Aggregatore di feed

Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT, has provided a forensic analysis of the videos and evidence emerging from Iran’s 13th April swarm drone and missile ‘demonstation’ attack into Israel: A ‘message’, rather than an ‘assault’.

The leading Israeli daily, Yediot Ahoronot, has estimated the cost of attempting to down this Iranian flotilla at between $2-3 billion dollars. The implications of this single number are substantial.

Professor Postol writes:

“This indicates that the cost of defending against waves of attacks of this type is very likely to be unsustainable against an adequately armed and determined adversary”.
“The videos show an extremely important fact: All of the targets, whether drones or not, are shot down by air-to-air missiles”, [fired from mostly U.S. aircraft. Some 154 aircraft reportedly were aloft at the time] likely firing AIM-9x Sidewinder air to air missiles. The cost of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000”.

Furthermore:

“The fact that a very large number of unengaged ballistic missiles could be seen glowing as they reenter the atmosphere to lower altitudes [an indication of hyper-speed], indicates that whatever the effects of [Israel’s] David’s Sling and the Arrow missile defenses, they were not especially effective. Thus, the evidence at this point shows that essentially all or most of the arriving long-range ballistic missiles were not intercepted by any of the Israeli air and missile-defense systems”.

Postel adds, “I have analyzed the situation, and have concluded that commercially available optical and computational technology is more than capable of being adapted to a cruise missile guidance system to give it very high precision homing capability … it is my conclusion that the Iranians have already developed precision guided cruise missiles and drones”.

“The implications of this are clear. The cost of shooting down cruise missiles and drones will be very high and might well be unsustainable unless extremely inexpensive and effective anti-air systems can be implemented. At this time, no one has demonstrated a cost-effective defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability”.

Just to be clear, Postol is saying that neither the U.S. nor Israel has more than a partial defence to a potential attack of this nature – especially as Iran has dispersed and buried its ballistic missile silos across the entire terrain of Iran under the control of autonomous units which are capable of continuing a war, even were central command and communications to be completely lost.

This amounts to paradigm change – clearly for Israel, for one. The huge physical expenditure on air defence ordinance – 2-3 billion dollars worth – will not be repeated willy-nilly by the U.S. Netanyahu will not easily persuade the U.S. to engage with Israel in any joint venture against Iran, given these unsustainable air-defence costs.

But also, as a second important implication, these Air Defence assets are not just expensive in dollar terms, they simply are not there: i.e. the store cupboard is near empty! And the U.S. lacks the manufacturing capacity to replace these not particularly effective, high cost platforms speedily.

‘Yes, Ukraine’ … the Middle East paradigm interlinks directly with the Ukraine paradigm where Russia has succeeded in destroying so much of the western supplied, air-defence capabilities in Ukraine, giving Russia near complete air dominance over the skies.

Positioning scarce air defence ‘to save Israel’ therefore, exposes Ukraine (and slows the U.S. pivot to China, too). And given the recent passage of the funding Bill for Ukraine in Congress, clearly air defence assets are a priority for sending to Kiev – where the West looks increasingly trapped and rummaging for a way out that does not lead to humiliation.

But before leaving the Middle East paradigm shift, the implications for Netanyahu are already evident: He must therefore focus back to the ‘near enemy’ – the Palestinian sphere or to Lebanon – to provide Israel with the ‘Great Victory’ that his government craves.

In short, the ‘cost’ for Biden of saving Israel from the Iranian flotilla which had been pre-announced by Iran to be demonstrative and not destructive nor lethal is that the White House must put-up with the corollary – an attack on Rafah. But this implies a different form of cost – an electoral erosion through exacerbating domestic tensions arising from the on-going blatant slaughter of Palestinians.

It is not just Israel that bears the weight of the Iranian paradigm shift. Consider the Sunni Arab States that have been working in various forms of collaboration (normalisation) with Israel.

In the event of wider conflict embracing Iran, clearly Israel cannot protect them – as Professor Postol so clearly shows. And can they count on the U.S.? The U.S. faces competing demands for its scarce Air Defences and (for now) Ukraine, and the pivot to China, are higher on the White House priority ladder.

In September 2019, the Saudi Abqaiq oil facility was hit by cruise missiles, which Postol notes, “had an effective accuracy of perhaps a few feet, much more precise than could be achieved with GPS guidance (suggesting an optical and computational guidance system, giving a very precise homing capability)”.

So, after the Iranian active deterrence paradigm shift, and the subsequent Air Defence depletion paradigm shock, the putative coming western paradigm shift (the Third Paradigm) is similarly interlinked with Ukraine.

For the western proxy war with Russia centred on Ukraine has made one thing abundantly clear: this is that the West’s off-shoring of its manufacturing base has left it uncompetitive, both in simple trade terms, and secondly, in limiting western defence manufacturing capacity. It finds (post-13 April) that it does not have the Air Defence assets to go round: ‘saving Israel’; ‘saving Ukraine’ and preparing for war with China.

The western maximalisation of shareholder returns model has not adapted readily to the logistical needs of the present ‘limited’ Ukraine/Russia war, let alone provided positioning for future wars – with Iran and China.

Put plainly, this ‘late stage’ global imperialism has been living a ‘false dawn’: With the economy shifting from manufacturing ‘things’, to the more lucrative sphere of imagining new financial products (such as derivatives) that make a lot of money quickly, but which destabilise society (through increasing disparities of wealth); and which ultimately, de-stabilise the global system itself (as the World Majority states recoil from the loss of sovereignty and autonomy that financialism entails).

More broadly, the global system is close to massive structural change. As the Financial Times warns,

“the U.S. and EU cannot embrace national-security “infant industry” arguments, seize key value chains to narrow inequality, and break the fiscal and monetary ‘rules’, while also using the IMF and World Bank – and the economics profession– to preach free-market best practice to EM ex-China. And China can’t expect others not to copy what it does”. As the FT concludes, “the shift to a new economic paradigm has begun. Where it will end is very much up for grabs.”

‘Up for grabs’: Well, for the FT the answer may be opaque, but for the Global Majority is plain enough – “We’re going back to basics”: A simpler, largely national economy, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers. Call it ‘old- fashioned’ (the concepts have been written about for the last 200 years); yet it is nothing extreme. The notions simply reflect the flip side of the coin to Adam Smith’s doctrines, and that which Friedrich List advanced in his critique of the laissez-faire individualist approach of the Anglo-Americans.

‘European leaders’, however, see the economic paradigm solution differently:

“The ECB’s Panetta gave a speech echoing Mario Draghi’s call for “radical change”: He stated for the EU to thrive it needs a de facto national-security focused POLITICAL economy centered around: reducing dependence on foreign demand; enhancing energy security (green protectionism); advancing production of technology (industrial policy); rethinking participation in global value chains (tariffs/subsidies); governing migration flows (so higher labour costs); enhancing external security (huge funds for defence); and joint investments in European public goods (via Eurobonds … to be bought by ECB QE)”.

The ‘false dawn’ boom in U.S. financial services began as its industrial base was rotting away, and as new wars began to be promoted.

It is easy to see that the U.S. economy now needs structural change. Its real economy has become globally uncompetitive – hence Yellen’s call on China to curb its over-capacity which is hurting western economies.

But is it realistic to think that Europe can manage a relaunch as a ‘defence and national security-led political economy’, as Draghi and Panetta advocate as a continuation of war with Russia? Launched from near ground zero?

Is it realistic to think that the American Security State will allow Europe to do this, having deliberately reduced Europe to economic vassalage through causing it to abandon its prior business model based on cheap energy and selling high-end engineering products to China?

This Draghi-ECB plan represents a huge structural change; one that would take a decade or two to implement and would cost trillions. It would occur too, at a time of inevitable European fiscal austerity. Is there evidence that ordinary Europeans support such radical structural change?

Why then is Europe pursuing a path that embraces huge risks – one that potentially could drag Europe into a whirlpool of tensions ending in war with Russia?

For one main reason: The EU leadership held hubristic ambitions to turn the EU into a ‘geo-political’ empire – a global actor with the heft to join the U.S. at Top Table. To this end, the EU unreservedly offered itself as the auxiliary of the White House Team for their Ukraine project, and acquiesced to the entry price of emptying their armouries and sanctioning the cheap energy on which the economy depended.

It was this decision that has been de-industrialising Europe; that has made what remains of a real economy uncompetitive and triggered the inflation that is undermining living standards. Falling into line with Washington’s failing Ukraine project has released a cascade of disastrous decisions by the EU.

Were this policy line to change, Europe could revert to what it was: a trading association formed of diverse sovereign states. Many Europeans would settle for that: Placing the focus on making Europe competitive again; making Europe a diplomatic actor, rather than as a military actor.

Do Europeans even want to be at the American ‘top table’?

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post The Interlocking of Strategic Paradigms appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is so depressing to listen and read people calling for the death of protesting students in America and 2 million Palestinians – in Gaza and Rafah.  These people are pro-Maga.   They are Zionist.  They are Democrat.  They cross the spectrum and join the Uniparty.  It is the Collective Concept wherein if one person disobeys, all his people are guilty.  The guilt by association includes entire races.  There were supposedly 15,000 to 20,000 at the start of the annihilation.  EU Human Rights Monitor suggests that of the nearly 40,000 dead, roughly 2500 were actually Hamas. 

Israel has been involved in 18 wars/conflicts since they effected a coup in 1948 – five involved Hamas.  Prior to “Hamas” over 200,000 Palestinians had been killed and 3 million sent to refuge camps.  Yet somehow Hamas is to blame for the dissent – and Israel is defending itself by murdering unarmed civilians

Every protestor across the US, every sympathizer with human life are HAMAS!  Israelis in America are calling for the deportation of Americans who criticize Israel.  And somehow all the awakened are asleep again.   Israel says jump …  and Americans ask, ‘how high?’.

What happened to ‘tolerance’?  Bow down on your knees and lick the feet of black people.  Only black people allowed.  Only black owned businesses get money.  Suddenly, the flip side is Zion against everyone not Zion.  And tolerance means jail or death.  The illegals suddenly don’t exist.  And the focus is on ‘protesters’ – kids!

The ‘awakened’ have forgotten the protests of the 50’s – civil rights movement, 60’s – anti Vietnam War,  and 70’s women’s rights.  They have forgotten how FBI agents and SOROS paid agitators incite protests into radical violence. Should all of these protesters been jailed and/or deported?  Fomenting rage is the means to distract.

Thought Leaders:   “CSIS has drawn from original research and a series of high-level discussions with global thought leaders to explore the evolving contours of this order, its future dynamics, and the most effective pathways for U.S. engagement.”   What is a ‘thought leader’?

According to CSIS, likemindedness was the goal of the Global Rules Based Order.  Everyone must share one ideology.  Everyone must have one opinion that is fed into their mindbox.  Everyone must comply or be punished.  And suddenly – this democratic theory is upended because people don’t want to become automatons.  And that qualifies as racist, discriminatory, and terrorist.  Guantanamo –

As a result, CSIS declares that dealing with the Global South, particularly Russia and China, they are at a loss because these bulwark nations refuse to pander to the one thought project and instead support their political, economic, and social diversity from the Zionist Cartel.

CSIS Solution:  “appreciating these differences, and what these states share in their aspirations for the global order, will help Washington craft a more effective strategy for international engagement in the years ahead.”

In other words, the Zionist Cartel is going to use ‘thought leaders’ to craft a better means of disposing of these opposition countries in order to effectuate The Global Rules Based Order.

In solving this crisis of rebel children, CSIS has developed a schematic of partners and stakeholders who will work toward the exclusion of China and Russia in trade and technology.

I2U2:  Developed in 2021 encompassing the UAE, US, Israel and India, The Quad, is intent on replacing The BRICS.  Claiming to be a private/public project, I2U2 is actually a subsidiary of the Department of State under the Israeli banner.    Funding is exclusively American Taxpayers.  They appear to be the global partnership expansion of NED – National Endowment for Democracy.

Stakeholders:  Gavi Vax, Bezos Earth, Rockefeller Foundation, Ikea Foundation, World Bank, Unicef, and The Global Energy Alliance.  The Green Energy Alliance is a plethora of banks and  solar solutions to energy.  Attempting to bring onboard Middle East countries into the fray of the Green Solutions will never come to much fruition given their economies depend on oil – the entire strategy seems rather weak and pointless.  Israel too is drilling for oil off the Gaza coastline.  The future of energy is NOT solar and wind no matter how they frame this massive adventure into land degradation!

