Irish Man Arrested After Driving Truck Through Gate of Russian Embassy

<p><strong>Canadian MP Mark Strahl related how a single mother in his district has had her bank account totally frozen by the Trudeau regime after she completely legally donated $50 to the trucker Freedom Convoy.</strong></p> <p>“Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job,” Strahl tweeted, adding “She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn’t participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen.”</p> <p>The MP further urged “This is who Justin Trudeau is actually targeting with his Emergencies Act orders.”</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"> <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper" readability="6.6415662650602"> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true" readability="6.6415662650602"> <p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job. She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn’t participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen. This is who Justin Trudeau is actually targeting with his Emergencies Act orders.</p> — Mark Strahl, MP (@markstrahl) <a href="https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2022</a></blockquote> </div> </figure> <p>In a follow up post, Strahl noted that the mother was attacked online by anti-freedom trolls after his initial tweet.</p> <p>“I am not going to help you dox her,” Strahl asserted, adding “I know who she is and I won’t stop fighting for her.”</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"> <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper" readability="8.0647590361446"> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true" readability="9.4879518072289"> <p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">To those of you, especially the media, demanding more details on Briane, having seen what has been said about her online today and what has been done to other convoy donors in the last weeks I am not going to help you dox her. I know who she is and I won’t stop fighting for her.</p> — Mark Strahl, MP (@markstrahl) <a href="https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495609957445926912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2022</a></blockquote> </div> </figure> <p>This is just one of hundreds if not thousands of cases, however the exact number of accounts that have been frozen is unknown because, despite the demands of MPs, the government will not provide further information.</p> <p>In addition to targeting bank accounts, the mayor of Ottawa Jim Watson has suggested confiscating vehicles from freedom protesters and selling them, thus taking away their livelihoods.</p> <p>“This is costing a small fortune for the taxpayers of Ottawa,” Watson claimed, adding “That’s one of the reasons why under the Emergencies Act, I’ve asked our solicitor and our city manager: How can we keep the tow trucks and the campers and the vans and everything else that we’ve confiscated, and sell those pieces of equipment to help recoup some of the costs that our taxpayers are absorbing? So that’s one of the provisions of the Emergencies Act, and we have been a beneficiary of the Emergencies Act.”</p> <p>Watch:</p> <p>The tyrannical actions of the Canadian government are now on show for all to see. Conservative Shadow Minister for Finance Pierre Poilievre slammed Trudeau’s “unjustifiable power grab,” and specifically addressed the targeting of those who have donated to the “wrong political cause.”</p> <p>Poilievre described it as “Not just an attack on their finances, but on their personal security.”</p> <p>He emphasised “If your bank account is frozen, you can’t buy food, you can’t buy fuel, you can’t pay your children’s daycare fees, and you can, under this law, face that personal attack without being charged with a single solitary crime.”</p> <p>Poilievre further warned “This is time limited, but his own finance minister said she wants some of the tools to be permanent. He said it will be geographically targetted, yet his own parliamentary secretary for justice said ‘the act technically applies to all of Canada,’ so the rules apply everywhere and indefinitely.”</p> <p>Watch:</p> <p>The comments came as <a href="https://summit.news/2022/02/21/trudeau-says-state-of-emergency-will-remain-in-place/">Trudeau vowed</a> that emergency measure will remain in place, and the Canadian parliament <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/canadian-parliament-votes-to-extend-emergencies-act-for-30-days/">voted to keep them in force</a>.</p> <p>As we <a href="https://summit.news/2022/02/21/canada-moves-to-make-asset-freezing-under-emergencies-act-permanent/">noted yesterday</a>, Canada has moved to make the asset freezing part of its Emergencies Act a permanent fixture.</p> <p><strong>SUBSCRIBE on YouTube:</strong></p> Follow on Twitter: <p>———————————————————————————————————————<br /> Brand <strong>new merch</strong> now available! Get it at <a href="https://www.pjwshop.com/"><strong>https://www.pjwshop.com/</strong></a> <a href="https://www.pjwshop.com/"><img alt="PJW Shop" border="0" height="600" src="https://cdn.summit.news/2021/07/merch.jpg" width="348" /></a></p> <p><strong>ALERT!</strong> In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.</p> <p>We need you to sign up for our free newsletter <a href="https://summit.news/newsletter">here</a>.</p> <p>Support our sponsor – <a href="https://bit.ly/TURBOFORCE">Turbo Force</a> – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.</p> <p>Also, we urgently need your financial support <a href="https://www.subscribestar.com/paul-joseph-watson">here</a>. ———————————————————————————————————————</p> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://summit.news/2022/03/07/irish-man-arrested-after-driving-truck-through-gate-of-russian-embassy/">https://summit.news/2022/03/07/irish-man-arrested-after-driving-truck-through-gate-of-russian-embassy/</a>

revolution summit Irish Man Arrested After Driving Truck Through Gate of Russian Embassy

Canadian MP Mark Strahl related how a single mother in his district has had her bank account totally frozen by the Trudeau regime after she ...

