By Jessica CORBETT

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”

“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”

“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”

“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.

“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”

“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”

The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

commondreams.org

It was something to behold. Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian President, unrepentant Atlanticist, current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, decided to go totally unplugged in an outburst matching the combat star turn of Mr. Khinzal that delivered palpable shock and awe all across NATOstan.

Medvedev said “hellish” Western sanctions not only have failed to cripple Russia, but are instead “returning to the West like a boomerang.” Confidence in reserve currencies is “fading like the morning mist”, and ditching the US dollar and the euro is not unrealistic anymore: “The era of regional currencies is coming.”

After all, he added, “no matter if they want it or not, they’ll have to negotiate a new financial order (…) And the decisive voice will then be with those countries that have a strong and advanced economy, healthy public finances and a reliable monetary system.”

Medvedev relayed his succinct analysis even before D Day – as in the deadline this Thursday established by President Putin after which payments for Russian gas by “unfriendly nations” will only be accepted in rubles.

The G7, predictably, had struck a (collective) pose: we won’t pay. “We” means the 4 that are not large Russian gas importers. “We”, moreover, means the Empire of Lies dictating the rules. As for the 3 that will be in dire straits, not only they are major importers but also happen to be WWII losers – Germany, Italy and Japan, still de facto occupied territories. History does have a habit of playing perverted tricks.

Denial didn’t last long. Germany was the first to break – even before industrialists from Ruhr to Bavaria staged a mass revolt. Scholz, the puny Chancellor, called Putin, who had to explain the obvious:  payments are being converted into rubles because the EU froze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves – in a crass violation of international law.

With Taoist patience, Putin also expressed hope this would not represent a deterioration in contract terms for European importers. Russian and German experts should sit down together and discuss the new terms.

Moscow is working on a set of documents defining the new deal. Essentially, that spells out no rubles, no gas. Contracts become null and void once you violate trust. The US and the EU broke legally biding agreements with unilateral sanctions and on top of it confiscated foreign reserves of a – nuclear – G20 nation.

The unilateral sanctions made dollars and euros worthless to Russia. Hysteria fits won’t cut it: this will be resolved – but under Russia’s terms. Period. The Foreign Ministry had already warned that refusal to pay for gas in rubles would lead to a serious global crisis of non-payments and serial global-level bankruptcies, a hellish chain reaction of blocked transactions, freezing of collateral assets and closures of credit lines.

What will happen next is partially predictable. EU companies will receive the new set of rules. They will have time to examine the documents and make a decision. Those that say “no” will be automatically excluded from receiving direct Russian gas shipments – all politico-economic consequences included.

There will be some compromise, of course. For instance, quite a few EU nations will accept to use rubles and increase their gas acquisitions so they may resell the surplus to their neighbors and make a profit. And some may also decide to buy gas on the go on energy exchanges.

So Russia is not imposing an ultimatum on anybody. The whole thing will take time – a rolling process. With some sideway action as well. The Duma is contemplating the extension of payment in rubles to other essential products – such as oil, metals, timber, wheat. It will depend on the collective voracity of the EU chihuahuas. Everyone knows that their non-stop hysteria may translate into a colossal rupture of supply chains across the West.

Bye bye oligarchs

While the Atlanticist ruling classes have gone totally berserk but still remain focused on fighting to the last European to extract any remaining, palpable EU wealth, Russia is playing it cool. Moscow has been quite lenient in fact, brandishing the specter of no gas in Spring rather than Winter.

The Russian Central Bank nationalized foreign exchange earnings of all major exporters. There was no default. The ruble keeps rising – and is now back to roughly the same level before Operation Z.  Russia remains self-sufficient, food-wise. American hysteria over “isolated” Russia is laughable. Every actor that matters across Eurasia – not to mention the other 4 BRICS and virtually the whole Global South – did not demonize and/or sanction Russia.

As an extra bonus, arguably the last oligarch capable of influence in Moscow, Anatoly Chubais, is gone. Call it another momentous historical trickery: Western sanction hysteria de facto dismembered Russian oligarchy – Putin’s pet project since 2000. What that implies is the strengthening of the Russian state and the consolidation of Russian society.

We still don’t have all the facts, but a case can be made that after years of careful evaluation Putin opted to really go for broke and break the West’s back – using that trifecta (imminent blitzkrieg on Donbass; US bioweapon labs; Ukraine working on nuclear weapons)  as the casus belli.

The freezing of foreign reserves had to have been forecasted, especially because the Russian Central Bank had been increasing its reserves of US Treasuries since November last year. Then there’s the serious possibility of Moscow being able to access “secret” offshore foreign reserves – a complex matrix built with Chinese insider help.

The sudden switch from dollars/euros to rubles was hardcore, Olympic-level geoeconomic judo. Putin enticed the collective West to unleash its demented hysteria sanction attack – and turned it against the opponent with a single, swift move.

And here we all are now trying to absorb so many in-synch game-changing developments following the weaponization of dollar assets:  rupee-ruble with India, the Saudi petroyuan, co-badged Mir-UnionPay cards issued by Russian banks, the Russia-Iran SWIFT alternative, the EAEU-China project of an independent monetary/financial system.

Not to mention the master coup by the Russian Central Bank, pegging 1 gram of gold to 5,000 rubles – which is already around $60, and climbing.

Coupled with No Rubles No Gas, what we have here is energy de facto pegged to gold. The EU Chihuahuas and the Japanese colony will need to buy a lot of rubles in gold or buy a lot of gold to have their gas. And it gets better. Russia may re-peg the ruble to gold in the near future. Could go to 2,000 rubles, 1,000 rubles, even 500 rubles for a gram of gold.

Time to be sovereign

The Holy Grail in the evolving discussions about a multipolar world, since the BRICS summits in the 2000s featuring Putin, Hu Jintao and Lula, has always been how to bypass dollar hegemony. It’s now right in front of the whole Global South, as a benign apparition bearing a Cheshire cat’s smile: the golden ruble, or ruble backed by oil, gas, minerals, commodity exports.

The Russian Central Bank, unlike the Fed, does not practice QE and won’t export toxic inflation to the rest of the planet. The Russian Navy not only secures all Russian sea lines, but Russian nuclear-powered submarines are capable of popping up all over the planet unannounced.

Russia is far, far ahead already implementing the concept of “continental naval power”. December 2015, in the Syrian theater, was the strategic game-changer. The Black Sea-based submarine 4th division is the star of the show.

Russian naval fleets may now employ Kalibr missiles across a space comprehending Eastern Europe, West Asia and Central Asia. The Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, linked by the Don-Volga canal, offer a space of maneuver comparable to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf combined. 6,000 km-long. And you don’t even need to access warm waters.

That covers around 30 nations: the traditional Russian sphere of influence; historical borders of the Russian empire; and current political/energy rivalry spheres.

No wonder the Beltway is berserk.

Russia guarantees shipping across Asia, the Arctic and Europe, in tandem with the Eurasia-wide BRI railway network.

And last but not least, don’t mess with a Nuclear Bear.

