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Russo-Ukrainian War: Schrodinger’s Offensive – A ramble about force design, Moldova, and a fortress on the steppe – by Big Serge – https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-schrodingers – “Where is the big Russian offensive? This is, at the moment, the million dollar question that inevitably intrudes on any discussion of the war’s current course. It is probably not surprising (to those of us that are familiar with human nature, at least) that this question becomes a Rorschach test in which everybody sees their own prior assumptions about the Russian military… The answers to this question do indeed vary widely. On one extreme, there are those who believe that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are prepared to launch an enormous “big arrow” offensive at any moment. We see this both from commentators like retired US Colonel Douglas MacGregor and from some Ukrainian sources who are likely trying to foment a sense of urgency to extract more aid from the west. On the other extreme, we have those who claim that the Russian military is so depleted that there will be no offensive at any point whatsoever. There are also some in the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda western intelligentsia, like the Nuland Institute for the Study of War or Michael Koffman, who argue that the offensive has already begun but is so lame and weak that nobody noticed… Okay. So either a giant offensive will happen any minute now (it might have just started while I was typing that), or it will never happen at all, or it already happened, or perhaps it’s in a state of quantum superposition in which it has both succeeded and failed, at least until we open the box. – Comment: Very well written article by the obviously extremely knowledgeable Big Serge. I found it fascinating.
“The Crisis of American National Power has Begun”. Col. Douglas Macgregor – The Gathering Storm. America’s Self-inflicted Trouble in Ukraine Aggravates Our Dangerous Trouble at Home – by Col. Douglas Macgregor – https://www.globalresearch.ca/gathering-storm-america-self-inflicted-trouble-ukraine-aggravates-our-dangerous-trouble-home/5813864 – “The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy… American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning… Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago… Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000… Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.”
Bombshell Vax Analysis Finds $147 Billion In Economic Damage, Tens Of Millions Injured Or Disabled – by Tyler Durden – https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bombshell-vax-analysis-finds-147-billion-economic-damage-tens-millions-injured-or-disabled – “A new report estimates that 26.6 million people were injured, 1.36 million disabled, and 300,000 excess deaths can be attributed to COVID-19 vaccine damages in 2022 alone, which cost the economy nearly $150 billion… Research firm Phinance Technologies, founded and operated by former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd, Yuri Nunes (PhD Physics, MSc Mathematics) and Carlos Alegria (PhD Physics, Finance), split the impact of the vaccines into four broad categories to estimate the human costs associated with the Covid-19 vaccine; no effect or asymptomatic, those who sustained injuries (mild-to-moderate outcome), those who became disabled (severe outcome), and death (extreme outcome). Data on vaccine disabilities and injuries comes directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), while the excess death figures are derived from official figures on deaths in the US via two different methods (methodology here)… It’s important to note that people in one category (injured, for example) can move into latter categories of severity – which this analysis does not take into consideration… ‘We need to remember that not only are these groupings an attempt to characterize different levels of damage from the inoculations, they are not static and could interact with each other,’ reads the report. ‘For instance, there might be individuals who had no visible effects after vaccination but nonetheless could still be impacted.’.. ‘Individuals with mild injuries from the inoculations could, over time, develop severe injuries to the extent of being disabled, or an extreme outcome such as death’.”
Video – Remarkable interview of former British Intel and Diplomat Alastair Crooke by Judge Andrew Napolitano of Judging Freedom – U.S. & NATO fallen into their Own Trap? – (25 min)
EU Pushing the ‘Criminalisation’ of Physical Cash with New Anti-Money Laundering Law – by Peter Caddle – https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/30/eu-pushing-the-criminalisation-of-physical-cash-with-new-anti-money-laundering-law/ – ‘The European Union is in danger of “criminalising” the use of physical cash with its new anti-money laundering laws, an MEP has warned… Dr Gunnar Beck, a representative for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has warned that the EU appears to be pushing for the “criminalisation” of the use of physical cash with its new anti-money laundering (AML) laws… Politicians in Brussels have long been pondering an upper legal limit on the value of cash transactions within the bloc, with lawmakers detailing plans to ban Europeans from spending over €10,000 in physical tender as part of a single transaction… The European Parliament however has now voted for such a proposed limit to be dropped down to as little as €7,000 as part of efforts to clamp down on money laundering and tax dodging within the bloc, with officials also voting to see cryptocurrency transactions paying for goods and services that are valued over €1,000 to be banned.”
ChatGPT can now access the internet and run the code it writes – by Loz Blain – https://newatlas.com/technology/chatgpt-plugin-internet-access/ – “OpenAI has allowed its stunning ChatGPT AI to reach out into the world with staggering new powers. It can now access the internet, run its own code to solve problems, accept and work on uploaded files, and write its own interfaces to third-party apps… Language model AIs teach themselves the arts of communication and problem solving based on a limited set of training data. In the case of GPT-4, that data is quite out of date, with the cutoff being late 2021. That’s where all of ChatGPT’s “knowledge” has come from up to this point, and its only output – at least in the service the public can use – has been text. Now, with today’s launch of a plugin ecosystem, GPT levels up again with some impressive new abilities… First of all, it’s now got access to the internet, meaning it can go surf the Web looking for answers if it determines you need up-to-date information that’s not in its knowledge base. To do this it formulates relevant search strings, sends them to search engines and databases such as Bing, Google, GitHub and many others, looks at the results, then goes and reads links it deems worthy until it decides it’s got a good answer for you. You can watch exactly what it’s up to while it does this, and when your answer comes back, it’s neatly annotated with links you can click on to go and examine the relevant sources yourself.”
The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami – “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction” – by Ellen Brown – https://www.globalresearch.ca/looming-quadrillion-dollar-derivatives-tsunami/5811784 – “On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves… Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called “systemically important” is not their asset size but the fact that their failure could bring down the whole financial system. That designation comes chiefly from their exposure to derivatives, the global casino that is so highly interconnected that it is a “house of cards.” Pull out one card and the whole house collapses. SVB held $27.7 billion in derivatives, no small sum, but it is only 0.05% of the $55,387 billion ($55.387 trillion) held by JPMorgan, the largest U.S. derivatives bank… This column, meanwhile, focuses on derivatives and is a followup to my Feb. 23 column on the “bail in” provisions of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which eliminated taxpayer bailouts by requiring insolvent SIFIs to recapitalize themselves with the funds of their creditors. “Creditors” are defined to include depositors, but deposits under $250,000 are protected by FDIC insurance. However, the FDIC fund is sufficient to cover only about 2% of the $9.6 trillion in U.S. insured deposits. A nationwide crisis triggering bank runs across the country, as happened in the early 1930s, would wipe out the fund. Today, some financial pundits are predicting a crisis of that magnitude in the quadrillion dollar-plus derivatives market, due to rapidly rising interest rates. This column looks at how likely that is and what can be done either to prevent it or dodge out of the way.