Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI (Video - 17mn)

 Today for the Easter, holiday, here's a slightly different video to open up your mind to the reality of AI. No hype, no worries about the future, just the facts. (This is what I actually do for a living these days :-)

 This video is bottling up all the basics of effective AI use in a short, impactful way supported with punchy, cute drawings which also help in understanding better the concepts. This should actually be required introduction to AI both for University undergraduates learning the basics of AI and business managers being acquainted to AI for their jobs. Enjoy!

 

"Capitalism Has Failed"

  Our failure is more social than any particular -ism. Still a good read.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via International Man,

Today, more than at any time previously, Westerners are justifying a move toward collectivist thinking with the phrase, “Capitalism has failed.”

In response to this, conservative thinkers offer a knee-jerk reaction that collectivism has also had a dismal record of performance. Neither group tends to gain any ground with the other group, but over time, the West is moving inexorably in the collectivist direction.

As I see it, liberals are putting forward what appears on the surface to be a legitimate criticism, and conservatives are countering it with the apology that, yes, capitalism is failing, but collectivism is worse.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is not classical logic, as Aristotle would have endorsed, but emotionalism that ignores the principles of logic.

If we’re to follow the rules of logical discussion, we begin with the statement that capitalism has failed and, instead of treating it as a given, we examine whether the statement is correct. Only if it proves correct can we build further suppositions upon it.

Whenever I’m confronted with this now oft-stated comment, my first question to the person offering it is, “Have you ever lived in a capitalist country?” That is, “Have you ever lived in a country in which, during your lifetime, a free-market system dominated?”

Most people seem initially confused by this question, as they’re residents of either a European country or a North American country and operate under the assumption that the system in which they live is a capitalist one.

So, let’s examine that assumption.

A capitalist, or “free market,” system is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by consumers and the open market, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

Today, none of the major (larger) countries in what was once referred to as the “free world” bear any resemblance to this definition. Each of these countries is rife with laws, regulations, and a plethora of regulatory bodies whose very purpose is to restrict the freedom of voluntary commerce. Every year, more laws are passed to restrict free enterprise even more.

Equally as bad is the fact that, in these same countries, large corporations have become so powerful that, by contributing equally to the campaigns of each major political party, they’re able to demand rewards following the elections, that not only guarantee them funds from the public coffers, but protect them against any possible prosecution as a result of this form of bribery.

There’s a word for this form of governance, and it’s fascism.

Many people today, if asked to describe fascism, would refer to Mussolini, black boots, and tyranny. They would state with confidence that they, themselves, do not live under fascism. But, in fact, fascism is, by definition, a state in which joint rule by business and state exists. (Mussolini himself stated that fascism would better be called corporatism, for this reason.)

In recognizing the traditional definition of fascism, there can be no doubt that fascism is the driving force behind the economies of North America and Europe.

In addition, the concept of any government taking by force from some individuals the fruits of their labour and bestowing it upon others is by no means free-market. It is a socialist concept. And, in any country where roughly half of the population are the recipients of such largesse, that country has, unquestionably, settled deeply into a socialist condition.

However, this is by no means a new idea. As Socrates asked Adeimantus:

Do not their leaders deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking care to preserve the larger part for themselves?

So, which is it? Are we saying here that these countries are socialist or fascist?

Well, in truth, socialism, fascism, and, indeed, communism are all forms of collectivism. They all come under the same umbrella.

So, what we’re witnessing is liberals, rightfully criticising the evils of fascism, but failing to understand it for what it is—a form of collectivism. Conservatives, on the other hand, do their best to continue to operate under their countries’ socialist laws, regulations, and regulatory bodies, whist continuing to imagine that a remnant of capitalism remains.

And so we return to the question, “Have you ever lived in a country in which, during your lifetime, a free-market system dominated?”

Such countries do exist. It should be pointed out, however, that even they tend to move slowly toward collectivism over time. (After all, it’s in collectivism that they gain their power.) However, some countries are “newer,” just as the US was in the early nineteenth century and, like the US, the governments have not yet had enough time to sufficiently degrade the economies that have been entrusted to them.

In addition, some citizenries are feistier than others and/or are less easy to convince that, by allowing themselves to be dominated by their governments, they’ll actually be better off.

Whatever the reasons, there are most certainly countries that are far more free-market than the countries discussed above.

But, what does this tell us of the future? What can be done to turn these great powers back to a more free-market system? Well, the bad news is that that’s unlikely in the extreme. To be sure, we, from time to time, have inspired orators, such as Nigel Farage or Ron Paul, who remind us what we “should” do to put these countries back on track, so that they serve the people of the country, rather than its leaders. But, historically, such orators have never succeeded in reversing the trend one iota.

History tells us that political leaders, in their pursuit of collectivism, never reverse the trend. They instead ride it all the way to the bottom, then bail out, if they can.

From Enlightenment To Ignorance: Society's Dangerous Embrace Of Stupidity

  Some literature for your Sunday. It all starts there...

Authored by Anthony Esolen via American Greatness,

What would be the state of a society in which a will to stupidity were united with a will to power?

When I first decided to study and teach literature as my life’s vocation, I foresaw the work ahead of me—to learn as much as I could about English letters. Was I still unread in the Victorian novel? That would have to change. Had I a blank area in early American? It would have to be filled. The idea, though, was not simply to cover this and check off that. It was to gain a broad view of the whole, to see the relations of one area to another, to hear Melville in conversation with Milton, to set Jay Gatsby off against Tom Jones, to hear the American strains of confidence and rule-breaking in Walt Whitman, and the no less American strains of reserve and fence-setting in Robert Frost.

But to study English literature is to open yourself to the literature of other nations, because English authors were never reading only English. You cannot have Chaucer without the three great Florentines: Dante, Petrarch, and, especially, Boccaccio. You cannot have the English romantics without the German romantics. If you want to best appreciate what is characteristic of Tudor and Stuart drama, with its boisterous violation of the “unities” of space and time as it whisks you from Rome to Alexandria and back, or lets pass sixteen years as Time himself comes on stage to tell you of it, you should become acquainted with the near contemporary drama of Racine and Corneille just across the water, with its classical concentration of action within a single day.

This, of course, is the work of a lifetime. I continue to learn languages and read literature I have never encountered before. But to call most of it “work” is to mistake its nature. It would be as if a self-described lover of art should drag himself from bed and mutter to his valet, “Dear me, I suppose I must go to the Sistine today. Paintings and paintings, nothing but paintings. Michelangelo, you know. Creation of man all the way to the what’s-it, with devils and bankers going one way and angels and decent sorts going the other. Molesworth, where is your mind wandering? Kindly hold the mirror so I can see myself.”

Yet that, as I see now, is the aim of our schools: to produce spoiled, self-satisfied graduates with the stolidity but not the innocence (and usually not the income) of an upper-class twit—a Bertie Wooster, if Bertie were sullen, debauched, and always in a state of political water-boiling. That is not the same as ignorance. I do not read Sanskrit, so I am largely ignorant of Sanskrit poetry. Had I more years ahead of me than I do, I might learn Sanskrit. I know something of the language, and I am piqued by the theology of Shankara, the greatest of commentators on the Rig-Vega. But I don’t have the years. Meanwhile, I have a Russian Bible that will provide my next re-introduction to the word of God, because when you know a language as poorly as I know Russian, you have to take things very slowly, and when you do that, you often see things that ease and fluency often miss, and these things can be small objects of wonder. It is like having to cross the woods afoot rather than driving along a road that cuts it in half. You might hear the ovenbird that way.

No, ignorance is one thing; we’re all going to be ignorant of most of the things there are to know. It used to be that a titan in mathematics, a Leonhard Euler, could be expert in all the areas of that subject; those days are gone. The topologist may be ignorant of Milton; that depends on his reading. But he is certainly going to be ignorant of most of the other branches of mathematics, simply because he has not got the time for them. Ignorance is one thing. Stupidity is another.

By stupidity, I do not mean mere dullness or sluggishness in the organ of understanding. I mean what the etymology suggests. You are stupid when you gape. The emperor Frederick II was called “Stupor Mundi,” “The Wonder of the World,” and to be stupefied still, in English, might suggest that you are overcome with astonishment. But stupidity has come to denote a gaping that is as far removed from wonder as possible. You are stupid when you gape indifferently at something excellent that you have the power to understand but without understanding it and without caring to, when you are unmoved by a beauty that you have the power to apprehend but you make sure you will not apprehend, when you shut the eyes of your soul against the goodness they might otherwise see.

Suppose you are trying to introduce a savage to a system of writing. He is ignorant of what the scratches and squiggles are supposed to say. Once you show him that they do speak, he should be interested, and if he has a lively mind, he will be like Sequoyah, who brought writing to the Cherokees. But if he has decided beforehand that nothing you have to show him is worth his time, he will be resolutely stupid: gaping on the thing and thinking that it is mere chicanery or foolishness or whatnot.

That sort of stupidity is what our schools are about. They do not teach young people about the glory of Melville, if they teach Melville at all, but about how Melville does or does not fit into some gridwork of identity politics, so that the work of art and intelligence itself, Moby-Dick, is left on the shore like a beached whale, dead and stinking, while onlookers in their stupidity hold their noses and pass by.

Nor is Melville an exceptional case. Consider what Milton thought the most beautiful thing in all of creation: the human form, male or female, as expressed most powerfully in the human face. Now consider how far we have gone to deny that such beauty, male or female in its characteristic manifestations, even exists. Suppose I say that ballet dancing or certain kinds of gymnastics most beautifully conform to the willowy beauty of the female body, while such things as weightlifting and football do not. I do not know which will cause me to be reviled more: my sense that the latter is awkward or my sense that the former is graceful and lovely. In this matter, I am required to be stupid and to gape in indifference at the one and the other.

