GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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To Advance The Climate Agenda: Never Waste Bad Weather

SUNDAY, AUG 01, 2021 - 12:10 PM
Authored by Steve Milloy via RealClearEnergy.com,

Bad weather is wreaking havoc in parts of the world. The cynical climate alarmist community hopes it will help get Joe Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar climate agenda through Congress.

“Amid summer of fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action,” editorialized the Washington Post. So let’s look at the “summer of fires and floods.”

Yes, it has been very hot in the Pacific Northwest.

Is this global warming, as alarmists want you to believe, or just weather?



The temperature reality is that there is no trend from 1911-2020 in very hot (i.e., 99F+) days in the Pacific Northwest. That’s according to Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and no one’s idea of a “climate denier.”

It’s out-of-control wildfire season again, which is being fueled by ongoing drought. Climate alarmists, of course, expect the public to believe that the drought is caused by global warming. But the natural history of the West over the past 1,100 years shows that megadroughts lasting as long as 200 years are the norm rather than the exception.

And since the federal and state governments kicked out the loggers and stopped managing public lands 40 years ago, these wildfires may come back every year until there is nothing left in the West to burn. This is not global warming; it’s a combination of Mother Nature and bad government.

Then there is the catastrophic flooding from torrential rains that have hit Germany, China and India. In none of these places is such rain and flooding novel.

The region of Germany that flooded has a history of flooding that goes back to 1348, long before SUVs were invented. German towns often record this history on buildings.

China is also no stranger to flooding. The torrential rain that recently is no worse than the torrential rain that struck the mainland in August 1975, according to the regional weather bureau. If the flooding has been worse, it’s because land use and poor storm water management have made it so.

And there is no trend in monsoon rains in India, per the most up-to-date recordkeeping from 1871 to 2017.

Despite these inconvenient truths, could these calamities still be due to global warming? Well, there isn’t even much of that right now. According to the most recent NASA satellite data, the average global temperature for June 2021 was slightly below the 30-average.

But don’t expect climate and weather reality to dampen the alarm repeated over and over every day in the media.

President Biden and Democrats plan to pass a $3.5 trillion “stimulus” bill in the fall. About $2 trillion of the spending is earmarked for climate.

Although no one has seen the bill, it reportedly will include a “clean energy standard” that will set mandatory goals for wind and solar power with an aim to eliminating fossil fuels from the electricity grid by 2035. It’s extreme spending and policy that will affect every American and not for the better. Think frozen Texas windmills and California blackouts.

Even if you believe the Democrat and media line on climate, you should realize that global emissions are going up with no end in sight according to a new report the International Energy Agency. Part of the reason that emissions will continue to rise is that new electricity demand can only be met by more fossil fuel generation, according to another new IEA report.

Both Joe Biden and John Kerry have openly admitted that unilateral US action on climate will achieve nothing. China has no plans to cut emissions and the G-20 just failed to agree on quitting coal and climate targets.

Yet Democrats nevertheless insist on massive climate spending and changes to our energy system even though there is no conceivable way they will accomplish their supposed underlying goal of controlling the weather.

We are not living through unprecedented bad weather so much as we are living through unprecedented exploitation of it for bad ends.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

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Brandon Smith: Why Are Globalists And Governments So Desperate For 100% Vaccination Rates?

SUNDAY, AUG 01, 2021 - 12:00 AM
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

I don’t think I am the only person that has noticed it – There has been a sudden deluge of covid vaccination propaganda and vaccine passport propaganda in the past month, more so than I think we have seen since the beginning of this year. I am speaking of the US in particular, but it is important to point out that in the US the establishment is still desperately clamoring for a much higher vaccination rate. In places like Europe, the UK and Australia vaccinations rates are higher and governments have moved on to the vaccine passport phase of their agenda.



Some people may be confused by the obvious lockstep that most nations are moving in as far as covid mandates and restrictions are concerned. How is it possible that almost all the governments on the planet are in agreement on medical totalitarianism? Well, it’s rather easy to understand when you realize the majority of them are linked together through globalist institutions like the World Economic Forum, which has repeatedly called the pandemic a “perfect opportunity” to push through their plans for a “Great Reset”.

The “Great Reset” is a long term ideological usurpation of what’s left of individual freedom and free market economies, and it’s goal is the imposition of a global socialist/communist dictatorship. Globalists wrap these objectives in pretty sounding words and humanitarian sounding aspirations, but at bottom the “Reset” is about an end to liberty as we know it.

This is not an exaggeration, this is reality; this is what these people desire above all else. But how to achieve such a goal?

Well, interestingly enough the WEF and the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation described exactly how they planned to do it during a “simulation” they held in October of 2019 called “Event 201”. During the event, they imagined a massive coronavirus pandemic, spread supposedly from animals to humans, which would facilitate the need for pervasive restrictions on individual liberties, national economies as well as the internet and social media. I’m sure it’s all a coincidence, but the exact same scenario the globalists at the WEF played out during Event 201 happened in the real world only two months later.

In any case, the pandemic itself has been a boon for the globalists. We have not seen a far reaching government power and corporate power grab since the rise of the National Socialists in Europe and the spread of communism in Russia and China almost a century ago. In fact, I would say that what humanity as a whole is facing today is much worse than what those wretched empires ever could have produced.

There is no doubt; globalist institutions and their government “partners” are the greatest beneficiaries of the covid crisis. They stand to gain ultimate social and political power if their agenda to exploit the pandemic succeeds.

That said, there a few hangups in their plan, and this is why I believe we are seeing an aggressive propaganda push in recent weeks. For example, as I outlined with extensive evidence in my article ‘Biden’s Vaccine Strike Force Plan Stinks Of Desperation’, it appears that the vaccination rate, especially in the US, is nowhere near as high as the elites would like.

While the Biden Administration and the CDC claims an overall vaccination rate of 67%, numerous other stats including the Mayo Clinics state map numbers indicate that only four states in the US actually have a vaccination rate over 65% (for one dose or more), and the majority of states have rates around 50% or less. Even large population blue states like California and New York are not above the 65% mark, and frankly, those numbers are going nowhere as vaccinations are dropping off a cliff.

If someone has not submitted by now with zero wait times and ample doses everywhere, then they are unlikely to ever be vaccinated.

Contradictory stats suggest to me that Biden and the CDC are inflating their vaccination numbers to create the illusion that a larger majority of Americans support the jab. And if this is the case, it explains why Biden, Fauci and the mainstream media are force feeding the public with pro-vaccine hype that consistently contradicts the real science. They are not getting the fear and public compliance that they had hoped for.

But why do they want 100% vaccination? Why are they so desperate for every single person in the world to get the mRNA jab?

After all, the average (IFR) death rate of covid is a mere 0.26% of those infected (this is a stat that the media consistently and deliberately refuses to mention to the public). This means that 99.7% of the public is in NO danger from covid whether they are vaccinated or not.

Do the vaccines ensure better odds? Well, according to recent statistics from Massachusetts, not necessarily, as they report over 5100 infections and 80 deaths of fully vaccinated patients. The media keeps telling us that only the unvaccinated are dying, but this is a lie, like so many other lies they have been peddling when it comes to covid. So, what’s the point of taking an experimental vaccine if the death rate of the virus is so low and the jab doesn’t necessarily protect you anyway?

There is no point. The science and the stats do not support it. The vaccines can’t even be credited with the decline in infections and deaths this year; the numbers plunged in January – Only 5% of the population was vaccinated by February. The only explanation for this is that the population hit herd immunity many months ago. Remember when governments said that they needed 70% herd immunity or vaccination to stop the lockdowns and mandates? The goalposts have been moves several times and the government “science” changes monthly. Now they claim herd immunity doesn’t matter and demand 100% vaccination.

We must ask the question again – Why the relentless government push for total vaccine saturation? It’s not saving lives, and the mandates remain regardless, so why?

I can only posit theories based on the evidence at hand, but I think it’s clear to most of us that the vaccines are NOT about public health nor are they about saving lives. They are obviously about something else…

As numerous virology and vaccine experts have warned over the past year, there is a great risk of harmful health side effects when it comes to experimental mRNA technology. Even one of the creators of mRNA vaccines has suggested that there are dangers in rolling out these gene manipulation cocktails without more testing. Of note are concerns about longer term disorders such as autoimmune disorders and infertility.

The mainstream media and the globalists will argue that there is “no evidence” that the mRNA vaccines will cause deadly side effects or infertility. I would argue back that there is NO EVIDENCE that they are safe.

Most vaccines are tested over the course of 10-15 years before they are released to the public for use. The covid vaccines were unleashed on the public within months. Honestly, I have no intention of acting as a guinea pig for an untested vaccine.

But what if the elites know exactly what the side effects will be? What if the vaccines are a pivotal part of their “Great Reset?”

The infertility question in particular is drawing the most fire from the establishment, and I would point out a particularly insidious narrative being implanted in the media. Whenever people question the chance of sterility caused by the vaccines, bureaucrats and media talking heads go on the attack, and then say “There’s no evidence that the vaccines cause infertility, but Covid-19 might cause it…” Just watch this recent speech by the governor of Arkansas where he and his medical flunky were almost run from the podium by an angry audience for peddling the same propaganda:

View: https://youtu.be/1jMLzMpL_sE
1:36 min

And there you have it. The stage is being set, in my view, for a mass infertility event, and covid will be blamed in place of the experimental vaccines.

This is why the establishment needs a 100% vaccination rate; unvaccinated people would stand as evidence of their crime. Let me explain…

My concern is that Klaus Schwab’s reset agenda is impossible to enforce in a permanent way unless the human population is greatly reduced over a short period of time (a generation or two). Globalists are constantly talking about population control and reduction. Elites like Bill Gates are famous for it. Is it any wonder that they would devise a plan to institute it?

What if, as many experts have suggested, the vaccine side effects create this condition of a diminishing population? What if they are meant to? We will not know for certain for a couple of years at least as autoimmune disorders and infertility take time to become visible in a population. The average timeline for actually diagnosing an autoimmune disorder is 4.5 years. Infertility can take six months to a year to diagnose.

If a large population of millions of people remain unvaccinated after the next couple of years, then they will represent a sizable and undeniable control group. A control group is a group of subjects that act as a pure sample untouched by a drug or vaccine experiment. If the vaccinated group becomes ill or dies from specific conditions and the control group does not have those same conditions, then that is a pretty good sign that your vaccine or drug is poison.

The 50% of Americans and smaller percentages in other nations are a control group for the experimental vaccines. If something goes wrong with the vaccines, then we will be the proof. I suspect this is what the elites are really afraid of.
They have to force us to be vaccinated as well – ALL of us, so that there is no control group and thus no proof os what they have done. They could simply blame mass health disorders on covid itself, or some other false culprit.

If the vaccines are a Trojan horse that causes widespread illness or infertility, and the globalists get caught because a control group exists, then it will mean outright rebellion along with ropes and lampposts for them. Their “Great Reset” will fall apart.

To be sure, this might happen anyway. Vaccine passports are the line in the sand for most people. We are even seeing extensive protests and riots in places like Italy, France, UK and Australia over the draconian passport scheme. The US, though, is where the biggest fight will take place, in my opinion. We have an armed population, millions upon millions of trained combat veterans and civilians, a military with around 70% conservatives and independents and a historical understanding of asymmetric warfare. As we have seen in places like Afghanistan, tanks, jets, missiles and drones are no guarantee if victory against a guerrilla force.

Vaccine passports are not going to happen here. We simply won’t allow it.

The globalists have set in motion an end game – It could be an end game for us, but it also could be an end game for them. They are on a strict timeline. They must get near 100% vaccination rates in the next couple of years or sooner. They must get their vaccine passports in place in the next couple of years or sooner. And, they must instill permanent lockdown conditions in the near term to stifle growing dissent. We are now in a kind of race in which the globalists must implement their agenda as fast as possible while we must hold out and hold them back until the truth becomes obvious to the masses; the truth that the lockdowns, mandates and vaccines were never about safety and were always about control – from social control to population control.

 

[marsh]

The Great Reset Elite Coup: Taking Control by Destroying Cash, Reshaping the Human ‘Individual’

For many people desperate to see a return to a life that is more familiar, it is still easy to

uncanceled.news

The Great Reset Elite Coup: Taking Control by Destroying Cash, Reshaping the Human ‘Individual’

by Global Research
August 1, 2021



For many people desperate to see a return to a life that is more familiar, it is still easy to believe that the upheavals we have experienced since March 2020 and the changes that have been wrought in their train are ‘temporary’, even if they are starting to ‘drag on’ somewhat longer than hoped.

However, anyone who is paying attention to what is taking place in the background is well aware that the life we knew before 2020 has already ended and what is being systematically put in its place as the World Economic Forum (WEF) implements its ‘Great Reset’ will bear no comparison to any period prior to last year.

• See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

Of course, those of us who qualify as ‘ordinary people’ have had no say in the shape of what is being implemented: that shaping has been the prerogative of the criminal global elite which is now implementing a plan that has been decades in the making and built on hundreds of years of steady consolidation of elite power.

Also, of course, there is nothing about this shaping that is good for us.

In simple terms, it is reshaping the human ‘individual’ so that previously fundamental concepts such as human identity, human liberty, human rights (such as freedom of speech, assembly and movement), human privacy and human volition are not just notions of the past but are beyond the comprehension of the typical ‘transhuman’. At the same time, the global elite is restructuring human society into a technocratic dystopia which is a nightmarish cross between ‘Brave New World’, ‘1984’ and the Dark Age.

• See ‘Strategically Resisting the New Dark Age: The 7 Days Campaign to Resist The Great Reset’.

The only question remaining is this: ‘Can we mobilize adequate strategic resistance – that is, resistance that systematically undermines the power of the global elite to conduct this coup and restores power to ordinary people – to defeat this coup?’

But before I answer that question, I wish to highlight just one element of the elite coup that is taking place and outline the profound changes that are being left in its wake unless we stop them.

These changes are essentially related to the capacities of computerized technologies to deprive us of what little we have left of our financial autonomy, including because any notion of privacy is rapidly vanishing.

Vanishing Money
One reason for highlighting the issue of money is because while it is good to see increasing critical attention being paid to the ‘injectables’ program, with its devastating consequences for humanity, far too little attention is being paid to the profoundly important transformation being wrought under cover of the elite-driven narrative which has virtually all people’s attention distracted from this deeper agenda. And while this deeper agenda entails a great many aspects, one subset of these is related to the way in which the global financial system is being re-engineered to play its role in fully controlling the human population.

In a series of reports issued in early 2020, the Deutsche Bank claimed that ‘cash will be around for a long time’. See the three reports accessible from ‘Transition to digital payments could “rebalance global economic power”’.

However, these reports are contradicted by other research and the ongoing evidence that cash is vanishing. Most importantly, there is no doubt about the elite intention in this regard. They want cash gone.

The digitization of money has been occurring for decades and it is now being accelerated dramatically.

Moreover, the World Economic Forum and other elite organizations have been actively working towards achieving a cashless economy for years. To get a sense of this trend, see ‘Why we need a “less-cash society”’ and ‘The US should get rid of cash and move to a digital currency, says this Nobel Laureate economist’.

Notably, in this respect, the ‘Better Than Cash Alliance’ has 78 members ‘committed to digitizing payments.’ If you think that this is a grassroots initiative set up by people like you and me, you will be surprised to read that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a ‘Resource Partner’ to the initiative along with some UN agencies, many national governments and corporations such as Mastercard and Visa.

So while the trend toward a cashless society has been progressing steadily for some decades, with countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden already virtually cashless and India rapidly moving in that direction – see ‘India’s PM Modi defends cash ban, announces incentives’ – the so-called ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ was contrived partly to provide a pretext for further accelerating the move from cash to cards and apps, with increasing numbers of people using the digital methods, even for small sums, partly because some people were scared into believing that the ‘virus’ could be transmitted by bills and coins.

But there is more. In addition to measures not mentioned here, other plans include the use of a facial scan that records your entry to a store and is linked to artificial intelligence that identifies you and your credit rating. This then enables, or otherwise, your ability to pay for goods and services based on this facial scan.

‘Does all of this matter’, you might ask.

Well the convenience of cards and apps has two significant costs: your privacy and your freedom. You lose both simply because while paying with cash is anonymous, paying by card or app leaves a digital trail that is as difficult to follow as an elephant whose tail you are already holding. And this digital trail forms a vital part of the surveillance grid that enables all of those who are tracking and documenting your movement, your payments and your behaviour to do so without leaving the comfort of their chairs. For more detail on this, watch ‘Cash or card – will COVID-19 kill cash?’ which is embedded in the article ‘Cash or Card – Will COVID-19 Kill Cash? Leaving a Digital Footprint With Every Payment’.

But it goes beyond this. As touched on above in relation to privacy and explained at some length by Whitney Webb, ‘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.’ See ‘Ending Anonymity: Why the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens the Future of Privacy’.

But to get back to cash: Unfortunately for us, the global elite does not intend to leave the abolition of cash to our ‘preference for the convenience of cards’ and other moves to entice us to switch to digital payment. It fully intends to force us to accept digital methods as the only means of payment.

In part, this is because electronic payments are extremely lucrative for banks and payment service providers, while the data broker industry is also making huge revenues.

• See ‘Cash or Card – Will COVID-19 Kill Cash? Leaving a Digital Footprint With Every Payment’.

And in some ways, ‘killing cash’ is simple. Two obvious ways of doing so are by removing ATMs (including from shopping centres) and closing local bank branches so that cash is simply unavailable. As has been happening for some time.

• See ‘Why Are ATMs Disappearing at an Alarming Rate after a Wave of Branch Closures?’ and ‘Australian bank branches and ATMs are vanishing’.

But, in this instance, even profitability is at the trivial end of the elite motivation spectrum.

Cash is being forced out of existence because it undermines the elite agenda to take all power from ordinary people.

So, in parallel with other regressions over the past 18 months as the elite coup to take complete control of our lives has continued to unfold, there have been ‘warnings’ from various institutions – including the World Economic Forum and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – about the possibility of an ‘allegedly imminent cyber attack that will collapse the existing financial system’.

Following a simulation in 2020, in which the World Economic Forum along with the Russian government and global banks conducted a high-profile cyberattack simulation that targeted the financial industry, another simulation was held on 9 July 2021 involving the World Economic Forum and the Russian government-owned Sberbank as well as other key financial agents. See ‘Cyber
Polygon’ and ‘Cyber Polygon 2021’. In reality, of course, such a collapse of the financial system would constitute ‘the final yet necessary step’ to implement the World Economic Forum’s desired outcome of forcing a widespread shift ‘to digital currency and increased global governance of the international economy’.

If this financial collapse happens, the ‘solution’ suggested by key agencies – ‘to unite the national security apparatus and the finance industry first, and then use that as a model to do the same with other sectors of the economy’ – will ensure that we lose what little control is left in our lives, not just in relation to our financial resources but in all other domains as well.

• For a full explanation, see ‘WEF Warns of Cyber Attack Leading to Systemic Collapse of the Global Financial System’.

And for another account of the deeper agenda and its financial impacts already, including its ‘economic genocide’, as well as what is yet to happen, watch this interview of Catherine Austin Fitts: ‘Globalist Central Banking New World Order Reset Plan’.

Beyond this, if you want some insight into another key threat in the cybercrime realm, check out this video by the Ice Age Farmer in relation to the cyber threat to the power grid.

• See ‘“Next Crisis Bigger than COVID” – Power Grid/Finance Down – WEF’s Cyber Polygon’.

So How Can We Resist?
Fortunately, there is some resistance already.

In response to concerns in the United States that businesses that refuse cash will disadvantage communities with poor access to traditional banking systems, there are signs that ‘a national movement protecting consumers’ ability to pay in cash may be emerging’ with a number of states and cities already outlawing cashless outlets.

• See ‘Cash or Credit? State and City Bans on Cashless Retailers Are on the Rise’.

Realistically, however, given what is at stake, considerable elite pressure will be applied to reverse these decisions in time. So we need our defense to be more rigorous and less reliant on agents who are unlikely to be tough enough to defend our interests or will be sidelined or killed for doing so, as at least two national presidents who resisted the elite intention last year have since been killed.

• See ‘Coronavirus and Regime Change: Burundi’s Covid Coup’ and ‘John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter’.

Moreover, given the likelihood that the financial system will be deliberately crashed at some point – and possibly soon – we need to employ a variety of tactics, that build resilience into our resistance, to defeat this initiative.

Hence, storing and paying with cash, moving your accounts to local community banks or credit unions (and away from the large corporate banks) and making the effort to become more self-reliant, particularly in food production, will increase your resilience, as will participating in local trading schemes, whether involving local currencies or goods and services directly.

