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COMEX Deliverable Silver Far Less Than Imagined As 50% Of “Eligible” Is Not Available

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COMEX Deliverable Silver Far Less Than Imagined As 50% Of “Eligible” Is Not Available

Submitted by Ronan Manly of BullionStar.com

Back in April 2020 during the LBMA-COMEX gold crisis of 2020, when gold prices on COMEX diverged nearly $100 higher than gold prices in London, and the LBMA and CME (COMEX) rushed out multiple combined statements trying to assure the market about “healthy gold stocks in New York and London” (while at the same time scrambling to send shipments of gold bars from London to New York), there appeared some intriguing correspondence between the CME and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Specifically, that correspondence (which was a submission by the COMEX to the CFTC certifying a doubling in ‘position limits’ on gold futures trading from 3000 contracts to 6000 contracts) contained the bombshell admission that 50% of the ‘Eligible’ gold in the COMEX-approved vaults in New York should be subtracted from ‘Deliverable Supply’ since that portion of gold in the ‘Eligible’ category is held by long-term investors and has nothing to do with COMEX gold futures trading. For background see the BullionStar article “COMEX Bombshell – Most eligible vaulted gold has nothing to do with COMEX” from 16 April 2020.

So instead of all the gold in the COMEX approved vaults (i.e. total of ‘Registered’ category and ‘Eligible’ category gold) being available to back COMEX gold futures trading, the CME was saying no, the estimated deliverable supply of gold is equal to ‘Registered’ + 0.5 (‘Eligible’).

Eligible, Registered and Deliverable

For anyone confused about the COMEX ‘Eligible’ and ‘Registered’ categories of inventories, join the club. Nearly everyone has been, at one time, confused by these terms. So here is a quick tutorial, straight from the horse’s mouth of the CME:

Eligible metal is metal that is acceptable for delivery against the Contract (i.e., which meets the specifications and approved brands of the Contract) for which a warrant has not been issued.”

Registered metal is eligible metal for which a warrant has been issued.

COMEX warrants are classified as electronic documents of title under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and are issued by Exchange-approved COMEX depositories.

Each warrant is registered at the Exchange and linked to specific bars with identifiable and unique warrant numbers traceable to each COMEX depository.”

Also: “COMEX depositories” = COMEX approved vaults = COMEX approved warehouses.

You might ask where I’m going with this? Where I’m going with this is Silver.

Because while COMEX operator (the CME) revealed its hand about the COMEX deliverable gold supply in April 2020 during the initial panic phase of the LBMA-COMEX gold crisis, it also turns out that the CME also revealed its hand about the COMEX deliverable silver supply during the initial panic phase of the LBMA-COMEX silver crisis, a.k.a. the beginning of the #SilverSqueeze frenzy in February 2021.

Silver Bombshell – Deliverable Supply with 50% Haircut

And what the COMEX operator CME revealed about deliverable silver in February 2021 was as equaling startling as what the CME revealed about deliverable gold in April 2020.

The February 2021 eligible silver revelation also came in a submission by the CME to the CFTC (dated 19 February 2021) certifying a doubling in ‘position limits’, this time on its silver futures contracts, from 1500 contracts to 3000 contracts. The CME 5000 oz silver futures contract (contract specs) is the world’s most traded silver futures contract and it is physically deliverable in “five (5) bars of refined silver cast in bars of one thousand (1,000) troy ounces”.

For whatever reason, this February 2021 CME submission (which had great timing by the CFTC and CME in being tee’d up just as #SilverSqueeze threatened to jettison the silver price a lot higher) seems to have gone under the radar until now and has not been mentioned anywhere as far as I can see, but it is critical in highlighting given the massive outflows of physical silver which we are currently seeing from both the LBMA vaults in London, and the COMEX Registered silver category in COMEX New York.

COMEX Registered silver has been in freefall since February 2021. Source: www.GoldChartsRUs.com
 
Why? Because those that say that COMEX silver inventories are not just Registered silver but also include Eligible silver, are not seeing the full picture.

50% Haircut – Now you See It, Now you Don’t

In its February 2021 submission, the CME included “an updated analysis of deliverable supply in connection with the increased position limits for the Silver Futures contract” which it attached as Appendix C to its submission, and which can be seen on the CME website here, and on the CFTC website here.

In this Appendix C, which has a full title of “Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“Comex”) Analysis Of Deliverable Supply Silver Futures”, the CME states that:

the key component in estimating deliverable supply is the portion of typical depository stocks that could reasonably be considered to be readily available for delivery.

And then goes on to quote the CFTC’s definition of deliverable supply as:

the quantity of the commodity meeting the contract’s delivery specifications that can reasonably be expected to be readily available to short traders and saleable by long traders at its market value in normal cash marketing channels at the derivative contract’s delivery points during the specified delivery period, barring abnormal movement in interstate commerce.

For COMEX silver, the 10 delivery points, or ‘approved silver depositories’, on the date the CME document was written (19 February 2021) were Brinks, CNT, Delaware Depository, HSBC Bank, IDS Delaware, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Malca-Amit, Manfra, Tordella & Brookes (MTB), Loomis, and Bank of Nova Scotia.

As of October 2022, all of these silver depositories are still approved by COMEX, with the exception of the Bank of Nova Scotia (which withdrew its vault from being COMEX approved on 1March 2021).

Like its Eligible Gold bombshell in the April 2020 document, the Eligible Silver bombshell in the CME’s February 2021 document stated that:

“The Exchange recognizes that silver is used as an investment vehicle and as such some silver stock may be held as a long-term investment.”

Because of this, states the February 2021 CME submission:

“the Exchange, in an effort to represent a conservative deliverable supply that may be readily available for delivery, made a determination to discount from its estimate of deliverable supply 50% of its reported eligible silver at this time.

Running the Numbers – Applying 50% Haircut to COMEX reports

Taking the CME’s estimate of ‘Deliverable Silver Supply’ (which uses a 50% haircut for Eligible silver), and plugging in the data from the latest COMEX silver inventories report (dated 21 October 2022) we see the following.

COMEX Eligible and Total Silver with a 50% Haircut – Source Data CME.
 
 
In terms of the overall COMEX total of Eligible silver reported on 21 October 2022, this was 265,956,072 ozs. The Registered silver inventory, which is at a 5 year low, was 38,134,406 ozs. The Eligible silver total (as reported by COMEX) was 265,956,073 ozs.

Raw data from COMEX – 21 October 2022

  • Registered silver inventory 38,134,406 ozs
  • Eligible silver inventory 265,956,073 ozs
  • Total silver inventory 304,090,479 ozs

COMEX Eligible with a 50% Haircut – 21 October 2022

  • Registered silver inventory 38,134,406 ozs
  • 50% Eligible silver inventory 132,978,036 ozs
  • Total silver inventory 171,112,442 ozs

This 171.1 million ozs is equivalent to 34,222 COMEX ‘5000 oz’ silver contracts. And so an individual position limit of 3000 contracts (e.g. held by a bullion bank) represents a massive 11.4% of COMEX deliverable silver supply.

So will the CFTC now instruct CME to lower COMEX silver position limits again? So as to prevent single trading entities having too much influence over silver “price discovery”?

Tamping Down ‘a much worse situation in the SILVER market’.

As an article on the legal website JD Supra,  written by K&L Gates LLP and Michael G. Lee explains why it is so important to have realistic position limits. It also raises some questions on why the CFTC raised position limits for gold and silver in April 2020 and February 2021, respectively, and in doing so made it easier for ‘unduly controlling’ those markets:

“The CEA [Commodity Exchange Act] empowers the CFTC to limit the number of derivative contracts that can be owned by any one person or group in order to prevent derivatives from being used to exercise undue control on a market, which can cause sudden or unreasonable fluctuations in price.

Furthermore, through the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress charged the CFTC to update its regulations on position limits to prevent excessive speculation and manipulation while ensuring sufficient market liquidity for bona fide hedgers and protecting the price discovery process.”

Or will the CFTC maintain the 3000 contract position limit, so as to allow the silver price to be tamp down, as the CFTC’s chairman Rostin Behnam said in March 2021. And I quote:

“And in many respects, the resiliency and the market structure of the futures market were really able to TAMP DOWN what could have been a much worse situation in the SILVER market.” 

See actual video segment here also:

Technically, the CFTC cannot lower position limits on silver, because the latest limit of 3000 has been hardcoded into the ‘Final Ruling’ on position limits for derivatives. The limit is actually “>3000″. See table on the CFTC website here.

But back to Eligible silver. why does the CME stop at a 50% discount for Eligible Silver? The CME February 2021 letter to the CFTC even concedes that:

“surveys conducted indicated no clear consensus as to how much silver is dedicated to long term investments.”

