Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times,

The Netherlands demanded the closure of two illegal Chinese police “service stations” in the country.

On Nov. 2, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wopke Hoekstra, posted on Twitter that the ministry has informed the Chinese ambassador that the stations must close immediately.

Human rights NGO, Safeguard Defenders, revealed in its September report that China had set up at least 38 Chinese police “service stations” in dozens of countries across five continents.

In the Netherlands, such stations were found in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

According to Hoekstra, no permission has been requested from the Netherlands for the setup of either station. “The Netherlands has asked the Chinese ambassador for full clarification … conducts research into the stations in order to find out their precise activities,” said Hoekstra.

In responding to the order from the Netherlands, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian insisted that the stations were run by local volunteers from the Chinese community, not police from China.

Overseas Chinese police “Service Stations,” or “110 Overseas,” are found in dozens of countries across five continents. (Courtesy of Safeguarddefenders)

Transnational Repression

Earlier, the Chinese spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to the allegation of the overseas police service stations on Oct. 26.

He claimed those were service centers and the purpose is “to help overseas Chinese nationals in need access the platform to have their driving licenses renewed and receive physical examinations.”

Wang Jingyu, a Chinese dissident in Rotterdam, disagreed with Wang’s claim.

Jingyu said, “I have solid and clear evidence to prove it’s a Chinese overseas police station in Rotterdam.”

According to Jingyu, a staff member of the Chinese police service station in Rotterdam has been calling him with an official telephone number dozens of times a day, “He wanted me to turn myself in, to go back to China … threatened me with an officially registered Telegram text.”

“It’s exactly opposite from the Chinese foreign ministry’s claim,” he told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Oct. 30.

According to the Safeguard Defenders’ report, the overseas policing operation was associated with a Beijing campaign to bring Chinese nationals back to China for fraud and telecommunication fraud investigations.

Previously, Chinese media claimed that 230,000 fraud suspects were successfully “persuaded to return” to China by the overseas police between April 2021 and July 2022.

However, the Safeguard Defenders’ report also indicated that those who were successfully persuaded claimed that “most involved dissidents or individuals that had fled religious and/or ethnic persecution.”

After the exposure of the illegal Chinese police service stations worldwide, the Irish government was the first to order the closure of a Chinese overseas police station.

Russia has issued new warnings and threats against Norway, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for its role in expanding NATO operations in the Arctic region.

“Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. “We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.”

Zakharova warned additionally that any future “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.” The warning comes as Norwegian media and politicians are caught up in denouncing alleged Russian spy plots.

On Monday the Norwegian government grabbed international headlines by issuing a rare ‘high state of alert’ order for its military, specifically citing Russia’s expanding military operations in Ukraine.

As The Guardian wrote, “Norway is putting its military on a raised level of alert, moving more personnel on to operational duties and enhancing the role of a rapid mobilization force in response to the war in Ukraine – although the prime minister said there was no reason to believe Russia intended to invade.”

“This is the most severe security situation in several decades,” Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre told a news briefing. But he added the key caveat, “There are no indications that Russia is expanding its warfare to other countries, but the increased tensions make us more exposed to threats, intelligence operations and influence campaigns.”

Interestingly, the raised alert level appears related to ongoing concern over Russian spies potentially compromising sensitive facilities in the country: 

Several Russian citizens have been detained in Norway in recent weeks, chiefly for being in possession of drones or allegedly photographing subjects covered by a photography ban. Most have since been released.

European nations have heightened security measures around key energy, internet and power infrastructure after underwater explosions ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

…The Russian embassy in Oslo has alleged that authorities there have used drone and ship sightings, as well as incidents involving Russians with cameras, to fuel a “spy mania”.

Tensions with Russia across the Scandinavian region are higher than ever also because of Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO. So far it remains that Turkey and Hungary are the final two holdout nations, refusing the fast-track membership, especially as Turkey as accused both Nordic countries of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”. 

