GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

[marsh]

China and Billionaire Bill Gates Just Purchased Huge Parcels of Farmland in North Dakota Near US Air Base - Why Is That? | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

Why is North Dakota allowing billionaire Bill Gates and China to buy huge parcels of farmland in their state near a US Air Force base that houses sensitive drone technology?

www.thegatewaypundit.com

China and Billionaire Bill Gates Just Purchased Huge Parcels of Farmland in North Dakota Near US Air Base – Why Is That?
By Joe Hoft
Published July 3, 2022 at 8:30am

Why is North Dakota allowing billionaire Bill Gates and China to buy huge parcels of farmland in their state near a US Air Force base that houses sensitive drone technology?

We Love Trump reported this morning:

A Chinese company paid $2.6 million for 300 acres of farmland in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

The parcel of land’s location near a US Air Force base that houses sensitive drone technology has lawmakers on Capitol Hill worried about potential espionage by Beijing, according to a report.

Fufeng Group, a Shandong, China-based company that specializes in flavor enhancers and sugar substitutes, recently purchased the North Dakota farmland.

“Grand Forks is also 40 miles away from Grafton, North Dakota, where a limited liability company believed to be controlled by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates recently paid $13 million for thousands of acres of potato farmland,” the New York Post reports.

Others reported on this story as well.



Where is our media? Can Biden do anything more to help China?



We reported previously that Bill Gates is now the largest land owner in the country.



China no doubt wants information on US drones and is happy to own land in the US.

This raping of America by creeps and communists has to stop.

 

[marsh]

Biden And His G7 Fraternity Threaten To Devastate The World's Economy - Analysts Warn Oil Prices Could Jump to $380 a Barrel | The Gateway Pundit | by Michael Robison

One simple move by the leaders of the G7 summit, at the behest of Biden, could completely devastate the world's economy

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Biden And His G7 Fraternity Threaten To Devastate The World’s Economy – Analysts Warn Oil Prices Could Jump to $380 a Barrel

By Michael Robison
Published July 3, 2022 at 9:20am

Western leaders, led by feeble Joe Biden, could potentially send oil even higher as they continue to sanction Russia and place the burden on the American public.

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase are warning that the price could triple to a staggering $380 or more if Russia decides to cut its output.

They warn that in light of the continued sanctions and proposals to penalize Russia, it could respond by limiting production.

“It is likely that the government could retaliate by cutting output as a way to inflict pain on the West,” analysts wrote. “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.”

Gas in America is now topping $5 per gallon in many areas. If oil prices jumped as predicted, it would devastate the nation’s economy.



The West is trying to punish Moscow for its war in Ukraine and plans to limit the price Russia can fetch for a barrel of oil.

But Russia supplies much of Europe with oil for heating and gasoline and could quickly reverse that impact by cutting production.

Cutting production by 3 million barrels a day would push global oil prices to about $190 per barrel. Dropping production by 5-million-per-day ]would send the price of a single barrel to $380, according to analyst Natasha Kaneva.

Western countries want to limit how profitable production is to Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite their dependence on the Russian resource.

The G-7 nations, including the United States, are trying to construct a complex plan to cap the price Russia can fetch from oil sales to non-G-7 countries as part of a menu of sanctions aimed at Russia.

“The goal here is to starve Russia — starve Putin of his main source of cash and force down the price of Russian oil to help blunt the impact of Putin’s war at the pump,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters. “The dual objectives of G7 leaders have been to take direct aim at Putin’s revenues, particularly through energy, but also to minimize the spillovers and the impact on the G7 economies and the rest of the world.”

But such a cap would leave Putin with more leverage than he currently has, according to JP Morgan’s bankers. Again the sanctions against Russia have a greater chance of directly impacting Americans.

“The most obvious and likely risk with a price cap is that Russia might choose not to participate and instead retaliate by reducing exports,” the analysts wrote.

Biden acknowledged earlier this week that oil prices are continuing to soar. He did not offer and sign or signal that relief is in sight.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542503450042179584

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1542503450042179584
3:49 min

“As long as it takes so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine,” Biden told reporters in Europe Thursday.

White House Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese told CNN Thursday afternoon that Americans need to accept the gas prices as a cost of getting to the future.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542684948519419908

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1542684948519419908
.19 min

“This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm,” he said.

 

[marsh]

The Woke Inquisitors Have Come for the Freethinking Heretics

Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date. Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of "good intentions."

www.gatestoneinstitute.org

The Woke Inquisitors Have Come for the Freethinking Heretics
by J.B. Shurk
July 3, 2022 at 5:00 am
Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date.

• Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of "good intentions." Fifteenth-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola's "bonfire of the vanities" destroyed anything that could be seen to invite or reflect sin. The notorious 1933 Nazi book burning... in Berlin torched some 20,000 books deemed subversive or "un-German". During Communist China's decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s, the vast majority of China's traditional scrolls, literature and religious antiquities went up in smoke.
• All three atrocities were celebrated as achievements for the "greater good" of society... Much like today's new censors who claim to "fight hate" because "that's not who we are," the arsonists of the past saw themselves as moral paragons, too. They purged anything "obscene" or "traditional" or "old," so that theocracy, Nazism, or communism could take root and grow.
• There will one day be much disagreement as to how the same Western Civilization that produced the Enlightenment and its hallowed regard for free expression could once again surrender itself to the petty tyranny of censorship.... The answer is that the West has fallen into the same trap that always catches unsuspecting citizens by surprise: the steady encroachment on free speech has been sold as a "virtue" that all good people should applaud.
• First, certain thoughts became "aggravating factors" that turned traditional crimes into new "hate crimes" deserving of additional punishment. Then the definition of what is "hateful" grew until politicians could comfortably decree anything at odds with their agendas to be examples of "hate." Who would be for "hate," after all? Surely no-one of good sense or good manners.
• Now "hate" has transformed into an elusive description for any speech that can be alleged to cause the slightest of harms. From there, it was easy for the state to decree that "disinformation," or rather anything that can be seen to contradict the state's own official narratives, causes "harm," too. Those who despise free speech told society, "If you do not punish hate, then you're a bigot." And today, if you oppose the government's COVID-19, climate change, immigration or other contentious policies, your harmful "disinformation" must be punished, too.
• On a plaque in the square [where the Nazis burned books] is a commemorative engraving... "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." That warning comes with no expiration date.

Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date. (Image source: iStock)

Attacks on free speech are on the rise. A British college recently expelled a student for expressing support for the government's official policy of deporting illegal immigrants. A Wisconsin school district charged three middle-schoolers with sexual harassment last month for refusing to use the plural pronoun "they" when referring to a single classmate. US President Joe Biden's National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy recently encouraged social media companies to censor from their online platforms any opinions that contradict Biden's climate change narrative.

In its continued commitment to preserve the government's monopoly over COVID-19 information, Twitter actually suspended a medical doctor for merely sharing a scientific study that suggests the Pfizer vaccine affects male fertility. And the NFL's Washington Commanders fined defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio $100,000 and forced him to apologize only weeks ago for having expressed his opinion that 2020's summer of riots across the United States after George Floyd's death was more destructive than the few hours of mayhem at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In contrast, it has become newsworthy that entertainment powerhouse Paramount has chosen not to censor old movies and television shows containing content that today's "woke" scolds might find "offensive." In a "cancel culture" world where censorship and trigger warnings have become the norm, preserving the artistic integrity of a film is now considered outright daring.

In fact, even publishers of old literary classics have begun rewriting content to conform with "politically correct" sensibilities.

Examples such as these, where personal speech is either censored or punished, are becoming much more frequent, and anybody who minimizes the threat this increased intolerance for free expression poses to a democratic society is either gullibly or willfully blind. As any defender of liberty knows, nothing more quickly transforms a free society into a totalitarian prison than crackdowns on speech. Of all the tools of coercion available to a government, preventing individuals from freely expressing their thoughts is most dangerous. Denying citizens that most basic societal release valve for pent-up anger and disagreement only heightens the risk for outright violence down the line. Either silenced citizens become so enraged that conflict becomes inevitable, or the iron fist of government force descends on the public more broadly to preemptively curtail that possibility. Either way, the result is a disaster for any free society.

For Americans who cherish free speech, this undeniable war on language and expression is jolting but not shocking. Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of "good intentions." Fifteenth-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola's "bonfire of the vanities" destroyed anything that could be seen to invite or reflect sin. The notorious 1933 Nazi book burning at the Bebelplatz in Berlin torched some 20,000 books deemed subversive or "un-German". During Communist China's decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s, the vast majority of China's traditional scrolls, literature and religious antiquities went up in smoke.

All three atrocities were celebrated as achievements for the "greater good" of society, and people inebriated with "good intentions" set their cultural achievements aflame with fervor and triumph. Much like today's new censors who claim to "fight hate" because "that's not who we are," the arsonists of the past saw themselves as moral paragons, too. They purged anything "obscene" or "traditional" or "old," so that theocracy, Nazism, or communism could take root and grow. And if Western institutions today are purging ideas once again, then it is past time for people to start asking just what those institutions plan to harvest next.

We in the West are running — not walking — toward another "bonfire of the vanities" in which normal people, egged on by their leaders, will eagerly destroy their own culture while claiming to save it. This time around the "vanities" will be condemned for their racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-science or climate-denying ways, but when they are thrown into the fire, it is dissent and free expression that will burn.

There will one day be much disagreement as to how the same Western Civilization that produced the Enlightenment and its hallowed regard for free expression could once again surrender itself to the petty tyranny of censorship. Many will wonder how the West's much-vaunted "liberal" traditions could meekly fold to the specter of state-controlled speech. The answer is that the West has fallen into the same trap that always catches unsuspecting citizens by surprise: the steady encroachment on free speech has been sold as a "virtue" that all good people should applaud.

First, certain thoughts became "aggravating factors" that turned traditional crimes into new "hate crimes" deserving of additional punishment. Then the definition of what is "hateful" grew until politicians could comfortably decree anything at odds with their agendas to be examples of "hate." Who would be for "hate," after all? Surely no-one of good sense or good manners.

Now "hate" has transformed into an elusive description for any speech that can be alleged to cause the slightest of harms. From there, it was easy for the state to decree that "disinformation," or rather anything that can be seen to contradict the state's own official narratives, causes "harm," too. Those who despise free speech told society, "If you do not punish hate, then you're a bigot." And today, if you oppose the government's COVID-19, climate change, immigration, or other contentious policies, your harmful "disinformation" must be punished, too.

It is a slippery slope, is it not? Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date. After the Nazis went down this poisonous path, repentant Germans built a public memorial to remember the book burning at the Bebelplatz and ensure its tragic lesson was never forgotten. On a plaque in the square is a commemorative engraving, paraphrasing the 19th century German writer Heinrich Heine: "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people."

That warning comes with no expiration date.

 

[marsh]

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg thinks his job is customer service

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the son of a hardcore Marxist academic, was a good student who managed to get himself into Harvard and, from there, win a Rhodes Scholarship. He is glib and, with his sonorous voice, makes nonsense and banalit...

www.americanthinker.com

July 3, 2022
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg thinks his job is customer service

By Andrea Widburg

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the son of a hardcore Marxist academic, was a good student who managed to get himself into Harvard and, from there, win a Rhodes Scholarship.

He is glib and, with his sonorous voice, makes nonsense and banality sound profound. When it comes to actual skills, though, he comes up short. He was an utterly average mayor of South Bend but is proving to be, not just an ineffective Transportation Secretary but an anti-effective one. It’s becoming obvious to all that he was an affirmative action appointee.

I won’t rehash Buttigieg’s history. You can read a bit more about him here. It was a history that left him manifestly unqualified to be president, although his ego is such that he truly believed he was suited and prepared for the job, and that is now proving to leave him equally unqualified for the job of Transportation Secretary. In that role, it turns out that Buttigieg’s sole leftist obsession is to remedy the scourge of racist roads in America.

The claim of some racist roads is not totally crackpot-ish. The reality is that, when modern car-based transportation arose in America, putting modern roads on the agenda, affluent people (i.e., White people) didn’t want freeways, highways, and massive city roads running through their neighborhoods. Those roads, therefore, were deliberately placed in poor communities, which often meant Black communities. And there is evidence that, in some cities, roads were built to make it harder for “undesirables” (e.g., Black people) to gain easy access to affluent communities.

Image: Pete Buttigieg (edited) by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

These wrongs were not equal across America and they occurred, on average, at least 60-70 years ago. They’re one of the tragedies of the racism Democrats tried to build into America’s fabric but they are in the past. Nevertheless, they’re Pete Buttigieg’s number one agenda item:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg launched a $1 billion project on Thursday to fix America’s racist infrastructure system.

Buttigieg launched the Reconnecting Communities program, a “first-of-its-kind” anti-racist infrastructure project aimed at rebuilding communities that were “racially segregated or divided by road projects,” reported the Associated Press.

That’s all a nice hobby horse for a guy with access to a billion in taxpayer funds. However, the real problems affecting all Americans today, regardless of skin color, are supply chain shortages, canceled flights, and skyrocketing fuel prices that affect their ability to get to work.
You haven’t heard much about the supply chain issue lately but it’s rearing up again (as the empty shelves at stores attest). On the West Coast, the unions are making demands:

On Friday the collective-bargaining agreement covering longshore labor along the West Coast expires, and with it the contract’s “no strike” clause. This will allow 22,400 dockworkers to walk off the job at any time until a new contract is ratified.

Negotiations began in May and could take months. A strike would shut down 29 ports, including the adjacent Los Angeles and Long Beach complex, which handles 47% of containerized imports from China and other Asian manufacturing centers.

Buttigieg should be on this like white on rice. But he isn’t. Biden met with the heads of the unions at issue but Buttigieg doesn’t seem to be involved.

When it comes to fuel prices, Buttigieg is also absent. Well, that is if you ignore him telling people that they should get an electric car or his denying that Biden’s policies (which definitely caused rising fuel prices) had anything to do with rising fuel prices and, of course, his assurance that nothing can be done to fix the problem.

Most recently, Buttigieg brought his unique ineptitude to the problem of flight cancellations across America. I’ve been informed recently that the problem stems from airlines offering wonderful early retirement packages to pilots to stop their money from hemorrhaging during the lockdowns. I assume that high fuel prices, supply chain problems, and other issues are bedeviling the airline industry too.

This is precisely the kind of thing a Transportation Secretary should be working on 24/7 to keep American air travel functional. But not Buttigieg. Instead, like a customer service agent, he shared with people helpful hints on getting refunds with canceled flights, complete with his own story about doing so:




Pete Buttigieg: Not just useless at his assigned task (for which he gets paid $221,400 per year) but offensively useless. Given that he’s incapable of doing good in his job, let’s just hope that, during his tenure, he doesn’t cause too much lasting damage.

 

[marsh]

The Economic Growth That Never Was

www.theepochtimes.com

An abacus on a one U.S. dollar paper note. (Shutterstock)
BUSINESS COLUMNISTS

The Economic Growth That Never Was

Tuomas Malinen

July 2, 2022 Updated: July 2, 2022

Commentary
In March 2019, we published an ominous special report, entitled: Why the global growth model is broken. In it, we explained a troubling phenomenon: productivity growth in the world economy had stalled in 2011 and started to decline.

We first noticed this in September 2017, and the situation has remained the same ever since. We named the period as the “Great Stagnation.”


A figure presenting the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) in the regions of the world from 1990 to 2021. (GnS Economics, Conference Board)

The total factor productivity, or TFP, presented in the figure above measures the share of GDP growth that cannot be accounted for by capital investment (in equipment and machinery) and the quantity and the improved quality of the labor force (skills and training). Effectively, TFP is the “unexplained” element of economic growth.

Solow Model of Economic Growth (1956) first suggested that one can find the value of TFP by collecting data from observed factors for capital, labor, and economic growth, and then, by applying some basic statistical estimation techniques to the growth model, calculate TFP, or “Solow Residual” as the remainder. It was also discovered that a large part of GDP growth was explained by technological innovations rather than purely by capital and labor, which the “residual” or TFP represented (see, e.g., our blog for more info).

In the December 2020 forecasting report, we postulated the perplexing problem of stagnated productivity growth as: “Stagnating global productivity growth is extremely worrying, because it implies that if firms are unable to increase their productivity, they will be unprofitable as well.
And when their indebtedness grows yet profitability stagnates or falls, their ability to service debt will also diminish over time.”

And we continued: “Decreasing productivity growth thus implies that the ability to increase profitability and service debt has diminished for several years—at the same we have become ever more indebted! Global debt is expected to reach an astonishing $277 trillion U.S. dollars, or around 350 percent of global GDP by the end of the year.”

How did we end up here?

It turns out—or we consider it the most plausible explanation—that the continuous monetary and fiscal stimulus by central banks and governments has destroyed or seriously damaged two main forces behind economic growth: creative destruction and the risk-and-reward relationship.

Long-term economic growth is driven by technical innovations, which increase productivity.

What this means is that innovations, from the spinning-jenny (practically a first actual industrial machine) to industrial robots (and beyond), grow the productivity of a human worker. This also increases his or her wage and makes products cheaper. This process, i.e., the growth of productivity, is behind the spectacular rise in living standards since the 18th century.

However, this process assumes a crucial element dubbed as creative destruction due to its dual nature. It implies, simply, that more efficient (more productive) methods will replace the old and inefficient. This requires that old firms fail (go bankrupt) and new firms take their place. This process is at the heart of the capitalist market economy.

Both gains and failures in the private sector drive economic progress. The former accumulates income and capital, while the latter uncovers sustainable businesses, setting the stage for creative destruction. Government plays an important role by setting laws, governing human and property rights, and guaranteeing income through social security, but it is, ultimately, the private sector and markets that drive progress. Do not let the MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) crowd tell you otherwise! As socialist market economy experiments have recurrently shown throughout history, this risk-and-reward relationship is essential for this creative destruction to work and for the economy to grow, dynamically.

The reason that our economies have grown, relatively decently, after the Panic of 2008, is presented in the figure below.

A figure presenting the ratios of debt to gross domestic product between main sectors of the economy in advanced countries from 1990 Q4 to 2021 Q3. (GnS Economics, BIS)

It shows especially that government debt has grown quite a bit faster than GDP since 2008 in advanced (rich) economies. Without the massive growth of government debt, the world economy would not have grown at this speed. We have been in constant resuscitation since 2008!

This has also made our economies fragile. Currently, they tend to succumb without constant support or at least when there are efforts to withdraw it. I have explained in my previous column why central banks have been forced to bail out the global economy and markets several times during the past five years. Now, with the aggressive rate hikes and balance sheet run-off (QT) of the Federal Reserve, we are fast approaching another breaking point, which is likely to require a full-scale bailout of the world economy.

