Oliver Stone on Putin


Armstrong Economics Blog/Russia Re-Posted Apr 10, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

California Republicans Aim to Make Theft Illegal


Armstrong Economics Blog/Crime Re-Posted Apr 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

In 2014, California basically decriminalized theft by permitting shoplifters to take what they please, as long as it was under $950. Prop 47, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, emboldened criminals to do as they please with no repercussions as they cannot be prosecuted for a felony charge. California does not aggregate robberies, so a criminal could target a store multiple times per week with limited repercussions as long as each robbery yielded under $950.

Republican lawmakers have introduced AB 1599 which would repeal most of Prop 47 and “make crime illegal again.” Republican Assembly member Kevin Kiley, an author of AB 1599, said, “[Prop 47] has essentially legalized theft and open drug use in California, culminating in these unbelievable smash-and-grab robberies.”

Smash and grab robberies have become an organized crime by low-level criminals. “You have people that will go into department stores and they’ll actually have a calculator on them,” Kiley said. “They’ll add up the value of what they’re stealing because they know as long as it’s under $950, they might as well wave at the security camera on the way out. They know there’s going to be no consequence for that.”

Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of California Retailers Association (CRA), noted that San Francisco and Oakland alone have lost $3.6 billion annually to organized retail crime. The National Retail Federation places estimates losses from organized crime at around 0.07% of total sales and believes the CRA is overestimating. Regardless, this is a preventable loss. Governor Gavin Newsom would need to approve of the measure, but has been consistent on his light on crime stance. Newsom has ignored pleas to crackdown on shoplifting, and simply told struggling store owners to use other existing laws to prosecute thieves. Independent store owners would be wise to leave California as the laws in place only protect criminals who have abused Prop 47.

German Parliament Blocks Over-60 Vaccine Mandate


Armstrong Economics Blog/Vaccine Re-Posted Apr 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s attempt to mandate vaccinations for everyone over 60 was blocked by Parliament in a 378-296 vote. The bill would have forced all Germans over the age of 60 to receive three vaccinations before October 1, 2022.

The Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP), and Greens were all pushing this bill forward and will likely continue to fight for a mandate. If Parliament did not vote in favor of the people, this would have opened the floodgates to endless vaccination mandates for the entire population. Under the failed bill, unvaccinated Germans would have been required to attend a doctor consultation to discuss (coerce) them into getting the vaccine.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach also recently reversed his stance on self-quarantine restrictions. Lauterbach initially said that the 10-day isolation rule would end on May 1. “I have withdrawn the proposal because the completely wrong impression would have arisen that either the pandemic is over or the virus has become significantly more harmless than was assumed in the past,” he stated. In other words, he does not want the people to feel safe as that would diminish the need for big government and Big Pharma.

They want to force injections on the people without erasing existing restrictions because they know the vaccine is ineffective. Parliament’s ruling comes as a silver lining, but the fight for medical freedom is far from over.

Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister to “Discuss” Russian Trade and Sanction Compliance


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022 | sundance 

Against the backdrop of increased Russia-India trade {link}, and the BRICS discussions about new trade payment mechanisms to avoid being shackled to the dollar {link}, it would appear the people behind the White House operation to create/maintain conflict with Russia are scheduling a stern conversation with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

WHITE HOUSE – ” President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will meet virtually with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Monday, April 11 to further deepen ties between our governments, economies, and our people. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi will discuss cooperation on a range of issues.” …

“President Biden will continue our close consultations on the consequences of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating its destabilizing impact on global food supply and commodity markets.” (read more)

The message from the White House will likely be akin to: ‘Nice country of 1.5 billion hungry people you got there Modi.  With all this talk of global famine going around, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t feed them.’ Oh, and by the way, did you happen to catch what just rolled out in Pakistan?  Imagine that – what with common borders and such… 

For those unfamiliar, it appears the DoS/CIA were up to their old tricks again, because Pakistan was favorable to the position of China and Russia in the Ukraine conflict and would not take sides with NATO and western allied leaders.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted through a majority parliamentary no-confidence vote early Sunday, that smells identical to the way Obama/Biden DoS/CIA ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

(VOA) – […] Khan is the first prime minister to be ousted by a no-confidence vote in Pakistan, but no democratically elected prime minister has served a full five-year term since the founding of the country in 1947.

The repeatedly delayed no-confidence vote against Khan was held after the country’s Supreme Court ruled last week he had acted unconstitutionally when he previously blocked the no-confidence vote, and subsequently dissolved parliament.

The embattled Pakistani leader had defended his blocking of the vote, alleging that the no-confidence motion was the result of the United States meddling in his country’s politics.

