GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Four Reasons Why Dollar Dominance Won't Be Permanent

WEDNESDAY, SEP 21, 2022 - 07:20 PM
Authored by Mark Nestmann via Nestmann.com,

We periodically read missives to the effect that “the dollar is doomed.” And we’ve been reading them for many years.

Consider this newsletter promotion from 1985. The headline was a lot like those we see today: “Get Your Dollars Out of the USA Before Uncle Sam Gets Them Out of You.” The copy predicted an imminent collapse in the US dollar’s value, along with hyperinflation.

Of course, neither of these things happened in 1985 … or over the next 37 years. Given this, you can understand why we tend to be skeptical when we read breathless pronouncements of impending gloom and doom for the greenback.

That’s especially true because at the moment, the dollar is surging in value. It’s at a 20-year high against the euro; a 24-year high against the Japanese yen; and a 37-year high against the British pound.

And we wouldn’t be surprised if the dollar strengthens further in the next few months, especially if the Federal Reserve follows through on its promises to continue raising interest rates.

But behind the scenes, the dollar looks more vulnerable.

We see four trends pointing the way.

First, while the dollar is effectively the world’s reserve currency, its share of global central bank currency reserves has been steadily shrinking for many years.

Today, about 59% of global central bank currency reserves are held in dollars. But in 2000, that number was 70%.

Second, American politicians have grossly abused the dollar’s privileged status.

One way they’ve done so is to borrow trillions of dollars to finance the country’s welfare-warfare state while simultaneously cutting taxes. No matter how much money its politicians borrow, central banks still need to accumulate dollars since so many global transactions are settled in dollars. Companies everywhere that conduct business internationally need to exchange their local currencies into dollars to pay for goods and services.

Third, Uncle Sam persists in using the dollar as a hammer to hold over the heads of its adversaries.

One form this hammer takes is US domination of the international payments settlement system called SWIFT – the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. This organization offers over 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries a network enabling them to send and receive payment orders – mainly dollars – in a secure, standardized format.

Even though SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium, Uncle Sam has a great deal of influence over it. Thus, we anticipated that within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, SWIFT ejected most Russian banks from its network. Russia now joins Iran and North Korea as countries effectively isolated from the global dollar clearing network.

Fourth, the targets of US sanctions are taking steps to de-dollarize.

We wrote about some of them in this article last year. Since then, Russia and China have taken steps to end the use of dollars altogether. The latest initiative in this direction occurred in June at the 14th BRICS summit. BRICS – an acronym for the countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – isn’t an organization as such, but rather a group of countries pursuing common goals. High on the list of those goals, as Chinese President Xi stated in his keynote speech:

We should expand BRICS cooperation on cross-border payment … to facilitate trade, investment, and financing among our countries.

Russian President Putin disclosed another crucial BRICS objective – setting up a new global reserve currency. It would consist of a basket of BRICS countries’ currencies.

It’s unlikely any of these initiatives pose any short-term threat to the dollar. Yet, the BRICS countries collectively account for 41% of global population, 24% of global GDP, and 16% of global trade.

Meanwhile, Americans are enjoying the effects of having the dollar riding high. For instance, they’re flocking to Europe to buy real estate. The hottest markets at the moment for buyers with fistfuls of dollars are in France (Paris and Provence); Italy (Tuscany and the Lake Como region); Portugal (Lisbon); and England (London).

The dollar’s run-up in value has also led to a prolonged decline in values of gold and silver. So far in 2022, gold has lost nearly 6% of its value; silver nearly 19%.

Still, gold’s performance is noteworthy, since the US Dollar Index, which tracks the strength of the dollar against a trade-weighted basket of foreign currencies, is up more than 14% for the year.

It’s anyone’s guess if the continuing efforts to dethrone the dollar’s reserve currency status will be successful, and when. But one thing is for sure. Eventually, the dollar is fated to join the long list of fiat currencies (i.e., currencies backed only by the governments that issued them rather than by a tangible asset such as gold) that have been debased out of existence.

On its way out, you’ll see even higher inflation, bail-ins, and exchange controls.

It’s only a matter of time. Make sure you’re ready when it comes.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

I Told You So: Aramco CEO Slams Unrealistic Energy Policies

WEDNESDAY, SEP 21, 2022 - 05:20 PM
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Years of underinvestment in oil and gas production is the leading cause of today’s energy crisis, and when the global economy rebounds from the current slowdown, the little spare oil production capacity that’s left will be wiped out, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser said on Tuesday.

“Many of us have been insisting for years that if investments in oil and gas continued to fall, global supply growth would lag behind demand, impacting markets, the global economy, and people’s lives,” the CEO of the world’s largest oil company and top oil exporter said at the Schlumberger Digital Forum 2022 in Switzerland today.

Investment in oil and gas more than halved between 2014 and 2021, Nasser said, adding that “The increases this year are too little, too late, too short-term.”

Back in 2014, annual investment in oil and gas was $700 billion, which dropped to just over $300 billion last year, Aramco’s top executive said.

“These are the real causes of this state of energy insecurity: under-investment in oil and gas; alternatives not ready; and no back-up plan. But you would not know that from the response so far,” he added, reiterating a long-held view of Saudi Arabia that underinvestment in previous years will come back to bite energy supply.

“Even with strong economic headwinds, global oil demand is still fairly healthy today,” Nasser said.

“But when the global economy recovers, we can expect demand to rebound further, eliminating the little spare oil production capacity out there. And by the time the world wakes up to these blind spots, it may be too late to change course,” he added.

“That is why I am seriously concerned.”

Saudi Aramco called once again for more investment in oil and gas, especially capacity development.

“And at least this crisis has finally convinced people that we need a more credible energy transition plan,” Aramco’s CEO added.

Saudi Arabia has plans to boost its production capacity to 13 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027, from around 12 million bpd now, but not much further above that. The Kingdom is one of just two major oil producers believed to hold some additional spare capacity now. The other producer is fellow OPEC member the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
 

marsh

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The Fed Is Wrong Again: Core Inflation Rapidly Rolling Over And Will Drop To 3% By Q1​

WEDNESDAY, SEP 21, 2022 - 05:00 PM

The Fed was dead wrong for the past decade in perpetuating QE long after the economic crisis had passed, but especially in 2020 and 2021 when it saw nothing but transitory inflation, and refused to step in an contain soaring prices which we are seeing today everywhere in action. And the Fed is also dead wrong now in its crusade to crush inflation - as it confirmed today when it hiked 75bps and telegraphed another 145bps of rate hikes - even if it means a grave recession.

Why is the Fed wrong again? Because besides sliding commodity prices (which will very likely soar in the very near future, especially once winter arrives in Europe and once Biden's drain of the SPR is over), the bulk of core CPI components - and certainly some of the biggest drivers such as shelter, cars and airfares are rolling over fast.

That's according to a new report by JPM's Phoebe White (full note available to pro subs here), who writes that she forecasts a material softening in inflation across all of the components that have been the largest contributors of core inflation over the past year—not only vehicle prices, but rents, medical care services, and airfares as well—and last week’s hot CPI report does not change this view.

At a high level, we have seen a continued rotation in the composition of core inflation over recent months, with core services inflation accelerating from 3.7% Y/Y as of December 2021 to 6.1% as of August 2022, while core goods inflation has decelerated from 10.7% to 7.1%. Notably, even while core goods inflation continues to run hotter than core services inflation, services receive nearly triple the weight in the calculation of the core index, with the rent components alone comprising more than 40% of the basket (Exhibit 1). Thus, it is clear to see why rent inflation, which has accelerated above 6% Y/Y in recent months, is the largest contributor to core CPI inflation as of the August report: Exhibit 2 shows that the two rent measures, owners’ equivalent rent and rent of primary residence, account for 1.9%-pts and 0.7%-pts, respectively.



Let's drill down into the data, starting start with rent inflation - which is the largest contributor to Core Inflation - and which the JPM analyst expects to peak in the next few months and roll over. Why? Take the Zillow Observed Rent Index which like the Apartment list price index (which we have discussed countless times especially when it was soaring higher), tends to lead the CPI rent measures, and this index has been softening recently.

And while JPM expects shelter inflation to break above 7% Y/Y by early next year - due to its several month delay from real-world prices - the bank also expects the pace of monthly gains to peak within the next few months. The rate of increases in the Zillow Observed Rent Index, which measures asking rents on new leases, peaked above 17% in February, but has softened to 12%
oya as of August—a notable softening, albeit still elevated versus the ~4% average pace observed prior to the pandemic. Unlike the Zillow data, the rent components in CPI track average rents across both new and existing leases.

Thus fluctuations in the Zillow index slowly pass-through to official measures as the stock of leases begins to resemble the recent flow of new leases, with each percentage-point increase in the Zillow rent index preceding a 0.6%-pt cumulative increase in shelter CPI .



To be sure, one complicating dynamic that we have been highlighting is the fact that tighter monetary policy could temporarily exacerbate rental inflationary pressure, as high mortgage rates discourage home-buying.

Indeed, now that no new home buyer reliant on a mortgage can possibly afford a house, they will likely have no choice but to find a rental. On the other hand, there is a limit to how high rents can go simply as a function of disposable income: outside of the top income cohort, JPM finds that rent affordability is already stretched, implying it will be difficult for rent inflation to sustain rates much above the pace of wage growth. And once neither housing nor rent is affordable, well then it becomes a political issue and Democrats will scream bloody murder - as Liz Warren already did today - and will demand Powell to start cutting rates.

Away from rents, new and used vehicles have had the next largest contributions to core CPI. And with demand softening, supply constraints easing, and raw material costs falling, JPM thinks declines in used vehicle prices are on the near-term horizon. Declines in new vehicle prices are likely to follow in 2023. In fact, the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which measures the prices dealerships pay for used cars at auctions, has declined since its peak in January, with the index falling 4% in August alone, and another 2.3% over the first half of September.

When will this slowdown appear in official data: as chart 5 illustrates, the pass-through from the Mannheim index to the BLS data exhibits a 1-3 month lag, making it somewhat difficult to forecast the precise timing of inflections in the used vehicle CPI. Looking ahead, JPM expects the trend of falling used vehicle prices to continue over coming months: Chart 6 shows that the J.P Morgan Automotive Commodities Index is now down 35%, reflecting the cost-weighted average price of the commodities used to manufacture a vehicle.

Used vehicle prices tend to be more sensitive to raw commodity costs compared with new vehicles, given that scrap value reflects a greater share of the overall price of a used vehicle.



The component with the next largest contributions to core CPI inflation is airline fares which is one of the more highly volatile categories of inflation. The still-high rate of airfare inflation on a year-ago basis reflects the surge observed through the spring alongside rising jet fuel prices, but this component has fallen by more than 14% since its peak in May, with prices likely to be somewhat more stable going forward.

Finally, the recent surge in health insurance inflation likely reflects, at least in part, the drop in insurance claims over a year ago, given the “retained earnings” methodology that BLS uses to calculate this component. Some utilization metrics are now tracking in line with pre-pandemic levels
Overall, when taking a deeper look at the largest contributors to core CPI inflation over the past year, JPMorgan sees clear evidence that core inflation is peaking and is likely to moderate fairly quickly on a sequential basis over the near term, falling from 6.5% in the three months through August, to about a 3.5% SAAR pace in 1Q 23 and just 3.1% in 2Q23, or essentially in line with the Fed' target.

To be sure, the longer it takes for these dynamics to play out, the greater the risks that high inflation could become more ingrained. However, what is even more relevant is that the latest hawkish rate hike by the Fed - which guarantees that the Fed overshoots, driving a more material weakening in demand and triggering a recession — will certainly lead to even softer inflation. In other words, if the Fed halts its tightening campaign here, not only will core prices drop to where the Fed wants them, but a recession may even be averted. However, if Powell continues blindingly to hike, a crushing recession is virtually guaranteed. And since the Fed is always wrong about everything, the worst case scenario is now in play.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Surprise, Surprise: Rockefeller-Funded Foundation Seeks to Silence Critics of the COVID Jab​

Red Voice Media Published September 21, 2022

The Rockefeller Foundation is donating $7.2 million for the Mercury Project, which is behavioral research focused on convincing people to get the jab.

They also want to fight health mis/disinformation and censor dissenting viewpoints.

Dr. Peterson Pierre: "It is vitally important for the state to use all its powers to repress dissent, because the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."

