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We Are Being Played

We Are Being Played

If any evidence existed to be found that Donald Trump had illegally colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, that evidence would have been picked up by the sprawling surveillance networks of the US and its allies and leaked to the Washington Post before Obama left office.

Russiagate is like a mirage. From a distance it looks like a solid, tangible thing, but when you actually move in to examine it critically you find nothing but gaping plot holes, insinuation, innuendo, conflicting narratives, bizarre mental contortions to avoid acknowledging contradictory information, a few arrests for corruption and process crimes, and a lot of hot air. The whole thing has been held together by nothing but the confident-sounding assertions of pundits and politicians and sheer, mindless repetition. And, as we approach the two year mark since this president’s election, we have not seen one iota of movement toward removing him from office. The whole thing’s a lie, and the smart movers and shakers behind it are aware that it is a lie.

And yet they keep beating on it. Day after day after day after day it’s been Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Instead of attacking this president for his many, many real problems in a way that will do actual damage, they attack this fake blow-up doll standing next to him in a way that never goes anywhere and never will, like a pro wrestler theatrically stomping on the canvass next to his downed foe.

What’s up with that?

In Opinion
In an anonymous Op-Ed, a senior Trump administration official says he and others are working ​to frustrate the president’s “misguided impulses.” https://nyti.ms/2Q6wEiP


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

The Manhattan Institute’s Joke of a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed

From his analysis, “Overheated: How Flawed Analyses Overestimate the Costs of Climate Change,” the Wall Street Journal somehow arrived at the following headline for Cass’s recent op-ed: Doomsday Climate Scenarios Are a Joke.

It should be noted that Cass is a Harvard-trained lawyer, with a background in political science, not climate science. And his employer, the Manhattan Institute, for years has promoted climate science contrarianism while pushing fossil fuel development. No surprise that the organization is bankrolled by several conservative foundations, including the billionaire Mercer family, major Trump donors and funders of climate denial.

Cass’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, which begins with “Debates over climate change are filled with dire estimates of its cost,” was quickly trumpeted by the also Mercer-backed right-wing publication Breitbart News.

What Cass is peddling with his “just get air conditioners” argument is known as adaptation. The purveyors of this approach admit the climate is changing but say that it is nothing to worry about because humans will just adapt. This argument is much more popular with the extremely wealthy than with the rest of the world’s population.

Cass proceeds to dismiss several reports from organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S.Government Accountability Office that estimate the impacts of increasing temperatures on the U.S. and global economy by simply saying people will do things like turn on air conditioners. Thus, he concludes, those estimates of the costs which he admits include “deaths from extreme heat, lost hours of work from extreme heat, and deaths from heat-caused air pollution” are “mostly from laughably bad economics.”

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

Germany Unveils “Cash Controls” Push: Ban Transactions Over €5,000, €500 Euro Note

Germany Unveils “Cash Controls” Push: Ban Transactions Over €5,000, €500 Euro Note

It was just two days ago that Bloomberg implored officials to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins “dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive.”

You probably never thought of your cash that way, but increasingly, authorities and the powers that be seem determined to lay the groundwork for the abolition of what Bloomberg calls “antiquated” physical money.

We’ve documented the cash ban calls on a number of occasions including, most recently, those that emanated from DNB, Norway’s largest bank where executive Trond Bentestuen said that although “there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation, the Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use.”

That, Bentestuen figures, “means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control.” “We believe,” he continues, “that is due to under-the-table money and laundering.”

DNB goes on to say that after identifying “many dangers and disadvantages” associated with cash, the bank has “concluded that it should be phased out.”

On Tuesday we got the latest evidence that officials across the globe are preparing to institute a cashless “utopia” when Handelsblatt reported (in a piece called “The Death of Cash) that the Social Democrats – the junior partner in Angela Merkel’s coalition government – have proposed a €5,000 limit on cash transactions and the elimination of the €500 note. 


Berlin is using a familiar scapegoat to justify the plan: the need to fight “terrorists” and “foreign criminals.”

“Limits on cash transactions would discourage foreign criminals from coming here to launder money,” says a paper penned by the Social Democrats. “If sums over €5,000 have to pass through traceable bank transactions, laundering would be severely hampered, it adds.”

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

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash

In a moment of curious serendipity, a little over 90 minutes after we showed what a dystopian, centrally-planned, cashless society unleashed in a negative interest rate world would look like (“by forcing people and companies to convert their paper money into bank deposits, the hope is that they can be persuaded (coerced?) to spend that money rather than save it because those deposits will carry considerable costs”), and briefly after we laid out the countless recent warnings from “very serious people” that cash is evil and should be banned:

… while warning to await a full-on coopted media assault about the dangers of cash “which is an anacrhonysm from a bygone era, and that the world will be so much better if only everyone dutifully exchanges the physical currency in their pocket for digital, traceable, and deletable 1s and 0s”, none other than Bloomberg issued an editorial Op-Ed in which it had one simple message: Bring On the Cashless Future.”

For those who were amused by our warning that a cashless world may be coming, here is precisely why the warning was issued, in Bloomberg’s digital ink:

Bring On the Cashless Future

Cash had a pretty good run for 4,000 years or so. These days, though, notes and coins increasingly seem declasse: They’re dirty and dangerousunwieldy and expensive, antiquated and so very analog.

Sensing this dissatisfaction, entrepreneurs have introduced hundreds of digital currencies in the past few years, of which bitcoin is only the most famous.

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

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