Germany is currently mulling reducing its focus on the long hyped ‘green’ initiatives as it scrambles to ramp up lagging defense manufacturing after recently approving a 100 billion euro military revamp in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Unnamed officials have told Bloomberg that this could involve “re-routing existing subsidies for eliminating coal-fired power plants to help defense manufacturers build new production facilities” – which also comes soon on the heels of Berlin approving transfer of its Leopard main battle tanks to Ukrainian forces, which constituted a stark policy reversal.
A coal-fired power station in Garzweiler. AFP/Getty Images
“The discussions between Germany’s federal government and regional states are aimed at providing the country’s armed forces with more weapons and ammunition and creating jobs in regions that are affected by the shift away from coal, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the talks are confidential,” the report detailed.
One particular large German defense contractor named in the report is Rheinmetall AG, which is planning a new factory to manufacture ammunition components in the state of Saxony, which remains a major coal-producing powerhouse for the country.
Conservative media outlet Breitbart pointed out we could be witnessing a great reset fail in progress- ironically enough, given the very cash intended to kill the coal industry will now go towards bolstering arms manufacturing.
The Bundeswehr, with about 250,000+ troops, has long been described as woefully undersupplied, especially in the scenario of ever having to fend off a hostile power, or in a WW3 situation in Europe.
Heading into 2023, Goldman was bearish on most asset classes, except commodities where the bank forecast a 43% gain as “supply shortages bite.” Since then the commodity picture has ebbed and flowed, and after commodities experienced a modest bounce following China’s unexpected reopening, they have resumed sinking with oil trading just above the Biden admin’s (supposed) SPR refill floor of $72, despite a near consensus that Chinese oil demand will hit record highs in 2023.
So has the recent setback dented Goldman’s optimism? Not at all: in fact, according to Goldman chief commodity strategist, not only will oil rise back above $100 a barrel this year, it will rise much more in 2024 when it will face a serious supply problem as spare production capacity runs out.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, Goldman chief commodity strategist Jeff Currie said that with sanctions likely to cause Russian oil exports to drop and Chinese demand expected to recover as the country ends its Covid Zero policy, prices will rise above $100 from their current level of around $80. Meanwhile, doubling down on his key long-term thesis, Currie said that a lack of spending in the industry on production needed to meet demand will also be a driver of higher prices, and this lack of capacity may become a big issue by 2024.
“The commodity super cycle is a sequence of price spikes with each high higher and each low higher,” said Currie, who predicted that by May, oil markets should flip to a deficit of supply compared to demand. That could use up much of the unused capacity global producers have, which will send prices higher.
Don’t let the fraudulence of this civilization eclipse the supernova of authenticity hidden just beneath that thin membrane.
Don’t let the vapid artificiality of mainstream culture cause you to miss the weird magic of life as it actually is.
Don’t let the barrage of advertisements screaming “THIS IS NEVER ENOUGH” distract from the symphony of joy in your cells at simply being alive.
Don’t let the nonstop corporate messaging that you are ugly conceal from you your radiant beauty.
Don’t let the Valentine’s Day products from Hallmark steal the spotlight from our wide open hearts and our roaring passion.
Don’t let the authoritative dronings of the imperial pundits mask the fact that they are babies made of mysteries and stardust.
Don’t let the feigned confidence of the people around you trick you into thinking that any of us really knows anything.
Don’t let all the buildings and billboards make you forget that no matter where you go you are always in the thick of nature.
Don’t let the deluge of lies and propaganda cause you to lose sight of the fact that they are trying to pour concrete over a bottomless abyss of truth.
Don’t let the footsteps marching to the beat of the imperial drum drown out the ancient song at the heart of consciousness.
Don’t let this civilization’s insistence that you are finite delude you into missing your own boundlessness.
Where it seems like there is an absence of depth, there are depths that couldn’t be explored in a thousand lifetimes.
Where it appears that there is an absence of truth, truth hides just behind the eyes which perceive this.
There are galaxies hidden in supermarket aisles. There are universes hidden in parking lots.
Just beneath the superficial phoniness, there’s a reality that is older than the stars.
Just beneath the capitalist tedium, there’s an endless fountain of amazement.
Just beneath the collective psychosis, there’s an oddly familiar sanity.
