A Nanny State Idiocracy: A Tale Of Too Many Laws And Too Little Freedom

  The amazing discrepancy between what people want and what they get through the government "nanny state". As laws pile upon laws, life becomes less fun, more regimented and regulated into nothingness. No surprise people spend most of their time indoor, it's a legal jungle outside. Especially if you're black and poor in red states and unless you're black and poor in blue states.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”

- Simone Weil, French philosopher

We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or a Nanny State Idiocracy. 

Whatever the label, this overbearing despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

As the Regulatory Transparency Project explains, “There are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing hundreds of thousands of people to write and implement regulations. Every year, they issue about 3,500 new rules, and the regulatory code now is over 168,000 pages long.”

In his CrimeADay Twitter feed, Mike Chase highlights some of the more arcane and inane laws that render us all guilty of violating some law or other.

As Chase notes, it’s against the law to try to make an unreasonable noise while a horse is passing by in a national park; to leave Michigan with a turkey that was hunted with a drone; to refill a liquor bottle with different liquor than it had in it when it was originally filled; to offer to buy swan feathers so you can make a woman's hat with them; to enter a design in the Federal Duck Stamp contest if waterfowl are not the dominant feature of the design; to transport a cougar without a cougar license; to sell spray deodorant without telling people to avoid spraying it in their eyes; and to transport “meat loaf” unless it’s in loaf form.

In such a society, we are all petty criminals.

In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent. 

The bigger the government grows, the worse the red tape becomes.

Almost every aspect of American life today, including the job sector, is now subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control.

Whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 4 American occupations requires a license.

According to business analyst Kaylyn McKenna, more than 41 states require that makeup artists be licensed. Twenty-eight states require a license before you can work as a residential painter. Funeral attendants, whose duties include placing caskets in visitation rooms, arranging flowers and directing mourners, have to be licensed to do so in Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

Case in point: in New Jersey, in what journalist Billy Binion describes as “yet another example of the effects of overcriminalization, which increases interactions between civilians and police with little benefit to actual public safety,” police went so far as to arrest a teenager and seize other teen’s bicycles for so-called traffic violations and a failure to register their bikes with the state.

This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

That explains how a fisherman can be saddled with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water. Or why police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public unless portable toilets are also made available. Or how states across the country, in a misguided attempt to disperse homeless populations, have criminalized sitting, sleeping, or resting in public spaces; sharing food with people; and camping in public.

The laws can get downright silly.

For instance, in Florida, it’s against the law to eat a frog that was used in a frog-jumping contest. You could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

“Such laws,” notes journalist George Will, “which enable government zealots to accuse almost anyone of committing three felonies in a day, do not just enable government misconduct, they incite prosecutors to intimidate decent people who never had culpable intentions. And to inflict punishments without crimes.”

Unfortunately, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill.

In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation.

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes. 

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with many doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments.

This is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

Escobar: De-Dollarization Bombshell - The Coming Of BRICS+ Decentralized Monetary Ecosystem

  This is quite a bombshell - If the BRICS truly introduce a new payment system this will indeed change our world profoundly in many respects. 

 

 Will the West "allow" it? - I doubt it very much. But then what? What exactly can they do?

  If you are interested by the concept, here's a direct link to the white paper presenting the idea in details: https://wp.unitfoundation.org/

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Get ready for what may well be the geoeconomic bombshell of 2024: the coming of a decentralized monetary ecosystem.

Welcome to The Unit  – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+ policy as early as in 2025.

According to Alexey Subbotin, founder of Arkhangelsk Capital Management and one of the Unit’s conceptualizers, this is a new problem-solving system that addresses the key geoeconomic issue of these troubled times: a global crisis of trust.

He knows all about it first-hand: a seasoned financial professional with experience in investment banking, asset management and corporate matters, Subbotin leads the Unit project under the auspices of IRIAS, an international intergovernmental organization set up in 1976 in accordance with the UN statute.

The Global Majority has had enough of the centrally controlled monetary framework put in place 80 years ago in Bretton Woods and its endemic flaws: chronic deficits fueling irresponsible military spending; speculative bubbles; politically motivated sanctions and secondary sanctions; abuse of settlement and payment infrastructure; protectionism; and the lack of fair arbitration.

In contrast, the Unit proposes a reliable, quick and economically efficient solution for cross-border payments. The - transactional - Unit is a game-changer as a new form of international currency that can be issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at national level.

The Unit offers a unique solution for bottlenecks in global financial infrastructure: it is eligible for traditional banking operations as well as for the newest forms of digital banking.

The Unit can also help to upend unfair pricing in commodity trading, by means of setting up a new – fair and efficient – Eurasian Mercantile Exchange where trading and settlement can be done in a new currency bridging trade flows and capital, thus paving the way to the development of new financial products for foreign direct investment (FDI).

The strength of the Unit, conceptually, is to remove direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and to offer especially to the Global Majority a new form of apolitical money - with huge potential for anchoring fair trade and investments.

It is indeed a new concept in terms of an international currency - anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%). It is neither crypto nor stablecoin – as it’s shown here.

The Beauty of Going Fractal

The Global Majority will instantly grasp the primary purpose of the Unit: to harmonize trade and financial flows by keeping them outside of political pressure or “rules” that can be twisted at will. The inevitable consequence translates as financial sovereignty. What matters in the whole process are independent monetary policies focused on economic growth.