So, like in the case of COMEX gold, the COMEX operator CME does not know how much of the ‘eligible category’ silver in the COMEX approved vaults is held as ‘long term-investments’. Why does CME even assume that 50% of the eligible silver is part of deliverable supply? Why not say 40%, or 30%, or 25% is available of deliverable supply?

Why even include any eligible silver at all as deliverable supply? At the end of the day, these vaults of MTB (owned by MTS PAMP), Loomis, Brinks, Malca-Amit, HSBC, and JP Morgan – all in New York City – and Delaware Depository and IDS Delaware (both in Delaware), and CNT (in Massachusetts), are in the first instance precious metals vaults for their own clients who store their precious metals in these vaults, and in the second instance these vaults then also just happen to be COMEX-approved vaults.

If an investor purchased a 1000 troy ounce silver bar for investment purposes, and deposited this silver bar in one of the above vaults for long term storage, then it would, due to COMEX-approved vault rules, be then listed as part of COMEX eligible silver, even though the investor may never have even heard of COMEX and had no intention of trading on a futures exchange. That’s just a simple example.

COMEX Eligible Silver – but with a 50% Haircut. 133 million ozs is not part of Deliverable Supply Source: www.GoldChartsRUs.com

SLV is 71.8% of JP Morgan’s Eligible Silver

But here is a real world example. Based on 21 October 2022 data, the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) – which is the world’s largest silver-backed ETF – states that it held 486,164,081.6 ozs of silver in the form of 1000 ozs silver bars. Of this total, 103,176,253 ozs of silver is held in the JP Morgan vault in New York, the same vault which is on the COMEX silver inventory report.

iShares Silver Trust (SLV): 103.176 mn ozs is held in the JP Morgan vault in New York
 
 
According to the COMEX silver inventory report for 21 October 2022 (see calculations above in previous table), the JP Morgan vault reported 143,694,411 ozs of silver in the Eligible category. With 103,176,253 ozs of this total held by SLV, this only leaves 40,518,158 ozs in the Eligible category of JP Morgan’s vault. In other words, 71.8% of the silver reported by the JP Morgan vault as ‘Eligible’ is already held as a long-term investment by a silver ETF, the SLV, leaving only 28.3% not held by SLV.

Of this total, SLV’s 103.176 million ozs represents 38.8% of all the COMEX claimed Eligible supply. And this is just one example. So straight away we see the magnitude of the danger in assuming that ‘Eligible silver’ is somehow connected to COMEX.

Tag team paper silver ‘scam’ – COMEX & LBMA propping up ‘paper’ silver pricing.
 
 

Conclusion

During September, silver inventories held in the vaults of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) in London fell by a massive 4.93%, and are now at a new record low. LBMA silver holdings now total only 27,101 tonnes (871.3 mn ozs), and have fallen every month for 10 straight months.

Over on COMEX in New York, the Registered silver total is now only 1186 tonnes (38.13 mn ozs), a five year low. During September, the LBMA vaults in London lost  1404 tonnes (45.166 mn ozs) , which is more silver than in the whole COMEX Registered category.

The LBMA even conceded in its latest update on silver vault stocks in London that “some contributors noted that increased client demand led to a number of physical silver exports“. The contributors here refer to the vault operators within the London LBMA market, which are HSBC, JP Morgan, ICBC Standard, Brinks, Malca Amit, and Loomis.

Nicky Shiels, precious metals analyst for MKSPAMP, echoed that view when reporting back from the LBMA’s annual conference in Lisbon last week, when she said that conference delegates predicted a “super bullish Silver [price] ($28.30!)” in a year’s time “as the focus was on physical tightness driven by unprecedented demand“. See tweet above.

An important contributor to this ‘unprecedented demand’ for physical silver is India where silver imports have been zooming ahead. Silver imports into India totalled 1812 tonnes in July, 1149 tonnes in August and initial estimates for September are about 1700 tonnes. Up until August 2022 (8 months), India’s silver imports totalled 6517 tonnes. Adding September’s ~ 1700 tonnes, gives 8217 tonnes for 9 months of 2022 so far. Which if annualised this nearly 11,000 tonnes, which is one-third of the world’s annual silver supply.

Back on COMEX, the CME’s ‘published’ silver total (where they include 100% of Eligible) is 304.1 million ozs (9458 tonnes). That figure is the lowest level ‘COMEX Eligible + Registered silver’ since 19 June 2019. But that doesn’t even include the CME’s own guidance of applying a 50% haircut on the Eligible total. When this 50% haircut is applied, the total silver in the COMEX vaults is just 171 mn ozs.

People point to the COMEX Registered silver total and say that silver can move from the Eligible category to the Registered category. But that’s not entirely true and only applies to a portion of the Eligible category. More Eligible category silver could of course come into play and move to Registered. But only at a higher silver price. With silver demand firing on all cylinders, and with demand destinations such as India securing an ever higher percentage of annual silver supply, expect the silver market to provide plenty of fireworks in the months ahead.

This article was originally published on the BullionStar.com website under the same title “COMEX Deliverable Silver far less than imagined as 50% of ‘Eligible’ is not Available”.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 06:30

Russia Notifies US Its Annual Nuclear Exercise Has Begun

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Russia Notifies US Its Annual Nuclear Exercise Has Begun

With NATO’s “Steadfast Noon” annual nuclear drills already ongoing in the North Sea region, and led by B-52 bombers from the United States, Russia has formally notified Washington it is kicking off nuclear exercises of its own

Two US officials cited in a Tuesday CBS report say the notification from Moscow specified that the annual exercises are to include “launches of nuclear capable missiles starting Wednesday.”

Via TASS

The timing of the two sides holding “annual” nuclear exercises couldn’t be worse, with the Ukraine war now hitting the eight-month mark – and tit-for-tat false flag accusations currently being hurled between the warring parties.

Russia says Ukraine forces are preparing to unleash a “dirty bomb” which will be blamed on Kremlin forces, while Kiev has alleged the Russians are preparing a “terrorist act” using spent nuclear fuel from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. 

According to more on the announced Russian exercises via the new CBS reporting

The annual exercise has been described by U.S. officials as “routine” around this time of year but nevertheless will take place against heightened Russian rhetoric about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. 

The Russian “Grom,” or Thunder nuclear exercise, typically involves large-scale maneuvers of strategic nuclear forces, including live missile launches, a senior military official said earlier this month. Officials have expected the annual exercise for several weeks but only recently received notification from Russia.  

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has meanwhile said the Western military alliance will closely “monitor” the Grom drills, saying it “will remain vigilant not least in light of the veiled nuclear threats and the dangerous nuclear rhetoric we have seen from the Russian side.”

Also deeply alarming is the fact that negotiations seem a distant possibility at this point. The US position is that Ukraine must achieve “victory” – and that ceasefire dialogue with Russia is a decision for President Zelensky alone. 

Russia’s military and the Pentagon just within the last days reaffirmed that they are keeping “open lines of communication” – precisely so that inadvertent escalation can be avoided.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 05:45

Visualizing All The Metals We Mined In 2021

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Visualizing All The Metals We Mined In 2021

“If you can’t grow it, you have to mine it” is a famous saying that encapsulates the importance of minerals and metals in the modern world.

From every building we enter to every device we use, virtually everything around us contains some amount of metal.

In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada and Miranda Smith visualize all 2.8 billion tonnes of metals mined in 2021 and highlights each metal’s largest end-use using data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Why Do We Mine So Much Iron Ore?

Iron ore accounted for 93% of the metals mined in 2021, with 2.6 billion tonnes extracted from the ground. It’s important to note that this is ore production, which is typically higher than metal production since metals are extracted and refined from ores. For example, the iron metal content of this ore is estimated at 1.6 billion tonnes.

 

With 98% of it converted into pig iron to make steel, iron ore is ubiquitous in our lives. Steel made from iron ore is used in construction, transportation, and household appliances, and it’s likely that you encounter something made out of it every day, especially if you live in a city.

Due to its key role in building infrastructure, iron ore is one of the most important materials supporting urbanization and economic growth.

Industrial Metals

Industrial metals are largely used in steelmaking, construction, chemical manufacturing, and as alloying agents. In 2021, the world mined over 181 million tonnes of these metals.

 

*Represents refinery/smelter production.

Aluminum accounted for nearly 40% of industrial metal production in 2021. China was by far the largest aluminum producer, making up more than half of global production. The construction industry uses roughly 25% of annually produced aluminum, with 23% going into transportation.

Chromium is a lesser-known metal with a key role in making stainless steel stainless. In fact, stainless steel is usually composed of 10% to 30% of chromium, enhancing its strength and corrosion resistance.

Copper, manganese, and zinc round out the top five industrial metals mined in 2021, each with its own unique properties and roles in the economy.

Technology and Precious Metals

Technology metals include those that are commonly used in technology and devices. Compared to industrial metals, these are usually mined on a smaller scale and could see faster consumption growth as the world adopts new technologies.

*Represents refinery/smelter production.

