Month: January 2021

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

There are many millions of Americans today in the post-election environment that feel uneasy about the fate of the country given the rise of a Biden presidency. And though I understand why this tension exists, I want to offer a possible “silver lining”; a different way of looking at the situation:

With Biden in the White House, there is no longer any ambiguity about what conservatives (and some of the more courageous moderates) need to do and need to accomplish. Now we know where we stand, and now the stakes are clear.

With Trump in office, a lot of liberty minded people became a little too comfortable, to the point that they were inactive. They actually believed the system could be repaired and corruption ended from within, and without much effort on our part beyond our votes. Trump made many conservatives lazy.

Then there was the Q-anon-sense floating around on the web which also misled some freedom activists into thinking that people much higher placed or “smarter” than us were fighting the good fight behind the scenes and that the globalists would be swept up in a grand 4D chess maneuver. This was a fantasy; it was never going to happen. Finally, everyone knows this and we can get on with the business of fighting the real battles ahead.

I think we are reaching a stage in the conflict between freedom advocates and collectivist tyrants when many illusions are going to melt away, and all we will be left with is cold hard reality. Now is the time when we find out who is going to stand their ground and fight for what they believe in, and who is going to cower and submit just to save their own skin. Now is the time when we find out who has balls.

The last four years plus the election of 2020 have revealed that political solutions are out the window. A lot of conservatives should have known better, but maybe it takes a perceived disaster to shock some people out of their waking dreams. Elections, voting, potential third parties; it’s all Kabuki theater. It’s all a facade to keep us docile and under control.

The liberty movement cannot revolve around a single political figure. We cannot bottleneck out efforts into the hands of one man or one political party. The fight is up to us – each of us as individuals. It was ALWAYS up to us.

A different form of organization needs to happen if Americans are going to protect our freedoms; a grassroots approach from the ground up rather than the top down. There will of course be people who stand out as teachers and pioneers, those that lead by example. But overall, the movement will not be acting on orders from on high. Rather, it will be acting according to self motivation. The liberty movement is not driven by personalities, but by shared principles which take on a life of their own.

I’m not worried about Biden. In fact, his presence may be the best thing to happen to conservative unity in well over a decade. The only thing I worry about, as noted, is who is going to stand their ground, and who is going to give in?

Biden may also be a wake up call for any moderate democrats out there who thought that by voting for a hair-sniffing corporate puppet they might put an end to the division and civil unrest in the nation. I think they will discover that Joe will attract even MORE civil unrest. He may even trigger more looting and rioting by Antifa and BLM during his administration than Trump did, by the simple fact these insane people will assume that Biden will be malleable and easier to exploit.

Biden himself is not all that important; he is nothing more than a foil for bigger events and a proxy for more nefarious people. His presence signals that the “Great Reset” agenda is fully greenlit. This agenda has a pretty obvious set of goals, many of them openly admitted to by the World Economic Forum, and some of them strongly implied by the extreme political left and the media. They include:

1) Perpetual pandemic lockdowns and economic controls until the population submits to medical tyranny.

2) Medical passports and contact tracing as a part of everyday life.

3) The censorship and de-platforming of all voices that oppose the agenda.

4) Greatly reduced economic activity in the name of stopping “climate change”.

5) Greatly increased poverty and the loss of private property.

6) The introduction of “Universal Basic Income” in which the government becomes the all-powerful welfare provider and nursemaid for a generation of dependent and desperate people.

7) A cashless society and digital currency system where privacy in trade is completely erased.

8) creation of a “shared economy” in which no one will own anything and independent production is outlawed.

9) The deletion of national borders and the end of sovereignty and self-determination.

10) The centralization of global political power into the hands of a select few elitists.

Now, you would think that most sensible people would be opposed to such a dystopian agenda. It would inevitably lead to mass death in economic terms, as well as war. Unless you are a psychopath that gets a vicarious thrill from the brutal oppression of millions of people, or you are a globalist that stands to gain immense power, there is nothing about the Reset that benefits you.

