Month: January 2023

Authored by Toby Young viaThe Daily Sceptic,

Samuel Greg, a Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy at the American Institute for Economic Research and author, most recently, of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, has written a good piece for the Spectator about the WEF on the eve of Davos 2023.

He argues that if you care about liberty, democracy and national self-determination, it’s perfectly rational to be concerned about the influence of Klaus Schwab and his followers. Not because they are the puppeteers controlling politicians across the West, but because their ideas permeate the upper echelons of the global elite. In particular, Schwab’s belief in the top-down, technocratic form of government exemplified by the EU.

It wields no formal political power and can’t make anyone do anything. Nonetheless, since its founding in 1971, the WEF has become an organisation which embodies supreme confidence in the imperative of a particular type of person running the world from the top-down. In his famous 2004 essay entitled ‘Dead Souls’, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called this prototype ‘Davos Man’.

A clever moniker that neither Schwab nor the WEF have ever succeeded in shaking off, Davos Man was Huntington’s short-hand description of “academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs” who thought alike and tended to view national loyalties and boundaries “as residues from the past”. Davos Man also looked with undisguised disdain, Huntington suggested, upon those who weren’t getting with the programme – whatever the content of the programme happened to be.

Therein lies the deepest problem with the WEF. It’s one thing for people to come together in international settings to discuss problems, share insights, and network. Business leaders, politicians, and NGO-types do this all the time.

It’s another thing for an outfit such as the WEF to decide that the time has come to rearrange the world from the top-down and remake the planet in a corporatist image. The ideal for which Schwab is aiming, judging from his speeches and writings, is something akin to a globalised EU, with its supranational and ingrained bureaucratic ways being transposed to an international level, and the levers of power vested in the hands of reliable Davos men and women.

In short, it’s easy to caricature the WEF and Schwab as something akin to Ian Fleming’s fictious Spectre and its criminal-mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Yet the agenda now being pursued at settings such as Davos is sufficiently alarming that anyone who believes in preserving things like liberty, sovereignty, and the decentralisation of power should be concerned.

Worth reading in full…

Robert Malone has a saltier take on the WEF’s current agenda on his Substack, particularly no. 4 on the WEF’s list of priorities: “Preparing for the next pandemic requires ending health disparities.”

That’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the toxic new ideology I discussed yesterday, which combines extreme risk aversion – to pandemics, climate change, hate speech, etc. – with ‘equity’, meaning a commitment to protecting ‘vulnerable’ groups, e.g. ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ+ community.

So the argument for, say, keeping mask mandates in place forever would run something like this: airborne viral diseases have a disproportionately negative effect on marginalised people because they have less access to healthcare, therefore governments have a moral duty to impose masks mandates.

A major Israeli attack on the Syrian capital has killed two soldiers and wounded two others, and has put the country’s main international airport temporarily out of commission. 

The early Monday morning attack reportedly involved Israeli jets firing two missiles at Damascus International Airport, causing significant enough to damage to force the airport’s closure while it undergoes repairs. The timing is interesting given the new Netanyahu government was just sworn-in at the end of last week, and is filled with hardline anti-Iran hawks who will likely escalate the proxy war across the region.

“It caused material damage in a nearby area, the army said, without giving further details,” the Associated Press reports. “Syria’s Ministry of Transport said work to repair the damage began immediately and later Monday, some flights resumed while work in other parts of the airport continued.”

It’s the second time in a year that Damascus International Airport has suffered closure due to Israeli attack, and it’s unclear if Syria’s anti-air defense measures, part of which has been supplied by Russia, deployed in response. 

The AP further reviews that typically the Israeli media and official explanation is ostensibly that Israel is targeting Iranian and Hezbollah arms shipments and personnel inside Syria.

“Israel has targeted airports and ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah,” AP writes. 

In the north, Israel has also targeted Aleppo International Airport in the recent past, with multiple strikes which had put it out of operation temporarily in September. 

#Israel strikes Syria on day 2 of 2023, day 4 after Netanyahu back in Gov. @AlMonitor https://t.co/3snMeaR19m

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 2, 2023

The United Nations has at times condemned the airport attacks, for example last June highlighting that airstrikes had forced the suspension of vital humanitarian aid deliveries. A statement had called the halted aid flights an “extremely serious” matter.

More broadly, the Syrian population continues to suffer the strangulation effects of US-led sanctions, with lack of fuel, heating gas, and food – and amid a collapsed post-war economy, a cratering currency and runaway inflation.

