As world leaders gathered for the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, they faced an uncomfortable reality check from the conference president Sultan Al Jaber, who stated, "there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C," warning that their fossil-fuel policies would "take the world back into caves."

Nevertheless, no lesser mind than Vice President Kamala Harris pledged another $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund at the summit, seeking to help developing countries adapt to the “climate crisis” as well as decreasing fossil fuel production, according to CNN.

The cult-like worship of (and escalation of) these policies is what led to tonight's discussion between Tucker Carlson and Michael Shellenberger, author of the must-read "Apocalypse Never", highlighting the increasingly obvious disconnect between global elites and the general public - most specifically in the context of environmental policies.

"We know that the pillars of civilization are cheap energy, meritocracy, Law and Order, and free speech and all four of those pillars are currently under attack," warns Shellenberger in his typically erudite and fact-based manner.

The hypocrisy is simply Orwellian.

As Shellenberger recently wrote on his Public substack, flying on private jets to a climate conference to announce plans to make energy even more expensive for working people is bread-and-circuses, except there’s no bread, and the circus consists of rich people celebrating their wealth, morality, and superiority.

Carlson begins by pointing out that the drastic climate change policies are “fundamentally nonsense,” asking Shellenberger just how long this “posturing” of environmentalism can go on:

"We're watching people push an Orthodoxy at increasing volume with increasing hysteria and with increasingly severe penalties for disagreeing...what is that?"

Shellenberger replies:

"Global Elites used to pretend to care about people but they're not even pretending anymore..."

Adding that that cheap energy was “currently under attack,” explaining how it directly affects “modern civilization":

"you start with cheap energy, but you can’t maintain modern civilization without cheap energy.”

He argues that "environmentalism used to have a kind of utopian positive side - that’s all gone.”

Sadly, but clearly, the two highlight the fact that financial interests are behind the push for renewable energy sources, claiming that oligarchs and political figures are promoting expensive and inefficient energy sources to control energy markets.

This is particularly clear from the detrimental influence of the ESG movement on the oil and gas industry.

Simply put, the current environmentalist movement has become nihilistic and anti-human.

“So," the journalist continues, "the attack on cheap energy is truly an attack on modern civilization and it should frighten us and we should be aware to, and alive to it."

Shellenberger concludes with perhaps the most poignant thought of the whole discussion:

“What gives me hope is that I think it’s finally becoming obvious to people that it’s a scam...

...and that the people that are pushing this really hate civilization, or at least they hate civilization for others.

They want it only for themselves and that they’re in the grip of a really dogmatic cult philosophy.

I mean, I think it’s fair to call it a death cult at this point, when you’re stifling energy supplies that are necessary to keep people alive...

I don’t know what else to call it other than an anti-human death cult.”

Carlson replies:

"that's right. It's not environmentalism. It's the snarling face of tyranny."

Watch the full interview below:

Ep. 44 Another half-demented 80-year-old yelling about things he doesn’t understand. These are our leaders. They don’t care about our future because they don’t have one of their own. pic.twitter.com/iylpXALJjZ

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 4, 2023

The thinker who brought us the history of punishment, linked with surveillance, was Michel Foucault, who died prematurely in 1984, and whose thesis of ‘panopticism’ I referred to in an earlier post. His work is an inexhaustible source of insight regarding the way in which one enters into a relationship with history – something that is not self-evident, but requires careful consideration of the contingent, usually unpredictable factors which have contributed to the present state of affairs. This insight also opens the way for a critique of current social practices, which may otherwise seem self-justifying and necessary. 

Foucault’s writings on enlightenment suggest that there is a fundamental difference between ‘enlightenment’ in the Kantian sense, which emphasised the universal moment of scientific and philosophical knowledge, and ‘enlightenment’ in the sense of a philosophy of the contemporary present, which would do justice to both the (Kantian) universal as well as what is contingent and particular, which is not subject to historical laws, deterministically conceived.

In his essay, What is enlightenment? (in The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow, P., New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 32-50), Foucault argues that Kant’s emphasis on the universal should be amplified by Baudelaire’s characterisation of the modern in terms of a tension between being and becoming (or the universal and the particular), in this way finding the ‘eternal’ (or enduringly valuable) in the transitory, historically contingent moment. For Baudelaire, this amounts to a species of self-invention.

Foucault, however, maintains that such self-invention would enable one to turn Kant’s critique into one that is pertinent for the present time, by inquiring what there is, in what we have been taught to accept as being necessary and universal, which we no longer are, or want to be, thus practising a kind of ‘transgressive’ enlightenment. This, I would like to show, is highly germane to the time in which we find ourselves, and by scrutinising the history that has brought us to our fraught present, we should be in a better position to identify what it is that we no longer want to be. 

The obvious question is therefore, what specific contingent practices of the present would have to be transgressed, and how could this be done? This is where the French thinker’s work on punishment and surveillance becomes important insofar as it is applicable to the present time. Specifically, I am thinking of Foucault’s first lengthy ‘genealogical’ study, aimed at exposing historically effective power relations (as opposed to the earlier ‘archaeological’ studies, which uncovered historically shaping discourses), Discipline and Punish – The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) – although the later volumes on the ‘history of sexuality’ are relevant in a different way.

Discipline and Punish may be summarised by stating that it affords one scrutiny of contemporary punitive and other social practices that reduce human beings to disciplined, docile bodies, while the The History of Sexuality – Vol. 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), demonstrates how ‘bio-political’ control is exercised over individuals and populations through ‘bio-power.’ 

In Discipline and Punish Foucault is interested in the distinctively modern form of (punitive) social control which, unlike the premodern form, is not designed to frighten citizens into submission. The latter was achieved by making a public spectacle of the punishment of criminals, for example through the gory business of drawing and quartering (Foucault 1995, pp. 3-6).

Instead, modern control requires many, varied micro-mechanisms for disciplining citizens, such as ‘the gentle way of punishment’ – prison-incarceration, which was put into practice surprisingly quickly, with its meticulously calculated categories of morally efficient and socially useful penalties, as a generalised punishment for a diversity of crimes in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries in Europe (Foucault 1995, pp. 115-117). It also included the ‘instrumental coding of the body,’ for example the discipline of rifle-training (Foucault 1995, p. 153), as well as the ‘analytic’ of learning to read according to different stages (Foucault 1995, pp. 159-160), teaching children a form of uniform ‘penmanship’ (Foucault 1995, p. 176), and organizing available space in hospitals in an increasingly ‘efficient’ manner.

The paradigmatic instance of disciplining was undoubtedly the ‘panoptical’ surveillance of prisoners in prisons designed, according to Jeremy Bentham’s 19^th-century model, to yield maximum visibility of inmates in their cells (Foucault 1995, pp. 200-201). 

Foucault distinguishes three chief disciplinary mechanisms, all of which contribute to shaping individuals into economically productive, but politically impotent, entities – if this sounds familiar, given the apathy of most citizens in contemporary democracies, it should be clear what the history behind present levels of political passivity, if not impotence, has been. These mechanisms are ‘hierarchical observation,’ ‘normalising judgment,’ and the ‘examination’ (in which the first two are combined). Together, they comprise the backbone of a ‘panoptical’ society, named after Bentham’s optimal-surveillance prison, or ‘Panopticon.’ Such ‘panopticism,’

Foucault demonstrates in this book, has become pervasive in modern society through the micro-operation of mechanisms such as those alluded to above. In passing one should note that modern panopticism – guided by the regulative ideal of complete transparency or visibility of all citizens – could be understood as a secular version of the Christian (as well as other religions’) belief that no one can escape the ‘all-seeing eye of God.’

The disciplinary techniques by which people have been constructed have the effect of producing ‘docile bodies’ across a broad social spectrum, according to Foucault. ‘A body is docile,’ says Foucault (1995, p. 136), ‘that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved.’ Although this could have been the aim in previous eras, the ‘techniques’ that comprised this modern ‘project of docility’ included new elements (Foucault 1995, pp. 136-137), such as the ‘scale of the control’ (which concentrated on individual bodies instead of the collective), the ‘object of control,’ (the ‘efficiency of movements;’ the ‘economy,’) and ‘the modality’ (an ‘uninterrupted, constant coercion’ through supervision, exercise, and surveillance).

It is not difficult to think of contemporary counterparts of these techniques, such as the manner in which one is subjected to standing in queues at modern airports, waiting to go through security [theater] before one can board one’s flight, and having to submit to the procedures of removing items from your pockets and all the rest of it – today’s equivalents of the micro-techniques which produce ‘docile bodies.’ 

The three mechanisms of discipline referred to above are largely self-explanatory, but a few clarifying remarks would not be amiss. The first, ‘hierarchical observation,’ is ‘a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power’ (Foucault 1995, pp. 170-171). Foucault names several instances of the ‘observatories’ that were the spatial embodiments of ‘hierarchical observation,’ and were constructed in the course of what he calls the ‘classical age’ (approximately from 1650 to 1800 in Europe): the military camp as ‘almost ideal model’ – ‘…the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility,’ ‘…hospitals, asylums, prisons, schools’ (1995, p. 171), and ‘workshops and factories’ (1995, p. 174). Normatively speaking, what these had in common was that the ‘…perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly’ (1995, p. 173). 

Other kinds of hierarchical observation – with its connotation of higher versus lower – marked by its accompanying effect of control, by turning people into docile bodies, are not hard to find. Teachers and lecturers are familiar with the sloping way in which rows of seating are arranged in schools and universities, where optimally lit classrooms and lecture halls with large windows facilitate the visibility and learning of, as well as discipline among students. Counterparts of this may readily be found in factories and hospitals. 

Docile bodies are also produced by ‘normalizing judgment’ (Foucault 1995, pp. 177-184), which involves the ‘power of the norm.’ ‘Like surveillance and with it,’ Foucault remarks (1995, p.184), ‘normalization becomes one of the great instruments of power at the end of the classical age.’

While previously individuals were judged according to the moral value of their actions, today they are placed on a differentiating scale which ranks them in relation to everyone else, usually in terms of criteria that can be quantified. One finds it everywhere, and not only in schools and universities. Restaurants, airlines, car rental companies, hotels, and educational institutions are all subjected to ranking, establishing a ‘norm’ by which they are judged. Moreover, these social practices do not tolerate difference – everyone should conform to the same standards. 

