If You Thought The Coinbase Bankruptcy Disclosures Were Bad...

 How do you protect electronic money? But for that matter: How do you protect fiduciary money? Or to put it differently: What is the value of money without assets to back it up? Yes, sure, the full economy behind money is what gives it value but what is it worth? One unit of money as expected or 0.1? It is not a detail. It is the difference between living in South and North Korea!

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Just wait ’til you see your government’s bail-in rules

One of the subplots that made for a bad week in crypto included a largely manufactured crisis around “The Coinbase bankruptcy disclosure”.  After posting an earnings miss, the next shoe to drop was the discovery in the latest version of the Coinbase Terms of Service, the addition of text that included the following:

“Custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors”

This verbiage became a big deal with every corporate media outlet dumping all over it. It trended on Twitter and quickly went viral, almost as if this was some sort of revelation.

It’s not. It’s basically the oldest adage in crypto, “not your keys, not your coins” spelled out in writing.

Do you really think if you’re holding your crypto on some exchange that suddenly becomes insolvent it’s going to make a difference if a paragraph to that effect appears in the ToS or not? Good thing Mt Gox or QuadrigaCX didn’t have a paragraph like that in their ToS otherwise everybody with assets in either exchange would have been really fscked, right?

You’re fscked no matter what. At least Coinbase is calling your attention to it.

Don’t hold your crypto on the exchange, any exchange, full stop. Even the largest crypto exchange CEOs will tell you that.

But if you’re one of those people for whom this is something to be up in arms about, I’ve got news for you:

Your governments have already laid claims to your savings

If you’re reading this it means you’re probably living in a country where the same exact thing is written into your governing legislation with respect to all the money you have on deposit within the banking system (as covered in The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto)

Remember back to 2013 with the Cyprus bail-in, which I always maintained was what put Bitcoin above $100 USD for the first time:

The Cypriots had a portion of their savings accounts confiscated to re-capitalize their failing banking system. In March 2013 Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem told interviewers that Cyprus would serve as a template for future bank restructurings in the euro zone.

By April, the framework showed up in Canada, under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s budget:

“The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital”

If you haven’t figured it out by now, “certain bank liabilities” are your savings.

The language was preserved in subsequent budgets, even after 2015 when Justin Trudeau came to power. His government made it permanent in 2018 with The Bank Recapitalization (Bail-in) Conversion Regulations.

This wasn’t unique to Canada.

In 2017 Australia did it with the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill:

“The TLAC standard builds on a significant body of international regulatory reform already undertaken by the Financial Stability Board to improve resolution frameworks for globally significant financial institutions. In particular, it builds on the Key Attributes which specifies that Financial Stability Board jurisdictions should have in place legally enforceable mechanisms to implement a ‘bail-in’. (emphasis in original)”

In the US, provisions for depositor bail-ins existed even before Cyprus, with the “Statutory Bail-Ins” provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill.

The fact is, if you’re living in any of the largest economies globally, then your country is party to a supra-national agreement on “flexible bank bail-in bonds” put in place at the G-20 Brisbane Summit in 2014.

So while you have the ability to choose not to do business with Coinbase (or better, properly custody your digital assets), your country has already granted itself the same ability to bail-in your fiat savings a long time ago, and it isn’t voluntary.

It’s the one issue that is completely bipartisan and duly ossified into the law of the land. From loose canon populists to far-left Marxist ideologues,  nobody within the corridors or power is talking about getting rid of the government’s authority to confiscate your savings to recapitalize a failing banking system. When this thing blows up subject to the inexorable outcome of their own failed policies and under its own warped incentives, there won’t be any quibbling over it, it’s the law.

“Hell yeah, we’ll take your savings.”

Given the behaviour of  governments just this year alone, where

• in Canada having the wrong political views could get your bank accounts seized,

• The US seized the  foreign reserves of two sovereign nations

• European banks are frantically seizing assets of persons with surnames ending in ‘-ved’ , ‘-nin’, ‘-tin’, ‘-lin’ or ‘-ov’

• Russia, for their part, is seizing assets of Western companies within their borders

Two things become apparent:

• First, we’re in an age where your assets and savings are considered fair game for everybody else, either as guilt-by-association with somebody else’s political ideology, or as retaliation for government actions you had no involvement with.

• Second,  seen from this perspective, it’s either ironic or (more likely) disingenuous that the corporate media is feigning shock over Coinbase.

Hedge Fund CIO: In Markets, The Strongest Gravitational Force Is Produced By Stop-Losses Imposed By Leverage

  Great analogy between cosmology and the market. And as for the image of a black hole below: It is brightest just before the plunge...

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“We are peering into the curved spacetime near a supermassive black hole,” said Michael Johnson, researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, marveling at the image. “And it is teeming with activity, always burbling with turbulent energy and occasionally erupting into bright flares of emission,” added Johnson, standing tall on our little planet, 27,000 light years (159,300 trillion miles) from Sagittarius A*.

At this vast distance, we travel through space at 140 miles per second, rotating around the supermassive black hole at our Milky Way’s center. Nearer objects move faster. Stars closest to Sagittarius A* travel at 141,000 miles per second. The plasma surrounding the black hole’s event horizon orbits at 190,000 miles per second, superheats to a trillion degrees, then disappears. Within our galaxy, gravity wins, eventually, always. Or so it seems. Time will tell.

Unlike heavenly bodies, financial markets are our creation, and as such, they are just as much a part of nature as are we, which is to say indistinguishable. In financial markets, the strongest known gravitational force is produced by the presence of stop-losses imposed by leverage. The larger the stop, the greater the pull.

The natural force at play is easy to understand. As the aggregate position size grows too large relative to its ability to withstand a capital loss, the market is drawn toward the price that forces liquidation. As prices approach that level, the process accelerates, the temperature rises.

Along that path, the combination of counterparties demanding more margin, nervous longs liquidating, and short sellers pressing positions produces an outcome all but inevitable. We see this repeatedly. Long Term Capital Management was a victim of gravity. So too were VIX ETP volatility-sellers in Feb 2018.

The Archegos unwind took two days in Apr 2021. This week a US dollar stablecoin called UST succumbed to gravity. A shockwave rippled across digital asset markets. And with temperatures this elevated, time accelerating, we are left to carefully examine the numerous large stops across the $200 trillion universe of traditional assets.

* * *

Stop: As a young pit trader in 1989, I was taught to understand where the big stop-loss orders were likely to be found. Markets in rough balance tend to oscillate, wander. But when there are traders with big leveraged positions, and they do not have the capital to sustain a large move against their exposures, they will eventually be forced to stop out either by choice or by creditors. As prices approach that stop-loss level, the trend accelerates. Sometimes such markets move as much in a minute as they otherwise do in a decade. Spacetime is bent around such stops.

