Monthly Archives: June 2023

Fabricated Narratives

Selfish Geoengineering

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The European Commission has warned the bloc’s lawmakers that geoengineering – large-scale technological interventions to mitigate climate change – is fraught with potential “unintended consequences.”

The EU executive body said in a statement released on Wednesday that deploying technologies like solar radiation modification without sufficient understanding of the potential dangers – either for Europeans or populations elsewhere in the world – could be devastating.

“These technologies introduce new risks to people and ecosystems, while they could also increase power imbalances between nations, spark conflicts and raises a myriad of ethical, legal, governance and political issues,” the statement continued, adding that there were no existing rules to ensure such technologies were deployed safely, and that any serious efforts must engage the EU and UN.

“Nobody should be conducting experiments alone with our shared planet,” EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans told reporters earlier this week, calling for any proposed experiments to be “discussed in the right forum, at the highest international level.”

It’s the latest sign of global concern over climate interventions. Billionaire Microsoft co-founder and Bill Gates attempted to bring his Harvard geoengineering team and their sun-dimming experiment to the north of Sweden in 2021, only to meet with ferocious opposition from the indigenous Saami population and Swedish NGOs, forcing them to return to the US.

Gates has invested heavily in stratospheric aerosol injection, a type of geoengineering in which finely powdered rock is released into the atmosphere to block some of the sun’s rays. Indigenous leaders warned the experiment would create a “moral hazard,” destroying any incentive to reach net zero carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the US – and the rest of the world – would be locked into a geoengineering sequence permanently, as halting the process would result in a sudden rebound of heating.

Critics have also pointed to studies showing that geoengineering setups like Gates’s could destabilize areas of the world in which they are not deployed, worsening the effects of climate change elsewhere by as much as 9%, even as they cooled whichever wealthy country could afford to deploy them.

Mexico banned geoengineering experiments in January after a startup called Make Sunsets tried spraying sulfur particles into the air “without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny,” according to MIT Technology Review. The university condemned that experiment, but has remained bullish on geoengineering, recently suggesting it “might be our final and only option.” The UN released a report in March backing the idea.

The European Commission included its concerns in a document reimagining what it called “the climate and security nexus.” The bloc’s leaders argued that climate change posed a greater threat to national security than ever – not just with biodiversity and resource depletion, but with a surge in migrant populations, more interactions with disease-carrying animals, and potentially runaway technology.

Meanwhile the little bees are at work . . . setting fire to the large swaths of the forests in Canada and northern US.

Toxic air quality alerts stretch from Michigan to Ohio, West Virginia to Pennsvyina to Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and into the lower New England area.

Democracy as Mob Rule

Macron on Revolution – Two-Faced

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Macron in 2020 to the Lebanese: the revolution does not happen by anyone’s order; people make it (do it).

Macron in 2023 to the French: Protests are not legal and no one has the right to riot against people’s representatives.

There are reports of “Tactical units driving through the streets of Marseille.” 

What the Twitter user is saying above lines up with France 24’s report:

Maybe this is why France needs military vehicles on the streets of Paris. 

Is France a third-world country? 

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Update (1235ET):

President Emmanuel Macron’s government struggles to contain social unrest across the country. 

French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said overnight chaos has resulted in 2,000 cars burned, 500 buildings damaged, hundreds of businesses looted, and violent clashes with police. He said over 800 people were arrested, with nearly 250 officers injured. 

Earlier, Macron blamed social media for fueling ‘copycat violence,’ and said state agencies would ask Twitter, Snapchat, and Tiktok to ban the most “sensitive content.” 

Riots and vandalism continued throughout the day Friday. Darmanin said buses and trams would be shut down by 9 pm local time nationwide to suppress the overnight unrest. 

Here are more scenes of the chaos:

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The police killing of a 17-year-old during a traffic stop on Tuesday has unleashed three consecutive days of social unrest across France. 

Bloomberg reports more than 600 people were arrested Thursday night into Friday, with a majority of them between the ages of 14 and 18. 

The End is Here

US Secretary of State Blinken wants to be in the “Room” in a Multipolar World

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Quite a change of the rhetoric.

Blinken admits post-Cold War era is over, and hopes the US will still be in the “room” with the big guys, maybe even at the adults’ table  while, nostalgically alluding to a time when the US used to be at “head of the table” (00:20).

Military Affairs

Seymour Hersh: Prigozhin’s Folly

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SEYMOUR HERSH / SUBSTACK — The Biden administration had a glorious few days last weekend. The ongoing disaster in Ukraine slipped from the headlines to be replaced by the “revolt,” as a New York Timesheadline put it, of Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group.

The focus slipped from Ukraine’s failing counter-offensive to Prigozhin’s threat to Putin’s control. As one headline in the Times put it, “Revolt Raises Searing Question: Could Putin Lose Power?” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius posed this assessment: “Putin looked into the abyss Saturday—and blinked.”

Yevgeny-Prigozhin

Secretary of State Antony Blinken—the administration’s go-to wartime flack, who weeks ago spoke proudly of his commitment not to seek a ceasefire in Ukraine—appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with his own version of reality: “Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were . . . thinking they would erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country,” Blinken said. “Now, over the weekend they’ve had to defend Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making. . . . It was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. . . . It shows real cracks.”