As with all elements of the defense we implement, it will need to be multi-layered and integrated into the overall defense strategy. The elite intends to kill off many of us – as the depopulation measures within the coup, including the destruction of the global economy throwing 500,000,000 people out of work and killing millions as a result, as well as the ‘injectables’ program already killing tens of thousands, make perfectly clear – and enslave the rest.

For an integrated strategy to defeat the elite coup, see the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign, which has 29 strategic goals for defeating the coup including meaningful engagement with police and military forces to assist them to understand and resist, rather than support, the elite agenda.

• But for a simpler presentation, see the 7 Days Campaign to Resist The Great Reset. The Telegram group is here.

Conclusion
One of the interesting challenges about the current ‘Covid-19 Crisis’ is that it continues to very successfully distract most people from awareness of the deeper agenda: the Global Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ and related initiatives, such as that discussed above in relation to money.

Hence, apart from the perennial problem of raising awareness and mobilizing resistance among those still believing the elite-driven propaganda, we face two key strategic hazards.

The first hazard is a longstanding one: while virtually all people believe that elite agents – in this case, governments – are controlling events, much ‘resistance’ will focus on begging governments, through such things as petitions and protest demonstrations, to ‘fix it’ for us. The elite has long dissipated our dissent by having us direct it at one or other of its agents. This case is no different. And while we are not using our occasional large rallies to inform people how to resist powerfully every day of their life, these rallies are a waste of time whatever solidarity they build in the short term. History is categorically instructive on that point.

A second strategic hazard we face is that resistance to the ‘vaccine’ and the ‘vaccine’ passport might be ‘successful’ (in the sense that concerted actions stall some government implementation of some measures in relation to these two initiatives) and leave most people believing that they have ‘won’, while the deeper agenda remains in the shadows with virtually no-one resisting.

It is important, therefore, that those who are aware of the deeper agenda continue to provide opportunities for others to become aware of this too and the fundamental threat it poses to us all while also sharing how we can resist its key dimensions in a way that makes a difference. It is not enough to complain about elite agents, such as governments, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, and the corporate media.

We must strategically resist the elite coup itself with actions such as those in the 7 Days Campaign to Resist The Great Reset before we find ourselves locked in a technocratic prison without the free-willed minds necessary to analyze, critique, plan and act.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

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"An Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As The Industry Races To Recycle

MONDAY, AUG 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
If there's one thing about the growing demand for EVs that we have tried to point out over the last month, it's the fact that the rhetoric about the "green" vehicles being perfect for the environment with little consequence isn't exactly 100% accurate.

Just over the last two months, we've written not only about how much driving needs to be done in EVs to make them better for the environment than internal combustion engine vehicles, but we've also noted that EV carbon footprints aren't necessarily as better than ICE vehicles as many people think.

Now, more questions are starting to be raised about the potential unintended consequences of the EV revolution. Notably, how can the metals used for EV batteries be recycled and reused as part of a circular economy before a materials crunch - or environmental impact from mining - negates the "green" label affixed to EV vehicles. That's the question FT delved into this week in a new report.

And who better to make it clear that recycling is an issue than former Tesla executive JB Straubel. He started a company called Redwood Materials in 2017 that is focused on trying to break down used batteries and reconstitute them into a fresh supply of metals for new ones.



Despite EVs bring zero emission while being driven, the "mining, manufacturing and disposal process for batteries could become an environmental disaster for the industry," FT wrote.

Straubel said to FT: “It’s not sustainable at all today, nor is there really an imminent plan — any disruption happening — to make it sustainable. That always grated on me a little bit at Tesla and it became more apparent as we ramped everything up.”

His company takes batteries from old smartphones, power tools and scooters, and turns them back into metals like nickel, cobalt and lithium so they can re-enter the supply chain. His goal is to stop mining from places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia and Chile, and start mining household waste.

Straubel says there's about 1 billion used batteries sitting around in households.

Gene Berdichevsky, chief executive of battery materials start-up Sila Nano, noted that there's a material amount of cobalt in smartphones compared to EV batteries: “So for every 300 smartphones you collect, you have enough cobalt for an EV battery.”

Cobalt mining is particularly resource intensive. "Cobalt can travel more than 20,000 miles from the mine to the automaker before a buyer places a 'zero emission' sticker on the bumper," FT points out.

Straubel says that EV emissions can be halved even further from where they are if batteries and metals can be continually recycled.



Redwood has raised more than $700 million from investors to hire 500 people and expand its operations. This year it'll process 20,000 tons of scrap and has already recovered enough material to build 45,000 EV battery packs.

Redwood already has partnerships with companies like Panasonic and Amazon. And companies like Apple are getting on board with the circular economy idea, which CEO Tim Cook aspiring to “not to have to remove anything from the earth to make the new iPhones”.

A circular economy with EV batteries would give the world a significant push forward to meeting net zero emissions goals. Kunal Sinha, head of copper and electronics recycling at miner Glencore, said: “For the world to hit net zero — by 2050 you can’t do it with just resource efficiency, switching to EVs and clean energy, there’s still a gap. That gap can be closed by driving the circular economy, changing how we consume things, how we reuse things, and how we recycle."

As EV adoption grows, demand for nickel, cobalt and lithium will continue to rise.

Paul Anderson, a professor at the University of Birmingham, said: “There is going to be a mass scramble for these materials. Everyone is panicking about how to get their technology on to the market and there is not enough thought [given] to recycling.”

A "crunch" for the materials will likely happen as a result of demand surpassing supply, which will take place in 2 to 3 years, according to Monica Varman, a clean tech investor at G2 Venture Partners.

Berdichevsky concluded: “In the future we’ll replace the car, but not the battery; of that I’m very confident. We haven’t even scratched the surface of the battery age, in terms of what we can do with longevity and recycling.”

 

[marsh]

Great Reset: World Economic Forum Says ‘Age of Human Robots is Over’

The World Economic Forum released a video in which "futurists" predict what human life will look like after the so-called Great Reset.

www.breitbart.com

Great Reset: World Economic Forum Declares the ‘Age of Human Robots Is Over’
496

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
KURT ZINDULKA3 Aug 20211,497

The globalist World Economic Forum has released a video in which three “futurists” predict what human life will look like after the so-called Great Reset, foretelling that technology will replace the “age of human robots”.

“Take a walk into the future,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) implored users on social media on Monday, as they presented the Great Reset technological wonders which will free humanity from manual labour in favour of work which requires “understanding what it means to be human.”

Stuart Russell of the University of California, Berkeley said in the video: “We’re getting past the last 10,000 years where we’ve used humans, by and large, engaging only a tiny fraction of human abilities and forcing people into repetitive, tedious dead-end work for the most part.”

“So the age of human robots is over and we have to figure out a new age. That means dramatic changes to the structure of our economy and society,” he declared.

In extended remarks from the Global Technology Governance Summit, Professor Russell said that people shouldn’t be afraid of automation taking their jobs for the time being, saying: “The kind of AI that people are worried about taking all the jobs doesn’t exist yet.”

Professor Amy Webb of New York University’s Stern School of Business predicted the increased use of editing genomes in order to “write a new code for life” and “redesign organisms for beneficial purposes”.

The professor said that this process has already begun with some of the coronavirus vaccines, which she noted: “make use of an engineered code in the form of messenger RNA”.

Webb went on to predict the use of “diminished reality glasses” which would enable the wearer remove unwanted things from their view, such as “garbage or other people”.

Mike Bechtel, Chief Futurist of the London-based Deloitte, said that “ambient” technology will always listen to your commands rather than needing to address specific smart speakers.

He likened the immersive tech experience to a “digital Downton Abbey” in which the “right agent” comes to aid you in each scenario.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1422150187749883905

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1422150187749883905
2:25 min

Responding to the video, anti-woke campaigner Dr James Lindsay wrote: “These freaks are excited about this stuff.”

“The genteel quasi-Marxist elitist dorks with soft hands, who want to reshape our world according to their vision, which is already failing, don’t understand that doing honest work and feeling proud of it is a huge part of ‘understanding what it means to be human’,” Lindsay said.

In June of last year, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, famously declared that the Chinese coronavirus was an opportunity for global governments to introduce a “Great Reset of capitalism“.

The globalist German engineer argued that the “world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies.”

The call for a ‘new age’ has been longstanding from the Davos-based group, with a 2016 video predicting a ‘happy’ future in which individuals no longer owned property.

“Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, ‘our city’. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes,” the WEF projected.

The World Economic Forum recently came under criticism for hailing the benefit of “quieter” cities as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns which they said have been “improving cities around the world”.

 

[marsh]

Nation of Renters

Rootless corporations, major financial institutions, and the federal government are poised to fundamentally change the way Americans live by separating them from property ownership

www.chroniclesmagazine.org

Editorials

August 2021
Nation of Renters

By Pedro Gonzalez
There is a storm on the horizon. Rootless corporations, major financial institutions, and the federal government are poised to fundamentally change the way Americans live by separating them from property ownership. The peculiar conjunctures of our time are paving a winding road to villeinage, with each turn bringing to clearer view the future of rent-serfdom awaiting most Americans.

As the nation locked down last year, rent protections that continue today sheltered tenants from eviction. Independent of intentionality, these measures kneecapped mom-and-pop landlords—individuals who are more likely to own single units, homes, and duplexes. “The long-term concern here, over the course of a few years, is that a growing share of mom-and-pop landlords will be forced to sell and rents will go up,” Peter Hepburn, an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University who researches housing inequality, told Bloomberg News.

“There’s a lot of private equity interest and a real possibility of growing consolidation.”

Many smaller landlords report vulture-like solicitations to sell from major real estate firms waiting to swoop down on the carcass. With more than 6 million renter households behind on rent, they feel as if the system is stacked against them, and for good reason.

Accompanying eviction moratoriums last year was the CARES Act. Americans took home stimulus checks, but wealthy hedge fund investors and real estate firms silently reaped billions in tax breaks while mom-and-pop landlords received comparatively little assistance. Among the financial giants that have taken a renewed interest in real estate is BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager.

BlackRock is powerfully connected both in America and abroad. It recently became the first global asset manager licensed to start a wholly-owned onshore mutual fund business in China. Domestically, Chief Executive Larry Fink has raised a shadow government of former Treasury Department officials to insulate BlackRock from regulators.

The firm’s influence is felt everywhere; it has even recently dipped into progressive politics. By using its voting power to compel Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Kroger to stop selling or severely restrict the sale of firearms and ammunition, BlackRock has practically enacted a de facto form of gun control. In April, it announced a racial audit to determine how it may have “contributed to racial inequities in the financial system.”

According to the Urban Institute, homeownership is already expected to decline over the next two decades, fueled by higher prices pushing more people toward renting. Now ordinary Americans are increasingly competing for a roof over their heads against the permanent capital of companies such as BlackRock and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which are buying single-family homes from real estate developers at double what the middle class can afford. Indeed, the country’s largest homebuilders are betting on America becoming a nation of renters, pouring billions into the built-to-rent sector with the backing of banks and private investment firms.

Entire neighborhoods are gobbled up as the stage is set for what John Burns Real Estate Consulting is calling “another speculative investor-driven home price bubble.” The firm estimates one in every five houses sold in many of the nation’s top markets is bought by someone who will never move in—in other words, as a speculative investment, often made by financial firms. Similarly, data from the Redfin real estate brokerage firm show investors bought about one of every seven homes in the first quarter of 2021. There’s even an emergent Silicon-Valley-to-Wall-Street pipeline in which private equity firms work with tech companies to buy homes before the public ever lays eyes on them.

Neoliberal media outlets like Vox have attempted to dispel concerns over Wall Street’s role in financializing homeownership, which is the foundation of the middle class. The solution, they say, is for Americans to get over their bigotry and love of open spaces, and marry mass immigration with mass real estate development, turning American residential areas into stack-and-pack metropolises, home to one billion atomized consumers. Of course, William E. Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, Vox’s major stakeholder, also happens to be on the board of Blackrock.

Meanwhile, some hail the rise of new forms of “ownership” in fractional ownership models, wherein people would own stock in entities that hold commercial and residential properties in their area. But this is nominal ownership; neighborhood real-estate investment trusts given in exchange for the financialization and further managerialization of the body politic.

Others point the finger at the Federal Reserve as the party responsible for these trends. Capital, they say, is merely capitalizing on cheap mortgage financing. But this misses a salient point: institutions like BlackRock and the Fed are joined at the hip.

As the markets strained amid the pandemic last year, Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were in close contact with Fink at BlackRock. In March, Mnuchin held scores of calls on the eve of the Fed’s unveiling of a policy package featuring its first ever program to buy corporate bonds, according to reporting by The New York Times. BlackRock was selected to purchase agency commercial mortgage-backed securities secured by multifamily-home mortgages on behalf of the Fed. In other words, a private firm was charged with implementing the government’s pandemic response.

By January 2021, the Biden administration had selected several BlackRock alumni for posts: Brian Deese, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, and Michael Pyle. Deese previously served as BlackRock’s global head of sustainable investing and was chosen to head the National Economic Council. Adeyemo, Fink’s former interim chief of staff, was named Janet Yellen’s top deputy at the Treasury Department.

Pyle, BlackRock’s global chief investment strategist and an Obama administration veteran, joined as chief economic advistor to Vice President Kamala Harris. Deese played a part in dismantling the American automotive industry, while Pyle served as BlackRock’s media mouthpiece.

In the background of this, the Biden administration declared war on the suburbs, setting its sights on single-family zoning. Its killing machine is the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The first shot was fired with the reinstating of an Obama-era fair housing rule temporarily undone under former President Donald Trump. Its purpose is to enforce the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which had already undermined constitutional property protections. The new rule to “affirmatively further fair housing” gives it lethal teeth.

Euphemistically put by HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, the rule “will require every local government that accepts federal housing dollars to make concrete and meaningful commitments toward affirmatively furthering fair housing.”

Plainly put, communities that don’t comply with the racial equity agenda by refusing to allow high-rise apartments, low-income housing, and high-density zoning in their neighborhoods will lose billions in federal funding. Under this thinking, a safe, clean community is a symptom of the disease of “structural racism”; blighting it with the squalor and anomie of the city is the cure.

“A house with a white picket fence and a big backyard for a Fourth of July barbecue may be a staple of the American dream,” explains a sympathetic USA Today reporter, “but experts and local politicians say multifamily zoning is key to combating climate change, racial injustice and the nation’s growing affordable housing crisis.”

Resistance is not only futile—it is “racist,” and HUD will financially strangle communities that resist their dispossession.

The “why” for Democrats is obvious. They win elections in cities, especially in big cities. This is the iron law of politics for our time. Bringing the city to where you live means increasing their electoral power. The annihilation of single-family zoning would also provide a boon for corporations and investment firms that are now in the business of buying up neighborhoods and consolidating properties into rentals. Areas traditionally zoned for single-family housing would, luckily for Wall Street, be invaded by apartment buildings and multifamily units. “While investors have been buying more single-family homes during the pandemic, they still have the biggest market share in the multifamily sector,” according to Redfin.

The Romans, Machiavelli noted, saw problems from afar, and these trends have coalesced to form brooding storm clouds on the horizon. Cynics, ideologues, and capital are forming a front, aided by the zeitgeist and farce of anti-racism.

Yet few sound the alarm, and fewer still have a response apart from downplaying or even celebrating our becoming a nation of renters.

 

[marsh]

Gen Z Conservative

The views and perspectives of a conservative college student on a wide variety of topics that interest young conservatives and conservatives of all ages.

genzconservative.com

The Great Reset: The Global Elite’s Plan to Radically Remake Our Economic and Social Lives



The Great Reset is upon us…or at least the powers that be are trying to bring it out. What was once a fringe “conspiracy theory” is now on display plain as day for everyone to see. The economic, political, academic, and media elites around the world are leveraging the chaos, confusion, and restrictions on liberty from the COVID-19 lockdowns and using them to radically alter society around the world.

What will this change look like? The global elites want to create a society of renters who own nothing, while also pushing a social agenda that would be unpopular with the unwashed masses and difficult to implement in a society with a broad, ownership-based middle class. What this means is that you would rent not just your home, but also your phone, computer, car (though you probably will “carshare,” the term for renting a car when you need one for an extended period and summoning one when you need it for a ride), and even the pots and pans you cook with.

The flip side of this will be a radical transformation of the world economy. No longer will you have a job in the sense that it has traditionally been understood.\

Instead, you will work various and sundry “gigs,” all of which place you in a precarious position at any given time. You will receive a fee for services performed, with no benefits, paid time off, healthcare, or anything else that the middle class in the West has become accustomed to.

To facilitate the Great Reset, rural populations will have to be coerced into more concentrated population centers since dispersed populations have too high a “carbon footprint.” The suburbs will be a thing of the past as suburbs and exurbs become more like cities. Mixed-use housing, where you and 500 other people live in a mid-rise condo hive with shops and “workshare” spaces (the new version of an office – on your dime, not your employer’s) in the same area.

The short version is that it’s a total end to the American way of life, specifically the way of life of most of the Western middle class. The specifics, including the why, are a longer story that you’re going to want to read if you want to be ready to fight against the Great Reset.

What is the Great Reset?
Knowing what the Great Reset is can be difficult because official sources on the matter – World Economic Forum, the primary mover behind the Great Reset, and its affiliated organizations and individuals – cloak their aims in vague euphemisms like the main slogan for the Great Reset, “build back better.”

We have discussed in our articles on Cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory in public schools, and, George Soros how the enemies of freedom often use vague, non-specifically positive language for their projects. These are generally words that, when taken at face value, no one could possibly disagree with. Who would be against building back better?

These words mean something else and one should not accept at face value the idea that the Great Reset is simply “building back better” any more than one should accept at face value the claim that four out of five doctors smoke Camels.

So what is the Great Reset?
At its core, the Great Reset is an attempt to enforce socialism through private companies rather than only through the government. Think of it as “socialism with Amazon Prime characteristics.” That being said, the government will certainly play a role in the Great Reset by angling for higher taxes, which the wealthy will be able to avoid using armies of lawyers and accountants; adding additional bureaucratic red tape, which the wealthy will avoid using the same armies of lawyers, connections, and special carveouts; and growing big government social programs a la the New Deal, which will disproportionately benefit the wealthy and preferred underclass who will be weaponized against the broad middle class. An excellent example of a Great Reset program in the United States is the proposed Green New Deal, which we will discuss in greater detail later.

Here is a glimpses of how the Great Reset will look:

• “Sharing Economy:” everything is rented and nothing is owned
• Digital media: it will be easier to ban and suppress books and videos that run contrary to prevailing narratives
• Social Media Restrictions: the de facto public square, will be restricted to those who tout the latest version of elite narratives.
• A de facto social credit system: those who deviate from the narrative will be financially blacklisted, including loss of their dubious “benefits” which will increasingly become necessary for ordinary life amd even survival
• Centralization of Housing and Land: fewer and fewer Americans will own the property they live in and on
• “Racial Equity”: some races will be more equal than others, with preferred groups becoming the recipients of generous benefit programs funded by the less preferred groups, who increasingly become tax slaves
• Climate Change: protection of the environment will be used as an excuse to reduce the standard of living for the middle class, increase restrictions on freedom of movement, and even access to food
• Ground-level goons will operate with impunity to attack enemies of the system in coordinated outbreaks of violence and intimidation
• Concentrated Wealth: wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the regime and its allies which will be used as economic leverage to control political discourse and personal freedom

Is The Great Reset Real?
This might all sound a little far-fetched; however, unlike other alleged “conspiracy theories” which require a great amount of research to prove are true, the Great Reset is right out there in the open for everyone to see. The people pushing it brag about it, speak of it openly, craft propaganda campaigns around it, refer to it explicitly by name, and get publicly frustrated and angry when the “dog isn’t going to eat the dog food.”

A video of Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum, the primary global elite institution pushing for the Great Reset, went viral. It is only about 40 seconds and well worth the time it takes to watch. You’ll see the Great Reset logo right behind Schwab in the same font as the World Economic Forum logo. Additionally, Schwab explicitly speaks of the Great Reset and his frustration with the COVID-19 pandemic in that it has not been as effective as he would like in pushing the Great Reset.

Klaus Schwab isn’t some random guy on Twitter or a blogger with a couple dozen readers, he is an extremely powerful man and head of one of the most important elite globalist organization in the world, the World Economic Forum.

The Great Reset is larger than a single 40-second viral clip. There’s an entire page about it on the World Economic Forum’s website, including a lot of vague language that doesn’t tell you much of what it actually. Time‘s website includes a rather massive cache of articles pushing the subject as unassailably good and beyond question or reproach. A video on the World Economic Forum’s YouTube channel is effectively a five-minute PSA of talking points on the subject.

Alarmingly, the BBC and others are running articles encouraging you not to believe your own lying eyes, insisting that this is a conspiracy theory not rooted in fact. Additionally, Wikipedia includes an entire section assuring you that the “conspiracy theory” of the Great Reset bears no relation to the pure, noble intentions of people like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and Tony Blair.

