This post today both stings and also justifies the building of my Library (DLL).
Why the sting?
"But before I begin showing the written evidence, let me first confess that prior to 20 years ago I was all in on America’s foreign policy adventures – I was just as naïve, ignorant and clueless as most Americans today. After all, we’re all public school grad-u-ates and......." - copied from https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-war-on-terror-no-its-actuallya-war.html?m=0 - which is just one post from a word search on WHO WANTS WAR. You can do the same and read for weeks.
The 20th century is undoubtedly the capstone for the Satan worshippers.
I literally get sick to my stomach reading some of the essays which review the events leading up to WWII.
Yeah - Happy Memorial Day?
Remember - TRUTH HURTS - and by God, we need it today!
Already, nearly one-third of Americans either aren't sure or believe thatUS involvement in WWII was a mistake. They're absolutely right to doubt the wisdom or the justice of US military involvement, particularly on Memorial Day. WWII was a massive mistake for Americans, a far more catastrophic and costly mistake than Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan combined, with serious consequences that led directly to the decline of the American nation and the expected collapse of the USA as a political entity.
I can assure you that if every U.S. citizen were to read Stalin's War, which is an excellent and well-sourced revisionist history by Sean McMeekin that relies heavily upon Soviet records that were not available before 1989, that 32 percent figure would rise to at least 98 percent.
More than 75 years after the conclusion of World War Two, one third of Americans are questioning the country's decision to send troops into battle. A new Economist/YouGov poll suggests that doubters believe it to be a mistake or are unsure if it was the right decision.
The poll, which was timed to coincide with Memorial Day, asked people for their opinions were on the decision to send American troops to fight in particular wars.
The question was asked: 'Do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in the following wars?'
The poll considered conflicts spread over more than 100 years including both World Wars, the Vietnam War and the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some 14 percent of Americans said they believed sending troops to fight the Nazi-led Axis powers during World War II was a mistake and an additional 18 percent weren’t sure, although the support for the decision to send troops to fight the Nazis received more support than any other war at 68 percent.
However, one third of Americans were still unsure if President Roosevelt made the right decision.
President Roosevelt didn't make the right decision. In fact, it is now obvious and well-documented that both President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were very clearly taking orders from someone, presumably someone connected to the small group of Jews who declared war on Germany in 1933, and that both elected leaders were instructed to back Stalin without question, even to the direct and material detriment of their own soldiers, countries, and national interests. The treasonous subservience of Roosevelt, in particular, eventually resulted in the attempted mass murder of 28 million Germans by US Secretary of State Henry Morgenthau, and also created the industrial Soviet Union by propping up the Soviet economy for 40 years despite the intrinsic economic dysfunctionality of communism.
Stalin's looting battalions were able to cart off from Germany alone, by the end of 1946, 4.15 million tons of industrial, commercial, artistic, and intellectual property in 519,000 railway wagons-an operation that would ultimately net Stalin 9.991 million tons of industrial goods.
If we include non-German countries, the Soviet intake of war booty totaled, by the end of 1947, the equipment, inventory, intellectual property, and records of 1.2 million separate factories or enterprises, including Siemens, BMW, and Allianz Insurance.
So voluminous were American lend-lease shipments across the Pacific to the Far East in this period-during the climactic phase of the war against Japan-that they equaled the volume shipped across the North Atlantic during the entire war to support the Red Army against the Wehrmacht, rounding out a total shipped across the Pacific of 8.244 million tons, which did not even include the warplanes flown into Siberia via ASLIB along with the sensitive and often strategic cargo they contained.
The mass pillaging of Germany, Romany, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia actually cost the Soviets more than the so-called "Lend-Lease" material did, because the Soviets didn't get free shipping for their war booty. The Roosevelt administration not only gave the Soviet Union an unthinkable amount of industrial material, food, factories, and military supplies, it didn't even charge the Soviets anything for the costs of transporting everything from Iowa and Ohio to Vladivostok.
