Vincent van Gogh On the outskirts of Paris 1887
Really?
Ukrainian family
https://twitter.com/i/status/1499915842477248515
Where’s Tony Fauci?
Where's Tony Fauci? pic.twitter.com/lN43XmijxH
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 5, 2022
@RT_com’s account has been withheld in Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Germany, Greece, Romania, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, Luxembourg, Latvia, Denmark, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Cyprus, France, Spain, Belgium in response to a legal demand.
Here’s our real problem. $1,000 monthly grocery bills.
“Complete food cycle collapse”.
Watch the bottom video.
• Russia “Recommends” Fertilizer Makers To Halt All Exports (ZH)
Those who have it, are no longer giving it away, and those that don’t will soon find themselves in the middle of an epic food crisis. Just hours after we reported that Russia effectively banned exports of fertilizers, moments ago Hungary – one of Europe’s most grain rich nations – has circled the wagons and realizing which way the wind is blowing, just announced that it will banning all grain exports effective immediately, in a statement . Expect wheat prices, already at record highs, to promptly double from here in the next few weeks as the world realizes the extent of the global food crisis that is coming. Our suggestion: buy flour, rice, barley and any other grains you can now, rather than waiting one month to buy them because you have to.
This morning we listed some of the countries that are dangerously (and almost exclusively) reliant on Russia and Ukraine for their wheat imports, highlighting Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and others… which are facing an “Arab Spring” style food crisis (and potential uprising) in the coming weeks unless the Ukraine conflict is resolved. And unfortunately, we can now confidently predict that the coming food crisis will strike every country that is using food fertilizer – which is all – because moments ago, Russian Interfax reported that as part of Moscow’s countersanctions, Russia has recommended fertilizer makers to halt exports, a move which will sent not only fertilizer prices orbitally higher, but all food prices will soon follow.
*RUSSIA RECOMMENDS FERTILIZER MAKERS TO HALT EXPORTS: IFX *RUSSIAN MINISTRY CITES LOGISTICS ISSUES ON FERTILIZERS: IFX. Worse still, natural gas is required in the manufacturing process for most nitrogen/fertilizer products and so the recent surge in European NatGas prices to record highs will only exacerbate the cost of fertilizer from any halt from Russia… all hell is about to break loose not only among food producers, but soon, in your local grocery store once US consumers realize that food prices are about to double, triple and x-ple more
Complete food cycle collapse
"The price of #wheat between now and the end of the year is going to quadruple."
"China is facing a complete food cycle collapse…" pic.twitter.com/1alpMHZsa6
— Real Vision (@RealVision) March 4, 2022
“Covid-19? A mega-crime of mass homicide spawned by a matrix of pharmaceutical racketeers, corrupt government officials, and accomplice news organizations.”
• No More Russian Dressing For You! (Jim Kunstler)
Who in the US government, from our founding in 1789 to 1991 — while Ukraine was part of Russia in one way or another — gave a passing thought to Ukraine? Answer: nobody. And then, after the crack-up of the USSR, Ukraine was “in play,” culminating in the 2014 CIA-sponsored “color revolution” that ousted then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was inclined to join Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union of trade relations rather than the US wished-for NATO or EU. And ever since then it has been one American intrigue after another — including a brisk trade in grift and bribery by the Biden family, the Clinton syndicate, the next-gen of Kerrys, and other entitled elites from over here selling their influence.
And now the economic sanctions on Russia, which are sure to blow back on the countries issuing them. Europe has to pretend that it doesn’t need Russian oil and gas, that it doesn’t need cheap uranium to run their nuke power plants, that they don’t need the Baikonur Cosmodrome to launch their satellites, and so on. More likely, these moves will accelerate the collapse of Western Civ’s banking system, stock and bond markets, and erode the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency — a longstanding “exorbitant privilege” for getting stuff from all over the world in exchange for promises to pay some Tuesday in the distant future. The reader may ask: why does this blog appear to take Russia’s side in the current conflict against the US and our supposed allies?
