Very telling when they decide to furlough drivers during the busiest delivery time of the year.


FedEx Freight to begin driver furloughs next month

FedEx Freight, the less-than-truckload arm of FedEx Corp. and the nation’s largest LTL carrier, said Saturday it will furlough an undetermined number of drivers starting in early December.

The furloughs are scheduled to last about 90 days, during which time affected workers will continue to receive health benefits and will be allowed to file for unemployment benefits in their respective states of residence. Some eligible employees will be offered permanent transfer opportunities to other markets that have hiring needs, the unit said in a statement.

The furloughs are expected to affect a small number of drivers, and not all facilities will be targeted, said Miranda Yarbro, a FedEx Freight spokesperson. The furloughs will be voluntary, Yarbro added.

“Because of our previous experience with furlough and with the incentives we are offering, we are expecting employees to volunteer to meet the business need,” Yarbro said in an email.

The unit employs about 45,000 people. It was not immediately clear how many drivers it employs.

The action was taken in response to slowing macroeconomic conditions that have impacted LTL demand in recent weeks, the unit said. The LTL segment, which has shown very strong growth coming out of the pandemic, has seen volumes level off recently due to economic uncertainty caused by high inflation and recession concerns.
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https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fedex-freight-to-begin-driver-furloughs-next-month

What would happen if a nuclear bomb was used in Ukraine?
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Damaged food supply could kill billions

There are, however, attempts to simulate what nuclear fallout would look like after a contemporary bombing.

Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey created a website called NUKEMAP to do just that. It compares the fallout from bombs detonated in the sky with those detonated on the ground.

Then, a study published in the journal Nature in August offered some projections of what would happen to the environment, population and global food supply if Russia and the US waged a weeklong nuclear war using strategic nuclear weapons.

The authors of the study estimated that there would be 360 million immediate fatalities from the use of the weapons themselves, and over five billion people would be left without food for two years after such a nuclear war — that is around 60% of the world's population. The disruption to the food supply would be caused by massive amounts of soot emitted by fires ignited by explosions.
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https://www.dw.com/en/what-would-happen-if-a-nuclear-bomb-was-used-in-ukraine/a-63724809

Interesting statement...



Diana West@realDianaWest
22h
·
America is now like High Noon, without Gary Cooper.

@jungatheart
@Alacran

These people aren’t stupid and you have to look at their goals from their perspective.  

If you explain to them that 2/3 of the ammonia in fertilizers comes from chemical plants and that the latter require natural gas sourced hydrogen to produce the ammonia, and that reducing fossil fuels leads to food shortages, they are OK with that.  They want to end commercial farming of plants and animals.  When you tell them that “billions of humans would die”, they are OK with that.  That’s the goal, even if they are one of the humans that must sacrifice their life for that goal!  They are useful idiots for the globalists, but their beliefs amount to a religion, and they want to execute their goals with the same religious fervor as an ISIS fighter.

The only way to fight them is imprison them in labor camps and re-educate them.  If that fails—> gas chambers.

Because you know they are thinking the same thing about us.  We can hope our side's "age and treachery" is enough to overcome their side's "vapid youth and fleeting beauty."

That does make more sense on one level.
Just another form of suicide for the mentally
ill.

Don't get yourself in trouble saying the raw truth dude.

I have been phrasing it something like this, 'a family and good friends can help deprogram a person from a cult successfully, but how would that happen for 100 million people in the US (alone)?'

Even if freedom loving people win politically, the people and the organizations of the cultists remains, and now they have more time on their hands.

I don't see any end game to the situation that doesn't involve mass graves. That fate is already written in stone. The only question is who goes in them.

Did you have to use the term “gas chambers”?  

I’m torn between thinking that they think they are protected, much like Antifa was protected here, or that they are filled with so much hate that they are on a suicide mission & want to take as many of us with them as possible.  Maybe it’s a little bit of both?

I do think they are being manipulated and used as cannon fodder to perpetuate the agenda by those who are pulling the strings, hence my color revolution reference.

