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Tag: Conspiracy

  • Digital ID, War and Troubles Ahead

    Long time no write. I got employed (at will, contract until the end of November) and have been working since last week’s Monday. Still learning the ropes, enough of that.

    Federal government

    Secretary of War, Hegseth, had called all generals, 1-star and up for an all hands meeting. This includes those who have ‘active situations’ going. Very unusual. The rumors online ranged from imminent intensification of WWIII, invasion of Venezuela, an alien arrival, a complete reorganization of US military, or mass lay offs to clean out our top heavy military organization chart. The official explanation was pep talks telling the armed forces to merit base up, go on diet, and concentrate on learning how to efficiently win wars rather than having rainbow events and PC talk. It is generally thought that the pep talks were a cover for something else, though what that might be is unknown to public.

    The mass lay offs in military would have dovetail nicely with the threatened imminent mass lay offs of Federal bureaucracy in general, due to government shutdown, because congress cannot (again) pass a budget, or as the case has been for quite a few years, a continuing resolution. Trump has been itching to take a machete or a flamethrower at our bureaucratic jungle and to cut our budget deficit (our current Federal debt has ballooned since the summer 36 trillion to today’s over 37.5 trillion and keeps rising)or at least the funding to his political opponents. Instead of putting the Federal workers on furlough with back pay when the continuing resolution has been passed, the president proposes to simply fire the non-essentials (or a fraction of them) to reduce Federal complexity and expenses. Considering the recent increase in debt levels, methinks, this is an opportunity for a political purge, any savings would be incidental.

    The immigration enforcement (Feds) vs antifa + their affiliates (supported by democrat jurisdictions) situation seems to be verging towards civil strife of the Irish Troubles type. Basically the central government (the new establishment) is bringing rebellious city states and provinces back under control, task complicated by the democrat (the former establishment) outrage over having lost their control over the central government. Meanwhile, I suspect the people would be more interested in what either of the parties would be doing on the rapidly rising cost of living and the employment and housing crises.

    Digital ID

    Vietnam froze about 86 million bank accounts, they can only be unfrozen if the account owner gets a government digital ID and provides a proof to the bank.

    In UK, Prime Minister Starmer told the folks that everyone must get a digital ID, soon it will be illegal to work without one. ‘Ministers have ruled out’ that welfare payments or healthcare would need digital ID. I suspect them of being economical with truth, what with Tony Blair Institute for Global Change clearly stating its usefulness for accessing benefits.

    This is, of course, ‘to combat the illegal immigration’ (much encouraged by successive Labour and Tory governments alike.) Exactly how the UK government believes forcing digital ID on people who do not use even paper IDs is going to help, but I think the digital ID for legitimate, as in taxable, work and other economic activity will collapse what is left of UK finances. Or the people will revolt (though at this point I think that less likely than finding metabolically active extraterrestrial life.) In any case, immigrants without ID could presumably still access welfare and healthcare, even if they cannot work legally.

    While I unfortunately did not find a reference, I recall that during COVID, Sweden discussed banning cash, but the government retreated when they realized that large enough fraction of of their economy functioned on informal basis to sink the rest of the economy(sarskillt utsetta omraden would have exploded or become even less governable than currently. While the White Hall may know their people better than I and are banking on them being hopelessly obedient (rebels having left during 17th and 18th century), lots of White Hall mandarins are clueless elites that live separate from normal life and consequences of their actions.

    I also read about digital ID already existing or being rolled into various EU countries. The same source also mentions online access. Omitted was the potential barring of online access.

    In South Korea, there was a big fire in a government data center, which crippled many of the government services, including things requiring digital ID. The fire started from a lithium battery (the batteries were being replaced because they were getting old) and it is unknown how much actual data the South Korean government lost.