Source: Daily Dose: ‘Who is Funding the Jabs?' with Dr. Peterson Pierre
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Bill Clinton and Blackrock team up to ACCELERATE the great reset | Redacted with Clayton Morris 13:58 min

Bill Clinton and Blackrock team up to ACCELERATE the great reset | Redacted with Clayton Morris​

Redacted News Published September 21, 2022

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative Summit this week and he had all kinds of ideas on how to promote the environment. Too bad those idea will end up harming the poorest amongst us but who cares about that, right?
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh0mSicox2w
3:28 min

Commitment | Clinton Global Initiative​

Sep 18, 2022

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Clinton Global Initiative
The Clinton Global Initiative was founded on commitment. Today, we celebrate the commitments that have served 435 million people globally. Tomorrow, the work continues to transform the future for millions more. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global and emerging leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI works with partners to drive action through its unique model. Rather than directly implementing projects, CGI facilitates action by helping members connect, collaborate, and develop Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable plans that address global challenges. Through CGI, the community has made more than 3,800 Commitments to Action that have made a difference in the lives of more than 435 million people in more than 180 countries. This video footage from CGI commitment-makers and includes a voiceover from Padma Lakshmi.

^^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AakMw_3eGwE
2:10 min

Leadership | Clinton Global Initiative​

42 views
Sep 21, 2022

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Clinton Global Initiative
A celebration of New York and the symbolism of the world’s most iconic building – the Empire State Building – now a leader in sustainability and a beacon of what’s possible for green energy transitions worldwide.

^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOP1EMzgJWU
2:48 min

Partnership | Clinton Global Initiative​

Sep 20, 2022

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Clinton Global Initiative
The remarkable story of Paul Farmer and his indelible impact on public health and the world.

^^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5luXuQ8vZo
2:15 min

Potential | Clinton Global Initiative​

Sep 20, 2022

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Clinton Global Initiative
A proven program to unleash the untapped potential of our nation’s youth, 100Kin10 is harnessing the power of education through sizable investments in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning.

^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuc5LkZTQn8
1:58 min

Taking Action Together | Clinton Global Initiative​

Sep 21, 2022

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Clinton Global Initiative
“We should model, live, and create an alternative future where what we have in common is more important than our interesting differences." President Bill Clinton
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQMPvXqiGE
25:55 min

Governor Newsom:poop::devilish: Discusses California Climate Action at the Clinton Global Initiative 2022 Meeting​

Streamed live on Sep 20, 2022

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California Governor Gavin Newsom
Initiative 2022 Meeting focused on accelerating climate action.

^^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2Ifb0ubBs
1:18:56 min

Clinton Global Initiative - Climate Week NYC Session: Reaching Net Zero​


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We Don't Have Time

The Clinton Global Initiative´s AGM Public session focusing on the Climate. How we can achieve the ambitious pledges for carbon reductions amid new laws and regulations

^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPWsbYXh2Z4
1:31:24 min

Clinton Global Initiative - Climate Week NYC Session: A Fast and Fair Clean Energy Transition​

Streamed live on Sep 19, 2022

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We Don't Have Time

The Clinton Global Initiative´s AGM Public session focusing on the Climate. How we can unlock capital for climate mitigation in an equitable and just way.

^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI86C39MOwU
1:42:12 min

Clinton Global Initiative - Climate Week NYC Session: The Climate Crisis We Are Already In​

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We Don't Have Time

The Clinton Global Initiative´s AGM Public session focusing on the Climate. How we can accelerate adaptation to a changing climate

^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CsqEdgvnkA
2:19:15 min

Clinton Global Initiative 2022 Closing Plenary: "Taking Action Together"​

Streamed live on Sep 20, 2022

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(RED)

The question: how do we — from the private sector to local communities — affirm our common humanity, develop deep and cross-cutting partnerships, and center the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of our global challenges at the heart of our collective work?
 
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment

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Sustainable Development Impact Meetings​

19—23 September 2022

Video on website 40:21 min Web3's Climate Impact

Web3's Climate Impact​

Public Speakers: Brynly Llyr, Lucia Gallardo, Josh Knauer, Anna Lerner, Amy Westervelt

As crypto and other Web3’s energy use has grown in recent years, so have concerns over the industry’s energy use. Despite big headlines, there is little discussion on the full scope of Web3’s climate impact and how the industry can support positive climate action.

Join this Issue Briefing as industry experts discuss Web3’s full climate impact.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Michael Yon @MichaelYon
Sep 22, 2022 at 12:11am
Germany Openly Preparing for Martial Law
22 September 2022
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

I will go on War Room today with Steve Bannon to discuss the collapse of modern Germany.


Michael Yon
@MichaelYon1776
·
1h
Germany obviously preparing for Martial Law

I’ve been back in Europe for almost three months. Netherlands, Germany, Czech, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, and Luxembourg on this trip.

Luxembourg already gone. About 50% of Luxembourg is now ‘migrants.’ The once incredible Luxembourg City now feels dangerous. Literally shit on the streets, drug deals, fights — saw about ten fights in just a few days.

Yesterday I drove from Budapest back through Austria and now am in Frankfurt am Main. Through corridors of endless windmills that many Europeans have come to despise.

The German/Austria border was thick with German Border Polizei with military rifles. Maybe 50 Polizei but was difficult to count due to geometry.

Germany is openly preparing for martial law:

1663823371794.png
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Putin has a DEVASTATING message for NATO and he's not bluffing | Redacted with Clayton Morris 35:35 min

Putin has a DEVASTATING message for NATO and he's not bluffing | Redacted with Clayton Morris​

Redacted News Published September 21, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his nation today and announced a “partial military mobilization.” In civilian speak, this means that he is ramping up his country’s efforts in Ukraine. He says that the West has thwarted peace talks and if Russian borders are threatening, he is ready to escalate. And he's not bluffing.

^^^^^^^
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVOWpSuFtIc
18:05 min

In full: Putin announces partial military mobilisation in address to Russia​

Streamed live 23 hours ago

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Sky News

Vladimir Putin has announced a partial mobilisation for the country's military campaign in Ukraine.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
They're HIDING the truth of the coming 2023 Recession | Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris 12:02 min

They're HIDING the truth of the coming 2023 Recession | Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris​

Redacted News Published September 21, 2022

The U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates another 0.75%. It feels like decades ago that they were at 0% but it was less than one year ago! This is the third consecutive increase and likely not the last. All 19 members of the board voted for this increase. There will be two more Fed meetings this year and most are expecting at least two more similar increases before the clock strikes 2023.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Do global leaders WANT WAR? Glenn's WARNING as Biden responds to Putin 7:24 min

Do global leaders WANT WAR? Glenn's WARNING as Biden responds to Putin​

Glenn Beck Published September 21, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated his war against Ukraine yet again, but this time, he's threatening the West too. Glenn review's Putin's latest speech and Biden's promised response. But as the West jumps from crisis to crisis, Glenn wonders if a larger conflict is exactly what global leaders want...
 

marsh

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Should We Be Worried About The Next (Digital) Apocalypse?

WEDNESDAY, SEP 21, 2022 - 08:40 PM
Authored by Alexandra Marshall via The Epoch Times,

Everyone loves a good apocalypse, and in 2022, there’s an end-times for everyone.

Some apocalypses are fictional—great for corporate lobbying and political ambition. Others are overplayed as a “get rich quick” scheme that vanishes without explanation.

But the real apocalypses, the ones that pose a genuine threat to civilisation, rarely make it to print. After all, there’s a difference between fear and terror, and no sensible politician wants to start a panic.

Societies built on technology become vulnerable to its flaws in the same way desert empires fear cloudless skies.

At the rate human civilisation is evolving, a true digital catastrophe would likely cause a Year Zero event, an epoch defined by digital darkness.

If important data was lost—assets wiped and identity data destroyed—there would be a resetting of civilisation. However, it would be foolish to imagine human beings can recover as quickly as a computer operating system.

Humanity has come close to digital calamity before, but not since crawling into the womb of Silicon Valley.

The digital revolution happened within a single lifetime, and we find ourselves in the difficult position of wanting to embrace technology without ending up imprisoned by it.

While we are busy avoiding virtual mouse traps laid by the government, we must take care to keep redundancies within society to protect against inevitable periods of digital failure. After all, one week without power is enough to send advanced cities into ruin.

The next digital apocalypse will not be stopped by teams of sweaty programmers, red-eyed and shaking in the din of the world’s server rooms.

The Y2K Bug
Some of us are old enough to remember when an innocent mistake from the dawning age of computers created panic in 1999.

The “Y2K bug” was a simple flaw in the handling of dates during calculations when four-digit dates were truncated into two digits to save space. This was fine from 1960 to 1999, but as the year 2000 approached, programmers had to stop procrastinating and patch the error which threatened the security of everything from banking to nuclear power plants, airliners, factory machinery, and the commercial world, while satellite systems and GPS posed a physical risk to safety.

Missile Commanders Lt. (L) and Lt. Col. Ken Reed confirm a launch warning over the phone during a practice drill at the North America Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 9, 1999. (Mark Leffingwell/AFP via Getty Images)

The tech industry was all at sea during this time, fixing micro-cracks on a listing cruise liner. It was an odd apocalypse because if you were not a programmer, there was nothing you could do.

Unlike the “bend the knee” mantra of climate change, the December of 1999 ended with an almost Norse fatalism culminating in a massive party beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge (at least in Australia).

The crowd was covered in glitter, neon glow sticks, and outrageous heart-antenna headbands—three sheets to the wind on champagne. Most expected their city to go black and for the world’s computers to cough and die.

They didn’t. Those programmers worked to the last stroke of midnight. The bridge erupted in colourful plumes of gunpowder. The apocalypse was so uneventful that 22 years on, there are articles wrongly dismissing the danger.

No one had anything to gain from the Y2K bug. It was a pest ruthlessly exterminated by every government. (Shhhh. Let’s not talk about the year 2038 problem).

The Next Digital Apocalypse May Lead to a ‘Great Reset’
If the next long-prophesied digital apocalypse proves advantageous for those hoping to “reset” the global economy, our data may be sacrificed to serve “the greater good.”

A catastrophic loss of data would require a “fair system” of recovery—a “re-distribution” of assets, like a toddler knocking over a Monopoly board only for the parents to “fairly” put the houses back on all the squares regardless of who bought them. Those in dispute are gifted to the bank. Depending on a nation’s debt, loan-forgiveness in exchange for property acquisition is likely.

A digital apocalypse of this scale would probably arise from physical damage to the world’s largest server farms rather than cyber warfare. It’s much more effective to flatten a building, cut a cable, or even sustain a natural occurrence such as the Carrington Event of 1859.

An unstable energy grid, while not permanently destructive, would induce periods of digital interference that may alter our dependence on high-tech solutions in our economy.

In the real world, retailers are quick to switch to cash after an hour of blackouts.

If the tech community is honest with the public, the next digital apocalypse will not be malicious attacks from our friends in North Korea. It won’t be a gremlin from the 70s chewing on the cords nor a Nigerian Prince with a recently deceased relative.

Our apocalypse will be conducted in the halls of Parliament, designed by lobbyists and politicians who are rapidly transforming the digital world into an intangible prison block.

The loss of citizen control over the digital realm, replaced by the desires of the state, is an apocalypse humanity can never recover from. It would be the end of the free market Eden that forged our greatest technological achievements.

In its place, we will find an arms race of control that extends into our thoughts and beneath our skin.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Masters of Deceit: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear, Mind Control, and Brain Warfare​


“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit

by John W. and Nisha Whitehead
September 21, 2022

The U.S. government has become a master of deceit. It’s all documented, too.

This is a government that lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; and wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad.

Worse, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

With every passing day, it becomes painfully clear that this is not a government that can be trusted with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.

Just recently, for example, the Pentagon was compelled to order a sweeping review of clandestine U.S. psychological warfare operations (psy ops) conducted through social media platforms. The investigation comes in response to reports suggesting that the U.S. military has been creating bogus personas with AI-generated profile pictures and fictitious media sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to manipulate social media users.

Psychological warfare, as the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group explained in a recruiting video released earlier this year, enables the government to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare (or psy ops) can take many forms: mind control experiments, behavioral nudging, propaganda.

In the 1950s, MK-ULTRA, the mind control program developed under CIA director Allen Dulles as part of his brain warfare Cold War campaigns, subjected hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel to doses of LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. For Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA hired prostitutes to lure men into a bugged room, where they would be dosed with LSD and observed having sex.

As Brianna Nofil explains, “MK-Ultra’s ‘mind control’ experiments generally centered around behavior modification via electro-shock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a variety of drugs, toxins, and chemicals.”
The CIA spent nearly $20 million on its MKULTRA program, reportedly as a means of programming people to carry out assassinations and, to a lesser degree, inducing anxieties and erasing memories, before it was supposedly shut down.

As one study reported, detainees held in CIA safe-houses abroad “were literally interrogated to death in experimental methods combining drugs, hypnosis and torture, to attempt to master brainwashing techniques and memory erasing.”

Similarly, the top-secret Montauk Project, the inspiration for the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, allegedly was working to develop mind-control techniques that would then be tested out on locals in a nearby village, triggering crime waves or causing teenagers to congregate.

As journalist Lorraine Boissoneault concludes, “Despite MK-ULTRA violating ethical norms for human experiments, the legacy of brainwashing experiments continued to live on in U.S. policy. The same methods that had once been used to train American soldiers ended up being used to extract information from terrorists in Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.”

