'Building 7 Controlled Demolition?': Republican Senator Plans Shock 9/11 Hearings, Says 'My Eyes Have Been Opened'

   Are we really going to reopen this can of worms?

  Of course building 7 was pulled down. Just looking at the video. it is obvious.

  But then why? Could it be because a "control" room was located inside that building?  And if there was a control room, what was it controlling? 

  The destruction of the Twin Towers? Could this explain why "rivers of liquid steel" were flowing in the basement? (According to the firemen). Why, "pilots" who could not fly a Cessna succeeded in flying jet-liners in a trajectory that the best pilots would have found difficult to execute?  (According to United Pilots). Why, the towers fell in free-fall although thick pillars should have slowed down the dynamics of the fall closer to the ground? (According to thousands of architects who requested a thorough analysis of the event but were denied).  

  And why were the investors paid twice by an insurance contracted weeks before the event? Why were fighter jets sent on errants over the Atlantic by the office of Dick Cheney instead of being directed to the high-jacked airliners? 

    The list of questions is so long and the number of coincidences so large that statistically, the thesis of a conspiracy is not only hard to avoid but actually pass the Ockam Razor test. 

  But then again, if you believe in such a terrible, in your face conspiracy, set up to implement the "War on Terror" with a well concocted plan meticulously implemented long in advance, then you may also believe that Covid-19 was indeed developed in a lab as a "gain of function" exercise and other such  conspiracies, and before long, you may realize that nothing of what you are told is really what it seems. 

  So, seriously, didn't anyone explained to this Senator that some skeletons should remain buried?

'Building 7 Controlled Demolition?': Republican Senator Plans Shock 9/11 Hearings, Says 'My Eyes Have Been Opened'

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is raising eyebrows after revealing on Benny Johnson’s conservative podcast that he’s pushing for a congressional hearing to examine the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.

Johnson, who serves on the the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, raised questions about the World Trade Center Building 7’s collapse, saying the documentary film, Calling Out Bravo 7 has sparked “an awful lot of questions.”

Senator Ron Johnson drops BOMBSHELL:

Tells us that 9/11 Hearings are being planned, Building 7 was potentially a "Controlled Demolition"

“Structural Engineers say that thing didn't come down in any other way than controlled demolition. Molten steel. Destruction of evidence. We… pic.twitter.com/aBQzCakll7

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 21, 2025

“Well, start with Building 7,” Sen. Johnson told Johnson. “Again, I don’t know if you can find structural engineers other than the ones that have the corrupt investigations like NIST that would say that that thing didn’t come down in any other way than a controlled demolition.”

“Who ordered the removal and the destruction of all that evidence? Totally contrary to any other firefighting investigation procedures. I mean, who ordered that? Who is in charge? I think there’s some basic information. Where’s all the documentation from the NIST investigation?” the Wisconsin lawmaker continued.

“Now, there are a host of questions that I want and I will be asking, quite honestly, now that my eyes have been opened up,” he added.

BUILDING #7 FLASHES AT THE TIME OF COLLAPSE — CONTROLLED DEMOLITION ?
pic.twitter.com/NU0Na0eOVs

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) September 11, 2023

Johnson said he plans to work with former Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), who recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to discuss 9/11, “to expose what he’s willing to expose.”

Rep. Curt Weldon Tried to Prevent 9-11, and The U.S. Government Shut Him Down pic.twitter.com/5vAzCT4lQJ

— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) April 15, 2025

The senator’s comments prompted Johnson to ask: “So we may actually see hearings about this?”

“I think so,” the senator replied while referencing previous efforts to obtain unredacted FBI files on behalf of 9/11 families.

“We want to get those answers, those documents for the families,” the lawmaker replied. “Hopefully, now with this administration, we can find out what is being covered up.”

Sen. Johnson expressed optimism that the Trump administration will authorize the release of 9/11-related documents, despite prior unsuccessful efforts to declassify them.

“We want those made available in terms of what happened. What did the FBI know that happened? So we had engaged with that. It was on a bipartisan basis. We wanted to get those answers, those documents for the families,” Sen. Johnson said. “Again, we didn’t get squat from the FBI. So hopefully now with this administration, I think President Trump should have some interests being a New Yorker himself.”

“What actually happened in 9/11? What do we know? What is being covered up? My guess is there’s an awful lot being covered up in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11,” he added.

Very interesting to say the least...

(WHY) Is Europe Still Fighting Lost Energy Wars?

   With England doubling down on wind energy, it looks very much like Europe will go to the end of the world, or rather the end of prosperity to "save the planet" and fall over!

  First bad news, Europe is now insignificant concerning CO2. Even if Europe somehow completely disappeared, it would be but a dimple in the world "carbon" emissions. 

  Second bad news, Poor people hardly care about "carbon". They care only about "not being" poor! And in this respect, Europe will become poor again long before it's carbon footprint dwindle to zero. Best examples? Japan in the 1970s: THE most polluted country in the world at the time. Remember Minamata? 30 years later it was history. Likewise, China in the 2010s, some days you could hardly breathe. Now? Have you heard of pollution in China this winter? Almost completely gone. The most polluted cities are almost all in India nowadays. 

