9/11, 22 Years Later: Will We Ever Get the Truth?

   I am much too young to have cared or understood what happened when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. It is only later, much later that I came to understand history and the fact that eventually the praetorian guards always end up controlling the palace. But it took another event for me to understand that history is written in the present and does not necessarily reflect the facts. 

  Like everybody else on 9/11 I switched on TV (I still had one at the time!) to see smoke above the World Trade Center and soon after a second plane slice through the other tower. An hour or so later, both towers fell in a most spectacular way in what was then raw history in the making. 

  Then again like everybody else I moved on. A month later I was in an eerily empty Maui (of all places!) and understood that things had changed forever. But the discussion was then focused on the coming wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and likewise I did not question the narrative. Why should I have? Wasn't the story clear-cut and the details sorted out? 

  The first sign that they were not was Building 7. In a little more than 100 years, not a single steel structure had imploded the way this building did after 9.11. Since, thousands of architects and engineers have requested a thorough investigation but to no avail of course...

Guest Post by Kevin Barrett

On June 6, Tucker Carlson, America’s most-watched TV pundit, launched a new show on Twitter. No longer reined in by Fox News executives, Carlson was free to ask a big, explosive question: “What exactly happened on 9/11?” He answered himself: “Well, it’s still classified.”

A few months earlier, Carlson had appeared on Clayton Morris’s podcast and brought up World Trade Center Building 7, widely viewed as the Achilles heel of the official story of 9/11:

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t—like, what is that?’… If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. You’d, like, lose your job over that. It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they—maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

Carlson’s words betray his cognitive dissonance. “Do buildings actually collapse (like that)? No, they—maybe they do.” He almost blurts out the obvious truth—“no, they don’t”—before correcting himself with the (possibly sarcastic) “maybe they do. I don’t know.”

Carlson built his career by cultivating a reputation for straight talk, unfazed by political correctness. But as he suggests, straight talk about 9/11 in general, and WTC-7 in particular, is unwelcome in today’s USA. In mainstream media, even asking questions in unacceptable.

Why can’t we ask questions about Building 7? Because the answers are all-too-obvious—and all-too-embarrassing to the rulers of the intertwined American and Israeli empires.

World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story high-rise, collapsed into its own footprint at 5:21 pm on September 11, 2001, seven hours after the Twin Towers were destroyed. Numerous witnesses reported police and emergency personnel announcing that WTC-7 was about to come down. Seconds before it fell, witnesses overheard a countdown to demolition (“five-four-three-two-one”) on police radio, followed by the massive explosion that precipitated the “collapse.”

The building fell at absolute free-fall for the first two-and-a-half seconds, and near-free-fall thereafter. That means that all of WTC-7’s vertical supports had somehow been simultaneously and completely removed. The only known mechanism that can do that is professionally-prepared-and-timed explosives.

The obvious controlled demolition of Building 7 threw a monkey wrench into the US government’s official 9/11 narrative. WTC-7 had been one of the most important buildings in America. It housed the CIA’s second-largest headquarters after Langley, Virginia, as well as the Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission with its Enron files, the Internal Revenue Service, and many of America’s biggest corporate heavy hitters. What’s more, WTC-7’s 23^rd floor was the home of New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), where the local and federal governments would manage their joint response to any major disaster—like 9/11.

The OEM response to 9/11 should have been run from the 23^rd floor of WTC-7. But it wasn’t. Why not? In an ABC-TV interview with Peter Jennings conducted on the morning of 9/11, then-NYC-mayor Rudy Giuliani provided the answer: “We were told the World Trade Center was going to collapse,” so they moved to an alternate site. Giuliani’s confession of foreknowledge of the unprecedented and vanishingly improbable “collapse” of the Twin Towers raises the question of why the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11 didn’t get the same warning.

Giuliani wasn’t the only one with foreknowledge of a “building collapse” on 9/11. Both the BBC and CNN reported WTC-7’s “collapse” before it happened.

Though Building 7 was an obvious controlled implosion, it couldn’t be acknowledged. Obviously the none-too-competent alleged hijackers blamed for 9/11 were not plausible suspects in the highly professional implosion of one of the most secure buildings in America.

For seven years, the feds stalled and obfuscated. A 2002 FEMA report sidestepped WTC-7, admitting that any hypothesis the authors could imagine (not including the unthinkable one, demolition) had “only a low probability of occurrence.” The 9/11 Commission Report, issued in 2004, did not even mention the destruction of the WTC-7. Network TV imposed a blackout on footage of its “collapse.”

Finally, in 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its long-overdue report on WTC-7. According to the authors, a hitherto-unknown physical phenomenon, “thermal expansion,” had caused a beam to unseat itself, magically removing all of the building’s vertical support and setting off 2.5 seconds of absolute free-fall followed by about five seconds of near-free-fall.

The NIST report, of course, is ludicrous. For details, watch the film Seven featuring University of Alaska professor Leroy Hulsey, who led a detailed computer simulation of the building’s destruction.

But we didn’t really need to wait for Hulsey’s report. Just listen to Larry Silverstein, the close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu who bought the World Trade Center two months before 9/11, doubled the insurance, and fortuitously skipped his usual breakfast at the top of the North Tower that morning. In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, broadcast in 2002, Silverstein confesses to “pulling” (i.e. demolishing) Building 7. He later collected roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars in insurance money on that very building, along with four billion for the rest of the World Trade Center—the fruits of his bizarre double indemnity claim that he had suffered two completely separate and unrelated terrorist attacks from the two planes.

The obvious fact that the authorities lied and are still lying about Building 7 raises the question of what else are they lying about—and points to the only slightly less-obvious demolitions of the Twin Towers. Like Building 7, the Twin Towers disappeared at near-free-fall acceleration into the path of most resistance, indicating that they too had had all of their vertical supports taken out with synchronic precision. Just as the sudden demise of Building 7 cannot be plausibly blamed on a few minor office fires of undetermined origin, the likewise sudden, symmetrical, and complete destructions of Towers 1 and 2 cannot possibly have been the result of random damage caused by relatively modest office fires kindled by kerosene (jet fuel).