Just beneath the indoctrinated familiarity, a real encounter is waiting to happen.
Just beneath the hopelessness of our current plight, a great power is cracking a smile.
Our rulers aren’t actually worried about “Russian influence”, they’re worried about dissent. They’re worried the public won’t consent to the “great power competition” they plan to subject us to for the foreseeable future unless they can exert massive influence over our minds, because they know that otherwise we will recognize that our interests are directly harmed by the economic warfare, exploding military spending and nuclear brinkmanship which necessarily accompanies that campaign to reign in Russia and stop the rise of China.
Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of “Russian propaganda”.
I know I’m not a Russian propagandist. I’m not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia. My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind. I’m literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.
Yet for years I’ve watched people pointing at me as an example of what “Russian propaganda” looks like. This has helped inform my understanding of all the panic about “Russian influence” that’s been circulating these last six years, and given me some insight into how seriously it should be taken.
That’s one reason why I wasn’t surprised by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files revelations about Hamilton 68, an information op run by DC swamp monsters and backed by imperialist think tanks which generated hundreds if not thousands of completely bogus mainstream news reports about online Russian influence over the years.
Hamilton 68 purported to track Russian attempts to influence western thought on social media, but Twitter eventually figured out that the “Russians” the operation has been tracking were actually mostly real, mostly American accounts who just happened to say things that didn’t perfectly align with the official Beltway consensus. These accounts were often right-leaning, but also included people like Consortium News editor Joe Lauria, who’s about as far from a rightist as you can get.
They played a massive role in fanning the flames of public hysteria about online Russian influence, but while they did this by pretending to track the behavior of Russian influence ops, in reality they were tracking dissent.
One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being brainwashed by western propaganda into panicking about Russian propaganda, something that has no meaningful existence in the west. Before RT was shut down it was drawing a whopping 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. The much-touted Russian election interference campaign on Facebook was mostly unrelated to the election and affected “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” according o Facebook. Research by New York University into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”
“There’s a whole list of things we’re developing it for,” Walker explained. “Not just for viruses, we’re applying it for like, oncology … gene editing … at least internally our focus will be to move beyond COVID.”
‘I hope we don’t find out that somehow this mRNA lingers in the body and like – because it has to be affecting something hormonal to impact menstrual cycles.’
(LifeSiteNews) — In another shocking video by Project Veritas, a top-ranking Pfizer employee can be seen on camera admitting that the company’s experimental COVID-19 vaccines have a “concerning” impact on women’s reproductive health.
The video, released by the investigative organization Thursday evening, once again shows the man identified as Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer’s director of research and development for strategic operations and mRNA scientific planning, admitting what LifeSiteNews and others outlets have been reporting since 2021, namely that when it comes to the COVID-19 injections, “There is something irregular about the menstrual cycles.”
“There is something irregular about the menstrual cycles. So, people will have to investigate that down the line,” Walker unknowingly told the undercover journalist in a clandestinely recorded video.
“The [COVID] vaccine shouldn’t be interfering with that [menstrual cycles]. So, we don’t really know,” the executive added.
Casually hypothesizing about what could be causing this “concerning” side effect – a side effect that was constantly denied by the mainstream medical establishment, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – Walker told the undercover journalist, “I hope we don’t find out that somehow this mRNA lingers in the body and like – because it has to be affecting something hormonal to impact menstrual cycles.”
“I hope we don’t discover something really bad down the line,” continued Walker, adding, “If something were to happen downstream and it was, like, really bad? I mean, the scale of that scandal would be enormous.”
Dr Jordan B Peterson and Amala Ekpunobi discuss her early life being raised in a far left household, the instances that caused her to question the all-encompassing ideology she had been fed, and her rise to providence as an internet and podcast personality, advocating for the truth across party lines.
Raised in a far-left activist household, twenty-two-year-old Amala Ekpunobi was once a student organizer for the left. Unanswered questions–and a search for the truth–led her to a complete ideological transformation. Passionately sharing her new conservative values online, Amala became a viral social media sensation. Now the host of PragerU’s popular show “Unapologetic with Amala,” she inspires millions of young people every day to discover the truth, defend their values, and lead better lives.
