GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

[marsh]

Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is in decline." 1:46 min

Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is in decline."
The Post Millennial Clips Published July 30, 2022
Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is weak. The United States under this regime is in decline."

 

[marsh]

UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global 'War on Farmers': Experts

The escalating regulatory attack on agricultural producers from Holland and the United States to Sri Lanka and beyond ...

www.theepochtimes.com

A sign of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is seen at the Congress centre during its annual meeting in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

US NEWS
UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War on Farmers’: Experts

They say 'Agenda 2030' development goals at root of sustainability policies that could lead to food shortages

By Alex Newman
July 26, 2022 Updated: July 27, 2022

The escalating regulatory attack on agricultural producers from Holland and the United States to Sri Lanka and beyond is closely tied to the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” Sustainable Development Goals and the U.N.’s partners at the World Economic Forum (WEF), numerous experts told The Epoch Times.

Indeed, several of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are directly implicated in policies that are squeezing farmers, ranchers, and food supplies around the world.

High-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members within the U.N. system helped create the SDGs and are currently helping lead the organization’s implementation of the global plan, The Epoch Times has previously documented.

If left unchecked, multiple experts said, the U.N.-backed sustainability policies on agriculture and food production would lead to economic devastation, shortages of critical goods, widespread famine, and a dramatic loss of individual freedoms.

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), is seen at the opening of the WEF Davos Agenda in Cologny, Switzerland, on Jan. 17, 2022. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)

Already, millions of people worldwide are facing dangerous food shortages, and officials around the world say those are set to get worse as the year goes on.

There is an agenda behind it all, experts told The Epoch Times.

Even private land ownership is in the crosshairs, as global food production and the world economy are transformed to meet the global sustainability goals, U.N. documents reviewed by The Epoch Times show.

As explained by the U.N. on its SDG website, the goals adopted in 2015 “build on decades of work by countries and the U.N.”

One of the earliest meetings defining the “sustainability” agenda was the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, which adopted the Vancouver Declaration.

The agreement stated that “land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that private land ownership is “a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

“Public control of land use is therefore indispensable,” the U.N. declaration said, a prelude to the World Economic Forum’s now infamous “prediction” that by 2030, “you’ll own nothing.”

Numerous U.N. agencies and officials have outlined their vision of “sustainability” since then, including calls for drastic restrictions on energy, meat consumption, travel, living space, and material prosperity.

Experts interviewed by The Epoch Times say that some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful corporate leaders are working with communists in China and elsewhere in an effort to centralize control over food production and crush independent farmers and ranchers.

Chinese military personnel march at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on April 28, 2020. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

The WEF, a network of major multinational businesses that collaborates closely with the CCP, is a “strategic partner” of the U.N. on Agenda 2030.

The increasing regulation of food production and even efforts to shut many farms and ranches come as officials around the world such as U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. World Food Programme chief David Beasley warn of looming food shortages worldwide.

But instead of easing restrictions and encouraging more production, Western governments and many governments dependent on aid are clamping down even harder.

Dutch farmers, already at the breaking point, have responded this summer with massive nationwide protests. That followed violent unrest in Sri Lanka tied to food shortages caused by government policy.

Governments and international organizations have cited various pretexts for the policies, ranging from increasing “sustainability” and protecting various flora and fauna, to promoting “economic justice” and even returning lands to aboriginal peoples.

Tractors drive by Dutch police officers standing guard as police close access to Apeldoorn on the A1 highway to block farmers from demonstrating against the Dutch government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions, on June 29, 2022. (JEROEN JUMELET/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

According to critics of the policies, though, the goal isn’t to preserve the environment or fight climate change at all. Instead, the experts warn that the “sustainability” narrative and the other justifications are a tool to gain control over food, agriculture, and people.

“The end goal of these efforts is to reduce sovereignty on both individual nations and people,” said Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a public policy organization specializing in environmental and development issues.

“The intent for those pushing this agenda is not to save the planet, as they purport, but to increase control over people,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that the goal is to centralize power at the national and even international level.

UN Sustainable Development Goals—Agenda 2030
The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, often referred to as Agenda 2030, were adopted in 2015 by the organization and its member states as a guide to “transforming our world.” Hailed as a “master plan for humanity” and a global “declaration of interdependence” by top U.N. officials, the 17 goals include 169 targets involving every facet of the economy and life.

“All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan,” declares the preamble to the document, repeatedly noting that “no one will be left behind.”

Among other elements, the U.N. plan calls for national and international wealth redistribution in Goal 10, as well as “fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services.”

Overview of the session of the Human Rights Council during the speech of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet at the United Nations in Geneva on Feb. 27, 2020. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File Photo)

Using government to transform all economic activity is a critical part of the SDGs, with Goal 12 demanding “sustainable consumption and production patterns.”

Among the specific targets outlined in Goal 12 are several directly linked to agricultural policies that undermine food production. These include “sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.”

Perhaps more importantly, the document demands “environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks.”

As a result, people and especially farmers must “significantly reduce their release to air, water, and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.”

Other SDGs that are directly tied to what critics have called the “war on farmers” include Goal 14, which addresses “marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including … nutrient pollution.” The U.N. regularly describes agriculture and food production as a threat to the ocean.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), led by former CCP Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Qu Dongyu, is helping to lead the charge.

In its 2014 report “Building a Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture: Principles and Approaches,” the U.N. agency calls for drastic restrictions on the use of fertilizers, pesticides, emissions, and water in the agricultural sector.

As an example of how agriculture must be reformed to be considered sustainable by the U.N., the FAO report declares that “excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer is a major cause of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”

The Rome-based FAO didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) gives a speech during a three-day summit on food security at U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome on June 3, 2008. (CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP via Getty Images)

Another of the 17 SDGs with a direct impact on agriculture and food production is Goal 2, with its calls for “sustainable agriculture” and “sustainable food production.”

Goal 6, meanwhile, calls for “sustainable management of water,” which includes various targets involving agricultural water use and runoff.

Because U.N. leaders see agriculture and food production as key contributors to what they call manmade climate change, Goal 13 is important, too. It calls for governments to “integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning.”

Goal 15, which deals with sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, also has multiple targets that affect agriculture and food production.

All over the world, national and regional governments are working with U.N. agencies to implement these sustainability goals in agriculture and other sectors.

For instance, responding to U.N. biodiversity agreements, the European Union has enacted various U.N.-backed biodiversity programs such as Natura 2000 and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which have been cited by the Dutch government and others in their agricultural policies.

The U.N. also boasts publicly about its role in imposing the SDGs in Sri Lanka and other nations suffering from food shortages and economic calamities linked to the very same global sustainability programs.

Around the world, almost every national government says it’s incorporating the SDGs into its own laws and regulations.

Part 1 of 2

 

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Part 2 of 2

World Economic Forum ‘Partnership’
Alongside the U.N. are various “stakeholders” that are critical to implementing sustainable development policies through “public-private partnerships.”

At the heart of that effort is the WEF, which since 2020 has been pushing a total transformation of society known as the “Great Reset.” In 2019, the WEF signed a “strategic partnership” with the U.N. to advance Agenda 2030 within the global business community.

Logo of the World Economic Forum taken at the Congress Centre 24 January 2007. (JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)

The official agreement defined “areas of cooperation to deepen institutional engagement and jointly accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Many of the key officials behind Agenda 2030, including top U.N. leaders such as current Secretary-General António Guterres—a self-proclaimed socialist—have also been working with the WEF for decades.

Meanwhile, the WEF has been explicit with its goals. It recently launched a “Food Action Alliance” (FAA) that acknowledges on its website that Agenda 2030 “informs the ambition of the FAA to provide an enduring and long-term platform for multi-stakeholder action on food systems to meet the SDGs.”

Alongside the U.N.’s “Food Systems Summit” in September 2021, the WEF’s FAA released a report outlining its own “leadership agenda for multi-stakeholder collaboration to transform food systems.”

Among other elements, the document summarizes the FAA’s insights on “supporting transformative food system partnerships, and its value proposition beyond the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

The WEF’s public concern with transforming agriculture and the food supply goes back over a decade, at least.

In partnership with various companies, the WEF released a 2010 report outlining a “new vision for agriculture” that included a “roadmap for stakeholders.” Many of the world’s largest food companies that dominate the market and own countless popular brands are involved.

The WEF’s website is packed with information purporting to justify a total transformation of the food supply by “stakeholders.”

“As global food systems become increasingly interconnected, effective coordination among a diverse set of stakeholders will be required,” WEF says on its “Strategic Intelligence” platform, frequently citing the FAO as its source.

“The potential to craft new, systemic approaches to food systems that include a diverse array of stakeholders presents opportunities to help sustainably feed the world well into the future.”

The organization’s frequent references to “stakeholders” refers to governments, companies, and so-called nongovernmental organizations that are often funded by those same companies and governments. They are all working together on the issue.

For instance, the WEF boasts that it has brought corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Unilever into the fold toward promoting a “more sustainable future.”

The Rockefeller Foundation, which recently released a report on how to “Reset the Table” and “Transform the U.S. Food System,” is also a key player.

The WEF’s “Food Innovation Hubs” around the world are set to be a major part of this global transformation.

Speaking to the World Economic Forum on “transforming food systems and land use” at last year’s Davos Agenda Week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that the Netherlands would host the “Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs.”

The secretariat, he said, “will connect all other Food Innovation Hubs” in order to facilitate creating “the partnerships we need.”

Neither the WEF nor the Rockefeller Foundation responded to requests for comment on their role in Agenda 2030 and on the agricultural policies being pursued around the world.

Other organizations and entities involved in the push include powerful tax-exempt foundations such as the Gates Foundation, the EU-style regional governments proliferating around the world, and various groups funded by them.

Squeezing Farmers—and the Food Supply
All over the globe, U.N. SDG-aligned government policies are squeezing farmers—especially smaller, independent producers unable to absorb the added costs of added regulation and control.

Celebrating U.N. sustainability ideas, recently ousted Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced at the U.N. COP26 climate summit in 2021 that his government was banning chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Police use water cannons to disperse farmers taking part in an anti-government protest demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over the country’s economic crisis in Colombo on July 6, 2022. (-/AFP via Getty Images)

“Sri Lanka recently restricted the imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides due to public health concerns, water contamination, soil degradation, and biodiversity impacts,” Rajapaksa told world leaders, to widespread acclaim.

“Although opposed by entrenched lobbies, this has created opportunities for innovation and investment into organic agriculture that will be healthier and more sustainable in future.”

In reality, even though they were promptly rolled back, the policies produced catastrophic food shortages, widespread hunger, and eventually a popular revolt that ousted the president and his government.

In 2019, the socialist Sri Lankan government also partnered with the U.N. Environment Programme to establish the U.N. Global Nitrogen Campaign, which promotes the U.N.-backed policies on nitrogen that are now proliferating worldwide.

In the Netherlands, headquarters for the WEF’s “Food Innovation Hub” secretariat, authorities are imposing nitrogen policies that are expected to decimate the nation’s highly productive agricultural sector. The plans also include widespread expropriation of farms.

“The expropriation plans of the cabinet are a downright declaration of war on the agricultural sector,” said Dutch Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren, of the Forum for Democracy party, as cited by De Dagelijkse Standaard. “Under false pretenses, farmers are being robbed of their land, centuries-old farms are being demolished and farmers’ families are being totally destroyed.”

Experts warned of dangerous consequences stemming from such sustainability policies including food shortages, skyrocketing prices, social unrest, and more.

“You can glimpse the green, sustainable future by beholding Holland and Sri Lanka now,” Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times.

And yet, the agenda is spreading rapidly. Canadian federal authorities last week announced similar restrictions on fertilizers and nitrogen after restrictions on energy production were put in place, sparking outrage from provincial officials and farmers.

In Ireland, the United Kingdom, and other European nations, various government entities are also working to slash agricultural production under sustainability programs.

Meanwhile, aside from continuing with policies that pay farmers not to grow food, the Biden administration is seeking to impose WEF-backed “Environmental, Social, Governance” metrics and reporting on companies through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Farm associations and more than 100 members of Congress argue that the plan would bankrupt owners of small and medium-size farms unable to comply with climate reporting requirements to do business with public firms, even as the world moves toward widespread food shortages.

In part, experts say the insistence on these sorts of policies is because those imposing them are largely insulated from the damage they are causing.

“Global elites in government, transnational organizations, corporate boardrooms—well represented in the WEF—are so caught up in their climate virtue signaling, from which many hope to benefit financially through investments in green energy, that they are slow to notice that they are completely detached from reality,” said National Center for Public Policy Research’s Cohen, who specializes in environmental issues.

“Few of those imposing regulations on farmers have ever set foot on a farm. By virtue of the power and wealth these people already have, they are shielded from the consequences of the misguided policies they impose on the rest of the world. That burden is borne by ordinary people around the world, about whom the Davos crowd and their partners in crime know nothing.”

Small, Independent Farms at Risk: Experts
Sri Lanka’s disaster offers a preview of what will happen to the United States and Europe if policymakers continue to follow the U.N. sustainability agenda, according to Sterling Burnett, who holds a doctorate in environmental ethics and leads the nonprofit Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

“It’s not a war on farming; it’s a war on small farming and independent farmers,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s a war in support of elite, large-scale agricultural industries.”

Farmers gather with their vehicles next to a Germany/Netherlands border sign during a protest on the A1 highway, near Rijssen, on June 29, 2022, against the Dutch Government’s nitrogen plans. (VINCENT JANNINK/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

Even though the U.N. SDGs speak of helping “small-scale food producers,” Burnett argued that independent farms and ranches are in the U.N.’s crosshairs to help consolidate control over the food supply.

Policymakers are “in the pocket” of major corporate interests including Conagra, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, and others, he said.

“They would just as soon have all their small competitors put out of business,” he said, echoing concerns expressed by numerous other experts.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm manages more money than any other company in the world, “wants to impose his values on companies using other people’s money,” Burnett said.

Fink, who serves on the board of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations and works closely with the WEF, is a key architect of the push to impose “environmental, social, governance” metrics on U.S. companies.

“This is the super-rich foisting their values on the rest of us,” said Burnett, pointing to those he says are happy to work with communists on the effort.

“As far as the World Economic Forum is concerned, you can’t have a Great Reset if you don’t reset the food supply, because food is necessary to everybody,” he said. “Stalin recognized this: Whoever controls the food controls the people. Same with energy.”

As prices soar and farmers go bankrupt, major corporations, in league with governments and international organizations, will pick up the pieces.

In the meantime, as seen recently in Sri Lanka, hungry people pushed to the brink are likely to react.

“People were not starving on January 6,” said Burnett, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, protest and breach at the U.S. Capitol. “The supply chain crisis is happening, shelves are already going empty, and when people are hungry, they will not sit around and do nothing.”

American Policy Center founder and President Tom DeWeese, a leading expert on and critic of U.N. notions of sustainability, warned that the war on farmers was part of a broader agenda to strip people of freedom.

“Always in the past, when tyrannical forces wanted to rule the world, they built armies and invaded, broke things, killed people, and forced subjugation,” DeWeese told The
The Epoch Times. “We are now dealing with a diabolical force that has figured out a way to get us to voluntarily surrender our liberties and help them subjugate us.

“What could be such a powerful tool? The threat of Environmental Armageddon,” he said, pointing to the climate-change narrative as the prime example.

Citing numerous U.N. officials and documents, DeWeese says the agenda isn’t to save the climate, but to transform the planet and centralize control over the populace.

Aside from the U.N. and the WEF, major companies such as Vanguard and BlackRock are working to take over and control the food supply, he said.

Already, a handful of companies in which those two investment firms are top shareholders dominate the global food and beverage industry. By taking over the farming, they will control it all.

“The goal is to have total control over food production,” he said, noting that they seek to own all seeds and even grow synthetic meat in facilities already being backed financially by Bill Gates and other billionaires.

Bill Gates at an event in New York City, on Nov. 6, 2019. (Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)
Genetically engineered crops are high on the agenda, too.

The U.N., the WEF, and others are also moving forward with promoting insects and weeds as food. Across the Western world, insect protein production facilities are popping up rapidly.