Authored by Natasha Wright,

Even if Merkel had not been accomplice to this grande feat of political mirage and deception, she should be praised for her honesty.

Otherwise, merely as a set of mitigating circumstances for ‘the Merkel on the political court of justice of history’ we could just acknowledge her honest admission that she was a participant in that grand Minsk Agreements delusion, which led the world into a conflict of huge proportions, the result and the aftermath of which the world cannot even see the outlines of at this point, and in its less favourable variant it can mean its complete destruction (the world’s destruction that is). The issue is certainly much more deep-rooted than that. Merkel has recently, seemingly totally unprovoked, divulged the well-hidden truth that the Minsk Agreements with Russia about Ukraine, signed seven years ago with the presidents of the two countries, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, Merkel and the then President of France, Francois Hollande reached within the framework of the Normandy Format were just a deceptive political ploy.

Sadly, some of the signatories (i.e. Germany, France and Ukraine) seem to have never even considered fulfilling all the signed contractual clauses and its pertaining elements. That agreement, Merkel admitted, was signed merely to consolidate and reinforce Ukrainian military might and buy more time so that they could use it for their ‘final reckoning’ with Russia. The Minsk Agreement, says the already retired Merkel during her ‘sitting on her political laurels’ pension days, Merkel disclosed to the general public and her political counterparts, that it was a mere concerted effort to give Ukraine time, which many have subliminally known already. Ukraine used that time to consolidate its military position, as is so blatantly obvious at this moment in time. The Ukraine from 2014 and 2015 is certainly not the Ukraine of the year 2022. The Battle for Debaltseve at the beginning of 2015 has patently proven that Putin’s army could have rolled over them in a nanosecond back then and crushed them to pieces militarily.

I sincerely doubt that the NATO member states could have done more back then than what they are doing now. Clearly, it was bound to turn into a frozen conflict and not solved at all. Ukraine has just been given a precious time it badly needed. As if Poroshenko wanted to reinforce what Merkel was about to disclose a few months later, NATO Secretary General, Stoltenberg, has boastfully gloated that NATO allies have given much needed support for Ukraine for years on end, particularly since 2014 so that its armed forces were much bigger and more powerful in February 2022 than in 2014. Moreover, Stoltenberg. ‘A wannabe-Adolf’ admitted at the NATO Summit in Madrid this summer after a series of belated admissions, they have been preparing for this for quite a long time now. This plausible though an oblique admission that the Minsk Agreements did not serve the purpose of a peaceable solution to the conflict but so as to simply arm and train Ukraine en route its military preparation for the war yet to come against Russia. The ‘kudos filled with irony’ for this should go straight to Petro Poroshenko that exactly what happened. Admittedly though ironically, that was a very talented document, which is how Poroshenko described it i.e. written with great political panache because they needed the Minsk Agreements to gain four more years as their head start, to form, consolidate and train Ukrainian armed forces, and together with NATO build the best military combat readiness army in Eastern Europe in line with the high-profile NATO standards. That was what Poroshenko trotted out inadvertently in front of the Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who made him believe that he was in fact talking to Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador in Russia. Poroshenko, out of sheer negligence and ignorance, was way more straightforward, up until Angela Merkel with her official though unanticipated admission and confirmation of all Russian suspicions on this matter, outplayed them in all her honesty. She even appears to have told the truth. Which possibly makes matters much worse for her. That’s it, Sergey Lavrov gave a succinct response. Vladimir Putin rose above it all though with overwhelming subtle derision. How one is supposed to feel if he and Russia had been viewed as the main culprits for the ongoing war of massive proportions but it turned out that he was right all along. Vladimir Putin gave a straightforward response. ‘This is disappointing, Truth be told, I did not expect to hear any such thing from the former German Chancellor because I have always thought that the German leaders were honest with us. Apparently, they resorted to ‘grand deception’ tactics. The situation is not just horrible but abhorrent as well, said Alexander Lukashenko, the disappointed host of the then Minsk Agreements.

Poroshenko, Hollande, whom Merkel led along holding his ‘politically rickety’ hand as if he were her political lapdog in front of Putin’s eyes, carried out a secret operation and deceived everybody. In doing so, they got a long period of a pseudo ‘truce’ so as to prepare Ukraine. After Merkel’s admission, nobody has the right to blame Russia for what happened. What is even worse, the Minsk Agreements and its great pretenders in all their feats of delusional pretence, is not an exception to the rule but it occurs as a rule for the Collective West.

