"For What Should We Fight Russia or China?"

"For What Should We Fight Russia or China?"

by Pat Buchanan

"Last Monday, in a single six-hour period, NATO launched 10 air intercepts to shadow six separate groups of Russian bombers and fighters over the Arctic, North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea and Baltic Sea. Last week also brought reports that Moscow is increasing its troop presence in Crimea and along its borders with Ukraine.

Joe Biden responded. In his first conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden assured him of our “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression in the Donbass and Crimea.” Though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and we have no treaty obligation to fight in its defense, this comes close to a war guarantee. Biden seems to be saying that if it comes to a shooting war between Moscow and Kiev, we will be there on the side of Kiev. Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered that if the U.S. sends troops to Ukraine, Russia will respond.

Again, is Biden saying that in the event of a military clash between Ukrainians and Russians in Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk, the U.S. will intervene militarily on the side of Ukraine? Such a pledge could put us at war with a nuclear-armed Russia in a region where we have never had vital interests, and without the approval of the only institution authorized to declare war - Congress.

Meanwhile, off Whitsun Reef in the South China Sea, which Beijing occupies but Manila claims, China has amassed 220 maritime militia ships. This huge Chinese flotilla arrived after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken put Beijing on notice that any attack on Philippine planes or ships challenging Beijing’s claim to rocks and reefs of the South China Sea that are in Manila’s exclusive economic zone will be backed by the U.S.

Our 70-year-old mutual security treaty with Manila covers these islets and reefs, said Blinken, though some are already occupied and fortified by China. Apparently, if Manila uses force to assert its claims and expel the Chinese, then we will fight beside our Philippine allies. This amounts to a war guarantee of the kind that forced the British to declare war on Germany in 1939 over the invasion of Poland.

Two weeks ago, 20 Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the largest incursion yet by Beijing over the waters between Taiwan and Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands. As national security correspondent Bill Gertz writes in today’s Washington Times: “China is stepping up provocative activities targeting regional American allies in Asia … with an escalating number of military flights around Taiwan and the massing of more than 200 fishing ships near a disputed Philippines reef.

The most serious provocation took place March 29. An exercise by the People’s Liberation Army air force that included 10 warplanes flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone is what analysts say appeared to be a simulated attack on the island. It came just three days after an earlier mass warplane incursion.”

China also raised tensions with Japan, announcing last week that Tokyo must drop all claims to the disputed Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited island chain that Japan has administered for decades but that Beijing recently claimed as its territory. While China appears clear about its aims and claims to virtually all of the islands in the South China Sea and East China Sea as well as Taiwan - it is less clear about its intentions as to when to validate those claims.

As for the U.S., does the present foggy ambiguity as to what we may or may not do as China goes about asserting its claims serve our vital interests in avoiding war with the greatest power on the largest continent on earth? If red lines are to be laid down, they ought to be laid down by the one constitutional body with the authority to authorize or declare war - Congress. And questions need to be answered to avoid the kinds of miscalculations that led to horrific world wars in the 20th century.

Are the reefs and rocks the Philippines claim in the South China Sea, claims contradicted by China, covered by the U.S. mutual security treaty of 1951? Are we honor-bound to fight China on behalf of the Philippines, if Manila attempts to reclaim islets China occupies? What is our obligation if China moves to take the Senkakus? Would the United States join Japan in military action to hold or retrieve them? What, exactly, is our commitment to Taiwan if China attempts to blockade, invade or seize Taiwan’s offshore islands?

John F. Kennedy in the second debate with Richard Nixon in 1960 wrote off Quemoy and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait as indefensible and not worth war with Mao’s China.

With its warnings and threats, China is forcing America to address questions we have been avoiding for about as long as we can. China is saying that it is not bluffing: These islands are ours! Time to show our cards."

- https://buchanan.org/

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

Related:

TUESDAY, APR 06, 2021 - 09:45 PM: "Beijing Accelerating Timeline For Possible Invasion Of Taiwan, Expert Warns"

TUE APR 6, AT 12:30 PM: US Sails Carrier Into South China Sea As Philippines Enraged Over China 'Territory Grab'"

TUE APR 6, AT 11:59 AM: "Ukraine's Zelensky: "NATO Membership Is The Only Way To End War In Donbass" "Urges NATO to quickly expand Black Sea presence as a "powerful deterrent to Russia"

TUE APR 6, AT 10:20 AM: "Russia's Army Begins Massive 'Combat Readiness' Inspection As Ukraine Tensions Soar" "Readiness drills being received as a 'message' & warning to US-NATO forces."

○

Related:

"Why Is the Biden Administration Pushing Ukraine to Attack Russia?"

○

What could possibly go wrong?

"Deep Healing 528Hz Ancient Frequency Energy Sound Healing Session"

Full screen highly recommended.

Spirit Tribe Awakening, 

"Deep Healing 528Hz Ancient Frequency Energy Sound Healing Session" 

"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind,

 body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey."

Please be kind to yourself, take a break, and savor this beautiful work.

Headphones recommended but nor necessary.

Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The Book of Life”

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.

That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,

that is why you must sing and dance,

and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freely download “The Book of Life”, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:

- https://selfdefinition.org/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

Full screen!

Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

The Daily "Near You?"

Yerevan, Armenia. Thanks for stopping by!

"Sometimes..."

 

"Just Because..."

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math,

that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."

- Kurt Vonnegut

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/6/21: "Important Updates: Stocks, Crypto, Gold, Silver, Crude, Debt"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/6/21:

"Important Updates: Stocks, Crypto, Gold, Silver, Crude, Debt"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Who’s to Blame for America’s Decline?"

