Sri Lanka Economic Crash (Video)

 If you would like to know what the end of the year will look like, just follow what is currently going on in Sri Lanka. They are about 6 months ahead the rest of the world thanks to epic economic mismanagement.

The Fall of China (Video)

 This video is food for thought. When the present looks hazy as it does right now, it helps to think a little farther ahead to focus on the most important issues. This is the purpose of this video.

 

Bertrand Russell - Message To Future Generations (1959) - Video 1'59"

 Very short - Very brilliant - And so, so relevant today!

Run! The door of China is closing (Video)

 Is Xi Jinping, Mao 2.0? 

 Not quite yet but he most certainly has started his "Long Road"!

 

ARE PUTIN AND XI GRAY CHAMPIONS? (PART 2)

 This is a Fourth Turning view of the current crisis. I repost it for reference only.

In Part 1 of this article I examined previous Fourth Turnings and the Gray Champions who won and lost, but made a difference in the course of history. Now I will try to peer through the fog of disinformation, lies, and false narratives to try and determine which Gray Champions will make a difference in this Fourth Turning.

The U.S. and NATO are playing with fire by poking the bear. This is no longer a limited conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. In the early days of the conflict, there were constant talks between both sides, with the possibility of a negotiated resolution. The American Empire nixed those talks. The neo-cons, representing the interests of the military industrial complex uni-party, see an opportunity to further enrich themselves, while believing they can bleed and weaken Putin. But who is really being weakened in the long run?

Putin’s military operation began on February 24. Oil was $93 a barrel. It is up 13% and despite economic sanctions, Russian oil revenue is higher, and the ruble is at a two year high versus the USD and Euro. Natural gas prices are up 69%. Diesel prices are up 89%. Gasoline prices are up 29%. Wheat prices are up 31%. The stock market is down 5% and at a one year low. As an exporter of oil, natural gas, and wheat, is Russia really suffering from these price increases, or are the citizens of the EU and U.S. bearing the brunt of the pain? Russians are paying $2.80 a gallon for gasoline, while Americans are paying $4.65 per gallon. Who’s winning this proxy war?

Russian oil exports are up 50% in 2022. The Biden administration is amateur hour on steroids. The State Department and Defense Department are led by inept woke lightweights who are stumbling and bumbling our country into World War 3. They keep pushing Putin, attempting to instigate him into an action they can use as a basis for officially declaring war against Russia.

Make no mistake about it, the U.S. is already at war with Russia and Putin knows it. Economic sanctions, even though they have backfired and hurt Europe and the U.S. far more than Russia, are an act of war. Providing the Ukraine with tactical information so they can target generals and naval ships is an act of war. Shipping high tech military weaponry, in addition to enriching U.S. arms makers, to the Ukraine is an act of war.

Sending $54 billion, printed out of thin air by Powell and his cronies and exacerbating our already 40-year high inflation, to the corrupt Zelensky so he can buy U.S. arms, is an act of war. I wonder if the “Big Guy” will get his 10%. Calling for the overthrow of a world leader, who has 6,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal, is a reckless act of war. This isn’t a video game, where you get to start over if you make the wrong move. This game of Risk could end life on this planet as we know it if someone makes the wrong move.

Fourth Turnings have a life of their own, with the generational juxtaposition driving events towards conflict rather than towards a negotiated resolution. The Prophet Generation leaders are sure of themselves, even when the facts argue against their plans. They will plunge forward, as their arrogance and self-absurdness convince them they are destined to achieve immortality in history books as the leader who changed or saved the world.

We are in the midst of an era where events are being orchestrated by evil men whose agendas, while not totally coordinated, all coalesce around a future world of authoritarian domination by the few and passive subjugation by the many. It is clear Gates and Clinton are active conspirators in the Great Reset scheme being implemented by the billionaire global oligarchs.

Trump is an enigma, as his rhetoric appears to be against these forces of evil, but his actions speak otherwise. His assessment and selection of key personnel, endorsement of candidates, and continued full throated support of the blood clot inducing Big Pharma experimental gene therapies that don’t keep you from catching or transmitting a low-risk flu, classifies him as either a clueless dupe or just controlled opposition, paid to keep half the masses distracted from their conspiracy to implement their Build Back Better New World Order.

