Saturday, March 26, 2022

New World Disorder

 Financially Insecure,


  The Saker", Andrei, interviews Michael Hudson (who described the "petrodollar" in "Super Imperialism" for Nixon and Kissinger to exploit):
​  ​Andrei:  How hard a hit would this Russian decision potentially have on the dollar?  And MBS negotiating with the PRC for oil sales in Renminbi.   Do you think that China and Russia will bring down the Petrodollar and will we see a commodities-backed Ruble and a commodities-backed Yuan replacing the Dollar?
​  ​Michael Hudson: The petrodollar will remain between the United States and its allies. But alongside it, there will be the Saudi-yuan and India-yuan arrangements for trade in oil, minerals, industrial products and probably international investment. Trade in these products will be able to occur in a number of currencies, probably on a number of exchanges. It is not clear whether some formal or informal arbitrage may develop between these areas. That is part of what is to be designed.  To oversee and regulate the resulting financial and trade arrangements, an alternative to the IMF is needed. The U.S. will not join any organization in which it does not have veto power, so we will see a division of the world into different trading and monetary areas.  The result is not so much a conflict as two quite different operating philosophies as the non-U.S. world develops its alternative to financialized neoliberalism.
​  ​Andrei:  The US has basically stolen Russian gold and foreign currency.  The Russians claim that the US has shot itself in the foot and that this will ruin the reputation of the dollar, do you agree with that?
​  ​Michael Hudson: Absolutely: Iran after the Shah was overthrown, Afghanistan’s foreign reserves earlier this year, Venezuela’s gold held in the Bank of England, and now Russia. Even timid Germany has asked that airplanes begin flying its gold held in the New York Fed back to Germany!

​Tom Luongo has unusually good analysis here:  NATO and Russia — Whistling Past Each Other’s Graveyards   
Excerpts:   The fault for this gap lies wholly with NATO and the West who have steadily advanced until they reached the Russian border at the Donbass. To discuss this in any other terms is pathetic and just an excuse to exercise one’s inherent racism and bloodlust against Russians...
  Russia’s list of grievances is as long as any bill that passes through a Congressional committee these days. But the big ones have been the attempts on flipping Belarus and Kazakhstan. These two pivotal countries were victims of failed revolutions to overthrow the governments there and install NATO-controlled puppets, trying to replicate the ‘victory’ in Ukraine in 2014.
 Not only did they fail miserably, if anything they furthered Russia’s aims to bring the former Soviet republics back into their orbit and end their flirtations with the West. The only one of these left, really, is Ukraine....
..This war was chosen by the West. It was designed this way. All “attempts” at diplomacy by NATO, the UK, France and the US were simply nothing more than time-buying exercises to build up Ukraine’s strength to launch a blitz of the Donbass and sanction Russia for even responding....
..Make no mistake, Minsk II was nothing more than another time-buying exercise by NATO and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to get Nordstream 2 completed and allow NATO to build up the Ukrainian military to the point where it could credibly blitz the Donbass.
  When Putin ordered a massive multi-front invasion he was simply pre-empting an attack that was coming.
​  ​The sanctions packages implemented since then were already prepared. They were happening no matter what move Putin made. There was no different outcome here, only the dates on which these events were going to take place.
​  ​NATO chose the place. Putin chose the time. Everything else is chatter and noise.​..
​  The losses on both sides will be horrific and high. The chaos unleashed on Ukrainian civilians is terrible. The scenes in recently ‘liberated’ Mariupol are heart breaking...
​  ​Opening salvos have been fired, now the real war for the future of humanity begins at the legal and financial level...
..Since the EU are not reliable actors Russia put them on the published ‘unfriendly list’ of countries that now are allowed to pay for their Russian exports in either rubles (announced by Putin earlier this week) or gold (announced yesterday).​..
​  ​Russia has the real power here because it produces what the world needs while the people pushing this war are doing so from an increasingly shaky foundation of paper assets.
​  ​So, contracts be damned, it’s gold or rubles for natural gas, unfriendly Europe.
​  ​It’s bitcoin or local currencies for everyone else.
​  ​Ukraine will be neutral. China will remain friendly. Words matter when a person wants them to matter.
​  ​And from where I’ve sat these past ten years the Russians have honored their words while the West has used them as weapons.

​"Joe Biden" met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw today. They met privately for a couple of hours, declared friendship and commitments to the long-term problem that is "Ukraine" and especially reaffirmed the NATO protection of NATO member states. "Biden" "Stands with Ukraine, period" (or perhaps somewhat behind Ukraine). The substance of their talks is unclear, but would naturally involve Polish claims on western "Ukraine". Poland does not want to take risks or blame, would rather let Russia take all the blame, but has nationalistic reasons to reclaim western Ukraine (Galicia and its problems) as part of Poland. If Galicia becomes part of Poland, it will be covered by NATO, but Polish incursions into Ukraine would presumably be at Poland's own risk. Some agreements will need to be reached...

​  ​Despite Kiev’s attempts to involve NATO in a war with Russia and establish a no fly zone over Ukraine, the alliance has once again confirmed its unwillingness to get into a military confrontation with the Russian Army.
​  ​Instead, the alliance has decided to strengthen the defense of its own territories. Four additional multinational NATO combat groups of 40,000 troops will be deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on a permanent basis.
​  ​Biden offered to Ukraine to resolve territorial issues with Moscow itself, but left the opportunity for the alliance to use force against Russia. The US President noted that NATO could intervene in the conflict in the case of the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. Given the example of false flag chemical weapon attacks in the war in Syria, the risks of provocation by the Kiev regime and the threat to civilians and military alike on the territory of Ukraine have increased.
​  ​Poland’s proposal to deploy NATO military units in Ukraine was rejected. However, this does not exclude the possibility of Poland’s participation in the war in Ukraine outside the alliance. Warsaw intends to introduce its contingent in the western regions of Ukraine to support the “fraternal Ukrainian people” and not miss the opportunity to establish its own control over the historically disputed territories. Apparently, this will be the main topic of negotiations between Biden and Duda on March 2​6​.


