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EU NatGas Soars Most In Year As Traders On Edge About ‘Possibility Of Tightening Supplies’

EU NatGas Soars Most In Year As Traders On Edge About ‘Possibility Of Tightening Supplies’

European natural gas prices erupted Friday for the largest daily gain in a year as Bloomberg pointed out, “Traders reassess supply risks amid signs of global competition for the fuel and a heat wave bearing down on the region.” 

The price of benchmark TTF jumped above 33 euro a megawatt-hour, up more than 23% on the session, rebounding from lows last seen before Russia squeezed Europe’s pipeline NatGas supplies ahead of the Ukraine war. Contracts have found a 22-euro floor after falling 91% over the last ten months. 

The one-day 23% surge is the largest since mid-June 2022, or about one year ago. 

A warm winter, slowing economic activity, and robust supplies have depressed prices since the end of last summer. Bloomberg said, “Traders are on edge about the possibility of tightening supplies.” 

James Waddell, head of European gas and global LNG at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd, said strong flows of liquefied natural gas from Russia Norway, Europe’s biggest supplier, could slide in the coming months due to several outages. 

Waddell said “physical concerns” are mounting about LNG that it unleashed a short squeeze and “stopped out a lot of traders who were shorting this market.” He added, “That’s given an extra boost to the TTF.” 

The surge is also a sign traders are looking at temperatures as the Northern Hemisphere summer is about to begin. The need for cooling buildings across Europe, Asia, and even the US will increase power demand and might support NatGas prices. 

“The heat wave in Northeast Asia over the next couple of weeks will also drive up cooling demand, and there will be more interest in cargoes from price-sensitive buyers in the region,” Waddell said, adding, “We are also anticipating a heavy maintenance schedule for LNG export facilities this summer.” 

Despite today’s price surge, traders and analysts are concerned about Europe’s recession as it likely weighs on industrial demand. So any price spike might be short-lived. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/10/2023 – 07:35

“This Is Crazy!”: Trump Rages After Indictment Unsealed

“This Is Crazy!”: Trump Rages After Indictment Unsealed

Update (1715ET): As one might expect, Former President Donald Trump took to Truth social to rage over today’s unsealed indictment against him.

“This is the man who caused the Lois Lerner catastrophe with the IRS,” Trump wrote, adding, referring to special counsel Jack Smith. “He went after Evangelicals and Great Americans of Faith.”

“His wife is a Trump Hater, just as he is a Trump Hater—a deranged “psycho” that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with “Justice,” other than to look at Biden as a criminal, which he is!”

Trump also slammed President Joe Biden, who “had records for years, totally unsecured, even stolen when he was a Senator.”

“This is crazy!” exclaimed Trump. “Under the Presidential Records Act, I’m allowed to do all this. Under the Clinton Socks Case, the decision is clear. There was no crime, except for what the DOJ and FBI have been doing against me for years.”

Biden moved his Boxes all over the place, including to Chinatown and up to his lawyer’s office in Boston. Why isn’t deranged Jack Smith looking at that?” Trump asked.

Trump also highlighted an appearance by John Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, who said that the Biden administration is “using these charges to go after their primary challenger,” calling them “serious issues.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called the indictment a “dark day” for the country in a Thursday tweet.

“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” he said, adding “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

*  *  *

Update (1505ET): As announced earlier, special Counsel Jack Smith is holding a press conference to discuss the Trump indictment.

*  *  *

The 49-page indictment against former President Trump was unsealed Friday, and contains 38 counts covering seven criminal charges, including willful retention of national defense information, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.

Special Counsel Jack Smith will hold a press conference at 3pm ET.

As attorney and journalist Techno Fog notes via The Reactionary, Trump faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted.

This is the first indictment of its kind; we are in new territory, led there by a regime that demands victory at any cost, no matter the political norms or the legal barriers standing in its way. The erosion of the institutions continues.

As Trump faces charges, and as the authorities and media promise that the charges (this time) are legitimate, make no mistake that millions of voters see it as something else: that they’ve been disenfranchised once again. As for the rest of America, it’s safe to assume that many feel little confidence in this prosecution. They see it for what it is.

Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to face charges. His first appearance will be before Judge Eileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020.

The indictment marks the first time in US history that a former president has faced federal charges – and is the first time a sitting president’s DOJ has indicted his chief political rival in an upcoming election.

At one point, Trump allegedly made a ‘plucking motion’ to indicate to his attorney that anything ‘really bad’ should be removed from the retained files.

Here’s (now former, just resigned) Trump attorney Jim Trusty discussing former presidents turning in classified documents (h/t/ Techno Fog)

Prosecutors also charged former presidential aide, Waltine Nauta, who continued to work for Trujmp after he left office.

Read the entire indictment below:

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/10/2023 – 07:05

Moving Toward A Global Empire: Humanity Sentenced To A Unipolar Prison & A Digital Gulag

Moving Toward A Global Empire: Humanity Sentenced To A Unipolar Prison & A Digital Gulag

Authored by David Skripac via Off-Guardian.org,

“COVID is critical because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.”

Yuval Noah Harari, World Economic Forum

Using the fake “COVID virus” narrative as cover, the privileged, power-mad parasites who pilfer the world’s wealth have sharply accelerated their longstanding plan to create a single global empire that is completely under their command.

This single global empire will ultimately employ the services of all the transnational institutions on the planet in order to regulate and control every aspect of human life.

It is a global empire run by an exclusive club, perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 strong, whose members do not pledge allegiance to any national flag, who snobbishly view themselves as superior to their countrymen, and who are indifferent to political ideology so long as they can control the political structure from within. They aim to erase all national borders and are well on their way to shredding the constitutions of every nation-state.

It is a global empire that, unlike days of yore, needs no standing army to wage war on a battlefield against an opposing empire. For, in this era of the single global empire, the enemy being subdued is each and every one of us.

That mission is being accomplished through a sophisticated information warfare campaign, which is designed to monitor and manipulate our every thought, word, and deed.

Importantly, this offensive attack on us is intended to suppress and stamp out freedom in every aspect of our lives—economic freedom; political freedom (particularly the freedom to impart and receive information and to accept or reject information); physical movement freedom; healthcare decision freedom; and, above all, the independence to think for ourselves—what can be called mental freedom.

Before I expose this global empire in more detail, I would like to share with you, dear reader, a story about my parents. It serves to contrast the 1950s’ version of mass surveillance and harsh restrictions on individual freedoms in certain parts of the world with the 2020s version of repression, wherein all of humanity—regardless of where one lives—is steadily and surreptitiously being herded into an omnipresent totalitarian control grid.

HARKING BACK TO 1955

In 1955, my parents, Maida and Janko, risked everything to leave their homeland, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was not a decision they took lightly, for it meant losing everything—possibly even their lives—if Yugoslav authorities ever found out that my parents had no intention of ever returning after visiting neighboring Austria for what they told border guards was simply a fun weekend excursion.

Since the end of the Second World War, Yugoslavia had been ruled by the communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. Although Tito’s government tried to improve the living standards of the average person, his apparatchiks’ authoritarian rule left a lot to be desired.

For instance, a major impediment to progress was the entrenched corruption at every level of the Yugoslav government. Members of the Communist Party received privileges and favors, while everyone else waited months on end for basic necessities, such as foodstuffs and housing. Among party members, kickbacks and bribery were commonplace. Advancement up the social and political ladder was based on party allegiance and on who you knew, not on merit.

Another major drawback under Tito’s reign was the curtailment of individual freedoms. My parents had witnessed firsthand an erosion of their basic rights—their right to assemble; their right to speak freely; their right to travel; and their right to own a business. If anyone bravely spoke out, either publicly or privately, against these injustices, the state would monitor and track his every move. One could even be watched by a nosy neighbour, who might well be working as a snitch for the government.

The surveillance net cast over Yugoslav society and the restrictions imposed on civil liberties became worse as the rift between Belgrade and Moscow intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Starting in 1948, the Soviets actively tried to interfere with Yugoslavia’s domestic political affairs. They even sought to overturn the Yugoslav government, for Moscow disapproved of Tito’s desire to chart an independent course, separate from the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc.

In June 1948, for example, the Soviets addressed the Yugoslav people with a call to overthrow their government. Yet, despite Moscow’s shadow permeating all levels of Yugoslavia’s internal political affairs, Tito’s communists managed to retain power. The USSR and its Eastern European allies refused to retreat, though. They still threatened to invade upon any pretext.

At Stalin’s behest, the Soviets tried to assassinate Tito on several occasions. Meanwhile, once-friendly neighbors like Hungary and Romania, now in the grip of the USSR, blocked Yugoslavia’s borders and shot at—and sometimes killed—Yugoslav border guards.

