#Texas was the first #US state to ban #BlackRock from doing business with the state.

#Florida has now followed suit.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law in 2021 to ban financial companies, including BlackRock and several other financial companies, that have #ESG policies that discriminate against the #oil & #gas sector.

FLORIDA PULLS $2 BLN FROM BLACKROCK IN LARGEST ANTI-ESG DIVESTMENT PUSHBACK

#Florida's chief financial officer said on Thursday his department would pull $2 billion worth of its assets managed by BlackRock Inc.

The move is the biggest such divestment by a US state opposed to the asset manager's environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) policies.

The move will hardly dent BlackRock's $8 trillion in assets but drew a strong response from the company, which said the action put politics over investor interests.

The refrain across #Europe is that:

"This recession will be shallow."

However that certainly isn't the message visible in global manufacturing #PMIs (Purchasing Managers Index)

Forward-looking order-inventories are at 2008 levels in:

•Austria (top left),
•Poland (top right),
•Czech (bottom left) and
•UK (bottom right).

#Raytheon's CEO says that the #US is working with Middle Eastern countries to move a handful of #NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) to #Ukraine.

The US plans to then backfill those systems with new #NASAMS in the #MiddleEast over the next 24 months.

US LOOKS TO SHIFT AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS FROM MIDDLE EAST TO UKRAINE, RAYTHEON CHIEF SAYS

The Biden administration would have to approve the arrangement to transfer the air defense systems to Ukraine.

This is 20 year-old news for me, but a good primer for people who don't know much about NED:

"The NED, the heir of the CIA's covert Cold War programs, is continuing to build up its networks abroad and interfere in the sovereign affairs of world players to maintain Washington's dominance. Still, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the US' broader power structure, comprising its global spying and cyber apparatus busted by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, CIA black sites, Pentagon military bases spread around the world, hundreds of secret overseas biolabs, and many other facilities which have yet to be scrutinized by the international community." https://sputniknews.com/20221125/us-ned-global-meddler-and-rightful-heir-of-cia-1104671859.html

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
The proof for lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 was published in 2015.

#Fauci vehemently insisted his agency did NOT fund Gain-of-Function research on bat coronaviruses.

The pinnacle of such theater were the jousting matches between Senator #RandPaul and Dr. Anthony #Fauci at Senate Health Committee hearings

And yet, to see that the NIH was, in fact, funding Gain-of-Function research on bat coronaviruses, one need only to read the 2015 paper titled:

"A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence" by Veneet Menachery, Zhengli-Li Shi, Ralph Baric, et al.

This study plainly states that the authors conducted Gain-of-Function research on bat coronaviruses in order to make them "infectious to primary human airway epithelial cells."

Towards the end of the paper, the reader comes to the following section:

"Biosafety and Biosecurity:

Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol

These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS and SARS Viruses (http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf).

This paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the NIH.

Continuation of these studies was requested, and this has been approved by the NIH."

Note that the reason for pausing Gain-of-Function research was the determination that its risks outweighed its potential benefit.

The legalistic assertion that this particular Gain-of-Function research was authorized to continue, flies in the face of the risk assessment.

Such research was, in 2014, deemed to be too dangerous for mankind, and in fact (as we now know) it was too dangerous.

That Professor Baric’s research was approved before this negative risk assessment was made is immaterial.

The 2015 paper and other documents show that Ralph Baric and his Chinese colleague, Zhengli-Li Shi, were indeed engineering SARS-like bat coronaviruses in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in order to make them highly infectious to humans

MORE

#German exports to non-#EU countries fell by 1.6% in October compared to the previous month,.

Hospitality sales in September fell by 0.9% compared to the previous month.

#Building permits fell by a significant 8.1% compared to the same month last year.

The number of corporate #bankruptcies rose by a massive 34% in September compared to the same month last year.

A further 40% increase is expected for November 2022.

Only one economic parameter is constantly increasing:

Producer prices in October 2022 were a gigantic 34.5% higher than in the same month last year.

