Let me say from the outset, with a degree of specific assurance we generally reserve for other matters, Russia had nothing to do with the targeting of grain facilities in the port city of Odesa.  Geopolitically and strategically, such an action would be against their interests.  These events have the smell of the U.S. State Dept and CIA all over them.

Start by first reviewing the agreement between Russia and Ukraine that was announced yesterday. July 22 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal on Friday to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, raising hopes that an international food crisis … can be eased.”   NATO country Turkey, specifically Recep Erdogan, brokered the deal between Russia and Ukraine.  Ignore the narrative engineering and WATCH.

Russia was particularly a geopolitical beneficiary from the agreement itself.  No longer could NATO and the western alliance blame Russia for the void in global food markets associated with the conflict in Ukraine.

From the perspective of Russian President Putin, the grain movement through the port city of Odesa was a net benefit.  “Russia has taken on the obligations that are clearly spelled out in this document. We will not take advantage of the fact that the ports will be cleared and opened. We have made this commitment,” said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

However, from the perspective of the Western alliance, the agreement mooted one of their biggest justifications for the upcoming global food shortage.   If Ukraine and Russia are exporting food, and yet food costs are still rising…. well, the food shortage impact from western energy disruption, the Build Back Better agenda, starts to become increasingly visible.

Suddenly, within hours of the trade agreement, the grain transportation system and the port city of Odesa come under fire from mysterious cruise missiles.

Europe – Missiles struck a key Ukrainian port Saturday, just one day after Kyiv and Moscow signed a breakthrough deal to unblock shipments of grain. Pointing the finger at Russia, Ukraine’s air force chief said the port — a key site for exporting Ukrainian grain — had been deliberately targeted.

“The port of Odesa, where grain is processed for shipment, was shelled. We shot down two missiles, and two more missiles hit the port territory, where, obviously, there is grain,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told reporters.

Russia has denied any involvement in the strikes, says Turkey’s defence minister.

The strike has been “unequivocally condemned” by the UN, alongside EU officials, such as European Commission vice president Josep Borrell, who said it “demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law.” (read more)

The origin of the mysterious missile attack becomes clear when you overlay the question of ‘who has motive’?

It wasn’t Russia.

We can be almost certain it was the U.S. State Department, and covert CIA operators, who used their operational control within Ukraine to target the exports.

Stopping the export of Ukrainian grain is in the interests of the western alliance.  After all, it was the United States who previously claimed, “Vladimir Putin is weaponizing food.”…

Apparently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has the ability to drive up U.S. inflation, explode U.S. energy costs, increase gasoline prices, influence global agriculture, weaken U.S. oil refining capability, disrupt availability of diesel fuel, impede the transportation of U.S. goods, force municipal energy companies to raise prices, cancel airline flights, stop the manufacturing of infant formula and now block the production -and increase the cost- of food in North America.

That’s their collective story, and they’re sticking to it. (read more)

A deal between Ukraine and Russia aims to ease the global food crisis. - New York Times - Jul 23, 2022

BRUSSELS — Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul on Friday to free more than 20 million metric tons of grain stuck in blockaded Black Sea ports in Ukraine, a deal aimed at bringing down soaring grain prices and alleviating a mounting global hunger crisis.

The highlighted claims are as false as much of the other NYT reporting on Ukraine.

Ukraine grain exports reach 47.2 million tonnes so far for 2021-22 - World-Grain.com - Jun 6, 2022

KYIV, UKRAINE — Ukraine has exported 148,000 tonnes of grain in the first five days of June, pushing its July to June 2021-22 marketing year total to 47.2 million tonnes, the country’s agriculture ministry said on June 6, Reuters reported.

The ministry said the total volume included 18.578 million tonnes of wheat, 22.4 million tonnes of corn and 5.7 million tonnes of barley, with corn shipments dominating the June start, Reuters reported.
...
Ukraine reached 54.9 million tonnes of wheat, corn and barley exports in 2019-2020, but dipped to 44.9 million tonnes in 2020-21, mostly on lower wheat production, according to the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Feb. 1 Foreign Agricultural Services (FAS) quarterly report. Before Russia's invasion, Ukraine had been projected to export 63.7 million tonnes of the grains in 2021-22.

The above numbers are more than 6 weeks old. Back then the difference between projected exports and exports up to June 5 was 63.7 - 47.2 = 16.5 million tons.

Ukraine's grain exports to reach 2 mln tonnes in June - deputy minister - Reuters - June 20, 2022

Ukraine’s grain exports will increase to 2 million tonnes in June from 1.7 million tonnes in May and reach the maximum volume that Ukraine can ship by land routes, First Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskiy said on Monday.

Since the first report a further 3 million tons of grains have been exported. The total left to export from the last season is thereby likely down to about 13 million tons.

Where the New York Times found '20 million metric tons' 'stuck in Black Sea ports in Ukraine' (because the Ukraine has mined the approaches)  is unexplained.

As for 'soaring grain prices' please consult these charts:

chart 1,  chart 2

To me it does not look like the recent prices have 'soared'.

The NYT also claims that the release of Ukrainian exports will be 'alleviating a mounting global hunger crisis'. In 2021 Ukraine's share of global wheat exports was 8.5% while Russia's was 13.1%. Since February exports from Russia had been hindered by 'western' sanctions on Russian banking, freight insurance and port access. In connection with yesterday's deal those sanctions have been at least partially removed. It will be Russian exports that will alleviate the hunger crisis much more than Ukraine's.

The NYT once had fact checkers who looked out for mistakes like the above ones. That now seems to be uncommon.

The main wheat farming in Ukraine occurs in the east and south where the war has likely led to much less planting during this season than in previous years. It is therefore unlikely that whatever will get harvested will be exported by farmers as local needs will have to be satisfied first. (read more)

Furthermore, to succeed we must be guided by the facts, and what those facts bear out as opposed to what we wish to believe. Look only and solely at the facts. Love is wise. Hatred is foolish. At least according to Russell, the author of "Why I Am Not a Christian." Today he might face criminal charges for that essay in certain geographic locales in this country and others.

Those American locales are the same ones H.L. Mencken described as harboring devotees of William Jennings Bryan, in some ways the early 20th-century version of Donald Trump. Mencken described Bryan as a man who "liked people who sweated freely, and were not debauched by the refinements of the toilet." The only difference today is that Trump doesn't actually like those people, but will get their votes as he also sells them  commemorative towels, MAGA hats, T-shirts and other swag.

Hey, he said it. I just agree.

The current GOP implosion is the single most significant event in the modern political arena. As it further condenses into a political black hole, the party's dwindling numbers continue to find new basements to raid in a never-ending, unethical quest for total power. The rats have long fled the sinking ship. All that remains are the leeches.  

With that in mind, you'd think the Democrats would be killing it going into the midterms. But most pundits, many Democratic strategists, members of Congress and some privately at the White House think otherwise. At best, some of these people believe the Democrats could hold on to the Senate while losing the House. The worst case scenario? Democrats lose both the House and the Senate while being treed by an angry Kodiak bear fleeing a catastrophic climate-induced wildfire. 

Only the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old precedent recognizing a [fictitious] constitutional right, may have given the Democrats a fighting chance to hold onto both houses of Congress. And now, secretly, every Democrat and many former Republicans have felt the spark of a New Hope: the possibility of  increasing the Democratic majority in the Senate enough to eliminate the filibuster rule. Why the sudden change of mood? It isn't exactly the plans to the Death Star.

The Roe v. Wade debacle threatens to produce a galvanized voting bloc of women from across the socioeconomic spectrum that could make such an outcome possible.

If that happens, it won't be the first time women of all colors have had to clean up a problem caused by a bunch of self-indulgent men.

But the Democrats have to overcome their natural desire to eat their own or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That is the party's continuing curse. In this environment, the zero-sum game of politics, oddly enough conjured up by the shriveled mind of onetime GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, holds sway in certain factions of the Democratic Party. "My way or the highway" isn't just a rant from a stifling parent. It is a battle cry among some Democrats — and among all Republicans. It makes building a consensus increasingly difficult.

"I spent most of my career in the federal government, and I'm very practical about what can get done even on the best days," Democratic strategist Julie Zebrak explained. "I do think Democrats putting forth candidates who create false expectations and who have views that aren't realistic is a problem. For the midterms, we need to put forth candidates who can beat the Republicans, and I'm not sure that's always who we chose."

Each party used to understand that concept. Today, it is anathema to true believers everywhere. But the real problem, according to strategists on both sides of the aisle, is renewed voter apathy. [My kind of ] People are tired of Trump. People are tired of Biden. People are tired of broken promises and unattainable goals. "If they become frustrated and don't turn out to vote, everyone loses," Zebrak warned.  