Stop II: Markets are mostly mean reverting. Their ups and downs are nature’s search for equilibrium. The damage to those on the wrong side of stops in such markets goes largely unnoticed in the broader financial system. But sometimes stops are existential. Hitting them precipitates a self-perpetuating move that is never reversed. Companies, currencies, and sovereigns – sometimes all at the same time – experience permanent shifts. And in times of great change, such as this turbulent decade, these are the stops to watch most carefully. Here are some:

• Putin: Russia is approaching a stop. Its slow-moving demographic collapse has been known for decades. Its weak economic engine will collapse beneath sanctions, depriving Russia of the capital to sustain itself and defend against domestic and foreign adversaries. NATO membership of Finland and Sweden is the kind of price action you see when nearing a stop. So too the accelerating pace of Kyiv visits by world leaders and nuclear saber rattling by Russian defense ministers. Were Russia not a great nuclear power, a stop would be hit imminently. But it has 1,500 nuclear warheads currently deployed. This is clearly the world’s greatest near-term risk.
• Famine: What appeared to be a trend of ever-expanding globalization allowed world governments and their respective economic systems to optimize for efficiency. But efficiency came at the cost of fragility, dependency. The current commodity price shock, and unfolding food shortage, will devastate most poor nations. This is only just getting started. Indonesia’s plan to limit palm oil exports, and India’s extraordinary decision to ban wheat exports, is what you see as governments approach stops. Hoarding has begun. This is the world’s greatest 2-3yr risk.
• Union: Europe is a project that exchanges the constraints of political union for the promise of an end to senseless war. It was not designed for economic efficiency, and it has so far avoided a complete monetary integration. It made an energy deal with Russia that left its economy dependent, vulnerable. It must now overcome an energy crisis, risking direct conflict with Russia. While common enemies tend to draw nations together, the continent has a long history of fracture, infighting. It has also tended to make moves toward greater integration only in times of acute market stress. The market hunts for such stops. The 10yr Germany/Italy spread is 190bps.
• America: There is no nation better positioned for a world that is deglobalizing than the US. It is the largest food producer, has enormous energy resources, innovators, capital markets, etc. Such advantages have been sold forward. Foreigners own $53.3trln US assets and the US owns $35.2trln foreign assets. The net external deficit has quietly increased nearly 10x since the start of the 2008 crisis. Our politicians have made entitlement promises that project government debt of more than 200% of GDP in the next thirty years, almost double the current share of GDP. Such vast imbalances will need to be resolved through default or devaluation (inflation). The latter is more likely. Unless the Fed contains inflation aggressively, the market will sniff the stop.  

Anecdote: The Sun fuses 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium each second to produce the outward pressure required to offset its gravity. All stable stars live in this state of hydrostatic equilibrium. When their fuel is eventually expended, gravity prevails, and they collapse into themselves, achieving new equilibriums governed by quantum law. Small stars like our Sun become white dwarfs. Larger ones become neutron stars, the densest objects in the visible universe. The most massive stars overcome all know forces and disappear entirely – this collapse to a black hole occurs in less than a second. Spinning here on a little blue planet, 27,000 light years away from the invisible center of our galaxy, the scale and speed of such forces appears less extreme. Yet still, we observe all things around us struggling endlessly, mercilessly, for equilibrium. The weather constantly reminds us that complex systems move in volatile ways as they search for balance. This extends to all natural systems, creatures, companies, nations too.

Throughout history our kingdoms, countries, and empires have had to produce sufficient outward pressure to maintain equilibrium and forestall collapse. The most prosperous ones have sustained balance through building vibrant economic systems. Such economies generate surpluses sufficient to sustain investment and finance a robust defense against those who threaten its existence. Some nations succeeded through conquest, confiscation, slavery, savagery. Others through capitalism. There are many models in between.

When nations are growing more prosperous, their governments have relatively easy work. But when the economic engine falters, they must make difficult choices to sustain the outward pressure required to avoid collapse. Many governments fail; sustaining a healthy economic system is hard work, requiring foresight, investment, ingenuity, risk-taking. In their failure, such governments resort to coercion, confiscation, crackdowns. They pay their bills and bribe the citizenry with money borrowed against their nation’s future, leaving it diminished, eventually depleted.

In a final attempt to defy gravity, and approaching their stop loss, governments print money. And this is why failing nations suffer currency collapse. 

The Real Reason Behind The EU's Drive To Embargo Russian Oil

 This article is food for thoughts. Tom Luongo tends to be pro-Russian and some of the ideas are speculative. Still, interesting...

 I do agree that the European Union is shooting itself in the foot and the Summer will be hectic before all hell breaking lose in the Autumn. Is this calculated? This would imply brilliance from politicians who do not display much intelligence in real life. Rather unlikely in other words. 

 Inflation, monetary turmoils and social disruption were all baked in the cake long before the Ukraine crisis but none of this is due to irresponsible politicians. In 1913 it was the Huns (Germans), the Jews in 1939. The Russians in 2022?     

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

This week the European Union is expected to announce a complete import ban on Russian oil. Hungary, in its first real act of defiance, is threatening to veto this; Germany, after some hemming and hawing, has finally decided it can survive such a ban.

Assuming Hungary’s objections are eventually overcome, at first blush this looks like yet another energy “own goal” by the people obsessed with soccer. The U.S. has already issued this ban.

Because European industry is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas, the conventional wisdom is that the EU Commission is just petulant and incompetent.

Are they petulant? Yes. Incompetent? Possibly? But only if you think in conventional terms of doing the right thing for their people. What is clear to any serious observer of EU politics is that they are not interested in what their people have to say or want.

Theirs is an agenda which will brook no opposition, even if it means destroying its own economy to bring a rival to its knees.

That said, I sincerely doubt there will be a “buyers embargo” on natural gas because there is no viable substitute for it.

Hungary is using the need for unanimous consent within the European Council to block any ‘gas ban’ in any new economic sanctions package. There are at least three other countries which are happy Hungary is willing to suffer Brussels’ wrath.

But banning Russian oil, on the other hand, is different.

So, it is interesting that Hungary would do this, given they import no oil from Russia. {Ed. this is wrong, Hungary imports 65% of its oil through the Druzhba pipeline} This veto was predicted by me the morning after the Hungarians overwhelmingly rejected George Soros’s anti-Viktor Orban coalition and handed it an ignominious defeat.

Hungary, on the other hand, has energy independence from Brussels by having contracted directly with Gazprom for natural gas via Turkstream’s train that goes into Serbia and Hungary. This should give you some context as to why the EU is trying to sanction Serbia and cut off the flows of that pipeline where it crosses EU territory in Bulgaria.

With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.

It is almost as if Orban and the Hungarians are now daring the EU to advance Article 7 procedures to kick them out. The problem with that is, if they do, it would begin the fracturing of the EU.

So, what is more likely to happen now is Hungary will use this veto to get the EU to back off on the ‘rule-of-law’ violations which are justifying cutting off Hungary from its EU budget distributions. The horse trade here should be obvious.

Because Brussels and their behind-the-scenes backers absolutely want this ban on Russian oil as much as the U.S. and the UK want it. It is part of their long-term strategy to bleed Russia out, after turning Ukraine into Afghanistan 2.0.

And it is in the differences between the oil industry and the natural gas industry where they think they can achieve this goal.

Of Pipes and Populi

In both the oil and gas industries, pressurizing a well is, for the most part, a one-way process. You dig a well and pull the oil and/or gas out. It produces until the well is depleted. You replace the well’s natural decay in production by drilling a new well.