​Not mentioned is payment for petroleum products in Rubles or gold.​
EU Steps Back From Impractical Russia Oil Embargo

​Central Bank Digital currencies (not your friend) are poised to "become the solution" to collapse of global petrodollar financial order (also not your friend).
​  ​The findings of the experimental CBDC program could assist in the adoption of CBDC international settlement for G-20 nations, though given the rising geopolitical fissures in the so-called “international rules based order”, it is far from clear which countries would be willing to engage with one another in such a way.
​  ​China has already launched its own digital yuan and is piloting its use in more than a dozen cities and regions. It has also been experimenting with its cross-border functionality. This has ignited fears in the West that that U.S. “financial leadership” is under threat — fears that have been magnified by the way US and EU sanctions against Russia, particularly the confiscation of a large chunk of Russia’s foreign currency reserves have backfired...
It will grant central banks far more power over our payment behavior.
That power could be used to “program” our spending.
No limit on negative interest rates.
Financial exclusion on steroids.
​  ​Lyons warns that CBDCs, “if not deliberately and carefully constrained in advance by law,… have the potential to become even more than a technocratic central planner’s dream. They could represent the single greatest expansion of totalitarian power in history.”

​Pepe Escobar, ​Make Nazism Great Again​  (sort of a haphazard history of Galicia and fascism through world wars and CIA "patronage")
The supreme target is regime change in Russia, Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.

​From the (Russian) horse's mouth, an assessment of the first month of the special police operation to de-nazify Ukraine:
...The secret cipher telegrams of the 4th brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine and classified documents captured by Russian servicemen revealed the plan for the preparation of the strike groups for offensive actions in the zone of the so-called “joint forces operation” in the Donbass. All measures of the nationalists’ combat coordination were ordered to be completed by February 28. In order to start performing combat missions as part of the Ukrainian “joint forces operation” in the Donbass in March 2022. Since February 2022, Ukrainian troops have multiplied artillery attacks on Donbass with prohibited large-caliber artillery weapons...

Moon of Alabama (German) Various national and regional interests will diverge from US/NATO under economic stress.
Some Likely Longterm Effects Of The War In Ukraine  

Weird and unexpected... Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia
...Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” reported Newsweek in an article entitled, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”.
​  ​The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”
​  ​A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: “We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”

​"I'm shocked, shocked..." ​ Horowitz: 5 ways DOD’s recalibrated health surveillance data looks like a fraudulent attempt to cover vaccine injury

(It was just "necessary" to get the "compliance" higher.)
Why Anger towards the Unvaccinated was Intentional Psychological Manipulation
A look at a study from 2020

National Geographic Asks: Why Is It So Hard to Compensate People for Serious Vaccine Injury?
​...​After losing several jobs worth more than $40,000 in wages, ​​Robinson said he felt “strong-armed” by his industry. “It became clear to me that the message in the industry was, if you don’t get vaccinated, you ain’t working,” Robinson said.
​  ​Like McFadden, Robinson developed multiple blood clots after his J&J jab, including one in his jugular vein. He’s now taking blood thinners and can’t do stunts, so he’s losing money — more than the wage cap of $50,000 established under the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program (CICP), the government-run program for compensating people injured by COVID vaccines or other countermeasures.
​  ​‘If the government’s going to force you to do something, they should provide compensation if they’re screwing you over,’ he said.”...
​...​“Vaccine injury compensation may be a last line of support for families confronting devastating or lifelong medical conditions because we don’t have a medical or social safety net that reliably keeps sick and disabled people out of poverty in this country”​ ...
​...One might even conclude it is analogous in practice to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of the criminal courts: for CICP, the vaccines are in effect innocent until proven guilty.​..
​...​CICP doesn’t even have an injury table for COVID vaccines, according to Haelle. As a result, very few paid claims are paid and the public has little trust in the system.

​The most substantial COVID-related risk to healthy minors is from the shots...
664 Reports of Myocarditis in 5- to 17-Year-Olds After COVID Shots, VAERS Data Show
VAERS data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included a total of 1,195,396 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 26,059 deaths and 211,584 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 18, 2022.

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Google Censors Narrative Threats

 Seeking Clarification,


  Last night I noticed an email from Google that the blog post "Worst Enemy" from 3/19/22 had been "deleted" due to violation of some condition in the list on their website, to which they thoughtfully sent a link for my edification.
The post had garnered over 100 views on Blogger, and 380 on Substack, where it remains uncensored  https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/worst-enemy?s=w 

  I started up the Substack blog after the 2/22/22 post "Two New Countries" prompted Google to delete my blog and gmail account. 
It was  the same vague "figure  out your sin" message. 
We jumped through Google's hoops and it was all reinstated, including the "Two New Countries" post, which had looked at Russian recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, declared 8 years previously by the republics, under duress of Ukrainian nationalist genocide, following the US-instigated 2014 coup.
Substack allowed me to send to subscribers, so I did not have to do that via gmail, which was the likely reason our gmail account was "disappeared" at the same time as Johnday's Blog.
  I had started Johnday's Blog in spring 2016, when my bcc email news-sends to about 200 friends started getting blocked, no matter what I did to comply. The main anti-narrative work I was doing was documenting the Democratic Primary fraud, which was disenfranchising Sanders voters (like myself). That censorship stopped 3 days after Trump was elected (without my help. I voted for Jill Stein). It happened again leading up to the 2018 and 2020 elections, b ut people could look at the blog if the email did not go through.
  There has been censorship associated with my medical investigations of the COVID pandemic, suppression of early and hospital medical treatments, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The American Board of Family Medicine is reviewing my Board Certification status (31 years) for "discouraging patients from vaccination against COVID-19", also known as "informed consent". They cited the (factual, linked) information on my blog as damning evidence. They are dragging this process out.

  What is consistent is that information disputing or disproving the current Control-Narrative being promulgated by power-elites is what will be censored.
The "Worst Enemy" post addressed this specifically, and included multiple narrative-deflating links and excerpts, opening with an essay that explained how "The West Is At War With Itself", or self-defeating, or "its own worst enemy". This begs the question of "why that post?". There was analysis of the Ukraine war from various sometimes-censored Russian and Russia-friendly sites.