Fifty years after women got the right to vote, Roe v. Wade solidified a[n egregiously wrong] constitutional right for all women. Fifty years later, it was lost. What if 50 years after women got the right to vote, they then lost that right? Can anyone seriously imagine that? Unfortunately, today you can. So, there is no doubt a great deal of frustration both with politics and in politics today.

The bright spot for the Democrats, the non-Trump Republicans and the [brainwashed] American people has been the Jan. 6 [show trial] hearings — which will wrap up (at least for now) in primetime splendor on Thursday night. The messaging coming from these hearings has been clear and concise[, ignoring the role of the Federal Bureau of Insurrection]. Those who engineered its [propagandistic] presentation have made sure it is [not] a fair and factual representation of the ongoing [efforts to right a stolen election] conducted by Donald Trump, which still threatens th[ose who stole this] country. It has been precedent-setting. It's been enlightening, frightening and overwhelming. Part of that is due to how these [show trial] hearings have been produced.

If the Democrats can learn from the hearings and apply those lessons in messaging to the campaigns for the midterms — while remembering to pick candidates who can actually win a general election (two really big ifs) — the Democrats might thrive this fall. Might [if they cheat on a monumental scale]. 

But cutting through the clatter in a typical news day remains a tool the Democrats don't readily have available. Issues? Ideas? Stances? Those they have in abundance. But only the Republicans have a handle on how to energize their base, through fear and nostalgia for a time that never really existed. That cuts through everything.

[...]

Meanwhile, the public is overwrought, with all the worries of a Mad magazine parody written by Stephen King. Yeah, it's good viewing, and better reading, but it's a tough way to spend your day.

After the Jan. 6 [show trial]  hearings close, and following the midterm elections, the course for this country will be set, perhaps for a generation to come.

We'd all better make sure it's a float trip we can take together. (read more)

A recession also brings along a natural drop in energy prices as less overall energy is used inside an economy that is slowing, stalled or contracting.

Oil prices drop as less oil is needed for the manufacturing of goods.  Energy use in transportation also drops and generally gasoline prices drop because less transportation fuel is needed, because fewer goods are being transported.  When the economy goes into a recession, energy use and prices always drop.

Put these factors together and you start to see how the transition to a new western energy policy, the Build Back Better agenda, benefits from a recession.

This is the essential understanding needed to reconcile why central banks would intentionally create an economic contraction.  The bankers are supporting the governmental objective of transitioning the western economy into a new energy system away from oil, coal and natural gas.  The banks are supporting the policymakers.

The central banks cannot openly admit what they are doing to support the politicians and policymakers.  In this weird new era, the banks are being instructed to support the policymakers without actually admitting they have changed their monetary mission.  The central bankers will continue to say their job is to manage and/or balance employment and inflation.  However, what they will not admit is their unspoken agenda to support the political decisions.

Instead, almost all the central banks are saying their interest rate hikes are intended to cool inflation by lowering demand.  However, it is not demand that is driving inflation; it is the policymaking behind the energy transition that is driving higher costs on everything.

The supply-side of the inflation dynamic is being overwhelmed by massive increases in energy costs which are the result of intentional western policy.  Extreme increases in consumer prices are the outcome of these energy price increases.  The overwhelming majority of consumer price inflation is being caused by energy policy, not demand.

The various central banks and monetary policymakers know this.  In fact, they are lying about their motives.  They have to lie, because if they were to tell the truth there would be an uprising, and the success of the [Bolshevik's] energy agenda would be put at risk.

In order to support the energy objectives of the various governments’, the central banks are trying -and succeeding- to lower economic activity.

Less economic activity means lower energy needs.  This is what they call “managing the transition” to the new economy based on “sustainable energy.”

The banks and policymakers are ultimately managing the economic decline in order to Build Back Better in the future.  This is why the originating charter of the central banks is being ignored, and the banks are raising interest rates into an already contracting economy.

None of this is being done accidentally.  All of this is being done with forethought and implicit intention.

Unfortunately, for the average person this means the banks and policymakers have entered a phase where it is in their interests to shrink the global economy.  They are trying to control the collapse of the various economies by working together.  This means less jobs, less work, a lower standard of living, and a period of extreme financial pressure for the average person.

Eventually, we will reach a point where the government(s) will need to step in and fill the gap from the declined economic activity.  Bailouts and subsidies will be needed as they were in the COVID lockdown test run.  Unemployed workers and the people being impacted by a prolonged economic recession will need subsidies in order to survive.

The government policymakers are planning to do just that, spend more.  They practiced during the [medically unnecessary] COVID economic lockdowns, now they will execute a similar policy path as they manage the energy transition.

We have only just entered the beginning phase of this Build Back Better agenda.  No one, including the banks and policymakers, have any idea how long this is going to take. We could be in this period of severe economic contraction for several years, perhaps decades, until their grand design of a new energy future is complete.  This has been the discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF), as the instructions were passed out.

The entire time the western government architects are doing this, they must keep the demand for traditional energy products like coal, oil and gas at the lowest demand possible.  That is why the central banks and politicians must keep economic activity at the lowest -yet survivable- rate possible.

Prepare your informed long-term affairs accordingly. (read more)

This is a real, serious loss for Davos, as I outlined in last week’s article on Draghi’s first resignation attempt.

But at the same time that the ECB raised interest rates, it also announced a new ‘without limit’ QE program called the Transmission Protection Instrument, because, as Zerohedge rightly points out, calling it “Italy specific QE sounds a little gauche.” I’d add it’s also against core European values like telling the truth.

ECB President Christine Lagarde was in full control in trying to outline this new experiment in monetary policy, clearly now more “art than science,” to quote Lagarde from the Before Time, you know, last week.

“We have everything under control,” has been the theme of all the headlines coming out of Europe this week. No matter the subject, even little things like the collapse of Mario Draghi’s Davos-backed government in Italy, that can derail the European project.

It’s all good, we just have to stay the course, be ‘data-driven,’ and not yield on Europe’s core values, which, at this point amount to, trusting the arsonists to run the fire department.

To give you an idea of how deeply embedded this controlling idea is, earlier this week it was the statement from EU “Foreign Minister” Josep Borrell.  Europe, he said, must keep the pressure on Russia. It cannot “afford sanctions fatigue.”  It needs to keep pressuring Russia’s economy for the long haul. We must keep up the saturation bombing of Russia’s financial system no matter how many of those bombs land in Rome, Athens or Berlin rather than Moscow.

The unstated goal of these sanctions is to keep advanced technology out of Russia’s hands to domestically produce the weapons it will need to fight off NATO, not next month, but next year or in 2024.

This is a long term plan.  In an episode of RT’s Crosstalk I taped earlier in the week, host Peter Lavelle brought up the Biden Administration quotes about this being a 20-year war against Russia and/or China.

Pompeo’s “Three Lighthouses” speech was the same conclusion; a generation of Americans are going to have to fight a holy war against the East for control over global energy. Too bad no one wants to sign up to join, Mike.

They only have the existing plan and they were put in place to execute it, even if others counter it effectively. Biden is also on the same script, but he’ll be gone soon because he’s no longer a credible messenger. Then we’ll bring in Kamala “We Gathered here, because here is where we are gathered” Harris to be the Moron-in-Chief at the White House.

Because, they remind us constantly, those uncouth Yanks can’t be allowed to run anything.

Moreover, if this is true, why did this CPI print push the ECB to raise rates by 50 bps versus 25 bps? I mean, they expected this CPI print, right? So shouldn’t they have been communicating 50 bps the entire time?

There is logic and then there is the E.C.B.

It’s just a desperate narrative to keep up appearances they have everything under control, that they are on top of the economic situation and there is no reason for anyone to panic.

For the EU however, the clock is ticking down fast. It’s the Fed’s turn next week and with this 50 bps raise, you almost have to expect 100 bps from Powell.

Remember that Eurocrats like Borrell and Lagarde have no Plan B (but maybe a Plan R, sadly).  

Reversals of Fortunes

I invoked Dr. Strangelove here for a reason.  Watch the movie again structurally, note the myriad of ‘reversals’ in it. It’s a marvel of screenwriting.  It shows you how clever humans are when they are single-minded in overcome obstacles to completing a task, operating as if the false is true.

There is no better metaphor for the current state of capital markets and political warfare than that.

I talk about reversals all the time in technical analysis of markets, but it’s an idea that is embedded deeply in storytelling.  The first key to writing a great screenplay is knowing every scene has to have a ‘reversal of value.’   

A reversal of value can be as simple as a cold person finding a hat, to a poor person finding a suitcase full of money.

The scene, no matter how small, has a controlling idea.  That controlling idea has to change a value in some way or the scene has no purpose.

Good editors leave them out. Studios put them back in to sell ‘Director’s Cuts’ on Blu-Ray.

