Category Archives: Social Control

Fiscal Insanity: The Government Borrows $6 Billion a Day, and We’re Stuck with the Bill

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By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

We’re not living the American dream.

We’re living a financial nightmare.

The U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card.

The government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity.

According to the number crunchers with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government is borrowing roughly $6 billion a day.

As the Editorial Board for the Washington Post warns:

“The nation has reached a hazardous moment where what it owes, as a percentage of the total size of the economy, is the highest since World War II. If nothing changes, the United States will soon be in an uncharted scenario that weakens its national security, imperils its ability to invest in the future, unfairly burdens generations to come, and will require cuts to critical programs such as Social Security and Medicare. It is not a future anyone wants.”

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $31 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. That translates to roughly $246,000 per taxpayer or $94,000 for every single person in the country.

The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars.

It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).

In other words, the government is spending more than it brings in.

The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to top $395 billion this year, which is significantly more than the government spends on veterans’ benefits and services, and according to Pew Research Center, more than it will spend on elementary and secondary education, disaster relief, agriculture, science and space programs, foreign aid, and natural resources and environmental protection combined.

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we’ve paid on this borrowed money is “nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.”

In ten years, those interest payments will exceed our entire military budget.

This is financial tyranny.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.

None of that has come to pass, and yet we’re still being loaded down with debt not of our own making while the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic reports, “U.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

Of course, we’re the ones who have to repay that borrowed debt.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.” That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that’s only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.

The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation, with nearly $300 billion disbursed over a five-year period. More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That price tag keeps growing, too.

As Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.”

Most recently, the U.S. has allocated nearly $115 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine since the start of the Russia invasion.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex continues to get richer, while the American taxpayer is forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

This is no way of life.

Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.

Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.

And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?

What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?

What if, instead of quietly sending in our tax checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we don’t have the right to decide what happens to our hard-earned cash, then we don’t have any rights at all.

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison 

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By Bert Olivier

Source: Brownstone Institute

In an outstanding piece of political-theoretical writing, titled ‘The Threat of Big Other’ (with its play on George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’) Shoshana Zuboff, succinctly addresses the main issues of her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, Hachette, 2019), explicitly linking it to Orwell’s 1984. 

Significantly, at the time she reminded readers that Orwell’s goal with 1984 was to alert British and American societies that democracy is not immune to totalitarianism, and that “Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere” (Orwell, quoted by Zuboff, p. 16). In other words, people are utterly wrong in their belief that totalitarian control of their actions through mass surveillance (as depicted in 1984, captured in the slogan, “Big Brother is watching you”) could only issue from the state, and she does not hesitate to name the source of this threat today (p. 16):

For 19 years, private companies practicing an unprecedented economic logic that I call surveillance capitalism have hijacked the Internet and its digital technologies. Invented at Google in 2000, this new economics covertly claims private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Some data are used to improve services, but the rest are turned into computational products that predict your behaviour. These predictions are traded in a new futures market, where surveillance capitalists sell certainty to businesses determined to know what we will do next. 

By now we know that such mass surveillance does not merely have the purpose – if it ever did – of tracking and predicting consumer behaviour with the aim of maximising profits; far from it. It is generally known among those who prefer to remain informed about global developments, and who do not only rely on the legacy media for this, that in China such mass surveillance has reached the point where citizens are tracked through a myriad of cameras in public places, as well as through smartphones, to the point where their behaviour is virtually completely monitored and controlled. 

Small wonder that Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (WEF) does not let an opportunity pass to praise China as the model to be emulated by other countries in this respect. It should therefore come as no surprise that investigative reporter, Whitney Webb, also alluding to Orwell’s prescience, draws attention to the striking similarities between mass surveillance that was developed in the United States (US) in 2020 and Orwell’s depiction of a dystopian society in 1984, first published in 1949. 

In an article titled “Techno-tyranny: How the US national security state is using coronavirus to fulfil an Orwellian vision,” she wrote:

Last year, a government commission called for the US to adopt an AI-driven mass surveillance system far beyond that used in any other country in order to ensure American hegemony in artificial intelligence. Now, many of the ‘obstacles’ they had cited as preventing its implementation are rapidly being removed under the guise of combating the coronavirus crisis.

Webb proceeds to discuss an American government body that focused on researching ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) could promote national security and defence needs, and which provided details concerning the “structural changes” which American society and economy would have to undertake to be able to maintain a technological advantage in relation to China. According to Webb the relevant governmental body recommended that the US follow China’s example in order to surpass the latter, specifically regarding some aspects of AI-driven technology as it pertains to mass surveillance. 

As she also points out, this stance on the desired development of surveillance technology conflicts with (incongruous) public statements by prominent American politicians and government officials, that Chinese AI-technological surveillance systems instantiate a significant threat for Americans’ way of life), which did not, however, prevent the implementation of several stages of such a surveillance operation in the US in 2020. As one knows in retrospect, such implementation was undertaken and justified as part of the American response to Covid-19. 

None of this is new, of course – by now it is well-known that Covid was the excuse to establish and implement Draconian measures of control, and that AI has been an integral part of it. The point I want to make, however, is that one should not be fooled into thinking that strategies of control will end there, nor that the Covid pseudo-vaccines were the last, or worst, of what the would-be rulers of the world can inflict upon us to exercise the total control they wish to achieve – a level of control that would be the envy of the fictional Big Brother society of Orwell’s 1984. 

For example, several critically thinking people have alerted one to the alarming fact that the widely touted Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are Trojan horses, with which the neo-fascists driving the current attempt at a ‘great reset’ of society and the world economy aim to gain complete control over people’s lives. 

