While the end of the world approaches, it’s time for all of us to be the best Rufus possible

I remember when I was a little child. Would you believe that I would climb out of my crib and stand on the edge, and then stand there for a moment or two before I fell and landed on my head?

Yeah. Good times.

I was normal. Not an exception.

In this post we will continue with the onslaught of major global changes that are all in full swing RIGHT here and RIGHT now. Whoa! Things are moving hot heavy.

China to restrict visas for US officials

The tit-for-tat move comes after Washington placed similar restrictions on the Chinese, citing “human rights abuses”

China has decided to restrict visas for a number of US officials in response to similar measures introduced by Washington earlier this month over alleged human rights abuses.

"The Chinese side decided to impose retaliatory visa restrictions on certain US officials who spread lies on the issue of human rights, imposed sanctions against China and harmed China's interests," stated Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Thursday. Wang said the move was made "to protect the sovereignty, security and development interests of the PRC.

The spokesperson claims that the US used, what he called, the false pretext of human rights issues to [1] interfere in the internal affairs of China, [2] discredit Beijing, and [3] put pressure on Chinese officials. Wang stated that such actions are a serious violation of the basic principles of international law and international relations.

China’s foreign ministry has so far not confirmed which exact officials will fall under these new restrictions, but the spokesperson said that those who invented the “lies” surrounding the issue of human rights and harmed China’s national interests already know who they are themselves.

The announcement comes after The US State Department imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials who Washington claims are responsible for the intimidation and harassment of human rights activists and dissidents in China and around the world.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited the alleged “genocide” of Uighur muslims and repression of dissidents in Hong Kong and Tibet, saying the US

“rejects efforts by [People’s Republic of China] officials to harass, intimidate, surveil and abduct members of ethnic and religious minority groups, including those who seek safety abroad, and US citizens, who speak out on behalf of these vulnerable populations."

The US urged China to…

end its ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, repressive policies in Tibet, crackdown on fundamental freedoms in Kong Kong,” and other abuses elsewhere.

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Tit 4 Tat

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A Rufus takes responsibility

Do you take ownership, and responsibility for your community? Or, are you going to stand by and do nothing? The future belongs to the unselfish, the members of a community that participate. video 3MB

Singapore appears to embrace the West

Remark by a Singapore friend :
Lee Hsien Loong is that piece of shit who betrayed his father and his siblings by colluding with the enemy — racist UMNO — which gleefully kicked Singapore (the little red dot on the map) out of the Malaysian Federation and caused LKY so much tears and grief!
When LKY was Singapore’s PM, he made it clear to Washington that US troops will never be allowed to make use of Singapore as a military base or a staging post in the event of a war between America and China.
Yet, the spineless HS Loong is now running head over heels to lick Yankee Joe Biden’s boots before the world press! How low and despicable can anybody get?
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Poland wants to cut-up Ukraine and sever ties with Russia

Medvedev for more than the past week has leveled consistent criticism that Washington is a “puppeteer” behind modern Poland.

Earlier in the month The Washington Examiner related Medvedev’s words as posted in an essay to social media channels as follows:

The essay, posted on Medvedev's Telegram channel, claimed that Poland and Russia have a long and "common history" that destines them to work together but that the Poles had been led astray by the U.S., "their puppeteers from across the ocean with clear signs of senile insanity."

This had been followed by Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergei Andreev just days ago saying it’s a possibility that Moscow might be forced to shutter its embassy in Warsaw in response to Polish authorities moving to expel 45 Russian diplomats who stand accused of spying, or are at least under suspicion, with the Ukraine war ongoing.

In particular Medvedev’s newest comments take aim at Poland’s reneging on crucial gas contracts…

“In 2020, Warsaw imported up to 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, but now it intends to abandon previous contracts. The volume of gas supplies from Russia to Poland this year has already decreased by 13% compared to last year,” Medvedev  explained. “Reverse supplies of the same Russian gas have been proposed as a replacement from Germany, as well as imports of LNG from Qatar, Norway and the United States. Economic benefits have fallen victim to bad political decisions.”

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Wants a war!

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Trump: The U.S. Is Now “Like A Third World Country” As The Supply Chain Crisis Gets Even WORSE

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A message by an American for Americans…

They keep promising us that things will start getting better.  When will that actually happen?  Once winter was over, the supply chain crisis was supposed to be on the way out.  Instead, as you will see below, even CNN is being forced to admit that it is getting even worse.  The war in Ukraine and a new wave of COVID lockdowns in China are being blamed, but those are only two pieces of the puzzle.  The truth is that we are now in the third year of this epic supply chain crisis, and there is no end in sight.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump told an interviewer that he is greatly disturbed by what he is currently witnessing

‘You go to a store, you don’t have bread. We’re like a third world country. They don’t have things. You go to buy something at Tiffany, you go to buy something at a hardware store — high, low — they don’t have product.’

Of course Trump is 100 percent correct.

Throughout our entire economy, there are shortages, delays and backlogs.

Trump himself has been personally affected by this.  In fact, in the interview he appeared to refer to a wait of “nine months” for something that he had ordered…

‘They say — even me, when I order things, like for furnishings, for a building or something — they say it’s going to take nine months to get it,’ Trump said. ‘Used to be like, same day service.’

Prior to 2020, most Americans never would have imagined that this sort of supply chain crisis could be possible.

But here we are.

And according to CNN, experts are openly admitting that our supply chain problems are now “getting worse”…

Problems with global supply chains were supposed to be getting better by now. Instead, experts say they are getting worse.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which cut off exports from Ukraine and put Russian businesses under sanction, has set off a series of new supply-chain bottlenecks. So has a surge in Covid cases in China, which has led to temporary lockdowns in parts of the country.

So when will things finally start getting better?

When the war in Ukraine ends?

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

When the COVID pandemic is over?

If you are waiting for that to happen, you are going to be waiting for an awfully long time.

And what is going to happen if another major “black swan event” comes along?

We are so vulnerable right now, and we should have never allowed ourselves to become so deeply dependent on other nations.

For example, once upon a time the U.S. had a dominant position in global computer chip manufacturing.  But now the vast majority of our chips come from overseas, and the war in Ukraine is threatening to take the chip shortage to an entirely new level

Ukraine and Russia don’t produce computer chips used by global automakers. But Ukraine is the world’s leading source of neon, a gas needed for the lasers used in the chip-making process. While some chipmakers have stockpiled neon ahead of the fighting, there are concerns about the long-term availability of the gas.

“People expected the semiconductor shortage to continue. But nobody predicted Ukraine,” said Bernard Swiecki, director of research at the Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan think tank.

The chip shortage is already affecting almost every industry in America to at least a certain degree, and now we are being told that it could get a lot worse in the months ahead.

That is really bad news.

As shortages intensify, that is going to make our raging inflation crisis even more severe as well.  There is way too much money chasing way too few goods and services, and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

What this means is the standard of living for most Americans is going to continue to go down.  According to two prominent economists, “the average American should budget an extra $5,200 this year for higher prices”

Meanwhile, economists with Bloomberg are warning that the average American should budget an extra $5,200 this year for higher prices – or an extra $433 every month.

Economists Andrew Husby and Anna Wong write that households can expect to pay thousands more in 2022 for the same basket of goods and services they used last year.

Needless to say, this is just the beginning.

This inflationary spiral is going to continue to escalate until we have a full-blown nightmare on our hands.

And with each passing month, money will just get tighter and tighter for hard working American families.  In fact, one survey has found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers are now completely running out of money between paychecks…

Now, workers are running out of money faster, Salary Finance found.

Roughly 20% of employees regularly run out of money between paychecks, up from 15% last year, according to the survey of more than 3,000 working adults in February.

