The Great Taking
International Man Communique
Intentional Destruction: First Covid, Now Comes "The Great Taking"
by Matthew Smith
The Great Depression was a well-executed plan to seize assets, impoverish the population, and remake society. What comes next is worse..
A recent book by David Webb sheds new light on exactly what happened during the Great Depression. In Webb’s view, it was a set up.
Webb is a successful former investment banker and hedge fund manager with experience at the highest levels of the financial system. He published The Great Taking a few months ago, and recently supplemented it with a video documentary. Thorough, concise, comprehensible and FREE. Why? Because he wants everyone to understand what’s being done.
The Great Taking describes the roadmap to collapse the system, suppress the people, and seize all your assets. And it includes the receipts.
You Already Own Nothing
Webb’s book illustrates, among other things, how changes in the Uniform Commercial Code converted asset ownership into a security entitlement. The "entitlement" designation made personal property a mere contractual claim. The "entitled" person is a "beneficial" owner, but not the legal one.
In the event a financial institution is insolvent, the legal owner is the "entity that controls the security with a security interest." In essence, client assets belong to the banks. But it’s much worse than that. This isn’t simply a matter of losing your cash to a bank bail-in. The entire financial system has been wired for a controlled demolition.
Webb describes in detail how the trap was set, and how the Great Depression provides precedent. In 1933, FDR declared a "Bank Holiday." By executive order, banks were closed. Later, only those approved by the Fed were allowed to reopen.
Thousands of banks were left to die. People with money in those disfavored institutions lost all of it, as well as anything they’d financed (houses, cars, businesses) that they now couldn’t pay for. Then, a few "chosen" banks consolidated all the assets in the system.
Centralization and Systemic Risk
As Webb shows, the cake has been baked for years. But this week came a sign it’s coming out of the oven.
Last Monday, Bloomberg admitted that measures taken to ostensibly "protect the system" actually amplify risk.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, G20 ‘leaders’ mandated all standardized Over The Counter (OTC) derivatives be cleared through central counterparties (CCPs), ostensibly to reduce counter party risk and increase market transparency. The best known CCP in the US is the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which processes trillions of dollars of securities transactions each day.
Before 2012, OTC derivative trades were bi-lateral and counterparty risk was managed by parties to a transaction. When doing business directly with other firms, each had to make sure it was dealing with reliable parties. If they had a bad reputation or were not creditworthy, counterparties could consider them toxic and shut them out of trades. This, according to the wise G20 leadership, was too risky.
With the introduction of central clearing mandates, counterparty risk was shifted via CCPs away from the firms doing the deal to the system itself. Creditworthiness and reputation were replaced with collateral and complex models.
Brokers, banks, asset managers, hedge funds, corporations, insurance companies and other so-called "clearing parties" participate in the market by first posting collateral in the form of Initial Margin (IM) with the CCP. It’s through this IM and a separate and much smaller Default Fund (DF) held at the CCP that counterparty risk is managed.
To ‘Mutualise’ Losses
Shifting risk from individual parties to the collective is a recipe for trouble. But, as explained in a recent report from the BIS, it’s worse than that. The structure of CCPs themselves can cause "Margin Spirals" and "wrong-way risk" in the event of market turbulence.
In flight-to-safety episodes, CCPs hike margin requirements. According to the BIS,
"Sudden and large IM hikes force deleveraging by derivative counterparties and can precipitate fire sales that lead to higher volatility and additional IM hikes in so-called margin spirals."
We’ve already gotten a taste of what this can look like. Similar margin spirals "occurred in early 2020 (Covid-19) and 2022 (invasion of Ukraine), reflecting the risk-sensitive nature of IM models."
Government Bonds as a source of trouble
The second area of systemic risk is the dual use of government bonds as both collateral and as underlying assets in derivatives contracts. Volatility in the government bond market can lead to a demand for more collateral underlying the derivatives markets precisely when government bond prices are declining. Falling bond prices erode the value of the existing IM. Collateral demands skyrocket just as the value of current and would-be collateral is evaporating.
Again, the BIS:
Wrong-way risk dynamics appeared to play a role during the 2010–11 Irish sovereign debt crisis. At that time, investors liquidated their positions in Irish government bonds after a CCP raised the haircuts on such bonds when used as collateral. This led to lower prices of Irish government bonds triggering further haircuts, further position closures and ultimately a downward price spiral.
Designed to fail
The BIS doesn’t admit it, but Webb says the CCPs themselves are deliberately under-capitalized and designed to fail. The start-up of a new CCP is planned and pre-funded. When that happens, it’ll be the "secured creditors" who will take control of ALL the underlying collateral.
Once more, the BIS:
…to mutualise potential default losses in excess of IM, CCPs also require their members to contribute to a default fund (DF). As a result, CCPs are in command of large pools of liquid assets.
That "large pool of liquid assets" is the full universe of traded securities.
In a market collapse, the stocks and bonds you think you own will be sucked into the default fund (DF) as additional collateral for the evaporating value of the derivatives complex. This is "The Great Taking".
Buffett’s famous line rings true: "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." Most of us are on the verge of learning that we’re the ones without any clothes.
If you haven’t read "The Great Taking" or watched the documentary, I recommend you pour yourself a stiff drink and watch it now:
The Great Taking
Posted on December 18th, 2023
Fossil Fuels and the Thirty Tyrants
Subject: John Kerry and the "Thirty Tyrants" are hopelessly, hilariously ignorant
From: Simon Black
December 13, 2023
In the year 404 BC, after decades of chaotic and bloody conflict among ancient Greek city states in the Peloponnesian War, Athens finally surrendered to its rival Sparta.
The defeat marked the end of the Golden Age of Athens… and Athenian democracy; almost immediately after the war was over, Sparta’s chief military commander created a ‘junta’ style dictatorship to rule over Athens. Democracy died overnight.
This council of dictators became known as the "Thirty Tyrants", and their regime was brutal.
The Thirty Tyrants waged genocide on the Athenians, exterminating roughly 5% of the population. They exiled or murdered ideological opponents. They confiscated people’s property. And they strictly controlled how Athenians were allowed to live their lives.
At one point during their regime (according to Xenophon’s Memorabilia), Socrates was summoned before the Thirty Tyrants and told that he was prohibited "to hold any conversation whatsoever with the young".
Apparently, they were quite concerned about the famous philosopher spreading disinformation.
In our modern era, we hear quite a lot that "democracy is under attack." It’s one of the favorite catchphrases of the left; when they don’t like a particular speaker, political candidate, or idea, they say that it ‘threatens democracy’.
Yet these same people have created their own version of the Thirty Tyrants who have been anointed with quasi-dictatorial powers. Nobody elected them. But they have an absurd amount of authority to govern how everyone else is allowed to live their lives.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which finally ended today in the United Arab Emirates, unelected fanatics from around the world gathered in a room to formally declare "the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era".
Some 85,000 participants attended the two-week event, according to the UN, though the real decision-makers number a few dozen at most. These are today’s Thirty Tyrants, and they include people like unelected US climate envoy John Kerry, who arrived at the conference on his "wife’s" private jet.
Kerry was a key architect of the final resolution, which demands that member nations "[transition] away from fossil fuels in energy systems. . . in keeping with the science."
In short, this means that coal-fired power plants, plus oil- or natural gas-based combined cycle power plants, etc. must be eliminated. Further, production of coal, oil, and natural gas also needs to be eliminated… or "phased-out" as the climate tyrants like to say.
Their ignorance, as usual, is overwhelming.
Bear in mind that oil, coal, and natural gas constitute over 50% of global electricity production according to the most recent data from the International Energy Agency. So, shifting away to renewable energy sources would require at least 12,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of additional production from wind and solar.
Let’s briefly examine the numbers:
The LARGEST planned solar powered electricity project in the world is the Gonghe Talatan Solar Park in central China, which will reportedly max out at 16GW in capacity.
So, at best, the largest solar plant in the world will produce roughly 40 TWh of electricity per year, which is just 0.3% of the electricity needed to replace fossil fuels.
Now, let’s adopt a "can do" attitude and presume that hundreds other similarly sized projects will be built around the world. What resources would this require?
Well, the International Energy Agency’s own report shows that "optimally tilted" solar panels produce around 1,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year for every square meter of panels.
So, 12,000 TWh (equivalent to 12 TRILLION kWh) of electricity per year will require 6.6 BILLION square meters of solar panels. Needless to say, that is far more than has ever been produced in the history of the world… combined.
But let’s continue with our "can-do" attitude and assume that global solar manufacturers can ramp up production enough to provide such an absurd number of panels.
Remember that solar panels require silicon; in fact, one square meter of solar panels (again, according to IEA data) uses about 600 grams of silicon.
Silicon comes from quartzite rock, which is fairly common in nature. So, producing all those panels obviously requires mining lots and lots of rock.
But the process of extracting silicon from quartzite rock is complicated; in fact, the chemical reaction calls for ‘carbothermal reduction’ using pure carbon, i.e. COAL, in a ratio that requires 2 parts carbon for every 1-part silicon.
It’s also worth noting that silicon only constitutes about 5% of a solar panel. Much of the rest is made from plastic-- which is obviously a product derived from crude oil.
So that takes us back to the Thirty Tyrants’ overwhelming ignorance. They want the world to produce billions of square meters of solar panels… which will require nearly 8 billion kilograms of coal, not to mention gobs of oil-based plastic.
But at the same time, they want to eradicate coal and oil production forever.
This is pure insanity. You cannot produce solar panels without oil. You cannot produce solar panels without coal. In fact, the laws of chemistry require twice as much coal for every unit of silicon produced.
These progressive fanatics have already tried to reinvent biology by conjuring 10,000 new genders out of thin air. But they cannot reinvent chemistry.
Bizarrely, though, despite these passionate ignoramuses being so hilariously ill-informed, they still have tremendous power to set rules and policies around the world.
Today’s Thirty Tyrants are trying to dictate how the rest of us should live our lives.
In fact, the next time you run your new ‘eco-friendly dishwasher’ and the plates come out of the wash dirtier than before, you can thank John Kerry for his pitiful ideas. He’s even managed to ruin basic appliances.
The Thirty Tyrants are also deliberately trying to create shortages of critical resources-- oil, coal, natural gas, copper, and so many more-- even though producing solar and wind energy requires those very resources.
This is a major reason why I’m such an advocate for owning real assets… because the Thirty Tyrants and their armies of passionate ignoramuses are hellbent on making critical commodities skyrocket in value.
We might not be able to stop them. But we can at least benefit from their ignorance.
Simon Black, Founder
Sovereign Man
From: Simon Black
December 13, 2023
In the year 404 BC, after decades of chaotic and bloody conflict among ancient Greek city states in the Peloponnesian War, Athens finally surrendered to its rival Sparta.
The defeat marked the end of the Golden Age of Athens… and Athenian democracy; almost immediately after the war was over, Sparta’s chief military commander created a ‘junta’ style dictatorship to rule over Athens. Democracy died overnight.
This council of dictators became known as the "Thirty Tyrants", and their regime was brutal.
The Thirty Tyrants waged genocide on the Athenians, exterminating roughly 5% of the population. They exiled or murdered ideological opponents. They confiscated people’s property. And they strictly controlled how Athenians were allowed to live their lives.
At one point during their regime (according to Xenophon’s Memorabilia), Socrates was summoned before the Thirty Tyrants and told that he was prohibited "to hold any conversation whatsoever with the young".
Apparently, they were quite concerned about the famous philosopher spreading disinformation.
In our modern era, we hear quite a lot that "democracy is under attack." It’s one of the favorite catchphrases of the left; when they don’t like a particular speaker, political candidate, or idea, they say that it ‘threatens democracy’.
Yet these same people have created their own version of the Thirty Tyrants who have been anointed with quasi-dictatorial powers. Nobody elected them. But they have an absurd amount of authority to govern how everyone else is allowed to live their lives.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which finally ended today in the United Arab Emirates, unelected fanatics from around the world gathered in a room to formally declare "the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era".
Some 85,000 participants attended the two-week event, according to the UN, though the real decision-makers number a few dozen at most. These are today’s Thirty Tyrants, and they include people like unelected US climate envoy John Kerry, who arrived at the conference on his "wife’s" private jet.
Kerry was a key architect of the final resolution, which demands that member nations "[transition] away from fossil fuels in energy systems. . . in keeping with the science."
In short, this means that coal-fired power plants, plus oil- or natural gas-based combined cycle power plants, etc. must be eliminated. Further, production of coal, oil, and natural gas also needs to be eliminated… or "phased-out" as the climate tyrants like to say.
Their ignorance, as usual, is overwhelming.
Bear in mind that oil, coal, and natural gas constitute over 50% of global electricity production according to the most recent data from the International Energy Agency. So, shifting away to renewable energy sources would require at least 12,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of additional production from wind and solar.
Let’s briefly examine the numbers:
The LARGEST planned solar powered electricity project in the world is the Gonghe Talatan Solar Park in central China, which will reportedly max out at 16GW in capacity.
So, at best, the largest solar plant in the world will produce roughly 40 TWh of electricity per year, which is just 0.3% of the electricity needed to replace fossil fuels.
Now, let’s adopt a "can do" attitude and presume that hundreds other similarly sized projects will be built around the world. What resources would this require?
Well, the International Energy Agency’s own report shows that "optimally tilted" solar panels produce around 1,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year for every square meter of panels.
So, 12,000 TWh (equivalent to 12 TRILLION kWh) of electricity per year will require 6.6 BILLION square meters of solar panels. Needless to say, that is far more than has ever been produced in the history of the world… combined.
But let’s continue with our "can-do" attitude and assume that global solar manufacturers can ramp up production enough to provide such an absurd number of panels.
Remember that solar panels require silicon; in fact, one square meter of solar panels (again, according to IEA data) uses about 600 grams of silicon.
Silicon comes from quartzite rock, which is fairly common in nature. So, producing all those panels obviously requires mining lots and lots of rock.
But the process of extracting silicon from quartzite rock is complicated; in fact, the chemical reaction calls for ‘carbothermal reduction’ using pure carbon, i.e. COAL, in a ratio that requires 2 parts carbon for every 1-part silicon.
It’s also worth noting that silicon only constitutes about 5% of a solar panel. Much of the rest is made from plastic-- which is obviously a product derived from crude oil.
So that takes us back to the Thirty Tyrants’ overwhelming ignorance. They want the world to produce billions of square meters of solar panels… which will require nearly 8 billion kilograms of coal, not to mention gobs of oil-based plastic.
But at the same time, they want to eradicate coal and oil production forever.
This is pure insanity. You cannot produce solar panels without oil. You cannot produce solar panels without coal. In fact, the laws of chemistry require twice as much coal for every unit of silicon produced.
These progressive fanatics have already tried to reinvent biology by conjuring 10,000 new genders out of thin air. But they cannot reinvent chemistry.
Bizarrely, though, despite these passionate ignoramuses being so hilariously ill-informed, they still have tremendous power to set rules and policies around the world.
Today’s Thirty Tyrants are trying to dictate how the rest of us should live our lives.
In fact, the next time you run your new ‘eco-friendly dishwasher’ and the plates come out of the wash dirtier than before, you can thank John Kerry for his pitiful ideas. He’s even managed to ruin basic appliances.
The Thirty Tyrants are also deliberately trying to create shortages of critical resources-- oil, coal, natural gas, copper, and so many more-- even though producing solar and wind energy requires those very resources.
This is a major reason why I’m such an advocate for owning real assets… because the Thirty Tyrants and their armies of passionate ignoramuses are hellbent on making critical commodities skyrocket in value.
We might not be able to stop them. But we can at least benefit from their ignorance.
Simon Black, Founder
Sovereign Man
Posted on December 13th, 2023
Trapping Wild Pigs
International Man Communique
Trapping Wild Pigs
by Jeff Thomas
Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look.
Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily.
However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them.
First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground.
After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.
Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.
Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side.
Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.
At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating.
You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs.
But unfortunately, that’s not always so.
In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.
Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor.
But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of "entitlements" – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.
Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their "diet," more free stuff is offered.
It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements.
Then, it’s time to erect the fence.
Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed.
And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence.
Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.
What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms.
You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.
And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.
Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is "temporarily" cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again.
The freedoms are gone for good and the entitlements are then slowly removed. This is how it’s possible to begin with a very prosperous country, such as Argentina, Venezuela or the US, and convert it into an impoverished collectivist state. It’s a gradual process and the pattern plays out the same way time and again. It succeeds because human nature remains the same.
Collectivism eventually degrades into uniform poverty for 95% of the population, with a small elite who live like kings.
After World War II, the Western world was flying high. There was tremendous prosperity and opportunity for everyone. The system was not totally free market, but enough so that anyone who wished to work hard and take responsibility for himself had the opportunity to prosper.
But very early – in the 1960s – The Great Society became the byword for government-provided largesse for all those who were in need – free stuff for those who were disadvantaged in one way or another.
Most Americans, who were then flush with prosperity, were only too happy to share with those who were less fortunate. Unfortunately, they got suckered into the idea that, rather than give voluntarily on an individual basis, they’d entrust their government to become the distributor of largesse, and to pay for it through taxation. Big mistake.
From that point on, all that was necessary was to keep redefining who was disadvantaged and to then provide more free stuff.
Few people were aware that the first sections of fence were being erected.
But today, it may be easier to understand that the fence has been completed and the gate is closing. It may still be possible to make a hasty exit, but we shall find very few people dashing for the gate. After all, to expatriate to another country would mean leaving all that free stuff – all that security.
At this point, the idea of foraging in the forest looks doubtful. Those who have forgotten how to rely on themselves will understandably fear making an exit. They’ll not only have to change their dependency habits; they’ll have to think for themselves in future.
But make no mistake about it – what we’re witnessing today in what was formerly the Free World is a transition into collectivism. It will be a combination of corporatism and socialism, with the remnants of capitalism. The overall will be collectivism.
The gate is closing, and as stated above, some members of the herd will cause a fuss as they watch the gate closing. There will be some confusion and civil unrest, but in the end, the great majority will settle down once again to their corn.
Only a few will have both the insight and temerity necessary to make a dash for the gate as it’s now closing.
This was true in Argentina when the government was still generous with the largesse, and it was true in Venezuela when the entitlements were at their peak. It is now true of the US as the final transition into collectivism begins.
Rather than make the dash for the gate, the great majority will instead look down at their feed and say, "This is still the best country in the world," and continue eating the corn
Trapping Wild Pigs
by Jeff Thomas
Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look.
Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily.
However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them.
First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground.
After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.
Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.
Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side.
Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.
At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating.
You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs.
But unfortunately, that’s not always so.
In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.
Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor.
But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of "entitlements" – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.
Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their "diet," more free stuff is offered.
It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements.
Then, it’s time to erect the fence.
Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed.
And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence.
Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.
What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms.
You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.
And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.
Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is "temporarily" cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again.
The freedoms are gone for good and the entitlements are then slowly removed. This is how it’s possible to begin with a very prosperous country, such as Argentina, Venezuela or the US, and convert it into an impoverished collectivist state. It’s a gradual process and the pattern plays out the same way time and again. It succeeds because human nature remains the same.
Collectivism eventually degrades into uniform poverty for 95% of the population, with a small elite who live like kings.
After World War II, the Western world was flying high. There was tremendous prosperity and opportunity for everyone. The system was not totally free market, but enough so that anyone who wished to work hard and take responsibility for himself had the opportunity to prosper.
But very early – in the 1960s – The Great Society became the byword for government-provided largesse for all those who were in need – free stuff for those who were disadvantaged in one way or another.
Most Americans, who were then flush with prosperity, were only too happy to share with those who were less fortunate. Unfortunately, they got suckered into the idea that, rather than give voluntarily on an individual basis, they’d entrust their government to become the distributor of largesse, and to pay for it through taxation. Big mistake.
From that point on, all that was necessary was to keep redefining who was disadvantaged and to then provide more free stuff.
Few people were aware that the first sections of fence were being erected.
But today, it may be easier to understand that the fence has been completed and the gate is closing. It may still be possible to make a hasty exit, but we shall find very few people dashing for the gate. After all, to expatriate to another country would mean leaving all that free stuff – all that security.
At this point, the idea of foraging in the forest looks doubtful. Those who have forgotten how to rely on themselves will understandably fear making an exit. They’ll not only have to change their dependency habits; they’ll have to think for themselves in future.
But make no mistake about it – what we’re witnessing today in what was formerly the Free World is a transition into collectivism. It will be a combination of corporatism and socialism, with the remnants of capitalism. The overall will be collectivism.
The gate is closing, and as stated above, some members of the herd will cause a fuss as they watch the gate closing. There will be some confusion and civil unrest, but in the end, the great majority will settle down once again to their corn.
Only a few will have both the insight and temerity necessary to make a dash for the gate as it’s now closing.
This was true in Argentina when the government was still generous with the largesse, and it was true in Venezuela when the entitlements were at their peak. It is now true of the US as the final transition into collectivism begins.
Rather than make the dash for the gate, the great majority will instead look down at their feed and say, "This is still the best country in the world," and continue eating the corn
Posted on October 26th, 2023
Green Energy
The following is an excerpt from an email sent by Sovereignman.com on 20th September 2023.
Let’s suspend reality for a moment and pretend that Klaus Schwab and Greta Thunberg are right… and that global energy should be 100% renewable.
What would it actually take to do this? Remember, solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries require lots of raw materials.
According to estimates by Professor Simon Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland, achieving the Schwab-Thunberg-Fink dream world require:
- 218 million tons of cobalt
- 899 million tons of lithium
- 4.3 billion tons of copper.
Let’s tackle copper first.
In 2019, the world produced 22 million tons of copper. So, a full transition to renewable energy would require 100% of the world’s annual copper production for the next 195 years.
That means that, for the next two centuries, there would be ZERO copper left over for anything else. Only renewable energy. Also bear in mind that solar panels wear out after a few decades… So, after 195 years, the world will have had to replace all of its panels at least 5 times.
Now, if you think that’s a daunting challenge, lithium and cobalt are even more interesting…
Global lithium and cobalt production in 2022 were approximately 130,000 tons each. Therefore, based on Prof. Michaux’s estimates, the transition to renewable energy requires 1,676 years of annual cobalt production, and a whopping 6,915 years of lithium production.
No, those are not misprints.
In short, the climate fanatics don’t realize that their renewable energy dream requires so many raw materials that it would take nearly 7,000 years to mine all the necessary resources.
What would it actually take to do this? Remember, solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries require lots of raw materials.
According to estimates by Professor Simon Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland, achieving the Schwab-Thunberg-Fink dream world require:
- 218 million tons of cobalt
- 899 million tons of lithium
- 4.3 billion tons of copper.
Let’s tackle copper first.
In 2019, the world produced 22 million tons of copper. So, a full transition to renewable energy would require 100% of the world’s annual copper production for the next 195 years.
That means that, for the next two centuries, there would be ZERO copper left over for anything else. Only renewable energy. Also bear in mind that solar panels wear out after a few decades… So, after 195 years, the world will have had to replace all of its panels at least 5 times.
Now, if you think that’s a daunting challenge, lithium and cobalt are even more interesting…
Global lithium and cobalt production in 2022 were approximately 130,000 tons each. Therefore, based on Prof. Michaux’s estimates, the transition to renewable energy requires 1,676 years of annual cobalt production, and a whopping 6,915 years of lithium production.
No, those are not misprints.
In short, the climate fanatics don’t realize that their renewable energy dream requires so many raw materials that it would take nearly 7,000 years to mine all the necessary resources.
Posted on September 20th, 2023
Why Flatulent Cows Matter
International Man Communique
Why Flatulent Cows Matter
by Jeff Thomas
We’ve all heard nonsense about cows presenting a danger to the continuance of life on earth – that methane gas from cow flatulence will bring on climate change faster than John Kerry’s jet.
Any thinking person (a sub-species of Homo sapiens that’s in decline but not yet endangered) would agree that the notion that an animal that’s existed in harmony with nature for over two million years could destroy the earth within fourteen years if they’re not exterminated is truly absurd.
And yet those whose ability to reason is on the decline are inclined to believe the claim. Presumably, these individuals are the same ones beginning to believe that men can have babies and that an individual can become something he or she is not simply by "identifying" as such.
But those of us who see the absurdity in such clearly nonsensical beliefs are disinclined to laugh as we observe that these concepts are being disseminated by globalist governments through a compliant media… and, worse, are being accepted by more than a few people.
As a case in point, recently, a publication – Natural News – did a piece entitled, "13 Nations agree to engineer global FAMINE by destroying agriculture, saying that producing food is BAD for the planet."
In that article, they describe a conference led by US Climate Czar John Kerry, in which representatives from thirteen countries are stated to have committed to a diminished cow population worldwide to combat climate change.
Well, that conference did take place, and a topic of discussion was methane produced by cows, and thirteen attendees did agree that measures of some sort were needed.
But it is not the case that thirteen countries have enacted legislation to eliminate cows.
We might take a step back here and examine what actually occurred. In so doing, we may not only learn whether or not red meat will soon be eliminated globally; we might also gain some insight into how globalist governments seek to achieve their ends.
In most countries, the role of Minister for the Environment is a lowly ministerial position, given to a loyal party member as a token. Most Ministers of the Environment pontificate a fair bit but rarely implement significant change. So, let’s follow the thread of what has taken place.
Why Flatulent Cows Matter
by Jeff Thomas
We’ve all heard nonsense about cows presenting a danger to the continuance of life on earth – that methane gas from cow flatulence will bring on climate change faster than John Kerry’s jet.
Any thinking person (a sub-species of Homo sapiens that’s in decline but not yet endangered) would agree that the notion that an animal that’s existed in harmony with nature for over two million years could destroy the earth within fourteen years if they’re not exterminated is truly absurd.
And yet those whose ability to reason is on the decline are inclined to believe the claim. Presumably, these individuals are the same ones beginning to believe that men can have babies and that an individual can become something he or she is not simply by "identifying" as such.
But those of us who see the absurdity in such clearly nonsensical beliefs are disinclined to laugh as we observe that these concepts are being disseminated by globalist governments through a compliant media… and, worse, are being accepted by more than a few people.
As a case in point, recently, a publication – Natural News – did a piece entitled, "13 Nations agree to engineer global FAMINE by destroying agriculture, saying that producing food is BAD for the planet."
In that article, they describe a conference led by US Climate Czar John Kerry, in which representatives from thirteen countries are stated to have committed to a diminished cow population worldwide to combat climate change.
Well, that conference did take place, and a topic of discussion was methane produced by cows, and thirteen attendees did agree that measures of some sort were needed.
But it is not the case that thirteen countries have enacted legislation to eliminate cows.
We might take a step back here and examine what actually occurred. In so doing, we may not only learn whether or not red meat will soon be eliminated globally; we might also gain some insight into how globalist governments seek to achieve their ends.
In most countries, the role of Minister for the Environment is a lowly ministerial position, given to a loyal party member as a token. Most Ministers of the Environment pontificate a fair bit but rarely implement significant change. So, let’s follow the thread of what has taken place.
- John Kerry contacts the Environmental Ministers in a host of "lesser" countries around the world on the vague premise of "making a difference." They’re pleased to take part, as Kerry gives them higher visibility and legitimizes their otherwise rather pointless jobs.
- A conference is held at a four-star hotel somewhere for a few days. Everybody listens to the speakers wringing their hands over the dangers of climate change, and each minister tries to get their photos taken with John Kerry.
- There’s very little in the text of the keynote presentation by Kerry – mostly vague comments about the dangers of methane and the need for each country to commit to making a difference.
- At the end of the conference, the attendees are proud to sign a document that’s devoid of detail but says that they’re all in agreement in hoping to make a difference.
- A press release is issued, showing all the ministers together, stating that methane is dangerous and that all the countries are in agreement regarding the concept of a worldwide methane control policy.
- The message received by the public is that all the experts agree on whatever they’re saying, although what they’re saying is still quite unclear.
- A publication such as Natural News publishes an article with a suitably alarming title.
- The perceived overstatement by Natural News is regarded as a provocation by controlled information sources such as Wikipedia to alert the public. Interestingly, whenever a publication, group, or individual is discredited by Wikipedia, they always do so in the very first line of their description, i.e.,
- "Natural News is a far-right, anti-vaccination conspiracy theory and fake news website known for promoting alternative medicine, pseudoscience, disinformation, and far-right extremism."
That’s essentially the process that’s now consistently being utilized by globalists.
Wikipedia now divides all publications, pundits, and others as either truth tellers or far-right conspiracy advocates. The real issue here isn’t farting cows any more than it’s whether men can have babies. These are mere exercises.
So, if we take a step back and consider an overview of what this all means – why it’s so prevalent and why the process is being so consistently utilized – we might be conclude the following:
The issues are absurdly extreme for a reason. The objective is not the achievement of the issues themselves. It is the alteration of the psyche of the populace.
Once the public has spent several years having their heads divided between "far-right extremism" and what’s approved by the Ministry of Truth, enough people will have been converted into non-thinking proles that a bill can be put forward with the broad and intentionally non-specific objective to outlaw far-right extremism in all its forms.
In order to assure the passage of the bill, a significant majority of people will have to have already reached the stage in their new thought process that they feel that the law is not only justified but essential. Those people who can still think will be expected to comply.
The goal is not the elimination of cows; it’s the elimination of thinking and dissent. If we keep the above in mind as a process rather than an intended outcome, we have a greater ability to focus on the critical issue.
To be sure, there are those entities that would like to eliminate red meat and feed people insects as a replacement. But that’s not the central issue here.
The core objective is nothing less than the elimination of individual thought and dissent. It’s essential in the creation of a fully collectivist state, and it’s at the very heart of the overall globalist objective.
Posted on August 1st, 2023
Elimination of Reason
International Man Communique
The Elimination of Reason
by Jeff Thomas
Recently, I paid for an item with the exact amount requested, including 89 cents in change. The salesgirl stared at the coins and clearly wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually, she reached for a calculator and began to total them up one at a time: 25 + 25 + 25 + 10 + 4. Having been schooled in the age prior to calculators, I’m accustomed to doing arithmetic in my head, but this particular instance evidenced a level of "dumbing down" over the last fifty years that was beyond what I had realised.
Since the dumbing down has been so consistently prevalent over the decades, it’s clear that this is no accident, nor is it an experiment in "alternative education" that hasn’t worked out as was intended. It’s clearly the result of a conscious effort to diminish the average person’s ability to think. As such, it’s had a long gestation period and was expected to require generations, but was nevertheless a conscious goal.
But why on earth would the controlling elite of any country seek to diminish the power to reason? Surely, reason is the basis of all independent thought – the catalyst for new ideas and improvement on existing goods and systems.
The answer, in a word, is control. Independent thought is the prime enemy of those who seek to dominate a people. For that reason, those who rule will happily sacrifice technological and social progress if it means that their dominance can be increased.
Controlling both the answers and the questions
It’s the nature of humans to question their situation and their surroundings. However, a clever leader will surmise that that means he needs to not only provide the answers, but the questions. If he can keep the people preoccupied with questions that are of little consequence to him, and provide answers that are easy for the people to absorb, he will control the areas of thought and, in so doing, will diminish the likelihood that he or his actions will be questioned.
Since time immemorial, successful leaders have understood that, in order to take the attention off their actions, carefully constructed distractions are called for.
For centuries, when leaders have been under criticism by their minions, they’ve used the distraction of war. War not only tends to unify a people, it also helps them to accept the removal of their basic rights for an "emergency" period. (Of course, most leaders don’t replace the rights after the emergency has ended. War therefore is also a good tool to increase tyranny, generally.) As Ludwig von Mises observed,
"War was not an affair of the peoples; it concerned the rulers only. The citizens detested war, which brought mischief to them and burdened them with taxes and contributions."
However, in modern times, propagandists have become far more sophisticated. Let’s look at a few. Adolf Hitler said,
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually, they will believe it."
Vladimir Lenin was a great believer in the idea that,
"The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive."
Two of the greatest inventions in making propaganda easy to sell have been political parties and television. In the days of kings, it was common to hate the king and want his downfall, but, with political parties, it’s possible to get one half of the people hating one party and the other half hating the other party. Then, all that’s necessary is to assure that each party has roughly the same amount of apparent power and the people will focus all their attention on the hatred of the opposing party and fail to notice those who are pulling the strings equally for both parties. The kings thereby remain the kings forever, whilst remaining invisible. The idea is not to defeat the anger of the people, but to redirect it. As Friedrich Hayek commented,
"The skilful propagandist then has the power to mold their minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information."
That last phrase is key. In today’s world, we possess the most significant propaganda tool that has ever been invented: television. Through this medium, we can create a major issue out of a minor incident, create two opposing viewpoints, each designed to appeal to one group or the other, and then repeat the propaganda unceasingly until the people have become thoroughly polarised from each other on the issue. In this fashion, we can begin with a minor incident, such as the one in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Arrange for one set of pundits to state unequivocally that the problem was racist Caucasian police, whilst presenting another set of pundits who just as vehemently proclaim that the problem is lawless blacks. Then, as Brother Adolf states, repeat the message endlessly – in this case, on the news seven days a week, from morning till night, for over six months.
Mission accomplished. The conservative group has redoubled its belief in the necessity for an increased police state, whist the liberal group dug in its heels on its perception of class warfare and the need for increased collectivism to combat that class warfare.
Once this issue has played itself out, it can disappear completely from the television and a new issue takes its place.
As stated above, in creating this means of propaganda, we have first created the question in the mind of the people, then we have spoon-fed two opposing answers – one designed to appeal to those who are by nature conservative and one to those who are by nature liberal. If we do our job well, the groups will become so blindly polarized that no social gathering, such as a dinner party, will contain both liberal and conservative invitees, or it will be a disaster.
All liberals will be unified in their thinking, just as all conservatives will be. Of course, those who are libertarian will be vilified by both of the other groups, as they represent a third alternative. (The success in indoctrinating a people and destroying their ability to reason can be measured by their vehemence in rejecting a third choice of reason.)
However, reason must be blocked out on a continuous basis, or there’s danger that it may return over time. As early as 600 BC, Lao Tzu had figured this out:
"The muddiest water is cleared as it is stilled."
Hence the importance of the endless repetition of the message. As a news item, Ferguson was deserving of a minor mention, perhaps once a week. But by suspending the outcome (whether charges would be laid against the officer), fuel could be added to the rhetoric fire day in, day out, for months on end. When it had finally outlived its usefulness, it was time to create another event. Of course, one shooting every six months in a population of 320,000,000 is a minor blip, but, through the continuous carpet-bombing of the viewer’s brain with the same rhetoric, two such events a year would seem like an epidemic.
Once we reach this level of thought control, it’s possible to offer utterly unacceptable candidates for public office and still have them gain election. All that’s needed is that they parrot the same rhetoric the people have become dependent on as a replacement for reason.
Whether it be Communist Russia, Nazi Germany or Fascist America, once the people have been successfully conditioned to allow Big Brother to dictate thought, the next step has always been totalitarian rule.
Posted on April 17th, 2023
NOSTR
Nostr: A Decentralized, Censorship-Resistant Social Media Platform That Works—Join The Party
by Nick Giambruno
Over the years, I've heard many claims of allegedly decentralized and censorship-resistant social media platforms.
None of them lived up to the hype.
That’s why I was skeptical of Nostr… until I tried it.
To my delight, Nostr actually works, and it's clear it has game-changing potential.
Nostr is an acronym for "notes and other stuff transmitted by relays."
It's an open protocol for transmitting social media data that anyone can use. Nostr is based on cryptography and doesn't need a central server, giving it censorship resistance.
Unlike traditional social media accounts, with Nostr, only you own your data and following. As a result, you don't have to worry about losing all your conversations and hard-earned followers for committing an arbitrary thought crime.
Nostr's first and most obvious use case is to obviate Twitter and, later, other social media platforms.
With Nostr implementations now easily available on the web, Apple products, and Android, its use has exploded recently and shows no sign of slowing down.
Nostr also seamlessly integrates with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, allowing for instant and nearly free micro-payments.
In this article, I'll show you how Nostr works and how you can join the party.
It's a different setup experience from what many people are accustomed to, but getting started is easy. Learning how to get started with Nostr is a small price to pay for an enormous reward in sovereignty.
Nostr: A Decentralized, Censorship-Resistant Social Media Platform That Works—Join The Party
by Nick Giambruno
Over the years, I've heard many claims of allegedly decentralized and censorship-resistant social media platforms.
None of them lived up to the hype.
That’s why I was skeptical of Nostr… until I tried it.
To my delight, Nostr actually works, and it's clear it has game-changing potential.
Nostr is an acronym for "notes and other stuff transmitted by relays."
It's an open protocol for transmitting social media data that anyone can use. Nostr is based on cryptography and doesn't need a central server, giving it censorship resistance.
Unlike traditional social media accounts, with Nostr, only you own your data and following. As a result, you don't have to worry about losing all your conversations and hard-earned followers for committing an arbitrary thought crime.
Nostr's first and most obvious use case is to obviate Twitter and, later, other social media platforms.
With Nostr implementations now easily available on the web, Apple products, and Android, its use has exploded recently and shows no sign of slowing down.
Nostr also seamlessly integrates with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, allowing for instant and nearly free micro-payments.
In this article, I'll show you how Nostr works and how you can join the party.
It's a different setup experience from what many people are accustomed to, but getting started is easy. Learning how to get started with Nostr is a small price to pay for an enormous reward in sovereignty.
How Nostr Works
Anyone can create an account on Nostr by generating a pair of public and private cryptographic keys.
Think of the public key as your username, which you share with others who want to follow you, and your private key as the password to your account. Anyone with access to your private key can control your account.
Nostr is a protocol. There is no official Nostr app—just like there is no official "email" app—there are only implementations of the protocol known as Clients. You can find these Nostr clients as apps on your phone and on numerous websites.
Once you have your public and private keys, you can access Nostr on any client you wish. Then, you need to input your private key into the client, and you're ready to go. The number of clients is growing daily, so plenty of options exist.
This contrasts with traditional social media accounts. For example, there are no other implementations of Twitter. There is simply Twitter. You cannot take your account and followers to another platform, as Twitter ultimately owns them, not you. Nostr turns this dynamic on its head and empowers the users.
The data for Nostr does not live on a central server but rather on a decentralized network of computers called Relays. There are countless relays available now for anyone to connect with. Anyone can run their own relay too. That’s why the number of relays is skyrocketing.
To summarize, you are ready to go once you generate a pair of public/private keys, find a Client, and connect to quality relays. It's pretty straightforward. I'll walk through how to do it below.
How to Join the Nostr Party
Once you fire up a Nostr client, giving it a few seconds to load the data from the numerous relays is important.
If you have an iPhone, the easiest way to get started is to download the Damus app and follow the instructions.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/damus/id1628663131
For Android users, the Amethyst app is a convenient Client to access Nostr.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vitorpamplona.amethyst
On the web, here are some excellent Nostr Clients.
https://iris.to/
https://snort.social/
https://astral.ninja/
However, you must create a public/private key pair before using those apps and clients.
Step #1: Create a Pair of Public/Private Keys
The easiest way is to visit the website below, a popular web-based Nostr client.
https://astral.ninja/
There should be a popup that appears. Click "Generate Keys," then click "Proceed." Then a popup box should appear that displays your public/private keys.
Now store your public/private keys in a secure location. Remember, keep your private key secret because anyone with access can control your account.
Step #2: Create Your Profile
Depending on which Client you are using, the exact steps will vary. But no matter which Client you are using, you can update your profile in the Settings area to include your name, profile picture, about, etc.
Step #3: Connect with Quality Relays
A crucial part of Nostr is connecting with quality relays so that you have reliable access.
I have found relays that work well, and you can copy them from my profile at the link below to your client's settings.
https://nostr.directory/p/nickgiambruno
I also recommend obtaining some paid relays. They only cost a couple of dollars (paid on the Bitcoin Lightning Network) and increase the speed and quality of the experience substantially. Input your Nostr public key, pay the invoice, then add the relay to your client's settings.
Here are some paid Relays that I find worthwhile:
https://eden.nostr.land/invoices
https://nostr.milou.lol
https://puravida.nostr.land/invoices
https://nostr.inosta.cc/invoices
https://relay.orangepill.dev/invoices
Step #4: Find People To Follow
If you'd like to follow me on Nostr, look me up in your client by my public key, which is listed below.
npub1wgjh30uxvvepumxhl3qlfzmt4chueprxmcvrxyw0wjtv9m4w8zwq3se082
Or you can search for me through @NickGiambruno.
You can also see the people I am following on Nostr at the link below in case you would also like to follow them.
https://iris.to/#/profile/npub1wgjh30uxvvepumxhl3qlfzmt4chueprxmcvrxyw0wjtv9m4w8zwq3se082
The website below is also a directory of popular accounts on Nostr.
https://nostr.directory/
That’s it.
Once you've completed these steps, you are ready to go.
Optional Steps: Verification, Directory Listing, and Enabling BTC Lightning Payments
An optional step that you can take to improve your experience on Nostr is to obtain verification and listing on the nostr.directory website.
Go to that website and follow the instructions on verifying your Nostr account on Twitter (and other platforms) by Tweeting a verification message on your Twitter account.
There is also another level of verification called NIP-05 that can help increase the reliability of your experience on Nostr.
The easiest way to get NIP-05 verified is to go to the Nostr Plebs website below and follow the instructions.
https://nostrplebs.com/register
It will require a tiny payment made over the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If you do not yet have a wallet allowing Lightning payments, check out Wallet of Satoshi for your phone, which is one of the most accessible options.
(Please note that while Wallet of Satoshi is one of the easiest options to access the Lightning Network on your mobile phone, there are more sovereign options. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to go into those details. For more, you can check out Your Guide to Total Financial Sovereignty With Bitcoin, which shows you how to use Bitcoin in the most sovereign and private ways possible.)
Once you have gone through all the steps, you will obtain some text that you will need to paste into your settings on your client in the NIP-05 field. Once you save your settings, wait a few minutes for the network to recognize it, and your account will be NIP-05 verified.
A fantastic feature of Nostr is that it works seamlessly with Bitcoin's Lightning Network for micropayments. That allows people to tip you for insightful messages or interactions you post on the network.
Again, the easiest—but not the most sovereign—way to do this is with the Wallet of Satoshi mobile phone app mentioned above.
You need to open the app, click "Receive," then click "@ Lightning Address." Then click the QR code to copy your Lightning address (it should start with LNURL…). Then take this Lightning address, go to your Nostr client's settings, paste it into the Bitcoin Lightning Address field, and click save.
Once you have done that, people on Nostr can send you tips and other payments that will go directly to your Lightning Wallet on your mobile phone's Wallet of Satoshi application.
Conclusion
Nostr works, and the implications are profound.
Never before has the world had a truly decentralized, censorship-resistant social media platform that works.
Now it does.
It’s an exciting advancement in free speech. I encourage you to check it out for yourself and to join the party.
I think you'll quickly understand why Nostr is growing exponentially… the quality of the conversation and the signal/noise ratio are much more favorable than on traditional social media.
Posted on February 7th, 2023
Sanctimania
by Jeff Thomas
In recent decades, political correctness has been very much on the rise in the countries that were formerly regarded as the "free world."
It's important to remind those who live in these countries (North America, Europe, etc.), that political correctness is not by any means as prevalent in the rest of the world. In fact, the further removed a country is from the influence of the EU and US, the less prevalent political correctness is.
The EU and US are, in fact, the epicentre of this movement... This is no accident.
So, should political correctness be forcibly controlled? Well, no. If someone wishes to adopt a belief, regardless of whether we find it silly, pointless, or even offensive, that should unquestionably be their right.
But, is there a point at which political correctness becomes dangerous? Yes, decidedly so. It becomes dangerous when it becomes sanctimonious and aggressive - it then morphs into what I term "sanctimania."
Sanctimania can be defined as the point at which personal opinion encroaches upon the personal liberty of others; when the other person's rights are aggressed upon or removed in the name of the opinion being expressed.
Sanctimania is, by its very nature, the point at which anger overcomes reason and force is employed in order to achieve social change.
To be sure, the anger and intolerance that typify sanctimania, taken together, are a most powerful force. As Mahatma Gandhi said,
"Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding."
