Semiconductors: Bull or Bear?

1999 All Over Again?

I started looking at rabbit years because for some reason they have a 12-year pattern of alternating boom-bust, and I've been thinking about how AI is like the 1999 New Economy, and then I looked into the Fed's liquidity pump and...Oops They Did It Again: Fed Repeats 1999

Nikkei Breakout

What culture is more open to automation?

Palladium and Nasdaq, Unhappy Together

My bearishness is intensifying.

Bonus: another sign that platinum's time is coming.

This chart from Slope.

From Stockcharts, the line from the 1980 high hits 2000 and the recent high:

Related posts:

Palladium Signals Top at $3200

The Top is Coming

Palladium Still Calling Tech & Palladium Top

Is The Bull Market Over?

2020 pre-covid panic: Palladium's Pendulum: A Third Top in Time and Price?

China's Semiconductor Industry "Decapitated"

The US government's new export controls are wreaking havoc on China's chip industry.

3. The starting point for this round of sanctions is to go all the way up the food chain and ensure the elimination of all American products and technologies from the entire ecosystem;

4. Any company or individual who violates these sanctions face arrest by the US Department of Justice..

I didn't have the series of events right, but I stand by most of what I wrote 8 years ago in The Logic of Strategy: Yuan Devaluation and the Road to Trade War

With a growing economic case against free trade, a shift in social mood making anti-free trade opinion more popular, plus the loss of political support for the financial sector, free trade will become a centerpiece issue in American politics. The trigger will be one of two factors. One is economic. China's credit bubble isn't going to slowly ride off into the sunset. There will be pain, it is only a matter of where it lands. The path of least resistance is devaluation of the yuan, something I have been looking for here for several years now due to the growth in credit. A target of ￥8 to $1 is a reasonable ballpark figure, with ￥10 to 1 not unbelievable given the rise of the shadow banking sector. The actual number isn't as important as the size of the devaluation: it will likely be large and set off the anti-China arguments that have been growing in the United States. The left and right have their beef with China's economic policies and the right has provided the main rhetorical cover for business. When that goes, there will be a bipartisan push for policies that counteract China's "predatory" currency policies. A Chinese devaluation could be the trigger.

The second factor is geopolitical. Do take the time to read the lengthy review linked above, and/or watch the video. Luttwak's main point is that China cannot simultaneously build up its economy and influence at the same time it builds up its military, and not run into resistance from surrounding states. He cites the Chinese policy on the island disputes as the case in point: instead of increasing China's power in the region, it has pushed Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia into the arms of the United States. An anti-China coalition is building up due to each nation following the logic of China's inevitable rise in power along with the perception of an increasingly aggressive China. China has "tipped its hand" so to speak and these nations are moving preemptively. Due to the nuclear arsenal of the United States and China (to say nothing of Russia's interest in the region), there isn't going to be a major war for survival. This reduces the options for confrontation, with one of the most powerful being economic. If there is a minor military confrontation that is too large to be ignored, the most politically acceptable response will be economic.

Either the economic or the geopolitical event can happen first then, but in time, the two will be seen as inseparable. Once events move in this direction, the logic to continue down the path is compelling.

The difference between Baizuo and MAGA is Baizuo are willing to risk war whereas MAGA is more focused domestically. Baizuo hype China and Russia as the enemies, MAGA knows Baizuo are the enemy. Americans are getting economic nationalism one way or the other. Their choice is whether they want childrens' genitals mutilated and WW3 in the process.

More Crash or Bounce Indicators

The case for a bounce: there's no panic yet. Oversold conditions, extreme positioning makes for rally fuel.

The case for a crash: there's no panic yet. Oversold conditions, extreme positioning makes for crash conditions.

Clear as mud.

ZH: Friday Was The Highest Put Option Volume Session In History

I checked in on bullish percent. Tech is approaching zero.

Tech Weakens

Energy and commodity stocks are bouncing today with energy, gold and copper higher. Gold (and silver, platinum) aside, I'll be looking at materials and commodities shorts today.

