GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Ending Anonymity: Why the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens the Future of Privacy

With many focusing on the Cyber Polygon exercise, less attention has been paid to the World Economic Forum’s real ambitions in cybersecurity – to create a global organization aimed at gutting even the possibility of anonymity online. With the governments of the US, UK and Israel on board, along with some of the world’s most powerful corporations, it is important to pay attention to their endgame, not just the simulations.
by Whitney Webb
July 10, 2021

Ending Anonymity_ Why the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens the Future of Privacy

Amid a series of warnings and simulations in the past year regarding a massive cyber attack that could soon bring down the global financial system, the “information sharing group” of the largest banks and private financial organizations in the United States warned earlier this year that banks “will encounter growing danger” from “converging” nation-state and criminal hackers over the course of 2021 and in the years that follow.

The organization, called the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), made the claim in its 2021 “Navigating Cyber” report, which assesses the events of 2020 and provides a forecast for the current year. That forecast, which casts a devastating cyber attack on the financial system through third parties as practically inevitable, also makes the case for a “global fincyber [financial-cyber] utility” as the main solution to the catastrophic scenarios it predicts.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an organization close to top FS-ISAC members has recently been involved in laying the groundwork for that very “global fincyber utility” — the World Economic Forum, which recently produced the model for such a utility through its Partnership against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC) project. Not only are top individuals at FS-ISAC involved in WEF cybersecurity projects like Cyber Polygon, but FS-ISAC’s CEO was also an adviser to the WEF-Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report that warned that the global financial system was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks and was the subject of the first article in this 2-part series.

Another article, published earlier this year at Unlimited Hangout, also explored the WEF’s Cyber Polygon 2020 simulation of a cyber attack targeting the global financial system. Another iteration of Cyber Polygon took place July 9th and focused on simulating a supply chain cyber attack.

A major theme in these efforts has not only been an emphasis on global cooperation, but also a merging of private banks and/or corporations with the State, specifically intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In addition, many of the banks, institutions and individuals involved in the creation of these reports and simulations are either actively involved in WEF-related efforts to usher in a new global economic model of “stakeholder capitalism” or are seeking to imminently introduce, or are actively developing, central bank-backed digital currencies, or CBDCs.

In addition, and as mentioned in the first article in this series, a cyber attack like those described in these reports and simulations would also provide the perfect scenario for dismantling the current failing financial system, as it would absolve central banks and corrupt financial institutions of any responsibility. The convergence of several concerning factors in the financial world, including the end of LIBOR at the end of year and the imminent hyperinflation of globally important currencies, suggests that the time is ripe for an event that would not only allow the global economy to “reset”, but also absolve the fundamentally corrupt financial institutions around the world from any wrongdoing. Instead, faceless hackers can be blamed and, given recent precedents in the US and elsewhere, any group or nation state can be blamed with minimal evidence as politically convenient.

This report will closely examine both FS-ISAC’s recent predictions and the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime, specifically the WEF-PAC’s efforts to position itself as the cybersecurity alliance of choice if and when such a catastrophic cyber attack cripples the current financial system.

Of particular interest is the call by both FS-ISAC and the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime to specifically target cryptocurrencies, particularly those that favor transactional anonymity, as well as the infrastructure on which those cryptocurrencies run. Though framed as a way to combat “cybercrime”, it is obvious that cryptocurrencies are to be unwanted competitors for the soon-to-be-launched central bank digital currencies.

In addition, as this report will show, there is a related push by WEF partners to “tackle cybercrime” that seeks to end privacy and the potential for anonymity on the internet in general, by linking government-issued IDs to internet access. Such a policy would allow governments to surveil every piece of online content accessed as well as every post or comment authored by each citizen, supposedly to ensure that no citizen can engage in “criminal” activity online.

Notably, the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime employs a very broad definition of what constitutes a “cybercriminal” as they apply this label readily to those who post or host content deemed to be “disinformation” that represents a threat to “democratic” governments. The WEF’s interest in criminalizing and censoring online content has been made evident by its recent creation of a new Global Coalition for Digital Safety to facilitate the increased regulation of online speech by both the public and private sectors.

(Long article. See website for the rest.)
 

glennb6

Inactive
View: https://youtu.be/PPkUe1ClnuI


1Hr

Audio interview on the great reset and misc with Bill Holter, Andy Schectman and redneck from Texas interviewer who I don't know from Snafu radio.

SNAFU radio
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Andy and Bill Holter talk about the coming collapse. Links to Bill Holter website: http://www.jsmineset.com & email: bholter@hotmail.com Links To Andy at Miles Franklin https://linktr.ee/SNAFUradio
to listen to Holter tell the listeners they will buy food with junk silver... if you have a farmer near you, if they have retail products available, if half the county hasn't gotten there before you, if the govt doesn't restrict what farmers can sell to the public, if even half of one percent of anyone actually has pre-1964 quarters...

and if otherwise you tried to turn your silver or gold into something that can be spent at a gas station, a wallyworld, and virtually anywhere (because they'd rather have a candy bar than a silver bar)... that would mean going to the coin shop to make the swap, if the coin shop is open, if the govt doesn't commandeer gold shops, if windfall taxes are not slapped on PM> cash at the coin shop, if there isn't a line 3 miles long to get to the gold shop, if you don't get jacked while waiting in that line....

PMs are assets that probably will appreciate in scary times and one may be lucky enough to make a profit, but what Holter is suggesting is not reality.
 

Jubilee on Earth

Veteran Member
to listen to Holter tell the listeners they will buy food with junk silver... if you have a farmer near you, if they have retail products available, if half the county hasn't gotten there before you, if the govt doesn't restrict what farmers can sell to the public, if even half of one percent of anyone actually has pre-1964 quarters...

and if otherwise you tried to turn your silver or gold into something that can be spent at a gas station, a wallyworld, and virtually anywhere (because they'd rather have a candy bar than a silver bar)... that would mean going to the coin shop to make the swap, if the coin shop is open, if the govt doesn't commandeer gold shops, if windfall taxes are not slapped on PM> cash at the coin shop, if there isn't a line 3 miles long to get to the gold shop, if you don't get jacked while waiting in that line....

PMs are assets that probably will appreciate in scary times and one may be lucky enough to make a profit, but what Holter is suggesting is not reality.
PMs are good for paying your property taxes in order to keep your house. And I imagine a 1oz silver coin will do just fine when wanting to buy some things. But the real purchasing power will be in barterables. Alcohol, sugar, salt, canning supplies, coffee, etc. will be way more valuable to most than junk silver.
 

Hfcomms

EN66iq
PMs are assets that probably will appreciate in scary times and one may be lucky enough to make a profit, but what Holter is suggesting is not reality.

We must of listened to two different podcasts. Holter has never suggested buying precious metals as a 'trade' to make a profit. He has always held them out as being a store of value and not a trade. And it's perfectly plausible to purchase local food from a farmer with silver. As said in the interview farmer's tend to be close to the earth and know what real value is.

He was not at all intimating that all you need is silver or gold and you'll be set to go. I heard him and Andy describe the steps that Bill has taken over the last year including parts to rebuild his water wells, his propane and electrical system and anything that can be obtained now which will either be in short supply or unobtainable in the future.

He has always suggested not only a robust food storage program but growing your own food as well. Farmers will still probably farm to some extent and you might be able to barter with them for things that they need and don't have or they might sell you some things that you don't grow.

The so called 'junk' silver is the perfect medium to do that as everybody recognizes what dimes, quarters and half dollars are and you can teach an 8 year old in 30 seconds the difference between real silver and a clad coin.

While Bill does broker precious metals through Miles-Franklin and is a partner with legendary Jim Sinclair he is an avid prepper in his own right and sees the metals as being only one part of an overall prepping plan. To think all one would need is gold or silver is almost as foolish as thinking if you had a stack of Bitcoin in your paper wallet you are all set to meet hard times.
 

glennb6

Inactive
HF,
Holter did say buy PMs to protect what you have from inflation/hyperinflation. He did say that junk silver will be good to trade with products from farmers/farmers markets. That's not technically wrong, but it's far from practical.

"And it's perfectly plausible to purchase local food from a farmer with silver. As said in the interview farmer's tend to be close to the earth and know what real value is."

The avg suburban town/neighborhood does not have access to farms and many do not have farmers markets within a hundred miles. Imagine though, if many of the residents in the various gated communities of outer suburban nowhereville that were within a not too far drive descended on some farms nearby.

"Do you have any steaks for sale Mr farmer"?
huh?... you want to buy a cow from me?
"no, just a few steaks".
You're kidding?!

"Hello neighbor, I see you grow corn. Can I buy a few dozen ears from you?"
Mister, I sell by the trailer load. Do you have a trailer?
Uhhh...well, no.

After the farmer(s) dealt with the first half dozen clueless but hopeful suburbanites, there would be a sign up at the front gate: WHOLESALE LOT SALES ONLY - NO RETAIL. And would you blame them?

Sure a few people might get lucky with a handful for <'64 quarters and dollar coins at a local market, or they may just encounter lesser enlightened sells who insist on $100 dollar bills only. Recall the many videos that made the rounds on YT where some guy was offering random people either a chocolate bar or a bar of silver? You know which most people chose. It would be interesting to try an experiment tomorrow, to try paying for things at various stores/gas stations/restaurants with junk silver. Bring a video camera ;)

No arguments with the many other prepping procedures he suggests, none at at all. But there are so many impracticalities to the "buy from farmers" and "barter with silver" that it's silly for all but perhaps a uniquely positioned few to do so.

Holter said don't look to PMs as a profit avenue but as a preservation tool. Ok. I'll bet he's also hoping for the proverbial $600 silver killing and $10,000+ gold before cashing in. Nah, he's not looking for a means to profit.... no, just preserving his cost basis amount - not. BTW, I too hope that if the financial system goes sideways, to be able to make a profit from my small investments. But I'm pretty sure it won't be done the way Holter is saying.

People with very fixed linear thinking processes concern me and I tend to disregard any advise they offer.

Thanks
 

Hfcomms

EN66iq
Holter said don't look to PMs as a profit avenue but as a preservation tool. Ok. I'll bet he's also hoping for the proverbial $600 silver killing and $10,000+ gold before cashing in.


Before cashing in….for what? Gold and silver are money. Why would any of us want collapsing fiat currency? We hold the metal to get out of fiat. Silver going to $600 and gold 10K doesn‘t mean so much when gas at the same time goes to $15 a gallon. The gold is to preserve your purchasing power thru the collapse and into the next system and the silver is used during the collapse as a bartering option along with trades for goods and services you already have.

People that buy paper metal or even the real thing because they think the prices are going to go up and they can ‘cash out’ frankly don’t understand the purposes of the metals or what we are facing in our near future.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

World Economic Forum Pushing for Great Reset Through a 'Cyber-Attack With COVID-Like Characteristics'
World Economic Forum Pushing for Great Reset Through a ‘Cyber-Attack With COVID-Like Characteristics’
by Arsenio Toledo

July 11, 2021




The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization supposedly dedicated to improving the world through business, politics and academia. Recently, it has been delving into the world of cybersecurity. In reality, the WEF is pushing for a Great Reset using a “cyber-attack with COVID-like characteristics.”

The WEF has taken a leading role in the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It has pushed for vaccine passports, digital barcode tracking and, most importantly, the Great Reset. Now, it is warning the world about a possible globe-spanning cyberattack that could cripple the global financial system.

WEF priming people to expect globe-spanning cyber attack
In early 2021, the WEF Center for Cybersecurity announced Cyber Polygon 2021.

This is an online cybersecurity conference. This year’s Cyber Polygon has one agenda: figuring out what a “cyberattack with COVID-like characteristics” looks like.

In earlier releases, the WEF said Cyber Polygon 2021 would focus on ransomware, the vulnerability of the global supply chain to cyberattacks and digital currencies. The WEF also promised to hold “live training exercises” that respond to “a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real life.”

“We all know, but still pay insufficient attention to, the frightening scenario of a comprehensive cyberattack, which would bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole,” said Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF. “The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyberattack.”

Schwab added that it was important for the WEF to use the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to “reflect on the lessons of the cybersecurity community to draw and improve our unpreparedness for a potential cyber pandemic.”

Schwab made these comments last year, showing that the WEF has been planning to prime people for a cyberattack-induced Great Reset for some time.

On July 9, the day the Cyber Polygon conference began, Schwab reiterated his fearmongering by reminding people about the recent cyberattacks that have occurred.

“We have seen in the past few months, for example, ransomware attacks targeting hospitals, critical infrastructure, school systems, the power grid and many other essential services,” he said.

“Ransomware attacks are complex, and criminal enterprises are increasing their scale and impact. This highlights the need for a structured multi-stakeholder, multi-lateral approach to secure our society against them.”

WEF’s worldwide cyber pandemic drill underway

The Cyber Polygon training exercise is comprised of over 200 teams from 48 countries. Companies like IBM, Santander and Ernst and Young have sent their respective cybersecurity teams to participate in this worldwide exercise.

“It is inevitable that some larger attack is going to occur one day,” said John Sancenito, president of a security consulting firm based in Pennsylvania. “What is being talked about today and over the next couple of days is a potential real-world situation.”

Sancenito is interested in the live drill’s focus this year. If a cyberattack targets the United States’ supply chain, it can impact people’s daily lives by shutting down critical infrastructures like the power grid or water treatment facilities

“What would you do if you can’t access your bank accounts, the internet, or your cell phone suddenly stopped working? These are the kinds of things people really do need to think through because one day we may be facing a crisis like that,” said Sancenito.

The Cyber Polygon live exercise goes on for several days. As of press time, it is still ongoing.

Learn more about how the WEF is planning to bring about a Great Reset by reading the latest articles at GreatReset.news.

Sources include:
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Globalist Leaders at G20 Endorse Global Tax Plan, Set For Vote in US Congress; “New Rules,” “No Turning Back”

By Guest Author Julian Conradson
Published July 11, 2021 at 4:11pm
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The move towards globalism is marching full steam ahead.

On Saturday, finance ministers from the world’s 20 largest economies met in Venice and announced that they had agreed to a “more stable and fairer international tax architecture.” The announcement comes just a week after 130 countries agreed to a proposal for a worldwide minimum tax, which Biden has been backing since taking office.

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Biden’s administration and the anti-American Globalists are rejoicing. Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, praised the efforts in Venice. The German finance minister said “it will be implemented and we will have built this international taxation system for the 21st century.” France’s finance minister added “there is no turning back.”

The unprecedented plan, if enacted, would drastically reshape the tax landscape around the world, especially in the US. It would establish a global 15% minimum tax. Proponents of the plan say that it will limit large corporations saving billions of dollars by shifting profits into tax havens. This, coupled with Biden’s plan to pass competition-crushing corporate tax increases reflects the desire of foreign nations to profit off of American companies for operating in their countries.

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The implementation of the global tax program hinges on the American legislature. Lawmakers in Washington are preparing to vote on the proposal, likely in two separate parts: “Pillar 1” and “Pillar 2.” They would need to approve separate measures because one requires changes to US tax legislation and the other gives foreign countries new abilities to either tax American business through the altering of existing trade agreements or by creating new ones.

It is expected to easily pass through the House of Representatives but should be met with a harder challenge in the Senate. Biden and the radical democrats could potentially avoid a hangup in the upper house with the domestic part of the new proposal and use reconciliation to pass it with a simple majority with Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.

According to The Financial Times: “Pillar 2, which changes US domestic legislation, could potentially be passed using the so-called reconciliation process. This can be used by US Congress once a fiscal year and bills passed by this route can clear the Senate with a simple majority. The upper chamber is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with US vice-president Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. However, Pillar 1, which will probably require treaty changes, would need the support of at least two thirds of the Senate.”

One of the last G20 holdouts for the tax was China. They have been opposed to agreements that would limit setting tax policy as they see fit. The deals now include significant room for countries to add-in exemptions from the global minimum taxes, laying the groundwork for China to sign on and not be required to follow any of the terms.

Instead of focusing on putting American citizens and businesses first, this administration continues to prioritize the interests foreign nations over the United States. Pat Toomey, the most senior Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee, called the global minimum tax “Crazy.

How does a globalist government get funded? Taxes, of course!