Anger has a way of taking personal viewpoint to a destructive level. And, in fact, throughout history, we've seen political leaders repeatedly whipping their followers into anger in order to seize greater control. Certainly, this was true in virtually every speech given by Adolf Hitler. It was used extensively by Maximilien Robespierre following the French Revolution. And, not surprisingly, it has been employed in political demonstrations and riots throughout history.
Confucius, a fellow who had a reputation for careful reflection, said,
"When anger rises, think of the consequences."
A good point. It's invariably true that no emotion has the ability to eliminate reason and self-control like anger. And this, of course, is why political leaders so often seek to create anger amongst their followers - so that they can be trained to do the bidding of the leaders without questioning either the validity of their actions *or* the consequences.
Well, what, then, are the benefits of this anger? Does it achieve its end? Does it typically convert or defeat the adversary? Let's query Buddha on that one.
"Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."
Quite so. Of course, Buddha was referring to the consequence upon the person who is angry, not the consequence upon the person who *inspired* him to anger. The person who inspired the anger is not harmed at all.
So, is there a difference between anger and sanctimania? Most decidedly so. Sanctimania is a refinement of anger. It's the better tool for political leaders seeking to control their followers.
Any political leader wishes to create in the minds of his followers a separation of opinion. He creates rhetoric that's intended to set his followers apart from others. That rhetoric is intended to have the appearance of a moral high ground. Once the followers believe that they're morally apart from others - once they've reached the stage of sanctimony, they've fallen under the control of the leader. Whether he's Vladimir Lenin, George Patton or Jim Jones, both the purpose and the method are the same.
And it's important to state that it doesn't matter whether the sanctimonial intolerance comes from the political left or right, although there can be no question that collectivist leaders have historically made greater use of it.
But sanctimania takes the rhetoric to the final stage. Whether it's as minor as beating up someone for being a ginger in the UK, or whether it's stoning a woman to death for the crime of infidelity, as in Leviticus, 20:10, sanctimania represents the power of the leader to control the aggression of the follower without question; without reason.
Quite a powerful political tool.
At present, we're viewing this phenomenon as an extension to political correctness. Whereas ten years ago we might have seen a man being reviled for making a sexual advance to a female co-worker, or using a pejorative with regard to someone of a different race or ethnic background, we're increasingly seeing these "crimes" elevated to the point that punishment is being called for.
The buzzwords are familiar to us all - racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, hate, etc.
It matters little whether the person being attacked is actually "guilty" of the entire list. If he's identified as being objectionable for any reason, he's then tarred with the entire list. Conversely, if another individual has been accepted within the group, should he actually be guilty of any of these "crimes," this fact is ignored. He's a "good" person.
Historically, Jews have been made the target of Christians and vice-versa. Blacks have been made the target of whites and vice versa. Conservatives have been made the target of liberals and vice versa.
Whenever in history political leaders have used the media to create a campaign against a given group or groups, the objective has been to create sanctimania as a vehicle by which increased control may be implemented. In the eye of the leader, it truly has nothing to do with one group being superior to the other. (In fact, the group could be chosen at random and the outcome would be the same.)
The objective is to create alienation.
Whether we assess Fidel Castro in his frenzied all-day speeches against the greedy capitalists, the Ayatollah Khomeini railing against infidels, or Al Gore creating fear of global warming from nothing, what we're witnessing is a leader creating sanctimania.
When we see large demonstrations of people with placards aggressing against others in reaction to such rhetoric, we're witnessing the intended product of sanctimania.
But, if we're able to step back a bit and take a deep breath, we'll hopefully remind ourselves not to fall into the trap of taking the opposing view of the sanctimaniacs just because we find their behavior offensive.
Instead, we'll hopefully remove ourselves from the field of rhetoric entirely and reach our conclusions through objective reasoning. This is not just a helpful lesson in objectivity - it's a survival technique, as, historically, periods of sanctimania are often followed by periods of great unrest.
Once sanctimania results in general chaos, the objectivity that we'd practiced may well determine whether we will become casualties of sanctimania or whether we'll quietly remove ourselves from the fray.
Posted on January 21st, 2023
World Economic Forum
The following is excerpted from an email sent January 20, 2023 by sovereignman.com. I think it portrays well what WEF is all about.
Their lesson: humanity is better off if people are poorer.
The WEF has turned into an overzealous, supranational, undemocratic organization with a dangerous amount of power; Schwab openly brags about the influence he has with world leaders.
For example, in 2017 Klaus Schwab spoke about all the world leaders who had previously been involved with the World Economic Forum through its Young Global Leaders program.
He named Russian President Vladimir Putin, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as examples to explain, "what we are very proud of... is that we penetrate the cabinets" of governments around the world.
Schwab said that half of Trudeau’s cabinet were Young Global Leaders of the WEF.
And Trudeau is a great example of the type of the world the WEF wants to create; one where the government can, for example, form "public-private partnerships" to freeze your bank accounts for protesting against being required to take a vaccine in order to earn a living.
And yes, representatives of the big banks and pharmaceutical companies are present in Davos this week.
The WEF’s goals aren’t a theory. Schwab wrote a book about it. You can read exactly what his worldview is, and see how it has made its way into legislation and national policy.
For example, in 2017 Klaus Schwab spoke about all the world leaders who had previously been involved with the World Economic Forum through its Young Global Leaders program.
He named Russian President Vladimir Putin, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as examples to explain, "what we are very proud of... is that we penetrate the cabinets" of governments around the world.
Schwab said that half of Trudeau’s cabinet were Young Global Leaders of the WEF.
And Trudeau is a great example of the type of the world the WEF wants to create; one where the government can, for example, form "public-private partnerships" to freeze your bank accounts for protesting against being required to take a vaccine in order to earn a living.
And yes, representatives of the big banks and pharmaceutical companies are present in Davos this week.
The WEF’s goals aren’t a theory. Schwab wrote a book about it. You can read exactly what his worldview is, and see how it has made its way into legislation and national policy.
Just four months after Covid was declared a pandemic, Schwab published a book called Covid-19: The Great Reset, arguing that the pandemic presented a "unique window of opportunity" for global elites to reshape "the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons."
The WEF was instrumental in promoting Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and censorship of "misinformation."
In 2021 in a now deleted Tweet, the WEF wrote, "Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world."
Months before the outbreak of Covid, it hosted a "Global Pandemic Exercise" to simulate "an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus."
One recommendation the conference put out was for governments "to partner with traditional and social media companies" to "combat mis- and disinformation" to ensure "that false messages are suppressed."
Naturally, an unelected group of global elites would have the final word on what constituted disinformation that the WEF wrote needed to be suppressed.
The WEF also sees combating climate change as the perfect crisis to exploit to push through its anti-capitalist agenda.
For example, in a recent article, the WEF argued for "uneconomic growth" in order to prevent climate change. It linked GDP growth to the number of natural disasters that occur, and even the likelihood of war.
Their lesson: humanity is better off if people are poorer.
The WEF was instrumental in promoting Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and censorship of "misinformation."
In 2021 in a now deleted Tweet, the WEF wrote, "Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world."
Months before the outbreak of Covid, it hosted a "Global Pandemic Exercise" to simulate "an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus."
One recommendation the conference put out was for governments "to partner with traditional and social media companies" to "combat mis- and disinformation" to ensure "that false messages are suppressed."
Naturally, an unelected group of global elites would have the final word on what constituted disinformation that the WEF wrote needed to be suppressed.
The WEF also sees combating climate change as the perfect crisis to exploit to push through its anti-capitalist agenda.
For example, in a recent article, the WEF argued for "uneconomic growth" in order to prevent climate change. It linked GDP growth to the number of natural disasters that occur, and even the likelihood of war.
Their lesson: humanity is better off if people are poorer.
Well, most people. Certainly not the very important elites flying in on private jets to Davos, Switzerland this week for the WEF’s annual conference.
They pretend to extol the virtues of representative democracy. But you’ll find absolutely none of that in the room. Instead it is a bunch of people who think they know better, and everyone else should live according to their will and dictates.
For example, a close partner in Schwab’s "public-private partnerships" to promote "stakeholder capitalism" is Larry Fink, who is also in Davos this week, and sits on the WEF board of trustees.
Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, a firm which controls $10 trillion worth of global corporations.
Their vision is "woke" corporations working in tandem with governments to "force behaviors" for what they decide is the greater good.
What might that look like? Well, the WEF has seriously suggested we’ll have to get used to eating bugs and weeds.
And last year, the WEF published an article called, "Psychologists say a good life doesn’t have to be happy, or even meaningful."
"Living through war or a natural disaster might make it hard to feel as though you’re living a particularly happy or purposeful life, but you can still come out of the experience with psychological richness."
So don’t worry, the WEF says, if you experience hardships such as "infertility, chronic illness, [and] unemployment."
A 2016 article published by the WEF declares "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better."
When it comes to personal choices, the author writes, "I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now."
They pretend to extol the virtues of representative democracy. But you’ll find absolutely none of that in the room. Instead it is a bunch of people who think they know better, and everyone else should live according to their will and dictates.
For example, a close partner in Schwab’s "public-private partnerships" to promote "stakeholder capitalism" is Larry Fink, who is also in Davos this week, and sits on the WEF board of trustees.
Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, a firm which controls $10 trillion worth of global corporations.
Their vision is "woke" corporations working in tandem with governments to "force behaviors" for what they decide is the greater good.
What might that look like? Well, the WEF has seriously suggested we’ll have to get used to eating bugs and weeds.
And last year, the WEF published an article called, "Psychologists say a good life doesn’t have to be happy, or even meaningful."
"Living through war or a natural disaster might make it hard to feel as though you’re living a particularly happy or purposeful life, but you can still come out of the experience with psychological richness."
So don’t worry, the WEF says, if you experience hardships such as "infertility, chronic illness, [and] unemployment."
A 2016 article published by the WEF declares "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better."
When it comes to personal choices, the author writes, "I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now."
These ideas are comically stupid, and the organization has lost credibility.
This is nothing new; in fact it’s quite common for arrogant, narcissistic ‘experts’ to force their ideas on to a society.
The WEF is only the latest modern incarnation. And even though it has lost much of its credibility, it’s important to remember there are always going to be ‘experts’ out there who want to tell you how to live your life.
This is ultimately what ‘freedom’ means. The word by itself almost sounds corny or cheesy. But ultimately we’re talking about your right to make your own decisions and control your own life.
If you don’t care about your freedom, you can’t expect anyone else to care about it. More appropriately, you can probably expect others (like the WEF) to try and take it away.
The WEF is only the latest modern incarnation. And even though it has lost much of its credibility, it’s important to remember there are always going to be ‘experts’ out there who want to tell you how to live your life.
This is ultimately what ‘freedom’ means. The word by itself almost sounds corny or cheesy. But ultimately we’re talking about your right to make your own decisions and control your own life.
If you don’t care about your freedom, you can’t expect anyone else to care about it. More appropriately, you can probably expect others (like the WEF) to try and take it away.
Posted on January 21st, 2023
Recognize Error
One of the most important skills a person can have is the ability to recognize error. Sometimes this is pure evil; more often it is a mistake. A mistake can be a simple typo or miscalculation, or it could be the result of a decision based on insufficient, or incorrect information. Sometimes it is the result of trusting the wrong people, and giving credence to information without checking it for correctness. When the error is evil, it does not usually present with horns and a pitchfork. More likely it is a suggestion whispered in the ear.
So how do we recognize error, of whatever sort? In the long run, "By their fruits ye shall know them." In the short run, we usually consider the historical reliability of the source, and compare it with relevant data from other sources. Critical thinking can be of immense help, but logic alone is not sufficient. Nearly anything can be justified with pure logic; sometimes it has to be overridden by the heart. For example, some people are trying hard to normalize paedophilia, styling it as "man boy love" or "age gap love" or other such innocuous slogans. I like to think that anyone with a shred of empathy rejects it as abominable.
What to do when we recognize error? It depends. If it is our own error, we want to correct it immediately, and avoid it in the future. If it is an imposition on the public, we want to be faithful in pointing it out so that others will not fall into the pit. If it is an individual, it depends on our relationship and the exact circumstances. Gratuitous advice may seem like the loving thing to do, but more often than not it is unappreciated and thus not advisable. In any case, correction of others needs to be done with humility, in the spirit of Galations 6:1
So how do we recognize error, of whatever sort? In the long run, "By their fruits ye shall know them." In the short run, we usually consider the historical reliability of the source, and compare it with relevant data from other sources. Critical thinking can be of immense help, but logic alone is not sufficient. Nearly anything can be justified with pure logic; sometimes it has to be overridden by the heart. For example, some people are trying hard to normalize paedophilia, styling it as "man boy love" or "age gap love" or other such innocuous slogans. I like to think that anyone with a shred of empathy rejects it as abominable.
What to do when we recognize error? It depends. If it is our own error, we want to correct it immediately, and avoid it in the future. If it is an imposition on the public, we want to be faithful in pointing it out so that others will not fall into the pit. If it is an individual, it depends on our relationship and the exact circumstances. Gratuitous advice may seem like the loving thing to do, but more often than not it is unappreciated and thus not advisable. In any case, correction of others needs to be done with humility, in the spirit of Galations 6:1
"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."
Posted on January 17th, 2023
(De)Centralisation
International Man Communique
Doug Casey on the Struggle Between the Powerful Forces of Centralization and Decentralization
by Doug Casey
International Man: We're seeing several disturbing trends converge: currency debasement, increased surveillance, and more travel restrictions.
It seems governments everywhere—and the WEF elite behind them—are waging an all-out war on ordinary people worldwide.
What do you make of this trend, and where is it headed?
Doug Casey: Well, as I said earlier, the World Economic Forum is actually an informal United Nations, which is bad enough.
It's populated by people who like the idea of powerful government in general, and a powerful world government in particular. When you look at history, you find that there are people who arise from seemingly nowhere and are able to put themselves in positions of huge influence and power. In today's world, that usually happens through elections. But Bismarck, Napoleon, Mao, Kissinger, Schwab, Gates, and most others didn't come up through elections for what they're worth. They came up through force of personality, cleverness, and connections. Elections are essentially an Americanism.
Incidentally, I don't believe in elections or "democracy" as means for determining who your boss is and who controls you. Elections have rarely been more than popularity contests at best, and more often, mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. As HL Mencken quipped, an election is just an advance auction on stolen goods. Now, more than ever, they're just rubber stamps for political operators who are adept at using the media and other forms of influence to get the hoi polloi to robotically legitimize their rulers.
Manipulating public opinion has become a fine art using electronic media. It's especially effective in getting the bottom half of society—let's call them marginal citizens—who aren't famous for researching issues or thinking critically, to vote one way or another. Voting can make sense if the voters are virtuous, independent thinkers, at least 21 years old, and property owners. Many today are none of these things. That's why elections are meaningless shams, more now than ever. They do nothing but legitimize power junkies.
Where is this trend going? As the economy and the dollar deteriorate further, people are likely to look for a strong leader, someone who will promise to make things better if he's given enough power.
Strong governments come in many flavors, but because life so often imitates art, I think it makes sense to look at science fiction for a view of the future. One possibility is that governments will become overtly draconian and move in the direction of George Orwell's 1984, which some are already using as an instruction book. Another possibility is outlined in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where biological modifications and drugs are used to create a kinder and gentler kind of police state.
Meanwhile, our friends at the WEF assure us that by 2030 we'll own nothing and be happy because everybody will have a guaranteed annual income. That sounds good to proles and wokesters who not only hate their jobs but have so much debt that they already own less than nothing.
These things are happening right before our eyes. The question is whether it's possible to reverse the trend. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion, and current trends toward economic, political, and social upset are accelerating. At some point—I'd say very soon—they'll reach a crisis point when anything can happen. It's a good bet we could see a collapse of the current system, at which point a whole new paradigm might be set up, whether we like it or not. The WEF types call it "The Great Reset." It's unlikely to be convenient or pleasant for most people over the next 10 or 20 years as the world reshapes itself.
The world changed totally after World War I. It changed even more radically after World War II. What's going on right now is at least that magnitude. I think anything before 2019 is going to be known as the "Before Times." It's almost like we're emulating science fiction.
International Man: For years, you've predicted the eventual destruction of the nation-state.
In large countries like the US and Brazil, for instance, it's clear that the values and culture of people in some parts of the country are entirely different—and even opposed—to those in other regions.
What can we expect to happen to these large nation-states?
Doug Casey: It's not all bad news. The WEF types are trying to make governments bigger and centralize things more. But at the same time, centrifugal forces will tear apart many nation-states and decentralize society.
In the examples you mentioned, the Northeast of Brazil could—and probably should—separate from the South. They're different countries culturally, economically, and racially; even their religious traditions are different. In the US, young Chicano males in California have about zero in common with old white women in the Northeast—except that they'll soon be paying 15% of their earnings in Social Security to support them, and they won't like it. There are numerous regional differences now that the US has devolved into what amounts to a multicultural domestic empire. At tens of millions of Thanksgiving tables 2 weeks ago, I'll warrant that there wasn't much talk beyond trivialities because the country is so divided over Red and Blue issues.
My guess is that Russia will start breaking up along ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. Only half of their population are ethnic Russians. I don't doubt the same thing will happen in China as its economy falls apart in this decade. While the country has transformed over the last 40 years, there have been huge misallocations of capital, from ghost cities to their Belt and Road venture, which will collapse. Along with their banking system.
Most of the countries in Europe have secessionist movements. And there's not a single country in Africa where national borders have anything to do with linguistic or ethnic borders. Not to mention that tens of millions of young Africans and Middle Easterners are going to migrate to Europe. And there's nothing the Europeans can or will do to stop it. It's as if Europe has signed its own death warrant. It's a dying culture and will dry up and blow away when it's overrun by alien masses—which they seem to welcome. And with it will go the values of Western civilization (link), which means that the currently brewing chaos is going to change the nature of the world at large.
Of course, change is the only constant. It's good that change came to ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and hundreds of other cultures—even though it was traumatic for them at the time. But I believe Western Civ is not only unique in all of history but orders of magnitude better—at least if you define "better" as personal freedom and a high standard of living for the average man.
Secession and decentralization will hopefully—against the will of the Globalists and the WEF—happen all over the world. In big countries like those we've mentioned, down to obscure countries like Bolivia or Burma, both of which are likely to break into at least two or three in the years to come.
On a local level, it's going to be dangerous and inconvenient because, of course, the powers that run governments will try to hold them together while the secessionists try to break them up into smaller entities.
I'm almost always on the side of the secessionists because a smaller entity comes closer to a grouping of people that share linguistic, ethnic, racial, religious, and philosophical values. And that makes it more stable. Ideally, the world will reorganize in Phyles. In fact, we're making a move in that direction, albeit with cautious baby steps.
While I think secession movements and the breakup of huge nation-states are part of the answer, that's not to say it's going to be pleasant. The American War Between the States was very unpleasant and inconvenient for everybody alive at that time, and, like most secession movements and revolutions, it failed. There's no guarantee that any of them are going to be successful, but these are the kind of times we're looking at. And it may be our best chance for averting something like a world government.
It all sounds chaotic, I know. And, contrary to what the WEF's neo-Marxist court intellectuals believe, the results are unpredictable.
International Man: There is a struggle between two powerful forces: centralization and decentralization.
Governments, large corporations, and globalists are pushing hard for centralization in all aspects of life.
At the same time, powerful forces are pulling towards decentralization.
Where do you think this is all headed?
Doug Casey: In Third World countries, millions of people are moving towards the big cities as a way to better themselves. Meanwhile, in countries like the US, people who are in a position to are moving out of the big cities. It's centralization on the one hand and decentralization on the other.
The same is happening in the world of finance. With any luck, Bitcoin will triumph completely over fiat currencies and CBDCs. The impending collapse of unsound financial and economic systems of the world will result, I think, in the reinstitutionalization of gold as money, along with Bitcoin.
As all this happens, a lot of corporations will go under, and their employees will have to find new ways to put groceries on the table. Not everybody will succeed.
There's potential for mass chaos on numerous levels in the years to come.
A final note, on the bright side. The Globalists, WEFers, and Jacobins pushing for more centralization are quite arrogant; there's a good chance they'll overreach, even though it now looks like they're winning. Maybe the average guy, even if he doesn't go out and riot in the streets, might still wake up.
A lot of people are becoming very unhappy about their lower standard of living and increasing controls. Perhaps enough of them will figure out the causes and retake their personal lives into their own hands, not just as part of a mob or a group, but as sovereign individuals.
Posted on December 9th, 2022
Government: Who Needs It?
International Man Communique
Do We Need The State?
by Doug Casey
Rousseau was perhaps the first to popularize the fiction now taught in civics classes about how government was created. It holds that men sat down together and rationally thought out the concept of government as a solution to problems that confronted them. The government of the United States was, however, the first to be formed in any way remotely like Rousseau’s ideal. Even then, it had far from universal support from the three million colonials whom it claimed to represent. The U.S. government, after all, grew out of an illegal conspiracy to overthrow and replace the existing government.
There’s no question that the result was, by an order of magnitude, the best blueprint for a government that had yet been conceived. Most of America’s Founding Fathers believed the main purpose of government was to protect its subjects from the initiation of violence from any source; government itself prominently included. That made the U.S. government almost unique in history. And it was that concept – not natural resources, the ethnic composition of American immigrants, or luck – that turned America into the paragon it became.
The origin of government itself, however, was nothing like Rousseau’s fable or the origin of the United States Constitution. The most realistic scenario for the origin of government is a roving group of bandits deciding that life would be easier if they settled down in a particular locale, and simply taxing the residents for a fixed percentage (rather like "protection money") instead of periodically sweeping through and carrying off all they could get away with. It’s no accident that the ruling classes everywhere have martial backgrounds. Royalty are really nothing more than successful marauders who have buried the origins of their wealth in romance.
Romanticizing government, making it seem like Camelot, populated by brave knights and benevolent kings, painting it as noble and ennobling, helps people to accept its jurisdiction. But, like most things, government is shaped by its origins. Author Rick Maybury may have said it best in Whatever Happened to Justice?,
"A castle was not so much a plush palace as the headquarters for a concentration camp. These camps, called feudal kingdoms, were established by conquering barbarians who’d enslaved the local people. When you see one, ask to see not just the stately halls and bedrooms, but the dungeons and torture chambers.
"A castle was a hangout for silk-clad gangsters who were stealing from helpless workers. The king was the ‘lord’ who had control of the blackjack; he claimed a special ‘divine right’ to use force on the innocent.
"Fantasies about handsome princes and beautiful princesses are dangerous; they whitewash the truth. They give children the impression political power is wonderful stuff."
Is The State Necessary?
The violent and corrupt nature of government is widely acknowledged by almost everyone. That’s been true since time immemorial, as have political satire and grousing about politicians. Yet almost everyone turns a blind eye; most not only put up with it, but actively support the charade. That’s because, although many may believe government to be an evil, they believe it is a necessary evil (the larger question of whether anything that is evil is necessary, or whether anything that is necessary can be evil, is worth discussing, but this isn’t the forum).
What (arguably) makes government necessary is the need for protection from other, even more dangerous, governments. I believe a case can be made that modern technology obviates this function.
One of the most perversely misleading myths about government is that it promotes order within its own bailiwick, keeps groups from constantly warring with each other, and somehow creates togetherness and harmony. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of the truth. There’s no cosmic imperative for different people to rise up against one another…unless they’re organized into political groups. The Middle East, now the world’s most fertile breeding ground for hatred, provides an excellent example.
Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peaceably in Palestine, Lebanon, and North Africa for centuries until the situation became politicized after World War I. Until then, an individual’s background and beliefs were just personal attributes, not a casus belli. Government was at its most benign, an ineffectual nuisance that concerned itself mostly with extorting taxes. People were busy with that most harmless of activities: making money.
But politics do not deal with people as individuals. It scoops them up into parties and nations. And some group inevitably winds up using the power of the state (however "innocently" or "justly" at first) to impose its values and wishes on others with predictably destructive results. What would otherwise be an interesting kaleidoscope of humanity then sorts itself out according to the lowest common denominator peculiar to the time and place.
Sometimes that means along religious lines, as with the Muslims and Hindus in India or the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland; or ethnic lines, like the Kurds and Iraqis in the Middle East or Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka; sometimes it’s mostly racial, as whites and East Indians found throughout Africa in the 1970s or Asians in California in the 1870s. Sometimes it’s purely a matter of politics, as Argentines, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and other Latins discovered more recently. Sometimes it amounts to no more than personal beliefs, as the McCarthy era in the 1950s and the Salem trials in the 1690s proved.
Throughout history government has served as a vehicle for the organization of hatred and oppression, benefitting no one except those who are ambitious and ruthless enough to gain control of it. That’s not to say government hasn’t, then and now, performed useful functions. But the useful things it does could and would be done far better by the market.
Posted on November 29th, 2022
No Way Out for the USA
International Man Communique
No Way Out for the USA
by Jeff Thomas
On the surface, it would appear that the US is in the catbird seat: Since Bretton Woods in 1944, the US has been able to dictate the economy to its trading partners and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world. Those countries that got on board the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo would be the world’s leaders in commerce, and the rest would take second shrift.
This was possible because, at the end of the war, the US had been supplying the allies with most of their armaments and materiel and had insisted on being paid in gold. By 1944, they held the great majority of the world’s gold and had the most productive manufacturing facilities. They were in a position to call all the shots, and the countries that subsequently made up the First World went along for the ride.
But by the 1970s, the US went off the gold standard and was paying for imports with US Treasuries. This was seen to be a boon at the time, as the Treasuries could be created from thin air, and the demands by the US became boundless. The US became the biggest house on the block, but it was, in fact, a house of cards, which was only as good as the currency it was built upon – not true money but debt.
To paraphrase Norm Franz, "Gold is the money of kings… debt is the money of slaves."
The US was, from 1971 on, in the business of enslaving its partners. Along the way, it became more economical to outsource manufacturing, and, over the ensuing decades, the production of most goods came from countries other than the US.
But a wrinkle occurred in recent decades: some of the overseas suppliers of goods, and in particular, energy were now building up their ability for world trade to the point that the US itself was no longer essential. Indeed, better business could often be created between countries without going through the US, and the US was becoming an obstacle to the economic advancement of other nations.
In recent decades, China and Russia have emerged as the most essential providers of goods and energy, respectively, precisely at the time that the US had planned to establish globalism – dominance over the entire world by the US, with the backup support of the other First World countries, most notably, Europe.
As long as the other First World countries continued to endorse American diktat to the world, US hegemony would not only continue but expand.
But then, Russia threw a rather major wrench into the works: the Nord Steam pipeline already supplied much of the natural gas to Europe, allowing it to heat its homes and run its factories. With the addition of Nord Stream II, a tipping point was reached: the great majority of Europe’s essential energy, which it was unable to produce itself, could be gotten from Russia and at a price that no other supplier could match.
What’s often overlooked in the discussion of the importance of Nord Stream II is that, from the first day that the tap was to be turned on to supply Europe, US hegemony would end. Although the US had succeeded in dominating European policy over the last half-century, that situation had now reversed. In a choice between pleasing the US and pleasing the eastern suppliers of goods and energy, Europe’s default position would now be with Asia, not the US.
In this one seemingly minor change in supply, the hegemony of the US would cease. And, more troublingly, US power had been a house of cards for decades. It was no longer a manufacturing titan; in fact, it now produced little besides debt. It had once used its manufacturing capacity to bully its trading partners, but now this power had become a mere remnant.
In recent decades, the US has been operating on its past laurels and the assumption that it was the big boy on the block and must be obeyed, no matter how unreasonable its demands were.
When US federal and corporate leaders realised their dilemma, they understood that they had only one last-ditch option: war.
Historically, this is always the last play of a dying empire: when you’re about to lose everything, a major war must be created as a distraction to buy time.
A small war is only a temporary respite. A major war serves to upset the world as a whole. If the world can be turned upside down, perhaps there’s a chance that the dying empire can actually survive with some of its power intact.
If not, the empire goes the way of the dodo. It slips away into insignificance or even extinction.
And this is where the US now finds itself. The shift to the Asian century is well underway. Quietly, one nation after another is shifting its trade and its deference to the Asian leaders. Those countries like Saudi Arabia, that can make dramatic shifts and do so safely, will be bolder in their shift. Less powerful countries will be a bit more subtle, tiptoeing away from their former master. And that, too, is now underway.
But again, the key ally of the US – the one without which it could not be an empire -has been Europe.
The EU is already on the ropes; it was a misconceived experiment from the start and has now begun to splinter. Although no major breakup has begun, the rot is already beyond any possible salvage, and the dictates of Brussels are encountering refusals by some member countries.
With the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, it has become quietly apparent in Germany and other EU countries that they will be facing extreme hardships as a result. They can no longer back out of their support for the US push to create warfare in Ukraine. Additionally, they face the US attempt to draw all the NATO countries into war with Russia – a suicidal prospect for Europe.
The US, in its desperation to escalate the war, has begun to suggest that a "limited nuclear war" might be advisable, but Europe understands that a limited nuclear war is akin to being "a little bit pregnant."
Europe would not survive such a war.
And so, Germany has begun the pull away from the US. President Olaf Scholz has personally gone to Beijing to broker peace. In doing so, he also makes a clear statement: Germany is acknowledging that it is moving over to a new master.
To be sure, the US will not take this lightly.
There will be collective nail-biting in the First World countries as the average man wonders and worries whether the US will do the sane thing and back away from warfare. What the average man does not understand is that, whilst this may be the best choice for the average man and the world in general, it would be the end for those who rule the US. The US would slide inexorably into a lesser state, or even fragment, leaving the US elite with no empire to rule.
This, above all, cannot be tolerated. And, so, it’s important to understand that, to the rulers of the US empire, this is an all-or-nothing game.
And to be clear, it’s a game that cannot be won. The US no longer produces much; it no longer has a meaningful balance of trade; it’s the most indebted nation in world history; it’s broke, and it can no longer win a protracted war.
And, to reiterate, the US has no other option at this point. It has destroyed all its other options and has no way out of its dilemma – its modern-day Thucydides Trap. As such, it will not go quietly. Much like a cornered rat, it will make a last attempt to take down as many others as it can on its way out.
That should give us pause. Those who wish to avoid becoming collateral damage as the behemoth falls would be advised to extricate themselves, economically and even geographically, from the dying empire.
No Way Out for the USA
by Jeff Thomas
On the surface, it would appear that the US is in the catbird seat: Since Bretton Woods in 1944, the US has been able to dictate the economy to its trading partners and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world. Those countries that got on board the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo would be the world’s leaders in commerce, and the rest would take second shrift.
This was possible because, at the end of the war, the US had been supplying the allies with most of their armaments and materiel and had insisted on being paid in gold. By 1944, they held the great majority of the world’s gold and had the most productive manufacturing facilities. They were in a position to call all the shots, and the countries that subsequently made up the First World went along for the ride.
But by the 1970s, the US went off the gold standard and was paying for imports with US Treasuries. This was seen to be a boon at the time, as the Treasuries could be created from thin air, and the demands by the US became boundless. The US became the biggest house on the block, but it was, in fact, a house of cards, which was only as good as the currency it was built upon – not true money but debt.
To paraphrase Norm Franz, "Gold is the money of kings… debt is the money of slaves."
The US was, from 1971 on, in the business of enslaving its partners. Along the way, it became more economical to outsource manufacturing, and, over the ensuing decades, the production of most goods came from countries other than the US.
But a wrinkle occurred in recent decades: some of the overseas suppliers of goods, and in particular, energy were now building up their ability for world trade to the point that the US itself was no longer essential. Indeed, better business could often be created between countries without going through the US, and the US was becoming an obstacle to the economic advancement of other nations.
In recent decades, China and Russia have emerged as the most essential providers of goods and energy, respectively, precisely at the time that the US had planned to establish globalism – dominance over the entire world by the US, with the backup support of the other First World countries, most notably, Europe.
As long as the other First World countries continued to endorse American diktat to the world, US hegemony would not only continue but expand.
But then, Russia threw a rather major wrench into the works: the Nord Steam pipeline already supplied much of the natural gas to Europe, allowing it to heat its homes and run its factories. With the addition of Nord Stream II, a tipping point was reached: the great majority of Europe’s essential energy, which it was unable to produce itself, could be gotten from Russia and at a price that no other supplier could match.
What’s often overlooked in the discussion of the importance of Nord Stream II is that, from the first day that the tap was to be turned on to supply Europe, US hegemony would end. Although the US had succeeded in dominating European policy over the last half-century, that situation had now reversed. In a choice between pleasing the US and pleasing the eastern suppliers of goods and energy, Europe’s default position would now be with Asia, not the US.
In this one seemingly minor change in supply, the hegemony of the US would cease. And, more troublingly, US power had been a house of cards for decades. It was no longer a manufacturing titan; in fact, it now produced little besides debt. It had once used its manufacturing capacity to bully its trading partners, but now this power had become a mere remnant.
In recent decades, the US has been operating on its past laurels and the assumption that it was the big boy on the block and must be obeyed, no matter how unreasonable its demands were.
When US federal and corporate leaders realised their dilemma, they understood that they had only one last-ditch option: war.
Historically, this is always the last play of a dying empire: when you’re about to lose everything, a major war must be created as a distraction to buy time.
A small war is only a temporary respite. A major war serves to upset the world as a whole. If the world can be turned upside down, perhaps there’s a chance that the dying empire can actually survive with some of its power intact.
If not, the empire goes the way of the dodo. It slips away into insignificance or even extinction.
And this is where the US now finds itself. The shift to the Asian century is well underway. Quietly, one nation after another is shifting its trade and its deference to the Asian leaders. Those countries like Saudi Arabia, that can make dramatic shifts and do so safely, will be bolder in their shift. Less powerful countries will be a bit more subtle, tiptoeing away from their former master. And that, too, is now underway.
But again, the key ally of the US – the one without which it could not be an empire -has been Europe.
The EU is already on the ropes; it was a misconceived experiment from the start and has now begun to splinter. Although no major breakup has begun, the rot is already beyond any possible salvage, and the dictates of Brussels are encountering refusals by some member countries.
With the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, it has become quietly apparent in Germany and other EU countries that they will be facing extreme hardships as a result. They can no longer back out of their support for the US push to create warfare in Ukraine. Additionally, they face the US attempt to draw all the NATO countries into war with Russia – a suicidal prospect for Europe.
The US, in its desperation to escalate the war, has begun to suggest that a "limited nuclear war" might be advisable, but Europe understands that a limited nuclear war is akin to being "a little bit pregnant."
Europe would not survive such a war.
And so, Germany has begun the pull away from the US. President Olaf Scholz has personally gone to Beijing to broker peace. In doing so, he also makes a clear statement: Germany is acknowledging that it is moving over to a new master.
To be sure, the US will not take this lightly.
There will be collective nail-biting in the First World countries as the average man wonders and worries whether the US will do the sane thing and back away from warfare. What the average man does not understand is that, whilst this may be the best choice for the average man and the world in general, it would be the end for those who rule the US. The US would slide inexorably into a lesser state, or even fragment, leaving the US elite with no empire to rule.
This, above all, cannot be tolerated. And, so, it’s important to understand that, to the rulers of the US empire, this is an all-or-nothing game.
And to be clear, it’s a game that cannot be won. The US no longer produces much; it no longer has a meaningful balance of trade; it’s the most indebted nation in world history; it’s broke, and it can no longer win a protracted war.
And, to reiterate, the US has no other option at this point. It has destroyed all its other options and has no way out of its dilemma – its modern-day Thucydides Trap. As such, it will not go quietly. Much like a cornered rat, it will make a last attempt to take down as many others as it can on its way out.
That should give us pause. Those who wish to avoid becoming collateral damage as the behemoth falls would be advised to extricate themselves, economically and even geographically, from the dying empire.
Posted on November 29th, 2022
Current Events
Introducing a website where a friend publishes news of interest to anyone who has reason to distrust government, the media, and the Medical Industrial Complex. It includes a podcast series where she and I discuss these current events.
Posted on November 24th, 2022
Windfall This!
How Governments Could Soon Hit Investors With a Windfall Profits Tax
by Doug Casey
International Man: What is a windfall profits tax?
It seems like a vague and arbitrary concept politicians use to justify taking more wealth from people they don't like.
Doug Casey: That's quite correct.
It's defined as the taking of "unusual and unearned" or "exploitative" profits.
The application of a windfall profits tax always has to do with the concept of "fair." Whenever you see the word fair being used, be on alert. "Fair" is among the most dangerous words in the English language.
Everybody approves of the idea of fairness in theory, in the abstract. But in practice, it's a chimera, a will o' wisp. Individuals of good will try to treat others fairly, i.e., with honor and justice; it's a question of doing what you say you'll do and not aggressing against other persons or their property. But the concept of "fair" usually connotes a sense of forced division of spoils. At the level of government, where coercion is overtly or tacitly in the picture, fairness tends to be no more than a political buzzword. They manufacture artificial notions of "fair" profits, "fair" prices, a "fair" wage, "fair" housing, and the like. These are arbitrary and pernicious concepts that tend to rationalize envy. This is entirely apart from the fact that taxes—the forceful taking of another's property under cover of the law—are themselves immoral. But that's a subject for another day.
Government takes it upon itself to tax what they consider windfall, or unfair, profits. Occasionally they pass out huge amounts of money to cover windfall losses on the part of favored corporations. Both windfall profit taxes and subsidies are symptomatic of the accelerating takeover of the economy by the political class. In a free society, profits are rewarded, and losses are punished by the market—end of story. In addition to moral benefits, that incentivizes businesses to create wealth, which benefits everyone. That's how countries grow rich and stay free.
Windfall profits themselves are almost always caused by the imposition, or the unraveling, of politically caused distortions in the market. Gold is a classic example. When the government raised the price of gold from $20 to $35 in 1933, it created windfall profits for speculators. It had been inflating the currency while maintaining a fixed price of gold in dollars until it became impossible.
The same thing happened again in 1971 when, after controlling the gold price at $35 an ounce while inflating the dollar for 38 years, they were forced to let it float. The metal ran to over $800 by 1980. Speculators and mining companies again made huge windfall profits because of State intervention in the market. The same thing happened in a different way with the other big "political" commodity, oil. Silver, which was controlled at $1.29 an ounce for decades until 1965, is another among many examples.
Windfall profits are usually a consequence of government intervention in the economy. Government typically finds a different type of poison to act as an antidote to the first type of poison they've injected into the economy.
When a corporation has windfall profits taxed away, it amounts to punishing foresight. A business makes windfall profits by positioning itself to provide goods and services when and where they're most needed, allocating them via market prices. It's counterproductive and quite insane to have a windfall profits tax.
The solution to "windfall profits" and the envy they engender is to totally remove governments and their central banks from the economy. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, though, so speculators and smart businessmen will hopefully continue to reap windfall profits while the State will, idiotically, attempt to punish them.
by Doug Casey
International Man: What is a windfall profits tax?
It seems like a vague and arbitrary concept politicians use to justify taking more wealth from people they don't like.
Doug Casey: That's quite correct.
It's defined as the taking of "unusual and unearned" or "exploitative" profits.
The application of a windfall profits tax always has to do with the concept of "fair." Whenever you see the word fair being used, be on alert. "Fair" is among the most dangerous words in the English language.
Everybody approves of the idea of fairness in theory, in the abstract. But in practice, it's a chimera, a will o' wisp. Individuals of good will try to treat others fairly, i.e., with honor and justice; it's a question of doing what you say you'll do and not aggressing against other persons or their property. But the concept of "fair" usually connotes a sense of forced division of spoils. At the level of government, where coercion is overtly or tacitly in the picture, fairness tends to be no more than a political buzzword. They manufacture artificial notions of "fair" profits, "fair" prices, a "fair" wage, "fair" housing, and the like. These are arbitrary and pernicious concepts that tend to rationalize envy. This is entirely apart from the fact that taxes—the forceful taking of another's property under cover of the law—are themselves immoral. But that's a subject for another day.
Government takes it upon itself to tax what they consider windfall, or unfair, profits. Occasionally they pass out huge amounts of money to cover windfall losses on the part of favored corporations. Both windfall profit taxes and subsidies are symptomatic of the accelerating takeover of the economy by the political class. In a free society, profits are rewarded, and losses are punished by the market—end of story. In addition to moral benefits, that incentivizes businesses to create wealth, which benefits everyone. That's how countries grow rich and stay free.
Windfall profits themselves are almost always caused by the imposition, or the unraveling, of politically caused distortions in the market. Gold is a classic example. When the government raised the price of gold from $20 to $35 in 1933, it created windfall profits for speculators. It had been inflating the currency while maintaining a fixed price of gold in dollars until it became impossible.
The same thing happened again in 1971 when, after controlling the gold price at $35 an ounce while inflating the dollar for 38 years, they were forced to let it float. The metal ran to over $800 by 1980. Speculators and mining companies again made huge windfall profits because of State intervention in the market. The same thing happened in a different way with the other big "political" commodity, oil. Silver, which was controlled at $1.29 an ounce for decades until 1965, is another among many examples.
Windfall profits are usually a consequence of government intervention in the economy. Government typically finds a different type of poison to act as an antidote to the first type of poison they've injected into the economy.
When a corporation has windfall profits taxed away, it amounts to punishing foresight. A business makes windfall profits by positioning itself to provide goods and services when and where they're most needed, allocating them via market prices. It's counterproductive and quite insane to have a windfall profits tax.
The solution to "windfall profits" and the envy they engender is to totally remove governments and their central banks from the economy. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, though, so speculators and smart businessmen will hopefully continue to reap windfall profits while the State will, idiotically, attempt to punish them.
International Man: Thanks to destructive ESG policies, Western sanctions on Russia, and rampant money printing, energy prices have soared recently. As a result, energy companies have seen their profits rise.
Recently, the European Union announced they are looking into implementing a windfall profits tax on energy companies.
What's your take on this?
Doug Casey: Again, like all state intervention in the economy, it's both economically and morally destructive.
By taxing energy companies, they're taking away the capital needed to produce more oil and create even more profits. It's not just energy but absolutely any kind of production, creation, or business. The fact that any good return on investment can be arbitrarily taken away discourages investment. But it's worse than that. The current mania for Environmental, Social, and Governance regulations hamstring production and immensely raise costs. Businesses now must hire legions of Karens to ensure there are enough people of the right gender and race, as opposed to competence. Essentially worthless busybodies justify their existence by bureaucratizing every move to assure that it's politically correct.
ESG and windfall profits taxes don't solve anything. On the contrary, they're making real and imagined problems much worse. This is how to not just destroy prosperity but bring on a new Dark Age.
International Man: There's precedence for a windfall profits tax in the US.
In 1980, Congress passed the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act, which taxed up to 70% of "windfall profits" of domestic oil producers.
What happened then, and how could it apply to what is happening today?
Doug Casey: Few people seem to remember that, at the top of the last oil boom in 1980, oil companies, drilling companies, and others in the energy space equaled about 30% of the S&P 500's market cap.
But by about this time last year, they'd fallen to about 3% of the S&P 500 market cap. It's been a long bear market, at least in relative terms, for oil companies. They've recovered a bit since, but are still very cheap.
People have also forgotten that, in the past, oil was both easier to find and easier to produce. At this point, most of the world's shallow, high-grade oil has been found and is being produced.
New oil fields today tend to be far offshore in deep water or other very problematic and expensive places. Not to mention the much greater political risks. It's much harder to produce oil than it used to be, even with the great technological advances that have been made. Voracious tax regimes and new ESG and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) rules make it even harder and more expensive. Most petroleum and mining companies now have more lawyers and human resources supernumeraries than they do geologists and engineers. The situation has become insane and unsustainable.
Many oil companies—Shell and BP are examples—have said that they're actually getting out of the energy business because it's more trouble and risk than it's worth.
But oddly enough, profits, windfall or not, are not going to be the problem in the years to come. As the Greater Depression deepens over this decade, profits of any kind—at least for productive businesses—are going to be in short supply. So, worry about losses bankrupting corporations in the future. The great parasite, the State, is on the ragged edge of killing its host.
