What If?

  What if it is time to end this blog?

  Or rather to go back to technical subjects that almost no one is interested in? 😁

  I had great fun sharing some insight with people about energy, technology and the market but now that the long anticipated collapse is upon us, foresight is quickly becoming obsolete. What's the point of keeping tracks of your direction in a polar fog if your short term objective is solely focused on not falling into ice cracks? 

 Likewise, we will quickly be overwhelmed with short term emergencies so that eventually, most people will focus on "cheap" easy to understand solutions paving the way to demagogues and tyrants as history repeats itself.

 We literally and pathetically learn almost nothing as a society repeating the same mistakes time after time. The end of democracy is therefore in sight proving Mencken was right: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance"

 My sole smallish schadenfreude is that the collapse will not follow the roadmap anticipated by the World Economic Forum towards their dystopian "New World Order". What we will get instead is a new world disorder. A fog of war from which few will benefit since income will crash faster than population. (Although you can trust these people that they will try. They are after all the richest and brightest.)

 With luck and provided we avoid a nuclear armaggedon, (50% chance according to most "experts"), we will still get the four horsemen of war, pestilence, famine and death. It is at this stage unavoidable. The die is cast. 

 This Winter will be hard but nothing compared to next year and the following years as the rapid unraveling of our social order will make everything scarce. Especially in developing countries which will suffer even more. Inflation and "free" money is nothing but transfer from the poor who don't have access to it to the rich who do. 

 And this is THE reason why this blog must be terminated as it will slowly turn to doom and gloom in line with current events.

 Interesting times ahead for sure!      

 

Authored by Tumoas Malinen via The Epoch Times,

Probably the most important thing in forecasting is the ability to ask: What if something is not how you think it is? Open speculation on world developments is the key to establishing a position, where basically nothing can really surprise you. And at that point, you have come so far as a forecaster.

The “What if?” questions I am currently asking are:

1. What if the raid of the Mar-a-Largo resort of President Trump was politically motivated?

2. What if the war in Ukraine was part of some plan to break the emerging Eurasian (China, Europe, Russia) global power structure?

3. What if central banks, or the “power brokers” behind them, know that monetary policies are going to crush the economy with interest rate hikes?

4. (To continue:) What if central bankers are deliberately pushing for the central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, to gain total oversight over the economy?

The first two are rather political, but as I mentioned before, politics has become a major factor affecting the global economy. That is why the questions need to be addressed and, perhaps, speculated upon.

Speculation on the actual reasons behind the Trump raid are already running high. There have been reports of Federal Bureau of Investigation whistleblowers coming forward with statements on the politicization of the FBI. At this point, this is naturally pure speculation, and political games, but these are alternative narratives we can consider, because if they turn out to be true, they will have serious repercussions.

Most important, if the raid was politically motivated, why is former President Donald Trump viewed as such a threat to the current system, or the “establishment,” such that his possible becoming again the president of the United States should be stopped? Comparing the tenures of Presidents Barrack Obama and Joe Biden with that of the one term of President Trump, for example, the latter was a rather peaceful and prosperous world.

Due to the Ukraine–Russia war, Europe may be facing its darkest winter since 1945. Our economic systems and societies are unlikely to be able to withstand major energy and possible food crises combined with interest rate hikes. Due to sanctions and central bank policies, we could be facing the deepest economic crisis since World War II, which also would make primarily Europeans a lot poorer.

What’s Going On?

This leads to the question: Why on earth did President Vladimir Putin attack Ukraine?

He had to know that it would lead to a serious backlash. It also is possible that there were other forces in play that paved the path toward war. There’s the scenario that some powerful entities in the United States wanted to stop the formation of the economic power structure among China, Europe, and Russia. The “entities” would have known which policies would push Putin “over the edge.”  This is, again, just speculation, but it’s an idea we need to consider, because, if accurate, it would mean that the economic prosperity of Europeans and possibly the world is being “sacrificed” for a geopolitical play or to accomplish an even more ominous objective.

Could this impoverishment, and thus a controlling of the middle-class through ravaging inflation and indebtedness, be a possible endgame of the “globalists” possibly threatened by another presidential term for Trump?

The question with central bank policies is equally pressing and worrying.

A sound economy needs no savior. It also does not need anyone to “push” it to grow with, for example, artificially low interest rates, as a healthy economy grows organically from the risk-taking of entrepreneurs, corporations, and individuals with the assistance of the financial system. Mistakes naturally do happen, and they sometimes lead to serious financial crashes and economic crises. However, stringent and punitive policies toward excessive financial speculation are truly the only remedy against “moral hazard” and other financial malpractices leading to crises. The financial crises in Finland and Japan during the early 1990s are good examples of this. And it should be remembered that the biggest economic crisis thus far, the Great Depression of the 1930s, occurred just 16 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Moreover, for the past decades, central bankers have manipulated our economies through interest rates and asset purchasing (and selling) programs (quantitative easing and tightening). What has this led us into? The global economy is more fragile than ever, and many heavily indebted sovereigns, such as those in the eurozone, remain solvent only by continuous central bank support. Essentially, the world economy is in constant need of resuscitation because of central bank policies.

How demented would be that, after destroying an economy, central bankers would make themselves appear as our saviors?

It would be Machiavellian: to crash something just to get more power over it.

This, however, could be the “hand” central bankers are playing, especially through the looming issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The issuance of digital currencies controlled by the central banks would eventually annihilate the banking system, or make it an obedient follower of central bank policies. This is because, especially during crises, deposits would flock to the central bank from commercial banks, as all deposits in the central bank are essentially fully covered by the taxpayers, or the State, and the money creation (printing) abilities of the central bank. This would lead the central bank to obtain a monopoly-like power in banking.

Then only cash would need to be banned for the central banks to gain full control of interest rates, and the economy.  The end result would be an economic dystopia, where the ability of citizens’ to control their own (economic) fate—a particular kind of agency—will effectively have been taken away.

This is something central bankers may try to sell us after the economy crashes, through the rationalization of “safety.” This again is speculation that ought to be considered as the end result of such an aim; it truly would be horrible, on the level of a kind of enslavement of the populace.

So, I urge everyone to ask the “What if?” questions presented above (and more).

This is because if any of them (not to mention several not discussed above) turn out to be true, we are living in a very different world that has been presented to us.

China's Imminent Economic Collapse: How It Will Impact You (Video - 15')

 More on the imploding Chinese bubble.

 It is getting more and more obvious that the black swan of this crisis will be Chinese.

 Get ready, the whole world will be impacted.