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marsh

On TB every waking moment

It’s Time To Unplug The Hype Over Electric Vehicles

MONDAY, JUL 12, 2021 - 06:40 PM
Authored by Robert Bryce via RealClear Energy (emphasis ours),

For more than a century, the promise of electric vehicles (EVs) has been parked just beyond the nearest traffic light. In 1901, the Los Angeles Times declared “The electric automobile will quickly and easily take precedence over all other” types of motor vehicles. "If the claims which Mr. Edison makes for his new battery be not overstated, there is not much doubt that it will make a fortune for somebody.”


In 1911, The New York Times declared that the EV “has long been recognized as the ideal solution” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical.” And yet today, 110 years after EVs were dubbed the Next Big Thing, they account for just 2% of new car sales in the U.S.

Yes, EVs are cool. And yes, sales of Teslas and other all-electric cars are rising at a fast clip. But despite lots of government push, there still isn’t enough consumer pull. Indeed, the history of the electric car is a century of failure tailgating failure.

Consider California. In 1990, state regulators mandated 10% of the cars sold in the state be zero-emission vehicles by 2003. The state now offers up to $7,000 in rebates to EV buyers. In addition, EV drivers can use California’s HOV lanes even if they have only one person in their car. Despite these incentives, only about 6% of the cars in California today have an electric plug.

Federal policymakers are ignoring California’s failure to jump-start widespread EV adoption. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed an infrastructure bill that included $36.6 billion in funding for EV charging networks and electrification of transportation.

As I explained in my June 30 testimony before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, I’m pro-electricity. Over the past 16 months, I’ve published a book (A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations) and co-produced a feature-length documentary (Juice: How Electricity Explains the World) both of which spotlight the essentiality of electricity. I also launched the Power Hungry Podcast which focuses largely on electricity, nuclear energy, and the electric grid.

So yes, I am pro-electricity. But I am adamantly opposed to the notion that we should “electrify everything” including transportation. The big problems with EVs are affordability, resilience, and supply chains.

EVs are coming down in price, but they are mostly being purchased by the Benz and Beemer crowd. The average household income for EV buyers is about $140,000. That’s twice the U.S. average.

Furthermore, low- and middle-income Americans are facing significant electric rate increases for grid upgrades to accommodate EVs. Proof of that can be seen by looking, again, at California. Last month, the California Energy Commission estimated the state will need 1.3 million new public EV chargers by 2030. Likely cost to ratepayers: about $13 billion.

Meanwhile, blackouts are almost certain this summer and electricity prices in the state are, as energy analyst Mark Nelson recently put it, “absolutely exploding.”

Last year, electricity prices soared by 7.5% and California regulators expect rates to surge another 40% or so by 2030. These cost increases are happening in a state with the highest poverty rate and largest Latino population in America.

Electrifying transportation will put more of our energy eggs in one basket and make our grid an even-juicier target for terrorists, cyberthieves, or bad actors. It will also reduce resilience and reliability in case of a prolonged grid failure due to natural disaster, equipment failure, or human error.

Indeed, attempting to electrify transportation makes little sense given the ongoing fragilization of our electric grid. That fragilization is due to the ongoing closures of our nuclear and coal-fired plants as well as the grid’s increased dependence on weather-dependent renewables and power plants that rely on just-in-time delivery of natural gas. Since 2016, the number of grid outages per year – what the DOE calls “major disturbances and unusual occurrences” – has nearly tripled.

EVs will also make the U.S. more dependent on China. Electrifying just half of our auto fleet will require, in rough terms, about nine times current global cobalt production, three times global lithium output, and about two times current copper production. As the International Energy Agency noted in a May report, China has a majority share in the processing of cobalt, lithium, and the rare earth elements needed to make EVs.

Now, I can almost hear the squeals of climate activists, Tesla stockholders, and people who drive EVs, who will respond to this piece by saying, something to the effect of “Bryce just don’t understand.” Or, “we have to switch to EVs because of climate change.” Or maybe, “look at all the automakers who say they are going to switch to EVs.”

I am aware of those arguments. I’ve been hearing them for years. And my reply is equally simple: If EVs are so great, why haven’t they taken over the market? Why do EVs still only account for 2% of all U.S. auto sales?

The simple truth is that oil’s century-long dominance of the transportation-fuel market is largely due to its high energy density. That density – along with oil’s versatility, quick refueling, ease of handling, and continuing improvements in internal combustion engines and hybrids -- assures that oil will be fueling our cars, trucks, ships, boats, snowmobiles, ATVs, bulldozers, excavators, and airplanes for decades to come.

Despite these facts, powerful lobby groups in Washington, as well as academics from elite universities, and big environmental groups want Congress to spend tens of billions of dollars on electrification schemes that will impose regressive taxes on low-income Americans, reduce our resilience, and increase reliance on China.

That’s a dubious trifecta.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Environmentalists "Feel Burned" By Biden's Infrastructure Bill, Want Another $2.1 Trillion In Climate Spending

WEDNESDAY, JUL 14, 2021 - 04:45 PM

An environmentalist group made up of the Center for American Progress, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters and "dozens of others" is seeking an additional $2.1 trillion in infrastructure spending after "feeling burned" by the lack of climate change measure in President Biden's infrastructure deal.

Because, you know, noble causes and all...

The group is now asking comrade Bernie Sanders to "include that much spending on climate measures in a package being assembled by Democrats", according to a new report by BNN Bloomberg. A written request was given to Sanders that asks for $225 billion for clean-energy tax credits, $250 billion for a clean-energy standard and $100 billion in consumer incentives for clean vehicles.

The bill also asks for "billions more" for water infrastructure, nuclear energy, electric buses and - we swear we're not making this up - "efficient electric appliances."

The push represents what is likely going to be decades-long pressure on Democratic administrations to help fulfill Biden's promises to eliminate carbon emissions from the electric grid by 2035 and the rest of the economy by 2050.



The group likely targeted Sanders to push for their requests for a reason:
Sanders previously had outlined a $6 trillion proposal covering Biden’s agenda as well as an expansion of Medicare, additional climate change items, immigration reform and a permanent extension of the child-care tax credit. But that measure is expected to shrink as agreement is sought from moderates in the caucus to pass both the budget resolution and a follow-up reconciliation bill, which requires 50 votes for passage along with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
The groups’ demands are "unlikely to be realized in full," BNN wrote.
Recall, we noted that in a late-night announcement Tuesday, Chuck Schumer said the Budget Committee had reached an agreement to allot $3.5 trillion for a spending package that would complete President Biden’s infrastructure plan.
"The Budget Committee has come to an agreement," Sen. Schumer told reporters Tuesday night following a closed-door meeting with Democratic lawmakers.
The deal adds to the $600 billion package of infrastructure measures that Biden has struck with Republicans.
"You add that to that the $600 billion in a bipartisan plan and you get to $4.1 trillion, which is very, very close to what President Biden has asked us for," Schumer said. "Every major program that President Biden has asked us for is funded in a robust way."
The package will include such "infrastructure" priorities like expanding Medicare, addressing climate change, expanding childcare (after the administration just approved a new $300 handout for couples with children) and education. The Democrats have famously deemed all this "human infrastructure", which Republicans have vowed to reject.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Pete Buttigieg Claims Democrat Infrastructure Plan Will Stop Climate Change

By Mike LaChance
Published July 14, 2021 at 1:36am
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For months now, Democrats have redefined the meaning of the word ‘infrastructure’ to include pretty much anything.

Most people think of it as roads and bridges, but Democrats think it means child care, education and more.

Pete Buttigieg, who is now Biden’s transportation secretary for some reason, is even claiming that their infrastructure plan will stop climate change. Is there anything infrastructure can’t do?

Breitbart News reports:

Pete Buttigieg: ‘Infrastructure’ Plan Will Stop Climate Change
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg boldly told KTLA Sunday that the “infrastructure” plan will stop climate change.

The nearly $1.2 trillion plan, hanging on by a thread with the support of 11 Senate Republicans, spends heavily on electric vehicles and other Democrat pet causes redefined as “infrastructure.”

Buttigieg pitched the plan to the news station, saying “As the West has been impacted by extreme weather events and some of the heat waves that have been going on, this is not going to go away.”

He added, “We need to take serious climate action to stop it from getting worse and that’s part of what will happen, thanks to these investments we’re proposing to make on everything from electric vehicle infrastructure to more resilient infrastructure planning in our communities.”

Buttigieg touted the current bipartisan support for the plan, based in part, on “financing” that includes increased activity by the Internal Revenue Service to pursue taxpayers.
In typical Democrat fashion, Buttigieg says there’s no time for debate on the issue.

The Hill reports:

Buttigieg: ‘There’s no time to argue’ over climate change
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the debate over whether climate change exists needs to stop, saying “there’s no time to argue about whether it’s real — it’s happening, and it’s incredibly dangerous.”


Buttigieg was asked during an interview on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday how his department is addressing climate change amid record-setting heat in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’ve got to do two things. One, we’ve got to make our infrastructure more resilient, because this is going to keep happening. So, we’ve got to make sure that our roads and our bridges are designed for rising sea levels and more heat waves,” Buttigieg said.

“But the second thing we got to do — we’ve got to stop it from getting any worse.

That’s why it’s important to make sure that we help Americans afford and drive electric vehicles. It’s why we have to make sure we have alternatives like transit and make sure it’s easier for people to get around without having to bring a vehicle sometimes, depending on where you’re going,” he added.
Democrats have been claiming for decades that there’s no time to argue about climate change.

And they just keep moving the goal posts.


Cross posted from American Lookout.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

EU Unveils Absurd Climate Change Targets "To Give Humanity A Fighting Chance"

WEDNESDAY, JUL 14, 2021 - 09:50 AM

Europe's push for electrification could include the ban of gas and diesel car sales within two decades. Lawmakers in the European Union (EU) are set to propose new measures today that will accelerate the ban of internal combustion engines, according to Reuters.

The great reset of transportation, or rather a clean overhaul of vehicles, is part of new measures to reduce carbon emissions by 55% from 1990s levels by 2030. By 2050, Europe plans to become the world's first net-zero emissions continent.

... and good luck with those targets - lawmakers usually overpromise and underdeliver.


We've noted multiple times that the EU's green energy policy targets are hogwash and will likely not be met (read: here & here).

So today, the European Commission (EC), the executive branch of the European Union responsible for proposing legislation, will unveil binding emission targets that could make internal combustion engines illegal for sale across the 27-country bloc by 2035 or 2040.

Nick Parker, a managing director at consultancy AlixPartners, said that most carmakers' models two decades from now will be "electrified." He said, "the question is whether they (the EU) might try to force the journey along the way or leave it up to individual carmakers to decide that path for themselves."

Bloomberg said, "the new vehicle emission targets would be a significant tightening compared with the existing fleet-wide emissions goals, which require a 37.5% reduction from 2030 for cars. Passenger cars account for about 12% of total EU CO2 emissions."

Barclays Plc has doubts about the proposed emissions reduction target by 2030. The bank finds it challenging for automakers to achieve a 55% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 even with hybrids, adding that future government policy could spur further adoption of battery-electric vehicles.
"These targets should not come as a surprise, although they clearly require an accelerated shift," Kai Alexander Mueller, a Barclays auto analyst, wrote last week.
One of the EU's most prominent manufacturers, Volkswagen, plans to slash internal combustion engine sales by at least 70% by 2030. Renault and Ford have also mentioned the push towards electrified vehicles to be a majority of sales by the end of the decade. Other automakers are expected to follow suit as soon as the new measures are revealed.

The proposed new measures of tightening carbon emission targets could be a massive boost for the EU's electric car market. The phasing-out of combustion engines is part of the great reset that is well underway.

The BBC shed more color on the dozen draft proposals that include the banning of combustion engines in vehicles to taxes on jet fuel to emissions on ships.
The proposals are likely to come under a lot of debate over the coming months.
"We're going to ask a lot of our citizens," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said.

"We're also going to ask a lot of our industries, but we do it for a good cause. We do it to give humanity a fighting chance."
The opposition will likely be in full swing as industry leaders, such as airlines and vehicle manufacturers and countries from the eastern region of the EU that heavily rely on fossil fuels, will be against such proposals.

Already, France is opposed to a 2035 or 2040 ban of the combustion engine in autos.

At least President Trump was honest about his support for the oil and gas industry because there is just no way in hell that green energy projects will have enough power capacity to fuel the economy of tomorrow when by 2050, the Earth's population is estimated to increase by at least 1.9 billion people.
 

Nich1

Veteran Member
So, if diesel engines are banned, will there be electric-powered tractors, combines, bulldozers, etc.?
 

raven

TB Fanatic
So, if diesel engines are banned, will there be electric-powered tractors, combines, bulldozers, etc.?
seeds will be vaccinated with graphite nanoparticles which will plant them, extract water from the morning dew, harvest them at the peak of perfection, and process them into seven delectable imitation meat flavors just like the rainbow.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
ttps://conservativeplaylist.com/2021/07/14/heres-what-happened-at-cyber-polygon-and-youre-not-going-to-like-it/

Here’s What Happened at Cyber Polygon – And You’re Not Going to Like It

by Jeff Thompson
July 14, 2021

Cyber Polygon 2020 – a simulation about a “cyber pandemic” – took place July 9, 2021. Many Americans felt widespread concern prior to the event.

Why is this? In short, because past simulations ended up becoming a reality. Could the Cyber Polygon simulation become a reality? Many Americans thought so. Derick Broze points out in his article that the world has experienced many simulations that came to fruition only a short time later.

For example, on October 18, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and the John Hopkins Center for Health Security conducted Event 201. Event 201 was a simulation of how the world would react if a coronavirus pandemic swept across the planet. Less than six months later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.

Interestingly, just as Cyber Polygon was about to start, a real attack occurred. From NBC News:

One of the most prolific ransomware gangs, REvil, conducted its boldest attacks yet over the Fourth of July weekend, on Kaseya, which services customers who in turn contract with thousands of businesses. Though the dust has yet to settle, researchers say the hack allowed REvil to infect more than 1,500 different organizations. The gang seems to have bitten off more than it can chew and has asked for a $70 million lump sum to unlock all infected computers.

Cyber Polygon 2020 Digital Pandemic is Now Complete
Many may wonder just what in the world happened there. The convention was kind enough to publish the findings for the rest of us to peruse at our leisure.

As noted by the official website, “The central theme of the event was a ‘digital pandemic.’ No surprise to those of us who paid attention. It’s because of this moniker that so many people have been concerned in the first place.

Videos published by the World Economic Forum set mental alarms off for Americans nationwide. According to this video, a cyber attack could be 10x more prevalent than what we’ve experienced with COVID-19. The narrator within the video states, “Fortunately, at least until now, cyber-attacks have not impacted our health the way pandemics have. At least until now.”

The video goes on to state, “The only way to stop the exponential propagation of a COVID-like cyber threat is to fully disconnect the millions of vulnerable devices from one another and from the internet.”

How Would a Full Disconnect Be Implemented and What Would the Effects Be?
One possible way would involve the use of an internet kill switch. Not only do those exist, but the US government has access to one. Theoretically, if you can turn off the internet, large segments of the population will be disconnected from one another. Meaning, what happens in one geographic region will go utterly unrecognized by citizens everywhere else.

Think about the practical implications of such. Think about the potential for further human rights violations. Perhaps a world where all news sources disappear overnight, with your favorite collectivist news agency being the only website still on the air?

Just Take a Look at Egypt in 2011
Protests by citizens fed up with the constant human rights violations they experienced under the current administration spread throughout the entire nation of Egypt in 2011. In an attempt to disband the protesters and keep them from organizing, Egypt hit its internet kill switch.

Egyptians responded by resorting to mesh networks such as Firechat (which is sadly now gone) to communicate with one another. Still, there’s no doubt that the internet shutdown was a significant blow to both the people and their businesses.

Though the internet was “dead” for only five days, it cost the Egyptian economy approximately $90 million US.

Approximately 5 million People From 57 Nations Tuned in to the Live Stream
The Cyberpolygon 2020 live stream “featured global leaders and experts, including Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, and Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, as well as top officials from INTERPOL, ICANN, Visa, IBM, Sberbank, MTS and other organizations.”

These leaders and experts spoke on the subject of cyber threats and cyber pandemics. But that wasn’t all.