"Who’s to Blame for America’s Decline?"

by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Our view, for the benefit of new readers, is that the U.S. went badly off the rails around 20 years ago. Since then, by almost every measure, it has been slipping and sliding downward. In everything, from life expectancies to income to GDP growth to freedom… to marriage rates and church attendance… America has lost ground.

Here’s the latest from Wolf Street: "The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves dropped to 59.0% in the fourth quarter, according to the IMF’s COFER data released [at the end of March]. This matched the 25-year low of 1995. These foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, etc. held by foreign central banks. Since 2014, the dollar’s share has dropped by 7 full percentage points, from 66% to 59%, on average 1 percentage point per year. At this rate, the dollar’s share would fall below 50% over the next decade."

On the global stage, in other words, the role of the U.S. is in decline.

Politically Correct Approach: But “declinism” has been, well, on the decline in academic circles. It suggests a moral failing… as if things might have turned out much differently had not people done stupid things. “Risism,” on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable. Nothing negative or prejudicial about it. Even the “fall” of Rome is now viewed not so much as a “fall” but a “transition.”

Yes, after the decline came the collapse. And then, the Barbarians took over and perhaps a million people died… The Vandals, the Goths, the Sueves, and the Alans enslaved many more… burned down cities… destroyed libraries (they couldn’t read or write, so what good were the ancient manuscripts?)…and Europe fell into a “dark age” for at least three centuries.

But that is a very “judgmental” view. Even the word “civilization” is no longer considered intellectually respectable. All cultures are equal. All languages are equal. All people are equal. None, according to this politically correct approach, are more “civilized” than others.

Different View: Here at the Diary, we take another view. In the eyes of God (and sometimes, the courts) all men may be created equal. But we humans look at every single one of them differently. Equality is neither a fact… nor a useful goal. After all, if we were all equal, we would be bored to death. No jokes, no lovers, no jackasses, no geniuses.

But don’t worry… Equality is just what we don’t have and don’t want. We are always comparing… contrasting… sizing up and looking down… One is more handsome… One is smarter… One chose the wrong spouse… One has no sense of color coordination!

There are roughly 250,000 adjectives in the English language… and every one is a way of making distinctions. Not even identical twins are the same. Humans are never equal, one to another. (Otherwise, why would some be judged and others do the judging? Why would some lead and others follow? Why would some govern… and others allow themselves to be governed?) All human life is unequal… and governed by moral rules, based on unequal conduct.

You make decisions. Decisions have consequences. You leave a nail sticking up on the job site. Inevitably, someone will step on it. And there are always cycles – cycles of learning and forgetting… cycles of building up and tearing down… of civilizing and uncivilizing.

Most of the time, most people go about their business… doing their win-win deals… exchanging goods and services as best they can. And then, along come the jackasses… just when you need them, to rob, murder, and legislate… and thus complete the full cycle – the rise and fall, the ups and downs, the booms and busts. The cycles are inevitable. But it’s still a “moral” world, in the sense that somebody left the damn nail sticking up!

Who’s to Blame? Who’s to blame for America’s decline? American economist Milton Friedman forged one of the nails. That is, he was instrumental in creating the new money system put in place in 1971. People were already limping in the late 1970s – U.S. inflation was already in the double digits. But then, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker rescued the money system in 1980. Then, quietly – and to the delight of millions – the new money did its damage, undermining the nation’s economy and its political institutions for the next 40 years.

Today, thanks to all the feds’ fake money, U.S. GDP growth rates are barely half of those from the 1970s and 1980s… and the nails are getting tossed out like confetti. Last month, Congress passed a $1.9 trillion “relief” program… and is now considering $2.3 trillion more. And last month, U.S. debt passed the $28 trillion mark, an increase of $4.7 trillion in the last 13 months.

But back in the 1990s, the momentum of growth and progress was so strong that the nation continued on an upward trend, until finally reaching the apogee of its imperial glory in 1999. Then, measured in gold, U.S. stocks hit their highest levels ever. They began a decline in 2000, and have never recovered.

Bad Emperors: Alas, then came a succession of bad emperors. George W. Bush launched the War on Terror – $7 trillion down the drain. Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street after the crisis of 2008-2009, and added nearly $10 trillion to the national debt over his eight-year term. The third in this parade of clowns was Donald J. Trump, who went on the biggest spending spree in U.S. history… with another $8 trillion added to federal debt in just four years. Government spending, as a portion of GDP, rose to over 40% during his term in office.

Worst of a Bad Lot: But The Donald’s contribution went far beyond the numbers. He also remade the Republican Party in his own image. No longer a party of ideas or principles… it is now just another group of hacks and grifters with a nativist/corporatist bent. This is especially important because now, we have the fourth – and perhaps, worst – of an awful lot, in the White House. And, with no effective conservative opposition, there is no one to stop the federales’ boondoggles or America’s eventual collapse.

Watch where you step."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"War with China? What Fun!"

"War with China? What Fun!"

by Fred Reed

"There is no limit to misjudgement. If the psychic curiosities in the Federal bunker start a war with China, or push Beijing into starting one, it will be blamed on a proximate cause, such as a collision of warships after which some lieutenant who joined on waivers lost it and opened fire. After all, historians have to write about something. The causes will actually be deeper and more complex.

To begin, people are cerebrally arranged to form groups - “packs” is a better word - and fight with other groups. This is dimwitted, but so are people. The urge manifests itself in wars, political parties, football, teenage gangs, and contract bridge. It is not rational. In football, armored mercenary felons having no relation to the cities they represent, battle other felons from another city, most of whose citizens would not let their daughters within a parsec of said felons - all this while the fans scream in adrenal murderousness. It is just what we do. At the national level, it is called “patriotism.”

Territoriality is part of the disorder. Human minds - the phrase may be an overstatement - seem intended for small wild groups for whom protection of hunting grounds might be important. When a Secretary of State embodies this instinct, he may, for example, confuse Asia with a patch of woods rife with deer. An instinct well suited to one situation is applied to another to which it isn’t.