The major use of rhenium, one of the rarest metals in terms of production, is in superalloys that are critical for engine turbine blades in aircraft and gas turbine engines. The petroleum industry uses it in rhenium-platinum catalysts to produce high-octane gasoline for vehicles.

In terms of growth, clean energy technology metals stand out. For example, lithium production has more than doubled since 2016 and is set to ride the boom in EV battery manufacturing. Over the same period, global rare earth production more than doubled, driven by the rising demand for magnets.

Indium is another interesting metal on this list. Most of it is used to make indium tin oxide, an important component of touchscreens, TV screens, and solar panels.

The Metal Mining Megatrend

The world’s material consumption has grown significantly over the last few decades, with growing economies and cities demanding more resources.

Global production of both iron ore and aluminum has more than tripled relative to the mid-1990s. Other metals, including copper and steel, have also seen significant consumption growth.

Today, economies are not only growing and urbanizing but also adopting mineral-intensive clean energy technologies, pointing towards further increases in metal production and consumption.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 04:15

The EU Is Driving ‘Polexit’

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The EU Is Driving ‘Polexit’

Authored by Rafał Woś via Remix News,

Thanks to the work of Brussels and Berlin in alienating Poles from the EU, the topic of Polexit is no longer taboo…

It now looks certain that the money from the EU Recovery Fund owed to Poland will not arrive in Warsaw before the 2023 parliamentary elections. This dramatic move is a purely political decision taken in Brussels and Berlin to “starve” the unruly Poles

Now, there are leaks in the media that the remaining EU funds owed to Poland will also be frozen. This is no surprise given that the EU establishment has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness. It is logical that Brussels brings out all available weapons against the hated conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.

The objective is to make Poles vote the right way and choose the right government. It is meddling in the internal and sovereign affairs of a member state, which has little to do with democracy.

This is not in the spirit of EU treaties and founding principles. Principles such as subsidiarity and the notion of a Europe of equal and sovereign member states — a voluntary union that pools rather than takes away sovereignty. Now, the EU seems to be about breaking rebellious provinces and making them accept central decision-making authority. 

This is not the first time this has happened. The same was done to the Syriza government in Greece in 2015. It was forced to adopt policies imposed by the troika of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank. A democratic mandate was overturned in the name of democracy. It would all be funny if it was not so serious. 

European institutions have also done this to Italy, changing governments to ones that followed its strictures. Pressure was also applied to Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Now, it is Poland’s and Hungary’s turn. 

The EU establishment is determined to avoid any change to the way it does things. It has learned nothing from the financial crisis of 2008, the euro crisis, Brexit, or the total collapse of its energy policy as a result of the war in Ukraine. They do not welcome calls for reform that would make them share power. When that kind of challenge arises, they react sharply, calling opponents extremists and anti-Europeans who must be stopped.

The EU elites are always right and never at fault for anything. 

We cannot rule out that they will succeed in breaking Poland in the same way as they broke Athens and Rome. But if they do, it will not be without consequences.

Polexit could become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the people turn against the EU or as the EU establishment effectively pushes Poland out of the EU. The groundwork for this is being laid before our very eyes. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 03:30

These Are The World’s Aging-est Societies

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These Are The World’s Aging-est Societies

In terms of larger countries, Japan has always been at the forefront concerning the share of residents aged 65 or older, with more than 86,000 centenarians alone living in the island nation in 2021.

As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on data from the United Nations Population Division highlights, one smaller country beats the East Asian state to the number one spot when considering smaller geographic regions.

Infographic: The World's Aging Societies | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The country in question is the tiny city-state of Monaco, which, according to the CIA Factbook, has the second highest population density worldwide. 36 percent of the country’s approximately 39,000 inhabitants are older than 65. This, along with an extraordinarily high life expectancy, is most likely owed to the fact that it has become a haven for the rich, who can afford even the costliest medical procedures and above-average care.

With Italy, Portugal and Greece, Southern Europe is also featured prominently in this ranking.

Worldwide, about one-tenth of the population is estimated to be over 65 years of age.

By 2050, low- and middle-income countries will be home to 80 percent of the world’s older population, according to projections by the World Health Organization. To raise awareness about this topic, the United Nations General Assembly has declared the timeframe between 2021 and 2030 the “Decade of Healthy Ageing.” The initiative aims to “reduce health inequities and improve the lives of older people, their families and communities through collective action.”

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 02:45

Escobar: The ‘War Of Terror’ May Be About To Hit Europe

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Escobar: The ‘War Of Terror’ May Be About To Hit Europe

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Never underestimate a wounded and decaying Empire collapsing in real time…

Imperial functionaries, even in a “diplomatic” capacity, continue to brazenly declare that their exceptionalist control over the world is mandatory.

If that’s not the case, competitors may emerge and steal the limelight – monopolized by US oligarchies. That, of course, is absolute anathema.

The imperial modus operandi against geopolitical and geoeconomic competitors remains the same: avalanche of sanctions, embargos, economic blockades, protectionist measures, cancel culture, military uptick in neighboring nations, and assorted threats. But most of all, warmongering rhetoric – currently elevated to fever pitch.

The hegemon may be “transparent” at least in this domain because it still controls a massive international network of institutions, financial bodies, politicos, CEOs, propaganda agencies and the pop culture industry. Hence this supposed invulnerability breeding insolence.

Panic in the “garden”

The blowing up of Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) – everybody knows who did it, but the suspect cannot be named – took to the next level the two-pronged imperial project of cutting off cheap Russian energy from Europe and destroying the German economy.

From the imperial perspective, the ideal subplot is the emergence of a US-controlled Intermarium – from the Baltic and the Adriatic to the Black Sea – led by Poland, exercising some sort of new hegemony in Europe, on the heels of the Three Seas Initiative.

But as it stands, that remains a wet dream.

On the dodgy “investigation” of what really happened to NS and NS2, Sweden was cast as The Cleaner, as if this was a sequel of Quentin Tarantino’s crime thriller Pulp Fiction.

That’s why the results of the “investigation” cannot be shared with Russia. The Cleaner was there to erase any incriminating evidence.

As for the Germans, they willingly accepted the role of patsies. Berlin claimed it was sabotage, but would not dare to say by whom.

This is actually as sinister as it gets, because Sweden, Denmark and Germany, and the whole EU, know that if you really confront the Empire, in public, the Empire will strike back, manufacturing a war on European soil. This is about fear – and not fear of Russia.

The Empire simply cannot afford to lose the “garden.” And the “garden” elites with an IQ over room temperature know they are dealing with a psychopathic serial killer entity which simply cannot be appeased.

Meanwhile, the arrival of General Winter in Europe portends a socio-economic descent into a maelstrom of darkness – unimaginable only a few months ago in the supposedly “garden” of humanity, so far away from the rumbles across the “jungle.”

Well, from now on barbarism begins at home. And Europeans should thank the American “ally” for it, skillfully manipulating fearful, vassalized EU elites.

Way more dangerous though is a specter that very few are able to identify: the imminent Syrianization of Europe. That will be a direct consequence of the NATO debacle in Ukraine.

From an imperial perspective, the prospects in the Ukrainian battlefield are gloomy. Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) has seamlessly morphed into a Counter-Terror Operation (CTO): Moscow now openly characterizes Kiev as a terrorist regime.

The pain dial is incrementally going up, with surgical strikes against Ukrainian power/electricity infrastructure about to totally cripple Kiev’s economy and its military. And by December, there’s the arrival on the front lines and in the rear of a properly trained and highly motivated partial mobilization contingent.

The only question concerns the timetable. Moscow is now in the process of slowly but surely decapitating the Kiev proxy, and ultimately smashing NATO “unity.”

The process of torturing the EU economy is relentless. And the real world outside of the collective West – the Global South – is with Russia, from Africa and Latin America to West Asia and even sections of the EU.

It is Moscow – and significantly not Beijing – that is tearing apart the hegemon-coined “rules-based international order,” supported by its natural resources, the provision of food and reliable security.

And in coordination with China, Iran and major Eurasian players, Russia is working to eventually decommission all those US-controlled international organizations – as the Global South becomes virtually immune to the spread of NATO psyops.

The Syrianization of Europe

In the Ukrainian battlefield, NATO’s crusade against Russia is doomed – even as in several nodes as much as 80 percent of the fighting forces feature NATO personnel. Wunderwaffen such as HIMARS are few and far between. And depending on the result of the US mid-term elections, weaponization will dry out in 2023.

Ukraine, by the spring of 2023, may be reduced to no more than an impoverished, rump black hole. The imperial Plan A remains  Afghanization: to operate an army of mercenaries capable of targeted destabilization and or/terrorist incursions into the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Europe is peppered with American military bases.

All those bases may play the role of major terror bases – very much like in Syria, in al-Tanf and the Eastern Euphrates. The US lost the long proxy war in Syria – where it instrumentalized jihadis – but still has not been expelled.