Blinken, unchallenged by his interviewer, Margaret Brennan, as he knew he would not be—why else would he appear on the show?—went on to suggest that the defection of the crazed Wagner leader would be a boon for Ukraine’s forces, whose slaughter by Russian troops was ongoing as he spoke. “To the extent that it presents a real distraction for Putin, and for Russian authorities, that they have to look at—sort of mind their rear as they’re trying to deal with the counter offensive in Ukraine, I think that creates even greater openings for the Ukrainians to do well on the ground.”

At this point was Blinken speaking for Joe Biden? Are we to understand that this is what the man in charge believes?

We now know that the chronically unstable Prigozhin’s revolt fizzled out within a day, as he fled to Belarus, with a no-prosecution guarantee, and his mercenary army was mingled into the Russian army. There was no march on Moscow, nor was there a significant threat to Putin’s rule.

Pity the Washington columnists and national security correspondents who seem to rely heavily on official backgrounders with White House and State Department officials. Given the published results of such briefings, those officials seem unable to look at the reality of the past few weeks, or the total disaster that has befallen the Ukraine military’s counter-offensive.

So, below is a look at what is really going that was provided to me by a knowledgeable source in the American intelligence community:

“I thought I might clear some of the smoke. First and most importantly, Putin is now in a much stronger position. We realized as early as January of 2023 that a showdown between the generals, backed by Putin, and Prigo, backed by anti-Russian extremists, was inevitable. The age-old conflict between the ‘special’ war fighters and a large, slow, clumsy, unimaginative regular army. The army always wins because they own the peripheral assets that make victory, either offensive or defensive, possible. Most importantly, they control logistics. special forces see themselves as the premier offensive asset. When the overall strategy is offensive, big army tolerates their hubris and public chest thumping because SF are willing to take high risk and pay a high price. Successful offense requires a large expenditure of men and equipment. Successful defense, on the other hand, requires husbanding these assets.

“Wagner members were the spearhead of the original Russian Ukraine offensive. They were the ‘little green men’. When the offensive grew into an all-out attack by the regular army, Wagner continued to assist but reluctantly had to take a back seat in the period of instability and readjustment that followed. Prigo, no shy violet, took the initiative to grow his forces and stabilize his sector.

“The regular army welcomed the help. Prigo and Wagner, as is the wont of special forces, took the limelight and took the credit for stopping the hated Ukrainians. The press gobbled it up. Meanwhile, the big army and Putin slowly changed their strategy from offensive conquest of greater Ukraine to defense of what they already had. Prigo refused to accept the change and continued on the offensive against Bakhmut. Therein lies the rub. Rather than create a public crisis and court-martial the asshole [Prigozhin], Moscow simply withheld the resources and let Prigo use up his manpower and firepower reserves, dooming him to a stand-down. He is, after all, no matter how cunning financially, an ex-hot dog cart owner with no political or military accomplishments.

“What we never heard is three months ago Wagner was cycled out of the Bakhmut front and sent to an abandoned barracks north of Rostov-on-Don [in southern Russia] for demobilization. The heavy equipment was mostly redistributed, and the force was reduced to about 8,000, 2,000 of which left for Rostov escorted by local police.

“Putin fully backed the army who let Prigo make a fool of himself and now disappear into ignominy. All without raising a sweat militarily or causing Putin to face a political standoff with the fundamentalists, who were ardent Prigo admirers. Pretty shrewd.”

There is an enormous gap between the way the professionals in the American intelligence community assess the situation and what the White House and the supine Washington press project to the public by uncritically reproducing the statements of Blinken and his hawkish cohorts.

The current battlefield statistics that were shared with me suggest that the Biden administration’s overall foreign policy may be at risk in Ukraine. They also raise questions about the involvement of the NATO alliance, which has been providing the Ukrainian forces with training and weapons for the current lagging counter-offensive. I learned that in the first two weeks of the operation, the Ukraine military seized only 44 square miles of territory previously held by the Russian army, much of it open land. In contrast, Russia is now in control of 40,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory. I have been told that in the past ten days Ukrainian forces have not fought their way through the Russian defenses in any significant way. They have recovered only two more square miles of Russian-seized territory. At that pace, one informed official said, waggishly, it would take Zelensky’s military 117 years to rid the country. of Russian occupation.

The Washington press in recent days seems to be slowly coming to grips with the enormity of the disaster, but there is no public evidence that President Biden and his senior aides in the White House and State Department aides understand the situation.

Putin now has within his grasp total control, or close to it, of the four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Lubansk, Zaporizhzhia—that he publicly annexed on September 30, 2022, seven months after he began the war. The next step, assuming there is no miracle on the battlefield, will be up to Putin. He could simply stop where he is, and see if the military reality will be accepted by the White House and whether a ceasefire will be sought, with formal end-of-war talks initiated. There will be a presidential election next April in Ukraine, and the Russian leader may stay put and wait for that—if it takes place. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said there will be no elections while the country is under martial law.

Biden’s political problems, in terms of next year’s presidential election, are acute—and obvious. On June 20 the Washington Post published an article based on a Gallup poll under the headline “Biden Shouldn’t Be as Unpopular as Trump—but He Is.” The article accompanying the poll by Perry Bacon, Jr., said that Biden has “almost universal support within his own party, virtually none from the opposition party and terrible numbers among independents.” Biden, like previous Democratic presidents, Bacon wrote, struggles “to connect with younger and less engaged voters.” Bacon had nothing to say about Biden’s support for the Ukraine war because the poll apparently asked no questions about the administration’s foreign policy.