The examination as disciplinary practice of reducing bodies to docility is familiar to everyone (Foucault 1995, pp. 184-194). In fact, the introduction of the examination made possible the connection of knowledge of individuals with a specific exercise of power. According to Foucault (1995, p. 187), the ‘examination transformed the economy of visibility into the exercise of power.’ He points to the ironic reversal, namely that premodern power was visible, while the subjects of power were largely invisible, compared to modern, disciplinary power, which operates through its invisibility, while simultaneously imposing a mandatory visibility on disciplinary (that is, disciplined) subjects (1995, p. 187). I need not remind readers of the degree to which this has been intensified post-COVID, but through technological means that even Foucault could not have anticipated.

Further, the examination ‘also introduces individuality into the field of documentation,’ through archiving, by which individuals are placed within ‘a network of writing,’ a veritable ‘mass of documents that capture and fix them’ (Foucault 1995, p. 189). As a mechanism of disciplinary power, examination, ‘surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a ‘case’’ (1995, p. 191). One therefore cannot exaggerate the way the examination has contributed to moving ‘ordinary individuality,’ which used to be in the darkness of imperceptibility, into the light of visibility that goes hand in hand with disciplinary control, turning an individual into an ‘effect and object of power’ (1995, p. 192), that is, into a ‘docile body.’ 

Neither is Foucault blind to the fact that many social-scientific disciplines, such as psychology, are implicated in this, contrary to what one might expect. This is evident where he observes, a propos the examination (1995, pp. 226-227):

…the examination has remained extremely close to the disciplinary power that shaped it. It has always been and still is an intrinsic element of the disciplines. Of course it seems to have undergone a speculative purification by integrating itself with such sciences as psychology and psychiatry. And, in effect, its appearance in the form of tests, interviews, interrogations and consultations is apparently in order to rectify the mechanisms of discipline: educational psychology is supposed to correct the rigours of the school, just as the medical or psychiatric interview is supposed to rectify the effects of the discipline of work. But we must not be misled; these techniques merely refer individuals from one disciplinary authority to another, and they reproduce, in a concentrated or formalized form, the schema of power-knowledge proper to each discipline…

The result? Today’s societies are ubiquitously carceral (prison-like), where the body is no longer seen as the prison of the soul or mind (as was believed since the time of the Pythagoreans through Christianity to the early modern period), but vice versa. The peculiar discovery of the modern era was therefore that, by ‘working’ on individuals’ minds their bodies can be much more effectively controlled than the other way around. The present era appears to have perfected this dubious process, to the detriment of the people who are subjected to it. 

Foucault points to a certain kind of architecture that emerged during the time he documented, which captures, metaphorically, the general societal function of the broad range of disciplinary techniques that has developed since then (Foucault 1995, p. 172):

A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control – to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable.

In case one might suspect that Foucault’s intent was merely to document the disciplinary practices briefly outlined above, it would be a mistake – Foucault’s genealogy of the prison, or more accurately, of modes of imprisonment – was clearly motivated by critical considerations, given his interest in relative autonomy. This explains his characterisation of 20^th-century society as thoroughly ‘carceral.’ In other words, the ‘disciplinary coercion’ referred to earlier, instead of being confined to military quarters, has become pervasive in the contemporary era. Small wonder that Foucault remarks sardonically, and with undisguised critical implications (1995, pp. 227-228):

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

Today this process has developed much further, and may be shown to have become more sinister, to boot, as Foucault’s friend and colleague, Gilles Deleuze, has done. But it helps to take note of Foucault’s work in this regard, insofar as it shows that the present, sustained attempt at gaining total technological control of people globally, especially through pervasive surveillance – at the cost of their democratic freedoms – did not fall from thin air. It has been centuries in the making. And we no longer want to be the objects of such unwarranted control. (read more)

The Vermont-based company is partnering on Baking Pitchfest 2024 with Project Potluck, which describes itself as "the largest professional community inclusively for People of Color (POC) in Consumer Packaged Goods."

On its website, Project Potluck invites people of color to "become a member for free," while asking those who don't meet the criteria to "learn how to support us."

King Arthur Baking defines its use of the term "people of color" as "Asian or Pacific Islander; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latinx; Indigenous or Native American; Middle Eastern or North African."

The baking competition is reportedly designed to provide "equitable opportunities for People of Color entrepreneurs," and winners will receive "financial support, brand exposure and mentorship to help accelerate their businesses."

The contest is divided into two categories, according to King Arthur: one focused on bakeries and the other on baking products.

According to BakingBusiness.com, in order to be eligible, "individuals and businesses must be POC-led and members of Project Potluck, with a straightforward membership process for interested POC individuals." The product category is open to non-white candidates nationwide, but the bakery category is only open to "person of color led" businesses in Washington state and Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Molly Lawrence, corporate social responsibility manager at King Arthur Baking, said, "Pitchfest 2024 is a testament to our commitment to fostering a more inclusive baking community and empowering creative POC leaders in the industry."

Project Potluck Executive Director Kathleen Casanova said it's important to expand the diversity of voices within the baking industry.

"Baking Pitchfest 2024 is more than a competition; it's a platform for empowering People of Color to break barriers and redefine the narrative in baking," Casanova said.

The grand prize winner of the baking contest will receive a $10,000 cash prize, "brand-building exposure through features on King Arthur Baking marketing," as well as one-on-one business consulting and a free membership to the Bread Bakers Guild of America.

King Arthur apparently took down the page advertising the contest and the baking company has since been blasted online by customers.

"I will NEVER use King Arthur racist flour," Madame DeFarge wrote in a post on X. "Disgusting. Too bad for them as my one woman baking business is growing. King Arthur Baking Company, you are getting the @budlight treatment. I am so angry right now. My breads and cakes aren't worthy of their support?"

An X account called Poodle Mom said she emailed King Arthur "about them excluding white people from their competition." She then posted a screenshot of what she said was the company's response, in which a customer service representative named Amy said she was "sorry to hear that this doesn't sit well with you."

"Please know that we'll be here and hope there'll come a day when you feel ready to rejoin our community," Amy wrote.

"Racism is racism," Sandman MD posted on X. "Looking at you King Arthur Baking Company. Those that claim this is only natural, as, 'it's just the pendulum swinging the other way,' remember, unless the pendulum is stopped, it'll swing back in the opposite direction. I don't want a pendulum, and ultimately, no one should. Revenge/Counter revenge isn't good for anyone."

The application process for the competition runs from Jan. 2 through Feb. 10. (read more)

as many of you likely saw, bill ackman is going scorched earth on academia. after some folks at MIT came after his wife’s dissertation, he decided to take a look at the publications of every professor and leader at the school.

popcorn futures were limit up.

you can read his (quite long) discourse on this HERE.

to be sure, bill is a formidable foe. he’s also arguably unhinged. but whatever your take on him, he’s certainly one who relishes a fight and who has a legions of smart, obsessive analysts working for him to bring to bear and a set of new AI tools to fuel them.

this is just the tip of the iceberg.

but it’s also ancillary.

consider:

overton windows are funny things.

you just cannot get a conversation going about certain topics or ideas until the world is ready, but once it is, it happens like a torrent.

slowly, slowly, then all at once.

ackman is not nemesis but a symptom of nemesis. the time had come for this to happen. he happened to be front and center when it did.

and that’s a VERY important distinction because it means he is not alone.

he’s part of a tide that sweeps clean and once in motion, the tide does not stop.

a fun and perhaps less considered aspect of the impending rummage through academic publication:

plagiarism is going to be the least of it.

this has been an incredibly isolated and unaccountable ivory tower.

small groups of hyper-politicized and fetishistically tribal hyper-partisans took over entire fields of endeavor. they took over the journals. they took over the grant giving. all of it.

this has made a lysenko level mess out of entire fields for decades. it has turned peer review into an ideological commissariat whose primary purpose has been to speak power to truth and to prevent truth from being spoken at all.

and now, suddenly, these obscure journals and dissertations, previously read only by other like minded members of "the club" who cared about nothing save ideological purity are going to be read widely.

propensity for plagiarism will be the least of the revelations.

the content is going to horrify.

have you ever actually read any of these papers about gender as social construct but race as immutable signifier of oppression or the whole intersectional aggrievement matrix of post modern pabulum?

it’s SO much worse than people suspect.

this isn’t even the outrageous stuff

and none of this is new.

this charming missive was “calling the shot” over 20 years ago.

it’s just that no one was paying attention because who cares what the current iteration of “how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin” happens to be?

it was a parlor game for tweedy irrelevancies.

but people are interested now. this spilled out into politics and economics and regulation and child rearing. it filled elementary schools and boardrooms alike.

and that crosses a rubicon.

and now comes the pushback.

academia is open for audit.

have you seen the dissertations of university professors, presidents, and elected officials and realized what they are actually about?

half of it is not even scholarship, it’s just diatribe.

have you ever seen how bad the science and the data behind whole fields like "climate science" or increasingly “medicine” is or what passes for ethics or even law?

have you seen how awful the study design in social (and hard) science has become and how laughably unable to replicate it is?

you will.

it's coming.

and when the world gets a look at what has been passing for academia, it's going to get very, very interesting for the academics because these people are so corrupt, so self-absorbed, so out of step, and so detached from reality that they have not only destroyed but actually inverted the whole system of “higher education” and turned the university into a self-serving fallacy factory for deranged doctrine.

and enough is enough.

occult academia has thrived and festered in obscurity.

it's going to be amazing what a little sunshine can disinfect. (read more)

I come to praise Claudine Gay, not condemn her. The now ex-president of Harvard did our nation a great service by being smug and arrogant at a congressional hearing. Her hubris revealed what a farce DEI is as Harvard overlooked qualified candidates and chose her simply because she is a black lady.

This is Bidenism. He chose his vice president and a Supreme Court justice the same way. The latter told Congress she could not define what a woman is. The former’s speeches make her sound like a 10 year old explaining the world to a 7 year old.

(A 10 year old is a person who has lived for 10 years.)

But wait. There’s more Bidenism. He plagiarizes everything, including his biography. Gay plagiarizes too! How do you think a dummy like her got a PhD? Her doctoral dissertation in 1997 from Harvard turned out to steal the work of others in violation of Harvard’s rules.

Her ability to become the top scholar in America — and presiding over Harvard is the cherry atop the Ivy League whipped cream that covers the higher education dessert — raises the question of whether this treat is worth having. Maybe America needs more meat and potatoes.

America has 1 million active medical doctors. They are useful and I would not be surprised if half the 6,020 doctors in West Virginia are foreign born.