But it gets even darker, DeWeese says.

“If people are starving, they are much easier to subjugate,” he said, adding that depopulation and control over humanity have been on the agenda of global elites for decades.

The “war on farmers” also comes amid what critics have described as a government-backed “war on energy” that’s affecting agriculture and virtually every other sector.

This includes limiting energy exploration, shutting down power plants, charging special fees and taxes, and other policies that have resulted in rapidly rising costs across the Western world, although not in places such as China.

The experts interviewed by The Epoch Times urged Americans to resist the war on farmers and the U.N.-backed sustainability policies using a variety of means. These include getting involved politically, adopting different shopping habits, finding alternative sources of food such as local farmers, and other measures.

Officials at the U.N. didn’t respond to requests for comment.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

CDC Gave Big Tech Platforms Guidance On COVID Censorship

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 01:00 PM

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave censorship 'suggestions' to social media companies and Google in order to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which obtained a trove of internal communications obtained by America First Legal.



The emails, between the CDC, Google, Twitter and Meta staffers - some of whom (as Just the News notes) were former Hill and White House aides - were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and show extensive cooperation which included thinly veiled threats for failing to more aggressively remove content.

Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over "vaccine misinformation." At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as "example posts."

In one email to a CDC staffer, a Twitter employee said he is "looking forward to setting up regular chats" with the agency. Other emails show the scheduling of meetings with the CDC over how to best police alleged misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. -Free Beacon

In one April 2021 email between a CDC staffer and Facebook, concern was raised after "algorithms that Facebook and other social media networks are apparently using to screen out posting by sources of vaccine misinformation are also apparently screening out valid public health messaging, including [Wyoming] Health communications."

Another email from March 2021 from a senior CDC staffer states: "we are working on [sic] project with Census to leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor social media for vaccine misinformation."

What's more, one email chain reveals that a CDC official showed up at Google's 2020 "Trusted Media Summit" conference, which was held for "journalists, fact-checkers, educators, researchers and others who work in the area of fact-checking, verification, media literacy, and otherwise fighting misinformation."

When asked by an organizer if the senior CDC official would allow her remarks on YouTube, she declined, saying she was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the same email chain with a senior CDC official, a Google staffer offers to promote an initiative from the World Health Organization about "addressing the COVID-19 infodemic and strengthen community resilience against

misinformation." That same Google staffer offers to introduce the CDC official to a Google colleague who is "working on programs to counter immunization misinfo." -Free Beacon

Meanwhile, Facebook gave the CDC $15 million in ad credits to use on the company's platforms in April, 2021.

"This gift will be used by CDC's COVID-19 response to support the agency's messages on Facebook, and extend the reach of COVID-19-related Facebook content, including messages on vaccines, social distancing, travel, and other priority communication messages," reads an internal memo.

As the Beacon notes, the level of coordination between government and big tech raises questions over what extent other private companies are working with the federal government in order to censor the public - including payment processors, Uber and other platforms which have banned the unwashed for wrongthink.

The revelations have also caused the New Civil Liberties Alliance to file a Thursday court document seeking to revive their lawsuit against the government on behalf of deplatformed users.

New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney Jenin Younes told Just the News it incorporated "the revelations about the CDC emails" into a filing Thursday seeking to reopen its case against the feds on behalf of deplatformed users.

A federal court dismissed that litigation a month before a whistleblower leaked documents suggesting the Department of Homeland Security's since-scrapped Disinformation Governance Board planned to "operationalize" its relationship with social media companies to remove content. NCLA cited those documents in its initial motion to reopen in June. -JTN

JTN further notes that the document dump is also likely to come into play in a lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana AGs against the government for alleged collusion with Big Tech to censor content on the origins of COVID-19, as well as Hunter Biden's laptop and vote-by-mail election integrity.

The feds filed a motion to dismiss two weeks ago for lack of legal standing and failure to state a claim. The AGs' responses aren't due until next week.

AFL's documents show the CDC shared specific tweets and Facebook and Instagram posts as examples of content to remove, including an interview with a former Pfizer vice president, Michael Yeadon, who advised against taking "top up" vaccines, meaning boosters.

The agency inserted its own COVID recommendations into Google's code, received $15 million in Facebook ad credits to promote its messaging, and even notified Facebook that Wyoming's public health messages were getting throttled as misinformation. -JTN

Recall that just one day after top health officials had a conference call to discuss a Zero Hedge article which highlighted a now-withdrawn paper from researchers in India suggesting "HIV-like insertions" in COVID-19, Twitter banned our account for roughly two months - with the tech giant claiming we doxxed a Chinese scientist (with publicly available information) in another article.

Thanks to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Fauci's emails, we know that the National Institutes of Health was not only aware of the Indian report, but were actively discussing how to handle it.

A January 31, 2020 email from AFP's Issam Ahmed asks NIH immunologist Dr. Barney Graham for comment:

"I was told by a contact you may be willing to give an opinion of this paper that has just gone live. It suggests the new Coronavirus has four inserts similar to HIV-1 and this is not a coincidence," reads the email.



Graham immediately forwards the correspondence to the Office of Communications and Government Relations (OCGR), saying "This is one we don't want to answer without high-level input, but wanted you to know about the rising controversy."



Two days later, Jennifer Routh OCGR replies, telling Graham: "OCGR is going to send a note to the reporter to decline, noting that the paper is not peer-reviewed. Please let us know if you receive similar requests."



That same Sunday morning, Fauci is looped in - with Sir Jeremy Farrar forwarding Zero Hedge's article after mentioning how World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom and the organization's cabinet chief were in 'conclave' - ostensibly on how to manage the narrative - noting "If they do prevaricate [bullshit the public], I would appreciate a call with you later tonight or tomorrow to think how we might take forward."

"Do you have a minute for a quick call?" Fauci replies, after having called the Indian paper "really outlandish."

Of course, the Indian paper was quickly withdrawn by its authors, and the notion that COVID-19 could have been man-made was rendered radioactive - for a while.

Is it any question how our Twitter (and Google) deplatformings happened, before both companies chose to reverse their decisions?

 

[marsh]

Food Banks Across America Report Record Demand And Record Shortages | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Food Banks Across America Report Record Demand And Record Shortages

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 11:00 AM

Food pantries and food banks are a key economic indicator for tracking poverty levels and financial instability in the US, and in the past few months they have been ringing alarm bells.

Stagflationary pressures have all but wiped out the savings of the average American and driven up credit card debt to historic highs. Only in the past month have credit spending and debt levels begun to slide, but this is more a sign that consumers are tapped out rather than a sign of a return to normalcy. High prices are slowly but surely overwhelming lower wage workers in particular. The average living wage across most US states is around $16 an hour; over 30% of American workers make less than $15 an hour.

Democrats and leftists will of course claim that this is because the Federal Minimum Wage is too low and needs to be increased, but the minimum wage has become irrelevant in the post-covid economy. Many retail and service companies now pay around $11-14 an hour, well above minimum wage, in order to retain workers. And STILL prices are too high for many of these people to keep up with expenses.

Can average workers demand more money? Probably not. Low skill and no-skill workers are going to have a hard time rationalizing $16-$20 an hour for flipping burgers, brewing coffee or running cash registers. Such a broad wage increase would also trigger even higher prices on most goods, defeating the purpose of higher pay.

The notion of a low wage worker revolt is a bit of a fantasy, and in some ways it can be dangerous for those that believe in it. The trillions of dollars in covid stimulus unleashed in 2020 may have boosted retail sales and employment for a couple of years, but that's coming to an end quickly. Workers can only opt out of certain jobs for a short time (as long as their parents will let them freeload), and bargaining for more money is dependent on their ability to get employment elsewhere. It's a sure bet that by mid-2023 many “wage revolutionaries” will be begging for their old burger jobs back.

Stagflation is not a wage issue so much as a money supply issue. There are too many dollars chasing too few goods. This is coupled with numerous supply chain problems caused by covid hysteria in export nations like China that are holding up a large number of cargo ships for weeks or months at a time. When it comes to food in particular, there are weather issues, war issues and governments sabotaging food production within their own countries using nonsensical climate change restrictions (as we are seeing in places like the Netherlands).

So, if people aren't going to get higher wages, and prices are going to continue climbing, what are they going to do? They generally turn to charities to help get through the month.



Food pantries usually don't offer enough supplies to fully feed a family, but they do supplement your existing income by adding a week or two worth of sustenance per month.

Many people will visit more than a couple food pantries at a time in order to stock enough for their families. The problem with price inflation is that it tends to directly affect and reduce the amount of donations that pantries receive and the amount of food they can give away.

In the past month there has been a steady stream of reports from pantries across the US stating that they are now hitting record high demand and record low supply. From New York to Wisconsin to Ohio to Missouri to Florida to Arkansas to California and beyond, pantries are running out. On top of that, it's the middle of summer – The busiest time for food banks and the Salvation Army is during the winter holidays.

The majority of pantries indicate that they are most in need of cash donations and that these have started to fade out. When it comes to necessities, most people will not or cannot reduce the frequency of their purchases. Food, gas, housing, utilities, etc. are fixed income costs, and when these costs rise workers must cut costs elsewhere. Charities are usually the first to see the chopping block.

The avalanche of reports suggests that this winter will be high in food demand and dismal in terms of supply, with little relief from charities. The most advisable option would be to stock dry and canned goods with a long shelf life now while they are still available and prepare for the cold season when demand skyrockets even higher. Even people in financial distress can utilize pantries today and stock supplies for the months ahead if they plan carefully. Those same pantries may not exist when winter rolls around, so now is the time to act.

Still, don't call it a recession (or depression)...

'That Sound You're Hearing Is The Goalpost Moving': Tucker Sounds Off On Biden's GDP Spin 8:57 min

'That Sound You're Hearing Is The Goalpost Moving': Tucker Sounds Off On Biden's GDP Spin
The Daily Caller Published July 29, 2022

 

[marsh]

Paying The Price For Krugman's Terrible Mistake | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Paying The Price For Krugman's Terrible Mistake

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 10:30 AM
Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Clear economic thinking and lucid communication via the written word tumbled out of fashion nearly 100 years ago. The fall from grace was triggered by the 1936 publication of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Not only is the book is rigorously indecipherable. It also has the ill-effect of making those who read it dumber. Unfortunately, Keynes’ drivel became the standard for foolish economic thinking, which still infects economic discourse to this day.

Many politicians and establishment economists remain enamored with Keynes’ gibberish. They love what it offers. In short, it provides academic rationale for governments to do what they love to do most – borrow money and spend it on ridiculous programs.

For example, Keynes advocated filling bottles with money and burying them in coalmines for people to dig up as a way to end unemployment. According to Keynes, this would provide jobs and money for the unemployed. Somehow, these public works egg hunts would create an economic boom and make everyone rich.

Over the years this reasoning has inspired countless government stunts to save the economy from itself. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the American Rescue Plan of 2021 are two mega Keynesian inspired spending bills passed this century. The U.S. will never be able to overcome the consequences of these asinine programs.

Just over a decade ago, Keynes devotee, Paul Krugman, took the logic of Keynesian economics and ran with it to the outer limits of deep space. In the process, he lost his mind.

Following his righteous departure from planet earth, Krugman went on cable television and explained that the proper way to propel an economic growth chart up and to the right is to borrow massive amounts of money and spend it preparing for an alien invasion.

Only a Nobel Prize winning economist could come up with such nonsense.



A Very Bad Call
Paul Krugman, of course, is a complete madcap. His days contemplating apparent aggregate demand insufficiencies and perceived supply gluts turned his brain to mush. His time staring at graphs while pondering possible government policies to make the graphs show what he wants transformed him into a moron.

Krugman has unwittingly experienced a higher learning glut from within the confines of Princeton University. In the pursuit of theory, he forgot one critically fundamental thing…how to think.

Yet occasionally, when buckets full of ice cold reality are repeatedly thrown in his face, Krugman has a brief moment of clarity. Consumer price inflation raging at an annual rate of 9.1 percent appears to delivered that moment.

On July 21, 2022, Krugman penned on op-ed in The New York Times titled: “I Was Wrong About Inflation.” In the article, Krugman focuses on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was passed in March of 2021 to counteract the economic consequences of government ordered coronavirus lockdowns.

In the op-ed, Krugman mentioned that some economists warned it would lead to rising inflation. But that he, like many other Keynesian economists, was “fairly relaxed” about the stimulus package. “As it turned out, of course, that was a very bad call,” admitted Krugman.

The experience over the last 18 months has shown the Keynesian nirvana of countercyclical stimulus spending to be absolute bosh. Somehow, with all his liquidity trap graphs, Krugman couldn’t see what was so clearly obvious…

That printing trillions of dollars and directly injecting them into the economy via stimmy checks, PPP, and lavish unemployment checks would cause raging consumer price inflation.

Broken Models
Did Krugman think this would be another instance of pushing on a string, like the 2008 bailout of the big banks via AIG? Did he think the fake money would largely remain within the financial sector like TARP funds did, and only slowly drip out into the real economy?

Maybe so. Here’s Krugman’s rationale for his “very bad call.”

“Historical experience wouldn’t have led us to expect this much inflation from overheating. So something was wrong with my model of inflation — again, a model shared by many others, including those who were right to worry in early 2021.

“In any case, the whole experience has been a lesson in humility…But in retrospect I should have realized that, in the face of the new world created by Covid-19, that kind of extrapolation wasn’t a safe bet.”

Apparently, Krugman’s model of inflation is a great big dud. It failed to forecast the greatest consumer price inflation blowout in over 40 years. If it couldn’t do that, then what good is it?

To be clear, a model is only as good as its inputs. The Keynesian approach of using aggregate data to identify apparent demand insufficiencies and perceived supply gluts is flawed.

Unemployment. Gross domestic product. Price inflation. These data points are all fabricated up and fudged out to the government number crunchers liking.

For each headline number there are a list of footnotes and qualifiers. Hedonic price adjustments. Price deflators. Seasonal adjustments. Discouraged worker disappearances. These subjective adjustments greatly affect the results. So what good are they?

And why’s The New York Times still giving Krugman a platform?

Paying the Price for Krugman’s Terrible Mistake
Now, where the rubber meets the road, failed Keynesian policies coupled with monetary madness have positioned the U.S. economy and financial system in an extraordinarily unfavorable place. Where consumer price inflation is raging while the economy is contracting.

Just yesterday (Thursday), second quarter GDP data was released by the Commerce Department. Between April and June the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.9 percent. This is on the heels of a first quarter GDP contraction of 1.6 percent.

Two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP meets the technical definition of a recession. So, with shrinkage occurring in both Q1 and Q2, the U.S. economy is without a doubt in a recession.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen may say, “this is not an economy that’s in recession.” But the facts – the government’s own fudged data – say otherwise.

Yet here’s where things really get interesting…

Because professional economists like Krugman and Yellen were wrong about inflation, and the Federal Reserve let it get away, the Fed is having to hike the federal funds rate in the face of a contracting economy. This week the Fed hiked the federal funds rate another 75 basis points to bring it to a range of 2.25 to 2.50 percent.

How much higher can the Fed go before something breaks?
We’ll find out soon. Moreover, we expect a mega disaster to arrive before inflation subsides.

At this point, the Fed will have to trigger a massive, 1930s-style depression to stop inflation in its tracks.

Here’s the point: Krugman was wrong. He admitted it. And we all get to pay the price for his terrible mistake.

 

[marsh]

Inflation, Recession Or Both? | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Inflation, Recession Or Both?

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 08:30 AM
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Perhaps more than anything else, the one question that is going to determine whether or not people make money in the market in the second half of this year is whether or not bad news is once again good news. So, let’s discuss the setup: what the macro picture looks like to me, and what I see as possible outcomes going forward.

Heading into the inflationary crisis that we are in, back on December 17, 2021, I wrote an article talking about why the “bad news” of inflation was simply just bad news. In other words, it couldn’t once again be a prompt for the Fed to swoop in and save markets, as they have done over the last several decades. In that article, I called the taper a non-sugar coated directional negative for markets.

