Tag: finance

Over the past decade, the one common theme despite the political upheaval and growing social and geopolitical instability, was that the market would keep marching higher and the Fed would continue injecting liquidity into the system. The second common theme is that despite sparking unprecedented asset price inflation, prices as measured across the broader economy – using the flawed CPI metric and certainly stagnant worker wages – would remain subdued (as a reminder, the Fed is desperate to ignite broad inflation as that is the only way the countless trillions of excess debt can be eliminated and has so far failed to do so).

The Fed’s failure to reach its inflation target – which prompted the US central bank to radically overhaul its monetary dogma last month and unveil Flexible Average Inflation Targeting (or FAIT) whereby the Fed will allow inflation to run hot without hiking rates – has sparked broad criticism from the economic establishment, even though as we showed in June, deflation is now a direct function of the Fed’s unconventional monetary policies as the lower yields slide, the lower the propensity to spend. In other words, the harder the Fed fights to stimulate inflation, the more deflation and more saving it spurs as a result (incidentally this is not the first time this “discovery” was made, in December we wrote “One Bank Makes A Stunning Discovery – The Fed’s Rate Cuts Are Now Deflationary“).

In short, ever since the Fed launched QE and NIRP, it has been making the situation it has been trying to “fix” even worse while blowing the biggest asset price bubble in history.

And having recently accepted that its preferred stimulus pathway has failed to boost the broader economy, the blame has fallen on how monetary policy is intermediated, specifically the way the Fed creates excess reserves which end up at commercial banks instead of “tricking down” all the way to the consumer level.

To be sure, in the aftermath of the covid pandemic shutdowns the Fed has tried to short-circuit this process, and in conjunction with the Treasury it has launched “helicopter money” which has resulted in a direct transfer of funds to US corporations via PPP loans, as well as to end consumers via the emergency $600 weekly unemployment benefits which however are set to expire unless renewed by Congress as explained last week, as Democrats and Republicans feud over which fiscal stimulus will be implemented next.

And yet, the lament is that even as the economy was desperately in need of a massive liquidity tsunami, the funds created by the Fed and Treasury (now that the US operates under a quasi-MMT regime) did not make their way to those who need them the most: end consumers.

Which is why we read with great interest a Bloomberg interview with two former Fed officials: Simon Potter, who led the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s markets group i.e., he was the head of the Fed’s Plunge Protection Team for years, and Julia Coronado, who spent eight years as an economist for the Fed’s Board of Governors, who are among the innovators brainstorming solutions to what has emerged as the most crucial and difficult problem facing the Fed: get money swiftly to people who need it most in a crisis.

The response was striking: the two propose creating a monetary tool that they call recession insurance bonds, which draw on some of the advances in digital payments, which will be wired instantly to Americans.

As Coronado explained the details, Congress would grant the Federal Reserve an additional tool for providing support—say, a percent of GDP [in a lump sum that would be divided equally and distributed] to households in a recession. Recession insurance bonds would be zero-coupon securities, a contingent asset of households that would basically lie in wait. The trigger could be reaching the zero lower bound on interest rates or, as economist Claudia Sahm has proposed, a 0.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The Fed would then activate the securities and deposit the funds digitally in households’ apps.

As Potter added, “it took Congress too long to get money to people, and it’s too clunky. We need a separate infrastructure. The Fed could buy the bonds quickly without going to the private market. On March 15 they could have said interest rates are now at zero, we’re activating X amount of the bonds, and we’ll be tracking the unemployment rate—if it increases above this level, we’ll buy more. The bonds will be on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet; the digital dollars in people’s accounts will be on the liability side.”

Essentially, the Fed is proposing creating a hybrid digital legal tender unlike reserves which are stuck within the financial system, and which it can deposit directly into US consumer accounts. In short, as we summarized “The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis“, something we reminded readers of on Monday:

There still appears to be some confusion about the endgame. The Fed itself spelled it out.

The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis: “by getting money to consumers you can limit the depth and duration of a recession”https://t.co/bG03TxiviT

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 22, 2020

So this morning, as if to confirm our speculation of what comes next, Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester delivered a speech to the Chicago Payment Symposium titled “Payments and the Pandemic“, in which after going through the big picture boilerplate, Mester goes straight to the matter at hand.

In the section titled “Central Bank Digital Currencies”, the Cleveland Fed president writes that “the experience with pandemic emergency payments has brought forward an idea that was already gaining increased attention at central banks around the world, that is, central bank digital currency (CBDC).”

And in the shocking punchline, then goes on to reveal that “legislation has proposed that each American have an account at the Fed in which digital dollars could be deposited, as liabilities of the Federal Reserve Banks, which could be used for emergency payments.“

But wait it gets better, because in launching digital cash, the Fed would then be able to scrap “anonymous” physical currency entirely, and track every single banknote from its “creation” all though the various transactions that take place during its lifetime. And, eventually, the Fed could remotely “destroy” said digital currency when it so decides. Oh, and in the process the Fed would effectively disintermediate commercial banks, as it would both provide loans to US consumers and directly deposit funds into their accounts, effectively making the entire traditional banking system obsolete. Here are the details:

Other proposals would create a new payments instrument, digital cash, which would be just like the physical currency issued by central banks today, but in a digital form and, potentially, without the anonymity of physical currency. Depending on how these currencies are designed, central banks could support them without the need for commercial bank involvement via direct issuance into the end-users’ digital wallets combined with central-bank-facilitated transfer and redemption services. The demand for and use of such instruments need further consideration in order to evaluate whether such a central bank digital currency would allow for quicker and more ubiquitous payments in times of emergency and more generally. In addition, a range of potential risks and policy issues surrounding central bank digital currency need to be better understood, and the costs and benefits evaluated.

