Sunday, March 16, 2025

Uninvited Observations

 Principled Observers,


  If we consider the actual power-struggle in our world to be between old-money, seeking to maintain ownership of usurous loans and pledged assets, which grow exponentially, as stagnant real economy looks at terminal decline in post-peak oil, and populist nationalist interests, seeking to rebuild constructively, then many things make more apparent sense.
  The paradox for well-established global finance, now that it has the mechanisms in place for the "Great Taking", is that enforcement of this legal-construct will destroy society, because it is so grossly unjust, and therefore destroy actual wealth. 
  Elites are divided into groups that would carry out the "Great Taking", and pay to enforce it, maintaining their ownership positions, opposed by other elites who would seek to rebuild productive economies to support their societies, and enlist citizens in this rebuilding with revised social contracts, reminiscent of Roosevelt's "New Deal".
  When I look at European and UK political elites using the specter of a Russian threat to build up their militaries, I see that it is hopeless to get in a war with Russia, but that they are likely to be able to use the war funding to build up forces to suppress their own citizens in the financial collapse.
  There is palpable fear and anger in liberal-minded Americans about a "neo-Nazi" movement of Trump/MAGA supporters. This was discussed at length in my Buddhist group today after our practice and meditation. 
  I did not point out that the actual structural economic problems are vastly worse than acknowledged, even by Team Trump (for which I did not vote, myself). I noticed some people externalized projections of the "problem" onto the "others" a literal fear of Nazis. 
  No personal worry about becoming a Nazi was openly voiced. The assumption seemed to be that "we are not that kind of people", but I personally recall being squelched during COVID in the fall of 2021 when I gave advice on early treatment with repurposed antivirals. My earlier advice on taking Vitamin D-3 to support one's immune system had been well received in early 2020, but in the fall of 2021 my mic was muted and was I harshly told that I was completely wrong, end of discussion.  
  There was some schadenfreude expressed that winter about a man who had died of COVID after refusing vaccination, leaving a wife and large family behind. I looked up the Go-fund-me, donated, and emailed the group how to do that, since they had expressed concern...
  If you notice me externalizing my demons onto somebody else, do feel free to point it out. It's not what I want to do. 
We all have to look at ourselves. I am inviting your observations openly here.  I'm not offering such uninvited observations to anybody, myself.

​  Putin peels off the masks of the ceasefire kabuki​,  Pepe Escobar
The “ceasefire” announced with trademark bombast by Team Trump 2.0 should be seen as a tawdry kabuki inside a cheap matryoshka...
..Cue to the actual peel off operation: Putin’s press conference after his meeting with Lukashenko in Moscow.
​  Ceasefire? Of course. We support it. And then, methodically, diplomatically, the Russian President pulled a Caravaggio, and went all-out chiaroscuro on every geopolitical and military detail of the American gambit. A consumate artful deconstruction.
​  End result: the ball is now back in Donald Trump’s court.​..
..Putin was gracious enough to thank “the President of the United States, Mr. Trump, for paying so much attention to resolving the conflict.”...
..“This ceasefire should lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the initial causes of this crisis.”
​  As in all Russian key imperatives – widely known since at least June 2024 – will have to be satisfied. After all, it’s Russia that’s winning the war in the battlefield, not the U.S., the – already fragmented – NATO, and much less Ukraine.
​  Putin was adamant on the ceasefire: “We are for it.”​  But there are nuances; once again, it’s called diplomacy.​..
​..Once again Putin deferred, diplomatically, to the “need to work with our American partners. Maybe I will speak to President Trump.”​  So there will be another phone call soon.​..
..Trump... ramped up sanctions on Russia’s oil, gas and banking, allowing the waiver on Russian oil sales to expire this week.​ [​Known to hurt Europe.]
That means in practice that the EUro-vassals and other assorted “allies” cannot buy Russian oil anymore without evading U.S. sanctions.​..
..The Brit ruling classes, MI6, their media and think tanks, simply abhor any negotiations. They are at direct, frontal war with Russia, and their plan A – no plan B – remains the same: inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow, as the SVR knows inside out.
​  The heart of the matter is the Black Sea. Vladimir Karasev’s analysis, as explained to TASS, is spot on: “The British have already entered the city of Odessa, which they view as a key location. Their special services are heavily involved there. The British do not conceal their desire to establish a naval base in Odessa.”
​  Odessa is part of the extensive menu of Ukraine’s resources already, in thesis, handed over to the Brits under the shady – and completely illegal – 100-year agreement signed between Starmer and the sweaty sweatshirt in Kiev.
​  According to the dodgy deal and its made in the shade footnotes, Zelensky already gave away to the Brits all sorts of control over minerals, nuclear power plants, underground gas storage facilities, key ports (including Odessa), and hydroelectric power plants.
​  On the ongoing minerals/rare earth saga in 404 – or what will be left of it – the Brits are in vicious, direct competition with the Americans.​..
​..A serious discussion running across informed circles in Moscow is that Putin by all means will never sacrifice Russia’s “indivisibility of security” demands posed to Washington in December 2021 – and met with a no-response response. NATO of course will never agree to it. The final decision will have to come from POTUS.​   https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/14/putin-peels-off-masks-of-the-ceasefire-kabuki/

  Offer good through Sunday. No surrender orders from Kiev, yet:  Putin Calls For All Ukrainians In Kursk To Surrender, 'Sympathetic' To Trump's Request To Spare Lives   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-phone-call-asks-putin-spare-lives-ukrainian-troops-surrounded-kursk

  Gilbert Doctorow,  Vladimir Putin’s ‘Yes, but…’ response to Trump’s cease-fire: how it looks the morning after 
  I was especially pleased to set out my view that the mildly positive position on the cease-fire taken by Putin is explained by what other talks are ongoing in great secrecy with the Trump administration, and most particularly in the time that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff spent in Moscow yesterday. We know nothing about this and, to be sure, at this stage we have no right to know since the parties are at the very start of a difficult discussion. But there is reason to believe that the substance of Witkoff’s mission was not to go into lines on the map representing the future borders of Ukraine and Russia after a peace treaty is signed. My peers have rightly said that such military affairs are entirely out of the competence of real estate developer Witkoff. But he surely has the ability to take forward Donald Trump’s plans for a thorough reset of Russian -American relations in what will become a new governing board of the world at which Russia, the USA, China and India have seats. Note: for the first time since 1945 Europe will have no seat at the table. The EU countries have totally discredited themselves as a force for peace in the world.   https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/14/vladimir-putins-yes-but-response-to-trumps-cease-fire-how-it-looks-the-morning-after/

​  No election in Ukraine even if truce with Russia achieved – top Zelensky aide
The US-proposed 30-day ceasefire would not entail martial law being lifted, Mikhail Podoliak has said​   
https://swentr.site/news/614238-no-election-ukraine-truce-podolyak/

​  European industry will starve until then, and people will freeze in the dark.  NATO countries should restore ties with Russia – bloc chief
It would be “normal” for relations to be resumed once the Ukraine conflict is over, Mark Rutte has suggested​   https://swentr.site/news/614242-nato-russia-relations-rutte/

​Schumer was afraid Musk would have free rein during a shutdown.  Senate Passes GOP Bill, Avoiding Government Shutdown   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democrats-furious-after-schumer-folds-gop-bill

$20 billion Disappeared into a special investment vehicle at Citibank:  A New Beltway Intrigue: Follow The Biden EPA Money   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-beltway-intrigue-follow-biden-epa-money

