GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

marsh

On TB every waking moment
20:06 min

DOCUMENTING THE DUTCH FARMER SAGA​

The HighWire with Del Bigtree Published November 7, 2022

James Patrick discusses his new documentary, Nitrogen 2000, which highlights the demonization of nitrogen emissions by the Dutch government in the name of environmentalism, and the colossal repercussions on farmers, the supply chain, and global food shortages.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWPHGs1g4nk
7:46 min

Your Boss Want To Stop You From Being Successful​

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The Economic Ninja
Nov 7, 2022
Are you looking for passive income 2022 but you cant break away from your day job.

(Quiet quitting and companies punishing people. Diversity of income streams.)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYH7u43GW04
12:18 min

China’s ‘Fortresses of Warfare’: COSCO Ships Spread CCP Reach Globally​

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China Uncensored
Nov 7, 2022

China's main shipping company COSCO is one of the biggest shipping companies on the planet. While it looks like a regular Chinese company on the outside, it's a branch of the Chinese Communist Party on the inside. In this episode of China Uncensored, we look at COSCO's global reach, how the CCP could use the data COSCO collects on shipping to its advantage, and how COSCO ships could be weaponized in a time of war.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0euUswwLvE
30:20 min

This Will Destroy Your Lifestyle​

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The Economic Ninja
Streamed 8 hours ago
(No summary given. Hyperinflation, central bank tyranny. They are doing this on purpose. EU sanctions

Biden Admits The Truth: "No More Oil Drilling" As Energy Stocks Set To Soar​

(article posted previously)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wi3PjUq4PE
19:17 min

540 - What Happens When the COVID-19 Emergency Declarations End?​

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Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Nov 7, 2022
First declared in January, 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, the federal COVID-19 public health emergency allows for key flexibilities and funds in response to the pandemic. With the declaration due to expire in January, what are the implications for things like Medicare/Medicaid coverage, and cost and access to vaccines and tests? Jennifer Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health & HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, talks with Lindsay Smith Rogers about the PHE and potential fallout for ending it too soon. Read Kates’ coauthored article here.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Inflation Was Always The Endgame

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 12:50 PM
Authored by Darlo Perkins via TS Lombard blog,

There is beautiful irony in macroeconomics, a sort of inherent Minsky dynamic, or universal Goodhart law, that means that just when everyone thinks something is definitively true, it turns out to be spectacularly false. In fact, worse than that, the false belief usually sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Our whole pseudo-science is susceptible to that famous Mark Twain quote “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." We see this most clearly in the long pendulum swings between fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. Just when the Keynesians think they have won the argument, they have to face their historic nemesis - stagflation.

And when policymakers think they can solve all the world’s problem with monetary policy alone, they always end up in some version of the liquidity trap. We also see these dynamics on a more granular level. Ignore the banking system, as the authorities did in the early 2000s, find yourself in a banking crisis. Regulate the banks, and push financial bubbles into shadow banking and institutional investors. Financial markets are viral. To control is to distort.

It is with this sense of irony, bordering on superstition, that we should rethink everything that has happened over the past decade. The 2008 crisis shocked everyone. As an industry, financial markets suffered a sort of collective PTSD.

Investors spent the next decade looking for black swans that never arrived.

The euro crisis in 2010. The debt limit in 2011. The euro crisis again in 2012.

Oil in 2014. China in 2014, and in 2016, and in 2019, and again 2021.

Mallmageddon in 2018. The thing that happened in repo markets – that nobody fully understood – in 2019. Sellside economists analyzed every potential threat in excruciating detail, looking for that one problem their clients feared most – “another Lehman moment”. And policymakers reacted in the same, hypersensitive way to every potential market threat. The authorities had their own PTSD to deal with. Nobody wanted to return to the crisis of 2008, with its chaotically arranged market communiques and rescue packages finalized at 4am. At every opportunity, central banks cut interest rates and added more QE. Deep down they knew these policies would do little to help their economies, but they seemed very effective at propping up asset prices.

And with inflation showing no obvious signs of life, there was no real cost to this endless monetary lifeline. What harm would it do?

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Inflation didn't budge, in large part, because fiscal policy was continuously, and egregiously, too tight. Only China – the one part of the world that weaponized its state balance sheet – was able to move the dial on the global CPI. But every brief burst of reflation quickly sizzled out, as soon as the stimulus was reversed. Overall, the global fiscal-monetary policy was deeply disinflationary. If yields at 800 year lows didn't make this point blindingly obvious, negative nominal rates - which everyone scrambled to explain when they first appeared – should have settled the debate. When Adam Tooze eventually writes his volume on this whole unfortunate story, his chapter on NIRP will be the part that stands out for being particularly bizarre. Negative interest rates were the “tell”. When investors will pay governments for the privilege of lending them money, it is clear that the old rules of economics have broken down. Now there is no limit on government debt. And deflation takes over from inflation as the dominant challenge facing central banks. It is no wonder that MMT was “winning” in the 2010s. When rates are zero, everything MMT says is true. MMT just reminded the mainstream things it had forgotten. And the mainstream resented it.

After 5 years of investors asking me to identify “the end of the cycle”, the black swan arrived from something few had imagined (as is the way with black swans) – the COVID pandemic. And by then, policymakers and investors had taken the “new rules” of the 2010s for granted. Secular stagflation would never end. Moderate inflation, let alone prices rising at "double digits", was something that seemed unimaginable. So policymakers put everything they had learned into practice. Central banks immediately backstopped the shadow bank system. The Fed widened its swap lines for dollar liquidity. And governments, knowing that monetary policy would not be enough, launched their biggest fiscal support programme since World War II. There were no questions about whether we could “afford it” anymore, and inflation was something only “boomers” cared about. The policy response was extremely successful. By freezing the credit cycle – bankruptcies fell to historic lows – the authorities prevented a depression.

The irony was that the COVID was nothing like the global financial crisis. In the end, this was a supply shock, not just a demand shock. The combination of lockdowns and income support was highly inflationary, which the spasms and reflexivity of international supply chains amplified. For a while, there were good reasons to think this inflation episode would be transitory – prices would not fall, but inflation would come down. Yet the supply problems continued, first in labour markets, and then with the war in Ukraine. Stagflation beckoned.

For central banks this was unacceptable, so they raised interest rates aggressively, as if their credibility depended on it. No central banker wanted to become a case study in monetary failure. But governments will have different ideas. For elected officials, inflation is a “cost of living crisis”, and a reason to provide fresh rounds of fiscal support – especially if/when central banks drive their economies into recession. And after the cost of living crisis, there will be further pressure on the public finances from climate change, ongoing energy shortages, decarbonomics, defence spending, and the emerging cold war between the world’s strategic geopolitical opponents. So, in the 2020s, we could find ourselves in a radically different situation to the 2010s. Inflation will always be a little too high (as opposed to too low), and with both monetary and fiscal policy pivoting a full 180 degrees, we will again have a “tug of war”, but a battle that pushes firmly in the direction of higher interest rates, rather than the disinflation and NIRP of the post-GFC era.

What is the point of this rear-view mirror rundown of the last decade? When you look back at the entire period, it feels as if there was a certain inevitability to where we have ended up – and where we are headed. Despite what some pundits thought, Japan-style deflation was never the endgame. For most democratic societies, inflation is the only socially-acceptable way out. We tried the “orthodox approach” of austerity last time. Now the “unorthodox approach” beckons…
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Petrodollar-Saudi Axis Is Why Washington Hates Iran

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 02:00 PM
Authored by Gary Richard via The Mises Institute,

Kish, since you are wondering, is an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf famed for its tourist and shopping attractions. It is becoming a serious rival to other nearby vacation hubs in Doha and Dubai.

Along with pristine beaches and extensive malls, Kish is—or rather ought to be—known more widely for another feature and institution which the Iranian mullahs established there way back in 2003; namely, the Kish Bourse (i.e., Kish Stock Exchange). بورس کیش if you prefer the Farsi.

Think of it as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange of Iran, a country stacked with natural resources, a relatively well-educated and sophisticated population (the literacy rate is 97 percent among young adults, which, if you consider the deplorable state of secondary education in the United States, means that Iranian youth are most assuredly smarter than your average young American adult), and an economy burdened by mismanagement of their own Islamic theocracy and crippling, long-duration sanctions from the American secular theocracy.

That American secular theocracy has considered it a dogmatic rite of passage into the state and corporate media (their temples) that one must, at the very least, excuse the economic, cultural, and political warfare against Iran as necessary for a variety of spurious reasons. Who really has enough free time to investigate and then suggest otherwise? After all, Iran is plagued by terroristic Islamic fundamentalists who have pledged—like their former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.”

That hero of American warfare and empire and regime change and nation building, George W. Bush, declared Iran to be one of the hinges of the “axis of evil”; so, since George W. Bush is so much better than Donald J. Trump, well, all Iranians must be malevolent thugs. Iran deserved to have the United States aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, to have the United States provide Hussein chemical weapons (mostly made in Germany and the United Kingdom), and then have those chemical weapons unleashed on them.

Never mind that Ahmadinejad never said that. Look away from the facts that one of the rare times in which Trump garnered any support from the deep state cathedral and corporate media cabal was when he tore up the Iran nuclear deal and when he assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Orange man good when he’s killing brown peoples in distant lands—so conclude the powers that have been for way too long.

Why has Iran, then, incurred such wrath from the American military-industrial complex establishment?

The regime’s Sturm und Drang regarding Iran - and, for that matter, any state that even intimates that it will conduct trade in oil without the dollar, cf. Russia - is all about the petrodollar system.

Let’s define it with some historical context: When Richard Nixon removed the dollar from its peg to gold in 1971, chaos followed. It was not just the Yom Kippur War (1973) and resultant OPEC embargo that led oil prices to skyrocket in the United States. The dollar, as the new, floating, purely fiat global reserve currency had lost its allure when compared to other sovereign currencies and precious metals.

In order to stave off runaway, hyperinflation, Nixon empowered then secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, to go hat in hand to the Saudi monarchy, with a proposal. According to Andrea Wong in a Bloomberg article from 2016(!), Simon landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to get King Faisal to agree “to finance America’s widening deficit with it’s newfound [oil] wealth.”

Said another way, the Americans promised to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, and in return, the Saudis would promise to denominate global purchases only in dollars. Washington would also go so far as to provide military aid and materiel to the Kingdom, which made Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, and Rand Corporation types happy. The tit for that tat came in the form of guarantees that the Saudis would “plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance [the inordinate, warfare-welfare] spending” of every US regime since.

It - incredibly - gets worse. King Faisal accepted the arrangement (one that was sure to make his desert-oil kleptocracy a major regional power and global player) on one condition: The rest of the world could not know the extent of the agreement. That is to say that Faisal knew that in the rest of the Islamic world, underwriting America’s drunken-sailor imperial spending, well, that would not play in Cairo, Damascus, and Kuala Lumpur.

Therefore, Simon allowed for the Saudis to “bypass the normal competitive bidding process for buying Treasuries by creating ‘add-ons.’ Those sales, which were excluded from the official auction totals, hid all traces of Saudi Arabia’s presence in the U.S. government debt market.”

Within just four years of the agreement, Saudi Arabia held about one-fifth of all Treasuries held abroad. It is further asserted that that number represents the bare minimum of the Saudi share of US debt. The Saudi regime launders and recycles its petrodollars though hedge funds and secretive arrangements with perhaps hundreds of quasi-private institutions, all done with the approval and oversight of the US regime.

Different parties. Different men. Different pronouncements. Different promises. But, the one thing they all have in common: They all bow low before the Saudis—one of them, literally!

The truth is that both American foreign policy and to a very large extent, American domestic policy, are both wrapped up in the petrodollar arrangement. For the past fifty years, the national government has attempted to do what a president not pictured above—Lyndon Baines Johnson—wanted to do in Vietnam; namely, apply the New Deal to Southeast Asia.

The subsequent regimes have doubled down on the insanity—they aspire to maintain American economic, imperial hegemony over the rest of the world while simultaneously engaging in domestic spending to infinity and beyond. Thus, the petrodollar system is the most grandiose of all monetary and money laundering schemes. The Fed and US Treasury create fiat out of thin air, the Saudis provide a semblance of supportive valuation for it, and then the Saudis conceal their ill-begotten gains by buying Treasuries and cleaning their dollars through ostensibly legitimate concerns.