  Finally and most ominously: Does it matter? Is CO2 really a factor in the current global warming trend? Maybe, but even if that is the case, it is probably to the tune of 20 to 30%. Nothing to fret about. We're on track to equalling the temperatures of the Middle Ages' optimum, 800 years ago, after rebounding from the little Ice Age of the Bruegel paintings in the 17th century. The likelihood that the cycle is natural is overwhelming. As for the hockey Stick from the 1990s, that motivated Al Gore to private-jet around the Globe for 20 years? We're still waiting 30+ years later!  

Authored by Drieu Godefridi via The Gatestone Institute,

The news came down like a thunderbolt. In a spectacular decision, the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, ordered the environmentalist organizations that comprise Greenpeace to pay $665 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The figure appears a monumental slap in the face to Greenpeace, which was sued by Energy Transfer for "defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts," following demonstrations against the pipeline project in 2016 and 2017.

The North Dakota jury did not pull any punches. Greenpeace was declared liable; its methods illegal and its actions harmful. Greenpeace has already announced that it will appeal.

Beyond the legal wrangling, this ruling raises the question: what if this case marks the start of a major transatlantic rift between an America defending its energy interests and a Europe mired in its green romanticism?

Let us look at the facts. 

The Dakota Access Pipeline -- a nearly 1,900-kilometer artery that carries crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation to Patoka, Illinois -- has been the focus of much passion. As early as 2016, Sioux and Cheyenne Indian tribes, supported by an armada of activists, celebrities and organizations including Greenpeace, denounced the project as threatening sacred tribal lands as well as water resources. Tens of thousands of signatures poured in on petitions, and protests at the construction sites paralyzed the work -- all costing Energy Transfer some $300 million in delays and extra costs.

The anger often degenerated into outright violence and large-scale vandalism, much to the annoyance of local populations, who became fed up with these crusaders who had appeared from elsewhere. Faced with this chaos, President Donald J. Trump, freshly inaugurated in 2017, issued a presidential memorandum to speed up the project, while brushing aside what he called an "incredibly cumbersome and horrific authorization process."

The pipeline became operational in May 2017. Energy Transfer nevertheless immediately decided to go on a legal offensive. According to Energy Transfer, Greenpeace had orchestrated the demonstrations, financed the disorder and spread lies about the pipeline.

The jury in Mandan, North Dakota, agreed on March 19, 2025, and ruled that Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Fund Inc. must pay combined damages of $665 million to Energy Transfer, a sum that sounds like a declaration of war on environmentalist NGOs. The days of omnipotence and de facto impunity for environmentalist NGOs were over.

Greenpeace USA is now crying that it will be forced into bankruptcy. Really? With its network of donors -- small, large and mega-large -- the NGO should be able to bounce back. The signal is clear: in the United States, no one any longer jokes with those who hinder the economy and trample on the rights of others under the guise of idealism.

Meanwhile, Europe is getting restless. Greenpeace International has invoked the European anti-SLAPP directive -- an EU initiative to protect individuals, especially journalists and activists, from abusive lawsuits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) aimed at silencing criticism or public participation, by providing safeguards like early dismissal of unfounded claims and financial protections. The anti-SLAPP directive, adopted in April 2024 by a European Union always ready to support and finance the most extremist NGOs, concretely aims to immunize these organizations against legal proceedings. Greenpeace International filed a lawsuit against Energy Transfer under the anti-SLAPP directive in the Netherlands, in February 2025.

Greenpeace related the incident to broader environmental concerns, according to its statement:

"Based in the Netherlands, Greenpeace International is citing Dutch law on torts and abuse of rights, as well as Chapter V of the EU Directive, adopted in 2024, which protects organisations based in the EU against SLAPPs outside the EU, and entitles them to compensation. The Directive, along with existing Dutch law, paves the way for GPI to pursue remedies against three entities in ET's corporate group... for the damage it has suffered and continues to suffer as a result of the SLAPP suits and related actions in the US. Greenpeace International sent Energy Transfer a Notice of Liability in July 2024, summoning it to withdraw its lawsuit in North Dakota and pay damages, or face legal action. Energy Transfer refused to do so."

Greenpeace would apparently like organizations such as itself to directly or indirectly cause hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, while preventing any court from intervening.

The applicability of the EU anti-SLAPP directive to the judgment in question is doubtful, because:

1. The anti-SLAPP directive in question has not yet entered into force in the Netherlands.

2. It is first and foremost Greenpeace USA that has been found liable (for $400 million) for acts committed in the USA, while the EU's anti-SLAPP directive is solely related to cross-border disputes. According to Article 1 of the anti-SLAPP directive, it pertains to clearly baseless claims or exploitative legal actions in civil cases that have cross-border elements, targeting individuals or entities — known as SLAPP targets — due to their involvement in public participation. The requirement of 'cross-border implications' means that SLAPPs related solely to domestic cases are not covered by the directive.

3. Greenpeace was found liable for activities that led to violence, not for having expressed its opinion. Incitement to violence is not an opinion, and the EU anti-SLAPP directive does not cover acts of violence. Its primary focus is on protecting individuals and entities engaged in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings in civil or commercial matters with cross-border implications.

