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Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said last month via Belarusian Telegraph Agency, BelTA., that World Bank and IMF offered him a bribe of $940 million USD in the form of “Covid Relief Aid.” In exchange for $940 million USD, the World Bank and IMF demanded that the President of Belarus:

• imposed “extreme lockdown on his people”
• force them to wear face masks
• impose very strict curfews
• impose a police state
• crash the economy

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko REFUSED the offer and stated that he could not accept such an offer and would put his people above the needs of the IMF and World Bank. This is NOT a conspiracy. You may research this yourself. He actually said this!

Now IMF and World Bank are bailing out failing airlines with billions of dollars, and in exchange, they are FORCING airline CEOs to implement VERY STRICT POLICIES such as FORCED face masks covers on EVERYONE, including SMALL CHILDREN, whose health will suffer as a result of these policies.

And if it is true for Belarus, then it is true for the rest of the world! The IMF and World Bank want to crash every major economy with the intent of buying over every nation’s infrastructure at cents on the dollar!

The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures

September 6, 2020

The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures

Since the pandemic lockdowns were first implemented in the US I have been more concerned with the government and central bank response than the virus itself. As I have noted in past articles, the pandemic restrictions and subsequent economic and social crisis events they help to create will cause far more deaths than Covid-19 ever will. Not only that, but the actions of the Federal Reserve continue to con the American public into believing that there is some kind of “plan” to stop the crash that THEY engineered.

The only agenda of the Fed is to increase the pain in the long term; they have no intention of actually preventing any disaster.

This is evidenced in comments by voting members of the Fed, including Neel Kashkari who recently argued for the enforcement of hard lockdowns for at least six weeks in the US, all because the US savings rate was going up. Meaning, because Americans are saving more in order to protect themselves from economic fallout, Kashkari thinks we should be punished with an economic shutdown that would force us to spend whatever we have been able to save.

Do you see how that works?

Fed members and government officials demand hard lockdowns, depleting public savings and destroying small businesses. Then, the public has to beg the Fed and the government for more and more stimulus measures so that they can survive. The people and the system become dependent on a single point of support – fiat money creation and welfare. Yet, the evidence suggests that this strategy is failing to do much of anything except stall the inevitable for a very short time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Harvest at Chez Cog

September 1, 2020

HARVEST AT CHEZ COG

It became obvious to Mrs. Cog and I by early February of this year (2020) that the next phase of socioeconomic crumble/chaos was being implemented both here in the USA as well as throughout the world. The rabbit hole just got deeper. Or more accurately, the deeper rabbit hole was just revealed.

Regardless of whether one believes the COVID-19 pandemic is real or not (we fall into that vast gray area in-between, which we are confidently informed by the mainstream media doesn’t actually exist) what is extremely hard to deny is the pandemic is being used politically to further enrich the already obscenely rich while turning the little people screws even tighter.

Case in point….27 million people remain unemployed (with more to follow as we enter the next stage of Great Depression 2.0) while the personal wealth of Jeff Bezos just passed $200 Billion…essentially doubling in less than 7 months.

For those of you who are like me and have a hard time with large numbers (I’m lost after counting 10 fingers and 10 toes) 200 billion is 200,000 times one million dollars. One billion is a thousand million. 200 billion is two hundred thousand million.

Clearly Bezos doesn’t need to sweat the rent or mortgage.

What this all meant to us back in February was we needed to accelerate our plans to install a greenhouse, along with other final touches to our little homestead we call home sweet home. While the capital improvements are never finished, the greenhouse was the last major building block we’d planned for many years.

Like busy beavers trying to beat the rising creek, we have been going non-stop since spring. Not only did I personally build and install the greenhouse on top of the contractor assisted leveled and graveled building pad (I also trenched in water and electric) but we also expanded the tilled portion of our fenced in garden by about 30%. This was all above and beyond the ‘normal’ things that need to be done in order to maintain our semi self sufficient lifestyle.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Triumph of Catastrophism. How Greta Thunberg Carried the Day

August 25, 2020

The Triumph of Catastrophism. How Greta Thunberg Carried the Day

Disclaimer: I am NOT saying here that the Covid-19 does not exist nor that people didn’t die because of it. If you react with the term “denialism” you are only showing that you have no rational arguments to produce.

