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“Don’t Trace Me, Bro” — Just Say No to Contact Tracing
“Don’t Trace Me, Bro” — Just Say No to Contact Tracing
Contact Tracing? Really? That’s the next big government program to push for total surveillance over our lives. Now the real fallout from the Coronapocalypse comes to light.
The very people who created a fake pandemic out of faulty statistics, media fear-pimping and the rankest of propaganda are now pushing the total surveillance state to protect us (them?) from the next crisis.
James Corbett from the Corbett Report just published an excellent video discussing ‘contact tracing’ as promulgated by (who else?) the Clinton Global Initiative to create an army of new Brown Shirts to assist our wise and benevolent leaders in managing us like livestock.
James is urging us not to use their Orwellian term, and I agree with him. But the best way to do that is to make fun of it and them.
I propose just looking at them and saying, “Don’t Trace Me, Bro.”
As always when they want to herd us towards a terrible idea they first have to come up with a harmless sounding euphemism for it. Either that or just call it a war that we’re going to fight and win together, you know, for kids!
But this was always the plan with this virus. We can speculate as to why this has been done, why it was directed from the commanding heights of our society but, in the end, that speculation is irrelevant.
This is happening, it’s here and they are now working to square the circle. The goal is to finish off the last vestiges of anonymity and individuality started with the destruction of financial privacy during the Clinton Adminstration, which was wrapped in the classic government phrases “Know Your Customer” and “Anti-Money Laundering”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Who’s Next to Fail in the Post-COVID World?
As much as I hate to invoke The Ayn Rand lest I give off the impression I’m some kind of Objectivist, which I am most certainly not, the engine of the world is coming to a halt.
Money velocity has been falling for years. It is now cratering as we hide in our homes from a bug that eventually we will all have to reconcile with. Credit is the engine of the world of today.
It is the gas which fuels the engine of the world.
COVID-19 has cratered the global economy exposing the internal rot within our hyper-financialized global economy as nothing more than a pyramid of Ponzi schemes…
… piling credit on top of credit until there are no more greater fools to sell the new debt to.
That’s the system we have. And it is collapsing precisely because the world is situated at the point where there is little more productive capacity to monetize and pull that capital from the future to fund the new debt.
It won’t matter if we replace this system with pure helicopter money without debt as the Modern Monetary Theory proponents argue. We’re already doing a version of this by having the central banks buy debt they never intend to sell on the open market. So, the debt itself is without value. The money printed from those bonds is as much scrip as if the bond had never been issued.
But the time lost by people in pursuit of uneconomic ends by mispricing risk and servicing debt they are legally obligated to service is real.
The engine is sputtering as trillions are printed to kick it back over one more time. But the gas has too much ethanol in it. There’s not enough air.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Don’t Be Fooled by the Deplatforming of Facebook
Don’t Be Fooled by the Deplatforming of Facebook
The push for speech control escalates. There is now a concentration of stories concerning social media companies and their role in shaping political thought.
We are nine months from a pivotal presidential election in the U.S. and the push is on to ensure that the outcome goes the way those in power want it to.
Three times in as many weeks billionaire busybody George Soros has attacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, demanding he be removed because he is working to re-elect Donald Trump.
This seems like an absurdity. But it isn’t. It’s all part of the game plan.
Create a controversy that isn’t real to seed a narrative that there’s a problem in need of a solution. Facebook has been the center of this controversy to inflame passions on both sides of the political aisle to ensure the desired outcome.
They want regulation of all social media companies to create unscalable barriers to entry for new ones while curtailing free speech on the existing ones.
Warren Buffet would call that a moat. I call it tyranny.
Enter Attorney General William Barr.
He weighed in recently that we need to have a conversation about Facebook et.al. in relation to their Section 230 immunity under the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 grants immunity to companies like Facebook and Google from prosecution for content hosted on their services as they argue they are not publishers but rather just pass-through entities or platforms of user-generated content.
Now, it’s pretty clear for the past few years the social media companies have been acting with open editorial bias to deplatform undesirables. They rewrite broadly defined terms of services and EULAs (End-User Licence Agreements) which they use to justify controlling what content they are willing to host.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
After Missiles Fly, Iraq Becomes the Battleground
After Missiles Fly, Iraq Becomes the Battleground
The future of the U.S.’s involvement in the Middle East is in Iraq. The exchange of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran occurred wholly on Iraqi soil and it has become the site on which that war will continue.