But the Towers were “overkilled” in unconventional explosive demolitions quite unlike the implosion of Building 7. Indeed, so much explosive force was used to pulverize the Towers that most of the contents of the buildings, including more than 1100 human bodies, were apparently vaporized into nothingness. And of the 1,640-odd victims who did leave at least a sliver of fingernail or a splinter of bone to be recovered by the most meticulous sifting-and-bucketing operation in history, many were blasted to smithereens, leaving only a few bone fragments to be recovered years later from the rooftops of neighboring buildings: “For example, a search in 2010 found 76 more fragments of remains on the roof of the 40-story Deutsche Bank building 250 feet from the South Tower. Previously, over 750 human bone fragments, each less than a half-inch long, were collected from this roof.”* How the massively explosive destruction of the two Towers, and the vaporization of its occupants and their office equipment, could ever have been mistaken for a natural gravity-driven collapse is one of those mysteries that will leave future historians scratching their heads.

The explosive destruction of the World Trade Center, conducted in such a way that it could be (quasi-)plausibly blamed on plane crashes and fires, required immense amounts of money and expertise, as well as insider access to the buildings. One often-overlooked requirement was that the perpetrators, who had invested so much in their elaborate demolition plans, would have needed to be 100% certain that planes would hit the buildings to provide a pretext for the demolitions. So they could not have simply allowed radical hijackers to attempt to seize control of planes and try to fly them into the Towers. The odds of successful plane-into-building hits, given that there had been no successful hijackings in the US for decades, would have been near zero. So, the perpetrators must have controlled the aviation aspect of 9/11, presumably by flying planes into targets by remote control. That would explain why there is no evidence that any alleged hijackers were even on board the alleged attack planes, and abundant evidence to the contrary.

Obviously powerful insiders were responsible. The question is, which insiders?**

The short answer, to which most students of the issue would agree, is “the neoconservatives.” Fanatically loyal to Israel, and desperate to turn the US military against their Muslim enemies, the authors of Rebuilding America’s Defenses (September 2000) famously announced that their yearned-for “process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event–like a new Pearl Harbor.”

9/11 was the neocons’ new Pearl Harbor. 9/11’s shocking imagery and 2000+ casualties closely resembled the original 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, whose psychological impact transformed an 80%-antiwar opinion into an angry hornets’ nest of warmongers. But 9/11 was not merely designed to launch the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the destruction of “seven countries in five years.” Its less-obvious but more important purpose was to implant Islamophobia deeply and permanently into the western subconscious mind. By equating Islam with terrorism, 9/11 hoodwinked the west into viewing Israel’s enemies as its own. The 9/11-triggered Islamophobia epidemic will probably continue to fester and spread for decades to come. Indeed, it will likely outlast the zionist entity itself.

But despite PNAC’s prognostications, 9/11 failed to contribute to the establishment of a “new American century.” Though the US military was successfully hijacked and turned against Israel’s enemies, the cost to the empire itself was astronomical, not only in terms of dollars but also in reputation and soft power.

While the US was bogged down in West Asia, fighting countries it should have befriended, peer competitors Russia and China arose to challenge America’s imperial dominance, and the BRICS alliance emerged heralding a multipolar world. When the dust settles, it is likely that 9/11 will be seen to have hastened the demise of the US empire by two or three decades. And the zionist entity, too, will soon be relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history, 9/11 or no 9/11.

So, the whole murderous hoax—a vivid display of the evil men are capable of—will turn out to be futile. As the Qur’an tells us, “They plot and Allah plans; and Allah is the best of planners.”

Covid Restrictions Are Returning Fast. Here’s What We Can Do.

  Was this the plan all  along? Hard to say. I now believe the strategy is decided by some groups of people without much discussions about tactical details to achieve the goals in order to keep maximum flexibility.

  If this is correct then likely we are in for some kind of trouble next year. Masks may or may not be reimposed, it really doesn't matter that much. Their acceptance or not will be a precious indicator for the next stage: What level of shock doctrine implementation is needed to reach the goal of complete control. In which case, whatever we do is bound for failure. We'll see!

Guest Post by Marie Hawthorne

We like to say that conspiracy theorists are just ahead of the curve, and we’ve recently gotten evidence that arguably the biggest conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, has been right about the story of a lifetime.  Covid restrictions are returning.

A TSA whistleblower told Alex Jones that by mid-September TSA managers and airport employees will be wearing masks, by October flyers will be masking again, and sometime in December, we can expect a full return to the 2021 Covid protocols.  After hearing this, Jones reached out to a manager within Border Patrol to see if he had heard anything about a return of Covid protocols, and he confirmed this.

Official channels have been quick to deny the return of any restrictions, and because Alex Jones said it, the average citizen dismissed it, too.

But let’s look around.

Are Covid restrictions really coming back?

Well, Epoch Times reported this week that UMass in Massachusetts; Kaiser Permanente in California; and United Health, Auburn, and University Hospital in New York have brought back mask requirements for staff and physicians.

Lionsgate Studios reinstated their mask mandate last week.  The Los Angeles County Dept. of Health told them they had to reinstate the mask mandate after several employees had been diagnosed with Covid.

The overwhelming majority of universities had strict vaccine and masking requirements during 2021 but gradually dropped those requirements over the past two years. There were still about 100 colleges and universities requiring proof of vaccination, but those were overwhelmingly medical schools in a handful of states.

However, Morris Brown, a small historically black liberal arts college in Atlanta, asked students to wear masks for the next two weeks despite no cases being reported on campus.

People love to hate Alex Jones, but it’s hard to prove him wrong sometimes.

There’s no rational explanation for the return of Covid restrictions. 

While the number of hospitalizations due to Covid is technically increasing, this past week in August still has the 22nd-lowest amount of Covid cases in the 160+ weeks since we began tracking cases. There’s no health emergency here (at least not due to Covid).

Some people are speculating that the new round of Covid alarmism has to do with the rollout of the latest Covid vaccine, which will most likely hit the market in mid-September.

More people are speculating that this is in preparation for the election next year.  In 2020, record numbers of people voted by mail, and there is some speculation that, if lockdowns return, this will be another reason to not have in-person voting in 2024, either.

Or maybe it was the plan all along.

It’s also possible that this was the plan all along, to have a society used to rolling lockdowns and constant new requirements for vaccine uptake.  I realize how far-fetched this sounds, but let’s look at some behind-the-scenes information.

This last January, Moderna signed a deal in the UK to build a facility capable of producing up to 250 million doses of mRNA a year.  Moderna’s Australian facility, capable of producing 100 million doses per year, will come online in 2024, as will their facility in Canada.  And these facilities all offer peanuts next to Moderna’s Massachusetts facility, which has a production capacity of 3 billion mRNA doses per year.