But even if there is a big demand shock to the downside, rarely an issue in the oil industry in the aggregate, then those wells keep producing. The market is temporarily glutted with oil, the price drops and old wells are not replaced until such time as supply-and-demand balance is restored.

Oil futures curves get constructed by traders to anticipate these effects on prices. And for normal volatility of oil demand, these curves should be reasonably predictable.

Unfortunately, we are living through a time where the most powerful people in the world (at least in their minds) are openly trying to destroy the petroleum market for their own purposes and agenda. They are actively working to make oil and gas prices volatile to the point of destroying investment in the industry.

They make no bones about this. Oil is the bane of the planet!

I call these people The Davos Crowd (for a description of them see my podcast, Episodes 75, 76, and 77 for the background information). They are the unelected oligarchs, bankers, hereditary power and newly Made Men (in the mafia sense) who gather at Davos, Switzerland, every year to decide on the future of humanity.

And it is their agenda, using Climate Change and international threats like biowarfare and terrorism as their justifications for a massive expansion of the surveillance state and their control over all things, but especially money.

Russia’s massive natural resource pile and sovereigntist-minded government stands wholly in the way of that. If you believe otherwise, you have been gaslit by Davos propaganda. I urge you to put away childish things, some rabbit holes are just holes, not warrens.

Back to the oil industry. Capping either a gas or oil well is dangerous because there is no guarantee it can be re-opened. Wells can be damaged and the oil/gas they contain lost without drilling a new one.

With gas you can just “flare it off” by burning the excess if your storage is full, rather than capping the well and wait for demand to return. With oil, on the other hand, you cannot really do that. You have to store the stuff somewhere. From all accounts so far, Russia’s oil storage capacity is already full, if not overflowing.

The oil industry in general is not geared for massive long-term storage due to supply/demand shocks because there is literally no need for it. What expands is the capacity to move oil around to consume it, not store it in big tanks hoping someone will buy it.

The industry has all the spare capacity it needs to coordinate supply and demand within pretty tight tolerances. It is not “just in time” delivery tight, but it is not capable of absorbing a 20% demand shock.

And this is where the West thinks it has a big lever to use against Russia right now. By all accounts, Europe is one of Russia’s biggest oil customers, with the port at Rotterdam taking in and refining as much as 1.4 million barrels per day before the war.

Believe it or not, The Washington Post had a decent article breaking down where Russia’s exports go. Of the approximately 7.2 million barrels per day Russia exports to the world, 4.8 million go to countries, most of them in Europe, that say they no longer want to buy it from there.

Lack of storage capacity should not be a big deal if Russia exported most of the oil to Europe by ship, which it does. According to a recent report by Transport & Environment, an NGO which is wholly geared to convincing Europe to get off Russian energy, the Druzhba pipeline only supplies around 10% of Russian oil to the European market.

This is a paltry 250,000 barrels per day. The U.S. embargo is more dangerous to the Russian economy, where in 2021 the U.S., having to replace barrels sanctioned from Venezuela by former President Trump, imported an average of 600,000 barrels per day.

Those imports began drying up in 2022, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, so chalk that up as another data point that this war between the West and Russia was planned well in advance of the actual start date back in late February.

The point is that the talking point going around the press today is that Russia does not have the storage capacity to deal with a European embargo and as such will have to cut production. Estimates of production cuts from Russia are around 1.8 million barrels per day, while the West is hoping for 3 million.

Similar to what Trump did in 2018 against Iran, the shock-and-awe campaign of sanctions froze many oil trading firms in their tracks, not knowing what the future would hold, and refused to do business with Russia for fear of running afoul of sanctions.

From Shell to Glencore to Trafigura, Russian oil tenders have become persona non grata and it created a complete mess of their trading books and the commodities-trading industry as a whole, as Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar’s note from last month described.

Because of this financial dislocation in what should be a boring, brain-dead stable industry—trading the most important commodity in the world with the biggest infrastructure to service it—chaos ensued.

The collective West, following Davos’s game plan, is hoping for even more.

Pozsar’s conclusion was that all these firms will either need a bailout at some point (with possible nationalization the price they pay) or be allowed to go bankrupt to serve the plan of radically overhauling the global energy economy away from petroleum of Davos.

At the same time, they would put a major dent in Russia’s economic prospects. Viewed that way, this is a kind of Evil Mastermind Two-fer.

But, if backing up the pipeline oil is not that big a hit to Russia’s production, what is the EU trying to accomplish here?

By disrupting the routes oil normally takes around the world, there is now a structural shortage of tankers to move oil demanded. Since many of those barrels, more than 2 million per day, now must go on much longer voyages.

Instead of the coffee and cake run from St. Petersburg to Rotterdam, those same ships now, at a minimum, must go to storage facilities in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, if not all the way to China or India, their final destination.

Read Pozsar’s post, or the ZeroHedge article linked above, to get a sense of the scale of the disruption.

This supply shock within the tanker market and the downstream effects of the added costs to the voyages, it is hoped, will create a cascading back-up within the Russian oil industry, forcing the forecasted production hits.

This will, in turn, eat into its positive trade balance which is “fueling Putin’s war machine.” It will also present the opportunity for Russia’s competitors to come in and steal market share from them.

Through this mechanism and efforts in the West to change Europe’s energy usage, the long-term effect is to destroy Russia’s ability to continue the war by starving it of needed capital.

Davos Rhymes with Thanos

The U.S. is happy to push Europe to this point and many commentators are happy to end the conversation there: Pick your epithet, but the line is the “Empire of Lies” or “Zone A” or whomever, feels their hegemony is threatened and they are bullying everyone, especially Europe, into their preferred strategy.

But I think that story is more of the “Made for TV” version than it is an accurate representation of reality.

It leaves out the larger goal structure of the people behind this mess in the first place. Rather than be captives of a hyper-belligerent U.S., the EU nations are absolutely willing partners in this.

Davos’s Great Reset strategy is built on the same mistakes about resource scarcity that Thomas Malthus made back in the early 19th century. Theirs is an economic model which does not believe people respond in real time to incentives, pro and con, which moderate their behavior. Rather, they see humans as a virus unleashed upon the world that needs to be controlled.

The entire Great Reset can be boiled down to the same argument the villain in the Marvel films, Thanos, made about having to kill off half the life in the Universe to make things “sustainable.”

And the power center of this type of thinking is not in the U.S. and the U.S. Empire. We are the hyper-capitalists growing the virus in our Petri dish of individualism.

No, this thinking comes squarely out of European critiques of capitalism. To be reductionist it is just Marxism warmed over and given a fresh gloss of rhetorical paint—sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), shared purpose, etc.

The proof that the EU is just as happy with war in Ukraine as neoconservative forces in the U.S. and UK is evident in their unwillingness to end the war through diplomacy.

But Europeans are the ones who will suffer the most from this strategy.

Bad Scripts Beget Bad Policy

If EU leadership, owned by Davos, were acting on average Europeans’ behalf, they would be using the obvious costs of cutting Europe off from Russian energy to tell the US and U.K. to go scratch.

Instead, all we hear from them is how Germany can wean itself off Russian energy completely within a year.