In this process of Syrianization of Europe, US military bases may become ideal centers to regiment and/or “train” squads of Eastern Europe émigrés, whose only job opportunity, apart from the drug business and organ trafficking, will be as – what else – imperial mercenaries, fighting whatever focus of civil disobedience emerges across an impoverished EU.

It goes without saying that this New Model Army will be fully sanctioned by the Brussels EUrocracy – which is merely the public relations arm of NATO.

A de-industrialized EU enmeshed into several layers of toxic intra-war, where NATO plays its time-tested role of Robocop, is the perfect Mad Max scenario juxtaposed to what would be, at least in the reveries of American Straussians/neo-cons, an island of prosperity: the US economy, the ideal destination for Global Capital, including European Capital.

The Empire will “lose” its pet project, Ukraine. But it will never accept losing the European “garden.”

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 02:00

Meet The 7 Men Who Will Rule China

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Meet The 7 Men Who Will Rule China

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Led by Xi Jinping, the seven men strode on the red carpet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 23, revealing the new generation of China’s ruling elites.

CCP leader Xi Jinping (front) leads members of the Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision-making body, as they meet the media in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Noel Celis / AFP via Getty Images)

These powerful officials are members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) top decision-making body. Current leader Xi heads the committee again after closed-door meetings at which roughly 370 hand-picked Party representatives rubber-stamped the committee’s members.

The lineup at the conclusion of the 20th Party Congress demonstrates Xi’s further consolidation of power, with all four newly appointed members being his protégés and allies.

The following are the members who will run the Party for the next five years.

Xi Jinping

China’s leader Xi Jinping (L) waves with Li Qiang (R), a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee, as they meet the media in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Xi confirmed his third five-year term as Party general secretary, a feat that no one since Mao has accomplished. Mao ruled the country for 27 years until his death in 1976.

Xi also retained his position as head of the Central Military Commission and is almost certain to remain the Chinese leader, which will be unveiled after the rubber-stamp legislative meetings next spring. He had already scrapped term limits by revising the constitution in 2018.

The lack of a possible successor to the 69-year-old leader suggests he may intend to extend his term further, which would normally end in 2027.

When Xi first joined the Standing Committee in 2007, it was clear from his age and from the makeup of the committee that he would replace then-Party leader Hu Jintao when Hu’s term ended in 2012.

Now, five of seven of the Standing Committee members, including Xi, are over 65, with Ding Xuexiang, now 60, being the youngest. It means none of them would be young enough to take over the Party’s top position in 2027. The CCP’s decades-long norm is that those who are 68 or older at the time of the Congress would retire.

Li Qiang

Li Qiang, Shanghai Communist Party secretary, applauds as he is introduced as a member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Taking over the Party’s No. 2 position is Li Qiang, Shanghai’s Party chief. The financial hub’s most powerful position is often seen as a stepping stone to the CCP’s top decision-making body. Li’s predecessor, Han Zheng, was promoted to the Standing Committee in 2017.

But earlier this year, speculation abounded that Li’s political career was doomed because of the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai. Confined to their homes for two months, the city’s 25 million residents struggled to obtain food and medicine, which angered the public and provoked numerous small-scale protests.

The political rise of Li shows “Xi Jinping’s criteria is the connection with him, absolute loyalty to him, and obedience to him,” said Feng Chongyi, a professor of China studies at the University of Technology Sydney.

The 63-year-old is Xi’s close ally. When Xi was a Party secretary of Zhejiang Province, Li was in charge of Wenzhou, a major city within Zhejiang. In 2004, Li was promoted to secretary-general of Zhejiang, becoming Xi’s right-hand man.

After Xi took the helm at the 18th National Congress in 2012, he promoted Li to governor of Zhejiang Province. Three years later, Li became Jiangsu Province Party secretary, the top position in the rich, coastal province that abuts Shanghai. In 2017, Li became Party secretary of Shanghai. Now, Li is widely expected to be the next premier.

Zhao Leji

Zhao Leji, the head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, at a media meet-and-greet of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, in Beijing on Oct. 25, 2017. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)

Anti-corruption czar Zhao Leji is one of two people maintaining their positions on the Standing Committee. Zhao most recently headed the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the driving force behind Xi’s campaign to rid the Party of political enemies—namely officials still loyal to former CCP leader Jiang Zemin.

The 65-year-old also led the Party’s Organization Department, a powerful body responsible for appointments of senior officials. Zhao helped promote many of Xi’s allies, according to the Brookings Institute.

Zhao started his political career in the northwestern Qinghai Province, where he was born, and worked his way up in the provincial bureaucracy. He became Qinghai’s Party secretary in 2003. Zhao then served as the Party chief of Shaanxi Province before arriving in Beijing in 2012.

Wang Huning

Wang Huning (C), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP’s Central Committee, attends the opening session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 5, 2018. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Another person who retains a position in the Party’s top governing body is Wang Huning, a veteran theorist.

The 67-year-old Wang is a rare political figure who has served three Party chiefs amid fierce political infighting and the once-in-five-year reshuffles.

“He [Wang] is not loyal to any leader,” Feng told The Epoch Times. “He is just a theorist that the Party found useful.”

The former professor and dean of the law school at Fudan University defined core ideologies for the three leaders, from Jiang Zemin’s Three Representatives, to Hu Jintao’s Scientific View on Development, to Xi Jinping Thoughts.

“Wang Huning’s presence also indicates to me that the ideological bent of the Party and Xi will continue and even deepen,” Dylan Loh, assistant professor at Nanyang Technology University, told Reuters.

Cai Qi

Cai Qi, Beijing Party secretary, stands as he is introduced as a member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

A newcomer to the elite standing committee, Cai Qi has known Xi for more than two decades. Cai worked under Xi when he held top posts in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. After Xi took power, Cai was promoted to Beijing before he became the city’s Party boss in 2017. In the same year, he joined the Politburo, despite public anger over his forced eviction of migrant workers on Beijing’s outskirts.

On Oct. 30, Cai takes over as First Secretary of the Secretariat, overseeing the Party’s propaganda and ideology work.

Ding Xuexiang

Ding Xuexiang, a new member of the Politburo Standing Committee, in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

As Xi’s right-hand man, Ding Xuexiang’s elevation to the Standing Committee is no surprise to observers, although he has never been a provincial-level Party secretary.

Ding’s ties to Xi could date back to 2007. When Xi briefly served as Shanghai’s Party secretary, Ding was the city’s secretary-general and Xi’s top aide. In 2013, just a few months after Xi took office, Ding moved to Beijing first as the deputy director of the General Office, then as leader of the powerful office that manages the top leadership’s administrative affairs.

The 60-year-old has accompanied Xi on many trips abroad.

[Ding] has probably spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other official over the past five years,” Neil Thomas, a senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at the Eurasia Group, told Reuters.

Li Xi

Li Xi, Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, is introduced as a new member of the Politburo Standing Committee, in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Li Xi, Party chief of the southern economic powerhouse Guangdong Province, is also a new face on the Standing Committee. The 66-year-old’s bond to Xi could be traced to indirect links to Xi’s late father, Xi Zhongxun, who was a Party revolutionary, according to the Brookings Institute.

Read the rest here…

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/26/2022 – 00:05

These Are America’s Violent Crime Hotspots

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These Are America’s Violent Crime Hotspots

The District of Columbia had the highest rates of violent crime in the United States in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s data.

“Residents are scared,” said Michael D. Shankle, chair of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in the Chinatown area, after three people were shot one night last month, one fatally, in two separate incidents.

He added, “They are angry. … We feel like we don’t have enough support.”

Nearly 1,000 cases of violent crime per 100,000 people were recorded in the state.

Alaska also has a high rate of violent crime, at 838 cases per 100,000 population.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the map below, the south-eastern states of New Mexico, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana also show higher figures than much of the rest of the country.

Infographic: Violent Crime Hotspots in the U.S. | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

At the other end of the spectrum placed Maine (109 per 100,000), New Hampshire (146), and Vermont (173).

Finally, we note that even with some of the country’s toughest gun laws, the District is awash in firearms.

Police so far this year have seized 2,249 guns, 815 more than this time last year…

…they seem to be fighting a losing battle as the bad guys just won’t follow their rules!

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/25/2022 – 23:45

Multipolar World Order – Part 4

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Multipolar World Order – Part 4

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

Part 1 of this series looked at the various models of world order.

Part 2 examined how the shift towards the multipolar world order has been led by some surprising characters.

Part 3 explored the history of the idea of a world ordered as a “balance of power,” or multipolar system. Those who have advocated this model over the generations have consistently sought the same goal: global governance.

In Part 4 we will consider the theories underpinning the imminent multipolar order, the nature of Russia and China’s public-private oligarchies and the emergence of these two nations’ military power.

