Posted originally on the conservative tree house on March 7, 2023 | Sundance
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers testimony today before the Senate Banking and Finance Committee. During his statements Powell says, “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.” Powell continued, “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.“… “We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting.” … “Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”
Everything about the testimony to the Senate, and almost everything within the questioning as presented, ignores the key and central component that inflation is being driven by energy policy. The scale of the pretending around this issue is jaw dropping.
Western governments, including the U.S. through Joe Biden, have limited and curtailed the production and exploitation of Oil, Coal and Natural Gas. At the core of the inflation within those same governments, this is the issue at hand. Energy prices have skyrocketed, driving the cost of everything through the roof. The central banks are raising interest rates in an attempt to shrink the economy to match the drop in energy production. This is their monetary policy (interest rates) attempting to support economic policy (Green New Deal / Build Back Better).
There are no lines for consumers in the U.S and Europe of people buying durable goods, electronics or shopping for non-essential items. Prices on the products within the durable goods economy are not being driven by excess consumer demand. There are not 25% more people buying lemons and milk than this time last year. The prices for goods in general, and for essential goods specifically, have risen as an outcome of the input costs around energy skyrocketing.
Everything is impacted by diminished energy production, and losses in infrastructure due to drops in investment, that contribute to the efficiency of energy distribution. Oil prices have jumped, gasoline prices, diesel prices, natural gas prices and electricity prices have all skyrocketed.
With those raw material production policies, farming costs, fertilizer costs, cooling and heating costs, electricity costs, home heating costs, transportation costs, packaging costs, storage and warehouse costs, refrigeration costs and everything impacted by major energy costs have increased. This is the main driver of consumer inflation.
When Jerome Powell says they are raising interest rates to “cool the economy,” the raw truth behind the statement is the central banks are trying to reduce the western economies in order to meet the diminished energy production created by policy. If they can make the economy smaller, less energy is needed….. and this should stem the rising costs from limiting the resource development.
Their problem is that baseline energy demand remains high. This is keeping energy prices high…. this is keeping inflation high. Their approach to continue raising interest rates, will only work if they achieve an economic outcome similar to the pandemic lockdown period.
Yes, excessive money does create devalued money, which in turn does create inflation. However, in the current inflationary dynamic it is not excessive money in the hands of working-class people that is driving high demand for goods. All of the consumer and sales data show that cash carrying consumers are not chasing limited goods. Consumers and workers are trying to afford essential goods and services that have increased in price as a result of energy policy.
Every economic analysis that does not take this majority factor into consideration is either: (a) making a mistake; (b) being intentionally obtuse and willfully blind; or (c) intentionally not discussing it because the motives of the analyst are to support the climate change agenda.
Once you accept that energy policy is the majority driving influence of current inflation (6.4%), then you can estimate how much economic damage will be needed in order to drop energy demand to a level that matches the diminished energy development, production and investment.
COMMENT #1: I have been watching Colonel Douglas MacGregor (ret), on alt news sites. He is a former tank commander in the Gulf war and has worked extensively with NATO, before retiring. I love his direct commentary – so in a nutshell he says the following: 1. Ukraine has lost up to 250k troops and they are in dire straits. They will lose the war badly. 2. The US military is in dire straits too and if push, comes to shove, could only provide 50k troops within weeks. They are down on ammunition (all gone to Ukraine) and the recruitment targets for all 4 branches are lower than what the DoD is telling us. 3. The European military is not ready at all and would be ineffective. 4. Which leads to him saying that the USA/NATO will not enter the war, because sane heads in the military will not allow it. I hope he is right, but he does not rule out false flags or Biden’s ineptitude. You should watch him, he’s great, a man with genuine battle experience and knows the political machinations of DC, yet strongly anti war.
NC
COMMENT #2: Colonel Douglas MacGregor has often come out and confirmed what you have said weeks or months before. It looks like he has similar sources. He went to West Point. Did they also teach your War Model as did the Citadel? A lot of generals graduated from the Citadel.
Keep up the great work
HB
REPLY: Perhaps we both have similar contacts. As far as West Point, I do not know if they ever taught our models. What I do know, is that there is a serious risk that Uktaine loses and all the fake news that keeps putting out the propaganda has not considered what happens if Ukraine loses.