It does not matter that this is not good for German industry or the German people in the long run. Russian energy is by far the cheapest solution for them, making their labor the most competitive it can be.

Instead, after helping manufacture the crisis in Ukraine, they now uphold the notion that it is a moral imperative for Germans to suffer without food, heat and other basic necessities of a supposed advanced first-world society to defeat the evil Russians.

In the years leading up to this conflict they would have worked to implement the Minsk Accords. They would have lifted the economic sanctions on Russia and come to an agreement about Crimea and the Donbas politically, and let the U.S. and the UK twist in the wind.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron did the opposite. They blew smoke up Putin’s ass while running the clock out until Macron was re-elected and Merkel could exit the scene, leaving a weak Davos-approved coalition to blame the collapse on.

Deepened trade between Russia and the EU would have eventually ground out the animosity and the U.S.’s insistence on arming Ukraine would have become an albatross politically while Europe would be staring at a potential renaissance, instead of an economic black hole.

France and Germany would not have betrayed their own attempts at diplomacy.

This, I believe, is much closer to the real story of the conflict, which serves a far larger purpose clearly stated by the architects of our misery than the simplistic framework of just blaming the U.S. for everything.

The idea that Europe fears a Russian invasion of Poland or even Germany, which necessitates NATO’s expansion to its border in the Donbas, is ludicrous. Russia’s military is not built along these lines nor is its performance in Ukraine evidence it is capable of such an operation.

What is unfolding now is a script that was written a long time ago. The war by the West against Russia has long been in the planning stages.

The Russians understand this better than many are willing to accept. Their leadership, Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have articulated this very clearly at every stage of the war to date.

They are under no illusions about where the West and Davos are willing to take this conflict, which is why they have made serious threats about striking out at the real “decision centers” who give the Ukrainian Armed Forces their marching orders.

These are warnings not to our politicians, but to us. This is where things lead.

They have asked for a parting of the ways, peaceably, between East and West, but that is not part of the agenda. Like classic narcissists with the burning need to control everything, Russia and the rest of Asia will not be allowed to walk away from Davos and their Eurocrat quislings, because they are the righteous saviors of humanity.

And we are just, at best, “the help” and at worst an inconvenience.

The bigger Davos plan of destroying the old global order to Build it Back Better, where they own everything and you will own nothing and like it or else, is the script.

They are now committed to this plan. It does not matter now whether it will work or not. This is what we have to realize in all of our analyses. Do the Russians and their friends in Asia and across the Global South have the means and the tools to come out on top? Possibly.

But the bigger question is whether or not this conflict escalates to the point where winning is an irrelevant concept. When you see a bloc as powerful as the European Union willing to commit acts of domestic vandalism this big—and blaming the victim of their unbridled aggression—it tells you we are far past the point of rational settlement.

Gulf State OPEC Members Sound Alarm About Dwindling Global Energy Capacity

 Renewable will save the day. Anytime now. Except that they won't. Our woke, ideology plagued society is burying its head under the sand. So much so that the worse it gets the more people prefer the listen to the hype. The financial crisis will soon give way to an energy crisis soon to be followed by a food crisis. Is this how societies crash? We will soon find out.

 What I find most fascinating is that this decline more than a shock is a slow moving process as described by Jared Daimond in his book "Collapse" or maybe more appropriately there are phases as Hemingway explained how he went bankrupt: "Two ways: Gradually then suddenly!"

Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates warned earlier this week that their spare energy capacity is decreasing in all energy sectors as key producers reduce investment in fossil fuels, pushing oil,  diesel, and natural gas to trade at near-record highs.

Brent oil was trading at around $102 a barrel as they spoke.

“I am a dinosaur, but I have never seen these things,” said Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman to Bloomberg on May 10, at an OPEC conference in Abu Dhabi.

The prince was referring to the surge in prices for refined oil products, in particular in the United States, where gas and diesel prices are hitting a record high, causing problems for the Biden administration.

“The world needs to wake up to an existing reality. The world is running out of energy capacity at all levels,” said the Saudi minister.

Suhail al Mazrouei, the UAE’s energy minister, said to Bloomberg at the same conference, that without additional global investment, OPEC+ would not be able to guarantee sufficient supplies of oil for its customers as the world economy fully recovers from the pandemic.

“We’ve been warning about the lack of investment,” said al Mazrouei, and “that lack of investment is catching up with a lot of countries.”

The two ministers also hit back at new U.S. congressional legislation intended to target the oil cartel and regulate energy output, claiming that the bill would bring greater chaos to already strained energy markets.

Of the major producers, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among the few producers investing in greater output and together, are spending billions of dollars to boost crude capacity by 2 million barrels a day by the end of this decade.

The other producers are struggling with investments, as Western shareholders and governments push for a transition from fossil fuels to “green” energy.

OPEC+ announced a 432,000 barrel-a-day increase for June at its meeting on May 5, but it’s struggling to reach even that monthly target, as many members are producing below their quotas.

The 23-nation energy alliance fell short of its production quotas by 2.59 million barrels per day in April, according to the latest OPEC+ survey by S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The UAE minister still believes that there is no serious market crisis at the moment and that OPEC has little urgency to boost oil production.

However, several key importers disagree, especially the EU, U.S., and Japan, which have been demanding a more rapid increase in output from OPEC+ since last year.

The same nations have at the same time imposed sanctions on Russia a lead OPEC member, after its invasion of Ukraine at the end of February.

The EU has recently announced an even more punitive ban on Russian energy imports this month.

Crude prices have risen more than 35 percent this year to a high of around $105 a barrel since sanctions were placed on Moscow over Ukraine.

The G7 nations have lobbied OPEC+ to punish Russia, but the Saudis and the UAE reiterated that the cartel would not allow geopolitics to affect its decisions.

Al Mazrouei blamed the politicization of the oil market for the latest rise in prices and declared that OPEC+ was unified and that all members have pledged not to hike output on there own.

“We are together,” he said. “Trust me. No one can unilaterally increase production unless they’re intending to break the alliance,” said the UAE minister.

“We are getting a fraction of what the companies and governments are making from those extra taxes,” he said.

The minister said that it was wrong to blame crude oil producers and that high taxes in consuming nations were to blame for skyrocketing fuel prices.

He also told CNBC that the revival of a proposed bill in Washington could push oil prices by as much as 300 percent.

Top OPEC ministers have hit back at new U.S. legislation intended to regulate oil output and that OPEC was being unfairly targeted over the energy crisis, saying that such efforts would bring chaos to energy markets.

A U.S. Senate Committee greenlighted the new bipartisan No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill on May 5 with a 17-4 majority, the first step towards passage of the decades-old proposal.

It now needs to be passed by the full Senate and the House, before being signed into law by the president.

The proposed bill aims to protect U.S. consumers and businesses over the manipulation of energy prices and would allow the U.S. government to open an antitrust suit against OPEC over its control of the majority of the world’s oil supply and prices.

“If you hinder that system, you need to watch what you’re asking for, because having a chaotic market you would see … a 200 percent or 300 percent increase in the prices that the world cannot handle,” said Al Mazrouei to CNBC at the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi.

“We, OPEC+, cannot compensate for the whole 100 percent of the world requirement,” he said.