If judges in the Netherlands nevertheless find in favor of Greenpeace International, anything is possible: such a ruling would be another slap(p) in the face to the United States. Would the Trump administration let stand a new European encroachment on US sovereignty? It looks as if the EU, through this directive, once again is trying to dictate the law on American soil. Transatlantic tensions, already fuelled by trade disputes, issues of free speech, NATO funding and the war in Ukraine, would mount further.

Beyond this legal duel, there is a clash of civilizations at play. On one side, Trump's America, driven by the mantra "drill, baby, drill" and a newfound pride in fossil fuels. Shale oil and gas, abundant and cheap, have made America the world's leading producer of hydrocarbons. The US is seeing energy independence boosted by massive exports of liquefied natural gas.

On the other side, a Europe stubbornly pursuing its Green Deal, a project as costly as it is illusory, sacrificing its competitiveness on the altar of environmentalist dogma. While in Europe, factories are closing, they are reopening in the United States. The contrast between pragmatism and ideology is striking.

What can we learn from all this? America has chosen its side: energy sovereignty, prosperity, an end to impunity for NGOs that engage in illegal activities. Greenpeace may appeal and its activists may cry "gagging prosecution," but the tide clearly seems to be turning

Japan Posts Record Population Drop, Shrinking For 14th Year, As Demographic Crisis Deepens

  The demographic downfall of Japan is quite something to behold and it is to my opinion irreversible since so many social and economic factors conjure to make the numbers what they are. Only Korea does worse for very similar reasons: Imbalance between economic and social incentives to raise a family.

  A direct consequence? Japan has almost completely stopped investing in the future. Here's a recent AI investment table. Go find Japan in a corner!

  

Japan Posts Record Population Drop, Shrinking For 14th Year, As Demographic Crisis Deepens

Japan's already collapsing population just posted its biggest annual drop on record, falling by 898,000 people as of last October compared to a year earlier, Kyodo News reported.

This marked the 14th consecutive year of population decline in the country, according to a government estimate. The previous record drop was 861,000, reported in July 2024.

This was the largest demographic drop since 1968.

Some more details: according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan’s total population was 123,802,000, as of October 1, 2024, down by 550,000 or a 0.44% year-on-year decrease.

The population of only Japanese citizens was 120,296,000, plunging by 898,000, or a 0.74% YoY drop.

The IMF projects that the total population will shrink by a further 3.5 million by the end of the decade.

The natural population decline, calculated by subtracting births from deaths, reached a record high of 890,000, rising for the eighteenth year running. This decline was 437,000 for women and 453,000 for men. 

The silver lining: for the third straight year, there was a net increase in immigration, with 340,000 more people entering than leaving Japan. Which is good news for globalists: if they are so worried where to put all those African and Middle Eastern refugees who have swept across Europe sparking unprecedented blowback against establishment politics, there is always Japan... assuming the locals accept the flood of foreigners.

The data underscore the country's unprecedented demographic crisis amid a rapidly aging society and collapsing birthrate.

Japan's total fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- fell to its lowest level in 2023 since records began in 1947, while the death/birth ratio at over 2.2, is the highest on record.

The figures, released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, show that only Tokyo and neighboring Saitama prefecture registered population increases.

By age group, the working population, consisting of people aged 15 to 64, stood at 73,728,000, a year-on-year decrease of 224,000, while the population aged 65 or older (red and orange in the figure below) increased by 17,000 to 36,243,000. Those 75 or older (red) increased by 700,000, to 20,777,000, and this age bracket now accounts for 57.3% of those aged 65 or older.

In response to the demographic crisis, the Japanese parliament passed a law in June 2024 aimed at reversing the falling birthrate. Measures under the law include expanded child allowances and enhanced parental leave benefits.

And beginning this month, the city government of Tokyo started offering its employees a four-day workweek, hoping to increase the population and create a healthier work-life balance in a country notorious for long hours at the office.

Officials have warned that the period leading up to 2030 represents a critical window to address the trend. Late marriages, financial insecurity, and limited support for working parents are commonly cited as contributing factors.

Bessent's Grand Strategy: Use Tariff Negotiations To Isolate China From The Rest Of The World

   Difficult to up the ante further against China although it is not lack of trying! 

   If cutting trade was not enough, pressure on other countries to do likewise, reclaiming investments in the US (land on top of the list), limiting students and other such measures should stop the rise of China...  or will they? 

  Could it be that the result will be exactly the same as for Russia? Pushing China towards a more autonomous "war" economy, more resilient and less dependant on foreign pressure?  

There may be cases in history when a declining power successfully hampered the rise of a new one but I am not aware of many. Would a more conciliatory policy get better results? Sadly we will probably never know!  (Which is what gold at 3,300 USD per once implies.)

Bessent's Grand Strategy: Use Tariff Negotiations To Isolate China From The Rest Of The World

Yesterday, president Trump laid out the stakes in the ever-escalating trading war between the US and China, in typical laconic fashion: "We may want countries to choose between us and China" (a topic discussed further here), with the White House adding that "The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us."

This strategy, of forcing the world into "us (or US) vs them" camps first emerged last week when Trump reduced reciprocal tariffs for all countries except China, something we highlighted at the time.

A few days later, this now appears to be the official strategy in the global trade war.

