Everything is about narrative these days including and especially the market.
Get it right and people will accept almost anything. Get it wrong, they revolt.
The job of the Fed of course it to get it right. This is how it's done:
Your Money Is About To Be Worth A Lot Less
Plus an update on Iran and the oil market.
To say that we are in deep sh!t is an understatement!
Iran Negotiation DESASTER & Russia in Full War Mode | Larry C. Johnson
The days of this blog and almost everything interesting on the Internet are counted. Soon, you will need a selfy, or real government issued ID to long on, first to the Internet then to participate to society, at which stage I will log out permanently.
We knew this was coming. It was just a matter of time and pretense as well as opportunity to have the right reason to do so. From the very beginning of this blog I warned this was coming, just as it was already being tested in China then. At one stage, the Covid crisis was used to push the idea with "vaccine" passports strongly promoted by the usual suspects. People pushed back and consequently, that angle of approach didn't work.
"Protect the children!" it will be, then. Who could be against? Unfortunately, what most governments want to do, especially in Europe, has nothing to do with "nudity", they couldn't care less, [LGBTQ are already in the classroom in many countries under the guise of "tolerance".], and everything to do with purging "wrong-think" and cleaning up Social Medias of "dangerous" ideas, like the government works for you and not the opposite.
What could and hopefully will save us are not whistleblowers which most people won't hear, but a major economic crisis could do the trick. Those pulling the strings in Europe know this of course which is why they are so busy demonizing Russia which will be used later to focus the hatred of the common people and justify more control down the road.
If all this doesn't remind you of "1984", then you didn't read the book carefully.
PS: The article is long and full of references so I only copied the Introduction below. Please follow the link here to read the examples:
by Patti Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,
That “black pill moment” is arriving faster than many realize. Not primarily through sweeping new government mandates, but through private companies quietly normalizing biometric data collection under the banners of “security,” “fraud prevention,” and “child protection.” They are erecting the infrastructure for a world where you cannot easily participate in daily life, commerce, or even basic online access without surrendering your face, your license scan, or other biometrics. Once the systems exist and the data flows, laws can simply ratify what private actors have already made routine.
In a recent commentary “Digital ID Black Pill Moment”, I highlighted a sobering reality: 186 out of 198 countries already have digital ID systems in place. Only a shrinking handful of nations lack foundational national digital IDs. As I wrote, “the global push for digital IDs is far advanced, likely past the point of no return, aligning with the UN’s 2030 goal of universal legal identity and enabling a globalist digital currency system that could control access to everything.”
The AI bubble is about to burst. That much is certain. Nobody knows when but the outcome is unavoidable. When this happens, the governments and financial authorities won't be able to come to the rescue as they did in 2008. They will do their best to avoid the panic from spreading but they cannot stop the hemorrhagic. This and AI itself are the two unknowns of 2027: A ASI-type of AI plus an hyper bubble imploding. Let's hope one will cancel the other because if for any reason they compound... "Houston, we have a problem!"
The AI Bubble Crash Will Be Worse…by Ed Zitron
This may be THE most important long term trend in the world right now!
The article below is about the US, but in Asia, not just Japan, all of Asia, the decline is close to a catastrophe. Japan had been at the forefront of the decline with numbers currently hovering around 1.2 children per women. But recently both Korea and Taiwan have gone below 1, with Thailand close behind. The numbers for China are unclear but with the one child policy enforced until recently, the numbers must also be well below 1.
What is worse is that this decline which was already a trend in the last few decades has taken a very sharp turn downward in almost all the countries around the world starting in 2012. Since the I-phone was introduced in 2007, it is not very hard to see the correlation between large scale introduction of the devices and the acceleration of the trend. As we say, correlation is not necessarily causation but in the case it probably is with a rather high level of certainty since the downturn started exactly in 2012 everywhere in developed countries with no exception.
More than children having access to nude pictures, this trend should concern governments more readily since the long term impact will be extremely profound.
Some people will argue that since the introduction of AI and robots will anyway destroy most jobs, the trend may in fact be positive. The experience of Japan which is about 20 years ahead shows this is not the case. Beyond the explosion of the debt and the imbalance of trade which are direct consequences, the lack of dynamism of an old society is also noteworthy. Likewise, from a "green" perspective, negative growth, another direct consequence looks like something we should welcome. In reality, our modern societies are unable to function in a negative growth environment which sooner or later leads to a crash. How can you build a credible business plan or pay back your loans when all the indicators turn negative?
by Thaddeus G. McCotter via American Greatness,
When I call you up, your line’s engaged
I have had enough, so act your age
We have lost the time that was so hard to find
And I will lose my mind
If you won’t see me . . .
