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Pepe Escobar in Zero Hedge explains the obvious: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-why-russia-driving-west-crazy

Why Russia Is Driving The West Crazy

Future historians may register it as the day when usually unflappable Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decided he had had enough:

We are getting used to the fact that the European Union is trying to impose unilateral restrictions, illegitimate restrictions and we proceed from the assumption at this stage that the European Union is an unreliable partner.

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on an official visit to Moscow, had to take it on the chin.

Lavrov, always the perfect gentleman, added, “I hope that the strategic review that will take place soon will focus on the key interests of the European Union and that these talks will help to make our contacts more constructive.”

He was referring to the EU summit of heads of state and government at the European Council next month, where they will discuss Russia. Lavrov harbors no illusions the “unreliable partners” will behave like adults.

Yet something immensely intriguing can be found in Lavrov’s opening remarks in his meeting with Borrell: “The main problem we all face is the lack of normalcy in relations between Russia and the European Union – the two largest players in the Eurasian space. It is an unhealthy situation, which does not benefit anyone.”

The two largest players in the Eurasian space (italics mine). Let that sink in. We’ll be back to it in a moment.

As it stands, the EU seems irretrievably addicted to worsening the “unhealthy situation”. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen memorably botched the Brussels vaccine game. Essentially, she sent Borrell to Moscow to ask for licensing rights for European firms to produce the Sputnik V vaccine – which will soon be approved by the EU.

And yet Eurocrats prefer to dabble in hysteria, promoting the antics of NATO asset and convicted fraudster Navalny – the Russian Guaido.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, under the cover of “strategic deterrence”, the head of the US STRATCOM, Admiral Charles Richard, casually let it slip that “there is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state.”

So the blame for the next – and final – war is already apportioned to the “destabilizing” behavior of Russia and China. It’s assumed they will be “losing” – and then, in a fit of rage, will go nuclear. The Pentagon will be no more than a victim; after all, claims Mr. STRATCOM, we are not “stuck in the Cold War”.

STRATCOM planners could do worse than read crack military analyst Andrei Martyanov, who for years has been on the forefront detailing how the new hypersonic paradigm – and not nuclear weapons – has changed the nature of warfare.

After a detailed technical discussion, Martyanov shows how “the United States simply has no good options currently. None. The less bad option, however, is to talk to Russians and not in terms of geopolitical BS and wet dreams that the United States, somehow, can convince Russia “to abandon” China – US has nothing, zero, to offer Russia to do so. But at least Russians and Americans may finally settle peacefully this “hegemony” BS between themselves and then convince China to finally sit as a Big Three at the table and finally decide how to run the world. This is the only chance for the US to stay relevant in the new world.”

The Golden Horde imprint

As much as the chances are negligible of the EU getting a grip on the “unhealthy situation” with Russia, there’s no evidence what Martyanov outlined will be contemplated by the US Deep State.

The path ahead seems ineluctable: perpetual sanctions; perpetual NATO expansion alongside Russia’s borders; the build up of a ring of hostile states around Russia; perpetual US interference on Russian internal affairs – complete with an army of fifth columnists; perpetual, full spectrum information war.

Lavrov is increasingly making it crystal clear that Moscow expects nothing else. Facts on the ground, though, will keep accumulating.

Nordstream 2 will be finished – sanctions or no sanctions – and will supply much needed natural gas to Germany and the EU. Convicted fraudster Navalny – 1% of real “popularity” in Russia – will remain in jail. Citizens across the EU will get Sputnik V. The Russia-China strategic partnership will continue to solidify.

To understand how we have come to this unholy Russophobic mess, an essential road map is provided by Russian Conservatism, an exciting, new political philosophy study by Glenn Diesen, associate professor at University of Southeastern Norway, lecturer at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, and one of my distinguished interlocutors in Moscow.

Diesen starts focusing on the essentials: geography, topography and history. Russia is a vast land power without enough access to the seas. Geography, he argues, conditions the foundations of “conservative policies defined by autocracy, an ambiguous and complex concept of nationalism, and the enduring role of the Orthodox Church” – something that implies resistance to “radical secularism”.

It’s always crucial to remember that Russia has no natural defensible borders; it has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, the Mongol Golden Horde, Crimean Tatars and Napoleon. Not to mention the immensely bloody Nazi invasion.

What’s in a word? Everything: “security”, in Russian, is byezopasnost. That happens to be a negative, as byez means “without” and opasnost means “danger”.

Russia’s complex, unique historical make-up always presented serious problems. Yes, there was close affinity with the Byzantine empire. But if Russia “claimed transfer of imperial authority from Constantinople it would be forced to conquer it.” And to claim the successor, role and heritage of the Golden Horde would relegate Russia to the status of an Asiatic power only.

On the Russian path to modernization, the Mongol invasion provoked not only a geographical schism, but left its imprint on politics: “Autocracy became a necessity following the Mongol legacy and the establishment of Russia as an Eurasian empire with a vast and poorly connected geographical expanse”.

“A colossal East West”

Russia is all about East meets West. Diesen reminds us how Nikolai Berdyaev, one of the leading 20th century conservatives, already nailed it in 1947: “The inconsistency and complexity of the Russian soul may be due to the fact that in Russia two streams of world history – East and West – jostle and influence one another (…) Russia is a complete section of the world – a colossal East West.”

The Trans-Siberian railroad, built to solidify the internal cohesion of the Russian empire and to project power in Asia, was a major game-changer: “With Russian agricultural settlements expanding to the east, Russia was increasingly replacing the ancient roads who had previously controlled and connected Eurasia.”

It’s fascinating to watch how the development of Russian economics ended up on Mackinder’s Heartland theory – according to which control of the world required control of the Eurasian supercontinent. What terrified Mackinder is that Russian railways connecting Eurasia would undermine the whole power structure of Britain as a maritime empire.

