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Europe’s Anti-Russia Sanctions a Stupendous Act of Self-Harm and Loathing

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 11, 2020

New data out this week indicates that the European Union has suffered aggregate economic losses amounting to over €120 billion due to its policy of imposing sanctions against Russia. That’s according to figures released by the Dusseldorf Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Yet European leaders at an EU summit this week again called for the extension of sanctions on Russia, which will roll on into the middle of next year and probably beyond that date. This lockstep action by the bloc is only leading to more tensions with Russia and taking a political direction to nowhere except more conflict. Those EU sanctions were first imposed in July 2014 over dubious allegations of Russia’s malign involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. Moscow has rightfully reciprocated with counter-sanctions on European exports of agriculture and other goods.

The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that the entire stand-off has hit EU economies with losses of €21 billion every year. The biggest loser is Germany’s economy which forfeits nearly €5.5 billion a year in bilateral trade with Russia.

Accumulated over six years since 2014 the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia has resulted in a staggering total loss of over €120 billion. And counting.

To put that figure into some perspective, it would be comparable to the combined annual military budgets of Europe’s three biggest economies: Germany, Britain and France.

Or to put it another way, this week the European leaders agreed on a landmark stimulus package worth €1.8 trillion for the 27-member bloc to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The economic loss to the EU from sanctions on Russia is of the order of 10 per cent of that record stimulus effort.

It is therefore mind-shuddering why the European Union persists in inflicting such untold damage to its own economy through its policy towards Russia.

The EU claims that sanctions are being extended because of the lack of progress in peace negotiations over the Ukraine crisis. Brussels is seeking to blame Moscow for that ongoing frozen conflict, oblivious to the fact that Russia is not a party to the conflict. It is a member of the so-called Normandy Format overseeing the Minsk Peace Accord signed in 2015. Germany and France are also members of the Normandy group. The group has not met since one year ago. So, why is Russia being singled out as the sole responsible for lack of progress in settling the Ukraine conflict?

Secondly, the Ukraine crisis was instigated by a coup d’état against the elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The coup was orchestrated by the United States and European allies, which ushered in an ultranationalist regime in Kiev with disturbing links to Neo-Nazi factions. Hostility towards Russian-speaking communities in the Ukraine then led to the Crimean referendum in March 2014 appealing for reunification with Russia. It is simply preposterous and cynical for the European Union to blame Russia for subsequent turmoil when the EU is itself directly complicit in fomenting the crisis.

In any case, rigidly applying sanctions is counterproductive to a diplomatic solution. Mutual dialogue is precluded by a policy of recrimination and scapegoating.

The EU sanctions policy is self-defeating and suffused with contradictions. It imposes measures against Russia with seeming insouciance about the huge damage being done to EU businesses, workers and farmers, and it does this without any clear justification. Yet this week EU leaders led by Germany refused to impose sectoral sanctions against Turkey in spite of repeated calls by EU members Greece and Cyprus for such measures as a means of defending their territorial integrity from Turkey’s aggressive gas exploration in the East Mediterranean. So here we have EU members protesting against threats to their sovereignty from Turkey; yet the EU leaders show little resolve to defend the bloc’s external southern borders by taking a tough sanctions line towards Ankara.

There is evidently a strange double-think when one compares the EU’s gung-ho attitude towards Russia over a matter in Ukraine which is not even part of the EU and a matter that is highly contested in terms of the allegations being made against Russia.

How to explain such an irrational, anti-Russia policy by the European Union?

One has to conclude that the EU is slavishly following a policy determined by the United States. The US has imposed its own bilateral sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine, as well as many other equally dubious claims, such as alleged electoral interference. The Europeans are thus deferring to Washington’s foreign policy of hostility towards Moscow, even though the economic losses felt by the Americans are negligible compared with those of Europe due to the latter’s geographic proximity and traditionally much greater trading relations with its continental neighbor.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted this week that the European Union’s policy is “centered on the United States”. Lavrov lamented that the EU under current leadership shows no sign of acting independently from Washington. In effect, the European bloc is a vassal under American tutelage.

Ironically, the antagonism towards Russia from the West is due to Russia’s demonstrative independence.

Says Lavrov in a separate interview: “The West’s awareness that Russia is an independent power has had a cumulative effect. Russia will always prioritize its national interests. It is always ready to harmonize them candidly and equitably with the national interests of any other countries based on international law, but it will never be under someone’s thumb.”

The Russian top diplomat added: “The desire to score propaganda points has dominated the West’s foreign policy for a long time, while overlooking the essence of the problems that need a solution in the interests of the peoples of the respective regions.”

A psychiatrist might opine that European self-harming, irrational antagonism towards Russia – while constantly appeasing an American bully – is a form of self-loathing. The EU’s political class resent Russia because the latter is a constant reminder of the independence and integrity that they are so abjectly deficient in.

December 14, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

An Expert Military Analysis of War with China

Actually, None is Necessary

By Fred Reed • Unz Review • December 13, 2020

The Correlation of Armed Forces: U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $634.8 billion in 2019. Exports were $163.0 billion; imports were $471.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $308.8 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $76.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were $56.5 billion; services imports were $20.1 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with China was $36.4 billion in 2019.

There is talk within the Washingtoniat of a possible war with China. Steve Bannon, who apparently was dropped on his head as a child, actually favors such a war. We hear the usual shoo-the-boobs alarm about how the Chinese are doing something terrible and we must gird our loins and American values and show them what for, bow wow, woof. The danger is that the current game of who-blinks-first in Asian waters might actually provoke a shooting war. You know the kind of thing: One warship refuses to get out of the way of another, a collision ensues, some retard lieutenant who signed up on waivers opens fire, and we’re off and running. It is not a good idea to let children play with matches.

The said war is discussed either in emotional terms by idiots or in purely naval terms by those familiar with such things, so we hear of the First Island Chain and the Second Island Chain and whose missiles against the other’s missiles and so on. This would be appropriate if we were fighting World War Two again. Which we aren’t. Let’s take a quick-and-dirty look at how such a war might go.

To begin the war, America would overestimate itself and underestimate China. This is doctrine in the Pentagon. There is probably a manual on it. Inside the DC Bubble, fern-bar Napoleons would assure us that it would be a short war, a cakewalk, a matter of days, not weeks. You know, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. When it turned out that the Chinese had other ideas, among which surrendering was not, and the months dragged on, various fascinating things would happen.

Rand, a thinktank wholly owned by the Pentagon, at least mentally, has wargamed both the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, concluding that the war could be both very long and a loss for America. We no longer live in 1960.

OK, the war: On day one, all the multitudinous American factories in China shut down. Example: Apple loses its factories, products from those factories, and the Chinese market of 1.4 billion consumers. Its stores close. Tim Cook’s gratitude will know no bounds. American auto manufacturers sell googolplexes of cars in China (or at least lots), mostly made in China. Overnight they will lose factories, cars, and Chinese customers. Overall, China buys many more cars than does the US. This analysis, if anything so obvious may be called analysis, can be repeated for industry after industry after industry. Goodbye, business vote.

Within weeks, Walmart’s shelves go bare. Walk down the aisles and read the “Made in” labels. We are not talking only plastic buckets and mops but chain saws, pharmaceuticals, motorcycles, and blood-pressure cuffs. So much for the blue-collar vote. The US buys 472 billion in goods annually from China, high-tech, low-tech, consumer goods, manufacturing components. No more.