The European Central Bank is way ahead of the Fed. They are already planning an anti-fragmentation tool for the eurozone. In it, they plan to support the sovereign debt markets of the weakest members of the eurozone. Socialization of Europe is proceeding fast.

There are also rumors of an another, considerably large “bailout” fund of the EU in the making. Just two years ago, EU members agreed on a 750 billion euro Recovery Fund.

Back in 2020, Dr. Peter Nyberg, a retired director general of the Financial Markets Department at the Finnish Ministry of Finance, and I warned about the Stealth Federalization of the EU. The sovereignty of EU member states had been eroding slowly, but with the Recovery Fund, it took a massive leap forward. Another such a common-debt-scheme would effectively seal our fate.

Alas, we have lived in a “mirage” of an economic recovery since the Great Financial Crisis. Our leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have not allowed the normal economic process, especially bankruptcies and failures, to clean our economies from unproductive, “parasitic” activities, over-indebtedness, and (zombified) companies.

This is why our economies are so weak, and this is why we are heading either to a complete socialization of the world economy or an epic economic collapse. We, the people, have let our political leaders to “sleepwalk” us into this cataclysmic watershed. Now would be an excellent time to wake up.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

[marsh]

Bank of America Issues Chilling Forecast: No GDP Growth

Economists are predicting the economy to shrink, with some financial experts saying a recession already has begun.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Bank of America Issues Chilling Forecast: No GDP Growth
By Jack Davis, The Western Journal
Published July 2, 2022 at 1:40pm

Bad news about America’s economy continues to flow during Joe Biden’s term as president.

On Friday, the Bank of America said America’s Gross Domestic Product is not expected to grow during the April-June quarter of 2022, according to Breitbart.

The previous estimate was for 1.5 percent growth.

Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest bank by assets, said a decrease in consumer spending that was reported Thursday triggered the updated prediction.

“This was the first fall in consumer spending this year amid high inflation and hawkish hikes by the Fed, indicating a slightly weaker economy than previously assumed,” the bank’s economists wrote in a note to clients.

Optimism hadn’t exactly been flowing earlier in the month, when, according to Reuters, Bank of America economists increased their prediction of a recession next year to 40 percent.

“Our worst fears around the Fed have been confirmed: they fell way behind the curve and are now playing a dangerous game of catch up,” wrote Ethan Harris, the bank’s head global economist.

Although most predictions call for storm clouds to hit in 2023, one study released Friday said they already are here.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow data said the GDP contracted by 2.1 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to CNBC.

The growth tracker said GDP shrank by 1.6 percent in the first quarter.

If that’s accurate, the American economy is now in the technical definition of a recession, according to CNBC. Official figures will be released in late July.

“GDPNow has a strong track record, and the closer we get to July 28th’s release [of the initial Q2 GDP estimate] the more accurate it becomes,” wrote Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

“The warning signs are starting to emerge, and the more we see those warning signs start to trickle into the labor market, the more the Federal Reserve is going to have to take heed,” David Page, head of macroeconomic research at AXA Investment Managers, said, per CNBC.

“You can be traveling along, then you hit a certain tipping point,” Page said. “It starts with something as amorphous as market sentiment. The market sentiment starts to evaporate. … That’s when financial conditions start to tighten.”

George Saravelos, Deutsche Bank’s global co-head of FX Research, wrote Friday that his data also shows negative growth for the second quarter of this year, according to Fortune.

“The U.S. economy may already meet the definition of a technical recession,” he said.

Guggenheim economist Matt Bush agrees, according to MarketWatch.

Bush said a slowdown in economic activity has led him to predict that the second-quarter growth he expected to come in at 2.7 percent will instead be a decline of 0.1 percent.

“These developments raise the risk of two straight quarters of negative real GDP growth, which is conventionally regarded as the definition of recession,” Bush wrote.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Understanding The Economic Crisis In Sri Lanka

SUNDAY, JUL 03, 2022 - 04:05 PM
Sri Lanka is currently in an economic and political crisis of mass proportions, recently culminating in a default on its debt payments. The country is also nearly at empty on their foreign currency reserves, decreasing the ability to purchase imports and driving up domestic prices for goods.

As Visual Capitalist's Avery Koop details below, there are several reasons for this crisis and the economic turmoil has sparked mass protests and violence across the country. This visual breaks down some of the elements that led to Sri Lanka’s current situation.


A Timeline of Events
The ongoing problems in Sri Lanka have bubbled up after years of economic mismanagement. Here’s a brief timeline looking at just some of the recent factors.
2009
In 2009, a decades-long civil war in the country ended and the government’s focus turned inward towards domestic production. However, a stress on local production and sales, instead of exports, increased the reliance on foreign goods.

2019
Unprompted cuts were introduced on income tax in 2019, leading to significant losses in government revenue, draining an already cash-strapped country.

2020
The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world causing border closures globally and stifling one of Sri Lanka’s most lucrative industries. Prior to the pandemic, in 2018, tourism contributed nearly 5% of the country’s GDP and generated over 388,000 jobs. In 2020, tourism’s share of GDP had dropped to 0.8%, with over 40,000 jobs lost to that point.

2021
Recently, the Sri Lankan government introduced a ban on foreign-made chemical fertilizers. The ban was meant to counter the depletion of the country’s foreign currency reserves.

However, with only local, organic fertilizers available to farmers, a massive crop failure occurred and Sri Lankans were subsequently forced to rely even more heavily on imports, further depleting reserves.

April 2022
In early April this year, massive protests calling for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation, sparked in Sri Lanka’s capital city, Colombo.

May 2022
In May, pro-government supporters brutally attacked protesters. Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, brother of President Rajapaksa, stepped down and was replaced with former PM, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

June 2022
Recently, the government approved a four-day work week to allow citizens an extra day to grow food, as prices continue to shoot up. Food inflation increased over 57% in May.

Additionally, the increasing prices on grain caused by the war in Ukraine and rising fuel prices globally have played into an already dire situation in Sri Lanka.

The Key Information

“Our economy has completely collapsed.”
- PRIME MINISTER RANIL WICKREMESINGHE TO PARLIAMENT LAST WEEK.

One of the main causes of the economic crisis in Sri Lanka is the reliance on imports and the amount spent on them. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

• 2021 total imports = $20.6 billion USD
• 2022 total imports (to March) = $5.7 billion USD

In contrast, the most recent reported foreign currency reserve levels in the country were at an abysmal $50 million, having plummeted an astounding 99%, from $7.6 billion in 2019.
Some of the top imports in 2021, according to the country’s central bank were:

• Refined petroleum = $2.8 billion
• Textiles = $3.1 billion
• Chemical products = $1.1 billion
• Food & beverage = $1.7 billion

Of course, without the cash to purchase these goods from abroad, Sri Lankans face an increasingly drastic situation.

Additionally, the debt Sri Lanka has incurred is huge, further hampering their ability to boost their reserves. Recently, they defaulted on a $78 million loan from international creditors, and in total, they’ve borrowed $50.7 billion.

The largest source of their debt is by far due to market borrowings, followed closely by loans taken from the Asian Development Bank, China, and Japan, among others.

What it Means
Sri Lanka is home to more than 22 million people who are rapidly losing the ability to purchase everyday goods. Consumer inflation reached 39% at the end of May.

Due to power outages meant to save energy and fuel, schools are currently shuttered and children have nowhere to go during the day. Protesters calling for the president’s resignation have been camped in the capital for months, facing tear gas from police and backlash from president Rajapaksa’s supporters, but many have also responded violently to pushback.

India and China have agreed to send help to the country and the the International Monetary Fund recently arrived in the country to discuss a bailout. Additionally, the government has sent ministers to Russia to discuss a deal for discounted oil imports.

A Foreshadowing for Low Income Countries
Governments need foreign currency in order to purchase goods from abroad. Without the ability to purchase or borrow foreign currency, the Sri Lankan government cannot buy desperately needed imports, including food staples and fuel, causing domestic prices to rise.

Furthermore, defaults on loan payments discourage foreign direct investment and devalue the national currency, making future borrowing more difficult.

What’s happening in Sri Lanka may be an ominous preview of what’s to come in other low and middle-income countries, as the risk of debt distress continues to rise globally.

The Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) was implemented by G20 countries, suspending nearly $13 billion in debt from the start of the pandemic until late 2021.


Some DSSI and LIC countries facing a high risk of debt distress include Zambia, Ethiopia, and Tajikistan, to name a few.

Going forward, Sri Lanka’s next steps in managing this situation will either serve as a useful exam for other countries at risk or a warning worth heeding.

 

[marsh]

https://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/independence-day/

CLUSTER**** NATION – BLOGJuly 1, 2022

Independence Day

Life for us will get simpler, for sure, but it doesn’t have to be a trip back to the eleventh century….

The Party of Chaos is draping its narrow shoulders in black crepe this Fourth of July, putting on funereal airs, which is actually just another cynical act in their remorseless performance of pretending to care about our country, as everything they touch goes to shit, blood, and ruin.

Anything not that, they would like you believe, is “right-wing extremism” and “domestic terrorism.” Such as reminding your fellow citizens that there’s an upside to the rule-of-law and free speech, two niceties of the constitution the Party of Chaos is working hard to dispose of.

Understand that this Party of Chaos is insane, and rejoice this holiday weekend that you are not them. Independence, after all, was not just throwing off the yoke of King George III, but of establishing conditions for a people to thrive and pursue happiness without nefarious interference by vicious authorities of a leviathan state. That was something worth fighting for in 1776 and worth fighting for now.

One such battle was decided this week in the US Supreme Court: West Virginia v EPA, about US government agencies under the executive branch usurping legislative and judicial prerogatives — in this case to enforce “Green New Deal” policies on the electric power industry by agency fiat, as if by law. No-can-do, the SCOTUS said in a 6-3 decision. The ruling will tend to quash the growing tyranny of the unelected federal bureaucracy issuing diktats that nobody has voted for, like the Department of Education’s increasingly insane use of the 1972 Title IX [nine] update of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to jam biological male transsexuals into women’s sports and locker rooms.

Much of this agency mischief has emanated in recent years from whoever is in the White House issuing executive orders to get around a recalcitrant Congress. Barack Obama was especially prolific at it and now the junta behind “Joe Biden” is trying to emulate Mr. O. The upshot is that the Green New Deal is dead because even a Democratic majority Congress is too chicken to vote for measures likely to bring down the electric grid and put an end to mass motoring (though current trends suggest exactly that outcome is in the cards even without government action).

The ruling also tends to foil the World Economic Forum’s effort to re-set Western Civ as a transhuman technocratic “green” nirvana. Rather, the USA and Euroland are on the express track to a Palookaville of grubby, post-industrial, neo-medieval hardship. Try to imagine Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse minus reliable electric service. All you’re left with is an ill-dressed schmuck wearing goggles in a dark, empty room. Not to mention the technocrat elite’s wished-for boons of computer-enabled eternal life and never-ending orgasm. Fugettabowdit. Mr. Zuckerberg will be lucky months from now if he can avoid being clamped to a stake and torched by the angered new peasantry he helped to create.

War is not the glorious romp it used to be, either, in the days of caparisoned hussars and grenadiers in colorful enfilade. Now it’s more like being a swarm of gnats in a bug-zapper: pfffftttt… and you’re just one of ten thousand fellow gnats parlayed into the plane of ignominious nonexistence, sans accolades and salutes. Thus, our supremely stupid campaign against Russia in Ukraine, which is so not going well that it is hard to find a comparable strategic fiasco in history.

Of course, strategic fiascos are “Joe Biden’s” specialty. Even his former running mate, Mr. O, acknowledged that “you can’t overestimate [“JB’s”] ability to **** things up.” The alleged current president wanted desperately to bog down his nemesis, Vlad Putin, in the Ukrainian buzzard flats, hoping that Russia would roll over and die. But, lo and behold, it’s not working, not even with that $50-billion “JB” supposedly wired to Kiev. Instead, it’s America and our NATO allies who are circling the drain. Remember all those humming factories we won the Second World War with? They don’t exist anymore. Try prosecuting an industrial war without any industry. Decreasingly, too, our oil production, thanks explicitly to “Joe Biden’s” policies. Next, he’ll beg Mr. Putin for a discount on Russian oil while threatening to punch him in the face. I hope you’re prepared to lose this one as badly as we lost Afghanistan.

Life for us will get simpler, for sure, but it doesn’t have to be a trip back to the eleventh century.

Mere months remain before the Party of Chaos has its near-death experience at the polls and we can begin to contemplate a change of course that allows us to remain a civilized nation of law and liberty, despite all the damage done. I’m celebrating this Fourth of July by mindfully declaring the independence of the country I love from the regime of grifters, tyrants, and sadists temporarily occupying the power centers of Washington, DC. I hope you will join me and do likewise.

 

[raven]

Obama had a pen and a phone
Trump had a magic wand.
Biden has Hunter

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Is Saudi Arabia In Discussion To Join BRICS?

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 03:00 AM
Authored by 'sundance' via The Last Refuge,

It is very curious timing in this article from Newsweek, containing massive geopolitical implications, using identified Saudi Arabia sources, would come in advance of Joe Biden’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.



Is this strategic geopolitical pressure from Saudi leader Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS) ahead of the meeting with Biden; or is this a genuine possibility that looms as likely? If the former, then Joe Biden is being geopolitically slow roasted by Saudi Arabia for his previous disparagements and ideological hypocrisy in his visit. If it is the latter, well, then the tectonic plates of international trade, banking and economics are about to shift directly under our American feet.

We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector taking place. Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.



This article from Newsweek is exactly about this dynamic with Saudi Arabia now potentially joining the BRICS team.

NEWSWEEK – Finland and Sweden’s green light to join NATO is set to bring about the U.S.-led Western military alliance’s largest expansion in decades. Meanwhile, the G7, consisting of NATO states and fellow U.S. ally Japan, has adopted a tougher line against Russia and China.

In the East, however, security and economy-focused blocs led by Beijing and Moscow are looking to take on new members of their own, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, two influential Middle Eastern rivals whose interest in shoring up cooperation on this new front could have a significant impact on global geopolitical balance.

The two bodies in question are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. The former was established in 2001 as a six-member political, economic and military coalition including China, Russia and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before recruiting South Asian nemeses India and Pakistan in 2017, while the latter is a grouping of emerging economic powers originally consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) upon its inception 2006, and including South Africa in 2010.

Here is the money quote:
[…]
“China’s invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join the ‘BRICS’ confirms that the Kingdom has a major role in building the new world and became an important and essential player in global trade and economics,” Mohammed al-Hamed, president of the Saudi Elite group in Riyadh, told Newsweek. “Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is moving forward at a confident and global pace in all fields and sectors.”
[…]
“This accession, if Saudi joins it, will balance the world economic system, especially since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world, and it’s in the G20,” Hamed said. “If it happens, this will support any economic movement and development in the world trade and economy, and record remarkable progress in social and economic aspects as Saudi Arabia should have partnerships with every country in the world.” (read more)

That would essentially be the end of the petrodollar, and -in even more consequential terms- the end of the United States ability to use the weight of the international trade currency to manipulate foreign government. The global economic system would have an alternative. The fracturing of the world, created as an outcome of energy development, would be guaranteed.



Keep in mind, in early June Federal reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “rapid changes are taking place in the global monetary system that may affect the international role of the dollar.” {LINK}

The western alliance (yellow) would be chasing climate change energy policy to power their economies. The rest of the world (grey) would be using traditional and more efficient energy development. The global cleaving around energy use would be complete.

This is not some grand conspiracy, ‘out there‘ deep geopolitical possibility, or foreboding likelihood as an outcome of short-sighted western emotion. No, this is just a predictable outcome from western created events that pushed specific countries to a natural conclusion based on their best interests.

You can debate the motives of the western leaders who structured the sanctions against Russia, and whether they knew the outcome would happen as a consequence of their effort, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Personally, I believe this outcome is what the west intended. The people inside the World Economic Forum are not stupid – ideological, yes, but not stupid. They knew this global cleaving would happen.


For a deep dive on BRICS, as predicted by CTH, {SEE HERE}.

The bottom line is – the 2022 punitive economic and financial sanctions by the western nations’ alliance against Russia was exactly the reason why BRICS assembled in the first place.

Multinational corporations in control of government are what the BRICS assembly foresaw when they first assembled during the Obama administration. When multinational corporations run the policy of western government, there is going to be a problem.

In the bigger picture, the BRICS assembly are essentially leaders who do not want corporations and multinational banks running their government. BRICS leaders want their government running their government; and yes, that means whatever form of government that exists in their nation, even if it is communist.

BRICS leaders are aligned as anti-corporatist. That doesn’t necessarily make those government leaders better stewards, it simply means they want to make the decisions, and they do not want corporations to become more powerful than they are. As a result, if you really boil it down to the common denominator, what you find is the BRICS group are the opposing element to the World Economic Forum assembly.

The BRICS team intend to create an alternative option for all the other nations. An alternative to the current western trade and financial platforms operated on the use of the dollar as a currency. Perhaps many nations will use both financial mechanisms depending on their need.
The objective of the BRICS group is simply to present an alternative trade mechanism that permits them to conduct business regardless of the opinion of the multinational corporations in the ‘western alliance.’

The BRICS team, especially if Saudi Arabia, Iran and Argentina are added creating BRICS+, would indeed be a counterbalance to the control of western trade and finance. This global cleaving is moving from a possibility to a likelihood. If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS the fracture becomes almost certain.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Top German Trade Union Head Warns Entire Industries May Collapse Amid Worsening Energy Crisis

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 03:35 AM

Last month, Russia reduced Nordstream natural gas flows by 60% because of an alleged disruption. German industries, heavily reliant on cheap Russian NatGas, face skyrocketing energy costs that have put many in danger of collapse.

"Because of the NatGas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," Yasmin Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions, told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Fahimi warned: "Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany."



Economics Minister Robert Habeck was quoted by Bloomberg on Saturday saying the government is working to address surging energy costs for utilities and power costs for businesses and households. He warned weeks ago Germany should prepare for further cuts NatGas.

Germany recently triggered the "alarm stage" of its NatGas-emergency plan to address shortages as the energy crisis in Europe's largest economy is far from over.

Habeck had also likened the squeeze on Russian NatGas supplies and its damaging effects on industries to a catalyst that could spark a Lehman Brothers-like crisis.

Deutsche Bank's chief FX strategist George Saravelos told clients days ago he was becoming increasingly concerned about the unfolding energy crisis in Germany.

Saravelos pointed out that dwindling NatGas supplies to Germany and the resulting surge in electricity prices have created massive problems for industries and utilities.