Answer: Why would you trust a government (ours) and its captive news media after years of their blatant lying and tyrannical over-reach? These parties appear to be at war against their own people, that is, against us — certainly more than Russia is. Especially in the historic moment when all our mendacious “narratives” are being exposed as false? Russian Collusion? Indictments underway and more to follow. Covid-19? A mega-crime of mass homicide spawned by a matrix of pharmaceutical racketeers, corrupt government officials, and accomplice news organizations. Stolen elections? Don’t, for Gawd’s sake, even try looking at the slime trail of evidence. I won’t bother listing the many transgressions of Wokery against our culture and history. And all of sudden, it appears a lot of American citizens have had enough of being fucked around. I’m with them.
Now consider this: What if it turns out that Russia can complete its Cleanup-in-Aisle-Four operation relatively quickly, with a minimized loss of life and damage to the everyday infrastructure of Ukraine, and arrange things there afterward so that Ukraine is not a menace to anyone, either Russia or the West? I sincerely believe this is their intention — just as I sincerely believe that their leadership is actually sane, and ours appears not to be. Perhaps Russia will even offer Ukraine (or its re-arranged regions) assistance in recovering from the foolishness it played along with to its own sorrow? What if Russia actually has no intention of starting World War Three? Will we keep trying to start it anyway?
Or EU.
• Ukraine’s NATO Membership ‘Will Not Take Place’: German Chancellor (ET)
Ukraine’s membership is not on The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s agenda, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday. “I also made it clear in Moscow and in my visit that this option [Ukraine’s membership of NATO] is not on the table and will not take place,” he said during an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. “I said publicly that we all know that Ukraine’s NATO membership is not on the alliance’s agenda today,” he added. “That was understood by the American president, that [was] also understood by the French president.” Scholz said he shares Russian President Vladimir Putin’s security concern and clarified to Putin that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO.
“The Russians were worried about the control issue of their security. [Putin was worried] that NATO has a military setup and rockets in Ukraine targeting Russian territory. That is why we tried to make it clear that this will not occur,” he elaborated. Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership appeared to be one of the core disputes that caused the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. In February 2019, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a constitutional amendment committing the country to becoming a member of NATO and the European Union after the parliament passed the bill. Poroshenko told the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine days after he signed the amendment that joining NATO was a guarantee of security for Ukraine.
On the Russian side, Putin says Russia needs to lay down “red lines” to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO saying that Ukraine’s growing ties with the alliance could make it a launchpad for NATO missiles targeted at Russia. The United States and other Ukraine alliances have tried to avoid war by deescalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. However, the Kremlin criticized the United States and NATO for failing to address the fundamental security concerns of Moscow, demanding that NATO stop its eastward expansion and that strike weapons not be deployed near Russia’s borders.
No-fly zone equals WWIII. Someone would have to shoot down Russian planes. Ukraine has no planes to do it with.
• Zelensky Slams NATO Over Refusing To Implement No-fly Zone Over Ukraine (Hill)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday slammed NATO as being “weak” and “underconfident” for refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine as his country fights in “the worst invasion since World War II.” In a Facebook video shared and translated by Axios on Friday, Zelensky said Ukrainians have fought fearlessly against Russians invading their country — and will continue to — but have been thrown into “nine days of darkness” without assistance from NATO. “Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an emotional video address. The president urged NATO to think about “all those people who will die because of you.”
“Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine,” he said. “Is this the alliance you were building?” A no-fly zone, implemented to prohibit enemy aircraft from flying into a region and attacking, would cut off Russian air support and blunt the advance of Russian troops toward Kyiv. The Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has so far rebuffed Ukrainian calls to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. “It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and prompting a potential direct war with Russia, the exact step that we want to avoid,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
In his video address, Zelensky disputed the fact that it would result in a direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia, calling it “self-hypnosis.” “I do not know how you can protect and whether you can protect NATO countries,” Zelensky said. “You will not be able to buy us off with liters of fuel for liters of our blood.” NATO is adamantly opposed to dragging out a large-scale war in Europe. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “the only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes.” “We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe,” the NATO chief continued.
“..Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion..”
• How Ukraine’s Jewish President Zelensky Made Peace With Neo-Nazis (GZ)
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away. Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters. Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash. Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement. By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament. A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
[..] Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC. Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background. Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
“..two attempts may have involved anvils dropping from cliffs, though one of them could have been a piano.”