His actions in not doing everything in his power to free the January 6 hostages, rotting in government dungeons, passive support for Biden’s reckless Ukraine provocations, and endorsement of left wing lunatics like Oprah talk show host and Turkish citizen Mehmet Oz for Senate in a state where he doesn’t reside, prove his true colors. A Trump victory in the 2024 presidential election would ensure a chaotic whirlwind of domestic violence as a likely global conflict would already be underway.

Is Putin the world’s last hope in derailing the WEF Great Reset agenda or is he just playing his part in enslaving the global population in squalor and debt within a techno-gulag dystopian surveillance federation, where you will own nothing and be happy while your overlords own everything and dole out your rations depending upon your level of subservience? Even though there have been tenuous links between Putin and the WEF globalist cabal, the reaction of these globalists to his military operation reveals he is not on their side.

The U.S. controlled NATO has been slowly encircling Russia with missiles and the imminent admission of Sweden and Finland will put their missiles on Putin’s doorstep. Putin and his closest advisors are clear headed and understand the stakes, as stated by Dimitry Medvedev:

“The pumping of Ukraine by NATO countries with weapons, the training of its troops to use Western equipment, the dispatch of mercenaries and the conduct of exercises by the countries of the Alliance near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia instead of their ‘war by proxy. Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war. This will be a disastrous scenario for everyone.” – Dimitry Medvedev – Former Russian President

It appears this showdown between the failing and flailing American Empire and Putin will be the existential clash of this Fourth Turning. There is one certainty. Putin will not accept defeat in Ukraine. He plans to attain his objectives, whatever the cost. If the U.S. and NATO are foolish enough to directly intervene, they risk confirming Robert Oppenheimer’s lament – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Putin has seen the writing on the wall since the 2014 U.S. orchestrated coup d’état and has shown tremendous restraint in his response.

His Ukraine invasion has been targeted on military objectives, making all efforts to avoid civilian casualties. The Russian military is methodical, efficient, and boring, as opposed to the Shock & Awe U.S. military that has failed miserably at achieving their objectives for 20 years. The false flag Ukrainian attempts to create atrocity narratives have failed pathetically. But Putin’s restraint should not be mistaken for weakness. He is a man of his word, not one of Biden’s bloviating apparatchiks who got their job based on race, sex, or wokeness credentials. He means what he says and is willing to back up his words with actions.

“If someone intends to intervene in the ongoing events from the outside and create strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast. We have all the tools for this, and we will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know that.” – Vladimir Putin – April 28, 2022

There is no doubt in my mind Putin will be the most impactful of the Gray Champions over the last several years of this Crisis. The other Gray Champion who has been biding his time and generally keeping a low profile is Xi Jinping. Like Putin, a dictator for life, he can play the long game, while the U.S. fiddles and burns. He has refused to condemn Putin’s invasion and is tacitly supporting Russia by purchasing their oil and wheat, sanctioned by the West.

He is also learning the U.S. and the EU are paper tigers, bogged down by immense levels of debt, vacuous leadership, a willfully ignorant populace, and militaries focused on wokeness rather than preparation for war. He continues to rattle his sword towards Taiwan, probing and testing the U.S. reaction. Xi’s aspiration is for China to dominate the 21^st Century and he is applauding the foolishness of the American Empire in its death throes as it accelerates its fall by seeing its currency and military domination degraded rapidly.

Xi is a serious man, on par with Putin, when it comes to tenaciously implementing his agenda. Both Russia and China have major demographic issues and as dictators, they always have the possibility of being overthrown by an internal adversary. Human rights, gender inclusivity, and choosing preferred pronouns are not high priorities for these men. Xi has been rapidly building up his military, using the hundreds of billions the U.S. has supplied buying their cheap crap for decades.

China’s CCP has infiltrated American universities and stolen our technological innovations, bribing corrupt politicians, greedy corporate CEOs, spineless college administrators, and our dishonest whore media, to gain control over key aspects of our economic system. They are truly the enemy within. And the Biden crime family is beholden to both China and Ukraine. Xi played Trump like a fiddle, pretending they were personal friends and making promises he never intended to keep, as shown by our trade deficit with China up 30% from 2021 and on-track to reach an all-time high over $450 billion in 2022.

Both Putin and Xi see the deterioration, degradation, and unseriousness of those steering the American ship of state into a sea of icebergs. They witness the bumbling fool of a president on a daily basis and the dimwitted sycophants running his administration behind the curtain. It would be comical if these amateurs weren’t in the process of tearing the fabric of American society to shreds, while simultaneously pushing the world into a global conflict in which the likelihood of nuclear confrontation grows by the day.

