The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. - Maximilien Robespierre.

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Should Auld Aquaintance Be Remembered? For The Sake Of The Future It Should

 by Jimmy McJimmy
27 March 2022

Every day for the past month we have been fed a stream of propaganda narratives about Vlad (Dr. Evil) Putin and the brutal Russians bullying brave little Ukraine and unfortunately a significant proporation of citizens (maybe a majority,) of citizens in the western nations have fallen for it and are quite willing to believe that Russia is the perpetual bad guy, the existential threat to European civilisation.

People have such short memories.

In 2011 NATO, or to be exact The USA, UK and France bombed a path to Tripoli to help its proxy forces of tribalistic ragheads on the ground oust Colonel Gaddafi. Tens of thousands lost their lives and much of Libya’s social fabric and infrastructure lay in ruins. In the space of a few weeks Libya was transformed from Africa's most prosperous and socially advanced nation to a failed state with three separate groups claiming to the legiimate government and waging a tripartate civil war. That situation persists today. 

The 2016 article appearing in Foreign Policy Journal ‘Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libyan Intervention’ exposed why Libya was targeted.

Gaddafi was murdered and his plans to assert African independence and undermine Western hegemony on that continent were rendered obsolete. The NATO action was justified by claims that Gaddafi was a brutal tyrant whose oppressive regime routinely brutalised the Libyan people. In fact Gaddafi was hugely popular among his people, it was the ruling elites of the west that did not like him because he was an obstacle to their plans for the economic colonisation of Africa.

In 2013 a Daily Telegraph article “US and Europe in major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb” reported that 3,000 tons of weapons had been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport in Croatia to rebels. In the same year Croatia was admitted to the European Union.

Also that year The New York Times ran the article “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands with CIA Aid”, stating that Arab governments and Turkey had sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters. This aid included more than 160 military cargo flights.

In his book The Dirty War on Syria, Tim Anderson describes how the West and its allies were instrumental in organising and then fuelling that conflict. Western politicians, led by US President Barack Obama made speeches and wrote editorials proclaiming that Syria's brutal dictator Bashar Al Assad must be ousted so that 'democracy and western values' could be spread to Syria.

Once again NATO and EU politicians took up the cry that Assad was a bully and a brute whose regime kept Syrians in a state of terror. Barack Obama (mouth almighty,) said that ousting Assad was his number one priority and spoke of direct military intervention by NATO to oust the Assad regime. Then Vladimir Putin told Obama and NATO that Russia would respond to help their ally. And that mad the western alliance reert to a policy of funding and arming batallions of undisciplines raghead terrorists who did unspeakable thing to Syrians in the areas they controlled. Christian and Jewish Syrians and the Yazidi and Druze minorities (whose offence was not being non - Muslims but simply being the wrong kind of Muslims,) and particularly the women of those minorities.

Over the last two decades, politicians and the media have been manipulating popular sentiment to get an increasingly war-fatigued Western public to support ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, under the notion of ‘protecting civilians’ or a ‘war on terror’.

The technique is always the same, a narrative is built around a claimed need to protect minorities, defend human rights of gays, transexuals and (but not so much these days,) biological women, removing tyrants from power, speading 'western values or protecting human life, in order to justify military attacks, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and the displacement of many more.

A memo from the US Secretary of Defense to NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark leaked by Clark after his retirement revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years,” starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”. Clark argued this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

Part of the battle for the public’s hearts and minds is the task of convincing people to regard these wars and conflicts as a disconnected array of events, not the planned machinations of the shadowy cabal of business leaders, politicians, academics and financiers who openly admit their aim is to replace national democracies with a totalitarian global government. For the last decade, the ongoing narrative about Russian aggression has been part of the strategy although commentators who do not subscribe to the global governance project recognise China as the biggest threat to the established world order.

But let's stop pretending the western governments are innoocents. Just what do we imagine MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6) part of SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) do? Develop novel knitting patterns? Similarly, is Porton Down the centre for macramé excellence?

No, MI6 is devoted to covert operations against foreign nations. Porton Down to a variety of things including chemical and biological warfare.

In 2018 an attack carried out with a nerve agent in the quiet English town of Salisbury, allegedly by Russian agents rendered former Russian secret agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter critically ill.  The alleged Kremlin sanctioned murder of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who while spying for his homeland on Britain was also passing Russian secrets to MI5, the governments “It’s the Russians” narrative has started to look more motheaten than a one armed piano player's dinner jacket.

Not only was Skripal a double agent, since being released from prison in 2010 as part of a spy swap with the USA, the former spy has been involved in commercial espionage and was named as a person of interests in the Democrats Dodgy Dossier compiled in an effort to smear Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. People like him tend to have a lot of enemies (including, possibly, President Trump – how bizarre the loony left have not yet tried to implicate him in the attack.)