America has 3 times as many people with doctorate degrees. I am not saying they are useless. I just would feel better if we had 3 million medical doctors and a million PhDs.

Every one of those PhDs wrote a doctoral dissertation and many of them have written research papers since then and even books. It would be a shame if some used artificial intelligence devices to check to see if those committee approved theses were cut-and-pasted, wouldn’t it?

Spoiler alert: Somebody is.

This all began on October 7 when Palestinian soldiers invaded Israel and raped, tortured, murdered and mutilated more than a thousand Israelis and kidnapped 240 more, including babies.

The next day — before Israel even had a chance to respond — Harvard students and faculty condemned Israel. Similar craziness happened at Penn and MIT. The lady presidents of those institutions ignored the support of Palestinian war crimes. Two months later, Congress hauled them in to find out what the devil is going on.

The Three Stoogettes sat there smirking. Free speech protects saying kill all the Jews. It depends on the context. It is hate speech only if you say kill all the Jews but you use the wrong pronoun.

The uproar cost Liz Magill her job at Penn and Harvard later forced Gay out. Both will continue to receive their outlandish pay as professors. Only MIT’s Sally Kornbluth remains.

What did Gay in, was her plagiarism and not her anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitism started the snowball rolling down the hill toward her. Billionaire Bill Ackman, a practicing Jew married to an Israeli, began the campaign to get donors to quit Harvard. Money talks and it is louder than the liberal media.

But her plagiarism of Carol Swain at Vanderbilt and others did her in.

The New Yorker reported, “Rumors about Gay’s record had been circulating among conservative bloggers for months, but, as the national spotlight turned toward Harvard, media outlets such as the New York Post began investigating. In early December, the activist Christopher Rufo published allegations about Gay in his newsletter, including instances of missing citations and verbatim copying of other scholars’ writing without the use of quotation marks or attribution. In the following weeks, more apparent instances of plagiarism piled up. Gay has admitted to making errors, such as duplicating ‘other scholars’ language, without proper attribution,’ but she has denied claiming credit for other people’s research, and has said that she stands by her work.

“In any case, on January 2nd, she stepped down from her role, saying that doing so was ‘in the best interests of Harvard’ and that it had been ‘distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor.’ (She will remain on the school’s faculty.)”

Gay was hired because of her resume — or CV as they call it now. She’s black, female and a graduate of Exeter. That was all the search committee was looking for.

And now her appointment bites academics back and not just in donations. Harvard has $50 billion in its endowment portfolio. But while the money does not matter, the plagiarism does because it reveals that doctoral programs are not as legitimate as the universities say they are.

Having watched Magill leave and having forced the outing of Gay, Ackman turned his attention to MIT’s Kornbluth. She is fighting back.

Business Insider and MIT (which is hanging on to its woman president for dear life) went after Ackman’s wife, who has a PhD that they claim was plagiarized. She said it was a few unattributed paragraphs in a 330-page thesis.

Robert Sterling, a CFO and investor, tweeted, “Going after Ackman’s wife is one of the dumbest moves I’ve ever seen. MIT and Business Insider don’t understand the force of nature that’s about to come after them.

“This guy literally beat out Brad Pitt competing for his wife. While you were losing sleep over not having toilet paper during Covid, he was making $2.6 billion shorting the entire economy. The dude is just built different.

“Ackman is righteously pissed off. He’s motivated. He’s rich, and he’s got some of the best research analysts in the world working for him (I worked in military intelligence, and DOD/IC analysts don’t come close to Wall Street short-sellers when it comes to autistically meticulous research).

“You think Gen Z clickbait journalists and MIT deans more comfortable in chemistry labs than in tense board-room proxy fights are ready for a guy like this once he gets on the war path? Yeah, right.”

Autistically meticulous! Is it OK if I enjoyed the phrase?

On Saturday, Ackman tweeted his plan: “Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus.

“Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work of others.

“But it wasn’t just the MIT faculty that did not sleep last night. The Harvard faculty, its governing board members, and its administrative leadership did not sleep either. Because why would we stop at MIT?

“Don’t we have to do a deep dive into academic integrity at Harvard as well?

“What about Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth? You get the point.”

He went on and on but readers get the drift.

It is called two can play this game. They went after his wife, he goes after them. If they want to be Palestinians, fine, he will be the IDF with AI as his Mossad.

This also raises the question of whether we really need all these PhDs. Each one has a thesis out there in the pile of 3 million dissertations. Are there really 3 million papers as worthy as Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity?

OK, that bar is a tad high. Let’s lower it to Colonel Sanders’ 11 Herbs and Spices, which like Three Stooges shorts is just as delicious today as it was when it was new.

In Gay’s case, Harvard lowered the bar to “Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Policies.” She could not pull that off.

11 days after Christopher Rufo broke the story on Gay’s academic mooching, National Review reported Harvard’s investigation was as useless as the FBI’s investigation of Hunter’s laptop.

NR reported, “Harvard and its president Claudine Gay are doing damage control amid an ongoing plagiarism scandal, with the embattled leader requesting even more corrections to her past work, this time her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation — the foundation of her academic career.

“But the total of seven corrections requested so far still leaves dozens of other instances of potential plagiarism unresolved. And scholars who believe their work was plagiarized have told National Review that they were never contacted by Harvard as part of its investigation into Gay’s academic work.

“For instance, it does not appear that any of the corrections will address portions of Gay’s doctoral dissertation drawing heavily from the work of Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, in some cases reproducing her writing word for word without citation.

“Swain — who has been outspoken about her feelings on the plagiarism scandal — told National Review that she is concerned by Harvard’s response to the revelations of its president’s academic-integrity issues. She feels that the university should have reached out to her and the other scholars both as a professional courtesy, to inform them their work may have been plagiarized, and as part of their fact-finding effort to determine the extent of Gay’s transgressions, since they’re the foremost experts on their own work.”

The coverup failed and 12 days after that story appeared, Gay resigned. She blamed racism in a column she wrote for the New York Times.

Harvard’s woes go further back then Gay. It hired Liz Warren to be on its token totem pole of law professors without bothering to verify that she was an American Indian. She’s not.

In August, Business Insider reported on another scandal, “Harvard professor Francesca Gino was accused of faking data. Now her million-dollar empire is crumbling — and scholars are eyeing who's next.”

Simine Vazire, a professor of psychology, ethics, and well-being at the University of Melbourne, gave this assessment of Gino’s work: “I didn’t think it was fraud, but I thought it was bullshit.”

Nearly three years ago, on April 13, 2021, the Harvard Crimson reported, “Over 40 percent of respondents to The Crimson’s survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they believe the University’s standing within higher education has fallen during the past decade.

“In addition, nearly 70 percent of faculty respondents said that grade inflation is a prevalent issue within their departments, with 34 percent strongly agreeing.”

Gay wasn’t the problem; she was the symptom. Smug and arrogant is no way to go through life. (read more)

Here are rulers, displeased that the people in their charge have been getting away with having forbidden thoughts, and posting these forbidden thoughts on the internet for all to see. So the rulers hire a brigade of females, each of whom has had her sense of humor surgically removed at college, a painful process which leaves the transistioner forever bristling in the presence of jokes. This gives them a kind of superpower, a heightened sense that somebody somewhere might be thinking That Which Shall Not Be Thought. After the surgery, they can tell just by looking at a screen name whether they are dealing with a thought criminal.

What’s odd is that rulers are announcing they are engaging in censorship of Reality. Yet, except for us, not many seem to care. The Cult of Safety First! has wreaked terrible psychic damage on the populace, such that the majority themselves demand “safety.” And, as Mencken said, they are going to get it good and hard.

Of course they are getting away with this in the name of What About The Children! A not infrequent ploy. Yet, as we have all seen times innumerable, once they get a restriction in the name of the kiddies, they apply it everywhere.

No, what struck me most is just how typical Gay is (or was) as an academic administrator. I’m not talking about the alleged fraud or the plagiarism or the lack of publications or the mealy-mouthedness. Okay, I am talking about the mealy-mouthedness. But what I’m really referring to is her naked careerism and apparent ruthlessness.

That’s what makes her so typical—an archetype, if you will—of those who rise through the ranks of administrative power within academe.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, administrators existed to serve the faculty—to handle the record-keeping and the endless paperwork, to wade through the miles of red tape so faculty members wouldn’t have to. Faculty would be free to do what faculty are meant to do, which is pursue knowledge and then write and teach about what they’ve learned.

Usually, under that model, the administrators were faculty members themselves, who took time away from teaching and researching to handle those pesky administrative tasks on behalf of their colleagues. And that is still generally the case at some smaller institutions and among the lower ranks of administrators, like department chairs.

But at most institutions, and at practically every level above department chair—associate dean, dean, vice-provost, provost, vice-president, president—the old collegial model has morphed into an authoritarian, top-down model. Rather than essentially working for the faculty, administrators now “supervise” them, with all that implies. If you’re a faculty member, administrators are your “superiors.” You “report” to them—about everything—and, ultimately, they get to tell you what you can and can’t do.

This top-down approach—as opposed to the original idea of the university as a community of relative equals—is of course reflected in the pay structure. A mid-level administrator typically makes half to twice as much as even an experienced, tenured professor. And at the upper end, administrators can make five to ten times the average faculty salary. Unless you’re a truly brilliant researcher, with a bunch of patents to your name, or else you write a bestseller, the only way to make a lot of money as an academic is to hop on the administrative elevator as early as possible and ride it to the top.

I’m enough of a free-market enthusiast not to begrudge anyone their salary. Indeed, as a former administrator for more than 20 years, I benefited from this system. But it’s also clear that it has created a perverse incentive structure: The higher you rise on that administrative elevator, the more money you make. Ergo, if your primary motivation is to make as much money as possible, it behooves you to rise as high as possible.

And how does one rise in academia? In pretty much the same way people rise within any bureaucracy: not due solely (or even primarily) to competence, but by consolidating their power, which involves sucking up to the more powerful while rewarding supporters and punishing opponents.

All of this, in turn, has produced a strain of flagrant careerism within the administrative class: people whose raison d’etre is to advance through the ranks and who put all their energy and effort into that endeavor rather than devoting themselves to the pursuit of knowledge or the instruction of the young. At smaller, less prestigious institutions, this often takes the form of people acquiring credentials that serve no purpose other than to advance their careers, like doctorates in “educational leadership.”

But even at the most prestigious institutions, we frequently see comparatively mediocre scholars like Claudine Gay parlay whatever advantages they might possess—whether race or sex or connections or just knowing where the bodies are buried—into administrative appointments, which they then protect with a ruthlessness mafioso might envy.

