Sep 062022
 
 September 6, 2022  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Man Ray Departure of summer 1914

 

Australian Artist Removes Ukraine And Russia Mural After Backlash (BBC)
Labor Day Assessment (Jim Kunstler)
Main Gas Pipeline To EU Will Be Closed Until Sanctions Lifted – Kremlin (RT)
Enforcing Russian Oil Price Cap Is Problematic – Washington Post (RT)
Deterioration Of Living Standard Inevitable – Greece Gov’t Spokesman (KTG)
Leaked Paper Shows UK Cops Preparing For Greater Civil Unrest This Winter (ZH)
Kremlin Scathing Over Truss But Kyiv Praises Britain’s New PM (G.)
Belgium Warns Citizens Of Ten ‘Difficult Winters’ Ahead (RT)
Kiev Urges Crimeans To Prepare Shelters (RT)
EU Arms Stocks Drastically Depleted – Borrell (RT)
NATO Struggling To Supply Winter Uniforms To Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)
Ditching Russian Gas No Way To Reach Climate Goals – Putin (RT)
Trump Medical Records, Tax Documents Seized In FBI Raid: Judge (Fox)
Biden’s Speech Had It All Backwards (Lance Morrow)

 

 

According to Bloomberg Europe has reserved $375 Billion in heating bill relief. UK’s Truss has set aside £130 billion.


Think of all the gas you could have bought with that money. Now you get nothing.

 

 

 

 

Winter will be big
https://twitter.com/i/status/1566832570775621632

 

 

 

 

The Russians have been accused for many years. Wonder how that feels?!

 

 

Take it down and tear it up

 

 

 

 

They’ve done it. War is peace.

Australian Artist Removes Ukraine And Russia Mural After Backlash (BBC)

An Australian artist has painted over a street mural showing Ukrainian and Russian soldiers hugging, after a community backlash. The Melbourne artwork advocated a “peaceful resolution” between the two countries, creator Peter Seaton says. But some have likened the three-storey mural to Russian propaganda. Seaton – known as CTO – has apologised for his work, saying it was “clumsy” and he “didn’t think it would be so badly received”. Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and Russian forces have been accused of war crimes since they invaded in February. Critics said the work – titled Peace Before Pieces – drew a false moral equivalence between the two sides.


“What would people think if a mural featured a rapist and a victim hugging?” co-chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, Stefan Romaniw, said in a statement. “Trying to be ‘even-handed’ and accepting a false narrative that ‘all we need is peace’ in this case supports evil.” Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said it was “utterly offensive to all Ukrainians”. An art organisation, called Art4Ukraine Australia, said it had raised concerns about the artwork before it was started, and was shocked to see it completed. Seaton said he had stayed up until 03:00 local time on Monday to paint over the mural. “The mural cost me $2,000 to $3,000… I wouldn’t do that and spend 10 days doing it if I had thought it was going to hurt people,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation later on Monday.

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“Annalena Baerbock, promised last week to keep demonizing Russia to support Ukraine’s black hole of racketeering “no matter what my German voters think or how hard their life gets.”

Labor Day Assessment (Jim Kunstler)

The Great Re-Set is an emergent phenomenon. It unspools naturally out of circumstances that reality presents. It goes its own way and we have to adapt to it, like it or not. Is our climate changing? Maybe. But so what? The climate has changed many times since the Bronze Age. If preventing that is actually out of the question, which it is, then what else are you going to do? The answer is: adapt intelligently to new conditions. When you clear away all the mental resistance to that — which amounts to a titanic struggle to keep things just the way they are — you’re going to have to make changes anyway. America was, for a time, the greatest industrial society and now that appears to be over. The disorder in all the moving parts of it is probably too gross to arrest at this point.

We shoved it into disorder by making some very bad choices, like getting rid of our factories and squandering our wealth on an absurd suburban living arrangement. Shale oil was a financial stunt to keep our set-up going a little longer. It was part of the colossal debt roll-up — the steering function of finance — that was used to compensate for our actual loss of mojo, and now that gambit has hit the wall. You can’t pretend to issue more debt when everyone knows it can never be paid back. Europe, the old home-base of Western Civ, never got around to shale oil, and its financial structure was such — reckless bond issuance with no fiscal accountability whatsoever — that now it is collapsing faster and worse than America. Europe’s leadership is clearly insane and it will likely be overthrown before long.

The foreign minister of Germany, the winsome Annalena Baerbock, promised last week to keep demonizing Russia to support Ukraine’s black hole of racketeering “no matter what my German voters think or how hard their life gets.” Stand by to see how that goes over.The angst around these circumstances is expressing itself in a generalized political nervous breakdown featuring the sort of tragi-comic behavior previously confined in lunatic asylums. Have you ever seen anything more patently insane than the sexual confusion acted out in American schools? Drag Queen story hours? Litter boxes in the bathrooms for students who identify as “furries”? That was the funny part. The Covid-19 event is no joke — rather a psychopathic mass murder.

Obviously, it was no accident. We have a pretty good idea who made it, and set it loose into the world. And the “vaccine” response looks plainly malevolent at this point. Yet the Covid episode is shot through with mystery. How did all those sedulously trained doctors get so mind-fucked as to persist in saying the “vaccines” were safe-and-effective, when the vaxxes were obviously killing and maiming people? They’re still stuck in that disgraceful posture, busy punishing their colleagues who demur, and dishonoring medicine — not to mention the thousands of public health officials still pushing vaxxes and boosters to this day. We can attribute that to mass formation psychosis, but even that reeks of mystery. Maybe, as the old American hymn goes, farther along we’ll understand why….

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Problems in [gas] deliveries arose due to sanctions that have been imposed on our country and a number of companies by Western countries, including Germany and the UK. There are no other reasons behind supply issues..”

Main Gas Pipeline To EU Will Be Closed Until Sanctions Lifted – Kremlin (RT)

The technical issues with gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline will persist until the West lifts sanctions it has slapped on Russia over the ongoing Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. On August 31, Gazprom completely shut down gas deliveries via the pipeline. Although initially Nord Stream 1 was slated to resume gas transit on Friday, Gazprom announced that it would remain closed indefinitely due to technical issues. “Problems in [gas] deliveries arose due to sanctions that have been imposed on our country and a number of companies by Western countries, including Germany and the UK. There are no other reasons behind supply issues,” Peskov noted.

The Kremlin spokesman also claimed that it is not Gazprom’s fault that “the Europeans absolutely absurdly make a decision to refuse to service their equipment,” which they are contractually obligated to do. Peskov stressed that all Nord Stream 1 operations hinge on “one piece of equipment that needs serious maintenance.” On Sunday, his comments were echoed by Alexander Novak, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, who blamed the European Union for the problems that have prevented the resumption of gas supplies via the pipeline. “The entire problem lies precisely on [the EU’s] side, because all the conditions of the repair contract have been completely violated, along with the terms of shipping of the equipment,” he said.

On Friday, Gazprom canceled the restart of Nord Stream 1 citing an oil leak in the turbine, which was detected during a joint inspection with manufacturer Siemens Energy at the Portovaya compressor station near St. Petersburg. At the same time, the malfunction could be remedied only in Canada, which has imposed sanctions against Moscow. Despite the maintenance issues, Europe has accused Russia of weaponizing energy supplies, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen describing Moscow as “not a reliable partner” in terms of gas supplies.

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Not if there is no oil. Not a problem at all.

Enforcing Russian Oil Price Cap Is Problematic – Washington Post (RT)

The latest initiative to set a price ceiling for Russian crude announced by the Group of Seven nations last week may encounter significant difficulties, the Washington Post reported on Friday. The scheme pushed by the G7 (the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan) is aimed at solving several problems simultaneously. It aims to undercut the revenue Moscow receives from selling crude to the global market, while maintaining energy flows to the West, and also keeping global oil prices in check. The plan, which is seen as a top priority of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, includes banning services such as insurance and financing to ships transporting Russian crude above an agreed price level.