I agree, this is a fight for the very existence of our culture, our principles,  our values, our legacy, our religion, and our civilization against a force that wants to completely erase it from the face of the earth.  There is no room for coexistence with that on any level, but by the time most on our side finally sees that, it will be too late.

This is where the US is in today’s world.  We are no longer respected, we are hated.  No changing of a President or Congress can repair that.

Turkey Says US Complicit In Istanbul Bombing, Rejects Condolence Message

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/turkey-says-us-complicit-istanbul-bombing-rejects-condolence-message

Disclose.tv@disclosetv
3h
·
·

Edited
NOW - Attack on Gustav Klimt's "Death and Life" painting with black liquid at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

https://gab.com/disclosetv/posts/109347920964564761

Disclose.tv@disclosetv
1h
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NEW - The B20 calls on the G20 to adopt vaccine passports using WHO standards and to promote digital identity schemes.

“Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by WHO — if you have been vaccinated or tested properly — then you can move around,” said the Indonesian health minister in Bali.

https://gab.com/disclosetv/posts/109348399031046225

Is there a rule that eco-terrorists have to be ugly.  Cause that chick is uuuuugly.

ETA:  Even if they just slap her hand for the vandalism, she should be prosecuted for being ugly in public, bless her heart.

Too late is rapidly approaching, and self-delusion is everywhere.  People are getting upset that republicans aren't winning, when it's the same republicans who backstab them, and cement the democrats' policies in place rather than rolling them back.

While electing republicans may slow down the shift to socialism, it also ensures it, because when republicans are in power the previously enacted democrat policies are made permanent and normalized, and the public is thereby acclimated to the insane leftwing policies already in place.  

What republicans should do is shred the democrat policies, but they don't.  They just pause things where they are, and slow down the move to the Left.  This pause only serves as a pressure release valve, preventing rebellion.

If republicans weren't elected, the Dems would just keep pushing left, harder and harder, and in accelerating their plans would end up overstepping, finally getting people off their asses and pushing back.

The Overton window keeps moving to the left, decade after decade, precisely because the GOP wins once in a while, and rather than bringing the country back into balance and back toward conservatism, the gop just pauses us where we are, and that becomes the new normal, the new stepping off point for next time Dems are in charge.

Ugly girls especially need attention.

Good post thanks.

And GD is filled with threads advocating exactly what you are describing, all in the name of potentially having a winning candidate, and in the end, these people will turn on us just like the ones of the opposing party.  

It’s only going to become harder and harder to stand on ones principles.

lol
How about fuck you.

Attached File


https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-come-programmable-dollars-new-york-fed-and-12-banking-giants-launch-digital-dollar

https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/financial-services-and-infrastructure/2022/20221115

The G20 looks more like a meeting of Bond villains discussing how they will dominate the world.



TommyRobinsonOfficial@TommyRobinsonOfficial
2h
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Trudeau speaking at B20 (the business leaders offshoot of the G20) confirming AI will monitor online speech.

Now we know why Klaus Schwab is there.

https://gab.com/TommyRobinsonOfficial/posts/109348996022198447

Spelled Fourth Reich wrong.

Future of the world...Russia, Ukraine, Chyna, Europe all kaput due to lack of food and demographics.

Buddy just sent me this
Attached File

Disclose.tv@disclosetv
1h
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JUST IN - White House requests $37.7 billion in new Ukraine funding.

https://gab.com/disclosetv/posts/109349679903981453

US Vows to Defend NATO Territory After Reports of Missiles Hitting Poland

U.S. Defense Department press secretary Pat Ryder said the Pentagon is aware of reports claiming that “two Russian missiles” hit an area inside Poland near the Ukrainian border and killed two people.

The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement rejecting claims it was involved and said it hasn’t carried out “strikes against targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” using “Russian weapons,” according to reports. The statement further asserted that claims to the contrary are “deliberate provocations.”

Reports on Tuesday claimed two missiles hit near the Polish town of Przewodow. Polish news outlets showed a destroyed farm vehicle and an image of a crater.

A spokesperson for the Polish government, Piotr Muller, said that Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki convened the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security and Defense Affairs on Tuesday, according to local media.

