Individual Economists

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

Zero Hedge -

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

The West has been calling Russia's ever-tightening internet regulations on its citizenry a "digital Iron Curtain". Already over a period of months and years of the Ukraine war, various popular US-based social media apps have been throttled and even banned, but this week things have escalated with YouTube and WhatsApp being blocked in Russia:

Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor has removed"youtube.com" from its DNS (Domain Name System) servers. If a user tries to access the site directly without a VPN (Virtual Private Network), their router can no longer assign the address to its IP address.

This means that You Tube is no longer accessible in Russia. The WhatsApp domain has also disappeared from Roskomnadzor's servers. The Russian government has also launched a campaign against the messenger app Telegram, leading analysts to say Roskomnadzor is cracking down on platforms beyond its control.

But perhaps even more impactful - in terms of Russians quickly getting news, information, and public statements (even from their own government channels) - is the new move to throttle and block Telegram.

An interesting theory, especially in the wake of the shocking Wagner mutiny of 2023...

Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor has tightened the screws on Telegram, accusing the messaging giant of failing to curb fraud and safeguard user data, which ironically is similar to what the French government accused the company of when it famously detained billionaire Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov.

The platform has an estimated over 93 million Russian users, which is more than 60% of the total population, but the Kremlin hopes to replicate with its state-backed messenger, Max. The all-in-one 'super-app' has been described in the following:

Max, a state-backed messenger developed by VK, is being positioned as a patriotic alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram — platforms that in recent weeks have suffered complete or partial disruptions to voice and video calls across the country.

Max is further being dubbed a "state app":

Beyond the glitzy marketing, Max is built to serve a political purpose. Officials want it integrated with the state services portal Gosuslugi via the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA). That would allow citizens to log into government platforms, pay utility bills or sign documents directly through the app, in effect making Max a digital gateway to basic civil services.

But at a government commission meeting in early August, the Federal Security Service (FSB) initially blocked Max's immediate connection to ESIA, citing the risk of personal data leaks. According to IT industry sources cited by Russian media, the FSB submitted a multi-page list of requirements ranging from certified encryption systems to source code audits. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the project, voiced similar concerns.

BBC has pointed out: "Moscow has made extensive efforts to push Russians to its state-developed Max app, which critics say lacks end-to-end encryption."

As for Telegram, it's loss will be huge for Russians, given that for starters every major Russian media outlet operates a Telegram channel, some even publishing there exclusively.

Major state and legacy outlets including RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC, Interfax, and Kommersant maintain large, highly active channels. In border regions like Belgorod, battered by power outages and municipal disruptions from Ukrainian strikes, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov uses Telegram to deliver updates directly to residents.

The same goes for many oblasts across Russia's south which have remained a frontline of sorts when it comes to cross-border attacks out of Ukraine.

Moskva News Agency

The other problem in getting rid of Telegram is that Russia's Defense Ministry pushes near-daily battlefield briefings, combat footage, and soldier interviews to its several hundreds of thousands of followers. So clearly any kind of major 'transition' - as is now apparently being forced on the population, won't come easy.

The Kremlin has long warned against Western intelligence infiltration and data exploitation especially via US-based platforms. It has also long battled what it deems 'propaganda' via content on these apps. But to some degree they are also mediums where Russian and Ukrainian officials can directly address the other side, serving the cause of public diplomacy, or at least clarifying each's position.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 22:10

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Zero Hedge -

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become.

One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock

The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.

The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs.

But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be. That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do.

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad for Ring and its “Search Party” feature.

Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with countless other Ring cameras to form a neighborhood-wide (or city-wide, or state-wide) surveillance dragnet. That Amazon emphasized that this feature is available (for now) only to those who “opt-in” did not assuage concerns.

Numerous media outlets sounded the alarm. The online privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condemned Ring’s program as previewing “a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.”

Many private citizens who previously used Ring also reacted negatively. “Viral videos online show people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns,” reported USA Today. The backlash became so severe that, just days later, Amazon — seeking to assuage public anger — announced the termination of a partnership between Ring and Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company (while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm).

The Amazon ad seems to have triggered a long-overdue spotlight on how the combination of ubiquitous cameras, AI, and rapidly advancing facial recognition software will render the term “privacy” little more than a quaint concept from the past. As EFF put it, Ring’s program “could already run afoul of biometric privacy laws in some states, which require explicit, informed consent from individuals before a company can just run face recognition on someone.”