A prosecutor with Norway’s domestic security agency on Friday gave a Russian name for the man who entered the country as a Brazilian but is suspected of spying on state secrets for Russia. https://t.co/idO9yiYE7O

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 31, 2022

As for Norway, the government late last week slapped new sanctions on top Russian officials and companies. This included at least 30 individuals and seven Russian entities. 

“Once again we are acting in concert with the EU to impose sanctions on Russia to maintain pressure on the Russian Government and its supporters,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Anniken Huitfeldt told a last Friday press conference.

Authored by Michael Hudson,

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia.

Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

The 12th and 13th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors. The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

*  *  *

This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site BraveNewEurope.

Twitter – long considered a safe space for election-influencing jackboots drunk on their own arrogance – is having its ‘Red Wedding’ moment, as one Employee characterized the widely anticipated mass layoffs following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant.

Indeed, with the abruptness of a guillotine, the company’s 7,500 employees were suddenly notified in a Thursday email that the layoffs had begun.

According to the NY Times, workers were instructed to go home and not come back on Friday as the cuts proceeded.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” read the email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

According to previous internal messages and an investor, around half of Twitter’s employees were just laid off – however the final number is unknown. On Wednesday employees circulated a message on Slack that suggested 3,738 people could be fired, but that changes could still be made to the list.

On Thursday evening, employees posted heart emojis and salutes in their Slack channel.

The mass layoffs come a little more than a week after Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter – after which he immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers, while other execs have since resigned or were fired.

Managers were asked to make lists of employees based on performance.

Meanwhile, Musk brought over 50 engineers and employees from his other businesses – including Tesla – to assist with the firings.

The Times then cites some ‘industry’ insider who said there was “nothing visionary or innovative about summarily firing workers by email,” because Musk is firing people with “specialized expertise and de institutional knowledge” before he “even seems to have a basic grasp of the business.”

Or, he’s completely wrong and Musk’s team of 50 were able to figure out how to fire 3,500 people based on contributions.

For employees, it’s a question of whether they ‘can’ or ‘can’t even.’

On Wednesday evening, some employees circulated a “Layoff Guide” with tips on corporate surveillance and employment rights. One worker created software to help colleagues download important emails and documents. He was later fired, he said.

On Thursday, workers got other signals that their workplace was changing. Twitter’s “Days of Rest,” which are monthly days off so employees can rest and recharge, were removed from their calendars, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Some workers also noticed that the employee directory had been taken offline, according to internal chats seen by The Times.

“Has the red wedding started?” one employee wrote on Slack, a reference to a massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Nine minutes later, the company sent the email informing workers of the layoffs. Employees who will keep their jobs would receive a message saying so on their corporate accounts, the message said, while employees being laid off would be notified on their personal accounts.

As the Times further points out, keeping employees out of the office on Friday means that laid off workers can’t take any items from the company (or sabotage it).

“To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email continues.

Congratulations Twitter, you played yourself.

Authored by Dmitri Orlov,

The Cuban Missile Crisis is a malicious misnomer. Cuba never had any nuclear missiles; it temporarily played host to some Soviet ones. The crisis started when Americans put their intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey that posed a new threat the Soviet Union, which responded by placing similar missiles in Cuba, evening the score. The Americans flew into a rage but eventually calmed down and withdrew their missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the crisis was over. And so it should be called the American Missile Crisis.

What’s happening now couldn’t be more different. Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. Take former British PM Liz Truss, for instance. The poor silly thing latched on to Putin’s words that “the wind rose can point in any direction” (a factual point about the utter uselessness of tactical nuclear weapons). She then allowed the British economy to go into free-fall while she obsessively tracked the wind direction over the Ukraine. It all ended badly for poor Liz. Don’t be like Liz.

I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual – the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is.

In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.

Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.

To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use.

Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered. If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West.