Making ends meet is going to become increasingly painful, and the shortages and the price hikes are just going to intensify in the months ahead.

Some of the things that we will soon see will be absolutely unprecedented.  For example, one of Steve Quayle’s readers says that the price of eggs is about to double at her local store…

I know I sent an email out to you both in regard to the warnings I was given by several different store managers. Well I have another one. Yesterday the store manager at Price Less Foods told me that the price of eggs will be doubling and there will be a massive shortage of eggs. I am lucky to live in an area where I can purchase fresh eggs from several different people who have chickens, not everyone can.

The reason why the price of eggs is going to rise so dramatically is because of the new bird flu pandemic that has already killed more than 14 million chickens and turkeys.

We are being hit by so many things at once, and the American people are becoming quite restless.

Just this week, a new survey found that just 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy.

In April 2021, 52 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the economy.

So much has changed over the past year, and a lot of people out there think that things can’t possibly get any worse than they are right now.

But they will, because the truth is that we are only in the very early chapters of this nightmare.

Vicki says…

The shooting war has been won by Russia.

The economic war is reaching the same ending, at a bit slower pace.

Not that any of this is apparent in the US news reporting.

China in Africa

Business, factories, labor and economy are far better than selling F-35 fighter jets and bombs to African dictators. Don’t you think? video 81MB

Sanctionistas go shopping for rubles

2022-03-26

As the situation stands today:

1. Russia has announced that since the US and the EU have defaulted on their US dollar and euro obligations, respectively, by freezing Russian reserves, Russia will now only sell natural gas for rubles.

2. There is no other source of sufficient quantities of natural gas available; thus, the EU has no choice but to continue importing natural gas from Russia.

3. The EU has to keep the gas flowing or it will be unable to make it through next winter without shutting down all industrial production or letting the housing stock go unheated.

How will the EU get the required quantities of rubles? Good question!

The following comprehensive analysis (credit: “adventurist”) answers it pretty well.

Oil for rubles

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Grandmother Rufus

So cute, but true. Show some appreciation for all sides and help others as only you know how. Let others laugh and make fun. You are unique. Be the best that you can be and always be the Rufus. video 8MB

The Western World Has Had Its Run

Gold ruble, Ukraine military collapse
• March 29, 2022

Lots of startling changes yesterday. Russia announced, apparently, a gold-backed or gold-related ruble. I haven’t had time to think about all the implications. Information is hard to come by, because the US blocks Russian news in order to control the Ukraine narrative and war propaganda. The Bretton Woods system collapsed when the West seized Russian central bank reserves, and it seems that the gold ruble adds to the end of the US dollar as world reserve currency under Bretton Woods. The implications could be vast, and the Washington idiots might very well wish they had left the Russians alone. I told them over and over that Russia had had enough of them, but the arrogant idiots didn’t listen. The sanctions, it seems, have brought about regime change in the West, reducing its power and influence.

Another big development is that apparently Ukraine has agreed to be a neutral country, no NATO, no foreign bases, no nuclear weapons, and accepts eastern Ukraine gong its own way. We will see if US puppet Zelensky is permitted to sign what Ukraine has agreed. Meanwhile, Russia has stopped its assault on Kiev, and is focused on clearing the remaining Nazi militias out of the Donbass region. I think the low-intelligence governments in Poland and Romania will get the message, and the US missile bases in those countries will be closed before too long.

These are major developments with many large implications. The World Economic Forum’s “reset” has likely been replaced by a Russian-Chinese reset.

The US ran on arrogance for so long that it has hollowed itself out. The Western world’s fate is unclear. It seems no one in intellectual, business, or political leadership positions believes in freedom and civil liberty. The US certainly is busy at work cancelling itself:

Here.

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Present generations of Americans will not recognize their country. Rivers, mountains, streets, schools, public spaces, even towns are losing their names and acquiring new politically correct names. Normally, this is what outside conquerors do to a country, but we are doing it to ourselves. A country that destroys its own monuments and history is lost.

My conclusion is that the days of the West are over. The West is drowning in accumulated mistakes and degeneracy. The moral fiber in the leadership ranks is gone

MM describes a local BBQ / Seafood place

Good place for some cheap food. You can eat your fill for under $15 USD. I go though the show and tell here. Enjoy video 110MB

Ukraine: US Biowarfare Labs Developed Disease Delivering Drones (DDD?)

It’s not just used in China, apparently.

Documents and other evidence from US funded laboratories in Ukraine suggest that Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass as well as Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Moscow has also identified specific US officials involved in the development of bioweapons in Ukraine.

Vector Drone – Very interesting BioLab Thread ty @GPlayer5150 https://t.co/OrYXszje52

— Kuts1 (@Kuts110) March 8, 2022

Of particular interest to Russian investigators are “documents testifying to the plans of the Kiev regime to use unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying and spraying deadly substances,” military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing.

#disinformation #agitprop#SouthOssetia KGB accuses #Georgia of spreading diseases via UAV's and drones, linked with US and #Lugar Biolab Tbilisi. https://t.co/JajVHeRpLX
— Jelger Groeneveld (@jelger_) June 7, 2020

Facts in the possession of the Russian military “prove that the Kiev regime was seriously considering the possibility of using biological weapons against the population of the Donbass and the Russian Federation,” Konashenkov added.

Russia has also identified “specific officials who took part in the creation of components of biological weapons,” the general added. He did not name any of them, however, saying only they were “the heads of divisions and employees of the US Department of Defense, as well as its main contractors.”

Een US biolab met een vreemde verzameling, Rusisch DNA.
Drones om muggen die besmet zijn los te laten.https://t.co/iEcQu7TrhG
— Petr@ (@Nomediocre_P) March 1, 2022

These campaigns were “directly related to the son of the current US president, Hunter Biden,” Konashenkov added, citing investigations in the Western media. Last week, the Daily Mail published emails showing Biden’s ties to the Pentagon contractor Metabiota, which specialized in researching pandemic causing pathogens that could be used as bioweapons.

Among other things, 🧵reports Ukraine documents on drones transporting biolab substances:

"Regarding biological weapons laboratories, the documents that reveal the plans of the Ukrainian regime 🇺🇦 to use drones to transport and disperse substances are particularly interesting."

— Pipers Creek (@piperscreekway) March 30, 2022

Hunter Biden’s involvement in the US funding of Ukrainian biolabs was brought up by Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, in a briefing last Thursday.

The results of the further analysis of documents and other evidence obtained from Ukrainian biolabs will be shared in more detail “in the near future at a special briefing,” Konashenkov promised.

More...
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Nice Chinese Girl

video. She’s on her porch. 4MB

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Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu Detected In Five More US States

An outbreak of the deadly strain of bird flu is quickly spreading across the U.S. The risk to humans is low, but bird flu could wreak havoc in the nation’s poultry industry ahead of Easter.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced on Wednesday that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was detected in five new states.

  • A non-commercial, mixed-species backyard flock (non-poultry) in Berkshire County, Massachusetts;
  • A non-commercial, mixed-species backyard flock (non-poultry) in Johnson County, Wyoming;
  • commercial poultry flock in Johnston County, North Carolina;
  • A non-commercial, backyard chicken flock (non-poultry) in Franklin County, Ohio;
  • And a backyard chicken flock (poultry) in Kidder County, North Dakota.

According to Bloomberg, USDA data shows the bird flu has been found in 23 states in flocks totaling about 17 million birds up and down Mid-Atlantic and Northeast and across the Midwest.

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More...

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Poll: 83% of Russians support Putin.