Zelinsky has tried to portray himself as a military leader, cloaked in the symbolism of a military strongman. Gaddafi, Hussein, Stalin, and even Hitler come to mind. All were seen as ardent nationalists. Zelinsky did this to attract enormous weapons and capital to this country, ensuring that his face becomes the symbol of the military leader.
In truth, Zelinsky is a figurehead whose survival depends on outside assistance. Ukraine continues to bleed out citizens, while its military gets eviscerated. Even with the weapons provided by the West, Ukraine’s military was never of the caliber of Russia’s. A Heroic figure he is not.
The West probably bet the sanctions and outside pressures would force Putin to withdraw. No one counted on Putin to stand his ground. Putin’s determination to crush Zelinsky means his tenure is linked with his war record and battlefield performance. Panic is now setting in. Zelinsky is as much a puppet regime as we saw in South Vietnam. It lacks broad support and like the one in Saigon, Kiev will collapse sooner or later from outside pressure.
Once collapse happens, military defeat means political defeat. Therefore, the West is panicked to raise the stakes and step in to bolster a puppet regime. The US entered Vietnam slowly, then suddenly. It now appears NATO is following this same process, first indirectly, now perhaps directly. They have turned Ukraine’s future into some kind of existential life-or-death battle. For NATO, that is certainly the case. Having squandered untold billions, their military readiness is now on the line.
Kennedy tried to block the expansion of the US presence in Vietnam and was assassinated for it. Johnson enthusiastically took over and then realized his generals, Westmoreland to be precise, had no real plan. Johnson lost by blindly following the military. Trump tried to keep the US out of wars and was ousted by a fraudulent election. Biden enthusiastically took over echoing Johnson. As with Vietnam, an unpopular regime with no support, Ukraine is likely even more corrupt and ripe for destruction. Pumping in billions won’t stop the eventual collapse. Zelinsky’s failures on the battlefield are synonymous with Vietnam.
The US congress has disgraced itself. As with Vietnam, there was no declaration of war. It became incremental and it took nearly 15 years to extricate ourselves from this mess. The blank check spending then is now in overdrive in Ukraine. That country will disappear but unlike Vietnam, from which we would eventually retreat, the US now is so deep inside Ukraine. Retreat would mean the collapse of Nato and the withdrawal of the US.
Who today is the Republican version of Nixon who will get us out of this mess? And who is the next Henry Kissinger to negotiate out of this modern disgrace? No, this is not like Vietnam. This is much worse. We have no leadership, just as is now evident with the puppet in Kiev. We, too, have a puppet in Washington. So two puppets trying to pretend they have each other’s backs ensures that what unfolds has no coda ending like Vietnam. Rather, it looks more like some roll of dice all-or-nothing gamble, echoing the epic debacle of Hitler’s Germany. It’s really the end of the US hegemony now in play.
MS
REPLY: We have followed the same exact path as Athens following the Defeat of the Persian Invasion. They became arrogant and compelled other Greek city-states to pay tribute to them for protection against another possible Persian invasion which never came. The various city-states began to rebel and a coalition was formed led by Sparta ushering in the Peloponnesian War. In the end, Athen lost if status as the financial capital of the known world.
The United States has lost every war contrived by the Neocons ever since World War II. There have been no overwhelming victories. Even the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Jamie Dimon, has come out and said that his top concerns include Ukraine and China. Only a fool does not look at the geopolitical events unfolding. The Biden administration is firmly in the hands of the Neocons. God help us!
The United States has launched a proxy war, unconstitutionally, circumventing Congress and the American people no less the entire world. What must be understood, is that the Biden Administration, the puppet of the Neocons led now by Victoria Nuland, has brought the entire world to the brink of World War III and they have now begun the countdown to the decline and fall of Western Civilization
Who is Victoria Nuland and why has she the queen of the Neocons? Victoria Nuland has been one of the leading Neocons always advocating war with Russia. She is behind the propaganda that Russia is on the verge of defeat and that the Russian army is really dysfunctional. This is standard propaganda. They put out the same exact line about the troops in Iraq. This is to convince Americans that they can wage war and it will be over in just a few hours or days. This is the typical Neocon sales pitch to justify their endless thirst for war. They are trying to provide justification to rush in for an easy defeat of their target.