That said, there will still be millions of useful idiots that support totalitarian policies, and they will act to enforce them. Some of them will be convinced that they are serving the “greater good”, and others will think that they can “earn a place at the table” if they lick the boots of tyrants long enough. Bottom line? It’s not just the globalists we need to worry about, it is also the contingent of zombies they have duped or bribed into serving the Reset.

The information war is about to take a backseat and a new fight is about to begin. But how will it start?

I believe the first test for conservatives will be Biden’s pandemic response. The Reset agenda and the pandemic are closely intertwined. Do not be misled by calls from Democrats to reopen the economy; there are strings attached.

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated that the state needed to reopen, or there would be “nothing left”, he also consistently hinted that vaccination numbers needed to improve. There are two big lies involved in this narrative – The first is that the vaccination rollout has failed on a technical level.

They want us to believe that only around 60% of the first 2 million vaccine doses have been administered because the state and hospitals failed to get them to citizens fast enough. The truth is, as we’ve seen in numerous polls of Americans and medical staff, millions of people DO NOT WANT to take the vaccine. The situation in New York must be shocking to establishment elites; it’s one of the most leftists states in the US and yet they can’t seem to trick enough people into taking the shot.

The same is true across the country, and it’s not because of bureaucratic failure, it is a propaganda failure.

Second, Cuomo’s statements hint that though lockdowns are destroying the economy, vaccine saturation is paramount. The message is this – “Take the vaccine, or the economy will crash.” The pandemic response is a carrot and stick approach: The lockdowns are the stick, and the reopenings are the carrot.

Of course, even if most people get vaccinated and submit to medical passports and contact tracing like good little slaves, this does not mean life will go back to normal. On the contrary, things will get much worse.

As I have noted in past articles like ‘Waves Of Mutilation: Medical Tyranny And The Cashless Society’, the globalists have admitted that the covid mandates and controls are going to be in place for many years, perhaps forever. Elites at MIT and the Imperial College Of London have written extensively about a strategy I call “Wave Theory”, in which governments constantly batter the public with waves of lockdowns followed by brief windows of partial openings and limited freedom.

The reopenings are a trick, a way to release public tension like a steam valve and make everyone think that the crisis is almost over. Then, the draconian mandates are brought back once again. This will never end. The only way to stop it is to remove the globalists from power and crush the Reset agenda.

A new narrative is already being injected into the mainstream media hinting that even vaccinations will not lead to freedom.

Anthony Fauci and others have argued that those who are vaccinated still need to follow lockdown mandates and wear masks. This policy completely ignores the scientific FACT that the death rate of covid is only 0.26% for anyone outside of a nursing home. It ignores the fact that masks have been consistently proven to do nothing to stop the spread of the virus. It ignores the fact that hospitals across the US have remained mostly empty, with only 15% of capacity in use during Covid . And, it ignores the fact that the vaccines are barely tested experimental cocktails that even the former VP of Pfizer has warned might cause dangerous autoimmune reactions and infertility.

On top of this, more and more stories about “covid mutations” are hitting the news wire. They are supposedly more infectious and more deadly than the original (which runs contrary to the natural evolution of the vast majority of viruses), and the mutation in South Africa is also “possibly” unaffected by existing vaccines. There is no concrete proof to support any of the claims, but I think you see where all of this is headed, right?

My guess is that in about two months the CDC and WHO will announce a new global outbreak of a more deadly strain of Covid. They will say the current vaccines are ineffective, and that lockdowns must continue. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are savvy to the old covid-19 scheme, so the elites are going to introduce covid-20, and covid-21, and covid-22, etc.

Biden will call for Level 4 lockdowns similar to those implemented in Europe and Australia, and this is where conservatives must draw a line in the sand and announce that we are not subject to unconstitutional restrictions, that we are breaking free. This will be our first major test.

It’s not enough to simply say “I won’t submit” when the consequences are minimal. One must be willing to fight back even when the consequences are dire. Being willing to lose everything for what you believe, being willing to possibly die for your values and principles means you are no longer a spectator in history, but an actor that can affect the future. Anything less is not enough to win the war that is coming.

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While Tesla allows any old random driver to act as a human beta tester for its “full self driving” (whatever that even means anymore), the California Department of Motor Vehicles has officially issued an actual permit to Baidu USA to begin testing driverless vehicles on public roads in Sunnyvale, California. 