As economist William Clark pointed out in 2005, nations that even appear to not be on board with this sinister arrangement are the ones that incur the most wrath from the State Department, Pentagon, NATO, presidential administrations, and all of the other aligned interests. In September 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that his Baathist government would no longer participate in the “Oil-for-Food” Program, and that, furthermore, oil deals would be denominated in euros.

From that point on, the writing (about Babylon this time) was on the walls of the state in DC. Just months after US forces invaded Iraq, in June 2003, Iraqi oil sales were converted back to petrodollars, which, owing to the euro’s strength against the dollar at the time, cost Iraqis a net 13 percent on their oil revenues and invalidated previously approved contracts with other nations.

Kish is a much greater offense to Washington than anything Saddam Hussein was able to accomplish. There, Iranian oil is bought and sold using euros, yuan, and (get ready for it) rubles. The Iranians have their own oil “marker” or means of certifying the purity and quality of the oil. Turns out, while the Biden administration and greater “liberal” Europe have expressed their collective outrage by spending other citizens’ money to support an oligarchy in Ukraine and have concurrently cut off those evil, boorish Russians with sanctions; business is brisk in Kish and Tehran. Volumes have increased on the export and import side.

Over just a four-month period, they went up 4 percent and a whopping 32 percent respectively. The Iranian consumer is holding up in spite of those onerous sanctions. Meanwhile, China has increased its purchase of Iranian oil. At present, 13 percent of China’s oil originates in Iran.

All of this is to say that, just like the Federal Reserve system, the petrodollar cabal has to reign at or near the top of operative institutions that the vast majority of Americans have “kinda, sorta heard about” and yet possess no idea of the extent to which said things suppress American prosperity and prospects for the future. Most have no idea why or how the Saudis can fund everything from genocidal proxy wars against Iran to upstart professional golf tours.

Must be all of that oil money. Factual, but not exactly true.

End the petrodollar.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Chinese President Xi To Visit Saudi Arabia By Year-End

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 12:00 PM
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Saudi Arabia by the end of this year as the world’s top oil importer and the top oil exporter strengthen energy and strategic ties while U.S.-Saudi relations are at a historically low level.

China’s Xi is set to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a visit to the Kingdom expected to take place this month or next, sources with knowledge of the preparations for the official visit told The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

China – the world’s largest importer of oil and a major customer of Saudi Arabian crude – and the Kingdom have deepened ties in recent years, including in the energy sector.

Last month, Saudi Arabia and China jointly stressed the importance of stable long-term crude supply to the market. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Zhang Jianhua, the director of China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), have also agreed to continue cooperation in their efforts to keep the global crude oil market stable, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia at a time of major turmoil in the oil market and geopolitics with the Russian invasion of Ukraine signals China’s intention to increase its influence in the Middle East, where the U.S. was, until recently, the world superpower with the biggest influence. The Chinese president’s visit also suggests that Saudi Arabia considers its relationship with China one of strategic importance.

While the Chinese and the Saudis are strengthening their relations, U.S.-Saudi relations are at a low point, especially after the U.S. Administration slammed Saudi Arabia and the OPEC+ group for what it described as a “short-sighted” and “misguided” decision to reduce their target oil production by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of this month.

Since the U.S. started criticizing the OPEC+ move, multiple OPEC+ producers, including Saudi Arabia, have defended the group’s decision to reduce production, saying it was dictated by technical analysis and had no political intentions whatsoever
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Chinese Exports And Imports Unexpectedly Contract For The First Time Since May 2020​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 04:40 PM

As markets debate whether the Fed will follow other central banks with a (soft) pivot, the global economy is going from bad to worse: overnight, the latest Chinese customs data showed that China exports as well as imports unexpectedly contracted simultaneously for the first time since May 2020 as elevated inflation and rising interest rates hurt global demand.

Chinese exports declined (-0.3% y/y) in October (vs exp +4.5%), the first drop since May 2020 on Covid outbreaks and weak external demand, following a +5.7% increase in September while the implied sequential export growth dropped to -3.8% m/m in October (vs. +0.5% in September).

Imports fell (-0.7% y/y) following a +0.3% gain in the previous month, while sequentially imports fell 3.5% mom sa non-annualized in October (vs. -1.0% in September). Import value declined sequentially on the lower prices of metal ores and weaker imports of tech-related products, such as computers and LCD panels. The trade surplus was well below consensus from weaker exports, though the level was slightly higher than September.

The overall trade surplus slightly widened to a near +$85.15 billion (up from $84.74 billion in September, but below the forecast of $95.97 billion).



According to Goldman, the export weakness broadened across destinations and products. Import of energy goods accelerated somewhat despite a weak import print. Other than weaker DM demand on tighter financial conditions and the ongoing European energy crisis, the contraction of exports partially came from port operation disruptions due to Covid outbreaks.

Some more details on China's trade data from Goldman:

1. By major export destination, exports weakness broadened in October. The year-over-year growth of exports decelerated across most major trading partners. Among major DM countries, growth of exports to the European Union decelerated the most (-9.0% yoy in October vs. 5.6% in September). Growth of exports to United States decelerated to -12.6% yoy in October (vs. -11.6% in September). Among major EM economies, growth of exports to ASEAN decelerated to 20.3% yoy in October (vs. 29.5% in September), and the implied sequential growth turned negative.

2. By major export category, export growth moderated across most products. The export growth of tech-related products dropped the most (cellphones and LCD panels, see Exhibit 3).



Among tech-related products, exports of LCD panels declined 16.2% yoy in October (vs. -6.6% in September), and export growth of cellphones moderated to 7.0% yoy in October (vs. 23.2% in September). Among housing-related products, exports of home appliances fell 25.0% yoy in October (vs. -19.8% in September). Among Covid-related products, exports of computers declined 16.5% yoy in October (vs. -12.6% in September).

3. Among major import categories, import growth of most energy goods remained solid in October on efforts to ensure energy security, and manufacturing related products rebounded.



Among energy goods, import growth of crude oil picked up to 43.8% yoy in October (vs. +34.2% in September) with import volume up 14.1% yoy (vs. -2.0% yoy in September). Import growth of coal accelerated somewhat to 2.8% yoy in October (vs. +1.5% in September) with volume up 8.3% yoy (vs. 0.5% yoy in September). Among major metal ores, import values declined on lower prices. For instance, iron ore import value fell 26.8% yoy in October (vs. -38.8% in September) with import volume up 3.7% yoy (vs. +4.3% yoy in September).

Among manufacturing related products, import growth of machine tools rebounded significantly in sequential terms (+44% mom sa non-annualized in October).
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Americans' Credit Card Debt Growth Slowest In 4 Months, Brace For Post-Midterms Plunge​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 12:19 PM

US Consumer Credit rose less than expected in September (the latest data) (+$24.98bn vs +$30bn exp) as the borad trend of slowing growth in total consumer credit continues...



The slowing growth appears to have been driven by a big drop in the growth of revolving consumer credit (i.e. credit cards), which rose just $8.323bn in September while non-revolving debt rose $16.65bn. That is the smallest increase in 4 months...




Revolving debt continues to hit new record highs - as the savings rate plummets to multi-decade lows - as Americans are forced to use their plastic to maintain living standards...



But September's slowdown in the growth of revolving debt might suggest that even the endless consumption needs of the American consumer may have bumped up against the wall of bank credit risk constraints.

Simply put, now that the midterms are out of the way, the maintenance of the fake impression that all is well must no longer be maintained.

Now, we suggest you panic.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

House Republicans Offer Preview Of Upcoming Investigations In Scathing Indictment Of DOJ, FBI

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 11:40 AM

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee released a massive report on Friday detailing whistleblower disclosures about the politicization of the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI under Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

According to the report, Garland has been a "willing participant of the Biden Admin’s weaponization of law enforcement," while the FBI has "abused its law-enforcement authorities for apparently political purposes."

What followed was a laundry list of incidents and whistleblower reports illustrating how politicized federal law enforcement has become.

What's more, the report shows that the FBI has been inflating domestic extremism figures to fit an agenda.

One of the most significant findings of the report showed that the FBI has been encouraging its agents to artificially inflate the number of domestic violent extremism (DVE) incidents.

For years, Democrats—including President Joe Biden—have claimed that DVE events comprise one of the largest threats to American national security. Specifically, Democrats have blamed conservatives and “white supremacists” for most such incidents.

During the 116th Congress, Democrats even went so far as to propose a bill that would substantially bolster DOJ resources to combat DVE. -Epoch Times

"White supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States," reads the bill.

According to the whistleblowers, however, "FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria."

"At a time when the Biden Administration maintains that DVE is the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States, the FBI appears to be complicit in artificially creating the Administration’s political narrative," wrote the Republican lawmakers, who say the agency is fostering an environment that puts pressure on agents to rack up DVE case counts.

"One whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify matters as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification," says the report.

The FBI has also fudged field office numbers to fit the DVE narrative - and "is misrepresenting the scale of [DVE]" by categorizing various investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol police as organic cases discovered by local field offices, rather than a single investigation of a single incident.

"In both ways, the FBI is fueling the Biden Administration’s narrative that domestic violent extremism is the biggest threat to our country," wrote the Republicans.

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Report:
Republicans Release 1,000 Page Report on FBI & DOJ Politicization - House Judiciary Committee Republicans

Incidents Manufactured
In at least one case of DVE, the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the FBI played a much more active role.

Ahead of the 2020 election, a plot was uncovered to kidnap Whitmer, whose COVID policies sparked intense national debates before the election.

The alleged would-be kidnappers were right wing, and originally reports suggested that the plot had developed organically.

But during the trial for the men, it became obvious that this was not the case: defense attorneys argued that their clients were pushed into crime by the FBI. According to defense attorneys during the trial, at least 12 FBI informants and agents were involved in the plot.

Despite the legal questions raised by defense attorneys, the three men were later convicted.

GOP efforts to get answers about the incident were met with silence, the report noted. Thus, the FBI’s motives in assisting the plot remain unclear.

Targeting Conservatives
To bolster their claims of politicization by the FBI, Republicans cited several incidents involving targeted use of federal resources against conservatives.

For instance, Republicans noted Garland’s infamous “school board memo” as a case in point.

In a September 2021 letter to President Joe Biden, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) characterized disruptions at school board meetings across the nation as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.”

Specifically, the NSBA was referencing an increasing number of parents across the United States attending school board meetings to voice their opposition to the content being taught their children—including controversial, Marxism-inspired critical race theory, far-left-wing positions on sexuality and gender, and, in some cases, even explicit or pornographic sexual images.

The NSBA proceeded to ask for federal assistance in dealing with these frustrated, outspoken parents—assistance that Attorney General Merrick Garland promptly provided.

Days after the NSBA letter, Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to help address the alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders. Garland’s response immediately raised suspicions among some Republican members of Congress, who have sought to keep the issue alive and have responded with promises like a “parents’ bill of rights” if they take Congress next year.

In their report, Republicans called this affair “unacceptable.”

“As the radical left continued to push a woke agenda on America’s children, parents across the country started to speak out at school board meetings against critical race theory, mask mandates, and controversial curricula,” they wrote. “As more parents spoke out, the [NSBA] and the Biden Administration colluded to create a justification, articulated in an October 4 memorandum from Attorney General Garland, to use federal law-enforcement tools to silence parents.

“Committee Republicans have repeatedly called on Attorney General Garland to rescind his ill-conceived memorandum that brought the heavy hand of federal law enforcement down upon America’s parents,” they added.

These calls have of course gone unanswered.

“It is unacceptable for the Biden Administration to use federal domestic terrorism resources to target American parents,” the lawmakers said. “The use of these resources chills protected First Amendment activity as parents rightfully fear that their passionate advocacy for their children could result in a visit from federal law enforcement.”

Republicans have made clear that they aren’t finished with the issue: on Oct. 13, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan warned Garland to preserve all documents related to the memo in preparation for further GOP investigation.

Also mentioned in the report was the shocking decision by the FBI to mount an unprecedented raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida home.

The raid was allegedly seeking classified documents that Trump had brought with him from the White House.