Russia’s independent sociological research organization Levada Center’s poll conducted between March 24-30 showed that Russian public’s support for the actions of their president rose by more than 10% compared to the figures in January or February. It was 69% in January and 71% in February. Poll details

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Discarded hopes and dreams.

Poor guy.

2022 04 01 10 12
She said no.

Don’t worry dude.

It happened to me also. But I did elict a ton load of sympathy from all the attractive chicks in the jewlery store when I returned the ring. Don’t you know.

Regime-ology

Regime-ology is a new field of study so the practitioners are still working out the tools and methods for interpreting regime activity. Unlike Kremlinology, on which regime-ology is modeled, the focus is not on a hierarchical structure. The Soviet empire was run by a vertical organization that operated like a corporation. The American empire is a horizontal organization modeled on the Mafia. It is a collection of elite gangster organizations jostling for power within the elite.

With Kremlinology, events could be interpreted as either a signal from the party elite or representing internal party changes. If someone disappeared from the public eye, it meant he had fallen out of favor with the party leaders. If party media reported something hanky about a party member, it was assumed to have been done with the permission of the party leaders to prepare the public for a change. The target was being shaped as a scoundrel so he could be denounced.

Regime-ology is a bit more complicated. If someone disappears for a while, it could mean nothing more than he is having a blood transfusion at one of Google’s secret rejuvenation centers. On the other hand, disparaging information about an oligarch in regime media could simply mean that one mob family is unhappy with another mob family and this is how they are communicating it. Using the media promotes the interests of the gangster class and delivers the message.

That is probably how to interpret the sudden interest by regime media in the famous Hunter Biden laptop from two years ago. For those not interested, this was the laptop that President Biden’s drug-addled son abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, which contained a trove of embarrassing information about the family. In addition to thousands of naked selfies and pics of Hunter smoking crack and meth with prostitutes, it had details of the Biden family criminal dealings.

Regime media dutifully covered this up by declaring it Russian propaganda and going as far as to imply it was a Trump campaign dirty trick. The New York Post, which was the first to report the laptop story, came under withering assault from the Silicon Valley crime families until they dropped the story. Facebook started banning people from their site for mentioning the story. Like the people air brushed from official photos in the Soviet Union, this story was erased from public view.

This is nothing new. The power of regime media is in what they can make the public ignore and this was a typical example. They do this by framing the issue as good guys versus bad guys, which is catnip for the American moralizer. Then they declare the thing to be ignored as the black hat and let the moralizers do the rest. Anyone mentioning the laptop on-line or even in private conversation was declared a crazy QAnon conspiracy theorist by others in their circle.

For no reason at all, the laptop story is back. First the intel community told the New York Times to admit they lied two years ago about it being fake. They did not mention that it was the intel community that lied, of course. Then the Washington Post was told to write about the Biden family’s criminal dealings that were on the laptop. The Post is the official organ of the intelligence community. You will recall that the Post was instrumental in the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.

Even more interesting, the scandal ridden outlet CNN has been given the green light to unleash their nutters on the story. This is a story posted by Dean Obeidallah, a former circus clown and far-left conspiracy theorist. In addition to being a conspiracy hub, CNN is also a popular landing spot for disgraced members of the intel community. Andrew McCabe and Josh Campbell landed there after being forced out of their jobs. The FBI uses CNN to control the Antifa/BLM community.

Taken together, this new interest in the Hunter Biden laptop story suggests the intel community is unhappy with the Biden crime family. It could be a warning shot about the recent rantings by Biden in Poland. This has created huge problems for the foreign policy gangsters running the war with Russia. They have been forced to spend their time telling European leaders that Biden should be ignored. This is not a good look for the Global American Empire in the middle of a crisis.

One way to look at this is that they are preparing the way for Biden to be removed from office this year. The plan was for him to pretend to be in charge through the midterm then hand things off to strong diverse female. Team Biden has been making plans for him to run again in 2024, while he is clearly in rapid decline. The Hunter Biden story could be the leverage to force Team Biden to stick to the deal. He takes the blame for the midterms, retires for health reasons and the laptop disappears.

On the other hand, this could be the start of a plot to hang the Ukraine debacle on Biden and his crooked son. The regime media is being told to sell the Ukraine war as a smashing success, but that can only go on for another month. Reality in the ground says the Russians are slowly grinding up the Ukrainian army. In a month, there will be little of it left in the east. Whether it is by force or by negotiations, the Russians will get the terms they laid out last month.

Then there are the economic sanctions. This is proving to be a disaster for the Global American Empire. The Germans just cut a deal with the Russians to buy gas in rubles, even through both sides are pretending otherwise. The Germans will buy the gas in Euros from Gazprom, which will then convert them immediately into rubles at the agreed upon exchange rate. This is de facto acceptance by Germany that they will buy gas from Russia in rubles. The rest of Europe will now follow.

What we could be seeing here is Afghanistan 2.0. The military industrial complex, the intel community and the foreign policy establishment opposed the withdraw from Afghanistan, but team Biden insisted on it. They let Afghanistan collapse and then let Team Biden take the blame for it. Notice that no one actually responsible in the military, intelligence of foreign policy realm was fired. We could be seeing the same thing afoot with the looming Ukraine disaster.

Again, regime-ology is a new field. We do not know what we do not know, so we are left to our imaginations. Maybe Hunter Biden is so mobbed up that even the thoroughly corrupt FBI has to acknowledge it. Maybe this is a feint to distract from something much worse that is in the wind. All we can know is that Hunter Biden will never be charged and we will never know the truth about the Biden family corruption. In a gangster state like America, those things are handled internally.

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Rufus delivery boy

He does it for country and family. Wow! video 4MB

Nice Chinese Girl

video. This girl reminds me of my sister-in-law. She’s short, thin and busty. Yeah. This is what China is like. 4MB

US Dollar Hegemony Ended Abruptly Last Wednesday

Interview with Margaret Flowers, Clearing the Fog

Margaret Flowers: You’re listening to Clearing the FOG, speaking truth to expose the forces of greed, with Margaret Flowers. And now I turn to my guest, Michael Hudson. Michael is the president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term, Economic Trends, ISLET. He’s a Wall Street financial analyst and a distinguished research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, in Kansas City. He’s also the author of numerous books and recently updated his book, “Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American Empire.” Thank you for taking time to speak with me today, Michael.

Michael Hudson: Well, thanks for having me on Margaret.

MF: You’ve talked a lot and written a lot about dollar hegemony and what’s happening now with de-dollarization. Can you start out by explaining to my listeners what dollar hegemony is and how it has benefited the wealthy class in the United States?

MH: Dollar hegemony seems to be the position that has just ended as of this week very abruptly. Dollar hegemony was when America’s war in Vietnam and the military spending of the 1960s and 70s drove the United States off gold. The entire US balance of payments deficit was military spending, and it began to run down the gold supply. So, in 1971, President Nixon took the dollar off gold. Well, everybody thought America has been controlling the world economy since World War I by having most of the gold and by being the creditor to the world. And they thought what is going to happen now that the United States is running a deficit, instead of being a creditor.

Well, what happened was that, as I’ve described in Super Imperialism, when the United States went off gold, foreign central banks didn’t have anything to buy with their dollars that were flowing into their countries – again, mainly from the US military deficit but also from the investment takeovers. And they found that these dollars came in, the only thing they could do would be to recycle them to the United States. And what do central banks hold? They don’t buy property, usually, back then they didn’t. They buy Treasury bonds. And so, the United States would be spending dollars abroad and foreign central banks didn’t really have anything to do but send it right back to buy treasury bonds to finance not only the balance of payments deficit, but also the budget deficit that was largely military in character. So, dollar hegemony was the system where foreign central banks keep their monetary and international savings reserves in dollars and the dollars are used to finance the military bases around the world, almost eight hundred military bases surrounding them. So, basically central banks have to keep their savings by weaponizing them, by militarizing them, by lending them to the United States, to keep spending abroad.