Do you remember that weird girl from Sweden? Yes, the one with the braided hair. What was her name? Greta something…. It is strange that so many people seemed to pay attention to what she was saying about things like climate change. Why should anyone be worried by that? Nobody cares about climate change anymore when there are much more important matters at hand with the great pandemic sweeping the world? And yet, strangely, nowadays people are doing exactly what Greta had told them to do

Not long ago, I published on Cassandra’s Legacy a post titled “The Great Failure of Catastrophism.” In it, I argued that some 50 years of warnings from scientists had been completely ignored by the powers that be. I also argued that a relatively minor perturbation, as the one caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, had been enough to consign all worries about climate to the dustbin of the silly ideas that nobody should care about.

But things keep changing and I am now amazed to see that humans are acting exactly as if they had listened to Greta Thunberg. Do you remember? She said we shouldn’t use the plane, that we should travel less, use less energy, consume less. Exactly what’s being done.

People are not flying anymore so much, they stopped most of their long distance traveling, the mass migration called “international tourism” seems to have disappeared for good.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On Covid-19 And Authoritarian Abuses

August 22, 2020

On Covid-19 And Authoritarian Abuses

Over the last few months there’s been a clique of indie media who’ve been urging their respective followings to bully and cajole other indie media into focusing on Covid-19, lockdowns, mask laws and Covid-related authoritarian agendas in their coverage of world events.

I personally find the idea of fighting with indie media in a world that is dominated by murderous globe-spanning power structures absurd, so I won’t make this about them, but since their attacks are getting more heated now I’m going to try to spell out my own position on the matter here as clearly as possible. I don’t expect this essay to have any effect on this online mobbing behavior’s primary drivers, who appear to operating in bad faith; this is more for my longtime readers who’ve been expressing bafflement that I haven’t made Covid-related abuses a primary focus of my writing.

To sum up the gist of my position in a paragraph: I’ve said from the beginning that “the fears that the ruling class will seize this opportunity to advance preexisting authoritarian agendas are well-founded”, and I’ve repeatedly written entire essays about this. Unless people want me to re-write more or less the same essays over and over again, there hasn’t been much more for me to add to the discussion. The information ecosystem is still too polluted and muddied to see clearly enough to provide a comprehensive, lucid, big-picture understanding of what’s actually going on, so I’ve just been watching and patiently gathering information.

That is what someone who is interested in telling the truth does: they wait until they have enough information about something before they attempt to elucidate their understanding of it. I haven’t been writing about my clear, big-picture understanding of what’s going on with this virus because I simply do not have one, and frankly I don’t believe anyone else does either.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As the Bubble Slowly Pops, the Economic Chain Reaction Is Now in Progress

August 20, 2020

As the Bubble Slowly Pops, the Economic Chain Reaction Is Now in Progress

bubble

Much has been written about the economic consequences of covid-19, yet, just as in many of the analyses of the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, the years of accumulating debt preceding the event do not attract the attention they deserve. Covid-19—or to be more precise, the lockdown—has initiated a cascading liquidation of the debt bubble that has been building for a generation. From the early 1980s, each recession has been responded to with iteratively lower interest rates. Following the bursting of the late 1980s credit bubble, Greenspan inaugurated the loosest monetary policy for a generation, creating the dotcom bubble. When this burst in 2000, it was responded to with even lower interest rates, reaching 1 percent from 2003–04, generating the housing bubble. When this burst in 2007/8, the response was 0 percent interest rates, turning a $150 trillion global debt bubble as it was then—already the largest In history—into a $250 trillion global debt bubble.

When central banks set interest rates it fundamentally distorts the pricing mechanisms of credit markets, just like price setting in other parts of the economy. Friedrich von Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for articulating that interest rates, like other prices, should be set by the market rather than central planning committees. We are not surprised when the government setting the price of food in Venezuela leads to food shortages, so we should not be surprised that 0 percent interest rates leads to a shortage in yield for investors, leading to a $250 trillion global debt bubble.

(Below is a speech I gave in the European Parliament in 2018 in which I adumbrated these points for a political audience):

Max Rangeley Speech in the European Parliament on the Coming Economic Collapse

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Kind of a World do We Want? (…really?)

August 18, 2020

What Kind of a World do We Want? (…really?)

Although this question is both enduring and familiar, its present urgency is fully accentuated in a typically brilliant, but viscerally terrifying, exposition by Noam Chomsky on the current frangible condition of the world, and its near-term prognosis. However, I am also reminded of the strapline from the International Permaculture Conference, held in London in 2015, offering the intention and perhaps the means for “Designing the world we want.”