That certainly appears to be true of Ms. Gay. We know that, as dean, she tried to destroy two black members of the Harvard faculty who refused to bow to her feminist, racialized vision of how the world ought to be. One was a law professor, Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., who agreed to represent Harvey Weinstein of “#MeToo” fame, the other a distinguished economist, Roland G. Fryer, Jr., whose research showed that black suspects are no more likely than white suspects to be shot by police.

The specific weapon that Gay used to attack her enemies was “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ideology, commonly known as DEI. The deeper problem, however, is not so much the weapon itself—although that is problematic enough—but the fact that she wielded it so mercilessly and efficiently.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Under Gay’s leadership…the mandate of the administrative state of the university continued to expand and shift from serving faculty to monitoring them.”

To be fair, not all academic administrators are like Queen Cersei—excuse me, I mean Claudine Gay.

Harvard physics professor Ari Loeb put it this way: “The message was, don’t deviate from what they find to be appropriate. It became more of a police organization.” Loeb also indirectly accused Gay, in a recent Medium post, of “[compromising] scholarly excellence…on the altar of a political agenda” and fostering a “self-justifying bubble” within the university.

Again, the precise mechanism she used to prop up her tyrannical reign is less concerning to me than the tyranny itself. I’ve worked in higher ed for over 38 years, and I saw this same sort of behavior from administrators long before DEI became the flavor of the month: If you weren’t with them, you were against them, and those in the first category got the lion’s share of the raises and promotions and cushy assignments, while those in the latter routinely had their lives made miserable.

(I wrote about this phenomenon years ago in an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “A Song of Vice and Mire,” in which I compared the inner workings of academic administration—particularly at two-year colleges, but also in general—to the machinations of the Court at King’s Landing in George R.R. Martin’s marvelous Game of Thrones novels.)

To be fair, not all academic administrators are like Claudine Gay. I’ve worked for a few that were quite good. I once had a rather powerful dean—we’ll call him Bill—tell me that his job was to make sure all the classrooms had chalk. (That gives you some idea how long ago this was.) What he meant was that his job was to make it as easy as possible for faculty members to do their jobs. And that is exactly right. Bill got it.

Unfortunately, in my experience, his type is grossly underrepresented among the ranks of high-level administrators. There are a lot more Claudine Gays and would-be Claudine Gays in academia than there are Bills, people who exist not to serve but to acquire power and then weaponize the latest orthodoxy—whether that’s DEI or whatever follows—against those who pose the greatest threat. 

I don’t mean to downplay the rapidly metastasizing cancer of DEI, which I firmly believe we must eradicate from our campuses, as I have argued elsewhere (for example, here and here). But getting rid of DEI will not rid academia of its Claudine Gays.

To do that, we must have faculty members who first re-embrace their traditional role as seekers and disseminators of truth, instead of pushing politicized, anti-Enlightenment rubbish like critical race theory and “transgenderism;” and who then wrest back the levers of power from the toxic Claudine Gay clones by demanding and participating in meaningful shared governance.

But since neither of those things will ever happen, we’re probably stuck with Claudine Gay and her ilk for as long as academia survives—which, come to think of it, with the Claudines in charge, might not be very long. (read more)

What I saw wasn’t pretty. A white male Kansas City police officer was kneeling on the neck of a woman. My first thought? “Thank God she’s white.” The woman was large and rambunctious. Using just a well-applied knee, the officer managed to hold her in place for at least ten minutes until back-up arrived. The arriving cops slipped a Hannibal-the-Cannibal mask over her face. That wasn’t pretty either. Take-downs never are. I had considered recording the incident on my cellphone, but I chose not to. In retrospect, I should have. (READ MORE from Jack Cashill: The Semantic Burden of Speaking While White)

From the moment I saw the edited video of George Floyd’s arrest a few weeks later, I knew better than to accept the media verdict. Derek Chauvin used exactly the same maneuver my local cop did. The woman in Kansas City had lungs enough to wake a neighborhood. Floyd did not. The problem, I suspected, was not with Chauvin, but with Floyd.

As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck.

To learn what did kill George Floyd, I have consulted with two physicians. One, Dr. John Dale Dunn, is a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in cause of death matters. The other, a pathologist at a major medical center with more than two decades of experience, I will call “Dr. Quincy.”

Quincy requested anonymity given the safety concerns expressed by his wife. She has reason to be cautious. The use-of-force expert who testified on behalf of Derek Chauvin was rewarded for his courage by having a pig’s head placed on his doorstep. The doctor who testified on Chauvin’s behalf had his entire career as a medical examiner investigated by the Maryland attorney general.

I have been consulting with Dunn for at least two years. He has never shied from venturing his opinion publicly. In fact, he recreated Derek Chauvin’s hold on Floyd, using two men whose weight mirrored that of Chauvin and Floyd with no ill effect on the Floyd stand-in. “Derek Chauvin didn’t kill Mr. Floyd,” Dunn tells me. “His bad heart did.” Baker knew this to be true as well. As he testified at Chauvin’s trial, Floyd had “very severe underlying heart disease.”

I met with Quincy two weeks ago. I asked Dunn if he would review Quincy’s findings and give me an informed second opinion. Like Quincy, Dunn is confident that Chauvin’s “subdual” of Floyd — Baker’s word — had nothing to do with Floyd’s death. He agrees with Quincy as well that the fentanyl in Floyd’s system was a non-factor, but that the meth in his system might have been.

The line in Floyd’s autopsy report that caught Quincy’s attention was this one: “Taken together, the gross and microscopic (H&E-stains) features of the lesion are most suggestive of an extra-adrenal paraganglioma.” This rare tumor was found in Floyd’s pelvis. Baker recognized the tumor, argues Quincy, but he failed — or refused — to understand its potency and significance.

These tumors, says Quincy, produce the most potent hormones in our bodies, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. The class of hormones they belong to is called catecholamines. “When the tumor goes off,” he tells me, “that is what’s called a catecholamine crisis. It might as well be a bomb.”

Among the symptoms of such a crisis are high blood pressure, confusion, excessive sweating, muscle weakness, anxiety, panic attacks, shaking, delusions, and hyperactivity, all of which Floyd exhibited on that fateful evening in May. More critically, when massive amounts of catecholamines are released into the blood, various organs of the body fail. Quincy compares the effect to the flooding of a lawnmower’s carburetor. (READ MORE: Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd)

“When a lawnmower engine gets too much gas and floods the carburetor, the engine loses power and chokes and sputters,” says Quincy. “In a similar way, too much adrenaline causes the heart  to lose its ability to pump blood.” When an individual’s heart begins to fail and cannot effectively pump blood, the blood backs up from the heart and leaks into the lungs. The increased fluid covering the alveolae of the lungs interferes with the oxygenation of the blood.

“It appears to me, watching the police bodycam videos, and now knowing he has an occult paraganglioma” says Quincy, “that Mr. Floyd exhibits many of the signs and symptoms of a full blown catecholamine crisis.” The crisis was likely triggered when Officer Thomas Lane taps the window of Floyd’s car with his flashlight at 8:09 that evening. Floyd, who had been nodding contentedly in the front seat of a borrowed Mercedes SUV, is startled and flips out.

A minute later, Floyd is crying like a child. “Okay Mr. Officer, please don’t shoot me. Please, man.” Lane had no intention of shooting Floyd. His crime was passing counterfeit money, not murder. At 8:14, Officer Alex Keung, the son of a Nigerian immigrant, tells Floyd that he will be put in the back of a police car.

As Keung leads Floyd across the street, his mouth now foaming, Floyd says, “I’m scared, man.” Even before he gets in the car, Floyd tells Keung, “I got anxiety for real man, and I’m claustrophobic.”  He adds, “I can’t choke, I can’t breathe Mr. Officer! Please. Please! Aaaaaah!”

When Keung tries to place Floyd into the car, his legs collapsing underneath him, Floyd says, “I’m claustrophobic man, please man, please.” He moans, “I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. Okay, okay. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground.” A friendly onlooker named Charles shouts at Floyd, “Bro, you about to have a heart attack and shit, man. Get in the car.”

Squirming feverishly, Floyd refuses to remain in the patrol car. “I’ll roll windows down, okay?” says Lane. At about 8:17, Floyd foretells his doom, “Y’all, I’m going to die in here. I’m going to die, man!” A minute later he adds, “I’m scared as fuck man…. When I start breathing, when I start breathing, it’s going to go off on me, man.”

As  Quincy argues, it already has gone off. The confusion, paranoia, muscle weakness, anxiety, claustrophobia. and shear terror that Floyd exhibits are all signs of a catecholamine crisis that is causing serious acute bilateral heart failure. Floyd’s complaint that he cannot breathe — even before he gets in the squad car — indicates the resultant pulmonary edema is causing respiratory failure too. He is minutes from dying, and Floyd is the only one who senses this.

Floyd had flirted with disaster before. On May 6, 2019, he was pulled over by the Minneapolis Police in an OxyContin investigation. When Officer Scott Creighton approached Floyd in the passenger seat, says Creighton, he was “moving all around and acting extremely nervous and would not listen” to his commands. Here too, the officers tried to calm Floyd down but finally had to forcibly remove him from the vehicle and handcuff him. “Listen to him,” said Creighton’s partner. “He’s crying like an adult baby.” Floyd was experiencing many of the symptoms of a catecholamine crisis that would kill him a year later. (RELATED: The Reparations Success Story That Isn’t)

Officer Creighton testified for the defense at Chauvin’s trial. “Mr. Floyd didn’t drop dead while you were interacting with him, correct?” asked the cold-hearted prosecutor. He obviously did not, but, observes Quincy, “There is a subtle but important difference between these two confrontations.”

In 2019, Floyd was alert and prepared as  Officer Creighton approached his car. When Officer Lane confronted him in 2020, Floyd was caught off guard. He reacted as if Lane had just snuck up on him to spook him. That reaction caused his tumor to release even more adrenaline than the encounter with Creighton, this time enough to overwhelm his heart.

At the Chauvin trial, paramedic Michelle Moseng testified that Floyd’s blood pressure after the 2019 arrest was extremely high. Floyd had told her “he had a history of hypertension and hadn’t been taking his medication.” Worried that he was on the verge of a stroke, she had Floyd transported to the hospital.