Because companies are only passing the price explosion on to consumers in bits and pieces, the big surprise is yet to come in supermarkets.

Officially, the #inflation rate is 10.4%, which sounds moderate, but it is also due to the so-called “shopping basket” used to calculate inflation.

The “shopping basket” is full of products and services that do not reflect the real life of ordinary people.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/12/02/parallel-society-ukrainian-children-in-german-schools-2/ (scroll down)

DE-DOLLARISATION PICKS UP PACE.

Seven Russian corporate giants, including #Rusal, #Rosneft and #Polyus, have raised a total of 42 billion #yuan in bonds on the Russian market, according to Reuters

Thee is a new credit system in the Global South.

The system will include a single payment card – in direct competition with Visa and Mastercard – merging the already existing Russian #MIR, #China’s #UnionPay, #India’s #RuPay, #Brazil’s #Elo, and others.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE YUAN'S THE NEW DOLLAR AS RUSSIA RIDES TO THE REDBACK

#Russia turns to the #Chinese currency amid sanctions. #Moscow becomes No.4 offshore trading centre for #yuan.

Yuan's share of Russian FX market jumps from 1% to 45%.

While the yuan, or renminbi, has been making gradual inroads into Russia for years, the crawl has turned into a sprint in the past nine months as the currency has swept into the country's markets and trade flows, according to a Reuters review of data and interviews with 10 business and finance players.

Russia's financial shift eastwards could boost cross-border commerce, present a growing economic counterweight to the dollar and limit Western efforts to pressure Moscow by economic means.

Total transactions in the yuan-rouble pair on the Moscow Exchange ballooned to an average of almost 9 billion yuan ($1.25 billion) a day last month, exchange data analysed by Reuters showed.

Previously, they rarely exceeded 1 billion yuan in an entire week.
"What happened was that it became suddenly very risky and expensive to keep traditional currencies - dollar, euro, British pounds," said Andrei Akopian, managing director of Moscow-based investment firm Caderus Capital, citing the potential danger of a bank that keeps foreign currency deposits being sanctioned

The death toll in the shelling of the centre of Donetsk increased to four
Defence headquarters: the death toll in the shelling of the centre of Donetsk has reached four, three were injured

DONETSK, December 5 - RIA Novosti. The number of those killed in the shelling of Donetsk by the Armed Forces of Ukraine has increased to four, the headquarters of the territorial defence of the DPR reported in Telegram.
"As a result of the shelling of the VFU (the armed formations of Ukraine - Ed.) in the centre of Donetsk, the death toll increased to four people, three more civilians were injured," the publication says.
Earlier on Monday, the agency reported the death of one civilian and the injury of two people as a result of a Ukrainian attack on the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic.
On December 5, the DPR representative office in the JCCC recorded two shelling of the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in total, 14 rockets were fired from the Grad MLRS into the city centre.

As the mayor of the capital of the DPR Alexei Kulemzin noted, the buildings of a secondary school and two kindergartens were damaged.
#TransFormatorBuzzes : 💤
Now, at least, they do not claim, that "they are shooting themselves". They simply kill civilians, as a routine. Every day. Day after day. There is a big difference between what Russian Air Force and the Ukrainian army are doing. Russian forces are hitting military targets, or targets that are crucial to the Ukrainian defence. There may be some civilian casualties accidentally. Mostly because of the Ukrainian AA defences are placed in populated areas, using civilians as a shield. Ukrainians are methodically killing civilians (which they just recently considered their compatriots), in the locations, where there is no military targets... Just because they can. Just to scare people into submission. Yes, they still can, not for long, though. Russians are good learners, they learn in a hard way, but remember lessons forever.
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🇺🇦 Khokhols say hello to all their leadership and promise to survive, but not for the sake of victory, but in order to hang them on the Maidan. And they advise "Zelensky and co" to pray that the Russians get to them first, so there is a chance to stay alive in prison.