This Summer NATO To Approve New War Plans For Russia Conflict!
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At the NATO summit in Vilnius this July, the alliance will for the first time in decades approve a classified plan for war with Russia. The plan will reportedly assign specific tasks and locations to NATO country members. Is this just another escalation...or possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy? Also today: Alan Dershowitz gets one right about the Durham Report! Watch today's program: This Summer NATO To Approve New War Plans For Russia Conflict! Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
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It comes as no surprise that the United States and the European Union didn’t have the face to commend the performance of Recep Erdogan and his party in the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkiye on Sunday. The election results do not serve the geopolitical interests of the US and its European allies. It is apparent that the entreaties and media management in the run-up fell on deaf ears. The western powers hoped for a weak unstable government and are instead worrying that a turbo-charged Erdogan with a commanding majority in the parliament will be presiding over a strong government and won’t be a pushover. Thus, pin-pricking has begun. A question mark is put on the legitimacy of Erdogan’s victory over his opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu who is backed by the West. A real time report by the OSCE election observer mission’s preliminary findings have come handy, which alleged attempts to gerrymander the election results. The report accuses Erdogan of enjoying “unjustified advantage” and resorting to “misuse of administrative resources”; and the election commission of “lack of transparency and communication” and independence. In a direct attack on Erdogan, the OSCE mission report says, “The president is not explicitly subject to the same restrictions in the campaign period” and took undue advantage of incumbency… (and) blurred the line between party and State, at odds with the 1990 Copenhagen Document” (which contains specific election-related commitments.) The report said the election administration, law enforcement bodies, and courts did not enjoy the confidence of the opposition in resolving electoral grievances “impartially and effectively.” The secrecy of the vote was not always guaranteed; family and group voting were frequent; and unauthorised people participated in the count, “raising concerns over its integrity.” During the vote count, “several significant procedural errors were reported.” The US State Department has promptly urged the Turkish authorities to conduct “the next phase of the presidential election in line with the country’s laws and in a manner that is consistent with its commitments to the OSCE as well as a NATO Ally.” The state department’s principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Monday that the Biden Administration is “continuing to closely monitor the country’s ongoing electoral process.” He noted that “broadly we congratulate the people of Türkiye for peacefully expressing their will at the ballot box, and also congratulate the newly elected parliament.” Patel repeated the stated US position that “we’ll continue to work together with whatever government is chosen by the Turkish people to deepen our cooperation and our – deepen our shared priorities.” But he also parried that “the election process is still unfolding, as is the work of the OSCE’s election observation mission, which, as you know, released some preliminary findings… But I’m not going to predict anything additional from here.” Patel confirmed that there were US observers represented in the OSCE team. Taking a cue from Patel, perhaps, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was upfront in a statement issued in Brussels on Tuesday. He stated, “We note the preliminary findings and conclusions of the International Election Observation Mission of the OSCE and the Council of Europe, and call on Turkish authorities to address the shortcomings identified.” Borrell added, “The EU attaches the utmost importance to the need for transparent, inclusive and credible elections, in a level playing field.” Borrell too welcomed the elections as such, and took note of the high turnout as a clear sign of the commitment of the Turkish people to exercising their democratic right to vote. The salience of these remarks lies in the subtle hint by both Patel and Borrell that all is not lost yet and the jury is still out as regards Erdogan’s victory. (Interestingly, Turkish Foreign Ministry has pointed out that a total of 489 international election observers watched the May 14 elections in Türkiye and it is also “reflected in the reports of these delegations that the elections were held in accordance with the standards of free democratic elections and with exemplary participation in the OSCE and the CoE geography.”) That said, by now, it must be sinking in surely in the western calculus that Erdogan has retained his core constituency, which has not suffered erosion, and his charisma cannot be matched by Kilicdaroglu. In “systemic” terms, the Globalists cannot match Erdogan’s nationalistic plank, either. Erdogan is all but certain to win the runoff. The big question is about the third candidate Sinan Ogan who secured 5.2% votes in Sunday’s first round and now bows out of the race. Where will his supporters go in the runoff? No doubt, that