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Xi most certainly plans to enact a takeover of Taiwan when he believes the U.S. is too distracted, militarily stretched and bogged down in their European misadventure. Biden has already pushed Russia and China closer, along with India, while the majority of the world supports Russia in this conflict. You will not hear that from the U.S. media, but it is a fact.

The U.S. Empire is not loved by the rest of the world. It has been feared, because if you stepped out of line in honoring the USD for all obligations you were summarily bombed into oblivion or cut off from the billions in “foreign aid” (aka bribes) doled out by American politicians. None of the foreign aid ever aids the people of those countries. It aids corrupt foreign leaders, arms dealers, and politicians who have a portion of the funds funneled back into their pockets. It has worked like a charm for decades, but these arrogant psychopaths went too far this time with their Covid scheme, unleashing a tsunami of inflation and destroying the just in time global supply chain they created when they sold off our manufacturing to China.

The horrific reported inflation of 8.3% is really 17%, if measured as it was during Paul Volcker’s reign as Federal Reserve Chairman. Of course, he took the courageous action of raising rates to 20% in order to crush it and succeeded. The cowardly Powell has rates under 1% and will do as he is told by his globalist overlords, destroying our economy so the Great Reset can move forward unabated.

History seems to be accelerating, with major developments and sudden turns every few weeks. False narratives and engineered distractions (Ukraine war, leaked abortion ruling, covid variant of the month) are designed to divert your attention from the collapse of our economy and financial markets. No one is really in control, though there are many egomaniacal self-absorbed despots who believe they can alter the course of history in the direction they choose.

Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and the rest of the World Economic Forum authoritarian evil globalist purveyors of real disinformation want to destroy our way of life so they can implement the way of life they want us to have – owning nothing, eating bugs, obeying their commands, under constant technological surveillance, and in constant fear of being turned in if they voice dissent. Essentially, they want to impose a techno-fascist global regime upon the masses.

Those pulling the strings know the jig is up. They’ve played the debt card to the hilt. It began to unravel in September 2019 when the repo market cracked. Everything since has been part of their exit strategy plan. They know the house of cards is about to come crashing down and are attempting to pull off a controlled demolition in which they retain their wealth, power, and control. Of course, their hubris will ultimately lead to their downfall, as the world is too complex, has too many variables to control, and their malevolent machinations will blow up in their faces and possibly blow up the entire world.

As we see shortages of baby formula, eggs, wheat, fertilizer, diesel fuel, high tech equipment, vehicles, along with open borders allowing hordes of illegals to pour into the country, and Democrat run urban enclaves encouraging murder and mayhem, all created by purposeful decisions made at the highest levels of government and funded by the likes of Soros and Gates, you can’t help but recognize their real goal is to destroy this country. We’ve reached the point Frank Zappa warned us about a few decades ago.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa

I understand what they are trying to accomplish. With little food or fuel, and less than 1% of the population able to grow their own food to sustain themselves, the Build Back Better oligarchs expect the masses to beg them to be saved. This is where the WEF slogan, “You will own nothing and be happy” comes to fruition. You will be doled out a food ration, work menial jobs, live a squalid existence, use their global digital currency, and try to maintain a high social credit score so you are not ostracized and condemned to the gulag, or worse.

The world is highly complex, and the best laid plans of these psychopaths are likely to go awry. I don’t believe they can pull off this controlled demolition without unleashing a myriad of unintended consequences. There is a pugnacious, heavily armed minority who will refuse to bend the knee to the arrogant, soft, egg head billionaires like Gates. His man boobs and pot belly don’t inspire admiration from average hard working blue collar man. A motivated minority of skilled freedom minded patriots can cause a multitude of problems for globalist totalitarians.

I also believe Putin and Xi are roadblocks to the WEF agenda, explaining the fawning over failed comedic actor Zelensky and his invitation to speak at Schwab’s annual World Economic Forum. The course of this Fourth Turning now hinges upon the actions of Putin and Xi in response to the threats and warlike actions being taken by an American Empire desperately clinging to the mantle as the dominant world power.

In theory I understood this Fourth Turning would ultimately lead to a bloody global conflict, but a few years into this Crisis I didn’t visualize a scenario which would lead to such an outcome. Each Fourth Turning has seen an exponential increase in deaths, as the killing technology has improved. There were approximately 65 million deaths during World War II, with Russia incurring 27 million of those deaths. That means approximately 3% of the global population were killed during the last Fourth Turning.