The agency made the announcement in a press release issued on Wednesday, stating that “while Baidu has had state authority to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers since 2016, the new permit allows the company to test three autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel on specified streets within Sunnyvale, located in Santa Clara County.”

According to the release, Baidu’s vehicles “are designed to operate on roads with posted speed limits not exceeding 45 miles per hour.” Testing is allowed to be done at all times during day and night, but won’t take place during “heavy fog or rain”.

The release also notes what companies need in order to qualify for such driverless testing permits. 

• Providing evidence of insurance or a bond equal to $5 million.
• Verifying vehicles are capable of operating without a driver, meet federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards or have an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and is a SAE Level 4 or 5 vehicle.
• Confirming vehicles have been tested under controlled conditions that simulate the planned area of operation.
• Notifying local governments of planned testing in the area.
• Developing a Law Enforcement Interaction Plan that provides information to law enforcement and other first responders on how to interact with test vehicles.
• Continuously monitoring the status of test vehicles.
• Training remote operators on the technology being tested.

“Driverless testing permit holders must also report to the DMV any collisions involving a driverless test vehicle within 10 days and submit an annual report of disengagements,” the release states. According to the DMV site, as of January 27, 2021, they have issued Autonomous Vehicle Driverless Testing Permits to just six entities. Noticeably, Tesla is absent from the list, which includes Autox Technologies, Baidu, Cruise, Nuro, Waymo and Zoox.

The CA Department of Motor Vehicles developed its Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program in 2014 “to allow manufacturers to test autonomous vehicles with a human in the driver seat.” In 2018,  the agency established the Autonomous Vehicle Driverless Tester Program for manufacturers to test their technology without a driver.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday vowed to oppose what he called the Biden administration’s bid to destroy jobs with its volley of actions targeting the oil and gas industry.

Abbott signed an executive order during a press conference in Odessa on Thursday, which directed all state agencies to sue the Biden administration for any federal actions that threaten the Lone Star state’s energy sector.

“Texas is going to protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack launched from Washington D.C.,” Abbott said.

“President Biden’s embrace of the green new deal is a job killer in Texas. It also takes a wrecking ball to the energy independence that Texas has been able to provide to the United States of America and Texas is not going to stand idly by and watch the Biden administration kill jobs in Midland, in Odessa or any other place across the entire region,” he added.

Abbott’s order (pdf) came on the heels of a series of executive actions taken by President Joe Biden in the name of fighting “climate change.” These include the decision to revoke authorization for the Keystone pipeline, the decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, and a moratorium on issuing new oil and gas leases on federal land and waters.

While Biden’s actions have drawn fire from Republicans, industry groups, and even some Democrats, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said at a Wednesday press briefing at the White House that Biden wants to make sure workers in the energy industry “have better choices” in jobs that “pay better” and are “cleaner,” giving the example of being a solar power technician instead of being a miner. Kerry also claimed that it’s a false notion that “dealing with climate” comes at the expense of energy workers, adding that there is “a lot of money to be made” in the creation of new “healthier” jobs in sectors such as green hydrogen, geothermal heat, and other renewables.

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, on Jan. 27, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday criticized the Biden administration’s actions on energy policy that he collectively dubbed a “piecemeal green new deal.”

“There’s nothing green about a tsunami of pink slips for American workers, or carting Canadian crude around in trucks and trains instead of a pipeline,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “This piecemeal green new deal is the wrong prescription: wrong for the environment, wrong for national security, and most of all for the working Americans who will soon be formerly working Americans if this keeps up.”

“Wilfully throwing our own people out of work, reducing our domestic energy security, raising costs and prices for working families—all for no meaningful impact on global temperatures,” McConnell added.

McConnell also cited a study (pdf) by energy consulting firm OnLocation, which concluded that Biden’s oil and gas lease ban would mean the loss of nearly 1 million jobs by 2022.

“The decision on federal lands will leave us down nearly one million American jobs by next year alone,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “It’s a heck of a way to kick off a presidency.”