These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first. Unlike back in the old Soviet days, Russia has no missionary zeal; it is happy to sit back and watch the West starve itself (due to a lack of Russian chemical fertilizer) in the dark (due to a lack of Russian oil and gas). All it wants to do is gather the pieces of the shattered Russian world and all the people and lands that the collapse of the USSR abandoned behind some Bolshevik-decreed border. In this situation, the risk of a nuclear war is pretty much zero. Please sit back, take a series of deep breaths and let the good news soak in. Feel the joy.

But the joy probably won’t last if you listen to craven idiots whose job is to lie to you about “Putin’s nuclear threat.” When, for instance, Jack Philips writes that Moscow has threatened to use… tactical nuclear weapons… in Ukraine to salvage its war there,” he is basically just lying to us, and not once but thrice in the same sentence: Russia did not threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons but instead pointed out their uselessness; and Russia’s special operation is a success. The fact that there is no threat is the main message of this article, but let us briefly digress and describe of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat look like.

The Ukraine is victorious in that according to the IMF its GDP is down 35% in 2022; according to its national bank inflation has topped 30% and isn’t slowing down; according to the World Bank next year 55% of Ukrainians will be below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day; according to the Ukraine’s economics minister, unemployment has reached 30%; according to its prime minister, it will be unable to pay pensions and salaries without immediate foreign aid; according to the UN, 20% of the population has left the country and another 33% are internally displaced; according to its energy ministry, it has already lost 40% of its electricity generating capacity. The Ukrainian army is drafting any male up to the age of 60, having run out of reservists, and the casualties it is suffering at the front are nothing short of horrific.

Meanwhile, Russia is vanquished because according to Reuters the Russian ruble is the strongest currency in the world; according to the Guardian Putin is more powerful and popular than ever; according to its agriculture ministry this year’s grain harvest is over 150 million tonnes, 50 million of which are for export, making Russia the world’s largest grain exporter; according to The Economist, Russia is emerging from recession just as the West is entering recession; and according to Goldman Sachs the index of economic activity in Russia is now higher than in the West. Russia just got done calling up 300 thousand, or 1%, of its trained and experienced reservists, who are now being drilled in the latest NATO-fighting techniques before being sent to the Ukrainian front.

But let’s not let facts stand in the way of the dominant narrative: the Ukraine has to be winning and Russia has to be losing because otherwise what could possibly cause Russia to become so utterly desperate as to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons? That part is simple; what is less obvious is why Western propagandists are sufficiently desperate to concoct and promulgate the false narrative of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail”?

The reason for all of this hectic propagandizing is that the collective West cannot hope to survive politically or economically unless Russia is brought to its knees and agrees to exchange its energy and mineral resources freshly minted digits that reside inside computers at Western central banks which can be confiscated at any time and for any reason. The situation is dire: the US is running through its Strategic Petroleum Reserve at breakneck pace, yet facing a shortage of diesel fuel and stubbornly high gasoline prices. It has a massive debt to roll over and expand but can only do so through direct money-printing, driving inflation, already at over 10%, ever higher. Europe is bracing for a harsh winter of ridiculously high energy bills, industry shutdowns and massive unemployment, while the US is not far behind. The fracking bonanza in the US was never quite profitable and now has perhaps a year or two before it is tapped out. Then the dream of US liquefied natural gas replacing Russian pipeline gas in Europe, never a realistic plan, will be dead for good while industry shutdowns spread to the US.

To avoid this scenario, desperate measures have been applied, and all of them have failed. First there was the plan of sanctions from hell, forcing numerous Western companies to stop shipping product to Russia and doing business there. This has done great harm to Western companies while providing Russia with an opening to steal their market share. What couldn’t be replaced with domestic production has been replaced with “parallel imports” via third countries.

Next, the West (Europe in particular) curtailed its Russian energy imports through a number of means, from sanctions against Russian tankers, to bans on the use of existing pipeline capacity through the Ukraine and through Poland, to outright terrorist strikes on Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic. An outright ban on Russian oil imports to the European Union is scheduled for December, and it will make the situation predictably worse. The result is that Russia has started shipping oil and gas to its partners in Asia instead, China in particular, and the West is now welcome to compete for this energy on the spot market, while spare supplies last. They won’t. Because of higher prices, Russia is exporting less energy but earning more foreign revenue.