Israel continues to up the ante on Iran, following President Trump’s lead by bombing Shia militias stationed near the Al Bukumai border crossing between Syria and Iraq.
The U.S. and Israel are determined this border crossing remains closed and have demonstrated just how far they are willing to go to prevent the free flow of goods and people across this border.
The regional allies of Iran are to be kept weak, divided and constantly under harassment.
Iraq is the battleground because the U.S. lost in Syria. Despite the presence of U.S. troops squatting on Syrian oil fields in Deir Ezzor province or the troops sitting in the desert protecting the Syrian border with Jordan, the Russians, Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds forces continue to reclaim territory previously lost to the Syrian government.
Now with Turkey redeploying its pet Salafist head-choppers from Idlib to Libya to fight General Haftar’s forces there to legitimize its claim to eastern Mediterannean gas deposits, the restoration of Syria’s territorial integrity west of the Euphrates River is nearly complete.
The defenders of Syria can soon transition into the rebuilders thereof, if allowed. And they didn’t do this alone, they had a silent partner in China the entire time.
And, if I look at this situation honestly, it was China stepping out from behind the shadows into the light that is your inciting incident for this chapter in Iraq’s story.
China moving in to sign a $10.1 billion deal with the Iraqi government to begin the reconstruction of its ruined oil and gas industry in exchange for oil is of vital importance.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trump’s Point of No Return
Trump’s Point of No Return
When I wrote that the coup against President Trump had morphed into a Civil War, I wasn’t kidding. The sham impeachment created the perfect environment for the Democrats and Republicans to get something definitive from him by playing the House and the Senate off each other.
With the Senate Neocon Occupied Territory the escalation of belligerence since Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the impeachment vote has been serious.
First, there was the rider to the NDAA which upped the sanctions on everyone willing to work on Nordstream 2. Then Lindsey Graham pushed the frankly insane DASKA bill through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Pelosi forced her impeachment vote through the House on partisan lines. Then, clearly overstepping her authority, she refused to send the Articles to the Senate hoping to add a more serious charge, like Obstruction of Justice or Treason for laundering Russian money through Deutsche Bank.
It is under these circumstances we should view the events in Iraq over the last week, especially the killing of IRGC Quds Forces Commander Qassem Solemaini.
Because I’ve warned from the beginning of this impeachment, Trump was just 17 votes in the Senate away from conviction. And failure on his part to respond to an attack on our troops now or our soil, the embassy in Baghdad, would have been enough to turn that many against him and install Mike Pence.
At the end of the day we are held captive by a minority of power-mad Trotskyites without any capacity for forgiveness or humility. They believe in societal order through the whip and the sword.
Truly Maoist in their thinking, the only political power that exists comes from the barrel of a gun. This is why there has been zero opportunities for diplomacy with Iran.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
As Winter Comes Pipeline Wars Heat Up
As Winter Comes Pipeline Wars Heat Up
For all of 2019 December has been a magnet. A number of major geopolitical issues come to head this month and many of them have everything to do with energy. This is the month that Russian gas giant Gazprom was due to finish production on three major pipeline projects – Nordstream 2, Turkstream and Power of Siberia.
Power of Siberia is here. It’s finished. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping christened the pipeline to begin the month. Next month Putin will travel to Turkey to join President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to open the first of four potential trains of the Turkstream pipeline.
It is only Nordstream 2 that continues to lag behind because of insane levels of pressure from the United States that is dead set against this pipeline coming online.
And the reason for that is the last of the major energy issues surrounding Gazprom needing resolution this month, the gas transit contract between it and Ukraine’s Naftogaz.
The two gas companies have been locked in legal disputes for years, some of which center on Crimea’s decision to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia in 2014. Most of them, however, involve disputes over costs incurred during the previous and expiring gas transit contract.
The particulars today are ultimately irrelevant as these lawsuits have been used as nothing more than blackmail to keep a new contract from getting signed. Ukraine has sued Gazprom in courts, like in Sweden, that rule not by the tenets of contract law but rather through the lens of social justice.