The EU is all about Director’s Cuts of unwatchable French ‘Cinema.’

Reversals are important, they create and release tension.  Good writing constantly builds up small reversals to set the stage for larger ones (Scene Arcs) which impact bigger ones (Acts) and so on.  

The Eurocrats and Davos don’t believe in reversals.  They believe in inevitability and if they can just ‘stay on script’ no matter the complication which has negated their plan, they can still get to the finish line and win.  

This is what happened at the ECB’s pivotal meeting this week. They are staying the course. 2% inflation is the goal. Lagarde dropped all forecasts and talk of inflation being ‘transitory.’ Even though circumstances have reversed against them and they finally admitted it publicly, they won’t give up the overall narrative that everything is fine.

Europe’s values can only be expressed through the EU and therefore anything to save the EU saves European values. Maybe Kamala can crib from that one.

Thank the gods we uncouth Yanks left those European values behind, only to have them constantly try and impose them on us at every turn.

To many investors the Fed had their pivotal meeting last month when they raised 75 bps, but that reversal of Fed policy was only in their minds. In fact, as I’ve been saying for more than a year now, the Fed’s pivotal meeting wasn’t this past June but the one from June 2021, when ‘stealth tightening’ through reverse repo payouts began.

That set in motion as series of complications for the ECB and Davos which have been piling up like those thrown in front of the people trying to stop Armageddon in Dr. Strangelove. The ECB finally realizes that there is nothing to do now but to accept the smoking ruin and face reality.

Stay on Target. Stay on TARGET

What we are seeing in the markets this week after the euro briefly broke parity with the US dollar is the predictable bounce which comes after a major scene arc was completed. The euro hit $1.03 and no further.

But it’s just that, a bounce, a brief comic interlude to release the tension.  

Lagarde’s performance was her admission of a ‘credit-spread gap’ that is now unbridgeable. Italy’s debt is headed towards oblivion and the ECB just said they will spend every euro of German savings to avoid that for as long as possible.

So, we have this idea that the ECB is on top of everything. But, what about the war in Ukraine? What about the EU’s future?

The next headline is just as much of a stunner, in the face of a fracturing EU and Mario Draghi’s tenuous hold on power in Italy: EU Starts membership talks with Albania, North Macedonia

Translation: Don’t worry, the EU is healthy and everyone wants to be a member.  We will only grow stronger, not weaker.  We will absorb all of Europe, claim NATO from the Americans, force them to fight China while we starve Russia. 

This is fine. 

This is all part of the script.  But, it’s clearly not.  

This is what they want us in the West to see, what we’re only allowed to find in internet searches. Meanwhile, the Russians tell you what Europe is really doing, namely lifting sanctions and desperately trying to get the energy and food it needs to stay one step ahead of the hangmen outside of parliaments all across the ‘civilized world.’

The truth is, for the first time in a very long time, Davos is not calling the shots for the entire West.   Italy’s government is gone because the populists were told they have US backing to end Draghi’s reign of terror.

Certified Ph.D. in Geography Liz Truss has even odds of becoming the next UK Prime Minister to keep US control over City of London strong and the UK in the game.

Canada raised rates by 1% the other day, prompting comments about it having to follow, if not one-up, the Fed.  Clearly, the Canadian banks have had enough of Justin TrueDOH! and his Ukrainian Fifth Columnist, Davos chick Chrystia Freeland.

And next week, the Fed will raise the stakes again on Lagarde regardless of what she said today.  TPI is unusable garbage which traders will front-run her into oblivion over. If she wants to know what that feels like maybe she should talk with Kuroda over at the Bank of Japan rather than her data-driven experts in Brussels.

My last point is the one so many people do NOT want to hear, but better consider very carefully. Anti-American commentators do not understand what is happening.  

They cannot wrap their brains around the idea that there are forces within the US hierarchy who see the Imperial Trap for what it is and that if it continues it will be the end of the US. That the Fed is facing an existential threat to its survival and that they have far more wiggle room than they think.

Maybe, just maybe, the giants are fighting and we ants have a hard time distinguishing between not only who’s winning but whose footsteps we should avoid.

At some point the whole illusion will come crashing down.  Europe is the old whore who still thinks she’s a hot twenty-something.  The Fed is the guy at the bar who’d rather drink alone.

One only has to really look at the image Lagarde and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen project to the world to see exactly what I’m talking about. Thank the gods Merkel left the scene.

These ladies will stay on script while riding the bomb to ground zero thinking they have dance partners the entire time. (read more)

CTH cannot overestimate what is more likely than not, as the Biden administration is now reportedly going to declare a national climate emergency in order to take their Green New Deal policy to the next level via executive fiat.  [The Hill Story Here]

Any possibility of the Biden administration creating an even deeper economic collapse under the auspices of climate change regulation, has essentially been stalled by congressional opposition to further Green New Deal (Build Back Better) spending and regulatory legislation.

Some, albeit not enough, congressional representatives, can see what lies at the end of this fundamental energy change, a significant collapse of the United States economy.  However, the committed ideologues behind Joe Biden are not going to let the legislative branch interfere in their climate change agenda.

What we are about to see is most reasonably predictable against the backdrop of how Biden’s administration exploited the “national COVID emergency,” that backstopped and justified their eventual use of OSHA to mandate vaccinations, and regulatory control over the private sector, under the guise of a pandemic emergency.  We predicted that administration approach in December of 2020, and that is exactly what they did {GO DEEP}.

When CTH shared that OSHA would be the institutional regulatory vector for forced vaccinations, many said we were conspiracy theorists.  Ten months later that is exactly what the people behind Joe Biden did (link). Now we can expect that same health emergency approach (massive regulations) to repeat with the declaration of a national climate emergency.

Pause and think about the ramifications to all domestic economic and business interests if the federal government starts using all agencies to regulate a new climate emergency policy.  Think about the regulations, the scale of potential regulations, from the dept of transportation, the dept of labor (including OSHA), the dept of the interior, the dept of energy, the dept of housing and urban development, the dept of education, the dept of health and human services, and many more.

The people behind the Biden campaign, those in real control of what this is about, have not hidden their goals and aspirations.

These are not stupid people.

They are scheming, conniving, ideological, ever-planning, ever-manipulating & Machiavellian types within the political system, lusting for power, influence and affluence.

WASHINGTON DC – The [illegitimate] Biden administration is considering the declaration of a climate change emergency in response to congressional inaction on the issue.

It’s unclear when and if such an announcement will come, though the White House had been considering a move as early as Wednesday.

Two sources familiar with the discussion on Tuesday morning told The Hill that the announcement could come Wednesday — the same day that Biden is expected to discuss climate during a trip to Massachusetts.

A third source also told The Hill that a climate emergency was under White House consideration.

By Tuesday afternoon, one of The Hill’s sources said that while the White House had planned to declare the emergency as soon as Wednesday, it has since advised that it will not do so on that day.

The Associated Press separately reported Tuesday afternoon that the White House would hold off from a declaration on Wednesday.

The Washington Post first reported late Monday that the White House was considering declaring the emergency as soon as this week. The White House announced Tuesday that Biden will travel on Wednesday to Somerset, Mass., to deliver remarks on tackling climate change.

A White House official declined to directly comment on whether Biden will pursue a climate emergency declaration, saying only that many options are under consideration.

“The President made clear that if the Senate doesn’t act to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, he will. We are considering all options and no decision has been made,” the official said in an email.

The move comes as hopes for climate action on Capitol Hill have stalled, as swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) backed away from talks last week following months of negotiations. The potential climate legislation, as part of Biden’s broader [Bolshevik] economic agenda, was expected to include major investments in [unreliable and intermittent] clean energy. (read more)

Think about those types of business and energy regulations applied on a national level, and then, as seen in prior Democrat administrations with IRS etc, think about those energy regulations also being enforced through the prism of political affiliation.

Think about how states that refuse to participate will be cut off from federal grants and funding for college tuition, Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursement, etc. etc.

Think about what happens to Main Street USA?

Think about companies on the NASDAQ or national companies on the stock-market?

Think about how those USA-specific federal energy compliance regulations apply when considering U.S. business operations -vs- just taking operations overseas without those worries.

Think about who in Washington, DC then takes control of what types of business interests are allowed to operate…. who determines the winning and losing?

Think about how Federal emergency climate regulations can be used to put the multinational corporate world back (the globalists) on their former financial pathways, even without TPP and TTIP trade deals.  [Every domestic regulation weaponized against Main Street USA is a win for the Wall Street multinationals.]

Think about how much China and southeast Asia would benefit and would love to see our economy knee-capped in a Biden regulatory stranglehold; essentially achieving the same objectives as the Paris Climate Treaty.