From the official website: The experts addressed the latest trends and technological threats, shared their experience in creating cybersecurity ecosystems, talked about the transforming threat landscape, and discussed the problem of fake news and how to discern misinformation on the Web

Coincidentally, one of the end goals of Cyber Polygon was to determine how to do a more thorough job of silencing all criticism that goes against the mainstream narrative.

If One Can Shut Down All Alternative Viewpoints, One Can Become the Sole Provider of “Truth”
If you’re a regular reader of The Organic Prepper, you’ve already seen this up close and personal. We were defunded roughly just one month ago. Why? For being a ‘misinformation site.’

It doesn’t matter how many scientists a person has to back up what they say. It doesn’t matter how many links to scientific journals a person adds. If anyone dares go against what the politicians and their ‘fact checkers’ deem to be correct, they will be silenced.

I believe “alternative” news sites are the only trustworthy source of news at the moment. Sites such as Zero Hedge, Children’s Health Defense, Daily Expose, Activist Post, The Last American Vagabond, Technocracy News, Survival Blog (and of course The Organic Prepper) are the only sites I trust to give me accurate information.

As far as I’m concerned, all else is misinformation. It’s propaganda.

However, these sources are just a fraction of the size of the major players (and you know who they are). If they are successfully stamped out, we will quickly end up in the type of situation warned of by FA Hayek in his excellent book The Road to Serfdom.

From Hayek: “If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading the people of this or that. The skillful propagandist then has the power to mold their minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information.”

(Hayek has much else to say about our current situation within the chapter ‘The End of Truth.’ It virtually reads as a play-by-play of the last year and a half.)

Technical Training Followed the Live Stream
Here, a collection of some of the best cybersecurity workers in the world gathered together into two teams to simulate a cyberattack of massive scope in real-time. This simulation involved 120 teams from 29 countries, and “the event was joined by state and law enforcement agencies, financial, educational and healthcare institutions, organizations from the IT, telecom, energy, metal, chemical, aerospace engineering and other industries.”

The good guys were the Blue Team, which protected their little chunks of infrastructure from the cyber-attack. The bad guys who conducted the attack were the Red Team. This simulation split into two halves: the real-time threat and the post-attack investigation. Throughout the real-time simulation, the Blue Team had to contain the cyberattack as best they could.

The banking industry and companies within the realm of IT “demonstrated the highest resilience.” However, it was also discovered that, as a whole, “technical specialists are better prepared for investigation than for defense.” The entire investigation process involved regular forensics as well as a concept known as Cyber Threat Hunting.

Cyber Threat Hunting is looking for cyber attacks that haven’t set off your early alert system. You may have anti-virus software, but it only alerts you to what it sees. If it doesn’t see it, no alarm is raised. With Threat Hunting, you seek to discover the hiding places where a cyber attack is lurking – or has already taken place – outside of the realm of where your traditional alarm systems would have guarded.

Cyber Polygon 2020 May Be Over, But it’s Not the End
If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re likely familiar with the concept of situational awareness. I’m of the mind that a thorough understanding of current events is a critical part of this. If you don’t know what’s going on around you, you’re going to get blindsided by reality. A working understanding of what is happening out there in the world – to me – is well worth the time. I believe an understanding of Cyber Polygon is a part of this.

So continue to monitor the waters. Pay attention to what’s happening out there.

In the past year alone, ransomware gangs have launched several high-profile attacks, including on a major pipeline and a meat supplier. If you’re looking for actionable steps you can take to mitigate your disaster risk, we have a host of articles detailing what you can do.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

World Economic Forum announces creation of Orwellian ‘Global Coalition for Digital Safety’

By Leo Hohmann, 14 July, 2021

The World Economic Forum announced June 29 it will initiate a new “public-private partnership” with Big Tech and governments around the world to identify and uproot all opinions from the Internet that it considers “harmful.”

The WEF is one of those elitist organizations that wields enormous influence over the elected leaders of Western nations but which almost nobody in the general population has heard of.

Its members are internationalist corporate honchos and technocrats who meet once a year in Davos with the stated goal of working to “shape global, regional and industry agendas.”

It made a big splash last year with its highly touted “Great Reset,” which promises to use the pandemic as an “opportunity” to crash the world’s dollar-based, capitalist economic system and “build back better” under a more socialist and globally integrated system that mirrors the United Nations Agenda 2030 goals for Sustainable Development.

Any politician you hear using the term “build back better” [Biden-Harris-Trudeau-Johnson repeat this mantra daily] you know has drunk the poisonous Kool-Aid of the World Economic Forum and its founder, Klaus Schwab [pictured below].

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Schwab’s latest venture is the so-called “Global Coalition for Digital Safety” that consists of execs from Big Tech and government officials with the goal of creating a “global framework” for regulating speech on the Internet, wiping it of so-called “harmful content.”

[I could not help but think of the Committee of Public Safety that conducted the reign of terror during the French Revolution.]

And who gets to define what’s “harmful”? Why, the global coalition set up by the elitist WEF of course!

The harmful” content targeted by this Global Coalition for Digital Safety you can bet will be tailor made to entrap those who stand for limited government, traditional values and individual freedom. Those of us who still believe in such things will not be included in the WEF’s definition of “inclusive,” “equality” or “diversity.”

“The Global Coalition for Digital Safety is a public private platform for global, multi stakeholder cooperation to develop innovations and advance collaborations that tackle harmful content and conduct online,” states the WEF on its website.

Microsoft immediately announced it was on board with the WEF’s plan to squelch free speech on the Internet.

Chief digital safety officer for Microsoft Courtney Gregoire stated:

“Technology offers tools to learn, play, connect, and contribute to solving some of the world’s greatest challenges. But digital safety harms remain a threat to these possibilities. As the World Economic Forum is uniquely positioned to accelerate the public-private collaboration needed to advance digital safety globally, Microsoft is eager to participate and help build whole-of-society solutions to this whole-of-society problem.”
Facebook also seems excited to get started on finding new ways to groom users to start thinking about turning in their friends for committing wrongthink. The social media giant has begun sending cryptic messages to some users that read as follows:

“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?”

See screenshot below that one user received from Facebook today, July 1, and sent to this reporter.

fb-screenshot-2021-07-01-at-2.23.00-pm-e1625185657517.jpeg

This program fits perfectly with the rhetoric coming out of Washington since Biden claimed the presidency.

Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, take every opportunity to talk about “extremists” on the right being the “biggest threat to our democracy.” This is a classic propaganda technique used to turn public sentiment against a targeted demographic. The Nazis perfected this, using the media to blame all of Germany’s problems on Jews before they actually started rounding them up and making them disappear.

The next phase in this evil plan is to encourage Americans to turn each other in to the online thought police. What happens next, after one has been reported to Facebook, Google or Microsoft? Will the tech giants turn those accused of thought crimes by their online “friends” and “followers” over to Biden’s politicized FBI? This is exactly how it works in China.

Readers of this blog know that China is the model being touted by those who believe in the Great Reset. Now their plans are right out in the open on the World Economic Forum website with this announcement of their Global Coalition for Digital Safety.

The WEF states:
“With the growing challenge to counter health misinformation, violent extremist and terrorist content, and the exploitation of children online, there is an urgent need for more deliberate global coordination to improve digital safety.
“The Global Coalition for Digital Safety aims to accelerate public-private cooperation to tackle harmful content online and will serve to exchange best practices for new online safety regulation, take coordinated action to reduce the risk of online harms, and drive forward collaboration on programs to enhance digital media literacy.”
In the above quote, notice how sneakily the WEF lumps spreaders of “health misinformation” – that would be anyone who expresses reticence about experimental mass vaccination programs, COVID lockdowns, mandatory mask wearing, etc. – in with violent extremists, terrorists and child traffickers. How clever.

The WEF has the audacity to claim its coalition will be “impartial” in policing the Internet. This is the same organization run by Schwab, who openly states that the pandemic should be exploited as a “unique window of opportunity” to fundamentally change the way the people live, work, do business and fit into society.

“The Forum is uniquely positioned to leverage its impartial platform and convening power to drive public-private cooperation amongst key stakeholders focused on improving safety online,” the WEF states in its release about the new coalition.

The WEF sets itself up as the global arbiter that defines terms like “harmful content” and “misinformation.” It also laments the fact that encrypted social media channels like Telegram and Signal are able to allow users to communicate free of censorship and spying.

Here are its recommendations for “key focus areas that now require coordinated action” by governments and their Big Tech allies:

1. Share Best Practices on Safety Standards: Exchange knowledge on policies and practices for improving online safety, considering content policies, remedies, transparency reports, use of data, and new technologies

2. Address Balance of Privacy and Safety: Share best practices on addressing the growing tension between privacy and safety as harmful content on encrypted channels risks evading detection

3. Market Competition: Drive better alignment between regulations focused on safety and competition to foster market innovation and enable consumer choice

4. Cross-Jurisdictional Content Cooperation: Enable action on content that spans jurisdictions and requires greater coordination amongst countries (e.g. content created in one county but causing harm in another)

5. Definitional Alignment: Support work on consistent definitions for content categories, such as self-harm and cyber-bullying to enable standardized enforcement, reporting, and measurement across regions.

If COVID taught us anything, it’s that Big Tech social-media platforms, in league with global power elites, defined for us what is allowed and not allowed to be said on the Internet.

Posts that challenge the official narrative about the virus and the best way to respond to it were immediately censored, either tagged with warnings meant to discredit the posts or removed all together.

The most typical reason for such censorship was that these posts “violated community standards,” which consist of mysterious, vaguely worded legalese that nobody reads.

Big Tech corporations are also increasingly working in concert with governments around the world, including in the U.S. and the ruling Chinese Communist Party in China, to regulate what people are allowed to see on the Internet.

But all of this control over the free flow of information is not enough for some of the global power elites.

Now they are ready to take their Gestapo tactics to the next level.

They want to turn us against each other.

Don’t let them do it.

Now is the time for all freedom-loving patriots in nations across the world to wake up, rise up, recognize these tactics as divisive and anti-human, and unite against this pernicious group of global predators.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Meet the World Economic Forum
Meet the World Economic Forum

by DR. JOSEPH MERCOLA
July 16, 2021

Editor’s Commentary: Dr. Joseph Mercola tends to be a lot nicer than I am when it comes to people who want to tear the foundations of this nation and the globe, then attempt to rebuild it in their Neo-Marxist image. I’ll come out and say it: The World Economic Forum is driving the most dangerous ideology this world has seen since the birth of paganism, yet world leaders are embracing it to “build back better” with The Great Reset when pandemic panic theater has evolved into the next fictional crisis.

Executives at the World Economic Forum have called me out directly, claiming that my assertion about their Neo-Marxism is false, that they simply believe in “stakeholder capitalism.” For those who do not know, the financial tenets of Neo-Marxism and stakeholder capitalism are identical. It’s a rebrand, nothing more, with the elite perched at the top and everyone else sharing in equity of misery.

With that preface, let’s turn to Dr. Mercola and podcaster James Corbett…

STORY AT-A-GLANCE
  • The COVID pandemic is a ruse to usher in a new system of global centralized governance by unelected leaders, the so-called Great Reset
    The founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, has emerged as the front man of the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has an unmistakable transhumanist component
  • The Great Reset is a rebranding of what in the last decade became known as the New World Order. The Fourth Industrial Revolution refers to the merging of digital, physical and biological systems, and the reliance on technological surveillance rather than the rule of law to maintain public order
  • The Fourth Industrial Revolution will transform not only how we live and interact but who we are as a human species. Man will ultimately be merged with machine. The COVID shots may well be the very first step into this transhumanist mass transformation
  • Members and stakeholders of the WEF include world government leaders, corporate leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, activists, cultural leaders and artists, all of whom collaborate to push the WEF’s technocratic, transhumanist missions forward
Over the past year and a half, I’ve written many articles detailing the evidence supporting the claim that the COVID pandemic is a ruse to usher in a new system of global centralized governance by unelected leaders, the so-called Great Reset. While the World Economic Forum (WEF) may not necessarily be the very top of this pyramid of technocratic elitists, it certainly appears to be a central power player.

Its founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, has emerged as the front man of the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has an unmistakable transhumanist component, or merging of biological or physical technologies in the human body,1 through his speeches and books on these topics, which include “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” (2016), “Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (2018) and “COVID-19: The Great Reset”2 (2020).

In the featured Corbett Report, “Meet the World Economic Forum,”3 independent journalist James Corbett takes a deep-dive into the WEF’s history and “the nightmarish future it is seeking to bring about.” Corbett also offers suggestions for how we can use this knowledge to derail this enslavement agenda.

New World Order Rebranded
As noted by Corbett, the Great Reset is nothing but a rebranding of what in the last decade became known as the New World Order. Of course, the creation of a New World Order was considered a conspiracy theory believed only by tinfoil hat-wearing kooks with too much time to surf the internet and too active an imagination.

Today, we can see that the New World Order was in fact real, and that the name-calling was simply a way to make sure the cat didn’t leap from the bag too soon. In June 2020, Schwab publicly announced the Great Reset,4 so there’s no way to dismiss it now. It’s happening.

As noted in a July 21, 2020, World Economic Forum article,5 the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns “has the potential to hobble global prosperity for generations to come.” The answer is to come up with stimulus measures, such as infrastructure development, that can allow countries to move forward.

But while at it, countries are urged to make sure the economic system is “built back better.” Make no mistake, this catchy slogan is part and parcel of the Great Reset plan and cannot be separated from it, no matter how altruistic it may sound.

Part of the “building back better” is to shift the financial system over to an all-digital centrally controlled currency system, which in turn is part of the system of social control, as it can easily be used to incentivize desired behaviors and discourage undesired ones.

While Bitcoin is decentralized and a rational strategy to preserve your personal financial freedom and opt out of the existing central bank controlled system, the central bank digital currency (CBDC) will be centralized and completely controlled by the central banks and will have smart contracts that allow the banks to surveil and control your life.

You’ll Own Nothing
There’s even talk of programming the currency such that they can control how you spend your money. The money may even have expiration dates, so you lose what you don’t spend within a certain time frame. One of the WEF’s promises is that by 2030, you will own nothing,6 and needless to say, if the central bank can control how and when you spend your money, they can eliminate your ability to save up for large purchases, such as, say, a house or a car.

The idea is that we will have to rent everything. Corbett shows a video clip from a lecture where the presenter explains that the direction we’re going in is “from products to services.” “Every product is a service waiting to happen,” she says.

What she means is that instead of buying something once and owning for as long as you please, eventually, you won’t have the option to buy anything outright. Your only option will be to lease the product you want, which means paying a fee every month for as long as you keep it.

And who owns all the items that we the public rent? “They” do. But who are “they”? Identifying the actual individuals who are pulling the strings and laying down these long-term plans is extremely difficult.

We can, however, identify organizations that play important roles, based on their ideologies and actions, and from there, specific people within those organizations who seem to wield a great deal of influence. We can also tell that the Great Reset is a technocratic agenda, so it stands to reason that those involved are referred to as technocrats. The WEF is undoubtedly part of this agenda, and Schwab is undoubtedly a technocrat of the highest order.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution — A Technocratic Agenda
Aside from the slogan “Build Back Better,”7 the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”8 is yet another term that goes hand in hand with the Great Reset. This refers to the merging of digital, physical and biological systems, and the reliance on technological surveillance rather than the rule of law to maintain public order.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will transform not only how we live and interact but who we are as a human species. Man will ultimately be merged with machine. The COVID shots may well be the very first step into this transhumanist mass transformation.
Just like the Great Reset is a rebranding of the New World Order, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is nothing but a rebranding of technocracy, melded with the transhumanist movement. While many are still blind to this, the transhumanist agenda is being rolled out worldwide through COVID-19 gene modification injections. Seemingly without much thinking, about half the U.S. population has already signed up to become first generation transhumans.

As noted by Schwab in a video clip in the featured report, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will transform not only how we live and interact but who we are as a human species. Man will ultimately be merged with machine. The COVID shots may well be the very first step into this transhumanist mass transformation.

In this paradigm, your body is viewed as a combination of hardware and software, your genes being “the software of life,” which can be updated through a simple injection of mRNA.

Ultimately, everything, including our physical bodies, will be incorporated into an “ecosystem driven by big data,” Schwab explains (which is what 5G and 6G are ultimately for). What he does not mention is how this will eliminate human rights and personal freedoms. That these will be taken from you, however, is clear for anyone with eyes to see.

