May 082023
 


Paul Cézanne Village derrière des arbres, Île-de-France 1879

 

The Prighozin File: Twilight of the Gods or Maskirovka? (Pepe Escobar)
Wagner Promised ‘As Much Ammo As We Need’ – Prigozhin (RT)
China, The Peacemaker? – McCoy (IC)
Kiev Counteroffensive To ‘Pave The Way’ For Dialogue With Russia – WSJ (TASS)
Kissinger Makes Ukraine Peace Prediction (RT)
EU Defenseless Against China – Berlusconi (RT)
US Anti-Russia Actions Push Humanity Towards World War, Malaysia ex-PM (TASS)
Kamala Harris To Run AI Taskforce (RT)
Fauci’s Never-Ending Victory Tour (Pierre Kory)
Tucker Carlson Squaring Off Against Fox – Axios (RT)
Rep. Comer Urges DOJ To Hold Possible Hunter Biden Indictment (Fox)
Close to 190 US Banks Could Collapse, According To Study (USAT)
A Credit Crunch Is Inevitable (Lacalle)
China And Its Trading Allies Are Well Placed To Topple The Dollar (Münchau)
MSM Doesn’t Care That the CIA May Have Helped Cause 9/11 (Marcetic)
Ex-Russian Space Boss Questions US Moon Landing (RT)

 

 

 

 

VDB

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

JFK Vietnam

 

 

Bowie Lennon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pepe on Twitter: “written on Thursday, BEFORE Prighozin’s deal with Kadyrov to wrap up Artemyovsk. Confirmed to me by top Donbass politico: fierce competition Wagner-MoD.”

The Prighozin File: Twilight of the Gods or Maskirovka? (Pepe Escobar)

There’s no question: if Prighozin is essentially telling the truth, this is – literally – nuclear. Either Prighozin knows everything nearly everyone doesn’t, or this is a spectacular maskirovka. Yet facts on the ground since February 2002 seem to support his main accusation: the Russian army can’t properly fight because of a completely corrupt bureaucratic gang right at the very top of the MoD, all the way to Shoigu, all of them only interested in making a financial killing. And it gets worse: under a rigidly bureaucratized environment, commanders at the frontlines have no autonomy to take decisions and quickly adapt, and need to wait for orders from far away. That should be the main reason for the Kiev counter-offensive standing a chance of imposing dramatic upsets.

Prighozin is definitely not alone among Russian patriots in voicing his analysis. In fact there’s nothing new: he was just more forceful this time. Strelkov has been saying the exact same thing since the start of the war. That even coalesced into an “Angry Patriots Club” releasing an explosive video on April 19. So here we have a small but very vocal group bearing impeccable patriotic credentials sounding a serious alarm bell: Russia runs the risk of losing this proxy war entirely unless dramatic changes take place right away. Or, once again, this could be brilliant maskirovka – leaving the enemy totally misdirected. If that’s the case, it’s working like a charm. Kiev propaganda outlets triumphantly adopted Strelkov’s accusations with headlines such as “Russia is on the brink of defeat, Strelkov threatens the Kremlin with a coup.”

Strelkov keeps doubling down, insisting that the Russian state really does not take this war seriously and is planning to make a deal without really fighting, even ceding territory in Ukraine. His evidence: the “corrupt” (Prighozin) Russian army did not make any serious effort to prepare the economy, or public opinion, for an offensive – in terms of training and logistics. And that’s because the elites in the Kremlin and the army do not rally believe in this war, nor want it; they’d rather go back to the pre-war status quo. So here we go again. Maskirovka? Or a sort of Revenge of the MoD against Wagner? It’s a fact that at the start of the SMO the Russian army didn’t exactly get its act together, they really needed Wagner on the ground. But now it’s a different ball game, and the MoD may be engaged in gradually reducing Wagner’s role so Prighozin’s men do not capture all the blazes of glory when Russia starts going for the jugular.

And then right in the middle of this incandescent confrontation, we have the irruption in the dead of night of a couple of puny kamikaze drones over the Kremlin. This was no attempt to assassinate Putin: rather a cheap PR stunt. Russian intel must have pieced the whole story by now: the drones were probably launched from inside Moscow or its suburbs, by Ukrainian strike cells dressed in civilian clothing and sporting fake IDs. There will be more such PR stunts – anything from car bombs and booby traps to improvised landmines. Russia will have to step up internal security towards a real war footing. But what about the “response” to – in Kremlin terminology – a “terrorist attack”? Elena Panini from Russtrat.ru has offered a priceless, non-hysterical appraisal: “The purpose of the night strike, judging by the video footage, was not the Kremlin itself and not even the dome of the Senate Palace, but the flagpole on the dome with a duplicate of the standard of the President of the Russian Federation.

The game of symbolism is already purely British stuff. A kind of ‘reminder’ from London on the eve of the coronation of Charles III that the conflict in Ukraine is still developing according to the Anglo-Saxon scenario and within the framework set by them.” So yes: those neo-Nazi mutts in Kiev are just tools. The orders that matter always come from Washington and London – especially when it comes to breaching red lines. Panini argues it’s time for the Kremlin to seize the definitive strategic initiative. That should include upgrading the SMO to the status of a real war; declare Ukraine as a terrorist state; and implement what is already being discussed in the Duma: the transition to the use of “weapons that are capable of stopping and destroying the Kiev terrorist regime.” The puny double drone attack – a combined Anglo-Saxon neocon provocation – has offered Moscow the perfect gift: an unmistakable casus belli.

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Putin?! No more withdrawal.

Wagner Promised ‘As Much Ammo As We Need’ – Prigozhin (RT)

The Russian private military company Wagner Group, which is fighting Ukrainian troops in the Donbass city of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), has been promised enough ammunition to continue the battle, the company’s head, Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday.The statement comes after Prigozhin warned that his fighters would be forced to pull out of the city on May 10 unless ammunition shortages are addressed by Russia’s Defense Ministry. In a voice message posted on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said that Wagner received “a military instruction … in which we were promised as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue our activities.” “We were told that we can carry out activities in Artyomovsk as we deem necessary,” Prigozhin added.


He also said that Army General Sergey Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, was tasked with “making all decisions related to the military activities of Wagner PMC in coordination with the Defense Ministry.” On Friday, Prigozhin said that Wagner personnel were suffering heavy losses because of what he described as a 70% shortage of ammunition. He later announced that the positions held by Wagner would be handed over to Akhmat, an elite unit from Russia’s Chechnya. The fierce and bloody battle for the mining city of Artyomovsk, known to Ukrainians as Bakhmut, has been raging for several months. Prigozhin claims his forces have taken control of nearly all of the city, while the Ukrainians are holding out in a small area in the western part. Capturing Artyomovsk, an important logistical hub, would allow Russian forces to make further advances in Donbass.

Bakhmut

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“..China the dominant economic presence of the Eurasian landmass..”

China, The Peacemaker? – McCoy (IC)

China has, in the last ten years, according to latest figures, expended a little over a trillion dollars in massive development loans. And they’ve done two things: They’ve laid a steel grid across the Eurasian landmass, for the first time actually overcoming that distance, and unifying Europe and Asia. So that, really, we shouldn’t speak of them as separate continents anymore; they were only divided by that great distance in the center. China has filled that distance with a steel grid of pipelines and rail links. And then, they’ve also ringed the whole world-island — that tricontinental world island of Europe, Asia, and Africa — with 40 ports, stretching from Sri Lanka, around the coast of Africa, and then ringing Europe, all the way from Piraeus in Greece to Hamburg in Germany.

And then, here we have to get almost metaphysical, a little bit mystical, OK? Because everybody talks about geopolitics. You know, you can pick up The Washington Post and New York Times and, probably, in every issue find the word “geopolitics” popping up all over the place. What is geopolitics? What might geopolitics mean? How might geopolitics actually make a difference? What’s the relationship between geographical formations and political events? And here’s what I think is happening, OK? That geopolitics is kind of like a substrate beneath the visible, tangible surface of events. Now, China has changed the Eurasian politics by investing this trillion dollars and laying down this infrastructure, so that China has an infrastructure for dominance of Eurasia. And then what happens? It’s kind of like the grinding of the tectonic plates beneath the earth’s surface that periodically manifests themselves in earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. When the liquid rock breaks through the earth’s surface and you get an enormous eruption, and then, suddenly, you realize that the tectonic plates are shifting.

Well, that’s what’s happened. China has changed the substrate of Eurasia’s geopolitics. And now, just now, after — It’s only been ten years that China’s been doing this. They started this in 2013, we’re in 2023. It’s [been] ten years. That’s not a long time. But they’ve done it fast, and they’ve done it, actually, pretty well, despite what you might read in the U.S. press about white elephant investments and all the rest. And so, there are all these manifestations. One was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. I mean, what China did was, they ran a geopolitical squeeze play around the U.S. position in Afghanistan. They signed very lucrative development deals with the six countries ringing Afghanistan, particularly Pakistan. And mind you, how does the U.S. military fight? We have troops on the ground and we have air support. And it’s that combination that’s absolutely central to all U.S. warfighting strategy. No planes, then no soldiers on the ground.