 

Blain: This Is A New Game, What Comes Next Isn't Pretty...

  Over the last two years, this blog has slowly morphed from data and business to the ongoing crisis which is slowly taking on apocalyptic proportions.

 The huge Chinese bubble imploding.

 The absurd but very real energy crisis in Europe.

 The Worldwide financial market heading strait to the wall due to 30 years of over leveraged banking system.

 And the weather changing back to a much more variable pattern so frequent and ominous in the past.

 All these waves and forces are converging on us and will strike sometimes between the end of this year and next year, rocking our economy as it hasn't been for over 500 years. 

 Get ready. The tsunami is coming!

Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

“The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Warning – Readers of a sensitive nature may wish to take a chill pill before reading this morning’s Porridge comment. Remember, the sun will come up tomorrow. The market might not.

Red Sky in the Morning – Sailor take warning. I woke to a vivid red sky this morning – by the time I rushed upstairs to snap a photograph it was already fading. In sailor lore Red Skies presage storms – it’s the rising sun reflecting off high levels of water vapour carried by approaching weather fronts that causes the bright red effect. Curiously, it’s been the quietest Caribbean Hurricane Season in decades, yet I suspect there is an almighty storm already upon global markets – we are so caught up in it we don’t realise its knocking on the windows – and about to knock them out!

The worst part of any storm is not the Eye (which is calm), or even the winds and storm surges as the gale approaches. The strongest winds are just outside the “eye-wall”, following the path of destruction. The really sustained high-winds and storm waves are in the following quarters. When it’s an Atlantic storm barrelling into Europe from across the Atlantic, is the bottom left-hand of the rotating storm where the winds are strongest and most destructive.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying.. this might get worse.. Much worse.

Despite many storm warnings – this market is ill prepared for the kind of instability about to hit, as recession, stagflation, geo-politics, domestic politics, energy, food, inflation and the rest combine in that most misused of metaphors; a Perfect Storm. There is no such thing – every storm is different – and it’s not the things you see coming that maims you, it’s the things you don’t!

Following Jackson Hole last week – where the Fed and other Central Banks confirmed the battle versus inflation means higher rates for longer – the market has staged a predictable sell-back. The numbers look bad – but hardly terminal. It still looks kind of normal for a typical September market reverse, a correction. The gains from the summer rally will probably be wiped out, but market participants will be expecting the next play to begin. In the next few days we will be back to talk of recovery.

Nothing much to panic about when the US 2 year bonds nearly hit 3.5%. Stocks in reverse. The VIX fear indicator of stock volatility is up to 27. None of these are chaotic – yet. Arrr…. The calm will not last…

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T’was the witch of September come stealin’

The big issue is how prepared for a market blow are we? Anyone with a career record under 15-years has never experienced a real market gale – the last one being the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. I reckon that’s well over 50% of the financial workforce. Their careers have been forged in markets artificially supported by quantitative easing and Zero Interest rates. Now we are stepping into aggressive rate hikes and quantitative tightening – with the Fed confirming a steep pace of hikes to tame inflation, even if it causes a slowdown. And the financial conditions barometer is tumbling as consumers and business face impossible budget calls.

This is a new game.

Lots of young fund managers will be looking at their books and wondering how they are going to reverse the 10-15% losses they’ve sustained this year. The compliance and risk management mitigation mindset that dominates institutional investor groupthink will largely ensure they don’t bet the farm on big risky bets, but for most funds – which means the money folk are saving for retirement – it’s going to a very bad year.

Risk and groupthink mean there are going to be fewer folk out there looking for risky opportunities – potentially meaning the crisis last longer. Losses on losses, at a time when consumer discretionary spending and pension saving will have been hammered by inflation, will have profound consequences on the future market.  Forget the walls of money that’s fuelled funds, and speculative market rallies – we’re looking at significantly less money coming into markets.

Bankers will be smiling. They are focused on how the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich was accelerated by QE and now means the top 1% of the global population own over 58% of societies wealth and assets. No wonder investment banks are hiring aggressively into private banking and wealth management services! Family offices don’t mind being smoozed.

Meanwhile… The Fed and the US economy can afford some economic misery. The US is largely detached from the global energy price shock, and will survive global recession in its largely self-contained domestic bubble. A recession will hurt – but won’t kill the economy.

This gathering storm is going to hit Europe hardest. Energy insecurity and the Ukraine war is responsible, but a large number of ECB board members are publicly calling for an unparalleled 75 bp hike to tame the inflation beast, and to reverse the sinking Euro (down 15% this year, and headed lower). Higher rates and a deepening economic crisis as Europe heads into recession and rising unemployment is scary, and doubly so as soaring energy costs look likely to trigger rising social tensions. As I’ve said before, when the going gets tough, the French will be revolting.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of September came slashin’
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

As for the UK. La-la land. New prime minister next week, promising tax cuts for the rich and regressive tax allowances to fight soaring energy bill – when the bottom 40% of the UK don’t pay tax. It won’t help the national mood to know our new Aircraft Carrier, the Prince of Wales, broke down a few miles from port yesterday on its way to a major deployment. Oops.. Sums up busted Britain.

What comes next isn’t pretty.

Since 1985 I’ve experienced a number of market crashes. They have been shocking, sharp and surprising. In every case they were caused by a blindingly obvious financial market imbalance – like consumer lending risks, over-exuberance, unsustainable expectations, etc. The coming crisis is very different – it’s been a series of exogenous shocks; Covid, and now Energy and Ukraine. It feels more fundamental that the simple market mispricings that triggered some form of market crash every 6-7 years. These were short, and we quickly recovered.

What is coming is something worse. This may be a once in a century storm…

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”

This is developing into something with a smattering of 1929 – unravelling massive financial mispricings – together with the exogenous effects of the wartime shocks in 1914 and from 1939. Forget inflation and growth, but consider issues like expertise, experience, groupthink, panic and fear, and the crushing of small investors trying to figure out where this might go next..

The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Global Economy

The one positive thing I can add.. following any storm.. the seas calm, the sun comes up, and we go out and do it all again..

Footnote – On August 11, 1979, 303 small yachts set out on the Fastnet Race from the Isle of Wight to the famous lighthouse off the South-Western tip of Ireland and back to Plymouth. There were strong winds forecast, but nothing unmanagable. It turned out much worse. The fleet was hit by a weather bomb as fronts combined to create a Force 11 Hurricane. 15 sailors died. Lessons have been learnt – mainly that: “there is nothing always about a storm at sea except its danger.”

Same thing in markets….