In this image from video, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks as the Senate reconvenes on Jan. 6, 2021. (Senate Television via AP)

But Texas is “prepared to fight back,” Abbott said, with his executive order directing every state agency to, “use all lawful powers and tools to challenge any federal action that threatens the continued strength and vitality of the energy industry. Each state agency should work to identify potential litigation, notice and comment opportunities, and any other means of preventing federal overreach within the law.”

Abbott also said he would support legislation that would prohibit cities from banning natural gas appliances, an action he said was recently taken in San Francisco.

“In Texas, we will not let cities use political correctness to dictate what energy source you use,” he said.

One of the most shocking consequences of the “shortage” of coronavirus vaccines has just been documented in Quito, Ecuador (the country’s capital) where a “fake” doctor has just been busted selling a fake COVID vaccine at an unlicensed clinic, according to local media reports cited by RT.

The doctor was reportedly charging $15-per-dose before the clinic was raided and shut down by Quito police and other federal authorities. Officially, the business was a “spa and slimming massage salon”, but it offered unlicensed medical services on the backend. With the COVID-19 outbreak ravaging the country, the establishment, which was located in the southern part of Quito, decided to add a “vaccine” against the disease to its list of treatments and sold an estimated 70K doses before getting busted.

News of the raid was published by the twitter feed of local police.

Exactly what recipients were injected with has yet to be determined by lab tests.

Patients were offered a three-dose course, with two of the injections supposedly giving full immunity. The first “dose” cost $15, while the follow-up chaser doses (which reportedly included cleansing drugs and multivitamins) cost another $100.

Ecuador has approved two vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech’s and AstraZeneca’s – for its national immunization against Covid-19, with two more products being considered. The government plans to roll out the effort in March, promising to vaccinate nine million adults for free by the end of the year.

Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that time, all civil and Constitutional rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of The USA PATRIOT Act.

Almost 20 years later, the U.S. has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a “virus” and it’s “super mutations” and a “riot” at the capitol. A lot of people called this and to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11, Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties be replaced with a new bill.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021

The DTPA is essentially the criminalization of speech, expression, and thought. It takes cancel culture a step further and all but outlaws unpopular opinions. This act will empower intelligence, law enforcement, and even military wings of the American ruling class to crack down on individuals adhering to certain belief systems and ideologies.

According to MI Congressman Fred Upton: 

“The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was the latest example of domestic terrorism, but the threat of domestic terrorism remains very real. We cannot turn a blind eye to it,” Upton said. “The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act will equip our law enforcement leaders with the tools needed to help keep our homes, families, and communities across the country safe.

Congressman Upton’s website gives the following information on DTPA:

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 would strengthen the federal government’s efforts to prevent, report on, respond to, and investigate acts of domestic terrorism by authorizing offices dedicated to combating this threat; requiring these offices to regularly assess this threat; and providing training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement in addressing it.

DTPA would authorize three offices, one each within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to monitor, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism. The bill also requires these offices to provide Congress with joint, biannual reports assessing the state of domestic terrorism threats, with a specific focus on white supremacists. Based on the data collected, DTPA requires these offices to focus their resources on the most significant threats.

DTPA also codifies the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would coordinate with United States Attorneys and other public safety officials to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism. The legislation requires DOJ, FBI, and DHS to provide training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in understanding, detecting, deterring, and investigating acts of domestic terrorism and white supremacy. Finally, DTPA directs DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Department of Defense to establish an interagency task force to combat white supremacist infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.

Those who read the bill aren’t so gung ho to shred the Constitution

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has some serious reservations. In a recent interview on Fox News Primetime, Gabbard stated that the bill effectively criminalizes half of the country. (Emphasis ours)

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

Gabbard, stating her concern about how the government will define what qualities they are searching for in potential threats to the country, went on to ask:

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this”

Tulsi said the bill would create a dangerous undermining of our civil liberties and freedoms in our Constitution. She also stated the DPTA essentially targets nearly half of the United States. 

“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.

Tulsi Gabbard is not the only one to criticize the legislation

Even the ACLU, one of the weakest organizations on civil liberties in the United States, has spoken out. While the ACLU was only concerned with how the bill would affect minorities or “brown people,” the organization stated that the legislation, while set forth under the guise of countering white supremacy, would eventually be used against non-white people.