There is something rather strange about the desperate bid to blame Russia, (apart from the fact that the media kerfuffle has kept two major stories off the front pages throughout this month;), it ignores a historic event that took place last November, also largely ignored at the time by most of the world’s media. Had the Salisbury attack not brought chemical weapons to the top of the news it might have remained ignored. In a ceremony at the headquarters of the world body responsible for the elimination of chemical weapons in The Hague, a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the destruction of the last of Russia’s stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Does anyone else find it strange that a very obvious, but convoluted chemical attack was conducted on an ‘individual of concern’ in Salisbury, the British home of chemical warfare, when an old fashioned IRA type car bomb, or an old fashioned Russian kidnapping and subsequent disappearance would have eliminated the target without all the media attention?

Similarly, former Russian spy Yuri Litvinenko was subject to a ‘sophisticated’ dose of nuclear poison, administered from a unique umbrella that was never found. Employing a drug reliant and desperate street thug with a knife would have been a far more effective and anonymous means of elimination.

Are we really expected to believe that MI6 (or whoever) is a well oiled, efficient espionage unit that never resorts to underhand tactics, whilst Russia is a bumbling bunch of fools who employ tactics straight from the school of James Bond fantasy?

Sorry, but I’m not that gullible. At deep state level The Russians are bastards. At deep state level so are we, and the Americans, French, Germans, Italians etc. etc. 


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News Roundup - 25 March 2022

 

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Ukraine (WW3 lite): The Nazis Have Stolen The Good Guys' White Hats

We Boggart Bloggers have said it many times in the past few weeks, and before that for several years. Many others in alt_media have said it too: The ultimate target of the US / NATO production titled The Superheroes Save Ukraine, currently playing to packed houses is about regime change in Russia, Ukraine is just a pawn in the game, an immature and unstable nation that just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time for the good of its citizens.

The New Nazis of Washington, Brussels, London, Paris and Geneva do not give up on their plans to destroy Russia and get their money grubbing hands on Russia's vast natural resources.

The centre of conflict is now around the city of Mariupol, currently surrounded by Russian troops and the political stronghold of Uraine's neo - Nazi Azov Brigade, a para - military political movement, .

All eyes are on Mariupol in eastern Ukraine. On Wednesday night, over 70% of residential areas were under control of Donetsk and Russian forces, while Russian Marines, Donetsk’s 107th batallion and Chechen Spetsnaz, led by the charismatic Adam Delimkhanov, had entered the Azov-Stal plant – the HQ of the neo-Nazi Azov batallion.

The Azov leaderrship in Maruipol was sent a last ultimatum: surrender earlier this week,which  implies a shift in Russian tactics in the Ukrainian conflict; Mariupol is about to be denazified and the Azov brigade which in leading the resistance has been using civilians as human shields were the Ukrainian militar's most hardened fighting force having been waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Russian speaking populations of breakaway regions Luhamsk and Donetsk since 2014.

 Elsewhere the Russian advane into Ukraine seems to have been paused. While most of mainstream media raves hysterically of brave little Ukraine inficting a humiliating defeat on the big bully Russia,  Bloomberg reported more realistacally on Friday that the Kremlin may be limiting its key military objectives to taking full control over the Donbas region. This despite multiple parts of the county, including outside the capital of Kiev, still witnessing intense fighting and shelling.

The hugely important Bloomberg article says that "After a month of fighting that has yielded limited territorial gains, the Russian military said it’s focusing efforts on taking full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region, potentially a sign it’s backing away from hopes of taking larger swathes of the country."

The Russian military's first deputy chief of the General Staff Sergei Rudskoi seemed to confirm this in the following  statement (as quoted in Interfax): "Our forces will focus on the main thing - the complete liberation of Donbas."

Bloomberg commented on the Russian commander's words, "Rudskoi claimed Russian troops have surrounded several major cities but deliberately didn’t seek to take them, instead aiming to pin Ukrainian troops down. His comments were the most detailed official accounting of Russian military performance since the Feb. 24 invasion."

But what of the other side, and I don't mean the clown Zelensk's antics, noises from Washington, London, Brussels and the military leaders of NATO about 'taking down Putin' but give the game away. There’s no intention among the main nations of the alliance, France, UK and US (the FUKUS axis,) to facilitate a peace plan in Ukraine – and that explains Comedian Zelensky’s non-stop stalling tactics. The supreme target is regime change in Russia, and for that Totalen Krieg against Russia and all things Russian is warranted. Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.

Turkey's President Erdogan said that Russia and Ukraine have reached "an understanding" on 4 out of 6 key contentious issues.  Both sides continue blaming the intransigence of the other for lack of significant breakthroughs, and so far only temporary humanitarian corridors have been briefly established in major zones of fighting.