    While I was anticipating hackers having a fiesta with people’s IDs online, and rolling blackouts and other such infrastructure misery making them unpracticable (the Indian Aadhar system has reportedly led to deaths by starvation due to lack of access to government social security), I had forgotten about the vulnerability of the data centers. TietoEVRY, which is a major PPP contractor for various data base services to Finnish government (including the election vote results, at least once in collaboration with Scytl when still known as TietoEnator) managed to years ago (when it was known just as Tieto) totally mess up multiple Swedish databases. Considering this and the South Korean example, I expect any digital ID to result in Kafkaesque nightmare for the subjects and massive confusion and potentially paralyzing dysfunction to the governments. But perhaps that is not a bug but a feature – maybe it will allow greater variety for financial oppression while reducing the citizens’ ability to defend themselves against the governmental predators, the profits of which are then calculated to outweigh the cost of national collapses.

    Local news

    California has on November 4th special elections about redistricting. The cost estimates range from 250+ to 280+ million dollars, that is over quarter of billion dollars to invest on Democrats (maybe) taking Congress (and US budget.) Nevertheless, as a California tax payer, I am annoyed. I have gotten two mailings of official election information. I suppose that is my tax dollars at work.

    War and Troubles

    Drone attacks and air space violations of NATO countries are intensifying. Involved parties: at least Poland, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, and, of course, Russia and Ukraine. I probably have missed countries – these days the news come too fast for me to follow. Also who did what to whom is unclear, including to many of the targets. Meanwhile, I am more worried about cyber attacks and domestic terrorists.

    Of domestic terrorists: someone set (or attempted to set) the concert bus of Ice-T in fire while he was touring in Portland, Oregon. Many thought that happened because someone mistook it for ICE vehicle, though now the official explanation is a random act of vandalism. I don’t know if this was a contributing factor for Trump’s orders to sent National Guard to Portland to protect ICE there. Maybe the generals were called in to take marching orders for intensifying civil troubles. Meanwhile, some dude got 19 years for terrorism for setting a police vehicle on fire in UC Berkeley campus. UC maintains a police force separate from City of Berkeley. I wonder what Janet Napolitano, a former president of the UC system and a former Secretary of Homeland security would think about the current happenings.

    There are many other items I could write about, but there is no time.

    Butterfly on a flower, flew away. Life does not need to be so grim all the time.

  • Resolution Weekend

    I just saw a video on YouTube by a gentleman who seems to be into Bitcoin. Aside from the Bitcoin part, there were interesting little news.

    Bank of England has published a bail-in guide. The term of note is ‘resolution weekend’. That’s when the peoples’ bank accounts will be converted into bank stocks at some fraction of value.

    I had already become aware that millionaires and billionaires are fleeing the UK by their thousands, an exodus greater than that afflicting PCR, despite PRC having vastly larger population. I was surprised at the claim that the departing assets are equal to 4% of UK GDP. Dividing the 91.8B$ cumulative wealth of the departees by 3640B$ estimated GB GDP gives only about 2.5% in mu calculator. It will be interesting to see if the UK government will go full DDR and slam the exit doors shut at this hemorrhage. They already have the hate crime reporting lines and speech crimes police (in case someone could post something UK government does not approve) so why not go for the full experience, complete with empty shops?

    Meanwhile, EU has made a deal of the decade (this century is too young to claim that something even weirder would not be coming through the pipes) agreeing to: 15% export and 0% import tariffs with US, 750 billion euros worth of US fossil fuels while banning all the Russian fossil fuel imports (which had continued despite the war, including quite a lot of natural gas transiting in pipelines through Ukraine), and 600 billion euros of private direct investment to US.

    Exactly what this private investment is and how EU Commission can agree to seems unclear. According to the document description page on EU side, the agreement is not legally binding. I suspect that the tariff and energy deals were a bribe to US to let EU still continue their war – I further suspect large amounts of US military gear to be included in that 0% import tariff. Also, I suspect that EU will rather soon have a resolution weekend for bank accounts as they are already talking about mobilizing funds laying in peoples’ bank accounts to fund plans that are excessive for the public purse. Pension funds are joining the arms bonanza. Bonus points if these ‘privately funded’ imports/investments will count towards the 5% of GDP funding target for non-US NATO members.