Analysts polled by the media are raising concerns that the ban could be easily circumvented if countries outside the G7, such as China and India, were to keep purchasing Russian oil above the capped price before selling it back to world markets at a premium. “The devil is in the details, and few details appeared today,” Bob McNally, a former energy official in the George W. Bush administration told the Post. “This was a process announcement, moving from exploring a price cap to implementing one.” According to Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the price cap plan, which would allow Russia to trade oil at a discount, would be less disruptive to world markets than Europe’s previous idea of severing all imports of Russian oil. Experts have also warned that Russia could retaliate by slashing shipments of natural gas to Europe more sharply, saying such a scenario would exacerbate the economic crisis already gripping many Western countries.

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Preparing the people. How about a lockdown in homes they can’t heat?

Deterioration Of Living Standard Inevitable – Greece Gov’t Spokesman (KTG)

“Deterioration of living standard for quite some time is inevitable,” government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou warned Greeks on Sunday. “Citizens’ quality of life is threatened with sharp deterioration,” the spokesman said in an interview with Skai TV and an article he published at the Sunday edition of the newspaper tovima . His warning comes a day after the Development Minister warned of “the worse winter than the one in 1942 [Greece under German Nazi occupation].despite the government cheers of a flourishing economy and tourism revenues breaking all records. Referring to “the upcoming difficult winter”, Oikonomou said that the government is fully aware that this winter the people’s strength will be tested.

“The crises imported from Europe are threatening our every day life and the standard of living of all the society and even more that of the most vulnerable groups. So we should seek for ways and answers in order to stand by the citizens” he said.He noted that the government is examining ways to support the citizens without blowing up the economy.“The energy crisis has similar characteristics with the pandemic. It is external, it is imported and was not produced here, it has significant economic repercussions as the pandemic did, so it needs economic measures and support as it happened with the pandemic”.

Oikonomou’s warnings come one day after the Development Minister urged Greeks to seek alternative ways for heating, while the government has been reassuring all summer long that it was well “shielded” against the energy crisis cheering a flourishing economy and tourism revenues breaking all records.. Inflation stood at 11.1% in August and price hikes of 7%-10% for goods of basic needs are coming in supermarkets in September as companies have already announced.

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Truss is mad enough to send in police against her own people.

Leaked Paper Shows UK Cops Preparing For Greater Civil Unrest This Winter (ZH)

New Prime Minister Liz Truss may have only weeks to deliver a confidence turnaround in the UK economy or face a surge in violent crime and breakdown in public order caused by a cost-of-living crisis. The Times revealed police chiefs fear “economic turmoil and financial instability” has the “potential to drive increases in particular crime types,” such as shoplifting, burglary, vehicle theft, and online fraud and blackmail, as Brits face one of the worst collapses in living standards in a century amid energy hyperinflation. “Prolonged and painful economic pressure” could spark “greater civil unrest,” similar to the 2011 London riots, the leaked national strategy paper read. One police chief noticed increased violent crime as inflation is stuck at multi-decade highs.

This comes as energy regulator Ofgem increased the cap on power bills to a record £3,549 ($4,189) beginning Oct. 1 from £1,971 ($2,330). That cap is expected to rise to £5,439 ($6,427) by January and £7,272 ($8,594) by spring. Besides police, energy executives warned that mass civil unrest looms as people cannot afford their heating and electricity bills this winter. About 160,000 Brits have joined a movement against skyrocketing electricity bills, vowing not to pay come Oct. 1. Last Friday, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom PJSC halted flows via Nord Stream 1 to Europe, sending EU natural gas and electricity prices soaring on Monday. This means Truss hardly has any time to deliver a coherent strategy to save households from energy poverty and businesses from failing.

The massive protest in Prague this past weekend, where tens of thousands of Czechs flooded the streets, offers a glimpse of the impending social unrest that could hit the street of the UK if power bills continue rising without government intervention. Published last week was a new report via Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm, warning there’s a high risk of social unrest in Europe later this year due to rising inflation. Europeans are finally waking up to how bad Western sanctions on Russia have backfired, as their governments sacrificed ordinary people over NATO’s proxy fight against Russia in Ukraine. These protests could spread like wildfire across Europe, and it appears the UK is preparing for the worst-case scenario.

Read more …

The Guardian should detest Truss, but guess what?!

Kremlin Scathing Over Truss But Kyiv Praises Britain’s New PM (G.)

Liz Truss’s imminent arrival in Downing Street as British prime minister has been greeted with scorn and scarcely veiled condescension from the Kremlin, but an outpouring of praise in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s chief spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, expressed concerns that relations might deteriorate in comments to reporters shortly before Truss was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership race. “I wouldn’t like to say that things can change for the worse, because it’s hard to imagine anything worse,” Peskov said when asked if Moscow expected any shift in relations with Britain. “But unfortunately, this cannot be ruled out.”

The Kremlin has openly mocked and belittled Truss since she went to Moscow in February for talks with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. In the meeting, a fortnight before the Russian invasion, Truss challenged Lavrov on the buildup of 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, which Moscow denied was preparation for an attack. Lavrov complained that her interventions were “just slogans shouted from the tribunes”. Russian government spokespeople sneered after a Russian newspaper reported that Truss had confused Russian regions with Ukrainian territory and had to be corrected by the British ambassador. The British government said she had simply misheard a question from Lavrov.

Reacting to Truss’s victory in typically bombastic style, one host on Russian state TV declared: “Stupidity has triumphed: Liz Truss has become the new prime minister … If Boris Johnson achieved Brexit, she wants to achieve something entirely different – the end of the world.” Ukrainian politicians, however, offered an exuberant welcome. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said British-Ukraine ties were already “ an unprecedentedly high level”, adding: “We in Ukraine know her well – she has always been on the bright side of European politics. And I believe that together we will be able to do a lot more to protect our nations and to thwart all Russian destructive efforts. The main thing is to preserve our unity, and this will definitely be the case.”

“In Liz, we Truss” tweeted Ukrainian deputy Rustem Umerov. “Mrs Truss is a solid supporter of Ukraine. Hope for a fruitful ongoing partnership between the UK and Ukraine.” Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko congratulated Truss, writing on Facebook: “I am glad that the alliance between our nations will remain strong and powerful, which is crucial for our common victory over the Russian aggressor and Putin’s regime.” Ukrainian media reported that Truss’s first call would be to the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Some bloggers were said to have christened Truss “the iron lady”, an epithet bound to delight the new prime minister, who has styled herself on Margaret Thatcher.

Read more …

Belgium could get very bad.

Belgium Warns Citizens Of Ten ‘Difficult Winters’ Ahead (RT)

Belgium is facing up to ten “difficult winters” but is about to leap “20 years forward” by getting rid of its dependency on fossil fuels, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Sunday. He was commenting on the looming energy crisis, exacerbated by sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict and a decrease in Russian natural gas supplies. Speaking to VRT TV, De Croo claimed that the conflict in Ukraine had affected the European economy much more than the Covid pandemic “could ever have had.” However, he said that the hardships are worth it, because “this is about the stability and security of the European continent.” “When we get it under control, it will be five difficult years, it will be ten difficult years with bad policy, but I also said that we as a country and European continent can handle this if we get all noses in the same direction,” De Croo pointed out.


He argued that the current situation has a bright side. “We can also jump 20 years forward, in terms of detaching from fossil fuels and breaking away from countries that we don’t like to trade with…,” the prime minister noted. Last week, the Belgian government published a plan to combat soaring energy prices. It set out measures to decrease energy consumption, such as lowering the temperature in government buildings to 19 degrees, limiting use of air conditioning to a maximum of 27 degrees and ordering to switch off lighting in federal properties and monuments between 7pm and 6am. According to the paper, the country “should be able to get through the winter without any major problems” and might even be able to help its neighbors.

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“..the active de-occupation.”

Kiev Urges Crimeans To Prepare Shelters (RT)

Kiev has issued a warning to people living in what it called “occupied territories,” including the Crimean peninsula, to prepare shelter and stock up on supplies. The appeal was shared to Twitter on Monday by an adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Mikhail Podolyak urged “residents of the occupied territories, including the Crimean peninsula, to follow the officials’ recommendations during de-occupation measures.” Furthermore, people should “prepare a bomb shelter, stock up on a sufficient amount of water and charge power banks right now.” Podolyak concluded his warning with the line “Everything will be Ukraine.” The warning comes after Podolyak announced last week that Ukrainian authorities are developing evacuation routes for Ukrainians living in Crimea “who want to leave the island during the active de-occupation.”