The Kremlin's chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky was cited in Interfax as saying that "Russia sees no progress on key issues in talks with Ukraine." This even after Ukraine's Zelensky has in recent weeks appeared to back off public statements expressing desire for a "path" to NATO membership. He's recently said he's "cooled" on the issue and is ready to discuss neutrality.

What the sticking points in negotiations may be is not clear. A highly likely problem is that reparations to the Luhansk and Donetsk regional governments to compensate for the estimaed 14,000 deaths suffered by citizens of the rebel regions at the hands of Ukrainian government troops figures large in the discussions.

More likely however is the role of neo - Nazi groups in waging war on Luhansk and Donetsk. Since the 2014 comour revolution engineered by USA, NATO and the EU which put a coalition of far - right, Russophobic groups in power in Kiev,  Azov has reportedly assimilated almost all neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine and recruited foreign mercenaries from Western Europe, Scandinavia and even South America to fight in Donbas. The Azov battalion was incorporated as the Azov Regiment into the Ukrainian National Guard

These activities were forbidden by the Minsk Agreements guaranteed by France and Germany which guaranteed the security and autonomy withing Ukraine of the breakaway regions but were ignored from day one by the US / NATO backed government in Kiev

 So when we step back and see the full picture through a longer lens it is not as simple as mainstream media and the Davosocracy would have us believe and to present it as a straight fight, Ukraine and their NATO backers as the good guys, Russia, which is not by any means as isolated in the international community as the globalists' narrative would have us believe, the Big Bad Bear. In fact there are no good guys or bad guys on this, just politicians protecting their own rather than their nation's interests.

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EU Steps Back From Impractical Russia Oil Embargo

 

By John Kemp, Senior Market Analyst at Reuters

EU leaders have stepped back from imposing an immediate embargo on Russian crude and petroleum product imports as the impracticality of the policy has become clear.  Imposing an immediate embargo on Russia’s fossil fuels “from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told German lawmakers this week.

Russia’s exports of crude and petroleum products to Europe are the second largest bilateral flow of oil between any two trading partners in the world, behind the United States and Canada, according to data from BP. 

Russia supplied 29% of Europe’s crude imports and 51% of the continent's petroleum product imports in 2019, the last year before the pandemic (“Statistical review of world energy”, BP, 2020).

No other trading partner came close to Russia’s share, which would make it extremely hard to replace in the short term.

So even speculation about a possible ban drove oil prices sharply higher this week, as traders weighed the practical difficulties, before prices retreated as it became clear EU policymakers were backing away from the idea.

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Friday, March 25, 2022

Debunked: the great green renewables delusion

 

By Patrick Benham-Crosswell

ONE of the great lines of the proponents of renewable power is that the input energy (mostly wind and solar) is free, therefore producing renewable energy is less expensive that from fossil fuels. Even though wind isn’t always available and therefore needs some back-up power – usually gas fired – the more wind generation there is the less gas will be needed and therefore the cheaper energy will be.

There’s just one problem: that’s not what the evidence shows. The reality is that there is a close correlation between the amount of wind generation and the increasing price of electricity. More renewables makes electricity more expensive.

I’ll prove it. The graph below comes from government data (the BEIS DUKES data set and the Asset publishing service). 

The grey line is the gas price for a large user (in p/kWh). Over the 14 years of the chart it’s pretty much the same.

The green line is the proportion of electricity from renewables (excluding nuclear). The great rush for renewables has certainly delivered an impressive amount of capacity.

The purple line is the ratio of the non-domestic electricity price to the gas price. (I’ve used the non-domestic price to avoid price caps distorting the truth). This tells us that up to 2013 a kWh of electricity was about four times the cost of a kWh of gas.  That’s not surprising, it takes about 2.5 kWh of gas to make one kWh of electricity and of course there are the operating and capital costs of the power plant to consider, plus the transmission costs.

Yet since 2013 the proportion of renewable electricity has trebled, but electricity is now seven times as expensive as gas. Greta’s gang will scream ‘Correlation is not causation!’ Fair enough; what could have caused this, then?

It can’t be the gas price, because that was pretty much constant.

The gas power stations are still there, so they still have costs. But now they are used 30 per cent less. If they were running 8,000 hours a year in 2004 they’re running 5,600 hours a year now. While this reduces the amount of (then) cheap gas that they need, it doesn’t alter the fixed costs, which now have fewer hours to be recovered so the fixed cost per hour increases. Who pays? You do.