However, Stalin not only double-crossed Roosevelt and Churchill, he also eventually betrayed their masters, which is one reason today's neoclowns now reside in the United States and are still banging the drum for a revenge war with Russia as they try to redefine the concept of "the West" in the same self-serving way they redefined "America" as an idea instead of an actual people.
And, just to make matters worse, Roosevelt summarily rejected Germany's attempt to surrender to the Western Allies in April 1943, despite the fact that Stalin was not only willing to accept an end to the war, but offered Germany a separate peace in two rounds of negotiations held in Stockholm through the spring of 1943 if Hitler would agree to the 1939 frontiers that had been originally agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Of course Hitler, being an idiot, didn't accept the Soviet offer.
The undeniable historical fact is that D-Day was totally unnecessary, as Germany attempted to surrender more than TWO YEARS before its surrender was finally accepted in May 1945. In other words, every single American life lost in the campaign on the Western Front was a needless sacrifice and a tragic waste.
While the setting of this well documented article is in Britain, it certainly applies to all of Western Civilization.
This concluding paragraph sums up the essence as it explains why we're ALL screwed because we as a society have lost all reason and any semblance of common sense - to the point that at some time in the near future we will look back fondly to the time we had indoor plumbing:
Caring and planning for our own children and grandchildren matters - replacing them with Subnormal lower performing imports eventually kills our own golden goose which we tried to milk for maximum profit - while burdening our general public with the cost of 'educating' those replacements in preference to our own children.
Our children should have the right to accuse us of criminal parental neglect and malpractice in the Court of our Creator God whose instructions we have ignored for decades - absolutely shameful - and the reckoning soon will come the old fashioned American way - WE EARNED IT! - CL
Personally, I subscribe to the Fake Alien Invasion theory that with the consecutive failures of Mutually Assured Destruction, Global Ice Age, Global Warming, War on Terror, and Pandemania to install global governance, the Prometheans are finally going play their Alien card.
But if that's not the case, this is certainly an amusing theory from the comments at Ron Unz's site:
World elites made a deal with aliens, in return for allowing some of humanity to survive, the rest are being vaccinated with alien DNA. Notice how fast vaccines have developed, untested? That’s because they were ready, to begin with. The new vaccines attach alien genes to human nerve cells; hence the headaches (caused by minor encephalitis, but no one reports it because the headache is supposed to be a ‘side effect’ of the vaccine) and heart inflammation in some cases (heart does contain nerve cells, a little though, hence fewer reports of heartache after the vaccine). What is the end goal? Well my friends, when the alien invasion happens, those who received alien vaccines will not be able to resist them. In fact, they may end up as alien food. Note that the world has already been a settlement, at an increasing rate in the past twenty years for an alien race from a collapsing planet. So the next wave will be the final one and the largest. > 99% of humanity will be used as a workforce and food source (I know it is hard to believe, but it is true; think of how we use cattle). This is the deal our elites made. Vaccines will render you incapable of resisting aliens. Think of how some parasites and viruses remove the fear of a certain predator in their hosts so that they can continue their life cycles. The same thing.
You might be wondering if an alien civilization is this advanced then why wouldn’t they just destroy us and take our planet instead of making a deal with some people. That’s for the same reason why we wouldn’t go on to kill all animals in a newly found land, but instead, conservatively use them for our needs. Humans are useful animals for them. Also, our numbers are huge comparatively. If we were to actually resist, they’d end up losing their valuable comrades as well. If you’ve read this far, what you can do to protect yourself is going as far as possible by 2027. This is mostly a guess, but people who go to live away in the wilderness will fare relatively better like wild animals. If you have already been vaccinated; well, good luck.
I am somewhat dubious of how effective an argument this will be in the eyes of those considering taking the not-vaxx. I mean, "don't get the shot because you'll end up as dinner on an alien plate" does sound more than a little far-fetched, if not entirely crazy.
(There were always crooks to game the system - but to control the whole system by crooks takes computers! - CL)
This is one theory, anyhow. But it does explain why everyone who seems to know what the actual facts are is so convinced that things will have to change:
Someone created a database of up to 900,000 fictional persons. Some of those fictional persons are listed as living at the same real or sometimes fictional addresses. And starting in 2016 someone got the bright idea to use this list of fictional persons to commit vote fraud. I believe this fraud recurred in 2020.