Kiev has repeatedly insisted that it considers Crimea, which became part of Russia following a referendum in 2014, to be an “occupied territory” and has vowed to seize the peninsula “by any means necessary.” The US-led NATO alliance also considers Crimea to be “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory, and has demanded that Moscow return the region to Ukrainian control. A US official told Politico last month that Washington had given Ukraine its blessing to strike targets of its choosing in Crimea. Kiev’s warning to Crimeans comes as the Ukrainian government has been talking about a counteroffensive in the south of the country for several months now, vowing to reclaim the whole of Donbass, parts of the Zaporozhye and Kharkov regions currently held by Russian forces, as well as Crimea.

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“Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto argued that each state should be allowed to make its own decision on the issue..”

EU Arms Stocks Drastically Depleted – Borrell (RT)

Stocks of weapons within the European Union are greatly depleted as member states continue to supply arms and ammunition to Ukraine for use in its conflict with Russia, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.“The military stocks of most member states have been, I wouldn’t say exhausted, but depleted in a high proportion, because we have been providing a lot of capacity to the Ukrainians,” Borrell said during a debate with lawmakers in the European Parliament, adding that the arsenal will “have to be refilled.”The top diplomat said EU member states must start coordinating their military spending to avoid too many duplications and a waste of money.

If countries don’t coordinate properly, “the result will be a big waste of money, because this is not a way of canceling our duplications – there are a lot of them – or filling our gaps.”EU countries have been sending weapons to Ukraine since Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring country in February – and Borrell has since discussed launching a bloc-wide training mission for Ukrainian troops.On Monday, the chief diplomat said Brussels should have responded more quickly to requests for training Ukrainian troops a year ago.“Unhappily we didn’t, and today we regret it. We regret that last August we were not following this request, fulfilling this request,” he said, adding that “we would be in a better situation” if the EU had acted at the time.

The US and UK are already training Ukrainian troops in urban combat and instructing them on how to use Western-supplied weapons.Some EU nations are also already hosting training for Ukrainian troops, but no coordinated bloc-wide, EU-level program has yet been implemented – and some countries have voiced concerns over the idea. Luxembourg Defense Minister Francois Bausch told AFP last week that he was “not convinced” this would be the best way to help Kiev. Meanwhile, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto argued that each state should be allowed to make its own decision on the issue, telling Politico that it “should not be done at a European Union level.”

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“..the German military is “quite critical” of the idea of handing over its equipment to Ukraine..”

NATO Struggling To Supply Winter Uniforms To Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)

NATO members have been scraping the barrel in their efforts to supply Ukraine with sufficient winter uniforms and field camp equipment, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Monday. Kiev has apparently called on the bloc to urgently provide the necessary equipment before the cold weather sets in. According to Der Spiegel, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov wrote a letter to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg back in late July, calling on the military alliance to provide cold-proof field tents along with clothing for as many as 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers. The uniforms and equipment should be delivered as quickly as possible, the minister added, according to the magazine.

Several NATO nations have since been searching their warehouses for the needed supplies. The organization confirmed to Der Spiegel that it is in contact with member states on the issue. According to reports cited by Der Spiegel, so far the US and Canada, as well as Sweden and Finland, which are yet to join the military grouping, have together promised deliveries that could cover up to 50% of Ukraine’s demands.Military officials from various NATO members argue, though, that most of their nations’ stocks are reserved for the national armies, Der Spiegel says. The defense alliance has reportedly offered to replace the uniforms and equipment member states hand over to Kiev, using the so-called NATO trust fund, amounting to $40 million.

Germany also reportedly plans to join the effort, although it had earlier struggled to equip its own troops with the necessary gear, Der Spiegel says. By sending winter clothing and field camp equipment, Berlin could make “an important contribution” to Ukraine’s defense ahead of the approaching winter, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said. According to Der Spiegel, the German military is “quite critical” of the idea of handing over its equipment to Ukraine. Lambrecht herself repeatedly stated earlier that the German Armed Forces – the Bundeswehr – are about to reach the limits of what they can give away when it comes to weapons.

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Because you end up burning everything else.

Ditching Russian Gas No Way To Reach Climate Goals – Putin (RT)

Europe’s decision to slash natural gas imports while trying to reach climate goals was a mistake, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday during an environmental forum in Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East. “First, they (EU) jumped ahead, and then, after cutting off Russian gas supplies, returned everything that was reviled,” Putin stated. He emphasized that all nations are in favor of reducing emissions into the atmosphere, noting however that everything should be done in a timely manner. “And if you jump ahead, get cheap Russian gas, and then cut off the supply of this gas yourself and immediately switch back to everything that was previously condemned, including coal-fired generation, this, of course, is not the best option for solving global problems,” the Russian president said.


Under the REPowerEU plan, published in May, the European Union plans to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027 and boost its renewable energy production. However, skyrocketing gas prices in Europe, which some analysts believe could lead to an energy catastrophe this winter, have forced some states to fire up coal plants and expand nuclear power use.

Putin history

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“It is also not clear why investigators seized items labeled “Article of Clothing/Gift Item.”

Trump Medical Records, Tax Documents Seized In FBI Raid: Judge (Fox)

A federal judge revealed Monday that former President Trump’s medical records and documents related to his accounting information and taxes were seized during the FBI’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago home. U.S. District Judge from the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen M. Cannon ordered Monday that an independent special master be appointed to review Trump’s records for attorney-client and executive privilege. The judge also ordered the Justice Department stop its own review of the material for investigative purposes. In the order, Cannon revealed the types of documents that had been seized during the raid. “According to the Privilege Review Team’s Report, the seized materials include medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information,” Cannon wrote.

A source familiar told Fox News that the FBI seized 40 years of Trump’s medical records from Mar-a-Lago during the search. Congressional Democrats have been seeking Trump’s tax returns since 2019. Last month, a federal appeals court paved the way for the House Ways and Means Committee to finally obtain Trump’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, under a law that permits the disclosure of an individual’s tax returns to the congressional committee. Trump may seek emergency intervention measures from the Supreme Court in an attempt to temporarily block any release of those tax records to the committee. [..] Last week, the Justice Department—after Cannon’s order—filed a more detailed list of documents taken in its raid of Mar-a-Lago, including dozens of classified documents and folders with classified markings.


Also included was a wide assortment of other items, including over 1,000 documents that did not have classified markings, several “Article of Clothing/Gift Item” entries and hundreds of printed news articles. It is also not clear why investigators seized items labeled “Article of Clothing/Gift Item.” In all, the DOJ said it took 18 such items. Meanwhile, Cannon’s order Monday halted the Justice Department’s “taint” or “filter” team’s review of seized records. “Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”

Read more …

In the WSJ, no less. Mr. Morrow is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His latest book is “The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism,” forthcoming in January.

Biden’s Speech Had It All Backwards (Lance Morrow)

Donald Trump isn’t a fascist, or even a semi-fascist, in President Biden’s term. Mr. Trump is an opportunist. His ideology is coextensive with his temperament: In both, he is an anarcho-narcissist. He is Elmer Gantry, or the Music Man, if Harold Hill had been trained in the black arts by Roy Cohn. He is what you might get by crossing the Wizard of Oz with Willie Sutton, who explained that he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” As for Mr. Trump’s followers, they belong to the Church of American Nostalgia. They are Norman Rockwellians, or Eisenhowerites. They regard themselves, not without reason, as the last sane Americans. You might think of them as American masculinity in exile; like James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, living in the forest has made their manners rough.

If there are fascists in America these days, they are apt to be found among the tribes of the left. They are Mr. Biden and his people (including the lion’s share of the media), whose opinions have, since Jan. 6, 2021, hardened into absolute faith that any party or political belief system except their own is illegitimate—impermissible, inhuman, monstrous and (a nice touch) a threat to democracy. The evolution of their overprivileged emotions—their sentimentality gone fanatic—has led them, in 2022, to embrace Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Or against the party. (People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists). The state and the Democratic Party must speak and act as one, suppressing all dissent.