Chomsky never pulls a punch, as he strikes at layer on peeling layer of mendacity and fragility, from a prevailing framework whose groans, under the cumulative stresses of “growth”, should be heard as cries of threatening systemic collapse. The intermeshing quality of the world’s many woes has been conveyed by the term “changing climate” (i.e. climate change per se being just one item on the list), and amid a morass of such magnitude, positives are apt to remain obscured and muffled. Thus acknowledged, there could hardly be a better time than now, for a recasting of the world, having decided how we want it to be, in the broadest context, while there is still sufficient residual integrity to the whole that change might yet be managed, and full collapse is not yet inevitable, or already crumbling out of our hands.

It is no surprise that Covid-19 is a principal feature on the current global stage, and is probably the major focus of our concerns and attentions just now. While we cannot know how exactly everything will pan out, it is likely that the virus will be with us for some time, and we are entering a period of “recalibration” rather than a Post-Covid “back to normal”. Hence, focussing more on local and community resilience increasingly seems to make sense. We will certainly need to share support with our family, neighbours and friends, in the time to come.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New York City Police Use Pandemic To Create COVID-19 Checkpoints

August 17, 2020

New York City Police Use Pandemic To Create COVID-19 Checkpoints

A recent article in The New York Post revealed how the NYPD used the pandemic to justify creating COVID-19 checkpoints.

“New York officials have stopped 353 cars at entrances to the Big Apple to warn travelers of the mandatory two-week quarantine rule. The stops were made from Wednesday through Friday at bridges and tunnels, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.”

Police are using the pandemic as an excuse to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by asking a vehicle’s occupants to answer questions like have they spent more than 24 hours during the previous 14 days in any state on New York’s restricted list?

The city has the audacity to claim that these stops are “quick and educational.” There is nothing quick and educational about being stopped and questioned by government officials.

Is there anything educational about fining people $10,000 dollars?

“Travelers who violate the quarantine rule could face up to $10,000 in fines. There are currently 35 states plus Puerto Rico on the list.”

Earlier this year, The Orlando Sentinel called COVID-19 checkpoints security theater, and worried about the cost to taxpayers. COVID-19 checkpoints have also been set up in Rhode Island, North Carolina, Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

Penn Station COVID-19 checkpoint

credit: WKZO

A WKZO article shows U.S. military personnel conducting a COVID-19 checkpoint at Penn Station.

“A few dozen travelers got off a train from Miami at New York City’s Penn Station on Thursday and were greeted by a team of public health workers and mayoral office staff who handed them informational fliers about the state’s new COVID-19 quarantine rules.”

Government officials use COVID-19 as an excuse to question and interrogate visitors.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An unexpected systemic crisis is for sure

August 16, 2020

An unexpected systemic crisis is for sure

Downturns in bank credit expansion always lead to systemic problems. We are on the edge of such a downturn, which thanks to everyone’s focus on the coronavirus, is unexpected.

We can now identify 23 March as the date when markets stopped worrying about deflation and realised that monetary inflation is the certain outlook. That day, the Fed promised unlimited monetary stimulus for both consumers and businesses, and the dollar began to fall.

The commercial banks everywhere are massively leveraged and their exposure to bad debts and a cyclical banking crisis is now certain to wipe many of them out. In this article we look at the global systemically important banks — the G-SIBs — as proxy for all commercial banks and identify the ones most at risk on a market-based analysis.

Introduction

In these bizarre markets, the elephant in the room is systemic risk — visible to all but simply ignored. This is partly due to everyone in government and central banks, as well as their epigones in the investment industry and mainstream media, believing our economic problems are only a matter of Covid-19. In other words, when the pandemic is over normality will return. But Covid-19 has acted like a conjurer’s distraction: it has deflected us from the consequences of Trump’s trade wars with China and the liquidity strains that surfaced in New York last September when the repo rate soared to 10%.

The liquidity strains and the severe downturn in the stock markets that followed earlier this year before mid-March have been buried for the moment in a tsunami of central bank money. Liquidity problems following last September’s repo crisis and the S&P 500 index collapsing by one third between 19 February and 23 March were a clear signal that the multiyear cycle of bank credit expansion had already peaked. Ever since the last credit crisis in 2008, the banks had recovered their lending confidence and expanded bank credit, a classic expansionary phase.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The COVID Bait & Switch

August 16, 2020

The COVID Bait & Switch

QUESTION: Do you really think that the Democratic leadership is trying to hurt people?

