Saturday, April 2, 2022

"A Rubicon of Methane"

"A Rubicon of Methane"
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina -  "A not-so funny thing happened on the way to... global petrodollar hegemony. (Didn’t see that coming, did ya?) As the rest of the world debated what must (“MUST!”) be done to address the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin quietly declared that the Rubicon shall henceforth flow (or not) with methane. The newswires were on the story..."March 31 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he had signed a decree saying foreign buyers must pay in roubles for Russian gas from April 1, and contracts would be halted if these payments were not made.

"In order to purchase Russian natural gas, they must open rouble accounts in Russian banks. It is from these accounts that payments will be made for gas delivered starting from tomorrow," Putin said in televised remarks. If such payments are not made, we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences. Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either - that is, existing contracts will be stopped."

As of this writing, Russian gas heats and lights up one in every three homes across Europe, a not-insignificant contribution to the power supply for the entire continent. And, as our friend Byron King mentioned in this space before, Europe has been steadfastly hampering its own ability to produce energy, from shuttering nuclear plants in Germany to “going green” elsewhere.

As such, more than a few nations are fast approaching a crucial decision point: abide by western sanctions and freeze in the dark... or renegotiate in Vlad’s rubles? For quick reference, Russia accounted for about 45% of Europe’s total gas imports in 2021, with Germany, Turkey, Italy, Belarus, and France receiving most of the feed.

Plenty are those happy to stand with their Ukrainian brothers... as long as they can do so from a safe, warm, well-lit distance. The world will see who is left standing after this latest development. As for importers of Russian oil, China leads the pack... followed by Germany, the Netherlands, the U.S., Poland and South Korea.

Meanwhile... At the behest of democratic lawmakers, President Biden this week announced an unprecedented release from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves – 1 million barrels per day for the next 180 days. For those doing the sums at home, 1 million barrels equals roughly 1/20th of the US daily consumption... or about the same amount as the Keystone XL pipeline is NOT delivering from your friendly, NATO card-carrying neighbors north of the 49th parallel. (That project was friendly-fired on Mr. Biden’s first day in office.)

Bonus Irony: Readers will recall that it was Senator Chuck Schumer who, last November, began urging Biden to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “We’re here today because we need immediate relief at the gas pump and the place to look is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” Schumer pleaded at a press conference in New York at the time.

If you feel like you’ve heard Chucky’s name in conjunction with the SPR before, that’s because you have. It was the very same Senator Schumer who was seen crowing from the rafters not two short years ago, after having proudly blocked the previous administration’s initiative to refill the reserve tanks “to the brim” back in March, 2020. Crude oil was $24.49 per barrel at the time, or about a quarter of today’s price. Boy, that extra capacity sure would have been nice to have on tap now, eh? Oh well..."

Musical Interlude: "Dance of Life, Relaxing Fantasy Music for Relaxation & Meditation"

Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland,
"Dance of Life,
Relaxing Fantasy Music for Relaxation & Meditation"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"
by John Wilder

"Time. Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me. The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.

Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality. Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.

Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.

We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away. My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.

But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!” He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood. I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years. If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything. As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it. Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is... difficult. Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

And yet... Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling. Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.

Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against. Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.

I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this: Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.

I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days. I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.

Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift. Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count. Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away."

"Fools and Knaves..."

“In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of
fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain
degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.”
- Philip Stanhope

“There are more fools than knaves in the world,
else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”
- Samuel Butler

"There Are Many Things Today..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
- Albert Camus

The Daily "Near You?"

Birmingham, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Oh Great, Now We Could Lose The Petrodollar…"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report 4/2/22:
"Oh Great, Now We Could Lose The Petrodollar…"
"The economic sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia have caused immense damage, but a loss of the petrodollar would be absolutely devastating for the U.S. economy. Since making an agreement with the Nixon administration in 1974, the Saudis have traded oil exclusively for U.S. dollars. Today, approximately 80 percent of all oil produced in the entire world is traded for dollars, and the “petrodollar” has become one of the foundational pillars of the current global financial system. Most Americans don’t realize this, but far more dollars are actually used outside of the United States than inside the United States, and having the reserve currency of the world is a massive advantage for us. Up to this point, there has been an insatiable demand for U.S. dollars all over the planet, and that has allowed us to enjoy a standard of living that is way above what we actually deserve."

"Why The Cargo Ship Mess is Getting So Much Worse"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 4/2/22:
"Why The Cargo Ship Mess is Getting So Much Worse"
"We have been told that our supply chain issues when it comes to the cargo ships have been resolved. I’m going to prove to you that this is much worse than it’s ever been. There is no resolution in sight. Global supply chains have been affected by everything that’s going on in the world. They’re only going to get worse in the coming months."

"The Russian Pivot - Not the Military One"

"The Russian Pivot - Not the Military One"
by Addison Wiggin

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; 
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
 who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
- Halford Mackinder

"The global economy’s predilection for the U.S. dollar is waning. Even the erstwhile champion of cable news, CNN, has figured out there’s a gaping yaw in U.S. policy today. “The West needs more oil now,” Zachary Wolf writes for CNN, stating the obvious. And the not-so-obvious. “The world needs to get off oil and gas ASAP. These competing, urgent realities are crashing into each other.” CNN:

"Climate. The world is approaching a more catastrophic phase of climate change and needs to move quickly to reduce carbon emissions.

Sanctions. Punishing Russia will raise prices in the West, particularly gas prices.

Economy. High gas prices could help drive the US into a recession and turn the outcome of the midterm elections in November."

President Biden’s solution promises to be about as effective as his promise to deliver more LNG to help the EU wean themselves off Russian natural gas. Yesterday, the president announced he’d be releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) for the next six months. “Look, the bottom line is this,” Biden said at the White House. “Between ramping up production in the short term and driving down demand in the long term, we can free ourselves from our dependence on imported oil from across the world.”