Think long and hard about how far the tentacles of achieving the Green New Deal can extend under the auspices of federal emergency climate mitigation.

Remember, those who are working on this don’t care about the middle-class and they have not for decades. The visibility of the ‘rust belt’ is the reference. This is about government bureaucrats using their DC power base to control trillions in economic value and sell their ability to influence the winners and losers to the highest foreign bidder.

Look at what blue states have already done to seize power and control under the auspices of a [contrived] national health emergency. Now think about that same manipulative intent spread throughout the entire country by weaponizing federal agencies with advanced regulation toward a national climate emergency.  The entire country turned into a California style-controlled energy economy.

Now, think carefully about how that approach aligns with a political change in personnel at the White House.  Joe Biden’s usefulness now exhausted. (read more)

There’s no “It’s Summer” clause in the Constitution, empowering the president to ignore the will of Congress and unilaterally govern when it gets hot. The rejection of the president’s “agenda” by the lawmaking branch of government isn’t a justification for executive action, it’s the opposite. The Senate has unambiguously declined to implement Biden’s climate plan.

Though you have to marvel at the utter shamelessness of Democrats, incessantly warning that “democracy” is on the precipice of extinction, now urging the president to act like a petty dictator. It’s been less than a month since the Supreme Court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s claim that bureaucrats could govern without Congress to regulate carbon (which is to say, the entire economy). What makes anyone believe that the president—who, incidentally, just got back from begging Saudi theocrats to pump more oil—is imbued with the power to enact a new regulatory regime or funding by fiat?

We now have senators like Jeff Merkley, who told reporters on Monday that Biden’s emergency edict “unchains the president from waiting for Congress to act,” openly undermining their oath to the Constitution by attacking the institution they represent. Congress may have spent decades abdicating its responsibilities—which, despite conventional wisdom, isn’t to rubber stamp the Democrats’ agenda—but its members rarely advocated openly for executive abuse. I guess they’re evolving.

Bloomberg reports that a emergency declaration would “unlock” the president’s power to “redirect federal funding to clean-energy construction.” When Donald Trump enacted an emergency declaration to reallocate funding earmarked for military projects to build a wall on the U.S. Southern border—“a clear attempt to circumvent the legislative branch and one that I hope leads to the Supreme Court overturning the abused National Emergencies Act,” I wrote at the time, so save your emails—the entire establishment melted down. “Declaring a National Emergency Could Give Trump Authoritarian Powers,” a columnist at New York Magazine claimed. “A Win For Trump’s Authoritarian Agenda,” wrote another in Forbes. And so on. It’s worth remembering the border is within the purview of the federal government. Trying to control the weather is not.

Which brings us to another small problem: There is no emergency. Politicians might treat every hurricane, tornado, and flood as an apocalyptic event—and then conveniently blame their political opponents for failing to rein in nature—but by every quantifiable measure humankind is less affected by climate than ever before. Despite the massive expansion of fossil fuel use, despite the explosion of the world’s population, far fewer people die from the weather.

Our ability to adapt to the vagaries of weather and acclimatize to the realities of climate change—whatever they may be—is far cheaper than state-compelled dismantling of the Constitution (and modernity). You may vigorously disagree. And that is a political debate about policy that belongs in Congress among representatives of the people. If every hurricane, heat wave, or flood is a justification for unilateral federal executive governance, we will be in a perpetual emergency. Regulating carbon emissions is an open-ended invitation to regulate the entire economy. Which is the [Bolshevik's] point.

And just as historically high gas prices—driven, in part, by the administration’s efforts to create fossil fuels scarcity—are slightly ebbing, Democrats want Biden “to halt crude oil exports, limit oil and gas drilling in federal waters, and direct agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency to boost renewable-energy sources.” Even if there was an emergency, the notion that diverting some money to prop up unreliable energy sources or subsidize more electric cars production is going to do anything to change the trajectory of the climate is a risible claim. The real emergency is that we have a lawless party pushing lawlessness. (read more)

My faith holds the perspective that if something is true, it will inevitably be discovered again and again throughout history. For example, in the recent series on ethics and morality, I highlighted the common observation that each of the major religious faiths holds many of the same core beliefs. In my own exploration, I have found that many of the world’s most advanced holistic medical systems have developed identical principles for healing the human body despite having no interaction with each other and the same can be said for many of the world’s most advanced meditation traditions.

Much of human history is a series of repeating cycles and many believe this trend is reflective of the fact that the underlying nature of the human heart and mind has remained unchanged. As a result, human societies will always react in the same way when similar circumstances arise regardless of the era.

Many of you have most likely noticed, our society appears to be going insane. While the current flavor of insanity is a bit different than anything that has come before it (which I believe is due to the amount of readily available information exceeding the capacity of the average human brain to process), what we are experiencing now is by no means the first time a collective insanity has gripped society.  

On account of the focus and reach of this substack, I was requested by the publisher to review a recently released book-The Psychology of Totalitarianism (the author of which, Mattias Desmet, is best known for popularizing the term “Mass Formation”). 

In reviewing the manuscript, I realized that many of the themes throughout it overlapped with both the messages I have tried to share on this substack and the ideas put forth by many wise individuals throughout history who identified the core problems with our society and were able accurately to predict what they would lead to far into the future.  

The Consciousness of Society

One of the most common questions raised throughout history has been “are humans intrinsically good or intrinsically bad?” My own belief is that most (but not all) humans are intrinsically good, but also that most human beings have varying degrees of susceptibility to outside forces that can cause them to commit evil. For example, many sexual predators who assault children were sexually molested in their childhood. I also believe it is likely each reader here has seen examples in their lifetime of someone being treated badly coping with that stressor by treating someone else badly (in psychology this process is termed “displacement”) or someone acting out at another because something innocuous that individual did consciously or unconsciously reminded them of a previous traumatic experience with another individual.

In general, as societies develop a more evolved consciousness, I believe the degree of evil that can occur within them decreases. This is because the society will structure itself to prevent the circumstances that eventually give rise to evil within its members and actively encourage the intrinsic aspects of human nature that promote goodness within the society. 

Simultaneously, as each member of society becomes more conscious, they will become more resistant to allowing negative experiences to influence their conduct towards others.  

The subject of ethics and morality in most cases I would argue is an attempt to move the consciousness and conduct of a society in a positive direction. I also suspect each of you has met people with immense hearts where regardless of how awful something they experience is, they will always be kind to those around them.

My exploration of this topic has led me to believe the most important thing for the direction of society is to encourage the evolution of consciousness within it and in that vein, I have researched how consciousness within societies has changed over the generations. In this exploration, I have found that while less conscious and more warlike societies will often wipe out more conscious and less violent societies (such as what the Roman Empire did to the Druids), in general, I believe there has been a steady forward evolution in the consciousness of the human species.

Providing the assertion that human consciousness has evolved in a positive direction should raise an immediate objection: if that is the case, why have the most horrific acts in human history occurred in the last century? The answer is very simple; even though as a society we have evolved into a kinder and more conscious species, our technological capacity to harm others and the environment around us has evolved at a much faster pace.

World War II

World War II is the most studied war in human history. This is because it was the last major war fought between superpowers where it was unclear who would win and both sides pulled out all the stops to ensure they would be the victor. This is important because, at the time of World War II, technology had finally advanced to the point mass carnage could be created, hence leading to many historians endlessly studying each battlefield implementation of a new war machine.

What is less appreciated about World War II was that it also marked the point where the media, building upon the recent advancements of Edward Bernays (the father of public relations), had evolved into a tool that could control the consciousness of society. 

A large part of the Nazi party’s success arose from their sophisticated propaganda and utilization of the new mediums of film and television. For example, the 1935 Nazi film, The Triumph of the Will was revolutionary for its time and was an immensely successful piece of propaganda many have credited with enabling the Nazis to rise to power and convincing the German populace to consent to the Nazi’s war against the world. 

When film was first developed, it was not possible to overlay sound onto it, so movies were typically produced with a pianist in the theater playing a musical score to accompany the cinematography. In this era of silent movies, Charlie Chaplin excelled at non-verbally conveying his intended meaning to the audience and became the first global superstar. 

When the Triumph of the Will was released in 1935, technology has advanced enough for sound to become incorporated into movies. According to one source, both Charlie Chaplin and French filmmaker René Clair viewed Triumph of the Will together at a showing at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Clair was horrified by the power of the film, crying out that this should never be shown or the West was lost. Chaplin, on the other hand, laughed uproariously at the film. I shared Chaplin‘s interpretation, but I can understand how Claire’s interpretation could have been arrived at in an era where there were no sophisticated movies to serve as a comparison.