That’s not all. There are the subsidies hidden in the Climate Change Levy. The subsidy regime for electricity generation is almost impenetrably complex. (The theory behind them was to encourage investors to take the risks of new technologies by guaranteeing that they would make a profit. Wind and solar are hardly new any more – but that’s an argument for another day). Fortunately the subsidy regime has been unpicked by the Renewable Energy Foundation who have produced the chart below. The subsidy rate for electricity is increasing, even though the technology is mature. The risks have decreased but the rewards remain. Who pays? You do.

It gets worse. There is a dynamic market for electricity which ensures that when you flick a switch the power flows. This market is competitive, the electricity companies buy from the lowest priced supplier. If there is a shortfall, as there increasingly is if the wind doesn’t blow (or the sun doesn’t shine) as anticipated, the gas generators can charge huge amounts.  ... Continue reading >>> EXPLORE OUR PAGES:

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Niall Ferguson On Misunderstanding History: "Biden Is Making A Colossal Mistake"

 

Authored by Niall Ferguson, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

Biden is making a colossal mistake in thinking he can bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan...

“The language people speak in the corridors of power,” former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter once observed, “is not economics or politics. It is history.”

In a recent academic article, I showed how true this was after both the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 and the “9/15” bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Policy makers used all kinds of historical analogies as they reacted. “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today,” President George W. Bush noted in his diary, late on the night of the attacks, to give just one example, though many other parallels were drawn in the succeeding days, from the Civil War to the Cold War.

Seven years later, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Tim Geithner were the first members of the Federal Open Market Committee to appreciate that, without drastic measures, they risked re-running the Great Depression.

What kind of history is informing today’s decisions in Washington as the war in Ukraine nears the conclusion of its first month? A few clues have emerged.

“American officials are divided on how much the lessons from Cold War proxy wars, like the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, can be applied to the ongoing war in Ukraine,” David Sanger reported for the New York Times on Saturday.

According to Sanger, who cannot have written his piece without high-level sources, the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation … CIA officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units, according to American officials. But as of now, Mr. Biden and his staff do not see the utility of an expansive covert effort to use the spy agency to ferry in arms as the United States did in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the 1980s.”

Reading this carefully, I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going. The administration will continue to supply the Ukrainians with anti-aircraft Stingers, antitank Javelins and explosive Switchblade drones. It will keep trying to persuade other North Atlantic Treaty Organization governments to supply heavier defensive weaponry. (The latest U.S. proposal is for Turkey to provide Ukraine with the sophisticated S-400 anti-aircraft system, which Ankara purchased from Moscow just a few years ago. I expect it to go the way of the scuttled plan for Polish MiG fighters.) Washington will revert to the Afghanistan-after-1979 playbook of supplying an insurgency only if the Ukrainian government loses the conventional war.

I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire.  It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Now, I may be too pessimistic. I would very much like to share Francis Fukuyama’s optimism that “Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine.” Here is his bold prediction from March 10 (also here):

The collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition. The army in the field will reach a point where it can neither be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize. … Putin will not survive the defeat of his army … A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.

From his laptop to God’s ears.   ... Continue reading >>>

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

News Roundup - 24 March 2022


If Ukraine rejects a deal, there could be much worse to come

by  Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley in TCW Defending Freedom,

IN my last article in TCW I suggested that Russia was positioning itself for peace negotiations and set out, given what they now held, what the terms might be. Putin’s pitch to President Erdogan of Turkey came soon after and it was very much as I had set out. Today there are signals from the negotiations that a deal is ‘close’. To recap, this would hinge on Russia gaining the Donbas, perhaps after a referendum and no guesses as to how that would go; Crimea and its water supply; a corridor to the Crimea, either by annexation of territory on the coasts of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea or else as a concession like that to Kaliningrad on the Baltic; and Ukraine giving up all ideas of membership of Nato, and also possibly the EU if the EU could afford them. Putin appears not to want to occupy the rest of Ukraine – apart from anything else, he does not have half a million troops to garrison it, even if he could pay them after the effects of western sanctions have bled him.

What would Ukraine get in return for such huge concessions?  No further (substantial) damage to Kiev and no encroachment on the port of Odessa on the Black Sea for sure; guarantees of security for what they would be worth; and presumably the safety of President Zelensky and his family. This would leave Ukraine free, but without most of its industrial infrastructure and its resources of minerals and gas, dependent on agricultural exports and lower living standards for Ukrainians. There might have to be some sort of Marshall Aid plan for Ukraine, with Russia making a contribution, or else a deal like this is unlikely to bring an end to Western sanctions on Russia and so even as Putin declares victory at home, the squeeze on ordinary Russians will get ever worse.

 The region has a distinct identity and doesn’t fit neatly into either Russia or Ukraine

 
Historic roots of the Donbass problem explained

Current events have brought a renewed focus on the Donbass, a historical region on the border of Ukraine and Russia. By the standards of history, this area has emerged quite recently, and has always stood a little apart. It’s important to understand its evolution when viewing this crisis, which began in 2014. 