The Great Reset is clearly real, but how do the powers that be intend to force it on the world?

Grooming for a Police State
Whether one thinks that the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions were a good faith response to a public health emergency or not is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it accustomed Americans and Westerners to significant restrictions on their freedoms, including freedom of movement. More than that, it showed those in power that people that if you created enough fear, Americans would tolerate the restrictions.

Thus, consciously or not, global elites were grooming the world population for a police state. Fortunately, there has been some pushback and vaccine passports are encountering stiff resistance from both elected officials and the general population at large. For most of 2020 and 2021, the most freedom loving people on earth – Americans – were walking around with dirty, useless masks on to comply with a government mandate. A mandate that after further scrutiny, made no sense. Americans even allowed their children to be subjected to this as a condition of attending school.

The COVID-19 lockdowns were not the first time that Americans were groomed for police state – TSA is the biggest example of this, however, we also see examples of this in our public schools with metal detectors and warrantless searches.

If nothing else, the elites learned that there is just about nothing that America and the world will not tolerate provided that you scare them enough. The burning question now is how will Americans be scared into further erosions of their liberties?

Part 1 of 2

 

[marsh]

Part 2 of 2

The Sky Is Falling: Climate Austerity and the Great Reset
The most likely answer is through climate austerity. There have already been musings among the COVID-19 lockdown warriors that one of the best things about the lockdowns is that they significantly reduced carbon emissions, thus saving the planet during the period when people were locked down. The natural conclusion is that climate lockdowns are a viable solution to climate change.

Whether or not one believes that climate change exists and is caused by humans is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not the burden of fixing the planet – if such a thing is necessary and possible – ought to be borne by individual consumers and the common man. Perhaps not surprisingly, billionaire plutocrats like Bill Gates (a big booster of COVID-19 lockdowns and the Great Reset) think that it ought to be.

This is the real meaning of “we’re all in this together.” Does anyone honestly believe that Davos attendees like Bill Gates will be living in dense, mixed-use communities or eating cricket patties as their primary source of protein? Of course not. They will continue to live the affluent lifestyles that they currently live in while the rest of us suffer.

The idea that you and I ought to bear the burden of climate change is called “climate austerity.” It is the belief that the average man must tighten his belt and lower his standard of living in what might well be a totally Quixotic attempt to save the planet. It is a concept closely tied to the Great Reset and an example of how something other than another pandemic might be used to get Americans and the rest of the world to radically change their notion of what they’re “allowed” to do.

We should all recall back that poorly aged phrase “14 days to stop the spread.”

How many times did the goalposts move? Where are we with that as you read this? First we were told that we needed to “flatten the curve.” Then there needed to be a vaccine. Then the vaccine wasn’t enough. The point is, that COVID-19 became a perpetual excuse for the elites to enact whatever “emergency” measures they wanted – all for your own safety, of course.

An integral part of climate austerity is the war on private transportation, commercial flights, and freedom of travel. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg floated a mileage tax and many measures advanced by the Green New Deal that would effectively ban private transportation, due to the high cost – again, you will be impacted by this but the elites will not. It seems that there is almost a weekly outrage against pickup trucks on Twitter.

The real reason for this is to control the free movement of people. The agenda here has nothing to do with stated goals and everything to do with locking you down, reducing your standard of living, abolishing your way of life, and subjecting every aspect of your life to control by powerful elites.

The Great Reset in Action: Blackrock Creates a Nation of Renters
BlackRock is a private equity firm that has been offering absurd prices for residential homes in the suburbs. They don’t plan to flip them and turn a profit.

Rather, the plan is to buy homes at 50 percent above asking with the purpose of transforming these homes into rental properties. BlackRock’s acquisition of the suburbs is part of a larger issue that grew out of COVID-19, but is closely related to the Great Reset – the increased centralization of the American economy.

While isolated conservatives such as Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to defend the “free market” principles of venture capital speculating on the market using free money from the Federal Reserve (with full knowledge that they will be bailed out if things go south), most recognized BlackRock’s attempt to corner the housing market for what it is. It was a transparent move to transform America into a society of modern serfs. Renters who own nothing can be moved around at the whims of Big Money or financially blacklisted if they step out of line.

BlackRock is certainly villainous, but they represent a broader trend not just limited to the housing market, the concentration of wealth as a weapon. The Bernie Sanders left focuses on “wealth inequality,” which is simply a fact of life that cannot be done away with. “The poor,” Christ told us, “you will always have with you.” People having more than other people isn’t a social problem, but a few people owning everything is, because it is simply socialism (centralized control) by other means. It also dramatically reduces the number of people with skin in the game making the economic and social atmosphere extremely volatile.

One company, or a handful of them, who dominate the housing market are dangerous for a variety of reasons. Chief among these reasons is the ability to weaponize this control over housing against critics of the regime. Who needs the government to enact a social credit system when the national landlord has one?
Of course, the usual dummies will defend this because it’s being done by a private corporation.

It is worth briefly noting that the eviction moratorium favors large landlords who can go months or years without an income over smaller ones, who cannot. The moratorium was enacted by the CDC, which apparently now has the authority to control rental properties in the United States.

The Great Reset in Action: Social Credit
The Great Reset is all in on “racial equity,” a term that appeared almost out of nowhere around the 2020 election and has been used unrelentingly since in the mainstream press as if it were a word everyone always used. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

“Equity” effectively means, not to lean quite too heavily on Orwell, that all races are equal but some races are more equal than others. This is a key goal of the Great Reset. The argument basically goes that the only way to address racial disparities in the United States is by extended special benefits and privileges to allegedly “oppressed” groups.

Because government benefit programs are a zero-sum game, these assistance programs, and special privileges will have to be paid for by someone else. For every dollar of benefit money doled out, a dollar of income is lost by someone else. For every job or university position reserved for a protected class, something is lost by someone else.

A key part of the push for “equity” is attacks on people who oppose it. Equity as an ideology is tied up with a bundle of other ideas pushed by Cultural Marxists and the extremely similar but unrelated phenomenon of George Soros “Open Society” types.

The important part, as far as we are concerned, is that concentrated wealth is better able to enforce the prevailing diktats of ideology. When small business evaporates, it is easier to enforce social programs using the private sector. Similarly, when ownership becomes increasingly concentrated, it is easier to enforce a de facto social credit system. The value system of corporate elites is well known.

Conservatives are already being denied bank accounts because of their beliefs, and the beliefs that warrant financial blacklisting are increasingly expanded. It is not too much to imagine that in the very near future, financial blacklisting and social ostracism, enforced by Big Tech and Big Finance, will come to include any critics of so-called racial equity or any other aspect of regime ideology.

In general, what you’re looking at is a system where there are far fewer poles of financial and social attraction, and that these few remaining poles are increasingly inseparable from the state. This is the essence of fascism in its definition not as anyone’s set of ideological or political principles, but as the system of governance where there is little to no daylight between the corporate sector and the administrative state.

Why the Great Reset?
We cannot speculate as to the internal motives of any man. What we can do is talk about the tangible effects that policies have here in the real world. The primary tangible effect of the Great Reset is an increased amount of power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, all of whom are hostile toward you, your values, and your way of life.

It might have been a happy accident that the greatest wealth transfer in human history happened during the COVID-19 lockdowns, or it might have been by design. Regardless, the upward wealth transfer happened. Success rarely satiates, rather it fuels a hunger for more success. We should see this wealth transfer as a prelude to an even larger wealth transfer that is forthcoming.

Additionally, the Western middle class sits on an enormous reserve of wealth in the form of homeownership and retirement funds. These are the white whales of the global elite. One would be a fool, given all of the evidence, to believe that they would stop at anything to acquire this massive reserve of wealth.

To the extent that it is possible, we must make ourselves more resilient. This means owning land, having your own well, a supply of food to weather the storm, adequate supplies of ammunition, useful skills, and close community bonds. It also means sounding the alarm bells about elite propaganda campaigns, legislative maneuvers, and bureaucratic fiats designed to destroy you.

Prepare to dig in for a long winter.

 

[marsh]

Biden to Sign Order to Have 50% of US Auto Sales Electric by 2030 | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

Joe Biden will announce a new order to have 40% to 50% of US auto sales electric by 2030.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Biden to Sign Order to Have 50% of US Auto Sales Electric by 2030

By Cristina Laila
Published August 5, 2021 at 1:05pm

Joe Biden will announce a new order to have 40% to 50% of US auto sales electric by 2030.

Since the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, the Biden Admin will just force the EVs on the population.

Electric vehicles cost between $50,0000 to $300,000 and they take HOURS to fully charge the battery.

“We have got to act, the transportation sector is the biggest part of our economy emitting greenhouse gases, and cars and trucks are one of the biggest parts of that,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNBC.

Joe Biden will also be announcing a proposed federal fuel economy and emission standards through the 2026 model-year, CNBC said.

CNBC reported:

President Joe Biden will set a new national target on Thursday for the adoption of electric vehicles, calling for them to represent half of all new auto sales by 2030, according to senior administration officials.

The target is expected to be supported by companies such as General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler. Executives of the Detroit automakers are scheduled to attend an event Thursday at the White House and pledge EV sales of between 40% and 50% by 2030.

Though the president will sign an executive order, the sales target is not mandatory. Instead, the document encourages the U.S. auto industry and government to promote legislation and the adoption of electrified vehicles. The target includes zero-emission vehicles powered by fuel cells and batteries as well as plug-in hybrid models with internal combustion engines.

The order “doesn’t function as a mandate, but it does create the conditions for us to meet that goal,” Treasury Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “We have got to act, the transportation sector is the biggest part of our economy emitting greenhouse gases, and cars and trucks are one of the biggest parts of that.”

One in five electric vehicle owners in California switched back to gas-powered because of the inconvenience of charging.

It only takes a few minutes to fill up a gas tank, yet some electric vehicles need several hours of charging to drive 35 miles.

Charging electric vehicles is a total “hassle” say 20% of EV owners surveyed between 2012 and 2018 so they’re going back to gas, researchers found.

Electric buses are melting in the California heat, catching fire and cost too much to fix.

The Biden Admin and the Marxists in California are trying to force electric vehicles onto American citizens through “infrastructure” plans and executive orders.

 

[marsh]

Hidden on Page 508 of the Infrastructure Bill Is a Plan to Make It Too Expensive to Drive a Car

The 2,702-page 'infrastructure' bill includes a proposal that could make driving a car unaffordable for many Americans.

www.westernjournal.com

Hidden on Page 508 of the Infrastructure Bill Is a Plan to Make It Too Expensive to Drive a Car


Taylor Penley August 4, 2021 at 3:07pm

The cost of living is on the rise, calls for yet another wave of pandemic restrictions have begun and now, buried deep in the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, the left has laid out yet another idea to bring Americans to their knees.

Make no mistake: The suffering is intentional, goal-oriented and not bound to stop anytime soon.

Still, one proposal in the 2,702 page infrastructure bill seems especially cruel — cruel enough to make it too expensive for many Americans to even drive a car.

Nick Short of the Claremont Institute highlighted an item on Pages 508-519 of the bill that would introduce a national per-mile motor vehicle user fee on a trial basis.

“Buried on page 508 of the 2,702 page infrastructure bill is a pilot program for a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee (MBUF) which is basically a long-term plan to make it too expensive to drive a car,” Short said Tuesday on Twitter.



The pilot program is set up “to test the design, acceptance, implementation, and financial sustainability of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee, to address the need for additional revenue for surface transportation infrastructure and a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee” and “to provide recommendations relating to the adoption and implementation of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee,” the bill says.

An article from The Lid Blog attached to Short’s tweet detailed the proposal even further, breaking down each component, from the program’s objectives to its proposal that “volunteers” from each state should discover different ways to collect data on miles driven by “both commercial and private vehicle operators.”

On Page 513, the proposal says that the “Secretary of the Treasury shall establish, on an annual basis, per-mile user fees for passenger motor vehicles, light trucks, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks.”

In theory, these per-mile user fees would vary by vehicle contingent upon several factors, including — you guessed it — environmental impact.

To ease any apprehension about participating in the pilot program, the measure indicates that participants’ identities will be protected, perhaps, as The Lid said, to prevent ostracization “if this happens and achieves the desired result.”

The left can chalk up this test run of what eventually might turn into a full-blown measure to make owning a vehicle next-to-impossible as an effort to be “environmentally conscious,” but is it instead another way to cripple our existing ways of life?

We might dismiss it now, but imagine telling yourself five years ago that the government would order small business closures, codify when and how Americans could worship and adopt an increasingly draconian “do as I say, not as I do” policy to address a global pandemic.

From the way we work to the way we breathe, so many aspects of our lives have already changed — albeit willingly, for some.

What’s so different about changing how we get to one place from another?

With $10 million dedicated to this program for each year from 2022 to 2026, it’s easy to see how the government doles out what it acquires from hardworking Americans.

Any Republican lawmakers who vote in favor of this “bipartisan” bill have no right to label themselves “conservative.”

This proposal is the antithesis of conservatism.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Toyota Warns (Again) About Electrifying All Autos. Is Anyone Listening?

FRIDAY, AUG 06, 2021 - 02:05 PM

Despite Biden's dreams... The world is not yet ready to support a fully electric auto fleet.
Authored by Bryan Preston via PJMedia.com,

Depending on how and when you count, Japan’s Toyota is the world’s largest automaker. According to Wheels, Toyota and Volkswagen vie for the title of the world’s largest, with each taking the crown from the other as the market moves.

That’s including Volkswagen’s inherent advantage of sporting 12 brands versus Toyota’s four. Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bugatti, and Bentley are included in the Volkswagen brand family.



GM, America’s largest automaker, is about half Toyota’s size thanks to its 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring. Toyota is actually a major car manufacturer in the United States; in 2016 it made about 81% of the cars it sold in the U.S. right here in its nearly half a dozen American plants. If you’re driving a Tundra, RAV4, Camry, or Corolla it was probably American-made in a red state. Toyota was among the first to introduce gas-electric hybrid cars into the market, with the Prius twenty years ago. It hasn’t been afraid to change the car game.

All of this is to point out that Toyota understands both the car market and the infrastructure that supports it perhaps better than any other manufacturer on the planet. It hasn’t grown its footprint through acquisitions, as Volkswagen has, and it hasn’t undergone bankruptcy and bailout as GM has. Toyota has grown by building reliable cars for decades.

When Toyota offers an opinion on the car market, it’s probably worth listening to. This week, Toyota reiterated an opinion it has offered before. That opinion is straightforward: The world is not yet ready to support a fully electric auto fleet.

Toyota’s head of energy and environmental research Robert Wimmer testified before the Senate this week, and said:

“If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability.”

Wimmer’s remarks come on the heels of GM’s announcement that it will phase out all gas internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2035. Other manufacturers, including Mini, have followed suit with similar announcements.

Tellingly, both Toyota and Honda have so far declined to make any such promises. Honda is the world’s largest engine manufacturer when you take its boat, motorcycle, lawnmower, and other engines it makes outside the auto market into account. Honda competes in those markets with Briggs & Stratton and the increased electrification of lawnmowers, weed trimmers, and the like.

Wimmer noted that while manufactures have announced ambitious goals, just 2% of the world’s cars are electric at this point. For price, range, infrastructure, affordability, and other reasons, buyers continue to choose ICE over electric, and that’s even when electric engines are often subsidized with tax breaks to bring pricetags down.

The scale of the switch hasn’t even been introduced into the conversation in any systematic way yet. According to FinancesOnline, there are 289.5 million cars just on U.S. roads as of 2021. About 98 percent of them are gas-powered. Toyota’s RAV4 took the top spot for purchases in the U.S. market in 2019, with Honda’s CR-V in second. GM’s top seller, the Chevy Equinox, comes in at #4 behind the Nissan Rogue. This is in the U.S. market, mind. GM only has one entry in the top 15 in the U.S. Toyota and Honda dominate, with a handful each in the top 15.

Toyota warns that the grid and infrastructure simply aren’t there to support the electrification of the private car fleet. A 2017 U.S. government study found that we would need about 8,500 strategically-placed charge stations to support a fleet of just 7 million electric cars. That’s about six times the current number of electric cars but no one is talking about supporting just 7 million cars. We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years, if all manufacturers follow GM and stop making ICE cars.

Simply put, we’re gonna need a bigger energy boat to deal with connecting all those cars to the power grids. A LOT bigger.

View: https://youtu.be/QT9BeGNnCqw
.21 min

But instead of building a bigger boat, we may be shrinking the boat we have now. The power outages in California and Texas — the largest U.S. states by population and by car ownership — exposed issues with powering needs even at current usage levels. Increasing usage of wind and solar, neither of which can be throttled to meet demand, and both of which prove unreliable in crisis, has driven some coal and natural gas generators offline. Wind simply runs counter to needs — it generates too much power when we tend not to need it, and generates too little when we need more. The storage capacity to account for this doesn’t exist yet.

We will need much more generation capacity to power about 300 million cars if we’re all going to be forced to drive electric cars. Whether we’re charging them at home or charging them on the road, we will be charging them frequently.

Every gas station you see on the roadside today will have to be wired to charge electric cars, and charge speeds will have to be greatly increased. Current technology enables charges in “as little as 30 minutes,” according to Kelly Blue Book. That best-case-scenario fast charging cannot be done on home power. It uses direct current and specialized systems. Charging at home on alternative current can take a few hours to overnight to fill the battery, and will increase the home power bill. That power, like all electricity in the United States, comes from generators using natural gas, petroleum, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, or hydroelectric power according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. I left out biomass because, despite Austin, Texas’ experiment with purchasing a biomass plant to help power the city, biomass is proving to be irrelevant in the grand energy scheme thus far. Austin didn’t even turn on its biomass plant during the recent freeze.

Half an hour is an unacceptably long time to spend at an electron pump. It’s about 5 to 10 times longer than a current trip to the gas pump tends to take when pumps can push 4 to 5 gallons into your tank per minute. That’s for consumer cars, not big rigs that have much larger tanks. Imagine the lines that would form at the pump, every day, all the time, if a single charge time isn’t reduced by 70 to 80 percent. We can expect improvements, but those won’t come without cost. Nothing does. There is no free lunch. Electrifying the auto fleet will require a massive overhaul of the power grid and an enormous increase in power generation. Elon Musk recently said we might need double the amount of power we’re currently generating if we go electric. He’s not saying this from a position of opposing electric cars. His Tesla dominates that market and he presumably wants to sell even more of them.

Toyota has publicly warned about this twice, while its smaller rival GM is pushing to go electric. GM may be virtue signaling to win favor with those in power in California and Washington and in the media. Toyota’s addressing reality and its record is evidence that it deserves to be heard.

Toyota isn’t saying none of this can be done, by the way. It’s just saying that so far, the conversation isn’t anywhere near serious enough to get things done.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Biden Administration Targets 50% Of Entire Auto Fleet To Be Electric By 2030

FRIDAY, AUG 06, 2021 - 12:50 PM

In continuing one of the largest government subsidized shifts to the auto industry ever forced upon manufacturers and customers, the Biden administration is now reportedly targeting 2030 to have 50% of the auto fleet on the road electric.

On Thursday of this week Biden issued an executive order to supplement this target, also proposing new vehicle emission standards that would cut pollution through 2026, starting with a 10% stringency increase in the 2023 model year, according to Reuters.

"The biggest thing that’s happening here is there’s a realization, on the part of both labor and business now, that this is the future. We can’t sit by," Biden said this week.



U.S. automakers slyly embraced the target, noting that it would "require billions of dollars in government funding" to accomplish.

But, of course, there's always some tree-hugging environmentalist group that isn't going to be happy enough. In this case it was the "Safe Climate Transport Campaign", who said that Biden didn't go far enough. They also called the commitment of automakers "unreliable".

GM, Ford and Stellantis collectively issued a statement saying they wanted "to achieve sales of 40-50% of annual U.S. volumes of electric vehicles ... by 2030." To make it happen, the Biden administration and the automakers are planning on using a combination of fully electric, fuel cell, and hybrid vehicles.

Conspicuously absent from the presser was Tesla, whose exclusion from the event prompted speculation about whether or not the company's anti-union stance played a role (or, if something else could be brewing in the background regarding the company). When asked about the omission, Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete ducked the question - twice.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1423248466004914176

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1423248466004914176
1:30 min

Biden doesn't seem keen on setting a binding requirement for the automakers, nor has he set a nationwide date for banning the sale of all gasoline powered vehicles, like California has done.

UAW President Ray Curry simply said his union was focused "on preserving the wages and benefits that have been the heart and soul of the American middle class."

"Flexibility is important ... but at the same token you need to set ambitious goals," said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan.

Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign said:

“Voluntary pledges from auto companies make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight look like a legally binding contract."

Nonetheless, Biden signed the executive order at the White House before jumping into an electric Jeep and driving around the grounds.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ7B0lwdd9c
12:02 min

Almost every prominent politician has relationship with the Communist Party USA | Counter Punch [Trevor Loudon]

Aug 7, 2021

The Epoch Times

 

[marsh]

IPCC: Redefining ‘Global Warming’ at the 11th Hour

On what planet is it OK for politically-determined definitions to supersede those written by actual scientists?

nofrakkingconsensus.com

IPCC: Redefining ‘Global Warming’ at the 11th Hour

On what planet is it OK for politically-determined definitions to supersede those written by actual scientists?


IPCC website (click)

Two weeks ago, the media announced the arrival of a new report prepared by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But that 1,200-page document still hasn’t been officially released.

Instead, journalists have been relying on a 34-page Summary for Policymakers – which is actually one of the strangest documents you’ll ever encounter. Normally, after someone writes a report, they write a summary that strives to accurately represent it. After making both the report and the summary public, they move on.

Not the IPCC. Its website tells us 16 pages worth of changes are now being made to the underlying Scientific-Technical Assessment to “ensure consistency with the approved Summary for Policymakers.”

Astonishingly, at this eleventh hour, the definitions of key terms are being altered. The authors – whom the BBC recently described as “top scientists from around the world” – had defined ‘global warming’ in a particular manner. They chose their language, we must presume, with care and deliberation. In their view this term is properly defined as:

An increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) averaged over a 30-year period, relative to 1850-1900 unless otherwise specified. For periods shorter than 30 years, global warming refers to the estimated average temperature over the 30 years centred on that shorter period, accounting for the impact of any temperature fluctuations or trend within those 30 years. [see p. 25 here]

But page 16 of the list of changes tells us the above text is being replaced. The official version of this report will say something different:

The estimated increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) averaged over a 30-year period, or the 30-year period centered on a particular year or decade, expressed relative to preindustrial levels unless otherwise specified. For 30-year periods that span past and future years, the current multi-decadal warming trend is assumed to continue. [bold added]

I’m not a scientist immersed in these matters, so I’m not equipped to weigh and measure the full significance of this new definition. But it appears immediately evident that an explicit assumption has been embedded into it despite the fact that the scientists themselves chose not to go there.

The glossary definitions of other key concepts are also being altered (see pages 15-16 here):

• global mean surface temperature
• global mean surface air temperature
• carbon dioxide removal
• mitigation (of climate change)
• negative emissions

Science loses. Politics win. That’s how things work in IPCC land.

Step 1: experts write a report
Step 2: experts draft a summary
Step 3: third parties (non-experts such as lawyers and diplomats representing UN recognized nations) attend secret, off-limits-to-the-media meetings where the summary gets re-written
Step 4: these same third parties vote to “approve” their re-write, thereby giving it official status
Step 5: the re-write is released to the world at a press conference – voilà the Summary for Policymakers
Step 6: officials revisit the original, full-length document and make 16 pages worth of changes

Many of these changes appear to be trivial. But if nothing of significance is going on why are these meetings secret?

More to the point: On what planet is it OK for politically-determined definitions to supersede those written by actual scientists?

As the author of two books about the IPCC, I’ve spent years trying to explain that this preposterous organization was designed to function in this manner and has done so for 30 years. It should never be mistaken for a scientific body.
.
LINKS:

The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert Donna Laframboise

• the IPCC webpage as it appears today has been archived here
• the 16 pages of changes – called ‘tricklebacks’ in IPCC-speak – have been archived here
• my previous IPCC commentary:
• 3 Things Scientists Need to Know About the IPCC
• Mysterious IPCC Expertise
• The IPCC’s Cynical Ploy
• The Last Chance Climate Saloon
• IPCC Pretends the Scientific Publishing Crisis Doesn’t Exist
• BBC Ignores Widely Publicized IPCC Problems
• Where’s the Science at the IPCC?
• US Scientific Integrity Rules Repudiate the UN Climate Process
• Cogs in the Climate Machine

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnM7WVPjWyM
4:58 min

The Great Reset’s destruction of property will TRAP us in POVERTY
Aug 9, 2021


Glenn Beck

Glenn explains how the far-left elite — partnered with The Fed and big banks — will slowly but surely destroy the average American’s ability to buy homes in middle-class neighborhoods. In fact, he says, proponents of The Great Reset have ADMITTED their goal is to destroy private property and this is one of their steps towards making that a reality. If they’re successful, Glenn says, they’ll TRAP us in poverty.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bryeIT3eZyA
1:05:47 min

The Government’s Plan to DESTROY Small Business | Carol Roth | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 112

Premiered Aug 7, 2021


Glenn Beck

America’s small businesses took a massive hit in 2020. But was this because of the COVID-19 pandemic, or is the government’s unprecedented response to blame? “Recovering investment banker” Carol Roth joins Glenn to break it all down, and the truth goes much deeper than we’ve been told. As Carol describes in her new book, “The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America,” wealth redistribution in America is already underway, as money is funneled from Main Street to Wall Street, and it’s ushering in the successor to capitalism: central planning. Carol puts into layman’s terms the latest on inflation, the housing crisis, social credit scores, cryptocurrency, and the Great Reset — and it’s all part of a “war” on your ability to create your own wealth

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

The Problem With Climate-Change Politics

SATURDAY, AUG 14, 2021 - 08:10 AM
Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, GOLD

Climate change bears all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored crisis, useful to shift attention from other political failures. But the absence of financial accountability which characterises government actions also introduces behavioural errors.

The absence of a profit motive in any state action exposes the relationship between governments and their electors to psychological factors. We all know that governments use propaganda and other tools to manage crowd psychology and influence their electorates. What is less understood is that governments themselves are misled by a crowd psychology in its own ranks which contributes to policy failure.

This article does not question the climate change debate itself. Instead, it examines the debate in the context of the psychology driving it. The release of government-sponsored propaganda on climate change in the form of a unanimous IPCC report predicting the end of the world as we know it is the latest example of a political and bureaucratic phenomenon, making the timing of this article apposite.


Introduction
Western economies have moved on from free markets to the point where they hardly exist in the true meaning of the phrase. Yet the state continually claims that it is free markets that fail, not government.

The reason governments fail in economic terms is that economic calculation is never part of their brief, and nor can it be. By economic calculation, we mean taking positive actions aimed at a profitable outcome. To survive and prosper, businesses and individuals must do this all the time — the only exception being when they can rely on the state to underwrite their failures, which is why established businesses encourage statist regulation to place hurdles in the way of upstart competitors. And why at an individual level there is a ready demand for state welfare.

But political objectives cannot involve profit and therefore economic calculation.

Instead of economic calculation, a responsible state can only manage its tax revenues efficiently to minimise its impact on the producers in the economy and to achieve affordable social outcomes in the context of a realistic consensus. The problem is deciding where the line is drawn between what is reasonable and what is not. It is also the line that determines who in the distant future will go down in history as a statesman or as a political flaneur.

Political objectives in the narrowest sense were the focus in America until the days of President Hoover, who broadened the political mandate into interventionism, followed by the modern-day hero for socialist economists, Franklin D Roosevelt. Nearly a century of increasing socialistic intervention since Hoover has led us into a socio-political system whose dubious achievements are not much more than monetary debasement and the repeated failure of statist ambitions.

It’s not just America; it’s all advanced nations. Regular readers of Goldmoney articles will be aware of the inflationary consequences of promoting neo-Keynesian interventionism and to where it all leads. But over the last thirty years and more we have seen the same state-sponsoring of self-serving scientists in fields other than just economics. Especially relevant today is climate change, because this highly politicised topic is now determining the course of capital investment in the commercial sector instead of profitable objectives.

Scientists, with no experience of climatology have been jumping on the global warming bandwagon for decades, milking state funds allocated for research aimed at proving that homo stultus is responsible for global warming. And when that didn’t arrive on frequently predicted schedules, global warming was renamed climate change.

Time for a reality check
It is time for a reality check, because on flimsy evidence climate policy is becoming overtly economically destructive, more so than any other statist intervention, outside monetary policy, in peacetime. The following quote from the popular Guido Fawkes website sums it up well:

The UN has been predicting planetary disaster for decades, usually scheduled to happen in about a decade’s time. In 1972 – half a century ago – Maurice Strong, the first UN Environment Programme director warned that the world “had just 10 years to avoid catastrophe”. In 1982 his successor, Mostafa Tolba, the then head of the UN Environment Programme told the world that it had just 18 years before “an environmental catastrophe as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust”. Yet 2000 came and went and we just partied like it was 1999…

As sea levels would rise, we were told that the Maldives islands would be under water over a decade ago, they’re building more luxury hotels. We were told the source of the great Ganges River in the Himalayas, the glaciers, would have melted long ago. The great Ganges River still flows, and the glaciers are still there. The Australian Great Barrier reef would be dead, it is alive and thriving. We were told by the UN Food Programme in the sixties that Earth could not feed a growing population and that the future was bleak with much of humanity facing starvation. The earth’s population has more than doubled since the sixties with fewer people in absolute poverty…

Before Maurice Strong, predictions that the end is nigh were generally confined to lunatics bearing placards, believers in predictions contained in the Book of Revelations, and leftist CND marchers. Now it is eco-warriors.

Only this week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced the latest salvo, as a warm-up to the mega-conference on climate change in Glasgow. It was “written by hundreds of scientists and approved of by 195 countries” (Daily Telegraph, 10 August). Let’s restate that another way:

“Hundreds of scientists have been paid by leading Western governments to write a report supporting these governments’ pre-agreed policies on climate change. All other governments have been corralled into approval either for fear of being dubbed deniers or fear of being left out of the subsidies they have reason to expect for supporting it from the Western nations promoting it”.

The psychology of government action, which emerges in the absence of the profit motive, is less about saving the world than about the inherent flaws in governments. The psychology of politics and bureaucracy has evolved to blind the executive to the consequences of their actions. It is a lesson in why government objectives run contra to economic progress.

Forget the argument, examine the psychology
A prejudice which is little examined is why establishments frequently stick to conviction while denying reasonable debate. There are many fields of government where this is demonstrably true, climate change being one of them.

Leadership is too often based on prevailing beliefs, with minds firmly closed to any evidence it might be wrong. Even Galileo was forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to recant his scientific evidence that the earth revolved around the sun – a thoroughly reasonable and logical though novel proposition, rejected by the Catholic establishment. But it wasn’t until 1992 that the religious establishment at the Vatican forgave him for being right. That was 359 years later and long after it mattered to Galileo.

Fortunately, when the establishment view departs from the facts it rarely survives as long. Socialism, economics, climate change and now wokeness in turn have become established in the state psyche and show the same static opinions insulated from inconvenient contradictions. This is not to say the establishment need be judgemental. Democratic government at its best tries to remain neutral and reflect a balance of opinion. But there are times when it loses sight of firm ground and becomes subverted by the psychology of its own established but unfounded beliefs.

The debate over Brexit was a classic illustration of psychology over reason, where few Remainers or Brexiteers changed their views following the referendum in 2016. Influential Remainers were, by and large, those who worked in government during the forty-five years of Britain’s increasing transfer of political power to Brussels. There are others who vehemently believe that being part of a larger economic unit is more secure than exposure to free markets. There are also those who believed Brexit would directly affect their lives and fear the uncertainty. Whatever their reasoning, their subconscious instinct is to seek protection in a guardian establishment rather than risk a commercially based proposition.

This article examines the psychology of that systemic consensus in the context of the climate debate. Climate change is only one example of a wider phenomenon and serves as a topical example. We revisit the scope of the work of Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, both of Toronto University, who examined the longstanding link between theories of overpopulation and climate change.

Six psychological factors
Denial of something that is increasingly obvious must be down to human psychology. In Chapter 6 of Desrochers & Szurmak’s work, they identify six distinct psychoogical factors which we will take in turn to enhance our understanding of the psychology of climate change. I list them under the following headings:

• The iron triangle of crisis
• The psychology of entrenched arguments
• Motivated reasoning
• The core theoretical theme
• The anointed elite and
• Optimism and pessimism

Part 1 of 2

 

[marsh]

Part 2 of 2

The iron triangle of crisis
Even from before the time of Malthus, there have been political influencers and activists who have promoted pessimistic assumptions about uncontrolled population expansion, and the ability of the planet’s resources to feed them.

Despite these fears being subsequently proved to be unfounded they continue to prevail among those who don’t need to pursue profits for a living. It is a bias to which politicians and their advisers are especially vulnerable.

The public naturally expects its elected representatives’ unbiased endeavours when bringing national threats to its attention. After all, it is arguably a primary function of government to protect its population from dangers, real and potential. There are government departments tasked with assessing dangers to society, their likelihood, and in their event how government should respond.

These are tasks that require unbiased research. But political guidance from the top is rarely neutral, seeking to influence outcomes.

And we now find that climate change science has become heavily politicised.

Climate change is the gift that goes on giving to politicians. It creates an impression of tackling the big issue of our times. And it is a source of crisis giving cover for failings over lesser priorities. Observing how Boris Johnson maintains his popularity through a combination of leading the world in the battle against climate change while seeking every photo opportunity possible and at the same time presiding over the Covid disaster has been a masterclass in practical politics.

One is left wondering how vacuous his politics would appear without the prop of climate change.

On his watch, the politics of climate disaster have taken on a new life in the UK.

Government spending plans angled at reducing carbon emissions has accelerated, as has the support and credibility given by state-funded scientists producing alarming forecasts. Radical environmentalism is not only embraced, but actively promoted through the media.

This trinity, this iron triangle of crisis as Desrochers and Szurmak put it, is therefore comprised of establishment interests, the promotion of fear, and media management. It focuses the public’s mind on a specific threat to the exclusion of others. It is a feedback loop of career and protectionism driven by the psychology of entrenched arguments, which is our next topic.

The psychology of entrenched arguments
A rational approach to absorbing and understanding new information would be to address it logically and without bias. Clearly, this does not happen. Our brains are still wired as they were in our hunter-gatherer days when our decisions were based on a choice of fight or flight. We therefore have a natural tendency to hold onto a protected position after it becomes untenable.

Imagine being part of a community of primitive cave-dwellers and fight or flight becomes a group decision. We will support each other in uncertainty well after a crisis point has passed, breaking ranks after flight has become the only option. It is survival by inward-looking mutual defence, not attack. It is the deep psychology behind groupthink, or the psychology of entrenched arguments. It leads to the cliff-edge of crisis.

Researchers from Cornell University have examined the phenomenon. They found that “participants prefer to learn information from in-group sources and agree more with in-group members on moral and political issues”. This takes groupthink into persistence territory after the flight option has long passed, and existing views become defensively entrenched. Awareness of the true situation becomes compromised through self-ignorance of the flaws in the group’s knowledge and judgement. It even has a name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

To this self-ignorance can be added a group’s overestimation of its understanding of controversial issues, leading to the illusion of “understanding bias”. The more members of a group who debate an issue, the more understanding bias is reinforced. You see evidence of understanding bias in wider politics, particularly when opinions coalesce over time into different political ideologies. In America, the Democrats are as intellectually capable as the Republicans, yet the two parties have retreated into sharply differing understanding biases.

Entrenched arguments are reinforced by naïve realism. A naïve realist assumes he or she personally is both rational and unbiassed in the assimilation and assessment of the facts, and further assumes that those who do not reach the same conclusions are ignorant, biased or both. Naïve realism is the product of a false consensus, under which those that agree with the naïve realist are seen to be more rational than those that do not. Entrenched arguments and naïve realism become the driving force behind motivated reasoning.

Motivated reasoning
We naturally believe in scientific research, on the incorrect assumption that all those PhDs from top universities conduct experiments for the same reasons as we were taught at school in chemistry lessons. Unfortunately, the scientific community’s motivation, in both the natural and social sciences, is not so pure.

Scientists are human and need to earn a living, which is far easier to do if they go with the general confirmation bias. In the post-education world, a scientist needs a paid position, recognition and to publish frequently in respected journals. Good ideas become suppressed and poor data to back bad ideas are too frequently the result of this motivated reasoning.

It was best summed up by John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University:

“Scientists in a given field may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings… Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma. Empirical evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely unreliable.”

Admittedly, Professor Ioannidis was writing about research in the natural sciences, but the methods and empirical evidence extends to the social sciences as well. It describes well the research papers published by central banks and the economist professors in universities. It is also characteristic of the opinion silos in government departments.

Motivated reasoning, such as on climate change and political correctness, is all about building a core theoretical theme.

The core theoretical theme
One way in which experts refute opposing evidence is by sticking to a core theoretical theme. I recall email correspondence I had with a well-known financial journalist in 2016, which ground to a halt when he declared,

“In my view, the record global savings rate (27pc) is the root cause of our problems. Some way must be found to rotate this into consumption to rebalance the global economy.”

In other words, he adhered to a core theoretical theme common to neo-Keynesian economists. By expressing it as his view, he was obviously not prepared to debate why he held that the record global savings rate was the root cause of our problems. We are not judging whether it is correct, only that he holds it, he assumes it. He was signalling he will not be shifted, so further debate is pointless. This is true of all state-funded economics, which this opinion reflects.

Numerous papers have been written to justify this stance. We have lived with this view since Keynes published his General Theory in 1936. As in Keynesian economics, a core theoretical theme has emerged in the climate change debate
But if Professor Ioannidis is right about empirical evidence showing expert opinion is extremely unreliable, and which appears to be confirmed in the fields of economics and monetary theory, it explains the closed minds to balanced debate in fields such as climate change. So long as a core theoretical theme is adhered to, it becomes almost impossible to overturn.

A determination to stick to the core Keynesian theme on the savings paradox is my journalist friend’s membership card for the anointed elite.

The anointed elite
Many of us want to belong, to make a difference, to enhance society. We know that to do so we must have influence and the best way to do that is to join and promote a cause that has the establishment’s support. And there is nothing like that comforting feeling of an open invitation into the parlours of the great and the good. Well-known figures in the media with this access use their fame and position to anoint themselves alongside the elite and continue to have a career for so long as they play the elite’s game.

The anointed elite was the description of the economist and political theorist, Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He came up with it in his pithily named 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a basis for social policy.

Even though we may not recognise it at the time, we have all come across it: the independent expert frequently called on by the media for comment in a specialist field. These experts rely on being informed by government insiders.

They adopt the expert mantle, but it is never made clear that they owe their media status almost entirely to their membership of a government-anointed elite and their support of the elite’s objectives. But if they are stupid enough to turn critic, they will be immediately unanointed and they know it.

It applies to ex-politicians and media correspondents alike. If, say, a correspondent for a national newspaper doesn’t play along, he risks being dropped from background briefings by the elite, while his confrères at other journals continue to be invited. “That journalist from the Daily Screech is unreliable. Best not include him in our off-the-record briefings.” The threat of exclusion is the surest way for the elite to ensure that its message is the one that prevails.

Optimists v. pessimists
The glass-half-full optimists and the glass-half-empty pessimists are not split evenly across two sides of an issue. In practice, the establishment and those with a position in society are protective and pessimistic about change because it is a threat to their established position, while commercially minded outsiders tend to take a more positive view.

Psychologists tell us that as humans we have two personalities. One half of us protects what we have, giving us a sense of location, property, and home. The other half is a traveller in search of new vistas, foreign relationships, and trade. Journalist and activist Jane Jacobs (of New York City and then Toronto) identified and described these two patterns of moral precepts as guardian and commercial syndromes.

According to Jacobs, we have a different mix of these characteristics as individuals, communities and even at national levels. The two syndromes show different characters, which is why some of us are adventurers and others home birds. Commercial relationships are outgoing, and honesty in business is rewarded, while guardians are protective, favour loyalty and support the establishment. Commercials shun force and come to voluntary agreements, while guardians shun trading and exert prowess. Commercials are collaborative, competitive and respect contracts, while guardians are exclusive, take vengeance and respect hierarchy. Commercials are open to inventiveness and novelty, while guardians expect obedience and discipline. And so on.

The commercials’ activities encompass work in making and trading, while the guardians are political leaders, administrators, educators, and upholders of the law. The two syndromes are a neat explanation for the different mindsets and social duties of the private sector compared with governments.

The consequences of climate change politics
The purpose of this article is not to enter the climate change debate but to examine the flaws in the process. Realistically, it is too late to question the line being pursued, having gone beyond any influencer’s control.

It is common knowledge that the science is politically influenced by state funding.

But it is not widely appreciated that the process of hyping up climate change into a full-blown crisis has become the consequence of a crowd psychology rather than a pursuit of the facts.