Fast forward to the present day, and it’s clear that the government—aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation—has updated its psy ops warfare for a new era. For instance, the government has been empowered to use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace.

It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

Back in 2014, for example, a Fusion Center in Washington State (a Dept. of Homeland Security-linked data collection clearinghouse that shares information between state, local and federal agencies) inadvertently released records on remote mind control tactics (the use of “psycho-electronic” weapons to control people from a distance or subject them to varying degrees of pain).

Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic could easily be considered psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat. As science writer David Robson explains: “Fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic… Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations… Various experiments have shown that we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease… the evocative images of a pandemic led [participants in an experiment] to value conformity and obedience over eccentricity or rebellion.”

This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm.

This is not a new experiment in mind control.

Add the government’s inclination to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”

We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.

The end goal of these mind-control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.

The government’s fear-mongering is yet another key element in its mind-control programming.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear.

The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled whether through propaganda, brainwashing, mind control, or just plain fear-mongering.

Fear not only increases the power of government, but it also divides the people into factions, persuades them to see each other as the enemy and keeps them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds.

In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being brainwashed—manipulated—into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward.

This unseen mechanism of society that manipulates us through fear into compliance is what American theorist Edward L. Bernays referred to as “an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

It was almost 100 years ago when Bernays wrote his seminal work Propaganda:
“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, to this invisible government of rulers who operate behind the scenes—the architects of the Deep State—we are mere puppets on a string, to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled.

For years now, the powers-that-be—those politicians and bureaucrats who think like tyrants and act like petty dictators regardless of what party they belong to—have attempted to brainwash us into believing that we have no rights: to think for ourselves, make decisions about our health, protect our homes and families and businesses, act in our best interests, demand accountability and transparency from government, or generally operate as if we are in control of our own lives.

Well, the government is wrong.

We have every right, and you know why? Because, as the Declaration of Independence states, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights—to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness—that no government can take away from us.

It’s time we started reminding the government that “we the people” are the ones in charge.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Fed rate hike to hit mortgages, credit cards and auto loans
Interest rates are set to soar even higher


By Breck Dumas FOXBusiness
ECONOMY Published September 21, 2022 11:30am EDT

Circle Squared Alternative Investments founder and CIO discusses the long-term impact of rate hikes on the U.S. economy on "Varney & Co."video
Fed has to take 'draconian steps' to accomplish inflation goal: Jeff Sica
Circle Squared Alternative Investments founder and CIO discusses the long-term impact of rate hikes on the U.S. economy on "Varney & Co."

The Federal Reserve is poised to approve another jumbo-sized rate hike this week to rein in the persistently high inflation pummeling Americans' budgets. However, the move will bring added pain to borrowers.

Credit cards, home mortgages and auto loans — already at elevated levels — will climb even higher as the central bank works to slow the economy in hopes of taming soaring prices.

Wall Street and economists widely expect Fed policymakers to announce a three-quarter percentage point boost on Wednesday, which would be the third mega-sized 75-basis-point jump in a row and the fifth rate hike for the year.

But the impacts of previous hikes are already evident — and set to worsen.

"Rates are rising at a pace not seen in decades and to levels not seen in years," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com. "Credit card rates are the highest since 1996, mortgage rates are the highest since 2008, and auto loans are the highest since 2012."

Bankrate's latest survey found that the average credit card rate was at 17.96% as of Aug. 31, the highest level seen in decades. That is up 3.5% from the July reading and up 10.8% from the average of 16.21% in August of last year.

Despite paying higher rates, consumers are increasingly relying on credit cards as sky-high inflation drags on. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that credit card debt held by Americans surged by 13% on an annualized basis in the second quarter to $16.15 trillion, representing the sharpest climb since 1999.

credit cards
Americans are increasingly relying on credit cards as inflation wears on, and they are paying elevated rates on balances. (iStock / iStock)

Car loan rates and balances are both up, too. According to Bankrate, the average auto loan is at 5.07%. At the same time, data from J.D. Power shows the average transaction price for a new vehicle hit a record $45,998 in July and is projected to climb even higher.

Meanwhile, Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey released last week shows the average rate for the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage topped 6% for the first time since late 2008 to 6.02%, up from 5.89% the week prior.

"The aim of Fed tightening is to curtail demand in an effort to tame inflation, and when it comes to the housing market, the Fed’s actions are working," said Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American.

Kushi noted, "Home sales, both new and existing, are falling. Builders have cut back production in response to rapidly declining affordability, and annual house price growth has slowed from the peak of nearly 21 percent in March of this year to 16.7 percent in July, according to data from First American Data & Analytics."

Home for sale
Rising interest rates are cooling the housing market. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File / AP Newsroom)

The combination of elevated home prices and rising rates continue to push more would-be homebuyers out of the market. Realtor.com reported that at today's rates, the median mortgage payment is now at $2,100 — a 66% surge from just a year ago.

With inflation still hovering near a four-decade high at 8.3% despite months of rate increases by the Fed, Americans can expect further hikes to come.

"The Fed has been delivering a ‘tough love’ message that interest rates will be higher and for longer than expected," said McBride. "The Fed will continue to hike rates until it actually restrains the economy and intends to keep rates at those restrictive levels until inflation is unmistakably on its way to 2%."

FOX Business' Megan Henney and Aislinn Murphy contributed to this report.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Breaking: Al Gore says the world is at a ‘tipping point’ for climate action

Posted at 6:38 pm on September 21, 2022 by Brett T.

Here’s some breaking news from Reuters. We’re not sure where they picked it up; they don’t mention a climate conference or anything similar, only that “Gore told Reuters.” So we’re guessing Gore’s Generation Investment Management sent Reuters a press release letting them know that the world is at a tipping point for climate action, and if we don’t act now, the planet will become uninhabitable sometime after he’s dead and won’t be around to ridicule.

So, what’s new from Gore?
The world is at a “positive tipping point” in the fight against climate change as surging oil and gas costs spur governments to decarbonise faster, former U.S. Vice President and co-founder of Generation Investment Management Al Gore told Reuters.

He pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act signed in August, a $430 billion bill seen as the biggest climate package in U.S. history, as well as a pledge by Australia earlier this month to cut carbon emissions by 43% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050.

“There are signs absolutely everywhere around the world” of the pace of change picking up, he noted, adding that the need to act was also being driven by worsening weather events.

“Mother Nature has joined the discussion about the climate crisis,” Gore said, citing heatwaves in China, floods in Pakistan and drought in Europe.

Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” came out in 2006 and found its way into the schools.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

WORLD AT WAR Study Says Nuclear War Would Cause Apocalyptic New Ice Age

Global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit.

Published 15 hours ago on 21 September, 2022Paul Joseph Watson

A new study says that a nuclear war would cause global temperatures to plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius), triggering a ‘Nuclear Little Ice Age’ that would lead to mass starvation.

The study, conducted by researchers at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, cautioned that a nuclear conflict would devastate the world’s oceans, with the effects being felt for thousands of years.

Whether through a deliberate act of war, an accidental detonation, or a hacking breach, the detonation of a nuclear arsenal anywhere in the world would spread into the upper atmosphere and impact everyone on the planet.

“In all of the researchers’ simulated scenarios, nuclear firestorms would release soot and smoke into the upper atmosphere that would block out the sun, resulting in crop failure around the world,” the study found.

“In the first month following nuclear detonation, average global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees C), a larger temperature change than in the last Ice Age.”

Rapidly expanding sea ice would then block major ports, like those located in Beijing, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg, crippling major global shipping lanes and preventing food imports to mega-cities like Shanghai.

“The sudden drop in light and ocean temperatures, especially from the Arctic to the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, would kill the marine algae, which is the foundation of the marine food web, essentially creating a famine in the ocean. This would halt most fishing and aquaculture,” the study found.

The scientists discovered that a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would result in fires that would spew “more than 330 billion pounds of smoke and sunlight-absorbing black carbon into the upper atmosphere.”

“We can and must, however, do everything we can to avoid nuclear war. The effects are too likely to be globally catastrophic,” the scientists concluded.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal AGU Advances.

As we previously highlighted, a separate study conducted by Rutgers University found that nuclear war between the United States and Russia would cause two-thirds of the planet to starve to death within two years.

5 billion people would perish, primarily as a result of nuclear detonations causing huge infernos that inject soot into the atmosphere which blocks out the sun and devastates crops.

Following Vladimir Putin’s warning that Russia was prepared to use its nuclear arsenal to defend its territorial integrity, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic warned that the planet is entering into a “great world conflict” that could take place within the next two months.

Study link: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000610
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Sara Cody deposition transcripts

Sara Cody is the public health officer for Santa Clara County. She doesn't know the size of SARS-CoV-2 particle. She believes masks work because she misinterpreted the Bangladesh mask study.

Steve Kirsch
24 hr ago

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Santa Clara County could have dropped their lawsuit against Calvary Chapel and the embarrassing deposition of their public health officer would have been confidential. But they didn’t. So now it’s part of court filing and is public record. You now get to see the whole deposition for the first time. It shows clearly that she relied on a study showing masks are ineffective for her mask mandate.

Executive Summary​

Santa Clara County wants Calvary Chapel to pay $3M to the County because the church didn’t require masks like Sara Cody ordered.

The lawsuit was the first opportunity to question a public health official and actually force them to answer the questions.

We finally learn in the deposition that Sara Cody’s mask mandate was based on the Bangladesh mask study. However, it is obvious to any thinking person that the study actually proved that the “benefit” of wearing a mask was too tiny to measure (i.e., zero).

Furthermore, when Science was formally asked to retract the study, they refused to acknowledge the request showing the journals are compromised as well. However, it is clear from the data collected in the study that masks do nothing.

Santa Clara County should never have required anyone to adopt a completely useless masking policy.

However, that won’t stop the lawsuit. They have their pride at stake. They want to show businesses that they can make ridiculous demands of people for no benefit, and then extract millions of dollars for non-compliance with nonsensical health directives.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Here are the depositions​

Mariah Gondeiro, Esq. CA Bar No. 323683 deposed Sara Cody. Here are the depositions and key parts are highlighted in yellow. Happy reading.
  1. Notice of Depo
  2. Sara H. Cody, M.D. (part 1, part 2)
  3. Sarah Rudman, M.D.
You can find the Bangladesh study on page 73 of Part 1 and also she admits that she believed the study showed masks worked.

The problem: that study showed no such thing.

Now that we know this, she will be skewered in court over this.

Basically, the County Health Officer completely misinterprets a study showing masks don’t work as the basis for her County-wide mandate. And then they go after the Church for $3M for non-compliance of a ridiculous mandate.

Here is the graph for purple clot masks vs. controls. See any difference? There isn’t one. If masks worked, there would be a difference.


Purple cloth masks vs. Controls in the Bangladesh study. Does this look like masks made a difference? Of course not!

For further reading​

You can watch the video of the first author of the paper being unable to defend the paper’s conclusion. You can watch the 2-hour video here or if you are short on time, just read all the comments.

You can also watch a video of an independent expert on statistics explaining the study. Watch my interview with Mike.

Or read about the retraction requested by UK Professor Norman Fenton.

Summary​

Why is Santa Clara County pursuing a lawsuit against a Church for violating a health order that is based on a scientific study which actually proved that masks did not make any measurable difference whatsoever. That’s what I’d like to know.

Just because Sara Cody thinks masks work is not a good basis for public policy. She should apologize to the public for her error. If she doesn’t, she should be fired.

This whole situation could have been avoided if public officials were forced to attend an open forum where they can be challenged by qualified experts who disagree with the officials. Does that exist anywhere? How would that result in worse outcomes?
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

House Judiciary Votes for Allowing NON-CITIZENS to Vote in Federal Elections

By J.D. Rucker • Sep. 21, 2022

“There it is,” quipped one political commentator on social media. “There’s the way they turn illegal aliens into Democrat voters.”

The House Judiciary voted to allow non-citizens to vote in an amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 8770 today. As Tweeted by House Judiciary GOP:

Judiciary Democrats just voted to support NON-CITIZENS voting in our elections. There’s no hiding it. Democrats WANT non-citizens voting in our elections.

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Before anyone gets too concerned, this still has a long way to go before it ever becomes law and almost certainly never could. But the sheer fact that Democrats are openly pushing for it now after years of pretending that wasn’t a motivating factor for them being so soft on the border is telling.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Globalists' Mass Migration Agenda (excerpts)

Orban: Mass Migration Agenda Part of ‘Global Plan’ to Create ‘New Proletariat’ in the West​

JACK MONTGOMERY24 Sep 2021

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán believes the mass migration agenda is part of a “global plan” to create a “new proletariat” in the West, advanced by people who care nothing for culture and national identity and consider only economics.