Bezos Earth Fund claims its creation is to ‘solve climate impacts’.  As a part of that initiative they are researching ‘alternative proteins’ – in line with Gates failed fake foods.  Apparently, FOOD is the second largest cause of climate change.   While pledging a $10 billion giveaway, so far the fund has given to ineffective stalwarts such as The World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense fund, etc… and has received hefty criticism from both the left and right as a result.  According to Guide Star, the Fund has failed to provide a Form 990 nonprofit return to the IRS since its inception in 2020.

It appears CSIS is overly confident in its future with these partners and peers revealing their lack of future global strategies.  The current state of the world is on a precipice – tilting between reality and fakery – an agenda the Zionist Regime is unwilling to relent.   Replacing the Rules Based Order with a new and improved rules based order is like selling Americans regurgitated stale zucchini – which becomes a toxic poison.  Been there…

This CSIS report also reveals – they really have no plan other than hamster spinning the airwaves hoping that Netanyahu will just be done with his death wish and in time the world will simply forget and move along.  Too many generations are witnessing this in graphic detail.   Their prized ‘youth market’ has defected.  The millennials are pissed.   And the Boomers are split down the middle – war hawks vs peacemakers.  America’s White House Handlers are NOT gaining traction and have seemingly lost the race to Agenda 2030 via endless wars, medical deaths, vaccine deaths, and a fraught and flailing economy.   NONE of which had to happen…

Reprinted with permission from Helena-The Nationalist Voice.

The post Global Rules Based Order of Collective Thought appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve been watching a lot of videos recently on the Civil Rights Lawyer YouTube channel. It’s a less sensationalized version of Cops Gone Wild. It is absolutely astonishing to see just what kind of “public servants,” all of them armed and dangerous, the taxpayers are footing the bill for.

Just in recent days, there was a roided out cop tearing a grandmother out of her car and throwing her roughly to the ground. Her “crime?” Driving fast in an effort to rush her three year old grandchild to the hospital. This police officer, like virtually all of them, was instantly aggressive, barking orders like a stereotypical drill sergeant, and never paused when she told him the situation. There have been other cases over the years of our beloved “public servants” stopping people who were rushing to the hospital. Citizens have died because these out of control tyrants couldn’t recognize a medical emergency. More importantly, they didn’t care. In one case, a then NFL player was detained while his mother in law died without him being able to say goodbye to her. So, sometimes even an athlete’s status doesn’t help.

In another case, a Black guy was checking his mail when a police car rolled up, and started questioning him. He pointed across the street and told them, “they called you.” A normal person would have said, “thank you,” and gone to that house. But not this guy. He became belligerent and confrontational. Which is the tactic every police officer uses in these very illuminating videos. They are never reasonable. They bark orders, and they expect the citizens who pay their salaries to obey them without question. At any rate, the cop ended up tasering this Black guy. Now, like almost all the Black non-suspects we see in these videos, he was combative and called the cop out on his behavior. Police don’t like that. The many Whites they harass and abuse aren’t as quick to defend themselves. They think of the cops as the “good guys.”

In another recent video, a White guy in West Virginia was stopped for having no inspection sticker. This is a serious crime in America 2.0, the kind that called for four police officers to arrive at the scene. These bullies always call for “backup,” even if they’re throwing an elderly invalid out of a wheelchair. “Officer safety” and all that. No one seems to care about citizen safety. The Civil Rights Lawyer showed, as he often does, just how thoroughly these cops lie in their reports. In this case, the cop claimed the guy “refused” to get out of the car, when all he did was very reasonably ask him, “what crime am I suspected of?” They hate when you do that. Police think they have the right to order you to do anything, and if you even hesitate, they begin yelling, and at best will throw you to the ground. At worst, they will shoot you.

That guy in West Virginia was charged with two counts of drug possession, even though the substances they found (after violating his Fourth Amendment rights by searching his car) were proven to be legal. And yet, they still charged him. Well, I guess that’s better than just planting the drugs in his car, which cops have been caught on tape doing many times. It’s a police state thing, you wouldn’t understand. It takes a special breed to be able to frame someone like that, and live with it on your conscience. In other cases, these “public servants” have been caught on tape threatening to make up charges on “uncooperative” citizens (in other words, citizens who know their rights under the Constitution).

In yet another startling video, a high school girl was stopped by a cop after pulling into a gas station. Her “crime?” Going 37 in a 30 mph zone. Wow- very scary stuff. The video showed the young girl to be understandably nervous, fumbling while trying to find her license and registration. The cop quickly lost patience, as they often do. Our brave hero pulled her from the car and body slammed her to the pavement. Her father showed up and acted far more reasonably than I would have if it was my daughter being assaulted like that. This bold officer was actually going to take this poor, frightened kid to jail. The charges in that case were subsequently dropped. The lawless bullies with badges in these cases almost always continue on in their positions, free to abuse other unsuspecting citizens.

In another case, an older guy riding his bicycle at some fair was stopped for unclear reasons by several officers. Now, these were bicycle officers, but they showed the same fighting spirit as regular patrol officers. They “suspected” this poor soul of being intoxicated. As might be predicted, they got physical with this harmless old guy, and slammed his head into the concrete. After spending a year in the hospital with severe brain injuries, he died. So they murdered someone who, at worst, might have had too much to drink before he got on his bicycle. Another elderly bicyclist, who’d been hit by a truck, was thrown onto the concrete as well by another courageous “public servant,” and he would die as well. There are no adequate words here.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Standing Army of the State appeared first on LewRockwell.

We’ve said from the beginning that far from the science dictating the agenda, we have the reverse: the agenda dictating the science, or at least what is passed off as science.

The globalist front group that has hijacked our government and is now waging a War on Democracy has an agenda that includes, for example, the imposition of lockdowns and the social and economic destruction they were intended to inflict.

“Science” was and still is invented or made up on the fly to justify that agenda.

But lockdowns run contrary to the mores and customs of the people, human instinct, actual science, evidence and, indeed, common ruddy sense and are thus very hard to enforce without provoking a revolt.

This particular attack on the people was intended, among other things, to cause so much destruction and dismay that by the time some reckless maniacs came along with experimental and possibly genocidal pseudo vaccines, people would submit to them without a fight if it meant all this disruption, inconvenience and upset would be over.

But the subversives occupying offices of state had a problem: how do you get people to comply with anything so manifestly stupid?

The answer of course was that you had to ramp up the terror and frighten a  bewildered and misinformed public into compliance with their own suppression.

Enter SAGE’s SPI-B committee top-heavy with an inordinate number the expert behavioral psychologists, among these a leading Communist Party member, whose expertise in psychological warfare could be used to create in  the public mind the fear required.

And to a degree, it worked. But not well enough and now as the operation starts to unravel and the truth of what has been done permeates relentlessly through the force screens of censorship into public consciousness, justice and retribution loom for their crimes against the nation and against humanity.

Seeing the writing on the wall and knowing the “just following orders” excuse will not let them off the hook, some of the cynical manipulators of  SAGE have begun to distance themselves from Suppression Central and develop a conscience . . .

Read the Whole Article

The post Ramping Up the Threat appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The whole world thinks that Gaza is occupied by Israel. The truth is that the whole world is occupied by Israel except Gaza.” (Anonymous)

This makes sense as the whole world – or its Western “leaders” (sic) – is cheering for Zionist-Israel. But Gaza and Palestine are defending their turf. Not to be occupied by Israel. 

They will succeed. At a high cost. Yes. But Palestine will prevail. They will not be defeated, and the Zionist atrocities, the endless horrifying torture, the indiscriminate killing, bombing, shooting, destruction of vital infrastructure, hospitals, schools – more than 40,000 Palestinians killed, most of them in Gaza, of whom more than 70% women and children – MUST not go unpunished.

The Nuremberg Code on War Crimes and Human Rights MUST be revived.

In the last few days, mainstream and non-mainstream media reported of massive student encampments, protesting for Gaza, for Palestine against Zionist-Israel. It is almost reminiscent of anti-Vietnam War movements of the late 60s and early 70s.

According to Resistance News Network (@RNN_Messaging_Bot), this appears to be happening at more than 45 top universities around the world, including dozens in the US. Many of them Ivy League learning institutes, such as MIT, Harvard, Yale, Berkley, UCLA, Brown, Columbia, Emery, City University NYC, and many more.

They are joined by universities in Australia and France.

How real is this? A unilateral defense cry for Palestine, not only by Palestinian and Arab students but by students of all colors and creeds in solidarity.

Knowing that these largely Zionist-funded universities are likely going to crack down on these encampments – what has already started – students may be suspended.

Then, all of a sudden appears a more sobering set of news – namely that Soros’s Open Society Foundation is funding most of the student anti-Israel protests, as reported three days ago by RT.

Why would Soros, the Woke Master, suddenly fund anti-Israel cum Zionist protests around the globe, of course, with focus on the US?

“Divide to conquer”?

Creating “false flags”?

Making believe that there is a huge pro-Palestine movement taking place at US universities?

It may give universities’ administrators the opportunity to officially – with much fanfare – crack down on student camps on university grounds, demonstrating concerned universities pro-Zionist-Israel stand (naturally, supporting their funders), letting future students know what they may be up to, in case they decide to apply to these universities.

The emerging bigger picture might be that student protests can be wiped out by the Powers-that-be, easily supported by the system’s forces of order, police, and military, if needed.

In which case Soros’s agenda is pro-Israel, pro-WEF, similarly as the Woke Movement supports the objectives of the WEF’s Great Reset and the UN Agenda 2030 – massive population reduction and control of every corner of human existence.

Almost simultaneously appear new speculations. RT reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could charge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top officials with war crimes and issue warrants for their arrest as early as this week. This is based on an NBC News report of 29 April 2024. Also included in warrants issued may be Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, army chief Herzl Halevi, and other unnamed senior military officers.

However, another sobering note, in NBC’s own words,

“Israel is working through diplomatic channels to try to stop the warrants being issued.”

Does anybody believe Israel may fail in her attempt to stop the warrants?

Who controls the ICC? Or asked differently, who dares going against the Zionist’s and Zionist-Washington’s “wishes”?

The ICC simply told NBC that it “has an ongoing independent investigation in relation to the situation in the State of Palestine” and has “no further comment to make at this stage.” See this.

*

What if the so-called student movement, the ICC “attempt” to arrest top Israeli officials including the Prime Minister, other apparently increasing protests around the globe against Israel, is but a new propaganda sting, demonstrating that despite all opposition to Zionist-Israel wiping Palestine off the map – stopping Zionism is not going to happen.

In the words of an “anonymous” above:

“The truth is that the whole world is occupied by Israel except Gaza.”

Once this lesson sinks in, the world may wake up and have a chance to free itself from Zionism’s evil claws.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Students Trigger To Stop Wars? appeared first on LewRockwell.

I strongly recommend getting sensible sun exposure each day, and one of the reasons why is because it helps naturally optimize your vitamin D levels. Low vitamin D levels are linked to an increased risk of cancers,1 while vitamin D can attach to the vitamin D receptor (VDR) in your cells, setting off a series of signals that may affect how they grow, develop and survive.2

In this way, vitamin D acts like a brake on the process of cell growth in many tissues of the body, helping to control the speed at which cells multiply. This is particularly important when it comes to cancer because one of the key features of this disease is cells growing out of control. Moreover, vitamin D has been observed in animal studies to help delay some age-related changes by activating another important pathway via the vitamin D receptor.

This pathway involves a molecule called Nrf2, which plays a crucial role in protecting your body from oxidative stress and DNA damage — two factors that are commonly linked to the development of cancer.3 Overall, evidence continues to accumulate showing that vitamin D is a strong ally to combat cancer.4

Vitamin D Reduces Cancer Mortality

Worldwide, cancer is the No. 2 cause of death, behind only cardiovascular disease.5 Meanwhile, the global prevalence of vitamin D deficiency (defined as a level of less than 20 ng/mL) and insufficiency (defined as a level of 20 to less than 30 ng/mL) is 40% to 100%.6 Although increasing vitamin D levels may help to reduce cancer deaths, health officials rarely recommend optimizing levels for this purpose.