The Federal Reserve has been researching issues raised by central bank digital currency for some time. The Board of Governors has a technology lab that has been building and testing a range of distributed ledger platforms to understand their potential benefits and tradeoffs. Staff members from several Reserve Banks, including Cleveland Fed software developers, are contributing to this effort. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is also engaged in a multiyear effort, working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to experiment with technologies that could be used for a central bank digital currency. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has established an innovation center, in partnership with the Bank for International Settlements, to identify and develop in-depth insights into critical trends and financial technology of relevance to central banks. Experimentation like this is an important ingredient in assessing the benefits and costs of a central bank digital currency, but does not signal any decision by the Federal Reserve to adopt such a currency. Issues raised by central bank digital currency related to financial stability, market structure, security, privacy, and monetary policy all need to be better understood.

To summarize, the wheels are already turning on a plan that sees the Fed depositing “digital dollars” to “each American”, a stunning development that essentially sees the Fed bypass Congress, endowing the Central Bank with targeted “fiscal stimulus” capabilities, and which could lead to a dramatic reflationary spike as it is the lower income quartile segments of US society that are the marginal price setters for economic goods and services. And having already implemented Average Inflation Targeting, the resulting burst of inflation would be viewed by the Fed as insufficient on its own (as it would have to persist for a long time over the “average” period whatever it may end up being), to tighten monetary policy. In fact, even as inflation rages – which some alternative inflationary measures to CPI suggest it already is – the Fed will have a semantic loophole in explaining just why it needs to keep inflation scorching hot even as the standard of living in America collapses to the benefit of a handful of asset holders.

Why? The CBO showed the answer yesterday:

Absent a massive burst of inflation in the coming years which inflates away the hundreds of trillions in federal debt, the unprecedented debt tsunami that is coming would mean the end to the American way of life as we know it. And to do that, the Fed is now finalizing the last steps of a process that revolutionizes the entire fiat monetary system, launching digital dollars which effectively remove commercial banks as financial intermediaries, as they will allow the Fed itself to make direct deposits into Americans’ “digital wallets”, in the process also making Congress and the entire Legislative branch redundant, as a handful of technocrats quietly take over the United States.

Authored by ‘Austrian Peter’ via The Burning Platform,

A reader recently wrote me a long letter on how he feels about all this ‘Plandemic’ stuff.  I thought it would be good to share it as there is so much in it which rings bells of truth for me…

[emphasis ours]

I’ve just woken up after reading ZeroHedge late into the night. I awoke with the conviction that Covid is being used to roll out a police state:

They know it’s not deadly, it’s no longer spreading and Lockdown is killing off the few small businesses which remain viable. Yet Boris now insists upon banning the assembly of more than 6 people. He has recalled some petty bureaucrats to act as street enforcers and requested people become snitches who report on their neighbours for any breaches of these guidelines. This automatically means we must now all fear our neighbours, or strangers who take our car number. How better to destroy the mutual trust upon which society is built?

Just think if one were to refuse to bend the knee.  In Australia and Spain the police have been caught using excessive force against those not wearing masks. Intimidating isn’t it? I’m thinking I may have to start using one. Yet the science is clear – masks offer no protection.

So we know these new restrictions are not being driven by the authority’s concern for our health. And what is the difference between where we are now and making it normal for the police to come to your door and arrest you for a breach of their protocols? What is the difference between where we are now and an oppressive police state?

There is only one difference between now and full-on state oppression:  A change in the Zeitgeist.

They need an event that will change the mood of the people – an event or a series of events that make us afraid of ‘them’. A psychological shock that will give the police the conviction that things are so bad ‘a little force is necessary’ to ensure things don’t get out of control. And then, magically, the current ‘temporary restrictions’ become state oppression. What could that game changer be?

Imagine this November: The US has 100 cities descending into what looks like the start of civil war as patriots turn out to stop Antifa burning down Middle America. Kamala Harris is calling for the army to ‘evict’ Trump because he refuses to leave the White House on the grounds that he won the popular vote while the mail-in ballots were fraudulent.

For the Brits, Brexit has caused problems at the ports – among other things some foodstuffs are not getting through. Germany’s economy has cratered after the EU stopped them exporting cars to the UK (Trumps already tariffed them), and the EU’s bank has insisted Germany let the 500 non-viable, medium sized biz (currently kept alive with emergency funding) go bankrupt.

Deutsche Bank collapses and this initiates a global banking crisis. Europe has no way of saving its banks as all the European economies are so damaged and 20% of workers have already been laid off.  It’s a Greek style banking crisis on steroids. People are pulling out cash in the expectation of daily cash limits. Physical gold will have already disappeared from the market place. So any biz with money in the bank is frantically buying bitcoin in an attempt to avoid their working capital being ‘bailed in’.

The banks will have already pulled the plug on their most vulnerable customers – the airlines – so virtually no planes are flying. Dover is jammed up with lorries lining the approach roads. So no one can leave Blighty.  And if you did, the emergency measures intended to pre-empt Covid’s Second Wave require you to be kept in quarantine at your destination. Locked down in a hotel, under military guard (as in NZ), for 4 weeks at your own expense and with frequent testing to ensure you are not a carrier. With full bio-metric data being collected and filed on an EU wide register. In practice this means that travel becomes so fraught that escape from your homeland is just about impossible.

You get the gist?  November could be the end of world as we know it’ (TEOTWAWKI).  But my point is this: Why are we looking at such a catastrophe if their goal is not a police state? No one destroys the globe’s economy and creates the conditions for a 10 year Greater Depression by accident. This has to be a planned, intentional destruction of much of global civilization.

The evidence is overwhelming. This civilization has been purposefully destroyed. Right now we’re in an unreal time (like the beautiful summer just before WW1’s carnage).  It’s like Wiley E Coyote who has gone over the cliff, is still running but not yet started to fall. But when we fall, how will people react as they realize that they will never work again, never pay off the mortgage, never collect their pensions?  If we have state oppression and economic chaos by Christmas then what will be the next stage of their takeover?