As the WSJ reports, the Trump admin plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their dealings with China, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

The idea, as we laid out in not so many words, is to extract commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate China’s economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House. US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries (the so-called "transshipment" loophole), prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies.

Those measures are meant to put a final stake in China’s already sinking economy (which somewhat ironically got a boost in the first quarter as its export partners front-loaded purchased goods ahead of the tariff price surge which is already in place and which will put a deep freeze on China's manufacturing empire) and force Beijing to the negotiating table with less leverage ahead of potential talks between Trump and President Xi Jinping. The exact demands could vary widely by nation, given their degree of involvement with the Chinese economy.

US officials have already presented the idea in early talks with some countries according to WSJ sources, who added that Trump himself hinted at the strategy on Tuesday, telling the Spanish-language program “Fox Noticias” he would consider making countries choose between the US and China in response to a question about Panama deciding not to renew its role in the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure program for developing nations.

According to the WSJ, the brain behind the strategy is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has taken a leading role in the trade negotiations since Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most nations—but not China—on April 9.

Bessent pitched the idea to Trump during an April 6 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s club in Florida, said people familiar with the discussion, saying that extracting concessions from U.S. trading partners could prevent Beijing and its companies from avoiding U.S. tariffs, export controls and other economic measures.

The tactic is part of a strategy conceived by Bessent to isolate the Chinese economy that has gained traction among Trump officials recently. Debates over the scope and severity of U.S. tariffs are ongoing, but officials largely appear to agree with Bessent’s China plan.

It involves cutting China off from the U.S. economy with tariffs and potentially even cutting Chinese stocks out of U.S. exchanges. Bessent didn’t rule out the administration trying to delist Chinese stocks in a recent interview with Fox Business. Still, the ultimate goal of the administration’s China policy isn’t yet clear.

Bessent has also said there is still room for talks on a potential trade deal between the U.S. and China. Such talks would have to involve Trump and Xi. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a new statement from Trump during Tuesday’s press briefing suggesting a deal with China isn’t imminent.

“The ball is in China’s court,” Leavitt said when reading Trump’s statement. “China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them. China wants what we have…the American consumer.”

Indeed it does, as do all the countries that China uses for tolling and/or transshipment, so if the White House truly cracked down on all possible ports of entry to US consumers, who account for 70% of the roughly $30 trillion in US GDP, then China will have no choice but to either concede, or pursue two other approaches which we laid out before: devalue the currency or unleash a massive fiscal stimulus.

It also isn’t clear that the anti-China line has entered into negotiations with all nations. Some countries haven’t heard demands from U.S. negotiators related to China, although negotiations remain in early stages. Many expect the Trump administration to raise China-related demands sooner or later.

Bessent has shown his desire for anti-China pledges from U.S. trading partners before. In late February, he said that Mexico had offered to match U.S. tariffs on China as part of negotiations over Trump’s tariffs on Mexico imposed because of the fentanyl trade. Bessent called Mexico’s offer a “nice gesture,” but the idea didn’t find much traction with the administration.

Since then, Bessent has taken a more central role in trade negotiations, assuming a lead in talks over reciprocal tariffs after Trump announced his 90-day pause on April 9. The Treasury secretary is slated to meet with Japan’s economic revitalization minister today and has laid out a list of nations he thinks could soon reach deals with the U.S., including Japan, the U.K., Australia, South Korea and India.

Of course, China isn't waiting for the trap to close in on it, and is conducting its own trade diplomacy. This week, Xi traveled to Vietnam, a key U.S. trading partner hard-hit by Trump’s tariffs, and signed dozens of economic pledges with the Hanoi government, although at the same time Vietnam has hinted it could balance out its trade balance with the US by purchasing substantial military equipment from the US.

China views Trump’s reciprocal trade gambit as an opportunity, Peter Harrell, the former senior director for international economics on former President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, said on a panel discussion Tuesday at Georgetown Law.

But China’s ability to counteract U.S. trade policies is limited, Harrell said. While the U.S. remains a “massive net importer,” China is reducing its imports from the rest of the world and focusing on self-sufficiency. The problem, as Michael Pettis has laid out, is that China is years if not decades behind having a vibrant consumer class of its own. Which only leaves mercantilism for now.

And that's why Beijing is scrambling to inflict as much financial damage on the US as possible - up to and including dumping US Treasuries in hopes of sending the dollar tumbling and prompting narratives about "the end of the US dollar reserve status" while maintaining the impression that all is well domestically as discussed here.

China “isn’t going to replace the U.S. as a source of demand for the products that a bunch of these developing countries…make,” Harrell said. “So the economics of this are going to prove challenging for China, but I think we see them playing the politics of this reasonably savvily.”

ALERT: TRADING HALTED! HISTORIC WW3 GLOBAL MARKET CRASH! IRAN WAR PLANS IN FINAL PHASE! (Video - 11mn)

   Remember the Spanish civil war? A backward country (at the time) on the edge of Europe with different parties supported by different countries. Move forward almost a century and the situation in Ukraine looks eerily similar. Of course what people remember is what came next. If it wasn't for Guernica, and Pablo Picasso, the Spanish Civil war would now be forgotten outside Spain, not the Second World War, although it is at Guernica that the first "modern" aerial bombing took place, just like today where war is becoming centered on drones under our eyes in Eastern Ukraine.