For example, research has shown that once you reach a minimum serum vitamin D level of 40 ng/mL, your risk for cancer diminishes by 67%, compared to having a level of 20 ng/mL or less.7

A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Ageing Research Reviews also found vitamin D3 supplementation reduced cancer mortality by 6%. This wasn’t considered statistically significant, but when only studies involving daily vitamin D intake were analyzed, cancer mortality dropped by a significant 12%.8 According to the researchers:9

“From a biological perspective, it is plausible that a sufficient vitamin D status has an impact on cancer prognosis: by binding to the vitamin D receptor (VDR), the active hormone 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D) influences signaling pathways that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and cell survival, and thus acts as an anti-proliferative agent in many tissues and can slow the growth of malignant cells.”

Other research also supports vitamin D’s role in protecting against cancer death. In one study of 25,871 patients, vitamin D supplementation was found to reduce the risk for metastatic cancer and death by 17%. The risk was reduced by as much as 38% among those who also maintained a healthy weight.10,11

What’s particularly noteworthy is this study only gave participants 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily and didn’t measure their blood levels. Despite these research flaws, a significant benefit was still found. However, other research has found even more striking benefits, including a GrassrootsHealth analysis published in PLOS ONE.

It showed women with a vitamin D level at or above 60 ng/mL (150 nmol/L) had an 82% lower risk of breast cancer compared to those with levels below 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L).12 Meanwhile, risks of lung cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, bladder cancer and lymphoma are higher in people with low vitamin D levels, while having higher levels is associated with a better prognosis in cases of breast and colorectal cancers.13

The Ageing Research Reviews study further revealed that daily vitamin D supplementation was particularly beneficial for people aged 70 and over, as well as those who took vitamin D daily and were later diagnosed with cancer. Study author Ben Schöttker, Ph.D., with the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, further explained:14

“This does imply that basically everyone aged 50 and older, including people who have never had cancer, might profit from vitamin D supplementation if they are vitamin D insufficient … Doctors cannot know who might develop cancer at a later time.”

Vitamin D Has Anticancer Effects Against Many Types of Cancer

A mini review on the impact of vitamin D on cancer, published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, pointed out that while vitamin D is widely recognized for its essential role in regulating the balance of minerals in the body, a deficiency has been linked to the onset and progression of various cancers.15 Vitamin D targets cancer in multiple ways, including:16

• Anticancer effects, which means it targets different stages of cancer development and progression, including the initiation, growth and spread of cancer cells.
• Antimetastatic effects, which refers to the ability to stop cancer cells from spreading from the original tumor site to other parts of the body. Since metastasis is often responsible for the fatal outcomes of cancers, preventing the spread can significantly improve survival rates.
• Anti-tumorigenic, meaning vitamin D helps prevent tumor formation or the growth of tumors. This can involve mechanisms like inducing cell death in cancer cells, blocking cell cycle progression, or inhibiting pathways that fuel tumor growth.

The review highlighted vitamin D’s role against the following cancers:17

In terms of breast cancer, the leading cause of death for women globally, vitamin D deficiency is common among patients, and those who are deficient are more likely to have more aggressive and harder-to-treat subtypes of breast cancer, such as higher grade and estrogen receptor-negative tumors.

The study also highlighted the role of genetic differences in the VDR that could influence breast cancer risk. In particular, in certain populations like North Indian women from New Delhi, variations in the VDR gene were identified as potential risk factors.18

In prostate cancer — the most common cancer in men — low levels of vitamin D were linked to high levels of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in the prostate which is associated with the progression of prostate cancer.19 In addition, vitamin D may influence the activity of sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), which is known as a longevity protein. Optimizing your vitamin D levels may help boost your body’s natural cancer defenses, in part, via mechanisms involving SIRT1.20

Additional research suggests there may be considerable variation in how different individuals’ genes respond to vitamin D supplementation, which might explain why not everyone benefits equally from extra vitamin D.

For best results, the scientists suggest vitamin D supplementation should be personalized and “advocate for options tailored to individual vitamin D needs, combined with a comprehensive intervention that favors prevention through a healthy environment and responsible health behaviors.”21

Why Sun Exposure Is the Best Source of Vitamin D

On a typical sunny day, your body may produce up to 25,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D,22 although many people aren’t in the sun enough to optimize their vitamin D levels. However, I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D from proper sun exposure, if possible, as it provides benefits beyond vitamin D optimization.

Higher levels of vitamin D may even serve as a marker for healthy sun exposure, which in turn may be responsible for many of the health benefits, which include reduced risk of cancer and increased longevity, attributed to vitamin D. Regular sun exposure, for instance, enhances production of melatonin — a potent anticancer agent.23

Near-infrared rays from the sun penetrate deep into your body and activate cytochrome c oxidase, which in turn stimulates the production of melatonin inside your mitochondria. Your mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of your body. A byproduct of this ATP production is reactive oxidative species (ROS), which are responsible for oxidative stress.

Excessive amounts of ROS will damage the mitochondria, contributing to suboptimal health, inflammation and chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and thrombosis (blood clots). But melatonin essentially mops up ROS that damage your mitochondria. So, by getting plenty of sun exposure during the day, your mitochondria will be bathed in melatonin, thereby reducing oxidative stress.24,25

If you’re unable to get adequate sun exposure each day, vitamin D supplementation may be necessary. Keep in mind that 20 ng/mL, which is often used as the cutoff for vitamin D deficiency, has repeatedly been shown to be grossly insufficient for good health and disease prevention, which means the true prevalence of people without optimal levels of vitamin D is even greater.

The only way to determine how much sun exposure is enough and/or how much vitamin D3 you need to take is to measure your vitamin D level, ideally twice a year. Once you’ve confirmed your vitamin D levels via testing, adjust your sun exposure and/or vitamin D3 supplementation accordingly. Then, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level.

The Optimal Vitamin D Level for Cancer Prevention

The optimal level for health and disease prevention, including cancer prevention, is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (150-200 nmol/L), while the cutoff for sufficiency appears to be around 40 ng/mL. In Europe, the measurements you’re looking for are 150 to 200 nmol/L and 100 nmol/L respectively.

It’s important to remember that calcium, vitamin D3, magnesium and vitamin K2 must be properly balanced for optimal overall health. Your best and safest bet is to simply eat more calcium-, magnesium- and vitamin K2-rich foods, along with sensible sun exposure.

However, if you find supplementation is necessary after a serum vitamin D test, also supplement with magnesium and vitamin K2 (MK-7) to ensure proper balance. You’ll also want to ensure you’re following an overall healthy lifestyle to reduce your cancer risk as much as possible. As researchers explained in Nutrients:26

“Vitamin D supplementation is not the magic pill that miraculously solves the cancer burden or that can replace a healthy lifestyle. It is necessary to foster a good environment and invigorate a healthy lifestyle, including a high-quality diet and physical activity. Both have been proven to confer health benefits in many diseases, including cancer, and are the best preventive measures available.”

Sources and References

• 1, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology July 2023, Volume 231, 106308
• 2, 3 Ageing Research Reviews June 2023, Volume 87, 101923, Introduction
• 4 Substack, Dr. William Makis, April 18, 2024
• 5 J Thorac Dis. 2017 Mar; 9(3): 448–451
• 6 Endocr Pract. 2021 May; 27(5): 484–493., Introduction
• 7 PLOS ONE 2016; 11 (4): e0152441
• 8, 9, 13 Ageing Research Reviews June 2023, Volume 87, 101923
• 10 JAMA Network Open 2020;3(11):e2025850
• 11 The Sentinel November 22, 2020
• 12 PLOS ONE June 15, 2015 (PDF)
• 14 Medical News Today May 17, 2023
• 20 Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24(7), 6154; doi: 10.3390/ijms24076154
• 21, 26 Nutrients 2022, 14(21), 4512; doi: 10.3390/nu14214512
• 22 J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2019 May;189:228-239. doi: 10.1016/j.jsbmb.2018.12.010. Epub 2019 Jan 4., Abstract
• 23 Youtube, The Joe Cohen Show, Episode 1, October 25, 2022, 4:00
• 24 Physiology February 5, 2020 DOI: 10.1152/physiol.00034.2019
• 25 YouTube, MedCram, Sunlight: Optimize Health and Immunity January 21, 2022

The post More Evidence Showing Vitamin D Combats Cancer appeared first on LewRockwell.

“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.”—Former presidential advisor Bertram Gross

The American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism.

The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.

This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past fifty years regardless of their political affiliation.

Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton: they have all been complicit in carrying out the Deep State’s agenda.

Frankly, it really doesn’t matter who occupies the White House, because it is a profit-driven, unelected bureaucracy—call it whatever you will: the Deep State, the Controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the corporate elite, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—that is actually calling the shots.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer that spells out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one seems to be talking about anymore.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS. In the militarized police culture that is America today, where you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is rarely held accountable for violating your rights, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE. This governmental scheme to deprive Americans of their liberties—namely, the right to property—is being carried out under the guise of civil asset forfeiture, a government practice wherein government agents (usually the police and now TSA agents) seize private property they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then, whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the government keeps the citizen’s property and it’s virtually impossible to get it back.

D is for DRONES. Nearly 1500 police departments across the U.S. include drones as part of their technological arsenal, and that number is growing. Although drones may be used for benevolent purposes, they have increasingly become extensions of the surveillance state, carrying out warrantless and constant mass aerial surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. New autonomous police drones can “read a license plate from 800 feet away and follow a vehicle from a distance of 3 miles.”

E is for EMERGENCY STATE. From 9/11 to COVID-19 and beyond, we have been the subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. The government’s ongoing attempts to declare so-called national emergencies in order to circumvent the Constitution’s system of checks and balances constitutes yet another expansion of presidential power that exposes the nation to further constitutional peril.

F is for FASCISM. A study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere economic units or databits.

G is for GLOBAL POLICE. The federal government has distributed more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment such as drones, tanks, and grenade launchers to domestic police departments across the country. As a result, most small-town police forces now have enough firepower to render any citizen resistance futile. By the time you take those small-town police forces, train them to look and act like the military, and then enlist them to be part of the United Nations’ Strong Cities Network program, you not only have a standing army that operates beyond the reach of the Constitution but one that is part of a global police force.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS. The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions, with federal agencies as varied as the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration stockpiling millions of lethal hollow-point bullets, which violate international law. Ironically, while the government continues to push for stricter gun laws for the general populace, the U.S. military’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free. The key word here, however, is control. This “connected” industry propels us closer to a future where police agencies apprehend virtually anyone if the government “thinks” they may commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by private corporations, this profit-driven form of mass punishment has given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for petty crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they may have a reason to do so. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between the citizenry and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by law enforcement officials.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country. This data collected on tens of thousands of innocent people is also being shared between police agencies, as well as with government fusion centers and private companies. This puts Big Brother in the driver’s seat.

M is for MAIN CORE. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation. As Salon reports, this database, reportedly dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by the Army and FEMA in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security. There are at least 8 million Americans in the Main Core database.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing to the militarization of the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for routine police matters. In fact, more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually possession of some small amount of drugs.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION and OVERREGULATION. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. As a result of this overcriminalization, we’re seeing an uptick in Americans being arrested and jailed for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room.

P is for PATHOCRACY and PRECRIME. When our own government treats us as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police and other government agents, mistreated, and then jailed in profit-driven private prisons if we dare step out of line, we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic. Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.” Couple that with the government’s burgeoning precrime programs, which will use fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics in order to identify and deter so-called potential “extremists,” dissidents or rabble-rousers. Bear in mind that anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—is now viewed as an extremist.

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY. Qualified immunity allows police officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing. Conveniently, those deciding whether a cop should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same system, all cronies with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS. The courts have increasingly erred on the side of giving government officials—especially the police—vast discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood draws and even anal and vaginal probes for a broad range of violations, no matter how minor the offense. In the past, strip searches were resorted to only in exceptional circumstances where police were confident that a serious crime was in progress. In recent years, however, strip searches have become routine operating procedures in which everyone is rendered a suspect and, as such, is subjected to treatment once reserved for only the most serious of criminals.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of the electronic concentration camp in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

T is for TASERS. Nonlethal weapons such as tasers, stun guns, rubber pellets and the like have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. These “nonlethal” weapons also enable police to aggress with the push of a button, making the potential for overblown confrontations over minor incidents that much more likely. A Taser Shockwave, for instance, can electrocute a crowd of people at the touch of a button.