The biggest blowup last week was German gas and power utility Uniper. Shares in the company crashed because it only received 40% of NatGas from Russia, and the rest had to be purchased in the open market (outside of long-term contracts), where prices have soared. This has created an immense strain on the utility, losing upwards of $30 million per day, or if annualized, could be an $11 billion loss.

Risks are mounting of a full NatGas disruption: "Europe should be ready in case Russian gas is completely cut off," IEA head Fatih Birol recently told FT.

Saravelos also told clients if NatGas supply woes via Nordstream aren't resolved in the coming weeks, this would lead to a broadening out of energy disruption with material upfront effects on economic growth, and of course, much higher inflation, or as he put it, "beyond the market's worries about slower global growth in recent months, what is unfolding in Europe in recent days is a fresh big negative supply shock."

Sooner or later, Germany will learn if that's because of economic disruption, that getting virtue signaled into supporting the Ukraine war was a bad idea.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

'Reset' This!

SUNDAY, JUL 03, 2022 - 08:45 PM
Authored by Michael Walsh via AmericanMind.org,

“The following is an excerpt from Michael Walsh’s forthcoming book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order, which will be published by Bombardier Books and be available October 18, 2022. Walsh has gathered a series of essays from among eighteen of the most eminent thinkers, writers, and journalists—including the American Mind’s own James Poulos, as well as Claremont Senior Fellows Michael Anton and the late Angelo Codevilla—to provide the first major salvo in the intellectual resistance to the sweeping restructuring of the western world by globalist elites.”



Part I: The Problem
What is the Great Reset and why should we care? In the midst of a tumultuous medical-societal breakdown, likely engineered by the Chinese Communist Party and abetted by America’s National Institutes of Health “gain of function” financial assistance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, why is the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF) advocating a complete “re-imagining” of the Western world’s social, economic, and moral structures? And why now? What are its aspirations, prescriptions, and proscriptions, and how will it prospectively affect us? It’s a question that the men and women of the WEF are hoping you won’t ask.

This book seeks to supply the answers. It has ample historical precedents, from Demosthenes’s fulminations against Philip II of Macedon (Alexander’s father), Cicero’s Philippics denouncing Mark Antony, the heretic-hunting Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem¸ and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s Nietzsche contra Wagner. Weighty historical issues are often best debated promptly, when something can yet be done about them; in the meantime, historians of the future can at least understand the issues as the participants themselves saw and experienced them. Whether the formerly free world of the Western democracies will succumb to the paternalistic totalitarianism of the oligarchical Resetters remains to be seen. But this is our attempt to stop it.

So great is mankind’s perpetual dissatisfaction with its present circumstances, whatever they may be, that the urge to make the world anew is as old as recorded history. Eve fell under the Serpent’s spell, and with the plucking of an apple, sought to improve her life in the Garden of Eden by becoming, in Milton’s words, “as Gods, Knowing both Good and Evil as they know.”

The forbidden fruit was a gift she shared with Adam; how well that turned out has been the history of the human race ever since. High aspirations, disastrous results.

The expulsion from the Garden, however, has not discouraged others from trying. Indeed, the entire chronicle of Western civilization is best regarded as a never-ending and ineluctable struggle for cultural and political superiority, most often expressed militarily (since that is how humans generally decide matters) but extending to all things both spiritual and physical.

Dissatisfaction with the status quo may not be universal—timeless and static Asian cultures, such as China’s, have had it imposed upon them by external Western forces, including the British and the Marxist-Leninists—but it has been a hallmark of the occident and its steady civilizational churn that dates back at least to Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Pericles, and Alexander the Great, with whom Western history properly begins.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, assaying the inelegant Koine, or demotic, Greek of the New Testament in Beyond Good and Evil, observed: “Es ist eine Feinheit, daß Gott griechisch lernte, als er Schriftsteller werden wollte—und daß er es nicht besser lernte”: “It’s a particular refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer—and that he didn’t learn it better.” Nietzsche, the preacher’s son who became through sheer willpower a dedicated atheist, was poking fun at the fundamentalist belief that the Christian scriptures were the literal words of God himself (Muslims, of course, believe the same thing about the Koran, except more so). If something as elemental, as essential to Western thought as the authenticity of the Bible, not to mention God’s linguistic ability, could be questioned and even mocked, then everything was on the table—including, in Nietzsche’s case, God Himself.

With the death of God—or of a god—Nietzsche sought liberation from the moral jiu-jitsu of Jesus: that weakness was strength; that victimhood was noble; that renunciation—of love, sex, power, ambition—was the highest form of attainment. That Nietzsche’s rejection of God was accompanied by his rejection of Richard Wagner, whose music dramas are based on the moral elevation of rejection, is not coincidental; the great figures of the nineteenth century, including Darwin and Marx, all born within a few years of each other, were not only revolutionaries, but embodied within themselves antithetical forces that somehow evolved into great Hegelian syntheses of human striving with which we still grapple today.

Wagner, the Schopenhauerian atheist who staggered back to Christianity and the anti-Semite who engaged the Jew Hermann Levi as the only man who could conduct his final ode to Christian transfiguration, Parsifal. Charles Darwin, ticketed for an Anglican parsonage but mutating into the author of On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and all the way to The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. Karl Marx, the scion of rabbis whose father converted to Lutheranism and, like Wagner for a time, a stateless rebel who preached that the withering away of the state itself was “inevitable”—and yet the state endures, however battered it may be at the moment.

It’s fitting that the “Great Reset of capitalism” is the brainchild of the WEF, which hosts an annual conference in the Alpine village of Davos—the site of the tuberculosis sanatorium to which the naïf Hans Castorp reports at the beginning of Thomas Mann’s masterpiece, The Magic Mountain. Planning to visit a sick cousin for three weeks, he ends up staying for seven years, “progressing” from healthy individual to patient himself as his perception of time slows and nearly stops. Castorp’s personal purgatory ends only when he rouses himself to leave—his Bildungsreise complete—upon the outbreak of World War I, in which we assume he will meet the death, random and senseless, that he has been so studiously avoiding yet simultaneously courting at the Berghof.

Central Europe, it seems, is where the internal contradictions of Western civilization are both born and, like Martin Luther at Eisleben, go home to die. And this is where the latest synthetic attempt to replace God with his conqueror, Man, has emerged: in the village of Davos, in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland: the site of the annual meeting of the WEF led by the German-born engineer and economist Klaus Schwab, born in Ravensburg in 1938, the year before Hitler and Stalin began carving up Poland and the Baltics.

Once more into the breach, then: behold the present volume. In commissioning sixteen of the best, most persuasive, and most potent thinkers and writers from around the world to contribute to our joint venture, my principal concern has been to offer multiple analyses of the WEF’s nostrums and in so doing to go poet Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” a few better. Then again, given the surname of the WEF’s chief, perhaps a better, more potent literary citation might be Margret’s little ditty from the Büchner/Alban Berg expressionist opera, Wozzeck (1925): In’s Schwabenland, da mag ich nit—”I don’t want to go to Schwab-land.” Nor, as Hans Castorp’s journey illustrates, should anyone wish to visit Davos-land if he prizes his freedom, his possessions, and his sanity. To the Great Resetters, we are all ill, all future patients-in-waiting, all in dire need of a drastic corrective regimen to cure what ails us.

In these pages, we shall examine the Great Reset from the top down. The eminent American historian Victor Davis Hanson begins our survey with “The Great Regression,” locating Schwab’s vision within its proper historical context. He is followed by Canada’s Conrad Black and America’s Michael Anton and their views of capitalism and socialism, with not a few attacks on conventional, osmotic wisdom that will both surprise and enthrall. Britain’s Martin Hutchinson outlines the contours of the Reset’s “Anti-Industrial Revolution,” even as the American economist David Goldman confronts both Schwab’s notion of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and China’s immanentizing its eschaton in real time, along with the Red Dragon’s commitment to the upending of Western civilization and its own Sino-forming of a post-Western world.

American writer, editor, and publisher Roger Kimball tackles the implications of a neofascist Reset in his essay, “Sovereignty and the Nation-State,” both of which concepts are under attack in the name of “equality,” its totalitarian successor “equity,” and the political consequences of our re-embrace of Rousseauvian concepts as applied to governments. British historian Jeremy Black discusses the misuses toward which the study of history has been and will be put to by the Resetters. The late Angelo Codevilla contributes what alas became his final essay, “Resetting the Educational Reset,” to sound the tocsin about the dangerous left turn of the once-vaunted American educational system, now reduced to a shrill, sinistral shell of its former dispassionate glory.

From Down Under, the Philippines-born Richard Fernandez twins two eternally competing faiths, religion and science; the American-born, Australian-based political sociologist Salvatore Babones contributes a remarkably clear explication of the kinds of transportation feasible under the “green energy” regimen the Reset seeks to impose upon us, and its practical and social implications. Writing from Milan, Alberto Mingardi, the director-general of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, gets to the heart of the Great Reset’s deceptive economic program with an essay concerning faux-capitalist “stakeholder capitalism” and its surreptitious replacement of shareholder capitalism in the name of “social justice.”

The Great Reset, however, is not strictly limited to matters financial, pecuniary, or macroeconomic. Social and cultural spheres are of equal importance. James Poulos looks at the Reset’s unholy relationship with the predatory Big Tech companies that currently abrogate the First Amendment by acting as governmental censors without actually being commanded by an act of Congress or, increasingly, an arbitrary presidential mandate. From British Columbia, noted Canadian author and academic Janice Fiamengo weighs in on the destructive effects of feminism upon our shared Western culture while, on the lighter side, Harry Stein examines the history of American humor—which in effect means worldwide humor—and how the leftist takeover of our shared laugh tracks has resulted in a stern, Stalinist view of what is and what is not allowed to be funny.

The British writer Douglas Murray has a go at the permissible future of Realpolitik under the panopticonic supervision of the Reset, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Covid hysterics, while the American journalist John Tierney lays out the road to civilizational serfdom that the unwarranted panic over the Covid-19 “pandemic” has triggered during its media-fueled run between 2019 and 2022. My contribution, in addition to this Introduction, is an examination of the Reset’s—and, historically, elitist tyranny’s—deleterious effects on Western culture: the very thing that gave birth to our notions of morality and freedom.

At its heart, the Great Reset is a conceited and self-loathing central-European blitzkrieg against the cultural, intellectual, religious, artistic, physical, and, most of all, moral inheritance we have received from our Greco-Roman forebears. This has been latterly shorthanded, with the rise of “wokeness,” to “white” culture. Typically racialist, if not outright racist, the cultural Marxists behind wokeness insist on reducing humanity to its shades of skin color and then claiming that although all skin colors should achieve in exact same proportions to their share in a given population, some skin colors are better than others and any skin color is preferable to white. It’s a deeply repellent principle that masquerades as a perversion of Judeo-Christianity but is in fact a simultaneous attack on individuality and merit that seeks to roll back the scientific and cultural advances of the past two millennia, wielding both science and culture as weapons against our shared technological and moral heritage.

The goal, as always, is power—the eternal fixation of the socialist Left…

 

[marsh]

No More Room for Farmers With ‘WEF Food Hubs’

Food Innovation Hubs (FUBs) are being set up all over the world for the "transformation of food systems". In November

conservativeplaylist.com

No More Room for Farmers With ‘WEF Food Hubs’

by Free West Media
July 4, 2022

Food Innovation Hubs (FUBs) are being set up all over the world for the “transformation of food systems”. In November 2020, the World Economic Forum announced that the European Food Innovation Hub will be located in Wageningen, in the Netherlands.

Prime Minister Rutte announced last year that his country would invest in the Global Coordinating Secretariat of the Food Innovation Hubs. This secretariat will also operate from Wageningen.

“Fishermen gone, farmers gone, the next planned ‘crisis’ will be famine. Fortunately, there is The Solution: the WEF ‘food hubs’! stated FVD leader Thierry Baudet.

“I find this quite disturbing. What do we need a food coordination centre for? Of the WEF, no less. Under the guise of ‘fair prices for farmers’, (good) citizens are made dependent on the WEF for their food supply. Isn’t that scary?” asked health scientist Yvonne Simons.

Independent researcher Frank Hoogerbeets noted: “Food hubs must take total control of the food supply through WEF policy. So there is no place for farmers anymore. Not reported by the NOS [National Public broadcaster. ed.].”

Prime Minister Rutte spoke earlier at the WEF about these ‘food hubs’. His government meanwhile blames farmers for producing too much “nitrogen”.

The nitrogen hoax
Last week there were several farmers’ actions against the announced nitrogen policy. The government wants to drastically reduce ammonia emissions from agriculture to protect nature.

For some farmers this means that they cannot continue their business in the same way in the future. Angry farmers’ activists blocked roads, visited the Mediapark in Hilversum and went to the house of nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal. The police arrested several activists for assault and vandalism.

During the debate about the manufactured “nitrogen crisis” in the country and in particular about the farmers’ protests against the tyrannical plans of the Rutte administration, Wybren van Haga (BVNL) lashed out at the cabinet. “The nitrogen hoax is inexplicable,” said Van Haga. He said that farmland was being confiscated for a problem that does not even exist.

Van Haga (BVNL) did not mince words. “Dutch farmers,” he said, “are being ruined by this cabinet on the basis of a non-existent nitrogen problem. Thousands of lives are being destroyed, families are being torn apart and the work of generations is being destroyed.”

The situation is so bad that “several farmers have hanged themselves.” And, indeed, “the right to property is no longer worth anything – farming culture is demonized, the government no longer appears to be a protector of the rule of law.”

Gideon van Meijeren, member of parliament for Forum for Democracy (FVD) was quoted in De Dagelijkse Standaard: “The expropriation plans of the cabinet are a downright declaration of war on the agricultural sector. Under false pretenses, farmers are being robbed of their land, centuries-old farms are being demolished and farmers’ families are being totally destroyed.

“It is terrible to see that several farmers have now been driven to such desperation that they feel compelled to take firmer action to make their cries heard.” He urged the government to stop “the unlawful expropriation plans” based on the nitrogen hoax.

Police filmed attacking farmers
The mainstream Dutch media have painted the farmers’ protests as “violent”. But what really happened during the Dutch farmers’ protests?

Dutch farmers say that the police acted particularly aggressive and violent during the protests near Stroe and Kootwijkerbroek on Tuesday and that media reports about these protests being “violent” are incorrect.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542108404998705155

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1542108404998705155
.12 min

The media showed images of young people who attacked police vans near Kootwijkerbroek with, among other things, demolition hammers. The police arrested 10 people in connection with public assault and attempted manslaughter.

According to the farmers, the information from the police is incorrect. A young farmer told the Barneveldse Krant that they were surprised at the A1 near Stroe by an unknown group that set fire to car tires close to the highway.

“That went very fast and broke down within a minute, but they were not part of us. We don’t know them either. During the invitation to the protest, it was emphatically stated that we would not set fire to tires,” said the farmer’s wife.

In addition, a 19-year-old boy drove a tractor with a tipper that was being chased by police vans. A riot police van tried to overtake the tractor at the cattle grid on Heetweg. Because there was no room on the cattle grid for two large vehicles, the tipper swerved slightly, causing the bus to hit it, his father explained. “That’s why he was arrested for attempted manslaughter, but they just wanted to overtake him where there was no room. Such a charge is really unbelievable,” he said in an extensive interview with the newspaper.

The father, who followed the vehicles in his van, was shot at with an electroshock weapon and beaten in the stomach by riot police and members of an arrest team.

An officer fired his electroshock weapon at his youngest son. “He received a few violent shocks and then also blows from a baton,” he told the Barneveldse Krant.

As a result of the interview, Caroline van der Plas of the BoerBurgerBeweging has once again asked for a statement of facts from the Minister of Justice about the farmers’ protests, now that the stories of the media and farmers do not match. “What really happened? The House must get the facts. On Thursday, the report of the facts was still refused by [PM Mark] Rutte,” complained Van der Plas.

On Wednesday evening, Tim Hoogeveen was arrested during a protest on the A37 near Holsloot. He was suspected of attempted manslaughter because he allegedly ran into a police car with his tractor. Media and politicians once again accused farmers of being “violent”. Justice was unable to determine on the basis of images and statements that it was attempted manslaughter and Tim was released again, reported RTV Drenthe.

Transforming food
A 2020 document from the Rockefeller Foundation outlined an ambitious plan to transform the food system under the guise of Corona. The document was published just after the World Economic Forum announced its Great Reset agenda and titled Reset the Table.

The document argued that the US food system needed to be overhauled with a focus on “social justice” and “protecting the environment”.

The Rockefeller Foundation advocated “sustainable agriculture” and “healthy food”. The WEF focuses mainly on insects as a “sustainable” protein source.

In addition, the Rockefellers advocated digital surveillance and the collection of data on the eating habits of Americans. This is already happening in Europe. Statistics Norway (SSB) has ordered large Norwegian supermarket chains to share all their receipt data with the agency.

Majority of citizens support their farmers
Most Dutch people said they would simply work from home now that farmers were planning to shut down the entire country. This has emerged from a representative survey conducted by Hart van Nederland polling more than 4 100 people. The research also showed that a majority support the large protest action by the farmers.

Farmers are planning to shut down the whole of the Netherlands at the start of the week with actions expected at airports (Schiphol, Eindhoven, Rotterdam and Lelystad), the port of Rotterdam and distribution centres of supermarkets.

Article cross-posted from Free West Media.

 

[marsh]

(COMMENT: The Dutch doings reminded me that the Biden Administrative state is still churning away on this nightmare plan. It might be part of the overall plan to fallow farmland and push producers out of business.)

Details behind Biden's '30 by 30' U.S. lands and oceans climate goal » Yale Climate Connections

The administration's sweeping plans to protect 30 % of U.S. lands and ocean territories by 2030 seeks to capitalize on natural landscapes and resources. The potential is promising, the political obstacles not insignificant.

yaleclimateconnections.org

Details behind Biden’s ’30 by 30′ U.S. lands and oceans climate goal

The administration’s sweeping plans to protect 30 % of U.S. lands and ocean territories by 2030 seek to capitalize on natural landscapes and resources. The potential is promising, the political obstacles substantial.

by BRUCE LIEBERMANMARCH 11, 2021

Among the many goals in President Biden’s climate change agenda, protecting 30 percent of U.S. lands and ocean territories by 2030 is among the most ambitious. And among the most complex.

The administration initiative is likely to face political headwinds in a divided government.
Nevertheless, achieving the “30 by 30” goal could be a critical marker on the road toward a carbon-free future. The reason: Natural landscapes and seascapes are powerful carbon sinks, pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and storing carbon in soil, grasses, shrubs, and trees, coral reefs, sea grasses, and ocean floor sediments.

“It’s impossible to overstate the importance of protecting more of America’s – and the world’s – natural places,” a group of senior staff members at the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote shortly after President Biden’s announcement.