However, Republicans insisted that such an unprecedented raid should not have been undertaken lightly, and Republicans have pointed to the raid as another instance of political bias by federal law enforcement.

Suppressing Opposition Reports
Additionally, the report notes the FBI’s role in suppressing the since-authenticated story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, with Republicans saying that Biden has received “preferential treatment from federal law enforcement.”

The contents of the laptop included several photos of Hunter Biden in sexual situations, sometimes with people who appeared to be substantially younger than 18. Others showed the president’s son using drugs like crack cocaine. Still, other sections of the laptop’s contents raised questions about the Bidens’ business dealings, with some emails and texts suggesting that Hunter Biden may have peddled his father’s prestige and influence for pecuniary gain.

The story was discovered by the New York Post, a conservative-leaning media outlet founded by Alexander Hamilton. After posting the story to their Twitter page, the New York Post was suspended pending the removal of the story. Similar suppression followed with other media outlets who reported on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

According to the report, some of this may not have been organic behavior by social media platforms.

The Judiciary Republicans noted that, during an August 2022 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook had suppressed the story at the FBI’s urging.

At the same time, dozens of national security and federal law enforcement agents signed a letter at the time claiming that the story was Russian disinformation—a claim which has since been shown to be patently untrue.

Around the same time, Republicans unveiled a report showing that the FBI had been aware of the allegations surrounding Biden’s business dealings with Chinese and Ukrainian interests for years, but had not taken action to look into the potential national security threat.

Republican efforts to get answers for this apparently significant oversight by the DOJ and FBI were met with silence. But GOP findings do provide some clues.

According to the report, a whistleblower allegation “suggests that FBI leadership in Washington may be the reason why the FBI seems to have provided Hunter Biden with special treatment.”

Specifically, a whistleblower told investigating Republicans that ASAC Tim Thibault of the FBI’s Washington Field Office ordered the investigation canned in July 2022.

According to Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who discovered the role played by Thibault, the agent did not give proper reason for closing the investigation under FBI rules of conduct. Thibault’s motivation in closing the case remains unclear.

Prologue to Further Investigations
The report is likely a taste of the investigations that Americans can expect if Republicans retake at least the House in the midterm elections, as pundits predict will be the most likely outcome.

Beyond the FBI and DOJ, Republicans have indicated several topics they may look into as the majority.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID)​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 03:40 PM
Authored by Alex Berenson via 'Unreported Truths' Substack,

How bad is the rise in mortality?

So bad funeral companies are starting to worry.


Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you’ll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits - and its stock is up over 15% since last week's earnings report.

(Death is your best investment!)



SCI’s management seems fairly open with investors. For many years, much of the company’s growth came from buying family-run funeral homes as their operators, umm, died out. The underlying funeral business is slow growth and very predictable.

At least it used to be.

As Thomas L. Ryan, Service Corporation’s chairman and chief executive, told investors Wednesday morning:

If you go back in this industry and particularly with SCI, year-to-year you would see the numbers of deaths -- probably in one year you may be down 1% or 2%, in the next year you're up 1% or 2% which you could predict was pretty good accuracy over a year and over a big footprint like ours what was probably going to happen… 2020 comes along, Covid, game-changer, right.

We're having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of in a year versus, let's say, a year or two before.


So Service Corporation expected that once Covid passed, its business would go back to normal…

What we would have expected is, why wouldn't we go back towards, let's say, a 2019 level, maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that. So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize. And that's kind of what we anticipated...

Only that’s not what has happened.

What we're telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019. That is not what anybody would have anticipated and that has just a very de minimis amount of Covid deaths [emphasis added] in it.



Covid is gone. But people keep dying. Why?

Unsurprisingly, Ryan did not mention mRNA vaccines anywhere. Why would he? Doing so would only make for headaches he and Service Corporation do not need.

But, earlier in the call, he did point to “more cancer deaths” and more broadly a decline in overall health:

We believe these excess services are more permanent in nature into a combination of aging demographics, higher risk, less healthy lifestyle developed during the pandemic.

Ryan also suggested delayed medical care might be an issue.

These explanations are… strained, at best. Aging demographics are hardly new, and the lockdowns that drove a “less healthy lifestyle” ended as early as mid-2020 in most red states and by early 2021 almost everywhere. Opioids and overdoses generally remain a horrendous crisis, but deaths appear to have peaked in early 2022 and fallen slightly since. And for all the discussion of delays in medical care, hospitals and doctors offices have functioned essentially normally for at least 18 months.

In any case, the United States is hardly alone in seeing a large and so far unexplained spike in deaths in 2022.

Countries from Germany to Australia to Taiwan are seeing similar trends.
They all have something in common. No points for guessing what.
In any case, Service Corporation is expecting business to stay good for years to come.

“These trends are hard to reverse quickly,” Ryan said.

“I hope three, four, five years from now will subside a bit. But I don't think it's any time soon.”


* * *
[ZH: It is not just funeral services companies. Market participants were somewhat stunned when Lincoln Financial announced results last week and shares collapsed over 30% after a shocking, and unexpected, $2.6 billion Q3 loss.

“A Catastrophe (and Not the Natural Kind),” Wells Fargo Securities analysts said in a note to clients Wednesday night, following the after-market release of earnings by the Pennsylvania life-insurance and annuities company.



What drove the big loss?

1667870108012.png

So, we wonder, is that the post-vaxx-new-normal-world-order trade: Short Life Insurers, Long Funeral Service Providers?]
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

"People Are Fed Up": Soaring Electricity Bills Become New Pain Point For Biden​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 06:21 AM

Utility companies are increasing electricity prices for American households ahead of the heating season. Some households take on debt to cover their power bills, while millions cannot pay. High electricity bills will be yet another uncomfortable political pain point for the Biden administration, according to Bloomberg.

Ahead of the US midterm elections, we outlined in several pieces that rising commodity prices are forcing utility companies to negotiate power contracts with customers higher.

Readers may recall we recently titled a note, "Your Next Pain Will Be Soaring Electricity Costs As Energy Crisis Comes To America." A gubernatorial debate in California not too long ago focused on skyrocketing electricity bills. Across the country, in Maine, politicians argued whether renewable energy is driving up electricity prices. A New York Republican candidate for governor pitched a move for the state to reverse a ban on oil and natural gas drilling to secure energy.

Discussions about power bills across the country come as at least 20 million households -- or about 1 in 6 American homes -- are behind on their utility bills. This winter's energy supply crunch could increase power bills and devastate households.

And it's not just rising power bills households are contending with --it's also rising prices for everything from food, shelter, and gas at the pump -- and this will influence how Americans vote on Tuesday.

The latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, which traditionally tends to spin topics to the hard left, shows a whopping 90% of Americans now rate inflation and economic turmoil as their primary concern ahead of elections.

"People are fed up," Tom Content, executive director of Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, an energy-advocacy group, told Bloomberg.

Source: Bloomberg
Luckily, warmer temperatures across the US delayed heating demand, though weather forecasts point to the average temperature dropping towards a 30-year mean by mid-month. This means heating demand will soon rise, and so will power bills.

Unlike in Europe, US lawmakers have yet to offer widespread utility-bill subsidies as discontent about overall inflation continues to grow.

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said there's a possibility that lawmakers could offer subsidies, but it's difficult to read households because there are limited questionairs by US polling firms that ask about power bills.

Wolfe doesn't believe the Biden administration is at the point of offering subsides or intervening in power markets to protect consumers from soaring rates, though he said, "there's no reason it can't happen."

Bloomberg noted important swing states for the midterm elections are experiencing a dramatic rise in power bills and overall inflation. This could be an issue for Democrats come tomorrow as Americans will vote with their empty wallets as many can barely afford to pay bills after 18 months of negative real wage growth, collapsing savings, and mounting credit card debt.

2022-11-07_07-10-06.png
Source: Bloomberg
Maria Beltran, 50, a Milwaukee resident, who lives on a fixed income, said her monthly electricity bill doubled in the past year. She spends her days as a volunteer community organizer to boost awareness about the inflation crisis.

"Energy that's affordable for me," [/I]Beltran said. "I'll vote for whoever I truly believe will make a change."

Beltran's concerns are seen across the country. No matter the state, Republican political ads, whether on small signs on the side of the road, on giant billboards, or even on television, have bashed Democrats for stoking inflation, resulting in a cost-of-living crisis.

"Rising prices in general are an issue for voters for this midterm election, whether it is related to utility bills or higher gas prices," said Mark Baldassare, chief executive officer and polling expert at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank.

Tens of millions of lower-income families are being squeezed and are quickly running out of discretionary income. They're tapped out, and many are becoming increasingly frustrated with Democrats. This discontent may continue through the 2024 presidential elections.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Used-Car Prices Collapse The Most Since Lehman Meltdown​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 11:01 AM

With soaring borrowing costs, the Federal Reserve has slammed the brakes on the once-booming used car market. The latest data on wholesale used-vehicle prices show October's decline on a year-over-year basis was the worst since the financial crisis over a decade ago.

The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index for October declined to 200, or about 10.6%, the worst decline since December 2008 when the global economy was melting down (and the 5th largest decline ever)...



The Fed's rapid pace of rate hikes this year is slowing demand, as Edmunds data showed the average annual percentage rate on used-car loans was a staggering 10% for some borrowers.

1667870877740.png

The index that tracks the price of what car dealerships pay at auto auctions has slid for 8 of the nine months and declined for the 5th straight month.



Since the Fed hasn't blinked (yet) and borrowing costs continue to skyrocket, wholesale used-vehicle prices could cool significantly more.



The slump in wholesale used-vehicle prices could be a harbinger of when the Fed begins to hike interest rates at a slower pace.

"Used car prices, once considered the barometer of how bad inflation has become, are now moderating. In fact, they have been dropping for a year. As supply-chain shortages moderate, this closely-watched gauge will likely continue to decline, helping curb overall inflation. The move may also support the narrative that the Fed can scale back its rate increases, boosting stocks," Bloomberg's MLIV Vincent Cignarella wrote.



The bad news about sliding wholesale used-vehicle prices is when they crush the retail market, there will be so many new buyers underwater in their vehicle loans.

Signs of distress are already materializing for consumers with subprime and deep subprime credit scores, according to Mish Talk.



As delinquencies rise and the layoff cycle begins, the repossession wave has already started.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1588995049064632322
.32 min

And the used car bubble could cascade into the structured product segment of the financial market as big banks hold a lot of consumer debt.

1667870951927.png

Meanwhile, shares of Carvana crashed 24% Monday after the company missed Wall Street's top- and bottom-line expectations for the third quarter as the demand for used cars plummeted.

Last month, the largest US chain of car dealerships, AutoNation, whose CEO, Mike Manley, warned the used car market showed signs of imploding.

Separately, Hertz Global Holdings reported its third-quarter earnings that showed depreciation costs were rising due to its used car prices at auction fetching lower values.

Readers may recall it was back in April when we asked a straightforward question: "Are Used Car Prices About To Peak For Real This Time?"
... and with a little bit of time, we were right. We expect deals, especially in the used car luxury segment, to materialize in 2023.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Constitutional Defamation: Democrats, Not Democracy, Are In Danger This Election

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 10:40 AM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is a slightly expanded version of my Hill column on the widespread claims that democracy is in peril if the GOP prevails in the midterm elections.

On the eve of the midterm elections, one would think that our constitutional system has only days to live.

Indeed, on Fox Sunday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn declared:

“I’ve studied history all of my life. I taught history. And I’m telling you, what I see here are parallels to what the history was in this world back in the 1930s in Germany. This country is on track to repeat what happened in Germany when it was the greatest democracy going, when it elected a chancellor that then co-opted the media.”

In other words, the Republicans are like Nazis about to overthrow democracy, an analogy to the rise of Adolph Hitler.

It is notable that Democrats, including President Biden, are now arguing that the media is pro-Trump or coopted by the Republicans.

Here is the column:

If a single moment could sum up the growing hysteria heading into the midterm elections, it was the appearance of historian Michael Beschloss on MSNBC this week when he warned that, if the Republicans prevail, we could see “our children … arrested and conceivably killed.”

In other words, it is not gas prices, the economy or crime that once again are the top polling issues for voters. Instead, it is democracy or death, gas or grandchildren — you choose.