“How much we produce, that is our share. And, actually, I would bet that we are doing much more.”

The UAE and Saudi energy ministers issued a joint statement, saying that both OPEC and non-OPEC members should work together to handle the ongoing energy crisis.

“I’m very concerned about the holistic energy system existing today,” said Prince bin Salman, who added that “the world needs to work collectively, responsibly, comprehensively in providing us and salvaging the world economy.”

Facts about Covid (From Swiss Research Group)

 

 Already two years and a half since the beginning of the Covid Pandemic and it is still almost impossible to find honest articles about the virus. 

 Most countries have moved in the right direction finally and started doing the right things after doing all the wrong things and failing for over two years. This being one of the main factor contributing to the recent improvement in mortality rates. Still, nobody said: "We were wrong!" Lockdowns were unnecessary. Mask likewise useless. Vaccination of whole populations? Useless and counterproductive in the long term. Worse, these failed policies remain official government policies in many countries. Borders are still closed (China). Masks still mandatory (Japan) and events still cancelled around the world. In the end, the virus is convenient and will therefore remain with us for as long as nothing comes to take its place.    

Swiss Policy Research

Fully referenced facts about covid, provided by experts in the field, to help our readers make a realistic risk assessment. (Regular updates below).

“The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947)

Overview

1. Lethality: The overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of the novel coronavirus in the general population (excluding nursing homes) is about 0.1% to 0.5% in most countries, which is most closely comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1936, 1957 and 1968.
2. Age profile: The median age of covid deaths is over 80 years in most Western countries (78 in the United States) and about 5% of the deceased had no medical preconditions. In many Western countries, about 50% of all covid deaths occurred in nursing homes.
3. Vaccine protection: Covid vaccines provide a very high, but rapidly declining protection against severe disease. Vaccination cannot prevent infection and transmission. A prior infection generally confers superior immunity compared to vaccination (in part due to mucosal immunity).
4. Vaccine injuries: Covid vaccinations can cause severe and fatal vaccine reactions, including cardiovascular, neurological and immunological reactions. Because of this, the risk-benefit ratio of covid vaccination in healthy children and adults under 40 years of age remains controversial.
5. Excess mortality: In most countries, the pandemic increased mortality by about 5% to 25%. Some of the additional deaths were caused not by covid, but by indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns (including an increase in drug overdose deaths).
6. Symptoms: About 30% of all infected persons show no symptoms. Overall, about 95% of all people develop at most mild or moderate symptoms and do not require hospitalization. Obesity, in particular, is a major risk factor for severe covid.
7. Treatment: For people at high risk or high exposure, early or prophylactic treatment is essential to prevent progression of the disease. Numerous studies found that early outpatient treatment of covid can significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
8. Long covid: Up to 10% of symptomatic people experience post-acute or long covid, i.e. covid-related symptoms that last several weeks or months. Long covid may also affect young and previously healthy people whose initial course of disease was rather mild.
9. Transmission: Indoor aerosols appear to be the main route of transmission of the coronavirus, while outdoor aerosols, droplets, as well as most object surfaces appear to play a minor role.
10. Masks: Face masks had no influence on infection rates, which was already known from studies prior to the pandemic. Even N95 masks had no influence on infection rates in the general population. Moreover, long-term or improper use of face masks can lead to health issues.
11. Lockdowns: In contrast to early border controls (e.g. by Australia), lockdowns had no significant effect on infection rates. However, according to the World Bank lockdowns caused an “historically unprecedented increase in global poverty” of close to 100 million people.
12. Children and schools: In contrast to influenza, the risk of severe covid in children is rather low. Moreover, children were not drivers of the pandemic and the closure of schools had no impact on infection rates in the general population.
13. PCR tests: The highly sensitive PCR tests are prone to producing false positive or false negative results (e.g. after an acute infection). Overall, PCR and antigen mass testing had no impact on infection rates in the general population (exception: to sustain border controls).
14. Contact tracing: Manual contact tracing and contact tracing apps on mobile phones had no effect on infection rates. Already in 2019, a WHO study on influenza pandemics concluded that contact tracing is “not recommended in any circumstances”.
15. Vaccine passports: Vaccine passports had no impact on infection rates as vaccination cannot prevent infection. Vaccine passports could, however, serve as a basis for the introduction of digital biometric identity and payment systems. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned as early as March 2020 that surveillance could be expanded during the pandemic.
16. Virus mutations: Similar to influenza viruses, mutations occur frequently in coronaviruses. The omicron variant, which may have emerged from vaccine research, showed significantly higher infectiousness and immune escape, but 90% lower lethality.
17. Sweden: In Sweden, covid mortality without lockdown was comparable to a strong influenza season and somewhat below the EU average. About 50% of Swedish deaths occurred in nursing homes and the median age of Swedish covid deaths was about 84 years.
18. Influenza viruses: Influenza viruses largely disappeared during the coronavirus pandemic. Yet this was not a result of “covid measures”, but a result of temporary displacement by the novel coronavirus, even in countries without measures (such as Sweden).
19. Media: The reporting of many media was rather unprofessional, increased fear and panic in the population and led to a hundredfold overestimation of the lethality of the coronavirus. Some media even used manipulative pictures and videos to dramatize the situation.
20. Virus origin: Genetic evidence points to a laboratory origin of the new coronavirus. Both the Virological Institute in Wuhan (WIV) as well as some US laboratories that cooperated with the WIV performed various kinds of research on similar coronaviruses.

How Politicians & Journalists Get Energy So Wrong in Europe

 Incompetence and ignorance are the two pillars on which the European Union is built. It is not an overstatement by now to say that Europe is shooting itself in the foot with it's energy policy. A few more months and it will become obvious for all to see but by then it will be too late. Can the Union survive 2023?  

Authored by Joakim Book via The Mises Institute,

“We live in a time where few understand how things get made. It is fine to not know where stuff comes from, but it isn’t fine to not know where stuff comes from while dictating to the rest of us how the economy should be run."

- Doomberg

Eighty-five percent of human energy usage comes from burning things. Either plants or trees grown in a geologically recent past or plants or trees (and decomposed animals) from ancient times. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.—all the things that occupy a climate-conscious citizen, activist, or politician’s dreams—are frizzles around the edges.

Human civilization is powered by combustion; human beings are a fossil fuel–burning civilization. You can take away the civilization part, which seems to be the end goal for some environmentalists, but bar that, you can’t take away the fossil fuel part.

If we listened only to our energy overlords’ preaching, we would get a very different impression of what the world is like. Wind turbines powering all those electrified vehicles on our roads, solar panels and batteries of immense capacities light and heat our homes. Dirty oil and polluting coal are out; green, clean, and smart machines on the way in.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Renewables don’t power our societies, they’re not about to any time soon, and the fact that they’re not isn’t a policy choice—or “greedy capitalism” preventing this utopian (dystopian) vision.

First, some housekeeping: Energy is not the same as electricity. Electricity is a secondary energy source, derived from primary energy sources through a conversion process—combustion or turbines spinning. The 85 percent figure above is for energy use. The bombastic figures in the press about the massive growth and expanse of renewables are for electricity, which is only a subset of all the world’s energy use (some 20 percent). Oil, coal, and gas for transport, heating, fertilizers, and construction dwarf the symbolic solar panels governments paid people to place on their roof.