In 2020, a struggling Floyd will not let the officers transport him anywhere. “Just take him out,” says an exasperated Lane. “Just lay him on the ground,” adds Tao. At 8:19, Chauvin and Keung oblige Floyd and lay him on the ground.

As Dunn and Quincy agree, lying on the ground is not at all helpful for someone experiencing acute heart failure. Upright as he was in the patrol car, Floyd at least had gravity to help lessen the back pressure on the lungs. On the ground, he loses that advantage, and the accumulating pulmonary edema accelerates.

The officers know none of this. They believe Floyd is either acting or reacting to the drugs he swallowed. The officers had found a “weed pipe” on Floyd and seen him swallow something. Given Floyd’s behavior, Lane questions whether the drug might have been PCP.  According to the NIH, “The elicitation of violent or psychotic behavior by phencyclidine (PCP) administration is well documented.” Police understand this.

For the next 9 minutes and 30 seconds, Chauvin restrains the muscular 6’6” Floyd using the same restraint I saw the officer use on a Kansas City woman weeks earlier. At 8:21, the officers upgrade their request for emergency assistance to a Code 3. With the fluid rapidly filling his lungs, Floyd is breathing, but he knows something is terribly wrong. Although he can still inhale, exhale, and talk, he is literally drowning in his own fluid.

For the next several minutes, Floyd complains that he can’t breathe, that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts. “Then stop talking, stop yelling,” says Chauvin. “You can’t win,” onlooker Charles chimes in. “You didn’t listen.” Even after he passes out, Lane worries that Floyd might spring back into action. At about 8:27, the ambulance arrives. By this time, Floyd is already dead.

One can forgive the cops for not correctly diagnosing Floyd’s condition. Baker and the other state witnesses deserve no such grace. Quincy was stunned to learn that once Baker observed Floyd’s paraganglioma, he failed to test for catecholamines. Quincy had been taught that if a catecholamine producing tumor is found during the autopsy of someone who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a catecholamine crisis is the prime suspect. Unless the lab results come back normal, it remains the prime suspect.

“There is no way in God’s green Earth that Baker can honestly say [the paraganglioma] is an incidental finding without running the catecholamines,” says Quincy. “The absence of ordering these tests convicts Baker’s lack of knowledge.”

Dunn is a bit more cynical. “[Baker] didn’t know about catecholamine crisis? Never saw it?” scoffs Dunn. He discounts the wisdom of “Hanlon’s Razor” — “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” — and opts instead for “the paranoid approach” —  “Bad things spring from bad intentions.” Baker had a powerful incentive to fudge his findings, says Dunn. “He knows if he goes with the evidence, he likely loses his job and he and his family are at risk from the mob and his career will be extinguished.”

If Quincy’s theory is correct — and Dunn believes it is — here is what happened. Floyd’s paraganglioma, set off when he was startled by Lane, released a large bolus of adrenaline into his circulation. This excessive catecholamine then overwhelmed his heart, causing acute heart failure. The severe acute heart failure then precipitated pulmonary edema leading to respiratory failure, hypoxia, and death.

If Quincy is right, nothing the officers might have done would have reversed the course of Floyd’s demise. “Even if Floyd had made it to the hospital alive,” says Quincy, “he almost certainly would have expired.” The medical personnel would not have known he was having a catecholamine crisis. and would have found him profoundly hypotensive as a result of his acute heart failure. The medical personnel would have administered adrenaline to bring his blood pressure back up. As Quincy observes, any additional adrenaline would be contraindicated in someone in a catecholamine crisis, which, once given, would have sealed his fate.

Given that roughly one-third of catecholamine-producing tumors are inherited, Quincy believes the state should share this knowledge with the Floyd family. With proper screening, family members will have a better chance of avoiding George’s fate.

As for Chauvin, Lane, Keung, and Tao, George Floyd’s fate sealed their own. Knowledge, however, will not save them unless a person of character and consequence acts upon it. And in a state full of cowards, such a person may no longer exist. (read more)

Peer Pressure

by Jennifer White

Seven women met in a darkened penthouse suite in an old office building in New York City. The eldest, clearly the leader sat at the end of the table.

"Ladies, what new ideas have we found for mass feminization? We have perfected the individual techniques, but there are so many people! We need to move forward faster."

"Madam, I have a new concept" said the redhead, clearly the youngest of the group. All heads turned as she began her presentation. She wore a sharp gray pinstriped business suit, sensible shoes, and a minimum of ornamentation. Yet she exuded female sexual prowess. Not her age nor her plain attire could hide it.

"I have an answer. Peer pressure" she said.

"Peer pressure?" asked one of the other ladies in a skeptical tone.

"Yes, peer pressure. It is a more powerful force than you might think at first. For example, how many ads are run every day telling children that smoking is bad? How often do they hear the message at school about it's effects? Yet every day, thousands of children start smoking. Many become addicts. Why do the start? Peer pressure. They want to be cool. They want to fit in. If the cool people do it, and all their friends, then they're left out if they don't do it too."

"So you think we an turn a population through peer pressure alone?"

"Yes madam, I do. We would need to seed an existing population first. I thought we could try at a high school in a small town. Feminize the right people. The class president. The captain of the football team. The school bully. The rebel. A few teachers. Soon, the other students would feel the pull, and would be drawn in. I estimate that we could get a 75% ratio within a year."

There were gasps from the crowd.

"Janice: select a proper town. Kimberly: I authorize you to use our resources to feminize a proper seed population. Amber: begin preparations for Operation Smokescreen."

The meeting broke up, and they all set out to their appointed jobs.

* * *

Westerville was a small town. Not much exciting happened there. The highlight of the year was the annual corn festival, when a parade was held, along with a concert and long endless speeches from the mayor and other local politicians with their highly inflated egos.

Carl grew up there, and as most people, it seemed that he would spend his whole life in the same town. Children grew up to take over their parents business, whether it was the farm, the mill, the store, or the restaurant.

Carl was now old enough to enter high school. Between the town itself and the kids bussed in from the surrounding farm communities, it was large enough to be considered class 'C' when it came to sports. Carl was a farm kid, and he was excited that he'd get to try out for the football team. True, they couldn't compete with the big schools from the north part of the state, but they were a team to be reckoned with most years.

So he was very excited the first day of school. He would try out after the last class, and would make the team for sure! He followed the map in his hand to find his locker, where he put his lunch and some of his stuff. Then he walked down the long hall looking for his classroom.

As he walked, he saw something strange. A guy wearing a skirt! This guy was dressed up like a girl, and had a purse over his shoulder and everything. Carl laughed.

"What's so funny punk?" said the guy. He towered over Carl. Carl saw that he was wearing full makeup, wore ear rings, and even had perfume on. He was close enough to smell it.

"Uh oh, that's Brad...I mean Brenda, the school bully" whispered his friend Todd, who was a sophomore.

"I asked you a question! What's so funny?" said Brenda again, his face getting redder, even with the foundation covering most of it.

"You...you're a guy, and you're wearing a dress" said Carl.

Brenda slapped Carl with the back of his hand. Then he clawed at Carl's arm, scratching him with his long, manicured fingernails, which were covered in a coat of blood red nail polish.

"Ow!" said Carl.

"Oh the little cry baby" said Brenda. "You're in *my* hallway, and you had better show me respect! Now you're going to have to give me your lunch money!"

"I brown bagged it" replied Carl in a shaky voice. This Brenda really was a bully.

"Then give me your pocket change" demanded Brenda. Carl didn't move, so Brenda swung his purse, hitting Carl in the stomach. He crumpled over in pain. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the one dollar bill he was going to use to buy a soda, and handed it to Brenda.

"That's better. Make sure you keep this coming, every day, if you don't want me to kill you!" said Brenda as he put the money into his purse. He then slung the thin strap over his shoulder, and strutted away.

Todd helped Carl find the classroom, and warned him not to get Brenda angry again.

"What's his deal? He's dressed up like a girl" said Carl.

Todd gave him a funny look, shook his head, and pointed to the door that Carl had to enter for first hour. He nodded and walked in. There were only a few empty desks left, so he took one in the third row next to a pretty blond girl. Carl smiled at her, but then turned his head and blushed. It was not girl he was next to, it was another guy. But he was dressed up so daintily with a black skirt, pantyhose, shoes with heels, even something to make it look like he had breasts. It was another guy in a dress. What he hell was wrong with this place?

As Mrs. Greene came in to take attendance, Carl was shocked to find that almost all of the boys in his class either had names that would normally be used for a girl, or they were dressed up like girls.

"Class, lets go around and introduce yourselves. Many of you are new students this year, and you should get to know one another."

"Hi, I'm Amy" said the first girl. At least he thought it was really a girl. "I'm a sophomore, and I'm in the drama club. We meet on Thursdays after class if anyone is interested."

Mrs. Greene pointed to the next student.

"Hello, I'm Tammy" said the boy sitting behind Amy. "I work after school, so I guess I'm not in any clubs or anything."

"I'm Gina" said the boy sitting to Carl's right. The one he mistook for a girl when he sat down. "I am the captain of the football team. We have open tryouts after school, if any of you aren't too afraid."

"You're the captain of the football team?" whispered Carl to Gina as the girl behind him talked about the school marching band.

"Yes I am. Are you trying out?"

"Yes."

"What position?"

"I'm a wide receiver, but I can play tight end too."

"Good, we need someone there. Glad to have you on the team" said Gina, extending his hand with it's exquisitely manicured fingernails.

"Oh these are just press-ons. They get too screwed up out on the field. But I can't stand having short nails, so I just put these back on every day. They're lovely, aren't they?"

"Um...I guess. Yeah" said Carl. This was just way too weird.

"Your turn" said Mrs. Greene pointing to him.

"I'm Carl, and I'm a freshman. I'm going to try out for football."

"More like 'Carla'!" said a whispered voice from the back.

The two guys who seemed most normal were the math nerds in the back. They had boys names and dressed like boys. But even a first day freshman could tell they were the unpopular nerds, and should be avoided unless you wanted to be like them. Guilt by association. Doomed to be unpopular. Carl would avoid them like the plague. He tried to concentrate as class began.

* * *

Second hour was no better. There were a bunch of guys dressed as girls again. The president of the honors society. The star catcher from the baseball team. The point guard from the basketball team. They were all dressed like girls, acting like girls, and nobody seemed to pay them too much mind.

Perhaps this was a first day of school thing, to scare the freshmen. Perhaps things would be better tomorrow.