The drum major in this parade of horribles has been President Biden, who was widely criticized for an earlier Philadelphia speech that denounced his political opponents as fascists plotting to overthrow democracy.

Biden returned to this theme in what White House chief of staff Ron Klain called his “final warning” to voters. The president ominously cautioned voters who might be thinking of voting for Republicans that, “make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us.” In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.

President Biden and others have returned to that theme as Democrats appear to be losing ground even in traditional blue states. Among others, Hillary Clinton warned that the GOP is trying to “steal” the election and that “they’re going after democracy.”

The president’s attacks do not appear to be gaining much traction, with polls showing that most people view him as inciting political unrest. Nevertheless, on almost every network and cable news program, the mantra seems unrelenting: If the GOP prevails in the midterms, democracy could be lost.

Whereas the media once pushed a false Russia collusion claim in the 2016 election, this time it is pushing a claim that the GOP itself represents the threat to our liberties and very lives.

As Democratic alarm over a GOP win in both houses of Congress has increased with polling in the past two weeks, so has the alarming rhetoric.

Beschloss, for instance, warned that not only may democracy have just a few days left but there may be no one allowed to record its fall: “Fifty years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press — which I’m not certain of, but if that is true — a historian will say what was at stake … was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.”

The Democratic campaign against GOP candidates as extremists and election deniers is breathtakingly dishonest. Democratic leaders like Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), have been accused of deceptive practices in spending tens of millions to support the most conservative candidates in Republican primaries. Those candidates — now denounced by Democrats as “extremists” — prevailed in their primaries with the Democrats’ support and could now win in states like New Hampshire.

At the same time, Democrats and the House’s Jan. 6 select committee are pursuing those who engaged in similarly inflammatory rhetoric leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — just as the airways are filled with Trump-like warnings that the midterm elections are about to be “stolen.” Likewise, just as some on the left claim there may be no more real history books after the midterms, others are campaigning to ban books by figures like Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the name of protecting free speech.

What leaders like President Biden seem to forget is that our Constitution not only was written for times like this, it was written in a time like this. Federalists and Jeffersonians actually — not just figuratively — tried to kill each other with the use of laws like the Alien and Sedition Acts.

But James Madison crafted a Constitution for the worst of times — and the worst of leaders. He famously observed that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” So he created a system that contains a series of checks and balances to prevent the concentration — and the abuse — of power.

There has been a growing crisis of faith on the left as leaders and pundits have attacked our Constitution and its institutions, including the Supreme Court. These objections appear to be based not on the Constitution failing to resist extraconstitutional demands but on it failing to yield to such demands.

These figures apparently are upset that the democratic process or the Supreme Court have not given them what they demand. Thus, the Constitution or the court must go.

Widespread references to Jan. 6 should inspire greater confidence in our constitutional system and dispel the doubts being voiced by President Biden and others. The Capitol riot was denounced by most Americans; Republican leaders like Vice President Pence and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) carried out their constitutional duties. Federal judges (including many appointed by then-President Trump) uniformly rejected challenges to the election; the Supreme Court, with six conservative justices, repeatedly ruled against Trump — including all three of his appointees.

The Constitution has weathered every storm in our history, including a Civil War and a “war” over civil rights. We’ve tackled everything from a depression to desegregation; we’ve faced periods of violence and vitriol that tore us apart. And yet, we remain.

The U.S. Constitution is not an elegant or poetic document, but it has one thing to commend it: It is designed to survive the worst of times and the worst of leaders, and it has done just that.

The Democrats’ democracy-or-death mantra is not just demagoguery. It is defamation of a constitutional system that has proven itself, time and again, to be up to any challenge. Democrats indeed may be in danger in this midterm — but democracy is not.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

US NatGas Futures Jump As Frigid Weather Set To Swoop Across Country​

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 05:40 AM

US natural gas futures bottomed on Oct. 24 after a 50% haircut on warmer weather. In the last two weeks, prices have staged a rally on the prospect of cold weather and tighter supplies. Last Monday, we penned a note titled "US NatGas Spikes As Temperatures Are About To Dive Nationwide." Now, with colder weather sweeping across the US, NatGas prices are up a staggering 49% in eleven sessions.

On Monday morning alone, NatGas futures are up 10%. Bloomberg said the move higher is weather-related, "as a winter storm hits the Pacific Northwest and frigid weather is expected across most of the country."



National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a 6-10 day temperature outlook for the lower 48 states showing that most of the country will experience below-average temperatures.



An 8-14 day temperature outlook by the weather agency also points to continued below-average temperatures for much of the US.



After an unseasonably warm end of October and the first week of November, the warm spell is forecasted to turn today. Average temperatures are expected around 58 degrees Fahrenheit and will revert to a downward sloping 30-year mean of the mid-40s by mid-month.



Colder weather indicates heating demand will rise, and so will the demand for NatGas.



The latest rally in NatGas outlines how sensitive traders are to potential cold snaps, as below-normal stockpiles and surging exports could strain domestic stockpiles in a deep freeze in the months ahead.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

White House Held Secret Talks With Putin Aides To Avert US-Russia War

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 07:05 AM

The White House has reportedly held secretive behind-the-scenes dialogue with the Kremlin related to the war in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday, citing unnamed US and allied officials. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spearheaded the secret talks with high-level Russian officials in recent months, reportedly with the aim of reducing the risk of the two nuclear-armed superpowers stumbling into a direct broader conflict.

"The officials said that U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan has been in contact with Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Putin. Mr. Sullivan also has spoken with his direct counterpart in the Russian government, Nikolai Patrushev, the officials added," according to WSJ.

"The aim has been to guard against the risk of escalation and keep communications channels open, and not to discuss a settlement of the war in Ukraine, the officials said."

Talks between Sullivan and top Russian officials haven't been disclosed on a public level since March. In response to the WSJ story, the Biden administration neither confirmed nor denied the claims of secret contact between the two sides, with National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson when asked if Sullivan had the conversations replying in a Sunday night statement, "People claim a lot of things."

Further the report notes, "Several U.S. officials said that Mr. Sullivan is known within the administration as pushing for a line of communication with Russia, even as other top policy makers feel that talks in the current diplomatic and military environment wouldn’t be fruitful."

The report doesn't indicate whether the alleged phone calls were positive or led to a lessening of tensions from Washington's perspective, nor is it known precisely when they took place. US-Moscow relations have hit an all-time historic low in the wake of the Feb.24 invasion of Ukraine, with the two nations' top diplomats, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, having only spoken once (at least one publicly disclosed conversation) - which was focused on a potential prisoner swap.

President Biden in an early October media interview appeared to shut the door on the possibility of talks with Putin, saying at the time, "Look, I have no intention of meeting with him. But for example, if he came to me at the G20 and said I want to talk about the release of Griner, I’d meet with him. I mean, it would depend," he explained.

The timing of the new WSJ revelations are interesting, given the report came the day after The Washington post said the White House is now privately urging the Ukrainian government to show openness toward negotiations with Russia. US officials cited in that Saturday report say the onset of a harsh winter, and the fact that Ukraine is already experiencing rolling emergency blackouts due to Russia's attacks on the energy grid, is likely to make Zelensky amenable to ceasefire talks.

The US officials believe that Kiev "is attempting to lock in as many military gains as it can before winter sets in, when there might be a window for diplomacy." But from Russia's perspective, the unprecedented inflows of US and Western arms to Ukrainian forces, including increasingly advanced and longer range missile systems, has also served to make diplomacy nearly impossible while increasing the risk of direct confrontation with NATO. But is there now hope of new ceasefire talks on the horizon?
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Political Left's Reaction To Free Speech On Twitter Confirms Their Authoritarian Intent

MONDAY, NOV 07, 2022 - 02:20 PM

We hear a lot these days from the political left about conservative and liberty minded ideals being a “threat to democracy,” and it's important to understand that leftists use the word “democracy” very deliberately and with specific intent. America has never been a pure democracy, and for good reason. Democracy is rule by the mob; it is 51% of society lording over the other 49%. It is tyranny of the majority.

The founders of our nation described America as a Constitutional Republic. Not once in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill Of Rights or the Constitution is the word “democracy” used. Not once. America is not a democracy because our system was intended to protect individual rights regardless of majority opinion. Majority rule was never the plan of the founders, and since they risked their lives centuries ago to create this country their viewpoints are far more important than those of woke activists in 2022 who have never done anything of value.

Leftists continue to use the word to describe our nation in bad faith, and they do this because it's what they want America to become. They don't care what America is or what it was meant to be, and this has been made clear in their reactions to various measures to bring balance and free speech back to the US after years of cancel culture controlled by far left extremists and their partnerships with Big Tech social media.

When it comes to Twitter, many conservatives will suggest that they really never cared about the platform and that it never affected their view of the world. However, it cannot be denied that for at least the past six years Twitter has been a launch pad for malicious leftist organization and large scale attacks on individuals in order to silence those who dare disagree with their ideology. They have used Twitter as a weapon to strike fear into people before the even think of speaking out.

This organization has included collusion between journalists, activists, corporate CEOs and governments, and while these people represent a minority within our society they wield enough money and power to manufacture an artificial consensus. They have had the power to silence opposition and make it appear as if the leftist narrative is the only narrative. Twitter has been the bane of American life for far too long.

The original management of Twitter, based out of San Francisco, has often held that there was no political bias inherent in the company and that everyone was treated fairly. We have seen ample evidence that this was simply not the case, with the tech giant now exposed for working closely with the federal government (DHS) and the Biden Administration to actively erase the voices of people who opposed the unconstitutional covid mandates and vaccine passports (among other things).

At the same time Twitter aggressively amplified the activities of leftist groups like BLM and Antifa, while consistently promoting the establishment narrative on almost every single domestic and geopolitical issue. The value of the company to the political left cannot be overstated. Twitter is their Mecca.

Whether you like Elon Musk or distrust his intentions, the drama surrounding his takeover of the platform is quite revealing. Musk has made very few announcements of intent as far as Twitter is concerned, with his primary goal being freedom of speech, or at least equal treatment of users regardless of their political background. The response from leftists has been predictable but also somehow astonishing at the same time.

We have seen the mainstream media froth in furious rage at the idea of Twitter becoming an open platform. Many have argued that Musk's takeover is a “threat to democracy” (there's that word again). Some have even insinuated that Musk is an authoritarian himself for trying to remove levels of censorship. The accusations are bizarre and Orwellian - For leftists “freedom is slavery.”

Musk is noted for attempting to appease some demands from the left and has only met with further attacks as well as actions to frighten away the company's advertisers. If leftists can't own the website they will seek to burn it down. Musk recently complained:

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They are trying to destroy free speech in America.”

The billionaire has said in the past that if his actions were making people angry on the far-left and the far-right at the same time then he “must be doing something right.” The problem with this sentiment is that only one side has been trying to deconstruct or destroy our constitutional rights. Musk can opine about the virtues of riding the fence or standing in the middle of the road and not committing to any viewpoint completely, but there are moments in history when one side is completely and utterly wrong, and the political left is that screaching albatross today.

The new owner of Twitter is now learning an important lesson that conservatives have known for some time: You cannot negotiate with terrorists. You cannot appease or bargain with people who only want power and destruction.

Many would define free speech in terms of social media as legal speech with context and nuance taken into consideration. There are always rules to everything and always will be. But for leftists free speech only applies to “correct” ideas that are vetted by them and the establishment. No one asked them to do this, they have declared themselves the arbiters of good speech and bad speech.

Free speech is a privilege relegated to only one group, one political movement. Everyone else must earn the opportunity to speak by showing fealty and compliance, and even then your ability to voice your ideas might elude you much like a vaporous blue checkmark.

For leftists, ideas are manifest. Ideas are dangerous. Facts and evidence that contradict their narratives are dangerous. Free speech is dangerous because it creates a level playing field in which leftists cannot compete. The ability to punish "incorrect speech" is a way to stop fair debate. It's the ability to control the world, and they know it.

Open discussion on Twitter by itself could be treated as irrelevant to most people; who cares about a single platform. But leftist opposition to free speech affects everyone and has poisoned the cultural well for years now. Look at how they have reacted to losing a single media company to free speech, and consider how they might react should they lose the entire country.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(World Wide shorts)

World wide rallies and protests. Thank you, freedom fighters. <3 <3 <3 1:06 min

WORLD WIDE RALLIES AND PROTESTS. THANK YOU, FREEDOM FIGHTERS. <3 <3 <3​

Global Awakening | The Giant Is Waking Up.