The political advantages of introducing legislative targets for climate policies in 2030 or 2040 is that they are sufficiently far away for current politicians to have dumped the problem onto their successors. Without carbon fuels and having subsidised unreliable wind and solar energy to the point where other energy sources, notably nuclear, are uneconomic, the cost of climate change politics threatens to be ruinous for economic activity in the future, threatening the tax base and therefore the expenditure of the governments which have thoughtlessly promoted it.

 

[marsh]

Will $500M for Smart Cities in Historic US Senate Spending Bill Fund Biometric Surveillance?

Half a billion dollars was written into the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate to pay cities to experiment with technologies for ‘Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation,’ which could include remote biometric systems, sensors and drones...

basedunderground.com

Will $500M for Smart Cities in Historic US Senate Spending Bill Fund Biometric Surveillance?

by Activist Post
August 15, 2021


Half a billion dollars was written into the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate to pay cities to experiment with technologies for ‘Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation,’ which could include remote biometric systems, sensors and drones.

Reaction to the inclusion was rapid. The Intercept spoke with a senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation who said the ‘SMART’ money will buy more surveillance using facial recognition. The industry has yet to convince critics alleging face biometrics introduce racial and gender bias and misuse by law enforcement of the technology’s safety.

Also of concern is how this technology, if not the funding, will become tangled with relevant military programs as has happened with other software and hardware being deployed to monitor and quell dissent.

At least some of the resulting projects will be used to create so-called smart cities, where a multitude of sensors collect data on just as many aspects of life in a patch of city. Some of the funding is also expected to go to supporting electric vehicles.

Vendors talk about improved irrigation of parks, use-controlled streetlights and insights into how people exist in a city.

Privacy advocates see information, including biometric identifiers, being collected by vendors and governments without informed consent of citizens. And there has yet to be created a data security system that cannot be hacked.

The legislation now moves to the House of Representatives, where it is unlikely that the surveillance provision will be stripped.

 

[marsh]

The Great ‘Global Warming’ Alarm Is Part of the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’

If anyone says to you “the weather extremes are a sure sign of global warming”, it’s because they take this

noqreport.com

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

by Julian Rose
August 16, 2021




If anyone says to you “the weather extremes are a sure sign of global warming”, it’s because they take this information directly from the media and assume it to be fact.

The media get it from government – or government ‘expert advisors’. The ‘expert advisors’ get it from a computer modelling exercise (e.g. Imperial College London).

The computer modelling exercise gets it from a large financial incentive offered by the corporate conglomerate and bought-out government, with the explicit instruction to produce a result which fills the needs of their combined political goals. In this case, to magic-up ‘scientific proof’ that global warming is real.

The need to have ‘proof’ that this invention is real is arrived at in spite of the fact that global warming’s main proponents know that the idea was dreamed-up at the Club of Rome in 1972 under a widely publicised treatise with the catchy title ‘Limits to Growth’. It gained a further boost from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when the infamous Agenda 21 was launched to impose largely irrational environmental constrictions as a forerunner to the highly discriminating ‘carbon taxes’ in operation today.

Limits to Growth might have appealed to those who oppose neo-liberal capitalist insistence on the necessity for a ‘permanent growth’ economy; but the real intent behind those words is the conditioning of the receiver to take a self imposed pseudo-sacrificial attitude about ‘limitation’.

Ergo, limiting one’s self for the sake of a ‘higher cause’ – saving the natural environment from Global Warming!

This form of conditioning becomes the perfect precept for encouraging naturally concerned citizens to not just embrace cutting back the typical material excesses of their lives, but ultimately the pseudo-saintly renunciation of all material interests. The ghoulish plan behind Klaus Schwab’s quasi religious Sermon from the Mount WEF

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

Schwab’s psycho-social engineering ‘deep mind experts’ having planned-out the precise stepping stones necessary for a ‘check-mate’ seamless handing-over of all private wealth to the insatiably materialistic elite masters of deception. A thoroughly odious yet quite brilliant slight of hand.

The great ‘Global Warming’ alarm was raised as a calculated way for leading industrialists, bankers and royalty to ensure their future as the premier influencers and controllers of global affairs.

Blanket controlled media indoctrination, using rampant fear mongering as its key component, is designed to convert public sentiment to the cause. The elite industrialist club know full well that ‘fear’ makes desperate people turn to their perceived leaders to protect them – and tell them what to do. The historial precedent for this is ubiquitous.

The notion that the climate was dangerously warming had no scientific evidence to back it up. That was cooked-up later under the auspices of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).

It is more than unfortunate that the great majority of green oriented NGO’s also swallowed the bait and, being by then mostly well funded by corporate backed governments, took the money, closed their eyes and minds – and jumped on board – thus embracing the deadly distortion of their original green commitments.

It is now the turn of Klaus Schwab (director of World Economic Forum) to take up the reins handed down to him by earlier representatives of the small but powerful elite that runs planetary affairs via such puppet heads of state as Bush, Cheney, Blair – and other aspiring despots of that time.

Schwab’s job is to ensure that ‘stop global warming’ goals are fully implemented through the channels of The Green New Deal, Great Reset, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Zero Carbon agenda. He must get this fake-green ball firmly rolling down the road especially designed for it by highly paid technocrats, whose particular bent is to create an ‘inventory of everything’ to make possible the control of all aspects of life on Earth.

These techno’s view the management of the world as an exercise in accounting.

A sterile reductionist mind-set closely linked to robotics and the notion that advanced mechanisation and calculation is superior to the creativity of the human mind. Hence the WEF’s announcement of the forthcoming ‘Internet of Everything’, the 5G powered Smart City surveillance and control grid which forms the centrepiece of The Great Reset agenda.

An agenda that has been specifically positioned under the title ‘green’- a name stolen from the original ecology movement of the 1970’s and 80’s, whose ethos was – and remains – the promotion of a human scale, light footprint ‘people’s ecology’. An authentic vision that bears no resemblance whatsoever to today’s gigantic corporate led Fourth Industrial Revolution, held up by the WEF masters of deception to be the only solution for ‘greening the planet’.

What it actually is, of course, is a wholesale corporate/cabal grab for the control of the world’s primary resources and money supply. The word ‘green’ could hardly have been more butchered.

So with this fake green ideology now at the forefront of the central control global planning elite’s blueprint for a brave new world, the drive is on to utilise every opportunity possible to enforce conditions that constrict mankind’s behaviour patterns to fit the cunningly concocted demands of ‘preventing global warming’. The great Club of Rome scare story, designed specifically to leave a frightened and confused public completely dependent upon the technocrat ‘experts’ coming up with a ‘life saving solution’ to prevent the planet from frying.

Now, ‘the life saving solution’ to the fictional ‘problem’ the technocrats came up with, has to fulfil the hard-wired goals of this small but very powerful elite that forms the shadow government of the planet. A despotic cabal whose intention is to master-mind the future according to a darkly inflated sense of self importance and superiority over the rest of humanity.

The first thing needed to smooth the way for the unfettered display of such rampant megalomania is to ensure the least possible public resistance. Least resistance to the rolling-out of ‘the grand plan’, whose implementation requires – to make it credible – a continuous process of environmental disruption and degradation.

The cause of this disruption can then be pinned on the advance of the ‘catastrophic’ warming’ – to which all solutions must be ‘technological’.

Technological in the sense of high tech, robotic, digital and electro magnetic.

Killing at least two birds with one stone is a popular concept within the ranks of New World Order proponents. So it was found that the effects of a general dumbing-down of brain power could be enhanced when combined with individually targetted mind control, hypnosis and torture, all of which had already been well tested via the US MK Ultra programme.

In this program human beings were ruthlessly experimented upon to find at what point they ‘cracked’ and became controllable tools for carrying out the secret operations needed to undermine the orderly functioning of society and to enact psy-ops, false flag events and even – when deemed necessary, murders.

A variation on these same techniques were used behind closed doors during Covid lockdown, especially in care homes, where genocide has become thematic and old people are considered disposable matter in the cause of ‘stopping Covid’.

Mind control is the central weapon of the elite planners. Its presence is ubiquitous in all aspects of daily life – starting with the TV – a particularly vital component of (State) control of the masses, and extending into all mainstream media operations, cell phone technologies, computer programmes, Wi Fi and advanced military ‘silent’ weaponry. There is a wafer thin line of distinction between the process and function of mind control, propaganda and straight indoctrination.

All the above are now being deployed to get the joys of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, Zero Carbon, Green Deal and 5G Smart Cities firmly installed in the brain cells of culpable human beings, who are also to be induced to hand-over all their private assets ‘for the cause’. Do not underestimate the mind bending power it takes to get ordinary folk to embrace the notion “You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

Coming-up this November is the COP International Climate Conference in Cornwall, UK. All the most sophisticated mind controlling wizardry will be employed to make this event appear to be ‘a world saving’ gathering of the good and the great. This is because it is nothing less than ‘fear of global warming’ that holds the entire Great Reset/Green Deal invention together.

Without this scary message of ‘disaster if we don’t act’ underpinning it, the future of the New World Order’s master control agenda would fall apart at the seams. Covid was sprung on the scene to ensure the fear factor would receive a turbo-charged boost, enough to carry it through to the point where the COP could double-up on it – and thus increase the chance of a witless public finally throwing up their arms and shouting “Save us at any cost!”

Atmospheric Aerosol Geoengineering (Chemtrails), Covid, 5G, The High Auroral Atmospheric Research Program (HAARP), WiFi, GMO, the chemical saturation of household products and especially foods – are all examples of contemporary weapons whose deployment is sold to us as ‘important progressive science’, but whose true purpose is to suffocate the life force that drives human and environmental vigour, natural health and spiritual vibrance.

Right down to the manipulation and degradation of human, animal and plant DNA and the genome of life itself.

At the end of this egregious mono cybernetic intrusion into the divinity of creation is ‘Robotic Man’. The transhumanist singularity omega point. A soulless cyborg ‘inhuman race’ which gets all its instructions through having its neocortex permanently wired to a central super computer.

This is actually the vision of the evolution of humanity that Schwab’s dark controllers have planned-out to be ‘The New Normal’; making the sentient human race largely obsolete by around 2050 – and almost so by 2030/2040. A human race that will by then have been culled down to approximately one quarter of its current number, if all goes according to plan for the psychopathic architects of the Great Reset/New World Order/Green Deal.

It is vital to grasp that the monstrous Covid invention, whose toxic ‘vaccinations’ are a genocide inducing weapon dressed up as ‘protection’, is just one of the cards in the ‘kill and control’ pack. A significant one, but one whose manifestation is symptomatic of the demonic bag of tricks available to the insentient perpetrators of raw evil.

Corona Virus and Global Warming are first cousins. They both owe their creation to exactly the same ‘rabbit from a hat’ conjuring trick. That of applying the art of deception-hypnosis en masse, in order to make people believe that what is unreal is real – what is fake is actual. And they both use the same fascist control mechanisms to achieve their ends.

Now we have put together the disparate parts of this genocide operation called: The Great Reset (forced totalitarian take-over), Green New Deal (fake green fascism), Zero Carbon (no carbon=no life), Fourth Industrial Revolution (completely robotic workplace) we can recognise that each element is actually integral to the overall plan. Strung together in this way we can finally see the whole diabolical picture.

It is therefore vital to recognise that we can only be effective in our defence of Life on Earth by seeing and acting on this ‘whole picture’. Not being drawn into treating each symptom as a separate and unrelated crises in its own right. Which is precisely what the instigators want us to do, of course.

For a steadily growing number of people, these dark days are actually having the reverse effect than that intended. They are stimulating the manifestation of great shafts of counteractive light! Suddenly, tens of thousands are finding a commonality of purpose and joining together to take-on the masters of deception, through standing strong for truth, justice and freedom.

It portends a remarkable shift of emphasis in all our lives. One of truly dramatic proportions that heralds the tangible unfolding of a new era for humanity. An era in which a dissolving of old barriers of race, class, religion and money – ushers in a profound sense of universal brother and sister hood; a great expansion of the spiritual and a new form of worldwide social and economic cooperation.

Cooperation in which shared humanitarian goals steadily replace the divisive and destructive greed of the profit predicated global market place.

This heart-led flowering of humanity is to be the truly defining factor of the great Global Warming/Covid Scam, as the history books will one day relate. The overwhelming use of fear and deception has provoked the opposite state to come out of hiding and to manifest as what, for its detractors, will be an unendurable counter force – emanating from none less than the energetic source of Creation Itself.

Such an astounding metamorphosis is now underway, and it has taken an extraordinary, blatant manifestation of darkness to ignite the counteractive fire which is now calling forth a great renaissance of the true powers of man. This is the age of truth, enlightenment and action.

Take your courage in both hands and step forth! Set your sights on nothing less than disarming and dismantling the technocratic top-down total-control system that attempts to enslave you, me and every sentient human being who seeks to remain true to the deepest values of Life.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Is Afghanistan The Thread That Unravels Western Dreams Of A "New World Order"

WEDNESDAY, AUG 18, 2021 - 06:30 AM
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

The drama playing out in Afghanistan right now has enormous implications for the entire planet, because it represents a colossal defeat for western globalists. Ever since the end of World War II, western elitists have been tirelessly working to establish “liberal democracies” all over the globe, and the idea was that all of the “liberal democracies” could be increasingly integrated into an emerging one world system. Of course China, Russia, Iran and their allies were never going to fully go along with this plan, and that is one of the reasons why they are endlessly demonized by media outlets in the western world. The Chinese, the Russians and the Iranians all have their own ideas about what the future of the planet should look like, and none of them are good.

But when it comes to world domination, the western powers were closer to achieving that goal than anyone else. Unfortunately for the western powers, the tide is now turning, and it appears that an era of tremendous instability is dead ahead.


U.S. globalists such as Henry Kissinger helped to popularize the idea of a “New World Order”, but in recent years western elitists have more commonly referred to it as “the Liberal World Order” or “the Liberal International Order”. The following is how the Liberal International Order is defined by Wikipedia…

In international relations, the liberal international order (some times referred to as the rules-based or the US-led international order) describes a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political liberalism, economic liberalism and liberal internationalism since the late 1940s.[3] More specifically, it entails international cooperation through multilateral institutions (like the United Nations, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund), and is constituted by human equality (freedom, rule of law and human rights), open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy, and monetary cooperation. The order was established in the aftermath of World War II, led in large part by the United States.

For a long time, the globalists were supremely confident that nobody could stop them, but over the past five years or so they have really started to doubt themselves. For example, the following is an excerpt from a Council on Foreign Relations article entitled “What Is the Liberal World Order?”…

World leaders created a series of international organizations and agreements to promote global cooperation on issues including security, trade, health, and monetary policy. The United States has championed this system—known as the liberal world order—for the past seventy-five years. During this time, the world has enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity.

But these institutions are far from perfect, and today they are struggling to address new sources of disorder, such as climate change and a deadly pandemic. What’s more, democracy is on the decline around the world, authoritarianism is on the rise, and countries like China are deliberately chipping away at the liberal world order, creating parallel institutions of their own. Faced with these challenges, will the liberal world order survive? If a new system emerges, what will that mean for freedom, peace, and prosperity worldwide?

These globalists really do believe that they know best, and many of them are truly convinced that what they were doing was what was best for humanity.

Time after time, we witnessed the same pattern. A foreign government would be toppled, a friendly “liberal democracy” would be set up, and that “liberal democracy” would start to be integrated into the world system.

That is precisely what happened in Afghanistan, but now after nearly 20 years the opium-selling nuts that were toppled in 2001 have overthrown the “liberal democracy” in Kabul and have reconquered the country.

Not only that, in the process they have completely and utterly humiliated the United States and other New World Order powers.

The Taliban has exposed how weak the New World Order really is, and that is going to greatly embolden other enemies of the New World Order.

If a motley collection of drug dealers and goat herders can defeat the New World Order, do you think that the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or anyone else will be intimidated ever again?

At this hour, the airport in Kabul has essentially been transformed into a giant prison. Anyone that tries to get in or get out is being shot by the Taliban.

The only way out is by air, and the desperation of those that are trapped inside the airport is off the charts. Three Afghans actually tried to cling to a U.S. military plane as it was taking off, but they quickly fell to their deaths…

At least eight people were killed at Kabul airport on Monday, including two who were shot dead by US troops, three who were run over by taxiing jets and three stowaways who fell from the engines of a US Air Force plane as it fled an airfield of thousands of desperate Afghan nationals.

This is so much worse than the fall of Saigon.

We are being told that there are approximately 34,000 people trapped inside the airport, and it could take weeks to finally evacuate them all…

The airport is being secured by 6,000 US troops but they yesterday failed to stop the runway being invaded despite helicopters being used to try and herd people off the tarmac.

Meanwhile there are at least 34,000 people – both citizens and Afghan allies – hoping to be rescued by the US and Britain and an unknown number relying on European countries, Canada and Australia.

The US hopes to be able to evacuate 5,000 people a day and the UK 1,000 a day but has so far both have managed a tiny fraction of that.

It is being reported that there are hundreds of journalists among those that are trapped inside the airport, and big media corporations in the United States are desperate to get them home.

As Americans cower in fear inside the airport, the Taliban are going door-to-door looking for attractive women to make into sex slaves…

Taliban fighters tried out a fun fair in Kabul while militants reportedly go door-to-door in the Afghan capital looking for interpreters and Western allies, amid allegations that gangs are marauding the streets of other cities hunting girls as young as 12 they can make their sex slaves.

The Taliban won and the New World Order lost.

This is going to change everything.

Of course the Taliban never would have been victorious without help. The Taliban makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling opium and other drugs, but they also receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year from other sources…

Both Afghan and US officials have accused regional governments of funding the Taliban, having long-suspected Pakistan, Iran, and Russia have offered their assistance at some point.

The most individual contributions come from Pakistan and Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, providing an estimated annual income of $500 million (£360 million).

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of the countries mentioned in that quote are also considered to be some of the New World Order’s biggest enemies.

And I think that it says volumes that the embassies of Russia and China are now being guarded by the Taliban and have continued to operate throughout this entire crisis.

There will be no more “empire building” after this. The balance of power is shifting on a permanent basis, and western dreams of establishing a true “Liberal International Order” that encompasses the entire planet are now dead.

As I discuss in my new book, I do believe that there will be a one world government one day, but it will not be led by the western powers.

The stunning defeat in Afghanistan has turned the globalist news outlets in the United States firmly against Biden. Just a few months ago they were endlessly singing his praises, but now they are ripping into him quite viciously…

An opinion piece in The New York Times claimed that Biden would ‘go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan’.

A Washington Post column said the situation ‘is on Biden, and it will leave an indelible stain on his presidency’, while a piece in USA Today said ‘this catastrophe is appearing on his watch, and he will have to take his lumps’.

And on CNN, one contributor actually said that this represents “the Saigon moment for President Biden”…

CNN’s presidential historian Tim Naftali was one of many observers to compare the situation to the infamous fall of Saigon.
“This is the Saigon moment for President Biden and this will be an albatross around his neck for the rest of time,” Naftali said.

The New World Order does not like losers, and Joe Biden is a loser.
But even after everything that has happened, he is still standing behind his decision…

“I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces,” Biden said during a speech from the East Room of the White House Monday afternoon. “That’s why we’re still there. We were clear-eyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency. But I always promised the American people I would be straight with you. The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”

This was never supposed to happen.

Afghanistan was supposed to become a “liberal democracy” and integrate into the emerging world system just like the globalist planners wanted.

But now the Taliban has proven that the globalists can be defeated, and that is likely to encourage other enemies of the New World Order to become more aggressive.

Needless to say, that could create a tremendous amount of instability all over the planet, and great instability could eventually set the stage for war on a global scale.

 

[Hi-D]

The Taliban defeats the "Great Satan". Nothing stops this. These are the days you prepared for. Pray. Needless to say.

 

[von Koehler]

Fortunately for America the percentage of Muslims is still a small number, making it easier to arrive at a solution.

 

[marsh]

Catherine Austin Fitts Unravels the Real Covid Agenda (Highwire) | Health | Before It's News 1:02:06 min

Catherine Austin Fitts reveals the dark agenda behind the Covid-19 PsyOp — to destroy national sovereignties and create a permanent global lockdown on humanity.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

The New World Order, Courtesy Of Rube Goldberg

THURSDAY, AUG 19, 2021 - 06:20 PM
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

In the 1930s, cartoonist Rube Goldberg became famous for designing machines that sought to fulfill a task, but did so in such a complex way as to be utterly ridiculous and, very possibly, unworkable.



Governments, of course, are Rube Goldbergs on steroids. They have a penchant for making any task absurdly complicated, expensive and, ultimately, dysfunctional.