That’s the key appeal for the Global Majority: a full ecosystem offering independent, complementary monetary infrastructure. And that surely can be extended to willing Unit partners in the collective West.

Now to the practical level: as Subbotin explains, the Unit ecosystem may be easily scalable because it comes from a fractal architecture supported by simple rules. New Unit nodes can be set up by either sovereign or private agents, following a detailed rule-book in custody of the UN-chartered IRIAS.

The Unit organizers employ a distributed ledger: a technology that ensures transparency, precluding capital controls or any exchange rate manipulation.

This means that connection is available to all open DEX and digital platforms operated by both commercial and Central Banks around the world.

The endgame is that everyone, essentially, may use the Unit for accounting, bookkeeping, pricing, settling, paying, saving and investing.

No wonder the institutional possibilities are quite enticing – as the Unit can be used for accounting and settlement for BRICS+; payment and pricing for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); or as a reserve currency for Sub-Saharan Africa.

And now comes the clincher: the Unit has already received backing by the BRICS Business Council and is on the agenda at the crucial ministerial meeting in Russia next month, which will work out the road map for the summit next October in Kazan.

That means the Unit has all it takes to be on the table as a serious subject discussed by BRICS+ and eventually be adopted as early as in 2025.

Will Musk and the NDB Be on Board?

As it stands, the priority for the Unit conceptualizers – whom I followed for over a year during several, detailed meetings in Moscow - is to inform the general public about the new system.

The Unit team is not interested at all in getting straight into political hot waters or to be cornered by ideologically-laden arguments. Direct references to inspiring but sometimes controversial concepts or authors like Zoltan Pozsar may bury the Unit concept into pigeon holes, thus limiting its potential impact.

What may lie ahead could be extraordinarily exciting, as the Unit appeal could extend all the way from Elon Musk to the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), hopefully engaging an array of crucial actors. After a positive evaluation by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov – who remains on the post in the new Russian government - it’s not far-fetched to imagine Putin and Xi discussing it face to face this week in Beijing.

As it stands, the major takeaway is that the Unit should be seen as a feasible, technical solution for the theoretically Unsolvable: a globally-recognized payment/trade system, immune to political pressure. It’s the only game in town – there are no others.

Meanwhile, the Unit conceptualizers are open for constructive criticism and all manners of collaboration. Yet sooner or later the battle ranks will be lined up – and then it will be a matter of seriously upping the game.

“Academically Sound, Technologically Innovative”

Vasily Zhabykin, co-author of the Unit white paper and founder of CFA.Center, Unit’s technological partner at Skolkovo Innovation Hub in Moscow, crucially stresses: the Unit “represents apolitical money and can be the connector between the Global South and the West.”

He’s keen to point out that “the Unit can keep all the wheels turning unlike most of the other concepts that feature ‘dollar killers’, etc. We do not want to harm anybody. Our goal is to improve efficiency of currently broken capital and money flows. The Unit is rather the ‘cure for centralized cancer’’’.

Subbotin and the Unit team “are keen to meet new partners who share our approach and are ready to bring additional value to our project.” If that’s the case, they should “send us 3 bullet points on how can they help and improve the Unit.”

A bold follow-up step should be, for instance, a virtual conference on the Unit, featuring leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev, Yannis Varoufakis, Jeffrey Sachs and Michael Hudson, among others.

By email, Glazyev, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) , summed up the Unit’s potential:

“I have been following the development of Unit for more than a year and can confirm that Unit offers a very timely, feasible solution. It is academically sound, technologically innovative and at the same time complementary to the existing banking infrastructure.

Launching it under the auspices of an UN institution gives Unit legitimacy, which the current Bretton Woods framework is clearly lacking. Recent actions by the US administration and loud silence from IMF clearly indicate the need for change.

A decentralized approach to emission of potential global trade currency, whose intrinsic value is anchored in physical gold and BRICS+ currencies, makes Unit the most promising of several approaches being considered. It balances political priorities of all participants, while helping each sovereign economy develop along its optimal path.

The New Development Bank (NDB) and BRICS+ shall embrace the concept of Unit and help it to become the pinnacle of the new emerging global financial infrastructure, free from malign political interferences while focused instead on fair trade and sustainable economic growth.”

A clear, practical example of possible Unit problem-solving concerns Russia-Iran trade relations. These are two top BRICS members. Russian trade with Iran is unprofitable due to sanctions – and both cannot make payments in US dollars or euros.

Russian companies suffer significant losses after switching to payments in national currencies. With each transfer, Russian businesses on average lose as much as 25% due to the discrepancy between the market rate in Iran and the state rate.

And here’s the key takeaway: BRICS+ as well as the Global Majority can only be strengthened by developing closer geoeconomics ties. The removal of Western speculative capital shall free up local commodity trading, and enable the pooling of investable capital for sustainable development. To unlock such a vast potential, the Unit may well be the key.

Russia Is About To Overrun Ukraine's Defenses – Why Are There No Peace Negotiations?

  Here's another WW3 is unavoidable article. The world has no use for such a war but the elites in the West want it.