International Man: If governments can implement a windfall profits tax on energy, it probably wouldn't be a stretch for them to do it in other areas.
If the price of gold explodes, couldn't Congress pass a "Fair Share Gold Windfall Profit Tax Act" levying a tax of 70% more on gold profits?
What are the implications of this political risk for investors in this space?
Doug Casey: Absolutely. The Prime Directive of all living things, from an amoeba to a person, to a State, is: Survive! Especially now, with most governments on the edge of bankruptcy and taxes already at onerous levels, nothing is off the table. If the State "needs" to take a "fair" share of oil profits or gold profits, maybe they can and will take a fair share of real estate profits on your house too.
In an era of housing shortages and finding places other than Martha's Vineyard to put millions of migrants, you may find your spare bedroom is up for grabs. If you bought a house years ago for $100,000 and today it's worth $2 million, perhaps the locked-up profits in your house should be taxed as being an unfair windfall profit as well.
What I'm trying to emphasize here is that, in today's world, although your investment risks are huge, the political risks of owning any assets today are even greater.
People don't realize that the government isn't their friend. It's become a predator. The State and its minions are actually your enemy. They can and probably will do almost anything to survive. And since the government is the only entity in society that can use force to survive, that's exactly what it will do.
We're in for a rough decade.
Posted on October 6th, 2022
Liberalism
"When Will They Learn?"
by Jeff Thomas
Dependency upon government is a disease. Once it has been
caught, it becomes chronic and does not reverse itself in a population
until the system collapses under its own weight.
For many years, frustrated colleagues of mine who are either
conservative or libertarian have posed the rhetorical question, "When
will those liberals learn?" Surely, at some point (they reason),
liberals will recognise that bailouts, entitlements, and a "planned"
society simply do not work. It s not even a question of whether
liberalism is a laudable concept. The problem is that it just... doesn't... work.
Of course, my colleagues are correct in their appraisal of the
liberal concept. Unfortunately, they are gravely mistaken in their
belief that there comes a point at which the liberal "bubble" pops and
suddenly all liberals wake up and smell the coffee.
Truth be told, as long as governments can benefit from maintaining a
strong liberal consciousness in their citizenry, and as long as they can
count on the media to maintain that consciousness, it will always be
possible to convince liberal thinkers that, whatever negative events
have taken place in a given country, they are the fault of the
"enemy"---the non-liberal contingent.
But, surely, when there is clear-cut evidence that liberal policies have failed, liberals must accept
that liberalism is an economic and social dead end. No, I'm afraid not.
Let's look at how just three examples are likely to play out---not as
we'd like to see them play out, but how they will play out in reality.
When the bailouts end, the economy will collapse. Liberals will then grasp that bailouts do not work. Not
so, I'm afraid. Although endless QE is as implausible as perpetual
motion, when it is finally halted, the economy will inevitably crash,
and crash badly---made worse by QE. Will liberals then realise the failure
of QE? No, they will only argue that the only problem was that it was
halted---that, had it continued, it would eventually have saved the day.
No liberal will hazard a guess as to what amount of QE or length of
time would have created salvation; however, the blame for the crash will
be placed squarely at the feet of the greedy One Percent, whom the
liberals will say "engineered the end of QE in order to impoverish and
enslave the middle class." Liberals will be more committed than ever to
government spending as a solution.
When cities such as Bradford in the UK or Detroit in the US
reach fiscal collapse, liberals will realise that ever-increasing
entitlements are simply not sustainable, that such tax-based benefit
programmes drive out thriving industries, leaving the poor behind, in a
dying metropolis. Again, this will not happen. Instead of learning the
obvious lesson, liberals will redouble their belief in collectivism.
They will reason that the government had successfully protected inner
city workers through benefit programmes. However, big business, wanting
to create slaves of workers, sent jobs overseas, to countries where
enslavement by the rich is still possible.
By doing so, they removed tax dollars from the system, causing the
impoverishment of inner-city dwellers, destroying their lives. Rather
than abandon social programmes as ineffective, liberals will set about
creating massive relocation programmes, such as moving the
disenfranchised inner-city people to areas where there is sufficient
local business for taxation to continue supporting those on public
assistance. In so doing, those areas that were previously economically
viable will also be bled to the point of fiscal failure, spreading the
disease. However, the liberal conclusion will remain the same: "The problem is the greedy rich."
When the government has fully morphed into a dictatorial police
state, liberals will realise that governmental overreach has destroyed
their liberty. Again, this will not be the liberal view when
the time comes. Instead, they will conclude, as they do now, that
freedom is a small price to pay for safety. They will, therefore, not
only accept, but encourage the government to redouble its Gestapo
approach every time a lone gunman fires into a classroom. And any single
such incident will be cause for a nationwide ramping-up of policing.
(If no lone gunman appears on the scene just prior to a planned
ramping-up, a suitable incident can always be created by the
government.)
In each of the above cases, nothing is learned by liberals, except
that they were right all along: "Don't trust the conservatives. They are
evil and will destroy all good in society."
These three examples should be sufficient to demonstrate that there
will be no magic day when liberals figure out the failings of
collectivism. In fact, quite the opposite will be true. Just as any
government benefits from its own expansion of power, so governments and
the media propaganda systems will ensure good that the EU and US will
only become more liberal over time.
Throughout history, a basic truism has been evident: Dependency
upon government is a disease. Once it has been caught, it becomes
chronic and does not reverse itself in a population until the system
collapses under its own weight.
A good example of this is East Germany in the early 1990's. In 1987, US
President Reagan famously delivered the words in Berlin, "Mister
Gorbachev, tear down this wall." His words were heard so loudly that
Mister Gorbachev did, indeed, tear down the wall. Almost immediately,
West Berliners, thrilled to be reunited with their brothers to the East,
created thousands of job opportunities for East Germans. East Germans
were equally thrilled, anticipating that they might now have larger
apartments, higher pay, and possibly own televisions and cars. However,
East Germans did not respond well to the standards of the West, feeling
that employers were too harsh in their requirements and the benefits
were not what they had been used to.
East and west re-unified, but the transition was not a smooth one.
But, before we place all the criticism on liberals, it is well to
note that, in both the EU and US, conservatives often tend to be just as
dogmatic in their assessments. Whilst conservatives arguably may have a
better grasp than liberals as to fiscal realities, they, too, are
continuously programmed to adhere to a fixed group of perceptions.
Conservatives and liberals are both programmed to maintain
ongoing opposition to each other. Conservatives are perceived as greedy
and evil by liberals; liberals are perceived as naiive and stupid by
conservatives. The more they can be polarised from each other, the more
governments may make use of the polarity as a distraction from their own
actions. The more conservatives and liberals place the blame on each
other, the more governments may present themselves as the referee,
whilst, in fact, they do all they can to expand the mutual animosity.
When people are angry, they do not think straight. The angrier they
become, the more reason goes out the window. Consequently, the more a
government can stir up its minions to attack each other, the more power
the government has to impose ever-greater controls on the population. In
a conservative administration, a government will institute greater
social controls. In the following liberal administration, the government
will institute greater economic controls. And the police state will be
increased under both administrations.
The net effect is overall increased dominance by government. Under
the two-party system, this dominance is not only tolerated by the
populace, but encouraged.
The day never comes when a people convince their government to
"lighten up." Relief only comes when an overly-powerful governmental
system collapses under its own weight.
Posted on October 4th, 2022
End of Western Civilization
Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization
by Doug Casey
International Man: The decline of Western Civilization is on a lot of people's minds.
Let's talk about this trend.
Doug Casey: Western Civilization has its origins in ancient Greece. It's unique among the world s civilizations in putting the individual as opposed to the collective in a central position. It enshrined logic and rational thought as opposed to mysticism and superstition as the way to deal with the world. It's because of this that we have science, technology, great literature and art, capitalism, personal freedom, the concept of progress, and much, much more. In fact, almost everything worth having in the material world is due to Western Civilization.
Ayn Rand once said "East minus West equals zero." I think she went a bit too far, as a rhetorical device, but she was essentially right. When you look at what the world's other civilizations have brought to the party, at least over the last 2,500 years, it s trivial.
I lived in the Orient for years. There are many things I love about it martial arts, yoga, and the cuisine among them. But all the progress they've made is due to adopting the fruits of the West.
International Man: There are so many things degrading Western Civilization. Where do we begin?
Doug Casey: It's been said, correctly, that a civilization always collapses from within. World War 1, in 1914, signaled the start of the long collapse of Western Civilization. Of course, termites were already eating away at the foundations, with the writings of people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. It's been on an accelerating downward path ever since, even though technology and science have been improving at a quantum pace. They are, however, like delayed action flywheels, operating on stored energy and accumulated capital. Without capital, intellectual freedom, and entrepreneurialism, science and technology will slow down. I'm optimistic we'll make it to Kurzweil's Singularity, but there are no guarantees.
Things also changed with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Before that, the US used gold coinage for money. "The dollar" was just a name for 1/20th of an ounce of gold. That is what the dollar was. Paper dollars were just receipts for gold on deposit in the Treasury. The income tax, enacted the same year, threw more sand in the gears of civilization. The world was much freer before the events of 1913 and 1914, which acted to put the State at the center of everything.
The Fed and the income tax are both disastrous and unnecessary things, enemies of the common man in every way. Unfortunately, people have come to believe they're fixtures in the cosmic firmament. They're the main reasons there are many other reasons, though, unfortunately why the average American s standard of living has been dropping since the early 1970s. In fact, were it not for these things, and the immense amount of capital destroyed during the numerous wars of the last 100 years, I expect we'd have already colonized the moon and Mars. Among many other things...
But I want to re-emphasize that the science, the technology, and all the wonderful toys we have are not the essence of Western Civilization. They're consequences of individualism, capitalism, rational thought, and personal freedom. It's critical not to confuse cause and effect.
International Man: You mentioned that the average American s standard of living has dropped since the early 1970's. This is directly related to the US government abandoning the dollar's last link to gold in 1971. Since then, the Federal Reserve has been able to debase the US dollar without limit.
I think the dollar s transformation into a purely fiat currency has eroded the rule of law and morality in the US. It s similar to what happened in the Roman Empire after it started debasing its currency.
What do you think, Doug?
Doug Casey: All the world's governments and central banks share a common philosophy, which drives these policies. They believe that you create economic activity by stimulating demand, and you stimulate demand by printing money. And, of course, it's true, in a way. Roughly the same way a counterfeiter can stimulate a local economy.
Unfortunately, they ignore that, and completely ignore that the way a person or a society becomes wealthy is by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. That difference, savings, is how you create capital. Without capital you're reduced to subsistence, scratching at the earth with a stick. These people think that by inflating which is to say destroying the currency, they can create prosperity. But what they re really doing, is destroying capital: When you destroy the value of the currency, that discourages people from saving it. And when people don't save, they can't build capital, and the vicious cycle goes on.
This is destructive for civilization itself, in both the long term and the short term. The more paper money, the more credit, they create, the more society focuses on finance, as opposed to production. It s why there are many times more people studying finance than science. The focus is increasingly on speculation, not production. Financial engineering, not mechanical, electrical, or chemical engineering. And lots of laws and regulations to keep the unstable structure from collapsing.
What keeps a truly civil society together isn't laws, regulations, and police. It s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation, and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western Civilization is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that's being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society. There are regulations on the most obscure areas of life. As Harvey Silverglate pointed out in his book, the average American commits three felonies a day. Whether he's caught and prosecuted is a subject of luck and the arbitrary will of some functionary. That s antithetical to the core values of Western Civilization.
International Man: Speaking of ancient civilizations like Rome, interest rates are just coming off the the lowest levels they've been in 5,000 years of recorded history. Trillions of dollars worth of government bonds trade at negative yields.
Of course, this couldn't happen in a free market. It s only possible because of central bank manipulation.
How will artificially low interest rates affect the collapse of Western Civilization?
Doug Casey: It s really, really serious. I previously thought it was metaphysically impossible to have negative interest rates but, in the Bizarro World central banks have created, it's happened.
Negative interest rates discourage saving. Once again, saving is what builds capital. Without capital you wind up as an empty shell Rome in 450 A.D., or Detroit today lots of wonderful but empty buildings and no economic activity. Worse, it forces people to desperately put their money in all manner of idiotic speculations in an effort to stay ahead of inflation. They wind up chasing the bubbles the funny money creates.
Let me re-emphasize something: in order for science and technology to advance you need capital. Where does capital come from? It comes from people producing more than they consume and saving the difference. Debt, on the other hand, means you're living above your means. You're either consuming the capital others have saved, or you're mortgaging your future.
Zero and negative interest rate policies, and the creation of money out of nowhere, are actually destructive of civilization itself. It makes the average guy feel that he's not in control of his own destiny. He starts believing that the State, or luck, or Allah will provide for him. That attitude is typical of people from backward parts of the world not Western Civilization.
International Man: What does it say about the economy and society that people work so hard to interpret what officials from the Federal Reserve and other central banks say?
Doug Casey: It s a shameful waste of time. They remind me of primitives seeking the counsel of witch doctors. One hundred years ago, the richest people in the country the Rockefeller's, the Carnegie's, and such made their money creating industries that actually made stuff. Now, the richest people in the country just shuffle money around. They get rich because they're close to the government and the hydrant of currency materialized by the Federal Reserve. I'd say it's a sign that society in the US has become quite degraded.
The world revolves much less around actual production, but around guessing the direction of financial markets. Negative interest rates are creating bubbles, and will eventually result in an economic collapse.
International Man: Negative interest rates are essentially a tax on savings. A lot of people would rather pull their money out of the bank and stuff it under a mattress than suffer that sting.
The economic central planners know this. It s why they're using negative interest rates to ramp up the War on Cash, the push to eliminate paper currency and create a cashless society.
The banking system is very fragile. Banks don't hold much paper cash. It's mostly digital bytes on a computer. If people start withdrawing paper money en masse, it won't take much to bring the whole system down.
Their solution is to make accessing cash harder, and in some cases, illegal. That's why the economic witch doctors at Harvard are pounding the table to get rid of the $100 bill.
Take France, for example. It s now illegal to make cash transactions over 1,000 Euro without documenting them properly.
Negative interest rates have turbocharged the War on Cash. If the central planners win this war, it would be the final deathblow to financial privacy.
How does this all relate to the collapse of Western Civilization?
Doug Casey: I believe the next step in their idiotic plan is to abolish cash. Decades ago they got rid of gold coinage, which used to circulate day to day in people s pockets. Then they got rid of silver coinage. Now, they re planning to get rid of cash altogether. So you won t even have euros or dollars or pounds in your wallet anymore, or if you do, it will only be very small denominations. Everything else is going to have to be done through electronic payment processing.
This is a huge disaster for the average person: absolutely everything that you buy or sell, other than perhaps a candy bar or a hamburger, is going to have to go through the banking system. Thus, the government will be able to monitor every transaction and payment. Financial privacy, even what's left of it today, will literally cease to exist.
Privacy is one of the big differences between a civilized society and a primitive society. In a primitive society, in your little dirt hut village, anybody can look through your window or pull back the flap on your tent. You have no privacy. Everybody can hear everything; see anything. This was one of the marvelous things about Western Civilization privacy was valued, and respected. But that concept, like so many others, is on its way out...
International Man: You've mentioned before that language and words provide important clues to the collapse of Western Civilization. How so?
Doug Casey: Many of the words you hear, especially on television and other media, are confused, conflated, or completely misused. Many recent changes in the way words are used are corrupting the language. As George Orwell liked to point out, to control language is to control thought. The corruption of language is adding to the corruption of civilization itself. This is not a trivial factor in the degradation of Western Civilization.
Words, their exact meanings, and how they're used are critically important. If you don't mean what you say and say what you mean, then it's impossible to communicate accurately. Forget about transmitting philosophical concepts.
Take for example shareholders and stakeholders. We all know that a shareholder actually owns a share in a company, but have you noticed that over the last generation shareholders have become less important than stakeholders? Even though stakeholders are just hangers-on, employees, or people who are looking to get in on a shakedown. But everybody slavishly acknowledges, "Yes, we've got to look out for the stakeholders."
Where did that concept come from? It's a recent creation, but Boobus americanus seems to think it was carved in stone at the country's founding.
We re told to protect them, as if they were a valuable and endangered species. I say, "A pox upon stakeholders." If they want a vote in what a company does, then they ought to become shareholders. Stakeholders are a class of being created out of nothing by Cultural Marxists for the purpose of shaking down shareholders.
Posted on September 29th, 2022
Decline and Fall of the American Empire
by Doug Casey
As some of you know, I'm an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what's likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome.
But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you're never supposed to talk about---religion and politics---and do what you're never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.
There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I'll explore shortly.
Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.
The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world's GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it's about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world's gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world's biggest creditor, whereas now it's the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it's slipping.
But it's not just the U.S.---it's Western civilization that's in decline. In 1910 Europe controlled almost the whole world---politically, financially, and militarily. Now it's becoming a Disneyland with real buildings and a petting zoo for the Chinese. It's even further down the slippery slope than the U.S.
Like America, Rome was founded by refugees---from Troy, at least in myth. Like America, it was ruled by kings in its early history. Later, Romans became self-governing, with several Assemblies and a Senate. Later still, power devolved to the executive, which was likely not an accident.
U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces the axe surrounded by rods as a symbol of state power. Publius, the pseudonymous author of The Federalist Papers, took his name from one of Rome's first consuls. As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S. When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.
A considerable cottage industry has developed comparing ancient and modern times since Edward Gibbon published The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776---the same year as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the U.S. Declaration of Independence were written. I'm a big fan of all three, but D&F is not only a great history, it's very elegant and readable literature. And it's actually a laugh riot; Gibbon had a subtle wit.
There have been huge advances in our understanding of Rome since Gibbon's time, driven by archeological discoveries. There were many things he just didn't know, because he was as much a philologist as an historian, and he based his writing on what the ancients said about themselves.
There was no real science of archeology when Gibbon wrote; little had been done even to correlate the surviving ancient texts with what was on the surviving monuments---even the well-known monuments---and on the coins. Not to mention scientists digging around in the provinces for what was left of Roman villas, battle sites, and that sort of thing. So Gibbon, like most historians, was to a degree a collector of hearsay.
And how could he know whom to believe among the ancient sources? It's as though William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, H. L. Mencken, Norman Mailer, and George Carlin all wrote about the same event, and you were left to figure out whose story was true. That would make it tough to tell what really happened just a few years ago& forget about ancient history. That's why the study of history is so tendentious; so much of it is "he said/she said."
In any event, perhaps you don't want a lecture on ancient history. You'd probably be more entertained by some guesses about what's likely to happen to the U.S. I've got some.
Let me start by saying that I'm not sure the collapse of Rome wasn't a good thing. There were many positive aspects to Rome---as there are to most civilizations. But there was much else to Rome of which I disapprove, such as its anti-commercialism, its militarism and, post-Caesar, its centralized and increasingly totalitarian government. In that light, it's worth considering whether the collapse of the U.S. might not be a good thing.
So why did Rome fall? In 1985, a German named Demandt assembled 210 reasons. I find some of them silly---like racial degeneration, homosexuality, and excessive freedom. Most are redundant. Some are just common sense---like bankruptcy, loss of moral fiber, and corruption.
Gibbon's list is much shorter. Although it's pretty hard to summarize his six fat volumes in a single sentence, he attributed the fall of Rome to just two causes, one internal and one external: Christianity and barbarian invasions, respectively. I think Gibbon was essentially right about both. Because of the sensibilities of his era, however, he probed at early Christianity (i.e., from its founding to the mid-4th century) very gently; I've decided to deal with it less delicately. Hopefully neither my analysis of religion nor of barbarian invasions (then and now) will disturb too many readers.
In any event, while accepting Gibbon's basic ideas on Christians and barbarians, I decided to break down the reasons for Rome's decline further, into 10 categories: political, legal, social, demographic, ecological, military, psychological, intellectual, religious, and economic---all of which I'll touch on. And, as a bonus, toward the end of this article, I'll give you another, completely unrelated, and extremely important reason for the collapse of both Rome and the U.S.
You don't have to agree with my interpretation, but let's see what lessons are on offer from the history of Rome, from its semi-mythical founding by Romulus and Remus in 753 BCE (a story that conflicts with Virgil's tale of Aeneas and the refugee Trojans) to what's conventionally designated as the end of the Western empire in 476 AD, when the child-emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer (a Germanic general who was in charge of what passed for the Roman army---which by then was staffed almost entirely with Germanic mercenaries who had no loyalty to the idea of Rome). It looks a lot like the American experience over the last couple of hundred years. First conquest and expansion, then global dominance, and then slippage into decline.
Political
It's somewhat misleading, however, to talk about a simple fall of Rome, and much more accurate to talk about its gradual transformation, with episodes of what paleontologists describe as "punctuated disequilibrium." There were many falls.
Republican Rome fell in 31 BCE with the accession of Augustus and the start of what's called the Principate. It almost disintegrated in the 50 years of the mid-3rd century, a time of constant civil war, the start of serious barbarian incursions, and the destruction of Rome's silver currency, the denarius.
Rome as anything resembling a free society fell in the 290s and then changed radically again, with Diocletian and the Dominate period (more on this shortly). Maybe the end came in 378, when the Goths destroyed a Roman army at Adrianople and wholesale invasions began. Maybe we should call 410 the end, when Alaric---a Goth who was actually a Roman general---conducted the first sacking of Rome.
It might be said the civilization didn't really collapse until the late 600s, when Islam conquered the Middle East and North Africa and cut off Mediterranean commerce. Maybe we should use 1453, when Constantinople and the Eastern Empire fell. Maybe the Empire is still alive today in the form of the Catholic Church---the Pope is the Pontifex Maximus wearing red slippers, as did Julius Caesar when he held that position.
One certain reflection in the distant mirror is that beginning with the Principate period, Rome underwent an accelerating trend toward absolutism, centralization, totalitarianism, and bureaucracy. I think we can argue America entered its Principate with the accession of Roosevelt in 1933; since then, the president has reigned supreme over the Congress, as Augustus did over the Senate. Pretenses fell off increasingly over time in Rome, just as they have in the U.S.
After the third century, with constant civil war and the destruction of the currency, the Principate (when the emperor, at least in theory, was just the first among equals) gave way to the Dominate period (from the word "dominus," or lord, referring to a master of slaves), when the emperor became an absolute monarch. This happened with the ascension of Diocletian in 284 and then, after another civil war, Constantine in 306. From that point forward, the emperor no longer even pretended to be the first among equals and was treated as an oriental potentate. The same trend is in motion in the U.S, but we're still a ways from reaching its endpoint---although it has to be noted that the president is now protected by hundreds, even thousands, of bodyguards. Harry Truman was the last president who actually dared to go out and informally stroll about DC, like a common citizen, while in office.
In any event, just as the Senate, the consuls, and the tribunes with their vetoes became impotent anachronisms, so have U.S. institutions. Early on, starting with the fourth emperor, Claudius, in 41 AD, the Praetorians (who had been set up by Augustus) showed they could designate the emperor. And today in the U.S., that's probably true of its praetorians---the NSA, CIA, and FBI, among others---and of course the military. We'll see how the next hanging-chad presidential election dispute gets settled.
My guess is that the booboisie (the Romans called them the capite censi, or head count) will demand a strong leader as the Greater Depression evolves, the dollar is destroyed, and a serious war gets underway. You have to remember that war has always been the health of the state. The Roman emperors were expected, not least by their soldiers, to always be engaged in war. And it's no accident that the so-called greatest U.S. presidents were war presidents---Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. We can humorously add the self-proclaimed war president Baby Bush. Military heroes---like Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower---are always easy to elect. My guess is that a general will run for office in the next election, when we'll be in a genuine crisis. The public will want a general partly because the military is now by far the most trusted institution of U.S. society. His likely election will be a mistake for numerous reasons, not least that the military is really just a heavily armed variant of the postal service.
It's wise to keep Gibbon's words about the military in mind: "Any order of men accustomed to violence and slavery make for very poor guardians of a civil constitution."
Continued next week...
Posted on August 31st, 2022
Careless
Speaking of lack of workers, the shortage in Switzerland is most acute in the healthcare industry, as noted by a large article in the Berner Zeitung from 13 July 2022. The shortage is currently 7500 Pflegefachpersonal (nurses), 20% more than 6 months ago. This is exacerbated by an unusually high load on the emergency room. As Kristian Schneider, Director of the hospital center in Biel, put it: "Wir haben keine Ahnung, woher ploetzlich all diese Patientinnen und Patienten kommen." (We have no idea where all these patients are coming from).
So, an unexplained shortfall in carers intersects with a mysterious increase in patients. Covid-19 is mentioned only as one of the reasons that nurses are often temporarily sidelined. No mention at all of the onerous requirement for personnel to be masked, now for over two years. No mention at all of vaccinations, which were required for many nurses. No mention at all of the well-known fact that many nurses resigned rather than be vaccinated. No mention at all of the possibility that the reason more patients are showing up in the emergency room is due to covid-19 vaccination.
Yet any number of medical experts, citing studies, government statistics, and personal experience, are sounding the alarm on the vaccines. They have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the increase in emergency room cases is due to the covid-19 vaccines. Yet the media refuses to go there, or even to pose the question. Ignorance is bliss.
Posted on July 13th, 2022
Disappearing Workforce
The Berner Zeitung of 9 July 2022 has a large article on page 17: "Wo sind all die Arbeitskraefte geblieben?" (where have all the workers gone?). The song "Where have all the flowers gone?" (https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-where-have-all-the-flowers-gone-lyrics) springs to mind.
The article starts with one egggspert (from ETHZ) claiming that nearly every branch is having trouble finding employees. Curiously, he then produces data from BFS showing that there are more employed now than before the pandemic. This is hard to explain since job openings are much higher. He blames it on the pandemic which caused lots of firms to shed employees. It is hard to square this with the BFS data showing employment at an all-time high.
Along comes another egggspert (from Avenir Suisse) saying that the workers haven't left Switzerland (duh), and the problem is only that there are more job openings than workers. Talk about circular reasoning. We know that many businesses had to close, in particular restaurants and hotels, and yet it is exactly the (remaining) restaurants and hotels that are having the most difficulty finding employees. Same for the airlines which have drastically reduced flights due to lack of personnel. If these workers have changed job branch (pilots? Seriously?), then why is nearly every branch suffering from lack of employees?
One explanation is offered by this article from the Brownstone Institute: Stop Blaming Workers for the Labor Shortage. The basic idea is that multitudes of workers, especially in the service industries such as restaurants and airlines, have had their lives rudely ripped out from under them. Once thus bitten, they are understandably shy to commit their lives again to a job that may disappear any moment at the whim of government. Demands for increased salaries are simply compensation for the new job uncertainty.
Our egggspert also claims that, contrary to popular opinion, older workers are more in demand in the Swiss workplace than ever. He's obviously never had the delightful experience of looking for a job in Switzerland while being over 50. I had one headhunter agency tell me point blank that they weren't going to work with me because none of their customers were interested in older workers. They agreed that I was highly qualified, and that I met the job requirements, but their customers would never accept someone my age, so they weren't going to waste any more time on me. One company informed me that they had a policy of mandatory retirement at age 60.
What nobody dares mention is the possibility that there are simply fewer people available to work. You won't find it in the mainstream media, but anyone willing and able to search the internet can readily find all manner of studies and reports about record numbers of deaths and disabilities starting in 2021. The most obvious evidence of this is the hundreds of young athletes who have been observed by packed stadiums and on live television keeling over and dying in the middle of a game. Mainstream media pretends this is normal. Morticians and coffin makers are doing land office business, and life insurance companies are reporting payouts running some 20-40% above normal. Commercial pilot (pre-retirement) deaths are also some 40% elevated. A multitude of prominent doctors and medical researchers place the blame squarely on the covid-19 "vaccines," but these people are studiously ignored. Somehow none of this makes the 11 O'clock news. Nothing to see here, move along.
Posted on July 11th, 2022
Excess Deaths
The European Mortality Monitoring hub, EUROMOMO, gathers and charts all-causes death statistics for Europe. Sadly, I cannot present their charts here, so you'll have to go there and eyeball them yourself. Looking at the Pooled number of deaths by age group, and extending the week range back to 2017, on the 85+ years chart we can't help but notice that there's been a lot of deaths wildly above the expected range, with nearly no compensating deaths below the expected range. Given that many people in this age range have a life expectancy measured in months, one would expect that when a lot of them die off in 2017, there would necessarily be a corresponding decrease in deaths over the next few years. This does not seem to be the case. Note also, that the baseline never changes, though every year there have been more deaths than expected.
Moving down to the Excess mortality section, and extending the years back to 2017, the All ages chart makes this undeniably clear. Using the Cumulated curves, we see that, starting about the middle of 2017, excess deaths have been the rule in Europe every year. Altogether there have been north of a million more deaths than expected over the last 5 years. Yet the baseline is never adjusted up, leading one to wonder, who is determining this baseline, and how? And what, exactly, is causing these excess deaths? Clearly it's not just covid-19, as the trend started in 2017.
Speaking of covid-19, why are there 150,000 excess deaths so far (end of June) for 2022? Those who wanted to get vaccinated did so in 2021, most of them multiple times, covid itself has pretty much gone underground, and the flu season ended months ago, so it's hard to believe those 150,000 excess deaths were due to the corona virus.
This becomes especially clear when looking at the 0-14 years chart. Over the course of 2020 they had negative cumulative excess deaths, and this trend continued until week 17 of 2021, after which excess deaths suddenly became, well, excessive. This age group exhibits very few deaths from corona virus, so why the sudden, and continuing, increase in excess deaths? Wasn't this when they started pushing the covid-19 vaccines on our children? Why the 400 excess deaths in the first half of 2022, given that hardly anybody in this age range ever died of corona virus? For that matter, why all the excess deaths in every year except for one year starting at week 16 of 2020? That special year of reduced child deaths corresponds closely to when everyone was in covid-19 lockdown, which inevitably resulted in many children not being kept up-to-date on their vaccine schedules.
Update. I posed some of these questions to EUROMOMO some weeks ago, and have yet to receive a reply.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/parents-questioning-routine-childhood-vaccines-covid/
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/exhaustive-study-of-german-mortality
Posted on July 1st, 2022
Producers and Parasites
Choosing Your Immigrants
by Jeff Thomas
In the 18th century, America was made up primarily of people who, of necessity, had had to work hard. Had they not taken full responsibility for their own welfare, there was no one else to do it for them and they would have starved. As this was the case, anyone who did arrive on American shores who was unwilling to work and wanted others to provide for him, could expect to find no sympathy and might well starve.
by Jeff Thomas
In the 18th century, America was made up primarily of people who, of necessity, had had to work hard. Had they not taken full responsibility for their own welfare, there was no one else to do it for them and they would have starved. As this was the case, anyone who did arrive on American shores who was unwilling to work and wanted others to provide for him, could expect to find no sympathy and might well starve.
In the 19th century, the former colonies had become the United
States. Expansion was underway and the young people of the 18th century
became the entrepreneurs of the 19th century. In order to continue to
get the menial tasks accomplished, millions of immigrants were needed.
Those who were welcomed were those who were prepared to start at the
bottom, often live in poor conditions, receive no entitlements and
compete for even menial jobs. If they accepted these terms, they
received the opportunity to immigrate and work.
Also, in the 19th century, the US expanded to the West coast, covered
the nation with railroads and created the industrial revolution the
greatest period of expansion in US history.
In the 20th century, income tax was implemented, the Federal Reserve
took over the dollar and the "New Deal" Introduced the concept of
entitlement. It was a mixed century of wealth generated by the
industrial revolution, fighting against the new concept of entitlement.
In the 21st century, immigrants in large numbers were again
encouraged to come in. However, unlike in the 19th century, they were
not encouraged on the basis of starting at the bottom, often living in
poor conditions, receiving no entitlements and competing for even menial
jobs.
Quite the contrary. They not only were guaranteed welfare, schooling
and housing, they would not be required to work at all and, if they
committed crimes, they were likely to be released without prosecution.
They, in fact, were afforded privileges above that of American citizens.
Today, American conservatives are stating that immigration must be
curtailed, as immigrants are inherently usurious. Conversely, liberals
are stating that America was built on immigration and the way forward is
to open the doors to all who wish to enter.
Both these assumptions are incorrect.
It's the most effective means of replacing those at the lower
positions, as the existing workers move into higher positions. This has
been the tradition since the formulation of the US.
The debate should instead be over which people are chosen to immigrate.
In every country, in every era, there are always some people who understand work ethic and responsibility. They are the producers. There are also always some who have no desire to work or otherwise take responsibility for themselves. They are the parasites.
In the 19th century, this simple principle was understood, and every
single immigrant recognized that, if he wasn't prepared to work and take
responsibility for himself, he might well starve. That being the case,
those who left their home countries to migrate to America were, of
course, producers. (The parasites never even got on the boat.)
But in the 21st century, the US government supports the collectivist
concept that potential immigrants must be offered more entitlements than
they ever had at home, even to the point that they'll have rights that
Americans don't have. Of course, the people who come will not be the producers. They will be the parasites.
So, let's do a comparison:
Producers:
- Prepared to start at the bottom
- Prepared to work hard enough to better themselves
- Prepared to take responsibility for their own well-being
- Prepared to respect the laws of the host country
- Prepared to have gratitude for the opportunity to better themselves
Parasites:
- Reluctant to accept low-level jobs
- Not prepared to work to better themselves
- Expect others (the host government) to take responsibility for their well-being
- Not prepared to respect the laws of the host country
- Expect to never be satisfied, no matter what level of privilege they're afforded
Once the above is put in perspective, the reader must then accept that his government is not only not doing what's good for his country, he's doing the exact opposite of what's good for his country.
And, then, of course, he must ask, "Why?"
There are two possible answers. It may be that the political leaders
of the US are quite delusional -- to the point that, whilst they may be
patriotic, they fail to understand the simple equation of worker
mentality.
Or it may be that the political leaders thoroughly understand
that the mass immigration of parasites is destructive for their
country, but also realize that such immigration increases their power
level.
In Europe, this question is more easily answered. The same trend is
taking place there, and the people of literally every country in the EU
are calling loudly to stop the mass wave of parasite immigration, yet
the EU itself is stubbornly insisting that the immigration not only
continue, but expand.
Brussels knows full well that, if enough parasites enter the system
and eventually receive the right to vote, they will always vote in
favour of a central government that provides them with entitlements.
Once their numbers substantially exceed 50% of all voters, the
collectivist oligarchy in Brussels will become autonomous. Elections
will become meaningless and power will remain with the Brussels elite
permanently.
In America, of course, the veil has not fallen away from the
government's objective, to the degree that it has in Europe. Roughly
half of Americans see the government programme of parasite immigration
as a moral imperative.
And, of course, both the government and the media are doing all they
can to enforce this propaganda. They present parasite immigration
supporters as "good people" and objectors as "bad people."
History is rife with examples of populations that were hoodwinked
into believing that they were "good people" because they supported an
idiotic precept that was, in fact, only intended to increase their
government's power over the people.
In all cases, this has ended badly and there can be little doubt that,
when this one hits the history books, it will also be looked back on as a
grave error in judgement.
Posted on June 22nd, 2022
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Referring to:
Looking at the "Development of occupancy over time" graph, I see three anomalies:
- We see that on the weekends the total number of beds declines drastically. This is presumably because fewer of the associated staff are assigned to work weekends. This is purely a cost-savings measure, which seems a bit odd for a global public health emergency.
- The 15-day average curves are almost entirely above the maximum values, and seem to take no account for the huge dips on weekends, or even during the week.
- The 15-day average curve for free beds is shown as being over 800, whereas the number of free beds is clearly shown to be much lower. It seems the 15-day average curve for free beds is really showing the total number of beds in operation.
I asked the authorities (2019-ncov@bag.admin.ch) about these discrepancies, and gave up waiting for an answer after two weeks.
One has to wonder how so many ICU patients are suddenly fit enough to leave the ICU on weekends, checking back in on Monday. Do most patients miraculously require less intensive care on the weekends, or are hospital administrators booking them unnecessarily into ICU during the week so as to justify the size of their ICU?
The answer may be hinted at in this quote from the explanation of "Certified and ad-hoc beds" on the same page:
Provided that they utilise at least 60 per cent of their certified beds on average over the year, hospitals are free to decide whether they operate all or only a portion of their certified beds.
It seems there is an incentive to maintain an average occupancy of at least 60% for the ICU beds.
This ICU chart was the primary justification given for several of the covid measures. Curiously, these discrepancies do not appear in any of the many similar charts for other statistics.
Looking at the total covid-19 time period (https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/hosp-capacity/icu?time=total), we see that:
- Available ICU beds are down to about half of what they were in March 2020
- ICU occupancy never exceeded 80% of available beds
- covid-19 usage never exceeded 50% of available beds
Given these facts, plus the well-founded suspicion that up to two-thirds of ICU patients could just as well be in normal beds, it appears that fears of ICU overloading were far from justified.
Posted on May 31st, 2022
Warlord Banksters
May 13, 2022
The associated PDF file is attached at the end of this blog entry.
The path of the Warlord Banksters is complex and has been hidden by obfuscation, deceit, and subterfuge to obscure the truth and protect a small group of banking families whose scams have fleeced every nation on earth and hidden the loot in offshore tax havens that hold the stolen wealth of the world. These elite banking families own the controlling interests in the Fortune 500 companies through asset management companies, shill corporations, offshore accounts, and a thousand other "old banking tricks" that have been used since the time of King Hammurabi of Babylon. The Italian, Jewish, German, and Lombard bankers of Venice used the same old tricks of the "father of lies" to create privately owned central banking systems that are used to this day in most countries and still owned by the same self-aggrandizing banking families.
Greed, known as the evil demon "Mammon", hasn’t changed his ways since the cut-throat machinations of the Medici bankers laid down the principals of corporate warlord banking that are inherently immoral and work against human advancement by engendering war, predatory banking, and economic slavery.
Ultimately, these "usury bankers" convinced governments to lock people up for not paying back loans on time. "Debtor’s Prison" was the outcropping of banking families, later called merchant bankers, controlling governments and economies that reached beyond "national" limitations. As commerce, trade, and mercantilism took over the world, bankers continued to have the upper hand and indeed made and destroyed kings and kingdoms with loans from their family banks. These families became corporate lineages that are still in power throughout the world today and associate through the Pilgrims Society, World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank, BIS, and many secret cabals, like: the Vatican and British Knights of Malta, CFR, RIIA, the United Nations, and many other elite globalist groups.
The Inventors of Bank Fraud and the Demise of Babylon
Money was first developed in the ancient world in temples that kept track of the storage of grain and food for the next season, which was initially a good and moral intention that charged no service fee or interest. Coins and money were developed to represent the value of human labor and stored resources. Eventually, temples began to use their excess grain stores, and hard coins, to make loans to others as investments. This money was used for the benefit of the group, not the personal gain of the individual. When the control of money left the domain of the temple, the positive uses for surplus grain and coin were "turned to the dark-side", and demons began fighting with the gods of the temple for the control of money and the lives of the people. Until we have the full picture of the evolution of money (Mammon), we will be unconsciously subject to these powerful demonic forces that are controlling our personal and global economic lives.
The story of money in the Western world begins around 2000 BC when the Babylonians had evolved into a highly developed commercialized society, complete with a sophisticated monetary and credit system. Barley and silver functioned side by side in a dual monetary system that made use of both as mediums of exchange and standards of value. Historically, barley preceded silver as the chief form of currency. A legal ratio established the value of silver in terms of barley and vice versa. Creditors accepted payments in either silver or barley, depending upon a debtor’s preference. Silver grew in importance relative to barley, and later Babylonian gold became a competing metal currency.
The Code of Hammurabi (2123-2108 BC) specified grain money for certain payments and metal for others. Merchants who insisted upon payment in the wrong currency could face severe penalties. The standard monetary unit was a shekel, equal to 180 grains of barley, or a fixed weight of silver. Silver was melted into small ingots that circulated as money and was usually tested for fineness at each transaction. Some of the ingots bore the image or super-scription of the god whose temple guaranteed the fineness of the silver.
Temples lent goods from their stores for repayment in-kind as a general practice. These loans charged no interest as long as they were repaid on time. Some merchants carried on a banking business of sorts, making loans in silver and grain, and holding deposits of customers that earned interest. These customers could pay obligations by writing drafts on these deposits. The statutory rate of interest was 20 percent, but silver loans often earned 25 percent and grain loans more than 33 percent. Bills of exchange were carved on clay tablets.
It is believed that traders began marking their own shekels in order to avoid the time-consuming process of weighing each transaction. Merchants who "issued" their own shekels could then trade them to patrons as IOUs. Any returning customers could then trade the marked shekel for a quantity of goods or services and the merchant would know that their standard weight secured the payment. This method eventually developed into a coinage system where rulers and states developed their own sovereign currency as a standard for exchange.
Babylonian Banking
Since land was such an essential part of Babylonian life, banking firms at the time were heavily involved in real estate matters. Banking firms like the House of Egibi acted as land managers, renting fields for absentee landlords, while other firms dealt strictly with royal-owned lands. For example, the House of Murashu, operating in the last half of the 5th Century BC, became successful by "renting royal lands to tenant farmers and acting as agents in converting agriculture profits into metal."
With prosperity came merchant bankers and a larger sector of the population participating in commercial and financial operations, whose transactions were based on a silver standard and modeled on promissory notes.
Contracts were written including a notarization by witnesses with the location and date. Goods would be weighed in silver and totaled for an amount payable which could be loaned to the purchaser. After a debt was repaid, the creditor would break the promissory clay tablet.
Private Babylonian banks also supported venture capitalists seeking commercial enterprises. A group of investors would pool their resources and give the capital to an individual to carry out commercial transactions to make a profit that would be divided among the initial investors, thus the model for corporations came into being.
In Babylon, at the time of Hammurabi, there are records of loans made by the priests of the temple. Temples took in donations and tax revenue and amassed great wealth. They redistributed these goods to people in need such as widows, orphans, and the poor and allowed people to take interest-bearing loans. The loans were made at reduced below-market interest rates. Sometimes arrangements were made to make food donations to the temple instead of repaying interest.
Once these systems of usury were established and the grip of Mammon was creating a cultural transformation based upon money, people naturally fell into debt and became slaves to pay off their debt.
The debtor being imprisoned for debt could nominate his wife, a child, or slave to work off the debt. The situation got so out of hand that King Hammurabi decreed that no one could be enslaved for more than three years for debt. Other cities, with residents racked by debt, issued moratoriums on all outstanding bills. The worship of Mammon was taking hold of the cultures that embraced usury and focused on "money that makes money from no labor" – evil usury.
During the 5th century BC, "Warlord Banking Families" came into existence in Babylon in their initial form; the Houses of Egibi, Murashu, Ea-iluta-bani, and Borsippa were such banking families. These "banksters" were classified as "merchant bankers" but should be seen as worshipers of Mammon who turned culture significantly toward materialism and belief in greed and harmed and killed many people in the process.
Most of this paper has been removed from this blog. You can download the complete PDF attached below, or go to the link up above.
As an example of the power and control of a nation’s central bank we need only look at the US Federal Reserve - which is not owned by the US, is not Federal, and has no reserves. If we wish to understand who owns the US Federal Reserve, we might end up feeling very frustrated with the many opinions, conspiracy theories, speculations, and dead-ends that you will encounter before coming up with a clear answer.
The obfuscation, conflation, confabulation, and sheer ignorance concerning who ‘We the People of America’ owe $25 trillion to is staggering. Much of the true ownership of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and its twelve sister banks, can be found by researching the US Trust Corporation. Walter Rothschild was an initial director and trustee. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup, and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley.
The path of the Warlord Banksters is complex and has been hidden by obfuscation, deceit, and subterfuge to obscure the truth and protect a small group of banking families whose scams have fleeced every nation on earth and hidden the loot in offshore tax havens that hold the stolen wealth of the world. These elite banking families own the controlling interests in the Fortune 500 companies through asset management companies, shill corporations, offshore accounts, and a thousand other "old banking tricks" that have been used since the time of King Hammurabi of Babylon. The Italian, Jewish, German, and Lombard bankers of Venice used the same old tricks of the "father of lies" to create privately owned central banking systems that are used to this day in most countries and still owned by the same self-aggrandizing banking families.
