Pasta News Network - New Zealand

Washington and Tokyo need to abandon their Cold War mentality and stop inventing enemies in the Asia-Pacific region, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday. He described a recent joint statement by American and Japanese foreign and defense ministers as containing “groundless smears and attacks” on China.

“We urge the US and Japan to abandon the Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop creating imaginary enemies and stop trying to sow the seeds of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific,” Wang told reporters at a regular briefing in Beijing.

Old habbits die hard.

Commentators have rushed to declare the long-criticized policy of NATO expansion as irrelevant to the war’s outbreak, or as a mere fig leaf used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to mask what Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates recently called “his messianic mission” to “reestablish the Russian Empire.” Fiona Hill, a presidential advisor to two Republican administrations, has deemed these views merely the product of a “Russian information war and psychological operation,” resulting in “masses of the US public … blaming NATO, or blaming the US for this outcome.”

Yet a review of the public record and many dozens of diplomatic cables made publicly available via WikiLeaks shows that US officials were aware, or were directly told over the span of years, that expanding NATO was viewed by Russian officials well beyond Putin as a major threat and provocation, that expanding it to Ukraine was a particularly bright red line for Moscow, that it would inflame and empower hawkish, nationalist parts of the Russian political spectrum, and that it could ultimately lead to war.

(((Proxy))) War.

Rejoice! The Toothy Tyrant is no more. Jacinda Arden, the “kind” and “empathetic” Queen of Woke who locked her people in their homes for months on end following the appearance of a single case of COVID-19 and turned her island nation into a prison has announced she is to step down. With the economy tanking and her party headed for almost certain defeat in the election later this year, it can only be taken as an admission of failure. Her fanatical pursuit of Zero Covid, which involved the roll-out of vaccine passports, the sacking of workers who refused to get jabbed and had a catastrophic impact on the New Zealand economy, has had disastrous consequences. Ross Clark has written a suitably gloating piece in the Telegraph titled, ‘Poor Jacinda Ardern, defeated by her own vanity’ with the blurb: “She believed her own myth – that she was the most virtuous leader in the world. Then came the consequences of her disastrous actions.”

That opening is an accurate summary of everything Jacinda.

The political obituaries were flooding in all day. Jacinda Ardern, it seemed, was just too good for this grubby political world. “A true global leader,” said Sir Keir Starmer. Her difference to the world was “immeasurable”, said Justin Trudeau. And how apt that New Zealand’s prime minister – a global progressive icon – was not defiled by losing an election but had the grace to bow out, saying she is emotionally exhausted. In so doing, she began her final act: the Assumption of St Jacinda, a world leader now showing the world how to say goodbye.

That’s one way of putting it. Another is to say that her popularity was tanking and she had decided she’d probably lose the general election this autumn. But rather than let voters pass verdict on her zero-Covid policy, she bolted. Doing so in an election year leaves her successor little time to get established – thereby condemning her party, Labour, to a sure defeat. She might have used her campaigning skills to limit the damage but instead, she has bailed: on party and country.

This.

Consumer advocates, economists, and other experts have discussed how Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments have contributed to the decades-high inflation America continues to experience.

“ESG-driven inflation is pushing higher prices on hardworking American consumers and forcing taxpayers to pay the bill for the progressive agenda of megalomaniacs like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told Breitbart News in a statement. “With supply chains still being disrupted and prioritization of liberal political goals forcing higher prices at the grocery store and the gas pump, it’s clear ESG is a major factor.”

Eco-Facism, hard at work.

The government of the Netherlands has announced plans to force the sale and closure of 3,000 farms in order to meet strict new environmental guidelines put in place by the European Union.

Although the purchases will apparently be made on generous terms of up to 120 percent of the farms’ value, the Dutch government has already made clear that purchases will be mandated, if required.

“There is no better offer coming,” Christianne van der Wal – Minister for Nature and Nitrogen – told Dutch Members of Parliament last week. Compulsory purchases would be made with “pain in the heart”, the government claimed.

Still surprisingly little coverage of this, which has now been going on for months. I wonder (((why))).

I usually am not a fan of journalists shouting questions at unwilling politicians outside of Congress and such, because the person is unlikely to answer and it’s simply unbecoming to be yelling at people just walking to their office. But Levan and Ali are not screaming, they’re not threatening, and they’re calmly posing Bourla the questions we all want to ask—and he refuses to answer a single one of them.

This.

Millions of people around the world were forced to take Pfizer’s ineffective vaccines due to government and business mandates, and an untold number experienced vaccine injuries. It’s shameful that Bourla refuses to answer for anything, and it’s equally shameful that despite there being an army of “accredited” journalists at Davos, not a single one will ask Bourla these questions.

Especially This.

So far, the U.S. has allocated $113 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes $24.2 billion in security assistance since the conflict began in February 2022.

Much of what the U.S. has supplied to Ukraine has come from its military’s own stocks. The Biden administration has dipped into those inventories 29 times, using what is known as “Presidential Drawdown Authority,” or PDA.

But now the flow of weapons is running up against current supplies and the production capacity of the defense industry.

"You know who's going to inherit the earth? Arms dealers." - Yuri Orlov

The Swiss escort agencies near Davos are already fully booked ahead of this year’s World Economic Forum, the elite gathering that brings together heads of state, corporate executives, and influential non-profiteers, Austrian outlet Exxpress reported on Sunday, citing a missive purportedly sent from one such agency.