Charlie Chaplin saw how easily Hitler’s depiction in that movie could be portrayed as a farcical theatre of absurdity, but also recognized just how dangerous a future it foreboded and made the decision to risk his career and personal savings to produce a rebuttal to it. Charlie Chaplin then studied the movie to the point he could accurately mimic Hitler (Chaplin shared many unusual characteristics with Hitler that also helped in this regard), and in The Great Dictator, Chaplin successfully portrayed Hitler to the world as a clueless buffoon rather than the maniacal genius Hitler had worked for nearly a decade to craft himself to the world as. This approach is extremely important to understand because often the most effective way to red-pill a group of people is not to win with “facts” but rather undermine the foundations of their belief system through comedy and satire that pokes fun at it without direct confronting the ideology and the endless defense mechanisms propping it up.

In addition to breaking down the foundation Nazism was built upon through humor that highlighted the inherent absurdity within it, Chaplin also structured the entire movie to set the stage for a much more serious speech at the movie’s conclusion. 

When I stumbled across this speech, I was awed by both the quality of it (it is still viewed as one of the most impactful speeches in history) and how much of it is just as true now as it was in 1940. Much of the psychology of totalitarianism is encapsulated in this three-and-a-half-minute speech and I would highly advise watching it to better understand our current era.

Note: A soundtrack (that arguably improves the speech) is added to this video. If you would like to watch the original, it can be viewed here. There are also likely a few aspects of the speech you may disagree with which will be addressed later in the article

20th Century Totalitarianism

Although the carnage of World War II’s battlefields is a frequent focus of historians, the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century are best known for the unimaginable horrors they committed upon their own people. Much in the same way advances in technology enabled unprecedented military massacres, those same advances enabled mass genocides to commence around the world.

As I attempted to illustrate in this series on the history of population control and sterilizing vaccines, what normally prevents governments from committing crimes against their people is ultimately the technological feasibility of those approaches. 

This history of “population control” has become much more relevant in the brief time that has elapsed since those articles were written as signs have since begun to emerge of catastrophic changes in the birth rate, the disability rate, and the death rate in the population that are difficult to attribute to anything besides the COVID vaccination campaign.

Like many, I have spent almost three years trying to understand how the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and its various delivery platforms kill or injure the human body. At the same time, the novel spike protein only represents one of the new technologies being utilized against the population and I believe the novel technology (particularly that from Silicon Valley) being used to cause the populace to comply with this agenda is just as important.

One of the major challenges with “red-pilling” people is that the entire context and implications of one “red-pill” belief can often be so complicated it is somewhat of a lost cause to try and open someone’s mind to it. Once one questions one foundational belief, it often requires them to question hundreds of other entrenched beliefs tied to the first belief, and effectively a barrier to seeing the truth is created that is often described as being “too monstrous to conceive.”  

Successfully red-pilling an audience thus often becomes a task of being able to concisely weave together a complex tapestry that accurately portrays the full picture. This is quite challenging to do, and bit by bit has been a goal of this substack. A key reason why I have repeatedly referenced The Real Anthony Fauci is because RFK Jr. was able to effectively portray the immense criminal enterprise behind the entire pandemic response. Likewise, I feel Mattias Desmet in The Psychology of Totalitarianism was able to explain the psychological terrain within our culture that has allowed this insanity to take root.  

Like RFK Jr., I believe the criminal enterprise must be recognized for what it is and the responsible parties held accountable, but like Desmet, I believe addressing these issues is a lost cause unless the societal consciousness within the society that permitted them to emerge is changed. For this reason, his book serves an invaluable role in bringing forth the mindset that is necessary for a better future.  

For the remainder of this review, I will discuss key themes within The Psychology of Totalitarianism, and as best as I can illustrate them with concepts that were not covered in the book (so there is less redundancy for those who later decide to read or listen to it).  

I must also note that in the same way in most cases I strongly agreed with the content of The Real Anthony Fauci but simultaneously had objections to certain details within it, I also do not one hundred percent agree with the content in The Psychology of Totalitarianism. For example, I understand why Desmet needed to take the approach he did for the eighth chapter, “Conspiracy and Ideology,” but my interpretation of the events he chronicled differs. I also noticed a few key aspects of the worst totalitarians of the 20th century were omitted such as Joseph Stalin being a highly paranoid and extremely sadistic individual or Mao Zedong (who caused far more carnage than any other human in history but was not mentioned in the book) largely operating from a place of amorality where he simply didn’t consider the human consequences as he tried his various disastrous ideas out.

Cooperative Systems

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was a gifted polymath who recognized a variety of ills within society and accurately extrapolated what they would lead to throughout his lifetime and well after his death. One of Illich’s central beliefs was that the complexity necessary to maintain the smooth functioning of an increasingly technologically advanced society would result in governments of the world seeking to use every technological means available to micromanage each aspect of society. Illich argued these technocratic dictatorships were attempting to fulfill a fundamentally impossible task, and because they failed to recognize this, would respond to their failures by seeking more and more control over society.

Illich believed that rather than using elaborate mechanisms of control to force human beings to adhere to an unnatural state that was in opposition to human nature, the ideal form of government followed a more decentralized model that encouraged the natural capacities of each member of society and provided the tools each member needed to succeed. This thesis was based on his observations of how well members of radically different societies around the world were able to work together and become highly successful once they were allowed to do so.

Many others have shared similar viewpoints to Illich. The oldest example I know of can be found within the Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching. 

This book was written during an incredibly stressful period of Chinese history where many aspects of each citizen's life were highly micromanaged (with those who failed to comply being immediately executed) and the citizenry were subject to prolonged periods of immense physical, emotional, mental and spiritual stress. The Tao Te Ching’s author argued that using force to control society was an exercise in futility that would require greater and greater strain to maintain, and that the correct way to live life and run society was to work in harmony with nature instead of attempting to dominate it.

Many of the approaches we have taken with modern technology have attempted to dominate a natural process to “improve it,“ yet over time have resulted in diminishing returns requiring greater inputs to maintain alongside a variety of disastrous secondary consequences. For example, modern monoculture agriculture initially boosted crop yields, but in the process destroyed the soil and continually requires more and more pesticides or fertilizers to support it.  

This is highly problematic both because this approach significantly reduces the nutritional quality of the food that is grown (which I believe is one of the underlying causes of poor health within the society) and because it has made the agricultural inputs necessary to create food become a scarce and limited resource. The effects of these policies are best shown within Africa and India, where western NGOs (particularly the Gates foundation), convinced farmers to discard their traditional forms of agriculture for the more “advanced” agrochemical and GMO approach.

Many of those areas subsequently experienced famine or mass suicides of farmers and are now beginning to experience widespread famine due to the pandemic policies increasing the prices of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer. Had these areas maintained their traditional form of agriculture (or even improved it), none of that would have occurred.

One alternative model to our current form of agriculture is known as “permaculture.“ This approach is built around structuring plant ecosystems so that each plant fertilizes the surrounding plants and provides resistance in the ecosystem to pests. In permaculture models, rather than continually increasing external inputs of agricultural chemicals being required, those inputs are instead naturally produced by the plant ecosystem.

The same principles hold throughout medicine, and I believe many problems within the medical system are a result of modern medicine attempting to temporarily dominate illness rather than working in harmony with the natural healing mechanisms of the body. In parallel to the above examples, the modern approach to medicine leads to progressively increasing strain within the human body. This strain then requires greater and greater external inputs to be maintained and thing after thing needing to subsequently be added in order to address each of the complications that arise from this gestalt of unnatural medical interventions.

Finally (as there are many other examples I could also cite of this principle), many activists have come to the conclusion that the best way to oppose totalitarianism and the technological dictatorship we are falling into is not to violently resist it, but rather oppose it through nonviolent resistance such as boycotting the system by creating parallel economic systems. Each of those decentralized systems is built upon the innate human ingenuity and the natural cooperation between human beings that emerge, when as Illich envisioned, they are allowed to.

Human Connection

Like Desmet, I believe that much of the current insanity within our society arises from individuals being disconnected from themselves, each other, and their environment. It is only when this connection is lost that it becomes possible to create a totalitarian society. Once one’s internal environment is in disarray, they stop caring about the disarray around them. This I would argue is why so many humans have no objections to the incredibly short sighted rampant environmental destruction that is committed for the sake of profit and reciprocally why having a clean home often improves mental health.

In my previous series on ethics and morality, I attempted to make the case that the ideal form of morality empowers each member of society with the ability to discern what is right and what is wrong and encourages them to be driven to do what is right. As this is rarely possible it implement consistently, ethics and laws are utilized to fill that societal need, and in all cases there will be times when they overshoot their target (creating collateral damage) and times when they undershoot their target (failing to prevent the societal ill they were created to address). Unfortunately, we are now in an era where we have largely lost the societal morality provided by organized religion and have not developed an intrinsic morality to replace it.