Diesen also shows how Eurasianism – emerging in the 1920s among émigrés in response to 1917 – was in fact an evolution of Russian conservatism.

Eurasianism, for a number of reasons, never became a unified political movement. The core of Eurasianism is the notion that Russia was not a mere Eastern European state. After the 13th century Mongol invasion and the 16th century conquest of Tatar kingdoms, Russia’s history and geography could not be only European. The future would require a more balanced approach – and engagement with Asia.

Dostoyevsky had brilliantly framed it ahead of anyone, in 1881:

Russians are as much Asiatics as European. The mistake of our policy for the past two centuries has been to make the people of Europe believe that we are true Europeans. We have served Europe too well, we have taken too great a part in her domestic quarrels (…) We have bowed ourselves like slaves before the Europeans and have only gained their hatred and contempt. It is time to turn away from ungrateful Europe. Our future is in Asia.

Lev Gumilev was arguably the superstar among a new generation of Eurasianists. He argued that Russia had been founded on a natural coalition between Slavs, Mongols and Turks. The Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, published in 1989, had an immense impact in Russia after the fall of the USSR – as I learned first hand from my Russian hosts when I arrived in Moscow via the Trans-Siberian in the winter of 1992.

As Diesen frames it, Gumilev was offering a sort of third way, beyond European nationalism and utopian internationalism. A Lev Gumilev University has been established in Kazakhstan. Putin has referred to Gumilev as “the great Eurasian of our time”.

Diesen reminds us that even George Kennan, in 1994, recognized the conservative struggle for “this tragically injured and spiritually diminished country”. Putin, in 2005, was way sharper. He stressed,

the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. And for the Russian people, it was a real drama (…) The old ideals were destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or simply hastily reformed…With unrestricted control over information flows, groups of oligarchs served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty started to be accepted as the norm. All this evolved against a background of the most severe economic recession, unstable finances and paralysis in the social sphere.

Applying “sovereign democracy”

And so we reach the crucial European question.

In the 1990s, led by Atlanticists, Russian foreign policy was focused on Greater Europe, a concept based on Gorbachev’s Common European Home.

And yet post-Cold War Europe, in practice, ended up configured as the non-stop expansion of NATO and the birth – and expansion – of the EU. All sorts of liberal contortionisms were deployed to include all of Europe while excluding Russia.

Diesen has the merit of summarizing the whole process in a single sentence: “The new liberal Europe represented a British-American continuity in terms of the rule of maritime powers, and Mackinder’s objective to organize the German-Russian relationship in a zero-sum format to prevent the alignment of interests.”

No wonder Putin, subsequently, had to be erected as the Supreme Scarecrow, or “the new Hitler”. Putin rejected outright the role for Russia of mere apprentice to Western civilization – and its corollary, (neo) liberal hegemony.

Still, he remained quite accommodating. In 2005, Putin stressed, “above all else Russia was, is and will, of course, be a major European power”. What he wanted was to decouple liberalism from power politics – by rejecting the fundamentals of liberal hegemony.

Putin was saying there’s no single democratic model. That was eventually conceptualized as “sovereign democracy”. Democracy cannot exist without sovereignty; so that discards Western “supervision” to make it work.

Diesen sharply observes that if the USSR was a “radical, left-wing Eurasianism, some of its Eurasian characteristics could be transferred to conservative Eurasianism.” Diesen notes how Sergey Karaganov, sometimes referred to as the “Russian Kissinger”, has shown “that the Soviet Union was central to decolonization and it mid-wifed the rise of Asia by depriving the West of the ability to impose its will on the world through military force, which the West had done from the 16th century until the 1940s”.

This is largely acknowledged across vast stretches of the Global South – from Latin America and Africa to Southeast Asia.

Eurasia’s western peninsula

So after the end of the Cold War and the failure of Greater Europe, Moscow’s pivot to Asia to build Greater Eurasia could not but have an air of historical inevitability.

The logic is impeccable. The two geoeconomic hubs of Eurasia are Europe and East Asia. Moscow wants to connect them economically into a supercontinent: that’s where Greater Eurasia joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But then there’s the extra Russian dimension, as Diesen notes: the “transition away from the usual periphery of these centers of power and towards the center of a new regional construct”.

From a conservative perspective, emphasizes Diesen, “the political economy of Greater Eurasia enables Russia to overcome its historical obsession with the West and establish an organic Russian path to modernization”.

That implies the development of strategic industries; connectivity corridors; financial instruments; infrastructure projects to connect European Russia with Siberia and Pacific Russia. All that under a new concept: an industrialized, conservative political economy.

The Russia-China strategic partnership happens to be active in all these three geoeconomic sectors: strategic industries/techno platforms, connectivity corridors and financial instruments.

That propels the discussion, once again, to the supreme categorical imperative: the confrontation between the Heartland and a maritime power.

The three great Eurasian powers, historically, were the Scythians, the Huns and the Mongols. The key reason for their fragmentation and decadence is that they were not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

The fourth great Eurasian power was the Russian empire – and its successor, the USSR. A key reason the USSR collapsed is because, once gain, it was not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

The US prevented it by applying a composite of Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman. The US strategy even became known as the Spykman-Kennan containment mechanism – all these “forward deployments” in the maritime periphery of Eurasia, in Western Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.

We all know by now how the overall US offshore strategy – as well as the primary reason for the US to enter both WWI and WWII – was to prevent the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon by all means necessary.

As for the US as hegemon, that would be crudely conceptualized – with requisite imperial arrogance – by Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski in 1997: “To prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”. Good old Divide and Rule, applied via “system-dominance”.