Besides the Neocons’ treason against the Constitution always manipulating proxy wars without the consent of Congress in violation of Section I, Article 8, there is also one huge very serious undisclosed conflict of interest and the Biden Administration should immediately fire Victoria Nuland and all her supporters within the Biden Administration to save the world and our nation.
Victoria Nuland is really of Ukrainian Jewish descent. Her family changed their name to try to hide their Jewish ethnic background. She really would be Nudelman, not Nuland. She is actually the daughter of Yale bioethics and medicine professor Sherwin B. Nuland, who changed his surname from Nudelman to Nuland. She has retained her family name Nuland to perhaps further hide her Jewish connection by being married to Robert Kagan. Victoria speaks Russian, French, and some Chinese. Hiding her Jewish background is critical. Her father was raised by parents who were Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Hence, her grandparents were Jewish Meyer Nudelman (1889-1958) and Vitsche Lutsky (1893-1941). This explains why Nuland has been a public proponent for Ukraine to wage war against Russia.
Her husband, Robert Kagan, authored the “real Iraq Study Group” report of the American Enterprise Institute. This was the Neocon view of regime change. Kagan was said to have convinced President George W. Bush, to order the “surge” plan for changing the course of the Iraq War. It was Kagan who co-founded the neoconservative think tank in 1997 which was known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with fellow Neocon William Kristol, who has a track record of usually being wrong. This has been the legacy of the Neocons in general.
Ron Paul plainly wrote: “Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. “ It is indeed time that we examine their Neocons who constantly usurp American foreign policy and will drive us straight into World War III. This may indeed be a family feud with Russia given both the Jewish and Ukrainian backgrounds.
Her Husband and Kristol used PNAC, from 1998 onward, to further the Neocon wars and their quest for Regime Change. Kagan was an early and strong advocate of military action in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan as well as to “remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power”. Kristol and Kagan teamed up and wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times where they put forth what is now known as fake news: They actually wrote:
“It is clear that Mr. Hussein wants his weapons of mass destruction more than he wants oil revenue or relief for hungry Iraqi children.”
They put forth their idea that the United States had the right to engage in regime change in other countries. They also wrote in the New York Times:
“And Iraq’s Arab neighbors are more likely to support a military effort to remove him than an ineffectual bombing raid that leaves a dangerous man in power.”
What I know from sources was that there was an intelligence report dated September 21st, 2001, that stated bluntly that there was NO evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Later, in the 2004 9/11 Commission report, they too concluded that there was NO “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, Kristol and Kagan with the rest of the Neocons, including Nuland, supported the Iraq Invasion which began on the 20th of March in 2003. They used the national security excuse to keep Bush sequestered after 9/11 so Cheney could run the government unobstructed.
I have warned that the Neocons are NOT Republicans but actually began inside the Democratic Party. They are the political version of transgender keeping a foot in both camps. In 1976, Bill Kristol worked for Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s United States Senate campaign. Later, in 1988, Kristol was the campaign manager for black Republican Alan Keyes’s unsuccessful Maryland Senatorial campaign against Paul Sarbanes. So Kristol was on both sides of the aisle. He then taught political philosophy and the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It was 1985 when Kristol first went to work in the White House serving as Chief of Staff to Secretary of Education William Bennett during the Reagan administration. Then Kristol became the Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (1989-1993) in the George H. W. Bush administration. This is when Kristol and Cheney were working together.
Kristol wrote The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny And America’s Mission with his co-author Lawrence F. Kaplan, which was published on February 1st, 2003, one month BEFORE the invasion. Note the timing. This was written to support Cheney. It takes time to publish this book.
Kristol’s book states that the rationale behind the preemptive strategy against Saddam Hussein is simply that he is a dictator who threatens both his own people and the world. That is sufficient to justify the United States invading another country before he does further harm. Kristol offered no evidence to support his case and he simply stated that “we do know that Saddam is a terrorist.” Kristol went as far as to criticize both the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration for allowing the Iraq threat to grow.
The Neocons seem to have been supported by the so-called Republican Lincoln Project, which was so anti-Trump, it endorsed Joe Biden who has had no problem letting the Neocons rule American Foreign Policy which has been anti-Constritution. While the Lincoln Project asks for donations from Republicans, they seem to be worthy of donating your alimony requirements and any other legal expenses you might have. Their agenda was strangely aligned with that of Bill Kristol.