Solar panels and wind turbines produce a minor part of the electricity needs, but do nothing to address the larger energy needs. In contrast, fossil fuels are energy-dense, reliable, on-demand sources of either energy or electricity, and we have excelled both at storing and transporting them.

Dreams of a green revolution, per the energy theorist Vaclav Smil, were always mirages:

We are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.

Instead, suddenly facing an adversary rich in raw materials and fossil fuels, the West’s talking heads doubled down on their green dreams. From behind comfortable newspaper desks, heated and electrified by natural gas, it’s remarkably easy to say things like: “The new reality is that we have to go all the way to universal electrification even faster, powered by 100% renewable energy with green hydrogen filling the gaps” (Andreas Kluth, at Bloomberg).

For the New Yorker, John Cassidy recently told us that we must “prevent future Putins from trying to hold the world to energy ransom—at least one worthy outcome of the tragedy that is Ukraine.”

In a powerful speech in the middle of the Russia flurry in March, Isabel Schnabel of the Executive Board at the European Central Bank rallied for renewable power:

Every solar panel installed, every hydropower plant built and every wind turbine added to the grid are taking us a step closer to energy independence and a greener economy….

Our dependence on fossil energy sources is not only considered a peril to our planet, it is also increasingly seen as a threat to national security and our values of liberty, freedom and democracy.

Luckily, Schnabel is in control of nothing less than the Eurozone’s printing press. One-upped by a fellow German, the reality-challenged finance minister Christian Lindner taught us that renewable electricity is “the energy of freedom.”

What he failed to understand is that renewable electricity generation in Germany requires boatloads and pipe loads of Russian gas, Russian oil, and Russian commodities: the steel and cement to construct their precious wind towers are made from coal, not even counting the extreme heat needed to shape the steel and iron that makes up its body.

 A single wind turbine uses thousands of kilograms of nickel in its shaft and gear, plus some rare earth minerals from some pretty unclean sources. The gigantic structures, hundreds of meters tall and much too clunky to easily transport, are erected and moved there by machines that swallow diesel by the gallon.

Fossil fuels are machine food, as Alex Epstein is fond of saying, and nothing drinks petrol like the machines that power a thirsty wind energy industry. When renewable sources are added to the electricity grid in large quantities, the cost of electricity goes up, not down, because their fickle reliance on weather requires them to be backstopped by thermal plants that run on coal or natural gas. The more renewables you add, the more natural gas you need.

Actually, Fossil Fuels Aren’t Optional

The conclusion from much political and media messaging on climate is the same: burning fossil fuels for energy is a choice, a bad one, and we must choose differently. The moral case against Russia is just a cherry on top.

“Would you rather rely on Mr. Putin’s Russia?” The Economist asked in a recent cover story on energy security.

The very same Russia that Bloomberg News described as:

“a commodities powerhouse, producing and exporting huge amounts of materials the world uses to build cars, transport people and goods, make bread and keep the lights on.”

But the writers at The Economist insist:

“As the world weans itself off dirty fuels, it must switch to cleaner energy sources.”

When we listen to the political overlords in Brussels or Berlin, or the intellectual ones in think tanks, political parties, or at influential media outlets, we get the impression that relying on “Mr. Putin’s Russia” can be done away with—as optional and care-free as picking a different ice cream flavor.

To hammer home the “renewable revolutions are impossible” point, let’s use the poster child for renewables, Germany. Here is its energy use over the last half century:

Let me know if you can spot Germany’s revolutionary Energiewende in the early 2010s. With a microscope, I can detect a little bit of wind crowding out some nuclear—while gas keeps growing and coal continues its fifty-five-year decline. What sort of fairytale must one believe to think that the purple and yellow shares—almost invisible at the top—could in any way supplant the others, preferably before next winter when Putin’s withholding of gas would once again be disastrous for Europeans.

A prominent German think tank, Agora Energiewende, also thinks it’s perfectly possible. Its projections depend, not just on building and installing more wind energy plants than ever before, but raising that rate of construction by about one-third every year for years on end. To describe those plans as “optimistic” somehow doesn’t cut it:

The International Energy Agency (IEA), staffed with the same sort of reality-resistant dreamers, produced this wonderful graph that plans for the energy production in a net-zero future (NZE):

At great expense and inconvenience, the world can indeed increase its use of solar and wind—but remember: they destabilize grids and constitute a vanishingly small portion of world energy needs. To replace what we need, and accommodate growth for the billions globally who scrape by on a minimum of energy, the IEA says we must add solar and wind capacity at a vertiginous rate, never before achieved, at way faster than their own forecasts.

As Alex Epstein writes in the preface to his future book Fossil Future: a net-zero policy, actually implemented “would certainly be the most significant act of mass murder since the killings of one hundred million people by communist regimes in the twentieth century—and it would likely be far greater.”

If you believe, as so many politicians, activists, and deluded journalists do, that this is a mere policy decision, you are sadly mistaken. The impossibility of renewables is a technical and physical problem—not an economic, financial, moral, or political problem.

Gaslighting Europeans

According to mental health site VeryWellMind, gaslighting is “a form of manipulation that often occurs in abusive relationships. It is a covert type of emotional abuse where the bully or abuser misleads the target, creating a false narrative and making them question their judgments and reality. Ultimately, the victim of gaslighting starts to feel unsure about their perceptions of the world and even wonder if they are losing their sanity.”

Consider the following combination of expert-led gaslighting: 

• The entire 2010s and beyond, politicians pooh-poohed nuclear: in words (rallying cries and moral suasion) and actions (strict regulations), they prevented any expansion and shut down capacity.

• European environmental regulation and climate activists have stopped as much oil and gas extraction as they could. Most countries have banned or otherwise prevented “fracking,” the natural gas extraction method that turned America into an energy exporter.

• For the last decade and more, climate warriors inside and outside governments have hauled boatloads of cash onto “green” energies—everything from wind and solar to experimental forms of tidal energy.

• Green electricity sources, because of the unpredictable load that makes them unsuitable for modern civilization, have expanded in consort with natural gas because the dirty secret of the former is that they require rapidly available backup power—for which the latter is the convenient choice.

• Because all things “carbon” are considered bad, politicians, journalists, and the Greta Thunbergs of the world have done everything in their power to sway more people into putting solar panels on their roofs and electric vehicles in their garages. That strains an already fragile grid by adding more demand and another variable supply: crucially, it requires lots more nickel, palladium, and silver—with Russia among the world’s largest supplier for those key commodities.

One would suppose that, on the back of the war in Ukraine, the strict Western sanctions on Russia, and energy prices going through the roof, the green-washed politicians and policymakers who rule our lives would offer excuses. Now that the Russian invasion had those very same policymakers cutting commercial ties to that despicable empire-building strongman, and energy prices and access suddenly rose to the forefront of everyone's mind, we’d expect a bit of humility. Apologies are in order:

Fellow Europeans, against market prices, physics, and sanity, we pushed you into worse forms of electricity generation and endangered our energy security. Instead of doing what we should have done, we relied more and more on the commodities exported from countries like Russia. For making Europeans more beholden to Putin, we apologize.