​  “The Great Taking”: How They Can Own It All ,  ​10/3/2023 Ellen Brown on David Webb's book
“’You’ll own nothing and be happy’? David Webb has gone through the 50-year history of all the legal constructs that have been put in place to technically enable that to happen.”
​  The derivatives bubble has been estimated to exceed one quadrillion dollars (a quadrillion is 1,000 trillion). The entire GDP of the world is estimated at $105 trillion, or 10% of one quadrillion; and the collective wealth of the world is an estimated $360 trillion.​..
..Initially they were [held by] banks –led by four mega-banks, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. But according to a 2023 book called The Great Taking by veteran hedge fund manager David Rogers Webb, counterparty risk on all of these bets is ultimately assumed by an entity called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), through its nominee Cede & Co.​..  Cede & Co. is now the owner of record of all of our stocks, bonds, digitized securities, mortgages, and more; and it is seriously under-capitalized, holding capital of only $3.5 billion, clearly not enough to satisfy all the potential derivative claims. Webb thinks this is intentional.
​  What happens if the DTCC goes bankrupt? Under The  Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005, derivatives have “super-priority” in bankruptcy.​..   Derivative claimants don’t even need to go through the bankruptcy court but can simply nab the collateral from the bankrupt estate, leaving nothing for the other secured creditors (including state and local governments) or the banks’ unsecured creditors (including us, the depositors). And in this case the “bankrupt estate” – the holdings of the DTCC/Cede & Co. – includes all of our stocks, bonds, digitized securities, mortgages, and more.​..
..It’s all laid out in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), tested in precedent, and validated by court rulings. The UCC is a privately-established set of standardized rules for transacting business, which has been ratified by all 50 states and includes key provisions that have been “harmonized” with the laws of other countries in the Western orbit.​..
​..Webb summarizes in the introduction:
​  It is about the taking of collateral (all of it), the end game of the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This scheme is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets and bank deposits, all stocks and bonds; and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment; land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will likewise be taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history.​..
..Warren Buffett famously described derivatives as “weapons of financial mass destruction,” but they did not start out that way. Initially they were a form of insurance for farmers to guarantee the price of their forthcoming crops. In a typical futures contract, the miller would pay a fixed price for wheat not yet harvested. The miller assumed the risk that the crops would fail or market prices would fall, while the farmer assumed the risk that prices would rise, limiting his potential profit...
​..Webb writes:
​n  In the late 1960’s, something called the Banking and Securities Industry Committee (BASIC) had been formed to find a solution to the “paperwork crisis.”
 It seemed the burdens of handling physical stock certificates had suddenly become too great, so much so, that the New York Stock exchange had suspended trading some days. “Lawmakers” then urged the government to step into the process. The BASIC report recommended changing from processing physical stock certificates to “book-entry” transfers of ownership via computerized entries in a trust company that would hold the underlying certificates “immobilized.”
​  Thus was established the Depository Trust Company (DTC), which began operations in 1973, after President Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold internationally. The DTC decoupled stock ownership from paper stock certificates. The purchasers who had put up the money became only “beneficial owners” entitled to interest, dividends and voting rights, leaving title of record in the DTC.  The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) was established in 1999 to combine the functions of the DTC and the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC). The DTCC settles most securities transactions in the U.S. Title of record is with DTC’s nominee Cede & Co.​..  
 Greg Morse notes that the dictionary definition of “cede” is to “relinquish title.”​...
​..The next step in the decoupling process was to establish “legal certainty” that the “anointed” creditors could take all, by amending the UCC in all 50 states. This was done quietly over many years, without an act of Congress.​..
..The next step was to “harmonize” the laws internationally so that there would be no escape, at least in the Western orbit. Webb learned this by personal experience, having moved to Sweden to escape, only to have Swedish law subsequently “harmonized” with the “legal certainty” provisions of the UCC...
..The last step was to establish “safe harbor” in the 2005 Bankruptcy Code revisions – meaning “’safe harbor’ for secured creditors against the demands of customers to their own assets.”​...
..Among other hazards, super-priority has contributed to the explosion in speculative derivatives, threatening the stability of national and global markets...
​..Webb does not say much about solutions; his goal seems to be to sound the alarm. What can we do to protect our assets? “Probably nothing,” he quoted a knowledgeable expert in a recent webinar. “We just have to stop them.”​  But he did point out that even the assets of the wealthy are threatened.​   https://ellenbrown.com/2023/10/03/the-great-taking-how-they-plan-to-own-it-all/

  ​2/16/2024, Ellen Brown  Defusing the Derivatives Time Bomb: Some Proposed Solutions
The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all? 
​  Speculating in the derivatives casino brought down international insurer AIG and investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, triggering the global financial crisis of 2008-09. AIG had to be bailed out by the taxpayers to prevent collapse of the too-big-to-fail derivative banks, and Lehman Brothers went through a messy bankruptcy that took years to resolve.​..
..Prof. Lynn Stout proposed stabilizing the market by returning to 20th century derivative rules. She noted that derivatives are basically wagers or bets, and that before 2000, the U.S. and U.K. regulated derivatives primarily by a common‐law rule known as the “rule against difference contracts.” ...  … Under the rule against difference contracts and its sister doctrine in insurance law (the requirement of “insurable interest”), derivative contracts that couldn’t be proved to hedge an economic interest in the underlying were deemed nothing more than legally unenforceable wagers.​..   The rule against difference contracts died in 2000, when the US embraced wholesale deregulation with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA)​...
..The fix of the G20 leaders following the global financial crisis, however, was to force banks to clear over-the-counter derivatives through central counterparties (CCPs), which stand between buyer and seller and protect either party if the other blows up. By March 2020, 60% of credit default swaps and 80% of interest rate swaps were centrally cleared. The problem, as noted in a December 2023 publication by the Bank for International Settlements, is that these measures taken to protect the system can actually amplify risk.​..
..All this... is to allow the big international banks to run the largest derivatives casino that the world has ever seen. Why not just shut down the casino? Prof. Stout’s suggested solution is for Congress to return to the pre-2000 rule under which speculative derivative bets were not enforceable in court. That would include reversing the “superpriority” privileges in the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and the Dodd-Frank Act.​..
​..What If the DTCC Goes Bankrupt?​ ...
​..In a general economic depression, the exchanges themselves could go bankrupt. No provision for that is made in the Dodd-Frank Act, which purports to decree “no more bailouts.” Still, reasons Prof. Lubben, the government would undoubtedly step in to save the market from collapse.
​  His proposed solution is for Congress to make legislative provision for nationalizing any bankrupt exchange, brokerage or Central Clearing Counterparty before it fails.​..  Congress might agree, since under current circumstances it would not involve any major changes, wealth confiscation or new tax burdens; and it could protect their own fortunes from confiscation if the DTCC were to go bankrupt.​..
..Another alternative that not only could work but could fix Congress’s budget problems at the same time is to impose a 0.1% tax on all financial transactions...  There are other possible solutions to customer title concerns. There is no longer a need for the archaic practice of holding all securitized assets in the street name of Cede & Co. The digitization of stocks and bonds was a reasonable and efficient step in the 1970s, but today digital cryptography has gotten so sophisticated that “smart contracts” can be attached by blockchain-like distributed ledger technology (DLT)...​  The states of Delaware and Wyoming have explored maintaining corporate lists of stockholders on a state-run blockchain; but predictably, the measures were opposed.​ The practice of holding assets in street name has proven very lucrative for the DTCC’s member brokers and banks, as it facilitates short selling and the “rehypothecation” of collateral.​..
..The good news is, this “great taking” can be stopped at the state level. Americans don’t need to count on a divided Congress to get the job done. Because the UCC is state law, state lawmakers can take concrete steps to restore the property rights of their constituents and protect them in the event of a financial crisis.​   https://ellenbrown.com/2024/02/16/defusing-the-derivatives-time-bomb-some-proposed-solutions/#more-15735