America must conform to the orthodoxy—to the Chinese finger-traps of diversity-or-else and open borders—and rejoice in mandatory drag shows and all such theater of “gender.” Meantime, their man in the White House invokes emergency powers to forgive student debt and their thinkers wonder whether the Constitution and the separation of powers are all they’re cracked up to be. Mr. Trump and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists: They want the state to stand aside, to impose the least possible interference and allow market forces and entrepreneurial energies to work. Freedom isn’t fascism. Mr. Biden and his vast tribe are essentially enemies of freedom, although most of them haven’t thought the matter through. Freedom, the essential American value, isn’t on their minds. They desire maximum—that is, total—state or party control of all aspects of American life, including what people say and think.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Paris

 

 

What is man’s influence?

 

 

 

 

 

 


A storm is brewing – Adam Kyle Jackson

 

 

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

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle September 6 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 45 total)
  • Author
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  • #115297

    Man Ray Departure of summer 1914   • Australian Artist Removes Ukraine And Russia Mural After Backlash (BBC) • Labor Day Assessment (Jim Kunstler
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle September 6 2022]

    #115298
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Belgium surely will ‘be getting rid of its dependence on fossil fuels’.

    After all, if you have no population because you killed them all, you won’t need fossil fuels.

    Meanwhile one of the great questions of our time, which has remained unanswered for more that 100 years -Anglo-Persian Oil Company 1905 and all that- still remains unanswered: How did our oil end up under their sand?

    So now ‘we’ have to send in the military and great convoys of trucks to steal it back.

    #115299
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Be very wary of land surface temperature graphs. The temperature of land surfaces goes up and down like a yoyo -last week I was in one layer of clothing and today it snowed and I was in five layers, plus hat and hood!- and is a very poor indicator of global averages, which are determined by the average temperature of the oceans (full depth up to 3 km in places). The transfer of heat to the depths of the oceans is a very slow process, since warm water is less dense and sit on the surface.

    If one is going to focus on land masses, a better measure of heat imbalance is the total mass of ice.

    15,000 years ago, ice covered England as far to the south as the [present] River Thames.

    Also very influential on global temperature averages, prior to humans messing everything up, were volcanic eruptions, which blocked insolation for up to two years. The great famines and mini-ice ages are attributable to massive volcanic eruptions.

    Unsurprisingly, poor harvests led to mass starvation and then revolutions.

    It is very clear where we are headed on that one.

    #115300
    oxymoron
    Participant
    #115301
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    She has a different accent, but the Truss thing talks the same kind of nonsense -“unleashing opportunity”- as Adern, the saboteur-in-chief of NZ.

    Of course, the Truss thing probably thinks she is Maggie we-showed-those-Ares-who-is-boss Thatcher reincarnated, forgetting that ‘The Iron Lady’ (not for turning) orchestrated the looting of the North Sea and the conversion of Britain’s most valuable asset into smoke and CO2 in an orgy of government-promoted consumption a long time ago.

    There really is fuck-all left now.

    Peak [UK] Coal: 1913;

    Peak [UK] Oil 2001.

    Peak [UK] Ponzi Finance 2019

    Peak [UK] Covid Deceit 2021

    Peak [UK] Insanity 2022.

    Peak [UK] Mayhem 2023.

    Peak [UK] Destitution 2025

    #115302
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Video: MSNBC Declares ALL Republicans “EVIL” And A “Threat To Democray”; Pundit Says “We Are At War”



    “Obviously, Republicans are, I think, the biggest threat to democracy. We don’t separate right-wing extremists and Republican Party anymore.”

    Cross made it clear that she considers “mainstream, establishment Republicans are echoing these calls for violence. All but threatening it.”

    In the same show she declared that it feels like a civil war has “already begun.”

    During the same segment, Cross AGREED when pundit Roland Martin declared “We are at war with these people. These folks are evil.”

    “They have allowed evil into their house with Donald Trump. He has now dominated the party. This evil is spreading. And when you are in a war footing, you have to respond accordingly,” Martin continued.

    “When the enemy is coming at you you, can’t fall down, you can’t break down. This means war,” he added.”

    Well that’s disturbing. I guess they’ll have to promote democracy with the THIRD party. Oh wait: we don’t have one. Hillary Clinton killed it in 2016, and every day since. M4All! Force the Vote!

    “”MAGA Proposals Are a Threat to the Very Soul of this Country”
    “I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat.”

    Uh-huh. Well all pretty great talk for part of the country with no guns and have to pay Red Hats to shoot people for them. Very serious business though. I wish they would take it so. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-first-battle-bull-run-really-picnic-battle-180964084/

    Perhaps do 6 weeks of boot camp, a month in the mangroves and brush of Florida, outside with no A/C. Maybe 12 weeks recon in the arrayos of New Mexico. Go hang out in a jeep all day in January Wisconsin. Tell me how much you want it then to go to people’s houses and order them around.

    Speaking of the new McConstruction, Surely more modest digs are good. Here’s the news though: new construction, in Florida, etc, LITERALLY needs major repair in two years. Literally. So common as to be expected now, back down to the 2x6s. Not entirely sure of why, different things, often with tyvek, insulation, weathersealing, and water, but here … what is it? $100+ /sqft, and is junk before you see the contractor drive away?

    What was I saying as fraud now infinite money, zero product?

    Prices? How about $7,000 for a home furnace I recently saw?

    “The World Economic Forum announced that biodiversity loss is the third greatest threat facing humanity”

    Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

    Not the total lack of food re-establishing that biodiversity – that is, the “untouched” ecosystems from New Jersey to Salinas? No, turning the earth back into complete wilderness, with untouched hunting lodges – I mean, lands – everywhere, would DEFINTELY kill 6 Billion people. So the INCREASE of biodoversity – by the WEF and other Billionaires for their Manor Hall amusement – is the greatest threat facing humanity.

    Well, not really, we can do a lot better, but you know what I mean. Plow under zee crops! Eeet zee bugs!!!

    And Ridin’ that Green Horse, no charging your car: “California Declares Grid Emergency (For 5th Straight Day) As Blackout Risks Surge”

    You can just skip work for 5 days, can’t you, pal? Save the Whales. Who doesn’t want 5 weeks vacation? …Which we’re not paying you for, and you get no air conditioning in. Practically Utopia! Btw, you can’t go surfing or we’ll arrest you for not wearing masks underwater. Science!

    AOC is the best and a born politician as she’s an idiot, a raging narcissist, and a unstoppable pathological liar, who is also compromised (back with her original campaign mis-handling). Perfect! That is the whole checksheet I’m sure. She also has narcissistic contempt for all haulers of wood and water, and thinks she is superior and knows better for being alive.

    T4V: You’re not banned at all, and can post any link you like. We don’t post on sewing quilts, growing chickens, brain surgery, or baseball. Is he refusing this as some secret conspiracy? All sites, books, talks, human activity have a focus. The focus appears to be the daily news, as presented by mainstream and not fringe players. The subfocus is peak oil and the way finance goes down first, and thus national and geopolitics. Also if we read your blog, it would just read “RothschildRothschildRothschildRothschildRothschildRothschildRothschild” which is boring as you’re not even giving me the specific family member names, their companies, and positions in those companies, which are all public information, and probably useful.

    AFKTT, I just do not see pop-ups or mechanisms to auto-click me anywhere from TAE, that’s very mysterious. You can dump that most likely by clicking these bombs in ‘Open new tab’.

    Yup, Oprah, Serena Williams, and Carlos Slim get pushed first. How can these poor, sad brown people pay high prices? Next thing they’ll be taking Obama’s beach home.

    “The climate has changed many times since the Bronze Age. If preventing that is actually out of the question, which it is, then what else are you going to do? The answer is: adapt intelligently to new conditions.”

    Interesting. Since I think everyone agrees even if we have CO2, ain’t nobody going to stop it, then we’re at Jim’s conclusion here: And…?