  Mish Shedlock may crack that nut open with this article about how the Biden administration is driving oil prices up, while pretending to try to lower them.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-doing-everything-possible-drive-price-oil-some-its-illegal
It is not merely the sanctions against Russian oil and gas. There is more. 
  I have been aware of predictions that the world would face an oil supply crisis in 2023 since late 2021. It seems to me that the price shock early this year will reduce the demand for oil at these high prices  by depressing economies. That "heads it off at the pass", softening the hard supply-inadequacy shock.
  The control-narrative of war-with-Russia is tried and true, worked well for the "owners" for most of my life, and has now been fully-rehabilitated for the peak-oil crisis.
Last June Gail Tverberg had this analysis:  Where Energy Modeling Goes Wrong
Summary: The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different.
  The modeling that comes closest to being correct is that which underlies the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This modeling was based on physical quantities of resources, with no financial system whatsoever. The base model, shown here, indicates that limits would be reached a few years later than we actually seem to be reaching them. The dotted black line in Figure 1 indicates where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on the limits we already seemed to be reaching at that time.
image.png

​  There is a control-narrative scramble to herd people into a response to the end-of-cheap-energy, as pollution, global warming, and global shortages of critical minerals for batteries, chips and electric motors break the finely tuned global economy and supply chains. 
  "We" tried Global-Warming/climate-change, but it was hard to get people motivated to change, and businesses still had to maximize profits and compete, so buying an electric car, solar panels and wind turbines happened, but there was no reduction in mining or burning.​ 
Climate change is happening, but it's less of  threat than running short of oil, which is slated to happen first.

  "COVID-Pandemic" control-narrative DID decrease global oil usage, even American oil consumption decreased, but that control-narrative is worn out. It spent its last burst on mandating the deadly mRNA gene-therapy "vaccines", which make people up to 3 times as likely to catch the latest COVID variant when it comes to town.



  The WAR-With-Russia control-narrative can be "turned up to eleven", and evokes the rational fear of nuclear Armageddon. Russia and Europe seem to be cooperating. What could go wrong? 
  War could go wrong, of course, but there are a lot of economic and financial details to work out.  There is going to be a "new" world financial order, and all of the players want to control it so that it sends them rent payments without fail. I commonly see the threat of the Chinese Yuan/renminbi displacing the dollar as global reserve currency shot down, but it is a straw-man threat. 
  What the Chinese, Russians, other Asian countries, Iran and others are looking at is a specific global trade currency, such as John Maynard Keynes described in the 1930s-1940s, but which was not adopted at Bretton Woods. It would be backed by commodities, like gold, oil, wheat, rice and soybeans, and actual industrial output from factories. Saudi Arabia is making it clear that it is happy to consider divorce from the $US, as that "protection" deal looks like it might better be serviced by Russia and China soon.
  What the global banking friends would like to see is global digital currency, and they are willing to give us free-money in a digital account so that we will become reliant upon it. California seeks to be an innovator, but the EU is all over it, too. 
Yes, the currency will hyperinflate this way, but novel "fixes" like eliminating your money will become available to central bankers.

  In general  drjohnsblog.substack.com will be a better place to look for my research as we go forward into harsher economic times, and probably harsher censorship of truthful foils to the dominant control-narrative. "WAR!" will be the control narrative for the foreseeable future, and the real problem will be global resource depletion.
  Keep those points in mind, and steer towards food security and lower cost living, especially where you cn grow vegetables and the local people and weather won't (usually) try to kill you.

Thought Criminal
(pictured with new shoots sprouting from banana plant)


Monday, March 21, 2022

Evoking Human Responses

 Responsive Humans,


  Tom Luongo analyzes the substance of the national players in Russia and the US, vs the media portrayals which shape public perceptions of the conflict, and public emotions. While Russia fights an unusually lopsided "police action" to de-nazify Ukraine, destroy it's NATO-harmonious military structure, impose neutrality and a political restart, and assure the safety of ethnic Russians, western propaganda only misinforms and shows pictures of Ukrainian children murdered by Ukrainian Azov Battalion and similar groups, and shows Vladimir Putin scowling, as the perpetrator.
  Russia trolled the west in early February about the predicted "invasion of Ukraine", asking what day it would begin, and pointing out that they had nowhere near enough forces near the border to invade. Indeed, they did not have, not by any traditional military calculation. The NATO-trained Ukrainian army and reservists number about 600,000. An invading force should be 3 X that, so 1,800,00. Russia had about 200,000 military personnel on Ukraine's border, enough to repel and counter-attack, but not to invade. The US/NATO were aware of this, and would naturally have expected a much smaller Russian action to defend Donbass civilians, as artillery attacks upon them were ramped up to 1200 shells per day in mid February.
  Russian forces did something original in warfare. They "invaded" with 1/3 of the defending force, and are making it work. They held their best units and modern equipment in reserve, against a counter-attack by the main enemy, NATO. They are not destroying cities and knocking out food supplies and utilities, because the people of Ukraine are not to be subjugated, just as the Russians have been saying. They are exhausting the Ukrainian military forces and, indeed, concentrating upon ridding the Donbass of the right-wing Ukrainian nationalist forces, by first making them run out of fuel, artillery and sleep.
  Putin's interviews with Oliver Stone in 2016 are referenced, and compared to Lindsey Graham's calls to somehow assassinatePutin to fix this problem. Stone asked Putin about the multiple assassination attampts, which had already been made upon his life. Putin resolutely replied with a Russian folk saying that, "he who is destined to hang, does not drown". Putin long ago invested his earthly life in the cause of Russian Nationalism. He made self deprecating humor with this saying, while making clear that he saw his fated-destiny as the deciding factor in what his life span might be.
  Western politicians, who have no skin-in-the game, are experiencing surprise and frustration at being caught unprepared for a real war with Russia. The Russian leader has lost the propaganda war in the west, but the Russian nation is galvanized, with Russian skin in the game. The rest of the world is watching the western empire, again paralyzed by a much smaller, yet more determined opponent.  
  Propaganda lies are very unlikely to galvanize western populations to the point where they are prepared to fight a land war in their home-towns. Somehow 1/3 of Americans do answer a poll that they support risking nuclear war to thwart Russian aggression. Is this the victory of concept over substance?

The Vineyard of the Saker blog looks at the Psy-Ops, which the west is winning at-home, but has lost in Russia, as fifth-columninsts and sixth-columnists duck and cover (he defines these terms well, which I needed).
​  ​The first week of the war went extremely well from a purely military point of view, but from a socio-political point of view, I know that a lot of Russian vacillated and really freaked out.
​  ​But then, the western PSYOPs made a huge mistake: they gave free reign to truly rabid and racist russophobia while, at the same time, openly proclaiming the Nazi regime in Kiev as “heroic” defenders of the West.  It is one thing to hear that your dictator Putin and his Mordor will be sanctioned to smithereens and quite another to feel the overt, direct and targeted hatred against you and your people, that is something you perceive less with your mind and more, I would say, with you “skin” or “guts”.  Once it became obvious that the West’s hate for Russia is absolute and total and that the “best” Russians can hope from our “western friends” is to be treated like Native Americans or the Boers by the Anglos, which is not different at all from how the Nazis treated Russians, most Russian figured out what this was really all about since Day 1 and even much before (I would argue since about 1000 years).
​  ​That was pretty much all it took to “switch over” the mode of many Russians from “of my God, what will happen next?” to “we shall never surrender” or, on the words of Molotov, “Ours is a righteous cause. The enemy shall be defeated. Victory will be ours” (June 22, 1941).