Governments around the world have invested colossal sums of money in the Covid response; they can’t walk away from it.  Too many powerful people are too invested.  75 members of Congress were trading stock in pharmaceutical companies in 2021, right in the middle of the first round of Covid.

Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, cofounded a hedge fund more than ten years ago that invested $500 million in Moderna.  He refuses to say whether or not he still has a financial interest in that particular hedge fund, but looking at the Moderna facilities popping up in the Commonwealth nations, I think it’s safe to assume he does.

The Covid response led to an unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of billionaires and they are not going to let that advantage go.

We’ve talked before about the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty.  If this gets ratified next year, which it probably will, the head of the WHO will be able to declare pandemic protocols when and where he wants.  This won’t be something people can vote their way out of because the decisions will be made outside the U.S.  And international treaties supersede the Constitution.

Get ready for an information blackout.

Powerful interests obviously want to keep Covid going, but there’s no reason to assume the playbook will be exactly the same this time around.  I strongly suspect that, this go-around, information will be far more tightly controlled.

In response to public outrage surrounding the Twitter Files, social media companies have gotten sneakier in the way they control what people see.  Outright bans are out. Burying information from non-mainstream sources is in.  This has been profoundly noticeable for anyone that does internet research.

Linda Yaccarino, X’s new CEO, has really gotten behind this.  We’ve written about her before, too.  She’s a big fan of “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” and that’s exactly what’s happening now.  The politically convenient aren’t being banned; they’re just not being seen.

Laws have been passed in various places to facilitate this.  We wrote about Europe’s Digital Services Act a few months ago, which has now come into law.  Under this, large online platforms will be regularly audited to make sure they are not violating any of the EU’s guidelines, some of which have to do with spreading information that may be harmful to people’s health.

American laws are not quite as strict (yet), but YouTube has voluntarily adopted the WHO’s guidelines, which means that it’s about to get a lot harder to view videos about alternative or natural health information.

And this would almost be forgivable if it seemed like any of it was actually helping.

But in all these discussions of reining in health “misinformation,” it really seems like they’re simply attacking anything that won’t generate revenue for Big Pharma.  If you look at Biden’s Covid Preparedness Plan, not once in the 100-page document does he address any natural immunity boosters like improved diet, exercise, and sunshine.  Even though, up until five years ago, it was well understood by physicians all over the world that improving diet and exercise offers low-cost, dramatic results.

And The Science™ seems almost aggressively sloppy.  The CDC’s V-Safe app stopped collecting data on adverse events following Covid vaccinations.  If you try logging in, a message pops up saying that data collection for Covid vaccines ended June 30, 2023.

And yet, people are still being actively pushed to get more shots.

There’s something we can do.

Having said all this, I don’t think it’s time to despair.  Both Kaiser Permanente and Lionsgate Studios dropped their mask mandates this week after the public began paying attention. Bringing these practices to light really does make a difference.

I am happy to have people call me a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist if the end result is that it becomes harder to implement mandates.

Aggressive narrative control is not a sign of strength. It’s a sign that the people in power are afraid of their subjects.  It’s easy to fire one person at a time for noncompliance. It’s a lot harder to lay off entire teams, though, and I’m hoping that’s what the public begins to realize.

Look at how you can quietly refuse to comply.

We live in a strange time.  Technology has made possible a concentration of power that previous tyrants could only have dreamed of.  If we don’t pay attention to the actions of the people behind these gigantic tech and pharmaceutical companies and the supranational government organizations like the WHO they all seem to be hopping into bed with, we may slide into that dystopian nightmare faster than we realize.

Open defiance will bring down the hammer.  But quiet nonconformity is a lot harder to punish, especially if large enough groups of us band together to do it.

Don’t Dismiss the Possibility of Gold Confiscation

   Even a cursory understanding of finance will lead to the obvious conclusion that "we have a problem". Unfortunately, there is no Houston to call. The financial system as we've known it for the last 70 years is broke and about to crash.  

  If you agree with this axiom, then like many people you have probably invested in gold, the "barbaric relic". It sounds like a good idea but is it wise? 

  This article argues that gold WILL be confiscated. The scenarios discussed below are to my opinion without much importance. I agree with the basics: Gold will be confiscated!

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas on the Burning Platform

If you hold precious metals in your portfolio, there is a good chance you fear hyperinflation and the crash of fiat currencies.

You probably distrust governments in general and believe they are self-serving and have no interest in your economic well-being. It is likely that your holdings in gold are your lifeline – your hope to get you through these times while holding on to your wealth.

But have you ever given any thought to the possibility of having this lifeline confiscated by the authorities?

In my conversations with friends and associates, I have often raised this question. The typical responses:

“They’d never do that.”

“I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”

“I just wouldn’t give it to them.”

I consider these “wishful thinking” responses.

It’s an interesting thought that the greatest threat to gold and silver investment might not be the possibility of losing on the speculation, but the government taking it away from you. It’s a thought that I’ve found few want to even think about, let alone discuss.

If you fall into this camp, you’re in good company. Some of the forecasters whom I respect most highly also treat it either as unlikely or at best, “something we may need to look at in the future.” To date, in conversing with top advisors worldwide, the two primary reasons they believe gold will not be confiscated are:

1. “Confiscation would mean the government acknowledges the reality of the value of gold.”

Yes, this is quite so. They would be changing their official view… which, of course, they do all the time. But I submit that all that they need to do is put the proper spin on it.

2. “They would meet greater resistance than they did back in ’33.”

I expect that this is also true, but that a plan will be put in place to deal with that resistance.

We’ll address both of these assertions in more detail shortly, but first, a bit of history.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt came into office and immediately created the Emergency Banking Act, which demanded that all those who held gold (other than personal jewelry) turn it in to approved banks. Holders were given less than a month to do this. The government then paid them $20.67 per ounce – the going rate at the time. Following confiscation, the government declared that the new value of gold was $35.00. In essence, they arbitrarily increased the value of their newly purchased asset by 69%. (This alone is reason enough to confiscate.)

Today, the US government is in much worse shape than it was in 1933, and it has much more to lose. The US dollar is the default currency of the world, but it’s on the ropes, which means the US economic power over the rest of the world is on the ropes.

I think that readers will agree that they will do anything to keep from losing this all-important power.

The US government has essentially run out of options. At some point, the fiat currencies of the First World will collapse, and some other form of payment will be necessary. Yes, the IMF is hoping to create a new default currency, but that, too, is to be a fiat currency. If any country were to produce a gold-backed currency in sufficient supply, that currency would likely become the desired currency worldwide. Fractional backing would be expected.