Today, Donbass is an industrial and mining region, but for a long time it was largely uninhabited. The steppe zone that ran along the southern borders of medieval ‘Rus’ (not yet divided into Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) was called the ‘Wild Fields.’ It was home to nomadic peoples and farmers only moved south with great difficulty. After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the Wild Fields  was a dangerous place to find yourself. 

Around four hundred years, a few peasants from Russia and Ukraine began to gradually settle in the future Donbass.

A great leap forward came in the 19th century when the coal deposits discovered there became necessary for industry. It was then that many of the cities without which it is impossible to imagine today’s Donbass were founded. In 1869, the British industrialist John Hughes built a factory around which the village of Yuzovka grew – it had a few more names, including Stalino,  before a local man renamed it Donetsk, in 1961
 

As Energy System Comes Apart, Germany Now Preparing Emergency Natural Gas Rationing Plans

from Watts Up With That, 24 March 2022

By P Gosselin on 22. March 2022 

Germany is saying “auf Wiedersehen” to plentiful and cheap energies and welcoming tight supplies and rationing. Unless they radically change course, German policymakers will soon be closing the remaining nuclear power plants by the end of the year and coal-fired power plants will be phased out over the coming 15 years.

 To make matters worse, European policymakers are moving to phase out fossil fuel powered cars and to replace them with e-vehicles, thus leading to skyrocketing electricity demand precisely when supply is being choked off. Experts warn of blackouts and hyperinflationary energy prices. Moreover, Europe is moving to profoundly restrict its supply of natural gas from Russia. 

All these measures taken together are certain to lead to unprecedented energy shortages over the coming years. Therefore, it’s little wonder the government is now scrambling to make plans to ration natural gas when the disastrous shortages arrive. “The government is having a contingency plan drawn up to determine which companies should first stop receiving gas when Russian natural gas fails to arrive,” reports Blackout News.de here. “A corresponding emergency plan is being prepared under the auspices of the Federal Network Agency.” Continue reading >>>

 
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‘A Loss of Humanity’: Dr. Scott Atlas Laments Societal Damage Caused by Psychotic COVID Authoritarians

from Big League Politcs 24 March 2022

On Wednesday night, Dr. Scott Atlas, former member of White House Coronavirus Task Force, appeared at Michigan State University where he addressed hundreds of students about the disastrous consequences of failed COVID-19 policy.

During the presentation, Dr. Atlas went through dozens of studies showing how COVID-19 lockdowns caused cascading problems that society may never recover from. These include excess deaths, severe mental health issues, economic damage to the poor and lower class, and a permanent divide among the brainwashed and those who have maintained the ability of independent, rational thought.


Before his presentation, Dr. Atlas met privately with patriotic leaders throughout the state – including journalists, gubernatorial candidates, state representatives, student activists, civil liberties attorneys, front-line doctors and others – where he talked candidly about the dire situation facing America.

Dr. Atlas addressed top activists in the state before speaking with students at Michigan State University.

Dr. Atlas, whose book A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America is now for sale, described how his naivety led him into the role of lead skeptic against megalomaniacal government scientists at war with free humanity.

“We are in a world where we can not trust people to be filters any more. We cannot trust people anymore because they have credentials,” Dr. Atlas explained.
Continue reading >>>

 

SYSTEM FAILURE: Commodities markets, banks, currencies and contracts begin breaking down… and the consequences will be catastrophic

by Mike Adams, News Target - 24 March 2022

When Nickel prices recently spiked at $100,000 / ton, the London Metal Exchange (LME) decided to halt all trading and reverse over 4,000 trades in order to protect the profits of a China-based mega-player who had been exposed to over $5 billion in margin calls. In effect, the LME declared that it will now pick winners and losers arbitrarily, the markets be damned.

In doing that, the LME committed credibility suicide. There is now no rational reason for any investor or trader to trust any transaction at the LME, not in copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel or other metals. Markets no longer work at the LME, and you are only allowed to “win” a trade if the LME gives you the nod. Wins can also be retroactively stolen from you by the exchange reversing trades. They will actually go back in time to screw you over for past winnings.

Just recently in Canada, the tyrannical Justin Castro Trudeau regime ordered banks to seize private account holdings of citizens who donated to the freedom trucker convoy. Overnight, the contract of banking was ripped to shreds. Banks can no longer be trusted to protect the assets you have deposited with them. Instead, they will steal your money any time the government orders them to do so, utterly without any due process or rule of law, even if you have broken no laws whatsoever.