Those concerns escalated just a few days later in the context of the Tucson disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, mother of long-time TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie. At the home where she lives, Nancy Guthrie used Google’s Nest camera for security, a product similar to Amazon’s Ring.

Guthrie, however, did not pay Google for a subscription for those cameras, instead solely using the cameras for real-time monitoring. As CBS News explained, “with a free Google Nest plan, the video should have been deleted within 3 to 6 hours — long after Guthrie was reported missing.” Even professional privacy advocates have understood that customers who use Nest without a subscription will not have their cameras connected to Google’s data servers, meaning that no recordings will be stored or available for any period beyond a few hours.

For that reason, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announced early on “that there was no video available in part because Guthrie didn’t have an active subscription to the company.” Many people, for obvious reasons, prefer to avoid permanently storing comprehensive daily video reports with Google of when they leave and return to their own home, or who visits them at their home, when, and for how long.

Despite all this, FBI investigators on the case were somehow magically able to “recover” this video from Guthrie’s camera many days later. FBI Director Kash Patel was essentially forced to admit this when he released still images of what appears to be the masked perpetrator who broke into Guthrie’s home. (The Google user agreement, which few users read, does protect the company by stating that images may be stored even in the absence of a subscription.)

Image obtained through Nancy Guthrie’s unsubscribed Google Nest camera and released by the FBI.

While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”

It is rather remarkable that Americans are being led, more or less willingly, into a state-corporate, Panopticon-like domestic surveillance state with relatively little resistance, though the widespread reaction to Amazon’s Ring ad is encouraging. Much of that muted reaction may be due to a lack of realization about the severity of the evolving privacy threat. Beyond that, privacy and other core rights can seem abstract and less of a priority than more material concerns, at least until they are gone.

It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:45

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Zero Hedge -

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become.

One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock

The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.

The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs.

But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be. That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do.

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad for Ring and its “Search Party” feature.

Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with countless other Ring cameras to form a neighborhood-wide (or city-wide, or state-wide) surveillance dragnet. That Amazon emphasized that this feature is available (for now) only to those who “opt-in” did not assuage concerns.

Numerous media outlets sounded the alarm. The online privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condemned Ring’s program as previewing “a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.”

Many private citizens who previously used Ring also reacted negatively. “Viral videos online show people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns,” reported USA Today. The backlash became so severe that, just days later, Amazon — seeking to assuage public anger — announced the termination of a partnership between Ring and Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company (while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm).

The Amazon ad seems to have triggered a long-overdue spotlight on how the combination of ubiquitous cameras, AI, and rapidly advancing facial recognition software will render the term “privacy” little more than a quaint concept from the past. As EFF put it, Ring’s program “could already run afoul of biometric privacy laws in some states, which require explicit, informed consent from individuals before a company can just run face recognition on someone.”

Those concerns escalated just a few days later in the context of the Tucson disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, mother of long-time TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie. At the home where she lives, Nancy Guthrie used Google’s Nest camera for security, a product similar to Amazon’s Ring.

Guthrie, however, did not pay Google for a subscription for those cameras, instead solely using the cameras for real-time monitoring. As CBS News explained, “with a free Google Nest plan, the video should have been deleted within 3 to 6 hours — long after Guthrie was reported missing.” Even professional privacy advocates have understood that customers who use Nest without a subscription will not have their cameras connected to Google’s data servers, meaning that no recordings will be stored or available for any period beyond a few hours.

For that reason, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announced early on “that there was no video available in part because Guthrie didn’t have an active subscription to the company.” Many people, for obvious reasons, prefer to avoid permanently storing comprehensive daily video reports with Google of when they leave and return to their own home, or who visits them at their home, when, and for how long.

Despite all this, FBI investigators on the case were somehow magically able to “recover” this video from Guthrie’s camera many days later. FBI Director Kash Patel was essentially forced to admit this when he released still images of what appears to be the masked perpetrator who broke into Guthrie’s home. (The Google user agreement, which few users read, does protect the company by stating that images may be stored even in the absence of a subscription.)