As most readers will know, the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and others see the opportunity and are building up their gold reserves quickly and substantially. If these countries were to agree to introduce a new gold-backed currency, there can be little doubt that they would succeed in changing the balance of world trade.

That said, the US government is watching these countries just as we are, and they are aware of the threat of gold to them.

The US government ostensibly has approximately 8,200 tonnes of gold in Fort Knox, although this may well be partially or completely missing. Additionally, it ostensibly holds a further 5,000 tonnes of gold in the cellar of the New York Federal Reserve building. Again, there is no certainty that it is there. In general, the authorities don’t seem to like independent audits.

In fact, there are rumors that the above vaults are nearly or completely empty and that the above quoted figures exist only on paper rather than in physical form. While there is no way to know this for sure, it’s not out of the question.

Either way, if the US and the EU could come up with a large volume of gold quickly, they could issue a gold-backed currency themselves. It’s a simple equation: The more gold they have = the more backed notes they can produce = the more power they continue to hold. By seizing upon the private supply of their citizens, they would increase their holdings substantially in short order.

Either that or they could just give up their dominance of world trade and power… What would you guess their choice would be?

It is entirely possible that the US government (and very likely the EU) has already made a decision to confiscate. They may have carefully laid out the plan and have set implementation to coincide with a specific gold price.

So how would this unfold? Let’s imagine a fairly extreme scenario and ask ourselves if it could be pulled off effectively:

• The evening news programs announce that the economic recovery is being hampered by wealthy private investors who, by hoarding gold, are skewing the value of the dollar and threatening the middle and poorer classes. The little man is being made to suffer while the rich get richer. A press campaign to equate gold ownership with greed ensues.

• The government announces the Second Emergency Banking Act, advising the public that “the first EBA was instituted by FDR to solve this same problem during the Great Depression. This act was instrumental in helping the little man ‘recover.’” (As the average man on the street doesn’t know his history nor how wrong this statement is, he’ll believe it. Besides, the announcement has a “feel-good” message, and that’s all that matters.)

• Possessors of gold, who make up a small minority of the population, would become pariahs. It won’t matter that the guy who owns two gold Maple Leafs is not exactly a greedy, rich man. No one will wish to be seen as resisting confiscation. Neither will they wish to go to prison for resisting, no matter how remote the possibility.

• The US pays for the gold in US dollars, which are rapidly headed south. Yes, the Fed will need to print more fiat dollars in order to pay them off, but this suits their purpose, as it inflates the dollar even more. Those who have turned in their gold will do whatever they can to unload the US dollars as quickly as possible and will need to find another investment at a time when there are very few trustworthy investments other than gold. The stock market would likely rise, showing the public how the gold confiscation program is “working.”

• One last scary possibility: The government demands that gold is turned in immediately and that settlement will occur following confiscation. After confiscation, it announces that, as there has been such a large number of cases of rich people ripping off the little man, processing them all could take months, possibly even a year or more. A further announcement states that some investors have made an unreasonable profit on the backs of the poor and that they should not be granted this profit. This profit must be returned to the people. (You can almost hear the cheers of the people.) Then it sets about making assessments. The bureaucrats find that most investors do not have formal, acceptable receipts for every coin in their possession. So if you paid $1,200 for a Krugerrand a couple of years ago, you get paid $1,200. If you bought it at $250 in 1999, you get paid $250. But if you have no receipt in an acceptable form, you get a “fair,” median payment, say, $500, regardless of when you bought it.

• Appeals: Each investor will be allowed up to one year to appeal the decision of the Treasury as to what is owed him. Of course, the investor knows that the dollar is sinking rapidly and that he would be wise to shut up and take what he is being offered.

Again, this hypothetical scenario is an extreme one. The reader is left to consider just how likely or unlikely this scenario is and what that would mean to his wealth.

But bear this in mind: If the above scenario were to take place soon, the average citizen would have mixed feelings. They would be glad that the “evil rich” had been taken down a peg, but they would worry about the idea of the government taking things by force, because they might be next. It would therefore be in the government’s interests to implement confiscation only after the coming panic sets in – after the next crash in the market, after it becomes plain to the average citizen that this really is a depression and he really is in big trouble. Then he will be only too glad to see the “greedy rich” go down, and he won’t care about the details.

As terrible as the thought is, it seems unlikely to me that the government will not confiscate gold, as they have little to lose and so much to gain.

Those who own gold would prefer to think that this cannot happen, but they have quite a lot riding on that hope and precious little evidence to support it.

It is entirely possible that this scenario will not take place, just as it is possible that confiscation will not take place. The purpose of this article is to spark some serious discussion – both for and against the possibility.

Arborist questions Maui WildFire and shares insights

   I do not know how long this video will stay on-line. (Probably long enough unless it gets some traction and gets deleted from YouTube.)

  This is pure conspiracy theory so let's forget about the answers, but the questions are still worth asking:

  What kind of fire can burn a house to ashes, crumbles concrete, melt metal but leaves nearby trees untouched?

  How comes eucalyptus leaves, full of combustible oils, survived unburned right in the middle of the conflagration? Likewise a building with a straw roof? 

  What are the odds of blue "things" surviving the fire while everything else, and we mean "everything" was burnt to the ground? (There is a great example of a row of cars completely burnt except for  a blue one right in the middle left untouched.)

  As a statistician, I deal with probabilities. Coincidences do happen. Likewise, correlation is not causation. Understood. But how far can you deviate from the norm (how many sigma) and still find nothing strange in the results? 

  I used to look at these kinds of events and explanations with a skeptic eye. Not anymore. I still do not buy all kind of protracted explanations but I now believe the questions are worth asking: What if?

 

 

Direct Government Censorship Of The Internet Is Here

  Like our economy going bankrupt, our freedom is going out the window, step by step and eventually it will be suddenly. Just like that, it will be gone. 

  We are the weak men of the fourth turning and most probably will do nothing about it. We forgot that freedom is not a right, it is something you earn the hard way.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Censorship of the Internet has been getting worse for years, but we just crossed a threshold which is going to take things to a whole new level. 