  ​Michael Snyder looks at the emotional-fatigue Americans have been subjected to by the psy-ops employed here on the-home-front since 2016.​
6 Years Of Being Manipulated By Manufactured Waves Of Outrage With No End In Sight
​  ​For the past six years, the American people have been emotionally manipulated by what I call “manufactured waves of outrage”.  Once the corporate media identifies a trigger, it will obsessively focus on it for weeks or months on end, and the narrative that develops will be echoed and magnified by millions upon millions of social media denizens.  Before too long, much of the population is whipped up into an irrational emotional frenzy, and that frenzy is used to move certain agendas forward.

​John Ward looks at Credit-Default-Swap risks in the western financial system. Russia did not "default" on bonded debt to westerners Friday, even though Russian central bank assets were frozen by the US/EU/UK. Russia deposited Rubles in Russian banks for the creditors. If Russia does the same thing next month, "default" will be declared, and the network of CDSs will be called, with lots of counterparties failing, which cannot actually be calculated, because these instruments obscure risk, rather than mitigating it, as real insurance would. Germany may be on-tap for more than Germany can conceivably cover.​
​  ​In a nutshell, driving Russia into default risks a nuclear chain reaction that is impossible to predict….and anyone telling you otherwise (eg the Pentagon) is lying.
​ Ultimately, NATO could well find itself sitting in Europe alongside bankrupt donators, and wondering what to do next. Somehow, I doubt very much if media demonisation is going to cut it in that context. But I am very clear on the fact that the Great Reset numpties haven’t done proper due diligence on the outcome….and even where they have, you can rest assured that the audit guys were lying to them.


​Moon of Alabama has "bits of interest from the war in Ukraine". These 3 seem most important to me. There is good perspective,also.
Destroyed Kiev shopping mall was used as weapon and ammunition depot.
Despite a hopeless situation the government in Kiev rejects to end war in Mariupol.
Unconfirmed: Zelensky rejects Ukrainian military request for retreat from the Donbas front.

SouthFront says that the main actions of the Russian and Novorussian forces are concentrated upon final elimination of Ukrainian military forces from Mariupol and the Donbass. Those forces cannot be reinforced and have been denied permission to make and orderly retreat. They are being sacrificed.
​  ​As of March 20, fierce street fighting continues in the city of Mariupol. Units of the Russian Armed Forces and DPR were developing their advance in the city. The grouping of Kyiv’s forces encircled there is being gradually destroyed.
​  ​It is interesting to note that according to satellite images that appeared online the operation is supported by Russian warships.


​Foreign "trainers" are successfully targeted again, and are moving to Poland as a result.​
​  ​Russian forces hit a Ukrainian special forces training center early on Sunday, killing more than 100 local troops and foreign mercenaries, the Ministry of Defense has said.
​  ​A Ukrainian Special Operations Forces training center near the town of Ovruch in the northern Zhytomyr Region, which hosted the mercenaries, was targeted by “high-precision air-launched missiles,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing.

​  ​The airstrike has eliminated more than 100 Ukrainian special ops troops and foreign soldiers of fortune, he added.
​  ​A week ago, Russia destroyed another mercenary base at the Yavoriv range in the western Lviv region, saying that up to 180 foreign fighters were killed there.
​  ​Kiev disputed those numbers and put the death toll at 35 people. It also insisted that all those who died in the attack were Ukrainian.

  ​If Poland is to be the new NATO staging ground to support the anti-Russian side of the Ukrainian civil-war, then Polish and mercenary forces, and supply-trains will need much better defenses, much much better. Are you sure you want to try this?
UK to deploy air defense missiles to Poland
London says the move will protect Warsaw against “Russian aggression”.

The Patriot missile system will be used to protect one NATO base in Slovakia. It augments Soviet era S-300 missiles to target incoming airplane and missile attacks.
Ukraine’s neighbor begins deployment of NATO’s air defense system
The US-made Patriot system won’t be a replacement for the Russian S-300, Slovakia’s defense minister has said


​There are currently no defenses against this new "Kinzhal" missile system. It has been used to destroy a hardened underground bunker.
​  ​"The combat use of the Kinzhal air-launched missile system has confirmed its effectiveness in destroying highly protected special enemy targets," he said. "Strikes by this air-launched missile system at military infrastructure facilities of Ukraine during the special military operation will continue."
​  ​The Kinzhal missile is used with a conventional warhead, the spokesman said.
​  ​Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his speech to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018, gave a brief summary of the Kinzhal missile system’s characteristics: Its speed is 10 times the speed of sound; the range is more than 2,000 km; the missile can perform evasive maneuvers at every stage of its flight, which allows it to overcome all air defense and missile defense systems, and can be equipped with conventional and nuclear warheads.


​So if "we" sanction "everybody", "We Win", right?
US Recklessly Eyes China as Target in Economic War, Joe Lauria​
​  ​After these statements it seemed clear the U.S. was trying to lay the groundwork for a truly reckless idea: to tie China to the war so it could sanction it perhaps along the lines of what the West has already laid on Russia.
  ​Then on Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spelled it out: “We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support. Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression, while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter.” He added: “We will not hesitate to impose costs.”...
​  ​All this was preparation for President Joe Biden’s video-call on Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Biden warned Xi not to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine or there would be “consequences” to pay...
​  ​Xi, however, warned Biden that the U.S. sanctions on Russia could trigger a worldwide economic crisis, apparently implying that the crisis would be far worse if the sanctions were extended to China...
​  ​The U.S. recognizes that its economic war against Russia could well fail because of the close and expanding economic and financial ties between Moscow and Beijing. But it is too late for the United States...
​  ​The U.S. has turned the majority of the world’s population against it. And it is now threatening to blow up the world economy. Cutting off trade and finance to Russia has already boomeranged on Western countries, driving up prices, especially at the pump. Instead of prompting a popular uprising in Russia as a result of its sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has actually risen since the invasion.
​  ​Adding China as a target of its economic war could drive the populations of the U.S. and Europe against their own governments instead.