At first blush the proposed switch from a fractional reserve monetary system to a digital currency system may seem reasonable, particularly in so far as it promises the (dehumanising) ‘convenience’ of a cashless society. As Naomi Wolf has pointed out, however, far more than this is at stake. In the course of a discussion of the threat of ‘vaccine passports’ to democracy, she writes (The Bodies of Others, All Seasons Press, 2022, p. 194):

There is now also a global push toward government-managed digital currencies. With a digital currency, if you’re not a ‘good citizen,’ if you pay to see a movie you shouldn’t see, if you go to a play you shouldn’t go to, which the vaccine passport will know because you have to scan it everywhere you go, then your revenue stream can be shut off or your taxes can be boosted or your bank account won’t function. There is no coming back from this.

I was asked by a reporter, ‘What if Americans don’t adopt this?’

And I said, ‘You’re already talking from a world that’s gone if this succeeds in being rolled out.’ Because if we don’t reject the vaccine passports, there won’t be any choice. There will be no such thing as refusing to adopt it. There won’t be capitalism. There won’t be free assembly. There won’t be privacy. There won’t be choice in anything that you want to do in your life.

And there will be no escape.

 In short, this was something from which there was no returning. If indeed there was a ‘hill to die on,’ this was it. 

This kind of digital currency is already in use in China, and it is being rapidly developed in countries like Britain and Australia, to mention only some.

Wolf is not the only one to warn against the decisive implications that accepting digital currencies would have for democracy. 

Financial gurus such as Catherine Austin Fitts and Melissa Cuimmei have both signalled that it is imperative not to yield to the lies, exhortations, threats and whatever other rhetorical strategies the neo-fascists might employ to force one into this digital financial prison. In an interview where she deftly summarises the current situation of being “at war” with the globalists, Cuimmei has warned that the drive towards digital passports explains the attempt to get young children ‘vaccinated’ en masse: unless they can do so on a large scale, they could not draw children into the digital control system, and the latter would therefore not work. She has also stressed that the refusal to comply is the only way to stop this digital prison from becoming a reality. We have to learn to say “No!”

Why a digital prison, and one far more effective that Orwell’s dystopian society of Oceania? The excerpt from Wolf’s book, above, already indicates that the digital ‘currencies’ that would be shown in your Central World Bank account, would not be money, which you could spend as you saw fit; in effect, they would have the status of programmable vouchers that would dictate what you can and cannot do with them. 

They constitute a prison worse than debt, paralysing as the latter may be; if you don’t play the game of spending them on what is permissible, you could literally be forced to live without food or shelter, that is, eventually to die. Simultaneously, the digital passports of which these currencies would be a part, represent a surveillance system that would record everything you do and wherever you go. Which means that a social credit system of the kind that functions in China, and has been explored in the dystopian television series, Black Mirror, would be built into it, which could make or break you.  

In her The Solari Report, Austin Fitts, for her part, elaborates on what one can do to “stop CBDCs,” which includes the use of cash, as far as possible, limiting one’s dependence on digital transaction options in favour of analog, and using good local banks instead of the banking behemoths, in the process decentralising financial power, which is further strengthened by supporting small local businesses instead of large corporations. 

One should be under no illusion that this will prove to be easy, however. As history has taught us, when dictatorial powers attempt to gain power over people’s lives, resistance on the part of the latter is usually met with force, or ways of neutralising resistance.

As Lena Petrova reports, this was recently demonstrated in Nigeria, which was one of the first countries in the world (Ukraine being another), to introduce CBDCs, and where there was initially a very tepid response from the population, where most people prefer using cash (partly because many cannot afford smartphones). 

Not to be outdone, the Nigerian government resorted to dubious shenanigans, such as printing less money and asking people to hand in their ‘old’ banknotes for ‘new’ ones, which have not materialised. The result? People are starving because they lack cash to buy food, and they do not have, or do not want, CBDCs, partly because they lack smartphones and partly because they resist these digital currencies. 

It is difficult to tell whether Nigerians’ doubts about CBDCs is rooted in their awareness that, once embraced, the digital passport of which these currencies will comprise a part, would allow the government complete surveillance and control of the populace. Time will tell whether Nigerians will accept this Orwellian nightmare lying down.

Which brings me to the significant philosophical point underpinning any argument about resisting the drive for dictatorial power through mass surveillance. As every enlightened person should know, there are different kinds of power. One such variety of power is encapsulated in Immanuel Kant’s famous motto for enlightenment, formulated in his famous 18th-century essay, “What is Enlightenment?” The motto reads: “Sapere aude!” and translates as “Have the courage to think for yourself,” or “Dare to think!” 

This motto may be said to correspond with what contributors to the activities of Brownstone Institute engage in. Hence, the emphasis on critical intellectual engagement is indispensable. But is it sufficient? I would argue that, while speech act theory has demonstrated, accurately – emphasising the pragmatic aspect of language – that speaking (and one could add writing) is already ‘doing something,’ there is another sense of ‘doing.’ 

This is its meaning of acting in the sense one encounters in discourse theory – which demonstrates the interwovenness of speaking (or writing) and acting through the imbrication of language with power relations. What this implies is that language use is intertwined with actions that find their correlate(s) in speaking and writing. This is compatible with Hannah Arendt’s conviction, that of labour, work and action (the components of the vita activa), action – the verbal engagement with others, broadly for political purposes, is the highest embodiment of human activity.

Philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have shed important light on the question of the connection between Kant’s “Sapere aude!” and action. In the third volume of their magisterial trilogy, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2009; the other two volumes being Empire and Multitude), they argue that although Kant’s “major voice” shows that he was indeed an Enlightenment philosopher of the transcendental method, who uncovered the conditions of possibility of certain knowledge of the law-governed phenomenal world, but by implication also of a practical life of dutiful social and political responsibility, there is also a seldom-noticed “minor voice” in Kant’s work. 

This points, according to them, towards an alternative to the modern power complex that Kant’s “major voice” affirms, and it is encountered precisely in his motto, articulated in the short essay on enlightenment referred to above. They claim further that the German thinker developed his motto in an ambiguous manner – on the one hand “Dare to think” does not undermine his encouragement, that citizens carry out their various tasks obediently and pay their taxes to the sovereign. Needless to stress, such an approach amounts to the strengthening of the social and political status quo. But on the other hand, they argue that Kant himself creates the aperture for reading this enlightenment exhortation (p. 17): 

[…] against the grain: ‘dare to know’ really means at the same time also ‘know how to dare’. This simple inversion indicates the audacity and courage required, along with the risks involved, in thinking, speaking, and acting autonomously. This is the minor Kant, the bold, daring Kant, which is often hidden, subterranean, buried in his texts, but from time to time breaks out with a ferocious, volcanic, disruptive power. Here reason is no longer the foundation of duty that supports established social authority but rather a disobedient, rebellious force that breaks through the fixity of the present and discovers the new. Why, after all, should we dare to think and speak for ourselves if these capacities are only to be silenced immediately by a muzzle of obedience? 

One cannot fault Hardt and Negri here; notice, above, that they include ‘acting’ among those things for which one requires the courage to ‘dare.’ As I have previously pointed out in a discussion of critical theory and their interpretation of Kant on the issue of acting, towards the conclusion of his essay, Kant uncovers the radical implications of his argument: if the ruler does not submit himself (or herself) to the very same rational rules that govern the citizens’ actions, there is no obligation on the part of the latter to obey such a monarch any longer. 

In other words, rebellion is justified when authorities themselves do not act reasonably (which includes the tenets of ethical rationality), but, by implication, unjustifiably, if not aggressively, towards citizens. 

There is a lesson in this as far as the ineluctable need for action is concerned when rational argument with would-be oppressors gets one nowhere. This is especially the case when it becomes obvious that these oppressors are not remotely interested in a reasonable exchange of ideas, but summarily resort to the current unreasonable incarnation of technical rationality, namely AI-controlled mass surveillance, with the purpose of subjugating entire populations. 

Such action might take the form of refusing ‘vaccinations’ and rejecting CBDCs, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that one will have to combine critical thinking with action in the face of merciless strategies of subjugation on the part of the unscrupulous globalists.

The Everything Bubble and Global Bankruptcy

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

The resulting erosion of collateral will collapse the global credit bubble, a repricing/reset that will bankrupt the global economy and financial system.

Scrape away the complexity and every economic crisis and crash boils down to the precarious asymmetry between collateral and the debt secured by that collateral collapsing. It’s really that simple.

In eras of easy credit, both creditworthy and marginal borrowers are suddenly able to borrow more. This flood of new cash seeking a return fuels red-hot demand for conventional assets considered “safe investments” (real estate, blue-chip stocks and bonds), demand which given the limited supply of “safe” assets, pushes valuations of these assets to the moon.

In the euphoric atmosphere generated by easy credit and a soaring asset valuations, some of the easy credit sloshes into marginal investments (farmland that is only briefly productive if it rains enough, for example), high-risk speculative ventures based on sizzle rather than actual steak and outright frauds passed off as legitimate “sure-fire opportunities.”

The price people are willing to pay for all these assets soars as the demand created by easy credit increases. And why does credit continue increasing? The assets rising in value create more collateral which then supports more credit.

This self-reinforcing feedback appears highly virtuous in the expansion phase: the grazing land bought to put under the plow just doubled in value, so the owners can borrow more and use the cash to expand their purchase of more grazing land. The same mechanism is at work in every asset: homes, commercial real estate, stocks and bonds: the more the asset gains in value, the more collateral becomes available to support more credit.

Since there’s plenty of collateral to back up the new loans, both borrowers and lenders see the profitable expansion of credit as “safe.”

This safety is illusory, as it’s resting on an unstable pile of sand: bubble valuations driven by easy credit. We all know that price is set by what somebody will pay for the asset. What attracts less attention is price is also set by how much somebody can borrow to buy the asset.

Once the borrower has maxed out their ability to borrow (their income and assets-owned cannot support more debt) or credit conditions tighten, then those who might have paid even higher prices for assets had they been able to borrow more money can no longer borrow enough to bid the asset higher.

Since price is set on the margin (i.e. by the last sales), the normal churn of selling is enough to push valuations down. At first the euphoria is undented by the decline, but as credit tightens (interest rates rise and lending standards tighten, cutting off marginal buyers and ventures) then buyers become scarce and skittish sellers proliferate.

Questions about fundamental valuations arise, and sky-high valuations are found wanting as tightening credit reduces sales, revenues and profits. Once the “endless growth” story weakens, the claims that bubble prices are “fair value” evaporate.

As defaults rise, lenders are forced to tighten credit further. The first tumbling rocks are ignored but eventually the defaults trigger a landslide, and the credit-inflated bubble in asset valuations collapses.

As valuations plummet, so too does the collateral backing all the new debt. Debt that appeared “safe” is soon exposed as a potential push into insolvency. When the bungalow doubled in value from $500,000 to $1 million, the trajectory of valuation gains looked predictably rosy: every decade housing prices went up 30% or more. So originating a mortgage for $800,000 on a house that looked to be worth $1.3 million in a few years looked rock-solid safe.