Against this backdrop, my parents made the fateful decision to leave their homeland. For years, they had been hearing through the grapevine about the “Promised Land”: the continent of North America. A land where the post-war economy was booming. A land of endless possibilities and countless opportunities. A land where, if one were willing to work hard, anything could be achieved. It was time for them to make their move.

Fortunately, my mother had stayed in contact with Franc Kopitar, a close friend of her family since childhood. Franc, after having served with Tito’s partisans (his partisan code name was Silvo) during the Second World War, had joined the Yugoslav state tourist and transport agency Putnik. (The agency was later renamed Kompas—a name it holds to this day.)

Although Franc was a patriot, ready to do whatever was necessary to defend his nation against an invading military force, he deeply distrusted the communists. Thus, he was willing to secretly help my parents escape Tito’s iron fist to seek a better life.

In 1955, through his connections in the government, Franc was able to secure the requisite visa and travel documents that enabled my parents to visit Graz, Austria, on a “temporary weekend pass.” The documents were the real deal: They bore the required stamps of authorization and other markings that would mislead the authorities into believing that my parents would return after their weekend sojourn in neighboring Austria.

Franc had instructed my parents to fully furnish their apartment with newly purchased furniture before they left. He knew this would mislead anyone who might be prying into my parents’ travel plans. After all, why on earth would anyone spend all of their meagre earnings to buy brand new furniture for their apartment if they planned to permanently leave the country?

With the deceptive scene of decorated rooms set in place and their deceptive scheme set in motion, my by-now-virtually-penniless parents packed everything they treasured into two small suitcases and set out for the Ljubljana train station on a cold January afternoon in 1955.

Filled with hope and trepidation, they boarded the train that would take them to the Yugoslav/Austria border. Not knowing how this momentous day would end, three questions weighed heavily on their minds:

Who and what was waiting for them at the border?

If their papers were not in order, were they going to be taken to prison and interrogated for days on end?

Worse, if their papers were not in order or their demeanor seemed suspicious, would they be hauled off the train and escorted to a nearby forest, never to be seen again? They knew such a tragic end had befallen many unfortunate souls who had tried to escape Tito’s reign.

The train reached the border with Austria by nightfall. (Austria at the time was divided into four Allied occupation zones: British, American, French, and Soviet.) Before it was allowed to cross into the British occupation zone, Yugoslav military authorities boarded in search of anyone who looked remotely suspicious or was suspected of traveling without authorization.

My parents had been instructed by Franc to look the soldiers straight in the eye and smile when asked to present their documents for inspection. It was imperative to make eye contact. If you were perceived to be avoiding the authorities’ direct gaze or if you looked nervous, you would immediately be ordered to disembark.

But making eye contact was easier said than done. My parents watched helplessly as a passenger interrogated ahead of them was removed from their railway car and dragged into the adjacent forest. Within seconds, they heard the echo of gunshots.

Years later, my parents told me it was one of the most difficult moments they ever had to endure. They recalled feeling morbid fear and dread as they forced themselves to sit calmly and not perspire—while their insides were turning to jelly.

To their enormous relief, when it came time to have their documents examined, everything was found to be in order. Nothing about their papers, their countenance, or their actions betrayed their secret. And so they were allowed to remain on the train and proceed into Austria.

Once they reached the Graz train station, they had no idea what to do or where to go. So they stood on the platform until a man in a grey trench coat approached and asked, in perfect Croatian (though with a British accent), “Are you visiting or escaping?”

After hearing their answer, the man chaperoned them to a processing centre, where they were provided with food and water by the Catholic relief agency Caritas Internationalis. From there they were transported by bus, along with other refugees, to a Displaced Person Camp (DP Camp Nr. 1001) located in Wels, Austria, in the American occupation zone.

There, my parents were interrogated and processed by American officials and then shown to their tight-but-blessedly clean accommodations in the crowded camp.

Although the camp was crammed with refugees from all over Eastern Europe, everyone made a point of getting along. My parents met many wonderful people of every neighboring nationality—Hungarian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian—and from all walks of life during their stay at the camp. In the evenings, everyone played cards and shared stories—always full of intrigue and often pathos—about their harrowing journey from Eastern Europe.

After spending three months at the DP camp, my parents were invited to move into the home of a wonderful Austrian family as part of the Austrian government’s refugee sponsor program, which was coordinated through the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The program was intended to help refugees learn the German language while providing them with a trade so that they could better assimilate into and contribute to Austrian society. (On average, about ten percent of all refugees would end up permanently staying in Austria, while the remainder would move abroad.)

Despite having forged an enduring bond of friendship during their sixteen months of lodging with the Austrian family, they nonetheless made the bold decision to voyage across the North Atlantic to the Port of Montreal, Canada, in 1957.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

ADVANCING TO 2023

Lately I’ve asked myself: If my parents lived today in the region now known as the former Yugoslavia and if they sought to move to a country that promised them an opportunity to improve their fortunes, where would they go?

If they were looking for a place in which the inherent, inalienable rights of citizens are respected by the government, could they find such a place on any continent?

Would they still travel to the Commonwealth country of Canada?

Would they venture as far as the two southernmost Commonwealth nations—New Zealand and Australia?

Would they flee to the ostensibly free United States? Or to a US-controlled European Union country?

How about moving to one of the BRICs—say, to Brazil, Russia, or India? (No, they probably wouldn’t be tempted by China!)

One way to answer these questions is to take a look at the current political and economic conditions in the aforementioned countries—and ascertain the “freedom factor”—or lack thereof—in each.

As we make our way from country to country, we will examine the actions of their governments over the past three years and reach a conclusion on behalf of my parents.

Let’s start with the country they adopted and the country I was born and raised in: Canada.

A 2023 LOOK AT CANADA

When my parents immigrated to Canada in 1957, it was indeed a land of opportunity and of plenty. It was possible for a middle-class, single-income family with two children to own a house, a couple of vehicles, and perhaps a summer cottage.

My parents had only a sixth-grade education, but they were willing to work hard. In a span of two years, they earned and saved enough to start their own business—a beauty salon. By 1963, they were able to buy their first detached home for $10,000, with a $5,000 down payment. Five years later, they managed to pay off the mortgage from the proceeds of their modest income. Looking back, I find their determination and savings skills incredible!

Now, imagine what that same scenario would look like today. The average selling price of a Canadian detached home in January 2023 was $612,204. If we apply what my parents did, putting down half the price, we would shell out a whopping $306,000 up front then pay off the remaining $306,000 over the next five years.

That works out to approximately $61,200 in annual mortgage payments, not including interest. If we calculate the cost of food, clothing, and fuel—another $40,000 per year for an average four-person family—we would have to earn around $100,000 a year plus another $100,000 or so to cover property and income taxes and mortgage interest.

Thus, we would have to earn around $200,000 in pre-tax annual income to live a fairly moderate lifestyle, afford our mortgage, taxes, and basic costs of living—all to achieve what my parents were able to do in the early 1960s on an at-the-time much more modest income.

Does such a scenario seem even remotely possible today? I think not.

The truth of the matter is that in Canada, as in most of the world, the cost of living has skyrocketed. The broad middle class that existed in Canada and most of the Western world from the 1950s through the 1980s, three decades when the average worker could own his own home, is being squeezed out of existence.

Rapid inflation has eaten away the purchasing power of both Canadian and US dollars even as housing costs have helium-ballooned up, up, and away. Making matters worse, rising energy, food, household goods, and healthcare prices have contributed to spiraling inflation, which is aggravating an already serious decline in real wages.

On the political scene, the present conduct of the Canadian government is virtually unrecognizable compared to the conduct of its predecessor government in the 1950s. The current regime in Canada, like most of the so-called “Western liberal democracies,” has shown disdain for truth and for individual freedom ever since the pseudopandemic was unleashed on the world in March 2020.

Like most countries, Canada’s federal and provincial governments implemented reprehensible COVID measures—lockdowns, physical distancing, masking, quarantines, QR codes, and experimental mRNA gene therapy mandates—to combat the alleged “deadly COVID virus.”

When Canadians from all walks of life revolted peacefully against the assault on their inalienable and constitutional rights by forming and participating in the Truckers Freedom Convoy, the regime retaliated. Full of spite, the thuggish Trudeau found an extreme way to remove protesters’ right to peacefully assemble. On February 14, 2022, he invoked the Emergencies Act—the first time it had ever been enacted in Canadian history.