All of these groups were anti-Trump because he was against their regime change agenda and endless wars. That anti-Trump position killed Kristol’s Weekly Standard in 2018 after two years of anti-Trump articles simply to wage war. The PNAC think tank he formed with Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan collapsed even sooner in 2006.
Nuland’s broth-in-law, Frederick W. Kagan, and her father-in-in-law, Donald Kagan, are part of this family of Neocons’ intent of changing the world to their agenda using war and regime change. Father and son wrote “While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today” in 2000. The book argued in favor of a large increase in military spending and warned of future threats, including from a potential revival of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program, which never existed.
It gets better. Kimberly Kagan, Frederick’s wife, is the founder of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which is the source of much of the fake news. Most curious, even the New York Times wrote about this Kagan family that they were really leftists and very outspoken to the point of manipulating whatever to gain their view of the world. The question is, just why is this family, such warmongers?
This Nuland/Kagan family of Neocons with Kristol and others has one major gold – Regime Change. They seem to be under the delusion that the United States has the right to interfere in other countries and overthrow leaders they simply do not like. Can you imagine if Russia decided it too would adopt the policy of Regime Change and move to overthrow the United State Constitution and end public elections of the leadership? Would the American people support that agenda? Hillary made such a big deal claiming that Putin interfered in her election to ensure Trump would win – Regime Change? Did Hillary accuse Putin of doing precisely what the Neocons are trying to do in Russia?
Perhaps you will recall Biden’s March 26th, 2022 remark calling for Regime Change in Russia. He said: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” at the very end of a speech in Poland’s capital. The HuffPost, which is always a Left-Biased publication, loved it. They reported that Biden wasn’t really calling for Regime Change, but instead only meant that Biden’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region rather than no longer head Russia.
Yet these Neocons’ view that it is their right to impose Regime Change over nations they disagree with constantly supports that if we overthrow these unacceptable leaders, their population will cheer and give us a ticker-tape parade. That has not taken place in Iraq or any other country these people have ever targeted. Victoria Nuland’s leaked phone call where she pushed her agenda saying “Fuck the EU” if they did not agree with her.
When testifying on March 8th, 2022 about bioweapons labs in Ukraine, Senator Rubio asked if Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons. Nuland hesitated and carefully responded that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” avoiding any description of what the “research” was about and if the US military was involved, it certainly had nothing to do with general public health. Nuland also carefully added that they were concerned that Russia could get its hands on their labs. If they were really nothing, then why be concerned if Russia walked into the lab? We they creating viruses to target just Russian DNA?
The entire mainstream press simply refuses to offer the slightest bit of investigative journalism. Based entirely on Nuland’s avoidance of the question, they declare that Russia’s claim of US involvement in 30 biological labs in Ukraine has nothing to do with weapons. They offered not a single shred of evidence and even if the Russians revealed what they found in a lab, they would call it Russian propaganda as they did with the Hunter Biden Laptop.
Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 and this Proxy War, had one of the largest forces trained by NATO in Europe as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Ukrainian force was 200,000 active personnel and 500,000 when reservists and paramilitary forces were included. It draft included the ages of all males 18 to 60 years old to take up arms. As well, they have handed out weapons to all citizens that wish to pitch in along with instructing the population on how to make Molotov cocktails.
The deliberate fraud on Russia with the intentional Minsk Agreement that the former Chancellor of Germany admitted was only a stall tactic to allow Ukraine to build an army demonstrating that they never intended for any peace agreement and that the West has cleverly used the Minsk Agreement to allow Ukraine to raise an army for this intended Proxy War.
Victoria Nuland, who was in Kiev during the Maidan Revolution with then head of the Neocons – John McCain. That is when McCain lied to the people and said this is “about you and no one else.” Why would he use those words except to falsely project the pretense that he was there for the Ukrainian people rather than his hatred for Russia?
Indeed, from 2014 and the US installation of an interim government that was instructed to immediately launch a civil war and attack the Donbas, the new interim Ukrainian government reinstituted the Draft as reported by NBC News on May 1st, 2014. The Ukrainian people never voted for this war. The Neocons circumvented the Ukrainian people as well. The first election took place on May 25th,2014 after they started the draft and launched their invasion of the Donbas.
By comparison, France had 205,000 active personnel, the UK 194,000, Italy 170,000, and Germany 184,000. Russia’s active force stood at 900,000 and it had 2 million in reserves. Ukraine had effectively the largest military trained by NATO. This presents a very serious question. Zelensky began drafting reservists 18 to 60 one day before the move by Russia to occupy the Donbas on February 24th, 2022.