I strongly believe humans have an innate ability to discern what is right and what is wrong. However, as one becomes more disconnected from their body, heart, mind and spirit, this ability is lost. The best analogy I have found for what occurs in the mind can be found within the daily life of kelp, a large floating form of seaweed that is anchored to the rocks on the ocean floor and continually sways back and forth in response to the ocean’s currents. Once the anchor to the ocean floor is lost, the kelp can no longer return to its original location and will eventually end up washed up on the shore.  

The daily pressures of life we face are like the currents of the ocean, and once our anchors are lost, we rapidly fall sway to the tides of society. To some extent, this is encapsulated by the famous quote “if you stand for nothing, you fall for anything.”

Over the last century anchor after anchor that connected us to the ocean floor has been systematically lost. Most of the population works jobs they feel are meaningless (Desmet for example shares a 2013 Gallup World Poll that found only 13% of people worldwide are truly engaged in their jobs). The social bonds that held Americans together such as religion, trust in one’s neighbors, and a healthy family structure have been replaced with a disorienting onslaught of advertising that seeks to convert each viewer to the sponsor’s agenda. For one of the first times in human history, we have abruptly transitioned from primarily requiring physical labor to intellectual labor and have further accelerated this disconnection into our minds through the rapid proliferation of big tech and social media within every aspect of our lives. In my eyes, this is extremely harmful because our species is beginning to lose the ability to feel (which I believe is what fundamentally makes us alive) and is replacing that loss with a slew of mental images and ideas.

The core problem with purely mental ideas is they hold no life within them. As a result, when people are dead inside and disconnected from themselves, ideas become everything to them, and the need to be “right” regarding a specific idea, regardless of how trivial it is can become a metaphorical matter of life or death because these people lack their intrinsic human connection to being alive.  

In totalitarian societies, as Desmet excellently illustrates, this disconnect is deliberately created and then continually propped up by idea after idea (of which many, like Charlie Chaplin a century ago noted often border on the absurd). Eventually, a collective psychosis consumes the nation and much of the population fanatically adheres to the increasingly inhumane and dysfunctional totalitarian system that has established itself.  In many cases this fanatical adherence sadly is their way of obtaining a surrogate for the human connection they desperately crave but have no access to in their everyday lives.

In a recent article, I discussed the absurd sexual policies advised by governments around the world to “stop the spread.” Although this was partly in jest, it also was meant to highlight the tendency of totalitarian governments to rip apart the basic bonds that hold human beings together (I would argue that healthy sexual intercourse is one of the deepest forms of connection and communication in our lives). This is particularly relevant because it has been noted by many scholars (such as Freud’s contemporary Wilhelm Reich in regards to Nazi Germany) that fascist and inhumane behavior within a society often emerges from highly repressive and disconnected sexual relations within the society.

The Search for Truth

Since the dawn of time, there has been a fundamental human need to understand the world and ask the question of “Why?”. One thing an effective search for the truth requires is developing a framework for determining what is true, and a branch of philosophy, epistemology or “How do we know what we know?”, was created for this purpose.

Often when I look at science, I notice that many of its shortcomings are ultimately epistemological in nature (many others have also made the same observation). Throughout this substack I have so far attempted to detail the corruption within the scientific process that led to the disastrous and completely unscientific pandemic response. However, this corruption was only possible due to the pervasive epistemological deficits within our society I would argue are another consequence of the widespread disconnection in modern society.

More specifically, there are four recurring epistemological deficits I have observed:

•Very few people take the time for epistemological self-reflection and to honestly ask themselves how they know what they know.

•Because many issues are so complex and require lengthy backgrounds to fully understand many members of society will instead default to evaluating those issues by either trusting experts, deferring to authoritative sources, or succumbing to the human tendency to follow a crowd. Each of these is surprisingly easy to manipulate and not surprisingly, frequently occurs.

 •Human beings tend to fear the unknown, and many different institutions have emerged throughout the ages to exploit that collective anxiety. It is often the case that the world around us is complex enough that it is simply not possible to fully understand what is occurring. Unfortunately, when this happens, many will respond to that ambiguity by artificially simplifying reality so that a declarative explanation can be affixed to the phenomena and create the illusion that “science” has mastered (and thus dominated) nature when in reality it has not come close to doing so. Traditionally, institutional religions filled this role by proposing a way to “explain” (and thus dominate) the world around us, thereby establishing the political power of the institutional religion. In the current era, it is critical to understand that the religion of science now occupies that role (take a moment to consider how many things can be done with medical science now like raising the dead through a cardiopulmonary resuscitation that in previous eras were labeled as “miracles”).

•The primary issue with utilizing logic as an epistemological framework is that logic is inherently subjective, and any viewpoint can be “proven” once the appropriate logical system has been chosen. 

One definition of intelligence is the ability to manipulate logical symbols, and one application of this form of intelligence is the ability to rearrange logical frameworks to your advantage. This is why many logical arguments you come across are essentially meaningless, and since very few people have been formally trained in logic these arguments are rarely challenged.

On a broad societal level, this abuse of logic has been made clear over the last few years by the obsessive focus on any potential positive data that resulted from the pandemic response and the complete dismissal of any negative data (which in reality greatly outweighed the existing positive data).  

 I attempted to illustrate this point here, and Desmet likewise provided two excellent example: 

 “None of the countries, whether they went into lockdown or not, came even close to the death count predicted by the models. Sweden is perhaps the most interesting example. This country, according to Imperial College models, would have 80,000 deaths by the end of May if it didn’t go into lockdown, which of course it didn’t. Its death count was 6,000. And to reach this figure of 6,000 required the “enthusiastic” counting methods described above. Otherwise, it could even have been much less.”

“When the experts who had built some of the models were asked during their testimony before the British House of Commons why they had not included the collateral damage of the measures in their models, they replied, disarmingly honestly, that this was beyond their expertise as epidemiologists.”

Note: the next part of this which is intended to further explain the fourth bullet point will only make sense to readers who have had similar experiences; please disregard it if you do not relate to it: One of the more effective spiritual practices I have learned (which can also be used medically) works by continually rearranging minute components of the human system until a configuration is arrived at which allows a positive effect to emerge. Over time, that practice made me realize how ephemeral many things I had previously grasped onto within the body, mind, and spirit were. After this realization, I then started noticing that same ephemeral nature could be found within many arguments I came across as they were rooted in a continually reconfiguring logic seeking to at last find a configuration that could “win.” Now, when I debate with these people, I often feel as though I am observing a Tetris player desperately trying to find a way to rotate the blocks of logic falling into the conversation so that the blocks fit into the line of reasoning they are trying to build.

These four themes are frequently exploited by those seeking to convince the masses of their agenda, and because epistemology is rarely, if ever, a consideration in the process of determining what to believe, a variety of more complex deceptions (such as the systemic corruption within the scientific apparatus) never are questioned. 

This leads to the curious situation we have today where many people have blind faith in numbers or statistics while simultaneously failing to recognize how incredibly arbitrary and easily changeable much of the data we are bombarded with is (put differently, the majority of current scientific studies cannot be replicated which means the “evidence” every facet of our lives is predicated upon is in many cases false). There has been such a blatant abuse of statistics and numerical figures during the pandemic response (some of which were detailed here, and much more that is discussed in Desmet’s book) that it has made this deceit observable to much of the population and hopefully can break the population's faith in numbers.

When one is dedicated to learning the truth, they will often find “truth” is illusory and ethereal, but at the same time, certain unambiguous universal truths will occasionally emerge. This is an extremely important concept because life and nature are complex and chaotic, and when they are simplified into rudimentary algorithms, they transform from being vibrant and alive to bland and sterile.

Desmet argues that the choice between a living complex view of reality and a sterile dead one touches upon the fundamental question of whether science will benefit or harm society.  Desmet is not alone in this view, and many highly influential figures before him have also shared this perspective. 

Unfortunately, while pockets of the scientific community, such as those studying quantum physics and chaos theory are oriented towards complexity, the general trend in science and especially big tech has been to do the exact opposite and create a sanitized version of reality where everything can be transcribed into algorithms.

In general that which cannot easily be seen or measured is ridiculed or simply ignored, which is a tragedy as this happens to many of the most important things science should be investigating. One of the most key points Desmet makes is that the dead form of science that reduces reality to a set of strictly defined parameters that demand set algorithmic response is foundational to totalitarian systems, so it is somewhat understandable systemic biases exist against science that brings life and unknown spontaneous variations into our conception of reality.

Denial of Reality

One of the most educational books I ever read was 1984 because of the philosophical ideas it introduced to me that I thought about throughout middle school. One of the scenes I remember best was when the main character was being tortured near the end of the book to distort his mind so that he would hallucinate and sincerely believe whatever the party leadership required him to. Years later, I came across an episode of a cartoon show that clearly illustrated the same concept (near the end of the episode, a police officer is pressured to hallucinate the presence of a gun that is not there).