China buys over $163 billion annually in American goods: petroleum, semiconductors, airline engines, soybeans, airliners, on and on. No more. It is hard to underestimate the joy this will cause in influential boardrooms. And of course the American workers who would have produced these things for China will be laid off. As electoral politics, this will prove suboptimal.

China produces a great majority of the rare earth elements crucial to the manufacture of electronics, such as semiconductors. No quick substitute is in sight. Just about everything in America uses these, to include the computers that run the electrical systems of cars. Though I haven’t checked, it is quite possible that the computers themselves are made in China. If you want a new and deeper understanding of the word “hostile,” check the influential CEOs of businesses on their second chipless day.

In a real war, it is likely that China, having thought of the foregoing, would (intelligently) destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, notably those of TSMC, as well as other factories of electronics. This would hardly be difficult since the Taiwan Strait is only a hundred or so miles wide. Losing these industries would be exceedingly painful for the US since its high-end chips come from Taiwan. It would take America years to replace this capacity domestically. Some of the necessary equipment, extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, is not made in America and in any event cannot be stamped out like beer cans.

In America it would quickly be discovered that the country is rather more dependent on China than some might think. If I may make up an example: The automotive industry finds that its sparkplugs come from China. While America could certainly make spark plugs, it turns out that a decade back the industry found that China could make them for forty percent less. In the cooperative commercial world pre-Trump, this was no problem. Not now. So much for sales of cars. And for the jobs of the workers who make them.

I will bet you all my diamond mines in South Africa and cattle lands in Argentina, that if you went through a parts list for, say, Boeing’s airliners, you would find lots of them made in China. Sure, the US could manufacture most of them, eventually. But companies need parts now, not eventually.

The effects on other countries of a large war against China would be catastrophic if not worse. Other countries also get many things, from China or Taiwan, such as semiconductors. Google on “country x largest trading partner.” A strong pattern quickly becomes clear: China is huge in trading with practically everybody. “Everybody” includes Germany, Japan, Australia, Russia, and South America as a whole. The world economy in its entirety would collapse.

How smart would this be? The United States is already in serious trouble, what with a currency rapidly being debased, a sinking middle class, businesses dying of Covid, jobs disappearing abroad, people living paycheck to paycheck, and social unhappiness resulting in continent-wide riots. Do you suppose the public will gladly support an unfathomably stupid war causing an instant, profound, and murderous economic depression? If so, you probably already have a collection of bridges.

This can be inflicted on the entire earth by a half-dozen loons in or circling around the White House unhindered by a worthless Congress. Six loons. Yes, I know, Trump is unlikely deliberately to start a Third world War, even as a publicity stunt. No, the generals in the Pentagon are not nearly stupid enough. (They might even refuse, pointing out that starting a war requires a declaration by Congress.) The problem is that for years America has been, if not actually looking for a fight, at least daring other countries to start one. For example, murdering Iranian officials, pulling out of arms-control treaties, pushing NATO ever closer to Russia, sanctioning countries far beyond anything that can be called a trade war, and playing chicken with China in the South China Sea. Under these circumstances you can get a fight without quite looking for one.

Write Fred at jet.possum@gmail.com. Put the letters pdq anywhere in the subject line to avoid heartless autodeletion.

December 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Russia on track to have one of its largest-ever grain harvests

RT | December 13, 2020

This year’s grain crop in Russia is set to exceed 131 million tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. This would be one of the country’s largest harvests, second only to the record 135.5 million tons recorded in 2017.

“Today we can talk about the completion of the harvest season in Russia. Grains are almost completely crushed. So, we can say with confidence that in 2020 our farmers provided one of the most significant harvests in the country’s recent history,” said the head of the ministry, Dmitry Patrushev, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The latest figures beat earlier expectations. The ministry had said in September it expected this year’s grain harvest to stand at 122.5 million tons.

Russia’s booming agricultural production has surged by 20 percent over the last six years. The country has managed to capture more than half of the global wheat market, becoming the world’s biggest exporter of grain, thanks to bumper harvests and attractive pricing. Since the early 2000s, Russia’s share of the global wheat market has quadrupled. In 2018-2019, Russia delivered 35.2 million tons of wheat to the global market.

Supported by a massive grain harvest, the country is projected to retain its leadership in the world’s wheat market in the coming years.

December 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Why this campaign of terror?

Never outside war time have populations been subjected to such outrageous assault and battery by government propaganda machines

By Gillian Dymond | OffGuardian | December 13, 2020

In the morning, the world is as the world should be. The sun rises, as predicted for this part of England in early December, at around twenty past eight. Shortly after this, I get up, go through the usual morning routines, have a quick breakfast, wash up, and am at my computer by ten o’clock. The hours pass unexceptionably until lunchtime. And then I can no longer put off the trip to the shops.

Going to the shops is something I do as little as possible nowadays. Once I might have walked in and out of the nearby town centre several times in a day, without thinking twice: but that was when I could move from home to street seamlessly, with no jarring transition between here and there.

Now it’s different. Now, beyond the protective confines of our home lies a parallel universe, a place of outlandish rituals and dogmas, where grotesquely masked figures pass each other warily on the street or, in the supermarket, lurk out-of-touch behind symbolic plastic screens. Instead of muzak, as I follow the prescribed route between the aisles, disembodied voices warn of death and disease, order me to protect myself and others by maintaining distance and keeping my plague-ridden exhalations to myself.

“We’re in this together!” they proclaim.

In less than a year some malign necromancy has transformed the fearless social beings who once thronged shops and cafés in the run-up to each Christmas into an infestation of dangerous, outsized germs: or, if scrupulous examination of the facts has left you confident that “the novel coronavirus” is no more threatening to moderately healthy people than the nastier brands of flu, into the crazed adherents of some apocalyptic cult.

Since I have spent the past nine months scrupulously examining the facts, the eyes now peering out at me over the inadequate face-covering of that woman beating a hasty retreat behind the cans of tuna as I approach are, it seems to me, those of a poor, unhinged lunatic. But then, I am an unbeliever. I do not wear the mask of allegiance. Marked out by the lanyard around my neck, I do my shopping as quickly as possible, and hurry back to the embattled sanity of domestic life.

Yes, even here embattled: for as the onslaught of propaganda continues without remission, only complete divorce from the outside world can afford protection. Fortunately, since the arrival of the computer I am beyond the reach of programmed television, but in order to wake to the accompaniment of pleasant but undemanding music, I used to put up with the intermittent smattering of adverts on Classic FM. Now that government has become the media’s most lucrative source of income, however, this is no longer tolerable. Who wants to be roused abruptly from sleep by inane incantations of “Hands! Face! Place!”, sometimes repeated twice within five minutes ?

“It’s just an actor!” my husband pleads with me, as I hurl execrations, and worse, at the radio. But whether it comes from actors or health ministers, the brain-washing stinks. “Don’t you just long for a nice commercial about sofas?” a friend asks mournfully, as we discuss the incremental take-over of advertising slots by the government’s ‘nudge unit‘. Even bona fide adverts from the likes of Boots and the big supermarkets are made nauseous by mealy-mouthed assurances of “safe” shopping. The only kind of safe shopping I long for is shopping safe from constant reminders of The Virus: shopping unmasked and convivially mingling; the chance to browse unimpeded in bookshops, and linger socially-undistanced over cups of coffee in a crowded café.

Why this campaign of terror, you have to ask? Why, in the midst of a genuine pandemic, would anyone need to be reminded unceasingly that death is dogging their footsteps? That at any moment The Virus, wafted abroad by some super-spreader passed fleetingly in the street, might  be insinuating itself into one’s body – or, worse, that we ourselves, infected but unaffected, might be silently contaminating a loved-one?

