Steve Bull's Blog, page 106
August 14, 2023
What Are the BRICS Planning With the August 22nd Durban Accords?
Photo by Khashayar KouchpeydehIn my first explainer about the BRICS nations, you met the players and you know why their decisions affect the global economy. But why do their decisions affect us?
You need to understand that first – before the August 22nd Durban Accords will make any sense. (But once you do understand, you’ll be astonished…)
Professor Reagan’s class is now in session!
Global trade runs on U.S. dollars
Since World War II, the U.S. dollar has enjoyed the role of global reserve currency. You may have heard those words before – here’s what they mean…
Worldwide, when companies or nations transacting with one another don’t share a common currency, they use U.S. dollars. When a Chilean copper mine sells tons of raw ore to a Canadian refiner, they invoice (and get paid) in U.S. dollars.
Obviously, most nations don’t have a common currency (the exception is the Euro zone). So the use of dollars for international trade is simply huge, approximately 85% of the global total.
So the world relies on dollars to do business. That’s a great deal for us! That means, for example, that deficit spending and newly-printed money always have a home somewhere in the world. Simply because the world has to have dollars.
Like I said, that’s a great deal for the nation that exports dollars. It’s not such a great deal for everyone else…
“It’s our currency, but it’s your problem”
In 1971, President Nixon ended the convertibility of dollars to gold.
The rest of the world, to put it mildly, went nuts. The gold standard was supposed to prevent inflation – but it hadn’t (primarily because American citizens weren’t allowed to swap dollars for gold since 1933).
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The Evidence that Convicts the CIA of the JFK Assassination
Longtime readers of my work on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy know that I point to the evidence establishing the fraudulent autopsy that was conducted on JFK’s body to convict the U.S. military establishment of criminal complicity in the assassination itself. That’s because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. Once one concludes that the autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body was fraudulent, one has automatically concluded that the military establishment was criminally complicit in the assassination itself. There is no way around that.
The evidence of autopsy fraud is set forth in my books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story. It is detailed to a much greater extent in Douglas Horne’s watershed five-volume book on the Kennedy assassination Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.
But what about the CIA? Is there evidence that convicts the CIA beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal complicity in the JFK assassination? Yes, there is. That evidence consists of the altered, fraudulent copy of the famous Zapruder film that the CIA secretly produced at its top-secret Hawkeyeworks photographic operation in Rochester, New York, on the weekend of the assassination.
Just as there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy, there is also no innocent explanation for an altered, fraudulent copy of the film of the assassination. Once one concludes that the famous Zapruder film is an altered, fraudulent copy of the original Zapruder film, one has automatically concluded that the CIA was criminally complicit in the assassination of President Kennedy. There is no way around that.
Abraham Zapruder’s camera.
Yes, I am thoroughly familiar with the CIA’s standard response: “Conspiracy theory, Jacob! Conspiracy theory!”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Renewables: Plug & Pray?
Photo by American Public Power Association on UnsplashWe are made to believe by PR articles and mainstream media pundits that “renewables” are just plug and play. Like computer screens. That all we need to do is to shut down old fossil fuel power plants and replace them with wind and solar. We are constantly bombarded with simplistic statements like “renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuel power plants”, as if such a simple one to one comparison could be made. All this hand waving, however, completely disregards the fact that the real life utilization of solar panels and wind mills are much lower than their nameplate suggests, and that they are a whole lot less useful in maintaining a stable grid than their polluting predecessors. It’s clearly not a plug&play game… Much rather, as it is played today, it’s all plug&pray.
There is a saying in contemporary German company culture: ‘Zahlen-Fakten-Daten’ — literally meaning: numbers, facts and data. It’s usually uttered during management reviews when someone makes a bold statement or starts to wax lyrical about an idea. It is meant to channel energies back to the task at hand and to request the necessary data to make a sound decision. So let’s see if statements pertaining the relative cheapness and usefulness of “renewables” really stand this test.
The latest report from the Energy Institute titled Statistical Review of World Energy (previously compiled by BP) provides us with just that: a ton of numbers and some rather inconvenient facts. Let’s start with availability. In case of regular fossil fuel power plants this metric is calculated by dividing the amount of time during which a plant is able to produce electricity over a certain period, by the total amount of time in that period. Let’s say your plant provides electricity 24/7, day-in day-out for 90 days but then it is down for maintenance for 10 days…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 11, 2023
August 8, 2023
Zelensky Threatens “Russia May Be Left Without Ships” Amid Emerging Battle At Sea
Last week witnessed two major Ukrainian strikes on Russian ships at sea in merely two days, which resulted in severe damage to a warship (seen listing as it was towed to port), and damage to an oil tanker known to supply fuel to Russia’s military in Syria.