“This life support system … plays a vital role in pulling planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it away,” the NRDC group wrote. “Protecting 30 percent of America’s natural areas will help stabilize the climate, protect biodiversity, and give plants and wildlife a chance to adapt to the warming already baked into our current climate.”

Plan requires ingenuity, consensus, broad commitment

It’ll take a lot of ingenuity, a lot of consensus, and a lot of sustained commitment across the nation to make the 30 by 30 vision a reality. Today, only about 12 percent of America’s land area is under some type of environmental protection, while about 26 percent of the country’s ocean territories are protected. The nation is well on its way to achieving the 30 by 30 goal offshore, but getting to 30 percent on land has a long way to go. In total, it’ll require environmental protections for a combined land area equal to twice the size of Texas.

The challenges notwithstanding, President Biden’s 30 by 30 goal hasn’t come out of thin air.

Scientists, conservationists, environmental organizations, and others have long advocated for protecting natural habitats – primarily to protect biodiversity. Biologist E.O. Wilson, for instance, in his 2017 book, “Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life,” called for 50 percent of the planet to be preserved in its natural state.

But the role of natural landscapes as powerful carbon sinks also has been widely recognized.

Global opposition to clearing rainforests in South America, southeast Asia, and other tropical regions, for instance, not only brings attention to massive losses of biodiversity; it also raises alarm that losing these forests means losing places that store vast amounts of atmospheric carbon.

In their 2019 study, “A Global Deal for Nature,” a group of conservation biologists wrote that protecting natural lands “not only safeguards biodiversity but also is the cheapest and fastest alternative for addressing climate change and is not beholden to developing carbon removal technologies unlikely to be effective or to scale in the time-bound nature of the current twin crises.”

In the U.S., what might 30 by 30 look like? And how will we get there?

President Biden has tasked the Secretary of the Interior, “in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and the heads of other relevant agencies,” to submit a plan by the end of April. The plan must recommend steps the U.S. should take and include input from state, local, tribal, and territorial governments; agricultural and forest landowners; fishermen; and other key stakeholders.

Immediate tools Biden could use

Biden has some immediate tools at his disposal. He has placed a pause on new leases for oil and gas exploration on federal lands and waters, a move that could signal new environmental protections. Some western state senators and representatives have expressed concerns over that pause.

Biden also had ordered a 60-day review of former President Trump’s move to shrink the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah by two-million acres; The New York Times in 2017 described that action as “the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.”

In addition, President Biden could create national monuments on federal public land through the Antiquities Act of 1906, enacted at that time to stem widespread looting of cultural sites across the American Southwest. Numerous presidents since then have exercised that authority. In 2009, for example, former President Bush established the Rose Atoll National Monument, a vast 13,436 square mile expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

During the January announcement of his plan to combat climate change, Biden called for establishment of a Climate Conservation Corps to mobilize people across the U.S. to participate in conservation projects that support the 30 by 30 goal. Biden ordered that Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies develop a strategy within 90 days to “to mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs.” The initiative is charged with seeking to “conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.”

The corps, reminiscent of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, could help raise awareness of climate change challenges and, the administration says, provide people across the country with good paying jobs.

One key issue to be determined: Which 30 percent of land? In which states?

Achieving 30 by 30 will require action on numerous fronts. “A national program to enact 30 by 30 won’t just be a series of new national parks declared by the President, but will include things like national wildlife refuges, national monuments, state-level protected areas, conservation easements on private land, and co-management with tribal leadership,” wrote marine conservation biologist David Shiffman in Scientific American last October. “Local consultation and support will have to be part of it from the beginning, but it won’t be successful without support and leadership from the federal government.”

And it won’t be enough just to protect any land; it will matter significantly which 30 percent is protected. “Conserving a giant, undeveloped stretch of land where little lives and that no one wanted to develop anyway is not especially helpful to biodiversity conservation or climate resilience,” Shiffman wrote. At least some part of every major ecosystem needs to be protected, he wrote.

Privately held lands not excluded

Protecting lands held privately – for instance by individuals, families, or corporations, Shiffman wrote, also will be a critical part of the effort.

More than half of the country’s forests – critical carbon sinks, places that absorb more carbon dioxide than they release – are privately owned. U.C. Berkeley environmental science professors Arthur Middleton and Justin Brashares in the New York Times in December 2020 wrote that “private lands also connect our public lands, providing seasonal habitat for wide-ranging wildlife and clean drinking water, crop pollination, and flood control.” With about 12 percent of the privately land now meeting the 30 by 30 goals, they wrote, protecting the remaining 18 percent “means protecting an area more than twice the size of Texas.”

Maximizing carbon sequestration

What would it take to maximize the potential of natural lands as carbon sinks? An in-depth study of the challenge by a group of scientists in 2018 offered one perspective.

“Natural Climate Solutions for the United States,” published in Science Advances on November 14, 2018, identified 21 conservation, restoration, and improved land management interventions on natural and agricultural lands. The researchers estimated that these measures could potentially sequester the equivalent of 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2025. That’s equal to 21 percent of current net annual emissions of the United States.

More than half of this potential – 63 percent – would come from increased carbon sequestration in plant biomass. Another 29 percent would come from increased carbon sequestration in soil; and 7 percent from avoided emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. Here are some highlights of the study:

• Reforestation is the largest single measure, with the potential to sequester 307 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) annually. Most of this potential occurs in the northeast (35%) and south central (31%) areas of the U.S. This potential can increase to 381 million metric tons of CO2e annually if all pastureland in historically forested areas is reforested. The authors noted that previous estimates have ranged widely from 208 to 1,290 million metric tons of CO2e annually. But the higher estimates require reforesting and afforesting (converting into forests) productive crop and pasture lands as well as natural grasslands.
• Another 267 million metric tons of CO2e annually can be sequestered by better managing forests on privately held land. Maximum potential can be achieved by extending harvest cycles and adopting other practices that reduce the impact of logging.
• Improved fire management on wildlands could result in sequestering 18 million metric tons of CO2e annually. This result includes restoring frequent, low-intensity, understory fires in fire-prone forest ecosystems to reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfires. “In the absence of improved fire management,” the authors wrote, “climate change is expected to continue to increase the frequency of high-severity fires and compromise the ability of forests to regenerate following these fires.”
• Avoiding conversions of forests for other uses could result in the sequestration of 38 million metric tons of CO2e annually. More than two-thirds of this potential, the authors wrote, is located in the Southern and the Pacific Northwest regions of the U.S. The authors noted that many of the places where forest conversion is occurring most rapidly are near urban areas, and also in agricultural areas such as the Central Valley of California.
• Avoiding conversions of grasslands to cropland can prevent emissions from soils and root biomass, resulting in the sequestration of 107 million metric tons of CO2e annually. Cropland expansion impacts grasslands much more than forests, and the higher rate of emissions from converted grasslands is due to a 28 percent loss of soil carbon from the top meter of soil.
• Growing cover crops on the five primary crops in the U.S. that do not currently use them (corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton), which cover more than 217 million acres nationwide, can result in the sequestration of 103 million metric tons of CO2e annually. Cover crops, grown when fields are normally bare, can result in increased carbon added to soils, improving nutrient management and overall soil health.
• Restoring tidal wetlands can also have an important impact on sequestering carbon, and the study estimates that 12 million metric tons of CO2e can be sequestered annually through restoration. About 27 percent of U.S. salt marshes are disconnected from the ocean and vulnerable to freshwater intrusion – which can result in big increases in methane emissions. Reconnecting salt marshes with the ocean, with culverts under roads and other infrastructure, can avoid such methane emissions.
• The study also identifies numerous other lesser measures, such as restoring peatlands, planting windbreaks and legumes in pastures, and better managing manure. Offshore, the authors also pointed to the importance of restoring seagrass. Every year, 1.5 percent of seagrass extent is lost, and about half of the carbon contained in biomass and sediment from disappearing seagrass beds escapes to the atmosphere, the authors estimated.

The potential is great in the U.S. and overseas to sequester carbon through natural solutions. The authors of the “Natural Climate Solutions” study noted that globally, natural climate solutions like the ones discussed above receive only 0.8 percent of public and private climate financing – despite their offering about 37 percent of potential mitigation needed through 2030.

As the Biden Administration pursues its agenda to fight climate change, the 30 by 30 goal will loom large. In their 2019 paper, “A Global Deal for Nature,” the authors argued that the most biologically diverse landscapes – tropical forests, for example – are also some of the most important carbon sinks. “It is no coincidence that some of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on land – natural forests – also harbor high levels of biodiversity,” they wrote. In ocean environments also, “biodiversity is part and parcel to the flux of atmospheric carbon to stored carbonates and deep ocean sediments.”

All of which adds up to the well-reasoned conclusion that striving toward 30 by 30 could benefit life on Earth and also help protect the climate that sustains it. The challenge ahead lies in matching the effort with the opportunity.

 

[marsh]

(COMMENT: I wonder how West VA vs. EPA will effect this? Congress didn't legislate this scheme.)

The Biden administration has a game-changing approach to nature conservation

The America the Beautiful initiative could redefine US conservation as we know it.

www.vox.com

The Biden administration has a game-changing approach to nature conservation
The America the Beautiful initiative could redefine US conservation as we know it.
By Benji Jones@BenjiSJones May 7, 2021, 12:00pm EDT

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visits Bears Ears National Monument near Blanding, Utah, in April. Rick Bowmer/AP

This story is part of a group of stories called
The biodiversity crisis, explained

The Biden administration is about to embark on a historic mission: to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s land and water by 2030.

Since President Joe Biden announced the target, known as “30 by 30,” in January, there’s been a mix of hope, especially from environmental groups, and apprehension, largely from people who earn a living off of the land. On both sides, there’s a heightened focus on the fact that just 12 percent of American land is within permanently protected areas today. The question is: Where will the rest come from?

On Thursday, the Interior Department released a report that starts to answer that question — and it shows the government is trying to overhaul how the country thinks about conservation altogether.

The initiative to reach 30 percent, called “America the Beautiful,” aims to redefine what constitutes “conserved” land, to make that new definition distinct from “protected” land, and to cede power to local communities and tribal nations to reach that target. At the same time, it promises to provide disadvantaged communities with more access to parks and the benefits of nature.

Though details are sparse, the report also suggests the US government is trying to iron out tensions that stem from past conservation programs from national parks, some of which were established at the expense of Native Americans, to regulations on ranch lands.

“We know we have to work across public, tribal, and working lands to be successful,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in a press call Thursday morning. “Conservation works best when it’s about partnership and collaboration.”

The US is among more than 50 countries that have committed to 30 by 30. The target has become a rallying cry for the global conservation movement as it seeks to thwart an ever-increasing crisis of biodiversity loss.

While the US has some of the world’s strongest environmental policies, its species, ecosystems, and natural spaces are in rapid decline. About 12,000 wildlife species are in need of protection to avoid the threat of extinction, the report says. “We are witnessing staggering declines in wildlife populations,” Brenda Mallory, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, said on the press call. “Nature in America is in trouble and Americans across the country are seeing and feeling the impacts.”

Many details remain to be seen, such as how the government will fund the campaign and, specifically, what kind of land will be considered as part of the 30 percent. Yet it’s clear that the plan is monumental — and here’s why.

A working cattle ranch along the Buffalo Fork River in Wyoming. Jon G. Fuller/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

1) The campaign redefines what “conservation” means
In the US, about 12 percent of land and one-quarter of the oceans are within permanently protected areas, including national parks, wildlife refuges, and marine protected areas. What that figure doesn’t include is other areas managed with sustainability in mind, such as farmland enrolled in conservation programs or tribal lands.

According to the report, those managed lands — though not formally protected — could contribute to the 30 percent target under a new and much broader definition of conservation.

(When the Biden administration wrote the 30 by 30 pledge into an executive order, it notably said “conserved” and not “protected.”)

“We want to make sure that we understand and take advantage of working lands,” Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, said on the press call.

How much US land and water will fall under that new definition? No one knows yet.

“Currently, the US government doesn’t have an answer to that question that adequately captures the conservation contributions of tribal nations, farmers, ranchers, forest owners, fishing communities, and others,” Mallory said.

In the coming months, the administration will come up with a system to map and track the area in the country considered “conserved,” called the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas. It will likely show that conserved areas in the US today already amount to well over 12 percent.

2) Indigenous rights and sovereignty are front and center
In a major departure from conservation efforts of centuries past, the new “America the Beautiful” initiative makes the sovereignty and rights of tribal nations a core part of the 30 by 30 campaign. (Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is a Native American and a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe whose territory is in New Mexico.)

Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Native American communities have inhabited the US for millennia, and they have more experience than anyone in land management. Research has also shown that biodiversity tends to decline more slowly on land managed by Indigenous people.

Plus, the US conservation movement is increasingly aware it needs to right past wrongs — when tribes were removed from their lands in the name of protecting “pristine” landscapes, such as when the government created Yellowstone and Yosemite National Park.

Over the next decade, the government will support tribal-led conservation efforts and make restoring Indigenous homeland a priority, the report said. It also calls on federal agencies to help tribal nations access programs that offer funding for conservation projects and to engage with Indigenous people in the management of public land and water. “Tribal nations have been serving as stewards of their land since time immemorial,” McCarthy said.

3) Farms, ranches, and other working lands will contribute to the 30 percent
Biden’s 30 by 30 pledge initially sparked concern among some farming, ranching, and hunting groups, which rely on large swaths of land for revenue. They worried that the goal might add restrictions to the land they use.

“The concerns of farmers and ranchers are escalating regarding the intent of the 30x30 goal, the definition of conservation, and the metrics for defining success,” Zippy Duvall, the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, wrote in a letter to Biden in late April.

US farmers and ranchers have enrolled more than 140 million acres of private land in conservation programs, and they should be recognized for their contribution to conservation, Duvall wrote in the letter. A large number of hunting and fishing organizations have also urged the administration to recognize their contributions toward protecting wildlife and ecosystems.

A man fishing in Kaercher Creek Park in Windsor Township, Pennsylvania. Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
The report suggests the government acknowledged those concerns and will consider many farming, ranching, and hunting lands as part of the 30 percent goal — if they’re managed sustainably. It will also work to expand them through voluntary conservation programs on working lands and by opening up more public land to hunting and fishing.

”The vision we lay out today in this first national conservation goal and report is a win for voluntary conservation practices on working lands,” Vilsack said. “We know that they will help to restore habitat, enhance soil health, and sequester carbon.”

There are already examples of this: Last month, the Department of Agriculture expanded its Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to plant beneficial species and take environmentally sensitive land out of production. Also that month, the Interior Department announced a proposal for the largest expansion of hunting and fishing opportunities in US history.

This is a big deal. In the past, some ranchers and hunters — especially in the West — strongly opposed government efforts to conserve land, which they considered exclusionary. Now, many of them appear ready to get on board. “The report goes out of its way to recognize the concerns raised by Farm Bureau and agriculture, in general,” said Sam Kieffer, an American Farm Bureau Federation spokesperson, in a radio interview Thursday. “It also recognized the contributions that farmers and ranchers have made in conservation.”

4) It will increase access to nature in low-income communities
Access to nature isn’t distributed evenly. People of color and low-income communities generally have been relegated to live in places with fewer green spaces and natural areas. As just one example, 74 percent of nonwhite Americans live in regions with less natural land, such as forests and wetlands, than the state median, compared to 23 percent of white people, according to a report by the Center for American Progress.

Not only do those communities lose out on the many benefits of nature, from clean air to less extreme heat, but they “shoulder a disproportionate share of the costs of nature’s decline,” the authors write. These include the loss of resources for subsistence fishing and hunting, the spread of industrial development, and pollution.

With this in mind, the US government said it will prioritize access to nature in disadvantaged communities as it aims for the 30 percent target. The commitment is in line with a broader goal of the Biden administration to restore environmental justice and channel 40 percent of benefits from government investments to disadvantaged communities.

It’s not entirely clear what steps the administration will take, but Haaland said the National Park Service will soon announce that it’s pouring $150 million into the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program to help underserved communities build more parks.

5) The initiative also seeks to generate a lot of jobs
The pandemic made economic growth and slashing unemployment a huge priority and talking point for the Biden campaign. It’s no surprise to see his team tie job creation to 30 by 30.

The big opportunity is in restoration, another key objective of the initiative. “Restoring forests to a more resilient condition creates jobs and reduces the threat of catastrophic wildfire,” the report says. Many of those jobs will be in rural communities, the authors added.

Biden’s American Jobs Plan plans to create a $10 billion Civilian Climate Corps. The corps would, among other things, employ people to restore lands and waters, which advocates call a win-win.

“Some of the earliest job wins you’re going to see are going to be in the restoration space,” Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, told Vox’s Ella Nilsen in March. “They don’t require materials or construction, new fabrication of different goods and materials. The only thing that’s needed is money.”

A range of groups applauded the report, including environmental organizations and tribal leaders, but there’s still a lot left to hash out. More about setting guiding principles than offering concrete details, the report was a starting point — and so is the 30 percent target.

“30 percent isn’t the end,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo during the press call. “30 percent is the beginning. It’s setting a very strong foundation and we hope [it] will build the momentum for longer-term conservation to benefit current and future generations.”

 

[marsh]

‘30 x 30’ — Progressives pushing for massive federal land grab

VALENTINE, Neb. –

www.thefencepost.com

‘30 x 30’ — Progressives pushing for massive federal land grab

News NEWS | March 5, 2021
By Spike Jordan
for The Fence Post

VALENTINE, Neb. – “Land: see Snatch.”
On first look, the Biden Administration’s “30 x 30” plan looks like a scheme cooked up by Hedley Lamarr, the main villain from Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” However, far from the comedic genius of the late Harvey Korman, the new Federal land grab is a serious threat to private property owners in the United States.
And it’s moving fast.

Just a few days into office, President Joe Biden released a flurry of executive orders, among them being through Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” (86 Fed. Reg. 7,619), which he signed on Jan. 27. Contained in that order is the “30 x 30” program, a radical and aggressive push forwarded by environmental and climate change activists to put 30 percent of the land and water in the United States under permanent protection by 2030.

But what 30 percent of the land will states and private landowners be forced to hand over? In Nebraska, where 97 percent of the state is privately owned property, that number is especially alarming.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts joined 16 other state governors, including Govs. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Greg Gianforte of Montana, and Brad Little of Idaho in a Feb. 22 letter to Biden warning against the potential federal overreach.

“Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers are our state’s original conservationists,” Ricketts said in a news release. “They work day in and day out to cultivate the land and manage water they’ve known for generations in a way that helps grow our state.

“With a new administration taking office, Nebraskans should be on the lookout in their communities for attempts by federal agencies and their partners to regulate land and water use,” he said. “We are already seeing big changes in how the federal government is approaching energy, climate, and conservation issues.”