On a larger scale, the central banks of the world just stole $300 billion in central bank “reserves” owned by Russia. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, western banks decided this gave them permission to steal $300 billion in Russian assets, thereby destroying the entire concept of “reserves” in one fell swoop. Now, no rational nation in the world will trust western central banks to hold their reserves in a safe manner. Central banks are now train robbers. They will loot whatever accounts are held by foreign nations they no longer like.

In courtrooms across America and western nations, facts, reason and law are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Prosecutorial decisions are now made entirely based on virtue signaling. If a Leftist murders a Trump supporter in broad daylight, the charges will be dropped against them — this is exactly what happened recently in Colorado. But if a conservative does nothing more than peacefully protest at the nation’s capitol building, they will be thrown into prison for years without trial, even if they violated no laws and did nothing wrong.
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China Quietly Buying Russian Oil As Kazakhstan Says CPC Terminal Halt To Last

from Zero Hedge, 24 March 2022

Days after we reported that India stubbornly refused to yield to western pressure and continued to buy cheap Russian crude oil at a discount of around $30 to dated brent...

... today Bloomberg reports what we have known all along, namely that China’s oil refiners are "discreetly" purchasing cheap Russian crude as the nation’s supply continues to seep into the market.

However, unlike India’s state-run oil refiners, which have issued a number of tenders seeking to buy Russia’s flagship Urals crude among other grades, traders say China’s state processors are negotiating privately under the radar with sellers so as not to make their support for the Putin regime too glaring in light of Western opposition.

At the same time, China’s worst virus outbreak since the start of the pandemic has led to some oil refiners cutting back operations and is forcing analysts to rethink their demand estimates.

So on one hand, the Covid-19 resurgence is posing a threat to global oil consumption and may accelerate demand destruction, helping to rein in bloated prices that soared on Russia’s war in Ukraine, but on the other it seems the world is about to be hit with another lengthy disruption.

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.

Sharron Davies threatened after criticising Lia Thomas competing in women's sport

James Micklethwaite, GB News, 24 March 2022

The former Olympic swimmer waded into the row on Lia Thomas, who was born a man, competing in women's swimming 

Sharron Davies MBE revealed she has been threatened over her views on transgender women competing in women's sport.

Swimmer Lia Thomas sparked huge debate around the subject when she became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title.

Debate raged around whether Lia should be able to compete in the women's division after transitioning from a male.

Labour MP Charlotte Nichols congratulated Lia on her achievement, branding any criticism as "lazy transphobia".

But Olympic silver medallist Ms Davies argued that it was unfair for women for Lia to be competing against them.

Sharron Davies
Sharron Davies

Since airing her views, Ms Davies revealed on Twitter she had received "several threats".

She wrote: "I’ve received several threats to myself and my work because I present evidence based facts on the unfairness of male inclusion in women’s sport.

"Which is biological sex based decriminalisation. I will not stop bringing these actual facts into the light or be bullied into silence.

"I’m used to it now. But I feel we are turning the corner and open debate to find science based solutions are not far away that will protect the integrity and rights of females in sport as well as offering up ways to be inclusive but not as the cost of another groups rights."

Mar 19, 2022; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Penn Quakers swimmer Lia Thomas on the pool deck at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships at Georgia Tech. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 19, 2022; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Penn Quakers swimmer Lia Thomas on the pool deck at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships at Georgia Tech. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

Thomas' victory came after a civil rights complaint was submitted against the University of Pennsylvania for permitting her to compete on its swimming team.

Also brought up was Lia's ranking of 462nd when she competed in the male ranks.

Government of Canada data shows the Triple Vaccinated are over 5x more likely to die of Covid-19 than the Unvaccinated

The Daily Expose, 24 March 2022

The Government of Canada recently started to include the triple vaccinated in their weekly data on Covid-19 deaths by vaccination status. But unfortunately for those who have succumbed to three doses of a Covid-19 injection, that data shows they are over 5 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the unvaccinated population.


 

The Canadian Covid-19 figures are produced by the Government of Canada (see here).

Their latest data is available as a downloadable pdf here.

Here are the tables from the January 30th, February 6th, February 13th, February 20th, and February 27th, Government of Canada Covid-19 Daily Epidemiology Update’ reports showing the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths by vaccination status from as far back as 14th December 2020, as well as the total population sizes of each vaccine group at the time of each report –

Google’s dominance of advertising is being exposed

 

An investigation by the competition regulator goes to the heart of how Google's parent company Alphabet makes its astonishing fortune

google logo
Google owes its dominance to the way it can control information Credit: Anadolu Agency

When the internet burst into the public consciousness in the mid 1990s after being the exclusive territory of computer professionals and nerds for a decade, foremost among the early adopters of the simplified internetworking technology known as theWorld Wide Web were libertarian idealists. These people believed the new electronic publisjing and communications medium would open a universe of information to anybody who had access to a computer, modem and phone line. All the information in the world would be at the fingertips of every human being. And for those who wanted to participate by publishing their thoughts, opinions and ideas which some of their friends might not understan and their bosses might take exception too, the internet offered the bonus of anonimity.

