Mar 122022
 
 March 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


René Magritte The victory 1939

 

A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)
Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)
Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)
‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)
On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)
Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)
In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)
Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)
One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)
Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)
Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)
Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)
Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)
Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

 

 

Inflation while money doesn’t move?

 

 

Tucker rule of law

 

 

Jen Psaki tells the Tik-Tok influencers in her briefing that Russia “of course hacked our election here” in 2016.

 

 

Von Greyerz has good analyses.

A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)

Russia has the biggest natural resource reserves in the world which include coal, natural gas, oil, gold, timber, rare earth metals etc. In Rubles these reserves will obviously appreciate substantially with the falling currency. In total, the Russian natural resource reserves are estimated at $75 trillion. That is 66% higher than the second country USA and more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia and Canada. Even if the total Russian supply is not lost to the world, it is clear that the West is determined to punish Russia to the furthest extent possible. Therefore, as we have already seen in the major escalation of oil and gas prices, the shortages will put insufferable pressure on the prices of natural resources.

The global market for grains, vegetable oil and fertilisers was already extremely tight before Russia’s attack. What is happening now is a commodity black swan across both energy and agricultural resources. The World Food Programme warned of a catastrophic scarcity for several hundred million people last November. What is happening now will make this exponentially worse. “Everything is going up vertically. The whole production chain is under pressure from every side,” said UN’s ex-head of agricultural markets. Energy and agricultural products are interlinked. Gas is feedstock for fertiliser production in Europe. Russia and Belarus together account for 1/3 of the world’s potash exports.Around 33% of world exports of barley come from Russia and Ukraine together, 30% of wheat, 20% of maize and 80% of sunflower oil. The consequences are unforeseeable.

Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is up 3X since April 2020. The exponential phase of the move has just started. UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FOA) are reporting a 43% increase in food price since 2020. And remember, this was before the real problems had started. I have for quite a few years warned about the coming inflation, leading to hyperinflation, based on unlimited money printing. But the dynamite of a global commodity crisis and shortages thrown into the already catastrophic debt and global monetary fire will create an inferno of nuclear proportions. If a miracle doesn’t stop this war very quickly (which is extremely unlikely), the world will soon be entering a hyperinflationary commodity explosion (think both energy, metals and food) combined with a cataclysmic deflationary asset implosion (think debt, stocks and property).

The world will be experiencing totally unknown consequences without the ability to solve any of them for a very long time. All the above would most likely happen even without a global war. But if the war spreads outside Russia and Ukraine, then all bets are off. At this point I am not going to speculate about such an outcome since what is standing in front of us currently certainly is bad enough.

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Well, yes, prices are rising.

Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.8 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.6 percent in January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 7.9 percent before seasonal adjustment. Gasoline was only up 6.6% in the February index. Most of the damage had not yet been taken; that’s in the last two weeks and will be in the next report. Groceries were up 1.4% on the month which annualizes to 18%, a figure that is worse than the early 1980s inflation and will flat-out ruin lower and middle-income Americans. Shelter was the largest non-food and fuel increase, which also monkey-hammers modest-income persons.

Prices for used vehicles dropped, no doubt due to the insanity of large trucks which of course are fuel pigs and most people buy them because they like them, not because they tow or haul something. When the pump shuts off at $100 before the tank is full they suddenly get a lot less attractive, don’t they? The fiction of “owners-equivalent rent” continues. Actual house prices have risen astronomically yet OER is only up 4.3%. Anyone who believes that figure is nuts. Incidentally this intentional distortion was part and parcel of the housing crash in 2008 and why we’ll have another one; rentals have been priced exclusive of capital cost recovery for quite some time and that’s a problem because the owners have thought they’d be “ok” due to capital appreciation in the asset value.

Then Covid hit, the moratoriums came and the rocket-shot in price that “rescued” what was otherwise a flat-out disaster that would have bankrupted basically everyone who owned and rented out single-family residences. The problem is that as with last time this “asset value” addition is a mirage; liquidity will be forced to tighten as when you can’t buy food you riot and a burned house is worth zero. You can’t print chickens, cows, wheat and corn — you have to grow them and when the input costs go up so does the price in the store. Thus these intentional (but transparent and fully-visible) lies in the CPI table, specifically OER, which I’ve outlined for over a decade as the cause of much of bad policy by both The Fed and Government, but which was intentionally put into the computation by the government itself, is going to lead to the same sort of bad outcome.

Insurance is going to take off too. Unfortunately that’s a “sunk cost” for virtually everyone in some form or fashion. If you think car insurance is going to get nasty health insurance was up 1.9% on the month which annualizes to 25.3%. Every single employed person either pays this directly (e.g. Obamacare) or it is a direct deduction from their wage and salary offer if the employer is forced to provide it for him or her with it commonly being $500 a month — so this is $100 per month, or over $1,000 a year that is going to come directly in the form of less money in your pocket or even firings if you no longer are worth the extra $100 a month to the employer! The annualized change in price for goods, both durables and non-durables, are all up double-digits with durable goods approaching 20%.

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“America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.”

Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)

Yes, life in the early twenty-first century looks more and more like a bad horror movie. And now the critics are moving in, savaging the production. “A massive murderous fraud,” many are saying of the Covid-19 extravaganza, and the audience, once back out in the blinding, clarifying daylight, are saying to themselves, Yeah, kinda seems like it was. Fraud vitiates liability protection. It is a well-known principle among the artisans of law. Moderna stock is down 70 percent and Pfizer more than 20. Wall Street has sniffed out a motherlode of rot, according to Mr. Edward Dowd, BlackRock investment advisor emeritus, who is saying it loudly over the alt-streams, making a whole lot of public health officials and doctors nervous as roaches when the lights flash on.

Mom impersonator Rochelle Walensky, chief of the CDC, has concealed much dire information about the number of “vaccine” injuries and fatalities of the past year, while still importuning everybody to vaxx-up and boost-up, knowing they might be harmed by it. Does she just skate on that? And then, of course, there is Dr. Fauci, missing in action lately. (Anybody look for him down in Paraguay?) The clock is ticking on when the millions of lawsuits might commence along with prosecutions for crimes against humanity.

Cue “Joe Biden,” then, to crash the global economy and give folks other things to think about — like, how am I going to keep driving sixty miles each way to work with gasoline at $8 a gallon? How, indeed, is anything like an advanced economy going to stagger forward now that nobody in the world will sell each other anything? Well, it probably just won’t. All that’s left is the sound of money being shot out of cannons, and nobody seems to notice that it gets shredded in the process. America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.

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“The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)

By now what we may call a Triple Threat has been established as the catalyst anticipating the launch of Operation Z. • Ukraine developing nuclear weapons. Zelensky himself hinted at it in the Munich Security Conference. • U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Confirmed, tersely, by none other than the Sinister Cookie Distributor neocon wife in the uber-neocon Kaganate of Nulands, who described them as “biological research facilities”. ” • An imminent attack on Donbass with massive civilian deaths. It could have been in March, according to documents seized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Or even in late February, according to SVR intelligence, which was monitoring the line of contact on a minute-by-minute basis. This is what eventually prompted Operation Z as a Russian version of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”).

So after years of CIA-instigated shouts of “conspiracy theory!” and less than zero “fact checkers” activity, it turns out “it was all happening in Ukraine”, as divine messenger Maria Zakharova once again pointed out: “We have found your own products. We have found your biological material.” The first-class investigative work of Dilyana Gaytandzhieva on Pentagon bioweapons was fully vindicated. Based on documents received from Ukrainian biolab employees, the Russian ModD revealed that research with samples of bat coronavirus, among other experiments, were conducted in a Pentagon-funded biolab.

The purpose of all this research – which included another Pentagon project to study the transfer of pathogens by wild birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia and other neighboring countries – was “to create a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly pathogens.” In trademark pysop mode, everything was turned upside down by the United States government: those evil Russkies could take control of biological samples, so any “accident” involving biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine would have to be blamed on Russia. The White House, in yet another flagrant display of unredeemable stupidity, accused Russia of “false claims” and China of “endorsing this propaganda”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov came up with the adult perspective: “The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

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“Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth.”