    “And” to me is the same as every other day before they told me all this, or anything. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Stop BUYING so much. Grow more things. Of course every part of that is violently opposed, and mostly illegal by the same people who are advertising leveling every mountain on earth to turn into MOAR CARZ to “Go Green”. But I only live my life, not theirs.

    “Main Gas Pipeline to EU Will Be Closed until Sanctions Lifted – Kremlin (RT)”

    So it’s been 6 solid months of the highest warnings, to both people and their leaders, individually? No dice? Well here you go.

    “the Europeans absolutely absurdly make a decision to refuse to service their equipment,” which they are contractually obligated to do.”

    Europe is initiating their SECOND genocide, against White people. …They don’t consider Slavs to be humans and white people. Well, Nazi is as Nazi does, and Eugenics are always in style for newspapers, professors, environmentalists, and all Schmartz-peoples. Yay murder!!!

    “But the murder is you.”

    “Yay my murder!!! I’m going to roll myself in butter and jump into the piranha tank! Not only can I not wait, you can’t stop me!”

    Me: “No. Don’t. Stop.”

    “Truss is mad enough to send in police against her own people.”

    Listening to Duran, etc, the astonishment that Truss could EVER be above Mayor of Staines (Surrey) “The town that died of shame” or above junior minister is just…inconceivable. And that BoJo could appear a political titan compared to her is breathtaking. But they need to put in a woman as Captain when they sink the ship. To blame it on her, and women generally. To do that, they need to find “The Dumbest Woman in Britain™”.

    “The Guardian should detest Truss, but guess what?!”

    Proving my point. She has the true anointing from the very top. The real government we never see. Fine with me.

    So…given this setup…what next? Like the DNC here, Britain as a whole has utterly annihilated all new talent, all up and comers, all ideas. All “Humans”, really. And NPCs cannot be politicos. Do the owners have some Adam Sutler primed in the wings, or is the idea just to let it dissolve into all against all? Atm, I feel the latter, for now. So it’s going wonderfully!

    “Belgium Warns Citizens of Ten ‘Difficult Winters’ Ahead (RT)”

    Belgium just told you A) they intend to never buy cheap, plentiful Russian gas again B) they plan on balancing supply and demand by killing all of you Belgians instead. Have a nice day!

    “EU Arms Stocks Drastically Depleted – Borrell (RT)”

    And can’t be replenished. Even if they had a factory — they don’t — they have no POWER for the factory. And they haven’t even fought anything resembling a war yet. Thanks to Rumsfeld – a man like the rest of the administration who never made a correct decision in his life – to going full 5GW, all Special Forces, and erasing all mechanized, industrial warfare to save money. …In a $1T military budget. Where’s my money, Donald? Where is it?

    Russia proved they are all moron has-beens, behind the times, and completely defenseless. Luckily, the people are also illiterate inbreds, derelict of all national duty, or they might notice.

    “NATO Struggling to Supply Winter Uniforms to Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)”

    I’m quite sure we have these uniforms, but we are attacking and liquidating Europe instead. You don’t have to help: We don’t need your charity.

    “cut off the supply of this gas yourself and immediately switch back to everything that was previously condemned, including coal-fired generation,”

    Because it’s not about going green, it’s about killing people. And it’s doing its job nicely. Europe may think if they can get through this window, lock down Europe like North Korea, even with cutting 1/3 or 100M dead people, they will have monomaniacal CONTROL, and THEN, like North Korea, attack and conquer Russia a few years from now. (Whut? Yes, I can see them believing this.)

    Trump: “Truly a nation in decline”

    Ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait ‘til they arrest him for no charges, on no evidence, and make a one-party system.

    “Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

    Exactly. And also exactly against all things on the “Right.”

    “People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists” …And ended the same way.

    “Mr. Trump and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists”

    Yes, the “Right” in the U.S. is the opposite of the “Right” in colloquial terms: NO central power and government, or too small to enact even one problem on the nation. …While arming and defending the speech of minorities nationwide. They think the “Right” is a police state, but that is the “Left.”

    “What is man’s influence?”

    I dunno, there were an awful lot of SUVs in pre-dynastic Egypt. Hieroglyphs of them everywhere. Ice covered the Thames thick enough for elephants and a brass band in 1600 as well. Note: we are not outside of historical bands yet anywhere. We’re in ought-sigma territory.

    #115303
    Red
    Participant

    Most here probably already know or sense this. I have been watching for this storm for some years now and trying to prepare somewhat. I doubt I’m anywhere near ready! We are however closer. We’re trying to use up last years stores now as they are taking up storage space that this years harvest requires now! Not a bad problem mind you. There are a few in the neighbourhood that grow most of their needs other than meat. Most do not and will likely be caught completely off guard this time next year.

    Things are far worse than you are being told. Over the past few months, I have been carefully documenting facts that show that global food production is going to be way down in 2022. Unfortunately, most people out there don’t seem to understand that the food that isn’t being grown in 2022 won’t be on our store shelves in 2023. We are potentially facing an absolutely unprecedented worldwide food crisis next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem very alarmed about this. So I would encourage you to help me get this warning out by sharing this list with as many people as you possibly can. As you will see below, we now have so many data points that it is impossible to deny what is coming. The following is a list of 33 things we know about the coming food shortages…

    #1 The hard red winter wheat crop in the United States this year “was the smallest since 1963”. But in 1963, there were only 182 million people living in this nation. Today, our population has grown to 329 million.

    #2 It is being projected that the rice harvest in California will be “half what it would be in a normal year”.

    #3 The U.S. tomato harvest will come in at just 10.5 million tons in 2022. That is over a million tons lower than a normal year.

    #4 This will be the worst U.S. corn harvest in at least a decade.

    #5 Year-to-date shipments of carrots in the United States are down 45 percent.

    #6 Year-to-date shipments of sweet corn in the United States are down 20 percent.

    #7 Year-to-date shipments of sweet potatoes in the United States are down 13 percent.

    #8 Year-to-date shipments of celery in the United States are down 11 percent.

    #9 Total peach production in the U.S. is down 15 percent from last year.

    #10 Almost three-fourths of all U.S. farmers say that this year’s drought is hurting their harvests.

    #11 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Oregon is down 41 percent.

    #12 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in New Mexico is down 43 percent.

    #13 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Texas is down 50 percent.

    #14 One beef producer in Oklahoma is now predicting that ground beef “could eventually top $50 per pound”.

    #15 At least 40 percent of the United States has been suffering from drought conditions for 101 consecutive weeks.

    #16 Overall, this is the worst multi-year megadrought in the United States in 1,200 years.

    #17 Europe is currently experiencing the worst drought that it has seen in 500 years. In some parts of central Europe, river levels have fallen so low that “hunger stones” are being revealed for the first time in centuries.

    #18 Corn production for the entire EU could be down by as much as one-fifth in 2022.

    #19 We are being warned that there will be crop losses in France of up to 35 percent.

    #20 It is being projected that crop losses in some areas of the UK could be as high as 50 percent.

    #21 It is being reported that there will be crop losses “of up to 50 percent” in some parts of Germany.

    #22 Some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”.

    #23 Agricultural production in Somalia will be down about 80 percent this year.

    #24 In eastern Africa, the endless drought has already resulted in the deaths of at least seven million animals.

    #25 In China, they are facing the worst drought that they have ever experienced in recorded history.

    #26 India normally accounts for 40 percent of the global rice trade, but we are being warned that production in that country will be way down in 2022 due to “considerable rainfall deficits in key rice producing states”.

    #27 A third of the entire nation of Pakistan was under water after recent floods absolutely devastated that nation, and agricultural areas were hit particularly hard. As a result, the vast majority of the crops in the country have been “washed away”…

    It has also been estimated that roughly 65 per cent of the country’s food basket — particularly crops like rice, cotton, wheat and onion — have been washed away.

    Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an interview to CGTN earlier this week, offered an even starker outlook by saying that “about 80 to 90 per cent” of the country’s crops have been damaged by the floods.

    #28 The prices of some fertilizers have tripled since 2021, while the prices of some other fertilizers have actually quadrupled.

    #29 One payment company is reporting that the number of Americans using their app to take out short-term loans for groceries has risen by 95 percent.