​This is an insightful and even-handed explanation of the many layers of history of this region.
Historic roots of the Donbass problem explained
The region has a distinct identity and doesn’t fit neatly into either Russia or Ukraine


Moon of Alabama looks at what the likely borders of the new Ukraine and Novorusia are likely to be after the police-action finishes.



David Stockman gives his (colorful and punchy) historical rundown and makes a similar guess as to what the new borders will be, for the same reasons.



Is the Petrodollar Swaying? ​ ​By Ghassan Kadi for the Saker Blog
​  ​The Petrodollar was meant to be a win-win agreement in which America propped up its economy, and in return supplied Saudi Arabia with security.
As time went by, the deal became increasingly one-sided, one in which Saudi Arabia was getting the spiky end of the pineapple. The Saudis have been feeling shafted for a long time, but they did not have enough intestinal fortitude to stand up and show their dismay to Uncle Sam.​..
America does not expect MBS to only condemn Russia and mirror the sanctions, but it also expects him to pump more oil into the global market in order to meet the shortfall created by the sanctions.
  MBS is not playing ball the way America wants him to play. He is refusing to condemn Russia, thus far refusing to lift oil production. But most seriously, he is discussing with China doing oil transactions in the Yuan (Renminbi) instead of the USD...
  MBS seems to be maturing enough to know how to play the game of the big boys. What is really pertinent is that the so-called Petrodollar, and what is left of its future, rest in his hands; and America has no say in this. Even as I finalize this article, news of a USD collapse is already being reported on the mainstream media.   With the deployment of the Kinzhal missile yesterday, the first-ever use of hypersonic weapons in combat, we can surely be certain that the changes we are witnessing now, economic or military, are not ones that the West ever desired or envisaged.

Natural gas contains more hydrogen and less carbon, so makes less CO2 when burned. It is presented as a "transition fuel", but the cost of extracting it is rising rapidly. The current energy return on energy invested is workable, but becomes unworkable for the current industrial system if the investment-cost of gas effectively doubles. It is expected to triple or quadruple by 2050. Thanks Charles.
Assessing Global Long-Term EROI of Gas: A Net-Energy Perspective on the Energy Transition​ 
​..​We find that the energy necessary to produce gas (including direct and indirect energy and material costs) corresponds to 6.7% of the gross energy produced at present, and is growing at an exponential rate: by 2050, it will reach 23.7%.

​Food insecurity makes human populations warlike.​
NOAA Warns US Megadrought Will Persist; May Impact Food Supply Chains

​Why did "we" win over "them" after 100,000 years of competition? Immune systems? More fertile? Adapted better to something or other? Thanks Charles. 
War in the time of Neanderthals: How our species battled for supremacy for over 100,000 years
To war is human – and Neanderthals were very like us.

​,,​Predatory land mammals are territorial, especially pack-hunters. Like lions, wolves and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals were cooperative big-game hunters. These predators, sitting atop the food chain, have few predators of their own, so overpopulation drives conflict over hunting grounds. Neanderthals faced the same problem; if other species didn’t control their numbers, conflict would have...
..War isn’t a modern invention, but an ancient, fundamental part of our humanity. Historically, all peoples warred. Our oldest writings are filled with war stories. Archaeology reveals ancient fortresses and battles, and sites of prehistoric massacres going back millennia.
​  ​To war is human – and Neanderthals were very like us. We’re remarkably similar in our skull and skeletal anatomy, and share 99.7% of our DNA. Behaviourally, Neanderthals were astonishingly like us. They made fire, buried their dead, fashioned jewellery from seashells and animal teeth, made artwork and stone shrines. If Neanderthals shared so many of our creative instincts, they probably shared many of our destructive instincts, too..​.
..The best evidence that Neanderthals not only fought but excelled at war, is that they met us and weren’t immediately overrun. Instead, for around 100,000 years, Neanderthals resisted modern human expansion...
..Why else would we take so long to leave Africa? Not because the environment was hostile but because Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe and Asia.​..​

​  I think that to avoid our warlike group impulses we need to keep ourselves securely fed. However, we outgrow our food supplies. When this happens, our sociopathic rulers direct us to kill our neighbors and take their food supplies and territory.
  I see this coming our way. My proactive adaptation is to grow a garden and store a bit of food in a rural area where the weather mostly won't actually kill you if you run out of fuel and electricity. This just mitigates our chances of being targeted, I think. It's what we can manage. To be more safe, we need to improve food security of the community. How does one family do that? I have various long term community-garden ideas. I see people in Yoakum growing vegetables already. It's traditional, Most people don't grow vegetables.​ Our garden is well displayed to the street. 
It's not a very busy street. We're probably not very influential.

Public Gardener
(pictured pushing the mower by the spring equinox garden yesterday)


Friday, March 18, 2022

Mind Control Tech Advances

 Free Thinkers,


  This research article by Spartacus follows upon others that reveal a deep intelligence investment in the technology of SARS-CoV-2, the engineered virus, now with variations, and genetic-engineering "vaccines" to help your body make spike protein itself, for months on end. 
This explains a frighteningly plausible big picture of the road to Build Back Better World.

A Hypothetical Mind Control System

Based on the aforementioned technologies, we at ICENI have come up with a concept for what mind control by these methods may look like:

Someone receives a COVID-19 vaccine. This vaccine contains both genetic material coding for SARS-CoV-2 Spike and mind control nanotransducers.

Genetic material for SARS-CoV-2 Spike becomes integrated into genome via LINE-1 reverse transcription. Subject now constantly produces Spike.

SARS-CoV-2 Spike injures and permeabilizes the blood-brain barrier, allowing the nanotransducers to cross the BBB and enter the brain (this endothelial toxicity also causes a great deal of blood clotting abnormalities in many people).

Nanotech crosses cell membranes and takes up residence in, or alongside, the neurons.

Some of the nanotransducers self-assemble into larger antennae, electrodes, and nanoelectronic components capable of receiving RF in frequency ranges that can deeply penetrate brain tissue.

5G base stations use beamforming and MIMO to focus directed beams of RF into the subjects’ heads.

The RF energizes the nanotransducers by wireless harvested power.

An external encoder/decoder unit begins sending signals to stimulate specific brain regions, with the nanotransducers acting as an interface.

The subject is now under the effects of precision mind control.