THE WIDER CONTEXT OF THE UKRAINE WAR

There is no evidence to suggest that the war in Ukraine is, in any sense, “fake.” The political and cultural differences among the populace of Ukraine are older than the nation-state, and the current conflict is rooted in long-standing and very real tensions. People are suffering and dying, and they deserve the chance to live in peace.

Yet, beyond the specific factors that led to and have perpetuated the conflict in Ukraine, there is a wider context that also deserves discussion.

The so-called leaders in the West and in the East have had ample opportunity and power to bring both sides in the Donbas war to the negotiating table. Their attempts to broker ceasefires and to implement the various Minsk agreements over the years were weak and half-hearted. Both sides, it seems, chose instead to play politics with Ukrainian lives. And both sides ultimately fuelled the conflict.

The West has done little but exacerbate the situation. And, though it faced a tough economic choice, the Russian government could certainly have leveraged its commanding position in the European energy market to better effect.

If, that is, avoiding war were the objective.

Whatever else it is, the war in Ukraine is the fulcrum for a transition in the balance of geopolitic power. Like the pseudopandemic that immediately preceded it, the war is accelerating the polarity shift.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was right to observe that the Ukraine war is “a gift to NATO.” Just as the West has delivered the Russian government’s monetary policy to them, so Putin’s administration has rescued NATO from vanishing relevance. Both poles are strengthened, if for different reasons.

At the same time the European Union (EU) is capitalising on both the war and the sanctions it imposed in order to reinvigorate its push towards EU military unification.

The UK is involved in this push, even though in 2016 its population elected, via referendum, to leave the EU, specifically because a majority of voters did not want to give “national sovereignty” away to the union leadership.

But, as we can see, it doesn’t matter what the people vote for or against. Despite having supposedly left the EU, the UK’s newly unelected Prime Minister has just signed up the UK as a “Third State,” bound by Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) agreements, under the direct military command of Brussels. As the UK partly hands its independent defence capability to the EU, it is playing its part in assisting the emergence of another pole.

The International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS), which has thus far underwritten unipolar domination, is being transformed now that it’s reaching the end of its life cycle. Economic growth is being deliberately stifled in the West via sanctions but encouraged in the East. Energy flows and consumption patterns are being redirected eastward. Simultaneously, effective military power is being “rebalanced.”

During the pseudopandemic, we saw much evidence of global coordination. Most unusually, almost every government acted in lockstep. China, the US, Russia, Germany, Iran, the UK and many other nations followed the same false narrative. All participated in shutting down global supply chains and limiting world trade. Most countries assiduously heeded the World Economic Forum’s preferred path of global “regionalisation.” The few that resisted were considered international pariahs.

What has happened since then? We’re told the war in Ukraine has reintroduced the same old East-vs-West division that most of us are more familiar with. Yet in nearly every other significant way nations remain strangely in total agreement. It seems The war in Ukraine is practically the only dispute.

MULTIPOLAR THEORY

The proposed multipolar world order does not constitute a defence of the nation-state. We have already discussed how the multipolar model dovetails quite precisely with the “Great Reset” (GR) agenda, so it should come as little surprise that multipolar theory also rejects the suggested Westphalian concept of national sovereignty.

Russia has numerous think tanks and GONGOs (government organized non-governmental organizations). Just as in the West, these are funded and influenced by both the public and private sectors, working in partnership. As noted by the Swedish Defense Research Agency, Russian think tank funding “part comes from the government and the rest from private actors and clients, usually big business.”

Katehon is the “independent” think tank established by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofyev (Malofeev), who has been sanctioned by the US since 2014 for his support of Ukrainian Russians, first in Crimea and then in the Donbas. The Katehon board includes Sergey Glazyev, the economist and politician who is the current Commissioner of Macroeconomic Integration for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

In 2018, Katehon pointed out that, despite all talk to the contrary, multipolarity had largely been defined as opposition to unipolarity. That is, expressed in terms of what it isn’t rather than what it is. Katehon sought to rectify this, offering its Theory of the Multipolar World (TWM):

Multipolarity does not coincide with the national model of world organization according to the logic of the Westphalian system. [. . .] This Westphalian model assumes full legal equality between all sovereign states. In this model, there are as many poles of foreign policy decisions in the world as there are sovereign states [. . .] and all of international law is based on it. In practice, of course, there is inequality and hierarchical subordination between various sovereign states. [. . .] The multipolar world differs from the classical Westphalian system by the fact that it does not recognize the separate nation-state, legally and formally sovereign, to have the status of a full-fledged pole. This means that the number of poles in a multipolar world should be substantially less than the number of recognized (and therefore, unrecognised) nation-states. Multipolarity is not a system of international relations that insists upon the legal equality of nation-states[.]

The unipolar world doesn’t protect the nation-state any more than the multipolar model does, Katehon observed. According to Katehon, the Westphalian model, in its application, has always been a myth. We might say it is just another “idea” political leaders peddle to delude us into accepting the policy goals they create. They occasionally exploit “nationalism” because it is useful.

EURASIANISM

In their efforts to cast Vladimir Putin as a comic book villain, the Western mainstream media (MSM) has attempted to personally link him to the controversial Russian political-philosopher and strategist Aleksandre Dugin. They have labelled Dugin Putin’s Rasputin or Putin’s “brain” and have alleged that Putin considers Dugin a close ally and his favourite philosopher.

There was never any foundation to these stories, however. Speaking in 2018, Dugin said

“I do not hold an official position within the state apparatus. I don’t have a direct line with Putin, I’ve never even met him.”

In 2022, the Western MSM’s allegations prompted Alain de Benoist, Dugin’s political and philosophical collaborator and friend of more than 30 years, to observe:

Putin’s “brain!” The fact that Dugin and Putin have never met once face-to-face is a good measure of the seriousness of those who use this expression. [. . .] Dugin undoubtedly knows Putin’s entourage well, but he was never one of his intimates or his “special advisers.” [. . .] The book he wrote a few years ago on Putin is far from being an exercise in admiration: Dugin on the contrary explains both what he approves of in Putin and what he dislikes.

Although Dugin has no special relationship with the Kremlin, this doesn’t mean his ideas aren’t influential there. He has acted as an advisor to the Chairman of the State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin, and to the Chairman of the State Duma, Gennadiy Seleznyov, so he certainly has political connections and is heard by the Russian political class.

Dugin is perhaps the leading modern voice for Eurasianism. In a 2014 interview, he explained his interpretation of both Eurasianism and its place within multipolarity this way:

Eurasianism is based on the multipolar vision and on the rejection of the unipolar vision of the continuation of American hegemony. The pole of this multipolarism is not the national state or the ideological bloc, but rather the great space (Grossraum) strategically united within the borders of a common civilization. The typical great space[s] [are] Europe, the unified USA, Canada and Mexico, or united Latin America, Greater China, Greater India, and in our case Eurasia.[. . .] The multipolar vision recognizes integration on the basis of a common civilization. [. . .] Putin’s foreign policy is centred on multipolarity and the Eurasian integration which is necessary to create a truly solid pole.

Neither the oligarchs nor the global political class are deluded enough to believe that they can simply commend one political philosophy or another, or one cultural ideology or another, and thereby control the behaviour and beliefs of humanity. There will always be the need for some Machiavellian skulduggery.

Putin has frequently espoused Eurasianist ideas. Conversely, Dugin is among those who have criticised Putin for his lack of a clear ideology:

He must translate his individual intuition into a doctrine intended to secure the future order. He just doesn’t have a declared ideology, and that’s becoming more and more problematic. Every Russian feels that Putin’s hyper-individual approach poses a huge risk.

In 2011, Putin announced his plan to create the Eurasian Union, much to the delight of Dugin and other the Eurasianists like Malofyev and Glazyev. Putin published an accompanying article:

We suggest a powerful supranational association capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world and serving as an efficient bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. [. . . .] It is clear today that the 2008 global crisis was structural in nature. We still witness acute reverberations of the crisis that was rooted in accumulated global imbalances. [. . .] Thus, our integration project is moving to a qualitatively new level, opening up broad prospects for economic development and creating additional competitive advantages. This consolidation of efforts will help us establish ourselves within the global economy and trade system and play a real role in decision-making, setting the rules and shaping the future.

Alexander Dugin

Putin pointed towards a global crisis that led to the claimed need for a supranational body that could act as a pole for decision-making in a global system based upon a balance of power. What he said follows a pattern; all those who extol global governance have used the same rhetorical trick.

This pattern is currently being repeated again. Irrespective of any other beliefs he may hold, Putin’s commitment to resetting the global polity is clear.

Eurasianism renders the Russian Federation a “partner” within a wider union. Currently the Eurasian Union only exists in the economic sense, and Russia is overwhelmingly dominant within it. Similarly, Russia’s permanent position in the UN Security Council affords Russia relative dominance within the UN.