It is the same with marriage and family life. Suppose I see a large family at a reunion. There are three or four generations, about fifty or sixty people in all. That’s by no means a lot, or at least it wasn’t when I was a boy, not when I had twenty-eight aunts and uncles and thirty-nine first cousins, and neighbor children had the like. I should be struck by the sheer human vitality. But if my first thought is that there are too many, that the women must have been pregnant too often, and that birth control would have solved the problem, I am stupid. I am like a savage who would rather dig under bark for grubs than learn how to plant seeds.

Now suppose that this will to stupidity is both the engine and the object of political power. When Sequoyah completed his syllabary of the Cherokee language, it took his people only a couple of years to see what a great gift he had given them. But if I were to say that Americans should learn to honor the religion without which their nation would never have been born and to be grateful for the gifts it conferred, even if they do not themselves believe in its teachings, I might as well hang a sign around my neck, inviting everyone, especially teachers, politicians, professional entertainers, and journalists, to spit on me and to make my name a byword from coast to coast. You must be stupid to be safe.

Readers may think of similar cases. Stupidity, apparently, is no obstacle to success in Google’s AI department; it is the royal road. Stupidity sells; stupidity is all the rage. Only someone stupid before the beauty of man and woman could suppose that a lopping-off here and a pin-the-tail there could turn one into the other, but dare to call out the stupidity, even in private, and you risk your career. I am not to honor my country; I am to be stupid before the contributions it has made to the world. I am not to be enthralled by the wonder of the cell and its intricate design: stupidity must reduce it to random jelly, as stupidity reduces the miraculous human being in the womb, with all its latent powers unfolding, to a wart, a tumor, or a parasite.

Hear, O America, the powers that be, the powers that be are united, and you must be stupid with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, or else.

RAND Sees "Internet Of Brains" By 2050

  What could go wrong?

  EVERYTHING! is the short answer. 

  Star Trek among all its kitsch 1970s pseudo SF gears was in fact exploring very interesting ideas. One of these was the Borg Cube, a civilization of connected entities which had abolished individuality. (If you haven't seen the movie, it is worth having a look.)

 Once the globalists are done with countries and cultures, the individual will be the last frontier. It looks more and more like their dream will become our nightmare in the near future. Hopefully they won't succeed but it won't be for lack of trying.

RAND Sees "Internet Of Brains" By 2050 

Elon Musk-led Neuralink Corp. implanted a brain chip into the head of a 29-year-old man with quadriplegia. The paralyzed millennial was recently seen using what he described as "The Force" to move a computer cursor around the screen to play Civilization VI with his mind. This is further evidence that the 'trans-humanism' movement - the merger of humans and machines - is accelerating development, fundamentally improving human lives, or at least that's what the billionaires are pitching. 

Editor Tim Hinchliffe of the tech blog The Sociable posted a creepy quote from a new report commissioned by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and conducted by RAND Europe and Frazer Nash Consulting that read:

"An 'internet of bodies' may also ultimately lead to an 'internet of brains', i.e. human brains connected to the internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks." 

RAND describes a future of the Internet of Bodies ecosystem that may morph into the Internet of Brains, i.e., a network of brain-to-brain connectivity. This technology could find itself in the marketplace between 2035 and 2050. 

"Trans-humanism implies the adoption of considerably advanced technologies by 2050, including brain-to-brain communication and genetic enhancement, and thus depends on resolving the various scientific and engineering barriers currently characterizing the field," the report said.

According to the report, the technological applications for this new brain network include:

• Wearable devices and implants for tracking and analyzing physiological and environmental data (e.g. biochips and implantable sensors). These technologies aim to achieve real-time continuous monitoring of physiological data to understand human health conditions and performance. 

• Sensory augmentation technologies such as hearing and retinal implants designed to improve or augment sensory activities, particularly vision and hearing. Smart prosthetics are a related category, including exoskeletons, i.e. whole-body robotic suits that enhance end users' physical capabilities and improve their mobility, strength, endurance and other abilities.

• Brain-computer or brain-brain interfaces that establish direct communications between human brains and/or computer devices. 

The latest example of transhumanism is Neuralink's brain chip...

If and when humans become fully integrated with machines, is this just a march towards digital slavery?

Globalists Claim Mass Immigration Helps The US Economy – Here's Why That's A Lie

  Globalism like Communism is an ideology therefore for those who believe, it can never be wrong. Any problem is because they didn't do enough and the solution is always to do more of whatever didn't work in the first place. 

  Right now, it's mass migration which is destabilizing countries North and South. 

  In the short term, it is not as bad as the risk of nuclear war. But is the long term the social damage will be huge with almost no economic positives. Multi cultural societies are supposed to be easier to run since the people can never muster a majority to oppose the elites. Sure enough but what if they lose cohesion and economic dynamism? 

 In the end, this is a huge bet and an enormous risk for the future of Europe and the US. My personal say on this issue is that it won't matter very much considering the economic hurdle ahead which are far more immediate. Still, making societies less cohesive is just adding another obstacle for the West to overcome as if there weren't already enough!

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

I have said it many times in the past but I think it bears repeating once again: If you want to understand why world events happen the way they do, you must understand the goals and influence of globalist institutions. You must accept the fact that these people create most of the national and international disasters you and I have to deal with on a regular basis and oftentimes they create these disasters deliberately.

Yes, I know, there are plenty of skeptics out there that think all geopolitics and crisis events are random or a product of bureaucratic stupidity; and those people are wrong. They have no idea what they’re talking about because they’re basing this conclusion on assumptions rather than facts and research. Make no mistake, there’s a good reason why it feels like the whole world has gone crazy all at once.

The primary purpose of the globalists is to erase national borders and homogenize all countries and cultures under one economic and governmental system. They have openly admitted to this plan on numerous occasions. One of the most revealing quotes on the agenda comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine that:

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

He adds in the same article a lesser known quote:

“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”

The people who push for this agenda are generally members of a number of globalist organizations, from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Tavistock Institute to the World Economic Forum to the IMF or World Bank, not to mention the Bank for International Settlements and the Council For Inclusive Capitalism. However, these think-tank groups are only part of the bigger picture. They are supported by some of the largest banking and investment corporations in the world, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Blackrock, etc.

If you want to know why mass illegal immigration is a growing crisis at this time and why the current government has been actively trying to enforce an open border police in the US, simply look into the financial aspects of pro-illegal immigration lobbying groups and think tanks pushing open borders messaging into the mainstream. You will find many of these banks and investment funds connected to them in one way or another.

For example, the list of companies backing the Governor of New York’s plan to subsidize illegal aliens entering the state is very revealing. If they’re allowed to continue offering incentives to illegals then those people will continue trying to come to the US; this isn’t complicated. The conspiracy is out in the open.

Admitting To The Agenda, Then Painting It As A Positive

For the first few years of Joe Biden’s presidency, he and his cohorts attempted to deny there was any mass illegal migration problem at all. However, when media coverage (mostly independent) began to expose the enormous caravans of illegals overwhelming border towns like El Paso, Texas, he was forced to acknowledge that the crisis was in fact a crisis.

But, if you thought that forcing Biden to admit to the migrant disaster was going to force him to do something about it, you were sorely mistaken. The reason mass immigration exists right now is exactly because the Biden Administration and globalist institutions are offering free handouts to “asylum seekers.” All they have to do to stop the rising tide of illegals is to stop offering them free stuff. Clearly, the political elites have no intention of doing this.

Instead, government officials, think-tanks and the media have decided that since they’re now pressed to admit that mass immigration and open borders are real, they’re going to spin the crisis as if it’s actually a good thing for America.

In a narrative similar to the one used by EU officials to justify their support of the invasion of Islamic fundamentalists from 2014 onward, American elites claim that western nations are “desperate for a younger population” which can fill the “needs of the labor market.” They claim than mass migrations into the west are “good for the economy.”

This was also the primary message of a World Economic Forum conference on migration and labor held in March. The globalist organization discussed how open borders and mass immigration could be framed as a “positive” in terms of economic advantages. And the talking points derived from WEF events always find their way into the corporate media. The main takeaway? Protectionism (of national borders) is bad and countries that engage in it will be at an economic disadvantage.

Since last month there’s been a hailstorm of establishment media articles and news reports suggesting that mass immigration will boost GDP and make America stronger. These assertions are all built on a single line from a single report from the Congressional Budget Office which states:

“In our projections, the deficit is also smaller than it was last year because economic output is greater, partly as a result of more people working. The labor force in 2033 (EDITOR’S NOTE: Do they mean 2023?) is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise. We are continuing to assess the implications of immigration for revenues and spending.”

Bloomberg recently published an article boasting that this line from the CBO report shows that the rising fears among Americans over illegal immigration are unfounded. They question why the migrant crisis is a top issue going into the 2024 elections and cite a number of major banking institutions that have adjusted their US fiscal outlook into the positive because of the CBO’s data point and higher immigration. Bloomberg quotes the HSBC:

“Immigration is not just a highly charged social and political issue, it is also a big macroeconomic one,” Janet Henry, global chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. No advanced economy is benefiting from immigration quite like the U.S., and “the impact of migration has been an important part of the U.S. growth story over the past two years.”

Firstly, let’s clarify something in terms of the CBO’s theory – The US deficit has fallen in direct correlation to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. It’s more expensive to borrow for everyone, including the government, which makes it more expensive to spend. Because of far higher interest payments the US is now adding over $1 Trillion every 100 days to the national debt. That’s unprecedented.

Any spending cuts can be directly attributed to higher interest rates, NOT immigration. The CBO mentions this fact very quickly in the same report, without elaborating on why they think immigrants add value. But let’s consider the GDP claim for a moment; why would the CBO expect higher immigration to add $7 trillion to the GDP in the next ten years?

Illegal Immigrants Are A Net Negative – We Don’t Need Them

They say it’s about more people working, but what about more people taking welfare and other subsidies? Neither the CBO (nor the media) make any distinction between legal migrants and illegal migrants when it comes to economic effects.