​   ​There are many drawbacks with this method. The spatial resolution and fidelity of using RF for this is very low. Two-way communication may be an insurmountable technical hurdle, but one-way stimulation of a specific brain region may be possible. Another drawback is the rather extreme EMF exposure the brain suffers, with far-field RF being beamed directly into it.

​  ​Finer control and two-way communication may be possible with near-field electromagnetic resonance instead of RF harvesting, using something far more intimate and obvious, such as a neurohelmet (like with Battelle’s BrainSTORMS).​..

​  ​Here’s a link to a clip of Dr. Pierre Gilbert, in 1995, stating, quite literally, that the Elites were planning to inject people with mandatory vaccines that would contain nanoparticles that would enter the brain and act as RF receivers.​ 

​  However, BCIs (brain computer interfaces) have a dark underbelly. Their rapid development is being funded and backed by military think tanks and intelligence agencies, with the supposed goal of giving soldiers an edge in combat, allowing them to control drones with their minds and have video feeds piped right into their heads.

​  ​Soldiers with BCIs implanted in their brains could have their sensory perception and emotional regulation altered to view the enemy as monsters, just like that one Black Mirror episode. Or, they could have their emotions deadened completely to make them fine with killing. Such a military is also coup-proof. Any rebellious thoughts are simply deleted from their heads. Their anxieties, erased by stimulation of their pleasure centers. Their fear, their hatred, abolished. Basically, they’re reduced to bio-robots.

​  ​The same technology could also be applied to the citizenry, without our knowledge or consent, neutralizing aggression and self-interested tendencies and rendering us docile and compliant servants of the technocratic New World Order. You, the reader, may view this as highly unethical, and it is. However, it is not illegal. There are no regulations that specifically forbid BCIs from being used to alter people’s affective states, mood, and cognition, thereby turning them into obedient slaves. It is the task of regulators to make autonomy-violating BCIs illegal before they can be used to harm us.​..

​  Consider what the World Economic Forum said, about how people will own nothing and will be happy. What they mean by this is that servitization will replace private property (i.e. renting things on a temporary basis, like driverless Ubers, Lime bikes, and Rug Doctors), and that the remainder of the satisfaction of owning things will be made up of what we at ICENI call techno-psychosocialization; using things like BCIs and drugs to provide a reward stimulus that would have been previously obtained by accomplishing real goals and obtaining real goods through real effort.​..

​  With a wealthy upper caste interested in anti-natalism, Neo-Malthusianism, and “sustainability”, one can be certain that techno-psychosocialization would be used to limit the luxuries of the lower classes and provide an illusory substitute. With a neural lace pumping pleasure into your brain, you could be living in a shanty town built from corrugated aluminum like in Ready Player One and feel like you’re on top of the world. Fried locusts would taste like caviar to you.​..

​  ​Picture if they had the ability not only to make people comfortable with their own genocide, but actually have them walk into a disposal unit with a smile on their faces, all at the touch of a button.

​(pictured raking dirt)


Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Petro Yuan

 Oil Purchasers,


  The author of this article downplays the significance of Saudi oil being sold in Chinese Yuan/renminbi. 
Importantly, this non-dollar sales arrangement eliminates the foundation of the petro-dollar, which Nixon/Kissinger negotiated with Saudi Arabia after the US default from the Bretton Woods gold standard, after American gold was depleted to the point that it could not honor international demands for gold.
  In the past the American military has wrought death and destruction upon nations which have dared to sell oil for other currencies, countries such as Iraq and Libya. Iran has weathered American opprobrium for a long time now, and though under duress, has not capitulated. 
Iran is selling a lot of oil to the Chinese, but we don't know the $US value of it. 
Saudi Arabia has poor relations with Iran, but can observe which way the wind is now blowing, and has good relations with Russia and China, the new guarantors of military and economic security in the changing "world order".
  It is likely that the US will attack Saudi Arabia in some way for this, and China, in some way, but the options are much narrower now. All of the options for attacking Saudi Arabia and China will also degrade US military and-or financial power. The way the "American" decisions have been made recently makes me think that there is a cabal in power which is intentionally working against actual American national interests. It is possibly just hubris and very bad judgement, but it is rapidly degrading American status as a global power,while simultaneously setting up a particularly bad economic status for deeply indebted Americans after the fall of empire. How will America export enough to repay these vast debts when the dollar is no longer accepted at-face-value, but needs to be backed by valuable material exports like oil, wheat, soybeans and cotton? What will Americans eat, burn and wear?
​  ​War and oil is also the focus, along with the US dollar and sanctions, on the back of the headline that Saudi Arabia is in talks with China to sell oil for CNY. Obviously, this is a much larger deal than the $2.6 billion purported India-Russia oil deal floated Monday, and in line with present pace of escalation in this metacrisis. This time we are talking $56 billion in oil and related petro-chemical exports, and $27 billion in Saudi imports...
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rabobank-petroyuan-news-suggests-china-preparing-us-sanctions​ 

​  ​The very conflict on Ukrainian soil also favors this type of measure, as there is a global trend towards multipolarization on several levels, including the economic and financial ones. China stands against the boycotts on Russia and elevates its partnership with Moscow in every way possible, which means that the West may soon also implement coercive measures against Beijing. So, Saudi Arabia takes advantage of the moment in order to enter a possible new market route, with prices in Yuan, serving the interests of China, its partner nations – including the entire BRI – and the BRICS. In this sense, de-dollarization seems just a natural consequence of the process of formation of a polycentric world, as it is being designed with the events in Eastern Europe...
​  ​Obviously, it is possible that Washington will re-establish good ties with Riyadh in the future, but stopping de-dollarization no longer seems an attainable goal.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/beijing-riyadh-cooperation-advances-de-dollarization-process/5774326

Oil Slides Under $100 After Russia Says Given "Written Guarantees" Ukraine Sanctions Won't Impact Iran Nuclear Deal
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/russia-given-written-guarantees-us-ukraine-sanctions-wont-impact-iran-nuclear-deal

Will the suicidal-empire allow a peace treaty?
​  ​The news out of Ukraine is coming extra fast and furious this morning, and barely minutes after Zelensky ended his videoconference before the US Congress in which he demanded for a no fly zone over Ukraine, the FT reports that Ukraine and Russia "have made significant progress on a tentative 15-point peace plan including a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces."

​Treaty disallowed, it appears. No neutrality for Ukraine.
And just like that stocks puke after just minutes following FT revealing that a "15-point peace plan including a ceasefire" was on the table amid Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks, Kiev is said to be rejecting the proposal.