^^^^
(Netherlands)

Netherlands. Who is trying to suppress freedom? 1:13 min

NETHERLANDS. WHO IS TRYING TO SUPPRESS FREEDOM?​

The Netherlands - The massive freedom demonstration planned for today in Amsterdam was canceled due to David Icke’s ban. Still thousands of people decided to peacefully demonstrate and this was the Government’s response.

^^^^^
(Austria)

Vienna Demonstration 3:14 min

VIENNA DEMONSTRATION​

While Vienna was the center of the uprising against the shameful compulsory vaccination, the masses are now rallying against the “Great Reset”.
 
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment
We need more such corageous women <3. Thank you !!! <<< NOOO masks!!! NOOOO "vax"!!!! NOOO tests!!! 2:18 min

WE NEED MORE SUCH CORAGEOUS WOMEN <3. THANK YOU !!! <<< NOOO MASKS!!! NOOOO "VAX"!!!! NOOO TESTS!!!​

Die deutsche Abgeordnete weist darauf hin, dass gegen die Präsidentin der Europäischen Kommission wegen Verträgen zur Beschaffung von Impfstoffen und der Verwicklung ihres Mannes in die Pharmaindustrie ermittelt wird.
"Alle Covid-Maßnahmen basierten auf Lügen", sagte sie.
FAUCI: Earlier in his "career" he discovered that many deaths during the Spanish Flu epidemic were from patients that died from pneumonia due to the WEARING of MASKS !!!!.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Peruvian Court Names Bill Gates, Rockefeller & Soros as Criminal Elite Responsible for Covid-19 3:58 min

PERUVIAN COURT NAMES BILL GATES, ROCKEFELLER & SOROS AS CRIMINAL ELITE RESPONSIBLE FOR COVID-19​

Per Argentine news reporter Veronic Ressia, the court said there is no way they could have predicted the pandemic so accurately (Event 201) without having detailed knowledge beforehand.

"It's all very suspicious because in this drill at the John Hopkins University, they had even planned how they were going to count the number of people and how they were going to handle the media."

@PLANdemicAgenda
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Brazil)

Massive Protests in RIO Yesterday, Protesters chanting, “Armed forces, SAVE BRAZIL!" MSM BLACKOUT! .45 min

MASSIVE PROTESTS IN RIO YESTERDAY, PROTESTERS CHANTING, “ARMED FORCES, SAVE BRAZIL!" MSM BLACKOUT!​

^^^^^
11.06.22 Brazil.. indigenous people join the demonstrations asking for intervention. part 1 .51 min

11.06.22 BRAZIL.. INDIGENOUS PEOPLE JOIN THE DEMONSTRATIONS ASKING FOR INTERVENTION. PART 1​

One of the tribes, the Manicoré, denounces that indigenous people voted for the president and that the bulletin issued by the TSE does not contain any votes for the president

^^^^
11.06.22 Brazil.. indigenous people join the demonstrations asking for intervention part 2 .43 min

11.06.22 BRAZIL.. INDIGENOUS PEOPLE JOIN THE DEMONSTRATIONS ASKING FOR INTERVENTION PART 2​

^^^^^
11.06.22 Brazil.. indigenous people join the demonstrations asking for intervention part 3 .12 min

11.06.22 BRAZIL.. INDIGENOUS PEOPLE JOIN THE DEMONSTRATIONS ASKING FOR INTERVENTION PART 3​

^^^^^
6.11.2022 Brazil still protesting the stolen election .22 min

6.11.2022 BRAZIL STILL PROTESTING THE STOLEN ELECTION​


^^^^
11.6.22 SWISS NATIONAL OBSERVER THOMAS ZAHND IN BRAZIL CONFIRMS REPORTS THAT LULA MAY BE DEAD 3:02 min

11.6.22 SWISS NATIONAL OBSERVER THOMAS ZAHND IN BRAZIL CONFIRMS REPORTS THAT LULA MAY BE DEAD​

The military will hand over the results of the elections to the electoral authority. Rumors that Lula da Silva was admitted to hospital with brain stroke and lymphoma and has since passed away are being shared. Brazilian forces are sent to international borders with Argentina, Bolivia , Colombia, Venezuela and Peru to repel infiltrations from Lula friendly armed factions.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Ep. 2919a - The Fed Is Preparing The Excuses When The Economy Collapses 17:59 min (starts at 1:27 min)

Ep. 2919a - The Fed Is Preparing The Excuses When The Economy Collapses​

X22 Report Published November 7, 2022

The [CB]/[WEF] are now accelerating their plan, they are trapped and the only way forward is to accelerate, this will be their downfall. The people are not with them and the more the push the people will reject their agenda. The Fed is now preparing to blame others for the collapse, this will fail.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Michael Yon @MichaelYon
Nov 7, 2022 at 10:56am
Rail Strike
07 November 2022
Upland, California

My current working paradigm that OGUS/WEF are methodically destroying United States. OGUS/WEF wants this strike but do not want to lose those elections they do not control. OGUS/WEF obviously can steal some elections but not all.

Under my current working paradigm, this strike is likely to occur after elections.

1667878701219.jpeg
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Elites Cheer Climate Narcissists​

Biden & UN Secretary General Encourage Extremism​

Michael Shellenberger
4 hr ago

“I'm 24 years old and I'm here,” said a Just Stop Oil protester, who blocked a major highway into London this morning, “Because I don't have a future.”

In truth, carbon emissions in Britain have been declining for decades.



Human resilience to disasters is rising and there is no scientific scenario for greater deaths from disasters due to climate change in the future



The activists ignore these facts.

“They are betraying young people like me,” said the 24-year-old activist. “I wouldn’t have to be here if they did their lawful duty to their own citizens.

Why did it take young people like me!?”

Notes psychologist Sam Vaknin, “There are narcissists whose grandiosity is being a victim.”

A young protester who is spray painting the side of a building says, “Here I am, an ordinary person having to do this!”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Record Number Of Illegal Migrants Escaped From Border Patrol In October

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
JENNIE TAER
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER
November 07, 2022

Roughly 66,000 illegal migrants evaded apprehension by border officials in October, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) source told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The number is another high for the Biden administration, which faced a record of nearly 2.3 million migrant encounters at the southern border in fiscal year 2022. There were nearly 600,000 recorded gotaways, or illegal migrants who evade apprehension that are caught on sensors run by federal authorities, at the southern border in fiscal year 2022, and over 389,000 in fiscal year 2021, Fox News previously reported.

“I believe that 66,000 is the most getaways that we’ve ever had,” National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told the DCNF.

Several other outlets reported gotaway numbers, including Fox News with at least 64,000, and Townhall with at least 86,000.

WATCH:
View: https://youtu.be/i6Hi0rIVU-k
3:01 min

Areas like the Tucson, Arizona, border sector are known for illegal migrant runners because of its rugged terrain and gaps that exist in the border wall built by the Trump administration that allow for smugglers to run without detection or arrest, National Border Patrol Council Vice President Art del Cueto told the DCNF in May.

Del Cueto pointed out areas in Sasabe, Arizona, that are known for gotaways, where the Sinaloa cartel operates just on the other side of the border.

“A lot of these people don’t want to get caught,” del Cueto said. “So, if there’s a gap further down where they’ll bring groups, they’ll turn themselves in through that opening in the fence, if they know that that’s gonna distract the agents. So agents are now gonna have to worry about apprehending those, they gotta worry about transport.”

The surge at the border continues to overwhelm agents tied up with processing them, pulling resources away from the frontlines, Judd explained.

“We don’t have enough agents in the field. We have too many agents dealing with administrative duties. The Biden policies force agents to release people that are in custody. Anytime you release people that are in custody, you are, in other words, rewarding them,” Judd said.

DHS didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

11/04/22

The Fake Meat Scam​

Using strategies to position it as a healthy alternative for natural meat, the industry's fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food, full of GE and pesticide-laden ingredients designed to look as much like meat as possible.

By
Dr. Joseph Mercola
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/...engineered-fake-meat-scam-cola/#disqus_thread
fake gm pesticide meat scam feature


Story at a glance:
  • Ultra-processed foods typically have five or more ingredients, many of which are not commonly used in home kitchens. This aptly describes the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger, including fake blood processed from genetically engineered yeast to mimic the taste and texture of real beef.
  • Although the soy-like hemoglobin used in the Impossible Burger is classified as generally recognized as safe, no tests have been done by independent labs on the product’s safety. However, tests on lab rats altered the animals’ blood chemistry; the company did not follow up on the results.
  • The parent companies for Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger commissioned studies to assess the environmental impact of production against typical concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) beef production. Not surprisingly, they found their product had a lower impact. But it’s not nearly as low as the beef production at White Oaks Pastures, which uses regenerative farming practices to produce natural beef products.
  • If a plant-based, genetically engineered (GE) meat alternative is not enough of a science fiction adventure, consider the “meat” scientists are growing from stem cell cultures in the lab. Some see these alternatives as the lesser of two evils, but when holistic herd management improves the environment, your best choice is to seek food from natural sources.
The junk food industry has a new product they are offering in exchange for your health and finances.

Using strategies to position it as a healthy alternative for natural meat, the industry’s fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food, full of GE and pesticide-laden ingredients designed to look as much like meat as possible.

In an effort to get you hooked on it, it’s marketed as healthier and better for the environment — which may lead you to believe you’re eating good food while protecting your local air and water supplies.

The manufacturers are so intent on mimicking foods found in nature that they’ve even genetically engineered “blood” for their fake meat products.

Food critics are divided on the taste, with some finding the texture pleasing, but not tasting like a burger. Others say that only when the burger is piled high with caramelized onions, vegan mayo and mashed avocado does the flavor likely approximate meat.

When it comes to organic offerings, food manufacturers would like you to believe they can improve on nature but, historically, this has been nearly impossible to achieve.

Ultra-processed foods have contributed to the obesity epidemic, rising rates of cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of all-cause mortality.

If you think ultra-processed foods are only found in the junk food aisle, though, it may surprise you to learn that, according to Current Developments in Nutrition, many foods you eat most likely include fake meat ingredients:
“Besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats, ingredients of ultra-processed foods include food substances not commonly used in culinary preparations, such as hydrolyzed protein, modified starches, and hydrogenated or interesterified oils.

“Additives whose purpose is to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product, such as colorants, flavorings, nonsugar sweeteners, emulsifiers, humectants, sequestrants, and firming, bulking, de-foaming, anticaking, and glazing agents.”

Health is not driving a meat makeover
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada warns you should not be swayed by deceptive marketing tactics using words such as “healthy” and “natural” when you make food choices.

Unfortunately, it appears that some consumers believe the advertising promises.

While called a plant-based meat alternative, Beyond Burgers and Impossible Burgers are an ultra-processed conglomeration of chemicals, concocted by pulling protein from soy and a few other processed concentrates.

Amy Keating, registered dietitian and Consumer Reports nutritionist commented:

“… while its starting materials may be plants, the main ingredients are all highly processed concentrates, oils, and flavors. If you want the health benefits of plants, eat them as whole foods with their nutrients and fiber naturally present.”

Adding to the discussion, both Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger have nearly the same amount of total fat and calories as real beef burgers. In addition, both also have much more processed sodium added.

As a reporter at NBC News so succinctly pointed out:
“If eating more realistic fake meat was about health, the offerings would be far lower in salt content, contain fewer calories and have a bit less dietary fat.

None of them do, because the point was never to live up to the marketing of healthier eating. It was to simply act as a smooth replacement for the meat we worried about eating in our day-to-day lives.”

The fake meat industry is riding the coattails of the real risk that CAFOs pose to the environment and to human health.

However, fake meat manufacturers have turned to the laboratory to boost profits and drive sales rather than support sustainable and environmentally-friendly real food production.

Chemical-packed fake meat contains GE blood
After they mimicked the look and texture of meat, manufacturers gave consumers the taste and color of blood using a compound produced by genetically engineered yeast cells.

The compound is called soy leghemoglobin, coming from the roots of the soybean plant.

