Beijing has repeatedly called on the White House to end its illegal practices inside Syria; the nation was also among the first to send aid to Syria following last month’s earthquake
China has repeated calls for the US to end its illegal military occupation of Syria and stop looting the country’s resources, stressing that its continued presence has worsened Syria’s humanitarian crisis.
“We call on the United States to sincerely respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of other countries and to immediately stop its illegal military presence and marauding in Syria,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a news conference on 11 March.
“The United States has illegally intervened in military activities related to the Syrian crisis, which has led to the death of a large number of innocent civilians and a serious humanitarian disaster,” Mao added before calling on US officials to lift crushing economic sanctions on Syria.
Beijing’s call came just two days after US lawmakers voted against a War Powers Resolution that called for withdrawing troops from Syria.
Around 900 US troops are currently deployed in the Levantine nation, controlling nearly a third of the country and a large portion of its oil fields. Their deployment is illegal under international law as it was not approved by the government in Damascus.
This is not the first time Beijing has bashed Washington’s illegal presence in Syria. Back in January, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Syria’s energy crisis and humanitarian disaster are a result of the US and its proxy militias plundering its resources.
“US stationing troops in Syria is illegal. US smuggling oil and grain from Syria is illegal. US missile attacks against Syria are also illegal,” he said then.
A year ago, Chinese and Syrian officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) welcoming Damascus into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Launched nine years ago, the BRI is a mega-infrastructure project that seeks to bring capital and infrastructure to Global South countries while dramatically strengthening connectivity for commerce, finance, and culture.
China was among the first nations to send aid to Syria following last month’s devastating earthquake when aid deliveries from the west were being held up due to US sanctions.
Here is my full interview with Graham Hancock. He is a journalist, writer and author, best known for his theories on human civilization. His new 8-part docuseries ‘Ancient Apocalypse’ is streaming now on Netflix. Most of his work has focused on investigating his thesis that a global cataclysm wiped out a great global civilisation thousands of years ago.
On March 6, Seymour “Sy” Hersh spoke about the Nord Stream explosion on September 26, 2022. He reveals in his substack how it was the result of Washington Administration authorizing C4 explosives be planted on the pipelines in June under the cover of a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea, and then setting them off using a signal from a sonar buoy dropped on the surface. Hersh discusses the discussion of the sabotage at the UN, the decline of his brand of journalism in mainstream media and more!
The growing number of institutional failures is a signal that the entire economic system is under pressure
“Depositors could panic, resulting in national runs on banks. Since lenders don’t have the money they will be forced to close their doors and block depositors’ access to their accounts. As governments cannot protect all depositors, we could be facing a 1929-style Great Depression or worse – the collapse of the entire Western financial system.”
The US banking industry is reeling from a string of bank failures, which kicked off last week and continue to rattle both domestic and global markets. Economists spell doom and gloom, despite efforts to stem the fallout. Here’s what you need to know.
What happened? California-based, crypto-focused bank Silvergate was the first to announce impending liquidation last Wednesday. Then came tech and start-up favorite Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the implosion of which on Friday was the largest US bank collapse since the financial crisis of 2008. New York-based Signature Bank was the latest to be shut down over the weekend, as regulators feared for its liquidity.
Why did the banks fail? The banks saw their stocks plunge following massive deposit outflows amid fears of a recession, higher interest rates, and a slowdown in the market for initial public offerings. These factors made it harder for many businesses to raise additional cash and led companies to draw down their deposits at SVB and similar lenders.
What do interest rates have to do with it? In order to tame inflation, governments in the West began to raise interest rates. There is a historic correlation between higher interest rates and failures of overleveraged financial institutions. Overleveraging occurs when a business has borrowed too much money and is unable to pay interest or principal repayments, or maintain payments for its operating expenses. Interest rates in the US have been hiked on more than one occasion over the past year, and many analysts warn they are currently too high at 4.5%-4.75% to keep financial bubbles from bursting.
Who’s next? The stock meltdown resumed with a vengeance on Monday, with several bank stocks halted due to volatility. As of mid-day, PacWest Bancorp, Zions Bancorporation, First Republic Bank and Regions Financial were no longer trading until further notice.
How did the Fed react? The Federal Reserve, US Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on Sunday announced a new emergency program aiming to shore up confidence in the banking system and protect depositors of failing banks. They will allow both insured and uninsured depositors of the collapsed banks full access to their money through a special FDIC fund. The Fed also separately announced it would make additional funding available for banks in cases of emergency, through a new Bank Term Funding Program.
Will the measures stem the fallout of the collapses? Traders and analysts claim the panic is already ripe and could further push investors to move funds from small banks to what they view as the safety of large systemically important lenders. This would drain liquidity from the latter and may lead to their downfall.