  Understanding this, what will China do? Blinken was recently in China to administer more menaces (before flying to Ukraine to play the guitar!) and Biden just signed a long list of tariff increases. Putin is in Beijing this week and probably will, on top of a warm welcome, get some actual support. Will it delay the war? Will Western countries get the message? Unlikely? What at this stage could cancel the ineluctable? If there ever was a good question to ask an advance AI, this one should be on top of the list.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

There are two classic propaganda narratives used by governments when it comes to keeping the public invested in any war campaign that does nothing to advance their national interests:

• First, there’s the “commitment” lie, which says that once you step in to support a war effort you then must stay exponentially committed, even if that war effort is exposed as pointless. Anytime the public pulls back from that war in a bid to reconsider what purpose it serves they are ridiculed for potentially “risking lives” and setting the stage for defeat. In other words, you must support the effort blindly. You’re not allowed to examine the conflict rationally, because who wants to be blamed for losing a war?

• Second, there’s the “domino effect” lie, which says that if you allow a particular “enemy” to win in one conflict, they will automatically be emboldened to invade other countries until they own the entire planet. It’s the same claim used to trick the American populace into supporting the war in Vietnam and it rarely turns out to be true. In fact, nations that engage in regional wars tend to be so weakened by the fighting that they don’t have the means to move on to another country even if they wanted to.

In the US we heard both of these narratives heading into the recent congressional vote for billions more in monetary and logistical aid to Ukraine. Neocons and Democrats worked together to force the bill through with a percentage of true conservatives fighting to stop it. Those conservatives were attacked relentlessly by the media for “helping the Russians”, but the reality that no one in the mainstream wants to talk about is that Ukraine has already lost the war.

No amount of additional funding or arms shipments are going to help them, and it has nothing to do with conservatives questioning the validity of war spending. Anyone who has a basic understanding of military strategy knows that the key to winning is ALWAYS manpower first, logistics second. Not superior technology or armaments, not superior cash and certainly not popular support from foreign interests.

This is especially true in a war of attrition, and attrition is in fact the method being used by Russia to systematically whittle down Ukraine’s forces. However, the western media refuses to discuss what’s really happening and has been acting as a hype machine for Ukraine instead.

In September of 2022 I noted that the Russian pullback to the Donbas was not the “retreat” the western media made it out to be. Many establishment talking heads claimed that this was the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin and that Ukrainian forces would be taking Crimea in the near future.

I argued that Russia was likely trying to consolidate its position as western artillery and tanks flooded into Ukraine. I also suggested that Russia wanted to avoid urban combat in major cities while tens-of-thousands of seasoned mercenaries were rushing to the front from the US and Europe. I predicted that the Russian pullback was in preparation for surgical strikes on western Ukraine’s resources and grid infrastructure.

With Ukraine’s grid heavily damaged, a large portion of the population would leave the cities and head for Europe until the war played out. Putin has specifically avoided major fighting within larger urban centers for a reason. Driving civilians out of metropolitan areas would make it easier for Russia to strike Ukraine in a secondary offensive without risking extensive collateral damage in the form of civilian casualties. This is exactly what has happened.

Almost 7 million Ukrainians left the country outright in the past 2 years, with another 6 million displaced (mostly from larger cities). Currently, Russia is moving to push civilians out of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, and they will probably be successful given their momentum and the destruction of water and power resources. With civilians out of the way a more aggressive attack can then be initiated.

Russia has been using an “artillery bubble” as a tool to protect ground forces as they push an advance. Meaning, troops will only attack as far as the artillery can reach. Artillery is vital to a large scale offensive. Coincidentally, Russia doubled its importation of explosive materials commonly used for artillery in the past several months. They are now reportedly producing triple the amount of artillery that NATO is providing to Ukraine.

Mainstream analysts claim the push towards Kharkiv move might be a feint, allowing Russia to increase the size of its buffer zone. They continue to assert that Russia doesn’t have the forces necessary for a major offensive. I would say it depends on how weak Ukraine’s defensive lines actually are. Russia has been consistently using large scale Pincer movements to envelop defensive positions and destroy them.

In the past two weeks alone Russia has gained considerable ground. Russian troops recently made confirmed advances northwest of Svatove (Luhansk Oblast), near Avdiivka (Donetsk Oblast), in Robotyne (Zaporizhzhya Oblast), and in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast, U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War reported on May 6th. The reason for this is relatively simple – Ukraine lacks the manpower to effectively establish defense in-depth. All the reports coming from the front support this theory.

That is to say, Ukraine’s defensive lines are a facade with no secondary positions or trenches to stall Russian breakthroughs. Once the Russians cut the main line there’s nothing much stopping them from gaining large stretches of ground. Some analysts have blamed this development on a lack of Ukrainian foresight or strategic preparedness, but I would argue that they just don’t have enough people to defend more than a single forward line.

My position is backed by numerous reports of the government’s desperate struggles with conscription. For the past six months the average age of Ukraine recruits is 43 years old. Meaning, youth recruitment is waning, either because younger people don’t want to fight and are avoiding the draft by leaving the country, or too many have died.

The conscription problem has been hidden by the western media for many months now, but even corporate news platforms are starting to admit that there is a severe lack of new recruits. Front line fighters have been complaining for months that they need to be cycled away from the trenches and given rest.

Another bad sign is the fact that Ukraine has been using Special Forces soldiers for trench duty. These units are trained specifically for asymmetric hit-and-run warfare, not sitting in mud holes waiting for artillery strikes to rain down on their fixed and exposed positions. It seems like pure stupidity, but it makes sense if Ukraine is actually running out of people to hold their only defensive line.

The cover-up of massive casualties is something I mentioned in past articles on the war and I think it bears repeating: Western warhawks continue to claim that it will be “cheaper” to use Ukrainian soldiers to fight Russia than to fight a larger war down the road with American and European lives.

