Vulnerable Lifelines
Freedom in Local Sufficiency
Blockaded,
Cutting and choking supply lines has become the preferred means of warfare recently. It is less risky to use than bombers and tanks, and cheaper, too, but it loses effectiveness over time, due to work-around solutions to get supplies.
Controlling and threatening to cut supply lines is much preferred in the long run, and it's what the Petrobuck-Empire has long done in places like the Strait of Hormuz and the Panama Canal. The Petrobuck transaction system has assured that the world would trade goods-and-services for conjured petrobucks, and recycle profits into US government IOUs (T.bills). This kept the flow of "free" goods and services coming to Washington and New York. It paid for the US military global-currency-regime enforcers (Hi Iraq! Hi Libya! Hi Venezuela!)
The Petrobuck system not only paid for America-the-Globocop, but it simultaneously fed "Globo-Cap" for free, since Globo-Cop was already paying for the system.
Globo-Cap made the $US system even more expensive for global users by exploiting cycles of debt to lend-cheap in $US, then raise interest rates, collapse markets, and buy assets in tributary countries in bankruptcy for pennies on the lent-dollar. Countries like China and Thailand had to pay more for insurance of various forms against this predation, and/or become predators when they could.
So the Petrobuck financial system gleaned something on the money side from every international trade across global supply lines, and the American Globo-Cop military
across the globe enforced the continuity of the system without successful challenge (see Iraq, Libya; Venezuela).
Te answer to this sucess was to extract more and more vigorously, and without end, and to bomb countries into the stone age if they sold oil for anything but $US, or threatened the Petrobuck-extraction-system in any other substantial way.
The tribute from the empire made manufacturing in America too expensive by comparison, except for F-35s and nuclear aircraft carriers and subs. American Industry got shipped to China, which was good for Globo-Cap profits and Chinese industrialization
Russia, China and Iran got tired of being milked in this scheme, and insulted for their efforts. So did other countries, but quietly. The rampant hubris of global imperialism was unchecked for decades, until it just could not subdue "The Graveyard Of Empires", Afghanistan. Afghanistan had done nothing to insult the Petrobuck-Empire after helping Americans end the Soviet Empire, but got falsely accused of helping an American CIA asset from Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden, who said he had nothing to do with 9/11, drop the WTC on that day of magic (see WTC-7 freefall at 5:20 PM).
Afghanistan finally bade the empire farewell in September 2021, as the empire left parting gifts of planes, vehicles, weapons and money.
Like any long-corrupted financial regime, especially one that requires exponential growth to remain stable, the Petrobuck regime has been very unstable at all levels since September 2008, managed on an increasing IV drip of faith-based-money from the Federal Reserve Banks.
"Repo window" of overnight lending between big banks started to fail in September 2019, because they could not trust each other for a few hours on the good-collateral of T-bills. The Fed took it over. That means that faith-in-the-Fed is holding the global financial system together.
Making sure that no alternative arises has been a big part of the defense of the system, but there are nascent systems in use between Russia, China, Iran and probably India, and they are being refined with use. At some point, some system will be a better choice, especially for a country that might someday disagree with Imperial policy.
Some countries passed that point long ago. Russia just passed that point definitively, and China has her toe in the water...
The problem now faced by Globo-Cop and Globo-Cap is that the legacy global financial system has lost the carrot, is all-stick and looks like it has fallen-and-can't-get-up. The economic threats of being cut off from the system are being applied as an act of war to a critical mass of system participants, who have been making alternative arrangements for well over a decade, and have started using them. The crashing of the global financial system by these acts of war invites the activation of the existing alternative arrangements much more widely. https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/by-enforcing-sanctions-on-russia-swift-may-commit-suicide/
Globo-Cap will no longer have the nations of the world backing the Petrobuck global financial regime, and assuring it's cost-free (except bribes) skimming operation.
This operation has also relied on cheap supply lines, long, complex, cheap, efficient supply lines across borders with shipping, trucks and rail. All of those require monetary coordination, governmental coordination, cheap fuel, ships, trains and trucks, and competent workers at all levels.
Italian truck drivers will strike as high fuel costs make them unable to fulfill contracts. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/italian-truckers-declare-force-majeure-over-gas-pains-halt-deliveries-starting-monday
Maximizing global profits has cut investments and resiliency in these chains. Oops!
War is shocking oil prices, which have been climbing inexorably for 18 months, anyway.
50 years ago most people ate things grown in their area, and staples like rice, beans and wheat, which stored and transported well. Cheapening of global supply chains led to competition from farmers thousands of miles away, even for fresh fruit. Globo-Cap profited, not the distant peasant-farmers. Meanwhile, factory-farmed wheat and corn from Kansas put small Mexican farmers out of business and they had to sell their farms (to Globo-Cap). Russia has had to become more self sufficient in the past 8 years of significant US and EU sanctions. Russia appears to have become the most self-sufficient country in the world, as the US was in WW-2.
This remains bad for Globo-Cap. Globo-Cap keeps trying to break Russia and accidentally inducing Russia to become immune to it's attacks.
Now that global supply chains are weaponized in global-financial-warfare, Globalism is losing its luster. It always had a lot of hidden costs, born by others, especially national governments, supported by taxpaying workers/consumers. Those costs are now apparent as inavailability of necessities, due to broken global supply chains.
Since Russia has become the most resilient country against global supply chain interdictions, Russia becomes the natural example to follow, but it could have been 1930s America, just as well. Nationalism, where national governments control border flows of goods, and collect tariffs, and make deals with other nations, reduces profits for Globo-Cap and increases local economic solutions to supply of the necessities of life.
Currently, weaponization of the $US and weaponization of global-supply-chain vulnerabilities seem to mark the end days of the global Petrobuck empire and the resurgence of national, regional and local self-sufficiency as the antidote, which will allow for survival. There are inefficiencies and parasitic extraction introduced with each hierarchical layer of control. Local economy is more efficient without distant regulation and extraction. The need to get some things from afar will continue, and has to be dealt with, but that tail should not wag the dog of supplying humans with food, shelter, water, clothing and fuel, the necessities.
We can do our part to meet our needs and the needs of friends, family and neighbors.
Grow some vegetables. Do some favors.
Pepe Escobar makes several important points:
The non-government in Kiev is simply not allowed by the Empire to negotiate anything.
By now what we may call a Triple Threat has been established as the catalyst anticipating the launch of Operation Z.
Ukraine developing nuclear weapons. Zelensky himself hinted at it in the Munich Security Conference.
U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Confirmed, tersely, by none other than the Sinister Cookie Distributor neocon wife in the uber-neocon Kaganate of Nulands, who described them as “biological research facilities”. ”
An imminent attack on Donbass with massive civilian deaths. It could have been in March, according to documents seized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Or even in late February, according to SVR intelligence, which was monitoring the line of contact on a minute-by-minute basis. This is what eventually prompted Operation Z as a Russian version of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”)... Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov came up with the adult perspective: “The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”... Neo-Nazis are doing exactly what ISIS/Daesh did in Syria: hiding behind civilians taken as hostages. Azov are the white clones of ISIS/Daesh. After all they learned their tactics from the same masters.
They will be bolstered by a fresh contingent of 450 fighters just arrived from – where else – Idlib, including lots of non-Syrians from Europe and the Maghreb. Most though are al-Qaedites and members of the Syrian branch of the Turkestan Islamic Party. Their transit point: the Syria-Turkish border, a smuggling free-for-all.. The key fact is that Russia, China, and for that matter the entire Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – responsible for at least 30% of global GDP and the bulk of the Eurasian market – don’t need the West at all.
As Peter Koenig, a former senior economist at the World Bank points out, “Western GDP has a different basis, with blown out of proportion services, whereas the GDP of the SCO and the Global South is production-based. A huge difference when one looks at the backing of currencies: in the West there is literally none. Eastern currencies are mostly backed by national economies, especially in China and soon in Russia too. That leads to self-sufficiency, and no longer reliance on the West.” https://thesaker.is/cutting-through-the-fog-masking-a-new-page-in-the-art-of-war/
US State Department Denies Russian Allegations Of Biological Weapons In Ukraine (Memo apparently not sent in time) “This Russian disinformation is total nonsense and not the first time Russia has invented such false claims against another country,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
The United States, he added, “does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.” The statement came about a day after Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told a Senate hearing there were biological laboratories located within Ukraine.