But why do Americans regard China as an enemy? Partly because the vast military sector of the economy needs an enemy as a budgetary pretext. This is often said. It is also true. Since none of the anointed enemies - Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea - does anything to threaten Americans, a drumbeat of media about largely imaginary menaces is needed. And provided.

At a somewhat deeper level, it is again the pack instinct. Conservatives in particular tend to see the world in terms of tribes, countries, or faiths presumed hostile. Even though the public has almost no knowledge of China, or because of this, it can quite easily be persuaded that China is very dangerous. People can then easily begin clamoring for war and, politicians being politicians, they will not risk votes by pointing out the stupidity.

But let us go back to the collision of warships. Why would a diversity-admit junior officer open fire on China? Proximately, because he is frightened and panicky. A bit more remotely, because he has been told over and over and over that the Chinese are dangerous and aggressive and want to do terrible things, seldom specified. The military tells them this because you cannot prepare the troops for war by telling them that there is no reason for it.

Why would a President allow a war, knowing (if in a lucid moment) that it would produce absolute unshirted havoc in the economy even if it didn’t go nuclear? He wouldn’t. That is, he wouldn’t all at once choose Armageddon. But he couldn’t afford to seem soft on China, not with the midterms looming, so he couldn’t back off. If in the ensuing shootout the Navy got trounced, he most assuredly couldn’t drop the matter, and would have to double down. So, of course, would the Chinese for the same sorts of reasons. Off to the races.

Deeper in the forest of causation is that the pathologically aggressive, amoral, manipulative, and crafty tend to rise to power. We select as rulers those who are least fit to rule. In America this is often done a bit differently, with the unscrupulous and powerful choosing cardboard leaders whose strings they can pull. The effect is the same.

Why would war seem reasonable? Because Americans have never seen one, and believe their forces to be invincible. If you think that you can’t lose a fight, why avoid one? And because those in comfortable circumstances know that a war in Asia would be fought by the lower economic classes, about whom they care nothing and don’t much like. American elites do not fight. Note the list of draft dodgers during Vietnam: Bush II, Cheney, Bolton, Trump, Biden.

These men, knowing almost nothing of the military, war or, very likely, military history, are quickly hijacked mentally by the Pentagon. The firm handshake, the steely gaze, the clean shaven, confident, and patriotic warriors (if only via Powerpoint) are impressive to pols who…well, you know…haven’t done that. They project strength and realism, without necessarily having either. Listening to them, you can easily get a sense of being accepted into a special, manly club. They say that America has the most powerful, invincible, best trained, tra la, tra la, and if you haven’t been there it is easy to believe. The Chinese? A cakewalk. Iran? Coupla weeks.

Another reason for easily blundering into a war poorly understood is the very low quality of American government. Congress and the President are chosen by popularity contests, not according to competence. A congressman who worked his way up the political ladder in Wheeling or Baton Rouge knows state politics. He is unlikely to know anything about the first Island Chain or what a terminally guided ballistic missile is. A friend in a position to know estimates that ninety percent of the Senate do not know where Myanmar is. No one without a grasp of geography has more than a child’s understanding of military, economic, or strategic reality. But they vote on these things.

Sez I, we are well and truly screwed. But there is little we can do about it."

- https://www.unz.com/

"And Some Things..."

“But I couldn't respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no color or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled. I clenched my teeth against the stars. I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep. One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”

- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"

"Vaccines Will Kill By Cytokine Storm"

 

Read this again, carefully... "months later". 

As always, research this yourself, gather the facts,

and draw your own informed conclusions.

○

"Cytokine Storms May Be Fueling Some COVID Deaths"

"The Cytokine Storm: Is This Why COVID Kills?"

○

Related:

• "CV-19 Vaccine Warning – CV-19 Cure – Must Watch Videos"

• "Basic Arithmetic For Leftist Losers"

• "Shot in the Dark: 

Medical Doctor Exposes Deadly Dangers of Covid-19 Vaccines"

• "The COVID Fraud Will Not Stay Hidden Forever"

• "Straight Talk On Covid"

• "Redefining Death"

○

Hat tip to Jim Quinn at The Burning Platform.

○

Without comment I present this article for your consideration,

and strongly urge you to view it:

4/3/21: - https://usawatchdog.com/

"Chinese Housing Bubble Is About To Burst As Household Debt Soars To 9.7 Trillion"

Full screen recommended.

"Chinese Housing Bubble Is About To Burst 

As Household Debt Soars To 9.7 Trillion"

by Epic Economist

"China's imminent housing crash is threatening to trigger a global financial catastrophe beyond any seen in modern history. While bond and stock markets across the United States and Europe are dangerously inflated due to central banks' extraordinary response to the health crisis and the enormous amounts of borrowing and spending over the past year, in the eyes of most financial analysts, Chinese markets remained suitable for investment as the country has managed to put the health crisis under control and reopen its economy. However, experts are alerting that Bank of China balance sheets and the latest measures introduced by the Chinese government indicate that the country's markets are anything but safe since a monumental domestic real estate bubble has been growing at the same pace as the $9.7 trillion household debt, and a bubble bust is likely to create a domino effect of failures all around the world, unleashing a financial disaster of epic proportions. That's what we're going to analyze in this video.

After the burst of the health crisis, Beijing authorities panicked and ended up releasing a staggering volume of $504 billion in credit to local governments with a mandate to invest to boost the economy. The housing sector was their primary investment of choice, as the new middle-income population was willing to borrow to finally get their own homes. But problems in the country's real estate sector have been concerning authorities way before the occurrence of the sanitary outbreak. In 2016, Chinese officials could already see that a dangerous speculative bubble in rising house prices was threatening the economy. They have tried, without success, to impose restrictive measures in order to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control. However, that only incited local governments and banks to resort to covert ‘off-balance sheet’ lending via so-called local government financing vehicles, where the local governments create an investment company that sells bonds to finance real estate or other local projects.

