Category U. S. DC Uni-party

Apr 28 2022

Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria Amid Ongoing Ukraine Battle


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022

At the same time as Russia has targeted railway lines as part of the effort to block U.S. arms shipments into Eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has now followed through on the previous warning to stop Russian gas supplies unless payments are made in non-sanctioned Rubles.

Poland is obviously the primary target for retaliation here, as the NATO alliance is using Poland as the gateway for arms deliveries into Ukraine.

According to multiple reports from the EU Russia has halted gas shipments into Poland and Bulgaria.  (Reuters) “Gazprom Russia’s gas export monopoly, suspended gas supplies “due to absence of payments in roubles”, as stipulated in a decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin that aims to soften the impact of sanctions.”

There are conflicting reports as to whether Germany is paying Russia, or whether they are trying to avoid running afoul of the NATO alliance by reducing Russian imports.

Ukraine President Zelenskyy is using the opportunity to reinforce his position that all European countries need to stop purchasing energy from Russia, or else they are not supporting Ukraine.   However, it’s not as simple as it seems because multiple EU countries are dependent on Russia for energy products and there are no immediate alternatives.  Russia is leveraging this dependency in an effort to break the western sanctions.

(NBC) – […]  After months of threats, the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to two European Union nations Wednesday and warned others could be next.  The long-feared move against the continent’s energy supply marks a dramatic escalation of Moscow’s bid to weaken the collective resolve of Ukraine’s allies as they send growing numbers of weapons to help Kyiv fight.

[…] Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom announced Wednesday it had halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland for failing to pay for gas in rubles, something Putin had demanded last month in response to tough sanctions imposed by the West on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. European buyers condemned Putin’s demand, saying it violated existing contracts with payments usually agreed on in dollars or euros, and called into question Russia’s reliability as a supplier.

[…] Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of petroleum and natural gas, and Europe is heavily reliant on imports from Russia for its energy supply. “In 2021, the European Union imported 155 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia, accounting for around 45% of EU gas imports and close to 40% of its total gas consumption,” according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency. 

Meanwhile, Bulgaria imported more than 70 percent of its natural gas from Russia in 2020, E.U. data showed. In the same year, Poland relied on Russia for around 45 percent of its natural gas.

[…] Notably, the decision to cut off supplies to Poland and Bulgaria came the day after the United States and its allies gathered in Germany to pledge more heavy weapons for Ukraine as it steels its defenses for what could be a decisive battle in the eastern Donbas region.  (read more)

Somehow, on top of the $14+ billion in direct aid to Ukraine, Joe Biden is likely to figure out a way to put the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for most of the EU energy problems in an effort to save face for the White House in a U.S. proxy war against Russia.  Both wings of the UniParty congress are likely to support that effort.

FUBAR

(Reuters) – […]  So far, it was unclear whether Poland or Bulgaria will comply with Moscow’s demands. Both countries rely heavily on Russian imports via pipeline.

Polish gas company PGNiG, whose gas deal with Russia expires at the end of this year, has repeatedly said it would not comply with the new scheme. It has also said it would not extend the contract.  Poland says it does not have to cut supplies to customers. The country can source gas via two links with Germany including a reverse flow on the Yamal pipeline, a link with Lithuania with an annual capacity of 2.5 bcm that will open on May 1 and via an interconnector with the Czech Republic for up to 1.5 bcm.

Bulgaria also had a contract with Gazprom due to expire at the end of the year. The country relies almost completely on Russian gas imports, and has taken steps to find alternative arrangements for supply, its energy ministry said in a statement. Bulgaria consumes about 3 billion cubic metres of gas per year and imports over 90 percent of it from Russia.  Previously, Bulgarian Energy Minister Alexander Nikolov had said a counterpart in Sofia could handle transactions in roubles, without giving details. (more)

Apr 28 2022

New York State Appellate Court Rules Against Democrat Gerrymandering Effort, 2022 Primary Likely Delayed


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022

New York state democrats attempted to mitigate the bloodbath coming their way in the 2022 elections by drawing a redistricting map that eliminated three republican congressional seats.   Today a New York State appeals court ruled the maps were unconstitutional efforts to gerrymander the districts and now the primary races will likely be delayed.