Form a business point of view a classic cartoon in The New Yorker magazine sumed up the equalising nature of this new medium in the caption: If nobody on the internet knows you’re a dog,  nobody would know you were a small business either, especially one that was punching above its weight. 

This promised to make the built - in advantages of the muli - national corporation, the globally recognised brand and the mega - factory redundant. A new business environment of dynamism and competition awaited us all – a world of free information, level playing fields and purer , less manipulated markets.

************

We’re a little wiser today, and so are competition regulators. Ten days ago, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into an esoteric practice in digital advertising – “header bidding” – that only a few insiders ever really understood. But don’t let that fool you. The probe goes to the heart of how Google makes its astonishing fortune. 

The legal discovery work of mining millions of corporate emails and documents was undertaken by the state attorney general office in Texas, and culminated in a lawsuit filed by the state in December 2020. 

But the details only came out in dribs and drabs until the full unredacted document was disclosed this January. The subsequent outcry left the CMA little choice but to join in, and Brussels launched its own probe the same day as the CMA.

Digital advertising is intimidatingly complex, but conceptually it remains fairly straightforward. Publishers of a newspaper or an app or a game have a blank space to sell. For their part, businesses with products or services want to reach a potential audience, and to do so as cheaply and effectively as possible. 

The traditional method in the old physical world saw newspapers negotiating a price for the space directly with agencies representing big brands. But with electronic ads, there is an opportunity for an efficient electronic marketplace. An intermediary sits between buyer and seller, and this is where we find Google, which dominates the sector. By its own calculations, 84pc of publishers worldwide, and 99pc of large US publishers use Google ad services to fill their digital slots.

Google owes its dominance to the way it can control information – with a presence on both sides of the digital ad platform, buying and selling, as well as sitting pretty in the middle. In one of the most notorious emails unearthed by Texas investigators, one Google staffer explains: “the analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the New York Stock Exchange”. 

But were the publishers getting good value? Were the ad buyers? It was a mystery, and they couldn’t accurately say, because the digital ad auction manipulations were so complex and obscure. As another senior Google employee explained in an internal communication: “charging non-transparently on both sides” gave Google “some flexibility to react and counteract market changes.” No wonder the casino always appeared to win.

That was until 2014, when publishers devised a clever wheeze that allowed them to compare the performance of Google’s ad exchange with other rival ad exchanges. This was via a technique called header bidding – because some code was inserted in the header of a web page – and for the first time the market could function as it should, and reveal the true value of the digital ad slots. Each side could now get more precious information too. 

The results were astonishing. Publishers saw ad revenues rise by between 30pc and 70pc, the Texas lawsuit alleges. Advertisers liked it too, since the smaller, scrappier rival ad exchanges charged lower fees than Google. Internally Google acknowledged how much all this hurt: rather than taking 20pc, a figure mentioned internally, one manager predicted “margins will stabilise at around 5pc”.

When Google’s rival Facebook, number two in the ad market, jumped on to the header bidding bandwagon, it really changed things. The lawsuit says that Google devised a secret agreement with Facebook, codenamed "Jedi Blue" that gave its biggest competitor huge perks. It also tried to lure publishers on to a mobile platform called AMP, where header bidding wasn’t possible. 

Google denies the claims, arguing that the deal was a "publicly documented, procompetitive agreement". The alleged collusion between Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google) is what makes this lawsuit so explosive: the lawsuit claims that two leading participants in the market colluded, acting like a buying cartel. Incredibly, we are told that Google could guarantee how many bids Facebook would win, down to a tenth of a percentage point.

The 242-page Texas lawsuit reveals a cat and mouse game played out over several years, but consistent themes emerge. As the piggy in the middle, Google was making life more difficult for the buyer and seller, obscuring processes, and preserving their own margin. Google denies the Texas allegations were anti-competitive, and argues that header bidding continues to grow. 

But publishers now wonder aloud how much healthier the media landscape would look today if the ad business had been more competitive. Perhaps more might have gone to keep revenue-starved local media alive, for example. Last year Google’s owner Alphabet reported revenue of $257bn.

At the end of the day, while financial and commodities exchanges are regulated, the digital ad exchanges are not. They might have been, but a decade ago President Obama shut down an FTC probe which would have obliged exchange owners to be transparent with information. Regulating them wisely today, so a market can grow, is one of our regulators' biggest challenges.