The short answer is, they wouldn’t. In a genuine pandemic, this constant mental battering would be superfluous. If the Black Death were raging outside my door, government would know full well that they didn’t have to fork out millions to convince me to stay inside;  more likely, they would have to pay me to leave the house.

Yet this government has bought the mass media lock, stock and barrel, at vast expense, with the sole purpose, it seems, of hammering home a message of impending doom. Instead of calming our fears with facts and rational arguments, they have seen fit to flood the airwaves with slogans calculated to maintain panic; with disingenuous appeals to the emotions; with out-of-context death counts, wilful obfuscation of the difference between cases and infections, a criminally dodgy PCR test and graphs and computer models (rubbish in, rubbish out) carefully selected to emphasise the worst possible eventualities.

And not content to cow us into submission with a constant diet of skewed and incomplete information, they have unleashed the army’s 77 Brigade to troll social media exchanges and snuff out any lingering dissent  –  or, as the government prefer to call it, “misinformation“. The aim can only be to induce maximum public terror in the face of a virus which, without all this deceptive ballyhoo, would hardly have been noticed by the population at large.

Why are they doing this? Surely, by now, they must be aware that increasing numbers of highly esteemed and experienced scientists contest policies which are killing vastly more people than they are saving, and which will go on killing well into the future!

True, non-scientists could get lost in all the reams of conflicting information churned out since we were first put on terror alert back in February and March, but one question is both fundamental and easily answered: are excess mortality figures for this year significantly above average? Only a huge and sustained divergence from the norm would indicate the presence of a new disease deadly enough to justify the extraordinary measures the government have taken.

The Euromomo charts for the UK show no such anomaly. In Northern Ireland there has never been any substantial increase in deaths overall. In Wales, too, mortality has hardly diverged from the normal range.  Scotland had a well-above-average peak in the spring, but since then has remained almost entirely within the bounds of normality. Even populous England, despite a death rate which soared sharply to a great height in March before falling equally sharply back by the middle of June, has spent most of the year chugging along below the “substantial increase” line, with the usual increase as winter approaches. A further chart at Covid-19 in Proportion? shows that,

Levels of mortality in 2019/2020 are very similar to those suffered in 1999/2000

Definitely not the Black Death, then, nor even the 1918 influenza. In fact, one of the world’s premier epidemiologists, John Ioannidis, has long been assuring us that the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is comparable with that of a bad flu. His early estimate, in March, of a case fatality rate in the general population of between 0.05% and 1.0%, as indicated by the outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess  –  a conclusion for which the eminent professor was, hilariously, censored by the non-scientists at YouTube.

Yet now we are being told that only mass vaccination against this fairly run-of-the-mill virus will allow us to return to any semblance of normal life. By special dispensation, millions of doses of insufficiently tested vaccine are already in the pipeline, with a guarantee of no come-back for Big Pharma or for doctors turning a blind eye to the precept “First to do no harm”, should those treated be hit with damaging repercussions on their health or, indeed, on life itself.

We are told that we should all accept the suspect panacea regardless, in order to beat “this dreadful virus”: it’s quite safe  –  honest, you’ve got my word for it, says Matt Hancock. Yet, side-effects apart, there is no assurance that the Pfizer vaccine, received with jubilation on 8th December by its first grateful recipient, will be effective in preventing either the disease or its transmission: and even if it does turn out to offer initial protection, this may last for as little as three months, so presumably regular repeat injections will be required.

What? Repeat injections! Are the young and healthy facing a lifetime of booster shots against a disease that is dangerous almost exclusively to the old and sick? And if this isn’t crazy enough, we are being told that, even while being turned into human pin-cushions, we will probably need to go on wearing masks and holding our friends and family at arm’s length well into the future: a future, it is hinted, of health passports and routine mass surveillance, if we wish to travel on public transport or generally engage in life beyond our doorstep.

This, it seems, will be the New Normal  –  but not to worry! After all, you’re already masking up automatically when you leave the house, aren’t you, and following the one-way footsteps on the pavement as a matter of course? And if it becomes too much of a nuisance to carry your proof of vaccination around with you, well, we should soon be able to offer you the trouble-free alternative of an implanted microchip, to cover all eventualities: health; finance; your social credit score …

Sometimes I think it would be better to be one of the masked zombies. Trusting, obedient, they live in a world which, though threatening, they understand and accept. It is real to them. They know, unquestioningly, that a dreadful plague has been visited upon us, a plague which threatens to wipe out the species: and they know that if they wear their masks faithfully, wash their hands a thousand times a day and steer clear of other human beings, they will be doing their bit to save the nation, and, eventually, be granted the supreme unction of a vaccine; after which, they believe, everything will go back to normal  –  perhaps with a few more bicycle lanes and wind farms, and somewhat fewer jobs  –  but hey!  –  what will that matter, when the nice, compassionate government is promising us all a Universal Basic Income?

For the rest of us, it’s not so simple. The rest of us must live in a world where our own perceptions are remorselessly challenged by the prevailing lie. Guided by rational thought processes and the evidence, we know that we are at no more risk from Covid-19 this year than we were in previous years from one of the more aggressive strains of influenza, but as soon as we venture into the outside world, everything contradicts our inner reality: and though we may not participate actively in the masquerade, we are condemned to a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, compelled to acquiesce silently in the grand illusion being played out all around us, under the direction of the government.

And to what end ?

If it were ever possible to put the enormities which have taken place since last March down to mere blundering, it certainly is not now. The argument that the government has simply blundered, and is now trying to save face by digging itself in deeper does not wash. Nor does the line about saving the NHS. The NHS has regularly survived winter flu seasons which saw beds lined up in corridors and staff rushed off their feet.

Besides, the Nightingale hospitals were quickly whisked into existence: and if the amount of money poured by the government into fear porn and the purchase of dud PCR tests and hastily concocted vaccines had been diverted into more beds, plus better pay for nurses and other non-administrative staff, the lesson might at last have been learned, and future winters made less chaotic.

It was obvious from the start to anyone with a basic education who bothered to check the facts that closing down the economy would be more damaging to life and limb than any virus. Why was this not also obvious to a prime minister with a PPE degree from Oxford, who is surrounded by whole cohorts of colleagues and advisers armed with equally prestigious qualifications?

Even granting an initial surge of panic when faced with hysterical predictions from the Imperial College fortune-telling team, it would have been possible to withdraw in fairly good order after the first lockdown, when many scientists were already saying that the danger had been exaggerated, that the virus was now endemic, and widespread natural immunity was in sight.

Why didn’t our government seize the opportunity, in June, to give themselves a pat on the back, announce that the lockdown had worked, and ease us all back into rationality via an interval of sensible voluntary precautions, as practised in Sweden?

Given a modification of the propaganda, the country would have believed them. When adroitly handled by the Behavioural Insights Team the country, it appears, will believe anything.

Why, then, insist on sticking to the advice of SAGE, and continuing to give credence to the serially failed speculations of Neil Ferguson, rather than attending to the more balanced suggestions offered by Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta?

Instead, the government chose to fan the flames of fear with an intensification of propaganda and orders to mask up, extending the reign of unjustified terror into the autumn, when the annual onset of respiratory diseases began to fill up hospital beds, and allowed the death counts and lockdowns to resume. One by one, those small businesses which survived the first onslaught are giving up the ghost, and it seems that our rulers will not rest content until every last man, woman and child in Britain has been thrown into the linked arms of corporate and state dependency.