Time after time
You refuse to even listen
I wouldn’t mind
If I knew what I was missing
—The Beatles, “You Won’t See Me”
As one heads into senescence, the milestones begin to fade in the rearview mirror. Yet every now and again, something jars the memory to refocus your recognition of such milestones and on how time has truly flown.
Recently, I was reminded that nearly an entire generation of Americans has been born after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. As a Gen Xer born before the introduction of the answering machine, I felt the weight of my sixty years, along with a gnawing anxiety about the future.
No, not because I won’t be around all that much longer. Despite the myths of the ubiquitous cult of youth promoted by our callow commercial culture, the increasing aches and pains accompanying my journey into old age are an insistent reminder that no one lives forever. Rather, my concern is how few Americans will be born to replace me and the other older members of our aging nation.
As reported by Elise Winland in Zeale News, a new study suggests the 2007 introduction of the iPhone has played a significant role in the declining U.S. fertility rate.
Written by Caitlin K. Myers and Ezekiel Hooper and issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the title of the working paper says it all: “Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly.”
The study’s methodology is straightforward, as are its implications for our nation. As succinctly explained by Ms. Winland: “The paper draws on a natural experiment created by Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T. When the iPhone launched in June 2007, it was available only on AT&T’s network until February 2011, giving researchers a way to compare areas with different levels of early iPhone access.”
While this deal was fortuitous for the researchers, the consequences were disastrous for the nation’s birth rate. According to Myers and Hooper:
The diffusion of the iPhone deepened the decline in births among women under 30 while suppressing the rise in births among older women. Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44. National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and reducing sexual frequency.
Importantly, Myers and Hooper are not asserting that the iPhone is the sole cause of the steep decline in America’s birth rate, which they cite as having dropped by 22 percent since 2007, again, the year of the iPhone’s introduction. For, as Winland notes, the researchers believe the nation’s record low birth rate of 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 “cannot be fully explained by the common explanations such as the Great Recession, increased access to contraception, rising housing and childcare costs, and delayed marriage.”
The researchers do argue that “studies imply that access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5–8.0% at ages 15–19 and 3.2–6.6% at ages 20–24, with statistically significant but smaller declines among older cohorts.” (It is worth noting that the iPhone had a salubrious impact on reducing teen pregnancies; however, the enduring detrimental effects stemming from the loss of social interaction and its accompanying skills will be carried into the future by today’s teens.)
Anyone with a cursory acquaintance with Marshall McLuhan’s work will see his dictum, “the medium is the message,” at work here. Every new technology affects human beings, both in how they interact with that technology and in how they subsequently interact—or fail to interact—with other people by using it.
The math—specifically subtraction—is elementary: by spending more time in your virtual cocoon, you have less time for interacting with real human beings. One must therefore consider how much of the iPhone’s contribution to the birth dearth stems from the technology’s unconscious effects on its users. Indeed, unlike, say, birth control or a career choice, the iPhone is not being used deliberately to delay or prevent pregnancy. Rather, the birth dearth is exacerbated because the iPhone user is more rapt with the device and the stimulation it provides than by another person. After all, there are only so many hours in the day—and night.
Meanwhile, the birth rate continues its decline. It is an indicator of national health. An optimistic, future-oriented nation has at least a replacement birth rate, if not a growing one. A declining nation has a declining birth rate. In America today, the atomization of our citizenry and its accompanying anomie continue apace, as algorithmically personalized prison cells push us out of gen pop and into solitary confinement. Thus does the insidious, circular logic of the siren song of decline become the mantra: life is unfair, inequitable, and horrible, so it is better—in fact, virtuous—not to bring a new life into this morass of meaninglessness.
The result of this is the declining birth rate found in both the United States and Europe, where the apostles of postmodernism hold sway, filling the perceived vacuity of modernity with a creed that holds the most “tolerant” belief is to believe in nothing—including one’s inherited civilization. A postmodern generation taught to loathe itself does not care to procreate. For what better way to reject the meaningless future than by making sure there are no succeeding generations to perpetuate it?
While my bachelor’s degree is only in political science, and despite all the technological advances during my lifetime—including the internet, social media, AI, and the answering machine—I nonetheless feel confident in declaring, “You can only make a baby in the real world.”
A healthy nation prizes real life over a virtual world. It doesn’t have a birth dearth. And I’m inclined to believe it has more answering machines—or at least call waiting—and fewer smartphones.