The invocation of the Emergencies Act enabled Ottawa police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to forcibly dismantle the four-week-long, thousands-strong peaceful demonstration in the nation’s capital. Despite being orderly, respectful, and nonviolent, these unarmed citizens were beaten by brutal, rifle-wielding officers. Two elderly protesters were trampled by police horses, and journalists were pepper-sprayed and shot.

Using the pretext of the Emergencies Act, the federal government even went so far as to freeze the bank accounts of some Canadians who had either organised or financially supported the convoy.

Then, on April 27, 2023—more than a year after the protest was broken up—Bill C-11, officially known as the Online Streaming Act, became law. Cowardly Canadian senators voted for it despite all their previously recommended amendments to it having failed. The new law will enforce sweeping internet censorship legislation that silences everyday Canadians on social media platforms.

In sum, Canada has completely lost its sense of humanity. The compassion and kindness that Canadians are known for throughout the world still exists, but it is being suppressed and buried under a mountain of lies propagated by the government and its handlers, who are part and parcel of the aforementioned global dictatorship.

CONCLUSION

Maida and Janko would not find economic freedom, political freedom, physical freedom, healthcare freedom, or mental freedom in today’s Canada.

We’ll now take a peek at three other Commonwealth of Nations countries.

*

A 2023 LOOK AT AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE UK

The rulers of the other fifty-five nations in the Commonwealth couldn’t engineer an excuse for following Canada’s freeze on bank accounts, but some of them adopted especially savage measures to eradicate an alleged novel disease called COVID-19.

The Australian government not only mandated curfews, masking, physical distancing, and the shutdown of the economy through lockdowns, but it ordered the army to patrol city streets during the lockdowns. In the Northern Territories, soldiers forcibly removed residents who were suspected of having the dreaded disease and transported them to Quarantine Camps.

In two major Australian cities, the political puppets controlled by the global oligarchs may not have frozen the bank accounts of lockdown protestors, but they did order police in riot gear to attend protests in Melbourne and Sydney, where they shot rubber bullets at unarmed fleeing people and pepper-sprayed the face of a 70-year-old woman who had fallen and was lying helpless in the street.

New Zealand, likewise, turned into a full-fledged police state, enforcing home detentions and citywide quarantine zones. Whoever was found breaching the government’s draconian lockdown orders faced arrest and even a prison sentence. In March 2023, for example, Pastor Billy Te Kahika and his colleague, Vincent Eastwood, were sentenced to four months and three months imprisonment, respectively, for illegally organising and attending a protest in front of TVNZ.

Aside from implementing ruthless COVID measures similar to Australia’s, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arbitrarily mandated “vaccination” for public health officials, pharmacists, barbers, teachers, and community support service employees. (More on Ardern below.)

The UK government, while not as harsh as its Aussie or Kiwi counterparts, nonetheless behaved repressively and reprehensibly in its anti-COVID efforts. Police were ordered to enforce a limit on gatherings of no more than six people in pubs, restaurants, cinemas, and outdoor spaces.

Like its Commonwealth partners, Britain didn’t shy away from using dubious tactics to manipulate a subset of its population. Its “nudge unit,” set up by the Cabinet Office in 2010, has been applying behavioural science principles—aka the pressure of propaganda—to steer public policy on everything from paying taxes to insulating homes. During the scamdemic, this unaccountable and unethical “nudge unit” scared, shamed, and scapegoated the public into taking the COVID jab.

We mustn’t forget that the UK is home to one of the world’s leading technocrats, the newly crowned King Charles III. In January 2020, then-Prince Charles returned to Davos for the first time in thirty years to speak at a World Economic Forum annual meeting—this one was celebrating the WEF’s 50th anniversary. And what subject did this pseudo-environmentalist address?

Why, of course, his passion for adopting decarbonization and other sustainable development initiatives, which he had to know were designed to further impoverish the poor and further enrich His Royal Highness and his avaricious buddies around the globe.

CONCLUSION

Maida and Janko would not find economic freedom, political freedom, physical freedom, healthcare freedom, or mental freedom in today’s Commonwealth of Nations countries.

*

We’ll pause here to inquire: Who are the actors reading their lines from the same worldwide script and performing identical roles as enforcers for the emerging global government?

In Canada, the most notable cast members are Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Both are lackeys of Klaus Schwab and graduates of his Young Global Leaders (YGL) academy—the indoctrination arm of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Other characters in this unfolding drama—YGL graduates all—include New Zealand’s dictatorial former Prime Minister-turned-Harvard-fellow Jacinda Ardern, France’s equally despotic President Emmanuel Macron and tech tyrants Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. According to one source, there are approximately 3,800 YGLs—and counting.

The YGLs’ chief raison d’être, it would appear, is to carry out the WEF’s Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution initiatives. The WEF agenda is being aided and abetted by the secretive Bilderberg Group, by Malthusian depopulationists at the eugenical Club of Rome, and, most notably, by the globe-wide organization that fathered the WEF: the United Nations.

Through its deceptive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its sinister Agenda 2030—the latter saddled with admirable-sounding-but-actually-imprisoning Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the UN has put in place a system designed to subjugate the entire population of the planet by transforming every human being into a feudal serf and a technocratic slave and a bug-and-synthetic-meat-eating transhuman—or topsoil!

As I write this, Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals are being instituted across the globe through the WEF’s Great Reset and its transhumanist Fourth Industrial Revolution.

And, as I write this, the installation of those SDGs is being abetted by numerous central banks—most notably the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank (ECB), the People’s Bank of China (PBC), the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR), and the US Federal Reserve (the Fed). These and other nations’ central banks are coordinating their efforts with what Tragedy and Hope author Carroll Quigley called the “apex” of the central bank network, the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

The central bankers intend to unleash, eventually in every nation on earth, the most extensive, oppressive social control mechanism ever devised: the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). (In the beginning, each country will have its own CBDC, but it makes sense that ultimately they would be merged into a single global digital currency.)

The implementation of CBDCs, combined with the rollout of a digital ID system, country by country, will spell the end of human freedom. Both the CBDCs and the digital IDs will be sold by the central banks to the unsuspecting public as a safeguard to protect the user’s anonymity and data. However, that pitch will be a deception designed to obscure the malicious intent and dictatorial bent of this monumental control grid.

Of the 208 nations with central banks, 119 of them are currently developing their own form of digital currency.

And that brings us to the United States of America, its all-seeing, all-knowing, all-controlling Federal Reserve Bank, and its other forms of imprisonment and enslavement.

A 2023 LOOK AT THE US

In addition to the planned rollout of the Federal Reserve-issued CBDC, there is movement afoot to launch a nationwide digital ID in the US.

US Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming have introduced Senate Bill 884, also known as “the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023.”

If this bill passes both chambers and is signed into law, it will require all Americans to have a valid digital ID if they want to connect to the internet, open and maintain a bank account, obtain a passport, and gain access to medical care. In essence, it will mimic the social credit score system the government of China uses to track and control its citizens. It is the very vehicle that the WEF is so eager to deploy across the rest of the world.

SB 884 is the latest, most obvious, and most concerning evidence of the US government’s ongoing public-private partnership with Big Tech. It points to the intent of the corporate-controlled, highly centralized and security-conscious government to surveil the movements of the entire US population.

Of course, the panopticon created by the Improving Digital Identity Act will allow US federal and state agencies to not only monitor everyone’s actions but also to block, silence, and sideline dissenters who disagree with the official narrative. All layers of government will be able to openly, actively, legally censor citizens and ignore their rights as codified by the constitutions of the US and its 50 states.

This is exactly what Google and its YouTube, Meta and its Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have been doing to their users in their attempts to silence anyone who presents inconvenient facts about COVID or any other politically sensitive agenda.

For those of you who think the State of Florida is a shining example of preserving liberty and human rights, think again.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has just sidelined Florida’s Senate Bill 222, the Protection of Medical Freedom Bill. SB 222 would have ended all discrimination against the unvaccinated, ended all existing and future vaccine mandates, and ended all existing and future vaccine passports for all Floridians, regardless of the vaccines being mandated by the federal government or by the eugenicists at the World Health Organization (WHO)—which, like the WEF, is allied with the UN.

In its place, Gov. DeSantis is promoting SB 252, which would end vaccine mandates and passports only for existing “COVID-19 vaccines.” Under SB 252, citizens in Florida would not be protected from future “pandemics,” future vaccine mandates, or future vaccine passport requirements.

Therefore, in the future, when the director (read: dictator) of the WHO declares a new pandemic under the vague requirements stipulated in the upcoming new global “Pandemic Treaty”—without even a shred of evidence of the existence of a contagious disease—Floridians would be required to surrender their bodily autonomy to an entirely new set of draconian mandates.

