Sep 182022
 
 September 18, 2022  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Marcel Duchamp Sonata 1911

 

Ukraine Is No Longer a “Limited Military Operation” (Paul Craig Roberts)
Ukraine Fumes Over ‘Unnatural Borders’ Claim (RT)
Ukraine Once Again Endangering Nuclear Plant – Moscow (RT)
Russia Can Declare Victory ‘Whenever It Wants’ – Budapest (RT)
Biden Warns Russia Against Nuclear Option In Ukraine (RT)
Kremlin Responds To Western Nuclear Claims (RT)
The Real Reason The US Wants To Sanction China (Marsden)
London Delusions (Milacic)
Angry Customers Demand Explanation As German Energy Bills Soar (ZH)
Zugzwang – Are We On The Brink Of A Central Banking Paradigm Shift? (Tooze)
The Simple Facts On Equities And Debt (Denninger)
‘Fauci Knows’ He Funded Gain-of-function Research – Redfield (JTN)
No, DeSantis Is Not A Human Trafficker Or Kidnapper (Turley)
Epstein Victims Angered By ‘Public Rehabilitation’ Of Prince Andrew (RT)
India PM Modi Reintroduces Extinct Cheetahs On Birthday (BBC)

 

 

This is just too perfect.

 

 

Child myocarditis ad

 

 

 

 

Putin fertilizer

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Maidan turned into War
https://twitter.com/i/status/1570832651405361152

 

 

 

 

PCR wanted a quicker resolution. Putin wanted to minimize civilian casualties. Maybe he trusted too much that others wanted that too.

Ukraine Is No Longer a “Limited Military Operation” (Paul Craig Roberts)

I was criticized as “blood-thirsty” by commentators incapable of strategic thought when I said that a limited operation would result in a wider war and more casualties to both sides than a swift conquest of Ukraine before the US and NATO had a chance to get involved. What Southfront calls the “unpredictable results” of the widening war will continue to prove me correct. Everyone who watched Washington’s limited involvement in Vietnam grow into a full-fledged long war should have known better than to repeat the folly. Apparently, the lesson escaped the Kremlin. Perhaps Putin won’t be able to stomach war with his “Western partners,” or the NATO countries will back out of the war in order to secure Russian energy and forestall economic and political collapse. But perhaps not.

I don’t think the Ukraine/NATO offensive in the Kharkov region was a success, but the media has played it as one and this will encourage the Washington neoconservatives, who have controlled US foreign policy since the George W. Bush regime, to push harder. As the US and NATO are already deep into the conflict, providing weapon systems, intelligence and targeting information, training, and now military personnel, it is easier for them to get in deeper than to withdraw. Putin might like to withdraw as he watches a dangerous wider war creep up on him, but he can’t without being regarded as a failure who led Russia to defeat. I conclude that the odds seem to be in favor of a larger war. To be clear, my purpose is not to pillory Putin or to produce a Russian victory. My purpose is to avoid a conflict that neither side can afford to lose. The only way to insure that outcome would have been a swift Russian victory over the entirety of Ukraine, not a “military intervention” in one corner of the country that festers month after month.

A convincing demonstration of Russian military prowess would have dissuaded Finland and Sweden from joining NATO as it would have demonstrated the inability of the limited forces at NATO’s disposal to defend anyone against the kind of attack Russia could have unleashed on Ukraine. I even entertain the possibility that NATO would have dissolved as Europe realized that its real interest is to be at peace with Russia. Unfortunately, those opportunities have passed untaken, and now we are faced with an interminable conflict unless the Kremlin abandons its failed policy and acts decisively. With winter approaching Europe will soon be overwhelmed with economic and political problems produced by being cut off from Russian energy by Washington’s sanctions. Unless Putin rushes to Europe’s rescue, Europe will soon be out of the conflict.

As the Western media functions as a Propaganda Ministry, few people in the world understand that Russia has committed few troops to the conflict. The Russian force has always been outnumbered by Ukraine’s forces, but superior Russian firepower has made the difference. If Putin were to commit another 100,000 soldiers and deprive Kiev and Western Ukraine of power and communication, he could still bring the conflict to an end before it widens out of hand. What is required is acceptance that the war has widened and requires decisive Russian action to bring the war to an end before the war widens further and becomes uncontrollable.

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“.. It should cede Transcarpathia to Hungary, Galicia to Poland, Bukovina to Romania, Donbass and Crimea to Russia. These are the territories of other countries..”

Ukraine Fumes Over ‘Unnatural Borders’ Claim (RT)

The Ukrainian Embassy in Romania has accused the EU country’s former foreign minister, Andrei Marga, of undermining the“basic principles of international law,” after he claimed that the borders of modern Ukraine are “unnatural,” and suggested that Kiev should cede parts of its territory to the neighboring states. The embassy has voiced its “regret” that a former top official of a “democratic European state” would make a statement that is not just “unacceptable under any circumstances,” but also represents a “particularly blatant deviation at a time when Ukraine heroically defends its independence and the security of Europe.”

The former Romanian diplomat made the controversial remark earlier on Saturday at the Alba Transylvania book fair, where he presented his new book ‘The Fate of Democracy’ and suggested that leading world powers should come together and agree on a new “security structure” in Europe and worldwide. “We are in a very special situation here, and I take this with all responsibility, Ukraine exists in unnatural borders. It should cede Transcarpathia to Hungary, Galicia to Poland, Bukovina to Romania, Donbass and Crimea to Russia. These are the territories of other countries,” he said, listing the regions that were incorporated into then-Soviet Ukraine by the Communists, but which he thinks should be relinquished. Over the course of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Kiev has repeatedly vowed to return to its control all of the territories it ended up with following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After the 2014 Maidan coup, Ukraine lost Crimea, which ended up re-unifying with Russia after a referendum. In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized two Donbass republics as independent states, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions special status within the Ukrainian state. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked, even as Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko had admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” Moscow has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc.

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With NATO support, they will try and shell it until Russia leaves.

Ukraine Once Again Endangering Nuclear Plant – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine has again shelled the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in an effort to undermine the facility’s safety, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday. The ministry said that “the Kiev regime has resumed provocations to create the threat of a man-made disaster” at the plant. Within the last 24 hours, the Russian military registered two Ukrainian artillery strikes, one on a suburban settlement and the other on a thermal substation in the vicinity of the facility, which has been under Russian control since March. “In total, 15 artillery shells were fired from the Nikopol area of the Dnepropetrovsk region. The artillery units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were suppressed by retaliatory fire,” the statement read. According to the Defense Ministry, the radiation situation at the plant remains normal.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the grounds of the plant, warning that the attacks could trigger a disaster that would eclipse the Chernobyl incident. Earlier this week, the head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, accused Washington of supplying Kiev with crucial intelligence to designate targets for shelling around the facility. “The consequences of these provocations could be very catastrophic not only for the majority of the population of Ukraine and Russia but also for Europe, and in terms of their scale they could surpass the tragedies that occurred at the nuclear power plants in Chernobyl and Fukushima,” he said at the time.

Ukraine has blamed Russia for the incidents, alleging that Moscow has been carrying out the strikes to frame Ukraine, even though its military eventually admitted to targeting the area. Following the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission that visited the Zaporozhye plant in early September, the UN’s nuclear watchdog adopted a resolution demanding that Russia “immediately cease all actions against and at” the plant. Russian officials, however, criticized the document, saying that it failed to mention Ukraine’s attacks on the station. Blasting the resolution as “anti-Russian,” Moscow also accused Western nations of “supporting and shielding” Kiev in “every possible way.”

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“..Moscow “has such an advantage” in the conflict that it could define what would constitute victory and declare it “almost at any time.”

Russia Can Declare Victory ‘Whenever It Wants’ – Budapest (RT)

Given Russia’s clear upper hand in Ukraine, the Kremlin can define what constitutes victory and declare that it has been achieved whenever it sees fit, a Hungarian minister has claimed. On Friday, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, shared his view of the conflict in Ukraine at a roundtable discussion at the University of Public Service in Budapest, which was held to promote a new book titled ‘Russian Great Power Policy 1905-2021.’ The official said that Ukraine and Russia have both found themselves in a situation that they are having a hard time getting out of. He added that the “chances of peace” right now are “poor” – though Moscow “has such an advantage” in the conflict that it could define what would constitute victory and declare it “almost at any time.”