‘The hidden agenda behind the Minsk Agreement additionally demolishes the credibility of the Collective West to tatters’ – the Chinese Global Times concludes. Merkel’s admission goes to prove that some countries in the Collective West, particularly the USA, fail to perform their contractual obligations. They breach contracts, they break their own words with utmost dismissive frivolity. They deem any agreement as useful only if they see their chance to promote their own selfish interests. Otherwise, Washington DC and their vassals are always on the ready ‘to fail to perform’.

One has to wonder why the Collective West keeps doing this? What is the rest of the decent world to do and how are we to move on from this after this admission by Merkel? Are we supposed to sign any future agreements and business deals with the Collective West? Does that mean that there will not be peace in the world as long as one great power is driven to a complete defeat? What got into Merkel to give away those precious details? We are yet to find out in Merkel’s memoirs.

There is no need to pardon Merkel for anything she has done but her admission is hugely important particularly for Moscow for the reasons of any future peace negotiations. All these great deceptions carried out under false pretences appear to come with a long tradition back in history. In the history of diplomacy it is not odd that political personages of huge importance break their promises. The history of international relations has witnessed such instances of statesmen and political figures giving their words and then breaking them. Even the formal pledges and written agreements. Especially in the 20th century. Hitler comes to mind. James Baker’s pledge ‘Not one inch eastward‘ given to Michael Gorbachev as well still resonates in our historical memory and certainly in the political archives.

Republicans’ slim House majority in the upcoming congressional session means that aspiring speaker Kevin McCarthy needs nearly every GOP rep’s votes. That’s giving discontented conservatives powerful leverage — and on Sunday, that leverage was evidenced by McCarthy granting a major concession to the holdouts.

However, it’s still far from clear that McCarthy will be elected on the first ballot —if at all. 

I’m not voting for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker because he’s just a shill of The Establishment.

The reason most of my Republican colleagues are supporting him is because they benefit from the redistribution of lobbyist & special interest money from McCarthy to their campaigns. pic.twitter.com/bdJmjwy6W7

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) December 27, 2022

In a conference call, McCarthy said he would agree to lower the threshold by which rank-and-file members can force a vote to depose a sitting speaker. Specifically, he said he would support a rule change that would allow any five members of the House majority to compel a vote to “vacate the chair.” That concession, however, is partial — some reps want any single member to have the power to force a no-confidence vote. 

Normally a largely ceremonial undertaking, this session’s speaker vote could turn into an entertaining spectacle that paralyzes the House. Since 1923, every speaker has won on the first vote. An 1855 battle for House leadership, however, spanned two months and 133 votes.  

To be elected speaker on Tuesday, McCarthy needs 218 votes. Since no Democrat is going to vote for a Republican, that means McCarthy will have to persuade nearly every one of the new session’s 222 GOP members to vote for him. Thanks to his party’s profound underperformance in the midterms, McCarthy is working with the slimmest majority for an aspiring first-time speaker since John Nance Garner in 1931.  

An easier path to firing a speaker is just one of many rule changes that have been demanded by conservative Republicans who are fed up with a top-down approach to legislation that sees mammoth omnibus bills presented by leadership for a straight up-or-down vote, with no ability to offer amendments from the floor. 

In a letter to GOP representatives, McCarthy voiced sympathy with their grievances:  

“The simple fact is that Congress is broken and needs to change,” McCarthy wrote in a letter to his members, citing party leaders’ increasingly centralized power that has “relegated members of both parties to the sidelines, with mammoth bills being drafted behind closed doors and rushed to the floor at the last minute for an up-or-down, take it or leave it vote.” — Politico

However, McCarthy’s concession and olive branch landed with something of a thud.  Nine GOP reps who’ve yet to commit to McCarthy issued a statement saying that, while it represented “progress,” “Mr McCarthy’s statement comes almost impossibly late to address continued deficiencies ahead of the opening of the 118th Congress on January 3rd…there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties.” 

I don’t see any scenario where I’d support Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker.

McCarthy has a track record of cutting backdoor deals with Democrats. pic.twitter.com/UzUz67yd7K

— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) December 29, 2022

Among the unacknowledged demands: Conservatives want a commitment that House leadership will not work to defeat them in party primaries.  

Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus has asked for rule changes that include: 

• Broader membership in the group that doles out committee assignments

• Allowing committee members to choose their own chairs

• Allowing amendments from the floor

• Being given five days to review legislation before voting on it

The new session starts Tuesday, and the speaker election is the first order of business — even before the swearing-in of new members.  Representatives vote in alphabetical order, by saying a name. Watch for resisters to the McCarthy campaign to say the name of a fellow representative, or any name at all. (For instance, Thomas Massie could vote for Ron Paul on the first ballot.)  

McCarthy can trim the necessary votes below 218 by persuading malcontents to skip the vote or simply reply “present.” That’s because, by precedent, winning the speakership requires a majority among those who vote for a specific name. 

A failure to win on the first ballot would compel McCarthy to offer more concessions to the hold-outs. It could also lead to the emergence of a new speakership candidate. An impasse could also be broken by a House vote to allow an election by a plurality. 

Thanks to the fact that several of the rebellious GOP members come early in the alphabet — including Andy Biggs (AZ), Dan Bishop (NC), Andrew Clyde (GA), Eli Crane (AZ) — we may know quickly if McCarthy’s first-ballot hopes are likely to be dashed. 

Authored by Guglielmo Cecero and Raphael Schön via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Bitcoin is under attack. It is increasingly seen as a “dirty currency.” Elon Musk’s Tesla, Wikipedia, Greenpeace and other organizations have stopped accepting BTC for their products or as a means to donate money.

Musk, who is not only one of the richest but also one of the most controversial people on this planet, has said: “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.” Ouch.

And it’s not just Musk. Politicians have also taken aim at Bitcoin.

Before the European Commission’s Markets in Crypto-Asset Regulation (MiCA) regulation was passed, it caused quite a stir within the Bitcoin community, especially due to the left-wing factions of the EU Parliament that were opposed to proof of work (PoW) and the power consumption of the Bitcoin network. In the trilogue, a version of MiCA was finally passed that did not ban PoW or mining.

As became known in April 2022, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) tried to push through a ban on bitcoin mining and one on BTC trading in the course of the draft law. Luckily, they failed.

However, the foundations for further steps have been laid. For example, the issuers of cryptocurrencies, which we know are mostly simply tech startups, will be obliged to deliver some kind of report on the energy consumption and the associated carbon footprint of the respective asset. Brokers and exchanges, in turn, must inform their customers about these exact figures when they purchase crypto assets.

The increasing aversion to Bitcoin also gained traction through an anti-Bitcoin Greenpeace USA campaign launched in March, which was financed by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, among others. Interestingly, Greenpeace accepted bitcoin donations between 2014 and 2021 until they were put on hold due to environmental concerns.

FACT: #Bitcoin mining is driving millions of tons of new global warming pollution in the US

MYTH: Burning “waste” methane can green bitcoin

REALITY: Burning waste gas does nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption and is even keeping old gas wells open https://t.co/o4Er21GVoo

— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) October 17, 2022

NEARLY HALF OF THE EU PARLIAMENT DOESN’T LIKE BITCOIN

As mentioned, a mining or trading ban for Bitcoin didn’t make it into the MiCA legislation. However, it is very unlikely that members of the EU parliament who tried to implement this in MiCA will give up — we can assume the contrary.

In March 2022, the economic and monetary affairs (ECON) committee in the EU parliament voted against a ban on PoW. Thirty-two members voted against it, 24 in favor. The topic seems to become more and more ideologically driven, as the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the left mostly wanted a PoW ban, whereas the Conservatives, the Liberals and right-wing factions tended to vote against it.

15/ Here is a detailed overview of how all the MEPs voted for the final vote (not only single amendments, but entire draft) pic.twitter.com/Z0i5DRI1bw

— Patrick Hansen (@paddi_hansen) March 14, 2022

The final MiCA draft created by conservative MEP Stefan Berger included a compromise: Instead of a ban on PoW, they agreed on including a rating system for cryptocurrency to assess their environmental impacts (more on that later).

In an email conversation with Politico, the Spanish Green EU parliament member Ernest Urtasun explained:

“Creating an EU labeling system for crypto will not solve the problem as long as crypto-mining can continue outside the Union, also driven by EU demand… The Commission should rather focus on developing minimum sustainability standards with a clear timeline to comply.”

And he added:

“Ethereum’s recent upgrade just showed that phasing out from environmentally harmful protocols is actually feasible, without causing any disruption to the network.”