In some ways, the US is the worst in the world when it comes to stripping citizens of the right to make their own healthcare decisions and safeguard their mental and physical sovereignty. For, besides working intimately with the transhumanist ideologues at the WHO, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WEF, and other UN agencies for several years, the US federal government has been at the epicenter of development, testing, and deployment of the experimental mRNA gene therapy “countermeasures.”

This research and the resulting products have adversely affected the lives of not only Americans but of people throughout the world.

Looking back, we recall that in early 2020 the US government, as part of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), worked hand-in-hand with the Department of Defence (DoD) and its US Army Contracting Command branch, plus the National Security Council (NSC) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), to award clinical development and manufacturing contracts to each of the “vaccine” manufacturers—PfizerModernaNovavax,

AstraZenecaGlaxoSmithKline and Janssen—even before deployment of the dangerous COVID-19 experimental gene therapies to the 50 states and the rest of the world could proceed.

The DoD went so far as to design, oversee, and organise the highly sensitive clinical trials for these experimental products. These steps are typically taken by the vaccine manufacturers themselves. They traditionally take years and years to complete, compared to the few weeks in which the COVID-19 trials were apparently conducted.

CONCLUSION

Maida and Janko would not find economic freedom, political freedom, physical freedom, healthcare freedom, or mental freedom in today’s United States of America.

But what if my parents decided to move to today’s Germany or the German part of Switzerland?

Or what if they chose to join the defiant anti-Macron protesters in France instead of departing, as they did, from the port at Le Havre on a ship bound for the Port of Montreal?

Or what if they felt for—and elected to fight side-by-side with—the persecuted farmers in The Netherlands?

Or what if they opted to stay put in 2020s’ Austria?

Would they find any aspect of freedom left in the European Union countries…?

*

A 2023 LOOK AT THE EU

The simple answer: No! The EU is a premeditated economic, political, and social failure.

In fact, the EU was an idea dreamed up not by the citizens of any nation in Europe but by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and David Rockefeller’s Club of Rome. Their rationale for creating the EU was painfully obvious: It’s easier for intelligence agencies and avowed eugenicists to control one larger, dependent, compromised, and impotent entity than to control numerous smaller, still-independent, sovereign nation-states.

The leaders—if they can be called that—of the European nations are EU sock puppets and shills. As such, they are doing everything in their power to deindustrialise and destroy their respective economies. As I just said, weakened national and regional governments are much easier to fold into a global empire than are strong, independent ones. The leaders of Germany, France, Austria, Spain, et al. have to know this, which means they have been corrupted to the core.

Here’s a prime example. The so-called heads of state in Europe insist they are protecting their own country’s national sovereignty and security by imposing economic sanctions on Russia—at Washington’s behest. They pretend the sanctions are meant to injure the big bad bear who dared attack NATO-controlled Ukraine.

But this is not true. The sanctions are actually decimating their own economies and peoples. The energy shortages, rising prices of goods, food shortages, and climbing interest rates throughout Europe are all intended results of those sanctions. I repeat: The leaders of Germany, France, Austria, Spain, et al. have to know this, which means they have been corrupted to the core.

They also pretend that the structure of the EU’s central government in Brussels is a “representative democracy.” No, it isn’t. Not even close. At its heart is the European Commission (EC)—the EU’s executive body—which is made up of unelected officials. The current EC President, notoriously corrupt Ursula von der Leyen, sets policy for the entire EU behind closed doors. Once the EC formulates a new policy, it’s just a matter of time before the bureaucrats in the European Parliament give it their rubber stamp of approval.

Secrecy, non-transparency, and no accountability are the name of the game. The EC is a farce and a failure through and through.

Similarly, the purported independence of the European Central Bank (ECB) is a sham. Although its website says the ECB is not “allowed to seek or take instructions from EU institutions or bodies, from any government of a Member State or from any other body,” the ECB is heavily influenced by the bank that created it in 1999: the BIS.

And, like the BIS, the ECB’s day-to-day operations are kept secret. It never releases a press release after a monetary policy meeting of its Governing Council, despite the European Parliament passing repeated resolutions demanding that it do so. Moreover, its structure, method of operation, and lack of accountability mirror that of the BIS.

In short, it’s hard to imagine a more undemocratic institution than the ECB. Yet this is the bank that Eurozone nations are asked to blindly trust when it comes to formulating their monetary policy. Simply mind-boggling!

With such an autocratic structure already in place, it was oh-so-easy for EC members to go along with the “pandemic” narrative by making backroom deals with the pharmaceutical companies to purchase millions of doses of the COVID-19 “vaccine” and by recommending that all member states implement the criminal COVID-19 measures.

Likewise, it was a snap to persuade EU member states to stand by in silence after Washington, the real power behind NATO, carried out a blatant act of war against them by destroying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

We spoke earlier of a few graduates of Klaus Schwab’s YGL academy, mentioning one European alumnus, France’s Macron, by name. Other Young Global Leaders who have advanced through the political ranks in Europe include former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Not to be left out: EU President Ursula von der Leyen, who sits on the WEF’s Board of Trustees.

Not surprisingly, the EU member states are following the US lead in pressing ahead with a digital ID system and basing it on China’s enslavement/imprisonment model.

Croatia (once part of Yugoslavia), where my father, Janko, is from, plans to be the first EU member to roll out the digital ID system for travelers flying between Zagreb and Helsinki this summer. The “pilot project” is using the UK-based company Verify 365 to merge the electronic identity of passengers with the new MyID Digital Wallet system. As always, the scheme is being promoted to the public as “a safe, secure and convenient way to prove who you are.”

Thankfully, some citizens in EU countries are rising up in defiance of the ruling oligarchy. In the Netherlands, for instance, thousands of Dutch farmers revolted against their government’s insane plan to cut nitrogen emissions by permanently closing more than 11,000 farms. The farmers created their own political movement, the Farmer-Citizen Movement—or BoerburgerBeweging (BBB)—which recently triumphed in regional elections after months of widespread tractor protests.

Then we have the millions of disgruntled citizens who have been regularly flocking to the streets of Paris and other major French cities to protest various economic and political “reforms.” Their initial complaint about higher fuel taxes (remember the yellow vest movement in 2019?) has evolved into a revolt against “Monarch” Macron’s decision to increase the legal pension age from 62 to 64. Macron’s invocation of Article 49.3—for the 11th time in his “reign”—allowed him to bypass the National Assembly (France’s lower house of Parliament). On May Day, protests against that perceived injustice got ugly.

To be sure, these massive demonstrations and the BBB’s encouraging victory are positive steps. No major liberation of Europeans from their own governments will take place, however, until the entire edifice of the EU is torn down. Most importantly, Europe will not be fully emancipated until NATO is dismantled. Only then will the people of each European nation be truly freed from the shackles of the Washington establishment that dictates every aspect—military and economic and otherwise—of their lives.

CONCLUSION

Maida and Janko would not find economic freedom, political freedom, physical freedom, healthcare freedom, or mental freedom in today’s European Union countries.

In all fairness, we must point out that totalitarian control and surveillance mechanisms, such as digital IDs and CBDCs, are not unique to Western countries. Venturing into the Eastern countries, we would encounter the exact same control grid being developed, with the same globalist, imperialist players at the helm, all of them ensuring that the East, like the West, remains under their domination.

One group of nations that is neither geographically East nor West but that has formed a bloc to counteract the dominance of the US and its allies is what Goldman Sachs ex-chief economist Jim O’Neill coined the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

I wonder: Would my parents ferret out a haven of freedom in any of the BRICS nations? We’ll soon find out.

*

A 2023 LOOK AT THE BRICS NATIONS

Countless pundits and journalists in the alternative media have opined that the BRICS nations—particularly Russia, China, and India—are leading the charge in an anti-globalist, anti-global-governance, anti-single-global-empire crusade.

On the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are some proofs that they misunderstand the geopolitical reality:

All of the BRICS nations are firmly onboard the WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution and the UN’s Agenda 2030—notably its SDGs.

The central banks of BrazilRussiaIndiaChina, and South Africa are all forging ahead with plans to roll out their programmable CBDCs as soon as possible. Among those five central banks, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are considering putting expiration dates on their CBDCs.

The BRICS are not challenging Western economic hegemony. Their financial initiatives are deeply connected to the World Bank and the IMF. Therefore, they must be seen as closely connected to the Washington establishment, not clashing with it (despite appearances to the contrary).

When it comes to COVID-19, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have been leading the pack in enacting a biosecurity surveillance state.

Indeed, ever since the scamdemic scare was announced in early 2020, the Kremlin has been complicit, just like the collective West, in carrying out harmful anti-human, anti-health measures under the direction of the WHO’s health tyranny.