Instead, we got gaslighting on a remarkable scale.

“Weaning off” Silly

The world isn’t weaning itself off fossil fuels—it can’t, and it shouldn’t. More importantly, “cleaner energy” aren’t options on a shopping menu, available as inconsequential choices the way consumers may choose Doritos over Pringles or a new toothpaste.

It’s becoming increasingly clear, to more and more people, that withdrawing from fossil fuels “for environmental reasons” is not a choice. A society and a world of 8 billion people more advanced than that powered by a horse and buggy, cannot do without the explosive power of fossil fuels.

The Psychology Of Manipulation: 6 Lessons From The Master Of Propaganda

  It is interesting to relate what Edward Bernays had to say about propaganda with current events while remembering that this was almost 100 years ago. As other social sciences, propaganda has made huge progress since, especially over the last 20 years with the use of the Internet as suddenly propagandists had a feedback and could improve their "art" much faster. Just as marketing, adding actual numbers to statistics makes it fearfully effective at the social level as the article below explains.

Authored by Ryan Matters via Off-Guardian.org,

Edward L. Bernays was an American business consultant who is widely recognized as the father of public relations. Bernays was one of the men responsible for “selling” World War 1 to the American public by branding it as a war that was necessary to “make the world safe for democracy”.

During the 1920s, Bernays consulted for a number of major corporations, helping to boost their business through expertly crafted marketing campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion.

In 1928, Edward Bernays published his famous book, Propaganda, in which he outlined the theories behind his successful “public relations” endeavours. The book provides insights into the phenomenon of crowd psychology and outlines effective methods for manipulating people’s habits and opinions.

For a book that’s almost 100 years old, Propaganda could not be more relevant today. In fact, its relevance is a testament to the unchanging nature of human psychology.

One of the key takeaways of the book is that mind control is an important aspect of any democratic society. Indeed, Bernays maintains that without the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”, democracy simply would not “work”.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

According to Bernays, those doing the “governing” constitute an invisible ruling class that “understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses”.

In Propaganda, Bernays draws on the work of Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his uncle!), outlining the power of mass psychology and how it may be used to manipulate the “group mind”.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

I recently explored this topic in an essay about how occult rituals and predictive programming are used to manipulate the collective consciousness, influencing the thoughts, beliefs and actions of large groups of people, resulting in the creation of what occultists call “egregores”.

Here I have extracted some key insights from Bernays in an attempt to show how his book Propaganda is, in many ways, the playbook used by the globalist cryptocracy to process the group mind of the masses.

1. IF YOU MANIPULATE THE LEADER OF A GROUP, THE PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW

Bernays tells us that one of the easiest ways to influence the thoughts and actions of large numbers of people is to first influence their leader.

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.

In fact, one of the most firmly established principles of mass psychology is that the “group mind” does not “think”, rather, it acts according to impulses, habits and emotions. And when deciding on a certain course of action, its first impulse is to follow the example of a trusted leader.

Humans are, by nature a group species. Even when we are alone, we have a deep sense of group belonging. Whether they consciously know it or not, much of what people do is an effort to conform to the ideals of their chosen group so as to feel a sense of acceptance and belonging.

This exact method of influencing the leader and watching the people follow has been used extensively throughout the last few years. One notable instance that comes to mind is the horrendously inaccurate epidemiological models created by Neil Ferguson, which formed the basis for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lockdown policies.

Once Johnson was convinced of the need to lockdown and mask up, the people gladly followed.

2. WORDS ARE POWERFUL: THE KEY TO INFLUENCING A GROUP IS THE CLEVER USE OF LANGUAGE

Certain words and phrases are associated with certain emotions, symbols and reactions. Bernays tell us that through the clever and careful use of language, one can manipulate the emotions of a group and thereby influence their perceptions and actions.

By playing upon an old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions.

The clever use of language has been employed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to great effect. An obvious example of this was when the definition of “vaccine” was changed to include injections utilising experimental mRNA technology.

You see, the word “vaccine” is associated in the public mind with a certain picture – that of a safe, proven medical intervention that is not only life-saving but absolutely necessary.

If governments had told people to go get their “gene therapies”, the vast majority of the public would likely question the motives behind such a campaign; they would feel extremely sceptical because the phrase “gene therapy” is not associated with the same images, emotions and feelings as “vaccine”.

The same goes for the word “pandemic”, the definition of which was also changed. The word “pandemic” is generally associated in the collective consciousness with fear, death, chaos and emergency (largely thanks to Hollywood and the myriad virus films it has released over the years).

3. ANY MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION IS ALSO A MEDIUM FOR PROPAGANDA

Any system of communication, whether phone, radio, print, or social media, is nothing more than a means of transmitting information. Bernays reminds us that any such means of communication is also a channel for propaganda.

There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda.

Bernays goes on to stress that a good propagandist must always keep abreast of new forms of communication, so that they may co-opt them as means of deliberate propaganda.

Indeed, systems that most people would associate with freedom of speech and democracy are none other than means of circulating propaganda. Facebook fact-checkers, Big Tech censorship and YouTube’s Covid banners certainly fall into this category.

Other examples of this include the recent algorithm updates made by various search engines (including Google and DuckDuckGo) to penalize Russian websites. Although this should come as no surprise (Google has been engaging in this type of “shadow propaganda” for many years).

4. REITERATING THE SAME IDEA OVER AND OVER CREATES HABITS AND CONVICTIONS

Although Bernays terms this a technique used by the “old propagandists”, he, nonetheless, recognizes its usefulness.

It was one of the doctrines of the reaction psychology that a certain stimulus often repeated would create a habit, or that the mere reiteration of an idea would create a conviction.

Repeating the same idea or the same “mantra” again and again is a form of neuro-linguistic programming aimed at instilling certain concepts or emotions into the subconscious mind. Indeed, people who are feeling sad or depressed are often advised to repeat to themselves an uplifting saying or affirmation.

There are many examples of this simple, yet effective, technique being used to great effect over the last few years. Think Q’s “trust the plan”, the globalist favourite, “build back better” or the incessant repetition of that twisted phrase, “trust the science”. Included in this category are the 24/7-in-your-face death statistics and case numbers, aimed at promoting the illusion of a pandemic.

There are more obvious examples of this as well, such as news anchors in different areas all reading from the exact same script.

5. THINGS ARE NOT DESIRED FOR THEIR INTRINSIC WORTH, BUT RATHER FOR THE SYMBOLS THAT THEY REPRESENT

After studying why people make certain purchasing decisions, Bernays observed that people often don’t desire something for its usefulness or value, but rather because it represents something else which they unconsciously crave.

A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.

Bernays gives the example of a man buying a car. From the outside, it may appear as if the man is buying the car because he needs a means of transport, but in actuality, he is buying it because he craves the elevated social status that comes with owning a motor vehicle.

This idea, too, applies to the events over the last few years.

For example, masks are a symbol of compliance. Everyone knows they don’t work but they wear them because of their desire to “fit in”, and to be seen as an upstanding citizen who follows the rules. Covid-19 injections are also a symbol and many people choose to get them because they have a desire to avoid being called an “anti-vaxxer” or a “conspiracy theorist”.