The 78-page ruling is available here.  The state appeals court ruled 4-3 against the democrats. The June 28, 2022, primary will likely be moved to August because the state now needs to redraw the congressional districts.

(Via MSM) – […] The New York State Court of Appeals said the three maps violated the state’s Constitution by creating political bias. The maps were “procedurally unconstitutional, and the congressional map is also substantively unconstitutional as drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” the court said.

[…] With no more appeals and time running out, the court ordered the adoption of a neutral map by an outside expert. The court also recommended the state’s June 28 primary be moved to August.

“We are confident that, in consultation with the Board of Elections, Supreme Court can swiftly develop a schedule to facilitate an August primary election, allowing time for the adoption of new constitutional maps,” the court said.  (read more)

Apr 28 2022

Representative Clay Higgins Questions DHS Secretary Mayorkas About Southern Border Crisis


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022

The U.S-Mexico border is in a state of near collapse.  U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed with thousands of illegal aliens crossing the border daily.  According to estimates the number of illegal aliens who crossed the border since Biden took office is somewhere between two and five million people…. and the crisis is only getting worse.

Today Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins (CD-03) asked Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas to define border failure, if that is not what we have currently underway.  WATCH:

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The painfully obvious answer is – it’s not a DHS failure because the massive influx of illegal aliens is the success of the plan.  The border crisis is a feature, not a flaw, of the Biden administration agenda.

Apr 28 2022

Dinesh D’Souza Discusses His Perspective on the 2020 Election After a Full Review of the Illegal Ballot Harvesting


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022 

Dennis Prager asks Dinesh D’Souza if his opinion of the 2020 election changed as a result of his research, organizing and collaborating with True The Vote, and reviewing all of the 2020 ballot harvesting work.  The results of the effort are assembled in the soon-to-be-released documentary, 2000 mules.

D’Souza explains that following the review of the specific precincts in the specific key targeted states, it became obvious the election was manipulated by an organized political effort to use fraudulently obtained ballots to stuff remote ballot collection boxes in those key precincts.   By taking this precinct level ballot harvesting action in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona the 2020 election result was a manipulated to provide Joe Biden a win.

According to D’Souza, the documentary will show the specific number of ballots that were fraudulently harvested in each of the key precincts, which then documents the precise number of fraudulent votes that were obtained by the ballot mules. WATCH:

Apr 28 2022

Deep State Response, Dept of Homeland Security Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2022

I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter.

Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media.

Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.

This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded.  In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative.

Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program. All of this background aligns with the previous visibility of a public-private partnership between the bureaucracy of government, the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. social media.  That partnership now forms the very cornerstone of the DHS/CISA effort to control what information exists in the public space.  It is highly important that people understand what is happening.

In July of 2021 the first admission of the official agenda behind the public-private partnership was made public {Reuters Article}.

What we are seeing now is an extension of the government control mechanisms, combined with a severe reaction by all stakeholders to the latest development in the Twitter takeover.

For two years the control mechanisms around information have been cemented by govt and Big Tech.  Even the deployment of the linguistics around disinformation, misinformation and malinformation is all part of that collective effort.  The collaboration between the government and Big Tech is not a matter for debate, it is all easily referenced by their own admissions.   The current issue is how they are deploying the information controls.

We have COVID-19, the vaccination effort and now Ukraine as examples of the collaboration to control information, to control what people are permitted to question and discuss on the internet.  Now things are getting much more detailed, and more alarming.

Shortly after Elon Musk made a bid to purchase a single information platform, Twitter, and then expressed his intent to open the speech valves, former Obama administration intelligence officials wrote a letter {SEE HERE} warning about efforts to break up the information control by Big Tech and Social Media.

That letter was shortly followed by a speech delivered by Obama himself where he specifically demanded that government take a larger role in the control of information {LINK}, essentially promoting an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’ to control information in the public sphere.

The internet search engine operators have already agreed to align with the interests of the government.  That’s not debatable as in the examples of Google {LINK) and DuckDuckGo {LINK} to name just two.  Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube have famously also expressed their intent to align with the control of information, based on the instructions and edicts of the same U.S. government agencies.   Again, this is not a conspiratorial claim, it is self admitted and we have all witnessed it.

Today, however, we are seeing the architecture of how they plan to organize the tools.