On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)

Nuland’s answer under oath to Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday appeared to confirm the U.S. has biological weapons in Ukrainian labs. Rubio asked her point blank whether Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons. A very uncomfortable Nuland answered that Ukraine was conducting “biological research” and the U.S. was worried “materials” would fall into Russian hands. It is hard to imagine she was worried about Russia seizing experimental vaccines or blood samples. She may be referring to gain-of-function research on pathogens that National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci testified could have a “dual use” purpose — both civilian and military. Here was Nuland apparently twice spilling the beans: the first time speaking on an unsecured telephone about U.S. plans for the 2014 coup in Kiev. And now about U.S.-funded bio research in Ukraine.

Damage control was clearly in order. First the White House scrambled to say Russian charges that the U.S. was running bioweapons research near the Russian border was “absurd” and “preposterous.” Then the Pentagon explained that these may be leftover pathogens from Soviet days and were part of a U.S. program begun 30 years ago to destroy WMD in former Soviet republics. That was the explanation of Robert Pope, the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He said: “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”

But documents on the website of the U.S. embassy in Kiev show the U.S. paid for and opened new labs in Ukraine as late as 2019. Now the U.S. reaction to Nuland’s revelations has turned more sinister. Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth. Now the U.S. is putting out the word that these Soviet-era pathogens may be used by Russia in the current conflict. Rubio set that ball rolling when he asked Nuland that if these weapons would be used, was there any doubt Russia would be the side using them. (It was a backhanded admission the U.S. and Ukraine have them too). She said: “There’s no doubt in my mind” it would be Russia.”

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That’s pretty unique. And risky.

Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)

One week ago, Shell quietly purchased Russian seaborne crude (at a record discount of $28.50) amid a self-imposed boycott by most other Western purchasers of Russian energy products, only to spark widespread populist outrage over its indirect funding of the Putin regime and prompting a vow from the largest European energy company to not purchase Russian crude any more. As a result, Moscow has found itself in the crippling position where despite carve outs for its oil exports (Europe has vocally refused to join the US ban of Russian energy exports), not a single western major is willing to buy Russian oil over fears of public backlash, while Chinese banks are reportedly on the fence when it comes to providing letters of credit to shippers seeking to purchase Russian oil, in the process freezing Russia’s entire seaborne oil exporting industry.

So fast forward to today, when in hopes of short circuiting the Chinese quasi-ban, Russian oil giant Surgutneftegaz (Surgut) has allowed Chinese buyers to receive oil without providing guarantees known as letters of credit (LC) in order to bypass Western sanctions, Reuters reported citing three people with knowledge of the matter said. A letter of credit, which allows 30 days for payment and is backed by a bank, is seen as the strongest guarantee for both sides. The change in terms will allow Surgutneftegaz – which will now face a direct monetary risk that “something might happen” to the uninsured cargo but since it has no other choices it will gladly take it – to continue to sell ESPO Blend crude from the port of Kozmino in Russia’s Far East to China, the world’s top oil importer.

As a reminder, Russian ESPO crude exports – of around 750,000 barrels per day in normal times – provide China’s biggest source of spot crude. While China has repeatedly voiced opposition to the sanctions, calling them ineffective and insisting it will maintain normal economic and trade exchanges with Russia, Bloomberg recently reported that Chinese state banks had restricted purchases of Russian commodities and stopped issuing U.S. dollar-denominated letters of credit for purchases of physical Russian commodities ready for export, perhaps out of fear of being seen as violating western sanctions. To get round the restrictions, Chinese companies are using open accounts that allow the customer to buy goods on a deferred payment basis, with a requirement to pay in full up to three days after the cargo is loaded. It was not immediately clear which banks were involved.

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“Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too?”

In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)

The word “whataboutism” is used to silence and insult opponents of U.S. imperialism. It should be embraced as a means of revealing what is too often kept hidden. Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent. When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine’s civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible. The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them. The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn.

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia. They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC. The chest thumping about the investigation into Ukraine should surely be followed by a discussion of U.S. hostility to the ICC. It is a clear example of when and how whataboutism should be practiced.

Not mentioning the U.S. relationship or rather lack of relationship with the ICC would be an indication of agreement with exceptionalist doctrine. If Vladimir Putin is described as a war criminal, thug, dictator, and a modern day Hitler, it is appropriate and indeed necessary to ask about American presidents. For brevity’s sake consider only those American presidents who served since 2001. U.S. invasions and interventions in western Asia, North Africa, central Asia and the Horn of Africa have displaced more than 37 million people since the “war on terror” began. Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too? Silence in the face of their criminality gives license and approval to U.S. aggressions.

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Blow up the internet to save propaganda.

Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)

What could possibly go wrong with setting an example like this? “Cogent Communications will pull the plug on its connectivity to customers in Russia in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The US-based biz is one of the planet’s largest internet backbones – the freeways of the internet – and says it carries roughly a quarter of global ‘net traffic.” Modern-day “aggregators”, of which Cogent is one, often are the source of address delegations as well. Cogent has confirmed they’re canceling IP addresses delegated out; when you are using an aggregator you don’t actually “own” any delegations you may have as for routing purposes the aggregator has the registration on those. For residential users this is not a major issue, but for commercial places where reverse mapping is a factor it can be at least a moderate hassle.

Much-more ominous, however, is this: “ICANN on Wednesday rebuffed a request from Mykhailo Fedorov, First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, to revoke all Russian web domains, shut down Russian DNS root servers, and invalidate associated TLS/SSL certificates in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” First, ICANN has no ownership of DNS root servers; they’re privately owned and operated. What they could do is remove “undesirable ones” from the “hints” file that is publicly distributed. Actually getting ISPs around the globe to change their hint files is quite-possibly another matter. Again, this is a distributed data set and what is distributed in terms of the root hints are suggestions, not commands. Could ICANN revoke the .RU top-level domain? Yes, but doing so risks a schism. Again there is nothing that can be done to enforce upon ISPs (or for that matter anyone willing to run their own local resolver, such as I do here at my home) what top-level domains exist and who is the delegated authority for them.

[..] ICANN wisely told Ukraine to go blow goats, but what also concerns me is that the people in Ukraine who made the request do not understand how this all works because in addition to asking for imposition of a deliberate schism they also asked for all Russian TLS/SSL certificates to be revoked. ICANN does not issue said certificates nor does it control the issuers, directly or indirectly, that people use as the “root of trust” for said certificates. As just one example ICANN has no operational control over Verisign which is one of the many firms that issues end-entity certificates. If you go to PayPal’s web page their certificate is issued by DigiCert and they, and only they, are the ones who validate that indeed they issued it and PayPal owns it.

The various operating system firms distribute a base “trusted root” list and there’s a consortium that agrees (most of the time) on what goes in and is removed from there; for example Google (Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox) both have such a list and are part of the consortium that makes such decisions, as does Microsoft, the various Linux distributions, Apple and FreeBSD. Attempts to tamper with this for political reasons are extremely unwise because while they may indeed be a “weapon” that can be used to inflict pain on various entities for political purpose any abuse of this sort risks a schism on the Internet as a whole and evasion of the sanction, if undertaken and it will be by the targeted parties, wildly increases the risk of compromise of the entire trust structure on which secure transactions rest. The impact of such an event will not be localized to the sanctioned parties; by definition if you do that the impact is likely to be global.

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Hunter and Azov.

One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)

The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, but it was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.” Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky. The study, which was funded to dig up corruption on the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine”. Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.” In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

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“1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.”

Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been forced by court order to publish all confidential documents sent to them by Pfizer in regard to emergency use approval of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection. The latest round of documents were published 1st March 22, and one of the documents confirms that the Pfizer Covid-19 injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. What are the consequences of this? Well official UK data shows that cases of Ovarian cancer in 2021 were at an all time high, and the UK Medicine Regulator received over 40,000 reports relating to reproductive and menstrual disorders suspected as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections in 2021 alone. The study, which can be found in the long list of confidential Pfizer documents that the FDA have been forced to publish via a court order here, was carried out on Wistar Han rats, 21 of which were female and 21 of which were male.