This gave America a free ride. Imagine if you went to the grocery store and you just paid by giving them an IOU. And then the next week you want to buy more groceries and you give them another IOU. And they say, wait a minute, you have an IOU before and you say, well just use the IOU to pay the milk company that delivers, or the farmers that deliver. You can use this as your money and just you’ll as a customer, keep writing IOU’s and you never have to pay anything because your IOU is other people’s money. Well, that’s what dollar hegemony was, and it was a free ride. And it all ended last Wednesday when the United States grabbed Russia’s reserves having grabbed Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and Venezuela’s foreign reserves and those of other countries.

And all of a sudden, this means that other countries can no longer safely hold their reserves by sending their money back, depositing them in US banks or buying US Treasury Securities, or having other US investments because they could simply be grabbed as happened to Russia. So, all of a sudden this last week, you’re seeing the world economy fracture into two parts, a dollarized part and other countries that do not follow the neoliberal policies that the United States insists that its allies follow. We’re seeing the birth of a new dual World economy.

MF: Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. So, are we seeing then other countries starting to disinvest in US dollars? You’ve written about how the treasury bonds that these central banks buy up have been basically funding our domestic economy. Are they starting to shed those bonds or what’s happening?

MH: No, they haven’t been funding our domestic economy because the Federal Reserve can create its own money to fund the domestic economy. We don’t need to borrow from foreign countries to fund our economy. We can print it ourselves. What the dollar hegemony does is fund the balance of payments deficit. It funds our spending in other economies, our spending abroad. It doesn’t help our economy, but it does help us get a free ride from other countries. The more dollars we spend in making a military base, all these military expenditures get turned over to the local Central Bank that turns and sends them back to the Federal Reserve or deposits them in US bank accounts. So, it’s the international free ride we get, not a domestic free ride.

MF: Okay. So are we seeing countries now, since this past week, starting to move their assets back to repatriate them because I know for Afghanistan, a big problem is that most of the government’s money was outside of the country and that has been used as a weapon against Afghanistan by seizing those assets and not allowing the Central Bank of Afghanistan to have them. Are we starting to see other countries repatriating their money and gold?

MH: Well, figures are only available at the end of each month, reported at the end of each month and then there’s a two-month delay, so we don’t have any idea what’s happening. But I’ve been talking to people all over the world in the last few days and the consensus is that everybody is now deciding the only place, certainly if you’re China or Russia or Kazakhstan or you’re in the Eurasian orbit, South Asia, East Asia, you realize, wait a minute, if all we have to do is something like Allende did in Chile or all we have to do is refuse to sell off our industry to American investors and they can treat us like they’ve treated Venezuela. So you can imagine that everybody’s watching this and there’s an expectation that as a result of the war in Ukraine, that’s really America’s NATO war, that this is going to create a balance-of-payments crisis throughout the whole Global South as their energy prices go up, oil prices soar, food prices are going to soar and this is going to make it impossible for them to pay their foreign debts unless they go without food and energy. Obviously, this is a political crisis. That is, the only result can be to split the world in two.

MF: You’ve been writing about this happening. You’ve written that the de-dollarization has been happening relatively quickly in recent years. So, are we now we’re now just seeing the end result of that? I mean, people said it could happen quickly. Is that exactly what we’re seeing right now?

MH: Yes, and nobody expected that it would happen this quickly. Nobody expected that it would be the United States itself that ends de-dollarization. People thought that, well, most of the sales of my book describing this super imperialism were bought by the Defense Department and they looked at it as a how -to-do-it book. And I was brought down to the White House and the Defense Department to explain to them how imperialism works.

I had expected that maybe China, Russia, and other countries would say, “We don’t want to give America free rides.” And yet it was the United States itself that broke all of this, by grabbing Russia’s reserves right after it grabbed Afghanistan’s and Venezuela’s reserves.

Nothing like this has happened in modern history, even in the 19th century wars. In the Crimean War in the mid-19th century, Russia, England and Germany, everybody kept paying the debts to the countries they were fighting against because the idea is that debts were sacrosanct. And now, all of a sudden, not only are debts are not sacrosanct, but countries can just grab foreign savings. I guess the problem began after the Shah of Iran fell and the United States grabbed Iran’s money and refused to let it pay its bond holders and started the whole war against Iran for trying to take control of its own oil resources. So, all of a sudden, the United States grabbing this has ended what everybody thought was an immutable morality.

MF: So that was in 1979 that the Shah fell in Iran and, and over the last number of decades, the United States has been increasingly using economic warfare against countries through what people call sanctions, but they’re actually, illegal unilateral coercive measures, has that been kind of driving and setting the stage for what is happening today?

MH: Yes, the International Monetary Fund has operated, basically, as an arm of the Defense Department. It’s been bailing out dictatorships, bailing out Ukraine, lending money to countries whose client oligarchies America wants to support, and not lending any money to countries that America doesn’t want to support, like Venezuela. So, its job is basically to promote neoliberal policies, and to insist that other countries balance their payments by undergoing a class war against labor.

The conditionality that the IMF insists upon for foreign borrowing is that countries devalue their currency and lower their wage rates and pass anti-labor legislation. Well, when you lower the currency’s exchange rate, what do you really lower? Food prices are set in dollars internationally, raw materials prices are, and prices for machinery and many goods. The only economic variable devalued is domestic labor (and domestic rents). The IMF has been using this kind of junk-economic free-trade policy as a means of keeping the wage rates in the Global South down. You could say it’s a financialization of an ultimately military conflict to promote neoliberal ideology.

MF: And you mentioned the lowering wages and things like that. And this is actually done because it’s favorable to US investors and US business, right? I mean, the World Bank actually has an index, the cost of doing business index, that helps inform large corporations about laws that countries pass that make them more favorable to businesses to come in.

MH: It’s even worse than that. The central aim of the World Bank is to prevent other countries from growing their own food. That is the prime directive. It will only make loans for countries to earn foreign currency and it has insisted ever since about 1950 that countries that borrow from it must shift their agriculture to plantation export crops to grow tropical crops that cannot be grown in the United States for environmental and weather reasons. And the countries must not grow their own food and must not undertake Land Reform or small family-based farming. So, it insisted on foreign-owned agribusiness in large plantation agriculture. And what that means is that countries that have borrowed for agricultural loans have not been loans to produce their own food. It’s been to compete with each other producing tropical export crops while being increasingly dependent on the United States for their food supplies, and for their grain. And that’s part of the corner they painted them into that is going to be creating such a world famine this summer.

MF: I definitely want to get into that as well as the energy situation and the climate crisis, but before we do that, I just want you to comment quickly on how this has also been driving countries to seek alternatives. The United States removed Russia from the SWIFT system, which is the international mechanism for doing trading and finance. It threatened China if they didn’t denounce what was happening with Russia and Ukraine to kick them out of the SWIFT system. So, this hubris of the United States is also kind of driving countries away to seek other alternatives, right?

MH: That’s the whole point. Well, fortunately they’ve been threatening to kick Russia out of SWIFT for the last two years. And so, Russia and China have been putting in place an alternative system. So, they almost pretty smoothly are shifting over to using their own currency with each other instead of using the dollar. And that’s part of what has ended the dollar standard and ended dollar hegemony.

If the way you have dollar hegemony is to have other countries deposit your money in your banks and handle their oil trade with each other by financing it in dollars, but all of a sudden you grab all their dollars and you don’t let them use US banks to pay for their oil and their trade with each other, then they’re going to shift to a different system. And that’s exactly what has ended the dollar hegemony, as you just pointed out.