What a quandary. The U.S. needs oil. Europe needs Russian gas. Politically, they can’t say it without destroying the climate change narrative they’ve been ginning up since An Inconvenient Truth ran amok in 2006. Not that it matters; most projections for energy independence scoot to 2030 and beyond. It doesn’t take a lot of math to conclude the president will likely have shed his mortal coil when that year dawns upon us. And with higher gas prices and a recession swirling about the news cycle, the midterms may clarify policy questions all by themselves.

Today, we’re focused on a different kind of inconvenient truth. “I don’t want to overegg the pudding,” Sean Ring wrote in the Rude Awakening on the day I interviewed him for The Wiggin Sessions. He was referring to Valdimir Putin demanding Russian oil and gas be paid for in rubles. He was also referring to a deal the Chinese made with the Saudis to pay for their oil in yuan. “Today will be remembered as the day power shifted irrevocably eastward,” Mr. Ring says, “towards Mackinder’s Heartland and away from its periphery. How did it all come to this? Oh, that’s easy. Hubris and a lack of strategic thinking. Lesser sons riding on the momentum of better men.”

Sean laid out specific reasons why he believes the time is nigh for the end of U.S. dollar hegemony. We crib:

• There’s nothing the U.S., EU and U.K. have that Russia needs.
• There are many things Russia has that the U.S., EU and U.K. need.
• The U.S., EU and U.K. have proven themselves utterly untrustworthy as asset custodians.

Thanks to stupid Western policy, the China’s Belt and Road Initiative is now a must for the “World Island.” “Halford Mackinder, a British geographer,” Sean points out, “summarized his Heartland Theory thus” — bringing to our attention a strategic theory we have never considered…

• Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
• Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island commands the world.

Mackinder viewed the world like this:
“Why is Eastern Europe, and hence, Ukraine, so important?” Sean asks. “Because it’s the only flat land route to invade Russia. And that’s what this is ultimately all about. The Heartland itself is mostly Russia.” It’s also what makes China’s Belt and Road initiative so important. “Feast your eyes on the map below,” Sean suggests.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative essentially obviates the need for an open water navy. “You know,” says Ring, “what American taxpayers have been spending so much money on…” We dig deep into Sean’s analysis of Russia’s pivot east because of the war, the West’s sanctions and the incoherent policy being advocated by the administration right now. We also take a look at China’s position while the West and Russia rebuke one another."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Death Of The Dollar Begins; The Final Chapter Of A Debt-based Empire"

"Death Of The Dollar Begins; 
The Final Chapter Of A Debt-based Empire"
by Mike Adams

“If you want gas, find rubles.” Those are the words of Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, as reported by the BBC this week. The story follows up with a bombshell that has been scarcely reported: "The Kremlin also said Russia could start demanding payment in rubles for other commodities such as fertilizer, grain, metals and timber. This means that Russia isn’t merely demanding rubles for gas and oil exports; it’s also going to demand rubles for commodities.

The ruble requirement began Friday. It won’t be demanded across all energy contracts immediately, but it will be rolled out across existing contracts over the next several weeks and months, Russia says. Many European nations (like Germany) depend almost entirely on Russian gas to power their economies. The day that the gas stops flowing is the day that Germany’s economy plunges into collapse, suffering irreversible economic damage due to mass bankruptcies of German-based businesses. “Germany and Austria have taken the first steps towards gas rationing,” the BBC adds. Austria relies on Russia for 80% of its natural gas.

Western nations cut Russia off from dollars and euros, yet they insist on paying Russia with the very same dollars and euros that Russia can no longer use. European leaders have said they refuse to pay for Russian energy exports with rubles. But these same nations took part in a financial system de-platforming of Russia that means Russia is largely unable to use dollars or euros. So there’s no point in Russia trading gas for fiat currencies that it can’t use and doesn’t want.

In fact, as long as the West’s economic sanctions are in place, if Russia were to sell gas for dollars or euros, that would be the equivalent of giving away its natural resources for free. And no country is going to give away energy for free. Especially not to a group of “unfriendly” nations that unleashed economic warfare against you in the first place.

Watch the ruble climb as it is backed by energy, commodities and gold: The ruble has already achieved a full recovery from its initial plunge following the economic sanctions put in place by the West. While the corporate media was initially claiming Russia’s currency would collapse within days, quite the opposite has happened. Russia’s currency is actually climbing steadily in value while the dollar, the euro and the yen are all losing value at a shocking rate.

In terms of real purchasing power in America, the dollar is actually losing an astonishing 2% per month. If you have dollars in a bank account, you are effectively earning negative 2% interest every month in terms of the loss of its actual value. To make matters even worse, Biden has proposed a $5.8 trillion federal spending spree for 2023, meaning the government will be spending nearly $1 trillion every other month. And that doesn’t count the bailout money that’s coming in 2023, which will likely reach several trillion dollars all on its own. We aren’t far from the US central bank printing a trillion dollars a month.

Putin, on the other hand, made a tactically brilliant move in demanding payment in rubles because that will drive demand for rubles for years to come. The petro dollar is now giving way to the hydrocarbon ruble. Since Russia sits on about 30% of all known natural resources in the world, tying the ruble to those natural resources instantly makes the ruble a store of value, especially given that every nation in the world needs energy, grains, minerals, timber and other resources that will be linked to the ruble.

Nobody needs dollars, really, since dollars are a failing fiat currency that’s being devalued by the day. It’s sort of like investing in an athlete who just jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. What people need are things like food, heating fuel, electricity, oil and so on. This is what Russia’s exports provide. This is what’s backing Russia’s new vision for the ruble.

Everybody is fleeing the dollar and getting into something that holds value: All the top financial minds see this unfolding in real time. It is irrefutable that the dollar goes to zero. Because of this realization, every person who is capable of grasping this reality is fleeing the dollar and shifting into other things that tend to hold value:

• Physical gold and silver
• Land
• New or used vehicles
• Residential homes or commercial buildings
• Ammunition and firearms
• Tractors and farming equipment

Some people are also shifting funds into cryptocurrencies, vaulted precious metals or fiat currencies of other nations. I spoke with a vaulted gold service provider yesterday and they confirmed they are slammed with new business as thousands of people are signing up to buy either physical gold or vaulted (stored) gold that’s held for them. The gold service providers on the front lines are simply being overrun with demand.