^^^^^

The Carefully Calculated Mass Migration Agenda​

By Zen Gardner
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
21st September 2015

This mass migration plan has been in the works for a long time, but they’re kicking it up several serious notches now, flooding the US borders while continuing to swarm European countries with any immigrants they can from a variety of cultures.

What and who is behind it? Clearly staged US/NATO/Israeli sponsored terrorism and genocide are at work in the middle east, driving desperate people to seek asylum elsewhere, as the US mandates inviting in as many as possible over its southern border. And all in concert.

UN immigration official: Use migration to undermine European national homogeneity.​

As usual, they give themselves away in their own documents and bloated speeches to their own inner circle. In particular, United Nations globalist fat cat Peter Sutherland, non-executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs and former BP CEO, top Bilderberger and Trilateral Commission honcho, has come right out and stated their plan as plainly and arrogantly as possible.

It’s not clear that the comment made by [in June] by Peter Sutherland, the UN’s special representative for migration, really counts as a “gaffe,” since Sutherland seems to have no sense that what he said might have been disturbing.

Sutherland was speaking to the British House of Lords, according to a BBC report... and said that the European Union should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, because “the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.”

He also, according to the Beeb, suggested “the UK government’s immigration policy had no basis in international law.” (Kind of a novel interpretation of the authority of international law over a state’s control of its borders, but that wasn’t the worst of it.) [source]

The report goes on:

Mr Sutherland, who is non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former chairman of oil giant BP, heads the Global Forum on Migration and Development, which brings together representatives of 160 nations to share policy ideas.

He told the House of Lords committee migration was a “crucial dynamic for economic growth” in some EU nations “however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states”.

Yes, I bet it is hard to explain to those citizens, especially when the UN representative appears to be in cahoots with the EU to deliberately flood and multi-culturalize Europe via outside populations.

Sutherland’s answer, of course, is that this is purely an economic problem (and where have we heard that before?)

An aging or declining native population in countries like Germany or southern EU states was the “key argument and, I hesitate to use the word because people have attacked it, for the development of multicultural states”, he added.

“It’s impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them. Just as the United Kingdom has demonstrated.”

[Sutherland] told the committee: “The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.”

“And that’s precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine.”
[source]

That’s pretty straightforward, to say the least. Where does he get his hubris? They’ve been doing this for a long time, whether local officials want it or not.

The implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 and other programs such as Codex Alimentarius have been eroding society’s fabric behind the scenes like termites eating out a building’s infrastructure. All while bankster backed globalists mastermind the various tentacles, manipulating humanity via their multinational banking, political and corporate stooges.

It’s important to note that the UN Sustainability 2030 Program is set to be ratified by the UN later this month. A major step up.
Coincidence? Not on your life.

The Planned Immigration Crisis​

Again, the plan has been in effect for quite some time, breaking down American borders and homogenizing their weakened populace in a deliberately devastated economy being more militarized by the day in preparation for a societal breakdown — the very one they’ve engineered. Just as in Europe.

In addition, it is bringing massive division in America as they once again employ the age old totalitarian maxim to “divide and conquer.”

Here’s how they’ve led up to now in the US:

Behind the endless throngs of desperate Central American children arriving on the U.S. border and a steady wave of illegal immigrants from Mexico and beyond is a covert plan for global economic warfare — those building up the world of globalization are tearing down the sovereignty and financial strength of the United States and Europe to make way for the coming corporate new world order.

A generation of sending American jobs offshore under NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, dumping cheap corn on Mexico thereby destroying millions of farming jobs and unleashing disruptive retailers like Wal-Mart upon the fragile economies of Latin America have created turmoil, uncertainty and rivers of human migration… and along with it bitter tension and discord over the dynamics of immigration, illegal immigration and the struggle for a lasting standard of living under the New World Order.

The globalist plan to wreck our national sovereignty has been unfolding for a while now…things are just speeding up in recent months.
[source]

EU Overload​

This rapidly unfolding development defies any sense of sovereignty, as clearly intended. The sense of insecurity and outrage is palpable in regular citizens as this unabated, uncontrolled onslaught continues. While besieged countries of course seek refuge from their economically and militarily bombarded societies, the western nations perpetrating these attacks are on one hand publicly appalled at their “invasion” and desire to flee their devastated homelands, while on the other, encouraging this very phenomenon to occur.

Your typical Freemasonic playing of both sides of the chess game. That’s simply how they work, and always have. Unwitting people are then caught up in a cognitive dissonant state of choosing either false side, which shuts down mental rationality and intuitive understanding. In most – but not all.

But what would you do in the face of seeing super powers contesting over your very soil and homeland while at the same time destroying it? Would you sit there with your loved ones, simply observing and hoping for the best? Or would you flee for seemingly safer grounds?

Brazen Bullshit and Tossing Wrenches​

Would you flee for safer grounds? That’s the question to ask those refusing to wake up as we point out these obvious truths.

The awakening lights fires under people and that’s a good thing, to get them off the fence and out of their perilous stunned and bewildered state. There’s no place more dangerous than not only being on the defensive, but in a condition of fear and confusion. Never mind a place under immediate attack, something about which most of the modern western world has no clue.
Yet.

That makes sitting ducks out of unaware individuals. But the tide is turning.

These entities are now pushing their programs with abject impunity while humanity tries to wrestle with these issues on a corrupt, futile, and inept political level. It won’t be until they fully grasp the big picture of what is being perpetrated that the people will have a true awareness of the scope of humanity’s planned takeover and the importance of not feeding the beast with their energy and cooperation any longer.

And standing strong in that awareness while pushing back in every way possible.

Knowledge and understanding eradicate fear, which is why their media minions make it so hard to connect the dots. But their illusive veil is coming down at a terrific rate now and I expect we’re going to see some serious wrenches thrown into their machinery. And it comes through awake and aware individuals.

You, and me.

To empower others with the truth is our most important duty, especially at this perilous time in history.

Keep on no matter what. And don’t fall for the fear and confusion agenda. They’ll be turning it up more and more so be on your toes and keep your vibrations high.

And chuck a few wrenches into their insane machinery while you’re at it.
Every wrench counts! Let’s grind this ****ing beast to a halt. Gather some fortitude and do something radical. Their machinery is exposed and vulnerable. Let’s do some damage in any way we feel compelled. Lob the unexpected of any sort into any situation you can. Let them handle the results.

After all, that’s what they do to us. Nothing unauthorized going on here!
Now go have a nice day.
Much love, Zen
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

GLOBAL COMPACT FOR MIGRATION​

On 19 September 2016 Heads of State and Government came together for the first time ever at the global level within the UN General Assembly to discuss issues related to migration and refugees. This sent a powerful political message that migration and refugee matters had become major issues squarely in the international agenda. In adopting the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the 193 UN Member States recognized the need for a comprehensive approach to human mobility and enhanced cooperation at the global level.

Annex II of the New York Declaration set in motion a process of intergovernmental consultations and negotiations towards the development of a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. This process concluded on 10 December 2018 with the adoption of the Global Compact by the majority of UN Member States at an Intergovernmental Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, followed closely by formal endorsement by the UN General Assembly on 19 December.

The Global Compact is the first inter-governmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. It is a non-binding document that respects states’ sovereign right to determine who enters and stays in their territory and demonstrates commitment to international cooperation on migration. It presents a significant opportunity to improve the governance of migration, to address the challenges associated with today’s migration, and to strengthen the contribution of migrants and migration to sustainable development. The Global Compact is framed in a way consistent with target 10.7 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in which Member States committed to cooperate internationally to facilitate safe, orderly and regular migration. The Global Compact is designed to:

  • Support international cooperation on the governance of international migration;
  • Provide a comprehensive menu of options for States from which they can select policy options to address some of the most pressing issues around international migration; and
  • Give states the space and flexibility to pursue implementation based on their own migration realities and capacities.
The New York Declaration
For the first time on 19 September 2016 Heads of State and Government came together to discuss, at the global level within the UN General Assembly, issues related to migration and refugees. This sent an important political message that migration and refugee matters have become major issues in the international agenda. In adopting the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the 193 UN Member States recognized the need for a comprehensive approach to human mobility and enhanced cooperation at the global level and committed to:
  • Protect the safety, dignity and human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants, regardless of their migratory status, and at all times;
  • Support countries rescuing, receiving and hosting large numbers of refugees and migrants;
  • Integrate migrants – addressing their needs and capacities as well as those of receiving communities – in humanitarian and development assistance frameworks and planning;
  • Combat xenophobia, racism and discrimination towards all migrants;
  • Develop, through a state-led process, non-binding principles and voluntary guidelines on the treatment of migrants in vulnerable situations; and
  • Strengthen global governance of migration, including by bringing IOM into the UN family and through the development of a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration
Annex II of the New York Declaration set in motion a process of intergovernmental consultations and negotiations culminating in the planned adoption of the Global Compact for Migration at an intergovernmental conference on international migration in 2018.

What are the aims of the Global Compact for Migration?The development of the Global Compact for Migration - an open, transparent and inclusive process

Read more at links and at the website
 

marsh

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Climate change means mass migration. We can make it fair and rehome millions, says author Gaia Vince​

Sep 21, 2022​

This article is part of:Centre for Nature and Climate
  • In the coming decades, it’s predicted that millions of people will need to move due to the impacts of climate change.
  • Environment journalist Gaia Vince discusses her book Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval on the World Economic Forum’s Book Club Podcast.
  • An Ipsos survey for the Forum finds more than a third of people think it’s likely they’ll be displaced in the next 25 years due to climate change.
The impacts of the climate crisis are being felt across the globe. The floods in Pakistan - intensified by climate change - have affected 33 million people, with thousands displaced.

As the world warms, millions more people will be forced to leave their homes in search of safer places to live.

A third of people (35%) expect they will be displaced in the next 25 years due to climate change, according to a survey conducted for the World Economic Forum by Ipsos. More than half of all adults have already seen the severe effects of climate change in their area - and 71% expect climate change to have a severe impact in the next decade.

In the latest Book Club Podcast, environmental journalist and author of Nomad Century, Gaia Vince discusses why as many as 1.5 billion will be forced to flee in the coming decades - and how the world can work together to rehome these people and restore the planet.

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The World Economic Forum Book Club Podcast transcript​

Beatrice Di Caro: From the World Economic Forum, I’m Beatrice Di Caro and this is the Book Club podcast.

In this episode, we’re joined by award-winning author Gaia Vince, to discuss her latest book Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval.

Gaia was the first woman to win the Royal Society Prize for Science Books in 2015, with her debut Adventures in the Anthropocene, for which she travelled the world meeting those living on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

In Nomad Century, she explains why there will be 1.5 billion environmental refugees in the next 30 years and how - and where - we can rehome those forced to flee due to drought, fire, heat and floods.

My colleague Kate Whiting interviewed Gaia and started by asking her what made her want to write the book.

Kate Whiting: Gaia welcome to the Book Club Podcast, it's really great to have you today. I've just finished reading your book Nomad Century and it was just such an eye-opening book, is the first thing to say about it. What was the impetus behind researching and writing this book?

Gaia Vince: Well, thanks so much for having me on Kate, it is a book that I want to get out widely and raise discussions about it. I have been fomenting the idea for some time really. Because I went on a journey of two and a half years around mainly the global South looking at impacts of climate change as felt by people on the frontline. Not just people there, also scientists and policymakers, presidents, all sorts of people who are already affected by the impacts. That was some years ago that I started that journey and I could see quite a lot of evidence of people already moving and at the time, the conversation in the Western world where I come from in London and the capitals of Europe and New York and so on, were very much about the idea of climate change being something in the future or something that we could prevent through mitigation and there wasn't much conversation at all on adaptation. Whereas what I'd seen going around the world was people already affected and already coming up with their own adaptations. And there was absolutely zero conversation. This has now moved on. People are now talking about adaptation. We're all witnessing the effects of extreme weather now.

We've just had this horrendous summer that has affected everywhere from India and Pakistan to the US to Europe to China, everywhere has been affected. So we're now getting the conversation a little bit about adaptation but still nobody is talking about the large places around the world and with huge populations that simply will not be able to adapt as the conditions become more extreme over the coming decades. There is no plan in place to manage that and these people will have to move, migration is already now inevitable. The degree is not inevitable. We can still change who has to migrate and in what numbers. But nevertheless, we need to start talking about this as an honest and realistic situation so that we can put in place some plans to manage it.

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Kate Whiting: You mentioned Pakistan and I think it's quite timely. We're having this conversation now when the news today is that I think it's something like the 33 million people have been displaced by the flooding there. So you know this is very much happening now and as you say we've seen images of drought and wildfires this summer, which I think has brought it home to people that actually this is something that we have… the climate crisis is happening. We have to act now. But also it's still quite hard to imagine the scale of it and there are a few statistics in the book that you cite, which actually gives an indication of that. What for you are the sort of key stats to really bring this to life how impactful it's going to be?