China Surpasses U.S. Chip Technology

The fruits of equality are bearing their final crop for America.

China Now Produces Semiconductors Better Than The US

According to a report by industry blog Tech Insights, which Bloomberg has confirmed, SMIC has produced Bitcoin mining semiconductors with 7-nanometer technology since last July. The figure represents the size of the transistors involved, and the smaller the figure, the smaller the transistors, and the more transistors that can be fit on a single chip. The more transistors on a chip, the faster and more efficient it will be.

Previously SMIC had only produced chips to a standard of 14-nanometers, and the US government had hoped to prevent any advance beyond that level. In 2020, the US government had banned export of equipment capable of producing 10nm and below level chips to SMIC. Currently the US government is focusing on preventing Dutch supplier ASML from supplying similar machines to SMIC.

Although ASML is already forbidden from selling its most advanced equipment to SMIC, the Biden administration is trying to tighten the ban to include less advanced technologies as well.

Currently Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung can make 7nm semiconductors, while US-based Intel is slated to release its own 7nm chip next year. Currently the most advanced US and European chips are only 12nm.

It is not clear how China has reached this level of technological sophistication. Some have suggested they may have modified their 14nm tooling.

America's Sputnik moment approaches at the same time it's "Weimar backlash" arrives.

Another Positive for a Rally

Palladium pops. I am not sure why it works, only that palladium and technology are highly correlated over the longer-term. Palladium is much more volatile and sometimes moves by itself, but usually reattaches.

Here's the recent history of QQQ and the physical palladium ETF.

Copper and Tech

Copper looks bearish to me with a moved twrds $3.50 likely. Cpper also looks like it has large relative gains to make versus the QQQs.

Will China Bounce?

It already has. How far some stocks could run: Alibaba is about 35 percent below horizontal resistance and 50 percent below downtrend resistance.

Haidilao edged past resistance, but still hasn't competed a base:

Two Main Market Scenarios

Energy shorts didn't work out yet. I thought there might be a pullback starting, but not yet. The upside target is still $150 here. I still think the better trade is on the short-side in energy, when and if QT kicks in. However, energy isn't the best short until QT starts working because it isn't a short at all yet. The boxes show the price range by month, a cheat-sheet for the CPI.

The reversal in bonds isn't dead yet, but like with oil, it's starting resume its general trend in 2022.

My highest conviction trade remains short stocks. I posted this chart yesterday as one possible path for the market:

Yet if oil and interest rates resume their upward march, stocks will start falling again at any moment. Maybe today is that moment, and yesterday was a day to sell at a price you won't see again for several years.

I had been looking for a low around $270 on QQQ and that was almost hit in May. The new target on the next wave down is $240 to $250, about a 20 percent drop from here. That would translate to around 3300 on the S&P 500 Index, but maybe more like 3400-3500 assuming tech underperforms again.

To sum up, the market should take one of two paths.

1. QT works and it kicks in fast. Crude oil leads a decline in stocks, bonds rally, and stocks could bottom in the summer, perhaps by early to mid July.

2. QT doesn't work. Investors panic and crude explodes higher, bonds collapse, and stocks resume their relentless slide with no capitulation. While there are more rallies, stocks don't bottom until perhaps September or October when $95 billion QT kicks in. Or surprise intermeeting rate hikes, or a 75-basis point or 100-basis point hike at a meeting, or accelerated/escalated QT causes a shock that triggers a capitulation event that registers in the VIX.

3. Intermediate scenarios involve stabilization, bonds hold or rally a little, crude doesn't climb past $120 and so on. However, the thing to keep in mind is that as crude rises, the more hawkish the Fed will have to become and soon. The wildcard that hasn't been played yet is the U.S. dollar. If that starts to crack (I don't think it will here), the Fed is going to enter panic mode because a falling dollar will turbocharge inflation. If the dollar falls, we are sitting at base inflation and a long way from peak readings on the CPI. All hell, political and financial, will break loose. My bet is the dollar goes higher from here, but if I was a Fed official, I'd be paranoid about doing anything that weakens the dollar before inflation is crushed.