Legal migrants usually have careers, business plans, skill sets and their own money coming into the US. Most illegals have nothing – Little education, no substantial skill sets, no money and no plan other than to get free handouts wherever possible. We have seen the proof of this in places like New York and Washington DC, where a tiny percentage of migrants bused into the cities have absolutely crushed their welfare infrastructure.

It’s estimated that the net lifetime cost of each illegal immigrant for the American taxpayer is over $68,000. While some illegals do end up paying taxes, their overall cost is far higher than the amount they pay in.

The jobs market has been inflated by trillions in Federal Reserve stimulus and most of the jobs created are low wage retail and service positions that will disappear in a couple years anyway. The CBO notes in the same report that unemployment is set to increase in 2024, but the media overlooked that little tidbit of information.

Migrants are not needed to keep the labor market going. In fact, as jobs numbers inevitably plummet due to higher interest rates illegals will only add to jobless levels and poverty levels in the US, further dragging the economy down.

Not to mention, the American housing market has suffered an oppressive spike in prices, with home costs and rents in many places doubling. This is caused in part by the millions of migrants entering the country each year looking for housing and getting help from US government programs to secure that housing. Get rid of the illegals and I guarantee rent costs will go down quickly.

Almost all of the projected GDP gain from illegal immigrants comes from their wages which go into their pockets (the same wages they send back to their families in their home countries). There is no direct GDP gain from illegals in terms of benefits to the overall economy. That said, the CBO may also be accounting for another factor which many Americans are unaware of – Government spending being added to GDP.

As I’ve noted in the past, a large portion of GDP calculated by state governments and the federal government comes from spending. The more the government spends the higher GDP climbs. It doesn’t matter if that money was wasted, it is still counted as rising economic activity.

So, if the US is adding 2-3 million illegals per year to the population and the government is spending thousands in tax dollars per year on each illegal through various subsidies, that will amount to billions per year in extra GDP. And the more they allow illegals to enter the country unchecked the more GDP can grow exponentially. Is that good for the economy? No. It’s going to destroy the economy and we are already seeing the effects, but the government and the media can spin it to look like it’s a positive.

The head of the CBO is a Republican but he’s also a former member of the IMF, so it’s not surprising he would paint mass immigration as a positive. The globalists want to end national sovereignty and the fastest way to do that is to create open border conditions, kill domestic economies, erase western culture and then swoop in with a “global solution” after the dust settles. This is the plan; to destabilize the US economic system, not save it. And, illegal immigrants are a useful tool for that end game.

The Era Of Informed Consent Is Over

  In finance it was the Glass Steagal law differentiating merchant banking which could take unlimited risk on their client's behalf and deposit banks which could not. The law was instigated during the great depression to protect your bank account from unlimited speculation and risk. It was a great hindrance for large national banks which were prevented to leverage their client's accounts on the market and was therefore cancelled by President Clinton in 1998 under heavy pressure from lobbying from the main American banks. 

  In the health sector, it was the informed consent law which likewise protected your health with the guaranty that no procedure or therapy could be implemented without the patient's agreement. Here too the pharmaceutical industry argued that the limitation was a great hindrance on progress as they were not in a position to move on with "High risks, High rewards" cures.

  Now thankfully, the law is on their side and they can finally move forward with "High risks (for you), High rewards (for them)" therapies. What's not to like with such a policy? Didn't we learned with the Covid-19 saga that the pharmaceutical industry had our best interest in mind? What could go wrong? Everything? Nay! Stop being a negative, anti vaccs, anti progress thinker. They swear. It's not (only) about profits!

Authored by Victor Dalziel via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In a significant blow to patient autonomy, informed consent has been quietly revoked just 77 years after it was codified in the Nuremberg Code.

(Jan H Andersen/Shutterstock)

On the 21st of December 2023, as we were frantically preparing for the festive season, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final ruling to amend a provision of the 21st Century Cures Act. This allowed

“... an exception from the requirement to obtain informed consent when a clinical investigation poses no more than a minimal risk to the human subject ...” [emphasis added]

This ruling went into effect on January 22nd, 2024, which means it’s already standard practice across America.

So, what is the 21st Century Cures Act? It is a controversial Law enacted by the 114th United States Congress in January 2016 with strong support from the pharmaceutical industry. The Act was designed to

“... accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st-century cures, and for other purposes [?] ...”

Some of the provisions within this Act make for uncomfortable reading. For example, the Act supported:

• High-risk, high-reward research [Sec. 2036].

• Novel clinical trial designs [Sec. 3021]

• Encouraging vaccine innovation [Sec. 3093].

This Act granted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) legal protection to pursue high-risk, novel vaccine research. A strong case could be made that these provisions capture all the necessary architecture required for much of the evil that transpired over the past four years.

Overturning patient-informed consent was another stated goal of the original Act. Buried under Section 3024 was the provision to develop an “Informed consent waiver or alteration for clinical investigation.”

Scholars of medical history understand that the concept of informed consent, something we all take for granted today, is a relatively new phenomenon codified in its modern understanding as one of the critical principles of the Nuremberg Code in 1947. It is inconceivable that just 77 years after Nuremberg, the door has once again opened for state-sanctioned medical experimentation on potentially uninformed and unwilling citizens.

According to this amendment, the state alone, acting through the NIH, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will decide what is considered a “minimal risk” and, most concerning, will determine:

“... appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of human subjects.”

Notice the term subjects, not patients, persons, individuals, or citizens... but subjects. In asymmetrical power relationships such as clinician/patient, it is understood that the passive subject will comply with the rulings and mandates of their medical masters. The use of the term subjects also serves to dehumanise. The dehumanisation of populations was a critical component of Nazi human experimentation and, as Hannah Arendt argued, is an essential step toward denying citizens “... the right to have rights.”

This ruling also allows researchers and their misguided evangelical billionaire backers to potentially pursue dangerous experimental programs such as Bill Gates’ mosquito vaccines, mRNA vaccines in livestock, and vaccines in aerosols. This Act encourages these novel and high-risk programs, with medical studies approved as “minimal risk” by the regulators no longer requiring researchers and pharmaceutical companies to obtain patient consent. Yet, the histories of pharmacology and medicine are plagued with clinical investigations and interventions that were thought to pose no more than minimal risk to humans but went on to cause immeasurable pain, suffering, and death.

This amendment represents merely a first tentative step as the U.S. government tests the waters to see what it can get away with. Given the lack of attention this ruling received in both the corporate press and independent media, the government is likely to feel emboldened to widen its scope. Thus, this decision represents the beginning of a chilling revisionism in Western medical history, as patient autonomy is again forsaken.

This ruling, to be actioned by potentially corrupt scientists, health bureaucrats, and captured health and drug regulators, is another step toward a dystopian future unimaginable just five years ago. No doubt the infrastructure to implement this decree is already being constructed by the same groupthink cultists responsible for the nightmarish pandemic lockdowns, continuing to place the pursuit of profit and the greater good above individual choice, bodily autonomy, and informed consent.

From the Brownstone Institute

The Optimism-Fatalism Historical Cycle

  An interesting perspective on democracy although I am not sure I follow their idea. Democracy over the ages has been a rare political system indeed so it is difficult to generalize and deduct rules. The Greeks invented it but the system didn't survive the death of Pericles. The Romans were never quite interested although they tested many legal and political aspects of democracy. The one system which did last was the Doge of Venice. A remarkably well designed and long lasting system which lasted almost 1,000 years. Then Voltaire and a few other French philosophers revived the idea (the theory at least) whereas the English, more practical, following the Magna Carta established a democratic system while maintaining their monarchic institutions. It is nevertheless in the US that the system flourished: "A Republic, if you can keep it!"

  That was almost 250 years ago and as expected by the founding fathers, their descendants were indeed incapable of keeping it. From nepotism to raw greed and corruption, from the deep state "praetorian guards" to massive lobbying, Washington has degenerated to the point that although the institutions are still there, the political show taking place in the modern theater is but a parody of what should really happen. With Bidden as the main character, it looks like a tragedy. Would Kamala Harris be in charge, it would be a comedy. Very little to be proud of.

  Was it to be expected? To some extent yes. Mencken warned us: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance!"

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

No fundamental form of human behavior, for better or worse, disappears forever.

Cycles of wealth, fear, or frustration force changes, and they bear an uncanny similarity to Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man.” We are, above all else, predictable.

The present decline, distortion, or much-heralded “end of democracy” is overstated. Still, it is difficult to disagree that the present cycle of democracy—beginning in the 18th century—has run its course. It is a human concept of behavior and, as with all things human, has its lifespan before it becomes feeble and sclerotic, corrupt and cynical, and ultimately a parody of what was intended in the flush of innocent youth.

Throughout the world, “democracies” now see themselves beset by the internal competition for office by career politicians whose goal, before all else, is to attain and retain power. The compromises of dignity, nobility of purpose, and service to the electorate are the hallmarks of the age. These compromises have led to the thing aspiring politicians once saw as the bane of human existence: autocracies or, worse, rampant and totalitarian tyrannies. But autocracies cloak themselves with the language of democracy.

Just as Africa, freed now from the coercion of major external powers, has resorted to removing governments by force, we see politicians in power using their office to suppress, deter, or remove their challengers for office.

The Communist Party of China (CCP) introduced the concept of “lawfare” to outmaneuver its domestic and international opponents: using legal mechanisms to constrain an adversary. This concept has been adopted vigorously by “democratically elected politicians” worldwide, so there are now few societies where “lawfare” is not used to eliminate legitimate opponents and constrain and channel society at large.

The spirit of democracy is nowhere to be seen.

Waste no time on mourning. Democracy has had its day and will return when the time is right.

But, equally, waste no time nurturing the self-delusion that moral or intellectual superiority lies in the pretense of democracy, the pretense that societies still embody what they once set out to represent. But we, most of us, insist on our certainty of the moral superiority of our own society because we have nowhere else to go. We cannot embrace our historical or geopolitical opponents’ rights to their own certainties.