Excess deaths related to Covid vaccines, the data (Video - 15')

  Mostly data from the UK but excess deaths are significant and correlate quite closely to vaccination campaigns...

 

What Will Be The Real World Consequences Of Europe's Coming Energy Crisis?

 

  This is exactly why you should not let 16 year old kids dictate your energy policy! 

  Whatever Europe does now, there is simply no exit to the conundrum they have created. 

  It is a "good thing" in a way as it will largely impede the WEF plan for a great reset although we'll get all the upheaval part and more.

What Will Be The Real World Consequences Of Europe's Coming Energy Crisis?

Anyone with any sense could have seen it coming – Europe is on the precipice of an economic and social crisis not seen since World War II; and they basically did it to themselves.  Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent NATO sanctions, the talking heads in the mainstream media have consistently fed the public an endless narrative on how the EU doesn't need Russian natural gas.  We've heard an array of theories and chest beating from corporate journalists and lying politicians; all of them sounding so certain that Russia would be isolated and economically destroyed within no time.  This has not happened, and now the reverse might soon be true for the EU and the UK.

To give you a sense of the disinformation being peddled to the public on this issue, take a look at the 10 point “battle plan” put together by the International Energy Agency (IEA) back in March to cut off Russian energy imports and save the EU from a crisis:

1)  Don't sign new gas supply contracts with Russia. (REALITY: This foolishly assumes that Russia wants to sign new contracts with Europe.)

2)  Replace Russian gas supplies with alternative sources.  (REALITY:  No alternative sources exist that can come close to filling Europe's energy needs and that can be as easily transported.  Europe will have to draw on energy commodities from around the world, taking up a large piece of a shrinking pie and driving up prices for most nations on the planet in the process.)

3)  Introduce minimum gas storage rules.  (REALITY:  This assumes there will be gas to store for later.)

4)  Accelerate the deployment of new wind and solar projects.  (REALITY:  Anti-carbon fantasy land not based in science.  There is no green energy in existence which has the ability to heat European homes and fuel their industry except nuclear, and EU governments have consistently been hostile to nuclear projects.)

5)  Maximize gas power from bio-energy and nuclear.  (REALITY:  The more bio-energy you develop the less farmland you have available for food.  And, nuclear power plants take years to build and EU governments continue to fight them.  If the EU had took some of the billions they use annually on useless green technology and anti-carbon programs and spent that money on nuclear plants 5 years ago, they would not be in the mess they are in today.)

6)  Enact short term tax measures on windfall energy profits – Cut energy bills when gas prices are high.  (REALITY:  You cannot enact greater taxes on energy producers and cut energy bills simultaneously without government price controls.  And, price controls lead to less supply anyway.  The more you tax energy producers the more the power bills are going to go up to compensate.  There is no way around this.)

7)  Speed up replacements of gas boilers and heat pumps.  (REALITY:  Before winter?  Not a chance.  This should have been done a couple years ago.  Also, it should be noted that the IEA zero-carbon agenda has called for gas boilers to be eliminated by 2025.  Rather convenient that the energy crisis is expediting their green energy goals, don't you think?)

8)  Accelerate energy efficiency improvements in buildings and industry.  (REALITY:  Who is going to pay for this?)

9)  Encourage a temporary thermostat reduction of 1 °C by consumers.  (REALITY:  This opens the door to “smart meters” which power companies or governments can control without your consent.)

10)  Step up efforts to diversify and decarbonise sources of power system flexibility.  (REALITY:  More green energy, which has proven time and time again to be a completely ineffective replacement for carbon based fuels.)

The IEA is an institution that is hostile to carbon based energy and industries and calls for the end of all carbon emissions by 2050.  This is why none of their bullet points from March that have been attempted have worked; because they aren't designed to work, only promote further carbon controls while harming global power generation in the process.  

There are currently no practical replacements for oil, coal and natural gas; none.  Especially not in a reasonable time frame that would spare Europeans from a full blown disaster.  The only way green technology would be able to provide enough energy for the world's populations would be if the human population was greatly reduced.  Europe's energy crisis actually helps the IEA agenda, just as it helps the UN and WEF climate agendas.  But what about all the people that will suffer in the meantime?

Expect to see extensive energy rationing this winter in the EU.  Around 80% of all EU natural gas is imported and Russia's natural gas exports make up around 40% of Europe's heating and electricity.  With Russia now reducing exports down to 20% of their original levels, there is zero chance that the EU will be able to maintain their normal energy usage.  

Supply-side shortages will mean a price explosion going into winter as demand increases.  Prices have the potential to double (or more) by the beginning of 2023.  

European governments will likely prioritize heating for public homes over energy for industry; they will do this to prevent civil unrest, as some government officials are already warning about.  There is a chance that EU industry will be hobbled as energy supplies are rerouted for public consumption.  We have seen something similar to this in China this year as their drought conditions worsen.

Civil unrest will probably happen anyway.  Climate restrictions, green energy rules on carbon emissions and other ludicrous measures are making it impossible for Europeans to adapt to crisis events.  Prices will be high, and price caps won't help with supply shortages.  When people start to freeze, there will be anger and desperation.  

The only legitimate short term solution to prevent a historic energy calamity in the EU this winter would be to remove sanctions on Russia.  But, NATO has made it clear that this will not happen.  So, the European people are being positioned to face the consequences while being told there will be no consequences.  And, when the pain starts to hit, they will be told that it's all for the “greater good.”

Rockefeller Foundation Wants Behavioral Scientists To Come Up With More Convincing COVID Vaxx Narratives

   Is there anything at all behind the Covid-19 narrative but money, power and control?

  If people had any doubts about how "free" countries work or rather are controlled from behind the curtain, the Covid pandemic dispelled them utterly.

Rockefeller Foundation Wants Behavioral Scientists To Come Up With More Convincing COVID Vaxx Narratives

In yet another sign that the covid vaccination agenda of globalist institutions did not do quite as well as they had originally hoped, the Rockefeller Foundation has revealed that it (along with other non-profits) has been pumping millions of dollars into a behavioral science project meant to figure out why large groups of people around the world refuse to take the jab.

The “Mercury Project” is a collective of behavioral scientists formed by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a non-profit group which receives considerable funding from globalist organizations and governments.  The stated goals of the project are rather non-specific, using ambiguous language and mission statements.  However, the root intentions appear to be focused on using behavioral psychology and mass psychology elements to understand the global resistance to the recent covid compliance efforts.

Mercury groups will be deployed in multiple nations and regions and will study vaccine refusal and the medical “disinformation” that leads to it.  They are operating with the intent to tailor vaccination narratives to fit different ethnic and political backgrounds, looking for the key to the gates of each cultural kingdom and convincing them to take the jab.  