What price conspiracy “theories” now? What we are dealing with are facts.

As countries throughout the world commit consensual suicide to a rousing chorus of “Build Back Better!”, what makes more sense? To shake the head in puzzlement, that so many nations, with one accord, should not only have made exactly the same mistakes earlier this year, but are now insisting, in unison, on entrenching the evils that have been unleashed?

Or to contemplate the possibility that a network of powerful supranational agencies – banks, corporations, NGOs  –  have for some time been collaborating to direct the course of world events through placemen and beneficiaries in local and national governments and their attendant bureaucracies, and that “the novel coronavirus” is being used to achieve the final push into an era of artfully camouflaged “global governance”: an era where policies devised by centralised, unelected committees are handed down to elected heads of state in the shells of what were once independent nations, and passed on by them to regional mayors and administrators for implementation and enforcement.

I caught the Asian flu in 1957. So did my mother: the only time I ever knew her to take a couple of days off work. The infection swept through the country, and tens of thousands died. In 1968 the Hong Kong flu passed me by, but once again the death toll was in the tens of thousands.

On neither occasion was it considered necessary to destroy millions of lives and livelihoods by closing the country down, nor was any attempt made to terrorise its inhabitants. Covid-19 is no more lethal than either of those previous infections  –  less so, unless you actually believe that all those currently described as dying “with Covid”, or dying within 28 days of testing positive, actually died from Covid. Never before have such destructive policies been inflicted on the nation in a futile attempt to wipe out a virus. Never before, outside war time, has the population of the UK been subjected to such outrageous assault and battery by a government propaganda machine.

Draw what conclusion you will. I’m off to feed the ducks. They don’t do anti-social distancing, and they don’t wear masks.

December 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

48% Of U.S. Small Businesses Fear They May Be Forced To “Shut Down Permanently” Soon

By Michael Snyder | The Economic Collapse | December 10, 2020

What would the United States look like if we lost half of our small businesses? The reason I ask that question is because approximately half of all small business owners in the entire country believe that they may soon be forced to close down for good. Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s did we see anything like this.  The big corporate giants with extremely deep pockets will be able to easily weather another round of lockdowns, but for countless small businesses this is literally a matter of life and death. Every day we are seeing new restrictions being implemented somewhere in the nation, and the politicians that are doing this are killing the hopes and dreams of countless small business owners. According to a recent Alignable survey, 48 percent of U.S. small business owners fear that they could be forced to “shut down permanently” in the very near future…

Based on this week’s Alignable Q4 Revenue Poll of 9,201 small business owners, 48% could shut down permanently before year’s end.

In fact, this number jumped from 42% just two months ago, demonstrating how several factors have converged to devastate small businesses: COVID resurgences, forced government reclosures, elevated customer fears, and a surge in online shopping at Amazon and other national ecommerce giants.

When a small business with only a few employees closes down forever, it never makes any national headlines.

But the truth is that small businesses are the heart and soul of our economy, and we are losing more of them with each passing day.

Here are some quotes from actual small business owners that took part in the Alignable survey…

  • “COVID has raised its ugly head again. I’m a caterer and I’ve had no work in November and my clients are cancelling for Dec. This is so sad. I have worked so hard to build my business the last 14 years. My business has gone from half a million to not even 200,000. This is devastating for any business.”
  • “COVID closings are killing this country! My business is on hold — no art walks or gallery openings, and I can’t even open my studio. Everything’s online.”
  • “Because therapeutic massage is so ‘up close and personal,’ I have only come back to about 40% of my previous clientele. I am afraid that the governor will shut us down again, which will be the end of my business. I also believe the ‘ruling elite’ does not care about small businesses.”

How would you feel if you spent years putting everything you had into a small business in order to make it successful, only to have the politicians come along and completely destroy it?

And every time a small business has to let workers go, it just makes the unemployment crisis in this country even worse.

On Thursday, we learned that another 853,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 853,000, an increase from the upwardly revised 716,000 total a week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 730,000.

I have been warning that the new lockdowns would make the numbers worse, and that is precisely what is happening.

And one expert that was interviewed by CNBC says that this is just the beginning…

“It looks like the unemployment losses are starting to stack up for the economy. It’s not going to be a good month,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. “You’re starting the first week of the month on a bad note, and it’s probably going to be all downhill from here. It feels like the lockdowns are intensifying. It’s closer to reality for those forecasts that look for the economy to go negative in the first quarter.”

It is also important to remember that there are many Americans that have been unemployed for so long that they are no longer eligible to receive benefits.

One of those long-term unemployed workers is 35-year-old Sarah Groome…

For six months, she received unemployment benefits from the government – but those payments shrank as the programmes wound down this summer. Since October, she’s received nothing.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do financially,” she says. “I’m applying to jobs and I’ve probably applied to over 100 at this point and I’ve had one interview.”

“It’s scary,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

What do you say to someone in her position?

It’s heartbreaking to hear stories like that, and more people are being laid off with each passing day.

And as our new economic depression gets progressively deeper, an increasing number of Americans are becoming very desperate.

In fact, many have already become so desperate that they are turning to shoplifting…

Shoplifting is up markedly since the pandemic began in the spring and at higher levels than in past economic downturns, according to interviews with more than a dozen retailers, security experts and police departments across the country. But what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken – more staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.

“We’re seeing an increase in low-impact crimes,” said Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security firm Aegis. “It’s not a whole lot of people going in, grabbing TVs and running out the front door. It’s a very different kind of crime – it’s people stealing consumables and items associated with children and babies.”

Everywhere we look, our society is starting to break down all around us.  Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits more than 70 million times this year, the number of homeless in New York City has reached an all-time record high, and civil unrest continues to erupt all over America.

No matter what happens politically, conditions are going to continue to deteriorate as we head into 2021.

Of course the mainstream media is boldly proclaiming that the new vaccines will pull us out of this tailspin and that life in America will soon return to normal.

You can believe the mainstream media if you want, but in the end the “hope” that they are promising will turn out to be a complete mirage.

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

December 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

The Empire Doubles Down: Open Society Foundations Will Now Be Run by Lord Malloch Brown

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 11, 2020

The hubris of empire has always struck me with shock and awe.

I mean it really takes balls to get caught with a prostitute and instead of apologizing to your wife, to instead buy the hooker a new fur coat and parade her publicly at a public event.

Such has been the case with George Soros’ long time bosom buddy Lord Mark Malloch Brown who after being revealed as a leading force behind the software used by the infamous Dominion Voting systems via Smartmatic (which transferred its operating systems to Dominion via Sequoia Inc), has now been made the president of Soros’ global Open Society Foundations.

What is the logic behind such a decision?

Simple: If these characters were truly guilty of the crimes they are being accused of, then why would they behave so unapologetically in public? Surely to be so confident, they must be innocent of wrongdoing. It may sound overly simplistic, but this formula has proven most effective in recent years.

This is a lesson learned just a few months go by Sir Kim Darroch (former British Ambassador to the USA 2016-2019). After having failed in his mission to “flood the zone” with British intelligence operatives to influence Trump’s perception of reality, Sir Kim found himself honoured as a Lord and life peer for services rendered rather than face anything close to a reprimand for “exceeding the boundaries of his job description” as one would have expected.

The doubling down of those deep state operatives like Comey, Brennan and Clapper who after having been caught artificially pushing a contrived lie to de-legitimize the 2016 elections under RussiaGate, would become ever more crazed and loud in their advocacy of Trump’s allegiance to the Kremlin.