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE. No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, often attributed to a fear for their safety. Yet the fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection.

V is for OPERATION VIGILANT EAGLE. One of several government initiatives dating back to 2009 that call for heightened scrutiny of those who challenge the government’s authority, this particular program calls for surveillance of military veterans, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” Coupled with a report that defines extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS. Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves, scanning devices and government mobile units are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home. While these mobile scanners are being sold to the American public as necessary security and safety measures, we can ill afford to forget that such systems are rife with the potential for abuse, not only by government bureaucrats but by the technicians employed to operate them.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. This top-secret program “allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness” against you, you are now be tracked based on what you buy, where you go, what you do in public, and how you do what you do. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country.

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE. We have moved into a new paradigm in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior or for saying the “wrong” word. In some jurisdictions, students have also been penalized under school zero tolerance policies for such inane “crimes” as carrying cough drops, wearing black lipstick, bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades. The lesson being taught to our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is this: in the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician, police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).

None of these dangers have dissipated in any way, and yet suddenly, no one seems to be talking about any of the egregious governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how freedom dies.

If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the Tenth Amendment, which affirms that “we the people” (in the form of juries and local governments) have the power to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

Nullify everything.

Nullify the court cases. Nullify the laws. Nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the Constitution.

It’s time to rein in our runaway government, reclaim our freedoms, and restore justice in America.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Steady Slide Towards Tyranny: How Freedom Dies from A to Z appeared first on LewRockwell.

In this time of widespread protests at American universities, it would be wise for the academic world as a whole to reconsider what these universities have become and why they are so vulnerable to student disruptions.  And then it will discover that instead of being places for quiet contemplation and study and discourse, universities have become another fundamental institution taken over by a do-gooding liberalism (or often wokeism) that is supposed to have “diverse” leaders treating its students as mollycoddled babies deserving protection from life’s realities and nurtured in simplistic views of a complicated world.

It is time for an end to that.

Time for universities to say that protests are not allowed.  We are not an open space for any group to gather and voice discontent for any cause and thus disrupt the essential purpose for which we exist, to foster learning and encourage research in a peaceful atmosphere where scholars in traditional disciplines open up to respectful students the world of thought and study so that they may be useful citizens in useful careers in a complex life.

There is no “right” to protest here, the constitution does not apply to academic institutions but to governments only—go look at the First Amendment, “to assemble and to petition Government”—and we have determined that they would interfere with our obligation to give you a place where you are free to study and learn.  As to other points of that amendment, you have no “right” to free speech, either, and we allow dissent and disagreement within the classroom only lest it similarly disrupt

You are paying us money so that we may provide faculty and administrators to provide convenient classes to teach you the essentials of a Western education, not so that you can speak abut anything at all or protest whatever displeases you.  Final.

If universities would understand themselves this way, they would warn students from the start that disruptive protest will not be allowed and if you engage in one you will be arrested, fined, and disciplined, including expulsion from the university,  forfeiting whatever fees and tuition you have paid.  You had better rethink what rights you have here and what you gave up when you agreed to be a member of this community.

Not that I think that this will happen at most places.  The kind of administrations fostered these days believe in the tenets liberalism has given them, including free speech and willful assembly. The fact that also so many of them are led by women does not encourage the idea that strong discipline for protest on campus is likely, since it is a simple truism that women are less likely to be disciplinarians within a family than men. (“Wait till your father comes home!”)  This has proved true so far this spring.

It is worth trying to get our universities to start thinking along these lines, nonetheless.  No point in not trying to return the academy to what it was supposed to be all along.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of 19 books over 60 years, including SDS, a history of a student activist movement in the 1960’s.

The post There’s No ‘Right’ to Protest on Campus appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di Weimin Chen

All'inizio di quest'anno l'Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ha nominato Island in Between nella categoria Miglior cortometraggio documentario al novantaseiesimo Academy Awards. Anche se alla fine non è riuscito a portare a casa l'Oscar, il documentario ha attirato l'attenzione sulla poco conosciuta isola Kinmen e sulla sua precaria posizione come punto di svolta nelle relazioni tra Taiwan, la Cina continentale e il continuo coinvolgimento degli Stati Uniti. Il regista taiwanese/americano, S. Leo Chiang, racconta scene di vita della gente del posto contrapposte alla temuta possibilità di guerra che incombe sulle loro teste, poiché le coste della terraferma si trovano a distanza visibile.

Nel documentario un enorme altoparlante puntato sulla baia di Xiamen diffonde la voce della cantante pop taiwanese Teresa Teng, mentre canta dolcemente i suoi successi e lancia provocazioni politiche alla città continentale più vicina: “Spero solo che tutti voi sulla terraferma godrete della stessa democrazia e libertà di cui godiamo noi”. Chiang lo ha ribadito anche in un'intervista:

da qui si possono vedere, sentire e percepire cose che non si vedono, sentono e percepiscono da Taipei o dal resto dell'isola di Taiwan. Molti di loro [che vivono a Taiwan] credono che siamo sempre stati amichevoli con la gente in Cina e sosteniamo relazioni più strette [con la Cina].

La sfumatura del popolo taiwanese nella gestione delle relazioni con la Cina sembra del tutto sfuggita agli americani e si vede nella politica di Washington.

Confermati i Berretti verdi di stanza a poche miglia dalle coste della Cina

L'isola principale di Kinmen si trova a sole sei miglia dalla città cinese continentale di Xiamen e alcune parti dell suo arcipelago sono a sole 2,5 miglia di distanza. Mentre Taiwan e il suo ruolo chiave nelle tensioni tra Stati Uniti e Cina stanno guadagnando attenzione, molte meno persone hanno sentito parlare di Kinmen. Ciò potrebbe cambiare man mano che gli Stati Uniti aumentano il loro livello di impegno, inviando lì consiglieri militari e forze speciali dell’esercito americano, meglio conosciute come Berretti Verdi.

Solo un paio di settimane dopo la nomination all'Oscar per Island in Between è stato annunciato che i consiglieri militari statunitensi avrebbero iniziato dispiegamenti a lungo termine sull'isola per assistere nell'addestramento nei campi anfibi dell'esercito taiwanese e migliorare le loro capacità nel contrastare le incursioni nemiche. Gli schieramenti sono stati pianificati insieme a vari altri tipi di supporto per l’esercito di Taiwan ai sensi della legge sull’autorizzazione della difesa nazionale del 2023 e includono anche i Berretti verdi del 1° Gruppo delle Forze Speciali, che sono permanentemente di stanza in due basi del 101° Battaglione di Ricognizione Anfibia. La presenza di Berretti verdi a Kinmen e in un altro gruppo di isole periferiche chiamato Penghu è stata confermata dal ministro della Difesa taiwanese, Chiu Kuo-cheng.

Un altro aspetto della cooperazione ai sensi del National Defense Authorization Act include l'addestramento da parte dei Berretti verdi delle loro controparti a Taiwan sull'uso del Black Hornet Nano, un piccolo veicolo aereo senza pilota che assiste nella sorveglianza e nella raccolta di informazioni. Il comando dell’aviazione e delle forze speciali taiwanesi ha mostrato interesse per l’acquisto di questi microdroni e probabilmente gli Stati Uniti accetteranno. Nessuno crede veramente che un gruppo di forze speciali dell’esercito americano di stanza a Kinmen con piccoli droni di osservazione farebbe alcuna differenza se la Cina avviasse un’invasione. Sembra che questa mossa serva come presa di posizione contro la Cina, soprattutto come segnale che l’America stanzierà sfacciatamente e apertamente forze speciali a poche miglia dalla terraferma. È a dir poco provocatorio, soprattutto perché anche un piccolo errore di calcolo potrebbe portare al conflitto aperto.

Fiammate su Taiwan

Poche settimane dopo il sopraccitato stanziamento di forze speciali, la tensione è divampata a Kinmen quando due pescatori cinesi sono annegati in seguito a un inseguimento da parte della guardia costiera taiwanese la quale è stata accusata di aver oltrepassato la sua giurisdizione; a questo fatto la guardia costiera cinese ha risposto salendo su una barca turistica e scortandola di nuovo a Kinmen. Il giorno successivo i taiwanesi hanno affermato di aver allontanato le navi della guardia costiera cinese che erano entrate nelle acque vicino all'isola. Anche se questi incidenti non hanno comportato conseguenze più gravi, la crescente attenzione su Kinmen sta sollevando segnali d’allarme sul fatto che l’isola sta diventando un punto caldo per le tensioni tra le due sponde dello Stretto.

Taiwan è stata proclamata parte integrante della Cina dalla Repubblica popolare con rivendicazioni che risalgono a prima della fine della guerra civile cinese. Xi Jinping ha messo in gioco la sua reputazione e la sua eredità nella riunificazione dell’isola con la terraferma. Alti funzionari dell’intelligence americana affermano che Xi ha ordinato ai suoi militari di essere pronti a invadere l’isola entro il 2027. In questo contesto l’esercito cinese ha aumentato il dispiegamento di forze aeree che attraversano le zone di identificazione aerea di Taiwan, ha eseguito esercitazioni marittime e ha fatto sentire il suo peso nel Mar Cinese Meridionale.

Parlando al Washington Post, Tom Shugart, membro senior aggiunto del Center for a New American Security, ha affermato che “queste esercitazioni diventano sempre più grandi. Poiché il numero e la frequenza continuano a crescere, diventa molto più difficile sapere se la prossima volta sarà quella vera”. Le posizioni e le linee di politica del governo americano che lo pongono apertamente in opposizione alla Cina in una rivalità geopolitica hanno spinto le relazioni a livelli molto bassi.

Alle porte di chi?

Chiang conclude il suo documentario chiedendosi: “Quando questi giovani arriveranno a Kinmen, saranno meravigliati, come me, dei tramonti pacifici? Gli stessi che mio padre deve aver visto quando prestava servizio qui tanti anni fa? E dalla gentilezza delle persone di qui che sono intrappolate nel fuoco incrociato?” Le sue parole suonano vere sia per i giovani taiwanesi che si recano a Kinmen per il servizio militare obbligatorio, sia per le truppe americane che ora sono di stanza lì. A livello generale, Kinmen, Taiwan e tutti i loro abitanti sono tragicamente nel mirino della rivalità tra Stati Uniti e Cina.

Come nel caso della narrativa sull’Ucraina e l’invasione russa, la narrativa americana riguardo Taiwan punta alle azioni provocatorie della Cina nei confronti di quest’ultima, respingendo al tempo stesso la possibilità che le consegne di armi e il rafforzamento militare di Washington in quella parte della regione indo-pacifica vengano percepiti come provocazioni dal punto di vista di Pechino. In un  discorso elettorale del 2016, Hillary Clinton affermò che “Mosca ha intrapreso un’azione militare aggressiva in Ucraina, proprio alle porte della NATO”. Chi è alle porte di chi adesso? Un rapido sguardo alla mappa dell’Ucraina orientale e di Taiwan rispetto a Stati Uniti, Russia e Cina dovrebbe rappresentare una risposta esaustiva.

È un brillante esempio che riporta alla memoria il pezzo “Imagine” di Ron Paul, dove l'ex-membro del Congresso predicava quel tipo di empatia strategica che richiede di mettersi nei panni dell'altro, in modo da vedere come stanno le cose anche dall'altra parte. Che effetto ha sulla Cina quando una superpotenza che si trova a quasi settemila miglia dall'altra parte del Pacifico schiera apertamente le sue forze speciali a distanza ravvicinata dalle coste cinesi, su un'isola tra la terraferma e Taiwan? Chi è alle porte di chi?

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

 

 

di Aaron Sobczak

Il Social Security Act è considerato il primo programma federale di assistenza sociale nella storia americana, essendo stato convertito in legge dal presidente Franklin Roosevelt nel 1935. Le pensioni statali esistono per i dipendenti pubblici e i veterani sin dalla Guerra Civile, e i sistemi pensionistici privati ​​anche da prima. Negli Stati Uniti non c’era grande sostegno per un sistema pensionistico pubblico, poiché l’associazione volontaria e l’autosufficienza erano lo standard. Un esempio di ciò è il fatto che quasi il 90% delle persone sopra i sessantacinque anni a New York non dipendevano da alcun tipo di programma di assistenza organizzato, privato o pubblico, prima del 1935.