And so an ingenuous plan was hatched for a nuclear provocation in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians, with some US and British help, were to take an old Soviet-era ballistic missile (a Tochka-U), load it up with nuclear waste from one of the Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, blow it up somewhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (which is already contaminated with long-lived radionuclides) and then Western media and diplomatic sources would all wax hysterical and blame it all on Russia in unison, hoping that at least some of the countries around the world that have been refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia would be cajoled into joining them.

How well did it go? Not at all well, apparently! First, Russian intelligence got the details on the whole operation from an inside source or two or three. This is not surprising, since no self-respecting nuclear engineer would be too excited to take responsibility for such a travesty. Second, Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu, under direct orders from Putin, made phone calls to his counterparts throughout the world, sharing this evidence with them. Third, Russia specifically requested that the IAEA go and investigate the two Ukrainian sites at which the travesty was being concocted. The end result is that the Ukrainians are now hurriedly destroying the evidence and covering their tracks. Considering that every gram of such highly controlled substances must to be inventoried and its every movement logged, this coverup may come to involve some incidents, accidents and force majeur circumstances. A nasty little accident involving a teacup of nuclear waste and a firecracker is not to be ruled out, to be blamed on Russia, of course.

Meanwhile, in the real world of nuclear superpower standoffs, two interesting events took place. On Thursday, October 20, 2022, the American nuclear sub West Virginia, an Ohio-class sub that carries 24 Trident II ballistic missiles, each of which carries 10 nuclear charges, surfaced in the Arabian Sea and was visited by Michael Kurilla, commander of United States Central Command. I imagine that he lined up the crew on deck, stood before them in navy dress whites, then dropped his pants down and did a little “milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner fudge is made” routine… because he might as well have. The purpose of a nuclear sub is to be stealthy because Russian air defense systems can intercept Trident II missiles especially well if they know where they are coming from. Thus, the act of surfacing and holding parades on deck basically announces to the world that the sub is off-duty for the time being.

Why would the Americans do this? Is this a clumsy peace gesture, a cryptic act of surrender or a veiled cry for help? Or are they all going senile because whatever Biden has got is infectious? It is hard for us to tell. Whatever it is, the Russians seem unaffected. The Russian nuclear sub Belgorod recently sailed off into the blue, causing a bit of a panic within NATO. It carries a number of the new Poseidon nuclear-powered drone torpedos, which are all about the number 100. Each of them carries a charge of 100 megatons. Poseidons have almost infinite range, move at around 100 km/h at a depth of 1000m (three times deeper than any nuclear sub) and when detonated near an underwater coastal ridge can raise a 100-meter tsunami. Just five of them are sufficient to demolish both coasts of the US and all of Northern Europe. These would be underwater nuclear tests conducted in international waters—antisocial, yes, but not exactly direct nuclear strikes on anyone’s territory, so hardly a casus belli. And the ensuing tsunami? Uh-oh! Oopsie-daisy, sorry about that! Nobody is going to write “in case of tsunami destroy Russia” into the US nuclear doctrine. Best of all, Poseidons can lie in wait for years, surfacing periodically to receive new orders. But if Russia is destroyed they will rise up and destroy the rest of the world world, because “What use is the world if there is no Russia in it?” (V. Putin)

We can be sure that the Russians won’t launch a nuclear war because it’s risky and they don’t have to take that risk in order to win. We can be sure that the Americans won’t launch one because it would be suicide. And so we can all sit back and relax while the “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” narrative-mongers bark their stupid heads off. As for all those assorted media whores who are scaring people with their nuclear nonsense in order to catch some hype—shame on them!