This is because Social Security is not “insurance.” It’s not a “trust fund.” It’s just a tax and a welfare program. The money current pensioners paid in was spent on other people years ago. It’s gone.
The federal government could abolish Social Security altogether, yet keep the Social Security tax in place.
After French protestors took the street to complain about the increase in the retirement age, I read quite a few jokes in social media about how protesting in France is the local pastime.
That may be true, but let it not be said that Americans don’t feel very, very strongly about their own national pension program. I say this because in response to my article last week on raising the Social Security age, I received more furious responses than I have for any other article in many years. Here’s one example from a man whose initials are MF:
What are you, just nuts??? Having paid in to SS for over 40 years and experiencing big gov losing my records for some of my most productive years, so my stipend has been reduced; And after my wife and I planned for retirement and saved while contributing to SS, my wife died 2 months after her 65 birthday never having received a single payment from SS after paying in for 42 years. There are no spousal survivor benefits. All the contributions she paid in are gone. Age of qualification isn’t the issue. Corruption, graft and top heavy bureaucracy, while incompetents administer at the front line are the problems. Either wise up, do your research or stay away from topics you seem totally ignorant about.
Here’s one from reader RG:
I didn’t make the promise [to pay a pension at age 65] the guvvmint did. … You are a useless f**k wasting computer ink. Get your head out of your a** and breath the gathering doom. My father fought in France in WW2 and Korea, didn’t live long enough to collect his benefits nor my mother-in-law. F**k you again.
A less emotional reader suggested that instead of reducing Social Security payouts—as I suggested—the better plan would be to “to do away with the social security program and give me the money I contributed over the past 45 years, with interest of course.”
These sorts of responses all share a common thread. Many are under the impression that they have some sort of promise or agreement with the federal government about pension funds. The supposed agreement is that money these former workers “paid into” the Social Security “trust fund” will be paid back to them. Some seem to even believe that the money is stored somewhere, earning interest, and can be returned.
Well, I have bad news for everyone who sincerely believes the government lie and thinks they have some sort of claim to today’s tax revenues due to a “promise” from the feds decades ago: there is no promise, no agreement, and you have no legal claim to money that was “paid in.”
It’s Not Insurance. There Is No Trust Fund. Your Money Is Gone.
This is because Social Security is not “insurance.” It’s not a “trust fund.” It’s just a tax and a welfare program. The money current pensioners paid in was spent on other people years ago. It’s gone.
Social Security is not an insurance program. A Social Security “account” bears no legal resemblance whatsoever to a bank checking or saving account. Social Security bestows no contractual rights or any other type of property right on workers.
In other words, Social Security as it is currently structured has nothing to do with legally enforceable promises or guarantees. There is no “trust fund” as that term is commonly understood, no funded segregated accounts, no IOUs or bonds stored in some lockbox, or anywhere else for that matter. Social Security is neither solvent nor bankrupt.
In Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court set the record straight. Social Security is actually nothing more than an umbrella term for two schemes that are legally unrelated: a taxation scheme and a welfare scheme.
Workers and their families have no legal claim, grounded in the Fifth Amendment or elsewhere, on the FICA tax payments that they make into the U.S. Treasury, or that are made on their behalf. Those funds are gone, commingled with the general assets of the U.S. government and fully available for purposes unrelated to Social Security. Being mere welfare recipients—not creditors or holders of equitable property rights—workers have hopes or expectations of future benefits, but no enforceable rights to them.
Nestor stood on the shoulders of a previous case, Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937). In Davis, the Court had confirmed that Social Security is not an insurance program. During the Helvering oral arguments, the Chief Justice had anticipated Nestor when he speculated from the bench that Congress would have the authority to abolish the welfare component while keeping the taxation component in place.
Thus, it is inappropriate either for the left to call Social Security “solvent” or for the right to call it “bankrupt.” A welfare program funded by general tax revenues cannot go bankrupt because its sponsor is a governmental entity with the power to tax and print money, not to mention reduce or eliminate altogether future benefits. The terms “solvency” and “bankruptcy” are appropriately applied to human beings, corporations, trusts, and the like. But not to Social Security. Social Security is not an entity.
This is why raising the retirement age for Social Security has nothing to do with what is “paid in.” The federal government could abolish Social Security altogether, yet keep the Social Security tax in place.