It’s this system that is now tumbling down – much to the despair of the usual suspects. Diesen notes how, “in the past, pushing Russia into Asia would relegate Russia to economic obscurity and eliminate its status as a European power.” But now, with the center of geoeconomic gravity shifting to China and East Asia, it’s a whole new ball game.

The 24/7 US demonization of Russia-China, coupled with the “unhealthy situation” mentality of the EU minions, only helps to drive Russia closer and closer to China exactly at the juncture where the West’s two centuries-only world dominance, as Andre Gunder Frank conclusively proved, is coming to an end.

Diesen, perhaps too diplomatically, expects that “relations between Russia and the West will also ultimately change with the rise of Eurasia. The West’s hostile strategy to Russia is conditioned on the idea that Russia has nowhere else to go, and must accept whatever the West offers in terms of “partnership”. The rise of the East fundamentally alters Moscow’s relationship with the West by enabling Russia to diversify its partnerships”.

We may be fast approaching the point where Great Eurasia’s Russia will present Germany with a take it or leave it offer. Either we build the Heartland together, or we will build it with China – and you will be just a historical bystander. Of course there’s always the inter-galaxy distant possibility of a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis. Stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile, Diesen is confident that “the Eurasian land powers will eventually incorporate Europe and other states on the inner periphery of Eurasia. Political loyalties will incrementally shift as economic interests turn to the East, and Europe is gradually becoming the western peninsula of Greater Eurasia”.

Talk about food for thought for the peninsular peddlers of the “unhealthy situation”.

China Joe’s “Daddy” Gives WHO “the Ole Razzle-Dazzle”

Tyler at Zero Hedge: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/who-reveals-china-refused-access-raw-data-earliest-covid-cases

China “Refuses” To Hand Over Raw Data On Early COVID Cases To WHO Team

BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, FEB 12, 2021 – 17:20

It came as no surprise that China disingenuously seized on this month’s World Health Organization (WHO) trip to try and claim the COVID-19 pandemic actually started abroad, while at the same time a number of global headlines essentially echoed “nothing to see here” – particularly on widespread suspicions the virus originated in a Wuhan military lab.

But now fresh Wall Street Journal reporting strongly suggests this first ever and much-hyped WHO trip to ‘get to the bottom’ of the virus’ origins likely didn’t even scratch the surface in terms of a real investigation (did anyone really expect it to?… also coming a full year+ after the fact). In particular the team of scientists and researchers was reportedly blocked by Chinese authorities from accessing crucial data on 174 of the country’s earliest cases.

Citing WHO investigators supposedly caught in the middle of what they described as “heated exchanges” over the lack of transparency, Chinese authorities “refused” to provide the team with the necessary “raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China…”

Front and center in the controversy is the following allegation:

The Chinese authorities turned down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

In preparation for the carefully planned trip to Wuhan, Beijing provided their own “summaries” of the data but not the hard data itself.

When this demand to access the raw underlying data was made, the WHO investigators were rebuffed, essentially being left with only the Chinese scientists’ version of what the data shows. One WHO researcher emphasized in a statement to WSJ that access to the hard data is standard, but was not followed in this case.

“They showed us a couple of examples, but that’s not the same as doing all of them, which is standard epidemiological investigation,” Australian microbiologist Dominic Dwyer said of the WHO trip and findings. “So then, you know, the interpretation of that data becomes more limited from our point of view, although the other side might see it as being quite good.”

So far the Chinese side has yet to comment, and will likely reject the allegations. While the WHO team initially said it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus which has turned the world upside down in efforts to fight it came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after visiting the lab, we wonder just how thorough their investigation was… or was it just a PR trip to willingly play softball with the CCP?

After all, this latest revelation strongly points to the WHO team being merely treated to the Chinese interpretation of the most crucial of all underlying data, namely the “raw, personalized data” on the first infections.

“China’s reluctance to provide the data adds to concerns among many foreign governments and scientists about a lack of transparency in China’s approach to the hunt for the pandemic’s origins,” underscores the WSJ report. “The U.S. State Department said this week it wants to see data underlying the WHO probe.” So it sounds like we’ve once again come full circle on the ‘mysterious’ origins and China’s role.

Bears Get Rich, Bulls Get Rich, Pigs Get Slaughtered

Evil Speculator on the perils of being a pig: https://evilspeculator.com/how-to-escape-the-squeeze-box/

A longtime subscriber wrote me the other day thanking me for the opportunity to grab $TLRY right before it kicked into short squeeze mode and exploded higher. In his words: “Not sure if you’ve seen but $TLRY short squeeze is in full blow status. It’s now pre market at 65ish. The only reason I got into it was because I followed your Short Squeeze setup. I got in at 22.61!! I only had a small position, but it’s going to pay for the cost of the strategy probably about 3000%! And it was a textbook entry on your system.”

Now I’m super glad he got in at the perfect spot and banked some mighty coin, but at the same time I really hope he also got OUT in time. Because just like with gravity and airplanes, what goes up must eventually come down. And that spells double true for hype driven short squeeze plays.

So let’s assume you just nailed a textbook squeeze box entry and much to your delight you’re watching the stock take off in a face ripping super rally. Odds have it a few nagging questions are now rattling around in your mind:

WHEN is a good time to take at least partial profits?
WHEN is a good time to get out?
WHEN do you know that a short squeeze rally is nearing its peak?
WHEN do you know you really really screwed up and lost over half your profits?

Let’s start with #4 and work our way backward. I’ve pointed to the entry my subscribe took to give you an idea of a) his entry and b) where he probably placed his stop, which per the squeeze box rules is around the 16 mark (i.e. the spike low).

If he still is in this trade then he basically qualifies as having giving away the bulk of his paper profits. NOT selling at the 60 mark or above after such an explosion higher is unreasonable, and that’s putting it lightly. But why?