Alcuni ritenevano che la Grande Depressione avrebbe automaticamente portato alla devastazione assoluta del sistema pensionistico privato. Fortunatamente le cose non andarono così: più dell'85% dei piani pensionistici privati ​​esistenti andarono avanti normalmente nel 1932. Roosevelt sostenne il disegno di legge sulla previdenza sociale nel 1935, dicendo che si trattava di un'assicurazione per tutti i pensionati. Furono introdotti anche degli emendamenti, incluso uno per consentire agli americani di tirarsene fuori se il loro sistema pensionistico privato si fosse rivelato più redditizio. Quest'ultimo, però, non fu incluso nella legge finale, uccidendo così ogni concorrenza nel sistema pensionistico. Uno dei principali argomenti contro un sistema di previdenza sociale obbligatoria è che potrebbe scoraggiare le assunzioni, poiché aumenterebbe il costo associato a ciascun dipendente. Durante la peggiore depressione della storia americana moderna, attraverso l’imposta sui salari, il presidente sostenne una legislazione che avrebbe costretto gli anziani a rimanere senza lavoro e scoraggiato gli imprenditori ad assumere più manodopera.

L'efficacia storica della previdenza sociale deve essere valutata, e idealmente paragonata, ai sistemi pensionistici privati ​​che stanno diventando sempre meno diffusi. Gli indicatori di risultato pubblicati dalla Social Security Administration vogliono essere un punto di partenza, ma comportano ulteriori complicazioni e segnali di allarme. I dati forniti in una delle relazioni disponibili risalgono principalmente agli anni 1998-2002, pertanto la loro rendicontazione è estremamente limitata. La relazione afferma di aver raggiunto livelli elevati di ammissibilità e di utilizzo, ciò non può che essere vero e lo sarebbe per qualsiasi programma governativo obbligatorio. I dati mostravano una diminuzione della partecipazione alla forza lavoro da parte degli uomini di età compresa tra i 25 e i 54 anni, ma un aumento della partecipazione di quelli di età compresa tra i 55 e i 64 anni. La partecipazione era aumentata anche per gli uomini di età pari o superiore ai 65 anni. Questa tendenza era un'indicazione su come i benefici della previdenza sociale non avevano apportato benefici alla fascia demografica prevista dallo stato.

Gli indicatori successivi erano adeguatezza, equità e fiducia. I principali dati presentati per i cinque anni indicati indicavano quanto una persona ricevesse dai benefici in relazione al reddito mensile precedente. Quelli con redditi più bassi avrebbero visto una corrispondenza fino al 70% rispetto al loro reddito mensile precedente, mentre quelli nella fascia di reddito alto avrebbero visto un 30%. C'erano anche dati che suggerivano una diminuzione complessiva della povertà nel corso di un periodo di quattro anni, ma non è chiaro se ciò fosse dovuto esclusivamente a questo programma. Lo studio evidenzia un presunto aumento del livello di affidabilità, poiché la percentuale di famiglie che utilizzavano l’OASDI per il 50%, 90% e 100% del proprio reddito era leggermente aumentata durante il periodo indicato. Si osservava un aumento di soli 1-3 punti percentuali in ciascuna categoria, il che non risulta significativo.

Vengono poi esaminati i benefici per coloro temporaneamente disabili. Il rapporto ammette che solo una piccola parte dei beneficiari superava l'importo del reddito previsto, indicando un'attività lucrativa sostanziale (SGA). Ciò significa che una frazione molto piccola di beneficiari aveva lavorato abbastanza da innescare la sospensione o la cessazione dei benefici SSI. In termini numerici, negli anni 1999-2002, una media del 6,8% dei beneficiari dei sussidi SSI aveva lavorato a un certo livello; e solo lo 0,6% dei destinatari che lavoravano soddisfacevano i requisiti SGA, mentre il resto lavorava a un livello pari o inferiore a tale requisito. Senza l’esame di fattori esterni, e assumendo una tendenza simile a vent’anni di distanza, ciò indicava che i beneficiari di benefici temporanei SSI ritornassero a pieno regime nel mondo del lavoro.

L’ultimo indicatore è il ricorso ai piani pensionistici privati. L'amministrazione rileva che circa il 50% della popolazione statunitense aveva aderito a un piano pensionistico privato sin dagli anni '70, con un numero di partecipanti in forte diminuzione. I dati rilevano che gli individui più anziani avevano risparmi sempre più insufficienti per integrare i pagamenti della previdenza sociale e che i piani pensionistici stavano passando a piani a contribuzione definita, i quali comportano rischi associati ai cambiamenti del mercato.

Questa relazione di oltre due decenni fa è, nella migliore delle ipotesi, poco brillante. La SSA non è riuscita a soddisfare alcuni dei propri KPI, mentre altri si sono rivelati errati fin dall’inizio. Anche se ci sono alti livelli di ammissibilità e utilizzo, questo non è un indicatore della necessità o dell’efficacia di tale programma, ma semplicemente di quanto il governo federale abbia una buona conoscenza dell’attuazione coercitiva. La legge sulla previdenza sociale è vincolante e i suoi componenti sono considerati da molti obbligatori, con un complicato processo di esenzione. Non sorprende che la maggior parte della popolazione abbia diritto a questo programma estremamente accessibile e fortemente sovvenzionato. Il secondo indicatore punta all’affidabilità del programma. È vero che il numero di partecipanti che utilizzano i sussidi per il 50% o più del loro reddito è aumentato leggermente durante il periodo indicato, ma tale ammontare non è significativo e presenta potenziali esternalità negative. Una maggiore dipendenza dai programmi federali non è un segno che un programma sia vantaggioso per l’economia; è un segno che un programma sta allontanando i partecipanti dal settore privato, portando così a un numero maggiore di individui che dipendono dal programma finanziato dalle tasse. Ciò è problematico, soprattutto perché il finanziamento fa affidamento sulla popolazione lavoratrice, e quindi tassata. Un numero maggiore di partecipanti a basso reddito significa meno finanziamenti a cui il sistema potrà attingere per i futuri utenti.

Coloro che ricevono temporaneamente i benefici della previdenza sociale difficilmente ne usciranno, come indicato da questi dati. Si può fare riferimento alla natura umana, ai livelli di disoccupazione degli anni esaminati o ad altri fattori, ma i dati mostrano chiaramente che i benefici hanno fortemente scoraggiato un ritorno alla forza lavoro durante il periodo di quattro anni misurato. A lungo termine questo rappresenta un problema, poiché i giovani lavoratori devono contribuire al sistema affinché funzioni. Viene poi esaminato l'utilizzo dei piani pensionistici privati. Non c’è paragone con l’efficienza in termini di costi dei piani privati, ma semplicemente con il fatto che circa la metà degli adulti americani ha accesso a un piano privato e vi ha accesso sin dagli anni ’70. Anche il fatto che gli anziani abbiano molti meno risparmi non è un risultato ideale, poiché lo stato non è immune agli effetti dell’inflazione o di un programma insolvente, danneggiando così la qualità della vita degli utenti SSI.

Ci sono segnali di allarme che indicano che il fondo di riferimento della previdenza sociale risulterà insolvente entro il 2035. Questa breve disamina sull’efficacia di questo sistema dovrebbe fornire indizi sul perché. I datori di lavoro devono pagare di più per assumere un individuo, il che porta a un mercato in cui i lavoratori poco qualificati vengono costantemente esclusi. La situazione è peggiorata negli ultimi anni, poiché anche i neolaureati hanno difficoltà a trovare un impiego. I datori di lavoro preferirebbero anche avere la possibilità di spendere meno per coprire i conti 401k dei loro dipendenti, o fondi simili, piuttosto che fornire una pensione fissa.

Tutto questo perché la previdenza sociale è spesso vista come un supporto primario piuttosto che uno supplementare. Man mano che più persone diventano ammissibili ai suoi benefici, ci sono sempre meno lavorano per finanziarli. Anche i tassi di natalità sono diminuiti in modo significativo rispetto ai tassi del 1935. Infine questi piani non sono competitivi. I datori di lavoro erano orgogliosi degli eccellenti fondi pensione messi a disposizione dei dipendenti e invece di fare affidamento sull’innovazione per migliorarli, lo stato ha imposto agli americani un piano unico per tutti. Roosevelt, nel suo tentativo di dimostrare la sua buona volontà agli americani disperati, sostenne una linea di politica che avrebbe danneggiato le generazioni future.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. Biden’s continued use of TikTok to reach the approximately 150 million American TikTok users, is not the only example of hypocrisy from politicians who support the TikTok ban.

The TikTok ban was driven by claims that, because ByteDance is a Chinese company, TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government and, thus. is helping the Chinese government collect data on American citizens. However, the only tie ByteDance has to the Chinese government is via a Chinese government controlled company that owns a small amount of stock in a separate ByteDance operation. Furthermore, ByteDance stores its data in an American facility not accessible by the Chinese government.

Just days before passing the TikTok ban, the same Senate that is so concerned about TikTok’s alleged violations of Americans’ privacy passed the FISA reauthorization bill. This bill not only extended existing authorities for warrantless wiretapping and surveillance, it made it easier for government agencies to spy on American citizens. It did this by requiring anyone with access to a targeted individual’s electronic device to cooperate with intelligence agencies.

Supporters of banning TikTok also cited concerns over the site’s “content moderation” policies. These policies reportedly forbid postings embarrassing to the Chinese government such as some related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square confrontation or the Free Tibet movement.

TikTok, like most social media platforms, engages in content moderation. The TikTok ban was supported by Democrats, including President Biden, who have a history of “encouraging” social media companies to censor Americans from using social media to spread “fake news.”

Fake news is defined as anything that contradicts the Democrat or “woke” agenda, including the truth about covid origins, dangers, and treatments; whether democracy was really threatened on January 6; and the full story of Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

One major reason behind strong bipartisan support for the TikTok ban is the wish to engage in a cold war with China. ByteDance’s Chinese connection makes it a convenient target to help foster anti-Chinese sentiment. Sadly, the anti-Chinese hysteria is a bipartisan phenomenon and has even infected some politicians who take sensible positions on US intervention in Ukraine.

Another major reason banning TikTok has strong bipartisan support is that the site is being used by many young people to share information on the Israeli government’s action in Gaza. The head of the Anti-Defamation League was actually caught on tape complaining about the “TikTok problem.” This use of TikTok made TikTok a target for the many politicians who think the First Amendment makes an exception for speech critical of Israel.

The silver lining in the TikTok ban is it is waking up more Americans, especially young Americans, to the threat the out-of-control welfare-warfare-surveillance state poses to their liberty and prosperity. This provides a great opportunity to spread the ideas of liberty and grow the liberty movement.

The post TikTok Hypocrisy appeared first on LewRockwell.

This will be brief, appropriate to the topic at hand.  It consists of a quote from Milton Friedman, found in Joseph Salerno’s outstanding book, Money, Sound and Unsound, p. 366:

If a domestic money consists of a commodity, [such as] a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren’t any. The commodity money takes care of itself.  [emphasis added]

Imagine that.  If we have sound money we don’t need the Fed.  Or Congress.  We just need sound money.

End of essay.

Postscript:

Economist Nouriel Roubini once attacked the gold standard:

Roubini raises the following question: If you are on a gold standard, or modified gold standard, what do you do in the event of a bank run—if you don’t have enough gold to fully back the currency?

Translated: What happens if the banks have created bogus IOUs for their depositors’ gold?  Suggestion: Have them indicted for fraud.  Gold doesn’t “back” anything.  It is the money.  The banks issue IOUs for the money.  When they issue more IOUs than they have gold on hand, they’re cheating.

Murray Rothbard:

In my view, issuing promises to pay on demand in excess of the amount of the goods on hand is simply fraud, and should be so considered by the legal system. . . .

This is legalized counterfeiting; this is the creation of money without the necessity of production, to compete for resources against those who have produced.

In short, I believe that fractional-reserve banking is disastrous both for the morality and for the fundamental bases and institutions of the market economy.… [quoted in Monetary Central Planning and the State, Richard Ebeling]

Roubini also says that a “gold standard limits the flexibility and range of actions that central banks can take.”  That alone should recommend it.  He thinks it’s a shortcoming.