In a message to unnamed hospitality staff and published by Exxpress, escort agency Sensuallounge Escort urges readers to book their “fine selection of ladies and gentlemen” ahead of time to ensure “the best possible care and company during the World Economic Forum.”

At-least some proof these humans have human wants and needs.

"While Mr. Bankman-Fried is accused of serious financial crimes, a public association with him does not carry nearly the same stigma as with the Jeffrey Epstein child sex trafficking scandal," wrote lawyers for the outlets.

Notably, the judge in the SBF case is the same one who presided over Ghislaine Maxwell's case, while SBF's lawyers, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, also represented Maxwell in her criminal case. SBF also hired James P. Harkins, a private investigator known as the "real hound dog," who also worked for Ghislaine.

Certainly a man who keeps good company.

He's gonna walk.

In the wake of the covid pandemic lockdowns and mandates, many western nations and states in the US witnessed a new eye opening level of government intrusion into the daily lives of citizens. Some, however, dealt with worse scenarios than others.

New Zealand in particular has popped up time and time again over the past couple of years with some of the most draconian restrictions on the public, and sadly the trend has not stopped just because the pandemic lockdowns stopped. The island nation seems to be intent on setting the standard for authoritarian policies and government micromanagement, and a series of recent laws are driving home the reality that they do not intend to relent.

Ticks all the boxes, worth reading in full.

As bombing and shelling ripped through Ukraine’s towns and cities in the first week of the invasion, the Ukrainian government still made a scheduled interest payment to its private lenders on time. The lenders — mostly international finance institutions, banks, and hedge funds — are all queuing up to collect their debts, with no sign of respite.

The people of Ukraine are fighting for their survival while dealing with huge humanitarian needs, mass displacement, and the horrific siege conditions in Mariupol. And yet they are seeing urgently needed resources flow out of the country to foreign creditors.

They will cancel the debt, in return for farmland and other resources (conveniently). But, it certainly is an interesting and fair point.

Since the 1890s, electricity networks and devices all around the globe have used alternating current (AC) systems, which means that the flow of electricity in the system is repeatedly changing direction.

Supplying electricity at a consistent frequency is very important because appliances and electronics on the network are designed for a specific frequency/voltage input. Therefore, they can be damaged by the wrong electricity supply.

As a rule, networks would rather supply no electricity than bad electricity. Automated controls through the electricity system will disconnect the supply if the frequency or voltage is “off-spec.”

Frequency Control is an often neglected topic and worth getting a good mention.

Few people in America today are as powerful and polarising as Anthony Fauci. For the Left, Fauci is a consummate cool-headed scientist, emblematic of the essential role of government. On the Right, he is a Deep State operative who destroyed the lives of countless people to serve a hidden agenda, all while mysteriously taking home a bigger paycheck than any other of the country’s two million federal employees (including their collective boss, the President).

The reality is that both narratives fundamentally misunderstand the position Fauci occupies in American government. Far from being a public health expert, Fauci sits at the very top of America’s biodefence infrastructure. And contrary to the notion that he is a Deep State string-puller of the Democratic party, it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who not only put Fauci there but created the very framework that the immunologist-physician commands.

America is a very strange place.

A fine ending, also the comment section.

Eat bugs and live in a pod.

The globalists and freaks in the left-wing media are trying to convince people to eat bugs.

Eating bugs is degrading and that’s why the elitists are pushing them as a “sustainable” source of protein for the peasants.

According to a new study, ‘beetleburgers’ made from mealworms will hit mass production to help feed the world.

And then it turns out, ingesting large amounts of Chitin is bad for humans.

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America's Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

JFK was right.

The scandal surrounding Pfizer’s contracts with the European Union over COVID vaccines has taken a new turn. The European Parliament’s COVID committee (COVI) approved on Wednesday, January 11th a proposal to ban Pfizer representatives from Parliament because of the company’s repeated lack of transparency.

Albert Bourla systematically refused to attend COVI committee meetings in October 2022 and December 2022, triggering protests from committee members. “The EP has a right to full transparency on the details of this spending and the preliminary negotiations that led to it,” tweeted Kathleen Van Brempt, chair of the COVI committee in December.

"The bill comes due." - Baron Mordo

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill that regulates the collection and use of the biometric data of the country’s citizens.

The legislation approved by Putin on Thursday introduces a new state-operated Unified Biometrics System (UBS), set to be created next year. The UBS will handle all biometrics collected from Russian nationals, including face images and voice samples. However, the law prohibits forcibly collecting such data.

"Rules for thee, but not for me."

Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director and current finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference, according to a Dec. 28 Caixin report.

Xie noted that cumulative digital yuan transactions had only crossed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after launch.

“The results are not ideal,” he said, adding that “usage has been low, highly inactive.”

Money is already "digital" so this should not surprise.

Recently, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen carelessly revealed the devastating cost of the Ukraine war.

“It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date,” she said. The comment drew sharp backlash and the E.C. later deleted the comments from video recordings of the address. The censorship was left unexplained and demonstrated the confusion of the purveyors of the approved narrative.

If Von der Leyen’s estimate is true, that is nearly ten times the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers reported by the Ukrainian government. The E.C. president’s remark shows that even the strongest backers of this bloody and unnecessary war can no longer hide the truth: Ukraine is at risk of losing.

The biggest money laundering exercise of our time and (((they))) are all in on it.