He went on to warn against any direct involvement by NATO, adding that the EU sanctions on Russia have so far backfired, hurting the bloc more than the intended target. Gulyas noted that the Western restrictions have “brought incredible income” for Moscow so far. Furthermore, the EU’s policies, he believes, could result in Russia drifting further away from Europe while becoming closer with Asia. While Budapest joins the US in condemning Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, this does not mean that Hungary is prepared to impose similar sanctions on Moscow, as this would go against the country’s own national interests, the minister noted.

On the topic of Ukraine, Gulyas accused Kiev of failing to protect the basic rights of ethnic minorities, particularly Hungarians. In 2017, the Ukrainian government adopted a law aimed at removing minority languages from Ukrainian schools, which Budapest sees as discriminatory. Kiev has long accused its Western neighbor of fanning secessionism among Ukraine’s Hungarian diaspora, including by allegedly secretly granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians.

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“..should a nuclear or chemical attack take place, Russia would “become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been..”

You mean, just like the US?

Biden Warns Russia Against Nuclear Option In Ukraine (RT)

US President Joe Biden has warned Russia of harsh consequences should it use nuclear or chemical weapons in Ukraine. In an interview with CBS News, a part of which was released on Friday, Biden was asked what would he say if he learned that Moscow is considering the use of weapons of mass destruction to counter what Kiev calls a successful counter-offensive in the east. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” he said. The president, however, declined to outline what the US’ response would be. “You think I would tell you if I knew exactly what it would be? Of course I’m not gonna tell you. It’ll be consequential.”


However, he said that should a nuclear or chemical attack take place, Russia would “become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been,” and America’s response would depend “on the extent of what they do.” In mid-August, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu dismissed claims that Moscow might use nukes in Ukraine as “absurd,” saying there are no targets in Ukraine that would warrant doing so. Russia’s current nuclear posture allows their use only when “the very existence of the state is threatened.”

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Of course, this is all blah. Clickbait. Russia’s doctrine is crystal clear, and there’s no sign they would violate it.

Kremlin Responds To Western Nuclear Claims (RT)

Moscow has reiterated that its nuclear doctrine is self-explanatory as top Russian officials repeatedly stated that the conflict in Ukraine does not meet any of its criteria. The statement followed US President Joe Biden’s threat of a harsh, “consequential” response should Russia use the weapons of mass destruction. “Read the doctrine, everything is written there,”Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti on Saturday, when asked about the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. According to Russia’s nuclear posture, Moscow reserves the right to use nukes only “in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies,” as well as “in response to a conventional attack that threatens the very existence” of Russia as a sovereign state.

The latest update to the doctrine, made in 2020, clarified two more scenarios for the possible use of nukes: in case of receiving “credible information about the launch of ballistic missiles” targeting the territory of Russia or its allies, or an attack “on critical infrastructure that controls nuclear weapons,” potentially rendering the deterrent inoperable. However, none of these hypothetical scenarios is relevant to the situation in Ukraine, Russian officials told the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York on several occasions last month. In mid-August, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu also dismissed as “absurd” claims that Moscow might use nukes in Ukraine, saying there are no targets there that would warrant doing so.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters on Friday that so far, Moscow has demonstrated a reserved reaction to actions by the Ukrainian authorities, such as attempts to target vital infrastructure on Russian soil or to stage “terror attacks.” “We’re witnessing attempts to stage terror attacks, attempts to damage our civilian infrastructure. We respond to this with restraint, but only for the time being,” Putin stated, triggering speculation that the approach may change in the future.

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To cripple Europe?!

The Real Reason The US Wants To Sanction China (Marsden)

The impact of anti-China sanctions on the EU would be devastating, particularly in light of the economic blow that the bloc has already taken from anti-Russian sanctions slapped on its own cheap Russian energy supply as a result of being egged on by Washington to stand in solidarity with Ukraine. China is one of Germany’s top customers, and Berlin is already facing near-deindustrialization as a result of the anti-Russian sanctions impact on its industrial sector. Washington has previously issued exemptions to its own restrictions for American entities. For instance, even in the case of its sanctions on Moscow, “the U.S. is issuing a number of “authorized-transaction notices and general licenses” to shield some corporate targets from the harsh economic measures contained in the sanctions,” according to a LexisNexis report.

But the path to any such US sanctions exemption for foreign entities is less clear. In the case of Russian oil, for example, the EU is dependent on the good graces of Washington if it wants to keep importing US-sanctioned Russian fuel. So basically Washington can use the restrictions to control and dictate trade in the EU and beyond. Unless, of course, enough countries get fed up with it and seek out an alternative system. Which is exactly what seems to be evolving in the wake of the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions, with Russia, China, Iran, and the global south deepening cooperation that could ultimately bypass the Western financial sphere.

It’s hardly surprising that the China sanctions talk comes in the wake of a US State Department visit to Mexico City this month, to pitch Mexican semiconductor manufacturing as part of a $50 billion investment that would facilitate US independence from the approximate $1 billion worth of semiconductors that America imports annually from China. The US is working to secure its own interests – as every country should. It’s clearly willing to pull out every stop to maximize its global competitiveness. Perhaps one of these days its allies will start following suit and doing strictly what’s best for themselves and their own citizens, even if it means diversifying their interests away from Washington’s.

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“Britain has assumed an extremely tough anti-Russian position, not bothering to see into the causes of the war, or think about its own interests.”

London Delusions (Milacic)

[..] since the 1950s, London has mastered the role of “Washington’s junior partner,” which implies a bigger role in NATO and exclusivity towards Europeans. Decades later, Liz Truss continues to play this very card in Ukraine, just as Boris Jonson did before her. Britain has assumed an extremely tough anti-Russian position, not bothering to see into the causes of the war, or think about its own interests.

It support a president who banned the official use of his country’s most widely spoken minority language, who sanctioned the torture of prisoners and persecution of ethnic minorities, a president whom Britain supplies with weapons and military instructors, and writes off debts. Taking a cue from the Johnson Cabinet, Liz Truss will try to convince Britons that since the struggle for England and its age-old imperial interests is now going on in the Ukrainian steppes, the British people must prepare for hardships – heating problems, rising tariffs, inflation and increased defense outlays. At the same time, the conflict in Ukraine will give London a chance to put a temporary damper on such controversial issues with Europe, as fishing quotas, relations with the EU in Northern Ireland, the situation around the economic status of Gibraltar, etc.

Meanwhile, the Russian market is closed to Western countries, the Russians turned to the East, where they quickly redirected the flow of raw materials supplies. Western arms deliveries to Ukraine allow Kyiv to fight on, but the Ukrainian economy is no longer able to support the very existence of the Ukrainian state, which requires monthly financial infusions from its Western allies. British mercenaries captured in Ukraine are tried and sentenced to death in the Donbass republics, and London cannot do anything to get them out. Of course, already the second British government in six months cannot be accused of waging a proxy war against Russia, which is a time-tested way to weakening the enemy. But is Russia weakening? And how will the British gain from this war? Will Ukraine ever be able to repay all the investments that London has sunk in it since February 2022?

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Governments will fall. But how many? How long can the EU survive?

Angry Customers Demand Explanation As German Energy Bills Soar (ZH)

Utilities in Germany have had to handle a surge in customer service calls in recent weeks from clients angry or desperate about their sky-rocketing energy bills, Reuters reports.The biggest utility, E.ON, has ramped up its capacity to handle calls from consumers who are shocked to find just how much their energy bills have surged in recent months. Gas prices in Europe are very high and power prices in many countries, including Germany, have hit record levels this summer after Russia choked pipeline gas supply to Europe and shut down indefinitely the key gas export pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream, at the beginning of this month.

“Some become aggressive out of frustration, others are in tears and need psychological support,” Ingbert Liebing, head of local utilities organization VKU, told Reuters, commenting on the spike in customer calls to utilities’ service centers. Apart from already high energy bills, German customers will have a surcharge as of October, as part of a government plan to implement a so-called gas levy on consumers in order to help struggling energy firms. Germany has recently announced it would impose a gas levy on consumers from October 1 through March 2024 as it aims to help energy providers and importers of natural gas, which are struggling with low Russian gas supply and very expensive alternatives to Russian gas. The new natural gas tax is set to cost German families, who will have to foot the bill for the tax, an extra $500 a year.