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Florida Becomes First State to Recommend AGAINST Vaccinating Children

<p><strong>Children should not be administered the experimental Covid-19 jab, Florida lawmakers declared Monday.</strong></p> <p>During a roundtable meeting with medical experts held by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Lapado advised parents against getting their children jabbed, saying it provides no benefit to healthy children.</p> [embedded content] <p>“The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” Ladapo said.</p> <p>“We’re kind of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, particularly with healthy kids, in terms of actually being able to quantify with any accuracy and any confidence the even potential of benefit.”</p> <p>Adding to the surgeon general’s directive against childhood Covid vaccination later from the Florida Strawberry Festival, Gov. DeSantis explained the state’s roundtable concluded there’s “very little benefit” to vaccinating healthy children.</p> <p>“If you look at teenage boys between 13 and 18 there’s been an increased signal for things like myocarditis,” DeSantis told reporters during a press conference. “You know one of the studies that was looked at to approve the Pfizer vaccine for young people found no hospitalization and death in the vaccine arm, which is good – but they found no hospitalization and death in the placebo arm either!”</p> [embedded content] <p>The governor added the CDC’s constant flip-flops, most recently on mask rules, have caused the American people to lose trust in the institution.</p> <p>“CDC with all due respect, they have not followed the science,” the governor said. “Throughout all this they’ve done a lot of political science. They’ve changed the guidance in like the last week or two with no change in underlying data – they just did it more for political purposes. And so… we are not just going to follow the CDC in the state of Florida.</p> <div class="D7snjvCt"><a href="https://www.infowarslife.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.directus.libertycdn.com/uploads/_/originals/TSP-hero-385-1.jpg" /></a></div> <p>“I think a lot of people have lost confidence in the CDC,” he added, “and I think that’s a huge majority of Americans that have lost confidence. So it doesn’t mean because they say it we won’t do it; we’re going to do it on our own, but clearly the fact that they say to do it is not going to be enough. We’re going to do our own stuff.”</p> <p>The announcement, which makes Florida the first state in the nation to implement such a recommendation, contradicts current recommendations from the CDC, which <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/children-teens.html" target="_blank">advises</a> parents to jab children as young as 5.</p> <p>Watch the full roundtable discussion below, dubbed, “The Curtain Close on COVID Theater”:</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator" /> <em readability="0.37628865979381">Follow the author on Gettr: <a href="https://www.gettr.com/user/adansalazarwins" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.gettr.com/user/adansalazarwins</a><br /> <em>Gab: <a href="https://gab.ai/adansalazar" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://gab.ai/adansalazar</a></em><br /> <em>Minds: <a href="https://www.minds.com/adan_infowars" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.minds.com/adan_infowars</a></em><br /> <em>Twitter:</em> <a href="https://twitter.com/AdanSalazarWins" data-show-count="false">https://twitter.com/AdanSalazarWins</a><br /> <em>Parler: <a href="https://parler.com/profile/adansalazar/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://parler.com/profile/adansalazar/</a></em><br /> <em>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/adan.salazar.735" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.facebook.com/adan.salazar.735</a></em></em> <p><em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://banned.video/watch?id=62267f9e5bbbdb5813b94413" target="_blank">See the Thread Exposing What Was Done In The Name Of Covid The Globalists Want Everyone To Forget</a></em></p> <hr class="wp-block-separator" /> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/florida-becomes-first-state-to-recommend-against-vaccinating-children">https://www.infowars.com/posts/florida-becomes-first-state-to-recommend-against-vaccinating-children</a>

news Florida Becomes First State to Recommend AGAINST Vaccinating Children

Children should not be administered the experimental Covid-19 jab, Florida lawmakers declared Monday. During a roundtable meeting with medi...

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Even Mild COVID Infection Linked To Brain Damage, Research Shows