  As the Canadian Preper outline below, "if you believe the current trade war is about Nike Shoes coming back to the US..." Clearly it's all about the conflict between China and the US and who in the end will control the world. America is trying to preempt the rise of China and may well go after Iran in order to do so. (Iran being a major source of oil for China and for now beyond the ability for China to do anything about it.) This is geo-strategy at the highest level and what was called in the 19C "The Great Game!".  

  Now, following Trump tariffs announcement last week and the ongoing crash, the dices are rolling...

 

The Global Reset Just Started (What You Must Know) (Video - 17mn)

   The best explanation of the Trump tariff you can find: Trump had no choice. He had to force the hand of the FED and oblige them to reduce rates urgently which they will now do, allowing the Trump government to refinance the 10 trillions dollars with a T that must be refinanced this year. I agree, this is the only rational explanation.

   But is this the right strategy? The US will dive into a recession and clearly the Trump team must have taken this into consideration: A sharp contraction this year followed by 3 years of expansion. The is the optimistic scenario focused on the US.

  But what about the rest of the world? The recession will obviously not be limited to the US and might in fact be deeper in some countries where the waves may be so high that they won't be able to swim to take a simple analogy. Then what? 

  This is the problem with the concept of "creative destruction", when does the destructive part turns to pure vandalism to the point that there is little left to rebuilt thereafter? We had "globalization". The system having reached its limits, a reset was necessary. OK, but then what comes next? A new wave of mostly domestic expansion? 

  Unfortunately, the last time the world was similarly integrated and globalized was at the end of the 19th Century. Them the trend stopped and in the early 1910s the world started de-globalizing. We all know what followed soon after!

 

Russia's DEVASTATING Warning to Trump: Iran Attack Ends in Catastrophe w/ Brian Berletic (Video - 24mn)

   Very interesting and knowledgeable analysis from Brian Berletic concerning the US - Iran conflict. Still unlikely to happen but the pressure from Israel on a favorable, to put it mildly, US administration is such that the future is especially hard to predict. 

  At this stage, this war is just a risk among other possible black swans but in a month or so with market crashing, international relations worsening and countries going bankrupt, suddenly the option could become "playable" for someone like Trump who believes he is a great businessman and is currently sitting at a game of roulette in Las Vegas. 

 

Living in the UK freaked me out so much I left // The inevitable collapse of the UK (Video - 18mn)

   A great detailed explanation why the UK in particular and Europe in General are doomed. The system is just not working anymore for most people. It is not a matter of policies which could be changed but systemic and therefore hopeless. (It's not just the pubs in England which are all closing, but the cafes in France likewise, without mentioning farms and factories.)

  The problem is that all this has been going on for decades and is now approaching breaking point. Fiat, in other words "free" money has allowed governments to paper over the growing cracks, post 2008 crash and especially post Covid, but we are now quickly approaching the limits. Add to this the Trump tariff shock and it is not very difficult to predict that the end of the years will be difficult for Europe.

Can We Fix Our Demographic Doom Loop?

  Simple answer: NO! In Asia where the decline has been faster than in Europe, the trend is similar so the reasons are deep and almost impossible to cancel. We have created a global world for goods but also for people and women consequently want the 10% most attractive (mostly financially) males who consequently happen to have an almost infinite choice whence the consequences! Add all the other factors and you have the current precipitous fertility rates. There is no cure short of a complete upheaval of the social structure of our modern societies. This could happen but it won't be nice during the transition to put it mildly. 

Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

Throughout the developed world, birth rates have crashed. 

But the “population bomb” that author Paul Ehrlich warned us about in the 1970s still exists; it’s just confined to the nations with the lowest per capita income. The correlation is almost perfect. The average number of children per woman in extremely poor nations is still extremely high.

For example, births per woman in Niger stand at a world-leading 6.6, which means that every generation the population of that nation will more than triple. Meanwhile, the per capita income in Niger, even based on purchasing power parity, stands at a dismal $2,084 per year. Exponential national population growth is occurring across most of the African continent, where in 1950, the population was estimated at around 225 million compared to an estimated 1.5 billion today. By 2050, Africa’s population is estimated to rise to 2.5 billion and is not estimated to level off until 2100 at nearly 4 billion people.

There are pockets of fecundity elsewhere in the world, primarily in the Middle East, but if you exclude Africa and some Islamic nations, the entire global population is on a path to oblivion. From China (1.2 children per woman), Korea (0.9), and Japan (1.3) to Germany (1.5), Italy (1.3), and the United Kingdom (1.6), populations are on track to descend by 50 percent in at most two generations. The European numbers are only slightly better than the Asian numbers because of immigration.

Because of the sensitive nature of the information, it is difficult to get reliable statistics on the birth rates of indigenous European women. But according to official data from the German government, nearly 50 percent of all children under the age of five in Germany have a “migration background.” Since 80 percent of Germany’s population is still reported as having “German origin,” it is clear that immigrant birthrates are far higher than the birthrates of indigenous German women.

This pattern repeats itself throughout the European nations and nations of European origin. According to the Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom, the most common name for baby boys is now Muhammad. In the hopefully more assimilative United States, according to Pew Research, “minority” births now outnumber white births.