The world’s economy is already doomed. The already broken supply chains ensure it can only get worse.  Once the derivative market goes, and banks can no longer fund the credit lines crucial for importers and exporters, then trade will collapse and thus food supplies cease.

It would seem to be inevitable that America is going to see more conflict as the Dems & Soros show no signs of wishing to abort their colour revolution. Maybe in 2021, maybe a year or two later, but there will come a time when a credit shortage leads to deflation. So the banks will print more and then rain down helicopter money which will lead to inflation. And then the currencies will start collapsing. Many people understand that this is inevitable. But what happens when people come to accept that money isn’t go to be worth the paper it’s printed on?  And thus keeping a job may not be worth the danger of leaving your house or of leaving safety.

I summarise one of last night’s articles:

“the beasts of burden don’t rebel, they just no longer show up. Not showing up can take a number of forms: early retirement, sick leave, a demand to work halftime, a workers’ compensation stress leave, and of course, resignation and quitting as in: “take this job and shove it”.  They slip noiselessly into the cracks and crevasses and once they’re gone, there’s nobody left to replace them.”

“As the Vital Few 4% realize the system no longer works for them and opt out, this will have an out-sized effect on the 64%, most likely urban dwellers, highly dependent on increasingly brittle, fragile services that depend on the Vital Few for their functionality. Think of London’s tube train drivers phoning in sick – ideology won’t matter.

Those dropping out may be Conservative or Progressive or they may have lost interest entirely in politics and all the other circuses that serve to distract the populace from the crises dissolving the glue that held the system together. “So I won’t get rich, that dream died a long time ago.”  What I’m interested in now is getting my life back and getting the heck out of Dodge as things fall apart.”

The rich will escape to their holiday cottages. The poor will riot – but what then?  As the social facade cracks, and the economic system breaks, there is neither a society nor an economy to fall back on. By Christmas it will be obvious that normality has gone for ever.

So what will ‘they’ do with millions of unemployed, frightened people?  If  ‘they’ leave the internet on then the people will start to organize – first politically – but when that doesn’t work, riots and then finally revolution. Turn it off and they will riot without being organized. Turn off phones and all hell will break out. Don’t turn them off and the kids will organize against the state – trash cars or burn down the local police station.  Have you noticed how some police stations look like forts?

My point is that it’s very hard not to see ‘events’ hitting the fan this November. And once they do it’s very hard to see life ever going back to stability, let alone ‘normality’. Rather, there will be an overwhelming need to control {oppress} the population before they take over the state. But what do you do with millions of unemployed in a failed economy who are doomed to losing their currency, long term poverty and probably food shortages. There is only one thing ‘they’ can do. Kill them.

Ideally, for the elite, Covid’s Second Wave will have a higher morbidity rate. Enough to steadily reduce the population but not so fast they can’t be buried in plague pits. It would have to be bad enough to justify a harsh Lockdown but it’s difficult to see that being feasible without giving the people electricity, internet & food and the money to pay for it. And even then it’s only a temporary fix as Lockdown can’t last for ever. Permanent Lockdown would soon destroy the currency which will mean no electricity or food.

Maybe Covid-19 v1.0 was supposed to kill off more people but it failed. Or maybe it worked as intended – they didn’t want to risk killing off too many in case the Lockdown failed and we revolted. But I don’t see they have much choice now. ‘The Fourth Turning’ will be turbulent until 2025 and things won’t really be resolved until 2030. How are they going to manage us for another 10 years? How will they control us? Feed us?

They can start a war but no one is going to turn up. Fight a war for the elite? Use a gun to kill people you don’t know?  That’s not going to happen. And they need to preserve the professional soldiers to ‘maintain the peace’ in the cities. So what options do they have but to release a more potent bio-weapon – nuclear war perhaps?

One of the scary things about working through ‘their’ options is that they don’t have many. Things have gone too far – they’ve destroyed the world’s economy. The system is stuffed. What are ‘they’ going to do with 2bn unemployed people. Even if there is enough food but the US has a developing dust bowl, Africa’s suffered huge locust devastation, and China’s preparing for food shortages. How do unemployed people pay for it?  Who can give them money without destroying the currency or if the currency is already destroyed?

A simple thing like the current fall in the number of sunspots is indicating an immediate future of colder weather and lower crop yields. Add into that, fuel shortages for agricultural machinery, lack of fertilizer – Nitrogen is made by burning lots of oil, lack of supply lines, and loss of credit lines. With people in Lockdown ‘they’ would be relying on a planned economy (not a free market) which is going to be inefficient. A planned economy is completely incapable of ensuring a stable food supply when there are shortages and the world is chaotic.

It’s not even feeding our cities that will be prime problem. It will be feeding the cities in Mexico and North Africa. They can’t cope with food price inflation. But they won’t starve – they’ll flood into the USA or cross the Mediterranean – lucky us!  And what will Erdogan in Turkey do to feed his people – nothing good!  If there are real food shortages then note that there are huge Muslim populations in France & Sweden, Turks and refugees in Germany, Pakistani ghettos in UK and plenty more where they all came from.

I’m feeling concerned. The problem is I can’t see Brexit solving our problems. Sure, it may not exacerbate them as much as I fear. November’s events may not trigger us into a state of oppression. But do you see my point?  Things have got so bad, they can only get worse. November is bound to see some changes and they may well trigger a change in the Zeitgeist, though how significant depends on ‘events, dear boy, events’.

But whatever happens I think it’s virtually guaranteed that both the economy and society will keep on deteriorating.

Do you think I’m right?

Will November be the tipping point?

Is there any way back?

Will there be anything to go ‘back’ to?