Washington rejected the charges, saying there was “no truth” to them. (read more)

Western media is full of (pro-western) spin on the background of the Pakistani issues, but regional media see exactly how the DoS/CIA operate with their lucrative intelligence bribes to ISI officials in Pakistan.   That’s the same m.o. the CIA used in Egypt – paying the Muslim Brotherhood and giving them resources to remove Mubarak.   The coincidences are too coincidental to be coincidental.

(VIA ABC) – […] Khan has claimed the U.S. worked behind the scenes to bring him down, purportedly because of Washington’s displeasure over his independent foreign policy choices, which often favor China and Russia. He has occasionally defied America and stridently criticized America’s post 9/11 war on terror. Khan said America was deeply disturbed by his visit to Russia and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, the start of the devastating war in Ukraine.  The U.S. State Department has denied his allegations. (more)

India and Pakistan have long been in conflict with each other.  The U.S. has always exploited this conflict as leverage in both countries, using intelligence and DoS operatives in Pakistan (major bribes), and using diplomatic/geopolitical and economic pressure in India.

That painful history of political extortion stopping is why India was so excited to have President Donald Trump in office.

President Trump spoke frankly to the Pakistani government about his expectations to stop supporting extremism (Taliban) in Afghanistan, and simultaneously Trump was honest and earnest with India using trade agreements that benefitted both the U.S. and India through his Indo-Pacific framework. {Go Deep – The Trump Doctrine}

Now, Biden turns back to leverage Modi by saying we’ve got the club back in charge and our tools ready in Pakistan.  If Modi keeps supporting Russia, suddenly the U.S. might provide discounted weapons and enhanced capabilities to Pakistan.  Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink….  Say no more.

I hate how the Fourth Branch of Government operates.

Americans in general are in an abusive and forced codependency relationship with our own government.  Unfortunately, most do not see it.

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...”I’ve had a great relationship with the Indians. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” ~ Racist Joe

Sunday Talks, Fauci Warns of Potential Return of Indoor Mask Mandate


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022

Appearing on ABC’s This Week to give his opinion on the current status of COVID-19, White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci warns the CDC may soon revert back to an indoor mask mandate.  This is additionally troublesome, because many people now define themselves by COVID-19.

There are many people who can only identify with other like-minded people fearful of COVID.  WATCH:

There are a significant portion of the American public who worship at the altar of COVID theatrics.  For them getting booster shots, following the CDC orders and participating in the mask theatrics is a profoundly religious experience that defines who they are in the modern world of pandemic fear.

Observing the behaviors of mask promoters, is almost like watching a livestream of unstable political expression.  It truly is one of the most bizarre new realities. Many of the Branch Covidians become mentally and emotionally unstable when they experience contact with a non-mask-wearing person.

Even after all of the ‘scientific evidence’ that shows masks provide no substantive benefit or lowering of infection risk, there are a great many people who cannot fathom not wearing one for the remainder of their lives.  The psychological training from two years of massively promoted COVID fear and the drumbeat of worry, has left a large portion of the American people in a permanent state of profound instability.

It is unnerving to realize how many people can be influenced to believe in something that lacks any logic or reason.  I’m not sure how long, if ever, this tear in the social fabric will last or take to repair.  Many of these COVID consequences have divided people permanently.  The full interview is below.

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Latest CBS Poll Reflects No Hope for Anyone, Including Joe Biden and Democrats


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022 | sundance

CBS has released their latest YouGov Poll [DATA HERE], again showing the top priorities of the American people are not even on the radar of the American government.  The DC beltway disconnect is stark.

Interestingly, the recent survey of Pennsylvania voters done by Reuters, turned up this almost identical priority list, only Rusia/Ukraine did not even appear in the top five.  The economy, inflation, gas prices, crime and immigration are the top five issues across the board, in almost every poll.

Russia/Ukraine is a non-existent issue. Yet, that is the actionable priority -with questionable importance for U.S. security interests- for a totally out of touch government and media to focus on.  Sending $14 billion to help Ukraine’s border fight, while our borders are crushed with illegal aliens, is a sharp stick in the eye for every American.

Unfortunately, our opinion doesn’t matter, and frustratingly, the people using Biden as a tool to achieve their goals do not have any concern whatsoever about political fallout.  Biden is a disposable tool for a program of rapid single-term advancement of the democrat-communist agenda.

Under ordinary circumstances, this level of disapproval would automatically create panic and start a change in policy.  However, under their current program, a kamikaze mission to create maximum ‘fundamental change’, the people creating the policy outcomes simply don’t care.  Biden is a disposable tool to be thrown on the trash heap of history.