On a chemical level, it’s similar to the heme iron molecule found in mammal blood and it adds some of the texture and bloody look of an all-beef patty.

But manufacturing it to scale is impossible with just soybeans — it takes one full acre of soybeans to produce 1 kilo of leghemoglobin.

Plus, it requires genetic work in the lab to insert the soy leghemoglobin into engineered yeast cells. During the fermentation process, the GE yeast produces large quantities, in addition to dozens of other proteins.

Impossible Burger’s scientists fed the leghemoglobin to rats for 28 days to determine the risk of allergic reaction or toxicity.

Dana Perls, from Friends of the Earth, pointed out that the rats exhibited alterations in blood chemistry, which the company did not follow up on.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only requires research by the manufacturer to determine food safety and has not conducted any independent tests.

Michael Hansen, Ph.D., Consumer Reports senior scientist, notes there is no long-term data demonstrating the effect of soy-like hemoglobin in humans.

The process of manufacturing the compound yields at least another 45 by-product proteins, also consumed with the leghemoglobin.

The FDA has classified the Impossible Burger as generally recognized as safe using data provided by the University of Nebraska and the University of Wisconsin.15 Other experts are not convinced.

According to the Center for Food Safety, 94% of the soybean crops grown in the U.S. are genetically altered.

And, Hansen warns there are not enough data to determine human safety when consuming chemical compounds, as these compounds are produced from genetically altered yeast harvested from genetically altered soybeans.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Board-Certified Obstetrician cries "STOP"

Promoting SARS-CoV-2 genetic vaccination in Pregnancy is an unprecedented ethical breach

Robert W Malone MD, MS
15 hr ago

Dr. Thorp is a Board-Certified Obstetrician Gynecologist and Maternal Fetal Medicine Physician with over 43 years of obstetrical experience. While serving as a very busy clinician his entire career he has also been very active in clinical research with about 200 publications. Dr. Thorp is an extremely busy clinician and researcher. He has seen over 22,800 high risk pregnancies in the past three years. He has served as a reviewer for major medical journals, has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine, and also served the American Board of Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology. He served in the United States Air Force as an Obstetrician Gynecologist having been awarded a Health Professions Scholarship for his medical school education. Dr. Thorp testified in the US Senate under the Bush administration in 2003 for his expertise in treating the fetus as a patient with in-utero therapies. Most recently Dr. Thorp has focused his research efforts on the COVID-19 pandemic and published several peer-reviewed scientific publications documenting the dangers of the vaccine in women of reproductive age and in pregnancy. His publications conclusively demonstrate that the COVID-19 “vaccination” experiment has been one of the greatest disasters in the history of medicine. Dr Thorp has clearly shown the mass death from COVID-19 pandemic that would have been prevented had the healthcare system and governmental agencies NOT prevented the widespread support of early and safe treatments proven successful by multiple experts around the world.

Published by permission of the author.

Experimental, Never before Tested Novel Genetic Therapy Pushed in Pregnancy.
The Most Egregious Violation of Ethics in the History of Medicine
James A Thorp, MD.

This IS the greatest medical disaster in the history of obstetrics and all of medicine. I testify that this unwarranted experimental gene therapy was NEVER indicated in pregnancy and was perpetrated unlawfully and with falsified data. Res ipsi loquitor. Facts speak for themselves.

It was known by Schadlich et al as early as 2012 that the lipid nanoparticles (LNP) concentrate in the ovaries of mice and Wistar rats. The FOIA request of the Japanese Pfizer biodistribution studies absolutely confirmed: within 48 hours the “vaccine” was immediately absorbed into the blood stream and concentrated in the ovaries 118-fold by 48 hours and the trajectory of the concentration would have risen even higher had the animals not been sacrificed at 48 hours. This experimental therapy may have permanent damaging effects on the human genome for multiple generations and makes diethystilbestrol pale in comparison.

A preborn baby by near term has only one million ova (gametes or germ cells) for her entire lifetime, this compared men’s gametes (sperm) are continuously produce throughout life with nearly a million sperm per hour. As argued in 2020 it was NEVER necessary in pregnancy because there were ample data suggesting that alternate therapies were available, but these were suppressed, buried, and villanized by the medical industrial complex for the sole purpose of paving the way for a lucrative experimental gene therapy masqueraded as a vaccine. Not only do the biodistribution studies document the disastrous concentration of the LNP in the ovaries adjacent to the precious and limited ova of our future generations, but these products also concentrate in the thymus gland in fetal life potentially rendering permanent harm to the “seed of the immune function for life”.

Alexandra Latypova a pharmaceutical whistleblower testifies that the industry knowingly and purposely falsified and hid from the public devastating reproductive toxicology studies documenting development of severe rib abnormalities in the animals, a condition in humans that is equivalent to lethal skeletal dysplasia. “They accepted fraudulent test designs, substitutions of test articles, glaring omissions and whitewashing of serious signs of health damage by the product, then lied to the public on behalf of the manufacturers” states Latypova.

The damning Pfizer 5.3.6 post marketing research documented unparalleled deaths after the “vaccine” in 1,223 patients (page 7) in less than 90 days and by all other historical standards should have been immediately removed from the market in December 2020. Pfizer attempted to block this release for 75 years but failed.

The Swine Flu vaccine was immediately removed from the market in 1976 for only 26 deaths and a few cases of Guillain Bare Syndrome. If the above Pfizer 5.3.6 data are not disturbing enough, go to page 12 where the pregnancy loss, miscarriage, fetal death and neonatal deaths are documented in pregnant women given the vaccine: of the 270 pregnant women given the vaccine, 124/270 had complications after administration (page 12). There is extensive documentation of potential fraud, collusion and RICO violations documented by numerous experts. There were 1,366 peer reviewed publications in just 15 months documenting severe complications and death after the vaccine.

Let that sink in for a moment: the peer-reviewed publication of C19 vax adverse events in just 18 months is massive and makes those published from ALL OTHER vaccines, ALL OVER the world in the past century. The NEJM Shimabukuro article pushing the safety of the vaccine in June of 2021 is flagrantly false and manipulated to bury an 82% miscarriage rate, a rate that rivals that of the abortion pill RU486 also known as mifepristone that carries a black box warning by the FDA.

The unprecedented false villanization of extremely safe and effective drugs is well established by completely falsified publications in the LANCET by Mandeep Mehra, by Shimabakuro NEJM and many others falsifying manipulated data to take out extremely cheap, safe and effective repurposed drugs including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. COVID-19 and the Unraveling or Experimental Medicine has destroyed the false narratives of the globalists who have killed for profit and is published in a three part series, Part I, Part II, and Part III.

The British Government itself advocates against the use of the “vaccine” in pregnancy and has remained steadfast, a stance that is brilliant to bury this recommendation deep in their UK.gov website purposely resort to plausible deniability: “In the context of supply under Regulation 174, it is considered that sufficient reassurance of safe use of the vaccine in pregnant women cannot be provided at the present time: however, use in women of childbearing potential could be supported provided healthcare professionals are advised to rule out known or suspected pregnancy prior to vaccination” (verified 11.3.2022). Multiple independent experts have published on the severe adverse effects of the “vaccine” in pregnancy and in the VAERS report (here, here) .

Our recent publication has documented unequivocal danger signals from the VAERS report using the Influenza vaccines over the past 284 months as a control group compared to that of the COVID-19 “vaccines” in just 18 months with a proportional reporting ratios well above the CDC FDA danger signal of 2: increase in menstrual abnormalities increased by 1192-fold, miscarriage by 75-fold, fetal malformation by 20-fold, fetal cardiac disease by 16-fold, fetal growth restriction by 25-fold, oligohydramnios by 16-fold, and fetal death by 38-fold. I can produce over 30 other completely independent worldwide sources that are consistent with this data and actually worse including that of the UK Yellow Card, the European Medicines Agency EudraVigilance the World Health Organization VigiAcces, the World Council for Health.

The CDC admitted that they have NOT been transparent with the data which is obvious since they have still not acknowledged the presence of the Pfizer 5.3.6 document as discussed above, they have hidden this data from worldwide citizens responsible for killing and injuring tens of millions. The most accurate medical database in the world, the military DMED database showed disastrous effects of the “vaccine” in pregnancy as reviewed by Senator Ron Johnson. Moreover they have tried to hide their phone data that could be easily manipulate as used in the Shimabukuro NEJM. Instead CDC is now hiding v-save data because the data was damning and 7.7% of the participants required a visit to the hospital or medical provider for complications after the “vaccine”.

There are now two recently published articles documenting intact pseudo-uridinated mRNA (pumRNA) from the “vaccine” in human breast milk that has extraordinarily concerning implications, Jia Ming Low et al, and Alisa Kachikis et al.

This is a disaster of unparalleled proportions. I have reviewed the frightening drop in birthrates in countries all over the world since the rollout of the “vaccine”. COVID-19 and Disaster Capitalism – Part I outlines the playbook of the medical industrial complex to game the system.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

German doctors lament "stagnating" vaccination campaign as the Health

Ministry sits on millions of doses that will never be administered
Lol. Lmao, even.

eugyppius
11 hr ago

We are now two months into the bivalent booster vaccination campaign, and interest remains more lukewarm than ever:

Family physicians are seeing less interest in vaccination against Corona, according to data from a physicians’ professional organisation. “Vaccination is our best sword in the fight against severe outcomes. It’s therefore that much more regrettable that the vaccination campaign is currently stagnating,” the national chairman of the German General Practitioners’ Association, Markus Beier, said …

Doctors no longer receive nearly as many requests for vaccination from patients as the Standing Commission on Vaccination recommends be vaccinated, Beier said. “Of course, our doctors use every opportunity in their practices to educate patients about vaccination, but the results is now rather meagre.” The truth must be told: “The run on Corona vaccinations has now slowed to a crawl.”

This is rough news especially for the vaccinators in the German Health Ministry, who rolled out their truly dismal “Ich schütze mich” (“I protect myself”) ad campaign less than a month ago – to absolutely no effect whatsoever.

As with many of the most important stories, this one has been carefully downplayed by the press. The only commentary I can find is this tepid piece in FAZ, which complains about “the aggressive counter-campaign from the ranks of the antivaxxers.” Maybe vaccine critics have changed a few minds here or there, but it’s nothing in comparison to what the vaccinators have done to their own cause. Never before in history have Germans been so rapidly and so widely exposed to a new pharmaceutical as they have to the Corona vaccines, and now that personal experience of the jabs is at an all-time high, enthusiasm could hardly be lower. This is the final repudiation of the vaccinators, and the one that matters the most.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Mega-Banks Join UN to Unleash "Climate" Tyranny 13:57 min

Mega-Banks Join UN to Unleash "Climate" Tyranny​

The New American Published November 7, 2022

The mega-banks of the United States and the world are critical players in the Deep State United Nations-led effort to transform the planet and impose centralized global controls under the guise of fighting "climate change," warns The New American magazine Senior Editor in this episode of Behind The Deep State. As predicted by Georgetown historian Caroll Quigley, the Bank for International Settlements is the "apex" of this move, through the appropriately named "Financial Stability Board" (FSB). Central banks, the BIS and banks are all working together—and with the UN—to stop lending and investment in companies and industries that are to be phased out for the New World Order.

The targeted victims include traditional energy and even agriculture, two key sectors that make life possible for all of the billions of people on the planet. This is not about climate, but about transforming the economy and civilization.

Mega-banks around the world have joined UN organizations such as the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Fortunately, policymakers in Republican-leaning states are working to investigate and rein in some of this.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Biggs: Holman rule is 'most impactful check' on Biden admin 3:41 min

Biggs: Holman rule is 'most impactful check' on Biden admin​

One America News Network Published November 7, 2022

Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) says that should Republicans take the House, the GOP must act to implement the Holman Rule. One America's John Hines has more on what that would mean.

