Banks escalate terror against the people
Shall we try to be 100% compliant, or end this abuse once and for all?
Great Britain, the ideological and strategic headquarters of the still undead Western Empire (formerly British Empire) has been something of a marvel to behold over the recent years. During the Covid 19 pandemic, or whatever that was, Britain implemented one of the world's harshest and longest lasting lockdowns. Even as the government paid behavioral psychologists to formulate fear-maximizing messaging strategies, top level government officials enjoyed themselves at private parties in sure knowledge that there was no risk to their health. Some of them crowed at their power to make people abide by arbitrary, unscientific measures they were imposing. We're all in this together (LOL)!
Leading the “free world” in Ukraine
British establishment has also been the world's most zealous cheerleader for war in Ukraine and the source of the most rabid Russophobic narratives. In fact, it was Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson who basically announced the coming war in a speech to the dignitaries in – where else – the City of London in November 2021:
"We hope that our friends [in Europe] may recognize that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability."
About that same time Britain sent additional troops and equipment to Poland and announced that the UK would enhance its permanent presence of troops and tanks in Germany. Shortly thereafter, the outgoing head of the UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter stated that the UK military would have to be ready for war with Russia.
Only a few months after his speech foreshadowing Ukraine war, Johnson would take it upon himself to wreck any chance of peace. In March 2022, during the relatively low-intensity phase of Russia's "special military operation," a negotiated peace deal was about to be signed between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the government of Turkye. At that point, Boris Johnson rushed to Kiev to make sure peace didn't break out and persuaded agent Zelensky not to sign the deal.
Look into my eyes… it’s the Americans!
For some odd reason, virtually all the media commentariat continue to insist that Johnson was sent by the US government as nothing more than America's obedient lapdog. Except that there is ZERO evidence for this. The notion that Johnson and his foreign policy cabal acted on their own initiative is simply not even entertained.
At the time, the Russian side was demanding Ukraine's neutrality, a commitment not to join NATO, and a special status for the Donbas. With those concessions, Russia would have withdrawn its troops from Ukraine's territory (Crimea remaining contested).
Unbanking the proles and the PEPs
Today, the people of this fine parliamentary democracy and bastion of freedom and human rights are seeing many of their compatriots mysteriously unbanked by the very same banking institutions who helped themselves to British taxpayers’ funds to bail themselves out after their reckless gambles turned sour. Now is that gratitude?
A few days ago former leader of the UKIP party and MEP Nigel Farage announced that his bank (Coutts) simply closed his account, no reason given (subsequently Coutts disingenuously explained that his balance was insufficient - that was a lie). Farage tried to open an account with eight other banks, all of which declined his request. No banking for you, Mr. Farage!
The reasons for this are unclear, but apparently have something to do with him being a PEP (politically exposed person) which supposedly makes him susceptible to bribery. But it seems that all other politicians, diplomats, and otherwise politically exposed persons have not been collectively unbanked. Yet!
We all appreciate how sensitive and uncompromising our banking establishments are when it comes to ethics and law - they didn't even think it important to prove that Mr. Farage broke the law or even did anything wrong or unethical. You can't be too careful these days. Well, as it turns out, Mr. Farage wasn't Britain's greatest legal/ethical risk for the bankers.
Willy-nilly, and away with you!
Another person they unbanked was one Alexandra Tolstoy, again based on the strict procedural standard known to the rest of us as willy-nilly. Ms. Tolstoy's interview with GB News, which aired earlier this week, contained some revealing details and is worth the 8 minutes' listen:
Apparently, the banks rely on certain data companies which provide the requisite dirt on their customers. One of them, apparently, is Refinitiv. The data is compiled in a way that is beyond shoddy, but it allows banks, applying the strict willy-nilly standard, to unbank their customers with no explanation given, destroy their businesses, leaving them to navigate a Kafkaesque maze to try and find out what they did (or might at some point do) wrong, what information about them caused them to lose their bank accounts and then jump through hoops to try to set the records straight.
Five million are at risk of being unbanked
Since all the banks rely on the same data sources, getting unbanked by one bank may mean, no banking for you anywhere in that bastion of freedom and human rights. It appears that five million British citizens are on data companies' record and at risk of losing their bank accounts.
How on earth were any of us ever persuaded to regard this malignant matrix as the free world, and how can anyone claim that "our values," the words so often uttered by our leaders in public, are anything more than a farcical lie? Over a century ago Lord Acton warned the Britons and all the rest of us that, "the issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks."
Eternal vigilance or eternal credulousness?
However, when I discussed these things with people over the years (the signs were there for anyone who cared to pay attention), I've often been dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Of course such things couldn't happen, banks must care for their reputation, they need depositors' business, bla, bla, bla - all the standard talking points "everyone" knows (Normies: “what, everyone out there is wrong and you are right?”)
As Goethe said, none are as blind as those who refuse to see. Unfortunately, many simply refused to see which is how we ended up in such a state of things. The price of liberty, as we might have learned, is eternal vigilance and most of us have been anything but vigilant. We’ve been credulous and complacent. Now the question is, what level of obedience and good behavior will it take to make sure we are not crushed by the institutions and structures that rule over us?
Or, should we at some point acknowledge that we've been had and rise up so that our children's foremost aspiration in life won't be to become the most compliant among citizens so that they may enjoy unmolested their allowed quota of Nitrogen or Carbon emissions and their ration of insect protein ?
Well, where would you rather live?
One of my favorite quips, heard many times in discussion of these issues, has been, "well, where would you rather live? In the West or in Russia?" This question is invariably posed by people who have never been to Russia, but know all about it because they watch TV and read the papers. For my part, I never replied Russia because that is not the point: the point is that we have to exercise critical discernment and vigilance where we are, because the abusiveness of this system is metastasizing in ways that with time can produce nightmarish outcomes.
As Aleksandr Solzhenytsin observed,
“All of the Communist parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it’s necessary to use disguises.”
The outcome of bureaucratic cruelty that was allowed to metastasize was the enslavement or killing of tens of millions of Soviet citizens on flimsiest of pretexts.
No, where would you rather raise your children?
Should we relax in the certain knowledge that this could never happen here? That's for each of us to decide. By today, things have become obvious enough that when people ask me where I would rather live, I ask them a slightly different question: where would you rather raise your children - in Russia or in the West? The reactions to that question are more interesting than the replies - it seems to me that at some level even many among the "normies" get it - they just can't admit it to themselves.
Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass investor reports which cover over 200 financial and commodities markets. One-month test drive is always free of charge, no jumping through hoops to cancel. To start your trial subscription, drop us an email at TrendCompass@ISystem-TF.com
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All the big institutions have adopted a messianic, horribly sanctimonious illiberalism. It's like an end times cult. Every failure is twisted into a cause to double down. Every catastrophe is proof of virtue. The banks already lowkey throttle the real economy and the people who work in it. With this new doctrine, they'll remove what's left of their utility to regular people.
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - apocryphally attributed to Henry Ford foreshadowed the tyranny.
What frightens me is that they do not need to hide anymore.