Whilst this is the norm in any era, we’re presently living through a period that’s becoming overwhelmingly confusing worldwide. The governments of the First World countries are pushing a whole series of mismatched agendas all at the same time. They seek to present a uniform objective, but even they cannot manage much consistency of purpose. Although all of the First World countries (US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are fully on board, there’s no real match-up in their game plan, or even their statements as to what the end goals are meant to be.

There are several main themes: the purported evil of the Second World leaders and the need for First World aggression toward them, even though no one on the other side seems to want to engage.

The reinvention of society in which basic truths are turned on their heads and replaced with new, often ridiculous “truths” that no one seems to fully understand, even when they’re rabidly promoting them.

And, of course, the COVID scare. COVID-19 was identified early on by a few observers as a lab-created variation on the seasonal flu that was consciously released in several countries at the same time as it was released in its “source” country. It was then hyped to be a killer disease that would create a pandemic.

The virus itself is a threat to the cardiovascular system. The powers behind the scare insisted that the only acceptable treatment was a selection of mRNA vaccines.

The rollout of this effort has been bungled so badly that even its leading salesmen have found it necessary to continually change their stories as to the effectiveness and necessity of lockdowns, distancing, masking and the cancelling of freedoms.

But one constant has remained: No previous flu treatment was of any use and should absolutely not be considered, no matter how effective it had been for decades. Only a vaccine and, indeed, only an mRNA vaccine would do – the patents for which seemed to be held by the salesmen who were leading the vaccine charge in the media.

So, what’s really going on here? We’re looking at a host of patently absurd notions, each obsessively presented as being beyond question and told that, if we fail to accept all of them 100%, we’re a danger to society and need to be punished. We’re looking at what occurred in Germany in 1938, following the Nazis’ Kristallnacht… but on steroids.

For those of us who have been paying attention over the last decades, it’s been quite clear that the New World Order – an extension of the concepts of Mayer Rothschild in the eighteenth century and revitalized by the Rockefeller family a hundred years ago – has been in the works since that time and has recently approached fruition. Most of the pieces of the puzzle are in place and the primary goals appear to be on the horizon.

First, a collectivist form of rule is nearly complete.
Collectivism consists of a gumbo of ingredients – socialism, communism, fascism and capitalism – with whatever recipe works for the particular population it is foisted upon. The actual recipe can be changed to fit whatever the tastes of the given country may be.

To soften up the people, ideals and beliefs must be done away with.
Karl Marx was quite correct when he postulated that the removal of core beliefs was essential; that perceptions of truth be replaced with non-sensical “truths” and that the only faith be faith in the rulers.

Next, the constant threat of aggression from others is necessary.
If no armed conflict exists, conflicts need to be invented. The people must live in fear of a perceived enemy.

The end product is a return to serfdom.
The modern serf would have a flat screen TV and a smart phone, but his wealth would be lost to such a degree that he’d be unable to take charge of his own life.

He must rely on his government to provide him with his needs on as short-term a basis as can be made workable. This makes him compliant.

Okay, so the New World Order concept has been kicking around for a long time. It’s been the great pride of David Rockefeller, its senior proponent for the greater part of his life.

But why all the craziness? Why now? Why has this behemoth of disjointed concepts suddenly come together and why the rush to make it all happen at the same time? Why not phase it in, possibly over a decade or two?

Well, there’s a problem. The very concept of a New World Order, in which a very small number of people lord over millions of proles is, at its heart, a sociopathic one. A part of the pathology of sociopaths is to see the world see the world as a playland that exists for them alone. As they see it, if they die, the world has no further reason to exist.

But the principal movers of the New World Order are now getting very long in the tooth. They’ve spent their lives pursuing their individual versions of a New World Order, whilst putting up with the versions that their fellow conspirators envision.

Henry Kissinger, now 97, has spent his life believing that a New World Order is best achieved through diplomacy – positioning each of the world’s countries for maximum usefulness and cooperation. Close friend George Soros, now 90, believes that dominance is best achieved through chaos and destruction. Klaus Schwab, 83, has spent the last half-century pursuing the concept that the proles must be taught to give up their possessions in favour of the rulers’ largesse.

Baron Rothschild, now 85, continues to follow his family’s long-held belief that the solution for dominance lies in the control of all the currency in the world – both its creation and its distribution.

What we’re looking at is a cabal of the most politically and economically powerful people and business entities in the world, with an overall agenda, but each with their own individual mini-agendas, each fighting to lead the charge. Predictably, this once-cohesive-sounding concept is beginning to resemble a Rube Goldberg creation.

Such a condition cannot last. However, whilst it’s in play, it will be a cock-up of mythical proportions and will assure that the next few years will be as devastating as they’ll be confusing. By the end of the decade it’s likely to be over, and the world will be forever changed. The trick will be to sidestep events as much as possible and make it to the other side. That will be no easy task.

Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country, but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay.

In the years ahead, there will likely be much less stability of any kind.

 

[marsh]

Climate, Covid, Control – and Criminals

Do not underestimate the mind bending power it takes to get ordinary folk to embrace the notion “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. If anyone says to you “the weather extremes are a sure sign of global warming”, it’s because they take this information directly from the media and assume...

basedunderground.com

Climate, Covid, Control – and Criminals

by Julian Rose
August 22, 2021


Do not underestimate the mind bending power it takes to get ordinary folk to embrace the notion “You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

If anyone says to you “the weather extremes are a sure sign of global warming”, it’s because they take this information directly from the media and assume it to be fact.

The media get it from government – or government ‘expert advisors’. The ‘expert advisors’ get it from a computer modelling exercise (e.g. Imperial College London).

The computer modelling exercise gets it from a large financial incentive offered by the corporate conglomerate and bought-out government, with the explicit instruction to produce a result which fills the needs of their combined political goals. In this case, to magic-up ‘scientific proof’ that global warming is real.

The need to have ‘proof’ that this invention is real is arrived at in spite of the fact that global warming’s main proponents know that the idea was dreamed-up at the Club of Rome in 1972 under a widely publicized treatise with the catchy title ‘Limits to Growth’. It gained a further boost from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when the infamous Agenda 21 was launched to impose largely irrational environmental constrictions as a forerunner to the highly discriminating ‘carbon taxes’ in operation today.

Limits to Growth might have appealed to those who oppose neo-liberal capitalist insistence on the necessity for a ‘permanent growth’ economy; but the real intent behind those words is the conditioning of the receiver to take a self-imposed pseudo-sacrificial attitude about ‘limitation’.

Ergo, limiting one’s self for the sake of a ‘higher cause’ – saving the natural environment from Global Warming!

This form of ‘austerity-conditioning’ becomes the perfect precept for encouraging naturally concerned citizens to not just embrace cutting back the typical material excesses of their lives, but ultimately the pseudo-saintly renunciation of all material interests. The ghoulish plan behind Klaus Schwab’s quasi religious Sermon from the Mount WEF:

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

Schwab’s psycho-social engineering ‘deep mind experts’ having planned-out the precise stepping stones necessary for a ‘check-mate’ seamless handing-over of all private wealth to the insatiably materialistic elite masters of deception. A thoroughly odious yet quite brilliant sleight of hand.

The great ‘Global Warming’ alarm was raised as a calculated way for leading industrialists, bankers and royalty to ensure their future as the premier influencers and controllers of global affairs.

Blanket controlled media indoctrination, using rampant fear mongering as its key component, is designed to convert public sentiment to the cause. The elite industrialist club know full well that ‘fear’ makes desperate people turn to their perceived leaders to protect them – and tell them what to do. The historical precedent for this is ubiquitous.

The notion that the climate was dangerously warming had no scientific evidence to back it up. That was cooked-up later under the auspices of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It is more than unfortunate that the great majority of green-oriented NGOs also swallowed the bait and, being by then mostly well funded by corporate-backed governments, took the money, closed their eyes and minds – and jumped on board – thus embracing the deadly distortion of their original green commitments.

It is now the turn of Klaus Schwab (director of World Economic Forum) to take up the reins handed down to him by earlier representatives of the small but powerful elite that runs planetary affairs via such puppet heads of state as Bush, Cheney, Blair – and other aspiring despots of that time.

Schwab’s job is to ensure that ‘stop global warming’ goals are fully implemented through the channels of The Green New Deal, Great Reset, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Zero Carbon agenda. He must get this fake-green ball firmly rolling down the road especially designed for it by highly paid technocrats, whose particular bent is to create an ‘inventory of everything’ to make possible the control of all aspects of life on Earth.

These technos view the management of the world as an exercise in accounting. A sterile reductionist mind-set closely linked to robotics and the notion that advanced mechanization and calculation is superior to the creativity of the human mind. Hence the WEF’s announcement of the forthcoming ‘Internet of Everything’, the 5G-powered Smart City surveillance and control grid which forms the centerpiece of The Great Reset agenda.

An agenda that has been specifically positioned under the title ‘green’ – a name stolen from the original ecology movement of the 1970s and ’80s, whose ethos was – and remains – the promotion of a human scale, light footprint ‘people’s ecology’. An authentic vision that bears no resemblance whatsoever to today’s gigantic corporate-led Fourth Industrial Revolution, held up by the WEF masters of deception to be the only solution for ‘greening the planet’.

What it actually is, of course, is a wholesale corporate/cabal grab for the control of the world’s primary resources and money supply. The word ‘green’ could hardly have been more butchered.

So with this fake green ideology now at the forefront of the central control global planning elite’s blueprint for a brave new world, the drive is on to utilize every opportunity possible to enforce conditions that constrict mankind’s behavior patterns to fit the cunningly concocted demands of ‘preventing global warming’. The great Club of Rome scare story, designed specifically to leave a frightened and confused public completely dependent upon the technocrat ‘experts’ coming up with a ‘life saving solution’ to prevent the planet from frying.

Now, ‘the life saving solution’ to the fictional ‘problem’ the technocrats came up with, has to fulfil the hardwired goals of this small but very powerful elite that forms the shadow government of the planet. A despotic cabal whose intention is to master-mind the future according to a darkly inflated sense of self importance and superiority over the rest of humanity.

The first thing needed to smooth the way for the unfettered display of such rampant megalomania is to ensure the least possible public resistance. Least resistance to the rolling-out of ‘the grand plan’, whose implementation requires – to make it credible – a continuous process of environmental disruption and degradation.

The cause of this disruption can then be pinned on the advance of the ‘catastrophic’ warming’ – to which all solutions must be ‘technological’.

Technological in the sense of high tech, robotic, digital and electro magnetic.

Killing at least two birds with one stone is a popular concept within the ranks of New World Order proponents. So it was found that the effects of a general dumbing-down of brain power could be enhanced when combined with individually targeted mind control, hypnosis and torture, all of which had already been well tested via the US MK Ultra programme.

The first thing needed to smooth the way for the unfettered display of such rampant megalomania is to ensure the least possible public resistance.

In this program human beings were ruthlessly experimented upon to find at what point they ‘cracked’ and became controllable tools for carrying out the secret operations needed to undermine the orderly functioning of society and to enact psy-ops, false flag events and even – when deemed necessary, murders.

A variation on these same techniques were used behind closed doors during Covid lockdown, especially in care homes, where genocide has become thematic and old people are considered disposable matter in the cause of ‘stopping Covid’.

Mind control is the central weapon of the elite planners. Its presence is ubiquitous in all aspects of daily life – starting with the TV – a particularly vital component of (State) control of the masses, and extending into all mainstream media operations, cell phone technologies, computer programmes, Wi Fi and advanced military ‘silent’ weaponry. There is a wafer thin line of distinction between the process and function of mind control, propaganda and straight indoctrination.

All the above are now being deployed to get the joys of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, Zero Carbon, Green Deal and 5G Smart Cities firmly installed in the brain cells of culpable human beings, who are also to be induced to hand over all their private assets ‘for the cause’. Do not underestimate the mind bending power it takes to get ordinary folk to embrace the notion “You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

Coming-up this November is the COP International Climate Conference in Glasgow, UK. All the most sophisticated mind controlling wizardry will be employed to make this event appear to be ‘a world saving’ gathering of the good and the great. This is because it is nothing less than ‘fear of global warming’ that holds the entire Great Reset/Green Deal invention together.

Mind control is the central weapon of the elite planners.

Without this scary message of ‘disaster if we don’t act’ underpinning it, the future of the New World Order’s master control agenda would fall apart at the seams. Covid was sprung on the scene to ensure the fear factor would receive a turbo-charged boost, enough to carry it through to the point where the COP could double-up on it – and thus increase the chance of a witless public finally throwing up their arms and shouting “Save us at any cost!”

Atmospheric Aerosol Geoengineering (Chemtrails), Covid, 5G, The High Frequency Active Auroral Atmospheric Research Program (HAARP), WiFi, GMO, the chemical saturation of household products and especially foods – are all examples of contemporary weapons whose deployment is sold to us as ‘important progressive science’, but whose true purpose is to suffocate the life force that drives human and environmental vigor, natural health and spiritual vibrance.

Right down to the manipulation and degradation of human, animal and plant DNA and the genome of life itself.

At the end of this egregious mono cybernetic intrusion into the divinity of creation is ‘Robotic Man’. The transhumanist singularity omega point. A soulless cyborg ‘inhuman race’ which gets all its instructions through having its neocortex permanently wired to a central super computer.

This is actually the vision of the evolution of humanity that Schwab’s dark controllers have planned-out to be ‘The New Normal’; making the sentient human race largely obsolete by around 2050 – and almost so by 2030/2040. A human race that will by then have been culled down to approximately one quarter of its current number, if all goes according to plan for the psychopathic architects of the Great Reset/New World Order/Green Deal.

It is vital to grasp that the monstrous Covid invention, whose toxic ‘vaccinations’ are a genocide inducing weapon dressed up as ‘protection’, is just one of the cards in the ‘kill and control’ pack. A significant one, but one whose manifestation is symptomatic of the demonic bag of tricks available to the insentient perpetrators of raw evil.

Corona Virus and Global Warming are first cousins. They both owe their creation to exactly the same ‘rabbit from a hat’ conjuring trick. That of applying the art of deception-hypnosis en masse, in order to make people believe that what is unreal is real – what is fake is actual. And they both use the same fascist control mechanisms to achieve their ends.

Now we have put together the disparate parts of this genocide operation called: The Great Reset (forced totalitarian take-over), Green New Deal (fake green fascism), Zero Carbon (no carbon=no life), Fourth Industrial Revolution (completely robotic workplace) we can recognize that each element is actually integral to the overall plan. Strung together in this way we can finally see the whole diabolical picture.

It is therefore vital to recognize that we can only be effective in our defense of Life on Earth by seeing and acting on this ‘whole picture’. Not being drawn into treating each symptom as a separate and unrelated crises in its own right. Which is precisely what the instigators want us to do, of course.

For a steadily growing number of people, these dark days are actually having the reverse effect than that intended. They are stimulating the manifestation of great shafts of counteractive light! Suddenly, tens of thousands are finding a commonality of purpose and joining together to take-on the masters of deception, through standing strong for truth, justice and freedom.

It portends a remarkable shift of emphasis in all our lives. One of truly dramatic proportions that heralds the tangible unfolding of a new era for humanity. An era in which a dissolving of old barriers of race, class, religion and money – ushers in a profound sense of universal brother and sister hood; a great expansion of the spiritual and a new form of worldwide social and economic cooperation.

Cooperation in which shared humanitarian goals steadily replace the divisive and destructive greed of the profit predicated global market place.

This heart-led flowering of humanity is to be the truly defining factor of the great Global Warming/Covid Scam, as the history books will one day relate. The overwhelming use of fear and deception has provoked the opposite state to come out of hiding and to manifest as what, for its detractors, will be an unendurable counter force – emanating from none less than the energetic source of Creation Itself.

Such an astounding metamorphosis is now underway, and it has taken an extraordinary, blatant manifestation of darkness to ignite the counteractive fire which is now calling forth a great renaissance of the true powers of man. This is the age of truth, enlightenment and action.

Take your courage in both hands and step forth! Set your sights on nothing less than disarming and dismantling the technocratic top-down total-control system that attempts to enslave you, me and every sentient human being who seeks to remain true to the deepest values of Life.

 

[West]

anyone know what the best potential investments might be to weather the great reset? Stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, precious metals, artwork? Thanks

I'm thinking a really good water well, and three ways to pump/pull the water out with out the grid. Containers to bottle it.

 

[marsh]

Biden's green energy plan, botched Afghan withdrawal boost China's rare metals monopoly

U.S. mandate for electric cars and Afghanistan's lithium reserves spell good news for Beijing.

justthenews.com

Biden's green energy plan, botched Afghan withdrawal boost China's rare metals monopoly

U.S. mandate for electric cars and Afghanistan's lithium reserves spell good news for Beijing.

Updated: August 22, 2021 - 11:15pm

At first blush, it may not seem that the Democrats' $4.5 trillion infrastructure and spending plans and President Joe Biden's bungled exit from Afghanistan have a nexus. But they do in China's rare metals monopoly.

Beijing already dominates the rare metals market needed for electronics, electric car batteries and computers, a reality made more painfully obvious with the current computer chip shortage that is slowing production of new U.S. cars.

And now with the haphazard U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, one of the world's largest untapped deposits of lithium — estimated by some at $1 trillion in Afghanistan — is poised to fall into China's hands just as Biden has ordered that half all U.S. cars be electric by 2030 and congressional Democrats prepare to vote to invest tens of billions of dollars more to push that goal further.

The irony of the connections is not lost on world leaders.

"So the West wants to go green with electric cars. To do that you need lithium for batteries," British politician Nigel Farage tweeted last week. "Afghanistan has by far the largest lithium deposits in the world and Biden has just handed them over to China."

Market experts already see China and the Taliban working a deal.
"Chinese dealmakers have their bags packed, and will arrive on the first flights after the airports open," Byron King, geologist and mining and energy writer for Agora Financial, told MarketWatch last week.

U.S. Geological Survey data projects that Afghanistan may hold unexplored mineral reserves worth as much as $1 trillion. The government of Afghanistan estimates the value could be as high as $3 trillion. The challenge is getting it extracted, particularly in remote areas.

Western governments that worked with the Afghan government helped grow some smaller scale mining, but now experts believe China will be free to work with the Taliban for a more systemic exploitation like it did with Africa's minerals.

Republicans in Congress have been raising alarm on the electric car push by Biden and the Democrats, citing the enormous reliance it will create on China.

"What it does is it forces Americans to rely on batteries to drive your car," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told Just the News on Friday. "Right now we have oil, gas, we've got gas, diesel, and you can choose to have an electric vehicle, which I'm not against, but the government making it by law that you can't drive a gas or diesel truck ... and you're forcing America to rely on China.

"China dominates right now 80% of the rare earth mines all over the world," she added. "And they dominate the battery market by 75%. And now China is moving in rapidly. And they've already been negotiating this deal with the Taliban for a long time. They want the mining rights to over 1 trillion of rare earth minerals in Afghanistan.”

Even The Washington Post, where the editorial pages support both clean energy and Joe Biden, see a massive imbalance that could disadvantage the United States.

"China dominates battery production today, with 93 gigafactories that manufacture lithium-ion battery cells, vs. only four in the United States," the Post warned in February.

 

[marsh]

America Last: Biden Talks $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Before Afghanistan Crisis

Biden delivered a statement to the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan -- but not before talking about his "Build Back Better" agenda.

www.breitbart.com

America Last: Biden Talks $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Before Afghanistan Crisis
423

Drew Angerer/Getty Images
JOEL B. POLLAK24 Aug 2021792

President Joe Biden delivered a statement to the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan on Tuesday evening — but not before talking about his “Build Back Better” agenda and the House of Representatives vote on $3.5 trillion in new spending.

“Before I update you on the meeting that I had with leaders of the G-7 earlier today, I want to say a word about the progress we’re making on the ‘Build Back Better’ agenda here at home,” Biden began, before praising the House vote on spending. He also congratulated Democrats on passing H.R. 4, the “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021,” which would vastly expand federal authority over election, but which is considered extremely unlikely to pass in the Senate.

Biden spoke as Americans stranded in Kabul continued to struggle to reach the airport, and as the administration was unable to clarify when, exactly, an August 31 withdrawal deadline imposed by the Taliban would officially begin.

Earlier in the day, the Pentagon confirmed to Breitbart News that the U.S. had begun drawing down forces to meet the August 31 deadline. In a statement prior to his address, Biden said “we are currently on pace to finish” the “objectives” of the U.S. mission by August 31, and that “completion of the mission by August 31st depends on continued coordination with the Taliban, including continued access for evacuees to the airport.”

In his speech, he emphasized that he had “asked the Pentagon and the State Department for contingency plans to adjust the timetable should that become necessary.”