Greed, known as the evil demon "Mammon", hasn’t changed his ways since the cut-throat machinations of the Medici bankers laid down the principals of corporate warlord banking that are inherently immoral and work against human advancement by engendering war, predatory banking, and economic slavery.
Ultimately, these "usury bankers" convinced governments to lock people up for not paying back loans on time. "Debtor’s Prison" was the outcropping of banking families, later called merchant bankers, controlling governments and economies that reached beyond "national" limitations. As commerce, trade, and mercantilism took over the world, bankers continued to have the upper hand and indeed made and destroyed kings and kingdoms with loans from their family banks. These families became corporate lineages that are still in power throughout the world today and associate through the Pilgrims Society, World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank, BIS, and many secret cabals, like: the Vatican and British Knights of Malta, CFR, RIIA, the United Nations, and many other elite globalist groups.
The Inventors of Bank Fraud and the Demise of Babylon
Money was first developed in the ancient world in temples that kept track of the storage of grain and food for the next season, which was initially a good and moral intention that charged no service fee or interest. Coins and money were developed to represent the value of human labor and stored resources. Eventually, temples began to use their excess grain stores, and hard coins, to make loans to others as investments. This money was used for the benefit of the group, not the personal gain of the individual. When the control of money left the domain of the temple, the positive uses for surplus grain and coin were "turned to the dark-side", and demons began fighting with the gods of the temple for the control of money and the lives of the people. Until we have the full picture of the evolution of money (Mammon), we will be unconsciously subject to these powerful demonic forces that are controlling our personal and global economic lives.
The story of money in the Western world begins around 2000 BC when the Babylonians had evolved into a highly developed commercialized society, complete with a sophisticated monetary and credit system. Barley and silver functioned side by side in a dual monetary system that made use of both as mediums of exchange and standards of value. Historically, barley preceded silver as the chief form of currency. A legal ratio established the value of silver in terms of barley and vice versa. Creditors accepted payments in either silver or barley, depending upon a debtor’s preference. Silver grew in importance relative to barley, and later Babylonian gold became a competing metal currency.
The Code of Hammurabi (2123-2108 BC) specified grain money for certain payments and metal for others. Merchants who insisted upon payment in the wrong currency could face severe penalties. The standard monetary unit was a shekel, equal to 180 grains of barley, or a fixed weight of silver. Silver was melted into small ingots that circulated as money and was usually tested for fineness at each transaction. Some of the ingots bore the image or super-scription of the god whose temple guaranteed the fineness of the silver.
Temples lent goods from their stores for repayment in-kind as a general practice. These loans charged no interest as long as they were repaid on time. Some merchants carried on a banking business of sorts, making loans in silver and grain, and holding deposits of customers that earned interest. These customers could pay obligations by writing drafts on these deposits. The statutory rate of interest was 20 percent, but silver loans often earned 25 percent and grain loans more than 33 percent. Bills of exchange were carved on clay tablets.
It is believed that traders began marking their own shekels in order to avoid the time-consuming process of weighing each transaction. Merchants who "issued" their own shekels could then trade them to patrons as IOUs. Any returning customers could then trade the marked shekel for a quantity of goods or services and the merchant would know that their standard weight secured the payment. This method eventually developed into a coinage system where rulers and states developed their own sovereign currency as a standard for exchange.
Babylonian Banking
Since land was such an essential part of Babylonian life, banking firms at the time were heavily involved in real estate matters. Banking firms like the House of Egibi acted as land managers, renting fields for absentee landlords, while other firms dealt strictly with royal-owned lands. For example, the House of Murashu, operating in the last half of the 5th Century BC, became successful by "renting royal lands to tenant farmers and acting as agents in converting agriculture profits into metal."
With prosperity came merchant bankers and a larger sector of the population participating in commercial and financial operations, whose transactions were based on a silver standard and modeled on promissory notes.
Contracts were written including a notarization by witnesses with the location and date. Goods would be weighed in silver and totaled for an amount payable which could be loaned to the purchaser. After a debt was repaid, the creditor would break the promissory clay tablet.
Private Babylonian banks also supported venture capitalists seeking commercial enterprises. A group of investors would pool their resources and give the capital to an individual to carry out commercial transactions to make a profit that would be divided among the initial investors, thus the model for corporations came into being.
In Babylon, at the time of Hammurabi, there are records of loans made by the priests of the temple. Temples took in donations and tax revenue and amassed great wealth. They redistributed these goods to people in need such as widows, orphans, and the poor and allowed people to take interest-bearing loans. The loans were made at reduced below-market interest rates. Sometimes arrangements were made to make food donations to the temple instead of repaying interest.
Once these systems of usury were established and the grip of Mammon was creating a cultural transformation based upon money, people naturally fell into debt and became slaves to pay off their debt.
The debtor being imprisoned for debt could nominate his wife, a child, or slave to work off the debt. The situation got so out of hand that King Hammurabi decreed that no one could be enslaved for more than three years for debt. Other cities, with residents racked by debt, issued moratoriums on all outstanding bills. The worship of Mammon was taking hold of the cultures that embraced usury and focused on "money that makes money from no labor" – evil usury.
During the 5th century BC, "Warlord Banking Families" came into existence in Babylon in their initial form; the Houses of Egibi, Murashu, Ea-iluta-bani, and Borsippa were such banking families. These "banksters" were classified as "merchant bankers" but should be seen as worshipers of Mammon who turned culture significantly toward materialism and belief in greed and harmed and killed many people in the process.
Most of this paper has been removed from this blog. You can download the complete PDF attached below, or go to the link up above.
As an example of the power and control of a nation’s central bank we need only look at the US Federal Reserve - which is not owned by the US, is not Federal, and has no reserves. If we wish to understand who owns the US Federal Reserve, we might end up feeling very frustrated with the many opinions, conspiracy theories, speculations, and dead-ends that you will encounter before coming up with a clear answer.
The obfuscation, conflation, confabulation, and sheer ignorance concerning who ‘We the People of America’ owe $25 trillion to is staggering. Much of the true ownership of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and its twelve sister banks, can be found by researching the US Trust Corporation. Walter Rothschild was an initial director and trustee. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup, and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley.
The historic Warlord Banking Families are clearly the true major shareholders in the fake and onerous debt "owed" to the US Federal Reserve. Basically, the Venetian’s central banking system has never died and can be found alive and well in the Warlord Banksters and their central banks throughout the world. Essentially, not much has changed since money became the god of materialism in the days of Babylon. Mammon reigns supreme in the immoral hearts of warlords and warmongers who work like demons to accomplish the economic enslavement of humanity. This is the bottom line of the worshipers of Mammon, control human willpower and freedom.
The actual first Warlord Corporation would be the Dutch East India Company, who in the end became one of the largest slave-traders in the world and started more conflicts and wars than anyone cares to count. At its height, the "Company" was more powerful than the nation that created it and remained so for hundreds of years. It is still active today in many subtle, and sometimes invisible ways. Corporate imperialism, industrial espionage, and the machinations of the military industrial complex all find their roots in the Dutch East India Company that competed with and defeated the Hanseatic League of Northern Germany. Later vestiges of this corporate privacy was the Corporate Trust Company (1892), now centered in the Netherlands that services most of the corrupt corporations worldwide.
The effects of these Warlord Banking Families are not only found in the past but are found in almost all central banks throughout the world to this very day. The evidence is well-hidden in corporate legal maneuvers, off-shore accounts, and fake philanthropic groups, but when you dig deep you will find that it is the same old warlords and warmongers doing the same old bankster scams and frauds that have been going on since Babylonian times. We will also find that even the same evil demons are worshiped in the same old fashion in many instances. These rich elite believe they are above all laws and that they are global oligarchs (lords) while the rest of us are their slaves (servants) in a debt-slave, prison camp called the Kingdom of Oligarchs, Warlord Banksters, and Evil Brokers.
This article is the basis of what is needed as an overview of the past if you wish to understand Warlord Banksters and Brokers in the fashion that the Anonymous Patriots refer to them. We have joined forces with the researchers at Americans4Innovation to help reveal the 200-year plan that these Warlord Banking Families have plotted out for the future of the world. This plan began with people like Lord Shelburne and Jeremy Bentham’s propaganda and led to Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, whose Round Table politics has driven war-policy for the Anglo-American Alliance. What was needed to fully understand what this 100-year plan was all about was the understanding of the genesis and development of these economic predators in the past – especially those banking families that are still powerful forces in global economics today.
We have heard about the Dutch East India Company above and now will focus on its rival, the British East India Company. In 1599, a group of British merchants met and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of trading with the East Indies. The Queen granted a Royal Charter to George, Earl of Cumberland, and 215 Knights, Aldermen, and Burgesses under the name, "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies." For a period of fifteen years the charter awarded the newly formed company a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.
From these beginnings in weaponized corporate imperialism, we can see how the later war-mongering attitude of the British led to a United Kingdom, upon which the ‘sun never sets.’ British warlord politics has drawn America into one war after the next. It was the British East India and Dutch East India companies that were behind the American Revolution through trade and tax manipulation with the Northern colonies and slavery and cotton trade with Southern colonies. Those same forces have continued to be part of every war since that time. It is not ideologies of politics that create war, it is the work of warlord banking practices and the continued worship of Mammon through the greedy misuse of money.
BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street manage a stunning $15 trillion in combined assets, equivalent to more than three-quarters the size of the US economy. The rapid growth of the Big Three fund managers gives them enormous sway over financial markets and the priorities of Corporate America. Combined, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard are the largest owner in 88% of the S&P 500 companies. For instance, the Big Three hold leading stakes in companies including Apple, JPMorgan Chase, and Pfizer. It is obvious we need to break up the Big Three by revamping Dodd-Frank, the 2010 Wall Street reform law.
The influence of Italian, Venetian, German, Dutch, and British banking families has now been laid out for you to reveal the banking-family dynasties that created the economic forces behind European monarchs, popes, and nations for the last nine hundred years. Often this influence was in the form of wars, debtor-prisons, piracy, resource fleecing, militarized mercantilism, and thousands of other evil machinations which were consciously or unconsciously offered up to the demon Mammon.
The effects of these Warlord Banking Families are not only found in the past but are found in almost all central banks throughout the world to this very day. The evidence is well-hidden in corporate legal maneuvers, off-shore accounts, and fake philanthropic groups, but when you dig deep you will find that it is the same old warlords and warmongers doing the same old bankster scams and frauds that have been going on since Babylonian times. We will also find that even the same evil demons are worshiped in the same old fashion in many instances. These rich elite believe they are above all laws and that they are global oligarchs (lords) while the rest of us are their slaves (servants) in a debt-slave, prison camp called the Kingdom of Oligarchs, Warlord Banksters, and Evil Brokers.
This article is the basis of what is needed as an overview of the past if you wish to understand Warlord Banksters and Brokers in the fashion that the Anonymous Patriots refer to them. We have joined forces with the researchers at Americans4Innovation to help reveal the 200-year plan that these Warlord Banking Families have plotted out for the future of the world. This plan began with people like Lord Shelburne and Jeremy Bentham’s propaganda and led to Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, whose Round Table politics has driven war-policy for the Anglo-American Alliance. What was needed to fully understand what this 100-year plan was all about was the understanding of the genesis and development of these economic predators in the past – especially those banking families that are still powerful forces in global economics today.
Much of what the Anonymous Patriots reveal in our research is disconcerting to those who have not studied history outside of the mainstream propaganda found in history books produced by the banking oligarchs who don’t want true history to be known. We cannot apologize for the grotesque and evil practices of these banksters. In our research, we needed to connect to the oligarch’s insatiable desire for money - the worship of Mammon. But we can point out that consciousness is all that is needed to shine the disinfecting light of day on the dark works of demon worshipers, until they melt away completely. Simple solutions will end Mammon’s control of nations, war, poverty, and evil.
All we have to do to melt down the economic warlords and warmongers is put an end to all off-shore accounts that fleece countries. These accounts have amassed so much money that the money cannot be repatriated into the countries it was stolen from without crashing that economy. This type of grotesque wealth is an illness and a crime that must be dealt with as such. The monarchy of England has more money in off-shore accounts than the total amount of currency in the world, according to many accounts. The rogue CIA (Pilgrims Society) has more gold than the total of all American gold reserves. They keep this gold bullion in Swiss numbered accounts in the gold vaults of Zurich. All of this wealth was acquired illegally and could be seized by those it was stolen from. We know who stole it, how they took it, and where they put it. Evil is clever, but never wise and therefore easy to recognize in the light of day, and quite easy to stop. The paths to hell are well-worn and seldom new and inventive. They are the paths of the same old seven deadly sins that have tempted humans since consciousness was born.
Following the path of the 200-year plan of evil is easy when you know who you are dealing with and how they accomplish their machinations. Once you understand the logic of evil, based solely on selfishness, it is easy to pull the rug out from underneath the people standing on that rug. For instance, in America, to defeat a large part of this evil we only have to default on the $25 trillion debt to the Federal Reserve because it was a fraud from the beginning – a bankster fiat money scam based on onerous war-debt. This type of fraud creates debt which is known from its inception to be impossible to repay - thus, perpetual debt enslavement. ‘We the People’ owe the Federal Reserve nothing; in fact, the Fed owes us. Once there is no more war-debt to the Fed, we won’t need payroll taxes, just simple sales tax paid by everyone, including the rich elite and corporations. We can also charge a tax for each purchase on the stock and commodity markets and then America will be richer than anyone can imagine. Just stop the theft from non-tax paying warlords, banksters, brokers, and warmongers and every American could be freed from debt-enslavement.
Once humans realize that their daily actions constitute their own personal "religion", and that what they think about is what they "worship" - freedom can come from cutting the ties to economic predators that hinder the development of higher thinking, personal development, and spiritual advancement. If you can free yourself from the brainwashing of predator economics that is hiding under the guise of free-market capitalism and find a new way to relate to money as stored human effort, we can place the free, spiritual human being at the core of our economics, politics, and beliefs and remove the evil influences that have been spawned by money and Mammon being at the center of our lives. We can become free when we love our work, and the efforts of our work are not tinged by the darkness of Mammon’s tools but are recognized as the efforts of love that each human has to share with others. Selflessness destroys Mammon and the selfish pursuit of money when a pious soul shares money like they share love with their own children.
Posted on May 15th, 2022
A Few of My Favorite Things
Quotes
- A woman's highest calling is to lead a man to his soul so as to unite him with Source. A man's highest calling is to protect woman so she is free to walk the earth unharmed. --Cherokee proverb
- Any science, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke
- The key to happiness is low expectations.
- It is better to trust people, and be occasionally cheated, than to be perpetually suspicious.
- The people who need our love the most are usually those who deserve it the least.
- Earth is the laboratory, love is the lesson.
- A man may come to love the woman he is attracted to. A woman is always attracted to the man she loves.
- A man will give a relationship to get sex. A woman will give sex to get a relationship. Problem is, the relationship is easily (and routinely) faked. -- me
- Men make life possible, women make life worth living. -- me
- Good sex springs from a good relationship, not the other way around. -- Timothy Keller
- The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can. -- Margo Kaufman
- Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. -- Jesus
- Love is when you want the best for the other person. Infatuation is when you simply want the other person.
- A young person who is not Liberal, has no heart. An old person who is not Conservative, has no brain. -- Winston Churchill
- Lack of skill dictates economy of style. -- Joey Ramone of The Ramones
- Sometimes you have to be satisfied with success. -- me
- The door of Hell is locked from the inside. -- C.S. Lewis
- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
- Das Heil der Welt liegt nicht in neuen Maßnahmen, sondern in einer anderen Gesinnung. -- Albert Schweitzer
- No, no, the other left
- Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations. -- George Orwell
Movies
- Groundhog Day
- A Couch in New York
- The Last Seduction
- Dave
- Gifted
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Gladiator
- Good Will Hunting
- The Great Escape
- Dead Poets Society
- Scent of a Woman
- The Sound of Music
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- Leon the Professional
- Outland
- Local Hero
- Diva
- West Side Story (1961)
- A Pocketful of Miracles
- Lilies of the Field
- To Sir, with Love
- A Man for All Seasons
Of course, as a fan of science fiction, I have a definite weakness for all Star Wars, Star Trek, Matrix, and Lord of the Rings films.
Books
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- Robert M. Pirsig
- Lila -- Robert M. Pirsig
- Snow Crash --
Posted on May 11th, 2022
Dollar Demise
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Posted on May 11th, 2022
Die jungen Putin-Versteher
An article appeared in the Berner Zeitung, dated 20 April 2022, with the above title; an entire page. The title is translated as "the young Putin understanders." The general tone of the article is dismay that some young people are so insensitive or stupid or brainwashed or whatever as to actually understand, or even sympathize with, the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Never mind that their own poll shows that something like 20% of the population agrees; the fact that young people, even more than older people, could fall for this seems to be surreal for the authors. I mean, one could understand it if it were mostly old fogies who were so deluded, but no, the poll clearly shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be so egregiously politically incorrect.
Sabine Frenzel led the polling effort. Here's a direct quote from the article:
Fuer Frenzel koennen die sozialen Medien eine "extreme Gefahr fuer die freie Meinungsbildung und damit die Demokratie" sein, zumindest solange nicht klar sei, wie verlaesslich Informationen auf diesen Plattformen seien, und kaum jemand verstehe, wie Algorithmen bestimmen wuerden, wer welche Informationen bekomme.
This translates to:
For Frenzel, social media could be an "extreme danger for free opinion formation, and therefore for Democracy," at least as long as it is not clear how reliable information is on these platforms, and hardly anyone understands how algorithms could determine who gets which information.
So, let's see what she's saying here. Presumably the "extreme danger" is that people might get the "wrong" information, and therefore come to have "wrong" opinions. This, apparently, could endanger democracy itself. After all, we don't know how reliable the information is on the various social media sites, and they might even be using secret algorithms to present their (mis)information to the "wrong" people. Forget all that nonsense about free speech, to protect democracy we have to ensure people only see the "right" information. Surely we can't let people sort out the facts for themselves; that would require critical thinking, which some might say the authors of this article seem to lack. No, no, it simply won't do to just let everybody see everything; we have to spoon-feed them the proper facts and opinions, we have to protect them from misinformation. Anything less endangers democracy, and therefore our very way of life.
"Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship."
― Bruce Coville
― Bruce Coville
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes."
― Thomas Payne
― Thomas Payne
"„For the common good" is the most common excuse for uncommon evil."
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies."
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
"Every manmade disaster begins when one man thinks for another. However benevolent they begin, the ultimate outcome is tyranny."
― John Kramer, Blythe
― John Kramer, Blythe
Posted on May 4th, 2022
Power
May 4, 2022
Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, but he has a long way to go before he catches up with Jakob "The Rich" Fugger — a powerful merchant banker who lived in the 1500s.
(Fugger’s name rhymes with ‘cougar’, not ‘bugger’. But as you’ll see below, it was aptly spelled ‘Fucker’ on occasion.)
Fugger was born into a prominent family in the Free City of Augsburg, part of the Holy Roman Empire. But he took his family fortune to unimaginable heights because he understood a critical concept: POWER.
Most of Fugger’s competition at the time — traders and financiers across Europe — focused on accumulating wealth. Fugger focused on accumulating power.
He routinely financed the conquests of both kings and clergy; in exchange, they owed him. And Fugger knew how to call in a favor.
In 1488, for example, he used his influence over Archduke Sigismund of Austria to take control of the vast Schwaz silver mines, giving Fugger almost total control of the silver trade. He later used his influence to dominate other industries — copper, silks, furs, spices, citrus, munitions, and more.
And every time Fugger took control of an industry, he would raise prices sky-high. It contributed to a widespread inflation that had never before been seen in Europe.
Fugger used his money to completely reshape European society. He believed in a form of capitalism where big businesses would be protected by government. And he weaponized his wealth to make his vision a reality.
Fugger financed the election of Charles V to become Holy Roman Emperor, which essentially put Europe’s most powerful politician in his pocket.
Even the Pope was beholden to Fugger, who used his influence with the church to override ecclesiastical limitations on interest-bearing loans, and to rewrite regulations governing commerce and trade.
At the peak of his wealth and power, Fugger had amassed a fortune exceeding TWO PERCENT of Europe’s entire GDP at the time.
The equivalent today would be about $500 billion — more than double what Elon Musk is worth.
Moreover, Fugger’s average annual investment return exceeded FIFTY PERCENT, ranking him one of the most successful investors of all time — just behind Nancy Pelosi.
But his lasting impact was the way that he fundamentally reshaped capitalism by modernizing the perverse, symbiotic relationship between politicians and private monopolies.
Today, we politely refer to this as a "public-private partnership". And the best example of this in our modern times is the case of BlackRock, and its CEO Larry Fink.
Fink’s net worth, compared to Fugger, is a paltry $1 billion. But his firm, BlackRock, controls more than TEN TRILLION in assets.
Incredibly, much of this is through the company’s various exchange traded funds, like the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF; this single fund has $300 billion under management.
Like Fugger, Fink has been aiming to reshape capitalism as we know it. His vision is something called ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’, or ‘ESG Capitalism’, which stands for Environmental, Social, Governance.
In short, Fink’s vision is ‘woke capitalism’, where companies prioritize social justice and the progressive agenda over creating shareholder value and delighting their customers.
This is the sort of nonsense thinking that has big corporations frantically trying to nominate a blind, perigender, pansexual Native American to their Boards of Directors… or force company CEOs to speak out against proposed legislation that no one has even read.
(Naturally, Chinese and Islamic companies are exempt from ESG requirements, because we have to respect their cultures.)
Fink works very closely with Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum, whose book The Great Reset details the new way of life that he, Fink, and their ilk have imagined for the rest of us.
The World Economic Forum, mind you, is the same organization that thinks we should all eat insects and weeds, because it’s good for the environment. They love Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, propaganda & censorship, and authoritarian governments.
This is a classic case of what I called the Tyranny of the Minority — a handful of people who believe they have the right to dictate how the rest of us should live.
Sadly, Fink actually has the resources to pull it off… and much of it is thanks to us.
BlackRock’s funds collectively contain trillions of dollars of capital. But it’s not BlackRock’s money. It’s your money.
Your company’s 401(k), for example, may be invested with BlackRock. Your personal investment portfolio may contain a few BlackRock ETFs.
Essentially, BlackRock has pooled everyone else’s money and taken it all under their management. They then invest this money in stock and bond markets around the world. And that gives them extraordinary influence.
BlackRock’s equity funds are typically in the top 5 shareholders of every major company on the planet.
For example, BlackRock is the #2 largest shareholder in Apple, Google, Exxon-Mobil, JP Morgan, and more, which means that Fink can practically hand pick these companies’ Boards of Directors.
The Boards, in other words, work for Fink. He has the power to pressure them into accepting his woke ESG capitalism requirements. And if they refuse, he can have them fired.
Reminder — Fink doesn’t have this power because of his own money. He has this power because he’s in control of OUR money. And he isn’t afraid to use it.
Jakob ‘The Rich’ Fugger ruled Europe from behind the scenes. By comparison, Fink’s power has become so vast today that Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s business partner at Berkshire Hathaway) called him an emperor:
"We have a new bunch of emperors, and they’re people who vote with the shares of their index funds… and I’m not sure I want [Fink] to be my emperor."
There’s a pretty simple fix to this: If you don’t want Fink to be your Emperor, stop giving your money to these giant Wall Street firms. There are literally thousands of other small, passive index funds to choose from.
To your freedom,
Signature
Simon Black,
Founder, SovereignMan.com
Posted on May 4th, 2022
Neutrality
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Switzerland almost immediately adopted the EU sanctions against Russia in full. This, despite the fact that the Swiss Constitution from 1848 requires neutrality. The Swiss department of foreign affairs attempts to justify their stance here. Encyclopedia Britannica, however, has a more sensible definition here. It talks about an attitude of impartiality, and the recognition by the belligerents of this attitude. This attitude is surely not included in the Swiss policy, and, to nobody's surprise, Russia has officially declared Switzerland as a non-friendly state. What good is it to claim neutrality, if any of the belligerents concludes otherwise?
In the past Switzerland has shown how neutrality can be useful to help broker agreements between combatants. This requires the trust, from both sides, in the impartiality of the neutral country. The very point of neutrality is to earn this trust, and without it neutrality is a hollow shell devoid of meaning and purpose. It may be technically and legally valid, but in real life, it is useless. In the case of Switzerland, it is a fig leaf hoping to cover up unconstitutional actions of the Bundesrat (Federal Council).
This explanation of Swiss neutrality, published shortly after the invocation of sanctions, is an obvious attempt to justify actions that any normal person would consider a breach of neutrality. The fact that the Bundesrat suddenly felt a need to publish this makes it clear they recognize they are on thin ice, and need to convince people that they really are neutral. They resort to legalities and technicalities to prove their case, ignoring the all-important attitude. They brazenly claims that neutrality does not imply impartiality, yet without that, what combatant would trust the "neutral" state as a broker? Unsurprisingly, the Russians, one of the only two parties that matter in this case, are not convinced.
Posted on April 11th, 2022
Horse Trading
Actually, the German term Kuhhandel would be better for this, as it concerns any transaction, not just difficult ones. The salient feature of any transaction is that it isn't concluded until all involved parties agree. As the transaction progresses, it is always possible for any party to break it off and return to the initial state. But let me start at the beginning of the story.
Recently I used one of the cash checkout machines at a supermarket, as is my wont. The bill came to CHF 8.20, which I dutifully fed into the belly of the beast. After all the clanking was done, it claimed that I still owed one Franc. I called over the attendant, who thoroughly checked the machine, and, at my request, instructed it to regurgitate the money that I had fed in. It dutifully coughed up 7.20, but what was illuminating is that this included a 20-Rappen (cent) coin. I had not fed in a 20-Rappen coin, but two 5-Rappen coins and a 10-Rappen coin. Thus it became clear that it was not giving back the coins that I had fed in; it had simply dipped into its treasury to spit out any old coins that would add up to the sum that it considered correct.
Now at this point a normal person would have concluded that they must have simply mis-counted. I, however, was convinced otherwise, and wrote an email to the manager to complain about my experience. It wasn't until I wrote this email that I realized why this experience made me so uneasy. My complaint was that the machine had no intermediate buffer for all the cash involved in the transaction. Lacking this, when asked to give back the money that I had tendered, it could only give back an equivalent amount, not necessarily the coins and bills that I had given it. At a more fundamental level, it lacks an abort button that would enable the user to undo everything and return to the previous state.
An illustration makes this clear. Let's say that you are buying a cow from me for $1700. As we stand out there in the field, you peel off $100 notes one at a time and hand them to me. I then put each one into my pocket as I get it. After you have passed me 17 of them, you demand your cow. Now I claim that you only gave me $1600, and you'll get your cow as soon as you dish out another $100. At this point you will naturally demand to see the money that you have handed me. I then fish $1600 out of my pocket. You are now exactly at the point where I was in my "transaction" with the cash checkout machine. You call me a liar and a swindler, and we duke it out. Sadly, I couldn't do that with the checkout machine.
This is why, in the real world, we put all the cash on the table so that everyone can count it and agree to the amount. But our sophisticated cash checkout machine can't do this, so what we have isn't a proper transaction. I give my cash until it thinks I've put in enough, and I have no recourse if I think otherwise.
The moral of the story is that if your checkout machine doesn't have an abort button, then the machine is incapable of performing a real transaction, and you should avoid it. It is in charge, and you have simply to meet its demands. This is how machines become our masters instead of our servants.
Posted on April 4th, 2022
Stupidity, Evil and the Decline of the US
by Doug Casey
(Today’s article is an adaptation from one of Doug’s speeches.)
It used to be that America was a country of free thinkers.
"Say what you think, and think what you say." That’s an expression you don't hear much anymore.
It’s much more like the world of 1984 where everything is "double think." You need to think twice before you say something in public. You think three times before you say something when you're standing in an airport line.
Regrettably, the US is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s become the land of whipped and whimpering dogs that roll over on their backs and wet themselves when confronted with authority.
Now, why are Americans this way? Let me give you two reasons—though there are many more.
First, there's a simple absence of virtue. Let’s look at the word virtue. It comes from the Latin vir, which means manly, even heroic. To the Romans, virtues were things like fortitude, nobility and courage. Those virtues are true to the root of the word.
When people think of virtues today they think of faith, hope, charity—which are not related to the word’s root meaning. These may pass as virtues in a religious sense. But, outside a Sunday school, they’re actually actually vices. This deserves a discussion, because I know it will shock many. But I’ll save that for another time.
An absence of virtues and the presence of subtle vices is insinuated throughout society. Worse, overt vices like avarice and especially envy are encouraged. Envy, in particular will become a big vice in the years to come. It’s similar to jealousy, but worse. Jealousy says "You have something I want; I’ll try to take it from you". Envy says "You have something I want. If I can’t take it from you, I’ll destroy it, and hurt you if I can." Jealousy and envy seem to motivate most Democratic Party presidential candidates. No wonder America is in rapid decline.
A second reason is unsound philosophy. The reigning philosophy in the US used to be based on individualism and personal freedom. It's now statism and collectivism. But most people don’t think about philosophy—or even have a consistent worldview. More than ever, they do what seems like a good idea at the time.
The average American has problems. But his rulers are something else again. Most of the people running the US are either knaves or fools. How do we know if we are dealing with a knave or a fool? In other words, are you dealing with somebody who is evil or just stupid? To give a recent, but classic, example, are you dealing with a Dick Cheney or a George W. Bush? Do you prefer the knavish Obama, or the knavish Biden? The foolish Trump, or the foolish Pence. Not much of a real choice anywhere…
At this point, the US resembles the planet Mars, which is circled by two moons, Phobos and Deimos, fear and terror in Greek. The US is also being circled by two moons, Kakos and Chazos, evil and stupidity in Greek. It’s hard to imagine the Founding Fathers having seen that as a possibility.
One of the relatively few laws I believe in is Pareto’s Law. Most people are familiar with it as the 80-20 rule—20% of the people do 80% of the work, 20% commit 80% of the crime, and so forth. It also applies to character and ethics. Most people—80%—are basically decent. What about that other 20%? Let's call them potential trouble sources because they can go either way. But 20% of that 20%—4%—are the sociopaths; they consistently have bad intentions. They’re usually hiding under rocks. But they like to emerge at election time.
In normal times when everything's going along well, they can look normal. They'll deliver the mail, or sell shoes or stocks. They’ll pet the dog, and play softball on weekends. But when circumstances in society get ugly, and reach a certain point, they start evidencing themselves. The rest of the 20% start swinging along with them. That's the place where we are right now in the US. It’s Pareto’s Law in operation.
A lot of people believe in American Exceptionalism. A good argument can be made for America having been exceptional in the past. It’s factually correct that America is the only country founded on the principles of individualism and personal freedom. It was actually different. It was special, even unique. But I don't think it's true anymore.
Of course all the world’s countries like to believe they're special or better than the rest. But they’re only different on the surface, in trivial ways. None—other than America—value individualism and personal freedom as founding virtues. Look at Russia throughout the 20th century. It was a phenomenal nightmarish disaster in Soviet times.
Look at Germany during the ‘30s and ‘40s. China, under Mao for 30 years, was the home of institutionalized, industrial scale mass murder. The same is true in lots of other countries… Cambodia, Rwanda, the Congo. There are dozens of other countries where bloody chaos reigned over the last century. But not the US. It was different.
But what if America has ceased to exist? What if it’s been transformed into just another nation state called the United States, with very different ideals and values? Why should it have a different fate than those other countries? I don't see any reason why that would be the case.
But if 80% of Americans are basically decent, well-intentioned people, what is going wrong and why?
Let me give you three reasons… although there are many others.
Number one, as I indicated earlier, Americans no longer have any philosophical anchor. They no longer share a national mythos—individualism, personal freedom, free minds, and free markets are now mocked. They may have some nebulous ideas about ethics that they picked up from the Boy Scouts. But they think all political and economic systems—and certainly all cultures—are equally good. The reigning philosophy is a mixture of cultural Marxism, identity politics, anti-male feminism, and anti-white racism.
I suppose it was inevitable in a country where a large plurality of people are dumb enough to spend four years and several hundred thousand dollars to be indoctrinated with those values.
The second thing is fear. It’s a reigning emotion in this country among the diminishing middle class.
Desperation and apathy characterize the growing lower classes. No wonder they're cemented to the bottom of society. It's a rare person that rises from the lower class because of those attitudes.
How about the upper classes? Their dominant emotions are avarice and arrogance; they think they're superior because they have more money. In many cases they’re rich not because they produce anything. But because they’re cronies, benefiting from the flood of money coming from the Fed, or the avalanche of laws and regulations coming from the Congress and the President.
America is still basically a middle-class country, although becoming less and less that way almost daily. And fear is the dominant emotion of the middle class. Fear of losing everything they have. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear they won’t be able to meet the credit card payments, the car payments, the mortgage payment. Fear they can't afford to send their kids to college—which is a mistake incidentally. But that’s another story.
The whole country is driven by fear… and it’s not a good thing. Deimos and Phobos, those two moons circling Mars are now circling the US, along with Kakos and Chazos.
The third, and perhaps most critical reason the US is going downhill—beyond a lack of a philosophical anchor and an atmosphere of fear—is a reflexive belief in government.
The United States used to be more like Switzerland, which is by far the most prosperous country in Europe. When you ask the Swiss, "Who's the president of Switzerland?", It's rare that anyone can tell you. It's academic. However, nobody cares. He doesn't do anything. Politics aren’t a big part of their lives.
But today in the US, people have come to view the government as a cornucopia. People expect it to solve all their problems. And that’s a real problem. Government is a genuine growth industry, and it attracts the worst type of people. Government is inevitably where sociopaths—the 4% and the 20%—are drawn. Washington draws sociopaths like a pile of dog droppings draws flies.
It's perfectly predictable. And why is that? Mao said it best, "The power of the state comes out the barrel of a gun." Government is about some people controlling other people. That's what attracts sociopaths, and that's why they go to Washington.
But enough bad news… what is it that makes things better in the world? Well, there are two things.
One is technology. The good news is there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived in all of earth's history previously combined. And they're continually increasing our control of nature. For most people, life is no longer "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", as Hobbes said. Technology is advancing at the rate of Moore’s law. And that improves the standard of living.
The second thing is savings. Individuals, like squirrels, are genetically wired to produce more than they consume. The difference between production and consumption can be saved. That creates capital. And capital enables technology. That creation of wealth should continue, barring a world war. Or most of the world’s governments acting more like Venezuela or Zimbabwe…. Which is quite possible.
So, in conclusion, I have some good news, and some bad news.
In the looming Greater Depression, most of the real wealth in the world will still exist. It's just going to change ownership
Posted on March 25th, 2022
OECD
International Man Communique
Tax Havens and the Greedy Rich
by Jeff Thomas
In 1960, 18 European countries, plus the US and Canada, signed on to become charter members of the new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Since that time, another 20 countries have signed on.
The Organisation was an expansion of an existing French organisation, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), begun in 1948.
Not surprisingly, the OECD became an extension of the OEEC and was led by France. As such, the tone of the OECD reflected French governmental thinking on economics. As the organisation expanded its power, its direction became more focused on two of the French government’s economic fixations: worldwide collection of tax and worldwide equalisation of tax.
Of course, France is known for its often-crippling levels of taxation, and in 2013, over 8,000 French people saw their tax bills top 100% of their earnings. This extraordinary tax level was, not surprisingly, introduced by socialist President Francois Hollande.
Monsieur Hollande may have been extreme in his tax, but by French standards, not dramatically so. France has long been a bastion for the socialistic belief that the "Greedy Rich" must be forced to pay their "fair share."
International Man Communique
Tax Havens and the Greedy Rich
by Jeff Thomas
In 1960, 18 European countries, plus the US and Canada, signed on to become charter members of the new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Since that time, another 20 countries have signed on.
The Organisation was an expansion of an existing French organisation, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), begun in 1948.
Not surprisingly, the OECD became an extension of the OEEC and was led by France. As such, the tone of the OECD reflected French governmental thinking on economics. As the organisation expanded its power, its direction became more focused on two of the French government’s economic fixations: worldwide collection of tax and worldwide equalisation of tax.
Of course, France is known for its often-crippling levels of taxation, and in 2013, over 8,000 French people saw their tax bills top 100% of their earnings. This extraordinary tax level was, not surprisingly, introduced by socialist President Francois Hollande.
Monsieur Hollande may have been extreme in his tax, but by French standards, not dramatically so. France has long been a bastion for the socialistic belief that the "Greedy Rich" must be forced to pay their "fair share."
The Greedy Rich
So, who exactly are the Greedy Rich? At what level of income does one become a member of this group? Well, like most things socialist, "rich" is a sliding scale. The man who came up with a new design for widgets and borrowed money and built a factory, employing others to make the widgets, is likely to find himself categorised as "rich."
Has he has a bad year and actually made less money than his lowest-paid employee for that year? No matter, he is still rich. (The adjective "greedy" is optional, to be used whenever criticising those being described as "rich.")
In considering the above, if we harbour resentment for such an individual, we might define "Greedy Rich" as "someone who appears to have more money than I do."
Of course, as stated above, this definition requires a sliding scale, as we cannot place a dollar figure on "rich." A rich person is simply someone who appears to have more money than we do, whatever that amount might be. Similarly, "fair share" might be defined as "more than they are presently paying."
So, here’s our widget manufacturer, who, in a good year, might earn well into six figures, but as he is solely responsible for the gamble he has taken in creating a business, he may make little or nothing in some years and, in fact, may need to plough back his previous earnings to shore up the business in bad years.
The Non-Greedy Rich
How about a football player who is paid upwards of seven figures annually for possessing the skill to kick around a ball well? Is he one of the Greedy Rich? No. In fact, he is to be idolised. He may even flaunt his wealth with mansions, expensive cars, bling, and a trophy wife, yet he is not one of the Greedy Rich.
And of course, there are movie stars and rock stars who fall into the same category. They may be conspicuously wealthy—even conspicuously wasteful—and be admired for it. They are "good people." Yes, they may display a penchant for behaving like spoiled royalty, even to the point of abusing their spouses, but they receive a firm warning and forgiveness, then return to their place on the pedestal.
And so, we might alter our definition to state that the Greedy Rich are deemed "guilty" because they employ others, making money from the sweat of their employees’ brows. But if we look deeper, we realise that the football player, the actor, and the rock star, employ limo drivers, gardeners, pool boys, agents, etc. They employ others, yet we don’t criticise their extravagant lifestyles over that of their employees.
To these groups of "non-greedy" rich, we may add the politicians, who also tend to live extravagant lives and generally greatly benefit financially from politics. But in order for politicians to live in this manner, they must receive tax dollars—the more the better—and this, of course, causes the universal hatred amongst politicians for tax havens.
Evil Tax Havens
The term, "Tax Haven" was once regarded as describing a jurisdiction where the people enjoyed freedom from taxation. Today, of course, most Tax Havens play down the freedom angle.
The OECD has successfully changed the term to suggest lawlessness, greed, money laundering, etc. Today, the OECD makes no secret of its goal to eliminate Tax Havens altogether and put the world on a "fair" system of uniform taxation.
What they mean by "fair," however, is that all the smaller nations that have chosen to have minimal governmental systems, supported by minimal taxation, are an embarrassment and a threat to them. This is unfair. Smaller nations must be forced to impose oppressive taxation on their citizens.
The OECD therefore campaigns continuously to force "equal taxation" on Tax Havens. And so, they regularly threaten economic warfare on the Isle of Man, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, etc., to create direct taxation that is "fair" and "acceptable" to the OECD member-nations.
The fly in this particular ointment is that the OECD member-nations do not in any way agree amongst themselves on what level of tax is "fair." The US is increasing its already burdensome taxation. The UK is doing the same, even though tax in Britain is already higher than in the US. And of course, France’s taxation level is higher than either, yet recommendations are regularly made by France’s government to increase it.
The objective of the OECD is to:
- Vilify those who have made money through jproductivity, to justify increased taxation
- Expand the image that the use of a Tax Haven is a criminal endeavour
- Force on smaller countries uniform (preferably high) taxation, to limit the exit of funds from OECD member-countries to Tax Havens
- Ignore the inconsistent taxation levels in OECD member-countries
- Continue to allow OECD member-countries themselves to act as Tax Havens
The OECD was created, ostensibly, for a variety of purposes, but what has been revealed as its primary purpose is to eliminate economic freedom in the world to the degree that the citizen is an economic prisoner of his government. This, in turn, ensures that the citizen’s wealth is readily available to be taxed or otherwise confiscated to the degree that the individual OECD member-nation’s government sees fit.
Enforced Uniformity… for Others
The OECD nations have no intention of enforcing uniformity or "fairness" upon each other; this restriction is to be reserved for the smaller countries that presently allow greater economic freedom.
The OECD has made great strides in recent decades: first, in convincing the public that the "Greedy Rich" are an evil class of people who seek to oppress the common man and, second, in making inroads into restrictions on Tax Havens.
(Soon to come: tax uniformity amongst smaller nations.)
But the OECD has a ways to go and it may be decades before they succeed in their effort. Additionally, the world is looking at large-scale, international economic collapse in the relatively near future.
What part will this play in the OECD’s efforts? Will they, like many organisations, go by the boards, as they may simply become impossible to fund? Or will we see an economic reset—a New World Order of sorts—in which the IMF becomes the world’s tax arbiter? Time will tell.
Posted on March 10th, 2022
Doug Casey Debunks the So-Called "Green Economy"
International Man: Politicians, the media, and large corporations promote solar and wind energy as replacements for fossil fuels.
Western governments are trying to pick winners and are subsidizing wind and solar energy to the tune of billions.
What's going on here?
Doug Casey: Solar and wind energy can be useful. But generally only for special applications or remote locations where regular power is uneconomic or un._available.
Wind and solar make no sense for mass power generation, however. They're completely unsuitable for a complex industrial civilization. The Greens aren't trying to solve a technological problem but make an ideological statement. Which is fine, except they're doing it at the public's expense. Meanwhile, the public has been so propagandized that they now feel it's morally righteous to be hornswoggled.
No problem if someone feels that covering his rooftop with solar panels can cut his electricity bill and pay back the cost in 7 or 10 years which is roughly the case today. It's something else entirely if a government puts a society's electrical grid at risk in order to virtue signal.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for alternative methods of generating energy. Geothermal can work in places like Iceland, where near-surface magma hotspots currently generate around 30% of their electricity. Tidal power works in certain locations. As does hydro, although it's increasingly unpopular because dams inundate a lot of land, silt up, displace the locals, destroy existing fauna and flora, and eventually collapse.
It's a fact solar tech has been improving for decades. For instance, there's been an annual 3000KM race across Australia for solar cars since 1987. They're still basically experimental toys, but they get faster every year. Still, it's only possible in a place like the Australian desert where the sun is usable 12 hours a day, every day. Any kid who's played in the sun with a magnifying glass can tell you solar power is real but that doesn't mean that it's suitable for base-load power in an industrial civilization. Someday we may use gigantic collectors in high earth orbit to capture the sun's power and beam it down to earth by microwave. But that's for the future.
So-called "green" technologies will continue developing and getting cheaper. Excellent. But progress will be much faster if entrepreneurs make the necessary decisions for economic reasons rather than bureaucrats for political reasons.
Coal and natural gas still make sense for mass power generation, but the real answer is nuclear in today's world. It's by far the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of power generation. And it would be far safer, cleaner, and cheaper if only it wasn't treated as such a bugaboo. We'd now be using very small, foolproof, ultra-cheap, self-contained thorium-powered nuclear plants if it wasn't for the obstructionism of the Greens and their allies.
Western governments are trying to pick winners and are subsidizing wind and solar energy to the tune of billions.
What's going on here?
Doug Casey: Solar and wind energy can be useful. But generally only for special applications or remote locations where regular power is uneconomic or un._available.