What Is the World Economic Forum?
Schwab founded the WEF in 1971, and the organization is clearly a family affair and a family legacy. Its regulations state that Schwab, as the founder, is the ex officio member of the board of trustees and only he, or an immediate family member, can designate his successor. In other words, the only people who will always have a seat at the table and cannot be kicked out are Schwab’s heirs.

Members and stakeholders of the WEF include world government leaders, corporate leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, activists, cultural leaders and artists, all of whom collaborate to push the WEF’s technocratic, transhumanist missions forward. And, as noted by Corbett, there’s hardly a single topic currently being discussed in the media that isn’t pushed and promoted by the WEF or someone with direct ties to the WEF.

Examples of areas the WEF is spearheading and pulling strings on include global cyber security problems and solutions, the reengineering of the global food system, the rewriting of a social contract.

This has never existed in the first place and appears to be part and parcel of the plan to control populations through social engineering and a social credit score, the education of our children, the resetting of the global monetary system, reimagining health care using nanotechnology and synthetic biology and much more.

It’s quite clear that the WEF serves as a central hub for the implementation of this new global social order through its public-private partnerships. The fact that people don’t announce their connections to the WEF makes it appear as though the technocratic, transhumanist movement is somehow organic, popping up here, there and everywhere, more or less organically.

In reality, however, there is nothing organic about it at all. It’s well-coordinated propaganda. Here’s how Corbett explains the WEF’s role in the future governance of world affairs:9

“The World Economic Forum has always sought to be, and is increasingly becoming, that organization that situates itself at the nexus of the public-private cooperation that will be governed by the ESGs [Environmental, Social and Governance.

This is an umbrella term for ‘sustainable investing’’] and other sorts of frameworks that the World Economic Forum is spearheading, by which they are going to tell the world exactly what they can and cannot, should or should not be doing in their individual business efforts to be part of this stakeholder capitalism.

Because you don’t own what you own. No, the society at large owns it and we all have to listen to society’s interests in these things. But you can’t talk to society, so you might as well talk to the World Economic Forum, who will tell you what society thinks.”


International Man of Mystery
So, who is this “international man of mystery,” Klaus Schwab? As noted by Corbett, Schwab’s online history has been thoroughly sanitized to leave few traces and threads to unravel. One of the more revealing investigations into Schwab’s past is Johnny Vedmore’s Unlimited Hangout report, “Schwab Family Values.”10

In it, he reveals Schwab as “the son of a Nazi collaborator who used slave labor and aided Nazi efforts to obtain the first atomic bomb.” The Schwab family was also involved in South Africa’s illegal nuclear program, Vedmore claims, as well as the European eugenics movement. He writes:11

“Especially revealing is the history of Klaus’ father, Eugen Schwab, who led the Nazi-supported German branch of a Swiss engineering firm into the war as a prominent military contractor. That company, Escher-Wyss, would use slave labor to produce machinery critical to the Nazi war effort as well as the Nazi’s effort to produce heavy water for its nuclear program.

Years later, at the same company, a young Klaus Schwab served on the board of directors when the decision was made to furnish the racist apartheid regime of South Africa with the necessary equipment to further its quest to become a nuclear power.
With the World Economic Forum now a prominent advocate for nuclear non-proliferation and “clean” nuclear energy, Klaus Schwab’s past makes him a poor spokesperson for his professed agenda for the present and the future.

Yet, digging even deeper into his activities, it becomes clear that Schwab’s real role has long been to ‘shape global, regional and industry agendas’ of the present in order to ensure the continuity of larger, much older agendas that came into disrepute after World War II, not just nuclear technology, but also eugenics-influenced population control policies.

… through the World Economic Forum, Schwab has helped to rehabilitate eugenics-influenced population control policies during the post-World War II era, a time when the revelations of Nazi atrocities quickly brought the pseudo-science into great disrepute.

Is there any reason to believe that Klaus Schwab, as he exists today, has changed in any way? Or is he still the public face of a decades-long effort to ensure the survival of a very old agenda?”


The Green Agenda Was Invented to Justify Depopulation Agenda
Aside from the WEF, there are many other organizations that work toward technocratic goals. These include the Club of Rome, the Aspen Institute, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlantic Institute, the Brookings Institute and other think tanks. According to Vedmore, the Club of Rome actually inspired the creation of the WEF and its annual symposium that takes place in Davos, Switzerland.

The Club of Rome is a scientific think tank that, like the WEF, promotes “a global governance model led by a technocratic elite.” It was founded only three years before the WEF, during a private meeting between Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Scottish chemist Alexander King at a Rockefeller family residence in Italy. Vedmore writes:12

“Among its first accomplishments was a 1972 book entitled ‘The Limits to Growth’ that largely focused on global overpopulation, warning that ‘if the world’s consumption patterns and population growth continued at the same high rates of the time, the earth would strike its limits within a century’ …

[In 1973], the Club of Rome would publish a report detailing an ‘adaptive’ model for global governance that would divide the world into ten, inter-connected economic/political regions. The Club of Rome was long controversial for its obsession with reducing the global population and many of its earlier policies, which critics described as influenced by eugenics …

However, in the Club’s infamous 1991 Book, ‘The First Global Revolution,’ it was argued that such policies could gain popular support if the masses were able to link them with an existential fight against a common enemy.”


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Part 1 of 2
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Part 2 of 2

The common enemy the Club came up with was mankind itself. An excerpt from “The First Global Revolution” reads, “In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.”13

It may be quite chilling for some to realize that the climate change threat narrative was cooked up in the late 1980s for the sole purpose of being able to implement a global depopulation agenda without stirring up excessive resistance. As noted by Corbett, depopulation and eugenics are “always at the heart of what they do,” referring to the WEF and any number of other organizations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As disturbing as all of this might be, it’s important not to stick our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. It is happening. The COVID pandemic was used to roll out a clearly transhumanist, technocratic agenda, and the WEF is driving the rollout.

In closing, the sleuths among you can start tying the threads of this web together by making use of the WEF’s website, www.weforum.org. Corbett provides the following example in his report. Simply look up any company currently in the news, and see if they have any ties to the WEF.

For example, the world’s largest meat supplier, JBS, claimed it was hit by a cyberattack in June 2021, forcing it to shut down its distribution.14 Looking at the WEF’s partner list, you’ll find JBS is in fact one of its partners. As noted by SilView Media, “JBS, a WEF member, coincidentally fulfills Klaus Schwab’s Cyber Polygon 2020 fantasies, ahead of Cyber Polygon 2021.”15

What has Schwab been predicting? Cyberattacks that threaten global transportation, distribution systems and the food supply. What are we seeing more and more of right now? Cyberattacks on transportation, distribution systems and the food supply. Coincidence? Or predictive programming? You decide.

 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Greens Hijack Biden's $3.5 Trillion Budget Proposal (That Could Be A Blessing)

FRIDAY, JUL 16, 2021 - 07:00 PM
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The Democrats' Congressional proposals keep getting sillier and sillier...



Deal or No Deal?

"Deal" means agreement among radicals. The Greens hijacked Biden's already strained budget.

Clean Electricity Standard
Please consider Reconciliation Package to Include Clean Electricity Standard.
In an interview with The Hill prior to her tweet, Smith, who is crafting the clean electricity standard legislation with Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), said she had expected the standard to be part of the legislation.
The senator also told The Hill that while the details of the standard will have to be worked out in negotiations, she’s hoping to see a requirement for 80 percent clean electricity by 2030.
My goal is to get to 100 percent clean electricity as soon as possible. President Biden’s goal is to be doing it by 2035,” she said, referencing Senate rules that allow reconciliation bills to raise the deficit for no more than 10 years.
White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy has said that the clean electricity standard is among her priorities for the legislation.
Smith said she’d include power coming from wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric or nuclear — and fossil fuels only when they use carbon capture technology to prevent their emissions from going into the atmosphere.

Smith also stressed the importance of the clean energy standard, calling it the “centerpiece of our strategy for addressing climate change.”
She said she opposes partial credit for unabated natural gas, which is less carbon-intensive than coal and oil, but still emits planet-warming gases.
Taxing Imports is Part of the Plan
The New York Times reports Taxing Imports is Part of the Plan.
Democrats have agreed to include a tax on imports from nations that lack aggressive climate change policies as part of a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget plan stocked with other provisions aimed at ratcheting down fossil fuel pollution in the United States.

The move to tax imports was made public Wednesday, the same day that the European Union outlined its own proposal for a similar carbon border tax, a novel tool that is designed to protect domestic manufacturing while simultaneously pressuring other countries to reduce the emissions that are warming the planet.

Unlike the Europeans, who outlined their plan in a 291-page document, Democrats released no details about their tax proposal on Wednesday. Calling it simply a “polluter import fee,” the framework does not explain what would be taxed, at what rate or how much revenue it would expect to generate.
Carbon Emissions in Tons



Carbon Emission Percentages



Economic Madness
The US only accounts for 14.5% of carbons and the EU another 8%.

It is well beyond crazy for the US and EU to propose to tax the word to reduce carbons by 55-80% by 2030.

Yet, that is the goal of economic illiterates on both continents.

EU Kicks Off Biggest Push Yet on Climate, Braces for a Fight
Meanwhile, in Europe, EU Kicks Off Biggest Push Yet on Climate, Braces for a Fight.
The European Union rolled out an ambitious climate plan to transform every corner of its economy on Wednesday, and braced for years of tough negotiations to turn it into reality.

Every industry will be forced to accelerate its shift away from fossil fuels in order to cut pollution by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. To achieve that, the bloc will bring new industries such as shipping into what’s already the world’s largest carbon market; ban new combustion-engine cars by 2035; impose new costs on dirty home heating; and force the aviation industry to emit less and pay more.

“Nothing we presented today is going to be easy. It’s going to be bloody hard,” European Commission climate chief Frans Timmermans said. But he said the “existential threat which is the climate crisis” called for radical steps.

EU officials are at pains to emphasize that the transformation must be fair. The bloc has earmarked 72 billion euros ($85.1 billion) in a new fund to help compensate those who lose out, with the money --which is based on current prices -- coming from the expanded market for carbon emissions.
291-Page Document No One Can Explain
The EU border tax is scheduled for 2026. European officials propose a phase-in period to figure out how the tax would actually work in practice to give time for countries to prepare.

"Europe was the first continent to declare to be climate neutral in 2050, and now we are the very first ones to put a concrete roadmap on the table," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Blessing in Disguise?
yes. To understand why, first let's take a look at what is happening beneath the surface in the EU, then the US Senate.

Eurointelligence discusses Opposition to 2035 CO2 Phase-Out
FAZ writes this morning that there is opposition within the European Commission to the phasing-out of the fuel-driven motor car by 2035.

Valdis Dombrovkis, Commission vice president, and Thierry Breton and Adina Valean, commissioners for the internal market and transport, favour a postponement to 2040. This debate reminds of us of the postponement of the exit from coal in Germany, which has been put back to 2038. What is happening right now all over Europe is that governments and the Commission are buckling under pressure from industry, and are choosing the soft option of delaying most of the adjustment to the next decade.

Among governments, France is leading to those who favour 2040 as an exit. A 14-year transition phase is beyond the life span of current management boards of car companies. It’s the next guy’s problem.

The other area of disagreement concerns interim targets. The original Commission proposal foresaw a 65% reduction until 2030. Realistically, that would only be achievable if manufacturers already start making and selling electric cars in large quantities by then. It will be interesting to see whether this number, too, will be watered down. If you pick 2040 as your zero target, it would be logically consistent to pick a lower reduction target for 2030 as well - in the order of 50%. That would mean that the whole timeline gets pushed back.

It is also important to remember that this is just the proposal itself. We would not be surprised if the EU Council waters it down even further.
Green Party Implodes in Germany



On June 26, I noted Green Party Implodes in Germany
An Infratest dimap poll, published June 10, debunked one of the more persistent myths about Germany - that it is naturally a green country.

Germany has a strong Green party, but there is a specific history to that, one that one should not be confused with general attitudes in society.

Here are some of the highlights. Should the state outlaw behaviour that is particularly damaging to the climate? 53% say No. Are you in favour of higher petrol prices? 75% say No. Should the government encourage a shift from fuel-driven to electrical cars? 57% say No.

The Greens are back to where they were at the beginning of the year, at around 20-22% - which we think is where the current core support lies.
The above snips from Eurointelligence.

Reconciliation Odds
The price tag of infrastructure is $1 trillion or so. Pelosi says she will not pass a standalone infrastructure bill.

The reconciliation package is another $3.5 trillion, and Bernie Sanders is arguing for $6 trillion.

I fail to see how Senator Joe Manchin (D) from West Virginia (a coal producing state) will get on board with the incredible demands of Senator Tina Smith.
Add Senator Jon Tester (D) Montana to that list of those questioning this madness.

Potential Saving Grave
The more demands the extreme radicals place, the more likely the moderates will run away. In the US it only takes one moderate to avoid economic disaster.

If Tina Smith and Nancy Pelosi insist on economic nonsense, Biden's entire $3.5 trillion reconciliation package will turn to ashes.

That is the potential saving grace of these economically mad proposals.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF's Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy

SUNDAY, JUL 18, 2021 - 09:30 PM
Authored by Whitney Webb via TheLastAmericanVagabond.com,

With many focusing on the recent Cyber Polygon exercise, less attention has been paid to the World Economic Forum’s real ambitions in cybersecurity – to create a global organization aimed at gutting even the possibility of anonymity online. With the governments of the US, UK and Israel on board, along with some of the world’s most powerful corporations, it is important to pay attention to their endgame, not just the simulations.



Amid a series of warnings and simulations in the past year regarding a massive cyber attack that could soon bring down the global financial system, the “information sharing group” of the largest banks and private financial organizations in the United States warned earlier this year that banks “will encounter growing danger” from “converging” nation-state and criminal hackers over the course of 2021 and in the years that follow.

The organization, called the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), made the claim in its 2021 “Navigating Cyber” report, which assesses the events of 2020 and provides a forecast for the current year. That forecast, which casts a devastating cyber attack on the financial system through third parties as practically inevitable, also makes the case for a “global fincyber [financial-cyber] utility” as the main solution to the catastrophic scenarios it predicts.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an organization close to top FS-ISAC members has recently been involved in laying the groundwork for that very “global fincyber utility” — the World Economic Forum, which recently produced the model for such a utility through its Partnership against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC) project. Not only are top individuals at FS-ISAC involved in WEF cybersecurity projects like Cyber Polygon, but FS-ISAC’s CEO was also an adviser to the WEF-Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report that warned that the global financial system was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks and was the subject of the first article in this 2-part series.

Another article, published earlier this year at Unlimited Hangout, also explored the WEF’s Cyber Polygon 2020 simulation of a cyber attack targeting the global financial system. Another iteration of Cyber Polygon is due to take place tomorrow July 9th and will focus on simulating a supply chain cyber attack.
A major theme in these efforts has not only been an emphasis on global cooperation, but also a merging of private banks and/or corporations with the State, specifically intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In addition, many of the banks, institutions and individuals involved in the creation of these reports and simulations are either actively involved in WEF-related efforts to usher in a new global economic model of “stakeholder capitalism” or are seeking to imminently introduce, or are actively developing, central bank-backed digital currencies, or CBDCs.

In addition, and as mentioned in the first article in this series, a cyber attack like those described in these reports and simulations would also provide the perfect scenario for dismantling the current failing financial system, as it would absolve central banks and corrupt financial institutions of any responsibility. The convergence of several concerning factors in the financial world, including the end of LIBOR at the end of year and the imminent hyperinflation of globally important currencies, suggests that the time is ripe for an event that would not only allow the global economy to “reset”, but also absolve the fundamentally corrupt financial institutions around the world from any wrongdoing. Instead, faceless hackers can be blamed and, given recent precedents in the US and elsewhere, any group or nation state can be blamed with minimal evidence as politically convenient.

This report will closely examine both FS-ISAC’s recent predictions and the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime, specifically the WEF-PAC’s efforts to position itself as the cybersecurity alliance of choice if and when such a catastrophic cyber attack cripples the current financial system.

Of particular interest is the call by both FS-ISAC and the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime to specifically target cryptocurrencies, particularly those that favor transactional anonymity, as well as the infrastructure on which those cryptocurrencies run. Though framed as a way to combat “cybercrime”, it is obvious that cryptocurrencies are to be unwanted competitors for the soon-to-be-launched central bank digital currencies.