Meanwhile, the German government is in talks with the biggest German importer of natural gas, Uniper, to potentially lift its 30% stake in the company to majority participation or to nationalize the firm. The German government agreed in July on a $15 billion bailout package to help the energy giant, which has been reeling from reduced Russian gas supply and soaring prices of non-Russian gas. Under the package, the German government bought a 30% stake in Uniper and made available further capital to help the company. “The deteriorating operating environment and Uniper’s financial situation have to be taken into account while Fortum, the German government and Uniper continue their discussions on a long-term solution for Uniper,” Uniper’s parent firm, Finland-based Fortum, said in a statement earlier this week.

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“The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation.”

Zugzwang – Are We On The Brink Of A Central Banking Paradigm Shift? (Tooze)

Central banks around the world are under pressure. Surging prices stoke fears of inflation. Central bankers, who commonly define themselves as guardians of price stability, feel forced to react. Interest rates are their preferred tool. Higher rates take steam out of the economy. That should lower inflation. The price is pain for borrowers and the risk of a recession and rising unemployment The choice for central bankers is easier where price increases are taking place across many sectors, meaning that the economy is undergoing a general inflation. This includes wages rising along with prices. The correlation between wages and prices should be regarded neither as anomalous nor as a dangerous “second round effect”. It should, in fact, be definitional of a general inflation.


Wages are the price of labour. If wages are not rising along with other prices, then you are not dealing with a general inflation at all, but rather a one-sided redistributional push by capital at the expense of labour. A truly general inflation will commonly go hand in hand with a relatively strong economy with low unemployment. In this respect there is a big difference between the situation on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, the Fed is facing a general inflation, modest in pace, but broadly based. Price increases are not uniform, they never are. But they now extend from bottleneck sectors, such as energy and food, to rents and house prices. Wages are also rising broadly in line with prices.

The situation in Europe is quite different. Price increases are far less broad-based. The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation. The energy price shock is sufficiently serious, to threaten a socio-political crisis as household expenditures and business budgets are wrenched out of balance by the price of gas and electricity. But to insist that this is an “inflation” problem and thus properly the domain of central bank interest rate policy is, to say the least, question-begging. What good will interest rate increases do in slowing down a surge in gas prices caused by the uneven COVID recovery, Putin’s war in Ukraine and the lack of integration in the global gas market?

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Roll over.

The Simple Facts On Equities And Debt (Denninger)

Corporations basically never pay off debt; they always roll it over. Since 1980, roughly, the cost of money has always been cheaper, so every time that bond comes due and has to be rolled over the amount of money you must pay in interest on the new one is less. This in turn means the amount the corporation pays in interest goes down and that means “E”, or earnings, go up. But — this cycle presumes that rates will never rise. That is, at worst the downward movement will cease, but never go the other way. Why? Because if it does (and it is and has for the last six months or so) then every time your bond comes due now you need to pay more in interest on the new one that replaces the old and that makes “E” go down. “E” is simply what’s left of what you take in after you pay expenses, of course, and if you have debt outstanding interest is one of your expenses.

People say The Fed “can’t” raise rates. Well, they are. And worse, the TNX, 10 year Treasury, broke range and is likely headed to about 5% which means a “AAA” corporate bond should carry a coupon of somewhere between 5.5-6% because no matter how good that credit may be it is inferior to the US Treasury. When the best credits out there roll over the next time, which they all will within the next couple to ten years, they will pay that 6% where they were paying 2 or 3%! The only other option is to redeem the bond entirely which means forking up the face value in cash. Take a firm that is regard as very well-managed — Berkshire. They have $119 billion in debt outstanding, and are certainly a AAA credit. Let’s assume that $119 billion currently carries a 2% coupon, so $2.38 billion in interest expense a year.

The firm’s net income is $11.7 billion so what happens if the cost of carrying that debt doubles (say much less triples.) That’s a 20% whack off the earnings; if the cost triples its a massive 40%. How does the “current” 58 P/E sound to you or even the so-called “forward projection” (commonly called a guess) if the earnings crash by nearly half? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, and this ignores input costs, which of course you can’t. As another example look at FedEx which reported last night. Revenues largely met expectations but EPS missed by a third. Where’d that come from? Costs, obviously. And, I might add, roll costs, that is, the spike higher in interest expense on outstanding debt are not yet showing up in any material size – but they most-certainly will over coming quarters and years; it is unavoidable for anyone with outstanding paper.

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But he’s still your friend?!

‘Fauci Knows’ He Funded Gain-of-function Research – Redfield (JTN)

The former Center for Disease Control and Prevention director who was cast as a conspiracy theorist for saying the evidence supported the lab-leak explanation for COVID-19 – allegedly provoking death threats – claims that the real “conspiracy is Collins, Fauci, and the established scientific community.” Robert Redfield told former Senate Finance Committee investigator Paul Thacker that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci “knew” he funded gain-of-function research that makes viruses more dangerous, and “misled Congress” when he denied it,” but “[n]othing’s going to happen as long as the Biden administration is here.” “Tony and I are friends, but we don’t agree on this at all,” Redfield said in an interview published in Thacker’s Disinformation Chronicle newsletter.

“Everyone had to agree to the narrative” pushed by Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a “wet market” in Wuhan, not the Fauci-funded Wuhan Institute of Virology miles away, to avoid becoming a public target of the two officials, he said. The virologist Redfield told the immunologist Fauci from the “second or third week in January” 2020 that “I’m very concerned that he was championing this theory that it came from animals.” The particulars of the novel coronavirus, such as the furin cleavage site and the “human” sequence in it, make clear that it’s not from bats, he said. “This thing was manipulated, orchestrated. That cleavage site was created.”

Transmission doesn’t make sense under natural evolution, according to Redfield. “You have a virus that is one of the most infectious viruses in the history of humanity, and yet that virus no longer can infect the bat? … No, this is highly abnormal.” Redfield said he believes The Lancet spring 2020 letter that lumped in the lab-leak hypothesis with “conspiracy theories” was “orchestrated … under direction of Fauci and Collins, trying to nip any attempt to have an honest investigation of the pandemic’s origin.” “There was nothing scientific about that letter. It was just an attempt to intimidate people,” he also said.

“Tony had over a year looking for an intermediate host” to explain the natural-evolution theory of COVID-19 “and still hadn’t found one” when Redfield went on CNN in 2021 to defend the lab-leak hypothesis, Redfield continued. Scientific American accused Redfield of promoting a conspiracy theory based on “xenophobia,” which Redfield suspects was due to Fauci’s influence at that publication. “I was threatened, my life was threatened,” he said. “I have letters I got from prominent scientists, that previously gave me awards, telling me that the best thing I could do for the world was to shoot myself because of what I said.”

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Kyle Shideler @ShidelerK: “The Feds shipping literally hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens around the country in the middle of the night and then threatening to sue/jail @RonDeSantisFL for sending 50 is the perfect encapsulation of the Biden Administration’s primary ethos.”

Stephen Miller @StephenM: “In 2020, under Trump, there were zero discretionary releases on the border—all illegals were either deported (expedited removal), expelled (Title 42), sent to Mexico (return to territory) or sent to a third nation (Safe 3rd). Biden replaced a policy of removal with MASS RELEASE.”

No, DeSantis Is Not A Human Trafficker Or Kidnapper (Turley)

Most migrants do not intend to remain in border communities with a huge influx of migrants and limited opportunities — one reason why the Biden administration has moved migrants elsewhere. Thus, if the administration pursued Newsom’s allegation of a possible “civil rights conspiracy in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1985,” it would potentially make a case against itself. If these governors are discriminating on the basis of national origin, so is the administration. Let’s consider a few of the other alleged crimes suggested by politicians and pundits:

Kidnapping, human trafficking The claim by Newsom and others that this could constitute kidnapping is absurd. Kidnapping requires that the culprit “unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person.” There is nothing unlawful in conveying individuals who are lawfully in the country pending their immigration hearings; the trips are voluntary, and most migrants appear eager to accept free passage to cities like New York or Chicago. Human trafficking — a charge suggested by some law professors — is prosecuted by the Justice Department when you exploit “a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.” Gov. DeSantis may have overt political motives for transporting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but even cable-news programs have not suggested he is doing so for sexual or labor exploitation.