    #30 Demand at U.S. food banks is now even worse than it was during the height of the COVID pandemic.

    #31 The World Health Organization is telling us that millions of people in Africa are now potentially facing a very real possibility of starving to death.

    #32 According to the World Food Program, 828 million people around the world go to bed hungry each night. Needless to say, that number will soon be much higher.

    #33 UN Secretary General António Guterres has publicly stated that he believes that it is likely that there will be “multiple famines” in 2023.

    As global food supplies get tighter and tighter, so will the risk of civil unrest.

    In fact, this has already been happening…

    The risk of civil unrest has surged this year in more than half of the world’s countries, signaling a coming period of heightened global instability fueled by inflation, war, and shortages of essentials, a new analysis says.

    According to Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm, 101 of the 198 countries tracked on its Civil Unrest Index saw an increase in their risk of civil unrest between the second and third quarters of this year.

    In recent weeks, we have seen absolutely massive protests in cities all over the planet.

    But conditions aren’t even that bad yet.

    So what will things be like in 2023 when it finally becomes exceedingly clear that there simply will not be enough food for everyone?

    Wealthy countries will have the resources to buy up much of what is available on the market, and that means that many poor countries will deeply suffer.

    If everything that you have read in this article sounds familiar, that is because we have been warned for years that such conditions were coming.

    In 2023, there will be famines and civil unrest all over the globe.

    This is not a drill. An extremely serious global food crisis has already begun, and I would encourage you to get prepared for what is ahead while you still can.

    A List Of 33 Things We Know About The Coming Food Shortages

    #115304

    Christophe Barraud: ENERGY MARGIN CALLS SEEN TOTALING AT LEAST $1.5 TRILLION – BBG

    *European energy trading risks grinding to a halt unless governments extend liquidity to cover margin calls of at least $1.5 trillion, according to Norwegian energy company Equinor ASA.

    #115305
    Red
    Participant

    It all started on March 5, 2014: a US sponsored fascist coalition government under the disguise of democracy was installed in Ukraine.

    With historical foresight this article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published on March 15, 2014 in the immediate wake of the US sponsored EuroMaidan Coup d’état.

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-us-launches-a-fascist-government-and-world-war-three/5372945

    #115306
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    It seems that all NATO countries, including the US, are claiming weapon and ammunition shortages due to supplying a small war in Europe!

    Where did all the trillions go?

    #115307
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The massive protest in Prague this past weekend, where tens of thousands of Czechs flooded the streets, offers a glimpse of the impending social unrest that could hit the street of the UK if power bills continue rising without government intervention.

    The 1 million march against the Iraq war was completely ignored by Tony Blair. Thick Lizzy is the same obedient servant type as Bliar. After that display of contempt, why would anybody in British politics care if there are a few hundred thousand protesters on the street?

    #115308
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Redneck, UpstateNYer and others thank you for your encouraging comments yesterday. I have thought it through a lot and I have realised I took the path Desmet recommends against. I spoke out, but in a way that was critical of their choices rather than voicing simply my own truth (what ever that means). I think we can come back from it and work on getting respect and support for my (our) ‘dissonant’ voice. They are good people but definitely in a Mass Formation state.
    Sometimes I can be ‘a lot’ as I am enthusiastic and passionate about ethics and principles and many people are not and just looking to ‘get by’ so it comes off as rude (probably more insensitive).

    I do believe we can speak out in a constructive way. We can promote our appreciation of the interconnectedness of the whole. We can be a voice that doesn’t close our walls in to protect ourselves from the risks of living a life fully. Hopefully within an understanding of nature and our deep need for other species and processes outside our measurement and control. When I look at trees or the honeyeaters or sulphur-crested black cockatoos (the most beautiful, gentle and haunting of all the birds in our forest BTW) I feel we share a life but we don’t/can’t know all the details of each other. I don’t know why they turn up when they do. Why Honey eaters always have such beef with magpies but sort of work together against raptors. They don’t know why i sometimes sprinkle chook food out for them but mostly let them work on their own. But they keep an eye on me and my kids and I keep an eye on them. We are family and they symbolise to me a vastness of life so big my rational mind is incapable of running numbers on it.
    It is bigger than death. It is bigger than me and it is fucking beautiful. And if Klaus and Bill and Justin and Jacinta are too busy for it they are missing out.

    It’s not all hookers and blow – you feel me.

    Love to all here at TAE. I need you guys to be the raging individual shining stars you are and when this internet thingy goes shit – I will have the ‘mysterious and irrational’ communication with ya’ll to keep me sane and warm.

    #115310
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Hi oxy. It’s a tough time, isn’t it?

    “I spoke out, but in a way that was critical of their choices rather than voicing simply my own truth”

    Thank you for saying that. I’ve done the same thing and need to take a step back and think before I speak.

    “Sometimes I can be ‘a lot’ as I am enthusiastic and passionate about ethics and principles … so it comes off as rude (probably more insensitive)”

    I’m guilty of the same. Unintentional, but you nailed it with that description. Another thing I need to do better about.

    I looked up pics of Sulphur crested cockatoos. Lovely bird with quite a personality.

    Thank you for sharing yourself. It’s not an easy thing to do, yet you do it regularly and with tremendous honesty and insight. 🙂

    #115311
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    [T]he global structure has changed, and with trust gone, “trade as we know it, is not coming back, and it is why soaring inflation isn’t going to be tamed any time soon, either … Global supply chains work only in peacetime, but not when the world is at war, be it a hot war – or an economic war”, notes [Zoltan] Pozsar, the leading guru of western financial plumbing.

    Existential Disquiets: Financial War Against the West Begins to Bite

    F.S.

    #115312
    zerosum
    Participant

    Love the cost comparison – UK vs Russia
    cost/inflation increase is zero if you don’t buy it.
    Also, If its not available, then inflation is zero.
    ———–
    Sometimes, what will happen does not follow what you thought would happen.
    ————
    Illusion

    a flourishing economy and tourism revenues breaking all records.
    ( Not at the soup kitchen)
    ————
    Choices need to be made.

    1. guns or plows
    2. feed the expats families or feed the expat soldiers
    3. print money for the rich or the poor
    4. coal plants and expand nuclear power use
    5. Burn furniture or stay cold
    6.
    ———
    @ Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    What could go wrong?
    Bidding on energy purchases without having the “right” kind of money to pay for it. ( $1.5 trillion)
    ———

    #115313
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    … btw, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit did an entire World Cup-themed Body Paint photoshoot with several models. Pretty iconic. Have-a-lookie at the full shoots at: https://youtu.be/sfFt2GzPR0s

    … so, there! Not all today is doom, …

    F.S.

    #115314
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Figmund: awesome artistry! Over on Kunstler’s board there was a discussion about learning to play the banjo. I’ve considered it for a couple decades. I’m feeling inspired again.

    Long live artistic expression!! 🙂

    #115315
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Long live artistic expression!! 🙂
    __________________________

    Well, … affirmative! The 2022 Men’s World Cup is set to debut in November, with games taking place in Qatar, I believe? It should be a fun tournament. And so, … just perhaps, SI will do updated World Cup-themed “Body Paint”?

    F.S.

    #115316
    John Day
    Participant

    Somehow I can access Strategic Culture, but could not do so last week.

    Thanks F.S. for the Alastair Crooke article. It focuses upon coercion of peoples, societies, in order to comply with diktats. That this coercion must be through lies and contrived emergencies is assumed.

    Do I have a “better plan”? The having-an-actionable-plan for humanity is not my personal department.

    This is tricky if one is a strict-materialist. Strict materialists are a big part of the world, and especially the government bureaucracies, and financial bureaucracies.

    It’s funny, but reading through the selected writings of Karl Marx, I think i got the answer to the question of who would administer the proletarian-revolution-state.
    Bureaucracy.
    Marx spent a lot of time fascinated with revolutionary (in waves) France, and it seems that he viewed the royal state-bureaucracy as the prize for winning.

    Marx likely assumed that his own class, intelligent, educated and basically managerial, would be called upon to guide the existing prize of a functional civil-service-bureaucracy in it’s service of revolutionary-factory-workers, who were the street-warriors of Paris. Marx sold his writings to members of the educated managerial class with revolutionary-leanings, who presumably saw their stock rising in the Communist-world. It seems naive, when viewed that way from our present historical vantage.