Risk is high, the risk of policy error is high, and policy success or failure is negative for stocks over different time frames. Bonds, commodities and currencies could see wildly divergent scenarios based on Fed policy success or failure.

The Great Replacement

IM-1776: IRREPLACEABLE: AN INTERVIEW WITH RENAUD CAMUS

Benjamin Braddock: Which do you think is the greater threat to Western European countries: the masses of immigrants themselves, the political and economic interests that encourage them to come in, or the apathy of a society that gives in to a hyperbolic egalitarianism that swallows them whole?

Renaud Camus: This is a most excellent question, to which I find it impossible to answer, except by saying that the three threats you very adequately circumscribed are not only equals, but each the conditions and the result of the other two. When Christians were in the Roman arenas, it was of little use, for the rare disapproving witnesses, to incriminate the lions and their butchery behavior. Great Replacement, as I have said a hundred times, would not be possible without what I have called “Little Replacement”, Le Petit Remplacement (it is the title of a fat collection of six essays): the substitution of cultural industries to culture, of entertainment to the Corpus, of popular and mass culture to high culture, which amounts more or less to the disparition of culture just as Great Replacement amounts to the disappearance of indigenous peoples, cultures, and civilizations. Hebetude is the condition of the successful and peaceful process of genocide by substitution. A specific feature of the present colonization of Europe is its triangular structure, very similar to the triangular structure of the old Transatlantic slavery: the people who accomplish it are not the forces or the mechanisms which most want and promote it. In global replacement there are the replacists, who want and organise the replacement, the replacers, who accomplish it, and the replacees, who are its victims. The masses of immigrants are obviously the most pressing threat (they are more than a threat, since they are already in place, and more often than not citizens). We can resist some of their specific actions, but to castigate them on principles would be just as absurd as to castigate the lions in the circus. And to castigate the machines, the mechanisms of global replacism and the Machination, it would be essential not to be machines ourselves, or computers. But it is indeed global replacism, or davocracy, which is the archenemy.

PayPal Expands Social Credit System to Anti-War Voices

Related posts

2022: USG Deplatforming at Home and Abroad, Building New Al-Qaeda for Domestic War on Dissent

2019: Digital Tyranny in the West. That has several links to other posts.

2018: Universal Basic Income is the Bribe For You To Accept Totalitarian Control

2018: Framework for Social Credit System Already Exists in USA

Even though there's no system yet in the West, there's already the framework for it in place. In the wake of the Charlottesville protests last summer, many technology companies shut off right-wing websites including PayPal and domain registration companies. Some of those cut off were involved in the protests or had direct ties, others were vaguely connected and some had nothing to do with them at all.

A few days ago, Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, a frequent contributor to MercatorNet, learned that credit card donations to her organisation, the Ruth Institute, had been cut off. Vanco Payment Solutions – “unlock the power of generosity” -- sent her a curt note saying that it was a hate group.

The “hate group” label had been pasted on the Ruth Institute by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), probably because it has opposed same-sex marriage. But the job of the Ruth Institute is healing the effects of family breakdown, not denigrating homosexuals. This appears to be another sign of LGBT corporate tyranny: if you don’t agree with us, get lost.

This is how it got going. They labeled right-wingers Nazis, bigots, haters and so on. Divide and conquer. Now they have the infrastructure up and they're systematically eliminating dissent oj all sides.

2018: The Information War: Political Conflict Evolves Through Technological Change

The changes taking place in politics and that feeling of accelerating madness isn't going away, it's coming to corporate board rooms and government agencies because it's driven not by politics, but technology. I have predicted on this blog that fringe parties such as Sweden Democrats or AfD will eventually win outright majorities (assuming no one goes into coalition with them or co-opts their issues). That would represent a political revolution in those countries. That change will still pale in comparison to the change in how politics, business, government, media and education are conducted by everyone.