Racketeering RICO was designed to combat organized crime by allowing criminal charges based on a pattern of underlying criminal acts. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1961 there is a list of “predicate offenses,” and at least two of those crimes can create the needed pattern for prosecution. But there is no established RICO pattern here because there are no established predicate crimes. An effort by the Biden administration to designate political opponents as “racketeers” would raise deeply troubling concerns about weaponizing the criminal justice system.

Illegal transport One of the most-cited bases for criminal prosecution has been 8 U.S. Code § 1324, which prohibits transporting or attempting to transport undocumented migrants. The law is designed to combat smugglers, not states offering free trips to those released into the country by the federal government. It requires an act of “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact” that the migrant “has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law.” These trips, however, are not in violation of law or “in furtherance of such violation of law.” The Biden administration’s controversial “catch and release” policy means migrants are free to go anywhere or accept trips from public interest groups, the federal government or the states.

In theory, public interest groups arranging for transportation or individuals giving rides to migrants could be prosecuted on the same basis under Section 1324. In reality, if transporting undocumented migrants after they are released into the country is to be judged criminal, then the Biden administration would be the largest “coyote” in history.

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Charles has so far done everything wrong. I give him 5 years as king. If that. He’s a danger to the family, the concept, the immeasurable riches.

Epstein Victims Angered By ‘Public Rehabilitation’ Of Prince Andrew (RT)

Lawyers who represented victims of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein told The Independent that their clients are angry and upset after seeing Prince Andrew – an associate of Epstein who was also accused of abuse – return to public life following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Andrew was stripped of his royal patronages and honorary military titles earlier this year after he settled a civil lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexually assaulting her while she was still a minor in 2001. Andrew refrained from public appearances after the settlement, but the disgraced royal has returned to the spotlight following the death of his mother, walking in the Queen’s funeral procession and standing vigil at her coffin in Westminster Hall.

“For the victims that are involved, seeing him in these types of public appearances and being praised by the public, it’s frustrating to them,”Spencer Kevin, a Florida-based lawyer who represented nine of Epstein’s victims, told The Independent. “This is a man they see as someone who is, at the very least, disrespectful to the victims, by his friendship with a pedophile. And for him to be lauded in public, as he’s doing, and to be praised by the public, which is what he’s seeking, is insulting.” Kevin suggested that Andrew may be attempting to “rehabilitate his image in the public,” and said that the Duke of York should have grieved in private instead. Mariann Wang, a New York-based lawyer who represented up to a dozen of Epstein’s victims, agreed, calling Andrew’s appearance in public “quite outrageous.”

Epstein’s victims aren’t the only people upset at Andrew’s recent appearances. As the Queen’s funeral cortege made its way through Edinburgh last weekend, a young man was arrested after he called the prince a “sick old man.” Epstein and Andrew were friends, and the British royal admitted to staying at Epstein’s properties even after the American financier had been jailed in 2008 for soliciting a child for prostitution. Epstein was arrested again in 2019 and accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, but was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell before he could be brought to trial. His death was officially ruled a suicide.

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Bit of hopeful news. Love the way they painted the plane for the occasion.

India PM Modi Reintroduces Extinct Cheetahs On Birthday (BBC)

Cheetahs are set to roam in India for the first time since they were declared officially extinct in 1952. A group of eight cats arrived from Namibia on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday on Saturday. They will undergo a month-long quarantine before being released in a national park in central India. Cheetahs formerly shared jungles with other big cats like lions and tigers but disappeared 70 years ago. They are the world’s fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour. This is the first time a large carnivore is being moved from one continent to another and being reintroduced in the wild.

At least 20 cheetahs are coming to India from South Africa and Namibia, home to more than a third of the world’s 7,000 cheetahs. The first batch of eight – five females and three males, aged between two and six years – arrived from Windhoek in Namibia to the Indian city of Gwalior on Saturday. Wildlife experts, veterinary doctors and three biologists accompanied the animals as they made the transcontinental journey in a modified passenger Boeing 747 plane. From Gwalior, the cheetahs were transferred by helicopter to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state, where they were released by a delegation led by Mr Modi.

Spread over a 289-square-mile area, the Kuno National Park is a sprawling sanctuary with prey like antelope and wild boars for the wild cats. An electrified enclosure, with 10 compartments ranging in size, has been built for the animals to quarantine before being released in the wild. Each cheetah will be given a dedicated team of volunteers, which will monitor it and keep tabs on the animal’s movement. Satellite radio collars have been put on each cheetah for their geolocation updates.

Read more …

 

 

 

Putin grain

 

 

The poorest in the UK and US are now poorer than the poorest in Slovenia.

 

 

Sagan budget

 

 

 

Pool party
https://twitter.com/i/status/1571061288561774599

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle September 18 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 53 total)
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  • #116161

    Marcel Duchamp Sonata 1911   • Ukraine Is No Longer a “Limited Military Operation” (Paul Craig Roberts) • Ukraine Fumes Over ‘Unnatural Borders’
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle September 18 2022]

    #116162
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Marcel Duchamp Sonata 1911

    I didn’t know that Sonatas’ traditionally feature a key-board along with other played insturments…

    #116163
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Nuts…should be instruments…

    #116170
    Red
    Participant

    Here is the Updated List of US-Based Food Manufacturing Plants Destroyed Under Biden Regime — You Can Now Participate and Add More Incidents on the Interactive Map

    Below is the excerpt of the email she sent to Gateway Pundit:

    If I had any doubts about this being on purpose, that is completely gone at this point. It’s almost terrifying seeing what is going on and the majority of people have no idea. Every day something else happens to add to this list. Things are happening so quickly now, that it is mind boggling. Big Tech is covering most of these up or burying them so far down the feed that most people never see them. I have investigative skills that I have used my entire career so I know how to get around all of that or I would never have found what I have.

    I had not heard of anyone looking up actual grocery store fires so that is what started me down this path. Once I saw how bad it was and the patterns that are happening it was clear what they are doing, and I am now convinced they are getting people to help with this just like they did with the election. I realize that not all of these are on purpose but once you see how big this is, it cannot be denied that something evil is going on and we are about to have our legs kicked out from under us…

    I wanted to see if you could send out an update for the map? When you first posted my map, there were so many people going to it that they told me it was going to cost several thousand dollars for a certain amount of views. I told them I didn’t have money like that so I would make it private for myself only or try to find another company. Apparently word got around so fast from your article that people bombarded the map company and wanted it back up. They contacted me and told me they decided to leave it up so they could get some good publicity because at that point I think it had almost 200,000 (from people around the world!) views within a week or two.

    Since then, I have learned that people can participate in the map and help me add things that I may not be able to find, that are being hidden on purpose, or that need to be corrected. I have made it to where anyone can add information for me but it won’t show up until I review and confirm if it is true. I am trying to play catch up but I’m still behind on the map right now so this would be wonderful if people knew they could help! I honestly believe that it is all of our responsibility to try and warn people so they can prepare for what is coming. It’s scary and heartbreaking but I know that God has His hand in this… I also know that people like you and I were born for “Such A Time As This” or God wouldn’t have given us the skills and tools that we have to help get the word out!

    #116171
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “ Ukraine Is No Longer a “Limited Military Operation” (Paul Craig Roberts)

    PCR telling Putin what to do. I’m sure like Willy Wonka, he will listen in raptured attention.

    Okay PCR, IF Russia attacked, they demanded Russia destroy everything the way we did in Iraq. Turning all the people against us, killing millions, all those children that are “worth it”, and making a very expensive nationwide repair. Aaaaaaand appears to have bankrupted us. Congratulations. Russia did NOT do that, and has control of most of the mining and industrial centers WITH the population and WITHOUT that much repair. Also have not alienated the rest of Ukraine should it come to that. Also if Russia swept in to the Polish border then NATO really would have mobilized as demanded, and possibly more confusion to get a FF into. But when the war is far away, why would French men sign up? So NATO is hamstrung as Poland and Germany won’t invest.

    Never do what your enemy demands. I mean, duh. If they, if YOU say it, we do the opposite.