. . .
I am not an investigator but I also suspect that an inquiry into vote fraud and into fraud relating to payments from government agencies will inevitably demonstrate a concurrence of fictional individuals and multiple fictional individuals listed at the same real or fictional addresses.
I have no reason to believe that this criminal enterprise has ceased their activities. I also would not be the least bit surprised to see a concurrence between payment fraud and voter fraud in other states.
It's becoming ever more clear that we aren't the minority, that it's not even a 50/50 society as the voting always seems to have it. It's just one gigantic lie that has been successfully sold by the People of the Lie.
The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
A correspondent calling him- or herself "Mercy Flush" makes that allegation at Free Republic. Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.
This is my personal observation of a pattern of suspicious activities and behaviors going on in the government of a certain West Coast Democrat-operated state that will remain nameless (but it's just south of Oregon).
Approximately ten years ago I observed a massive increase in turnover in the accounting departments and HR departments of state agencies responsible for making grants of state and Federal money to the public. This phenomenon did not seem to impact any agencies that do not issue payments to the public.
In prior years the pattern within state government was that accounting staff would frequently spend an entire 30-40 year career with one agency. This meant they had significant experience and understanding of the financial operations of the agency and this led to efficiency. The same applied to Personnel/HR staff.
Then starting around ten years ago the pattern abruptly flipped. New managers were hired into most accounting and HR offices and they ruthlessly purged or isolated older, experienced staff. These people were replaced with younger, less experienced people who were typically recent college graduates.
The typical tenure of more than half of these new accounting and HR staff at a particular agency is less than one year. For whatever reason they frequently fail probation and are then removed from their jobs. Some of them face inexplicable acts of retaliation by their managers and numerous lawsuits have resulted as affected individuals have fought back.
This phenomenon impacting accounting and HR staff did not exist prior to 2010.
The advent of this staffing issue coincides with the rise in a specific indicator of fraud: Multiple recipients of fraudulent payments listed at the same real or fictional addresses.
. . .
Because of the persistent instances of high turnover and retaliatory acts by a broad spectrum of managers after 2010 it is not a small logical leap to assume that this phenomenon is tacitly sanctioned by the people who own and operate state government.
Based on my own informal observations I've concluded that the fraudulent acts of likely embezzlement includes a database of approximately 600,000 to as many as 900,000 fictional persons. The purpose of the fraud is quite possibly to move Federal funds from certain accounts transferring them to non-Federal accounts. This amounts to likely tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars being siphoned off from Federal programs over an eleven year period.
Some of these funds are likely being redirected to state government accounts.
No one at EDD has been arrested, demoted, prosecuted, reprimanded, or kicked out of the office coffee club over this fraud. Why? Because I don't think any of the front line staff for EDD were involved. These hard working folks are backlogged trying to clear a massive number of legitimate unemployment claims.
I believe the fraud was automated and that a very few individuals were directly involved in the actual crime. I believe the fraud was automated for the very simple reason that legitimate claims are still backlogged. The fraud was quickly processed because there was no actual review of the claim involved.
Okay, now this goes to the next step.
Someone created a database of up to 900,000 fictional persons. Some of those fictional persons are listed as living at the same real or sometimes fictional addresses.
And starting in 2016 someone got the bright idea to use this list of fictional persons to commit vote fraud. I believe this fraud recurred in 2020.
. . .
I am not an investigator but I also suspect that an inquiry into vote fraud and into fraud relating to payments from government agencies will inevitably demonstrate a concurrence of fictional individuals and multiple fictional individuals listed at the same real or fictional addresses.
I have no reason to believe that this criminal enterprise has ceased their activities. I also would not be the least bit surprised to see a concurrence between payment fraud and voter fraud in other states.
Remember how Obama was supposedly creating a massive database of his supporters? What if that story was to cover for the creation of a massive database of fictional persons who would be used to finance and influence future elections?
Those are important questions to ask, but I've seen no coverage whatsoever of the allegations in the mainstream media. What say you, readers? Do any of you have any insight or information that would either substantiate or refute them?