Image obtained through Nancy Guthrie’s unsubscribed Google Nest camera and released by the FBI.

While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”

It is rather remarkable that Americans are being led, more or less willingly, into a state-corporate, Panopticon-like domestic surveillance state with relatively little resistance, though the widespread reaction to Amazon’s Ring ad is encouraging. Much of that muted reaction may be due to a lack of realization about the severity of the evolving privacy threat. Beyond that, privacy and other core rights can seem abstract and less of a priority than more material concerns, at least until they are gone.

It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:45

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

US-Controlled ATACMS Missiles Deployed In South China Sea, 10km Off China's Mainland

Zero Hedge -

US-Controlled ATACMS Missiles Deployed In South China Sea, 10km Off China's Mainland

Authored by Drago Bosni

Mere days after the US-backed government in Taipei launched the so-called Joint Firepower Coordination Center (JFCC), defined as “an enhanced firepower coordination effort in close cooperation with the United States”, multirole sources have confirmed that the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan is deploying the overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced M142 HIMARS MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) to the islands of Penghu and Dongyin.

The US-made system is also equipped with ATACMS missiles, extending its reach to 300 km. Taipei insists that this will “strengthen the effectiveness of the kill chain”, while its Ministry of Defense (MoD) stressed that the increase in HIMARS orders to 111 units was undertaken specifically to forward-deploy them to the islands closest to China’s mainland.

US-made ATACMS long-range missile. Wiki Commons

Dongyin, the northernmost island of the Matsu archipelago in the East China Sea, (see Map) is located around 10 km from mainland China. Deploying missiles such as the ATACMS there puts virtually the entire Fujian province within range, including key cities like Fuzhou, Ningde and Quanzhou.

However, the situation is even worse, given that the US controls those missiles through the JFCC. Its establishment and the permanent deployment of American personnel at command and control facilities in Taipei to oversee planning and potential use of ATACMS missiles in case of yet another US/NATO-orchestrated escalation are deeply troubling and concerning for Beijing.

However, Taipei is still trying to present it as “harmless assistance in coordination and supervision”. They’re just not saying for what.

Obviously, China is not buying it and for good reason. Namely, the JFCC allows Washington DC to select targets and finalize attack plans.Formally, this is done jointly with local forces, but we all know how the Pentagon uses vassals and satellite states, especially when it comes to striking strategic assets such as critical industrial and scientific infrastructure, both of which are found in abundance across mainland China.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Koo Li-hsiung says these concerns are “incorrect and misleading”, insisting that US troops on the island are “not acting as supervisors or monitors”. Koo claims that “the presence of US staff reflects longstanding, institutionalized cooperation mechanisms focused on strengthening Taiwan’s defensive and combat capabilities rather than any form of foreign oversight”.

However, empirical evidence makes it very difficult to take such claims seriously. Namely, the Pentagon effectively launched hundreds of strikes on Russia in the last four years, using the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict as a way to test and probe the Russian military, as well as the Kremlin’s strategic reactions and posturing. Many of these attacks were launched at purely civilian targets, the most notorious of which was on June 23, 2024. On that day, at least four US-made ATACMS missiles were shot down by Russian air and missile defenses above Sevastopol, Crimea. The banned cluster submunitions (primarily used against infantry) of at least one missile exploded above the crowded beaches at Uchkuyevka and Lyubimovka on the northern outskirts of Sevastopol.

The attack, nearly coinciding with the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Russia, killed four civilians and injured over 150 others. At the time of this act of terrorism, US/NATO ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets were present above the Black Sea, prompting Moscow’s direct response.

The US, aided by its numerous vassals and satellite states, could easily use a similar scenario in a potential confrontation with China, particularly if the warmongers and war criminals in Washington DC manage to escalate yet another conflict, just this time over Taiwan. Beijing is certainly aware that the JFCC can facilitate such escalation and understands the political West’s terrorist nature and tendency to target civilians all across the globe in an attempt to provoke a violent response.

This is then unmistakably framed as Russian, Chinese, Serbian, Iranian or anyone else’s supposed “aggression”, while the populace is galvanized for “defensive” wars that are somehow always tens of thousands of kilometers away from America’s shores. Worse yet, the fact that the Taipei regime is using virtually identical weapons as the Neo-Nazi junta is also very telling, particularly platforms such as HIMARS.