Some of you have watched my Price Action Masterclass and can probably answer that question. Three huge gaps followed by what clearly is an exhaustion candle in a HV short squeeze are several harbingers of a sell off about to unfold.

Which is why you get out and thank the Lord for having bestowed you with the testicular fortitude to hold out this far in the first place and not to jump ship a long time ago. And if you had you would have been in your complete rights as a trader to do so.

To answer # 3 here’s another example (I didn’t trade as my criteria weren’t all satisfied): Where do you think SNDL goes from here? To $1.6 or back to the $4 mark? Odds have it the bulk of the move is over and at minimum you missed a great exit opportunity with the potential to buy back lower.

Let’s use APHA as a ‘paint by numbers’ example. This is actually I did take and rode all the way into… (drumrolls)

21.

Yup, you read that right and I’m still ecstatic about it as it banked over 4R in profits. I could have made a LOT more but then again, I’m not a gambler.

Here’s my reasoning: As soon as I see large gaps on the way up I am OUT as there NEVER is any predicting how far a short squeeze is going to run. Do I see an issue with keeping a quarter of the shares or perhaps as much as half in the running? No, it all depends on your risk tolerance and trading goals.

But not at least taking partial profits after a 4R run is simply foolish in my book and that of most any serious traders I have come across.

So I just answered #2 and #1 – but what I have not shown you is a structured way to gauge a proper exit AFTER a rally has rolled over and is on the way down.

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

George Orwell, “1984”

Here is Simon Black: https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/an-absurd-look-at-the-marxist-ultra-woke-education-system-in-2021-30855/

In honor of Black History Month, schools across the Land of the Free are adopting a curriculum that’s being pushed from the organization Black Lives Matter.

Curiously, the “Black Lives Matter at School” curriculum has absolutely nothing to do with history, let alone black history.

Instead, the organization presents an entirely Marxist, ultra-woke agenda.

The first clue is that the website literally states “we engage comrades” through the curriculum’s 13 guiding principles.

One of these guiding principles is “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” to replace it with “villages that collectively care for one another, and especially our children.”

Wait, what? OUR children? Now we’re supposed to award untold influence over our kids to self-described “trained Marxists” ?

But this only scratches the surface of the curriculum.

Under the organization’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” there are lesson plans which endeavor to teach young students about why they should join trade unions when they become an adult.

And they go on to teach that everyone is “entitled to economic, social and cultural help from your government.”

One resource in the curriculum advocates printing money to implement a “systemwide social justice shock,” including “free universal health care… and direct subsidies [i.e. universal basic income].”

Another teaches “that white supremacy is a fundamental component of our founding documents. The Constitution was not a document to promote democracy, but to prevent it… my students engage in an activity where they see this unfold in the classroom.”

One lesson plan instructs teachers to have their students “Write your own hex poem, cursing… specific people who have been agents of police terror or global brutality” including “small micro aggressions… i.e., people who say ‘all lives matter’. . .”

And they do this with incredibly young, impressionable children who absorb everything like a sponge.

For example, the curriculum suggests instructing kindergarten students that ‘Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else’ as part of ‘freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.’

This seems totally appropriate for a five year old!

To be fair, some of the curiculum is grounded in good intentions. They teach kids that everyone has a right to be themselves, and that discrimination is stupid. Those are great lessons.

But the way they cram it down everyone’s throat is appalling.

For example, one curriculum resource was written by an individual who self-describes as a “queer disabled autistic nonbinary femme writer and disability/transformative justice worker.”

You can’t just be a human being anymore. You can’t just be Bob or Maria. You have to provide a laundry list of ways that you self-identify with victim groups.

This is what passes for credentials these days.

It almost reminds me of those silly royal titles that monarch’s use. In Game of Thrones, Queen Daenerys self-stylized as “Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons . . .”

Now it’s “Queen of the Bolsheviks, first of her name, rallier of woke mobs, Arch-Tweetress of problematic vocabulary, Lord-Commander of the social justice warriors, vanquisher of the cis-male, and defender of the nonbinary femmes.”

This curriculum teaches young people that you gain power in our society– not through accomplishments and deeds– but by gathering more titles of victimization. More titles means more power.

The propaganda and indoctrination starts in kindergarten and continues for 13 years.

And you might think when you reach university you can finally acquire a real education.

A Military Government?

Image result for national guard troops in dc

James Bovard (Mises): https://mises.org/wire/troop-deployments-washington-are-disaster-waiting-happen

“Tyranny in form is the first step towards tyranny in substance,” warned Senator John Taylor two hundred years ago in his forgotten classic, Tyranny Unmasked. As the massive National Guard troop deployment in Washington enters its second month, much of the media and many members of Congress are thrilled that it will extend until at least mid-March. But Americans would be wise to recognize the growing perils of the militarization of American political disputes.

The military occupation of Washington was prompted by the January 6 clashes at the Capitol between Trump supporters and law enforcement, in which three people (including one Capitol policeman) died as a result of the violence. Roughly eight hundred protestors and others unlawfully entered the Capitol, though many of them entered nonviolently through open doors and most left without incident hours later.

The federal government responded by deploying twenty-five thousand National Guard troops to prevent problems during President Joe Biden’s swearing-in—the first inauguration since 1865 featuring the capital city packed with armed soldiers. Protests were almost completely banned in Washington for the inauguration.

Instead of ending after the muted inauguration celebration, the troop deployment was extended for the Senate impeachment trial. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) declared, “So long as Donald Trump is empowered by Senate Republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the Capitol.” But the Senate vote on Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) motion labeling the trial as unconstitutional signaled that the trial will be anticlimactic because Trump is unlikely to be convicted. The actual trial may be little more than a series of pratfalls, alternating between histrionic Democratic House members and wild-swinging, table-pounding Trump lawyers. A pointless deluge of political vitriol will make a mockery of Biden’s calls for national unity.