Essentially, this is what hardcore power politics is all about. Medvedev was not bragging when he said the era of a single reserve currency is over. The advent of a resource-based global reserve currency means, in a nutshell, that 13% of the planet will not dominate the other 87% anymore.

It’s NATOstan vs. Eurasia redux. Cold War 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and even 5.0. It doesn’t matter. All the previous Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations see which way the geopolitical and geo-economic winds are blowing: the time to assert their real sovereignty is at hand as the “rules-based international order” bites the dust.

Welcome to the birth of the new world system. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in China, after meeting several counterparts from across Eurasia, could not have outlined it better:

“A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape. It’s an objective process. It’s unstoppable. In this reality, more than one power will “rule” – it will be necessary to negotiate between all the key states that today have a decisive influence on the world economy and politics. At the same time, realizing their special situation, these countries ensure compliance with the basic principles of the UN Charter, including the fundamental one – the sovereign equality of states. No one on this Earth should be seen as a minor player. Everyone is equal and sovereign.”

Given claims that the West’s dissidents are slaves to crackpot conspiracies, the oxymoron of conspiracy theories needs examining by first stating what a theory is, by then going on to say what a conspiracy is and by examining how such name-calling is central to NATO’s dark agenda.

With that in mind, Steven Weinberg’s The Revolution That Didn’t Happen, his primer on what constitutes a theory, should be required reading for all those university professors, who teach their nonsense subjects to prospective journalists and social media influencers. (They know who they are, even if they are unsure of their pronouns).

As well as castigating Thomas Kuhn who, Weinberg asserts, should have known better than to spread his paradigm shift nonsense to the four winds, Weinberg tells us that there are two basic classes of theories, the deterministic and the stochastic, each of which remains important to this day.

Deterministic theories include Newtonian and Christian pre-determination theories, as well as Malthusian fatalism and similar off-shoots. In such worlds, the end result can never be in doubt: drop the apple, it falls to the ground; be a good Calvinist, go to Calvinist heaven.

Speckled about them, as the ether is to Maxwell’s equations, were Catholic notions of legions of angels and demons jousting with each other to win our souls. Kings, queens and other monarchs blended neatly into this over-identified model and folk knew on which rung of Jacob’s stairway to heaven they stood both in regard to God and to the King, God’s earthly representative and enforcer.

Greek philosophers like Aristotle helped solidify this hierarchy, where women essentially got the short straw partly because, as Aristotle explained, women have less teeth than men. It was not until Spenser came along some 2000 years later that folk got the novel notion of counting how many teeth men and women actually had to determine if Aristotle’s hypothesis was correct or not. Suffice to say that Weinberg says the only use a philosopher has is to protect us from other philosophers.

There arose then a gradual trend not to accept theologies, no matter how complete, beautiful or over-identified they seemed. Folk started measuring things and, in the process, they noted anomalies, exceptions to pre-conceived notions which would eventually cause the underlying theories to be modified, if not scrapped altogether and it was confusion on this point that dragged Kuhn and oodles of Gender Studies cretins into their self-made abyss; Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers makes some important remarks on Galileo and other frauds in this regard.

It was, for example, such calculations that got most of us to accept the world is not flat and that Newtonian physics works perfectly, but only in a Newtonian world where gravity is king. Thus, although we no longer believe in Maxwell’s ether, and we now know that there is more to nature than Newton’s particles, no future discovery can ever hope to alter the fundamental logic of their work. Both Maxwellian electrodynamics and Newtonian mechanics will remain integral parts of human knowledge until the end of time.

Branching far out from physics, we can have deterministic and/or stochastic theories on just about anything tangible and measurable. Measurement through appropriate models allows us to set insurance premiums as women, on average, live longer than men, men are more risk prone, and so-called Acts of God, though rare, can be devastating and so should be insured against at an appropriate premium that can be measured. But conspiracies?

Conspiracies are a legal fact and one can hardly have a theory about a fact. Prior to the 1906 Trade Disputes Act, trade unions were regarded as criminal conspiracies and the Tolpuddle Martyrs ended up being transported as convicted felons because they were part of a conspiracy, of a trade union, in other words. Guy Fawkes and his pals suffered terrible deaths because they were captured conspirators. Elements of the Catholic hierarchy condemned the Irish-American Fenian conspiracy and likewise condemned Freemasonry as a conspiracy. And then we have the persons unknown trial where Irishmen were convicted of conspiring with persons unknown at times unknown to commit crimes unknown. Though those conspiracies were all legal, historical facts, they in no way constitute building blocks for a theory on conspiracies or on anything else.

Canada’s truckers are not conspiracy theorists. They are blue collar workers, who want government conspirators to get off their backs and out of their bank accounts. French citizens protesting in solidarity with them are not conspiracy theorists, even though the French educational system devotes far too much time to philosophy. They are simply French citizens, who are carrying on the proud French tradition of protesting for their own notions of liberty, equality and fraternity. Kiwi protesters simply object to a pampered World Economic Forum fascist being foisted upon them.

As regards the Masons, though an endless number of allegations have been made against them, those allegations do not make a theory. They are observations, real or imagined, on how Freemasons work and they lead to hypotheses, which must be tested. Now, those who say the Masons, the Jesuits, the Jews or any broadly similar group control world affairs fall down at this very important hurdle: because theories or hypotheses such as theirs, which purport to explain everything, actually explain nothing, they are stilted theologies that get us absolutely nowhere.

One either accepts their theology and joins their cult or one continues to question and test and to ultimately reject all such cults, including those with massive marketing budgets, the biggest of which is that, which empowers and enriches our regional, national and trans-national overlords. And, although their marketeers seem to be all froth and no substance, they have been very successful froth peddlers ever since Edward Bernays first pulled the wool over governments and women more than 100 years ago. To believe that our political overlords have been on the level with us all that time is to display an innocence that belongs only in a cloistered convent and that is a destination the Gender Studies legions would object to, just as they object to much else.

What these strange folk are doing is hijacking the received narrative to shape today. Gone, for example, is the Bradleyist interpretation of the Shakespearian tragedy and even JK Rowling is being exiled from her own Harry Potter franchise because she won’t accept Alice in Wonderland’s Humpty Dumpty logic regarding the definition of womanhood.

The Bradleyist interpretation of Shakespeare is relevant as unorthodox, unpopular or downright stupid interpretations of history are held up as symptoms of these so-called conspiracy theorists. But historians do not work to theories; they consult, as far as is practicable, primary sources and draw conclusions, hopefully bias-free, therefrom for others to build upon. Because these soft sciences have no hard component equivalent to Maxwell’s equations, their ether lends itself to manipulation by the gullible, as well as those with sinister agendas.

That much should be obvious and, although this cancer is bad enough in literature and history, its toxins are now seeping into the hard sciences, exposures like that of the Sokal hoax notwithstanding.

Sokal noticed Jacques Derrida claiming to understand Einstein’s constant and proving he didn’t. Sokal wondered how abstruse mathematical topics not used in chemistry or biology and only very rarely in physics could possibly become relevant in the humanities or social sciences. Sokal showed these hucksters were using all the well established tricks of the intellectual charlatan and he exposed Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze as the self-serving frauds that they were.