Given Californian politics at this time, I suspect there won't be any official investigation of the situation - but one hopes that someone, somewhere, at some stage, will do so, there and in other states. If true, such allegations might explain much about how the November 2020 electoral fraud was funded, organized and perpetrated - and how those behind it hope to get away with it again in future.
The Swiss and the Norwegians were the first to reject the grasping claws of the European Union. Now, in the aftermath of Brexit, the Swiss have confirmed that the European superstateis in decline:
Switzerland shocked Brussels by walking away from a closer relationship and into an uncertain future, but MP Thomas Aeschi says the Swiss will not be a cash cow eternally milked to keep the EU alive, preferring Swissexit instead.
Switzerland today is celebrating its breakaway status from the European Union, having finally tired of the bullying and rhetoric from Brussels and walked away from a proposed framework arrangement after seven years of negotiations, preferring to go it alone in Swissexit.
Never a full member of the EU, that decision leaves its relationship with Brussels facing an uncertain future. The two are bound together by a collection of 120 bilateral agreements that, one-by-one, will lapse over time. However, choosing to walk away from deadlocked negotiations was, it seems, not so hard after all.
With clear echoes of Britain’s divorce from the bloc, an imperious Brussels once again massively overplayed its hand and the Swiss eventually tired of the bullying, the rhetoric and the threats. They laid their cards on the table, stood up and walked away. That’s seven years of talks that amounted to nothing. Nichts. Rien. Niente.
Aeschi said that following the abandonment of discussions, “People will see the EU’s real face. They will understand that the European Union may not be as democratic as it says it is and that it is not truly interested in what the people want.”
The European Union uses the word "democracy" in much the same way that Stalin's Soviet Union or Biden's ersatz USA does, which is not even remotely synonymous with the customary usage as defined in the dictionary. What it really means to them is "in submission to the Promethean world order" and refers to something that the Arabs might describe as the Dar al' Tanwir.
Keep that in mind every time you hear Israel being described as "the only democracy in the Middle East".
Switzerland shocked Brussels by walking away from a closer relationship and into an uncertain future, but MP Thomas Aeschi says the Swiss will not be a cash cow eternally milked to keep the EU alive, preferring Swissexit instead.
Switzerland today is celebrating its breakaway status from the European Union, having finally tired of the bullying and rhetoric from Brussels and walked away from a proposed framework arrangement after seven years of negotiations, preferring to go it alone in Swissexit.
Never a full member of the EU, that decision leaves its relationship with Brussels facing an uncertain future. The two are bound together by a collection of 120 bilateral agreements that, one-by-one, will lapse over time. However, choosing to walk away from deadlocked negotiations was, it seems, not so hard after all.
Parliamentary leader of the Swiss People’s Party in the National Council Thomas Aeschi MP told RT.com exclusively,“Most people in Switzerland are quite happy with the decision that was taken. However, it is only a battle so the war is not won.
“Because in Switzerland, there are strong forces that will continue trying to nudge us towards closer integration into the European Union.”
Aeschi suggested those forces, the conservative parties and Europhile Social Democrats, would seek to use the three-week summer session of Switzerland’s National Council, which starts on Monday, to explore ways to rescue the negotiations.
He pointed out that any outcome would need to face a people’s referendum, which, having been suggested by a government that had negotiated itself into the stalemate in the first place, would most likely fail.
But what does this all mean? If Switzerland is not an EU member then surely it was free to do as it chooses?
“The framework agreement would essentially have meant a passive EU membership,” Aeschi said. “It would mean Switzerland would be obliged to take over EU legal development and that the European Court of Justice would have been the arbitrator between the EU and Switzerland so it will never be the neutral court but it would have been the court of the European Union.”
And that was a major sticking point. But this should have come as no surprise to EU negotiators; after all, it was one of the key objections that Britain had in its negotiations over Brexit, but it seems backing off an intransigent approach was not a lesson they learned.