The looming disaster in Ukraine, and its political implications, should be a wake-up call for those Democratic members of Congress who support the president but disagree with his willingness to throw many billions of good money after bad in Ukraine in the hope of a miracle that will not arrive. Democratic support for the war is another example of the party’s growing disengagement from the working class. It’s their children who have been fighting the wars of the recent past and may be fighting in any future war. These voters have turned away in increasing numbers as the Democrats move closer to the intellectual and moneyed classes.

If there is any doubt about the continuing seismic shift in current politics, I recommend a good dose of Thomas Frank, the acclaimed author of the 2004 best-seller What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, a book that explained why the voters of that state turned away from the Democratic party and voted against their economic interests. Frank did it again in 2016 in his book Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? In an afterword to the paperback edition he depicted how Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party repeated—make that amplified—the mistakes made in Kansas en route to losing a sure-thing election to Donald Trump.

It may be prudent for Joe Biden to talk straight about the war, and its various problems for America—and to explain why the estimated more than $150 billion that his administration has put up thus far turned out to be a very bad investment.

This article was first self-published by Seymour Hersh on his Substack page.

Seymour M. Hersh publishes at Substack. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker and The New York Times and established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism in 1970 when he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize (as a freelancer) for his exposé of the massacre in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Since then he has received the George Polk Award five times, the National Magazine Award for Public Interest twice, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the George Orwell Award, and dozens of other accolades.

This is also explained similarly by The London Review of Books blogger, Greg Afinogev :

“…What is already clear is that the attempted coup is a watershed moment for the Russian far right. It may be tempting to read Prigozhin’s criticisms of the invasion, which echo Western reporting, as a nod to antiwar sentiment. They are not. His actual view of the war is: ‘We didn’t start this special operation, but once the village has ended in a shitshow and you and your neighbours are [killing] each other up, you’d better [kill] them up to the end.’ Thomas Friedman said something similar about Iraq, though he used a more genteel analogy.

“Prigozhin’s admiration for the Ukrainian military, on the other hand, is real enough: he would like Russia to be what he thinks Ukraine has become in the crucible of conflict – a society single-mindedly devoted to mobilising and sacrificing for ultimate victory. The main crime of Russia’s wealthy elites and bureaucrats like Shoigu, in Prigozhin’s eyes, is their failure to take the war seriously enough to achieve this end: instead of the frozen conflict in which the country now finds itself, Russia needs to ‘live for a certain number of years like North Korea, close all the borders, stop pussyfooting around.’ These points are familiar touchstones of the Russian nationalist right, especially its most vocal representative, the video streamer and Telegram poster Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov…”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/june/prigozhin-s-march-on-moscow

Western Hegemony's Collapse

US Congress Plots to Save Dollar Dominance amid Global De-Dollarization Rebellion

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by Ben Norton via Geopolitical Economy

Summary: The US Congress held a hearing titled “Dollar Dominance: Preserving the U.S. Dollar’s Status as the Global Reserve Currency”, as countries around the world join the de-dollarization rebellion against Washington’s “exorbitant privilege”.

Michael Faulkender, who served as Donald Trump’s assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, declared in the session, “As assistant secretary, I told my team that the Treasury secretary proudly states that the dollar will never not be the world’s reserve currency, and our job is to make sure that’s true”.

Also present in the hearing was Daniel McDowell, an associate professor in the political science department at Syracuse University in New York, and author of the book “Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash Against the Dollar”.

McDowell argued that, by imposing more and more sanctions on countries around the world, Washington is actually weakening the dominance of the dollar.

The US has sanctions on nations that represent more than one-third of the global population and 29% of the world’s GDP.

The two-hour hearing did not address possible plans for the BRICS bloc to create a new international reserve currency. Instead, the participants only spoke of existing national currencies like the Chinese renminbi, Russian ruble, or euro as potential challengers to the US dollar – while ultimately dismissing all of them.

The idea that BRICS could develop an international currency (similar to John Maynard Keynes’ idea of the Bancor) was not even raised as a possibility

The US Congress held a hearing to discuss the growing international movement toward de-dollarization.

Numerous lawmakers expressed concern over what they referred to as mounting “threats” to the “supremacy” of the dollar, warning that China and Russia are challenging the US-dominated international financial system.

Economists invited to testify in the session cautioned that Washington’s aggressive imposition of unilateral sanctions has backfired, weakening dollar dominance by encouraging targeted countries to develop new, alternative financial institutions.

Titled “Dollar Dominance: Preserving the U.S. Dollar’s Status as the Global Reserve Currency”, the June 7 hearing was organized by the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions.

The tone of the two-hour event was deeply schizophrenic. Speakers would triumphantly argue that the dollar remained unbeatable, that its hegemony was inevitable and natural, before a few minutes later complaining that foreign adversaries are conspiring to undermine it.

A neoconservative political economist who spoke, Daniel McDowell, boasted of how the dollar is “the king of all currencies” and “a powerful symbol of American financial royalty”.

Michael Faulkender, who served as Donald Trump’s assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, declared in the session, “As assistant secretary, I told my team that the Treasury secretary proudly states that the dollar will never not be the world’s reserve currency, and our job is to make sure that’s true”.

Representative Monica de la Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said dismissively, “Now this hearing comes at a critical time when some academics and naysayers are spreading theories that de-dollarization has begun, and that the beginning of the end has arrived for the dollar’s dominant role as a global reserve currency”.

The session was chaired by Republican Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer, a hard-line anti-China hawk from Missouri.