ANSWER: It is not just the Democrats. We are looking at politicians around the world. It makes no sense with such a low death rate that is equivalent to the flu and all the forecasts of Neil Ferguson have proven false that they would continue these lockdowns. It makes no sense. They are either deliberately hurting people or they have been bribed by the consortium to further the Great Reset. I am open to any other explanation. Even moderate Democrats are not comfortable with what is taking place. This is a deliberate agenda to destroy the economy to rebuild it GREEN. The serious mistake here is that they think they can recreate the economy in their vision. They do not even know how it works.

Let us not forget that the entire justification for these lockdowns was the forecast of Ferguson who claimed 3 million Americans would be killed. The justification for masks, social distancing, and lockdowns was to save lives because the curve had to be flattened because there would be a shortage of bed space in hospitals. That NEVER took place. So why do we still have lockdowns?

This has been a bait & switch. You have an elite group cheering the destruction as an opportunity to rebuild the world economy the way they think it should run. They are threatening fund managers to divest from China in hopes of bringing them to their knees to accept their agenda. That is NOT going to succeed. We are staring in the eyes of absolute ruthless tyranny and the markets are starting to perform in anticipation of a major financial crisis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

August 13, 2020

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

The pandemic lockdowns are a complicated issue, and that is absolutely deliberate. The point of 4^th Generation psychological warfare is to present the target individual or population with a hard choice – a no-win scenario. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I often equate this to the key moves in a difficult chess game; your primary goal is to create a dual threat and force your opponent to sacrifice one piece over another in order to escape with the least amount of damage. Do this a few times and you have won the long game.

There are multiple aspects to the global pandemic which seem engineered to push our society to make “sacrificial decisions”. We can choose to sacrifice the lives of those that are susceptible to the virus, sacrifice our economy, or sacrifice many of our freedoms with the promise that the economy and lives will be protected. The easiest choice is always to give away a little more freedom. We’ll get it all back eventually…right?

Of course, we don’t actually get to “choose” anything when we play along with this game. 4^th Gen warfare is meant to eventually take IT ALL from the target population while making people think it was their choice to give those things away.

To be clear, it’s not only the pandemic being exploited as leverage to conjure these situations. The leftist riots are another example of a bought and paid for crisis that is being used in an attempt to convince half of Americans that breaking constitutional principles and instituting unprecedented government power is somehow an acceptable sacrifice. The riots and the virus response work hand-in-hand; one is created to get leftists to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety, the other is created to get conservatives to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Time To Position For The Endgame

August 9, 2020

It’s Time To Position For The Endgame

Are you, like us, sensing that things are poised to fall apart?

Do you sense an approaching endgame?

Like there’s another heavy shoe to drop? Perhaps an entire closet’s worth?

Certainly there’s entirely too much confusion surrounding SARS-CoV-2 and how to deal with it.

Should people wear masks? Will schools re-open? Should they? Why isn’t Covid-19 being treated consistently across medical centers? Are there things we could and should be doing to minimize the impacts before people catch it?

I believe there are good common-sense answers, even if complicated, to these and many other related questions But common sense is in short supply these days, especially amongst our “leaders” in the US (who actually act like bad managers).

Our clueless politicians busy themselves either pandering to or hiding from the media cameras when it comes to Covid-19 response. Meanwhile, Big Pharma is doing everything it can to direct the action in ways that funnel any profits into its pockets — public health be damned.

It’s a certified shit show. No question about it.

But It Gets Worse

Beyond the pandemic, the central banks are busy ignoring Plutarch as they embark on the grandest social experiment in all of human history by floating billionaires’ yachts ever higher as more and more average folks drown beneath the rising waterline.

Displaying either a level of tone-deafness exceeding that of Marie Antionette, or a level of psychopathy matching that of Ted Bundy, the US Federal Reserve is — RIGHT NOW — engaged in the largest transfer of wealth in all of US history.

Between March-April 2020, the Fed added a staggering $282 billion to the bottom-line wealth of US billionaires:

But that wasn’t enough.

So the Fed kept printing. And buying, buying, and buying more and more financial assets held – of course – mainly by the already-wealthy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?

August 4, 2020

Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?