The day prior, CNBC led with the headline:

Dow futures up nearly 200 points following Fed decision to aggressively wind down asset purchases

My article ridiculed market participants, analysts and financial media for suggesting that inflation wasn’t going be a problem and that winding down asset purchases was somehow going to magically propel stocks higher.

Since then, the S&P has seen an -11.57% plunge, the Russell has fallen about -13.63% and the NASDAQ, as I first predicted would happen back in November 2021, has been pasted to the tune of -19.4%.



Since then, inflation has spiked out of control. Sadly, the only piece of “good news” we have gotten recently is that CPI blew through the roof last month with a 9.1% YOY print - a number so high and so inconceivable that I felt forced to postulate that we may have seen the peak.

That prediction is not to say that inflation is over, but rather that comps are going to get “easier” (which is what happens when you have a year of nosebleed growth and you’re comparing year-over-year). Drawdowns in some commodities over the past month should help, acting as temporary headwinds.

On the month, crude is down about -9%, metals are down between -3% and -12%, wheat and lumber are down -12% and -16%, respectively and, while food has bucked the trend and risen for the month, the CRB commodity index basket is down about -3.8%.



The saying “bad news is good news”, of course, comes from the fact that shitty macroeconomic news often prompts central bankers, Pavlovian-style, to start or accelerate quantitative easing and other easy money policies.



This, in turn, usually boosts the stock market regardless of actual underlying economic activity.
This was essentially how we got the freakishly indecent and obscene rally off the March 2020 pandemic lows.

Over the last week, it has become clear that the market seems to think that the Fed raising by 75bps and GDP confirming that we are in a recession, as expected, are both bullish pieces of news. This is what has sparked the rally in both equities and precious metals over the last couple of days, as I predicted would happen in my July 2022 portfolio update:

I think it’s likely the 9.1% print is the peak, for a little while at least, based on current spot prices. Used cars are down, new cars are down, home prices are starting to come down as more inventory comes on the market, oil has sold off over the last 2 weeks, etc. This doesn’t mean inflation is over, not does it mean stocks won’t still move lower in the longer term once the effect of rate hikes put into place in 1H 2022 finally surface in credit markets, but it means we could be at a lull for the time being (1-2 quarters).

I think equities are going to rally on this sentiment (the fact that stocks didn’t crash spectacularly in the last 48 hours on that 9.1% print says something to me). The market is forward looking and the inflation numbers are backward looking, as much as I absolutely hate to admit it.

The key questions from here become:

• How long will this rally last?
• What type of an impact will these macro factors have on Fed policy?

There’s certainly seems to be a growing case for allowing inflation to just take hold and run rampant. For example, Bernstein said on Thursday that a “policy pivot” from the Fed would be “completely appropriate”.

Those comments were echoed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was busy lobbing grenades at Fed Chair Powell via Twitter.

But inflation, even if it comes down from 9% and starts to subside on a year-over-year basis heading into 2023, is still going to be elevated no matter what direction we go in.

The objective idea of a successful soft landing by the Fed, as defined by a sane person looking from the outside in, would be for real rates to once again go positive and for inflation to head back down to the Fed’s arbitrary, totally dumbass, 2% “target”.

What I’m predicting is far more likely, however, is that inflation backs off only slightly, real rates stay negative and the Fed declares success heading into the second half of the year anyways, beginning to ease its hawkish posture.

In other words, for now, it looks as though between letting inflation run rampant and crashing the economy, I’m leaning more towards the Fed allowing inflation to run rampant going forward. The Fed will have the perfect excuse to do it as CPI moves lower, maybe to 7% or 6%.
It will in no way be a “win” in the war against inflation, but that won’t prevent the Fed from conjuring up a word salad of bullshit talking points to make the everyday American believe that it is. Simultaneously, and likely most important to the FOMC, it’ll get the Central Bank out from the crosshairs of politicians.


And so, as I’ve said, forecasting which way the scales are going to tip is going to be key to navigating markets over the next year. While I am not claiming that the Fed is going to take the inflationary course of action as a certainty, I wanted to lay out my thoughts in terms of how I would position in either scenario.

If the Fed does decide to declare victory and let inflation run, despite real rates being negative, I definitely want to stay long gold and silver, as well as risk assets like cash flow generative tech companies that have been beaten down significantly over the last 8 to 10 months.

If the Fed decides to hold course and continue defiling the corpse of the economy through planned rate hikes, I would hedge a bit more by selecting my favorite cash burning tech ShitCo “story stocks” (i.e. they don’t generate cash, so they survive just off hope and narrative - like the Treasury). I’d also focus more on buying dividend paying value stocks and staples that I’ve already pointed out as they plunge.

The scales obviously tip more towards value in the event of a prolonged recession and more towards growth and risk in the event of the Fed allowing inflation to run rampant.

Additionally, there are a few names that I’ve outlined in my most recent portfolio update that I want to own, no matter what. A conversation with my FinTwit friend @FredMcFeely days ago reminded me of one sector I have been bullish on for a year now: Aerospace and Defense.

While I’ve often talked about Lockheed LMT 1.63%↑ and Maxar MAXR 3.49%↑, both of which I own, other names in this sector include RTX 0.40%↑, LDOS 1.99%↑, NOC 3.66%↑ and GD 0.99%↑ , as well as small caps like RADA -0.20%↓.

Along the same lines, I continue to absolutely love cybersecurity names like IHAK -0.27%↓ and PANW 0.67%↑. While there isn’t as much deep value in cybersecurity, there are still marquee names like Palo Alto Networks that I think, despite their growth profile, will still be in great demand going forward. The next major geopolitical conflict will be fought not only in person, but also online.

And for better or for worse, it still feels like we’re tiptoeing around World War III.

I’d love to be able to tell you that I know exactly what the Fed is going to do, but we are at an unprecedented crossroads, for which there is no historical precedent.

We have never had so much outstanding gross federal debt relative to GDP and our Fed has never faced this type of inflationary crisis before.




We don’t have the luxury of moving rates like Paul Volcker did. In fact, we haven’t even felt the brunt of the last several rate hikes in my opinion, the aftershocks of which will likely take another couple months to make their way through the financial system.

Put it this way: if the market crashes again, like it did around Christmas in 2018, I won’t be surprised. The key question is: what will the Fed do when this happens?

Rather than try to guess the outcome of this unprecedented situation, the only thing that I can do is try to accurately frame what I believe the problem and the potential outcomes to be. For now, it seems the likelihood of going inflationary crisis instead of recession is at about 60% to 40%.

I’ll try to keep my readers updated on my thoughts on this as they change, but be aware that, like anything else, I am just a lagging indicator to how the Fed decides that they randomly want to posture themselves this week. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is out there telling people that the recession is transitory, the White House and economists are lying to people and telling them that this week’s GDP print doesn’t mean that we are in a recession and President Biden is blaming inflation on Vladimir Putin.

Let’s be honest: you absolutely can’t ****ing reason with these people and they exist in such a distorted field of twisted reality that trying to predict their next move, and then how the market will respond to it, is like trying to figure out what a drunk crackhead at stumbling around at the Market-Frankford subway station is going to yell out next.

Even in the one-in-a-million chance that you guess it right, it’s still going to be completely incoherent. Welcome to the current state of the market and the economy.

 

[marsh]

Gas Levy Could Triple Household Heating Bills In Germany | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Gas Levy Could Triple Household Heating Bills In Germany

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 06:20 AM
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Germany plans to introduce a levy for all its gas consumers beginning in October as the government looks to avoid a wave of collapsing gas-importing and gas-trading companies amid record-high natural gas prices, a new bill seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.



Russia is further reducing flows via Nord Stream this week, to just 20% of the pipeline's capacity, days after restarting the link at 40% capacity after regular maintenance.

The German government has already intervened to rescue energy group Uniper, Russia's single largest gas buyer in Germany. Uniper—and many other German gas traders and suppliers—have been reeling from reduced Russian supply and soaring prices of non-Russian gas.

Germany and Uniper agreed last week on a $15 billion bailout package, including the German government taking a 30-percent stake in the company and making more liquidity and credit lines available to the group.

Under the plans of the government, all consumers of gas, including households, will have to pay an additional levy, which will go to support Germany's gas importing companies, which struggle with a lack of Russian gas and sky-high prices of non-Russian alternatives. The details of the bill are set to be announced next month.

Households and industrial consumers are expected to pay the levy through September 2024, according to the draft Reuters has seen.

"One doesn't know exactly how much (gas) will cost in November, but the bitter news is that it's definitely a few hundred euros per household," German Economy Minister Robert Habeck was quoted by Reuters as saying on Thursday.

Marcel Fratzscher, president of DIW, the German Institute for Economic Research, told Düsseldorf's Rheinischen Post newspaper that German households should prepare for at least tripled costs of heating on gas. The levy should be accompanied by a relief package for lower-income households, otherwise the new charge could lead to a "social catastrophe," Fratzscher added.

 

[marsh]

Gazprom Suspends Gas Supplies To Latvia As Austria Warns EU Russian Energy Ban "Impossible" | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Gazprom Suspends Gas Supplies To Latvia As Austria Warns EU Russian Energy Ban "Impossible"

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 08:00 AM

"Today, Gazprom suspended its gas supplies to Latvia... due to violations of the conditions" of purchase, Russian energy giant Gazprom has announced Saturday in a statement posted to Telegram.

This after on Wednesday gas deliveries to Europe were cut to about 20% of capacity via the Nord Stream pipeline. The EU has continued charging Moscow with using energy as a "weapon" and as "blackmail".

Image source: Riga Municipality

However, the Kremlin has responded by again blaming Western and US-led sanctions for blocking the ability of Gazprom to properly and safely maintain its systems.

"Technical pumping capacities are down, more restricted. Why? Because the process of maintaining technical devices is made extremely difficult by the sanctions adopted by Europe," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, repeating his familiar theme that the EU has in essence shot itself in the foot.

"Gazprom was and remains a reliable guarantor of its obligations... but it can't guarantee the pumping of gas if the imported devices cannot be maintained because of European sanctions," he said. Regarding Nord Stream, Gazprom has said reduced supply is due to "technical condition of the engine". The saga of the turbine hold-up and blame game with Siemens has in the meantime only continued in stalemate.

As for the stoppage to Latvia and Riga's alleged "violations of the conditions" - this is likely connected with Moscow's demand of payments in rubles for "unfriendly" nations and as retaliation for EU sanctions.

Latvia is now seventh on the list of European countries which have been cut off from Russian gas - or at least seen their supplies drastically reduced to the point they must start mulling emergency rationing plans (Germany being the front and center example of the latter case). Latvia now joints Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany.

But it seems Latvia was among those on its way to weaning itself off Russian energy in the first place: "Earlier this month, the Latvian parliament voted in favor of a proposal to ban Russian gas supplies starting January 2023," notes CNN.

Meanwhile, more significant voices from within the EU have joined Viktor Orban's criticism of Brussels' measures targeting Russia, saying it will only hurt European populations worse. Russian media days ago cited the words of Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer:

The European Union cannot ban Russian natural gas, as the step would harm EU members more than Russia, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer warned on Thursday, as cited by Austrian media outlets. Chancellor Nehammer made the comments during a visit to Vienna by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
"Sanctions must hit those against whom they are directed more, but not harm those who decide them," Nehammer told the Austria Press Agency.

Nehammer added, as translated in Lenta.ru, "Austria’s position is that an embargo on gas is impossible. Not only because Austria depends on Russian gas, the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment."

The Austrian leader's "impossible" comments were later picked up in prominent Chinese state-run media as well. He also warned of a domino effect leading to "mass unemployment".

 

[marsh]

Europe’s Two-Front War: Russia & Climate Change | ZeroHedge

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

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Europe’s Two-Front War: Russia & Climate Change

BY WEALTHION
FRIDAY, JUL 29, 2022 - 11:54

Geopolitical analyst and macro investor Louis-Vincent Gave discusses why Europe is currently uninvestable and makes the case for continued weakening in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate.

European, more specifically German, energy policy has been making headlines lately as many fret about rising oil and gas costs heading into winter. One third of Germany’s natural gas supply is imported from Russia. Gazprom, the Russian gas supplier, has signaled that it intends to decrease flows to Germany by 20%, citing a “technical condition”, though many speculate Russian political strategy is behind the move.

Already, the past several months have seen European gas costs decouple from American to a spectacular degree, upending decades of relatively tight correlation:

I sat down to speak with Louis-Vincent Gave, founder of GaveKal Capital - a research and wealth management firm with over $2.9 billion in assets under management, about the situation in Europe and how he’s currently positioning his firm’s portfolio. Long story short, it’s not with European stocks.

“European growth has been lackluster for two decades,” Gave emphasizes, so they’re not on good footing to begin with. High energy costs are eating up discretionary income, which could morph into a fully fledged panic come winter time when demand picks up and becomes more inelastic.

According to Gave, this does not bode well for the currency either, which reached parity with the dollar in mid-July but has seen a slight rebound in the following weeks. Energy is inherently tied to a nation’s sovereignty and currency strength, and, as Gave puts it: “If you run out of energy, then you move into freefall”.

The outlook isn’t looking good and overzealous “green” policy could make things even worse.

Referring to it as the “two-front war” against both Putin and climate change, Gave strongly critiques Germany’s plan to shut down its last surviving nuclear power plants, highlighting their hypocritical decision to instead import coal from South Africa.

Between strategic moves by Russia and self-hamstringing green policy, the EU is looking unattractive as an investment as the coming winter brings increased volatility to the region.
To hear more of Louis Gave’s perspective and why he instead sees Asia as the next secular winner on the World’s Stage, check out the full interview with him below:

Part 1:

View: https://youtu.be/YiM1fYZq0T8
46:00 min

Part 2:

View: https://youtu.be/IqoUP1YEeM0
56:09 min

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.

 

[marsh]

Rhine Levels In Germany Forecast To Drop Lower As Barges Reduce Cargo | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Rhine Levels In Germany Forecast To Drop Lower As Barges Reduce Cargo

SATURDAY, JUL 30, 2022 - 05:45 AM
As Germany bakes in a heatwave, water levels on the River Rhine — an 800-mile (1,288-kilometer) river that runs from Switzerland to the North Sea and is used to transport tens of millions of tons of commodities through inland Europe — have fallen to dangerously low levels. '
Water levels at the chokepoint of Kaub near Frankfurt declined to 25.6 inches (65 centimeters) on Thursday, its lowest reading since 2018, when a drought shuttered the waterway for 132 days, resulting in economic and supply chain turmoil.



The low water level means barges must reduce cargo weight to navigate the shallow parts of the river or risk grounding.



Roberto Spranzi from the DTG German Inland Navigation Association told the German newspaper DW that shippers are transporting half the cargo they usually would. Reuters said some shippers sail with only a quarter of cargo depending on the type.

About 80% of all goods that are transported via inland waterways use the Rhine, making it Germany's most critical transit artery to move goods around. Falling water levels have snarled supply chains, such as the ones of BASF, the world's biggest chemical company. The company has failed to shift barge transport of goods to entirely trucking.



Two forecasts paint a troubling outlook for the river and imply water levels will continue dropping.

"Unfortunately, our longer-range models suggest drought conditions will probably continue for the next months," said Andreas Friedrich of the DWD Federal Weather Agency, adding the agency expects a 60-65% chance of dry weather through the autumn season.

Another forecast, this time Kaub's water levels, could slide to 23.6 inches (60 centimeters) by next week, resulting in even more vessel owners scaling back cargo to reduce draft.



Shippers are focused on the critical 15.7 inches (40 centimeters) mark, a level if breached, prevents barges from sailing past the point and would result in a similar shutdown of the waterway as in 2018.

Germany's year from hell as energy hyperinflation, lack of natural gas supplies, supply chain snarls, and slowing economic growth risk the economy sliding into recession. Rhine woes could worsen the souring economic outlook, as noted in "Germany's Energy Crisis About To Get Even Worse As Rhine Water Levels Plummet."