It should be noted that the ATACMS missiles were provided to the Taiwanese military years ago and even tested during 2025 live-fire drills, all coordinated (or should we say commanded) by the Pentagon. This includes the first publicly reported use of the HIMARS, pointing to Taipei’s intent to integrate these systems into its broader military architecture, all under American supervision.

Obviously, the ATACMS is by no means a match to China’s hypersonic weapons, as the US is decades behind in such technologies. In addition, the Chinese military uses some of the most advanced ABM (anti-ballistic missile) defenses on the planet, most notably the HQ-19 and HQ-29. However, Beijing is still concerned that the HIMARS and its munitions (particularly the ATACMS) could be used against Chinese civilians in the neighboring Fujian province. Naturally, this is most definitely not in the interest of Taiwan or its people, as it could trigger China’s direct response, one that would obliterate virtually any target on the island.

However, the US might reckon this is an ideal opportunity to not only undermine Chinese efforts to peacefully resolve the Taiwan crisis, but also to cement hatred and enmity between Beijing and Taipei.

Sadly, this is precisely what happened in NATO-occupied Ukraine, where tens of millions of ethnic Russians were not only brainwashed into becoming “Ukrainians”, but also galvanized into pathological hatred toward other ethnic Russians. Moscow still tried to localize the resulting conflict and prevent it from spreading beyond the Donbass.

However, it was precisely Washington DC’s ability to direct violence virtually everywhere in NATO-occupied Ukraine that eventually forced the Kremlin to respond. Although nearly four years have passed and millions have died thanks to the political West’s obsession with wars, death and destruction (among other things, such as its pedophile-cannibalistic tendencies), the conflict’s end is still not in sight. The US/NATO sees this strategy of “controlled chaos” as an ideal way to destabilize virtually the entire world.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 20:55

India Explores Gas Power Boost To Stabilize Grid During Peak Hours

Zero Hedge -

India Explores Gas Power Boost To Stabilize Grid During Peak Hours

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

India considers boosting the run rates of its gas-fired power plants during evening peak hours to support the grid amid the surge in renewable power generation, India’s Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said on Friday.  

“For the last three years we have been studying whether gas plants can run for eight hours in the evening and remain shut during the rest of the day,” Agarwal said at a meeting with power plant executives, as carried by Reuters. 

India has reduced in recent years its gas-fired power fleet from 25 gigawatts to 20 GW, due to idled plants for years that are now unfit to operate. 

However, the country, where coal remains king but renewables rapidly expand, looks to keep the 20 GW gas-fired capacity to provide flexible baseload capacity to offset the intermittency of solar and wind power. 

India is expected to import about 29 million tons of LNG this year, while its goal to almost double the share of gas in the energy mix to 15% will need import capacity of around 100 million tons, Kumar Singh, chief executive at Petronet Ltd, the biggest Indian LNG importer, said at the India Energy Week conference last month.

India, however, needs liquefied natural gas prices in Asia to nearly halve from current levels in order to significantly raise LNG imports and consumption, the executive added. 

India is in no hurry to sign long-term LNG delivery deals as the country’s price-sensitive buyers stall talks and wait for the coming supply glut to pressure sellers into agreeing to lower prices.

But later this year, the LNG market is expected to tilt into oversupply and in a buyer’s market, in which India - and other price-sensitive buyers in Asia - could have the upper hand in negotiations with long-term LNG sellers.

Meanwhile, NITI Aayog, the policy think tank of the Indian government, said this week that India’s coal demand could more than double by 2050 from current levels under current policies.  

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 20:05

"Low Profile" Doomsday Nuclear Bunker Hits Market, Just 3 Hours From DC

Zero Hedge -

"Low Profile" Doomsday Nuclear Bunker Hits Market, Just 3 Hours From DC

Continuing our coverage of privately owned nuclear bunkers for sale, we generally find Cold War-era underground sites clustered in the Midwest. However, a recently listed bunker in the hills of central Pennsylvania sits roughly a three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., and New York City, offering a rare Mid-Atlantic bug-out option.

Coldwell Banker real estate agents Blain Berrier and Greg Rothman listed the Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker, originally constructed in the late 1960s as part of what they describe as the AT&T Long Lines project. It was engineered for durability, redundancy, and long-term self-sufficiency.