Regardless of the official measures, China's housing bubble continuously rose. February data show that home prices increased by 16.8 percent. "According to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the total market value of China’s real estate is currently around $65 trillion. In 2019, China’s GDP was $14 trillion, making China's real estate far more inflated than US or EU values by a big margin. A 2018 study found Chinese home prices averaged 9.3 times annual incomes, outstripping inflated San Francisco’s 8.4 times," as reported by Engdahl.

In the second half of 2020, China’s Evergrande Group, one of the most valuable real estate companies in the world faced a ravaging cash crisis due to an enormous debt burden of approximately $121 billion and the slow down of economic activity. The Evergrande crisis scared the Chinese government, but, as result, authorities doubled down on local hidden real estate debts. Total local hidden debt is estimated to be at between $4.2 trillion to $6.1 trillion.

China’s domestic debt has been rising at an average annual rate of roughly 20 percent, which is significantly faster than its gross domestic product, meaning that in every possible scenario, the eastern superpower is in huge trouble. Official data revealed that outstanding household debt, which mainly includes real estate debt, was surpassing $9.7 trillion at the end of 2020. That already represents 62 percent of the Chinese gross domestic product.

As the strategist described "if troubles in this local bond market spill over into the national sovereign bond market, a huge market worth a staggering $18 trillion, that would drive bond rates far higher, triggering a wave of local defaults in less viable projects including real estate. It is certain that the state central bank would then pump liquidity to save its giant state banks. But given the scale of the debt, that could well force liquidation of China dollar assets abroad, including its estimated $1.04 trillion of US Treasury debt".

With the new $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the U.S. national debt has skyrocketed and the bond market has already started to feel the impacts of rising Treasury yields. That is to say, it would take very little from a China bond crisis to trigger a global financial meltdown. And the Chinese housing bubble burst could be the final coup to provoke a domino downfall. Only this time, as we previously discussed, considering the entire world economy has fallen into a debt spiral that is out of control, with the simultaneous collapse of both of the world's leading superpowers, no one will come to the rescue, and soon we might find ourselves in the middle of a tragic Great Depression of modern times."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

MUST WATCH! "Los Angeles, The New Detroit; Hollywood Retail Depression; Sunset Blvd. A Hellhole; Stores Closed"

Full screen! If you dare...

Jeremiah Babe,

"Los Angeles, The New Detroit; Hollywood Retail Depression; 

Sunset Blvd. A Hellhole; Stores Closed"

Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

Full screen recommended.

Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright as a crescent Moon, remaining visible for weeks to people living at the dawn of recorded history. Today, the resulting supernova remnant, also known as the Cygnus Loop, has faded and is now visible only through a small telescope directed toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). 

The remaining Veil Nebula is physically huge, however, and even though it lies about 1,400 light-years distant, it covers over five times the size of the full Moon. The featured picture is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of six images together covering a span of only about two light years, a small part of the expansive supernova remnant. In images of the complete Veil Nebula, even studious readers might not be able to identify the featured filaments."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

“A Prayer for the World”

“A Prayer for the World”

“Let the rain come and wash away the ancient grudges,

the bitter hatreds held and nurtured over generations.

Let the rain wash away the memory of the hurt, the neglect.

Then let the sun come out and fill the sky with rainbows.

Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken.

Let it burn away the fog so that we can see each other clearly,

So that we can see beyond labels, beyond accents, gender or skin color.

Let the warmth and brightness of the sun melt our selfishness,

So that we can share the joys and feel the sorrow of our neighbors.

And let the light of the sun be so strong that we will see all

people as our neighbors.

Let the earth, nourished by rain, bring forth flowers to

surround us with beauty.

And let the mountains teach our hearts to reach upward to heaven.”

- Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Ninth Duino Elegy”

“Ninth Duino Elegy”

“Praise the world to the angel: leave the unsayable aside.


Your exalted feelings do not move him.


In the universe, where he feels feelings, you are a beginner.


Therefore show him what is ordinary, 

what has been
 shaped from generation to generation, 

shaped by hand and eye.

Tell him of things.

 He will stand still in astonishment,


the way you stood by the rope maker in Rome
 

or beside the potter on the Nile.


Show him how happy a thing can be, 

how innocent and ours,


how even a lament takes pure form,


serves as a thing, dies as a thing,


while the violin, blessing it, fades.

And the things, even as they pass,


understand that we praise them.


Transient, they are trusting us 
to save them –

 us, the most transient of all.


As if they wanted in our invisible hearts


to be transformed 
into - oh, endlessly - into us.

Earth, isn’t this what you want?

 To arise in us, invisible?


Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly

there’s nothing left outside us to see?


What, if not transformation, is your deepest purpose?

Earth, my love, I want that too.

Believe me, no more of your springtimes are needed

to win me over- even one flower is more than enough.

Before I was named I belonged to you.

I seek no other law but yours, and know I can trust

the death you will bring.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"I Know Not..."

- Albert Einstein

"The Russians Are Reportedly Using “120-Caliber Mortars” And “Hand-Held Anti-Tank Grenade Launchers” To Bombard Ukrainian Positions"

"The Russians Are Reportedly Using “120-Caliber Mortars” And

“Hand-Held Anti-Tank Grenade Launchers” To Bombard Ukrainian Positions"

by Michael Snyder

"Why is the corporate media in the United States so quiet about this? As more Russian forces race toward the conflict zone, the Russians have reportedly been hammering Ukrainian positions over the past couple of days. But I haven’t been able to find a peep about this from the corporate media. I don’t understand why they aren’t covering this, because this conflict has the potential to start a global war. Joe Biden is pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine, and if a Russian invasion actually happens that promise of “unwavering support” would be put to the ultimate test. We are now closer to a shooting war with Russia than we have been at any point since the end of the Cold War, but most Americans are totally clueless about the drama that is unfolding on the other side of the globe right now.