This emerging “battle at sea” also comes as Russia has stepped up major assaults of Ukrainian ports, including on the Black Sea and in the Danube, across from NATO member Romania.
The Olenegorsky Gornyak, a Russian Navy landing ship, tugged to shore – apparently listing – after it was attacked last Friday. via ReutersKiev and Washington have accused President Vladimir Putin of ‘weaponizing food’ – while the Kremlin has blamed Ukraine and its NATO backers for making Black Sea transit routes dangerous, given the sea drone attacks and release of sea mines.
In new statements, President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled there will be more attacks on Russian ships to come, which is likely to see the conflict slide further toward “unlimited war” – where any and all targets, including civilian, are taken out.
Zelensky said in a fresh interview with the Latin American publication La Nacion that Ukraine forces will turn the ongoing blockade of Ukrainian ports back on Russia.
“If Russia continues to dominate the Black Sea and block it with missiles, then Ukraine will do the same, which is a fair defense of our capabilities,” he said. And significantly, he added:
“If they continue to shoot, we don’t have many weapons, but if they continue to shoot, they may be left without ships until the end of the war. And this is what we want to show them.”
“Therefore, Ukraine will definitely respond to any attacks on the civilian population and grain corridors,” Zelensky emphasized.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Brazil Censorship Regime: Popular Podcaster Monark Criminally Investigated and Fined $75,000 For Online Speech
One of Brazil’s most popular podcasters, Monark (real name Bruno Monteiro Aiub), is under criminal investigation and has received a fine equivalent to $75,000 for his online conduct.
Critics of the authority’s behavior here – like Brazil-based investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald – see this as a way to completely science the online personality known as the country’s version of Joe Rogan.
And do this without any due process, as well.
Reports in the Brazilian press say that the decision to fine Monark, whom they refer to as a digital influencer, came from Federal Supreme Court’s Minister Alexandre de Moraes.
Moraes is no stranger to taking an active part in controversial policies and decisions slammed for suppressing free speech on the internet.
In fact, he now has a fairly long history of involvement in this, dating back to the campaign to oust Brazil’s previous president.
In line with this reputation, Moraes’ decision was explained as the podcaster’s failure to comply with a court order, and in addition to the fine, includes blocking his bank account, suspending any new social media accounts, and demonetizing his channels.
In other words, a pretty thorough deplatforming and canceling, and Monark said he also lost his Rumble contract over the incident. And the reason: Moraes says he’s fighting “disinformation” allegedly spread by Monark, as well as his tactic of trying to get his voice heard by creating a new account, once an old one gets banned.
Monark’s defenders, including his lawyer, say that the “crime” he committed is that of having an opinion that is not liked by the government, and that accusations of “instigation of anti-democratic acts” are not true.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The Fed Hits 3,000 Percent Inflation
The US economy was pushed to extremes during the pandemic recession and subsequent recovery. The unemployment rate peaked at 14.7 percent, the highest in the post-World War II period. Inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years, prompting the Fed to raise short-term interest rates to their highest levels since 2007.
As of June, the economy hit another dubious milestone: Inflation has now reached 3,000 percent under the Federal Reserve.
Inflation under the Fed
The Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress in December of 1913, and the regional Federal Reserve banks opened for business in November of 1914. Comparing the price level at the end of 1914 to the level today tells us how much total price inflation the US economy has experienced under the Fed.
The consumer price index (CPI) is the most widely used and longest-running measure of the US price level, but there are disagreements about the accuracy of historical CPI. MeasuringWorth aggregates macroeconomic data such as interest rates, economic production, and the price-level from the most reliable historical sources.
Historical CPI data from MeasuringWorth show that the US price level rose by 2,920.2 percent from 1914 through 2022.
While the MeasuringWorth dataset provides only annual data, we can add monthly data for the current year from the official CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). According to BLS data, the CPI rose by 2.74 percent (not seasonally adjusted) in the first half of 2023.
That brings total inflation under the Fed to 3,000.2 percent.
Compared to what?US inflation was not always as persistently high as it has been under the Fed. Before the Fed, the purchasing power of the dollar was determined by supply of and demand for gold. Consequently, the purchasing power of the dollar was relatively stable.
