Peter Myers Digest: Col. Douglas Macgregor says Sabotage was done by US Navy & and British Navy, with Polish support
(0) Blinken Calls Sabotage Attacks On Nord Stream Pipelines A “Tremendous Opportunity”
(1) UN Treaty will give the WHO dictatorial powers
(2) Former Pentagon advisor Col. Douglas Macgregor says Sabotage was done by US Navy & and British Navy, with Polish support
(3) Two explosive devices were attached to pipe A of Nordstream 2, while no explosive device was attached to pipe B
(4) October Surprise just ahead of Election Day, November 8: a False Flag attack on domestic US infrastructure
(5) NOURIEL ROUBINI hard landing by year’s end, an economic and a financial crash
(0) Blinken Calls Sabotage Attacks On Nord Stream Pipelines A “Tremendous Opportunity”
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, OCT 03, 2022 – 06:40 AM
Ever since the recent unprecedented sabotage attacks on the Russia to Europe Nord Stream pipelines, the central question has continued to remain <https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88062> who did it and correspondingly <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/did-the-us-sabotage-nord-stream/> cui bono?
Just when speculation and an avalanche of theories have inundated the web on an array of international outlets, the Biden administration has bluntly (and apparently lacking self-awareness) boasted that the pipeline bombings present an “opportunity”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Friday joint press briefing with Canada’s top diplomat that the damage and disruption to the pipelines are being seen in Washington as a “tremendous opportunity” to greatly reduce European energy imports on Russia.
In addressing the ‘mystery’ sabotage incidents, Blinken began, “I think first it’s important to make clear that these pipelines – that is, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 – were not pumping gas into Europe at this time. Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known. Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.”
A mere few sentences later, he followed <https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-press-availability/> by saying “ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
He at the same time touted that the Untied States has now become “the leading supplier of LNG [liquefied natural gas] to Europe,” stressing too that the Biden administration is helping to enable European leaders to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”
Tellingly, in that single section of comments while speaking alongside his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Blinken had repeated the word “opportunity” while highlighting the European energy crisis no less than three times.
According to <https://twitter.com/SecBlinken?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing “offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.” Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter. <https://t.co/T2eacQUuBF> pic.twitter.com/T2eacQUuBF
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) <https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1576326018893492225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> October 1, 2022
Canada’s Joly for her part pointed the finger at Russia for sabotaging its own pipeline during a panel discussion the same day, <https://globalnews.ca/news/9168324/russia-nord-stream-pipeline-damage-joly/> telling an Atlantic Council conference that the world is “not naïve” about who is responsible for the acts of “sabotage”. She’s the latest top official of a NATO government to do so.
But the Canadian foreign affairs minister stopped short of naming Russia directly in <https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/we-re-not-naive-about-who-s-behind-sabotage-of-nord-stream-pipelines-joly-says/ar-AA12rZkU?ocid=EMMX> the exchange:
“At this point we’re still investigating, but obviously we want to make sure that we do things the right way, but we’re not naïve,” she said.
“You’re not naïve as to who’s behind it?” Sciutto responded.
“As I said, we won’t speculate but at the same time, we want to make sure that — the world needs to understand that this is very important European infrastructure that was sabotaged,” the minister added.
On the other side of the question of culprits and the crucial cui bono question, The American Conservative offers the following <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/did-the-us-sabotage-nord-stream/> commentary:
One could certainly see why sabotaging Nord Stream benefits the US. We didn’t want Europe to get Nord Stream in the first place, because it would make Europe dependent on Russian gas. This is perfectly reasonable, from an American point of view. However, if Washington sabotaged those pipelines in the middle of the Ukraine-Russia war, that would mean an insane escalation of the war, to sabotaging critical infrastructure.
Think about it: if Russia can’t deliver gas to Europe anyway, because the pipelines are too damaged, that makes it harder to make peace and restore energy flow to Europe. This fits Washington’s policy goals. That doesn’t mean Washington is responsible for this sabotage, but there’s a lot more reason for Washington to have blown the pipelines up than for Russia.