But we do not know how best to reorganize our own society without the unthinkable collapse of that same democracy to force our actions.

The birth and death of states have been a preoccupation of scholars since humanity began to structure into durable communities. In 2006, I created—with the help of Greek Cypriot scholar Marios Evriviades—the words “cratocide” (the murder of nations) and “cratogenesis” (the birth of nations) for the book, “The Art of Victory.” Shortly afterward, we added the word “cratometamorphosis” to describe the total reorganization of societies.

Collapse is always the prerequisite to “cratometamorphosis.” Theoretically, this reorganization and revitalization of society should be feasible before total collapse creates a situation when no other option is available. But the very safeguards we have put in place over decades and centuries to protect our present structures also safeguard the corrupted wreckage they have become.

So if, as it appears, many societies—and by no means only those that thought of themselves as democratic—are waiting painfully for that total collapse so that they may be free to recreate themselves “closer to the heart’s desire,” then why is little thought given to that future society, that utopia?

During the years of difficulty that beset so many during the Industrial Revolutions, new concepts were conjured, speculatively, out of whole ideals. There were also years of uncertainty in societies in flux, during which new belief systems were devised.

These religions and ideologies all rippled down the ages and continue to inspire followers, often in the face of historical evidence that they failed here and there but were never revised to truly meet new requirements. Indeed, modern democracy itself—mirroring several iterations in the Hellenic states and earlier in the Indus Valley civilizations over the past 10,000 years—was just such a “revivalist creed,” and its new advocates failed to understand (or even question) why, in its earlier iterations, it had ultimately collapsed.

Is it possible that at our present impasse, there is some belief that technology—artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and so on—will define or create a new social framework? Have we, in so embracing “technology,” outsourced responsibility for devising ways in which humans can best work together? Certainly, technology has enabled the implementation of mass guidance of vast numbers of the human population, like the “murmuration of starlings,” the uncanny, but now understood, mass coordination of flocks of starlings in flight.

This “mass guidance” of humans is the mass psychosis tendency, a fundamental self-protection mechanism in human behavior designed to create herd protection.

That mass psychosis, of course, is what we saw during the COVID-19 crisis. However, it presupposes that human societies can be made to walk willingly and fatalistically toward the scenario outlined in the book, “1984,” by George Orwell. It may be man’s good fortune that economic dislocations—now being evidenced in the tremblors that shake the values of currencies and the viability of major economies—will gradually erode the pace of technological progress, enabling human society to regroup on more elemental or human lines.

To “start again” with new concepts for societal organization—governance—will inevitably involve considering concepts that, whether we realize it or not, have probably been played out before. However, it would be ideal to recognize that the framework begins with the sovereignty of each individual and the requirement for each individual to respect each other individually to achieve progress and human reproduction.

At least that optimistic framework can reemerge for a while until we see politics once more fatalistically reach the point where all respect is once again lost, and the desire for power outweighs the desire for societal wellbeing.

Doug Casey on What’s Really Going On in Haiti

   What's really going on in Haiti? To understand the place and the hell hole it has become, knowledge of history helps. Here's a description from Doug Casey. You could add a few mitigating points: France didn't help much after independence and the US not at all since. But human history is not quite a story of harmonious development, from the Romans onward through the not so friendly Vikings and Huns to the rather violent conquistadors in South America. Yes Haiti has earthquakes and Typhoons but so does Japan. Countries which do develop, often pull themselves by the bootstraps. Think about Korea which after the Korean war was poorer than Chad! Haiti meanwhile was the homeland of Voodoo and other esoteric practices. Now it is said to be a haven for cannibalism. Let's hope this is not true but with a gang chief called "barbecue" you can most certainly expect the worst!  

Via International Man

International Man: After Haiti’s president was assassinated in 2021, Ariel Henry—a US ally—began serving as the acting head of the country even though there was no election.

Recently, Henry flew to Africa to ask the Kenyan government to send soldiers to help fight the armed groups increasingly taking control in Haiti.

Before he could return, the armed groups took control of most of the country, and Henry recently resigned.

What’s your take on the situation?

Doug Casey: Chaos is par for the course in Haiti. I’ve been there a half-dozen times since 1970 and have come to realize that you have to put the current chaos in the context of Haiti’s history, which is basically one disaster and tragedy after another. Let me give you a brief rundown, starting with its independence after the French Revolution.

The eviction of the French, starting in 1791, resulted in their first real bloodbath after the slaves overthrew their masters. The place was a slave colony from the very beginning and one of the richest places in the hemisphere due to sugar production. The French lost 50,000 soldiers trying to regain control of the island, killing about 350,000 Haitians. Napoleon decided to cut his losses and write the place off. Haiti was off to a bad start.

Incidentally, it was the only slave revolt in all of history that resulted in an independent country. But Haiti has always had bad habits as a result of its history.

After independence, the next ruler, JJ Desallines, massacred about 5,000 remaining whites in 1805. Subsequent rulers styled themselves as kings or emperors for the rest of the 19th century, occupying themselves with wars with the Spanish speakers in what became the Dominican Republic on the eastern side of the island.

In 1824, about the same time Liberia was founded as an alternative colony for blacks, 6,000 US slaves were exported to Haiti. But most of them thought it was just too brutal and returned to slavery or poverty in the US.

After a horrible century, Haiti had a 20-year respite when it was occupied by US Marines from 1915 to 1934. It was a time of some order and development, although several thousand Haitians who resented the white occupiers were killed.

As soon as the Marines left, the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic massacred about 30,000 Haitians living there. It was apparently quite grisly; Haitians were hacked with machetes and driven into the sea to be eaten by sharks. Dominicans and Haitians maintain poor relations to this day.

Then came the election of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1957. Duvalier used his credentials as a voodoo houngan to his advantage. Fear and psychological warfare, combined with the threat of violence, kept a lid on the pressure cooker during his exotic reign.

Haiti’s history has been one of almost unremitting bloodshed, poverty, disasters, and oppression. But a country’s history is different from day-to-day life. Especially for the relatively few members of the middle and upper classes, I’d say it was pleasant enough…

International Man: Doug, having spent time there, you are familiar with Haiti in a way most people aren’t.

What’s really going on?

Doug Casey: I first went there in 1970, when Papa Doc was still alive. I can tell you that it was very safe in those days, at least for a foreigner. You could walk anywhere in Port-au-Prince late at night with money hanging out of your pockets, and nobody would touch you.

Now, there were two reasons for that. Number one, at that time, Haiti was socially pretty stable; the population was only a third of what it is today. There were numerous light manufacturing enterprises set up by foreigners to take advantage of the cheap labor. Reason number two was that Duvalier had a praetorian guard, a secret police, called the Tonton Macoute. They always sported dark sunglasses.

It was well known that if anybody harmed a tourist, they’d severely regret it before their body was discovered the next day. Haiti was dirt cheap. You could get a nice hotel room in downtown Port-au-Prince, with breakfast and dinner included, for $10 a day. Some of the hotels were very nice indeed, like the Olufsen. One night, I met Barry Goldwater, who was having dinner at the next table.

In fact, it was looking so good for a while that a hotel called the Habitation Leclerc was built with exceptional rooms and private pools for each of the rooms. Now, it’s just an overgrown ruin filled with vagrants.

I drove across the island to Cap Haitien. The roads were unbelievably bad, but on the bright side, there were no other cars in either direction. On the way, I passed an abandoned city called Duvalierville, where Papa Doc was going to make a new capital. This is something Third World countries can’t resist. They love the idea of building new capitals. Haiti’s effort was a ruin, a testimony to the country’s economy.

Haiti used to be a really nice place for a while, even as it degenerated into an archetypical shithole. In fact, it was so pleasant that I was thinking of moving there and starting a diving business. But that was then. This is now and now is very, very different. So different that the State Department’s usually worthless travel advisories should be taken seriously. On my last visit we had to hire two armed guards when going out.

International Man: The mainstream media is filled with coverage of the cannibalistic gangs that have taken over the country—including calls for the US government to “do something.”

Others have said claims of cannibalism are CIA propaganda aimed at delegitimizing those who overthrew a US puppet and paving the way for some kind of foreign intervention. In a recent statement, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that a “transitional council” is underway to appoint a new interim government in Haiti.

What is the US government really up to in Haiti? Why do they have a history of meddling in this impoverished country?

Doug Casey: Cannibalism? Maybe it’s true since food is hard to come by. Or maybe it’s just a rumor to make a statement, like the human heads Mexican gangs used to post along highways. In any event, it’s a mystery to me why anybody cares about Haiti. The country produces absolutely nothing now—except rum—and I’m absolutely shocked that the Barbancourt Rum company has somehow managed to stay in existence.

One time, I met an American who managed the factory that made all the major league baseballs. He was just getting completely fed up with the place. Constant shakedowns from the government made him crazy; having to deal with local bureaucrats overcame the advantages of cheap labor. They moved baseball manufacturing out of the country. You’d only do that as a last resort. They couldn’t make that business work because it was just too crazy—and that was way before the current mass violence.

Haiti used to grow coffee and sugar, but it became uneconomic. Hand labor with no machines just doesn’t pay. Mining might have worked, but who would make a long-term capital-intensive investment in a chaotic country with questionable property rights? Lots of Haitians produce art, and some of it’s very good—but all the good artists have left Haiti. Cruise ships used to go there, but you don’t bring cruise ships to violent shitholes, forget about war zones.

So what is the future—if any—for this country? Why does the US have any interest in it?

Haiti has nothing but subsistence agriculture—and not much of that because of theft. They don’t grow anything, they don’t make anything, and they don’t export anything. It’s hard to see how they even subsist.

Their main export is people because anybody who can possibly get out tries to get out. Remittances from Haitians living abroad and foreign aid are the only sources of income. Tourism is totally dead for the foreseeable future. Even ships with relief aid wind up trapped in the harbor while their food cargoes rot from the heat. FWIW, no commercial flights are coming or going from Haiti—zero.