​  8/4/2024  Ellen Brown,  How Unelected Regulators Unleashed the Derivatives Monster – and How It Might Be Tamed
​  The Bank for International Settlements estimated that value at $610 trillion. And financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding  global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022. A quadrillion is 1,000 trillion.
​  Most of this casino is run through the same banks that hold our deposits for safekeeping. Derivatives are sold as “insurance” against risk, but they actually add a heavy layer of risk because the market is so interconnected that any failure can have a domino effect.​..
..As of Dec. 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives out of a total of $192.46 trillion at all U.S. banks, savings associations and trust companies. That’s four banks holding 87 percent of all derivatives at all 4,587 federally-insured institutions then in the U.S.
​  In June 2024, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board jointly released their findings on the eight U.S. megabanks’ “living wills” – their resolution or wind-down plans in the event of bankruptcy. The Fed and FDIC faulted all of the four largest derivative banks on shortcomings in how they planned to wind down their derivatives.​..
..It was not Congress that authorized that expansive definition of permitted banking activities. It was the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), part of the “administrative deep state,” that permanent body of unelected regulators who carry on while politicians come and go...
​..The OCC’s authority to regulate banks dates back to the National Bank Act of 1863, which grants national banks general authority to engage in activities necessary to carry on the “business of banking,” including “such incidental powers as shall be necessary to carry on the business of banking.” The “business of banking” is not defined in the statute.​..
​..No mention is made of derivatives trading or dealing.
​  The powers of banks were further limited by Congress in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which explicitly prohibited banks from dealing in corporate equity securities, and by other statutes passed thereafter. However, the portion of the Glass-Steagall Act separating depository from investment banking was reversed in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000.​ Omarova writes that this allowed the OCC to articulate “an overly expansive definition of the ‘business of banking’ as financial intermediation and dealing in financial risk, in all of its forms, and … this pattern of analysis allowed the OCC to expand the range of bank-permissible activities virtually without any statutory constraint.”​...
​..Most of this derivative trading is conducted through the biggest banks. A commonly held assumption is that the real derivative risk is much smaller than the “notional amount” stated on the banks’ balance sheets, but Denning observes ... In 2008, governments had enough resources to avert total calamity. Today’s cash-strapped governments are in no position to cope with another massive bailout.
​  He concludes:
​  Regulation and enforcement will only work if it is accompanied by a paradigm shift in the banking sector that changes the context in which banks operate and the way they are run, so that banks shift their goal from making money to adding value to stakeholders, particularly customers. This would require action from the legislature, the SEC, the stock market and the business schools, as well as of course the banks themselves.​..
..The Menand/Ricks proposal is quite detailed and includes much more than regulating derivatives, but on that specific issue they propose:
​  While member banks are permitted to enter into interest-rate swaps to hedge rate risk, they are not allowed to engage in derivatives dealing (intermediation or market making) or take directional bets in the derivatives markets. Derivatives dealing and speculation do not advance member banks’ monetary function. Apart from loan commitments, member banks would not be in the business of offering guarantees or other forms of insurance.
​  Would that mean the end of the derivatives casino? No – it would just be moved out of the banks charged with protecting our deposits.​..
​..University of Southampton business school professor Richard Werner, who has written extensively on this subject, adds that banks should be required to concentrate their lending on productive ventures that create new goods and services and avoid inflating existing assets such as housing and corporate stock.
​  Speculative derivatives are a form of “financialization” – money making money without producing anything. The winners just take money from the losers. Gambling is not illegal under federal law, but the chips in the casino should not be our deposits or loans made with the backing of our deposits.
​  The Menand/Ricks proposal is for private banks, but banks can also be made “public utilities” through direct ownership by the government. The stellar model is the Bank of North Dakota, which does not speculate in derivatives, cannot go bankrupt, makes productive loans, and has been highly successful.​..
..The “business of banking” can include making money for private shareholders and executives, but that business should be junior to the public interest, which would prevail when they conflict.
​  Unfortunately, only Congress can change the language of the controlling statute; and Congress has been motivated historically to make major changes in the banking system only in response to a Great Depression or Great Recession that exposes the fatal flaws in the existing system. With the reversal of “Chevron deference,” however, the OCC’s rules can now be challenged in court.​..
..A financialized economy is not sustainable and not competitive. The emphasis should be on investment in the real economy. That is the sort of paradigm shift that is necessary if the U.S. is to survive and prosper.​   https://ellenbrown.com/2024/08/04/how-unelected-regulators-unleashed-the-derivatives-monster-and-how-it-might-be-tamed/

​  12/10/2024  Ellen Brown,  How to Escape the Federal Debt Trap
​  Third quarter data is not yet available, but interest payments as a percent of tax receipts rose to 37.8% in the third quarter of 2024, the highest since 1996. That means interest is eating up over one-third of our tax revenues.​..
..Raising taxes and trimming the budget can slow future growth of the debt, but they are unable to fix the underlying problem — a debt grown so massive that just the interest on it is crowding out expenditures on the public goods that are the primary purpose of government.
​  Borrowing Is Actually More Inflationary Than Printing
​  Several financial commentators have suggested that we would be better off if the Treasury issued the money for the budget outright, debt-free.​.. 
 Federal securities can be posted in the repo market as collateral for an equivalent in loans, and the collateral can be “rehypothecated” (re-used) several times over, creating new money that augments the money supply just as would happen if it were issued directly.​..  The argument for borrowing rather than printing is that the government is borrowing existing money, so it will not expand the money supply. That was true when money consisted of gold and silver coins, but it is not true today. In fact borrowing the money is now more inflationary, increasing the money supply more, than if it were just issued directly, due to the way the government borrows.​..  Investopedia: " Because most modern economies rely on fractional reserve banking, when primary dealers purchase government debt in the form of Treasury securities, they are able to increase their reserves and expand the money supply by lending it out. This is known as the money multiplier effect. "
​  Thus, “the government increases cash reserves in the banking system,” and “the increase in reserves raises the money supply in the economy.” Principal and interest on the securities are paid when due, but they are paid with borrowed money. In effect, the debt is never repaid but just gets rolled over from year to year along with the interest due on it.​..
​..U.S. Currency Should Be Issued by the U.S. Government
​  Well over 90% of the U.S. money supply today is issued not by the government but by private banks when they make loans.  As Thomas Edison argued in 1921, “It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.”
​  The government could avoid increasing the debt by printing the money for its budget as President Lincoln did, as U.S. Notes or “Greenbacks.”​..
..Alternatively, the Treasury could mint some trillion dollar coins. The Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value, and no limit is put on the value of the coins it creates.​..   Congress chose to impose limits on the amounts and denominations of most coins, but a special provision allowed the platinum coin to be minted in any amount for commemorative purposes.​..   To prevent congressional overspending, a budget ceiling could be imposed – as it is now, although the terms would probably need to be revised.
​  Eliminating the Debt
​  Those maneuvers would prevent the federal debt from growing, but it still would not eliminate the trillion dollar interest tab on the existing $36 trillion debt. The only permanent solution is to eliminate the debt itself. In ancient Mesopotamia, when the king was the creditor, this was done with periodic debt jubilees — just cancel the debt.​..  But that is not possible today because the creditors are private banks and private investors who have a contractual right to be paid, and the U.S. Constitution requires that the government pay its debts as and when due.
​  Another possibility is a financial transaction tax, which could replace both income and sales taxes while still generating enough to fund the government and pay off the debt.​..   But that solution has been discussed for years without gaining traction in Congress.
  Another alternative is to have the Federal Reserve buy the debt as it comes due.​..   In 2023 approximately 31% of the outstanding debt came due for renewal. As usual, it was just rolled over into new debt. But the nearly one-third coming due in FY2025 could be bought in the open market by the Federal Reserve, which is required to return its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the debt virtually interest-free.​..   If a third of the outstanding debt is too much to monetize in one year to avoid inflation, this maneuver could be spread out over a number of years.
​  Mandating that action by an “independent” Fed would require an amendment to the Federal Reserve Act, but Congress has the power to amend it and has done so several times...
​..How to Avoid Hyperinflation
​  Alarmed economists contend that a Weimar-style hyperinflation is the inevitable outcome 
of government-issued money. But as Michael Hudson points out, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”​ ...  Issuing the money directly will not inflate prices if the funds are used to increase the domestic supply of goods and services. Supply and demand will then go up together, keeping prices stable.​..
​..Swapping Debt for Productive Equity
​  Money printing is not inflationary if the money is issued for productive purposes, raising GDP in lockstep
; but how can we be sure that the new money will be used productively? Today the banks and other large institutions that first receive any newly-issued money are more likely to invest it speculatively, driving up the price of existing assets (homes, stocks, etc.) without creating new goods and services.​..
​..Lending Directly to Productive Businesses
​  Another possibility for using newly issued money to increase the supply of goods and services is for the Federal Reserve to make loans directly to productive businesses.​..  Cornell Law School Professor Robert Hockett expanded on this design in an article in Forbes in March 2021:
​  [T]he founders of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 … designed something akin to a network of regional development finance institutions. … Each of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks was to provide short-term funding directly or indirectly (through local banks) to developing businesses that needed it. This they did by ‘discounting’ – in effect, purchasing – commercial paper from those businesses that needed it … [I]n determining what kinds of commercial paper to discount, the Federal Reserve Act both was – and ironically remains – quite explicit about this: Fed discount lending is solely for “productive,” not “speculative” purposes.​..
..Except for its emergency Commercial Paper Funding Facility operated from 2020 to 2021 and from 2008 to 2010, the Fed no longer engages in the commercial loan business.​..
..Hockett explained that the drafters of the Federal Reserve Act, notably Carter Glass and Paul Warburg, were essentially following the Real Bills Doctrine (RBD). Previously known as the “commercial loan theory of banking,” it held that banks could create credit-money deposits on their balance sheets without triggering inflation if the money were issued against loans backed by commercial paper...
​..The RBD in its crude formulation held that so long as the lending of endogenous [bank-created] credit-money was kept productive, not speculative, inflation and deflation would be not only less likely, but effectively impossible. And the experience of German banks during Germany’s late 19th century Hamiltonian ‘growth miracle,’ with which the German immigrant Warburg, himself a banker, was intimately familiar, appeared to verify this. So did Glass’s experience with agricultural lending in the American South.
  ​Prof. Hockett suggested...
​..In time, we might even imagine a proliferation of public banks, patterned more or less after the highly successful Bank of North Dakota model, spreading across multiple states. These banks could then both afford nonprofit banking services to all, and assist the Fed Regional Banks in identifying appropriate recipients of Fed liquidity assistance.
​  The result, he said, will be “a Fed restored to its original purpose, a Fed responsive to varying local conditions in a sprawling continental republic, a Fed no longer over-involved with banks whose principal if not sole activities are in gambling on price movements in secondary and tertiary markets rather than investing in the primary markets that constitute our ‘real’ economy. It will mean, in short, something approaching a true people’s bank, not just a banks’ bank.”​   
https://ellenbrown.com/2024/12/10/how-to-escape-the-federal-debt-trap/#more-15857