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://api-assets.infowars.com/2022/03/covidbrain12834767890.jpg" /></div> <p><strong>Even mild cases of the China Virus are associated with tissue damage and loss in brain volume, accelerated losses in brain regions tied to sense of smell, and a cognitive function deficit, a new British study finds.</strong></p> <p>The study by University of Oxford investigators <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5" target="_blank">published</a> in <em>Nature</em> on Monday shows the brain scans of hundreds of COVID-infected British individuals is equivalent to at least one extra year of normal aging.</p> <p>“It is brain damage, but it is possible that it is reversible,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna18959" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> Gwenaëlle Douaud, an associate professor at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences. “But it is still relatively scary because it was in mildly infected people.”</p> <p>The study compared the brain scans of 401 people between 51 and 81 years old to a control group of 384 <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/" target="_blank">U.K. Biobank</a> participants who had not tested positive for COVID, and were matched according to the Covid-infected group’s numerous health metrics including weight, age, sex, and more.</p> <p>The results showed a “significant” difference in brain matter thickness and tissue damage markers.</p> <p>From the study “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank</a>“:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="11"> <p>We identified significant longitudinal effects when comparing the two groups, including: (i) <strong>greater reduction in grey matter thickness and tissue-contrast in the orbitofrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus</strong>, (ii) <strong>greater changes in markers of tissue damage in regions functionally-connected to the primary olfactory cortex</strong>, and (iii) <strong>greater reduction in global brain size</strong>. The infected participants also showed on average larger cognitive decline between the two timepoints.</p> </blockquote> <p>NBC News claimed that the effects of the COVID injection can be ruled out because the COVID-positive participants were studied <em>before</em> the vaccines were “widely available.”</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="13"> <p><em>The overall brain volume in people with Covid declined by an extra 0.3 percent over those without the disease.</em></p> <p><em>Older participants experienced all these excess brain-related declines more profoundly.</em></p> <p><em>The study offers no indication whether a Covid vaccination would mitigate the risk of such changes. The participants tested positive for the disease between March 2020 and April 2021, before the vaccines were widely available in the U.K.</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Dr. Steven Deeks, a veteran HIV researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, praised the Oxford researchers for finding “definitive clinical data” on the subject of COVID and brain function.</p> <p>“This study provides the most definitive clinical data available to date that SARS-CoV-2 directly or indirectly damages nerves and that this, in turn, can have systemic effects, including changes in the brain,” Deeks said.</p> <p>“It contributes to an emerging theme that nerve damage was common during the first few waves of the pandemic.”</p> <p><strong>Read the Oxford-led study:</strong></p> <hr class="wp-block-separator" /> <em>Twitter: <a href="https://www.infowars.com/rss.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">@WhiteIsTheFury</a></em><br /> <em>Gab: <a href="https://www.infowars.com/rss.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">@WhiteIsTheFury</a></em><br /> <em>Minds: <a href="https://www.minds.com/whiteisthefury/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">@WhiteIsTheFury</a></em><br /> <em>Gettr: <a href="https://www.gettr.com/user/whiteisthefury" rel="noopener noreferrer">@WhiteIsTheFury</a></em> <p><em><a href="https://battleplan.news/watch?id=62268b9b3692ef588200deca" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vindicated Whistleblower Who Exposed Govt. Covid Propaganda Payoffs to Corporate Media Joins Infowars in Powerful Interview</a></em></p> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/even-mild-covid-infection-linked-to-brain-damage-research-shows">https://www.infowars.com/posts/even-mild-covid-infection-linked-to-brain-damage-research-shows</a>

news Even Mild COVID Infection Linked To Brain Damage, Research Shows

Even mild cases of the China Virus are associated with tissue damage and loss in brain volume, accelerated losses in brain regions tied to ...

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China Needs to Pop Its Property Bubble