These have been political decisions that allowed Naftogaz to seize Gazprom’s European assets, further complicating any resolution to the conflict. These policies were pursued aggressively by former Ukrainian President and long-time US State Department asset Petro Poroshenko and they have done nothing to help Ukraine.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A New Middle East Thanks to Putin
A New Middle East Thanks to Putin
Peace in the Middle East is coming at us fast and we’re going to have Russian President Vladimir Putin to thank for it.
The howls of agony coming from U.S. and European foreign policy centers are deafening. Pat Buchanan lists them in his latest article which asks if Putin is now the new king of the Middle East.
“Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a Plate” was the title of a Telegraph column. “Putin Seizes on Trump’s Syria Retreat to Cement Middle East Role,” said the Financial Times.
The U.S. press parroted the British: Putin is now the new master of the Mideast. And woe is us.
Remember that the epicenter of virulent anti-Russian, pro-Israeli sentiment doesn’t begin with the Neocons along K-Street. It begins with the remnants of the British imperial class which still holds tremendous sway over British politics.
Think I’m wrong about that. Just look at Brexit.
As I pointed out the minute Trump defended his initial pullout of 50 U.S. troops to allow Turkey to cross into northern Syria, Putin has the situation mostly under control by laying the groundwork to craft win/win/win/win possibilities for everyone in the region.
Buchanan remains skeptical of this, saying that if Putin is the new king of the Middle East, will the crown lie heavy on his head?
It’s a fair question but I think it betrays Pat’s biases as an old Cold Warrior.
Pat makes a series of comparisons between Russia’s military presence in the region and the size of the economies backing them to make his point. I think, frankly, that’s outdated analysis.
It is based on the premise that Russia has imperial aspirations in the region, similar to that of the U.S. At his core, Buchanan is still a ‘great powers theory’ kind of guy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Coup Has Begun – The Empire Strikes Back Everywhere
The Coup Has Begun – The Empire Strikes Back Everywhere
“I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.”
Darth Vader, “The Empire Strikes Back”
You know I think there are no coincidences in politics. Everything happens on a particular schedule. So when I see a day as crazy as today I have to ask the question, “Why this, why now?”
Look at the headlines and you’ll see what I’m talking about. All of these things happened since I woke up at 7:30am this morning in Florida:
- The British Supreme Court just arrogated unprecedented power to itself by inserting itself into any dispute between the Government and Parliament. This upends more than 300 years of constitutional process.
- The Democrats have announced they will pursue impeachment charges against President Trump because an unverified, hearsay whistleblower made a complaint about a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski. Impeachment odds soared overnight as someone was tipped off about the Democrats’ plan.
- Bitcoin’s hashrate mysteriously flash-crashed more than 40% presaging a massive $1500 drop in price.
- Donald Trump delivered a blistering critique of socialism at the United Nations General Assembly. Too bad he’s nearly as bad as the ones he’s fighting on the far left.
- Europe’s Trio of Faded Glory — The UK, France and Germany — joined in the chorus of unverified condemnation of Iran in the attack on the Saudi oil field on the 14th.
- The Federal Reserve continues to bail out banks to the tune of $65 to $75 billion per day through overnight repo operations that no one can give us an explanation as to why they’re needed.
This feels to me like a multi-level coup against those that dare stand athwart the global power structure. Both British and American leadership institutions are under sincere attack with these moves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Will the Yemen War be the End of Saudi Arabia?
Will the Yemen War be the End of Saudi Arabia?
The attack on Saudi Arabia’s major oil processing station in Abqaiq over the weekend was a major turning point in global politics. It may be even bigger than many of us realize.
While forces within U.S. political circles, Israel and Saudi Arabia keep trying to shift the blame to Iran, the most likely scenario is that the Houthis in North Yemen were responsible for the attack as a follow up to last month’s hit which showed off the capabilities of their new drones.
That attack set the stage for the latest one in a classic case of the past being prologue. By showing the world it was capable of throwing drones anywhere in Saudi Arabia rebels in Yemen created plausibility for last weekend’s attack.
And as I said the other day this attack begs a lot of questions. And the ham-fisted push to blame Iran for it, after President Trump all but ruled out a military response from the U.S. from all corners of the U.S. and Saudi establishment opens up even more.
If this was a swarm attack from Iraq and Iran, as claimed now (and supported by factless conjecture) then how did all the vaunted U.S. technology fail to account for it?