The ACLU’s statement is true.

As with similar bills submitted under the guise of “protecting” Americans against outside threats, this bill will inevitably expand further. The stated goals of the DPTA are far-reaching and frightening enough. It would amount to an official declaration of the end to Free Speech.

Soon there will be no rights left for Americans

In the last twenty years, Americans have lost their 4th Amendment rights, and now they are losing their 1st. All that remains is the 2nd Amendment, and both the ruling class and increasing numbers of the American people know it.

Dark days are ahead.

A large group of Antifa terrorists rioted at the ICE building in South Portland this week. 

Mainstream media went radio silent on the attack when “60 Antifa terrorists burned American flags and threw projectiles and mortar explosives at federal police officers,” according to Federal Inquirer. 

Despite fleeing the US because of Antifa death threats, Conservative journalist Andy Ngo posted a series of videos Thursday showing the clash between Antifa terrorists and federal police. 

Portland Police Bureau told local news KATU that “the group began blocking traffic by moving construction cones and barriers into the street just before 10:00 p.m.” Wednesday night. Thirty minutes later, police said the group lit a dumpster on fire, and that was when federal officers exited the ICE building and began to repel protesters. 

At the #antifa riot at the Portland ICE facility overnight, they set a dumpster on fire & attempted to push it into the building. Federal officers came out to stop them. Antifa threw a mortar explosive at police. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/KVMpAJ3LJ1

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 28, 2021

It took a little over two hours for the Feds to disperse the crowd. They said crowd control munitions were used, and one person was taken into custody. 

Federal officers rushed out to make a targeted arrest of an #antifa at the riot outside the Portland @ICEgov facility last night. Karl Anders Nilsson, 20, was arrested & charged w/felony rioting & more. He was quickly released without bail. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/yReHDao6C7

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 28, 2021

Ngo posted a picture of the Antifa terrorist who was arrested. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration calls for “unity” and continues to label Trump supporters “domestic terrorists” while ignoring Antifa attacks on federal agents, law enforcement personnel, private and government property. 

In response to the latest rioting in Portland, Mayor of Sandy, Oregon Stan Pulliam, a Republican, told Fox News that the chaos in Portland is what happens when there’s a push to defund police.

Authored by Kenny MacDonald via The Libertarian Institute, 

On January 19th, the US Senate held confirmation hearings for Joe Biden’s Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken. Blinken has a reputation on both sides of the aisle for being exceptionally qualified for the job of America’s top diplomat, which is surprising considering he was on the wrong side of every major foreign policy blunder of the last 20 years; Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

When Senator Rand Paul asked Antony Blinken what lessons he has learned from his disastrous foreign policy record in Libya and Syria, Blinken replied that after “some hard thinking” he’s proud that he has done “everything we possibly can to make sure that diplomacy is the first answer, not the last answer, and that war and conflict is our last resort.”

Of course war is the last resort. Even the most hawkish war criminals would agree that war is the last resort. But the question is, war is the last resort to accomplish what? If war is the last resort to get a country to fully capitulate to Washington’s demands then eventually the US will be at war with everyone. To Blinken, war as the last resort can only be understood in the same way a mugger considers shooting his victim as a last resort to stealing their wallet.

Blinken displayed his hubris a few minutes later when he said, “The door should remain open” for Georgia to join NATO under the justification of curbing Russian aggression.

Rand Paul informed Blinken, “This would be adding Georgia, that’s occupied [by Russia], to NATO. Under Article 5, then we would go to war.”

Senator Paul is right. According to Washington, Russia has been occupying 20 percent of Georgia since 2008. Under the principle of collective defense in Article 5 of NATO, the US would be obligated to treat Russia’s occupation of the country of Georgia the same way the US would treat a Russian occupation of the US state of Georgia. That sounds like a recipe for war. But don’t worry, peaceniks, Antony Blinken has assured us that war is the last resort!