If a way to defuse this conflict is not found, we could literally be looking at a scenario that eventually leads us into World War 3. And the clock is ticking, because once Putin gives the order to invade there will be no going back.

On Saturday, the Ukrainians once again reported that forces on the other side of the conflict zone opened fire. The following is an English translation of a report that was posted on the official website of the Ukrainian military: "Ignoring the agreements reached on July 22, 2020 within the framework of the Tripartite Contact Group, the Russian occupation forces continue to shell the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Since the beginning of this day, on April 3, 6 violations of the ceasefire regime by the armed forces of the Russian Federation have been recorded.

In the area of ​​the Vostok operational and tactical group near the town of PISKY, the Russian occupiers opened fire with 120-caliber mortars, large-caliber machine guns, hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers and small arms prohibited by the Minsk agreements. Near AVDIYIVKA and VODYANOY in the Azov Sea, Russian occupation forces fired large-caliber machine guns, anti-tank and automatic machine-gun grenade launchers."

Technically, the ceasefire that was agreed to on July 22, 2020 is no longer in effect because it expired on April 1st. But the Ukrainians continue to frame these incidents as “ceasefire violations”. On Sunday morning, the Ukrainian military posted another update: "Russian occupation forces continue to shell Ukrainian defenders’ positions in order to further accuse them of violating the ceasefire. During the past 24hrs, on April 3, 10 violations of the ceasefire by the armed forces of the Russian Federation were recorded.

In the area of ​​the operational and tactical group “East” near the settlement of SAND, the Russian occupiers opened fire with mortars of 120-caliber, large-caliber machine guns, hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers and small arms prohibited by the Minsk agreements, and from near the village. hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers. Near the settlements of AVDIYIVKA, SHYROKYNE and VODYANE in the Azov region, Russian occupation forces fired large-caliber machine guns and grenade launchers of various systems."

Subsequently, the firing seemed to stop, and that is probably because there is a high level of respect on both sides for the religious holiday that was taking place. But it is quite likely that the fireworks will resume on Monday, and hopefully the corporate media in the United States will start to properly cover this exceedingly important story.

At this moment, there are three seemingly unsolvable issues which need to be addressed if this conflict is to be defused somehow.

First of all, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed Decree No. 117/2021 on March 24th, the Russians essentially considered it to be a declaration of war against them. That document makes it the official policy of the Ukrainian government to reconquer Crimea, and the Russians consider Crimea to be their sovereign territory. I don’t anticipate that either side will ever back down, and the Biden administration has been pushing hard to make this a very important issue internationally.

Secondly, the Biden administration has been doing everything that it can think of to try to sabotage the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Selling gas to the Europeans is exceedingly important to the Russians from an economic standpoint, and the possibility that the Europeans could end that relationship is probably the number one thing holding Putin back from launching an invasion right now. But if the Biden administration is successful in killing the Nordstream pipeline and in getting the Europeans to start rejecting Russian gas, then Putin may figure that there is nothing left to lose.

Thirdly, the Russians will never, ever accept Ukraine joining the NATO alliance. Having NATO forces right on the Russian border is considered to be completely and utterly unacceptable by Russian military strategists, and the Russians are extremely alarmed that NATO forces could soon be deployed to Ukraine on a large scale: "The Kremlin said on Friday that any deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine would lead to further tensions near Russia’s borders and force Moscow to take extra measures to ensure its own security."

NATO voiced concern on Thursday over what it said was a big Russian military build-up near eastern Ukraine after Russia warned that a serious escalation in the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region could “destroy” Ukraine. And it is also being reported that the Ukrainian military is scheduled to hold joint military exercises with NATO in just a few months: "UKRAINE’s armed forces have said joint military drills with NATO troops would begin in a few months’ time in a move which is likely to infuriate Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and stoke already heightened tensions with Moscow, which has expressed its opposition to the idea."

The Trump administration didn’t provoke Russia, and so for four years there was relative stability in the region. But now the Biden administration has decided to put enormous amounts of pressure on Russia on multiple fronts, but this could backfire dramatically if the Russians decide that military action in Ukraine becomes unavoidable.

In recent articles I have described Biden as a “hothead” and a “warmonger”, and at this point his cognitive decline is apparent to everyone. He is easily persuaded, and the fact that his national security team is packed with extremely aggressive warmongers is not reassuring. This is a story that is not going to end well, but the vast majority of Americans have very little interest in foreign policy at this point, and most of them do not regard Russia as any sort of a threat. But once the Biden administration actually gets us into a war, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to wake up and get really upset.

Of course a potential conflict is not just looming with Russia. We are also stumbling toward potential conflicts with China, North Korea and Iran, and Biden’s national security team does not seem to know how to handle any of those relationships."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Shawnee, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/5/21: "New Record High For Stocks, Crypto Taking Off, Crude Craters, Dollar Falls"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/5/21:

"New Record High For Stocks, 

Crypto Taking Off, Crude Craters, Dollar Falls"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Helpless People..."

“Almost all Americans have had an intense school experience which occupied their entire youth, an experience during which they were drilled thoroughly in the culture and economy of the well-schooled greater society, in which individuals have been rendered helpless to do much of anything except watch television or punch buttons on a keypad.

Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn’t any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we’ve been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage.

Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They’re like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don’t have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won’t surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent - or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.”