The sociopathy behind this rationale is disturbing. The lack of manpower in Ukraine cannot be solved. It is a product of endless death paid for with our tax dollars. NATO has prolonged the fighting with funding and arms, but not to win, only to sacrifice more people in a bloody conflict Ukraine is destined to lose.

Their argument also assumes that Americans and Europeans are going to jump blindly into military service in a war against Russia. I don’t know about Europeans, but I do know for a fact that most Americans are not going to buy in and will refuse a draft. The majority of the US public doesn’t even want to send further aid to Ukraine; they certainly aren’t going to go die for Ukraine. The arrogance of the warhawks is mind boggling.

The bottom line is this: Ukraine is about to be overrun. They didn’t have the manpower to effectively launch a counteroffensive. They don’t have the manpower to establish defense in-depth. And, they are using their most seasoned soldiers as cannon fodder in the trenches.

This dynamic demands that diplomatic solutions be entertained, but no one seems to be talking about that. Why?

As I theorized in my article ‘World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided’, the underlying plan may very well be to try to force Americans and Europeans to accept an expanding war with Russia. The western public has been bombarded with lies about Ukraine’s ability to win; when they lose people will be shocked and incensed by the outcome.

Maybe the elites hope that the populace will be so angry about the loss that they will rally around a larger war effort by NATO? The French government has already asserted that they are willing to send troops to Ukraine in direct confrontation with Russia, while Lithuania and Poland have said they will not rule out the possibility.

Now is the time for peace negotiations, BEFORE Ukraine is overrun. Will this happen? Probably not. But when diplomacy is removed from the table completely the only conclusion we can come to is that a greater war is desired. And when greater war is desired, we also have to conclude that our leadership has something substantial to gain by putting the world at risk.

You might be on the side of Ukraine, you might be on the side of Russia, you might not care about either side, but there’s no denying that this war is being escalated by special interests and we need to ask why?

Police Issued QR Codes to Enter Parts of Paris This Summer

  So the QR Covid pass was not for nothing and people warning that this was the future were indeed on the right tracks. Now imagine a state of emergency due to war, global warming, a new pandemic, whatever really. You can go one place, not another one. Sounds OK? Fine. Now add AI to this. I can go but you can't. Now add dynamic pricing, Sorry 5 dollars became 20 for you, just 3 for me. The possibilities are infinite. Ask the Chinese! This is how, imperceptibly the "soft" police state will be implemented. You do not support pedophiles in kinder gardens, do you?  Once you see through the "technical" aspect, the policies become transparent. Note that access is not limited to the Olympic venues but to the areas around. Eventually the "zones" will become permanent. 

May 14th, 2024

Via: Metro:

The capital of France– Paris – will be split into zones this summer, with anyone wanting to enter certain areas required to show a pass on their phone.

Special measures will be in place throughout the city as part of increased security around the Olympic Games, which start in July.

Anyone wishing to enter certain zones, including residents, will have to apply for a special Pass Jeux (games pass) on a platform run by police.

It mostly applies to people driving, but even pedestrians will need to show a QR code to enter an area called the ‘grey zone’ around the River Seine in the centre, where the opening ceremony will take place.

The codes will be checked at access points along the entrance to each zone, manned by officers.

"Ukraine is Finished" US Army Colonel Reveals TRUTH About America's Failed War Against Russia (Video - 33mn)

  The scope of this video is not as broad as the one (erased by Google) from Macgregor but is very clear nevertheless. 

  The whole story about Ukraine in the West is a lie! Worse, the leaders know they are lying!

 

Go Nuts About Nuts To Help Keep Cancer At Bay

  As expected the superb geo-strategic analysis of Macgregor I posted yesterday was erased by Google within hours. This is pure censorship and criminal!

  Here's a more innocuous post which should have a longer shelf life.

  Nuts are good for health. That much almost everybody knows by now. What we are discovering is how good they actually are. In a nutshell: Eat more nuts! :-) 

Authored by Alexandra Roach via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In their many variations, nuts are a superfood praised as rich sources of minerals, vitamins, amino acids, proteins, and other bioactive compounds.

(Pavel Kalenik/Unsplash)

Chestnuts are champions for vitamin C, for instance. Pistachios contain the most vitamin A and potassium. Both are high in folic acid. Cashews enrich us with magnesium. The level of vitamin B3 (niacin) is the highest in peanuts, and vitamin E (tocopherol) is found in almonds.

Walnuts are especially high in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a neuroprotective omega-3 fatty acid important for normal growth and development. It also has been shown to induce apoptosis (programmed death of cells) in breast cancer cells.

Our bodies cannot produce ALA, hence, nutritional intake is a must, as it is with many other key nutrients.

Research Supports the Benefits of Nuts

A 2023 review published in the journal Foods, found mounting evidence that a nut-rich diet can potentially prevent numerous chronic illnesses.

According to the report, “The ingestion of phytochemicals from nuts and their positive influence on several diseases (cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, birth defects, cataracts, diabetes, diverticulosis, and obesity) are established.”

In addition to the improvement of cardiovascular disease, depression, and cognitive function, nut consumption is correlated with lower cancer incidence and cancer mortality, and decreased all-cause mortality, states a 2021 review.

The Nut/Cancer Health Connection

The World Health Organization predicts a considerable increase in cancer, with a potential of 32.6 million cases worldwide by 2045.