Then the troop deployment was extended into at least mid-March because of unidentified threats made to members of Congress. Acting Army Secretary John Whitley announced last week: “There are several upcoming events—we don’t know what they are—over the next several weeks, and they’re concerned that there could be situations where there are lawful protests, First Amendment–protected protests, that could either be used by malicious actors, or other problems that could emerge.”

“We don’t know what they are” but somebody heard something somewhere, so the military deployment will continue. Threats have occurred in waves toward members of Congress at least since the farm crisis of the 1980s, but prior menacing did not result in the occupation of the capital city.

Perpetuating the troop deployment is also being justified by melodramatic revisionism. In congressional testimony last week, Capitol Police acting chief Yogananda Pittman described the January 6 clash at the Capitol as “a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists.” Apparently, anyone who tromped from the scene of Trump’s ludicrous “I won by a landslide” spiel to the Capitol was a terrorist, or at least an “insurrectionist” (which is simply “terrorist” spelled with more letters). Is “walking on the Mall with bad thoughts” sufficient to get classified as a terrorist in the Biden era?

Placing thousands of troops on the streets of the nation’s capital could be a ticking time bomb. The longer the National Guard is deployed in Washington, the greater the peril of a Kent State–caliber catastrophe. The Ohio National Guard’s volley of fire in 1970 that killed four students and wounded nine others was a defining moment for the Vietnam era.

Forty years later, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published an investigation of the Kent State shooting based on new analyses of audio recordings from the scene. The Plain Dealer concluded that an FBI informant who was photographing student protestors fired four shots from his .38-caliber revolver after students began threatening him. That gunfire started barely a minute before the Ohio National Guard opened fire. Gunshots from the FBI informant apparently spooked guard commanders into believing they were taking sniper fire, spurring the order to shoot students. The informant denied having fired, but witnesses testified differently. (The FBI hustled the informant from the scene and he later became an undercover narcotics cop in Washington, DC.) Though there is no evidence that the FBI sought to provoke carnage at Kent State, FBI agents involved in COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program) in the 1960s and 1970s boasted of “false flag” operations which provoked killings.

If some malicious group wanted to plunge this nation into chaos and fear, National Guard troops at a checkpoint would be an easy target—at least for the first moments after they were fired upon (most of the troops do not have ammo magazines in their rifles). The sweeping reaction to January 6 might be far surpassed if troops are gunned down regardless of whether the culprits were right-wing extremists, Antifa, or foreign infiltrators. An attack on the troops would likely perpetuate the military occupation and potentially spur Biden to declare martial law.

Last spring, when riots erupted after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, President Trump warned that “the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.” Many activists were justifiably appalled at the specter of Trump seizing dictatorial power over areas wracked by violent protests. But the danger remains regardless of who is president.

Martial law is the ultimate revocation of constitutional rights: anyone who disobeys soldiers’ orders can be shot. There are plenty of malevolent actors here and abroad who would relish seeing martial law declared in Washington, the paramount disgrace for the world’s proudest democracy.

Unfortunately, Biden would have plenty of support initially if he proclaimed that violence in Washington required him to declare martial law. As the Washington Post noted in 2018, a public opinion poll showed that 25 percent of Americans believed “a military takeover was justified if there were widespread corruption or crime.” The Journal of Democracy reported that polls showed that only 19 percent of Millennials in the US believed that it would be illegitimate “in a democracy for the military to take over when the government is incompetent or failing to do its job.” But trusting to military rule for Millennial wish fulfillment would be the biggest folly of them all. Support for martial law is the ultimate proof of declining political literacy in this nation.

Regardless of the risks, some politicians are clinging to the presence of the troops in Washington like Linus clutching his “security blanket” in a Peanuts cartoon. Will we now see regular alarms from a long series of politicians and political appointees working to “keep up the fear”?

History is littered with stories of nations scourged by “temporary” martial law that perpetuated itself. Anyone who believes America is immune should recall Senator Taylor’s 1821 warning against presuming “our good theoretical system of government is a sufficient security against actual tyranny.”

Solar Activity and Climate Change

Courtillot, 2021 presents compelling evidence that planetary dynamics can materially influence the solar radiance. The sharpened decline of solar activity since 1990 is evident in sun spot data:

Finding whether the planets of the solar system, and in particular the Jovian planets, have an influence on planet Earth is currently undergoing a revival and has become the focus of renewed attention. The present paper deals with the prediction of the starting solar activity cycle, Solar Cycle 25. We propose that astronomical ephemeris, specifically the catalogs of aphelia of the four Jovian planets, can be used as evidence of a driving mechanism of variations in solar activity, represented by the series of sunspot numbers SSN from 1749 to 2020 (Appendix B). We use singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to associate components with similar periods in the ephemeris and SSN. We determine the transfer function between the two data sets, first with Jupiter only, then we improve the match in steps with the four Jovian planets and finally including commensurable periods of pairs and pairs of pairs of the Jovian planets (following for instance Mörth and Schlamminger 1979). The transfer function can be applied to the ephemeris to predict future values of cycles. We have tested this with success with the hindcast of Solar Cycles 21 to 24 using only data preceding these cycles. We have also divided the full data set into two halves. Using the SSA method applied to Solar Cycles 1 to 13, we successfully “predict” the characteristics of Solar Cycle 14. Then, we use the second half of the SSN data (from Solar Cycle 14 to 24) to obtain another “prediction” of Solar Cycle 25. The shorter time series used results in (unacceptable) negative SSN values. This is interpreted as a failure to extract a proper trend from too short a data set, which does not allow a correct interpretation of the trend, as a result of ephemeris periods longer than the data interval of the truncated SSN series. But the trend is correctly recovered when the full-length series is used and the effect of the ephemeris of Uranus and Saturn is recognized. Figures 7 and 11 demonstrate the quality of the SSA model when one computes the sum of the SSA components with periods compatible with the revolution periods of Jovian planets and the periodicities of the ephemeris of commensurable pairs Jupiter/Saturn and Uranus/Neptune and pair of pairs (Jupiter/Saturn)/(Uranus/Neptune).