“Due to the crisis situation, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, in consultation with President Andrzej Duda, ordered a meeting at the National Security Bureau with members of the National Security and Defense Committee,” Muller told reporters.

At a news conference, Ryder said the United States is “aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland near the Ukraine border.” However, officials don’t have enough information to confirm those reports, he said.

He said that the United States “will defend every inch of NATO territory” as Washington waits for more information. “When it comes to force protection, we always take the safety and security of our troops no matter where they’re serving very seriously,” Ryder told reporters.

It’s not clear whether the missile strike was intentional or done in error.

The Russian Mash Telegram channel published a photo of what it claimed is a fragment from an S-300 missile that is often used by Ukraine, as some Russian state-run media outlets suggested Kyiv may be responsible for the incident.

“The reasons for this incident are not known at the moment,” local fire service spokesman, Marcin Lebiedowicz, told Poland’s Radio Lublin.

Unnamed U.S. officials told The Associated Press that two people died in the incident and asserted that the missiles were of Russian origin. It happened as Russia launched a barrage of missiles into Ukraine, and several crossed into Poland, which shares a lengthy border with Ukraine.

The Polish government has not publicly confirmed the information from the unnamed U.S. official to AP.

Neighboring Moldova was also affected. It reported massive power outages after the strikes knocked out a key power line that supplies the small nation, an official told AP.

Some European Union officials condemned the incident and blamed Russia although there has yet to be an official confirmation.

“My condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland. Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime,” wrote Latvia’s deputy prime minister, Artis Pabriks, on Twitter.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russia and said the reports represent a “significant escalation” in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/pentagon-says-the-us-is-aware-of-reports-of-missiles-striking-poland_4865096.html

From Oct.5, 2022...

Poland suggests hosting US nuclear weapons amid growing fears of Putin’s threats

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/poland-us-nuclear-wars-russia-putin-ukraine

FOURTH TURNING WINTER OF DEATH

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance.

“Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
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“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
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“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning


https://www.theburningplatform.com/2022/11/14/fourth-turning-winter-of-death/

Cheers gif, but I can't find it.




Sadly this.  "Vote harder" doesnt work, and we saw the entire house and senate betray us Jan 7 and after.  They show us what they are, each time gop gets in power.  Yet people desperately want these same feckless gop politicians to win.  "Oh we are so fucked if the Dems win, from AWB to more trillions in spending" they whine.

Sure, it'd be great if we could get someone like me or you elected, times 350.  But the shitbirds inCongress are nothing like the ideal Constitutional conservative, never will be, and they do us a disservice by merely slowing the Left down and failing to roll ANYTHING back.

GOP wins are needed for the Left to get the public acclimated to men playing women's sports and in their locker rooms, tranny story time, being forced to use "preferred pronouns", gun control (each successive infringement), etc.

I'd rather the Dems win and keep winning, (and they will since they cheat openly now), so that they push too far too fast.  Their oppression of citizens, infringement of rights and violation of the Constitution and BOR will accelerate and finally make the frog jump out of the pot, ready for action.

We already laundered $60 billion to the Dems through ukrain and ftx, but since ftx blew up, they need a new source of funds, huh?

This admin and congress are the most corrupt in history, and will face very real consequences for it.

Hahahahahahhaaa.

Murder a couple billion through viruses, vax, hunger and starvation.

You still have 6 billion pissed off people.

They will implement their policies, they will get their utopia. Billions will die.

And still, their system will fail, and it will fail catastrophically.

They are the architects of their own destruction and they are so arrogant and convinced of their own greatness, they don't even see it.

TommyRobinsonOfficial@TommyRobinsonOfficial
1h
·
Day 16 of protests as Brazilians swamp Rio military barracks asking them to stop Lula's socialist takeover.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20221115-thousands-of-brazilians-demand-army-support-to-block-lula-taking-power

https://gab.com/TommyRobinsonOfficial/posts/109350742210487419

TommyRobinsonOfficial@TommyRobinsonOfficial
1h
·
Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

ESG Endangering America’s Farms and Your Food: State Treasurers

The latest threat to farming can be identified in three familiar letters.