“The conversation around the dollar being the reserve currency is becoming louder and louder, as we have more and more I think threats to it”, he cautioned.

Luetkemeyer boasted of the many “economic advantages” that dollar hegemony gives to the United States:

The US dollar has been the preferred global currency since the end of World War Two, providing our nation inherent economic advantages, as well as responsibilities.
Today, an estimated 88% of all currency transactions by value are conducted in US dollars. Among other things, this limits the risk of a balance of payments crisis, which inherently lowers our exchange rate risk.
The dollar’s position also allows the United States and Americans to borrow at rates such as 50 to 60 basis points lower.
Our currency strength not only benefits the United States government, but also helps American consumers by lowering the price of imported goods, resulting in an estimated $25 to $45 billion a year in savings.

The bipartisan hearing was mostly dominated by Republicans, but it also featured some Democrats.

The ranking member of the subcommittee, Ohio Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, began the session saying, “Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today to discuss the preservation of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, a topic which we all agree is of the utmost importance”.

Beatty’s rhetoric was less aggressive than that of Luetkemeyer, but she essentially echoed the same talking points, stating:

The dominance and supremacy of the currency affords the United States numerous benefits, from reduced borrowing costs, to increased financial stability, to influence over global financial markets.
It also allows us to leverage economic measures against those that seek to threaten our national security and foreign policy.
Given the undeniable value of the U.S. dollar’s dominance, it is critical that we address the currency and the present threats to it.
As we speak, foreign adversaries like Russia and China are actively working to undermine the U.S. dollar and cripple our global power and influence. We see this in Russia’s rapid accumulation of gold reserves over the last decade, as well as China’s development of non-SWIFT systems to settle and clear transactions involving the RMB.
Furthermore, several other countries are pushing efforts to bypass use of the U.S. dollar and the U.S.-led financial system.
That is why I agree that the subject of this hearing unquestionably deserves our time and attention in Congress and in this subcommittee.

The hearing also featured testimony from Tyler Goodspeed, a right-wing economist who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers when Trump was president.

Goodspeed boasted:

The fact that 90% of all foreign exchange transactions continue to involve the United States dollar, and that global central banks continue to hold almost 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in U.S. dollars, confers net economic benefits on the United States economy.
First, foreign demand for reserves of U.S. dollars raises demand for dollar-denominated securities, in particular United States treasuries. This effectively lowers the cost of borrowing for U.S. households; U.S. companies; and federal, state, and local governments.
It also means that, on average, the United States earns more on its investments in foreign assets than we have to pay on foreign investments in the United States, which allows the United States to import more goods and services than we export.
Second, foreign demand for large reserves of U.S. dollars and dollar-denominated assets raises the value of the dollar, and a stronger dollar benefits U.S. consumers and businesses that are net importers of goods and services from abroad.
Third, large reserve holdings of U.S. currency abroad, in effect, constitutes an interest free loan to the United States worth about $10 to $20 billion per year.
Fourth, the denomination of the majority of international transactions in U.S. dollars likely modestly lowers the exchange rate risks faced by U.S. companies.
Fifth, given the volume of foreign U.S. dollar holdings and dollar-denominated debt, monetary policy actions by foreign central banks generally have a smaller impact on financial conditions in the United States than actions by the United States central bank have on financial conditions in other countries.

Marshall Billingslea, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing under Trump, who also previously worked in the Pentagon, expressed concern that the central banks of China and Russia have been de-dollarizing their foreign-exchange reserves and instead buying other assets, such as gold, which cannot be easily sanctioned:

If we look at what Russia did in the run-up to its further invasion of Ukraine, they began dumping ownership of Treasury bonds in 2018. In that year, they plummeted from $96 billion in holdings down to $15 billion.
And they also started buying large amounts of gold.
China is now … embarking on its own gold-buying spree. I haven’t seen the data for May, but April marked the sixth straight month of Chinese expansion in its gold holdings.
And I’m not sure I believe the official figures. We have to recall that China is the dominant gold-mining player around the world, and half of those gold-mining companies are state-owned.
So the actual size of China’s war chest, when it comes to gold reserves, may be far higher, in fact I suspect inevitably far higher than official numbers suggest.
Last year, China also started dumping its treasuries. 2022 marked the largest or second-largest decrease on record, with a drop of about $174 billion, and China stood at the lowest level since 2010 in terms of its holdings.

In the hearing, Billingslea also warned that, as China stockpiles gold in its foreign-exchange reserves, it could start issuing yuan-denominated contracts that are backed by gold:

The thing I do worry – I come back to this fact that they’ve been buying a lot of gold – is that one of the things that they could do, which would be very concerning, if they wind up having larger reserves of gold than we we believe, is they could start issuing yuan-, or gold-denominated, gold-backed yuan contracts.
That would further their ambition for introducing the yuan onto the world stage.

Also present in the hearing was Daniel McDowell, an associate professor in the political science department at Syracuse University in New York, and author of the book “Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash Against the Dollar”.

McDowell argued that, by imposing more and more sanctions on countries around the world, Washington is actually weakening the dominance of the dollar.

The US has sanctions on nations that represent more than one-third of the global population and 29% of the world’s GDP.