International Man: In the US, Florida senators have asked President Biden to create a plan for dealing with the influx of Haitian migrants that will surely come into the country amid the chaos.

What do you think about this?

Doug Casey: Like I said, the main income of the country is dollars sent by expats to relatives. And foreign aid, most of which disappears down sundry ratholes. There are probably about 12 million people living in Haiti, but well over a million more are now living in the US.

Some of the islands in The Bahamas have been completely taken over by Haitians because it’s easier to get to than the US. Haiti will probably become the 53rd US state after Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Soon to be joined by the Ukraine, then by Israel. Then maybe Gaza will become the 56th US state.

The problem is that Haiti has been ruled by criminals and criminal gangs from Day One. Except now the government, long the most powerful criminal gang, barely exists. Other criminal gangs have taken over the place.

The situation can’t be solved easily. Sending in foreign troops, even black ones from Kenya, is a nonstarter. On the bright side, it’s hard to imagine anything happening that’s much worse than the 2010 earthquake when something like 250,000 people died. That’s so many people that it’s hard to imagine where they could even find places to bury them all.

Haiti has nothing except millions of penniless people.

International Man: Throughout Biden’s presidency, we’ve seen an embarrassing retreat from Afghanistan, a failing war in Ukraine, the overthrow of numerous US allies in Africa, and now this situation in Haiti.

Is this yet another example of a failed foreign policy and the declining influence of the US empire around the world? What are the implications?

Doug Casey: Yes. The Bidenistas are so incompetent that it makes me think Washington will look like Duvalierville if they’re reinstalled in November. A failed foreign policy is one of the many signs of a declining US.

One thing is for sure: What happens in Haiti should have absolutely nothing to do with the US because none of it’s good. Perhaps Las Vegas’s slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” can be restated as “What happens in Haiti, stays in Haiti.” More likely, though, it will be “Coming to a location near you!”

If property rights in the US were properly enforced, you wouldn’t have the mass migration of penniless people. They’re not just escaping the problems of their home countries. They’re being actively induced to come to the US for free housing, free money, free cell phones, and free medical care. Today’s immigrants are different from those of the 19th century; they may have been penniless, but they had to make their own way and provide for themselves.

The US is becoming the world’s dumping ground of criminal classes from all around the world. I heard an anecdote the other day from someone from Caracas. He said you don’t have to worry about someone stealing your iPhone anymore because all the thieves have left for richer pickings in the US.

So yes, it’s all about failed policies—bankrupt moral philosophies, and raw stupidity, with a flavoring of bad intentions. Haiti’s problems should stay in Haiti; they should solve their own problems. Instead, Haiti’s problems are being exported to the US.

It's Over And The FDA Is Finished (Russell Brand video - 21mn)

  The dam is bursting at last! Now Ivermectin! OK typical Russell Brand but still an important underlying message. Ivermectin WAS an effective medication against Covid-19. So why the campaign against it by the FDA? 

 

Ex Qantas Captain, Graham Hood's Powerful Witness Statement (Video - 19mn)

   A heart wrenching witness against the Covid vaccine in front of the Australian parliament. Finally!

 

America's Minsky Moment Approaches

  I am afraid the Minsky moment approaching is not just for America. Europe is also bankrupt both in practice and in ideas. The green agenda is pipe dreams for over educated ideologues who have never seen a cow in their lives. (Reason why the peasants all over Europe are up in arms.) The energy agenda is a recipe to keep the EU elites in their private jets (no carbon tax for these of course) and the rest of the population back in the Middle ages. Or rather a technological neo-feudalism as the more accurate modern description goes. In Asia the picture is not much better. If birth rates in China, Japan and Korea are all near or below 1 child per woman, it indicates a profound malaise for young people who do not see a future for themselves, no matter the political system.

  We certainly can trudge along a few more months but eventually the tsunami of quadrillions of derivatives triggered by the bursting of the Chinese real estate bubble and the America lack of productivity bubble will overwhelm the markets. Then what? 

  The problem with this analysis is that what we see, the people behind the curtain can see just as well and they may well decide to do "something" about it. Could statements from the likes of Emanuel Macron who directly represent these shadowy powers be an indication of what they plan? 

 I hope not but the idea should not be dismissed so lightly. So Minsky Moment, Black Swan or WW3? However you look at it, it doesn't look like a great choice heading our way.

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

Named after American economist Hyman Minsky, the idea behind a Minsky moment is that a financial markets crisis (especially in credit markets) is caused by a sudden and systemic collapse in asset prices, usually after a sustained period of speculative investment, excessive borrowing, and widespread financial risk taking.

In other words, it’s the moment when the music stops playing, investors stop buying, and the Ponzi game ends abruptly. It’s a hard crash.

America may be on the brink of its Minsky moment.

This process, which moves from slowly, slowly, to suddenly and now, goes back decades.

The confrontation with reality that was required to put America’s economic house back in order after the global financial crisis of 2008–09 was deferred to a later date by politicians, central bankers, and government officials alike, presumably when they would no longer be around.

Instead of taking the painful but necessary steps of liquidation—i.e., allowing more over-levered and risk-heavy banks and financial firms to fail, and for the economy to take the short-term pain, then move on—the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve kicked the can down the road by massive money-supply expansion and unproductive government spending.

The same playbook from the financial crisis (i.e., money printing and fiscal excess) was used again in 2020 in response to the pandemic. As the monetary authorities had but one instrument in their toolbox—the blunt-force cudgel of money-supply growth—it was the go-to solution.

As the saying goes, when the only tool available is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In both instances—the financial crisis and COVID periods), the U.S. Congress went on a massive spending spree, not realizing (or, as political animals with short time horizons, not caring) that excess and repeated deficit spending, and the debt creation needed to fund it, would eventually spiral out of control and doom future generations.

While a more serious collapse of the bubble—a monetary Great Reset—was avoided in 2008–09, the underlying conditions were not resolved.

The monetary and fiscal actions taken at the time only postponed the crisis and, worse, further inflated a massive bubble that is destined to eventually burst.

We are still living in this bubble, evidenced by all-time highs in equity and crypto markets, speculation in numerous asset classes from real estate to collectibles to memecoins, and “get what you can while you can” borrowing by governments, households, and corporates alike.

Given the increasing magnitude (in both nominal and real terms) of the debt problem, a financial crisis in 2024 or 2025 will have much worse consequences than anything that would have happened at the time of the financial crisis 15 years ago.

On the eve of the 2008 crisis, U.S. federal debt to GDP was around 64 percent, the same level as in 1995. This allowed some flexibility. As of the most recent quarter, the ratio of debt to GDP is now nearly double that, at 122 percent.

On this measure, the United States is now among the top 10 most indebted countries in the world, a peer group that includes economically hobbled nations such as Venezuela, Greece, Italy, and sclerotic Japan.

The level of U.S. national debt, quickly approaching $35 trillion in coming months, now requires more than $1.1 trillion in interest payments annually just to service it. And this number doesn’t include state and municipal debt or the unfunded liabilities and entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security that now comprise the substantial majority of the federal budget, limiting anyone’s ability to shrink the deficit through a reduction in discretionary spending.

The deficit for 2024 is tracking at $1.7 trillion, adding to the existing cumulative U.S. deficit of $22 trillion since 2001. The deficit matters in part because high deficits relative to GDP are strongly correlated with persistent inflation.

Since 2020, the United States has run the highest levels of deficits (as a percent of GDP) since World War II. Those deficits produced high inflation, but they also reversed and became budget surpluses shortly after the war ended. This was made possible because of the productivity miracle that was mid-twentieth century America.

The United States of 2024 has no equivalent productivity boost waiting in the wings. Artificial intelligence is one bright spot, but other tech (crypto in particular), energy, and mining industries are each being chased off-shore through regulatory interference.

Manufacturing is attempting a comeback, but only represents 11 percent of GDP. Bureaucratic, tax, monetary (the U.S. dollar remains too high to be competitive), and other barriers persist. The continued growth (as a percent of GDP) of financial advisors, personal injury attorneys, and tax accountants needed to navigate the impossible IRS tax code hardly comprise the revolutionary army needed to make the American economy great again.

When the Minsky moment arrives, the U.S. government will have no ability to confront it save for a resumption of quantitative easing and other forms of money printing.

With the bond markets in turmoil, investors will be increasingly reluctant to buy more U.S. debt. Foreign buyers have already begun reducing their exposure, and now account for only 30 percent by value of U.S. Treasurys held, compared with 45 percent in 2013.

If this divestment trend suddenly accelerates, the United States will be forced to monetize its debt through Federal Reserve purchases of U.S. Treasurys. This will be highly inflationary, even as economic conditions are weakening and unemployment is rising.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have already committed to a “whatever it takes” approach to crisis management. When the Minsky moment arrives, and the bond markets are in meltdown, the “whatever it takes” will primarily be a firehose of liquidity (more money created out of thin air) to the banking system with an alphabet soup of program names.

As a result, the United States will be forced to accept significantly higher levels of inflation. The alternatives are just too severe. The U.S. government, as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, cannot default. There is a practical limit on how high it can take the visible tax rate. Its only alternative is the hidden tax of ever-higher inflation.

To avoid this outcome, U.S. productivity would have to dramatically increase such that the ratio of debt to GDP falls back in line. This seems an impossibility. The higher the ratio of debt to GDP, the greater the anchor-like drag on the national economic ship.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor We Are On the Brink of Total War The Time To Act Is Now (Video - 45mn)

  Colonel Douglas Macgregor is brilliant both in his analysis and conclusions. I am afraid he is right too, if we don't get things right in Ukraine and especially Israel we may indeed have a global war sooner that people expect.