Gaia Vince: Well if we look at the situation in Pakistan it is truly horrific. You know a third of the country was underwater. I think the flood waters have receded a little now but a third of the country being underwater is phenomenal if you consider. Any other country that would happen to, consider Britain being a third underwater, we could not cope and of course Pakistan is struggling. I do put a lot of statistics in the book and it can be a bit overwhelming, what we are facing is pretty catastrophic. I was speaking to scientists only last week who were saying that the global temperature has now risen 1.35 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature and it's likely we will exceed 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial averages within the next five or six years. If you think about the last COP last year in Glasgow, the emphasis was very much on keeping 1.5 alive, keeping below 1.5 by the end of the century.

Well you know the reason for that is that once we exceed 1.5 degrees, we risk tipping points in the earth system that threaten people immediately, but also intergenerationally. These are tipping points in the earth system where we put a normal stable state that we have built our entire civilizations under, into a completely different state which humanity has never experienced before. So you know everything from the coral reefs to the Amazon to the ocean circulation that keeps the gulf stream working. There are tipping points which if we go over if the Greenland glaciers melt, we are entering a whole different world and I don't think people have really woken up to how soon that could happen and how catastrophic it could be and you know this book Nomad Century really is my attempt to look pragmatically at what this means and what we can do because we do still have choices. You know the future is still unwritten. We still have decades to live through this appallingly scary situation.

But soon we won't have those choices, we will just simply be reacting as we are now to every new catastrophe. And once you're reacting, it's too late to change it. Right now we do have choices and I really want to make that clear, we are not doomed. There are solutions we can take which will help as many people as possible survive that and I think it's an abdication of responsibility to not discuss them, which is what's happening at the moment.

We are not doomed. There are solutions we can take which will help as many people as possible survive - and it's an abdication of responsibility to not discuss them.

Kate Whiting: Your chapter in the book that looks at what you call the force 4 horsemen of the anthropocene are drought, heat, fire and floods as we've seen all of those things this summer. They are the main drivers of migration and you talk about I think they'll be 1.5 billion environmental refugees in the next 30 years, so there's obviously that impact on humanity but there's also a huge economic impact isn't there?

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Gaia Vince: Well I mean it's already having a huge economic impact. People are not completely honest about the effects of climate change on the economy. But if you just look, for example, at China which has been experiencing extreme heat and drought over the past few months, they have had to stop agricultural production which has had huge effects on the global food prices, exacerbated by the Ukrainian situation and actually climate effects across the world which have hit agriculture. They also had to stop production, other forms of production besides agriculture because power stations were having outages because they just didn't have the power supply because they didn't have the water to work certain industries and it was too hot to work in other places. Heat and drought have huge impacts on the economy and you know the way the world is networked, we can't afford for China's economy to tank. We're all networked and this doesn't just become a small problem in China, it becomes a global problem as we've seen throughout the pandemic and so on. It's in all of our interests to come up with solutions because all our interests are aligned on this. We all want productivity. We're not competing in that way, you know if China's economy is going well, then the rest of the world also has a chance. So it's in all our interests to try and solve this problem.

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Kate Whiting: So for you the main crux of the book is obviously the migration that will need to happen. We need to rehome people in an orderly manner. What is that case that you make for migration?

Gaia Vince: It is inevitable. People are already moving. But what's happening is they're not necessarily moving to safety. They're moving from rural areas to cities and that is happening because rural livelihoods are becoming impossible under these conditions and because villages are being washed away and rural areas are becoming unlivable, whereas cities generally have more of the infrastructure and the institutions to help people. But what happens is a lot of people are arriving in slum accommodation which is the most vulnerable part of cities and they are then trapped there because they've quite often used their resources to move to cities and can't move on. So I'm talking about facilitating migration because a lot of people can't move to safety, they don't have the finances, they can't cross borders because of our border limitations. It's actually quite difficult to migrate even when you've got all the resources to hand, if you've ever tried moving house you'll know. What we're talking about is a sort of tropical band and areas of coastland, small Island states, places around big rivers becoming increasingly unlivable for large numbers of the population. Not everybody living there will have to move, but they can't sustain these massive populations that they currently have. We’re talking about tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions to billions over the coming decade having to move. Now we can either leave that situation, as we're doing at the moment and put up totally inadequate barriers and turn it into a horrific conflict zone as we have for very small trickles of migration compared to what we're expecting. Or we can put plans in place to actually facilitate and manage this migration so that it helps produce economically vibrant, growing cities in safer places. Everywhere around the planet is going to have to adapt to the new conditions of the Anthropocene, to this changed world that we're all living in. But some places will be better able to adapt. They have the resources, they are less affected by climate change. They have stronger institutions. They're just more resilient and these places will be receivers of large numbers of people.

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And it needs to be managed so that people moving… and they will largely be moving for work. You know migration is not a security issue. It has been completely framed as a security issue. It's really a labour issue and if you think you know, all of the trade facilitation that we have in place to get commodities and resources moving swiftly around the world in order to boost economies everywhere. Well human labour is the biggest resource we have. It is the biggest part of our economy and what we've been doing is hampering that.

So helping people move to jobs and making sure that people are properly included so they don't live in segregated cities where they are not included in society and in the formal economy, we have examples where that has tragically happened and led to all kinds of difficult outcomes. Sweden is the most obvious example, coming to mind today because we've just had the Swedish elections. But if we can facilitate that migration we can move people to safety, we can help feed people in different ways and create new infrastructure that is sustainable and resilient and build hopeful cities with thriving economies. The whole of the Northern hemisphere basically is suffering a demographic crisis and that is going to hit home very soon actually because you know we're simply not having enough babies to support the ageing population. We need the stimulus of new workforce and we will only achieve that through immigration. Leaders know that, whatever they publicly say in anti-immigration rhetoric. They absolutely know that their economies depend really heavily on immigration and this is a way if it's managed well that we can meet those two objectives.

Kate Whiting: I think that's a really good point about the workforce shortages that we have in parts of the world and it doesn't really make sense when there are so many people who need to move for work. And it makes obvious sense to us that you want to fill those gaps. I think you also mention somebody had said that if borders were removed completely GDP would increase by $90 trillion and so actually migration brings with it economic benefits to countries as well.

Gaia Vince: There have been quite a few different calculations but they are phenomenal if you would completely remove borders because people move generally to where the jobs are and if the jobs are there, it's because there are vacancies, they need people to fill them. People organise themselves much better, they don't need the enormous numbers of security barriers that prevent people from just creating their own networks and their own economies.



The number of forcibly displaced people has doubled over the past decade. Image: UNHCR Global Trends Report 2021

Kate Whiting: Yeah I think also in light of the war in Ukraine where we've seen, Europe can take in… the UK where we are talking now has taken in refugees in the homes for Ukraine programme, who are now finding jobs and adding to the economy. So we know that it can happen in an orderly manner and I suppose it's really a question of how that happens and what needs to happen and you mention in the book the role of the UN as part of that.

Gaia Vince: The UN is flawed. I think we've all seen the evidence for that. But nevertheless in the short time that we have to really address this issue, it is the only body that can carry out international, global negotiations on this level. I think we'll probably start with regional agreements like for example within the European Union, there is free movement of labour. I think that will probably expand and we'll get agreements across other regions and then these will tie up and we'll get those global agreements coming out of that.

And various regions are already in the process of forming their own free movement areas for labour. This is something that needs to be managed properly and it will take investment, it absolutely will, but that investment will be more than repaid you know. Initially you do have to put money in to ensure that when large numbers of people come, that the healthcare system, the social systems are in place can actually respond to that. So people do have enough housing, they do have access to education and so on and that native populations don't feel pushed out or that there is a conflict over resources. It also takes investment in the narrative in actually countering this very poisonous hostile anti-immigration narrative with some facts about immigration: that they don't increase immigrants, don't increase crime, that they actually increase the productivity of an economy, they increase the number of jobs and generally wages, when they move in. There's plenty of research to back that up now. For politicians and policymakers to remain silent as these narratives go unchallenged has led to a really worrying situation, where nations rely entirely on immigrants for their cities to thrive and yet people are confused about whether immigrants actually are a hostile threat to them or whether they should welcome them in.

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Kate Whiting: When you were writing your first book, which won the Royal Society of Science Prize, you were the first woman to win that prize and so congratulations for that, Adventures in Anthropocene, you spent two and a half years travelling around the globe. What kind of things did you see and people that you met who were actually struggling now with the impact of climate change?

Gaia Vince: Well I mean everything. So I met people in small island states in the Indian Ocean, in Kiribati and in the Maldives, whose houses had been washed away, who would point to the sea essentially and say ‘oh yes, that's where our school was’ - there is a visible change. It's happening so fast that people can see from year-to-year huge change. Then you know, the other end of the scale, in the Andes, so many villages that are being completely deserted because the rains just never came, they just never came and they're completely dependent on glacial meltwater or rainwater and the glaciers are all gone now. So it's rain or nothing and then I would find them in the slums of the cities. And it's easy for a lot of people to imagine that as things get hotter, you do need to adapt, perhaps you buy air conditioning units. Perhaps you change the shape of the house a bit so that it's insulated or a bit cooler.

You know for the many millions something like 9 million slum dwellers in Mumbai alone who are living in basically concrete boxes with corrugated metal roofs, hard up against each other with little alleyways in between, they cannot adapt to the heat that is coming. They're already 6 to 10 degrees hotter in those slum houses than they are in the proper city of Mumbai, the proper built infrastructure. While some swanky hotels and shopping malls have got aircon, as soon as the heat gets to a certain level, all you can hear is generators pumping out because there are power outages immediately. And you know these generators are running on fossil fuels and so the air is affected. The idea that all of these slum dwellers will have aircon units is ridiculous. You know that would immediately cause a power outage and how would that air be cooled and I mean it's just not possible.

Mumbai is also affected because it's on the edge of the ocean, it's also affected by flood waters as well as extreme heat. There will be a population in Mumbai, it's going to be a much smaller population, this enormous 20 million population, the majority are going to have to move over the coming decades and perhaps a large number by 2050. That's the period of time that most mortgages are out. You know that's the time since 1992, since the Queen’s last jubilee or Billy Ray Cyrus's Achy Breaky Heart - it's not that long ago. When we make big financial decisions over what house we're going to buy or what car we're going to buy, they are expected to last over that time period. We really need to bear in mind that the world will be very different in 2050, is that financial purchase you're making a good investment or are you going to be stuck somewhere that you cannot sell? You can't move from because it's too risky, it's in a fire risk zone. We've seen wildfires spontaneously erupt even in the UK, let alone across Europe and the US, it's now continual we've had that in Australia for some time But in the UK it's already happening, so we need to think about that: fire, flood, heat all of these things are really threatening where we live now and will be pushing people to move.

For the many millions, something like 9 million, slum dwellers in Mumbai alone who are living in basically concrete boxes with corrugated metal roofs, hard up against each other with little alleyways in between, they cannot adapt to the heat that is coming.

Kate Whiting: I think that's a really good point that you make about how it's going to affect everybody. In the book you say about houses in Florida, really enormous mansions and they can't get insurance and things and obviously then you know how it affects people in slums in Mumbai or Nairobi.
So I guess the question is where will these people be living. You say in the book, there are certain areas and also what those houses will look like? There are initiatives that will create lots of homes for people. So what does that look like?

Gaia Vince: Well, we're going to be largely moving north. We need to move to higher latitudes and if you look at the globe there isn't much land in higher latitudes in the global south because of the shape of the continents, so we will be moving north. Some cities will be expanded, some existing cities.

Churchill, Manitoba, for example, which is a small kind of polar bear outpost at the moment, but it's in a strategically important place. It's on the Hudson Bay which will be increasingly experiencing ice-free summers. It's also linked by railways to the rest of the United States, so it's in quite a good zone, so places like that will be expanding, places like Scotland, places in Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland. If we look from space, we can already see visible greening of the Arctic. This part of the planet is heating up four times faster than anywhere else and over the next couple of decades, we're going to see dramatic change to this whole kind of Arctic belt. Other places we're going to need entirely new cities built by largely a migrant workforce just as the United States was settled by immigrants, just as Australia was settled by immigrants, we're going to see that happening.

And the kinds of houses we build will have to be appropriate for the Anthropocene conditions so they will need to be built out of sustainable materials. We'll be moving away from very carbon-intensive materials like concrete and cement. And moving to a lot more things like cross-laminated timber houses. The buildings will have to be very well insulated and much more passive but also they will work harder for producing their own energy, recycling a lot of things like water and air systems throughout them. They will be dense housing considering the number of people that we will have to house. If you consider the global population is going from today's eight billion up to nine or ten billion by the 2060s before it's likely coming down to today's number by the end of the century. That fluctuation means we need some flexibility in our housing structures in our cities and how we plan them.