I had to interrupt and stop this conversation
Your voice across the line gives me a strange sensation
I’d like to talk when I can show you my affection
Oh, I can’t control myself . . .
Don’t leave me hanging on the telephone
Hang up and run to me
Oh, hang up and run to me.
—Blondie, “Hanging on the Telephone”
Every time I post something negative about China, I lose most of my Chinese audience. Well, so be it. This blog is about the truth, not trying to please or conversely displease anyone. Since I only follow the news very loosely, I tend to focus on the subjects I understand, related to finance, data, science and sociology.
And here we are once again. It has been know for a long time that the data coming from China are bogus. Currently the GDP of the country is not only not growing by 5 or 6% a year, but it may in fact not be growing at all.
There are several reasons for that, but the main one relates to the 2016 implosion of the huge real estate bubble which like in Japan is having a disastrous impact on investment and growth.
This in turn is having devastating consequences on young people who have no way of expressing their unhappiness at not being able to find jobs, marry and join society. So we end up with grass-root movements like Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平, 'lying flat') and bai lan, (Chinese: 摆烂, "Let it Rot') which are almost exactly like their Japanese equivalent of Ikikomori, (引きこもり) where the mostly male young adults, end up withdrawing from social life and seeking extreme isolation, typically staying confined in their homes for six months or longer.
Same causes, same consequences. Initially, I expected China to find a solution to the problem, unlike Japan, since the country has tools of coercion that Japan does not have access to. And sure enough, companies did find a way to solve the problem by putting even more pressure on the few who ended up finding a job, using AI to measure their productivity and training the AI to do their job, compounding the dissatisfaction of a generation of young people who consequently found a clever answer to the pressure: Digital Sabotage!
If you are interested, please look at the video below. It is interesting and shows what happen when you try to cross a whole generation. (PS: In a similar but unrelated subject, try to imagine what will happen in Europe next year when tech savvy under 16 are confronted to Social media interdiction!)
Something Is Spreading Like WILDFIRE Across China — And It’s About to Get Worse
Thank you to Tulsi Gabbard for the confirmation of what we've been saying for over 5 years. The conspiracy was real. As usual, nobody will be punished but at the very least their reputation will be tainted. We will of course read nothing whatsoever in the media. Old news right?
Tulsi Gabbard Releases Claims Alleging Fauci Funded Wuhan Research and Misled Congress
Tulsi
Gabbard released statements alleging that Anthony Fauci used taxpayer
funds to support gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of
Virology, which she linked to the origins of COVID-19. The claims
further allege that Fauci worked with elements of the intelligence
community to suppress information about a possible lab-leak origin and
misled Congress under oath. Gabbard said the actions represented a
coordinated effort to conceal wrongdoing, manipulate intelligence
assessments, and shift responsibility away from U.S.-funded research
activities.
New files expose Fauci–CIA plot to conceal COVID-19's US-funded biolab origins
Tulsi Gabbard released documents on her final day as director of US national intelligence that expose former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci’s role in a purported COVID-19 cover-up.
What's in the files?
🔴 Before COVID-19, Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions of dollars to fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — which the ODNI has described as “the source of an unintentional lab leak” triggering the global pandemic
🔴 Gain-of-function research refers to the process of genetically altering a pathogen to give it new or enhanced biological traits
🔴 When the pandemic erupted, Fauci weaponized his ties with the US intelligence community (IC) to conceal the truth and manipulate public perception:
➡️ he advanced the risky research linked to big pharma's vaccine push worth trillions of dollars
➡️ he hand-picked experts and pushed the IC to endorse an animal origin of the pandemic
➡️ as a US pandemic "czar", he publicly pushed lies and censorship
➡️ the IC marginalized, supressed and unmasked whistleblowers, including within its own community when they dared to challenge Fauci's narrative
🔴 One document references Senator Rand Paul’s interview, in which he stated that Fauci visited the CIA in early 2020 and that some CIA analysts who initially supported a lab-leak hypothesis were overruled by senior officials. Paul questioned whether Fauci or the CIA played a greater role in shaping the cover-up, asking, “Did the CIA influence Anthony Fauci?”
🔴 Fauci also promoted research papers arguing for a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, including The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020
🔴 Another Lancet letter, organized by British scientist Peter Daszak, strongly rejected non-natural-origin theories. It was Daszak’s organization, EcoHealth Alliance, had collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and received NIAID funding for coronavirus research
EcoHealth Alliance: The engineers behind COVID-19?