At the start of World War I the belligerent governments went off the gold standard so they could fight one of the bloodiest wars in human history.  Gold, since it can’t be created on demand, would have severely limited the “flexibility and range of actions” governments could take.

Sound money “does not emerge from central-bank policy decisions.” But who cares about sound money when you want to engage in massive human slaughter?

And of course it’s only the gold-less monetary standard that allows the corrupt regime to shore up the ongoing butchery overseas.

More recently, Roubini said, “the world is on a slow-motion train wreck.”

The unmolested gold coin standard avoids train wrecks, “Dr. Doom,” by staying on track.

A gold standard doesn’t need Roubini.  It doesn’t need Jerome Powell and his merry band of inflationists.  It doesn’t need Congress.  It doesn’t need the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.  It doesn’t need the WEF, the FOMC, or AOC.  It doesn’t need the numerous insults of various economists who damned it as a barbarous relic.

It just needs to be left alone.

The gold standard “requires nothing else than that the government abstain from deliberately sabotaging it,” Ludwig von Mises wrote in The Theory of Money and Credit:

What all the enemies of the gold standard spurn as its main vice is precisely the same thing that in the eyes of the advocates of the gold standard is its main virtue, namely its incompatibility with a policy of credit expansion.  The nucleus of all the effusions of the anti-gold authors and politicians is the expansionist fallacy. (p. 421)

Credit expansion – inflation – is indispensable to a growing government. From Human Action:

The gold standard removes the determination of cash-induced changes in purchasing power from the political arena. Its general acceptance requires the acknowledgment of the truth that one cannot make all people richer by printing money. The abhorrence of the gold standard is inspired by the superstition that omnipotent governments can create wealth out of little scraps of paper. (pp. 471-472)

If wealth could be created out of scraps of paper or their digital equivalent, world poverty would be a thing of the past.

Remember, the commodity money takes care of itself — and us too, if we let it.

The post Sound Monetary Policy in Under 40 Words appeared first on LewRockwell.

“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd

You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten.

What’s most appalling is that our governing apparatus is visibly willing that to happen. When Barack Obama warned America to not underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up, was that some kind of joke? After all, it was Mr. Obama and his fellow blobsters — the cabal of Intel spooks, covert Marxist bureaucrats, lawfare ninjas, globalist megalomaniacs, post-liberal think tankers, weapons grifters, degenerate billionaires, and assorted mentally-ill camp followers — who inflicted Joe Biden on the body politic. And then ran him on the country like some demon algorithm designed to wreck the USA as fast as possible.

The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.

And how did the opposition to that epic divergence into bad faith turn so flabby? How did the Republican Party roll over and wheeze so feebly while the FBI ran amok swatting grandmothers in dawn raids, and the US attorney general made justice a whore, and a Republican Congress allowed the Frankenstein agency of Homeland Security to flood the country with its enemies and give them gobs of operational cash? If Mr. Trump was unappetizing to them as a leader, why were they unable to produce an alternative figure of standing and stature at least equally resolute? They look like traitors and cowards.

For the moment, the country lies mired, inert, and demoralized in the face of in those terrible mysteries. But events are still tending and the hidden hand of emergence still operates backstage, preparing surprises for us. You are necessarily aware that the center did not hold. It’s even hard to locate where the center used to be with the action so heavy on the far-out margins. You’re watching drag queens importune young children to shove all the Jews into the sea. And the kids are sitting next to their mommies. What happened to the mommies’ brains that permits them to think this spectacle is okay? How will the mommies ever get their minds right?

In some quarters, a great rage is building. Not a few resent the overthrow of common sense, common law, and common decency. You better believe they will be aiming to do something about it. They will stand up for their dignity, their culture, their history. Virtue isn’t dead; it’s just broke down on a lonely highway waiting to hitch a ride back to where the lights are still on. Don’t forget that this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Meanwhile, prepare for action. It’s obvious that the enemies of the people don’t intend to rest. They are going to try to play out this string to the last move because otherwise a lot of them will be going to jail, or might even hang for their wickedness. Once they turned criminal, there was no turning back. They have dishonored themselves and they’re trying to dishonor their country.

It’s true nonetheless that we’re moving into a new disposition of the human project. It’s going to be smaller and leaner, and not nearly as complex as the tottering Rube Goldberg apparatus we’re currently trapped in. We don’t know yet what the shape and texture of that America is going to be. As the sage Yogi Berra observed, our whole future is ahead of us. If you’re not among the insane, have faith. We’ll get there and everything is going to be all right.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Pep Talk on a Dark Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

Years ago, Doug Casey mentioned in a correspondence to me, “Empires fall from grace with alarming speed.”

Every now and then, you receive a comment that, although it may have been stated casually, has a lasting effect, as it offers uncommon insight. For me, this was one of those and it’s one that I’ve kept handy at my desk since that time, as a reminder.

I’m from a British family, one that left the UK just as the British Empire was about to begin its decline. They expatriated to the “New World” to seek promise for the future.

As I’ve spent most of my life centred in a British colony – the Cayman Islands – I’ve had the opportunity to observe many British contract professionals who left the UK seeking advancement, which they almost invariably find in Cayman. Curiously, though, most returned to the UK after a contract or two, in the belief that the UK would bounce back from its decline, and they wanted to be on board when Britain “came back.”

This, of course, never happened. The US replaced the UK as the world’s foremost empire, and although the UK has had its ups and downs over the ensuing decades, it hasn’t returned to its former glory.

And it never will.

If we observe the empires of the world that have existed over the millennia, we see a consistent history of collapse without renewal. Whether we’re looking at the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, or any other that’s existed at one time, history is remarkably consistent: The decline and fall of any empire never reverses itself; nor does the empire return, once it’s fallen.

But of what importance is this to us today?

Well, today, the US is the world’s undisputed leading empire and most Americans would agree that, whilst it’s going through a bad patch, it will bounce back and might even be better than ever.

Not so, I’m afraid. All empires follow the same cycle. They begin with a population that has a strong work ethic and is self-reliant. Those people organize to form a nation of great strength, based upon high productivity.

This leads to expansion, generally based upon world trade. At some point, this gives rise to leaders who seek, not to work in partnership with other nations, but to dominate them, and of course, this is when a great nation becomes an empire. The US began this stage under the flamboyant and aggressive Teddy Roosevelt.

The twentieth century was the American century and the US went from victory to victory, expanding its power.

But the decline began in the 1960s, when the US started to pursue unwinnable wars, began the destruction of its currency and began to expand its government into an all-powerful body.

Still, this process tends to be protracted and the overall decline often takes decades.

So, how does that square with the quote, “Empires fall from grace with alarming speed”?

Well, the preparation for the fall can often be seen for a generation or more, but the actual fall tends to occur quite rapidly.

What happens is very similar to what happens with a schoolyard bully.

The bully has a slow rise, based upon his strength and aggressive tendency. After a number of successful fights, he becomes first revered, then feared. He then takes on several toadies who lack his abilities but want some of the spoils, so they do his bidding, acting in a threatening manner to other schoolboys.

The bully then becomes hated. No one tells him so, but the other kids secretly dream of his defeat, hopefully in a shameful manner.

Then, at some point, some boy who has a measure of strength and the requisite determination has had enough and takes on the bully.

If he defeats him, a curious thing happens. The toadies suddenly realise that the jig is up and they head for the hills, knowing that their source of power is gone.

Also, once the defeated bully is down, all the anger, fear and hatred that his schoolmates felt for him come out, and they take great pleasure in his defeat.

And this, in a nutshell, is what happens with empires.

A nation that comes to the rescue in times of genuine need (such as the two World Wars) is revered. But once that nation morphs into a bully that uses any excuse to invade countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria, its allies may continue to bow to it but secretly fear it and wish that it could be taken down a peg.

When the empire then starts looking around for other nations to bully, such as Iran and Venezuela, its allies again say nothing but react with fear when they see the John Boltons and Mike Pompeos beating the war drums and making reckless comments.

At present, the US is focusing primarily on economic warfare, but if this fails to get the world to bend to its dominance, the US has repeatedly warned, regarding possible military aggression, that “no option is off the table.”

The US has reached the classic stage when it has become a reckless bully, and its support structure of allies has begun to de-couple as a result.

At the same time that allies begin to pull back and make other plans for their future, those citizens within the empire who tend to be the creators of prosperity also begin to seek greener pastures.

History has seen this happen countless times. The “brain drain” occurs, in which the best and most productive begin to look elsewhere for their future. Just as the most productive Europeans crossed the Pond to colonise the US when it was a new, promising country, their present-day counterparts have begun moving offshore.

The US is presently in a state of suspended animation. It still appears to be a major force, but its buttresses are quietly disappearing. At some point in the near future, it’s likely that the US government will overplay its hand and aggress against a foe that either is stronger or has alliances that, collectively, make it stronger.

The US will be entering into warfare at a time when it’s broke, and this will become apparent suddenly and dramatically. The final decline will occur with alarming speed.

When this happens, the majority of Americans will hope in vain for a reverse of events. They’ll be inclined to hope that, if they collectively say, “Whoops, we goofed,” the world will be forgiving, returning them to their former glory.

But historically, this never occurs. Empires fall with alarming speed, because the support systems that made them possible have decamped and have become reinvigorated elsewhere.

Rather than mourn the loss of empire that’s on the horizon, we’d be better served if we focus instead on those parts of the world that are likely to benefit from this inevitability.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Falling From Grace appeared first on LewRockwell.

What’s the latest in labor union news?  The Dartmouth basketball team has formed a labor union.

Say what? Aren’t these labor organizations only for employees?  Isn’t it true that the Dartmouth basketball team members are students, not workers?  Yes, and yes, but in making these points, we reckon, is the absence of the fact that Dartmouth College is a member of the Ivy League, and they do things differently than ordinary mortals. Perhaps someone should check on whether the professors there, who led these student-athletes down this particular garden path, have been engaged in a bit of plagiarism, instead of rational teaching of their classes.  Maybe there’s something wrong with the water supply, if that is what they are drinking, in New England.

One way to look at this new initiative is that it is stakeholder theory gone berserk.  Stakeholder theory is the view that yes, the corporation should offer a fair return to the owners, the stockholders, but should also do so for complete strangers, and people who have no ownership rights in the company at all.  For example, workers, suppliers, customers, neighbors, the man in the street (not to say the man in the moon), and people halfway around the globe, to boot, for all we know.

The point is, if (Dartmouth) students can become employees, without working for an employer or being paid to do so, then anyone can.  Hey, I shop regularly at McDonald’s (I don’t, but work with me here).  I’m now going to sign up as many diners of this restaurant as I can, and form a labor union, organized against Ronald McDonald.  We’ll bargain for lower meal prices, cleaner restrooms, etc.  And woe betide management if they do not “bargain fairly” with me and my fellow rent seekers.

I also play chess at tournaments.  Ditto.  I’m gonna organize my fellow competitors, and we’ll demand reduced entry fees.  The National Labor Relations Board can hardly say me nay, given its support for the Dartmouth basketball players.

But I am just getting started.  I’m also a straight white male.  We’re gonna get organized and demand more respect from everyone else.  Pay, too.  I am also fat, bald, and bearded.  Yes, yet another “labor union” is in the offing.

Say what you will about these reductios ad absurdum, but it cannot be denied that they are absurd.  Wokist stakeholder theory leads down some weird garden paths.

This philosophy also supports ordinary labor unions, the ones with actual employees.  It does so on the grounds that these organizations are necessary to improve wages and working conditions from what they would be in their absence.  Nonsense.  No, let me take that back and correct it: nonsense on stilts.

What determines wages has nothing to do with labor organizations.  It is all predicated upon the productivity of the worker.  You can’t get blood out of a stone.  The marginal revenue product of the employee is what sets an upper bound on the full wages (money wages plus working conditions) he can command.

Joe’s productivity is $40 per hour.  That means that for every 60 minutes he spends on the shop floor, or on the assembly line, or behind a desk, his employers’ revenue increases by precisely that amount.  Can his remuneration be $50 per hour?  No.  Then the company would lose $10 hourly, and that is no way to run a railroad.  The employer would eventually go broke, assuming he overpaid not only Joe, but numerous others.