The ignorant masses who stupidly believe the corporate media, of course, will be utterly wiped out when the dollar goes to zero. They will be stunned, surprised and betrayed, unable to understand that their gullibility lead to their financial demise. Many will starve, others will be left homeless. Some will turn to crime to try to survive, and some of those will end up getting shot by the well-prepared who are defending their preps.

When the dollar goes to zero, the U.S. empire of debt collapses with it. The debt was never sustainable, of course. And MMT was never anything but a silly delusion. Sure, the government will try to push a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but no one with any IQ points at all will want anything to do with the system, especially after realizing how badly everyone was deceived and betrayed by the central banks’ crashing of the fiat dollar. (Inflation doesn’t go away just because you make money digital. If anything, it only invites even more rapid money printing and currency devaluation.)"

Today’s Situation Update covers all this in much more detail:
Related:

"Shopping At Dollar General! Finding Deals & Some Special Offers!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/2/22:
"Shopping At Dollar General! 
Finding Deals & Some Special Offers!"
"In today's vlog we are at Dollar General to check out another food option as prices across the country are getting super expensive! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation!"

Friday, April 1, 2022

"Panic Buying Frenzy Sweeps Across China As People Rush To Hoard Food Supplies At Supermarkets"

Full screen recommended.
"Panic Buying Frenzy Sweeps Across China As 
People Rush To Hoard Food Supplies At Supermarkets"
by Epic Economist

"China’s lockdowns have set off a massive new wave of panic buying this week as millions scrambled to stock up on food supplies and medicine before movement restrictions were reimposed in several major cities. While some prepared for a lengthy period stuck at home, others were forced to quarantine in their offices to keep business running, and some were caught by surprise by the renewed mandates and remained isolated in quite unusual locations.

Over the past few days, supermarket shelves were left bare by panic buyers, creating shortages of a series of products and leading some shoppers to engage in physical altercations over the remaining supplies. The fresh measures to contain the latest outbreak are also triggering shock waves on the global supply chain, sparking mass businesses shutdowns, port closures, and pushing domestic production down. All of these disruptions are adding immense pressure on food prices – not only in China but in global markets as well.

Mass testing is also being conducted to screen all of Shanghai's residents for the virus. Given that the city is home to 25 million people, rumors started circulating that authorities would actually extend the city’s lockdown for several days to be able to spot all new cases and contain local outbreaks. As a result, residents started another panic buying frenzy in anticipation of the restrictions. “We're all wondering if it's really possible to test, analyze and then sweep up the [infected] among almost 25 million people in a matter of days, then simply open up again. We're preparing for weeks of this," said one resident.

Others have been forced to isolate themselves in far more unusual locations. One woman’s story went viral this week when her community's lockdown began while she was at the gym. Her experience was similar to a widely reported of a woman in Zhengzhou who had to quarantine for several days at a hot pot restaurant. On the other hand, for millions of people, the restrictions have caused lots of anxiety. One footage showed supermarket shelves completely emptied out of all products. Additional video captured the moment two men erupted into a fight near fresh produce stands. Some have also taken to social media platform Weibo to urge help as they were not able to get medicine or treatment due to pharmacy closures.

The chaos is expected to continue as the number of cases keeps rising. Some of the nation’s biggest ports have been shut down, disrupting trade, domestic production, and the flow of goods in and out of the country. Both Shenzhen and Shanghai are important economic powerhouses for the rest of the world, and the recent closures are raising fears about severe interruptions to the global shipping industry and supply chains, according to industry insiders. That is already sparking massive ‘shock waves’ across global supply chains, and contributing to rampant food inflation, they added.

The disruptions are affecting the stability of the global manufacturing supply chain, creating huge backlogs and exacerbating shortages in foreign markets. However, the damages consumers are going to face are likely to be deeper and more long-lasting than what most companies are going through. The impact of shortages, delivery delays, and sudden movement restrictions will continue to weigh on prices and make food inflation a permanent reality, not only for the Chinese but also for consumers all over the world."

"Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crash, Get It Out And Stockpile Food; Economy Being Disabled"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/1/22:
"Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crash, 
Get It Out And Stockpile Food; Economy Being Disabled"

Gerald Celente, "Ukraine War, Start to Finish, Who’ll Win? Why and When? - Interview with Scott Ritter"

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal,
"Ukraine War, Start to Finish, Who’ll Win? 
Why and When? - Interview with Scott Ritter"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets And More: Hidden In Plain Sight, What You Need To Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/1/22"
"Markets And More: Hidden In Plain Sight,
 What You Need To Know Now"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.
The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”

Bill Bonner, "The Great Beyond"

"The Great Beyond"
by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "We rode over to the cemetery – a real Boot Hill – to see Carlos’s grave. Carlos died by drowning, a very rare thing in a very dry country. It was ruled an ‘accident’ by the police. But it didn’t look like an accident to us. It looked like suicide. The footprints showed that he walked around the reservoir to the deep end – the only place he could have drowned. His cellphone was placed on the ground. Then, the feet came together…. and disappeared. There were no other footprints. What would make Carlos – a simple field hand – want to kill himself? Nobody wants to ask.
We have our suspicions. They would surprise no one. Jealousy. Hate. Betrayal. Desperation. Talking to his wife, we had the strong sense that she knows something that she’s not telling us. But there is no point to going any further with this; the heart has its stories… often best left untold.

Our beat is money. But on its own, money is worthless. It is the heart, with its wants and needs, its vanities and mysteries, that gives money meaning. So, today, we will dig a bit further into the mush and muscle, in the hopes that we might learn something.