We conclude with a prediction of Solar Cycle 25 that can be compared to a dozen predictions by other authors (Petrovay 2020): the maximum would occur in 2026.2 (± 1 yr) and reach an amplitude of 97.6 (± 10), similar to that of Solar Cycle 24, therefore sketching a new “Modern minimum”, following the Dalton and Gleissberg minima in the previous 200 years.

Although the exact mechanism for this influence of planets on the fluid envelopes of the Sun (photosphere) and also Earth (atmosphere and ocean) is still not fully understood, this influence is clearly apparent in the present paper. We have seen that for instance the long period trend that we extract with SSA in a time window of 200 years could in part be the signature of a long period ephemeris, such as periods linked to Neptune (165 yr; Table 1). We could include the terrestrial planets but expect smaller contributions (these could for instance have a bearing on features such as double maxima). In closing, we wish to emphasize the fact that the powerful SSA method of analysis of quasi-periodic oscillations is a central tool in this analysis. The reconstructed transfer functions that allow one to pass from the ephemeris to the sunspots should be applicable as long as the source (astronomical ephemeris) will stand and as long as we have included all effects from the relevant planets. The SSA reconstruction we propose can be used to predict beyond Solar Cycle 25, but may be degraded with time since oscillations longer than the data interval may have been missed.

Hajra, 2021 reports the solar minimum now in process will be the weakest – a finding consistent with recent evidence of planetary cooling:

The present work indicates a strong impact of the solar activity cycle magnitude on the solar wind–magnetosphere energy coupling and resultant geomagnetic activity. The weakest magnitude of Solar Cycle 24 is found to be associated with an overall reduction in energy coupling and reduced numbers of magnetic storms and HILDCAAs. The stronger the storms, the stronger the reduction in number with no superstorms in Solar Cycle 24. This has a great impact on the cosmic ray shielding. As shown in the present work, reduced solar activity makes the near-Earth space exposed to a higher flux of cosmic rays. This can have important effects on manned missions at low Earth orbit or to the Moon and Mars.

Recent studies predict the solar activity entering in a period of grand minimum (e.g. Wang, 2017; Jiang and Cao, 2018; Upton and Hathaway, 2018; Gonçalves, Echer, and Frigo, 2020, and references therein). This may lead to a much lower solar wind energy input in the magnetosphere and a further decrease in geomagnetic activity events. This has large impacts on space weather effects and technological applications.

Kossobokov et al., 2010 presented empirical evidence of localized cooling in 3 major European cities:

A consequence of our study is that numerical values of sensitivities or any parameter linking solar activity (energy input as a function of wavelength) or increase in GHGs to climate response (temperatures, in particular) may need to be revised (Miura et al., 2005; Chylek et al., 2007; Easterling and Wehner, 2009). There is actually growing evidence of a significant influence of solar activity (TSI) on climate (temperatures, in particular), which is not fully captured in model predictions (Scafetta and West, 2007; Camp and Tung, 2007). The effect may be larger than inferred from the very small changes in TSI observed over the past three solar cycles by satellites (Foukal et al., 2006; Fröhlich, 2006). Moreover, the uncertainty in closing the so-called ACRIM-gap may change our understanding of the relative significance of TSI variations among other forcing factors of climate change (Scafetta and Willson, 2009). These authors conclude that “This finding has evident repercussions for climate change and solar physics. Increasing TSI between 1980–2000 could have contributed significantly to global warming during the last three decades (Scafetta and West, 2007, Scafetta and West, 2008). Current climate models (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007) have assumed that the TSI did not vary significantly during the last 30 years and have therefore underestimated the solar contribution and overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to global warming”. However, this analysis is disputed by Krivova et al. (2009), who find a decrease not an increase of solar activity between the solar minima of 1986 and 1996 (with the most recent minimum being still lower, the total amplitude of long-term TSI variation being on the order of 1 W m⁻²).

Having found regularities in the past behavior of the Sun, de Jager (2008) suggests that it is undergoing a transition to a lower energy state. This author discusses heliospheric drivers of Sun–climate interactions and finds that about one half of the Sun’s equatorial magnetic fields and one third of the Sun’s polar fields contribute to tropospheric temperatures. De Jager (2008) finds that “the recent global warming peak does not seem to differ significantly from the other peaks that occurred during the last four centuries. (…) As such, the recent period of global warming does not appear to be exceptional from a historical perspective”.

References:

Courtillot, V., Lopes, F., & Le Mouël, J. L. (2021). On the prediction of Solar Cycles. Solar Physics, 296(1). doi:10.1007/s11207-020-01760-7

Hajra, R. (2021). Weakest solar cycle of the space age: A study on solar wind–magnetosphere energy coupling and geomagnetic activity. Solar Physics, 296(2). doi:10.1007/s11207-021-01774-9

Kossobokov, V., Le Mouël, J.-L., & Courtillot, V. (2010). A statistically significant signature of multi-decadal solar activity changes in atmospheric temperatures at three European stations. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 72(7–8), 595–606.

Lunatic Fringe, I Know You’re Out There — Way Out There

Zman: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=22800

Z-man’s best lines in bold

The Ride Never Ends

Posted on February 10, 2021

The reboot of last year’s big political flop, otherwise known as Trump Impeachment, hit the big stage in DC this week. The Senate kicked off the show with a debate about the constitutionality of the whole thing. The old rule of vaudeville was that you start every show with some jokes to warm up the audience. It is good to see Washington bringing back the old traditions for their political dramas. To the shock of no one, the Senate voted in favor of the claim that this nonsense is constitutional.