Eyewitness video accounts of Ukrainian military (including Azov battalion) atrocities and war crimes against civilian Ukrainians, trying to escape in cars, and sheltering in hospital basements.

Donetsk People's Republic militia continue mop-up actions in Mariupol against Ukrainian military and Azov Battalion.
​  ​Local residents help the DPR forces by pointing out locations and firing positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
​  ​Against this backdrop, panic videos from members of nationalist units in Mariupol started pouring into the media space calling on everyone to shout that Mariupol is Ukraine and that the DPR and Russian Federation must urgently stop an attack on Mariupol.
​  ​The members of the nationalist battalions are well aware that they have little chance of surviving if they encounter DNR servicemen from Mariupol and its suburbs or being captured by locals. Their actions in the city have put them in an almost hopeless position.

​From The Saker Blog:

​  ​Here is what you need to know about Avdeevka: this is the very heavily defended location from which the Ukronazis could unleash their terror against the civilians in Donetsk.  Now that this entire town has been flattened, the people of Donetsk can now finally hope to live in relative (Ukie Smerch MLRS and Tochka-U missiles can still reach Donetsk!) peace.
​  ​So, not only did Russian encircle the entire Ukrainian forces in an operational cauldron, she then proceeded to cut that single force into two smaller cauldrons (but both still contained in the bigger, operational, cauldron) and now as a show of force, she destroyed the most combat capable Ukrainian unit in the most heavily defended town.
​  ​The “message” here is clear: we strongly encourage you to lay down arms or else…​  ​
http://thesaker.is/russian-special-military-operation-in-the-ukraine-day-19/


​China is reducing global supply of manufactured Chinese goods now, due to COVID, which reduces the potential harm of US financial sanctions, since it creates pent-up demand and reduces flows in transit, where payment mechanisms might be impaired by $US sanctions.
World Economy Braces For Supply Chain Chaos As COVID Closes China

Taiwan would have to defend itself from Chinese invasion by sinking all Chinese landing craft before they reach the island. How would that go?
(Could Taiwan buy Russian hypersonic missiles, maybe?)

US, NATO Rush MANPADS Systems Into Ukraine, Downplay Proliferation Risks
Russia: West 'grossly ignoring' agreements on Manpads
Senior US officials say its a “risk worth taking,” which is easy to say since the risk of proliferation is chiefly in Europe...

​Russian News Source Alert: ​
  One of Italy’s largest trade unions has called for a protest outside the Pisa airport on Saturday, after receiving a tip from some employees that Ukraine relief flights were transporting weapons and ammunition, not food and medicine.
  Several workers at the Galileo Galilei airport refused to load one of the cargo flights advertised as carrying humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The crates did not contain food and medication but weapons, ammunition and explosives instead, the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) said in a statement on Monday evening...

​  ​The union said the workers refused to load the military supplies as that would lead to the deaths of their colleagues in Ukraine – namely, those working at the bases targeted by Russian missile strikes, where the weapons processed through US and NATO bases in Poland get delivered​ 

​Russian Central Bank reserves, status explained in detail:

​Pepe Escobar (gloating) has the story to expound upon the major rumor:​
​  ​The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union and China just agreed to design the mechanism for an independent financial and monetary system that would bypass dollar transactions
​  ​On Friday, after a videoconference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).​..
​  The Eurasian system will be based on “a new international currency,” most probably with the yuan as reference, calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries, as well as commodity prices. The first draft will be already discussed by the end of the month...
​..​NATO nations amount to at best 15 percent of the world’s population. Russia won’t be forced to practice autarky because it does not need to: most of the world – as we’ve seen represented in the hefty non-sanctioning nation list – is ready to do business with Moscow.
​  ​Iran has shown how to do it. Persian Gulf traders confirmed to The Cradle that Iran is selling no less than 3 million barrels of oil a day even now, with no signed JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement, currently under negotiation in Vienna). Oil is relabeled, smuggled, and transferred from tankers in the dead of night.
​  ​Another example: the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), a huge refiner, just bought 3 million barrels of Russian Urals from trader Vitol for delivery in May. There are no sanctions on Russian oil – at least not yet.​..
..Russia and Iran are about to sign a very important agreement, which may likely be an equivalent of the Iran-China strategic partnership. The three main nodes of Eurasia integration are perfecting their interaction on the go, and sooner rather than later, may be utilizing a new, independent monetary and financial system.​..
​  ​Meanwhile, there’s a mystery to be solved: where is that frozen Russian gold?

Gold, the "new dollar"?
So Many Russians Are Buying Gold That Central Bank Halts Bank Purchases

​Russia sanctions Hunter Biden, "the big guy" and top US officials. This is symbolic unless they have holdings in Russian banks, or Russia somehow gets control of the Ukrainian banking system (nightmare scenario!).​

How much gas will your paycheck buy, and how does that affect your economic perceptions and choices? How might you vote in November?
​  ​Our estimate for March is that the average wage of production and nonsupervisory workers, as measured by the BLS’ Average Hourly Earnings (AHE), can purchase 6.4 gallons, which is up from the low of 4.4 gallons in July 2008, and significantly lower than the high of 13.8 gallons in February 1999.

​Judged by the enemies she keeps?
Tulsi Gabbard Smeared as ‘Treasonous Liar’ By Sen. Mitt Romney Over Ukraine Biolab Concerns
"Millennial age group, 25 to 44 experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality"
"It’s the worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history."
Can you guess what caused it? I think I know...
​.. ​OK, so what caused all the deaths? 
The only explanation is the vaccine because the deaths are so massive.