 

[marsh]

NEW ZEALAND - Announces plans to tax livestock owners for burps and farts, to tackle climate change. 2:19 min

NEW ZEALAND - ANNOUNCES PLANS TO TAX LIVESTOCK OWNERS FOR BURPS AND FARTS, TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE.

• WATCH

All the WEF compromised countries, rolling out the same attacks on farmers and the food chain using unproven climate change "science"

 

[marsh]

(Italy)

Far-right Brothers of Italy may emerge victorious from snap vote 2:10 min

FAR-RIGHT BROTHERS OF ITALY MAY EMERGE VICTORIOUS FROM SNAP VOTE

• WATCH

(There will be friction with the EU, but Italy has a great deal of debt.)

 

[marsh]

Farmers are throwing rubber tires on the fires to keep them burning after Mark Rutte ridiculed them .20 min

FARMERS ARE THROWING RUBBER TIRES ON THE FIRES TO KEEP THEM BURNING AFTER MARK RUTTE RIDICULED THEM

• WATCH

Dutch authorities are becoming unable to respond to the massive amounts of fires across the country. Farmers are throwing rubber tires on the fires to keep them burning after Mark Rutte ridiculed their frustration.

 

[marsh]

Beef Prices Expected to Increase Even More, as Farmers Are Forced to Sell off Cattle Herds

Farmers are the backbone of America.

redstate.com

Beef Prices Expected to Increase Even More, as Farmers Are Forced to Sell off Cattle Herds
By Levon Satamian | Jul 30, 2022 3:45 PM ET

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

The United States Department of Agriculture says the cattle market has shrunk to an extent that hasn’t been seen in years. According to the latest cattle report, “of the 91.9 million head inventory, all cows and heifers that have calved totaled 39.5 million.”

Down from two percent in 2021, there are 30.1 million beef cows, and the milk cows decreased to 9.38 million in the United States.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture livestock analyst Shayle Shagam said:

“We are seeing large numbers of female stock have been placed in feedlots … supplies of cattle going to feedlots is going to be declining,” resulting in “progressively tighter supplies of all fed cattle available for slaughter as we move into 2023.”

In June, the price of ground beef was up 9.7 percent from a year ago. Due to the decrease in supply, increased input prices, as well as drought conditions, we could see another price surge.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1551622457735479297

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1551622457735479297
1:23 min

National Cattleman’s Beef Association CEO Colin Woodall said the drought is widespread this year, compared to the regional droughts in the past. Woodall told Fox Business:

“There’s no place to go because everybody is struggling to find the forage they need to feed their cattle … We do expect the prices to continue upwards, but everybody has to remember that it’s not cattle producers setting that price.”

Woodall continued:

“It’s all about costs. When you look at those who make a decision to send their cattle to market to either thin down their herd or completely eliminate their herd, it is always going to be attributed to the increase of their input costs. And that is everything from the cost of feed, cost of hay and cost of diesel for tractors, diesel for the truck, fertilizer costs. And there’s so many things that go into producing cattle that the producers just don’t have any control over.”

John Kleiboeker, an owner of a seedstock operation in California and Missouri, explained that herd depletion would carry on due to the number of cows and heifers sold for slaughter. He added that it would take years to build it back.

“A heifer is two years old before she produces her first baby … That calf is another 18 months after that. So you’re talking about close to 40 months from the time that little baby heifer is born until she has produced a pound of beef.”

Klieboeker said he has not had to sell any stock yet; however, due to the continuous soaring prices of forage and feed, he has created his “cull list.” The cost for big round bales from the same supplier went up 50 percent from last year, $75 per bale, which has forced him to buy hay elsewhere.

“There is hay available, but with freight, the cost of transportation to bring it 200 to 250 miles south may be prohibitive,” Klieboeker told FOX Business. “The cheapest price we can find is $5.05 to $6 per loaded mile. Well, if you go adding an extra $1000 to $1,200 to a load of 30 round bales of hay, it gets really expensive real fast.”

Today, so many people take farmers for granted, but they don’t realize that farmers are the backbone of America. They work daily to put food on our tables, no matter the weather conditions. Among other things, farmers strengthen our economy. In 2018, $140 billion worth of American agricultural products were exported, which shows that farmers strengthen the global economy.

Thank you to all the farmers.

 

[marsh]

FERTILIZER COLLAPSE: Chemical Giant BASF to Slash Ammonia Production in Germany Amid Natural Gas Crisis, Reducing Nitrogen-Based

As Germany’s natural gas supply runs dry, major corporations that use it such as chemical giant BASF are having to

uncanceled.news

FERTILIZER COLLAPSE: Chemical Giant BASF to Slash Ammonia Production in Germany Amid Natural Gas Crisis, Reducing Nitrogen-Based Fertilizer Supply

by Ethan Huff
July 30, 2022



As Germany’s natural gas supply runs dry, major corporations that use it such as chemical giant BASF are having to pay more for what they can get while also drastically cutting production.
BASF reportedly had to pay an additional 800 million euros (about $809.5 million) in the second quarter compared to a year earlier while slashing output of ammonia, which requires large amounts of gas in order to produce.

“We are reducing production at facilities that require large volumes of natural gas, such as ammonia plants,” announced BASF chief executive Martin Brudermuller in a conference call following an earnings report.

BASF is looking to tap external suppliers to fill the deficit, but there will still be potential supply disruptions. Ammonia is a fertilizer, after all, which means farmers will have more trouble getting it, which means more problems rippling throughout the supply chain.

Covid variant BA.5 is spreading. It appears milder but much more contagious and evades natural immunity. Best to boost your immune system with from our dear friend, the late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.

“Reuters details how ammonia plays a critical role in manufacturing nitrogen-based fertilizers, plastic-making, and diesel exhaust fluid,” one report explained. “A byproduct of ammonia production is high-purity carbon dioxide (CO2) which is heavily used in the food industry.”

They refuse to admit it, but the world’s largest economies are now in a recession

The move comes after Russia announced that natural gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 (NS1) pipeline will be reduced by half, dropping from 40 percent to just 20 percent.

Other European Union (EU) countries have said they will reduce NatGas demand by 15 percent over the next eight months, but Germany faces a much more difficult situation as it has no liquefied natural gas (LNG) port terminals to replace the Russian pipeline on which it has long relied.

Sacrifices like less heat in the winter will have to be made, we are told, as well as the possibility of a lights out situation in Germany come wintertime.

Benchmark natural gas prices in Europe at the Dutch TTF hub have consequently hit their highest levels since March, shooting up 35 percent in just one week.

“Chemical companies are the biggest industrial natural-gas users in Germany, and ammonia is the single most gas-intensive product within that industry,” Reuters reported.

Arne Rautenberg, a fund manager at Union Investment, says ammonia is more than likely the first thing that will go amid the natural gas supply squeeze because of the time of year in which it is typically needed.

“In the northern hemisphere, nitrogen fertilizer is applied primarily during the spring,” Rautenberg said, indicating that the CO2 supply for the food industry is likely to experience disruptions.

“It can also be produced in the United States and shipped to Europe.”

Because of soaring energy prices caused by inflation, natural gas use in Germany and elsewhere was already being cut long before Russia invaded Ukraine, which prompted sanctions that have impacted the flow of natural gas through NS1.

VCI, a chemical industry lobby, says German ammonia production started being curbed almost a year ago. The economic impact of those cuts is now being felt in a major way and will lead Germany and the rest of the world into a recession.

“Less fertilizer means less food and more bugs,” wrote someone at Zero Hedge about how the engineered takedown of the global economy and food supply will lead the world into a paradigm of eating crickets and other bugs, just as the “elite” have long been planning.

“What does a world without fertilizer look like? Hint: It looks like global famine,” wrote another.

“The Germans may as well voluntarily report to the Rhine meadow camps of post-WW2,” added someone else. “Their voluntary subjugation is almost complete.”

More related news about natural gas can be found at FuelSupply.news.

 

[marsh]

(UK heatwave)

British MET Climate Change Clergy Face Unprecedented Social Media Uprising

The British people have finally had enough, after attempts by the MET to link the heatwave to climate change triggered an unprecedented social media backlash.

wattsupwiththat.com

• 2022 July 30
• British MET Climate Change Clergy Face Unprecedented Social Media Uprising

Guy Fawkes Night, 1776. One of a Group of four prints of Windsor Castle Paul Sandby, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

British MET Climate Change Clergy Face Unprecedented Social Media Uprising

Essay by Eric Worrall
The British people have finally had enough, after attempts by the MET to link the heatwave to climate change triggered an unprecedented social media backlash.

Weather forecasters faced accusations of LYING and scaremongering during this month’s extreme heatwave as leading meteorologists condemn unprecedented levels of trolling in hundreds of abusive tweets and emails

• The Met Office’s lead meteorologist asked for ‘a bit of respect’ for his colleagues
• It comes after reports linking the heatwave to climate change riled up viewers
• Climate change made the unprecedented temperatures ‘ten times more likely’
• Online abusers even accused TV meteorologists of lying and being blackmailed

By MARK TOVEY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 22:20 AEST, 29 July 2022 | UPDATED: 01:18 AEST, 30 July 2022

Weather forecasters have been the target of ‘unprecedented levels of trolling’ this month, as keyboard warriors took to social media to accuse TV meteorologists of spreading hysteria during the heatwave.

The BBC‘s weather team said they were inundated with comments on social media telling them to ‘get a grip’, while others questioned the accuracy of their reports as the nation sweltered in heat that got as high as 40C.

Social media trolls seemed whipped up by reports linking the heatwave with secular trends caused by climate change, according to the Royal Meteorological Society who said their forecasters were also targeted along with forecasters from the Met Office.
…
According to the Met Office, climate change made the heatwave ten times more likely – although it is not possible to conclude causation definitively.

BBC meteorologist Matt Taylor said he had found the amount of online abuse levelled at him this month ‘depressing’.

He said: ‘Ít’s a more abusive tone than I’ve ever received.

‘I switched off a bit from it all as it became too depressing to read some of the responses.’

The Royal Meteorological Society also weighed in on the pushback received by their members during the heatwave.

The society’s chief executive Professor Liz Bentley said members had faced ‘public ridicule, accusations of lying or suggestions of being blackmailed’.
…
Read more: Weather forecasters faced accusations of lying during July's heatwave

WUWT does not condone physical threats or violence. But I understand the anger. Britain faces a horror winter of spiralling price rises and shortages, in my opinion largely a consequence of a long term MET office and BBC climate scare campaign which undermined mainstream political support for reliable energy.

My question, what are the people hurling abuse and threats expecting to achieve?

Before I read Climategate I thought alarmists were all scientific frauds, but after I read Climategate I realised there is a range of motivations. Many if not all of them actually believe.

Even when they hide declines or try to have open minded science journal editors fired, or manipulate data from New Zealand which strongly suggests the MWP was global, they think they are being the good guys. So there is no point threatening or hurling abuse. People who believe they are the good guys put up with abuse, because they believe their mission to help others is more important than their personal comfort.

So how do we fix the unaffordable green energy mess the MET and BBC have helped create?

The best course in my opinion is to find and vote for politicians whose priority is fixing today’s problems, rather than politicians whose obsession is what the weather will be like after we are all dead. Even if this means voting for minority party candidates.

Please don’t fall for the political canvasser canard that a minority candidate vote in Britain’s first past the post system is a wasted vote. Politicians watch minority votes like hawks, minority candidate support is their weather vane for what their voters really want.

So long as mainstream political canvassers can cajole you into voting mainstream, they don’t care if you have a few gripes. But a large breakout in favour of climate skeptic candidates would be a real shock to the political system.

Just look at Brexit. Nigel Farage‘s UKIP never achieved sizeable representation in Westminster Parliament. But they came close to a breakthrough. The threat of a voter support breakthrough was enough to persuade then Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the Brexit referendum, which Cameron thought would put the issue to bed. Cameron misjudged and lost.

If nobody had voted for UKIP, even though they knew their candidate was unlikely to win, in my opinion there would have been no Brexit referendum.

The same political formula could work for fixing Britain’s broken, overpriced energy system. If enough British people vote for politicians whose focus is today’s problems, even if those candidates don’t win, politicians will be panicked into responding. It will no longer matter what MET and BBC climate scaremongers believe or say, if they lose their position of influence.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis.

 

[Samuel Adams]

Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is in decline." 1:46 min

Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is in decline."
The Post Millennial Clips Published July 30, 2022
Jack Posobiec: "The United States under this regime is weak. The United States under this regime is in decline."

Refresh my history…..

Did this regime begin with Woodrow Wilson, or Abraham Lincoln ?

 

[TammyinWI]

World Economic Forum Thinks It Can Tell Companies How to Invest, Us What to Buy, Governments How to Govern
By Jon Fleetwood
1 day ago

“As of now, the willingness and ability of consumers to pay premiums have not been demonstrated. It is critical for industry stakeholders to strengthen and scale-up demand signals for low-emission products,” says the WEF.
QUICK FACTS:

• The World Economic Forum (WEF) published an article Friday demonstrating how the organization assumes it can dictate how international companies should invest, where the public spends its money, and which policies legislators should implement in order to bring about “radical change” to the global economy and “accelerate industrial transformation.”
• The article, titled “Five steps to get industries on track for net zero,” gives five directives for achieving “[n]et zero emissions by 2050,” a feat the WEF says “cannot be achieved without radically accelerating the decarbonization of heavy industries.”
• One of the directives, called “Set a public-private investment agenda to decrease the cost of clean technology,” calls for private sector businesses to devote “more full-scale projects” to low-emission production technologies, instead of allowing companies to invest in technologies they feel best represent what consumers want: “Moving forward, economies of scale, efficiency gains and further innovations are likely to drive costs down,” the WEF piece reads. “But this can only happen if more full-scale projects are developed. Public and private sectors should come together to rapidly multiply such projects around the globe.”
• Another directive, titled “Promote low-carbon demand and establish transparency and visibility among producers,” admits that private citizens are not interested in buying “low-carbon” goods and services: “As of now, the willingness and ability of consumers to pay premiums have not been demonstrated,” the WEF acknowledges. The solution? Instead of allowing the free market and consumer choice to set demand, the WEF wants to manufacture demand among the public for WEF-partnered corporations’ goods and services out of thin air: “It is critical for industry stakeholders to strengthen and scale-up demand signals for low-emission products,” the WEF article declares.
• A further directive, “Strengthen net zero policies and regulations to level the playing field for low-carbon producers,” instructs sovereign governments to legislate “ambitious policy frameworks” that are in line with the WEF’s agenda: “[G]overnments need to facilitate the emergence of economically viable” net zero policies, the WEF urges.

BACKGROUND:

• The WEF says it wants China to take “an increasingly active role in reshaping the international system of climate change.”
• The Forum also wants to “explore emerging models of Chinese leadership adapted to a new norm of globalization. It will make recommendations for building trust between China and the rest of the world – based on mutual respect and shared interest – in pursuing strategic cooperation in areas such as climate change, health research and sustainable technologies.”
• The WEF also promises how it “will illustrate how business leaders both inside and outside China can navigate this changing landscape to bring an entrepreneurial approach to solving global challenges.”
• China’s share in all the world’s manufacturing stages of solar panels currently exceeds 80%, and for key elements including polysilicon and wafers, it is set to increase to more than 95%, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).
• Joe Biden is currently removing tariffs on China’s solar panels so that China is poised “to be the manufacturing superpower of the solar industry,” the IER notes, adding that Biden sees China’s dominance of the solar sector “as key to reaching his dream of net zero emissions by 2050.”
• Read the IER’s report below.
• Biden family businesses are tied to trillions in lithium—a key element used to make batteries—acquired by China through the U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal.

instituteforenergyresearch.org-China-Positions-Itself-Well-in-the-Net-Zero-Market-PlaceDownload

World Economic Forum Thinks It Can Tell Companies How to Invest, Us What to Buy, Governments How to Govern - American Faith

"As of now, the willingness and ability of consumers to pay premiums have not been demonstrated. It is critical for industry stakeholders to strengthen and scale-up demand signals for low-emission products," says the WEF.

americanfaith.com

 

[von Koehler]

This insanity will not stop until all the evil globalist bastards are given a fair trial.