    @Oxymoron- You said “y’all”. Good-on-ya, Mate!
    Sorry about the worldview collision with your brother.
    Good for the birds cooperating against raptors.

    #115317
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    One of my Simple Rules For A Happy Life (#137 to be precise) is as follows:

    137) Be prepared to be blindsided by a previously unknown Truth at any moment.

    #115318
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Will Globalism Succeed?

    Will Globalism Succeed?

    #115319
    Red
    Participant

    A question of cascades
    Among the mostly unforeseen problems facing us today is that our critical infrastructure – including energy – is designed to operate on a “firm” basis. Sure, in an emergency, the power can be cut. And one of the obvious consequences to anyone who prefers a desktop PC to a laptop is that computers break when the power goes off without warning. Less obviously, the working life of grid infrastructure itself is shortened if there are too many power cuts. And then there is that vast network of communications infrastructure which also depends upon a steady supply of power.

    On any day at an average datacentre, a truckload of hardware is required to replace all of the old hardware which has burned out. That’s without the kind of power outages that are expected across Europe – including the UK – not just this winter, but for years ahead.

    And then there are the lockdown-induced supply chain disruptions that mean that even now, key computer components are in short supply. So, the very last thing we want to be doing is putting additional strain on the components we are currently using just in case we cannot get replacements.

    Replacements may turn out to be a lot harder to find once the other three-quarters of the world’s countries switch to the emerging BRICS trading system. The financial services – aka tax evasion – that the UK has traditionally used to balance its export-import current account will be about as useful as a chocolate teapot in a world in which just 25 percent of countries still trade in western currencies. Moreover, without the energy needed to power business and industry, it is far from clear what we are going to export in order to pay our way in the world.

    What this suggests to me is that things are going to begin breaking down. And it is unlikely that we will be able to quickly fix anything which depends upon imported components or commodities. Worse still, as we are already seeing with our water and energy sectors, there is zero strategic thinking in the UK. Instead, the likely diminished supply of parts and components will simply go to whichever corporation can pay the most for them rather than which of our critical infrastructure needs them most. We already witnessed this process at the beginning of the pandemic, when godzillionaires were buying up ventilators and PPE even as hospital patients gasped for breath and frontline doctors and nurses were exposed to lethal viral loads… don’t expect energy parts and components to be any different.
    More:

    In Brief: Growth of a sort, A question of cascades, Energy and government, That’s the point, Full circle

    #115323
    zerosum
    Participant

    Sometimes, what will happen does not follow what you thought would happen.
    ————
    137) Be prepared to be blindsided by a previously unknown Truth at any moment.
    —————-
    Luck is being prepared to take advantage of possibilities
    —————

    #115324
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    Kunstler had more to say in his Labor Day Assessment post. Here are a few gems:

    “Anyway, and in the meantime, we’re obliged to see where all this is taking us and what we have to do about it. The survivors of this disorder will be living in a world of generalized contraction, facing much-reduced standards of living. All the giant enterprises will be gone, including probably the federal USA government as we know it, and all the supports it offered. We’ll be gravely disappointed by the failures of advanced technology to mitigate any of this, and much of that technology will disappear, including reliable electric service and the Internet. Whatever you do will have to be much more local and, in one way or another, these activities will revolve around growing food.”

    “I called it a World Made by Hand in the cycle of four novels I churned out between 2008 and 2017. You can look there for a detailed, graphic description of how this new disposition of things might work. The society depicted is still recognizably an American culture, and the people still find joy, purpose, and meaning in being here on this planet, despite the reduction in comfort and convenience. In many ways, it is a world in recovery from the ravages of the super high velocity way-of-life we’re leaving behind, and because of that, it is shot through with grace. That is our destination.”

    “Keep that in mind — if you still have a mind — as you witness the unravelings ahead. This is not the end of the world or the end of the human project in this world. Not everybody will be violent or insane and the number of reality-based people with their emotional equipment intact will, oddly, grow in proportion as the others depart this plane of existence. For some of us, this is a movie with a happy ending.”

    I believe that we were built for this. The essential elements for adapting/succeeding in times of great change are within. LISTEN and you will find the Way.

    “…the people still find joy, purpose, and meaning in being here on this planet, despite the reduction in comfort and convenience.”

    Inviting you to live a meaningful life now – while we’re on the edge. It takes commitment and perseverance, all efforts are rewarded. You will become courageous and resilient with clarity of PURPOSE. Ups and downs the same. Living a meaningful life always takes you to a place of deep GRATITUDE. Embrace it. With GRATITUDE you will come to realize it’s not me but Thee.

    Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.
    LOVE to All.

    #115325

    It’s quite the picture on APOD today. (It’s also a picture of a cloud.)

    M Desmet has some interesting things to say, but when things get really ugly, speaking up can find you on a gallows with your own mother putting a noose over your head.
    Joe Biden’s gates of hell speech was an indicator that they are ramping things up. The discretion of paranoia isn’t such a bad reaction to being called an enemy of the state.

    #115326
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    Consciousness turns life into a road made up entirely of crossroads.

    Overabundance of choice – time to put a cap on options.

    Radical acceptance.

    #115327
    Red
    Participant

    AP: “Overabundance of choice”
    Absolutely. I have maintained the idea that too many choices is a bad thing at times. It leaves one thinking they may have made the wrong one. If there were fewer, less chance of that outcome. The advertising industry thrives on it. Too many choices, I choose not to chose, still a choice. Damn it’s a catch 22. What choice do I have? Hmmm, let me choose! Shit, did it again.

    #115328
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Meanwhile, the ‘defenders of freedom and democracy’ in Ukraine have been throwing everything they have at ‘the evil dictator”.

    Ukrainian ‘successes’ in recent days include:

    1. getting themselves into a cauldron, losing their exit (pontoon bridges) and awaiting complete annihilation by shelling and bombing

    2. sending a small group behind the Russian line and hoisting a flag. None returned, all being dead soon after the flag raising.

    3. asking for ‘quiet time’ to collect hundreds of bodies in the death zone.

    4. losing several more villages and the outskirts of a few more towns.

    #115329
    Michael Reid
    Participant


    I fully trust your brilliant selves to read perspectives from every side and make up your own minds—and then change your minds as many times as you want based on information and your gut. (One thing I am going to say for the sake of logic and facts is that I don’t think that Mattias Desmet used the concept of “mass formation” to blame the crowds—he merely said that such thing exists, and it does.)

    https://tessa.substack.com/p/mass-formation-and-the-missionary

    #115330
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Debt Rattle based upon 100% contrived debt-based money fraud.

    Money and debt must equal since loans are used to originate money, Money I lent into existence, not merely printed. Those who say “printed money” without speaking of the associated debt are either purposefully deceiving people or what Lenin called “useful idiots.” I think it was Lenin. Maybe it was Stalin.

    The fraud is based upon 5th grade applied mathematics, and the fact you don’t know this is proof to the Money Power Families (Royal and Banking Families) that your are “unfit.” If they taught you one thing in school it is that “only the fit survive.” So, to them, if you are an idiot who can’t apply 5th grade math to figure out how the accumulation of your ancestral accumulated wealth has been stolen on a global basis, you basically kill your own family off by being unfit.

    This is NOT now I believe. It repulses me, hence, I speak the truth about this system. However, the masses have no interest in the truth, and the gatekeepers self-censor at best, actively deceive at worst. It really doesn’t matter which — you will never get the truth from either.

    The simple fraud works like this:

    Banks loan $20 to society at 5% interest. In a year, the borrower owes $21 due to $1 interest liability accruing to their balance sheet and $1 interest asset accruing to the lender’s balance sheet.

    $20 can’t pay off $21 any more than you can jump over the moon. The bank controls the $1 the borrower needs to pay off the loan, The owners of the banks lending the money have complete and total control over the borrowers, their solvency, and whether they choose to bankrupt them or loan more money to them.

    This is not capitalism. It is not socialism. It is not communism. It is not capitalism.

