corporate control or government. that is the question; 

 

Western financial experts have a self-interest to never explain this issue. Instead, they frame the issue as BRICS seeking an alternate currency in the energy markets. However, the currency or petrodollar is not the issue. At least it’s not the core issue.

What Vladimir Putin, and by extension BRICS, do not want is corporatism -corporate financial control over govt systems- determining prices.

To give you an example of Vladimir Putin’s argument, consider orange juice.

Why should orange juice in California or Florida cost $7/gal, when the oranges are in CA or FL?

Shouldn’t the orange juice in FL or CA be cheaper than in, say, Minnesota? Logic would say, yes.

However, that would mean the corporations who have purchased the OJ production couldn’t maximize predatory profiting, through nonmarket forces, ie. “Commodity trading.”

The same organic supply/demand rule applies to strawberries, or [fill in the blank].

What is setting the price, what the west calls the “market price,” is actually the commodity trading issue. That means Minnesota, Florida and California consumers all pay the same price.  Within the energy sector Putin views this as unfair and unworkable.

To his credit, under normal supply/demand Putin would be selling oil/gas to Europe at much lower prices than “market prices” because the pipelines are in place, the proximity is near and the delivery is cheap........more..........

 bet you can't do this;

see.......... 

 larry johnson shows us some things we may not have considered;

 

 A chokepoint is not a wall. It is a tollbooth — expensive, annoying, survivable — and the traffic always finds another way around. That is the single lesson I would press on anyone in Washington who believes the dollar can be made into a cage for Iran, and it is a lesson the last great naval hegemon paid for in starved cities and a needless war. Britain held the sea lanes in 1812; the United States holds the dollar-clearing system in 2026. Both powers convinced themselves that command of the arteries of commerce could bend a rival without fighting him. Both discovered that a blockade, whether of ships or of payments, leaks — because networks reroute, and a determined adversary treats the chokepoint as a toll to be paid rather than a barrier that stops him.

I want to walk through why I think the parallel is exact rather than poetic, because when you lay the two systems side by side they line up almost part for part, and so — so far — do their results.

Networks reroute: the pattern that governs both cases
Start with the behavior that decides everything, because it is the same in both centuries. Coercion by commerce generates its own antibodies..........more............

 the digital id crime is approaching and we'll have few options that are an easy way around that; 

 

Something shifts beneath the surface of ordinary life. Not with announcements or spectacle, but through the quiet consolidation of systems that now track, verify, and gatekeep nearly every exchange between citizens and the institutions they rely upon. By 2028, according to timelines established by international bodies and echoed in domestic policy papers, Americans will face a choice that is not really a choice at all: accept a federally standardized Digital ID or find yourself locked out of the economy you helped build.

This deadline is not speculative. The World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Economic Forum have all converged on 2028 as the target for universal digital identity implementation. Within the United States, federal agencies have accelerated pilot programs linking biometric data to financial access, travel privileges, and social services. What appears as technological modernization is, upon closer inspection, the construction of a comprehensive control system—one where participation in society requires continuous verification, and where verification can be revoked without appeal............more............

 eleven minutes with colonel macgregor who says, we're screwed;

watch........... 

 is this the way you want 'our ' government to act in the world, supporting things like this;

 

 On a darkened rooftop in Tel Aviv, Israeli intelligence officers outline the details of their work. These men tell us how they helped develop an AI mapping tool that trawled for phone signals and recommended apartment buildings in Gaza to bomb. Indirectly, they admit, they are responsible for thousands of deaths, but they never spoke up because that wasn’t their place. “My role is technical,” says one. “I’m just a small cog,” says another.

NAZA – directed by the Israeli film-makers Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham and produced by the Guardian – is a chilling documentary about a mass slaughter that was authorised at the highest levels of government. But it is also, primarily, about the process, the system, the little links in the killing chain. Szor and Abraham build their film around the accounts of 24 anonymised military and intelligence insiders. NAZA, we learn, is an acronym used by the intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces prefer to target Hamas terrorists in their homes at night – and if they live with their family, or in heavily populated neighbourhoods, too bad. At one point, a source claims, approval was given to kill 500 NAZA for one Hamas member............more...........

 pcr explores the various reasons we 'merikans' have no political home as both 'sides' are corrupt liars; 

 

Politically Americans Have No Where To Go

Paul Craig Roberts

I have lost confidence in Trump, who represents Israel and not Americans.  But when you look at the Democrat alternative it is genuinely scary.  

The Democrats used a totally corrupt Department of “Justice” and FBI and also the whore American media, a despicable collection of scum, to orchestrate Russiagate, documents-gate, a variety of other false charges and false civil suits plus two impeachments.  Then to get rid of Trump the Democrats stole his reelection and prosecuted those who provided complete and total proof that the election was stolen. The whore American media covered it all up for the Democrats.  The NY Times, CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes have zero credibility.  Yet the scum still speak as if truth issues from their corrupt mouths.

The electorate returned Trump to office, but Trump found that the civil service is highly partisan and 90% or more Democrat and ready to frustrate his policies at all cost.  He also found that the Democrat judges the idiot Republicans had stupidly confirmed in lifetime appointments stifled his efforts by making rulings far outside their authority.  

Trump also experienced the cost of the US government’s long subservience to Israel, and found himself led by Netanyahu into a losing war with Iran, a war for Israel, not for the United States.

Now he is frustrated beyond belief.  When have you last seen anyone wearing a MAGA hat in Walmart, a diner, a bar, a supermarket?........more..........