Postmodernism and similar schools are, Sokal shows, the software through which the hardware of ineffective, reactionary remedies enter the socio political system. To be blunt about it, French philosophers like Jacques Derrida have even less to offer than does Aristotle and that also applies to the university departments they continue to poison. They are far worse than any conspiracy minded barfly.

Although conspiracy theory canards should be debated and then dismissed as the red herrings that they are, we cannot debate The World Economic Forum’s Humpty Dumptys where words means precisely what they want them to mean. If we are ever to break free from their shackles, we must first articulate a platform that resonates with society’s real stakeholders. But, as Sokal asserts, we will not do that with the narcissistic sophistry of Derrida and his chums. Rather, we must instead challenge those like Trudeau, Macron and Ardern, who mask their virtue signalling fascism in the honeyed maze of Derrida and the reactionary Gender Studies tripe he spawned.

The case against Covid mandates, as articulated by Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore and Robert Kennedy Jnr, exemplifies. These three, amongst others, have not only shredded the accepted Covid narrative but, irrespective of whether they are “right” or “wrong” or whether they adhere to some conspiracy worshipping coven or other, they have given us cause to question and debate that narrative.

But debate is the very last thing the World Economic Forum’s Young Leaders want or can handle. Debate is bad for business, debate slows down decision-making and debate is, in any case, redundant as those who profit from Covid have, so they proclaim, settled the science once and forever.

And that is the key and cardinal point. The World Economic Forum’s consuls declare that those they oppose are conspiracy cultists, who should be cancelled, much like Rome cancelled the Catacomb dwellers. JK Rowling? A TERF, so persecute her. Canadian truckers? Theoretical heretics, so rob $10 million from them. Dostoevsky? Russian, so off with his head and kick his cat.

How, why and to what benefit ? The how has been a gradual ongoing and well funded war of attrition where these subversives took an inch on academia’s lowest rung and, with massive funding and targeted intimidation, expanded to where they have even expelled JK Rowling from her own franchise. The why has been to emasculate us all and, as the Harry Potter saga shows, to even cancel the imaginations of children. The benefit to the World Economic Forum and their NATO enforcers is to allow us collude in them cancelling Russia, the world’s biggest country, from our intellectual, economic, cultural, historical and even geographical space. Not even Harry Potter or Humpty Dumpty could conceptualize that degree of nihilistic madness.

For all their philosophical flaws, the French have the right idea when they kick against these pricks and strive, however imperfectly, for liberté, égalité, fraternité, for grounded ideals which are infinitely nobler than those who rule over them and over us. We, on the other hand, have fallen so far from grace one doubts we will ever rise again. And somewhat like how Delilah emasculated Samson, so also have we been seduced not with a bang from a gendarme’s truncheon but by the Gender Studies whimperings of insipid politicians. The price for our submission can be seen not only in our crumbling cities but in the endless wars NATO pretends to be fighting on our behalf.

If we look at it all through a stochastic rather than a deterministic lens, then things may not be that grim. The coming economic turbulence may be a blessing as well as the curse it will undoubtedly be, if we reject Foucault’s pretentiousness and shift our efforts back towards criticizing our failing economies, our corrupt states and our compromized leaders, whilst also improving our daily lives, reading Dostoevsky, adhering to grounded ideologies, and promoting sober social relations and community-rooted cultures. Striving, in short, for a life worth living, free from the petty chicanery of those who benefit from parroting NATO’s conspiracy theory slurs to deflect from their own vile conspiracies and viler intrigues.

Update(15:55ET): Nothing to see here… only the President of the United States speaking at an emergency summit of NATO heads making somewhat overly casual sounding references regarding likely massive energy and food shortages…

“It’s going to be real,” Biden said at a news conference in Brussels. “The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

Pres. Biden warns that food shortages are “going to be real,” saying the U.S. is working with European partners to end trade limitations on sending food abroad to help alleviate supply issues caused by Russian sanctions. https://t.co/GPN1kQDMMj pic.twitter.com/0nuN0LMfve

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 24, 2022

And The Federalist’s Sean Davis aptly summarizes where things stand…

“We’re about to face massive energy and food shortages, and Biden’s solution is to ban drilling and put expensive and inefficient solar panels and windmills on what’s left of American farmland that hasn’t been bought up by China or BlackRock,” he wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, below are Biden’s comments on China, coming after the formal NATO statement published Thursday:

Biden says that he expected China to provide assistance to Russia in their invasion of Ukraine.

If that’s true, why did he share intelligence about Russian military movements with the Chinese? pic.twitter.com/D5YBOt6ovP

— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) March 24, 2022

The NATO statement included the following: We call on all states, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to uphold the international order including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in the UN Charter, to abstain from supporting Russia’s war effort in any way, and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions.

Also of note from the Thursday afternoon speech is that Biden said he supports booting Russia – and thus Putin – from the Group of 20:

President Biden said Thursday that he would support Russia being expelled from the G20 over its invasion of Ukraine, a step that would further Vladimir Putin on the international stage.

Biden said the decision would ultimately be up to the G20, but that he has proposed allowing Ukraine to attend as an observer nation if other members do not agree to remove Russia.

Here’s what he said when asked about the G20 issue by a reporter:

“My answer is yes,” Biden said during a news conference when asked about whether Russia should be removed. “It depends on the G20. That was raised today, and I raised the possibility that, if that can’t be done – if Indonesia and others do not agree – then we should, in my view, ask to have both Ukraine be able to attend the meetings as well as … basically (having) Ukraine being able to attend the G20 meeting and observe.”

In bears recalling concerning the global food shortage the president is warning about…

pic.twitter.com/5nXJGFBwrh

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) March 24, 2022

* * *

Update(1333ET): President Joe Biden held a live Q&A press conference from Brussels following Thursday’s NATO extraordinary session to address the Ukraine crisis.

“It would trigger a response in kind,” said Biden when asked what NATO ‘s response would be if Putin used chemical weapons. Watch:

Asked by @CeciliaVega if the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine would trigger a military response from NATO, Pres. Biden says: “It would trigger a response in kind.”https://t.co/WJy31kMhbt pic.twitter.com/LF1XA2VMuc

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 24, 2022

But over to the press pool, something is seriously wrong when mainstream media journalists ask questions like this – almost seeming to be desirous of seeing WW3 breaking out…

ABC reporter asks Biden if he was too quick to rule out world war 3 pic.twitter.com/OEjl9ijWhu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2022

And then there are these very alarming statements…

We’re about to face massive energy and food shortages, and Biden’s solution is to ban drilling and put expensive and inefficient solar panels and windmills on what’s left of American farmland that hasn’t been bought up by China or BlackRock. https://t.co/ZX8q6adj2a

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 24, 2022

* * *

Upon the close of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s press briefing, NATO released its official statement from the extraordinary session over the Ukraine crisis… “We, the Heads of State and Government of the 30 NATO Allies, have met today to address Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades,” the statement posted to NATO’s website begins. “Russia’s war against Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and is causing enormous human suffering and destruction.”