- John Taylor Gatto,

“Some Reflections on the Equivalencies Between Forced Schooling and Prison”

○

Big Brother And The Holding Company, "Heartache People"

"Bus Driver Economics"

"Bus Driver Economics"

by Jeff Thomas

"Economics should not be an especially difficult subject to understand. In essence, it’s simply the study of how money functions. However, academics, theoreticians, politicians, and financial leaders all stand to benefit if they can manage to complicate the basic principles and muddy the waters of economic comprehension.

No individual has been manifestly more successful at this than the economist John Maynard Keynes. Educated at Cambridge, a bastion of Socialist thinking, Mister Keynes famously published "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" in 1936, forever changing the world’s perception of economics. This was quite an amazing feat, especially as Mister Keynes’s goal was not to explain economics, as had traditionally been the object of the subject; his goal was to distort the study of economics - to confuse economic principles in order to promote socialist concepts.

Socialism had, since its beginnings, been unpopular with many people, as it clearly did not work economically. So, in order to make socialism more broadly acceptable, Mister Keynes, in his book, suggested essentially that, although 2 + 2 = 4, with socialism, 2 + 2 could somehow equal 5.

Mister Keynes recommended that governments control the economy, saying that, in good times, they could tax and regulate the people so that government held the money. Then, in bad times, they could pour that money back into the economy in order to revitalize it. In saying this, he ignored the fact that, historically, free markets tend to be self-regulating - that supply and demand invariably create their own balance. Of course, his concept gained the instant approval of all the world’s governments and has held it ever since, as every government would like to control all the money, if at all possible.

Interestingly, just before his death in 1946, Mister Keynes confessed that, in reality, governments, ever dependent upon election cycles, will collect money through taxation and regulation during good times, then immediately spend all of it, then borrow more. Then, when bad times arrive, the government will not only be broke, but in debt. And, instead of then relieving the economy by going out of business, as any failed business would do, they increase taxation, to keep their own nests feathered. Thus, in bad times, government becomes a country’s greatest detriment to economic recovery.

Present-Day Keynesianism: Back to the present day, we observe both the EU and US governments (and a host of other economically troubled governments) actively pursuing Keynesian economics. As much of the world is presently in the midst of the (still unacknowledged) Greater Depression, politicians in each election cycle, trot out yet another promise for prosperity, always based upon governmental control of the economy - the very same Keynesian concept that created the economic calamity in the first instance.

One year, the promise will be "green shoots." When that fails to materialize, the next promise will be "shovel-ready jobs," which also fails to materialize - in every case, because the premise itself was fundamentally, economically unsound.

During downswings in each of these jurisdictions, any government prides itself on declaring, at intervals, that a small percentage of new jobs has been created, in an effort to suggest recovery. They do this in the face of the fact that government employment numbers are skewed to not include those who have given up looking for work. In addition, anyone who has insufficient work to support himself and his family, but is still employed even one day a week, is counted as "employed." In the US alone, if all the people who are not fully employed were acknowledged, the present percentage of unemployment would be above 20%. (Truth: Updated: April 2nd, 2021. March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment is 25.7%. - CP)

When an economy is in decline, there are few new real jobs to be had, whilst others continue to disappear. And here is where Keynesianism really comes to the rescue. Since the actual take-home pay of an individual is less important to government statistics than new-job creation, one socialist solution is simply to divide up the existing jobs.

By creating shorter work-weeks - say, thirty hours - many ten-hour jobs open up, and these can be claimed to be "new hires." Of course, they are improvements only in a statistical sense, as both the thirty-hour employee and the ten-hour employee see diminished standards of living than if a free-market economy had prevailed and both employees may have had the opportunity for forty-hour employment. As previously stated, this condition, whilst simple to understand in principle, is hopelessly confused and muddied in practice - a situation that allows it to prevail.

A Practical Lesson: Perhaps it would be helpful to offer, for comparison, a more transparent version of the same condition. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Cuba’s primary export product had been sugar. The USSR was Cuba’s principle customer, paying more than four times the going rate to Cuba for its sugar, in exchange for being a loyal Russian ally.

When, after the collapse of the USSR, the Russians pulled out of Cuba, the Cuban economy, having been based on an inflated product value, virtually collapsed. Large numbers of Cubans, previously employed in the sugar industry, were simply no longer necessary, and Cuba had a problem on its hands. One attempted solution was the "sharing of jobs" (essentially the same "solution" that is now developing in the US). In the years following the sugar debacle, if you were on a bus, travelling from, say, Havana to Santa Clara, you would have two bus drivers on board for the entire round trip.

One would drive to Santa Clara, whilst the other sat in a seat behind him. On the return trip, the second driver would take over. A pointless exercise that only resulted in a divided paycheck. Yes, both drivers were now "employed", but each earned less than he might have in a less socialistic economy. Understandably, nothing improved in any real sense for the Cuban people.

The lesson here is that a socialist government first degrades the free market through over-taxation and over-regulation. Once it has done so and the system is beginning to break down, a socialist government never reverses its policies in the face of failure, it instead redoubles the failed policies. Having made the pie smaller overall, it then divides up the slices in an effort to maintain the perception that everyone still has his piece of the pie. Unfortunately, that sliver may not be enough to sustain the recipient. But of course, in socialism, as in governments in general, perception has always been regarded as being more important than reality.

As a footnote to the Cuban comparison, it’s instructive to note that, when the Cuban government launched policies like the above-described Bus Driver Economics during the economic crisis that it euphemistically called the "Special Time," another policy was to limit the expatriation of its citizens to other countries. As the Special Time grew worse, the penalties for exiting Cuba became more severe. This is another classic symptom of major economic decline - an effort by the government to trap the population from exiting. And not surprisingly, we’re seeing the early stages of this in the EU/US.