(Holman Rule can the House can target funding for bureaucrats that do not follow the law. Using the budget/power of the purse. For instance, they have the "police powers" and are persecuting those they shouldn't and failing to prosecute those they should.)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

11 Signs That Economic Activity Is Plunging Off a Cliff

by Michael Snyder November 7, 2022 in Opinions

Car Sales
Have you noticed it too? There has been a dramatic shift in the economy in recent days. It has been sudden and it has been severe. All over the country, sales are falling like a rock, inventories are piling up to alarming levels, and large companies are beginning to conduct mass layoffs. Perhaps it was inevitable that such a downturn would arrive, but the Federal Reserve has made things far worse by rapidly hiking interest rates. Every other time the Fed has engaged in such a rate hiking binge it has resulted in a recession, and there is no way that we are going to escape unscathed this time around. The following are 11 signs that economic activity is plunging off a cliff…

#1 This year, only 74 percent of Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving because so many people are skipping the holiday in order to save money…​
In 2021, researchers note that an IPSOS survey found that nine in 10 Americans planned to celebrate Thanksgiving. This year, the new poll of 1,000 people found that number has fallen to just 74 percent. In fact, 47 percent say they’re celebrating “Friendsgiving” because of its more budget-friendly menu. Specifically, just 24 percent of Friendsgiving celebrations will even have a turkey on the table, with 33 percent opting for a pizza instead!​
#2 Used vehicle prices have just plunged at the fastest pace that we have seen since 2008.​
#3 A Dollar General assistant manager named Travis Bennett recently posted a video on TikTok that showed unsold inventory at his store literally piling up to the roof…​
In a video with over 380,000 views addressed to “anyone inside this company that actually cares,” TikTok user Travis Bennett shows the conditions of his Dollar General. This includes boxes filling the aisles and numerous crates that have not been unpacked. Bennett says this is typical for “most Dollar General stores across the country.”​
#4 Consumer confidence in the housing market just hit an all-time record low.​
#5 All over America, companies are seeing depressingly low sales numbers. In fact, it is being reported that the Net Rising Index “is getting close to a level which corresponds to several past recessions”…​
A closely watched survey from the National Association for Business Economics has shown a decline in sales for companies that hasn’t been this sharp since the mid-2020 Covid crash and is getting close to a level which corresponds to several past recessions. The Net Rising Index (NRI) for sales — the percentage of survey respondents reporting rising sales minus the percentage reporting falling sales — peaked at 74% of firms in April 2021. As of October, it’s down to 36%.​
#6 CNN is reporting that Facebook could start laying off thousands of workers “as early as this week”.​
#7 Other large tech companies are also conducting mass layoffs, and many believe that what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.​
#8 Credit card debt growth has fallen to the lowest level in 4 months.​
#9 20 million U.S. households are behind on paying their power bills.​
#10 37 percent of all small business owners were not able to pay their rent on time during the month of October.​
#11 A poll that was just released found that a whopping 73 percent of Americans will be “thinking a lot about the economy” when they vote.​

The fact that voters are so focused on the economy right now appears to be really bad news for Democrats.

The guy in the White House always gets most of the credit or most of the blame for how the economy is performing, and right now Joe Biden’s approval rating is downright dismal…

Voters’ approval of President Joe Biden remains deep in negative territory and 70 percent of voters say the country is on the wrong track — both results that bode ill for Democrats as Election Day approaches.

Fifty-five percent of registered voters said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, and just 42 percent said they approve in the last POLITICO-Morning Consult poll conducted in advance of Tuesday’s election.

Of course Joe Biden is still going to be in the White House no matter what happens during the midterm elections.

In fact, either he or Kamala Harris will be residing there until at least January 2025.

So there won’t be any major policy changes for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, economic conditions are just going to continue to deteriorate.

As this new downturn accelerates, a lot of Americans are going to lose their jobs.

In fact, Bank of America is projecting that job losses in this country will soon hit 175,000 a month…

As pressure from the Fed’s war on inflation builds, nonfarm payrolls will begin shrinking early next year, translating to a loss of about 175,000 jobs a month during the first quarter, the bank said. Charts published by Bank of America suggest job losses will continue through much of 2023.

“The premise is a harder landing rather than a softer one,” Michael Gapen, head of US economics at Bank of America, told CNN in a phone interview Monday.

Sadly, that is a wildly optimistic projection.

During times like these, you will want to be carrying as little debt as possible, and you will want to have a sizable emergency fund so that you can continue paying the bills if something happens.

In 2008 and 2009, millions of Americans ended up losing their homes because they couldn’t continue paying the bills once they lost their jobs.

Don’t let that happen to you.

The times that we are moving into won’t be pleasant. Eventually, they will be far worse than anything that we experienced in 2008 and 2009.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to be depressed about what is coming.

When I was growing up, I was often told that “when times get tough, the tough get going”.

Those that choose to be bold and tough are going to have a much better chance of making it through what is ahead.

Unfortunately, boldness and toughness are in short supply in our society today, and the coming economic slowdown is likely to cause a massive national emotional breakdown.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Democrats Prepare To Run The 2020 Playbook Again​

The Biden regime somehow knows that election results will be delayed in key states before the election is conducted!

Emerald Robinson
4 hr ago

Since the vast majority of polls indicate a “red wave” election, left-leaning corporate media outlets have coordinated their messaging in the last 24 hours and published almost identical versions of the same article: “prepare to wait for election results that could take many days."

Notice the publication dates: almost all of them were published on November 7th. How did every left-leaning corporate media outlet in America manage to print the same story on the same day?

This behavior was last seen in 2020 — and we all know what happened next.

Why is it always the same battleground states that can’t count their ballots on time? Why is it always the same places that use electronic voting machines?

How would Democrat election officials already know that they could not quickly count votes in an election that hasn’t been conducted yet?

It doesn’t take days to get election results.

It takes days to cheat.


Exhibit #1 — Reuters via Daily Mail.


Exhibit #2 — The Week.


Exhibit #3 — Los Angeles Times.


Exhibit #4 —Vox.


Exhibit #5 — NPR.


Exhibit #6 — CNN.


Exhibit #7 — The White House.

1667885043890.png
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1589707575699841030


Exhibit #8 — New York Times.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Now What?

Will our new Congress show it is worthy to represent free men?

November 8, 2022 by Bruce Thornton

It looks like the Republicans come January will control both houses of Congress. The government will still be divided, so neither party will make any big legislative changes in the next two years. The president will no doubt use executive orders to get around Congress to push the Dems’ agenda, but such tinkering is hostage to the next president. So what should the Republicans do for the next two years?

We know what they shouldn’t do, and that’s indulge in happy talk about “bipartisanship” or “reaching across the aisle” or trying “to get things done.”

The Democrats have swung so far to the left that there’s very little common ground, outside a national emergency, on which to base cooperation. The moderate Democrat is a near-extinct species, and the radical ideologues have cowed them into compliance. Most Dems who have some common sense and respect for the Constitution’s checks and balances against tyranny have been silenced.

So first, the Republicans must ignore charges of “obstructionism” and “partisanship.” The first principle of the Constitution is “first do no harm,” and one way to do that is for our Senators and Representatives to “set ambition against ambition,” and use their Constitutional powers to stymie the Dems’ tyrannical ambitions. These days that means, as Florida Senator Marco Rubio put it, that the Senate’s “most important job” in a divided government is “to stop bad things from happening,” like confirming the president’s nominees for the courts, his cabinet, and other federal officials.

So no more talk like “the president deserves to have his nominees ratified.”

That, and the Republican preemptive cringe when it comes to race and sex, is how we get Supreme Court justices whose only recommendation is their race and/or sex. Like Orwell’s saints, all Biden’s picks should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

In other words, the next two years should see a concerted effort to start holding accountable the bipartisan, big-government guild that too many Republicans have joined, accepting many progressive assumptions about, for example, the role of the federal government in creating, managing, and expanding federal agencies.

Some commentators have, with good reason, have focused on the most dangerous bipartisan consensus: the redistribution of taxpayer money through entitlements. The consequences include our metastasizing federal deficits and debt paid for by borrowing or creating money, thus mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. And it compromises our military readiness by starving the Pentagon of needed funds to counterbalance China’s long military build-up specifically designed to challenge the U.S.

Unfortunately, reforming entitlement spending is unlikely to be seriously addressed even if the Republicans take control of the government in 2024, despite the fact that increasing longevity and fewer workers mean the big three budget-devouring entitlements––Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which along with other health-care spending already devour half the annual budget––will face an influx of retirees into the system, at the same time that payroll taxes diminish, putting even more strain on the nation’s budget.

The problem is too many voters have become addicted to government largess and regard it as a sacrosanct right, deterring politicians of both parties from fixing this mess. For example, the House is charged with initiating government spending, the so-called “power of the purse.” But representatives in the past have faced fierce media attacks that demonize congressmen who want to use that Constitutional power to address this problem.

For now, then, the Republicans need to tackle what they can do––exercise their oversight powers to investigate publicly executive-office functionaries of agencies that are the mechanisms for federal interference in the sovereign states, individuals, families, and civil society. And the most dangerous of these agencies is the FBI and its boss, the DOJ, which have the power, backed up by lethal force, to investigate, surveil, charge, and try citizens.

For six years, we have witnessed the politicization of these agencies and the abuse of their power that has disregarded the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment under the law. From the Russia hoax to Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary’s rogue server to the January 6 political prisoners, the FBI has brazenly used those powers to benefit one political party at the expense of the other. This violation of the bedrock principle of equality before the law has brought us closer to tyranny.

Moreover, the House Judiciary Committee has already done much of the investigative work in their 1050-page report “FBI Whistleblowers: What Their Disclosures Indicate about the Politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice,” which blames the political corruption of agency chiefs Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland.

The report’s Executive Summary, for example, writes that the FBI leadership “is artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism,” and “pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism,” thus “misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide” by “categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident.”

Similarly, Biden, at the behest of the National School Board Association, suggested the FBI used “the Patriot Act against American parents,” and then, at the direction of DOJ chief Merrick Garland, had “the FBI Counterterrorism Division set up a special ‘threat tag’ to track school board-related cases.” The FBI also “had abused its foreign intelligence authority to spy on American citizens, including people associated” with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the FBI “is clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke leftist agenda,” and “actively seeking to ‘purge’ FBI employees holding conservative views.” As a result of this illegal use of the agency, the ‘“criminal side’” of the FBI is being ‘“dragg[ed] down,’” resulting in resources being ‘“pulled away’” from ‘“real law enforcement duties’” like child sexual abuse.

These are just a small sample of Christopher Wray’s and Merrick Garland’s politicization of their agencies and violations of their oaths to uphold the Constitution. And the reason is clear:

To manufacture a “crisis” that the Biden administration is not letting “go to waste,” in order to expand its un-Constitutional assaults on the Dems’ political enemies.

The gravity and danger of this corruption cannot stand. If there is a Republican House and Senate, or even just the House, public hearings must be held, with subpoenas issued and Wray and Garland forced to testify under oath, or be prosecuted if they refuse, and charged if they commit perjury. And these hearings should be just the beginning of holding accountable those who politicize their public office.

For that road ends in tyranny: “arbitrary power,” as Aristotle wrote, “which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No free man willingly endures such a government.”

The corruption of government agencies is a textbook illustration of an assault on our freedoms. We need our new House of Representatives and Senate to show that are worthy representatives of free men.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Dutch Conservative Party Demands the Flemish Government Cancel its World Economic Forum Membership

Amy MekNovember 7, 20221 comment4 min read

The Flemish government legitimizes and subsidizes a worldwide lobby organization openly pursuing globalism, states MEP Sam van Rooy.

The Dutch conservative party, Vlaams Belang, is demanding that the Flemish government cancel its World Economic Forum (WEF) membership. This year, the Flemish government will pay almost EUR 200,000 in membership fees to the WEF and approximately EUR 27,000 as a participation fee in their annual meeting in Davos.

In a press release by Vlaams Belang, Flemish Member of Parliament Sam van Rooy stated that the Flemish government is legitimizing and subsidizing a worldwide lobby organization that is openly pursuing a well-defined ideological agenda, namely that of globalism.”

This agenda seems to have recently crystallized into the so-called “Great Reset,” which aims to create “a safer, more equal and more stable world” by “acting collectively and swiftly to renew all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.” They are striving for a world government based on climate hysteria and social control.

WEF’s influence on the Flemish government’s policies
Because citizens in a democratic constitutional state are entitled to transparency regarding the policies pursued, MEP van Rooy asked Flemish Minister-President Jan Jambon questions about the Flemish government’s ties and cooperation with the WEF.