"War, never been so much fun!" - Cannon Fodder

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who last year assured the nation that inflation was only a fleeting bogeyman, recently took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to sell the Biden snake oil of a U.S. economy that we are supposed to believe is “resilient,” “strong,” “healthy,” and “robust” thanks to this administration’s endless inflationary spending, because of which she claims “the U.S. will be in a uniquely strong position to capitalize on the future.”

Funny, but just a few days before her overflowingly optimistic op-ed, Yellen was telling CBS’s 60 Minutes “there’s a risk of a recession,” then craftily adding that “it certainly isn’t, in my view, something that is necessary to bring inflation down”—a suggestion that the aggressive but less-than-Volckeresque higher interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve she once chaired will be to blame for the downturn that likely has already begun.

Only a matter of time before the USD pops.

Platforms remove content at the “explicit direction” of US federal agencies, the Twitter CEO has claimed

All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.

Pretty sure Australian and New Zealand based alphabet agencies know who to call when needed too.

It is certainly interesting to see what disappears in "Western Nations" with "Free Speech".

Ghanaians are seemingly fed up with alarmist new year predictions especially prophecies about the incoming new year.

Ghanaian government has issued a stun warning to religious leaders against making alarming New Year predictions that can cause anxiety, fear or death.

The Ghana police spokesperson Grace Ansah-Akrofi in a statement on Tuesday said those found culpable would be arrested. He recalled that police has banned what it describes misleading New Year prophecies that can cause jitters.

One way to keep the peace.

Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to enter a plea deal next week in the FTX Ponzi scheme case.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s case was assigned to Bill Clinton-appointed District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

TGP reported that after allowing SBF to return home to his parents’ house before Christmas that the judge who set him free next recused herself from the case because of her husband’s conflicts.

This is good news for Sam Bankman-Fried. Judge Kaplan is part of the Deep State Democrat gang.

He's gonna walk.

In a move that has many folks scratching their heads, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has renewed its push for the People’s Garden Initiative which now includes registering vegetable gardens nationwide. According to the USDA, the move is to foster a "more diverse and resilient local food system to empower communities to address issues like nutrition access and climate change." But those who have been following the USDA closely for years know that they couldn't care less about your health and nutrition.

So, what in fact is the issue with nitrogen and Dutch farming?

The nitrogen crisis is a bureaucratic and muddled affair which is now and will increasingly impact all of Dutch society. In 2017 a small NGO, Mobilisation for the Environment, led by long-time environmentalist Johan Vollenbroek, went to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to challenge the then current Dutch practices that protected natural areas from nitrogen pollution.

In 2018, the ECJ decided in a court ruling that the Dutch legislation, which allowed business to compensate for increases in nitrogen emissions with technical measures and restoration, was too lenient. The Dutch high court agreed with the ruling. In so doing almost 20,000 building projects have been put on hold, stalling the expansion of farms and dairies, new homes, roads, and airport runways. These projects are valued at €14 billion of economic activity.

"Oehoe oehoerend hard" - Normaal

Decades of failed energy policies came home to roost this year.

Most Britons probably didn’t realise at the time just how close we came to blackouts this year. Parts of London were just inches away from running out of power back in the summer. The National Grid, out of sheer desperation, was forced to fork out an astonishing £9,700 per megawatt hour to secure emergency supplies from abroad – over 5,000 per cent the usual price. That close shave with a blackout was the energy crisis in a microcosm. An insecure supply of energy has been unable to keep up with demand, pushing up prices to new eye-watering levels.

"All I want to say is that they don't really care about us." - Michael Jackson

Germany’s Federal Network Agency, a government watchdog responsible for the regulation of electricity and gas in the country, has announced a new plan that will allow power grid operators to remotely limit the use of heat pumps and electric car chargers in Germany next winter without the user’s permission.

With the plans set to be put in place by January 2024, the measure has been described as a way of ensuring energy grid operators have the ability to artificially curb electricity demand should consumption outstrip supply.

"Wir schaffen das."

From Canadian truckers to Dutch farmers, working people have had enough of the laptop elites.

The laptop elites. The pyjama classes. It’s hard to know what to call the new establishment. Those upper-middle-class graduates who make up the knowledge economy. Who think tweeting is a job. Who have faithfully imbibed every woke mantra, from ‘Trans women are women’ to ‘Wear your mask!’. Who are waited on hand and foot by the precariat of Deliveroo and Amazon. Who loathe the old economy – the one that actually makes things – for its unsightly footprint on the planet. And who loved lockdown. Six months making sourdough bread for your Instagram Stories while still getting paid for whatever it is you do for a job? What’s not to like?

The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy possibly ranks as the single most famous event of the twentieth century.

For nearly sixty years, there have been widespread suspicions that he died at the hands of a conspiracy, as did his brother Robert a few years later. Although these “conspiracy theories” have been ignored or dismissed by nearly our entire mainstream media, they have inspired hundreds or thousands of books and films along with countless articles, and have been widely believed by large portions of the American public. The resulting loss of faith in our major institutions has been dramatic, leading to today’s intense popular skepticism on so many other issues, whether justified or unjustified.

Our government has still never released all of its official records on the death of our 35th President, but after almost six decades that monumental cover-up may finally be starting to collapse.

“To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true,” Musk said.

“Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far, they’ve all turned out to be true. If not more true than people thought.”

Files released earlier this month showed how the FBI worked to discredit the Biden laptop report and prevent it from spreading on the platform in October 2020, just weeks ahead of the general election that year.