On August 25th, a new law known as the “Digital Services Act” went into effect in the European Union.  Under this new law, European bureaucrats will be able to order big tech companies to censor any content that is considered to be “illegal”, “disinformation” or “hate speech”.  That includes content that is posted by users outside of the European Union, because someone that lives in the European Union might see it.  I wrote about this a few days ago, but I don’t think that people are really understanding the implications of this new law.  In the past, there have been times when governments have requested that big tech companies take down certain material, but now this new law will give government officials the power to force big tech companies to take down any content that they do not like. 

Any big tech companies that choose not to comply will be hit with extremely harsh penalties.

Of course mainstream news outlets such as the Washington Post are attempting to put a positive spin on this new law.  We are being told that it will “safeguard” us from “illegal content” and “disinformation”…

New rules meant to safeguard people from illegal content, targeted ads, unwanted algorithmic feeds and disinformation online are finally in force, thanks to new regulation in the European Union that took effect this month.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

When this new law was first approved, NPR admitted that it will enable European governments to “take down a wide range of content”…

Under the EU law, governments would be able to ask companies take down a wide range of content that would be deemed illegal, including material that promotes terrorism, child sexual abuse, hate speech and commercial scams.

In addition to “illegal content” and “hate speech”, the Digital Services Act also applies to “hoaxes” and any material that is considered to be “disinformation”.  The following comes from the official website of the European Commission…

At the same time, the DSA regulates very large online platforms’ and very large online search engines responsibilities when it comes to systemic issues such as disinformation, hoaxes and manipulation during pandemics, harms to vulnerable groups and other emerging societal harms.

These new content rules are so vague that they could apply to just about anything.

And that is precisely what they want.

From this point forward, if you post something that they do not like, they will have the power to have it taken down.

Even if you don’t live in the European Union, they can have your content taken down, because someone in the European Union might see it.

So who will be doing the censoring?

Well, it is being reported that “hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it”…

Under this Orwellian regime, a team of hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it. The firms themselves, faced with reputational risk and financial penalties, will have little choice other than to comply. This can be done in all manner of ways: simply by human moderators removing content, by shadow-banning problematic creators to reduce their reach, by demonetising certain content, and by tweaking algorithms to favour or disfavour certain topics. And though, legally speaking, the DSA only applies in the EU, once installed inside Big Tech firms, this vast content-regulation apparatus will surely affect users in the rest of the world, too.

In addition, the official website of the European Commission is telling us that big tech companies must “react with priority” to any content that has been reported by “trusted flaggers”…

A priority channel will be created for trusted flaggers – entities which have demonstrated particular expertise and competence – to report illegal content to which platforms will have to react with priority.

This means that far left organizations that have been set up to police content online will now be given extraordinary power to restrict speech on the Internet.

Needless to say, the Internet is never going to be the same after this.

Initially, this new law will apply to 19 very large online platforms…

The online platforms affected are Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X (listed as Twitter), Wikipedia, YouTube, the European clothing retailer Zalando, Bing and Google Search.

If any of those large online platforms choose not to comply with the new law, the penalties could be extremely severe…

A firm that does not comply with the law could face a complete ban in Europe or fines running up to 6% of its global revenue.

Last month, X/Twitter said it was on track to generate $3bn (£2.4bn) in revenue. A fine of 6% would be the equivalent of £144m.

Once we get to February 24th, 2024, the Digital Services Act will also apply to a vast multitude of smaller platforms.

At that point, it will be very difficult to escape the reach of this new law.

And just to make sure that they can keep a very close eye on things, the EU just established a brand new office in San Francisco on June 22nd…

European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton cut the ribbon to commemorate the official launch of the European Union’s San Francisco office on Thursday, June 22, alongside Lieutenant Governor of California Eleni Kounalakis, California State Senator Scott Wiener, and Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs Adrian Vazquez.

“I am very glad to be here today in Silicon Valley, a global centre for digital technology and innovation, to officially inaugurate the new European Union office in San Francisco,” Commissioner Breton said in his keynote address to an audience of business and technology sector leaders. “As like-minded partners who strive for reciprocity and common principles, all while respecting our respective democratic processes, our transatlantic ties are more relevant than ever in the area of technology.”

For many years, the Internet was one of the last bastions for free speech.

But now everything has changed.

From this point forward, far left European bureaucrats will get to determine what is acceptable and what is not acceptable on our large online platforms.

Direct government censorship of the Internet is here, and that is going to make it much more difficult to share the truth with a world that desperately needs it.

These are such dark times, and they are getting darker with each passing day.

Over 1,600 Scientists Sign 'No Climate Emergency' Declaration

  There is no climate emergency. Never was any.

  There is no "consensus" among scientists. Also never was.

  What there is, is policy through fear: virus, climate, wars... 

  Now about "Climate Change"...Yes, sure, that's what it does. It is an oxymoron. 

  Temperatures are currently on a slow upward trend and have been over the last 300 years since the little ice age of the 17th Century. It may go on another 200 years until we reach another optimum and grape once again grows in Scotland. Then it will reverse while staying in a relatively warm patch of the current glacial age. These are all waves or trends at different time scales which are far, far beyond our control.

  Now a slowdown of the destruction of tropical and rain forests, pollution of the oceans with plastics and fertilizers, less consumption and more recycling, more respect generally for our natural environment would all be very positive and contribute greatly to a prosperous future.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth, contrary to the popular alarmist narrative.

“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.

The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

"Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming," the declaration said.

Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models "exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases" and "ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.

CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.

“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”

Climate Models and Sunlight Reflection

Among the CLINTEL signatories are two Nobel laureates—physicists John Francis Clauser from the United States and Ivan Giaever, a Norwegian-American.

Mr. Clauser has made a significant addition to climate models to dismiss the narrative of global warming: the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds which, on average, cover half of the earth.

Current climate models vastly underestimate this aspect of cumulus cloud reflection, which plays a key role in regulating the earth’s temperature. Mr. Clauser previously told President Joe Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies.

In May, Mr. Clauser was elected to the board of directors at the CO2 Coalition, a group focusing on the beneficial contributions of carbon dioxide in the environment.

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people,” Mr. Clauser said in a May 5 statement.

“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”

“It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

False Doomsday Predictions, a Presidential Issue

CLINTEL’s declaration against the climate change narrative counters propaganda spread by climate alarmists who have long predicted doomsday scenarios triggered by global warming—none of which have ever come true.

In 1970, some climate scientists predicted that the earth would move into a new ice age by the 21st century. Pollution expert James Lodge predicted that “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century,” according to The Boston Globe.