Nonetheless, while the Russian government may hope to benefit from such unions and councils, by forming “poles” in a multipolar system and setting policies influenced by ideas like Eurasianism, it has diluted and declared a plan to eventually cede Russian “national sovereignty” to the union—to the pole. Putin’s pursuit of Eurasianism and multipolarity doesn’t necessarily indicate anything other than pragmatism. Nor does it represent a defence of the Russian nation-state.

We can only guess, but Putin’s preference for Eurasianism and multipolarity is unlikely to be rooted in any particular ideology. Rather, it serves a purpose, providing his government and its partners a bigger stake in “the game.”

TIANXIA

Putin’s notion of “Eurasian integration” jibes with the Chinese ideology of “tianxia,” which can be translated as “everything under heaven.” In Chinese antiquity, tianxia placed the empire at the pinnacle of a global moral hierarchy. Confucian universal care dictates that a civilised state cares for its own, first and foremost, but cannot consider itself civilised if it doesn’t care for others, too.

Other states are considered civilised if they care for their citizens and barbaric if they don’t. Therefore, all civilised states should care more for the interests of other peaceful and civilised states than they do for the needs or desires of barbaric states. Consequently, bonds are naturally formed between caring states, creating a kind of organic geopolitical order, as each state places its own people at the centre of a network of civilised relationships.

In tianxia, the practice of Confucian universal care also operates within all institutions that comprise a state. For instance, civilised individuals naturally care for their families and their immediate communities more than they care for people outside those circles. However, no one is to act selfishly at the expense of other citizens, no matter where they reside, without falling into barbarism themselves.

This is a model of state that is not based upon ethnic or “blood” ties or even national borders, but rather upon a hierarchical system of morality.

Tianxia has been promoted by a few Western commentators as a “beautiful” idea. Like a philosophical Mandelbrot set it suggests a perfect moral symmetry at both at the micro and the macro scale. The multipolar world order, supposedly with tianxia at its heart, is therefore recommended as a wonderful new model of global governance and is frequently described as “win, win cooperation.”

Academics like Professors Zhao Tingyang and Xiang Lanxin have said that the global adoption of tianxia would establish a “post-Westphalian world.” This view stems from their assessment that the Westphalian order is ideologically stagnant, limited to nothing more than an expedient balance of power system wherein “might is right.”

The criticism from these tianxian scholars is not a fair reflection of the moral precepts expressed by the Peace of Westphalia—treaties that extolled the Christian values of forgiveness, tolerance and peaceful cooperation. The scholars’ assessment is, however, a reasonable appraisal of the actual conduct of Western states that only pretend to honour Westphalian principles.

Professor Lanxin points out that China “has no ontological tradition.” That is, philosophically tianxia doesn’t ask “what is this?” but rather “what path does this suggest?” If tianxia were applied to China’s strategic foreign policy, it would be ambivalent to ideas like national sovereignty.

Much like the moral foundations of Westphalian international relations, tianxia is professed but not practised. Currently, for example, China is arming the UAE and the Saudi regimes to wage war in Yemen and is also stealing Yemen’s natural resources. Is this tianxia? Where is the “win” for the Yemeni people in China’s behaviour?

The drawback of noble ideas is that they can be exploited by hard-nosed geostrategists to sell any policy agenda they like. The theories of tianxia and Eurasianism provide a grounding for multipolarity. The philosophy isn’t the problem, it is its exploitation by the engineers of multipolar global governance.

They don’t care what the intent of an idea is. They care only how they can use that ideology or philosophy to justify their actions if anyone asks. If philosophical thought suggests some useful strategies, all the better.

When global governance over a multipolar system is the goal, then tianxia, like Eurasianism, certainly is “beautiful.”

Consider the words of Professor Zhou:

[Some are] concerned that tianxia would lead to “Pax Sinica” replacing “Pax Americana.” However, this concern is misplaced because under tianxia, there would be no place for a king — the system itself is king. In this sense, it would be a bit like Switzerland, where various language groups (French, German, Italian, Romansh) and local cantons all coexist in a commonwealth of roughly equal parts where the center in Bern is essentially a coordination point with a rotating president whose power is so constrained that some Swiss citizens can’t even name the person occupying the post.

Tianxia relegates the political voice of the people to an irrelevance. It is multipolar, defining political power as a networked system that is not limited by national sovereignty or unipolar authority but rather operates “constrained” centres of power. For those who manipulate geopolitics covertly, it is perfect: the system itself is king.

Tianxia may be a serene philosophy, but what really matters is how the theory is applied to policy. The 2017 authorised publication titled Forge Ahead under the Guidance of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Thought on Diplomacy by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi gives us a glimpse of the kind of thing China’s political class and others call “win, win cooperation.”

Xi Jinping […] puts forward new propositions on security, development and global governance. […] Xi Jinping […] has underscored China’s role and contribution to world peace and development and to upholding the international order. […] China has […] played a leading role in the Asia-Pacific cooperation, the G20’s transformation and the course of economic globalization[.]

[…] China has promoted the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund and the BRICS New Development Bank, and has taken an active part in the formulation of rules governing such emerging areas as marine and polar affairs, cyberspace, nuclear security and climate change.

[…] The [Belt and Road] initiative has been widely commended for lending impetus to global growth and boosting confidence in economic globalization.

[…] We have taken an active part […] and worked with other countries to tackle global challenges such as terrorism, climate change, cyber security and refugees. […] We advocated the formulation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and became the first country to release its national plan on implementation.

It turns out that the alleged application of tianxia means upholding the international order, international financial and monetary system reform, Agenda 2030, counterterrorism, controlling human capital, exercising global cybersecurity, economic globalization and, of course, global governance.

It seems Xi Jinping’s tianxia-inspired “thoughts” are just the same as the thoughts of the Rockefellers, Vladimir Putin, Klaus Schwab and all other members of the multipolar sales team.

RUSSIA – THE FUSION OF THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE OLIGARCHY

The Russian government and its think tanks and and oligarchs are not alone in advocating a “regionalized” world of poles. With its five “groups,” a nascent multipolar world order already exists in the form of the G20. The G20’s enthusiasm for a single global tax system demonstrates the intention to move toward a much firmer system of global governance.

Previously we noted that Putin purged the oligarch collaborators of the West in fairly short succession after becoming President. Much has been written about his war against the “5th columnists.” This often infers that Putin is somehow opposed to the power of oligarchs. That isn’t true at all.

The Russian government has no problem with people making huge amounts of money and then using it to exercise political power. It is just that political power must promote the Russian government’s aspirations.

In fact, one of the perks of being in Putin’s circle is the opportunity to become fabulously wealthy. We have already discussed the obscene levels of wealth inequality in Russia, particularly in terms of its concentration in the hands of the oligarchs. Putin hasn’t put an end to this elitism; he has facilitated it on a grand scale.

To put the matter in perspective: when Putin became President in 1999—that is, “elected” in 2000—there were a handful of Russian billionaires and oligarchs. Today, according to Forbes, there are more than 100.

Perhaps it is just another coincidence, but the sanctions have provided an impetus for Russian oligarchs living overseas to return to the motherland, a trend that has effectively strengthened the Kremlin’s bond with its oligarch “partners.”

In 1999, Putin inherited a Russian economy that had been holed out. Between 1999 and 2014, he oversaw a remarkable Russian economic recovery. Living standards improved significantly, GDP rose from $200 billion in 1999 to $2.2 trillion in 2014.

Putin led Russia from the 20th largest economy in the world to the 7th (now 11th). It seems that luck—or price fixing!—may have played a part in this apparent economic miracle. Russia’s GDP growth tracks the global oil price quite precisely.

While the Russian people benefited from some of this growth, fuelling a consumer boom, the same period also saw a huge increase in wealth inequality. A new class of Russian oligarchs hoovered up a disproportionate share of Russia’s national wealth. During his 2000 campaign to be formally anointed as President, when a radio journalist asked Putin how he would define “oligarch” and what he thought of them, he said:

[The] fusion of power and capital — there will be no oligarchs of this kind as a class.

Once secured in power, though, Putin’s team constructed a crony capitalist regime that is the epitome of the “fusion of power and capital.” He and his entourage effectively inverted the Western model of oligarch control, where capital is converted into political power. In Russia, political power enables the accumulation of capital, creating an almost unique class of oligarchs.

Gazprom, the world’s largest publicly listed gas company, provides a case study demonstrating how the Russian oligarchy functions.

Dmitry Medvedev and Alexei Miller worked in St Petersburg alongside Putin during the 1990s. Medvedev was the mayoral campaign manager for Anatoly Sobchak, who subsequently co-authored the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Putin was an advisor and then deputy to Sobchak. Miller served on the mayor’s Committee for External Relations.

When Putin became President, he gave Medvedev the highest civil service rank in Russia and made Miller the Deputy Minister of Energy.

Meanwhile, Putin decreed that Gazprom was a “national champion”—meaning a “private” corporation the Russian government considers essential to the Russian economy. Through various funds, the Russian government retained its 50.2% controlling interest in Gazprom, which makes Gazprom a public-private partnership.