will affect the “balance of power” in the runoff and tilt the scales decisively. The odds are in favour of Kilicdaroglu getting the bulk of the “anti-Erdogan” votes of Ogan, but will that be sufficient to win in the second round? It may not be. Put differently, Ogan will not be able to deliver his entire electorate to Kilicdaroglu. Clearly, if Erdogan can retain his voter base exceeding 49.5% it is and goes on to attract even a quarter of the votes Ogan secured, he is going to be the victor in the runoff. The strong likelihood is that Erdogan will win. The fact that AKP secured a comfortable majority in the parliamentary elections — against all forecasts — also creates a new momentum. The AKP’s success goes to show that the Turkish voter seeks a stable government in Ankara when the external environment is becoming extremely dangerous for the country and the economic crisis demands attention. Whereas, the sort of rainbow coalition that Kilicdaroglu is heading used to be the bane of Turkish politics for many decades in the pre-Erdogan era, and a recipe for instability. Equally, it needs to be factored in that the groundswell of Turkish public opinion remains staunchly anti-western. If he wins, this will be Erdogan’s final term. And it is going to be a “legacy term.” Erdogan will no doubt aim to transform Turkiye as a regional hub in energy, food, connectivity and transit. There is going to be breakthrough in nuclear industry, defence industry, infrastructure projects, etc. with Russian participation. It is entirely conceivable that in the highly polarised political atmosphere in the country, there could be protests staged by the opposition if Erdogan wins in the runoff on May 28. But that won’t pose a serious challenge to Erdogan. Turkey is not ripe for a colour revolution. The point is, unlike Georgia’s Eduard Shevardnadze or Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich, Erdogan is a grassroots politician with a solid mass base and the politics he practises is in sync with the zeitgeist in the region. Reprinted with permission from IndianPunchline.com. Turkiye rallies behind Erdogan Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity Shortly before the release of the Durham report, I wrote about the concern that we have a de facto state media in the United States. The column explored the pattern of false claims replicated across media platforms in the last four years. Then the Report was released and the media seemed intent to prove the point. However, even in this determined group, the Washington Post (which won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Russian collusion) set a new level of denial with a column by Philip Bump. Bump has long been controversial for his role in pushing some of the false claims discussed in prior columns. Some of those are worth noting briefly because they share common elements to his most recent column. For example, Bump was one of those who made the false claims that Attorney General Bill Barr cleared Lafayette Park for a photo op for Trump. He also claimed that Barr lied in his denial of the use of tear gas by federal agents. Bump wrote the Washington Post column titled “Attorney General Bill Barr’s Dishonest Defense of Clearing of Lafayette Square.” Not only did the Post refer to the “debunked claim” that no tear gas was used by the federal government, but goes on to state: It is the job of the media to tell the truth. The truth is that Barr’s arguments about the events of last Monday collapse under scrutiny and that his flat assertion that there was no link between clearing the square and Trump’s photo op should be treated with the same skepticism that his claims about the use of tear gas earns.It turns out that both assertions were true. Bump and others were pushing a conspiracy theory and exhibited little interested in confirming the facts. (I testified in Congress not long after the clearing of the area and stated that the conspiracy theory was already contradicted by the available evidence). Indeed, the falsity of the photo op claim was evident within a day of the clearing. When various investigations disproved his earlier allegations, Bump wrote a rather bizarre spin on the controversy where he grudgingly acknowledged the evidence supporting Barr on the park clearing while entirely ignoring his prior accusations on the the tear gas controversy. Bump also slammed Trump for claiming that his campaign was spied on by the FBI under the Obama Administration. (Trump used the term “wiretapping” which is a rather dated term for surveillance). Bump again guffawed at the suggestion. Later it was shown that the surveillance did target both the campaign and campaign associates. Bump also pushed the Russian collusion story and slammed the New York Post for its now proven Hunter Biden laptop story. He was also there for the Democrats when he wrote a column titled “Why the Trump Tower meeting may have violated the law — and the Steele dossier likely didn’t.” Of course, nothing came from the Trump Tower meeting because there was no cognizable crime. In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.” Bump often seems content that most readers will not go much beyond the headline. For example, when Trump slammed the top 20 most dangerous cities as being Democratic-run, Bump announced it was false in a column titled “Trump keeps claiming that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They aren’t.” However, his statistics showed that on a per capita data, none of the 20 most violent