Studies show that housing that is dense and is mixed - so there's residential combined with utilitarian combined with commercial industrial all sorts of purposes within the same sort of blocks, everything being walkable rather than zoned off, this is a residential area and then you have to drive to the commercial district or the industrial - having them all closely together makes the most sense in terms of social cohesion and inclusivity of the population, which is really what you want. In terms of the density of the housing itself, architecturally it looks like four to six stories is about right. If you think about the Parisian blocks of housing, that's about four to six stories generally. So we're thinking of blocks about that sort of height, any higher and people feel more disenfranchised, they are left out of the shared social areas of the street, and any lower, you start getting these big suburb-style housing complexes that are disenfranchising as well in the US. So there's a lot of evidence to support dense housing and cities that are genuinely inclusive and this does take investment. It does take investment from government in terms of finance, but also in terms of that really important community building and inclusive messaging.

Kate Whiting: And one of the huge challenges we'll face alongside rehoming people is how to feed them. We're seeing huge amounts of feed insecurity already because of drought and lack of water. So how do we go about feeding a 9 billion population?

Gaia Vince: This century is all change. It really is a huge upheaval in every single aspect of our lives because we're very much living the lives of Victorian or Twentieth Century people where resources were plentiful, the climate was nice and reliable and the global population was quite low. We've moved. We've left that zone already and we're moving into much more dangerous territory where people will have to move but also agriculture will have to move - a lot of places will not be agriculturally viable. There won't be the labour force to do that agriculture as well. I mean already we're seeing drought everywhere and large agricultural yields losses and hunger across from Yemen to Mali. We're already seeing the seeds of what will come, so agriculture is something that will have to be completely transformed and the biggest change will be moving to almost completely plant-based diets. So that immediately cuts out the huge ecological destruction of livestock agriculture because not only are forests and other wildlands converted to keep livestock but also to produce the food that is then fed to livestock. It's an incredibly inefficient way of producing food for humans. So we will move to plant-based diets and also some novel foods. When I say novel, I mean novel to us as westerners, for other places in the world have been eating these foods for a lot longer and that's things like seaweeds and insects. If you feel squeamish about insects, I think they're delicious, I've eaten them across Asia and in other places. They can be ground up into protein meals that can be added to processed foods or sprinkled on top of other dishes and it's perfectly delicious.


The Planetary Health Diet consists of 50% fruit and vegetables. Image: EAT-Lancet
Kate Whiting: And you won't even know you're eating them.
 
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Part 3 of 3

Gaia Vince:
It's a very sustainable form of protein because insects can be kept anywhere. You don't have to have a huge field. You don't have to deforest the Amazon to put insects there. You can house them within cities if you want or in car parks, it's much easier. There are also other forms, so we can get proteins and pretty much all the nutrients we need from genetically modified bacteria, algae, even fungi. These can be grown in vats wherever and they will be added to our regular meals. We're already eating meat replacement products whether they're veggie burgers or veggie sausages. These are largely made up of meat protein replacements made from plants or modified or other modified organisms. We will move there slower or faster I think. If you look at the way dairy is being phased out, the number of milk replacements: nut milks or pea milks or oat milk, we seem to have already reached a tipping point in that. That will be a huge change and it will free up a large amount of land that can then be rewilded and restored and that's really key because during this century, ideally, if we manage it well, we will - at the same time as people are undergoing this upheaval - be restoring the planet's health, restoring the destroyed and damaged ecosystems so that forests… Parts of the Amazon are already emitting more carbon than they are withdrawing which is terrifying.

We rely on the Amazon to set weather patterns but also to withdraw enormous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere if it can't do that job, we are so screwed. So the restoration of ecosystems will continue and hopefully by the end of the century the planet will be healthy enough for people to return back to some of these unlivable places. And we will get a return to the tropics.

The restoration of ecosystems will continue and hopefully by the end of the century the planet will be healthy enough for people to return back to some of these unlivable places.

Kate Whiting: That's really hopeful. I know in the book you discuss some sort of best-practice examples almost of how people have already started rehoming their own citizens or advertise for people to come and Canada for example, wants to actively encourage more migrants. So are there any particular…

Gaia Vince: Canada is planning on tripling its population in the coming decades through immigration, it's bringing people in and I think it will have to go higher than that. They're very open about that, it's not apologetic ‘we're trying to keep people out’. It's very much government policy that the citizens have bought into. It can feel like an aberration if you look at current politics but actually, there have been plenty of times throughout history and currently, now, where messaging has been the opposite, encouraging people to come. Australia had this whole £10 Pom scheme, where they paid people to come to the country. We will be fighting over immigrants soon as this demographic crisis hits. Because of the impact of things like Brexit, we're already fighting over trying to get labourers for farmwork, for care work, for hospitality. We have shortages in major industries.

Kate Whiting: Reading this as a mother, I know obviously the climate crisis will affect everybody and you say in the book as a mother yourself, you know if it has a different impact because you're thinking about the future of your children and what world they're going to live in. When you were researching did it make you want to run for the hills so to speak or you know actually think about your future?

Gaia Vince: Yeah I mean, what we are facing is horrendous. It is a huge horrible crisis and it terrifies me because this is the world that my children are going to have to… I mean I'm going to be around in 2050. They're going to be around at the end of the century in 2100, you know, it's horrific. And you can either fall into despair and say we're all doomed and there's nothing we can do, so then we won't do anything. Or you know we can be pragmatic and say there is still quite a lot we can do, we do have choices. And we need to manage this so that people have liveable, productive, healthy cities to live in rather than absolute despair, war, not enough food, energy that cuts out the whole time. I think that these choices, managing migration even on an unprecedented scale, even this very huge challenge that I'm talking about: living with people that weren't born where you were born and didn't grow up where you grew up and forming a community, a society on our shared planet is a much better solution than having to enrol in an army because we're fighting over what land there is. I would much prefer that future for my children. I just really hope that we actually start a conversation about the genuine situation as we face it: this really is a serious catastrophe that we face, but that we do have choices and what the choices are like, be really honest about what the choices are and how we can make them work rather than resorting to tribalism and sort of petty tropes that populist leaders keep falling back on in that very predictable way.

Living with people that weren't born where you were born and didn't grow up where you grew up and forming a community, a society on our shared planet is a much better solution than having to enrol in an army because we're fighting over what land there is. I would much prefer that future for my children.

Kate Whiting: It will take cooperation and we saw that with the pandemic that we are able to move and work altogether in a united way to solve a crisis. You end the book with an eight-point manifesto which is a kind of combination of statements of fact and actions that need to happen. How hopeful are you that we'll be able to accomplish all those things and turn this around?

Gaia Vince: You know we are an incredible species. We completely rely on the fact that we cooperate, we're super-cooperators, we cooperate beyond our family group beyond just our small friendship. We cooperate internationally, globally with complete strangers to make this incredibly networked world. In fact, we're so efficient at that, that we dominated the planet and we've pushed it into this terrible situation. We can push it out with our social skills of cooperation. We also have incredible technological skills. We are able to deliberately change where water flows, how energy is produced, the temperature of the atmosphere. We can do all of those and we need to combine those but in a democratic way. We need to come up with solutions to this problem, which are out there, they really are. It is my hope that this will be a century of upheaval, but it will be one in which we emerge as a fairer, more just, healthier society on a much more sustainable planet and going forward we continue within those ecological limits.

Kate Whiting: Gaia Vince, thank you very much for your time today.

Gaia Vince: Thanks Kate.

Beatrice Di Caro: That was author Gaia Vince speaking to Kate Whiting
Big thanks for joining us on the World Economic Forum Book Club Podcast.
 

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Exit Ramp: How to FIGHT the Progressive Road to Serfdom | Glenn TV | Ep 224
48:10 min

Exit Ramp: How to FIGHT the Progressive Road to Serfdom | Glenn TV | Ep 224​

BlazeTV Published September 21, 2022

A big question Glenn has always had about “The Amazing Do-Over” is: How do you get the most powerful and wealthy nation that has ever existed to accept, “You will own nothing … and be happy”? A foundational principle of this country from its very inception has been land ownership. We worked hard, were fiscally responsible, and stayed away from high debt, but the progressive era began to erode all of that. The Clinton Global Initiative recently gathered the ruling class to tell the plebes how to run their finances and called anyone who dared challenge their ideas “climate change deniers.” Glenn argues we are dangerously far down the “Road to Serfdom” and exposes the progressive playbook to keep us in line. It’s a 600-year-old medieval model that’s been the plan all along. We’re already feeling economic pain, and yet they’re playing “Game of Thrones” with our lives. Turning us into serfs is their ultimate goal. How do they finish the complete restructure of the American financial system and our way of life? Glenn connects it all on the chalkboard and details the solution to fighting back against the ruling elites.
 

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UAE Accelerates Development Of Huge Gas Field As High Prices Persist

THURSDAY, SEP 22, 2022 - 03:30 AM
By Simon Watkins of OilPrice.com

Continued high gas prices in Europe in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February have prompted several major European oil and gas companies to expedite the development of gas projects in the Middle East, with Italian major Eni’s latest announcement regarding the UAE being the latest example.

According to comments from the company, its chief executive officer, Claudio Descalzi, met last week with his counterpart from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Sultan al-Jaber, in Abu Dhabi, to discuss speeding up the development of the Ghasha sour gas project, and the Offshore Block 2 project.

The Ghasha concession is the world’s largest offshore sour gas development, comprising not just the Ghasha field itself but also the Hail, Hair Dalma, Satah, Bu Haseer, Nasr, SARB, Shuwaihat, and Mubarraz fields as well. First production from it had been expected to begin in 2025, with the target being the production of at least 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of gas by 2030. Eni is the holder of the largest foreign share of the ADNOC-led project, with a 25 percent stake, followed by Germany’s Wintershall Dea (10 percent), Austria’s OMV (5 percent), and Russia’s Lukoil (5 percent). ADNOC’s al-Jaber confirmed recently that: “ADNOC is committed to unlocking the UAE’s abundant natural gas reserves to enable domestic gas self-sufficiency, industrial growth and diversification, as well as to meet growing global gas demand.”

The Ghasha concession was one of the key projects that was part of the US$2 billion of drilling contracts handed out recently by ADNOC as part of the UAE’s plans to help OPEC’s third-biggest producer achieve gas self-sufficiency, and after that to look to exporting the surplus. Becoming self-sufficient in gas is part of the UAE’s broader ‘Operation 300 Billion’ plan that intends to raise the contribution of the country’s industrial sector to AED300 billion (US$81 billion) from the current AED133 billion within the next 10 years. This objective, in turn, is part of the UAE’s Circular Economy Policy 2021-2031, and will be achieved in large part through the creation of 13,500 industrial companies over that period, covering the manufacturing, construction, electricity, gas, mining and quarrying sectors in the first instance. All of this aligns with the ADNOC’s broader plans to expand its hydrocarbons (and low-carbon) businesses, for which it has announced spending plans of $127 billion between this year and the end of 2026.

Self-sufficiency in gas will also allow the UAE to build out a strategic petrochemicals sector and to avoid being reliant on Qatar for the gas that it requires for its electricity grid. This drive towards self-sufficiency in the gas sector was energised after the huge shallow gas field discovery made in 2020 in Jebel Ali, which, according to statements from the companies developing the site – ADNOC, and the Dubai Supply Authority - holds around 80 trillion cubic feet of gas across a 5,000 square kilometre area between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Following this, the hunt for further sizeable gas deposits picked up pace, and not just in the vicinity of the previous discoveries. Last year, ADNOC announced an increase in national reserves of 16 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, bringing the UAE's gas reserves to 289 tcf.

Another of the UAE’s constituent emirates, Sharjah, also recently announced proposals to launch an offshore bidding round for its new gas and condensate find in Block B. Eni has a 50 percent in this area too, with the other half being held by the state-owned Sharjah National Oil Corp (SNOC), and it is here that the Italian company discovered the Mahani reservoir. According to initial reports from Eni, the first drilled well in Mahani achieved flow rates of up to 50 million standard cubic feet per day (mmcf/d) of lean gas and associated condensate. SNOC is currently limiting the production from Mahani-1 gas well at less than 50 mmcf/d in order to collect data and delineate the reservoir, according to the state-owned company’s chief executive officer, Hatem al-Mosa. He added: “The seismic [of the exploration prospect] shows that it is significant [and], if it is as per the seismic, it will be very economical to produce and develop.” Eni and SNOC are also partners in the onshore concession areas A and C, where exploration is actively in progress, with Eni being the operator.

Offshore Block 2, the second of the major projects earmarked for fast-tracking last week, also features Eni as the major shareholder, with a 70 percent stake (the remainder being held by Thailand’s PTTEP). The end of July saw the discovery of a new, deeper reservoir that indicated 1.0-1.5 tcf of raw gas, almost doubling the discovered field volume, according to a comment from ADNOC at the time. The July discovery followed the one made in February from a shallower target, and takes the total potential gas discovered from Block 2 to 2.5-3.5 tcf. Eni also operates in other offshore areas of Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah, another UAE emirate.