* * *

After school, Carl went to the gym, where he met Coach Clark. He went to the locker room to suit up, and was amazed that so many of the guys were wearing frilly pink panties. Most of them wore bras too. He saw Gina, the QB take off a frilly white bra, and replace it with a sports bra before putting on his pads.

The receivers and linebackers put lines of black makeup under their eyes to reduce glare. They also put on waterproof mascara so it wouldn't smudge, and fixed their lip gloss.

"You want some?" asked Gina.

"Uh, no thanks" said Carl. He wasn't sure anyway if Gina was referring to the manly black eye stuff or the girly makeup. He wasn't going to take a chance!

"Suit yourself" said Gina, who put on his helmet and ran out the door.

Not all of the guys had on women's clothes and makeup, but most of the team leaders did. The only one who seemed to scoff at them was the nerdy kicker, who would have been too small except that all he did was kick the ball for field goals and extra points.

"You won't find me touching that stuff!" he said to Carl supportively. Carl wasn't sure that he wanted his friend on the team to be the nerdy kicker, so he ignored him, put on his helmet, and ran out the door too.

Practice was great, and several players said they were sure he would make the team. He was good enough, he might even get to start. He sure hoped so.

* * *

Day two of school was pretty much the same. Carl waited for the right moment to pass through the section of hall that Brenda patrolled. He got by without incident. He went into first hour, and talked to Gina about the football team until class was started.

He could not believe that the team captain acted and dressed like a girl when he wasn't on the field. He noticed that Gina's legs were shaved, and his painted toe nails showed through his open toed sandals. Gina's hair was long and pretty. From being in the locker room, Carl knew it was not a wig. Why did so many of the guys at this school dress and act this way? It was too strange.

Football practice was great again, with the coach telling Carl that he wouldn't have to worry about making the cut. That was such good news to hear! He couldn't wait each day to get through class so he could get to practice, which was the best time of the day for him.

After two weeks, final cuts were announced, and as the coach had said, Carl was on the team. In fact, he had earned a spot as a starter. The starting players all got together after practice on Friday.

"We're all going to the mall tomorrow night to get matching ear rings" said Kelly, the linebacker. "You need to come with us and get your ears pierced too. The we can all match, as a team."

"I don't know. I'll have to ask my folks."

"Come on! Most of the guys here pierce their ears. Perhaps coach was wrong to pick a freshman to start.

"No! I'll be there. What time?" asked Carl.

"Seven. Be there."

Carl showed up at the appointed time. Most of the guys on the team who were starters already had their ears pierced. There were only two of them besides Carl that didn't. Gina and Kelly picked out which ear rings the team would wear, and Carl waited to get his ears pierced. There was only a quick shock of pain as his earlobes were penetrated by the sharp metal, leaving behind a clear hole. The girl at the booth put in his earrings, and handed him a mirror to admire himself.

He was shocked that they had picked a long dangly ear ring, not a stud like players in the NFL wore. These were very pretty and girl. Not what he was expecting!

When the non-starters saw the earrings on Monday, they all felt left out. They weren't cool. Not only were they the bench warmers, but they didn't look like the captain or the starters did now. They met after practice, and all headed to the mall before going home. They would go get the same thing for themselves. They didn't want to be left out in the cold!

* * *

It was time for the first game of the season. Carl was so excited that he couldn't think of anything all day at school, but the game. He was so glad when it was finally time to suit up. This time, when Gina asked if he was going to put the black stuff on his face, he said yes. Gina dipped his finger into the can of makeup, and put two dark lines below Carl's eyes. Then he took the mascara, and made Carl's lashes look long, lush and attractive. He put more on the outside than on the inside, for an interesting effect that drew attention to Carl's eyes.

He handed Carl the lip gloss, which Carl put on himself. He wasn't going to be the only one who didn't do it! He put on his helmet, and ran out on the field.

The game was close, but in the last quarter, it was Carl who went deep and caught a perfect pass from Gina to put away the game! The nerdy kicker missed the extra point, so there was some drama at the end, but Kelly sacked the QB on 3rd down to put an end to things.

They had won! And Carl was a hero.

In the locker room, after the coach's speech, they all showered up. Carl felt ashamed that he was just about the only starter on the team with hair all over his body. He would have to start shaving so he would fit in better.

The all dressed up in their frilly clothes, although Carl just had slacks and a sweater.

"We're all going out to celebrate" said Gina. "Want to come?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"The cheerleaders are all coming" said Kelly.

"Then I'm there dude!" said Carl as they all laughed.

They met at a local restaurant, and ordered salads and diet colas. Carl was sitting at a table with Gina, Kelly, and three cheerleaders. Two of them seemed pretty interested in his friends, but the third one was somewhat aloof.

"Come on Carl, ask her out" whispered Gina.

"Uh Katie, listen. I have something to ask you" he said shyly.

"Sure Carl, what is it?"

"Well, I was wondering, I mean, if you aren't too busy or whatever on Saturday, if you'd like to maybe go see a movie or something?"

"Oh that's so sweet of you. I'll have to think about it" she said.

Carl felt crushed. Rejected by a cheerleader. He was the hero of the football game. What was wrong? She should have said yes.

"Go take a leak" said Kelly, giving him an elbow. "I'll find out what's wrong."

When Carl came back to the table, the topic wasn't discussed again. But when Gina drove him and Kelly back home in his car, he told Carl what was up.

"She's a hot commodity you know" said Gina. "Every guy in the school is asking her out all the time."

"I'm sure. But she seemed so...cold to me. I don't get it."

"She says its the way you dress. You're so out of it. I mean, look at you. You have the worst fashion sense! Maybe if you tried to fit in more. But if you insist on dressing like some nerd, I don't think she'll ever go for you."

"Yeah" added Kelly. "You're the only starter who doesn't have cute shoes. And I've never even seen you in a skirt. What's wrong with you? Your legs look fine. You should show them off!"

"And that hair. What an awful cut. You need a stylist, STAT!"

They both laughed.

"Look, lets get you a good makeover, get you some proper clothes, and you can try again with her. I'm sure she'll come around. She just doesn't want to be seen with someone who looks like such an uncool nerd. That's all. Don't take it personal."

"I won't" said Carl, not sure if he liked the remedy for his situation. But they guys were right. Perhaps he was just out of touch with things. All the other cool guys were wearing skirts and heels. Why was he in jeans and sneakers? He didn't want to be left out. He didn't want to be shunned by cheerleaders. He would go to the mall, or borrow something from his older sister. Then he'd have a fighting chance.

* * *

When Carl came out of his room wearing a dress, his father blew a fuse.

"No son of mine is going out looking like that!"

"But dad, all the guys are dressing like this."

"Well you are not!"

"Oh come on! I'm tired of getting teased for looking like a nerd."

"I knew we shouldn't have let him keep the ear rings. Look at him now."

"Oh dear, let the boy be. I've seen his friends. They're all very nice. They just dress that way these days. Don't be an old fogey. Remember how you told me your father was so mad when you went out, and didn't want to wear a tie?"

"Yes, I guess so. But I still say this is wrong. He looks like a fruit."

"Dad! I have a date with a cheerleader tonight."

"Looking like that?"

"She wouldn't date me until I did start dressing like everyone else."

He had been shaving his legs for weeks. But this was only his second time in public wearing clothes he borrowed from his sister's closet. When he asked Katie again when he was wearing a skirt, she accepted his offer. They were going to a movie that night. He was determined to dress prettier than last time, to make sure she was happy with him.

His mother helped him fix his makeup, and helped do his nails as his father scowled. But it was worth it. Katie just loved how he looked, and had a long stem rose for him. They had dinner and a movie, after which they went dancing.

Carl thought it was the best night of his life.

* * *

On Monday, he went to school wearing a pink tank top, with spaghetti straps, so that his bra straps showed through. Everyone was impressed how his fashion sense had improved since the first day of class. As he looked around, he realized that only the nerdy math guys in the back were still dressed as they were the first day. It had seemed shocking to see a guy in a skirt, but now he couldn't imagine going to school without one. He had seen this really cute navy blue one, with pleated panels. He just had to have it!

"Hey Carla" said Gina.

"What? What's up?" he said. Most of the guys were calling him that now, and the girls too. He had been reluctant to go along with it until Katie said it was cute. So now he was even signing his papers as Carla. It just seemed natural now.

Carla pulled a pen out of his purse, and started to take notes for the class.

* * *

In New York, the seven women met again to assess the progress of Operation Smokescreen.

"So, by half way through the school year, we have all but a few nerds who've given in to peer pressure?"

"Yes!" reported a joyful redheaded woman. "Operation Smokescreen is a huge success. We seeded the population with a few dozen key individuals whom we feminized over the summer, using the usual mind control techniques. And just as predicted, the other students, their peers slowly but surely marched in step with them. We also programmed the key girls to only be attracted to men in dresses, which helped add more pressure. We have almost the entire male population of the school going around in female attire every day. It is now a self-sustaining cycle. When the new students come in next year, the will fall to the same force of peer pressure. All we had to do was to start the cycle, and now it will continue on by itself."

"I sense from you that you want something more though"

"Yes Madam. You see, we've got them to dress like girls and act like girls, but who is to say that when they go off to a college that they don't revert back? They will have a new set of peers and new peer pressure to fit in. We may lose them."

"So what do you suggest?"

"We need to have them alter their bodies. If they have breasts and vaginas, they will not be able to go back."

"Indeed. And how will we accomplish this?"

"I have a theory."

"You usually do."

"My theory is that if we can get just one of them to undergo 'the operation', then it will be like a house of cards, and others will follow."

"Why didn't you program one of them to do it when you had the chance?"

"Because that wouldn't work. It needs to be a 'new recruit' who came to school this year as a regular boy. If one of them took the plunge, the others would feel like they are falling behind. And they would try to keep up with *her*."

"Excellent. Make it so."

* * *

Carla brushed his long hair and studied his complexion. He was getting good at applying foundation to hide the skin blemishes. If only he had a prettier nose, like Katie did. He sighed, and teased his hair to get it just right.

He went to school, and had the usual day of learning interspersed with talking to the girls, hanging out, being with friends, and talking about football. The season was over, and he had been a star player for the team. Next year, they would even be tougher.

He was walking home, when a car pulled up beside him. A red haired woman asked him to come to the window.

"Young man, are you Carla Wilson, the football player?"

"Yes I am" he said proudly.

"Please come in. I have business to discuss with you."

"Who are you?"

"I am a recruiter. Do you want to play football in college?"

"Yes! But I have three years of high school left."

"Well do you want to listen to my offer?"

"Sure."