But this is an old formula that wasn’t invented with Trump. Caught laundering drug money HSBC? No worries. Pay a few dollars in fines, wait a bit, then do it again, but go bigger. Caught orchestrating a color revolution in Georgia? No problem. Just do another one in Ukraine. What happens when your Georgian color revolutionary puppet starts a war with Russia and has to flee his own nation to avoid imprisonment for corruption? Give him Ukrainian citizenship and install him as Governor of the Nazi-infested province of Odessa.

Back to the Soros-Brown Lovefest

Despite these truths, I must admit that the December 4 announcement of Lord Malloch Brown’s rise to the Presidency of Soros’ Open Society Foundations did surprise me.

Knowing that Dominion Voting systems shared its office space with Soros’ Tides Foundation in Toronto Canada was pretty bad. Knowing that Dominion executive Eric Koomer was caught on Soros-connected Antifa organizing zoom calls publicly announcing that he had ensured that Trump would not win was also bad. Seeing the integration of Dominion’s voting systems with a Soros operation known as the Clinton Foundation Delian Project didn’t look good.

When it came to Soros/Malloch Brown characters active in Biden’s aspiring administration, we find the likes of Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Peter Neffenger have found themselves enmeshed in the current coup operation serving as U.S. head of Smartmatic. Other Soros-Malloch Brown connected operatives include International Crisis Group member Jake Sullivan as Biden’s pick for National Security Advisor, Neera Tanden (head of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress) who will head the White House Office of Management and Budget, and lest we forget Anthony Blinken – longtime friend of International Crisis Group President Robert Malley and son of Soros confidante Donald Blinken (whose Donald and Vera Blinken Open Society Archive in Hungary should serve as a constant reminder.)

Yet despite their decades of collaboration and devotion to the cause of destroying sovereign nation states as I outlined in my previous report, Soros and Malloch Brown didn’t make any effort to separate themselves amidst the current surge of U.S. color revolution controversies but have instead doubled down dramatically.

Announcing the transfer of power from Open Society President Patrick Gaspard to Brown, the Open Society website proclaimed:

“Patrick Gaspard has announced his decision to step down as president at the end of the year. During his three-year tenure, he confronted significant threats to open societies around the globe, including the rise of authoritarian regimes and the spread of the COVID-19 virus worldwide. Under his capable leadership, the Open Society Foundations have emerged stronger than ever.

Succeeding him as president will be Mark Malloch-Brown, the former UN deputy secretary‐general and UK minister, who currently serves on the Foundations’ Global Board. Malloch-Brown will take over effective January 1.”

Soros commented on Lord Malloch Brown’s presidency saying: “Mark is deeply familiar with Open Society’s work and shares my vision of a political philanthropy that is focused and prepared for the future.”

What these Globalists Fear

The real threats to their joint vision for an “open society” (code for “technocratic post-nation state world order run by a Malthusian master class”) were enumerated on multiple occasions by both Lord Malloch Brown and Soros. Since the current battle across the globe between Great Reset oligarchs and patriots has coincided with a spike in misinformation and psy ops which have attempted to pin the USA into a war posture with China, it is a good moment to be reminded of what those fears are.

In his June 2020 speech promoting world government, Lord Brown stated: “In the wider world a more authoritarian form of government is the new majority. It is not China alone. This “new majority” embraces leaders who come to power by the ballot box and those who didn’t, but who all share a preference for a nationalist foreign policy, the weakening of domestic institutions and the rule of law”.

At another event a few months later, Lord Malloch Brown warned that the United Nations had been infiltrated by authoritarian nation states like Russia, and China. His solution? Create new transnational operations which “bypass the UN security council”. Apparently, only open society-friendly NGOs are enlightened enough to dictate global policy.

Outlining his understanding of the two greatest threats to “open society”, George Soros had targeted two villains in his January 23, 2020 Davos speech: #1) Xi Jinping’s China and #2: Donald Trump’s USA.

At this speech, Soros stated: “regrettably, President Trump seems to be following a different course: Make concessions to China and declare victory while renewing his attacks on U.S. allies. This is liable to undermine the U.S. policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses.”

At the time Soros spoke, the U.S.-China trade deal had begun its first phase which aimed at ensuring China’s purchase of $200-$300 billion of U.S. manufactured goods. During these hopeful days of collaboration, President Trump understood much better than he does now that 10+ months of COVID insanity and anti-China psy war have flooded his support base, that the ultimate recovery of U.S. manufacturing was contingent upon good relations with China. Trump’s early words of support of Xi Jinping when COVID had newly emerged onto the scene calling the Chinese leader “my friend”, were truly prospects which scared the hell out of Soros, Malloch Brown (not to mention Soros’ right wing doppelganger Steve Bannon who has been set up as a false opposition over the past few years.)

USA-China Synergy is the greatest threat to a Bankers’ Dictatorship

The fact is that the vast markets being created by China’s Belt and Road Initiative provide important zones of demand for U.S. production and vital energy for long term big thinking unseen in the USA since the days of John F. Kennedy. China’s leadership in the multipolar alliance alongside Russia has not only created a foundation of serious resistance to the unipolar agenda, but has also re-awoken for the first time in decades, the multipolar foreign policy traditions that were once emblematic of the USA which I’ve written extensively about here and here and here and here.

This obvious synergy between the two “authoritarian” states of Xi’s China and Trump’s USA was, and continues to be, the greatest fear of those technocrats wishing to castrate nation states on the alter of green decarbonization schemes, world government and never-ending asymmetric wars to ensure that such inter-civilizational cooperative projects as the New Silk Road, be sabotaged under “divide and conquer” strategies. Sure these technocrats sometimes speak well of China, but I assure you that the only thing they admire are China’s centralized controls and surveillance infrastructure which they would love to have applied to control those democratically-minded nations of the west that they seek to dominate. Everything that China does that relates to poverty reduction, large scale infrastructure development, promotion of full spectrum economics abroad, win-win diplomacy, sovereign banking controls, mass education, and frontier creative leaps in science are considered deplorable and only worth destroying.

This is what makes the collapse of U.S. patriotic strategic thinking under an “anti-China” worldview so tragic and dangerous. For all of their courageous work exposing the election fraud and the ongoing 4 year coup attempt of Russia Gate, U.S. patriots like Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn and even Trump himself have demonstrated a tendency to fall for lines of simplistic reasoning that attempt to deflect the causal hand of British intelligence, and instead blame a combined assortment of secondary/tertiary reactive players like Iran and China as the ultimate villains of the story.

Perhaps if people would think a little more seriously about the CIA’s creation and protection of such Asian-scientology outfits like Falun Gong whose U.S.-based leader believes he is a messiah and which controls Epoch Times then they would be a little more weary about accepting every piece of information being slipping into their minds like mental trojan horses.

Perhaps these patriots would also recognize that Falun Gong’s expulsion from China in 1997 was due more to the outfit’s role in attempting to lead a color revolution akin to the Russian White Revolution of 2010 and not due to the CPC’s fear of the spread of “compassion, benevolence and kindness”. They might also realize that Soros/CIA Freedom House’s support for Falun Gong dovetails Bannon’s own collaboration with the same organization bringing both apparent “enemies” into direct synergy. Bannon’s calls for “uniting the global Christian right” under his Dignitas Humanitae Institute (connected to the highest echelons of the European black nobility) under a unified front to prepare for war with Chinese civilization and Islam is just a re-packaging of the neocon clash of civilizations doctrine that has played off of Soros’ anti-human brand of globalism for decades.