State treasurers at the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) told The Epoch Times on Nov. 14 that the United States’ agricultural base could be jeopardized by the top-down push for environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) scoring.

“It’s a real threat,” Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante said.

Farming is critical to the Cornhusker State’s economy, as that nickname suggests. The University of Arkansas reports that Nebraska produced over $21 billion in agricultural cash receipts during 2020.

During a panel discussion with Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder and SFOF CEO Derek Kreifels, Murante warned that ESG criteria in the financial sector pose a real risk to agriculture as we know it.

Many asset managers and leading banks have committed to “Net zero by 2050,” often through participation in United Nations-linked entities such as the “Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero” and “Climate Action 100.”

If those powerful institutions decide farming and ranching are excessively harmful to the climate, the flow of capital to agriculture could slow to a trickle—well before consumers feel the impact at their dinner tables to know the impact of the ESG efforts.

“When it comes to farmers and ranchers, how to get to net zero when using fertilizer, which is produced by natural gas, is extremely difficult—if not impossible—which is why we sometimes joke that the policy of certain asset managers seems to be that farmers can continue growing food, they just can’t use water or fertilizer to grow them,” Murante told The Epoch Times.

“The attack,” he said, “has already begun.”

Murante pointed out that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently joined former president Bill Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September.

Murante warned, “They’re not talking in theory, they’re not using rhetoric, they’re making commitments to make it happen, and we don’t think it is at all appropriate for public finances to be used for that purpose.”

Murante believes the dramatic increases in fertilizer prices since 2021 can be traced in part to ESG or ESG-like policies that are among the factors increasing the price of energy.

And activist investors who want companies to divest from fossil fuels as fast as possible aren’t exactly eager to fund new fossil fuel exploration and production.

Between July 2021 and July 2022, the cost of anhydrous ammonia surged from $726 a ton to $1,469 a ton, per the University of Illinois. That’s over 200 percent of the original price. Other fertilizer prices similarly increased during the same period, according to the same source.

“Anytime you drive up energy costs, you make farming and ranching extraordinarily difficult,” he said.

“Farmers are not Wall Street bankers. They can’t afford to just absorb a 200 percent increase in their cost of goods and their cost of doing business,” he continued.

Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder shares these concerns over ESG and farming, as well as other core industries for many states, including his.

“Louisiana is heavy in oil and gas and heavy in agriculture,” he told The Epoch Times.

Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick told The Epoch Times he was not aware of many examples of ESG policies directly impacting farmers and ranchers. But he agreed that ESG is indirectly harming food production through its effect on energy prices and inflation.

“I think that we can certainly attribute the rise in the cost of energy to ESG activism,” he said.

He believes the ESG risk to farmers and ranchers will increase significantly if ESG-style regulations on banking and the private sector continue to expand.

Fitzpatrick is especially worried about the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) proposed principles on what the U.S. government agency has classified as climate-related financial risks.

Virtually all banks in the United States carry FDIC coverage.

Coupled with proposed climate risk rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a hard line on climate from the FDIC could ultimately make things even harder for food producers, Fitzpatrick believes.

“That’s when you’re really going to have a significant impact on [agriculture], I think.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/esg-endangering-americas-farms-and-your-food-state-treasurers_4863103.html

ESG: The Merger of State and Corporate Power

In 2022, in the midst of a recession, record inflation, and a tumbling stock market, a corporate ideology known by the acronym ESG emerged from obscurity to become a headline topic. It has been called everything from a risk-management tool and a movement for a cleaner, more just world, to a “con,” a “fraud,” and even—in an Elon Musk tweet—“the devil incarnate.”

The term itself is opaque; ESG brings environmental, social, and governance causes together under one umbrella. The environmental component includes things such as transitioning to wind and solar energy from fossil fuels, and to electric vehicles from gasoline-powered cars.

The social component includes racial and gender equity, diversity training for employees, economic equity, and gun control. The governance component focus on how companies are run and includes racial and gender quotas for corporate boards, management, and staff, and—in the case of Exxon—putting green energy advocates on the board.