He got in the car. The woman drove over to a parking lot, turned it off, then turned towards him.

"I love your shoes" she said.

"Thanks! I just got them last week. Do you know how hard it is to find cute wedges in this large of a size?"

"I can imagine" she said. "Listen Carla, I have an offer to make to you. We would like you to play for F.S.C. on the football team."

"What's the catch?"

"There is no catch. We have seen your talent, and we want you to be the first girl to play big time college sports for the football team."

"But I'm not a girl. Not really."

"I understand. That's why I'm here."

"What do you mean?"

"We can fix that."

"And make me a girl? How? I don't get it."

"We have ways" she said. Carla didn't even feel the slight prick in his arm from the small dart the woman had poked him with. He listened, and noticed that the room was spinning. The next thing he knew, he woke up in the car.

"Carla, are you all right?"

"I guess I was zoning for a minute."

"That's OK dear. Anyway, your appointment with the doctor is next week on Tuesday. Don't miss it!"

"I sure won't. Thanks!" he said, putting the bottle of estrogen into his purse. "I'll be sure to take these every day" he added as she drove off.

How exciting! He was going to play football on a college scholarship!

* * *

On Tuesday, Carla showed up at the doctors office.

"All your paperwork seems to be in order. I just need to go through a few last details. Are you 100% sure you want this?"

"Oh yes!" blurted out Carla, not even really understanding what was going on.

"And you obviously dress as a girl every day, and have taken a girl's name."

"Yes."

"And you take your estrogen?"

"Every day!"

"Good. We can begin. Undress, put a robe on, and lay on the table over there. We will begin shortly."

Carla complied. Soon the anesthesiologist arrived, and hooked up the mask to Carla's face. He began seeing double, and soon passed out.

* * *

When Carla awoke, he looked down. His chest was puffed out, and covered with bandages. He touched them lightly. His new breasts. Big ones, just like Katie had. He was so proud! The other guys were going to be jealous.

He shifted positions, and had a shooting pain between his legs. He groaned, and reached down there to move the blanket a bit. It was uncomfortable against his new....vagina! He was a girl now! Unbelievable! This was the best day in his life! Carla was a she now! A real girl.

"I'm a girl!" she said out loud.

"Yes you are" said Katie, who held Carla's trembling hand.

"Wow, look at you. You're stacked" said Gina. "I wish I was like you"

"Me too" said Kelly.

Carla was in the recovery room for a day, then went home. After a few more days of recovery, she was ready to begin school again. She felt so free! Instead of covering up her body, she could now wear V-neck shirts like Katie wore. She could wear shorter skirts or tight little shorts, since she didn't have that unsightly bulge between her legs anymore.

She was Miss Popularity. Everyone wanted to talk to her, to be with her.

"What was your doctor's name? I want boobs too!"

"Wow you're a real girl. I wish I could afford to do that too."

"Please, let me hang out with you. You're the most popular girl in school!"

"Hey, you can be a cheerleader for the basketball team now too. You'd look good in that little skirt and the tight sweater"

On and on it went.

* * *

"Report."

"In the second half of the school year, out of 154 males, we know that at least 128 are on hormones or birth control pills. Forty eight have had plastic surgery. Only seven have gone all the way, but the others have had breast implants, facial surgery, hip implants, and other minor procedures. I estimate that next year we will hit nearly 90% compliance. They all want the feminine body style now."

"Wonderful. Operation Smokescreen is a huge success. We will begin to roll it out at small schools all over the country, then Europe and Asia."

There was a huge applause.

"Calm down ladies. Now tell me, what is the next idea?

What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it, the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history. 

We are now living within a hybrid war conducted almost entirely by deception, and thus designed to achieve war aims with little energy input. It is a war of conquest directed not against other nation states but against all of humanity.

In the Prologue of the book Webb paints a richly textured, autobiographical picture of his provenance as finance guru, obviously with exceptional intelligence and, it turned out, courage. His knowledge of finance and economics has been the result of long years of work in the field, but he recalls the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, before the start of his professional career, when he was a child, and what he calls (witnessing) the subsequent “industrial collapse” of the US in Cleveland, where the family lived, culminating in “the complete destruction of everything we had known” (p. vii). Before he gets into the details of his life, he commences the Prologue with an indirect intimation of his reasons for writing the book (p. vi): 

Presently, as we well know, families are divided. People are experiencing a kind of isolation, perhaps not physically, but in spirit and mind. This has been made to happen through the dark magic of false news and narrative. This alone has been a great crime against humanity. The tactical purposes are many: to confuse and divide; to cause disengagement; to demoralize; to instill fears and to introduce false focal points for these fears; to manipulate the historical narrative; to create a false sense of the present reality; and ultimately, to cause people to acquiesce to what has been planned.

It is impossible to overstate the urgency of Webb’s message – everyone who reads this article should download the book (free) at this link, or at least view the documentary based on it at CHD.TV, Rumble and (I don’t know for how long) YouTube. It makes for compulsive reading – a kind of non-fictional, real-world detective story, where you, the reader, are both the victim of the crime and the one looking over the detective’s shoulder at the evidence that he is digging up.

And is there persuasive evidence! In the ‘court of human justice’ – which should be established, if it does not exist – the primary documentary evidence adduced by Webb would be sufficient to incarcerate all of these culprits, if not condemn them to capital punishment (recalling that, etymologically, ‘capital,’ or ‘of the head’ in Latin, relates to one’s head, which was usually implicated in hanging and decapitation; it also echoes in ‘wearing a cap’). That Webb knows only too well how he has exposed himself (and his family) with this book – and earlier, in addresses where he shared his findings with audiences in Sweden and the US – is clear where he writes, against the backdrop of the two occasions where he presented his insights, together with evidence (p. xxx):

Less than a month after speaking at that conference in the U.S., a man contacted me who asked to meet in Stockholm. He had been the Chairman of a U.S. political party, and had a long career related to the defense establishment. He stayed at a hotel within a short walking distance from my apartment. We had lunch. He suggested a pint of ale. He asked me to explain the subject of which I had spoken at the conference. I went through the evidence and implications. The odd thing is that he then asked no questions about the subject. Instead, he fixed me in the eye and said, ‘Does your family know you are doing this?’ He said nothing more; that was the end of the meeting. I paid the bill and left. Perhaps it had been a ‘courtesy call.’ We all have to die sometime, and being assassinated must be among the most honorable ways to do it. One must have been doing something right! Made a difference! No classier way to die, really. I always wanted to be like John Lennon!

One could easily be fooled by Webb’s debonair shrugging-off of what could indeed have been a thinly veiled death threat from his dinner guest, but the fact remains that anyone who has the courage to oppose the psychopaths trying to hijack the world runs a tremendous risk, the more high-profile such opposition becomes. This is shown in the recent death ‘by suicide’ (yeah, right!) of Janet Ossebaard, who made the series, The Fall of the Cabal, and was involved in the unmasking of a network of pedophiles. The chances that she committed suicide, as reported, are pretty slim, I would say; she was evidently a thorn in the side of the murderous cabal.

Returning to Webb’s book, he tellingly recounts how, after 9/11, when he saw all the signs of a deteriorating US economy everywhere, concomitantly there were undeniable indications that the Bush administration was spreading disinformation on this, covering it up by disseminating spurious reports of American economic strength. 

In reality, however, the opposite was the case, symptomatic of which was the rapid shutting down of American manufacturing capacity and outsourcing it to China (which was obviously in on the deal). Nothing less than the (planned) loss of the American industrial base was occurring, while, accompanying this, Alan Greenspan was lauding the putative “productivity miracle” resulting from technology investment and development. It was a masterly performance of pulling the wool over Americans’ eyes. 

Simultaneously, the impression of prosperity was further solidified by projecting the illusion that there was no risk in borrowing money; the ability to repay loans was ostensibly guaranteed. Webb’s persistent, perspicacious sleuthing has uncovered the trail which reveals the steps taken years ago to prepare for the global economic collapse we are facing now. This included the 2008 financial collapse, of which he writes wryly (p. xxviii): 

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis it eventually became known that tens of trillions in losses in derivative positions were housed in the biggest banks, which were then bailed out with newly created money. The prime brokers would have failed, but to prevent that they were made banks and also received direct injections of created money from the Fed. No one was prosecuted. On the contrary, the perpetrators were rewarded with enormous bonuses. It was almost as if it had all gone according to plan.

If I understand Webb correctly, this is the strategy that has been repeated several times, at least since the second half of the 19^th century, resulting in the rich getting (much) richer and the poor getting (much) poorer. In brief, focusing on “Velocity of Money” (VOM) – “Velocity multiplied by Money Supply = GDP. Lower Velocity results in lower GDP” (p. 3) – Webb shows that, given the cyclical collapse of economies and empires in the 20th century, following the Great War, and the demonstrable benefit, despite all this hardship, of certain banking interests regarding control (and creation) of money, as well as of key institutions, the contemporary ‘heirs’ of all this control knew that a similar collapse would recur. They have been preparing for it. And they are determined to remain in control. Hence the supposed ‘Great Reset.’ 

 During the Dot-com bubble and bust period Webb studied the relationship between financial markets and the Federal Reserve bank, and realised that the latter was deliberately influencing the former by manipulating the money supply – that is, routinely printing more money than, correlatively, GDP growth. If money supply growth is more than GDP growth, a financial bubble develops, divorced from any real economic growth. By the end of 1999 the money supply had increased by more than 40% of GDP annually, signaling that VOM was imploding. 

Does this sound familiar? Since the start of the plandemic trillions of US dollars have been printed, accelerating the widening of the gap between money supply and real economic productivity, and thus hastening the financial collapse. This is what the cabal wants. After all, as Webb tersely remarks (p. 4), “Crises do not occur by accident; they are induced intentionally and used to consolidate power and to put in place measures, which will be used later.” Rather apocalyptically, he continues (pp 5-6):

VOM has now contracted to a lower level than at any point during the Great Depression and world wars. Once the ability to produce growth by printing money has been exhausted, creating more money will not help. It is pushing on a string. The phenomenon is irreversible. And so, perhaps the announcement of the ‘Great Reset’ has been motivated not by ‘Global Warming’ or by profound insights into a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ but rather by certain knowledge of the collapse of this fundamental monetary phenomenon, the implications of which extend far beyond economics.