In his reply, Jambon stated that the Flemish government “has no structural contacts with the WEF outside of its participation in the WEF meeting in Davos” but that there are “more regular contacts at the level of the Flemish government.” According to the prime minister, those contacts also aim to follow up on the various activities and projects that take place annually, including outside the Davos meeting.

Until 2020, the Flemish government paid an annual membership fee of 55,000 euros to the WEF. Since 2022, however, Flanders has been “promoted” to “associate partner” of the WEF, which requires a membership fee of no less than 175,763.87 euros per year. This contribution has already been paid for 2022; the same bill is expected for 2023.

About that “associate partnership,” Jambon states the following: “The associate partnership offers the advantage that Flanders can participate in more activities throughout the year and, in addition, projects are being worked on within a thematic platform, ‘Shaping the Future of Trade and Investment.’ Those activities and projects provide additional visibility and the opportunity to learn and contribute policy-wise.” So the entanglement between the Flemish government and the WEF is therefore increasing, says Van Rooy

Jambon also calls WEF membership ‘a policy instrument of the Flemish government to achieve the objectives of the coalition agreement. The Prime Minister announces that he wants further to strengthen cooperation with the WEF in the coming period.

Globalist objectives
According to Jambon, “the mission of the World Economic Forum is to improve the state of the world,” but that mission has turned out to be politically correct and woke: the WEF has an ideological agenda of inclusion, diversity, open borders, and climate and climate change. CO2 hysteria, explains Vlaams Belang. Jambon claims that “the WEF is not asking us to pursue a specific agenda,” but he adds that his “participation in the Davos meeting may result in policy initiatives.” It, therefore, seems very likely that the Flemish government is following the globalist objective of the WEF as much as possible in exchange for access to the WEF network of multinationals, banks, journalists, and NGOs.

Vlaams Belang MEP Van Rooy believes that Jambon’s answers are revealing in their vagueness and raise additional questions. He, therefore, asks that the Flemish government to cancel their WEF membership: “Exchanging ideas and attracting investments are, of course, laudable ambitions in themselves, but that should not happen in the context and under the auspices of the WEF, a lobby group which pursues a globalist agenda and can therefore in no way be regarded as a neutral forum for this,” explains van Rooy.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Biden Keeps Promising To Make Energy More Expensive. Believe Him.

BY: DAVID HARSANYI
NOVEMBER 07, 2022

Yes, we’re going to make energy more expensive.

That’s Joe Biden’s closing message for 2022. “We’re going to be shutting these [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” Biden told a crowd in deep blue California on Friday, arguing that it was “cheaper” to generate electricity from wind and solar.

Is it? In California, which not only leads the nation in “clean energy” production but is leading the rest of us into rolling blackouts, residents pay 24.62 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy, around double the national average.

There are only three other states where residents fork 20 or more cents over, the isolated Hawaii and Alaska and the frack-banning New York. The price of a gallon of gas in California is around two dollars over the national average, at $5.458. In Texas, it’s $3.173.

The president also forgot to mention that affordable natural gas, propelled by technological efficiencies like fracking, is as much a reason for the struggles of coal.

After West Virginia’s Joe Manchin groused about Biden’s denigration of his state’s top industry , the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “walked back” the comments, contending that the president’s “remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”

How they were distorted, she did not say. The statement stresses that the president understands that “the men and women of coal country built this nation” but that, yes, we must shut down the coal industry — as well as the oil and gas production. Biden is sorry that you’re offended. “Our goal as a nation is to combat climate change and increase our energy security by producing clean and efficient American energy,” the statement falsely goes on to say. Wind and solar, both victims to vagaries of the weather, aren’t, by any definition, “efficient.”

The kerfuffle, as with most debates over gas and oil, is confusing. The administration’s stated goal — one of the major policy planks of the Democratic Party — is to deliberately, through mandates or bans or taxes or contrived “markets,” make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive to force a “transition.” Biden’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice promises that a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions will exist no later than 2050. California has banned new gas-powered cars by 2035. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, supported by virtually every Democratic Party presidential candidate last time around, is far more extreme.

In case there was any confusion, however, Biden reiterated his position at a rally for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul later this past weekend. Responding to a climate activist heckler, Biden shouted: “No more drilling. There is no more drilling! I haven’t formed any new drilling.” It’s one of the few true things the president has said in a while. The Biden administration, even during historic spikes in gas prices, effectively shut down any new federal leases. Sure, the administration pressured OPEC+ to temporarily offer a reprieve before the election, but it has barely budged on domestic production. This is what Democrats have wanted for decades.

None of these climate plans can be implemented without the effective nationalization of the energy sector and the banning of fossil fuels. Solar, after decades of mandates and subsidies and cronyism, accounts for around 3 percent of the national portfolio. Both wind and solar need to be propped up by fossil fuel generation. In anything resembling a functioning market, “clean energy” loses, not only to oil, gas, and coal, but also to nuclear power.

This week, Biden will join his special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, in Egypt for the biggest climate change event of the year. In Sharm el-Sheikh, thousands of climate alarmists and technocrats will get together and brainstorm new ways to stop agricultural advances that have saved millions from hunger, or the proles from using their air conditioners. It is a movement that is working to gut modernity. It is also an unprecedented sabotage of the American economy. There is no historical parallel in which a government has intended to deindustrialize and make its citizens poorer. In good times, we can afford to humor the Malthusians, augmenting our energy portfolio with expensive, technologically inferior solar panels and antiquated windmills (rather than more gas and nuclear). That is no longer the case. And the attack on energy should be one of the biggest issues in every election moving forward.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

UN chief, Gore, others give heated warnings in climate talks

The Associated PressThe Associated Press
AP7 Nov 20221,031

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told world leaders they must cooperate or perish, speaking Monday at the annual climate summit in Egypt

UN chief, Gore, others give heated warnings in climate talksBy SETH BORENSTEINAssociated PressThe Associated PressSHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — With the world on “a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” the United Nations chief on Monday told dozens of leaders to ”cooperate or perish,” singling out the two biggest polluting countries, China and the United States.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wasn’t alone in preaching with tones of fire and brimstone to try to shake up the world’s sense of urgency at this year’s annual U.N. climate conference.

“Choose life over death,” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore urged. “It is not time for moral cowardice.”

Some of the strongest pleas for action came from leaders of poor nations that caused little of the pollution but often get a larger share of the weather-related damage. Several called on developed nations for reparations, which in climate negotiations is called “loss and damage.”

“Africa should not pay for crimes they have not committed,” Central African Republic President Faustin Archange Touadera said, adding that rich nations were to blame for the climate problem.

“Climate change is directly threatening our people’s lives, health and future,” Kenyan President William K. Ruto said of the African continent, which he said is looking at $50 billion a year in climate change damage by 2050. Ruto said Kenya is choosing to not use many of its “dirty energy” resources even though it could help the poor nation financially, and has instead opted for cleaner fuels.

Loss and damage “is our daily experience and the living nightmare of millions of Kenyans and hundreds of millions of Africans,” Ruto said.

Seychelles President Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan said, “Like other islands, our contribution in the destruction of the planet is minimal. Yet we suffer the most.” He called on wealthier countries to assist in repairing the damage.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called for a massive overhaul of international development loans and a 10% tax on fossil fuel companies, which she said made “$200 billion in profits in the last three months.”

“I don’t need to repeat the horror and the devastation wrecked upon this Earth over the course of the last 12 months since we met in Glasgow,” Mottley said. “Whether the apocalyptic floods in Pakistan or the heat waves from Europe to China or indeed in the last few days in my own region, the devastation caused in Belize by Tropical Storm Lisa or the torrential floods a few days ago in St. Lucia.”

Ahead of this year’s conference, known as COP27, leaders and experts have been ringing alarm bells that time is running out to avert catastrophic rises in temperature. But the warnings may not have the impact of past meetings because of multiple other challenges pulling leaders’ attention — from midterm elections in the U.S. to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“In the fight for life on Earth, no one is a bystander,” said Jordan’s King Abdullah. “Every contribution counts. COP27 has brought us together to link forces and stand our ground. We are at the beginning of a long, challenging and urgent transformation.”

More than 100 world leaders will speak over the next days at the gathering in Egypt, most from developing countries demanding greater accountability from the richest, most polluting nations. Much of their focus will be on telling their stories of devastation by climate disasters, including a speech Tuesday by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif of Pakistan, where summer floods caused at least $40 billion in damage and displaced millions of people.

“Climate change will never stop without our intervention,” the summit’s host, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, said.

El-Sissi, who also called for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, was gentle compared to a fiery U.N. chief Guterres, who said the world “is on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

He called for a new pact between rich and poor countries to make deeper cuts in emissions with financial help and phasing out coal by rich nations by 2030 and elsewhere by 2040. He called on the United States and China — the two biggest economies — to work together on climate, something they used to do until the last few years.

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres said. “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact — or a Collective Suicide Pact.”

But bad timing and world events hang over the gathering.

Most of the leaders are meeting Monday and Tuesday, just as the United States has a potentially policy-shifting midterm election. Then the leaders of the world’s 20 wealthiest nations will have their powerful-only club confab in Bali in Indonesia days later.

Leaders of China and India — both among the biggest emitters — appear to be skipping the climate talks, although underlings are here negotiating. U.S. President Joe Biden is coming days later than most other leaders on his way to Bali.

“There are big climate summits and little climate summits and this was never expected to be a big one,” said Climate Advisers CEO Nigel Purvis, a former U.S. negotiator.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was initially going to skip the negotiations, but public pressure and predecessor Boris Johnson’s plans to come changed his mind. King Charles III, a longtime environment advocate, won’t attend because of his new role. And Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine created energy chaos that reverberates in the world of climate negotiations, won’t be here.

Many European leaders who spoke Monday singled out Russia as the cause of the current energy and food crises, saying the war in Ukraine showed shifting to renewable energy was a matter of national security.

“We always want more” leaders, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell told a Sunday news conference. “But I believe there is sufficient (leadership) right now for us to have a very productive outcome.”

In addition to the leaders’ speeches, the negotiations include “innovative’’ roundtable discussions that “we are confident, will generate some very powerful insights,” Stiell said.

Still, “the historical polluters who caused climate change are not showing up,’’ said Mohammed Adow of Power Shift Africa. “Africa is the least responsible, the most vulnerable to the issue of climate change and it is a continent that is stepping up and providing leadership.”

“The South is actually stepping up,” Adow told The Associated Press. “The North that historically caused the problem is failing.’’

For the first time, developing nations succeeded in getting onto the summit agenda the issue of “loss and damage” — demands that emitting countries pay for damage caused by climate-induced disasters.

Nigeria’s Environment Minister Mohammed Abdullahi called for wealthy nations to show “positive and affirmative” commitments to help countries hardest hit by climate change. “Our priority is to be aggressive when it comes to climate funding to mitigate the challenges of loss and damage,” he said.

Leaders of poorer nations, joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, talked about the issue as one of justice and fairness.

“Our part of the world has to choose between life and death,’’ Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan said.

___

Frank Jordans contributed to this report.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Barrasso: Biden’s Policies ‘Haven’t Put a Dent in Climate Change,’ But Have Done ‘Dramatic Damage’ Economically

IAN HANCHETT7 Nov 20223

Video on website 7:48 min

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Senate Republican Conference Chair Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) reacted to President Joe Biden’s vow to shut down coal plants by stating that the Biden administration has done real economic damage while “They haven’t put a dent in climate change,” with its energy policies.

Barrasso said, “Well, Joe Biden and the Democrats have been living in the Twilight Zone over the last couple of years in terms of their attacks on available, affordable, and reliable energy. And you’re right, Larry, the cavalry is going to come tomorrow. I’m asking everybody to make sure you get out and vote, vote for Republicans. We have to get rid of all of these Democrats who believe in all of these things. They have been sabotaging the American energy independence and our American energy economy. People have been suffering. So, when I hear the President say, no coal, and then he says, no drilling as well, this is an administration that has taken a sledgehammer to our American energy economy and to our American energy workers. They haven’t put a dent in climate change, but they’ve done dramatic, dramatic damage to families all across the country who are just trying to heat their homes and buy groceries and buy gas. And they’re going to have to be held accountable. That’s coming tomorrow.”
 
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