Each rat received a single intramuscular dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection and then the content and concentration of total radioactivity in blood, plasma and tissues were determined at pre-defined points following administration. In other words, the scientists conducting the study measured how much of the Covid-19 injection has spread to other parts of the body such as the skin, liver, spleen, heart etc. But one of the most concerning findings from the study is the fact that the Pfizer injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. An ‘ovary’ is one of a pair of female glands in which the eggs form and the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone are made. In the first 15 minutes following injection of the Pfizer jab, researchers found that the total lipid concentration in the ovaries measured 0.104ml. This then increased to 1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.

Ed Dowd

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“Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!”

Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years. There are two ways to be over Covid. One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons. Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.

Rationality is back! In that sense, it’s good to forget about Covid if it means living life normally and behaving with clarity about what does and does not work to mitigate a virus. The Democrats decided that the hyper-restrictionist ways were risking political fortunes. Hence, the line and the talking points needed to change. Another way to get over Covid is to forget completely about the last two years, especially the astonishing failures of compulsory pandemic controls. Forget about the school closures that cost a generation two years of learning. Forget that the hospitals were largely closed to people without a Covid-related malady. Forget about the preventable nursing-home deaths. Forget that dentistry was practically abolished for a few months, or that one could not even get a haircut.

Forget the stay-at-home orders, the church and business closures, the playground and gym closures, the bankruptcies, the travel restrictions, the firings, the crazed advice for everyone to mask up and physically separate, the record drug-related deaths, the mass depression, the segregation, the brutalization of small business, the labor-force dropouts, the forced stoppages of art and culture, and the capacity limits on venues that forced weddings and funerals to be on Zoom. Forget about a closer look at the bogus mathematical models, vaccine trials, the circumstances behind the Emergency Use Authorizations, the adverse effects, the inaccuracies of the PCR test, and misclassification of deaths, the billions and trillions of misdirected funds, the division of all workers between essential and nonessential, and the millions who were forced to get jabs they did not want.

Forget about the possibility of a lab leak, the role of China, the deadly use of ventilators, the neglect of therapeutics, the near-banning of all talk of natural immunity, the overselling of the vaccine, the lost religious holidays, the lonely deaths due to the blocking of loved ones from hospitals, the censorship of science, the manipulated and hidden CDC data, the payments to the major media, the symbiotic relationship between government and Big Tech, the demonization of dissent, and the abuse of emergency powers. Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!

Who precisely benefits from this method of being “over Covid?” The unrepentant hegemon that gave us this disaster to begin with. They want to be in the clear. They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia.

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No knowledge whatsoever of adverse events?!

Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has flagged that older Australians may get a new Covid vaccine booster shot every year. Mr Hunt said the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has been looking into a potential fourth vaccine shot for weeks. After some significant research he said ATAGI will potentially be ‘going to recommend a second booster’ for people aged 65 and over, and an annual jab is being considered. Mr Hunt said it could be a matter of weeks before older Australians known they can have a second Covid booster Mr Hunt said advice from the nation’s leading vaccine advisory group could come through by the end of the month on whether a fourth dose would be recommended.

So, Australians could find out in a matter of weeks whether they need to receive a second COVID-19 vaccine booster ahead of a predicted winter surge in infections. Mr Hunt said it was more likely than not a fourth dose will be the course of action for some groups ahead of winter, when a spike in both COVID and flu infections is forecast. ‘I can’t pre-empt the decision but … they are potentially going to recommend a second booster, which would be potentially the start of an annual program for people 65 and above,’ Mr Hunt told reporters in Canberra. ‘We’re expecting that advice from ATAGI within the next three weeks, if not earlier.’

The fourth dose plan will be a major topic of discussion when Prime Minister Scott Morrison meets with state and territory leaders at Friday’s national cabinet meeting. It comes as the government announced $2.1 billion to prepare for the months ahead. The plan will involve $1.2 billion to help protect residential aged care and disability care sectors, $356 million to protect vulnerable population groups and a further $571 million for vaccines.

Electronic pill

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“The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.”

Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)

Comrade citizens, after success with the Ministry of Information controlling efforts surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and public health vaccinations, The Division of Correct Thinking has announced they will also not tolerate any information against their war efforts in Ukraine. All good global citizens will appreciate the Ministry’s effort to protect you from bad Russian influences. Only the approved truth must remain visible to combat any Russian efforts to influence our thinking. The only horrors approved for review must be approved by the compliance division within the Google Ministry of Information. Comrade citizens, as our experience with COVID and the heroic vaccination program has shown us, the Ministry always looks out for our physical and mental health.

The inherent dangers of wrong thoughts could lead to misplaced sympathies, lack of necessary motivation and questions about the altruism within the Ministry for Peace. Further guidance continues…. Comrades, we must also be on guard for dissident agent provocateurs who may surface with unapproved information. The Ministry anticipates subversive efforts against the health of our state that may involve messages from non-reliable sources. The state fact-checking operations have been activated to level red status in anticipation of this problem. Help do your part. If you are concerned you may have been influenced by any information that could potentially be defined as friendly toward the Russian government, you must help deprogram your wrong thoughts by watching replays of Rocky IV or Red Dawn.


These are historically accurate documentaries, provided by brilliant Hollywood research teams, and they outline prior efforts of the Russian government to attack our nation. Any comrade citizen who wishes to donate their monthly chocolate or gasoline ration to the brave Ukranian people should contact their local re-education office using the Tik Tok code: GOOD CITIZEN. You may also text your good citizenship status to 1-800-YesWeCan, and you will receive a link to download a QR code providing you access to the full YouTube library of approved reference material. In the approved library, you will find quality content highlighting the glorious efforts of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the patriotic resistance of the Ukrainian military. The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.

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“We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support..”

Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, restaurants across the country are now requiring proof of Ukraine support in order to eat in their restaurants. Patrons are being asked to produce a photo ID and open up their social media profiles to prove they have been adequately supporting Ukraine by posting flags and sharing the latest wartime propaganda. “We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support,” said the manager of one NYC cafe. “If you aren’t adequately supporting the thing that everyone says we are supposed to be supporting at this time, you don’t deserve to eat in my store!” When asked about whether he would still require vaccine cards due to the pandemic, he stared blankly and said: “The what? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Patrons who don’t have adequate evidence of Ukraine support will then have to show adequate evidence of Russia hatred before entering.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle March 12 2022

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  • #104028

    René Magritte The victory 1939   • A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz) • Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 12 2022]

    #104029
    Germ
    Participant

    Fascinating interview:

    #104030
    Red
    Participant

    Who would have thought that making optimistic harvest predictions during years of wild weather extremes turn out so poorly. The geopolitical situation in Europe aside, this phenomenal weather swinging is set to continue this growing season in the northern hemisphere. The various institutions that predict crop yields are looking forward to bumper crops again this year. So lack of fertilizers, much higher fuel costs, parts shortages for machinery shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got tech fixes for all that right? We have yet to see ugly! Oh yeah I forgot to mention the likely outcome from the response to the pandemic, you know the unknown health unknowables or were they?
    https://en.mercopress.com/2022/03/09/severe-drought-impacts-on-argentine-corn-and-soybean-crop-estimates

    #104031
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    All out economic war has been declared upon Russia by the axis of evil. Nothing will effect the Ruble internally within Russia greatly regardless of its foreign exchange fortunes other that what Russia obtains through foreign exchange, autarky can assuage those costs. Russia has given notice it will respond, maybe not tit for tat but asymmetrically as they see fit, when they see fit. The Eurasia Economic Association have contingency arrangements to avoid dollar reserve currency use that will be put into use and may cause the deterioration of the dollar as universal exchange medium. However great care must be taken in doing so as the dollar has become the universal measure of exchange value and may be the only use it retains; the cost of replacing that function will be enormous but doesn’t require dollars as a medium of exchange, only the principle of dollars and that does not need any U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve products, printed or digital.

    #104032
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    #104034
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ll try again to suggest that All-Y’all look at the Vineyard of the Saker blog from 3/11/22 under this heading. I cannot get a post with the link to stick, nor would it post last night: The Russian statement is very good, and notes weaponization work on Plague and Tularemia, among others…

    Sitrep: UNSC on biolabs in the Ukraine + Russia Transcript

    @Formerly T-Bear: Gold might work better than $US as an exchange reference, after fluctuations calm down, right? Like in the olden days…

    #104035
    chooch
    Participant

    The ethical skeptic recently posted a chart showing a peak (excess death) around age 40.