The statement called on Putin “to immediately stop this war and withdraw military forces from Ukraine, and call on Belarus to end its complicity, in line with the Aggression Against Ukraine Resolution adopted at the UN General Assembly of 2 March 2022.” Further it said the invasion “makes the world less safe” and additionally condemned the Russian leader’s rhetoric as “irresponsible and destabilizing.”

Biden with Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on March, 24. Via AFP

And at a moment President Volodymyr Zelensky’s is being seen as a “hero” and icon of sorts, and further following his pre-recorded address before the summit wherein he urged more weapons from the West (while stopping short of requesting a no-fly zone), the NATO statement reads:

Ukrainians have inspired the world with heroic resistance to Russia’s brutal war of conquest.  We strongly condemn Russia’s devastating attacks on civilians, including women, children, and persons in vulnerable situations. We will work with the rest of the international community to hold accountable those responsible for violations of humanitarian and international law, including war crimes.

This comes after the Biden administration on Wednesday saying it believes war crimes have been committed by Russian forces, in a first formal statement charging such.

NATO urged an immediate ceasefire:

Russia needs to show it is serious about negotiations by immediately implementing a ceasefire. We call on Russia to engage constructively in credible negotiations with Ukraine to achieve concrete results, starting with a sustainable ceasefire and moving towards a complete withdrawal of its troops from Ukrainian territory.

On Ukraine’s resistance and right to self defense, it said:

Ukraine has a fundamental right to self-defence under the United Nations Charter.   Since 2014, we have provided extensive support to Ukraine’s ability to exercise that right.  We have trained Ukraine’s armed forces, strengthening their military capabilities and capacities and enhancing their resilience.  NATO Allies have stepped up their support and will continue to provide further political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend itself.

On the recent allegations out of Washington and some Western allies suggesting that Moscow could be preparing deployment of chemical or even nuclear weapons…

NATO Allies will also continue to provide assistance in such areas as cybersecurity and protection against threats of a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear nature.  NATO Allies also provide extensive humanitarian support and are hosting millions of refugees.  Foreign Ministers will discuss further our support to Ukraine when they meet in April.

Crucially the statement calls out China, after a week-and-a-half of Biden administration claims that it’s secretly resupplying the Russian military with weapons. The NATO statement says:

We call on all states, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to uphold the international order including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in the UN Charter, to abstain from supporting Russia’s war effort in any way, and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions. We are concerned by recent public comments by PRC officials and call on China to cease amplifying the Kremlin’s false narratives, in particular on the war and on NATO, and to promote a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Calling member states’ commitment to Article 5 “iron-clad” it said of NATO’s increased defense posture in response to events in Ukraine…

In response to Russia’s actions, we have activated NATO’s defence plans, deployed elements of the NATO Response Force, and placed 40,000 troops on our eastern flank, along with significant air and naval assets, under direct NATO command supported by Allies’ national deployments. We are also establishing four additional multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. We are taking all measures and decisions to ensure the security and defence of all Allies across all domains and with a 360-degree approach.  Our measures remain preventive, proportionate, and non-escalatory. We will now accelerate NATO’s transformation for a more dangerous strategic reality, including through the adoption of the next Strategic Concept in Madrid.

Earlier Stoltenberg made the important admission of NATO having “trained” “tens of thousands” of troops in Ukraine going back to 2014…

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Russia:

– NATO provides significant military support to Ukraine, trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers
– We will not send NATO troops, planes
– A no-fly zone over Ukraine would mean a NATO-Russia conflict pic.twitter.com/wWqq0Rpjyg

— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) March 24, 2022

The NATO statement says further that “In light of the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades, we will also significantly strengthen our longer term deterrence and defence posture and will further develop the full range of ready forces and capabilities necessary to maintain credible deterrence and defence,” it continues. “These steps will be supported by enhanced exercises with an increased focus on collective defence and interoperability.”

On cyber attacks, the statement lays out:

We are enhancing our cyber capabilities and defences, providing support to each other in the event of cyber-attacks.  We are ready to impose costs on those who harm us in cyberspace, and are increasing information exchange and situational awareness, enhancing civil preparedness, and strengthening our ability to respond to disinformation. We will also enhance our preparedness and readiness for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. We will take further decisions when we meet in Madrid.

The statement ends with the following lines: “President Putin’s choice to attack Ukraine is a strategic mistake, with grave consequences also for Russia and the Russian people.  We remain united and resolute in our determination to oppose Russia’s aggression, aid the government and the people of Ukraine, and defend the security of all Allies.”

Interestingly and quite worrisome from Stoltenberg’s earlier press conference, despite stressing the need for “deconfliction”, he said that theoretically Article 5 ‘collective defense’ could be triggered in the event of a major cyberattack.

He said this when pressed on the issue by a reporter: “On cyber, well we have stated that cyberattacks can trigger Article 5 but we have never gone into the position where we give a potential adversary of defining exactly when we trigger Article 5.”

A direct NATO-Russia clash leading to WW3 based on a… cyberattack? We certainly hope not.

zerohedge.com

Higher fuel and food prices are a sacrifice I’m prepared to make in exchange for a greatly increased likelihood of nuclear armageddon.

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Let’s be clear: you’re not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you’re paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet.

It’s not “Putin’s price hike”. This was all orchestrated by the empire, from root to flower. The goal is to use economic warfare and a costly counterinsurgency against western-backed Ukrainians to either collapse and balkanize the Russian Federation or foment enough discontent to secure regime change in Moscow. This is because Putin refuses to kiss the imperial ring.

The western empire could not possibly care less about Ukrainians beyond the extent to which they can be used to roll out this agenda. There hasn’t been nearly enough public rage about the fact that the US government knew this war was coming, knew exactly how to prevent it with very low-cost concessions to Moscow, and chose not to. They made that choice in order to advance this agenda.

That’s what you’re paying for as your cost of living skyrockets. Not freedom and democracy. Not saving Ukrainian lives. Just the very mundane and unsexy unipolarist objectives of a few sociopathic empire managers. Empire managers who, of course, will have no trouble paying for things like fuel and groceries while ordinary people struggle.

And if you think these cold war escalations against Russia are hurting your bank account, wait til the imperial crosshairs move to China.

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One under-appreciated aspect of online censorship is how the fear of losing a valuable platform understandably causes people to self-censor, thereby widening the radius of the censorship campaign’s effectiveness a lot further than the actual censorship:

Never thought I’d be so worried about being censored all the time. Very carefully and cautiously watching what I say and how I say it, deciding I shouldn’t even say it at all. Some democracy we have here on the internet. Very healthy.

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) March 12, 2022

It’s exactly the same as the “cooling effect” that the persecution of whistleblowers and journalists has on leaks and investigative journalism. People shying away from speech they could be punished for does a lot more to restrict speech than the punishments themselves.

If for example a chemical attack occurs in Ukraine and is blamed on Russia, there will be great fear of questioning the official narrative about it on YouTube for fear of losing one’s platform because YouTube has banned skepticism of official stories about violence in that nation. People will self-censor to avoid being punished for their speech.