Are voter ID laws an obstacle to transgender people exercising their rights at the ballot box?  Some trans groups and the ACLU argue that this is the case as the midterm elections near.  

The push against identification at the polls has been aggressive, with Democrats making up the bulk of people in opposition.  A long list of excuses has been presented as to why very simple and straightforward laws requiring ID to vote are a violation of the civil liberties of various minorities.  Notably, Democrats and the ACLU have suggested that such laws are “racist” because minorities often don’t have or are “not capable” of getting a state ID.

The ACLU argues, for example, that over 25% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics of voting age in the US do not have ID.  This data comes from the GOA and the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and was collected from 2012-2014, around a decade ago.

The problem with this argument is that there are no legal obstacles for minorities to get a state ID.  If they don’t have one then it is their fault they are not able to vote.  The only people who would have trouble obtaining an ID are illegal immigrants who are not allowed to vote anyway.  The minority access to ID argument just doesn’t hold water.

However, not to be defeated, anti-ID groups are turning to a tiny portion of the population that might face legitimate confusion at polling stations because of their appearance – Transgenders.

Representatives from the ACLU in Tennessee where stricter enforcement of voter ID laws is underway suggest that the act of a trans person having to explain their trans status is humiliating:

“It’s not just embarrassing, but it’s terrifying to have to do that — to try to read the room and see, like, are they going to kick me out? It can be really dehumanizing to have your whole identity nitpicked just so that you can cast your ballot and have your voice be heard…” Says Henry Seaton, an ACLU advocate.  Seaton is a woman who transitioned in appearance to a man who claims she once had her ID scrutinized in 2016.

Beyond the apparent embarrassment, trans rights groups also say that ID confusion could potentially lead to people being turned away from the polls, or it could put trans people “at risk” of harassment.  Almost all stats involving trans harassment accounts are collected by trans rights groups with a clear political agenda, so it is difficult to say how serious this threat actually is and how much of it is fantasy.

“People who might be inclined to harass marginalized voters at the polls are more aware of trans people’s existence,” said Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “So I expect that we’re going to hear more stories of trans people being harassed, whether by voters, poll workers, poll monitors or other folks who are present during the election.”

Legitimate harassment is illegal regardless of the individual, as are any acts of assault or violence.  Trans people are protected under the same laws as everyone else, but groups like the ACLU claim that this is not enough and separate laws need to be established giving trans people special protections.  This would include making them exempt from voter ID laws.  

Frankly, this is yet another example of social justice proponents trying to make their problems into the country’s problems.  If a person’s identification does not match their appearance then it is going to be scrutinized whether they are trans, a minority or they are white and straight.  By attempting to change their appearance to look more like the opposite sex, trans people set themselves up for questions when going to vote.  There are dozens of other scenarios where this would also be an issue.  It is not for state governments to cater to every individual case; their job is only to ensure that ballots are secure and that non-citizens don’t vote illegally.

Since the ACLU and trans rights organizations cannot come up with many examples of trans people being denied the right to vote and only present anecdotal stories of individuals being inconvenienced for five minutes, it’s hard to find justification for an overhaul of state laws preventing voter fraud.

The more likely explanation for the growing interest in transgender voting is that social justice activists have hit a brick wall when it comes to stopping the spread of ID laws and they are looking for a legal toe hold or weakness in the armor.  Their exploitation of minorities failed, but if voter ID can be challenged using trans people as a foil, then these groups might be able to bring down all ID laws for everyone, including illegal immigrants; the real golden goose for progressive politicians.      

Several years ago, when the “liberal, tolerant” left first decided to cancel Zerohedge , they did so using their two favorite eradication strategies: deplatforming (we were removed from Facebook and Twitter, a death sentence for most websites that depend on media powerhouses for their traffic, luckily we are not one of them) and demonetization (we lost ads hosted by Google, Amazon, and various other platforms, and we also were booted by PayPal, which in retrospect was a lucky outcome). Despite this full-bore effort by the left to silence us, we somehow survived – in large part thanks to our readers who have signed up as subscribers for our premium offering.