State-Sanctioned Suicide: No sooner had we absorbed news of Carlos’s death than another death came our way. An old friend, in Switzerland, committed suicide. This was a death of an entirely different sort. Premeditated. Assisted. Sanctioned by the government. Here’s the report (from a family member): “Marie got in touch with an organization called ‘Exit.’ Normally, they help terminally ill people kill themselves. But they will also do it for people who are severely depressed. Marie had cut herself off from her two children. I think it was over money. She had become a recluse. And she was very unhappy.

She called me about a month ago to say that she had contacted the Exit people and was planning to commit suicide. I didn’t know what to do. Or how to take it. She could be melodramatic. And very emotional. I figured she was just telling me how depressed she was. I knew she was taking antidepressants. I thought she had it under control. Then, she called to say she had a date – about a week ahead. She seemed very determined. Calm. Her mind was made up.

Apparently, the Exit group did interviews with family and friends to make sure that she was in her right mind and was unlikely to ever recover from her depression. Then, they came to her apartment, along with a policeman as a witness; they gave her a pill. I heard from her friend, who must have been with her, that she was smoking a cigarette, calmly and even making jokes. Then, she took the pill, fell asleep and died. Rest in peace. Another family member reported that the end was “serene”… and that “it was what she wanted.”

Total Control: But the news left others deeply disturbed. One offered a comment: “Rest in peace? What kind of peace is that? She was obviously at war with her own children… and it tormented her… drove her crazy… so crazy that either she wanted to escape by killing herself… or wanted to torment them by removing all possibility of a reconciliation. Either way, it was the wrong thing to do. Not just ‘wrong’ like a mistake… but wrong – sinful… selfish and mean."

That’s what is wrong with our whole modern world,” she continued. “It has lost its soul. Imagine, people who come to your house… give you a pill… and watch you die. What’s wrong with these people? Didn’t anyone try to stop her? Didn’t anyone try to save her? Suppose you saw someone getting ready to jump off a bridge? Would you just say ‘oh well, that’s their business’? And didn’t it occur to anyone that killing people – even people who say they want to be killed – is wrong?

Look… I have no idea whether Marie should live or die. But neither do they. It’s one thing when people suddenly shoot themselves and there’s nothing you can do about it. But coming to her apartment with a pill?

This is so disappointing… and so sad. These people think they can make life or death decisions based on interviews and psychological profiles. How did they know what was really in her heart… or what Marie’s suicide would do to her children… or her friends? Why did they think she had any choice in the matter? She didn’t choose to be born; who gave her the right to choose to die? Those are things we shouldn’t decide for ourselves. How did they know whether she was meant to live or die… or whether she might some day see a burning bush… and get down on her knees to beg forgiveness… beg her children and her god… to take that iron corset off her heart and let her live?

I find it just overwhelmingly sad… crushingly sad… as if there really were no God at all… no real grace or beauty… no hope of redemption… as if we were now all at the mercy of soulless technicians with their crackpot theories on their power trips… with their charts and graphs… telling us the planet can only be 1.5 degrees warmer… or that we should have 2% inflation, not more, not less… and telling us when we can go a restaurant… and giving children vaccines that they don’t need… and censuring what we say…and insisting that we put their medicines into our bodies… you’re always going on about the Fed monkeying with interest rates and printing fake money… and I guess that’s part of it too… they think they can control everything and everybody…and now, they think they have the right to tell us who can die… and when."

“Very sad.”

"The Image That Comes To Mind..."

"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, "Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight." That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, "This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may the world be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends." There are the only three positions."
- Joseph Campbell

"The Coming American Dictatorship"

"The Coming American Dictatorship," Part I
by John Wilder

“Well, Captain, the Klingons called you a tin-plated, overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood.” – Star Trek

“Comrade Stalin, a fortune-teller came to see you!” “Execute him. If he was any good, he would have known not to come.”

"Most people like to be told what to do. They want to be led. That makes sense, given the history of humanity. We work best when we work together, and the worst group is a group of a dozen people who each think they’re the leader. Because of this, hierarchy is a built-in feature to our operating system. Get a group of lumberjacks together, and one of them will want to be named the branch manager.

The downside of this “working together” is that the vast mass of people are willing to behave like lemmings and all jump off the cliff, as long as that’s what everyone else in the group is doing. Heck, lemmings would even jump off a dock, if they felt pier pressure. For me, the last few years has been the biggest revelation in human behavior and how easily people (especially NPCs) can be reprogrammed.

The three biggest reprogramming efforts in the last few years have been Trump, COVID, and Ukraine. I’ll skip Trump for the moment, and jump into COVID. Was the ‘Rona a real disease? Certainly. The reaction to it was overblown at every level. The average age of people who died from Corona-chan was (through my rough calculations) 73 in the United States.

In two years, a total of 921 deaths below the age of 17 were recorded. By my calcs, this was less than 1% of the deaths from all causes for kids of that age. In other words, it was uncommon. For that, though, we shut down schools, shut down the economy, and tossed trillions in cash out everywhere. That led to pent-up demand – when the local Lego® store reopened, people lined up for blocks.

You’re aware of all of that, of course. This isn’t ancient history. But the number of Americans who became Corona believers overnight was in the tens of millions. The reactions of panic were amazing. It became the reason for the existence of the news media and Big Tech® to actively put a blanket of censorship on all views that didn’t agree with whatever the blessed St. Anthony Fauci, PBUH, didn’t believe that afternoon.

The ‘Rona continued to be a means of control, as well as amazing profitability for the vaxx makers. Biden even tried to up the ante with controls that would have made Brezhnev blush that were (in some cases) later defeated, which made him stop before he went full Trudeau. Never go full Trudeau.

Eventually, the vaxx requirements and silly Corona restrictions got so politically muddled and unpopular that the subject had to be changed. A desperate politician with low approval ratings decided that the best thing that could have happened to him is... Russia. Leftists have been head over heels hating Russia for quite a long time, even more than they hate having to switch cars after the Amber Alert comes over the radio. I started to write a paragraph as to why – but why doesn’t matter.