Or else, is it a case of:  “we’re doomed, I tell ya, doomed”.  And what happens when more people work out that the elites have created a situation where their only option is to rapidly reduce the population! Famine will lead to uncontrollable social conflict, perhaps with Muslims massacring whites in general or the local Jewish populations in particular. I think that much conflict could see ‘them‘ lose control.

Thus it’s hard to see any other viable method than a bio-weapon. Agenda 21 could be implemented on schedule. And if not, the solution will need to be applied within a few years, certainly before 2025.  Timing may depend on vaccine production as there will have to be at least enough vaccine for essential workers, the police, the military and the management class if the elite are to retain control.

Britain is scrambling to avoid a second lockdown after its first one six months ago, with PM Boris Johnson just introducing expanded new social distancing rules across the UK, as the government’s top adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warns “the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days.” 

Specifically the latest surge in COVID-19 cases at current rates could mean 50,000 cases a day by mid-October, Vallance warned at the start of the week. In introducing new measures to fight the spread Tuesday night, Johnson urged citizens to “summon discipline, resolve and a spirit of togetherness.” The new measures will last a whopping six months with warnings of “a difficult winter” — also at a moment total infection numbers approach the half-million mark (as of Wednesday: 409,729 people tested positive since the start, including 41,862 deaths).

However all the dire pandemic predictions have naturally resulted in a surge of panic buying, similar to what happened across the West and in the United States as lockdowns hit last Spring.

“Supermarket bosses have urged shoppers not to start panic buying, while Asda is bringing in 1,000 safety marshals, as the industry braces for a potential change in shopping habits ahead of new lockdown restrictions,” The Guardian reports late Wednesday.

Discount supermarket chains Tesco and Aldi urged customers this week not to start stockpiling goods, saying was “unnecessary” and seeking to calm fears of disruption in supply chains. 

Aldi in the UK, for example, posted a public statement saying:

“There is no need to buy more than you usually would. I would like to reassure you that our stores remain fully stocked and ask that you continue to shop considerately.”

“We have remained open for our customers throughout the pandemic and will continue to have daily deliveries, often multiple times a day, across all of our products.”

And CEO Dave Lewis of the popular store Tesco said in a televised interview that Britons should not panic: “The message would be one of reassurance. I think the UK saw how well the food industry managed last time, so there’s very good supplies of food,” he said, describing an improved plan for rapid restocking.

“We just don’t want to see a return to unnecessary panic buying because that creates a tension in the supply chain that’s not necessary,” he added.

Via NPR: If the U.K.’s rate of new coronavirus cases doubles four more times, Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance said, “you would end up with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October per day.”

Given the record number of new cases, the sense of fear and panic is not likely to abate in the short term:

New UK coronavirus cases hit 6,178 on Wednesday, according to the latest government data. The number is the highest daily level since 1 May, when the UK was in full lockdown.

Here were the numbers as of the prime minister’s Tuesday night address:

Local UK grocery stores have reported they’ve started hiring and stationing extra security personnel in preparation to monitor both numbers of shoppers at once, and mask and other guidelines. 

Authored by Shaurya Malwa via Decrypt.co,

In brief

• Three power plants in Iran will soon offer their electricity outputs to interested Bitcoin miners.

• The move comes after a July ruling enabled power plants to legally mine Bitcoin.

• Iran has turned to Bitcoin mining as a potential source of income amidst broader economic worries.

Three major power plants in Iran will soon offer their energy outputs exclusively for Bitcoin mining, the country’s Thermal Power Plant Holding Company (TPPH) announced on Monday, as per a report on local news outlet Tehran Times.

Irani power plants receive benefits and subsidies from the government on their fuel supplies, which are in turn used to produce power. And while they were earlier barred from mining cryptocurrencies, a new ruling in July allowed power plants to engage in the business—albeit after gaining necessary government approval, licenses, and complying with the tariffs set for crypto mining.

The TPPH now wants a slice of that pie. It said it will soon offer a tender for the electricity output of three power plants for the purpose of Bitcoin mining.

 “The necessary equipment has been installed in three power plants of Ramin, Neka, and Shahid Montazeri, and the auction documents will be uploaded on the SetadIran.ir website in the near future,” said TPPH head Mohsen Tarztalab.

Tarztalab said that the sale of electricity to Bitcoin miners presented a new, stable way of generating profits in the electricity sector.

He added the three power plants will only use their expansion turbines for the purpose of Bitcoin mining, which uses natural gas to produce power and is a cheaper alternative to liquid fuels like gas oil.

Such turbines are not connected to the national grid—which distributes power across the country for commercial purposes—and will be wholly used by the power plans to mine Bitcoin instead, explained Tarztalab.

Bitcoin adoption for a reason

The July ruling is said to be a savior for the country’s electricity industry. Repeated price hikes and the obligation to supply electricity at stable prices to subscribers has created falling profits for Iranian power producers in the past, the report noted.

Iran’s adoption of Bitcoin comes at a time when the country grapples with a bleak economic outlook and international trade sanctions imposed by influential governments, such as the US, over its controversial nuclear power program.

However, Bitcoin mining is providing them a new way for them to generate income, it added. And mining is a big opportunity.

Iranian ministers said in 2019 that regulated, industrial-scale Bitcoin mining can pull in, annually, an estimated $8.5 billion.

As highlighted by the latest edition of the European Drug Report, Sweden is the country with the most drug-induced deaths per million of the population in Europe.

In 2018, 81 people died per million inhabitants, ahead of the United Kingdom’s 76 drug-induced deaths per million. Finland and Ireland jointly had the third-highest death rate with 72 deaths per million.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As tragic as these figures are, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that they pale in comparison with the toll of America’s opioid crisis.

In 2018, the U.S. experienced 314.5 drug-related deaths per million of its population and it lost more inhabitants to drugs than the next 20 countries combined.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A disturbing testimony from a psychiatrist outlines that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is in such a bad state in prison that he should be considered at ‘high risk’ of suicide.