The publication continues, “Prominent Polish politician Radek Sikorski understood this, firing off this ill-advised tweet as soon as the news broke.”…
<https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/thnkutwt.png?itok=CY-vaNza> Finally, we note that China state-affiliated media mouthpiece could not resist commenting on Blinken’s apparently cluelessly ironic comments, saying what much of the rest-of-the-world is perhaps thinking…
Taking the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” is such undisguised comment, isn’t it? Isn’t Mr. Blinken worried that his remarks will make the world believe “whoever benefits did it”? <https://t.co/X8NwAX75w2> pic.twitter.com/X8NwAX75w2
— Hu Xijin ??? (@HuXijin_GT) <https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/1576652339397525504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> October 2, 2022
Below is the full section of transcript and context wherein Secretary Blinken dubbed the pipeline incident and European energy crisis a “tremendous opportunity” [emphasis ours]…
* * *
“I think first it’s important to make clear that these pipelines – that is, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 – were not pumping gas into Europe at this time. Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known. Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.
What we’ve been doing – and we’ve also been working on this together for many, many weeks as we saw the Russian aggression in Ukraine and as we saw the ongoing weaponization of energy by Russia – is to work very closely with European partners as well as countries around the world to make sure that there is enough energy on world markets. And so we’ve significantly increased our production as well as making available to Europe liquefied natural gas. And we’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe to help compensate for any gas or oil that it’s losing as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
We’ve worked to release oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make sure as well that there is oil on the markets and to help keep prices down. We’ve engaged with the European Union and established months ago a task force to work directly with Europe on ways to decrease demand to help get through the winter, as well as to pursue additional supply and to find ways to speed up the transition to renewables even as we’re getting through this challenging period. So all of that work is ongoing.
My own sense – and I mentioned this the other day – is, look, there’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter. Europe itself has taken very significant steps to both decrease demand but also look at ways to pursue the transition to renewables at the same time. And ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.
That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come, but meanwhile, we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to make sure that the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”
(1) UN Treaty will give the WHO dictatorial powers
From: “Boyle, Francis A” <fboyle@illinois.edu>
Subject: FW: UN Treaty Creates Medical Dictatorship Under Biden
https://www.infowars.com/posts/un-treaty-creates-medical-dictatorship-under-biden/
October 3rd 2022, 5:13 pm
“This treaty, if passed, will give the WHO dictatorial powers to determine health policies here in the U.S. in the event of another pandemic — which of course they know all along they’re going to create,” professor Francis Boyle says.
Professor Francis Boyle joined The Alex Jones Show on Monday to expose the medical tyranny under Biden being created by a United Nations treaty.
Boyle explained that the World Health Organization (WHO) – the medical arm of the UN – is drafting a treaty that, if signed by Joe Biden, would surrender U.S. health policy to the global body.
“It’s clear that this treaty, if passed, will give the WHO dictatorial powers to determine health policies here in the United States in the event of another pandemic, which of course they know all along they’re going to create,” Boyle said.
Boyle went on to point out that the Biden administration issued an <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/09/12/executive-order-on-advancing-biotechnology-and-biomanufacturing-innovation-for-a-sustainable-safe-and-secure-american-bioeconomy/> executive order earlier this month which violates the biological weapon guardrail legislation that he drafted in 1989 by green-lighting the development of an “offensive biological warfare weapon” and a vaccine for it.
“I called for and drafted the United States domestic implementing legislation for the biological weapons convention that is known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act (BWATA) of 1989 that was passed unanimously by both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George Bush Sr. with the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice,” Boyle explained.
In violation of that bill, the EO provision says the U.S. government and international partners will:
(vii) develop, and work to promote and implement, biosafety and biosecurity best practices, tools, and resources bilaterally and multilaterally to facilitate appropriate oversight for life sciences, dual-use research of concern, and research involving potentially pandemic and other high-consequence pathogens, and to enhance sound risk management of biotechnology- and biomanufacturing-related R&D globally; and
(viii) explore how to align international classifications of biomanufactured products, as appropriate, to measure the value of those products to both the United States and global bioeconomies.
“So they admit that they will be engaging in the development of offensive biological warfare weapons involving potentially pandemic pathogens like COVID-19 was,” Boyle said.
Watch the full Monday edition of The Alex Jones Show:
(2) Former Pentagon advisor Col. Douglas Macgregor says Sabotage was done by US Navy & and British Navy, with Polish support
Former Pentagon Advisor Says US Likely Attacked Nord Stream Pipelines To Isolate Germany
by Tyler Durden
TUESDAY, OCT 04, 2022 – 03:45 AM
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A former Pentagon advisor says the most likely culprits behind the Nord Stream pipeline blasts are the United States and Britain, and that the attack was carried out to prevent Germany from bailing on the war in Ukraine.