And where’d those planes come from? The nearest air base that they could fly from after this geopolitical squeeze play was the Persian Gulf. They had to fly 2,000 miles, which means their ability to loiter over the battlefield and provide close air support was very limited. They could refuel, of course, but it was impossibly inefficient, and it was dangerous for the troops on the ground. And that meant, bang, we had to get out of there as fast as we could. The next manifestation we saw which, you know, seemed to be absolutely unrelated — But, again, think of that substrate and the periodic eruption. The next eruption was this sectarian division, as deep as the history of Islam, over a thousand years between Sunni and Shia —Shia, Iran, Sunni, Saudi Arabia — locked in the confrontation. But China signed a $480 billion development deal with Iran, and China’s top source of oil — and it’s the world’s leading oil importer — was Saudi Arabia. And so, China suddenly was in a position, because of this change in the geopolitical substrate that makes China the dominant economic presence of the Eurasian landmass. They could mediate between them.

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“.. the US Department of State and the CIA are skeptical of the idea and would like to see the result of the potential Ukrainian counteroffensive before taking any diplomatic steps..”

Kiev Counteroffensive To ‘Pave The Way’ For Dialogue With Russia – WSJ (TASS)

The Kiev regime’s ostensibly possible counteroffensive may “pave the way” for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine by the end of the year with China being one of the mediators, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday citing European officials. According to the newspaper, key representatives from the US National Security Council support the idea of holding the negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. That said, the US Department of State and the CIA are skeptical of the idea and would like to see the result of the potential Ukrainian counteroffensive before taking any diplomatic steps. The Wall Street Journal also points out that this “shift in Western thinking” is occurring amid Western countries’ serious concern that they won’t be able to maintain the necessary level of military aid to the Kiev regime in the future.


That said, some Western states want to see whether China is capable of defusing the conflict which also indicates a change in the way the West sees Beijing’s role. Media conjecture about a potential counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops has been rife for several months running, with various potential trigger dates being publicly mooted. Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry highlighted that such open speculation within Western countries about expectations for an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive only serves to confirm these countries’ direct involvement in the conflict. On April 23, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Alexey Danilov rejected calls for dialogue on settling the conflict with Russia demanding more weapons from the West. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow always supported holding negotiations but dialogue on the situation around Ukraine is possible only if Russia’s legitimate interests and concerns are taken into account.

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“Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think by the end of the year..”

Kissinger Makes Ukraine Peace Prediction (RT)

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has told CBS News that the conflict in Ukraine may be approaching a turning point, and that Chinese-brokered peace talks could begin by the end of 2023. “Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think by the end of the year,” the 99-year-old diplomat told CBS in an interview broadcast on Sunday. By that time, he continued, “we will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations. With the release of its ‘Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’ in February, China put itself forward as a potential mediator between Moscow and Kiev. The Chinese plan was rejected outright by the US and EU, while Russian President Vladimir Putin described some of its 12 points as “in tune” with Moscow’s position, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed only a handful of its points, but maintains that Kiev will not compromise with Russia in any way.

Zelensky’s refusal to negotiate with Putin’s government – the Ukrainian leader banned contact with the Kremlin in a decree last October – is just one stumbling block faced by China or any other potential middleman. Russia considers the conflict in Ukraine a proxy war between itself and NATO, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that any negotiations would not be held “with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.” In Washington, the administration of President Joe Biden publicly claims that it is up to Ukraine to decide when to seek peace. Zelensky has been offered no incentives by the US to do so, with Biden offering to continue supplying him with weapons “for as long as it takes” to achieve his war aims.


Among these aims is the capture of Crimea, a Russian territory since 2014. American military leaders have publicly admitted that the chances of this happening are slim to none. Kissinger drew the ire of Kiev last year when he suggested that Ukraine should accept a return to the “status quo ante,” or relinquish its territorial claims to Crimea and grant autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in the name of peace. He has since suggested that these territories become the basis of negotiations after a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal. Moscow has repeatedly said that it is open to talks with Kiev but only if Ukraine “recognizes the reality on the ground,” including the new status of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as parts of Russia. Otherwise, the Kremlin has stated, Russia will settle the conflict by military means.

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“The best thing we could do would be to go to school to study Chinese..”

EU Defenseless Against China – Berlusconi (RT)

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi warns that the EU would be unable to defend itself if China decided to attack one of its member states. The veteran politician urged Brussels to adopt a robust military strategy and invest heavily in defense. Berlusconi made the remarks in a video interview recorded on Friday by Sky TG24 news channel. He is currently in the San Raffaele hospital in Milan and is being treated for leukemia, which was diagnosed in early April. The former prime minister said the EU is hardly a force to be reckoned with in the international arena, and should China decide to “occupy Italy, and maybe some other European country, we would absolutely not be able to counter it.” “The best thing we could do would be to go to school to study Chinese,” he added.

To improve its standing, Berlusconi said, the EU needs to adopt a “single military policy, with strong cooperation between the armed forces of all European countries.” He also advocated an increase in defense spending and the establishment of a 300,000-strong “emergency corps.” Politically, Berlusconi said he would like to see a “truly united continent” – something which would be more achievable if the bloc dropped its ‘unanimity principle’ in voting in favor of an 80-85% majority, he argued. He went on to stress that the EU can and must play a greater role in the world, including standing up to what Berlusconi described as “Chinese imperialism. Last month, Bloomberg reported that the current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was considering withdrawing from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.


According to sources cited in the article, however, there is a lack of consensus on the matter within the ruling coalition. Speaking in late March ahead of her visit to China, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that while “decoupling” from Beijing is not in the EU’s interests, Brussels should become “bolder” in its relations with China – which is growing “more repressive at home and more assertive abroad,” she added. Commenting on Von der Leyen’s remarks, the Chinese ambassador to the EU, Fu Cong, said her message was incoherent and contradictory, while calling out the “misrepresentation and misinterpretation of Chinese policies and Chinese positions,” and advising the European Commission chief to find better speechwriters.

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”..if Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, I think Russia will feel less threatened, and there will be no confrontation. But once the process is started, Russia will take preemptive action,..

US Anti-Russia Actions Push Humanity Towards World War, Malaysia ex-PM (TASS)

The US authorities push humanity towards a world war by contributing to emergence of two hostile blocs, says Former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad. “The US will try to get other countries to join in the action against Russia, and Russia will also have to find friendly countries which will support it,” Mahathir, 97, said in an interview for the Global Times. “There will be confrontation between the Eastern bloc and Western bloc. And this will escalate and become a world war.” The expert noted that the conflict in Ukraine, provoked by the West, has already affected the entire world. He noted that the complicated situation has led to increased spending for essential goods around the world, negatively affecting grain shipments.


“The invitation to Ukraine to join NATO is a provocation. In fact, if Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, I think Russia will feel less threatened, and there will be no confrontation. But once the process is started, Russia will take preemptive action,” Mahathir said. He pointed out that NATO states are not directly involved in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict et, because Ukraine is not a member of the alliance. However, according to the ex-Prime Minister, the standoff with Russia harms NATO member states greatly. “In the end, they [Russia and Ukraine] will have to find some settlement. It is better for them to talk to each other, to discuss, to negotiate,” Mahathir said.

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Feel safer?

Kamala Harris To Run AI Taskforce (RT)

US Vice President Kamala Harris has been appointed to head a new artificial intelligence initiative in partnership with leading companies in the field, the White House announced in a press release on Thursday. Harris and other senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden will meet with the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI to remind them of their “responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public.” The meeting is intended to keep the companies on track toward “driving responsible, trustworthy and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society,” according to the White House, which referenced recent executive orders and official statements reminding tech companies that their products were subject to civil rights law and other protections against unlawful discrimination.

The four companies, along with Hugging Face, NVIDIA, and Stability AI, will also submit to a public evaluation of their capabilities by thousands of industry experts and other curious members of the public at DEFCON 31, the Las Vegas hacking convention that has repeatedly put the insecurity of the US’ voting machines on display by giving children a chance to hack them. The White House also announced the creation of seven new National AI Research Institutes focusing on climate, agriculture, energy, public health, education, and cybersecurity, explaining the new institutes would “support the development of a diverse AI workforce” with $140 million in funding from the National Science Foundation. The administration is also giving the public the chance to weigh in on government AI policy starting this summer, according to the press release.


Tasked with stemming the flow of migrants over the US’ southern border upon taking office in 2021, Harris instead presided over a record amount of illegal immigration, earning her the lowest approval rating of any modern US vice president. Last year, she was assigned with developing a blueprint for fighting “disinformation,” harassment and abuse online despite having no experience in the technology sector. While hundreds of experts in the AI field have called for a moratorium on, or at least a dramatic slowdown of, AI development until internationally agreed-upon safety measures can be put in place, the US has thus far shied away from issuing any strong statements about the technology. Last month, Biden met with his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to discuss the “risks and opportunities” in the field but declined to address the experts’ warnings while admitting AI “could be” dangerous.

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“For all his faults, Fauci is no fool. One does not spend 54 years ensconced in the federal government without learning how to play politics.”

Fauci’s Never-Ending Victory Tour (Pierre Kory)

What a dystopian nightmare watching “America’s Doctor” try to continue his Covid victory tour. It is both shocking and unsurprising that he would do this despite leaving a generation of children with lower IQ scores, a US life expectancy which dropped three years in the span of two, hundreds of thousands of deaths from the vaccines amongst working-age Americans (threatening the life insurance industry), millions of vaccine injured, skyrocketing disability rates, an explosion of cancers, and suddenly plummeting birth rates. So I went after him. Again. Maybe he will get the memo this time, particularly in light of the frosty receptions he has received of late from normally kid-gloved, obsequious interviewers. Enjoy. Dr. Anthony Fauci left government in December, but his media tour is going strong, albeit with a different tone and tenor.