This is the exact same principle as a king having an artist who spoke ill of him tortured in the public square in order to deter future acts of dissent. Just re-packaged to be more palatable for the modern world.

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When someone brings up bad things the US does in response to outrage over bad things Russia does, it’s not to defend Russia. It’s to get the US to stop doing bad things.

Bleating “whataboutism” at sincere attempts to get the US empire to stop doing evil things is just defending those evil things. You’re basically just saying “Shut up! Now’s not the time to talk about the bad things the US power alliance does, we’re on something else right now!” Okay, so when? Never? Nothing has ever been done about the crimes of the empire. No meaningful changes whatsoever were made after Iraq.

Russia invading Ukraine doesn’t magically erase the fact that the western empire has spent the 21st century slaughtering people by the millions in wars of aggression and working to destroy any nation which disobeys it. Putin would have to work very, very hard to catch up to those numbers. That still needs to be talked about, and it still needs to end.

EXCLUSIVE: Twenty years after 9/11, compelling statistical data suggests that the true death toll of the ‘War on Terror’ is a staggering *6 million people*: which is likely a conservative estimate. I breakdown the data for @BylineTimes https://t.co/YTV6IoZ3ic

— Dr Nafeez Ahmed FRSA (@NafeezAhmed) September 15, 2021

People talk about this like it’s something in the past, something the US and its allies did back in history but now it’s Russia doing it. No, this is happening currently in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela etc, and will continue to happen unless drastic changes are made.

The murderousness, tyranny and omnicidal recklessness of the US-centralized empire is a problem of unequalled urgency regardless of what Russia happens to be doing. You can’t just bleat “whataboutism” and make that go away. It’s a problem that urgently needs to be dealt with.

It’s an objectively good thing if more attention is brought to that urgent problem by someone saying “Oh you’re upset about this war? Wait til you hear about what your own government has been doing.” Any attempt to interfere in their pointing this out is facilitating mass murder. Either help draw attention to this problem or stop interrupting people who are drawing attention to it with power-serving gibberish about “whataboutism”.

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Western leaders appear to have gone to the NYPD Academy of De-Escalation.

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During the Cuban Missile Crisis everyone had a healthy fear of nuclear annihilation, and people wanted de-escalation above all else. Today hardly anyone even cares about the insane nuclear brinkmanship games being played, and all mainstream factions are calling only for escalation.

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Schrödinger’s Putin: Simultaneously a crazy deranged lunatic and also much too level-headed and rational to respond to western escalations with nuclear weapons.

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Love how shitlibs finally decide to become “anti-war” the second their “anti-war” activism has a chance to help manufacture consent for World War 3.

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Four years of demented propaganda about an imaginary Trump-Russia conspiracy, Kremlin Facebook memes and GRU bounties in Afghanistan turned liberals into a bunch of gnashing, frothing zombies starved for Russian flesh. Ukraine just gave them something to sink their teeth into.

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Always wondered how long it would take for DuckDuckGo to get absorbed into the imperial narrative management campaign. https://t.co/yRHoUQHxe3

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 10, 2022

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I don’t understand the common sentiment on the left that we need to spend a lot of energy criticizing Putin for this war in the same way we criticize our own rulers for their warmongering. Like even forgetting about all the things western powers did to give rise to the war in Ukraine, what specifically is the argument here? That the English-speaking world doesn’t have enough criticism of the Russian invasion, and has too much criticism of NATO aggression? That if more antiwar lefties scream about Putin he’ll go “Ah shit I pissed off a few fringe westerners, let’s cancel the war you guys”? It just doesn’t seem like those who make such claims have thought very hard about the position they’re trying to advance.

Our voices can do far more good criticizing the actions of our own governments, which receive barely any criticism, than those of someone else’s government which gets tons. It also can’t be denied that there’s a major propaganda push to manufacture consent for dangerous agendas which pre-date the invasion by many years. Is my voice better used opposing those dangerous agendas, or in helping to facilitate them by saying the same things everyone else is already saying?

Putin is bad! Putin is bad and his war is very bad!

There. I did the thing. Can anyone tell me what I just accomplished, apart from greasing the wheels for new cold war escalations? Did I plow any new ground? Expand awareness in any new direction? What specific good did I do?

None that I can see.

The fact that the Russian people are doing a better job of holding their government to account with massive antiwar protests than people in western nations have says terrible things about us and our obsequiousness to our warmongering masters. If you can’t criticize your government, you are more obedient than Russians living under Putin.

Criticizing Putin is the easiest thing in the world for a westerner to do right now. Low cost, maximum clicks, but has zero impact on the conflict and will save zero people. Criticizing the west for its role is hard; it gets you outrage mobbed, deplatformed and shunned. But it could work.

None of these outrage merchants would ever dream of going against their own government, because if they tried they would find themselves smashed against the invisible walls of our inverted totalitarian cage. On some level they know this. That’s why they project.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

It was some twenty years after the end of the Vietnam war that a security conference was held between leading military figures from both America and Vietnam. Following the conference a U.S. Air Force General approached a Vietnamese General. The American had been a fighter pilot captain during the conflict, the Vietnamese general had been a Colonel in the N.V.A. The American asked (paraphrasing): “You have to tell me, we knew your Army was continually crossing the Mekong, we flew sorties up and down the river and could never find your bridges.” “I know,” said the Vietnamese, “we built them three feet under water.”

In that instant the American understood why America lost the war. His “Road to Damascus” moment was informed by how the different combatants approached problems. Had that been an American problem, how an Army crosses a wide, deep and fast flowing river, they would have solved the problem differently. They would have built a suspension bridge, they would have had bases on either side to protect it. They would have had Bowling alleys and Burger Kings and would have been flying in Bob Hope to entertain the troops. Why? Because they could, when you have resources they become the answer to every problem. The Vietnamese didn’t have resources, so they were resourceful.

And that, as the American realized, was why the Vietnamese won, and America lost.

The general may have learned a lesson, but if he told anyone, no one listened. Many of the same mistakes were repeated in Afghanistan, with the same results. Resources are not the answer to every problem. As with Americas war on drugs, war on crime, war on poverty, all resources do is obscure the underlying problem and present false, ineffective solutions.

War, and the threat of war is America’s solution to everything. To the man with the hammer, every problem is a nail. America does indeed have a formidable war machine. However, as with all machines it requires fuel to run it, that fuel is the U.S. dollar. Since the Bretton Woods accord at the end of WWII, America has had the privilege of possessing the world’s reserve currency. This enabled America to dictate to all countries outside the Soviet bloc how the global financial system would work. The so-called “free world” was anything but free, it was handcuffed by a system that effectively exercised control over their domestic economies.

In 1973 Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, much to the chagrin of the rest of the world. Despite protests no country was in a position to do much about it. Under its proxies, the IMF and World Bank, it enslaved much of the developing world and prevented it from post-colonial development. The resentment towards America and the weaponisation of its dollar resource should not be underestimated.