What is the carry away lesson from all of this?

Love your nation, and if you are American then defend the presidency from the likes of creeps like Soros, Mark Malloch Brown and Bannon. But keep in mind that the causal hand behind the subversion of the republic (or whatever nation state you might live in) is the same hand which desperately seeks to destroy China, and this same hand can only be chopped off once patriotic Americans and patriotic Chinese begin to work together.

December 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

This green fantasy will bankrupt us

By Neil Collins | November 20, 2020 

It’s 2050. You wake in your cosy, insulated house, turn on the windfarm-powered lights, cook up a breakfast coffee on the hydrogen stove before jumping into your electric car. You whizz silently along roads with air as fresh as a mountain stream past happy e-bikers and carbon-neutral schools to your heat-pump powered office.

So, viewed from Britain in 2020, can you spot the odd one out? Here’s a clue: the e-bikers get no subsidy. Everything else on this list loses money, and needs state support on a massive scale to get even halfway to the nirvana glimpsed by the prime minister this week. Today’s subsidy, of course, is tomorrow’s tax rise.

Home insulation? £2bn is barely enough to get some sort of programme started. The disruption from insulating your home will be enough to discourage us from taking up this offer, almost regardless of the accompanying bribe. As we saw with double glazing and solar panels, the cowboy installers and fraudsters will be the principal beneficiaries.

Windfarms? The easier sites are already filled up, driving development further offshore to have any chance of quadrupling today’s contribution. The bulk of new contracts are going to overseas manufacturers, while evidence of catastrophic damage to seabirds is growing, and nobody knows the long-term cost of maintaining this hi-tech engineering in a hostile environment.

Hydrogen home cooking? Hydrogen is much harder to handle than natural gas, and a compulsory conversion programme – the only practical way to exploit the existing pipework – would meet stiff resistance. Besides, like electricity, hydrogen is not a fuel but an energy transmission mechanism. Making it from actual fuel is like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Heat pumps? The capital cost typically runs into tens of thousands of pounds per dwelling, even where your garden is big enough to take one. They are also likely to be rather more expensive to maintain than your ‘fridge.

As for the electric car, despite subsidies of thousands of pounds per vehicle, with promises to spend billions more on sockets to charge them, motorists remain suspicious. After all, it is only a few short years since we were being urged to buy a diesel car, to make each barrel of oil go further. Now diesel is officially an evil producer of particulates that kill children.

Reconfiguring the electricity grid for electric vehicles will cost much more than the £2.5bn allocated in the government’s plan. Then there is the £40bn a year raised from fuel duties which will disappear if electricity takes over. It is almost a rounding error in the context of the hundreds of billions which the UK is going to waste with this week’s fashionable projects. They may indeed create thousands of jobs, but then so would digging large holes and filling them in again. Jobs that destroy wealth rather than creating it make us all poorer.

The government’s cheerleaders may argue that no price is too high to pay for “saving the planet”, but this week’s programme, if it is really implemented, will be ruinously expensive. After a year when the UK economy has shrunk by a tenth, we cannot afford more government repression, even cloaked in greenery. A smaller economy makes paying for the NHS, for example, much harder. Worse still, Britain’s self-harm makes almost no difference to global CO2 emissions, when China makes meaningless pledges of good behaviour while building two coal-fired power stations a week. How they must be laughing at us. … Full article

December 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Will Arce bring Cuban doctors back to Bolivia?

By Lucas Leiroz | December 12, 2020

For the supporters of Evo Morales and MAS, the election of Luis Arce in Bolivia was a great victory. But the challenges for the new president are enormous and opposition to his plans is strong. One of the most recent challenges is to decide about the future of medical cooperation between Bolivians and Cubans. Arce, in the midst of his country’s political chaos, must choose the future of Bolivian health cooperation with Cuba.

For 13 years, thousands of Cuban doctors have been in Bolivia and helped to make up for the shortage of health professionals in this South American country. Altogether, more than 70 million medical consultations were carried out by Cubans in Bolivia. A real dependency relationship was created. Without Cubans, thousands of Bolivians are unable to receive any medical treatment and entire regions of the country are excluded from the national health system, mainly the urban peripheries and rural zones. Even so, shortly after the coup that overthrew Morales, one of the first attitudes of the government of Jeanine Áñez was to expel the brigade of Cuban doctors from Bolivia, as part of the alignment measures with the US planned by the opponents of Morales.

Despite the undeniable benefits of the Cuban presence, Bolivia’s departmental medical schools vehemently reject the Cuban brigade’s presence in the national territory. According to representatives of such departments, the members of the Cuban medical brigades are “supposed doctors” who perform secret activities for the Communist government of Cuba. Another widely used argument is that Cubans “take jobs” that would be for Bolivian doctors. In this regard, the Doctors’ Union announced that health professionals will soon go on strike against the Arce government and that services will only resume if the president maintains the veto against Cubans.

In addition, the La Paz Faculty of Medicine recently stated that it sent a letter to the Ministry of Health addressing the issue of Cuban doctors. The Faculty, like the Union, is directly opposed to the presence of foreign doctors in the country, however, it assumes a more “peaceful” posture, trying to negotiate with the government instead of starting a national strike.

This rivalry between Bolivian and Cuban doctors is not new. During the government of Evo Morales, Bolivian doctors carried out repeated strikes, which lasted for months, resulting in leaving a large percentage of the population dependent on the public health system without an adequate care. There was no statistical study on the case, but it is known that many Bolivians became ill, died, or had serious consequences due to the resistance of doctors to assist them – which is a crime. That is precisely why Arce is acting so cautiously: his goal is to prevent further strikes in the midst of the pandemic.

However, the idea of replacing Cuban doctors with unemployed Bolivian professionals seems to be nonviable. At the time of the expulsion, the Áñez government had declared that it would immediately fill these positions with Bolivian doctors, which never really happened, showing that Bolivia really has no structure to supply the absence of Cuban doctors.

There are a number of factors that must be considered when analyzing this case. First, it deals with a question of quality over quantity. Regardless of the numbers and whether or not there are enough Bolivian doctors to replace the brigades, Cuban medical training is noticeably more appropriate, with the Caribbean country being recognized worldwide for its medical quality. During the pandemic, Cuba sent humanitarian aid to several countries, including developed nations, such as Italy. It is impossible to deny the ability of Cuban professionals – which is usually done only based on ideological assumptions. Still, the numbers of Cuban actions in Bolivia are impressive: more than 70 million consultations, 47,000 laboratory tests and 253,000 surgeries. The main merit of these professionals serving remote regions, where the Bolivian public system has difficulty reaching. Bolivia is a country marked by mountainous and desert regions, where access by health professionals is often difficult. Bolivian doctors most of the time do not arrive in such regions as large urban centers are treated with priority. Cooperation with Cuba met this need.

It is also important to demystify the discourse of Bolivian health professionals that Cubans are “taking their jobs”. This is not true. It is important to remember that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with poor education conditions for most of the population. In general, Bolivians who graduate in medicine are part of the country’s economic elite and are, therefore, interested in guaranteeing their own interests, and not those of the population, when they criticize the government and promote strikes and stoppages.