One of the most insidious lies modern science is built upon is a much more elaborate version of the above concept. 

A central idea within the religion of science is that humans are irrational beings prone to a variety of cognitive blind spots that caused them to hallucinate many things that are not there. 

Science and “evidence” hence assume the role of being the arbiters of truth, while we, the common people are viewed as children who require the responsible adults of science to guide us towards the truth. The problem of course is that institutional science is often completely wrong due to either its own biases or the systemic corruption within it (and in many cases years later the scientific or medical field will zealously believe the concept they had viciously denounced in the not too recent past).  

I most commonly encounter this problem in the context of medical injuries (this is why I spent a few weeks drafting a series on medical gaslighting). Often, after an unambiguous adverse event occurs from a medical intervention, the individual who experienced the injury is repeatedly told by every authority figure in medicine that the idea a medical injury could have occurred is an irrational hallucination. This is asserted as an unquestionable truth because there is “no evidence” that the medical procedure can cause the specific injury that was experienced (even though in most cases you can find evidence supporting the link). 

In effect, much like in the scenes described at the start of the section, the full pressure of science is brought upon the participants to make them directly deny their own perception and understanding of reality.  

Because of how frequently this concept comes up whenever one attempts to study or discuss an “alternative“ science, it has always been a pet peeve of mine. However, after reading The Psychology of Totalitarianism, I discovered that this “scientific” usurping of one’s innate perception of reality is foundational to totalitarian systems; many of the same shenanigans I see today that rest on highly questionable epistemological foundations were previously utilized by the most repressive regimes of the 20th century.  

Once this unmooring of reality was accomplished by instilling a blind subservience to “science” it is then followed by the “science“ of the regime continually morphing and contradicting itself to fit the daily needs of the leadership. This created a situation where the totalitarian government would play Tetris with the minds of its subjects whenever it was convenient to do so.

Because most of us never had to live in a totalitarian state, this type of societal reality is difficult to grasp, let alone comprehend. Since the religion of science has slowly been woven into every fabric of our daily lives, we in turn have moved closer and closer to the totalitarian form of science, often without realizing how deeply we have already fallen under its spell. 

For most of us, the first time we have ever witnessed this type of widespread scientific abuse has been with the pandemic policies, where there has been no logically consistent principle in their approach (besides maximizing profiteering), and yet the “science“ behind each policy has been given a blank check to radically reshape and decimate our society.  

Mass Formation

In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Desmet shows that our modern technocratic society has managed to re-create many of the same foundational conditions that gave rise to totalitarian governments in the 20th century and allowed the pandemic hysteria to rapidly take over our society. Desmet’s central thesis is that when the correct conditions are present within society, a collective or crowd consciousness emerges which causes unspeakable atrocities to be permitted by, and in many cases directly conducted by large masses of the population (this process is termed “mass formation”). 

This is a critical point because the majority of the individuals who commit the worst crimes of totalitarian regimes are not evil or psychopathic, but rather simply had a level of consciousness that allowed them to be swept into a mass formation. Similarly, this provides an explanation of why so many political zealots throughout the ages will feel it is justified to distort the facts in whatever way is necessary to promote their ideology.

The first author to identify this crowd consciousness, Gustave Le Bon, accurately modeled it in 1895 and provided many insights that remain applicable in the current era (unless you have directly witnessed it, it is nearly impossible to comprehend the extent to which people within crowds can change or suddenly snap when the correct circumstances emerge to trigger that behavior). 

Totalitarian states revolve around placing the population in a vulnerable state because that facilitates pushing them into a horrific crowd consciousness. The key factors that precipitate this totalitarian transformation are those discussed throughout this article such as systemic disconnection from the things that make us human, social isolation, silencing of dissenting voices and blind faith in science and in powerful authoritarian figures.  

Mass formation also requires collective anxiety to be present within the society. Many argue anxiety is the disease of the modern age (for example the WHO has reported one in five people have an anxiety disorder globally) and I believe this collective disease is a symptom of the pervasive disconnection within modern society.  

One of the most well-known examples of this concept is the repeated observation that members of advanced industrial societies cannot handle solitary confinement. Many eastern spiritual traditions argue this is a result of those individuals being unable to handle being alone with what is inside their own mind. Although solitary confinement is rarely enacted upon the population, many more subtle versions of it already exist throughout modern society and create an environment that compounds the existing pervasive anxiety.  

Most individuals who suffer from chronic anxiety hence will continually seek thing after thing that allows them to escape from being with themselves, and I have seen many cases where this comfort greatly weakened or emotionally disabled them (for example I find individuals who repeatedly smoked marijuana to address emotional discomfort they encountered over time became unable to cope emotionally stressful events). Once the lockdowns occurred (which imposed a more overt form of solitary confinement on many), it resulted in an epidemic of psychiatric diseases which arguably eclipsed all the potential benefits that resulted from the lockdowns.

The final component necessary for mass formation is to have an “enemy“ to attach all of these negative feelings (that largely arise from disconnection) onto. In most cases, the enemy must be an abstract target so that it can never be defeated and the perpetual war against it can sustain the mythology of the totalitarian state. Infectious disease has been a common choice throughout history (as any means can be adopted to “address” it, blind allegiance to science makes the new “scientific” policies unquestionable, and the potential for deaths from the disease makes it possible to justify committing atrocities for the greater good).  

As was discussed here, I do not agree with the school of thought that argues viruses are a hoax, but I have tried to listen to their case, and I feel one very important point they make is that the fear of “deadly” diseases has been continually abused throughout history to enable genocide. Over the last few years that fear of disease has been used to justify lethal vaccine mandates, previously in the United States it was used to justify forced sterilization, and in Nazi Germany the “danger” of tuberculosis became a justification for murdering large numbers of undesirable members of society. (read much more)

This is The World Davos Built. The only problem was that too many people simply said, “You know what? No.” Now it wouldn’t matter to Davos if you and I said this. We’re just ants to be stepped on. They have multiple layers of psy-ops and distractions ready to pit us against each other and marginalize dissent to the point of irrelevance.

Whether we like it or not we will be tracked by multiple databases through our online activity, pressured at our crappy jobs to conform or face financial and reputational ruin and told the most egregious lies about why it’s all necessary.

But when Davos’ plans threatened some of the most powerful people in the world, including those who they’ve previously allied themselves with, that’s when the wheels began coming off this train. It’s created an opportunity for one set of globalists to take out another set of globalists and basically make a mess of everything. True power that had been suppressed through excess credit creation (i.e. eurodollars) was now facing the moment where it could reverse the flow of capital.

First it was Russia in 2014 declaring independence by first opposing the Ukrainian Junta and taking Crimea then moving in to stop the looting of Syria in 2015.

Then it was the US Commercial Banks’ turn led by the Federal Reserve, beginning with the introduction of SOFR — Secured Overnight Funding Rate — in 2017 and the appointment of Jerome Powell as FOMC Chair by populist president Donald Trump.

Today we are watching the Fed run the global economy into an iceberg long thought that we could avoid. We can’t. We have to hit it and take our lumps. This is what will set the stage for a reversal of The World Davos Built, which is the legacy this generation must leave the next or humanity enters a multi-century dark age of technocratic control or worse, complete societal collapse.

So, look around you. Russia is winning in Ukraine. The Global South refused to be intimidated and stood by Putin. Sanctions are destroying the EU. The US dollar is still king (for now) and gutting Davos’ power base, the European Union and the European banking system.

The Fed is gleefully raising rates to destroy the Biden Administration and set the US on a more sustainable and humbler fiscal path, the one thing the world desperately wants to see. Draghi is out in Italy, Eastern Europe is falling while Viktor Orban rises in Hungary. The BRICS are expanding and NATO is fracturing.

Let’s make 2022 a year that Davos Lost. (read more)

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that six locations each will shut down in Seattle and Los Angeles, in addition to two in Portland, Ore., one in Philadelphia, and one in Washington, D.C., by August. The company cited repeated safety incidents behind its decision.

Leaked footage of Schultz at an internal meeting, published by The Post Millennial’s Ari Hoffman on Thursday, revealed the coffee-chain executive blaming elected officials for an environment in which it’s too hostile to operate.

“In my view at the local, state, and federal level, these governments across the country and leaders, mayors, and governors and city councils have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental illness,” said Schultz, who returned to the company as chief executive in April. “We are going to have to refine and transform and modernize many of the things we do to meet the needs of our customers in a very changing operating environment in which customer behavior is changing.”

In a letter to employees on Monday, Debbie Stroud and Denise Nelson, both Starbucks senior vice presidents, outlined reforms to address inner-city safety issues plaguing corporate stores.