• Zelenskyy Losing Ground (CTH)
Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly survived three, yes three, assassination attempts in the past 48 hours, per Fox News and Lindsey Graham’s BFF, Sean Hannity. According to U.S. officials, a shadowy Kremlin-linked squad known as the Wagner Group, were behind the objective. While details from the U.S. intelligence community are sketchy, two attempts may have involved anvils dropping from cliffs, though one of them could have been a piano. The third attempt appears loosely connected to the notorious Acme TNT gang who have been directly linked to Wile E Coyote; a dubious conspirator currently being investigated by Interpol.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has rejected Zelenskyy’s demands to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. This has angered the modern Churchill in a T-shirt, who railed against NATO after the last refusal: WASHINGTON DC – […] “Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an emotional video address. The president urged NATO to think about “all those people who will die because of you.”
“Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine,” he said. “Is this the alliance you were building?” (read more) Meanwhile, the 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment that was a few miles outside of Kyiv a week ago, is still a 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment that is still a few miles outside of Kyiv. The Washington Post is now reporting, tomorrow a 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment will be located just a few miles outside of Kyiv.
“..Kaleniuk is not just a journalist, but a member of the WEF and runs initiatives backed by Soros throughout Eastern Europe.”
• Zelenskyy Is Tied To Klaus Schwab, Justin Trudeau, And Other Global Elites (LSN)
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of the reasons he got into politics. After leaving his career as a comedian and entertainer and becoming Ukraine’s president in April 2019, Zelenskyy hailed Trudeau as “one of those leaders who inspired” him “to join politics,” when he became Ukraine’s president in 2019. While Zelenskyy has shot to stardom from relative obscurity from the perspective of the West since the Russo-Ukrainian conflict became international news last week, his admiration for Trudeau comes as less of a surprise when looking into his background.
Like Trudeau, Zelenskyy is an acolyte of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, the globalist organization behind the now-infamous “Great Reset” agenda, which tells the world that by the year 2030, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” The ubiquitous support for Zelenskyy by the elite, including support from “defund the police” and Black Lives Matter leftist mega-donor George Soros, Trudeau, American President Joe Biden, and all sides of mainstream media, has led many to question the true motivation behind the West’s condemnation of Russia and a concern that a push for yet another foreign war involving the West is underfoot.
On Tuesday, for example, Ukrainian journalist Daria Kaleniuk made an emotional demand to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, asking him to instruct NATO to enter the war in Ukraine. After the event was praised in Western media, reports surfaced showing that Kaleniuk is not just a journalist, but a member of the WEF and runs initiatives backed by Soros throughout Eastern Europe. While many are skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his former ties to the KGB, scrutiny of the other side of the conflict seems absent in mainstream outlets which has worried many considering the radical nature of the WEF and their Great Reset goals.
The zenith of cynicism?
• Bill Clinton Relaunching Clinton Global Initiative (Fox)
Amid the Russian war on Ukraine and the coronavirus, former President Bill Clinton announced Friday that the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) is resuming full operations after largely shuttering in early 2017. Clinton made the announcement in an open letter in which he also announced a meeting in New York City in September for members of the “CGI community.” He said the pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine are the two major events that spurred him to bring back the initiative that’s been effectively dormant for years. “The COVID-19 pandemic has ripped the cover off of longstanding inequities and vulnerabilities across our global community,” Clinton said.
“The existential threat of climate change grows every day. Democracy is under assault around the world, most glaringly in Ukraine where Russia has launched an unjustified and unprovoked invasion that has put millions of lives in grave danger.” The CGI faced scrutiny during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for its significant international donations – which some said could create conflicts of interest. Clinton lost the 2016 election, but the Clintons still followed through on mass layoffs of their foundation’s employees in January 2017. “A new chapter of the Clinton Global Initiative is beginning,” a video teasing the restart of the charitable effort said Friday. “And the need for cooperation and coordination has never been more urgent.”
Well, that’s news…
• Western Media Are Acting As Cheerleaders For War (Cook)
Britain and other European states have chosen to fuel the fires of resistance in Ukraine by sending it weapons that can only lead to greater loss of life, especially of civilians caught in the crossfire. One might have expected the British media to examine the ethical implications of such a policy, and the hypocrisy. But not a bit of it. In fact, much of the media have not only been acting as lobbyists for more weapons to be sent to the Ukrainian army, they have whipped up support for civilians in the UK to get more involved in the fighting. That has been the case even after No 10 distanced itself from comments by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, that Britons should be encouraged to volunteer for Ukraine’s so-called “international legions”, supposedly to defend Europe.