Wind and solar make no sense for mass power generation, however. They're completely unsuitable for a complex industrial civilization. The Greens aren't trying to solve a technological problem but make an ideological statement. Which is fine, except they're doing it at the public's expense. Meanwhile, the public has been so propagandized that they now feel it's morally righteous to be hornswoggled.
No problem if someone feels that covering his rooftop with solar panels can cut his electricity bill and pay back the cost in 7 or 10 years which is roughly the case today. It's something else entirely if a government puts a society's electrical grid at risk in order to virtue signal.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for alternative methods of generating energy. Geothermal can work in places like Iceland, where near-surface magma hotspots currently generate around 30% of their electricity. Tidal power works in certain locations. As does hydro, although it's increasingly unpopular because dams inundate a lot of land, silt up, displace the locals, destroy existing fauna and flora, and eventually collapse.
It's a fact solar tech has been improving for decades. For instance, there's been an annual 3000KM race across Australia for solar cars since 1987. They're still basically experimental toys, but they get faster every year. Still, it's only possible in a place like the Australian desert where the sun is usable 12 hours a day, every day. Any kid who's played in the sun with a magnifying glass can tell you solar power is real but that doesn't mean that it's suitable for base-load power in an industrial civilization. Someday we may use gigantic collectors in high earth orbit to capture the sun's power and beam it down to earth by microwave. But that's for the future.
So-called "green" technologies will continue developing and getting cheaper. Excellent. But progress will be much faster if entrepreneurs make the necessary decisions for economic reasons rather than bureaucrats for political reasons.
Coal and natural gas still make sense for mass power generation, but the real answer is nuclear in today's world. It's by far the safest, cheapest, and cleanest form of power generation. And it would be far safer, cleaner, and cheaper if only it wasn't treated as such a bugaboo. We'd now be using very small, foolproof, ultra-cheap, self-contained thorium-powered nuclear plants if it wasn't for the obstructionism of the Greens and their allies.
Unfortunately, governments everywhere, driven by uninformed and misinformed public opinion, are trying to make solar and wind the exclusive sources of power. Public opinion is shaped by leftists. They have almost completely captured academia, the mass media, celebrities, corporate boards, and other centers of influence. It's perverse that coal and natural gas are being made artificially uneconomic because they have to be stopped and restarted constantly during times when so-called alternative energy can't generate adequate power. There's apparently no limit to political stupidity; the German government is committed to closing down their remaining two nuclear plants by the end of 2022. No matter that most of their natural gas comes from Russia...
A good case can be made that the whole green movement is actually insane. I'm not at all convinced they're even well-intended. These people are like poisonous watermelons, green on the outside, red on the inside.
International Man: Governments also heavily subsidize electric vehicles (EVs).
Absent this intervention in the market, would EVs be economical? Will EVs ever be able to exist without government support?
Doug Casey: Speaking as a lifelong car guy, I like the idea of electric vehicles (EVs). Their low center of gravity means they tend to handle much better than cars with internal combustion engines (ICE). They can accelerate faster and achieve speeds just as high as ICE cars. They have only a fraction of the moving parts of ICE cars. And battery technology keeps improving; even now, you can get 300, 400 miles, or more of range. At least when it's not too hot or cold out.
The main problem with EVs at the moment is that they can be inconvenient to charge. But there's a much bigger problem on the way. If the world goes to EVs in a big way which they want to do the grid won't be able to handle all the power needed to run them. The transmission capacity doesn't exist, and new high voltage lines are a real NIMBY issue. That's entirely apart from the fact that the main baseline power simply won't be there in a world of wind and solar.
Innovation, technology, and capital accumulation can solve those problems. But in the kind of highly regulated and highly taxed world that the Greens advocate, we'll have constant blackouts and higher costs. People are afraid that fossil fuels are going to run out, but they won't. The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, nor will the fossil fuel age end because we run out of hydrocarbons.
If technology is free to develop, better forms of power will appear. In the meantime, the answer is nuclear and fossil fuels, of which there are hundreds of years of supply left. In the meantime, subsidized "green" or "alternative" power isn't the answer. If something needs a subsidy, it's because it's uneconomic. And if something is uneconomic, it means you're destroying capital, not building capital. You're making the world poorer, and poor countries have a hard time making technological advances.
Electric vehicles have a great future, but both the grid and power plants will have to evolve greatly to make them viable on a big scale. They shouldn't be legislated into existence, which is what's happening now. The result will be another major crisis.
International Man: Many people think they are absolving their alleged climate sins by using EVs, promoting solar and wind energy, and demonizing fossil fuels.
Are these things really as "green" as the average person thinks they are?
Doug Casey: No. Greenism is a sham and a delusion. It's an example of a meme that has spread not because it's true it's not but because the public feels that "everybody" believes it, and therefore it must be true. People who know nothing about basic chemistry, physics, or science, in general, think magic can happen. It's really like a religion that way.
They confuse scientism with science, much the way they confuse Marxism with economics. An early example was the attempt to impose something called "energy accounting." It's largely forgotten now. They disregarded costs in terms of dollars and cents, trying to compute costs by figuring how much energy one thing might use as opposed to another. It became insanely complicated, impractical, and actually irrational. In the real world, some forms of energy are worth more than others, depending on time, place, and circumstances. Just as Marxists believe that all labor is equally valuable, energy accounting assumed all energy was equally valuable.
Windmills and solar collectors are the two basic technologies that Greens are relying on. They overlook the fact that constructing windmills takes a lot of concrete, steel, copper, exotic metals, and petroleum-based plastics, plus a lot of power to build the giant structures. Their blades have limited lifespans, can't be recycled, and have to be thrown into landfills. The same is true of solar panels. They're actually a long-term blight upon the environment.
Once again, it's fine to use windmills and solar for personal convenience, special situations, or remote locations. Otherwise, they make no sense at all except to ideologues who want to virtue signal.
International Man: According to the consulting firm McKinsey, getting to "Net Zero" carbon by 2050 would cost $275 trillion in capital spending on physical assets by 2050, or $9.2 trillion a year.
It's a ridiculous amount of money and an impossible proposition. Yet, governments are enthusiastically jumping on board with this plan.
Is Net-Zero a giant swindle? How does it end?
Doug Casey: Net Zero means getting down to net-zero carbon emissions. That's actually insane. Partly because it would direct even more power and resources to the State and partly because carbon is a good thing.
Carbon is the basis of all life; you shouldn't try to eliminate it. It's as if the Greens have declared war against the Periodic Table of the Elements. Uranium, sulfur, fluorine, chlorine, cadmium, and lead have long been declared enemies. Someday I expect they'll discover that argon is almost 1% of the atmosphere and will ask the government to "do something" about that too. God forbid they discover that nitrogen, which is 20% of the atmosphere, is key to making most explosives...
The atmosphere has about 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide or less than 0.04%. That's a teeny weeny amount. Frankly, we might be better off if it grew to 10 times that level to 3,800 parts per million, which is still less than half of a percent of the atmosphere.
Why? Greens seem unaware that through most of the earth's history, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been many times what it is now. And as a result, the earth was covered with massive forests, giant plants, and animals. Carbon is conducive to life.
In fact, 130 parts per million is the minimum amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere necessary to sustain plant life. It's plant food. Believe it or not, we're at the ragged edge of killing both plant life and ourselves if we reduce it much further. The amount of CO2 may be going up, but there's little proof that humans are to blame. Most of it is because of natural forces, like volcanism.
Global warming is tied to the reason we're supposed to hate carbon. But climate change is largely controlled by the sun, in combination with a myriad of other factors ranging from cosmic rays to the changing tilt of the earth to possibly the solar system's rotation around the galaxy. Contrary to the hype that saturates the planet, there's plenty of reason to believe the climate is now headed towards a long cooling spell. Don't worry about Global Warming. It's the least of our problems.
Warm is good, cool is bad, from the point of view of life, civilization, and everything else. The Greens have everything upside down and backwards. I think a good case can be made that they don't love nature nearly as much as they simply hate humanity, including themselves.
International Man: The green agenda will cause unimaginable government-caused distortions in the economy.
What are the investment implications?
Doug Casey: If they continue along this path and it appears that they will huge amounts of capital will be misallocated or destroyed. Trillions of dollars will be wasted by governments for political reasons. A huge amount of debt will be incurred, devastating the standard of living of future generations who have to repay it exactly when all the solar collectors and windmills have to be junked.
If we continue along this way, it's going to be an economic disaster, making the world poorer, not richer. When the world gets poorer, unhappy people will start wars to blame somebody else for the problem or steal resources.
The US economy is being Sovietized. Which is to say, directions increasingly come from apparatchiks and political cadres, as opposed to letting people decide what they want in the market. If you value democracy, the only democratic way of organizing things economically is to let the market decide. But in a Green society, humans and markets are seen as the enemy---things to be reduced and eliminated.
Posted on March 9th, 2022
Scientism
David Stockman on Scientism and the New Road to Serfdom
It's long past time for conservative folks to wake up. Today's great threat to capitalist prosperity, personal liberty and constitutional government as we have known it is not Marxism, socialism or any other variant of traditional left-wing ideology.
The real threat to liberty is more generic. Rather than a specific history-rooted ideology, such as the working class socialism of the early industrial era, the foundational threat has always been the aggrandizement of the state, and the empowerment of the political classes and nomenklatura that thrive upon it, whatever the ideology upon which they justified their will-to-power.
And today the vehicle for that impulse of statist expansion is Scientism --- the false claims that economic science, public health science and climate change science, among others, require sweeping increases in state intervention and control.
This proposition is not merely a grand abstraction. The recently passed $7 trillion in stimmies, bailouts and infrastructure boondoggles, the Biden Administration s claims that we have just nine years until irreversible climate disaster, and the ongoing depredations of the COVID Virus Patrols are real time instances of Scientism at work --- unnecessarily and destructively extending the long arm of the state deep into daily economic and social life.
There is no valid science that calls for either the extinction of fossil fuels, or lockdowns to stop the spread of a virus like those that have afflicted mankind since time immemorial, or massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep capitalism from plunging into the drink.
These claims amount to invented science based on large theories of how the world works, which are essentially goal-seeked. That is, they first posit the climate, public health and economic models that inherently require heavy-handed state intervention to prevent catastrophic outcomes, and then they array the evidence and projections to validate the predicate.
For example, the natural climate change now underway --- as it has been for 4.5 billion years --- is essentially benign, not catastrophic. Current warming is nothing new --- it's happened repeatedly from the Medieval Warm Period (900--1300 AD) to the Roman Warming (200 BC to 300 AD) to the Holocene Climate Optimum (7,000--3,000 BC) and on back in countless unnamed cycles reaching deep into the history of the planet.
Contrary to the false claims of the climate howlers ---
- current mildly rising temperatures are in keeping with the historical truth that warmer is better for humanity and most other species, too; and
- climate cycles are a function of powerful planetary forces, such as the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, which causes ice ages in 100,000 year intervals, and solar irradiation oscillations, which modulate cosmic rays and cloud formation. These forces have shaped the earth s climate for eons and long preceded and massively exceed the impact of industrial era CO2 emissions;
Continued planetary equipoise requires no interventions whatsoever by the state to retard the use of prosperity-fostering fossil fuels or to subsidize and accelerate the adoption of high cost renewable energy.
Posted on March 4th, 2022
The Sandcastle
by Jeff Thomas
The decline from democracy to tyranny is both a natural and inevitable one.
That's not a pleasant thought to have to consider, but it's a fact,
nonetheless. In every case, a democracy will deteriorate as the result
of the electorate accepting the loss of freedom in trade for largesse
from their government. This process may be fascism, socialism,
communism, or a basket of "isms," but tyranny is the inevitable endgame
of democracy. Like the destruction of a sandcastle by the incoming tide,
it requires time to transpire, but in time, the democracy, like the
sandcastle, will be washed away in its entirety.
Why should this be so? Well, as I commented some years ago,
The concept of government is that the
people grant to a small group of individuals the ability to establish
and maintain controls over them. The inherent flaw in such a concept is
that any government will invariably and continually expand upon its
controls, resulting in the ever-diminishing freedom of those who granted
them the power.
Unfortunately, there will always be those who wish to rule, and there
will always be a majority of voters who are complacent enough and naive
enough to allow their freedoms to be slowly removed. This adverb
"slowly" is the key by which the removal of freedoms is achieved.
The old adage of "boiling a frog" is that the frog will jump out of
the pot if it s filled with hot water, but if the water is lukewarm and
the temperature is slowly raised, he ll grow accustomed to the
temperature change and will inadvertently allow himself to be boiled.
Let's have a look at Thomas Jefferson's assessment of this technique:
Even under the best forms of Government,
those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations,
perverted it into tyranny.
Mister Jefferson was a true visionary. He knew, even as he was
penning the Declaration of Independence and portions of the
Constitution, that his proclamations, even if they were accepted by his
fellow founding fathers, would not last. He recommended repeated
revolutions to counter the inevitable tendency by political leaders to
continually vie for the removal of the freedoms from their constituents.
Around the same time that Mister Jefferson made the above comment,
Alexander Tytler, a Scottish economist and historian, commented on the
new American experiment in democracy. He's credited as saying,
A democracy is always temporary in
nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A
democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover
they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From
that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every
democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is
always followed by a dictatorship.
So, was each of the above gentlemen throwing a dart at a board, or
did they each have some kind of crystal ball? Well, actually, neither.
Each was a keen student of history. Each knew that the pattern, by the
end of the 18th century, had already repeated itself time and time
again. In fact, as early as the fourth century BC, Plato had quoted
Socrates as having stated to Adeimantus,
Tyranny naturally arises out of
democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery comes out
of the most extreme form of liberty.
Today, much of what was called the "free world" only half a century ago
has deteriorated into a combination of residual capitalism, which has
been largely and increasingly buried by socialism and fascism. (It
should be mentioned that the oft-misinterpreted definition of "fascism"
is the joint rule by corporate and state--a condition that's now
manifestly in place in much of the former "free" world.)
Today, many people perceive fascism as a tyrannical condition that's
suddenly imposed by a dictator, but this is rarely the case. Fascism is
in fact a logical step. Just as voters succumb over time to the promises
of socialism, so a parallel decline occurs as fascism slowly replaces
capitalism. Fascism may appear to be capitalism, but it's the antithesis
of a free market. As Vladimir Lenin rightly stated,
Fascism is capitalism in decline.
Comrade Lenin understood the value of fascism for political leaders.
Whilst he retained a close relationship with New York and London
bankers, and a healthy capitalist market was tapped into for Soviet-era
imports, he was aware that his power base depended largely on denying
capitalism to his minions.
So, from the above quotations, we may see that there's been a fairly
erudite group of folks out there who have commented on this topic over
the last 2,500 years. They agree that democracies, like sandcastles,
never last. They generally begin promisingly, but, given enough time,
any government will erode democracy as quickly as the political leaders
can get away with it, and the progression always ends in tyranny.
We're presently at a major historical juncture--a time in which much of the former free world is in the final stages of decay and approaching the tyranny stage.
At this point, the process tends to speed up. We can observe this as
we see an increase in the laws being passed to control the
population--increased taxation, increased regulation, and increased
promises of largesse from the government that they don't have the
funding to deliver.
When any government reaches this stage, it knows only too well that
it will not deliver and that, when the lie is exposed, the populace will
be hopping mad. Therefore, just before the endgame, any government can
be expected to ramp up its police state. The demonstrations by
governments that they're doing so are now seen regularly--raids by SWAT
teams in situations where just a small number of authorities could
handle the situation just as well. Displays of armed forces in the
street, including armoured vehicles, in instances of disruption.
In London, Ferguson, Paris, Boston, etc., the authoritarian displays
have become ever-more frequent. All that's now necessary is a series of
events (whether staged or real) to suggest domestic terrorism in several
locations at roughly the same time. A state of national emergency may
then be declared "for the safety of the people."
It's this justification that will assure the success of tyranny.
Historically, the majority of people in any county, in any era, choose
the illusion of safety over freedom. As John Adams was fond of saying,
Those who would trade freedom for safety will have neither.
From this point on, it would be wise for anyone who lives in the EU,
US, UK, etc. to watch events closely. If a rash of "domestic terrorism"
appears suddenly, it could well be the harbinger that the government has
reached the tipping point--when tyranny under the guise of "protecting
the safety of the people" is inaugurated.
The most essential takeaway here is that, although some may object (even violently), the majority of the people will trade their freedom for the promise of safety.
Posted on December 27th, 2021
Disinformation
This breathless report of a small plane crash goes on to claim that we are now experiencing an epidemic of plane crashes lately. It shows lots of photos of plane crashes, and implores us to do the research. So I did just that. The National Transportation Safety Board has a database with all transportation accidents. They provide statistical analysis, access to the raw data, and a tool to do your own queries on the database. At https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-main-public/query-builder it is easy to cobble together a query to gather statistics. I looked for fatal crashes of general aviation airplanes in the timeframe June - September 2021; the database shows there were 63 such crashes in those 4 months. That would extrapolate to about 190 per year. In the past decade fatal GA crashes have been at 220 and up each year.
So there is no epidemic of airplane crashes, unless they're mostly non-fatal, which hardly seems likely or even interesting. That means this report is likely disinformation, designed to mislead, confuse, or just distract, the conspiracy theorists who are pursuing the truth about covid-19. This kind of disinfo is standard operating procedure for those who are trying to cover up their conspiracy. They feed fake news to those eagerly seeking damning information about the plandemic. Then they debunk it, making the conspiracy theorists look like rubes who will believe anything. Sadly enough, all too often they're right.
-- arizona audit hijacked
Posted on October 15th, 2021
Turning Totalitarian
You'll Own Nothing and You'll Be Happy
by Jeff Thomas
-
Klaus Schwab was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Little information is available as to his upbringing – i.e., the degree to which he was educated to believe in Nazi doctrine – but whatever he was taught in his youth, he is, today, one of the most ardent believers in, and proponents of, totalitarian rule.
The term "Nazi" refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or "National Socialism," and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.
Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.
Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.
For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.
The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:
1. Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.
2. Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.
3. Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.
4. Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.
5. Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.
6. Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.
The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.
Of course, if any individual were to read the above menu, he would immediately say, "No way!" and reject the programme outright. Therefore, if such an oppressive regime were to be imposed upon a people, it would need to be sold to them as a benefit, not as virtual enslavement.
Joseph Goebbels was proud of saying, "Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep saying it and eventually, they will believe it."
Quite so. Fortunately, Mister Hitler and his friends were removed from the firmament before the final stages of the programme could be implemented.
But today, the jurisdictions listed above are now solidly in the completion stage of bullet point #2 and have begun to provide the offer of bullet point #3: the promised solution to the populace.
And so, we return to our poster boy for totalitarianism: Klaus Schwab.
His fame has been earned through his creation and chairmanship of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Over the last half century, the WEF has grown in influence to become one of the foremost leaders in the proposition of a New World Order.
As with Mister Hitler, in order to sell Totalitarianism 201 to the people of the countries in question, the technique once again is to "Make the lie big."
Professor Schwab’s video offers an idyllic state in which people can rid themselves of all the personal debt, the political upheaval and the social unrest that is now expanding so rapidly.
The proposed solution is that you sign over your right to own possessions on a permanent basis, in trade for a life in which there is minimal responsibility. The world government will provide you with a basic income. You will rent whatever you need – a residence, a vehicle, appliances, even your clothing.
Most importantly, as can be seen from the countenance of the citizen in the image above, you’ll be happy.
There will be no more wars. A "handful of countries" will rule the world cooperatively. There will be no waiting for medical attention. "There will be a global price on carbon" emissions. (This states that those who use fossil fuels – everyone – will be taxed for its use, although no explanation is given as to how this keeps the world from ending in twelve years due to emissions, as globalists claim.)
The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.
Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?
But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.
For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.
But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl... Oh-oh.
All the things that were promised may be withdrawn one at a time, until you’re both subservient and impoverished. You will lack the ability to rebel or even to complain.
For generations, political leaders have offered empty promises that were never kept. Conservative and liberal political leaders alike have consistently made a grand show of disagreeing with each other on what form of governance might serve the people best. Yet, somehow, the result, no matter which group theoretically holds the reins of power at any given time, has always been a larger, more powerful government and a populace that was increasingly robbed of its freedoms – social, political and economic.
We are now at the very turning point at which much of the former Free World is being tempted to make the leap into the "Brave New World."
All the social, political and economic problems that presently exist have been caused by political leaders. They are now asking you to trust them to end those problems.
The promise is a simple one: You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
But you’re not required to sign up. All you need do is sit still and accept the transformation to totalitarianism as it plays out.
Nothing could be simpler.
by Jeff Thomas
-
Klaus Schwab was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Little information is available as to his upbringing – i.e., the degree to which he was educated to believe in Nazi doctrine – but whatever he was taught in his youth, he is, today, one of the most ardent believers in, and proponents of, totalitarian rule.
The term "Nazi" refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or "National Socialism," and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.
Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.
Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.
For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.
The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:
1. Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.
2. Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.
3. Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.
4. Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.
5. Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.
6. Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.
The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.
Of course, if any individual were to read the above menu, he would immediately say, "No way!" and reject the programme outright. Therefore, if such an oppressive regime were to be imposed upon a people, it would need to be sold to them as a benefit, not as virtual enslavement.
Joseph Goebbels was proud of saying, "Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep saying it and eventually, they will believe it."
Quite so. Fortunately, Mister Hitler and his friends were removed from the firmament before the final stages of the programme could be implemented.
But today, the jurisdictions listed above are now solidly in the completion stage of bullet point #2 and have begun to provide the offer of bullet point #3: the promised solution to the populace.
And so, we return to our poster boy for totalitarianism: Klaus Schwab.
His fame has been earned through his creation and chairmanship of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Over the last half century, the WEF has grown in influence to become one of the foremost leaders in the proposition of a New World Order.
As with Mister Hitler, in order to sell Totalitarianism 201 to the people of the countries in question, the technique once again is to "Make the lie big."
Professor Schwab’s video offers an idyllic state in which people can rid themselves of all the personal debt, the political upheaval and the social unrest that is now expanding so rapidly.
The proposed solution is that you sign over your right to own possessions on a permanent basis, in trade for a life in which there is minimal responsibility. The world government will provide you with a basic income. You will rent whatever you need – a residence, a vehicle, appliances, even your clothing.
Most importantly, as can be seen from the countenance of the citizen in the image above, you’ll be happy.
There will be no more wars. A "handful of countries" will rule the world cooperatively. There will be no waiting for medical attention. "There will be a global price on carbon" emissions. (This states that those who use fossil fuels – everyone – will be taxed for its use, although no explanation is given as to how this keeps the world from ending in twelve years due to emissions, as globalists claim.)
The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.
Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?
But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.
For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.
But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl... Oh-oh.
All the things that were promised may be withdrawn one at a time, until you’re both subservient and impoverished. You will lack the ability to rebel or even to complain.
For generations, political leaders have offered empty promises that were never kept. Conservative and liberal political leaders alike have consistently made a grand show of disagreeing with each other on what form of governance might serve the people best. Yet, somehow, the result, no matter which group theoretically holds the reins of power at any given time, has always been a larger, more powerful government and a populace that was increasingly robbed of its freedoms – social, political and economic.
We are now at the very turning point at which much of the former Free World is being tempted to make the leap into the "Brave New World."
All the social, political and economic problems that presently exist have been caused by political leaders. They are now asking you to trust them to end those problems.
The promise is a simple one: You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
But you’re not required to sign up. All you need do is sit still and accept the transformation to totalitarianism as it plays out.
Nothing could be simpler.
Posted on October 3rd, 2021
Capitalism—A New Idea
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Posted on September 30th, 2021
Why I don't get vaccinated
20210910
Today our local newspaper (Berner Zeitung), put out a request to learn why some people are refusing to partake of the free covid vaccinations. The journalist wants readers to submit their rationale, which he will present to a local expert for his judgement. The arguments (and presumably their refutation by the local egggspert) will then be published online and in the newspaper. Naturally the expert is anything but impartial, and will do his best to justify his position by shooting yours down in flames. It's you against the accredited expert, and he gets the last word. You'd have to be either a masochist or hopelessly optimistic to go for that deal.
So why would anyone refuse the vaccine, the journalist asks? After all, 1) it's free, 2) has only moderate side-effects, and 3) protects against severe sickness. Let's take these three "advantages" in turn. 1) That fact that it's free is hardly a reason to invoke a medical procedure which has been documented to cause a wide variety of serious health problems, including death. If I put my piss in a syringe and offered to inject it for free, I doubt I'd get many takers. Obviously the cost is a trivial consideration compared to the contents, so calling "free" an advantage is pretty lame. 2) The journalist's claim that it "has only moderate side-effects" proves only that he hasn't been paying attention to the documented serious health issues, including death, that many thousands of vaxxers have experienced. True, for most people, the side-effects are minor to negligible, but one could say the same of Russian Roulette. The media has even managed to feature what they can't fix, touting the minor side-effects as "proof that it is working." Some people will fall for just anything. Then there's 3) "protects against severe sickness." The vaxxers like to claim this, but there isn't a shred of proof. In fact, some experts explain in detail why just the opposite will be the case come the next flu season. It's interesting to note that the journalist doesn't venture to say that it prevents one from coming down with covid, though this is the usual reason for a vaccine. It's also interesting that the covid experts have decided that natural immunity (gained from having survived covid) is only good for 6 months, whereas for every other disease it is considered the best type of immunity, effective for life.
So why don't I get the vax? There's so many reasons, it's hard to know where to start. If I have to pick just one, I'll take the fact that it hasn't undergone any long-term testing. This is one that my daughter, a doctor, (plus many of her colleagues) agrees with. It is, explicitly, still experimental, meaning that everyone who takes it is part of the experiment. There are very sound reasons why vaccines are normally required to go through extensive trials lasting 7-15 years. These have gone through some 10 months of testing. Furthermore, the detailed test data, and even the ingredients, are proprietary and not available to anyone. Adding insult to injury, the new mRNA technology has never been tried on humans, and failed miserably in the few animal trials where it was tried.
When I consider all that, I have to wonder why anyone does get the vax. You'd have to be either very trusting, or very fearful. Way back in March 2020 our favorite fear monger (Dr. Fauci) himself published in a peer-reviewed study that covid-19 is no more deadly than a seasonal flu, so it's hard to see why anyone would be afraid. Sure, lots of old folks died, but the vast majority of them had one foot in the grave already, and covid just pushed them over the edge, something the flu does every year. So it's a good thing the flu basically disappeared in 2020; instead of the usual millions of cases, only a few hundred happened. One might be forgiven for suspecting that bog standard flu was systematically re-labeled covid.
Posted on September 10th, 2021
A Primer on Central Banks
"The Bank Was Saved, and the People Were Ruined."
by Jeff Thomas
The above quote is from William Gouge, commenting on the Panic of 1819. The panic had been caused when the First Bank of the United States had first expanded the money supply dramatically by offering loans, then contracted the money supply by tightening its requirements for new loans, causing a crash.
This is a useful quote, as, in its simplicity, it states the very nature of crashes brought on by irresponsible banking practices. In every case in which this occurs, it is possible through the complicity of the government of the day.
The origin of this syndrome goes back to Mayer Rothschild, a very clever fellow who, in the late 18th century, offered financial benefits to politicians in Germany in trade for political support for whatever activities his bank might practice. Rothschild was a long-term thinker; his method involved the offering of regular emoluments to politicians without their having to provide him with anything immediately. Then, when he needed a large favour, he would call it in.
Movie buffs may see a similarity between Rothschild’s method and the deals made by Don Corleone in The Godfather. "Some day – and that day may never come – I’ll call upon you to do a service for me."
Rothschild created boom-and-bust cycles which were highly profitable for his bank, but depended upon the support of the government when the "bust" part came along.
As described above, the bank would offer loans to the public on generous terms, then suddenly rein in those terms on all future loans. The claim the bank would make would be that inflation was taking place and the bank was taking action to control that inflation. (Of course, Rothschild did not bother to mention that it was the bank itself that had caused the inflation.)
The net result would be a "panic," or, in today’s terms a "depression." Everyone involved would be harmed by the event except the politicians and the bank.
This scheme was accurately and succinctly described by G. Edward Griffin in 1994:
"It is widely believed that panics, boom-and-bust cycles, and depressions are caused by unbridled competition between banks; thus the need for government regulation. The truth is just the opposite. These disruptions in the free market are the result of government prevention of competition by the granting of monopolistic power to the central bank."
Mayer Rothschild’s five sons followed in his footsteps and would go on to control much of the banking in Europe. The Rothschilds are perhaps best known for the Bank of England, which is still in operation today as one of the world’s most powerful banks.
So, let’s have a brief look at central banking in America.
In 1782, the Bank of North America was opened in America during the infancy of the United States. It was modelled after Rothschild’s Bank of England. It operated as a central bank and, as it was organised by Congressman Robert Morris, it was intended from the start to serve both its directors and the politicians of the day.
The bank did indeed serve the bankers and politicians – at the expense of the depositors. Although the bank lost its charter in 1783, an effort was soon afoot to create a virtually identical bank, called, "The Bank of the United States." The proposal was backed by the Rothschilds, who intended to control it.
Having just seen, first hand, how much damage a central bank, with a fascist relationship to the government could do, a terrible (and ongoing) row took place within the Cabinet of President George Washington as to whether another potentially disastrous bank should be allowed. The main protagonist was Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who said,
"The system of banking [is] a blot left in all constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction… I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity…is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
by Jeff Thomas
The above quote is from William Gouge, commenting on the Panic of 1819. The panic had been caused when the First Bank of the United States had first expanded the money supply dramatically by offering loans, then contracted the money supply by tightening its requirements for new loans, causing a crash.
This is a useful quote, as, in its simplicity, it states the very nature of crashes brought on by irresponsible banking practices. In every case in which this occurs, it is possible through the complicity of the government of the day.
The origin of this syndrome goes back to Mayer Rothschild, a very clever fellow who, in the late 18th century, offered financial benefits to politicians in Germany in trade for political support for whatever activities his bank might practice. Rothschild was a long-term thinker; his method involved the offering of regular emoluments to politicians without their having to provide him with anything immediately. Then, when he needed a large favour, he would call it in.
Movie buffs may see a similarity between Rothschild’s method and the deals made by Don Corleone in The Godfather. "Some day – and that day may never come – I’ll call upon you to do a service for me."
Rothschild created boom-and-bust cycles which were highly profitable for his bank, but depended upon the support of the government when the "bust" part came along.
As described above, the bank would offer loans to the public on generous terms, then suddenly rein in those terms on all future loans. The claim the bank would make would be that inflation was taking place and the bank was taking action to control that inflation. (Of course, Rothschild did not bother to mention that it was the bank itself that had caused the inflation.)
The net result would be a "panic," or, in today’s terms a "depression." Everyone involved would be harmed by the event except the politicians and the bank.
This scheme was accurately and succinctly described by G. Edward Griffin in 1994:
"It is widely believed that panics, boom-and-bust cycles, and depressions are caused by unbridled competition between banks; thus the need for government regulation. The truth is just the opposite. These disruptions in the free market are the result of government prevention of competition by the granting of monopolistic power to the central bank."
Mayer Rothschild’s five sons followed in his footsteps and would go on to control much of the banking in Europe. The Rothschilds are perhaps best known for the Bank of England, which is still in operation today as one of the world’s most powerful banks.
So, let’s have a brief look at central banking in America.
In 1782, the Bank of North America was opened in America during the infancy of the United States. It was modelled after Rothschild’s Bank of England. It operated as a central bank and, as it was organised by Congressman Robert Morris, it was intended from the start to serve both its directors and the politicians of the day.
The bank did indeed serve the bankers and politicians – at the expense of the depositors. Although the bank lost its charter in 1783, an effort was soon afoot to create a virtually identical bank, called, "The Bank of the United States." The proposal was backed by the Rothschilds, who intended to control it.
Having just seen, first hand, how much damage a central bank, with a fascist relationship to the government could do, a terrible (and ongoing) row took place within the Cabinet of President George Washington as to whether another potentially disastrous bank should be allowed. The main protagonist was Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who said,
"The system of banking [is] a blot left in all constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction… I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity…is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
On the other side, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton led the argument in favour of the creation of a second central bank. Incredibly, even though Congress had just seen what a disaster this could be, they approved the charter for the new bank in 1791. It opened with less than nine percent of the private funds required by its charter.
A primary object of the bank was to provide fiat currency for the government, whilst collecting deposits from the public. Immediately, the new bank began to print money and to lend it, with predictable results. By 1811, it had closed its doors, having rewarded only its directors and some politicians, whilst the depositors lost their money.
This, surely, would be the end of the failed concept of a central bank, a fascist partnership between financiers and politicians. However, in 1816, Congress granted a charter to the second "Bank of the United States." Within three years, the bank had caused the Panic of 1819, as stated in the opening paragraph of this article and, again, as Gouge said, "the bank was saved and the people were ruined."
In 1832, President Andrew Jackson was up for re-election and he risked his success on a campaign to stop the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States. Although he won both his re-election and his bid to stop the renewal of the charter, both the Rothschild family and their American counterparts continued their efforts to create a central bank that would provide both bankers and politicians with wealth whilst using depositors as cash cows.
They succeeded marvelously in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve, a more sophisticated relationship between bank and State that has operated ever since. In the boom-and-bust cycles it has created, the US dollar has been devalued by over 96% and, in 1999, the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act allowed bankers to create the Mother of All Loaning Sprees, resulting directly in the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2007 and the crash of the stock market in 2008.
But the system today is far more advanced than in the eighteenth century. It is no longer necessary to fold the banks involved, or at least not immediately. In the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crashes, Government has declared that the closing of the central banks would be the worst catastrophe that could befall the country and therefore, the country must borrow heavily to re-fund them. No requirement was made of the banks to actually offer these funds on loan, let alone to bail out the debtors. The banks have instead been able to absorb the funds, continuing the massive bonuses to the very directors who caused the disaster in the first instance.
The above history is a brief, thumbnail sketch of events relative to central banking in the US since the formation of the country. It is not meant to be all-encompassing and the reader is encouraged to study the subject further. But the sketch does have a purpose.
Today, most of the First World is in the midst of an economic crisis that has been caused by debt. That debt has been the product of bankers and governments working together.
History shows us that the present situation is not an accident. It is the repetition of a very successful method by which bankers, with the complicity of governments, create boom-and-bust cycles; cycles that, whilst damaging for nearly all citizens of a country, are very profitable for those who create the cycles.
If we are to watch the evening news, there are, daily, politicians and pundits offering "solutions" – "Provide quantitative easing," "tax the one percent," or simply, "kick the can down the road." Through endless debate, viewers are encouraged to believe that somehow, the government and the directors of the banks and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve will come up with a solution to the problem.
However, a brief read of the history above suggests that there will be no "solution," as no solution is intended by those who have created the problem. The entire concept is to periodically hang the depositor out to dry. (It’s not done to be purposely unkind; it’s done because it’s so very profitable.)
If the reader has not yet been squeezed to the point that his net worth (value of assets, minus debt) is under water, he would be well advised to consider means by which his liquid assets can be removed from the banking system, a system that, if history repeats, may soon take those remaining assets, as the second half of the Great Unravelling unfolds.
Does this mean that the reader should run right down to the bank and withdraw his assets? Not necessarily. What it does mean is that it would be best to recognise that a clear pattern has existed for hundreds of years regarding boom-and-bust banking and the reader would be well-advised to ask himself some unpleasant questions. Here are a few:
Will my bank be one of those that crashes?
Will my savings be lost partially or entirely?
How much time do I have before I should remove my deposits?
Will my bank honour the agreement of the paper gold that they have sold me?
Will I be able to take delivery of allocated gold that they "hold" for me?
What do I do with my assets if I withdraw them from the bank?
Will there be banks that will remain in business? Which ones?
The above questions should be asked periodically, as events unfold. Doing so may mean the difference between the retention or loss of assets that the reader now trusts his bank to hold for hi
Posted on July 26th, 2021
Serfdom Ahoy!
Here's Why the New COVID Relief Program Will Turn the Working Class into Serfs...
by Chris MacIntosh
by Chris MacIntosh
serfdom.jpeg
"This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal that absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half."
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Everything is now political.
ESG, climate change, racism, gender, vaccines. Ask yourself why is it that all of these things are non-negotiable? Why can’t they be discussed? Why is there no room for dissent, questioning, and discourse?
Something is amiss. Think about it.
The pointy shoes at the IMF tell us that the pandemic will cost the world $28 trillion by 2025, which means it’ll be much, much more.
The truth is the pandemic isn’t the cause. The lockdowns, however, are.
Understanding what exactly this "pandemic" is, is really critical to understanding everything taking place globally and in financial markets both now and in the future.
This virus is statistically as dangerous to the population as a bad flu. "No, not possible, Chris. Look at the response by governments. Surely that’s disproportionate." Yes, it is, but there is a reason.
To understand the answer to this more fully we need to go back to 2008 and then walk forward tracking the unfolding events.
Following the housing crash and subsequent banking crisis QE was brought in as the tool to "fix" what could have and should have been fixed by letting the banks fail and putting on trial and jailing Wall Street bankers as well as regulatory agencies who were all willfully and knowingly involved in a massive fraud.
The economy has been hanging by a thread ever since.
Then in 2019 the money market seized up with the overnight lending rate shooting up, causing the pointy shoes at the Fed (and the ECB in coordination with the BOE, too) to step in to "fix" it.
They printed upwards of 100 million smackaroos PER NIGHT.
1.png
Bankers should have been screaming… but they’re not. Why?
Since the beginning of 2020 the major central banks around the world have expanded the money supply by anywhere from 30% to… how do I even say this without my throat catching? Better yet a visual to display the situation.
2.png
"This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal that absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half."
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Everything is now political.
ESG, climate change, racism, gender, vaccines. Ask yourself why is it that all of these things are non-negotiable? Why can’t they be discussed? Why is there no room for dissent, questioning, and discourse?
Something is amiss. Think about it.
The pointy shoes at the IMF tell us that the pandemic will cost the world $28 trillion by 2025, which means it’ll be much, much more.
The truth is the pandemic isn’t the cause. The lockdowns, however, are.
Understanding what exactly this "pandemic" is, is really critical to understanding everything taking place globally and in financial markets both now and in the future.
This virus is statistically as dangerous to the population as a bad flu. "No, not possible, Chris. Look at the response by governments. Surely that’s disproportionate." Yes, it is, but there is a reason.
To understand the answer to this more fully we need to go back to 2008 and then walk forward tracking the unfolding events.
Following the housing crash and subsequent banking crisis QE was brought in as the tool to "fix" what could have and should have been fixed by letting the banks fail and putting on trial and jailing Wall Street bankers as well as regulatory agencies who were all willfully and knowingly involved in a massive fraud.
The economy has been hanging by a thread ever since.
Then in 2019 the money market seized up with the overnight lending rate shooting up, causing the pointy shoes at the Fed (and the ECB in coordination with the BOE, too) to step in to "fix" it.
They printed upwards of 100 million smackaroos PER NIGHT.
1.png
Bankers should have been screaming… but they’re not. Why?
Since the beginning of 2020 the major central banks around the world have expanded the money supply by anywhere from 30% to… how do I even say this without my throat catching? Better yet a visual to display the situation.
2.png
The central banks would have struggled to do this without drawing attention to their scandalous behaviour if it weren’t for the scapegoat of Covid. "This is unprecedented," they tell us. "We have to do something," they say.
To convince the public of the absolute necessity for the tyranny now imposed, they have used every lying trick in the book, and when found out and revealed quickly and mercilessly acted to ensure the truth is "canceled".
3.png
Breach of community guidelines. No mention made of what this community is or what the guidelines are. The level of distraction availed by the Covid fraud is breathtaking and has allowed for the most egregious transfer of wealth in history.
This money has been printed not to provide "covid relief" as is being sold to a gullible public but to bail out the banks in a more palatable fashion.
If direct bailouts were enacted, the outrage would have likely been of far greater magnitude than the 1% protests that followed the 2008 debacle. Instead, they chose to funnel the capital directly to the consumer.
Make no mistake about it though, without this we’d be in a full-blown banking crisis. This is why we don’t have banks failing and the fat cats on Wall Street chewing their fingernails.
Less than 3% of money supply is in physical format. The balance is all debt-based money. Money is brought into circulation by the creation of debt. This debt burden has grown to uncontrollable eye watering levels. It will collapse and was in the process of doing so back in 2008. It was about to do so again in 2019 when the money market seized up.
The desperate need to hold this ball of wax together was why in 2014, bank bailouts not being enough, they enacted laws to allow bank bail-ins. Meaning that they can (and will when necessary) seize customer deposits in order to bail out the bankers.
That it is legalized theft won't matter. As is always the case the average Joe has no idea about any of this and gleefully plonks his hard-earned wages in the bank believing that he is a customer and that the bank is there to serve him. Customers of Cypriot banks thought the same thing right up until they received a shocking jolt of reality back in 2013.
One thing to remember is that you can't have a collapse like this without taking the currency down with it. Never happened before in history and it isn’t going to happen this time around either.
The coming problem is this. We have a truly monstrous increase in money supply, and if we open the global economy back up, we’re going to then get an increase in velocity. I.N.F.L.A.T.I.O.N.
While the money conjured up and given to the banks in 2008 led to an explosion in "growth assets," the money now printed has been fed to the general populace (who then don’t default on their debts to the bankers).
It solves two problems for the pointy shoes. Firstly, it ensures the bankers don’t go bankrupt. And secondly, it turns a working class into a slave class.
You see, when you work for a living and vote for your government, they are reliant on you. But when you don’t work for a living and are reliant on your government then you are a slave to them. The roles are completely reversed.
To sum it up
We have entered a period of time where ideologies are driving literally everything.
Ideas and opinions are becoming weaponized.
What is important to understand is that this absolutely is and will drive capital flows more than ever.
This will impact economies and sectors.
This is the fourth turning, and it will run until it collapses or implodes on itself.
Posted on July 24th, 2021
Phyles
International Man Communique
Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State
by Doug Casey
There have been a fair number of references to the subject of "phyles" in this publication over the years. This essay will discuss the topic in detail. Especially how phyles are likely to replace the nation-state, one of mankind’s worst inventions.
Now might be a good time to discuss the subject. We’ll have an almost unremitting stream of bad news, on multiple fronts, for years to come. So it might be good to keep a hopeful prospect in mind.
Let’s start by looking at where we’ve been. I trust you’ll excuse my skating over all of human political history in a few paragraphs, but my object is to provide a framework for where we’re going, rather than an anthropological monograph.
Mankind has, so far, gone through three main stages of political organization since Day One, say 200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern men started appearing. We can call them Tribes, Kingdoms, and Nation-States.
Karl Marx had a lot of things wrong, especially his moral philosophy. But one of the acute observations he made was that the means of production are perhaps the most important determinant of how a society is structured. Based on that, so far in history, only two really important things have happened: the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Everything else is just a footnote.
Let’s see how these things relate.
International Man Communique
Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State
by Doug Casey
There have been a fair number of references to the subject of "phyles" in this publication over the years. This essay will discuss the topic in detail. Especially how phyles are likely to replace the nation-state, one of mankind’s worst inventions.
Now might be a good time to discuss the subject. We’ll have an almost unremitting stream of bad news, on multiple fronts, for years to come. So it might be good to keep a hopeful prospect in mind.
Let’s start by looking at where we’ve been. I trust you’ll excuse my skating over all of human political history in a few paragraphs, but my object is to provide a framework for where we’re going, rather than an anthropological monograph.
Mankind has, so far, gone through three main stages of political organization since Day One, say 200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern men started appearing. We can call them Tribes, Kingdoms, and Nation-States.
Karl Marx had a lot of things wrong, especially his moral philosophy. But one of the acute observations he made was that the means of production are perhaps the most important determinant of how a society is structured. Based on that, so far in history, only two really important things have happened: the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Everything else is just a footnote.
Let’s see how these things relate.
The Agricultural Revolution and the End of Tribes
In prehistoric times, the largest political/economic group was the tribe. In that man is a social creature, it was natural enough to be loyal to the tribe. It made sense. Almost everyone in the tribe was genetically related, and the group was essential for mutual survival in the wilderness. That made them the totality of people that counted in a person’s life—except for "others" from alien tribes, who were in competition for scarce resources and might want to kill you for good measure.