    Es

    #104036
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Biden: NATO-Russia Conflict Would Be “World War 3”, Warns Kremlin of “Severe Price” If Chemical Weapons Used”

    So that’s your plan? Gosh these guys are easy. I mean since they’re the ones bringing CW in AND the UN OPCW will assure the world that Russia did it, it’s not easy. But imagine if they didn’t tell you their next move every morning at 4am, then broadcast it to every major outlet worldwide.

    Reminding: Incubator babies! Chemical Weapons! Gas Attack! Yeah how did that go in Syria for you?

    Looking at it another way, RAND listed the weaknesses of Russia. …As a personal favor to Russia I presume, since they’re publishing their attack vectors. But let’s look deeper: what are the weaknesses and imbalances of the United States and W?

    Also adding that Germany had two options: it could join Russia with fair market prices, buy their nuclear electricity, gas, and aluminum and get enormously rich together, OR Germany could stick with their Anglo conquerors still occupying them 70 years later, refuse to pay fair prices, and go to war, or be on the front lines of the war AGAINST Russia. There was a lot of manouvering, but atm we know which one they picked. Doesn’t make sense to me: killing vs not killing, paying fair money vs having to oppress and occupy for the next 100 years, but some people like that sort of thing. If they believe/choose that, they’re certainly no longer Saxons.

    Without the commodities, Germany isn’t the only one to fall. They locked up to steal Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, NoKo later. If they can’t, there is no “western consumerism.” With no illusion of sales, there cannot be 10x hypothecated services parasite perched on top. Like the truckers, all they have to do to stop them is say “no” and stay home. Don’t ship. So this is mortal and fatal to them.

    Biden is of course helping all he can. Russia refused to cut off oil even during a war, so Joe and Nancy did it for him. Merely for the blame, killin’ some (poor) folks.

    DuckDuckGo Updates Search Engine, Will Penalize Sites ‘Associated with Disinformation’”

    And ceases to exist, as this was their only marketable advantage. No surprise, this is the process and will always work as long as you can print infinity money.

    Democratic spending bill: “A blatant attempt to restrict the Second Amendment and override sanctuary state laws…”

    Continuing to start that civil war. At least we can’t say they only start them for everybody else. Fair is fair, we have the CIA start them at home too. “Party of Chaos” as Kunstler says. The other one is the “Party of Dumas” …Wait for it…

    “American Police Have so Much Gear that They’re Sending It to Ukraine”

    This is like a joke. “What schools had all the funded they needed and they had to hold bake sales for bombs?” They are so broke the US is holding bake sales to fund the Nazis in Ukraine. There are couple levels of crazy here. So…shipping guns overseas to a war zone isn’t a crime now? Not if we can help genocide all Russians? And if you do, you’re only increasing the crime rate in Europe. Duh: the weapons aren’t in the supply and support chain unless they are AK bullets and standards. Your AR-15, etc are all NATO rounds and will be sold for cash in the black market to buy the REAL military arms they need. Not toy pop guns like your .38 or .22lr either. But this is good for Hillary’s arms sales, like the ones from Tripoli to Idlib. Arms flying around the planet (but not for you!) is our motto.

    But with a nation of thought-stoppers, who haven’t asked an intelligent question in decades since they were beaten senseless for it at the age of 5, none of this matters. We “signaled” we were going to help the weak and oppressed by putting guns into the hands of Euro mafia (ironically mostly Ukrainians) who attack the weak and oppressed. Learning things is hard. You have to shut up and listen for 10 seconds.

    “UN Warns Ukraine War Could Spark 20% Surge in Global Food Prices”

    Only because they paved and destroyed everything here. We could have doubled food in a jiffy. This is now so far in the past Mellencamp could have told you about it. You can’t rebuild those towns and elevators overnight. There are no parts for combines and tractors. And you can’t unpave New Jersey ever. Congratulations, morons, you bought a one-way trip to hardship and oppression. And your kids ride for free.

    Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-09/niall-ferguson-ukraine-invasion-struggles-could-be-the-end-for-putin Straightforward Anglo, believing all the Anglo worldview without question, and “once ironically called himself “a fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang” following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” -Wikipedia Interesting insight into what the pale-faces are thinking. Or in their case, not thinking.

    “To my eyes, the most striking feature of the sanctions against Russia is the way that Western corporations have gone well beyond the letter of government requirements.”

    Yes, there is no better indicator of “Fascism” and the perfect merger of corporation and state than this fact. Thanks for proving all my accusations for me. GE, BP, CNN, they no longer like money. They will destroy their shareholders for the cause. Voluntarily, without being asked. Because they are all Group-think, of one mind and national body, and voluntarily, using propaganda and peer pressure, the definition of “Fascio.”

    “It is teetering on the brink of a financial crisis that will see bank runs, soaring inflation and default” “a 35% quarterly decline in gross domestic product”

    Does he mean the United States? Same with “Those who courageously protest the war are being arrested and harassed in the usual fashion” “the repressive apparatus of state security seems to be in full working order” He means US, UK, and Canada, right? See where having a moral standing – at all – starts to matter in life and war?

    “Conversely, if there is justice in the world … disaster befalls the architect of this war” Yes indeed. Let it be so, though he knows not what he asks.

    FullUp
    https://sinfest.xyz/btphp/comics/2022-03-12.jpg

    Is that the mark of a rich, peaceful, free nation?

    “Inflation while money doesn’t move?”

    What these MMT geniuses don’t get is: it moves all at once. Like Weimar, they say, “We’re geniuses! We printed a million-billion dollars and nothing happened! Let’s print 30 trillion.” (Literally) And nothing happens. Until FAITH is lost, and then velocity goes to infinity, all the money comes out of hiding in just 3 months. The key to inflation is PERCEPTION, which cannot be predicted. This is true of gold and dollar replacements. We had inflation from 1980-2000 but gold went down because “confidence”. It’s confidence that makes it.

    Right now this is Inflation (printing) smashing into deflation (debt). But they keep increasing the forces involved. Infinitely.

    Why would we be worried about “Whataboutism”? If I answer Biden’s war Crimes with Bush’s war crimes, we can happily arrest and hang them both. Doesn’t bother me a bit. Wrong is wrong. And I don’t have a team. So there’s no stress, no bother. I only follow law and morality, and it only irritates and stops those who don’t follow law and have no morality. Also, I expect they’re in the Very Important World of Twitter and the New Yorker. Back in the real world, ngaf, and we hear it less.

    The main “Whataboutisms” are when people point out their breathtaking hypocrisy solely in pursuit of power. That’s why we “Whataboutism” for 14,000 killed Russian genocide by their open Bandera “hero” government in Ukraine. It shows who they are, they have no moral high ground, but the moral low ground, and they don’t like it. Hahahaha. Which means I do it more.

    “ICANN on Wednesday rebuffed a request from Mykhailo Fedorov, First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, to revoke all Russian web domains,”

    Anything to start WWIII. Remember the Pentagon pulling off their shirt and showing they owned like 100 million potential IP addresses and could DNS if required? Yeah, they’ve thought of this. They’re just playing around. Apparently this is the thing though and they’re probing the attack now. A few sites have gone down in the test last few days. I say “they” as the Derp State, tryin’ to kill some folks again. Why would Russia bother? The West will do it to hide the (next) banking crash, like the one Canada ran into last month. But they couldn’t do that without a Russia to blame it on.

    This goes with yesterday’s discussion in who’s controlling things? Biden SotU delineated TRUMP’s platform and agenda. No one noticed of course. Biden is HELPING Russia. No one notices. Biden is both destroying the currency faster than ever and the DNC party forever. He’s airing live from a stage studio across from the real White House, while Kamala has yet to visit the VP residence. How much more of coincidences can you take?