cities were run by Republicans. On a straight crime rate comparison, only one city was run by a Republican (Jacksonville, Fla.). Seventeen of the 20 cities were run by Democrats (two had independent mayors). Anticipating the obvious response, Bump wrote that “Trump would no doubt shrug at that detail… that his assertion was only slightly wrong.” Well, yeah. Given that history, many of us were waiting for Bump’s spin after years of pushing these collusion claims. He did not disappoint. Yesterday, the New York Post ran a column by me that was used as the theme for the cover. Bump again declared two parts of the column to be false and again proceeded to prove that they were not. Bump declares: 'The report details how the Russian collusion conspiracy was invented by Clinton operatives and put into the now-infamous Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign,’ Turley writes, incorrectly. At another point, he writes that “President Barack Obama and his national security team were briefed on how ‘a trusted foreign source’ revealed ‘a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.’ It then happened a few days later.” That is also incorrect.Let’s start with the second claim. Bump says that it is untrue that Obama was briefed on the Clinton campaign plan. Notably, in the long time line that follows, Bump never shows how the statement is false. Indeed, he admits that on “Russian intelligence obtained by the US government indicates that Clinton’s campaign decided to ‘vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.’” Note Bump does not deny the briefing occurred. Indeed, the line is based on the Durham report and the briefing was previously reported by media. Rather, he later reveals that he is just objecting because the Clinton people would not confirm the intelligence report. He writes: That allegation remains unconfirmed to this day despite Durham questioning Clinton staffers about it. Clinton herself told Durham that the claim — sourced to Russia, which Durham describes as a “trusted foreign source” — “looked like Russian disinformation to me; they’re very good at it, you know.So Bump is citing Clinton whose campaign funded the dossier, hid the funding in its legal budget, denied its role to reporters, and actively pushed not one but two false claims with the FBI. Bump then adds, bizarrely, that “it’s strange to argue both that the Clinton campaign explicitly sought to dig up dirt linking Trump to Russia, leading to Steele’s work in June, and that it wasn’t until late July that they decided to make this a core strategy. The latter undermines the former.” I will leave that to you to figure out. Now on to the main event. Bump says it is false that “The report details how the Russian collusion conspiracy was invented by Clinton operatives and put into the now-infamous Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign.” Once again, when you get to his proof, it is not there. He does not defend the actual allegations in the dossier that Durham demolishes in his Report. He only suggests that others may have invented or pushed their own conspiracy theories a couple weeks earlier. Bump curiously starts the relevant timeline in June 2016 and emphasizes that the Clinton campaign did not make the collusion effort a “core strategy” until July. That formal decision is used rather than the earlier dates when Fusion was hired and the research funded by the campaign. Durham details how Fusion approached Steele in May 2016 to do the work. Bump details how figures like Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook were raising Russian concerns as proof that the Russian collusion allegations were not just the work of the campaign. Citing the Clinton campaign manager as evidence that others were raising the concerns is largely compelling. It also does not alter the fact that the campaign’s dossier manufactured false allegations that were then fed to the government and media. In reality, there were earlier concerns by the government with regard to Carter Page being targeted by the Russians. However, Durham notes that those concerns in March 2016 over Page were not because they believed that he was an asset. Rather American intelligence “was concerned about the Russians reaching out to Page” and found that Page was not “receptive to the recruitment efforts.” What Bump does not address are the findings in both the Inspector General and Durham reports that the Clinton campaign actively pushed the false claims into the FBI and into the media. The dossier would be used in the FISA court and former FBI Director James Comey would even continue reference the false “tee-tape” claim from the report in 2018. The dossier would also be cited for years as “corroborated” and reliable by the media as well as Democratic members of Congress. What is clear is that Clinton efforts were sufficiently pronounced by July 2016 that former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The Russian investigation was launched days after this briefing. Pointing out that there were others raising Russian contacts in the weeks before does not alter the role of the Clinton campaign in fostering the false collusion and Alfa Bank allegations as a political hit job. Bump also does not address how the campaign hid the funding and lied to reporters about its role. However, Bump saved the best for last. After telling readers that there was nothing to see here, he further assured them that “there’s an alternative way to consider the Russia probe: that Russia hoped Trump would win, that Trump was happy to have their help and that federal counterintelligence officials saw that as problematic.Call it Russian Collusion 2.0. In other words, as with his take on the Hunter Biden laptop, Bump is still arguing that it was the Russians after all. There is another possibility. As Bump wrote when he was falsely accusing Barr, “it is the job of the media to tell the truth.” This would be a good time to start. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. Wait! Washington Post’s Bump Makes the Last Pitch for Russian Collusion Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