Effective strategies, such as increasing dietary fiber, eating more fruits and vegetables, and physical activity, could potentially reduce cancer risk factors by approximately 42 percent.

The journal Chronic Diseases and Translational Medicine published a 2023 review about the interrelation of nut consumption and different types of cancer, including women-related and gastrointestinal cancers.

Data suggests that eating nuts not only reduces “cancer-related risk and mortality,” but possibly prevents the occurrence of certain types of cancer and its advancement. Nuts contain active anticarcinogenic compounds such as “folate, phytosterols, saponins, phytic acid, isoflavones, ellagic acid, α-tocopherol, quercetin, and resveratrol,” according to the review.

The research points to certain phytochemicals and their mechanisms as preventatives for cancer.

Accordingly, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and pine nuts contain polyphenols, which inhibit carcinogenesis that is chemically induced. Likewise, hazelnuts and brazil nuts hold helpful properties, called isoflavonoids, to balance hormonal mechanisms.

Most nuts are strong antioxidants that counteract oxidative stress and guard our DNA—the health benefits list of nuts is long.

Nuts at a Glance

Walnuts

A review published in the journal Nutrition outlines the cancer-preventative properties of walnuts, as researched in animal studies with mice. It summarizes the following points:

• A diet enriched with walnuts prevented the increase of “human breast cancers implanted in nude mice by [approximately] 80%.”
• Mammary gland tumors were reduced by approximately 60 percent through a diet containing walnuts in a mouse model.
• “Walnuts slowed the growth of prostate, colon, and renal cancers by antiproliferative and antiangiogenic mechanisms.”

Another interesting fact was shared in the review. Comparing the intake of whole walnuts to a diet equally rich in n-3 fatty acids, the reduction of tumors in the mammary gland was greater when ingesting whole nuts. This reinforces the idea that active components in walnuts act synergistically to suppress cancer.

Walnuts also proved their antitumorigenic qualities in an animal study in vivo in mice. Compared to the corn-oil-based control group, the walnut group featured two major improvements—the tumor growth rate was slowed by 27 percent, and the tumor weight was reduced by 33 percent.

Reducing inflammation in the body benefits many health conditions, amongst others cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. Walnuts have proven valuable in all.

A randomized controlled trial tested a daily intake of 56 grams of walnuts (366 calories) in 46 overweight adults. Another trial analyzed the same amount on diabetic patients. Both results showed that the increased nut intake improved endothelial function significantly, which is key for healthy blood and lymph vessels. In turn, endothelial cells are needed to protect from vascular malfunctions—the hallmarks of several types of malignant disorders.

Almonds

Contrary to common belief, regular almond intake does not lead to weight gain, although the nuts contain almost 50 percent fat. Instead, almonds “appear to promote weight loss,” affirms a research paper published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, which benefits obesity-related illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

However, almonds also contain the highly controversial and much-researched bioactive compound glycoside amygdalin. Highly controversial because its pharmaceutical development as an anti-cancer treatment continues to be a topic of discussion in the pharmaceutical world.

As a commercial drug, amygdalin is distributed under the name Laetrile but has since been shown to have serious side effects, such as damage to nerves and the liver, a lack of oxygen in the blood, and confusion. Furthermore, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved Laetrile and has said that the compound shows only little anticancer effect.

In contrast, a review in the Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics praises amygdalin’s few side effects, its low cost, and especially its excellent results in the battle against multidrug resistance. Furthermore, the compound can be easily naturally sourced as it occurs in the kernels of many fruits and is a compound in nuts.

A 2023 comprehensive review published in the International Journal of Molecular Science relates the same hopeful message: “Amygdalin seems to be a promising naturally occurring agent against cancer disease development and progression.”

While Amygdalin has proven its anti-tumor qualities, it is still not recommended as an extensive remedy, as some challenges need to be overcome.

Its correct dosage heavily depends on the type of bacteria present in a person’s gut. Therefore, researchers have not been able to find an across-the-board therapy. “Unfortunately, there is currently no foolproof method for determining the microbial consortium and providing a safe oral dosage for every patient,” researchers state in a 2022 review.

Scientists place their hope in modern nano-technologies as they further explore the qualities of amygdalin in cancer treatment. “There are several pieces of evidence to support the idea that amygdalin can exert anticancer effects against lung, breast, prostate, colorectal, cervical, and gastrointestinal cancers.” The compound “has been reported to induce apoptosis of cancer cells, inhibiting cancer cells’ proliferation and slowing down tumor metastatic spread,” according to the above-mentioned 2023 review.

A 2019 article published in Cancer Medicine that dials in on amygdalin, primarily found in bitter almonds, not only highlights its “antioxidative, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory activities,” but investigates the clinical value of the anticancer agent.

The compound introduces cytotoxicity and apoptosis in the body and balances the immune function, which affects especially “solid tumors” such as lung or bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma.

Despite limiting factors, such as the “primary stage” of both clinical and experimental research and the lack of high-quality publications on the topic, researchers still believe these studies to be promising regarding cancer treatments.

Many may not be surprised that walnuts and almonds provide us with these health benefits. However, the following nut, which botanically speaking, is a legume, often gets a “bad rap” as a common allergen. Nevertheless, research shows its valuable qualities in cancer therapy.

Peanuts

A human study published in the journal Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation showed that “High consumption of peanuts, walnuts, and almonds appears to be a protective factor for the development of breast cancer.”