Over 4% of the U.S. male population was killed during the Civil War. A similar death toll percentage today would exceed 250 million people. With the killing technology available today to men of dubious intellect and malicious motives, the potential loss of life could exceed our worst nightmares. I hoped for a less dismal route for this inevitable Crisis, but we are now careening towards our own rendezvous with destiny. On the current trajectory, we are running out of time on the Doomsday Clock.

Strauss and Howe laid out four potential outcomes, which I have presented many times before in previous articles. Three of the four are not positive. If you asked me a few years ago, I would have selected outcome three as the most likely, as the American Empire died with a whimper, much like the British Empire after World War II. Now I realize outcomes three and four are highly unlikely.

I believe outcome two is inevitable, as the dominant nation (America) has chosen to take a course which will engulf the planet in a war with an unknowable outcome. Once war starts on a grand scale, it could spin out of control and result in outcome number one. We can only hope cooler heads will prevail, but observing what is considered leadership in this day and age, I’m not optimistic.

1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck.
2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

Cutting Off Russian Gas Would Be "Catastrophic", German Industry President Warns

  As on clue to the previous article about the true goals of the Ukraine war, Europe already finds itself on the ropes struck between the Scylla of American imperialism and the Charybdis of a deep gas-induced depression following years of outrageous budget deficits. Now wait until the gas pressure drops to see the political pressure rise. The Summer will be hot!

Cutting Off Russian Gas Would Be "Catastrophic", German Industry President Warns

As we detailed yesterday, almost two months after Europe rushed to declare it would impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine with no regard for how such sanctions would boomerang and cripple its own economies, the old continent which was and still remains hostage to Russian energy exports, is finally grasping the underlying math which was all too clear to Vladimir Putin long ago.

The European Union’s executive arm said yesterday that the currency bloc’s economy would expand about 0.2% this year, with inflation topping 9%, as governments struggled to replace the imports.

This severe stagflationary scenario is highlighted by Siegfried Russwurm, president of the Germany’s biggest industry association BDI, warning that the cessation of Russian gas deliveries would have a dire effect on the German economy.

“The consequences of cutting off Russian gas supplies would be catastrophic,” he told tabloid Bild am Sonntag in an interview published at the weekend.

Russwurm added that cutting off Russian gas would deprive businesses of fuel in Germany, forcing businesses to close production lines.

“In this situation many companies will be completely cut off gas supplies. In many cases, affected businesses will be forced to stop production, some businesses may never be able to start again," he warned.

Europe's "sudden realization" of just how destructive pushing through with full-blown sanctions will be, somewhat similar to that of Elon Musk who "learned" about the millions in Twitter spam accounts only after bidding $44 billion - is why over the weekend, Bloomberg reported that the European Union is set to fully water down its so-called sanctions and to offer gas importers a solution to avoid a breach of sanctions when buying fuel from Russia while satisfying President Vladimir Putin’s demands over payment in rubles.

All of which helps explain why the Ruble is trading at a five-year high against the euro...

And in typical European fashion, the messaging is full of confusion, with guidance for companies is one thing while the propaganda disseminated for public consumption totally different, all the while the biggest winner remains Putin and Russia which yesterday reported a new record high in its current account.

Escobar: Death By A Thousand Cuts - Where Is The West's Ukraine Strategy?

  Pepe Escobar is definitively pro Russian but does that make him wrong?

  The real question is: What is the true goal of this war? Eastern Ukraine can only be a tactical answer. What about Western Europe then? We will only know in a few months.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The pounding, daily western narratives on 'Ukrainian wins' and 'Russian losses' underpins the lack of an actual, cohesive Grand Strategy against Moscow...

While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.  

Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end they were totally outmatched by anumerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.

The New Rift Between WHO And China

  For over a month now, I have been trying to understand why China was so inflexible about the current lock-down in Shanghai. Trying to crash the world global chain? It makes little sense since it harms China more than anybody else. And then I stumbled on the article below which explains that Xi Jinping is trying to secure a 3rd term at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party which will take place in early November in Beijing. So all this for that! It of course makes so much more sense. It is also I good prophylactic against too much "conspiracy thinking". Often explanations are simple, prosaic and parochial.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

From the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization and China’s CCP have worked and spoken hand-in-glove, culminating in the Potemkin Village junket of mid-February 2020. The WHO-sponsored travel report—how wonderfully China had performed!—was written and signed by American public health officials who recommended Wuhan-style lockdowns, a disastrous policy that further inspired most governments in the world to do the same.