What these demographic trends portend for our future is central to every major issue we face. Can we maintain economic health if we accept a population in terminal decline? So far, the Asians are betting they can, relying on automation and AI to fill the labor gaps. Can we maintain cultural stability if we import Africans and Moslems to have babies since we don’t want to anymore? That’s the bet the European nations are making.

But there is an even more fundamental question that ought to be the topic of massive public debate, without stigmatizing the participants or restricting the theories offered up. Why don’t women in developed nations want to have babies anymore?

Answers to this question typically travel into safe spaces. 

It’s economics: the cost of living is too high. Or the slightly conspiratorial but increasingly mainstream explanation that endocrine disruptors in our food and water have lowered the fertility and the libido of men and women alike. And, of course, the likely possibility that social media has spawned a younger generation that is isolated, socially stunted, and intimacy challenged.

To some degree or another, all of these explanations are true, but they ignore countervailing facts: Our nations are now filled with subcultures for whom none of these reasons apply to nearly the same effect. What are they doing that we stopped doing? And here is where we dive into the topics and theories that one may risk career and political suicide to utter.

There is a pundit on X who goes by the name “hoe_math” and bills himself as “history’s manliest and most hilarious sex genius.” He recently released a brief video post on his X account that squeezes several inflammatory explanations for low female fertility into 2 minutes and 14 seconds. Something this succinct deserves analysis, despite being horrifically biased, sexist, etc., etc., etc., because even if he is overstating his case and ignoring other factors and being deliberately offensive, he is covering the forbidden bases that need to be covered. If there were more honest scholarship available on these topics, we might by now have a more sanitized and more credible compilation. But we don’t. So here goes.

The video opens with a clip of a woman who claims women don’t need men anymore. To which “hoe_math” goes to work. He begins by saying that women’s need for men is not gone, just more indirect now, stating that “men have always been between women and the real world.”

Relying on hand-drawn pictographs, he shows seven women in pink dresses, safe inside a circle that is shielded by men who are getting killed (denoted by being crossed out with red X marks), protecting them from danger. “Your office job is not the real world,” he continues. “Men face danger and build things in order to create a safe space for women. You just don’t understand that because you’re too comfortable… If all men stopped working right now, we would all die. That’s because men make all the food and build all the houses and the walls.”

If the first half of the video asserts that that base reality still exists, requiring the presence of men, the second half explores the consequences of denying that assertion. Speaking about women, he says, “And then you look around and go, ‘Hey, men have more than us. No fair,’ so you go to the government, which writes some laws for you that make you equal, and then you are disgusted by men who are equal to you.” He then ventures his primary argument, saying, “So without equality laws, it’s very easy for women to find men they respect, and with equality laws, it’s very difficult.”

Moving from the impact of financially empowering women to the impact it has on men, he states, “And then everyone tells these men they are worthless,” while in the video placing a “not people” card over the first seven levels of men on a pictograph that has columns of men and women ranked from 10 down to 1. He then says the men who are deemed worthless decide not to work anymore and instead turn themselves into a Peter Pan type character that rejects personal responsibilities and refuses to grow up.

Whatever else you may say about this video, and despite its glib oversimplifications, it has too much substance to be dismissed. A study conducted in 2006 by academics from MIT and the University of Chicago evaluated the role of height and annual income in determining male attractiveness to women. It found that for a man 5′ 6″ in height to be as attractive as a man 6′ tall, the shorter man would have to earn $175,000 per year more than the six-footer. For a 5′ 8″ man, the gap he would have to fill drops to $138,000 per year. A man only 5′ 2″ tall would have to earn a whopping $269,000 per year more than the six-foot man to be considered equally attractive to women.

Income matters. A 2022 study of dating site behavior found that “Men with combined income and education that was one standard deviation greater than the mean received 255%—over three times—more indicators of interest than men with combined income and education that was one standard deviation less than the mean.” A 2018 study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior found that women consistently rated men with greater income as more attractive and that these findings “tally with a much broader corpus of scientific work which found high-status men were considered more attractive by women.”

If women aren’t attracted to men who make less money, that would help explain why they aren’t marrying these men and having children. But also relevant to the decline in births are two myths that are slowly disintegrating despite ongoing mainstream denial.

The first is the familiar trope that women only make 83 cents for every one dollar earned by men. Not true. 

When normalizing for job type, qualifications, and hours worked, the “gender pay gap” all but disappears, thus diminishing the pool of eligible males.

The second myth is that women are more likely to find fulfillment in careers than in having children. Also not true. 

A study of American women aged 18-55 found that married women with children were twice as likely to be “very happy” as unmarried women with no children and only half as likely to be “not too happy.” As long as this myth persists, however, women are impelled to choose career over children.

These findings all come with uncomfortable implications. 

Are women choosing to be alone because they have an innate need to only be with a man who is more able to provide for them than they can provide for themselves, and there are no longer enough of those men to go around? Are the only cultures where women still have babies above a replacement level those cultures that discourage women from having education and careers?

The cost of living, toxins in the environment, and the isolating impact of technology are all playing a role in the catastrophic decline in birth rates in developed nations. But there are also profound and very recent changes in how we collectively choose mates and choose to have families that are probably playing the larger role. If we ignore these cultural factors, we risk losing everything. The heritage we have painstakingly built over millennia may be erased because we didn’t want to talk about it. Babies don’t yet come in bottles. Women either get pregnant and give birth to them, or we go extinct.