The Rockefeller Foundation and the SSRC note:

“Following the characterization of inaccurate health information by the U.S. Surgeon General as an “urgent threat,” and by the World Health Organization as an “infodemic,” the SSRC issued a call for proposals to counter the growing global threats posed by public health mis- and disinformation and low Covid-19 vaccination rates, and received nearly 200 submissions from around the world.

...With Covid-19 prevalent and rapidly evolving everywhere, there is a pressing need to identify interventions with the potential to increase vaccination take-up.”

The SSRC and the Mercury Project are not only receiving funding from foundations, but also government based institutions.  In June of 2022 the Mercury Project received another $20 million from the National Science Foundation, which claims to be an “independent” agency of the United States government.  Meaning, fabricating effective covid propaganda is becoming a money train for the small groups of behavioral researchers and psychologists that jump onboard.

The purpose of the NSF partnership with the Mercury Project is outlined on the SSRC website:

“This innovative partnership will support research teams seeking to evaluate online or offline interventions to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand and other positive health behaviors, including by targeting the producers and/or consumers of inaccurate health information and/or by increasing confidence in reliable health information.”

The Mercury Project lists these bullet points as their focus:

“Funded projects will provide evidence about what works–and doesn’t–in specific places and for specific groups to increase Covid-19 vaccination take-up, including what is feasible on the ground and has the potential to be cost-effective at scale. Each of the 12 teams will have access to findings from the other teams while exploring interventions including, but not limited to:

Conducting literacy training for secondary school students in partnership with local authorities to help students identify Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.  

Equipping trusted messengers with communication strategies to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand.

Using social networks to share tailored, community-developed messaging to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand.”

In other words, their focus is propaganda, propaganda and propaganda.  The very basis of the existence of the Mercury Project presupposes that individuals cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about the information they are exposed to, and that they must be molded to accept the mainstream narrative.  It also presupposes that mainstream or establishment information is always trustworthy and unbiased.     

The widespread non-compliance against covid vaccination mandates despite extensive government pressure is perhaps one of the most underappreciated events of the past century.  It is likely the reason why political elites and the corporate media went from a non-stop fear campaign against the public to almost no mention of covid within a matter of weeks.  It was as if the populace was being put through two years of waterboarding and then one day the torture simply stopped without explanation.

If vaccine passport laws had been implemented through western nations on the scale that governments and globalists were demanding, then the last vestiges of personal freedom would now be erased permanently.  All individual rights would become privileges granted by authorities and contingent on your submission to whatever covid booster shots or medical procedures happen to be in vogue at the time.  Think about it:  If they had gotten what they wanted, the west would look exactly like China does right now, or worse, with no economic participation without an up-to-date covid pass.    

And, the threat still lingers.  Why the Mercury Project feels the need to compose vaccine propaganda for a virus with a mere 0.23% median Infection Fatality Rate is not explained.  And, if vaccination numbers from agencies like the CDC are accurate, then the population has already achieved herd immunity anyway (perhaps their numbers are not accurate?).  Why are globalist groups so obsessed with 100% vaccination for covid?  This is never explained.  

They will say it's all about saving lives, but if only 0.23% of people on average are at risk regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not, then public health is not really a believable explanation.  It would seem that the Mercury Project's purpose is more about influencing people to vaccinate despite the science rather than in the name of science.

Fauci's COVID Disaster: A Summary

 

  Based on the evidences below, the question is: Should Dr Anthony Fauci face a court of justice?

  But don't hold your breath, because the rabbit hole is so deep he probably won't.

Authored by Ian Miller via Brownstone Institute,

News that Dr. Anthony Fauci is finally leaving his post after what seemed like an endless reign at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases should be a time for celebration.

But it’s not.

Fauci has caused such tremendous damage throughout the past few years that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.

In nearly every area of life in the United States, as well as in many other parts of the world, Fauci’s influence has been a key contributor to massive amounts of human suffering.

Fauci inexplicably had particular ire for children.

Long after it was abundantly clear that closing schools had no significant health benefit, Fauci continued to support shutdowns and restrictions on normal life for millions of children at little to no risk from the virus.

His capacity for outright political advocacy and activism has been breathtaking to behold and contributed to the extreme collapse of trust in public health “experts” and authorities.

So it seems worth revisiting some of the greatest hits of Fauci’s reign of incompetence. 

Unmasked is entirely reader supported. Paid subscriptions allow the work to continue in this format, and any readership is greatly appreciated.

Masks

Perhaps one of Fauci’s biggest and most dramatic failings has been on masks.

Early on, he famously opined on 60 Minutes that he was confident that masks didn’t work, that they might only block “a droplet or two,” but didn’t provide the protection people thought they did.

He then confirmed the same information to people privately asking for advice on whether they should wear masks when traveling.

He later absurdly claimed that his initial comments were made out of a desire to protect supply for healthcare workers. Except, of course, healthcare workers would never wear the types of cloth masking that Fauci and his allies at the CDC were recommending.

Not to mention that his claim is made even more ridiculous by the fact that he told people privately not to wear masks.

Had he believed they worked but wanted to protect limited availabilities, he could have easily told those who asked to wear a mask without jeopardizing any large scale supply for hospital workers.

Of course, that’s not what he did.

His claim that masking would lower transmission and would demonstrate clearly beneficial results compared to areas that didn’t mask has been proven false repeatedly:

Well after it had been confirmed, by copious amounts of data, that masks don’t work, Fauci continued to advocate for universal masking. 

Even today, he’s remained completely steadfast that masks work, despite the conclusive evidence to the contrary.

Recently, after his incessant mask-wearing was completely ineffective at preventing him from being infected with the virus, Fauci continued to recommend people wear masks while lying about their effectiveness, saying they were “recommending people when they are in indoor congregate settings to wear a mask.”

“Those are simple, doable things that can help prevent us from having even more of a problem than we’re having right now.”

Just like the mask mandates during winter 2021-2022 were able to prevent the spread of the virus, right?

Lockdowns

The incomprehensible amount of lying that Fauci has done over the past few years extends past masks to lockdowns and business closures and capacity restrictions.

Fauci now claims that he never said to lock down the country. 

Except, of course, that’s exactly what he said on the record in 2020:

In September of 2020, Fauci claimed that states like Florida that reopened were “asking for trouble,” while praising New York for having one of the “best” responses.

Almost immediately afterwards, hospitalizations in California and New York shot past Florida with businesses closed, capacity restricted, and universal masking.