​  Gabbard Nixes Choice Of Israel Critic For Key Post After Pro-Israel Voices Object
​  For anyone desperate to see the Trump administration's hawkish and intensely pro-Israel element offset by bona fide America First voices in key intelligence positions, the selection of retired US Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis to oversee the production of the President's Daily Brief seemed almost too good to be true. Alas, that has proven to be the case, as an eruption of objections and smears from Israel-supporters killed his job offer in a matter of hours.​   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gabbard-nixes-choice-israel-critic-key-post-after-pro-israel-voices-object

South African Ambassador Expelled From US After Accusing Trump Of "White Supremacy"​   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/south-african-ambassador-expelled-us-after-accusing-trump-white-supremacy

​  US and Israel ask East African countries to resettle Palestinians: Report
Talks were reportedly held with Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland over the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza​   
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-israel-ask-east-african-countries-resettle-expelled-palestinians

​  Hamas To Free American Hostage After Direct Trump Admin Intervention
​  Hamas on Friday announced it is preparing the release of hostage Edan Alexander, who is an American citizen serving in the Israeli military, along with the bodies of four other dual nationals previously slain.
​  Alexander was manning a military post near the Gaza Strip on October 7 when the base was overrun by Hamas gunmen pouring in from Gaza. The US-designated terror group further announced it "affirms its complete readiness to initiate negotiations and reach a comprehensive agreement on the issues of the second phase while calling for the occupation (Israel) to fully implement its obligations."​   
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hamas-free-american-hostage-after-direct-trump-admin-intervention

​  Killing some folks​ in sandals for peace:  Trump Orders New Large Scale Strikes On Iran-Backed Houthis In Yemen
​  Days ago Yemen's Houthis announced they are resuming attacks on Red Sea shipping over Israel's failure to fully open humanitarian aid corridors into the Gaza Strip.
​  But President Trump has responded preemptively by on Saturday ordering a series of new airstrikes on Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The US commander-in-chief was warned he'll continuing using "overwhelming lethal force" until the Iranian-backed Houthi completely halt their attacks.​   
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/trump-orders-new-large-scale-strikes-against-iran-backed-houthis-yemen

​  Around 50 martyred, injured in US-UK aggression on Yemeni cities
The assault comes as Yemen enforces a ban on Israeli ships entering designated zones in response to the Israeli regime's siege on Gaza.​   https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/several-martyred--injured-in-us-uk-aggression-on-yemeni-capi

​  Houthis Claim Ballistic Missile Attack On USS Truman Carrier
​  Yemen's Health Ministry now says that 32 people, including children, died after Saturday's major US airstrikes pounded Sanaa, with President Donald Trump warning the Houthis not to attack ships passing through the Red Sea.
​  But on Sunday, that's precisely what the Houthis did: a Houthi military announcement claimed the group carried out "a qualitative operation" on the US aircraft carrier Harry S Truman. "Our forces targeted the Truman aircraft carrier with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone," a spokesman said.​..
..A subsequent Fox report said that US warships shot down any inbound Houthi drones, and that they were not a serious threat.
​  Saturday's strike on Yemen not only resulted in civilian deaths, but a reported over 100 injured​.   
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/houthis-claim-ballistic-missile-attack-uss-truman-carrier

UNRWA opens 130 temporary learning centers in Gaza for 47,000 children​   https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250315-unrwa-opens-130-temporary-learning-centers-in-gaza-for-47000-children/

Palestinian Civil Defense teams recover 61 bodies from Shifa Hospital yard in Gaza​   https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinian-civil-defense-teams-recover-61-bodies-from-shifa-hospital-yard-in-gaza/3510623

​  Thousands of Syrian Alawites sheltering at Russian base one week after state massacres
Syrian government-linked armed groups have carried out 54 massacres since 6 March, killing at least 1,476 Alawite civilians in the country's coastal areas​   
https://thecradle.co/articles/thousands-of-syrian-alawites-sheltering-at-russian-base-one-week-after-state-massacres

Trump Reacts to Biden Autopen Controversy: ‘Who Was Signing All This Stuff?’​   https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/13/washington-reacts-biden-autopen-controversy-signing/

Voice Of America Journalists Placed On Leave After Trump Dismantles 8 Federal Agencies​   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/voice-america-journalists-placed-leave-after-trump-dismantles-8-federal-agencies

​  Slovak Government Official Claims DNA in Vaccines Turns People into "GMOs," Sparks Global Outrage
​  In a bombshell press conference on March 11, 2025, Dr. Peter Kotlár, a Slovak physician, government commissioner, and MP, dropped a jaw-dropping claim: all 34 analyzed Pfizer and Moderna vaccine batches contain dangerously high levels of DNA, potentially transforming recipients into "genetically modified organisms."​...
​..Kotlár didn’t mince words, revealing he’s already looped in heavy hitters like U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who confirmed receipt of his findings. "Furthermore, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation… and Pamela Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, were also informed," he said, signaling this isn’t just a Slovak issue—it’s a global wake-up call. With Kennedy settling down on his new role as HHS Secretary, you can bet the popcorn’s popping as this dam threatens to burst.
​  The meat of his claim? "In every single vial, there is an extremely high amount of DNA… stable compared to mRNA, can integrate into human DNA," Kotlár asserted. Echoing my earlier report’s warning—"Theoretically, DNA fragments can integrate into the host genome, increasing the risk of genetic mutations"—he ups the ante, alleging this could lead to cancer or cell death.​   
https://www.aussie17.com/p/breaking-news-slovak-government-official

​  CDC Will Study Possible Link Between Vaccines and Autism, Pledges to ‘Leave No Stone Unturned’
​  Trump administration officials asked the CDC to perform the study, according to The Washington Post. The revelation came days after President Donald Trump, in an address to Congress, referred to the rising rate of autism in the U.S. Trump cited CDC data showing that 1 in 36 U.S. children have autism.​   
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-study-possible-link-vaccines-autism/

​  The fallout from David Weldon’s withdrawn CDC nomination
Withdrawing David Weldon’s CDC nomination deepens vaccine scepticism and raises concerns over political gatekeeping.​   
https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/the-fallout-from-david-weldons-withdrawn

  (I'll never get another one, myself.) FDA Issues Flu Vaccine Recommendations After Canceling Routine Meeting With Advisers
​  Instead, the FDA held a closed session with experts from its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, along with officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Defense, to review U.S. and global surveillance data on currently circulating flu viruses.
​  That interagency meeting was held on the same day that the VRBPAC was originally scheduled to meet. In a statement, the FDA said it does not expect any impact on the timing or availability of vaccines for the public.​   
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fda-issues-flu-vaccine-recommendations-after-canceling-routine-meeting-advisers

​  The void ate Steve Kirsch's homework:  Lessons learned paper: "6 dead for every person that MIGHT have been saved by the COVID vaccine"
I was a co-author of this paper, but thanks to corrupt medical journals such as Cureus, the paper is impossible to find anymore, despite passing 10 peer-reviewers!​   https://kirschsubstack.com/p/lessons-learned-paper-6-dead-for

  ​Meryl Nass MD,  While the US frets and moans about measles, Europe had OVER 100 TIMES as many cases per capita last year. Did you hear anything about it?  The media sure knows how to spin people up. Why do they refuse to put anything in context?   https://merylnass.substack.com/p/while-the-us-frets-and-moans-about