 

[Dozdoats]

May be the last step to Great Reset ZUSA.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Taliban Secures World's Largest Lithium Deposits After US Withdrawal From Afghanistan

THURSDAY, AUG 26, 2021 - 05:45 AM

It's been more than a decade since we penned "The US "Discovers" Nearly $1 Trillion In Mineral Deposits In Afghanistan" in which we highlighted the colossal untapped mineral deposits that reside in Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden's decision to rapidly and completely withdraw from Afghanistan makes even less strategic sense if readers go back to our 2010 post where we quoted "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: Part 2, the 21st Century paradigm"? Which said,

"Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact. Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country."

We continued:

"Which is why it will be best to have the US military not only stay in Afghanistan indefinitely but to get a million man reinforcement surge."

Readers have known for a while Afghanistan was never about the opium trade or the war on terror but rather the massive deposit of minerals essential for renewable energies.

So in the Economic Hit Man context, why would the Biden administration suddenly pull out of Afghanistan after 20 years if the play all along was about securing rare earth metals?

We don't want to speculate the Biden administration's intentions, nor do we have any idea. Still, one thing is sure is that the Taliban now control the world's largest lithium deposits is becoming friendly with China.

Conservative media outlet Free West Media says new relations between the Taliban and China could increase its global dominance in green energies, such as the lithium-ion battery supply chain market.

Unbeknownst to many, the blog points China and Afghanistan share a 130-mile stretch border. For more on this, here's Free West Media's latest piece titled "Taliban now control one of the world's largest lithium deposits."

A Bloomberg New Energy Finance Limited report in 2020 highlighted China's global dominance in the lithium-ion battery supply chain market, due to its grip on raw material mining and refining. In 2019, the US imported 80 percent of its rare earth minerals from China, while the EU states imported 98 percent of these materials from China.
China incidentally also shares a small border with Afghanistan called the Wakhan Corridor – 210km long. While the length of the border may appear insignificant, its location is crucial. Afghanistan is believed to have large deposits of gold, iron, copper, zinc, lithium and other rare-earth metals, valued at over $1 trillion. "Afghanistan may hold 60 million metric tons of copper, 2,2 billion tons of iron ore, 1,4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs) such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and veins of aluminium, gold, silver, zinc, mercury…" according to a 2020 report in The Diplomat.

But the Wakhan Corridor has been used by Islamic Uighur militants opposed to Chinese rule in Xinjiang. Chinese officials meeting with the newly installed Taliban are certainly aware of the risk that radical Islamists pose: "We hope the Afghan Taliban will make a clean break with all terrorist organisations including ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) and resolutely and effectively combat them to remove obstacles, play a positive role and create enabling conditions for security, stability, development and cooperation in the region," said a high-ranking Chinese official.

Why is this important?
Global demand for lithium is projected to increase 40-fold by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, along with rare earth elements, copper, cobalt, and other minerals also abundant in Afghanistan. And these minerals happen to be concentrated in only a small number of pockets around the world.

The Bolivian Andes may contain 70 percent of the planet's lithium, and many analysts argue that extracting lithium from brine as in Bolivia is more environmentally friendly than extracting it from rock.

Interestingly, metallic lithium and its complex hydrides are used as high-energy additives to rocket propellants, thermonuclear weapons, or even as a solid fuel.

In 2010, the US Department of Defense called Afghanistan "Saudi Arabia of lithium" after American geologists then discovered that the country's deposits amounted to at least a trillion dollars. Lithium is an essential ingredient to produce long-lasting batteries used in electric cars in particular. The battery of a Tesla Model S, for example, has about 12 kilograms of lithium in it.

Ten years later, these metals have not yet been extracted. The Taliban is unlikely to sell the metal to Americans, and the United States views China, the world's largest lithium producer, as its main rival. And the US wants at least 40 percent of its cars to be electric by 2030. Thus the previous US-led government in Kabul had hoped that the promise of mineral wealth would entice President Trump into making a commitment to stay in the country.

"Afghanistan can be an appropriate place for US industry, and specifically the mining sector, to look at opportunities for investment," Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, the former chief adviser to Afghan President on infrastructure, human capital, and technology, once opined.

But Tom Benson, a PhD in the Department of Geological Sciences at Stanford University, has focused his research on a 16,3 million-year-old supervolcano on the Oregon-Nevada border which contains the largest lithium deposit in the United States. A number of other active volcanoes may hold the same deposits, and there is a particularly "exciting" one, called Bogoslof, in Alaska. That may be why the US has lost interest in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban are now sitting on a stockpile of one of the most strategic minerals in the world," said Rob Schoonover, an ecology expert at the US think tank Center for Strategic Risks, in an interview with Quartz. "The question of whether they will be able to play this role will be important in the future."

Could the Taliban benefit from this resource?
The exploitation of these rare earth metals could undoubtedly give the Taliban an economic advantage. Before the US retreat, the Afghan government had considered selling lucrative mining contracts to American companies. But such agreements were always discussed with the view of keeping the US military in the country and sharing the spoils. With the Taliban now leading the government, the option of involving American mining concerns is of course out of the question.

"As long as there are safer and more reliable sources (of metals, note) elsewhere, the use of Afghan minerals will remain low," said Schoonover.

However, the Taliban already have experience in extracting rare stones. By mining lapis lazuli, the Taliban earns at least $300 million per year.

Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president now in exile, thought that the abundance of mineral deposits were a curse for his country. Indeed, many economists are aware of the fact that such rich deposits in developing countries generally become a source of corruption and violence, to the detriment of the locals.

The Taliban will have to find a way to participate in the global lithium trade, much larger than their lapis lazuli trade. Access to Afghan central bank reserves has been denied to the Taliban by the US. The new Afghan leadership could also have trouble in convincing Chinese investors who once lost $3 billion in 2007 in a Taliban copper mine that could not be exploited due to persistent administration blunders.

However, good reason for China to become involved in the extraction of lithium in Afghanistan may not only be the wealth it could generate, but also to avoid more ecological damage caused by lithium mining on its own soil and to limit the scope of Islamic infiltration. The extraction of this metal leads to water shortages and air pollution, but the rewards could coax Taliban leaders into addressing the Uighur headache.

So the question we ask readers: Did the Biden administration just give away Afghanistan's rare earth minerals to China? There's no way in hell that the Taliban will let Western countries mine the land. This would suggest China could soon secure mining deals and start extracting lithium, putting the country ahead of the US in the green energy space.

[COMMENT: China just built a road through neighboring Pakistan from China to the Arabian sea under the "belt and road initiative." I could see them connecting with one built in Afghanistan to bring the minerals out efficiently.]

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Vaccine Mandates & The "Great Reset"

WEDNESDAY, AUG 25, 2021 - 11:40 PM
Authored by Philipp Bagus via The Mises Institute,

Pressure on the unvaccinated grows. While the vaccinated in some countries are getting back some of their freedoms taken away by the covid interventions, the unvaccinated are not so well off. They are being targeted for discrimination.

Access to public spaces and traveling is being made more difficult for them. In some countries there is even mandatory vaccination for some professions.

But why is the vaccination campaign so important to governments that they are increasing the pressure to such an extent? And who has an interest in the global vaccination campaign?

To answer these questions, it is necessary to analyze the prevalent vaccination narrative and ask who benefits from it.

In doing so, the alliance of interests between the state, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and supranational institutions must be addressed.


Let us start with the pharmaceutical industry.
It has an obvious economic interest in the vaccination campaign. It makes enormous profits from widespread vaccination.

What about the state?
In the covid-19 crisis, politicians have systematically amplified fear and hysteria.

This was no accident and is unsurprising, for the state builds its raison d'être on the argument that it protects the population from internal and external dangers.

The state is built upon fear. The narrative is that without the help of the state, the citizen would be defenseless against hunger, poverty, accidents, war, terrorism, disease, natural disasters, and pandemics. It is, therefore, in the state's interest to instill fear of possible dangers, which it then pretends to resolve, expanding its power in the process. A relatively recent example is the restriction of civil liberties in the US in response to the threat of terrorism after the 9-11 attacks and the second Iraq war. Similarly, it was in the interest of governments to purposefully instill fear and portray covid-19 as a unique killer virus in order to expand state power to an extent unknown in peacetime at the expense of citizens' fundamental rights.

When the corona crisis started and not much was known about the virus's potential danger politicians were faced with an asymmetric payoff. If politicians underestimate a danger and do not react, they are held responsible for the underestimation. They lose elections and power. Especially if they can be blamed for deaths. Photos of mass burials aside, the consequences of underestimating danger and failing to act are politically fatal. In contrast, overestimating the danger and taking decisive action are politically much more attractive.

If it really is an unprecedented threat, politicians are celebrated for their tough measures such as lockdowns. And politicians can always argue that without their decisive action, there would indeed have been a disaster. If the measures ultimately turn out to have been exaggerated because the hazard was not so great after all, the possible negative consequences of the measures are not as directly associated with the politicians as the photos of mass burials, because these consequences are more indirect and long term. The indirect and long-term health costs of lockdowns include suicides, depression, alcoholism, stress-related illnesses, earlier deaths from canceled surgeries and screenings, and a generally lower standard of living. However, these costs are not directly associated with the drastic interventions and blamed on the policy. Many of these consequences will occur after the next elections or even later and are not visible. For instance, we cannot observe to what extent a higher standard of living would have increased life expectancy. And if someone dies six years from now from alcoholism or depression developed in the wake of lockdowns, most people probably will not make the lockdown politicians responsible, and if they do, these politicians will possibly already be out of office. Thus, it is in the interest of politicians to overestimate a threat and overreact.

In order to justify and defend the harsh measures such as lockdowns that are so attractive to politicians, it is necessary to stir up fear. When politicians stoked fear and hysteria during the covid-19 crisis, implementing highly restrictive measures such as lockdowns, the damage to the economy and social fabric was immense. Yet a society cannot be cannot be locked down forever, as the costs keep rising. At some point, it must exit lockdown and return to some normality.

However, how can one at the same time stir up fear of the threat of a killer virus and return to normalcy?

The way out is vaccination.
With to the vaccination campaign the state can stage itself as the savior from the great danger. The state organizes vaccination for its citizens and gives the vaccinations to the citizens for "free." Without this "vaccination rescue" and in a permanent lockdown, the negative economic and social consequences of the restrictions on civil rights would be so great that resentment among the population would continue to grow and ultimately unrest would threaten. So, sooner or later, the lockdown must be ended. If, however, the state authorities were to back out of the lockdowns and restrictions without further explanation and imply that the danger was not so great after all and that the restrictions were an exaggeration and a mistake, they would lose a great deal of support and trust among the population. Consequently, from a governmental perspective, a good and face-saving "exit scenario" from the most severe restrictions is needed, and the vaccination campaign provides it.

Through state-provided vaccination, the state can continue to hold on to the narrative of the great threat and still get out of the lockdown. At the same time, it can pass itself off as a savior that is making somewhat more normality possibly through vaccination. To do this, it is necessary that as large a proportion of the population as possible also get vaccinated, because if only a fraction of the population gets vaccinated, the vaccination campaign cannot be sold as a necessary step toward opening up. Thus, it is in the state's interest to get a major part of the population vaccinated.

If this strategy works, the state will have set a precedent, expanded its power, and also made citizens more dependent. Citizens will believe that the state has rescued them from a mortal predicament and that they will need its help in the future. In return, they will be willing to give up some of their liberties permanently. The announcement that a state-organized annual vaccination booster is needed will perpetuate the citizens' dependence.

The mass media have fallen in line and actively support the vaccination narrative.

The state and mass media are closely linked. Framing by the leading media and targeting the population have a long tradition. Already in 1928 Edward Bernays advocated the intelligent manipulation of the masses in his classic book Propaganda. In modern states, the mass media help to construct popular approval for political measures such as in the case of covid-19.

The mass media's support of the state is due to several reasons. Some media are directly owned by the state, others are highly regulated or require state licenses. Furthermore, media houses are staffed with graduates from state educational institutions. In addition, especially in times of crisis, a good connection to the government offers advantages and privileged access to information. The willingness to carry the state's fear narrative also comes from the fact that negative news and the exaggeration of dangers bring attention.

In the corona crisis, the one-sided media coverage that proliferated through social media and muted critical voices contributed to fear and panic and created great psychological stress among the population. However, it is not only negative news that is attractive to the media; the narrative of the state rescuing the population from a major crisis also sells well. Thus, the vaccination narrative plays into the hands of the mass media.

In addition to nation-states, the media, and pharmaceutical companies, supranational organizations also have an interest in ensuring that the world's population is vaccinated.

Supranational organizations are actively pursuing an agenda in which global vaccination campaigns play an important role. These organizations include the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations (UN), the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Health Organization (WHO), which are closely interconnected.

Some of these organizations have set as their goal a great reset, or a great transformation. In the areas of pandemic and climate protection, gender, migration, and the financial system, these organizations want to find coordinated answers for the benefit of all people worldwide. They emphasize shared responsibility and global solidarity. The central control of vaccination, climate change, and financial and migration flows bears the hallmarks of a new world order. For example, the theme of the 2019 annual meeting of the WEF was "Globalization 4.0: Shaping a New Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution." Another example of supranational planning is the UN's "Global Compact for Migration." At the national level, these radical ideas are supported, as shown by the German Advisory Council on Global Change's Welt im Wandel – Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine Große Transformation (World in transition: Social contract for a great transformation) policy paper.

Raymond Unger (2021, pp. 84–89) sees this drive for supranational planning as part of a culture war envisioned by Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse. A global management of opinion and outrage is combined with scenes of fear and horror, especially in the fields of climate change and corona, to establish a new socialist world order. In fact, the WHO, the IMF, and the UN are led by former communists. The WEF is financed by global companies, including the pharmaceutical industry and the big tech companies. The WEF, for its part, significantly finances the UN's 2030 Agenda. The WHO is also significantly funded by pharmaceutical companies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which spearheads global vaccination campaigns. During the covid-19 crisis, the pharmaceutical industry also exerted its influence on the WHO. And the IMF only aided nation-states if they complied with WHO recommendations.

These interconnected supranational organizations see the covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to advance their agendas. The UN policy paper Shared Responsibility, Global Solidarity: Responding to the Socio-economic Impacts of COVID-19 views covid-19 as a turning point for modern society. The intention is to seize the opportunity and act in a globally coordinated manner. The major tech companies support these agendas. They are also members of the WEF and censored disagreeable information related to covid-19 on their platforms (Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook), just like the mass media. Videos critical of vaccination are particularly quickly deleted on YouTube.

The title of a keynote speech by IMF director Kristalina Georgieva, "From Great Lockdown to Great Transformation" also underscores the idea that supranational organizations want to use the corona crisis for their agendas.

Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF, argues that the covid-19 crisis represents a "rare opportunity" to "lay new foundations for our economic and social systems." In COVID-19: The Great Reset, coauthored with Thierry Malleret, Schwab speaks of a defining moment and claims a new world will emerge. According to Schwab, it is time for a fundamental reform of capitalism.

Thus, the globally coordinated vaccination program can be interpreted as a building block in a supranational strategy of a great reset.
Global vaccination structures are being established that can be used for subsequent global vaccination campaigns. From the perspective of advocates of a great reset, globally coordinated covid-19 vaccination underscores the need for global structures and organizations that can then be used for other global purposes, such as effectively combating "climate change" and pushing for a great reset. In short, the state, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and supranational organizations are closely intertwined and have a common interest in the vaccination narrative.

From this perspective, the mounting pressure on the vaccine-free is unsurprising.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Fed Up With The Fed's Abuse Of Power

FRIDAY, AUG 27, 2021 - 06:30 AM

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
One phrase describes the Fed's pillaging of the nation to benefit the few at the expense of the many: abuse of power.


To confess that the fate of the entire global economy now rests on the mumblings of a fossilized Politburo fanatically devoted to making the rich richer is to 1) state the obvious and 2) admit the extreme fragility of the global financial system. That it has come to this-- all global markets soar or collapse in unison based on the addled spew of the fossilized Politburo's chairman--is overwhelming evidence that 1) the system is broken and 2) the fossilized Politburo has way too much power and 3) the fossilized Politburo is abusing its power by enriching the already-rich, decade after decade, to the detriment of the bottom 90% and systemic stability.

Let me translate the incoherent ramblings of Chairperson Powell: let them eat cake (or more precisely, let them eat brioche), for increasing wealth and income inequality has been the Fed's prime directive since The Maestro Alan Greenspan began the Fed's manipulation--oops, I mean management--of the stock, bond and risk markets in the early 1990s.

The fatal synergies unleashed by the Fed's abuse of power were already apparent to Greenspan by December 5, 1995 when he issued his famous warning that equities were exhibiting "irrational exuberance." The irrational exuberance of those early days of the Fed's abuse of power--stripmining the middle class to boost the wealth of America's top tier--now look positively quaint compared to today's Fed-fueled speculative mania which has poisoned the entire society and hoisted the economy on a rickety ladder to the sky that will crush everything below when it finally snaps.

It would be refreshing to dispense with the Fed's pathetic, tissue-thin rationalizations for making the rich richer: we're just trying to boost inflation (the surest way to impoverish the bottom 90%) and increase employment... oh right, which must be why labor's share of the economy has been in a free-fall for the past 30 years of Fed manipulation / abuse of power. (see chart below)



Let the record show what the Fed has accomplished: 1) inflating three ever-more destructive speculative bubbles and 2) unprecedented extremes of wealth and income inequality.

The Billionaires are grateful for the free trillions the fossilized Politburo showers on the super-wealthy while destroying the safe yields that once benefited the middle class.



One phrase describes the Fed's pillaging of the nation to benefit the few at the expense of the many: abuse of power.



When will America finally end the Fed's reign of inequality and ever more extreme abuse of power? When will we finally ease this disastrously fossilized Politburo into the dustbin of history? If we cannot do so, the nation's financial collapse is easily foretold.

 

[marsh]

How Europe could get China and the U.S. on its side with new carbon tax

The EU's plan for a carbon tax has raised concerns in China, the U.S., Brazil and other nations. One expert says what the EU needs to do to get them onboard.

www.cnbc.com

SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

How Europe could get China and the U.S. on its side with new carbon tax

PUBLISHED THU, AUG 26 20211:29 AM EDT

KEY POINTS

• The measure, if approved, will force EU businesses to pay a carbon levy for goods they import from outside the bloc.
• The problem is that some nations might not want to go down the carbon neutrality route as fast as the EU.
• John Kerry, the U.S.′ top climate envoy, said earlier this year he had concerns about the proposal and that it should be used only has a “last resort.”

WATCH NOW Video on website 7:48 min

The European Green Deal: Europe’s last-ditch climate plan

The European Union’s proposed carbon pricing rules could hit a major snag in the form of China and the U.S., but one expert predicts it will still possible to convince the economic superpowers to get onboard using a series of cautious steps.

The EU said in July that it wants to impose a carbon border adjustment mechanism — also referred to as CBAM. The measure, if approved, will force EU businesses to pay a carbon levy for goods they import from outside the bloc. In essence, it aims to incentivize other places with less stringent emissions rules to reduce their carbon footprints or else risk losing some business.

The problem is that some nations might not want to go down that route; or at least not as fast as the EU, which is aiming to cut its greenhouse gas emission by 55% from 1990 levels by the end of 2030. China, India, South Africa and Brazil said in April they had “grave concern” regarding the EU’s intentions for a carbon tax, calling it “discriminatory.”

Tim Gore, member of the Institute for European Environmental Policy, a think tank, told CNBC in July that the CBAM “has very big implications, of course, for countries which are exporting into the EU market.”

As such, he said the EU will have “to invest in serious dialogue” with those countries to bring them on board. He said one of the ways to achieve this is “to make sure the revenues that will be generated are returned to those countries to support their low carbon transition.” He said this would be particularly useful for poorer countries, that are looking to increase their cash positions.

China and the U.S. have different economic realities
But China is not necessarily in this category and nor is the United States, which has also raised eyebrows over the EU’s plan. John Kerry, the U.S.′ top climate envoy, said earlier this year he had concerns about the proposal and that it should be used only has a “last resort,” suggesting that other steps could be taken to reduce global emissions.

Gore, from the Institute for European Environmental Policy, believes that competition to be the world’s leading economy will be the solution to any conflict with the EU’s climate plans.

“Both those economies [the U.S. and China] know as well that the EU here is making a serious down payment on advancing into this new low carbon economy. So irrespective of the international climate negotiations, those governments will be looking at their own economies and saying where is the competitive edge in the next 10 to 20 years,” Gore said via Zoom, while adding that Beijing and Washington will want to make sure they will not be left behind in the race to carbon neutrality.

As long as industrial installations outside the EU are not subject to similarly ambitious measures, these efforts can lose their effect.
Paolo Gentiloni
EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER

A Brussels-based think tank, Bruegel, also said in a blogpost last month that the EU should ensure that international talks over its carbon tax plan happen at the World Trade Organization. This approach would likely reduce future trade disputes in this space.