In addition, as this report will show, there is a related push by WEF partners to “tackle cybercrime” that seeks to end privacy and the potential for anonymity on the internet in general, by linking government-issued IDs to internet access. Such a policy would allow governments to surveil every piece of online content accessed as well as every post or comment authored by each citizen, supposedly to ensure that no citizen can engage in “criminal” activity online.

Notably, the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime employs a very broad definition of what constitutes a “cybercriminal” as they apply this label readily to those who post or host content deemed to be “disinformation” that represents a threat to “democratic” governments. The WEF’s interest in criminalizing and censoring online content has been made evident by its recent creation of a new Global Coalition for Digital Safety to facilitate the increased regulation of online speech by both the public and private sectors.

FS-ISAC, its influence and its doomsday “predictions” for 2021
FS-ISAC officially exists to “help ensure the resilience and continuity of the global financial services infrastructure and individual firms against acts that could significantly impact the sector’s ability to provide services critical to the orderly function of the global economy.” In other words, FS-ISAC allows the private financial services industry to decide on and coordinate sector-wide responses regarding how financial services are provided during and after a given crisis, including a cyber attack. It was tellingly created in 1999, the same year that the Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated banks after the onset of the Great Depression, was repealed.

Though FS-ISAC’s members are not publicly listed on the group’s website, they do acknowledge that their membership includes some of the world’s largest banks, Fintech companies, insurance firms and payment processors. On their board of directors, the companies and organizations represented include CitiGroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, among others, strongly suggesting that FS-ISAC is largely a Wall Street-dominated entity.

SWIFT, the society that manages inter-bank communication and dominates it globally, is also represented on FS-ISAC’s board. Collectively, FS-ISAC members represent $35 trillion in assets under management in more than 70 countries.
FS-ISAC also has ties to the World Economic Forum due to the direct involvement of its then-CEO Steve Silberstein in the WEF-Carnegie initiative and FS-ISAC’s participation in the initiative’s “stakeholder engagements.” There is also the fact that some prominent FS-ISAC members, like Bank of America and SWIFT, are also members of the WEF’s Centre for Cybersecurity, which houses the WEF Partnership against Cybercrime project.

At the individual level, the founding director of FS-ISAC, Charles Blauner, is now an agenda contributor to the WEF who previously held top posts at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and CitiGroup. He currently is a partner and CISO-in-residence of Team8, a controversial start-up incubator that operates as a front for Israeli military intelligence in tech-related ventures that is part of the WEF Partnership against Cybersecurity. Team8’s CEO and co-founder and the former commander of Israeli intelligence outfit Unit 8200, Nadav Zafrir, has contributed to WEF Centre for Cybersecurity policy documents and WEF panels on the “Great Reset”.
In addition, current FS-ISAC board member Laura Deaner, CISO of Northwestern Mutual, served as the co-chair for the WEF’s Global Futures Council on Cybersecurity. Teresa Walsh, the current global head of intelligence for FS-ISAC, will be a speaker at the WEF’s Cyber Polygon 2021 regarding how to develop an international response to ransomware attacks. Walsh previously worked as an intelligence analyst for Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and the US Navy.

The FS-ISAC’s recent report is worth looking at in detail for several reasons, with the main one being the sheer power and influence that its members, both known and unknown, hold over the current fiat-based financial system. The full report is exclusive to FS-ISAC members, but a “thematic summary” is publicly available.
The FS-ISAC’s recent report on “Navigating Cyber” in 2021 is “based on the contributions of our members and the resulting trend analysis by FS-ISAC’s Global Intelligence Office (GIO)” and includes several “predictions” for the current calendar year. The group’s GIO, led by Teresa Walsh, soon-to-be speaker at Cyber Polygon 2021, also “coordinates with other cybersecurity organizations, companies and agencies around the world” in addition to its intelligence gathering from FS-ISAC members.

At the beginning of 2020, when the COVID-19 crisis resulted in an overt push towards digitization, FS-ISAC launched a “new secure chat and intelligence sharing platform” that “provided a new way for members to discuss threats and security trends.” It is fair to assume that the private discussions on this platform directly informed this report. According to the recent FS-ISAC report, the main trends and threats discussed by its members through this service over the past year were “third party risks”, such as the risk presented by major hacks of third party service providers, like the SolarWinds hack, and “geopolitical tensions.”

The report contains several “predictions for 2021 and beyond.” The first of these predictions is that adversarial nation-states will team up with “the cybercriminal underworld” in order to “obfuscate their activity and complication attribution.” FS-ISAC does not provide evidence of this having happened, but supporting this claim makes it easier to blame state governments for the activities of cybercriminals when politically convenient without concrete evidence. This has happened on several occasions with recent high-profile hacks, most recently with SolarWinds. As noted in previous reporting, prominent companies that contract for the US government and military, like Microsoft, and intelligence-linked cybersecurity companies, are often the sole sources for such narratives in the past and, in those cases, do not provide evidence, instead qualifying such assertions as “likely” or probable.” Even mainstream outlets reporting on FS-ISAC’s “predictions” noted that “FS-ISAC did not point to specific examples of spies relying on such tradecraft in the past,” openly suggesting that there is little factual basis to support this claim.

Other predictions focus on how third party service providers, such as SolarWinds and the more recently targeted Kaseya, will dominate, affecting potentially many thousands of companies across multiple sectors at once. However, the SolarWinds hack was not properly investigated, merely labeled by US intelligence as having “likely” ties to “Russian” state-linked actors despite no publicly available evidence to support that claim. Instead, the SolarWinds hack appears to have been related to its acquisition of an Israeli company funded by intelligence-linked firms, as discussed in this report from earlier this year. SolarWinds acquired the company, called Samanage, and integrated its software fully into its platform around the same time that the backdoor used to execute the hack was placed into the SolarWinds platform that was later compromised.

FS-ISAC also predicts that attacks will cross borders, continents, and verticals, with increasing speed. More specifically, it states that the cyber pandemic will begin with cyber criminals that “test attacks in one country and quickly scale up to multiple targets in other parts of the world.” FS-ISAC argues that it is therefore “critical to have a global view on cyber threats facing the sector in order to prepare and defend against them.” Since FS-ISAC made this prediction, cyber attacks and especially ransomware have been occurring throughout the world and targeting different sectors at a much more rapid pace than has ever been seen before. For instance, following the Colonial Pipeline hack in early May, Japan, New Zealand, and Ireland all experienced major cyber attacks, followed by the JBS hack on June 1. The hack of Kaseya, believed by some to be just as consequential and damaging as SolarWinds, took place about a month later on July 2, affecting thousands of companies around the world.

The final, and perhaps the most important, of these predictions is that “economic drivers towards cybercrime will increase.” FS-ISAC claims that the current economic situation created by COVID-related lockdowns will “make cybercrime an ever more attractive alternative,” noting immediately afterwards that “dramatic increases in cryptocurrency valuation may drive threat actors to conduct campaigns capitalising on this market, including extortion campaigns against financial institutions and their customers.”

In other words, FS-ISAC views the increase in the value of cryptocurrency as a direct driver of cybercrime, implying that the value of cryptocurrency must be dealt with to reduce such criminal activities. However, the data does not fit these assertions as the use of cryptocurrency by cybercriminals is low and getting lower. For instance, one recent study found that only 0.34% of cryptocurrency transactions in 2020 were tied to criminal activity, down from 2% the year prior.

Though the decrease may be due to a jump in cryptocurrency adoption, the overall percentage of crime-linked crypto transactions is incredibly low, a fact obviously known to FS-ISAC and its members.

However, cryptocurrency does present a threat to the plans by FS-ISAC members and its partners to begin producing digital currencies controlled either by approved private entities (like Russia’s Sbercoin) or central banks themselves (like China’s digital yuan). The success of that project depends on neutering the competition, which is likely why FS-ISAC subtitled its 2021 report as “the case for a global fincyber utility,” with such a utility framed as necessary to defend the financial services industry against cyber threats.


The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime

Long article - read the rest at Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF's Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy | ZeroHedge
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Democrats Add Funding Of ‘Civilian Climate Corps’ To Infrastructure Bill

By Mike LaChance
Published July 21, 2021 at 4:44am
IMG_7898.jpg

Have you noticed that the word ‘infrastructure’ has been changed to mean anything Democrats want?

Their new infrastructure bill is now going to include the ‘civilian climate corps’ whatever that is.

It sounds like a job creation plan for environmental activists.

The Washington Examiner reports:

‘Civilian Climate Corps’ to be part of Senate Democrats’ infrastructure bill
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday that a climate jobs proposal called the Civilian Climate Corps will be part of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that Senate Democrats plan to pass.

The move reflects the high priority many Democratic activists place on climate change measures, even as businesses raise concerns about the financial cost of conversion to non-fossil fuels. The furthest-left lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, have long pushed for the “Green New Deal,” which calls on the federal government to wean the United States from fossil fuels and curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.

“Right now, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the climate crisis and create millions of permanent good-paying union jobs,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, told reporters Tuesday. “It’s a great opportunity to combine those things. I have made addressing the climate crisis in a bold and strong way, the primary focus of our debate on infrastructure.”

Schumer praised the Sunrise Movement, a liberal 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(3) political organization that lobbied for the federal government to establish the CCC.
AOC makes it sound like a division of the military.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1417483927107870729
.34 min

Chuck Schumer admits this is basically a jobs program.



What does any of this have to do with infrastructure?

Cross posted from American Lookout.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Fallacy Of Climate Financial Risk

WEDNESDAY, JUL 21, 2021 - 04:40 PM
Authored by John Cochrane via Project Syndicate,

The idea that climate change poses a threat to the financial system is absurd, not least because everyone already knows that global warming is happening and that fossil fuels are being phased out. The new push for climate-related financial regulation is not really about risk; it is about a political agenda.


In the United States, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of the Treasury are gearing up to incorporate climate policy into US financial regulation, following even more audacious steps in Europe. The justification is that “climate risk” poses a danger to the financial system. But that statement is absurd. Financial regulation is being used to smuggle in climate policies that otherwise would be rejected as unpopular or ineffective.

“Climate” means the probability distribution of the weather – the range of potential weather conditions and events, together with their associated probabilities. “Risk” means the unexpected, not changes that everyone knows are underway. And “systemic financial risk” means the possibility that the entire financial system will melt down, as nearly happened in 2008. It does not mean that someone somewhere might lose money because some asset price falls, though central bankers are swiftly enlarging their purview in that direction.

In plain language, then, a “climate risk to the financial system” means a sudden, unexpected, large, and widespread change in the probability distribution of the weather, sufficient to cause losses that blow through equity and long-term debt cushions, provoking a system-wide run on short-term debt. This means the five- or at most ten-year horizon over which regulators can begin to assess the risks on financial institutions’ balance sheets. Loans for 2100 have not been made yet.

Such an event lies outside any climate science. Hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and fires have never come close to causing systemic financial crises, and there is no scientifically validated possibility that their frequency and severity will change so drastically to alter this fact in the next ten years. Our modern, diversified, industrialized, service-oriented economy is not that affected by weather – even by headline-making events. Businesses and people are still moving from the cold Rust Belt to hot and hurricane-prone Texas and Florida.

If regulators are worried even-handedly about out-of-the-box risks that endanger the financial system, the list should include wars, pandemics, cyberattacks, sovereign-debt crises, political meltdowns, and even asteroid strikes. All but the latter are more likely than climate risk. And if we are worried about flood and fire costs, perhaps we should stop subsidizing building and rebuilding in flood and fire-prone areas.

Climate regulatory risk is slightly more plausible. Environmental regulators could turn out to be so incompetent that they damage the economy to the point of creating a systemic run. But that scenario seems far-fetched even to me. Again though, if the question is regulatory risk, then even-handed regulators should demand a wider recognition of all political and regulatory risks. Between the Biden administration’s novel interpretations of antitrust law, the previous administration’s trade policies, and the pervasive political desire to “break up big tech,” there is no shortage of regulatory danger.

To be sure, it is not impossible that some terrible climate-related event in the next ten years can provoke a systemic run, though nothing in current science or economics describes such an event. But if that is the fear, the only logical way to protect the financial system is by dramatically raising the amount of equity capital, which protects the financial system against any kind of risk. Risk measurement and technocratic regulation of climate investments, by definition, cannot protect against unknown unknowns or un-modeled “tipping points.”

What about “transition risks” and “stranded assets?” Won’t oil and coal companies lose value in the shift to low-carbon energy? Indeed they will. But everyone already knows that. Oil and gas companies will lose more value only if the transition comes faster than expected. And legacy fossil-fuel assets are not funded by short-term debt, as mortgages were in 2008, so losses by their stockholders and bondholders do not imperil the financial system. “Financial stability” does not mean that no investor ever loses money.

Moreover, fossil fuels have always been risky. Oil prices turned negative last year, with no broader financial consequences. Coal and its stockholders have already been hammered by climate regulation, with not a hint of financial crisis.

More broadly, in the history of technological transitions, financial problems have never come from declining industries. The stock-market crash of 2000 was not caused by losses in the typewriter, film, telegraph, and slide-rule industries. It was the slightly-ahead-of-their-time tech companies that went bust.

Similarly, the stock-market crash of 1929 was not caused by plummeting demand for horse-drawn carriages. It was the new radio, movie, automobile, and electric appliance industries that collapsed.

If one is worried about the financial risks associated with the energy transition, new astronomically-valued darlings such as Tesla are the danger. The biggest financial danger is a green bubble, fueled as previous booms by government subsidies and central-bank encouragement. Today’s high-fliers are vulnerable to changing political whims and new and better technologies. If regulatory credits dry up or if hydrogen fuel cells displace batteries, Tesla is in trouble. Yet our regulators wish only to encourage investors to pile on.

Climate financial regulation is an answer in search of a question. The point is to impose a specific set of policies that cannot pass via regular democratic lawmaking or regular environmental rulemaking, which requires at least a pretense of cost-benefit analysis.

These policies include defunding fossil fuels before replacements are in place, and subsidizing battery-powered electric cars, trains, windmills, and photovoltaics – but not nuclear, carbon capture, hydrogen, natural gas, geoengineering, or other promising technologies. But, because financial regulators are not allowed to decide where investment should go and what should be starved of funds, “climate risk to the financial system” is dreamed up and repeated until people believe it, in order to shoehorn these climate policies into financial regulators’ limited legal mandates.

Climate change and financial stability are pressing problems. They require coherent, intelligent, scientifically valid policy responses, and promptly. But climate financial regulation will not help the climate, will further politicize central banks, and will destroy their precious independence, while forcing financial companies to devise absurdly fictitious climate-risk assessments will ruin financial regulation. The next crisis will come from some other source. And our climate-obsessed regulators will once again fail utterly to anticipate it – just as a decade’s worth of stress testers never considered the possibility of a pandemic.
 

LoupGarou

Ancient Fuzzball
So, if diesel engines are banned, will there be electric-powered tractors, combines, bulldozers, etc.?

Don't laugh just yet......


This might be the biggest one available soon....
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Democrats planning Civilian Climate Corps of 'millions' paid at least $15 per hour
"Our climate crisis today requires a peaceful but wartime-scale mobilization in order to combat the climate crisis," Ocasio-Cortez says.

Updated: July 21, 2021 - 10:59pm

Agroup of Democrats is pushing for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps that could employ "millions" of young people at a minimum of $15 per hour as a way to tackle climate change.

"I was proud to stand alongside Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez this year as we reintroduced the Green New Deal and also brought forward our new Civilian Conservation Corps because that legislation is a pathway to new jobs in our country, union jobs for young people," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said during a news conference focused on including the Civilian Climate Corps in the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill the Democrats are drafting.

Recruits for the envisioned corps "can, through apprentice programs, not just have a job but have a career in fighting this climate crisis and a pathway for education, a pathway for them to pay off their student loans or to go to college," Market added.

President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have endorsed creating a Civilian Climate Corps modeled on the the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal-era public work relief program.

"I am using my power as majority leader to ensure that the Civilian Climate Corps will be included in the reconciliation package, and I will fight to get the biggest boldest CCC possible," Schumer said. "Together, we're going to work to make this a strong, bold and so important reality."