The moment of "open" warfare, when everything blows up and might even go kinetic (if the ruling class is that evil), is when the populist right and left finally find enough issues to unite on. Then the old power structure will crumble. We are gettingcloser to this momentu all the time. GOPe like Liz Cheney appear full-on "Blue" and some Democrats like Tulsi are full-on "Red." Of course, if we look at Cheney and Tulsi's positions, they'd be classified as Red and Blue respectively, but on the issues that matter, that animate the voters today, the are on "the other side." Something like Roe being overturned and going back to the states will also shake things up because the left is more of a coalition of interests than the right. As social issues are in descent and military and economic issues ascendant, the populist right and left are in far more agreement about the direction of policy. Once they find some agreeable details, the 4th Turning will enter its final crisis phase.

Update: Matt Taibbi has more details on PayPal's attack on independent journalism. PayPal's IndyMedia Wipeout

Unlike many on the list, Consortium editor Joe Lauria succeeded in reaching a human being at the company in search of details about the frozen or “held” funds referenced in the note. The PayPal rep told him that if the company decided “there was a violation” after a half-year review period, then “it is possible” PayPal would keep the $9,348.14 remaining in Consortium’s account, as “damages.”

“A secretive process in which they could award themselves damages, not by a judge or a jury,” Lauria says. “Totally in secret.”

Consortium, founded by the late investigative reporter Robert Parry, has been critical of NATO and the Pentagon and a consistent source of skeptical reporting about Russiagate, as well as one of just a few outlets to regularly cover the Julian Assange case with any sympathy for the accused. Ironically, one of the site’s primary themes involves exploring disinformation emanating from the intelligence community. The site has had content disrupted by platforms like Facebook before, but now its pockets are being picked in addition.

This episode ups the ante again on the content moderation movement, toward the world hinted at in the response to the Canadian trucker protests, where having the wrong opinions can result in your money being frozen or seized.

Many people remark on this as if it is something normal, and historically it is...but not in America. This is something that no one on the left or the right would have agreed with 20 years ago. What happened in the past 20 years to turn America's ruling class into what appear to be, total foreigners with no understand of American culture? How does a country's ruling class become this out of touch in a single generation?

Forget Free Speech: Remove the Censors

Robert Reich, a Clinton administration economic adviser: Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense

The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.

Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was.

At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok.)

These moves were necessary to protect American democracy.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

The doubt increasingly creeping into my mind is that everyone who wants censorship should lose their free speech. That we should not try to create free speech while these people are around or in power, but that the solution is to remove them from power and the wider society. All major media outlets should be banned, all journalists working at major media outlets should be "deplatformed" for life if they called for censorship.

The march to authoritarian and totalitarian society is underway for one reason and one reason alone: the opponents of tyranny believe they are fighting society or technology or culture or some other force. They think they can oppose it with debate and education. No. There is one way to solve the crisis: remove the authoritarians.

Orban in Hungary did this. He created a free country with open debate. Those who opposes Orban, who claim Hungarian society is not free, are the same people calling for censorship all over the West. The ruling class is terrified that people will learn the great lesson from Hungary: that the ruling class and most of what we view as the fruit of a free society in the West, from gay marriage and transgenderism to climate and systemic racism, to endless wars all over the globe, bailouts for Wall Street, shipping jobs overseas (free trade is a false ideology too), mass immigration...it is all a manufactured belief system by an authoritarian ruling class.

Once their grip on the key societal control points is gone, it all collapses. Someone who genuinely believes in all these ideas would never be worried that people online oppose them. That people debate them. They are panicked over the Internet and free speech and run from debate because they know their beliefs are all false ideas that cannot compete. Or maybe they believe in their ideas, but know they'd be extremely lucky to get 20 percent of the vote if they openly stated their beliefs. They also may believe, in a bit of projection, that those who oppose them merely push their own false ideas. Non-Christian, "post-modernists" may believe there is no truth except power, therefore censoring your enemies is good because it's lies versus lies, and only one set of lies can win. They cannot fathom that there are people out there who still believe in the Truth. And then there is the smallest number among them, those who know exactly whom they serve and who they oppose.