    Joker in the game: EU CBDCs, denied by European Central Bank to be programmable with expiration dates (not to mention blocking or sin fees for non-approved uses, which would similarly depend on programmability.) (There are also privacy questions.) I wonder what the actual utility of EU CBDCs for the small people would be, and how CBDCs (programmable or non) would affect application of a Resolution Weekend?

  • Civil War by Proxy?

    California and Federal government are increasingly hostile in open. California has years of experience in ignoring Federal laws, some notable example issues being cannabis, immigration, and gender identity.

    On the other hand, California has used its soft power as a major economy to enforce environmental and consumer standards on the rest of the states and even abroad.

    During Biden(?) administration, Californian values seemed to become the US standard regardless of other states’ opinions, and California became more assertive also in foreign and trade policy, most notable event being the summit with president Xi and Biden in San Francisco (preceded by a climate lobbying visit of governor Newsom to Beijing.) Various California politicians were also courting China, although also opposite happened. Does anyone still remember 2022 when the then Speaker of the House, California representative Pelosi flew to Taiwan and caused jitters over potential armed conflict between USA and PRC? (Whether this was part of a policy by a bigger faction within the administration and if so, which one of them is murky to me.)

    Now, the issues between quite untethered California and the Federal government have finally come to boil. The trigger to me seems to be the transgender athletes competing against girls, where the Federal government sees California Title IX application to this issue as violation and the regular people just unfair. California continued this practice, despite warnings from Washington DC, and the current administration threatened to withhold Federal funds for California sports. Thereafter, Newsom threatened to withhold the Federal share of California state taxes, a move somewhat reminiscent to the Nullification Crisis prior to the Civil War in 1800s.

    Meanwhile, a group of Antifa or similar group(s) coordinated an attack on ICE that had done a raid in Los Angeles.

    This attack is curious because of its organization and its timing coinciding with the spat over ideologies and money. Reminiscent of the coordinated wave of violent riots in summer 2020, there were clashes between pro-immigration protesters in New York on the opposite side of the continent.

    More importantly, both the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and governor Newsom publicly refused to help to quell the rioters, even opposing the Federal efforts. The rioters were attacking Federal law enforcement with stones and were painting graffiti putting things in fire. In fact, a roster of California political people have come in defense of David Huerta who got arrested for participating in the riot, but their support to anti-Federal action.

    President Trump has authorized the use of 2000 National Guard (update: now 4000 plus 700 marines), and the Department of Homeland Security is bringing in reinforcements.

    I am writing this in Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, waiting for a flight that would take me back to California Bay Area via Frankfurt am Main and Los Angeles Airports. By the time I have landed, well before the time I can post this (I need to add links to sources), we will see if the California or Federal authorities have caved in. If the California stops protecting the violent mobs, removes transgender athletes from girls competitions and possibly even ponies up some tax tithes to Federal government, the incipient civil war will be averted. If the Federal government fails to enforce its rules also in California, I fear that this was the opening shot of the active phase of the disintegration of the United States. Worst case scenario, neither gives in, we may have active civil insurgency in multiple blue states by the end of the summer. The most likely outcome will be a frozen conflict, that is: both sides will pretend nothing significant happened but neither will acknowledge that the other side might have won.

    I also predict there will be lots of pundits dissecting irrelevant minutiae from the utterances of either side, and thanks to the strong left bias of the main stream media, the reporting will mostly support California and its allies, meaning tailwinds for civil war or mostly peaceful disintegration of USA and headwinds for peace and prosperity. The biggest losers will be the regular people trapped in the middle, looting and violence disrupting supply chains, especially for groceries and fuel, and then collapsing the teetering economy in general.

    Update: Much has happened since Sunday. California did not capitulate and the National Guard activated in Los Angeles is up to 4000 and 700 marines are in readiness. When I arrived on Sunday evening to Bay Area, I took the BART from airport to hometown. The train did not take or drop passengers at Embarcadero station due to political activism nearby, but let out a handful of burly police officers and while the train waited a couple of minutes next to the platform, I could observe the officers running and so did a couple of the people already there. There was still a crowd waiting for the next train or something, though the trains had started skipping that station for the duration. Sorry, no video footage of that.