Tens of thousands of Germans marched through Berlin on Saturday, proclaiming a “Day of Freedom” and demanding an end to government-mandated face masks and “social distancing.” The UK and Netherlands also saw large protests against their governments’ tyrannical actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to media accounts, the Berlin protesters held signs reading “We are being forced to wear a muzzle,” “Natural defense instead of vaccination,” and “We are making noise because you are stealing our freedom!”

Good for them!

The New York Times Tweeted that the masses of Berlin demonstrators were all “Nazis” and “conspiracy theorists.” Does the “paper of record” really want us to believe there were perhaps a million Nazis active in the streets of Berlin? Wouldn’t that be alarming?

The fact is, Europeans are realizing that their government-mandated lockdowns did little or nothing to protect them from the virus, while causing economic catastrophe and untold human suffering.

They likely looked around and noticed that Sweden, which never locked down its economy, rejected face masks, and kept its restaurants and other places of business open, did not fare any worse than the countries that have been turned into open air prisons for much of the year. In fact, Sweden had a lower death rate from the virus than strict lockdown states like the UK and France. No wonder people are starting to get angry.

Unfortunately, while the Europeans are waking up, Americans are still asleep as our freedoms continue to be trampled. While Europeans demand an end to government tyranny, here we see states with minuscule new deaths returning to lockdown. It is as if all the wannabe tyrants from mayors to governors are finally realizing their secret dreams of ruling by decree. Their dreams are our nightmares!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

August 4, 2020

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

At least 20 thousand people (some say many more) marched in Berlin on August 1st 2020 to protest against the restrictions imposed by governments against the Covid-19 epidemic. Unanimously branded as “criminals,” “neo-nazis,” and “idiots” by the Western media, their presence is nevertheless an indication of a growing movement of resistance against the authoritarian crackdown in Europe.

As I am writing, the Covid epidemics has been over for at least two months in Europe. In the US, instead, the epidemic is over only in the large cities while it is still ongoing in the central states, only recently showing signs of abating. The result is a different perception of the situation. In the US, the progressive movement is still trying to use the epidemic as an anti-Trump weapon, accusing the president of not having been authoritarian enough and not having imposed even more draconian measures. In Europe, instead, the public is starting to perceive that nobody is dying of Covid-19 anymore and that their governments are terrorizing them about a threat that has ceased to exist. It is still an embryonic movement, routinely demonized and criminalized by the government propaganda machine, but it is clearly rising. The recent manifestation in Berlin of tens of thousands of people (perhaps many more) is a clear indication of this trend. Earlier on, we had seen something similar in Italy.

You will be probably baffled by this interpretation of the Berlin demonstration, especially if you live in the US, or if you routinely watch TV or read newspapers in a Western country. But there is a logic in everything that happens and the general perception of the coronavirus is rapidly changing. As an example of this growing interpretation of the situation, let me report, below, a few paragraphs from the book “The End of the Megamachine” by Fabian Scheidler, at present in press in the English version.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pollak: Big Tech, Establishment Media Crush Free Speech Through a Form of Prior Restraint

August 2, 2020

Pollak: Big Tech, Establishment Media Crush Free Speech Through a Form of Prior Restraint

Jack Dorsey New York Times (Michael Cohen / Getty) — Michael Cohen / Getty

Big tech and mainstream media have joined forces to crush free speech and press freedom. Not only are they censoring alternative medical views on coronavirus, but they are also censoring news outlets that happen to cover those views.

On Monday night, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (owned by Google) took down video from a Facebook live stream of a press conference on coronavirus in Washington, DC, by a group of doctors that was covered by Breitbart News that day.

The press conference was held by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. The press conference featured doctors talking about their own views about the treatment of coronavirus or COVID-19, sometimes presenting perspectives that are not featured by the “experts” making policy for the country. Some talked about hydroxychloroquine; others touted the scientific case for reopening schools.

One doctor, Stella Immanuel, a Nigerian immigrant, argued passionately for hydroxychloroquine (plus zinc and azithromycin), saying she had personally treated hundreds of patients with it. She called hydroxychloroquine a “cure.” The video went viral.

New York Times columnist Kevin Roose drew attention to the video, noting: “Breitbart could claim it was just covering a newsworthy press conference.”

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted a report that Roose’s tweets were “driving people at Facebook absolutely crazy.”

Subsequently, Facebook and Twitter took the video down, with Facebook responding directly to Roose, saying the video was taken down for “sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.”

When President Donald Trump retweeted someone else’s version of the video, Twitter removed it. It was the latest example of Twitter interfering in a message posted — in this case, indirectly — by the President of the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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