 

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Ukraine Descends Further Into A Totalitarian Dictatorship

Mac Slavo
March 23rd, 2022
SHTFplan.com
Comment (1)

Ukraine is taking the “conflict” with Russia as an excuse to further enslave those living within its borders. Not only are those living under Volodymyr Zelensky’s rule subjected to martial law and a social credit system, but the master has also now banned 11 political parties and seized control of all media.

Zelensky continues to plead for “freedom” and “democracy” (even though the two are far from the same things) for the slaves to see, but yet, his first tendency has been to become an authoritarian master hellbent on controlling others.

As Axios reported, the list of parties now banned include Platform For Life, Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party, and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

In a speech that was posted online, the Ukrainian president said his country’s National Security and Defense Council agreed to his banning the activities of those parties, The Hill reported.

“Given the full-scale war waged by the Russian Federation and the ties of some political structures with this state, any activity of a number of political parties during the martial law is suspended,” Zelenskyy noted in his address to the country. “Any activity of politicians aimed at splitting or collaborating will not succeed,” Zelenskyy added. “But it will get a tough response.” ... Continue reading >>>

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The Sceptics Are Starting To be Heard By The Herd On The Origins Of Ukraines Conflict

 We who write Boggart Blog in all its guises have sometimes felt as though we were shouting into the great void as we presented the results of our research, investigations and long term reporting (since 2014 and even further back than that,) on how the attempts of the Western Alliance (USA, NATO and the European Union,) to recruit Ukraine as a member of the anti - Moscow club could only result in conflict, economic catastrophe and probably to eventual war.

We do not feel at all please with ourselves for predicting that something like the current crisis was the inevitable outcome of expanding NATO eastward and ever closer to Russia's borders and thus gain the ability to place NATO troops and weaponry on the border was not going to be acceptable to Moscow. If you are familiar with recent history consider America's reaction when communist Cuba invited Russia to install missiles on the Caribbean island only a hundred and fifty miles from the US coast in the early 1960s.

America,  quite rightly, threatened serious consequences and Russia backed down. Imagine how Britain would react if Ireland tried to join the Russian Federation or France if Andorra was annexed by China. The USA, NATO allies and the European Union member states must accept their share of responsibility for the current conflict. There were several options other than full NATO membership for Ukraine, a United Nations backed guarantee of neutrality for Ukraine was the most favourable to all sides.

So it is gratifying to us to see that more and more sober, intelligent voices in alt_media are calling out the hysterical demonisation of Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin and arguing that armed conflict, with all the attendant suffering and pointless deaths could have been avoided had the western alliance not beein more intertested in effecting regime change in Russia than it was in creating conditions for peaceful co - existence between Russia and Ukraine.

Below is an extract of one more excellent example of how the 'conspiravy theorists' of alt - media have once again beaten the mainstream media boy and girl reporters with their little degrees in media studies.

The US is Culpable in Today's Ukraine Crisis

by The Space Worm

The US is Culpable in Today's Ukraine Crisis

How the incessant neo-conservative urge to reshape foreign nations in the Western image has brought us to the brink of World War.

Many know this story, but I’d like to summarize it as succinctly as possible, using only primary and establishment media sources in hopes that this article may be persuasive and shareable to friends/family of all politics. The goal is not to distract from Ukrainian suffering but to inform US citizens of how their leaders often engage in harmful foreign policy so that we may refrain from electing such leaders in the future.

Brief Background

Throughout 2012 and most of 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had been in negotiations with the European Union on the terms of a political/trade agreement involving a sizeable loan, lowering of tariffs, and a goal to “promote gradual convergence on foreign and security matters with the aim of Ukraine's ever-deeper involvement in the European security area” (direct quote from the agreement). Putin has stated, numerous times over several decades, his concerns about Western military forces creeping closer to Russia’s border. The Ukranians asked for $160 billion to offset trade restrictions that Russia would likely implement as a result of the deal. The EU could only offer $828 million. Russia then offered Ukraine a $15 billion loan and to cut Russian natural gas prices by almost a third. Yanukovych canceled negotiations with the EU and accepted Putin’s offer. Considering the Russian loan was nearly 20 times greater than the EU loan and the agreement eliminated the possibility of Russian sanctions while leaving EU relations largely unchanged, this was a rational decision by Yanukovych. To quote Reuters, “the unwillingness of the EU and International Monetary Fund to be flexible in their demands of Ukraine also had an effect, making them less attractive partners.”

Results of 2010 election in which Yanukovych (written Janukovych) won by a slim majority almost entirely on the South-Eastern vote - Ukrainian political division falls on geographic lines.

The decision to cancel the EU agreement, which was not a unilateral decision by Yanukovych but a valid vote by Ukranian Parliament, was met with protests in the North-Western Capital Kiev, led by prominent members of Yanukovych’s opposition party, which quickly turned violent. Western Ukranians were understandably upset after the one-year-long negotiations fell through. ... Continue reading >>>

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