    I’m fine with it if it’s an accident caused by bad DNC/CIA/DERP strategy, but it beggars belief. So we have a “tangle” of responses because the minions have beliefs and marching orders from their weirdo religion in the past. But the Top – who should most know better – are doing the weirdo death-eater thing but 99% of the time always TOO FAR. So they both reveal their intent to murder all life on earth which no one cares about, but also to murder YOU personally, which people sorta slowly sinks in a leeeetle bit. So I have to say that my impression is that somewhere, somehow, the White Hats have the blackmail files and the phone books of the baddies. And they’re calling the minons with “the usual orders.” Now if they called and said, “Trumper is the bestest and we want you to vote for gun rights and abortion” then they’d know something was up and stop. So you tell them to have Beto say “we’re coming for you” and call VA to say “We want post-birth abortions”. (Both literally happened.)

    The people then go “Whaaaaaaaaaatt????”

    Or as today, Nuland to say, “Yes, we do have 29 very dangerous labs, actually.” And “inflation is +8%” (Psaki) and “we’re no longer the reserve currency” (Powell). You see if the Black Hats can run the world with blackmail files + fat bribes and pensions, then all you need to do is get that same phone # and checkbooks, then in a sorta-gray area like you have in wars and rebellions, use it cuz IDGAF. Screw them and their mothers. It’d be the funniest thing ever to do this and send Bolton to Mongolia too. I could keep it up all day just for entertainment.

    This is literally the only POSSIBLE way to stop them since the system rests 99% on lies and propaganda, so the only solution is for people to realize they have been lied to, it’s all fake, and these specific people are the liars to be discredited, then because discredited, no shield and arrested. That way the next generation doesn’t just believe it again and we go right back to being a slave plantation. They need to have the hardships of war and rebellion without anyone getting killed. Pretty big ask but this would do it. Find me another explanation if you can.

    One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)”

    Just like here, the oligarch that funded Ze’s TV show, simply moved the reality TV show from the fake presidential office to the real presidential office. Of course here it’s the opposite: we moved from the real White House to the stage one. Obviously faker than Ukraine. Clue? The oligarch also took the other actors to be the other cabinet.

    “They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia.”

    “What difference does it make at this point?” “Let’s not worry about who did what to whom…” That is ME, attacking and killing you and the whole United States and stealing a trillion of your money in just 6 months. So much money that ONE oligarch, Bezos made enough ADDITIONAL money to pay every Amazon employee $200,000 bonus in just a few months. The other 100 oligarchs made the same. From you. Now paying 15% inflation with no raises. Your kids will starve shortly like we all used to.

    But let’s not ask why 12-year-olds are dying of heart failure and you’re broke and still have 80% of the oppressive police state they installed using that leverage to go from mostly information blackout to total media blackout of wrongthink.

    Did I say blackout? No. We now both permit and promote open genocide against Russians worldwide.

    It’s the civic duty of all loving, caring, peaceful world citizens to murder the poor and all Russians wherever they are found. Signal your virtue and Kristallnacht them today!

    #104037
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    #104038
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    John Day at # 104034,
    Following WW II the dollar gained reserve currency due to its exchangeability with gold, basically a bartering currency that could be used instead of gold. As with all things, the kids got into the cookie jar and that no longer has cookies. The problem with gold is the very limited amount available that cannot underwrite the world’s economic growth without having its value becoming quite fluid to meet those needs and loosing its store of value properties or becoming too valuable for normal commerce. There is a reason John Maynard Keynes called it a barbaric relic; he would know. There is also a reason that gold is taken from the ground to be put back into the ground for safekeeping; having it loose in general exchange has a significant loss factor. There are few good answers and no correct answers to the problem.

    #104039
    chooch
    Participant

    Noirette,

    Appreciated your commentary the other day. I would reply all the above but it doesn’t answer the question where is this going except it ain’t good.

    I was reviewing all my war notes. I think Putin’s plan A was to take Kyiv quickly thus control of the country and then demilitarize and denazify. I think he gambled on the odds of that scenario panning out being high. Five days in he had to fall back to contingent scenarios.

    Now he is executing plan B, demilitarize and denazify on the road to take Kyiv and control of the country. The escalation required to achieve this is likely to come at the expense of a great number of Ukrainians, to which the West is in full support of behind their veil of virtue.

    Urban areas are being encircled and isolated and the Russians have yet to employ their full aerospace capability most likely in the interest of keeping civilian numbers down and preserving the the infrastructure. How long can they play nice?

    #104040
    Oroboros
    Participant

    From Reminiscence of the Future…

    Andrei Martyanov gives a nice overview from the Russian perspective. A great cigar, a glass of single malt, and just the right amount of Snark.

    Also a great wrap up of businesses leaving Russia vs businesses staying, it might surprise you.

    Mercedes leaves, Renault stays to capture the German market share, those sneaky French.

    No Shit, “Geniuses”

    https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/03/no-shit-geniuses.html

    #104041
    Fattigmann
    Participant

    @Formerly t-bear, gold and precious metals are wonderful natural checks on unsustainable human growth. The idea is that, as new territories are opened up and explored, new sources of precious metals are found. This idea underlies the gold rush mentality of the 19th century. Of course, the modern mind does not accept limits even on a finite planet. A much more stable (and smaller), more beautiful, natural order would be in place without unbacked paper money.

    #104042
    zerosum
    Participant

    public amnesia.
    optimistic predictions
    If you are looking for “WHY”, read the blogs.
    Read TAE.

    Our leaders – Our future – unknown consequences without the ability to solve any of them

    destruction of civil infrastructures
    destruction of industrial infrastructures
    destruction of military infrastructures
    destruction of social infrastructures
    destruction of economic infrastructures

    destruction of critical thinking
    destruction of peace

    Humanitarian corridors
    Mass graves
    ————

    • ‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)

    Cutting Through the Fog Masking ‘a New Page in the Art of War’


    The non-government in Kiev is simply not allowed by the Empire to negotiate anything.

    By now what we may call a Triple Threat has been established as the catalyst anticipating the launch of Operation Z.

    1. Ukraine developing nuclear weapons. Zelensky himself hinted at it in the Munich Security Conference.
    U.S.
    2. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Confirmed, tersely, by none other than the Sinister Cookie Distributor neocon wife in the uber-neocon Kaganate of Nulands, who described them as “biological research facilities”. ”

    3. An imminent attack on Donbass with massive civilian deaths. It could have been in March, according to documents seized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Or even in late February, according to SVR intelligence, which was monitoring the line of contact on a minute-by-minute basis. This is what eventually prompted Operation Z as a Russian version of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”).

    Read more ……
    ————-
    Unintended consequences.
    Every man, 18 to 60 yrs, will get a gun.
    Ukrainians will be better armed than in the USA

    —————
    Azov Battalion
    https://www.intellinews.com/eastern-ukraine-has-almost-completely-fallen-but-putin-now-needs-a-peace-fast-237784/
    By Gav Don March 12, 2022
    Russian forces yesterday reached the edges of the city of Dnipro. Sitting as it does on the elbow of the Dnepr River, this news provides firm evidence that Russia is now in practical occupation of pretty much all of Trans Dnepr Ukraine, apart from the pocket in which about a dozen brigades (60,000 men) of Ukraine’s best troops are now trapped facing LDNR. Surrounded and cut off from fuel, food and ammunition, this force now has a choice of whether to fight to the last round or to treat for terms.

    In Mariupol the Azov Battalion will be given no such choice. With de-Nazification front and centre of its war aims we can expect Russia to take no (Azov) prisoners. Azov’s fight to the death, using civilians as cover wherever it can, is causing the reduction of Mariupol that we are now listening to (but not seeing – most of the film crews are in Kyiv).

    With its arrival on the Dnepr Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine is approaching its end, successful in military terms but a disaster by any other measure. Which makes now a good time to think about whether and how the war might end.
    READ MORE ………
    ———-

    #104043
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The hysteria is reaching in heights

    How to Donate Your Airline Miles to Help Ukrainians
    A way to contribute to relief efforts, even if you don’t have cash to spare.

    Gee, I never saw this type of appeal for the half million Iraq women and child murdered by the US War Criminal, the Dumber Bush.

    The Empire of Lies hypocrisy is bottomless apparently.

    That’s why I like Jim Kunstler, for his word-smithing skill.

    America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.”

    .

    #104044
    zerosum
    Participant

    Eight trucks carrying humanitarian aid poised to enter are thought to have been stopped. Stephen Cornish, from medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, said: ‘Sieges are a medieval practice that have been outlawed by the modern rules of war for good reason.’ Sergei Orlov, Mariupol’s deputy mayor, said there was ‘no way out.’ He told Irish broadcaster RTE: ‘Russian troops do not allow us to leave our cities. We have no utilities, no electricity, no sanitary system.