May Joe’s wage be $25?  No, that is not sustainable, either.  For at that low rate of pay, Joe’s employer will take down a cool $15 per hour off his services.  Some other firm will be happy to have Joe on its payroll at $26, pocketing only $14 per hour, but will reason that better they “exploit” Joe to the tune of $14 than that the other firm do so at the rate of $15.  Nor will this bidding process end there.  You see where I am going with this.  Another company will offer $27, and we’re off to the races.  Where will this process end?  As near to $40 as the costs of these transactions will allow.  Wage tends to equal productivity at all times.  At equilibrium, the two are equated.

Nor must the initiative for this bidding war emanate, only, from the employers’ side.  The worker, too, can apply for a better paid job, helping this process along.

Actually, paradoxically, labor unions lower wages.  Who do you think pays for all those strikes, those elections, those efforts to organize, those slowdowns?  Those monies could have gone to the workers, but they do not.

Someone had better tell those Dartmouth jocks that labor unions are not the be-all and end-all that our friends the woke socialists think they are.

This originally appeared on American Thinker and was reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post When Student Basketball Teams Unionize appeared first on LewRockwell.

Blinken Accuses China of helping Trump Steal the Election in November

Last time it was Russiagate. This time will it be Chinagate?

While Blinken accuses China out of one side of his mouth, he threatens China out of the other side with sanctions unless China abandons its support of Russia. See here.

At the same time, Blinken is up to mischief in Taiwan and supporting US military aid and presence on the island despite the official US “one China” policy. Surely it must occur to the Chinese government that if China helps Washington isolate Russia, China herself is isolated. In view of such reports as this–“US Encircling China With Military Bases to Cut Off Ocean Access in Conflict Scenario”  Chinese “Russian expert” Professor Feng Yujun appears to be very foolish. It is difficult to imagine China’s development and Silk Road project without Russian energy.

But maybe not. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have delusional tendencies that if they refuse to respond with more than words to Washington’s provocations, everything will eventually be OK. As I see it, the policy of conflict avoidance simply increases the number and seriousness of the provocations.

As I emphasize, the most important step toward peace would be a Russian-Chinese-Iranian announcement of a mutual defense treaty. This would introduce a missing caution into US foreign policy and halt the provocations that are leading to nuclear war.

The post Why Did China Facing Endless Troubles from Washington Accept a Visit from Blinken Aimed at Disrupting China’s Relationship With Russia? appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to mounting data, one of the more serious side effects of the COVID mRNA jabs appears to be dementia, and worse yet, this previously untransmissible disease may now be “contagious,” transmissible by way of prions.

In my 2021 interview with Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., she explained why she suspected the COVID shots may eventually result in an avalanche of neurological prion-based diseases such as Alzheimer’s. She also published a paper detailing those mechanisms in the May 10, 2021, issue of the International Journal of Vaccine Theory. As she explained in that paper:1

“A paper published by J. Bart Classen (2021) proposed that the spike protein in the mRNA vaccines could cause prion-like diseases, in part through its ability to bind to many known proteins and induce their misfolding into potential prions.

Idrees and Kumar (2021) have proposed that the spike protein’s S1 component is prone to act as a functional amyloid and form toxic aggregates … and can ultimately lead to neurodegeneration.”

In summary, the take-home from Seneff’s paper is that the COVID shots, offered to hundreds of millions of people, are instruction sets for your body to make a toxic protein that will eventually wind up concentrated in your spleen, from where prion-like protein instructions will be sent out, leading to neurodegenerative diseases.

What Are Prions?

The term “prion” derives from “proteinaceous infectious particle.” Prions are known to cause a variety of neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or “mad cow disease”) in cattle, and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.

These diseases are collectively referred to as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). They’re characterized by long incubation periods, brain damage, the formation of holes in the brain giving it a sponge-like appearance, and failure to induce an inflammatory response.

Infectious prions propagate by transmitting their misfolded protein state to normal variants of the same protein.

In short, prions are infectious agents composed entirely of a protein material that can fold in multiple, structurally distinct ways, at least one of which is transmissible to other prion proteins, leading to a disease that is similar to viral infections but without nucleic acids.

Unlike bacteria, viruses, and fungi, which contain nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) that instruct their replication, prions propagate by transmitting their misfolded protein state to normal variants of the same protein.

According to the prion disease model, the infectious properties of prions are due to the ability of the abnormal protein to convert the normal version of the protein into the misfolded form, thereby setting off a chain reaction that progressively damages the nervous system.

Prions are remarkably resistant to conventional methods of sterilization and can survive extreme conditions that would normally destroy nucleic acids or other pathogens, which is part of why prion diseases are so difficult to treat.

More Evidence mRNA Shots Can Trigger Dementia

Today, there’s even more evidence to support Seneff’s theory. In August 2022, tech entrepreneur Sid Belzberg wrote2 about prions.rip, a website he’d set up to collect data on the neurological side effects of the jabs. (This site is no longer live.)

Within a few months, the site had received about 15,000 hits and gathered 60 reports from people who got the jab and suffered neurological deficits shortly thereafter, including six cases of diagnosed CJD.

“Normally this disease affects 1 in a 1,000,000 people,” Belzberg wrote.3 “To get 6 cases you would need 6,000,000 hits to the site assuming everyone reports. The chances of getting 1 case in 15,000 hits is 1 in 66. To see 6 cases in 1 group of 15,000 is 1/66^6 or 1 in 82,000,000,000, or 20 times more likely to win a Powerball lottery! …

To reiterate, CJD is an exceptionally rare disease that is now a known and established severe adverse reaction (SAE) from the DEATHVAX. Injecting this slow kill bioweapon can cause ailments that are about as likely to develop in the real word as getting struck by lightning twice. The proof is now irrefutable.”

Frameshifting Can Result in Prion Production

In mid-December 2023, researchers reported4,5,6 that the replacing of uracil with synthetic methylpseudouridine in the COVID shots — a process known as codon optimization — can cause frameshifting, a glitch in the decoding, thereby triggering the production of off-target aberrant proteins.

The antibodies that develop as a result may, in turn, trigger off-target immune reactions. According to the authors, off-target cellular immune responses occur in 25% to 30% of people who have received the COVID shot. But that’s not all.

According to British neuroscientist Dr. Kevin McCairn, this frameshifting phenomenon has also been linked to harmful prion production — and that frame shifted prions, specifically, are infectious and can be transmitted from one person to another. As reported in the Journal of Theoretical Biology in 2013:7

“A quantitatively consistent explanation for the titres of infectivity found in a variety of prion-containing preparations is provided on the basis that the etiological agents of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy comprise a very small population fraction of prion protein (PrP) variants, which contain frameshifted elements in their N-terminal octapeptide-repeat regions …

Frameshifting accounts quantitatively for the etiology of prion disease. One per million frameshifted prions may be enough to cause disease. The HIV TAR-like element in the PRNP mRNA is likely an effector of frameshifting.”

McCairn explained this mechanism in a February 19, 2023, interview with Health Alliance Australia (video above). In it, he noted:

“Mis-folded proteins caused by prions can impact every level organ and tissue system in the body … [They] bioaccumulate and are resistant to degradation, thereby building up …”

Prions may in fact be the primary molecule that is being “shed” by COVID jab recipients, and if those prions are due to frameshifting, that could be very bad news indeed, considering their implication in dementia.

Another doctor who believes we’ll be facing an “epidemic of prion disease” is Dr. David Cartland. In late February 2024, he posted8 13 scientific papers linking the COVID jabs, prion diseases and CJD, noting that was just a “small selection” of what’s available in the medical literature.

Prions Implicated in Long COVID as Well

According to genomics expert Kevin McKernan, Ph.D., prions are also involved in long COVID (or as McKernan calls it, “long vax”).9 In one 2024 study,10 96.7% of long COVID sufferers had received the jab. In an interview with the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), McKernan stated:11

“If you frameshift over the stop codons, you’re going to be making proteins that are spike-mito proteins. When I talk to a lot of the long vax patients I hear of all these things that remind me of my time in the mitochondrial disease sequencing space …”

McKernan claims he tried to publish a paper on this in 2021 with Dr. Peter McCullough, but the editor of the journal “stepped in and torpedoed the paper.”12

World’s Largest Side Effect Analysis Has Been Published

In related news, the largest study13 to date on the side effects of the COVID jabs was published in the journal Vaccine in February 12, 2024, and it confirms what I and many other alternative news sources have been saying all along, namely that the mRNA jabs are the most dangerous medical products to ever hit the market.

The study — performed by the Global COVID Vaccine Safety (GCoVS) Project and funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Ontario and the Canadian Health Research Institute — evaluated the risk of “adverse events of special interest” (AESI) following COVID-19 “vaccination.”

Data from 10 sites in eight countries (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand and Scotland) were included, encompassing more than 99 million jabbed individuals.

Of the thousands of side effects Pfizer listed in its confidential report of post-authorization adverse events submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,14 the GCoVS focused on 13 AESIs that fall into three primary categories: Neurological, hematologic (blood-related) and cardiovascular conditions.

They calculated the AESI risk for each of the 13 AESIs based on the number of observed versus expected (OE) incidents occurring up to 42 days after injection. The “expected” number of side effects were based on vaccine adverse event data from 2015 to 2019. These rates were then compared to the adverse event rates observed in those who got one or more of the COVID jabs, either Pfizer’s BNT162b2, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, or AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1.

Largest Study to Date Confirms COVID Jab Dangers

The analysis15 revealed several concerning side effects, including increased risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots in the brain, and various neurological conditions. Here’s a quick summary of the findings:

•Myocarditis and pericarditis:

◦Pfizer vaccine — OE ratios for myocarditis were 2.78 and 2.86 after the first and second shots, with the risk remaining doubled after the third and fourth shots.

◦Moderna vaccine — OE ratios for myocarditis were 3.48 and 6.10 after the first and second shots. Doses 1 and 4 also showed OE ratios of 1.74 and 2.64 for pericarditis.

◦AstraZeneca vaccine — OE ratio for pericarditis was 6.91 after the third shot.

•Blood clots in the brain (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, CVST):

◦An OE of 3.23 for CVST was observed after the first AstraZeneca shot.

◦A significant increase in CVST risk was also noted after the second Pfizer dose.

•Neurological conditions:

◦Guillain-Barré syndrome — An OE ratio of 2.49 was observed following the AstraZeneca jab.

◦Transverse myelitis — Risk nearly doubled with the AstraZeneca shot.

◦Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis — OE ratios of 3.78 (Moderna) and 2.23 (AstraZeneca) were noted.

These findings really underscore the potential for serious side effects from the COVID shots, including conditions that may lead to other consequences in the longer term, such as stroke, heart attack, paralysis and death.

Effectiveness and Safety Was Wildly Exaggerated in Trials

Considering those findings, it’s no surprise to find that effectiveness and safety were exaggerated in clinical trials and observational studies. In a guest post on Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack, Raphael Lataster, Ph.D., writes:16

“An unofficial series of four crucially important medical journal articles, two by me, appearing in major academic publisher Wiley’s Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice reveals that claims made about COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness and safety were exaggerated in the clinical trials and observational studies, which significantly impacts risk-benefit analyses.

Also discussed are the concerning topics of myocarditis, with evidence indicating that this one adverse effect alone means that the risks outweigh the benefits in the young and healthy; and perceived negative effectiveness, which indicates that the vaccines increase the chance of COVID-19 infection/hospitalization/death, to say nothing about other adverse effects.”

Summary of Papers

The four papers in question include:

1.“Sources of Bias in Observational Studies of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness” published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice in March 2023, co-authored by BMJ editor Peter Doshi, Ph.D., statistician Kaiser Fung and biostatistician Mark Jones, which concluded that “case-counting window bias” had a significant effect on effectiveness estimates.17

As explained by Lataster, this “concerns the 7 days, 14 days, or even 21 days after the jab where we are meant to overlook jab-related issues, such as COVID infections, for some odd reason as ‘the vaccine has not had sufficient time to stimulate the immune system.’

This may strike you as quite bizarre since all of the ‘fully vaccinated’ must go through the process of being ‘partially vaccinated,’ sometimes even more than once. To make matters worse, the unvaccinated do not get such a ‘grace period,’ meaning that there is also a clear bias at play.