Either way, the EU seems intent in pursing this policy.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, decided to put forward the CBAM proposal despite the concerns raised by some international partners. The institution believes the policy is essential to prevent “carbon leakage” — the idea that companies operating in Europe would shift their production to places with less restrictive emissions policies.

A detail of the pilot carbon dioxide (CO2) capture plant is pictured at Amager Bakke waste incinerator in Copenhagen on June 24, 2021. - The goal is to be able to capture 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from Amager Bakke’s emissions by 2025.
IDA GULDBAEK ARENTSEN | AFP | Getty Images

“As long as industrial installations outside the EU are not subject to similarly ambitious measures, these efforts can lose their effect,” the EU’s economic commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, said in July about the need to impose the CBAM.

As a result, the 27 EU member states and the European Parliament are assessing the proposal. But this legislative process could take up to two years to be fully implemented into law.

“We are already too late in moving on climate change. We can see this summer, extreme weather events all around the world,” Bob Ward, from the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy in London told CNBC last week.

He added that “this is going to continue to get worse for at least the next three decades till we get to net zero as a world.”

“We need an orderly but accelerated transition towards net zero emissions,” he said.

 

[marsh]

Bacanora Lithium accepts Ganfeng’s $391 million takeover offer

The deal hands China’s largest lithium producer control over the Bacanora mine in Mexico, slated to begin production in 2023.

www.mining.com

Bacanora Lithium accepts Ganfeng’s $391 million takeover offer

Cecilia Jamasmie | August 27, 2021 | 3:41 am News China Mexico and Central America Lithium

The Chinese miner’s expansion in Latin America includes the Caucharí-Olaroz lithium project in Argentina. (Image courtesy of Ganfeng Lithium.)

China’s Ganfeng Lithium, one of the world’s top producers of the battery metal, is going ahead with the takeover of Bacanora Lithium (LON: BCN) as the Mexico-focused explorer and developer has accepted a sweetened £284.8 million (about $391m) cash offer.

Ganfeng increased its original bid, submitted in early May, to 73.6 pence per Bacanora share in cash and Germany-focused Zinnwald (LON: ZNWD) shares, in which Bacanora holds a 36% stake. This compares with Ganfeng’s previous offer of 67.5 pence per share in cash.

As part of the deal, Bacanora shareholders will be entitled to receive 67.5 pence in cash and a distribution of the UK-based miner’s stake in Zinnwald at a ratio of 0.23589 Zinnwald shares for each Bacanora share.

With the addition of those shares, the Chinese group’s offer represents a 63% premium to Bacanora’s closing share price on May 5.

THE DEAL HANDS CHINA’S LARGEST LITHIUM PRODUCER CONTROL OVER THE BACANORA LITHIUM MINE IN MEXICO

The bid, which would add the Sonora project in Mexico to Ganfeng’s global portfolio of lithium assets, comes as soaring lithium prices have triggered a wave of deals in the sector, including the recent mega-merger of Australia’s Galaxy Resources (ASX: GXY) and Orocobre (ASX: ORE).

Ganfeng’s improved offer has overcome a number of potential obstacles to a deal, including meeting all pre-conditions outlined in the May announcement and securing Chinese authorities’ approval.

The deal still needs the support of shareholders owning more than 50% of Bacanora and the Mexican antitrust approval.

Following the original offer, a group of more than 400 investors orchestrated a campaign to block the deal, calling the offer derisory. But the revised bid has the backing of M&G Recovery Fund, which holds a 14% stake in Bacanora, Ganfeng said.

Prices for lithium in China have jumped more than 100% so far this year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, on the back of an expected demand increase from the electric vehicles (EVs) sector.

Ganfeng, which already had a 50% stake in Bacanora’s Mexican project, holds interests in mines in Australia, Argentina and Canada and around 70,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent of annual conversion capacity in China.

The Sonora mine, expected to begin production in 2023, will produce 35,000 tonnes of lithium per year once at full tilt.

Targeting hot spots
Beijing announced last year a development plan for the so-called new energy vehicle (NEV) industry in 2021-35. It is targeting a 20% share of NEVs in the country’s total vehicles sales by 2025, which supports the demand for battery materials in the long run.

Gangfen paid C$353 million ($278m) in July for Canada’s Millennial Lithium, which has the Pastos Grandes project in Argentina. The previous month it had paid $130 million for half the Goulamina lithium mine in Mali.

The Chinese miner is also advancing a planned C$353 million ($280m) acquisition of Argentina-focused Millennial Lithium, which will give it control of four of Latin America’s biggest lithium deposits, hosting combined lithium carbonate equivalent resources of 43.5 million tonnes, based on figures from Mining Intelligence.

Gangfend is simultaneously exploring setting up a batteries plant in Argentina, where is developing the Cauchari-Olaroz lithium brine project, in the country’s northwestern Jujuy province.

An International Energy Agency (IEA) report published in May recommended governments to start stockpiling battery metals, noting that lithium demand could increase 40-fold in the next 20 years. IEA executive director Fatih Birol said this would become an “energy security” issue.

China dominates lithium processing, while mine supply largely comes from Chile and Australia, the two largest producing countries.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

China Has a Grand Strategy to Displace US: China Expert

SUNDAY, AUG 29, 2021 - 07:00 PM
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

China has had three grand strategies to counter the United States since 1989, culminating in the latest phase since 2016 of wanting to displace the United States, said China expert Rush Doshi during a recent webinar to talk about his new book.

Doshi wrote the book, entitled “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” while working at the Brookings Institution, which hosted the online event on Aug. 26. Now, he is the Biden administration’s newly-appointed director for China on the White House National Security Council.



The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials “seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence,” with the grand strategy, according to Doshi’s book.

The grand strategy is now in its third phase, Doshi explained, after examining years of CCP documents such as memoirs, speeches, and biographies. Now, he said China saw its competition with the United States as global, regional, and functional in many domains.

“It’s in key domains like economics, technology, finance, emerging technologies, obviously in security and political institutions,” Doshi explained. He added the nature of the Sino-U.S. competition was much wider now, involving more countries.

He explained:

“If you look at the Chinese discourse on what they see as the future of competition … they believe that the West, the United States and others, will sort of increasingly work together.

“They think they have to do the same thing with other states, that’s a little harder, in their own estimation, because they don’t have the same network of alliances and historical partnerships.”

His comments were made in his personal capacity as a former Brookings fellow.
The first phase of China’s grand strategy lasted from 1989 to 2008, then the second phase kicked in for the next eight years, according to Doshi. In 2016, China commenced its third phase of the strategy.

Beijing saw the United States as a quasi-ally before it changed its perception and saw America as an ideological and military threat following three events—the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the first Gulf War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Doshi. Describing the events as a “traumatic trifecta,” he said Beijing ushered in the first phrase—a blunting strategy.

His book details how China made military, political, and economic decisions in accordance with the blunting strategy. For example, Beijing shifted from controlling distant maritime territory to preventing the U.S. Navy’s ability to traverse or intervene in waters near China. The shift was accompanied by focusing its military investment in submarines, naval mine arsenal, and anti-ship ballistic missiles.

The 2008 financial crisis prompted Beijing to see the United States differently, believing that America was “weakening” and its economic and political model wasn’t “quite as effective,” Doshi explained during the webinar. In response to its new view, Beijing began focusing more on “building the foundations for Chinese order within Asia,” Doshi added.

He said the shift from blunting to building was evident by a speech by former Chinese leader Hu Jintao at the 2009 ambassadorial conference, during which he said China had to “actively accomplish something.”

As a result, Beijing began to focus more on distant military capabilities, turning its attention to investing in aircraft carriers, overseas military bases, and surface vessels, according to his book.

Beijing reaffirmed its belief that the United States, as well as the West, was in decline, after seeing populist candidates won several elections around the world in 2016, former President Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote, according to Doshi. In response to its assessment, the Chinese regime adopted the third phase of its grand strategy—what Doshi called an expansion strategy.

The communist regime “takes the blunting and building strategies from early periods and applies them on a global stage,” Doshi explained.

“If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both,” his book says.

It adds:

“It is clear, then, that China is the most significant competitor that the United States has faced and that the way Washington handles its emergence to superpower status will shape the course of the next century.”

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

Empire's Fate

SUNDAY, AUG 29, 2021 - 10:00 PM
Authored by Nikola Kehdi via AmericanMind.org,

America under siege and at a crossroads

Nothing lives forever, and nations are no exception. The reasons for the downfall of great nations and empires are complex, but if you want to see a great country decline and crumble, it is enough to watch it cancel its culture and destroy its economy through an abandonment of values and fiscal irresponsibility.


Unnatural cultural and economic conditions will lead inevitably to social polarization and civil unrest. This leads to an erosion of democracy, less freedom, and less economic opportunity.

Due to the pandemic, we have seen the global accumulation of power and centralization at the expense of individual liberty. The current Washington and coastal elites are forcibly imposing their cultural views on the American people.

The country’s progressives in control of the media, academia, the corporate sector and almost every other institution present a vision of the U.S. as irredeemably racist, evil, and oppressive. Massive reconstitution of the nation is necessary to move forward, in this view.

A country without memory is a zombie. Deleting the past destroys the future. With left-wing extremists driving political debate, destroying monuments, attacking free speech, and censoring everything that displeases the Twitter mobs, America is on the path toward Communist-style tyranny. A total revision of American history, and a forceful implementation of progressive socialist values, will take place in the United States if the current momentum continues unchecked.

With its centralized policies and mixed economy, Europe has been experiencing economic decline for decades. The United States has avoided this fate because of its tradition of limited government, fiscal responsibility, capitalism, and free enterprise. However, massive unproductive government spending with ever growing entitlements and never-ending quantitative easing have become the norm in recent years—largely with bipartisan consensus.

The United States has close to $30 trillion in debt. Interest rates will not remain low forever, especially if inflation continues to increase, which is a virtual certainty given the Biden plan to double or triple government spending. When rates rise, paying for this massive debt will be much costlier. The short sightedness of politicians is steering the American economy toward “Modern Monetary Theory,” a fancy name for socialism.

As Europe has shown, massive trillion-dollar packages do not boost the economy; the private sector does. Governments cannot channel capital efficiently. Instead, they fund zombie companies, unproductive sectors, and political cronies. The data back this up: according to the Congressional Budget Office, the estimate for average real growth in GDP from 2020 to 2030 is 1.7 percent, while the unemployment rate is forecast to average 4.8 percent, despite trillions of dollars in stimulus packages. In the second quarter, after massive government intervention, annualized growth was at 6.5 percent, much lower than the 8.5 percent expected, while annualized real personal disposable income fell at a 30.6 percent rate, and inflation continues to rise.

In contrast, the pro-growth and pro-worker policies of the Trump administration led to median household income growing by 6.8 percent in 2019, which remains the largest annual increase on record. America gained seven million new jobs—more than three times projections and at what was supposed to be the end of an expansionary cycle. Middle-class family income increased nearly $6,000—more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration. Median household incomes rose among Hispanics (7.1 percent), blacks (7.9 percent), Asians (10.6 percent), foreign-born workers (8.5 percent), whites (5.7 percent), and for all native-born Americans (6.2 percent). Poverty rates during the Trump years fell to a 17-year low. It was thanks to Trump’s policies that the American economy began to recover much quicker than Europe as soon as many states ended lockdowns. When the Biden administration, with the help of the Fed, started inundating the economy with needless and unaffordable money, the recovery cooled rapidly.

The current administration is intent on following through with unnecessary spending, an assault on the energy sector, increasing the size of government, and higher taxes which will lead to a decline in competitiveness, stagflation, and the immiseration of the American people. Republicans are enabling this fiscal insanity, as their support for the massive, unnecessary infrastructure bill shows.

The American century appears to be coming to an ignominious end. The recent catastrophe in Afghanistan is a direct consequence of the weakened state America finds itself from internal attacks that have produced an ineffective and incompetent government. Soon, the United States will be unable to confront Chinese expansionism or other authoritarian threats. Hence, it is a crucial moment for American society. It is up to conservatives and traditionalists to be smart and swift enough to counteract the cultural and economic transformation and provide an alternative, which is not yet happening in any cohesive or convincing way.

 

[marsh]

The Planned Obsolescence Of America 4:24 min

The Planned Obsolescence Of America
Bannons War Room Published August 30, 2021
[Natalie Winters - National Pulse]

 

[marsh]

Progressive Democrats urge Biden to oust Powell, revamp Fed over climate, racial justice concerns

President Trump in 2017 appointed Powell to the Fed.

justthenews.com

Progressive Democrats urge Biden to oust Powell, revamp Fed over climate, racial justice concerns

President Trump in 2017 appointed Powell to the Fed.

Updated: August 31, 2021 - 1:43pm

A group of progressive House Democrats is urging President Biden to revamp the Federal Reserve including the ouster of Trump-appointed leader Jerome Powell – with the expectation such change will result in the Fed putting focus on climate change and racial and economic justice.

"We urge President Biden to reimagine a Federal Reserve focused on eliminating climate risk and advancing racial and economic justice," the five lawmakers, led by the chamber’s unofficial leader New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Mondaire Jones of New York and Chuy Garcia of Illinois, all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also signed the letter, according to CNN.

Powell is a Republican and former investment banker appointed reserve chairman in 2017 by then-President Trump.

Powell's term expires in February, amid much speculation about whether President Biden, a Democrat, will appoint him to another term to lead the United States' central banking system.

The Fed’s efforts under Powell to keep the U.S. economy from collapsing during the pandemic have been largely hailed.

The caucus noted Powell’s effort to keep as many Americans as possible during the pandemic, members voiced concern over his track record on the climate crisis and regulation, CNN also reports.

"Under his leadership the Federal Reserve has taken very little action to mitigate the risk climate change poses to our financial system," they said.

However, the Fed has joined an international network of financial regulators focused on climate change, and Powell in recent months has warned about climate change posing "profound challenges” for the global economy and the financial system.

They also accused the Fed of "weakening" financial regulations, an argument Powell disputes.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_Es8tDOUo
14:03 min

How the Afghanistan disaster puts CHINA on top

Aug 31, 2021


Glenn Beck

The big winner in Biden’s Afghanistan disaster seems to be China, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin says. Not only does the vacuum we left behind there give direct opportunities to the Communist nation to expand their mineral and lithium reserves, but it gives them greater leverage around the world. No longer will small nations looking for help — or even Western ones looking for allies — blindly trust the United States: "Who around the world will believe us again, when we go into some place, to say, hey, we can make your lives better?"

 

[marsh]

How the Taliban’s Win Benefits China’s Belt and Road

The Taliban's victory in Afghanistan could have major repercussions for China's Belt and Road Initiative and its CPEC project.

www.breitbart.com

How the Taliban’s Win Benefits China’s Belt and Road
90

AP Photo/Rahmat Gul
JOHN HAYWARD31 Aug 202186

Communist China has made no great secret of its lust for Afghanistan’s natural resources, or its belief that the Taliban conquest will bring a gruesome stability to that fractious and tribal nation.

If the budding partnership between Beijing and the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” holds up, it could have long-term ramifications for China’s colonialist Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China is eager to exploit up to $3 trillion in rare-earth minerals in Afghanistan, improving its chokehold on the world market and feeding much-needed minerals into China’s hungry industrial machine. China also has a $4.2 billion copper mine in Afghanistan, plus projects under development by the China National Petroleum Corporation.

Chinese state media are eagerly boasting of courteous treatment from the Taliban for “private” Chinese businesses and clearly signaling to Taliban leadership that gigantic state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are ready to move in once Beijing is convinced Afghanistan is under control and stable enough for massive investments.

“We are ready to exchange views with China on how to forge ahead in terms of boosting our mutual relations, establishing peace in the region, and its assistance in the reconstruction of Afghanistan,” a Taliban spokesman declared on Monday.'

The benefits China can bring to the Taliban are clear, beginning with great-power diplomatic protection that will make any replay of the post-9/11 invasion by U.S. and NATO forces impossible. China shields its client states from action by international organizations, from the United Nations to human rights groups.

This frees up the most vicious of China’s partner regimes to do whatever it takes
to maintain power and suppress uprisings.

China is also very good at helping its client states evade Western sanctions, a diplomatic tool Beijing constantly seeks to attack and weaken. Sometimes these sanctions-evading schemes get a little messy and there are loose ends to clean up, but one cannot fault the Chinese Communist Party for lack of trying.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s grand scheme for purchasing political influence across the Third World. It frequently devolves into a nasty form of colonialism called “debt-trap diplomacy,” in which developing nations – or, more to the point, their ambitious and corrupt political elites – take out loans from Chinese banks for dubious “infrastructure” projects that can never generate enough revenue to pay off the loan. China then graciously accepts control of vital national assets from its debtors in lieu of loan payments.

Some of China’s Belt and Road clients have lately been having deep second thoughts about participating in the enterprise, due to concerns about growing Chinese Communist influence over their internal politics, or because they noticed BRI tends to benefit China much more than its junior partners.

Pakistan appeared to be having such second thoughts about BRI but, in early August, the head of its stalled BRI projects was replaced with someone much friendlier to Beijing, so the highly touted $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is expected to get back on track.

The deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan was one reason CPEC stalled out, so if the Taliban can deliver the “stability” Beijing desires, the regional progress of Belt and Road will benefit.

Some observers doubt China wants much more from Afghanistan for BRI than eliminating the security obstacle posed by the Taliban’s long insurgency.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for example, argued last week that while Afghanistan is formally a member of BRI and sent delegates to some BRI forums, the membership was largely ceremonial before the Taliban takeover and China will see little need to develop that role any further just to grab Afghanistan’s minerals and gas.

CFR saw a few potential benefits for expanding BRI in Afghanistan, including beefing up CPEC and keeping extremists hostile to China’s interests under control, but felt these benefits were offset by the difficulty of protecting expansive Chinese operations and by the heavy risks of sinking big money into Afghanistan’s shaky soil at time when BRI is emphasizing smaller, safer projects.

BRI could also become a carrot China dangles in front of the Taliban to secure its enduring cooperation, perhaps holding out expanded membership in CPEC as a reward for the Taliban aggressively handling China’s security concerns. In other words, the road to Belt and Road gold could be paved with a lot of dead Uyghurs.

The Diplomat thought the Taliban might be interested in the “hard” aspects of BRI, such as getting a piece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s roads and pipelines, but not so much with “soft” BRI projects like China’s ballyhooed Digital Silk Road and Health Silk Road. Those “soft” projects would involve cultural changes the Taliban is reluctant to make, like expanding educational opportunities for women, and they tend to spread Chinese political influence into client states.

The Diplomat proposed an interesting sticking point for greater Taliban participation in BRI could be ethnic cleansing, which Beijing obviously has no moral objection to, but only when it is done with crisp industrial-scale efficiency to avoid revolutions and uprisings:

China also expects the Taliban to soften their tone toward ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan if they want to join the BRI. In the past, the Taliban were accused of ethnic cleansing against minorities such as Hazaras. But the continuation of this abuse will elevate the risk of terror attacks against the infrastructure facilities that are to be constructed by Chinese companies in Afghanistan. Segregation and harassment against Shias or Uzbeks would also threaten relations with neighboring countries like Iran or Uzbekistan and challenge the roll-out of regional multilateral projects financed and constructed by China. Similarly, the Taliban should not transform Afghanistan into a destination for terrorists who would plan attacks in Xinjiang or other countries in Central Asia that support the BRI, as China would never tolerate this.

Bloomberg News suggested China will be reluctant to make big investments that the Taliban could use against it as leverage if their relationship turns sour at some point in the future. China wants a stable Afghanistan that can be mined for resources and neutralized as a menace to CPEC, not Afghanistan as a blossoming regional economic hub under the iron control of a mercurial theocracy that enjoys humiliating great powers.

If anyone could twist China’s debt-trap diplomacy into a “creditor trap” – a failed state that can blackmail Beijing by threatening to destabilize and bankrupt Pakistan, where China has invested so much money that it cannot walk away – it would be the Taliban.

“The Taliban comeback in Afghanistan will galvanize many Islamist actors in Pakistan to emulate the Afghan jihadist movement. It will be a huge challenge for a terribly weakened Islamic Republic of Pakistan to sustain itself with an Islamic emirate next door,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted.

The WSJ speculated China rushed so quickly to embrace the Taliban because Beijing is growing nervous about how many other powers it needed to rely on, in order to keep Afghanistan’s chaos from disrupting its Central Asian business interests: Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.

“Resultantly, China has shelled out large loans to countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan to secure its BRI dream. However, such a forward-looking strategy often falls on its head when regimes can change overnight in unstable territories, and China therefore willingly or unwillingly must extend its support to the Taliban, a group that by its very nature is highly erratic and poses a threat to all investments made in Afghanistan by countries globally,” the Business Standard judged.