Putin appointed Medvedev and Miller to the Gazprom board. Medvedev acted as chairman until 2008, when he was selected as the nominal President of the Russian Federation, while Putin temporarily acted as Prime Minister for a few years. Miller was appointed as Gazprom CEO in 2001 and is still in that post.

In 2006, Gazprom released the construction cost of its Altay pipeline from West Siberia to China. The same year it also released the expenditure figures for its Gryazovets-Vyborg pipeline. The per-kilometer cost of the Gryazovets-Vyborg pipeline was four times higher than the comparable Altay pipeline or similar pipelines, such as the OPAL pipeline in Germany.

In 2008, the Russian firm PiterGaz Engineering estimated the total construction cost of the Sochi pipeline to be $155 million—at the current exchange rate. Yet Gazprom paid the present-day equivalent of $395 million.

This inflated price prompted the East European Gas Analysis (EEGA) to note:

Russian pipeline engineering institutions, including the corresponding divisions of Gazprom, give realistic estimations of pipeline construction costs, comparable with those of western projects. However, it looks like, on the way to the top management of Gazprom, these cost estimations get at least tripled. [. . .] Apparently, after getting a realistic cost estimation, Gazprom executives add a generous margin for contractors and brokers, so the total project cost gets 3-4 times higher.

Such slush funds are found in every sector of the Russian economy, most notably in defence, infrastructure development and healthcare. The proceeds are then doled out to loyal oligarchs.

They are “oligarchs” in the fullest sense of the word. Their wealth is dependent upon their partnership with the political state. In return, they use their wealth to forward the policies of the state. Their capital couldn’t be more “political.”

For example, Alexey Mordachov owns the steel giant Servestal that supplies gas pipeline to Gazprom for its development projects, such as the Yakutia-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline (aka the China–Russia East-Route).

Other oligarchs profiting from the scheme include Putin’s personal friends Gennady Timchenko, who owns the OAO Stroytransgaz construction company, and Arkady Rotenberg, whose Stroygazmontazh (S.G.M. Group) forms Russia’s largest gas pipeline and power grid construction company.

The oligarchs are profiting from the construction of the Arctic Silk Road.

They deploy their resources to ensure that the Russian government’s foreign policy objectives are realised. The Russian oligarchs and the Russian political class are in a symbiotic relationship: a public-private partnership constructing the multipolar world order.

In so doing, they are engaging in the Great Reset, implementing the Rockefellers’ vision and fulfilling the dreams of Carroll Quigley’s Anglo-American network. The Russian state is more than just a public-private partnership. Moving beyond mere contractual arrangements and shared strategic goals, Russia’s government has fused the corporate and the political into a single public-private nation-state.

Despite the slaughter going on in the Ukraine war and all sides’ refusal to unconditionally negotiate, Russia’s “state-owned” private energy corporation Gazprom has apparently settled its dispute with Ukrainian “state-owned” energy corporation Naftogaz and is pumping 42.4 million cubic meters of natural gas a day through Ukraine to Western Europe energy markets.

The Russian Federation is paying the Ukrainian government substantial transit fees. It is effectively funding Ukraine’s war effort. The war is only for the little people.

CHINA – THE FUSION OF THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE OLIGARCHY

The only major developed economy in the world to have gone further than Russia in fusing the public and private sectors is China. China is a neo-fuedal capitalist state operating as a technocracy under the leadership of an oligarch dynasty.

The great military and political leaders of Mao Zedong’s revolution who later successfully evaded Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) were collectively referred to as the “eight immortals.”

When the Rockefellers and the Trilateral Commission dispatched Henry Kissinger to prepare the ground for US President Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, seven of the immortals decided to throw their collective political weight behind fellow immortal Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms.

Deng Xiaoping

The process of opening up China’s economy began in earnest following Mao’s death in 1976. Prominent Trilateralists such as then-US President Bill Clinton, global investment firms, Western-based multinational corporations and private investors stepped up foreign direct investment to assist China’s immortals in modernising the country’s economy, financial sector, military, industrial and technological capability. The modernisation enabled the rise of China’s oligarchy.

For example, the immortal General Wang Zhen supported Deng’s economic liberalism but also sliced off huge chunks of China’s state assets and placed them in trust to his son, Wang Jun.

Subsequently, Wang Jun collaborated with Deng’s economic advisor, Rong Yiren, to seed his now private capital into Citic Group Corp, which then became China’s “state-owned” investment company.

Citic Group is a public-private partnership that today has significant influence over China’s financial services, advanced manufacturing technology, production of modern materials and urban development.

In this way the immortals effectively created a public-private dynasty in China. Their immensely wealthy offspring are now collectively referred to as the “Princelings.”

The Princelings can broadly be divided into three groups, each influencing important Chinese sectors and industry:

  • political Princelings, such as Xi Jinping, manage the public sector

  • military Princelings manage the defence and national security sectors

  • entrepreneur Princelings manage the private sector.

As a group, they have huge influence over China’s domestic and foreign policy.

China is a one-party state but has not abandoned politics. The selection of Xi Jinping as Paramount Leader in 2012 marked an effective power-shift toward the Princelings, who many consider to represent the “elite.”

They are “opposed” by the “Tuanpai,” whose power base stems from the Communist Youth League movement established by former president Hu Jintao. The Tuanpai are broadly popularist and more focused on the issues of working Chinese people.

Other factions, such as the “Shangai Gang” and the “Tsinghua Clique,” add to the political mix.

Technocracy controls citizens through the allocation of resources. China leads on the technocratic aspects of the Great Reset. It is the world’s first operational Technate, wherein the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) oversees the surveillance and control of the population through its social credit system:

The establishment of a social credit system is an important foundation for comprehensively implementing the scientific viewpoint of development. [. . .] Accelerating and advancing the establishment of the social credit system is an important precondition for promoting the optimized allocation of resources.

The idea is that citizens can be rewarded for good behaviour and penalised for bad. Speaking to French Television, one of the lead developers of China’s social credit system was asked how French adoption of it might have impacted the Yellow Vest protests in France. Lin Jinyue replied:

I really hope that we will manage to export it in a capitalist country. [. . .] I believe that France should quickly adopt our system of social credit, to regulate their social movements. [. . .] If you had had the system of social credit, the Yellow Vests would never have been.

Coincidentally, social credit-style surveillance has been greatly enhanced as a result of the pseudopandemic that began in China. To travel on public transport, enter civic buildings, be admitted to the workplace and so on, it is necessary for China’s citizens to scan their COVID Pass QR code. Green allows them to move freely; Red prevents their free movement.

Biometric identification via facial recognition scanning is required to register a sim card in China. The biometric data system allows the NDRC to track the movements of every citizen and allows biosecurity to be enforced nationally.

Covid QR codes, combined with digital ID, means that China’s Technate is on its way to meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 and 16.

SDG 3 reads:

Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks

And SDG 16 says:

By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration

“Legal identity” is UN code for digital identity.

The Chinese technocratic oligarchy is also ahead of other countries in its development and implementation of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Bo li recently vacated his position as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of China to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as its Deputy Managing Director.

Speaking at the IMF’s Central Bank Digital Currencies for Financial Inclusion: Risks and Rewards symposium, Bo Li discussed the claim that CBDC would improve so-called “financial inclusion”:

CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program [CBDC] to create smart-contracts, to allow targetted policy functions. For example[,] welfare payments [. . .], consumptions coupons, [. . .] food stamps. By programming, CBDC money can be precisely targeted [to] what kind of [things] people can own, and what kind of use [for which] this money can be utilised. For example[,] for food. So this potential programmability can help government agencies precisely target their support to those people who need support. So, in that way we can also improve financial inclusion.

Perhaps so—although the improvement will only be afforded tothe citizen who obeys the”government agencies and private sector players”—the Princelings. Engage in “bad” behaviour and and CBDC will be used to target you for financial “exclusion.”

With CBDC in place, there would be no need to switch people’s QR code to red to stop them from attending a protest. Simply program their CBDC to prevent train ticket purchases or the use of money more than a mile from home. Physical lockdowns of Covid days are replaced by CBDC lockouts, which are much easier to enforce.

Bo Li speaking at the IMF symposium

THE MULTIPOLAR MILITARY DIMENSION

Global economic and financial power is backed up by military force. So if the powers-that-be are serious about building a new system of super-powered poles, they need to have the muscle to hold their respective positions. After all, a multipolar world order cannot be stabilised and enforced unless each pole presents a genuine military threat to the other.

For most of the post-WWII period, the US-led unipolar NATO alliance possessed the most advanced military technology. Not only did the West dominate monetarily, financially and economically, it had the military advantage to go with it. Yet, just like every other aspect of former Western dominance, that, too, has disappeared, and military power has blossomed elsewhere.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, Russia is claiming technological military supremacy. It is now ahead in the arms race. The US has confirmed that Russia used a functioning hypersonic missile in Ukraine, a fact that Joe Biden called “consequential” and frankly admitted “is almost impossible to stop.”