STAND UP
Property rights advocate Margaret Byfield is the executive director of American Stewards of Liberty and daughter of “Sagebrush Rebel” Wayne Hage, the man behind the first federal lands grazing case filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims. Her organization’s website is https://americanstewards.us, and offers an email newsletter with the latest developments and information on the 30 x 30 plan.

(Read the rest at the website)

 

[marsh]

We Are Witnessing a Stunning Breakdown of Law and Order, and the Overwhelmed Police Seem Powerless to Stop It

This country is not the same place that it was ten years ago. In fact, it is not even close

americafirstreport.com

We Are Witnessing a Stunning Breakdown of Law and Order, and the Overwhelmed Police Seem Powerless to Stop It

BY MICHAEL SNYDER
July 3, 2022



This country is not the same place that it was ten years ago. In fact, it is not even close to the same place that it was five years ago. Violent crime is out of control in many of our major cities, and there aren’t enough police to handle it all. So in many cases a police officer literally never shows up when someone reports a serious crime.

Unfortunately, the number of serious crimes just keeps going up. In 2020, we witnessed the worst spike in violent crime in U.S. history, but 2021 was supposed to be a year when rates of violent crime started going back down. Of course that didn’t happen, and now 2022 is on pace to be even worse than either 2020 or 2021…

Violent crimes are on the rise in six of America’s major cities and set to outpace the already historic levels of 2021 violent crime.

Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New York City are all on pace to break their 2021 levels of violent crime halfway through this year, with the nation’s largest city leading the group, according to crime data reviewed by Fox News.

At this point, violent crime is up 25.8 percent in New York City compared to the first half of last year.

That is staggering.

“It’s getting crazy out there. You never know when you’ll need to leave in a hurry. I have the world’s best bugout bag ready to grab in case of emergency.” — JD Rucker

Of course New York City still has a way to go before it gets as bad as Chicago.

In the Windy City, there are hundreds of thousands of “high-priority emergency service calls” each year, and last year there were no police available to respond to those calls 52 percent of the time…

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.

So if you are the victim of a violent crime in Chicago, your odds of having a police officer available to help you are about the same as guessing a coin flip correctly.

The following is a partial list of “high-priority emergency service calls” for which no police officer was available in 2021…

• 14,955 – assaults in progress.
• 17,828 – batteries in progress.
• 16,350 – person with a gun.
• 5,210 – person with a knife.
• 12,787 – shots fired (reports from people, not the city’s automated “Shotspotter”)
• 1,352 – person shot.
• 887 – person stabbed.
• 14,265 – domestic battery.

Despite numbers such as these, there are lots of people out there that are relentlessly calling for the police to be “defunded”.

Do they want total anarchy?

Because that is what would happen.

Our streets are already bad enough. As you can see from this video, police in Chicago are having a really difficult time even protecting themselves at this point.
If you have over $100,000 in retirement, you can get $10,000 in free silver by opening up a qualifying IRA today.
But Chicago actually doesn’t have the highest murder rate in the nation.
That honor goes to New Orleans…

It’s no secret that New Orleans struggles with violent crime, but new statistics paint a grim picture of the Crescent City being on pace to be the murder capital of the United States if trends don’t change in 2022.

According to data from AH Datalytics, compiled using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, New Orleans has a per capita year-to-date homicide rate of 72 per 100,000 residents. The next three U.S. cities behind New Orleans are Birmingham with a per capita homicide rate of 59 per 100,000 residents and Baltimore and St. Louis, each with a per capita homicide rate of 58 per 100,000 residents.

So far this year, the murder rate in New Orleans is up 44 percent.

But the corporate media is trying to convince us that all of this is perfectly “normal”, aren’t they?

Do you believe them?

One man that will never be fooled is World War II veteran Carl Spurlin Deke. He just turned 100 years old on June 29th, and when he was interviewed by a local news outlet he boldly declared that the U.S. “is going to hell in a handbasket”…

Deke’s gratitude for his life quickly turned into an emotional confession about his concern about the entitlement and ungrateful grievance erupting from younger generations saying, “People don’t realize what they have. They b*tch about it. And then nowadays, I am so upset because the things we did, the things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all going down the drain.” Deke began weeping as he added “Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. We haven’t got the country we had when I was raised, not at all.”

The 100-year-old WWII vet cried for those growing up in America today saying, “Nobody will have the opportunity I had. It’s just not the same. That’s not what our boys, that’s not what they died for.”

Sadly, he is 100 percent correct.

We are in an advanced state of decline, and it is getting worse with each passing day.
If things are this bad now, what will this country look like once economic conditions deteriorate quite a bit more?

Previous generations of young Americans were equipped to handle adversity. This generation of young Americans is not.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all used to be able to take for granted is steadily disappearing, and our society is evolving into a horror show that would have been unrecognizable to previous generations.

If we would have done things differently, we could have gotten much different results. Our choices have consequences, and now most of our major cities are being transformed into crime-infested hellholes right in front of our eyes.

 

[marsh]

Billionaire climate elites have their own rules

BY PAUL DRIESSEN ~Billionaire climate scolds with mansions, private jets want to tell rest of us how to live~ Progressives have long wanted to tax unrealized gains from billionaires’ stocks, bonds,…

selfeducatedamerican.com

Billionaire climate elites have their own rules
2022-07-03

BY PAUL DRIESSEN
~Billionaire climate scolds with mansions, private jets want to tell rest of us how to live~
Progressives have long wanted to tax unrealized gains from billionaires’ stocks, bonds, land holdings, homes, artwork, cars, yachts and other property. As appealing as this sounds, the scheme would be vastly complicated and unworkable. In the absence of sales, who would evaluate current values – and how?

But the frustrations we “commoners” have with the ultra-rich are understandable – especially when they lecture us about eating less “climate-altering” beef, avoiding $5.00 gasoline by buying $60,000 electric vehicles, and bankrolling “experts” who say we should live in 650-square-foot apartments.

So it’s entertaining when some of those billionaires start arguing about who is more saintly (and sanctimonious) when it comes to preventing the alleged Climate Crisis.

Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been quibbling about which of them cares more about climate change. Musk recently refused a “philanthropic opportunity” with Gates because the Microsoft co-founder still has a half-billion-dollar “short position against Tesla,” which Musk says is “the company doing the most to solve climate change.” Gates says he gives more to climate causes than anyone else, including Musk.

However, as happens too often with elites who promote climate activist agendas, when it comes to ensuring human and planetary health, they both ignore evidence, the big picture – and their own lifestyles, including private jets and multiple mansions. They’re not alone.
After spending eight years attacking fossil fuels, former-President Obama installed a 2,500-gallon propane system at his 6,900-square-foot Martha’s Vineyard home, which is apparently safe from rising seas that endanger other coastal properties (resulting from propane, oil and natural gas emissions).

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos led an entourage of 400 luminaries, dignitaries and “green” CEOs flying private jets to the 2021 COP-26 climate confab in Glasgow. Two years earlier, currency manipulator George Soros and 1,500 other “global leaders” hopped their private jets to the World Economic Forum in Davos, once again to focus attention on “sustainability” and “dangerous global warming.” As climate czar John Kerry explained, private jets are “the only choice” for someone as important as he is.

Not to be outdone, Leonardo DiCaprio flew a private jet to New York City in 2016 to accept an environmental award, then flew it back to France a day later. “Climate change is real!” he intoned.

Of course, it’s real. It’s been “real” throughout Earth’s history, and there is no Real World evidence to support assertions that manmade greenhouse gases have replaced the powerful natural forces that drove past climate fluctuations, or that fossil fuel emissions are now causing dangerous warming and weather.

Computer models are not evidence, and their predictions generally conflict with actual world events. Why should we disrupt our energy, economy and living standards because models claim there’s a crisis? Yet models are always the last refuge for the false prophets of climate Armageddon.

In reality, far more people die in cold weather than in hot spells, and a slightly warmer planet would be quite beneficial for both humanity and the plant and animal kingdoms.

There is simply no credible evidence that today’s climate fluctuations and weather events are due to fossil fuels, instead of the same natural forces that have operated throughout Earth history. Tornado records show fewer violent twisters 1950-1985 than during the 36 years since. Not a single Category 3-5 hurricane made U.S. landfall for a record 12 years (2005-2012).

Three especially “brutal” droughts during a 200-year dry spell caused the Mayan civilization to collapse by 930 AD. Multiple droughts struck the Chaco Canyon (Four Corners) region 1130-1450, helping to end the Anasazi civilization. Extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar, causing political unrest and war, and fostering the spread of Islam. The Pleistocene glacial epochs and Little Ice Age brought “frozen droughts” to Europe, Asia and North America.

Even worse than the fake science and endless fear-mongering, their proposed
remedies to the Climate Crisis would be far more harmful to people and planet than the warming and weather they worry about.

Replacing fossil-fuel (and nuclear) electricity generation would mean blanketing the planet with millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of backup battery modules, thousands of mines to produce the raw materials for these technologies (mostly Chinese-operated), and hundreds of landfills for worn-out, 300-foot-long wind turbine blades and other dilapidated “green energy” equipment. (Thankfully the United States has a huge, thus far unused landfill: Arizona’s Grand Canyon.)

The ease with which billionaire climate club members do business with China also conflicts with gnerally accepted standards of environmental and human rights ethics.

Musk is quite cozy with the Chinese Communist regime. From taking billions in regime-funded loans, to speaking at their embassy, to building a factory in Xinjiang amid the Uyghur genocide, he is surprisingly comfortable working with a state founded on ideologies of totalitarian hatred and abuse.

Gates stretched the limits of U.S. security laws to help China build nuclear reactors suitable for powering naval vessels, even as China continues making strategic long-term moves to control ever-larger swaths of the Pacific and surpass U.S. naval power in this critical region.

Incredibly, but understandably, these billionaires almost never) criticize Xi Jinping’s regime. In fact, Musk has met with communist officials on multiple occasions and frequently says China “rocks” – even though it is by far the world’s biggest emitter of plant fertilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) and toxic pollutants.

In fact, in 2019 China’s greenhouse gas emissions were nearly 2.5 times those of the United States – and more than all the world’s developed nations combined. In CO2 equivalent, China emitted 14.1 billion metric tons that year – more than a quarter of the entire world’s emissions.

Musk even stopped serving on President Trump’s advisory panels, to protest Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the meaningless Paris climate agreement that’s actually a treaty.

So why are Musk and Gates so quick to criticize America – but never reprimand the People’s Republic? They clearly don’t live by the environmental principles they preach and won’t even criticize the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitter, toxic chemicals polluter, and child and slave labor practitioner.

Still worse, the policies they promote would harm global public health. As Congressman John Curtis (R-Utah), founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, recently noted, “killing American fossil fuels just causes them to be replaced by dirtier foreign sources, in particular Chinese and Russian.” Perhaps, Mr. Curtis suggested, we should instead start “attacking carbon emissions, not energy sources, through carbon capture, American innovation, natural solutions, and other paths that boost the American economy while reducing global emissions.”

Over the last decade, the U.S. has reduced CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world. Yet, Musk, Gates and fellow jet-setters continue to support policies like the Paris accord, which would impose major restrictions on the U.S. while allowing China to continue increasing emissions through 2030.

Perhaps, instead, we should just stop trying to reduce CO2 emissions, since that monumental and costly global effort is driven by demands that we prevent a “manmade climate crisis” that doesn’t actually exist.

If these climate activists wish to make a difference in human and environmental health around the world, they need to change their perspective and their relationship with Communist China. They need to begin looking at Real World climate and weather evidence, and practicing what they preach.

Unfortunately, they’re unwilling to do so. They’d rather make noise (and more billions) than safeguard us commoners’ economy and living standards, or support true productive change in America and abroad.

 

[marsh]

Sen. John Kennedy has some advice for Biden and the mayors of several major cities on how to deal with skyrocketing crime 2:47 min

Sen. John Kennedy has some advice for Biden and the mayors of several major cities on how to deal with skyrocketing crime
The Post Millennial Clips Published July 3, 2022

Sen. John Kennedy has some advice for Biden and the mayors of several major cities on how to deal with skyrocketing crime.

 

[marsh]

Michael Yon @MichaelYon​ Jul 4, 2022 at 12:51pm​

Am Going Live with the Excellent Allison Morrow in about five mins​ Will talk about Netherlands, farmers, and hostile take over.​

View: https://youtu.be/CD3Fqolv4uw
1:11:23 min

Dutch farmer blockades - LIVE in Amsterdam! || Michael Yon

Streamed live 3 hours ago


Alison Morrow

Dutch farmers continue their protests as ships have joined in at ports. They're battling ongoing crackdowns of nitrogen and ammonia. Michael Yon, a longtime war correspondent, is live in Amsterdam.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Dutch Protesters Pour Manure On Government Offices Over Industry-Killing Regulations

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 06:45 AM

Dutch farmers who have been protesting for weeks over the government's radical plan to cut nitrogen emissions by 50% - 95% by 2030 have taken things to the next level - pouring manure on government offices in response to the plan which would cause widespread chaos - including the death of 1/3 of Dutch farms.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542190883243802627

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1542190883243802627
.37 min

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543300949870927873

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1543300949870927873
.45 min

Pissed off protesters became aggressive with police last week, with angry farmers demanding that the Hague backtrack on their 'green' agenda.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542182990108827649

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1542182990108827649
.26 min

Dutch farmers have been protesting in the streets for days against the government’s plan to target the livestock sector with nitrogen emission cuts.

Bloomberg also reported last week that several farmers showed up to parliament with cows in tow to protest the policy - with some threatening to slaughter them on the spot.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1541724873944342528

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1541724873944342528
.40 min



"If the nitrogen measures are adopted, one of these two ladies [cows] will not go home but will receive a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse," said farmer Koos Cromwijk in a statement to Dutch news agency ANP outside parliament (via The Counter Signal).

Farmers laying flowers for all the farmers who commited suicide because they couldn't take it anymore. 3 farmers in the last 2 weeks. https://t.co/DYQRP8WsUd
— Yvonne ️‍ (@yvonderks) July 3, 2022

Last week Dutch farmers also blocked the border between Holland and Germany, while even bigger protests are slated for July 4.

Very angry Dutch farmers block border between Holland and Germany. Harsh protests in many Dutch cities after politicians' decision to closes dozens of farms and cattle ranches to reduce nitrogen by 30% - 70% to comply with EU regulations on nitrogen pollution. pic.twitter.com/uKYXj0gvD8
— RadioGenova (@RadioGenova) June 30, 2022

Meanwhile, farmers in Spain are coming out against inflation for fuel and essential goods.

Spanish farmers are on board too.https://t.co/3Wh5KEBmXf
— Canamerish (@YourBrainstem) July 2, 2022

And what did the Dutch government have to say about the new law?

"The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business."

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

German Energy Giant In Talks Over €9 Billion Bailout Package

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 01:00 PM
Remember when Germans laughed at Donald Trump in 2018 for saying they had become "totally dependent" on Russian energy? Well... yhey aren't laughing now.

View: https://youtu.be/1JpwkeTBwgs
3:14 min

Just a few days after we reported that the stock of German gas and power utility Uniper - and the single largest importer of Russian gas in Germany - crashed after the company slashed its outlook and said it was in talks with the government to secure liquidity, potentially including a full-blown bailout from the German government after Russia reduced natural gas deliveries to Europe, on Monday Bloomberg reports that the giant utility is in advanced talks with the German government over a bailout package of as much as 9 billion euros, (or $9.4 billion).

The government is looking at applying a set of measures, including loans, taking an equity stake and also passing part of the surge in costs onto customers, said two people familiar with the talks.

As part of the plan, Reuters reported earlier that Germany’s government is preparing legislation that will allow it to take stakes in utilities and impose emergency levies on consumers as ministers are scrambling to deal with the impact of soaring energy prices on electricity firms after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Economy Minister Robert Habeck recently warning of “a Lehman effect” as suppliers face soaring costs to meet obligations to customers. The new law will also allow for customers to shoulder more of the burden of rising gas prices. The cabinet is set to approve the bill this week.

Uniper shares sank another 28% on Monday, taking the company’s market value to 4.14 billion euros, just shy of its all time low. The stock was worth roughly 4x more at the start of the year.



Germany, which has built its economic model on a cheap common currency (which has crushed Europe's periphery ) to avoid the strong Deutsche mark, and even cheaper Russian gas, is wrestling with a squeeze in supplies and surging fuel prices as Moscow punishes Europe for its support for Ukraine. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has warned the gas crunch risks triggering a collapse in the market, similar to the role of Lehman Brothers in the financial crisis.

The surge in energy import prices has crushed Germany's exporting powerhouse, sending its trade balance plummeting and as shown in the chart below at this rate Germany faces an unprecedented outcome: a negative trade balance, something that has not happened since the early 1990s.



German utilities have been urging the government to impose a levy on consumers to help offset the rising cost of gas. Analysts estimate that curbed Russian flows are costing Uniper 30 million euros a day.

Meanwhile, Habeck has said that the squeeze on Russian flows may get worse, and warned of the risk of a domino effect of failing companies. The broader economy is also in peril as the government is trying to contain the fallout for consumers and industry. Plans have been drafted for rationing, with Germany’s vast industry poised to suffer shortages.

“We aren’t dealing with erratic decisions but with economic warfare, completely rational and very clear,” Habeck said on Saturday. “After a 60% reduction, the next one logically follows.”

Well, maybe if it is all "rational and very clear", then Germany should not have sided with Ukraine in the all too real war taking place just a few hundred miles east of Germany.

So just how will Germany add another company to its bailout roster? According to Bloomberg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz signaled at the weekend the government could use bailout tools created during the pandemic to rescue Lufthansa in the current crisis.

“The federal government should be given options along the lines of the Lufthansa aid,” a Reuters source said.

Lufthansa’s bailout saw the state taking a 20% stake in the airline through an Economic Stabilization Fund, but without being able to exercise shareholder voting rights. The airline was not allowed to take over other companies until 75% of the state aid had been repaid, and its shareholders and managers could not benefit from taxpayers’ money, meaning dividends and bonus payments were put on hold.

Decades after de-regulating their energy markets, governments across Europe are intervening to prop up utility companies buckling under sky-high prices, while also protecting consumers from soaring costs. Several European energy suppliers have gone bust over the past year, where they have had long-term contracts with customers and have been unable to pass on the swift spike in prices.

To try to shield consumers from soaring energy bills, governments have also turned to windfall taxes on oil and gas companies, subsidies and discounts.

Russia is Germany’s top supplier of gas, making it more exposed than other European states to an economic war with Moscow. Soaring prices have heaped political pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who on Monday will meet unions and employers to try to build a consensus on fighting inflation, reviving a concept established in 1967 in response to economic recession that ended the country’s post-war boom.