Eni’s efforts in the UAE will complement those of other major European oil and gas firms in recent months, most notably France’s TotalEnergies, which recently signed a partnership agreement with ADNOC that includes cooperation in trading, product supply and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. As highlighted and analysed by OilPrice.com recently, TotalEnergies is at the vanguard of France’s policy of attempting to reduce its own dependence on Russian energy imports by expanding and expediting the development of alternative energy supplies, particularly in the Middle East. As TotalEnergies stated at the time of the signing of the partnership agreement with ADNOC: “[The agreement includes] the development of oil and gas projects in the UAE to ensure sustainable energy supply to the markets and contribute to global energy security.”

This, in turn, followed the signing of the UAE-France Comprehensive Strategic Energy Partnership, which also focuses on securing energy supply for France going forward. Such concerns about the negative effects for France resulting from the staggered bans on Russian energy ahead were echoed again earlier in July by France’s economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, who said: “Let’s prepare for a total cut-off of Russian gas; today that is the most likely option.” Although France receives slightly less than 20 percent of its gas imports from Russia – much less than several other European Union (EU) states – its liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports fell by nearly 60 percent month-on-month (m-o-m) in June, to around 1.06 million metric tonnes, according to industry data.

In addition to the new elements delineated in the partnership agreement, TotalEnergies has several major gas projects in development in the UAE. Its 40 percent stake in the Ruwais Diyab unconventional gas concession has an output target of 1 bcf/d by 2030 and saw first production in 2020. The French company also has a 15 percent stake in ADNOC Gas Processing, which produces natural gas liquids and condensate from the associated gas produced by ADNOC Onshore, and a 5 percent stake in ADNOC LNG (liquefied natural gas).
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

France Prepares To Nationalize Its Struggling Nuclear Industry

THURSDAY, SEP 22, 2022 - 12:30 AM
By Haley Zaremba of OilPrice.com

France is working up to fully nationalizing the currently 84% state-owned nuclear energy company Électricité de France (EDF) at the same time that the company is anticipating a massive downturn in profits.

EDF had already warned investors that its core profits would take a considerable hit this year, but just sharply increased that projected loss to a whopping 29 billion Euros (normally here we would say how much that is in dollars, but the European economy has taken such a downturn – largely thanks to energy woes – that the values of the Euro and the Dollar are virtually identical). The massive loss is thanks to a series of unfortunate events that have led to more than half of EDF’s 56 reactors being taken offline – a record shortage.

France’s nuclear sector has been hit with multiple issues at the worst possible moment. The industry is dealing with a pileup of delays and stoppages thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, a “series of maintenance issues including corrosion at some of France’s aging reactors, troubles at state-controlled energy group EDF and a years-long absence of significant new nuclear investment,” according to reporting from the Financial Times over the summer. In the few months since that FT report, the situation has grown even worse, as a severe drought has caused rivers around Europe to run dry, leaving some French and Swiss nuclear plants without enough water to keep their systems cool.

As a result, French nuclear energy output is at an all-time low. This is a major issue for the nation, which derives about 70% of its energy from nuclear power. Generally, France is a net exporter of energy, thanks to its robust and heretofore reliable nuclear sector. Now it’s being forced to import energy in a historically tight market. The European continent is experiencing a crisis of soaring energy prices thanks to a game of chicken with Moscow. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has been working toward weaning itself off of its heavy reliance on Russian fossil fuels with the intention of instituting energy sanctions on the Kremlin. In response, Russia’s Gazprom has indefinitely cut off natural gas supply to the continent via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, citing its own suspiciously timed maintenance issues.

The timing of the French nuclear collapse is all the more tragic due to the political wrangling with Russia. France has long been the global poster child for nuclear energy, with the highest production rates per capita and an evangelical zeal for nuclear energy development to shore up energy security in the era of climate change. France was not tied in any substantive way to the dangerous reliance on Russian gas imports that made the continent’s energy security so fragile. In fact, it has prided itself on the energy independence that nuclear built. But now, just when it was most needed, French nuclear has failed to save the day.

Now, the French government is going to make a bid to fully buy out EDF in order to take control of the company as it tries to right the ship. In the coming weeks, the French government is expected to launch a tender offer for the remaining 16% of the company it doesn’t already own so it can unilaterally (and quietly) make decisions pertaining to building new reactors and addressing the myriad issues with the existing fleet. “People close to the operation have said the company’s financial woes have added to incentives to remove it from the glare of markets,” the Financial Times reports.

EDF has said that it plans to have its full fleet back up and running by early next year. In order to do so, the already heavily indebted company will have to take on a whole lot more debt at a time that the company is already under scrutiny for operational errors and oversights. At the end of the day, the issues in France are not a problem with nuclear power at all – they’re a problem of mismanagement.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The European Central Bank's Zimbabwean Model

WEDNESDAY, SEP 21, 2022 - 11:00 PM
Authored by Declan Hayes,

As the Dutch farmers are showing, that is something worth opposing von der Leyen, Lagarde, Stoltenberg and Europe’s other Quislings and the perches they pontificate from.

Though the function of European, German, Japanese and Zimbabwean central banks is to enable the credibility and efficiency of the financial side of their respective economies so that the real side of their economies may achieve the nation’s broader macro economic goals, NATO’s central banks have obviously and disastrously abandoned those tasks for reasons this article makes apparent. Because Zimbabwe, like Germany’s Weimar Republic before it, has reached annual inflation rates of 90 sextillion per cent a year, Europe should not be emulating the financial and economic basket case of Harare.

Whatever about Zimbabwe, Germany has been famously down this road before and, in a total reversal of earlier post-war policies, seems determined to traverse it again. The European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, is printing euros as quickly as their colleagues in Zimbabwe are printing Zimbabwean dollars, as the Confederates printed their Greybacks and as Weimar printed their famously worthless marks.

Although Weimar’s woes were many, two of the most pertinent were that the Kaiser borrowed immensely to fund his armies, whose victories were supposed to enable him to repay his nation’s debts, and that the Western allies bled defeated Germany’s resources dry, thus opening the way for Herr Hitler once Weimar fell. Europe’s central banks are following this very policy today. They are doling out billions to ease energy bills, to bribe farmers and, most notoriously, to feed the money laundering Ponzi scheme that is Zelensky’s Kiev junta. The money supply, at more than 15 trillion euros, is at record levels and real interest rates are in negative terrain, pauperizing pensioners but failing to kick start their fuel starved economies. Inflation,.Germany’s bane, is again on the march as too far much money is in search of far too few bags of fire wood; and English toilet paper has increased in price by 50% in the last few months, Albion is really in squeaky bum time.

As the European Central Bank’s leaders presently have no other card to play, they must think their printing presses are enough to prevail in Ukraine and to allow Europeans to both eat and heat themselves this winter. Not only is that wishful thinking on the part of ECB President Christine Lagarde, the ‘multi cultural’ Parisian, who previously fronted the IMF and who held senior Ministerial positions in the French government but it betrays her fundamental ignorance about monetary policy.

The main aim of the euro was to have the stability of the German mark and the Dutch guilder and not to be as volatile as Lagarde’s French franc, which was devalued four times since 1945. Unlike Lagarde, the Central Bank of the Federal Republic of Germany, along with that of Japan, seemed to have understood monetary policy, which is best seen as being like the throttle of a motorbike which must, when necessary, allow more fuel to enter the economic engine but which also must not flood it by drowning it in Zimbabwean dollars, French francs, Confederate Greybacks or Lagardean euros.

To further illustrate this point, recall that the interest rates of the German Federal Republic and Japan were flatter than pancakes for decades after their 1945 surrender. This central bank policy, together with a stable exchange rate, allowed Japanese and German industry to plan ahead, to innovate, to capture markets and to allow their countries to prosper on the backs of their technological and industrial might.

Lord Keynes, who was involved in the financial intricacies of both the First and Second World Wars, understood all that. He had the measure of the Lagardes of this world whom, he famously said, were slaves to long dead economists, the Chicago School in the case of Lagarde and her ECB confreres. Like the CIA’s Chicago School and the Austrian School that inspired them, their analyses omit not only the real economy but the political leadership and direction necessary to achieve economic and social success, which the post war Japanese and German states possessed in abundance, just as China does today.

China is, of course, the workshop of the world, just as Japan, Britain and Germany formerly were. But a large part of their success was due to their monetary policy, which served the interests of their economy with Japan, most notably, keeping both the yen’s value stable and Japan’s interest rates artificially low for decades.

Lagarde’s Europe works to a different beat, printing euros by the billion, both for Zelensky’s regime to trouser and to stave off Europe’s pending collapse which needs action on the real side of the economy, rather than gifting reams of cash to oil companies if it is to survive. Europe’s salvation is in getting back to work by using the cheapest energy wherever it can be found to produce high valued added German and Dutch goods.

Up to when the Americans ordered the closure of Nord Stream 2, that affordable energy was Russian, which has now been jettisoned in favor of printing billions more euro for Zelensky to squirrel away. Forget about our sanctioned Russian caviar. We can no longer afford Dutch tomatoes, British black pudding or German pork sausages because ‘cosmopolitans’ like Lagarde and the moronic von der Leyen have decreed we must follow Sri Lanka and jettison the Russian fertilizer that is at the heart of both European farming and European urbanization. Lagarde and von der Leyen see the solution to our problems in giving the Dutch farmers a few euros in lieu of the sustainable lifestyle the Dutch had previously carved out for themselves through hard work and massive investment.

But their monetary madness, if madness it is, goes a lot deeper than even destroying European farmers. Take a squint at European debt rates, at the rate of public debt and of the collapsing rates of investment and see the abyss that looms ahead. Though Ireland, to take one of the more extreme examples, has an external debt 700% the size of its GDP, its government is still handing out bribes galore to delay its inevitable collapse. As its only representations on the EuroStoxx50 index of top Euro denominated shares are CRH, a corruption ridden builders’ providers, Flutter Entertainment, an ethically challenged gambling company, and Linde PLC, a multinational German company domiciled in Ireland for tax evasion reasons, Ireland has no chance of repaying its debt in either this world or the next, and its promises to rebuild Ukraine are therefore not worth a Continental.

And, if we go through the EuroStoxx50 index’ mainland European companies, which include a rag tag mixture of auto, alcohol, financial, food, luxury goods, chemical, sportswear, retail and real estate rental companies, we see the same story of companies that are going the way of the dodo. Because we can see all their governments have no chance of repaying their debts either, we must then ask are Lagarde and the insufferable von der Leyen moron more knaves than fools.

Although von der Leyen is undoubtedly an idiot of epic proportions, she and those in cahoots with her are obvious knaves as well. They have sacrificed Western Europe to what they describe as the vagaries of the market but to what is, in effect, the grand designs of Amazon, Gates, Musk, Schwab and similarly shoddy Lords of our age.

Though Lagarde’s lot can throw all the crumbs they want to small German businesses and highly efficient Dutch farmers, they are nowhere near enough to keep the lights on, never mind to keep those enterprises viable. That can only be done by instilling stability in the economy and confidence going forward, the sorts of stability and confidence that were the hallmark of the unique economic structures of both Federal Germany and Japan that must now give way to the behemoths of BlackRock, Vanguard, Amazon and Microsoft that finance the World Economic Forum’s civilian wing and that have no need of Dutch farmers, small retailers, entrepreneurs, the mittelstand of Germany, Switzerland and Austria or any other such expendables.

Though Keynes’ long dead economists were correct to say that money is only a veil over the real economy, it also uses dupes like Lagarde and von der Leyen to mask how companies like Amazon and Google, working with the CIA and allied bodies, are colonizing and pauperizing Europe and thereby making all that is good in European society go Harare’s way, into economic freefall.

And so, Europe is at a crossroads, where the path of the World Economic Forum, NATO and the European Central Bank is Hayek’s Road to Serfdom with all the horrors impoverished Africa, Syria, Iraq and Yemen have endured, and the alternative path that is taking root in Russia, China, Iran and Latin America can also be ours if we can rid ourselves of our ECB, EC and WEF lords and ladies. In the one, we will own nothing and will, like tame dogs, learn to love our nothingness. In the other, if we work for it, we at least have the hope of living as free citizens and, as the Dutch farmers are showing, that is something worth opposing von der Leyen, Lagarde, Stoltenberg and Europe’s other Quislings and the perches they pontificate from.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Warning: Gene-Edited Meat Products Coming to Supermarkets Near You

BY KAREN SANDERS TIMESEPTEMBER 21, 2022

Sure, we know that most conventionally produced meat isn’t the healthiest food. For instance, numerous studies linked the consumption of meat – loaded with toxic chemicals and synthetic antibiotics – to cancer and heart disease. Even “leaner” meats seem to be healthy only when eaten in moderation, because of the toxicity already mentioned.

Moreover, the meat industry is pretty rough on the planet, contributing to ozone depletion, antibiotic resistance, and animal cruelty. Supposedly to fix some of those issues, innovators have pushed gene-edited burgers for years now. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has heard their requests and has just approved the first gene-edited cattle.