Just how far becomes increasingly clear as one reads through this densely documented book – not a book with many pages, but a ‘big’ book as far as the importance of its theme (and its substantiation) is concerned. Given the number of reports and other sources which Webb cites, it is impossible to do justice here to all their details and their pertinence for Webb’s argument, that the so-called elites have spent years to prepare for a ‘super-cycle’ collapse that will necessitate the transition to a New World Order, with them still in control. I can therefore only lift out the salient parts of his argument. The first is neatly captured where he writes (p. 7):

There are now no property rights to securities held in book-entry form in any jurisdiction, globally. In the grand scheme to confiscate all collateral, dematerialization of securities was the essential first step. The planning and efforts began over half a century ago.

Not only was the [Khazar-controlled] CIA intimately involved in this “dematerialization” – which essentially meant moving from paper-based stock certificate archiving, to a computer-based system – but the CIA project leader was moved to a senior position in the banking sector without any banking experience. Webb raises the possibility, interrogatively, that the ensuing “paperwork crisis” was “manufactured” to justify the dematerialisation process, which paved the way for the present electronic archiving system worldwide.

Small wonder the epigraph for this chapter is a quote from Sun Tzu (which is just as applicable to today): “All warfare is based on deception.” This also covers the topic of the next chapter: “Security Entitlement,” of which Webb writes (p. 9): “The greatest subjugation in world history will have been made possible by the invention of a construct; a subterfuge; a lie: the ‘Security Entitlement.’”

And indeed, having informed one that, since their inception more than 400 years ago, these “tradable financial instruments” were recognised, by law, as personal property, he hits the reader with the news that this is not the case any longer. In practice, Webb explains, this implies that even if, wishing to avoid the complications of a car dealership possibly going bust after purchasing a car on an installment plan, one has bought it for cash, this will no longer work. Security entitlements have been changed legally to permit creditors of the bankrupt car dealership to seize your car as an asset that still belongs to the dealership. 

Webb sums this legal coup up as follows (p. 10): “Essentially all securities ‘owned’ by the public in custodial accounts, pension plans and investment funds are now encumbered as collateral underpinning the derivatives complex…” The “protected class” have legally stolen all our assets from us even before the anticipated (and engineered) global financial implosion occurs (if it does). Moreover, through additional legislation, this has been ‘harmonised’ to ensure that “secured creditors” be guaranteed that their assets be protected through “cross-border mobility of legal control of such collateral” (p. 16). Furthermore, ‘safe harbour’ provisions were made timeously to protect the ruling class (p. 32): 

In 2005, less than two years before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, ‘safe harbor’ provisions in the U.S. Bankruptcy code were significantly changed. ‘Safe harbor’ sounds like a good thing, but again, this was about making it absolutely certain that secured creditors can take client assets, and that this cannot be challenged subsequently. This was about ‘safe harbor’ for secured creditors against demands of customers to their own assets.

It gets worse. It turns out that, if something called Central Clearing Parties – tasked with providing “clearing and settlement for trades” in a variety of financial transactions – is insufficiently capitalised to prepare for the eventuality of failing, and such a failure occurs, “it is the secured creditors who will take the assets of the entitlement holders. This is where it is going. It is designed to happen suddenly, and on a vast scale.” Webb goes on to disabuse readers of the belief that the so-called “Bank Holiday” ended the Great Depression (Chapter VIII), and of believing Ben Bernanke’s promise, in 2002, that the Federal Reserve “won’t do it again” (i.e. make its mistakes regarding what led to the Great Depression). Instead, he cautions (p. 46):

Is the Fed indeed ‘very sorry?’ Can one believe the promise that ‘we won’t do it again?’ They have studied the lessons of the past in detail; however, their purpose has been to prepare a new and improved global version for the spectacular end of this debt expansion super-cycle. That’s what this book is about.

Webb’s elaboration on The Great Deflation (Chapter IX) is a salutary reminder that this kind of thing has happened before, in the 1930s, albeit not on the scale that is being planned this time. In the Conclusion (p. 64) he drives his point home by confronting readers with the stark reality of what is happening; I feel like quoting the whole of this powerful chapter, but obviously that is redundant, because the book can (and should) be downloaded free via the link provided near the beginning of this article – please read it; it is imperative to read all the detail that cannot be supplied here. Here is a smattering of citations from it:

As a human being, should this not concern you? What part of the organized slaughter of vast numbers of innocent people can you find acceptable? Do you believe that you are special in some way, that you were being protected, or that you will be protected now?

 There has been abundant evidence of great evil at work in the world, throughout time and in our present time. Do you really wish to be ignorant of its existence and operation? (p.64.)

To not know is bad. To not want to know is worse. 

 Willful ignorance of the existence and operation of evil is a luxury even the wealthy can no longer afford. 

We are in the grip of the greatest evil humanity has ever faced (or refused to acknowledge, as the case may be). Hybrid war is unlimited. It has no bounds. It is global, and it is inside your head. It is never-ending. (p. 65.)

We have witnessed designs and real attempts to exert physical control over every person’s body, globally, and this is continuing…Why is this happening? 

 I will make a startling assertion. This is not because the power to control is increasing. It is because this power is indeed collapsing. The ‘control system’ has entered collapse. 

 Their power has been based on deception. Their two great powers of deception, money and media, have been extremely energy-efficient means of control. But these powers are now in rampant collapse. This is why they have moved urgently to institute physical control measures. However, physical control is difficult, dangerous and energy-intensive. And so, they are risking all. They are risking being seen. Is this not a sign of desperation? (pp. 67-68.)

Never before has a system benefited so few at the great expense of so many. Is this not inherently unstable and unsustainable? Physical control, as opposed to rule by deception, requires enormous energy. Can this be sustained while destroying all economies, and abusing all people, globally? They do not know how to ‘build back better.’ Look at their footprint around the world—the destruction, the economic devastation. (p. 68.)

Let me close with John F. Kennedy’s own words: 

Our problems are man-made;

therefore, they can be solved by man. (p. 70.)

In turn, I shall conclude with the last paragraph of Webb’s Prologue; let us take this to heart, spread the link to his book far and wide, and, to quote Naomi Wolf’s recent book’s title, ‘face the beast’ bravely and resolutely:

It is my hope that in making this unpleasantness explicit, and doing so at this time when developments are becoming more apparent, that awareness might spread, and that the worst might be averted. Perhaps this Great Taking might not be allowed to happen if we each hold up our end—even the investment bankers—and say forcefully: we will not allow this. It is a construct. It is not real.

Amen.

(read more)

The Corrosion – And Scam – Of DEI

Its not that white men don’t pull crap like she allegedly did. They do.  Its the audacity to do it while being a Federal Security Director and thinking you can get away with it. Which she obviously did think she could do.

Or how about our former nuclear dude who liked to pretend-sex and also steal high-priced luggage at airports? Do straight white men pull that sort of crap?  Of course they do, but how many attempt it while holding a high federal office, not once but several times, thinking they can get away with it?
NONE.

Cuban thinks that “DEI” is good business. Like Hell it is — unless you can and do engage in behavior that should be counted as Racketeering to force other firms to do it through various schemes involving collusion and even force through government mandates.  Now whether you formally manage to hit the “Racketeering” threshold or not isn’t the point.

The point is that if you hire people in those three examples above because they are queer, black, female, lesbian or some combination of the above and you do so in the place of a qualified white man then in a free market I will hire the qualified white man, I will outcompete you and if you make a practice of this and thus intentionally cripple your firm’s performance (never mind the impact of said scandals on your alleged “good name”) I will feast on the ashes of your former business. (read more)

If you grew up in the 1980s, you might recognize the title from a line in the 1983 Tom Cruise movie Risky Business.

Cruise’s character, a hard-working and responsible high school senior named Joel Goodsen—obviously a take on the “good son”—is left home alone in his family’s Chicago suburban upper-middle class home while his parents go on vacation for a week. Sounds a little like Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone, except in this case, Joel Goodsen was intentionally left home alone.

With his temporary independence and through the bad influence of a high school friend, Joel’s life quickly goes “off the rails”. He sleeps with a prostitute in his family’s house. He discovers his mother’s expensive crystal egg is stolen, and in the process of getting it back, he is stalked by Guido the Killer Pimp, resulting in his dad’s prize Porsche ending up at the bottom of Lake Michigan. To raise the money to fix the damages to the Porsche, Joel decides to bring in a bunch of his new prostitute girlfriend’s colleagues to create a “pop up” brothel at his parent’s house while they are still away.

Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan.

The whole situation kind of reminds me of a young Jeffrey Epstein and his “gal pal,” Ghislaine Maxwell—minus the blackmailing of powerful people, of course. And I should probably point out that I don’t believe Maxwell was Epstein’s “sidekick”; I believe she was, in fact his handler.

Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine’s father, was a former member of the British Parliament and military and is believed to have worked with the MOSSAD, Israel’s version of the CIA. I believe Ghislaine, also British, worked in a similar role as her dad for the MOSSAD. I believe Epstein was likely an over-sexed pervert who wanted to be rich, seem important, and have the ability to pursue his perversions unimpeded. This arrangement was a perfect fit.

I believe Jeffery Epstein was the “face” of the blackmail operation. He was used to lure people in. The targets were US politicians, CEOs, influential members of the media, and scientists.

US politicians were blackmailed to control the US government, control policies, where tax dollars go, and which foreign entities they go to. CEOs have the money and the media controls the narrative. But what about the scientists? If you control the scientists, you control science.

If you control the science, you control the climate change hoax.

Is it a coincidence that “climate change” as a concept went into high gear around the time Epstein’s blackmail operation began? Oh, and who was the face of climate change at the time? That’s right—Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s vice president—both allegedly connected to Epstein.

Again, coincidence?

Ghislaine Maxwell has been “sold” to us as Epstein’s girlfriend who later became just a friend who happened to procure underage girls to satisfy his insatiable needs and perversions. Most people are probably now more willing to accept that she was much more involved—and in charge—of the blackmail operation than was once believed.

I find that there are too many connections between Jeffrey Epstein, Israeli leaders and other Jewish billionaire businessmen to refuse exploring the possibility that he and his operation were working with the MOSSAD and other intelligence agencies, blackmailing people of power and influence. Israel has received a lot of financial and military support from the US and Americans over the years. Have US politicians and powerful Americans been blackmailed into supporting these aspects of Israel?

As the “Epstein list” comes out, we will hear of things we’ve known for a while now, we will learn some new names, and we will be subjected to some disinformation as well.

Then, if some of the information is ‘fake,’ then how can we trust any of it?

Needless to say, the 48-hour rule will be in effect. (read more)