McDowell explained:

Dollar preeminence and U.S. financial centrality are not without consequence for American coercive power, as you all know.
With little more than the stroke of the president’s pen, or through an act of Congress, the U.S. government can use financial sanctions to impose enormous economic costs on targeted foreign actors, be they individuals, firms, or state institutions, by freezing their dollar assets or cutting them off from access to the banks through which those dollars flow.
As the United States has increased its reliance on financial sanctions as a tool of foreign policy, it has provoked anti-dollar policy responses from our adversaries.
Though such steps are unlikely to upend the dollar’s position as top international currency, including the reserve currency role, over time such policies could diminish the coercive capabilities that the United States derives from dollar centrality.
Over the last two decades, the United States has used the tool of financial sanctions with increasing frequency.
For example, in the year 2000 just four foreign governments were directly targeted under the U.S. Treasury country program, overseen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. Today, that number is greater than 20; and if we include penalties from secondary sanctions, the list gets even longer.
The more that the United States has reached for financial sanctions, the more it has made adversaries in foreign capitals aware of the strategic vulnerability that stems from dependence on the dollar.
Some governments have responded by implementing anti-dollar policies, measures that are designed to reduce an economy’s reliance on the U.S. currency for investment and cross-border transactions.
While these measures sometimes fail to achieve their goals, others have produced modest levels of de-dollarization.
Notable examples here include Russian steps to cut its dollar reserves and reduce the use of the dollar in trade settlement in the years leading up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or China’s ongoing efforts to build its own international payments network based on the yuan – efforts that have taken on a new sense of urgency as Beijing has become more aware of its own strategic vulnerabilities from dollar dependence.
…
The growing number of states espousing anti-dollar viewpoints and adopting anti-dollar policies does threaten to weaken the future potency of U.S. financial sanctions.
…
Finally, whenever possible, U.S. financial sanctions should be coordinated with our allies in Europe and Asia, who should feel as if they are key stakeholders in the dollar system, and not vassals to it.

Another Republican congresswoman who participated in the hearing, Young Kim from California, complained that China has developed other ways to provide financing to countries that don’t involve the US dollar.

Kim singled out the currency swap-line agreements that the People’s Bank of China has signed with the central banks of other countries, such as Argentina, which is a way for Beijing to give liquidity or credit in yuan, bypassing Washington-dominated financial institutions like the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system:

We should all be troubled by the increase of central bank swap-line agreements deployed by the People’s Bank of China [PBOC].
According to a 2021 PBOC report, it said that it has swap facilities with 40 countries, with a combined capacity of almost 4 trillion yuan, or about $570 billion dollars.
And just a few days ago, Argentina, a country facing a deep currency devaluation and 109% annual inflation, they announced a deal to renew its currency swap line with China and double the amount it can access to nearly $10 billion dollars.
So the PBOC justifies the swap lines as a way to force countries to utilize the yuan as a method of exchange.
So I want to ask you, Mr. Billingslea, instead of liberalizing its capital account and allowing the yuan to be fully convertible into the currency exchange markets, the CCP has opted to increase its bilateral swap-line agreements to further internationalize its currency.
So is there anything that the United States can do to slow down or reduce adaptation of the PBOC’s currency swap lines?

All the participants in the hearing treated the hegemony of the US currency as desirable, arguing it must inevitably be maintained. The five expert witnesses who were invited insisted that there is no short-term threat to dollar dominance.

The two-hour hearing did not address possible plans for the BRICS bloc to create a new international reserve currency. Instead, the participants only spoke of existing national currencies like the Chinese renminbi, Russian ruble, or euro as potential challengers to the US dollar – while ultimately dismissing all of them.

The idea that BRICS could develop an international currency (similar to John Maynard Keynes’ idea of the Bancor) was not even raised as a possibility.

Democracy as Mob Rule

Highlights of a New Level of Despair by the Elites

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via https://www.legitgov.org

Homeland agency expanded authority to wage ‘domestic surveillance and censorship,’ House report says –No “cyber component” needed for proposed “rapid response team” to parachute into local jurisdictions to help election officials with “informational threats,” agency subcommittee said. | 26 June 2023 | Secret documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that a Department of Homeland Security agency “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public,” according to an interim staff report released Monday night. The findings add details to reporting by Just the News about the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its work with private entities to remove, throttle and label purported misinformation on elections, Hunter Biden and COVID-19 — efforts that might even constitute election meddling and sometimes target true content. The “severe public outcry” in spring 2022 against DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board, shuttered a few months later, so alarmed CISA and its advisors that they “tried to cover their tracks” on censorship and surveillance, which “included scrubbing CISA’s website of references to domestic ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,'” the report says. By outsourcing its “censorship operation” to a CISA-funded nonprofit in the wake of First Amendment litigation by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, CISA was “implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional,” House Judiciary Republicans said.

DHS outsourced censorship to third parties, then tried to cover it up: House Judiciary GOP report –Federal government’s moves show it “implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional,” interim staff report says. | 26 June 2023 | The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its “censorship operation” to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, “implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional,” according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. CISA also wanted to use the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), as its “mouthpiece” to obfuscate its own role in censorship, the report says. It cites spring 2022 meeting notes from the subcommittee on “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation,” which was established by CISA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.

Zuck’s Spy: Former CIA Agent Takes Over ‘Elections Policies’ at Facebook | 22 June 2023 | Aaron Berman, a 17-year veteran of the CIA who already held a senior position in Facebook’s “misinformation” team during the 2020 election, has been promoted to “Head of Elections Policies” at the company now known as Meta. Berman served at the CIA between March 2002 and July 2019. During that time, he wrote for and edited the President’s Daily Brief, an influential top-secret document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community given to the president each morning. According to Berman’s LinkedIn, he enjoyed positions of considerable influence at the agency, including “supervising teams of dozens of analysts and with multi-million-dollar budgets,” and leading briefings for members of congress and National Security Council members.