    More ominously, a Walmart heiress is funding (in a small part) a nationwide call for unrest June 14th, another weak indicator supporting my hypothesis that the riots that started last weekend are part of elites’ civil war, raging over  who gets to loot the treasury.

    In social media there are reports of incidents in Denver, Charlotte (NC), Boston (MA), Chicago, New York City and Atlanta, things are escalating fast. This indicates that this is not a question of secession (California from USA) but of civil war by proxy between the progressive left and the conservatives over the control of Federal government. The presidency and the Congress are currently held by Republicans, but vast swathes of the administrative state are governed by the Deep State currently (mostly) promoting leftist ideologies (reasons for that are too long to expostulate in a single post and in any case speculative to the tinfoil hattery territory.) Individual states and their administrative apparati are a hodgepodge of ideologies, but the Left Coast in general and California in particular is the current vanguard and bastion of progressive establishment, so troubles beginning here makes sense.

    Meanwhile, governor Newsom and Federal officials are still discussing about who pays what.

    On a side note, a major food distributor supplying thousands of supermarkets got hacked last week and food distribution is off kilter. When I yesterday visited a grocery, they had a sign on meat counter apologizing for ‘warehouse issues’. I did not ask the cause then because I had not then seen this piece of samizdata news yet. I wonder if the food shortages and riots at the same time are a coincidence?

    Finally, whether true or not, the possibility of a fleet of robotaxis fleeing LA riots in order not to get burned by Mexican flag waiving ‘mostly peaceful’ protesters shows what kind of timeline we are living in. In any case, Waymo services have been suspended in downtown LA are for the time being.

    Looks like I need to pick some canned meat while it is still available.

  • Some News

    Nobody expects the Spanish interruption

    This week Iberian Peninsula had a massive power outage that darkened large parts of Spain and Portugal, affected Andorra, France and according to some, Netherlands and Belgium. I have not yet seen the proximal cause for the outage published, though speculations have run from Russian hackers to atmospheric phenomena. What is increasingly clear is that the Western European power grid has become extremely vulnerable to disturbances and even the slightest wobble can collapse the interconnect.

    European power grid is at 50 Hz and already 0.5 Hz out of sync causes massive troubles – the power grid can choose to shut down or experience massive damage when the system goes off even that slightly. In Spain, the power grid began to experience fluctuations blamed at some point on ‘induced atmospheric oscillations’ (a mistranslation?) or anomalous heating. However, the power grid had lost large fraction of its buffering capacity as the power production has moved from traditional big power stations with big turbines that maintain inertia against minor fluctuations to renewable energy which uses inverters. In other words, the power grid had become more fragile. Spain had just six days earlier boasted about having produced 100% of its daily energy by renewables. Spain is not alone with its fragile grid, the EU wide race to Net Zero has weakened grids over the Western continent. Individual countries have relied on power production of their neighbors to subsidize their climate programs, and when the neighboring countries transform from help to drain, whole Western Europe is in trouble,

    Snake

    Unrelated to European problems, Japanese Tokaido Shinkansen line had about an hour and half train stoppage due to a power outage caused by a snake that had slithered into power line. Or maybe the snake was a tool of a global conspiracy against power grids. The article did not know the fate of the snake.

  • Klaus Schwab Has Resigned

    Last weekend, it was announced that Klaus Schwab has resigned from his position as a chairman of WEF. He had been one for 55 years, and was one of the faces of the technocratic globalism that the transnational institutions and Western governments have been pushing on the populaces. You know, things like 15 minute cities, CO2 taxes, energiewende, digital IDs, central bank programmable digital currency, the Great Reset and modified RNA vaccines.