The study group included 97 female patients suffering from breast cancer, and a control group of 104 healthy women. Researchers analyzed their seed consumption via the Mantel-Haenszel test method and found a correlation between dietary nut intake and the development of breast cancer.

Peanuts once again portrayed their qualities as functional food in a study that investigated phytosterols (PS), a natural compound that lowers cholesterol levels and prevents cardiovascular diseases. This research suggests that their sterol beta-sitosterol, in particular, holds protective anticancer effects against “colon, prostate, and breast cancer.”

With 207 milligrams PS per 100 grams, unrefined peanut oil has the highest concentration of valuable beta-sitosterol—even higher than olive oil. Peanut butter “contains 144-157 mg PS/100 g.” Further refinement of the product results in lower rates of the active compound.

Another healthy property of peanuts is the polyphenol phytochemical resveratrol—the target of a review focused on anticancer agents. In addition to peanuts, sources of resveratrol include grapes, red wine, and other berries.

Researchers point out that people benefit from the consumption of this powerful antioxidant, as it displays “strong anti-tumor activities through inhibiting tumor cell proliferation, inducing cell apoptosis, promoting tumor cell differentiation, preventing tumor invasion and metastasis, and further moderating the host immune system to kill tumor cells.”

In fact, the nickname “French Paradox” was given to resveratrol’s impact on the health of the French people, as it seems that the compound counteracts the French diet, which is often high in fats, and protects consumers from cardiovascular disease and more.

Pistachios

Another inconspicuous nut with plenty of healthy properties comes from the cashew family.

In comparison to other nuts, the health profile of pistachios is even more advantageous. They are low-fat, a good source of vegetable protein, contain a remarkable amount of minerals (potassium) and vitamins (C and E), and are high in dietary fiber.

Both, in vitro and in vivo models have indicated significant regulatory properties in pistachios on oxidative stress, according to a 2022 review. Consequently, eating pistachios also positively affected the risk of chronic diseases, including cancer.

Another 2022 review highlighted resveratrol in pistachios and its favorable role in breast cancer treatment.

Unfortunately, the high cost of this nut often keeps people from regular intake, which would be beneficial to their health.

Diet, Inflammation, and Cancer

It has long been known that lifestyle and diets greatly impact our health.

A 2010 review describes the multistage process of cancer as “initiation, promotion, and progression,” and explains that oxidative stress plays a role in all three phases of tumorigenesis (the formation of cancer), as does chronic inflammation in the body—conditions fought by nuts.

A diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids is beneficial to cancer survival, according to a review published in the Journal of Nutrition that examined several animal studies. In addition, it can lessen side effects that come with chemotherapy and increase the treatment’s efficacy. The review goes as far as stating that the “consumption of omega-3 fatty acids might slow or stop the growth of metastatic cancer cells,” after appropriate cancer treatment.

Walnuts contain the highest amount of omega-3 fatty acids.

Attention to Quality

As phenolic compounds in nuts are highly unstable, they may be impacted by various processing techniques.

Unfortunately, studies are rare, as certain types of nuts also react differently. Research that does exist indicates that thermal treatment negatively impacts nuts, such as hazelnuts, where most of the polyphenol content is found in the skin.

Roasting also alters the profile of nutrients in nuts, which can lead to increased allergenicity and changed protein levels, for instance in peanuts. This processing technique seems to affect almonds and pistachios less—they stay stable or might even slightly benefit from the process. In contrast, the antioxidant profile of hazelnuts and walnuts suffers.

A 2023 overview published in the journal Foods mentions that peanuts blanched in 100 degree Celsius water for 20 minutes were less allergenic. On the other hand, “boiling almonds for 10 min[utes], or cashews and pistachios for 60 min[utes] did not affect their properties.”

Authors of the overview suggest that consumers best educate themselves about the variation of bioactive compounds in nuts and the impact of food processing methods, as well as finding a quality source.

Recommended Daily Intake

A 2020 narrative review highlights the extremely low consumption of nuts and seeds worldwide.

Although nuts are continuously praised as a superfood, and the per-capita consumption in the United States increased to 5.6 pounds per person in 2022, recommended consumption is rarely met.

The Global Burden of Disease Study found in 2017 that “global consumption was only 12 % of the recommended level” of a daily intake of 21 grams. In 2019, the Eat-Lancet Commission upped the recommended everyday consumption to 50 grams of tree nuts and/or peanuts. With an average daily intake of 7 grams of nuts, we do not come even close to that goal.

As a rule of thumb, a 2021 study comes to the conclusions that eating a “handful of nuts” is a practical way of “achieving recommended nut intakes.” Researchers explained that combining various types of nuts in a medium-size handful averages at about 36.3 g, which “resulted in a high proportion of individuals taking at least 80% of the recommended intake of nuts.”

Feel free to mix and match, bake with nuts and seeds, or add them to your salads, lunch, and dinner. Mostly though, just have fun going “nuts about nuts” and assisting your health at the same time.

Alexandra Roach is a board-certified holistic health practitioner, herbalist, and movement teacher who has also worked as a journalist, TV news anchor, and author. She has earned citations from U.S. Army commanders for her work with military personnel and writes with a broad perspective on health.

Douglas Macgregor: Russia Is ANGRY After US Conducts Exercises Near Border! TENSIONS ESCALATE (Video - 36mn)

  An amazing analysis from Douglas Macgregor which goes far beyond Ukraine. The West elites are losing their grip on power and are therefore desperate and dangerous. A new world or Armageddon. The stakes could not be higher. We may be weeks away from a nuclear war. 