THE ECB DOESN’T LIKE BITCOIN — AT ALL

While we see different opinions on Bitcoin in the European Parliament, the signals we’re getting from the European Central Bank (ECB) are very clear. The ECB is issuing warnings about cryptocurrencies on a regular basis, naming their “exorbitant carbon footprint” as “grounds for concern”.

Just recently, on November 30, 2022, the ECB published a blog post titled “Bitcoin’s Last Stand.” In it, ECB’s Market Infrastructure And Payments Director General Ulrich Bindseil and advisor Jürgen Schaff argue that, “Bitcoin’s conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment.”

According to Bindseil and Schaff, Bitcoin transactions are “cumbersome, slow and expensive,” which they say explains why the world’s largest cryptocurrency — created to overcome the existing monetary and financial system — “has never been used to any significant extent for legal real-world transactions.” Bindseil and Schaff added that since Bitcoin is neither an effective payment system nor a form of investment, “it should be treated as neither in regulatory terms and thus should not be legitimized.”

While it may seem paradoxical to very vocally attack something that is on the “road to irrelevance,” it is not the first time that the ECB has attacked Bitcoin.

10 years ago today, the ECB wrote in its first report on #bitcoin: “In an extreme case, virtual currencies could have a substitution effect on central bank money if they become widely accepted.” pic.twitter.com/aPACJlds3G

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) October 21, 2022

In July 2022, the ECB singled out Bitcoin in a research article and compared proof of work to fossil fuel cars while considering proof of stake as more akin to electric vehicles. Let’s ignore for a minute that this doesn’t make sense and look at what it wrote in detail:

“Public authorities should not stifle innovation, as it is a driver of economic growth. Although the benefit for society of bitcoin itself is doubtful, blockchain technology in principle may provide yet unknown benefits and technological applications. Hence, authorities could choose not to intervene with a view to supporting digital innovation. At the same time, it is difficult to see how authorities could opt to ban petrol cars over a transition period but turn a blind eye to bitcoin-type assets built on PoW technology, with country-sized energy consumption footprints and yearly carbon emissions that currently negate most euro area countries’ past and target GHG saving. This holds especially given that an alternative, less energy-intensive blockchain technology exists.”

In general, the ECB believes it’s highly unlikely that the European Union will not take action in terms of carbon emissions on PoW-based assets like bitcoin. The authors of the paper argue that in their view it’s likely that the EU will take similar steps on phasing out PoW as they are doing with fossil fuel cars. Especially since, according to them, an “alternative, less energy-intensive” technology like PoS exists.

“To continue with the car analogy, public authorities have the choice of incentivising the crypto version of the electric vehicle (PoS and its various blockchain consensus mechanisms) or to restrict or ban the crypto version of the fossil fuel car (PoW blockchain consensus mechanisms). So, while a hands-off approach by public authorities is possible, it is highly unlikely, and policy action by authorities (e.g. disclosure requirements, carbon tax on crypto transactions or holdings, or outright bans on mining) is probable. The price impact on the crypto-assets targeted by policy action is likely to be commensurate with the severity of the policy action and whether it is a global or regional measure.”

The vast majority of citizens are used to thinking of money as something other than what it really is, and the ECB is also to blame for this. Money is perceived as something that has value by itself, instead of something whose value comes from the interaction between the people who use it.

The euro is subject to both constant changes (regular inflation) and traumatic events (devaluations, forced exchange rates, etc.), but these are ignored or otherwise underestimated. People believe they own it, although they can only exchange it for other things.

For how many and for what things will 100 euros be exchanged in one year, five years or ten years? This is, in no way, up to us.

Its exchange function is constantly changing due to factors we cannot control. The interaction between those who use it is the main factor and, in turn, this interaction depends on economic and monetary policy rules that few people know about.

Bitcoin escapes these rules (and this is the reason why the ECB wants to ban it), it is just code that the ECB and the regulators are trying to make useless. Bitcoin also and above all expresses its value through features that are totally independent of a government’s power and, therefore, the ECBs.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

In 2025, we will see a rating system for cryptocurrencies according to their environmental impact within the European Union — think energy labels for fridges or TVs. You can already expect that bitcoin will get the worst classification. This step will essentially be positive for Ethereum and bad for Bitcoin.

Source

It’s quite unlikely that such a label will scare off investors from buying bitcoin, especially since the Bitcoin community is saying that the Bitcoin network is not an obstacle but a solution for more green energy.