Figure 1. Index of the US price level, 1774-2022
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Puppet Masters of the Pandemic. Part 2: What Did The CIA Do in Wuhan?”
Part 2 of an interview with the New American Magazine
From Part I – the interview left of with the big question of who is the puppet master? What’s behind all this propaganda and control over the past three years? I spoke of different theories that people had put out there, and ended with the beginning of the hypothesis that the CIA may in fact be that controlling element. Part II picks up the thesis there.From Part I: Dr. Robert Malone: We <Bret Weinstein, Steve Kirsch and myself> talked about emergent phenomena, that this might just be the consequence of simultaneous things happening and separate actors acting on their own initiatives, and the result would be a vector sum of things (controlling the propaganda and globalized governmental policies). I’ve never felt comfortable with that as an explanation for why we would see this amazing harmonization of propaganda, censorship, messaging strategies, technical strategies like the purchasing of influencers, et cetera, globally.
Then, a colleague … a close colleague of mine who actually employs a former director of the CIA were discussing who is the puppet master? What’s behind all this? We had a discussion in which he related a conversation with his employee (former DCIA) regarding the global power and reach of the CIA, in which the former DCIA concluded that the CIA was currently the most powerful organization in the world, perhaps the most powerful global organization in human history. This is one of those things I haven’t wanted to believe…
Part II
If you are subjected on a daily basis to this advanced technology of nudging and information control and censorship, control of narrative, <governments and NGO> cooperating with press, cooperating with social media so that every single thing you encounter is manipulated to support the agenda and the narrative of whomever the dominant force is that is propagating this?
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 7, 2023
3,000 US Troops Enter Gulf Region In Latest Escalation With Iran
Two American warships with over 3,000 newly deployed US military personnel between them have entered the Red Sea, new statements confirm Monday, as part of the Pentagon’s efforts to thwart Iranian seizures of international vessels in regional waters.
The US Fifth Fleet announced Monday the ships have transited the Suez Canal with the fresh deployment of sailors and Marines. The Bahrain-based command said the USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall warships provide “greater flexibility and maritime capability” in ensuring the safety of global shipping in the Gulf and Mideast area of operations.
US Navy, file imageThe statement further said the new troops and warships will seek to “deter destabilizing activity and de-escalate regional tensions caused by Iran’s harassment and seizures of merchant vessels.” Both US warships are amphibious assault-style vessels with rapid deployment capabilities of both Marines and helicopters, and other assets.
It comes after the Pentagon has tallied that over 20 internationally-flagged tankers have been either seized or harassed by Iran’s military over the last two years, particularly in the vital Strait of Hormuz.
Last week the Pentagon announced an unconventional and controversial plan to “deploy a security guard composed of Marines on board commercial tankers passing through and near the Strait of Hormuz, to form an additional layer of defense for these ships,” according to Fifth Fleet spokesman Tim Hawkins.
But there are legal questions and hurdles to such a proposal, still reportedly being mulled – given the US Marines would be dealing with various foreign vessels, and presumably some would not give permission for them to board. It further remains unclear whether the Marines would only provide security details on US-flagged tankers, or among other close Western allies such as British-flagged vessels.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Was the Covid response a coup by Western intelligence agencies?
On Thursday, friend-of-the-blog Michael P. Senger posted an important essay to Substack, in which he asks whether the “Response to COVID” was “effectively a coup by the Western intelligence community.” Everyone should read it, as it summarises in one place a range of evidence that Senger and others have collected pointing to the role of the defence and intelligence actors in promoting lockdowns, especially in America.
Many readers have asked me in sometimes polite and sometimes highly hostile and dismissive ways to comment on these ideas for a long time now. I find this surprising, as I don’t disagree with any of Senger’s specific observations, and I don’t think they’re necessarily in conflict with my own theses of What Happened in 2020. I’ve long held that the bureaucracy succumbed to very radical ideas about how to suppress SARS-2 between February and March 2020, and as the defence and intelligence sectors are part of the institutional apparatus of the government, it’s only logical to think that they should’ve fallen prey to these ideas too. Perhaps it is true, though, that my overall interpretation of events departs somewhat from the Intelligence Coup Thesis. In what follows, I’ll try to explain why.
Senger and others have surely shown that key members of the American defence establishment were very worried about SARS-2 and willing to follow the lead of China in pandemic policy from the beginning. Their advocacy, however, seems to be of two types. Either it occurs very early but doesn’t seem to be about mass containment specifically, or it occurs rather later and indicates an endorsement of lockdowns around the same time everyone else was endorsing them.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