The 4,800-square-foot, below-grade, reinforced-concrete bunker was renovated 15 years ago and used to secure a data and communications site.

"Power infrastructure includes commercial electric service with automatic transfer capability and a 150 kVA diesel generator supported by on-site fuel storage designed for extended runtime," the agents said.

And there is more:

Here's what's special about the bunker on Weikert Road in Millmont, central Pennsylvania: its proximity to major cities across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

The amenities get even better:

4,800+ square foot below-grade reinforced concrete bunker, configured with multiple secured rooms, hardened corridors, and support areas. Several rooms include private bathrooms, and the layout was designed for both manned and unmanned operations.

. . .

Mechanical systems include multiple heat pumps utilizing a closed-loop well water system for heating and cooling, originally engineered to operate continuously and efficiently. Environmental systems incorporate multi-stage air filtration and water purification components, designed for long-duration occupancy. The facility also includes specialized mechanical rooms, utility areas, and hardened support spaces typical of secure infrastructure installations.

This is important:

The site benefits from controlled access, substantial setbacks, and a low-profile footprint.

And did we mention price??

Is this a near-perfect bug-out nuclear bunker for the Mid-Atlantic corridor?

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 19:40

When It Comes To Climate And Energy, Let's Retire The Politics Of Fear

Zero Hedge -

When It Comes To Climate And Energy, Let's Retire The Politics Of Fear

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the latest example of the scare tactics favored by climate change alarmists, it was announced last month that 2025 “was the third-warmest in modern history, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service,” as reported by NBC News.

A light display created using drones is performed near the U.N. headquarters ahead of the 78th U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 15, 2023. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

The story added: “The conclusion came as no surprise: The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, according to Copernicus data. In 2025, the average global temperature was about 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.65 Fahrenheit) higher than from 1850 to 1900—the period scientists use as a reference point, since it precedes the industrial era in which massive amounts of carbon pollution have been pumped into the atmosphere.”

As usual, our most affordable and reliable fuel sources were blamed.

“The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dominated by the burning of fossil fuels,” according to Samantha Burgess, the “strategic lead on climate” for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates Copernicus, according to the report.

Sometimes it feels like the climate change crusaders are oblivious to everything going on around them. For decades, they’ve been resorting to the same tired strategies to convince us that doom and gloom are just around the corner if we don’t change our ways. What they ignore is that their tactics aren’t working—more people than ever are tuning them out.

Americans in particular have grown wise to the predictions that don’t come true and the demands that don’t make sense. In fact, so badly has science become blatantly politicized that the number of people who have a great amount of trust in science keeps shrinking.

That fact was backed up by a recent Pew Research Center report that found that “Americans’ confidence in scientists remains lower than it was prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.” To many of us, it is now obvious that the inconsistent guidance on COVID-19 and many COVID-19 pandemic edicts that were later found to be ineffective and even misleading demonstrated that science was not above being overtly politicized.

While the Pew study noted a Democrat–Republican disparagement regarding trust in science (Democrats trust it more, Republicans less), only 28 percent of all U.S. adults said they have “a great deal” of confidence in scientists “to act in the public’s best interest.”

I recently noted the welcome admission by manmade climate change believer Noah Kaufman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, who, writing for The Atlantic, said flatly that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.” Whether in regard to vaccines, dietary guidelines, or climate change, in recent years science has too often found itself at the center of partisan political debates and has thus lost the trust of many Americans by appearing to support certain causes over others based on ideology rather than pure scientific data.

But we can’t afford to let that happen when it comes to making energy decisions. Why? Because no one can deny that affordable energy is the key to economic prosperity for U.S. households and businesses.

When energy costs are low, manufacturers can produce goods at a lower cost, resulting in more-competitive products domestically and internationally.

When fuel is affordable—whether diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel—all modes of transportation, including airlines, trucking and shipping companies, can charge less, resulting in savings for all consumers.

Heating, cooling, and transportation costs represent the most significant share of most families’ budgets. When energy costs are reasonable, household spending on other goods and services increases, not only helping individual families but also contributing to overall economic growth.

In addition to everything else, there is real damage caused by manipulating science in a way that puts climate over people. It puts people in danger and keeps them in poverty—and ultimately only a privileged few will benefit.