Therefore, the Bitcoin mining industry has the incentive to become greener: The fossil fuel analogy in the ECB paper makes no sense. The energy mix of a PoW network like Bitcoin can come entirely from renewable, green sources. Bitcoin can serve as a way to immediately monetize energy, as is already happening with flared gas that would be flared anyway. However, it’s questionable how fast and effective this effort will be to policymakers, especially since fossil energy companies like Exxon are now mining Bitcoin using flared gas.

The authors of the ECB paper are already implying that a higher bitcoin price equals more energy consumption, as more miners will participate. Destroying demand for bitcoin would hence be an effective solution to bring down the hash rate. At least in theory.

CONCLUSION

The academic and political consensus seems to point toward something like trying to retire the “old” PoW, and moving towards the “new” PoS standard. Particularly since Ethereum’s recent merge, many bystanders believe this could be a viable path for the Bitcoin network. We doubt that and plan to elaborate on that in a future post. As we’ve seen in different scenarios, banning Bitcoin is hard, if not impossible. The Nigerian government tried, failed and eventually gave up, for instance.

It will be quite a while until 2025, and with an energy crisis, increased focus on carbon emission as well as global uncertainty overall, the only thing we can do at this point is to expect the unexpected.

Even if the worst-case scenario happens, and we see a Bitcoin ban of some sort happen in the EU, we doubt that this will hold forever. Bitcoin does not ask for permission. Bitcoin is something that ontologically struggles to stay inside a fence. It is not an idea derived from anarchist positions, it is an argument derived from the inherent characteristics of the technology introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto. The regulators work in an authorizing logic and so it is clear that they struggle to intercept the Bitcoin phenomenon, which functions regardless of someone else’s permission.

Meloni’s government will soon force NGO ships flying flags from countries like France, Germany and Norway to accept the migrants they pick up in the Mediterranean Sea

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni smile as she attends her year-end press conference in Rome, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

As Olivier Bault reports at Remix News, the threshold of 100,000 illegal migrants who arrived by sea in Italy this year was crossed on Dec. 21, and the number is not only a symbolic milestone but also serving as a call to action for Italy’s conservative government.

The figure of 100,000 can be compared with the 64,055 on the same date a year ago and the 33,867 arrivals by sea in 2020. This year’s number is the highest since 2017, the year when the left-wing government of Matteo Renzi finally decided to clamp down on the NGOs’ business of transferring illegal immigrants to Europe through passive and sometimes active cooperation with people smugglers, introducing stricter rules on how NGO ships were allowed to operate in the Mediterranean Sea.

Meloni’s government prepares to take action

Starting next year, however, Giorgia Meloni’s government will introduce stricter rules for NGO boats operating in the Mediterranean Sea to prevent them from coordinating their activities with people smugglers and from searching for would-be immigrants near the Libyan shore.

Italy’s council of ministers was to approve on Dec. 28 a draft security decree that will include a new Code of Conduct for those NGOs and accelerate the processing of asylum requests.

One of the big changes the new right-wing government in Rome plans to introduce is that migrants taken on board an NGO boat in an alleged search-and-rescue operation will be required to declare if they intend to file an asylum request once in Europe. If this is the case, the country under whose flag a given ship is sailing will be required to take in the asylum seekers and process their requests.

The new policy change may give governments in Germany, France and other nations second thoughts about funding migrant boats operating on the Mediterranean if they are the ones forced to take these migrants in.

A second major change is that after a search-and-rescue operation, an NGO ship will have to immediately ask for a safe port to disembark the rescued migrants and will have to sail towards their designated port, without waiting for days for further opportunities to “rescue” migrants.

This is meant to put an end to the practice of systematic searching for would-be illegal immigrants, sometimes in coordination with people smugglers, instead of conducting genuine search-and-rescue operations.

The NGOs that will violate the new rules will face administrative sanctions and can eventually have their ships seized by the Italian authorities in case of repeated violations.

The second part of the new “security decree,” which will have to be later approved by Italy’s parliament to become law and remain in effect, will provide for fast processing of asylum requests and more efficient repatriation procedures for those whose requests are rejected.

Vast majority are economic migrants

In 2016, 181,436 illegal immigrants entered Italy. Thanks to the new rules introduced by Interior Minister Marco Minniti in the summer of 2017 and a memorandum of cooperation that was then signed with the Libyan government in Tripoli, the number dropped that year to 119,310.