Tribes tend to be natural meritocracies, with the smartest and the strongest assuming leadership. But they’re also natural democracies, small enough that everyone can have a say on important issues. Tribes are small enough that everybody knows everyone else, and knows what their weak and strong points are. Everyone falls into a niche of marginal advantage, doing what they do best, simply because that’s necessary to survive. Bad actors are ostracized or fail to wake up, in a pool of their own blood, some morning. Tribes are socially constraining but, considering the many faults of human nature, a natural and useful form of organization in a society with primitive technology.
As people built their pool of capital and technology over many generations, however, populations grew. At the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, all over the world, there was a population explosion. People started living in towns and relying on agriculture as opposed to hunting and gathering. Large groups of people living together formed hierarchies, with a king of some description on top of the heap.
Those who adapted to the new agricultural technology and the new political structure accumulated the excess resources necessary for waging extended warfare against tribes still living at a subsistence level. The more evolved societies had the numbers and the weapons to completely triumph over the laggards. If you wanted to stay tribal, you’d better live in the middle of nowhere, someplace devoid of the resources others might want. Otherwise it was a sure thing that a nearby kingdom would enslave you and steal your property.
The Industrial Revolution and the End of Kingdoms
From around 12,000 B.C. to roughly the mid-1600s, the world’s cultures were organized under strong men, ranging from petty lords to kings, pharaohs, or emperors.
It’s odd, to me at least, how much the human animal seems to like the idea of monarchy. It’s mythologized, especially in a medieval context, as a system with noble kings, fair princesses, and brave knights riding out of castles on a hill to right injustices. As my friend Rick Maybury likes to point out, quite accurately, the reality differs quite a bit from the myth. The king is rarely more than a successful thug, a Tony Soprano at best, or perhaps a little Stalin. The princess was an unbathed hag in a chastity belt, the knight a hired killer, and the shining castle on the hill the headquarters of a concentration camp, with plenty of dungeons for the politically incorrect.
With kingdoms, loyalties weren’t so much to the "country"—a nebulous and arbitrary concept—but to the ruler. You were the subject of a king, first and foremost. Your linguistic, ethnic, religious, and other affiliations were secondary. It’s strange how, when people think of the kingdom period of history, they think only in terms of what the ruling classes did and had. Even though, if you were born then, the chances were 98% you’d be a simple peasant who owned nothing, knew nothing beyond what his betters told him, and sent most of his surplus production to his rulers. But, again, the gradual accumulation of capital and knowledge made the next step possible: the Industrial Revolution.
As the means of production changed, with the substitution of machines for muscle, the amount of wealth took a huge leap forward. The average man still might not have had much, but the possibility to do something other than beat the earth with a stick for his whole life opened up, largely as a result of the Renaissance.
Then the game changed totally with the American and French Revolutions. People no longer felt they were owned by some ruler; instead they now gave their loyalty to a new institution, the nation-state. Some innate atavism, probably dating back to before humans branched from the chimpanzees about 3 million years ago, seems to dictate the Naked Ape to give his loyalty to something bigger than himself. Which has delivered us to today’s prevailing norm, the nation-state, a group of people who tend to share language, religion, and ethnicity. The idea of the nation-state is especially effective when it’s organized as a "democracy," where the average person is given the illusion he has some measure of control over where the leviathan is headed.
On the plus side, by the end of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution had provided the common man with the personal freedom, as well as the capital and technology, to improve things at a rapidly accelerating pace.
What caused the sea change?
I’ll speculate it was largely due to an intellectual factor, the invention of the printing press; and a physical factor, the widespread use of gunpowder. The printing press destroyed the monopoly the elites had on knowledge; the average man could now see that they were no smarter or "better" than he was. If he was going to fight them (conflict is, after all, what politics is all about), it didn’t have to be just because he was told to, but because he was motivated by an idea. And now, with gunpowder, he was on an equal footing with the ruler’s knights and professional soldiers.
Right now I believe we’re at the cusp of another change, at least as important as the ones that took place around 12,000 years ago and several hundred years ago. Even though things are starting to look truly grim for the individual, with collapsing economic structures and increasingly virulent governments, I suspect help is on the way from historical evolution. Just as the agricultural revolution put an end to tribalism and the industrial revolution killed the kingdom, I think we’re heading for another multipronged revolution that’s going to make the nation-state an anachronism. It won’t happen next month, or next year. But I’ll bet the pattern will start becoming clear within the lifetime of many now reading this.
What pattern am I talking about? Once again, a reference to the evil genius Karl Marx, with his concept of the "withering away of the State." By the end of this century, I suspect the US and most other nation-states will have, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist.
The Problem with the State—And Your Nation-State
Of course, while I suspect that many of you are sympathetic to that sentiment, you also think the concept is too far out, and that I’m guilty of wishful thinking. People believe the state is necessary and—generally—good. They never even question whether the institution is permanent.
My view is that the institution of the state itself is a bad thing. It’s not a question of getting the right people into the government; the institution itself is hopelessly flawed and necessarily corrupts the people that compose it, as well as the people it rules. This statement invariably shocks people, who believe that government is both a necessary and permanent part of the cosmic firmament.
The problem is that government is based on coercion, and it is, at a minimum, suboptimal to base a social structure on institutionalized coercion. Let me urge you to read the Tannehills’ superb The Market for Liberty, which is available for free, download here.
One of the huge changes brought by the printing press and advanced exponentially by the Internet is that people are able to readily pursue different interests and points of view. As a result, they have less and less in common: living within the same political borders is no longer enough to make them countrymen. That’s a big change from pre-agricultural times when members of the same tribe had quite a bit—almost everything—in common. But this has been increasingly diluted in the times of the kingdom and the nation-state. If you’re honest, you may find you have very little in common with most of your countrymen besides superficialities and trivialities.
Ponder that point for a minute. What do you have in common with your fellow countrymen? A mode of living, (perhaps) a common language, possibly some shared experiences and myths, and a common ruler. But very little of any real meaning or importance. To start with, they’re more likely to be an active danger to you than the citizens of a presumed "enemy" country, say, like Iran. If you earn a good living, certainly if you own a business and have assets, your fellow Americans are the ones who actually present the clear and present danger. The average American (about 50% of them now) pays no income tax. Even if he’s not actually a direct or indirect employee of the government, he’s a net recipient of its largesse, which is to say your wealth, through Social Security and other welfare programs.
Over the years, I’ve found I have much more in common with people of my own social or economic station or occupation in France, Argentina, or Hong Kong, than with an American union worker in Detroit or a resident of the LA barrios. I suspect many of you would agree with that observation. What’s actually important in relationships is shared values, principles, interests, and philosophy. Geographical proximity, and a common nationality, is meaningless—no more than an accident of birth. I have much more loyalty to a friend in the Congo—although we’re different colors, have different cultures, different native languages, and different life experiences—than I do to the Americans who live down the highway in the trailer park. I see the world the same way my Congolese friend does; he’s an asset to my life. I’m necessarily at odds with many of "my fellow Americans"; they’re an active and growing liability.
Some might read this and find a disturbing lack of loyalty to the state. It sounds seditious. Professional jingoists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, or almost anyone around the Washington Beltway go white with rage when they hear talk like this. The fact is that loyalty to a state, just because you happen to have been born in its bailiwick, is simply stupid.
As far as I can tell, there are only two federal crimes specified in the US Constitution: counterfeiting and treason. That’s a far cry from today’s world, where almost every real and imagined crime has been federalized, underscoring that the whole document is a meaningless dead letter, little more than a historical artifact. Even so, that also confirms that the Constitution was quite imperfect, even in its original form. Counterfeiting is simple fraud. Why should it be singled out especially as a crime? (Okay, that opens up a whole new can of worms… but not one I’ll go into here.) Treason is usually defined as an attempt to overthrow a government or withdraw loyalty from a sovereign. A rather odd proviso to have when the framers of the Constitution had done just that only a few years before, one would think.
The way I see it, Thomas Paine had it right when he said: "My country is wherever liberty lives."
But where does liberty live today? Actually, it no longer has a home. It’s become a true refugee since America, which was an excellent idea that grew roots in a country of that name, degenerated into the United States. Which is just another unfortunate nation-state. And it’s on the slippery slope.
Posted on July 18th, 2021
Republikflucht
International Man Communique
The American Republikflucht
by Jeff Thomas
Shortly after World War II in 1945, the USSR occupation began limiting the freedom of East Germans to travel into West Germany.
At first, the restrictions were mild, much as we’re seeing in countries like the US today – more red tape, longer waits, etc. Not so much a ban on travel as a nuisance. Today, as in Germany in 1945, the would-be traveler is getting used to the idea of gaining approval to travel. Just a formality, folks, sorry for the inconvenience.
But then, with little fanfare, East Germany was officially declared the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the prospect of international travel began to change.
Emigration laws were tightened. A propaganda booklet published at that time read:
"Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness. Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a ‘guaranteed future’ one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favors a new war and destruction?
Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labor in our republic, to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness?" Workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists."
Republikflucht was the term given to those who sought to leave the GDR. It’s significant that the translation into English is "desertion from the republic."
An unapproved exit from East Germany soon became punishable by imprisonment. It was only then that East Germans understood that they were prisoners in their own country. They had not seen the warning signs and had failed to leave when it was still possible.
After that time, the numbers of those who were able to escape dropped to several hundred per year (Some 75,000 failed and were caught and imprisoned.)
But surely, all that’s old news. Of what interest is it to us today?
Well, as mentioned above, a soft-closing of the US borders (and indeed all of the countries that comprise the First World) has begun. After 9/11, security tightened considerably. Then, with the onset of the COVID hysteria, actual permission to travel fell under the whim of the government. It ceased to be a right and is now a privilege that could be approved or removed as the government sees fit.
Many people welcomed this step, feeling that it assured them greater safety, whilst others regarded it as a bit of a nuisance, but understandable under the circumstances. Very few treated it as a warning.
But the hysteria over COVID-19 is dying down. Masks are beginning to disappear; children are beginning to go back to school, churches are beginning to re-open, so, surely, it was all for the best.
But there are now rumours that a new, more worrisome variant of COVID-19 may be on the way. Should this occur, it would be understandable if the government were to declare that "We warned people that everyone needed to take the vaccine, but many didn’t listen. Now the whole country will be paying for the error of a selfish few."
So, will the jab become mandatory, as some people hope but others fear?
Well, it is more likely that a back-handed mandate would be imposed:
"We are not going to mandate that all residents receive the vaccine, but based upon past failures of those who refused vaccination, we would be irresponsible if we were to allow those who are unvaccinated to leave their houses to shop, go to work, or travel."
And a new danger has been announced by the White House: the danger of a "Climate Change crisis" to be addressed with "a unified national response to Climate Change."
And this is already being taken up by other countries in the First World cabal. The UK and Australia in particular have called for a World Health Organization climate lockdown. Under it, travel by air would only be approved "when it is morally justifiable."
That phrase is an interesting one. First, it suggests that travel by air, especially to leave the country, will only be by permission. But there’s a secondary implication: If you seek to travel, you’d better have a damn good reason because you’re a threat to the Greater Good.
And at this juncture, it might be prudent to reread the East German pamphlet above. The implications in the pamphlet are the same as the language now in use in select countries.
The period of pre-conditioning the populace is now complete. Americans and citizens of the other First World countries have now successfully been indoctrinated into the concept that their desire to live freely is not their right. They now live by permission. It has been accomplished almost without notice. We now move into Phase II: the imposition of rules governing escape from the country.
In essence, we have reached East Germany circa 1961. At that time, the pamphlet referenced above was published, and barriers of cinderblock and barbed wire began to appear between the GDR and "free" West Germany.
The image above gained international fame at that time. It shows GDR border guard Hans Konrad Schumann. He was one of the rare few who saw the writing on the wall and understood that his window of opportunity would be brief. He tossed off his rifle and jumped over the new barbed wire barrier to the West.
It’s important to note that, in 1961, this was still quite easy to do, yet the vast majority of East Germans were too afraid to make the move. "Surely," they thought, "things are not as bad as they seem."
The photo was entitled Leap into Freedom and became an iconic symbol worldwide.
Schumann committed his Republikflucht – his "desertion from the republic"
Posted on June 30th, 2021
Anxiety drove vaccine reactions in 5 states
2021-05-18
This recent AP article tells how U.S. health officials are explaining away vaccine adverse reactions as psychosomatic. Quite possibly they are correct in their assessment. It is well known that anxiety can cause any number of physical effects on the body. Injected with a placebo saline solution, a significant percentage of people will develop a variety of symptoms.
Let's turn the tables and consider the effects of the concerted fear campaign that has been waged by politicians, scientists, and Bill Gates. Mainstream media has subjected everyone to a constant drumbeat of scary corona news. The virus and its innumerable variants have been pumped up to be the ultimate boogeyman, unseen but deadly. We have been exhorted to look at other people with suspicion and keep them at bay. Yet in the mainstream media there has been no suggestion that this overt fear campaign could be a factor in covid sickness or death.
The mainstream media has hyped vaccination to the moon as a Good Thing, and yet health officials sagely note that some people fear it and thus their symptoms are all in their heads, not the vaccine. Why have no "health officials" suggested that at least some of the covid cases could be due to the tsunami of fear mongering that the mainstream media dishes out daily? If the anxiety arises in spite of massive positive publicity, how much more likely is it when we are constantly being reminded how deadly the virus is?
Just how stupid do they think we are?
Posted on May 18th, 2021
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
2021-04-03
VAERS, as it is commonly known, is the U.S. government's excuse for relieving the pharmaceuticals of all liability for their vaccines. Various people have estimated that anywhere from 1% to 10% of all adverse events are actually reported in the system. Participation is voluntary and open to all, and apparently there is no serious validation, so the data is not of high quality. For example, there are over 100 entries with completely bogus vaccination dates going all the way back to 1920. The CDC makes the data available here weekly, with a one-week lag.
The current drive to vaccinate everyone for COVID-19 is resulting in tens of thousands of entries in this database, and the analysis has turned up some interesting results. I have used SQLite Manager, a FireFox plugin, to perform some analysis. After the attached file is fed into SQLite Manager, the CDC data can be easily imported. The included views turn up some striking factoids.
The VAERS_ID columns are presumably automatically generated by the database, such that each new case has an ID which is one higher than the last case. Scanning the (first) ID column in the DATA table, it is obvious that there are gaps in the numbering, leading one to wonder if some of the data has been removed. More astonishing, sometimes there are huge leaps in the numbering for a run of cases, followed by resumption of the expected numbering. All in all, as the AWOL view shows, over 80% of the entries seem to be missing. A suspicious person might wonder what happened to them.
A look at the cases by age range (covid_by_decade) shows that, although there are plenty of cases for the under-60 crowd, there are, unsurprisingly, extremely few deaths. This same view shows that women of childbearing age (20-50) are four times more likely to report an adverse event than men. For all age ranges women are more at risk, though some of this might possibly be because women are perhaps more likely to report untoward symptoms than men.
A breakdown by state (covid_by_state) shows that, for whatever reasons, some states report up to five times more adverse events per capita than others.
Breaking the cases down by manufacturer (covid_manufacturer_stats) shows that about half are from Moderna, and half from Pfizer\Biontech. Eyeballing the complete breakdown by lots (lot_counts), we see that most lots are relatively harmless. This is confirmed by the safe_lots view which shows that at least 93% of the lots have produced only 7% of the reported cases. Many of the lots have only one case, so it seems likely that many lots produce no cases at all, and are therefore not in the database. Thus the number of lots that produce very few, or no, cases is probably over 95%. The flip side of this is that less than 5% of the lots produce 93% of the cases. Clearly not all lots are created equal, as depicted by the dangerous_lots view. Each of these 19 lots produced over 100 cases, over 10% of them fatal.
Posted on April 3rd, 2021
Domestic enemies
Rome’s greatest statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, witnessed the end of the Roman Republic. Before paying with his life, he spoke to the Roman Senate:
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."
Posted on March 12th, 2021
Polarity
International Man Communique
Learning from Ants
by Jeff Thomas
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"If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. [Etc.] The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?"
The above observation by Shera Starr cannot be improved upon.
And yet, the answer to the question is fairly simple.
But let’s first take a look at this anomaly. It’s natural to identify with some individuals more than others. That tendency occurred before Homo sapiens came into being. In addition, the tendency for animals to group into families or packs also predates humans.
We tend to want to be around those who behave the way we do and have the same perceptions as we do. That only makes sense. We wish to surround ourselves with those who are unlikely to surprise and possibly even endanger us by behaving in a fashion that we would not ourselves choose.
This is the basis of trust – an essential in group or herd mentality. And being a part of a group or herd brings to us increased safety.
So, what then, of those who are not within our group or herd? How do we relate to them?
Well, any nature programme that covers animals gathered around a water hole can provide that answer.
We see a small group of wild pigs drinking alongside a group of wildebeests. Neither species is predatory, so they learn to recognise that, even though one group is made up of savannah-living grazers and the other are forest-living foragers, they can easily co-exist, which will increase the ability of both species to use the water hole at the same time.
We might also see a group of hyenas using the water hole, but we notice that the prey animals all seek to keep a distance between themselves and the predatory hyenas. Everyone understands that they are all at the water hole for the same reason and it makes sense to share, even if, in another situation, they are natural enemies.
In fact, in most of nature, we see that species adapt to a condition of mutual tolerance in order to be able to coexist.
No surprise, then, that Homo sapiens got on the mutual tolerance bandwagon in its formative stages and, for the most part, has remained that way.
But it is also true that predators develop dual habits. They may exercise tolerance at the water hole, but at some point, they mean to make a meal of their water hole neighbours.
And when doing so, many species create associations with others of their kind to hunt.
This, too, is true of humans. Most of humanity seeks to live in a spirit of cooperation with others.
In the countryside, people erect walls and fences to establish boundaries, then find it expedient to respect such divisions in order to live in peace. Even in cities, people who live cheek by jowl in the same building respect each other’s privacy for the most part. Even if they do not become friends, they either remain polite or ignore each other.
Although there are always exceptions, for the most part, mankind behaves in a manner that is based upon "getting along." He might argue with others, but for the most part, he understands that cooperation generally should be the objective, as it’s in his best interests.
But why, then, are we seeing in so many of the countries of the First World, a rapidly increasing polarity amongst people. Ms. Starr is exactly correct. Those who would be most inclined toward mutual tolerance have, in recent years, become so polarised that they cannot so much as get together with their own families for the holidays without getting into heated arguments.
Why are people of today so solidly in one of two camps?
Can this be blamed on the rise of the internet? Well, no, the internet has become the source of a plethora of opinions and perceptions. And more than closing people off to polarised "A" and "B" choices, the internet has served to broaden public discourse.
Of course, most people express distrust for the media, particularly those networks that purportedly deal in "news." What passes for news today is far from objective information that the viewer can then assess at his leisure.
On one network, we view unceasing diatribes against one political party. Then we turn the channel and view unceasing diatribes against the opposing party.
In turning on the News, we arrive at Indoctrination Central.
But if we really pay attention objectively, we discover that the same programmes are dictating to us that it is either our humanitarian duty to vax, or that vaxxing will enslave us to globalists who will inject us with microchips.
They are also our source for the opposing beliefs that warfare is essential to protect us against those who seek to destroy us, or that it will be the wars themselves that will destroy us.
In fact, all of Ms. Starr’s concerns find their source in the media. When we ask the question, "Who is shaking the jar… and why?" we find that those who control the media are at the source of the polarisation of people, especially in the First World.
As to the "Why?" the answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked. Like the ants, the more a people can be made to fight each other, the easier it is to subjugate them.
And since the effort to polarise people has become so massive, we can only conclude that the ultimate objective will be to implement a far greater level of subjugation, in an abnormally short period of time.
Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. white. Man vs. woman. Divide and conquer.
In such a socio-political climate, the challenge will be to keep your wits about you. As the jar is shaken on a daily basis, it will be vital to recognise that those who control the media are creating a war between the pigs and the wildebeests. This is something that is not desired by either species, but as Hermann Goering stated, "Why, of course the people don’t want war." They must be goaded into it if those who are pulling the stings are to achieve greater subjugation.
In the coming years, this trend can be expected to become far worse than at present. The challenge will be to escape the jar if you can. Find a location where the state of warfare is less pronounced, or if this is not possible, seek a location within the jar that’s away from the fray.
Those who fall for the bait – who buy into rabidly supporting one political party or another, or who allow themselves to be angered at an entire race, or who are conned into hatred of an entire gender – will prove to be the greatest casualties of subjugation.
Posted on February 28th, 2021
Why the new paradigm was inevitable
by Jeff Thomas
Just as people go through a lifespan that consists of different stages, so empires tend to follow a pattern of stages.
They tend to start off slowly, making progress as a result of industriousness, understanding that progress is dependent upon hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit.
This is important to understand, as it’s the one essential in the growth of a nation. No nation becomes an empire through complacency or a lack of productivity. Welfare states do not become empires, although most empires end up as welfare states.
So, if that’s the case, what is the progression? And more importantly, what does this mean, considering the dramatic changes that are now unfolding in much of the world?
Prosperity
As stated, prosperity is created through a strong work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit throughout a significant portion of the population. This is what brings about wealth creation – a condition in which people invest their time and money in a business enterprise that reaps profit. The profit is then re-invested to expand upon that success.
In the early stages of prosperity, those who create the wealth are revered, as the goods and services they create benefit all, even those who may be less ambitious or less imaginative and may never become business leaders themselves.
But inevitably, there will be those who seek to prosper to the exclusion of others. This trend was seen around 1900 in the US – a time when the country’s wealthiest entrepreneurs figured out that, if they banded together, they could buy both political parties. That would mean that, regardless of which party held power, the government could be counted on to pass laws that would protect their monopolies and make success increasingly more difficult for the competition.
Wealth Disparity
Of course, the objective of this would be that there would be a small number of individuals and corporations at the very top, who would be in a position to split up the pie amongst themselves and throw the crumbs to those beneath them.
Over time, this would lead to those at the very top becoming inordinately wealthy, well beyond what would be normal for their level of investment. And very few new individuals and corporations would be able to break into this cabal. Only those who could add to the size of the pie would be allowed in.
Resentment
Not surprisingly, this, over time, would lead to resentment amongst those who were left out of the loop. When this became generational, with minimal change, the "greedy rich" would become the most hated segment of the population.
Those who come to understand that they will never be able to advance to the top layer would come to regard themselves as "disenfranchised."
This in turn results, eventually, in the awareness that the "little man" represents the majority of voters, which is then capitalized upon by opportunistic political candidates.
Increasingly, there are cries by political hopefuls for the one percent to be taxed. With every election these promises are renewed. And each time out, greater demands are made by the politicians.
Of course, the one percent are already running the show on both sides of the aisle and can make sure that they are taxed very little, if at all. But someone must be made to cough up, so politicians go after the middle class, taxing them increasingly until, after decades of increases, they are squeezed to the limit.
As Vladimir Lenin said, "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
At this point the wealth disparity is at a peak and the resentment turns to anger. Those, who for decades have been promised a "fair share," realise that they have instead been sold out.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
Traditionally, once the population became resentful enough that the system was in jeopardy, those few who comprised the ruling elite were likely to essentially say, "Let them eat cake." This, ultimately, would lead to their downfall.
But today, we have the illusion of democracy, which allows for a different paradigm.
Collectivism
From the time of the French Revolution onward, we have had the construct of collectivism to work with.
Rather than defy the little man, defeat him by being seen to agree with him.
Create political figures who call out for a re-engineering of society: "An equal outcome for all. Take the wealth from the wealthy who stole it and give it back to the little man."
Such platitudes sell well when resentment has hit its peak.
But the secret benefit for the ruling elite is that the new breed of politician works for the one percent, just as politicians always have.
And collectivism benefits the one percent even more than any free-market system could. Under it, the little man is not raised up, as promised. Instead, the middle class is beaten down to the same level as the little man, creating uniform poverty.
As Winston Churchill stated, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
Therefore, it should come as no surprise to us that, when an empire such as the US begins to unravel, the ruling elite who actually own the country are ready and eager to create a transition that will appear to benefit the little man but will, instead, enslave him to a greater degree than he ever could have imagined.
So, it should come as no surprise to us that in recent months, the US has witnessed a carefully orchestrated drama in which the poster boy for the greedy rich – the US president – goes down in flames.
And the heroes of the play appear centre stage, providing a litany of collectivist promises that will bring cheers from the populace.
And so the trap is sprung. A totalitarian future disguised as a panacea.
As P.T. Barnum said, "There’s a sucker born every minute," and there is no greater sucker than a voter who actually believes that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. His vain hope is that, even though every collectivist government in history has failed to deliver on its promises and has, instead, resulted in uniform misery, this time it will be different, and the new government will deliver on the now-hackneyed empty promises.
The new paradigm was as inevitable as it will be long-lived and ultimately destructive.
2021-02-09
Posted on February 9th, 2021
90 years ago
2021-02-04
International Man Communique
Doug Casey: Comparing the 1930s and Today
by Doug Casey
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You've heard the axiom "History repeats itself." It does, but never in exactly the same way. To apply the lessons of the past, we must understand the differences of the present.
During the American Revolution, the British came prepared to fight a successful war—but against a European army. Their formations, which gave them devastating firepower, and their red coats, which emphasized their numbers, proved the exact opposite of the tactics needed to fight a guerrilla war.
Before World War I, generals still saw the cavalry as the flower of their armies. Of course, the horse soldiers proved worse than useless in the trenches.
Before World War II, in anticipation of a German attack, the French built the "impenetrable" Maginot Line. History repeated itself and the attack came, but not in the way they expected. Their preparations were useless because the Germans didn't attempt to penetrate it; they simply went around it, and France was defeated.
The generals don't prepare for the last war out of perversity or stupidity, but rather because past experience is all they have to go by. Most of them simply don't know how to interpret that experience. They are correct in preparing for another war but wrong in relying upon what worked in the last one.
Investors, unfortunately, seem to make the same mistakes in marshaling their resources as do the generals. If the last 30 years have been prosperous, they base their actions on more prosperity. Talk of a depression isn't real to them because things are, in fact, so different from the 1930s. To most people, a depression means '30s-style conditions, and since they don't see that, they can't imagine a depression. That's because they know what the last depression was like, but they don't know what one is. It's hard to visualize something you don't understand.
Some of them who are a bit more clever might see an end to prosperity and the start of a depression but—although they're going to be a lot better off than most—they're probably looking for this depression to be like the last one.
Although nobody can predict with absolute certainty what this depression will be like, you can be fairly well-assured it won't be an instant replay of the last one. But just because things will be different doesn't mean you have to be taken by surprise.
To define the likely differences between this depression and the last one, it's helpful to compare the situation today to that in the early 1930s. The results aren't very reassuring.
Corporate Bankruptcy
1930s
Banks, insurance companies, and big corporations went under on a major scale. Institutions suffered the consequences of past mistakes, and there was no financial safety net to catch them as they fell. Mistakes were liquidated and only the prepared and efficient survived.
Today
The world’s financial institutions are in even worse shape than the last time, but now business ethics have changed and everyone expects the government to "step in." Laws are already in place that not only allow but require government intervention in many instances. This time, mistakes will be compounded, and the strong, productive, and efficient will be forced to subsidize the weak, unproductive, and inefficient. It's ironic that businesses were bankrupted in the last depression because the prices of their products fell too low; this time, it'll be because they went too high.
Unemployment
1930s
If a man lost his job, he had to find another one as quickly as possible simply to keep from going hungry. A lot of other men in the same position competed desperately for what work was available, and an employer could hire those same men for much lower wages and expect them to work harder than what was the case before the depression. As a result, the men could get jobs and the employer could stay in business.
Today
The average man first has months of unemployment insurance; after that, he can go on welfare if he can't find "suitable work." Instead of taking whatever work is available, especially if it means that a white collar worker has to get his hands dirty, many will go on welfare. This will decrease the production of new wealth and delay the recovery. The worker no longer has to worry about some entrepreneur exploiting (i.e., employing) him at what he considers an unfair wage because the minimum wage laws, among others, precludes that possibility today. As a result, men stay unemployed and employers will go out of business.
Welfare
1930s
If hard times really put a man down and out, he had little recourse but to rely on his family, friends, or local social and church group. There was quite a bit of opprobrium attached to that, and it was only a last resort. The breadlines set up by various government bodies were largely cosmetic measures to soothe the more terror-prone among the voting populace. People made do because they had to, and that meant radically reducing their standards of living and taking any job available at any wage. There were very, very few people on welfare during the last depression.
Today
It's hard to say how those who are still working are going to support those who aren't in this depression. Even in the U.S., 50% of the country is already on some form of welfare. But food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, Social Security, and local programs are already collapsing in prosperous times. And when the tidal wave hits, they'll be totally overwhelmed. There aren't going to be any breadlines because people who would be standing in them are going to be shopping in local supermarkets just like people who earned their money. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of it is that people in general have come to think that these programs can just magically make wealth appear, and they expect them to be there, while a whole class of people have grown up never learning to survive without them. It's ironic, yet predictable, that the programs that were supposed to help those who "need" them will serve to devastate those very people.
Regulations
1930s
Most economies have been fairly heavily regulated since the early 1900s, and those regulations caused distortions that added to the severity of the last depression. Rather than allow the economy to liquidate, in the case of the U.S., the Roosevelt regime added many, many more regulations—fixing prices, wages, and the manner of doing business in a static form. It was largely because of these regulations that the depression lingered on until the end of World War II, which "saved" the economy only through its massive reinflation of the currency. Had the government abolished most controls then in existence, instead of creating new ones, the depression would have been less severe and much shorter.
Today
The scores of new agencies set up since the last depression have created far more severe distortions in the ways people relate than those of 90 years ago; the potential adjustment needed is proportionately greater. Unless government restrictions and controls on wages, working conditions, energy consumption, safety, and such are removed, a dramatic economic turnaround during the Greater Depression will be impossible.
Taxes
1930s
The income tax was new to the U.S. in 1913, and by 1929, although it took a maximum 23.1% bite, that was only at the $1 million level. The average family’s income then was $2,335, and that put average families in the 1/10th of 1 percent bracket. And there was still no Social Security tax, no state income tax, no sales tax, and no estate tax. Furthermore, most people in the country didn't even pay the income tax because they earned less than the legal minimum or they didn't bother filing. The government, therefore, had immense untapped sources of revenue to draw upon to fund its schemes to "cure" the depression. Roosevelt was able to raise the average income tax from 1.35% to 16.56% during his tenure—an increase of 1,100%.
Today
Everyone now pays an income tax in addition to all the other taxes. In most Western countries, the total of direct and indirect taxes is over 50%. For that reason, it seems unlikely that direct taxes will go much higher. But inflation is constantly driving everyone into higher brackets and will have the same effect. A person has had to increase his or her income faster than inflation to compensate for taxes. Whatever taxes a man does pay will reduce his standard of living by just that much, and it's reasonable to expect tax evasion and the underground economy to boom in response. That will cushion the severity of the depression somewhat while it serves to help change the philosophical orientation of society.
Prices
1930s
Prices dropped radically because billions of dollars of inflationary currency were wiped out through the stock market crash, bond defaults, and bank failures. The government, however, somehow equated the high prices of the inflationary '20s with prosperity and attempted to prevent a fall in prices by such things as slaughtering livestock, dumping milk in the gutter, and enacting price supports. Since the collapse wiped out money faster than it could be created, the government felt the destruction of real wealth was a more effective way to raise prices. In other words, if you can't increase the supply of money, decrease the supply of goods.
Nonetheless, the 1930s depression was a deflationary collapse, a time when currency became worth more and prices dropped. This is probably the most confusing thing to most Americans since they assume—as a result of that experience—that "depression" means "deflation." It's also perhaps the biggest single difference between this depression and the last one.
Today
Prices could drop, as they did the last time, but the amount of power the government now has over the economy is far greater than what was the case 90 years ago. Instead of letting the economy cleanse itself by allowing the financial markets to collapse, governments will probably bail out insolvent banks, create mortgages wholesale to prop up real estate, and central banks will buy bonds to keep their prices from plummeting. All of these actions mean that the total money supply will grow enormously. Trillions will be created to avoid deflation. If you find men selling apples on street corners, it won't be for 5 cents apiece, but $5 apiece. But there won't be a lot of apple sellers because of welfare, nor will there be a lot of apples because of price controls.
Consumer prices will probably skyrocket as a result, and the country will have an inflationary depression. Unlike the 1930s, when people who held dollars were king, by the end of the Greater Depression, people with dollars will be wiped out.
The Society
1930s
The world was largely rural or small-town. Communications were slow, but people tended to trust the media. The government exercised considerable moral suasion, and people tended to support it. The business of the country was business, as Calvin Coolidge said, and men who created wealth were esteemed. All told, if you were going to have a depression, it was a rather stable environment for it; despite that, however, there were still plenty of riots, marches, and general disorder.
Today
The country is now urban and suburban, and although communications are rapid, there's little interpersonal contact. The media are suspect. The government is seen more as an adversary or an imperial ruler than an arbitrator accepted by a consensus of concerned citizens. Businessmen are viewed as unscrupulous predators who take advantage of anyone weak enough to be exploited.
A major financial smashup in today's atmosphere could do a lot more than wipe out a few naives in the stock market and unemploy some workers, as occurred in the '30s; some sectors of society are now time bombs. It's hard to say, for instance, what third- and fourth-generation welfare recipients are going to do when the going gets really tough.
The Way People Work
1930s
Relatively slow transportation and communication localized economic conditions. The U.S. itself was somewhat insulated from the rest of the world, and parts of the U.S. were fairly self-contained. Workers were mostly involved in basic agriculture and industry, creating widgets and other tangible items. There wasn't a great deal of specialization, and that made it easier for someone to move laterally from one occupation into the next, without extensive retraining, since people were more able to produce the basics of life on their own. Most women never joined the workforce, and the wife in a marriage acted as a "backup" system should the husband lose his job.
Today
The whole world is interdependent, and a war in the Middle East or a revolution in Africa can have a direct and immediate effect on a barber in Chicago or Krakow. Since the whole economy is centrally controlled from Washington, a mistake there can be a national disaster. People generally aren’t in a position to roll with the punches as more than half the people in the country belong to what is known as the "service economy." That means, in most cases, they're better equipped to shuffle papers than make widgets. Even "necessary" services are often terminated when times get hard. Specialization is part of what an advanced industrial economy is all about, but if the economic order changes radically, it can prove a liability.
The Financial Markets
1930s
The last depression is identified with the collapse of the stock market, which lost over 90% of its value from 1929 to 1933. A secure bond was the best possible investment as interest rates dropped radically. Commodities plummeted, reducing millions of farmers to near subsistence levels. Since most real estate was owned outright and taxes were low, a drop in price didn't make a lot of difference unless you had to sell. Land prices plummeted, but since people bought it to use, not unload to a greater fool, they didn't usually have to sell.
Today
This time, stocks—and especially commodities—are likely to explode on the upside as people panic into them to get out of depreciating dollars in general and bonds in particular. Real estate will be—next to bonds—the most devastated single area of the economy because no one will lend money long term. And real estate is built on the mortgage market, which will vanish.
Everybody who invests in this depression thinking that it will turn out like the last one will be very unhappy with the results. Being aware of the differences between the last depression and this one makes it a lot easier to position yourself to minimize losses and maximize profits.
So much for the differences. The crucial, obvious, and most important similarity, however, is that most people's standard of living will fall dramatically.
The Greater Depression has started. Most people don't know it because they can neither confront the thought nor understand the differences between this one and the last.
As a climax approaches, many of the things that you've built your life around in the past are going to change and change radically. The ability to adjust to new conditions is the sign of a psychologically healthy person.
Look for the opportunity side of the crisis. The Chinese symbol for "crisis" is a combination of two other symbols—one for danger and one for opportunity.
The dangers that society will face in the years ahead are regrettable, but there's no point in allowing anxiety, frustration, or apathy to overcome you. Face the future with courage, curiosity, and optimism rather than fear. You can be a winner, and if you plan carefully, you will be. The great period of change will give you a chance to regain control of your destiny. And that in itself is the single most important thing in life. This depression can give you that opportunity; it's one of the many ways the Greater Depression can be a very good thing for both you as an individual and society as a whole.
Editor's Note: The rush to inject an unprecedented amount of money into every corner of the economy is a last-ditch effort to keep the stock market casino going for as long as possible—no matter the consequences.
All this unprecedented money printing will give rocket fuel to the gold bull market, which is already underway.
Gold is the best bet for right now. It delivers protection AND profits.
International Man Communique
Doug Casey: Comparing the 1930s and Today
by Doug Casey
-
You've heard the axiom "History repeats itself." It does, but never in exactly the same way. To apply the lessons of the past, we must understand the differences of the present.
During the American Revolution, the British came prepared to fight a successful war—but against a European army. Their formations, which gave them devastating firepower, and their red coats, which emphasized their numbers, proved the exact opposite of the tactics needed to fight a guerrilla war.
Before World War I, generals still saw the cavalry as the flower of their armies. Of course, the horse soldiers proved worse than useless in the trenches.
Before World War II, in anticipation of a German attack, the French built the "impenetrable" Maginot Line. History repeated itself and the attack came, but not in the way they expected. Their preparations were useless because the Germans didn't attempt to penetrate it; they simply went around it, and France was defeated.
The generals don't prepare for the last war out of perversity or stupidity, but rather because past experience is all they have to go by. Most of them simply don't know how to interpret that experience. They are correct in preparing for another war but wrong in relying upon what worked in the last one.
Investors, unfortunately, seem to make the same mistakes in marshaling their resources as do the generals. If the last 30 years have been prosperous, they base their actions on more prosperity. Talk of a depression isn't real to them because things are, in fact, so different from the 1930s. To most people, a depression means '30s-style conditions, and since they don't see that, they can't imagine a depression. That's because they know what the last depression was like, but they don't know what one is. It's hard to visualize something you don't understand.
Some of them who are a bit more clever might see an end to prosperity and the start of a depression but—although they're going to be a lot better off than most—they're probably looking for this depression to be like the last one.
Although nobody can predict with absolute certainty what this depression will be like, you can be fairly well-assured it won't be an instant replay of the last one. But just because things will be different doesn't mean you have to be taken by surprise.
To define the likely differences between this depression and the last one, it's helpful to compare the situation today to that in the early 1930s. The results aren't very reassuring.
Corporate Bankruptcy
1930s
Banks, insurance companies, and big corporations went under on a major scale. Institutions suffered the consequences of past mistakes, and there was no financial safety net to catch them as they fell. Mistakes were liquidated and only the prepared and efficient survived.
Today
The world’s financial institutions are in even worse shape than the last time, but now business ethics have changed and everyone expects the government to "step in." Laws are already in place that not only allow but require government intervention in many instances. This time, mistakes will be compounded, and the strong, productive, and efficient will be forced to subsidize the weak, unproductive, and inefficient. It's ironic that businesses were bankrupted in the last depression because the prices of their products fell too low; this time, it'll be because they went too high.
Unemployment
1930s
If a man lost his job, he had to find another one as quickly as possible simply to keep from going hungry. A lot of other men in the same position competed desperately for what work was available, and an employer could hire those same men for much lower wages and expect them to work harder than what was the case before the depression. As a result, the men could get jobs and the employer could stay in business.
Today
The average man first has months of unemployment insurance; after that, he can go on welfare if he can't find "suitable work." Instead of taking whatever work is available, especially if it means that a white collar worker has to get his hands dirty, many will go on welfare. This will decrease the production of new wealth and delay the recovery. The worker no longer has to worry about some entrepreneur exploiting (i.e., employing) him at what he considers an unfair wage because the minimum wage laws, among others, precludes that possibility today. As a result, men stay unemployed and employers will go out of business.
Welfare
1930s
If hard times really put a man down and out, he had little recourse but to rely on his family, friends, or local social and church group. There was quite a bit of opprobrium attached to that, and it was only a last resort. The breadlines set up by various government bodies were largely cosmetic measures to soothe the more terror-prone among the voting populace. People made do because they had to, and that meant radically reducing their standards of living and taking any job available at any wage. There were very, very few people on welfare during the last depression.
Today
It's hard to say how those who are still working are going to support those who aren't in this depression. Even in the U.S., 50% of the country is already on some form of welfare. But food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, Social Security, and local programs are already collapsing in prosperous times. And when the tidal wave hits, they'll be totally overwhelmed. There aren't going to be any breadlines because people who would be standing in them are going to be shopping in local supermarkets just like people who earned their money. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of it is that people in general have come to think that these programs can just magically make wealth appear, and they expect them to be there, while a whole class of people have grown up never learning to survive without them. It's ironic, yet predictable, that the programs that were supposed to help those who "need" them will serve to devastate those very people.
Regulations
1930s
Most economies have been fairly heavily regulated since the early 1900s, and those regulations caused distortions that added to the severity of the last depression. Rather than allow the economy to liquidate, in the case of the U.S., the Roosevelt regime added many, many more regulations—fixing prices, wages, and the manner of doing business in a static form. It was largely because of these regulations that the depression lingered on until the end of World War II, which "saved" the economy only through its massive reinflation of the currency. Had the government abolished most controls then in existence, instead of creating new ones, the depression would have been less severe and much shorter.
Today
The scores of new agencies set up since the last depression have created far more severe distortions in the ways people relate than those of 90 years ago; the potential adjustment needed is proportionately greater. Unless government restrictions and controls on wages, working conditions, energy consumption, safety, and such are removed, a dramatic economic turnaround during the Greater Depression will be impossible.
Taxes
1930s
The income tax was new to the U.S. in 1913, and by 1929, although it took a maximum 23.1% bite, that was only at the $1 million level. The average family’s income then was $2,335, and that put average families in the 1/10th of 1 percent bracket. And there was still no Social Security tax, no state income tax, no sales tax, and no estate tax. Furthermore, most people in the country didn't even pay the income tax because they earned less than the legal minimum or they didn't bother filing. The government, therefore, had immense untapped sources of revenue to draw upon to fund its schemes to "cure" the depression. Roosevelt was able to raise the average income tax from 1.35% to 16.56% during his tenure—an increase of 1,100%.
Today
Everyone now pays an income tax in addition to all the other taxes. In most Western countries, the total of direct and indirect taxes is over 50%. For that reason, it seems unlikely that direct taxes will go much higher. But inflation is constantly driving everyone into higher brackets and will have the same effect. A person has had to increase his or her income faster than inflation to compensate for taxes. Whatever taxes a man does pay will reduce his standard of living by just that much, and it's reasonable to expect tax evasion and the underground economy to boom in response. That will cushion the severity of the depression somewhat while it serves to help change the philosophical orientation of society.
Prices
1930s
Prices dropped radically because billions of dollars of inflationary currency were wiped out through the stock market crash, bond defaults, and bank failures. The government, however, somehow equated the high prices of the inflationary '20s with prosperity and attempted to prevent a fall in prices by such things as slaughtering livestock, dumping milk in the gutter, and enacting price supports. Since the collapse wiped out money faster than it could be created, the government felt the destruction of real wealth was a more effective way to raise prices. In other words, if you can't increase the supply of money, decrease the supply of goods.
Nonetheless, the 1930s depression was a deflationary collapse, a time when currency became worth more and prices dropped. This is probably the most confusing thing to most Americans since they assume—as a result of that experience—that "depression" means "deflation." It's also perhaps the biggest single difference between this depression and the last one.
Today
Prices could drop, as they did the last time, but the amount of power the government now has over the economy is far greater than what was the case 90 years ago. Instead of letting the economy cleanse itself by allowing the financial markets to collapse, governments will probably bail out insolvent banks, create mortgages wholesale to prop up real estate, and central banks will buy bonds to keep their prices from plummeting. All of these actions mean that the total money supply will grow enormously. Trillions will be created to avoid deflation. If you find men selling apples on street corners, it won't be for 5 cents apiece, but $5 apiece. But there won't be a lot of apple sellers because of welfare, nor will there be a lot of apples because of price controls.