Iraq had resources, mainly oil, but what should have been a blessing for the country turned into a curse. Saddam Hussein decided to break from the petrodollar system and sell his oil in other currencies, we all know how that turned out. Similarly, when Ghadafi decided to sell his oil in the newly launched gold-backed dinar, it turned out badly for him and the Libyan people too. Both countries were deliberately destroyed, Tripoli, the once vibrant capital city of Africa’s most prosperous country, now has open slave markets. None should doubt how seriously America takes the subject of the dollar. These were lessons learned by national leaders everywhere. For those curious as to why America needs 1000 foreign military bases in more than 100 countries, that’s why, so no country attempts to stray from the dollar plantation.

The trillions of foreign debt owed by America was never intended to be repaid, just rolled over indefinitely. Fair to say, most countries understand that the monies they were compelled to invest in U.S. treasuries is a sunk cost, and they are not getting it back. With every turn of the printing press the dollar further loses credibility and the asset value of their holdings diminishes further. Every country is looking for alternative ways of doing business that don’t involve the dollar. China and Russia, China and Iran and China with many of its Asian neighbours have been using reciprocal currencies for several years. This amounts to trillions in trade that the Dollar is no longer a party too. Once this is understood it can help provide a context for current events.

Russia has complete control over its central bank and minimal foreign debt. It also possesses immense gold reserves. President Putin has wisely made Russia virtually “sanction proof”. Sure, the West can sanction a few overseas oligarchs, but who cares? Not the Russian people. Removing Russia from the SWIFT payment system will result in come short-term inconvenience, but alternatives are available. Both Russia and China have developed their own interbank payment systems and are now making them available to other countries who wish to by-pass the dollar altogether.

The use of the dollar as a weapon of war has worked well for America, until now. But when a country becomes overly reliant on its resources, it becomes a “one trick pony”, see Saudi Arabia. Stripped of oil, what kind of economy would the Saudis have? They wouldn’t have one at all. America stripped of its unique resource will be in the same position.

The dollar could crash any day, the government has long known this. A government-issued digital currency is planned to replace it. That may work in America, but few countries will want to entangle themselves in another American-dominated financial system. The resource is running dry, and American leadership shows no sign of any resourcefulness.

Interesting times…

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The baptism of fire from western analysts and newsrooms is that the “invasion” of Ukraine is unjust and that “Putin will stop at nothing now” in his so-called quest to retake former Soviet bloc countries.

“Where will it end? Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic?” one harped, while millions nod their heads in a gang bang of blinded dogma and bigotry. Few care to look at the history and the nuances of what has happened in recent years which provoked such a reaction from Putin. From as far back as a decade ago when the West overthrew Ghadaffi and created a war there which it then backed with its own jihadists (which threw a major spanner in the works for Putin’s ambitions in Libya) to missiles placed strategically by NATO in Romania and Poland, for example, reported on as recently as 2018, which were wrapped in a sugar coating of narrative from the op-ed writers in the West who talked about Russia no longer being the threat, as the new enemy is Islamic terrorism etc etc.

Western newsrooms are still trying to pull the wool over our eyes about Ukraine, simplifying and distorting the facts, simply so as they can get on with their jobs of producing the fodder to keep them busy, while serving their masters in government who chuck them a bone every now and again with a leaked report.

The so-called “revolution” in Ukraine is always reported as a victory for the West as “democracy” finally slayed the evil powers of Soviet-esque influence as the latter is always painted as corrupt and the former candida.

But there are enough voices out there which call what happened in Ukraine back then as a U.S.-backed coup d’etat and Zelensky as the new useful idiot of the west. Even the Los Angeles Times put the boot in recently when, just days before the invasion, it painted a picture of the new president as a near-useless cretin masquerading as a political hero who had lost a colossus of political capital in recent months when the tensions started to be palatable last year.

Will any western hacks examine this further and look at the different accounts? Unlikely, as this “grey zone” is what nearly all western journalists hate as it represents masses of work and going against the grain of both the narrative from their own governments but also the grey-haired chiefs’ views in the newsroom. We saw this with Syria. Kudos to Peter Hitchens for standing alone and trying to offer a more objective point of view about the Ukraine invasion. I doubt if anyone will follow him.

The story for western media has already been written and neatly divided into two binary portions of tainted narrative which is an egregiously cruel part of war: truth usually is the first casualty when the bullets start flying.

But what about the promises of support from the West towards the Zelensky government? Isn’t that a morose act of sublime cruelty in itself? To promise to help, but in reality only offer token support of relatively small amounts of cash and military hardware? Will NATO send one soldier to the Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers there? Will any EU member state do the same?

Yet the narrative continues and you can see the strain on Zelensky’s face in his social media posts and his anger towards Washington, NATO and the EU.

As those sanctions start to bite, who really are the winners and losers? The embarrassing press conference given by Biden where, after finishing the painful autocue speech, he declares to one reporter that “sanctions won’t prevent anything” is baffling. The truth is that sanctions are really all that the EU and US has to fill in the widening gap, the radio silence from NATO which talks a great talk on supporting allies but looks more and more weak, ineffective and pointless as the days go on. Building up NATO troops in neighbouring countries will soon be seen for the empty gesture it is when the bloodbath starts as Ukrainians show resistance against Russian advances. As the whole world watches, soon NATO’s credibility will plummet even further as the implications of doing nothing but merely acting as a spectator will make the organisation tumble to an all-time low. The argument from many at NATO that Putin’s aim to push NATO back has backfired as it has only resulted in more troops being stationed now in Poland, for example, is a lame one at best. What is likely to emerge in the coming days and weeks is that the West is likely to become a bigger enemy of most Ukrainians when they see what the real deal is and Zelensky’s rallying call to the masses, if he is not toppled, will be a scathing attack on these so-called western values, with the EU itself being in his crosshairs – a win-win for Putin, many will note. War is cruelty on a level most of us can’t process. But even more cruel are those who orchestrate it and then run away and hide the moment the knife is drawn from the sheath. 

A funny thing happens when corporate culture becomes indistinguishable from government culture. Corporatized governments promote and grant authority to those ‘ambitious’ individuals who can best over-sell and over-promise results. Think of unimpressive appointees like Trudeau, Ardern, Johnson, and Morrison.

At first glance it doesn’t really matter that these aims are unattainable. But it does matter, because from it we can crystalize this axiom: the more impossible the dream, the more it promotes the likes Ardern, et al.

As each one percent increase in unemployment sustained over a year creates some thirty-six thousand ‘deaths of despair’, a widely known and published fact, the shutting down of economies several years ago was going to cause millions of such deaths as initial unemployment rates in the U.S. alone spiked to nearly 15% according to Pew Research.

Ambitious leaders in league with the IMF/WEF were onboard with this, knowing full well the consequences. It was the pushback from popular ‘populist’ forces that prevented this early on, and in the U.S. a strong case can be made that the White House itself was on the side of these populist forces at the time, as it called for an opening of the U.S. economy and fought openly with governors from blue states.