 

Heart-Scarring Detected Over 1 Year After COVID-19 Vaccination: Studies

   It is much worse than we were told! When you were injected with the mRNA vaccine, the RNA didn't necessarily stay in your arm as it was supposed to do. Often it migrated and infected cells randomly. These cells started producing the spikes and were of course immediately destroyed by your immune system. Whenever this was in the heart, it would cause irremediable inflammations. Worse, we now know that the mRNA technology is not yet mature and consequently, the samples contain huge numbers of RNA "debris". What effects do these have on the body? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Except of you look at which type of diseases have been exploding since 2021: Myocarditis, Turbo cancers and a litany of rare diseases we hardly ever saw before. Coincidence or correlation?

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Heart scarring was detected more than one year after COVID-19 vaccination in some people who suffered myocarditis following receipt of a shot, researchers reported in new studies.

A health care worker prepares a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Sydney, Australia, on July 1, 2021. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

A third of 60 patients with follow-up cardiac imaging done more than 12 months after their myocarditis diagnosis had persistent late gadolinium enhancement (LGE), which is, in the majority of cases, reflective of heart scarring, Australian researchers reported in a preprint of a new study, published on March 22.

Myocarditis is a form of heart inflammation.

The median time from receipt of a vaccine to follow-up imaging was 548 days, with the longest interval being 603 days.

“We found that the incidence of persistent myocardial fibrosis is high, seen in almost a third of patients at >12 months post diagnosis, which could have implications for the management and prognosis of this predominantly young cohort,” the researchers wrote.

“The long-term clinical implications of LGE in this condition are as yet unknown, but LGE has been demonstrated to confer worse prognosis in non-COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially if it persists beyond six months,” they added later, pointing to several previous papers.

Researchers in one of the previous papers, for instance, found that LGE was a “powerful prognosticator” of adverse outcomes in myocarditis patients.

Before the new testing, nine patients were determined to definitely have myocarditis, and 58 patients were labeled as probably having myocarditis. The findings of persistent LGE resulted in reclassifying 16 of the cases from probable myocarditis to definite myocarditis.

Exclusions included patients who were pregnant or allergic to agents used in gadolinium testing.

Among a subset of 20 patients who underwent imaging shortly after vaccination, 19 had LGE. In follow-up imaging, LGE was no longer visible in 10 of those patients. In five, it was reduced, but in four it was unchanged.

Andrew Taylor, a professor at Monash University’s Central Clinical School, and his co-authors conducted the study by recruiting patients who were diagnosed with myocarditis associated with COVID-19 vaccination between August 2021 and March 2022. The patients were invited to undergo imaging at Alfred Hospital or Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

The study population with follow-up imaging included 44 adults and 16 adolescents.

Most of the patients had received a Pfizer-BioNTech shot. A minority had received a Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccination. The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Limitations of the paper, which was published ahead of peer review, included possible selection bias, since participation in the study was voluntary. Authors listed no conflicts of interest or funding.

Another Paper

In the other recent paper, researchers in Canada reported finding about half of patients referred for imaging due to possible post-vaccination myocarditis had persistent LGE in follow-up imaging.

Overall, 60 patients were included in the retrospective study. Of those, seven reported persistent symptoms.

In a subset of 21 patients for whom follow-up MRIs were available, 10 had persistent LGE, the researchers said. On the other hand, function of the left ventricle, which pumps blood, had normalized in all patients.

The persistent LGE “likely reflects replacement fibrosis,” or heart scarring, Dr. Kate Hanneman, with the University of Toronto’s Department of Medical Imaging, and her co-authors wrote. They cited some of the same papers as the Australian group, including the study that found patients with persistent LGE had a higher risk of adverse outcomes, as well as a paper on what it represents when LGE is found on MRI in patients with myocarditis.

“However, the significance of LGE is uncertain in patients post-myocarditis with recovered normal left ventricular systolic function,” the researchers said. They called for additional studies to evaluate patients with persistent LGE and a recovered left ventricle.

The study included adult patients who were referred to a hospital network with suspected myocarditis and had new cardiac symptoms such as chest pain within 14 days of COVID-19 vaccination. The patients all received either the Pfizer or Moderna shot.

Limitations of the study, which was published by the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, included a lack of biopsy-confirmed myocarditis.

The authors declared no funding and listed only one competing interest, that an author is an associate editor of the journal.

The corresponding authors for the two papers did not respond to requests for comment.

“My concern from reading these two studies is that myocardial damage and scarring is present in a significant number of COVID vaccine injured individuals at up to 18 months after vaccination. This suggests potential for permanent heart damage from the vaccines,” Dr. Danice Hertz, the research lead for the U.S. group React19, told The Epoch Times in an email. “The long-term implications are not yet known but need to be studied carefully.”

Earlier Findings

The new papers add to earlier studies, which found that LGE persists for months in some people following a COVID-19 shot.

Researchers in Washington state reported in 2022 that LGE persisted in children for up to eight months after vaccination. Later that year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that more than half of 151 patients with follow-up imaging had residual LGE, which was described as “suggestive of myocardial scarring.”

The CDC has longer-term data on the patients, the agency confirmed to The Epoch Times in January, but has not yet published another paper describing that data. The CDC, which failed to warn the public about the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis, declined to comment on the new Australian and Canadian papers.

Hong Kong researchers in 2023 reported finding that about half of 40 patients with follow-up MRIs months after vaccination had LGE.

Symptoms have also persisted in some patients with post-vaccination myocarditis.

The CDC, describing preliminary updated results from its longer-term study, said in early 2023 that there were patients still suffering from symptoms more than one year after a shot. Researchers in Australia in late 2023 said that symptoms persisted at least six months after a shot in a majority of patients they followed. And some patients also told The Epoch Times they have lingering health issues years after vaccination.

What's Wrong With America's 'Elites'?

  Sure enough America has an "elite" problem. Having spent a life discussing and negotiating with these people first in Finance then in the data business, I have been amazed by their utter lack of general education. Porsche engines in Volkswagen bodies! Bright people without proper background knowledge meaning that mostly they are not in a position to take proper decisions. And then there's the rest of course, prejudices and woke policies which completely skew their reasoning as discussed below. The tittle of the article should be "The sorry state of American education!" Money has not improved higher education, quite the contrary, it has only favored nepotist and promoted the wrong values as discussed below.  

Authored by Laura Hollis via The Epoch Times,

It is becoming increasingly clear that some of America’s most serious problems can be traced back to our colleges and universities - or at least the ones educating the country’s most powerful people.

The Vietnam War era aside, it has traditionally been uncommon for events at universities to make national headlines. Absent something extraordinary, like a president giving a commencement address, a dramatic scientific breakthrough or the award of a prominent international prize to faculty, headlines with university names in them have tended to relate more to national championships in sports.

Not anymore.

Over the past few years, news items about events on college campuses have come to dominate headlines. The subjects are some of the country’s most fabled institutions. And the stories are often negative, if not outright shocking.

Last December, the congressional testimony of three university presidents—Claudine Gay from Harvard University, Elizabeth Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—set off a firestorm. Under questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) about anti-Semitic speech and conduct on their campuses, the three women dodged and deflected, unwilling to state definitively that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policies and codes of conduct.

The response was swift. Within days, Magill resigned. Gay survived the initial maelstrom, but the bad publicity prompted critics to start digging through her professional past, and she resigned less than a month later, following accusations of plagiarism in her research publications. Some of the nation’s largest donors to these universities—many of them Jewish—began announcing that they would cease or pull back donations totaling in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars.

The chaos on campuses has only increased since, with pro-Palestine protests and marches at dozens of colleges and universities, and horrific rhetoric bumping up against speech codes and demands for free speech. Across the country, Jewish students describe themselves as “living in a climate of hatred and fear” amid dramatic increases in anti-Semitic conduct, threats, slurs, and actual violence.

This week, Stanford University sophomore Theo Baker published “The War at Stanford” in The Atlantic, in which he describes how the Israel-Hamas war has affected his campus. One Arab American graduate student told Baker that he thinks President Joe Biden “should be killed” and that Hamas should rule America. Pro-Palestine protesters set up sit-in “camps” for months and shouted for the destruction of Israel, chanting, “We don’t want no two-state; we want all of ’48!” Guest speakers brought in to facilitate campus discussion of the complex issues have been shouted down. Stanford employees have been threatened (“We know where you live!”), the interim president’s home has been vandalized, and his effigy was carried around campus covered in fake blood. The administration, Baker says, seems paralyzed, indecisive and defeated.

This isn’t an isolated incident at Stanford, and the Israel-Hamas war hasn’t caused it. Last March—months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel—Stanford Law School students shut down a talk being given by federal judge Kyle Duncan, shouting at him every time he attempted to speak or engage the audience, screaming epithets and holding up signs with vulgar accusations and calls for violence against Duncan’s daughters.

Similar behavior has been displayed at other schools, having nothing to do with claims of colonialism in the Middle East.

Swimmer and activist Riley Gaines was cornered and forced to hide in a classroom at San Francisco State University last year, prevented from giving her talk about limiting participation in women’s sports to biological women.

In 2017, author Charles Murray’s scheduled talk at Middlebury College was interrupted by a mob that later physically attacked him and his faculty host Allison Stanger. Stanger’s hair was pulled so hard by a protester that she suffered a concussion.

The poisonous rhetoric, intolerance, and violence is just the tip of the iceberg.

In an interview with The Daily Signal podcast host Rob Bluey last week, national pollster Scott Rasmussen described what he called “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.” A recent Rasmussen poll asked Americans “to suppose there was an election and it was close but your candidate lost. And if their campaign team knew they could win by cheating and not get caught, would you want them to do so?”

According to Rasmussen, only 7 percent of American voters overall said they’d rather cheat to win. But among the group that he calls “the elite,” that number jumped to 35 percent. Among the “politically obsessed elite” (those who “talk politics daily”), it was a staggering 69 percent!

So who are these “elite”?

Rasmussen explains that they are the top 1 percent of the population. They make more than $150,000 a year. They live in densely populated urban areas. They have not only college but postgraduate degrees. And large numbers of them “went to one of 12 elite schools.”

He doesn’t name them, but we can hazard a pretty good guess which schools they are.