Her position was in conflict with usual government practice, which has treated those heading off to fight in war zones in the Middle East as terrorists. Shamima Begum, who went to Syria aged 15, has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied the right to return for doing what Truss has proposed in Ukraine. Nonetheless, that did not dissuade the BBC from travelling to Essex to meet “Wozza”, a supplier of surplus British army kit he has been selling cheaply to Ukrainians in Britain so they can head off to the battlefront. Wozza was shown tearing off Union Jack insignia from uniforms so Ukrainian militiamen could use them.
Compare that with the treatment of an entirely peaceful form of resistance by westerners in solidarity with the Palestinians, the international Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. It has been treated as barely better than terrorism, with bans on support for BDS across Europe and the US. It is hard to remember in all the media agitation over Ukraine that this sympathetic coverage flies in the face of its reporting conventions. It is inconceivable, of course, that Britain would ever send arms to help, for example, Gaza liberate itself. For that reason, the media will never have the opportunity to exercise their vocal chords in outrage at such a development.
“That, of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.”
• War-Profiteering Gangsters Will Kill Us All Unless We Unite (Roger Waters)
I figured something out after tossing and turning all night. We on the left often make the mistake of still looking upon Russia as a somewhat socialist enterprise. Of course, it isn’t. The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Russia is an unadulterated neoliberal capitalist gangster’s paradise, modelled during the time of its horrific restructuring under Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) on the United States of America. It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces.
Would that mean the General Assembly had a mandate to govern, sadly it doesn’t, which means it’s even more beholden on all us freedom-loving, law-abiding anti-war activists to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world, irrespective of race, religion, or nationality, in pursuit of elusive peace. That, of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.
Hmmm. Moderna’s 70% shareprice loss is real. Their realm looks over. Same with Pfizer. See: Thomas Renz, Edward Dowd.
• Grave New World: The Soft Tyranny of Tomorrow (Charles)
The Frankfurt School predecessor and Marxist author Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the curious transformations of capitalism from the mid-to-late 1800s, when Marx wrote, to the early 20th century of Benjamin’s day. In the industrial era Marx observed, commodities were primarily viewed as raw materials and basic goods. Marx focused on production. By Benjamin’s time commodities had been transformed into “objects of consumption.” Objects of desire, in other words. Benjamin had discovered something: consumerism had been born as a primary driver of capitalist production. Commodity fetishism had fundamentally changed, coming to resemble the consumption-driven manias we see today. Benjamin’s biographer called the evolving commodity fetishism, “a delusional expression of collective utopian fantasies and longings.”
With the advent of advertising, consumer packaged goods lifted capitalism to new heights. Benjamin witnessed a sea-change. And yet what has happened since Benjamin’s death in 1940 has been nearly as convulsive as that which the German philosopher saw. The pandemic has illustrated the value of two very basic functions of modern consumer capitalism that evolved after Benjamin: one is planned obsolescence and the other is artificial need. The former is most evident in the cycle of vaccinations that have descended on the population. First, it was two doses of a single vaccine. Once it was shown that protection waned quickly, and the vaccine neither prevented infection nor provided enduring immunity–both promised by authorities in the run-up to the rollout–a further booster shot was introduced.
In some cases, Israel for example, two boosters were recommended, the final one belatedly shown to be barely effective. Big Pharma likely knew this was going to happen. The other vaccine targeting a respiratory virus, the flu shot, provides only modest protection. Non-sterilizing vaccines are said to wane rapidly in their efficacy for a variety of reasons. Some would also argue that these vaccines have created an artificial need as well, for healthy people. The overall Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is less than one percent, raising the question of why there has been such a push to immunize the world against such a mild respiratory virus. Big Pharma was well aware of this, too, but happily sponsored mainstream media stories that ratcheted up popular fears to the level of hysteria and mass hypochondria.
It is no surprise that a rolling calendar of immunizations is being introduced for the global population. Pfizer has noted profits of $18 billion in 2021 and projects $34 billion in 2022. Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are likewise in the pink. Some 37 vaccinations are already on the books for healthy children. Endless upgrades and novel technologies are introduced that obsolete previous versions. Payments to biddable media outlets ensure artificial needs are generated to provide a large consumer market.
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