China, too, has fired a hypersonic missile. It apparently circled the globe. It then dispatched a hypersonic glide missile that struck its target in China. Again, confirmation came from senior US military officials, who called the technological advance “stunning.”

Now China says it may soon be able to arm its navy with these superior weapons.

Meanwhile, the West’s dunderheads, who until relatively recently dominated militarily, simply can’t wrap their minds around the ramjet engine technology (or scramjet) that powers this new breed of missiles.

While China has confirmed global flight tests and pinpoint hypersonic accuracy and Russia has actually used them in the battlefield, the Pentagon and the US Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and its private-sector partners like Raytheon are still fumbling about with limited tests, hoping they might be able to develop the same operational capability sometime soon.

If you can believe that!

The British can’t build ships that function in warm water, and their aircraft carriers can’t sail more than a few nautical miles without breaking down.

The US Navy can’t sail its ships at all.

And no one in the West can build a fighter aircraft that actually works. Yet Russia has taken submarine technology to a new level, and everyone is pretty sure China has developed AI “intelligentized” fighting capability.

The West’s sudden inability to stay in, let alone lead, the technological arms race certainly seems to mark a polar shift in the global military balance of power. It is likely that the Western military-industrial complex is kicking itself after spending the last 30 years handing its military technology over to the East.

Now look what they’ve done!

CONCLUSION

The Russian government and the Chinese government are not “worse” than the US, the UK or the French government. They are just governments doing what governments do. They represent the interests of those who can keep them in power—or remove them.

The multipolar world order ends the last vestiges of national sovereignty. It is the geopolitical Great Reset: the culmination of the oligarch’s longstanding plan to establish a system of global governance that affords them dominion over all.

If the multipolar system proceeds, which seems likely, the 193 nations—give or take—of the world will eventually be incorporated into a few global poles. Who knows how many, but probably no more than half a dozen or so.

There are some potential benefits to multipolarity. Perhaps tianxia will break out, thus reducing the risk of conflict. A “balance of power” between global poles of states could limit aggression. But if we consider how this might be achieved and who is supposedly leading it, there is reason for concern.

Assuming that the Pax Americana, Pax Europa, Pax Eurasia and Pax Sinica poles, or whatever, don’t intend to disarm, wouldn’t this logically infer a proliferation of armaments globally, including hypersonic nuclear weapons? How will these poles maintain internal security? What is to stop warfare from breaking out within each pole as disputes emerge? Will other poles have to, or choose to, intervene?

Let’s be honest. The omens don’t look too encouraging. We are accelerating towards the multipolar world order due in large part to a war currently being waged by one of multipolarity’s leading proponents. Similarly, the activities of the other leading proponent—in places like Yemen, for instance—hardly inspire confidence.

There is no evidence to suggest that the conduct of either Russia or China is or will be intrinsically “better” than the conduct of the leading nations of the previous “order.”

By far the most concerning aspect of the multipolar world order is that fewer “poles” will empower global governance. The consistent trajectory, throughout history, toward the centralisation of power hasn’t just happened by accident. The strategy of diminishing the clique of people who exercise control over the global population is a purposeful one. Were it not, it wouldn’t have been engineered in the first place.

The goal of these technocrats is to possess unopposed power. We know what they desire to do with that power should they ever achieve it:

  • enhanced biosecurity

  • population control

  • population surveillance

  • digital IDs

  • social credit systems

  • AI automated censorship

  • Universal Basic Income

  • control of the food supply, of water, of energy, of housing, of education

  • ultimately, the total control and enslavement of humanity through Central Bank Digital Currency, or some variation of it.

The nation-states advocating the new multipolar world order don’t reject these control mechanisms. On the contrary, they are leading in of their development. The multipolar system is one giant leap toward global technocratic tyranny, a system they fully endorse.

In Part 1, we noted that US geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski had identified Eurasia—”extending from Lisbon to Vladivostok”—as the setting for what he called “the game.” He observed:

America must absolutely take over Ukraine, because Ukraine is the pivot of Russian power in Europe. Once Ukraine is separated from Russia, Russia will no longer be a threat.

US-led Western powers, having orchestrated the 2014 Euromaidan Coup and having failed to seize control through the Ukrainian ballot box, have since then demonstrated their intent to incorporate Ukraine into the West’s strategic orbit by any means. Conflict of some sort became inevitable from that point onwards. The next eight years saw an escalating proxy conflict unfold, with virtually no serious attempts to stop it, which has led to this entirely predictable Ukraine War.

The people of Ukraine and the people in the new Russian republics and oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson are viewed as expendable pawns. The conflict is all too real for them, as they fight and die and long to live in peace without the perpetual threat of violence. Yet neither the “great powers” nor their puppet leaders care about the lives of the people beyond their strategic value.

The war in Ukraine is a deadly tactical ploy. The point is to fight it out, down to the last Ukrainian, if necessary, in order to facilitate the transition to the multipolar world order, thus enabling the abhorrent Great Reset and finally delivering full-blown global governance.

The vulnerable ones who will freeze to death in Europe this winter—and they could number in the thousands—are mere collateral damage in “the game.”

Yet war needn’t get in the way of business as usual: Russia continues to supply gas to Europe, if in greatly reduced quantities and at elevated prices, through Ukrainian pipelines.

The mainstream media and much of the alternative media, in both the West and the East, market the Ukraine war as a battle for “freedom,” “sovereignty” or some such drivel. As the death toll mounts among those forced to fight for their existence, we in the wider international community, taking one side or the other, fall for the same old monstrous lies.

We plant our little flags, online and off, and argue about our respective delusions, imagining that we are participating in the war, in our own small way. We act like jeering football crowds who cheer on our side to win.

Globalist think tanks have long considered war a strategic catalyst for change, a point we should have learned from Norman Dodd’s investigation and report for the Reece Committee on Foundations in 1954. We are being hopelessly naive if we imagine the war in Ukraine couldn’t possibly lead to a horrific global conflict. We have no reason to “trust” the lunatics whom we allow to remain in charge.

Equally, we should recognise that we are being manipulated by tactics designed to produce fear. Nuclear brinkmanship should always be seen in its fear-inducing context.

The oligarchs of the world are united as they seek to establish a regionalized, multipolar system of global governance that will rule the nation-states we live in.

Our political leaders, wherever they exert their claimed authority, are wholly complicit with the oligarchs’ agenda. They are selling us all out as they vie for a better seat at the table while breaking our backs in their obsequious desire to polish it.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/25/2022 – 23:25

Just How Big Is America’s ‘Strategic Cheese Reserve’?

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Just How Big Is America’s ‘Strategic Cheese Reserve’?

As of August 2022, the U.S. had 1.5 billion pounds of cheese in cold storage across the country. That’s around $3.4 billion worth of cheese.

Using data from USDA, this graphic looks at just how big the U.S. cheese stockpile has gotten over the last few years, and compares it to notable landmarks to help put things into perspective.

But before diving into the data, Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach and Carmen Ang take a step back to quickly explain why America’s cheese stockpile has gotten so big in the first place.

Why So Much Cheese?

Over the last 30 years, milk production in the U.S. has increased by 50%.

Yet, while milk production has climbed, milk consumption has declined. In 2004, Americans consumed the equivalent of about 0.57 cups of milk per day. By 2018, average milk consumption had dropped to 0.33 cup-equivalents.

In response to this predicament, the U.S. government and dairy companies have been purchasing the extra milk and storing it as cheese for years.

So, where does one store such a large amount of cheese? A sizable portion of the stockpile is stored in a massive underground warehouse (a former limestone quarry) outside of Springfield, Missouri.

The Stockpile Keeps Growing

Apart from a small dip in 2021 during the global pandemic, America’s stockpile of cheese has increased steadily over the last five years:

 

Between April 2018 and April 2022, U.S. cheese holdings increased by 130 million pounds to reach 1.48 billion pounds. After climbing up to 1.52 billion pounds in July, the stockpile settled once again at 1.48 billion pounds at the end of August 2022.

Now, the U.S. cheese stockpile weighs more than the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Tower of Pisa, and the Great Sphinx of Giza—combined.

Is the Cheese Stockpile Here to Stay?

Attempts have been made to get rid of the cheese stockpile. Over the years, the government has established federal food welfare programs and encouraged milk consumption in schools throughout the country.

Yet, despite their best efforts to decrease the surplus, America’s cheese stockpile continues to grow.

As domestic consumers continue to decrease their milk consumption, and switch out their dairy milk for milk alternatives like almond or oat milk, how much bigger will this cheese stockpile get before the government comes up with an alternative solution to deal with its surplus of dairy?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/25/2022 – 23:05