The Swiss MP said, “I can feel, and I think that political observers feel it too, that the winds have changed a bit with the problems of the European Union: the whole debt crisis, excessive spending, poverty in southern and eastern parts of the European Union and many are afraid that Switzerland would be used as a milk cow that will be milked and have to pay excessive sums to finance the European Union.”
While these broader concerns are felt by the Swiss, at the negotiating table it was an impasse over three key areas – the protection of workers’ salaries, citizens rights and state aid – that did for the agreement.
“It looked like we were reaching a tipping point last November,” Aeschi said. “That was just around the time another new negotiator – number five, a woman this time, Livia Leu – was sent to Brussels to find an agreement within those three key areas.
“Eventually she came back, a bit similar to British Prime Minister (David Cameron) at the time, with empty hands. She couldn’t get any concessions in any of those three areas and she travelled around six times to Brussels in four or five months and there was really no progress. This led to the realisation in the government that there was no chance of having a satisfactory agreement.”
With clear echoes of Britain’s divorce from the bloc, an imperious Brussels once again massively overplayed its hand and the Swiss eventually tired of the bullying, the rhetoric and the threats. They laid their cards on the table, stood up and walked away. That’s seven years of talks that amounted to nothing. Nichts. Rien. Niente.
Aeschi said that following the abandonment of discussions, “People will see the EU’s real face. They will understand that the European Union may not be as democratic as it says it is and that it is not truly interested in what the people want.”
While Brussels will certainly try to sell this loss as a missed opportunity for Switzerland, it will find it hard to ignore the landlocked nation at the heart of Europe. There are 1.4 million EU citizens living in the country, which also exported about €160 billion of goods and services to the EU last year, making it the bloc’s fourth-largest trading partner, behind the UK, China and USA.
As confident Aeschi said, “We have good relations with most countries and we have a very strong industry. We have a budget that is more or less in balance and we have a currency that is fairly strong so I'm not too afraid about our position.”
And so the European Union’s dream of luring Switzerland into its political web, of ‘ever closer union’, lies in tatters, a victim of the very same patronising arrogance that so infuriated British negotiators, which has proven after all not to be an aberration but the high-handed way it chooses to do business.
Let’s leave the final word for now to an Oscar Wilde-style observation that might have gone like this – were those in Brussels ever to listen: To lose your third-largest trading partner may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose your fourth-largest looks like carelessness.
Damian Wilson
is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.
Davos really do think they are too clever by half. Despite prognostications to the contrary, negotiations with Iran over a new JCPOA are nearing completion which Biden/Obama will sign off on after putting up a bit more token resistance to lifting sanctions.
Why do I say this? Nordstream 2.
Biden backed down on Nordstream 2 and, at The Davos Crowd’s insistence, he will back down on the JCPOA.
Davos needs cheap energy into Europe. That’s ultimately what the JCPOA was all about. The basic framework for the deal is still there. While the U.S. will kick and scream a bit about sanctions relief, Iran will be back into the oil market and make it possible for Europe to once again invest in oil/gas projects in Iran.
Now that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer going to be leading Israel, the probability of breakthrough is much much higher than last week. The Likudniks in Congress and the Senate just lost their raison d’etre. The loss of face for Israel in Bibi’s latest attempt to bludgeon Gaza to retain power backfired completely.
U.S. policy towards Israel is shifting rapidly as the younger generations, Gen-X and Millennials, simply don’t have the same allegiance to Israel that the Baby Boomers and Silent generations did. It is part of a geopolitical ethos which is outdated.
So, with some deal over Iran’s nuclear capability in the near future, Europe will then get gas pipelines from Iran through Turkey as well as gain better access to the North South Transport Corridor which is now unofficially part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia, now that Nordstream 2 is nearly done, will not balk at this. In fact, they’ll welcome it. It forms the basis for a broader, sustainable peace arrangement in the Middle East. What’s lost is the Zionist program for Greater Israel and continued sowing dissent between exhausted participants.
But the big geopolitical win for Davos, they think, is that by returning Iran to the oil markets it will cut down on Russia’s dominance there. That the only reason Russia is the price setter in oil today, as the producer of the marginal barrel, is because of Trump taking Iranian and Venezuelan oil off the market.