  Meryl Nass MD,  Hepatitis B vaccine at birth: Why we desperately need someone like Dr. Weldon to clean up CDC's immunization division
Hep B is a horrible program in which 3 million US babies/yr receive a dangerous vaccine at birth to protect 16 babies who could be individually selected and vaccinated appropriately​   https://merylnass.substack.com/p/hepatitis-b-vaccine-at-birth-why

​  Dr. Paul Alexander:  AI generated CRUDE back of the envelope analysis of risk of childhood vaccines looking at adverse effect risk from childhood vaccines (all) versus if unvaccinated & results skews to NO vaccine! BUT...
​  The gap is massive: serious risks from vaccinating are 60 times higher than serious risks from disease today. Milder risks from vaccinating are 14 times higher. Why?
​  Every child who gets the recommended 43 shots is guaranteed exposure to possible side effects. But an unvaccinated kid? They’re not catching most of these diseases
—measles reportedly hit just 271 kids in 2024, and polio’s been zero wild cases since 1979 (the last U.S. cases were from the old oral vaccine itself, not the disease).​   
https://palexander.substack.com/p/ai-generated-crude-back-of-the-envelope

​  Kennedy Takes Aim at FDA Loophole That Allows Unsafe Ingredients in Food
​  HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday directed the FDA to take steps to eliminate the “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, loophole that allows the use of food ingredients based on food companies’ own assurances that the ingredients are safe, with no safety assessment by the FDA.​  
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/kennedy-fda-loophole-allows-unsafe-ingredients-food/

It's the Linoleic acid that'll getcha:​ Do Seed Oils Cause Heart Attacks?​  By Tucker Goodrich​   https://www.malone.news/p/do-seed-oils-cause-heart-attacks

​(He doesn't know it's bad.)  Oils Rich in Linoleic Acid  By Dr Tomislav Meštrović, MD, PhD   https://www.news-medical.net/health/Oils-Rich-in-Linoleic-Acid.aspx#:~:text
Name% Linoleic acid
Safflower oil
78%
Grape seed oil
73%
Poppyseed oil
70%
Sunflower oil
68%
Hemp oil
60%
Corn oil
59%
Wheat germ oil
55%
Cottonseed oil
54%
Soybean oil
51%
Walnut oil
51%
Sesame oil
45%
Rice bran oil
39%
Pistachio oil
32.7%
Peanut oil
32%
Canola oil
21%
Egg yolk
16%
Linseed oil
15%
Lard
10%
Olive oil
10%
Palm oil
10%
Cocoa butter
3%
Macadamia oil
2%
Butter
2%
Coconut oil
2%
 
 
average val


  These are not good wavelengths for human cells. The 5G Safety Myth: Assumed Safe, Not Proven Safe
Despite insufficient safety data and growing evidence of biological effects, 5G and other wireless technologies are being deployed unchecked, prioritizing corporate interests over public health.​   https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/the-5g-safety-myth-assumed-safe-not

  Who gets to join? Who/what has "rights"? Who decides?   U.S. Transhumanist Party and The Transhumanist Bill of Rights - Ties To Club Of Rome One World Order And Silicon Valley Technocrats   https://anamihalceamdphd.substack.com/p/us-transhumanist-party-and-the-transhumanist

​  Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation
Researchers say problem could increase number of people at risk of starvation by 400m in next two decades​   
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/10/microplastics-hinder-plant-photosynthesis-study-finds-threatening-millions-with-starvation

What if the Earth Tilted? - Where The Tsunamis Go​   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0_7bDHJCQ

​Level Headed (pictured with spring garden planted in Yoakum)

Friday, March 14, 2025

The Other Interpretation

 Incredulous,


  The question is again forced, what is going on in world events, which seem chaotic and nonsensical? What it seems like is that there is no narrative which adequately serves the interests of the "Owners" and their political and business "elites", and that there are two divergent camps, with divergent interests and control-narratives, the globalists, and the nationalists. Globalists are tied to supra-national lending at interest to national governments, to fund wars. Lending at interest leads to economic crises, as debts outgrow productive economies at all scales. Economic crises lead to wars, which must be funded... 
  Populist nationalists seek to increase real-economy, to the benefit of their nations, workers, families, communities and long-term infrastructure viability.
  Globalists seek to extract the abstracted "capital" from nations in the form of money, which is a conceptual agreement, not a farm, factory or oil well. Money is highly fungible, and can travel from New York to Bangladesh in an instant. This is convenient for those who have agreed ownership rights to productive properties and to the debt payments of individuals, companies and nations. They can lend at low rates, engineer crises, then demand higher rates or full repayment, obtaining either higher rates of return, or asset liquidations, as in the Asian Financial Crisis, where factories and businesses were bought very cheaply by global financiers.
  Populist nationalists may shelter their countries from such extraction-cycles of free-flowing "financial capital" by introducing "capital controls", such as China has, which tie the money to the place, the nation. 
  Nationalists may also fund their nations through tariffs, which make their national products less expensive at home, and increase the costs of foreign products. Retaliation is usual, so imports become more expensive in all countries. Countries which depend heavily on imports may be hit harder, especially if they can't replace them, as might be the case if their is not enough farmland to replace food imports. Nations that are more self-sufficient will fare better, especially if others depend upon their exports, such as oil and grains.
  Autarky is the state of self sufficiency. No modern nation is truly autarkic, but Russia has been pushed hard in that direction by sanctions since 2014, and has the most natural resources per capita of any country. A system of tariffs, which makes imports expensive, nudges a country towards autarky, and it takes the money from trade to run governments. This is bad for globalists who favor a free-trade system where they collect the skim from trade between nations. The more trade the better. The more a nation depends upon trade to survive, the more the globalists who control the channels and finances of trade are able to extract wealth from that nation through their manipulations of price and availability.
  Global trade has been facilitated by diesel fuel, and massive ships to carry standardized containers, which can transfer directly to trucks and rail cars.
  Global trade has certain advantages, because some places can make some things more efficiently than other places can, and if they ship cheaply, then there are practical benefits, but also the risk of dependency. This vulnerability to an embargo was impressed upon the US in 1973, two years after the US had peak domestic oil production, by the Arab Oil Embargo, which was retaliation for the US supporting Israel in the 1973 war. 
  My best assessment is that we are in a jagged plateau of global industrial output, which is poised for terminal decline, because it is 90% correlated with net oil + natural gas condensates production, and that peaked at the end of 2018. The "Repo Crisis" of big banks not trusting each other on overnight loans, backed by T-bills, happened the next August, and the "Going Direct Bailout" happened during COVID lockdowns in Spring of 2020. 
  If my assessment is correct, the debts-at-interest that are the foundation of our current money are mostly bad-debts.  The cookie jar has mostly IOUs, not cookies. Who will get the remaining cookies? How will this be managed? Those are political questions which societies must agree upon, or they will break apart and not produce the necessities of life for their members.
  The first question is how to manage the defaults. Global ownership elites prefer that claims upon the remaining wealth be nullified. If a claimant dies, then that is one less claim upon real wealth to compete with theirs. Destruction of competing claims through war has often been employed in the service of old-wealth.   Sometimes broad societal negotiations, to reach a new Social-Contract are engaged over a period of years, and a society is able to reorganize functionally and move forward in a better-adapted arrangement to provide for its human needs at scale. 
  We are now approaching such a moment of societal realization, I think.