It would have been elementary statecraft for Biden to get Ukraine and Russia to have a peaceful settlement, or at least one short of war. Instead, every public statement was a variant of “let’s you and him fight.” Biden actively egged on the conflict that no one believed would actually happen. Why? This why is important.

It was to swap out the chips. COVID-19 Fear Enabler™ was replaced with 2022 Russia Hate®. Joe saw his shot to again become nearly as popular as “that dance the kids are doing, the twist” and someone decided to make the chip swap.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t valid reasons to be on the side of Ukraine – there are. Me? I’m not on either side – I don’t need to choose between various them. But the real loser of this war won’t only be Ukraine and Russia. In the long run, I think the biggest loser will be the economy of the United States, especially with unemployment after Ukraine has to lay off the Biden, Pelosi, and Romney families.

I see that there is a very, very significant portion of the populace that is highly susceptible to this reprogramming – again – no every Russia hater is an NPC, but many are. The technology for this reprogramming has been honed very well over time. People who couldn’t spell Ukraine and couldn’t find it on a map want to intervene with a no-fly zone and troops. One wonders if they know that “no-fly” has nothing to do with zipperless pants.

Whether planned or not, this will very likely result in the final crisis that the United States will face in its current form. The difficulty is that we are a population that is already divided. I feel that the recent sanctions against Russia are an own goal that will ultimately result in the death of the dollar as the reserve currency and wrote about that here.

Ultimately, this leads to that final crisis that we’ll face as a nation. How will we deal with an economic crisis? Certainly there is the possibility of Civil War 2.0, which is what I had previously had as my number one risk. It’s still there, but a new risk is becoming more and more probable as we head towards Biden’s Depression. What kind of crisis? That one is simple. Economic disruption in the United States of Weimar proportions, as I’ll outline below.

A move away from the US dollar as the reserve currency (which is happening right now) will create poverty. Yes, we make food in the United States. But we don’t make the microchips required to run the John Deere® harvesters. We also make most of the energy that we consume. But we don’t make the steel to produce the pipe to drill it or move it. We’ve simply lost much of the technological and experience base required to make the things we need, except for Doritos®.

As noted above, I can see other probabilities, but Biden’s driving Russia and China together to create a Eurasian bloc that has both raw materials and production capacity will upset and supplant the unipolar world we had since 1992. This creates the conditions necessary to crush a United States built on a FIRE economy.

What’s a FIRE economy? Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Yup, that’s the United States. Regardless of how it has been used, it is an economy that’s built around sloshing money around. No matter what the condo sells for in New York, it won’t put a single more hamburger into a McDonald’s® in Manhattan.

Russia can make and harvest the food, because they can make tractors or import them from China. Russia can make excess energy, as well as the pipe to move it. They don’t even need China for that. The United States used to be indispensable. Now?

The United States imports $90 billion a month more than it exports. $90 billion. Why do people sent us $90 billion in stuff every month more than we send out? Because we pay with dollars. These dollars exist because we just print them, or, more likely, create electronic bits that we call dollars. It was a good gig, but Biden’s sanctions against Russia have shown the Russians that they don’t need the Western financial system. They can sell oil and fertilizer and grain for rubles. Or gold. Or microchips. They don’t need the dollar.

This sort of crisis facing the United States has happened before. Most of the time, it rhymes.

A decadent people: Weakened through a fixation only on pleasure and power, because they live in abundance, are confronted with a crisis – typically ending the pleasure. What, then, do the people want? Well, of course, they want the pleasure back. They want the abundance back. What are they willing to do? Anything. As I said, people like to be led. So, when the Strong Man shows up with the Plan, they’re ready to accept it.

What does the Strong Man require to return the pleasure and abundance back? Simple, said the spider to the no-fly zone: Control. Who is ready to give control? People who can swap programming nearly immediately, to swap out COVID Fear Pack™ to Save Ukraine 2022 Upgrade© without skipping a beat. And that’s how you get a Dictator."

The Daily "Near You?"

Bulverde, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

"Business Lunacy, and Civility is Dead"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 4/1/22:
"Business Lunacy, and Civility is Dead"
"There are so many things in the economy that we keep getting more news on day after day. Whether it’s real estate, interest rates or the potential diesel fuel shortage the stories have lax and continue to get new information. We also are going to talk about the fact that civility is dead. Civility is dead in business and in our personal lives."

"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what's going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich

Gregory Mannarino, "The Yield Curve Votes "NO-CONFIDENCE" On The US Economy"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/1/22:
"The Yield Curve Votes "NO-CONFIDENCE" On The US Economy"

Jim Kunstler, “Jettison the Animals!”

“Jettison the Animals!”
by Jim Kunstler

"Probably the only crime not documented on Hunter Biden’s laptop is murder, though given his dad’s position in government, and given the desperation building over unfriendly forces currently deciphering said laptop like a Rosetta Stone of the “Big Guy’s” corruption, and given Pop’s access to the Intel Community and its various rogue workshops, who knows who might have got whacked along the Bidens’ road to perdition.

The “president” famously loves and admires his son - “the smartest man I know,” he’s said - but every once in a while, in those infrequent lucid moments between breakfast and the morning “lid” on his imperial duties, “Joe Biden” must smack himself in his Blarney Stone of a head wondering how the hell did that meshugganah kid of mine manage to lose that goddam treasure-map of a laptop! And just as quickly, the fugitive thought floats away like a soap bubble…It’s easy to play dumb when you’re already senile.

Perhaps “Joe B” dimly senses the dark presence of the Deep State pussyfooting closer and closer to his zone of special protection. It’s said, for instance, that the CIA enjoys the use of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post for molding public opinion to suit its agenda… and that lately the newspaper has joined the FBI-chummy New York Times in disclosing that Hunter’s laptop may, after all, not be the hobgoblin of “Russian disinformation” that fifty former Intel nabobs said it was… but rather… a thing… an unbelievably toxic hairball stuck in the Deep State’s craw - considering that however much the Deep State is disparaged, it at least is supposed to protect its government myrmidons from taint sufficient to keep them in their useful offices - and Gawd knows what else in the way of vile secrets will get upchucked behind that hairball.