“We read every incident report you file — it’s a lot,” they wrote. “We want you to know that creating a safe, welcoming, and kind third place is our top priority. Because simply put, we cannot serve as partners if we don’t first feel safe at work.”

In March, employees began to unionize after being confronted with a spike in homeless and violent people entering cafes after the company changed its bathroom policy. Following a woke controversy, Starbucks [stupidly] opened its restrooms to all members of the public, even people who weren’t buying anything. Schultz said in that June the four-year-old bathroom policy is now on the chopping block.

“We have to harden our stores and provide safety for our people,” Schultz said last month at a forum sponsored by The New York Times. “I don’t know if we can keep our bathrooms open [for the homeless to smear feces on the walls].”

In the effort to unionize, one employee complained to Jacobin that Starbucks baristas are doubling as “untrained social workers.”

Stroud and Nelson said the company will now be offering staff de-escalation, mental health first aid, and active shooter training. The pair also highlighted benefits for employees seeking paid parental leave or abortion.

“We hear the challenges facing you in stores, and we all have a lot more to still figure out — but we know we’ll get there because YOU have shown us, time and again, that our stores can be a place of hope, optimism and community for all,” they wrote.

The overwhelming rise in violent crime plaguing urban population centers run by Democrats has led voters in some California cities to recall their prosecutors. Last week, L.A. County officials said they received enough signatures, 715,833 despite only 566,857 needed, to place a referendum for District Attorney George Gascón on the ballot pending signature verification. The process follows voters in San Francisco successfully ousting District Attorney Chesa Boudin by a 10-point margin last month. (read more)

On The Washington Post homepage these days, you’ll find headlines such as, “How To Deal With A Chatty Coworker Who Won’t Get Out Of Your Office,” but you won’t find mention of the more than 100,000 people protesting in Madrid. You’ll find the story of a gay union entitled, “What’s Two ‘Yentas’ Plus One Senator? A Lifetime Together” at The New York Times, but you won’t see a single heading on the more than 10,000 protesters in Athens. Corporate media has largely glossed over the tens of thousands of farmers in the Netherlands who clogged up roadways and distributions centers by holding Canadian-trucker-convoy-style demonstrations to protest radical climate policies.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which records protests worldwide, 11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022. As of July 5, Carnegie had recorded protests of more than 120,000 people in France, 100,000 in Spain, 10,000 in Greece, 10,000 in Kazakhstan, 10,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 5,000 in Iran, 5,000 in Peru, 1,000 people in Argentina, 1,000 in Morocco, and 1,000 in the U.K.

Many of the French protesters took to the streets on May Day for salary increases and against President Emmanuel Macron’s increase of the retirement age. Fifty-four people were reportedly arrested in Paris after some demonstrations turned violent. France’s economy, Europe’s third-largest, shrank in the first quarter of 2022, and in June, inflation shot up 5.8 percent compared to last year. Protesters also held demonstrations in March, with some complaining they had lost 15 to 20 percent of their purchasing power. Meanwhile, France’s answer to inflation? Keep spending; the country is throwing $20.4 billion at the problem.

In Spain, with gas subsidies, direct grants, and an increase in the minimum wage, the socialist-leaning government has seen only rising inflation rates (10.2 percent), and the accompanying price hikes are driving thousands of people onto the streets to protest. The country is finding out the hard way what a 40 percent reliance on renewable energy will do to the labor market. With its high unemployment rate at 13.65 percent as of the first quarter of 2022, labor shortages are raising prices on staple grocery items to an almost 30-year high. Thousands of demonstrators protested in March for relief in the form of tax cuts.

Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that any supply issues, aggravated or initiated by the Russia-Ukraine war, would burden Greece’s weakened economy that only just emerged from a decade-long crisis in 2018 to be sent right back by Covid shutdowns in 2020. In April, thousands gathered at a labor union-organized rally outside parliament in protest of inflation, which followed a February demonstration where about 10,000 people showed up to protest electricity prices that had leaped 56 percent, fuel prices that had jumped 21.6 percent, and natural gas prices that had skyrocketed 156 percent in January.

In India, a country locked in a vicious cycle of going into debt to pay off interest of former debts, the increasing cost of living is racking the country. In March, an estimated 50 million workers participated in a two-day strike to protest the loss of jobs and income, with communist groups organizing rallies in May decrying the high rate of inflation.

The socialist government in Argentina that led the country to default seven times and produced the largest decline in the relative standard of living in the world since 1900 is trying to do something new. On Monday, Argentina’s new economy minister Silvina Batakis announced her plan to cut the fiscal deficit — a proposal more than a thousand Argentines are protesting.

Decades of government spending and faulty economic policies have led to Argentina’s inflation rate growing to 58 percent. Prices are liquid and through the roof, with iPhones costing six months’ rent and a two-hour plane ticket equaling the cost of a month’s college tuition. Batakis plans to hold Argentina to the terms of a $44 billion debt deal it made earlier this year with the International Monetary Fund. Thousands of Argentines meanwhile flocked to protest against the economic hardships felt by the country upon cutting spending and took up banners crying for Argentina’s separation from the IMF.

The United Kingdom is suffering from a high 9.1 percent inflation rate as of May, and many are tired of the government’s response. Brits flocked out in February to protest rising costs of living, with demonstrations held in at least 25 towns and cities and signs reading, “tax the rich” and “freeze prices not the poor.” The U.K.’s inflation rate was already at 5.4 percent in January of this year due in part to the 2020 Covid shutdowns, but it has since almost doubled, largely due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian oil. In June, thousands marched down central London in protest, wanting the government to boost its welfare response.

Still reeling from the worst drought it has had in 40 years, Morocco is seeing price spikes on even the most basic goods. Thousands of Moroccans joined protests in February to decry the increasing cost of living, with unions staging more demonstrations in April. The country has high unemployment rates and large public debt, along with a heavy reliance on imports.

Aside from a scant headline here and there, America’s most popular news providers, The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and NBC, did not cover these protests, despite the French and Spanish protests being 10 to 100 times larger than the protests these corporate media giants did report.

None of these four major outlets wrote a single line on the protests of more than 100,000 demonstrators in Spain, more than 10,000 in Greece, more than 1,000 in Morocco, and more than 1,000 in the U.K. The New York Times published one lone article on the strike in India, where an estimated 50 million people walked off the job. The Washington Post has two small articles on the Argentinian protests of more than 1,000 as inflation appears set to hit 70 percent, and it has reported once on the May Day protests in France where more than 120,000 people protested government pension reforms. NBC mentioned the May Day protests once in a world report. This is the entire 2022 coverage by these media giants of these countries’ protests over economic turmoil.

Of these 11 countries, only four made any major headlines. The corporate press oftentimes only highlights these economic protests when they get so loud they can no longer be ignored, as we saw with Kazakhstan’s kill order to quell protests and the Sri Lankans’ attack on their president’s home. Over the weekend, the biased media finally began covering the Sri Lanka protests that are over 10,000 people strong — but only because footage of demonstrators swarming the president’s residence by the thousands on Saturday went viral.

Corporate media won’t talk about the rest of these protests because the countries are struggling from economically disastrous policies akin to [illegitimate] President Joe Biden’s. Any show of economic turmoil in EU member states could be traced back to EU sanctions on Russia or green energy failures, which would fly in the face of the corporate media’s agenda. Many of these countries have inflationary monetary policies.

The leftist media will tell you about Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Peru, however, but only to bolster its pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia narrative that denies the realities of war to promote Biden’s efforts to empty our pockets and replenish Ukraine’s.

In its treatment of the Kazakhstan protests, The Washington Post made sure to mention the country’s relationship with Russia. The Times’ articles on the Sri Lanka protests framed the economic downturns in terms of problems stemming from Russia’s invasion and ignored Sri Lanka’s Green Deal ban on chemical fertilizer that ultimately crashed its economy. Both CNN’s coverage of protests in Iran and NBC’s reports of those in Peru likewise stressed the Russia-Ukraine war as the cause for economic turmoil.

The media only highlight these world protests when they grow too big to ignore or when the facts can be skewed toward their preferring narratives. Cherry-picking which protests to highlight gives media cover to paint them as isolated incidents in non-Western countries instead of a worldwide trend showing the consequences of embracing left-wing policies. After all, Biden is making the same blunders in the United States, and corporate media can’t have Americans connecting those dots.

The U.S. labor market is in shambles. Inflation has skyrocketed to a 40-year high at 9.1 percent. The [illegitimate] Biden administration is drawing down our emergency oil reserves, shipping it overseas to nations that can’t function on their “Green Energy” policies anymore than we can. Irony alert: The oil will go through a European pipeline despite Biden citing climate conservation to shut down our own Keystone pipeline.

Discontent with these policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.(read more)