Twenty-six months later, it turns out that China in fact had not “eliminated the virus fully within its borders,” contrary to the over-the-top claims of TV pundit Devi Sridhar in her new book “Preventable.” They only pushed cases into the future, as the CCP discovered when positive tests appeared all over Shanghai, leading to 7 weeks of brutal lockdowns.

This move on China’s part has been a disaster for the country and the world economy, and presently endangers the financial and technological future of the entire country.

For Xi Jinping, lockdowns and zero-covid were his greatest achievement, one which was celebrated the world over, causing his political pride to swell beyond all bounds. Now, he cannot back off lest he face possible losses in upcoming party elections.

Just this past weekend, he made it clear to the entire government that there would be no backing off the zero-covid policy: the CCP will “unswervingly adhere to the general policy of ‘dynamic zero-Covid,’ and resolutely fight against any words and deeds that distort, doubt or deny our country’s epidemic prevention policies.”

The problem is acute: vast numbers in China likely need to acquire natural immunity via exposure. The lockdown policy likely puts a damper on the achievement of endemicity. That means long-term damage to China’s future.

Sensing this problem, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, offered a mild criticism:

“Considering the behavior of the virus, I think a shift will be very important,” adding that he had discussed this point with Chinese scientists.

What happened next is truly fascinating: Tedros’s comments were censored all over China and searches for the name Tedros were immediately blocked within the country.

Implausibly, merely by stating the incredibly obvious point, Tedros has made himself an enemy of the state.

Meanwhile, another WHO/China partisan, Bill Gates, has been sheepishly saying something very similar in interviews, namely that the virus cannot be eradicated.

It’s not just Tedros and Gates who are trying to flee their advocacy of lockdowns. Anthony Fauci himself denied that the United States ever had “complete lockdowns”—which is technically correct but not because he didn’t demand them.

On March 16, 2020, Fauci faced the national press and read from a CDC directive: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

In fact, one gets the strong sense that governments around the world are pretending as if the whole pathetic and terrible affair never happened, even as they are attempting to reserve the power to do it all over again should the need arise.

On May 12, 2022, many governments around the world gathered for a video call and agreed to pour many billions more into covid work, and reaffirm their dedication to an “all-of-society” and “whole-of-government” approach to infectious disease. The U.S. government under the administration readily agreed to this idea.

Leaders reinforced the value of whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to bring the acute phase of COVID-19 to an end, and the importance of being prepared for future pandemic threats. The Summit was focused on preventing complacency, recognizing the pandemic is not over; protecting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, immunocompromised people, and frontline and health workers; and preventing future health crises, recognizing now is the time to secure political and financial commitment for pandemic preparedness.

The Summit catalyzed bold commitments. Financially, leaders committed to provide nearly $2 billion in new funding—additional to pledges made earlier in 2022. These funds will accelerate access to vaccinations, testing, and treatments, and they will contribute to a new pandemic preparedness and global health security fund housed at the World Bank.

Is it progress to see these people throwing around language from the much-criticized but now wholly vindicated Great Barrington Declaration? Doubtful. You can’t make a bad policy better by tossing around words. There is every indication from this statement that there will be no apologies, no regrets, and no changes in the default position that governments must always and everywhere have maximum power to control any pathogen of their choosing.

Despite Tedros’s censored words, it’s no wonder that Xi Jinping continues to feel vindicated and affirmed, and sees no real political danger in choosing his own power over the health and well-being of his people. Governments around the world still cannot muster the courage to make a full-throated and solid attack on zero-covid, for fear of the implications of such a concession. Nudges and hints, even from the WHO, will not do it.

Rabobank: There Are Whispers Of A Shift To Physical Commodities Being Used As Trade Settlement

  Weekly market report from Michael Every at Rabobank.

 It is interesting because he touches everything relevant and is not especially oriented one way or the other. 

 What is more and more obvious week after week is the growing world disorder. He is right that higher interest rates and a recession will solve the high commodity prices... but at what price? I am just old enough to remember bicycles on motorways in the Netherlands in 1973. As for famines, we forget too easily that it is only the recent green revolution (that one we definitively not "green" at all in the modern sense of the word!) of energy + pesticides + fertilizers which solved the equation for a while. 