Others showed how the FBI pressured Twitter to find evidence of foreign influence and sources of disinformation and to take action against specific accounts.

"Make no mistake, Madam; that folly is over. I will tear this sacred garment into a thousand pieces and scatter them on the wind. The people wait today for the revelation, but none will come. You may kill us if you can, but we have at least crushed a lie and done service to our country." - Greenmantle (1961)

Approval rates for welcoming refugees and support for globalism are low across Europe, with soaring numbers of respondents believing they are being personally harmed by the globalisation process, research shows.

The number of Britons who believe they are being personally harmed by globalisation has increased near-three-fold in one year, the number of Swedes who believe that has doubled, and in Germany, it has gone up nearly 90 per cent. Meanwhile, less than a third of Danes are happy about refugees fleeing to their country, and under half of all European nations surveyed say the same. This has been revealed in a partial dataset of research into the state of globalism in the West reported by Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

People do not like it when politicians force an established culture to be supplanted by another. There are limits on how much diversity any place can hold.

Reduce, reuse, recycle: we are never more aware of the familiar mantra than at Christmas, when a tsunami of cardboard, cellophane and empty bottles of beer and Chateauneuf sweeps through the house. Each one of us is faced with a domestic waste mountain.

But a series of reports this year have raised questions about what happens to our recycling – and whether it’s even worth doing. The biggest problem concerns plastic. According to researchers, more than 60 per cent of the 2.5 million metric tonnes of plastic that is recycled in the UK every year is sent to countries where it is less likely to be recycled or disposed of sustainably. As a result, the equivalent of 30 double-decker-bus loads of plastic waste is dumped or burned in developing countries every 30 seconds, according to a study by the international relief charity Tearfund.

If you have ever seen the first of the Rambo films (First Blood), you will know that a Vietnam War vet who just wants to be left alone is harassed mercilessly by some small-town law enforcement folks. That is a big mistake, and it leads to all sorts of trouble not just for the sheriff and his colleagues, but for an entire community in America’s northwest.

The idea of just wanting to be left alone is of course one that many of us can approve of and seek for ourselves, our families, and our loved ones. However, I am here to inform you that while this might have been viable not all that long ago in the West, it seems that it is no longer something we can count on.

Annually, friend-of-the-site David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. He strikes again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way. As with past years, he selected Peak Prosperity as the site where it is published in full. It is longer than our usual posts, but worth the time to read in full. While each part stands on its own, and doesn’t need to be read in order.

All Roads Lead to Ukraine. Trying to understand the war from a dead cold start was monumentally hard. Geopolitical events occur to teach Americans geography; I am no exception. As a combination of foreshadowing and trigger warning, I am going to steelman the debate by taking a decidedly Russian perspective but am not sure it is steelmanning if you come to believe it. If this is gonna drive you nuts, I beg you to stop reading because you will just get mad while I wallow in the slime of your frustrated soul.

Three weeks ago and experimental chat bot called ChatGPT was unleashed on the world. When asked questions, it gives relevant, specific, simple answers - rather than spitting back a list of internet links. It can also generate ideas on its own - including business plans, Christmas gift suggestions, vacation ideas, and advice on how to tune neural network models using python scripts.

Now, experts think Google might struggle to compete with these smaller companies offering machine learning chat bots, as they may prove damaging to its business model.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers aging to be a natural process. This makes it difficult to get FDA approval for drugs that seek to slow or reverse the biological process of aging. Instead, drugs intended to target aging must target a disease that often results from the aging process in order to demonstrate efficacy and gain approval.

But there is growing consensus and effort among scientists to convince the FDA that aging itself should be classified as a disease and an appropriate target for drug development.

This could be a major milestone for not just industry, but society. If the FDA is swayed, the resulting regulatory shift could mean approval of drugs or treatments that slow or reverse the aging process generally, before a patient develops disease.

You could say some people believe we are "sick of life"

Former Swiss intelligence officer and NATO adviser Jacques Baud on the roots of the Ukraine-Russia war and its growing dangers. As the Russia-Ukraine war enters a new phase, former Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud analyzes the conflict and argues that the US and its allies are exploiting Ukraine in a longstanding campaign to bleed its Russian neighbor. Guest: Jacques Baud. Former intelligence officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service who has served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the United Nations, and with the Swiss military.

So they’re not ill; they just don’t feel like working any more. That is the conclusion from an analysis by the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee, which argues that the British labour force has shrunk not primarily because of long Covid or other sickness, but because of middle-aged people retiring early.

The UK stands almost alone in the developed world in failing to reverse Covid’s impact on the supply of workers. The proportion of working-age people willing to work has gone down and it’s still falling. Almost everywhere else, the “economic activity rate”, as it’s called, has recovered.

For months, the dominant theory has been that illness is the primary cause. The surveys all show a rise in people citing it as their main reason for not working. But closer interrogation of the data has shown that the rise in illness is almost entirely among people who had already stopped working. So Britain’s health might be ailing but that isn’t the cause of the worker shortage.

After writing quite the pre-Christmas reflection Friday, night, Journalist Matt Taibbi has decided to grace us with a Christmas Eve edition of THE TWITTER FILES - which he says details "Twitter's relationship to other government agencies - including some that don't like to see their name in print much."

"After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday. - Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022"

In a stunning admission, according to estimates from the government’s top health authority, nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week.