Anti BigTech Bills Are Too Good to Be True

I assumed there was something nefarious about these bills and it is confirmed: Anti-Big Tech Legislation Has a Free-Speech Poison Pill

uperficially, Big Tech is one of the only issues where the right and left of America have some degree of unity: Both dislike Big Tech’s sheer power and would prefer to scale it back.

As a result, there is a good chance that two antitrust bills currently under consideration in Congress will actually pass, instead of going nowhere like the vast majority of legislation. One bill recently passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with enough Republican support to be actually bipartisan (as opposed to the fake bipartisanship where two Republicans join a political purge targeted at their own party).

But Americans should not be misled. These two bills are highly flawed, and unless they are improved before passage, instead of fixing the censorship threat of Big Tech they would make it more robust than ever before.

For nationalists, populists, conservatives, and dissidents of all stripes, the single biggest problem with tech is not its size, but how effectively it can exploit chokepoints to shut down dissident speech. In theory, both of these bills could strike a major blow against censorship and in favor of free speech and freedom of association. Yet right now, they are not doing that. Instead, both bills contain loopholes that allow tech giants to keep exercising the same monopoly powers they always have, as long as it is in the name of “safety.” ...Neither loophole actually defines what “safety” is, but the word is already well-established in the tech world as a euphemism for “censorship.” YouTube’s calls its content moderation division YouTube Trust and Safety; Twitter’s moderation advisory group is the Twitter Trust and Safety Council; the World Economic Forum’s initiative to increase digital censorship is titled Advancing Global Digital Content Safety; in the U.K., Boris Johnson’s new bill to combat “disinformation and misinformation” online is called the Online Safety Bill. When Apple banned Parler after January 6, it was to stop “threats to people’s safety.” When Amazon followed behind and kicked Parler off Amazon Web Services, it was because the company “poses a very real risk to public safety.”

If these vague loopholes remain in place, then instead of using Big Tech antitrust to empower dissidents, these bills will give them explicit approval from Congress to continue censorship in the guise of safety.

BigTech Delenda Est: Facebook OKs 'Hate Speech' Against Russians

Big social media companies should be shut down. These firms become a big attractor for censors and tyrants. Decentralize social media and this cannot happen. Who watches the watchmen? The solution isn't relying on government or regulators, but on creating an ecosystem of small companies that provide niche markets. Will it stop tyrants? No, they have already gone after Gab. Parler was kicked off Amazon's servers. Alternatives must be built with the assumption that every possible attack vector will be used. This leads to high inflation and high costs, but there is no alterative. Irony of ironies: the amount of energy and resources consumed by creation of parallel economies from Russia to the dissident web in the West, will guarantee much higher CO2 emissions. Reducing economic growth and tightening control over the economy via government has always been the goal of the ruling class. The current crew would rather reign over Hell-on-Earth than serve in Heaven.

Reuters: Facebook temporarily allows posts on Ukraine war calling for violence against invading Russians or Putin's deathOn the bright side, I'm chuckling at the thought of trolls opening Facebook accounts and seeing if there is a red line when it comes to death threats against Russians. Should be an interesting experiment!

Discord and Twitch are Dead Platforms

Discord's new policies ban dangerous health misinformation

Discord hasn't been as active in fighting pandemic misinformation as social networks, but it appears ready to change its tune. According to Protocol, Discord is updating its community policies to ban any misinformation that poses a "significant risk" of physical or social harm, including claims that threaten "public health." A chat server could face action if it spreads falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines, to put it another way. The community rules also bar spam, manipulative bots, fake accounts, bad-faith account reporting and "malicious" impersonation of others. The guidelines also forbid hate linked to age, caste, gender identity and serious illnesses. Discord will also consider "off-platform" activity when making decisions on bans and other policy decisions. Someone who belongs to a hate group or commits real-world crimes could face repercussions online.

Twitch Says It Will Bar Chronic Spreaders of Misinformation

Twitch, the livestreaming site beloved by video gamers that has become a key internet communications service, said on Thursday that it had created new rules aimed at clamping down on egregious purveyors of misinformation.