His bewildering lack of awareness is bad enough, but even as late as 2021, long after lockdowns and business closures were disproven, he continued to suggest that areas that reopened were engaging in extremely risky behavior by going against his dictates.

The headline of a story out of Jacksonville in April 2021 read: “Fauci: Opening Florida for business as COVID-19 variants surge a ‘risky proposition.’”

Just a few months prior to this remark, he had pointedly criticized Florida for reopening, only to see other states that followed his advice have significantly worse results. 

You’d think that being proven wrong would create some humility, uncertainty, and willingness to admit mistakes.

But that’s not what Dr. Fauci does. 

Instead, he doubled down, and said that Florida reopening in April 2021, months after vaccines had been available, was “risky.”

Except that California reported significantly higher rates of age-adjusted COVID mortality than Florida for all of the first and second quarters of 2021, with mask mandates and capacity limits for part of that time frame:

He pulled the same thing nationally, claiming inaccurately that the country would risk a new surge due to “relaxed” restrictions and new variants:

Remember too that Fauci claims to be the singular representative of “science.” If this is what “science” is, it clearly doesn’t deserve the respect it’s been given.

Of course, even into this year, Fauci is defending his recommendations, all evidence to the contrary, while denying that lockdowns, which permanently harmed tens of millions of people, didn’t irreparably damage anyone:

Children

Perhaps Fauci’s most damaging recommendations were related to schools. 

Jordan Schachtel compiled perhaps the best timeline of his advocacy to keep schools closed or excuse those who wanted to keep them closed. 

In his capacity as a masking fanatic, Fauci’s also promoted school masking, saying children over 2 should be forced to mask in school if local officials decided it was necessary. 

No matter how many times masking in schools is disproven, he’ll never admit these statements were baseless nonsense.

Between school closures and forced masking, the damage he’s caused to children is quite literally incalculable.

Vaccinations

There’s also his incomparable track record of inaccuracies on what the vaccines would do.

Among many other issues, his prediction that reaching certain levels of vaccination would eliminate the potential for future surges was, like everything else he’s done, almost immediately proven wrong.

His failures in this area are endless.

Obviously this is nowhere close to a comprehensive list of the incomprehensible stupidity that Fauci’s demonstrated over the past few years. A full list would require a book, or several books to chronicle.

His incompetence, hubris, awe-inspiring ego and commitment to being wrong in every possible circumstance is quite literally incomparable.

The tremendous amount of flip-flopping and backtracking to defend his prior ineptitude is continuously defended by Fauci as “The Science™” changing.

Except the CDC guidelines he continuously defended and promoted were never based on changing science, as evidenced by the fact that they never ran high-quality randomized controlled trials to justify their decision-making.

“Science” can’t change when one of the key tenets of it, evidence-based recommendations, was never updated.

But that didn’t matter to Fauci. What mattered is endless media appearances, praise from the left, and maintaining a veneer of infallibility propped up by a fawning press.

While it might be tempting to think that this retirement will signal a dramatic shift in thinking about COVID at a federal level, that seems far too optimistic.

As with everything else COVID-related, the Biden Administration has committed to ensuring that whoever replaces outgoing officials will be even worse. Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky are shining examples.

At the very least, there’s a glimmer of hope that Fauci will still be called before Congress and be held accountable for the damage he’s caused and for his blatant, world-altering agenda.

*  *  *

Originally posted at Ian Miller's 'Unmasked' Substack,

Kyle Bass: War Between The US & China Within 2 Years Or Sooner? (Video - 47')

  Another brilliant interview of Kyle Bass. He may not be right on every point but there is more information in this one interview than in a week of news.

  Mostly about the market and the coming recession but also about China...

 

COVID Vaccine Propaganda Busted – High Deaths and Cancers

  We often get the comments about proof: "Where is the proof that the mRNA vaccines are actually harmful?

 Well there are as much proof and statistics as you need, it's just not in the media and mostly censored on social media. Still courageous doctors (since they are often punished for doing so) take the risk to warn us about what is going on as discussed below.

  Witnesses can always be presented as anecdotal. A few extra death in a hospital is nothing exceptional. It can  and does happen for all sorts of reasons. But statistics are different. When you have a significant deviation from the norm, "something" must be going on. A "something" which was only marginal in 2020, suddenly became a major factor in 2021. We should indeed never jump to conclusion as correlation is not causation. Still in country after country, a sharp jump in myocarditis and hart attacks, all types of cancers and sudden death of people under 50 following within weeks of vaccination campaigns lead to the obvious conclusion that "something" is wreaking havoc with our immune system. Just as immunologists warned us the mRNA vaccines would do from the beginning.       

Post in the Burning Platform by Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn

The main propaganda line is that vaccines and boosters are ‘safe and effective’ and prevent severe illness and death. These are lies, as shown by the data.

COVID propaganda lies set a record in the history of the human race.  It has killed millions of people.

The recent sharp increase in COVID deaths has caught my attention. I have been watching daily COVID statistics in The Washington Post. A few months ago, the 7-day average for deaths was about 300. In last Sunday’s paper, it was 500.

That is about a 70% increase!

This is despite all the vaccine and booster shots that a majority of Americans have taken.

Yet there is no attention to this anywhere.

Why are more people dying from COVID?

Because what hospitals are doing is ineffective. It’s not working.

Have the vaccines and boosters wrecked the immune systems of many people? So as the transmission of the virus continues, people are getting sick enough to die.

If more people took a high dose of vitamin D, this high death rate could be prevented. See my previous essay on Vitamin D.

When will the truth about the vaccines and boosters be widely seen?

Another explanation may be the vast numbers of illegal aliens coming across the Southern Border. Many likely have poor immune systems and have not been vaccinated. But hospitals are not reporting whether such people are dying from COVID.

What is the cancer connection to COVID?

A researcher who queried the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) discovered a 10,661.4% increase in cancer reports as a result of experimental COVID-19 gene-based vaccines as compared with all FDA-approved vaccines over the last 30 years.

It’s important to always remember that VAERS likely only reports as little as 1 percent of actual impacts because it is voluntary and burdensome reporting that most doctors and others do not take the time to use.

Brian Shilhavy, who is the editor of Health Impact News, traced his steps in the search providing links to documentation of his various findings.

Having first queried the cases of “the most common cancers [that] had been reported following COVID-19 vaccines,” he found “837 cases of cancer, including 88 deaths, 66 permanent disabilities, and 104 life-threatening events.”

He emphasized that even these numbers were not exhaustive, and the VAERS database could not handle the larger search of “ALL cancers listed in VAERS” under this category of COVID inoculations.