The budget reconciliation framework currently totals an estimated $3.5 trillion. It includes a significant portion of Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda, including universal pre-K, tuition-free community college, and support for childcare to taxpayers who meet certain income requirements.

The Civilian Climate Corps "would put millions of people back to work in the short-term, but it would put millions of people on the pathway to lifelong climate smart careers," Markey said. He emphasized that "$15 an hour must be our floor, not our ceiling, and we have to ensure that we support the health and childcare and transformational job training and educational benefits that every single family in our country need."

Ocasio-Cortez asked the public to imagine that three months after the authorization of a Civilian Climate Corps "a quarter million young people were employed in a dignified job."

"What if this led to record improvements in and record performance in containing our wildfires across the country?" suggested the progressive New York representative. "What if this led to tens of thousands of new trails in our national forests and park service? And what if I told you that this isn't something that we have to imagine doing but that was actually the record of the original Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938?"

Ocasio-Cortez said the Civilian Conservation Corps isn't a "pipe dream" or "some big progressive vision" that is unrealistic.

"Today, we are talking about, in both the Green New Deal and a Civilian Climate Corps that acknowledges the fact that our climate crisis today requires a peaceful, but wartime-scale mobilization in order to combat the climate crisis," she said. "So it's not just about doing it, it's about doing it big."

The climate corps is about advancing the left's economic agenda, as well as environmental change, Ocasio-Cortez revealed. "The way that we're going to combat the climate crisis is not just with the science, but it is also with our economic structure," she said. "We can combat this with a fair economy and in establishing a Climate Corps, that not just guarantees a $15 minimum wage, but also extends the same educational benefits that we should be giving to our teachers and our other public service workers. It should put people on a track, and with Senator Markey and I's bill, 1.5 million people on a track to good union jobs."
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Top Global Energy Agency Calls for Phasing Out of All Gas-Powered Cars, Coal-Fired Plants

Fossil fuel use is a double-edged sword. Climate alarmists fixate on one edge and completely disregard the other.

Thursday, July 22, 2021
climate-change-2254711_1920.jpg

Image Credit: Pixabay License
Saul Zimet
Saul Zimet

Areport from the International Energy Agency (IEA) proposed a radical policy agenda last month:
  • Immediately end the approval of all new coal-fired power plants and oil and gas fields internationally.
  • Swiftly phase out all gasoline-powered vehicles.
  • Ban the sale of new oil and gas furnaces to heat buildings.
“That would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels — the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage,” says a recent New York Times article that discusses the IEA’s report.

And those were just a few of the extreme measures that the world’s leading energy agency said would be required to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Biden Administration’s “2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target” puts the United States in fairly close alignment with the IEA’s objectives. The White House’s target includes a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035 and a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050.

Our Fossil Fuel Economy
How radical is this agenda? Well, since the prices of some renewable energy sources have been falling rapidly relative to those of some fossil fuels, it is plausible that the global economy may shift somewhat away from fossil fuels on its own in the coming decades. But from the industrial revolution to the present day, fossil fuels have been absolutely central to global economic progress.

Enacting the IEA/Biden agenda would mean overturning the vast majority of our economy, roughly 84 percent of which still runs on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, as opposed to other energy sources such as wind and solar, which are far less reliable and applicable to a much narrower range of industrial uses.

As Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative, has written for the Brookings Institution, “The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century, before fossil fuels came into wide use. Human health and welfare have improved markedly, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in 1800 to almost 8 billion today. The fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy.”

But despite the central role of fossil fuels in humanity’s material wellbeing, the IEA and the Biden Administration believe that averting the most devastating effects of climate change will require public regulatory policy that shifts the economy almost entirely toward alternative energy sources.

Many experts believe that anthropogenic climate change is already responsible for intensified storms, heatwaves, droughts, and vector-borne diseases.

According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change earlier this year, it is likely that anthropogenic climate change has been responsible for about a third of human heat deaths since 1991. Such are the “catastrophic effects of climate change” expected by the IEA to worsen substantially over the next few decades, unless global civilization brings its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

But is there any way in which such colossal regulatory measures are likely to backfire? And how bad could such unintended consequences be? Could they be so bad as to exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the most catastrophic effects of climate change on human wellbeing?

Climate Danger Versus Climate Resilience
Reducing fossil fuel use may reduce the intensity of climate change, possibly including dangers such as intensified storms, droughts, and heat waves. But that’s not all it does. Using fewer fossil fuels also impacts how people are affected by those dangers: in other words, humanity’s level of “climate resilience.”

The exact definition of “climate resilience” is debated, but it typically includes adaptation to changing climate conditions, absorption of climate impact, and transformation of the environment using technological or scientific means. All of these resilience strategies are made possible by economic progress, including fossil fuel-led growth. With less access to abundant and reliable energy, civilization’s climate resilience would be substantially reduced.

The widespread availability of fossil fuels directly contributes trillions of dollars to the global economy each year, and indirectly contributes incalculably more by making countless other industries possible. This economic growth is continuously granting more and more communities access to better infrastructure, medicine, education, and other precious advantages against the dangers of an ever-changing environment. Fossil fuels, by allowing civilization to cheaply and reliably power its homes, vehicles, hospitals, factories, and other engines of human wellbeing, protect people from an ever-widening range of potential climate impacts.

The climate resilience side of the equation, despite being at least as significant as the climate danger side, is often ignored in the models of future climate impact.

This is because, while it is difficult to model a changing climate, it is impossible to model the future of human ingenuity, which will be composed of decisions and insights that only the people of the future can possibly know.

How We’ve Done So Far
So which edge of the climate sword is sharper? Has the damage caused by climate change so far outweighed humanity’s progress building climate resilience?

According to research from the University of Oxford economist Max Roser and the University of Edinburgh geoscientist Hannah Ritchie, absolute global deaths from natural disasters have been going down almost every year between 1901 and 2018, even while the global population has exploded from roughly 1.6 billion to roughly 7.7 billion during that period.

1627006766974.png
[Animated graph on website]

This overall reduction in deaths by natural disaster, which accounts for floods, extreme weather, extreme temperature, earthquakes, and droughts, is similar to the consistent reduction in deaths by disease in recent decades (COVID-19 obviously overturned these disease data in 2020, but not in a way that’s directly relevant to climate change, since it is only vector-borne diseases that are directly exacerbated by climate change).

1627006845745.png

[Animated graph on website]

The data—which show climate-related deaths have been falling even while fossil fuel use has intensified climate change—suggest that so far climate danger has been no match for climate resilience in the battle over human wellbeing.

The Alarmist Assumption
The IEA, the Biden Administration, and others advocating for extreme near-term reductions in global fossil fuel use have one seldom-examined assumption at the foundation of their climate alarmism. This assumption is that despite climate resilience having consistently outpaced climate danger in the past, soon the tables will turn and climate danger will gain the upper hand.

It is widely believed that dangerous tipping points likely dwell in the future of environmental change. What is rarely factored in is that continued economic growth, facilitated in large part by fossil fuels, will likely continue to produce unpredictable technological and scientific breakthroughs, creating new forms of security and wellbeing, and at new scales.

The climate alarmists would have society sacrifice one of its most precious industries, and thus radically increase the price of electricity, food, housing, and countless other critical assets without which the global poor would be at the mercy of starvation and homelessness. These economic changes might sound weatherable to those of us who can afford frequent meals out and subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max all at the same time, but to the global poor, this is a matter of life and death.

As the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions.” History suggests that extremist energy agendas like the IEA’s and the Biden administration’s would lead us down such a road, making millions of poor people more vulnerable to climate threats in the name of mitigating those threats.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

CA Agency May Scrap Electric Bus Fleet After Electric Buses Melt in California Sun, Catch Fire, Cost Too Much to Fix

By Cristina Laila
Published July 23, 2021 at 12:00pm
IMG_3371.jpg

The electric bus idea is going down in flames – literally.

A California transit official said electric buses manufactured by Proterra are melting in the California heat.

One electric bus caught fire while it was charging and the agency said the electric buses are just too expensive to fix.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:
An electric bus manufactured by Proterra caught fire while charging in a southern California city that is now considering taking the electric buses off the road, according to government records.
The Foothill Transit agency, which serves the valleys surrounding Los Angeles, will decide on Friday whether costly Proterra buses purchased in the last decade are still operable. Problems cited by the agency include not only the bus that caught fire in what’s described as a “thermal event,” but also buses that melt in the California heat and have transmission failures. Roland Cordero, the agency’s director of maintenance and vehicle technology, says the problems with the buses are exacerbated by Proterra’s inability to help with repairs.

“With the number of failures we are experiencing and the inability of Proterra to provide parts, these [Battery Electric Buses] BEBs will only get worse as we continue to operate them whenever the BEBs are available for service,” Cordero wrote ahead of Friday’s executive board meeting, where the agency will debate taking Proterra buses out of service.
Meanwhile Biden’s gargantuan ‘infrastructure’ plan allocates billions of dollars to expand electric vehicles and charging stations.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Bioengineering Company Ginkgo Bioworks Ties Together DARPA, Bill Gates, WEF, Transhumanism, and The Great Reset

A major player amongst the globalist elite has been sitting right under our noses and I never noticed.

by Derrick Broze
July 24, 2021

Editor’s Commentary: I’m ashamed that I had never heard of Ginkgo Bioworks until today. My fellow defenders against transhumanism, globalism, and Neo-Marxism may be sitting there right now judging me for my lack of attention to this company, and I probably deserve the scowls. This company has risen so quickly in the last decade that it’s insane I never noticed them.

They’re not as big as Monsanto but they appear to be much more dangerous. Considering they’re tying together the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, DARPA, and the transhumanism movement together through various partnerships is should be a very loud alarm bell. Combine that with billion-dollar funding from the U.S. government to “fight” Covid-19 and there significance in the here and now becomes apparent.

The article below by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond is loaded with information about the company and its nefarious connections. Read carefully as Broze has a tendency to subtly drop bombshells and then move on. If he lingered on any of the blockbuster topics, the article would have been a book, so he kept it concise for busy readers. Again, go slow and absorb the information carefully. This is extremely important stuff, folks.
In May, biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks announced it was going public with a valuation of $15 billion. Ginkgo is a rising star in the biotechnology field, describing themselves as “The Organism Company”. While their name is less known than other biotech giants such as Monsanto and Bayer, the scope of their research and projects will likely affect billions of people around the world in coming years.

Ginkgo Bioworks was founded in 2009 by a group of MIT scientists focused on “engineering biology” for a variety of purposes. Officially, Ginkgo Bioworks “designs, engineers, develops, tests and licenses organisms”. The company refers to their work as “biology by design”, stating that they “program cells to make everything from food to materials to therapeutics.” Ginkgo’s researchers use genetic engineering to design and “print” new DNA for a range of organisms, including plants and bacteria. These organisms can then be licensed out for artificial flavors and sweeteners, cosmetic ingredients, crop treatments and pharmaceuticals.

What Ginkgo lacks in name recognition they make up for in financial investments. In March 2015, Ginkgo raised $9 million from investors during the company’s first significant fundraising round. A few months later they would receive another $45 million from a group led by Viking Global Investors. Just 3 years ago, the company was reportedly valued at over $1 billion after raising over $429 million in funding from investors, including Cascade Investment.

In November 2020 the U.S. government granted Ginkgo a $1.1 billion loan for “COVID-19 testing and the production of raw materials for therapies that may help address future pandemics”.

Additionally, in October 2020, Allonnia, a company supported by investments in Ginkgo, launched a $40 million effort to study wastewater. The announcement of a Ginkgo associated company studying wastewater came on the heels of similar announcements for “environmental surveillance” by the World Health Organization as part of the fight against COVID-19.

Allonnia is the third company to launch out of Ginkgo Bioworks’ Ferment Consortium, a “$350 million investment vehicle leveraging biology to solve global challenges and transform established industries”. Companies participating in the “Ferment Consortium” gain access to “Ginkgo’s foundry for biological engineering, its iterative codebase model, and an extensive industry network of partners and investors”.

Partners with Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum
In May, when Ginkgo Bioworks announced their public valuation and investments, the list of investors included Cascade Investment. Cascade is an investment company controlled by Bill Gates. The firm recently made headlines when it was reported that Bill Gates has used shell companies owned by Cascade to become the largest farmland owner in the United States.

Ginkgo Bioworks is listed as a partner with the World Economic Forum, the organization behind The Great Reset agenda.

Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginkgo, is also listed as a partner with the WEF. Ryan Morhard is Director of Policy and Partnerships at Ginkgo Bioworks and listed as an author at the WEF. Before joining Ginkgo Bioworks, Ryan led the WEF’s work on global health security and biological risks. While it’s not fair to assume that every single company and person listed as a partner with the WEF is involved in The Great Reset efforts to transform humanity, it should encourage readers to remain skeptical of those associated with the WEF.

The relationship between the WEF and Ginkgo goes back to at least June 2016 when the “organism design company” was designated as one of the WEF’s Technology Pioneers, an award granted to the “world’s most innovative companies”. The press release for the event states that Ginkgo was chosen by a professional jury and with their selection would “have access to an influential and sought-after business and political network worldwide.”

Further, Ginkgo is listed as a WEF partner as part of the “Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Production” platform and the “Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare” platform. Another investor in Ginkgo Bioworks – Viking Global Investors – is also listed as a partner with the WEF, this time under the Shaping the Future of Financial and Monetary Systems platform. These platforms were ostensibly launched by the WEF as a method for confronting societal issues while cooperating with organizations from a number of industries and governments. However, they appear to serve as roadmaps for the ways in which the Davos Class want to remake and reset the world in the coming years.

The COVID Action Platform clearly outlines the post-pandemic world imagined by the WEF.

Given what we know about The Great Reset plan to remake all of society, it’s important to recognize that Ginkgo is one of dozens of companies chosen for such a partnership with the WEF. It’s also worth remembering that the WEF promotes themselves as the “international organization for public-private cooperation”, positioning their organization as a necessary conduit for partnerships between governments and private businesses.

Ginkgo Bioworks has expanded their operations via efforts like the aforementioned Ferment Consortium, a “private investment vehicle for funding Ginkgo spinout companies with transformative potential in established industries”. Companies launched via the Consortium gain “full access to Ginkgo’s platform for cell programming and the market expertise of leading strategic partners”. According to the press release:

“In the past two years, Ginkgo launched Joyn Bio and Motif FoodWorks on its platform for cell programming; Joyn launched in partnership with Bayer Crop Sciences with $100 million in financing and Motif with $90 million and strategic support from Fonterra and Louis Dreyfus Company. The $350 million Ferment Consortium will enable Ginkgo to replicate more of these successes.”

Joyn Bio is focused on agriculture by developing microbes which lessen farmer dependence on synthetic nitrogen. Motif FoodWorks says they are “working towards a future where genetic engineering can help make foods that are sustainable, healthier, delicious, and accessible to everyone”. The work of Motif fits perfectly with the World Economic Forum’s push for genetically engineered, lab grown foods.

In addition to the wastewater research and $1.1 billion loan to Ginkgo Bioworks, the company has also played a role in testing for COVID-19 via Coincentric, Ginkgo’s “public health and biosecurity” team. Coincentric has specifically been involved with developing tests for children in public schools.

An examination of Coincentric also wields connections worth exploring. For example, Dylan George recently joined Coincentric as Vice President of Business Development. A press release regarding the announcement notes that George has a “wealth of leadership and biosecurity experience”, including working with the U.S. government and as Vice President of the infamous In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm with ties to Facebook’s founding. The release also notes that George worked as a “Senior Advisor for Biological Threat Defense” and within the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the health equivalent to the Military-Industrial Complex’s best friends, DARPA.

In fact, Coincentric’s team is filled with an interesting cast of characters, including Lt. General Thomas P. Bostick, the 53rd Chief of Engineers of the United States Army and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, former DARPA Program Manager in the Biological Technologies Office and VP of Business Development with Ginkgo; and the previously mentioned Ryan Morhard, Ginkgo’s Director of Policy and Partnership, who led the World Economic Forum’s work on global health security and biological risks.

The presence of officials associated with the U.S. military, DARPA, the CIA, and the WEF is curious to say the least.