With new evidence, Congress unmasks a multi-year government plot to protect Biden, sully Trump –From search warrants to charges, federal agencies put thumb on scale of justice and elections, new evidence suggests | 26 June 2023 | When the Justice Department discovered from journalists a storage locker containing evidence against ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a search was executed immediately. But when IRS agents found a similar storage area containing evidence in the Hunter Biden criminal tax probe, they were denied the right to search despite meeting the probable cause standard, then Biden’s lawyers were tipped off, according to new congressional testimony. Likewise, when federal prosecutors believed there was evidence of crimes at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, they launched an unprecedented and full scale-raid on the former president. But when agents wanted to execute a search warrant at Joe Biden’s Delaware home because they had probable cause to believe evidence of Hunter Biden tax crimes, they were turned down for a warrant to raid the guest house in which the first son was living… The pattern and evidence about the behavior of federal bodies — ranging from the IRS, FBI and spy agencies to the Justice Department, U.S. attorney’s office and National Archives — is enough to even convince one unabashed Joe Biden supporter there has been a scheme to administer unequal justice. [See: Whistleblower 1 transcript.]

Billionaire Biden Donor Bankrolled 2020 Election Social Media Censorship Effort | 8 June 2023 | The Department of Homeland Security’s controversial social media censorship effort during the 2020 election was propped up by a partisan billionaire. Newly obtained documents, acquired through a public records request, confirm that Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire, financed a specialized portal maintained by the Center for Internet Security (CIS). This portal was used to facilitate the swift removal of predominantly conservative messages on Twitter and Facebook during the previous presidential election. Omidyar, previously identified as one of the largest donors to campaign groups supporting Joe Biden’s presidential bid, donated 45 million to the “Sixteen Thirty Fund” in 2020. This dark m-ney group mobilized Democratic voters and financed pro-Biden Super PACs. However, Omidyar’s direct involvement in the DHS partnership, which is now facing increased scrutiny, remained undisclosed until now.The funding provided by Omidyar to CIS was used to establish a Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP).

Judge Cannon Smacks Down Jack Smith, Denies Government’s Motion to Keep List of 84 Witnesses Under Wraps in Classified Docs Case | 26 June 2023 | Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, issued her first smackdown of Special Counsel Jack Smith. Judge Cannon on Monday denied Jack Smith’s motion to keep a list of 84 potential witnesses under seal in the classified documents case. The judge said Jack Smith failed to explain why it was necessary to keep the names of the witnesses a secret. Jack Smith was also trying to block Trump and his alleged co-conspirator, Walt Nauta, from communicating with the 84 witnesses.

Germany to permanently deploy troops near Russia’s border –The move comes amid a NATO drive to increase their military strength on the bloc’s ‘eastern flank’ | 26 June 2023 | Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius said on Monday that Berlin is to station 4,000 troops to Lithuania, a fellow NATO member, as the bloc seeks to fortify its ranks around Russia’s exclave, Kaliningrad. “Germany is ready to permanently station a robust brigade in Lithuania,” Pistorius said on Monday during a visit to the country’s capital, Vilnius. He noted that facilities and infrastructure will need to be developed to accommodate the influx of German troops. “Germany stands by its commitment as a NATO member, as Europe’s biggest economy, to stand up for the protections of the eastern flank,” Pistorius continued. He also noted that a deployment of this magnitude could take more than “a few months.”

‘Neutral’ Switzerland joins EU’s anti-Russia sanctions –The new restrictive measures target individuals, companies and organizations | 28 June 2023 | The Swiss government has announced the expansion of its sanctions on Russia, in line with the latest measures passed by the European Union. According to a statement released by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) on Wednesday, the fin-ncial and travel restrictions will target individuals, companies and organizations that “support the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.” Earlier this year, the West accused Russia of “unlawful deportation and transfer” of children from Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended the policy of moving minors from combat zones and rejected accusations that the practice was illegal. According to Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, the children were placed in Russian summer camps at the request of their families. [An ironic accusation, as Ukraine has been engaging in child trafficking, with the backing of the Biden regime and the West, for years.]

U.S. backs coup attempts whenever it can benefit – Lavrov –Washington’s reaction to regime change movements differs based on where they take place, the Russian foreign minister has claimed | 26 June 2023 | The U.S. enthusiastically supports regime change whenever it can benefit from the process, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT. If a protest movement targets a government more pliant to American interests, Washington will inevitably reject it, the diplomat added. There have been numerous attempts at regime change around the world in recent years and they were “met with a different response on the part of the US, depending on who was in power and who was trying to carry out the coup,” Lavrov said in an interview on Monday. “Where the West is happy with the current government, in such situations no protest can be legitimate. But where the government doesn’t reflect the interests of the hegemon and is pursuing the national interests, in those cases we see various unlawful forces are being stimulated [to attack the authorities],” the diplomat added. An example of such a differentiated approach by the US and its allies was the regime change in Ukraine in 2014 and the conflict in Yemen the next year, Lavrov pointed out.