In May 1982, Mostafa Tolba, then-executive director of the United Nations environmental program, said that if the world did not change course, it would face an “environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust” by 2000.

In June 2008, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, said that within five to 10 years, the Arctic would have no ice left in the summer.

As climate alarmists continue to spread propaganda about global warming, the topic has become an issue in the 2024 presidential race, with multiple candidates openly dismissing it.

In a July 13 post on X, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that climate change “is being used to control us through fear.”

“Freedom and free markets are a much better way to stop pollution. Polluters make themselves rich by making the public pay for the damage they do," he said.

During the first 2024 GOP presidential debate, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called climate change a “hoax.”

“The reality is, the anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy. And so the reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change,” he said.

High Temperatures, Biden’s Appliance Crackdown

Climate activists have insisted that global warming is responsible for the soaring temperatures across the United States, even claiming that temperatures are hitting record highs.

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, John Christy, a climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, dismissed the narrative of record high temperatures.

“Regionally, the West has seen its largest number of hot summer records in the past 100 years, but the Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest are experiencing their fewest,” he said.

“For the conterminous U.S. as a whole, the last 10 years have produced only an average number of records. The 1930s are still champs.”

Climate change policies have been used to justify sweeping lifestyle changes across the United States by the Energy Department, like restricting home appliances, and sometimes, even outright banning them.

In June, the Energy Department proposed rules that would require ceiling fans to become more energy efficient, a development that could lead to manufacturers having to shell out $86.6 million per year in “increased equipment costs.”

In February, the DOE proposed energy efficiency rules targeting gas stoves that would affect half of all new models of such stoves sold in the United States while making most of the existing ones noncompliant.

In July, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission proposed a policy that would remove nearly all existing portable gas generators from the market.

The Biden administration has already implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which came into effect on Aug. 1.

END GAME FOR THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

  We are fast approaching a 4th turning event. Nobody knows the shape and time: Global war, market crash, social disruption, all of the above? Who knows?

  What is certain is that the dominoes are all in place and sometimes soon they are going to come crashing down.

   The war in Ukraine is going badly for the West and NATO as the Ukrainian army is being annihilated. What will be their next move? Declare defeat and pack up? Unlikely. Global chaos which is already looming in Africa with the rejection of Western hegemony would become a tsunami.

  The everything bubble is growing wings. And why not? Financial authorities have the back of the mega gamblers. No deficit is big enough and fiat money is... well even more fiat if that is possible. Those who have access to credit will buy everything. The rest of the population will own nothing!

  And sure enough, 2030 is coming early except that it is not a stable society. The fact that fertility rates are now below 1 in most cities in Asia shows that living there has become unaffordable and likewise confidence in the future is approaching new lows. Let's not talk about American cities where it is not sure which of the people and infrastructure will crack first.  

  2024 will be an "interesting year" according to the Chinese definition of interesting. The only question left is when exactly does 2024 starts? It could be any day now!

Living through the late stages of an empire in decline, coming unhinged, flailing about in a death throes of debt, depravity and denial, is not a pleasant experience. But, it is just the cycle of history playing out once again, with the name of the empire changed, different villains and fools, civil and international strife, and a debt default to end all debt defaults. As the chart below portrays, the existing social order, controlled and dominated by America since the beginning of the 20th Century, is rapidly hurtling towards its demise, to be swept away by a tsunami of debt default, social chaos, and global war. That’s how Fourth Turnings roll.

I know the ignorant masses choose the ostrich method of keeping their heads buried in the sand, but that will not save them from the consequences of actions taken and not taken over the last fifty years by the political and business leaders installed by wealthy globalist psychopaths bent on controlling the world and reaping the riches from their despicable efforts.

I believe Ray Dalio‘s chart of the changing world order is accurate as to where we stand in the cycle, even though he is one of those global elitists. The beginning of the decline can be pegged to the start of the 21st Century, with the dot.com crash and 9/11 ushering in an astronomical increase in debt, money printing, and despotism, as each crisis created by debt and money printing was met with the “solution” of more debt and money printing. With interest on the national debt about to surpass $1 trillion per year and unfunded future debt obligations exceeding $200 trillion, there is no way out. The American economic system will implode in a matter of a few years.

The internal conflict since the election of Trump in 2016 and the subsequent coup, election fraud, scamdemic, and now unwarranted un-Constitutional persecution of Trump, leaves the country on the brink of civil war. I know the regime media and distracted masses scoff at the possibility of civil war, but the same was true in 1859. There are a lot of rightfully angry people in this country with a seething rage for those who have destroyed this country for their own gain. The 2024 election sure seems like a spark that could ignite this powder keg, and the 300 million weapons owned by the angry people are waiting to be put to proper use.

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I believe we are already in the midst of stages 16 – Loss of Reserve Currency and 17 – Weak Leadership. The American empire initiated war in the Ukraine has set in motion the demise of the USD as the reserve currency of the world, ending its seventy seven year reign as the one and only settlement currency for global trade. Biden, the weakest, dumbest, most corrupt, illegitimate president in the history of our country, has succeeded in pushing Russia, China, India, Brazil, and now the Middle East and South American oil producers towards an economic alliance which will accelerate the demise of the USD.

Biden, as the puppet of evil globalist forces, has encouraged an invasion of our southern border by barbarian hordes, has destroyed our economy, flouted the Constitution, and has set us on a path towards global conflict. He makes James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter look like Mount Rushmore candidates compared to his “accomplishments”. They were just ineffective and weak. He is corrupt, evil and destructive. 2024 would be the sixteenth year of this Fourth Turning, right in the wheelhouse of civil war, revolution, and global conflict. We have entered the endgame and now it’s just a matter of how much destruction, death, and retribution will be required to achieve a new world order better than what we have today. Not winning is not an option.

First the vaxxines, Now EVs!

  If you didn't like the vaccine, you won't like the EV either although the same techniques will be used to coerce you into buying one! 

  An ideologically tainted article from the Burning Platform. Still...

 “Hesitancy” About the Drugs that Weren’t Vaccines . . . and Now EVs

Guest Post by Eric Peters

When “hesitancy” about being voluntarily injected with the drugs that turned out to not be vaccines became a thing, it became another thing.

A pushed thing.

Things got to the point that people who refused to take the drugs being pushed were threatened with loss of employment (and with it, career, in the case of people in occupations such as airline pilots, doctors, nurses and so on).

Will it get to that point with EVs?