    “US President Joe Biden has warned Russia of harsh consequences should it use nuclear or chemical weapons in Ukraine.”

    They generally say this before CNN sniffs the backpack and the OPCW makes stuff up.

    “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.” Biden said. …Using nuclear-chemical weapons like depleted uranium rounds that have caused birth defects and 1,000 year cancers in Iraq and with Vets is something only Americans should do. You know: the America that has first-strike nuclear attacks on Moscow as our official policy. And backed it up with non-stop offensive wars of aggression which were all “Defensive.” As 20-year norm. While being the only nation using land mines, cluster bombs, and attacking civilians nearly everywhere as we do in Yemen. Go on, Joe, tell us all about it. …While you tell us how you plan to attack wrong-voters in the U.S. domestic territories with F-15s.

    Washington has previously issued exemptions to its own restrictions for American entities.”

    Of course they have. And we’re so mad we doubled imports of Russian oil.

    And the U.S. is trying to create jobs, in Mexico? Again? Maybe Beto should campaign there. Again.

    “US is working to … pull out every stop to maximize its global competitiveness.” By creating jobs in other countries, not the U.S.

    “..since the 1950s, London has mastered the role of “Washington’s junior partner,”

    They’re the neck that turns the head as they say in Greece. That is, from our perspective they’re the merged or senior partner. And we have to destroy them while they and we are merged. They’re inside all our systems, from FBI, CIA, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Uber. …Pretty hard. But we’ll do it and kick their -ss because we like that sort of thing.

    “It supports a president who banned the official use of his country’s most widely spoken minority language, who sanctioned the torture of prisoners and persecution of ethnic minorities,”

    No change here: they are always against minorities. Just yesterday Jean-Pierre said if you didn’t hold a 51% view, you were an “Extremist” and targeted by the FBI for cleansing with F-15s. That’s not just “Minorities”, that category would/could include all men (49%) all Christians no doubt, or all people under 5’-5”. That’s “Democracy”! The 51% rule and the 49% have no rights, as would be allotted to them by their Creator and legally due under a “Republic”.

    Angry Customers Demand Explanation as German Energy Bills Soar (ZH)
    How long can the EU survive?”

    It depends. Whenever things fail, they add more fascism. Like ’01 and ’08. It’s only the amount of fascism at debate here. If they add infinite North Korean totalitarianism as the NY Times recommends, it can go on quite a long time. For their immediate problems: don’t pay. You won’t pay now, or you won’t pay later, so might as well shelter your resources now.

    “Uniper, to potentially lift its 30% stake in the company to majority participation or to nationalize the firm.”

    Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Which is why they’re for Socialism. Socialism and welfare for the corporations and the rich. But don’t worry: once the corporation is working and the losses are all covered, they’ll sell it right back to the Engelhorn family at a loss. He’ll use the profits to buy more German politicians. Win-win.

    “The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation.”

    Uh…? Or an unnecessary and pointless suicide attempt. However, nations are essentially eternal. Like “the Truth,” they cannot die, but they can live a long, miserable existence. As France has recently.

    Anyway, how are the two different? And he thinks wages just rise with inflation? Never have before. They always lag critically and badly, which is why inflation is promoted and such a boon for speculators and asset-holders. Why it causes such enormous income disparity. And why it cripples a nation near-instantly. “Wages are the price of labour. If wages are not rising along with other prices, then you are not dealing with a general inflation at all,” We’ve never had “inflation” then, because this never happens.

    “What good will interest rate increases do in slowing down a surge in gas prices caused by the uneven COVID recovery, Putin’s war in Ukraine and the lack of integration in the global gas market?”

    But they work in the U.S. with essentially the same problems? Same foundation – though a little faster – as the last 100 years? His whole argument is off-center.

    Corporations basically never pay off debt; they always roll it over.” Yes, since 1980 only. But you can grow operations with a thing called “Cash” that comes from “Profit.” We haven’t done that in generations and forgot. I mean, LITERALLY forgot. I read regularly that if financing dries up, companies fail and won’t make parts…that they could make from “Sales” and “Profits”. Gee, however will we live without that enormous financial tapeworm in our guts?

    How does the “current” 58 P/E sound to you … if the earnings crash by nearly half?”

    Michael Pento says the same thing. Stocks now have NEVER been more expensive. Ever. Never ever ever. Not since the first three gentlemen sat under the buttonwood tree. Never. Higher than ‘29, higher than ‘08. Which is astonishing. Does it FEEL like we’re at a boom high? And what gives rise to such astonishing valuations compared to U.S. GDP? Because the customers are so fat, and own so little stuff with such high savings accounts they’re about to buybuybuy?

    Um, no. Highest price EVER. When sales and earnings are about to be cut in HALF. But we’ve spent lifetimes here with no choice but to spend too much, buy too high, increase too much debt. …Because, central banks, inflation. That’s the cycle. If you don’t, you can spend from childhood being responsible, never owning a car, house, stock, etc, poorer every day, and many have. But lashed to the cycle, should it turn, the whole ship sinks.

    “Tony and I are friends” Why?
    “Everyone had to agree to the narrative” Why?
    Nothing’s going to happen as long as the Biden administration is here.” Why? I didn’t do any of these things, and don’t understand them. They’re not necessary or inevitable to me. Are you a robot or something?

    “Transmission doesn’t make sense under natural evolution,” And did you see the genetic outliers for Omicron? Like 20 independent mutations, all in the same direction, all at once, with no evolution. A 10-sigma outlier. But Science doesn’t ask questions. It goes around the questions, and knows exactly WHICH questions not to be curious about. Strange curiosity that is turned on and off with such precision. That matches both the money and Twitter so exactly.

    “No, DeSantis Is Not a Human Trafficker or Kidnapper (Turley)”

    Yes, but this is reality and the law, and they are the #Opposite of reality and the law. Why waste your breath mentioning the law? They don’t care. Neither do their followers. If it gives them emotional jollies, the fee-fees, they do it, if if doesn’t, isn’t satisfying emotional jollies, it doesn’t exist.

    Cheetahs lived in India? Were they introduced by people the first time too, maybe 2,000 years ago?

    Sagan: “What could you buy for $10 Trillion dollars?” All of Congress. And all the judges. And the Scientists too. Apparently all the Doctors.

    Go ahead and stop them before cutting off the money system.

    “Why doesn’t that thinking apply to Global Warming?”he asks. Because your every prediction has been completely wrong, mostly ever, but certainly for the last 30 years. Remember we had only until 2000 to stop the runaway climate change? Extinction of polar bears? That was 22 years ago. And they said the same thing in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. How many decades do you live where a group is so dead wrong – more wrong than even economists – and you just keep listening to them? At some point don’t you grow up and say “Heyyyyyy, I think maybe I’ve been had”? “Every thing they say never happens, and every time it involves more MONEY, and more POWER to them, and it’s my money and power they took”? In fact, I’m flat broke, in a tent, eating bugs, and they’re jet-setting 300 days a year from one sea-level 5-star maskless dinner to another.

    NOPE. It will never happen. A lifetime of failed predictions, false alarms, decade after decade after decade cannot cure it. That these are the guys who CAUSED every problem with previous Science, has no warning, no caution, no alarm, no effect. That every promoter and progenitor are ALSO the most evil companies on earth, and the most wasteful: Nike, Amazon, Coke, Google, Raytheon, ADM, and were the most wrong about everything ever said: CNN, NPR, BBC, NYT, “WMD! Yellowcake!” no caution at all. This one time, the most evil companies, the most failed scientists, and the most wrong, criminally misreporting, million-man killing media operations, and all their jet-flying billionaire owners have all combined powers like “Superfriends” and this one time are completely right and have only our greater good and truth at heart.

    That is the most unlikely and preposterous conspiracy theory I have ever heard.

    EternalHope
    1932
    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/climate-change-has-been-a-routine-scare-tactic-since-1930s/

    Page after page. SSDD. Oh and the Ice Age in the cooler 1970s! Classic! Scienz! Always wrong; never in doubt. Quietly removing “This glacier is melting” signs in national parks then slinking away. Away away to go publish more AI word-soup articles in journals that their own Editors say aren’t science and can’t be trusted. While killing a million men at a pop with recommended lockdowns. But this one time….