Joe Biden is clueless and entirely irrelevant to the objective.  He sits around eating pudding and muttering to himself until called upon to head to the stage set, and literally read what has been written for him.  Biden has no clue, other than, (a) he is in complete agreement with the goals, and (b) it takes a lot of pancakes to fill a canoe.  I swear, the puppet masters keep putting little girls in his orbit during public appearances just to laugh about it.

These people are sick.

(CBS) Higher prices are leading people to say they’re making cutbacks, especially on more discretionary items like entertainment and travel. (That may, of course, have a wider impact on the economy later.) About half are cutting back on food and groceries, and this is especially the case among those with lower incomes. (read more)

Ya think?

As Expected, Le Pen and Macron Head to a Runoff in French Election – Polling Shows Them Even After Primary


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022 | sundance

As expected, in the France election no candidate achieved 50% of the vote.  That sets up a runoff election fifteen days from now to determine who will be the next president.  Reuters Article Here – Guardian/MSM Article Here

In the primary race the final results are not yet announced; however, current President Emmanuel Macron has approximately 28% of the vote, and challenger Marine Le Pen has around 24% of the vote.  No other candidate was close enough to change the top two outcome.

In the head-to-head matchup, the race is essentially tied, well within the margin of polling error (as above).  Interestingly, Le Pen has flipped the 18-to-34-year age bracket and now holds majority support in the younger voting bloc.  Perhaps, due to young French citizens feeling the outcomes of the professional political left thirsting for unilateral power during COVID.

There was around a 65% voter turnout according to most early analysts.  The general election is essentially a coin toss based on the current polling.  The final vote to determine the winner will take place April 24th.  It will be a very closely watched event by leaders around the world.  A Le Pen victory would be seismic in the world of politics, akin to Trump’s victory in 2016, and that outcome is a strong possibility.

The professional political left are apoplectic.

(BBC Opinion) –  Estimations from round one show how tactical voting rewrote the electoral map.

Voters gathered into three broad camps: Macron, the far-right and the far-left. In the last days of campaigning, many people who were considering other candidates finally decided that they would rather back a frontrunner.

There was thus a big transfer of votes from Éric Zemmour – the hard-right nationalist pundit – to the camp of Marine Le Pen. Some right-wingers in the conservative Republicans party may have done the same.

On the left, voters decided that neither the Socialist Anne Hidalgo nor the Green Yannick Jadot could ever make it into round two. So they shifted massively to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, simply to keep a leftist in the race. This despite many Socialists and Greens actively disliking the man.

And in the centre, many who would normally have chosen the Republicans’ Valérie Pécresse will have plumped instead for the incumbent. Why? Because they were genuinely afraid that Le Pen and/or Mélenchon were coming up too strong from behind.

The result means two things.

One is the utter devastation facing France’s two traditional parties of government since 1958 – the conservative right, and the socialist left. This was a process started by Macron five years ago, but now comprehensively complete.

Both parties’ candidates – and certainly the Socialists’ Anne Hidalgo – may have failed to reach the 5% threshold, which allows them to claim back election costs. The price tag will be millions of euros, but worse is the ignominy. We can expect serious internal ructions.

Macron has so engineered it that the divide in French politics is now definitively the one that he sought: between his own “realistic centrism” and “openness to the world” and the “extremism” of his opponents. The “nationalist extremism” of Le Pen and the “utopian extremism” of Mélenchon. (read more)

Nationalism -vs- Globalism

During his pandemic response, Macron went totally overboard.  He was the first one to announce (July 2021) that a vaccine passport would be needed in order to shop, drink, eat at restaurants, travel or worship.  Many other western, fascist totalitarian dictators, the new democracy leaders, followed soon thereafter.  Macron’s ideological fiats may come back to haunt him. We can hope.  The French people were not happy with this unilateral decision, and it showed people how quickly some leaders will become dictators.

President Macron took that dictatorship even one step further in January of this year, and this is likely the biggest problem for him right now.  In January he announced that any unvaccinated person was “irresponsible” and therefore “no longer a citizen.”

Macron told Le Parisien that he had decided to act against the non-vaccinated, by “limiting as much as possible their access to social life activity”.  “The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so we will continue to do so, to the bitter end. That’s the strategy,” the head of state said. “When my freedom comes to threaten that of other people, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen.” 