(POLITICO) – “DHS is standing up a new Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia. Nina Jankowicz will head the board as executive director. She previously was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship and oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.” (link)

You can read more about Nina Jankowicz and her ideological alignment with the control mechanisms here and here.  The bigger picture issue is that DHS will now work around any independence of social media, vis-a-vis Twitter as a free speech platform, by defining the parameters of allowed conversation.   A bureaucratic board within DHS will now serve as the group who defines what can and cannot be discussed.

Here’s Ms. Jankowicz in September of 2020.    The head of the DHS governance board, Nina Jankowicz, claiming that color revolutions are an appropriate response to rigged elections, but they will never rise in the U.S.  WATCH:

It doesn’t take a deep thinker to see exactly where this is going.  Various U.S. government agencies will now define their interests.  The definitions will then be transmitted to the officers within big tech and social media, and any entity who dares to challenge that govt definition or govt narrative will be targeted for content removal.

Permitted speech will be defined by government agencies, and the mechanisms for controlling, targeting or removing speech that challenges that narrative will now lead to content removal.  The shift here, the part that must be emphasized, is the official justification in the terms and conditions of the social media platform operators will come from U.S. government agencies, not the platform itself.

Against this backdrop it is not a surprise why Elon Musk’s entry into the information space is now considered a risk.

…”The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote that same year gave Silicon Valley executives, U.S. elected officials and the public a peek into what can go wrong when social media companies opt not to wade too deeply into what people say on their sites.”… (link)

Apr 27 2022

Antidepressant Prescription Sales Spike


Armstrong Economics Blog/medicine Re-Posted Apr 27, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

A SingleCare Team study revealed the majority of the US population takes some form of a prescription pill. The insurance agency found that the number of people reliant on prescriptions significantly rose after the pandemic. In fact, medications for mental health issues are on the rise. The company reported a 70% increase in prescriptions for the antidepressant Lexapro, a 31% increase in Zoloft, a 21% increase in Trazadone, a 20% increase in Prozac, and a 16% increase in Adderall. The agency noted that the American Psychological Association reported an uptick in individuals self-medicating illegally with opioids as well.

Currently, around 66% of adults in the US are reliant on Big Pharma. Canada is in a similar situation, albeit with lower prescription costs, with 65% of their adult population on prescription medicine. In contrast, only 26% of adults in the UK and 35% of adults in Australia are reliant on medications.

Why are people in the US and Canada more likely to take prescription medication? One could argue the US population is not as healthy as other nations due to obesity and limited walkable cities, but that does not account for the large disparity. One big reason is marketing – but that does not apply in Canada. Only in the US do you see commercials and billboards promising a pill to cure the woes of life. It is not common practice in other countries for people to ask their doctor for a specific medicine.

This all comes down to business and corporate profits. The average American takes FOUR different pills each day. So over 131 million Americans are reliant on at least one medication. Citizens in the US spend more than any nation on prescription drugs, with the average consumer spending $1,229. Canadians spend around $879.

In addition to the billions Big Pharma made on COVID-related drugs and vaccines, they have also profited from COVID restrictions deteriorating the public’s mental health. In mid-June 2020, when many restrictions began to ease, SingleCare reported a 50% increase in antidepressant medication. The same increase was reported during the third week of March when lockdowns began. “Between the concern over job loss, isolation, and general anxiety, this growing trend in antidepressants over the past few months may well be due to the pandemic’s impact on mental health,” Ramzi Yacoub, Pharm.D., the chief pharmacy officer at SingleCare stated. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies believe the need for prescription drugs will only continue. Thanks to COVID, antidepressants are now the most prescribed medication in the US and the second-most prescribed medication in Canada.

Apr 27 2022

The Refusal to Understand Economics


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics Re-Posted Apr 27, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Once upon a time, I use to respect The Economist. I even took the back cover in July 1985 to announce that the Economic Confidence Model was beginning a new 51.6-year Cycle that was a Private Wave that would ultimately peak in 2032. I boldly announced the bottom in gold and the peak in the dollar taking the back cover every week in July 1985.

The Economist just released its cover article sadly demonstrating that the publication remains in the Dark Age of economics. They began:

“Central Banks are supposed to inspire confidence in the economy by keeping inflation low and stable. America’s Federal Reserve has suffered a hair-raising loss of control. In March consumer prices were 8.5% higher than a year earlier, the fastest annual rise since 1981. … It is the Fed, however, that had the tools to stop inflation and failed to use them in time.”