The Daily Mail reports that Professor Michael Kopelman testified during an extradition hearing in London that Assange has “begun making preparations to end his own life including confessing to a Catholic priest, drafting farewell letters to his family and drafting a will.”

Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London, also said that Assange told him he experienced hearing voices in his head saying “we’re coming to get you.”

“He reported auditory hallucinations, which were voices either inside or outside his head, somatic hallucinations, funny bodily experiences, these have now disappeared,” Kopelman said.

“He also has a long history of musical hallucinations, which is maybe a separate phenomenon, that got worse when he was in prison,” the psychiatrist added.

“The voices are things like, “you are dust, you are dead, we are coming to get you”. They are derogatory and persecutory,” he continued, adding “They seem to have diminished. Subsequently the musical hallucinations have also reduced, and the somatic hallucinations have disappeared.”

Kopelman even noted that Assange “reported a near-death experience and wondered if the CIA would find a way to get him or mess with his head” noting that this “may or may not” be paranoia.

Kopelman warned that “The risk of suicide arises out of clinical factors…but it is the imminence of extradition and or an actual extradition that would trigger the attempt, in my opinion.”

Assange is languishing in Belmarsh, a notoriously horrid maximum security prison housing murderers and terrorists. For much of the time since being arrested on leaving the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange has been kept in solitary confinement. He is also heavily medicated.

The wikileaks founder faces extradition to the US, where he would be charged with an 18-count indictment related to hacking computers and conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.

Professor Kopelman also noted during the hearing that Assange has been depressed “certainly throughout the time I’ve been seeing him.”

“It’s fluctuated a bit, his appetite has fluctuated, he’s had persistent problems with sleep and his mood state is worst in the early hours of the morning and that’s stayed consistent,” Kopelman added.

“Mr Assange was very reluctant to talk about his suicidal ideas and plans because he feared he would be put on constant watch or isolation,” the psychiatrist further explained.

The report notes that the QC for the US government argued that Assange is ‘exaggerating’ his psychiatric symptoms and ‘self reporting’ suicidal ideas, and that Kopelman is an ‘advocate’.

“I’m a psychiatrist, you’re a lawyer. I make my diagnoses on my criteria,” the professor is said to have replied.

Assange’s QC reportedly read out a list of multiple times, at least ten, that Assange had requested the Samaritans suicide prevention helpline number between August and November 2019.

Assange has been in the prison since April of last year:

Since much of the media is now centred around generating outrage and deplatforming dissent, “journalists” don’t have to worry about being targeted by the establishment because they no longer do actual journalism.

That’s why they’re all cheering Assange’s arrest today.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 11, 2019

Hillary Clinton responded to the arrest of Julian Assange by laughing and joking about it. https://t.co/xCDg5MjtAh

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 12, 2019

Julian Assange is now so ill he can barely talk. This is how society treats its transgressors.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) May 29, 2019

Julian Assange is still isolated, medicated and silenced in Belmarsh prison. Don’t forget about him.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) September 12, 2019

Julian Assange is literally dying in solitary confinement and no one really cares. Everyone who helped Trump get elected was targeted and virtually destroyed, and has there been an adequate response?

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 26, 2019

Julian Assange is still dying in prison for the crime of doing journalism and virtually no journalist on the planet cares.

They’re too obsessed with defaming and deplatforming their ideological enemies because journalism is dead.

And so might Julian Assange be pretty soon.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 30, 2019

Julian Assange: “I’m slowly dying here.”

He is sedated, in solitary 23 hours a day.

He’s in a prison meant for dangerous criminals & terrorists.

All for the crime of journalism.

If the Chinese had done this to a dissident, there’d be outrage.

Where are the protests?

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) December 31, 2019

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

COVID 19 is being used to create a global fascist dictatorship. From New Zealand to the the U.S, so called western democracies have adopted and developed the Chinese model of technocracy to create a single biosecurity State. This globalist corporate State is to be centrally controlled and administered by a distant global governance cartel of appointed bureaucrats. Tasked only to serve the interests of a tiny, disproportionately wealthy group we can call the parasite class.

Every aspect of your life will be monitored and controlled, as we move towards the ultimate surveillance State. Your ability to work, to socialise, to travel, conduct business, access public services and to purchase essential goods and services will be dictated to you, and restricted, by the State, based upon your biosecurity or immunity status.

This transformation process is well underway. You are no longer a human being, you are a biosecurity risk. As such you may be removed to a military controlled quarantine camp as and when the State sees fit. Detention without trial will be the norm. All protest will be outlawed unless the protest suits the agenda of the parasite class.

You will not leave home without it.

Your children will no longer be your own. They will belong to the State. Parental consent for medical procedures will be presumed or, in the case of mandatory procedures, not required. Once the biosecurity State is firmly established consent will be a distant memory.

We have a diminishing window of opportunity to stop this global fascist dictatorship. Violent protest will not work. Not only are they morally indefensible, they are tactically naive.

Keeping you safe?

Violence is the language of the oppressor. The global State holds total dominion over instigation of the use of force. To crack down, in response to a violent uprising, is the fervent hope of the oppressor. It allows the State to exercise more, not less, authoritarian control.

In reality, to stop it, all we need to do is refuse, en masse, to comply. We must do this with our eyes open. It won’t be easy and many of us will face harsh punishment from a desperate tyrant. However, if we don’t stand up now, we are condemning future generations to unimaginable levels of slavery and misery.

In order to foist this upon us, the apparatus behind it has invested billions in propaganda. The fascist technocracy, presently being being constructed at an alarming pace, requires our cooperation. Without it, the biosecurity dictatorship cannot gain its desired authority.

Our representative democratic systems are not what our forebears gave everything to build. The parasite class have hollowed them out, replacing the organs of State with their own, leaving only the shell as a chimera to maintain our delusions and keep us believing that we have a semblance of control.