This is a shockingly stark divergence from the extremely low 'official' case count (which reported just 62,592 symptomatic) and utterly dwarfs the previous global daily record of about 4 million, set in January 2022, as Omicron spread...

Not sure what they were expecting, you cannot stop nature. Nature has a way of doing things.

Japan reverses nuclear energy phase-out policy amid global fuel shortages, climate change

Japan has adopted a new policy promoting greater use of nuclear energy to ensure a stable power supply amid global fuel shortages and to reduce carbon emissions, in a major reversal of its phase-out plan following the Fukushima crisis.

Key points:

• Japan plans to maximise its existing nuclear reactors by restarting as many as possible
• The policy reversal argues that nuclear power provides stable output and serves "an important role"
• A Fukushima disaster survivor says the new ruling is "extremely disappointing"

Energy is the Economy.

Without Energy, no Economy.

According to the newspaper report, Stanford’s website administrators have embarked on an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”. Under this initiative, users of the website must not be so described because the word “users” might make some of them think they were being compared with drug addicts (who are themselves better described as “people who deal with substance abuse issues”).

Other words and phrases to be excised by Stanford include “rule of thumb” (it allegedly refers to an old English law which allowed men to beat their wives), “ballsy” (links personality traits to anatomy), “long time no see” (mocks indigenous people and Chinese), and even the now famous, fairly new expression “trigger warning” (can “cause stress about what is to follow”).

This story could have arisen only in the West, and would probably be incomprehensible to all but an elite few in the countries which featured in the four preceding stories – China, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan and even democratic India.

And this is why Russia and China are increasingly distancing themselves from the West. The West is incapable of introspection and unable to see what is on the horizon.

On December 22, 2022, the United States Senate passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill, which means that American taxpayers have had to fork over more than $110 billion in aid to Ukraine in less than one year.

Earlier in 2022, Congress approved $66 billion in aid to Ukraine. The additional $45 billion featured in the omnibus bill would make that figure total out to $111 billion.

According to Kristina Wong of Breitbart News, this figure “would exceed by tens of billions the estimated average the U.S. spent per year on a full-scale war in Afghanistan, which had more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops deployed to the country at one point.”

The Biden administration has promised to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

We used to say that socialism cannot work. What does that mean? It means that it will only make people poorer and more miserable. But what if you have an ideology that is actually intended to do that? Can Faucian economics work? Yes, if you mean to reduce the population, spread misery, end progress, abolish all comforts, empty the cities, cause people to freeze to death, and only allow what’s left of the population to live off bugs.

We need to get real. These people are truly up to no good. They have gotten their way. What’s more, the gang that did this is not subject to the voters, so elections might not make a bit of difference, even if they turn out well.

Some 5,000-plus soldiers from the Swiss army are deployed to welcome attendees to the luxury ski resort and protect participants from any harassment, protests or dissenting voices.

In a statement released Friday, January 6th, the Swiss Defense Department (VBS) said the Federal Assembly, the country’s parliament, had approved the deployment of the mass Swiss army contingent, the Swiss German-language newspaper Blick reports.

Anti-WEF protests are reportedly expected to take place all next week after the conference opening on Monday.

One way to keep "opinions" out of the room.

One way to keep un-elected decision makers un-accountable.

In response to the U.S. government’s weaponization of the dollar through such measures as sanctions and trade wars, China, along with Russia and other nations, are making efforts to dethrone the dollar as the world’s international reserve currency. For example, Russia and China are now using the Chinese yuan, rather than the dollar, for payment for Russian oil. Saudi Arabia is now talking about doing the same thing.

One of the interesting aspects of this process involves gold. According to an article at Forexlive, China has purchased 62 tons of gold in the last two months. China’s gold reserves now total 2,010 tons.

There is sound money and then there's currency. Russia and China know what's up.

Potatoes New Zealand chief executive Chris Claridge told NewstalkZB in a live interview that “potatoes aren’t particularly good swimmers and don’t like being submerged in water for long periods.” Claridge said access to the fields to harvest the crops is also hampered in the wet weather.

Gerhard Uys reports for Stuff.co.nz that record amounts of rainfall before Christmas are expected to lead to an early season potato shortage and higher prices.

What a great name for a factual website, that alone makes it worth a link.

With Beijing pivoting on key policies, a cyclical recovery appears to be underway. But structural issues – such as the heavy debt load of local governments — haven’t gone away. On Dec. 30, Zunyi Road & Bridge Construction Group from Guizhou province, one of the poorest regions, extended its bank loans for two decades. It pledged to honor payments on its bonds.

The restructuring caused a splash among market participants. Local government financing vehicles, or LGFVs, are mostly tasked with building infrastructure projects. They allow local authorities to raise money without having the debt appear on the government’s balance sheet. This “hidden” debts and contingent liabilities have risen to 47 trillion yuan ($7 trillion and 39% of GDP) in September, up from 20 trillion yuan at the end of 2016, according to Adam Wolfe, an economist at Absolute Strategy Research.

No one outside of China knows the true nature of the ledger, but I do know they have enough gold to back the system up.

"We expect the European ban on seaborne Russian crude and refined products (to come into force on February 5) to result in a drop of Russian production of at least 1 million barrels per day in 2023, with Russia having difficulties in finding alternative markets," UBS’ Giovanni Staunovo, told Insider.