But the eager-to-please misleaders in service of the IMF, for their part, would never approach any success without an entire cultural substrate. Narratives are a type of soft power, and like all forms of power, narratives can only go so far. We are now witnessing now just how far they can go.

Narratives are just ‘stories in our heads’. But if these are shared with broader communities, real or virtual/digital, then they are reinforced and become part of reality.

The WEF and the IMF it works for have a grand plan for the future – the technocratic aims of which are by now thoroughly understood. The WEF begins with these aims as a foregone conclusion, and so the only questions they wanted answered were ‘Who will carry it out?’, and ‘How will it be done?’

Whether or not it can be done (let alone, ‘should be done’) is not a question they are interested in. It’s a non-starter, because these things simply have to be done.

But this is a positive sign, is it not? The corporate culture of over-selling and over-promising investors and shareholders works in the public’s interest insofar as these catastrophically dystopian aims are far less stable or realizable than advertised.

In other words, the public has been resisting illegal legislation and shattering the narrative which justifies it, and so resetism itself is in danger of failure.

This much has meant the organic development of a counter-narrative, one that resonates with increasing layers in affected societies. Big tech oligarchs have done their part in trying to police, punish, and silence this counter-narrative.

Elites have fallen into a vicious cycle, as the populist counter-narrative is proven in part by that very censorship and repression. The more they push, the weaker they become.

Yet that point is so very well understood by Sorosian Color Revolutionary social engineers, planners, organizers, that one might raise some greater suspicion. It is indeed an axiom of Gene Sharp books like From Democracy to Dictatorship – A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (2012)and one of the most important points to make in popular organizing against ‘regimes’.

Each time the ‘regime’ attempts to make some ‘show of strength’, the counter-narrative prevails as mass publics understand that ‘shows of strength’ are derived from crises of strength and actual weakness.

Freedom, like love, come from places of strength. Dictatorship, like fear, come from a place of losing control. And power is like water, the more you grasp at it, the faster you lose it.

The absolute panic is palpable.

The Majority of People Trust Their Elites Less

One thing the WEF does by positioning itself as some independent watch-dog critic of a rapacious globalist oligarchy, when in fact it is employed by them, is demonstrate that they are ‘tuned in’ to how mass publics think and feel.

This is meant to subvert ‘tired’, ‘dated’, and ‘slow-to-change’ constitutional institutions.

Technocrats mean to show that by simple analysis of internet user data – their hopes, dreams, proclivities, political views and biases – they can arrive at top-down solutions which somehow reflect the user data.

They can then use state-of-emergency laws to enact these solutions into law, or into practice. So much of actual life takes place in the private sphere, that simple collusion and agreement between corporate chiefs on police is already enough to take the place of government and law. Elections are a cumbersome thing of the past, and – they reason – can be done away with.

As a managerial class, here they show the ruling class that because they so very well understand the ‘people’, they are capable of using an entire array of social sciences to achieve the desired result which they have over-promised and over-sold.

At the November 11^th 2021 WEF forum in Dubai, “The Great Narrative Meeting”, held in collaboration between the UAE government and World Economic Forum, which aligned with the announcement of the new book by Schwab and Malleret, The Great Narrative, (published December 28^th 2021), it was disclosed by panelist Ngaire Woods, Professor of Global Economic Governance at Oxford University, that global elites are now more trusting of each other than ever before, but that the people they rule over – nation by nation respectively – are far less trusting of their own rulers

Woods went on to say that one obstacle to governments’ Covid restrictions and climate measures in the coming years was that “the majority of people trust their elites less.”

Ngaire Woods, Professor of Global Economic Governance at Oxford University

“At Davos a few years ago [surveys] showed us that the good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more,” … “So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together.

“The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead but if people aren’t following we aren’t going to get to where we want to go.”

The WEF’s new release, The Great Narrative, with its fixation on fake news, is as much an admission of guilt as it is recognition of failure.

The sheer speed, magnitude and scope of the weaponization of Covid-19 to prop up a police-state in Western democracies was a demoralizing psychological operation, an act of political warfare not of nation against nation, but of elites against mass populaces.

This was an information warfare blitzkrieg. But without a decisive vernichtungsschlacht (battle of annihilation), they only left their own line of assault riddled with holes and supply-line issues. Nothing can hide a genuine lack of real preparedness as such displays of confidence. Of course, both their ability to succeed and their operating narrative seemed plausible enough when they launched their attack.

Now, these holes and supply-line issues are termed ‘Fake News’, and this frames the primary focus of The Great Narrative and is the real root of all issues admittedly discussed in the introduction (pg 12-19).

The rest of the thinking world understands instantly what this means: the WEF is calling for further censorship and repression of any alternative narratives.

And yet the hurried pace of the Covid-19 introduced Great Reset, and the way that a sizable portion of the populace has been able to expose it, reject it, and organize with some successes against it, also raises questions.

Was the Great Reset hurried?

What events forced the elites to make this happen now, instead of later?

What conditions would have been riper, and why were those conditions not fostered in advance?

As we have developed this so far in our work on the subject, it indeed appears that the Great Reset was launched with an insufficient foundation for reasons which expose the weakness of the plan. This seems to leave sizable room for the possibility that a notable split within the plutocracy now exists. This can be understood in terms of looking at the future possible outcomes in terms of the balance of class dynamics: billionaires are themselves stratified.

This stratification and conflict among elites is critical to understanding the present balance of forces.

Regardless of political orientation, the predominant error made among citizen-activists pushing back against Resetism is to resort to a default vulgar leftism in their interpretation of the motivations of the elite.

The error here is to project class solidarity onto the owning class. This error is easy to make for a number of reasons, and mostly because indeed the owning class does get behind many if not most of the upwards redistribution schemes which they all benefit from. But these moves tend to conceal or distort the real division which exist among them.

There are signs that their gambit is faltering and those developments were forecasted in our previous work on the subject The Globalist Dilemma: How to Implement a 4th Industrial Revolution Without Losing Power.

Chiefly, their plans were overly publicized, for reasons likely unavoidable given the number of governments, NGOs and organizations required to execute it. Despite their use of euphemisms and the language of human rights and economic development, those parts of the concerned public including lower-order elites, all could see what was really afoot.

In short, the public’s tolerance was misapprehended and through this, the public’s ability to wage a counter-offensive was possibly underestimated. Or conversely – and this also fits the bill –the position of the public to act in the public interest was accurately understood, but the plan had to go forward anyhow.

Either miscalculation would not in and of itself spell demise for the orchestrated Reset agenda.

The rate, volume, and type of upwards capital redistribution is a strong indicator of where the Great Reset agenda stands. But these move in a complex, non-linear fashion. And furthermore, what we can compare the changes to in a concrete sense, are changes over a preceding similar period of time. By that matrix alone, we can say there has been some ‘success’ in the Great Reset scheme.

But comparing this to what was really aimed for, what could have been if executed as it appears they had designed, presents another picture entirely.

A Great Reset in Crisis – A failure to Manufacture Consent

The Non Profit Industrial Complex was not deployed to soft-sell the Great Reset prior to its announcement. Instead, it came all at once, out of nowhere. And for those reasons, it was clumsily attached to their work-to-date (on climate change and poverty reduction).