The Origins of ESG Ideology

The ESG movement is a derivative of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are 17 SDGs in all, ranging from “no poverty, zero hunger, and good health” to “responsible consumption and production” and “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.”

In 2019, the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual gathering of the world’s most powerful political and corporate leaders in Davos, Switzerland, signed a strategic partnership with the U.N. to advance the SDGs throughout the corporate sector. Led by founder and Chairman Klaus Schwab, the WEF issued the “Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

The manifesto declared that “a company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfills human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system.”

During the annual meeting, Schwab told the gathered corporate executives and world leaders, “Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, by a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to improve the status of the world.”

In a CNBC interview in 2020, Bank of America CEO and WEF International Business Council Chairman Brian Moynihan said, “To solve these huge problems that the world faces—this is U.N. week and the SDGs are the statement to the world of what we’d like to make progress on—you have to bring capitalism to the task.”

On Nov. 4, 100 executives from the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders issued a joint letter to attendees of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27), stating, “We are ready to work side-by-side with governments to deliver bold climate action.”

“Accelerating the transition to net zero requires significant collaboration and shared responsibility between the private and public sectors.”

Signatories of the letter included Coca-Cola, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Nestle, PepsiCo, Siemens, Sysco, and Unilever.

Speaking at the COP27 conference, former Vice President Al Gore concurred, saying, “We need $4.5 trillion per year to make this transition, and that can only come by unlocking access to private capital.”

Author and political analyst Michael Rectenwald told The Epoch Times, “This is a massive campaign that has already metastasized to almost all of the corporate world. The tentacles of the WEF extend to almost every sector of society.”

More than 500 of the world’s largest corporations have signed pledges to support ESG goals across industries including banking, insurance, asset management, tech, media, energy, manufacturing, and transportation. These pledges are signed as part of membership in international clubs like Climate Action 100+, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, the Net Zero Banking Alliance, and the Net Zero Asset Managers Alliance.

There’s no segment of the U.S. economy that’s outside the reach of this movement.

From its origins in U.N. think tanks and WEF conference rooms, ESG is then passed down to the corporate world via Wall Street, marketed as an investment strategy for companies to follow—voluntarily or involuntarily.

Carole Crozat, BlackRock’s head of sustainable investing research, explained to investors that “while measuring the alignment of investments to the U.N. SDGs is a complex and evolving task, we believe that their integration in investment decisions can help secure long-term financial performance.”

“Redirecting capital toward U.N. SDGs could offer $12 trillion of market opportunities linked to our long-term social and environmental well-being,” Crozat said.

ESG in Practice

In principle, ESG means that companies look beyond making profits and consider higher political and moral issues, such as the welfare of the planet; in practice, it means that corporations become political agents for left-wing causes. This concept is also called “stakeholder capitalism,” which has been endorsed by CEOs across the corporate world.

Speaking for Bank of America, Moynihan said, “Our research shows that companies that do well on ESG end up doing better … It defines capitalism the way that people want to define it, which is stakeholder capitalism and solving the big problems of the world.”

Stakeholder capitalism means that, instead of answering exclusively to shareholders, CEOs will focus on employees, the environment, and society at large. As head of the Business Roundtable, a club of America’s largest corporations, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon applauded the organization’s announcement in 2019 that corporate executives would henceforth follow stakeholder ideology, stating that the American dream was “fraying” and that “these modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.”

In accordance with ESG principles, stakeholder-oriented banks such as JPMorgan Chase refused to lend to oil drilling companies in Alaska. Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, and Major League Baseball fought against voter ID laws in Georgia that they claimed were racist.

The world’s largest food companies such as Nestle, Danone, Kellogg’s, General Mills, and Unilever encourage—and sometimes pressure—the hundreds of thousands of farmers who supply them to take up a U.N.-approved method of farming called “regenerative agriculture.”

As part of the U.N. and ESG goals to reduce shootings, banks including Citibank restricted lending to the firearms industry. Credit card companies Visa, Mastercard, and American Express began tracking purchases from gun shops.