    ‘Without water we had the awful [situation] when a child died of dehydration. So people collect snow to melt it to water.

    The city is totally destroyed by artillery and… aircraft bombing.’ Mr Orlov said 50,000 children including 3,000 babies and toddlers remain in Mariupol. He estimated that about 100,000 of its 450,000 citizens had managed to flee before the siege. He added: ‘Unfortunately, we have no opportunity to bury [the dead] in private graves. That’s why yesterday we buried 47 people in a mass grave.’
    Ukraine’s foreign ministry last night accused Russian soldiers of abducting Ivan Fedorov, mayor of the south-eastern city of Melitopol, which fell nearly two weeks ago.
    ————
    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling on Russian forces to heed the calls of residents in the occupied city of Melitopol who protested to demand their mayor be freed.

    Zelensky, who spoke earlier Saturday with the leaders of Germany and France, said the detention of Mariupol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was an attempt “to bring the city to its knees.”

    He said that Ukraine expects “the leaders of the world to show how they can influence the liberation (of) a man who personifies Ukrainians who do not give up.”

    Zelensky also encouraged Ukrainians to keep fighting, saying it was “impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it.”

    ——

    #104046
    John Day
    Participant

    @Formerly T-Bear: Keynes was brilliant, but Keynesians are one-trick-ponies.
    Keynes sought to match monetary supply to economy in a growing economy, which we appear to be done with.
    International exchange of gold in trade was stable for the US, as studied in detail by Michael Hudson in the 1960s, except for one mismatch, which happened to be Vietnam.
    The US hemorrhaged all of it’s gold through Vietnam. The world saw this happening for years.
    France got her gold in time, the UK, not quite, but the percent they got at the last minute was never revealed in detail.

    The central banks of the world do remain prepared for this fallback plan, and it’s not necessary to circulate gold coins for it to work. I’m seeing rumors of a “commodity based eastern reserve currency” to replace the Petrobuck$.
    Just rumors…

    #104047
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr.D: Amen, Brother!

    #104048
    zerosum
    Participant

    Opinion | There is no wisdom in pretending that Ukraine’s neo-Nazis don’t exist


    OPINION | THERE IS NO WISDOM IN PRETENDING THAT UKRAINE’S NEO-NAZIS DON’T EXIST
    The troubling history and dangerous US relationship with the Azov Battalion and other extreme right-wing groups in Ukraine cannot be forgotten.
    BY MEDEA BENJAMIN AND NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES
    MARCH 10, 2022

    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 9, 2022.
    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/09/there-no-wisdom-pretending-ukraines-neo-nazis-dont-exist

    Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.”

    In 2014, Nuland and the State Department got their favorite, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, installed as Prime Minister of the post-coup government. He lasted two years, until he, too, lost his job due to endless corruption scandals. Petro Poroshenko, the post-coup President, lasted a bit longer, until 2019, even after his personal tax evasion schemes were exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers.

    When Yatsenyuk became prime minister, he rewarded Svoboda’s role in the coup with three cabinet positions, including Oleksander Sych as deputy prime minister, and governorships of three of Ukraine’s 25 provinces. Svoboda’s Andriy Parubiy was appointed chairman (or speaker) of Parliament, a post he held for the next 5 years. Tyahnybok ran for president in 2014, but only got 1.2% of the votes, and was not re-elected to parliament.

    Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme right in the 2014 post-coup elections, reducing Svoboda’s 10.4% share of the national vote in 2012 to 4.7%. Svoboda lost support in areas where it held control of local governments but had failed to live up to its promises, and its support was split now that it was no longer the only party running on explicitly anti-Russian slogans and rhetoric.

    After the coup, Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader Yarosh described to Newsweek as a “war” to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2 with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.

    After anti-coup protests evolved into declarations of independence in Donetsk and Luhansk, the extreme right in Ukraine shifted gear to full-scale armed combat. The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for fighting its own people, so the government formed new National Guard units to do so.

    Right Sector formed a battalion, and neo-Nazis also dominated the Azov Battalion, which was founded by Andriy Biletsky, an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. It was the Azov battalion that led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics and retook the city of Mariupol from separatist forces.

    The Minsk II agreement in 2015 ended the worst fighting and set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics, but a low-intensity civil war continued. An estimated 14,000 people have been killed since 2014. Congressman Ro Khanna and progressive members of Congress tried for several years to end US military aid to the Azov Battalion. They finally did so in the FY2018 Defense Appropriation Bill, but Azov reportedly continued to receive US arms and training despite the ban.

    In 2019, ….. read more …..

    #104049
    Noirette
    Participant

    chooch posted: *re Putin*

    Now he is executing plan B, demilitarize and denazify on the road to take Kyiv and control of the country. The escalation required to achieve this is likely to come at the expense of a great number of Ukrainians, to which the West is in full support of behind their veil of virtue.

    Taking for granted that nobody cares about Ukrainians … The country is a terrain promoted up to be the subservient host of a Russia-US war far away from all rich NY or Moscow residents. Actors like Ze, parading about (though some reports say he has fled), his “resisting speech” (echoing Churchill, ridiculously lame), well. No good will come of it.

    “Veil of virtue”, yes, good expression. What a bunch of hypocrites.

    Imho the demilitarize Ukr. plan is working out fine. (Off the cuff, as I am not a milit. informed person.) Targetting and destroying milit. installations with precision weapons or on the ground assault, closing them off, is achievable, and is probably (?) close to being a done deal. The Ukr. armed forces (plus whatever rag-tag criminals etc.) could not possibly defend all these varied, scattered, depots, installations, air-fields, barracks, munitions holdings, factories, tank parking lots, … etc.

    De-nazi-fying is another kettle of fish, a whole other topic. Gathering together the top leaders of Azov battalion and shooting them in the head is one way but maybe not the best.

    #104050
    Henry
    Participant

    Orginal sourced paper from Pfizer:

    http://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf

    Funny how they made it almost impossible to view the list of issues.

    Luckily someone has cleaned up the list:

    The Complete List of the Pfizer Adverse Events of Special Interest

    Huston looks like we have a problem.

    #104051
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    Fattigmann at # 104041
    gold and precious metals are wonderful natural checks on unsustainable human growth.
    How? Please give historical examples of your argument.

    The idea is that, as new territories are opened up and explored, new sources of precious metals are found.
    Just where might these ‘new territories’ be?

    This idea underlies the gold rush mentality of the 19th century.
    The gold rush of the 19th Century was unique in history and can not be repeated.

    Of course, the modern mind does not accept limits even on a finite planet.
    The ‘modern mind’ IS a limit on a finite planet.

    A much more stable (and smaller), more beautiful, natural order would be in place without unbacked paper money.
    Go ahead and destroy ‘unbacked paper money’ and find out what will happen. How will you heat your house, even have that house, put food on the table in that house, find clothes in the closet in that house, or have any of the communication devices that adorn your house to entertain and pass the time. And forget having any vehicle to transport your better parts to where ever you wish to go. You have no ability to accomplish any part of your life without ‘unbacked paper money’. Open your eyes!

    #104053
    John Day
    Participant

    I have tried again and the Saker link to the Russian UNSC statement will simply not post.