​  Thanks Eleni.  Is Donald Trump managing the possible collapse of the “American empire”?​  by Thierry Meyssan
​  For a month, the accumulation of critical events around the United States, Ukraine and the European Union has been difficult to interpret because each power has been advancing in disguise. European leaders assume a stupid air by assuring that they continue to support the Ukrainian integral nationalists while Washington and Moscow have already agreed on a peace agreement. However, it is possible that the diplomatic summits are hiding another issue: the prevention of a major economic crisis in the West. In this case, Washington must terrorize its allies to force them to pay off its debts. ​ 
​  It was in the kitsch decor of his Mar-a-Lago residence that Donald Trump convinced allied central bankers and finance ministers that he was going to make them pay the United States’ debts...
..A videoconference by analyst Jim Bianco, taken up by the Bloomberg agency, rekindled concerns. According to this analyst, the Trump administration is following a plan, the "Mar-a-Lago Agreement". It intends to radically restructure the US debt burden by reorganizing world trade through tariffs, devaluing the dollar and, ultimately, reducing the cost of borrowing, all with the aim of putting US industry on an equal footing with its competitors in the rest of the world.​..
..On January 21 and 22, Donald Trump had gathered the central bankers and finance ministers of the G7 in his Mar-a-Lago residence. He is said to have welcomed them by telling them: "No one will leave this room until we have found an agreement on the dollar". The agreement in question would therefore have been approved by the allies.
​  The main idea would be for the US Treasury to issue government bonds that do not pay interest (what are called "zero coupons") and that would not mature for a century (that is, could not be exchanged for cash for 100 years). Washington would therefore have to force its allies to convert their debts into "zero coupons".
​  If we accept this analysis, we must reinterpret various actions of President Trump, in terms of customs duties or the creation of a sovereign wealth fund. They no longer seem as erratic as the international press describes them, but on the contrary very logical.
​  We must therefore consider that Donald Trump is trying to manage the possible economic collapse of Joe Biden’s "American empire" as Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev tried to manage that of Leonid Brezhnev’s "Soviet empire".
​  I am all the more attentive to this hypothesis because, in my opinion, the coup of September 11, 2001 had no other goal than to postpone the foreseeable collapse of the “American empire”.​..
..This is probably what we are witnessing today: Donald Trump, President of the United States, is dissolving the “American empire” as he had tried to undo it in 2017...
..If my hypothesis is correct, we must not believe a word of the threats of annexation of new territories, such as Canada, and not imagine that the United States is withdrawing militarily from Europe to confront China, but admit that it is militarily abandoning its European alliesWe see that it is abandoning Germany and relying on Poland to organize Central Europe, even if it means letting Warsaw annex Eastern Galicia (currently Ukrainian). Similarly, we must prepare to see the United States abandon its Middle Eastern allies, with the exception of Israel...
..Note that if the European allies, the Chinese and the Saudis should consider it a scam to exchange their debts for “zero coupons”, Russia should on the contrary support the United States in this maneuver. Indeed, during the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Russia went through a decade of recession and unrest, but today it needs the United States to avoid finding itself face to face with China.​   https://www.voltairenet.org/article221903.html

US deficit sets record with $1.1 trillion in first five months of fiscal year 2025​   https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/finance/us-deficit-sets-record-11-trillion-first-five-months-fiscal-year-2025

​  Witkoff was in Moscow Thursday, as was Belarusian President Lukashenko.  Trump envoy to present ceasefire deal to Russia this week – White House
Washington and Kiev agreed on a 30-day truce in the Ukraine conflict on Tuesday​   https://swentr.site/news/614107-trump-envoy-russia-ceasefire/

Putin Rejects US Temporary Ceasefire Plan, Appears In Military Fatigues​   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-rejects-us-temporary-cease-fire-plan-appears-military-fatigues

‘A ceasefire only benefits those who are retreating’: Russia’s top foreign relations experts and actors react to US-Ukraine talks​  https://www.rt.com/russia/614082-russia-ukraine-ceasefire-experts/

​  Russian Negotiator Reiterates Russian “Nyet” on Ceasefire Even Before US Emissary Steve Witkoff Arrives in Moscow
​  Putin, very, very uncharacteristically, donned a military field uniform, rolled down to the regional HQ in Kursk (Gerasimov was already there), and made a 5-minute on-camera statement, one of the two salient points of which is that he “strongly suggested” the military considers establishing a buffer zone around Russian borders after finishing clearing out the Kursk region. If that isn’t a signal to the Americans about any ceasefires, I do not know what is…
​  His second salient point, by the way, was to stress that any Ukrainians captured in the Kursk region were not actually POWs, but rather “terrorists”, i.e. persons who have violated Russia’s criminal anti-terrorism statutes.
​  Let’s return to Ushakov’s remarks. As indicated yesterday, I was highly confident the Russians would not entertain the US-Ukraine scheme, but I had assumed they would go through the diplomatic motions, of at least having a what I called a tea and cookies chat, and yet again restating Russia’s conditions before talks could begin. As readers pointed out in comments, Russia could also have gone for slow-walking to get expectations down: “We agreed in Riyadh that we needed to get the diplomatic machinery on both sides back in operation before we can entertain any proposal.”
​  So why a speedy and very public rebuff? One possibility is that it was important to reassure the Russian public that Putin was not going all wobbly in response to a US overtures, particularly after the important milestone of the Ukraine rout in Kursk.​   
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03/russian-negotiator-reiterates-russian-nyet-on-ceasefire-even-before-us-emissary-steve-witkoff-arrives-in-moscow.html

​  Putin lists guarantees Moscow wants for 30-day ceasefire
The Russian president wants assurances that Kiev will halt military mobilization, soldier training, and arms deliveries​   
https://swentr.site/russia/614167-putin-ukraine-ceasefire-guarantees/

​  READ IN FULL: Putin’s statement on Trump’s Ukraine ceasefire proposal
Russia is ready, the president has said, stressing that such an agreement “must lead to long-term peace”​   
https://swentr.site/russia/614170-putin-ukraine-conflict-us/

Putin Declined The Ceasefire​; Trump Imposes Additional Restrictions​   Military Summary For 2025.03.14​   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCRBGf6QPaw

​  Trump ‘would like to meet with’ Putin​:  The Russian president has also expressed openness to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire with his American counterpart
​  Trump said the US has already discussed many details of a potential “final agreement” with Kiev and is now waiting to see “whether or not Russia is there.”
“We’ve been discussing land with Ukraine… pieces of land that would be kept and lost and all of the other elements of a final agreement. You know, we’ve been discussing concepts of land because you don’t want to waste time with a ceasefire if it’s not going to mean anything,” Trump said. “They discussed NATO and being in NATO, and everybody knows what the answer to that is. They’ve known that answer for 40 years, in all fairness.”
​  Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited the Russian capital on Thursday to discuss the results of US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia earlier this week and to relay Moscow’s position back to Washington. Witkoff was also expected to meet with the Russian president behind closed doors in the evening, but officials have yet to confirm whether the meeting took place or to provide details of his other interactions during the brief visit.​   
https://swentr.site/news/614191-trump-like-meet-putin/

​  Larry Johnson and Judge Napolitano had a long sit down with  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov​.  A Conversation with Foreign Minister Lavrov
​  What an honor. I was invited, along with Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal, to interview Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on Monday. Mr. Lavrov is smart, charming, funny and quite approachable. He ain’t a bullshitter. There was no pretense about him. After spending more than 90 minutes conversing with him, I came away with a new appreciation of his skill as the consummate diplomat. Although we each had prepared a couple of questions in advance, those went out the window once the conversation started. There were no constraints on what we could ask.
​  There was an added treat before Mr. Lavrov arrived… we spent thirty minutes chatting with Maria Zakharova in a casual environment. She is equally charming and tough as a rhinoceros hide.​   
https://sonar21.com/a-conversation-with-foreign-minister-lavrov/

  ​Gilbert Doctorow,  Belgians want war!
​  My finger on the pulse is my membership in a prestigious ‘royal’ French-speaking club, where I have the opportunity to sit at table with other members for the periodic, even weekly gatherings. My own preferred sub-club is the Cinema group which gathers at least once monthly for projection of some vintage film which may be American, or French, or whatever. After the screening we take seats on a random basis for a shared dinner.  Table talk wanders in all directions. Not often do folks talk politics, because it is by nature so divisive. But when they do, it is perfectly clear that the overwhelming majority of members are now pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian. Given that this club has long been a haven of tolerance for divergent opinions, and when I joined five years ago they still celebrated the visit of Peter the Great to Spa during his European travels, this solidity behind the NATO position on Russia is striking...
​..Our daughter in her work as a school teacher in a Belgian secondary school is well immersed in the hoi polloi.  They are her fellow teachers, they are the parents of her students with whom she meets periodically. And as the mother of two teen-age boys, she gets together socially with the parents of their friends.
​  What I am hearing from her is very clear:  this hoi polloi has been properly indoctrinated, properly brain washed and now strongly favors defending Ukraine, strongly favors the establishment of a military draft in this country and say they are ready to send their sons to war against Russia.  In fact, in some Belgian public schools today preparations are being made to introduce courses in paramilitary training for the final year of secondary education. This patriotic movement cuts across the country’s language divide.
​  Of course, no one has asked the sons of these Belgian patriots how they feel about being drafted into the army and being sent to the front against Russian forces where they will be blown to bits in a matter of days, just as the Ukrainian recruits are today experiencing.
​  I will not comment here on the advice I would give my grandsons should the draft be introduced in Belgium.  Read my lips.​   
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/13/belgians-want-war/

​  Celia Farber,  Germany Launches Hotline, Encouraging People To Report Family And Friends Who Hold "Conspiracy Theories" That Question "Democratic Institutions"   https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/germany-launches-hotline-encouraging