Blinken’s framing of the issue exposes his disingenuous approach. Russian aggression is a term used by Washington insiders to describe a Russian reaction to western aggression. Blinken knows that the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia was not Russian aggression, he calls it that because it suits his agenda and the American press is dependably ignorant enough to not ask questions.

In the 2008 war, Georgia was the aggressor against the South Ossetians, a people who are ethnically distinct from Georgians, and who have never—not even for one day—considered themselves a part of Georgia. The Ossetians have a history of Russian partiality; they were among the first ethnic groups in the region to join the Russian Empire in the 19th century and the USSR in the 1920s. Today, ethnic Ossetians straddle both sides of the current Russian border, and they are more aligned with the Russian government than with the Georgian government.

When Georgia gained sovereignty from the former Soviet Union in 1991, South Ossetia declared its independence. In response, Georgian forces invaded South Ossetia, initiating an armed conflict that killed more than 2,000 people. In 1992, a ceasefire agreement was signed in Sochi between Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia, which created a tripartite peacekeeping force led by Russia. Although the international community never acknowledged South Ossetia’s independence, they have enjoyed political autonomy since the 1992 Sochi agreement.

The Sochi agreement held up until Georgia’s ultra-nationalist President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the 2003 western-backed bloodless “Rose Revolution” coup-d’etat. The pro-western President Saakashvili advocated joining the EU and NATO, and insisted on asserting Georgian rule over South Ossetia. U.S. President George Bush supported the new Georgian president’s effort to bring Georgia into NATO, which for Russia would mean bringing a hostile military up to its border. In 2006, President Saakashvili offered South Ossetia autonomy in exchange for a political settlement with Georgia. A referendum was held, and the South Ossetian people overwhelmingly reaffirmed their desire for independence from Georgia.

In August, 2008, After exchanging artillery fire with South Ossetia, Georgia invaded South Ossetia’s capital city of Tskhinvali, killing 1,400 civilians and 18 Russian peacekeepers. Georgia’s attack triggered a Russian invasion into South Ossetia and Abkhazia (another breakaway region) to restore stability and protect peacekeeping forces.

Important video where @RandPaul questions Biden’s proposed Secretary of State Antony Blinken about his endless, repeated support for regime change wars — in Iraq, Libya, Syria — and how Blinken never learns from his “mistakes”. From @richimedhurst: https://t.co/OGTIkhP2Sw

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 26, 2021

Russia is by no means innocent—they used disproportionate force attacking targets inside Georgia—but only a Russophobic shill would conclude that this war was somehow caused by Russian aggression. The idea that Russia had no business intervening is laughable. Under the 1992 Sochi agreement, Russia took charge of a peacekeeping coalition to help prevent exactly the scenario that happened in the summer of 2008.

If George Bush had succeeded in bringing Georgia into NATO, the United States may have been dragged into war with Russia in 2008. Antony Blinken claims that NATO membership deters Russian aggression, but does he really believe that Russia would have been deterred from intervening to protect its own peacekeeping force? Does Blinken believe that Georgia—backed by the U.S. military—would have acted more cautiously in South Ossetia, or is it more likely they would have been bolder?

It’s undeniable that it is in Russia’s best interest to have pro-Russian countries on its borders. But pretending as if Russia is going to march into Tbilisi and reabsorb the entire country of Georgia into Russia is a level of paranoia that should disqualify anyone from having an opinion on the subject. The military conflict in Georgia is about the two breakaway regions and their right to self determination. Russia’s self interest happens to align with the wishes of the people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. By supporting Georgia, America—the champion of democracy and self determination—has adopted the position that South Ossetians didn’t really mean to repeatedly choose independence when given the option. This is a situation where America’s professed values are diametrically opposed to its policy of countering Russian influence everywhere on the map.

Antony Blinken should pause to consider if America’s policy objectives are worth fighting a war for. Is it worth confronting Russia in South Ossetia? Was it worth confronting Russia over Crimea and the Donbas in Ukraine? Is it a good idea to withdraw from the INF Nuclear Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty? Should we have spent the last 30 years marching NATO—a military alliance hostile to Russia—right up to the doorsteps of Russia? Is any of this really making us safer?