    Now it is said that he has resigned as a consequence of a whistle-blower that had implicated Klaus Schwab and his wife in fiscal (and possibly other types) of improprieties, with the WEF board having a sudden emergency meeting. Somehow I doubt this reason – whistle-blowers do not just conveniently appear after 55 years of people not noticing chairman’s practices. I suspect this has more to do with the disastrous effects of the current forced changes on economy and the cultural blowback against the zealous insistence on the Veblen ideologies of the elites enforced with a surveillance state. Since I have not detected WEF to show interest in actual well-being of the masses, rather than the insistence that masses must adapt to their betters’ vision of the Greater Good, I think Klaus Schwab’s ouster has more to do with the smarter members realizing that sawing the branch they are sitting on, i.e., destroying the countries they live in, is not a viable long-term strategy. Even bugout countries, like New Zealand, would sooner or later be destroyed by technocratic practices.

    In a WEF’s Davos meeting about a year ago, Blackrock’s Larry Fink who also sits in WEF’s Board of Trustees, surprised by praising xenophobic countries which had instead of immigration invested in AI and robotics. At that point I took it as a bad omen – what are they planning to do with the people replaced by AI and robotics? In retrospect, I think that was an outward sign that there will be changes within WEF.

    In summary, I think Klaus Schwab was forced out after his vision of New World Order had proven to be a failure.

  • How Many People Are There in China?

    Sometimes, the conspiracies of the West like chemtrails or other forms of weather modification and QAnon become boring and it is fun to look at the conspiracies in the East.

    One of the more intriguing conspiracy theories (to me) is the claim that China has way fewer people than the official 1.4 billion.

    I first encountered this claim some years ago, but did not pay much attention to it. The message sounded too crazy and was promoted by Falun Gong, which has a real reason for a grudge against the CCP government. I am also pretty convinced that part of the anti-China messaging is or was funded by US government as a psy-op against a competing power.

    However, while the figures as low as 300 to 400 million Chinese left (in the Peoples Republic of) seem extreme, I can believe fewer than 1.4 billion, probably no more than 1.2 billion, possibly below 1 billion.

    My reasoning being:

    1) There are government tendencies for inflating population numbers. In places like Nigeria, where the funds from central government are allocated partially based on provincial populations, and corruption is common, local leaders have a pressure to report their populations generously. I suspect Nigeria does not actually have over 200 million people. So many of their princes have died, that the mortality among the peasants must be horrendous. Ahem.

    Similarly, in United States, we do not know the population even at the accuracy of million, which I suspect in part resulting from allocating federal resources like Congress seats based on state population.

    Also, having a large (potential) labor force is believed to improve the economy numbers (although not universally), which is why many Western countries have been importing people en masse.

    2) Related to governmental pressures is the individual financial fraud. Duplicate (or multiplicate) social security accounts have in abounded, at least in earlier times, whereas 100 billion in social security payments have apparently been paid to people with temporary or no social security numbers, maybe half of it obvious fraud. Since China has in recent years implemented a Draconian social credit system, I don’t know how much an individual can bilk the government there by double IDs though private sector frauds are too prevalent to list here.

    3) Mass immigration has generated a global population of hundreds of millions.Many of these individuals are undocumented, which I presume are still in citizenship lists of their home countries while being part of the head count in their current locations. I remember an apocryphal story in Europe about people getting paid social security by two countries, presumably being counted as part of the population in both. I do not know if this inaccuracy includes dual citizens or just undocumented migrants. In case of China, I think their hukou system is pretty water tight within China’s borders, but I also think that millions, maybe tens of millions of Chinese have slipped over the borders, all over the world. These Chinese exist, but reduce the population at home.

    4) Chinese population policies have been a demographic disaster. One Child Policy meant that many of the Gen-X were not allowed to be born, reducing the population growth rate. Now there are too few Millenials and even fewer Gen Z and the young people are too stressed to reproduce. Yet, China’s population was supposed to have grown during the 1970s – 2010s, though at least the recent year’s have officially had negative population growth.

    Therefore, even if we don’t go with the active depopulation hypotheses,

    I don’t think the current global population exceeds 7.5 billion, and would not be hugely surprised if it were as low as 7 billion people.