The price of oil could soar if the European Union (EU) abruptly bans Russian crude from its energy markets, JPMorgan said on Tuesday in a note.

According to the investment bank, a full and immediate embargo would displace four million barrels of Russian oil per day, sending the benchmark Brent crude to $185 a barrel.

"Such a ban would leave neither room nor time to re-route [supplies] to China, India, or other potential substitute buyers. In a slower phase-out, Russia would have more time to adjust its oil flows toward friendlier buyers and global ex-OPEC+ supply growth would have time to grow sufficiently to fill at least some of the Russia-sized hole in global oil supply."

The Wall Street bank's warning comes as the EU considers an embargo on Russian oil imports.

It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any "conspiracy theory of history;" for a search for "conspiracies" means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny imposed by the State, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the State rulers but by mysterious and arcane "social forces," or by the imperfect state of the world or, if in some way, everyone was responsible ("We Are All Murderers," proclaims one slogan), then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack on "conspiracy theories" means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the "general welfare" reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions. A "conspiracy theory" can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State's ideological propaganda.

— Murray N. Rothbard, Anatomy of the State

This essay represents a "conspiracy theory" (or better, a conspiracy hypothesis) about the uses of the term "conspiracy theory" itself. I acknowledge that the term is one of the most potent epithets that can be hurled at a writer or speaker, that it is mostly used to delegitimize and dismiss its target, and that it serves not only to discredit the claim that a writer or speaker makes but also the very investigation into purported conspiracies. The phrase represents a condensed, shorthand means of labeling a claim negatively and humiliating the claimant, disqualifying the claimant and the claim a priori. Likewise, in writing of the "conspiracy" behind the use of the phrase, I am hereby opening myself up to the charge of "conspiracy theory." I submit that the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" are used most frequently by those on the left, who usually associate the phrases with "right-wing" arguments and interlocutors. Therefore, in writing this essay, I am openly inviting the condemnation of leftists. But this is intentional.

In the US, the term "conspiracy theory" is often credited to a disinformation or deflection campaign of the CIA in connection with the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy — to discredit all but the official narrative concerning that event. But the Oxford English Dictionary finds the first usage in a 1908 article in the American Historical Review and defines the compound noun as "the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; specifically, a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event."

Monitors collected intel for Kiev while leadership hushed up forced seizure of its vehicles, Moscow claimed

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) collaborated with the Ukrainian government in its fight against the Donbass republics and tried to cover up offences by Ukrainian nationalist forces, Russia's deputy representative to the UN told a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

The accusations came as Dmitry Polyansky blasted Western powers, saying they were being hypocritical regarding the security crisis in Ukraine. The US and its allies pursue their own selfish interests rather than the interests of the Ukrainian people, when they fan hostilities in the east European country, the diplomat said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has taken his battle with Disney a step further, announcing at a press briefing on Tuesday that the state's legislature will consider terminating the special status of the Reedy Creek Improvement District that administers much of Walt Disney World.


DeSantis said that the special session of the state's legislature will be expanded to include considering the termination of all special districts enacted in Florida prior to 1968, according to a video of the press briefing shared by the governor on Twitter.

The special status, which Disney has had since 1967, gave the company the legal right to operate under its own government around Walt Disney World in central Florida.

Despite having reportedly lost more than 20,000 soldiers in the nearly two mostly unsuccessful months since invading Ukraine, the Russian military still has a "vast majority" of their combat capabilities, according to the Pentagon.

"We still assess that, in general, they have the vast majority of their assembled combat power available to them," spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. "From what they have assembled over the course of the fall and in the early winter months and weeks, they still have a lot of the amassed combat power available to them."

But Moscow's losses have taken their toll as well, including the destruction of 167 Russian aircraft, 790 tanks, eight boats and 67 anti-aircraft warfare systems, among other equipment, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense said earlier that day.

The revelations pouring out from John Durham is very enlightening which has confirmed that the Democrats for four years led by Hillary Clinton, set in motion the strategy to constantly attack Trump and thereby prevent him from carrying out his goal to drain the swamp. John Durham has revealed that the "secret Trump server is communicating with a Russian bank" was a totally fictitious claim put out their by Hillary which had no basis in fact whatsoever. It was just totally made up.