Blinken has bought into his own propaganda. To Blinken, regardless of the stubborn details of history, every conflict on Russia’s border is simply Russian aggression. Washington’s solution is the expansion of NATO, which Russia describes as “NATO encirclement.” This is an unacceptable military threat to Russia, who has a deep distrust of western intentions due to a long history of western invasions into Russia. Antony Blinken still lives in a bipolar world in which the United States and Russia are existential threats to each other’s existence. Every conflict and every alliance is only viewed through the lens of the New Cold War crusade against Russia. This maniacal crusade could thrust America in the unthinkable abyss of nuclear war.

Rand Paul got his answer, Antony Blinken learned nothing from all his mistakes! The danger isn’t merely resorting to war too early, the danger is in sticking our noses in conflicts that we have no business being in. War should be the last resort to defending America’s people and it’s homeland from foreign invasion; it should not be the last resort to enforcing America’s utopian vision on the world, and it certainly shouldn’t be the last resort to prevent an ethnic group in the South Caucasus—that almost no American has ever heard of—from the right to self-determination.

Kenny MacDonald is a former Navy SEAL and Afghanistan War veteran. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history. Youtube Channel. Medium. Facebook.

Manhattan’s “prime” retail real estate remained under pressure in the fourth quarter as the once too prominent shopping areas have transformed into “ghost towns.”

According to Bloomberg, retail rents across every major shopping district in the borough are plunging as a revitalization of the local economy continues to stall. 

Mayor DeBlasio’s solution to mitigate the virus spread has been restricting or banning indoor capacity at restaurants and limit mass gathering. More government regulation has hindered the local recovery. 

As if brick and mortar retail didn’t have enough problems to deal with considering the massive push towards e-commerce during the pandemic, Soho retail rents in the fourth quarter dropped 22% to $290 a square foot over the same period last year, according to a report by brokerage Cushman & Wakefield Plc.

Rents in Soho have been sliding for four years. They may eventually pressure commercial real estate firms who own buildings as higher vacancies and lower rents could reduce rental income, making it harder for them to service mortgages. 

Lower Fifth Avenue retail rents in the quarter dropped 20%. Rents in upscale Madison Avenue declined 16%.

Considering the pandemic, strict social distancing measures from the city government, and the explosion in e-commerce, it is nearly impossible for most to open retail stores and do business in once prominent areas of downtown Manhattan.

Cushman & Wakefield said the supply of retail space in most areas is surging. Availability rates in Fifth Avenue, Soho, and Meatpacking are about 24%. 

From 57th to 72nd streets, Madison Avenue had a shocking 40% availability rate for the second straight quarter. 

Herald Square/West 34th Street was the only area in the borough that experienced a decline in available retail space. 

With the retail bubble now popped, there were more than 9,300 retail department store closures across the US in 2020. 

The retail space remains oversupplied with stores, and the consolidation of stores countrywide could continue for the next couple of years. 

To sum up, the new normal in Manhattan will be high retail vacancies and lower rents with a local economy unable to recovery this year. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

How do you unrig a speculative rigged market? You don’t. It simply crashes into a putrid sinkhole.

Gamed speculation–using knowledge of how markets can be pushed to profit those doing the pushing–has long been decried. Declaring that the unproductive profiteering of greedy speculators will be the death of the Republic goes back to Rome, and in American history, to Alexander Hamilton’s battle in 1791 to pay the speculators who had bought up the new nation’s war bonds for pennies on the dollar full value plus interest.

Gamed speculation–and the cheery presumption that there will always be a liquid market of chumps willing to buy insiders’ pumped-up balloons–inflate and pop bubbles, with devastating consequences not just for the broken speculators but for conventional investors who naively believed “the market” was in fact a market (smirk) rather than a mechanism to enrich those who have the capital and knowledge to engineer profiteering behind the curtain. (Please see the still from The Wizard of Oz below.)

An interesting intersection of dynamics has led to the curtain being ripped aside by the democratized speculations of WallStreetBets, a crowdsourced pool of speculative capital which shares many characteristics with online gaming and live-action role playing (LARP) only the gains and losses are in real dollars (the fortunes made and lost in GameStop (GME) are very real indeed).