MF: So, let’s get a little bit into where things are headed with this new situation, a rapidly changing situation. It may be hard to say what’s happening, but you talked about a food crisis this summer. Can you talk a little bit about more about that and does the conflict in Ukraine feed into that?

MH: Well, as President Putin and Lavrov have said, the fighting in Ukraine isn’t really over Ukraine at all. It’s a fight over what shape the world will take and whether the world will be unipolar or, as it now appears, multipolar. The US, for the last year before it began to escalate attacks on the Russian-speaking Ukraine, was trying to block Europe from, and especially Germany, from buying Russia gas and oil.

There are three pillars of American foreign policy that base American power. The first pillar is the oil industry. That’s the most powerful industry next to banking in the United States. And United States throughout the 20th century, along with Britain and France, have controlled the world oil trade.

That has benefited the United States in two ways. Number one, we are a major oil exporter because we have a big oil and gas industry. But, number two, our US companies control the foreign oil trade. So that if some country, say Chile or Venezuela, does something that the United States doesn’t like, like growing their own food or pursuing a socialist policy, the United States can simply cut off their oil and sanction them. Without oil, they don’t have energy to drive the cars or power their factories or drive their GDP.

So, the American war in Ukraine is really a war against Germany. Russia is not the enemy. Germany and Europe are the enemy and the United States made it very clear. This is a war to lock in our allies so they cannot trade with Russia. They cannot buy Russian oil. They must be dependent on American oil for which they will have to pay three or four times as much. They will have to be dependent on American liquefied natural gas for fertilizer. If they don’t buy American gas for fertilizer, and we don’t let them buy from Russia, then they cannot put fertilizer on the land and the crop yield will fall by about 50% without fertilizer.

So, the, the war in Ukraine was to make Russia look so bad by defending itself against the attacks by the Ukrainian right wing in the Russian-speaking areas that the US has said, look at how bad Russia is. You’ve got to forego buying oil and gas or grain or titanium or palladium or anything else from Russia.

And so, the effect of this war has been to lock the NATO countries into dependency on the United States because the great fear of the United States in the last few years is that as America is de-industrializing, these countries are looking to the part of the world that’s growing, China, Central Asia, Russia, South Asia. And the United States feared losing control of its satellites mainly in NATO, but also in South America. So, it sanctioned and blocked their ability to buy non-US energy. They’re blocking their ability to buy non-US food, blocking their ability to invest in or use their surplus to get prosperous by investing in China, Russia, or Eurasia.

So, this is basically a war of America to lock in its allies. Well, the result is that oil prices, now that you can’t get Russian oil, are going to go way, way up, and that is going to create a crisis for many of the Global South countries that are oil deficit countries. The fertilizer companies in Germany have already been closing down because they say, without Russian gas, we make our fertilizer out of gas, and if we can’t get Russian gas, we can’t produce the fertilizer that. So, world fertilizer prices are going way up.

Russia is the largest grain exporter. And now that grain exports are being blocked by the sanctions, the question is, what are North Africa and the Near East going to do that have been depending very largely on Russian grain exports? Their food prices are going to go way up.

You can imagine just from seeing what’s happening in the United States when gas prices go up here, food prices go up here, not only does it put a squeeze on individual family budgets, but throughout the world, it puts the squeeze on the balance of payments of other countries. And so, they’re desperate. How are they going to pay the higher prices unless they borrow even more money from US banks? And of course, that’s another arm of US policy. The US banks hope to make a killing in making loans at rising interest rates to third world countries.

And of course, arms exports. NATO in the last few days has agreed to make American arms exports to increase their purchase of arms. So, the stock market has been soaring in the last few days. They say this, the world famine, the world crisis is a bonanza for Wall Street. The oil company stocks are going way up, the military, industrial stocks, Boeing Raytheon way up, the bank stocks. This is America’s great power grab, and it realizes, when it can create a crisis and tell the Global South or poor countries your money or your life. This is how most of the great property grabs and conquests have been made throughout history.

MF: And just this week at the NATO meetings, President Biden basically said food prices are going to go up in the United States and Europe as a result of what’s happening. And that’s just the price we have to pay.

MH: Well, what he should have said, this is the price they have to pay us. That’s how the stock market took it. When he said this is the price we have to pay, this is the price consumers have to pay to the American oil companies, to the American Agricultural food distribution companies. It’s the price other countries have to pay to the United States.

This is to say to the rest of the world, you know, we’ve got you completely, I don’t know how to put it, what phrase to use, but you don’t have any choice, your money or your life. We’ve got you trapped. And he’s crowing over the fact that this resulting inflation is exactly what was intended by the war in Ukraine that has led to the isolation of Russia and other countries following a non-US policy.

MF: But more and more countries in Latin America, in Africa, are turning to countries like China for partnerships, for investment. Do you see a point coming where there is just this real shunning of the United States and turning to these alternatives?

MH: That is exactly what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is, China’s investment is very different from US investment. US and European investment will give financial investments to countries at interest that the whole country is liable for to repay. China’s investment is taking place by means of the Belt and Road Initiative and direct capital investment in developing ports, infrastructure and railways. And instead of having a general financial claim against these countries, China has an equity claim, a property claim backed by the physical means of production that it puts in place.

Well, this summer, when countries say they cannot afford to pay their foreign debts, the United States has as a backup plan, okay, let’s write down everybody’s debts, government debts, to each other so that governments can pay the private bond holders and the banks. And they’re going to try to, essentially the US will forgive its debts so that Latin America can pay Chase Manhattan Bank and Citibank and the bondholders. And China is going to say, wait a minute, we don’t have any financial claim against these countries. We didn’t lend them dollars. We didn’t lend them our foreign currency at all. We built assets there and the assets are still in place. There’s no problem there.

So, the question is, whose debts are going to be written down to whom? And all of this is going to lead to, as you can imagine, destabilization. The United States is probably going to try to push regime change on countries that try to trade with China as it’s already threatened China with. And the more sanctions the United States imposes on Latin America, Africa and the Near East and South Asia, they will be creating a crisis, but the crisis will lead the rest of the world to treat the United States in the same way that Russia and China are treating the United States as just the enemy threatening the entire world with their neoliberal power grab. So, the United States in a way is isolating itself from the rest of the world by declaring war on it.

MF: And I think that’s not going to be good for us here at home in the United States. You’ve talked about the way that the current economy has been structured. You’ve also raised a lot of concern about the climate crisis. And of course, we have the recent IPCC report basically saying that we’re way behind in taking action to even adapt to the climate crisis or the warming that we’re going to be experiencing. So now in this new situation, how do you see that impacting the climate crisis?

MH: Here’s what Biden said, in effect: “We’re way behind in the pace of global warming.” American policy is based on increasing and accelerating global warming. That has been a central point of US policy ever since I joined the Hudson Institute in the 1970s. The United States is opposing any attempt at trying to prevent global warming because you can imagine what would happen if other countries go to solar energy and renewable energy. That will reduce their dependency on the US oil industry. If you look at American policy, it is being run basically by the oil industry to establish dependence of other countries on oil. Then obviously the last thing the United States is ever going to do is prevent global warming. So, if we’re behind in global warming, it’s that the sea level is not rising fast enough. The world is not getting hot fast enough not to lock in foreign reliance on America’s oil.

And I think you’ve seen what in the last few weeks, what President Biden has said, the fuel of the future is coal and oil. Right now, he’s in Poland. I think he’s suggesting that Polish coal, which is one of its major products, should be used in Europe instead of Russian gas. So, American foreign policy is based on the accelerated use of coal and oil, not renewable energy.