It is a fools errand to attempt to use their system to win our freedom. It is designed to control us. Appeals to their courts will never deliver justice to us. Temporary, small victories will always be overturned. Nor can we vote harder expecting yet another of their puppets to save us.

The purpose of the representative democratic apparition is to centralise all global power in the hands of the parasite class. This course is inexorable and, while we persist in our electoral folly, we will not alter it.

We must build something new to replace it. The obvious solution is the decentralisation of all power to the individual. We must construct a voluntary society.

Without us, without our obedience, the parasite class is currently nothing but a group of ineffectual, wannabe plutocrats, sat on piles of paper, created from nothing and worth nothing. If we don’t obey, there are no rulers.

Should we refuse to use their monetary system, their usury will be fruitless; if we decide not to pay their taxes, we cut will off their economic exploitation and if we never vote for their bureaucrats we won’t consent to their nominated, elected aristocracy.

We just don’t know that we have all the power.

We are the scientists and the engineers, the doctors and the nurses; we are the builders and the architects, the mechanics and the farmers; we are the soldiers who kill and die for their enrichment, we are the police officers who enforce their unlawful rules; we are the people who build and work in their factories, we are the office workers and bank clerks who administer their system, the shop workers, the programmers, the writers, the artists, the teachers and we are the people who, through our belief in their mythical authority, allow the parasite class to control us.

We are the meek, we are the receivers of all knowledge and all wisdom. We possess all the technology we need and we are the experts. It is our world, leased from our future generations, not theirs. Without us the parasite class are utterly incapable of controlling anyone or anything.

We must create, not destroy. We must liberate science, technology, art and knowledge itself from their occult control. We must build alternative decentralised systems, enabling humanity to live as a coexistence of free, sovereign beings. We must focus upon self sufficiency, we must support each other, turn our backs on the control systems of the parasitic State and build our own autonomous communities.

We must refuse to comply with any and all attempts to centralise power. We can do this by rejecting, outright, the concept of authority.

No one ever has any right to tell anyone else what to do. But nor does anyone ever have the right to cause any harm or loss to another human being. We can live in harmony because we are capable of respecting each other equally, without reservation. We know this.

Not a single human being on this Earth has the right to order any other to obey their authority. None of us possess this power. Therefore, this power can never be derived from us. We do not have it to give. The State’s claim of authority, gleaned from their electoral anointment ceremony, is a charade. Their authority does not exist in reality, only in our imaginations.

We don’t need anyone to tell us how to live. Nor how to deal with the tiny minority incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions. A voluntary society would be a society without rulers, not a society without rules.

We don’t need their systems of authority to live in relative peace and harmony and we never have. Spontaneous order is all around us. We already live the overwhelming majority of our lives free from State control and without the need for anyone to impose any rulers upon us.

A disease, or a control mechanism?

With a few exceptions, no State compels the farmer to grow crops, no State coerces labourers to pick the harvest or engineers to design and operate packing plants and no State forces anyone to transport the produce to market nor any consumer to buy it.

This system isn’t controlled by any single authority. It is an intricate, often global, network of free individuals, each acting in their own best interests, creating a harmonious social order way beyond the operational control of any State. The State has no part in this social order of immeasurable complexity.

This ordered social construct, bringing food to the family table, is entirely voluntary. Our society is built from millions of such systems and trillions of voluntary actions and exchanges that happen every day. The voluntary society already exists. All we need do is recognise it, and then seize it. The State is, and always has been, entirely unnecessary. It is a hindrance, not a utility.

What benefit does the State and its regulation bring to our food supply chains? It claims to protect it. Protect for whom?

It removes the free market to protect the profits of multinational corporations. It imposes taxes, raising everyone’s costs, to pay for its wars of neocolonialist exploitation. It forces wages down, it cuts the margins for everyone from growers to retailers, pushing some into poverty to be preyed upon by the same corporate State.

Its food standard regulations, supposedly designed to keep us safe, effectively reduce food quality, creates massive waste, reduces nutrition, causes more sickness and lengthens the queues at the pharmacy. Again for the benefit of the parasite class and their pharmaceutical corporations.

In a truly voluntary, free market what would a supplier gain from providing low quality, expensive produce to consumers? They would quickly go out of business.

Only State regulations can possibly facilitate lowering quality, while raising prices, without anyone in the supply chain, other than the oligarchs at the top, profiting from it. Corporate profit is the bottom line and the State’s sole purpose is to protect it.

Yet, somehow, we remain convinced that society could not possibly order itself spontaneously, without the forced coercion of the State. Despite the fact that, in great measure, it already does. We neither lack the ability nor the knowledge to build a voluntary society. We lack the confidence, because this pernicious system is purpose built to rob us of it.

We are taught, practically from birth, that respecting authority is a virtue. To obey is to be good, disobedience is punished. What could we be if instead we taught our children to think critically, that all of us have equal, inalienable rights, never to cause harm or loss and to take responsibility for themselves because there is no claimed protection from any authority?

Respect their authority?

Unfortunately, once we enter the education system the doctrine of authority is vigorously reinforced through perpetual repetition and the systemic application of reward and punishment. We are taught what we are allowed to know. This prepares us to be productive workers and responsible members of the State.

We are then permitted to work until we are no longer productive, with every last ounce of profit milked from us, as we shuffle off to our graves on pharmaceutical life support, before the State swoops in to hoover up the remnants of our lives.

This is not done for our benefit. We are programmed to believe in the farcical notion of a benevolent State. A State which exclusively serves the parasite class and one in which our lives are the real commodity.

COVID 19 is not a high impact infectious disease, it has low mortality rates and is absolutely comparable to influenza. It isn’t even clear that is can be identified as a disease at all. Sadly, it seems the vast majority of us are so adapted to our authoritarian environment that we are incapable of ever questioning anything we are told by our superiors.