“I am not going to put them in prison, I am not going to forcibly vaccinate them,” Macron went on. “Therefore you have to say to them: from January 15 you can no longer go to a restaurant, you can no longer go for a drink, you can no longer go for a coffee, you can no longer go to the theatre, you can no longer go to the cinema,” the president said.  (read more)

That extremist approach is the opening Marine Le Pen now has in front of her – to expose Emmanuel Macron as the installed, WEF approved, multicultural economic globalist everyone knows him to be.

Cleveland Fed Chair Outlines Reasons Monetary Policy Cannot Lower Inflation When Energy Policy Is in Control


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022 | sundance 

Loretta Mester, the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss inflation, the economy and monetary policy.  Ms Mester is in a tough place, because she cannot admit the influence of federal monetary policy is far outmatched in the era where Joe Biden energy policy is limiting oil and gas development and creating massive inflation.

Mester does admit the supply chain crisis will extend well into 2023, but blows hopeful unicorn wishes by projecting that price inflation will temper by the end of this year.  From the perspective that 20 to 50% price increases on critical goods (housing, food, fuel, energy) are unsustainable in repeated cycles, she is correct; the rate of inflation will lower. However, that’s only because the baseline prices will have increased so high the rate of increase measure falls.  WATCH:

A $4 item that gains a $2 increase holds a 50% rate of inflation.  The next year that $6 item again has a $2 increase, but the rate of inflation drops to 33%.  The price increase is the same, but the rate of inflation drops.  That’s what is going to happen in the second half of this year.  FUBAR

The White House is doing this on purpose in order to chase their ideological dreams of sustainable energy and climate change.  Energy prices underline the entire economy, because oil and gas prices touch everything.  Insofar as they continue the war against coal, oil and gasoline, there’s nothing monetary policy can do to combat inflation.  The Fed must however, pretend not to know things.

Zelenskyy Gives British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a Guided Tour of The Great Western Battle to Save Kyiv


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 9, 2022 | Sundance

To get a better context for the catastrophic and dangerous war zone that is Ukraine, yesterday European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell Fontelles visited President Zelenskyy in Kyiv {link}.  The primary purpose of the meeting was to affirm the intent of the EU to accept Zelenskyy into the Union.

Earlier today, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also went into the war zone, toured the extreme chaos and battleground, and met with Zelenskyy (video below).

(Via MSM) – The UK is to send 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems to Ukraine, Downing Street announced Saturday, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid an in-person visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Johnson and Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer made separate visits to Zelensky on Saturday, the latest in a string of leaders to travel to the country during the ongoing Russian invasion.

Johnson posted on Twitter that his visit to Kyiv was “a show of our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine” and announced a new package of financial and military aid.

“Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century,” the UK PM said in a statement.

He praised Zelensky’s “resolute leadership” and the “invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people,” adding that the UK “stands unwaveringly with them in this ongoing fight … we are in it for the long run.”  Later in his nightly address posted on social media, Zelensky thanked the UK and Johnson. (read more)

As seen in video promoted by the NATO alliance, Johnson and Zelenskyy ignored the threat of bombs, missiles and artillery that could be raining down upon them, and bravely walked without flak jackets, vests or even helmets despite the chaos.

Unfortunately, the cinematography produced by the western NATO alliance failed to capture the smell of burning diesel fuel from the aftermath of hundreds of tanks and weeks of street-to-street urban warfare.  However, it does appear that Johnson was prepared for hand-to-hand combat if any angry shopkeeper stepped out of line.   Courage is, as they say, contagious.  Footage below:

Pentagon Cannot Confirm Bucha Atrocity


Armstrong Economics on Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Apr 10, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: So you think Russia did not do that in Bucha?

SJ

ANSWER: It is to the advantage of Zelensky who is appearing before every parliament he can ask for money. The US Pentagon has come out and even said that they CAN NOT independently verify what took place in Bucha. There is no way to verify anything in Bucha and there are videos that show people laying in the street pretending to be dead with no blood and then there are videos showing they get up when the camera passes.

If you want your family or someone else to rush over there and kill Russians to avenge Ukraine, you should go there and fight yourself. Don’t send others there to die for propaganda. Don’t worry. Congress just authorize handing all the weapons on the Christmas list of Zelensky so we will get your war that you so are eager to engulf the entire world. If you really think Ukraine can defeat Russia, please, volunteer for the vanguard.

know, Ukraine and you better count your fingers when shaking hands. The government there is texting me asking for money. There is ABSOLUTELY zero confirmation that ANY money being sent to Ukraine gets to the people and not the pockets of one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Only a fool will send money to Ukraine based on all of these solicitations. The ONLY people to send money to are the International Red Cross or Crescent.

There has been NOT a single war that ever began that was based on truth. Every war was sold with propaganda.