Amalgamated Bank President Priscilla Sims Brown stated in an interview with CBS that “where there may be gun sales that are intended for black markets or we see patterns of gun purchases made in multiple gun shops … we can provide that information to authorities to investigate.” PayPal went a step further and refused to allow its payment services to be used to buy guns or ammunition.

Following ESG social criteria, Disney fought to repeal a Florida law that bans the teaching of sexual topics to schoolchildren in kindergarten through third grade, which Disney said was a human rights violation. Disney executives also announced during a staff meeting they were “adding queerness” and “advancing a not-so-secret gay agenda” in the children’s shows they produce.

Corporations across the board began implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion training for employees, with Coca-Cola urging employees to “be less white,” and asset manager Vanguard instructing its white male employees to accept “uncomfortable” criticism about their racist biases toward minorities. United Airlines set racial and gender quotas for hiring new pilots, and Bank of America announced that it would provide no-down-payment mortgages for minorities who want to buy a house.

The WEF, Bank of America, Disney, Coca-Cola, and PayPal didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A Money Machine That Spans the Globe

ESG isn’t just an ideology; it’s also an industry. ESG investment funds and other assets have rapidly grown over the past decade to reach a current $55 trillion worldwide. ESG assets are projected to grow to $100 trillion by 2025.

To put this in perspective, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the entire United States is currently about $21 trillion. The ESG industry is enormous and pervasive; it’s lucrative; and it has created a broad network of vested interests—consultants, rating agencies, accountants, investment managers, and proxy agents—to bring agnostics into the fold. Often, the companies that impose ESG ratings on companies, countries, and even U.S. states, also provide paid consulting services to help them improve their ratings.

The main drivers of the ESG movement are Wall Street banks and investment funds, which control the capital for the world economy. The three largest asset managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, together control more than $20 trillion in assets under management. Because they manage index funds, they own shares in most corporations that are included in market indexes like the S&P 500.

“If you just look at BlackRock by itself, it’s the first, second or third largest shareholder in 80 percent of the companies in the S&P 500,” Andrew Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants, told The Epoch Times. “They use that tremendous voting power, not only to advance this economic leftist agenda, but to put it above their obligation to generate returns for their investors.”

BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Epoch Times that “the way that these fund managers use ESG to push progressive politics is multifaceted. The first and probably the most public way is they get to vote the shares that they’re managing.”

“The more quiet, sort of less public way is that they have what they call engagement meetings with corporate leadership on these issues,” Hild said. “And when they show up, they don’t say: hey, we’re just representing ourselves, they say we represent ownership of 7.5-20 percent of your publicly traded shares. BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard together would be the largest shareholder in 90 percent of the S&P 500.”

Speaking at a New York Times conference in 2017, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink appeared to underscore this point, stating: “Behaviors are going to have to change and this is one thing we’re asking companies. You have to force behaviors and here at BlackRock we are forcing behaviors.” Fink writes an annual letter to CEOs, setting priorities for the coming year.

“If you read his annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink actually thinks he needs to tell the world’s CEOs every year what BlackRock thinks,” Puzder said. “He doesn’t have to go to every shareholder meeting, he just tells them what to do in a letter. And the letter the year before last said we need to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which will require a transformation of the entire economy.”

Despite its rhetoric to the contrary and its membership in various global ESG organizations, BlackRock has vehemently denied that it uses its influence to push a political agenda. Responding to a letter (pdf) from 19 state attorneys general who asserted that “BlackRock used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels,” BlackRock countered (pdf) that its funds were highly rated from a performance perspective and that “our participation in these initiatives is entirely consistent with our fiduciary obligations.”

Other financial institutions that have pledged support for the ESG movement include Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and UBS. And in pledging fealty to ESG goals, corporations are not only aligned with each other, but with governments, as well.

“It’s now becoming increasingly difficult to tell where the private sector ends and the government begins,” Alex Newman, CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media, told The Epoch Times. “We’re seeing a merger of the two.”

JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“In my experience, large Wall Street banks are not charitable institutions,” Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur and founder of Strive Asset Management, told The Epoch Times. “You look at which firms are rewarded with government packages, like who gets the COVID-19 stimulus packages; a lot of that flowed through BlackRock.”

Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, told The Epoch Times: “What we’re seeing is a new revolving door in Washington. We’re seeing liberal activists, whether they’re in the administration or on Capitol Hill, instead of leaving those positions and going to K Street to become lobbyists in Washington, what we’re seeing now is they’re going to Wall Street. And they’re using the enormous influence that these Wall Street firms have to really drive policy at the state and local level in a way they haven’t done before.”

Brian Deese, for example, who’s the current National Economic Council director, was global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, Hild noted.

“And you have Tom Donilon, who’s now been put in charge of a significant portion of our foreign policy, vis-à-vis China. And again, he comes right out of BlackRock and it’s going down the line.

“The Biden administration has been heavily staffed by BlackRock alums, and in some cases, it’s even scary some of the issues that they handled when they were at BlackRock. Tom Donilon, for example, recommended to clients while he was there that they tripled their exposure to China, and now he’s in charge of a portion of the Biden administration’s foreign policy vis a vis China.”

A Democratic Deficit

What’s most striking about ESG is how, in joining corporations with government under a common cause, it has created a new power structure that often supersedes national laws and overrides the Constitution. Working in collaboration with government agencies, corporations have engaged in enforcement, censorship, and warrantless surveillance, often doing what the government is legally prohibited from doing.

Some believe that this public–private alliance, which overrides democratic institutions, is necessary because the crises that humanity are facing—including climate change and racism—are so dire.

“The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security, and the very life of the planet,” President Joe Biden said in his speech at the U.N. COP27 summit on Nov. 11.

Calling for a “sustainability revolution” at the COP27 conference, former Vice President Al Gore condemned “the culture of death that surrounds our addiction to fossil fuels by digging up dead life forms and burning them recklessly in ways that create more death.”

But others are wary about this concentration of power and authority in so few hands, and the public’s loss of a voice or vote in such major decisions about the future.

“How you address racial inequity or global climate change, these are important enough questions that we should resolve them through free speech and debate in the public square by putting people into public office who are accountable to the American electorate. Companies are not accountable, BlackRock is not accountable, Larry Fink is not accountable,” Ramaswamy said.

“This is the heart of the question that was an issue in 1776, where we said for better or worse, citizens decide how to settle these common political questions through the political process where everyone’s voice and vote counts equally.”

New York University Finance Professor Aswath Damodaran told the Prague Finance Institute in November 2021: “Do you really want Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon deciding what’s good or bad for the world? You’ve outsourced what should be your responsibility as a voter, as a citizen, to CEOs of companies. Nothing good has ever come of doing that.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/esg-the-merger-of-state-and-corporate-power_4858981.html

Australia’s Banks have introduced a Social Credit System by linking Publics transactions to their Carbon Footprint

Banks that turn green, yes, but at what cost? Commonwealth Bank, an Australian bank also known as CBA, that already refuses to allow its clients to support The Expose, has teamed up for the first time with CoGo, a startup that specializes in “carbon management solutions”, to create a feature that monitors the carbon footprint of its customers through their transactions.

As part of this partnership, a select group of customers can view their carbon footprint through their online banking apps. In addition, they can purchase carbon credits to offset excess emissions from previous months.

Customers can pay a fee to help offset their CO2 footprint within the app.

Customers get notified when their individual purchases exceed the “acceptable” carbon average. The customer would then get guilt-inducing messages on his phone, like “8 trees were cut down”.

Towards mandatory monitoring of carbon footprints?

By combining the bank’s extensive customer roster with CoGo’s industry-leading capabilities, we will soon be able to offer enhanced transparency to customers so they can take concrete steps in reducing their environmental footprint, ” CommBank Group Director Angus Sullivan said in a statement on October 5.

He also added: ‘Our data capability will provide greater personalisation for customers over time, including more granular information about their carbon footprint with the option to offset individual transactions.’

The bank calculates a customer’s carbon footprint based on the ‘transactions made on your CommBank credit or debit cards’.

It says the national average for carbon emitted in kilograms is 1,280 – while a sustainable figure is around 200.