With these negotiations ongoing and likely to conclude soon I’m sure the thinking is that this will help save Iranian moderates in the upcoming elections. But with Iran’s Guardian Council paving the way for Ebrahim Raeisi to win the election that is also very unlikely(H/T to Pepe Escobar’s latest on this) :
So Raeisi now seems to be nearly a done deal: a relatively faceless bureaucrat without the profile of an IRGC hardliner, well known for his anti-corruption fight and care about the poor and downtrodden. On foreign policy, the crucial fact is that he will arguably follow crucial IRGC dictates.
Raeisi is already spinning that he “negotiated quietly” to secure the qualification of more candidates, “to make the election scene more competitive and participatory”. The problem is no candidate has the power to sway the opaque decisions of the 12-member Guardian Council, composed exclusively by clerics: only Ayatollah Khamenei.
I have no doubt that Iran is, as Escobar suggests, in post-JCPOA mode now and will walk away from Geneva without a deal if need be, but Davos will cut the deal it needs to bring the oil and gas into Europe while still blaming the U.S. for Iran’s nuclear ambitions because they’ve gotten what they actually wanted, Netanyahu out of power.
Seeing the tenor of these negotiations and the return of Obama to the White House, the Saudis saw the writing on the wall immediately and began peace talks with Iran in Baghdad put off for a year because of Trump’s killing Soleimani.
The Saudis are fighting for their lives now as the Shia Crescent forms and China holds the House of Saud’s future in its hands.
Syria will be restored to the Arab League and all that ‘peace’ work by Trump will be undone quickly. Because none of it was actually peaceful in its implementation. Netanyahu is gone, Israel just got defeated by Hamas and now the rest of the story can unfold, put on hold by four years of Jared Kushner’s idiocy and U.S. neoconservatives feeding Trump bad information about the situation.
The Saker put together two lists in his latest article (linked above) which puts the entire situation into perspective:
The Goals:
1. Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces, and security services. 2. Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan but further north. 3. Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah. 4. Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone,” but this time in Lebanon. 5. Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon. 6. Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines. 7. Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. 8. Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project. 9. Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional coalition of forces. 10. Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.
The Outcomes:
1. The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally “plugging holes” in the Syrian frontlines and “extinguishing fires” on local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria). 2. Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage. 3. Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge) 4. Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced refugees are returning home. Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.
The net result is everyone in the region who were aggressors are now suing for peace. This is why I expect some kind of deal that returns Iran to the global economy. There’s no way for Germany’s shiny new trade deal with China to work without this.
Trump’s hard line against Iran was always a mistake, even if Iran’s nuclear ambitions are real. But with the Open Skies treaty now a dead letter the U.S. has real logistical problems in the region and they only multiply if Erdogan in Turkey finally chooses a side and gives up his Neo-Ottoman ambitions, now very likely.
But when it comes to economics, as always, Davos has this all backwards vis a vis oil. They still think they can use the JCPOA to drive a wedge between Iran and Russia over oil. They still think Putin only cares about oil and gas sales abroad. It’s clear they don’t listen to him because the policy never seems to change.
So, to Davos, if they bring 2.5 to 3 million barrels per day from Iran back online and oil prices drop, this forces Russia to back down militarily and diplomatically in Eastern Europe. With a free-floated ruble the Russians don’t care now that they are mostly self-sufficient in food and raw material production.
None of that will come to pass. Putin is shifting the Russian economy away from oil and gas with an announced ambitious domestic spending plan ahead of this fall’s State Duma elections. Lower or even stable prices will accelerate those plans as capital no longer finds its best return in that sector.
This carrot to Iran and stick to Russia approach of Brussels/Davos is childish and it will only get worse when the Greens come to power in Germany at the end of the year. Unless the German elections end in a stalemate which is unforeseen, the CDU will grand coalition as the junior partner to the Greens, just as Davos wants it.
Don’t miss the significance of the policy bifurcation either when it comes to oil. The Biden administration is trying to make energy as expensive as possible in the U.S. — no Keystone Pipeline, Whitmer trying to close down Enbridges’s Line 5 from Canada into Michigan, etc. — while Europe gets Nordstream 2 from Russia and new, cheap supplies from Iran.