Wall Street and the politicos who profiteer as insiders are naturally horrified by both developments:

1. That the curtain of how super-wealthy insiders and their only the wealthy can play entities such as hedge funds have manipulated markets behind the curtain for decades, leading to an unprecedented economic inequality in which the top 10% skim fully 97% of all income from capital. To have their game hijacked by a bunch of young gamers is beyond appalling to the New Nobility, who firmly believe their insider manipulations were the exclusive preserve of their crowd in the castle.

(Recall that ours is a thoroughly Neofeudal Economy, with a New Nobility of financiers, Big Tech monopolists, et al. who own the vast majority of capital and political power, and a restive mass of commoners holding either no capital or phantom capital that will dissipate into thin air in the next financial upheaval.

2. Not only are the mechanisms of manipulation now visible to all, an unruly rabble of commoners has ganged together to play their own version of the speculative game of skimming staggering profits from a rigged “market.” How dare they!

No wonder the skimmers and scammers and political refuse that passes for “leadership” in today’s America are shocked, shocked by the open and openly gleeful democratized speculation that (like cryptocurrencies) is enriching the wrong people, i.e. commoners. It’s as if the debt-serfs, tax donkeys and decapitalized peasants stormed the castle at night and broke open the jewel box and the stash of champagne, and proceeded to swing from the chandeliers, mocking the self-serving privileged who’d been pillaging the nation for decades via their legalized looting.

Mark, Jesse and I discuss these developments in our latest Salon podcast:

AxisOfEasy Salon #36: Democratizing Stonk Market Manipulation (1:03 hrs)

Where do these developments lead? An interesting question. Unfortunately for Wall Street insiders and their political-scum apologists, we can’t unsee the levers behind the curtain. The insiders can’t put their legalized looting genie back in the bottle, for everyone has seen how “markets” are manipulated to enrich those pulling the levers.

If the political-scum apologists want to end democratized speculation, they’re going to face blowback when they try to protect the rights of the New Nobility to continue manipulating markets to their exclusive advantage. The rage against the New Nobility’s lock on capital, rigged markets and 97% of all the income generated by capital has been simmering to a boil, and political-scum apologists had best tread carefully.

How do you unrig a rigged speculative market? You don’t. It simply crashes into a putrid sinkhole. Phantom capital vanishes into the thin air from whence it came. Ponder the similarities of the Cisco Systems speculative frenzy in 2000 and Tesla’s speculative frenzy in 2020.

Dang, the levers of the machinery behind the curtain just broke.

*  *  *

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Joe Biden has moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and one of his administration’s most difficult tasks is going to be the restoration of trust in the American government. Even though the foundations of U.S. democracy withstood the events of January 06, cracks are still in place, as shown by continuing suspicion and accusations on Capitol Hill. Along with distrust inside government, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the nation is divided with a recent survey finding that a mere 42 percent of the U.S. public trusted the government in late 2020.

The findings come from Edelman Research’s latest Trust Barometer which polled 33,000 people in 28 countries about their trust in various institutions between October 19 and November 18, 2020. Globally, ‘trust’ collapsed in the second half of 2020…

However, despite the turbulence of 2020, a year where hundreds of thousands of Americans died from Covid-19, the research found that trust in U.S. government actually grew three percent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Still, the U.S. figure is far lower than many other countries with trust in government in Australia and Canada standing at 61 percent and 59 percent, respectively. It is also slightly lower than the UK where the government’s Brexit strategy has proven highly controversial with public approval of the institution 45 percent in late 2020.

Some of the highest levels of trust in government were seen in Asia where 82 percent of Chinese respondents trusted the institution, along with 79 percent of people polled in India. Japan was among the lowest at 37 percent while the figure was lower still in Spain and Russia at just 34 percent.

South Korea, UK, and China saw the biggest collapses in trust of government in 2020…

Ironically, “business” is now the only institution that is seen as both ‘competent’ and ‘ethical’, with government seen as neither…

The stakes are high for 2021 and improvement will likely hinge on how the pandemic plays out, particularly when it comes to the efficiency of vaccination programs and getting economies back on track without compromising public safety.