Fast forward to today when it is now the turn of the world’s richest man to go through this same drama.

In a carbon copy of what happened to us, America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mindnumbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive. According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social-media platform last week.

Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.

So, @Pfizer – making billions off of government mandates, liability protection, & often demonstrably false propaganda – pulls ads from Twitter – over, uh, “concerns about disinformation?” #HealthcareFreedom #BeatBigHealthcare

— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) November 4, 2022

Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.

Advertisers should support:

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

Other advertisers temporarily halting their ads because of the uncertainty at the company as top executives exit and Mr. Musk considers a raft of changes, some of the people said.

And just in case it’s still unclear, as long as a handful of shrill, ultra-left harpies such as this lunatic manage to outshout everyone else, it will always be free speech that loses, even if that means that advertisers are stuck peddling their wares at places like MSNBC and CNN where most of the audience has zero disposable income as it is entirely reliant on the government for its handouts.

Several ad buyers say they expect the number of brands pausing Twitter ads to rise. The platform isn’t considered a must-buy for many advertisers, with far larger budgets going to tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, they say, and pausing makes sense during the bumpy transition under Musk.

Additionally, many executives on Madison Avenue are uneasy with the rash of sudden executive departures from Twitter’s advertising sales and marketing units. Among those who have exited are Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, Twitter’s vice president of global client solutions. Those executives “helped reassure advertisers that their ad dollars were being spent wisely and appropriately on Twitter” according to the Journal. We assume that means that the woke ad agencies were assured that only liberals would be allowed to view their ads.

Musk has been working to reassure advertisers, both publicly and privately, that the platform will remain a safe place for brands. Since tweeting last week that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape,” the billionaire has participated in several meetings and video calls with some of the world’s largest ad companies and blue-chip advertisers, ad executives said.

On Wednesday, Musk participated in a video call with WPP PLC, the world’s largest ad company, and some of its clients such as Coca-Cola, Unilever PLC and Google, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the meeting, Musk stressed that Twitter would be a safe place for brands, promising to rid the platform of bots and add community-management tools, according to the people.

He also discussed how he was seeking to segment the content on Twitter so users could customize what shows up in their feeds. That would allow people to have the equivalent of a PG-rated version of the platform, Musk said, and give advertisers the ability to choose which content to be near.

Somehow we doubt that approach will succeed. Instead, what Musk – and other thought leaders – should do, is show the variance in disposable incomes between those who frequent conservative media outlets, and those which are a magnet for liberals. Something tells us advertisers will be very surprise at who has more purchasing power. Because when you cut out the virtue signaling and the PC bullshit, at the end of the day, an ad is supposed to reach the richest, most willing to buy segment of society. The fact that this has become lost may explains the dismal state of consumer-facing companies in the US today.

As for Twitter, ironically less ads will only make the user experience that much more enjoyable. For Musk, it will also mean that the website will generate far less cash flow, which means that either he will have to dig deep to keep it funded, or he will have to start charging everyone, not just the bluechecks, for access. Whether that is a viable proposition, remains to be seen.

Billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly trading up his 2015 Gulfstream G650 private jet for a top-of-the-line Gulfstream G700, Bussiness Insider reported.

The G700 costs a whopping $78 million and is powered by all-new, high-thrust Rolls-Royce engines that can propel the aircraft to a maximum Mach .925 while cruising at more than 50,000 feet. 

Insider said Musk is expected to take delivery of one of the finest private jets in the world in early 2023. It can fly up to 7,500 nautical miles without refueling, allowing the billionaire to travel non-stop from Austin, Texas (where Tesla Motors is headquartered) to Hong Kong. 

The addition of the new jet shows Musk’s growing desire for Gulfstreams, which would expand his overall fleet of private jets to four. Three would be Gulfstreams, while the Dassault 900B stands out. 