As Doug Casey might say, the chances of a people changing a country’s direction from within are "Slim to none… and Slim is out of town." Socialism, historically, has never ended with a gentle reversal to a free-market system. It invariably ends with further deterioration until the point of economic collapse. When a country is clearly on the road to socialistic oblivion, the wisest decision might be to get off the bus."

- internationalman.com

○

Freely download "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,"

by John Maynard Keynes, here: 

- https://www.files.ethz.ch/

"A Good Question..."

“In the end, we return to the question, just how much do you love truth? Do you really love truth or are you just curious? Do you love it enough to rebuild your understanding to conform to a reality that doesn’t fit your current beliefs, and doesn’t feel 120% happy? Do you love truth enough to continue seeking even when it hurts, when it reveals aspects of yourself (or human society, or the universe) that are shocking, complex and disturbing, or humbling, glorious and amazing – or even, when truth is far beyond human mind itself? Just how much do we love truth? It’s a good question to ask ourselves, I think.”

- Scott Mandelker

"America’s Poor in the 'Paradise' Ahead"

"America’s Poor in the 'Paradise' Ahead"

By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – All we have left is mockery. But in America, circa 2021, our sarcasm is dwarfed by the absurdities of real life. Last week, we tried to mock the Biden administration’s conceits. No bridge is too far for the Biden team… even those built by God himself. Alas, our sarcasm fell short. Scarcely had the ink dried on our April Fools’ issue, that Team Biden came out with more claptrap… leaving our cynicism far behind.

Here’s The New York Times: "Biden Seeks to Use Infrastructure Plan to Address Racial Inequities." "…President Biden’s $2 trillion plan to rebuild aging roads, bridges, rail lines and other foundations of the economy comes with a new twist: hundreds of billions of dollars that administration officials say will help reverse long-running racial disparities in how the government builds, repairs and locates a wide range of physical infrastructure. That includes $20 billion to “reconnect” communities of color to economic opportunity, like the Black residents still living in the interstate’s shadow along Claiborne [Avenue… In New Orleans]."

Oh yes… Can you imagine it, dear reader? We can’t. Not only do you need an extreme talent for mockery to make fun of the Biden team, you need a remarkable imagination to see how its fake money could cause a real boom… or how its boondoggles could help anyone but the elite, the insiders, and the cronies who control the money.

The Elite Excuse: To bring readers fully into the picture… at least as we see it… Government is always an excuse for the few – the elite – to lord over the many. They use government to keep the power, the money, and status headed their way. In that regard, “racial inequalities” are useful.

There are two broad explanations for why some groups are richer than others. 1) It is their own fault… If they acted more like rich people – studying hard, saving their money, etc. – they’d soon be rich themselves. Or 2) It is the fault of other people… “racists” who hold them down and squeeze the air out of them.

For the elite, the second hypothesis is much more attractive than the first. It is easier to understand. The problem is easier to fix. And it gives many people a satisfying sense of indignation. After all, they’re not like those rednecks down in Georgia! Most important, it offers the cronies and insiders an almost infinite range of opportunities to rip off the little guy. Today’s elite uses the poor the way the Bolsheviks used the proletariat – not as a cause, but as a tool, to help them gain power for themselves.

Like the War on Drugs… or the War on the COVID-19… or the War on Terror, there is little hope that a new “surge” in the War on Poverty (by reconnecting poor areas to economic opportunity) will help the public (Black or white). But it is a great boon to the elite (Black and white), who administer its many programs, spend its billions of dollars, and thus attain power, status, and money for themselves.

The Diversity Issue: Here’s how it works. Bloomberg TV recently hosted its fourth annual “Inequality Summit.” Speaking on “diversity targets” was Kenneth Chenault, a Harvard Law School graduate… and former CEO of American Express. Mr. Chenault, an “African American,” says progress at getting more “diversity” on corporate boards has been disappointing. But who gets on a corporate board? A poor person? One of the forgotten little guys? Nope. What they want is a person like Kenneth Chenault… That is, one of the elite, an “African American,” who went to the same schools as the white directors… and someone who, therefore, acts like a rich person. Not the high-school dropouts from the wrong side of Claiborne Avenue, in other words.

Another example: Corporate boards are told it would be good PR to let non-white firms handle some of their investments. This, too, is advertised as a victory for “diversity.” But who are these money managers? Not the homies from West Baltimore. Today’s Financial Times includes a portrait of one of them, John Rogers, the founder of Ariel Investments. Where did Rogers go to school? Princeton! Does this token do-goodism really help the poor man? Not at all; it just uses him… a useful excuse for more elite plundering.

The Multiplier Effect: As we saw last week, the “multiplier” effect used to mean that the feds could spend money – say, on interstate highways – and the country would “get back,” in the form of increased GDP, some four or five times its money. We doubt that that was exactly cause and effect, but that’s what happened.

But today, the debt burden is so high… and each new dollar expended is financed with more printed money and more debt… and the economy is so mucked up with false price signals, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s merciless suppression of interest rates…so that now, when the feds spend money, the GDP return – according to a study by Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management – is negative. That is, each dollar spent by the feds subtracts about $1.20 from GDP over the next three years.

The more the feds meddle – with regulations, debt, price controls, and “infrastructure” pork – the more economic damage they do. So, if America’s honcho, Joe Biden, were actually to enact his new $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” program to “address racial inequalities,” we could expect GDP to contract by about $2.8 trillion by 2024.

Let’s see… Contracting output? Increasing money supply? What does that imply? Inflation! And who would suffer most? The “diverse” people on corporate boards? The directors of “anti-racism” programs? The politicians who vote for the boondoggles… or the apparatchiks who implement them? Nope. The rich and powerful will be fine. They know the game. They have 535 members of Congress looking out for them, and 11,524 registered lobbyists on the payroll. They also have sophisticated financial advisors who will help them protect their capital. Besides, the feds will pump up their stocks and real estate.