For decades, fear of being called racist has suppressed honest debate over mass immigration. Similarly, fear of being called sexist prevents honest debate over why there is a population crash and what to do about it.

US Peanut Allergy Epidemic Sprang From Experts' Exactly-Wrong Guidance

 

  A stunning report explaining what's wrong with our health system and indirectly how the Covid Pandemic was made much worse than necessary.

  Greed, profits, inability to reverse gear when proven wrong, lack of local autonomy. peanut Allergy is the perfect example because there is no "conspiracy" behind the story and we therefore can see how the system goes wrong on its own with all the long term consequences for the victims.

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

In the 1980s, peanut allergies were almost entirely unheard-of. Today, the United States has one of the highest peanut-allergy rates in the world. Disturbingly, this epidemic was precipitated by institutions that exist to promote public health. The story of their malpractice illuminates the fallibility of respected institutions, and confirms that public health’s catastrophically incorrect guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t an isolated anomaly.

The roots of this particular example of expert-inflicted mass suffering can be found in the early 1990s, when the existence of peanut allergies — still a very rare and mostly low-risk phenomenon at the time — first came to public notice. Their entry into public consciousness began with studies published by medical researchers. By the mid-1990s, however, major media outlets were running attention-grabbing stories of hospitalized children and terrified parents. The Great Parental Peanut Panic was on.

As fear and dread mounted, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a professional association of tens of thousands of US pediatricians, felt compelled to tell parents how to prevent their children from becoming the latest victims. “There was just one problem: They didn’t know what precautions, if any, parents should take,” wrote then-Johns Hopkins surgeon and now-FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in his 2024 book, Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.

Ignorance proved no obstacle. Lacking humility and seeking to bolster its reputation as an authoritative organization, the AAP in 2000 handed down definitive instructions: Parents should avoid feeding any peanut product to children under 3 years old who were believed to have a high risk of developing a peanut allergy; pregnant and lactating mothers were likewise cautioned against consuming peanuts.

The AAP noted that “the ability to determine which infants are at high risk is imperfect.” Indeed, simply having a relative with any kind of allergy could land a child or mother in the “high risk” category. Believing they were erring on the side of caution, pediatricians across the country started giving blanket instructions that children shouldn’t be fed any peanut food until age 3; pregnant and breastfeeding mothers were told to steer clear too.

What was the basis of the AAP’s pronouncement? The organization was simply parroting guidance that the UK Department of Health had put forth in 1998. Makary scoured that guidance for a scientific rationale, and found a declaration that mothers who eat peanuts were more likely to have children with allergies, with the claim attributed to a 1996 study. When he checked the study, however, he was shocked to find the data demonstrated no such correlation. The study’s author, Irish pediatric professor Jonathan Hourihane, was himself shocked to see his study used to justify the policy. “It’s ridiculous,” he told Makary. “It’s not what I wanted people to believe.”

Despite the policy’s lack of scientific foundation, the US government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) fully endorsed the AAP guidance. In time, it would be all too apparent that — as with public health’s later response to Covid-19 — the experts weren’t erring on the side of caution, they were erring on the side of catastrophe.

"I didn't make the recommendation!" Fauci laughed in 2019 as he disclaimed responsibility for his own agency's harmful guidance (CBS Sunday Morning)

It didn’t take long. By 2003, a study found that the rate of peanut allergies being self-reported by US children and their parents had doubled from 1998 levels. Critically, it wasn’t only the frequency that was soaring, but also the severity. “We saw a new type of allergy, which is the severe anaphylactic reaction, the ultra-allergy where, if someone used the same ice cream scooper…even though they rinsed it, that kid could end up in the emergency room,” Makary explained in a September podcast appearance.

All along, the right thing to do was the opposite of what the AAP and NIAID had instructed: The best means of avoiding peanut allergies wasn’t to shield young children from peanuts, but rather to intentionally feed them peanuts. That was consistent with established principles of immunological tolerance — specifically, the knowledge that early-life contact with various substances can promote tolerance of would-be allergens.

Rather than decreasing peanut allergies, AAP and NIAID created an all-out epidemic, and then prolonged it by fiercely resisting the stark reality of what they’d done. Instead of re-examining the rationale for the peanut-avoidance instruction, the public health establishment only became more emphatic in pushing its bad medicine, assuming noncompliant parents must be to blame. In reality, as the allergy rate soared, parents were growing even more dedicated to keeping children away from peanuts. The vicious circle of the growing epidemic prompting even more peanut avoidance brought disaster, with ER trips for peanut allergy attacks tripling from 2005 to 2014.

There were dissident voices in medicine from the very start of the UK-led madness. One of them, London pediatric allergist and immunologist Gideon Lack, set out to prove the guidance was wrong. His initial, 2008 study showing that genetically similar populations with vastly different exposures to peanuts in infancy had correspondingly divergent peanut allergy rates wasn’t enough to overcome the entrenched dogma.