“Using the exact same search terms for cancer,” he wrote, “I then searched ALL FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30 years and found only 140 cases of cancer reported.”

“That result is for 360 months (30 years), whereas the 837 cases following the experimental COVID-19 vaccines were reported in just 20 months, since the roll-out of the COVID-19 shots beginning in December of 2020,” Shilhavy wrote.

“That is an increase of 10,661.4%!” he concluded.

Shilhavy also made note of the significant number of the cancer cases in the database that were of young people, from age 12 up through many young adults in their 20s.

Last October, a Swedish lab study found that the spike protein associated with the COVID-19 illness, and its experimental vaccines, enters the nucleus of cells and significantly interferes with DNA damage-repair functions, compromising a person’s adaptive immunity and perhaps encouraging the formation of cancer cells. In other words, COVID vaccines can significantly impair immunity.

In March 2021, board-certified pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole reported that he was seeing a massive “uptick” in various autoimmune diseases and cancers in patients who have been COVID-vaccinated, LifeSiteNews reports.

FADING SMILE OF A DYING EMPIRE

 A great article from The Burning Platform.

 It always sounds "old" to say that times past were better but in the case of the current state of the US is is profoundly true. As our linear view of history in Western culture is about to give way to a more realistic cyclical vision, it is amazing to see decline in action as rot slowly gnaws away at the foundations of the country erasing in a short few years decades of progress, the democratic process questioned as if there really was an alternative (all types of other arrangements have been tested over time, none are pleasant!) and corruption spreads like wildfire. A sad but good story as told below.

 

“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.” – Edward Gibbon

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.” – William Shakespeare, Richard II

We moved to our corner of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania twenty-seven years ago. We raised our three boys here. We spent hundreds of hours on local baseball fields, in hockey rinks, in school gyms for basketball games, concerts, plays and donuts-with-dads. It’s still a nice place to live, with virtually no crime, decent roads, and reasonable property tax rates. But I would have to say there has been a degradation in the overall quality of life in my community, which is consistent with the downward spiral of our society in general. When we planted our roots in this community it was still more farm-like than suburban. Family farms and open space were more prevalent than housing tracts, strip malls, fast food joints and cookie cutter commercial buildings. A beautiful farmhouse a few miles from our home, freshly painted white, proudly displayed the iconic yellow smiley face. It symbolized good times.

We’ve been driving on this road for twenty-seven years on the way to baseball games, hockey practices, the car dealer for service, and lately to our gym, as we try to fend off father time.  Driving by that barn in the early days would always brighten your day. A bright yellow smiley face against a white background represented a positive, happy view of the world.

We moved to this area in 1995 while Clinton was president, unemployment was 5.6%, CPI was 2.8%, GDP growth was 2.7%, the annual deficit was $164 billion, the national debt was $4.9 trillion, the Fed balance sheet was $500 billion, the U.S. population was 263 million, total household debt was $4 trillion, you earned 5.5% on your money market fund, the U.S. bailed out Mexico, the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and OJ Simpson was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife. The military industrial complex was being starved by lack of wars and the stock market soared by 33% as the beginning of irrational exuberance began under the reign of Greenspan and his Put.

A lot has happened over the last twenty-seven years and the faded, barely visible smiley face, on a now mold ridden decaying barn, is truly representative of a society, culture and economic system dying a slow torturous death, as apathy, technological distraction, myopic indolence, and the greed of powerful elites combine to ensure the eventual collapse of the short-lived American Empire. Much of this quarter century of decline is borne out in the change in economic numbers noted above.

The unemployment rate is reported as 3.5% today with 158 million out of 264 million working age adults employed. That leaves 106 million not employed, or 40% of working age adults not working. Back in 1995, 125 million out of 199 million working age adults were employed, leaving 74 million not working. Over a quarter century we’ve added 65 million people to our population, but only 33 million to the employment rolls. Either we’ve devolved into a nation of freeloaders on welfare/disability, or the BLS is lying about the 3.5% unemployment rate, or both.

The BLS currently tries to convince the ignorant masses inflation is only 8.5%, up tremendously from the 2.8% in 1995. Since the Fed/Wall Street induced financial crash of 2008, the government had been reporting inflation of between 0% to 3%, when in reality, as measured the way it was measured in 1980, it had been between 7% to 10%. Today’s actual inflation rate is 17% in case you were wondering. Revealing the true cost of living to the peasants might induce a revolting outcome for our overlords. The government prefers to treat the math challenged masses like mushrooms, by keeping them in the dark.

The corrupt Fed, feckless politicians, media mouthpieces for the empire, and Wall Street shysters were shocked I tell you by skyrocketing inflation after the Fed increased their balance sheet from $3.7 trillion to $8.9 trillion and the D.C. swamp creatures increased the national debt from $23.2 trillion to $30.7 trillion since the beginning of 2020. This generated inflation in financial assets for the global elite and their minions, while destroying the finances of the middle and lower classes. The rot grows like a cancer in this empire of debt.

The annual deficit of $164 billion in 1995 was racked up in 17 days in 2021. We have run annual deficits of $3.1 trillion in 2020 and $2.8 trillion in 2021, and the scumbags in Washington just keep passing $700 billion spending bills, writing off student loan debts for gender fluidity majors and sending billions in weapons to the most corrupt regime on the planet – Ukraine. The degradation and downward trajectory of this empire of debt, delusion and despair can be most clearly defined by comparing our GDP growth since 1995 to the growth of debt by both our government and the populace. Total U.S. GDP in 1995 totaled $7.6 trillion and today checks in at $24.8 trillion. That is a growth of 326% over twenty-seven years. The national debt has grown by 626%. Seems unsustainable, but why question our glorious leaders.

The Fed balance sheet has grown by 1,780%. Household debt has grown by 400%. Median household income in 1995 was $34,000. Today it is $73,000. That is a 214% increase over 27 years. With real inflation averaging over 10% per year during this time frame, average working Americans have seen their standard of living methodically decline, replacing the income with debt. The only beneficiaries of debt are the banking cabal and the mega-corporations selling their cheap Chinese crap to clueless dupes who believe driving a leased BMW and living in a cookie cutter McMansion with an $800,000 mortgage makes them wealthy.

The selfie generation is too distracted checking in on Facebook, posting pictures of their food on Instagram, doing a dance routine on Tik Tok or counting their likes on Twitter to realize how badly they’ve been screwed over by those pulling the strings of this society. The propaganda and psychology of fear utilized by the powerful interests has reached a level that would make Edward Bernays burst with pride, as manipulating the masses to believe falsehoods is a key requirement in implementing their Great Reset agenda.