    #116172
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I am also pretty sure the Rand leak wasn’t “real”. Over 50-50 at least, I did consider undermining it by adding my doubts but usually there’s a kernel of truth, and what was leaked was accurate and not wrong. The leak’s existence was still important.

    The food plants, generally optional, as like the LNG terminal accidental explosion, and the Fertilizer accidental explosion, after it breaks, no one bothers to fix it. Uninterested. Why? Doesn’t that seem odd? As odd as their total disinterest in contracts for domestic masks, and to transfer Pharma back stateside?

    Yeah. No. Don’t. Stop. Too hard. Can’t figure it out. Must be conicidence-day again.

    #116173
    Red
    Participant

    Neoliberal economics:
    Establishment version: modern free market freedom, practised by freedom loving people, to freely create freedomaceous wealth everywhere! Woohoo!

    Real World Translation: rigged system to funnel wealth from the poor to the rich by imposition of slave wages and debt servitude = economic enslavement of the 99%

    Disinformation:
    Establishment version: anything contrary to the “truthiness” narrative espoused by Western Mainstream Media Patriots. Is Israel an apartheid state? That’s disinformation!

    Real World Translation: anything which portrays the AngoEuroZionist Empire in a bad light and their enemies du jour (Russia, China, Iran etc) in a neutral or favourable light. Absolutely nothing to do with truth or facts.

    National Endowment for Democracy:
    Establishment version: benevolent fund by the USA to promote rule by, for and of the ordinary people in foreign countries. Yay!

    Real World Translation: CIA cutout to finance astroturf campaigns to destabilise foreign governments that do not bend to the US will, in order to install US puppet regimes that will funnel wealth to the USA.

    US invasion of Iraq in 2003:
    Establishment version: act of “liberation” to save the world from Saddam’s WMDs and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

    Real World Translation: WMD story was a fucking LIE, invasion was done to preserve the US petrodollar and control Iraqi oil assets and give massive contracts to US corporations. Killed more than a million Iraqis by 2010, so I guess you could say those Iraqis were “liberated” (from life).

    Russian invasion of Ukraine:
    Establishment version: unprovoked aggression by Russian dictator Vlad-the-Impaler Putin on 24 Feb 2022 because he is just plain crazy (also a vampire). So naturally the West needed to ban Russian cats and Tchaikovsky in response.

    Real World Translation: belated response by Russian Duma (democratic parliament) to relentless aggression by the US/NATO [expansion] since 2014 – including the murder of 14,000 civilians in Donbass, ie Russia was forced to intervene to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from genocide by the US proxies [amd prevent Ukraine from being used as potent nuclear latform against Russia.]. Also more than 30 bio-pathogen labs funded by the USA (by Victoria Nuland’s own admission) were discovered in Ukraine, so there WERE WMDs in-the-making in Ukraine.

    International “Rules based order”:
    Establishment version: even the USA cannot properly define WTF this crapulent term means.

    Real World Translation: USA makes up their one-sided rules (to always benefit itself) and orders everybody else about, otherwise foreigners face sanctions or coups or assassination of their leaders or invasion. Nothing to do with United Nations International Law.

    Far too many Newspeak and Doublethink terms to itemise here!!

    Commenters can think of many more!!

    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2022/09/17/a-guide-to-the-angloeurozionist-establishment-lexicon/

    #116176
    Red
    Participant

    Treatments for Vaccine Recipients

    Dr. Shoemaker: [Ivermectin is] the only medicine that helps you fight if you’ve got a vaccine injury. It’s the key to a vaccine injury protocol. It’s time. It’s time. This is over because the science is strong. The science is huge, that ivermectin is the thing that should always be available. But now that we’ve created this crisis, we need it even more. We need it even more in Canada, in everywhere.

    Dr. Shoemaker: I want I ivermectin available for everybody. I don’t want you to have to go to the veterinary clinic or the veterinary store to get some of this medicine. It has to be made perfectly and ethically legal in all of your pharmacies.

    Dr. Trozzi: For the treatment protocols, if like [Dr. Shoemaker], if you’ve had a couple of those injections or one of those injections and you got these spike proteins being produced by yourselves, go to the World Council for Health, go to the Spike Protein Detox Guide. Dr. Shoemaker is aware of that. The FLCCC do a great job [and] Canada Covid Care Alliance. These are very similar protocols. There’s a variety of things you can do, both natural and medicinal, including one of the safest, most effective medications in the history of mankind – ivermectin.

    Covid Injections Are Dangerous, What You Can Do If You’ve Had One or Two

    #116177
    Germ
    Participant

    Hey wonderful group.

    Has anybody heard anything significant about the dates Sept 23/24 ?

    Sray sane purebloods!

    😘

    #116178
    zerosum
    Participant

    The winner writes history
    • Ukraine Fumes Over ‘Unnatural Borders’ Claim (RT)
    Transcarpathia to Hungary, Galicia to Poland, Bukovina to Romania, Donbass and Crimea to Russia. These are the territories of other countries.

    • Ukraine Once Again Endangering Nuclear Plant – Moscow (RT)
    Russian officials, however, criticized the document, saying that it failed to mention Ukraine’s attacks on the station. Blasting the resolution as “anti-Russian,” Moscow also accused Western nations of “supporting and shielding” Kiev in “every possible way.”

    • London Delusions (Milacic)
    the Ukrainian economy is no longer able to support the very existence of the Ukrainian state, which requires monthly financial infusions from its Western allies.
    ————–
    Did you ever hear of how bad capitalism is bad for you?
    Example of true capitalism. Stop your bitching.
    (I got it, you want it. Pay what I say otherwise, do without.)

    • Angry Customers Demand Explanation As German Energy Bills Soar (ZH)
    “reduced Russian gas supply and soaring prices of non-Russian gas. “

    Another example of capitalism at work

    • Zugzwang – Are We On The Brink Of A Central Banking Paradigm Shift? (Tooze)
    “….redistributional push by capital at the expense of labour ….. . Price increases are not uniform, they never are. But they now extend from bottleneck sectors, such as energy and food, to rents and house prices….. The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation. capilalism

    Third explanation of how true capitalism works.
    Don’t argue with me, go argue with Karl Denninger

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=246962
    The Simple Facts On Equities And Debt

    Corporations basically never pay off debt; they always roll it over. (before they run off with their gains and go bankrupt)
    ———

    Again how true capitalism works.
    Putin: Much of the Ukrainian grain is actually American after Ukraine sold its farmlands to U.S. companies.

    ———–

    #116179

    Well, it occurred to me while appreciating Dr. D’s commentary “ gee however will we live without that enormous financial tapeworm in our guts “ that he, RIM and the AE community are collectively the lad in the crowd who cries out “the king has no clothes!”

    Kudos to you all for delivering my daily dose of the “red pill”news and analysis. Especially you Dr. D , your cutting sarcasm speaks to my sense of humour.

    #116180
    those darned kids
    Participant

    #116181
    morongobill
    Participant
    #116185
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ““The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation.””

    Is there anything more general to an economy than food and energy. Other than water and oxygen and land above water, no.

    #116186
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    This global warming is real/global warming is not real whining nonsense is enough to make me puke on someone’s shoes. Everything we disagree with has become formulaically reduced to someone else’s “scare tactics”. It doesn’t matter whether this or that is what’s causing the current climate upheaval: the climate is currently upheaving, puking all over our shoes.

    So the fat cats wanna sell snake oil in the name of saving the human race or something? Whatever. The climate is going wonky, and it only takes 20 years of that to reduce a global civilization to a shadow of itself.

    I can see it now on a billion tombstones: IT WASN’T MY FAULT! THEY DID IT!

    Raised amid a thousand shades of grey of injustice, we naturally feel that the most important part of any remedy is knowing (or at least believing we know) whom to blame.

    What is truth, Jesus asked. So did Socrates. Neither had an answer.

    #116187
    TAE Summary
    Participant

    Sorry, the Boat is Full

    #116188
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @boscohorowitz noted, “What is truth, Jesus asked. So did Socrates. Neither had an answer.”

    How come nobody asked me ?