For example, President Putin and his Minister of Health (and WHO executive board member) Mikhail Albertovič Murashko have been promoting mass vaccination.

Their Sputnik V injection is virtually identical to the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s injection. In fact, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)—the Kremlin fund that finances Sputnik V—signed a memorandum of cooperation with AstraZeneca in December 2020.

Moreover, Russia has introduced vaccination mandates for certain regions of the country and mandatory jabs for the military.

Because Russia has no equivalent of the US CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how many Russians are being injured or murdered by their experimental Sputnik V jab. Nevertheless, thanks to Argentina’s Ministry of Health, we do know that, of the three “vaccines” the Argentinian government has adopted for use—Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinopharm—the Sputnik V injection has been the leader of the pack when it comes to causing adverse reactions, beating the other two contenders by a huge margin.

Russian doctors are well aware of health risks associated Sputnik V, but they are labeled “terrorists” and are threatened by the state with excessive fines and prison time if they voice their concerns. Afraid of the consequences, most of them self-censor.

If you think biometric surveillance is unique to China and the West, you are wrong. Herman Gref, the CEO of Russia’s Sberbank and a member of the WEF’s Board of Trustees (with Ursula von der Leyden, you will recall), has teamed up with Russian telecom titan Rostelecom to form Digital Identification Technologies JV, which will create a unified biometric system for all of Russia.

Soon, the poor propagandized and punctured people of Russia will not be able to access any government services unless they hand over their biometric data—bypassing the need for pesky QR codes altogether.

Should we be surprised that Putin and his functionaries are no more curbing individual freedoms than are the West’s tyrants? Why would we be? What would prevent Putin from following in the footsteps of his predecessors? Nothing I know of, unless the people of Russia begin to mobilise and protest in a big way, as their French brothers and sisters have done in Paris.

Consider: When Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the former Soviet Union, he was avowed member of the globalist-eugenicist Club of Rome. He also partnered with Canadian globalist-eugenicist Maurice Strong to establish the Earth Charter global sustainability project in conjunction with Agenda 21. Both Gorbachev and Strong were leading figures in the UN’s early steps toward global governance.

Just because the Soviet Union petered out and Gorby and Strong are no longer with us is no reason to assume that Russia’s ruler of twenty-four years has not been pursuing the same globalist ends. Indeed, Putin hardly seems the type to let other world leaders hog the limelight, take all the marbles, or grow dangerously bigger and stronger than he is.

Truth be told, BRICS bloc members Russia and China are simply another version of the same totalitarian control grid set up by the technocrats in the West. Neither of them offers any out—any salvation from the harms of biologics, biometrics, and biosecurity—to their people.

In fact, China has been the test bed for all of the totalitarian mechanisms that either have been or will be let loose on the rest of the world. During the pseudopandemic, China launched a series of vicious COVID-19 measures—inhumane lockdowns, mandatory QR codes, ubiquitous biometric surveillance, mass compulsory vaccination, forced—and enforced—masking rules, and constant testing. In short, China is a full-fledged scientific dictatorship, aka technocracy.

And what about the other three BRICS nations: Brazil, India, and South Africa?

Besides being onboard the WEF bandwagon, the WHO bandwagon, the CDBC bandwagon, the World Bank and IMF bandwagon, and thus the entire Western hegemonic bandwagon, have these three countries installed any politicians or policies or programs that are freedom-oriented and that would make my parents want to flee to them?

First, Brazil. The largest South American country is now under the thumb of the globalist cabal with the election of Luiz Inácio Lulada Silva (commonly known as “Lula”), Brazil’s 39th President. Unlike his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to sign an international pandemic treaty and resisted certain aspects of the scamdemic scheme, Lula fully embraces the monolithic, world-dominating agenda of the WHO, GAVI, and the WEF.

To wit: In February 2023, Lula declared that for families to remain eligible for the famous Bolsa Family Program (BFP), a social program for the poorest of the poor families, they must vaccinate their children—specifically with the COVID-19 experimental gene therapy. Otherwise, they lose the benefits afforded them under the BFP.

Next, India. Contrary to what both the mainstream and the alternative media have been claiming, the Gates Foundation never got “kicked out” of India. In fact, the opposite is true. In 2006, for example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan, launched the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI).

Over the years, the PHFI received funding from pharma companies (e.g., GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson), from “philanthropists” (e.g., the usual suspects: Bill and Melinda Gates and the Rockefellers), and from NGOs (e.g., the World Bank and USAID). When the WHO declared the “pandemic” in early 2020, members of the PHFI were perfectly poised to create, advise, and direct the Indian government’s national COVID Task Force. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to conclude that the PHFI was pivotal in steering all COVID-19 measures and COVID-19 injection-related policies in India.

Last, South Africa. Working closely with the nation’s servile mass media, the South African government, headed by President Cyril Ramaphosa, imposed one of the longest, most severe lockdowns on the continent. The impact of closing small businesses on a populace that largely depends on weekly subsistence wages was catastrophic. Because the state failed to deliver subsides to the poor and self-employed for over a year, nearly one quarter of all small businesses went under, and unemployment skyrocketed.

Brian Pottinger, writing for UnHerd, outlines what the consequences were for those brave individuals who dared challenge the South African government’s insane lockdown restrictions:

An entire section of the population was effectively criminalised: in the first four months of the outbreak, 230,000 citizens, 0.4% of the population, were charged with infringement of the Disaster Regulations for breaking the restrictions, 311 of them policemen. All the charges were later dropped: the criminal justice system simply could not cope.

Thus, there is no way to justify calling the BRICS economic model a non-globalisation alternative to the West’s globalisation push when, in reality, it is just another form of globalisation—a different approach to globalisation.

Like the Western model, the BRICS model is structurally inflationary. Like the Western model, the BRICS model is not free market-based, but, rather, industrial policy-based. And, significantly, the BRICS model is part and parcel, as is the Western model, of the new international world order. They are the same dysfunctional plan, just with different brandings.

CONCLUSION

Maida and Janko would not find economic freedom, political freedom, physical freedom, healthcare freedom, or mental freedom in any of today’s BRICS nations.

*

Granted, there are great power rivalries taking place on the world stage. To the average person, it may actually look as if we are indeed living in a multipolar world, where the weakened nations of the West—led by the fading US empire—on one side of the divide are battling to retain supremacy over the energized nations of the East—led by Russia and China—on the other side of the divide.

“But examples of multipolarity abound,” you insist.

I understand: There’s the conflict in Ukraine, where innocent people on both sides are suffering and dying needlessly.

I understand: Tensions are brewing off the coast of China, where the American Empire is trying in vain to prevent China’s inevitable takeover of Taiwan.

I understand: That same slowly dying American Empire is feverishly trying to prevent European-Russian economic integration by blowing up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, thus enabling Washington to maintain its temporary grip on that region until its inescapable economic collapse is complete.

Despite the veneer of multipolarity, however, there is—as I mentioned at beginning of this article—a single global empire operating at a higher level. Or, you could say, at a deep state level. The unipolar empire exists outside of the general field of perception of the majority of the world’s populace. It transcends not only the East-West partition but all other divides between nations. We will now find out how this is so.

THE GLOBAL EMPIRE: A UNIPOLAR PRISON, A DIGITAL GULAG

At the top of the global empire is “the central bank of all central banks”—the highly secretive and unaccountable Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Its task is to direct and coordinate monetary and fiscal policy for all the central banks around the globe. This is how the BIS directly controls the world’s money supply and indirectly controls trade and national economies.

By holding such an influential and prominent position, the BIS forms the apex of a pyramid-like structure that consists of a ladder-like hierarchy of organizations and institutions comprising the global empire. All of them are run by what I call the parasite class.

[click to enlarge]

Per this Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P) chart created by UK researcher and journalist Iain Davis, the global empire’s structure is designed so that the chain of command flows from the BIS to the world’s central banks and from them to…

…the policymakers at the think tanks. These include various Rockefeller funds and foundations, plus the Rockefeller-founded Club of Rome, the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission, and the Rockefeller-founded Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Some of these think tanks actually have non-Rockefeller roots, among them the CFR’s UK equivalent, the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), and the hardcore eugenicist Chatham House, founded by British diplomat Lionel Curtis in the aftermath of World War One.

The think tanks work in partnership with the BIS and the central banks to set international public-private policy objectives. Once these big-picture objectives are formulated, they are sent to…

…the policy distributors, such as the Rockefeller-founded United Nations, the UN’s WHO and IPCC, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, ostensible philanthropists (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation comes to mind), global corporations, and NGOs.