Billionaires and elites have run into trouble with private jet ownership this year — mainly because of climate change warriors tracking their every movement and posting jet locations on social media. We noted last month that French businessman Bernard Arnault, the owner of the luxury-goods company LVMH, sold his private jet after being fed up with social media tracking his every movement. He said renting private jets solves that issue. 

We are certain Jack Sweeney, who created the Twitter account “Elon Musk’s Jet” to track the billionaire, will be adding the G700 sometime next year. 

But with a fleet of four jets, it’s getting more difficult to track the billionaire unless independently verified on the ground that he was in the plane. 

The number of billionaire donors to the GOP has been rapidly increasing vs. previous midterm election cycles – dwarfing the amount Democrats have received from their own Democrat donors (and which is largely due to George Soros).

In particular, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison have been ramping up contributions.

The three men, worth a collective $150 billion, are among the 12 top political donors ahead of the elections, according to the most recent data from OpenSecrets. Of that dozen, 10 are backing Republicans in a big way: They’ve spent a cumulative $338 million, up 250% from the 2018 cycle. –Bloomberg

And as Bloomberg further notes, this is a trend which extends to the top 100 political donors – among which some $574 million has gone towards Republican candidates and groups – around 45% more than what Democrats have received.

George Soros is of course the largest supporter of Democratic causes with $129 million in donations – nearly double the largest GOP donor Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein. Other GOP whales include Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Yass and Timothy Mellon.

Several new names appear near the top of this year’s top 100, who combined account for almost 35% of total campaign contributions. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, is the second-largest contributor to Democrats, while another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, is backing Republicans. -Bloomberg

“If you look at the people who are giving on the Republican side — Griffin and Schwarzman and the others — they’re all historically Republican donors,” said Chartwell Strategy Group founding partner, David Tamasi. “It’s not like this is their first rodeo with giving. It’s just got more weight behind it.”

Last week we noted that Democrat donors had all but abandoned Florida.

• “The Democratic Governors Association spent just $685,000 this election cycle. It gave $14 million to Florida in the past two governor races.
• Big outside donor money has almost completely dried up. New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg contributed only $1.5 million to Democrats this cycle. He vowed $100 million to Florida in 2020.
• Democrats have collectively raised $29 million in the four non-federal statewide races. Republicans raised nearly $200 million.” — Politico

The boost from GOP billionaire donors will give Republicans an advantage in what Bloomberg suggests is a ‘dead-heat race’ to regain control of the Senate, on top of an expected majority win in the House.

That said, Democrats still top Republicans in terms of overall campaign donations this cycle, outraising Republicans by nearly $191 million in all House and Senate races.

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden administration on Wednesday renewed the public health emergency determination for monkeypox.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement that his decision to renew the public health emergency was “a result of the continued consequences of an outbreak of monkeypox cases across multiple states.” He had consulted with public health officials before renewing the determination.

The Biden administration first declared monkeypox a public health emergency this year on Aug. 4. It would have expired Wednesday, Nov. 2, if it was not renewed.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky previously said the declaration would provide more “access to resources” and will “enable personnel to be deployed to the outbreak” in some areas. The emergency will also “further raise awareness” and encourage testing for monkeypox.

The latest U.S. renewal of the public health emergency comes after the World Health Organization announced that its emergency committee had likewise determined monkeypox as a global health emergency. The determination was made following a meeting of the committee on Oct. 20.

As of Wednesday, the CDC has recorded 77,573 monkeypox cases globally and 38 deaths. It has recorded 28,492 cases of monkeypox in the United States, with the death toll at 8.

Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality congressional caucus, praised the renewal of the public health emergency determination, saying it will ensure continued support to address the outbreak.

“Thanks to vaccination efforts across the country, the contraction and spread of MPV has decreased significantly. However, MPV continues to spread and is disproportionately impacting people of color. We must bolster support and resources—including by appropriating sufficient funds—to help these communities and end this outbreak,” Cicilline added.

Read more here…