How Does Ginkgo Bioworks Fit In the Bio-Security, Transhumanist Agenda?
Ginkgo Bioworks says their goal is to build a “platform” which enables its customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company’s platform is playing a key role in expanding so-called biotechnology applications in the areas of food, agriculture, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. It is indisputable that these types of technology which allow companies (and perhaps individuals) to “print” cells and DNA are all but inevitable at this point. It is also indisputable that these technologies do have the potential to do some good.

For example, The Cronos Group, one of the benefactors of Ginkgo Bioworks’ largesse, is attempting to use DNA sequences from cannabis plants to “build” high quality and pure strains of the medicinal plant. This could allow for medicines tailored to specific illnesses and needs. Still, with the wealth of connections uncovered in this cursory look into Ginkgo Bioworks we ought to remain skeptical.

What remains unclear is whether or not companies like Ginkgo Bioworks and their partners in the World Economic Forum imagine that society voluntarily and consensually transitions to the Brave New World they envision. Yes, the technologies can improve the state of the world and, perhaps, help the planet in the process, but who is making these decisions for the rest of humanity? Is the global population organically calling for the world the World Economic Forum hopes for? Or, is this push for remaking and resetting society another scheme by the Predator Class at the top of the pyramid?

Without a doubt, the Great Reset is intended to transform our world, shifting it further into an AI-driven, Internet of Bodies, where human life can be altered (or ended) as simply as pressing the power button on a computer. Companies like Ginkgo hope to “hack” the genetic code so they can bend organic life to their will. Whatever positives may be gleaned from these efforts, the end result is the same: humanity aims to play God. Now, should we be playing God in this fashion?

The answer to that question will shape the future of humanity and the planet.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The World Will Run Out Of EV Batteries By 2025

MONDAY, JUL 26, 2021 - 05:00 AM
Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

In many ways, the world is not ready for the EV revolution. While electric vehicles are an absolutely invaluable and essential component of the clean energy revolution and combating climate change and imperative which grows more urgent with each passing second, the world has been unable (or, in some cases, unwilling) to keep up with the necessary infrastructure installations and investments to prepare for the kind of wide-scale adoption which is both necessary and imminent. For one thing, even in some of the most developed countries in the world, aging power grids are entirely unprepared to handle the onslaught of increased energy demand as more and more of the country leaves their gas guzzlers behind and plugin. This problem is far from insurmountable, and can indeed be all but completely solved by making our energy use and production more efficient, but it needs to be addressed in a big hurry in order to make the EV revolution viable.



And then there’s the issue of those pesky car batteries. While you can cut down your carbon footprint by a massive margin by switching over to an EV, you just can’t get away from using finite resources completely. EV batteries contain a litany of expensive and finite rare earth metals and minerals, most notably cobalt and lithium, which cause tricky negotiations with global supply chains and which are not without their negative environmental externalities thanks to sometimes messy mining operations.

The energy revolution’s dependence on rare earth metals, which is only set to intensify, has inadvertently put a huge amount of control into the hands of China, which controls around 90% of the market for some of these resources, and has shown that it is not afraid to use that power to sway international politics and diplomacy. In fact, it has been posited that China’s dominance of these supply chains, and other countries’ reticence of that dominance, could potentially lead to a new clean energy resource war if world powers don’t tread lightly.

And now, according to a new Bank of America Global Research report, the global EV battery supply is in danger of running out completely as soon as 2025. “Our updated EV battery supply-demand model suggests the global EV battery supply will likely hit [a] ‘sold-out’ situation between 2025-26, with its global operating rates reaching above 85%,” the report reads ominously. The supply shortage will be largely a product of rapidly increasing demand in a market that is simply unprepared for the levels of EV adoption coming down the pike in the immediate term.

As world leaders feature incentives and imperatives for electric car adoption in their post-pandemic recovery policies and economic stimulus packages, and the private sector leans further into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment principles, the transition away from gasoline and diesel combustion engines is expected to go into overdrive. “We forecast the global operating rates of EV battery will rise to about 121% by 2030, based on announced capacity so far, implying another round of substantial CapEx cycles will likely kick in the next 2-3 years,” the BoA report went on to say.

The world needs to ramp up its EV battery production, and it needs to do it essentially overnight. But the EV battery issue, as big as it is, is only a microcosm of the much bigger and more pressing issue of a general lack of foresight into the world getting serious about the energy revolution and green energy transition. In many ways, COVID-19 catalyzed the growth of clean energy in ways that we couldn’t have seen coming, to be sure, but the need for this kind of wide-scale adoption of EVs and clean energy has been pressing, known, and all but ignored for decades now. It’s far past time to get serious about policy, incentives, investment, and R&D at a pace that reflects the urgency of the imperative set by the looming threat of catastrophic climate change.
 

raven

TB Fanatic

The World Will Run Out Of EV Batteries By 2025

MONDAY, JUL 26, 2021 - 05:00 AM
Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

In many ways, the world is not ready for the EV revolution. While electric vehicles are an absolutely invaluable and essential component of the clean energy revolution and combating climate change and imperative which grows more urgent with each passing second, the world has been unable (or, in some cases, unwilling) to keep up with the necessary infrastructure installations and investments to prepare for the kind of wide-scale adoption which is both necessary and imminent. For one thing, even in some of the most developed countries in the world, aging power grids are entirely unprepared to handle the onslaught of increased energy demand as more and more of the country leaves their gas guzzlers behind and plugin. This problem is far from insurmountable, and can indeed be all but completely solved by making our energy use and production more efficient, but it needs to be addressed in a big hurry in order to make the EV revolution viable.



And then there’s the issue of those pesky car batteries. While you can cut down your carbon footprint by a massive margin by switching over to an EV, you just can’t get away from using finite resources completely. EV batteries contain a litany of expensive and finite rare earth metals and minerals, most notably cobalt and lithium, which cause tricky negotiations with global supply chains and which are not without their negative environmental externalities thanks to sometimes messy mining operations.

The energy revolution’s dependence on rare earth metals, which is only set to intensify, has inadvertently put a huge amount of control into the hands of China, which controls around 90% of the market for some of these resources, and has shown that it is not afraid to use that power to sway international politics and diplomacy. In fact, it has been posited that China’s dominance of these supply chains, and other countries’ reticence of that dominance, could potentially lead to a new clean energy resource war if world powers don’t tread lightly.

And now, according to a new Bank of America Global Research report, the global EV battery supply is in danger of running out completely as soon as 2025. “Our updated EV battery supply-demand model suggests the global EV battery supply will likely hit [a] ‘sold-out’ situation between 2025-26, with its global operating rates reaching above 85%,” the report reads ominously. The supply shortage will be largely a product of rapidly increasing demand in a market that is simply unprepared for the levels of EV adoption coming down the pike in the immediate term.

As world leaders feature incentives and imperatives for electric car adoption in their post-pandemic recovery policies and economic stimulus packages, and the private sector leans further into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment principles, the transition away from gasoline and diesel combustion engines is expected to go into overdrive. “We forecast the global operating rates of EV battery will rise to about 121% by 2030, based on announced capacity so far, implying another round of substantial CapEx cycles will likely kick in the next 2-3 years,” the BoA report went on to say.

The world needs to ramp up its EV battery production, and it needs to do it essentially overnight. But the EV battery issue, as big as it is, is only a microcosm of the much bigger and more pressing issue of a general lack of foresight into the world getting serious about the energy revolution and green energy transition. In many ways, COVID-19 catalyzed the growth of clean energy in ways that we couldn’t have seen coming, to be sure, but the need for this kind of wide-scale adoption of EVs and clean energy has been pressing, known, and all but ignored for decades now. It’s far past time to get serious about policy, incentives, investment, and R&D at a pace that reflects the urgency of the imperative set by the looming threat of catastrophic climate change.

they will not be built in America
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Here's Why the New COVID Relief Program Will Turn The Working Class Into Serfs...

MONDAY, JUL 26, 2021 - 09:55 PM
Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,
This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal that absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
George Orwell, Animal Farm


Everything is now political.
ESG, climate change, racism, gender, vaccines. Ask yourself why is it that all of these things are non-negotiable? Why can’t they be discussed? Why is there no room for dissent, questioning, and discourse?

Something is amiss. Think about it.

The pointy shoes at the IMF tell us that the pandemic will cost the world $28 trillion by 2025, which means it’ll be much, much more.

The truth is the pandemic isn’t the cause. The lockdowns, however, are.

Understanding what exactly this “pandemic” is, is really critical to understanding everything taking place globally and in financial markets both now and in the future.

This virus is statistically as dangerous to the population as a bad flu. “No, not possible, Chris. Look at the response by governments. Surely that’s disproportionate.” Yes, it is, but there is a reason.

To understand the answer to this more fully we need to go back to 2008 and then walk forward tracking the unfolding events.

Following the housing crash and subsequent banking crisis QE was brought in as the tool to “fix” what could have and should have been fixed by letting the banks fail and putting on trial and jailing Wall Street bankers as well as regulatory agencies who were all willfully and knowingly involved in a massive fraud.

The economy has been hanging by a thread ever since.

Then in 2019 the money market seized up with the overnight lending rate shooting up, causing the pointy shoes at the Fed (and the ECB in coordination with the BOE, too) to step in to “fix” it.

They printed upwards of 100 million smackaroos PER NIGHT.



Bankers should have been screaming… but they’re not. Why?

Since the beginning of 2020 the major central banks around the world have expanded the money supply by anywhere from 30% to… how do I even say this without my throat catching? Better yet a visual to display the situation.



The central banks would have struggled to do this without drawing attention to their scandalous behaviour if it weren’t for the scapegoat of Covid. “This is unprecedented,” they tell us. “We have to do something,” they say.

To convince the public of the absolute necessity for the tyranny now imposed, they have used every lying trick in the book, and when found out and revealed quickly and mercilessly acted to ensure the truth is “canceled”.



Breach of community guidelines. No mention made of what this community is or what the guidelines are. The level of distraction availed by the Covid fraud is breathtaking and has allowed for the most egregious transfer of wealth in history.

This money has been printed not to provide “covid relief” as is being sold to a gullible public but to bail out the banks in a more palatable fashion.

If direct bailouts were enacted, the outrage would have likely been of far greater magnitude than the 1% protests that followed the 2008 debacle. Instead, they chose to funnel the capital directly to the consumer.

Make no mistake about it though, without this we’d be in a full-blown banking crisis. This is why we don’t have banks failing and the fat cats on Wall Street chewing their fingernails.

Less than 3% of money supply is in physical format. The balance is all debt-based money. Money is brought into circulation by the creation of debt. This debt burden has grown to uncontrollable eye watering levels. It will collapse and was in the process of doing so back in 2008. It was about to do so again in 2019 when the money market seized up.

The desperate need to hold this ball of wax together was why in 2014, bank bailouts not being enough, they enacted laws to allow bank bail-ins. Meaning that they can (and will when necessary) seize customer deposits in order to bail out the bankers.

That it is legalized theft won’t matter. As is always the case the average Joe has no idea about any of this and gleefully plonks his hard-earned wages in the bank believing that he is a customer and that the bank is there to serve him.

Customers of Cypriot banks thought the same thing right up until they received a shocking jolt of reality back in 2013.

One thing to remember is that you can’t have a collapse like this without taking the currency down with it. Never happened before in history and it isn’t going to happen this time around either.

The coming problem is this. We have a truly monstrous increase in money supply, and if we open the global economy back up, we’re going to then get an increase in velocity. I.N.F.L.A.T.I.O.N.

While the money conjured up and given to the banks in 2008 led to an explosion in “growth assets,” the money now printed has been fed to the general populace (who then don’t default on their debts to the bankers).

It solves two problems for the pointy shoes. Firstly, it ensures the bankers don’t go bankrupt. And secondly, it turns a working class into a slave class.

You see, when you work for a living and vote for your government, they are reliant on you. But when you don’t work for a living and are reliant on your government then you are a slave to them. The roles are completely reversed.

To sum it up
We have entered a period of time where ideologies are driving literally everything.

Ideas and opinions are becoming weaponized.

What is important to understand is that this absolutely is and will drive capital flows more than ever.

This will impact economies and sectors.

This is the fourth turning, and it will run until it collapses or implodes on itself.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Carol Roth: Lockdowns Helped Five Tech Companies Gain Trillions in Value While Collapsing Main Street

435
LAS VEGAS, NV - OCTOBER 04: Moderator Carol Roth (L) talks with Dave and Buster's, Inc. CEO Stephen King during Global Gaming Expo on October 4, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images for Global Gaming Expo)
Isaac Brekken/Getty Images for Global Gaming Expo
ROBERT KRAYCHIK29 Jul 202136

Government-decreed lockdowns helped Big Tech gain trillions of dollars in company valuations, Carol Roth, author of The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America, noted on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Roth highlighted the arbitrary, inconsistent, and selective application of shutdowns — ostensibly mandated to reduce coronavirus transmission — which broadly exempted big box stores and online retailers such Amazon and Walmart.

The world’s most highly valued companies increased their market capitalization while small businesses were forced into closures and bankruptcies.

Roth observed, “The government — over the past 16 months, [and] is continuing to do it again — has been picking winners and losers, and they’re doing it not based on data and science, but they’re doing it based on political clout and connections.”

“This has facilitated the greatest wealth transfer that we’ve ever seen in history from Main Street to Wall Street,” she added.

Government and leftist claims that “we are all in this together” in terms of lockdowns “just isn’t the case,” she remarked.

https://soundcloud.com/breitbart View: https://soundcloud.com/breitbart
21:36 min audio interview

Roth noted the arbitrary determinations of supposedly “essential” and “non-essential” businesses and operations.

“The big guys — the Amazon warehouse, the Walmarts, [and] in some jurisdictions, weed dispensaries that weren’t even legal a couple years before — were deemed essential,” she said, “Somehow, people’s businesses were told by the government the most horrible thing they could be told, that they were not essential.”

She continued, “None of this was based in data and science, and [small businesses] did not get appropriate compensation [from the government] for basically subjugating their property rights for the quote, unquote ‘good’ of society.”

Large “essential” retailers benefit from consumers being denied access to small businesses due to government edicts, Roth stated.

She explained, “If you shut down a small business and people are trying to spend money and they can’t spend money with these small businesses, the beneficiaries of those sellers are those big companies — the Amazons of the world — and I think that’s pretty straightforward.”

Roth explained the role of the Federal Reserve in facilitating the transfer of wealth from small businesses to the world’s largest corporations.

She remarked, “What people don’t realize is the level of intervention by the Federal Reserve on behalf of the government and by them artificially suppressing interest rates and ‘printing money’ — and I put that in quotes, because they don’t actually print it, they do an accounting entry, they do it out of nowhere — that has really increased the value of these companies.”

Five technology firms’ valuations collectively increased by over three trillion dollars as small businesses were being artificially destroyed by government policy, Roth said.

She stated, “We had five tech companies in 2020 that gained $3.4 trillion in value at the same time that hundreds of thousands of small businesses were being murdered and millions more were struggling to survive. You had a record year for IPOs.”

“Today, we have five tech companies that are worth $9 trillion in value, and the increase in this value — if you compare the chart to the Fed printing — is almost exactly the same as the amount that the Fed has pumped into the system,” she added.

She went on, “So really, they are just maneuvering that money from savers, from retirees, who are earning absolutely nothing, and giving these tech companies not only increased value but access to capital that they can use to go out and compete with smaller businesses in the market.”

Roth concluded by warning that public compliance with abusive government decrees only encourages further abuses.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Chuck Schumer Says Climate Crisis Will Be Worse Than COVID Unless Dems Pass Infrastructure Bill (VIDEO)

By Mike LaChance
Published July 30, 2021 at 3:55am
Chuck-Schumer-inf.jpg

Do you remember when Democrats used to accuse Republicans of using the politics of fear to advance their agenda? Chuck Schumer doesn’t.

He recently claimed that if the Democrat infrastructure bill isn’t passed, that climate change is going to be worse than COVID.

That doesn’t even make sense. What does an infrastructure bill have to do with climate change?

FOX News reports:

Climate crisis ‘will be worse than COVID’: Schumer
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that the climate crisis will be worse than the coronavirus pandemic and that Democrats are ready to respond with “big, bold action” unlike anything the U.S. and “this world has ever seen before.”

During a press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demanding climate action on Capitol Hill, Schumer said the country was at a “pivotal moment” to address climate change with Democrats now in power.