Rumors have it that Merrick Garland’s DOJ is conducting an investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax quandaries. They must be wicked complex. In the case, for example, of monies exceeding a billion dollars transferred from CCP-connected companies to Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca Investment firm, was Biden-the-Younger a mere fiduciary? Or did those funds make a trip to some Baltic State laundry, where they got washed, rinsed, and delivered to the personal bank accounts of Hunter, Uncle Jim, Uncle Frank, and Dr. Jill? If memory serves, the much-maligned Rudy Giuliani probably has those laundry tickets.

The fabled Hard-drive-from Hell apparently contains evidence of felonious misdeeds other than tax evasion ranging from treason, bribery, and wire fraud, to child sex-trafficking and the use of Air Force Two in the commission of crimes. That leaves AG Mr. Garland on a hot spot of dreadful discomfiture. Does he call off the dogs on that vast bone-pile of perfidy and just “laser focus” on some rinky-dink tax charge - and then face the wrath in ten months of a sure-to-be Republican majority House and Senate capable not just of impeaching his ass, but making criminal referrals on it? Or is compelling evidence of high crimes going to be spewed all over the land by those aforesaid private-sector sleuths poring over Hunter’s hard-drive, in a way that the AG can only ignore at the risk of his own reputation… or maybe even a year in some federal slammer for obstruction of justice?

Kinda depends a little bit on what sort of commotion special counsel Mr. John Durham stirs up if-and-when he gets around to indicting any of the superstars of RussiaGate - many of them former and current DOJ and FBI personnel - because when that happens, the odor around Mr. Garland’s department will be so pungent that prosecutors will have to work the Hunter case wearing industrial-strength, full-face, carbon-filtered respirators.

In short, is the dear Deep State fixing to throw “Joe Biden” overboard in a play for its own legitimacy, as if it is actually looking after the nation’s interests? At some point, even ghouls and spooks have a certain survival instinct. And all that might kinda depend on whether President Vlad Putin of Russia happens to disclose what exactly his soldiers found when they captured the numerous “bio-research” labs that ringed Ukraine’s former eastern provinces near the Russian border. Hunter Biden’s companies had an ownership position in those labs, which were actually run by the US Department of Defense jointly with (who else?) the CIA. The wildest stories are circulating about the labs - like, they were developing horrific designer plagues targeted specifically at genetically Slavic people… to be spread by loosing infected migratory birds into the Eurasian skies… say, what…? When, exactly, did American foreign policy turn into something out of a Marvel Comic?

Anyway, in case you’ve forgotten, the Biden family melodrama is actually a sideshow to the main event in the center ring right now: the collapse of Western Civ, starring the USA as a once-promising beacon of liberty and decency, now reduced to the equivalent of a homeless fentanyl freak gibbering about gender Marxism in history’s gutter. The scaffold of the economy is collapsing, helped along by “Joe Biden’s” foolish bid to disrupt global banking arrangements, boomeranging right back in Western Civ’s chops, as the supply lines to every conceivable precious commodity from fertilizer to rare earths - with oil in the middle of all that - get recklessly severed. 

Isn’t it bad enough that we no longer make anything in our country; now we don’t even have access to the stuff we might need if we ever actually considered making stuff again? On top of that, no food for you, O nation of whimpering simps, lost in your Tik-Tok raptures of virtual orgasm. March of 2022 sure was a humdinger. And, of course, April always begins with a joke, before the serious fun starts."

"How It Really Is"

 

"This Is Always The Hope..."

"What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again."
- Inga Muscio

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up for 4/1/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up for 4/1/22"
"Everything is a Lie, Ruble Rumbles, Inflation Rising"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"If you watched the mainstream media (MSM) news lately, you might be noticing how everything they told you is a huge lie. The MSM said Hunter Biden’s laptop with treasonous deals and nasty sex photos is nothing more than Russian disinformation. LIE. We were told over and over again by the MSM, that the so-called dossier on Trump with tawdry tales were true or mostly true. Total LIE. The MSM told all the CV19 vax is safe and effective. Huge LIE and the MSM was paid $1 billion to push this Deadly LIE. The MSM said, and is still saying, Ivermectin is not effective against CV19. Another Huge LIE!! We are drowning in a sea of lies, and the MSM is happy to be rowing the boat of fake news.

The so-called sanctions put on Russia by the west were supposed to cripple them and kill the Russian ruble. I told you this would backfire big time, and it has. Putin is forcing countries to use the Ruble when buying oil, natural gas, wheat and everything else it sells. There is a new competitor to the dollar, at least when buying Russian goods and resources. Will the dollar take a hit as other countries no longer need it? I say yes. After getting clobbered on sanction news, the Ruble is back to where it was when the sanctions were imposed. Now, inflation has been turbo-charged in the west, and that is a huge backfire in my book.

Speaking of inflation, have you filled up your vehicle lately? How about buying some food at the grocery store? The Biden/Obama Administration would like you to think that the massive inflation you are experiencing is all Russia’s fault. That, too, is a huge lie. We are getting this because of disastrous policies instituted by the Biden Administration. Biden and crew want to “Build Back Better” after they tear and burn your world down. It won’t be better, and the evil globalists backing Biden will be in total control if they get their way."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
 stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 4/1/22:

Free Download: "The Vaccine Death Report"

"The Vaccine Death Report"
by David John Sorenson and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, MD

"Purpose: The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.

Facts: We aim to only present scientific facts and stay away from unfounded claims. The data is clear and verifiable. Over one hundred references can be found for all presented information, which is provided as a starting point for further investigation.

Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world. The severity of this situation compels us to ask this critical question: will we rise to the defense of billions of innocent people? Or will we permit personal profit over justice, and be complicit? Networks of lawyers all over the world are preparing class-action lawsuits to prosecute all who are serving this criminal agenda. To all who have been complicit so far, we say: There is still time to turn and choose the side of truth. Please make the right choice."
Freely download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:
We now know HOW... where we fail into mind-numbing incomprehension is WHY? How could anyone conceive of such a hideously horrifying "solution" on a planetary scale? What could possibly be of such enormous potential impact? With their infinite resources the powers-that-be would of course have known years ago the verified truths in this video, and devised their ultimately motivated solution. View this video, and connect the dots, and decide for yourself where truth is... A must view!