But the $1 million was a bubble based solely on easy, abundant, low-cost credit. When credit tightens, the home is slowly but surely repriced at its pre-bubble valuation ($500,000) or perhaps much lower, if that value was merely an artifact of a previous unpopped bubble.

Now the collateral is $300,000 less than the mortgage. The owner who made a down payment of $200,000 will be wiped out by a forced sale at $500,000, and the lender (or owner of the mortgage) will take a $300,000 loss.

Given the banking system is set up to absorb only modest, incremental losses, losses of this magnitude render the lender insolvent. The lender’s capital base is drained to zero by the losses and then pushed into negative net-worth by continued losses.

The collateral collapses when bubbles pop, but the debt loaned against the now-phantom collateral remains.

This is the story of the Great Depression, a story that’s unloved because it calls into question the current series of credit-inflated bubbles and resulting financial crises. So the story is reworked into something more palatable such as “the Federal Reserve made a policy error.”

This encourages the fantasy that if central banks choose the right policies, credit bubbles and valuations detached from reality can both keep expanding forever. The reality is credit bubbles always pop, as the expansion of borrowing eventually exceeds the income and collateral of marginal borrowers, and this tsunami of cash eventually pours into marginal high-risk speculative vebtures that go bust.

There is no way to thread the needle so credit-asset bubbles never pop. Yet here we are, watching the global Everything Bubble finally start collapsing, guaranteeing the collapse of collateral and all the debt issued on that collateral, and the rabble is arguing about what policy tweaks are needed to reinflate the bubble and save the global economy from bankruptcy.

Sorry, but global bankruptcy is already baked in. Too much debt has been piled on phantom-collateral and income streams derived from bubble assets rising (for example, capital gains, development taxes, etc.). The asymmetry is now so extreme that even a modest decline in asset valuations/collateral due to a garden-variety business-cycle recession of tightening financial conditions will trigger the collapse of The Everything Bubble and the mountain of global debt resting on the wind-blown sands of phantom collateral.

There are persuasive reasons to suspect global debt far exceeds the official level around $300 trillion, most saliently, the largely opaque shadow banking system. When assets roughly double in a few years, bubble symmetry suggests that valuations will decline back to the starting point of the bubble in roughly the same time span.

The resulting erosion of collateral will collapse the global credit bubble, a repricing/reset that will bankrupt the global economy and financial system.

The Plight of a Woman Who Questioned Vaccine Safety in Malaysia

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By Simay B

Source: TrialSite News

Since 2021, a legal tussle has persisted between a single mother, Liyana Razali, and the Malaysian government. This is due to her statements concerning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for 12-17 year-olds. The government outlawed Razali’s statement for fear that the public would develop negative perceptions of the vaccine, which could jeopardize the vaccination program. She was allegedly subjected to police harassment, media defamation, and a 30-day detention at Ulu Kinta Mental Hospital. TrialSite is following the controversial issue of vaccinating children against COVID-19, as well as the medical community’s perspective on this topic.

Razali made her speech on September 28, 2021, in front of the Ministry of Higher Education. She said, “Here I would like, on behalf of today’s parents who are present at the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia … to express our solidarity with parents.” She went on to name three families whose children were experiencing side effects following COVID-19 vaccinations, or had passed away shortly after receiving the vaccines. She also referred to three other children who had died after being vaccinated: two students at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Tasik Damai in Ipoh, and one teenager in Lahad Datu, Sabah.

As well as expressing solidarity, she called on listeners to report side effects through the proper channels. “Report it to the authorities,” she said. “Do not just post them on social media. Come forward, and send your information, and we will try to fight for your rights.”

Police Intervention and Possible Misinterpretation of Razali’s Speech in Mainstream Media

Five days later (October 3), Razali was called to the police station for questioning. They asked her, without having official paperwork, to appear at a magistrates court. When she was asked to appear at Ipoh Magistrates Court on November 30, 2021, they cancelled the court appointment.

Meanwhile, the news of the police looking for Razali was published in mainstream media, including her photograph and home address. The reports stated that she had made “false COVID vaccine claims,” and that her allegations that students had died after receiving the vaccine were untrue.

The police returned on May 20, 2022, with an arrest warrant from Putrajaya Magistrates Court. They took Razali to court, where she refused to enter a plea for lack of a verified criminal complaint against her. The deputy public prosecutor (DPP) proposed a 30-day observation in Ulu Kinta Mental Hospital, to which the magistrate agreed.

Lawyers’ attempts to get Razali out were rejected. The DPP took a long time in building a case against her, and the trial began on November 22, 2022.

Exception in Penal Code 505

Razali has been charged under Penal code 505 (b), which states, “Whoever makes, publishes, or circulates any statement, rumor, or report with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public, or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offense against the State or against the public tranquility.” This implies that the government is claiming that her words were intended to cause public distress, which might incite the public to rally against the state.

Razali’s lawyers petitioned the DPP to apply the exception to penal code 505 (b), which reads, “It does not amount to an offense within the meaning of this section, when the person making, publishing, or circulating any such statement, rumor, or report has reasonable grounds for believing that such statement, rumor, or report is true and makes, publishes or circulates it without any such intent as aforesaid.”

Based on this exception, if Razali had reasonable grounds to believe her statement was true at the time she said it, her actions were not against the law. Her representation was rejected without reason, and the case was motioned to continue.