The company, acknowledging the real-world harms that could come with its rapidly expanding influence, said it would prohibit “harmful misinformation superspreaders who persistently share misinformation on or off of Twitch.”

Twitch will target only channels that meet a handful of criteria. To fall afoul of the new policy, users must be persistently sharing harmful misinformation that has been widely debunked, the company said, adding that it had “selected these criteria because taken together they create the highest risk of harm, including inciting real-world harm.”

Remember that saying things such as "men can't have babies" is dangerous and debunked misinformation.

Exit question: why do China and the West have the same Internet censorship regimes?

USG Deplatforming at Home and Abroad, Building New Al-Qaeda for Domestic War on Dissent

Russia is weeks away from having its aviation industry grounded because it cannot obtain parts for planes or pay landing fees. Traders refuse to buy Russian oil because they fear falling afoul of a fluid sanctions regime. What is technically legal today may be illegal tomorrow. Who wants to be caught owning an oil tanker filled with Russian oil that is banned from sale?

Private companies are getting in on the act along with sports leagues. Formula One permanently cancels Russian Grand Prix

On Wednesday, the FIA ruled that the contract for the 2022 race had been terminated for reason of force majeure as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The FIA also banned the display of Russian and Belarusian flags and symbols, along with the playing of their national anthems, at any event under its jurisdiction and suspended its sanctioning and funding of events in both countries.

Apple halts sales in Russia, bans propaganda apps over Ukraine war. Google and Apple also banned their payment systems, creating havoc.

Violence against ethnic Russians and anything remotely Russian is also now greenlit by the Baizuo regime.

It is actually horrifying how conservatives and liberals were so quickly and effectively programmed by Marvel movie themes into supporting escalation with Russia and now even attacks on other Americans who happen to be Russian

Remember: you weren't even allowed to say "WuFlu" because it was basically violence against Asians

But let's make it policy and culturally acceptable to discriminate against Russians in America to OWN Putin

"The vandals broke windows and spray painted 'anti-Russian' writings on the building, police said. It was unclear how many people may have been involved."

That's fine because Russians aren't POC *and* they're all related to Putin, basically not human

The analogy of the red pill and blue pill is apt. You can either see the regime taking shape in the United States or you cannot. Many people who recognize how evil it was to unleash the Department of Justice and FBI agents on parents upset with their local school boards allowing rapes in schools, teaching racial hatred and implementing abusive masking policies suddenly dumped all this knowledge down the drain when the target shifted to Russia. The same institutions used to crush American dissent was weaponized to maximum effect against Russia.

What is being done to Russia today will be done to Americans tomorrow, indeed it has already been done to a small segment of dissidents by payment processors, by Google, Apple, Paypal, Mastercard, Airbnb and so on.

Russia can resist deplatforming because it is a nation. It can build its own systems and operate independently. Nuclear weapons should, but I sense won't, prevent USG from eventually attempting a genocidal war on Russia. It has allies though. As long as China doesn't abandon Russia, it should survive and maybe even thrive.

American dissidents though? They have no nuclear weapons. They have no allies. Neither Russia nor China will help them. Indeed, Russia and China would rather let the Baizuo completely destroy the United States as a competitor than to risk "making America great again." A parallel economy is therefore a necessity. Americans need everything from basic utilities, banking and financial services, to currency and security. They must build these goods and services because without it, USG will deplatform them.

USG already launched violent pogroms in the summer of 2020. It is unleashing another on ethnic Russians today. They haven't launched violent pogroms on the core middle of the country yet because they lack the propaganda, but they are building it now. USG helped overthrow the elected government of Ukraine in 2014 (for being insufficiently pro-EU, he was a corrupt politicians playing the Russians off the EU and vice versa as he asked for more money...) with the help of literal Nazis. Now they are using their ties with Ukrainian Nazis to create an international network of "white supremacists" which they will then tie to American dissidents, allowing the full force of USG including extra judicial killings.