It was only after he created a randomized controlled trial — comparing the effects of peanut exposure on children between 4 and 11 months old — that he proved that, as is the case with so many other allergies, peanut exposure is preventative, not causative. Specifically, he observed that the group of children who were exposed to peanuts in their infancy had 86% fewer peanut allergies than children who’d been shielded from peanuts.

Marty Makary, who explored the expert-inflicted peanut allergy epidemic in his 2024 book, is now commissioner of the FDA (Eric Harkleroad /KFF Health News)

Lack’s study was published in 2015, but the AAP and NIAID held tight to their 2000 stance for another two years. Their final surrender to reality was just the beginning of the end, as they and the broader public health apparatus now faced the daunting task of undoing a 17-year campaign that chiseled the no-peanut approach into the minds of parents and medical practitioners. A 2017 USA Today headline about the reversal summed it up bluntly: “Peanut Allergy: Everything They Told You Was Wrong.”

Of course, the greatest burden fell on the many children and young adults condemned to living with peanut allergies because their parents followed the 180-degree-wrong instructions of federal public health authorities and the country’s largest pediatric association. That means living in fear of accidental exposure, which, depending on the patient and the exposure, can result in itchiness, hives, eczema, swelling of the face, lips and eyes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, cardiac arrest or even death. For some, having a peanut allergy means carrying an expensive EpiPen, and making concessions like avoiding social events and restaurants.

With an eye on eliminating these allergies or at least reducing their severity, various therapies are being honed; unsurprisingly, they typically center on some form of controlled exposure to peanuts. Last month, a new study brought welcome news for children with milder versions of peanut allergies. By consuming increasing amounts of peanut butter over an 18-month period, all 32 children in the study were ultimately able to eat three tablespoons — comparable to the content of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — without a reaction.

Beyond patients, others in our society have faced different kinds of consequences of the expert-inflicted epidemic. Families and insurers have had to shell out money for treatments — and for those expensive EpiPens, which come with expiration dates. Schools have created peanut-free zones or banned peanuts altogether. Food manufacturers and restaurants faced new labelling requirements. Some airlines have stopped serving the widely-loved snacks. Spurred on by specialty law firms, people who’ve suffered allergic reactions to peanuts have filed suits against schools, restaurants, grocery stores and amusement parks. Then there’s the guilt, regret and resentment that hangs heavy on parents who heeded bad advice to the detriment of their children’s health.

Those parents might feel a little better if they received the apologies they’re due from AAP and NIAID. It’s unlikely one will ever come, and it’s clear that nobody should expect one from Anthony Fauci, who was NIAID director during the entire 17-year span covering the both bad advice and its reversal. In a 2019 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Fauci put on a truly grotesque display of arrogant indifference to the suffering his organization had inflicted. Attempting to distance himself from his own agency’s flawed guidance, Fauci shared a hearty laugh with CBS’s Tony Dokoupil, telling him, “I didn’t make the recommendation, that’s for sure!!”

A few years later, Fauci would make similar obfuscating statements about his hand in pushing the Covid-era lockdown regime. "Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down," he told the New York Times. "I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the CDC's recommendation, and [other] people made a decision based on that. The CBS interview aired almost exactly a year before the Covid pandemic exploded. To look at the interview now is to appreciate that Fauci has always been the slippery, turf-guarding bureaucrat in a lab coat we witnessed as he and the public health establishment mismanaged Covid with truly devastating consequences.

Much as we’d see when the Covid era unfolded, in 2019 Fauci refused to acknowledge that public health had made a mistake regarding peanut allergies. “I wouldn’t say it was an error,” he said. “I think…it was a judgement call that in retrospect was the wrong call…It was a recommendation based on this intuitive feeling that if you withhold, therefore you’re going to protect the children.” The man who later claimed that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science” wouldn’t even volunteer that AAP and NIAID were dead-wrong to rely on “intuitive feelings.”

Beyond Fauci’s self-aggrandizing arrogance, there are other similarities between the disastrous public health responses to peanut allergies and Covid-19. In both crises, public health:

• Disregarded knowledge that suggested a different approach. Much as knowledge of immune response suggested peanut avoidance could be a counterproductive avenue, public health “experts” disregarded pre-Covid studies that rejected the notions of quarantines, widespread school, restaurant and workplace closures, and the use of surgical masks to mitigate contagious respiratory ailments.

• Mindlessly followed the bad example of the first country to react to the crisis. For peanuts, that meant copying and pasting the guidance of the UK Department of Health. With Covid, Western public health took its cues from Communist China.

• Blamed poor outcomes on noncompliant citizens. In the face of soaring allergy rates, health officials pinned the blame on parents failing to heed their advice. In the Covid era, public health was likewise prone to pushing failed health interventions ever-harder.

• Marginalized and demonized dissidents. Adherents to the standing peanut dogma attacked Lack for even initiating his pivotal study. “I was accused of unethical behavior. There was huge pressure to stop the study,” he told Makary. “Testing the hypothesis was seen as unethical because it seemed preposterous.” Of course, the Covid era saw even the best-credentialed questioners of the lockdown, mask and hyper-testing regime treated far worse.

None of this is to say that prominent health organizations and officials are always wrong. However, what’s true at the individual healthcare level is true at the societal level: When the stakes are high, one should always be eager to hear dissenting second opinions.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe for free at starkrealities.substack.com