To say I am shocked at their reporting that is no better than a first-semester student in Economics 101. It reflects a complete lack of comprehension of how the economy even functions and adopts the politician view that they are NEVER responsible for inflation – it is always the central bank.

Clearly, they have not bothered to take notice that something major took place with the fall of Bretton Woods in 1971. Previously, the theory was if you borrowed, that was less inflationary rather than printing more money. Of course, that was a throwback to the days of Gresham’s Law when currencies traded in Amsterdam were based not on political-military power, but on the pure metal content. The debasement of the coinage by Henry VIII led to (1) the higher-based coinage being hoarded and (2) the decline in the value of English coinage trading in Amsterdam.

That theory became the Quantity of Money Theory which today is totally obsolete yet that is what we hear all the time when the Fed increased its balance sheet and therefore it should have been inflationary following 2008 but the Fed and other central banks could not create 2% inflation. That even led to some claiming MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) proves that the creation of money is NOT inflationary.

It was barely two months after we announced the beginning of a Private Wave in the Economist in July 1985 that in September 1985, the central banks were all called together and formed the G5 and then proclaimed that they wanted the dollar lower by 40%. This was James Baker’s brainchild that manipulating the dollar lower would reduce the US trade deficit and create jobs.

Letter Armstrong to Reagan October 1985 With Photo

I was summoned to be among the global experts who solicit advice but never listen. It is always a dog & pony show so they can pretend they summoned the top experts in the world and then announce what they intended to do anyhow. Of course, it is always pretended to be based on independent advice. However, that is just not how Washington or any government functions. So I wrote to President Reagan and warned that devaluing the dollar to reverse the trade deficit would lead to a crash.

sprinkel-11081985

The present ordered Beryl Sprinkel who was the 14th Chariman of the Economic Advisers to the President (1985-1989) to respond. It had been the rise in interest rates to 14% under Paul Volcker to reduce inflation that led to the Deflation. Capital poured into the dollar for the high-interest rates which peaked precisely with the previous ECM wave in March 1981. Thereafter, the dollar soared driving the British pound down to $1.03 in 1985.

Clearly, the entire theory that the Economist is still clinging to currently is unsupported by the historical evidence. The raising of interest rates to stop inflation led to the explosion of the national debt thanks to the servicing costs. In 1980, the national debt stood at $907.7 billion. By 1989, the debt reached $2.857 trillion. The raising of interest rates created deflation near-term but expanded the inflation longer-term.

The Plaza Accord set in motion the 1987 Crash. They failed to understand that lowering the value of the dollar may have made US goods appear cheaper overseas to reduce the trade deficit, but at the same time, it also devalues all the US assets in the eyes of foreign investors. After selling more than one-third of the US national debt to the Japanese, the lowering of the dollar by 40% would mean a 40% loss on their holding of US debt.

As the dollar began a free-fall, the central banks began to realize this was a mistake. The Louvre Accord was an agreement, signed on February 22, 1987, in Paris, that aimed to stabilize the international currency markets and halt the continued decline of the US Dollar caused by the Plaza Accord. The agreement was signed by France, West Germany, Japan, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Italy declined to sign the agreement. The Group of 5 became the Group of 7 – G7 (now G20).

The G7 meeting of central bankers and finance ministers in Paris announced that the dollar was now “consistent with economic fundamentals.” They announced that they would only intervene when required to ensure foreign exchange stability. The objective was then to manage the floating currency system.

Democrats gained control of Congress in 1986 and immediately called for protectionist measures. The dollar depreciation agreed to in 1985 at the Plaza Accord, failed to really improve the trade perspective. In 1986, the trade deficit actually rose to approximately $166 billion with exports at about $370 billion and imports at about $520 billion. The object of manipulating currency to try to create jobs and alter trade flows proved to be completely false.

My concerns warning the White House that volatility would increase made back in 1985 were materializing. What they did not understand was that lowering the dollar in value also led to a shift in capital flows and the selling of US assets. Foreigners were suffering losses by financing U.S. trade by purchasing United States Treasury bonds in an attempt to ease the trade deficit criticism. We were advising the Japanese to buy gold on the New York COMEX, export it, and then resell which would also make it appear that the US exports were increasing. However, the lower dollar was then resulting in the importation of inflation into their own nations.