Last American Vagabond: Ukraine And The New Al Qaeda

Yet, this insurgency is poised to have consequences that reach far beyond Ukraine. It increasingly appears that the CIA sees the insurgency it is creating as more than an opportunity to take its hybrid war against Russia ever closer to its borders. As this report will show, it appears the CIA is determined to manifest a prophecy propagated by its own ranks over the past two years. This prediction from former and current intelligence officials dates from at least early 2020 and holds that a “transnational white supremacist network” with alleged ties to the Ukraine conflict will be the next global catastrophe to befall the world as the threat of Covid-19 recedes.

...Soon after Russia began military operations in Ukraine, Foreign Affairs – the media arm of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – published an article entitled “The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency.” The piece was authored by Douglas London, a self-described “retired Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who served in Central Asia and managed agency counterinsurgency operations.” He asserted in the article that “Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that will spread across multiple borders” with the potential to create “widening unrest that could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit.”

Other notable statements made by London include his assertion that “the United States will invariably be a major and essential source of backing for a Ukrainian insurgency.” He also states that “As the United States learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.” London explicitly refers to models for this apparently imminent Ukrainian insurgency as the CIA-backed insurgencies in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the “moderate rebels” in Syria from 2011 to the present.

Indeed, when January 6th took place, no real effort was made by Capitol Police or other law enforcement officials present to stop the so-called “riot”, with plenty of footage from the event instead showing law enforcement waving the supposed “insurrectionists” into the Capitol building. This, however, did not stop top politicians and national security officials from labelling January 6th as the “another 9/11” that Neumann had apparently predicted. Notably, the DHS’ first-ever Homeland Threat Assessment, Neumann’s warning, and the subsequent official narrative regarding the events of January 6th were all heavily focused on the threat of “white supremacist terror attacks” on the US homeland.

Returning to the May 2020 Politico article – Graff notes that many supposed pandemic “experts”, which – per Graff – includes Bill Gates and US intelligence officials James Clapper and Dan Coats, had “projected the spread of a novel virus and the economic impacts it would bring as well as “details about the specific challenges” the US would face during the initial phase of the Covid-19 crisis. Graff then asks “What other catastrophes are coming that we aren’t planning for?” According to the “thought leaders” he consulted for this piece, which included several current and former intelligence officials, the most immediate “near-term threat” likely to disrupt life in the US and beyond following Covid was “the Globalization of White Supremacy.”

The black lieutenant governor of Virginia was called a white supremacist because she's allied with the white middle class that is the target of the Baizuo regime. Anyone who is not on their team will be labeled a white supremacist. Any and all links between an individual and a "white supremacist" will fall under terrorism laws, allowing the government to seize your bank account. It's all there being built in real time, out in the open and most of the people who are being targeted by this regime are cheering on their own destruction because they cannot but help to fall for military propaganda.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong. I wish the Ukrainians could win and save their country, but they will not. They will lose. This war was instigated by USG and it is going as planned. The destruction of Ukraine was caused by the United States and its European allies. The antagonization of Russia has been going on for decades and this is the result that everyone with a functioning brain predicted. The isolation of Russia was the goal, paid with the blood of Ukraine. (I have bad news for Taiwan...)

One needn't be pro-Russia to see what is being done, how the corporations and general public are quickly whipped in a frenzy of bloodlust, seeking the total destruction of "the enemy" based on propaganda and lies. It has happened several times in the past few years with different targets. Systemic racism, the police, white nationalism, now Russia. Each with varying degrees of truth behind it or none at all.

What is certain is the regime will collapse under its own weight. Even if it manages to hang on, it will be forced into sacrificing the currency among other assets that will wreck the lives of ordinary Americans. This will stir up dissent. The regime will lash out as it falls, searching for whatever scapegoat is on hand. The squeaky wheel will get raided by SWAT teams at 2am. They will find their bank accounts seized. Lawyers will be afraid to represent them. They will be isolated and alone, then destroyed as an example to everyone else.