♦️ The ODNI trove describes EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function experiments with bat coronaviruses, which had the stated goal of helping design vaccines and therapeutics against potentially emerging viruses
♦️ China was selected as a research platform by EcoHealth under the pretext that it had the highest risk of viral exposure due to its large population and diverse wildlife, including bats that can harbor novel viruses
♦️ According to the documents, EcoHealth conducted extensive infection experiments using “diverse bat SARS-CoVs” on “transgenic mice expressing human ACE2"
♦️ They used a “reverse genetic strategy” with bat SARS-CoVs, created “chimeric viruses,” and “constructed the full-length infectious clone of MERS-CoV”
Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath.
Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements… pic.twitter.com/ZMdliW4zyS
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) June 19, 2026
The release, issued on Gabbard’s last day on the job, includes an eight-page May 27, 2020, assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Z Program. That assessment concluded that “all of the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus - specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors - were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019.” It assigned equal weight to a laboratory-modification hypothesis and a natural-origin scenario.
Meanwhile, Recall that while the government was locking us down, Dr. Anthony Fauci and those in his orbit were actively fabricating a 'wet market' narrative that would conceal US research as a possible origin - despite his own advisors initially insisting that COVID-19 looked manmade.
In his January 2024 transcribed interview, Fauci was asked about conversations concerning the same three topics - COVID origins, WIV, and EcoHealth. When asked about the CIA, he answered yes: he said he was briefed “once or twice” in a secure NIH facility and also recalled a briefing in a White House situation room.
The newly released documents then show a June 4, 2021 briefing involving CIA/WCP personnel, NSC officials, and Fauci, during which Fauci offered views on pangolin research, sick WIV researchers, single-lineage vs. multi-lineage evidence, and recommended scientists for the IC to contact. A separate CIA-context email says that same 40-minute secure video teleconfrenece involved CIA/WCPMC officials and that Fauci gave thoughts on the 4 May 2021 COVID-origin briefing and recommended U.S. scientists to consult.
So, he lied.
According to a statement released with the files, "Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research."
The files include the Year 5 progress report for EcoHealth Alliance’s NIH grant 5R01AI110964-05. Under Specific Aim 3, the project outlined plans to:
This research track overlaps with work described in the 2018 DEFUSE proposal, which involved EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and Shi Zhengli’s team at WIV. The proposal sought to create chimeric bat coronaviruses with enhanced human infectivity, including consideration of furin cleavage site insertion to improve lung-cell entry, and to test the resulting viruses in humanized mice originally developed in Baric’s lab.
A 2016 WIV paper included in the release describes a synthetic shuttle vector system for assembling large DNA fragments, with demonstrated capability up to 31 kilobases. The authors presented the method as a tool for “genome-scale DNA reconstruction,” a technique relevant to synthetic biology and virus engineering.
Surveillance work under the same NIH grant reported that 9 of 1,497 rural residents in southern China (0.6%) were seropositive for bat SARS-related or HKU10 coronaviruses.
And from leaked emails three years ago:
Among other things, the NIH helped fund experiments at WIV that infected genetically engineered mice with “chimeric” hybrids of SARS-related bat coronaviruses in what some scientists have described as unacceptably risky research.
...
Andersen laid them out plainly in an email to Fauci that same evening. “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen wrote in the email. “I should mention,” he added, “that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.” -The Intercept
A June 8, 2021, internal email in the release references a 2016 New York Academy of Medicine meeting at which Peter Daszak reportedly discussed colleagues in China “manipulating the spike protein on coronavirus to make them more virulent.”
Other 2020–2021 emails show officials debating technical concerns, including references to a DOD report on a “suspicious added furin-site” and FBI reporting containing unusual genetic descriptions. One analyst noted the risk that non-experts could misinterpret technical data while still calling for scrutiny. Another observed that “the IC took direction straight from NIH… the people that funded the Wuhan Lab” and referenced “a complex web of money and politics influencing analysis.”
July 2021 emails concerning the selection of outside reviewers for COVID-origin assessments show officials rejecting several candidates for political sensitivity or conflict-of-interest reasons:
These materials provide primary-source documentation that a U.S. national laboratory assessed a laboratory origin as equally plausible to natural emergence at a time when prominent scientific publications were publicly emphasizing a natural zoonotic source and characterizing alternative hypotheses as conspiracy theories. This includes the February 2020 Lancet letter and the March 2020 Nature Medicine paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”, along with subsequent amplification by NIH leadership.
The research details in the declassified grant reports and proposals involved techniques and modifications - spike-protein engineering, receptor adaptation, humanized-mouse testing, and consideration of furin cleavage sites - that later featured prominently in scientific debate over SARS-CoV-2’s characteristics.