The fawning adulation and questions about his exercise regimes and bobbleheads have been replaced by skepticism and outright doubt from outlets who never dared question the all-knowing man once dubbed “America’s doctor” by the New Yorker. Fauci recently appeared on CNN to complain about, “a personification of me as a person who essentially closed everything down.” He was responding to a lengthy sitdown with the New York Times where he declared, “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that.” For all his faults, Fauci is no fool. One does not spend 54 years ensconced in the federal government without learning how to play politics.

Three years removed from the worst of the COVID pandemic, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases knows the policy decisions guided by his medical recommendations are looking worse by the day. Herein lies his problem. When his ideas were in vogue, Fauci had no problem claiming responsibility. Now that the ugly consequences are coming due, he is eager to wash his hands. In the face of plummeting math and reading scores between 2020 and 2022, Fauci is especially quick to deny his role in the school shutdowns. Last fall, Fauci raised eyebrows for denying that school lockdowns, “forever irreparably damaged anyone.” Yet as late as September 2020, Fauci recommended that schools only open back up once the virus is “under control.”

Earlier in the year, he had chastised Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, warning that premature reopening “likely” led to widespread student infection. Today, even left-leaning sources concede that, “kids are safe. They always have been.” Then came the vaccines. From the outset, Fauci’s entire COVID mitigation strategy was based on an experimental vaccine rushed to market under the branding “warp speed.” There had never been an mRNA-approved vaccine before, and now it was being pushed non-stop from the White House podium with the full support of the pharmaceutical industry. It was always highly illogical to deploy a static vaccine toward a mutagenic and constantly changing coronavirus. Then came the checks the vaccines couldn’t write. Fauci told us they would stop transmission. He implored us to “follow the science.”

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“..knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map..”

Tucker Carlson Squaring Off Against Fox – Axios (RT)

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson is ready to go on the attack against Fox News if the network does not release him from his contract, Axios reported on Sunday, citing sources close to the pundit. Fox fired its number-one host last month just hours before he was scheduled to go on air, but has not released Carlson from his $20 million annual contract, which forbids him to work elsewhere in the industry until January 2025. While Carlson has made no public statement on his departure or his future plans, aside from a two-minute Twitter video promising his viewers that he would see them “soon,” he has retained entertainment lawyer Bryan Freedman to negotiate an exit to the contract. Sources claiming to be close to the newsman say he is losing patience with the network.

“His team is preparing for war. He wants his freedom,” a “close Carlson friend” told Axios, noting that Carlson had previously said he wanted to “get this done quiet and clean” but his team was now “going from peacetime to Defcon 1.” The conservative icon “knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map,” another insider source agreed. Carlson’s allies in the media are supposedly prepared to go on the offensive against Fox, and outlets including video platform Rumble and cable network Newsmax have reportedly offered to pay him even more than his previous employer. Even billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk is reportedly interested, though the two have not discussed the details of any arrangement. “The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous,” Freedman told Axios.


The network lost almost half of its audience in Carlson’s 8pm time slot in the week following his firing, and ratings for the network’s other shows have also declined precipitously – especially in the 25-54 age demographic desirable to advertisers. Carlson’s show drew over 3 million viewers per night, far more than the next most popular show. The exact reason for Carlson’s ouster has not been made public. Media critics including the New York Times point to leaked text messages from the anchor, specifically one in which Carlson admitted enjoying watching footage of an antifa protester being beaten by a group despite this not being “how white men fight,” then acknowledging the protester’s humanity. Other leaked texts revealed Carlson did not believe the claim that Dominion Voting Systems was flipping votes for Democrat Joe Biden. Fox settled Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $787 million just days before firing the anchor.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1654966139074539520

https://twitter.com/i/status/1655321469541285889

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“We’re going to disclose many of the different LLCs, many of the different transactions that all these different Biden family members have gotten from our adversaries around the world..”

Rep. Comer Urges DOJ To Hold Possible Hunter Biden Indictment (Fox)

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., urged the Justice Department to hold on a potential Hunter Biden indictment until after Republicans hold a press conference unveiling additional details surrounding the Biden family’s business dealings. Comer warned officials to wait to charge the first son until they hear from congressional leaders, arguing that the possible indictment could be just a “slap on the wrist” compared to their upcoming revelations. “My message to the Department of Justice is very loud and clear. Do not indict Hunter Biden before Wednesday,” Comer said during “Sunday Morning Futures.” “When you have the opportunity to see the evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son.

This is about the entire Biden family, including the President of the United States. So we believe there are a whole lot of tips that the IRS and the DOJ don’t know about because we don’t believe they’ve done a whole lot of digging in this, and we have.” “By all accounts from the media reports that we’re getting, what they’re looking at charging Hunter Biden on is a slap on the wrist. It’s a drop in the bucket,” he continued. “So Wednesday will be a very big day for the American people in getting the facts presented to them so that they can know the truth, and then the Department of Justice can finally do what they should have done years ago.” Federal prosecutors are reportedly nearing a decision on a potential Hunter Biden indictment stemming from a years-long probe into possible tax and gun-related violations.


But Republicans are set to hold a press conference on Wednesday presenting the American people with additional information on the Biden family’s bank records, a briefing that Comer argued will provide additional information into the investigation led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss. Comer warned the evidence they have further implicates the Biden family in a broader, criminal “pay-for-play” bribery scheme. “We’re going to present to the American people all the information that we’ve received thus far pertaining to bank records. We’re going to disclose many of the different LLCs, many of the different transactions that all these different Biden family members have gotten from our adversaries around the world,” he said. “We don’t believe this was just a coincidence that all these Biden family members were receiving money from these this Web of LLC into their personal bag.”

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“uninsured depositor runs”

Close to 190 US Banks Could Collapse, According To Study (USAT)

With the failure of three regional banks since March, and another one teetering on the brink, will America soon see a cascade of bank failures? Bloomberg reported Wednesday that San Francisco-based PacWest Bancorp is mulling a sale. Last week, First Republic Bank became the third bank to collapse, the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history after Washington Mutual, which collapsed in 2008 amid the financial crisis. After the demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March, a study on the fragility of the U.S. banking system found that 186 more banks are at risk of failure even if only half of their uninsured depositors (uninsured depositors stand to lose a part of their deposits if the bank fails, potentially giving them incentives to run) decide to withdraw their funds.

Uninsured deposits are customer deposits greater than the $250,000 FDIC deposit insurance limit. Regional banks are failing because the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes to tamp down inflation have eroded the value of bank assets such as government bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Most bonds pay a fixed interest rate that becomes attractive when interest rates fall, driving up demand and the price of the bond. On the other hand, if interest rates rise, investors will no longer prefer the lower fixed interest rate paid by a bond, thus driving down its price. Many banks increased their holdings of bonds during the pandemic, when deposits were plentiful but loan demand and yields were weak. For many banks, these unrealized losses will stay on paper.


But others may face actual losses if they have to sell securities for liquidity or other reasons, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “The recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the U.S. banking system to uninsured depositor runs,” economists wrote in a recent paper published on the Social Science Research Network Of course, this scenario would play out only if the government did nothing. “So, our calculations suggest these banks are certainly at a potential risk of a run, absent other government intervention or recapitalization,” the economists wrote.

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“What will generate a credit crunch is the destruction of capital in the asset base of most lenders.”

A Credit Crunch Is Inevitable (Lacalle)

Federal Reserve data shows $98 billion of deposits left the banking system in the week after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Most of the money went to money-market funds, as the Bloomberg data shows that assets in this class rose by $121 billion in the same period. The data shows the challenges of the banking system in the middle of a confidence crisis. However, as many analysts point out, this is not necessarily the main factor that dictates the risk of a credit crunch. Deposit flight is certainly an important risk. Many regional banks will have to cut lending to families and businesses as deposits shrink, but in the United States bank loans are less than 19 percent of corporate credit according to the IMF, while in the euro area it is more than 80 percent. What will generate a credit crunch is the destruction of capital in the asset base of most lenders.

The slump in mark-to-market valuations of all asset classes from loans to investments is what will ultimately drive an inevitable credit contraction. Credit standards have tightened significantly already, and the credit impulse of the economy, both in the US and euro area, has deteriorated rapidly, according to the respective Bloomberg indices. Both are below the March 2021 low. We must remember that credit standards’ tightening was already a reality before the Silicon Valley Bank demise. But the reality check of capital destruction in the financial system’s asset base is far from done. Start-ups will most likely see the most severe crunch in financing as the tech bubble burst adds to the asset base capital destruction in private equity and venture capital firms, who have delayed all they could the required write-downs and face a sobering reality check.


Our internal estimate of capital destruction in the asset base of banks and private equity firms is between a 15 to 25 percent wipeout, which is consistent with the average decline in market value over the October 2021–March 2023 period. Real estate investments all over the US and Europe require a significant reevaluation now that real estate has underperformed the market for eighteen months, according to Morgan Stanley. The optimistic valuations of real estate and corporate investments in banks’ balance sheets will require a significant analysis and subsequent write-off that leads to much tighter credit standards and stringent investment conditions.

Read more …

“..shifting at least part of its $3.2trn worth of foreign reserves held in dollars into other currencies. All of this would take a long time – one or two decades, perhaps.”