New York City to start charging drivers to enter Midtown Manhattan as soon as 2024 – MTA | 28 June 2023 | New York City could start the first congestion pricing program in the United States as soon as spring 2024 with the goal of reducing traffic in one of the world’s busiest commercial districts, the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. The Federal Highway Administration granted final approval for the program, a spokesperson said Monday, according to The New York Times. Under the program, drivers would be charged a fee to enter the borough of Manhattan south of 60th Street… One proposal in a report from the MTA last year would charge $23 for rush-hour trips into Midtown Manhattan and $17 during off-peak times [Ed. that on top of the $15 bridge or tunnels toll]. The fees, which are expected to generate 1 billion annually, would go to the MTA to improve the city’s public transit.

Democracy as Mob Rule

“We’re in the Midst of a Coup” – NeoCons Will Rig 2024 Election

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ViaGreg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong was forecasting “chaos” in 2023, and that’s exactly what we got. 

His cycle work says don’t look for it to get better anytime soon. 

Armstrong explains, “We are in the midst of a coup…”

“We have all these people who have been neocons for 30 years.  Even Ron Paul said recently that the neocons have been waging war for 30 years and have not won a one single one.  This is what they live for.  Look at the clip of Lindsey Graham saying this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians.  How can you take pleasure in that statement that this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians.  This is not defense.  These are the words of a psychopath in my mind…
They are not about to accept anybody who is going to be against war.  The neocons are in full control of the government—period.  We are living in the time of a coup.  The United States is not the free country you thought it was…”

Armstrong also predicts that the neocons will rig the 2024 election so Biden (or some other neocon) gets a second term. 

Is there any way to stop this election rigging and fraud in 2024?  Armstrong says,

“I don’t believe so.  Our computers show that holy hell breaks loose starting in 2025.  I think the problem will be the cheating will be in everybody’s face this time.”

Armstrong also says the neocons will try to start a war before the 2024 election so Biden will win because a wartime president has never lost an election.  Armstrong says the cheating will be necessary because the real poll numbers for Biden are in the single digits and not the 40% approval ratings the Lying Legacy Media tells you.  Armstrong contends Biden’s approval number is still stuck at 9.5% with his deadly accurate Socrates computer program, but the big reason for Biden and his crew to worry is the real inflation number. 

Armstrong says, “Inflation is subsiding a little bit, but it is basically still over 26%.”

Armstrong says Biden’s approval numbers are so low and inflation is so high that they have to have war with Russia. 

War is the reason they had to remove Trump out of the White House because Trump was against constant war.  Armstrong adds,

“No way they are going to allow a free election.  It you think the CIA cannot rig the vote, I don’t know what planet you live on.”

Don’t expect Fed Head Jay Powell to lower interest rates.  It will be just the opposite.  Armstrong explains,

“What is Powell looking at?  War is the number one cause of inflation.  He can’t say because you people are dumping all this money into Ukraine, inflation is only going to go higher because then he is criticizing the government.  So, he just says he’s looking at ‘international considerations.’ 
Look what the Vietnam war did.  It broke the back of Bretton Woods.  War is always the number one problem.  The neocons only care about winning, and they do not care about the country.  They do not care about your 401-k or your retirement.  They could care less.”

In closing, Armstrong warns, “Russia is like a wild animal, and if it is cornered, it will attack.” 

This means the whole thing in Ukraine could go nuclear if Russia is pushed into a corner.  And what about all that debt the western world has built up?  Armstrong says,

“They intend to default on all the sovereign debt. . . .I don’t see this succeeding.  I think it’s all going to collapse.  The reason why they are doing this is they realize they are losing power.  They feel it slipping out of their fingers.  The more that happens, the more they become aggressive.  That’s what this is all about.”

There is much more in the 53-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, cycle expert and author of the new book “The Plot to Seize Russia” for 6.27.23.

Saving Europeans from Themselves

Sergey Karaganov: By Using its Nuclear Weapons, Russia Could Save Humanity from a Global Catastrophe – II

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via RT

If things continue as they are, Moscow will have no choice but to use the ultimate weapon

By Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow

This month, there has been an active debate in Russia about the possibility of Moscow preemptively using nuclear weapons. Which would be at variance with the established doctrine. It began after the publication of an article by Professor Sergey Karaganov, which prompted a wide response from the domestic expert community.

While Karaganov has been advocating relaxing the rules, others have different opinions: for example, Fyodor Lukyanov thinks the West cannot be ‘sobered up’ by using the bomb, and Ilya Fabrichnikov believes Russia should not ‘take NATO’s bait’ and unleash the ultimate weapon.

This is Karaganov’s follow up response to his critics.

During over seventy years of mutual deterrence, atomic weapons have saved the world. People just took this for granted. However, now we see that things have changed and the unthinkable is happening: the West is responsible for a major war in the underbelly of a major nuclear power.

The official history of the creation of these weapons is known, but in my opinion there is also a higher power at play. It is as if the Lord God saw that a large part of humanity had gone mad, having started two world wars in a generation, and gave us these nuclear weapons, which are weapons of the apocalypse. He wanted them to be, to be in the front of our minds, at all times, and to scare us.

But now people have lost their fear.

Over the last few decades in the United States, Western Europe and even partly in Russia, what I call “strategic parasitism” has spread: the belief that there can never be a major war and that there will never be a major war. People are accustomed to peace, and it is on this basis that modern Western ideology has grown. In addition, there is now an unprecedented amount of propaganda around, to an extent unprecedented even during the Cold War.