As their name implies, the distributors are tasked with disseminating the policies far and wide, to all corners of the world. They make sure the policies also get into the hands of officials on the next ladder rung down, who are called…

…the policy enforcers. Their ranks include the various military branches, the judiciary, police and security forces, and any other enforcement arms built into all layers of government (national, provincial, state, local).

These governmental law enforcement bodies work in conjunction with selected “scientific” authorities, such as…

…the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

All of these agencies and authorities must justify the policies they are required to enforce. They often write rules and regulations and ordinances and codes for the policies and then pass them down to the organizations on the lowest rung of the ladder. Iain Davis calls them…

…the “policy propagandists”—or, in polite terms, the perception managers.

These media and public relations outfits, consisting of the mainstream media (“Establishment” newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations), social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), and fact checkers (Full Fact, PolitiFact, Snopes, AP Fact Check, Poynter, etc.), work alongside hybrid warriors (77th Brigade and HutEighteen, for example) and anti-hate campaigners. The latter include the US-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

The propagandists’ job is to persuade the public—us billions of ordinary folks who stand beneath the ladder-like pyramid—to unthinkingly accept the lies we are being fed and to automatically acquiesce to the repressive policies.

In summary, humanity has never in its entire history faced such an all-pervasive totalitarian, technocratic system of governance.

The purpose of this despotic empire is to curtail, if not remove, humans’ fundamental freedoms, steal our wealth, sap our physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual strength, separate us from our friends and families, and thus control us from head to toe, from here to there and everywhere, all day and all night.

Working behind the scenes, the BIS and the central banks are already causing some sizable banks (think Signature, Silicon Valley, and First Republic banks) to collapse. From here on in, the number of bank failures will only increase. Soon the biggest banks (think JPMorgan Chase & Co.) will start gobbling up not just large and mid-sized competitors but also smaller regional and local banks.

Once the central banks have completely implemented their planned AI-controlled digital monetary and financial system, we will all be held hostage in their global empire, sentenced to their unipolar prison, confined in their digital gulag.

The ailing American Empire will continue to exist for the time being. But that’s only because the parasite class that has been feeding off America’s wealth for centuries still needs the American military to do its bidding—its dirty work—abroad. Once the corporate controlled US Empire has served its purpose economically and militarily and is no longer a viable host, those same greedy parasites will have a feast to end all feasts—with the aim of draining that once-strong, swaggering nation to the last drop. No empire has withstood the generations of blood-suckers.

Putin, too, is dispensable and disposable in the parasitic globalists’ eyes. He cannot curry their favor simply by playing along with their agenda, even though he may perceive himself to be one of them. If Russia is not careful, it will be dismembered, piece by piece. Its valuable resources will be snatched and sold off. It will be turned into a land of warring fiefdoms. Parasites are equal opportunity feeders.

Even common folk like you and I are not immune from the parasitic class, which attaches itself to and absorbs anyone willing to be its host. Regardless of our location, we are all, in varying degree, already living within reach of the tentacles of the parasites’ global empire.

FINAL CONCLUSION

And that brings us back to the question I asked at the start of this article: If my parents had stayed in their place of birth, the region now known as the former Yugoslavia, for the last 58 years and if only now, in 2023, they decided they’d had their fill of the technocratic state’s suppression of their rights, where would they go to find freedom?

My 96-year-old father answered that question when I posed it to him recently.

“Knowing what the world is like today,” he replied, “I would probably not go anywhere. Yes, Belarus holds the gold standard when it comes to not complying with the COVID narrative, but I would most likely stay in my home country of Croatia. I would join a network of likeminded people—someone like journalist Andrija Klarić of Slobodni podcast—so that together we can find solutions to this nightmare.”

This article is written in memory of my mother, Maida, and in tribute to her childhood friend Franc, who saved her and her husband, Janko, from a life of repression in Yugoslavia and from possible death by firing squad during their escape.

It also honors my father, Janko, who persuaded me to open my eyes to the ugly, if hidden, realities of the world. With perseverance and patience, he pounded into my teenage head that all is not as it appears to be. He told me to always question everything, to get as many different perspectives as possible when looking into any subject, and, above all, to “follow the money trail, for it never lies.”

They would want me to expose and reject the global empire and its nefarious agenda. They would welcome a truly multipolar world. A world in which “we the people” live in peace, respect everyone’s God-given right to freedom, privacy, and individual sovereignty, and work together in ways that benefit all of humanity and bless our beautiful, abundant earth.

Originally published by Global Research

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 23:40

Colorado Bans Court-Ordered “Brainwashing” Camps For Abused Minors

Colorado Bans Court-Ordered “Brainwashing” Camps For Abused Minors

Colorado has become the first state in the nation to ban court-ordered camps where children are ‘reunified’ with a parent who has been accused of abusing them.

Protesters outside the courthouse in Santa Cruz, Calif., following the release of a video showing two teens being dragged out of their homes under a court order that they be taken away to a reunification camp. (Courtesy of Alienation Industry)

These reunification camps are used by family court judges to settle private custody disputes or divorces involving minors. As part of the order, camp workers are sometimes given temporary custody of the children so they can legally take them from their homes. While at the camp, children are forced into what some have described as a “brainwashing technique” that the camps call “reunification therapy.”

According to Tina Swithin, Founder of One Mom’s Battle, forcing children back into a relationship with an abusive parent is essentially “court-ordered child trafficking,” the Epoch Times reports.

Evita Tolu, an attorney in Missouri where she has represented children forced into reunification counseling with an abusive parent, called the practice “kafkaesque”—a term based on German novelist Franz Kafka who wrote stories about characters who were subject to severely bizarre bureaucratic powers.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment from the three major court-ordered reunification camps: Family Bridges, Turning Points for Families, and Lynn Steinberg’s reunification camp. None responded.

Some children sent to the camps have described being dragged out of their homes by transport workers, being handcuffed, and transported to an unknown place. Some children have alleged undergoing degrading punishments if they don’t say they love the parent who allegedly abused them. -Epoch Times

“I was so terrified, I couldn’t stop shaking,” said one former ‘inmate’ of such camps, Allyson Bender, who recounted her experience in 2017 when she was 16-years-old.

More via the Epoch Times;

The Colorado law, which now bans judges from ordering children to attend reunification camps against their will came on the heels of a string of tragic murders of children within a month by Colorado parents awarded custody despite having either convictions or pending allegations against them.

It also followed the results of a state audit that turned up evidence that at least one custody evaluator admitted he dismissed 90 percent of child abuse claims without investigating them.

The main trigger for ordering children to attend reunification camps is an allegation that they have made false allegations of child abuse against their parent as part of the other parent’s plot to alienate them from the accused parent.

As The Epoch Times and other media outlets have reported, family court judges have been found in a high number of cases to refuse to consider evidence of child abuse against a parent.

In some cases, the judges have ordered the suppression of criminal convictions of child abuse against a parent. Some parents who brought up past convictions have themselves been accused of parental alienation.

As part of the practice, the parent accused of “alienation” is often stripped of custody and children are ordered to undergo reunification therapy.

Court-ordered reunification has been denounced by several organizations including the American Psychiatric Association. Insurance companies will not insure the camps or the therapy administered. The therapy costs an average of $5,000 a day, according to bills shared with The Epoch Times by parents.

The length of the stay in the camps averages 90 days. But as one parent told The Epoch Times in March, his two girls were kept “indefinitely” at the reunification camp. They were forcibly transported by “transporters” in California under a family judge’s court order.

Family court judges are basically doing whatever they want with our kids,” Riley, who says he went broke paying for the camps, told The Epoch Times.

In addition to the Colorado legislation, Swithin’s group has filed a class action lawsuit against the Turning Points for Families reunification camp and its owner Linda Gottlieb on behalf of several children who say there were abused at the camp.

Gottlieb did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.

On its website, the camp, which operates nationwide, bills itself as “a therapeutic vacation” and refers to parental alienation as child abuse.

On its website, the caption under a picture of a child’s hand reaching out to an adult’s hand reads, “It is anti-instinctual to reject a parent—even an abusive parent.”

Other states are considering legislation similar to Colorado’s recently passed ban on courts ordering children to attend reunification camps.

Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire have tried repeatedly to pass legislation banning reunification therapy.

The lawmakers recently got the child and family law committee to form a special committee to study the state’s family court system.

The committee has so far held four hearings. Parents and advocates for court reform have been held to a strict five minutes to speak, while judges and other supporters of the court have been allowed to speak for up to an hour.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 23:20

Dozens Of Capitol Police Riot Helmets Were Confiscated Just Before Jan. 6, Former Lieutenant Says

Dozens Of Capitol Police Riot Helmets Were Confiscated Just Before Jan. 6, Former Lieutenant Says

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Days before violence broke out at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a U.S. Capitol Police captain ordered the confiscation of dozens of riot helmets from officers without the knowledge of Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, a former USCP lieutenant told The Epoch Times.