Is there a risk of a broader upheaval? Governments in the US, Britain and Canada have been taking extraordinary steps to prevent a potential banking crisis. Germany’s finance watchdog stated the “distressed situation” of SVB’s German branch “does not pose a threat to financial stability.” According to some analysts, there’s no risk of contagion, since the authorities have stepped in.
What’s the worst-case scenario? Depositors could panic, resulting in national runs on banks. Since lenders don’t have the money they will be forced to close their doors and block depositors’ access to their accounts. As governments cannot protect all depositors, we could be facing a 1929-style Great Depression or worse – the collapse of the entire Western financial system.
Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel hedge fund, says the US central bank’s rescue package for Silicon Valley Bank shows that American capitalism is “breaking down before our eyes”.
Griffin told the Financial Times that US taxpayers should not have to bail out institutional investors, following the decision by the US Federal Reserve to intervene to prevent contagion throughout the US banking sector following the collapse of Santa Clara-based SVB.
“The US is supposed to be a capitalist economy, and that’s breaking down before our eyes,” he said in an interview. “There’s been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full.”
SVB was shut down by US regulators on Friday after customers raced to withdraw $42bn — a quarter of its total deposits — in one day and a failed effort to raise new capital called into question the future of the tech-focused lender.
On Sunday, the Fed unveiled a lending facility so that “banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors”. Those at SVB and Signature Bank would be protected from loss, even if their deposits exceeded the normal $250,000 insurance limit, said officials.
Critics of the Fed’s move have pointed to the risk of moral hazard that comes from making all depositors whole on the money they have with SVB, while regulators face questions over missed warning signs.
Did you think that the Federal Reserve was just going to stand by and watch the U.S. banking system completely collapse? In response to the stunning failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the Federal Reserve announced a rescue plan on Sunday evening that is going to radically change banking in America forever. All deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be fully guaranteed and will be available on Monday.
Did you think that the Federal Reserve was just going to stand by and watch the U.S. banking system completely collapse? In response to the stunning failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the Federal Reserve announced a rescue plan on Sunday evening that is going to radically change banking in America forever. All deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be fully guaranteed and will be available on Monday. Of course the Federal Reserve can’t just make an exception for these two banks. If they are going to do this for them, that means that they are going to have to do it for everyone else too. So what this means is that from this point forward the Federal Reserve is essentially promising to guarantee every bank account in America. Considering the fact that more than 19 trillion dollars is deposited with U.S. banks, that is quite a promise to make.
To support American businesses and households, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors. This action will bolster the capacity of the banking system to safeguard deposits and ensure the ongoing provision of money and credit to the economy.
The Federal Reserve is prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise.
The additional funding will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.
With approval of the Treasury Secretary, the Department of the Treasury will make available up to $25 billion from the Exchange Stabilization Fund as a backstop for the BTFP. The Federal Reserve does not anticipate that it will be necessary to draw on these backstop funds.
After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary Yellen, after consultation with the President, approved actions to enable the FDIC to complete its resolutions of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in a manner that fully protects all depositors, both insured and uninsured. These actions will reduce stress across the financial system, support financial stability and minimize any impact on businesses, households, taxpayers, and the broader economy.
The Board is carefully monitoring developments in financial markets. The capital and liquidity positions of the U.S. banking system are strong and the U.S. financial system is resilient.
Depository institutions may obtain liquidity against a wide range of collateral through the discount window, which remains open and available. In addition, the discount window will apply the same margins used for the securities eligible for the BTFP, further increasing lendable value at the window.
The Board is closely monitoring conditions across the financial system and is prepared to use its full range of tools to support households and businesses, and will take additional steps as appropriate.
Please don’t just skim those paragraphs.
Take the time to read them in detail, because what the Fed just did literally changes everything.
From now on, nobody will have to worry that their bank will fail, and the Fed has decided to completely end the war against inflation.
Translation: the Fed’s hiking cycle is dead and buried, and here comes the next round of massive liquidity injections. It also means that the Fed, Treasury and FDIC have just experienced the most devastating humiliation in recent history – just 4 days ago Powell was telling Congress he could hike 50bps and here we are now using taxpayer funds to bail out banks that have collapsed because they couldn’t even handle 4.75% and somehow the Fed has no idea!
That analysis is right on the money.
I warned that our system could not handle higher interest rates, and higher rates were directly related to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
So there won’t be any more rate hikes.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Fed started cutting rates very soon.
In addition, all of the fresh money that the Fed will be injecting into the financial system now will be highly inflationary.
We are being told that the Fed’s plan won’t cost taxpayers a dime, but the truth is that inflation is a tax on all of us.
So the financial community may be praising this “extraordinary intervention” by the Fed, but there will inevitably be a very high price to pay for spraying money around so recklessly.
JUST IN – Feds consider "extraordinary intervention" to safeguard all uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank — WaPo
As I have repeatedly warned my readers, our fundamentally flawed system simply cannot survive without artificial support.