COVID 19 is nothing more than a casus belli for the Third World War. As the representatives of the State openly admit, that war is a hybrid war. Just as there is no such thing as a healthy human being, nor is there any distinction between war and peace.

All is war and we are the enemy. The military objective is to grind us into docile and compliant slaves, serving the new normal State.

We must face reality. In the new normal, driven by the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” our labour is no longer required. We are destined only to consume, and that consumption is to be ruthlessly controlled. As are we.

There is no black and no white, no right wing nor any leftists, there is no gay and no straight, no Republicans nor Democrats, no Conservatives nor Labour supporters. These are just some of the divisions forced upon us by the parasite class, and its compliant lapdog the mainstream media, to keep us divided and to stop us realising the truth.

We are in this together. All of us. No matter where we live or what we believe. We are all part of a single, inviolable truth.

Call it God, Allah, Yahweh, the Divine Spirit, the Universe, Mother Earth or Natural Law, there is one truth and we all understand it. Cause no harm, cause no loss, take responsibility for our actions and treat all with compassion and respect.

We are not merely a random cluster of atoms. We are sovereign spiritual beings. We have purpose and every life has inestimable value. We stand together or divided we fall.

You have a choice. Choose wisely.

Resist!

San Francisco residents are on edge and sounding the alarm amid a spate of brazen break-ins throughout the city, according to KPIX5, which notes that burglaries in the city were up 42% in the first nine months of the year vs. the same period in 2019.

“In the Northern District, which includes Pacific Heights, the Marina, North Beach, and Cow Hollow, it’s up 59%. In the Mission, 79% and in the Richmond up 50%,” according to the report.

A recent example is a video posted on Nextdoor and given to KPIX 5 from one homeowner in the Cow Hollow neighborhood that shows a man trying to break into a house at 1:52 a.m. on August 22. It’s an image that’s creepy, disturbing and has shaken a sense of safety.

The homeowner didn’t want his identity revealed, but others say these attempted burglaries have been rampant. –KPIX5

“Our next-door neighbor got broken into and they had already experienced another break-in a month prior to that,” said resident Ginny Fang, who lives in the city’s North Beach neighborhood. Thieves stole four of her family’s bicycles several weeks ago in a breaking and entry.

“You take a walk down the neighborhood and you see so many holes just punched into garages and wires, the same wire that was used to hook ours, you see them, laying around on the street,” she said.

According to San Francisco Police, the department is getting more reports of garage break-ins recently.

“We’re doing all we can to step up patrols and to ultimately arrest those who are committing these crimes,” said offcier Robert Rueca.

“It’s so hard, the destabilizing feeling, and there’s already so much happening in the world and even the basic sanctity of your home,” said Fang.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

The signs really began to become visible at the end of January, 2020; there was an exodus of people brewing, and it was galvanizing fears on both sides of the political spectrum. The pandemic situation is cited by the mainstream media as the primary cause, but in reality the migration had started at least 3 years earlier. Americans were leaving certain states and cities behind by the tens of thousands, and these places were predominantly leftist in their policies and population. California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc.; all of these progressive states were bleeding residents since 2017, the pandemic just accelerated the situation.

There are a number of reasons given for the dramatic shift in population, but two specific reasons stand above the rest: Economy and political ideals. The pandemic itself is only a minor motivator. Consider the fact that residents of California left the state in droves for Texas over the summer DESPITE the problem of Covid infection spikes in major metropolitan areas of the Lone Star State. People didn’t care, they just wanted to get the hell out of California as quickly as possible.

Again, a main reason given by former Californians was politics. They are conservatives or moderates that felt isolated or trapped in a far-left cesspool and they realized their future life prospects depended on them transplanting to a more free and less bureaucratic place.

The fear among conservatives was that the pandemic would smoke leftists out of their hives and that they would spread to more conservative areas and “take over”. This does not seem to be the case. In fact, it appears that most leftists are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that their states are dying and are actively defending state policies on the web. Check out the angry and delusional comments from California progressives on this opinion article in Arizona telling them to leave their failed policies behind if they move to the state.

These people are suffering from some serious saltiness, and the fact they they are still trying to claim that states like California are economically stable shows how truly delusional they are. Conservative states have nothing to worry about – The lefties are too dumb to relocate. They’re going to sit within the rotting corpses of the states they killed and pretend it smells like roses. This is what they do; when they are wrong or when they have failed they double and triple down. It’s their defining characteristic.

In my state of Montana real estate purchases have surged over the past year. Recent data on school enrollment numbers are up 15% – 20% in cities like Missoula. This includes new students in public schools as well as those registered for homeschooling, and it’s a massive spike for the region. The majority of new students are recent transplants from other states. I have spoken with hundreds of these people personally and ALL of them said they were moving to Montana because they were conservative, many of them were preppers and many of them wanted to be around other conservatives in the event that the world continues on its current downward spiral.

They do sometimes mention the coronavirus situation, but they generally are not worried about the virus itself. Rather, they are concerned about the virus RESPONSE. Meaning, they want to retain their freedoms, they do not like the draconian restrictions put in place in their former states and they are trying to escape the business lockdowns that are killing local economies.

Some states like California have responded as leftists typically do, by seeking to punish people for walking away from the collective. This includes a new Wealth Tax law in the works that would require people with high incomes such as business owners leaving California to continue to pay taxes to the state for 10 years, even though they no longer live there. In other words, successful business owners who leave California will have to pay taxes to two separate state governments at the same time.

California Assemblyman Rob Bonta, one of the people supporting the Wealth Tax proposal, asserts that the pandemic is the cause of California’s economic troubles including a huge surge in the homeless population. However, the spike in poverty and homelessness was escalating well before the coronavirus ever appeared. It was the hard-left policies of the state government that caused this mess; they can’t blame everything on Covid, though conmen like Bonta will certainly try.