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Name That Tune? Scandinavian Black Metal

When I was young there was a TV show called ‘Name That Tune’, where panellists would compete to see how few notes they could name a tune in: I was recently told the same idea has been relaunched as an app. Looking at the key notes struck recently, can you ‘name that tune’?

Many were sure it was “transitory inflation”, but even Jeff Bezos is Tweeting the White House wanted to spend trillions more dollars than they have been able to, in which case inflation would be even higher than it is now. There is broad agreement that Friday’s dead-cat-bounce in markets in no way captures the real mood music. As such, some now think the tune is “more new normal”, as Fed Chair Powell talks about 50bp hikes in both June and July, while not ruling out a possible recession, suggesting rates will have to come back down again.

Both those hikes and a recession are likely the right notes. However, many tunes start the same, but then diverge sharply. Are we really going to see rate hikes and then rate cuts? Arguably, the music now playing is more sinister – but as a result, many are trying to avoid naming what the tune actually is.

Think of Scandinavian Black Metal as Finland and Sweden officially announce bids for NATO membership, overturning decades and centuries of neutrality, respectively; as Ukraine wins the Eurovision Song Contest, showing the tune the EU public is singing, and President Zelenskiy floats hosting it in demolished and occupied Mariupol; and as France and Germany come last, an EU-wide rejection of their continuous bids to harmonize with Russia.

Think similarly as the G7 warns of 43 million people going hungry if Russia won’t stop its blockade of the Black Sea, which it won’t. That seems an undercount given recent surveys in even Western countries talking about 2 in 7 people facing some form of hunger, and a surge in the use of food banks. Worse, India just halted exports of wheat, or will only sell to those in real need, which injects another layer of (geo)politics into commodities trading.

Likewise, oil remains over $100 despite much of China in lockdown, which Shanghai may lift slightly from 16 May. Imagine how high oil would be with China open. Diesel is in short supply, and Bloomberg’s Javier Blass says at prices the equivalent of $200-250. There are warnings of diesel shortages in the north-east US, which will bring trucking to a halt. Recent conversations with taxi drivers in London and Singapore, which there are evident shortages of, complaining that current fuel prices mean they struggle to make ends meet. Nigerian domestic airlines have threatened to stop flying completely.

We can all name the tune that follows. Pro-China Sri Lanka is in chaos over rising food and energy prices. Pro-China Iran is seeing street protests, despite being a major energy producer – and is still no closer to a nuclear deal despite the EU thinking ‘Wandel Durch Handel’ will work in the Middle East in the same way it has not worked in eastern Europe or the Far East. China itself, besides sealing people into their homes, is restricting outbound international travel, clipping passports of those arriving, and according to one source, blocking overseas calls.

China also saw terrible data: industrial production -2.9% y-o-y vs. consensus of 0.5% and 5.0% in March; in year-to-date (y-t-d) terms, it was up 4.0%, down from 6.5% from last month; retail sales y-o-y were -11.1% vs. -6.6% consensus, and down from -3.5%, and in y-t-d terms were -1.2%, down from 3.3%; fixed investment y-o-y y-t-d was 6.8% vs. 7.0% consensus and down from 9.3%, the last leg standing; and property investment was -2.7% y-o-y y-t-d vs. -1.5% consensus and 0.7% in March, underlining that the investment seen was into infrastructure not housing. Indeed, residential property sales were -32.2% y-o-y y-t-d, and unemployment ticked up from 6.0% to 6.1%. China’s response was to cut mortgage rates 20bp for first-home buyers, but there was no rate cut in the MLF interest rate from 2.85% despite 50-50 market expectations of such a move.

In short, it’s easy to look at those data and the terrible fall in real incomes around the world and conclude that rate hikes are a mistake that will end in recession – and worse. However, there are several tunes that follow those obvious notes.

We could see the familiar ‘new normal’ music of a rapid rates retreat, as normal until now.

In which case, we would not just get a knee-jerk rally in bonds and stocks, and a weaker US dollar; we would also get more commodity-price inflation, which would imply even more socio-economic and socio-political polarisation and destabilisation. As a result, the Fed might sing a new tune.