And then immediately given a public hanging.

 

[marsh]

Dr. Climatelove or: How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love CO2 - The New American

How much of the air we breathe is carbon dioxide? A typical answer, one writer states he hears, is 20 percent. The actual figure is four one-hundredths of one percent (or 400 parts per million). ...

thenewamerican.com

Dr. Climatelove or: How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love CO2

by Selwyn Duke July 29, 2022

How much of the air we breathe is carbon dioxide? A typical answer, one writer states he hears, is 20 percent.

The actual figure is four one-hundredths of one percent (or 400 parts per million).

“How can such a small magnitude of CO2 be dooming humanity?” ex-professor Ron Ross, Ph.D., then asks, posing what he says is the “one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train.”

The gas’ atmospheric concentration isn’t readily divulged because, if it were, CO2 couldn’t be a global-warming bugaboo, says Ross. Instead, it’s just as with the number of unarmed black suspects shot by police every year, which the average person believes is in the hundreds or even thousands (actual figure: approximately 18 to 27):

Climate alarmists lend the impression that CO2 constitutes a significant portion of our atmosphere — and avoid disclosing the actual numbers.

They further claim that the gas’ concentration is increasing precipitously; that this is man’s dirty-hands handiwork; and that if we don’t rend world economies as the “remedy,” life as we know it will soon be unknown.

So putting aside the hot air about allegedly heating air, what really constitutes our air? “Seventy-eight percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, 21 percent is oxygen, 0.9 percent is argon, and 0.1 percent is other gases,” Ross writes. “The other gases include methane (0.00017 percent); nitrous oxide (0.00003 percent); and water vapor, which varies from 0 to 4 percent.”

As for CO2, can such a minuscule proportion of it really imperil man, Ross asks?

Moreover, is there truly good reason to believe that increasing levels of the gas doom Earth?

History, and pre-history, tells a different tale. Ross elaborates:

During the Cambrian period 500 million years ago, CO2 constituted over 5,000 parts per million of the Earth’s atmosphere. Then, 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, CO2 was 1,700 parts per million, more than four times what it is now. Life thrived during those periods. How can 400 parts per million be a threat to our existence?

Before humans started burning fossil fuels about 200 years ago, CO2 made up 250 parts per million of our atmosphere. It has been growing at about one part per million per year for the past 150 years. In other words, a very small magnitude is growing at a very slow rate. Is there any reason that rate will accelerate when it hasn’t in a century and a half?

Put differently, when considered geologically, CO2 is at historically low levels.

“Great!” some will say. Actually, though, there’s reason to believe this is not great at all.

CO2 is not a pollutant, but a naturally occurring gas necessary for life on Earth. In fact, astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James warned in 2013 that life on our planet would eventually end because of too little CO2, with the gas’ atmospheric concentration dropping so low that plants wouldn’t be able to photosynthesize.

(Don’t worry, this wouldn’t happen for another billion years.)

Realize here that carbon dioxide is to plants what oxygen is to man. People have reduced stamina and more trouble breathing at higher altitudes because there’s less O2 in the air. Similarly, botanists pump CO2 into their greenhouses because it facilitates plant activity (growth).

Related to this, the dinosaur age’s high CO2 levels were a major reason the Earth was then blanketed with lush foliage. Crop yields are greater when the gas’ concentration increases, and today our planet is greener than it was 20 years ago, likely partially due to CO2’s rise.

Quoting the father of toxicology, Paracelsus, Ross writes, “The dose makes the poison.” In other words, since everything is either safe or toxic at the right levels, it follows that there could conceivably be too little or too much CO2. But it’s clear there’s no threat of our overdosing on it.

Ross’s closing point is that if people knew the Truth — that, again, geologically speaking, our CO2 levels are vanishingly low — many would likely demand explanations from the warming alarmists. In the least, the latter’s claims would meet with far more skepticism.

Another lightbulb-in-the-head-lighting argument relates to the allegedly rising mercury. Simply ask: What’s the ideal average temperature for the Earth?

People won’t have an answer. Yet, then, how can they possibly know if the given climate change, whether naturally- or humanity-induced, is good or bad? For they can’t then know if the given change is bringing us closer to, or moving us farther from, that ideal temperature.

This argument is ideal itself because the question is unanswerable. There is no specific optimum temperature; only a range in which it must remain for life as we know it to exist. At higher temperatures, tropical life-forms proliferate more; at lower temperatures, Arctic ones do.

Yet note: The tropics boast 10 times as many species as does the Arctic because warmth breeds life. And “cold weather is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 17 times as many deaths as hot weather,” as even The New York Times, citing a Lancet study, had to admit in 2017.

Anyway, this pair of questions, relating to carbon dioxide and changing temperatures, constitutes a Tyson Fury-level one-two punch that can really make people think, become climate wise — and learn to stop worrying and love CO2.

 

[marsh]

Who Is Behind the Economic Collapse?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE The PBS Frontline documentary “The Untouchables,” which originally aired in 2013, investigates the cause of the 2007-2009 financial

americafirstreport.com

Who Is Behind the Economic Collapse?

BY DR. JOSEPH MERCOLA
July 30, 2022



STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The PBS Frontline documentary “The Untouchables,” which originally aired in 2013, investigates the cause of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, and why Wall Street crooks escaped fraud charges related to the sale of bad mortgages
• Not one Wall Street executive was held accountable for this massive crisis, yet evidence suggests Wall Street executives with the willingness to defraud customers to pad their own bottom line were the cause of it all
• The case against Bear Stearns and JP Morgan, basically summed up the core of the entire 2008 credit crisis: Banking institutions intentionally sold securities they knew were bad
• The same criminal bankers are now intentionally destroying the global financial system in order to replace it with something even worse — social credit scores, digital identity and Central Banking Digital Coupons (CBDCs), which will give them the ability to control not only your individual finances but also everything else in your life
• The financial crisis of 2008 showed us how incompetent they are. So why would we accept the “new and improved” financial system they intend to roll out as soon as the current financial system is in shambles?

The PBS Frontline documentary above, “The Untouchables,” which originally aired in 2013, investigates the cause of the 2007-2009 financial crisis,1 and why Wall Street crooks escaped fraud charges related to the sale of bad mortgages.

As explained by PBS:2

“Are Wall Street executives ‘too big to jail’? In … ‘The Untouchables,’ producer and correspondent Martin Smith … investigates why the U.S. Department of Justice failed to act on credible evidence that Wall Street knowingly packaged and sold toxic mortgage loans to investors, loans that brought the U.S. and world economies to the brink of collapse.

Through interviews with top prosecutors, government officials and industry whistleblowers, FRONTLINE reports allegations that Wall Street bankers ignored pervasive fraud when buying pools of mortgage loans.”

Historical Review
You might wonder why I would post a nearly 10-year-old documentary. It is because we can learn powerful lessons from our history. It is clear that all the bankers that were responsible for the financial trauma were never prosecuted.

Well, you can bet your bottom dollar that we will have the same result when it comes to prosecuting those responsible for killing millions in the COVID pandemic.

So let’s dive into the history so you can learn. Below, I’ve also included a documentary called “All the Plenary’s Men,” which goes deeper into the question of why the Justice department didn’t hold anyone accountable or prosecute any of the big banks.

The financial crisis that began in 2007 and came to a head in 2008 wasn’t the result of short-term fraud. No, the scene was set years earlier with rock-bottom interest rates and lax mortgage lending standards and grew worse from there, as fraudsters started cashing in on what appeared to be free and easy money.3

Originally, the lowered interest rate was intended to boost the economy after the dot.com bubble. The end result, however, was the complete opposite. A housing bubble formed, and as all bubbles do, it eventually burst, leaving financial institutions holding trillions of dollars of worthless subprime mortgage investments — investments that had fraudulently been sold as top-notch low-risk instruments.

Deepening the disaster was the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 relaxed the net capital requirements for investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley, which allowed them to leverage their investments by as much as 40 times. As explained by Investopedia:4

“The Fed started raising rates in June 2004, and two years later the Federal funds rate had reached 5.25%, where it remained until August 2007. There were early signs of distress. By 2004, U.S. homeownership had peaked at 69.2%. Then, during early 2006, home prices started to fall.

This caused real hardship to many Americans. Their homes were worth less than they paid for them. They couldn’t sell their houses without owing money to their lenders. If they had adjustable-rate mortgages, their costs were going up as their homes’ values were going down.

The most vulnerable subprime borrowers were stuck with mortgages they couldn’t afford in the first place. As 2007 got underway, one subprime lender after another filed for bankruptcy.

During February and March, more than 25 subprime lenders went under. In April, New Century Financial, which specialized in sub-prime lending, filed for bankruptcy and laid off half of its workforce.

By June, Bear Stearns stopped redemptions in two of its hedge funds, prompting Merrill Lynch to seize $800 million in assets from the funds. Even these were small matters compared to what was to happen in the months ahead.

It became apparent by August 2007 that the financial markets could not solve the subprime crisis and that the problems were reverberating well beyond the U.S. borders.”

The interbank market froze as banks around the world started reporting liquidity problems and major losses from bad subprime investments, central banks started pumping out billions of dollars in loans to prop up the credit markets, recession hit, stock markets crumbled, investment banks collapsed and were sold for pennies on the dollar, and home lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the U.S. government.

The “remedy” to this epic failure was the Wall Street bailout, where many banks were given billions of dollars to stay afloat. Government basically bought the toxic assets (with taxpayer dollars, of course) to save banks deemed “too big to fail,” while an estimated 3.8 million Americans were forced into foreclosure5 and lost their life savings to boot.

Who’s to Blame?
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the 2008 financial collapse.6

Economists like to blame lax mortgage lending policies that permitted people to borrow more than they could afford.

Others have laid blame at the feet of predatory lenders, who charmed people into thinking they could afford higher mortgages than were really feasible, and investment “experts” who bundled the bad mortgages and resold them to investors as low-risk instruments. Bankers, at the time, admitted they had miscalculated the risks.

The agencies that signed off on the toxic mortgage bundles, giving them top investment ratings, also clearly played a role, as did individual investors, who either didn’t do their due diligence or simply resold what they knew was bad debt to others.

And then there’s Wall Street. Frontline interviews make it clear that at the heart of this bubble were greedy Wall Street executives with the willingness to defraud customers to pad their own bottom line.

Was Fraud Committed?
The question asked by Frontline is whether actual fraud was committed. Not one Wall Street executive was held accountable for this massive crisis. Is it really possible that not a single one of them committed provable fraud? And if they did, why weren’t they held to account?

David Boies, founder of the New York City law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, told Frontline correspondent Martin Smith that substantial prosecutions were indeed expected at the time. Within the halls of Washington D.C., calls for prosecution were also loud and clear.

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., was among those insisting that those responsible for defrauding hardworking Americans had to be identified, prosecuted and thrown in jail.

As noted by Kaufman, the financial system of the world, not just the U.S., was nearly destroyed, and “that doesn’t happen if there isn’t something bad going on.” Ultimately, however, no culprits were identified. No one was held responsible. No one went to jail. And one of the reasons for this, according to the U.S. Justice Department, was because “greed is not necessarily a criminal offense.”

As noted by Frontline, in order to go after Wall Street, investors needed a) proof of what the bankers knew, and b) that they had criminal intent. Frontline goes on to interview several due diligence underwriters, people who do the actual number crunching to assess the risk of buying a given loan portfolio, and determine if the underwritings — the loans — are legitimate.

So, if a Wall Street company wants to buy a portfolio of loans, they will hire due diligence underwriters to tell them whether or not a particular portfolio is a safe investment by manually reviewing a sampling of loans within that pool.

In the years leading up to the housing crash, due diligence underwriters were instructed, allegedly by their supervisors, to not scrutinize loans too deeply or question what ought to have been questioned, such as whether a waitress could really be making the $12,000 a month needed to afford the loan. Even in cases where outright fraud was suspected on a mortgage application, the due diligence underwriters were not allowed to call it that.

Fraudulent Activity Ignored/Accepted at the Highest Levels
Some higher-ups were also noticing problems. Richard Bowen, former vice president and a chief underwriter at Citigroup between 2002 and 2009, became concerned when he discovered that 60% of the mortgage loans purchased by Citigroup failed to meet its lending policy. By the end, the rate of defective mortgages at Citigroup exceeded 80%.

Bowen tried to alert senior leadership within Citigroup to the fact that the company was at great risk, but no one seemed to care. He was later demoted and ended up resigning. Citigroup eventually pleaded guilty in a civil fraud suit for failing to perform basic due diligence from 2004 until 2010.

Frontline goes on to review some of the many Congressional hearings held, and what was discovered by investigators. Importantly, one Financial Crisis Inquiry Report revealed findings from an investigation into a due diligence company called Clayton Holdings, which had performed due diligence for some two dozen banks that were buying mortgages, packaging them and selling them to investors.

Even though Clayton Holdings was finding that a substantial portion of each bank’s holdings failed to meet the bank’s standards for buying those loans, in each case, the banks accepted the loans and sold them to investors. What’s worse, they told investors these were prime, low-risk investments, and then bet against them with short positions. How is that not criminal conduct?

The findings were referred to the Justice Department, but aside from a few fines, no charges were brought. No doubt, criminal intent can be very difficult to prove, but many still feel the Justice Department simply didn’t try hard enough.

Bear Stearns Lawsuit Sums Up Credit Crisis Fraud Scheme
That doesn’t mean we cannot figure out what actually happened. Nick Verbitsky, a documentary filmmaker, had conducted several interviews with Bear Stearns’ EMC Mortgage employees, who in great detail explained how the company was defrauding its clients.

After reviewing several hours of these tapes, investigative journalist Teri Buhl wrote an article about it. Shortly thereafter, she was contacted by lawyers with Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, who represented a group of mortgage insurers called Monolines. They were already working on a fraud case against Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase, and wanted the whistleblowers to help them build their case.

The case against Bear Stearns and JP Morgan basically summed up the core of the entire 2008 credit crisis, financial analyst Mark Palmer told Frontline. He believes the financial crisis was, at its core, the result of banking institutions intentionally selling bad mortgages. Palmer is also convinced there was sufficing evidence to, at bare minimum, indict many of the key players.

Finally, in 2012, the New York attorney general filed a civil case against Bear Stearns and JP Morgan, alleging fraud. His case was largely based on the work of other private law firms, including Patterson Belknap. The question is, why couldn’t the Justice Department get the job done?

Part 1 of 2

 

[marsh]

Part 2 of 2

The Same Crooks Are Sinking the Economy Again
No one in the top echelon was punished for their egregious malfeasance that led to the 2008 financial crisis. And now, they’re manifesting yet another crisis, even larger than the last. That’s what happens when you allow criminals to continue in their schemes without repercussions. They get emboldened, and the crimes get larger and larger.

We’re now at the point where banksters have self-selected themselves to rule the whole world, tossing notions of democracy, freedom and human dignity in the waste bin along the way. As noted by Dr. Robert Malone in a recent Substack article:7

“… the US taxpayers bailed out the large banks when they crashed the global economy during 2007-2008 … I did not get a bail out. You probably also just had to suck it up.

But the big banks worked with the (privately owned) Federal Reserve bank, US Government, and Blackrock and destroyed their competition (the savings and loan industry), small businesses all across the country, and decimated the finances of homeowners who had been enticed into multiple cycles of refinancing.

Meanwhile, these same big banks who were largely responsible for the economic catastrophe essentially got free money (paper fiat currency printed by the Federal Reserve and injected into the economy via the big banks, which is really just another form of taxation — by the privately owned Federal Reserve!)

And these are the same banks, managers and hedge funds who think that they have the wisdom, knowledge, and skills to manage the entire world.

And they apparently believe that they just need to be able to digitally track everyone’s behavior, purchases, political activities, bank accounts, and all other aspects of our lives so that they can properly manage us via social credit scores, ESG scores, etc.

These large banks and investment funds (Larry Fink/Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard etc.) seem to believe that if they have all of this individual level data and tracking capabilities on all of us, together with a centralized world digital currency, then they will be able to properly manage all of us.