Retired US Army colonel Douglas Macgregor made the comments during an appearance on the Judging Freedom podcast.
Macgregor said a process of elimination rules out Germany, because they are dependent on Nord Stream for their energy security, while it also served no benefit for Russia to have sabotaged its own infrastructure.
“Would the Russians destroy their own pipeline? 40 percent of Russian gross national product or gross domestic product consists of foreign currency that comes into the country to purchase natural gas, oil, coal and so forth. So the Russians did not do this. The notion that they did I think is absurd,” Macgregor said.
Referring to Polish MEP Radoslaw Sikorski’s infamous deleted tweet in which he wrote, “Thank you, USA,” Macgregor noted, “Who else might be involved? Well the Poles apparently seem to be very enthusiastic about it.”
“Douglas Macgregor, former advisor to US Defense Secretary in the administration of Donald Trump, argued the absurdness of the rhetoric that Russia was behind the Nord Stream attack, and said, ‘The Russians did not do this’.” pic.twitter.com/zVKesXKVIN
— Comrade Heather ?????????????? (@ComradeHeather) October 2, 2022
However, citing reports that more than 500 kg of TNT had been detected in both explosions, the former Pentagon advisor suggested only the United States and British Royal Navy had the capability to pull off the attack.
“Then you have to look at who are the state actors that have the capability to do this. And that means the Royal Navy, the United States Navy Special Operations,” said Macgregor.
“I think that’s pretty clear. We know that thousands of pounds of TNT were used because these pipelines are enormously robust. You have several inches of concrete around various metal alloys to move the natural gas. So it’s not something that you could simply drop a grenade down at the end of a fish line and disrupt. That means it takes a certain amount of sophistication,” he added.
Macgregor suggested that the motive behind the attacks was to prevent Germany from bailing on the Ukraine war after Berlin began “to give the impression that they were no longer going to go along with this proxy war in Ukraine.”
“I’m hesitant to say ‘we know it must have been Washington’. I can’t say that because we just don’t know. But it’s very clear that we have foreclosed Berlin’s options. Berlin was drifting away from this alliance. [Chancellor] Olaf Scholz said ‘I’m not sending any more equipment, I won’t send any tanks’. Now he’s in a bind because the United States has simply robbed him of the option of bailing out. Who’s going to supply him gas and oil and coal and everything else if he bails out? Where does he turn now? And remember, the Germans, who are facing terrible consequences at home refuse to restart nuclear power plants,” the former official said.
As we previously reported, the CIA warned Germany of potential attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea weeks before Nord Stream 1 and 2 were targeted.
Both Joe Biden and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland asserted that Nord Stream 2 wouldn’t be allowed to operate if Russia attacked Ukraine.
(3) Two explosive devices were attached to pipe A of Nordstream 2, while no explosive device was attached to pipe B
https://www-anti–spiegel-ru.translate.goog/2022/wenn-der-spiegel-keine-argumente-hat
If the mirror has no arguments…
Der Spiegel is furious that many are accusing the United States of having blown up the Nord Stream pipelines. Der Spiegel indulges in insults instead of presenting arguments.
October 3, 2022 3:00 p.m
I don’t normally respond to columns, opinion pieces, and commentaries that appear in the “quality media,” because those are statements of opinion that are often not based on fact. And as you know, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But today I’m making an exception, because one of the Spiegel columnists spewed such nonsense that he also mentions the anti-Spiegel that I’d like to give a short answer.
Christian Stöcker seems to see it as a new calling to rail against evil Russian propaganda. Within a short time he therefore mentioned the anti-mirror a second time. His current column is entitled “ Viral Nord Stream theses – the copy-paste propaganda ” and I’ll anticipate it: it’s not worth reading because the information content – as is almost always the case with columns – is close to zero.
In his column, Stöcker works on the evil Russian propagandists, who of course are the usual enemy images of Spiegel, i.e. MPs from the AfD and the left. And, of course, it’s also about all sorts of “ Russian-based German Kremlin propagandists ” (meaning me, among others), “ obscure pro-Russian Telegram channels” and others. According to Stöcker, all these evil “propagandists” are busy blaming the poor USA for the explosion of the pipelines in the Baltic Sea without any reason, which of course – as it sounds between the lines – is completely absurd. […]
For the sake of completeness, I would like to mention that Mr. Stöcker made a point in his otherwise meaningless work that actually poses a mystery: one of the four tubes of the Nord Stream pipelines remained undamaged. This is one of the two tubes of Nord Stream 2.