The one thing missing from this reboot is the boggle-eyed lunatic who was the master of ceremonies for the first one. Adam Schiff is sitting this out. There is some debate about whether having a paranoid schizophrenic be the star of the show was the reason the first try at this was an embarrassing flop. They also had the fat guy who poos himself in public as the co-star. The whole thing turned into a poorly made version of Dumb and Dumber, which is a problem when you are putting on a drama.

The early reviews say this reboot is looking like the high school version of an old Broadway musical. The writing is good, but the people playing the roles are far too small for the costumes they are wearing. Even without Trump looming over it as a reminder that our politics have long ago descended into farce, the idea of impeaching a man who is out of office is too much to overcome. The public is mostly ignoring it, despite the month long hype about the imaginary insurrection.

Like so much the shadowy cabal that runs this place has done over the last several years, this stunt just serves to undermine the system they operate. In a world where massive election irregularities are ignored and dismissed by the politicians, it is tough to take those same politicians seriously when they bang on about their democracy or imaginary threats to it. If they were really worried about their democracy, maybe they would do something about the voting system.

What this looks like is theater for the people inside the wire so they can be reminded there is a wire, and it must be maintained. The green zone they have erected for themselves is not simply an overreaction. It is a symbol of the spiritual and cultural divide between the people running this place and the rest of us. The hive minded have now created a physical manifestation of their world view. From now on, people inside will be made to show they are loyal to inside, not outside.

Putting that aside, the thumbless people behind this farce are creating a new set of problems for themselves with this. American politics has always been a game of bad cop worse cop. One side tells 20% of white people they will push through some nation wrecking scheme, while the other side tells 40% of white people that they will not roll back the last nation wrecking scheme, but they will stop this one. This has kept white people engaged in a process that has slowly dispossessed them.

The rigged election and the response to it broke this system. Despite the Republicans pulling all the usual tricks in an effort to scare their voters in Georgia during the special election, many of those voters stayed home. The old gags did not work, because the election put the lie to those old gags. Impeachment promises to hammer home this point to tens of millions of white people. One party hates them, and the other party really hates them. They do not have a voice in this system.

We have already seen some Republican Senators shed their skin suits, revealing their scaly natural exterior. Six of them slithered over to the other side, coiling around the legs of their master, to vote in favor of this farce. You can be sure they will be voting to convict when the time comes. Conventional wisdom says the Senate will not get the votes to convict, but given the state of things, that is not a good bet. The GOP would love to be rid of Trump forever and this is how they do it.

If you assume that a third of the GOP senators hate Trump and his voters, that is roughly 15 votes right there. Then you have the deluded members who think they can inherit that vote if Trump is forced off the stage. They think their kinder gentler populism will win the day. Then there are those who are taking bribes. The level of corruption in Washington is such that we have to assume all of them are on the pad. Maybe the ChiComs tell them to support a conviction.

Either way, the whole thing will most likely further undermine the Republicans as the security fence for the Democrats. This is very bad for the political class, as it further reinforces the notion that there are now two sides. Those inside the razor wire green zone and those outside it. Given the general cluelessness of the people running both parties, this is a very dangerous environment for them. They need to people trusting in the system, even if they do not trust the people running the system.

There is one interesting side story to this. Trump put up a solid defense of himself in the first impeachment circus. He hired competent lawyers and treated the whole thing with far more respect than it deserved. This time he has hired a B-team that is more concerned with melodrama than the process. It may be that Trump would welcome a conviction and disqualification. This lets him go back to being a gassy blowhard on-line, without having to deliver any of the things he promises.

Another bit of subplot here is that the larger show that was the “great fortifying of our democracy”, which looked a lot like coup, is coming to a close. This is the last bit of the drama the new regime can use to distract from reality. That reality is they own the mess they created in their effort to overthrow the system. The crumbling economy, the Covid fiasco, the bloated financial system, all of it. They will not have Trump to kick around anymore, so they will own what comes next. Good luck with that.

The Red Ponzi Outlines Its Expectations from China Joe, the Oligarch Sock Puppet — Or Else [Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Tom Dorsey, …]

And Blinken blinks

Chinese troops march during a military parade

From Epoch Times:

Beijing Hints at What It Wants of US-China Relationship Through State Media

BY NICOLE HAO February 9, 2021 Updated: February 9, 2021

Chinese state-run media Xinhua published a series of four commentaries in which it called on the new U.S. administration to “lead the U.S.-China relationship back on track” after years of what one article called “casting poison” onto bilateral relations.

“Treating China as a major strategic competitor or even a rival is a historical, directional, and strategic error [that the U.S. made],” Xinhua wrote in its first commentary published on Feb. 4. “Now the [United States’] most urgent task is to correct itself to take the right path… It’s time for the U.S. to show political foresight and walk toward China.”

The commentary went on to criticize the United States for ruining the relationship in the past four years, making indirect swipes at the Trump administration.

“Some people were believing blindly in ‘America first,’ delusionally thinking that ‘decoupling’ and ‘disrupting supply chains’ could stop the globalization of the economy,” the Xinhua article stated.

Former president Donald Trump had suggested the idea of decoupling the Chinese and U.S. economies. His administration officials have also highlighted national security risks in relying on Chinese manufacturing and called for critical sectors to reshore.

Epoch Times Photo — Then-President Donald Trump, left, meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, 2019. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

The media outlet published a second commentary that day, criticizing the U.S. government for policies restricting Chinese researchers from obtaining visas.

The Trump administration enacted visa restrictions for researchers with links to Chinese military-affiliated institutions, citing risks of espionage and intellectual property theft to benefit the Chinese regime.