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

"Unthinkable Thoughts"
by Josh Mitteldorf

"This is not what I enjoy writing about, but as I find dark thoughts creeping into my consciousness, perhaps it is better to put them on paper with supporting logic and invite my readers to help me clarify the reasoning and, perhaps, to point a way out of the darkness.

Already in January, 2020, two ideas about COVID were emerging. One is that there were people and institutions who seemed to have anticipated the event, and were planning for it for a long time. Gates, Fauci, the World Economic Forum, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine were among the prescient. (I credit the (now deleted) videos of Spiro Skouras.) Second was the genetic evidence suggesting that COVID had a laboratory origin. Funders of the scientific establishment have lost their bid to ridicule this idea, and it has now leaked into the mainstream, where it is fused with the classical yellow peril propaganda: “China did it!”. I have cited evidence that America is likely equally culpable.

The confluence of these two themes suggests the dark logic that I take for my topic today: Those who knew in advance, not only that there would be a pandemic but that it would be a Coronavirus, were actually responsible for engineering this pandemic.

Immediately, I think: How could people capable of such sociopathic enormities be occupying the most powerful circles of the world’s elite? And what would be their motivation? I don’t have answers to these questions, and I will leave speculation to others. But there’s one attractive answer that I find less compelling: that it’s a money-maker for the large and criminal pharmaceutical industry. The new mRNA vaccines are already the most profitable drugs in history, but I think that shutdown of world economies, assassinations of world leaders, deep corruption of science, and full-spectrum control of the mainstream narrative imply a larger power base than can plausibly be commanded by the pharma industry. Instead, I’ll try to follow the scientific and medical implications of the hypothesis that COVID is a bioweapon.

The Spike Protein: The spike protein is the part of the virus structure that interfaces with the host cell. SARS 1 and SARS 2 viruses both have spike proteins that bind to a human cell receptor called ACE-2, common in lung cells but also present in other parts of the body. Binding to the cell’s ACE-2 receptor is like the wolf knocking at the door of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. “Hello, grandmama. I’m your granddaughter. Please let me in.” The virus is a wolf wearing a red cape and hood, pretends to be an ACE-2 enzyme molecule seeking entrance to the cell.

In order to enter the cell, the virus must break off from the spike protein and leave it at the doorstep, so to speak. This is an important and difficult step, as it turns out. Unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a trick for making the separation. Just at the edge of the protein is a furin cleavage site. Furin is an enzyme that snips protein molecules, and it is common in our bodies, with legitimate metabolic uses. A furin cleavage site is a string of 4 particular amino acids that calls to furin, “hey - come over here. I’m a protein that needs snipping.”

The most compelling evidence for a laboratory origin of COVID is that coronaviruses don’t have furin cleavage sites, and until last year, this trick has never evolved naturally.
Click image for larger size.

How we think about natural disease: The classical understanding of a viral or bacterial disease is this: A parasite is an organism that uses the host’s resources for its own reproduction. It is evolved to reproduce efficiently. If it has co-evolved with the host, it may be evolved to spare the host’s health, or even to promote it, because this is the optimal long-term strategy for any predator or parasite. But newly-emerged parasites can do well for awhile even if they disable or kill their hosts, and this is the kind of disease that is most damaging to us. The damage is done because the (young) virus’s strategy is to reproduce rapidly and disperse itself into the environment where it can find new hosts. The virus has no interest in harming the host, and was not evolved to this end, but this is a side-effect of commandeering the body’s resources for its own reproduction.

How engineered diseases can be different: A bioweapon virus is designed to cause a certain kind of harm.

* What kind of harm? It depends on the projected use for the weapon.
* Doesn’t the virus have to reproduce? Probably, for most weapon applications; but a bioweapon is not necessarily designed for rapid reproduction. A bioweapon can be designed as a “sleeper” to remain dormant for months or years, or to cause incremental disability over a long period.

If COVID had evolved naturally, we would expect that its spike protein would be adapted to mate well with the human ACE-2 receptor. There’s no reason to suspect it being otherwise biologically active. But if COVID is engineered, it may be that the spike protein itself has been designed to make us sick.

One reason this is significant is that the vaccines have all been designed around the spike protein, assuming that the spike protein were metabolically neutral. If the virus had been naturally evolved, this is a reasonable assumption. But if it came from a laboratory (whether it leaked or was deliberately released) the spike protein might be actually be the agent of damage. There are several reasons to suspect that this is the case.

The Spike Protein as an Active Pathogen: Back in February, 2020, this article noted that the spike protein was not perfectly optimized to bind to human ACE-2 and put this forward as an proof that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.” But if someone were designing the virus to cause harm, the spike protein would be a convenient locus for the damage vector, so the spike might have been designed with twin purposes in mind, binding and toxicity. The spike protein appears in many copies around the “crown” of the coronavirus. Since each copy has a furin cleavage site at its base, many spike proteins will break off into the bloodstream. We now have several reports and hypotheses concerning the spike protein as an active agent of damage. The spike protein is suspected of causing blood clots, of inducing long-lasting neurological damage, and of causing infertility. Many anecdotes describe injuries to un-vaccinated people who have been in close proximity to vaccinated, prompting speculation about “shedding” the spike protein.

“Individuals with COVID-19 experience a vast number of neurological symptoms, such as headaches, ataxia, impaired consciousness, hallucinations, stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. But autopsy studies have yet to find clear evidence of destructive viral invasion into patients’ brains, pushing researchers to consider alternative explanations of how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms…

If not viral infection, what else could be causing injury to distant organs associated with COVID-19? The most likely culprit that has been identified is the COVID-19 spike protein released from the outer shell of the virus into circulation. Research cited below* has documented that the viral spike protein is able to initiate a cascade of events that triggers damage to distant organs in COVID-19 patients.