The lowest number —and the lowest death toll as well — was reached in 2019 after over a year with Matteo Salvini as Italy’s interior minister, with “only” 19,471 migrants arrivals by sea. However, that number included a significant rise observed from September to December, when Salvini’s League was replaced by the center-left Democratic Party as the 5-Star Movement’s coalition partner under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

Similarly to what was observed during the previous years, most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea on small fishing boats or bigger ships run by European NGOs this year did not escape war. Out of the 100,000 who had arrived from Jan. 1 to Dec. 21, some 86,000 were from countries at peace. Out of these, over 20,000 were from Egypt, and almost 18,000 were from Tunisia. Bangladesh came third with over 14,000 of its citizens among those who reached Italy through the Mediterranean Sea this year.

None of those countries are at war or known for persecuting their citizens, so it is clear most of those migrants have spent thousands of euros and risked their lives in the hope of a better standard of living in Europe.

It is also worth noting that out of those more than 100,000 new immigrants, over 30,000 have come from Tunisia using small boats and 73,173 sailed from the Libyan coast between Jan. 1 and Dec. 20, of whom 22,216 were turned back by Libyan coast guards. An additional 17,583 sailed from Turkey or Lebanon according to data from Italy’s interior ministry compiled by Il Giornale.

This year, there have been 15 ships active transporting migrants on the Mediterranean belonging to 12 different NGOs, of which only one is Italian. The biggest ships are run by the Franco-Swiss organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) and the “European” organization SOS Méditerranée whose headquarters are in France and which is financed in large part by French local authorities. Both the former’s Geo Barents ship (3,844 migrants disembarked in Italy this year, as of Dec. 20) and the latter’s Ocean Viking (2,387) fly the Norwegian flag. Germany’s Sea Watch came only third this year with its two ships having disembarked 1,825 migrants in Italy, but it will have a newer, bigger ship, the Sea Watch 5, to take even more migrants on board from next year on.

Can Meloni succeed?

The Meloni government’s efforts to control immigration by sea will depend much on bilateral agreements they manage to secure with the countries of origin of those migrants. In addition, it remains to be seen whether Meloni’s government will have the courage to keep migrants under surveillance in closed facilities until their asylum requests are processed and until they are sent back to their home country for those whose requests are rejected.

All of these actions would necessarily set Italy on a collision course with the pro-immigration European elites in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin.

Authored by Matthew Ehret,

Will Americans wake up to the reality that they’ve been walking on the wrong side of history for too long or has the point of no-return been crossed?

Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.

The aid was part of an overall omnibus spending bill passed by both houses of Congress was a gargantuan $1.7 trillion and included $858 billion in defense spending which far exceeds any sum ever spent by a U.S. government in history.

Of that $858 billion, $817 billion is allocated directly to the U.S. Department of Defense while the remaining $29 billion will be allocated to national security programs within the department of energy.

Continuing to Weaponize Taiwan

2023 NDAA Funds will be used to “strengthen” Taiwan in the Pacific with $12 billion authorized to assist Taiwan in purchasing weapons from the U.S. military industrial complex (with the $12 billion in ‘loans’ needing to be paid back over the course of the next five years of course). Of this fund, $100 million will be given directly to contractors to fill up a “contingency stockpile” to be used by Taiwan “in case of any future conflict”.

Additionally Taiwan will be invited to participate in the next U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Military Exercise in 2024 and thus greater “Pacific NATO” strategy encircling mainland China. This exercise and broader Pacific NATO (aka Quad) anti-China arsenal of puppet colonies will be boosted by an additional $11.5 billion will be allocated to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative ‘to counter malign Chinese influence in the Pacific’.

Just as Ukraine has suffered U.S.-directed color revolutions in 2004 and 2014, so too has Taiwan been strung through a similar NED-funded ‘Sunflower Revolution’ regime change in 2014 which saw the Kuomintang Party taken out of power just as final stages of an economic integration agreement with mainland China were being finalized.

Billions have been tagged to purchase Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jets and ships made by General Dynamics but beyond airforce, one of the biggest and most dangerous boosts in spending this year has been absorbed by a fixation on ‘space warfare’. $5.3 billion will be directed towards ‘space force’ and the ongoing effort to militarize space as a new dimension in war making in the 21st century (which was $333 million more than originally requested by military officials at space force’).