<p><strong>The financial woes of the giant real estate developer <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58579833" target="_blank">Evergrande</a>, which carries an estimated debt of $300 billion, have rekindled global fears that China’s property bubble is about to burst.</strong></p> <p>Such predictions have occurred <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/6cd98926-d9e1-11e3-b3e3-00144feabdc0" target="_blank">repeatedly</a> in the past, in particular since <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/cbc83612-3134-11df-8e6f-00144feabdc0" target="_blank">2010</a>, and have been fueled by the rapid rise of property prices, construction volumes, and real estate debt.</p> <p>Today, many <a href="https://mises.org/wire/why-chinas-property-bubble-big-deal">analysts</a> fear that if the property bubble collapses, the impact on the real economy will be devastating. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/ea1b79bf-cbe3-41d9-91da-0a1ba692309f" target="_blank">Some</a> expect China’s growth potential to decrease dramatically, to 4 percent per year from about 8 percent during 2010–19, or even lower.</p> <p>Yet the current property market turmoil originates in regulatory action to reduce financial leverage, and it may not lead to a full-fledged financial meltdown if authorities keep the situation under control.</p> <p>Most important, reducing the share of construction and real estate activity may slow real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the short run but would benefit China’s transition to a more productive and sustainable growth model.</p> <h4><strong>A Red-Hot Housing Market</strong></h4> <p>After its liberalization in the late 1990s, China’s property market witnessed a sustained expansion with only minor corrections lasting no more than a few months. The government supported the property sector to strengthen the urban middle class and underpin growth.</p> <p>Banks started issuing home loans in 1997, and credit was easily accessible to both developers and households. Housing became the preferred investment vehicle for the Chinese, as bank deposit rates were kept artificially low, the stock market suffered severe crashes in 2007 and 2015, and capital controls prevented investment diversification abroad.</p> <p>Today the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-empty-homes-real-estate-evergrande-housing-market-problem-2021-10?r=US&IR=T" target="_blank">homeownership rate</a> exceeds 90 percent (compared to 65 percent in the US) and about 70 percent of household wealth—far higher than in Western economies—is held in real estate.</p> <div class="FGN1AxUc"><a href="https://www.infowarslife.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.directus.libertycdn.com/uploads/_/originals/TSP-hero-385-1.jpg" /></a></div> <p>After the global financial crisis, the government used the property sector to spur growth via recurrent waves of easy credit. As a result, residential property prices have more than doubled during the last fifteen years alone (graph 1).</p> <p><strong>Graph 1: China Nominal Residential Property Price Index</strong></p> <figure class="wp-block-image"><a href="https://cdn.mises.org/mm1_5.png" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img alt="mm1" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/max_1160/s3/mm1_5.png?itok=5EW0YqWE" title="" /></a></figure> <h6><strong>Source: FRED and Bank for International Settlements.</strong></h6> <p>The real estate bubble was fueled by a vast increase in both mortgage and developer credit. During the last decade, household mortgage loans increased almost six times, to about $6 trillion, while real estate developer’s debt almost doubled to $3.5 trillion (graph 2).</p> <p>Real estate debt exceeded 50 percent of GDP at the end of 2021 and contributed to the rapid buildup in China’s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/china-economy-charts-show-how-much-debt-has-grown.html" target="_blank">total debt in the economy</a>, which in 2020 almost doubled to around 290 percent of GDP, after only two decades.</p> <p><strong>Graph 2: Housing Mortgage Loans and Developer Debt</strong></p> <figure class="wp-block-image"><a href="https://cdn.mises.org/mm2_1.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img alt="mm2" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/max_1160/s3/mm2_1.jpg?itok=17qXjDQx" title="" /></a></figure> <h6><strong>Source: IHS Markit.</strong></h6> <p>The scale of the building boom unleashed by China’s growth stimuli is impressive. The <em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/42ed2476-1648-11e4-93ec-00144feabdc0" target="_blank">Financial Times</a></em> reports that in only two years—2011 and 2012—China produced more cement than the US did in the entire twentieth century. During the last fifteen years, the volume of floor space under construction by real estate developers increased more than five times (graph 3).</p> <p>Today, China’s real estate activity, including construction, accounts for about <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/13476bf7-a519-427c-afd8-06e5579539d8" target="_blank">30 percent of GDP</a> annually, compared to 15–20 percent in most developed nations. In addition, local governments depend on land sales for about a third of their fiscal revenues. The fact that <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-empty-homes-real-estate-evergrande-housing-market-problem-2021-10?r=US&IR=T" target="_blank">about a fifth of China’s housing units are now vacant</a> certainly points to housing oversupply and real estate malinvestment.</p> <p><strong>Graph 3: Housing Construction Activity</strong></p> <figure class="wp-block-image"><a href="https://cdn.mises.org/mm3_4.png" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img alt="mm3" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/max_1160/s3/mm3_4.png?itok=ol__bErm" title="" /></a></figure> <h6><strong>Source: IHS Markit.</strong></h6> <p>Yet as authorities have taken action to cool real estate activity in recent years, several indicators, such as new housing starts, housing under construction, and land purchased by developers, dropped significantly (graph 3). The volume of floor space available for sale has fallen by almost 20 percent from its peak, and the number of <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/01/25/can-chinas-long-property-boom-hold" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">months needed to sell all available homes</a> almost halved from 2015 to 2020, indicating a reduction in housing oversupply.</p> <h4><strong>What Triggered Evergrande’s Problems?</strong></h4> <p>The stock market crash of 2015, which also had a ripple effect in the financial and real estate sectors, prompted government action to reduce leverage and risk in the property market. In December 2016 President Xi Jinping said that homes were for “<a href="https://www.economist.com/china/2021/09/04/chinas-bid-to-stabilise-its-property-market-is-causing-jitters" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">living in, not for speculating</a>.” Beijing introduced tighter mortgage conditions and restrictions on ownership of multiple homes in order to curtail housing credit, booming residential prices, and overbuilding. In 2019 the Communist Party declared that property was not a tool for short-term economic stimulus, and China avoided another oversized growth stimulus during the pandemic.