Meanwhile, Germany’s government has warned of possible energy shortages and rationing in the winter months if it cannot fill its gas storage quickly enough.

“The hope of filling the gas storage facilities to some extent by winter could be torpedoed by Russia at any time. Then there are hardly any compensatory possibilities left,” said a note from Sentix that tracks investor morale in the euro zone.

“In Germany, some ideological boundaries have to be crossed to prevent a “Lehman moment” in the energy sector,” it said, referencing the U.S. bank whose demise help triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

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Despite Opposition From His Closest Advisors And Supporters, Biden Expected To Roll Back China Tariffs As Soon As This Week

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 12:15 PM

Joe Biden woke up on July 4, failed miserably when trying to read one word from the teleprompter...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543717758667730944

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1543717758667730944
.11 min

... and decided that the most patriotic thing the president could do, was leak that tariffs imposed on China by the Trump administration could be rolled back as soon as this week, a decision which the WSJ said is constrained by competing policy aims: on one hand addressing inflation (because supposedly easing tariffs will somehow shrink inflation) while on the other hand maintaining economic pressure on Beijing, not that that has been a policy goal of Joe Biden, who has become China's de facto Manchurian candidate courtesy of his son Hunter.

Citing 'people familiar with the situation', the Journal writes that what comes next could include a pause on tariffs on consumer goods such as clothing and school supplies, as well as launching a broad framework to allow importers to request tariff waivers.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is conducting a mandatory four-year review of the Trump-era tariffs. A comment period for businesses and others who have benefited from the tariffs will close July 5, giving the administration an opportunity to calibrate its policy.

A tariff rollback would mark Biden's first major policy step on trade ties between the world’s two biggest economic powers. The president in recent weeks held a number of meetings with senior economic advisers where options for a decision on the Trump-era tariffs were discussed, Bloomberg adds citing its own sources.

Hints that the Biden administration is considering an easing in some of the tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports have multiplied as inflation has accelerated, putting pressure on US officials to find ways to tamp down prices paid by consumers for everyday merchandise.



Biden said last month he’ll be talking to Chinese President Xi Jinping “soon” and told reporters he was “in the process” of making up his mind about whether to lift tariffs. Some members of Biden’s Cabinet suggested he use the upcoming call with Xi to ask him for reciprocal tariff cuts on American goods currently facing import duties, though that idea was quickly shot down, the people said.

Meanwhile, as he weighs a decision, Biden has been buffeted by policy disagreements both within his administration, and by outside forces including business, labor and lawmakers, which is why a plan to announce a tariff cut has been repeatedly postponed, as it reflects the "sharp divisions" within his own administration over the China tariffs.

Among his own cabinet, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen - who recently admitted her cluelessness is behind the most catastrophic inflationary juggernaut unleashed in the US in more than 40 years - has called tariffs a drag on the economy, saying the administration is looking at ways to reconfigure them to help curb inflation. Yellen has said some of the inherited tariffs aren’t strategic and don’t address China’s unfair trade practices.

“Reconfiguring some of those tariffs so they make more sense and reducing unnecessary burdens is something that’s under consideration,” Yellen said in an interview with ABC News on June 19.

Most of Biden's cronies, however, take the opposite view to that of the senile trasury secretary: on the other side are U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and National security adviser Jake Sullivan, who see tariffs as valuable leverage in getting concessions from China. These skeptics want a tariff cut paired with another measure designed to keep pressure on Beijing to change practices that the U.S. says put American companies and workers at a disadvantage.

Among the possible steps are raising tariffs on strategic items such as industrial machinery and transportation equipment, while lowering duties on consumer goods. The U.S. also could start a fresh investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act focusing on China’s industrial subsidies on high-tech items, a policy the USTR has been preparing for months. Such a policy could lead to tariffs on a new set of products.

“From the domestic political perspective, there are two very strong, competing concerns. One is the need to be perceived as fighting inflation. And the other is the need to be seen to be very strong in standing up to China,” said Claire Reade, a longtime China official for the USTR who is now at the law firm Arnold & Porter.

“The question is how do you take all of these divergent concerns and harmonize them into one policy?” she said.

The catalyst behind the highly unpopular decision is an even more unpopular byproduct of the Biden administration - soaring prices. The White House has been struggling in vain to contain the fallout from high prices for food, gas and other consumer items, which will decimate the Democratic Party in the November midterm elections.

Unsurprisingly, economists say removing Chinese tariffs isn’t likely to have a dramatic impact on inflation. Peterson Institute analysts Megan Hogan and Yilin Wang estimate that removing tariffs on Chinese imports could lower consumer-price index inflation by a marginal 0.26 percentage point at first. But “as U.S. corporations trim their markups to compete with imports,” that might eventually lead to a 1-percentage-point reduction in inflation, they added.

Meanwhile republicans including Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) and others have rightfully pointed out that, for more than two years after the tariffs were introduced, there were few signs of inflation or discussions linked to their impact on consumer prices.

“Wouldn’t removing these tariffs simply encourage more bad behavior,” Hagerty asked Tai at a recent hearing. “What kind of message would it send to China?”

At the same time, proponents of tariff reduction - most of them generously funded by China - say it is important for Biden to show he is serious about fighting inflation, possibly by pausing tariffs on consumer goods purchased by American households. As the Federal Reserve is primarily responsible for controlling inflation, tariff reduction is one of the few policy options available to the president. Biden himself has said in recent weeks that he is considering a tariff cut, noting that the levies were introduced by the previous administration.

Of course, this being the Biden administration where every incremental decision only lead to more chaos and pain, a decision to drop tariffs would only lead to even more acute attacks on the White House as it was Biden's own advisors such as Tai (previously appointed by Biden) who has repeatedly defended the tariffs as a useful tool in confronting China over its trade practices.

“The China tariffs are, in my view, a significant piece of leverage, and a trade negotiator never walks away from leverage,” Ms. Tai told a Senate subcommittee meeting on June 22.
For its part, China has long pressed the U.S. to ease the tariffs, contending they hurt both countries.

“With inflation rates running high across the globe, the U.S. needs to lift all the additional tariffs imposed on China, as this will serve the interests of businesses and consumers and benefit both countries and the world at large,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a June 15 press conference.

As the main weapon of his trade war with China, former President Donald Trump imposed tariffs ranging from 7.5% to 25% on Chinese imports worth roughly $370 billion over four rounds between July 2018 and September 2019. The action was based on the findings of a Section 301 investigation over China’s practices related to technology transfer and intellectual property.

While early rounds of the tariffs were placed on strategic items closely linked to the investigation, the lists were later expanded to consumer goods as Trump officials ramped up pressure on Beijing.

There is one reason why we should be skeptical that Biden will order tariff cuts: labor unions and progressive Democrats, who have had a decisive sway on Biden’s trade policy, are among the most vocal opponents of tariff cuts. Among them are the members of the Labor Advisory Committee advising the USTR, representing top unions including the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers and Service Employees International Union.

They noted that nothing has changed in China’s practices since Trump’s 301 investigation that would merit lifting the tariffs. If anything, they wrote, Beijing has “only doubled down on their strategy and approach.”

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Here We Go Again: The Fed Is Causing Another Recession

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 09:00 AM
Authored by Jon Wolfenberger via The Mises Institute,

Cause of the Boom-Bust Business Cycle
The primary cause of the recurring “boom and bust” business cycle is central banks like the Federal Reserve creating money out of thin air. This was first explained by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises over a century ago. His student F.A. Hayek won the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on this theory, which is now known as Austrian business cycle theory.


The basic outline of Austrian business cycle theory is as follows:

1. the government “central bank” (in the US, it is the Federal Reserve or “Fed”) creates money out of thin air (they effectively “print it,” although typically in the form of digital entries now), usually by buying Treasury bills or bonds from commercial banks, which then …
2. is deposited in commercial banks which, through the process of fractional reserve banking (where banks are legally allowed to keep only a fraction, such as 10 percent, of their deposits in cash reserves), create even more money out of thin air to lend to their customers, which then …
3. leads to lower interest rates than would prevail in a free market without a central bank and fractional reserve banks legally creating money out of thin air, which then …
4. causes businesses and consumers to borrow the newly created money to invest in long-term projects such as mines, factories, houses, etc., since the profitability of those investments appears higher now with a lower cost of capital, which then …
5. leads to the unsustainable “boom” phase of the business cycle where scarce capital is misallocated to unsustainable investments since the real resources of raw materials, equipment and labor needed to finish these long-term projects are not physically available; while paper money may literally grow on trees, the actual scarce resources needed to create goods and services do not (printing money does not create the goods needed for profitable investment—if it did, Zimbabwe would be the wealthiest country in the world and we could all stop working, saving and investing); then …
6. the higher money supply leads to higher price inflation, which raises production costs and usually causes the central bank to slow the growth rate of money supply and raise interest rates to try to lower inflation (if they do not, it will eventually lead to hyperinflation, which effectively destroys a functioning currency and economy), which then …
7. leads to the “bust” phase of the business cycle, where the unsustainable investments are proven to be unprofitable and must be liquidated to allocate capital to the most productive uses that meet consumer desires.

As this theory shows, the dreaded boom and bust business cycle is not inherent in a free market economy. It is caused by the legal privilege granted to central and fractional reserve commercial banks to create money out of thin air. As Mises summarized:

True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks.

They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.

Fed Panicked Over Covid
As a result of the stock market crash and global economic collapse caused by government covid policies in early 2020, the Fed panicked and aggressively increased the money supply by 40 percent, more than double the increase in the money supply in prior recessions, as shown below (which is the “Austrian money supply,” calculated as M2 less small time deposits and retail money market funds plus Treasury deposits at the Fed).



This massive money creation resulted in the highest inflation rates in over forty years, with the latest CPI report showing inflation at 8.6 percent, well above the Fed’s 2 percent target. And now that money supply growth has slowed substantially to only 7 percent —and the Fed-controlled monetary base (currency plus bank reserves at the Fed) is now declining 2.6 percent year over year — the economy is starting to slow.

Recession Signs Are Mounting…
Economic growth has already weakened substantially. US gross domestic product fell 1.4 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and the Atlanta Fed is now estimating 0.0 percent GDP growth in the second quarter.

Real personal income is down 3.5 percent year over year, and was down 17 percent in March, the biggest decline in over sixty years. Real manufacturing and trade sales are now down 2.5 percent year over year. This broad sales measure only declines in recessionary periods, as shown below (recessionary periods are shaded gray).



Interest rates have been skyrocketing due to high inflation and slower money supply growth. The ten-year Treasury yield increased from 1.19 percent last summer to 3.25 percent now, while the two-year Treasury yield increased from 0.13 percent last summer to 3.17 percent now. The thirty-year fixed mortgage rate has risen from 2.77 percent last summer to 5.78 percent now, which is causing a collapse in mortgage applications and homebuilder sentiment.

The “yield curve” spread between the ten-year and two-year Treasury yields has now flattened to only 0.08 percent. This spread “inverted” briefly a couple of months ago when the two-year yield rose above the ten-year yield. It could easily invert again soon. As shown below, a flattish or inverted yield curve spread between the ten-year and two-year Treasury yields has occurred before every recession in recent decades.



The spread between high-yield “junk” corporate bonds and Treasury yields has risen to the highest levels since the covid panic of 2020, as junk bond investors start to price in the risk of a recession, as shown below.



Copper is known as “Dr. Copper” for its ability to predict recessions due to its sensitivity to the economy. Copper prices have fallen 20 percent in the past three months.

Initial unemployment claims are the best leading indicator of employment. They have been rising steadily for the past three months, as shown below (weekly claims are the black line and the four-week moving average is the red line).



The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey has fallen to the lowest levels in over forty years, as shown below.



Similarly, The Conference Board CEO Confidence survey has fallen to recessionary levels, as shown below.



Proven leading economic indices have weakened to recessionary levels. The Economic Cycle Research Institute’s Weekly Leading Index, which leads the US economy by at least six months, has declined from a high of around +28 percent last year to –6.3 percent now. This highly regarded economic forecasting firm has recently gone public with their forecast for a coming recession.

The Brave-Butters-Kelley Leading Index has fallen well below the –1 threshold that signals with 86 percent accuracy that a recession is likely to start within eight months, as shown below.



Now the Fed Is Trying to Crash Financial Markets and Cause a Recession
Normally, the Fed would be slashing interest rates and printing money to try to prevent a recession and stock bear market at this point, which they tried and failed to do in the early 2000s Tech Bust and 2008–09 Great Recession.

But instead, the Fed is being forced to hike rates aggressively to try to bring inflation down. They already hiked the Fed Funds rate to 1.50 percent to 1.75 percent and will need to hike at least 1.50 percent more to catch up to the two-year Treasury yield.

The Fed is explicitly saying they want to lower bond, stock and housing prices and raise unemployment. They say they can do all of that without causing a recession. That is clearly a fantasy.

As Bill Dudley, former president of the New York Fed and vice chairman of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee, has said in recent months:

The Fed’s application of its framework has left it behind the curve in controlling inflation. This, in turn, has made a hard landing virtually inevitable….
To create sufficient economic slack to restrain inflation, the Fed will have to tighten enough to push the unemployment rate higher….
Getting inflation down will be costly, in terms of jobs and economic growth….

Investors should pay closer attention to what Powell has said: Financial conditions need to tighten. If this doesn’t happen on its own (which seems unlikely), the Fed will have to shock markets to achieve the desired response. This would mean hiking the federal funds rate considerably higher than currently anticipated. One way or another, to get inflation under control, the Fed will need to push bond yields higher and stock prices lower….

So far, financial conditions really haven’t tightened very much….
The Fed has to push up the unemployment rate, when the Fed has done that in the past, it has always resulted in a recession….
It is very unlikely that a year from now we will be at this level of bond yields this low and this level of stock prices this high.

As shown below, despite the stock and bond bear markets, financial conditions remain very easy, according to the Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index.



Conclusion
If the Fed succeeds in tightening financial conditions enough to try to maintain their reputation as an “inflation fighter” (i.e., trying to lower the inflation they created in the first place), this will likely be the biggest government-caused economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, as we predicted here last year.

 

[marsh]

Americans Facing Widespread Blackouts Due to Biden's Green Energy Push, Expert Warns - Slay News

Millions of Americans are "incredibly" vulnerable to the risk of widespread blackouts this summer due to Democrat President Joe Biden's green energy push, a leading expert is warning.

slaynews.com

Americans Facing Widespread Blackouts Due to Biden’s Green Energy Push, Expert Warns

Frank BergmanJuly 4, 20224 Comments

Millions of Americans are “incredibly” vulnerable to the risk of widespread blackouts this summer due to Democrat President Joe Biden’s green energy push, a leading expert is warning.

Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director at Power the Future, warns that every area of the United States could be in danger.

According to Turner, the “entire country” is facing “a huge energy shortage” because of the Biden administration’s policies that push to convert to green energy sources while taking traditional sources of power offline.

“I think the entire country is incredibly vulnerable because the entire country is facing a huge energy shortage and I don’t think there is any place that is truly safe,” Turner told Fox News.

At issue are blackouts that could become widespread across the country this summer as grid operators struggle to meet the increased demand.

The problem has been plaguing some states for years but the threat is now expanding to impact much of the country.

Turner said some states are under increased threat this year, especially those that have made political pushes to switch over to so-called sources of “green energy.”

“The areas of the country I’d be most concerned about are the ones that already have inherent weaknesses,” Turner said.

“Texas, California, New Mexico, New York, all of New England.

“These are areas whose policies and political decisions have weakened their electric grid.”

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The potential outages come as many states have moved to quickly take plants that produce traditional sources of energy such as coal and natural gas offline.

Instead, states are switching production over to renewable energy sources, which currently do not have the capacity to keep up with the demand of a hot summer.

Part of the issue with renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar is that it is dependent on variables outside human control.

Some areas do not have enough wind or sunshine to continuously produce power, for example.
Batteries are in development that could help store excess energy production for later use, but the technology is currently expensive and not fully developed.

That could force grid operators into tough decisions to maintain the integrity of the overall electric grid when demand picks up.

However, Turner argues that the move to renewable energy is a mistake altogether.

The Midwest is particularly vulnerable this summer, even though it has for decades been more immune to the rolling blackouts and brownouts that typically plague the West.

Regulators in Illinois have warned of controlled outages that could occur this summer.

One electric company is even sending a warning letter to customers during potential heatwaves.

“A recent generation capacity auction has revealed that the Midwest could fall short of needed generation capacity to serve the summer peak load under certain conditions,” SouthEastern Illinois Electrical Cooperative said in the letter.

“In the event that this happens, your Cooperative would be directed to disconnect a portion of the load in order to prevent an electric grid failure.”

Critics have blamed the potential shortages on Illinois’s Democrat Gov. J. B. Pritzker.

Pritzker has vowed to move the state to 100% renewable energy by 2045, which has caused investment in traditional sources of energy generation to plummet.

“If you look at any country worldwide, or any state in America, that has pushed green energy mandates by government action, not one of them has been successful,” Turner argued.

“And you can measure that on multiple levels of success, in terms of what they’ve actually purported to or claim that they would produce in terms of electricity, reliability, cost.
“In terms of actual construction, or cost to the consumers.”

Meanwhile, Turner argued that the outages are most likely to affect everyday Americans and won’t likely impact the wealthy elite.

“They will choose what neighborhoods go into darkness,” Turner said.

“Look who they shut off,” Turner said.

“Have you ever seen a Kardashian complain about lack of power or Silicon Valley… Facebook’s headquarters?

“They’re all fine… they’re never the ones plunged into darkness.

“Just watch and see what neighborhoods get turned off,” he continued.

“Watch and see what happens in neighborhoods in California, New Mexico, and New York that are turned off the grid.

“That will tell you what our politicians think about their constituents and will tell you what effect the green agenda has on our country.”

 

[marsh]

US energy producers roast Biden over gas prices tweet

US energy producers have hit back at Joe Biden after the president tweeted that 'companies running gas stations' should simply 'bring down the price you are charging at the pump'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

US energy producers roast Biden over gas prices tweet they suggest is written by a 'White House intern' who should 'register for Econ 101 for the fall semester'

• President Joe Biden tweeted that 'companies running gas stations' should simply lower their prices
• But the U.S. Oil & Gas Association roasted Biden for the tweet on Sunday, telling the president to 'please make sure the White House intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester'
• Jeff Bezos took issue with the same tweet, with billionaire accusing Biden of putting US on wrong track
• Gas prices had been climbing to daily record-highs for weeks until mid-June before easing somewhat

By RACHAEL BUNYAN FOR MAILONLINE and ELIZABETH ELKIND, POLITICAL REPORTER and PAUL FARRELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 06:27 EDT, 4 July 2022 | UPDATED: 06:28 EDT, 4 July 2022

US energy producers have hit back at Joe Biden after the president tweeted that 'companies running gas stations' should simply 'bring down the price you are charging at the pump'.