 PS: Listen quickly to this masterful analysis of the world as YouTube tends to censor these videos within days of their publication.

 

Huge Financial Shock Inevitable & Hitting Now by Ed Dowd

  The everything bubble; China Real Estate, US Office Building, Tokyo second bubble and many others worldwide will burst eventually. They always do. The only thing which cannot be predicted is when. The behavior is similar to that of a sand pile. You cannot predict which grain of sand will start the crash but you can with certainty predict that one will. Ed Dowd believes this will happen before the end of the year. I agree. In fact most people agree which may be why there is a sense of panic in Brussels and Washington. A new world order is being born. This might be the signal!

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  

Former Wall Street money manager Ed Dowd is a skillful financial analyst.  Even though he has a wildly popular book on CV19 vax deaths and injuries called “Cause Unknown,” he is now turning his attention back to the economy.  Dowd warns the economy can fall out of bed at any time.  Dowd explains, “What’s coming up next is a credit cycle.  We are going to see commercial real estate go into problem mode.  There are a lot of loans that need to be rolled over in 2024 and 25.  A lot of these properties are down 80% . . . .  There is huge credit risk coming.  The prediction of bank failures is accurate.  We are going to see, over the next 12 to 24 months, banks go belly-up.  Then, they will have to get merged with bigger banks.”

What happens to the Biden economy?  Dowd says, “The economy is going to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months.  The real economy is not doing well. . . . The only thing that has been holding up the GDP growth is government spending.  We are spending $1 trillion every 100 days.  That’s adding $1 trillion to the deficit.  The only job creation is government jobs, and they don’t actually add to the economy. . . . Reports are coming out now that the low-income consumer is getting absolutely hammered.  McDonald’s talked about it in their most recent earnings call. . . . So, low-income and the middle-class are getting squeezed while the rich continue to plug along.”

Dowd told me off camera that the economy could get into trouble without warning.  Dowd explains, “You’ve got to look at history.  In 2008 and 2009, everyone talks about the crisis, but bank failures started showing up in 2007. . . . I suspect as we roll through time in the real economy and the money supply issues start to hit the economy, we will see more bank failures and more businesses shut down.  46% of small businesses are having problems paying their rent.   There is going to come a time in the next 6 to 12 months this huge shock that we saw in the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2000 bubble where massive layoffs start to happen–it’s inevitable.  This is what happens when you crank up interest rates from 0% to 5.5%.  There is a lag in the real economy, and it’s hitting right now.  It’s only going to intensify as time goes on.

China Is Facing An Epic Deflationary Crash That It Can No Longer Hide

  The Chinese real estate bubble has been imploding for a few years now. But how bad is it, really?

  With over 30 years of experience with "bubbles" in Japan, I am afraid we won't know the answer for quite some time. As in Japan, the Chinese government can and will paper over the deflationary trend with huge budget deficits as the article below suggests. Eventually, just as in Japan, the potential for destroying the money his huge.

  This said, as my next article explains, the West will already be in recession at that time so does it matter in the end? Just another black swan among many? 

China Is Facing An Epic Deflationary Crash That It Can No Longer Hide

It has long been understood that most financial data provided by the Chinese government is propaganda designed to misrepresent the country's true economic circumstances.  At best, their statistics provide half the truth and the rest has to be discerned through deeper investigation.  When systemic crisis events take place in China it usually comes as a shock to much of the world exactly because they expend considerable resources in order to hide instability behind a thin veneer of fabricated progress.

The biggest story in China in the new millennia has been nation's debt explosion.  China's debt-to-GDP ratio is currently estimated at nearly 300% (official numbers), with most of the liabilities accrued in the past 15 years.  Chinese debt spending accelerated in part because of the global credit crash of 2008, but a lesser known factor is their entry into the IMF's Special Drawing Rights basket.  The process started around 2011 and the IMF requires any prospective applicant to take on a wide array of debt instruments before they can be added to the global currency mechanism. 

By the time of China's official inclusion in the SDR in 2016 they had nearly doubled their national debt.  After 2016 debt levels skyrocketed.

The debt problem is harder to quantify in China because of their communist structure posing as a free market structure.  Corporate debt in China has to be included into the national debt picture because of state funded enterprises and the level of government investment in property and industry.  

It is here where we find the most blatant warning signs of deflationary crisis, particularly in property markets and infrastructure development.  The CCP has put a "great information wall" in place to prevent accurate data from leaving the country, but some reports on China's failing infrastructure still escape.  China's export market is crumbling in the past year, in large part because western consumers are tapped out due to inflation.  However, what they prefer not to mention is the damage they did to themselves after three years of near constant covid lockdowns.  This destroyed their retail sector and things have only grown worse since.

Then there is the real estate market which has suffered extreme deflation over the past decade, with a larger drop expected in the next year.  China deliberately popped the housing market bubble as a means to disrupt what officials considered out of control speculation.  This led to the now famous "ghost towns" dotting the Chinese landscape; thousands of neighborhoods and high rises left unfinished and empty after development companies went bankrupt.  

One of the more disturbing trends in China, though, is the effort to use large infrastructure projects to hide the nation's deflationary decline.  China's propaganda machine is pervasive across the world and most people in the west assume  that China is on the cutting edge of progress because of videos on social media.  In reality, the Chinese have been building cheaply constructed and poorly designed false-front landmarks that look technologically impressive on the surface but fall apart in a matter of months.