Suddenly it seemed like a decade or so of propaganda was missing to connect these dots, between climate change, poverty on the one hand, and neuro-implanting and track and tracing the populace, on the other. That’s because there was a decade missing.

A gradual process of building support for the Great Reset, through manufacturing consent, (through building up these ideas through academia and the press, in popular culture and in media), could have been carried out.

The fact that it was not presents us with a contradictory set of postulates. The direct and brutal ‘honesty’ of the reset, in which the medium is the message (“do it because we say!”) makes it easier to combat. At the same time, it raises serious questions as to its timing and its method.

All together then, the release of The Great Narrative is all the more fascinating. This acts much like a sequel to Covid-19: The Great Reset, which itself served the role of narrative instruction. Intended as much for university students as for public relations agencies and politicians, in reading it one discovers all the errors and narrative points which failed to be useful, be related to actual events, and so on.

There is such a discrepancy between the narrative and predicted events in The Great Reset, and what has actually occurred, that we can understand all the better what The Great Narrative had to be written and released so hastily.

It will be an important research task therefore to compare the differences between these two texts.

Ever since the conclusion WWII, western elites have opted for a course of historical development on the foundation of ‘gradual reforms and change’. This, as opposed to the radicalism and rapid changes saw in the first fifty years of the 20^th century.

Many of the changes to the geopolitics of the world and Europe envisioned by the architects of the Third Reich are being implemented today by western elites, but these changes are delivered incrementally and slowly over a period of seven decades instead of seven years.

Through this, concerns can be addressed and cohesion in and among elites can be built. The rapid pace of changes seen in the first half of the 20^th century raised concerns, and caused divisions between western elites, and provoked a ‘histamine’ reaction from the populations in question.

When populations use social media to openly discuss the holes in the mainstream narrative, their comments and posts are called ‘fake news’. Fact checkers say so, even though a recent lawsuit against Facebook revealed through FBs rejoinder that Zuckerberg considers the views of the fact checkers to be merely opinions. “Facebook Quietly Admits Its Third-Party ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinions’”

The need to openly talk about ‘narratives’ and combatting fake news as the WEF does, is itself a sign of the times and a sign of their own weakness. The Resestist narrative is crumbling, and lacking popular support they resort to an unstable repression.

It has been said that “The Gods laugh at those who make plans”. That should resonate with all whose life plans have been disrupted over the last two years. Fair to say that little has worked out as intended for anyone. Going forward to a future rife with uncertainty, any plans must include an element of “wishful thinking” There are few certainties existing on which to base those plans. Accepting this is difficult, a future that cannot be seen and accounted for is understandably daunting to most.

Once considered unthinkable, war on a global scale is now a real possibility. Elites have longed used war to distract from domestic problems, Western aggression towards Russia, China and Iran has turned them all potential flash points. The purported “threats” by these identified adversaries are all centred on their refusal to comply with the Empires’ wishes. Despite the relentless propaganda and scaremongering, little support for war can be expected from the Western people. All wars are based on lies, and alas all too often those lies have worked. With “weapons of mass destruction” still strong in the public consciousness, few will believe any justification for war. The Empire’s war narrative has changed little, but the people have. Covid, as has become increasingly obvious is the greatest crime ever imposed on the people on such a global scale. With few exceptions it has affected everybody, everywhere. The mass awakening it has inspired has led to mass uprisings around the globe. Which at the time of writing show no signs of abating, in fact they are growing. As more information about the Pandemic emerges the worse it gets as the depth of the evil is further exposed. It is fair to assume as more details continue to come out, those still accepting the lie will join the already awakened in anger.

What the Covid tyranny has exposed is the total corruption of not just the political class but of all the institutions of power and control. The political class has lost any remaining credibility they may have had prior to Covid, which, lest we forget was dubious even before Covid. Overwhelmingly the people now understand that it was never about what is now known to be no more than a seasonal flu. It is about totalitarian control over every aspect of people’s lives. Had this been confined to just the political class the results may have been different, but it has shown that all the governing institutions have been complicit in this atrocity. The mainstream corporate media, long worthy of public disdain, have proved themselves to be co-conspirators. Without their supporting narrative of lies, none of this would have been possible. Included in this odious group are big tech and social media. They silenced genuine but dissenting medical experts, while allowing celebrities and the unqualified (Bill Gates) to force feed the public these lies. The medical establishment, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary have been as guilty. The so called judicial systems of the west have proven themselves more concerned with preserving the establishment than pursuing any justice or accountability. The list goes on. The extent of the globalist control has alarmed and angered all. Credibility or trust in any of these bodies, rightly no longer exists.

What do we have when nobody acknowledges the authority of the existing institutions of control? We have anarchy. These institutions can only exist with the trust off the public, and they no longer command that trust. In their current form, it is highly unlikely that the essential trust can be regained on any functional level. The word anarchy normally invokes images of burning buildings and Molotov cocktails. The uprisings in Australia, Canada, and elsewhere have demonstrated that both Anarchy and order can co-exist. Despite attempts by instigators to incite violence, the protesters have wisely avoided it and remained peaceful. They understand that resorting to violence will just play into the Globalists hands and justify reciprocal violence, let us hope that continues. Violence they understand and can use to their own ends, peaceful non-compliance they can’t. Martin Luther King understood that so did Mahatma Ghandi, so it appears does the majority of the newly created mass’s, to their eternal credit.

The movements of MLK and Ghandi were on national scale, this movement we are now witnessing is International. It is the Globalists against humanity, Dissenters in different countries and further inspired by their counterparts in other nations. The Australian Governments heavy handed and absurd restrictions have provoked demonstrations at Australian embassies in many countries. The courageous stand taken by the Canadian people has enshrined the Canadian flag as a symbol of freedom to people everywhere.

Throughout history, people have periodically rebelled against being ruled badly, but the “Elite” have always objected to being ruled at all. When exploitation becomes a way of life for the powerful in society, they create laws to justify it and a moral code to glorify it. A system of smoke and mirrors based on propaganda can only sustain itself as long as the majority accept it. The tyrant is not to be feared, it is the majority who are prepared to suspend their critical faculties and enable it who are traditionally the problem. We are experiencing a turning point in history, a point when the majority are not complying, with the Globalist narrative. That is the Tyrants greatest fear. And indeed afraid they are, very afraid. We may see them burn a few sacrificial lambs to appease the mob, Fauci, Macron, Trudeau are all dispensable, maybe even a Bill Gates. But that is not enough. This war will not be over when the mandates end, it is no longer just about that. Humanity is entering uncharted waters and what comes next is far from certain. What is certain is that all the institutions of power and control have been exposed, any trust they once enjoyed no longer exists. Our freedoms were never theirs to take away, asking their consent to get them back just reinforces their control. We don’t know what the “new normal” will look like, but is for the people to decide, not the elites. Those who describe themselves as “public servants” while acting as the ’masters” will have no future in what is becoming a truly BRAVE new world…