​Call it what you want...
​  The latest official figures from the UK Health Security Agency show that triple vaccinated people aged 30-70 have now lost at least 70% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system of unvaccinated people.
​  ​Their immune systems are deteriorating between 10 and 30% per week on average, with the detioration much larger and quicker among the younger age groups.
​  ​If this continues at the current rate then all triple vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds will have 100% immune system degradation by the middle of April 2022, with all other triple vaccinated age-groups following suit not long after.
​  ​In other words, official UK Government data strongly suggests the triple vaccinated population are rapidly developing acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

Immunocompetent
(pictured varnishing more cabinet plywood for walls)


Monday, March 14, 2022

Preparing For Less

 Conserving Fuel,


  We have all exited the era of fossil-fuel driven exponential growth of our human population and the industrial economy which is our life support system.
This has not officially been announced yet.
  We are seeing increased cost of fuel, factory-farmed food, and manufactured goods, as supplies become erratic and uncertain going forward.
  Those who command the western liberal economic system are threatened uniquely, because they have put the rest of us in a situation to take the majority of the real-world losses as the system implodes. The "owners" reasonably fear the backlash against them when this happens. 
  They need to preemptively assume further emergency powers, martial-law type powers, to protect them from revolt from threat-factions such as "home-grown-white-supremacist-MAGA-terrorists".
  The COVID-Pandemic narrative stalled out. It never worked as quickly and efficiently as planned. An unanticipated threat-to-ownership has arisen from the growing public awareness of "vaccine" deaths and crippling side effects, after so many were forced to receive them and allow their children to be injected with them.
  The WAR! narrative is all powerful, and can be escalated to sweep this under the rug by ramping up current fear levels. The problem with war, actual war, is that those in power run the very real risk of losing power if "they are on the wrong side of history", as I believe our current elite global financial-capitalist value-extracting class is.
  They can only worsen the declining resource and declining wealth situation for the many in order to maintain their position atop a shrinking total global economy.
They need a lot of faithful military and faithful police and faithful local political machines to do this. All of these groups are made up mostly of the class of people who are set to be dealt the major blows of hurt, and to take financial and human losses.
  The sooner this class is forced to capitulate, the less harm they will be forced to bring upon everybody else.
  The $US financial system is their format for extraction of wealth from the world. Iit is huge, (almost) all-pervasive and completely established.
This is being used to punish Russia by the $US system defaulting on the $US that the Russian central bank holds, refusing to honor those US dollars.
  This selective default on a currency to harm another country, which uses that currency, makes the currency suspect to all who would use it, since it contains a death-switch that can be thrown from afar without any legal process. Using this against Iran was somewhat more subtle, and against Venezuela, and their oil could somehow be substituted in global markets, to garner support.
  Now we see that China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and India are not supporting these moves. These are critical large economies with lots of citizens and with other options for global trade. Saudi Arabia has been critical to support of the Petro-Dollar regime since America had to default on the gold standard.
  It seems that there is much talk of a "commodity based eastern currency system". Gold, oil, wheat, soybeans, coal, iron, and manufactured goods are all "commodities". Such a system could be activated this year. Already sub-systems have been activated to trade with Russia in Rubles/Yuan, and Rubles/Rupees, for instance. 
  In the near term, our threat as humans seems to come from the death throes of a global financial-military regime, whose owners fear its citizens enough to kill any number of them. In the longer term, we are directly threatened by the collapse of this form of global financial capitalism. We can do a lot better than this, reduce military spending, which is very destructive to the world, using resources to kill people and bomb infrastructure.
  However, we need to regroup during an absolute and rapid decline in wealth. This will be even more rapid in the US, which will not get commodities-for-dollars from the world, and will need to export resources and goods that it now takes for granted for domestic consumption.
  Peaceful prepping with food stocks and a vegetable garden, cash and cargo-bikes, and being debt-free, with healthy social relationships seems sane and prudent.
We are low on cash, but not letting it stop us...

Briefings by the Russian Defense Ministry3/14/21 and fairly brief, no maps...

​Much more extensive is the Russian government statement on humanitarian relief work in Ukraine. Azov Battalion and related Ukrainian military in Mariupol has been suppressed enough for humanitarian relief convoys to bring supplies in and to evacuate residents and wounded out.

Moon of Alabama (Germany) has the story about the frequent and recurrent hints of a Russian chemical-weapons attack coming, and the western response that will follow.
This seems like fairly blatant foreshadowing. "Blame Russia" is the operational plan for anything that happens. Russia has no reason at all to use chemical weapons, and every reason to avoid it, as did the government of Syria a few years ago when false-flag attacks by western-funded anti-Syrian groups killed loyal Syrian citizens and blamed it on the Assad government forces.
Ukraine - Officials Announce False Flag Attack - Sanctions Hit Back

​Eric Zuesse has this detailed investigation of the threats to Ukrainian President Zelensky's life, which are not new, but are ongoing.
Why did Vladimir Putin (Probably) Save Volodymyr Zelensky’s Life?

Tom Luongo looks at the ins and outs of "Money" in the rapidly-degrading $US global financial regime. The "outside money" he speaks of can be thought of as real-economy, while the "inside-money" is cheap central-bank lending to insiders, used to extract value from the real economy. "Paper gold" and "physical gold" are exemplary. This is good, extensive and detailed.
The Ins and Outs of Whose Money is it Anyway?
FYI, there are a lot of empty glasses around the world right now and more are being created everyday as the financial system turned predatory after the Lehman Bros. collapse in 2008.

​I'm warning you, though...​"Media Isn't Warning You" That US Careening Towards Food Crisis

​"Class-Consciousness" from Charles Hugh Smith​  (Know what class you will fall into. It's useful for planning.)
Serf-Expression​  ​
​[​Eventually the "flock of timid and industrious animals" changes their minds about how much exploitation by the few is acceptable.​]​
​  ​You may have noticed the news flow beyond the hot war in Ukraine is largely focused on capital: financial capital (markets, liquidity, interest rates, commodities, central bank tightening, etc.) and political capital (geopolitical maneuvering, sanctions, revising energy and defense policies, etc.)
​  ​Notice who's left out, unnoticed and invisible? The serfs, the bottom 90% who have been decapitalized in the developed world and exploited in the developing world for the past 45 years.
​  ​With capital ascendant, the vast majority of financial and political gains flowed to the top tier of speculative capital (banks and billionaires) while the purchasing power of labor (i.e. wages) has been in a 45-year descent. (See chart below)
​  ​This disemboweling of labor transferred $50 trillion from labor to capital in the U.S. alone. Financialization and globalization devalued labor and working-class assets such as savings and boosted leveraged speculative bets only available to financiers and corporations...

​Thanks for this, Tessa:  
mRNA "DNA Gene Editing" - no Longer a Conspiracy Theory
Reckless "Gene Editing" with no Oversight is Very Dangerous

​This seems rather odd... Where will a billion $US come from? Does Moderna have it? Who might take the company over and pay that? It's sort of a "poison pill".
Would a "golden shower" be more appropriate?
Moderna approved a $926MILLION golden parachute for its CEO at the end of 2021 in the event he's replaced

Penny Pinching Prepper
(pictured with 2 lovely spinach quiches from fresh garden spinach)