The Appearance of Seven Witnesses in Razali’s Case

After Razali’s speech, over a period of almost one year, the DPP arranged for a range of people to testify against her. Seven of them have since appeared in court to testify and under cross-examination they have admitted that their previous statements had been influenced rather than being their own stand.

Two Ministry of Health (MOH) workers participating in the vaccine rollout claimed that they had been ordered to write their reports. Two MOH doctors and Ipoh school’s headmaster said that they had filed reports with the police out of fear of jeopardizing the vaccination program. Fathers of the two deceased Ipoh children had been summoned and instructed to testify that their children had died before vaccination.

The witnesses helped to shed some light on Razali’s case and how the public had perceived her speech, and the failure to stand their ground for fear of the government.

Doctors’ Testimonies

The doctors who have so far testified have claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine’s side effects were not severe and included allergies, Bell’s palsy, and myocarditis.

At least one witness for the government, a medical doctor, also said that when seeking consent from parents or guardians, there was no need to spend time on obtaining fully informed consent because it was all too complex for most people to understand, so there was no point wasting time like this. These witnesses also stated, however, that once consent had been given, patients must be responsible for any negative effects.

Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, or death.

Several studies have further demonstrated the effectiveness of these vaccines. One such study is a Hong Kong population-based observational study conducted in 2022. Results from this study revealed that two doses of the CoronaVac or BNT162b2 vaccines offered protection against severe illness or death within 28 days of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.

Another study previously reported by TrialSite on COVID-19 vaccines for teens 12-17 years old has been carried out and continues in various regions globally. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines are indicated by the vaccine companies to be safe and effective at preventing severe infections for this age bracket.

Furthermore, in 2021, the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) resolved that the benefits of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines far outweighed their risks.

The Risk of COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects

There is data from around the world showing safety warning signals following the COVID-19 vaccine (including severe disability and death). However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are only a few cases of very rare adverse severe events, namely myocarditis and pericarditis, that have been reported so far. These conditions were mainly observed in younger men aged 16-24 years and occurred after the second dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Generally, the conditions appeared within a few days after vaccination. The WHO indicates that these injuries were mild and responsive to conservative treatment.

The Malaysian Ministry of Health (KKM) informed the media in January 2023 that over 94% of reported vaccine reactions to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty had been mild, but that “a small number” amounting to 1,162 serious cases of effects such as anaphylaxis, acute facial paralysis, myocarditis, and intravenous thrombosis had been recorded. This followed more than one year of claims by KKM that there had been no serious post-vaccine injuries reported in Malaysia.

These figures are similar to those reported by the CDC for teen vaccine reactions, which found 91.6% of cases were nonserious, and only 8.4% were severe. Common side effects after vaccination include headaches, muscle or joint soreness, fever, nausea, and vomiting. The injected area may redden, swell, itch, or have some pain. Most people recover quickly from the side effects, including the rare myocarditis and pericarditis cases reported after vaccination, which are claimed to be not as severe as those caused by COVID-19 infection.

These claims have been contested by world-leading cardiologists, such as Dr. Peter McCullough in the U.S. and Dr. Aseem Malhotra from the UK, who cite research showing that identified myocarditis and pericarditis from the vaccines is more severe than COVID-19-induced cardiac effects. The CDC continues to investigate the long-term effects of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination.

In addition, results from randomized control trial data from Pfizer, released under a court order in the U.S., demonstrated that over 1228 deaths occurred after the administration of the Pfizer vaccine. Additionally, 42,086 individuals reported 158,893 adverse events within a 3-month period.

A study done in Thailand in mid-2022 showed that 3.5% of boys showed evidence of pericarditis or myocarditis after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Research from other countries, such as that done on 12th-grade South Korean students, has shown a low rate of serious adverse events and no vaccine-related deaths. Other studies that targeted Israeli adolescents 16-19 years old put the risk of myocarditis at 1.34 per 100,000 within twenty days after the first dose and 15.07 per 100,000 after the second dose. In the U.S., the rates were 12 cases per million people (12-39 years) who received the second dose of the mRNA vaccine.

However, in March 2023, the Israeli Ministry of Health covertly released a new study showing large numbers of deaths within 60 days of receiving an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

In December 2021, health officials in Vietnam had to suspend the use of the Pfizer vaccine after the hospitalization of over 120 children following a group vaccination at school. Additionally, three children died from an overreaction to the vaccine in Bac Giang, a province near Hanoi, and Binh Phuoc, a province in the south.

The Case Continues

Despite the Malaysian Ministry of Health’s firm stance that the COVID-19 vaccines are perfectly safe, Razali is not the only person flagging potential adverse reactions. In the same week that Razali delivered her speech, a vaccination program in Malaysia’s Kajang prison resulted in 18 serious adverse events and two deaths in under 2,500 people. The prison director’s letter to the regulatory department and health office went viral after being leaked.

The health minister claimed that there were no deaths in Malaysia linked to the COVID-19 vaccine while confirming that 535 deaths reported as adverse events “were not directly linked to the vaccines” according to postmortem results. However, an autopsy of 40 people who died within two weeks of vaccination conducted at the University of Heidelberg in Germany showed that specific techniques and stains are required to detect the effect of the vaccine at a cellular level on postmortem. The head of the autopsy project, Peter Schirmacher, concluded that between 30 to 40% of the deaths his team examined had resulted from the vaccination, and might have been missed by regular postmortem protocols.

As with anyone accused of breaking the law, Razali deserves a fair hearing before a court of law to establish whether or not her public statements were in any way a violation of Penal code paragraph 505 (b), especially given the exception that is an integral part of that clause.