China is planning another 1 trillion Yuan ($137 billion) in infrastructure projects in 2024 alone, but the debt cycle and the deflationary spiral seem to be catching up with them.  The IMF claims that China's economy has stumbled but is "unlikely to fall", yet, with their global exports falling, property markets plunging and consumer activity in decline it's hard to see how they can continue without a depression-like event in the near future.

Lost in the Vast Wasteland of Social Media

  Interesting Article on Social Media, the disease of our time, by Charles Hugh Smith. What else to say but highlight the artificiality of the whole edifice and its destructive effect, especially on the younger generations? 

  I am by essence a libertarian and would prefer by far that people decide for themselves in most matters of life, especially for things like alcohol. One valid argument against that is the fact that some things like alcohol and drugs are addictive and that consequently people cannot decide by definition since they fall into the addiction. Well, if that is true, then why not submit Social Media to the same rule since their addictive power is even stronger? 

  Lost in the Vast Wasteland of Social Media

May 9, 2024

Once we've made "digital visibility" the primary source of our identity, status and self-respect, we've doomed ourselves to wandering, compass-less, in a vast artificial wasteland.

That social media is addictive is self-evident. The temptation to continue scrolling is as limitless as the vast wasteland of content.

The destructive nature of this addiction is also self-evident. The net result of this addiction is depression, anxiety and rising rates of self-harm and suicide.

The immense profitability of addiction to screens and social media establishes the corporate incentives to increase their addictive power and thwart attempts to limit this profitable power. Who cares about self-harm and depression when shareholder value is at stake?

Though social media is pitched as connecting us all, it's actually about control: the platforms control the flow of user-created content, the addictive mechanisms and the monetization of user engagement.

What's less obvious is the incentive for users to keep creating content for the tech platforms to monetize. This is of course the great "innovation" of social media: entice users to create content so the corporation gets all this content for free. The second "innovation" is to monetize the users' attention / "engagement," a two-fer: monetize the free user-created content and then monetize the addicted users who can't stop scrolling.

The incentive for users is core to human nature: to gain recognition and respect. We observe the tremendous status and respect lavished on those with high digital visibility on screens, and this ignites our Mimetic Desire--we want what we see others wanting and value what others desire--to increase our digital visibility so we too can enjoy some of the status and respect heaped on those with screen presence.

Concurrent with the rise of digital visibility as the key source of status and respect is the decline of other social means of gaining status and respect. The economy places a premium on mobility of both capital and labor, so the workforce and neighborhoods are in constant flux. Unlike the previous economic model of stable employment, where people routinely worked for the same company for decades, as did their peers, now there's no stable community at work that provides social ties and respect: everyone is an atomized, free-floating individual.

Sure, we can pass physical prints of our selfies in famous locales around to our stressed-out, here-today, gone-tomorrow co-workers, but who cares? How much status and respect can we possibly gain in the limited, unstable circles of work and neighborhood? Very little.

The same is true of neighborhoods: here today, gone tomorrow. There is no stable social order left in the real world to provide the recognition and respect every human needs. So we turn to the artificial media-world of screens and social media.

What defines the media? That it's staged, scripted, enhanced, edited, artificial. TV programs are artificial representations of real life, not real life: the boring bits have been edited out, the drama enhanced, the actors made up and the scenes staged.

Real life can't compete with this carefully edited, distilled, enhanced simulation of real life. We understand this and so our goal on social media is to stage, script and edit our real-world selves and lives into an enhanced artificial facsimile that is worthy of a higher status than that earned by our unstaged real life.

So even as we share a crowded apartment with five other low-paid workers, we post photos of ourselves in luxe bars holding $20 cocktails. This is only half the battle for digital visibility; the other half is building an audience so our visibility increases. As our visibility increases, the status and respect we gain increases proportionately.

As the means to gain status and respect in the real world have diminished, the potential to increase our status in the digital realm has skyrocketed. This is the difference between the old legacy mediums of TV and print: we could only be passive observers, as it was extremely difficult to get through all the gatekeepers and actually get on TV or in print media.

Anyone can get on the screen and page in social media. There are three billion Channels of Me, and so the Darwinian struggle is to stage, edit and enhance one's channel to somehow become more appealing and compelling than the millions of competing channels.

This generates another addictive dynamic: did anyone "like" my last post or comment? The desire for an audience introduces an emotional vulnerability: we want the higher status awarded to larger audiences, and so we become obsessed with monitoring our "likes" and views. We become easy targets for trolls who relish crushing the hopes and spirits of those seeking to out-stage and out-enhance everyone else trying to increase their digital visibility.

This is the potent source of much of the depression, anxiety and self-harm stripmining the mental health of the younger generations. Once we've made digital visibility the primary source of our identity, status and self-respect, we've doomed ourselves to wandering, compass-less, in a vast artificial wasteland.

To avoid self-destruction, we must understand the nature of social media--that it's been carefully crafted to addict us--and to free ourselves of the illusion that an enhanced digital representation of ourselves is a worthy foundation for our identity, social status and self-respect.

The artificial digital realm is not a substitute for real life, nor is "status" gained on social media a substitute for an authentic identity and selfhood. We reach through the screen for the proffered feast and are left even more starved when we finally turn the screen off.

Addiction is profitable:



Smartphone addiction:



I've written dozens of essays on social media over the past 13 years;