While Russia has been rerouting crude volumes to Asia, traders are finding it increasingly challenging to secure the necessary insured vessels to carry sanctioned Russian crude. As of the first week of December, Moscow was sending nearly 90% of its crude to Asia.

Starting Marsden Point back up is going to start to look very attractive soon. But that will take at-least 2 - 3 years.

Globally, oil production is down everywhere so buckle up. Unless sensible decisions are made, we are going to see $3-5+ sooner then you would think.

The leader of the US Navy has admitted that the question of dwindling US arms stockpiles in the rush to arm Ukraine, which now stands at over $100 billion in defense aid and counting, is dire enough that some tough unprecedented decisions are coming, which shocked a group of reporters this week.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro acknowledged before a naval warfare conference in Arlington, Virginia on Wednesday that the US within the next six months could face a decision of whether to arm itself or Ukraine, due to rapidly depleting stockpiles due to supplying Ukraine

This is fine.

Besides, 5th Gen warfare only needs keyboards and printing presses.

Beijing has begun purchases of three types of Arctic crude previously destined for the EU, Bloomberg reports.

China has ramped up imports of a wider variety of Russian crude oil, including Arctic grades with a rare, dense and highly sulfurous Arco, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing oil-flow tracking data from Vortexa and Kpler.

Sanctions, mean, nothing.

In the final days of 2022, Goldman's economists predicted that "the biggest political risk" of 2023 will be the Congressional showdown over America's favorite periodic drama: the debt limit.

This is what the bank's chief economist Jan Hatzius said then: "The debt limit likely poses the greatest political risk next year, and we expect it to rival the 2011 episode in its disruption to financial markets and the economy. That said, we do not expect Congress to enact major fiscal changes. Republicans might press for spending cuts in a debt limit deal, but we do not expect substantial cuts next year. The White House might press for increased fiscal support, but this also looks unlikely as we believe a soft landing is more likely and a divided Congress would have difficulty responding to a recession even if one occurs."

"The bill comes due." - Baron Mordo

Supporters of Brazilian far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his electoral defeat have stormed the presidential palace, Congress, and the Supreme Court in the capital, Brasilia.

Videos on social media showed Bolsonaro supporters smashing windows and furniture in the National Congress and Supreme Court buildings on Sunday. They climbed onto the roof of the Congress building, where Brazil’s Senate and Chamber of Deputies conduct their legislative business, unfurling a banner that read “intervention” and an apparent appeal to Brazil’s military.

This has been brewing for a while now. As far as the MSM is concerned, seemingly only the NZ Herald had an article in a corner via the Associated Press wire.

Early indications are that more died during the last year (Feb 2022 to Feb 2023). Those are staggering numbers. The U.S. Government built a war memorial to the U.S. military personnel slain in that conflict. When you learn that more than a million Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses in the last twenty years then you begin to understand the gravity of this threat. That is more than twice as many that the U.S. lost in World War II. And what is the domestic reaction? A big yawn.

I wonder when Americans will have had enough and then proceed to "replenish the tree of liberty."

The founding fathers have atleast foreseen this moons ago.

One week ago, in his latest - and arguably most important note of 2022 - Credit Suisse repo guru Zoltan Pozsar discussed the two key anchors of the Bretton Woods III regime he believes will replace the world in which the dollar is a reserve currency: i) commodity encumbrance (i.e., rehypothecation) and ii) the Petroyuan, and - intertwined inbetween them - China's aggressive accumulation of gold.

This was hardly a coincidence: just a few weeks earlier, we learned that for the first time in years, China had bought 32 tons of gold in the month of November, its first official purchase since September 2918 (even as it had unofficially been buying up much more gold over the past three years).

China and Russia know what is coming.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has issued ultra-provocative words claiming that it's not fundamentally Ukraine that Russia is at war with, but that the Russian military is facing all of NATO inside Ukraine.

"The events in Ukraine aren’t a clash between Moscow and Kiev. It’s a military confrontation of NATO, first of all the US and Britain, with Russia. Fearing a direct engagement, NATO instructors push Ukrainian men to certain death," he said in a fresh interview with state-owned newspaper aif.ru.

Proxy Proxy

But based on the words of Russian Security Council Secretary Patrushev, it seems Russia increasingly sees military confrontation with NATO as already happening. After all, the massive loss of Russian troops in the Makiivka barracks attack was reportedly accomplished with US-supplied HIMARS missile systems.

Proxy War

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

That finisher:

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

A sensible list of questions, sadly ignored by everyone involved within American politics. Politicians and mainstream journalists alike.

Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson revealed earlier this week that the College of Psychologists of Ontario is demanding that he submit to mandatory social media training with their hand-picked experts or face the suspension of his license. (Spoiler alert: he is declining the training.)

Unlike the U.S., which has First Amendment protections, Canada has no constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was codified in 1982, is a rather wishy-washy document and only guarantees rights and freedoms on paper. It bears no resemblance to its superior American constitutional counterpart and was largely trampled upon by the Trudeau government during the most acute phases of its COVID-inspired tyranny.

Dis gon' b gud.

At least 29 people, including 10 soldiers, have been killed in an operation to arrest the son of jailed Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s government says after a shootout with cartel members.

Ovidio Guzman, nicknamed “El Raton”, or “The Mouse”, was rounded up early on Thursday in the northern state of Sinaloa and flown to Mexico City on a military plane.

“Ten members of the military … unfortunately lost their lives in the line of duty,” Defence Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters on Friday, adding 19 “lawbreakers” were also killed in the operation. Another 35 soldiers sustained gunshot wounds.