This is cited by Mr Stöcker as evidence that it must have been Russia that blew up the pipelines. In this way, Russia would have kept the option open of pumping a little more gas to Europe. Only this is not a convincing argument, because it ignores all the other points I made above and does not change the fact that Russia would have cut off its own access to the European gas market and destroyed its own infrastructure worth many billions.
If Russia would have benefited at all from blowing up a pipeline in the Baltic Sea, it would have been from blowing up the new pipeline between Norway and Poland. Incidentally, I am sure that if this pipeline had been blown up, the NATO propagandists would have been quick to follow the simple logic they ignore when blowing up Nord Stream, which is to ask who actually benefits from the blast.
I don’t know if we’ll ever find out why there were four explosions that only affected three of the four tubes. At the moment we can only speculate about the reason for this. Perhaps the placement of the explosive devices was simply a mistake, because instead of being attached to both pipes of Nord Stream 2, the two explosive devices were attached to pipe A of the pipeline, while no explosive device was attached to pipe B.
No matter who is responsible for the blasts, he would certainly not intentionally blow up one tube twice while leaving the other tube undamaged. If the goal had been to destroy only three of the four tubes, three explosive charges would have sufficed. The fact that there were four explosions suggests to me an error on the part of the perpetrators, but that is just my speculation, which everyone can think about for themselves and come to their own conclusion.
(4) October Surprise just ahead of Election Day, November 8: a False Flag attack on domestic US infrastructure
October Surprise
By John Helmer, Moscow
The official Russian reaction to the Nord Stream attack is to identify it as a US military operation, and to wait for an investigation to produce the evidence. That means wait, delay. No retaliation. […]
More ominous for Biden’s campaign staff is the voters’ answer to the question, Is the country going in the right or wrong direction? In mid-July those who said wrong outnumbered those who said right by 57 points. This gap, measured on September 30, has now shrunk to 37 points.
That’s still a very large disapproval margin though the positive gain, in the White House and Democratic National Committee calculation, has been 20 points over two months. That’s the feel-better factor – it would evaporate if the war in Europe comes home to the US in the coming four weeks.
The polls which the Biden Administration are reading suggest that on November 8, voters want to feel reassured that Biden and the Democrats will continue to keep the US out of the war in the Ukraine. The negative margin for Biden – that is, the gap between those who approve his performance and those who disapprove – is significantly smaller for his conduct of the Ukraine war than in voter assessments of his performance on inflation, the economy in general, immigration and crime.
In Washington, if not in Kiev, Ukrainian Jews and Irish Catholics count votes in the same way. The count reveals that US voters do not want to risk the direction of their country if the Biden Administration and the Kremlin open war on US territory. A false-flag operation, to be approved in secret by the National Security Council, for sabotage of US gas pipelines, power grids, or nuclear reactors, portrayed to voters as a Russian retaliatory strike, would run a bigger risk than any October Surprise in American election history.
It would be the biggest risk since President Franklin Roosevelt was reviewing the intelligence on Japanese intentions, between August 1, 1941, when the US imposed its oil export embargo, and December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour; and since President John Kennedy interpreted the intelligence on Soviet intentions in Cuba in October 1962.
“Let me remind you,” Zakharova concluded her briefing last week, “that this concerns not just one country but the entire planet.”
(5) NOURIEL ROUBINI hard landing by year’s end, an economic and a financial crash
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/the-expected-financial-crash-is-finally-here.html
October 03, 2022
The Expected Financial Crash Is Finally Here
The central banks have misdiagnosed the reason for the currently high inflation rates. They were caused not only by too much stimulus provided by governments and the central banks but to a large part by the lack of supplies which is to the consequence of the pandemic and the ‘western’ sanctions following the war in Ukraine. By increasing interest rates the central banks fought against the wrong enemy. They made things worse:
The Stagflationary Debt Crisis Is Here
Oct 3, 2022
NOURIEL ROUBINI
The Great Moderation has given way to the Great Stagflation, which will be characterized by instability and a confluence of slow-motion negative supply shocks. US and global equities are already back in a bear market, and the scale of the crisis that awaits has not even been fully priced in yet.