In a new filing, Durham revealed that the CIA concluded that cellphone data and Internet traffic provided by Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann was "not technically plausible" and "user created." This proved to be deliberately fabricating evidence which was the same strategy behind the notorious Christopher Steele dossier, which they also fabricated facts. Of course, the CIA was against Trump as was the NSA because they were on the agenda of creating war with Russia. Despite all of this evidence which is surfacing, still those on the left continued to ignore these facts and will not relent when it comes to bashing Trump. Clinton's team simply invented the entire story, forged evidence, and then presented it to the FBI and CIA as if it was something worth pursuing, derailing a presidency for years.

Could it be the same reason none want to talk about digital passports and killer injections?

Since I posted the article on March 30 about Pippa Malmgren's bombshell statement at the World Government Summit on the coming global digital money system, I have been inundated with emails from worried readers.

They want to know what they should do to protect their assets in the face of such a dramatic change.

I have not been able to respond to all these emails so I will respond here. Ideally, these emails should be directed to your representatives in Congress, who actually have the ability to stop or slow down the rush toward a digital currency.

But instead, our senators and representatives, even those on the House and Senate banking and financial oversight committees, have remained silent on this issue.

I am not a professional investment adviser, so take this for what it's worth.

Remaining 'nationalist battalion' militants and 'foreign mercenaries' in Mariupol will be spared if they lay down arms - Moscow

Russia on Tuesday offered another opportunity to surrender for the remaining Ukrainian forces holed up at the Azovstal steel plant in the Black Sea port city of Mariupol.

All those present at Azovstal should exit the facility between 14:00 and 16:00 Moscow time without any arms or ammunition on them, the Defense Ministry directed.

"Considering the catastrophic situation at the Azovstal metallurgical plant...the Russian Armed Forces again offer militants of nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries to stop hostilities and lay down their arms starting 12pm Moscow time on April 19, 2022," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"All who lay down their weapons are guaranteed the preservation of life," the ministry added.

The wording of the statement repeated - almost word for word - a similar offer made to the Ukrainian forces on Sunday, which they ended up rejecting. It has been reported that the Kiev authorities strictly forbid their troops from surrendering to Russians.

On Monday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked whether President Joe Biden or White House press secretary Jen Psaki herself would apologize for their inaccurate comments about "whipping" claims that came from a viral incident involving Border Patrol and Haitian migrants last September.

The report is expected to be published soon. In the meantime, the press secretary is using that to deflect from having to apologize.

"We've been told that the mounted Border Patrol officers the president accused of whipping migrants have been notified, they will not face criminal charges. So when is the president going to apologize to them?" the Fox News reporter asked.

Suggested clauses would incentivize reporting "pandemics", and see nations punished for "non-compliance".

The first public hearings on the proposed "Pandemic Treaty" are closed, with the next round due to start in mid-June.

We've been trying to keep this issue on our front page, entirely because the mainstream is so keen to ignore it and keep churning out partisan war porn and propaganda.

When we - and others - linked to the public submissions page, there was such a response that the WHO's website actually briefly crashed, or they pretended it crashed so people would stop sending them letters.

Either way, it's a win. Hopefully one we can replicate in the summer.

Until then, the signs are that what scant press coverage there is, mostly across the metaphorical back-pages of the internet, will be focused on making the treaty "strong enough" and ensuring national governments can be "held accountable".

An article in the UK's Telegraph from April 12th headlines:

Real risk a pandemic treaty could be 'too watered down' to stop new outbreaks

It focuses on a report from the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention (GPHC), and quotes one of the report's authors Dame Barbara Stocking:

Our biggest fear [...] is it's too easy to think that accountability doesn't matter. To have a treaty that does not have compliance in it, well frankly then there's no point in having a treaty,"

The GPHC report goes on to say that the current International Health Regulations are "too weak", and calls for the creation of a new "independent" international body to "assess government preparedness" and "publicly rebuke or praise countries, depending on their compliance with a set of agreed requirements".