Two helmet-less U.S. Capitol Police officers at the police barricade on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Metropolitan Police Department/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Former Capitol Police Lt. Tarik K. Johnson said he was ordered to collect “20 to 30” helmets by his immediate supervisor, Capt. Ben Smith. Johnson said there was no explanation for the order, but he assumed the equipment was past its expiration date.

The collection was done within the two weeks prior to Jan. 6, most likely the week of Dec. 28, 2020, to Jan. 1, 2021, Johnson said.

Now, did they tell me that the helmets were expired? Nobody told me that they were,” Johnson said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “But if they were perfectly good helmets, why would you take them?”

After receiving a list of officers from Smith, Johnson said, he had sergeants announce the helmet collection at roll call. He said officers brought their helmets to his office.

Johnson said he first reported the helmet confiscation to the office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) during a meeting on Jan. 11, 2021.

Johnson said he served on Leahy’s Capitol Police protective detail for more than two years. Leahy retired from the U.S. Senate in January after nearly 50 years in office.

U.S. Capitol Police officers attempt to maintain the barrier on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Steve Baker/Special to The Epoch Times)

Johnson said the day after he met with J.P. Dowd, Leahy’s chief of staff, he received notice of suspension from U.S. Capitol Police. The Epoch Times reached out to Dowd regarding the meeting, but did not receive a response by press time.

More recently, Johnson reported the helmet issue to the GOP-controlled Committee on House Administration, which oversees Capitol Police. Committee staff asked him for a meeting to discuss Jan. 6 issues, he said. That meeting could take place within the coming days.

A Committee on House Administration staff member contacted by The Epoch Times declined to comment on the helmet issue or Johnson’s possible testimony.

The Epoch Times contacted Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger and USCP Director of Communications Tim Barber for comment on Johnson’s allegations, but they did not respond by press time.

‘Why the Urgency?’

Johnson and Sund said the proper procedure would have been for the USCP Property Asset Management Division to handle the collection of the old equipment and issuance of new helmets.

“I don’t do property inventory,” Johnson said. “So even when they were bringing me the helmets, there’s no mechanism for me to give them a receipt anyway because we never do that. I’ve never seen that done. I’d been there a lot of years, and I never had to take helmets.”

Sund, who was forced to resign as chief on Jan. 7, 2021, said he would not have issued a confiscation order—especially so close to a major protest scheduled for the National Mall and Capitol grounds.

TK [Johnson] bringing this up is the first I’ve heard of them taking back helmets,” Sund told The Epoch Times.

“These helmets could have expired a year, two years ago,” Sund said. “Well, why the urgency to collect them now? That’s what I just don’t know. I just don’t know when they expired, if, indeed, they expired.”

A U.S. Capitol Police officer wears a knit cap at the police barrier on the Capitol’s west front on Jan. 6, 2021. (Steve Baker/Special to The Epoch Times)

Sund said that in the fall of 2020, he obtained a $320,000 budget to purchase helmets. The goal was for every sworn officer to have head protection. Supply-chain delays due to COVID-19 hindered the fulfillment of the USCP order, he said.

Riot helmets are designed to protect officers from blunt impact from objects like bats or pipes, and projectiles such as stones, bricks, or water bottles. Flip-down face shields are also meant to protect from chemical agents such as pepper spray.

The department secured the delivery of 104 helmets on Jan. 4, 2021. Those helmets were intended for officers who were not part of the Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU), Sund said.

“I was pushing to get helmets in and get helmets distributed,” Sund said. “To hear TK [Johnson] say they’re pulling helmets back and not doing a one-for-one [exchange], that’s very concerning.

If they were concerned about the helmets being expired, why be concerned right then, right before January 6?” Sund said. “How long ago did the helmets expire? Did they expire a year ago? Why all of a sudden the urge, the rush to haul them in?”

Photographs and video from the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 show dozens of Capitol Police officers outside the building wearing USCP baseball caps or knit winter hats. Some of the officers worked at police barricades where violence broke out.

Videos show most of the USCP officers guarding the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol did not have helmets or face shields. Agitators attacked Capitol Police with pepper spray and projectiles before the crowd entered the Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda.

‘Mine Was Also Taken Away’

The chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee said he blew the whistle on confiscated safety equipment months before Jan. 6 and long before Johnson was ordered to collect riot helmets.

“Helmets were taken from USCP officers way before Jan. 6th, as were gas masks.” Gus Papathanasiou told The Epoch Times in an email. “I was aware, as mine was also taken away.”

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 23:00

Iranian Drone Factory To Be Built Outside Moscow, White House Says

Iranian Drone Factory To Be Built Outside Moscow, White House Says

Ever since Iranian-supplied suicide drones began being used by Russia to attack Ukrainian cities, the White House has been warning allies with growing alarm of the increasing military coordination between Moscow and Tehran, both which are under expansive US sanctions.

But for the first time, the Biden administration’s Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that Iran is helping Russia build a new manufacturing plant for Iran-designed drones outside of Moscow.

The location was identified as in Alabuga special economic zone, east of the Russian capital, with Kirby qualifying that the plant “probably will be built” and could be operational as soon as next year.

Already, NATO officials have said Iran has provided Russia hundreds of its Kamikaze ‘Shahed’ for use in the war in Ukraine.

The White House further on Friday released what Kirby described as satellite imagery of the industrial location where the plant is expected to be constructed. The imagery was captured in April. According to more via The Associated Press:

Kirby said that U.S. officials also have determined that Iran continues to supply the Russian military with one-way attack drones made in Iran: The drones are shipped via the Caspian Sea, from Amirabad in Iran to Makhachkala, Russia, and then are used by Russian forces against Ukraine.

Other defense items, including ammunition, is also being shipped from Iran using the same Caspian Sea routes, the statement added.

“This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the international community,” Kirby said in the Friday briefing. “We are continuing to use all the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities including by sharing this with the public — and we are prepared to do more.”

Throughout the invasion which started February 24, 2022, Russia has proven itself able to circumvent Washington sanctions and attempts to isolate Moscow globally with ease by deepening partnerships with other ‘official enemies’ and rivals of the US like China and Iran.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 22:40

Snowden Warns Today’s Surveillance Technology Makes 2013 Look Like “Child’s Play”

Snowden Warns Today’s Surveillance Technology Makes 2013 Look Like “Child’s Play”

Authored by Julia Conley via CommonDreams.org,

“We trusted the government not to screw us,” said Edward Snowden.

“But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power.”

With this week marking 10 years since whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed information to journalists about widespread government spying by United States and British agencies, the former National Security Agency contractor on Thursday joined other advocates in warning that the fight for privacy rights, while making several inroads in the past decade, has grown harder due to major changes in technology.

“If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today,” Snowden told The Guardian, “2013 seems like child’s play.”

Snowden said that the advent of commercially available surveillance products such as Ring cameras, Pegasus spyware, and facial recognition technology has posed new dangers.

As Common Dreams has reported, the home security company Ring has faced legal challenges due to security concerns and its products’ vulnerability to hacking, and has faced criticism from rights groups for partnering with more than 1,000 police departments—including some with histories of police violence—and leaving community members vulnerable to harassment or wrongful arrests.

Law enforcement agencies have also begun using facial recognition technology to identify crime suspects despite the fact that the software is known to frequently misidentify people of color—leading to the wrongful arrest and detention earlier this year of Randal Reid in Georgia, among other cases.

Last month, journalists and civil society groups called for a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of spyware like Pegasus, which has been used to target dozens of journalists in at least 10 countries.

Protecting the public from surveillance “is an ongoing process,” Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday. “And we will have to be working at it for the rest of our lives and our children’s lives and beyond.”

In 2013, Snowden revealed that the U.S. government was broadly monitoring the communications of citizens, sparking a debate over surveillance as well as sustained privacy rights campaigns from groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future.

“Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday.

“We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power.”

Last month ahead of the anniversary of Snowden’s revelations, EFF noted that some improvements to privacy rights have been made in the past decade, including:

  • The sunsetting of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which until 2020 allowed the U.S. government to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records;

  • The emergence of end-to-end encryption of internet communications, which Snowden noted was “a pipe dream in 2013”;

  • The end of the NSA’s bulk collection of internet metadata, including email addresses of senders and recipients; and

  • Rulings in countries including South Africa and Germany against bulk data collection.

The group noted that privacy advocates are still pushing Congress to end Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications, and “to take privacy seriously,” particularly as tech companies expand spying capabilities.