The U.S. Oil & Gas Association roasted Biden for the tweet, telling the president to 'please make sure the White House intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester'.

The jibe comes after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took issue with the same tweet, with the billionaire suggesting Biden is either ignorantly or knowingly putting the United States on the wrong track.

Biden tweeted from his official White House handle on Saturday: 'My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril.

'Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now.'

But Biden faced criticism for the tweet, with the U.S. Oil & Gas Association tweeting in response: 'Working on it Mr. President. In the meantime - have a Happy 4th and please make sure the WH intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester.'

Meanwhile, Bezos criticized Biden for calling on companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, which have soared to about $5 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Bezos said Biden's remarks amounted to 'either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.'

'Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,' the US billionaire tweeted Saturday.

Gasoline prices at the pump have become a symbol of broader price rises in the United States, and they are sapping Biden's approval rating ahead of midterm elections in November.

US energy producers have hit back at Joe Biden after the president tweeted that 'companies running gas stations' should simply 'bring down the price you are charging at the pump'

The U.S. Oil & Gas Association roasted Biden for the tweet, telling the president to 'please make sure the White House intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester'

Meanwhile, Bezos criticized Biden for calling on companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, which have soared to about $5 a gallon in many parts of the country

Biden has regularly attacked oil companies, saying they only care about profits and not the well-being of the average consumer.

The companies say in turn they have increased production to try to tame prices but that these are set on the world market and are subject to dynamics that are not under the control of US oil giants.

The Biden administration hit back at Bezos on Sunday, with John Kirby, the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, saying his boss would take 'great exception' to being accused of misdirecting the American people during an interview on Fox News Sunday.

'The American people are facing pain at the pump, clearly, now we're at what - $5 per gallon? And the president is working very, very hard across many fronts to try and bring that price down,' the spokesman continued.

He highlighted Biden's initiatives toward lowering gas prices in recent months, all of which had done little to abate the surge that only subsided within the last three weeks.

Working with G7 leaders toward a price cap on Russian oil, releasing record numbers of oil the US's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and calling on Congress to pass a three-month summer gas tax holiday are the measures Kirby listed.

'If everybody cooperates on this, we can bring the price down at least by about a dollar a gallon,' he claimed.

Kirby said Biden 'knows the impact high gas prices have on the American household.'
Asked specifically about Bezos' 'misdirection' accusation, Kirby said 'anybody who knows President Biden knows he's plainspoken.'

'He tells you exactly what he's thinking and in terms that everybody can understand,' Kirby said. 'So I think we obviously take great exception at the idea that this is somehow misdirection.'

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said the White House would take 'great exception' to accusations of misdirecting the American people

The president sent out the message days after telling Americans that they will have to endure high gas prices for as long as it takes Ukraine to defeat Russia

The president's message caught the attention of the third richest person in the world, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos

During the 2020 election cycle, Amazon donated $1.7 million to the Biden campaign but the company while donating $164,000 to the Trump campaign

'The president is speaking honestly with the American people about what he's trying to do to bring the prices down but he was honest even before the invasion.'

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also defended Biden and said on Twitter Sunday that oil prices have dropped about $15 a barrel over the past month.

'But prices at the pump have barely come down. That's not 'basic market dynamics.' It's a market that is failing the American consumer,' she wrote.

Gasoline prices have been above $5 a gallon since early June, which is unprecedented in the car-crazy nation. Prices have fallen slightly since, but remain far from the $3 a gallon level of a year ago.

Biden's tweet came amid the July 4th holiday weekend where Americans are paying an average of $4.81 for gas as of Sunday.

The president's statement was also mocked by Chinese state media reporter Chen Weihua.

The communist mouthpiece sent a sarcastic tweet highlighting how Biden was seeking to undermine the principles of supply and demand which dictate prices in a free-market economy like that of the United States.

Weihua tweeted: 'Now US President finally realized that capitalism is all about exploitation. He didn't believe this before.'

The reporter tweeted something similar to Biden in 2021 when he responded to the president's tweet that read: 'Let me be clear: capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's exploitation.'

Weihua wrote then: 'Capitalism is all about exploitation. Period.'

Biden's tweet earned praise from Chen Weihua, a reporter and columnist for the state owned China Daily. Weihua is based in Brussels, Belgium

Another of those who responded was Texas Senator Ted Cruz who tweeted:'My message to the guy running your teleprompter. It's YOUR fault. Reverse the dozens of executive orders, regulations & agency actions targeting American energy, and gas prices will fall... FAST. #Bidenflation.'

The president made a similar plea to oil giants in a June 22 speech that read in part: 'These are not normal times. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you are paying for the product.'

Biden begging for companies to reduce prices comes shortly after his administration failed to sell even his own party on a 90-day gas tax break.

According to an NBC report, if the tax break went ahead, the average American would only save 12 cents per gallon.

As the price of gas continues to skyrocket for American consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the Biden administration 'plans to block new offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.'

Since March 2022, the president has sought to lay the blame for inflation at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin calling inflation: 'Putin's price hike.'

A Democratic Party strategist told Politico in June that the catchphrase was not resonating with voters saying: 'It's not meeting voters where they are. It's much more important to feel their pain than explain it.' The article quoted other strategists who said that the phrase sounded more like 'blame-shifting than problem-solving.'

Last money, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell broke with the Biden administration in admitting that inflation was already high prior to Russia invasion of Ukraine in February.

Although the plan does allow for oil companies to lease drilling areas in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska's Cook Inlet until 2028.

Back in 2020, while Biden was running for president, his campaign promised to stop new oil and gas drilling on federal land and water.

In a one-on-one debate with fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders, Biden said: 'No more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore – no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill – period.'

Vice President Kamala Harris said on the same day as the president's tweet that lowering gas prices was 'probably' the Biden administration's top priority

During an appearance at the New Orleans Saturday for the Essence Festival of Culture, Vice President Kamala Harris told WDSU that lowering the price of gas is 'probably' the Biden administration's top priority.

Harris said: 'The President and our administration's probably highest priority is bringing down the price of gas and cost of living.'

Meanwhile earlier this week at a NATO summit in Madrid, Biden said Americans will have to put up with high gas prices for 'as long as it takes' due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Following those remarks, New York Republican Congressman Andrew Garbarino took aim at the president attempting to blame Russia's invasion of Ukraine for the price of gas on Fox Business Network's 'Mornings with Maria.'

Garbarino also said: 'In November 2020, gas prices were around 43 — a barrel of oil was $43 a barrel. And now, a month before Putin invaded Ukraine, it was $87. So, it was already doubled in one year of his presidency.'

The congressman went on to call Biden's excuses 'a joke.'

'Stand firm' on high gas prices for, 'future of liberal world order"

On July 1, Biden economic advisor Brian Deese said that Americans should 'stand firm' on paying record-high gas prices because the 'future of the liberal world order' is more important.

'What do you say to those families that say, 'listen, we can't afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?' the director of the National Economic Council was asked on CNN Thursday.

'What you heard from the president today was a clear articulation of the stakes. This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm,' he replied.

Deese added: 'At the same time, what I would say to that family and Americans across the country is you have a president and an administration that is going to do everything in its power to blunt those price increases and bring those prices down.'

Majority of Americans now want Biden to prioritize tackling inflation over Russia after sending more than $5billion in military aid to Ukraine

President Biden promised the U.S. would be making sacrifices 'as long as it takes' for Ukraine, but a new poll shows public appetite for unchecked support is waning.

Polling conducted by YouGov shows that 40 percent of Americans think the U.S. should be less involved in conflicts abroad, 12 percent think the U.S. should be more involved and 31 percent think involvement should stay about the same.

Asked what Biden's main priority should be right now, 53 percent said lowering inflation or fixing the energy crisis, 8 percent said ensuring a defeat of Russia in Ukraine.

Forty-six percent said that they oppose the U.S. becoming directly involved in combat in Ukraine, 21 percent neither support nor oppose and 23 percent support the U.S. becoming militarily involved, according to the poll, obtained first by the Washington Examiner.
Biden has promised not to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Forty-four percent of respondents said they did not approve of Biden's handling of the war in Ukraine, 36 percent said they approve.

YouGov sampled 1,000 people from June 23 to June 29.

The U.S. has given almost $60 billion to Ukraine since the Russian invasion - $5.5 billion from the Biden administration, and $54 billion authorized by Congress. That figure does not include the tens of billions worth of American weapons and equipment transferred to Ukraine.

Concerns have mounted in Congress about the Pentagon's ability to monitor the sudden influx of cash for Ukraine and to track the thousands of U.S. weapons headed to the nation.

Meanwhile, Russia has refocused its efforts on Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Vladimir Putin said this week there is 'no use in setting an end date' to what he calls the 'special military operation in Ukraine.' Neither Russia nor Ukraine are likely to want to come to the negotiating table and make concessions any time soon.

 

[marsh]

A Hidden Alliance of former WEF Young Global Leaders working in Lockstep to enforce the Great Reset include Macron, Trudeau, Ardern, & Boris Johnson

How is it that more than 190 governments from all over the world ended up dealing with the Covid pandemic in almost exactly the same manner, with lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination cards now…

expose-news.com

A Hidden Alliance of former WEF Young Global Leaders working in Lockstep to enforce the Great Reset include Macron, Trudeau, Ardern, & Boris Johnson
BY THE EXPOSÉ ON JULY 3, 2022 • ( 19 COMMENTS )

How is it that more than 190 governments from all over the world ended up dealing with the Covid pandemic in almost exactly the same manner, with lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination cards now being commonplace everywhere?

The answer may lie in the Young Global Leaders school, which was established and managed by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (“WEF”), and that many of today’s prominent political and business leaders passed through on their way to the top.

A hidden alliance of political and corporate leaders is exploiting the pandemic with the aim of crashing national economies and introducing a global digital currency, and these leaders include President of France Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson.

This isn’t fiction, it’s fact. Just listen to the President of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, himself say the following –

“I have to say when I mention or names like Mrs Mirkle, Vladimir Putin and so on they have all been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, but what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, the President of Argentina and so on. So we penetrate the cabinets.

“So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of his cabinet are Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum.”

The story begins with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is an NGO founded by Klaus Schwab, a German economist and mechanical engineer, in Switzerland in 1971, when he was only 32. The WEF is best-known to the public for the annual conferences it holds in Davos, Switzerland each January that aim to bring together political and business leaders from around the world to discuss the problems of the day.

Today, it is one of the most important networks in the world for the globalist power elite, being funded by approximately a thousand multinational corporations.

The WEF, which was originally called the European Management Forum until 1987, succeeded in bringing together 440 executives from 31 nations already at its very first meeting in February 1971, which was an unexpected achievement for someone like Schwab, who had very little international or professional experience prior to this.

The reason may be due to the contacts Schwab made during his university education, including studying with no less a person than former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The Forum initially only brought together people from the economic field, but before long, it began attracting politicians, prominent figures from the media (including from the BBC and CNN), and even celebrities.

In 1992 Schwab established a parallel institution, the Global Leaders for Tomorrow school, which was re-established as Young Global Leaders in 2004. Attendees at the school must apply for admission and are then subjected to a rigorous selection process.

Members of the school’s very first class in 1992 already included many who went on to become important liberal political figures, such as Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Tony Blair.

Source

There are currently about 1,300 graduates of this school, and the list of alumni includes several names of those who went on to become leaders of the health institutions of their respective nations. Four of them are former and current health ministers for Germany, including Jens Spahn, who has been Federal Minister of Health since 2018. Philipp Rösler, who was Minister of Health from 2009 until 2011, and was then appointed the WEF’s Managing Director by Schwab in 2014.

Other notable names on the school’s roster are –

• Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand whose stringent lockdown measures have been praised by global health authorities;

Source

• Emmanuel Macron, the President of France;

Source

• Sebastian Kurz, who was until recently the Chancellor of Austria;
• Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary;
• Jean-Claude Juncker, former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and President of the European Commission;
• Annalena Baerbock, the leader of the German Greens;
• Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia;
• Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada;

We also find California Governor Gavin Newsom on the list, who was selected for the class of 2005, as well as former presidential candidate and current US Secretary of Transportation Peter Buttigieg, who is a very recent alumnus, having been selected for the class of 2019.

All of these politicians who were in office during the past two years have favored harsh responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and which also happened to considerably increase their respective governments’ power.

But the school’s list of alumni is not limited to political leaders. We also find many of the captains of private industry there, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Virgin’s Richard Branson, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the Clinton Foundation’s Chelsea Clinton.

Again, all of them expressed support for the global response to the pandemic, and many reaped considerable profits as a result of the measures.

And if you don’t believe Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom isn’t in on it with his “build back better” slogans, then just take a look at this image of him taken at a World Econimic Forum Young Global Leaders event.

Leaders who have been groomed by the WEF have infiltrated Governments around the world and they have worked in lockstep to implement ridiculous, Draconian restrictions under the guise of an alleged virus that kills less than 0.2% of those it infects.

The following text is taken from a document released by the Rockefeller foundation in 2010 titled ‘Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development’. It describes a future scenario playing out which the document terms as the ‘Lockstep Scenario’.

Source

In 2020, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike the 2004 SARS epidemic, this new coronavirus strain—origin unknown—was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing millions in just seven months.

The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers. The pandemic blanketed the planet—though disproportionate numbers died in care homes, where the virus spread like wildfire in the absence of official containment protocols.

The United Kingdom’s initial policy of “strongly discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.K but across borders.

However, a few countries did fare better—China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter post-pandemic recovery.

China’s government was not the only one that took extreme measures to protect its citizens from risk and exposure. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.’

You will have noticed a few words within the article which we highlighted in bold. These are words that we changed in order to bring the document in line with the current scenario playing out across the world – the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.

A grand total of just 9 words is all that we needed to change to ensure the full text; written in 2010 by the Rockefeller Foundation, fully represented the alleged Covid-19 pandemic. Just nine words.

We’re either living in the age of coincidence or we are watching a very carefully thought out plan play out before our eyes.

 

[marsh]

Farmers' Protests: The Government Sends an Army of Police Officers to Deal With Blockade 1:25 min

(Dutch) Farmers' Protests: The Government Sends an Army of Police Officers to Deal With Blockade
Red Voice Media Published July 4, 2022

Several dozen (possibly more) police officers have been sent to fire tear gas at protesters and disperse the blockade of a distribution center in Heerenveen.
Source: https://t.me/thespreadeagle/20918

^^^^
Dutch Fishermen and Farmers Unite Against Arbitrary Climate Restrictions .22 min

Dutch Fishermen and Farmers Unite Against Arbitrary Climate Restrictions
The Vigilant Fox Published July 4, 2022

In solidarity with the farmers' protest against nitrogen emissions restrictions, fishermen joined the cause and blocked several ports.
Source: Real Time News

^^^^^
Dutch Farmers Turn up Heat on the Government and BLOCK Distribution Centers and Supermarket Chains .22 min

Dutch Farmers Turn up Heat on the Government and BLOCK Distribution Centers and Supermarket Chains
The Vigilant Fox Published July 4, 2022

"No farms, no food."
Source:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543955748471930882

View: https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1543955748471930882?s=20&t=heqpZYcZcMteNPHQhu_-_w


^^^^
Epic Scenes in the Netherlands: The Dutch Farmers Aren't Messing Around .20 min

Epic Scenes in the Netherlands: The Dutch Farmers Aren't Messing Around
The Vigilant Fox Published July 4, 2022

The government picked the wrong people to mess with.
Source:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543988839294930944

View: https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1543988839294930944?s=20&t=8C3NyVFLCcDaB0w_4PzoOQ


^^^

 

[marsh]

Reiner Fuellmich: Update On Actual Trials For Crimes Against Humanity 1:09:27 min

Reiner Fuellmich: Update On Actual Trials For Crimes Against Humanity
Sunfellow on COVID-19 Published July 4, 2022

Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer join Maria Zeee to discuss how actual trials for crimes against humanity may move forward. According to Fuellmich and Fischer, trials could begin in the United States by holding pharmaceutical companies liable for the damages they have inflicted on people with their COVID-19 vaccines.
You can stay updated with Dr. Fuellmich's work here:
Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Dr. Fuellmich

 

[marsh]

Farmers & Fishing Boat Convoy/Protest Netherlands, Total Shutdown 16:19 min

FARMERS & FISHING BOAT CONVOY/PROTEST NETHERLANDS, TOTAL SHUTDOWN

• WATCH

I have been watching this daily to see whats developing, they have locked down pretty much the entire nation. As on an hour ago they have also blocked access to/from Germany.
Every motorway is also blocked.

 

[Tristan]

'Liberal World Order' Biden Regime Talking Point Backfiring Bigly & Going Viral - Kayleigh McEnany 1:21 min

'Liberal World Order' Biden Regime Talking Point Backfiring Bigly & Going Viral - Kayleigh McEnany
Red Voice Media Published July 2, 2022

"So in their most lucid moments, they are admitting that when you pump your gas, when you see, as I did, you know, 100 something dollars, that's intentional. They want you to get rid of your car. They want you to move to a clean energy vehicle. It's all part of the great liberal transition"

There is no way for everyone to move to a "Clean Energy vehicle".

It's just not in the cards. It's physics and math. Minerals and Money.

So, what they intend is something else. Something different.

Can you discern what that is?

 

[raven]

There is no way for everyone to move to a "Clean Energy vehicle".

It's just not in the cards. It's physics and math.

So, what they intend is something else. Something different.

Can you discern what that is?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL7beNWNLEQ

Let's ride with the family down the street
Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet
We'll have a gay old time.

What'd I win?

 

[marsh]

Dutch farmers have blocked highways from other countries, cut off media, food distribution centres.. .45 min

DUTCH FARMERS HAVE BLOCKED HIGHWAYS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES, CUT OFF MEDIA, FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTRES..

• WATCH

Dutch farmers have blocked highways from other countries, cut off media, food distribution centres, and the fishermen have blocked the ports with their boat. THIS IS HOW ITS DONE! The Netherlands is resisting the Great (Bullshit) Reset.

^^^^
Tractors, Trucks, and cars are taking to the highways of the Netherlands to protest the WEF laws! .10 min

TRACTORS, TRUCKS, AND CARS ARE TAKING TO THE HIGHWAYS OF THE NETHERLANDS TO PROTEST THE WEF LAWS!

• WATCH

RIGHT NOW: Tractors, Trucks, and cars are taking to the highways of the Netherlands to protest the new WEF laws that protesters say will destroy farming in the country as they know it.