But the poor? They have only their meager incomes. And as prices rise, they will feel pinched… and betrayed. The Russian Revolution overthrew the existing elite to put a new elite in command. They promised a “worker’s paradise.” But while the new elite prospered, the workers had to endure a dreary slavery for the next 70 years. So, too, we predict… that America’s poor – Black and white – will suffer more or less equally in the paradise ahead."

-www.rogueeconomics.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Peak Woke"

"Peak Woke"

by Jim Kunstler

"What were the execs of these mighty companies thinking - these knights of the boardroom, these capitalist geniuses, these moral nonpareils - when they cancelled Atlanta’s turn to host the midsummer All-star Game to “protest” Georgia’s passage of a law that requires voter ID? Surely that they were striking a righteous blow against systemic racism. And then, the rest of the world realized - almost immediately - that Major League Baseball requires online ticket buyers to show ID when they pick up their tickets at any stadium… and that Delta Airlines requires passengers to show ID (duh) before being allowed to fly in one of their airplanes… and that various other corporations snookered into this latest hustle such as Nike, Coca Cola, and Calvin Klein support forced labor in the Asian nations that manufacture their products.

They’re Woke, you see. The tentacles of Wokery have reached into every last compartment of American life now, more effectively even than the Covid-19 corona virus. Wokeness emerged on the scene in 2014 when the feckless teenager Michael Brown was shot to death by police officer Darren Wilson upon arrest in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that kicked off the Black Lives Matter movement. The moral panic BLM ignited proved to be a spectacularly effective device for repelling the truth of the situation, and many more like it, which was that Michael Brown resisted arrest, fought with, and menaced officer Wilson before getting shot.

The Woke moral panic that proceeded from this effectively suppressed two truths about police relations with Black America: 1) that Blacks committed crimes against life and property at a disproportionately high rate to their percentage in the US population, and 2) that the number of unarmed black people killed by police was statistically miniscule, and in most cases involved people resisting arrest or fighting with police. As the 2016 election approached, the Democratic Party realized it was in its interest to cultivate the Woke moral panic so as to marshal the Black voting bloc so crucial to victory at the polls.

With the help of their allies in the news media and the coddled faculty ideologues on campus, the Democrats fed this moral panic until it grew into an historic mass hysteria every bit as insane as the witchcraft hysterias of the Middle Ages in Europe. Then Mr. Trump came along, inflicting a savage trauma on the Left, and after his election, the news media and the campus crusaders were joined by very potently placed officers in the federal bureaucracy - especially the Intel Community, with its weapons for disordering public opinion, and the Department of Justice, with its ability to ruin lives and reputations - to crush Mr. Trump and everyone who opposed the Left’s will-to-power.

They kept it up for four years, using every device in the bureaucracy to drive Mr. Trump from office while deliberately gaslighting, hoaxing, misdirecting, and bamboozling the public. In the process, the Democratic Party became hostage to the worst elements among its supporters and foot-soldiers: the race hustlers, the gender-deranged, the criminal sociopaths, the limousine Marxists, the Wall Street swindlers, the Silicon Valley megalomaniacs, and even America’s foreign adversaries - as evidenced by the Biden Family’s lucrative dealings with the party that runs China.

In 2020, China gave the Democrats their greatest gift, Covid-19, a means to wreck the US economy and an excuse to pare away Americans’ constitutional rights to various freedoms of speech, published expression, movement, association, self-defense, and economic liberty. Finally, in managing to elect the inert and incompetent Joe Biden via ballot fraud the party went a scam too far.

All social hysterias run their courses. They run out of new gags, and out of new recruits. Their tropes grow tiresome, even comical, such as the Woke mainstays of “racism,” “misogyny,” and “white supremacy.” Their promptings reveal themselves as obviously dishonest. The punishments they seek seem increasingly warped and sadistic. The behavior they induce begins to look patently insane. That’s where America stands now.

To keep the flywheel of hysteria spinning during the Covid year of 2020, the Dems turned the death of George Floyd into a new-and-improved second coming of Michael Brown in order to juice BLM for the fall election. This time there were video cameras galore on the scene to capture what turned out to be an ambiguously deceptive storyline. Half the world flipped out at the sight of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck at that Minneapolis intersection. It sure didn’t look good. Now that former officer Chauvin is on trial for Murder 2 and 3 plus manslaughter, the prosecution spent a week demonstrating indeed how bad that looked, with one witness after another who described how bad it made them feel to watch George Floyd die. Of course, watching anything die can be horrifying. It was, in essence, a wholly sentimental case for the prosecution.

The defense is ready to present facts that tell a different story: of a multiple violent felon and drug abuser hopped up on dangerous levels of narcotics and stimulants, with an impressively dire array of medical problems including Covid-19, who refused to follow police instructions, and in a manner that appeared deranged, leading to his being subdued by an approved police procedure to prevent harm to himself and others. The Minneapolis city council already queered the trial before it started by granting a $27-million settlement to the Floyd family, officially imputing guilt on Mr. Chauvin’s side. BLM has made it clear that they will not accept an acquittal.

Even a conviction is liable to inspire riots as the victory dance revs into the warm spring nighttime. Judging by last year’s BLM uprisings in city after city, the precedent has been established that mob violence is justified and holds no consequences. Something tells me that this particular error in political thinking will not be indulged this time around. The Woke hysteria and the hustles that grow out of it have shot their wad. Something else has awakened in this land: a recognition that we are in serious trouble, that our adversaries are having their way with us as we act stupidly, that we have become our own worst enemies, that being insane is not a virtue."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Don't Wonder..."

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.

In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,

wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."

- "Grey's Anatomy"