Still, what to expect from professionals who refuse to treat their own countrymen, promoting stoppages of essential services only for political reasons? Apparently, the close links between the Bolivian opposition and the medical centers have reached intolerable levels. In any case, the scenario only tends to get worse.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

December 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

China to bail out Iraq in multibillion dollar oil deal

MEMO | December 10, 2020

Iraq is currently deciding whether to go ahead with a multibillion dollar oil deal with China which will bail the country out as part of the effort to solve Baghdad’s worsening economic crisis. The deal comes after SOMO, Iraq’s state agency in charge of oil exports, welcomed bids from various oil traders and companies in a letter issued last month.

That resulted in “several offers” being made by various companies. These were then evaluated by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, reported Bloomberg, which quoted cabinet spokesman Hassan Nadhim.

In the Iraqi government’s bid conditions, SOMO said that the successful company would purchase four million barrels of oil per month, or around 130,000 per day, with the first year’s supply being paid for up front. The deal is meant to last for five years.

In return for supplying oil to the winning bidder, Iraq will receive $2 billion for a fraction of the promised quantity of oil, with the balance paid later. The barrels of oil are effectively security for a loan.

The winning bidder turned out to be ZhenHua Oil Co., a major state-owned company in China with ties to the Chinese military. It is the latest example of China’s international lending strategy, in which state-controlled banks and trading organisations lend money to oil-rich countries struggling to keep afloat financially, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola and now potentially Iraq.

If Prime Minister Al-Kadhimi signs the deal, then it would not be the first time that the company has dealt with Iraq. ZhenHua Oil, which trades around 1.3 million barrels per day of oil and other products, began a joint-venture with SOMO back in 2018 in order to help market Iraqi oil in China to increase exports. That venture was later scrapped.

Iraq’s economy and oil industry suffered greatly from the oil price crash earlier this year, after Russia and Saudi Arabia triggered an oil price war in March over a dispute over oil production.

In September, Iraq’s crude oil exports fell by six per cent and last week its oil minister acknowledged that the industry is in a critical condition due to the coronavirus pandemic.

See Also:

Iraq eyes construction deals with China in return for oil sales

December 10, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

The Hunter Biden Criminal Probe Bolsters a Chinese Scholar’s Claim About Beijing’s Influence With the Bidens

Professor Di Dongsheng says China’s close ties to Wall Street and its dealings with Hunter could enable it to exert more power than under Trump

By Glenn Greenwald | December 9, 2020

Hunter Biden acknowledged today that he has been notified of an active criminal investigation into his tax affairs by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. Among the numerous prongs of the inquiry, CNN reports, investigators are examining “whether Hunter Biden and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China.”

Documents relating to Hunter Biden’s exploitation of his father’s name to enrich himself and other relatives through deals with China were among the cache published in the week before the election by The New York Post — revelations censored by Twitter and Facebook and steadfastly ignored by most mainstream news outlets. That concerted repression effort by media outlets and Silicon Valley left it to right-wing outlets such as Fox News and The Daily Caller to report, which in turn meant that millions of Americans were kept in the dark before voting.

But the just-revealed federal criminal investigation in Delaware is focused on exactly the questions which corporate media outlets refused to examine for fear that doing so would help Trump: namely, whether Hunter Biden engaged in illicit behavior in China and what impact that might have on his father’s presidency.

The allegations at the heart of this investigation compel an examination of a fascinating and at-times disturbing speech at a major financial event held last week in Shanghai. In that speech, a Chinese scholar of political science and international finance, Di Donghseng, insisted that Beijing will have far more influence in Washington under a Biden administration than it did with the Trump administration.

The reason, Di said, is that China’s ability to get its way in Washington has long depended upon its numerous powerful Wall Street allies. But those allies, he said, had difficulty controlling Trump, but will exert virtually unfettered power over Biden. That China cultivated extensive financial ties to Hunter Biden, Di explained, will be crucial for bolstering Beijing’s influence even further.

Di, who in addition to his teaching positions is also Vice Dean of Beijing’s Renmin University’s School of International Relations, delivered his remarks alongside three other Chinese banking and development experts. Di’s speech at the event, entitled “Will China’s Opening up of its Financial Sector Attract Wall Street?,” was translated and posted by Jennifer Zeng, a Chinese Communist Party critic who left China years ago, citing religious persecution, and now lives in the U.S. A source fluent in Mandarin confirmed the accuracy of the translation.

The centerpiece of Di’s speech was the history he set forth of how Beijing has long successfully managed to protect its interests in the halls of American power: namely, by relying on “friends” in Wall Street and other U.S. ruling class sectors — which worked efficiently until the Trump presidency.

Referring to the Trump-era trade war between the two countries, Di posed this question: “Why did China and the U.S. use to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 [when Clinton became President] and 2016 [when Obama’s left office]?” He then provided this answer:

No matter what kind of crises we encountered — be it the Yinhe incident [when the U.S. interdicted a Chinese ship in the mistaken belief it carried chemical weapons for Iran], the bombing of the embassy [the 1992 bombing by the U.S. of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade], or the crashing of the plane [the 2001 crashing of a U.S. military spy plane into a Chinese fighter jet] — things were all solved in no time, like a couple do with their quarrels starting at the bedhead but ending at the bed end. We fixed everything in two months. What is the reason? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here.

It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.

Who are these “old friends” of China’s “who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence” and have ensured that, in his words, “for the past 30 years, 40 years, we have been utilizing the core power of the United States”? Di provided the answer: Wall Street, with whom the Chinese Community Party and Chinese industry maintain a close, multi-pronged and inter-dependent relationship.

“Since the 1970s, Wall Street had a very strong influence on the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States,” Di observed. Thus, “we had a channel to rely on.”

To illustrate the point of how helpful Wall Street has been to Chinese interests in the U.S., Di recounted a colorful story, albeit one fused with anti-Semitic tropes, of his unsuccessful efforts in 2015 to secure the preferred venue in Washington for the debut of President Xi Jinping’s book about China. No matter how much he cajoled the owner of the iconic D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose, or what he offered him, Di was told it was unavailable, already promised to a different author. So he conveyed his failure to Party leadership.

But at the last minute, Di recounts, he was told that venue had suddenly changed its mind and agreed to host Xi’s book event. This was the work, he said, of someone to whom Party leaders introduced him: “She is from a famous, leading global financial institution on Wall Street,” Di said, “the president of the Asia region of a top-level financial institution,” who speaks perfect Mandarin and has a sprawling home in Beijing.

The point — that China’s close relationship with Wall Street has given it very powerful friends in the U.S. — was so clear that it sufficed for him to coyly laugh with the audience: “Do you understand what I mean? If you do, put your hands together!” They knowingly applauded.

All of that provoked an obvious question: why did this close relationship with Wall Street not enable China to exert the same influence during the Trump years, including avoiding a costly trade war? Di explained that — aside from Wall Street’s reduced standing due to the 2008 financial crisis — everything changed when Trump ascended to the presidency; specifically, Wall Street could not control him the way it had previous presidents because of Trump’s prior conflicts with Wall Street:

But the problem is that after 2008, the status of Wall Street has declined, and more importantly, after 2016, Wall Street can’t fix Trump. It’s very awkward. Why? Trump had a previous soft default issue with Wall Street, so there was a conflict between them, but I won’t go into details, I may not have enough time.

So during the US-China trade war, [Wall Street] tried to help, and I know that my friends on the US side told me that they tried to help, but they couldn’t do much.

But as Di shifted to his discussion of the new incoming administration, his tone palpably changed, becoming far more animated, excited and optimistic. That’s because a Biden presidency means a restoration of the old order, where Wall Street exerts great influence with the White House and can thus do China’s bidding: “But now we’re seeing Biden was elected, the traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment, they’re very close to Wall Street, so you see that, right?”