The fact that leftist states are poised to institute punishments or disincentives for leaving (which is unconstitutional, by the way), shows just how bad the migration has become for them. Frankly, these state governments need to be taught a lesson, and one of the only lessons they understand is the loss of tax revenues.

It should not be surprising at all that conservatives are rushing for the exits, these places are on fire and progressive legislators are throwing Molotov cocktails for good measure. I’m only surprised by the speed and scale of the migration, the whole thing is happening so fast it makes your head spin.

My point is, the migration is very real. No one can deny anymore that it is happening. But what does it mean for the future of America?

As I have noted in previous articles, in my view the BEST case scenario we can possibly hope for as conservatives is a balkanization of the US based on ideals and principles. According to the economic data and social upheaval I am seeing, I think there is little chance we can save the whole country in the short term. Instead, conservatives organizing together regionally is the best bet in stopping widespread unconstitutional changes to our laws and usurpation of our culture.

In rural areas in particular we enjoy far more freedom and the majority of people have no interest in abiding by lockdown restrictions. We ignore them. A friend of mine recently had family visit from California and they were astonished at how ‘normal’ daily life was in Montana. They said just being able to go to a restaurant and eat there, or walk into a store without being forced to wear a mask was a strange feeling, as if they were visiting a foreign nation.

This is saddening to me. The coronavirus is certainly not worth this loss of liberty.

I suspect that the conservative migration will lead to some interesting side-effects. First and foremost there will be continued attempts to stop it. Eventually, states like California will try to implement measures beyond tax punishment. They may even try to exploit the pandemic as a rationale for locking down state borders in the name of “protecting citizen health”. I would not be surprised if hard-left states actively try to physically stop residents from moving away.

As the economy continues to decline and stagflation strikes, likely very hard in 2021 regardless of who is in the White House (you can thank the Federal Reserve for that), price increases will eventually prevent Americans from being able to relocate anyway. But, for the next six months at least I think the migration will continue to grow.

The congregation of conservatives today is perhaps the first time in a long time that we have sought to build a unified front for preserving the American way of life, free from big government, free from bureaucracy and free from socialist subversion. Without the migration, we have zero chance of achieving this, but there are some who will argue against it.

I have noticed that certain conservatives and moderates are claiming that by leaving places like California or New York the movement is “abandoning the fight” and exposing those regions to complete takeover. News Flash for these folks: You already lost those states. You lost that fight. They have been taken over. And, if you understand strategy in the slightest, you will wrap your heads around the need for a strategic withdrawal so that you can live to fight more winnable battles another day.

This mentality reminds me of the people that were arguing that conservatives should not start their own social media platforms “because the real fight is on Twitter and Facebook”. This is naive thinking. Those platforms are OWNED by the extreme left, and there is no one on these websites that will be convinced by your arguments no matter how reasonable or factual. It’s time to build alternatives that are more free and stop wasting our energies on lemmings that cannot be saved.

What I find most fascinating about the current migration is that it’s bringing together conservatives and moderates or “classical liberals” that have been alienated by modern social justice movements. In my opinion most moderate liberals are actually conservatives or libertarians and they’re just not ready to admit it yet, but I’m glad to see these people working together.

The fight that is coming will require us to ally with people that do not necessarily share ALL our views, and that’s okay. The goal is to get to the truth, and to use what works best and to maintain a set of shared cultural principles that value freedom. Americans aren’t relocating anymore out of convenience or economic incentives – it’s actually rather inconvenient and expensive to relocate these days. They aren’t moving due to climate or job availability or wages. They are moving because they have a shared desire to be free. It’s really that simple.

And, the sooner free peoples band together, the safer we will be from the statists and tyrants of the world. If that means the US is broken apart for a time in the process, then so be it. It’s better than having the entire country fall because rational people were isolated from each other.

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Iranian state media on Wednesday published a photo set showing the US carrier group led by USS Nimitz transiting the Strait of Hormuz which Tehran says was gained after domestic-build spy drones “intercepted” the carrier.

State-run Tasnim reports: “In remarks on Wednesday, IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri said the homegrown drone has detected the US carrier strike group before the flotilla cruised through the Strait of Hormuz and into the waters of the Persian Gulf.”

The Nimitz along with battleship escorts sailed through the area last Friday, according to separate reports.

Tunsgiri made the remarks upon the occasion of a military ceremony marking the IRGC’s naval force receiving nearly 200 domestic produced drones and helicopters. 

The IRGC Rear admiral described, “Monitoring and tracking all maritime movements in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of ​​Oman will be made possible by these drones that will greatly increase our capabilities in this area.”

The US sail through appears to have occurred without incident despite the Iranian drone mission.

The drone photo set had already been circulating among Middle East analysts and think tanks in the West, which confirmed their authenticity. 

Iranian media and officials are now hailing the domestic-produced drone spy mission as a success, and no doubt the reason the photo set has been released alongside English-language state media headlines is to display the IRGC’s advancing capabilities in “securing” Hormuz.

Iran Releases Images of USS Nimitz-Class Aircraft Carrier & Escorting Battleships, Monitored & Chased by IRGC Drones at Entrance to Persian Gulf pic.twitter.com/dJUQs2Ct3z

— Fars News Agency (@EnglishFars) September 23, 2020

The Associated Press also confirmed the US carrier is in the Persian Gulf :

The Nimitz, and several other warships, passed last Friday through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important chokepoint for oil shipments, the U.S. Navy had said in what was described as a “scheduled manoeuvr.”

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, however, has yet to comment on the Iranian drone monitoring mission or whether it observed the drone’s flight path last week.

Should Iran continue with such provocative drone missions so near US ships in the vital gulf waterway, it’s only a matter of time before there’s escalation based on an incident, likely in the form of the US blasting Iran’s UAVs out of the sky.