The man who deplatforms himself cannot be deplatformed. Even without the threat of persecution, alternatives are a good idea because some U.S. institutions will fail anyway. The closure of the financial markets and banking system could be a conscious choice or caused by a cyberattack. It makes a great deal of sense to have alternative institutions that can survive.

Gab Launches Parallel Economy Fund

Technology is worthless on its own. The same people who claim blockchain or Bitcoin can liberate people are the same ones who though the Internet would liberate political speech around the world. Instead, authoritarian regimes have achieve more complete control over their nations, while Western authoritarians are now empowered by this technology. Blockchain will create the perfect totalitarian prison where all economic activity takes place under the government's watchful eye or doesn't take place at all, and anyone who doesn't play by those rules can start shopping for their prison gear.

There is a term that has fallen out of usage: political-economy. Law, economics and politics are all intertwined. To leave off one leg of this stool, or to get one leg wrong, will ruin whatever project is being attempted. Assuming one isn't starting from a wrecked base, where simply improving the law can generate extremely positive benefits. Think China 1978, Peru in the early 1990s and so on.

In the West, the advance of authoritarian leftism has gone unchecked for decades. Most of the nominally "conservative" politicians are leftists. Their highest value is anti-racism, aka anti-nationalism and in the American context, anti-white. Conservative politicians spend their energy fomenting for war against Russia and China, undermine border control efforts, deep-six healthcare reform and defend BigTech as it takes apart the lives of free-thinking Americans (and Canadians , Australians, Germans, English and so on...) on the left and right.

Nothing can be gained from debate because debate is illegal. Debate is not wanted. There is no debate with authoritarian power. Ask the truckers of Canada if protest is allowed. People who desire freedom must return to a fundamental understanding of power: the political-economy. Whether diversity caused it or not, America has split into different nations. The United States of America is a false construct. Where "we" would debate before, there is only expression of power now. People who hate America, Americans and Christians their history, culture, people, politics and God, do not debate things like history or economics. They tear down statues, they ban symbols, they have their enemies arrested, fined and/or imprisoned. The shut down their businesses. They imprison them in their homes, inject them with experimental drugs, treat their children worse than criminals.

There is no way to stop this without accumulating power. If it were possible to debate again in the future, that first requires establishing a power base. If debate can not happen anymore, then Americans must prepare for persecution and eventually war. In the context of 4G, war has already started, but most of the public doesn't realize it yet. One way or another, Americans are going to a need a new political-economy. Gab: The Parallel Economy Fund

Gab will be investing in early stage startup businesses who are working to solve a set of problems in the Parallel Economy. This could be in technology, media, healthcare, finance, or a few other areas of interest to us that we will elaborate more on in the future.

Some of our areas of interest right now include:

1. Making Bitcoin more user friendly and privacy focused for everyday use

2. Censorship resistant shipping & logistics

3. 3D Printed 2nd Amendment protection

4. Decentralized Christian healthcare options

5. Software for homeschooling parents

6. Distributed pasture grazed meat distribution and butchering

7. Christian Entertainment/Content

8. Mesh networks, radio technology, and alternative forms of off grid communication.

9. Technology for Churches and planting Churches

10. Christian AirBnb

Gab will invest 25-50k in startup capital, Gab Ads credit, Gab Cloud services for free speech hosting services, and access to the Gab community of entrepreneurs for mentorship and help with scaling and distribution.

Eventually, the parallel economy will develop a functional parallel currency, and that's when things will get very interesting.

Even if you aren't interested in politics, politics will be interested in you. It will be impossible to not choose a side in the coming years. As happened with vaccines and mandates, people who went along will suddenly find they don't want to go along anymore. The circle of acceptable thinking and contrary opinions will keep shrinking. As the failures of USG pile up, the currency will eventually crack. There's already talk of price controls because of inflation. The Baizuo blame high prices on greed, instead of incompetent government and central banking policies. Nothing but destruction is coming for people who passively accept the current political-economy. The only choice is to accept it or not. If not, then it is long past time to get busy building.