Kicking the hornet's nest is never a good idea.

A program trained with the help of artificial intelligence is set to help a defendant contest his case in a U.S. court next month, New Scientist reported. Instead of addressing the court, the program, which will run on a smartphone, will supply appropriate responses through an earpiece to the defendant, who can then use them in the courtroom.

In a new development, a company, DoNotPay, which has been training AI, has now claimed that its program will be able to defend a speeding case that is due to be heard in a U.S. court in February 2023. Identities of the individual and the court remain under wraps, but we do know that the defendant is contesting a speeding ticket

I am all for an high stakes legal case, that gets won by a machine learning model that quotes some 16th century law that everyone forgot about.

The Taliban government of Afghanistan has signed an oil extraction deal with a Chinese company, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

The contract with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC) was signed in Kabul in the presence of the Taliban’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, the outlet said, citing a statement from the Taliban government.

And so China continues to buy up the world while the West squanders their money on feelings.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed an executive order to activate the National Guard in the state amid a major surge of illegal aliens arriving in the Florida Keys from places such as Cuba and other Caribbean countries.

“As the negative impacts of [President Joe] Biden’s lawless immigration policies continue unabated, the burden of the Biden administration’s failure falls on local law enforcement who lack the resources to deal with the crisis,” the Republican governor said in a statement.

“That is why I am activating the National Guard and directing state resources to help alleviate the strain on local resources. When Biden continues to ignore his legal responsibilities, we will step in to support our communities.”

DeSantis 2024

The US is going to send Ukraine Bradley Fighting Vehicles for the first time in a new weapons package worth nearly $3 billion, US officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The officials said the $2.85 billion aid package will be formally announced on Friday, and it will mark the single largest arms package for Ukraine the US has pledged at one time. The package will include 50 Bradleys, which are designed to transport infantry troops with armored protection that are equipped with a 25 mm gun.

How is this not a proxy war with Russia at this point.

The Indian government is reportedly interested in buying a copper mine and up to two lithium mines in Argentina, in a bid to catch up with China as a top provider of minerals needed for electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

India’s Business Standard on Thursday explained that several Indian mining and minerals corporations joined forces to create an enterprise called Khanij Bidesh India Ltd. (KABIL) in 2019, with an eye toward securing a “supply of strategic materials.”

A team of geologists from the Indian government went hunting for lithium in South America last November, and now KABIL is reportedly prepared to move on acquiring one or two lithium mines and a copper mine, possibly developing them in partnership with an Argentine firm called Camyen.

The things you can do when not burdened by eco-facism and ESG initiatives.

More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.

A U-Haul truck in a file photo taken in Illinois. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images) The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.

Red Pills, Pay Bills.

Go Woke, Go Broke.

Ottawa intended to welcome 431,645, a goal that has been reached, surpassing the previous year's record of more than 401,000 immigrants."Today marks an important milestone for Canada, setting a new record for newcomers welcomed in a single year," Fraser said. "It is a testament to the strength and resilience of our country and its people."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) processed approximately 5.2 million permanent residency applications in 2022, more than double the number from 2021.

Canada's goal for 2023 is 465,000 immigrants, increasing to 485,000 in 2024, then 500,000 in 2025, with an emphasis to be placed on skilled workers.

Freshly trained doctors, police officers and firefighters do not grow on trees. Neither do many other forms of infrastructure. Expanding a society at such a rate is train wreck waiting to happen.

Long gone are the days of suffocating niceness from our northern cousins. Now, professionals who disagree on social media with Canada’s ruling elite find themselves ruthlessly threatened by institutions that are meant to stand for liberty of thought.

That ‘stuffy’ and outdated value is scorned by the younger generation who prefer the comfort of ‘approved truth’ and safe nests feathered with media ‘consensus’.

While most Western regimes find themselves under attack from a mixture of neo-Marxism, eco-fascism, gender extremism, and whatever ‘ism’ TikTok culture involves – it is Canada that leads the way on policing ‘wrongthink’. They have readily embraced the insidious idea that the government and its bureaucracies have a right to ‘re-educate’ those who dissent.

I guess people like kicking hornet nests and all.

More than one economist, big wig CEO, and Fed watcher has alleged the problems haunting the financial system have very deep roots. These people often contend governments and central banks have not fully rectified the problems causing the great financial crisis of 2008. Instead, they have merely papered over our failures by printing money and flooding the system with liquidity.

Let's just cut to the chase. Overall, the global financial system is not a well-designed efficient machine. Instead, it is a cobbled-together mess all glued together in a haphazard way to get the job done. To make matters worse, this system is greased by the greed of those who benefit from stealing a little from here and there. In the real world, things are usually not intentionally designed to be complicated but the reality is that they just are.

There is "Sound Money" and then there is "Currency".

The current price inflation engulfing the US and other western nations results more from fiscal stimulus in 2020 and 2021 than monetary policy. In America alone, national politicians pumped more than $6 trillion into the domestic economy in the form of direct payments—subsidies—to state and local governments, preferred industries (insurance, airlines), businesses (payroll “loans”), and individuals in the form of stimulus checks.

All this new money was created even as Covid lockdowns dramatically reduced the production of goods and services and disrupted global supply chains. So unlike monetary stimulus, where central banks push interest rates down and buy government bonds from commercial banks, the price inflation we are suffering today is directly tied to fiscal stimulus. It’s a simple matter of more money chasing fewer goods and services. Paying people to stay home and not work was a recipe for disaster.