And Di specifically referenced the work Beijing did to cultivate Hunter:

Trump has been saying that Biden’s son has some sort of global foundation. Have you noticed that?

Who helped [Biden’s son] build the foundations? Got it? There are a lot of deals inside all these.

Some excerpts of Di’s speech can be seen below, and the translated transcript of it here.

The claims in his speech can be seen in a new light given today’s revelations that the U.S. Attorney has resumed its active criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and whether he accounted to the I.R.S. for the income (CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz says that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”


The pronouncements of this University Professor and administrator should not be taken as gospel, but there is substantial independent confirmation for much of what he claimed. That is even more true after today’s news about Hunter Biden.

That Hunter Biden received large sums of money from Chinese entities is not in dispute. A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs earlier this year, while finding no wrongdoing by Joe Biden, documented millions in cash flow between Hunter and his relatives and Chinese interests.

Nor can it be reasonably disputed that Wall Street exerts significant influence in Democratic Party politics generally and in the world of Joe Biden specifically. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, CNBC reported in the weeks before the election:

People in the securities and investment industry will finish the 2020 election cycle contributing over $74 million to back Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, a much larger sum than what President Donald Trump raised from Wall Street.

They added: “Biden also received a ton of financial support from leaders on Wall Street in the third quarter.” At the same time, said CNN, “professionals on Wall Street are shunning Trump and funneling staggering amounts of money to his opponent.” Wall Street executives, CNBC reported, specially celebrated Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, noting that her own short-lived presidential campaign was deluged with “contributions from executives in a wide range of industries, including film, TV, real estate and finance.”

Moreover, Biden’s top appointees thus far overwhelmingly have massive ties to Wall Street and the industries which spend the most to control the U.S. government. As but one egregious example, Pine Island Investment Corp. — an investment firm in which key Biden appointees including Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief nominee Gen. Lloyd Austin have been centrally involved — “is seeing a surge in support from Wall Street players after pitching access to investors.”

Prior to the formal selection of Blinken and Austin for key Cabinet posts, The Daily Poster reported that “two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team have been partners at a private equity firm now promising investors big profits off government business because of its ties to those officials.” The New York Times last week said “the Biden team’s links to these entities are presenting the incoming administration with its first test of transparency and ethics” and that Pine Island is an example “of how former officials leverage their expertise, connections and access on behalf of corporations and other interests, without in some cases disclosing details about their work, including the names of the clients or what they are paid.”

That China and Wall Street have an extremely close relationship has been documented for years. Financial Times — under the headline “Beijing and Wall Street deepen ties despite geopolitical rivalry” — last month reported that “Wall Street groups including BlackRock, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have each been given approval to expand their businesses in China over recent months.”

A major Wall Street Journal story from last week, bearing the headline “China Has One Powerful Friend Left in the U.S.: Wall Street,” echoed Di’s speech by noting that “Chinese leaders have time and again turned to Wall Street for assistance in periods of trouble.” That WSJ article particularly emphasized the growing ties between China and the asset-manager giant BlackRock, a firm that already has outsized influence in the Biden administration. And Michael Bloomberg’s ties to China have been so crucial that he has regularly heaped praise on Beijing even when doing so was politically deleterious.

Even the smaller details of Di’s speech — including his anecdote about the book event he tried to arrange for Xi — check out. Contemporaneous news accounts show that exactly the book event he described was held at Politics and Prose in 2015, just as he recalled.

None of this means that Trump was some sort of stalwart enemy of Wall Street. From massive corporate tax cuts to rollbacks of regulations in numerous industries and many of their own in key positions, the financial sector benefited in all sorts of ways from the Trump presidency.

But all of their behavior indicates that they view a Biden/Harris administration as far more beneficial to their interests, and far more susceptible to their control. And that, in turn, makes Beijing far more confident that they will wield significantly more influence in Washington than they could over the last four years.

That confidence is due, says Professor Di, to Beijing’s close ties to a newly empowered Wall Street as well as their efforts to cultivate Hunter Biden, efforts we are likely to learn much more about now that Hunter’s activities in China are under active criminal investigation in Delaware. We should and could have learned about these transactions prior to the election had the bulk of the media not corruptly decided to ignore any incriminating reporting on Biden, but learning about them now is, one might say, a case of better late than never.

December 10, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Billionaires’ ‘pandemic profits’ alone could pay for $3K stimulus checks to EVERY American – report

RT | December 9, 2020

American billionaires made so much money during the Covid-19 pandemic that their profits since March are enough to give every US resident a $3,000 check without cutting into their pre-virus wealth, a new report shows.

Over the last nine months, the 651 billionaires who call the US home have increased their wealth by a whopping $1.06 trillion, according to a report published Tuesday by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies. Far from being negatively impacted by the pandemic-related economic shutdowns, the country’s super-rich seem to have thrived amid the policies that have plunged so many ordinary Americans into poverty.

The billionaires’ wealth grew so much that they could cut “every man, woman and child in the country” a $3,000 stimulus check and “still be richer than they were nine months ago,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a Tuesday press release.

The report tracked the fat-cats’ profits from March 18, the approximate start date of the economic shutdowns, through December 7. The vast majority accelerated their accumulation of wealth even as ordinary Americans saw their life savings slip through their fingers, losing jobs, businesses, and loved ones to the one-two punch of the coronavirus and the political response.

After nine months of raking in the cash, the billionaires’ total wealth had soared 36 percent to over $4 trillion – nearly twice the $2.1 trillion in wealth held by the poorest 50 percent of Americans.

The monstrous cash-pile amounts to double the two-year budget gap of all state and local governments, a figure estimated to reach $500 billion thanks to the devastating effects of the economic shutdowns on tax revenues. It even approaches the massive sum the federal government spends on Medicare and Medicaid – $644 billion and $389 billion in 2019, respectively, the report claims.

While most working- and middle-class Americans received a single stimulus payment of $1,200 as part of March’s CARES Act pandemic bailout, a promised second stimulus check has failed to materialize. The expanded unemployment program that doled out $600 per week to newly-jobless Americans came to an end in July, and while President Donald Trump issued an executive order to bridge the gap with a less generous $300 weekly payment, Congress has thus far refused to pass a second Covid-19 bailout package even as the rest of the bailout programs are set to expire at the end of the year.

One of the chief beneficiaries of the fiscal explosion has been Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose personal fortune increased 63 percent since March as locked-down Americans turned to online shopping to meet their needs. The retail tycoon faced sharp criticism over his company’s alleged mistreatment of Amazon warehouse workers in the early days of the pandemic, but had he distributed his $71.4 billion windfall among Amazon’s employees, workers would have received $88,000 each while leaving their boss just as rich as he was before the coronavirus outbreak.

And Bezos, said to be the richest man in the US, wasn’t even the most blessed by Covid-19. That title goes to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, whose wealth grew by an eye-popping 542 percent – from “just” $24.6 billion in March to $143 billion by December. Musk is about to get quite a bit richer, too, after his StarLink satellite company won a Federal Communications Commission auction to deliver bandwidth to hundreds of thousands of rural Americans.

Senate Democrats circulated a letter earlier this week demanding another $1,200 stimulus payment be part of the Covid-19 aid package currently being debated in Congress. The party has balked at a Republican-authored bailout proposal that would exclude individual payments and include a five-year liability shield for corporations – a measure Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders derisively dubbed a “get out of jail free card to corporations.”

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment