American Negroes Got Massively Suckered By Celebrities Into The Crypto Dip...,

FT  |    “We do not like to get left behind when it comes to new technology,” she said. 

The promise of cryptocurrencies as a wealth builder has been supercharged by celebrity endorsements, sponsorships and advertising. Prominent black Americans including the musicians Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, the boxer Floyd Mayweather, the actor Jamie Foxx and the film-maker Spike Lee have promoted crypto to their communities. 

Lee appeared in commercials for crypto ATM operator Coin Cloud last year, saying that “old money is not going to pick us up; it pushes us down” and “systematically oppresses”, whereas digital assets are “positive, inclusive”. Last month, Jay-Z announced a partnership with former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey to launch a “Bitcoin Academy” literacy programme in the Brooklyn public housing complex where he grew up. 

Such celebrity endorsers have faced heavy criticism for getting paid to sell high-risk investments to people who may not have the resources to weather crypto’s volatility. “Ninety-eight per cent of these cryptocurrencies were not designed to do anything other than extract money from people’s bank accounts,” said Najah Roberts, a former financial adviser and the founder of cryptocurrency education centre Crypto Blockchain Plug. “This is not ‘get rich quick’,’’ Roberts added. “There are massive targeting ads that are targeting our community.”

Bellanton said it is not adverts but the prospect of financial freedom, a lack of the investment minimums common for mutual funds, and a feeling that the blockchain distributed ledger is more transparent than big banks that draws in first-time investors. 

“The reason that minorities at a higher rate than others are adopting crypto is precisely because if you’re not already rich, it’s way cheaper to send [USD Coin, a stablecoin asset] than to send a wire,” said Brian Brooks, chief executive of blockchain company Bitfury, at the Aspen Ideas Festival last month. “It’s just cheaper. 

The entire system is cheaper and faster. It doesn’t have all these entry barriers where you can only get it if you’re already rich.” Despite the risk of losses, many black investors are staying invested in the market. Dennis McKinley, 41, has been buying the dip against the advice of his financial adviser. He said his crypto coins now constitute roughly 30 per cent of his overall portfolio, held alongside equities. 

“Young black America is just now getting to a point where we have the amount of freedom to have the opportunity to invest in alternative strategies besides just real estate,” said McKinley, a small-business owner in Atlanta. “I think that it’s important to learn and get out there.”

Long Before The Crypto Catastrophe "I Told You So!!!"

Bitshit: BUY! BUY! BYE!

ibankcoin |  Crypto currency Bitconnect (BCC) plunged from $321 to a tad over $35 today, a drop of more than 86% after regulators from state authorities issued cease and desist letters for unauthorized sale of securities. That’s right. Just because your shit is on the blockchain, that doesn’t mean you get to solicit your fucking Ponzi scheme to people in America. State regulators will have something to say about that.

Via the company’s website, as per the reasons for shutting down.

The reason for halt of lending and exchange platform has many reasons as follow:
The continuous bad press has made community members uneasy and created a lack of confidence in the platform.
We have received two Cease and Desist letters, one from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division. These actions have become a hindrance for the legal continuation of the platform.
Outside forces have performed DDos attacks on platform several times and have made it clear that these will continue. These interruptions in service have made the platform unstable and have created more panic inside the community.

Price action.

What did Bitconnect do? They quite literally ran a Ponzi scheme. Look at one of their brochures, promising investors 40% returns, PER MONTH.

Via Tech Crunch:

Many in the cryptocurrency community have openly accused Bitconnnect of running a Ponzi scheme, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
The platform was powered by a token called BCC (not to be confused with BCH, or Bitcoin Cash), which is essentially useless now that the trading platform has shut down. In the last The token has plummeted more than 80% to about $37, down from over $200 just a few hours ago.
If you aren’t familiar with the platform, Bitconnect was an anonymously-run site where users could loan their cryptocurrency to the company in exchange for outsized returns depending on how long the loan was for. For example, a $10,000 loan for 180 days would purportedly give you ~40% returns each month, with a .20% daily bonus.
Bitconnect also had a thriving multi-level referral feature, which also made it somewhat akin to a pyramid scheme with thousands of social media users trying to drive signups using their referral code.
The platform said it generated returns for users using Bitconnnect’s trading bot and “volatility trading software”, which usually averaged around 1% per day.
Of course profiting from market fluctuations and volatility is a legitimate trading strategy, and one used by many hedge funds and institutional traders. But Bitconnect’s promise (and payment) of outsized and guaranteed returns led many to believe it was a ponzi scheme that was paying out existing loan interest with newly pledged loans.
The requirement of having BCC to participate in the lending program led to a natural spike in demand (and price) of BCC. In less than a year the currency went from being worth less than a dollar (with a market cap in the millions) to a all-time high of ~$430.00 with a market cap above $2.6B.

Lenders into the Bitconnect Exchange have revealed the company is closing out accounts, issuing BCC in exchange for their dollars — which is causing the price to plummet.

Bitconnect is officially closing up. They sent me 33 BCC for my $11k+ in loans. Worth $6600 and dropping by the second. Their exchange is down so the only option is to send the BCC to an external exchange.

— LifeByAdam (@LifeByAdam1) January 16, 2018

Mobile Money In Africa Has Unleashed A Plague Of Gambling Addiction

TechnologyReview |  Sports betting in Africa is not an entirely digital phenomenon: dingy betting parlors filled with underemployed youth have long been fixtures of the urban landscape. Increasingly, though, gambling has moved online, aided by the rapid spread of technologies like smartphones, high-speed internet, and mobile money platforms, which enable payments via phones without a bank account. Today, gambling happens almost anywhere: on college campuses, in far-flung villages, or even, as Kirwa admits with a hint of embarrassment, behind the wheel while driving. Experts say this ease of access is driving up participation and making betting more addictive across Africa—in economic powerhouses like Nigeria and South Africa; in poorer, more fragile states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and in soccer meccas such as Senegal, home to the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations champions, where online betting got a late start but is now growing by 50% each year. 

Nowhere, though, is the craze as acute as it is in Kenya, the country that gave birth to the continent’s first mobile money service, M-Pesa, and is often called Africa’s “Silicon Savannah” for its status as a regional tech powerhouse. While the country’s mobile money revolution has played a well-documented role in encouraging savings and democratizing access to finance, M-Pesa’s role in betting presents something of a paradox. Today, it’s easier than ever for those in fragile economic circumstances to squander everything. Although estimates on the prevalence of gambling vary, a December 2021 survey by the US research firm GeoPoll found that 84% of Kenyan youth polled had tried betting, and one-third of those reported betting on at least a daily basis. The vast majority, like Kirwa, do so on their smartphones using mobile money.

“Most people who bet in Kenya are not doing it for recreation—they’re doing it because they want to make money,” says Fabio Ogachi, a professor of psychology at Nairobi’s Kenyatta University. Ogachi says a significant proportion of Kenyans who bet show signs of gambling addiction—behaviors that include betting to recover lost funds, staking increasing amounts, and lying about one’s habit. Technology, he adds, has been a major driver of the sports-betting phenomenon: “We’ve been using mobile money for so many years, it’s become part and parcel of how we conduct business. When online betting came along, it found this ideal system was in place.”

When financial inclusion isn’t enough

That mobile money would become so ubiquitous in Africa—let alone fuel a betting epidemic—is in many ways an accident of history. The technology has its roots in a 2006 experiment, conducted by the telecom firms Vodafone of the UK, and Safaricom of Kenya, that sought ways to increase access to finance among those who’d previously been excluded from traditional banking.

 

A Russian Central Bank Digital Currency?

the-blindspot |  In the last few years, we can observe two very important technologies emerging in Russia:

• Every single shop till in Russia is now connected in real-time to the tax system. It is illegal for a shop to sell goods or services via a till which is not connected. Every receipt that you get has a cryptographic code evidencing that the transaction has been recorded for tax purposes in the central system. The man who delivered this project for the Federal Tax Service is now the deputy prime minister of Russia, Mikhail Mishustin.
• In the years since 2014, Russia has built its own internal clearing system called “Mir”. This has enabled Russian banks and commercial infrastructure to operate independently of the visa, mastercard and SWIFT as an internal matter.

Russia has already demonstrated the ability to roll technology out across the whole country in order to increase the control of the state. Russian citizens have not yet appreciated what this means – but the next step is now required and it is much bigger than before.

So why invade Ukraine?

Putin’s focus here is the manipulation of his own population.

He is going introduce a digital rouble and likely abolish cash. The technology to do this is already available. With this in place, he will be able to control his population through their wallets – monitoring everything that his people spend and deciding who should have access to money and who should not.

A software reset based around a new digital currency requires mass adoption and acceptance – and a population that is ready to accept a much higher level of centralised control.

In order to do this, he needs to isolate his country and ensure that his population is submissive and accepting of a significant change in how things work. This necessarily includes undermining confidence in the rouble as a cash-based currency and cutting Russia’s payment systems off from international markets. Then he can bring in a state-controlled digital alternative – something that the Chinese are already well on the path to implement for themselves.

This is the dictator’s dream – controlling the people via their wallets, absolutely and totally. As we have been saying ourselves: “banks not tanks”. How much he must be laughing when he hears this phrase. And we are willingly helping Putin here, we are his accomplices in this grand plan – not that there is much we can do about it.

And once the new system is in place and working, borders can come down, concessions of a kind can be made and maybe interactions with liberal western democracies resume – but now with control systems in place that can conserve his regime for the long term.

Why invade Ukraine so badly?

Putin may have overestimated the power of his forces, and underestimated the strength of resistance and vigor of international responses. But Putin probably does not need to win any war in Ukraine. He seems to be preserving his defence capabilities rather than needlessly wasting them. He is doing the invasion of Ukraine on the cheap because the invasion does not really have to succeed.

He has now achieved what may have been his objective all along – which is the financial and media isolation of Russia.

What he now needs to do is create a frozen conflict in Ukraine that he can maintain at minimum cost for as long as it takes for him to reset the control systems that he uses with his domestic population.  So that’s also why he is not sending in the expensive fighter jets, bombing Kiev or firing lots of hard-to-replace missiles. Of course, a land bridge to support his occupation of Crimea would be a useful by-product of the campaign – but this is not the main objective.

Putin has no actual interest in trying to wipe Ukraine off the map – only creating the conflict narrative needed to isolate his population for a period to get them to accept a new way of living day-to-day. And we should also note that he continues to sell his Ukrainian adventure to his local people as a “strategic operation” not as an invasion – which is because it might not be about an invasion (unless it has to be) and he has no intention of seeing it through.

If Putin is not mad?

So let’s assume that Putin is not actually mad. Plan A might not have worked – but he surely has plan B, whether or not he arrives there by design or accident.

He is a very clever and capable man – with enormous resources and he is focussed on maintaining control and absolute power over his Russian subjects. After more than 20 years in charge, he probably does not have any other choice.

Putin does not care about us. Putin does not care about the people of Ukraine. Perhaps we are all his useful fools. Whatever we might think, the agenda with Putin is always domestic. Perhaps the real targets and ultimate victims of the Ukrainian invasion are going to be Russian?

Are Russian Sanctions An Apocalyptic Self-Own? (The Black Horse...,)

strategic-culture |  In its triple strike of sanctions on Russia, the EU initially was not looking to collapse the Russian financial system. Far from it: Its first instinct was to find the means to continue purchasing its energy needs (made all there more vital by the state of the European gas reserves hovering close to zero). Purchases of energy, special metals, rare earths (all needed for high tech manufacture) and agricultural products were to be exempted. In short, at first brush, the sinews of the global financial system were intended to remain intact.

The main target rather, was to block the core to the Russian financial system’s ability to raise capital – supplemented by specific sanctions on Alrosa, a major player in the diamond market, and Sovcomflot, a tanker fleet operator.

Then, last Saturday morning (26 February) everything changed. It became a blitzkrieg: “We’re waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia. We will cause the collapse of the Russian economy”, said the French Finance Minister, Le Maire (words, he later said, he regretted).

That Saturday, the EU, the U.S. and some allies acted to freeze the Russian Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves held overseas. And certain Russian banks (in the end seven) were to be expelled from SWIFT financial messaging service. The intent was openly admitted in an U.S. unattributable briefing: It was to trigger a ‘bear raid’ (ie. an orchestrated mass selling) of the Rouble on the following Monday that would collapse the value of the currency.

The purpose to freezing the Central Bank’s reserves was two-fold: First, to prevent the Bank from supporting the Rouble. And secondly, to create a commercial bank liquidity scarcity inside Russia to feed into a concerted campaign over that weekend to scare Russians into believing that some domestic banks might fail – thus prompting a rush at the ATMs, and start a bank-run, in other words.

More than two decades ago, in August 1998, Russia defaulted on its debt and devalued the Rouble, sparking a political crisis that culminated with Vladimir Putin replacing Boris Yeltsin. In 2014, there was a similar U.S. attempt to crash the Rouble through sanctions and by engineering (with Saudi Arabian help) a 41% drop in oil prices by January 2015.

Plainly, last Saturday morning when Ursula von der Leyen announced that ‘selected’ Russian banks would be expelled from SWIFT and the international financial messaging system; and spelled out the near unprecedented Russian Central Bank reserve freeze, we were witnessing the repeat of 1998. The collapse of the economy (as Le Maire said), a run on the domestic banks and the prospect of soaring inflation. This combination was expected to conflate into a political crisis – albeit one intended, this time, to see Putin replaced, vice Yeltsin – aka regime change in Russia, as a senior U.S. think-tanker proposed this week.

In the end, the Rouble fell, but it did not collapse. The Russian currency rather, after an initial drop, recovered about half its early fall. Russians did queue at their ATMs on Monday, but a full run on the retail banks did not materialise. It was ‘managed’ by Moscow.

What occurred on that Saturday which prompted the EU switch from moderate sanctions to become a full participant in a financial war à outrance on Russia is not clear: It may have resulted from intense U.S. pressure, or it came from within, as Germany seized an opportune alibi to put itself back on the path of militarisation for the third time in the past several decades: To re-configure Germany as a major military power, a forceful participant in global politics.

And that – very simply – could not have been possible without tacit U.S. encouragement.

Ambassador Bhadrakumar notes that the underlying shifts made manifest by von der Leyen on Saturday “herald a profound shift in European politics. It is tempting, but ultimately futile, to contextually place this shift as a reaction to the Russian decision to launch military operations in Ukraine. The pretext only provides the alibi, whilst the shift is anchored on power play and has a dynamic of its own”. He continues,

“Without doubt, the three developments — Germany’s decision to step up its militarisation [spending an additional euro100 billion]; the EU decision to finance arms supplies to Ukraine, and Germany’s historic decision to reverse its policy not to supply weapons to conflict zones — mark a radical departure in European politics since World War II. The thinking toward a military build-up, the need for Germany to be a “forceful” participant in global politics and the jettisoning of its guilt complex and get “combat ready” — all these by far predate the current situation around Ukraine”.

The von der Leyen intervention may have been opportunism, driven by a resurgence of SPD German ambition (and perhaps by her own animus towards Russia, stemming from her family connection to the SS German capture of Kiev), yet its consequences are likely profound.

Just to be clear, on one Saturday, von der Leyen pulled the switch to turn off principal parts to Global financial functioning: blocking interbank messaging, confiscating foreign exchange reserves and the cutting the sinews of trade. Ostensibly this ‘burning’ of global structures is being done (like the burning of villages in Vietnam) to ‘save’ the liberal Order.

However, this must be taken in tandem with Germany’s and the EU decision to supply weapons (to not just any old ‘conflict zone’) but specifically to forces fighting Russian troops in Ukraine. The ‘Kick Ass’ parts to those Ukrainian forces ‘resisting’ Russia are neo-Nazi forces with a long history of committing atrocities against the Russian-speaking Ukrainian peoples. Germany will be joining with the U.S. in training these Nazi elements in Poland. The CIA has been doing such since 2015. (So, as Russia tries to de-Nazify Ukraine, Germany and the EU are encouraging European volunteers to join in a U.S.-led effort to use Nazi elements to resist Russia, just as in the way Jihadists were trained to resist Russia in Syria).

What a paradox! Effectively von der Leyen is overseeing the building of an EU ‘Berlin Wall’ – albeit with its purpose inverted now – to separate the EU from Russia. And to complete the parallel, she even announced that Russia Today and Sputnik broadcasts would be banned across the EU. Europeans can be allowed only to hear authorised EU messaging – (however, a week into the Russian invasion, cracks are appearing in this tightly-controlled western narrative – “Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing”, warns a leading U.S. military analyst in the Daily Mail. Simply “[b]elieving Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts”, Roggio writes. “We cannot help Ukraine if we cannot be honest about its predicament”).

So Biden, finally, has his foreign policy ‘success’: Europe is walling itself off from Russia, China, and the emerging integrated Asian market. It has sanctioned itself from ‘dependency’ on Russian natural gas (without prospect of any immediate alternatives) and it has thrown itself in with the Biden project. Next up, the EU pivot to sanctioning China?

Retail Bank Branches And ATMS An Endangered Species In Kansas City For A Minute Now...,

dailymail |  As Australian banks continue to focus on digital transactions for customers, ATMs and bank branches are disappearing across the country, according to new data.

The analysis revealed close to 460 bank branches have shut down across the nation in recent years, and dating back to 2020, approximately 3800 previously active ATMs have been removed.

NSW alone now has 140 fewer in-store banks, and almost 300 suburbs don't have a singular ATM to withdraw cash.

It is a similar story in Victoria, where 120 branches have permanently closed their doors to customers.

'Closures have a devastating impact on local communities,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said.

'Jobs are lost, business is impacted, and another local service disappears.'

The closures have hit hard in regional and rural areas, and for older citizens, Ms Angrisano added.

Another key factor for the branch closures and reduced ATM's is the fact that banks are bringing in a small fortune from daily digital transactions.

As Australia accelerates towards a cashless society, fees from either the customer or vender for online banking have become common place.

In a modern-day digital world, an estimated 80 per cent of Aussies prefer to bank online.

But the remaining 20 per cent, namely the disabled or those who are not digital savvy, have been left stranded.

Tellingly, CBA now has 875 bank branches nationwide - compared to 1134 in February 2020. 

Their number of ATMs has reduced to just over 2000 - in 2019 there were 4118 ATM's in circulation.

Last year, ANZ head of distribution Kath Bray said bank branch closures were a sign of the times, with digital transactions now the primary focus for many.

 

Amazon Whole Foods "Just Walk Out?" - What Kind Of Self-Respecting Man Ever Bothered To Walk In?

NYTimes  |  “Would you like to sign in with your palm?”

That was the question a cheerful Amazon employee posed when greeting me last week at the opening of a Whole Foods Market in Washington’s Glover Park neighborhood. She blithely added, “You can also begin shopping by scanning the QR code in your Amazon app.”

“Let’s go for the palm,” I said.

In less than a minute, I scanned both hands on a kiosk and linked them to my Amazon account. Then I hovered my right palm over the turnstile reader to enter the nation’s most technologically sophisticated grocery store.

For the next 30 minutes, I shopped. I picked up a bag of cauliflower florets, grapefruit sparkling water, a carton of strawberries and a package of organic chicken sausages. Cameras and sensors recorded each of my moves, creating a virtual shopping cart for me in real time. Then I simply walked out, no cashier necessary. Whole Foods — or rather Amazon — would bill my account later.

More than four years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13 billion. Now the Amazon-ification of the grocery chain is physically complete, as showcased by the revamped Whole Foods store in Glover Park.

For a long time, Amazon made only small steps toward putting its mark on the more than 500 Whole Foods stores in the United States and Britain. The main evidence of change were the discounts and free home delivery for Amazon Prime members.

But this 21,000-square-foot Whole Foods just north of Georgetown has catapulted Amazon’s involvement forward. Along with another prototype Whole Foods store, which will open in Los Angeles this year, Amazon designed my local grocer to be almost completely run by tracking and robotic tools for the first time.

The technology, known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Behind the scenes, deep-learning software analyzes the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase the accuracy of its charges.

While You're Transfixed By The Ukraine Antics, The Vaccine Credential Initiative Rolls On...,

nakedcapitalism  |  As the world is transfixed by the escalating war in Ukraine and its economic fallout, big moves concerning vaccine passports are taking place behind closed doors.

An article published last Thursday by Politico, citing a source from the so-called Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI™), reported that the World Health Organization is poised to convene member States and representatives of Covid-19 immunization credential technology groups to recognize different vaccine certificates across nations and regions. In other words, as countries around the world drop almost all of their COVID-19 public health measures, it looks like digital vaccine passports are going to be made not just universal but permanent (as I warned would happen in April 2021):

The WHO is bringing together the groups to develop a “trust framework” that would allow countries to verify whether vaccine credentials are legitimate, said Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE and a co-founder of the VCI.

Why it matters: The effort would aid international travel by allowing proof of vaccination to be more easilyshared and verified, Anderson said. Many countries and regions have different standards for proof of inoculation, creating confusion for travelers and officials.

“It’s piecemeal, not coordinated and done nation to nation,” Anderson said. “It can be a real challenge.”

The WHO would say only that news on the topic should be coming “soon.”

The VCI is behind SMART Health Cards, which have become the de facto standard for digital vaccine credentials in the U.S., with dozens of states developing or adopting the technology. The group will participate in the initiative.

The Vaccine Credentials Initiative (VCI™) is one of a number of private partnerships working to harmonize vaccine passport standards and systems at a global level. The VCI™ is leading the development and implementation of the open-source SMART Health Card Framework and specifications. Its partners include U.S. government contractor MITRE Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle, Sales Force and Mayo Clinic.

According to its own website, the VCI™ has helped to implement SMART health cards in 15 jurisdictions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Senegal, Qatar, Rwanda, North Macedonia and Aruba. It has also helped to “quietly” roll out digital vaccine certificates across 21 US states, as Forbes recently reported:

While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders…

And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access to SMART Health Cards. “We’ve seen a notable uptick in states that have officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR code,” says Dr. Brian Anderson, co-founder of the VCI and chief digital health physician at MITRE.

Another global partnership seeking to standardize vaccine passports is the Commons Project Foundation (CPJ), which was founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and is supported by the World Economic Forum.

There is also the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which was founded last year by Mastercard, IBM, Grameen Foundation and the International Chamber of Commerce. The organization is the brainchild of the world’s largest digital identity advocacy group, the New York-based ID2020 Alliance, which itself was set up in 2016 with seed money from Microsoft, Accenture, PwC, the Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The ID2020 Alliance’s goal is to “enable access to digital identity for every person on the planet.”

Is Ongoing Financial Collapse A Plot Twist On The Road To Digital Currency/ID?

kunstler  |  The Ukraine blow-up is more a humiliation for “Joe Biden” and his faction than for the US per se, for the truth is that we have scant interest in that corner of the world and what goes on there is none of our business, and never was….

It is fair to say that the “Joe Biden” government dearly wanted a Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to divert attention from the “Joe Biden” government’s war on its own people in the United States. The table was nicely laid for it over many years, including, by the way, Mr. Trump’s vaunted gift of weaponry to Ukraine, which enabled and emboldened the Kiev regime to harass the Russian-speaking population of Donbas without relent. And the situation was aggravated by the deliberate negotiation-unworthiness (Russian term) of “Joe Biden” and Company, who refused to discuss the chief issue between the US and Russia, namely, the dishonest effort, in violation of written agreements dating from 1990, to enlist Ukraine in NATO, and thereby to place missiles on Russia’s border. The US disallowed something very similar in 1962, when the old USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba.

You are also seeing payback for the Maidan color revolution of 2014, engineered by John Kerry’s State Department and John Brennan’s CIA. We have been managing Ukraine backstage since then and, alas for that poor country, quite deceitfully. If you bother to read the recent statements of both “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin, you will see exactly why and how the situation developed. You will also see an appalling difference in the quality of public utterance — as, say, the difference between Zippy the Pinhead and a Metternich.

I’ll get back to all that presently, but first let’s be clear about what “Joe Biden” & Co. seek to divert public attention from: the complete implosion of all the narratives that support the “Joe Biden” regime — and the campaign against Western Civ more generally by the sinister likes of Klaus Schwab and his global gang of Great Re-setters, including Bill Gates, George Soros, and many actors in America’s own Deep State.

The Covid-19 story is blowing up, and in a very ugly way for the American people. The news is finally wriggling free of our combined news media / social media censorship machine and that news is as follows: Covid-19 was a trip laid on the world to get rid of the irascible Mr. Trump and usher-in a system of digital social controls. The mRNA “vaccines” were all patented and ready to go before the virus even took off. The mRNA “vaccines” turned out to be ineffective and arguably more damaging than the Covid-19 virus. That last bit of news is now coming out in reports from the life insurance and funeral industries, which are showing an alarming increase in all-causes death, especially in people under 60 years of age.

It is also coming out that the CDC has wildly and recklessly falsified its own data throughout the Covid crisis, and that the “vaccine” safety trials were a complete fraud — which has led to the prospect of Moderna and Pfizer losing their liability shields, and, recently, to the crash of their share prices. The public is also learning that they were cruelly denied early treatments with well-proven off-label drugs that might have saved millions of lives. And yet, knowing all this, “Joe Biden” and his Democratic Party are to this day urging Americans to “go out and get vaccinated, get boosted,” in the words last week of the US president. You can’t be faulted if you suspect that they are deliberately trying to kill a lot of people.

The blow-up of the Covid-19 story will come to horrify even those Americans hypnotically locked into mass formation, and will lead to countless lawsuits and prosecutions. But in the meantime, we will be preoccupied with the blow-up of the financial system and the economy it is supposed to serve. The inflation horses are out of the barn and running wild. The Federal Reserve has finally succeeded in destroying the value of the dollar and, consequently, destroying the little that is left of middle-class life in the USA. At the same time, they have unleashed forces that will also destroy the fortunes of many upper-class people, too, as the stock and bond markets go south. Financial collapse is at hand, and “Joe Biden” doesn’t want you to pay attention to it. The Ukraine melodrama is a compelling distraction.

 

If This Fat Bastard Had His Way - There Would Be No Funding For The Freedom Convoy

globeandmail |  The Ontario government says it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to millions of dollars donated through online fundraising platform GiveSendGo to the convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at several border crossings.

The province obtained an order from the Superior Court of Justice that prohibits anyone from distributing donations made through the website’s “Freedom Convoy 2022″ and “Adopt-a-Trucker” campaign pages, said a spokeswoman for Premier Doug Ford.

Ivana Yelich said the order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” was issued Thursday afternoon. She cited a section of the Criminal Code that allows the attorney general to apply for a restraint order against any “offence-related property.”

Hundreds of semi-trucks rolled into downtown Ottawa two weeks ago to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates and health restrictions and now trucks are also blockading border crossings in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.

Donors initially raised more than $10-million through GoFundMe, which announced last Friday it was pulling the plug on the campaign and that the money would be refunded. The site said it initially believed the demonstration was going to be peaceful, but withdrew its support after police and local leaders raised concerns it had become an “occupation.”

Convoy organizers quickly set up new campaigns on Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo. As of Thursday, “Freedom Convoy 2022″ had raised $US8.4-million and “Adopt-a-Trucker” had amassed more than $686,000.

Explainer: The Ottawa protests’ havoc is spreading from Windsor to Alberta. Where are the trucker convoys now?

GiveSendGo posted a statement on Twitter Thursday night about its “Freedom Convoy” campaign.

“Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo,” it said.

“All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”

Organizers have also touted the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as another way to generate funds for protesters and avoid other potential fundraising shutdowns, including during a news conference that was livestreamed to supporters on Wednesday.

Ontario’s move to freeze access to the donations comes the same day as an all-party House of Commons committee of MPs heard testimony from deputy directors of Canada’s financial intelligence hub about how it doesn’t cover crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe.

This "Feeling" Better Start Spreading Through The Herd A Lot Faster

brucewilds |  Just how unkind the recent Covid-economy has been to the middle-class has been masked by the helicopter money flowing from Washington. This has skewed income and spending across America but little attention has been paid to those taking it on the chin. This includes the owners of small businesses and those making substantially more than before the pandemic hit. The evidence of the pain and damage being inflicted on the Main Street economy is going beginning to become apparent. It can be seen as we drive down the street and see move empty windows and for lease signs which are sprouting up like weeds.

Even the appearance of a coin shortage due to our government being inept is causing people to claim this is all an intentional part of a larger plan. It means businesses are using the coin shortage to stop taking cash. This has left some people wondering if those wanting the demise of paper money are using the virus scam to eliminate cash altogether. The pandemic and warning germs can be transferred on the surface of money mean that suddenly "money" has now been deemed "unsafe." The rumor is out that Nancy Pelosi has already inserted in one stimulus bill the seeds of "taking our currency digital." 

This would force everyone into the banking system increasing the government's ability to tax, track, and control just about everything. The complete transformation to digital currency would mean if the government does not like your business or politics they could just lock you out of the system. They could even charge you to park your money while the bank would be allowed to lend it out and charge interest on it. Eliminating cash is the first step they must adopt for this to work. It would lock money into their system, they would eliminate or control all alternatives to money so it cannot be diverted from or moved out of the banking or financial system.

As events unfold I have witnessed a growing opinion being battered around that something sinister is happening beneath the surface. This includes the feeling we are no longer in control of our fate. More and more the idea that form follows function and the winners were picked before all this started is being injected into the mix. This theory embraces the proposition the bottom half of society is destitute and totally dependent on the government which means they have been removed from the battlefield. Now that these people are no longer a threat, corporate and government collaborators are consolidating power and control.

You Realize Panic-Demic Is ONLY The Tip Of The Livestock Management Iceberg - Right?

While you sleeping, that other cat was steady creeping. Tried to tell you sum'n was up with those funky multi-state drone swarms - nobody paid any heed - now a minute later - come to find out deeply disturbing incursions were taking place prior to, during, and subsequent to this mysterious and unexplained public interval. If you don't understand exactly how bad this is, then school is officieally adjourned for you. Suffice it to say, there are levers upon levers upon levers available to those intent on implementing the aims of the Great Reset. Bad as it is, the panic-demic is a cake-walk compared with what's provably and trivially feasible to those intent on the aims of the new economic and social order. Think Chernobyl, Fukashima - and like a basic but elite hacker incursion - totally devastating and completely untraceable.

Forbes |  Documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act show how a number of small drones flew around a restricted area at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant on two successive nights last September. Security forces watched, but were apparently helpless to act as the drones carried out their incursions before disappearing into the night. Details of the event gives some clues as to just what they were doing, but who sent them remains a mystery.

Details of the events were obtained from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Douglas D. Johnson on behalf of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The SCU’s main interest is in anomalous aerospace phenomena, what other people term UFOs. In this case though the flying objects were easily identifiable as drones, although their exact mission and origin are unknown. Johnson passed the information to The War Zone who give a detailed account.

Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant is the largest in the U.S., producing over three gigawatts, 35% of Arizona's total power capacity. It supplies electricity to Phoenix and Tucson, as well as San Diego and Los Angeles. It is a critical piece of strategic infrastructure; during the 2003 Iraq War, National Guard troops were deployed to Palo Verde to defend against a possible terrorist threat. In normal times, as with other nuclear installations, it is protected by armed security guards.

The armed guards, gates, fences and barriers were useless on the night of September 29^th. According to the official report:

“Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white rights [sic] and are estimated to be 200 to 300 hundred [sic] feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area. Drones were first noticed at 20:50 MST and are still over the site as of 21:47 MST. Security Posture was normal, which was changed to elevated when the drones were noticed.”

The drones departed at 22:30, eighty minutes after they were first spotted. The security officers estimated that they were over two feet in diameter. This indicates that they were not simply consumer drones like the popular DJI Phantom, which have a flight endurance of about half an hour and is about a foot across, but something larger and more capable. The Lockheed Martin Indago, a military-grade quadcopter recently sold to the Swiss Army, has a flight endurance of about seventy minutes and is more than two feet across. At several thousand dollars apiece minimum, these are far less expendable than consumer drones costing a few hundred. All of which suggests this was not just a prank.

The Great Reset Is A Worldwide Technocratic Coup d'Etat

mises |  The basic idea of the Great Reset is the same principle that guided the radical transformations from the French to the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. It is the idea of constructivist rationalism incorporated in the state. But projects like the Great Reset leave unanswered the question of who rules the state. The state itself does not rule. It is an instrument of power. It is not the abstract state that decides, but the leaders of specific political parties and of certain social groups.

Earlier totalitarian regimes needed mass executions and concentration camps to maintain their power. Now, with the help of new technologies, it is believed, dissenters can easily be identified and marginalized. The nonconformists will be silenced by disqualifying divergent opinions as morally despicable.

The 2020 lockdowns possibly offer a preview of how this system works. The lockdown worked as if it had been orchestrated—and perhaps it was. As if following a single command, the leaders of big and small nations—and of different stages of economic development—implemented almost identical measures. Not only did many governments act in unison, they also applied these measures with little regard for the horrific consequences of a global lockdown.

Months of economic stillstand have destroyed the economic basis of millions of families. Together with social distancing, the lockdown has produced a mass of people unable to care for themselves. First, governments destroyed the livelihood, then the politicians showed up as the savior. The demand for social assistance is no longer limited to specific groups, but has become a need of the masses.

Once, war was the health of the state. Now it is fear of disease. What lies ahead is not the apparent coziness of a benevolent comprehensive welfare state with a guaranteed minimum income and healthcare and education for all. The lockdown and its consequences have brought a foretaste of what is to come: a permanent state of fear, strict behavioral control, massive loss of jobs, and growing dependence on the state.

With the measures taken in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a big step to reset the global economy has been made. Without popular resistance, the end of the pandemic will not mean the end of the lockdown and social distancing. At the moment, however, the opponents of the new world order of digital tyranny still have access to the media and platforms to dissent. Yet the time is running out. The perpetrators of the new world order have smelled blood. Declaring the coronavirus a pandemic has come in handy to promote the agenda of their Great Reset. Only massive opposition can slow down and finally stop the extension of the power grip of the tyrannical technocracy that is on the rise.

When No Lives Matter Economic Stimulus Could Be Tied To Vaccination Compliance

theatlantic |  Other researchers with whom I spoke echoed many of the same concerns about people’s possible resistance to taking a vaccine, especially if its rollout is botched. To avoid such mistakes, Michele Andrasik and Chris Beyrer, who are among the leaders of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, an initiative by the National Institutes of Health, have already started to test different messages for communicating the benefits of immunization to the public. As Beyrer told me, early results indicate that an emphasis on the importance of the vaccine for revitalizing local communities will be crucial. “A lot of people are feeling very isolated,” he said, “so we are building a lot around solidarity: ‘We are all in this together!’”

Because of the influence of the anti-vaxxer movement, the vaccination rate for measles has dropped so low in certain areas of the country that children from Brooklyn to Santa Monica have contracted the potentially life-threatening disease. It is natural to fear that the same could happen with the coronavirus. But this ignores the fundamental differences between the two diseases. “You can’t just take the anti-vaxxer mentality you see with measles,” Flier told me, “and apply it to the situation we face with COVID.”

But will enough people get it? What happens if, as the CBS poll suggests, one in five Americans refuses to cooperate?

According to the experts I spoke with, the threshold for herd immunity for COVID-19 is likely to fall somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population. Since about one in 20 Americans is likely to have suffered from COVID-19 by the time a vaccine becomes available, this means that somewhere between 45 and 65 percent of the American population will need to be vaccinated.

In the case of measles, herd immunity requires an almost total social consensus about the utility of vaccines. As some children have painfully learned, such near unanimity is difficult to sustain. But in the case of COVID-19, anti-vaxxers would have to convert a much larger proportion of Americans in order to have a similarly devastating impact on our collective health. Unless one in three—or even one in two—Americans refuses a vaccine that would allow them to go back out into the world without fear and protect their loved ones from a deadly pandemic, the U.S. is likely to reach herd immunity.

Again and again, the coronavirus has defied expectations about how it is likely to behave. We would therefore be well advised to reckon with the possibility that things could once again break against us. Perhaps this virus is not only uniquely suited to disrupting human civilization but also unexpectedly adept at beating our attempts to immunize people against it.

terrorist and criminal networks more connected than you think...,

thomsonreuters |  According to our new study, released in conjunction with The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, connectivity between terrorist and criminal activity is highest in developed, resource-rich countries, and those with policies actively supporting criminal elements, countering previous assumptions.

The study, Risky Business: The Global Threat Network and the Politics of Contraband, uses information from our Thomson Reuters World-Check database to examine the relationships of those who produce and profit from illicit activities that include terrorism, the illegal narcotics trade, organized crime, human smuggling and political corruption. The network analysis includes 2,700 individuals linked by 15,000 relationships spanning 122 countries.

Key findings include:

• Connectivity among actors within the illicit marketplace is relatively high. This should not be construed to say that the network is a cohesive organizational entity. Rather, the phenomenon is a self-organizing complex system built through social connections from the bottom up.
• By most measures of connectivity, terrorists are more interconnected than almost all other types of criminals, second only to narcotics smugglers. The transnational nature of terrorist actors allows them to link disparate criminal groups.
• An analysis of social connections shows that 35 percent of the links that criminals and suspicious individuals maintain cross into terrorism.
• Connectivity between terrorists and criminals is highest in resource-rich countries. This challenges conventional wisdom that assumes this is a product of failed or economically poor states. However, the study found there is connectivity among poor countries that use criminality as an economic or national security tool.
• Identifying financial irregularities is critical to tracking dirty money, questionable transactions and illicit actors. Many government agencies are not training analysts in the intelligence or defense communities to think about the convergence of commerce, economics and threats. This skill gap represents a challenge confronting law enforcement and national security authorities.

the android security model is most impressive...,

marketplace |  Try to pay for something at your local store of choice and you might notice a few changes up at the register. Namely those kiosks where you’re used to paying with a swipe credit card. 

There's a good chance some of those stations are ready to accept the new chip and PIN tech.

But there's also a chance that there's a logo from Apple, Google and other tech giants letting you know you can pay up with an app on your phone. And now, add Chase Bank to the mobile payments game.  

Molly Wood, senior Marketplace tech correspondent, spoke with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal about what the biggest bank in the U.S. has planned for the checkout line.

On how Chase is different:

They are not the first ones, but arguably they are the biggest. Chase is huge. One of every two households, according to Chase, is a Chase customer. [It is] the No. 1 processor in terms of payments overall. So what they are going to do differently, I think, is double down on reach. Chase is partnering up with Wal-Mart and some other big retailers. Now, that said, even though they have the size and the power, they’re going all-in on confusing. The digital wallet that they’re building sounds a little bit funky. There will be a Chase app. You could use that to pay by showing a code to a cashier that they can scan — but not in every store. Some stores will require you to use a different app that is being built by this consortium of retailers. So it’s a little messy right now.

On why companies are climbing into mobile payments when so few people uses it:

In fact, I think it’s only about 4 percent of consumers. It’s something like 13 percent have ever actually tried it. It’s very tiny. But it has the potential to be hugely profitable for whatever company wins…. There’s a potential for this to become a multibillion dollar business, even in the next couple years.