As research on COVID-19 vaccine administration to teens between 12-17 years continues, organizations urge parents or guardians to report serious cases for further assessment.

The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up

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U.S. intelligence was too quick to leak information about the German investigation to The New York Times. It raises the distinct impression that the real culprit is nervous about the investigative work of Seymour Hersh. 

President Joe Biden meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Oval Office, March 3, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

By Scott Ritter

Source: Consortium News

Back in 2000, the television series “Andromeda”  premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, “Andromeda,” frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history.

The series ran five years.

Fast forward to the present.

History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly confessed his intent to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream pipeline system which delivered Russian natural gas to Europe through four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, consisting of two pipelines each).

Since then, the Biden White House was compelled to deny the president’s stated intent after an explosive report by Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailed damning information which, if true (and there is no reason to suspect it’s not) casts the responsibility for a series of underwater explosions that took place on Sept. 26, 2022, on Biden himself.

Hersh’s report was ignored by the mainstream media in the United States, with neither The New York Times, for whom Seymour Hersh wrote on national security issues for many years, nor The Washington Post even hinting that the greatest living investigative journalist had broken a blockbuster story.

Enter the “Andromeda” — not the spaceship of the eponymous television series, but rather a Bavaria C50 15-meter (49-foot) yacht based out of the German Baltic port city of Rostock. On March 7 — nearly a month after Hersh self-published his article on Substack — a team of German reporters from the ARD capital studio, Kontraste, Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Die Zeit collaboratively reported that they had uncovered the existence of “the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation.”

The boat was “a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians.” According to the story, “the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people.”

The name of the yacht was “The Andromeda.”

According to the German reporting, the team — five men, consisting of a ship captain, two primary divers, two supporting divers and a female doctor — used the Andromeda to transport the team, along with the explosives used to destroy the pipelines, to the scene of the crime. The boat was returned to Rostock in “an uncleaned condition,” allowing German law enforcement officials, who carried out a search of the vessel between Jan. 8-11, to detect “traces of explosives” on a table in the ship’s cabin.

The same day the German reporting on the new Nord Stream attack narrative broke, The New York Times ran a front-page story entitled “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, US Officials Say.”

[Related: As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story]

For the first time, The New York Times referred to Hersh’s reporting, writing, “Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden,” before closing with “U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.”

As if echoing the Biden White House denials, The New York Times led off with this:

“New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe” (emphasis added.)

The New York Times, it seems, was more than happy about proceeding with its own anonymous intelligence sources, while dismissing Hersh’s.

The problem with both the German reporting and that of The New York Times (whose source was clearly referring to the same data reported by the German reporters) is that the Andromeda narrative doesn’t hold water.

Take, for instance, the Tom Clancy-like tale of derring-do that has four allegedly Ukraine-affiliated divers defy physiology by conducting dives that would require the use of a decompression chamber for them to survive an ascent of 240 feet (the depth of the Nord Stream pipelines that were destroyed). A rule of thumb is that decompression takes approximately one day per 100 feet of seawater plus a day.

This means that the team of divers would have required three days of decompression per dive. But to decompress, one needs a decompression chamber. For a dive involving two divers, the Andromeda would have to have been outfitted with either a two-person Class A decompression chamber, or two single-person Class B chambers, as well as the number of large oxygen bottles needed to operate these chambers over time. \

A simple examination of the interior cabin space of the Bavarian C50 yacht would quickly dispossess one of any notion that either option was viable.

Simply put — no decompression chamber, no dive, no story.

‘Traces’ of High Explosives 

There is another aspect of the story to probe. According to the German reporting, law enforcement officials detected “traces” of high explosives on the tables in the cabin of the Andromeda.

According to the Swedish Prosecution Authority, in a statement released on Nov. 19, 2022, Swedish investigators discovered “traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found” at the site of the explosions.

These explosives, according to a Nov. 22, 2022, report issued by Nord Stream AG, the Swiss-based parent company that owned the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, produced “technogenic [i.e., “of or pertaining to a process or substance created by human technology”] craters with a depth of 3 to 5 meters” separated “by a distance of about 248 meters.”

“The section of the pipe between the craters is destroyed, the radius of pipe fragments dispersion is at least 250 meters,” the report noted.

In a report to the United Nations, both Denmark and Sweden said that the damage done to the Nord Stream pipelines was caused by blasts equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive.”

It should be noted that underwater pipelines like those used in Nord Stream are designed to withstand proximal explosions from devices up to several hundred kilograms in size. Indeed, in locations such as the Baltic Sea, where unexploded military ordnance from multiple world wars abounds, the threat of a drifting device striking a pipeline and detonating is quite real.

Computer modeling shows that a 600-kilogram high explosive charge detonated approximately 5 meters from a 34mm-thick steel pipeline filled with gas would not compromise the structural integrity of the pipeline.

At the location of the explosions, the Nord Stream pipelines consisted of 26.8 mm steel pipes with an addition 33.2 mm of concrete coating, for a total thickness of 60 mm. The weight of a single pipe section was over 11 tons.

In short, a standard high-explosive charge of several hundred kilograms would not be sufficient to cause the destruction that occurred on the Nord Stream pipeline.

Enter Hersh, who reported that the explosives used were “shaped charges.”

With a shaped charge, the energy of the explosion is focused in one direction, usually by creating a concave shape in the explosive that is them lined with a metal sheet, so that it usually achieves an armor- and/or concrete-penetrating effect.