So, the question. Who put the bankers in charge of the world? This is crazy. It must stop. They have repeatedly demonstrated their incompetence, hubris, arrogance and greed. Somehow, the power of the Billionaires, Privately Owned Central Banks, Massive ‘Investment/Hedge funds,’ and all of their cute little clubs and private societies needs to be curtailed or (preferably, in my opinion) destroyed.

We need to confront the truth which has been hidden behind all of this … The world has empowered monopolists (such as Bill Gates) and monopolies to capture far too much power and control. They need to be brought to heel. For the sake of all of us. For the sake of humanity. For the sake of our children, if nothing else.”

Polycrisis of Doom Ahead
The COVID pandemic has brought into clear view the strategy used by the globalist cabal. Bankers are key players in this cabal, but they’re not the only ones. They create crises to feed their own greed. The pandemic was just the last of many such crises.

The financial crisis of 2008 showed us how incompetent they are. So why would we accept the ‘new and improved’ financial system they intend to roll out as soon as the current financial system is in shambles?

But the financial crisis of 2008 also shows us just how incompetent they are. They didn’t have the situation under control then, and they don’t have it under control now. So why in the world would we accept the “new and improved” financial system they intend to roll out as soon as the current financial system is in complete shambles?

It’ll be far worse than the last. There can be no doubt about that, because it will not only grant them complete control over your personal finances, it’ll also give them complete control over every other area of your life. This will occur after the Great Reset in the next two to three years once the central banks implement their CBDCs (central bank digital currencies).

Right now, we’re facing an unprecedented series of crises, as outlined in “Economy Expert Explains the Impending Polycrisis of Doom.” All of these crises — inflation, food shortages, energy shortages, impending war escalation — were created for the purpose of hiding the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen.

Once that wealth transfer is complete, you will “own nothing,” as predicted by the World Economic Forum, and be under the complete control of the greediest and fiscally most incompetent humans on planet earth. There’s simply no scenario in which these individuals will be able to create the utopia they claim to promote, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the sooner we can replace them with people who actually have the skills necessary to rebuild what they’ve destroyed.

How Bankers Plan to Force Us Into The Great Reset
Several countries have intentionally crippled and/or entirely dismantled their energy sectors, including Germany, France and the U.S., in the name of the Green Agenda. As a result, Deutsche Bank now warns Germans will need to burn firewood to survive the coming winter,8 and France is turning off street lights to reduce energy consumption.9

At this point, it’s important to realize that the Green Agenda is just another tool to force us into The Great Reset, just like the pandemic was used to weaponize Big Pharma in preparation for a global biosecurity network.

As explained by Town Hall, one of the ways big banks are plotting to force this transition is by implementing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores to businesses and individual investment accounts alike:10

“If banks are allowed to collectively decide to stop financing any group of people they want, based not on financial concerns but ideological considerations, then banks and their Great Reset allies will have, in effect, near-total control over society — especially if they begin to tie lending decisions to a vast ESG system …

The time has come for a massive populist revolt against the Great Reset, one that will hopefully have the same success as the grassroots movement against Common Core did under the Obama administration. The fate of the free world may very well depend on it.”

Understand the Game in Britain
Meanwhile, leadership in the U.K. is crumbling, and the World Economic Forum is fighting to get one of its members to take former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s place. As noted by Maajid Nawaz,11 the British leadership contest is all about securing a leader who will usher in The Great Reset:

“Division has been sown after Brexit. Civil norms has [sic] been crushed after COVID. The ‘means of production’ have been disrupted after war in Ukraine. What comes next is the purpose they all served: The Great Reset.

Combined, these cumulative crises of monumental fiscal suicide, unprecedented supply chain disruption and food and energy shortages are in danger of causing the collapse of the global financial system, sparking truly unprecedented global uprisings. In fact, we are already witnessing this.

The collapse of the global financial system now appears inevitable. It actually collapsed in 2008. What has proceeded since then is merely the execution of a carefully planned, if not vicious, controlled demolition.

The demolition is orchestrated by World Economic Forum (WEF) establishment globalists so that their own controlled opposition may steer this global reset towards further centralized tyranny, as opposed to allowing it to enable decentralized democracy.

Popular resistance will now be used as a pretext to clamp down and suspend liberty by rolling out militarized forces to subjugate the very conveniently rebelling citizens.

This is how the global financial establishment seeks to ride the current global revolution in order to retain their power. We are at the end of a natural generational cycle: a historic turning. We are witnessing the ‘reset’ part of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. They have told us what they plan to do. After the reset they will seek to ‘Build Back Better’ in order to create their New World Order …

The above is the proper context for why the globalist British establishment turned against their own frontman and PM Boris Johnson.

This allows for the impression that those responsible for any past injustices during the Brexit, COVID and Ukraine war chapters appear to be sufficiently scapegoated in the eyes of the hapless public, while the next chapter of their desired global transition to technocracy is ushered in under our very noses by a new, fresh-faced acolyte …

The globalists’ next chapter requires an unscathed PM — alive in the public imagination for handing out free cash to the public — who is prepared to steer the collapse of the financial system and usher in global banking’s planned technocracy: social credit scores and Central Banking Digital Coupons (CBDCs).”

The central banking cabal and its many allies have infiltrated governments and institutions across the world for many decades, slowly turning the systems against us. We are now in the final chapter of their technocratic takeover. Everything points to them succeeding.

What You Can Do
However, there is a wild card: The human spirit and its inherent love of freedom.

If enough of us refuse to accept the “new world” these crooks are proposing, we may still have a chance to turn this disaster around and truly rebuild something better.

It is important that you continue to prepare for the inevitable financial catastrophe and become as independent and resilient as possible. This year I have offered many articles on how you can prepare, and you can look them up on my Substack site.

It will also be vital to become as healthy as possible. A recent study showed that 93% of U.S. adults are metabolically unhealthy, and those stats were 4 years old. It is likely that number is now over 95%. You want to be the 1 person in 20 that is healthy. Make it your goal to be in that group.

• 1, 4, 5, 6 Investopedia May 17, 2022
• 2 YouTube Frontline February 22, 2022
• 3 the Balance August 28, 2020
• 7 RW Malone Substack July 19, 2022
• 8 MSN July 14, 2022
• 9 The Counter Signal July 15, 2022
• 10 Town Hall March 30, 2021
• 11 Maajid Nawaz Substack July 14, 2022

 

[Dozdoats]

Let’s be honest: you absolutely can’t ****ing reason with these people

Mr. Market will.

 

[marsh]

The Great Flattening of Joe Biden's Eco-Hammer

Yes, folks, Joser the Joserian, the Destructor, AKA Joe Biden, appears ready to unleash his awesome power to screw things up once again. Not that this would be something new, but the scope of what may happen is significant. Jose...

www.americanthinker.com

July 30, 2022

The Great Flattening of Joe Biden's Eco-Hammer

By John Kudla

Yes, folks, Joser the Joserian, the Destructor, AKA Joe Biden, appears ready to unleash his awesome power to screw things up once again. Not that this would be something new, but the scope of what may happen is significant. Joser seems ready to issue a Climate Emergency Declaration to save America from climate change.

What is a climate emergency? Since climate is weather averaged over 30 years or more, no one really knows.

Could it have something to do with the summertime heat wave stressing electrical grids in California and elsewhere? You might think so, but summertime heat waves are short-term weather phenomena. This is not climate gone wild. In other words, a heat wave does not a climate emergency make.

Has there been a sudden demand from the American people to do something about climate change? Considering that only 1% of American families see climate change as one of their biggest concerns, the answer is no.

Is this somehow tied to our European allies? Some of them believe so strongly in climate change that they have been closing coal-fired power stations for the past several years, just like the U.S., in order to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, these actions are reducing their electrical generating capacity to the point where they are endangering their ability to function as a modern society. Here is a speech by Europe's High Priestess of Climate Change, Greta Thunberg, which explains how she and other true believers feel about the subject.

The most sensible question is whether there has been some radical change in the Earth's atmospheric temperature in the past few months or years.

Based on the chart below showing the temperature change in the lower atmosphere via satellite, it is clear that the temperature has been slowly rising for the past 40 years. However, the temperatures in 2022 are very similar to temperatures in 2018. How is that an emergency?

​

Does it have something to do with the climate change model predictions from the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change — the IPCC?

In 2008, the IPCC created four Representative Concentration Pathways, or RCP scenarios, to model the Earth's climate out to 2100. Each scenario is based on the concentration of greenhouse gases assumed to be in the atmosphere over a specific time. RCP2.6 assumes that CO2 emissions start declining by 2020 and go to zero by 2100, a model that is now obsolete. RCP4.5 emissions top out in 2040 and then decline. RCP6.0 has emissions peak in 2080. RCP8.5, where emissions continue to rise until 2100, is considered the worst-case scenario. If we are heading for a climate apocalypse, we should be tracking along the RCP8.5 path by now.

​

However, if we look at global temperature predictions from 2005 and plot the current global atmospheric temperature, we see something curious. The current temperature is below all 138 model projections.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Either the IPCC has been lying to us for the past thirty-plus years or its modeling program overstates atmospheric warming from CO2.

Where is the scientific justification for a climate emergency? There isn't one because there is no crisis. In fact, in 2021, the IPCC admitted that the likelihood of RCP 8.5 happening is low.

So, what is Biden up to? A climate emergency is just an excuse to impose segments of the Green New Deal on the U.S. through executive orders.

Supposedly, the point is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase reliance on renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. This would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide the U.S. emits into the atmosphere and make the progressive wing of the Democrat party happier.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Joe can affect climate policy only in the U.S. Note the chart below showing the distribution of carbon dioxide emissions by country.

In 2019, the U.S. accounted for 16% of the worldwide emission of CO2.

Meanwhile, China, India, and Russia together contributed 41%.

Of course, since China's and Russia's primary concern is dominating the world, and India's main concern is pulling itself out of poverty, they probably don't care about CO2 emissions. Ditto for the 19% of the rest of the world, mostly poorer third-world countries who want to improve their quality of life. So, despite all of the happy talk behind the Paris Climate Accords, it is debatable that roughly 60% of the world does not care about CO2 emissions. Either they know that the whole thing is a farce, or it is not an issue that matters to them.

​

So, while Joser the Joserian is happily wrecking our energy production and distribution systems, forcing the rebuilding of factories, homes, and other buildings to meet more stringent climate restrictions, and demanding we switch to electric vehicles, the rest of the world will go on its merry way, CO2 emissions be damned. They get dependable energy supplies, and we get wind and solar farms, which work when the wind blows, and there is bright sunshine, but not so well at other times.

Have you wondered why Joe Biden has been begging foreign dictators in Venezuela, Iran, and our former ally Saudi Arabia to pump more oil? He has been doing this even though the simple solution is to loosen restrictions and produce more oil in the United States.

The part no one seems to understand is that this whole sham is not about saving the Earth. Instead, it is about waging an economic jihad on U.S. fossil fuel industries, which are 8% of our nation's GDP. It is about using the U.S. government's power to disemploy and impoverish the roughly ten million people who work in the industry. This will weaken the economies of at least a dozen states, wreck an entire segment of our economy, and punish the Republican Party by depriving it of campaign contributions from the oil, gas, and coal companies and their workers.

While this happens, industries and unions friendly to Democrats, such as green energy, electric vehicle makers, the UAW, etc., prosper. Not to mention that Biden's pals in China will make out like bandits, since we will have to buy most of the windmills and solar panels from them.

Last I checked, Joe is neither king nor emperor. So if he is allowed to get away with this, what will stop him from declaring an emergency a week and ruling the U.S. by decree? The damage resulting from this sort of Machiavellian scheme could be severe.

Image via Public Domain Pictures.

 

[marsh]

Dr. Chris Martenson & Mattias Desmet - It's Time to Take a Stand 59:51 min

Dr. Chris Martenson & Mattias Desmet - It's Time to Take a Stand
Right2Freedom Published July 30, 2022

Just over seven months ago, I helped introduce the world to Mattias Desmet and the concept of “Mass Formation” (aka Mass Psychosis). Nearly half a million people watched our video on our many social media channels and at the Peak Prosperity website.

Prominent voices like Dr. Robert Malone, Joe Rogan and many others quoted the show and Mattias, and the idea of a mass psychosis taking over our world became common knowledge.

I found profound relief at finally having a framework for understanding – and even having compassion for – my fellow citizens who seemed to be going, well, crazy. A light on a very dark path began to shine.

People who once relished freedom and Democracy, often sporting a healthy and well-earned distrust of government and pharmaceutical companies, suddenly became acolytes of those entities. They attacked anyone that questioned the obviously authoritarian actions of those same entities.

How could so many people turn into slaves of the very entities that they had shunned throughout their lives? They literally became the victims and the tools of totalitarian leaders…voluntarily?

Just so, how could so many so-called “trusted leaders” turn us – their constituents or customers or friends and family – down this horrid path? As I wrote for the original interview, these “dim actors” pull our emotional strings “to create fear and isolation in order to push their agenda of technocratic control of our lives, dreams of transhumanism, using vaccine passports as a first step on a path to overt totalitarianism.”

Early on, you might have justly given those bad actors a break; after all, it was a pandemic of a new virus. But it didn’t take long to see the truth behind actual science and data; yet these elites doubled down on their control.

In his newest book, “The Psychology of Totalitarianism” Mattias helps us understand how those we supposedly trusted are still trying to create a world in which they have full control.

As he writes, “Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. It arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation—from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists—as technology advances. Governments, mass media, and other mechanized forces use fear, loneliness, and isolation to demoralize populations and exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results.”

While we may think the lies of the pandemic and authoritarians are being exposed, and there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel, the truth is that we’re still very much in danger. Climate change, Monkeypox, Ukraine, China, recession, supply chains…the list of emergencies are never-ending, and thus the excuses for more control are never-ending.

Take this to heart, the risks are as grave as ever. We few brave and courageous people must continue to stand up and say “No!” If we do not, Mattias shows exactly how throughout history good people ended up somewhere they deeply regretted. That could be us, soon.

The good news is that many more people are now waking up to the truth that government restrictions and mandates, seemingly endless fear-based public relations campaigns, lockdowns, forced medical procedures, and vaccine passports to travel in one’s own community were created not on the basis of sound science or firm data, but out of a desire to control.

Human misery and mass atrocities are always possible, but now more than ever, our “leaders” are pushing us in that direction. It is our solemn duty to resist.

As always, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” We can do better. Listen to this important interview so “they” can’t transfer their anger and rage at us.

Mattias tells us how it’s done, and what we can do. Of course, we must defend ourselves but never resort to unnecessary violence. Continue to be courageous. Hold everyone with compassion. Hate the sin, not the sinner. But most of all, we must speak up.

 

[marsh]

BIG WIN for Medical Freedom: Judge Grants Service Members Preliminary Injunction Prohibiting C19 Vax Mandate 3:44 min

BIG WIN for Medical Freedom: Judge Grants Service Members Preliminary Injunction Prohibiting C19 Vax Mandate
The Vigilant Fox Published July 30, 2022

Attorney Aaron Siri: "What kind of country would we be if those that we send out to fight and spill their blood to protect our freedoms, we don't respect their very freedoms? And so this judge took that oath very seriously."

Full Episode: Radical Truths: Pierre Kory, Aaron Siri, and Maajid Nawaz Join the Highwire - Episode 278 [VIDEO]

 

[marsh]

Where's the Food Going to Come From? Climate Stupidity Is Going to Kill Us All 2:36 min

Where's the Food Going to Come From? Climate Stupidity Is Going to Kill Us All
The Vigilant Fox Published July 30, 2022









Del Bigtree: "The whole place [WEF] is ‘Stop global hunger.’ Yet the very people saying that are literally paying people to shut down their farms so that they don’t grow anything."

^^^^^
Read More on Substack: Where's the Food Going to Come From? Climate Stupidity Is Going to Kill Us All

Where's the Food Going to Come From? Climate Stupidity Is Going to Kill Us All

Isn't it weird that all these governments are obsessed with targeting food production?