“The reason I bring that up,” he continues, “is about half the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.” And, he says, they also shape “the mainstream media narrative.”

Not only does this group think it’s acceptable to cheat to win an election, but 70 percent believe there is too much individual freedom in the United States, and an equal number trusts the government—which, of course, they control. “They really believe,” Rasmussen says, “that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.”

What’s going on at our most prestigious and exclusive universities? How have they produced generations of amoral, condescending authoritarians? And how do we put a stop to it?

Those are questions Americans need answers to.

On The Brink Of A Dramatic Change: The Digitalization Of Money

 The arrival of CBDC is, short of a nuclear war, THE most important change on the immediate horizon as well as the most dangerous one for individual freedom. 

  When introduced, there will be no turning back. My personal (educated) guess, is that it will be almost impossible to get it right (reason why it is not already here.) 

  You can get familiar with the subject bellow in this well argumented explanation of the system as well as issues related to its implementation.

Authored by Efrat Fenigson via Bitcoin Magazine,

The current state of Central Bank Digital Currency Projects globally summarized by Efrat Enigson, independent journalist and host of the "You're The Voice" podcast...

“What underpins a world order is always the financial system.

We are on the brink of a dramatic change where we are about to, and I'll say this boldly, abandon the traditional system of money and accounting and introduce a new one. And the new one is what we call blockchain.

It means digital. It means having an almost perfect record of every single transaction that happens in the economy, which will give us far greater clarity over what's going on. It also raises huge dangers in terms of the balance of power between states and citizens. In my opinion, we're going to need a digital constitution of human rights if we're going to have digital money.

Most people think that digital money is crypto and private, but what I see are superpowers introducing digital currency. The Chinese were the first. The US is on the brink of moving in the same direction. The Europeans have committed to that as well.”

This revolutionary speech about a new financial system, was delivered at the World Government Summit in March 2022 in Dubai, by Philippa "Pippa" Malmgren, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Chatham House; her father, Harald Malmgren served as a senior advisor to US Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford and others. She’s a technology entrepreneur and economist, who served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, for Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and is a former member of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and Corporate Governance.

Her words about the transition to a new world order that requires a new financial structure correspond well with the words of French President Emmanuel Macron in June 2023 at the Global Finance Summit in Paris: "The world needs a public financial shock to fight global warming, and the current system is not suitable for dealing with the world's challenges." The president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, also called for "a clean slate" and said the Bretton Woods organizations (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) do not serve their goals nor respond to society's needs.

The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR

“THE NEW BRETTON WOODS MOMENT”

“A new international monetary system is taking shape, some call it the new Bretton Woods moment that needs to be seized to create a new global financial governance,” says the investigative journalist Whitney Webb in a recent sitdown interview, where she mention that according to Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England & Bank of Canada and the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, the three pillars of the new multi-polar world are Digital IDs, CBDCs and ESG, through a global carbon market. All world governments are pushing this agenda, that in order for it to succeed, all monetary systems and supporting systems must become digital and rely on digital data.
A good example of this was revealed at an event of the Central Bank of Israel with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which I attended – in September 2023 in Tel Aviv, where the “Genesis Project” was presented. As part of this project, "green" bonds are issued, based on carbon quotas in the CBDC infrastructure. This is how the climate agenda is linked to financial markets.

“DEBT SERFDOM”

“Stablecoins could be the way in which the US is further globalizing the dollar, spreading its adoption directly to the world’s general public in order to continue increasing its debt and encourage uptake and usage of the dollar”, says Mark Goodwin, Editor in Chief of Bitcoin Magazine, in this interview with Whitney Webb. He suggests that the politician’s outcry of de-dollarization and the weakening of the dollar are a distraction from perpetuating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
“While CBDCs are what people are becoming fearful and aware of, it may just be the red herring, and the real strategy of the US dollar's survival is highly regulated stablecoins (such as Tether), which can easily be programmable, even more than CBDCs, as well as seized, regulated and controlled indirectly by governments. 100 billion dollars in treasuries were already purchased by Tether, its subsidiaries and owners. Tether is positioned alongside the top 20 nation states buying debt from the US, with around one tenth of China or Japan that have a trillion dollars debt to the US”.

Whitney Webb & Mark Goodwin. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC9dJYqDZ9c

This theory, together with the words of Mark Carney, Pippa Malmgren, Emmanuel Macron & Lula Da Silva, join the calls of global leaders and heads of states, pointing to the replacement of the monetary and financial world order, to introduce a new monetary system. Many experts say that we are reaching the end of the current fiat monetary system experiment, which is destined to collapse. Since world leaders are aware of this, they prefer to engineer a controlled demolition, to maintain control and steer the course, and enter the new era with power firmly within their grasp.

CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY SYSTEM (CBDC)

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), tie the financial freedom of citizens to the government and the banking establishment. The central bank issues its centralized digital currencies, and essentially creates a new monetary system, "fiat on steroids", a system that takes everything that is bad in the fiat system, and adds more of it; surveillance, control, censorship, and enforcement capabilities. A modern prison? Indeed, the CBDC is the ultimate prototype of a prison without physical chains. By connecting CBDCs to digital identity cards, and to government systems such as universal basic income, social credits and more, we get the ultimate control apparatus. This apparatus will dictate to citizens what they’re allowed to purchase, what the permitted quotas are while limiting consumption according to rules and use cases, at programmed times, places and cadences. The system is able to determine the use of a geographic radius (geo-fencing), and to determine expiration dates on the money. Each remote controlled digital wallet can also be switched on and off by its operators. More than 130 countries are in the initial stages of piloting CBDC systems, of which 36 countries are in advanced pilots, and 3 countries have already launched systems (Nigeria, Jamaica and the Bahamas).

WILL RIPPLE (XRP) BE THE CHOSEN PLATFORM FOR CBDC?

Ripple, a digital payment network and transaction protocol that owns the cryptocurrency XRP, is considered one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, and is strategically positioning itself at the heart of government financial innovation, aiming to be the cornerstone of future CBDCs.

The company is in talks with about twenty governments around the world to develop their CBDCs using Ripple's technology. In May 2023, Ripple launched a dedicated CBDC platform to assist central banks, governments and financial institutions around the world in issuing CBDCs and stablecoins. To date, Ripple has partnered with six governments for CBDC pilot projects: Georgia, Colombia, Montenegro, Hong Kong, Bhutan and the Republic of Palau.

The National Bank of Georgia, for example, has chosen Ripple as its technology partner for its CBDC pilot last year, citing Ripple's technical expertise and team capabilities. Its interest in CBDCs is in leveraging modern technologies, such as the programmability aspect of CBDCs, aiming to create a platform with smart contract and programmable token capabilities to stimulate innovation in the financial sector.

In the case of Bhutan, Ripple’s technology was chosen in 2021 for the country’s CBDC project to enable advanced cross-border payments, and assist in “financial inclusion” - in line with Bhutan’s mission to increase financial inclusion in Bhutan to 85% by 2023.

In 2022, Ripple reached the final stage of the G20 Techsprint CBDC Hackathon, hosted by Indonesia and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), and in August 2023, the Republic of Palau launched a USD-backed digital currency, developed by Ripple.

Promoting its platform as an infrastructure for a CBDC, Ripple advocates for government regulation of cryptocurrencies, and tries to position itself as the preferred solution for CBDC projects. Its claim to fame of being the ideal CBDC partner for governments is the combination of speed, efficiency, a sustainable and "green" blockchain network that uses little energy (compared to the Bitcoin network), and interoperability - the ability to communicate and work with CBDC solutions in other countries on the Ripple infrastructure. The company warns that there is a risk for CBDC adoption by the public, caused mainly by a lack of market education, and it encourages the programming and expiration dates capabilities, which are perceived by most of the public as particularly Orwellian features of CBDCs.

Ripple encourages the abolition of cash (and a move to a cashless society), and unsurprisingly, it promotes the climate agenda; The company's website presents its commitment to a clean, prosperous and secure low-carbon future, with a plan to reach carbon net-zero by 2030.

Apparently, in line with Ripple’s expansion strategy vis-a-vis governments, the company makes sure to recruit employees who came from central and commercial banks. One of the company's top executives is Andrew Whitworth, policy director at Ripple, who previously worked at the Bank of England. At the same time as his role in Ripple, Whitworth also serves as a Director of the "Digital Pound Foundation", an organization that has declared itself the authority on the Digital Pound; it advises and influences the government's decisions regarding CBDC projects and deployments. Clearly an inside connection such as this might give Ripple an advantage in shaping digital currency policies to fit their platform and solutions. Does this hint a conflict of interests, or at least an unfair play?

Another avenue through which institutional influence and implicit control over Ripple could manifest is via a legal battle with the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) concerning the XRP cryptocurrency. Engaging in such legal disputes inevitably positions Ripple in a scenario where maintaining a positive relationship with institutions becomes crucial. Consequently, it's no surprise that Ripple prioritizes governments, central banks, and financial institutions as its primary target audience in its market strategy.

Photo: Lord XRP Twitter account

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS IN CBDC

China spent a couple of years rolling out relatively failed CBDC projects without widespread adoption, while injecting 30 million yuan as free money to encourage user adoption. Transactions using the digital yuan hit 1.8 trillion yuan (US$249 billion) in June 2023.

Recently, significant progress has been made: the two main payment services and applications in China - WeChat and Alipay - which have a traffic of about 3-4 trillion dollars per year, integrated the Chinese CBDC service into their applications. The central bank regulator made it clear that digital yuan isn’t meant to compete with the two payments giants. Rather, it’s supposed to play a complementary role.

Elon Musk, who owns, among other things, the Twitter/X platform, has stated that he wants to make the platform an "everything app" like the Chinese WeChat, including payment management. Will X also follow the Chinese route and integrate the CBDC solution into it, or will it try to become a CBDC infrastructure itself with the help of Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, the Dogecoin?