</p> <p>Last year the government tackled high leverage in the real estate sector even more forcefully. Regulators capped the share of housing loans that banks may hold and also imposed “three red lines” on large property developers, limiting the size of their debts relative to their assets, equity, and cash. This complemented existing policies to cap growth in shadow financing and offshore bond issuances. Mortgage rates were pushed up, and land auction rules were tightened, together with hundreds of other regulations covering the property market. In addition, China announced a five-year program to test a new property tax, which weighed down housing demand and prices further.</p> <p>The squeeze on new financing constrained developers to reduce new investment and cut prices to promote sales. Developers’ liquidity dwindled amid falling construction starts, unfinished projects, and lower sales. Signs of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/evergrande-crisis-other-china-property-developers-in-trouble-outlook-2021-12?r=US&IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">financial stress emerged rapidly</a>, and not only Evergrande, but also other large developers such as Kaisa and Shimao, as well as smaller players like Fantasia, Modern Land, and Sinic Holdings, defaulted on their debt obligations. Demand for housing has taken a hit, with investors waiting for prices to fall further and reticent to buy projects from distressed developers. At the same time, property-related nonperforming loans went up, reducing the banks’ appetite for housing-related lending and exacerbating the financing shortage.</p> <p>This looks like a perfect storm, with the initial financing squeeze disrupting construction and the real economy, which in turn has aggravated financial stress further. According to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/third-of-chinese-developers-could-face-debt-problems-amid-evergrande-contagion-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> by the credit rating agency S&P, about a third of real estate developers could experience financial distress and head toward bankruptcy. But before concluding that China’s property bubble may finally collapse, one should bear in mind that the current turmoil was triggered by government action, part of a longer-term plan to cool the real estate sector. </p> <h4><strong>Could China Stop a Property-Related Financial Meltdown?</strong></h4> <p>It is possible that government’s measures may come too late and may unintentionally lead to a disorderly collapse of the bubble. Yet the authorities still have a few aces up their sleeve. The central bank has already started marginally easing monetary policy and interest rates, encouraging banks to lend more. If necessary, it could also relax limits on bank lending to developers and households mortgages. If push comes to shove, regulators could also relax the restrictions on financing developers by extending the deadline for meeting the “three red lines.” Despite being cash strapped themselves, some <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/13476bf7-a519-427c-afd8-06e5579539d8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">local authorities have stepped in</a> already to finance the completion of Evergrande’s projects and make payments to its contractors.</p> <p>In the extreme scenario that the forced deleveraging of developers spirals out of control, bringing about a massive correction in prices and activity, China can still do what other countries have also done to delay the inevitable outcome of the mess of a collapsed property bubble. It can transfer the nonperforming real estate debt from the balance sheets of banks to a special asset management company (AMC) at a discounted value and then recapitalize the banks. Such operations do not require great fiscal strain, thanks to the “magic” of modern banking—where the required equity capital represents only a small fraction of total bank assets (<a href="https://www.bankingsupervision.europa.eu/banking/statistics/html/index.en.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">about 6 percent in Europe</a>)—and thanks to the government guarantee of the debt issued by AMCs. For example, at a total debt of 360 percent of GDP and real estate loans in excess of 40 percent of GDP, <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2016/12/31/Spain-Financial-System-Stability-Assessment-25977" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spain’s debt metrics</a> were marginally worse when its property bubble burst in 2009 than China’s are today. Eventually, the fiscal cost to transfer banks’ bad assets—mortgages and developer loans—to the AMC called <a href="https://www.sareb.es/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SAREB</a> and recapitalize them was a manageable <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2016/12/31/Spain-Financial-Sector-Reform-Final-Progress-Report-41358" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">5–10 percent of GDP</a>. Having a public debt of about 45 percent of GDP in 2021 (95 percent of GDP including off-budget obligations, according to the International Monetary Fund [<a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2022/01/26/Peoples-Republic-of-China-2021-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-Staff-Report-and-512248" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IMF</a>]), China could—for now—afford a similar fiscal effort. China also holds vast foreign exchange reserves of about $3.4 trillion (25 percent of its GDP) as of the end of 2020 and enjoys a much higher savings rate than Spain. Moreover, China can always buy time by pushing for business consolidation in the real estate sector and ask some of its large state-owned enterprises to acquire bad assets from troubled developers, spreading the cost of a potential crisis. This appears to be happening already in Evergrande’s restructuring process since its debt default in December.</p> <h4><strong>What about the Real Impact on Growth?</strong></h4> <p>The sharp drop in construction and real estate activity has already reduced annual real GDP growth in China to 4.9 percent in Q3 and 4 percent in Q4 2021, the slowest rates in eighteen months. It is obvious that cooling the property sector cannot be done without lowering growth rates temporarily, while factors of production are reallocated to more productive uses. This is the unavoidable immediate cost that China has to pay in order to stop overinvestment and the waste of resources in real estate. After property bubbles collapse, economic growth can resume relatively fast and on a sounder footing, as the cases of Spain and Ireland show. If it downsizes its bloated property sector, China would have much more resources available to invest in research and development, information and communications technology, artificial intelligence, and other <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2020/01/high-tech-high-risk-for-chinas-economy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">high-tech sectors</a>, in which it wants to become a global leader. The short-term negative economic consequences of deleveraging the real estate market should not stop China from moving ahead.</p> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/china-needs-to-pop-its-property-bubble">https://www.infowars.com/posts/china-needs-to-pop-its-property-bubble</a>