If Russia has destroyed over 250,000 Ukrainian troops that have been trained by NATO, does this really support the Kagan family narrative that Russia is weak and we can take them in a few days? war review of keen interest for the whole world. Does the United States just sulk in the corner, or does it take the defeat of Ukraine as a battle cry to win one for Gipper? What happens in the future as Ukraine loses after pouring money that is twice that of the entire German military budget? Has the Kagan family fulfilled our model that this is the start of the Decline & Fall of the West? We are facing a very serious crossroads here as Ukraine falls under a massive Russian onslaught. We are looking at the entire credibility of the Biden Administration and all the fake news that has been told us Russia will collapse any moment.
Nobody has ever been able to beat Socrates – including me. We must consider that the mess of Ukraine and the failure of all this money to bring down Russia to achieve this family’s quest for Regime Change or personal vengeance will be our undoing. As Ron Paul said: “Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. “
QUESTION: Thank you for the interesting update on Crude & Natural Gas previously. Since Feb was a Directional Change and March is a turning point, then the cycle inversion for a March high rather than a low looks still choppy with no breakout. Since electric car demand has peaked, the Fed seems determined to get inflation down to 2% if it kills the world economy. Then the decline in supply is not having the expected rise in prices as one would expect. Can you explain this paradox?
Thank you
JV
ANSWER: Yes the Directional Change in Crude for February warned that we would bounce rather than decline. There was a slight possibility of an early low in March and a swing up perhaps on geopolitical news. But that has not played out.
It appears that Ukraine is losing so there may be a bigger question of how the United States handles yet another loss – Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq where removing Saddam led to religious wars. Note that the Fed began raising rates as soon as Russia invaded to protect the Donbas. Despite claiming it was for inflation, the Fed knows too well that inflation rises with war. They acted when Russia made its move understanding that this proxy war would accelerate inflation.
Crude took the nose-dive when Biden seized power as the general public believed he would end fossil fuels since that was what he said during his campaign. However, it soon became apparent that he was putting the cart before the horse and the shortages he set in motion led to to sharp price increases but this was part of the entire lockdown nonsense. The lockdowns led to a robust bounce in prices with the shortages only because everyone was artificially held in home imprisonment.
Post March 2022, we have the Fed raising interest rates, and the economy taking a real nose dive in the Democratic state with the most stringent COVID restrictions, so this time we have shortages with declining economic activity. The COVID lockdowns have substantially altered the economy and many are working virtually from home. Vacancies in office space in NYC have exceeded 15% and rising. Many stores are still boarded up.
The Paradox is that previously we were all in prison. So we rushed out and tried to do everything we were not allowed to do before. Post-March 2022, now we have a declining economic situation so we have declining demand combined with declining supply. At this point, the 2020 low should hold and we should be entering a bull market into 2033. However, I would expect the trend will become more robust with war where we also have a Panic Cycle in 2025.
The timing targets never change. What is produced be it a high or low is always subject to interpretation ahead of events. Still, the timing is fixed.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance
As promised, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began publicizing the closed-circuit TV footage from Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. In the introduction to the footage, Mr Carlson outlines the process and limitations that his producers encountered.
Tucker Carlson states no one from the House of Representatives placed any restrictions on the footage as reviewed. Additionally, Carlson notes that no one at Fox News leadership had any input into the review that his team undertook. As he describes, much of the 40,000 hours of footage was innocuous, empty rooms with CCTV camera footage showing very little. However, the footage that did show events, does not support the “violent insurrectionist” narrative as promoted by the J6 committee. WATCH:
Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance
Ugh, it makes me sick to see these schemes as they are constructed and yet feel helpless to stop them from organizing. Remember which media outlets push the PR campaigns of the U.S. Govt. (1) CNN drives Dept of State; (2) Washington Post drives CIA; and (3) NYT/Politico advance the interests of the domestic intelligence apparatus.
With that in mind, here comes the Intelligence Community laying the groundwork for reauthorization of the FISA-702 surveillance system on American citizens.
They are so damned transparent in their agenda, the stenographers have even dropped “FISA,” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as the term within the construct. Now they are just calling it “702 reauthorization.”