“Despite calls over the last few years for federal legislation to rein in Big Tech companies, we’ve seen nothing significant in limiting tech companies’ ability to collect data… or regulate biometric surveillance, or close the backdoor that allows the government to buy personal information rather than get a warrant, much less create a new Church Committee to investigate the intelligence community’s overreaches,” wrote EFF senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia, executive director Cindy Cohn, and assistant director Andrew Crocker.

“It’s why so many cities and states have had to take it upon themselves to ban face recognition or predictive policing, or pass laws to protect consumer privacy and stop biometric data collection without consent.”

“It’s been 10 years since the Snowden revelations,” they added, “and Congress needs to wake up and finally pass some legislation that actually protects our privacy, from companies as well as from the NSA directly.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 22:20

How ‘Child-Friendly’ Drag Events Can Expose Children To Sex Offenders

How ‘Child-Friendly’ Drag Events Can Expose Children To Sex Offenders

Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Drag events targeting children can be a hunting ground for sexual predators, according to a therapist with a long career in treating sexual predators.

A relatively recent phenomenon “Drag Queen Story Hour,” which first appeared in San Francisco, now is happening around the nation—at public libraries, in eateries, at performance venues, in parades, and even at schools.

These events often include men in women’s clothing performing erotic dances, wearing skimpy or suggestive costumes, and telling sexually charged jokes.

These shows sometimes mask sexual predators and facilitate the sexual grooming of children, experts told The Epoch Times.

Children cheer as drag performers dance at the Chattanooga Pride parade in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Oct. 2, 2022. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

‘Significant Risk to Women and Children’

Jon Uhler, a therapist who treats sex offenders, says that in his experience if a man feels comfortable performing sexual dance in a skimpy women’s outfit for children, he’s likely extremely sexually deviant and “poses a significant risk to women and children.”

Uhler told The Epoch Times that men who want to perform for kids in sexy women’s outfits have likely watched hundreds of hours of deviant pornography that reshapes the brain to become a sexual predator.

Men don’t become sexual predators all at once, Uhler said.

Sexual deviancy requires a slow descent over time into deeper and deeper levels of evil, he said.

“The issue is deviance,” Uhler said. “It always has been throughout human history.”

Uhler draws his experience from 15 years spent treating hundreds of sex offenders, working with more than 4,000 sex offenders in several contexts, and spending more than 13,000 clinical contact hours with sex offenders.

He said he has treated sex offenders both inside and outside of prison.

All the men he has worked with eventually admitted they did porn, he added.

It Starts With Porn

Viewing increasing amounts of “deviant” pornography supercharges the journey into perversion, Uhler said.

People aren’t born sexual predators, Uhler said. Instead, they become remorseless abusers through a process that starts with pornography, he asserted.

People on the way to deviance move from simple lust, to objectification, to power and control, to defiling, to increasingly warped behavior.

Every stage of deviance pulls abusers into increasingly warped behavior, he said.

Uhler said that men who enjoy wearing drag tend to get that way because they watch huge amounts of porn, he said.

Anyone can sink down this scale, and sexual deviancy destroys the brain’s capacity for empathy, Uhler said.

That leads to psychopathy, and psychopaths tend to be callous, detached, manipulative, remorseless, parasitic, sexually promiscuous, and without the capacity for guilt.

“A psychopath’s brain is very different than a normal person’s brain, Uhler said. “And there’s no going back.”

The Epoch Times found no comprehensive list of drag performers in the United States.

Ru Paul’s New York DragCon event drew a record 50,000 visitors this year. But not all of these people were drag queens, and some came from outside America, the group’s Facebook page shows.

Not all drag queens perform at “child-friendly” events but verifying the criminal history of a large number of performers would be nearly impossible without a nationwide drag group’s cooperation.

Drag performers usually use stage names, wear flamboyant costumes that disguise their identity, and put on heavy makeup that further camouflages their normal appearance. Their real names rarely appear in promotional materials.

The Epoch Times emailed all 28 American chapters of Drag Queen Story Hour and the national hub to ask how many members they have, and whether performers have their backgrounds checked before being scheduled to read with children.

None of them responded to requests for information.

Convicted Sex Offenders

In the past four years, at least eight American drag performers accused of sexual crimes have worked with children, The Epoch Times has found. Seven of these men have been convicted of child sexual abuse, child pornography, and prostitution.

Three of these men participated in Drag Queen Story Hour events for children. Two took part in a reality TV competition. One taught children as a dance instructor. Another mentored young boys wanting to learn how to perform in drag. Yet another performed in “all-ages” drag shows.

One drag performer was arrested in 2012 for running a child sex-trafficking operation. He became a transgender activist in prison.

A man charged with sexual crimes was president of an activist group that facilitated Drag Queen Story Hours.

It’s important to remember that these men are only the ones who got caught, Uhler said.

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 21:40

Robusta Coffee Prices Soar To New Record As El Niño Sparks Supply Fears

Robusta Coffee Prices Soar To New Record As El Niño Sparks Supply Fears

Vietnam and Indonesia, some of the top-producing coffee countries, are experiencing extreme weather that could worsen a shortage of robusta beans. This has pushed robusta coffee prices to a record high, making it more expensive for buyers to obtain cheap beans, Bloomberg reported. A confirmed El Niño ahead of a Northern Hemisphere summer could worsen the shortage and perhaps explain why prices are skyrocketing. 

Just weeks ago, “Robusta Prices Hit 12-Year High As El Niño Threat Sparks Shortage Fears,” and fast forward to Friday, robusta bean prices per ton have jumped to $2,790, the highest since the contract started trading 15 years ago. 

Due to dwindling supplies, prices have surged more than 50% since the start of the year. Also, the anticipated El Niño weather pattern, which is now confirmed, has supported prices. El Niño means hotter, drier conditions for top suppliers Vietnam and Indonesia that will crimp yields. 

Bloomberg explains robusta demand has been increasing:

The switch was first observed among roasters who increased the amount of robusta used in commercial blends to offset higher arabica costs and energy bills. Then, double-digit inflation in many parts of the world saw grocery bills surge to the highest in decades, forcing some consumers to trade down to cheaper options.

And then warned:

As roasters increase the amount of robusta in their coffee blends, growers struggle to keep pace. A combination of higher fertilizer costs and drought has slashed crop yields. That’s set to keep the global coffee market in a deficit for a third straight season in 2023-24.

As we started to see El Niño probabilities increase in April, we informed readers, “El Nino Watch Initiated As Ag-Industry In Crosshairs.”

And on earnings calls, the number of corporate executives discussing weather-related impacts has surged to multi-year highs.

The global economic impact of El Niño could be in the trillions of dollars over the next several years. It appears the ag space is seeing the brunt of the first impacts. 

So, what does this mean for consumers when they go to the supermarket? Well, brace yourselves because the rise in food prices is far from over. In particular, coffee prices are set to rise even more, making that morning cup of joe even more costly. The good news: egg prices have collapsed

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 21:20

Russia’s Gasoline Exports Have Surged By 37% This Year

Russia’s Gasoline Exports Have Surged By 37% This Year

By Charles Kennedy of OIlPrice.com

Despite the Western sanctions, Russian oil companies boosted their gasoline exports by 37% between January and May compared to the same period in 2022, Russian daily Kommersant reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the data.

The Russian Energy Ministry last month asked oil companies to reduce their exports and raise supply on the domestic market, according to Kommersant’s sources.

After a sharp rise in wholesale gasoline prices in May and recommendations from the Energy Ministry to oil firms to curb exports, Russia’s daily gasoline exports in the first six days of June were four times lower than the levels at the end of May, Kommersant reports. 

Russia has stopped reporting official data about oil production and exports, much to the frustration of its OPEC+ partners, as the leader of the pack, Saudi Arabia, is reportedly looking to boost oil prices to at least $80 per barrel—the estimated breakeven price for its budget for 2023.

Russia has redirected both crude oil and petroleum product exports after the EU embargoes on imports of seaborne Russian oil. The EU banned crude imports in early December 2022 and embargoed fuel imports from Russia as of February 5, 2023.

Russian gasoline exports surged in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2022, as Moscow placed growing volumes of fuels with African customers after the EU embargo on seaborne imports of Russia’s fuels. Russian gasoline exports were estimated at 1.9 million tons in the first quarter of 2023, up compared to 1.3 million tons exported in the same period of 2022, per Refinitiv data cited by Reuters.

The trade shift in Russian oil flows also benefits Moscow’s Middle Eastern allies in the OPEC+ pact as the biggest Arab Gulf oil producers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), scoop up Russia’s fuels at discounted prices.    

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/09/2023 – 21:00