^^^^
THEY PICKED THE WRONG FIGHT TAKING ON THE FARMERS IN THE NETHERLANDS .40 min

THEY PICKED THE WRONG FIGHT TAKING ON THE FARMERS IN THE NETHERLANDS

• WATCH

^^^^

 

[marsh]

US PUSHES EU TO CUT ENERGY USE AS BLOC DITCHES GREEN AGENDA 3:36 min

US PUSHES EU TO CUT ENERGY USE AS (G-7) BLOC DITCHES GREEN AGENDA

• WATCH

(COMMENT: It is collapsing faster than they envisioned and they need to get control over the rate of collapse so they can extract billions from public coffers and investment portfolios. Too many people are waking up to the war against them.)

 

[Tristan]

Cutting production by 3 million barrels a day would push global prices to $190, analyst Natasha Kaneva wrote.

Kaneva warns that the worst-case scenario of a 5-million-per-day cut would send the price of a single barrel to $380.

Take that, everyday citizens of the world.

But fear not, your 'Leaders' won't have their lifestyles impacted whatsoever.

I'm sure you can find some comfort in that, at least.

 

[marsh]

There is no way for everyone to move to a "Clean Energy vehicle".

It's just not in the cards. It's physics and math. Minerals and Money.

So, what they intend is something else. Something different.

Can you discern what that is?

I think of it as a war. The globalists (Liberal World Order) want top down control over every aspect of your life so that they can re-order it according to their ordered plan for humanity. This war encompasses making you dependent upon them for everything you need - food, shelter and energy. They often use the foil of the environment -Climate Change, pollution, - carbon emissions, (now nitrogen emissions - Dutch, ) as a justification for their actions. They will take the war on you down to famine, eviction, no heating or light to get people helpless, weak, isolated and desperately dependent.

As Michael Yon points out, they typically select an antagonist to demonize. In the Dutch case, it is the farmers. This has also been used in the US. (I made a 30 year career out of defending them. The PTB wanted their water, their land and to push them off grazing on public lands.)

The EV push will create dependencies and limit range of movement. Those who can't afford them will have support for their fossil fuel vehicles phased out, ripe for demonization and leaving them more dependent. It is a way of separating the public along economic and ideologic lines. Those who have them will find they will soon be unable to charge them at home because of neighborhood electrical delivery system capacity limitations. They will be assigned a charging time slot at a charging station, thus limiting their travel range. CBDC will further control the amount of rationed energy that can be justified for their use.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Saudi Ex-Spymaster Pens Scathing Op-Ed On "Rethinking The Global Order"

MONDAY, JUL 04, 2022 - 04:00 PM

With Saudi Arabia reportedly in discussions to join BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and President Biden set to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) - who he vowed to make "the pariah, that they are" during the 2020 elections over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi - a July 4 Op-Ed by former Saudi spymaster Turki bin Faisal Al Saud over the current state of affairs may provide key insight at this particular moment in geopolitics.



In short, while fundamentally endorsing the UN's globalist agenda, Al Saud argues that those leading the current international order have "failed to live up to the principles of good governance enshrined in the UN charter," and that hypocritical world leaders "need to come to their senses" and reform "deeper structural problems" in order to adapt to the new, multipolar order pushed by Russia and China.

"Our organizing principles still reflect the mentality of the post-war and Cold War era," he argues, citing a UN report that concluded major reforms were needed.

Authored by Turki bin Faisal Al Saud via Project Syndicate (emphasis ours),
For decades, it has been obvious that the UN system needs to be reformed to account for the realities of the twenty-first century. Yet recommendations to restructure global governance have been ignored by those with the power to carry them out, leaving us with a world of multiplying crises for which there are few solutions.

BAKU – Just as the world was beginning to recover from one of the biggest crises in recent decades, another one has erupted in Europe. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic underscored our common humanity, Russia’s war on Ukraine has reminded us of how fragile, interconnected, and interdependent our world is. As the Chinese say, “All is one under heaven.”

Intensifying great-power confrontations and deglobalization are jeopardizing world peace and security. New crises seem to be lurking around every corner, but appropriate solutions are nowhere to be seen – not in the Far East, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, or Latin America. The popular mood has darkened, reinvigorating populism, nationalism, Islamophobia, and other atavistic trends that threaten the progressive achievements humanity has made since World War II.

The Ukraine crisis itself is a symptom of deeper structural problems in the international order. That order, led by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), has failed to live up to the principles of good governance enshrined in the UN Charter.

New global orders tend to emerge from major wars. In the case of WWII, the victors created structures designed to preserve international peace and security. But while our increasingly integrated world has changed dramatically since the UN’s founding, our organizing principles still reflect the mentality of the post-war and Cold War era. Within the current framework, a failure to respond to global challenges is a failure of the entire international community.

Can the system be reformed? Calls since the early 1990s to restructure the UN system – the avatar for the broader international order – have consistently fallen on deaf ears. Worse, Russia and China are now using their seats at the helm of the international order to push for a more multipolar system. Rather than working to reform the current framework, they are challenging its validity.

Humanity’s collective achievements over the past seven decades are a testament to why we must work together to make the UN system more fair, inclusive, and attentive to people’s needs and aspirations. Indeed, that was the mission of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in 2003.

Consisting of 16 eminent figures from different parts of the world, and chaired by former Thai Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun, the panel analyzed contemporary threats to international peace and security; evaluated how well existing policies and institutions had done in addressing those threats; and offered recommendations aimed at strengthening the UN and enabling it to provide collective security for the twenty-first century.

The panel’s final report made clear that all of the UN’s principal organs needed reform, including the Security Council, which the panel argued should be expanded.

Unfortunately, the Security Council’s veto-wielding permanent members simply ignored the panel’s recommendations, setting the stage for today’s paralysis and dysfunction.

The Middle East is especially in need of a well-functioning, genuinely representative UN system. No region has suffered more from the unfair bipolar and unipolar dynamics of the past. We have been the altar on which the principles of the international order are routinely sacrificed. The same principles that led to the creation of the State of Israel also led to the Palestinians being deprived of their homeland and denied their basic rights to self-determination and statehood.

As the Middle East has gone from one war to another, from one catastrophe to another, and from one UN resolution to another, justice has continuously eluded it. Every time an Arab, Muslim, or Middle Eastern issue comes up, the hypocrisy of the great powers that lead the international order becomes crystal clear.

The leaders of those powers need to come to their senses. Reforming the existing order requires new thinking by all UN member states, including the Security Council’s five permanent members. The international order can preserve peace and security only to the extent that it is equitable and capable of meeting the challenges that humanity faces. Short of that, geopolitical upheavals will continue to threaten world peace and security.

* * *
His Royal Highness Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, was the Director General of Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah, Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency from 1977 to 2001, and has served as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States.

 

[marsh]

Via Michael Yon:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_K_GjBbe1w
25:05 min

Supreme Court Uproots the Administrative State; Biden Calls to Drop Filibuster to Codify Roe V. Wade

Streamed live 11 hours ago


Crossroads with JOSHUA PHILIPP

(Philipp talks about the decision laying out that agencies cannot skip the normal legislative process of going through Congress, passing a bill and having it signed by the President. Where an agency has skipped that Constitutional process and created its own rules, those rules are illegitimate.)

Watch the full live Q&Ahttps://ept.ms/ConstitutionalYT

^^^^
Quoted on above show:

Power Plant Emissions Regulations - Harvard Law School

The Biden administration set a goal of creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050. This is a compilation of our legal analyses, podcasts, and tracker posts about the Biden administration’s efforts to advance these rules, including rebuilding...

eelp.law.harvard.edu

Harvard Law School

Program News

• Latest News
• Featured Publication: What to know about the SEC’s Proposed Climate Risk Disclosure Rule
• Featured Podcast: Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus on West Virginia v. EPA, What’s Next?
• Featured Student Work: EPA’s Revived Clean Cars Waiver for California

Power Plant Regulations
The Biden administration set a goal of creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050. To achieve those targets, the administration is taking a whole-of-government approach. EPA has a key role in the regulatory effort for the power sector. Below is a compilation of our legal analyses, podcasts, and tracker posts about the Biden administration’s efforts to advance these rules, including rebuilding the regulations that the Trump administration rolled back.

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
Read moreMERCURY AND AIR TOXICS STANDARDS (MATS)
Read moreNEW SOURCE REVIEW
Read moreCOAL ASH RULE
Read moreCROSS-STATE AIR POLLUTION RULE (CSAPR)
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.

ONCE IN ALWAYS IN GUIDANCE FOR MAJOR SOURCES UNDER THE CLEAN AIR ACT
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.
GREENHOUSE GAS NEW SOURCE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS FOR POWER PLANTS
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.
NATIONAL AMBIENT AIR QUALITY STANDARDS FOR PARTICULATE MATTER AND OZONE
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.
POWER PLANT STARTUP, SHUTDOWN, AND MALFUNCTION RULE
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.
POWER PLANT EFFLUENT LIMITS
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.
REGIONAL HAZE RULE
Read our Regulatory Tracker post about this rule.

^^^^^

text:

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA

www.law.cornell.edu

Phillipp says what just ended was the ability of agencies to do whatever they want. Or the ability of the President to create a new agency and allow it to create new laws - the unelected bureaucrats, the Deep State who became the real power in this country.

Counterpoint to Kuo:: Gregg Phillips of 2000 Mules





The rest is behind a paywall.

(COMMENT: A friend of mine who is a Congressman and a farmer, was moaning about water allocations for next year. I asked him how much of that directive was federal and whether it was from agency rulemaking or Congressional law. I don't think it has hit them what this decision means and what could be challenged. Of course, California has its own environmental bureaucratic tyranny, so I think we still have that issue here. CA Constitution would apply on those. Other states may see some relief on the federal level. Of course, I hope they go after the US Forest Service good and hard.)

 

[marsh]

Supreme Court Targets the Real Enemy

www.theepochtimes.com

The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington on Dec. 10, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

BUSINESS COLUMNISTS
Supreme Court Targets the Real Enemy

By Jeffrey A. Tucker
July 1, 2022 Updated: July 4, 2022

News Analysis
The flurry of rulings from the Supreme Court has everyone’s head spinning. The most significant among them, even if it doesn’t capture all the headlines, is West Virginia v. EPA. The majority opinion is impressive, but the part I found truly wonderful is the concurring opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

This is where we see things headed, toward a major and much-welcome curbing of the power of the administrative state.

Just to review what this thing is, it’s an unelected bureaucracy that rules the country without oversight from voters or legislatures. For well over 100 years, most courts have given it a pass, just assuming that the “experts” in the bureaucracies are handling things just fine, faithfully interpreting legislation, and merely creating rules for easy compliance.

Generations have gone by as this fourth branch of government has grown in size, scope, and strength. For the most part, its baneful impositions have been felt by one business or one industry at a time. You have heard the stories. The car dealer complains about how the Department of Labor is making him crazy. The machine-parts manufacturer is going bonkers about letters from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The energy company can never satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

They are stories and we find them unfortunate, but we’ve generally avoided thinking of these as systematic, all-pervasive, and truly dangerous to the idea of freedom itself. However, there are some 432 of these agencies. The authors of the Declaration of Independence noted their existence back in the day when they accused the English king of having “erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”

They fought a revolution to end the tyranny but now we have a home-grown form, starting in 1883 with the Pendleton Act and continuing throughout the 20th century as each new administration creates its own bureaucracy.

The thing has taken on a power of its own. Strangely, the topic hardly comes up at all during elections, and that’s for a reason. Politicians running for office like to advertise their power to make change. They might even believe it. In reality, though, elected officials have very little influence over the conduct of public life relative to the administrative state.

As Trump found, not even the president is a match for the deep state.

Here’s what has happened since March 2020: The beast showed its face. Seemingly out of nowhere, these strange agencies and people for whom we never voted were ruling our lives.

They restricted travel, forced us to cover our faces, closed our churches and schools, and forbid our businesses from operating unless they were big enough to afford a powerful lobbying arm in Washington. The whole scene was appalling. It caused many people—including some earnest judges—to take notice.

Once you see the problem, you can’t unsee it.

Consider the problem with inflation alone: it’s largely the responsibility of the Federal Reserve, which is among the most terrifying of the deep-state agencies. This thing was founded in 1913 with the promise that it would end “wildcat banking” and contain the expansion of money and credit so that we would have a more stable economic environment to encourage growth.

Even now, people believe that the Fed is going to somehow fix recessions and inflations, even though a deeper analysis reveals that the Fed itself is the cause of both. The Fed surely can’t be both the problem and the solution, which is becoming as obvious as the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can’t make a textbook pathogen go away with power and potions.

Let’s take a quick look at the supposed 2 percent inflation target of the Federal Reserve. It might seem to you that they have long ago blown past this, such that it is entirely cosmetic. But the Fed has a little trick up its sleeve. It says it doesn’t follow conventional inflation indexes such as the Consumer or Producer Price Index. It’s fancier than that. It follows instead the index of Personal Consumption Expenditures. And, sure enough, when we look at the PCE, we find that the Fed is pretty good at its job!

All that changed recently when the PCE itself blew up. Now, the Fed has been revealed to be utterly incompetent, in a way that is no different from the CDC, NIH, DOL, DOE, DOT, HHS, DHS, FTC, SEC, and all the rest of these glorified 3-letter agencies employing nearly 3 million people who can’t be fired or controlled. The unique feature of our times is that the expert class in government has been unmasked as fakes at best and unrelenting menaces at worst.

Here’s where the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation stands today:

(FRED/Jeffrey A. Tucker)

So much for competence at the Fed! And yet, how exactly is this institution supposed to be controlled? We don’t vote for them. The Fed board is appointed by the president with Senate approval but this control is mostly mythical. The fancy economists run circles around the political actors with big words and fancy finance, so what can they do but approve?

The political class too often acts like absentee owners of a far-off land: they have little choice but to trust the hired landlords to do a good job. The administrative machinery has become the real power, not only implementing the policies but making and enforcing the rules too.

With COVID-19, this whole scam was revealed to absolutely everyone—not just to small businesses but to every single individual and family in the United States. The whole bureaucracy announced to us what they have always believed but rarely said: your life is not your own. Your job is to comply. And so, this raises the fascinating question of what precisely are we going for here and what kind of society and government do we want? Surely this should be up to the people!

While the Supreme Court in its most recent decision was dealing with a technical aspect of how regulations applied to a coal plant, the implications of the decision are much larger. The EPA was determining policy, even making it, riffing wildly on legislation with the presumption that courts will always and everywhere defer to the agency over industry and even over the words of the legislation. The court said no: it was the EPA that had been operating illegally all along.

This decision is so startling because it shows a Supreme Court doing what it is supposed to do, serving as a legal check on the power ambitions of government itself. That’s what the framers intended. We’ve just begun, however. The court needs to attack the whole machinery of the deep state at its very root, going after “Chevron deference” (1984), the Public Health Services Act (1944), the Federal Reserve Act (1913), and stretching all the way back to the Pendleton Act (1883).

A nation ruled by a faceless deep state isn’t a representative democracy and it isn’t consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

When you consider the implications of this one decision, they are awesome. It doesn’t just apply to the EPA and its elaborate plans for changing the global climate through command and control. It also applies to every other agency, including the CDC and even the Fed itself.

They all should be accountable to the people through their elected representatives. If we can’t get back to that system, we will lose everything.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

 

[marsh]

In the End, It Will Be the Decision of the American People to Fight for our Constitutional Republic or Submit to Tyranny - The Time Is Now | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

Guest post by Lawrence Sellen If You Are Not Yet Convinced Of The Need For A Second American Revolution, Then Read This The following are the annotated statements of Founding Father Samuel Adams from his article “The Rights of the Colonists” in The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to...

www.thegatewaypundit.com

In the End, It Will Be the Decision of the American People to Fight for our Constitutional Republic or Submit to Tyranny – The Time Is Now
By Joe Hoft
Published July 4, 2022 at 9:30am

Guest post by Lawrence Sellen

If You Are Not Yet Convinced Of The Need For A Second American Revolution, Then Read This

The following are the annotated statements of Founding Father Samuel Adams from his article “The Rights of the Colonists” in The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

The Biden regime, together with its allies in the World Economic Forum and the Chinese Communist Party, consider those natural rights, not unalienable endowed by the Creator, but as privileges dispensed or withdrawn according to the convenience of the state.

Call it globalism, communism or neo-Feudalism, the intent is the same, to establish a world government by an international ruling class, who exploit the land for personal profit and rule over billions of people without liberty or property.

The usurper Biden has already declared that our rights guaranteed under the Constitution are “not absolute” and is actively in the process of eliminating them, in particular, the Second Amendment, upon which all of our other freedoms depend.

The totalitarian Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum said, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

Is the Biden regime’s ongoing deliberate demolition of the U.S. economy a North American sequel to Mao Zedong’s 1958 to 1962 Great Leap Forward, a policy that led to the deaths of up to 45 million Chinese, easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder in history?

Do Americans really want to wait to find out?

Samuel Adams also wrote:

“The Legislative has no right to absolute, arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people.”

Can any American today honestly believe that Washington, D.C. represents the interests of and is accountable to the people as defined by the U.S. Constitution?

The Democrat Party has permanent control of the federal bureaucracy, which is composed of unelected officials, who have the power to comprehensively regulate our lives and punish us when we don’t comply.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in particular, have become political weapons against Democrat Party opponents, which has created a two-tier system of justice.

In our current de facto one-party state, Republicans play the role of court eunuchs.

The Republican Party has seceded from its voters and should be abandoned as a political vehicle capable of providing any effective opposition to the Biden regime, the Democrats or the mainstream media. It too is a party of the ruling class and the Deep State.

Once elected, members of Congress serve only their own interests, and that of their party and its wealthy donors. Petitioning Congress for the redress of grievances is an exercise in futility.

Now that our elections have proven to be a sham and our political system has been shown to be hopelessly corrupt, Americans who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law must choose either to resist or to submit to a one-party totalitarian state.

On this July 4, 2022, we must heed the words of another Founding Father, John Adams:

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

More recently, President Ronald Reagan said:

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

The United States is no longer a functioning constitutional republic.

American Colonists eventually realized that freedom could only be secured by the action of those who desire it, not as an indulgence granted by distant rulers.

Likewise, there will be no restoration of our constitutional republic emanating from Washington, D.C. from where it has been systematically dismantled to sustain a system riddled with greed and corruption.

If history is any indicator, do not expect the predicted Republican “red wave” in the November mid-term elections to significantly change anything in Washington D.C.

True change can only arise bottom-up. In the end, it will be the decision of the American people to fight for our constitutional republic or submit to tyranny.