Consider the billions that the Biden administration doled out to political cronies on its way out the door in the name of the climate cause. Consider also the Obama administration giving more than $500 million dollars to Solyndra, the solar panel company accused of engaging in “a pattern of false and misleading assertions,” only to see it go bust—all at the expense of hardworking, taxpaying Americans.

That’s why it’s important to remove the manipulation of the energy sector from the politicization that has infiltrated the scientific community. Americans should not be pawns in the effort to frighten our people or our government into abandoning our most reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean energy sources.

There’s a better way. By passing the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act (ARC-ES), Congress can codify into law the guarantee that Americans will always have access to low-cost energy, regardless of the effort of progressive political groups to weaponize science in order to funnel tax dollars to prop up “alternatives.”

Anyone can manipulate data to come up with horrifying “what if” scenarios designed to frighten or intimidate people into making their preferred choices. That’s not how to make public policy. We need to pass ARC-ES to move past the days when the science that fewer people trust is manipulated to justify changes in energy policy that few people want. When it comes to science, let’s trade the politics of panic for the integrity of facts.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 19:15

From Border Incursions To Stadiums: Counter-Drone Systems To Protect World Cup Games

Zero Hedge -

From Border Incursions To Stadiums: Counter-Drone Systems To Protect World Cup Games

Whether the brief shutdown of El Paso airspace was driven by a reported U.S. military directed-energy counter-drone weapon or what senior U.S. officials characterized as a Mexican cartel drone incursion remains unresolved at the moment.

Our assessment is that, with FIFA World Cup matches just months away, the Trump administration is racing to deploy counter-drone systems. After all, President Donald Trump signed last year's "Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty" executive order, which set the stage for accelerating counter-UAS and airspace security technology.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that, through the federal Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) Grant Program, four New York public safety agencies will use $17.2 million to fund equipment and systems that "detect, identify, track, monitor and/or mitigate unmanned aircraft systems" during the FIFA World Cup matches.

"With the evolution of technology comes new ways it can be used to harm others," Governor Hochul said. "This funding will go a long way to keep New Yorkers safe while allowing historic events like the 2026 World Cup and our nation's 250th birthday to be celebrated safely and securely."

Earlier this morning, defense tech firm Fortem Technologies announced it had received a multimillion-dollar contract to deploy its net-equipped DroneHunter at U.S. venues during soccer games this summer.

Last month, U.S. military, federal agencies, and local authorities gathered for a two-day summit near U.S. Northern Command headquarters, bringing together federal agencies, 11 U.S. host committees, and FIFA's security heads to prepare for matches across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

"We're never going to not worry about a dirty bomb," Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosanna Cordero-Stutz, who participated in the planning session, told Politico. "But we also recognize that there's a lot of other things that we need to worry about as well."

"You can't just give counter-UAS mitigation equipment to law enforcement that hasn't learned how to use it yet," said White House FIFA World Cup Task Force Coordinator Andrew Giuliani, who coordinated the federal government's role in tournament preparations and addressed the drone threat at the summit.

To FIFA officials and U.S. government leaders, the fastest-growing threat to the host cities across North America will be drones.

Last month, we outlined the theme that the rise of "Next-Gen Counter-Drone Security" was certainly upon us, but our focus was on securing data centers.

We pointed out that Wall Street analysts largely end their analysis at the financing and construction of next-generation data centers, with limited discussion regarding the modern security architecture required once these facilities are built and become instant high-value targets for non-state actors or foreign adversaries (read this); traditional perimeter measures such as metal chain-link fencing and standard surveillance systems are rendered utterly useless in the world of emerging AI threats, including coordinated autonomous drone or swarm-based attacks.

Our view is that the counter-drone industry is set to see a rush of investment in companies developing and deploying detect-and-identify systems, as well as defeat systems such as soft-kill or hard-kill options that could include kinetic sentry systems.

If you're wondering what a hard-kill option looks like ... 

... Allen Control Systems has that covered. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 18:50

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus

Financial Armageddon -


Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.






Dump the Dollar before Bank Runs start in America -- Economic Collapse 2020

Financial Armageddon -












We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

Hillary Clinton's Top Secret Files Revealed Here

Financial Armageddon -

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.





Pages