    #116189
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    I went to a community gathering yesterday that was a presentation by the former mayor of Phoenix (Goddard) who has now been on the board of the Central Arizona Project for the past several years. (The Central Arizona Project — CAP — is the massive canal system that brings water from the Colorado River to central Arizona, the location of the largest population.). Due to agreements between western states that were finalized 100 years ago (NOT forced on the states by the federal government), Arizona had an allotment of the Colorado River, but was not able to fully realize that allotment until the CAP was built. This was very important because prior to CAP, AZ groundwater was habitually being pumped at unsustainable levels all across the state.
    According to Goddard, when the allotments were created a hundred years ago, they were based on conservative estimates from the best data available. It was not then known that the Colorado River basin had been experiencing unusually wet years. Currently, the Colorado River basin is experiencing the worst drought since around 1200. (Goddard hinted that climate change was at play. Who knows? It isn’t all that relevant, as we must deal with “what is,” not with the unknowable “what may be.”).
    In the 1990s (I think I’m remembering that correctly) the affected states recognized that the original allotments were not always going to work and got together and hammered out agreements about what to do in case of drought. Those agreements have come into effect in 2022. We are in Tier 1 now, and will most likely be in Tier 2a next year. It is recognized that the tier system is not going to work — it isn’t sufficient to address the problem, and would result in some populations with inadequate access to water. So, the US Department of the Interior stepped in about 6 months ago and told the affected states that they needed to get together and come up with a solution, or the federal government would see them in court. They were given 4 months to do this, with a deadline of August 16. Goddard says that the CAP board came up with what they thought was an equitable, doable plan, but that California (who has more senior rights to the water) wouldn’t play ball. So the states called the feds’ bluff, and the feds have so far failed to act.
    AZ has some options. The governor has requested and received from the legislature around $500 million (fully funded, with another $600 million not funded) to address the drought. AZ has a second canal system serving central AZ with water that is entirely within AZ, the Salt River Project. The SRP water system is NOT in a drought state, and has plenty of water. There are plans to interconnect the two canal systems. Another option is to compensate those with more senior rights to various waters in AZ to not exercise those rights so that the water may be used elsewhere in the state. Rules may change regarding golf courses (a very big deal in AZ, as we have beautiful golf courses when much of the country is blanketed in snow,) and expansive green lawns in front yards.
    AZ could decline to use its full water allotment from the Colorado River, utilizing other sources, to help build back up the volumes of Lake Mead and Lake Powell (preserving electrical generation capacity, etc.,) but without agreements with California (whose water rights are more senior under the hundred year old agreement), California could take any water that AZ decided to leave in the lakes.
    My biggest takeaway from the meeting: it is critical that humanity cooperates.

    #116190
    zerosum
    Participant

    “The climate is going wonky, and it only takes 20 years of that to reduce a global civilization to a shadow of itself.”
    Nope. its going to take less than 20 years.
    Nobody is noticing because they don’t think that they are being affected by “bad” weather. (until they lose it all to the weather)
    We are on the down slope.
    One step forward two steps backward.
    Our leaders, of all gov., will need increasing amount of taxes just to stand still and if you don’t own assets that can pass on those increases then you will be the payer.

    (The Rule of 72: Double Your Money – Rule One Investing

    The Rule of 72: Learn How To Double Your Money with Compound Interest


    Given a 10% annual rate of return, how long will it take for your money to double? Take 72 and divide it by 10 and you get 7.2. )

    #116191
    Tree Frog
    Participant

    Red…

    Regarding the destruction of food… The fire at McCrumb in Belfast, Maine… I was an accident. I know people there.

    I’ve not seen a statistical context for these events broadly. How unlikely, given history? I’d like to see that.

    #116192
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    What a state we are in.

    We are dealing with dangerous antagonistic potentially powerful adversaries that have sunk below the level of mere bad guys (plenty of those around, so meh.), into the realm of stark staring mad.

    Wanting to steal everybody’s stuff and boss them around is bad, but at least it’s understandably rational. World institutional leadership however (a teensy bit under half of all world leadership) has sunk far below just wanting to steal and rule. They now want it ALL. The goal is 100% control of all that is. Being unable to accomplish that goal at their current level of capability, their new sure-fire strategic plan is to accomplish that very same goal by means of . . . . . (wait for it . . . .) . . . . . throwing away all of their existing capability so as to have LESS of it. Uh, yup. That should work like a charm.

    For example, they have ruled over 3/4 of the world with the dollar for a century, and yet failed to rule over the remaining quarter. They have tried mightily but have been unsuccessful in attaining 100% total hegemonic control over absolutely everyone. So to accomplish that goal now they have decided to reduce the value of that dollar to zero. Boy, THAT should do it, dontcha reckon?

    For example they have . . . . successfully enough . . . . controlled the “narrative” for centuries immeasurable. Well enough, at least, that their bamboozled subjects went on being uncomplaining . . . . enough . . . . for the scam to continue, despite being robbed at gunpoint on a daily basis and made to pretend belief in a mountain of absurd lies and fairy tales.

    But enough wasn’t enough for the top of the heap. Leaders insisted upon there being NO complaints, NO challenges, and ZERO dissident voices asking humiliating questions. To accomplish that rulers lied and censored so much that now virtually no one believes anything that governments or “authorities” have to say anymore. More and more people now turn to each other for information instead of turning to their leaders or “experts” for that kind of thing, like they used to. In other words, being unable to accomplish their goal with their current (and impressive!) level of capability, they strategized that the way to accomplish that very same goal now after such unexpected defeat was to throw away their last vestigial shred of credibility and trustworthiness. No one trusts them. No one believes them. And (mostly Western) leadership did that to themselves, on purpose.

    That is way below bad. It is even way below bat shit crazy. It is INVERTED. Nearly half of the leadership in the world believes that the ability to accomplish an effect is to have LESS ability to accomplish that effect. Down to and including no ability at all).

    NATO, with all of it wealthy backers, years of preparation and massing of highly trained and well equipped armies could not win against Russia in Ukraine. So what’s the solution? Why to destroy its own food supply and fuel stores, industrial capacity, currency and and to go on doing so until Russia gives up. (Why would Russia quit, out of PITY or something?)

    And how about that uber smug club of snobs known as the Davos crowd and its WEF? Their derangement is impossible to exaggerate. They want so much less of so many things that if they got their way there would not even be any of THEM left! Human’s would not exist outside of some truly truly bizarre and impossible robotized “Matrix” of electronics based “Artificial” intelligence containing digitized sentient idetnties (uploaded into the AI like an iTune MP3, which doesn’t need (and therefore doesn’t have) any organically grown humans at all. Homo sapiens will be translated into “Transhumans”, etc. etc. etc.

    Such goals and behaviors are not so much “bad”, per se, as they are INVERTED from reality. The word “insane” is far too bland to describe the state. Demonic or Satantic are closer, but still inadequate. My personal favorite, if pressed for a strong enough adjective, might be “Satanic”, but let’s face it. Words alone just don’t do the trick.

    These demented “leaders” are, at this moment as we speak, working feverishly and publicly, toward accomplishment of the goal of not enough of ANYTHING and EVERYTHING (including human population!) , and to go on doing so until the surviving world yields to them world d omination as a propitiative gift simply because those leaders are just so “Elitely” smart, rich and pretty that they DESERVE to own everything and everybody for no other reason than that.

    Such creatures cannot be reasoned with because they have explicitly disavowed reason itself. They can only be escorted to the graveyard to which they are already headed of their own free will.

    And that requires great care, because they are very crazy, and for that reason very dangerous.

    #116193
    Tree Frog
    Participant

    Dr D…

    Per PCR… The long game for Putin is multiplarity. Being a thug like the US is a losing strategy. PCR seems to miss that entirely.

    #116194
    zerosum
    Participant

    Weekend opinion/fact/fiction is ready,
    Come and get it.

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/09/ukraine-open-thread-2022-153.html#comments

    #116195
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I find it useful to reduce the Ukraine situation to this:

    USNATO Euromerica started this mess.

    Putin is finishing it. It will be over when Putin is done.

    OH well. Let’s be happy.

    #116196
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    “Hey wonderful group.

    Has anybody heard anything significant about the dates Sept 23/24 ?”

    It’s my wife’s birthday, so yes, I’ve been hearing a LOT about its significance recently.