China And Its Trading Allies Are Well Placed To Topple The Dollar (Münchau)

The dollar is the foundation of US global leadership, and the future of the dollar is therefore intricately linked to the debate about geopolitical fragmentation. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, asked during his recent visit to China: “Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade?… Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?” These are good questions. The perhaps surprising answer is that he himself made that decision, together with the former leaders of the other “Brics” group of nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Their economic-development models have succeeded but have also critically depended on the US dollar. During the period of hyperglobalisation – which I date from 1990 to 2020 – the US became the global importer of last resort, and let its trade deficit against the rest of the world increase.

China and many other fast-developing economies built up savings in the currency they were paid in – the US dollar. They invested those savings into US bonds and other assets. The willingness of the US to absorb the world’s savings surpluses was the engine of globalisation. It ensured that the dollar would maintain its status as the world’s leading currency. This mechanism explains what happened in the last 20 years, but it won’t tell us what will happen in the next 20. Yet the dollar fans assume that the geopolitical and geo-economic environment will stay broadly the same. f the five Brics countries wanted to end their dependence on the dollar, they would have to do more than just choose another currency to trade in. It is not a menu choice, as Lula suggested during the same speech. He and his fellow Brics leaders would have to change how they interact with the rest of the world, and with one another.

China is key. In 2021, the country derived 43 per cent of its GDP from investment. This is approximately twice the level of the US and other Western countries. If China managed to shift some of its GDP to consumption, it would reduce its external trade surplus, as consumers tend to buy more imported goods. If you wanted to be less reliant on the US dollar, this is where you would have to start. As a second step, China and the other Brics countries could start trading more with each other, become more self-reliant in their supply chains, and set up their own financial infrastructure. hanging economic models is hard. Three years after Brexit, the UK is still struggling to move away from a model that depended on close integration with the EU.

Germany is finding it hard to maintain competitiveness without cheap Russian gas and with impaired global supply. It takes decades to build industrial production lines and supply chains. In China, there are an awful lot of vested political interests at the regional level, which rely on the investment boom continuing. If President Xi Jinping was really keen to extricate China from the US dollar, he would need to impose policies that would meet with resistance from regional leaders. In parallel, China would also have to start a long process of shifting at least part of its $3.2trn worth of foreign reserves held in dollars into other currencies. All of this would take a long time – one or two decades, perhaps.

Read more …

“Several former agents recalled being blocked by the agency from sharing intelligence about the hijackers with the rest of the FBI.”

MSM Doesn’t Care That the CIA May Have Helped Cause 9/11 (Marcetic)

For all the ways the September 11 attacks continue to shape US culture and foreign policy, the event is still shrouded in a surprising amount of mystery. A recently unearthed bombshell court filing offers some possible clarity on the questions that continue to surround the attacks and their aftermath — and yet, like similar bombshells in recent years, it’s been studiously ignored by the media and political establishment. First reported by Rolling Stone contributing editor Seth Hettena on the Substack SpyTalk, the media project run by veteran former Newsweek national security reporter Jeff Stein, those potential answers come in the form of a signed affidavit from Guantanamo military commission investigator Don Canestraro. The affidavit outlines the findings of a 2016 investigation by Canestraro, a longtime veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), into Saudi and CIA complicity in the terrorist attacks, findings that are squarely at odds with the story given to the public in their wake.

Relaying the information gathered from dozens of interviews he conducted with former FBI and CIA personnel, members of the 9/11 Commission, and US government officials, Canestraro’s affidavit outlines a sequence of events that, if true, suggest a botched and illegal domestic CIA operation was at the heart of the intelligence failure that enabled the attacks. More than that, it suggests there was a concerted cover-up of the grave blunder after the fact by both the CIA and the George W. Bush administration. The affidavit outlines the overlapping claims of numerous agents that the CIA impeded law enforcement efforts that could have prevented the attacks. Several former agents recalled being blocked by the agency from sharing intelligence about the hijackers with the rest of the FBI.


The CIA knew from wiretaps that two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Halid al-Mindhar, had multiple entry visas letting them travel to the United States, one former agent said, but didn’t pass it on to the bureau. Two other agents alleged that the CIA withheld information about the two men’s connection to the planner of the October 2000 al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole, which, if known, would have turned the case into a criminal investigation for the FBI to pursue. One of those agents recalled a meeting with the CIA in which they were shown photos of three suspected terrorists, two of which would turn out to be future hijackers al-Hazmi and al-Mindhar. When the agent, referred to in the affidavit as CS-12, asked who was placing border crossing alerts on the suspects, which would have notified law enforcement about their entry into the United States, they were told no one was.

Read more …

“..he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to..”

Ex-Russian Space Boss Questions US Moon Landing (RT)

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof. In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast. Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time.

All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon. The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.


Rogozin concluded by saying he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to, despite the incredible progress in technology since the late 1960s. What he claims to have found out, however, was that Washington has “its people in [the Russian] establishment.” Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going down in history as the first humans to walk on the lunar surface. The flight was preceded by the unmanned Soviet Luna 2 program, which blazed the trail for Moon exploration. Last April, President Vladimir Putin pledged to resume Russia’s lunar program.

Read more …

 

 

 

 


A husky next to a wolf. Although wolf-like in appearance, huskies are no more closely related to wolves than poodles and bulldogs are. And the size says it all.

 

 

Kiss whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1655267089551183875

 

 

Aqua puppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1655210878101340167

We love little guy

 

 


The rainbow starfrontlet (Coeligena iris) is a species of hummingbird in the “brilliants” tribe Heliantheini. Males have a glittering yellow-green forecrown that transitions through golden yellow to blue on the crown Jorge Luis Cruz Alcivar

 

 

Chick
https://twitter.com/i/status/1655043864279785473

A video of a giant Squid. This specimen, found in Toyama Bay, measured approximately 3.7 meters in length. However, estimates place their maximum size at about 12-13 meters.

 

 


Secretary bird

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle May 8 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 44 total)
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  • #134824

    Paul Cézanne Village derrière des arbres, Île-de-France 1879   • The Prighozin File: Twilight of the Gods or Maskirovka? (Pepe Escobar) • Wagner
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 8 2023]

    #134826
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “JFK saying in September 1963 that he’s going to withdraw from Vietnam.”

    Yes but that was for reasons so strange, so hard to gather, that it took decades to understand it.

    …Everybody KNEW there were no “Dominoes of Democracy” and that the whole thing was a useless joke. Just like today, some bought the PR and some didn’t. Back then who was a billionaire-eating shill was the Right, not the Left. (although: Johnson). But the REASON they needed Vietnam WAS to bankrupt the United States. The End. It was a money play. The money interests planned and forced it on us, against all resistance. Because then THEY would be in power, or more, UNLIMITED power, printing money for nothing. The war, even big as it was, was a footnote to the real war, between “oligarch” interests, in this case, U.S. national and sovereignty vs globalist and banker.

    What happened immediately after? No silver. Also Guns n Butter. Also Welfare, that appear to have increased poverty, drugs, and despair 10x while also vaporizing the American family. Exactly as everyone knew and said at the time, having seen it tested on Indian Reservations and elsewhere.

    “[John Lennon] earnestly socialist men I’ve ever met in my life.”

    This I can understand and value, even though it will still kill everybody. They actually have a real humanity and real goal in helping people and creating a better world, however naive. The “naive” means you can actually engage with them on HOW, and therefore present your concerns for solving (what has never once been solved) and get wheels turning. This is contrasted with today where you’ll be punched and arrested, which is of course super-humanitarian love.

    “Man Who Accidentally Left 300,000 guns for Known Murderers” also is America’s 2nd best gun salesman, after Obama. The NRA or somebody actually mailed him a plaque. His policies have doubled that, now being the best gun salesmen to registered Democrats, a whole new market opened up for the gun lobby. Thanks, Joe.

    “completely corrupt bureaucratic gang right at the very top of the MoD, all the way to Shoigu,”

    …In every military ever, including or especially the U.S. during and after WWII. But this matters, and it’s on a gradient. Is it a Maskarovka? Yes, but all the best lies are true. He/they know that the CIA has Kompromat on Russian generals – why wouldn’t you? — and that they are also stiff, self-serving bastards. Thus the name: “General”? And “Russia” knows they must clean them up to get anything done, long-term. We know that here in America too about our own Pentagon. Question is: can you DO it? And as in all good Intel – misdirection or no – that’s the question.

    “a combined Anglo-Saxon neocon provocation – has offered Moscow the perfect gift: an unmistakable casus belli.”

    Yes, THIS was the point. And/or to get Russia mad at Putin, didn’t work to have them mad that Putin got them in a War and overthrow him. Therefore they only way to make them mad now is Putin isn’t in the war ENOUGH, as much as the general Russian would like, and overthrow him.

    …Cue Chooch and Redneck on this one, since I think their prognosis was the war had no Russian support and all the citizens were fleeing. That’s not to make fun, but recall that moment in time back then and the narrative that was supported then. How do they flip-flop so easily without us saying, “Errrrr……whut??” So you want to take the “L” for then, or for now? Because clearly both #Opposites can’t be true.