Consumer prices will probably skyrocket as a result, and the country will have an inflationary depression. Unlike the 1930s, when people who held dollars were king, by the end of the Greater Depression, people with dollars will be wiped out.
The Society
1930s
The world was largely rural or small-town. Communications were slow, but people tended to trust the media. The government exercised considerable moral suasion, and people tended to support it. The business of the country was business, as Calvin Coolidge said, and men who created wealth were esteemed. All told, if you were going to have a depression, it was a rather stable environment for it; despite that, however, there were still plenty of riots, marches, and general disorder.
Today
The country is now urban and suburban, and although communications are rapid, there's little interpersonal contact. The media are suspect. The government is seen more as an adversary or an imperial ruler than an arbitrator accepted by a consensus of concerned citizens. Businessmen are viewed as unscrupulous predators who take advantage of anyone weak enough to be exploited.
A major financial smashup in today's atmosphere could do a lot more than wipe out a few naives in the stock market and unemploy some workers, as occurred in the '30s; some sectors of society are now time bombs. It's hard to say, for instance, what third- and fourth-generation welfare recipients are going to do when the going gets really tough.
The Way People Work
1930s
Relatively slow transportation and communication localized economic conditions. The U.S. itself was somewhat insulated from the rest of the world, and parts of the U.S. were fairly self-contained. Workers were mostly involved in basic agriculture and industry, creating widgets and other tangible items. There wasn't a great deal of specialization, and that made it easier for someone to move laterally from one occupation into the next, without extensive retraining, since people were more able to produce the basics of life on their own. Most women never joined the workforce, and the wife in a marriage acted as a "backup" system should the husband lose his job.
Today
The whole world is interdependent, and a war in the Middle East or a revolution in Africa can have a direct and immediate effect on a barber in Chicago or Krakow. Since the whole economy is centrally controlled from Washington, a mistake there can be a national disaster. People generally aren’t in a position to roll with the punches as more than half the people in the country belong to what is known as the "service economy." That means, in most cases, they're better equipped to shuffle papers than make widgets. Even "necessary" services are often terminated when times get hard. Specialization is part of what an advanced industrial economy is all about, but if the economic order changes radically, it can prove a liability.
The Financial Markets
1930s
The last depression is identified with the collapse of the stock market, which lost over 90% of its value from 1929 to 1933. A secure bond was the best possible investment as interest rates dropped radically. Commodities plummeted, reducing millions of farmers to near subsistence levels. Since most real estate was owned outright and taxes were low, a drop in price didn't make a lot of difference unless you had to sell. Land prices plummeted, but since people bought it to use, not unload to a greater fool, they didn't usually have to sell.
Today
This time, stocks—and especially commodities—are likely to explode on the upside as people panic into them to get out of depreciating dollars in general and bonds in particular. Real estate will be—next to bonds—the most devastated single area of the economy because no one will lend money long term. And real estate is built on the mortgage market, which will vanish.
Everybody who invests in this depression thinking that it will turn out like the last one will be very unhappy with the results. Being aware of the differences between the last depression and this one makes it a lot easier to position yourself to minimize losses and maximize profits.
So much for the differences. The crucial, obvious, and most important similarity, however, is that most people's standard of living will fall dramatically.
The Greater Depression has started. Most people don't know it because they can neither confront the thought nor understand the differences between this one and the last.
As a climax approaches, many of the things that you've built your life around in the past are going to change and change radically. The ability to adjust to new conditions is the sign of a psychologically healthy person.
Look for the opportunity side of the crisis. The Chinese symbol for "crisis" is a combination of two other symbols—one for danger and one for opportunity.
The dangers that society will face in the years ahead are regrettable, but there's no point in allowing anxiety, frustration, or apathy to overcome you. Face the future with courage, curiosity, and optimism rather than fear. You can be a winner, and if you plan carefully, you will be. The great period of change will give you a chance to regain control of your destiny. And that in itself is the single most important thing in life. This depression can give you that opportunity; it's one of the many ways the Greater Depression can be a very good thing for both you as an individual and society as a whole.
Editor's Note: The rush to inject an unprecedented amount of money into every corner of the economy is a last-ditch effort to keep the stock market casino going for as long as possible—no matter the consequences.
All this unprecedented money printing will give rocket fuel to the gold bull market, which is already underway.
Gold is the best bet for right now. It delivers protection AND profits.
Posted on February 4th, 2021
Inauguration iniquity
2021-02-09
According to this iconic photo from http://americasvoice.news/, President Biden's inauguration took place under blue skies with a brisk wind.
Close examination of the "live" streams reveals that this was not actually the case.
Let's start with the official White House video. At 35:00 and again at 49:00, we see the sky is completely overcast. However, when Lady Gaga enters, just seconds later, the sun is shining, and continues to shine for the rest of the video. Note also that this video was viewed only about half a million times, has the chat replay disabled, and has 11 times more thumbs down than thumbs up. Hmmmm.
The CSPAN "live" stream is over 9 hours long, providing footage from events preceding the inauguration itself. At 5:41:27 we see completely overcast skies, and only soft, indistinct shadows. Three minutes later we have serious sun and distinct shadows. At 5:57:43 we have the White House and completely overcast skies, yet at 6:02:05 we have sunshine and largely blue skies. At 6:57:15 we have bright overcast and soft shadows, but 13 minutes later the weather has improved markedly.
Here's one report on the weather in Washington:
Brandon's 365 Weather, Traffic, and More
January 20 at 8:44 AM ·
INAUGURATION WEATHER: Right now there is a little rain/snow mix around Washington DC especially on the south side. There could be a few flurries or rain showers today.
January 20 at 8:44 AM ·
INAUGURATION WEATHER: Right now there is a little rain/snow mix around Washington DC especially on the south side. There could be a few flurries or rain showers today.
Here's an video from someone who was actually there. Heavily overcast with only soft shadows.
This tiny news item from AP gives a clue as to the prestidigitation involved. Showing the Capitol under completely blue skies, it reads:
Clearly the last line is a lie, as the scenes of Biden's swearing-in have the weather from the 18th, and not from the 20th. The temporary evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol complex, conveniently at 11:59, ensured that there would be no witnesses.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Capitol complex temporarily locked down during a rehearsal for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration after a fire in a homeless encampment roughly a mile away sent a plume of smoke into the air and caused security concerns.
But law enforcement officials said there was no threat to the public and the fire was not believed to be a threat to the inauguration. Local firefighters put out the blaze quickly.
Officials said the evacuation of some participants and the lockdown were ordered by the acting chief of Capitol Police in an abundance of caution.
Biden was not participating in Monday's rehearsal, nor were other VIPs who will attend the ceremony on Wednesday.
Consider also the mysterious case of the vanishing lady in pink.
All things considered, it appears that the actual swearing-in happened on the 18th, and that both "livestream" broadcasts were heavily edited with inserts from the "practice" on the 18th. The fire in the homeless encampment was probably a false flag event, providing a pretext for the evacuation and lockdown.
Posted on January 28th, 2021
COVID tests
Update 2021-01-21: Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce Massive COVID False Positives_
2021-01-08
International Man Communique
COVID Tests Gone Wild—An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests
by John Hunt, MD
What COVID tests mean and don’t mean
RT-PCR tests can be designed to be highly sensitive to the presence of the original viral RNA in a clinical sample. But a highly sensitive test risks poor specificity for actual infectious disease.
Rapid antigen tests are different. They measure viral protein. They do so by reacting a clinical sample with one or two lab-created antibodies that are labeled with a measurable marker. These antigen tests are often poorly specific, meaning they can show as positive in the absence of any actual viral protein or any COVID disease.
For a lab test, what does it mean to be sensitive? What does it mean to be specific?
I’ll use COVID to help explain these terms. In order to do this correctly, we need to avoid using the language of the media and government because those institutions tend to mislead us via language manipulation. For example, they’ve wrongly taught us that a COVID-positive test is synonymous with COVID- disease. It isn’t, as you will soon see.
So for this article, I will use the term "Relevant Infectious COVID Disease" to mean a condition, caused by COVID-19, in which a patient is sickened by the virus or has (in their airways) living replicating virus capable of being transmitted to others. This seems a fair definition of what we should be caring about in this disease. If the patient isn’t sick and isn’t capable of transmitting the disease, then any COVID RNA or protein that may appear in a test is not relevant, nor infectious, and therefore of little to no consequence.
You can think of a test’s sensitivity like this: In a group of 100 people who absolutely have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many people does the test actually report as "positive?" For a test that is 95% sensitive, 95 of these 100 patients with the true disease will be reported by the test as COVID positive and 5 will be missed.
Specificity: In a group of 100 people who absolutely do not have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many will be reported by the test as "negative?" For a test that is 95% specific, 95 of these healthy people will be reported as COVID-negative and 5 will be incorrectly reported as COVID-positive.
Sensitivity and Specificity are inherent characteristics of a test, not of a patient, not of a disease, and not of a population. These terms are very different than Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV). PPV and NPV are affected not only by the test’s sensitivity and specificity but also by the characteristics of the people chosen to be tested and, particularly, the patients’ underlying likelihood of actually having true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. The Positive Predictive Value—the chance a positive test actually indicates a true disease—is greatly improved if you test people who are likely to have COVID, and, importantly, avoid testing people unlikely to have COVID.
If you do a COVID test with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity in 1,000 patients who are feverish, have snot pouring out of their noses, are coughing profusely, and are short of breath, then you are using that test as a diagnostic test in people who currently have a reasonable up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. Let’s say 500 of them do actually have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, and the others have a common cold. This 95% sensitive test will correctly identify 475 of these people who are truly ill with COVID as being COVID-positive, and it will miss 25 of them. This same test is also 95% specific, which means it will falsely label 25 of the 500 non-COVID patients as COVID-positive. Although the test isn’t perfect it has a Positive Predictive Value of 95% in this group of people, and is a pretty good test overall.
But what if you run this very same COVID test on everyone in the population? Let’s guesstimate that the up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID in the US at this moment is about 0.5% (suggesting that 5 out of 1000 people currently have the actual transmittable disease right now, which is a high estimate). How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don’t have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that's a pretty lousy test. It’s far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.
The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren’t.
In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening.
A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season).
A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease.
A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn’t adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.
Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests. Our health officials are doing what a first-year medical student should know better than to do. It’s enough of a concerning error that it leaves two likely conclusions: 1) that our leading government health officials are truly incompetent and/or 2) that we, as a nation, are being intentionally gaslighted/manipulated. Or it could be both. (Another conclusion you should consider is that my analysis of these tests is incorrect. I’m open to a challenge.)
So what if you, as an individual, get a positive PCR test result (one that has 95% specificity) without having symptoms of COVID-19 or recent exposure to a true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease patient? What do you do? Well, with that positive test, your risk of having COVID has just increased from less than 5 in 1,000 (the general population risk) to about somewhere perhaps 5 in 55 (the risk of actual Relevant Infectious COVID Disease in asymptomatic people with a COVID-19-positive test). That’s an 18-fold increase in risk, amounting to a 9% risk of you having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease (or a 91% chance of you being totally healthy). That may be a relevant increase in risk in your mind, enough that you choose to avoid exposing your friends and family to your higher risk compared to the general population. But if the government spends resources to contact-trace you, then they are contact-tracing 91% of people uselessly. And they are deciding whether to lock us down based on the wrong notion that COVID-positive tests in healthy people are epidemiologically accurate when indeed they are mostly wrong.
For the 50 asymptomatic low-risk people falsely popping positive out of each group of 1,000, what makes them pop positive? For a rapid antigen test, it is because the test is never meant for use as a screening test in healthy asymptomatic people because it’s not specific enough. For a PCR test, positivity confidently means that there was COVID RNA in that sample, sure, but your nose or mouth very likely just filtered some dead bits of viral debris from the dust particles in the air as you walked through CVS to get the test before you learned you were supposed to use the drive-through. PCR can be way too sensitive.
A few strands of RNA are irrelevant. Even a few hundred fully intact viral particles are not likely to infect or cause disease. Humans aren’t that wimpy. But keep in mind that there is a very small chance that the test popped positive because you are about to get sick with COVID-19, and the test caught you, by pure luck, just before you are to become sick.
On top of this wrong use of diagnostic tests as screening tests, the government has been subsidizing hospitals for taking care of COVID-19-positive patients. Let’s say a hospital performs a COVID test 4 times during a hospital stay as a screening test in a patient who has no symptoms of COVID. If that test pops positive once and negative three times, the hospital will report that patient as having COVID-19, even though the one positive result is highly likely to have been a false positive. Why do hospitals do this testing so much? In part, because they’ll get $14,000 more from the government for each patient they declare has COVID-19.
When we see statistics of COVID-19 deaths, we should recognize that some substantial percentage of them should be called "Deaths with a COVID-19-positive test." When we see reports of case numbers rising, we should know that they are defining "case" as anyone with a COVID-19-positive test, which, as you might now realize, is really a garbage number.
Summary:
We have an epidemic of COVID-positive tests that is substantially larger than the epidemic of identified Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. In contrast, people with actual, mild cases of COVID-disease aren’t all getting tested. So the data, on which lockdowns are supposedly justified, are lousy.
The data on COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the US are exaggerated by a government subsidization scheme that incentivizes the improper use of tests in people without particular risk of the disease.
Avoid getting tested for COVID unless you are symptomatic yourself, have had exposure to someone who was both symptomatic and tested positive for COVID, or have some other personal reason that makes sense.
Know that getting tested before traveling abroad puts you at a modest risk of getting a false-positive test result, which will assuredly screw up your trip. It’s a new political risk of travel.
There is a lot more to this viral testing game, and there are a lot of weird incentives. There are gray areas and room for debate.
Yes, the COVID disease can kill people. But a positive test won’t kill anybody. Sadly, every COVID-positive test empowers those politicians and bureaucrats who have a natural bent to control people—the sociopaths and their ilk.
John Hunt, MD is a pediatric pulmonologist/allergist/immunologist, a former tenured Associate Professor and academic medical researcher, who has extensive experience and publications involving PCR, antigen testing, and analysis of respiratory fluid. He is internationally recognized as an expert in aerosol/respiratory droplet collection and analysis.
International Man Communique
COVID Tests Gone Wild—An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests
by John Hunt, MD
What COVID tests mean and don’t mean
RT-PCR tests can be designed to be highly sensitive to the presence of the original viral RNA in a clinical sample. But a highly sensitive test risks poor specificity for actual infectious disease.
Rapid antigen tests are different. They measure viral protein. They do so by reacting a clinical sample with one or two lab-created antibodies that are labeled with a measurable marker. These antigen tests are often poorly specific, meaning they can show as positive in the absence of any actual viral protein or any COVID disease.
For a lab test, what does it mean to be sensitive? What does it mean to be specific?
I’ll use COVID to help explain these terms. In order to do this correctly, we need to avoid using the language of the media and government because those institutions tend to mislead us via language manipulation. For example, they’ve wrongly taught us that a COVID-positive test is synonymous with COVID- disease. It isn’t, as you will soon see.
So for this article, I will use the term "Relevant Infectious COVID Disease" to mean a condition, caused by COVID-19, in which a patient is sickened by the virus or has (in their airways) living replicating virus capable of being transmitted to others. This seems a fair definition of what we should be caring about in this disease. If the patient isn’t sick and isn’t capable of transmitting the disease, then any COVID RNA or protein that may appear in a test is not relevant, nor infectious, and therefore of little to no consequence.
You can think of a test’s sensitivity like this: In a group of 100 people who absolutely have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many people does the test actually report as "positive?" For a test that is 95% sensitive, 95 of these 100 patients with the true disease will be reported by the test as COVID positive and 5 will be missed.
Specificity: In a group of 100 people who absolutely do not have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many will be reported by the test as "negative?" For a test that is 95% specific, 95 of these healthy people will be reported as COVID-negative and 5 will be incorrectly reported as COVID-positive.
Sensitivity and Specificity are inherent characteristics of a test, not of a patient, not of a disease, and not of a population. These terms are very different than Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV). PPV and NPV are affected not only by the test’s sensitivity and specificity but also by the characteristics of the people chosen to be tested and, particularly, the patients’ underlying likelihood of actually having true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. The Positive Predictive Value—the chance a positive test actually indicates a true disease—is greatly improved if you test people who are likely to have COVID, and, importantly, avoid testing people unlikely to have COVID.
If you do a COVID test with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity in 1,000 patients who are feverish, have snot pouring out of their noses, are coughing profusely, and are short of breath, then you are using that test as a diagnostic test in people who currently have a reasonable up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. Let’s say 500 of them do actually have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, and the others have a common cold. This 95% sensitive test will correctly identify 475 of these people who are truly ill with COVID as being COVID-positive, and it will miss 25 of them. This same test is also 95% specific, which means it will falsely label 25 of the 500 non-COVID patients as COVID-positive. Although the test isn’t perfect it has a Positive Predictive Value of 95% in this group of people, and is a pretty good test overall.
But what if you run this very same COVID test on everyone in the population? Let’s guesstimate that the up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID in the US at this moment is about 0.5% (suggesting that 5 out of 1000 people currently have the actual transmittable disease right now, which is a high estimate). How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don’t have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that's a pretty lousy test. It’s far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.
The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren’t.
In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening.
A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season).
A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease.
A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn’t adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.
Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests. Our health officials are doing what a first-year medical student should know better than to do. It’s enough of a concerning error that it leaves two likely conclusions: 1) that our leading government health officials are truly incompetent and/or 2) that we, as a nation, are being intentionally gaslighted/manipulated. Or it could be both. (Another conclusion you should consider is that my analysis of these tests is incorrect. I’m open to a challenge.)
So what if you, as an individual, get a positive PCR test result (one that has 95% specificity) without having symptoms of COVID-19 or recent exposure to a true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease patient? What do you do? Well, with that positive test, your risk of having COVID has just increased from less than 5 in 1,000 (the general population risk) to about somewhere perhaps 5 in 55 (the risk of actual Relevant Infectious COVID Disease in asymptomatic people with a COVID-19-positive test). That’s an 18-fold increase in risk, amounting to a 9% risk of you having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease (or a 91% chance of you being totally healthy). That may be a relevant increase in risk in your mind, enough that you choose to avoid exposing your friends and family to your higher risk compared to the general population. But if the government spends resources to contact-trace you, then they are contact-tracing 91% of people uselessly. And they are deciding whether to lock us down based on the wrong notion that COVID-positive tests in healthy people are epidemiologically accurate when indeed they are mostly wrong.
For the 50 asymptomatic low-risk people falsely popping positive out of each group of 1,000, what makes them pop positive? For a rapid antigen test, it is because the test is never meant for use as a screening test in healthy asymptomatic people because it’s not specific enough. For a PCR test, positivity confidently means that there was COVID RNA in that sample, sure, but your nose or mouth very likely just filtered some dead bits of viral debris from the dust particles in the air as you walked through CVS to get the test before you learned you were supposed to use the drive-through. PCR can be way too sensitive.
A few strands of RNA are irrelevant. Even a few hundred fully intact viral particles are not likely to infect or cause disease. Humans aren’t that wimpy. But keep in mind that there is a very small chance that the test popped positive because you are about to get sick with COVID-19, and the test caught you, by pure luck, just before you are to become sick.
On top of this wrong use of diagnostic tests as screening tests, the government has been subsidizing hospitals for taking care of COVID-19-positive patients. Let’s say a hospital performs a COVID test 4 times during a hospital stay as a screening test in a patient who has no symptoms of COVID. If that test pops positive once and negative three times, the hospital will report that patient as having COVID-19, even though the one positive result is highly likely to have been a false positive. Why do hospitals do this testing so much? In part, because they’ll get $14,000 more from the government for each patient they declare has COVID-19.
When we see statistics of COVID-19 deaths, we should recognize that some substantial percentage of them should be called "Deaths with a COVID-19-positive test." When we see reports of case numbers rising, we should know that they are defining "case" as anyone with a COVID-19-positive test, which, as you might now realize, is really a garbage number.
Summary:
We have an epidemic of COVID-positive tests that is substantially larger than the epidemic of identified Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. In contrast, people with actual, mild cases of COVID-disease aren’t all getting tested. So the data, on which lockdowns are supposedly justified, are lousy.
The data on COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the US are exaggerated by a government subsidization scheme that incentivizes the improper use of tests in people without particular risk of the disease.
Avoid getting tested for COVID unless you are symptomatic yourself, have had exposure to someone who was both symptomatic and tested positive for COVID, or have some other personal reason that makes sense.
Know that getting tested before traveling abroad puts you at a modest risk of getting a false-positive test result, which will assuredly screw up your trip. It’s a new political risk of travel.
There is a lot more to this viral testing game, and there are a lot of weird incentives. There are gray areas and room for debate.
Yes, the COVID disease can kill people. But a positive test won’t kill anybody. Sadly, every COVID-positive test empowers those politicians and bureaucrats who have a natural bent to control people—the sociopaths and their ilk.
John Hunt, MD is a pediatric pulmonologist/allergist/immunologist, a former tenured Associate Professor and academic medical researcher, who has extensive experience and publications involving PCR, antigen testing, and analysis of respiratory fluid. He is internationally recognized as an expert in aerosol/respiratory droplet collection and analysis.
Posted on January 8th, 2021
Constitutional review
2021-01-05
The Frogs Will Boil Themselves
by Jeff Thomas
There’s a well-known old fable that describes a frog being boiled alive. It states that if a frog is dropped in boiling water, it will hop out. But if it’s placed in lukewarm water, it will be comfortable. Then, if the heat is turned up slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be boiled to death.
In political terms, this translates into a slow increase, say, the slow rise of taxation or the gradual removal of freedoms.
But there’s another way to boil the electorate of a country: have them become willing participants in their own demise.
This method is a common practice in many countries, particularly the US. Americans have repeatedly been conned into begging for their second amendment rights to be diminished.
The method is to make use of the media to shine a light on the horrific murder of innocents through the use of firearms.
In recent years, this effort has been ramped up through regular senseless massacres of people, particularly children, in public places, such as schools and movie theatres.
Whether or not these incidents are actually created by the ruling elite is a moot point. What matters is that their proliferation has been extremely effective in providing the media will the fodder to repeatedly ask, "When is the Government going to make the possession of guns illegal so that the killing will stop?"
Many citizens are wary of such suggestions, but countless others quickly take the bait and demand that the Government "do something."
Eventually, this becomes a point of pride for many citizens — a badge of righteousness — for standing up for those who have been victims.
Through such efforts, the US Constitution has slowly lost its ability to serve as a limitation to Government power. A proliferation of laws that redefine what the Constitution means has, over time, eviscerated the Constitution.
Not surprisingly, those who support this effort are largely liberal, which creates a backlash from those who are conservative and vehemently oppose any erosion of the Constitution.
Those who are liberal may reinforce their beliefs by watching propaganda networks on television and regularly pump up the dangers of the Constitution. Likewise, conservatives have their propaganda network, which can be counted on to reinforce their views.
Whichever side Americans take on such issues, they would be wise to keep an eye out for what may be the next development in this wrangle.
Those who dutifully watch the liberal "news" networks may soon see pundits despairing that the failings of the aging Constitution must be dealt with. It must be updated if it is to serve changing needs. After all, the Founding Fathers cannot be blamed that they didn’t foresee the existence of AK-47s. Surely, it falls to the present administration to "correct" the failings of the well-intentioned old document.
Conservatives, of course, are likely to be more cautious, but what we may see is for the pundits on their favoured network to express frustration that the Left is seeking to erode traditional values and must, at some point be stopped, or the country will be destroyed. There can be no question that the Founding Fathers were correct — that unless the Constitution and its amendments are not clarified once and for all as to what they were meant to express, American liberty is at stake.
Americans, like citizens of most countries, love a good battle between good and evil. Every four years, a massive three-ring circus is staged in which the political leader is decided and both sports teams – Democrats and Republicans – go all out in seeking a victory on the playing field.
However, in most cases, neither candidate is trustworthy or qualified for the job, but this is of no importance. The essence of the battle is not to select a wise and capable leader but to win.
Similarly, once the populace has been wound up on both sides to believe that only a pitched battle can "re-establish the Constitution" or "modernise the Constitution," the battle shall be met.
At present, this eventuality may seem mere speculation. But then, the media campaign has not yet begun.
At present, all that exists is pundits in the media bemoaning the injustice of the present situation.
What is needed is the prediction of pundits that, whatever side an individual takes on the issue, his side is sure to win.
On the liberal side, social warriors must come out daily in the media with demands for change and the certainty of success once the battle has begun. On the conservative side, pundits need to guarantee that the battle will be won once and for all, but that the situation is in dire need of immediate attention, or all may be lost.
The result will not be immediate, but, with repetition, eventually, the American people on both sides of the fence may well not only suggest, but demand that the matter be sorted.
At that point, the Government may announce that a Constitutional Review will be undertaken. It would not matter that most of those making the demand are the pundits on the media networks. What would be presented would be that "a majority of Americans demand that the review take place as soon as possible."
Although at the time, the propaganda may imply that the review will be focused on one part of the Constitution, such as the Second Amendment, Americans will soon discover that the entire document is up for grabs. Under the terms of the review, all facets of the Constitution may be questioned.
Then what would the outcome be?
Each side will hope that their elected representatives will emerge as the heroes, but that is not how politics works.
In truth, elected leaders do not seek to serve the public but to dominate them. Invariably, their recommendations for change will be whatever transfers greater power to themselves.
Both Democratic and Republican members will argue forcefully for the rights of the American citizen. However, in the end, a "compromise" shall be made — one in which the rights of the populace are diminished and the Government has new powers to allow it to bypass the electorate in the future.
If this does occur, the public will, in effect, "boil themselves." They will have demanded that the Government act, and, when the dust has settled, each side will claim some sort of victory but will fail to understand that they have brought about their own loss of rights.
It is hoped that, when the day comes that a Constitutional Review is proposed, Americans refuse to take the bait.
by Jeff Thomas
There’s a well-known old fable that describes a frog being boiled alive. It states that if a frog is dropped in boiling water, it will hop out. But if it’s placed in lukewarm water, it will be comfortable. Then, if the heat is turned up slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be boiled to death.
In political terms, this translates into a slow increase, say, the slow rise of taxation or the gradual removal of freedoms.
But there’s another way to boil the electorate of a country: have them become willing participants in their own demise.
This method is a common practice in many countries, particularly the US. Americans have repeatedly been conned into begging for their second amendment rights to be diminished.
The method is to make use of the media to shine a light on the horrific murder of innocents through the use of firearms.
In recent years, this effort has been ramped up through regular senseless massacres of people, particularly children, in public places, such as schools and movie theatres.
Whether or not these incidents are actually created by the ruling elite is a moot point. What matters is that their proliferation has been extremely effective in providing the media will the fodder to repeatedly ask, "When is the Government going to make the possession of guns illegal so that the killing will stop?"
Many citizens are wary of such suggestions, but countless others quickly take the bait and demand that the Government "do something."
Eventually, this becomes a point of pride for many citizens — a badge of righteousness — for standing up for those who have been victims.
Through such efforts, the US Constitution has slowly lost its ability to serve as a limitation to Government power. A proliferation of laws that redefine what the Constitution means has, over time, eviscerated the Constitution.
Not surprisingly, those who support this effort are largely liberal, which creates a backlash from those who are conservative and vehemently oppose any erosion of the Constitution.
Those who are liberal may reinforce their beliefs by watching propaganda networks on television and regularly pump up the dangers of the Constitution. Likewise, conservatives have their propaganda network, which can be counted on to reinforce their views.
Whichever side Americans take on such issues, they would be wise to keep an eye out for what may be the next development in this wrangle.
Those who dutifully watch the liberal "news" networks may soon see pundits despairing that the failings of the aging Constitution must be dealt with. It must be updated if it is to serve changing needs. After all, the Founding Fathers cannot be blamed that they didn’t foresee the existence of AK-47s. Surely, it falls to the present administration to "correct" the failings of the well-intentioned old document.
Conservatives, of course, are likely to be more cautious, but what we may see is for the pundits on their favoured network to express frustration that the Left is seeking to erode traditional values and must, at some point be stopped, or the country will be destroyed. There can be no question that the Founding Fathers were correct — that unless the Constitution and its amendments are not clarified once and for all as to what they were meant to express, American liberty is at stake.
Americans, like citizens of most countries, love a good battle between good and evil. Every four years, a massive three-ring circus is staged in which the political leader is decided and both sports teams – Democrats and Republicans – go all out in seeking a victory on the playing field.
However, in most cases, neither candidate is trustworthy or qualified for the job, but this is of no importance. The essence of the battle is not to select a wise and capable leader but to win.
Similarly, once the populace has been wound up on both sides to believe that only a pitched battle can "re-establish the Constitution" or "modernise the Constitution," the battle shall be met.
At present, this eventuality may seem mere speculation. But then, the media campaign has not yet begun.
At present, all that exists is pundits in the media bemoaning the injustice of the present situation.
What is needed is the prediction of pundits that, whatever side an individual takes on the issue, his side is sure to win.
On the liberal side, social warriors must come out daily in the media with demands for change and the certainty of success once the battle has begun. On the conservative side, pundits need to guarantee that the battle will be won once and for all, but that the situation is in dire need of immediate attention, or all may be lost.
The result will not be immediate, but, with repetition, eventually, the American people on both sides of the fence may well not only suggest, but demand that the matter be sorted.
At that point, the Government may announce that a Constitutional Review will be undertaken. It would not matter that most of those making the demand are the pundits on the media networks. What would be presented would be that "a majority of Americans demand that the review take place as soon as possible."
Although at the time, the propaganda may imply that the review will be focused on one part of the Constitution, such as the Second Amendment, Americans will soon discover that the entire document is up for grabs. Under the terms of the review, all facets of the Constitution may be questioned.
Then what would the outcome be?
Each side will hope that their elected representatives will emerge as the heroes, but that is not how politics works.
In truth, elected leaders do not seek to serve the public but to dominate them. Invariably, their recommendations for change will be whatever transfers greater power to themselves.
Both Democratic and Republican members will argue forcefully for the rights of the American citizen. However, in the end, a "compromise" shall be made — one in which the rights of the populace are diminished and the Government has new powers to allow it to bypass the electorate in the future.
If this does occur, the public will, in effect, "boil themselves." They will have demanded that the Government act, and, when the dust has settled, each side will claim some sort of victory but will fail to understand that they have brought about their own loss of rights.
It is hoped that, when the day comes that a Constitutional Review is proposed, Americans refuse to take the bait.
Posted on January 5th, 2021
Friedrich Schiller
2021-01-05
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER (1759-1805) was a leading German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered for such dramas as THE ROBBERS (1781), the WALLENSTEIN trilogy (1800-01), MARIA STUART (1801), and WILHELM TELL (1804). Critics have noted his innovative use of dramatic structure and his creation of new forms, such as the melodrama and the bourgeois tragedy.
Schiller also wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics, synthesizing the thought of Kant with that of Idealist philosophers. He elaborated the concept of "die schöne Seele" (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that duty and inclination are no longer in conflict with one another. Thus beauty, for Schiller, was not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one too. His philosophical work was also concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and then found its way as well into his dramas.
One of the most profound works of German philosophy, ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (1794), was inspired by Schiller's deep disenchantment about the French Revolution and its degeneration into violence. It examines politics, revolution, and the history of ideas in order to argue that art should have a greater role in shaping society. He conceives of art as the vehicle of education, one that can liberate individuals from the constraints and excesses of either pure nature or pure mind. Through aesthetic experience, he asserts, people can reconcile the inner antagonism between sense and intellect, nature and reason.
Schiller also wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics, synthesizing the thought of Kant with that of Idealist philosophers. He elaborated the concept of "die schöne Seele" (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that duty and inclination are no longer in conflict with one another. Thus beauty, for Schiller, was not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one too. His philosophical work was also concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and then found its way as well into his dramas.
One of the most profound works of German philosophy, ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (1794), was inspired by Schiller's deep disenchantment about the French Revolution and its degeneration into violence. It examines politics, revolution, and the history of ideas in order to argue that art should have a greater role in shaping society. He conceives of art as the vehicle of education, one that can liberate individuals from the constraints and excesses of either pure nature or pure mind. Through aesthetic experience, he asserts, people can reconcile the inner antagonism between sense and intellect, nature and reason.
Schiller delivered his essay on Lycurgus and Solon in the context of his lectures on Universal History, at
Jena University, in August 1789. The essay puts forth two alternative
conceptions of government—a republican and an oligarchic form—which have
existed since the time of the Greeks. The oligarchic, associated with Lycurgus (ca. 800 BCE), reduces man to a beast, denying individual human creativity. Solon's (d. 559 BCE) republican government is premised on a conception of man raised to the level of participation in the divine.
Posted on January 5th, 2021
Asymptomatic spread
2021-01-02
Most of the nonsensical measures mandated to "flatten the curve" and otherwise stop the spread of the Corona virus are based on the assumption that anyone could spread the disease. "Look ma, no symptoms." This of course flies in the face of all known medical history, but somehow the politicians swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
On 7 June, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, told a press conference that asymptomatic spread was very rare. Eyebrows were raised, but the WHO managed to backpedal on this enough to confuse the issue without actually calling her a liar, and the world went back to assuming that everyone was a potential menace to society.
On 20 November an article appeared in Nature Communications, announcing the results of a study done in Wuhan with nearly 10 million subjects. They failed to find a single case of asymptomatic spread. Somehow our beloved mainstream media managed to miss this sensational finding, and thus nearly nobody heard about it. So life goes on as abnormal.
The cynic might conclude that there are two kinds of scientists at work here. There's the kind who clearly know which side their bread is buttered on, and they blithely claim with a straight face whatever augurs best for their funding and career prospects. Then there's the kind, mostly retired, who actually make sense. Naturally those that the politicians consult are not rushing to bite the hand that feeds them.
This article lays out the details well: Asymptomatic Spread Revisited
Posted on January 2nd, 2021
Words of wisdom
MARTIN LUTHER KING
"The Ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy... Cowardice asks the question – Is it safe? Expedience asks the question – Is it Politic? Vanity asks the question – Is it popular? But Conscience asks the question – Is it right?
And there comes a time when a man must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is RIGHT!"
"The Ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy... Cowardice asks the question – Is it safe? Expedience asks the question – Is it Politic? Vanity asks the question – Is it popular? But Conscience asks the question – Is it right?
And there comes a time when a man must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is RIGHT!"
Posted on December 29th, 2020
agapē
Traditionally, the Greek word agapē is understood as unconditional love, the highest form of love, the love that is God. This is in contrast to philia (brotherly love), or philautia (self love).
In his January 14, 2000 speech, "The Issue of America's Manifest Destiny for Today", Lyndon LaRouche said the following:
This quality in the person, the quality of cognition, combined with a determination to do good—in the sense of increasing man’s power in the universe, in the sense of improving the conditions of life of human beings through the use of this power—was called, in the Ancient Greek, agapē, which is the term which was the subject of the original Greek version of Paul’s I Corinthians, notably I Corinthians 13.
I understand this as the combination of good intention, and ability to effect change. This is the combination of the heart and the head. Good intention alone isn't of much use without the ability to effect change.
Posted on December 27th, 2020
Herd immunity
This photo summarizes it well:
Until recently, herd immunity was understood to be the state where a group was safe from epidemic because a sufficient number (less than 100%) of the population had acquired immunity, whether through vaccination or as a result of having been previously infected. Now we have the spectacle of the World Health Organization doing everything they can to suggest that immunity acquired by natural means (meaning, without vaccination) somehow doesn't count towards herd immunity. This is, of course, poppycock. It serves only to advance their agenda that everyone must be vaccinated, early and often.
"Herd immunity is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a virtual press briefing.
Here's a clue as to why some scientists are willing to support this ridiculous assertion:
Posted on December 26th, 2020
Great Reset
You'll Own Nothing and You'll Be Happy
by Jeff Thomas
-
Klaus Schwab was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Little information is available as to his upbringing – i.e., the degree to which he was educated to believe in Nazi doctrine – but whatever he was taught in his youth, he is, today, one of the most ardent believers in, and proponents of, totalitarian rule.
The term "Nazi" refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or "National Socialism," and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.
Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.
Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.
For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.
The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:
- Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.
- Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.
- Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.
- Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.
- Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.
- Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.
The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.
Of course, if any individual were to read the above menu, he would immediately say, "No way!" and reject the programme outright. Therefore, if such an oppressive regime were to be imposed upon a people, it would need to be sold to them as a benefit, not as virtual enslavement.
Joseph Goebbels was proud of saying, "Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep saying it and eventually, they will believe it."
Quite so. Fortunately, Mister Hitler and his friends were removed from the firmament before the final stages of the programme could be implemented.
But today, the jurisdictions listed above are now solidly in the completion stage of bullet point #2 and have begun to provide the offer of bullet point #3: the promised solution to the populace.
And so, we return to our poster boy for totalitarianism: Klaus Schwab.
His fame has been earned through his creation and chairmanship of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Over the last half century, the WEF has grown in influence to become one of the foremost leaders in the proposition of a New World Order.
As with Mister Hitler, in order to sell Totalitarianism 201 to the people of the countries in question, the technique once again is to "Make the lie big."
Professor Schwab’s video offers an idyllic state in which people can rid themselves of all the personal debt, the political upheaval and the social unrest that is now expanding so rapidly.
The proposed solution is that you sign over your right to own possessions on a permanent basis, in trade for a life in which there is minimal responsibility. The world government will provide you with a basic income. You will rent whatever you need – a residence, a vehicle, appliances, even your clothing.
Most importantly, as can be seen from the countenance of the citizen in the image above, you’ll be happy.
There will be no more wars. A "handful of countries" will rule the world cooperatively. There will be no waiting for medical attention. "There will be a global price on carbon" emissions. (This states that those who use fossil fuels – everyone – will be taxed for its use, although no explanation is given as to how this keeps the world from ending in twelve years due to emissions, as globalists claim.)
The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.
Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?
But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.
For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.
But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl... Oh-oh.
All the things that were promised may be withdrawn one at a time, until you’re both subservient and impoverished. You will lack the ability to rebel or even to complain.
For generations, political leaders have offered empty promises that were never kept. Conservative and liberal political leaders alike have consistently made a grand show of disagreeing with each other on what form of governance might serve the people best. Yet, somehow, the result, no matter which group theoretically holds the reins of power at any given time, has always been a larger, more powerful government and a populace that was increasingly robbed of its freedoms – social, political and economic.
We are now at the very turning point at which much of the former Free World is being tempted to make the leap into the "Brave New World."
All the social, political and economic problems that presently exist have been caused by political leaders. They are now asking you to trust them to end those problems.
The promise is a simple one: You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
But you’re not required to sign up. All you need do is sit still and accept the transformation to totalitarianism as it plays out.
Nothing could be simpler.
by Jeff Thomas
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Klaus Schwab was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Little information is available as to his upbringing – i.e., the degree to which he was educated to believe in Nazi doctrine – but whatever he was taught in his youth, he is, today, one of the most ardent believers in, and proponents of, totalitarian rule.
The term "Nazi" refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or "National Socialism," and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.
Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.
Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.
For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.
The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:
- Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.
- Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.
- Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.
- Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.
- Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.
- Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.
The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.
Of course, if any individual were to read the above menu, he would immediately say, "No way!" and reject the programme outright. Therefore, if such an oppressive regime were to be imposed upon a people, it would need to be sold to them as a benefit, not as virtual enslavement.
Joseph Goebbels was proud of saying, "Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep saying it and eventually, they will believe it."
Quite so. Fortunately, Mister Hitler and his friends were removed from the firmament before the final stages of the programme could be implemented.
But today, the jurisdictions listed above are now solidly in the completion stage of bullet point #2 and have begun to provide the offer of bullet point #3: the promised solution to the populace.
And so, we return to our poster boy for totalitarianism: Klaus Schwab.
His fame has been earned through his creation and chairmanship of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Over the last half century, the WEF has grown in influence to become one of the foremost leaders in the proposition of a New World Order.
As with Mister Hitler, in order to sell Totalitarianism 201 to the people of the countries in question, the technique once again is to "Make the lie big."
Professor Schwab’s video offers an idyllic state in which people can rid themselves of all the personal debt, the political upheaval and the social unrest that is now expanding so rapidly.
The proposed solution is that you sign over your right to own possessions on a permanent basis, in trade for a life in which there is minimal responsibility. The world government will provide you with a basic income. You will rent whatever you need – a residence, a vehicle, appliances, even your clothing.
Most importantly, as can be seen from the countenance of the citizen in the image above, you’ll be happy.
There will be no more wars. A "handful of countries" will rule the world cooperatively. There will be no waiting for medical attention. "There will be a global price on carbon" emissions. (This states that those who use fossil fuels – everyone – will be taxed for its use, although no explanation is given as to how this keeps the world from ending in twelve years due to emissions, as globalists claim.)
The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.
Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?
But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.
For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.
But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl... Oh-oh.
All the things that were promised may be withdrawn one at a time, until you’re both subservient and impoverished. You will lack the ability to rebel or even to complain.
For generations, political leaders have offered empty promises that were never kept. Conservative and liberal political leaders alike have consistently made a grand show of disagreeing with each other on what form of governance might serve the people best. Yet, somehow, the result, no matter which group theoretically holds the reins of power at any given time, has always been a larger, more powerful government and a populace that was increasingly robbed of its freedoms – social, political and economic.
We are now at the very turning point at which much of the former Free World is being tempted to make the leap into the "Brave New World."
All the social, political and economic problems that presently exist have been caused by political leaders. They are now asking you to trust them to end those problems.
The promise is a simple one: You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
But you’re not required to sign up. All you need do is sit still and accept the transformation to totalitarianism as it plays out.
Nothing could be simpler.
Posted on December 7th, 2020
Gubmint
I want to work up some text on this theme, but for now you'll have to be content with the links and attached documents.
Everyone assumes that we need government to make laws and police to enforce them. Most people don't know that the first real police force in America was created in 1838. Passports didn't come about until 1920.
Here's an example of how some have lived without the "benefit" of government:
Here's an example of how some have lived without the "benefit" of government:
Posted on December 3rd, 2020
"voluntary" vaccination
Interestingly, the same people who loudly proclaim: "My body, my choice," are the first ones to insist that everybody must be vaccinated against covid-19, multiple times. Many, maybe even most, people are smart enough to realize that mandatory vaccination is a bad idea at best, particularly since the vaccine has skipped over most of the usual required testing. Worse, the virus has never been isolated, meaning that it is by definition impossible to determine if it actually works. Adding insult to injury, vaccination does nothing to the eliminate the "need" for the current array of mandated plague prevention measures.
Recognizing that the groundswell of public opinion is going against them, governments are backing away from their originally stated plans to make vaccination mandatory. However, as it turns out, they have a more effective weapon up their sleeve. Businesses are starting to plan for a: "no shot, no service" policy. Quantas Airlines has already announced that, as soon as it is available, they will require covid vaccination before flight. Other airlines are rapidly following suit. The WHO is looking at possible 'E-vaccination Certificates for travel. Ticketmaster is contemplating requiring vaccination for event tickets.
It's easy to see where they're going with this. Governments are working overtime to crank up the fear, apparently aiming for the point where most people will not be willing to sit next to, or even be in the same room with, someone who has not been vaccinated. Businesses will effectively be forced by their customers to exclude the unvaccinated. Who needs laws when you can simply whip up enough hysteria to get everyone to shun the vax deniers?
The right thing for the government to do would be to make it illegal to condition service on vaccination. I'm not holding my breath. You can sign up here to let your voice be heard.
Posted on December 2nd, 2020
Electronic voting machines
Many people are of the opinion that electronic voting machines only multiply the possibilities for fraud, and only paper-based voting is safe.
Let us start by skewering the notion that paper-based voting provides any kind of guarantee of fraud-free vote counting. Looking back at the 2000 Presidential election, in the state of Florida, Bush won by a slim 537 votes. A recount was ordered, and hordes of lawyers descended on the state to inspect millions of ballots, haggling over hanging chad, dimpled chads, and such. After a couple weeks several boxes of overlooked ballots were discovered in a closet. The circus went on for 5 weeks until the Supreme Court finally decreed Bush the winner. Fast forward to the 2014 vote for Scottish independence. After the fact, many eyewitness accounts, and even videos, of vote fraud showed up in the internet. Yet there was never even a recount.