    It is Money Power Monopolist… the core of absolutely every nation on planet Earth. Most are deceived because the Money Power in control puts a different veneer on top of the Money Power Monopolism. The Muppets are bedazzled by the veneers and constant propaganda such that they can’t see what has been staring back at them the whole time.

    BTW, the lending arrangement is a fraud because the loan isn’t payable based on the borrowers sole ability. The only way the borrower can pay back that loan is if the lender returns all interest accrued to the lender in a timely manner such that all interest payments can be made. At the end of the transaction, the borrower has no money and the lender has $1,

    Lender: Lent $20, returned accrued interest to borrower in timely fashion, received $21, extinguished $20.

    Borrower: Received $20, paid $20 worth of $21 loan with the $20 and also paid the $1 interest with money provided to him in a timely manner, so paid $21 total.

    The lender appears to earn $1 free and clear through this process.

    Again, the above mechanism is a fraud because the borrower relies on the lender to make the loans payable, otherwise, they are INEXTINGUISHABLE DEBTS.

    The lender conceals this fact by lending more money to other people.

    That way one person can earn money from another and pay their loans, but, by definition, the debt owed by the other person has to go up.

    Take two people with the same loan outlined above… person 1 works for person 2 and earns $1 from him. Person 1 can pay his debts now, but person 2 only has $19 to pay $21. But if both are Muppets, the lender will portray person 2 as a dead beat, and person 1 will believe it because he paid his loan off!

    We see this dynamic occurring to this day! We never learn!

    The uncritical and unthinking naysayer will default to — that doesn’t apply to the real world. Yes, yes it does. Take off the coward pants and run the numbers at $20 trillion @ 5% and the proportional results are IDENTICAL.

    Other mindless people will claim that one can work harder for more money… never realizing one can’t work for money that doesn’t exist!!! That was the reason the Great Depression occurred — there was a lack of money… that’s all. Lots of cheap labor, cheap resources, lots of demand… but ya can’t work for money that doesn’t exist! Why didn’t it exist? Because Main Street was saddled with INEXTINGUISHABLE DEBT through the mechanism outlined above.

    Weapons of Mass Debt. Weapons of Mass Double-Entry Bookkeeping.

    Crimestop is for cowards.

    =====================================

    “If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.”
    ~ Robert Hemphill
    Credit Manager of Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta, Ga.
    In the foreword to a book by Irving Fisher, entitled 100% Money (1935)

    “The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.”
    ~Henry Ford

    “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”
    ~Lord Acton

    “This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized….the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill.”
    ~Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., Lindbergh On the Federal Reserve – The Economic Pinch

    “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”
    ~Henry Ford

    “The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.”
    ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

    #115331
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    I saw (and personally felt) the need to have good insulation and a constant supply of affordable heat in England in 1963. One of the great fears was that insufficient home heating would cause water in pipes to freeze, and then burst them.

    I recognised the overpopulation and dependence on imported food predicament of Britain in 1968. And decided to get out.

    Being denied much very important information by the ‘education’ system, I did not know that the global financial empire controlled almost everything almost everywhere [in ‘civilised’ nations] when I left.

    #115332
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Don’t be too hard on North Korea.

    I had a friend who went there. He said he had never seen any place that was so clean and so well organised. He particularly appreciated the lack of commercialism.

    Of course, tourists were watched constantly and their itineraries were carefully controlled because North Korea has been under constant attack by ‘The Empire of Lies’ since the Japanese were defeated in 1945.

    When the Koreans set up ‘the wrong kind of government’, i.e. socialist, the Empire of Lies quickly rushed military forces to Korea and overthrew that government. They used unrepatriated Japanese troops to keep the Koreans subjugated. Just when they thought they were free, the Koreans had their oppressors since the 1910 invasion back as oppressors!

    As many of us know, the conflict escalated into the kind of campaign the NATOstan nations like best: an air war in which bombs and incendiaries are dropped as quickly as logistics will allow, and those who resist domination are pushed back to the Stone Age, with the usual ‘collateral damage; in Korea’s case that was about 3 million dead at the hand of those who deliver ‘freedom and democracy’.

    I take all reports about ‘slave camps’ and ‘government campaigns aimed at genocide’ of North Korea by its own government with a very large pinch of salt, especially when reported by ‘The Guadian’ -the guardian of deceit and dysfunction.

    #115333
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Here we go!!!!!

    10YT 12th January 2022: 1.72%

    10YT 6th September 2022: 3.33%

    I was following all this stuff long before I discovered Greg Mannarino

    #115334
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    Breaking. WES and V. Arnold are AWOL.
    Commentariat are getting squeezed every which way.
    Commentariat are getting testy.
    Memento mori is creeping into our heads.
    Eastern PA Tomato report: Absolutely tasteless fruit, no balance of sugar and acid even with heirlooms. Yield way down, drought. Phytophthora rot i.e Buckeye rot showing up after a 5 year crop rotation and so it goes.

    #115335
    Redneck
    Participant

    Oxy, nicely said.

    #115336
    chooch
    Participant

    Just being curious.

    Russia dependent on Western HiTech.

    It’s usually weeks before there is confirmation of what truly transpired. Here is an alternate narrative. (Remember, grain of salt. War racketeers are winning on both sides)

    https://wartranslated.com/grey-zone-wagner-group-channel-recaps-ukrainian-assault-dismisses-amphibious-landing-claims/

    #115337
    John Day
    Participant

    A majority of Americans, 56.8% think Biden’s declaration of war on Trump voters was a “dangerous escalation in rhetoric” which was “designed to incite conflict amongst Americans,” according to a new poll by the Trafalgar group.

    Perhaps even more telling is that 71% of Democrats said Biden’s speech – in which he said “MAGA forces” pose a “clear and present danger” to Democracy – thought it was simply “acceptable campaign messaging that is to be expected in an election year.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dangerous-escalation-majority-americans-think-biden-speech-was-designed-incite-conflict

    #115338
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    John: “Democrats said Biden’s speech ….. was simply “acceptable campaign messaging that is to be expected in an election year.”

    Perhaps. But not by the sitting “present dent” (openly admit to hijacking that from a commenter on a diff board). Sad that Democratic party members now find that acceptable. Hope they feel the same in the future [however long it takes] when the pendulum swings … I feel a bit of karma circling.

    Thankfully, most surveys are suspect. 😉

    #115339
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.burnabynow.com/bc-news/bc-to-start-fall-covid-19-booster-campaign-with-recently-approved-bivalent-vaccines-5786063
    B.C. to start fall COVID-19 booster campaign with recently approved bivalent vaccines
    VANCOUVER — British Columbia unveiled a fall COVID-19 battle plan that includes newly approved booster vaccines and flu shots to ward off the expected return of respiratory illnesses, with few expectations for more lockdowns and mask mandates.
    VANCOUVER — British Columbia unveiled a fall COVID-19 battle plan that includes newly approved booster vaccines and flu shots to ward off the expected return of respiratory illnesses, with few expectations for more lockdowns and mask mandates.

    COVID-19 remains a threat, but vaccines have helped change the nature of the disease for most people in B.C., and a return to wearing masks or lockdown orders is not likely unless a strong new variant appears, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Tuesday.

    “The pool of people who are susceptible is different now and that’s because of vaccinations,” she said at a news conference.

    “I don’t see us getting there unless we see the emergence of something new and different,” said Henry, referring to a return to previous strict public health measures.

    The population’s level of immunity is higher than at the start of the pandemic, but B.C. is still not at the point “where we can let our guard down,” she said.

    Residents will start receiving invitations to book a second booster shot this month in the campaign aimed at combating an expected increase in COVID-19 and flu cases in November and December when people spend more time indoors.

    “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Henry. “This is our best guess about what’s going to happen and unfold over the coming months. That we think will give the best protection for all of us as we are expecting an upsurge of COVID-19.”

    #115340
    Fully_caffinated
    Participant

    I just got my monthly utilities bill for August mid winter here.
    $2.38 NZD per day
    That’s for water power HVAC, water heating and waste water.
    $1 is the daily charge, the rest usage charges.

    I’m very glad I ain’t living in UK or Europe!

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