“This is a unique opportunity,” he said. “We are surrounded by evidence of the climate crisis — the fires out West, the heat waves, the floods — everywhere you look.

“Because of global warming, things are getting worse and worse. And I tell my constituents in New York: COVID was horrible, but if we do nothing on climate, starting within a few short years from now, each year will be worse than COVID, and each year will be worse than the previous year.”

“We know that we can’t let this moment pass us by,” he continued.
“It’s our time to act. And as majority leader, I have made it clear I will not pass an infrastructure package that does not reduce carbon pollution on a scale commensurate with the urgency of the climate crisis that we face. Plain and simple. And that’s what Democrats intend to do.”
Watch the video below:

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1420511985385541635
.20 min

1627664647877.png

This is all lies, and the media will let Schumer get away with it because they agree with the Democrat agenda.

Cross posted from American Lookout.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Earth Overshoot Day Is Coming Sooner And Sooner

FRIDAY, JUL 30, 2021 - 04:15 AM

July 29 marks this year’s Earth Overshoot Day, the day that humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds the resources Earth can regenerate within that year.

Over the decades, the ecological and carbon footprint of humans has gradually increased, all while Earth’s biocapacity, i.e. its ability to regenerate resources has diminished significantly.
Infographic: Earth Overshoot Day Is Coming Sooner and Sooner | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

That has led to Earth Overshoot Day coming earlier and earlier each year, gradually moving from December 30 in 1970 to July 29 this year.
“There is no benefit in waiting to take action,” Global Footprint Network CEO Laurel Hanscom said in a statement.
The pandemic has demonstrated that societies can shift rapidly in the face of disaster. But being caught unprepared brought great economic and human cost. When it comes to our predictable future of climate change and resource constraints, individuals, institutions and governments who prepare themselves will fare better. Global consensus is not a prerequisite to recognizing one’s own risk exposure, so let’s take decisive action now, wherever we are,” she added.
The concept of Earth Overshoot Day was first conceived by Andrew Simms of the UK think tank New Economics Foundation, which partnered with Global Footprint Network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign. WWF, the world’s largest conservation organization, has participated in Earth Overshoot Day since 2007. To find out more about the calculations behind Earth Overshoot Day, please click here.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

1 in 5 electric vehicle owners in California switched back to gas because charging their cars is a hassle, research shows

Dominick Reuter
Wed, July 28, 2021, 7:18 AM·4 min read

Mustang Mach E GT Performance Edition 03

Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition. Ford
  • Roughly 20% of electric vehicle owners in California replaced their cars with gas ones, a study shows.
  • The main reason drivers said they made the switch was the inconvenience of charging.
  • The findings suggest new challenges facing the growth of the nascent electric vehicle market.
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.
In roughly three minutes, you can fill the gas tank of a Ford Mustang and have enough range to go about 300 miles with its V8 engine.

But on a recent 200-mile trip from Boston to New York in the Mustang's electric Mach-E variant, Axios' Dan Primack said he felt "panic" as his battery level dipped below 23% while searching for a compatible charger to complete his trip.

"I was assured that this might be one of the country's easiest EV routes," Primack wrote. "Those assurances were misplaced."

For Bloomberg automotive analyst Kevin Tynan, an hour plugged into his household outlet gave the Mach-E just three miles of range.

"Overnight, we're looking at 36 miles of range," he told Insider. "Before I gave it back to Ford, because I wanted to give it back full, I drove it to the office and plugged in at the charger we have there."

Standard home outlets generally deliver 120 volts, powering what electric vehicle aficionados call "Level 1" charging, while the higher-powered specialty connections at 240 volts are known as "Level 2." By comparison, Tesla's "Superchargers," which can fully charge its cars in a little over an hour, run on 480 volts.

That difference is night and day, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy by University of California Davis researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal that surveyed Californians who purchased an electric vehicle between 2012 and 2018.

Roughly one in five plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners switched back to owning gas-powered cars, in large part because charging the batteries was a pain in the… trunk, the researchers found.

Of those who switched, over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, and slightly fewer than that lacked Level 2 connections at their workplace.

"If you don't have a Level 2, it's almost impossible," said Tynan, who has tested a wide range of makes and models of PEVs over the years for his research.

Even with the faster charging, a Chevy Bolt he tested still needed nearly six hours to top its range back up to 300 miles from nearly empty - something that takes him just minutes at the pump with his family SUV.

EVs have come a long way in recent years in terms of range, safety, comfort, and tech features, but Hardman and Tal note that very little has changed in terms of how they are recharged.

The researchers warned that this trend could make it harder to achieve electric vehicle sales targets in California and other countries, and the growth of the market overall.

"It should not be assumed that once a consumer purchases a PEV they will continue owning one," Hardman and Tal wrote. "What is clear is that this could slow PEV market growth and make reaching 100% PEV sales more difficult."

GM has set a target of an all-electric fleet by 2030, while Ford recently unveiled its "game changing" Lightning F-150 electric pickup truck and is prioritizing production of its electric Mustangs over its traditional gas ones. But Tynan says that fixing the charging issue will require even more active engagement from automakers.

Meanwhile, change is on the horizon. Tesla recently filed paperwork to open a drive-in restaurant at one of its LA supercharger stations (which takes 15 minutes to deliver an 80% charge), and 7-Eleven announced it will be installing 500 fast-charging connections at select convenience stores across North America.

Meanwhile, those initiatives are dwarfed by President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan, which would set aside $15 billion to build a national network of 500,000 stations.

But those are largely still plans, and it will be a while before EV ownership is just as convenient as gasoline currently is.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Europe's Expensive Climate Club And Its Detractors

SATURDAY, JUL 31, 2021 - 08:10 AM
Authored by Tilak Doshi via Forbes.com,

The EU published a whole raft of additional climate policies on July 14th with its long-awaited “Fit for 55” package to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050. It included its most contentious plank – the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). On July 19th, US Democrat legislators introduced a similar bill to tax imported goods for their carbon content sourced from countries that lack strict environmental policies. Details on the US proposal are scant, with one leading newspaper article stating that the US would “require companies that want to sell steel, iron, and other goods to the United States to pay a price for every ton of carbon dioxide that is emitted during their manufacturing processes.

If countries can’t or won’t do that, the United States could impose its own price.”

It would seem that the Nordhaus climate club has become the policy vehicle of choice for advocates of the “climate emergency” on both sides of the Atlantic.

Why The Climate Club
On the face of it, the climate club’s logic is straightforward enough. It is to replace the earlier flawed architectures of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015) which were voluntary international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. To mitigate the problem of ‘free riders’ that inevitably emerge with such agreements, the climate club would establish an incentive structure that penalized nations that did not play by the rules.

The EU and the US want to impose trade tariffs to bring the cost of carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the manufacture of an imported good into alignment with what a domestic producer would pay to produce the same good.

European and American companies are less competitive because they have to pay for their emissions while foreign companies that export to them don’t. Thus rules to reduce emissions will encourage companies in the West to “offshore” their production to developing countries which have less onerous restrictions on emissions, a process known as “carbon leakage”. Brussels and Washington, it is claimed, merely intend to “level the playing field”. Of course the question arises, whose playing field?

The European Commission will initially apply the CBAM to imports from energy intensive sectors including iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers and electricity, coming into force from January 2026. An analysis by a bank found that Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, India and China will be amongst the most impacted by the CBAM. The complexity of the Brussels-concocted plan ensures that exporters to the EU will have their work cut out for them. Exporting firms will have to document detailed carbon audits on their emissions which would include calculating the percentage of emissions that are already covered by carbon taxes elsewhere (domestic and for imports which go into manufacturing the exports). If these complex and expensive analyses are beyond the compliance capabilities of firms, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, the EC will unilaterally establish carbon tariffs on the basis of the dirtiest 10% of European producers of the same good.

The Climate Club’s Detractors
On July 26th, China opened its first defensive salvo against the EU’s plan to impose the world's first carbon border tax, stating that it intruded climate issues into international trading norms, broke WTO rules and undermined prospects for economic growth. Earlier in April when it became apparent that both the EU and the US Biden administration were considering extra-territorial and unilateral policies to enforce upon the world their own predilections to “fight climate change”, India also adopted a position similar to China’s. It issued a joint statement with the BASIC bloc — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — calling CBAM “discriminatory“ and expressing its “ grave concern”.

Detractors of the climate club – a club which threatens to be both exclusive and punitive for non-members — point out that carbon border taxes are contrary to the UN climate body’s Article 4. This refers to “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities”, an established feature of climate change negotiations since the UN’s first Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Last week, at the G20 on climate change and energy, India cited this long-standing equitable principle in countering the “net zero by 2050” target backed by the EU, US, the UN climate body and other rich country-dominated multilateral agencies such as the IEA, the World Bank and the IMF. India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav said that “…given the legitimate need of developing countries to grow, we urge G20 countries to commit to bring down per capita emissions to global average by 2030”.

While the global average is 6.5 tons per capita of CO2-equivalent, India emits just below 2 tons while the US emits 17.6 tons and Germany 10.4 tons. India asserted that as the rich countries have already “consumed” most of the available “carbon space” in the atmospheric sink since the Industrial Revolution, the “net zero by 2050” target is inadequate.

The detractors are not limited to developing countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the proposed carbon tariff plan “trade protection by another name”. Russia, like China, sees the CBAM as running foul of WTO rules and had already made clear its views a year ago when the EU was mooting its Green Deal plans which included carbon tariffs.

Problems With The Climate Club
Apart from the UN climate body’s Article 4, there are areas in which the proposed carbon tariffs may conflict with WTO trading rules. They may be found to contravene the WTO’s rule of non‐discrimination, a mainstay of international trading norms which requires that any advantage granted to the imported products of one WTO member must be accorded immediately and unconditionally to like products originating from all other WTO members.

Carbon tariffs could also be inconsistent with the WTO’s ‘ national treatment rule’, another foundation stone of modern international trade under the WTO regime which requires that imported products be given “no less favourable” treatment than that given to like domestic products. If European producers continue to receive free emissions allowances (as they do now under the EU’s Emission Trading System), then the EU will be found in violation of the “national treatment” rule.

It would seem that the putative rich-country climate club members are headed for an impasse with the rest of the world in the rules of international trade that have broadly prevailed since the Second World War. On the one hand, we have somewhat less that 20% of the world’s population represented by policy elites that are convinced that the “science is settled” and a “climate crisis” is upon us. On the other, we have the vast majority of the world’s population – over 6 billion — newly emerged from wretched poverty in recent decades or desperately trying to. For those beginning to enjoy — or at least having a fighting chance to taste — the fruits of economic growth and technological progress across Asia, Africa and Latin America, their worries are less to do with concerns of the carbon footprint of economic growth as much as ensuring that economic growth will re-emerge after the devastation brought on by the Covid pandemic lockdowns.

Democracy Prevails
But there is a final twist. The Western policy elites, convinced by climate models that purportedly predict dire climate conditions decades into the future, seem to be facing the constraints of democracy in their own backyards. After Switzerland dropped its negotiations with the EU, the country rejected a climate-protection law in a referendum last month. The referendum rejected all three parts of the law in separate votes: on CO2, on pesticides, and on drinking water. Two days ago, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, facing an increasing backlash from constituents over soaring heating costs with his plans to ban gas boilers in British homes in favour of expensive new-fangled heat pumps, delayed his government’s plans by 5 years to 2040.



For Europe, the greatest lesson of mass politics against climate change polices supported by metropolitan elites was the gilet jaune protests that was triggered by fuel taxes. As one acute observer put it, “The French love a good riot, but the political backlash to the French government’s plans to increase carbon taxes on fuel could be a harbinger of what’s to come in countries committed to the global warming crusade”.

It is no surprise then that a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s largest banks, warned that for the EU’s Green Deal to succeed, “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship will be necessary”.

The climate club’s detractors have the tide of history on their side.
 

Hi-D

Membership Revoked

CA Agency May Scrap Electric Bus Fleet After Electric Buses Melt in California Sun, Catch Fire, Cost Too Much to Fix

By Cristina Laila
Published July 23, 2021 at 12:00pm
IMG_3371.jpg

The electric bus idea is going down in flames – literally.

A California transit official said electric buses manufactured by Proterra are melting in the California heat.

One electric bus caught fire while it was charging and the agency said the electric buses are just too expensive to fix.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:




Meanwhile Biden’s gargantuan ‘infrastructure’ plan allocates billions of dollars to expand electric vehicles and charging stations.

Busted.
Trevor Milton, founder of electric truck maker Nikola, charged with fraud
The scheme resulted in Milton receiving tens of millions of dollars in personal benefits, prosecutors say

Founder of electric truck company Nikola charged with fraud
JULY 29, 202104:58


July 29, 2021, 7:22 AM PDTBy Tom WinterNew York federal prosecutors have charged Trevor Milton, the founder of the electric truck company Nikola, with engaging in an audacious scheme to defraud investors, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.Milton is accused of using his massive social media platform and TV appearances to mislead retail investors in order to inflate and maintain Nikola’s stock price. The scheme resulted in him receiving tens of millions of dollars in personal benefits, according to the indictment.“Milton sold a version of Nikola not as it was – an early stage company with a novel idea to commercialize yet-to-be proven products and technology – but rather as a trail-blazing company that had already achieved many groundbreaking and game-changing milestones,” the indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York says.“In presenting his version of Nikola to investors, Milton repeatedly made false and misleading statements about core aspects of Nikola’s products, technological advancements, and commercial prospects.”Federal prosecutors say Milton falsely claimed, for instance, that Nikola’s first semitruck prototype could be driven under its own power and even created a misleading video that purported to show it. Milton also falsely claimed that the company was producing hydrogen at a cost that was four times less than the prevailing market rates, and that it had obtained “billions and billions and billions and billions” of dollars of committed orders for an electric pickup truck.“Today’s charges against Milton are where the rubber meets the road,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said at a press conference prior to the court hearing.Milton, who resigned as Nikola’s executive chairman in September, surrendered to authorities Thursday morning. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud, and was released on $100 million bond.Recommended



A spokesperson for Milton's legal team said he was innocent.
"Mr. Milton has been wrongfully accused following a faulty and incomplete investigation in which the government ignored critical evidence and failed to interview important witnesses," the spokesperson said. "From the beginning, this has been an investigation in search of a crime."
The indictment was unsealed five months after Nikola admitted that Milton had misled investors from July 2016 through July 2020. In a statement, Nikola said Milton has had no involvement with the company since he resigned last year.
“Today’s government actions are against Mr. Milton individually, and not against the company,” it said. "Nikola has cooperated with the government throughout the course of its inquiry.”

Trevor Milton, founder of electric truck maker Nikola, charged with fraud (nbcnews.com)
 

Hi-D

Membership Revoked
On the global tax you will find that big London Banks and extractives are exempt. I would post a better source than this but they are behind pay walls(Bloomberg) and I used my freebies.

UK wins financial services carve-out from new global tax rules - FT | Reuters

UK wins financial services carve-out from new global tax rules - FT
Reuters



2 minute read
Buildings are seen in the Canary Wharf business district, as people walk along a footpath, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Britain January 27, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra

The City of London financial district in Britain, March 19, 2021. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

Buildings are seen in the Canary Wharf business district, as people walk along a footpath, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Britain January 27, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra



1/2
The City of London financial district in Britain, March 19, 2021. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) - Britain is set to secure an exemption for financial services from a new global tax system which was agreed by the Group of Seven economies to squeeze more money out of multinationals like Google, the Financial Times said on Wednesday.
Reuters had reported earlier this month that British finance minister Rishi Sunak was pushing for financial service firms to be exempt to help protect the City of London's largest banks from paying more tax. read more
The FT said the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is leading the reform of the global tax rules for companies, had accepted Britain's case on a carve-out.
The new global tax rules are designed to make companies pay more tax in countries where they operate. Banks do typically pay taxes locally on profits made in different jurisdictions, the OECD said in a paper in 2020.
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As part of the new deal, Britain will also remove its digital services tax. The FT said this was likely to happen in a staggered process. A spokesperson for Britain's Treasury declined to comment.
Reporting by Kate Holton; E


Extractives are not mentioned in the above article but they are also exempt. This is most likely why.

2019 Data on project-level extractive-related payments to The Crown Estate (TCE) by mining and quarrying companies | EITI (ukeiti.org)

Extractive Industries (worldbank.org)
 
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