U.S. Naval CENTCOM is in Bahrain folks. Are these people blind as well as incompetent?
No. I don’t think they are. Say what you want about U.S. political leadership and the nigh-treasonous bureaucracy supporting it, I don’t think our military is that fundamentally corrupt, lazy or stupid.
What are we spending all of the money on, after all?
By continuing to spin this attack up as Iranian in origin people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Saudi Arabian government are throwing the Pentagon under the bus.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Turkey Exposes Central Bank Incompetence
Turkey Exposes Central Bank Incompetence
Last year I asked whether Turkey would be “City Zero in Global Contagion.” That question was based on the crisis unfolding in the Turkish lira which materially threatened a number of major European banks, especially those in Italy.
This week highlighted something really interesting for me that, I think, sets in motion a similar thesis about Turkey but for much different reasons. The sovereign debt crisis will come about purely because of a failure of confidence in institutions.
Competence is the key to staying at the top of human dominance hierarchies, not force. Those built on competence tend to last and those built on force are, at best, meta-stable for a specific period of time.
The difference between what’s happening in Turkey with President Erdogan taking control of the Turkish central bank and the end of Mario Draghi’s term heading the ECB cuts to the heart of this issue of competence versus force.
The Draghi Put-on
Draghi has projected this aura of the ever-in-control competent manager of Europe’s finances while steadfastly holding to policy ideas which have done nothing but destroy capital formation within the Eurozone.
His last statement and policy decision this week are emblematic of his inflexibility both intellectually and politically. And it’s clear that he’s trapped at whatever negative-bound he’s got in his head, handing off a Europe on the verge of collapse to his sister-in-tyranny, Christine Lagarde.
Draghi just fired his “Cheap Money Bazooka” on his way out the door to kick the can down the road another few months.
He’s setting the stage for the full-blown monetization and collapse of the European banking system under his successor, former IMF chief Christine Lagarde. What hasn’t worked for Europe for the past 11 years was just introduced again as the only way to save the situation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Battle of the ‘Flations has Begun
The Battle of the ‘Flations has Begun
Inflation? Deflation? Stagflation? Consecutively? Concurrently?… or from a great height (apologies to Tom Stoppard).
We’ve reached a pivotal moment where all of the narratives of what is actually happening have come together. And it feels confusing. But it really isn’t.
The central banks have run out of room to battle deflation. QE, ZIRP, NIRP, OMT, TARGET2, QT, ZOMG, BBQSauce! It all amounts to the same thing.
How can we stuff fake money onto more fake balance sheets to maintain the illusion of price stability?
The consequences of this coordinated policy to save the banking system from itself has resulted in massive populist uprisings around the world thanks to a hollowing out of the middle class to pay for it all.
The central banks’ only move here is to inflate to the high heavens, because the civil unrest from a massive deflation would sweep them from power quicker.
For all of their faults leaders like Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini and even Boris Johnson understand that to regain the confidence of the people they will have to wrest control of their governments from the central banks and the technocratic institutions that back them.
That fear will keep the central banks from deflating the global money supply because politicians like Trump and Salvini understand that their central banks are enemies of the people. As populists this would feed their domestic reform agendas.
So, the central banks will do what they’ve always done — protect the banks and that means inflation, bailouts and the rest.
At the same time the powers that be, whom I like to call The Davos Crowd, are dead set on completing their journey to the Dark Side and create their transnational superstructure of treaties and corporate informational hegemony which they ironically call The Open Society.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Interview: The Lew Rockwell Show – The Coming Disintegration
Interview: The Lew Rockwell Show – The Coming Disintegration
I got to chat with one of my all-time heroes the other day while taking in the sights of gorgeous Northern New Mexico, Lew Rockwell. Lew is a legend in the libertarian community and the father, in my opinion, of the modern libertarian movement.
Lew was the first person to publish my work and without that encouragement (I still remember the email response, “Brilliant! Send a pic and a bio.”) I wouldn’t be here today.
So, without any further preamble here’s my talk with Lew.
The New EU is Even More Insane than the Old EU
The New EU is Even More Insane than the Old EU
The new leadership team of the EU is insane. They learned nothing from May’s vote which saw the middle ground occupied by Angela Merkel lose ground.