    Sitrep: UNSC on biolabs in the Ukraine + Russia Transcript  ..Russia, China, Brazil, India, and Kenya want investigations into the Biolabs…Russian Statement Excerpts:  We called this meeting because during the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, some shocking facts came to light: the Kiev regime is urgently concealing traces of a military biological program that Kiev implemented with support of the US Department of Defense.   Defense Ministry of Russia got hold of documents confirming that Ukraine developed a network of at least 30 biological laboratories that host extremely dangerous biological experiments, aimed at enhancing the pathogen properties of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other lethal diseases with the help of synthetic biology. This work is funded and directly supervised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the United States, i.a. in the interests of Pentagon’s National Center for Medical Intelligence. The key role in these programs was played by a BSL-3 central reference laboratory at the Mechnikov Scientific-Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa, Ukraine. Research centers in other cities also played a role – Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Dnipro, Kherson, Ternopol, Uzhgorod, Vinnytsia. Research results were sent to US military biological centers, i.a. to U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, US Naval Medical Research, and US Army Biological Warfare Labs in Fort Detrick that used to be the key hubs of the American biological weapons program…..As part of another project, bats were considered as carriers of potential BW agents. Among the priorities identified are the study of bacterial and viral pathogens that can be transmitted from bats to humans: pathogens of plague, leptospirosis, brucellosis, as well as coronaviruses and filoviruses. Project documents clearly indicate that the United States actively financed bioprojects in Ukraine…..Ukraine has a unique geographical location, where transcontinental migration routes of potential carriers of dangerous diseases intersect. Many of those routes pass through the territories of Russia and Eastern Europe. The research that I mentioned was done in the very midst of Eastern Europe and in close vicinity to the Russian borders. According to the data received, the birds that were ringed and released during biological research from the Kherson nature reserve, were caught in Ivanovo and Voronezh regions of Russia…..Several thousands of samples of blood serum of COVID-19 patients (most of them of Slavic ethnicity) were transported from Ukraine to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the United Stated – allegedly for trials of treatment and prevention of COVID-19.
      Everyone knows how sensitive Western states are when it comes to transferring biological samples of their citizens abroad. And there is a good reason for that – theoretically, samples may be used to create bioagents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations.   The activity of biolabs in Ukraine that we track back to 2014, and US-implemented program of so-called reform of Ukrainian healthcare system triggered uncontrolled growing incidence of dangerous and economically relevant infections in Ukraine. There is an increase in the number of cases of rubella, diphtheria, tuberculosis. Occurrence of measles has increased more than 100-fold. The World Health Organization said Ukraine runs high risks of having a polio outbreak. There is evidence that in Kharkov, where one of the labs is located, 20 Ukrainian soldiers died of swine flu in January 2016, 200 more were hospitalized. By March 2016, the total of 364 people had died of swine flu in Ukraine. Besides, outbreaks of African swine fever occur regularly in Ukraine. In 2019, there was an outbreak of a disease that had symptoms similar to plague.
      While the US itself shut down military-purpose biological research on its territory due to high risks it posed to American population, the Kiev authorities actually agreed to turn their country into a biological testing site and have their citizens used as potential test subjects. Those experiments bearing potential country-scale risks continued for years. This once again proves the cynicism of Kiev’s Western patrons who keep shouting from every rooftop that they care for the fate of Ukrainians…..The materials that our Defense Ministry got hold of prove that all serious high-risk research in Ukrainian biolabs was directly supervised by US experts who had diplomatic immunity… ..Ukraine’s Health Ministry ordered to eliminate biological agents deposited in biolabs starting from 24 February 2022…..The Lvov lab alone destroyed 232 containers with pathogens of leptospirosis, 30 – of tularemia, 10 – of brucellosis, 5 – of plague. The total of more than 320 containers was eliminated. Pathogens’ titles and excessive amounts give reason to think that this work was done as part of military biological programs… ..All those years, there was a site for dangerous biological tests on the doorstep of the European Union. We call to think of a real biological threat to the population of European states that may be posed by uncontrolled spread of biological agents from Ukraine. As we know from our experience with COVID-19, this cannot be stopped. Should this be the case, it will encompass the entire Europe…..During hearings of the US Congress on 8 March, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland in fact confirmed that there were biolabs in Ukraine where military-purpose biological research had been conducted…
    ..At the same time, the Department of State sticks to the point that allegedly there are no US-controlled biolabs in Ukraine. Hence a question to the American delegation. How does this reconcile with 2005 Agreement between the US Department of Defense and Ukrainian Ministry of Health Concerning Cooperation in the Area of Prevention of Proliferation of Technology, Pathogens, and Expertise that could be Used in the Development of Biological Weapons? … ..We emphasize that biological threats defy all borders. No region of the world can feel totally safe today. The United States supervises several hundreds of biolabs in 30 countries, i.a. in the Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia, and along the perimeter of former USSR. Washington does not agree to subject them to international verification…..We feel obliged to keep the Security Council updated on the situation with US military-purpose biological activity in Ukraine that creates real risks for international peace and security. We intend to get back to this topic soon. We would not exclude a possibility of activating mechanisms envisaged by Articles 5 and 6 of the BTWC. For now, we would like to hear answers of the US side to the questions that we asked.

    #104055
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Right now, as we speak, Vladimir Putin, controls the fertilizer that feeds the world. Consider for a moment or two just how much power that gives to Mr. Putin. Would it be fair to say that he has the world, the entire world, by the jewels?

    Now look back into history and tell me what your average garden variety power hungry tyrant would choose to do with that much power. In other words, how long do you think it would take for them to simply claim ownership to the whole darned thing?

    Does anyone see Mr. Putin doing that? I understand that opinions on that point vary.

    So is Vlad a white hat or a black hat?

    #104056
    John Day
    Participant

    My test of posting a Saker blog link to Sergey Lavrov’s comments in Turkey revealed that it would also not be accepted by the AI censor.

    #104057
    John Day
    Participant

    @D.Benton Smith: Hat color debate time? Surely you jest, sir! There can be no agreement.
    I think Putin/Lavrov follow a moral compass enigmatic to most westerners. I also think I “get it”, but that’s my personal perception, and I have no objective proof.
    My read is that they seek to act in favor of planetary life, to allow it to make it’s way and not be herded and culled, as the “owners” seek to do.
    Which chaos is more white or black?
    I must personally favor the bottom-up approach to adaptation in these novel times.

    #104058
    John Day
    Participant

    Lavrov: “We are also outraged by what Pentagon has been doing in the biological laboratories created with its funding. It uses the Ukrainian territory to carry out experiments with pathogens which can then be used to create biological weapons. Washington’s representatives have publicly refuted rumours that they have been engaged in prohibited activity in Ukraine. Not surprisingly, EU countries started saying in one voice that they do not know anything about the Americans working on biological weapons in Ukraine. By the same token, it is not surprising that UN representatives also said that they did not have this information. It goes without saying that the Americans have been doing this in total secrecy. They do this in other post-Soviet countries as well, with their biological weapons laboratories encircling the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. They will not get away with this.”

    #104059
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    @ John Day
    Thanks for tip to look at “ Sitrep: UNSC on biolabs in the Ukraine + Russia Transcript” from saker blog.

    I’m going to repeat Andrei’s questions posed yesterday, as I’ve been wondering the same:

    Question: does anybody know of a strong, solid and quick VPN with Russian outlets?
    Question: which is the least bad, the least corrupt, search engine out there?
    Question: do you know of a 100% FOSS messenger, including its internal encryption mechanisms?

    (For search engines, the answer is not DuckDuckGo. according to The Gateway Pundit , Duckduckgo also deranks and censors. I heard the same from RT International yesterday.)

    I set up a local rocketchat server yesterday. Something partner and I can use to communicate when at home that FB does not snoop. (He’s a night owl; I am not. It is an effective way to share ideas when one is asleep and the other is awake.) At home, on the local network, behind a firewall, not venturing out to the internet, the conversation should be private. I declined the free rocketchat cloud connections, which means that I will need to wade through a lot of steps before it will work outside of the local network. (Although it is, in theory, doable.). I’ll need to set up encryption.

    I was thinking about my smartphone yesterday. It was when my twins were babies, around 15 years ago, that I got my first smartphone, although they weren’t called that then, and I didn’t pay for a data connection – I was dependent upon WiFi. It was, oh, around 11 or 12 years ago that I first got a smartphone with data and “3G.” It was so that I could do internet research when on a job site, independent of the client’s internet (which may not be working.) The allure of 4G was that I could be in the phone with a client AND browse the internet at the same time. These were important tools for someone who made her primary income by fixing problems clients had with their computers and networks. I didn’t pick up these tools because I wanted Google or the NSA to spy on me 24/7.

    A bit of advice: if you use a computer with Windows 10/11 OS, take a look at Settings -> Privacy, under each setting. Make certain that you are copacetic with the personal data your PC is sending to Microsoft…such as their keylogger.

    Amusing thought experiment: https://youtu.be/26MgTCz7GhA What if the internet went down EVERYWHERE? – first 60 minutes, minute by minute.