The CBDC pilot in Nigeria didn't exactly take off either, after the citizens took to the streets to protest the abolition of cash in the country, and resented the introduction of an unneeded digital solution, while demanding the return of cash. After a long and painful protest, the cash was returned alongside the new digital currency, which was not canceled and became part of reality. Furthermore, a new stablecoin is in preparation in Sandbox mode in Nigeria. The cNGN is a Naira stablecoin which some claim has more potential than the e-Naira to be widely adopted. “The stablecoin will be more broadly interoperable than the CBDC, which is only available in the central bank’s wallet. At launch, the central bank’s wallet usability was weak, although it is now quite good”, said Bolu Abiodun, a reporter at Techpoint Africa.

Source

The UK saw a strong public backlash to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year, with more than 50,000 responses sent to the Bank of England following a public hearing on the Digital Pound, aka the UK's national CBDC.

GERMANY - AWARENESS OF "EXCESSIVE SURVEILLANCE"

In Germany, the technical guidelines document for a digital currency of a central bank was published in January 2024. Below are several quotes from the document, reflecting the tyrannical nature of the new currency, and the awareness of the central bank for trust issues it can create:

• Programmability is the institution’s authority to dedicate your money for certain uses, and to prohibit the use of your wallet when it is "outside the permitted scope".
  
• "The central bank can revoke CBDC notes, e. g. as an instrument of monetary control. Revocation of CBDC notes is performed by an authorized entity, the revocation authority, controlled and operated by the central bank." This sounds like a technique to confiscate and apply a shelf life to money.
  
• "Payments permitted under certain restrictions.. if the central bank sees fit to impose them" - the document lists restrictions that can be applied to wallets, depending on the amount of personal information that will be provided. For example, the amount of money in the wallet, the number of payments per day, the amount of money per transaction or per day.
  
• The good news: The German central bank is aware of the possibility of public opposition to a surveillance system: "Many of these design choices are general decisions on the trade-off between excessive surveillance and legitimate monitoring functions for AML and KYC purposes in conjunction with measures for mitigating fraud and misconduct. These decisions are extremely sensitive in nature and can strongly influence the level of trust that users place into the CBDC”.

ISRAEL - THE DIGITAL SHEKEL WILL BE DISTRIBUTED THROUGH COMMERCIAL BANKS

Israel takes an extensive and active part in various CBDC pilots, such as the Sela project, Eden, Icebreaker and more, which I have reported on extensively in the past. The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Israel announced that in December 2024 a technical design document for the Digital Shekel will be published, and its implementation will then begin in partnership with the private sector.

The Bank of Israel's latest document from last week covers the proposed architecture of the Digital Shekel. Here are some interesting points from the document:

• The distribution of the Digital Shekel will be two-tiered: instead of direct contact between consumers and the central bank for funding and defunding, an indirect method similar to the distribution of cash today will be used. The banks will purchase digital shekels from the central bank in large quantities and transfer them to customers upon wallet charging.

• The system will be able to apply and enforce limits, for example limits on the balance that users are allowed to hold in the Digital Shekel.

• The system will support the possibility of applying interest on the Digital Shekel.

• Users will be able to access the Digital Shekel through several payment providers, including credit cards, Google/Apple Pay, wearables, payment apps and more.

• Unlike most retail CBDC solutions, Israel's model allows users to open a wallet with a payment service provider (PSP) and connect to multiple third-party banks to fund and defund balances.

Another interesting development in Israel is the announcement of a plan to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the shekel, called BILS, by the exchange platform, Bits Of Gold. Crypto Jungle website reports that the Israeli Capital Market Authority approved the pilot, according to the draft principles published by the Central Bank of Israel. Interesting to note that the company providing the infrastructure for the issuance and custody of the currency is the Israeli technology giant "FireBlocks", which took part in the "Eden" pilot project of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange for the issuance of digital bonds, built to adapt in the future to a potential CBDC infrastructure.

NO INTERNET? DON'T WORRY, GOVERNMENTS WILL TAKE CARE OF CONNECTIVITY ANYWAY

A number of CBDC pilots, like in India, the European Union and more, focus on the adoption of the system by everyone, even amongst people without internet access. The washed-up name "financial inclusion" implies that the system will not skip anyone, not even citizens without Internet connectivity in remote areas, or without reception. In India for example, there are 683 million people living without an internet connection and largely outside the control of the state. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to bring these remote areas into a new surveillance network through various technological means. A successful launch of CBDC in India also corresponds with the government's overarching goal of reducing cash usage and improving financial monitoring.

THAILAND - FREE MONEY FOR THE MASSES

In September 2023, the Thai government announced that any Thai citizen over the age of 16 who chooses to participate in the CBDC pilot, will receive free CBDC worth $280 (10,000 baht) - quite a lot of money in Thai terms. This digital money will be loaded into the digital wallet application and will be available for use within 6 months, and within a radius of 4 km from the residence of the registered citizens. The pilot targets low-income citizens as a first stage, and later expands to entrepreneurs and small business operators - provided they are registered in the tax system. In Thailand many citizens are not registered in the government systems and not everyone has a bank account. It seems that air-dropping "free money" is another tactic to lure citizens into government systems, with the bait of “free” controlled government money. But is there such a thing as “free lunch”?

THE EUROPEAN UNION - A POSITIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN HIGH GEAR

The European Union launched a marketing campaign to promote the digital euro about six months ago, to start educating the European public about a reality where that they will be obliged to use a supervised digital euro, led by Christine Lagarde, who was previously convicted of crimes and was promoted to serve as the governor of the European Central Bank, the ECB.

The Digital Euro new marketing campaign. Source: Christine Lagarde’s Twitter account

At the same time, a charade is going on in the European Union Parliament where the dangers of CBDCs are being discussed, only thanks to the public awareness and discourse, while Lagarde rushes forward and kicks off the marketing campaign to instill in the public the following messages: the digital euro is easy, safe, fast and reliable. Not a word about its Orwellian capabilities to track, program, limit and condition activity through expiration dates, geo-fencing, and remote on and off switching.

Another ECB campaign video for the Digital Euro

THE DIGITAL EURO WILL NOT BE ANONYMOUS

In a discussion at the European Union Council in 2023, Lagarde emphasizes a point: the digital euro will not be anonymous. Privacy will exist in the system, but not anonymity. Let’s break this up in a different way: for the banks, the key to surveillance and control is identification. The bank must know who the citizen is and verify their identity, in order to exercise law enforcement or regulations, through technological restrictions. Lagarde's claim that the technology will allow privacy but not anonymity is unfounded: apparently the central bank considers itself and the financial service providers some kind of God, since in front of them the citizen will be identified, and therefore it is not clear what kind of privacy can exist, without anonymity.

Source: Christine Lagarde’s Twitter account

In a presentation from March 2024, the ECB presents a timetable for the Digital Euro. In November 2025, the development and implementation phase will begin, with the completion of the "democratic" legislative process.

The timing of the launch of the Digital Euro corresponds well with the European Union's initiative to issue digital identity cards to all EU residents between now and 2030, to enable the necessary government identification and tracking of its citizens. Identical initiatives are enacted and promoted in many other countries around the world at the same time. Where I live, in Israel, ID cards and passports have been mandatory and digital for many years, and also biometric since 2013 - therefore there is no need to start the marketing campaign for the Digital Shekel yet, as the digital infrastructure exists hence the first step of digitalization is already done.

The timetable of the Digital Euro by the ECB

This phase of the project is the "preparation phase", the ECB reveals, in which they are preparing for the launch phase of the Digital Euro. Of course, we are reassured that no final decision has yet been made regarding the launch of the CBDC, and this will only happen with the approval of the "Government Council" after the completion of the democratic legislative process of the European Union. Therefore, in parallel with the democratic debate for or against the Digital Euro, the development of the technology will continue, in order to be prepared for the launch.

Central bank governors such as Lagarde and Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron insist that the CBDC is digital cash, and also insist that physical cash will not be abolished. It is possible that these central bankers feel the need to make a U-turn from the incriminating speech of the head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Augustin Carstens, who caused a public outcry when he stated in 2020 that the CBDC technology, unlike cash, will allow monitoring of financial transactions and will be a means of enforcement by the establishment:

“The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control of the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that

expression (money) of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

Agustín Carstens - BIS General Manager

THE FUTURE: CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED, OR FREE, DECENTRALIZED AND SECURE?

Ayn Rand, author and philosopher, said that "We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." Are we taking giant steps towards a new monetary reality, where the fiat currencies we know become fiat on steroids, aka CBDCs? Or into the reality of "stable" and closely regulated cryptocurrencies, tethered to fiat? Either way, the feeling is that the establishment is doing everything to preserve the debt economy, and its inherent modern slavery. The only way to break these fiat-matrix boundaries is to opt out and enter into a new system, which seems to run in a parallel reality, the Bitcoin system. On the Bitcoin standard, under self-custody, no third party has the ability to confiscate, program or take over private assets. Not even the government or the state. Bitcoin uses a lot of energy for its mining, but this proof-of-work mechanism makes the blockchain network extremely secure and the Bitcoin currency very valuable. Bitcoin is "safe money", which is out of reach for the establishment. Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is a digital currency without intermediaries or third parties (peer-to-peer) in a decentralized and secure network, which allows everyone to be their own bank, instead of relying on banks and external parties. With a fixed and known supply, it represents the most powerful digital asset on the market as a store of value and as a unit of account, and in the future will also be used as a medium of exchange.

In my recent interview with the media and finance expert, and one of the most famous Bitcoiners, Max Keiser, he compared the CBDC to a parasitic and centralized cancer: "If you were to look at the amount of energy that Bitcoin uses and the rate at which it's increasing, you would say good is triumphing over evil. So this gives me a lot of hope. And I don't think centralization in anything works at all, except cancer. Cancer is the only thing that seems to work to be overly centralized and parasitic. That's the cancer model, but I think we're gonna win against the cancer of CBDCs.” 

Follow Efrat's work here.