    #116197
    zerosum
    Participant

    ^^^^
    Go get it.
    Report of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine – as of September 18, 2022

    #116198
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    If Hungary grabs a slice of Ukraine it would be useful if it connected to a Russian controlled area, giving it access to the outside world.

    #116199
    WES
    Participant

    Thanks Red and Morongobill for vaccine detox links.

    Germ: I have seen Sept 23/24 dates too but remain baffled as to what it mean!

    Zerosum: The Rule of 72 was one of the first rules of investing I learned. But since ZIRP and NIRP the rule only showed how fast you were losing!

    Tree Frog: I admit I had a good chuckle at your expense re- “I was an accident”. Probably the work of auto correct!

    Bosco: Re-shoes. I had a Dutch teacher who said Dutch kids who couldn’t make it to the toilet (or too lazy) would pee into someone’s wooden shoes usually left outside by the door! Polder might verify the practice?

    BDS: Spoiler Alert! They wouldn’t ask you the question because they didn’t want an answer! It was really important that the question remained unanswered. An answer would have spoiled the effect!

    #116200
    Red
    Participant

    Tree Frog I’d like to see that as well. Natural disasters happen without reason all the time. Looking for patterns is a human thing. With or without human help/intervention even in a steady state shit happens. Just watching the approaching storm and trying to prepare for it. Some are prepping physically and some mentally. For me it’s mostly mental prep as I’ve been living close to home for decades. Preparing my little property to feed and house me as much as possible with as little fossil energy as I can get away with. I am by no stretch of the imagination “depression” proof but somewhat “recession” resistant. Best I can do for now. Eyes open people.
    Germ, I have seen the 24th mentioned in a number of places as well with no info forth coming. I guess we’ll just have to wait it out, like waiting on santa! Most likely just another lump of coal. For me coal would be a good find as I could use it in the forge I’m presently constructing.

    #116201
    Noirette
    Participant

    aspnaz posted, prev. thread:

    (…) this whole Great Reset thingy is a collaboration of the looney left green wankers and the oligarchs. The oligarchs spotted the simpleton looney leftist and put together a plan, which involved taking the looney leftists seriously, something oligarchs, in fact any normal people, had never done before, so the looney left green veggies fell in love with the oligarchs and believed that the oligarchs were in love with them, so they set their fat (…) lesbians off to war to fight for green. And here we are.

    Ha ha… 🙂 Yes… I’d add that German Romanticism, which includes Close Harmony with Nature, and such like, and German Guilt, made it particularly vulnerable to a ‘green agenda’ traditionally rabidly against ‘nukulear.’ Which Merkel exploited / went along with / as Russian gas (and German coal …) filled the gap, and apparently afforded some renewable energy ‘gains.’

    Once some of these FF feed-ins were put in jeopardy, via the US clamping down on a Russia-Europe integration and potential alliance, leading to cancelling NordStream 2, to closing down to NS1, problems arose. The energy-equation if I may call it that, didn’t add up.

    So everyone in D is thrown in disarray…flailing about…But hey, a rich country should be able to buy what it wants? …Hmm.

    Another factor is that ‘green’ energies / initiatives / industries, are quite lucrative, they have lobbyists, fight hard for subsidies, and get them. Powerful movers, money-makers, behind e.g. wind turbines.

    One mini ex. Where I live (CH), electric bikes have replaced the ‘moped’. (50cc FF engine.)

    This was accomplished by very consequent Gvmt. subsidies to the makers of E-bikes. A small village I lived in previous offered the e-bike of your choice, free, under certain conditions, like not having no car. There were almost no takers, as all the car-drivers were commuters, etc. Now I live in shabby suburbia, and the offer is, if you buy an e-bike standard model, you get 350 (CHF, dollars, euros, say), if a more powerful model (accomodates a child in trailer, etc.) 550, and each year 100 for repairs. ++ it’s the cool thing!

    All of this takes place without taking into account analysis of overall energy production / delivery / use, which CH is capable of, and produces. But fashion and commercial interests, propaganda, local (cantonal) powers overrides any hard-headed analysis and what it might advise / enforce.

    #116202
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    I see that blue-and-yellow is the new black.

    15 years ago, ‘everything had to be black. Black clothes, black vehicles, black houses, black fences…. Now ‘everything’ has to be blue-and-yellow.

    Fairly recently I wrote that if I had to live in Taiwan, I would choose Hualien.

    Things are not good in Hualien at the moment.

    At least the nuclear reactor near Keelong hasn’t been hit (yet?)

    https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/powerful-earthquake-shakes-taiwan-buildings-and-bridges-collapse

    https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/powerful-earthquake-shakes-taiwan-buildings-and-bridges-collapse

    #116203
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    The Saker has an excellent article on the controlled demolition of Europe, and Germany in particular, by the US.

    WHY Is Germany Committing Suicide? The Same Reasons WHY the EU/UK is Being Deindustrialized!

    #116204
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    I suppose we will observe how well the project of a controlled demolition of the global economic system proceeds over the next couple of months. It sure looks to be on track for ‘free-fall acceleration’ to ground zero for NATOstan countries.

    #116205
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    This is well worth watching to get a better understanding of how Moldova fits into the bigger picture of the SMO

    (Note how much those borders changed and who was nominally in control of what is called Ukraine at the moment.)

    #116206
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    18th September 2022

    ‘The price of gold will open today at US$1676/oz. This is -US$41 or -2.4% below where it was this time last week.’

    Move on. Nothing to see here. And surely no manipulation is a ‘free market’.

    #116207
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    The proper description for what is happening in Europe is really an energy and food price shock rather than a general inflation.

    Away away to go publish more AI word-soup articles in journals that their own Editors say aren’t science and can’t be trusted.

    #116208

    Doesn’t aspnaz live in Taiwan?
    How are you doing, aspnaz?
    Earthquakes, btw. Big, shallow ones.

    #116209
    Bill7
    Participant

    Mr. Tooze seems in the above article to be working very hard to not see what’s obvious, attempting to convince his readers that his obfuscating views are in fact accurate ones.
    I’ll stick with my earlier comment about it virtually all being nonsense-news, these days.

    Who benefits from nonsense-news?

    #116210
    Dr. D
    Participant

    It’s not a mystery, I’m as comforting as Mr. Rogers. I say the same thing every day: experts are wrong (they are), we can prove it for days, months, decades, centuries. As it has ever been, so shall it ever be. All the textbooks were wrong, every day you grew up, and they’re not suddenly right this time. Therefore, think for yourself and don’t believe what people on the internet tell you. Fair enough…but ESPECIALLY if they are Nike, Amazon, and the BBC. There’s never a time they agree on something that they are correct and up to no good. Treat them, and doctors, professors, economists, the same as you treat me: as some young guy.

    If I’m right about some things like Housing Bubbles and Covid, add some points. If I’m wrong, like I was about Arizona water rights, subtract in proportion to the scale and surety I put on. I don’t know why Arizona was one of the westerns states I was so sure about, turns out it was probably California. And that’s not a panacea. Checking that, I found out several states have strongly relaxed their rules only a year or so ago, while against all others, Colorado only just went fascist on it.

    Nobody’s right about all things, so the only thing you can be sure of is that only reporters will be reliably wrong about all of it. They – or rather the people who sign their checks – are as certain as gravity. Mr. Jones. How can they be so wrong?

    “Their derangement is impossible to exaggerate.”

    “Such creatures cannot be reasoned with because they have explicitly disavowed reason itself.”

    Yes, the #Reason is the #Logos. They are expressly and actively #AntiLogos. Therefore, although they may not mean to, they MUST be against “The Way, the Truth, and the Light.” ACTIVELY against. FURIOUSLY against. With an irrational hatred and aversion that knows no limits. Why they’ve done it, I can’t imagine – they’re smart people – but done it they have. I cannot stop their free will to reject God, heaven, and reason, nor to invent hardships that are entirely unnecessary and even quite difficult and expensive to bring about. That are counterproductive to their plans and decrease their own power. But… #AntiLogos, #AntiReason. Stupid is as stupid does. I can only respond to it in a good, practical, and #Reason-able way. Even a #Forgiving one, although I don’t prefer it.

    #116211
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    @Afewknowthetruth Thanks for the Moldava video it’s a good starting point to try to understand the regional conflict.

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