news China Needs to Pop Its Property Bubble

The financial woes of the giant real estate developer  Evergrande , which carries an estimated debt of $300 billion, have rekindled global f...

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Urban Supremacy and the Dismantling of Rural Communities

<p><strong>Probably the worst of the multitude of villainous covid restrictions came at the expense of churches, the forced closure of their doors.</strong></p> <p>Coupled with this tragedy was the fact that while churches were empty, liquor stores remained open for business.</p> <p>And while this wasn’t true everywhere, in many areas, bars were allowed to open for inside business before churches had been given the green light for pews to be filled.</p> <p>It is not my intention here to speak to the morality of these measures; they speak for themselves.</p> <p>Instead, I would like to paint a picture of how rural socialization in its present condition varies from its past and why this dynamic speaks to our current reality of urban supremacy.</p> <p>We have all likely watched a movie that features a small town with not much to do.</p> <p>The default mode of entertainment, or even coping mechanism for the folks of these towns, then, is the bar.</p> <p>Zooming in even more on this generality, you might discover that one of the main characters of the movie is in a constant state of depression, feeling no purpose in life, and therefore drinks his sorrows away every night, mainly in complete silence, with perhaps a few conversations here and there with the bartender.</p> <div class="xwdYmGN3"><a href="https://www.infowarslife.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.directus.libertycdn.com/uploads/_/originals/TSP-hero-385-1.jpg" /></a></div> <p>Is this a bit of an embellishment? Perhaps. But I think you get the picture.</p> <p>While it is certainly not true that all small towns and rural areas fit this mold, this has become an accepted meme for these types of areas, sometimes justified, sometimes not.</p> <p>It is difficult, then, to imagine what folks living in a similar reality to the one above went through, or are currently going through, as measures that only made sense in cities—and even that is stretch in many cases—were handed down to these more spread-out areas as well. Drinking away your sorrows when there are at least people socializing a few feet away from you became drinking them away alone in your own home.</p> <p>On top of that, while the church steeple in town remains in sight for our hypothetical man as he gets in his car each night after a visit to the liquor store, the voice inside his head saying, “You know, I should probably get back in church,” was also no longer a reality in the world of covid.</p> <p>There are a number of factors at play here. Yes, the man certainly needs a better outlet for coping.</p> <p>Also yes, while that outlet can be found within those church walls, and despite the magnetization the man feels toward the church, if the doors were open, the man sadly probably still would not take advantage.</p> <p>And lastly, yes, the bar being the center for socialization in many of these rural areas is again a problem, and one that existed for long before the covid pandemic began. But this hasn’t always been the case.</p> <p>The word “feudalism” comes with an array of mostly negative connotations. “A condition of political and economic servitude to the king” is people’s oversimplified definition of the word.</p> <p>But just as is the case with many words, “feudalism” has also evolved and has even been intentionally muddied through the years. In her book <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ignatius.com/those-terrible-middle-ages-ttmap/" target="_blank"><em>Those Terrible Middle Ages!</em></a>, author Régine Pernoud details two periods in which two different forms, or perhaps stages, of feudalism existed.</p> <p>The first stage of feudalism was one in which each fief was indeed under a lord who was appointed by a king, but the laws of each domain were more determined by the customs and cultures of the peoples within these lands: blood and soil possessed more power over these people’s everyday lives than the king did.</p> <p>As time went on, however, circumstances which cannot be covered here led to the king becoming more of an absolute monarch. Rural power decreased while urbanized centralization of power increased. In this reality, the customs and culture of each individual fief became watered down, and despite their many cultural differences, the fiefs began to exist under the same will to power.</p> <p>Along with this transition came also a decrease in rural forms of entertainment, education, and spiritual gatherings. Attending community plays and concerts put on in town or in the countryside gave way to having to go to the theater in the big city.</p> <p>Places of learning went from being built in beautiful valleys to also residing within the cities. And cathedrals were built less and less on hillsides, and again placed nearer to or within cities.</p> <p>Not only was the power centralized away from the various cultures of each of the domains making up the fiefs, but community was itself centralized in the city, eventually leading to what we have now: urban “elites” dictating the lives of rural communities that don’t hold the same cultural values.</p> <p>Obviously, the path from there to here was not an entirely straight line.</p> <p>Transitions are never smooth, with constant detours along the way.</p> <p>But it is not a stretch to claim that as power increased in urban areas, rural areas not only lost theirs but also found themselves under the control of the areas increasing their power and that allowing culture and socialization to persist and thrive in these new areas of power led to a lack of it in the places where more and more people simply exist, monotonously working and then perhaps going to the bar every Friday night to catch up with the boys, or more sadly, wallow in own self-pity.</p> <p>This is not to say that “catching up with the boys” is a bad thing. Because it’s not. But it cannot be the only thing if your wish is for your community to have more say in its governance than the closest large city.</p> <p>We are in a transition now. The current trajectory is more centralization, away from sovereignty and toward globalization.</p> <p>As mentioned, though, transitions aren’t smooth or easy. There are opportunities to be had. Complaining that the Davos crowd is seeking even more power than they already have is not an effective engagement with the opportunity currently presented to us.</p> <p>Our time must be spent building—specifically building back rural and community power.</p> <p>Perhaps you continue to catch up with the boys at the bar in town on Friday night; however, along with that you spent the night before reading with friends at the newly built community library.</p> <p>And you start a tradition of making Saturday a day of entertainment for your community: food, sports, games, dancing, plays, and concerts—maybe even make it day you all work on building a castle on the countryside (dead serious). Then, on Sunday, you attend that church.</p> <p>What I’m describing here is a vibrant culture, one that hopefully already exists, or is beginning to exist, in certain communities.</p> <p>Because the more these cultural uprisings shift away from the city and into pocket communities, the less power these cities will have over your preferred pocket; and it’s important to note here that your preferred pocket may actually have—possibly need—its own particular centralization of power, used mainly to keep out folks who seek to infiltrate and change the culture.</p> <p>Creating and building up these pocketed communities of power—a new form of fief, if you will—will ensure that the church doors in your community remain open as they are being forced shut, over a virus or for any other reason, in areas that no longer have control over you.</p> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/urban-supremacy-and-the-dismantling-of-rural-communities">https://www.infowars.com/posts/urban-supremacy-and-the-dismantling-of-rural-communities</a>

news Urban Supremacy and the Dismantling of Rural Communities

Probably the worst of the multitude of villainous covid restrictions came at the expense of churches, the forced closure of their doors. Co...