    #104060
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Noirette

    The Ukronazis are scattered and embedded through the ‘regular’ Ukraine military. They are acting exactly like the German SS did during WWII in the ‘policing’ of the regular German Army units, making sure there is no ‘wrong think or wrong speak in the ranks. The SS was Hitler’s personal army within the army.

    Zelinsky is a muppet with far right Azov leaders having their diseased fists rammed up his ass. He has no power but the Azovniks do.

    Russian intelligence has been gather detailed information of the present Ukrainian military command and infrastructure for at least the past 8 years.

    Russian intelligence has not only mapped out the ukronazi command structure in exquisite detail, they mapped out the ID’s of the Azovniks and far right members of the Ukrainian military by name and possibly by photo ID, finger print and other bio-metric identify marks.

    Russian intelligence has had years to compile these lists of who’s who in the atrocity space.

    All Ukronazi have certain tattoos as part of their hate cult, making them easy to identity.

    Any surrender by Ukrainian forces and the Russians will sort out the Azov nazis far right elements from the regular Ukrainian troops.

    Any mercenaries or third party combatants will be shot on the spot.

    Lower ranking Ukro-nazis will be disposed of without a trial or a trace that they ever walked the earth.

    Higher ranking war criminals will actually be tried in public at the coming War Crimes Tribunal held and globally televised by Russia.

    They said this is what will happen and they seem to be successfully doing everything they have said so far.

    The Eurotards and the Empire of Lies just can’t bring themselves to break the shocking news to their Sheeple consumers.

    Bah, bah

    The Western Public are after all treated by their Owners like mushrooms.

    Fed lots of horseshit and kept in the dark.

    .

    #104061
    chooch
    Participant

    Zelensky is aware that Putin can flatten Kyiv. Latest messaging.

    Lieutenant Colonel Maxim Krishtop, a captured Russian pilot, was paraded before TV cameras in Kyiv on Friday afternoon.

    ‘Do not invade Kyiv, we have already lost this war’

    No cameo for Penn.

    #104062
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I personally knew a German Officer from WWII who had been captured by the Russians on the Eastern Front in 1944. He was shipped to a labor camp in Siberian.

    He was finally released back to his homeland in 1951.

    Let me repeat that, he was released from his labor camp in Siberia in 1951

    He was told he was ‘an administrative’ oversight.

    Most of the original pows with him died over the course of his confinement.

    The Russians got a lot of ‘free’ labor from him and the other German POWs.

    Russians have a long memory

    And chooch, do you enjoy being a cheerleader for the Empire of Lies? The Ukrainian army has been smashed and surrounded from the get go. The Russians were willing to take the losses to achieve their goals, which they have done. This military campaign of theirs will be studied in military academies around the world for decades. They did it with a numerically smaller ground force while the Ukrainian military act like cowards hiding behind civilians as shields.

    #104063
    zerosum
    Participant

    I’m surprised that there is so much expression of hate, anger, revenge, negative passion and hostility that has been generated by the propaganda by our leaders, snobs, main stream media.
    Have humans always been so sensitive to this kind of inputs?
    Maybe covid or the vaccines infected human ability to critical thinking.

    #104064
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    John Day at # 104046
    I’d be sort of careful of assigning ‘one trick pony’ on John M. Keynes. His collected life opus has thirty volumes (including index); I’ve read 28 of the 29 others, (his book on probability will likely not be attempted at this point). I do not have quite the same esteem for Dr.Michael Hudson although he has drawn up some heterodox conclusions, many of which I agree and some that I don’t but like Dr. Steve Keen, another of high calibre scholarship, both have not broken the gravity of BMA Econ 101 and are still in orbit of that ersatz economic theorem.
    I was stationed inEurope when Lindon Johnson pushed ‘Buy American’ and save our gold. Richard Nixon later cut the Gordian’s knot tying gold to currency, avoiding foreign exchange deficit to drain gold reserves. By this time the dollar had become firmly established as the international currency used in valuation, trade and contract, nothing else filled the economic need, or at that point could. No inventory has ever been taken of the U.S. gold reserve; what is there is pure speculation but it has for many years been insufficient to back the U.S. dollar volume at its historic prescribed level. To return to gold as currency or basis of currency restores barter as economic exchange and 3,000 years of economic experience will be back at square one. Your choice, that.

    #104065
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Formerly T-Bear

    So how much actual gold do you think the Empire of Lies has in total?

    My guess, based on the behavior of the Empire of Lies, is close to zero with only gold plated tungsten bars creating a ‘photo op’ illusion for the Plebs to ogle at.

    If there is any left, it’s been rehypothecated several thousand times to Infinity and beyond, making it worse than useless.

    The Empire of Lies is simply packed with Hollow Men

    The Hollow Men

    Mistah Kurtz – he dead

    A penny for the Old Guy

    I
    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats’ feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion
    ;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

    II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death’s dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind’s singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.

    Let me be no nearer
    In death’s dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer-

    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

    III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man’s hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    Is it like this
    In death’s other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

    IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death’s twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

    V

    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o’clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
    Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

    #104066
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @ JohnDay “So is Vlad a white hat or a black hat”

    And I though I was being so clever by writing my personal statement of fact by framing it as an apparently “rhetorical question” . Here’s how it was meant to play: everybody who thought Vlad was obviously a white hat would simply agree with what they assumed was my position. Same would go for those poor misbegotten souls on the other side of the divide who thought Vlad was “obviously” a black hat. Both camps were meant to think I was on their side, but without me having to run the risk of overtly offending one side or the other.

    The cowardly ploy did not work worth a damn.

    For the record : Vlad is a white hat, and one of the VERY few grown-ups in the room.

    #104067
    WES
    Participant

    The war on our money
    The war on covid
    The war in the Ukraine
    These non-stop wars are all aimed at us!

    #104068
    chooch
    Participant

    As much as I do being a vaccinator. Your extrapolation skills are mind boggling Oroboros.

    #104069
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    @ Oroboros
    Though numerous figures have been given at numerous times, it is speculation and guesswork what may be (or not be) in storage and where that storage is. I have no idea and decline to speculate least it feed some conspiracy theory; it’s the best I can answer.
    During the Great Depression, J.M. Keynes noted the U.S. buying most of the world’s production over some period and the Treasury had an estimated 8-9,000 tons at that time IIRC. How much more went in and when is anyone’s guess given the ‘sanctuary’ given throughout the war years and after.

    #104070
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @Wes
    “The war on our money
    The war on covid
    The war in the Ukraine
    These non-stop wars are all aimed at us!”

    You noticed. I think the job now is waking others up to what “war” means. I’m pretty sure that vast majority are still using using (and thinking of) the word ‘war’ in a sort of abstract or metaphorical sense. The unfortunate truth is that this present war is as real as real gets, in the old fashioned WW2 sense of the word, and not much abstract or metaphorical about it.

    #104071
    John Day
    Participant

    Formerly T-Bear wrote: “I’d be sort of careful of assigning ‘one trick pony’ on John M. Keynes. His collected life opus has thirty volumes (including index); I’ve read 28 of the 29 others, (his book on probability will likely not be attempted at this point).”

    I had written: “Keynes was brilliant, but Keynesians are one-trick-ponies.
    Keynes sought to match monetary supply to economy in a growing economy, which we appear to be done with.”

    I believe we agree on your point. Keynes was brilliant. “Keynesians” are mostly NOT brilliant, as they simplify his work to the point of wrongness.

    Hudson was working for a Rockefeller at a bank who noted Hudson’s talent understanding international flows of goods and gold. The gold balance of payments need only shift when there is an imbalance of trade between nations. This was pretty well balanced for the US, except for Vietnam. A lot of dollars were getting spent there and converted to gold by the locals, who were not using the $US they got to buy American products, and much preferred gold-in-hand. International traders were onto this by 1964 and the gold outflows increased, because the gold was clearly worth more than the $US, while the situation lasted. JFK was aware of this, and worried. The US was already unable to meet it’s responsibilities if the dollars were presented for gold. He planned an exit from Vietnam and also the Federal Reserve system.
    Johnson was willing to go along to get along, not a man of integrity…

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