​  Free Trade was Ricardo’s Concocted Theory Used to dispossess the British Aristocracy​,  Paul Craig Roberts
​  As for Trump’s tariffs, at the present time it seems that often they are threats leveled at specific countries to get them to do what they should be doing or to get them to give their help to Trump’s agenda.  For example, the initial tariffs Trump announced against Mexico and Canada were withdrawn once the two countries agreed to police their borders with the US to help halt the flow of immigrant-invaders into America.  It remains to be seen whether a full blown tariff system is put in place...
..It is possible that tariffs could recover their historic role in the financing of the US government.  The US government was financed over most of its history by tariffs.  It was not until 1918 that the income tax passed in 1913 affected the population, so the US government has been dependent on income taxation only for about a century.  As I have explained, the introduction of an income tax resurrected a form of slavery as it gave government ownership rights in our labor.  The definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor.  Today people subject to an income tax are in the same position as medieval serfs who owed part of their labor to feudal lords.​..
​..The income tax taxes labor and capital, factors of production.  Thus income tax reduces GDP and living standards. Classical economists, unlike the present day “junk economists” as Michael Hudson correctly calls them, said, correctly, that consumption, not factors of production, should be taxed.  That is what a tariff does. If you don’t consume goods produced in other countries, you pay no taxation.
​  Countries once understood that being dependent on imports of necessities, such as food, was a threat to national existence. A country could be subdued by the cutoff of food.​   
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/03/12/free-trade-was-ricardos-concocted-theory-used-to-dispossess-the-british-aristocracy/

​Weaker dollar outlook:  Gold Soars To Record High As Tariff Tensions Rise   https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/gold-soars-record-high-tariff-tensions-rise

  Alastair Crooke,  ​ Europe faces a MAGA ‘vibe-shift’ as Trump moves to his primordial objective – The Global Reset  
  The point here – which Europe feigns to not understand – is that the end to the Ukraine conflict simply is Trump’s ‘gateway’ to the entire rationale and platform on which he stood: The Great Reset of the Geo-Political landscape. Ukraine, simply said, is the obstacle to Trump’s pursuit of his primordial objective: The Global Reset.
​  Starmer, Macron and the eastern wing of the Euro-élites are blind to the sheer scale of the global vibe-shift towards traditionalist U.S. politics and ethics. They miss too, the barely concealed fury in the Trump world that exists behind this nascent revolution. “The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies”, Allister Heath writes...
..Team Trump – committed to the task of taking down the American Deep State as the ‘inexorable enemy’ – perceives (rightly) the British security state to be co-joined at the hip with their American counterparts, as a part of its global meta-structure. And its oldest and deepest component has always been the destruction of Russia, and its dismemberment...
​..Friedrich Merz, Macron and Starmer are talking about how they are going to turn around their countries – via a massive infusion of debt – into defence superstates. Yet, at some level of consciousness, they must realise that it is not doable, so they settle instead for presenting themselves as ‘world leaders on the international stage’.
​  The European élites are deeply unstable ‘leaders’ who are risking the prosperity and stability of the continent. It is clear these countries do not have the military capacity to intervene in any concerted manner. More than anything, it is the European economy circling the drain that is the reality at the gates.​  
​  Zelensky is accomplice to the European insistence that defeating Russia takes priority over achieving peace in Ukraine, in spite of lacking any strategic rationale as to how it may be achieved after three years of a worsening military situation. Both plans – crushing the Russian economy with sanctions and attrition of the Russian military to the point of collapse – have failed. Why then does Zelensky resist Trump’s peace proposals? On the surface, it makes no sense.
​  The explanation likely goes back to the post-Maidan era when the western ‘Meta Security State’ (principally, the British and the Americans) entrenched hardline Banderites (then a tiny minority) into the Ukrainian Police, Intelligence and Security State. They are still today the controlling force. Even were this faction to acknowledge that their war cannot be won, they understand what happens if they lose​.
​  Russia will not deal with them. They view them as extremists (if not war criminals) who are in no way ‘agreement capable’ and must be replaced by a leadership who is actually capable of compromise. Russia would likely pursue and bring these men to trial. Zelensky has to be frightened at what the Banderites might do to him (despite his British team of bodyguards).​..
​  President Trump has ordered intelligence sharing with Ukraine stopped. What he technically did was to stop allowing Ukraine to use exclusive U.S. targeting systems controlled by U.S. Intelligence, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office and the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. What has been suspended is the exchange of so-called ‘lethal’ data, including information for HIMARS targeting. However, the defensive information needed for protection is still being provided to Ukraine.​..
​..In Ukrainian command posts, the battle tracking and satellite online feeds on tablets and TV screens have indeed been disconnected.​ What Trump’s slap-down has done is to puncture the fiction that Ukraine is able to defend itself with a little substitute of European support.​   https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/11/europe-faces-maga-vibe-shift-as-trump-moves-to-his-primordial-objective-the-global-reset/

​  Michael Every,  Rabobank: "There's Growing Recognition Trump Is Serious About Radically Reshaping The US"
​  Meanwhile, there’s growing recognition Trump is serious about radically reshaping the US. The Wall Street Journal asks if he is taking a “liquidationist approach”. The Financial Times underlines he sees the need for shock therapy to remake the US to make things ​great again and argues a recession won’t stop him. Indeed, the more one hears ‘Main Street not Wall Street’, ‘national security’, ‘long term, not next quarter’, and ‘don’t focus on stocks’, the more it echoes ‘Common Prosperity’.​   https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rabobank-theres-growing-recognition-trump-serious-about-radically-reshaping-us

Schumer Shutdown: Senate Refuses To Pass Continuing Resolution After Democrats Melt Down​   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/blocks-path-schumer-and-schiff-schitt-shower-over-shutdown-friday-deadline-looms

​What did somebody say to Chuck?  "Bastards!": Schumer Throws Contrived Tantrum After Caving To GOP   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/schumer-shutdown-two-ways-can-go

​  RFK Jr's Ex-CIA Daughter-In-Law Tasked With Reining In Intel's 'Black Budgets'​ 
​  Rather than working inside just one three-letter agency to reform it, the director of the Office of Management and Budget asked, why not bring the entire espionage apparatus to the president’s heel? Fox Kennedy accepted. Passed over for a job at CIA, she now oversees the entire CIA budget as well as the budgets for the 17 other agencies that collectively make up the intelligence community.
​  This makes her the tip of the fiduciary spear, so to speak, in the ongoing White House war against what they see as a “woke and weaponized” government security establishment. The budgets, like the ones collecting dust next to her desk, and other bureaucratic authorities known only to the nerdiest of wonks, Fox Kennedy insists, are the very best tools “to put the Leviathan on the chain.”
​   All of this delights Vought, who calls her addition to OMB “a huge deal,” a step toward policing the shadowy corners of the federal government he described as “nearly untouchable.” No clandestine budget or compartmentalized program will be beyond her purview. Instead, AFK will be free to follow the money.   
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/03/12/amaryllis_fox_kennedy_former_cia_agent_tasked_with_reining_in_intels_black_budgets_152493.html

​  Look Out Below​:  Psychology and fundamentals both have to bottom for there to be "value", despite what idiots on TV say. That day is not today. Tomorrow doesn't look good, either.
​  I’ve already explained why I think markets could be set up for a much bigger move lower. I detailed this in both my March market review and my piece explaining why I think the next crash could very well be different from those of days past and could “break the brain” of market participants: This Next Market Crash Will Break Our Fragile Brains.
​  I wasn’t going to write a piece midday today until I turned on the television and, despite the best efforts of David Faber to inject some semblance of reality onto CNBC guests, watched portfolio managers justify paying 26x to 40x earnings for tech stocks they said are “on sale”.​..
..Faber actually did a pretty good job trying to paint a picture of the psychology of the market as it stands today. What he said mostly aligns with what I have been saying over the last couple of weeks: that there is a psychological shift taking place deep in the foundations of the market, not only where people are beginning to entertain the idea that we’re entering a bear market, but also simultaneously entertaining the idea of a rotation out of risk-on speculative US technology stocks and into both US industrials and emerging markets​.   https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/look-fck-out-below

​  Celia Farber,  Intel: Contracts Out For Killings Of Alex Jones, Elon Musk, Chase Geiser's Family Swatted Middle Of Night, Based On On False Report
Alex Jones Says Intel Told Him It's The Ukrainians—And One InfoWars Reporter, Jamie White, Got Shot To Death Days Ago In Austin, Returning Home. White Was On Zelensky's Kill List​   https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/intel-contracts-out-for-killings