Right now – and for now – people are still free to opt-out of “electrification.” And the evidence accrues that many are doing exactly that as word about the adverse events people who’ve already bought into “electrification” are experiencing.

Such as the very public experience of Ford CEO Jim Farley, who tried mightily to make excuses for the EV’s failings that echo eerily of the way those pushing the drugs tried to make excuses for their failure to immunize the people who took them. Who assumed that’s what they’d be getting. Instead, many of them got myocarditis and other unpleasant things. But – never mind that, said the drug pushers. These drugs will reduce the severity of symptoms and that will reduce the number of hospitalizations and that, in turn, will help reduce the burden on hospitals.

One can almost hear the same cadences in the apologias emanating from Farley – whose company is on track to lose $4.5 billion (so far) pushing battery-powered vehicles that don’t go very far and require a lot of waiting (and planning to wait) in between.

At least they don’t kill you.

Well, not usually.

But they sure do kill any desire to own one of these things. Excepting, of course, the True Believers. Who – like the True Believers in “mask” wearing – cannot be swayed by facts. That is the nature of True Belief.

One must just believe.

But they are relatively few such. Or at least, probably not enough.

Just as “mask” wearing is not likely going to be accepted as easily again as anything other than what it has always been – i.e., a device meant to create an image of agreement with a sick narrative – so also the holy nimbus that once illumined the EV is fading.

They are being produced.

But they are not being sold.

Dealers aren’t placing new orders; they have too many in inventory already. Tesla is an exception, but only because it appeals – like the “mask” – to the true believers. But there are only so many of those left. Once they have their articles of faith, it will be difficult to persuade those who are not believers to buy in.

What then?

It will probably follow the script that was intended for us during the “pandemic.”

Like the drugs that weren’t vaccines, expect EVs to be pushed on those who are . . . “hesitant.” The pushing will take the form of pushing the “hesitant” out of their current vehicles – i.e., the ones that take them where they need and want to go without a planning (and waiting) ordeal that is analogous to what it was like back in the 1940s to fly anywhere farther than very close by. Across the country, say.

In case you forgot what that was like, it went something like this:

You boarded a prop job airplane in let us say New York, at what was then Idlewild Airport (JFK International, now). It took off – and landed in Washington, where you waited for the bird to fuel up before it took off en route to your next stop in Chicago. Where you waited (again) while they topped off the bird. After another stop or maybe two, you finally touched down in LA.

It only took all day to do what it takes about five hours to do today, in a fast jet. Which can  be likened to a not-electric car in that it doesn’t need to stop to travel very long distances. An EV, on the other hand, can be likened to going back to a prop job to fly across the country – when fast jets are available.

Farley publicized the fact, however inadvertently. Much the same as Fauci and the White Coats  – it sounds like a Synth band from the ’80s – did much to spread the truth about the drugs that weren’t vaccines, by brazenly and serially lying about them.

An interesting confluence is in the making. It is essentially the same one that reached its crescendo when the Thing that currently occupies the home of the president attempted to use the government to force people to take the drugs that weren’t vaccines. The Supreme Court ruled he could not do so but the far more powerful rebuttal was that of the people who had already refused to take the drugs being pushed and were not going to take them under any circumstances whatever.

The same is forming up as regards this pushing of EVs. There are millions of people who aren’t going to be pushed, under any circumstance whatever.

What will the Thing – and the Things in his service (or is it the other way around?) do when they run into such a wall of “hesitancy”?

We’ll soon find out.

The Western World Is About To Deliver Some Very Bad News To Its Young Adults

  After Michael Every, Benjamin Picton now! It looks like Rabobank enjoys splashing everybody with deep truths while launching stones in the pond.

 I do not agree with everything but still a great read. Enjoy!

 

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank (From Zero Hedge)

Here Be Dragons

I’ve been away on holiday for the last two weeks trying my best to pay more attention to my children than I do to the markets. Mission accomplished for the most part, but it has been hard to look away while momentous shifts seem to be occurring all around us. Indeed, at the Jackson Hole symposium over the weekend, ECB President Lagarde re-upped her comments from April by suggesting that “there are plausible scenarios where we could see a fundamental change in the nature of economic interactions”, “past regularities may no longer be a good guide for how the economy works” and “there is no pre-existing playbook for the situation we are facing.” Translation: “we really don’t know if rates are high enough or not, and that isn’t really the point anyway.”

So, according the second most senior central banker in the world we’re in uncharted waters, and as anyone who has ever taken an interest in the Age of Discovery will know, once you reach the edge of the known world, here be dragons.

The most obvious dragon is of course China, and its surrogates, which are making new attempts at formalizing challenger status to the G7 via the BRICS bloc. Michael Every notes:

The BRICS just expanded to allow in Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, so with much hullabaloo we can colour in more countries, GDPs and commodities (like oil) as 'anti-dollar'. However, Argentina is a serial defaulter with a plummeting currency, and may dollarize soon; Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest countries, and recently brushed with civil war; Egypt has a wilting currency; Saudi Arabia and the UAE have their currencies pegged to the US dollar, and the former is haggling over a US defence deal and nuclear tech; and Iran is heavily sanctioned, again with a collapsing currency, and could be daggers drawn again with Saudi at any time. In short, the world is changing, but as the FT has pointed out, the BRICS+ (a name created by Goldman Sachs) don't even have an official website. Meanwhile, it was the Euro, not the dollar, that saw its share of SWIFT transactions collapse to a record low in the latest data. You want to look at potential early victims of any global tectonic shifts? Look there.

This reads as a very ragtag group, with “relationships” built mainly around a common outsider status and no small dose of opportunism in seizing a perceived first-mover advantage in undermining dollar hegemony. We remain sceptical. As we’ve covered in this publication many times, the idea of commodity standard like some kind of petro-Yuan is laden with problems.

The auspices aren’t great for the new alternative multilateralism. The putative centre of the BRICS+ bloc, China, is struggling to revive its flagging growth engine while economic remedies that are taken as orthodox in the West are shunned for their perceived incompatibility with Xi Xinping thought. Markets have been waiting for months for signs of big-bang stimulus from the CCP or the PBOC, but as the WSJ reports, maybe it just ain’t coming. Chinese perceptions that Western consumerism is flabby, decadent and morally obtuse stands at odds with the need for China to fulfil the role of deficit-runner in order to get enough Yuan into the hands of the periphery. How can Argentina, Brazil, Iran and Egypt buy virtuous Chinese manufactures if they don’t have any Yuan? The answer here is that trade will continue to be conducted in dollars, one way or another.