It claimed the United States “heavily destroyed the humanities exchange between America and China,” and noted that many Chinese students choose to stay in the United States upon graduating from their degrees.

The commentary did not mention or address the U.S. concerns.

A third commentary was published on Feb. 5, focused on U.S.-China trade relations.

Xinhua criticized that the Trump administration tried to decrease U.S. investment into China, encouraged American firms to leave China, and suppressed Chinese firms in the United States. The former two likely referred to the aftereffects of trade war tensions, as the United States enacted punitive tariffs to address China’s unfair trade practices and China responded with retaliatory tariffs. The former administration also placed a list of Chinese firms on a trade blacklist for national security risks or their roles in China’s human rights abuses.

But the article made no mention of the former administration’s rationale for the policies.

A fourth commentary was published on Feb. 6, focused on tech cooperation.

“The last U.S. government unreasonably suppressed and intensively shut out China’s science and technology with the excuse of national security. Those methods were disgusting and shocking,” the article stated. “Technological containment is akin to the crooked path of self-isolation.”

Many of the blacklisted Chinese companies were tech firms, effectively blocking them from doing business with American suppliers.

Then, on Feb. 7, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai criticized the Biden’s administration China policy during an interview on CNN. Asked about State Secretary Antony Blinken and Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi’s recent phone call, Cui said: “You don’t have an effective foreign policy just by talking tough or playing tough.”

Blinken had said the United States would stand up for human rights and democratic values in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong.

Xinhua’s recap of their phone call was in a markedly different tone.

“[Blinken said that] the U.S. was willing to develop a stable and constructive bilateral relations with China,” Xinhua reported.

China affairs commentator Yang Wei concluded that the recent commentaries and rhetoric from Chinese officials show that they “are trying to threaten Biden’s administration to kneel down and listen to them.”

“In fact, we have seen the result, which is that the U.S. government and Beijing couldn’t be in agreement on almost all issues,” Yang wrote in a commentary published on the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Feb. 7.

U.S.-based China affairs commentator Li Linyi analyzed that the Xinhua commentaries were a display of what the Chinese regime hopes the Biden administration would change about the relationship.

“The Chinese regime is laying its cards on the table,” Li said in a phone interview, and testing whether the new administration would fulfill its requests.

During an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that was broadcast on Feb. 7, President Joe Biden said, “there’s going to be extreme competition [between the U.S. and China],” but that the new relationship he wants to forge need not be one of conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron similarly said during an event held by Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council on Feb. 5: “China is altogether a partner, a competitor, and a systemic rival.”

Macron explained that China was a partner on climate change, a competitor on trade, and a rival given its geopolitical ambitions and human rights abuses.

Solar Minima and a Valetine’s Day Polar Hit

Valetine’s Day precip heading for metro NY and New England

The Rule of Law Slows China Joe, the Oligarch’s Loyal Puppet

Laredo Sector Border Patrol Agents shut down a stash house in Rio Bravo, Texas, on Jan. 20, 2021. (Courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Story in Epoch Times: https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-judge-blocks-bidens-deportation-freeze-for-two-more-weeks_3690904.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-02-09-2

Texas Judge Blocks Biden’s Deportation Freeze for Two More Weeks

BY JACK PHILLIPS February 9, 2021 Updated: February 9, 2021

A federal judge in Texas extended the suspension of President Joe Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations until Feb. 23.

U.S. District Court Judge Drew Tipton in the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday ruled that the federal government cannot make immigration enforcement changes without consulting Texas. As a result, he extended the temporary restraining order by another 14 days, asserting that the state of Texas would face more harm than the federal government if the extension wasn’t granted.

”The irreparable harm that would accrue to Texas if an extension of the [temporary restraining order] is not granted before consideration of its motion for a preliminary injunction is more substantial than any harm incurred by the defendants,” wrote Tipton in his ruling, adding that his ruling will give parties more time to “provide for a more fulsome record” to assist the court in “adjudicating Texas’s motion for a preliminary injunction.”

His order noted (pdf) that the Biden administration had argued that the 100-day pause on removals is needed to allow the White House to take into account considerations on immigration, foreign policy, and humanitarian needs.

According to Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, “extending the [temporary restraining order] is proper because the additional time is necessary for the record to be more fully developed.”

US border wall construction — A loader grades land near a section of privately-built border wall under construction near Mission, Texas, on Dec. 11, 2019. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sued the Biden administration over its order to pause some deportations, asserting that the White House would violate its agreement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S.-Mexico border security, and instead requires 180 days’ notice to change immigration policy.

“On its first day in office, the Biden Administration cast aside congressionally enacted immigration laws and suspended the removal of illegal aliens whose removal is compelled by those very laws. In doing so, it ignored basic constitutional principles and violated its written pledge to work cooperatively with the State of Texas to address shared immigration enforcement concerns,” Paxton’s lawsuit said. “This unlawful reversal will cause Texas immediate and irreparable harm if it is not enjoined.”

On Jan. 20, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske wrote in a memo (pdf) to direct the “immediate pause on removals of any noncitizen with a final order of removal (except as noted below) for 100 days.”

But Pekoske’s memo affects nearly every illegal immigrant with pending deportations “including those whose removal was ordered following a full and fair hearing and those who are not entitled—and do not claim to be entitled—to further immigration benefits,” Paxton wrote in his suit.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the DHS for comment.

Separately, on Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that illegal immigrants who were convicted of assault or driving under the influence won’t be deported under new guidelines provided by the Biden administration.

“The priority for the enforcement of immigration law will be on those who are posing a national security threat, of course a public safety threat, and on recent arrivals. Nobody is saying that DUIs or assault are acceptable behavior, and those arrested for such activity should be tried and sentenced as appropriate by local law enforcement. But we are talking about the prioritization of who is going to be deported from the country,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.