This is what had Trump so hopping mad when he was President. This is part of why he hated the JCPOA. Israel and the EastMed pipeline was what should have been the U.S. policy in his mind.
Now, those dreams are dead and the sell out of the U.S. to Davos is in full swing. Seriously, Biden/Obama are going to continue on this path of undermining U.S. energy production until they are thrown out of office, either by the overwhelming shame of the election fraud lawsuits which recall Senators from Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, the mid-term elections which brings a more pro-Trump GOP to power or by military force. That last bit I put a very low probability on.
Bottom line, for now global oil prices have likely peaked no matter what drivel comes out of John Kerry’s mouth.
The Brent/WTI spread will likely collapse and go negative for the first time in years as Iran’s full oil production comes online over the next two years while U.S. production falls. We’ll see rising oil prices in the U.S. while global supply rises, some of which China is getting at a steep discount from who? Iran.
Meanwhile Russia continues to hold the EU to account on everything while unmasking the not just the latest Bellingcat/MI6/State Dept. nonsense in Belarus surrounding the arrest of Roman Petrosovich, but also filling the void diplomatically left by a confused and incompetent U.S. policy in the Middle East.
If I’m the Bennett in Israel, the first phone call I make after taking office is to no one other than Putin, who now holds the reins over Iran, Hezbollah and a very battle-hardened and angry Syria who just re-elected Assad because he navigated the assault on the country with no lack of geopolitical skill.
Because it is clear that Biden/Obama, on behalf of Davos, have left Israel out to twist in the wind surrounded by those who wish it gone. We’ll see if they get their wish. I think the win here is clear and the days of U.S. adventurism in the Middle East are numbered.
The oil wars aren’t over, by any stretch of the imagination, but the outcome of the main battles have decisively shifted who determines what battles are fought next.
In a significant and strategic development for monetary metals, the Government of the Russian Federation has just introduced legislation which will allow Russia’s giant National Wealth Fund (NWF) to invest in gold and other precious metals. The NWF is Russia’s de facto sovereign wealth fund, and has assets of US$185 billion.
Introduced as a resolution to the procedures for managing the investments of the National Wealth Fund and signed off by the Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin on Friday 21 May, the changes will allow the National Wealth Fund to buy and hold gold and other precious metals with the Russian central bank, the Bank of Russia.
Gold as Diversification and Protection
In a note accompanying the gold announcement, the Russian government refers to gold as a traditional protective asset, and says that the move to add gold will introduce more diversification into NWF’s investment allocation, while promoting overall safety and profitability for the fund.
The full resolution (Resolution of May 21, 2021 No. 765) can be seen here, in Russian, in pdf form.
Up until now, the National Wealth Fund, through its 2008 investment management decree has been allowed to allocate funds to all main financial asset classes, such as foreign exchange, debt securities of foreign states, debt securities of international financial organizations, managed investment funds, equities, Russian development bank projects, and domestic bank deposits. The latest amendment now adds gold and precious metals to that list.
While Russia’s National Wealth Fund is sizable (at US$ 185 billion), it is not that widely known internationally. So here’s a quick recap. In its current structure, the National Wealth Fund emerged in February 2008 when its precursor, the Stabilization Fund of the Russian Federation, was split into two parts, namely a Reserve Fund and a Future Generations’ Fund (later renamed the National Wealth Fund).
The original Stabilization Fund, which was established in 2004, was launched so as to stabilize the Russian federal budget and insulate it against the volatility of international oil prices and oil export earnings.
The Reserve Fund then grew into a general fund to top up the federal budget, while the National Wealth Fund was designated as a fund to support the Russian Federation pension fund, for co-financing the state pension fund, and to guarantee the long-term stable functioning of the pension system. Then in early 2018, the Reserve Fund was rolled into the National Wealth Fund.
When active, the Reserve Fund had an investment remit of investing in low-yield securities, while the National Wealth Fund then and now invests in a broader set of asset classes. While the National Wealth Fund is managed by the Russian Ministry of Finance based on investment procedures and terms established by the Russian Government, the operational investment of the NWF is carried out by the Bank of Russia.