China clearly has little appetite for further credit expansion either. The CCP has made several attempts over the years to rein-in debt levels, all of which have ultimately been abandoned in the face of a stalling economy. For the time being, Xi Xinping is resisting large-scale easing of credit conditions, urging “patience” while the economy passes through what policy-makers hope is a temporary soft patch, rather than the start of a Japan-style stagnation brought on by decades of malinvestment and speculative pump-priming of real estate assets.

The real question now is how strong the CCP and the PBOCs resolve to address burgeoning debt-levels will be in the face of economic slowdown. For an authoritarian regime whose legitimacy is built on the delivery of rapidly rising living standards, slow growth poses a potentially existential risk. The obvious retort here is that authoritarian states have no need to court popular opinion, but the speed at which the Covid-Zero policy was ultimately abandoned in the face of civil discontent should serve as an indication that the CCP is ultimately still sensitive to what the population thinks.

Looking back to Jackson Hole it’s fair to say that debt and popular discontent aren’t a uniquely Chinese problem. During the meeting of rich men north of Richmond (Jackson Hole is north of Richmond, I checked) a paper presented by Barry Eichengreen and Serkan Arslanap broke the bad news that “public debts will not decline significantly for the foreseeable future”, “primary surpluses of... 3 to 5 percent of GDP are very much exceptions to the rule” and that “inflation is not a sustainable route to reducing high public debts.” That all makes for sobering reading for already beleaguered millennials and Gen Z’s, who will be the can carriers for Eichengreen and Arslanap’s prognosis that “given ageing populations, governments will have to find additional finance for healthcare and pensions”.

What seems to be missing here is a dose of Huw Pill cod liver oil, whereby the West confronts the idea that we’re not as rich as we used to be, and that deteriorating demographics and higher spends on national security might necessitate a lowering of ambitions around what is possible in welfare economics. There are signs that the message is starting to get through. BOJ Governor Ueda nodded to the plight of the West when he suggested that the relocation of supply chains will result in lower productivity in the future, which ultimately means lower real incomes. Meanwhile, former French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud, echoes Michael Every’s assessment of Europe’s diminishing importance by writing in the UK Telegraph that “deluded Europe can’t see that it is finished.”

Nobody likes bad news, but telling young people that they need to pay a higher proportion of their stagnant incomes to fund the pensions of people who are wealthier than they are ever likely to be is sure to go down like a lead balloon, especially when pop culture is already communicating the sense that a Dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, and is taxed to the hilt.

So, the plates are shifting and policy makers in the West seem to be either totally unsure of the answers, or proffering answers that are anathema to the social fabric. We’re in uncharted territory and here be dragons.

Debunking the debunkers

   What's wrong with fact checking the news? Nothing in principle until you check more specifically what the debunkers do and how they do it and suddenly it all sounds like support for a major conspiracy theory: Someone is trying to hijack the narative!

   It all started in the early 2000s following the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York. Quite a few, in fact if you check carefully almost all the explanations of the authorities made little sense or were full of holes so people started to ask questions and mention "inconvenient truth" to mis-use a popular word of those days. Clearly something had to be done about what news were trending on the net or soon the governments would lose control of the narrative and lo, fact checkers were born. 

  Like censorship in Europe which first targeted neo-nazis and pedophiles, (Who can legitimately support these people?) they went easy at the beginning, targeting mostly politicians for exaggerated claims, missing context and distorting facts. Well, isn't it what politicians do? And so over the years under the radar, they trained. How do you prove a point even when it is flimsy? How do you establish authority or conversely destroy credibility?    

  But the point of all this was not philosophical but practical. You can debate for a long time what is the truth, especially in science where you almost never have all the facts but this leads nowhere and it certainly never was the goal. The goal as mentioned earlier was to establish guidelines to control the narrative on a new platform where new tools had to be built. And built they were.

  In many respect, the fact checkers were very similar to the Federal Reserve which is neither federal nor a reserve of anything and slowly built their authority by doing the right things and checking the right way. 

 So what is the right way of doing fact checking? Well going against the authorities is definitively a no go except for trivial matters to prove your neutrality. The UN, WHO, CDC and other alphabet soup of organizations are also almost god like in their statements. So much so that if infallibility could be declared, Vatican-like, it would already have been done. It can't but never mind, the fact checkers will act as if it was the case. As for information, once the "truth" has been set, almost instantly every time, no variation is allowed less it confuses the message. Although this doesn't work over time as 6 months later you can broadcast the opposite of what you just said without concern of contradiction. Social memory is short and fact checkers are there to check "other" people against your message. Not if what you say is consistent over time.  

  So that's about the mission, now about the method. Here, it's a little more complicated as you need techniques. Here's a good one which works well in science: Select the most absurd statement you can find like "The Earth is flat!" and conflate it with other statements you want to discredit like "The Earth turn around the Sun!" Now destroy the credibility of the flat-earth and "other" esoteric believers while saying as little as possible about any solid arguments they may have. And lo, the job is done. Who are you going to believe? The authorities or flat-earth believers? There are many other such techniques. The point here is not to describe all of them, just to explain what is going on.  

  Once the goals are set and the method is honed, you can slowly expend the scope of the fact checking which is exactly what we have seen over the years. From politics to science and from there later to whatever social discourse will need to be controlled. (Note that nobody is fact checking if you believe the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, or more, or less. That, nobody cares!)

  Fact checking works by discrediting and shaming the heretics. Most heretics are nuts or fanatics of one sort or another so mostly it works. But some heretics are more credible than others. They use facts which are difficult to refute and ask dangerous questions. These are the Luthers and Calvins of the World. More control is needed!

  The first line of defense is the Internet GAFA which were originally asked to censor their platforms and more recently are being coerced to do so by laws such as the recent one from the European Union. The heretics will have fewer places to hide. 

  The second line of defense are these new laws which are suppose to control speech in a broad way but is fact are so wide that they can be interpreted however the inquisition decides to do as explained by  CJ Hopkins in my previous article.

  And that is how fact checkers and debunkers have found their place in the ecosystem of intolerance and will play their role on the way to totalitarianism. 

  From a truth point of view, they are not necessarily always wrong (or right). But that's not the point. From their mission point of view, they are always right. They can't be wrong with the right message! And in the circular logic of people who are always right, the rest, anything else is by definition "wrong"! And that's how you deny the enlightenment and destroy science. We are almost there!