People are simply being fed lies, and they are afraid to say what they really think. As a result of more than 70 years of peace, the public’s sense of self-preservation has become dysfunctional, and it is further stifled by the extraordinarily virulent agitprop, part of which claims that Russia would never be able to attack Western Europe.

Official Western propaganda pumps the idea that the West can do anything it likes and Moscow will just put up with it. This has now become very clear and vivid.

The official history of the creation of these weapons is known, but in my opinion there is also a higher power at play. It is as if the Lord God saw that a large part of humanity had gone mad, having started two world wars in a generation, and gave us these nuclear weapons, which are weapons of the apocalypse. He wanted them to be, to be in the front of our minds, at all times, and to scare us.

But now people have lost their fear.

Over the last few decades in the United States, Western Europe and even partly in Russia, what I call “strategic parasitism” has spread: the belief that there can never be a major war and that there will never be a major war. People are accustomed to peace, and it is on this basis that modern Western ideology has grown. In addition, there is now an unprecedented amount of propaganda around, to an extent unprecedented even during the Cold War.

People are simply being fed lies, and they are afraid to say what they really think. As a result of more than 70 years of peace, the public’s sense of self-preservation has become dysfunctional, and it is further stifled by the extraordinarily virulent agitprop, part of which claims that Russia would never be able to attack Western Europe.

Official Western propaganda pumps the idea that the West can do anything it likes and Moscow will just put up with it. This has now become very clear and vivid.

At the same time, having already thrown the Ukrainian people into the furnace, the Americans are pushing the Western Europeans into the same place, destroying the status they have held for five centuries. This policy also solves another problem – it destroys the Old World as a strategic player and potential competitor. In turn, the captured West European elites are driving their countries and peoples into the ground.

We would like to believe that our adversaries will come to their senses. Because if they don’t, Russia’s political-military leadership will be faced with a terrible moral choice and the need to make a hard decision. But I believe that our president must demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons at some point.

But the question is who could and should be the target of such an attack. The Americans, as we all know, have been shamelessly lying when they say that we are preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Ukraine. This is monstrous nonsense, absolutely malicious, because of course the Ukrainians are a miserable, deluded people who are being driven to slaughter. But they are still our people, and we are not going to hit them.

If there are to be nuclear strikes, they should be aimed at countries in Western Europe that have been most supportive of the mercenary regime in Kiev.

Fortunately, we have begun to take steps up the ladder of nuclear deterrence. But we need to move faster and more decisively, even though their use would be, of course, a monstrous step and should be avoided if possible. But as the vector of development of the West, its elites and society – and its movement towards anti-human and post-human values show – all this clearly indicates an objective drift to an eventual thermonuclear war. We have to interrupt this process and save the world – avoiding, of course, super-violent actions if possible.

We have time, but we must realize that it is rather short. We have to use these few years to solve the problem of the West, to make it step back and mind its own business, because now, to distract from its own internal issues, it is trying to start wars all over the world.

Launching the current military operation was an important – and certainly correct – step, although in my view it should have been taken earlier. There are a number of other moves that can be made. In particular, it is worth making it clear to everyone in the West that any attack on Belarus will be equated to a blow to Russia and will have similar consequences.

Possible Russian measures could also include missile redeployments, tests of our strategic missiles at close range, as well as psychological actions and even the severing of diplomatic relations with those countries that play the most active Russophobic roles. Also possible is a measure such as warning all Russian speakers, all citizens of the former Soviet Union, and all people of goodwill to leave places that are potential targets of a nuclear strike. This too could be a potentially powerful tool of deterrence. And all these people do not have to go to Russia: let them go to other states that do not have military facilities and do not help the Kiev regime and do not supply it with weapons and money – there are many such countries. People should return to Russia not out of fear, but out of their own free will.

When discussing a hypothetical atomic attack on Western Europe, the question arises: how would the US answer? Virtually all experts agree that under no circumstances would the Americans respond to a nuclear attack on their allies with a nuclear attack on our territory. Incidentally, even Biden has said so openly.

Russian military experts, however, believe that a massive conventional retaliatory strike could follow. It could be pointed out that this would be followed by even more massive nuclear strikes. And they would finish off Western Europe as a geopolitical entity. Which, of course, would be undesirable because, after all, we are to some extent Europeans and, to use Dostoyevsky’s words, the old European stones are not alien to us.

When discussing such scenarios, the subject of China and its position inevitably comes up. Our strategic goals are the same, but our operational goals differ, of course. And if I were Chinese, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to end the conflict in Ukraine, because it diverts US and Western attention and military power away from them and gives Beijing an opportunity to accumulate strength.

It’s a perfectly normal, I would say respectful, position. And of course I do not want nuclear weapons to be used. First of all, for moral and ethical reasons: I think the Chinese and I agree on that.

And secondly, because the Chinese still have a small nuclear capability, it is undesirable for them to start a military and political competition in this area right now. In ten years’ time they will have a first-class nuclear capability (and even in five to seven years’ time their situation will change), and then the best option to prevent a major thermonuclear war will be to have a more powerful China in the front line, with Russia supporting and covering it, as the Chinese are supporting us now.

I fully understand the moral anguish of people who say: under no circumstances is the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable and unacceptable. To which I reply: my friends, I respect pacifists, but they exist and live in this world only because soldiers fight and die for them, just as our soldiers and officers are fighting now in Ukraine.

Forgotten History

George Orwell on Reading the News

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…….Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed.

I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.

I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.

George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War, Chapter 4.

“It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.” – Kissinger