In an example using data from Pfizer’s clinical trial, the authors show that thanks to this bias, a vaccine with effectiveness of 0%, which is confirmed in the hypothetical clinical trial, could be seen in observational studies as having effectiveness of 48%.”

2.“Reply to Fung et. al. on COVID-19 Vaccine Case-Counting Window Biases Overstating Vaccine Effectiveness,” authored by Lataster, which discussed how the counting window bias not only affected effectiveness estimates in observational studies but also safety estimates, suggesting a need for reassessment of vaccine safety.18 The article also addresses “the mysterious rise in non-COVID excess deaths post-pandemic.”19

3.“How the Case Counting Window Affected Vaccine Efficacy Calculations in Randomized Trials of COVID-19 Vaccines,” again co-authored by Doshi and Fung, which detailed how case-counting window issues also overestimated effectiveness in Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials.20

4.A second article by Lataster, in which he highlighted and summarized the evidence showing that clinical trials were affected by adverse effect counting window issues that led to exaggerated safety estimates.21

“Together, these four articles make clear that claims made about COVID-19 vaccines; effectiveness and safety were exaggerated in the clinical trials and observational studies, whilst also finding time to discuss myocarditis and perceived negative effectiveness, meaning that new analyses are very much needed,” Lataster writes.22

Resources for Those Injured by the COVID Jab

Based on data from across the world, it’s beyond clear that the COVID shots are the most dangerous drugs ever deployed. If you already got one or more COVID jabs and are now reconsidering, you’d be wise to avoid all vaccines from here on, as you need to end the assault on your body. Even if you haven’t experienced any obvious side effects, your health may still be impacted long-term, so don’t take any more shots.

If you’re suffering from side effects, your first order of business is to eliminate the spike protein — and/or any aberrant off-target protein — that your body is producing. Two remedies shown to bind to and facilitate the removal of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein are hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. I don’t know if these drugs will work on off-target proteins and nanolipid accumulation as well, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to try.

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) has developed a post-vaccine treatment protocol called I-RECOVER. Since the protocol is continuously updated as more data become available, your best bet is to download the latest version straight from the FLCCC website at covid19criticalcare.com.23

For additional suggestions, check out the World Council for Health’s spike protein detox guide,24 which focuses on natural substances like herbs, supplements and teas. Sauna therapy can also help eliminate toxic and misfolded proteins by stimulating autophagy.

Sources and References

• 1 International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research May 10, 2021; 2(1): 402-444
• 2, 3 2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com August 18, 2022
• 4 Nature December 6, 2023
• 5 Trial Site News December 7, 2023
• 6 The Telegraph December 6, 2023
• 7 Journal off Theoretical Biology May 2013; 325: 52-61
• 8 Twitter/X Dr. David Cartland February 24, 2024
• 9, 11, 12 LifeSite News March 4, 2024
• 10 Journal of Clinical Medicine 2024; 13(5): 1208
• 13, 15 Vaccine February 12, 2024 [epub ahead of print]
• 14 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports Received Through 28-Feb-2021, Pages 30-38
• 16, 19, 22 RW Malone MD Substack March 6, 2024
• 17 Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice March 26, 2023; 30(1): 30-36
• 18 Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice July 4, 2023; 30(1): 82-85
• 20 Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice July 15, 2023; 30(1): 105-106
• 21 Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice January 18, 2024
• 23 Covid19criticalcare.com
• 24 World Council for Health Spike Protein Detox Guide November 30, 2021

The post Doctors Predict Epidemic of Prion Brain Diseases appeared first on LewRockwell.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, you’ve no doubt heard about Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour. A reference to the various “eras,” or phases, of the singer’s life, the Eras Tour features a 44 -song set list spanning hits from every album of her 17-year-career. Time magazine reported that “[by] the end of 2023—less than halfway through the tour’s scheduled 152-show run—the Eras Tour had earned over $1 billion to become the highest-grossing concert tour of all time.” Sky-high ticket prices and near-instant venue sellouts led to the release of The Eras Tour movie on Disney+, and over 4.6 million viewers have now streamed the concert from the comfort of their own homes.

Now, I may be dating myself here, but I will readily admit to being among the first of the now-three generations to fall in love with Taylor Swift’s music. I vividly remember driving around Charleston, South Carolina, where I attended college, with a 20-piece chicken nugget meal from McDonald’s (oh to have that metabolism again!) singing “Love Story” at the top of my lungs like it was written especially about me. The next year, in 2009, I had a blast with my best friend at Swift’s Fearless Tour. I sobbed to her song “Back to December” on repeat in 2010 after what felt like a life-shattering breakup. And then there was that time I jumped on stage at a friend’s wedding reception, circa 2014, to belt out “Shake It Off” with the band.

But then something curious began to happen. As I left my college and law-school eras, filled with all the joys and sorrows and mistakes of youth, I entered a new series of eras: motherhood, then wifehood (suffice it to say, the order of these personal eras is a subject for another article). Then more motherhood. Then a conversion to Catholicism. As I grew and matured, however, Swift seemed to remain stuck in an earlier era. I found it more and more difficult to relate to her songs.

There’s a reason Gen Z and Gen Alpha love Swift with an ardency that surpasses even that of the Millennials who loved her first: Taylor Swift, though 34, is still “feelin’ 22.” It’s readily apparent that this is a woman entering the latter part of her prime childbearing years who remains lost and alone. She is a billionaire with the world at her feet, but it’s clear she has no real idea what to do with it. She remains emotionally stunted, repeatedly trying to fill the aching cry of her heart with created things and transient romantic relationships.

The only evidence of “maturity” in her music over the last decade or so—and it is a false maturity to be sure—is that instead of the fairly innocuous lyrics of fairytale dreams and true love that were the central themes of much of her earlier music, she’s now unafraid to incorporate all manner of curse words (albeit sparingly compared to much other pop music) and make both open and veiled references supporting same-sex relationships and premarital sex. Some of her most popular songs still contain a troubling element of bullying, a mean-girl streak that most of us hopefully outgrow by the time we enter adulthood. There’s also a darker imagery that has crept into her work, with occult symbolism showcased throughout the Eras Tour and an overtly sexual cover for her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Read the Whole Article

The post Taylor Swift Does Not Belong in Your Christian Era appeared first on LewRockwell.

The cashless society is a necessary step in preparation for the mark of the beast.

The mark of the beast, btw, is a concept based on a couple of short passages from The Revelation (end of chapter 13 and start of chapter 14), which say that there will eventually be a one world government just before Jesus returns, and the spiritual leader of that government will cause people everywhere to get a mark put in their right hand or in their forehead, without which they will not be able to buy or sell.

What we have used for centuries for buying and selling is cash (or checks). We have also progressed to credit cards.

So all of these would need to be replaced with the mark, in order for the prophecy to come true.

Is cashless society in World a bad step?

Cashless Means Automatic

If money is easy to spend, it is also easy to take. Convenience can easily become tyranny. Automatic payments that come directly from your bank account illustrate the point.

Below Is First 9 Major Risks of a Cashless Society:

1. Risk of Confiscation

The convenience of digital money that allows you to spend your money more easily, also makes it easier for banks, governments and thieves to take it.The message to depositors is clear- when you put money in a bank you are a creditor of the bank and if it goes bust you are at the bottom of the list of creditors. Your money** will be seized as part of any approved plan, perhaps even before the broke bank files for bankruptcy.

Your bank account can be raided by government authorities, like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) without notice or reason given. If the IRS believes your bank account deposit and/or withdrawals activity is suspicious and/or may involve a pattern designed to avoid reporting requirements, they may seize your account.

Think your money is safe in the bank? Think again.

2. Risk of Theft

Digital cash a bit of Trap-it can be stolen.Think digital money is safer than cash and can’t be stolen?

3. Crime is Easier

Some actually believe that in a cashless society that crime will go down and drug dealers will go out of business. Think again.

In a cashless society, theft will occur on line and in far larger amounts than cash heists. An online thief never has to confront his victim, commit violence, crack a safe, get past an alarm system, dog or armed guards and carry away his loot. Rather, in a cashless society, the cyber thief merely has to hack the systems where the ‘money” is. The online heist involves no risk of death or threat to the thief’s personal safety and can be done from anywhere in the world.

4. Risk of System Failure

Without cash, the value of currency would have no independent value outside a functioning banking system to which you have access. Your money wouldn ‘work’ without a functioning banking system. If the banking system is down due to a power outage, solar flare, financial crisis, Internet failure, hack or network crash, your money is unavailable and potentially lost. If back up files are lost how do you prove you had $15,000 in your account?

5. Risk of Being Exiled From the System

Even if the digital banking system was 100% fool proof, you may end up being shut out of the system for wrong doing (actual or alleged), bad credit or failure to pay banking fees. Or you may be the victim of identity theft and as a “precaution” your account may be closed. Without access to the banking system, how will you pay your bills and buy items you need?

Read the Whole Article

The post 9 Major Risks of a Cashless Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

This week, the rise in JGB yields and the decline of the yen accelerated (note: the JPY chart is on an inverted scale). There is no doubt that there is a crisis developing.

Ever since the Fed raised interest rates, the Bank of Japan’s monetary policies have become exposed as being out on a limb. The BOJ has been pursuing QE since the year 2000, and in the process has accumulated nearly 60% of its own government’s debt. Relative to the size of the economy, this debt at over 260% of GDP is the highest of the world’s advanced nations.

Until now, these policies failed to fully disrupt the yen’s domestic purchasing power, due to the propensity of Japan’s population to save and the long-term trend of the dollar’s declining interest rates. But US interest rates are no longer declining and with the US Government in a developing debt trap the pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise rates firmly into positive territory is increasing.

Japan’s propensity to save is still there. It means that if the BOJ raises rates, savings will increase even further at the cost of consumption, throwing the economy into statistical recession. This is of course a Keynesian analysis whose errors are now being exposed. That said, Japan has been running on Keynesian hot air since the 1990s asset bubble imploded: that’s thirty years of denying the necessary creative destruction needed for an economy to regenerate.

From higher interest rates, there are some important consequences that flow from Japan’s Keynesianism:

·      Already at over 260%, government debt to GDP will soar not only due to continued budget deficits currently exceeding 5% and growing, but importantly because GDP will be contracting due to the savings paradox. It will not be long before this debt to GDP figure increases to over 300%, undermining the fiat yen’s credibility even if interest rates are permitted to rise.

·      The BOJ’s balance sheet equity of only Y100 million is already wiped out over hundreds-of-thousand times by bond losses on its QE holdings. These losses will now accelerate astronomically. How long can this bankrupt situation be allowed by markets to persist?

·      Going by Japan’s global systemically important banks, her commercial banking system is probably the most highly leveraged in the world. Like the Eurozone G-SIBs, this is because negative interest policies compressed credit margins and the only way in which banks could maintain bottom line profits was to increase their ratios of balance sheet assets to equity capital. Not only do higher interest rates lead to massive losses as the cost of funding rises above interest returns on assets (just like last year’s regional bank failures in the US), but non-performing loans will impact balance sheets as well.

·      With many years of suppressed interest rates leading to a decade of negative rates, Japanese local governments and corporates have become debt zombies. Positive interest rates will expose the errors of not addressing the imbalances that arose from the 1990s debt bubble and its subsequent collapse.

As the interest rate crisis facing Japan’s policy makers unfolds, there can be no doubt that Japan’s politicians, true to their Keynesian roots, will double down on trying to prevent deflation. Budget deficits will soar, not just as the balance between revenue and welfare spending tips further into the red, but because of political determination to keep stimulating a rapidly disintegrating economy.

The problems facing Japan are an extreme example of those facing other G7 nations. There is no salvation in higher interest rates either, only economic and monetary collapse. The combination of rising government debt, higher compounding interest costs and an entire economy wrongfooted by rising interest rates are a lethal mix. So what does Mrs Watanabe do about it? Well, getting out of fiat yen into real legal money, which is gold, could be seen as an increasing option. It is favoured by the East Asian masses, and probably by the ordinary Japanese people when they begin to realise what’s happening to their savings.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for domestic users of Japan’s yen to wake up to the increasing certainty that the fiat yen is in the early stages of outright collapse.

Reprinted with permission from MacleodFinance Substack.

The post Japan’s Slide Into Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.