Now, that’s why I think the environmental movement should become an anti-war movement and the movement against this neoliberal dollar hegemony. You’re not going to avoid global warming unless you stop the dominance of American foreign policy by the oil industry.

MF: I think we’ve been seeing that shift over the last few years where the climate movement is starting to understand we can’t address this crisis without addressing the US military. So just in the last minutes that I have with you, what do you have to say to the listeners about where this is going for us materially as people living in the United States, a country that has been showing itself to be a failing state? The Covid-19 pandemic, I think, has really exposed that in so many ways, the financial insecurity that people are facing, housing, education, health care, all of the failures of the government to meet the basic needs of the people. How do you think that’s going to change with this new situation?

MH: Well, the United States has been getting a free ride internationally. So, much of the prosperity here has been the result of our not having to pay for our own military spending, not having to pay for many of the foreign investments that we’ve got that supply the US with low priced foreign raw materials. All that is being ended by President Biden’s policy, which, of course, the Republicans support just as much as the Democrats.

So, there’s really a political movement that is ending up impoverishing, I’d say, 99% of Americans. While the Federal Reserve saves the stock and bond market for the 1%, there’s going to be a huge squeeze that’s going to force, I think, most American families into debt leading to probably a close down of a lot of businesses just as you had the Covid crisis closing down a lot of businesses. You’re going to have the rising fuel prices, the rising food prices utterly force families into default and an inability to be self-supporting without either running into debt or selling their homes and becoming renters.

MF: And that’s a whole other problem with the buying up of the housing in the United States by these investment corporations so that they can then control those rent prices. It sounds like difficult days are ahead.

MH: Yes. Well, and nobody can really ,it’s really Uncharted Territory because nobody thought there was an alternative. The economic view was as Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no alternative.” Well, now, America’s forced the world to find its own alternative.

MF: Well, thank you for sharing that wisdom with me. I encourage people to continue to follow you and read your books and follow your writing. Where’s the best place to find you?

MH: I have a website: Michael-Hudson.com. And I’m on Patreon. I post my articles on the website and on Patreon.

MF: Well, thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today, and for the important work that you’re doing.

MH: Well, I’m awfully glad we had to talk about this, Margaret.

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Crushed ideas and hopes

It happens to the best made plans of mice and men.

2022 04 01 10 e12
It is not going to happen.

The ISS Space Station

A highly anticipated change of command ceremony between the United States and Russia has taken place on the International Space Station.
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Despite mounting tensions between the two countries, NASA has repeatedly reaffirmed that it continues to work closely with Russian space agency Roscosmos.
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Eyes have been on the ISS since war broke out in Ukraine but tensions on the earth did not reach into space.
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Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov in his handover address affirmed those on the space station were “one crew”.
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“I think ISS is like (a) symbol of the friendship and cooperations and like symbol of future of exploration of space,” he said.

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More...

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The Media Is The Number One Cause Of War Since 1898

In 1895, a 32-year old entrepreneur in New York City bought a failing newspaper and hatched a bold plan to turn it around.

The newspaper industry was cutthroat, especially in New York. There were at least 16 other daily newspapers in circulation, and there was fierce competition for readers’ attention.

But the young entrepreneur had an idea: thrill readers with tales of death, destruction, and brutality in the Cuban War for Independence against Spain.

Cuba was a Spanish colony at the time, but revolutionary forces had been fighting for independence for several years. Few people in the US really cared about Cuba. But the new publisher vowed to make them care.

His name was William Randolph Hearst. And his paper, the New York Morning Journal, constantly thrust Cuba in his readers’ faces.

Their stories were full-blown sensationalism. By early 1898, Hearst’s Journal was printing outright fabrications of atrocities committed by Spanish troops in Cuba, in an effort to whip up public support for the United States to join the war.

The government played along. While ‘war crimes’ did not yet exist, US President William McKinley escalated tensions by accusing Spain of atrocities, saying in a speech that “the civilized code of warfare has been disregarded.”

Then, on February 15, 1898, a US naval vessel known as the Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor off the coast of Cuba. 268 sailors died.

Several investigations were conducted, and to this day there is still nothing conclusive explaining how the explosion took place. It’s entirely possible that the explosion was caused by the Maine’s on-board fuel.

But Hearst (along with many other papers) jumped to publish stories claiming the Maine was sunk by a Spanish torpedo, and they continued agitating for the US to join the war.

Thanks to the effective media propaganda, most Americans were in favor of war. The newspapers had cast Spain as the evil aggressor, and its commanding general, Valeriano Weyler, was routinely called a “butcher”.

The newspapers told Americans that the fight against Spain was a necessary one… that it was a matter of moral righteousness— a crusade of good against evil.

They finally got their wish in April 1898 when the Spanish-American War broke out.

There are a lot of similarities with the media today.

The level of trust in the media is already laughably low. There was the obvious Hunter Biden laptop coverup, which most mainstream media refused to even mention during the US Presidential election in 2020.

Then there were the outright lies in the Russia collusion hoax, for which the New York Times was even awarded the ‘esteemed’ Pulitzer Prize.

(Coincidentally, the Pulitzer is named after Joseph Pulitzer, a newspaper publisher who also fabricated lies in the late 1800s and agitated for war against Spain.)

Then there’s the case of Biden appointee Tracy Stone-Manning, who was nominated last year to head up the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management.

Stone-Manning is a former eco-terrorist who participated in violent campaigns against forestry workers in her youth.

This isn’t some wild conspiracy theory; Stone-Manning has admitted to wrongdoing, including sending violent threats to the US federal Forestry Service. She ultimately avoided prosecution and saved herself by ratting out her associates.

But a recent Freedom of Information Act request revealed that NBC News colluded with the Biden Administration to go easy on Tracy Stone-Manning during her confirmation hearing, and whitewash over her terrorist history.

This is pretty incredible…

Think about the media circus a few years ago when US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexually assaulting someone when he was a teenager.

There was no promise from NBC News (and other mainstream propagandists) to go easy on the allegations against Justice Kavanaugh that went back 30+ years.

Instead, they smeared his name and deemed him guilty.

It’s also noteworthy that, during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, several protestors stormed the Capital and physically accosted United States Senators in order to prevent the Constitutional voting process from occurring.

Yet NBC News declined to label those protestors ‘domestic terrorists’, or to claim that democracy was ‘under attack’ because they had criminally trespassed into the Capitol.

This is the same media which acted as the government mouthpiece during COVID, justifying  the public health dictatorship that took over the world.

This is the same media which watched cities burn in 2020 and said the protests were “mostly peaceful”.

And, yes, this is the same media that has routinely pushed America into war. It wasn’t just Spain in 1898.

The United States joined the Vietnam War based on a Gulf of Tonkin skirmish with the North Vietnamese which never actually occurred. But the Johnson administration and intelligence sources said it happened, so the media reported it as fact.

Then there were those supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, which the media dutifully reported without question and helped push the US into war back in 2003.

Today many in the media are calling for an escalation against Russia. They want a no-fly zone. They cheer the President’s dementia-ridden foreign policy and praise him for impromptu comments that only escalate tensions.

Most of all, they force feed the war in Ukraine, 24/7, as if that’s supposed to be our #1 priority.

Forget about the economy, rising prices, and supply chain dysfunction… and forget about conflict anywhere else in the world. We’re only allowed to care about Ukraine and Putin.

Historically speaking, it is not far-fetched to think the media could help push the world into a major war… and one with potential nuclear ramifications.

It’s not inevitable, but we are closer today than any other time since at least 1962— and certainly closer than even a week ago.