A new study by Brown University's Cost of War Project has estimated that post-9/11 wars launched by the west have directly and indirectly resulted in more than 4.5 million dead, most of them civilians. Also today, France, US, and UK set to begin training Ukrainians to pilot western fighter jets. Watch the Liberty Report: New Study: 4.5 Million Died In Post-9/11 Wars Click on the headline to read the full story from The White House has nominated a Pfizer-tied doctor to become the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a statement released by the White House, President Biden declared Dr. Monica Bertagnolli “a world-class physician-scientist whose vision and leadership will ensure NIH continues to be an engine of innovation to improve the health of the American people.” The NIH is currently led by Lawrence Tabak, a Bill Gates stooge who replaced longtime NIH chief Francis Collins. Collins resigned after emails surfaced that he and Anthony Fauci, among others, coordinated with other influential figures to silence doctors and scientists who opposed the covid hysteria narratives. Dr Bertagnolli has received a stunning $290.8 million in research funding from Pfizer. The Daily Signal, a project of the Heritage Foundation, reported that from 2015 through 2021, she “received more than 116 grants from Pfizer, totaling $290.8 million, making up 89% of her research grants.” Anthony Fauci, who remains on salary at the NIH and has a taxpayer-funded US Marshals security detail, told The Washington Post that he personally advocated for her selection as the next NIH director. Bertagnolli has also received $17.4 million in grant funding from Janssen Research & Development LLC, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The revolving door strikes again, now more in your face than ever before. Reprinted with permission from The Dossier. Subscribe and support here. Biden's new NIH director nominee, who was selected by Fauci, received $290 million in grant funding from Pfizer Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity Donald Trump continued last week his effort to present himself as the peace candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Trump took another big step in this this endeavor when, during a Wednesday CNN “town hall” event in New Hampshire, he stated, when asked if as president he would continue the United States government sending money and weapons to the Ukraine government and whether he supports Ukraine winning its war against Russia, that the important thing to do is stop all the killing by settling the war quickly. Trump insisted that as president he could bring about such a settlement “in one day, 24 hours.” Also last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a much-talked-about potential primary competitor for Trump, headlined events on Thursday and Friday at which he signed bills into law and made presentations that could help to define himself as the freedom candidate in the Republican presidential primary should he end up throwing his hat into the ring. “Freedom” was right there on DeSantis’s podium in a sign bearing the title of his Thursday event: “Prescribe Freedom.” And, DeSantis, early in his speech, declared, “we’re gonna sign a series of bills here today to cement this state as the free state of Florida and as the freest state in the country.” That claim of accomplishment for freedom, should DeSantis run for president, will likely be the front and center message of his campaign. His ability to defend its truth and convince voters of its importance will, therefore, likely be important determiners of his campaign’s success. While DeSantis’s Thursday speech also delved into other areas, as suggested by the event title, the primary focus was on DeSantis’s efforts to ensure greater respect for freedom in Florida than in other states during the coronavirus scare that was used to excuse crackdowns at national, state, and local government levels across America, as well as efforts he has made since to protect Floridians from future crackdowns in the name of countering coronavirus or some new medical threat du jour. Then, at the Friday event, DeSantis stood behind a podium with a sign upon it declaring “Big Brother’s Digital Dollar.” DeSantis thus presented himself visually as the adversary of Big Brother, the freedom-suppressing nemesis of George Orwell’s novel 1984, in this event dedicated to highlighting efforts DeSantis is pursuing to counter a potential implementation by the Federal Reserve of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). DeSantis, in this Friday speech, presented his efforts against the implementation of a CBDC in terms of acting to protect freedom, declaring early on that “this today what we’re talking about is a good example of kind of the posture about we’re on offense in this state of Florida: we’re leading; we’re getting ahead of issues; and we’re making sure