The press back then never understood the crash. I was called in by the Brady Commission charged with investigating the causes of the Crash. Of course, they would not blame the government. The best I could do was to prevent a witch-hunt on Wall Street and the final report casually mentioned that they believed foreign exchange had something to do with it.

There is probably nobody else who has dealt with more central banks than me from China to Switzerland and into the Middle East. To read this cover story by the Economist was indeed shocking. They are obviously still under the impression that inflation is the result of the rise and fall of the money supply that dates back to the days of Henry VIII. I dare say, things have changed slightly.

Today, governments have borrowed relentlessly. But the debt is acceptable now as collateral so national debts are simply money that pays interest. That is completely out of the scope of the central bank so it DOES NOT have the tools to prevent or create inflation. The politicians always want to spend whatever it takes to win the next election and then blame the central bank if it resulted in inflation. It is a sad day that the Economist is so out of touch its rambling and that of someone serious out of touch with reality.

Apr 27 2022

Ukraine’s New Deal


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Apr 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Apr 27 2022

Solid Take from Glenn Greenwald on Elon Musk Motives and Purchase of Twitter


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 26, 2022 

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson previewed a discussion with Glenn Greenwald that will appear in full tomorrow on Fox Nation.  In this segment {Direct Rumble Link Here} Greenwald gives his perspective on the motives of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter.

Greenwald does a good job encapsulating the essential support most feel for the Musk effort.  There are many people still uncertain about how this will all roll out, and Musk has been favorable to Big Govt in his two most famous endeavors, Tesla and SpaceX.   Elon Musk’s phase of pushing back against speech and internet control is more recent, and as a result has left many people wondering about it.

As Greenwald notes, there really isn’t a downside for people who are trying to break the totalitarian and monopoly control systems on the internet.  The upside benefits to on-line freedom, debate, discussion and the first real effort to stop internet censorship are well worth supporting.  Greenwald eloquently puts an appropriate context to the battle.  WATCH:

Apr 27 2022

The Media Meltdown Over the Possibility of Free Speech Twitter is Very Revealing, Meanwhile Twitter Employees Fear Loss of Censorship Mechanisms and Leaked Audio of Twitter Executive Reaction


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 26, 2022 | Sundance 

Perhaps no media paragraph more perfectly encapsulates the issues around the Twitter debate than this one from New York Times writer Shira Ovide:

…”The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote that same year gave Silicon Valley executives, U.S. elected officials and the public a peek into what can go wrong when social media companies opt not to wade too deeply into what people say on their sites.”… (link)

In essence, that would be the quiet part said out loud and matter-of-factly.  If people are allowed freedom of communication, they end up doing things without our approval.

That paragraph perfectly encapsulates the reason why so many media and leftists are having mental breakdowns.

Elon Musk has the audacity to purchase one, just one, social media platform with the intent to allow Americans the freedom to speak to each other freely, without limit and control.  That is the expressed risk the Democrats, media and leftists in every institution are enraged about.

As Fox News highlighted, “several Twitter employees expressed serious concerns and fear over Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company including a prominent worry that Musk would undo censorship mechanisms they had worked to implement over the years.”  It’s all about control.  We are living in a cyber version of Poland circa early 1980’s.

The solidarity movement results in millions of Polish citizens taking to the streets, looking around and suddenly realizing there are more of us than them.  That is what the collective left is now desperate to avoid, and they will do anything to stop people from seeing the scope of the control effort they have deployed in order to carry out their agenda.  Those are the stakes at play.

During yesterday’s phone call between Twitter executives and employees at the company, the leaders within the company talked about the issues at hand.  A leaked copy a short segment of the discussion was made available by Project Veritas today.  WATCH:

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All of this collective apoplexy and anxiety is a reflection of fear.  The need for control is a reaction to deep internal fear.

Notice they keep using the words “safety”, as if being exposed to alternate perspectives is something that threatens safety.

Elon Musk is correct, “the extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all.”

(Source)

I can only imagine what “years of censorship mechanisms” means inside the technology systems created by the Twitter regulators.

This gets more interesting by the day….