That’s why it is more important than ever to be prepared for whatever the world has in store for us.

And that means crafting a rock solid Plan B to make sure you can respond from a position of strength, whatever crisis comes next.

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Simon Black

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Nice Chinese Girl

video. She’s a personal favorite. I love that dress, by the way. Who would figure that mustard would be a good color? 4MB

US accuses China of ‘choking’ Taiwan

Washington’s top diplomat in Taipei attacks Beijing for “destabilizing” the region and threatening “all democracies”

The head of the de facto US embassy in Taiwan has accused China of “provocative” military moves near the island. Sandra Oudkirk claimed that Beijing has undermined regional peace while vowing to “strengthen” security ties with Taipei.

Oudkirk – who directs the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial US embassy – castigated Beijing during a speech at the local American Chamber of Commerce, on Wednesday, singling out its policies toward Taipei.

“The [People’s Republic of China’s] increasingly aggressive behavior is nowhere more evident than in relation to Taiwan, where the PRC has continued to exert military, diplomatic, and economic pressure,” she said, adding that “provocative military activities” near Taiwan are “destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and undermine regional peace and stability.”

Continued efforts by Beijing to choke Taiwan’s international space, pressure its friends, and interfere in Taiwan’s democratic system represent a threat to all democracies.

With Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in attendance at the event, Oudkirk went on to voice “deep concerns” over “China’s alignment with Russia” following Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, appearing to draw parallels between the conflict in Eastern Europe and tensions between Taiwan and the mainland.

“China is already on the wrong side of history when it comes to Ukraine and the aggression being committed by Russia,” she said, echoing previous comments from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Though US officials have pressured Beijing to sever its ties with Russia and join a punitive sanctions campaign, China has so far refused to budge, maintaining a neutral stance toward the conflict while urging for diplomacy and an end to the fighting.

Oudkirk said Washington would continue to “strengthen Taiwan’s role as a regional security partner” – part of the Joe Biden administration’s increased outreach to the island. Late last year, the president declared that the US is “committed” to defending Taiwan from any potential Chinese attack, in what appeared to be a break with a long-standing policy of ‘strategic ambiguity.’ White House officials soon walked back his comments, however.

The United States has also approved a number of arms sales to Taiwan in recent months, and continues to sail warships through the contested Taiwan Strait on a near-monthly basis despite repeated warnings from Beijing to stay out of its “internal affairs.” China considers Taiwan to be its sovereign territory, though the island has long been self-governed and refers to itself as the Republic of China.

Founded as a non-profit corporation, the American Institute in Taiwan now serves as the informal US embassy and has received most of its funding from the State Department since the United States ended diplomatic recognition of Taipei with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. Currently, only a handful of nations recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, among them Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and the Vatican City.

How America is viewed by the rest of the world

pay attention. This is what the next 100 years will be like… video 6MB

TRAPPED!!! AMERICAN AND UK MILITARY “ADVISORS”, PLUS FRANCE INTEL OPERATIVES WITH AZOV NAZIS IN MARIUPOL – NOW TRAPPED BY RUSSIAN FORCES

At present, whatever remains of Ukrainian Army AZOV Regiment (the Actual NAZI Regiment) is holed-up inside the vast Azovstal Industrial Area  in Mariupol, Ukraine. The group totaling 20 — of US and UK military advisors as well as several Ukrainian SBU (secret police) advisors—is holed up, together with Azov fighters.

Despite being offered several prior chances to evacuate Mariupol, they chose to stay.  Now, they are too late to evacuate as Russian forces pummel that area to De-Nazify it.

Overnight, Ukraine sent two military helicopters to Mariupol to try to rescue the trapped US, UK, and Ukrainian Secret Police persons.   Both those helicopters landed without incident, but when they took off, both were SHOT DOWN.

One of those helicopters had 17 aboard, 15 of whom died when the chopper was hit and crashed into the earth.  The two survivors have been taken prisoner by Russian forces.

The second helicopter was hit several kilometers off the coast of Mariupol, and fell into the Sea of Azov.  Rescue craft were sent, but no word yet on finding anything or anyone in the water.

One of the Mi-8 helicopters was shot down by . . . . . . . An American STINGER anti-aircraft, man-launched missile, supplied to Ukraine by the United States and later captured from the Ukrainian forces by Russian forces.

MORE!

From the helicopter that crashed into the earth, COVERT INTEL SOURCES now tell me,  the bodies of two French Intelligence operatives, allegedly with DGSE credentials, were also said to have been recovered.

If true, this would explain French President Macron’s desperate attempts to have a French-led evacuation out of Mariupol last week!  Macron’s requests to Putin were declined.  If French Intelligence Agents were embedded with AZOV NAZI troops, then this is a massive PR problem for both France and for NATO.

HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION

At some point, the presence of foreign military “Advisors” and foreign Intelligence “operatives” is going to transform this from a Ukraine-Russia conflict, to a NATO-Russia conflict.  Once that threshold is officially crossed (and it is solely up to Russia to decide) then war is upon us all.

A bunch of US and British military men being present right on the front line would confirm not only how intricately involved with Azov the NATO countries are, but the fact that Ukraine is a US puppet state being used to wage a proxy war on Russia.

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Grandma’s Favorite Cabbage Rolls

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Cabbage Rolls

No one knows good old-fashioned home cooking like Grandma, which is why this recipe for cabbage rolls is one of the best there is, period. Made with ground beef, onion, white rice and seasonings, Grandma’s Favorite Cabbage Rolls are sure to make your mouth water.

Top ’em off with a homemade sauce of tomato, brown sugar, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce and you’ll have yourself a winning dinner the whole family will love.

Even the pickiest of eaters will gobble up these delicious old fashioned cabbage rolls! Plus, this recipe is a favorite of Grandma’s because it only costs a few dollars to make. It’s one of our favorite budget-friendly recipes, and we think it will be one of yours, too.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups white rice, cooked
1 12 lbs raw ground sirloin or 1 1/2 lbs ground round
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 raw eggs
1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
Sauce to pour over rolls
4 (15 ounce) cans tomato sauce tomatoes, diced
2 tablespoons brown sugar 
 tomato juice (optional)
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  • Core head of cabbage by cutting around the core and removing as much as possible. Boil large pot of water (fill pot only 1/4 or 1/2 full — when boiling put cabbage into water and cover with top. Leave cabbage in water and every so often as leaves loosen up remove leaves and place in collander in sink to cool — when all leaves are removed turn off water and throw away — (if you have any little pieces of cabbage left at end of core, you can save them to place on top of leaves if you would like.
  • In a large bowl mix cooked rice, ground meat, onion, garlic, raw eggs 1/2 can tomato sauce and oregano and a little pinch of kosher salt. Mix well with your hands –.
  • Spray 9 X 13 inch pans with Pam. Take cabbage leaves and fill with 1/4 to 1/2 cup meat mixture (depending on how big hour leaves are). Place with seam side down in pans — Turn oven on 350 degrees. Make up sauce (depending on how many rolls you get from your cabbage and how much sauce you want,you can use between 4 to 6 cans of diced or stewed tomatoes for your sauce), if you like cabbage rolls to have more sauce, you can add a little tomato juice to your sauce. Pour sauce over top of rolls. Sprinkle with kosher salt over top of rolls.
  • Bake uncovered to 2 1/2 hours or until browned on top, you may need to add a tomato juice to them once in a while so they do not dry out –.
  • Freezes well.

Vaccine Schedule for the United States

Interesting.