that your freedoms are protected against threats that may not even necessarily be here right now but are developing.” Throughout the Friday speech, DeSantis kept returning to protecting freedom as a reason for acting against a potential CBDC. For example, DeSantis stated: “Once they then have the ability to run a central bank digital currency, they’re gonna be able to have the window into what you’re doing with the money and have the ability to control where that money is going.” That control could be exercised, for example, suggested DeSantis, to limit how much gas you can buy based on claiming the limitation is to protect against global warming. Providing another example, DeSantis suggested someone who bought a gun one week could be prevented from buying another the next week. The CBDC would just be shut off for use in that transaction. “So that would empower the government to do, I think, a lot of things that would not be conducive to freedom,” stated DeSantis. “I think that anyone with their eyes open can see the dangers that this type of an arrangement would mean for Americans who want to exercise their financial independence and would like to be able to conduct business without having the government know every single transaction that they are making in real time,” DeSantis further stated. DeSantis concluded that a potential CBDC “is something that will be a massive transfer of power from individual consumers to a central authority, and that’s just fundamentally antithetical to a free society.” In opposition to a CBDC, DeSantis said he would be signing at the event legislation that would cause the state’s version of the Uniform Commercial Code to deny recognition of a Federal Reserve implemented CBDC. This action DeSantis contrasted with a movement in other states for those states’ versions of the Uniform Commercial Code to be altered to accommodate a CBDC. Should DeSantis enter the Republican presidential contest, we will likely have a situation where the leading candidate is seeking to sell himself as the peace candidate and the most popular challenger is promoting himself as the freedom candidate. This promises to be a good situation for proponents of reducing the United States government’s intervention both in America and abroad, especially if each candidate ultimately decides that the best course is to try to show that he in fact is the best candidate for both peace and freedom. A Trump versus DeSantis contest could be quite a change from other recent Republican presidential contests. If Trump and DeSantis settle into trying to prove which of them is the most dedicated to peace and freedom, there may be much reason for advocates of the US government respecting peace and freedom to cheer for both candidates as the primary contest proceeds. But, in many such observers’ minds a couple questions will persist. Do these candidates really mean it? Will they deliver on their promises once in office? The Peace Candidate Versus the Freedom Candidate in the Republican Presidential Primary Click on the headline to read the full story from
The Durham Report dropped yesterday and it's worse than we imagined. The FBI, together with the CIA and the Hillary Clinton campaign, colluded to undermine US elections and destroy the Trump presidency. What will be the next step? Watch today's Liberty Report: The Durham Report And The FBI Coup Against America Click on the headline to read the full story from Russia’s aerial attack on the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi is catching quite a bit of attention because of reports of a spike in Gamma rays following multiple, massive explosions. Educated speculation believes that the increase in Gamma radiation may be a consequence of Russian bombs blasting British supplied depleted uranium rounds into dust. The photo above shows the intact weapons storage facility just outside Khmelnytskyi taken some time before the Russia strike. Khmelnytskyi sits 217 miles to the west of Kiev, which means these strikes were most likely carried out by cruise missiles, such as the Kinzhal or Iskander. These strikes also provide vivid proof that Ukraine’s anti-missile air defense system is non-existent or disabled in and around Khmelnytskyi. Let’s look at some of the video evidence. There were at least three bombs that struck this weapons depot. The first strike comes at 4:29 am (see the first video below, which shows the three strikes). That strike apparently ignited secondary explosions from ammunition and explosives stored at the targeted facility. There is a second blast recorded at 5:07 am followed by a massive explosion at 6:10 am, resulting in a black mushroom cloud towering over Khmelnytskyi. 4:29 am, 5:07 am and 6:10 am 5:10 am 13 May 6:10 am 13 May 2023 The following photo shows the aftermath of the strikes. The big crater in the upper left hand part of the image obliterated a couple of buildings and forests. Maybe this attack, with multiple missiles, will kill the tired narrative that Russia has run out of missiles and is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It is not clear whether or not depleted uranium shells were vaporized. What is certain is that Ukraine lost an enormous quantity of munitions of various types that cannot be easily or quickly replaced. It also is noteworthy that Russia has been carrying out these kinds of strikes, not all with the same level of success, at multiple sites throughout Ukraine for the last eight days. Whatever small advances Ukraine has managed on the flanks of Bakhmut, they do not compensate for the massive loss incurred at Khmelnytskyi. This is a graphic reminder to the Ukrainians west of Kiev that they are at war and that Ukrainian military facilities are not safe. Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com. Khmelnytskyi — Did Russia Vaporize Depleted Uranium Shells? Click on the headline to read the full story from The economic forces – those post war strong tailwinds – that have shaped the last 35 years, and which accelerated gilded journeys through the western “plentiful era,” are no longer blowing in a favourable direction. They were already slowing, but now are reversing. The winds now have shifted 180° in direction – they are gusting headwinds. This is a structural shift within a long cycle. There are no quick “silver bullet” solutions. The “Cabaret” good-time years are gone. We will have to “make do” with less; and consequent political volatility is inevitable. China had earlier industrialized, giving us inflation-killing, cheap manufactures; Russia gave us the cheap energy that kept western economies (just) competitive, and (almost) inflation free. A “Frictionless Ease” at that point characterised the movements of goods, capital, people – everything. Today however, it is Friction and Impediment that is prevalent. The “turn” began with the US determination to not allow an Asian “heartland” to supplant it. But the shift has acquired its own powerful momentum, now generating severed trading blocs that are determined to shake free from “old hegemonies.” In place of “Frictionless Ease,” we have economic de-coupling: sanctions, asset seizures, legal protection degradation, regulatory discrimination; Green Agenda and ESG discrimination; national security “ring fences,” and narratives that cast swathes of hitherto mundane economic activity into borderline “treachery.” Simply put, there is friction … everywhere. On top of this general transition to friction, there are distinct dynamics that are turning a frictional base into raging headwinds. The first is geo-politics. The multi-polar sphere is rising. But it’s “pull” is not just for multi-polarity, per se; it is essentially about the re-appropriation of national autonomies; of state sovereignties and the recovery of discrete civilisational ways of being and values by aspirant multi-polar states. As Ted Snider has succinctly puts it: The monopoly of the dollar has not just assured US wealth: it has assured US power. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. That dollar dominance has often allowed the US to dictate ideological alignment or to impose economic and political structural adjustments on other countries. It has also allowed the US to become the only country in the world that can effectively sanction its opponents. Emancipation from the hegemony of the dollar – is emancipation from US hegemony.The flight from using the US dollar in trade therefore becomes the key mechanism to replacing the US-led unipolar world with a multipolar world. Plainly put: the US has over-used its weaponization of the dollar, and the tide of world opinion (even that of President Macron and some other EU states) has turned against it. Why is this so important? Simply, it has begun a global “run on the dollar” – rather like a “run on a bank,” as confidence ebbs. The second dynamic is the inflation “virus” – the historic scourge of all economies. The latter has quietly accumulated strength during the “golden era” of zero-cost credit, but then became turbo-charged with tariffs for China – with the EU self-electing to forego cheap energy in the hope that its boycott would implode Russia financially. And with the West’s widening “war” for the on-shoring of an ever-ballooning range of supply lines, to be ring-fenced under national-security designation. Essentially, the West embraced economic self-harm, “from an underlying mood of existential dread, a nagging suspicion that our civilisation may destroy itself, as so many others have done in the past.” (Hence the impulse to reassert a civilisational primacy, even at the price of accelerating a possible western economic self-suicide). Billionaire fund manager, Stan Druckenmuller, caustically notes the inherent tail risks – knowingly run – during the tailwind era of zero inflation/zero interest/abundant liquidity era: [But] … when you have free money, people do stupid things. When you have free money for 11 years, people do really stupid things. So there’s stuff under the hood, it’s starting to emerge. Obviously, the regional banks recently … But I would assume there’s a lot more bodies coming … It’s a scary cocktail that we’re being presented with.Well, who wants to be the party-pooper? Not the élite 1% certainly, who were doing very nicely from this paradigm. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low, and government auditors encouraged banks to buy long-dated US Treasury bonds and mortgages through giving them favourable accounting treatment. (The banks didn’t have to value them at their current market value in accounts so long as they could pretend they would hold them to maturity). Then the scourge of Inflation and interest rate hikes arrived – shredding the value of such assets. That has left liabilities uncovered and exposed. The authorities contrived at the building of this “free money” house of cards by letting it rip for so long. It was a gamble that inevitably would have its “ceiling,” a limit beyond which it could not be sustained further. By then, decades later, people had come to believe it could be extended – forever. Many still do. They fail to notice that the tailwind had turned 180°, and had become a strong inflationary headwind. Then arrived the truly extraordinary “Big Gamble”: Europe decided that it could “do” without cheap energy and natural resources (out of pique at Russia over Ukraine). It decided to bet big on new technology (technology that is yet to be evolved, or proven) arriving, and arriving in time, and at a cost that could sustain a competitive modern economy – in the absence of fossil fuel pump-priming for an infrastructure originally built that way. There is no assurance at all that this tech prospect will materialise. It may, but it may not. And that is a huge gamble. European states primordially fought wars in the 19th Century precisely to secure energy or resources such as oil, coal and iron ore. In WW1, Britain fought in the Middle East to secure the bunker fuel-oil that would allow British warships to be converted from coal to oil. The conversion to oil gave the UK navy the competitive edge over the coal-fired German fleet. But today’s EU has decided to eschew 19th Century fossil resources in a Panglossian bet on human ingenuity producing a technical revolution – to timetable – and on cost. “But missing is the fact that technology cannot create energy [at least of the type that modern society needs]. This human agency conviction has long proved overly-sanguine. Those who assume that the political world can be reconstructed by the efforts of human Will, have never before had to bet so heavily on technology over [fossil] energy – as the driver of our material advancement,” Helen Thomson writes. Betting on technology over fossil energy, however, is but half of the Big Gamble. The other half of it consists of the western economy being founded and constructed around cheap energy. That is its’ “business model”: It is hard to conceive of another. Will Europe spend the coming decades scrapping and replacing efficient energy infrastructure with new sources of energy, that for the main are no more than a “gleam in the eye” of an innovator? If so, it will be the first time in history that anyone has bet so heavily on tech, over energy. Never before has such redundancy of the existing energy infrastructure (and its loss of value) been seriously contemplated. And – never before – has efficient energy infrastructure been scrapped, to be replaced with new Green structures that are less efficient (see here and here as two examples), less reliable, and more expensive. It is the first time in history that such an investment has been made at this scale. That makes everything more expensive, harder, and less efficient. It is a recipe for further embedding inflation and economic degradation. Truly, it is to sail against howling headwinds. How will this infrastructure be financed? The Free Money era is behind us; fiscal cost is now REAL cost. Degraded efficiency, reliability and friction will then meet and contend with upcoming EU Net Zero ideology, with Climate becoming the pretext for introducing radical restrictions on ways of living. In the US, financialisation of the economy was supposed to extend western economic primacy. It did for a while, but ultimately financialised products ballooned, sucking dry the real economy that produced things, and employed people productively. These money-like derivative products (displacing the real economy) have tended more to the realm of the unreal. It is hard now to tell between money-things that are “real and unreal.” The FXT saga (for those who followed it) illustrated this precisely: How real, and in what way was the FXT “token”? The Green, ESG “products” fad sounds remarkably like a derivative idea descending out from the financialised product world: i.e promoting technological bling that attracts investment, but which becomes more and more detached from the real makings-and-doings of a classic economy – more abstract, more based on promises, hopes, and wishes than on things derived from nature. For the ordinary European, it is indeed “a scary cocktail that they’re being presented with,” one BBC document predicts. “The Net Zero objective cannot allow for “personal choice”: “What do truly low-carbon lifestyles look like – and can they really be achieved by personal choice alone?,” the article laments. Well, if the answer is “no” then that means the ultra-low CO2 lifestyle has to be for everybody. How we do that is a matter of “both individual and systems change.” Looking ahead, what does this “cocktail” portend? Political turbulence, probably. To paraphrase Churchill’s bluntness: “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which they [the people] will not put.” Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation. Big Gambles Heading Into Gusting Headwinds Click on the headline to read the full story from
In a shocking and bizarre speech at Howard University over the weekend, President Biden named "white supremacy" to be the greatest terrorist threat facing America today. For a president promising to unite America, will his divisive language resonate with voters? Also today, while Germany keeps shoveling money into Ukraine neocons in Washington are panicking that Congress may start questioning the need to fund Ukraine for "as long as it takes." Watch today's Liberty Report: Bizarre Biden To White America: 'You're All Racist Terrorists!' Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity |
Ron Paul
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