The NWF is financed in the following way. Each year, the Russian Federation earns oil and gas revenues (from production taxes and duties on oil and gas), a portion of which are then applied to finance the federal budget, and the remainder of these oil and gas revenues are transferred to the National Wealth Fund. As its basically a multi-asset investment fund, the National Wealth Fund also increases in size based on positive returns from the existing assets that it manages.
Gold – More Sustainable than Financial Assets
As the NWF soon will begin to buy and hold gold as part of its investment remit, it will be interesting to watch the NWF’s asset allocation reports, which can be found in the statistics section of the NWF pages of the Russian Ministry of Finance website here.
If this recent news about the NWF investing in gold look familiar, that’s because it is. Back in November 2020, the Russian government proposed a plan to allow the NWF to buy and hold gold, at the time introducing draft legislation for that purpose. It is this draft legislation which has now been signed into law on 21 May by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
However, nearly a year earlier in December 2019, Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had originally raised the idea that the National Wealth Fund should invest in gold, saying at the time that he saw gold “as more sustainable in the long-term than financial assets.”
It’s therefore interesting that following more than a decade of aggressively buying of domestic gold mine production and boosting Russia to one of the largest sovereign gold holders in the world, the Russian central bank stopped buying gold in April 2020, saying that it had suspended gold purchases in the domestic market.
With the central bank stepping out as a regular gold buyer in early 2020, this left Russian gold miners (and the Russian commercial banks) to sell Russian gold on the export market, and Russian gold exports have ramped up since then, particularly Russian gold exports to the West via London. See here, here, and here for examples.
The last time the Russian central bank bought gold was in March 2020 when it added 18.7 tonnes to its gold reserves, to give a grand total of 2299 tonnes. Since then it has made no gold purchases, but has made two small sales, each for 100,000 ozs (in January 2021 and again in April 2021), leaving the Russians with 2292 tonnes currently.
Still, this leaves Russia as the fifth largest sovereign gold holder in the world (just behind the claimed gold holdings of France and Italy). Russia’s gold reserves also comprise 22% of total Russian reserve assets, and since 2020 gold has been a larger component of Russian reserve assets than US dollar denominated assets, as the Russian state continues to de-dollarize its exposure in light of sanctions risk.
Note also that Russia operates a “State Fund of Precious Metals and Precious Stones” called the Gosfund which is managed by state organization ‘Gokhran’ which reports to the Ministry of Finance. This Gosfund can also buy and hold gold, but it does not publish any details of what it holds, and they confirmed to BullionStar in 2016 that:
“Gokhran does not publish information about the amount of gold reserves in the Russian Gosfund and data about precious metal operations”.
But you can assume that the Gokhran is probably also buying gold.
Conclusion
When at the end of March 2020, the Russian central bank announced that it would suspend purchases of gold in the domestic market, it also said that “subsequent decisions on gold purchases will be made subject to financial market developments."
One of these decisions now seem to be the Russian state / central bank putting on another ‘hat’ (of the National Wealth Fund), and returning to the gold market in tag team style (following a plan that began at the end of 2019), with the National Wealth Fund now able to continue where the Bank of Russia left off in early 2020. Any NWF gold buying will also mean less Russia gold for export, but maybe this is the intention, especially in light of heightened sanctions risk on Russia from the US and EU and the risks of overseas asset freezes.
Physical gold, as all gold owners will know, has no counterparty risk and no credit risk, so is the ultimate monetary asset for a national state to hold when worried about the sanctions risk of other countries.
As Dmitry Tulin, first deputy governor and board member of the Bank of Russia said in 2016 when commenting on the Bank of Russia’s gold purchases, “Russia is increasing its gold holdings because gold is a reserve asset that is free from legal and political risks."
With the arrival of the massive Russian sovereign wealth fund NWF as a new gold buyer, it now looks like Russia is involved in a grand game of geo-political and monetary chess with golden pieces, and indeed a game of 4D chess.