So clearly paper ballots cannot guarantee a clean election, yet just as clearly if you want to manipulate millions of votes, the easiest way to do it is to introduce computers into the vote counting system. On the other hand, it is not computers that commit fraud, it is the people who program them, configure them, and operate them. Electronic voting fraud has been rife because the vendors and state election officials have played fast and loose ever since computers arrived on the scene. Programs written by the vendors are proprietary and not subject to scrutiny. Last minute "updates" are common, and "glitches" often happen during the counting. The programming allows the operator to override anything, and audit trails can be erased or edited. Supposedly "air gapped" computers are fully connected with the internet, and data is often sent to other continents in real time.
If anyone took election security seriously, there would be intense scrutiny of the programming by many experts, rigorous configuration control, secure audit trails, no off-site connections, and strictly limited operator intervention. Ultimately election fraud is always committed by people. With electronic voting, a lot of that people-work can be checked and verified in advance. Far fewer people are needed to do the counting, reducing the opportunities for fraud.
Posted on November 14th, 2020
Public Health versus Economy
At the heart of this whole covid-19 thang is the fatuous claim that public health must be guaranteed, cost the economy what it will. Reality is that the corona virus is no more lethal than a normal flu season. This was officially published in March by Dr. Fauci himself, and by many other experts since. Reality is that a devastated economy has far more deleterious effects on public health than the flu ever could. This was predicted by experts in March, and has since been confirmed many times over.
5G proponents like to claim that the economy is more important than any perceived risks to public health. They point out that mobile data demand is increasing exponentially. Furthermore, future business opportunities such as Internet of Things and self-driving automobiles depend on 5G. In reality, the IoT is a solution looking for a problem, and probably has far more to do with 24x7 surveillance, monitoring, and control than with boosting the economy. Though it could be useful in some scenarios, 5G is certainly not necessary for self-driving autos, and nobody has bothered to explain why we must have self-driving autos. Opponents of 5G point out that hundreds of studies (most of them sponsored by the military) document the health hazards of microwave radiation. Once there's a 5G node on every lamppost and tens of thousands of 5G satellites in orbit, there will be no avoiding continuous irradiation.
So there we have it. Draconian pandemic measures are necessary because public health trumps the economy. 5G is necessary because the economy trumps public health. Pardon me while I tear my hair out.
Posted on November 13th, 2020
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The EFF was founded 30 years ago to help insure the protection of human rights in the modern era of computing, and it has done much excellent work in this arena. Lately, however, it has strayed into the fields of politics and social justice. Here is the guts of a letter I sent them, expressing my disappointment with their evolution.
Where I do have a problem is when minorities, however defined, are given preferential treatment in your legal work. Your about page emphasizes human rights, which clearly apply to all humans; identity considerations are irrelevant. When you concentrate on minorities because they are most adversely affected, you are trying to get better treatment for minorities. While this may generally, as you suggest, result in better protection of human rights for all, that is not guaranteed. Worse, it is an affront to non-minorities whose rights are no less violated than those of minorities.
While it may be true that certain minorities are more heavily impacted, rights are rights, and the degree of impact is immaterial. Everybody's right to free speech is inviolable, whether they have something to say or not. Everybody's right to privacy is inviolable, whether they have an important need for privacy or not. Making a distinction, or a case, based on impact, is bogus in the framework of protecting human rights. A poor black woman has the exact same human rights as a rich white man. I grant you, the former may often be more negatively impacted than the latter with regard to things like money, status, and opportunity. In the context of rights, however, there is no difference.
Historically, EFF has been about maintaining human rights in the face of advancing technology. If I'm understanding your diversity statement correctly, EFF is evolving from fighting for equal rights and opportunities, to fighting for fair opportunities and outcomes. Equal is easy to define and justify, but the same cannot be said for fair. Additionally, I do not think it is properly the job of EFF to have any concern about outcomes.
This all seems to be part of a pronounced veer to the left, as evidenced by, for example, your recent actions regarding TikTok. You assert that the President is violating our First Amendment rights, yet you remain curiously silent about Google's ongoing blatant abuse of its de facto monopoly status to influence public opinion and voting.
NBC's childish explanation of Section 230 (which you recommend) would be laughable if you and so many other intelligent people didn't actually take it seriously. Hate speech, lies, and disinformation are very much in the eye of the beholder, which is exactly why free speech is so damned important. One man's patriot is another man's terrorist; thus allowing (even requiring) companies to serve as censors is fraught with danger. When it is done, it needs be with concise definitions, right of redress, and impeccable impartiality, all of which have been consistently and one-sidedly flouted by our social media giants. NBC's "helpful" "explanation" studiously ignores the crux of the matter, namely that companies that act as publishers are not entitled to Section 230 privileges.
EFF has a long and brilliant record of noble endeavor in the field of protecting human rights. Sadly, it seems to be "evolving" (straying) into other fields, including politics and social justice. This is a deplorable development, unworthy of the high ideals with which the company was founded.
Posted on September 25th, 2020
Plandemic
It's getting more obvious by the day that the entire covid-19 thang is nothing but a scam.
According to Swiss bureau for statistics there has been, by definition, no epidemic for the entire summer. Nevertheless, people and businesses are still suffering under a variety of restrictive and debilitating measures.
Eminent expert Dr. Roger Hodkinson explains that the entire covid-19 is a scam. Listen from 2:30 - 6:05. He also agrees with the Great Barrington Declaration that the measures enacted to stop the epidemic are far worse than the epidemic. In Japan, the suicide rate for 2020 has surged, reversing a declining trend since 2003.
Update 2021-01-04: Sky News reports (11:52): "Hospitals are being overrun with admissions and staff are under more pressure than they were during the first wave." This is an important part of the justification for impending ever-more severe lockdown measures.
However, 5 days earlier, Summit News reported that a woman was arrested by police after taking video in the empty Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. The article further reports:
"NHS England says that there are now more COVID-19 patients in hospitals than there were during the April peak of the first wave.
However, public data shows that hospitals are indeed emptier than at this time last year, with beds being at 89% occupancy compared to 95% occupancy in December 2019.
In regions across the country, critical care occupancy rates are also lower than the 3 year average."
However, public data shows that hospitals are indeed emptier than at this time last year, with beds being at 89% occupancy compared to 95% occupancy in December 2019.
In regions across the country, critical care occupancy rates are also lower than the 3 year average."
This study shows that 5G can actually create corona virus.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND
ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SARS-COV-2 AND OTHER FACTORS
ASSOCIATION DES OFFICIERS DE RÉSERVE
(ASSOCIATION OF FRENCH RESERVE ARMY OFFICERS)
Download PDF
ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SARS-COV-2 AND OTHER FACTORS
ASSOCIATION DES OFFICIERS DE RÉSERVE
(ASSOCIATION OF FRENCH RESERVE ARMY OFFICERS)
Posted on September 1st, 2020
Casedemic
Update 2021-01-21: Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce Massive COVID False Positives
All over we're seeing a rising number of covid-19 cases being detected, and nearly no deaths from the dread virus. The news media is making hay with the case count, while doing its best to downplay the inconvenient lack of mortality. For example, according to official Swiss statistics, during a week in August 2020, over 1500 new cases were reported and only 5 deaths, and 97% of those deaths were with comorbidities.
Governments are playing right along, mandating more superfluous and even counter-productive measures proclaimed as necessary to stem the tide of new cases. In reality, the most-used PCR tests are problematic at best, and there will always be a number of false positive indications from these tests. The more you test, the more "positive" results you're going to get, and of course extensive testing is "for public safety". In reality it has rather to do with sustaining fear and thus demand for the government to "do something." Government is always happy to oblige that demand.
The worst of it is that they have re-defined case to mean being found positive on some dubious test. In the real world, a case is a sick person, with symptoms and everything. This sleight-of-hand change of definition is at best maliciously deceptive.
Traditionally WHO defined pandemic as a global disease involving serious morbidity and mortality. Lately WHO and CDC have revised the definition by removing all reference to mortality and even morbidity. This conveniently allows the world to be in a "pandemic" which nobody would even notice without the "help" of the media.
Posted on August 22nd, 2020
Virus, schmirus
According to Tom Barnett, the Corona Virus is not infectious because a virus is never infectious. Listen to his brief explanation:
A part 3 is planned, and this will be updated when it comes out.
Amandha Vollmer writes in detail about the virus deception and why coronavirus is not contagious. She includes lots of references.
Another explanation of why viruses are not transmissible.
Posted on August 16th, 2020
Face masks even bad for surgeons
Arthur Firstenberg writes:
As a person who went to medical school, I was shocked when I read Neil Orr’s study, published in 1981 in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Dr. Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester. And for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries. They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections from March through August 1980 with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years. And they discovered, to their amazement, that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks. Their conclusion: "It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all" and that wearing a mask during surgery "is a standard procedure that could be abandoned."
I was so amazed that I scoured the medical literature, sure that this was a fluke and that newer studies must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease. But to my surprise the medical literature for the past forty-five years has been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves spread bacteria and viruses.
- Ritter et al., in 1975, found that "the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination."
- Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. "Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments."
- Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. "No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used," they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.
- In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.
- A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that "The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use."
- Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that "surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anaesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable."
- Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.
- Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that "no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks."
- Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. "Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist," wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.
- Webster et al., in 2With data gathered from participants putting a mask on for a few moments and coughing 5 times to establish said effectiveness. Upon further review, the study itself noted, "both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment." Even though they came to that conclusion with what can easily be considered an inadequate amount of data (they’ve since retracted), what’s even more alarming is that the scientists found when test subjects coughed into the masks, even more virus particles ended up on the OUTSIDE of the mask than on the inside of the mask. It may come as a surprise, but that’s simply how viruses can travel in the real world.010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.
- Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found "no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials." Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.
- Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that "none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not."
- Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that "there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection."
- Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that "there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination."
Schools in China are now prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising. Why? Because it was killing them. It was depriving them of oxygen and it was killing them. At least three children died during Physical Education classes -- two of them while running on their school’s track while wearing a mask. And a 26-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung after running two and a half miles while wearing a mask.
Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55. All 13 states that have death rates higher 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.
This 66-minute video on masks from an expert tells you everything you ever wanted to know about masks.
This surgeon & editor of a medical journal explains why surgeons wear masks and you shouldn't.
The official recommendation by the Journal of the American Medical Association
NIH shows that cloth facemasks actually increase influenza-linked illness
Here's a twitter thread with more info
New study shows masks useless
Stanford study proves face masks worthless against covid-19
Face masks cause permanent brain damage!
Two OSHA experts talk about face masks
12 graphs show mask mandates do nothing to stop COVID
An expert on masks tells it like it is.
Masks useless to stop COVID, and unhealthy for the wearer
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/12/03/efficacy-of-surgical-masks.aspx
Association of AmericanPhysicians and Surgeons on masks
This is why, against all the science, they persist with the masking requirements:
Posted on August 15th, 2020
Huxley meets Orwell
My analysis is that the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009/10 was used to convince governments that they needed more controls for pandemic management. It was at this time that the UN sent out teams to various governments to help them fashion such legislation. There was no lockdown over-reaction then because the required laws were not yet in place. So that pandemic was just used to set the stage for this one.
Posted on August 3rd, 2020
covid-19 redux
Now that some time has passed so that we have real data to analyze, here's a couple comprehensive reports as to the scientific wisdom that has (or has not) been applied to the pandemic.
An expert has stated unequivocally that a viral epidemic never has a "second wave", yet the press is full of warnings about the inevitable second wave. The popular "proof" that a contagion can have a second wave is the "Spanish flu" of 1918, yet it has been proven that the Spanish flu was not contagious.
The latest fad is contact tracing, touted by some experts as de rigeur for handling epidemics. Yet in 2019 the WHO stated in a report (appended) that it is unproven and generally not recommended for a variety of reasons.
This eye-opening report by Swiss Policy Research evaluates both medical and societal issues of the pandemic. They update it regularly. The usual Deep State apologists (Wikipedia, Media Bias/Fact Check) brush it off as propaganda and conspiracy theory, proving only that the Deep State does not like it.
Most people are now indoctrinated and brainwashed, to the point of complete and utter idiocy. I would rather be called a conspiracy theorist than a brainless, subservient lemming. Unfortunately, those who really need to watch this clip will bypass it... Blessed are the poor in spirit I guess...  Jeremy Elliot breaks it down perfectly!
The insiders all know that HCQ is the silver bullet for covid-19, so why are they doing their best to suppress this knowledge and access to the drug?
Given that most of the "medical" measures are dubious at best, we are left to ponder why they have been nearly universally adopted. This analysis shows that four of these measures are pure symbology, designed to indoctrinate and program the populace into the New World Order control era.
Posted on July 11th, 2020
Brazil
According to this guy, what's really happening in Brazil is pretty much the opposite of what their mainstream media is reporting. The government and justice system have been stacked with leftists for decades, and when conservative Bolsonaro was voted in, they freaked out. The Supreme Court consists of avowed communists, and they are doing everything possible to undermine the elected President and shutdown the popular opposition.
Posted on June 26th, 2020
Fake numbers
The following links are copied from Jim Stone's fabulous website.
http://www.nvinoticias.com/nota/149500/oaxaca-alcanza-323-muertes-y-2-mil-798-contagios-por-covid-19
Every one of these reports, from the US plus half a dozen other countries, reports exactly 322 new cases of covid-19. How likely is that? Even more significantly, that number is highly symbolic for the illuminati.
Check out this tweet where apparently in Brazil they found that a hospital claiming to be overflowing with 5000 covid-19 cases and 200 deaths, was totally empty!
Posted on June 16th, 2020
Mandela effect
Back in the dark ages when I went to school, we learned that Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address starts with the words:
Fourscore and seven years ago, our forefathers...
But now, if you go to the internet and look it up, you'll find that almost everywhere it has changed to be fathers instead of forefathers.
However, I have found a couple counterexamples where the original forefathers is used:
Amusingly, in the first one, after setting up an elaborate joke based on the word forefathers, Charles Laughton then goes on to recite the address with fathers instead of forefathers.
The two counterexamples prove that I'm not losing my mind, I really did learn it as forefathers. It seems that someone has gone through the entire internet and altered the speech. This has been done very skillfully, so that it is impossible to see that anything has changed. In my first counterexample, the speech was changed, but it was impossible to change the preceding dialog to obviate the word forefathers. In the second one, my guess is that the song was not even recognized as a recitation of the address. Or, if it was, then changing the song was beyond the capability of the changer.
How and why was this done? My guess is that it was done by AI, and it was done simply to prove that it could be done. Personally, I'd like to see the Lincoln Memorial, where it is carved in marble. Also interesting would be any photos that people have taken in the past of that memorial.
Perhaps all of the many Mandela Effects have been done similarly by AI. Maybe they were done simply to confuse people, to be grist for the mill of the conspiracy theorists, something to keep them distracted.
Posted on June 13th, 2020
"You can't make this stuff up"
It starts to look like the loony left has gone full retard.
To wit, some headlines from yesterday's ZeroHedge:
- Minneapolis City Council To Disband City's Police Department
Major Bicycle Brand Suspends Sales To Police Claiming Bikes 'Weaponized' Against Protesters
- Philly News Editor Ousted After Daring To Question Legitimacy Of Burning The City's Buildings Down
- Minneapolis Mayor Loudly Booed, Subjected To 'Walk Of Shame', After Refusing To Abolish Police Department
- Not The Onion: BLM Protesters Vandalize Abraham Lincoln Statue In London
As Tom Luongo put it:
Every single issue that the Democrats used to control the moral high ground on, except abortion, has been burned up in the past week. Any good will Black Lives Matter had with working class white and Hispanic Americans is ash.
Posted on June 8th, 2020
George Floyd false flag
All of the following comes from Jim Stone (http://82.221.129.208/.vk6.html):
There is a LOT wrong with the "murder video" that proves these guys really did act this out and there was no killing
The videos are hard to keep linked and are declining in quality as they repeatedly get deleted by Youtube.
1. You can tell when the ambulance arrives and the officer gets off the victim there was no pressure being applied.2. When the ambulance arrives, rather than tend the victim, (the official reports state the ambulance was warned he needed medical attention and was unresponsive,) they did not tend to him immediately on the ground, instead they loaded him onto the gurney without checking a damn thing, pushed him into the ambulance and drove off. There's a HUGE problem with that.
Standard EMT procedure in this case is FIRST to take his pulse and administer CPR if needed RIGHT WHERE HE IS FOUND LAYING especially when (according to the story line) they were notified he was "unresponsive" and needed an ambulance. EMT's do not load people onto the stretcher first, they first get the person stable if possible and then load them. No one at any point, no officer and no EMT ever checked the guy's pulse. That there alone proves it was a crisis act, done by people who were not professionals knowledgeable enough to even fake it good.
3. Since no one checked the guy's pulse, how did the cops know he was not going to wake up in the ambulance and raise hell? I can't begin to describe what a screw up that was, and to top it all off, in ALL CASES, conscious or not, the cops pick people up up and throw them in the back seat. They would not have called an ambulance at all, having never checked his pulse. He'd have been loaded like a side of beef and taken to the station.
4. The appalling "I am so proud" show by the "officer" at the end was obviously done for the sole purpose of angering the public.
So here we have a story where the neighbors never knew he was a cop, where the victim was never checked at all, just loaded onto a stretcher, when he could have woken up and caused a problem. The police will NEVER DO THAT, THEY WILL NEVER DO THAT EVER, FAKE COPS, FAKE EMT'S FAKE STORY.
5. AND THE PUNCH LINE: THEY WERE BOUNCERS AT THE SAME CLUB AND CLEARLY KNEW EACH OTHER. "HEY GEORGE: DO YOU WANT TO DO A HIGH PAYING GIG?" "SURE DEREK, I'M A LITTLE LOW ON CASH SINCE CORONA CLOSED THE CLUB, I'M GAME!
This story is another box of fruit loops, and now some in Minnesota's government are calling to declare "racism" a public health emergency like COVID. TOO OBVIOUS.
WHERE WERE ALL THE OTHER COP CARS? IN REAL SCENARIOS THEY MOB A SCENE LIKE THIS, FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE!
For a man who claims he can't breathe, George sure does a lot of talking and moaning.See also this report from Sorcha Faal.
Check out this video.
Somehow Obummer knew about George Floyd 9 days before he was murdered!
Posted on June 3rd, 2020
Lockdown lunacy
Slowly it is becoming clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that masks and lockdowns had little effect on stemming the coronavirus.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ Note that fact 30 states that WHO research finds that contact tracing is not recommended under any circumstances for pandemic influenza. So the current push for mandatory contact tracing must be for something other than medical reasons.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Posted on June 3rd, 2020
Eric Schmidt
In a crowded field, he may be one of the evilist people on the planet. Read all about it here.
Here's an interesting 2014 article by Julian Assange featuring Eric.
Posted on May 22nd, 2020
They're all terrorists!
David Martin (https://www.davidmartin.world/) demonstrates in this 'Butterfly' of the week video that Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the governors of all the lockdown states, are terrorists as defined by the Patriot Act. In 32 minutes he presents all the legal evidence, leading to this inescapable conclusion. The fireworks start at about the 22-minute mark. He even provides a letter template that you can tweak and send to officials in all the right places. Take a few minutes at your keyboard to actually do something to get this lockdown lifted.
Posted on May 16th, 2020
Mass hysteria
Mystery sickness
We're going to be seeing a lot of this kind of story; anything to keep the fear stoked. Look up "psychosomatic" and "mass hysteria" and you'll see that large numbers of people can end up in the hospital with very real symptoms, simply as the result of some combination of suggestion, fear, anxiety, and stress.
We're going to be seeing a lot of this kind of story; anything to keep the fear stoked. Look up "psychosomatic" and "mass hysteria" and you'll see that large numbers of people can end up in the hospital with very real symptoms, simply as the result of some combination of suggestion, fear, anxiety, and stress.
Posted on May 13th, 2020
Snitches
Some people seem to feel compelled to tattle on their neighbors who are not complying with the letter of lockdown. This could perhaps be considered commendable if the lockdown regulations made any sense, but alas, they don't. Of course The Powers That Be are loudly proclaiming that the lockdown is all in the name of public safety, but it has long since been obvious to any number of real experts that the lockdown is, long-term, actually far more of a danger to public safety than CoronaVirus ever could be. Now, if we were talking the Bubonic Plague, then the extreme measures might be justified, but even Dr. Fauci publicly admitted weeks ago that it is not much worse than your average flu. Nobody ever thought it necessary to shutdown the world economy for the annual flu, so why everyone rush to do it for CV?
Posted on May 13th, 2020
Shutdowns are pointless, stupid, and evil
As usual, Larkin Rose explains it well. The only reason ever given for shutdown and masks was to flatten the curve, to prevent overtaxing the healthcare system. Neither shutdown nor masks will keep you from getting it; that's impossible at this point. At best you can delay the inevitable, kick the can down the road. Unless you have one foot in the grave already, you probably won't even notice that you got it. In fact getting it is probably a good idea, because it may give you immunity. If you do experience severe symptoms, there are a number of proven-effective treatments, ranging from 20 minutes in a sauna, to vitamin C, to chloroquine and remdesivir. Meanwhile, the long-term health and economic consequences of the shutdown are catastrophal.
Let's add the marvelous rant of Ann Barnhardt
Posted on May 5th, 2020
Secure PC
https://starlabs.systems/pages/laptops Here's a new PC coming on the market. Its Unique Selling Point is that they have somehow disabled Intel's management engine. That's the secret "manager" inside your computer which is, we all assume, how the Black Hats spy on you. This thing ain't cheap -- the minimal version is $700, and the version I'd want is nearly $1000 -- but I don't know of any other way to get anything close to this kind of security.
Purism claims to offer better security, but it's not obvious what makes their PureOS better than other Linux distributions. https://puri.sm/products/librem-mini/
Meanwhile, I've found that Tuxedo Computers offers laptops which allow the Intel Management Engine to be disabled.Here's another laptop manufacturer that offers the ability to disable the Intel Management Engine, as well as the webcam and WLAN. Better yet, they'll install your choice of 5 different versions of Linux, including my personal fav Manjaro.
System76 has machines built with coreboot firmware, which disables the Intel Management Engine by default. They do their best to disable the IME, but my guess is they can't get it all. They can only use whatever bits of information that Intel chooses to publish, which is far too little to have any guarantee of security.
According to libreBoot about the only way you're going to get real security with AMD or Intel is to have an old chip. They publish a page listing various sources of computers featuring libreBoot.
Here's an interesting quote from Jim Stone's page:
I have definitely discovered an auto-destruct on Intel plaforms where the processor (or some other component) is told to send out high voltage spikes to destroy the entire motherboard while the computer is "off" How could a processor do that in such a tiny space? EASY: If it clocks at over a ghz, the part that would do that could easily be a fraction of a millimeter in size. Frequency matters, the lower the frequency the bigger the parts have to be.
They probably did not expect me to figure out what happened and did not want this info "out there". So when I went to type this, they attacked the AMD laptop I have been using for 10 years and the keyboard, which has never glitched in 10 years suddenly started glitching and it overheated and shut off when it has never done that before. Obviously they don't want this posted (which is why I came right out and said it in the opening line) Here is how I discovered this:
I went to try to start the Celeron G4390 after giving the spooks what I figured would be "enough time" to un-brick it. I had it sitting in the motherboard box with nothing attached to the motherboard except processor and ram. Since there was no power switch, I used a jumper to hit the ATX power pins and the jumper got hot (instantly) and I got shocked. That's IMPOSSIBLE, no motherboard has voltages that high so I immediately grabbed a meter and checked the ATX power pins (to see if the power supply did that) from the back side of the ATX connector with it still plugged into the motherboard and there was nothing at all there except for the 5 volts that is used for the ATX start voltage (and obviously Intel's Vpro tech)
All I have is a basic meter (I really should have a scope) but whatever, at least the meter is not total crap and I checked out on the motherboard, and with ONLY the 5 volts from the ATX power system somehow, out on the motherboard, the meter was reading 63 volts. If I measured from the power on pins on the motherboard (which are obviously separately managed and not hooked directly to ATX on) - from them to power supply ground I could see 63 volts but on the actual ATX power connector, when read only back to the connector, there was only the power on 5 volts and the rest showed nothing. Obviously there's some SERIOUS auto destruct capabilities if that can happen. Obviously CorVpro security is not B.S., the device really does get bricked. Since I have only a basic DMM meter I don't know what the actual voltage was, it could be assumed it was spikes with a short duty cycle and unknown frequency so with an ordinary DMM it is impossible to know the actual peak voltage was. But I do know this now: Intel based platforms come with a high voltage auto destruct. There's no way in hell that voltage could have been there any other way. Surprisingly it did not back feed into the power supply, at the ATX pins (when measured from pin to pin only) there was nothing anywhere except the power switch voltage of 5 volts.
They probably did not expect me to figure out what happened and did not want this info "out there". So when I went to type this, they attacked the AMD laptop I have been using for 10 years and the keyboard, which has never glitched in 10 years suddenly started glitching and it overheated and shut off when it has never done that before. Obviously they don't want this posted (which is why I came right out and said it in the opening line) Here is how I discovered this:
I went to try to start the Celeron G4390 after giving the spooks what I figured would be "enough time" to un-brick it. I had it sitting in the motherboard box with nothing attached to the motherboard except processor and ram. Since there was no power switch, I used a jumper to hit the ATX power pins and the jumper got hot (instantly) and I got shocked. That's IMPOSSIBLE, no motherboard has voltages that high so I immediately grabbed a meter and checked the ATX power pins (to see if the power supply did that) from the back side of the ATX connector with it still plugged into the motherboard and there was nothing at all there except for the 5 volts that is used for the ATX start voltage (and obviously Intel's Vpro tech)
All I have is a basic meter (I really should have a scope) but whatever, at least the meter is not total crap and I checked out on the motherboard, and with ONLY the 5 volts from the ATX power system somehow, out on the motherboard, the meter was reading 63 volts. If I measured from the power on pins on the motherboard (which are obviously separately managed and not hooked directly to ATX on) - from them to power supply ground I could see 63 volts but on the actual ATX power connector, when read only back to the connector, there was only the power on 5 volts and the rest showed nothing. Obviously there's some SERIOUS auto destruct capabilities if that can happen. Obviously CorVpro security is not B.S., the device really does get bricked. Since I have only a basic DMM meter I don't know what the actual voltage was, it could be assumed it was spikes with a short duty cycle and unknown frequency so with an ordinary DMM it is impossible to know the actual peak voltage was. But I do know this now: Intel based platforms come with a high voltage auto destruct. There's no way in hell that voltage could have been there any other way. Surprisingly it did not back feed into the power supply, at the ATX pins (when measured from pin to pin only) there was nothing anywhere except the power switch voltage of 5 volts.
So far he has had better luck with his new AMD processor.
Posted on May 4th, 2020
CHP immune to Coronavirus
This is members of the California Highway Patrol gathering after their arrests of 33 civilians protesting the governer's social distancing order.
Good thing the police are magically immune to the Coronavirus.
Posted on May 4th, 2020
Timothy Charles Holmseth (TCH)
This character has his own site (timothycharlesholmseth.com) and FacePlant page. He claims to be a member of the "Pentagon Pedophile Taskforce", which is of course shrouded in secrecy. He claims that thousands of abused children have been released from underground warrens by Pentagon special forces.
While it may indeed be true that abused children are being freed, it seems that nothing that TCH says can be believed. There is a website (timothycharlesholmseth.site) which makes this fact perfectly clear.
It is alleged that Google is no longer censoring. Try looking for "Timothy Charles Holmseth", and you will not find the .site mentioned above. Duckduckgo is no better. If you add the word "site" to the query, then at least duckduckgo will find it, but not google. You can even search for "timothycharlesholmseth.site" and not find it on google (or startpage.com, which uses google).
The fact that timothycharlesholmseth.site is being censored by google tells us all we need to know about Timothy Charles Holmseth.
The fact that timothycharlesholmseth.site is being censored by google tells us all we need to know about Timothy Charles Holmseth.
See also this short youtube video from "Agent Margaritaville" which makes it clear that it was TCH himself who was responsible for the imprisonment of Field McConnell (who he claimed to be helping) and the theft of all the considerable donations to his cause of saving the children.
Posted on April 28th, 2020
How covid-19 really works
The text of the article is included here.
I have been practicing emergency medicine for 30 years. In 1994 I invented an imaging system for teaching intubation, the procedure of inserting breathing tubes. This led me to perform research into this procedure, and subsequently teach airway procedure courses to physicians worldwide for the last two decades.
So at the end of March, as a crush of Covid-19 patients began overwhelming hospitals in New York City, I volunteered to spend 10 days at Bellevue, helping at the hospital where I trained. Over those days, I realized that we are not detecting the deadly pneumonia the virus causes early enough and that we could be doing more to keep patients off ventilators — and alive.
On the long drive to New York from my home in New Hampshire, I called my friend Nick Caputo, an emergency physician in the Bronx, who was already in the thick of it. I wanted to know what I was facing, how to stay safe and what his insights into airway management with this disease were. "Rich," he said, "it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before."
He was right. Pneumonia caused by the coronavirus has had a stunning impact on the city’s hospital system. Normally an E.R. has a mix of patients with conditions ranging from the serious, such as heart attacks, strokes and traumatic injuries, to the non-life-threatening, such as minor lacerations, intoxication, orthopedic injuries and migraine headaches.
During my recent time at Bellevue, though, almost all the E.R. patients had Covid pneumonia. Within the first hour of my first shift I inserted breathing tubes into two patients.
Even patients without respiratory complaints had Covid pneumonia. The patient stabbed in the shoulder, whom we X-rayed because we worried he had a collapsed lung, actually had Covid pneumonia. In patients on whom we did CT scans because they were injured in falls, we coincidentally found Covid pneumonia. Elderly patients who had passed out for unknown reasons and a number of diabetic patients were found to have it.
And here is what really surprised us: These patients did not report any sensation of breathing problems, even though their chest X-rays showed diffuse pneumonia and their oxygen was below normal. How could this be?
We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call "silent hypoxia" — "silent" because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature.
Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs in which the air sacs fill with fluid or pus. Normally, patients develop chest discomfort, pain with breathing and other breathing problems. But when Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don’t feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And by the time they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays). Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent.
To my amazement, most patients I saw said they had been sick for a week or so with fever, cough, upset stomach and fatigue, but they only became short of breath the day they came to the hospital. Their pneumonia had clearly been going on for days, but by the time they felt they had to go to the hospital, they were often already in critical condition.
In emergency departments we insert breathing tubes in critically ill patients for a variety of reasons. In my 30 years of practice, however, most patients requiring emergency intubation are in shock, have altered mental status or are grunting to breathe. Patients requiring intubation because of acute hypoxia are often unconscious or using every muscle they can to take a breath. They are in extreme duress. Covid pneumonia cases are very different.
A vast majority of Covid pneumonia patients I met had remarkably low oxygen saturations at triage — seemingly incompatible with life — but they were using their cellphones as we put them on monitors. Although breathing fast, they had relatively minimal apparent distress, despite dangerously low oxygen levels and terrible pneumonia on chest X-rays.
We are only just beginning to understand why this is so. The coronavirus attacks lung cells that make surfactant. This substance helps the air sacs in the lungs stay open between breaths and is critical to normal lung function. As the inflammation from Covid pneumonia starts, it causes the air sacs to collapse, and oxygen levels fall. Yet the lungs initially remain "compliant," not yet stiff or heavy with fluid. This means patients can still expel carbon dioxide — and without a buildup of carbon dioxide, patients do not feel short of breath.
Patients compensate for the low oxygen in their blood by breathing faster and deeper — and this happens without their realizing it. This silent hypoxia, and the patient’s physiological response to it, causes even more inflammation and more air sacs to collapse, and the pneumonia worsens until oxygen levels plummet. In effect, patients are injuring their own lungs by breathing harder and harder. Twenty percent of Covid pneumonia patients then go on to a second and deadlier phase of lung injury. Fluid builds up and the lungs become stiff, carbon dioxide rises, and patients develop acute respiratory failure.
By the time patients have noticeable trouble breathing and present to the hospital with dangerously low oxygen levels, many will ultimately require a ventilator.
Silent hypoxia progressing rapidly to respiratory failure explains cases of Covid-19 patients dying suddenly after not feeling short of breath. (It appears that most Covid-19 patients experience relatively mild symptoms and get over the illness in a week or two without treatment.)
A major reason this pandemic is straining our health system is the alarming severity of lung injury patients have when they arrive in emergency rooms. Covid-19 overwhelmingly kills through the lungs. And because so many patients are not going to the hospital until their pneumonia is already well advanced, many wind up on ventilators, causing shortages of the machines. And once on ventilators, many die.
Avoiding the use of a ventilator is a huge win for both patient and the health care system. The resources needed for patients on ventilators are staggering. Vented patients require multiple sedatives so that they don’t buck the vent or accidentally remove their breathing tubes; they need intravenous and arterial lines, IV medicines and IV pumps. In addition to a tube in the trachea, they have tubes in their stomach and bladder. Teams of people are required to move each patient, turning them on their stomach and then their back, twice a day to improve lung function.
There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter.
Pulse oximetry is no more complicated than using a thermometer. These small devices turn on with one button and are placed on a fingertip. In a few seconds, two numbers are displayed: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. Pulse oximeters are extremely reliable in detecting oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates.
Pulse oximeters helped save the lives of two emergency physicians I know, alerting them early on to the need for treatment. When they noticed their oxygen levels declining, both went to the hospital and recovered (though one waited longer and required more treatment). Detection of hypoxia, early treatment and close monitoring apparently also worked for Boris Johnson, the British prime minister.
Widespread pulse oximetry screening for Covid pneumonia — whether people check themselves on home devices or go to clinics or doctors’ offices — could provide an early warning system for the kinds of breathing problems associated with Covid pneumonia.
People using the devices at home would want to consult with their doctors to reduce the number of people who come to the E.R. unnecessarily because they misinterpret their device. There also may be some patients who have unrecognized chronic lung problems and have borderline or slightly low oxygen saturations unrelated to Covid-19.
All patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus should have pulse oximetry monitoring for two weeks, the period during which Covid pneumonia typically develops. All persons with cough, fatigue and fevers should also have pulse oximeter monitoring even if they have not had virus testing, or even if their swab test was negative, because those tests are only about 70 percent accurate. A vast majority of Americans who have been exposed to the virus don’t know it.
There are other things we can do as well to avoid immediately resorting to intubation and a ventilator. Patient positioning maneuvers (having patients lie on their stomach and sides) open up the lower and posterior lungs most affected in Covid pneumonia. Oxygenation and positioning helped patients breathe easier and seemed to prevent progression of the disease in many cases. In a preliminary study by Dr. Caputo, this strategy helped keep three out of four patients with advanced Covid pneumonia from needing a ventilator in the first 24 hours.
To date, Covid-19 has killed more than 40,600 people nationwide — more than 10,000 in New York State alone. Oximeters are not 100 percent accurate, and they are not a panacea. There will be deaths and bad outcomes that are not preventable. We don’t fully understand why certain patients get so sick, or why some go on to develop multi-organ failure. Many elderly people, already weak with chronic illness, and those with underlying lung disease do very poorly with Covid pneumonia, despite aggressive treatment.
But we can do better. Right now, many emergency rooms are either being crushed by this one disease or waiting for it to hit. We must direct resources to identifying and treating the initial phase of Covid pneumonia earlier by screening for silent hypoxia.
It’s time to get ahead of this virus instead of chasing it.
Posted on April 27th, 2020
Coping with quarantine
He's loud and foul-mouthed, but this 4:49 video lays out exactly what I was saying a month ago about how the man on the street should be supported during this time of crisis. I think the idea is rather obvious, yet as far as I know, no government has done this. Why not?
Posted on April 22nd, 2020
Decentralization coming?
In their hatred of the President, governers of various leftists states have suddenly discovered the 10th Amendment, which limits the powers of the federal government. Democrats have traditionally assumed that control and power should be ever more centralized. Now, however, they think that each state should be free to set their own lockdown schedule and pandemic practices, instead of having them dictated from on high. The mainstream media is, predictably enough, fanning the flames.
Methinks none of them have thought this through, as a consequent honoring of the 10th Amendment would require dismantling much of the federal government. I suspect that Trump secretly agrees, and is now egging the states on by posturing as the absolute dictator. Could this be the first step in a radical reformation of the federal government?
The Future Must Be Decentralized and Localized is another good article on the subject.
Posted on April 22nd, 2020
Tyranny of the majority
As if all the governmental tyranny weren't enough, we're rapidly coming up on the danger of having our neighbors dictate what we must do.
On 15th April a poll of 40,000+ people in Switzerland showed that a majority were totally in favor, or tending towards, all of the following:
- mandatory wearing a face mask in public
- mandatory vaccination
- "anonymized" movement tracking, whatever that means
This all goes to show how successful the fear porn has been. Politicians and the media have done an excellent job of scaring the masses into servile submission. They not only tolerate the government tyranny, they demand it.
Meanwhile, in America government experts are hoping to use this crisis to massively increase total surveillance.
Posted on April 20th, 2020
Thomas Binder
This Swiss medical expert was briefly committed to a psychiactric institution for questioning the party line. Die Weltwoche reports (in German). The comments are also interesting.
CJ Hopkins has written this outstanding article that lifts the curtain, revealing the policymakers frantically cranking the levers and dials to whip up the hysteria. It's called "manufacturing consent", and The Powers That Be have been doing this for a long time.
Posted on April 17th, 2020
Food chain
There have been stories of food shortages, dairy farmers dumping milk, and farmers forced to reduce their herds. This article explains why this is the case. Some of the comments are also very illuminating.
To summarize, traditionally 60% of food in America is prepared and consumed outside the home. That portion has now been reduced to zero, which doesn't mean that less food is being eaten, only that it is all being eaten at home now. Problem is that much of the food packaging has necessarily been targeted to the wholesale market, not the retail market that provides food for the home. The retail packaging industry was already running at near 100%, great for corporate efficiency, but impossible to ramp up to meet the suddenly increased demand. The 60% that was going to the wholesale market is now largely unusable. Thus the need to scale back production, which is unfortunate in the face of undiminished demand.
Posted on April 15th, 2020
Can you say "Police State"?
There are many articles and videos on the internet documenting blatant government overreach masquerading as "protecting public safety". This one summarizes it well.
In case you are suffering under the delusion that the purpose of the lockdown is to stop the spread of the Coronavirus, take a look at this.
Obviously what they really want is to track and trace everyone.
Repeat after me, kiddies: "It's for your own protection."
Posted on April 15th, 2020
Waking up
This 5:37 video documents a personal journey of awakening. Learning to think and research for himself, the author goes from detesting Trump to admiring him, and comes to embrace the Qanon movement. Whatever you do, think for yourself.
Posted on April 6th, 2020
Trust
In the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004), there is a brief scene (season 3, episode 4, at 31:31) which beautifully illustrates the meaning of the word trust. To understand the brief exchange, you need a little background info. Admiral Adamah, commander of the fleet with the remnant of humanity, has tasked Sharon with leading the assault to rescue the civilian population from the enemy androids. Thing is, she's one of those androids. Just before departure she asks the admiral: "How do you know? I mean, how do you really know, that you can trust me?" Adamah answers: "I don't. That's what trust is."
Posted on April 3rd, 2020
How the scam works
This report, Manufactured Pandemic: Testing People for Any Strain of a Coronavirus, Not Specifically for COVID-19Manufactured Pandemic: Testing People for Any Strain of a Coronavirus, Not Specifically for COVID-19, shows how they're running the covid-19 scam. Of course it also requires a lot of fake news, as detailed in my earlier post.
Meanwhile, updated 6.4.2020:
Dr. Andrew Kaufman seems to have tied this all together. Cells produce something called Exosomes, and they look just like covid-19. Under stress, cells tend to put out more of these exosomes. He posits that the RT-PCR test used to detect covid-19, is actually detecting exosomes. So the body is under stress (fear, EMF, etc) and produces the common symptoms, plus exosomes. The test detects these exosomes and people are declared to have covid-19. Meanwhile, researchers are studying the covid-19 virus, which is weaponized and patented, but not very deadly, and probably has nothing to do with the majority of "cases".
If the inventer of PCR is to be believed, PCR is not suitable as a diagnostic tool.
This report COVID-19 Is Saving Lives shows just how bogus this whole scare is.
Adding insult to injury, doctors in the US are being required to certify covid-19 as the cause of death for any patient who tests positive for covid-19.
According to this Israeli expert, the data shows that quarantine makes no difference at all.
Another voice questioning the need for lockdown.
Experts agree that quarantine is no longer a good idea.
This ER doctor in NYC committed suicide not long after seeing a horrifying onslaught of patients found DOA in ambulances, all of them COVID-19 patients. The suspicious among us might be inclined to suspect that they all died of something other than COVID-19. The conspiracy theorists among us might be inclined to suspect that she had help with her "suicide".
Here's a detailed analysis of the situation as of 6 April 2020.
The latest statistics straight from the CDC. Try as I might, I can't spot the crisis here. Maybe you have to be an expert like Dr. Fauci to see it.
If this keeps up much longer, morgues are going to start going out of business!
Unsurprisingly, these embarrassing charts are no longer available on the CDC website.
Posted on April 2nd, 2020
Singing your song
A soul might be compared to a song; each one is unique, and there's no end of possibilities. The performance of a song can be as beautifully straightforward as a soloist and one accompanist (Simple Gifts), or as magnificent as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with full orchestra and organ backing (How Firm a Foundation).
An incarnation could be thought of as a performance of the soul's song. A good performance involves getting it all right: words, notes, tempo, intonation, rhythm. How do we know when we've got it right? The key words are harmony, progress, and service.
Jesus could be considered the master musician, who came here to show us the way to get it right. Back then this was known as finding the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus told us we find it within ourselves. His unparalleled Sermon on the Mount maps out the way. It comes down to aligning ourselves with God. The more we do this, the more we'll make progress in achieving the kingdom of heaven, and the more harmonious our lives will be. Serving others is another marker on the road to salvation.
Worldly distractions and passions, false beliefs, misunderstandings; these can all lead us off the straight and narrow path. So, to sing our song well, we need to leave all that baggage behind. We need to detect the bad notes and replace them with the right ones. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to learn your song and perform it well, adding your voice to the symphony which is humanity.
Posted on March 31st, 2020
There is no Corona Pandemic
This video reports on an acute lack of patients at the biggest German hospitals. Additionally, press investigations are suppressed. Reports from Italy are similar, and explanations for the publicly announced crisis situation are discussed.
Try searching on Twitter for #emptyhospitals. So why are they setting up all manner of emergency facilities to accommodate the (nonexistent) overload? If it's all just to be prepared for an expected overload, then why is the media reporting that the hospitals are overflowing *now*, and that healthcare workers are overtaxed and working at their limits?
The alleged reason for the quarantine is to mitigate the overloading. Can you say HOAX ?
Posted on March 30th, 2020
Chinese Coverup
"I’m getting sick of hearing all the blame being thrown out in every direction for this virus. I’ve heard urban yuppie types complain about the barbarous habit of eating wildlife, introverted types who were happy reading books the entire crisis complain about the gall of some people for coming out to socialize, Americans freaking out at China for not controlling the virus, Chinese freaking out at the rest of the world for not imposing Chinese-style authoritarian measures in their countries and putting the rest of the world at danger, and so on and so on. None of it is helpful. I’m sure that reams of paper got spent producing Chinese government reports after SARS, and some of them probably said in font so big you could read it from the cheap seats: do not cover up information in the event of potential epidemic. And yet information silo’ing is the beating heart of the political system here. Their political system could no more help acting the way it did than ours can help acting the way it does. Shit happens sometimes, people. Instead of flipping out about why the world isn’t configured according to your preferences, adjust to the current reality, and focus on what’s within your control!"
Posted on March 30th, 2020