Covid Vaccine schedule for children kids
Covid Vaccine schedule for American children

Fine Chinese Girl

Here’s yet another fine Chinese woman. They are all over China, don’t you know. Of course, if you believe the Western narrative, China has no girls or women. They have been all killed as the result of the one-baby policy. LOL. Only an idiot would believe that bullshit. What bullshit are you believing out of the American / UK “news” today? Eh? Video 2MB

China warns of ‘worst consequences’ over Taiwan

Beijing says nothing will stand in the way of “national reunification” with Taipei

China has warned that no foreign powers or militaries will succeed in interfering with Taiwan, cautioning that any country attempting to offer military support to Taipei will face “consequences.”

“The Taiwan question is a purely internal affair of China,” Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Tan Kefei told reporters on Friday.

“No one and no force can stop” Beijing from a “complete national reunification” with Taiwan, Tan said, adding that anyone who tries to do so, “will suffer the worst consequences in the end.” 

Tan said the Chinese military stood ready to thwart any outside interference on the matter. His statement came days after Australia’s defense minister, Peter Dutton, argued that it would be “inconceivable” for Canberra not to join with the US should Washington decide to defend Taiwan.

Kiev claims NATO will defend arms convoys to Ukraine against Russia

Dutton later softened his language, saying on Sunday that the Australian response would be based on “our country’s best interests.”

Last month, Australia accused a Chinese warship of pointing a laser at one of its surveillance planes. Beijing said the allegation was “false.” 

While the government in Beijing insists Taiwan is part of China’s territory, the US has typically taken a non-committal position, unofficially supporting Taiwanese independence and supplying weapons to Taipei, while at the same time acknowledging China’s claim to the island.

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Fair Warning

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The Bodyguard of Lies

Here’s the official U.S. narrative as echoed by the mainstream media: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, Putin’s three-day blitzkrieg of Kyiv has failed, Russian forces are bogged down and valiant Ukrainian troops are putting up a powerful defense and regaining lost ground with the help of weapons from NATO.

In this version, President Zelenskyy is the new Churchill rallying patriots against an evil dictator. All of that is either entirely or mostly false.

Here’s the real story: Russia’s invasion is the end result of 14 years of provocation by the West, including repeated declarations that Ukraine will join NATO and a U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2014 that displaced a pro-Russian president.

Russia never planned a blitzkrieg on Kyiv. That’s a Western invention intended to make Putin look like a failure. In fact, Russia is slowly and methodically taking territory in the south and east of Ukraine in order to control the seacoasts, eliminate pro-fascist elements in Mariupol and establish pro-Russian autonomous zones in Donbas.

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Full Article

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Rufus kitty cat

This cat knows what family and community are. Do you? video 1MB

Ukraine Military Update

here is a breakdown of what is going on according to Scott Ritter:

1/ Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

2/ Maneuver warfare is a good place to start. Understand Russia started its “special military operation” with a severe manpower deficit—200,000 attackers to some 600,000 defenders (or more). Classic attritional conflict was never an option. Russian victory required maneuver.

3/ Maneuver war is more psychological than physical and focuses more on the operational than on the tactical level. Maneuver is relational movement—how you deploy and move your forces in relation to your opponent. Russian maneuver in the first phase of its operation support this.

4/ The Russians needed to shape the battlefield to their advantage. In order to do this, they needed to control how Ukraine employed it’s numerically superior forces, while distributing their own smaller combat power to best accomplish this objective.

5/ Land Bridge. Strategically, to facilitate the ability to maneuver between the southern, central, and northern fronts, Russia needed to secure a land bridge between Crimea and Russia. The seizure of the coastal city of Mariupol was critical to this effort. Russia has accomplished this task.

6/ Control. While this complex operation unfolded, Russia needed to keep Ukraine from maneuvering its numerically superior forces in a manner that disrupted the Mariupol operation. This entailed the use of several strategic supporting operations—feints, fixing operations, and deep attack.

7/ Feint warfare. The concept of a feint is simple—a military force either is seen as preparing to attack a given location, or actually conducts an attack, for the purpose of deceiving an opponent into committing resources in response to the perceived or actual actions.

8/ Example of use. The use of the feint played a major role in Desert Storm, where Marine Amphibious forces threatened the Kuwaiti coast, forcing Iraq to defend against an attack that never came, and where the 1st Cavalry Division actually attacked Wadi Al Batin to pin down the Republican Guard.

9/ Ukraine use of a feint. The Russians made extensive use of the feint in Ukraine, with Amphibious forces off Odessa freezing Ukrainian forces there, and a major feint attack toward Kiev compelling Ukraine to reinforce their forces there. Ukraine was never able to reinforce their forces in the east.

10/ Fixing operations were also critical. Ukraine had assembled some 60,000-100,000 troops in the east, opposite Donbas. Russia carried out a broad fixing attack designed to keep these forces fully engaged and unable to maneuver in respect to other Russian operations.

11/ History. During Desert Storm, two Marine Divisions were ordered to carry out similar fixing attacks against Iraqi forces deployed along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border, tying down significant numbers of men and material that could not be used to counter the main US attack out west.

12/ Pinned Down. The Russian fixing attack pinned the main Ukrainian concentration of forces in the east, and drove them away from Mariupol, which was invested and reduced. Supporting operations out of Crimea against Kherson expanded the Russian land bridge. This phase is now complete.

13/ Strategic Deep Attacks. Russia also engaged in a campaign of strategic deep attack designed to disrupt and destroy Ukrainian logistics, command & control, and air power and long-range fire support. Ukraine is running out of fuel and ammo, cannot coordinate maneuver, and has no meaningful Air Force.

14/ Redeployments. Russia is redeploying some of its premier units from where they had been engaged in feint operations in northern Kiev to where they can support the next phase of the operation, namely the liberation of the Donbas and the destruction of the main Ukrainian force in the east.

15/ This is classic maneuver warfare. Russia will now hold Ukraine in the north and south while its main forces, reinforced by the northern units, Marines, and forces freed up by the capture of Mariupol, seek to envelope and destroy 60,000 Ukrainian forces in the east.

16/ This is Big Arrow War at its finest, something Americans used to know but forgot in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also explains how 200,000 Russians have been able to defeat 600,000 Ukrainians. Thus ends the primer on maneuver warfare, Russian style.

Rufus Kind action

When the time comes, what are you going to do? Be a spectator, or take action. Your actions determine your sentience. Service-to-yourself, or service-for-others. And please don’t be a NPC service-to-another.  Your actions, in this life, are a reflection of who you are. It’s binary. White or black. There is no gray area. video 3MB

Chinese community in action

This would never happen in the United States. In the USA, most people whould be inside their cars watching on as spectators. Maybe taking videos. With some slamming on their horns making noises. video 3MB

Rufus Immediate action

You don’t know when there will be a calling, but it will happen. Are your ready for it? Or will you pretend that nothing is going on? Will you sit by passively and allow others to become service-to-others sentience, while you are firmly and affixed as a service-to-self selfish, alone, greedy and “independent” asshole? video 9MB

How a Rufus Community Operates

Everyone in the community works together as one organism. If they “feel” something is wrong, they talk to others, they investigate, and they get help. In this case, we have gas station attendents, bus drivers, and construction workers working with the polcie to prevent a child abduction. video 14MB

Rufus reminder

When the world is treating others unkindly, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to reset things. Do not wait for others to take action. Do not wait for the police, fire or medical care to come. Do not wait for others, or watch while doing nothing. You were not born to be a spectator. You were born to be a participant. So act the part. God damn it! video 13MB

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Scene From By Dawns Early Light – HBO – Nuclear War – World War 3 Movie

An end of the world movie that involves nuclear launches. This is a 30-minute segment, and it is chilling how much it matches what is going on RIGHT NOW.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 3

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