​  Celia Farber,  Trump Administration Blocks Kennedy CDC Pick Dr. Dave Weldon, RFK Jr. "Very Upset." Weldon's Official Statement Here
"I Have Learned The Hard Way Don't Mess With Pharma."​   https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/trump-administration-blocks-kennedy

​  Jon Rappaport,  Dave Weldon dumped as CDC nominee; is anybody talking about the real secret here?​  I am; the scandal they want you to forget   https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/dave-weldon-dumped-as-cdc-nominee

Massie Donations Pour In - Jewish Group Vows To Help Trump Oust Him​   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/massie-donations-pour-jewish-group-vows-help-trump-oust-him

​  Trump says no Palestinians will be expelled from Gaza as he presses takeover plan
'Nobody is expelling any Palestinians,' US president says after Israeli minister vows to erect office to oversee forced displacements​   
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-says-no-palestinians-will-be-expelled-from-gaza-as-he-presses-takeover-plan/3507836

​  Yale Suspends Palestine Activist After AI Article Linked Her to Terrorism
Helyeh Doutaghi attended events sponsored by Samidoun, a pro-Palestine group subject to U.S. sanctions.
​  The dystopian future is here. Yale University has suspended a scholar in its law school after a Jewish news website that uses AI to produce articles called her a member of a terrorist group. It comes as the Trump administration has launched a relentless campaign to silence any speech sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.​   https://gizmodo.com/yale-suspends-palestine-activist-after-ai-article-linked-her-to-terrorism-2000575148

​  Professor at Center of Columbia University Deportation Scandal is Former Israeli Spy
​  Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), was abducted by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Saturday for his role in organizing protests last year against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Khalil’s dean, Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo, head of the School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli military intelligence officer and official at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. Yarhi-Milo played a significant role in drumming up public concern about a supposed wave of intolerable anti-Semitism sweeping over the campus, thereby laying the groundwork for the extensive crackdown on civil liberties that has followed the protests.​   https://www.mintpressnews.com/professor-columbia-university-scandal-former-israeli-spy/289231/

​  Former head of Israeli military intelligence welcomes 'chaos' in Syria
Tamir Hayman said infighting between Syrian factions was beneficial, but added Israel must remain silent on the matter
​  "Everyone is fighting each other. An agreement with the Kurds on the first day, a massacre against the Alawites on the second day, and a threat to the Druze on the third day... All this chaos in addition to an Israeli attack on the south... All this chaos is somewhat good for Israel," he explained.​  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/former-head-israeli-military-intelligence-welcomes-chaos-syria

During the "ceasefire":  Israel kills three Palestinians every 24 hours in Gaza, using snipers, drones, and starvation as genocidal tools​   https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6642/Israel-kills-three-Palestinians-every-24-hours-in-Gaza,-using-snipers,-drones,-and-starvation-as-genocidal-tools

​  Honest (former) Politician, Dennis Kucinich, The Genesis of Sectarian Death Squads in Syria: The Fall of Assad to US-Supported Extremists and the Massacre of Christians and Alawites
  As I reflect on America’s disastrous policies in Syria, I am left with a haunting question: Why would the United States pursue strategies that have led to the slaughter of Christians and Alawites, the destruction of ancient communities, and the triumph of extremism?
​  For years, as a Member of the House of Representatives, I stood on the floor of Congress and sounded the alarm about reckless regime-change policies. I opposed the neoconservative “Clean Break” strategy.
​  I spoke out against the Iraq War in 2002, knowing it would unleash sectarian violence and provide a breeding ground for jihadist groups. I rejected the illegal U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, warning that removing Gaddafi would turn Libya into a failed state and open the door to Islamic extremists.
​  Each time, I was ignored, dismissed, or even vilified by those Washington insiders eager to remake the world in their own image, (and to cash in while doing so) without regard to the human cost.
​  I demanded transparency.
I demanded accountability.
​  I called for a congressional investigation into the CIA’s role in arming extremist groups.
I was met with official silence and media-induced public ridicule.
​  In 2013, I opposed Obama’s plan to bomb Syria, warning that U.S. military intervention would do nothing but strengthen jihadists. When I traveled to Syria in 2017 with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, I spoke directly with Christian leaders, civilians, and government officials who told us what the American media refused to report: The U.S. was not helping the Syrian people—it was destroying them.
​  I came back determined to expose the truth, to tell the American people that our tax dollars were funding a war that targeted innocent people, people whose families had lived in the region for centuries.
​  Most in mainstream media, every loyal to war narratives, dismissed the findings. The bipartisan political establishment stayed the course, ensuring that weapons and resources continued to flow into the hands of extremists.
​  Now, in the aftermath of Assad’s fall, the worst-case scenario has come to pass. Cities that once housed some of the world’s oldest Christian communities lie in ruins, their people slaughtered or driven into exile. Christians and Alawites are labeled heretics by the very groups America helped empower.​ And I ask again: Why? 
 https://www.globalresearch.ca/genesis-sectarian-death-squads-syria/5881948

US steered Syrian Kurds toward Damascus deal, sources say​   https://www.voanews.com/a/us-steered-syrian-kurds-toward-damascus-deal-sources-say/8008684.html

​  Erdoğan welcomes Syrian deal with Kurdish forces
Turkish President Erdoğan has welcomed the agreement between the Kurdish SDF and the Syrian government, saying it "will contribute to the country’s security and stability."​   
https://www.duvarenglish.com/erdogan-welcomes-syrian-deal-with-kurdish-forces-news-65783

Syria's Jolani Invited To EU Donor Summit At Very Moment His Troops Massacre Alawites, Christians​   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/syrias-jolani-invited-eu-donor-summit-very-moment-his-troops-executing-alawites

​  NEW STUDY - COVID-19 Vaccine “Millions of Lives Saved” Claim Debunked by Real-World Data
Statistical analysis dismantles Dr. Peter Hotez’s claim that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions, exposing a contradiction with real-world mortality data.​   
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/new-study-covid-19-vaccine-millions

​  Meryl Nass MD,  How you do it: Suggest industry fix the problem. If they don't, THEN you fix the problem with regulation
"The dyes do little other than to make unhealthy food appear more appealing."​   https://merylnass.substack.com/p/how-you-do-it-suggest-industry-fix

​  Health Secretary Tells CEOs To Remove Artificial Dyes From Food

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told executives from top food companies that he wants artificial dyes out of the nation’s food supply before he leaves office, according to a food company trade association email.​   
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/health-secretary-tells-ceos-remove-artificial-dyes-food

​  From Jane Orient MD,  Public Health Watch: Is There a Vaccine-Autism Connection?
​  The whole concern about MMR and autism is believed to have originated in a 1998 paper in The Lancet by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and 12 others. The journal retracted the paper 12 years later, and the British General Medical Council revoked Dr. Wakefield’s medical license.
​  Dr. Wakefield was not the first person to suggest an association, and hundreds of thousands of parents have reported that their normally developing child suddenly regressed (losing eye contact, speech, motor skills, etc.), often after a well-baby visit that involved “baby shots.”
​  Nearly 90% of autism cases may be regressive, according to a 2018 study by Ozonoff, et al., a fact not compatible with a genetic cause. Rather, it implicates a sudden toxic exposure.​   
https://aapsonline.org/public-health-watch-is-there-a-vaccine-autism-connection/

​Meryl Nass MD,  Bird Flu: Kennedy calls for testing drugs in poultry for prevention and treatment:  What a novel idea.   https://merylnass.substack.com/p/bird-flu-kennedy-calls-for-testing

Dr Nass, Fowl Play: How Chicken Genetics Barons Created the Egg Crisis​:  Time for a crash course in how the food industry was lost?   https://merylnass.substack.com/p/fowl-play-how-chicken-genetics-barons

Hypocrites: Rainforest Decimated To Build Mega Road For UN Climate Change Summit,  Steve Watson​  Literally paving over paradise​   
https://modernity.news/2025/03/12/hypocrites-rainforest-decimated-to-build-mega-road-for-un-climate-change-summit/

Biotic Pump, Ecorestoration and River Runoff​:  Why plant transpiration is an investment -- Anastassia Makarieve and  Didi Pershouse​   https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/biotic-pump-ecorestoration-and-river

​Drip Watering Gardener (pictured before dawn in spring-forward garden with fresh cedar mulch outside of beds)