Without getting too technical, the design of an underwater shaped charge that would be sufficient to penetrate concrete-lined steel pipe at a depth of 240 feet is not common knowledge. The charge would have to be prepared by qualified explosives experts and ideally tested prior to being employed operationally to validate the design and functionality of the device.

These are not tasks undertaken by a small ad hoc team of Ukrainian underwater saboteurs, but rather state-sponsored actors with access to military grade explosives and testing facilities.

Strike two for the German reporting.

But the most glaring deficiency in the German reporting deals with the detection of “trace explosive” onboard the Andromeda. This information would identify the precise explosive used. Moreover, when compared and contrasted with the “trace explosive” found by the Swedes at the location of the Nord Stream attacks, it could provide a clear linkage between the Andromeda and the attacks.

But Sweden has sealed the files of its investigation into the Nord Stream attack on national security grounds, meaning that it will not cooperate with Germany to see if the explosive traces found at the scene of the Nord Stream crime match those onboard the Andromeda.

The obvious reason behind this decision: because the two traces won’t match. One — the Swedish sample — points to the culprit. The other — the Andromeda sample — is evidence of a cover up.

Strike three, and you’re out.

The German government’s crude effort to manufacture an alternative narrative regarding who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline fails the smell test — in short, it stinks. The holes in this story are such that even the most gifted screenwriters could not turn this Andromeda tale of changing history into something remotely believable. In short, Gene Roddenberry would not be impressed.

Moreover, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community was quick to leak information about the German investigation to The New York Times appears to be de facto evidence of U.S. complicity in this cover up.

And the reason for this cover up is quite clear: the Germans and Americans both fear the reporting being done by Hersh.

Bull or Bear? The Ultimate Source of Market Instability

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Market commentators tend to focus on Bulls and Bears and Federal Reserve policies as drivers of stock market gyrations, but there’s a far more profound dynamic working beneath these veneers: the forces of adaptation and evolution transforming the economy and society as conditions change.

While the general expectation is that the post-Covid economy “should” revert to the stability of 2019, this ignores what was already unraveling in 2019. The global economy experienced fundamental shifts in technology, production, energy, capital flows, labor, currencies and geopolitics in the past 25 years, and all these forces are not just in motion but accelerating in ways that are destabilizing the status quo.

The necessity of adaptation and evolution can be summed up very simply: adapt or die. This is the natural state not just of Nature and species but of systems such as societies and economies. Those which cling on to failing models stagnate and decay, while those which embrace dissent, transparency and a constant churn of experimentation and trial-and-error will adapt and evolve and emerge stronger and more adaptable.

The US economy went through a comparable period of instability and forced adaptation in the 1970s, a dynamic I explored in The Forgotten History of the 1970s (January 13, 2023). Everyone benefiting from the status quo arrangements fought the much-needed changes tooth and nail, and so progress was uneven. Transitioning to a more efficient and responsive industrial base required tremendous capital investments and scaling up new technologies.

The transition is more costly and takes more time than we would like; the 1970s transition took about a decade. We can anticipate a similar scale of capital investment and time will be needed for this structural adaptation.

As the chart below illustrates, the 1970s was characterized by high inflation and big swings up and down in the stock market. Successful adaptations generated hope for quick recovery, while lagging adaptations tempered the hope with painful realities.

Again, it is likely that the decade ahead will track this same general dynamic of big swings generated by hope that the worst is over and the realities that progress is only partial and instability still reigns.

Everyone wants a trend they can trade for effortless gains. That may no longer be realistic.

The GATHERING Storm in Ukraine Spells Doom for the West

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Photo by by Adam Brummett

By Col. Douglas MacGregor

Source: Information Clearing House

The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.

American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.

Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.

Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.

Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.

In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.

Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.

In sum, Washington’s military strategy to weaken, isolate, or even destroy Russia is a colossal failure and the failure puts Washington’s proxy war with Russia on a truly dangerous path. To press on, undeterred in the face of Ukraine’s descent into oblivion, ignores three metastasizing threats: 1. Persistently high inflation and rising interest rates that signal economic weakness. (The first American bank failure since 2020 is a reminder of U.S. financial fragility.) 2. The threat to stability and prosperity inside European societies already reeling from several waves of unwanted refugees/migrants. 3. The threat of a wider European war.

Inside presidential administrations, there are always competing factions urging the president to adopt a particular course of action. Observers on the outside seldom know with certainty which faction exerts the most influence, but there are figures in the Biden administration seeking an off-ramp from involvement in Ukraine. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a rabid supporter of the proxy war with Moscow, recognizes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demand that the West help him recapture Crimea is a red line for Putin that might lead to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.

Backing down from the Biden administration’s malignant and asinine demands for a humiliating Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine before peace talks can convene is a step Washington refuses to take. Yet it must be taken. The higher interest rates rise, and the more Washington spends at home and abroad to prosecute the war in Ukraine, the closer American society moves toward internal political and social turmoil. These are dangerous conditions for any republic.

From all the wreckage and confusion of the last two years, there emerges one undeniable truth. Most Americans are right to be distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. President Biden comes across as a cardboard cut-out, a stand-in for ideological fanatics in his administration, people that see executive power as the means to silence political opposition and retain permanent control of the federal government.

Americans are not fools. They know that members of Congress flagrantly trade stocks based on inside information, creating conflicts of interest that would land most citizens in jail. They also know that since 1965 Washington led them into a series of failed military interventions that severely weakened American political, economic, and military power.