This entire charade seems to be bursting at the seams, with raging inflation, a recession in process (despite Biden’s lackeys trying to redefine recession), a Green New Deal Great Reset agenda purposely creating energy and food shortages, government agencies running roughshod over the Constitution, and a tyrannical administration attempting to crush their political adversaries using any means necessary. Smiles are fading as we head into either a hyperinflationary depression or a deflationary depression, with some world war mixed in.

The economic decay is easily provable, but our cultural and societal degeneration has exceeded our economic deterioration. Just as the Roman Empire exhibited particular traits of a dying culture, the American Empire displays similar characteristics, such as: concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth; obsession with sex and perversions of sex; art becoming freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original; widening disparity between very rich and very poor; increased demand to live off the state.

Of course, our dying culture has also been turbocharged by the climate cult attempting to destroy our fossil fueled economic system by purposely sabotaging our energy and food systems as the driving force for their Great Reset. Weaponizing the annual flu as a means to inject billions of people with a DNA altering, sometimes lethal, concoction is part of Bill Gates’ depopulation agenda. They have taken the sex and gender perversion to new levels of child abuse, grooming and mutilation. The rampant pedophilia and child trafficking by the global elitists is the most despicable aspect of our cultural degeneracy. Anyone with a conscious can no longer be proud of this country and should be desperately concerned about its future.

“A growing sense of unease presently pervades the American consciousness. Americans are no longer as confident in their nation and self-assured as they once were. A sense of frustration and anger underscores American consciousness. Americans are looking over our shoulder at other emerging economic juggernauts and wondering if we can still be world’s social, political, and economic leader when Congress cannot even manage to balance the national budget. The thought that we are diminishing in stature in the eyes of the international community constantly torments Americans. Faded glory strikes a crippling blow to the American psyche. Analogous to an aging beauty queen, America might still possess a golden crown, but she lost her luster. In an eroding empire, Americans feel like second-class citizens in the union of nations.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster

The terms modern and progress have become warped and used as an excuse for destroying localization, small businesses, what worked, what was good, and what benefitted society, replacing it with globalization, mega-corporations, complex technology, profits at any cost, and benefits accumulating to the few with suffering borne by the many. Two examples come to mind within a few miles from my home. Just a couple miles from the fading smile barn is a property that was once a thriving family farm. I snapped a picture last week as I was driving past.

The decaying abandoned farmhouse, dilapidated barn, and rusting farm machinery are being engulfed by weeds, as the memories of a productive useful family farm fade like that yellow smiley face. I don’t know why it was abandoned, but I’m sure the corporate farming conglomerates and the corporate meat processing plants were a major factor. When you can buy cheap meat at Wal-Mart produced in China or some industrial farm, why pay a little more for fresh non-GMO meat sold by a local farmer?

Gone are the roadside vegetable stands and buying fresh meat from your local farmer neighbor. Maybe the patriarch of the homestead got too old, and his sons had been indoctrinated by the government schools to get corporate jobs in some of the commercial office campuses that have replaced open space and farmland. Whatever the reason, it provokes melancholy about a better simpler time whenever I pass by.

The governmental actions taken in the early 2000s still irk me to this day. The area around the intersection of Forty Foot Road and Sumneytown Pike in the late 1990s was still reminiscent of simpler times, before smart phones, hyper-consumerism, and proliferation of big box retail. Small businesses were important and viable. There was a family run diner near the turnpike entrance where all the locals ate breakfast and talked sports and politics.

Township police were friendly, driving older basic vehicles and housed in a small unassuming one-story township building. Nicely kept older homes lined one side of Forty Foot Road and the other side was an eclectic mixture of old-time baseball fields, with no lights and little to no ground’s maintenance, and the old Henry Sprecht grade school, built in 1909 to honor a long-time educator and local historian, which had been replaced by newer schools and creatively repurposed into a quaint antiques mall.

We spent many a summer evening watching my oldest son play little league baseball on those fields while trying to keep our four-year-old and three-year-old sons from getting into trouble. We loved wandering through that antiques mall as individual vendors selling all manner of antiques, hand crafted woodwork, baseball cards, toys, occupied nooks, and crannies in this ancient school. We bought a handcrafted cabinet by a local artisan for our kitchen, which we still employ today in our storage area.

My fondest memory was at Christmas time when it would become a Christmas wonderland and I would take the boys there to see the spectacular miniature train show, where local train aficionados would set up amazing displays. The kids were mesmerized. There was also a family-owned home center in Hatfield called Snyder’s that sold everything for your home and also had a great train display at Christmas for kids to enjoy. All this unpretentious delight ended abruptly in the early 2000s, as progress, commercialization, and greed took hold of the country and our little community.

As you may remember, Greenspan coined the term irrational exuberance in 1996 to describe financial markets, then turbocharged stocks by cutting rates, causing the dot.com bubble and responded to the stock market crash by cutting rates and causing the biggest real estate bubble in history, until now. These ephemeral paper riches caused local government bureaucrats to use phantom tax revenues to envision delusions of grandeur by building useless unnecessary projects.

This is exactly what the government drones running Towamencin Township did. They produced a grand master plan, gave it a fancy name, spent tens of millions of our tax dollars, and produced an embarrassing mess. They used eminent domain to acquire homes, forced the dozens of small business owners out of the antique mall and flattened the building, closed off the baseball fields to little kids, and closed Forty Foot Road for over a year to build a glorious $13 million bridge to nowhere. This bridge stands as a tribute to all those Chinese ghost cities, as it serves no purpose except as an example of government incompetence, wastefulness, and misuse of taxpayer funds with no consequences for the government drones.

Rather than wait for actual retail tenants to sign on to their glorious project, the government geniuses built the bridge knowing they would come. They never came. The real estate retail bubble popped. It’s now fifteen years later and those four baseball fields are still sitting there, untouched, undeveloped, and unused. They stuck a Walgreens where the charming antique mall once sat. No pedestrians cross the pedestrian bridge because there is nothing on either side. A four- story commercial building was built on spec a block from the bridge and stood vacant for five years.

Home Depot and Lowes built within a few miles. There are now cookie cutter townhouses where Snyder’s stood. Another successful retail center in the 1990s up the road, anchored by a family owned Genuardi supermarket and a Sears Hardware, along with a pizza place, drugstore, Blockbuster, and kids play center has been vacant and rotting for over a decade, as bankruptcies, mergers, and the relentless downward economic spiral made it untenable.

In addition to wasting taxpayer money on the ghost bridge to nowhere, these financial government geniuses decided their police station built in 1975 no longer met the needs of their fast-growing police force in a township with no crime, because it is 88% white/Asian. They built themselves a complex three times the size of their old station. Lucky, because they now have a police force of 23 officers, all decked out with souped-up brand-new SUVs.

You need that level of manpower and firepower for all those speed traps, fender benders and writing tickets for illegal basketball nets. There hasn’t been a major crime in Towamencin in over a decade, but the taxpayers pay over $1 million per year to be harassed and pay for their donut budget This level of government waste is happening in every locality and state in America. And the Feds put them all to shame with their corrupt, wasteful, traitorous spending, bribing, and war mongering across the globe, to the tune of trillions.

The decline I’ve personally seen in my local community is not just a localized cancer but has metastasized across the land and around the globe. As our economic system accelerates towards inevitable implosion, either as a planned demolition or due to the hubris of central bankers, the fraying social fabric of our civilized society is unmistakable, as the moral state of our country has deteriorated to a level seen only in debauched empires on the brink of failure.

The global elite and their moral depravity have engulfed the world, as their ravenous greed, insatiable appetite for dominion over the masses, immoral deceit, manipulative use of propaganda, and satanic decadence have created economic, social, political, and military distress across the globe. As Toynbee and Solzhenitsyn note, the lack of morality and courage among those who profess to be leaders has permeated throughout society, leading to a dearth of citizens taking civic responsibility for the path of the country.

“Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

We are a lost society, ruled by emotions, captured by technology, misinformed, uneducated, indifferent, fearful, passively accepting of whatever government and media tell them is true, and entranced by materialism funded by debt. We are a sick dying culture where common community standards, self-responsibility, hard work, kindness, and manners have been superseded by the worship of abnormality, celebration of degeneracy, living off the government, spreading hatred, and waging undeclared wars across the world.

There is an empty shallowness to our civilization, with the vacuum filled with gadgets, pathetic displays of fake affluence, trivialities like social media, and superficial displays of virtue signaling regarding the latest woke craze shoved down our throats by those controlling the levers of society. There is an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, fear, and foreboding mood of impending doom, as this Fourth Turning accelerates towards its bloody denouement.

The aura of pessimism about the future and fear that our superpower status, only in existence since 1946, is rotting from within permeates the psychology of those actually willing to think critically and see what is really happening. The existing social order will be extinguished during the waning years of this Fourth Turning. We are in the interval between the decay of the old and formation of the new, whatever that may be.

This transition will be one of uncertainty, turmoil, miscalculation, fanatical misrepresentations, war (civil & global), false prophets, bloodshed, and clear winners and losers. Decay and death of empires have happened for centuries and are necessary to expunge the excesses and abuses which always occur as empires expand and its leaders exhibit a hubristic arrogance towards their people and the world.

“Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – The Fourth Turning

It is hard to believe the prognostications of Strauss & Howe a quarter century ago, just after I moved to my community, could be so eerily accurate. But, when you are sure of the catalysts: debt, global disorder, and civic decay, the volcanic eruption of distress can only flow along certain channels, preordained by choices made over decades by our leaders and ourselves.

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

• Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
• Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
• Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
• Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction” 

This Fourth Turning has created tremendous distress in all four categories noted by Strauss & Howe. With over $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities, the country is already in default, but unwilling to admit it. The Social Security fund will run out of money in a few years. State and local pension funds are underfunded by trillions. With Powell and his minions in control, hyperinflation and deflationary depression are on the near-term horizon, with financial assets crashing once again, for the fourth time this century.

The social distress has been initiated and promoted by the global elite through their complete control of the media propaganda outlets. They are attempting to spur violent upheaval, as this will give them the excuse to disarm and electronically imprison dissenters and Great Reset resisters. Class, race, religion, and gender are all being used to stoke unrest.

The political distress is the biggest gaping wound in our national body today. If critical thinking individuals didn’t acknowledge the existence of a Deep State before, they surely can’t deny its existence now. It has existed for decades, but has been forced out into the open, as threats to their power and control multiply due to their arrogance, ineptitude, wickedness, and avarice.

Anyone who dares to deviate from their directives and threatens their fiefdom is either killed, neutered, or destroyed (JFK, RFK, George Wallace, Perot, Assange, Trump). Russiagate, two impeachments, J6 witch trial, and now the rogue DOJ/FBI raid on Trump’s compound has driven the political stress to heights not seen since 1860. The desires of the globalist elites for a Great Reset into a new world order where you own nothing, and they own everything is the goal of all this engineered chaos.

The military distress may be the most concerning and potentially most destructive aspect of this Fourth Turning as we enter the normally bloody phase. The flailing U.S. empire is provoking and stoking global conflict to keep feeding the Deep State military industrial complex. The Ukraine conflict was initiated by the U.S. in 2014 and is being used as a justification to fight Russia without getting our hands dirty.

Continuing to poke the nuclear armed bear, has the potential to escalate the conflict to a point of no return. Throwing fuel on the fire by provoking China over Taiwan’s independence is irrationally reckless and the mark of a desperate empire seeing the sun setting on its 76-year reign as the one global superpower, and willing to risk global war in a fruitless effort to remain king.

The U.S. can let its empire expire with a whimper (e.g. British Empire) or a bang. Based on their ham-handed, stumbling, absurd endeavors to maintain their dominance over the world, they have initiated global food and energy shortages, caused unbearable economic hardship upon the middle and lower classes, and have pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war with countries run by serious men. While we are supposedly led by an ancient fossil lost in a fog of dementia and unable to string two coherent sentences together, even with a teleprompter. Obama, the Deep State, and a plethora of diversity hire apparatchiks are really calling the shots.

The smile has faded on this empire of debt, delusion, denial, and destruction, just as it has on the barn near my house. The coming trials will require levels of courage, fortitude, and sacrifice which many might think they are not capable of summoning, but we have no choice. You can’t sit out Fourth Turnings. Sides will need to be chosen and life or death decisions made. The future of this country and the world hang in the balance.

Choosing your allies and forming local communities of like-minded people with the skills to survive and thrive in the world created after the coming conflict is resolved, is all you can do at this point. Preparation may not be enough, but not preparing guarantees a bad outcome for you and your family. Whatever you do, put absolutely no faith in any government solution to our predicament. They are the enemy and you can’t vote your way out of this.

I hope after this is over to see a fresh coat of white paint applied to that old barn and a brand-new yellow smiley face resurrected on the same spot, marking the start of a new High.