Worryingly, several studies have found that the spike proteins alone have the capacity to cause widespread injury throughout the body, without any evidence of virus. What makes this finding so disturbing is that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer and currently being administered throughout the U.S. program our cells to manufacture this same coronavirus spike protein as a way to trigger our bodies to produce antibodies to the virus.” [Global Research article, Feb 2021] Note: the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines are also based on the spike protein, and cause the spike protein to be created in the vaccinated person.

* “Research cited below” refers to this study in Nature which reports that the spike protein, injected into mice, crosses into the brain, where it causes neurological damage. Bigger news came from a study in which researchers from California’s Salk Institute collaborated with Chinese virologists. They have found that the bare spike protein without the virus (injected in mice) can cause damaged arteries of the kind that lead to heart disease and strokes in humans. The original paper was published in Circulation Research, and the Salk Institute issued a news report describing the research.

One of the most credible dangers of the spike protein involves fertility. None of the vaccines were tested in pregnant women, and yet many government and other authorities are recommending it as safe for pregnant women. VAERS has reported 174 miscarriages to date after COVID vaccination. VAERS is notoriously underreported. I find the anecdotes less concerning than the fact that no one is taking this seriously, and research is being actively discouraged in the best-respected science journals.

There is a credible mechanism, in that the spike protein is partially homologous to syncytin. Syncytin, in fact, was originally a retroviral protein, inserted into the mammalian genome many aeons ago, and evolved over the ages to play an essential role in reproduction, binding the placenta to the fetus. An immune response that attacks syncytin might be expected to be impose a danger of spontaneous abortion. In any ordinary times, this would be a subject that medical researchers would jump on, with animal tests and field surveys to assess the danger. But these are no ordinary times, and the risk is being dismissed on theoretical grounds without investigation. This is especially suspicious in the context of history: a Gates Foundation vaccination program in 1995 was allegedly promoted to young women, causing infertility. (Yes, I know there are many fact-checkers eager to “debunk” this story, but I don’t find them convincing, and some of these fact-checkers are compromised by Gates funding.)

Even doing what the spike protein is supposed to do — tying up ACE2 — can be a problem for our lungs and arteries, which are routinely protected by ACE2.

The most dangerous possibility, suspected but not verified, is that the spike protein causes a prion cascade. Prions are paradoxical pathogens, in that they are misfolded proteins that cause misfolded proteins. Their evolutionary etiology is utterly mysterious, so much so that it took Stanley Prusiner a decade after describing the biology of prions before the scientific community would take prion biochemistry seriously. But prions make potent bioweapons, which laboratories can design outside of natural evolutionary dynamics. The possibility of prion-like structures in the spike protein was noted very early in the pandemic based on a computational study. This recent review combines theoretical, laboratory, and observational evidence to make a case for caution. Once again, I find it disturbing that this possibility is being dismissed on theoretical grounds rather than investigated in the lab and the field.

Where did the idea come from that all vaccines are automatically safe? Why do so many journalists dismiss the suggestion that vaccines should be placebo-tested individually, like all other drugs? Why has it become routine to ridicule and denigrate scientists who ask questions about vaccine safety as politically-motivated luddites, or “anti-vaxxers”? How did we get to a situation where the “precautionary principle” means pressuring young people who are at almost no risk for serious COVID to accept a vaccine which has not been fully tested or approved? I don’t have answers, but I do know who benefits from this culture.

Putting together all the evidence:
• Knowledge beforehand.
• Suppression of treatments and cures.
• Toxicity of the spike protein which, if it had been made by nature, should have been benign.
• Inclusion of the toxic spike protein in the vaccines that are supposed to protect us.
• Heavy promotion of these scantily-tested vaccines and
• Censorship of scientists and doctors who question the vaccines’ safety.

Putting together all this evidence, it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent."
Related, Must Read!
"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"
"There is no chance of long-term survival for anyone who received a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injection, according to leading French virologist Luc Montagnier. Everyone who is getting jabbed for the Chinese Virus will die, he reportedly stated during a recent interview, which you can watch at Brighteon.com. “There is no hope and no possible treatment for those who have already been vaccinated,” Montagnier stated plainly during the segment. “We must be prepared to cremate the bodies.” After studying at length the ingredients contained in the injections and what they do, Montagnier came to the conclusion that every single person who gets the shot will eventually die from antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE. “That is all that can be said,” he added."
Full article here:
"The prestigious Salk Institute, founded by vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, has authored and published a bombshell scientific article revealing that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is what’s actually causing vascular damage in covid patients and covid vaccine recipients, promoting the strokes, heart attacks, migraines, blood clots and other harmful reactions that have already killed thousands of Americans (source: VAERS.hhs.gov)."

Critically, all four covid vaccine brands currently in widespread use either inject patients with the spike protein or, via mRNA technology, instruct the patient’s own body to manufacture spike proteins and release them into their own blood. This floods the patient’s body with the very spike protein that the Salk Institute has now identified as the smoking gun cause of vascular damage and related events (such as blood clots, which are killing many people who take the vaccines). "Put simply, it means the vaccines were designed to contain the very element that’s killing people."
Excerpt: “Executives are having their HR staff and their managers, superintendents, floormen, etc., go through and look at the staff that have received the vaccines, and they’re planning on having to replace them all within the next three years. What does that say to you?” The woman does not name herself, but does claim that she runs a company that works in succession planning. We are taking her word for it, but it does resonate with what French virologist and Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier recently admitted about what will happen to jabbed people within the next few years. View Brighteon video in article.

“It’s got some of these guys literally in tears as they’re going through the company and literally checking off all of these individuals who have taken the vaccine, knowing that most likely within the next three years they’re going to have to replace that person,” the woman adds. “This is a really big thing in the industry that I’m in. These massive gas and oil companies are looking to have to replace thousands of personnel.”