    Britain, Europe, WANT everybody dead. Billions in fact, they’ve said so openly for years just like Mein Kampf. Are they lying? Shouldn’t we believe them? Nope! Reality a la carte. They say it but I know ahead of time when not to believe them. So since they have bunkers THEY think they will survive and could care less: only the annoying, useless people will die, leaving all their yummy stuff to whoever survives. WE don’t think like that, so it’s hard for us to credit/visualize it. But they WANT a war. They want a WORLD war. They want a NUCLEAR war. They are trying to CAUSE it, and both they and the other side (Russia) by their actions show they believe if they had this nuclear war, Russia would “lose” in every meaningful sense, so therefore both Russia, China, and the Pentagon White Hats have refused and prevented war, and done terrifically well at it. (Viz. North Korea)

    The financial system needs to go down WITHOUT the narrative cover of a “War”. That EXPOSES them this time. And unlike centuries previous, all sides recognize it’s the MONEY problem, and we all have the same common enemy. Therefore we are all – generally – united in not having a war. Which is super-frustrating for them, as they’re glue-sniffing idiots who think we’re all violent morons, and this has always worked before. You can see why looking at the news every day now: it SHOULD be working. But it isn’t.

    That’s why the video of Bakhmut is the world’s most boring battle.

    “• US Anti-Russia Actions Push Humanity Towards World War, Malaysia ex-PM”

    Here’s another world leader openly saying they want and are trying to cause WWIII. It’s not a secret!!! Is he lying? Should we not believe him, with access to nation’s top records? London and Davos want WWIII. The End. That means the Biden Admin + 2/3rds of the U.S. Bureaucracy want WWIII. I can’t guess but +1/2 the Pentagon wants WWIII. Absolutely all the media + NPR want WWIII, or at least another genocide. They’ve been already running that genocide in Chicago and Baltimore for 30+ years.

    • EU Defenseless Against China – Berlusconi (RT)

    Kind of. But what? Are they going to attack and occupy Spain? With what? Marching 500,000 men across all of Russia, Turkey, etc? If they’re not near you, they’re essentially no threat to you, which is why you should leave them alone, Europe, and the U.S. in the China Sea. You’re drunk: go home.

    “artificial intelligence initiative in partnership with leading companies”

    Again, merger of corporation and State? And this never sets alarm bells for anyone? Nope, because they love and trust the State with all their hearts. “The FBI and all policemen are involved in a daily genocide against Trans and Black people all day since forever, but that’s why we know they’re good, and love and trust everything they say!”

    Decades now, and I’m still at a loss of how these two facts coexist in their minds. Merger of corporation and State: like saying “we must arrest all reporters in order to prevent Fascism” (AOC), Merging the two every day, in every way, with unlimited blank checks, fights corporations and fascism! The more money the government gives to Amazon and Bezos, the less fascist we are! …I’m sorry, having said it so many times, I can’t come up with an insult that works here. All words have lost meaning.

    “Hugging Face,”

    An AI called “Face Hugger”. What could go wrong?

    “• Close to 190 US Banks Could Collapse, According To Study (USAT)

    Yes, but it’s hard to know what they mean by this. Remember, we have no Capitalism anywhere in the United States. No bankruptcy, and haven’t since ‘08 but certainly decades before then for special people. The Fed can, and has, take over all things, everywhere, in a perfect merger of Corporation and State, insuring everything. This is most probably also completely illegal, and no one cares since we have no Justice system either.

    However, you can re-NAME reality, but reality still exists. They can shift all the bankruptcies to the currency, and that will only bankrupt the United States. Your choice. But math exists and God is not mocked.

    So 190 Banks, yes? And it matters, yes? But don’t confuse yourself that it’s 1979 and there is a market anywhere, stock and bondholders, and consequences. Those are all completely at The Party’s discretion. The Party owns and controls the means of Production, i.e. all corporations, at will, and daily designates all winners and losers. And you sir, are not in the Club.

    ““What will generate a credit crunch is the destruction of capital in the asset base of most lenders.”

    That’s for sure. We have the fastest – and only – M2 plunge in 100 years. No money although again I’m shocked at the lack of response and effect. But the ASSETS are also worthless, (eg Corporate RE and Treasuries) even before this.

    [China] They invested those savings into US bonds and other assets.”

    Yes, but it’s been 15 years since they dumped all Fannie Mae and also went short-term duration. Too soon? Didn’t notice things as inconsequential as the ‘08 housing collapse, bankruptcy of Fannie Mae, and Operation Twist? We’re WAY beyond that.

    MSM Doesn’t Care That the CIA May Have Helped Cause 9/11 (Marcetic)

    Speaking of 20 year old news. They also didn’t want to know how a 40-story building that’s not on fire collapsed in broad daylight, or why a jet that hit only the Pentagon criminal investigation records room had no engines or wings and is not on camera anywhere.

    “..he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to..”

    Again, these GIANT Apollo rockets did take off. If they didn’t go to the moon, what were they for?

    How Civil Wars Start Book Review: Leftists Are Idiots

    Apart from the title, sadly perhaps too saucy to be posted in an official “Debt Rattle,” this article reviews the Book “How Civil Wars Start (And How to Stop Them) “by Barbara F. Walter 2022. This is from someone who’s a certified idiot (a PhD), however, the data they provide, via “Getting the Memo” as a professor, is the 25-point checklist for causing a Civil War. This review of course doesn’t list them all, but they, Government, and the Left (but I repeat myself) have methodically gone down the list in force-installed every one of them, and, as the Right won’t take them up on the Planned, Designated Civil War, down to the very most tiniest, irritating pointless ones, like screwing with names, statues, and national holidays.

    Creation of factions – this one took a long time, esp after they found out race doesn’t work well.
    Flip-excude former factions out of power so they have grievance.
    Make sure they’re aware they will be kept out of power by (illegal) force, so they have no alternative to violence.
    Weaken social cohesion.
    Erase societies guardrails.
    Constant social and economic tension.
    Causing partisanship and group identification instead of identifying, e.g. as an “American”.
    Group tension, in a limp government, increases odds of Civil War 30x.
    Ethnic division plus religion or geography increases Civil War by 12x.
    Key pivot to synthesize a Civil War out of nothing, the “Sons of the Soil” thesis:

    “[Who] no longer has a chance of winning, no access to government, no access to political power, that tension is formed.  It’s even larger if that group used to be in control and lost power”:

    They lived on territory they conquered or settled
    • They consider themselves “native” and the rightful heirs
    • They were or had been the majority
    This group is likely to rebel at twice the rate of others, and are generally a much more capable foe.”
    “What sets these Sons of the Soil off?  They see their:
    • Culture,
    • Language,
    • Holidays, and
    • Religion replaced.

    Now you see why they SPECIFICALLY go after these things which are most antagonizing, even if, like holidays, completely pointless. However, America hasn’t followed any of their Plans™ or we’d be in a Civil War already, probably in the 90s when Clinton did Ruby Ridge and Waco to try to get something started. (I was there and all the “militia” — actually just country people — said it was a scam and don’t fall for it, so, they didn’t.) I think mostly this is a combination of our Christianity which is very blah and non-specific, non-denominational, our widespread multi-racial heritage, our immense size, and our basis as a 99.99% amalgam of immigrants. Regardless of what country they studied, Serbia for instance, none of them have these things. So who you gonna fight? People just like you?

    Now you see why I say “They’ve been trying to start a Civil War, that Civil War is long planned and well-funded, and comes from the top. Since at least Rush Limbaugh, 1990.” This is EXTREMELY SERIOUS, but luckily they’re glue-sniffing morons from generations of idiot inbreeding with a complete absence of all work and learning, like “W”, so we have a pretty good chance of whupping them. And seem to be.

    #134827
    Red
    Participant
    #134828
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Finance = Uncle Sam wants you brain dead

    News = Uncle Sam wants you brain dead

    Entertainment = Uncle Sam wants you brain dead

    Culture = Uncle Sam wants you brain dead

    Foreign Policy = Uncle Sam wants you brain dead

    Medicine = Uncle Sam wants you dead

    .

    #134829
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I didn’t know reptiles had a sense irony

    .

    #134830
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Catching up:

    I think yes, Left and Right are extremely problematic as a means to describing Parties, or indeed what’s going on. As I pointed out, they have not only one lie embedded in them, but are broadly cross-lied. So what seems okay plausible at first just vaporizes into nonsense on any inspection, yet the words and ideas are still used, and worse, we have no others. (In common use at least)

    We’ve got some interest from Arndt, because aside from all other questions, we have to wonder, “was he even correct”? It’s not easy to tell what’s going on, even in it, or even after. Look at today. He says there are no “Parties” even as we list 100 of them. Legit question, I sense that his meaning here is correct. The Parties were then not Parties, but “Movements”, not knowing how to define either. Problem. Then we have the last major election, which was Nazis vs Communists. Both willing to burn each other in the streets. That of course makes us at this distant time think they must have been opposites, not realizing like in France or elsewhere, it’s always the Far Left vs Center Left, or some similar, with the “Right” of the National Front being always sidelined. In this case, the “monarchic” interests, the “Let’s support the German government” interest was being sidelined. On purpose. How are you going to destroy your rival (to London) or attack Russia with somebody else’s army unless you do this?? …And back to the point, that’s even IF you think France’s N.F. IS “Far-Right” or e.g. Macron ISN’T, both of which are wide open to debate, and probably both false.

    So to me we have the International Communists, which as his quote says, are very Marx and Class-based approach, (Soviet-style) versus the National Communists, which allow for not a “Brotherhood of Workers,” but “German” workers first (whoever they are. New problem: do you mean Austrians? How about German-speaking Poles and Russians? How about if they were once German, intermarried, and no longer speak German. …Nevermind: whatever gives me power is the answer.)(Nazi-style)

    This National Communist vs International Communist debate is still going on today, with the “Right” (actually Liberty and Libertarians) being again, almost completely sidelined as they do not work to capture and enlarge the State and use the massive central state and its spoils to attack and punish their enemies. …That’s why they’re the only “Good Guys”, such as it is. We call those groups “Globalists”, which is now an amalgam of Government and Billionaires, so it has a strange confluence of “Capitalists” and anti-Capitalists, because we’re all directed to the wrong definitions all the time. There was once a subset of, e.g. largely (Kennedy) Democrats here who were National Communists, wanting redistribution and social programs but within the context of the United States, (Blue Unions); however, all those people are essentially gone. Replaced by Woke. That leaves only pan-Globalists and Nationalists on the field, with Global Communists being like 2/3, and Nationalists in disarray at 1/3 as they are still digesting the adoption of all the former National Communists (aka, “Blue Workers” + people alarmed at crime, social extremes, etc, “Blue Suburbs”.)

    Such is the problem with using any words or idea derived from Marxism, as 99% of all Economists, Sociologists, and we society at large, do.

    Is recovering the Nation possible? Meh. I’m telling you what has to happen, not whether it’s possible. Like I can say “You have to get rid of cancer” without naming any odds of that being at all possible.

    Will it? Yes. We will win. However at this point the nation after will be so different it’s hard to describe. We didn’t “Win” to get it back to something recognizable or some status quo from 1930-1990. And that’s okay. So long as the PRINCIPLES are re-established of Justice, representation, independence, self-reliance and self-determination, etc. We weren’t like 1930-1990 before either. We weren’t in Wave 1 out of the Revolution, and we weren’t like that in Wave 2 through Jackson and as it slowly closed in on us after the Civil War. We were very different. But we were still America. This happens, and this is one of those times.

    Trump did not go full retard like the Dims”

    No, he went full half-retard, and continues today. But stupid is as stupid does.

    So its our own fault, we’re on a kosher plantation”

    Kind of. But as I said above, the solution has become violence, and that is the solution they encourage and desire. We CAN take them out using violence, but SHOULD we, right now? At the moment we are still trying all the other things, and in fact may win without it. So morally we should and must, even if that’s extremely irritating and costly.

    #134831
    WES
    Participant

    Regarding James Comer saying wait until Wednesday, I think the CTH has it correct.

    What happens on Wednesday? Yeah a million people will pour over the US/Mexican border!

    So Biden needs a big “squirrel” distraction! So the uniparty’s Republicans will provide the necessary distraction that Hunter Biden is (not) under investigation!

    #134832
    Oroboros
    Participant

    NEWS FLASH

    Pedophile President invents :

    The Foreign Malign Influence Center:

    Government Disinfo in the Name of Fighting Disinfo

    A Styxhexenhammer666 production for Monday morning

    #134833
    John Day
    Participant

    Last night, Aspnaz said to Celticbiker: “Know Your Enemy.”

    It’s funny. That happens to be the name of a book that my Grandfather, Robert H. Williams wrote.
    It’s still available on line and it was never available online when he wrote it, because Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet.
    Even though my Grandfather was in both world wars, the FBI had this long file on him, which is also on the internet now. He was an observer-gunner in a Spad, and radio operator in WW-1 and was in OSS counter-intelligence in WW-2. Between the wars he attended the Sorbonne, Harvard grad school, Arabia on a tramp steamer, raised a family and built them a house with his hands.
    He came to Texas in a covered wagon as a little boy.

    #134834
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Natasha Wright answers Dr. D

    Natasha writes in praise of robbing banks. I mean, that’s where the money is. And I think, Ms./Mr. (w)Right believes the Credit Suisse’s nazi depositors deserve to have their deposits, er ah I meant, “assets” acquired by USB or was she intentionally not writing UBS. So, Natasha clarified the (((real))) cause of the (((banking))) crisis. Can you imagine an (((ombudsman))) and Simon Wiesenthal Center has the ((power))) to manipulate the Senate Banking Committee into forcing the fire sale of Switzerland major bank?

    Something Is Rotten in Schmutzig Switzerland

    #134835
    zerosum
    Participant

    Vancouver, Grouse Grinde, heart, rescued.
    ——————–
    “I had a lalalland dream”
    Sadly, I’m now awake to something different, reality.

    ———-
    Ukraine fortified, for the wrong war, since 2014, and lost, ( “Battle of Bakhmut”:) distance/overwhelming warfare, (drones, missiles and artillery)
    ———-
    Here comes the “Savior” of the system/the rich
    • Close to 190 US Banks Could Collapse, According To Study (USAT)
    • A Credit Crunch Is Inevitable (Lacalle)
    ————-
    The most obvious tool of depopulation is war.

    #134836
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Swiss were not invaded by the Nazis in return for being the Nazis Piggy Bank®, before, during, and AFTER the war.

    #134837
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    @Oroboros

    Indeed. One does not start a fight with one’s banker.

    #134838
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Feisty chick
    It looks to be between 1 and 2 weeks old. I think that it is facing off against an older chick — one between 4 and 6 weeks old. I have seen older chicks bully younger chicks. I have NEVER seen a chick attack like that — VERY unusual.

    #134839
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I am grateful that the Old Order is collapsing into the footprints of its absurd conspiracies. Allowed to continue, we would soon be hearing of “racial/ethnic reassignment” via genetic therapy and maybe a bit of plastic surgery. Lip collagen for aspiring wiggers; nose shaving for aspiring ‘high yallers’.

    The Struggle To Be You and Me (the new DNC campaign anthem)

    ***

    In the Midnight Moonlight

    #134840
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Dr D
    Creation of factions – this one took a long time, esp after they found out race doesn’t work well

    It is interesting to note that the current set in power who are gunning for ever-increasing totalitarian control have been specifically fomenting division between “races.” Why? Due to the fact that nazism was birthed from racist sentiment that grew out from colonialism (Europeans tended to believe that their culture was superior to the native cultures of their colonies) and nativist sentiments stoked by all of the displaced peoples throughout Europe who were impoverished and had no place to go (original people to an area were discomfited by the displaced people in their midst, especially during a period of economic hardship), it is often believed that racism and totalitarianism go together, like hand and glove. I’m not convinced that this is the case — it seems to me that what is endemic to totalitarianism is the “in-group” vs. “out-groups,” not specifically race. I sometimes wonder if the rhetoric dividing “white” and “brown” people has been specifically crafted to try to create a public sentiment in the US similar to that of Europe between the world wars. However…that sentiment is not likely to take hold in the US in the same way as it did in that European era, because the US public has been spending the last 6 decades learning to appreciate the descendants of African slaves, and the unique contributions that they have been making to US culture, music, sports, etc. However, a wave of migrants during an economic downturn IS likely to cause strife, as people scramble for scarce resources. It is possible that the migrants may play an important social role, however, as there will be great need for hands to take care of all of those injured by the vaccines. Migrants who are criminals or who are here to do the bidding of the Chinese government are a potential real concern. Regardless, I suspect that the migrants are not going to be as sympathetic to the a Democratic Party as the leadership of that party may expect them to be.

    #134841
    John Day
    Participant

    File Under: “Can’t hurt to ask, rght?”
    Turkey Angrily Rejects US Request To Give Ukraine S-400 Air Defense System
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/turkey-angrily-rejects-us-request-give-ukraine-s-400-air-defense-system

    #134842
    John Day
    Participant

    Where is that “feisty chick” today?
    A little red rooster, perhaps?

    #134843
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    It will come as no surprise to anyone here that this year’s big surprise was the just released publication of the FIRST full autopsy on a covid vaccine death. You might also be unsurprised by the surprising facts revealed therein. https://www.youtube.com/live/pdjZAvxzm98?feature=share

    What surprises me is that a crime of this literally unprecedented magnitude both continues, and continues to go unpunished. Premeditated ongoing genocide. Ho hum.

    I presume that when ordinary sheep are led to the slaughter they are unaware of where they are going or why, and are thus unworried and easily led.

    But what do you call it when victims know, and go anyway? I had previously thought that we humans were more cantankerous than that. Obviously not.

    Apparently our herdsmen are more skillful than I had thought them to be. I would like to think otherwise, but you just can’t argue with results, and so far the results speak for themselves. The bastards are getting away with it.

    So far.

    Ho hum?

    #134844
    John Day
    Participant

    In Austin, Texas, it’s the illegal migrants that do most of the construction, ditch digging, cleaning of homes and businesses, plumbing, and so on. When I was in college here from 1976 to 1982 white and black people did al those things. I could get a job doing things like that in less than a week any summer.
    Now I see an occasional older black or white guy operating a crane or backhoe, or being a foreman. Everybody else moves like they grew up speaking Spanish in the countryside, where farmers can’t make a living any more. They’ll meet your eyes and smile back, too.

    #134845
    John Day
    Participant

    @DBS: I also feel like there is something fundamental about humanity that I have been misunderstanding until recently, or maybe just never grokked…

    #134846
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Perhaps it would be better if Kamala Harris was REPLACED by an AI!

    #134848
    John Day
    Participant

    @anticlimactic: Incompetent evil vs. Chat GPT evil.

    Hmmmm…

    #134849
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @JohnDay

    I would be very interested to know some more about what those fundamentals are about, because I’m a little bit stumped by all of the rampant passivity going on all over the place.

    #134850
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    The winners of wars get to run the system of their choice, and the system they choose always seems to be the one that puts them in charge of the wars (and the money, and law, and info and so on.)

    #134851

    Maybe they upped the amount of fluoride in the water. It’s not like they would tell us they had done so.

    #134852
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The latest from Bud Lite/Anheuser Busch/inBev:

    The CEO of AB says their troubles are due to online Misinformation and Disinformation

    This reminds me of Disney’s take on the eve of the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story – the longed-for movie about Han Solo constantly, bewilderedly, asking everyone else what is going on while being beaten up and schooled by women while having mundane traits such as the particular blaster he had in the cantina and the stripes on the pants he wore in the cantina “explained” in as boring a way as possible.

    Disney said that negativity surrounding Star Wars was being caused by… Online Russian Trolls.

    See? There’s only a small minority of people that don’t like Disney Star Wars plus some Russian Trolls and Bots. Then the movie bombed and lost money. Where’d all the people go, Disney?

    But they fixed that – well, someone fixed it – when Captain Marvel came out, purchasing all those empty theatre seats and declaring a 1 Billion gross victory.

    Seems that the damage control for CIA led Budweiser (check the CEO’s resume) is the same as Disney’s was — see if they can piggyback off an existing psyop.

    And this is over a BEER. Nothing is too petty.

    I’ve been brainstorming how Budweiser can recover without apologizing

    Lobby massively to lower drinking age to 13 – this will allow them to sell to Dylan Mulvaney’s follower demographic.

    What goes together better than Pizza and Beer? The Obamas already got Pizza approved for public schools based on the tomato sauce being a vegetable. Carbohydrates are part of the food pyramid, aren’t they? Get beer approved for school lunches – paid for by the taxpayer! Winwinwin!

    How else can we get Bud bought by taxpayer money instead of customer money? Sell it to public libraries, state owned elder care facilities, the military, serve it at the DMV, the cafeterias of government offices at the city, county, state, and federal level. Get it sent as aid to Ukraine. MAKE the deplorables buy Bud Lite whether they want to or not, via taxes/deficit spending!

    #134853
    zerosum
    Participant

    Depopulation
    Secret …. Surprise … spring offensive …. slaughter for who

    #134854
    chooch
    Participant

    Dr. D,

    In December, Russia passed laws to fine/arrest anyone found discrediting the military. Therefore Russia milbloggers and citizens went quiet on social media. This guy provides a weekly podcast, seems like a rational assessment.

    Russian Milblogger on telegram

    https://t.me/DmitriySteshin/7680

    [translation]

    “I couldn’t watch Prigozhin’s video with the dead “Wagnerites” in full. Yesterday I met a militia friend, still the first wave. He says they stopped gathering for the holidays. Any gatherings turn into a feast for dead comrades, and then smoothly flow into a scandal on the topic – “what are we doing / did wrong.” It is unbearable. My personal martyrology will not fit into the form for submitting a post to the TG, so I just try not to think about it. I can’t change anything, getting into the same martyrology is easy. Let everything go as it is, God will manage. And Prigogine’s words are also a translation of God’s will. And there will be a harvest, there will be the first May thunderstorm, and those who are purer and more righteous will win.”

    #134855
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I don’t get why Russia would be launching all these reported spoiling attacks especially in the south.

    You’d think, since big arrow movements by Russia are impossible due to NATO surveillance/intelligence, the next closest thing would be a major river crossing by Ukraine.

    Maybe this is just experience playing Hearts of Iron talking, but I think I’d WANT a major commitment by the enemy putting their backs against a river.

    Unless these are semi-ineffectual spoiling attacks – oh no, don’t cross the lower Dnieper /s – it suggests they COULD NOT handle such a river crossing effort, so nix it before it begins. If they COULD handle it, you’d think it would be better to allow it.

    #134856
    Mr. House
    Participant
    #134857
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Read that article, was covid an economic crisis or an actual pandemic?

    #134858
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Also apparently everyone going to food banks is a disabled mother

    #134859
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Give Bud Lite to the food banks for disabled mothers and their children!!! Charity write-off for Bud/AB/inBev!!!!!

    #134860
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @Oroboros

    Due process isn’t made to happen until a cause of action is made to happen.
    And neither due process nor cause of action happen without lots of money and not just the promise of money.

    So one certain ((group)) shook down the Law , the Banks and Congress to get their money under the ((guise)) of a banking crisis.
    “Roiled the markets”…christ the euphemisms that lobotomized people.

    I see a pattern emerging…..emerged.
    Certain groups receive collective punishment by selective justice while other ((groups)) administer justice under the Mask of pandemics, wars, financial crises

    #134861
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Alistair Crooke, … his summa summarum at the end of his latest article:

    To repeat: Biden is in a ‘bind’ and his Team is floundering. It is hugely premature for the White House to call ‘mission accomplished’ on Ukraine – but what else can they do? War with China will not be with China alone, but likely will be with Russia too. This surely was the essence of the Chinese Defence Minister’s four-day visit to Moscow (including a personal session with Putin). The message was clear enough: China and Russia are ‘joining hands militarily’. This will portend a strategic paradigm change that may well force a U.S. re-consideration of the way ahead – or not.

    … and the article:

    Decent Into Débâcle: Pyrrhic Victories, Lies and Strategic Miscalculations

    F.S.

    #134862
    Rover
    Participant

    The Reagan years saw ketchup classified as a vegetable for school lunches in public schools🤯
    I was there😐

    #134863
    John Day
    Participant

    DBS and I keep wondering about how to correctly understand humanity:
    “I would be very interested to know some more about what those ‘fundamentals’ are about, because I’m a little bit stumped by all of the rampant passivity going on all over the place.”

    We can agree that some people see mass killing of other people as a “solution” looking for problems.

    What if a lot of people are so deeply inclined to stay with the herd that they subconsciously accept being slaughtered, while denying any such threat, so as to avoid cognitive-dissonance?

    You see that I only have a question, not an answer, and I’m neither of those kinds of human, so I have to keep looking at history unfolding again, along ancient patterns of population-overshooting-resources, and do my best to mitigate the situation.
    Elites and most of the herd deny what I see everywhere.

    #134864
    John Day
    Participant

    “Emerging Modified Consensus” starts with the latest Surplus Energy Economics article.
    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/emerging-modified-consensus

    Dr. Tim Morgan at Surplus Energy Economics presents: The emerging ‘modified consensus’, Inching towards acceptance?
    As you may know, the interpretation long set out here is that the underlying ‘real’ or physical economy of products and services has deteriorated, via stagnation, into contraction. Partly because of a mistaken belief that monetary gimmickry can promote material expansion, a huge gulf now yawns between the ‘real economy’ and its ‘financial economy’ proxy. The financial system itself, understood as an aggregate stock of monetary ‘claims’ on the real economy of the future, is poised to fall into this chasm…
    ..A perennial question about this situation concerns how much ‘they’ – meaning decision-makers, or ‘the powers that be’ – know about these trends, as they are understood here.
    A much better question, though, is ‘what would they do if they did understand it?’ The one thing of which we can be sure is that, if the situation was indeed understood, nobody in a position of authority could possibly come out and say so. To do this would be to precipitate a market crash, itself a prelude for the onset of generalised chaos.
    In this situation, the only realistic course of action for the authorities would be a gradual retreat from over-sanguine assumptions around economic growth. They would need to manage expectations downwards, and this would require the crafting of a modified consensus. The authorities would not, and could not, say that economic growth has ceased, let alone that it has gone into reverse, and neither would any practical purpose be served by doing so. Instead, they would seek to steer expectations towards successively, but gradually, lower levels.
    The view set out here is that this modified consensus has started to emerge. [It’s weird, but everything that happens these days just makes people poorer.]

    #255: The emerging ‘modified consensus’

    4 US Banks Crash in 2 Months: Banking Crisis Explained by Economist Michael Hudson [Interview excerpted] Thanks Christine.
    Hudson: And the reason the banks are insolvent now is because of President Obama’s program and his Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, who appointed the current Federal Reserve President, Powell.
    When President Obama decided to bail out the banks, instead of writing down the bank loans to what would have been reasonable levels, instead of saving the junk mortgage victims from their houses, he decided to go along with his boss, Robert Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, and save Citibank and the other big banks that were the most troubled banks of all.
    And they’re still the most troubled banks of all, except they have a government guarantee, just like Obama gave them, that no matter how much they lose, they will not lose the money. No matter how much the banks lose in negative net worth, the economy will lose, not the banks.
    All of that became implicit when the Federal Reserve decided to help the banks that were insolvent in 2008 and 2009, to help them recover their net worth by quantitative easing.
    That is creating $9 trillion worth of Federal Reserve balance sheet support of the banks to enable the banks to drive down interest rates to near zero…
    ..And the banks used all of this increasing liquidity. What were they going to do with the [liquidity]?
    Well, they lent them out largely to private capital firms. In other words, they lent them out to operators on Wall Street who borrowed from the banks to buy out companies and take them private.
    Then they would have the companies borrow money from the banks for billions of dollars of money and pay this money out as special dividends to the private capital companies that had bought them out, leaving companies as bankrupt shells, such as Bed Bath & Beyond…
    ..What happened then was that the Federal Reserve, under the lawyer, Mr. Powell, he’s not an economist, he’s a lawyer, serving his clients, which are Chase Manhattan, Citibank, and the big banks, to decide, well, there’s a danger of wages rising and we’ve got to keep wages down in order to maintain the profit of the stocks that are fueling the stock market gains.
    The Federal Reserve decided and announced that it was going to begin raising interest rates from 0% to 4%…
    ..Everyone I knew moved into short-term government bonds, that is, Treasury bills, three-month Treasury bills, or maybe two-year Treasury notes, because they didn’t want to take the loss that occurred if you’re holding a 30-year bond.
    And holding a 30-year mortgage is just like holding a 30-year bond. All of a sudden, interest rates are going up, but you’re holding a security, a mortgage or a bond that pays a very low interest rate and whose price has fallen by 30%, maybe even 40%.
    Now, that means that if you’re a bank and you have depositors and your assets are reduced in market price by 40%, what are you going to do if your deposits aren’t reduced? You have negative equity.
    Well, just about every bank in the country moved into a negative equity position, because all the banks have made fairly long-term loans…
    ..Now, after Silicon Valley Bank went under, for instance, Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism … said, — Well, Silicon Valley Bank just hopelessly mismanaged their portfolio in holding on to these long-term government bonds. Why did they do it?
    Well, here’s why they did it. Imagine what would have happened if Silicon Valley Bank or any bank in America would have acted just like the private individuals who move their personal retirement accounts or their personal financial accounts into short-term treasuries.
    They all would have begun to sell their 30-year mortgages or other long-term mortgages. This by itself would have crashed the price of 30-year mortgages…
    ..Well, the act of selling them would have caused the prices to decline to a point where indeed, right away, they would have been yielding this 4%. Obviously, there’s very little they could do…
    ..In other words, nobody wants to lose any money. And the fact is, whoever held these long-term securities was going to lose money.
    Well, this is exactly what happened to the savings and loan institutions in the 1970s, in the 1980s. There was nothing the banks could do…
    ..The banks said, — Well, there’s only one way that we can avoid facing the fact that our assets are much less than our liabilities by just keeping the deposits there. Let’s keep paying the depositors what we were paying all along, 0.2%…
    ..Now, I know many people, friends of mine, who’ve taken their money out of the bank and invested in two-year government notes or short-term money market funds, and they’re getting 4%. Why on earth would they leave the money in the banks? …
    ..So the Federal Reserve had painted itself into a corner during quantitative easing. By lowering interest rates to just about zero, the Fed has guaranteed that if you ever move out of this position, if you ever go beyond the Obama policy of saving the banks by inflating the capital markets, then you’re going to drive the capital markets bankrupt, insolvent.
    So we’re now finally facing the insolvency that Obama and Trump and Biden early on were able to avoid. And it’s just a seventh-grader, well, maybe an eighth-grader, could have done the arithmetic…
    ..And of course they’re moving it into banks like Chase Manhattan or Citibank, which indeed, as Pam Martens said, are serial abusers and violators of regulations.
    Of course they’re moving there because the government says, — No bank depositor, no financial investor will lose any money. We promise you that the economy will lose money, not the banks, not the financial sector.
    We promise you that if we have to pay more money to support the financial sector, we’re willing to cut back Social Security. We’re willing to get rid of Medicaid and Medicare.
    We’re going to get rid of social spending because the economy needs the banks not to lose any money, because that’s, to us politicians, they’re our campaign contributors. They’re who we’re really working for. They’re who we’re protecting. That’s our job as politicians…
    ..And the government and the media are not confronting the fact that the existing debt overhead of the banking system and the financial system and the private capital, that all of this is unsustainable, and we’ve reached the point of unsustainability.
    Well, if eighth graders can see that the banks are insolvent, even investors and even some economists can do the mathematics and see how insolvent they are and realize that we’d better take our money and run.
    So you’re now having the wealthiest 1% of the country taking their money and running, and that’s what’s causing this problem.
    You can expect the wealthiest 1% to contribute very heavily to the 2024 presidential campaign…
    ..I think you’re missing the point to put the blame on the regulators. The problem’s not that the banks control the regulators and regulatory capture. They’ve captured the government. And it’s the government that appoints the regulators…
    ..The regulators can only regulate within the existing legal system and the existing political system. They can’t change the political system. And the problem is systemic itself…
    ..So the government has basically announced, if you want to keep your money safe, move it to one of the five big systemically important banks. “Systemically important” means, it’s a bank that controls government policy of the financial sector in its own favor…
    ..So the bottom line is, the whole U.S. economy is being sacrificed to banks that have made bets, and they’ve been bad bets.
    Their bets have gone wrong, and they’re bailed out by the Treasury, saying, — Even if you make bad bets, no matter what, we’re going to rescue you, no matter what it takes for the economy at large…
    ..Pam Martens herself could look at the banks and say, this bank has negative equity, and the government can immediately take it over into the public domain.
    But the government won’t do that because they’ll say that’s socialism. And socialism, which we used to call democracy, but now they’ve [renamed] democracy socialism because they think it’s a bad term.
    And they say, no, we have to let private enterprise rule. And private enterprise is gambling.
    Most banks have not made money, as much money in interest as they’ve made in capital gains. And the biggest capital gains have been derivatives and short sales and options.
    So the financial sector isn’t about making loans to industrialists to build factories and employ labor to produce more goods.
    It’s made to make loans to gamblers, because that’s where most of the money is made. That’s what the financial system is. And to characterize the system as if it’s part of the economy is the sort of mythology of our time.
    The financial system is external to the economy. It’s like a parasite on the economy, using the government as a means of extracting money from the economy or using its own money-creation abilities to make sure that it creates enough money to make sure that the wealthy financial institutions cannot lose…
    ..But for the bank depositors and for the public to be quiescent, they have to be stupid. And that’s the role of The New York Times and The Washington Post and the other media…
    ..Don’t look at debt problems. They don’t look at balance sheet problems. None of the problems that are occurring today appear in the economic curriculum that people have to learn in order to see how the economy works.
    It’s all a mythology. It’s a fairytale. And you could say it’s sort of the superstition of our time. I won’t dignify it by calling it a religion, even though many banks look like the ancient Greek and Roman temples.
    It’s really just a superstition that the financial system works to help the economy instead of, how can we make money from the economy by taking over the government and capturing the whole government, not only the regulators.

    4 US Banks Crash in 2 Months: Banking Crisis Explained by Economist Michael Hudson

    #134865
    John Day
    Participant

    There is lots of information about Carlson’s news reports here, just as there were a lot of sincere actions by JFK that got him assassinated. Powerful enemies.
    Was This What Got Tucker Carlson Fired?

    Was This What Got Tucker Carlson Fired?

    Tucker Carlson Preparing For “War” Against Fox News
    Popular host is locked into a contract until January 2025.
    Carlson has not technically been fired since he has still not been released from his $20 million per year deal, which forbids him from working elsewhere in the industry for another 20 months.
    That means the popular host would be completely frozen out of being able to actively cover the 2024 presidential election.
    “His team is preparing for war. He wants his freedom,” a close friend told Axios, adding that Carlson had previously said he wanted to “get this done quiet and clean” but his team was now “going from peacetime to Defcon 1.”

    Tucker Carlson Preparing For “War” Against Fox News

    A New Version of an Old Story
    Consciousness of Sheep looks at how Hansel and Gretel were abandoned in the woods by their parents during a severe famine, and implications for the epoch we have now entered. Thanks Red.
    In reality, and only for a brief period, a relatively small fraction of the human population has been able to pretend that we had somehow transcended the horrors of famine and war. And – as always happens – growing affluence allowed us to pretend that our good fortune was entirely of our own making. Even today, with a large part of the western population seeing its living standards decline, most of us find it inconceivable that we might once again be on the cusp of a new age in which hunger and famine become commonplace…
    ..For the time being, for the affluent sections of the population at least, food shortages have amounted to little more than a reversion to the seasonal availability of foods that was the norm prior to the spread of the supermarkets in the mid-1980s. In the UK this winter, for example, shortages of salad vegetables like cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes were blamed by the establishment media on poor weather in Spain and Morocco… mostly neglecting to mention that the reason supermarkets had been forced to import in the first place was because the cost of imported gas and fertiliser for the hydroponic farms in England and the Netherlands had risen so high that farmers couldn’t afford to grow winter crops – a problem that is unlikely to go away any time soon.
    In any case, in a market economy, the first signs of shortage – which were visible to anyone paying attention in the wake of the 2008 crash – are not to be found in empty shelves, but rather in those at the bottom of the income distribution no longer being able to afford increasingly expensive food. That is, the spectacular growth of foodbanks across the UK, along with the more recent shoplifting epidemic, is an indication of the growing number of people no longer able to maintain an adequate diet.
    Over the winter, even working households on relatively good incomes have resorted to foodbanks in the face of a 20 percent or more year-on-year increase in the prices of staples like bread, milk, and eggs.

    A new version of an old story

    BBC: Climate change too important to be left to personal choice [More “consensus modification”.]
    The ultra-low carbon lifestyle isn’t just for the eco-minded, it has to be for everybody. Or it isn’t going to work (“work” being defined as controlling the planet’s climate decades out). “What do truly low-carbon lifestyles look like – and can they really be achieved by personal choice alone?“ the article laments.
    Well if the answer is “no” then that means the ultra-low CO2 lifestyle has to be for everybody. How we do that is a matter of “both individual and systems change”. By systems change is meant that “with the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour, we can reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2050…
    In richer countries, this means moving towards a far lower carbon lifestyle for most people (excluding homeless citizens).

    BBC: Climate change too important to be left to personal choice

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