While US focused, it is much the same in any other western nation.

Describing all the ways experts got it wrong is a thriving cottage industry. Expertise is itself contentious, as conventional expertise legitimized by credentials, prestigious institutional positions, scholarship, prizes, etc. can be wielded to promote the interests of the expert or whomever is funding the expert.

Another segment of experts are self-proclaimed, essentially substituting an air of confidence in their own projections for actual expertise.

Yet another segment of experts are lightweights with a misleading veneer of legitimacy to cloak their real identity as paid shills for corporations or other self-interested parties. PhD, anyone? Just put that PhD after your name and then pontificate about subjects completely outside your field.

Accurate.

At the beginning of October, Elon Musk put forward a peace plan for Ukraine. The plan came, like so many of Musk’s ideas, in the form of a Twitter poll

It was not warmly received. In a particularly memorable tweet, Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Germany said, “Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you.”

Criticism focused on the first two points: that Russia’s sham referendums be redone under UN supervision, and that Crimea be formally recognised as part of Russia. Perhaps understandably, many Ukrainians and their Western supporters were indignant at the prospect of giving up any territory in exchange for peace.

Friendly reminder, this war started on the 24th of February 2022, the first peace talks happened on the 28th of February 2022. (((They))) do not want peace.

Over the past year, German security researcher Matthias Marx and a small group of researchers at Chaos Computer Lab, a European hacker association, have bought six SEEK II (Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit) on the popular auction website, according to the NY Times.

They contained biometric data at detainment facilities, on patrols, during screenings of local hires, and after the explosion of an IED. Officials at the time were concerned over a rash of shooting in which Afghan police and soldiers fired on American troops, and were hoping that biometric data could help identify any possible Taliban agents within their bases.

This is fine.

Emeritus Professor Jeffrey Gordon of Ben-Gurion University’s Solar Energy and Environmental Physics Department has calculated that this would require six times less mass than the best nuclear option to provide the same amount of electricity.

He claims that his proposal would provide uninterrupted electricity supply for oxygen-producing facilities 100% of the time, with a sufficient number of panels always exposed to the sun.

Lofty goals.

Makes me want to play Millenium 2.2 again.

In the spirit of New Year’s predictions, I will boldly assert that the same may be true of 2023’s future word of the year, “conspiracy theory.”

Like “gaslighting” and “goblin mode,” it is a term that has taken on a new meaning in light of current events—and one that the Left–Establishment hegemony has desperately sought to appropriate and weaponize for its own purposes.

But in the next 12 months, we will see conservatives successfully reclaim it. In fact, the early adopters are already lighting the way on social media.

My picks: 2, 7 and 9.

Back to the coins. They embody firmness of value. You can tell the history of the world through coins. There is an element of tragedy here, looking through coins from a time when money was sound, government was small, and Americans believed in liberty and independence.

The money shot:

The Fed is a good printer. It is a terrible alchemist. So if you want to get rid of inflation once and for all, there is a way. Get rid of the Fed and make the dollar good as gold again. Make the dimes silver. Forget this embarrassing baloney-sandwich stuff we use today.

Oil has been the single most influential resource in modern history, driving industrialization, building nations, and deciding the outcome of wars. It has been responsible for raising millions of people out of poverty and for razing entire cities to the ground. From technological advancements to environmental disasters, few, if any, industries have left as large a mark on the earth.

While the history of oil can be traced back as far as 3000 BC, when builders in Mesopotamia began to use bitumen to strengthen bricks, the story of the modern oil industry really began in the 1850s. Since then, explorers, investors, kings, journalists, spies, and scientists have all attempted to leave their mark on the industry. This is a list of the ten people who, for better or worse, are responsible for shaping the oil industry as we know it today.

When you get into this fascinating read, you learn that organized crime fused with intelligence agencies during World War II, forming the precursor of the CIA — the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

The web of corruption grew from there, as criminal factions and intelligence agencies developed a symbiotic relationship using blackmail as a tool to achieve their individual ends. It’s not just about money, although wealth is certainly part of it. It’s about power and control, which those involved, including Jeffrey Epstein, would stop at nothing to achieve.

(((They))) are a lovely bunch.

Elon Musk has criticized mainstream media outlets over their coverage of the so-called “Twitter Files.”

“Why is corporate journalism rushing to defend the state instead of the people?” Musk wrote on Twitter on Dec. 27, in response to a tweet from journalist and documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse. The latter was sharing his new Substack post about how corporate media rushed to defend the FBI and the state instead of exposing them.

“The Hunter Biden laptop story shows the extent to which the corporate media has become the propaganda arm of the state,” Woodhouse wrote in his Substack, pointing to the recent release of the seventh installment of Twitter’s internal documents.

Going to have to buy more popcorn.

One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2021, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as "the sheer breadth of narratives, stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments" made 2021 the most memorable year yet in our brief history, and that it would be an extremely tough act to follow. And yet despite the exceedingly high bar for 2022, not only did the year not disappoint but between the constant news barrage, the regime shifts, narrative volatility, market rollercoasters, oh and the world being on the verge of a nuclear Armageddon for much of the year, the past year was the most action, excitement, and news (including fake news)-packed yet.

Where does one even start?

The Top 20 is towards the end of the article. My picks number 10 and number 3.