6. ONE CAN MANIPULATE INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS BY CREATING CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MODIFY GROUP CUSTOMS

Lastly, Bernays tells us that if one wishes to manipulate the actions of an individual, the most effective way to do so is to create circumstances that engender the desired behaviour.

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of on a new piano? […] He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom.

For example, why all of a sudden does everyone “stand with Ukraine”? According to Bernays, it’s not because there is a war going on and innocent people need our love and support, but rather because it is the new “group custom” to do so.

The process of altering group customs begins from the top down. In every nation or social clique, there are leaders, public figures and influencers. Manipulating those with the most sway eventually filters down into the public mind. That is why when a celebrity decides to wear something extravagant on the red carpet, a whole new trend can arise overnight.

Similarly, at the beginning of the Covid saga and then the Russia-Ukraine war, the media were quick to circulate stories of celebs “catching Covid” and urging people to stay home, or public figures condemning Russian actions and calling for stricter sanctions (which just so happened to hurt the West more than they hurt Russia).

THE PROPAGANDA PLAYBOOK

The world is a volatile place right now. Things seem to change quickly and no one knows what might happen next. However, amid all this chaos there is one thing that has not changed and is unlikely to change any time soon, and that is human psychology.

Because of this, the tactics used to manipulate people’s thoughts, beliefs and actions have not changed either. In fact, most of them were outlined in detail 100 years ago by Edward Bernays in his 1928 book, Propaganda.

That’s right, the Puppet Master’s playbook isn’t a secret. It’s right there, freely available to anyone who cares to understand how the powers that be seek to influence them on a daily basis.

A terrifying prediction for 2030 (the Great Reset) (Video)

 Here's a preview of what the WIF (World International Forum) predicts for 2030 as the Great Reset. Digital Identity, Digital Money and Scoring or as the Chinese call it: Social Credit. Just seeing the current applications in China Right now, it looks more like a nightmare than a technological utopia. Many things could and will happen before 2030 but the 4th industrial revolution as the WIF calls this dystopia will hopefully not be one of them.

 

"The Whole Planet Is A Pot, And We're All Frogs" (Covid Policies)

 Some interesting comments of what is currently going on in China. My take is that either the Chinese have gone mad as the article suggest or they are preparing for something "bigger". As discussed earlier I prefer the second hypothesis. It is more rational and more likely. I do not believe that the Chinese or the Russian want war. Nobody does. But they understand that the necessary financial reset in the West will be an opportunity to set scores with non Western countries and they must therefore prepare themselves for this event by decoupling their economy and get ready for unforeseen happenings...

Authored by Ugo Bardi via The Seneca Effect blog,

The lockdown in China: if the powerful are doing something that looks stupid, it's because whatever they’re doing IS actually stupid

I received several comments on my post "The Shanghai Lockdown: a Memetic Analysis," and I think that some were so interesting to be worth reproducing in a full-fledged post. The first comment comes from an anonymous commenter living in China. It seems to me believable, and also consistent with my interpretation.

In practice, the Chinese were (and are) not the only one who are conditioned by factors such as avoiding a loss of face.

Italians did the same during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

There seems to be an enormous psychological problem that when you discover that you have been conned, you don't want to admit that. It makes little difference if you are Chinese, Italian, or another nationality.

There follows a comment by "Mon Seul Desir" on which I fully agree. So much that I used it in a condensed version for the title of this post.

When something looks insane, most likely, it IS insane.

A comment on "The Shanghai Lockdown: A Memetic Analysis"by "Anonymous"

I am in Shanghai. I have been living here since 2007. I can read/speak Chinese at a high level of fluency. I also travelled extensively in the country.

There is something that most foreign analyst do not grasp: the Chinese Mind (the "collective subconscious" if you wish.)

• The Chinese Mind likes to be seen in the Struggle doing things to fight in the Struggle (no matter what the Struggle is, whether those actions give tangible results or not, at least they make great photo ops for the media.)

• The Chinese Mind is hive-like, it's blindly obedient, and it lashes out at the "Enemy" (whether real or imaginary)

• The Chinese Mind is a bit childish, it is for sure stubborn, and non-rational/logical (non-Cartesian)

• The Chinese Mind is constantly under ideological propaganda, everywhere, every time, from childhood til death, from home to the workspace...

• The Chinese Mind is never guilty, it always blames the Other (and the object of the blame is constantly shifting)

• The Chinese Mind hates losing face (what face, nobody knows) and hates being criticized (just shut up and put it under the carpet)

Remember the famines? One day they wake up and decide to kill all the birds (that were eating bugs that were eating crops...)

Same Mindset.

Shanghai has always been seen as the most "civilized" city in China. Shanghai is often called Le Paris de l'Orient, it is an "international" first tier city... probably the top Chinese city in terms of openness, quality of life and access to medical care.

Nobody expected to see such levels of insanity in Shanghai... in other areas of the country, yes, but not here. Looking at the conditions in the quarantine centers... Containers without doors in a field, tents set on a highway, toilets flooded with feces... open air zoo.

They come take positive cases in big buses and ambulances almost daily. The police is patrolling streets at all times and we are unable to even set foot on the sidewalk. Every building that had a positive case is either: shut down with barriers OR has 1-2 men in a tent monitoring 24/7 (imagine all the manpower required.) Currently there are 3-4 of those tents in my compound. It's basically Martial Law.

The psychological toll is quite high. The monetary one must be hard of lower classes. Some neighbors have mental breakdowns. Some people spray alcohol in the air while walking to get tested... You'd think the Plague is upon us.

Some people were getting messages in group chat about "foreign spies" and "foreign media fueling anti-China conspiracies." Good ol' shift the blame tricks.

I have been in lockdown since mid-March, got tested 35 times, and lost about 12 pounds. The local governmental commune gave us a little bit of food, but barely enough to survive.

Luckily we had some preps and were able to order some food. Now most delivery guys are not allowed to deliver to our address. We can get a bit of food, but we need to get imaginative to create new recipes (boiled/sweet and sour/spicy/fermented cabbage.)

My take is:

It could be a test for something much bigger (ie., war, energy crisis) or they are truly afraid of the unrest if lots of old people were to die. Chinese people tend to get emotional and the last thing the authorities want to deal with is mobs lynching doctors in the streets.

Is the frog slowly boiling in the pot?

I think so.

Except the whole planet is pot and we're all frogs.

Posted by "Mon Seul Desir"

I think that there’s far too many attempts to rationalize the conduct and policies of the powerful as being part of some astonishingly clever plan, myself I use Occam’s razor, if the powerful are doing something that looks incredibly stupid, self destructive and utterly insane, then it is because whatever they’re doing IS actually incredibly stupid, self destructive and utterly insane. I don’t buy the myth that those in power are unusually clever, informed or are far seeing. Here in Canada I’ve been witnessing the follies of our child-rulers for the past few years and the bungling of senile Brandon south of the border and this is governance on the level of Honorius and Arcadius and their corrupt intrigue filled courts. As for China, I saw a report on Xi’s appearance before the Congress of Peoples Deputies and I wondered. How many of the deputies applauding him are actually plotting against him?