The recent U.S.-Canada-Australia joint ‘space warfare’ drills in order to prepare for an oncoming war over Europe took place at the start of December 2022 at the Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado- which indicates that the residues of any positive memory of ‘space diplomacy’ once seen under JFK’s leadership, the 1976 Apollo-Soyuz cooperation program or even the better aspects of President Trump’s Artemis Accord.

The 2000 RAD Origins of NDAA 2023’s Dark Age Doctrine

It would be a lie to say that this program for human extermination originated in 2022, or even under the previous presidencies of Trump or Obama.

If one wishes to grasp the germ seed of today’s policy doctrine, it would be necessary to revisit the Project for a New American Century Think Tank’s September 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report where the end of history cultists then taking the helm of government stated:

“RAD” envisions a future in which the United States is in complete control of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace of planet Earth. It finds objectionable the limitations imposed by the ABM treaty and urges a newer rendition of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ defense shield program.

On top of calling for the USA’s exit from the ABM Treaty (which was promptly done in the wake of 911), the authors of RAD outline in clear detail the rationale behind the growth of the rise of a need for a new branch of the military known as space force. The authors stated that the USA must gain:

“CONTROL THE NEW ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMONS’ OF SPACE AND ‘CYBERSPACE,’ and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.”

Outlining the doctrine of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ the PNAC report outlined on page 51:

Global Missile Defenses — “A network against limited strikes, capable of protecting the United States, its allies and forward-deployed forces, must be constructed. This must be a layered system of land, sea, air and space-based components”.

Looking towards the need to expand and modernize nuclear forces due to the possible danger of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Iraq, the RAD authors stated:

“Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force.”

Possibly one of the most dangerous and revealing aspects of RAD, was found on page 60, where the authors outline a program that soon grew into obscene proportions in the wake of the 2001 Anthrax attacks which justified the later passage of Cheney’s 2004 Bioshield Act as well as the growth of the 320+ international biolabs run by the pentagon. Describing the conversion of bioweapons from the realm of terror to “a political useful tool”, the authors state:

“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and ‘combat’ likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes… Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and non-combatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”

Back to Ukraine

How will the $45 billion Ukraine money burning project be used? That’s not so easy to say exactly?

What we do know is that $22.9 billion will go towards that Kiev will be expected to use to buy more weapons from private U.S.-based defense contractors and much of the rest will be enjoyed by NGOs and Non Profits which will more often than not be run by figures closely tied to those same creatures in the Washington swamp who voted for these bills.

These uncomfortable facts were outlined repeatedly by the oft-slandered republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene whose multiple attempts to create some form of oversight and auditing of the handouts to Ukraine have been met with absurd levels of resistance since the special operation was launched in February. Even when such operations as the FTX crypto exchange (a major partner to Kiev and the World Economic Forum) was discovered to be simply a money laundering outfit infusing vast sums into the coffers of the DNC that were tied to Ukrainian operations, hardly a single western Mockingbird press outlet made a peep.

As the Pentagon Papers and Hunter Biden Laptop reminded us, not only has Ukraine been run by a coterie of money laundering grifting politicians enjoying endless skimming of foreign aid (Pandora Papers revealed that both Zelensky and his billionaire handler Igor Kolomoskoi were both tied to offshore shell companies representing hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen loot), but also energy firms like Burisima which has been caught extracting revenue from the Ukrainian people the way silk worm farmers extract silk.

And what happens if you find yourself among that precious minority of republican or independent voices of resistance to this new plunge into world war? Just ask Representative Matt Gaetz who has been called out alongside other patriots such as Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert for not applauding Zelensky’s pathetic speech in Congress this week. For the crime of keeping their hands from slapping in lock step with the rest of the congressional herd, NBC analysts like Michael Beschloss have attempted to stir up a McCarthyite witchhunt asking why these representatives refused to clap, asking:

“I’d like to know why that was for two reasons- Number one: You’re a public servant, we’re allowed to know those things. You’re supposed to tell us if you’re serving in Congress what the reason was. Do you love Putin, or are you just opposed to democracy, or is there something else?”

The fact that these figures even dared ask where graft was going probably touched a nerve too close to home with the Pentagon itself failing its fifth consecutive audit in November 2022 with over 65% of its assets and expenditures unaccounted for. That’s right, the government ‘lost track’ of $2 trillion in 2022.

Will enough Americans wake up to the reality that they have been walking on the wrong side of history for far too long or has the point of no-return already been crossed?