The Vigilant Fox

Amid ongoing protests in the Netherlands, more countries are signing on to these climate reductions to emissions, primarily targeting the agricultural industry.

In a news article covered by the Highwire, we gain some insight into what these reductions entail. Here is the headline:

DUTCH MINISTRY OF FINANCE REPORT: 11,200 FARMERS MUST STOP, 17,600 REDUCE LIVESTOCK BY THIRD TO HALF


In this story, we see a glimpse of transparency as members of Parliament forced the release of an internal document by the Minister of Finance. Here’s what it says (translated to English).

“The current nitrogen strategy of the cabinet will mean, according to the calculations of the Ministry of Finance, that 11,200 farmer businesses must be stopped and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock, by a third almost a half. The calculations were published on Wednesday afternoon to show how hard the agricultural sector (a total of 40,000 to 50,000 farmers with cattle) is affected by the nitrogen fertilization plans of the cabinet.”

The food supply was already heading towards a global downturn after the strain of two and a half years of COVID policies, and now while we are vulnerable, while we need some relief, they want to impede the work of up to 50,000 Dutch farmers?

And it’s not just the Netherlands. Check out the headline from the UK.

British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry - but at what cost to agriculture?


And here it is directly on the UK government’s website.

How to apply for a lump sum payment to leave or retire from farming



It goes on to say this:

“Before you receive the lump sum payment, you must do all the following:

• transfer your agricultural land in England (but you can keep up to 5 hectares) or plant it with trees under a woodland creation scheme
• transfer grazing and pannage rights you have on common land in England, where required
• give up (surrender) your English BPS entitlements”

Basically, they’re saying, “Get the heck out of here! We don’t want you to farm anymore, and WE want to be in control the land.”

Here’s what the Highwire’s Del Bigtree has to say about all of this.

“The whole thing is so disturbing. The farmers are the problem?

Farmers are? Not all of the industries that are tracking us and tracing us or causing problems around the world and starting wars? It’s the farmers? Those people that are out there digging the dirt, bringing us our food, and where’s our food going to come from?

And like you said, the whole place [WEF] is ‘Stop global hunger.’ Yet the very people saying that are literally paying people to shut down their farms so that they don’t grow anything.

We’re under attack! I don’t know how else to see it — by some really, really stupid, sinister, dark, strange entities.”

Completely agreed. It feels like it’s designed. And I’m afraid these dumb decisions are going to have massive consequences.

To dig deeper into this subject, watch Michael Yon’s interview with Jordan Peterson.

 

[marsh]

Financial System - Lawless Criminal Control Syndicate – Catherine Austin Fitts 1:09:40 min

Financial System - Lawless Criminal Control Syndicate – Catherine Austin Fitts
Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com Published July 30, 2022

Financial System – Lawless Criminal Control Syndicate – Catherine Austin Fitts | Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post) Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says we are at war with the Deep State globalists that want nothing short of total control over all of mankind. Central...

usawatchdog.com

inancial System – Lawless Criminal Control Syndicate – Catherine Austin Fitts

By Greg Hunter On July 30, 2022 In Political Analysis 2 Comments
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post)

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says we are at war with the Deep State globalists that want nothing short of total control over all of mankind. Central bankers want a financial system that is a lawless criminal control syndicate where it’s legal for them to do whatever they want. It is simply a choice between tyranny and sovereignty, freedom or slavery. We start with the foundational building block of tyranny, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that global bankers want to install in the financial system. CAF says, “It’s not a currency.

That’s what you need to understand. What we are talking about is a control system that is going to be implemented in a global coup d’état, and we are in the middle of a global coup d’état. That’s what is happing right now. Essentially, if you look at the central bankers, the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and all the central bankers are trying to create a system where they are completely free of the laws of nation states and governments. In other words, they are inserting sovereign immunity from all laws and literally trying to create a civilization under the law where they are free to do whatever they want, including, as we know—genocide.”

CAF says to fight back against CBDC is to use cash. Fitts says, “If you go to Solari.com, you will see something that says, “Cash Every Day.” Click the big red cap that says, “Make Cash Great Again.” If you click on that, you will get three videos. There are two videos I really want your audience to watch. One is a 56 second video of the BIS general manger Augustin Carstens in October 2020 explaining with CBDC they will have central control and enforce them centrally.

It’s the only time in my life that I saw a central banker be 100% honest. The second video says “Financial Rebellion,” click it and you’ll get three minutes of a presentation by Richard Werner. He is certainly the top scholar in the world on central banking. . . . Richard explains that one of the top central bankers in Europe told him they are planning on chipping all of us.”

CAF says central bankers will ignore the U.S. Constitution, steal all of our assets like cash and gold but especially the land. CAF contends they won’t be able to do this unless they take our guns and extinguish the Second Amendment. CAF also talks about what she thinks will happen after the first of this year when it comes to inflation or deflation.

CAF says, “We are at war and we need a war strategy. . . . The ‘Great Reset’ will turn into the ‘Great Resist.”

CAF contends the good news is people are waking up and this evil criminal system can be stopped. CAF says, “Saint Paul said in Timothy, ‘Just stand and watch the divine go to work.’ They can’t do this. Did you see what just happened in Ireland? They tried to go all digital, and they had so many people cancel their accounts, they had to walk it back. . . . One thing the Bible makes clear is it will at times look hopeless, but it won’t be. That’s why you have to stand.”

There is much more in the 1 hour and 10 min. interview.

 

[marsh]

(Argentina)

Argentina's Government Collapsing; People Refuse to Work Amid Major Subsidy Cuts

Protests have erupted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, over the past 90 days and continue to build inside the ...

www.theepochtimes.com

Members of social and trade union organizations protesting on July 20, 2022, in Buenos Aires, in demand of a universal basic income. The impoverished South American country struggles to repay its US$44 billion dollar debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amid rampant inflation and social unrest. (Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

AMERICAS
Argentina’s Government Collapsing, People Refuse to Work Amid Major Subsidy Cuts
Only 43 percent of adults have a job, as inflation soars above 60 percent
By Autumn Spredemann

July 27, 2022 Updated: July 28, 2022

Protests have erupted in Buenos Aires over the past 90 days and continue to build inside the capital as residents battle with their center-left government over sizeable amendments to social programs.

Cuts to subsidies in the energy sector based on household income already began in June.

Other subsidies, including the country’s notorious welfare program, are also on the chopping block, triggering thousands of angry residents to take to the streets.

State-sponsored aid for civilians has soared in the past 20 years, leaving 22 million Argentinians dependent on some form of government assistance.

In the first quarter of 2022, the national employment rate was 43 percent, according to government figures.

Argentina’s president Alberto Fernandez is pictured during a meeting in Germany at Elmau Castle, on June 27, 2022. (Markus Schreiber/AFP via Getty Images)

The country’s state funded programs extend to nearly every aspect of the economy, from wages to utilities, education, and health care.

Argentina already spends an estimated 800 million pesos per day—a sum of more than US$6 million—on state benefit programs.

Concurrently, inflation in the South American nation hit 58 percent in May and soared above 60 percent in July. By comparison, national inflation was just over 14 percent in 2015.

Harry Lorenzo, chief finance officer of Income Based Research, told The Epoch Times the spending habits of Argentina’s government are at the root of the escalating problem.

“The Argentine government has been grappling with a collapsing economy for some time now. The main reason for this is the government’s unsustainable spending, which has been funded in part by generous welfare programs,” Lorenzo explained.

Deeper Into Economic Chaos
Cries for more state money, freedom from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and for President Alberto Fernandez to step down echoed within the angry crowds gathered near the president’s office—Casa Rosada —during the nation’s independence day celebration on July 9.

Since then, scheduled demonstrations have continued, led by professional protest organizers or “piqueteros” demanding the abolition of the proposed subsidy cuts and a wage increase.

“This is madness. What the piqueteros are asking for is madness,” Alvaro Gomez told The Epoch Times.

Gomez has lived and worked in Buenos Aires for more than 15 years and currently is a taxi driver. As the years have passed, he’s watched his country dive deeper into economic chaos.

“I’ve seen five presidents come and go in that time; nothing has improved. Half of our country doesn’t want a job, and the ones that do, don’t want to pay the taxes for the others,” he said.

Current vice president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner speaks during a news conference in Buenos Aires, Dec. 7, 2017. (Reuters/Marcos Brindicci)

Argentina’s minister of the economy and close ally of Fernandez, Martin Guzman, resigned from office on July 2 amid complaints that internal conflicts prevented him from doing his job.

Guzman was the driving force behind a critical new IMF deal. He also reportedly clashed with the current vice president and former two-term president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over the handling of Argentina’s spiraling economic crisis.

Kirchner is a vehement subsidy supporter and has previously denounced Argentina’s dependence on the IMF.

In summary, half of the ruling coalition wants more foreign bailouts as a solution to bankrupted coffers and inflation.

The other half wants to maintain the existing social programs and be independent of foreign aid while raising taxes on an increasingly impoverished population.

Presently, some parts of Argentina have more than 40 percent of its population living below the poverty line.

Low Investor Confidence
Kirchner called the sudden resignation of Guzman “an immense act of political irresponsibility” during a press conference in the province of Santa Cruz.

Fernandez quickly appointed Silvina Batakis on July 3 to fill the gap in the pivotal office.

Wasting no time, Batakis met with IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva on July 25 to discuss a potential new deal for the country’s outstanding $44 billion debt.

Robert Donnelly, the finance manager at Marketplace Fairness, told The Epoch Times that Argentina’s reliance on foreign bailouts isn’t a solution but more of a short-term economic pressure valve release.

“While this has been somewhat successful, it has not solved the underlying problem,” Donnelly said.

He explained that Fernandez’s administration could do several things to alleviate the country’s dependence on outside loans, like increasing exports and attracting more foreign investment.

Though with the collapse of the peso, high inflation, and no clear strategy for a path forward from the government, outside investor confidence remains very low.

The International Monetary Fund logo outside the headquarters building during the IMF/World Bank spring meeting in Washington on April 20, 2018. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Lorenzo maintains reeling in government spending is paramount. “This would involve scaling back the welfare programs, which have been a major contributor to the country’s debt.”

However, for the 1.2 million members dependent on the social program Empower Work, which is an income subsidy that provides a living wage for an indefinite period of time, working a regular job is out of the question.

“The government expects us to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the same amount of money,” an outraged female Buenos Aires resident and piquetero lamented to reporters during a live news broadcast.

When asked where how she’d been earning income for her household, the woman replied, “the government.”

Anger at Having to Work
Another protester, an adult male, also decried the proposed welfare program changes telling local reporters, “Cristina [Kirchner] told us we have to go to work instead of receiving social benefits. Going to work, that’s the policy of a right winger.”

Protesters continue to ask for more subsidy money or for Fernandez to step down from office.

Meanwhile, the embattled head of state called for unity in the economically devastated nation during the 206th anniversary of the country’s independence.

In the same speech, Fernandez lashed out at groups who were attacking the government and wanted to “keep all the income.”

Regarding the nation’s deepening economic crisis and resultant instability, Fernandez said, “Unity is always the fruit of the willingness of those involved to consolidate it.

“History teaches us that it’s a value that we must preserve in the most difficult moments.”


Autumn Spredemann
REPORTER

 

[marsh]

Expert: No U.S. Energy Independence if It Relies on Russia Uranium

An energy expert said the U.S. cannot be energy independent if it relies on hostile nations like Russia and China for resources.

www.breitbart.com

Expert: U.S. Cannot Have Energy Independence if It Relies on Russia Uranium
42

GUILLAUME SOUVANT/AFP/Getty
PENNY STARR30 Jul 2022165

Amir Adnani, founder and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp., said in an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday with host Matt Boyle that the United States cannot be energy independent if it relies on hostile nations like Russia and China for resources, including vital minerals like uranium.

Uranium is used to power nuclear plants and the nuclear reactors that power naval ships and submarines.

“[We have to] get off of the Russian uranium import dependency that we have,” Adnani said. ”We’re going to be a world superpower and not have our own uranium? We’re going to be a world superpower and depend for our uranium on Russia. How does any of this make sense?”




Adnani said that the Biden administration energy policies are hampering U.S. energy independence.

“We’ve got to just face the fact that in the real world, and a real energy matrix and policy, we need nuclear power, we need natural gas,” Adnani said. [“We’re a] big energy country and remember energy equals life. And Russia is trying to take life away. Russia is trying to take energy away and leverage it, whether it’s in the battle over Ukraine or when it comes to how it wants to influence and leverage against Europe.”

Andani said that his company is trying to turn the course of uranium production in the U.S.

“The U.S. used to be the biggest producer of uranium in the world,” Andani said.

“There’s no uranium mining domestically and I’m trying to change that,” Andani said.

In another important development in bringing back domestic uranium production Uranium Energy Corp. successfully aquired Uranium One, the world’s fourth largest uranium producer and part of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom.

 

[marsh]

Collapse? There Goes Ammonia and Nitrogen-Based Fertilizer

Germany's BASF, the world's largest chemical company, is cutting ammonia production further due to soaring natural gas prices...

www.independentsentinel.com

Collapse? There Goes Ammonia and Nitrogen-Based Fertilizer
By
M Dowling
-July 30, 2022

Ludwigshafen, Germany – January 2022: BASF SE, a German multinational chemical company and largest chemical producer in the world
Germany’s BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, is cutting ammonia production further due to soaring natural gas prices, it said on Wednesday, with potential ramifications from farming to fizzy drinks, Reuters reports.

It will reduce access to fertilizers and bring up the costs during the manufactured natural gas crisis.

Germany’s biggest ammonia maker SKW Piesteritz and number four Ineos also said they could not rule out production cuts as the country grapples with disruption to Russian gas supplies.

Ammonia is used in fertilizers – the ones that actually work – and the Green agenda demands their abolition. One of the byproducts is CO2, now falsely alleged to be a poison.

BASF would purchase some ammonia from external suppliers to fill gaps but warned farmers would face soaring fertilizer costs next year.

The Russia-Ukraine war added to the problem.

Chemical companies are the biggest industrial natural-gas users in Germany and ammonia is the single most gas-intensive product within that industry. They will be seriously damaged.

BASF is forced to pay more for what they can get while also drastically cutting production.

BASF reportedly had to pay an additional 800 million euros (about $809.5 million) in the second quarter compared to a year earlier while slashing output of ammonia, which requires large amounts of gas in order to produce.

“We are reducing production at facilities that require large volumes of natural gas, such as ammonia plants,” announced BASF chief executive Martin Brudermuller in a conference call following an earnings report.

The news of BASF reducing ammonia production because of soaring NatGas prices comes as Russian state-owned energy producer Gazprom PJSC halves supplies via Nord Stream 1 to Europe to about 20%. EU member states agreed Tuesday to reduce NatGas demand by 15% over the next eight months, though countries like Germany, without any liquefied natural gas (LNG) port terminals to replace Russian pipeline NatGas, might have to make more considerable sacrifices.

The sanctions are seriously harming the West and not destroying Russia as they allegedly hoped. Maybe the Western rulers want to destroy the West.

 

[marsh]

Washington D.C. Is Run By the Enemies of the American People – It Is Time to Take America Back (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft | 88

Guest post by Lawrence Sellin Washington D.C.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Washington D.C. Is Run By the Enemies of the American People – It Is Time to Take America Back (VIDEO)

By Joe Hoft
Published July 30, 2022 at 1:00pm

Guest post by Lawrence Sellin
Washington D.C. is enemy-occupied territory – It is time to take America back

The accumulation of excessive power has made the federal government a self-serving and self-preserving entity unaccountable to the American people and operating outside of constitutional constraints.

The U.S. government has become a corrupt one-party state, composed of mutually supportive Democrat and Republican politicians, administered by a permanent dictatorial bureaucracy, all controlled by transnational interests, who plunder American assets for personal power and profit, while attempting to maintain the illusion of democracy.

Once exposed, when blatant and outrageous lies are no longer sufficient to soothe the electorate into complacency, such a government must curtail freedom and oppress the people in order to retain power.

The politically contaminated Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have created a two-tier justice system, in which those serving the one-party state are never held accountable for their crimes, while opponents of federal overreach and malfeasance are treated like Soviet-era political prisoners without rights or due process.