When questioned by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Nuland confirmed Tuesday the United States is protecting “biological research facilities” in the country from Russia’s army.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact we are now quite concerned that Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces, should they approach,” Nuland said.
Tucker Carlson: Someone needs to explain why there are dangerous biological weapons in Ukraine
The Pentagon is lying about this - why?
Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Ugh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs that Ukraine definitely doesn't have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does. And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, Toria Nuland said, whatever they're doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is, "quite concerned" that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-we-have-right-know-this
Russia Calls For UN Security Council Meeting Over "Biological Activities" In Ukraine
It seems that mideasterners want to fight FOR Russia and the Donbass in Ukraine, in even larger numbers than the ISIS jihadi group mentioned above."We need to help them get to the war zone," Putin told his Security Council on a video conference call earlier on Friday. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia received at least 16,000 applications from people in the Middle East who want to fight in Ukraine.
Putin said: "If you see that there are these people who want of their own accord, not for money, to come to help the people living in Donbas, then we need to give them what they want and help them get to the conflict zone." https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-send-fighters-middle-east-ukraine-despite-peace-optimism
Oopsie on the very last part of this professional think-tank analysis.
How to Destroy Russia. 2019 Rand Corporation Report: “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”
According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.
Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.
Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education.
In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.
In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win. https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-corp-how-destroy-russia/5678456
War documents, "grain of salt", but supported by findings ofUkrainian/Azov troop concentrations and supply preparations in Mariupol...UKRAINIAN NATIONAL GUARD WAS ABOUT TO ATTACK DONBASS – THE SECRET DOCUMENTS FOUND BY THE RUSSIAN MOD
"Always Look On The Bright Side Of..."
The Upside of a Crushing Recession , Charles Hugh Smith Only recessions which defy the usual tricks of monetary easing (create trillions of new dollars) and fiscal stimulus (give away a few of those new trillions) have the power to cleanse a system clogged with dysfunction, waste, fraud, corruption and financial zombies that soak of resources while doing little more than enriching the few at the expense of the many. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar22/recession3-22.html
The 2020 study on Ivermectin for COVI said it could reduce deaths by 75%. The conclusion was changed by somebody to, "Needs further study".
Who Changed the Scientific Conclusions of a Paper that Could Have Saved Millions? At Last, We May Have a Name. https://flccc.substack.com/p/who-changed-the-scientific-conclusions?s=r
All of the medical and scientific concerns we had in 2020 have been born out. The "vaccines" cause excess deaths in people, just like they did in lab animals.COVID-19 Deep Dive Part II: Vaccine Complications (Exhaustive scientific detail and well organized analysis)
Our governments are compelling us to inject poison into our bodies
I figured they would have to scrap it when they set the timeline for March, back in late 2021, when Omicron was already circulating and Delta was declining.
Austria Scraps Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Law
https://www.globalresearch.ca/austria-scraps-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-law/5773640
The "WAR!" control narrative allows for any change in policy by any government. It is the BEST control narrative, until the pressure has to be maintained by, actual war... Germany reactivates coal power plants amid Russian gas supply threats https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-reactivates-coal-power-plants-amid-russian-gas-supply-threats/
What about all those Patriot missiles? Why didn't they shoot it down, or even try? Drone From Ukraine War Travels Over Multiple NATO Countries Before Crashing In Croatia The Soviet-era Tu-141 "Strizh" reconnaissance drone, likely operated by Ukraine's military (given as the Associated Press noted that it's the only known country currently operating Tu-141 drones) crashed just outside the capital city of Zagreb on Thursday. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/drone-ukraine-war-travels-over-multiple-nato-countries-crashing-croatia
Blockade Runner
You are one of the few, or maybe the only one, that can compost data into something that is nourishing. Mostly data/news is poisonous and sickening, your posts are healing. Thank you! Globo-cop&cap - so enlightening!