(VIA POLITICO) – The intelligence community has a critical congressional ally in its bid to reauthorize a sweeping warrantless surveillance program. However, even he thinks its officials aren’t making a convincing enough case.
“One of the things the community’s got to do a better job of is explaining, in practical non-classified terms, how valuable this tool is,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a recent brief interview. “And they’ve not done that as well as they should.”
Warner sits at the heart of what will be a months-long, knockout debate about whether to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance program, known as Section 702, by the end-of-year deadline. The program is designed to gather the electronic communications of foreigners abroad, but has the potential to sweep up those of Americans.
The Virginian, who argues continuing the program in some form is essential but is open to changes, will have his work cut out for him. Influential and newly emboldened House Republicans have made it clear they won’t let Section 702 stay alive without significant changes — if they support reauthorization at all — amid an all-time-low relationship with the Justice Department and the FBI.
And the intelligence community can also count Section 702 critics among House Democrats and senators in both parties, many of whom believe this is their best chance to force more limits on the program. (read more)
As most people are now aware, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) sits at the epicenter of how the surveillance state is weaponized against American citizens. It is the SSCI who helped create the surveillance network, and it is the SSCI who now seek to defend the unconstitutional system they have created.
Pretenses are being dropped, and you will note how in this reauthorization schedule they are dropping “foreign” communication with American citizens, as a limitation on the authority they have already usurped. Yes, it is factually true the ‘foreign’ aspect was always a ruse, a false premise, that granted the Dept of Justice, National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), and FBI legal authority to conduct intrusive Title-1 surveillance on any American citizen.
Well beyond the “cell phone metadata,” in the era of your portable transponder having internet and social media connection, just about everyone has metadata connected to a foreign person or entity. Use the Twitter app on your phone, you are connected to foreign entities. Use Instagram or Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram, same/same/same/same.
TicTok? Fughetaboudit. The auspices of only looking at U.S. persons engaged in foreign contacts is totally moot.
The “702 authorities,” which is an innocuous term for a “U.S. Person“, permit DHS, DOJ, FBI and any national security apparatchik to open up your data and check you out. This is the reality of the modern era. This total surveillance reauthorization is what the SSCI wants to permit. It must be stopped completely. It cannot be “reformed.”
4th Amendment – “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Either you are secure from federal search of your “private papers,” as outlined in the United States Constitution, or you are not.
There is no aspect of this “702” nonsense, where a secret court grants a secret authorization, to engage in secret surveillance, by some secret entity of government – which might be a contractor, just to “see if” you might be doing something suspicious, or against the interests of the federal government. The premise behind “702” reauthorization is unconstitutional.
How strongly do I feel about this?
I will openly campaign against any politician or candidate who does not fully endorse the elimination of FISA 702 Authorization in sum and total. I don’t care who the candidate is, or what his/her political affiliation might be.
I am sick and tired of having to construct communication systems, to engage in ordinary conversation and/or communication, knowing the biggest challenge is to construct the system to defend ordinary people against unconstitutional searches and seizures. Ironically, this includes the very commenting system you are using to share any opinion of this outline. This domestic surveillance system just needs to be stopped.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance
Coming out of the pandemic related disruption, the larger story of U.S. manufacturing has been an odd blend of good data and bad data depending on the sector. While some manufacturing was growing as a result of clearing supply chains, other sectors of manufacturing remained soft.
In total, the full supply chain rebound should have completed around the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.
However, simultaneous with the correction within the supply chain(s), consumer purchase activity began contracting.
The consumer pullback led to very weak holiday sales last year, and a combination of increased inventories of finished goods.
Keep in mind that Maersk overseas shipping noted significant drops in orders for the movement of material in the third quarter of last year. Considering the lag, the previously noted inventory buildup in combination with the drops in unit sales of durable goods, would generally mean lower manufacturing purchase order activity Q4 (’22) and Q1 (’23). This reality is reflected in the actual data as reported by The Wall Street Journal:
(Via WSJ) – […] New orders for manufactured goods contracted for the sixth straight month through February, according to surveys by the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturing output is down 1.7% from its postpandemic peak in May 2022, according to a three-month moving average of Federal Reserve data. And the Commerce Department’s measure of civilian capital equipment orders, excluding aircraft—the building blocks of business—was down 3.4% in January from its recent high in November 2021, after adjusting for inflation.