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Yes, the US Has Its Own “Sphere of Influence.” And It’s Huge.

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://api-assets.infowars.com/2022/03/030722navy.jpg" /></div> <p><strong>Late last year, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/newsworld/spheres-of-influence-are-a-reality/ar-AATtUBN" target="_blank">declared</a> that “One country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence. That notion should be relegated to the dustbin of history.”</strong></p> <p>His words were directed at Russia after Moscow increasingly made it clear that it considers Ukraine to be part of Russia’s “near abroad” and thus part of Russia’s sphere of influence.</p> <p>This claim that spheres of influence are some sort of relic from the past has been further pushed by Washington establishment types like former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who in January <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-dreams-of-a-russian-sphere-of-influence-kazakhstan-s-protesters-are-the-latest-to-push-back/ar-AASzCdL" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stated</a>, “Putin thinks as a kind of 18th-century or 19th-century leader about spheres of influence.”</p> <p>The agenda here, apparently, is to connect the idea of spheres of influence with Napoleon-looking characters from the days of yore who believed in that old-fashioned spheres-of-influence stuff.</p> <p>Moreover, the implication is that the United States regime doesn’t maintain a sphere of influence.</p> <p>These claims of opposition to spheres of influence continue an effort that’s been going on at least since 2010, when Hillary Clinton in the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/07/06/clinton-u-s-has-steadfast-commitment-to-georgias-sovereignty/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wake of the Russo-Georgian War of 2008</a> declared, “The United States does not recognize spheres of influence.” She was echoing earlier comments by Condoleeza Rice, who in <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/condoleezzariceonrussia.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a 2008 speech</a> in Washington, DC, claimed the United States is creating a world</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="8"> <p>in which great power is defined not by spheres of influence or zero-sum competition, or the strong imposing their will on the weak—but … the independence of nations [and] governance by the rule of law.</p> </blockquote> <p>The words of technocrats like Rice, Clinton, and Blinken are always interesting as indications of what it is the US regime <em>would like people to believe</em>, but in real life, it is abundantly clear that the US does not in any way actually reject the notion of spheres of influence. It’s just that the US is opposed to a sphere of influence <em>for Russia</em>.</p> <p>Indeed, the United States regime not only jealously defends its own sphere of influence but has been ferociously attempting to expand it since the end of the Cold War.</p> <p>This, of course, is what we ought to expect from any state devoted to preserving and expanding its own power. In other words, the US regime is no different from any other great power in history when it comes to establishing a sphere of influence. Perhaps the only real difference is that Washington insists on lying about it.</p> <h4>What Is a Sphere of Influence?</h4> <p>Spheres of influence “are best defined as international formations that contain one nation (the influencer) that commands superior power over others.”<a href="https://mises.org/wire/yes-us-has-its-own-sphere-influence-and-its-huge#footnote1_6zu7ruk">1</a> Spheres of influence are usually regional in that they offer defensive advantages, since states in sensitive geopolitical locations are “expected” to be friendly to the regional hegemon. Historically, large states have employed the tactic when they have lacked the ability or the political will to simply annex neighbors yet also desired to dominate those neighbors in terms of foreign policy. States that are not sizable powers in their own right have often fit into these regional schemes as client states, puppet states, or simply “friendly” nations with close cultural and economic ties. Historically, large states also pursued expanded frontiers to ensure “buffer zones” that could stand between them and powerful regimes who wanted to militarily dominate frontiers far from their heartlands. The partitions of Poland, for example, served this purpose for the Austrian Habsburgs, the Russians, and the Prussians. The Empire of Japan created Manchukuo as a puppet state to act as a buffer between Japan, China, and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In more recent times, North Korea serves as a buffer state between China and US-dominated South Korea. </p> <p>Attempts by a regional hegemon to control buffer states, expand frontiers, and keep “friendly regimes” well within the fold all constitute efforts to maintain a sphere of influence. As unfortunate as it may be, the fact is powerful states simply don’t let their less powerful neighbors do whatever they want—so long as the regional power has the means to prevent it.</p> <p>The United States is no different.</p> <h4>The US Sphere of Influence</h4> <p>The United States was wildly successful in its own efforts to create a buffer zone in western North America. From the early nineteenth century, the US was concerned with ensuring that it controlled areas west of the Mississippi to ensure a large frontier between New Spain and the United States. The US was so successful in these efforts that it had fully annexed these lands by the late nineteenth century.</p> <p>Yet the interests of the American regime hardly stopped at the Rio Grande or the prairies of southern Canada. As was made clear with the Monroe Doctrine, the US had long aspired to an immense hemispheric sphere of influence in which no Asian or European power would be permitted to operate.</p> <p>The fact that the US maintains its own sphere of influence today is blatantly obvious to anyone familiar with US interventions in Latin America. Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders demonstrated the a-broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day rule when he <a href="https://cnsnews.com/article/washington/susan-jones/sen-bernie-sanders-hypocritical-us-insist-we-do-not-accept-spheres" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">correctly noted</a> that it is absurd to claim the United States respects the sovereignty of other states within the US’s perceived sphere of influence:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="15"> <p>“Does anyone really believe that the United States would not have something to say if, for example, Mexico or Cuba or any country in Central or Latin America were to form a military alliance with a U.S. adversary?” Sanders asked in a speech on the Senate floor.