And as Bill Ackman has noted, if the Fed had just stood by and done nothing we would have been facing a nightmare scenario as early as next week…
The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake. By allowing @SVB_Financial to fail without protecting all depositors, the world has woken up to what an uninsured deposit is — an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank. Absent @jpmorgan@citi or… https://t.co/SqdkFK7Fld
Over the past several days, we really did come to the brink of the abyss.
But now the Federal Reserve has come charging to the rescue and so everything is okay, right?
I wish that was actually true.
As a result of the Fed’s reckless rate hiking strategy, U.S. banks are now sitting on 620 billion dollars of unrealized losses.
That is “billion” with a “b”, and that is a ticking time bomb that is not going to go away any time soon.
Meanwhile, the housing bubble is imploding, we are heading into the worst commercial real estate crisis in all of U.S. history, and now faith in the U.S. banking system has been greatly shaken.
This crisis is not even close to over.
And every time there is a new eruption somewhere, the Fed will try to put the flames out with generous injections of fresh liquidity.
Virtually everyone applauds when the Fed starts spraying money around, but by now all of us should realize that this story is not going to have a happy ending.
The skunks may have contracted influenza by scavenging wild birds, B.C. government says
The Canadian Press · Posted: Mar 13, 2023
Eight skunks found dead in late February tested positive for avian flu after they were hospitalized for suspected poisoning. (Heiko Kiera/Shutterstock)
Eight skunks found dead last month in Vancouver and nearby Richmond, B.C., have tested positive for avian flu.
The B.C. government says it is the same strain of avian influenza associated with the outbreak that began in April 2022.
The skunks were found in residential areas in both cities and were taken to B.C.’s Animal Health Centre over concerns they may have been deliberately poisoned.
British Columbia’s Ministry of Agriculture says the skunks were infected with the same H5N1 strain that has caused the deaths of millions of domestic poultry since the outbreak began in April last year.
The ministry says in a statement the skunks may have contracted H5N1 by scavenging on infected wild birds.
The statement says while avian flu in skunks is considered to be a low risk to human health, there are always risks when people or pets come into contact with sick or dead wild animals.
Since last April, the ministry says wildlife infected by the flu included more than 20 species of wild birds, two skunks and a fox found in rural areas of the province.
The ruling class has culled millions of birds making sure to devastate the food supply and destroy financially the small farms in the United States. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own website now says that this bird flu in humans is “sporadic.”
The avian flu has spread to several different mammals, including skunks. Four skunks were found dead in Larimer County, Colorado as the H5N1 bird flu continues to spread to multiple species.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officials said four dead skunks in Larimer County recently tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza, according to a report by 1310KFKA.
State Parks and Wildlife officials first confirmed the H5N1 strain of the bird flu among wild geese in northeast Colorado last March, agency spokesman Travis Duncan said in a release. Now they’ve confirmed three cases of the virus in mammals, which showed signs of neurologic symptoms, general weakness, and organ damage before their deaths. The first mammal known to contract the bird flu was a black bear in Huerfano County, which state wildlife officials euthanized after seeing it suffer from seizures, Duncan said. The animal’s remains had frozen in the wild and the “authorities” left it until it thawed enough to be taken to a health lab for testing, which confirmed traces of H5N1.
A skunk from Weld County tested positive for the virus in November, Duncan said. And in mid-January, a mountain lion was found dead in Gunnison County, Duncan said. The lion also tested positive for H5N1 and suffered liver damage and bronchointerstitial pneumonia.
“Similar to many local species, mountain lions move through our communities on a regular basis as they travel between seasonal ranges throughout the year,” Brandon Diamond, a Parks and Wildlife manager, said in the release. “It was only a matter of time before the first (bird flu) case was confirmed in Gunnison County based on known cases in adjacent counties.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers transmission to humans. pets, and wild mammals as low. However, the “scientists” responsible for crafting the COVID narrative are working hard on the bird flu one:
The ruling class has culled millions of birds making sure to devastate the food supply and destroy financially the small farms in the United States. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own website now says that this bird flu in humans is “sporadic.”
Sporadic human cases of H5N1 reported with H5N1 viruses circulating in birds since 2021 have occurred following exposure to infected poultry.
Human infections with bird flu viruses can happen when virus gets into a person’s eyes, nose or mouth, or is inhaled. This can happen when virus is in the air (in droplets or possibly dust) and a person breathes it in, or possibly when a person touches something that has virus on it and then touches their mouth, eyes or nose. The spread of bird flu viruses from one infected person to a close contact is very rare, and when it has happened, it has not led to continued spread among people. –CDC.gov
With the banking system in free fall, and the public thoroughly distracted by their fiat currency going up in flames, the bird flu narrative could unfold. Unfortunately, we are going to have to watch everything because this year is not getting any easier.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 