Gene-Edited Meat: Is It a Good Thing?

These cows have shorter, slicker coats. The thinking? Those coats will help them withstand heat better. That will lead to less stress and higher meat production – but is that a good thing?

Like the fake meat revolution, gene-edited meat products aren’t necessarily a beneficial replacement for the natural version. On the contrary, the processed substitution strips out vital nutrients that help you successfully digest foods that were meant to be eaten whole.

What else? They’re often grown in conditions that harm the environment, such as those that use pesticides. In addition, they lack the synergistic health qualities that natural, heritage, whole foods bring to the table.

If that’s not enough, nothing is saying gene-edited cattle will be grown in more human conditions once their DNA is tweaked. The very point of the modification seems to be packing cows “comfortably” into close quarters.

Synthetic Foods: Not All They’re Cracked up to Be​

The new green light has also missed several critical steps in a safe approval process. These include:
  • Streamlining the approval process and skipping normal review factors
  • Failing to conduct long-term safety and toxicity studies
  • Not adequately safeguarding our genetic stock for the future

Gene-Editing Leads to Unintentional Consequences​

This decision also ignores information showing that changing DNA in one area is not necessarily contained to that area. Instead, it may lead to long-term changes in cattle DNA. Brazil, for instance, was working toward herds of genetically dehorned cows. They used the same CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology approved by the FDA to adjust their cows’ genes. Then they discovered unintended DNA errors cropping up.

Also, as COVID-19 has shown us, when one organism’s DNA changes, it can significantly impact another organism – i.e., human health. We can’t afford simply to ignore this.

Here Is a Better Way to Meat​

Like meat? Want to have less of an impact on the environment? There’s a better way. For one thing, study after study conducted by luminaries such as the Rodale Institute has shown that organic food can feed the world. The argument that we need conventional and genetically engineered foods to address the planet’s food crisis is overblown, if not outright false.

For another, there is plenty of environment-friendly meat to be had. We don’t need to purchase meat loaded with toxins, pathogens, parasites, and antibiotics. We can say no to Big Meat by refusing to buy fast food and avoiding synthetic and/or conventional meats at the grocery store and deli.

Instead, patronize Earth-friendly, human, regenerative farms – which offer 100% grass fed beef products, from locally sourced smaller farms. These raise meat healthy for humans, honor our genetic heritage, protect breeding stock for the future, and tread lightly on the planet.

It’s not too late to vote with our dollars. So say yes to better beef today.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Russians Truly Believe That This Conflict Is an Existential Fight for Survival, and That Makes Nuclear War so Much More Likely

by Michael Snyder September 22, 2022 in Commentary, Lede, Top Reading

Putin Nuclear War
If heavily armed intruders were trying to break through the door of your home, would you shoot them if they actually succeeded in getting inside?
Most westerners do not realize this, but that is actually how the Russians view the conflict in Ukraine. They are entirely convinced that this is a life or death struggle with NATO, and almost nightly there is discussion about the possibility of nuclear war on television. The Russians are deeply scared, and they truly believe that the future of their nation hangs in the balance. In an existential fight for national survival, there are no limits. The Russians will do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of Russia, even if that means causing a global cataclysm.

You may be reading this and thinking that all of this sounds quite silly to you.

But it doesn’t matter what you believe.

What matters is what the Russians believe.

Bill Gates wants meat to go away. He wants us to eat bugs. I won’t eat bugs. I am getting organic, sous vide, freeze-dried chicken for long-term storage from Prepper Organics.

When the Soviet Union broke up, NATO promised that they would not expand eastward and gobble up former Warsaw Pact countries.

But that is exactly what happened.

Ukraine was supposed to be where it finally stopped, but now Russia finds itself fighting an army in Ukraine that has been trained by NATO, that has been supplied with highly sophisticated NATO equipment and that is constantly being fed intelligence from NATO.

In addition, the successful counter-offensive that Ukraine has launched has been spearheaded by lots of foreign fighters from NATO countries.

Those fighters are supposedly in Ukraine “voluntarily”, but the Russians aren’t buying it.

At this point, the Russians are framing this war as a direct fight with NATO, and Vladimir Putin just greatly escalated the conflict…

The desperate despot also ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 military reserves – a first in Russia since the Second World War – and gave the go-ahead for referendums to be held in occupied areas of Ukraine that would make them a part of Russia, in the Kremlin’s eyes at least.

He vowed to use ‘all means’ to defend the regions, saying: ‘If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will use all available means to protect Russia and our people – this is not a bluff… I shall stress – by all means available to us. Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them.’

Putin is warning that if push comes to shove he will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons.

And he isn’t the only prominent voice in Russia that is talking like this.

Just a few days ago, one Russian journalist suggested that Putin should have nuked the Queen’s funeral because so many western leaders were all gathered in one place…

Putin should have nuked the Queen’s funeral while world leaders were all in one place, one of the Kremlin’s most-prominent propagandists has declared.

Olga Skabeyeva, dubbed Putin’s ‘Iron Doll’, made the ghoulish suggestion last night – just hours after Her Majesty’s body was laid to rest at the end of 11 days of mourning.

The 37-year-old – who is married to a Russian politician – was speaking with guests about when and where her country could use its nukes when she said: ‘We should have done it today, all the best people are [in Britain] for the funeral.’

You and I may look at that and think that Olga Skabeyeva must be completely insane.

Because without a doubt, it was a truly horrible thing for her to say.

But we have to understand that this is the sort of frame of mind that the Russians are in right now.

To them, nuking the west is a very real option because they are entirely convinced that western leaders want to destroy Russia. The following comes from a Russian news source…

We must speak frankly and openly: the West is waging a fierce war against the Russian state, using local forces as proxies. And this is covered by the fig leaf of “defending democracy.” However, what they really want is for Russia to be destroyed. Forever! Irrevocably!

Whether we like it or not, this is what they believe.

And if we want to find a way out of this mess that does not involve nuclear war, we need to clearly understand what they are thinking.

Alexander Dugin is one of the most influential voices inside Russia right now, and he is openly warning that “the probability of a nuclear Armageddon grows by the day”…

We are on the brink of World War III, which the West is compulsively pushing for. And this is no longer a fear or expectation, it is a fact. Russia is at war with the collective West, with NATO and its allies (though not with all of them: Turkey and Greece have their own position and some European countries, primarily but not only France and Italy, do not want to actively participate in a war with Russia). Yet, the threat of a third world war is getting closer and closer.

Whether it will come to the use of nuclear weapons is an open question. But the probability of a nuclear Armageddon grows by the day. It is quite clear, and many American military commanders (such as the former American commander in Europe Ben Hodges) openly declare it, that the West will not even be satisfied with our complete withdrawal from the territory of the former Ukraine, we will end up on our own soil, insisting on ‘unconditional surrender’ (Jens Stoltenberg), ‘de-imperialisation’ (Ben Hodges), dismemberment of Russia.

In 1991, the West was content with the collapse of the USSR and our ideological surrender, primarily by accepting the Western liberal ideology, political system and economy under Western leadership. Today, the red line for the West is the existence of a sovereign Russia, even within the borders of the Russian Federation.

This is the man that is often referred to as “Putin’s brain”.

Sadly, Putin is literally surrounded by people that think this way.

They truly believe that the United States and other western powers will not stop until there is no longer a sovereign Russian nation.

To them, the very existence of Russia is at stake and that could justify the use of nuclear weapons if it becomes necessary.

Since June 2020, it has been official Russian policy that nuclear weapons can be used “when the very existence of the state is put under threat”…

In June 2020, he signed a decree updating Russia’s nuclear doctrine that requires quoting in full. “The Russian Federation retains the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies…” But that sentence ends with an unusual statement: “… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

So why won’t we take Putin seriously when he threatens to nuke us?

Here in the western world, our leaders continue to assure us that there is almost zero chance that a nuclear war will erupt.

But meanwhile they continue to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

If both sides just continue to raise the stakes, eventually someone will cross a line that will not be able to be uncrossed.

And once that happens, nothing will ever be the same again.

I do not want to be caught in the middle of a cataclysmic nuclear exchange, and so I am pleading with leaders on both sides to find a peaceful way out of this mess.

Unfortunately, both sides seem to be absolutely obsessed with winning at this point, and that means that there will be no peace.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Food Crisis Continues: Upcoming US Harvest Expected to Be the Most Disappointing in Years

by Arsenio Toledo September 22, 2022 in Opinions

Crops (1)
The United States’ upcoming harvest is expected to be the country’s most disappointing in years, raising fears that America’s food supply will remain tight and food prices will keep increasing.

Senior executives at some of America’s largest agribusiness and food processing companies like Bayer, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge warned that worldwide crop supplies remain tight due to persistent drought conditions in the U.S. and other agricultural heavy-hitters like countries in South America. Uncertainties over crop production in conflict-hit Ukraine are also making the situation precarious.

High temperatures and drought conditions have affected crop quality all over the U.S. West and the Great Plains. In places like Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, heatwaves hit at a time when corn crops required the most water, causing a lot of yield losses.

“It looks like a large part of the corn belt, in my opinion, is going to be dealing with below-normal precipitation, so we’re looking at a drier harvest,” said Ryan Martin, an agricultural meteorologist from Indiana. “From mid-September and going through the end of October, I think we’re going to be looking at below-normal precipitation.”

Martin added that parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and the northern Great Lakes may see some more precipitation. But for the central and southern plains regions, drought conditions will likely persist and they will receive “well-below-normal precipitation.”

“We’ve already seen some wheat dusted-in in parts of Kansas and Oklahoma. Right now, there’s nothing to change that,” said Martin. “And when the rains come through, the systems are not overly moisture-laden, so we do see a little bit of moisture, but if you get half an inch and if you need an inch-and-a-half [of precipitation] or more to kind of get the soil profile back, it’s just not going to happen and not going to work.”

America needs at least two years of good harvests to get back to normal
Agriculture experts warn that it will take at least two years of good harvests in both North and South America to ease the heavy pressures on global food supplies and food prices. (Related: August food inflation jumped by 11.4%, but experts warn the worst is yet to come.)

“When it comes to the global food supply situation, I think things are going to continue to be tight for the time being,” warned Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sept. 12 released a statement lowering its nationwide corn production estimate to just 13.9 billion bushels, three percent lower than its projection last month and eight percent below the 2021 harvest total. Soybean production estimates are also down three percent from a record-high projection in August. The current estimate is also lower than last year’s total harvest.

Agriculture consultancy firm Professional Farmers of America also cut its outlook for corn yields by 13 percent in Nebraska and 22 percent in South Dakota.

Chuck Magro, chief executive of seed and pesticide producer Corteva, noted that the corn harvest this year is currently expected to come far below recent yields in North America and Europe, hindering the world’s ability to restock global corn supplies.

“The current market expectation is that global grain and oilseeds markets need two consecutive normal crop years to stabilize global supplies,” said Magro.

Markets have already reacted to the possibility that food supplies will remain restrained. Futures prices for wheat at the Chicago Board of Trade is already up 17 percent year-over-year, and corn prices have already risen by 28 percent and soybeans by roughly 14 percent compared to last year.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

House Passes Legislation Changing Electoral Vote Counting Process For Presidential Elections – Here Are the 9 Republicans Who Voted with Democrats

By Cristina Laila
Published September 21, 2022 at 6:19pm

The Democrats are fiercely working to overhaul elections ahead of the midterms.


The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a proposal to overhaul rules for certifying presidential elections.

The House voted 229-203 to pass the proposal – 9 Republican lawmakers voted with the Democrats.

The 9 RINO usual suspects voted with the Democrats: Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer, Gonzalez (OH), Jacobs (NY), Herrera Beutler, Katko, Rice (SC) and Upton.

“The House legislation overhauls certain parts of the Electoral Count Act, which sets out deadlines for states to certify their presidential contests, establishes a process to send electors to Washington, names the vice president as the overseer of the vote count and lays out a process for lawmakers to challenge results.” Politico reported.

In other words, the Democrats are working to make it easier for them to steal elections after they set up Zuckerberg ballot boxes all over the country.

The House’s version of the legislation is not expected to pass the Senate.

The Senate’s version of the Electoral Count Act will go “through a markup next week,” Politico reported.

“To all those who oppose this legislation, I ask you, how could anyone vote against free and fair elections — the cornerstone of our constitution?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday on the House floor.

“How could anyone vote against our founder’s vision: placing power in the hands of the people? How could anyone vote against their own constituents, allowing radical politicians to rip away their say in our democracy?” she said.

VIDEO:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1572711774570299392
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House Democrats are also desperately trying to pass HR. 8873 before they leave office for the midterm elections.

The bill is an urgent attempt by Democrats to put in place rules to ensure they can steal all future elections from the American people.

Steven Bannon earlier this week warned the War Room audience that Democrats are attempting to push this through committee.
 
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