Euroskeptics doubled their representation while nationalist Greens gained ground as well. The European People’s Party lost significant clout and was forced into unprecedented haggling over the leadership bloc.
Merkel, now having no political future to protect, as her last act of betrayal to Germany engineered the ‘election’ of Ursula von der Leyen to replace Jean-Claude “When things get tough you have to lie” Juncker as European Commission President.
Von der Leyen is more of a euro-integrationist than Juncker was. It’s clear they circled the wagons knowing that, as Nigel Farage points out in this clip, the EU will look nothing like it does now in five years when her term is up.
Just like the EU today looks nothing like it did in 2014 when Juncker took over.
So, it’s time to go for broke and push for everything before it all falls apart. But the trends are clear. von der Leyen is the past and Nigel Farage is the future of Europe.
More of everything EU is expected from them and there’s every reason to take them at their word.
The only interesting thing von der Leyen said here was that they would be happy to offer another extension. That’s only interesting because it sets her at odds with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Of course the EU is happy to keep the UK in limbo.
But here’s the rub. The Brexit Party polling just behind Tories, who have rallied behind Boris Johnson to stabilize their poll numbers. Johnson has to keep talking No-Deal Brexit or the knives come out for him.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Meet the New European Union, Same as the Old One
Meet the New European Union, Same as the Old One
The European Union chose new leadership this week. It was, for once, a fraught affair.
No rubber stamps were anywhere to be seen.
In the end all four of the new European Union leadership were not the frontrunners as put forth by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her choice for EU Commission President was rejected.
So too was Mario Draghi’s replacement at the top of the European Central Bank, Bundesbanke President Jens Weidmann.
French President Emmanuel Macron was the clear winner this weekend.
The choices for these positions are all designed to both maintain the path of European integration but also weaken the hold Germany has on European Union power politics.
And this thorough rebuke to Merkel immediately threw the euro into defensive mode. But, don’t kid yourself. Weidmann was never an acceptable choice as ECB President. More on this later.
The new Commission President, replacing the odious Jean-Claude Juncker, is German Defense Minister Ursula Von der Leyen. She’s a thorough Europhile and Russophobe. Since she’s a Social Democrat, to me it looks like ALDE’s Guy Verhofstadt flexed his expanded presence in the room. He helped ensure no populist upstarts would control EU foreign policy.
It will will continue being virulently anti-Russian, if not more so than in the past.
Von der Leyen is a perfect example of leadership chosen by committee (and The Davos Crowd behind them) to be nothing more than a puppet of the globalist/neo-liberal forces which control the direction of the EU.
Merkel’s a lame-duck trying to get what she wants from Russia while maintaining a brave face to the United States. Putting Von der Leyen in charge ensures any good relations between here and Vladimir Putin should be heavily discounted going forward.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Europe Won’t Admit the Mini-BOTs Are Coming
Europe Won’t Admit the Mini-BOTs Are Coming
Italy is in serious trouble financially. This is virtually common knowledge at this point. What isn’t common knowledge is its Euroskeptic government led by Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Five Star Movement’s Luigi Di Maio are preparing an assault on the foundation of the European Union itself to save Italy.
And that assault comes with the most innocuous name. Mini-BOT. Mini-BOTs were originally the idea of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis to assist Greece get out of the stranglehold placed on it by the euro.
What is a mini-BOT? It is a small denomination (mini) Bill of Treasury (BOT) that can be issued by, in this case, the Italian government to act as a domestic currency for settling government debts, paying taxes, etc.
It would be a parallel currency which could circulate freely domestically at a discount to the euro which would work as a medium of exchange to reflect the reality of the Italian economy better than the euro does.
The euro’s value is dominated by Germany’s economy. And, in short, by being so the euro overvalues Italy’s labor pool and undervalues Germany’s. Gresham’s Law states under-valued money is hoarded and over-valued spent. In Italy the euro is hoarded. In Germany it is spent. This is why Germany runs such a massive trade surplus against the other members of the euro-zone.
Italy (and Greece, Portugal, Spain and others) need a currency that can circulate to properly support domestic trade.
By mispricing Italian labor via the euro it keeps the goods produced in Italy uncompetitive on the world market. Italy’s central bank can only issue euro-denominated debt which trades at rates far lower than it should, enhancing Germany’s position.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