</p> <p>“Do you think members of Congress would stand up and say, well, you know, Mexico is an independent country and they have the right to do anything they want. I doubt that very much.”</p> </blockquote> <p>We need not point only to Mexico, of course.<a href="https://mises.org/wire/yes-us-has-its-own-sphere-influence-and-its-huge#footnote2_z3zy3i4">2</a> The United States has supported a number of regime change operations in Latin America out of concern that an unfriendly regime would invite hostile foreign powers—i.e., the Soviet Union—into the Western hemisphere. Interventions by Washington include the Cuban trade embargo, the US’s proxy war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, US support for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the 1954 Guatemalan coup, and the 1964 Brazilian coup. Most famously, of course, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the US appeared willing to engage in nuclear war in order to keep the Soviets out of the US’s sphere of influence. (The crisis was resolved when the US—secretly, so as to give the impression the US “won”—agreed to remove missiles from Turkey, a location deemed too close to the USSR’s sphere of influence.)</p> <p>In a world of global power projection, however, nations within the US’s sphere of influence need not even be in the Western Hemisphere. Since the Second World War, the US has extended its sphere of influence to include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea, Japan, and arguably Taiwan. The US has even initiated invasions to add nations to its sphere of influence. Iraq was within the Soviet sphere of influence until the Persian Gulf War of 1990. After 2003, with the US’s full-blown invasion of Iraq, the nation was fully added to the US sphere of influence.</p> <p>So, why did the US start claiming to be opposed to spheres of influence? A big reason was that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US began to aspire to folding <em>the entire world</em> into Washington’s sphere of influence. This naturally means that any other sphere of influence is illegitimate.</p> <p>Writing in <em>Foreign Policy </em>in 2020, Graham Allison <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/HKSEE/HKSEE%20PDFs/Allison_Spheres%20of%20Influence%2C%20Foreign%20Affairs%2C%20March-April%202020.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">noted</a> that when it came to announcing the end of spheres of influence,</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="14"> <p>such pronouncements were right in that something about geopolitics had changed. But they were wrong about what exactly it was. U.S. policymakers had ceased to recognize spheres of influence—the ability of other powers to demand deference from other states in their own regions or exert predominant control there—not because the concept had become obsolete. Rather, the entire world had become a de facto American sphere. Spheres of influence had given way to a sphere of influence.</p> <p>The strong still imposed their will on the weak; the rest of the world was compelled to play largely by American rules, or else face a steep price, from crippling sanctions to outright regime change.</p> </blockquote> <p>So, in the minds of Washington’s advocates of global US hegemony, the old notion of multipolar spheres of influence was replaced by one of a global world order dominated by Washington. Or as Allison put it,</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="6"> <p>The claim that spheres of influence had been consigned to the dustbin of history assumed that other nations would simply take their assigned places in a U.S.-led order.</p> </blockquote> <p>So, when we see American pundits and foreign policy officials suggest that civilized regimes—i.e., not Russia—reject the idea of a sphere of influence, they’re either deeply misinformed about the US’s own sphere of influence or they’re just lying.</p> <h4>Are Spheres of Influence Legitimate?</h4> <p>Sometimes those who claim to oppose spheres of influence will muddy the waters by speaking of how states don’t have a “right” to a sphere of influence. Blinken did precisely this when he declared, “One country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence.” This, of course, is correct as far as it goes. Individual persons have rights. States do not.</p> <p>But, so long as we have states, we should expect those states to seek out ways to preserve and expand their own power. This means states with the economic, military, and political means to do so will expand their spheres of power. Washington has no more a “right” than Moscow to dictate what kind of missiles or bombers are hosted by Cuba. Yet this is just typical great power politics exercised by all states in the usual fashion. This isn’t moral. It’s just one of the many ways that states consider themselves entitled to engage in aggressive acts that would be considered unacceptable for any nonstate group. </p> <p>Certainly, we should seek to lessen states’ perceived “need” for a sphere of influence and to lower the stakes in conflicts over spheres of influence. This can be done by building international interdependence through the expansion of trade. Moreover, we can insist that our own states adopt defensive military postures rather than offensive ones—often accomplished through cutting bloated military budgets and abolishing standing armies that serve little purpose beyond occupying foreign countries. We can insist our own state stop provoking other regional powers through blunders like continued North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion.</p> <p>But perhaps the most important first step from the American perspective is to stop deluding ourselves about the US being some sort of uniquely virtuous nation that would <em>never, ever</em> stoop to imposing its own sphere of influence on its neighbors.</p> <br /> <br /> source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/yes-the-us-has-its-own-sphere-of-influence-and-its-huge">https://www.infowars.com/posts/yes-the-us-has-its-own-sphere-of-influence-and-its-huge</a>

news Yes, the US Has Its Own “Sphere of Influence.” And It’s Huge.

Late last year, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken  declared  that “One country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence. ...

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