Look at what just happened in crypto. This obvious bubble, led by people who think if you wear black and sunglasses you somehow become Neo from the Matrix, and cheer-led by people who don’t care provided it tastes like steak, is likely bursting. If/when it does, it will take trillions in ‘wealth’ with it. And what will that achieve? First, the primacy of the fiat US dollar over ‘safe haven’ digital money-printing. Second, it will force millions of people who had walked away from burger-flipping due to ‘crypto wealth’ back into the workforce. Can you see why the Fed would want that to happen? And all it took was fiat Fed Funds at 1%.

Likewise, as commodities surge, have been weaponised, and are talked of as backing a ‘new world order’, there are also whispers of a shift to physical commodities being used as trade settlement. Cargoes are still priced in US dollars but, allegedly, de facto barter is already taking place to circumvent the global dollar system and any potential Western sanctions.

Can you see why the Fed needs to act on that urgently too? This is not an existential threat per se but, as with crypto, it limits the Fed’s ability to achieve its goals. Just as if everyone can print their own money what does it matter where Fed Funds sits, if commodities are so expensive they can be bartered as settlement, how can the Fed bring inflation down? (As Japanese PPI also hits 10% y-o-y today, and the BOJ keep pegging 10-year JGB bond yields at 0.25%.)

The answer/tune might be for the Fed to go well beyond 1%,… and stay there: to do unto commodities what they are doing unto crypto.

If so, inflation then falls. Bonds rally. Real incomes rise – for those who still have jobs. Unfortunately, assets get truly smashed – including bonds for quite some time, and most at the short end. Stocks obviously suffer - unless some people help to ramp certain key names, which obviously never happens. Then again, asset-backed ‘new world orders’ also get smashed. Which is part of the tune people won’t name.

Of course, so do net exporters such as China; and although lower commodity prices would make another debt-driven infrastructure stimulus package more affordable for Beijing, lower exports plus more stimulus plus higher Fed Funds would be very negative for CNY – which in that kind of scenario becomes another bubble cheer-led by people who think they are Neo and/or who don’t care provided it tastes like steak.

On a related note, the IMF just raised the CNY’s share of its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket. Yet who cares? The WHO might as well have announced the news. In the first quintennial review since CNY --pointlessly-- became an official reserve currency in 2016, delayed a year by Covid, its weighting rose from 10.92% to 12.28%. As I argued in ‘Why Bretton Woods 3 Won’t Work’, current FX reserve holdings of CNY are arguably already higher than required by day-to-day activity, so this IMF news changes nothing. Indeed, the US dollar’s weighting also rose from 41.73% to 43.38%, while the euro's dropped from 30.93% to 29.31%, JPY's fell from 8.33% to 7.59%, and GBP's from 8.09% to 7.44%.

With PM Boris Johnson apparently about to walk away from the Northern Ireland protocol, potentially triggering a UK-EU trade war, GBP was already likely to stay under pressure.

“We didn’t understand” that COVID is “kind of like flu,” says Bill Gates

Guest Post by Mark Crispin Miller

Note his logic: “We didn’t know then that COVID’s really just a flu; so it was pretty scary that the world, including the United States, didn’t go on alert nearly as fast as it needed to.” (Not “as fast as we thought it needed to,” but “as fast as it needed to,” suggesting some crossed wires inside “Bill’s brain.”)

And yet, funnily enough, Dr. Fauci, of all people, did know that COVID is ‘kind of like flu,” as he noted in February, 2020. So Gates’s “experts” weren’t in touch with Dr. Fauci?

If there’s any justice in the world, this mass-murdering predator (who went to Epstein’s island 37 times) is hiding out, surrounded by his bodyguards, and flinching every time he hears an unexpected noise. And if there’s any justice in the universe, Bill Gates will spend eternity in that condition.

Non, sorry Bill. Actually, we did! 

I remember perfectly doctors saying that the Corona Virus was responsible of 15% to 20% of the flu every year. 

What was different in 2020 was the Made-in-China spike making Covid far more easy to spread and then of course the apocalyptic statistics of Dr Ferguson according to whom 10% of mankind were about to die. 

They didn't die. But they were vaccinated. Some people became incredibly rich thanks to unlimited budgets from panicked governments. Well, except of course in Africa where they could not afford the cost. And guess which continent, the virus avoided?  

So, in the end, it would be great if at least we did draw some conclusions from this debacle... and we did: Propaganda works! Repeat the words until you believe them and eventually you will become a believer. And most importantly: Never, ever revisit the past to admit you made a mistake! Now, what were we saying about Ukraine?