This upcoming feature will be available to all bank customers next year. Initially presented as a personalized carbon footprint.

Commonwealth Bank says the data is private and not given to CoGo, and that eventually, the data will be so specific it can be broken down into individual transactions.

Despite a supposedly better understanding of carbon footprints and their compensation, there is still a fear that such programs will become mandatory. This will restrict individual purchases under the guise of combating global warming.

In the scientific journal Nature, four climate experts raised the idea of ​​a disturbing program to better control individual consumer CO2 expenditures.

A kind of personal map on which the carbon footprint would be expressed in the form of quotas. These would decrease according to travel, heating and electricity costs and other domestic lifestyles.

Anyone who exceeds the limit in accordance with the national objectives of each country would thus be obliged to buy additional units on the personal carbon market. Reselling would be done by those with units to resell.

Would the travel bans and other extreme measures taken by governments around the world during the Covid-19 crisis have prepared the ground for a certain docility towards the introduction of revised financial control measures under the guise of the climate debate?

US Senator Rand Paul had already sounded the alarm about Davos attendees for whom “privacy is not a concern. […] They want to follow everyone with a QR code”.

He also said: “The real danger here that’s even more dangerous than all their phoney caring about carbon footprint,” he said. “The real danger is this look how bad your government is in a country where you get to vote for these people. This would be a government, a world government where you don’t get to vote on anybody. This is everybody’s worst nightmare.”

The measure of Commonwealth Bank is also in line with that of Credit Suisse. Through its “Tree Print” study, the European banking group also points the finger at Western lifestyles in the face of reforestation needs.

As a result, for a sustainable lifestyle according to the Paris Agreement, the “ideal” consumer would take only three showers a week, eat no more than 25 grams of cheese, eat insects, take only one short flight a year and only wash their clothes once per month.

In the UK we are already aware of the infamous “Nudge Unit” which is working with UK banks to implement a social credit system disguised as carbon guilt trip trackers.

According to the Nudge unit, banks should use their “wealth of data” to provide “carbon feedback” on transactions, and introduce social credit-style rewards and incentives to encourage “sustainable behaviours.”

We’re moving towards a net zero social credit system based on sustainable behaviour and a highly controlled populace.

https://expose-news.com/2022/11/15/australia-social-credit-bank-carbon-footprint/

Ain’t this some shit
Thailand working towards paperless system

Lots of bad juju packed in that.  That’s the future and it’s coming quickly.

They are so afraid of us that their need to control has become an obsession.

Don't waste food on them.

Surely that's behind glass.

This is true, but it won't happen with the GOP.  The two-party uniparty will not change.  You have some outliers like MTG, Boebert, and Gaetz, but they wouldn't be there without being GOP.

You make sense and then say crazy things like this.

What’s so crazy about that? They are absolutely the most corrupt organization in the history of the world. The consequences part is yet to be determined.

Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh...

TommyRobinsonOfficial@TommyRobinsonOfficial
35m
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Jens Stoltenberg: 'This is most likely Ukrainian air defense missile systems or missiles"

"This is not Ukraine's fault"

They were scrambling to invoke Article 5 when they instantly blamed Russia, the truth comes out and NATO are like "meh just mistake".

https://gab.com/TommyRobinsonOfficial/posts/109353723434598915

Riding through the Phoenix slums yesterday with @Michael_Yon as we waited for more of the fraud to be revealed in Arizona. This “Blue Hell” as Michael calls it, is what Democrats create everywhere they are given or steal power. #KariWon. Stop the steal 2.0!@RealAmVoice pic.twitter.com/RlrfZeI2QQ

— Ben Bergquam - Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News (@BenBergquam) November 15, 2022

At this point, there are only two entities left to administer those consequences, the American populous and God Almighty.

TommyRobinsonOfficial@TommyRobinsonOfficial
29m
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Xi Jinping telling off his mate Trudeau in public today:

"Everything we discussed has leaked to the newspaper, that's not appropriate, that's not how we do things." 😂

https://gab.com/TommyRobinsonOfficial/posts/109353841620681003