NEW YORK – For a year now, I have argued that the increase in inflation would be persistent, that its causes include not only bad policies but also negative supply shocks, and that central banks’ attempt to fight it would cause a hard economic landing. When the recession comes, I warned, it will be severe and protracted, with widespread financial distress and debt crises. Notwithstanding their hawkish talk, central bankers, caught in a debt trap, may still wimp out and settle for above-target inflation. Any portfolio of risky equities and less risky fixed-income bonds will lose money on the bonds, owing to higher inflation and inflation expectations.
How do these predictions stack up? First, Team Transitory clearly lost to Team Persistent in the inflation debate. On top of excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies, negative supply shocks caused price growth to surge. COVID-19 lockdowns led to supply bottlenecks, including for labor. China’s “zero-COVID” policy created even more problems for global supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through energy and other commodity markets. And the broader sanctions regime – not least the weaponization of the US dollar and other currencies – has further balkanized the global economy, with “friend-shoring” and trade and immigration restrictions accelerating the trend toward deglobalization.
Everyone now recognizes that these persistent negative supply shocks have contributed to inflation, and the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the US Federal Reserve have begun to acknowledge that a soft landing will be exceedingly difficult to pull off. Fed Chair Jerome Powell now speaks of a “softish landing” with at least “some pain.” Meanwhile, a hard-landing scenario is becoming the consensus among market analysts, economists, and investors.
It is much harder to achieve a soft landing under conditions of stagflationary negative supply shocks than it is when the economy is overheating because of excessive demand. Since World War II, there has never been a case where the Fed achieved a soft landing with inflation above 5% (it is currently above 8%) and unemployment below 5% (it is currently 3.7%). And if a hard landing is the baseline for the United States, it is even more likely in Europe, owing to the Russian energy shock, China’s slowdown, and the ECB falling even further behind the curve relative to the Fed.
Are we already in a recession? Not yet, but the US did report negative growth in the first half of the year, and most forward-looking indicators of economic activity in advanced economies point to a sharp slowdown that will grow even worse with monetary-policy tightening. A hard landing by year’s end should be regarded as the baseline scenario.
While many other analysts now agree, they seem to think that the coming recession will be short and shallow, whereas I have cautioned against such relative optimism, stressing the risk of a severe and protracted stagflationary debt crisis. And now, the latest distress in financial markets – including bond and credit markets – has reinforced my view that central banks’ efforts to bring inflation back down to target will cause both an economic and a financial crash.
I have also long argued that central banks, regardless of their tough talk, will feel immense pressure to reverse their tightening once the scenario of a hard economic landing and a financial crash materializes. Early signs of wimping out are already discernible in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the new government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE has launched an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds (the yields on which have spiked).
Monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture. Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in the first quarter of 2019, when the Fed stopped its quantitative-tightening (QT) program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts – after previously signaling continued rate hikes and QT – at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate in a world of excessive debt with risks of an economic and financial crash.
Moreover, there are early signs that the Great Moderation has given way to the Great Stagflation, which will be characterized by instability and a confluence of slow-motion negative supply shocks. In addition to the disruptions mentioned above, these shocks could include societal aging in many key economies (a problem made worse by immigration restrictions); Sino-American decoupling; a “geopolitical depression” and breakdown of multilateralism; new variants of COVID-19 and new outbreaks, such as monkeypox; the increasingly damaging consequences of climate change; cyberwarfare; and fiscal policies to boost wages and workers’ power.
Where does that leave the traditional 60/40 portfolio? I previously argued that the negative correlation between bond and equity prices would break down as inflation rises, and indeed it has. Between January and June of this year, US (and global) equity indices fell by over 20% while long-term bond yields rose from 1.5% to 3.5%, leading to massive losses on both equities and bonds (positive price correlation).
Moreover, bond yields fell during the market rally between July and mid-August (which I correctly predicted would be a dead-cat bounce), thus maintaining the positive price correlation; and since mid-August, equities have continued their sharp fall while bond yields have gone much higher. As higher inflation has led to tighter monetary policy, a balanced bear market for both equities and bonds has emerged.
But US and global equities have not yet fully priced in even a mild and short hard landing. Equities will fall by about 30% in a mild recession, and by 40% or more in the severe stagflationary debt crisis that I have predicted for the global economy. Signs of strain in debt markets are mounting: sovereign spreads and long-term bond rates are rising, and high-yield spreads are increasing sharply; leveraged-loan and collateralized-loan-obligation markets are shutting down; ’. The crisis is here.