[…] Production of appliances, furniture and carpeting was down almost 15% in January from the previous year, according to the Fed. That coincides with sales of previously owned homes falling for 12 straight months. Consumers often buy furnishings after they move.
Production of steel, iron and other primary metals was down 3.6% and machinery production fell by 1.8%. Output of plastics, food, beverage and tobacco products, and computers and electronics, also fell during that period.
[…] Business inventories swelled in the fourth quarter of last year, when consumer spending cooled. The ratio of inventories to sales for durable goods was higher in November and December than at any point since 2009, with the exception of April and May 2020, when pandemic-related lockdowns froze commerce.
Pat Weiler, chief executive of paving-equipment maker Weiler, said inventory levels are up more than 50% over the last two years. (read more)
Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn’t really manufacture much any longer. Manufacturing only accounts for around 11% of GDP. However, if purchase orders for inbound component goods are down for six straight months, we can generally infer the absence of downstream consumer demand.
I fully expected a recession statistic in the fourth quarter last year and was quite surprised we didn’t see one. The scale in the drop of imports was statistically the majority reason for the outcome. Imports are a deduction to GDP. However, that said, there is nothing visible in the consumer purchasing side to indicate why durable good manufacturing is even as strong as it is.
We are in a very weird economic environment that is not helped by the financial punditry pretending that things are going swimmingly.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on March 6, 2023 | Sundance
Last night, around 5:30 p.m., Georgia police said a group of violent agitators used the cover of a festival and peaceful protest to coordinate an attack on construction equipment and police officers at a proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. “This is not a protest,” APD officials said at a press conference Sunday night. “This wasn’t about a public training center; this was about anarchy.”
Today, Atlanta PD announce 23 people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, including Thomas Jurgens of Georgia who is a staff lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The SPLC has long been known as an extremist group of radical leftists operating under the auspices of “anti-hate group” lawyering. The arrest of an SPLC activist/lawyer on domestic terrorism charges affirms the radicalization of the group itself. VIDEO REPORT:
(Atlanta PD) – On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.
The agitators destroyed multiple pieces of construction equipment by fire and vandalism. Multiple law enforcement agencies deployed to the area and detained several people committing illegal activity. 35 agitators have been detained so far.
The illegal actions of the agitators could have resulted in bodily harm. Officers exercised restraint and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests. (link)
Officers have arrested a total of 23 people. Only two of them are from Georgia. The following have been charged with domestic terrorism, according to Atlanta police (link):
Posted originally on the CTH on March 6, 2023 | Sundance
The battle within cyberspace continues, with mainstream media willing to use every sketchy source possible in order to maintain the great pretending.
As many major stories have shown in the past few years, the big battle over human control is taking place on social media platforms as they continue to be manipulated by government agencies. The Twitter Files released have shown just how extensive the government manipulation of information has become.
The U.S. State Dept, Dept of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, DOJ, Defense Dept, and a host of ancillary networked agencies and public-private partnership all occupy this space. Essentially, it is a fight for control of the public psyche.
In addition to the Twitter Files, stories averse to the interests of the state (Hunter Biden laptop) and fake stories created in the interest of the state (Trump-Russia) are all manipulated by the network of intelligence agencies, quasi government actors and the social media platforms. This is not debated any longer. There is overwhelming evidence of this reality now.
It is into this context that the Associated Press now promotes a story (with extremely sketchy sourcing) claiming that too much “pro-Trump” support exists on Twitter, and too much anti-DeSantis activity exists on Twitter, for that to be an authentic representation of reality. You see, inside the eco-chamber of the mainstream media, they cannot reconcile organic outcomes that are the opposite of their worldview.
The AP cannot fathom Trump support, ergo the entire architecture of the Twitter system must be Trump “bots” marching against authentic DeSantis. You cannot make this stuff up, yet it is good to actually see how nonsensical the narrative engineering has become.
(Via Associated Press) – […] As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.
The sprawling bot network was uncovered by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm that shared its findings with The Associated Press. While the identity of those behind the network of fake accounts is unknown, Cyabra’s analysts determined that it was likely created within the U.S. (read more)
Now, who do you think the control officers behind the “Israeli tech firm” support? The American candidate promoting “America First” economics?…. Or the controlled candidate promoting “America along with the interests of mutually beneficial multinational corporations?”
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