Far too many Americans believe they have had no real national leadership since January 21, 2021. It is high time the Biden administration found an off-ramp designed to extricate Washington, D.C., from its proxy Ukrainian war against Russia. It will not be easy. Liberal internationalism or, in its modern guise, “moralizing globalism,” makes prudent diplomacy arduous, but now is the time. In Eastern Europe, the spring rains present both Russian and Ukrainian ground forces with a sea of mud that severely impedes movement. But the Russian High Command is preparing to ensure that when the ground dries and Russian ground forces attack, the operations will achieve an unambiguous decision, making it clear that Washington and its supporters have no chance to rescue the dying regime in Kiev. From then on, negotiations will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Related Video:

Don’t Believe Anything – But Recognize the Verge of a New Dark Age

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By Phil Butler

Source: New Eastern Outlook

A decade ago, discovering every significant media outlet in the western world as tabloid news would have been inconceivable. Well, the unbelievable is all around us pounding pure lies into our brains on behalf of people eviler than Emperor Caligula. Just Google Putin, Russia, or even China, and with some effort, you’ll see what I mean.

In the mainstream, your average American gets, President Joe Biden is some kind of Dwight Eisenhower or Harry Truman figure. A man who cannot find his way off a stage or navigate the White House lawn is somehow a fit chess competitor for Vladimir Putin. The latest snafu is about his visit with Ukraine’s Zelensky a day before Putin spoke about a new phase of Russian policy. The CNN headline read “Biden’s Ukraine visit upstages Putin and leaves Moscow’s military pundits raging.” As an American who served his country in the military and other capacities, it’s sickening. Get this.

These media outlets and the Neocons have Americans believing a Chinese weather balloon that blew off course was gathering vital US nuclear missile silo intel. And Joe Biden waited until it flew all the way across the country before launching a multi-million-dollar F-22 strike to kill the spy machine. Days later, US fighter pilots shot down UFOs over Alaska. The only positive note after that was the Internet memes poking fun at the senile President and our goofball policies. Oh, but there’s more, oh so much more.

The New York Times and the rest are providing pushback on the Biden-authorized Nord Stream sabotage reported by one of the world’s most respected investigative journalists, Seymour Hersh. The guy who uncovered the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, key facts on Watergate, CIA domestic spy, and a lot more busted the Biden administration for using Navy Seals to detonate undersea charges dooming a Russia to Germany gas pipeline. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s revelations should have caused a media frenzy, a UN summit, and a NATO emergency meeting. But the people in charge can’t have that. The story of the decade so far is being slid under the rug. The reason why is explained in something Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said recently:

“In many cases, ruling elites in unfriendly countries do not act of their free will, but only because they must show solidarity within their block. NATO and the EU enforce heavy-handed discipline on their members at the initiative of an aggressive minority.”

“How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” should be a reason for Biden’s impeachment hearings to be planned. The Germans should be banning US military personnel from their borders. And the Russians should probably go ahead and declare war when it all pans out true. We have this from Hersh’s sources and research:

“Last June, the Navy divers, operating under cover of the highly publicized NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with knowledge of the operational planning.”

The pipelines, which supplied Germany and much of Europe with cheap gas to run industry and fueled the lives of millions, were sabotaged without so much as a mention of the plan to America’s lawmakers. Hersh went on to describe how Biden, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, and Anthony Blinken were key conspirators in the illegal plan to undermine a NATO ally just to get to Putin and Russia. Biden had announced months before, after a meeting with Germany’s Scholz, that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there would be no pipeline.”

Of course, Biden and his scandalous minions knew Russia had to act to prevent further NATO shenanigans in Ukraine, as we learned from the revelations of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the Minsk accords being a ruse. Talk about world-class liars and thugs. America’s leadership makes the worst Israeli mafioso seem harmless as Mickey Mouse. These people will get our world blown up.

Now Biden, Zelensky, all the EU criminals, and even exiled Putin enemy and Russian mafioso Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky have been seen at the Munich Security Council predicting Putin’s demise—some more. Once we’d have thought US presidents, New York Times publishers, and killer thugs kicked from Russia like bullying kids from the schoolyard would be strange bedfellows. But this Biden administration has to be the most corrupt bunch since the days of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.

Get this, one of the men involved in the Hunter Biden laptop affair, Prof. Gal Luft, is now in leg irons in a Cyprus jail awaiting extradition to the US for, you won’t believe it, being an arms dealer. Luft had helped the FBI and other agencies with highly incriminating facts about Hunter Biden, and now he’s on a path like Jeffrey Epstein or Julian Assange. Hanged by the neck, or something like that. Oh, and congressional investigators are asking who paid millions of dollars for Hunter Biden’s art? The lunacy goes on, and on, and on.

I’ll leave off with the European Parliament bosses blocking public scrutiny of Ursula von der Leyen over a Pfizer contract she clearly benefitted from. And Pfizer gate is not the EU President’s only worry. She’s now pledged another €1 billion for Ukraine’s fast recovery. That is, if there is a Ukraine to rebuild once western weapons and mercenaries force the Russians to obliterate the country just to keep NATO and bio-weapons labs out. For me, it now seems obvious why the liberal world order has gone all in with this proxy war against Russia. If the citizens of our countries ever find out what their leaders have really done, there will be public hangings Mussolini style across the NATO cabal.

So, forget the tabloids except to use reverse psychology for understanding the news. If the White House says we did not blow up Nord Stream, you can bet your last dollar we did. Think about our track record, America’s I mean. Our leaders operate like very drunken Roman senators, and our military operates as if Hannibal were commanding the armed forces of every third-world country. We even have officials swearing that Putin does not have any nuclear weapons. No really. This is where we are with detente in the 21st century, on the verge of a new Dark Ages.