It is a government that cannot be reformed through the electoral process because election integrity can no longer be assured.

Many Americans ask, how was the United States transformed from a constitutional republic into a one-party state inching towards totalitarianism?

It resulted from the eventual convergence of the separately-evolving political and economic philosophies of the Democrat and Republican parties that occurred during the Cold War’s clash between capitalism and communism.

It was a shift in support from American constitutional nationalism to authoritarian transnationalism, either corporate or communist, today represented by the global governance models of the World Economic Forum and the Chinese Communist Party. Both advocate systems in which small ruling elites oversee billions of virtual slaves without individual rights or property. In a world without nations, there are no citizens to which rulers need cater or be accountable, just humans as replaceable parts in lands to be exploited.

Stated simply, it was the political and economic abandonment and degradation of American citizens in favor of transnationalism by both Democrats and Republicans that has paved the way for the emergence of an American one-party totalitarian state.

About the same time the Democrat Party shifted its base of support from American workers to wealthy donors and corporate liberals, who were investing heavily in the global economy, Republicans were responding to the needs of large multinational corporations rather than American small business, which was the backbone of the U.S. economy and the American Middle Class.

In parallel, American communists, who embraced a governance model similar to the corporate globalists, never abandoned the notion of fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

The takeover of the Democrat Party by communist elements followed the pattern witnessed after the 1917 Russian Revolution.

At that time, the political left widely believed that a violent proletarian revolt would sweep across Europe and, ultimately, North America.

It did not.

As a result, the Communist International began to investigate other ways to create the state of societal hopelessness and alienation necessary as a prerequisite for socialist revolution – in essence, to erode western democracy from within.

The single, most important organizational component of that effort was a Communist think tank called the Institute for Social Research, popularly known as the Frankfurt School.

The task of the Frankfurt School was first, to undermine the foundation of Western civilization that emphasized the uniqueness of the individual and, second, to determine new cultural forms that would increase the disaffection of and division among the population.

Just as in classical economic Marxism, where certain groups like workers and peasants are a priori good, and other groups like the bourgeoisie and capital owners are evil, in Cultural Marxism, feminists, racial and ethnic minorities and those who define themselves according to sexual orientation are deemed good and “victims” of societal injustice. It logically follows, then, that white males and “privilege” and, by extension, Western civilization, are automatically and irredeemably malevolent.

Likewise, when the violence perpetrated by radicals in the 1960s failed to spark revolution in the United States, American communists adopted the tactics of the Frankfurt School, spawning new cultural forms like critical race theory, transgenderism, sexual grooming of children and even a tolerance for pedophilia, all to create societal degradation, division and conflict, again, essential elements for radical political change.

American communists concluded that the best means to create a one-party state was to take over the Democrat Party.

The process to establish a one-party state was already underway in the Democrat Party in the mid-1960s through immigration and social welfare legislation designed to generate a permanent Democrat voting majority.

The Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was designed to import new Democrat voters from Third World countries, while President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty programs was meant to create dependency on the federal government, mainly among Black Americans, which, tragically, led to the destruction of the Black family.

The Biden regime’s open borders policy is simply a radical extension of the American voter replacement concept initiated by the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and consistent with the World Economic Forum’s view of American workers as replaceable parts.

To the detriment of the American people and the health of the country, as the Democrat Party moved ever more politically leftward, the Republicans followed.

The American two-party system was further subverted as Democrats ran as Republicans in conservative districts.

It is why so many Republicans, so easily and so often vote with Democrats on critical national issues.

Republican leaders do not oppose their Democrat counterparts because they do not want to challenge the ruling class, they want to be part of it. The Republican Party has solidified its choice to no longer represent what had been its constituency, but to adopt the identity of junior partners in the ruling class.

The fusion of Democrat and Republican ideologies based on transnationalism precipitated the separation of the federal government from the American people.

Nevertheless, the Democrat and Republican parties are now irretrievably linked to and financially dependent upon transnational entities.

Today, the United States is ruled by a political aristocracy that sees itself as distinct from the American people and as the only element capable of governing the country, and those who oppose them as having no intellectual or legal right to do so.

The Bible says that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Likewise, a government separated from the people, also, cannot stand.

It is a fundamental principle of our constitutional republic that the efficiency and effectiveness of government are directly dependent upon the trustworthiness of government officials as representatives and executors of the views and desires of the people.

The U.S. federal government no longer serves that function.

There are many challenges facing the United States that cannot be effectively addressed without solving two fundamental problems.

First, the federal government, as an institution, is hopelessly corrupt and, second, although we have elections, we do not have representative government.

It is no longer a contest between the Democrat and Republican ideologies but a battle between the entrenched power of the bipartisan political establishment versus the freedom and well-being of the American people.

There is a winning coalition in the United States, one inclusive of all Americans, one for all those who believe in a simple proposition — honest, representative and effective government.

But there will be no solutions emanating from Washington, D.C. because it has made itself an enemy of the American people.

We can only restore our constitutional republic through a nationwide, bottom-up political insurgency based on the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms and the Tenth Amendment’s restrictions on the powers of the federal government.

It is time to take America back.

Watch the video below:

View: https://youtu.be/WpOjBRdwC_U
11:51 min

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

 

[marsh]

Farmer protests spread across the EU in Italy, Spain, Poland and Germany

A WAVE of agricultural protest has swept Europe and the wider world, as a host of issues conspire to pit farmers against national politics.

www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk

Farmer protests spread across the globe
14th July

By John SleighNorthern Editor

A WAVE of agricultural protest has swept Europe and the wider world, as a host of issues conspire to pit farmers against national politics.

Farmer-led protests in Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland have sprung up in the wake of action by Dutch farmers, who were first to take to the streets to complain about the impact of new emissions rules.

German farmers blockaded roads on the border with the Netherlands and gathered in large numbers to protest near the city of Heerenburg. Italian farmers also held tractor protests in rural areas and threatened to take the protests to the streets of Rome.

Polish farmers took over the streets of Warsaw complaining against cheap imports, and the high interest rates which have destabilised their businesses and threatened their livelihoods. The heat of rising inflation has also reached Spain, where farmers blocked highways in the southern region of Andalusia to protest against high fuel prices and the rising costs of essential products.

The initial anger from Dutch farmers arose from fears that they would have to downscale or stop their business to meet reduction targets for the nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions produced by their livestock. While the Dutch government has announced large investments in farm housing and technology, they will also have the option to force farmers to sell their land in case enough volunteers for the technology shift are not found.

Some estimates show that Dutch plan forcing 30% of its farms out of business by 2030.

As a result, thousands of Dutch farmers blocked ports, airports, and roads, as well as supermarket distribution centres, with their tractors, and torched straw bales in the streets and dumped manure at government buildings. The supermarkets are running out of food as the protests continue to intensify. Other sectors have also started to join in the protests, with fishermen blocking ports and several ships honking their horns to express their frustration over rising inflation.


Further afield, in the Imphal West district in India there were protests at the non-availability of fertilisers. Reports from local newspapers said farmers across the state were facing short supply of fertiliser for the on-going paddy crop season even as the state government, particularly the agriculture minister, claimed that there was no dearth of urea in the government warehouse.

Following that information, thousands of Indian farmers converged at the district agriculture office in Imphal’s Lamphelpat. However, officials there informed them that only 250 bags of urea would be distributed and tokens would be issued to those in the queue in the coming days. Irked by that announcement, the farmers stormed the warehouse.
https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/subscribe

 

[marsh]

Facebook Global Freedom Movement



(Germany)


(New Zealand - this is their Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who said that her government is the only reliable source of truth

 

[von Koehler]

Facebook Global Freedom Movement

View attachment 354332

(Germany)
View attachment 354331

(New Zealand - this is their Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who said that her government is the only reliable source of truth

View attachment 354334

Just shows how long and extensively these globalist bastards have been planning.

 

[marsh]

US Frack Growth Constrained In "Perfect Storm" | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

US Frack Growth Constrained In "Perfect Storm"

SUNDAY, JUL 31, 2022 - 02:30 PM
Last week, Halliburton Co.'s CEO Jeff Miller warned hydraulic fracturing equipment is in short supply and could hamper fracking growth. Another oil/gas executive echoed the same warning this week and said bottlenecks could persist through 2023.

"Availability of frac fleets is one of main bottlenecks impeding oil and natural as production growth for the next 18 months," Robert Drummond, chief executive officer of fracking firm NexTier Oilfield Solutions, told Reuters.

Besides supply chain snarls, Drummond warned that capital constraints would make adding equipment to fields challenging. He said this imbalance could take several years to correct, adding that NexTier has no plans to expand fracking capacity this year.

This development is another setback for the Biden administration's efforts to increase US oil production to ease the worst inflation in forty years ahead of the midterm elections in November.

US crude production is around 11.6 million barrels per day, below the pre-pandemic 12.3 million bpd in 2019, the latest data from the Energy Information Administration show.



Matt Hagerty, a senior analyst at BTU Analytics, pointed out that "frac crew bottlenecks" are a "significant headwind for US producers headed into 2023." He said frac sand and labor shortages, elevated inflation, and limited frac fleets are a "perfect storm."

Halliburton's Miller said oil companies didn't have enough fracking equipment for newly leased wells. He said diesel-powered and electric equipment are in short supply, "making it almost impossible to add incremental capacity this year."

A similar message was conveyed by Exxon Mobil, whose CEO said that global oil markets might remain tight for three to five years primarily because of a lack of investment since the pandemic began.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods said it'll take time for oil firms to "catch up" on the investments needed to ensure enough supply.

In response to shale's dismal ramp-up in production, the Biden administration has panic sold millions and millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has been drained by 125 million barrels so far in 2022 -- all in hopes of lowering gasoline prices at the pump ahead of the midterm elections in November.



The good news is the recession, and high inflation appears to have sparked the weakest gasoline demand since 2013.



The Shale patch has a structural bottleneck that won't be resolved this year. Blame years of divestment and decarbonization for the mess.

 

[marsh]

Hawaii Electricity Prices To Skyrocket As Final Shipment Of Coal Arrives | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Hawaii Electricity Prices To Skyrocket As Final Shipment Of Coal Arrives

SUNDAY, JUL 31, 2022 - 12:00 PM
Hawaii is receiving its final shipment of coal this week, which Gov. David Ige called a huge step forward in the state’s transition to clean energy. What he meant was that local are about to pay a lot more for basic essentials.

A law put in place a couple of years ago will finally shut down the island’s last coal burning power plant. And since coal is the dirtiest * but cheapest - source of power for Oahu, it means that all else equal, power prices are about to skyrocket.

“In its time, coal was an important resource for Hawai‘i and I’d like to thank the workers who have run our last remaining coal plant,” Ige said in a statement. “Renewable energy projects to replace coal are coming online with more on the way.”

“Even as we face challenges in making this transition, it’s the right move for our communities and planet. Most importantly, it will leave Hawaiʻi a better place for our children and grandchildren.”

So noble, Scandinavian teenagers would approve: there is just one problem: as KHON2’s Always Investigating reports, replacement power projects are behind schedule due to unexpected global events with supply chain issues, so Oahu residents should prepare to pay even more for electricity this fall. In other words, Europe's catastrophic experience with the "Green transition" where an entire continent moved to "energy alternatives" some 30 years before it was ready to replace fossil fuels, is coming to at least one American state.

In the meantime, consumers can either cut back on power, try solar and batteries, or pay more for oil-generated power — which costs as much as five times more than coal.

The Kapolei plant has been Oahu’s largest single generator for three decades, meeting about 16% of the island’s peak electricity demand. Its closure on Sept. 1 means eliminating 180 megawatts of power, or about one-tenth of what Oahu needs. There is no ready replacement for this source of energy which is about to go offline.



But wait, it gets funnier: one year ago, Hawaii was stunned to learn that the "green facility" which is replacing the Kapolei coal plant, the 185-MW Kapolei Energy Storage Facility, will be charging its "enormous battery" … with oil! In other words, Hawaiians will be trading one fossil fuel (coal) for another, albeit one far more expensive. Or as the chair of PUC, Jay Griffin, complained, Hawaiians are “going from cigarettes to crack."

“If there is not enough solar, wind, or battery storage energy to replace the AES plant, HECO would have to use oil instead to charge things like the upcoming 185-megawatt Kapolei Energy Storage Facility,” Pacific Business News reported.

It’s not a matter of “if,” however. The reality is there’s not enough wind, solar, or battery storage to replace the AES plant. Hawaiian Electric has made this quite clear in recent documents, noting that it would not be able to meet its year-two renewable target (75 percent) for “more than a decade.” - Source FEE Stories

Confused? Here is the simplified schematic:

1. Oahu is permanently shutting down its final coal plant which provides 10-20% of the island's energy
2. Its replacement is an energy storage facility which however will need oil to charge its battery
3. Hawaii is effectively replacing dirty coal power with just as dirty oil power, which however is far more expensive.

Translation:another brilliantly executed "green" revolution, or as FEE put it:

The project is a wonderful demonstration of why we should be wary of giving central planners more power over energy security. It’s an example of a phenomenon explained by Ludwig von Mises: that government policies often have exactly the opposite effect of what was intended.

In an address delivered before the University Club in New York in 1950, the economist explained how government policies often backfire in ways that are predictable. Here is an example he offered:

“The government believes that the price of a definite commodity, e.g., milk, is too high. It wants to make it possible for the poor to give their children more milk. Thus it resorts to a price ceiling and fixes the price of milk at a lower rate than that prevailing on the free market. The result is that the marginal producers of milk, those producing at the highest cost, now incur losses. As no individual farmer or businessman can go on producing at a loss, these marginal producers stop producing and selling milk on the market. They will use their cows and their skill for other more profitable purposes. They will, for example, produce butter, cheese or meat. There will be less milk available for the consumers, not more."

These outcomes are of course contrary to the intentions of lawmakers, Mises pointed out. They wanted to make it easier for people to purchase milk, not reduce the supply of milk. But the result is the same, he observed, and that is the lesson.

So what can we do about it at home besides getting ready to write bigger checks to Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO)?

HECO vice president Jim Kelly suggests to “really be embracing the idea of conservation,” especially during peak hours. Between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., don’t be cranking on the air conditioner, taking long showers, running the oven, or whatever else that requires electricity and water. And while blaming Putin might provide a few minutes of gratification, it won't do anything for the accelerated depletion of your bank account.

 

[marsh]

Just shows how long and extensively these globalist bastards have been planning.

I think if it ever becomes truly revealed, we will find the Royal House of England is deeply involved in all the shady trafficking, money laundering, gold theft, Ukrainian corruption and other bad stuff as well. Their hatred of Russia is longstanding and I believe they were a pro-war push as well. Charles is a real piece of work.

 

[marsh]

(COMMENT: I have previously posted videos of bread lines outside of bakeries in Lebanon)

Beirut's 2020-Blast-Hit Grain-Silos Suddenly Collapse In Massive Plume Of Debris | ZeroHedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Beirut's 2020-Blast-Hit Grain-Silos Suddenly Collapse In Massive Plume Of Debris

SUNDAY, JUL 31, 2022 - 07:39 AM

Two years since the apocalyptic explosion seen around the world, Beirut's grain silos - that were massively damaged in 2020 - have suddenly collapsed this morning, sparking a huge cloud of smoke and debris.

Everyone remembers the shocking images from August 5th 2020 as a massive blast, caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the port unsecured for years, killed over 200 individuals and injured more than 6000.



The devastation was almost total but several of the massive grain silos were left partially standing...

But, as of today, they are no longer standing.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1553748244848574464

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1553748244848574464
.36 min

After reportedly burning for more than three weeks, part of Beirut port’s grain silos has collapsed.

The fires were caused by grain fermentation.

Firefighters and Lebanese Military troopers had been unable to extinguish the fire, which had been releasing odors into close by cities. Officials last week issued directives to residents living close to the port to remain indoors in well-ventilated areas.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1553747674351935489

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1553747674351935489
.06 min

As of yet there are no reports that anybody was injured.
Developing...