Authored by Robert Aro via The Mises Institute,

A cashless society would be the nail in the coffin for liberty and freedom, offering centralization, the likes of which Marx could only dream.

The existence of a government backdoor or spyware becomes a real possibility, and given the State’s track record, a real likelihood.

Then, of course, the ability to track, freeze, and even set expiry dates on money, will be marketed as “features” to protect the public.

As for the 5.9 million Americans considered “unbanked,” i.e., those who have no checking or savings accounts, (the poor, weak, and vulnerable) they can expect life to get more difficult. This is the price we pay for free market intervention.

Earlier in the week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York made the announcement:

Members of the U.S. Banking Community Launch Proof of Concept For A Regulated Digital Asset Settlement Platform

The explanation may only make sense for those well versed in crypto technology:

Members of the U.S. banking community today announced the launch of a proof of concept (PoC) project that will explore the feasibility of an interoperable digital money platform known as the regulated liability network (RLN). Using distributed ledger technology, the proposed platform would create innovation opportunities to improve financial settlements and would include participation from central banks, commercial banks of various sizes and regulated non-banks.

Basically, Fedcoin is advancing and is now in the testing stage:

The 12-week PoC will test a version of the RLN design that operates exclusively in U.S. dollars where commercial banks issue simulated digital money or “tokens” – representing the deposits of their own customers – and settle through simulated central bank reserves on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger.

Some of the largest financial institutions are involved in this 12-week program:

BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.

Plus:

The technology is being provided by SETL with Digital Asset, powered by Amazon Web Services. Swift, the global financial messaging service provider, is also participating in the initiative to support interoperability across the international financial ecosystem.

From Bitcoin to Dogecoin, there seems little long term hope for those who love privacy and autonomy when the largest corporations and fintech firms work with the Federal Reserve to roll out a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Would you like to know who else is was working with the Feds? Courtesy Coindesk:

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was, until last week, a major political donor – he gave $5.2 million to U.S. President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and spent another $40 million supporting mainly Democratic candidates ahead of the November midterm elections – and an influential figure in Washington.

Bankman-Fried regularly met with regulators and lawmakers, weighing in on how the crypto industry should be regulated. He was a vocal supporter of one bill, in particular: the bipartisan Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), a still-in-progress bill…

We know for certain CBDCs are coming, as well as more regulation. And given the trajectory of both, a cashless society is too. What is less certain is whether or not Sam Bankman-Fried, for his culpability in what may amount to one of the largest thefts of all time, will ever see jail time. 

People across Buffalo, New York, and the surrounding metro areas are waking up Saturday morning to snowmageddon that dumped between 5-6 feet of snow over the last few days. 

The latest from the Weather Prediction Center warned extreme snowfall “will produce near zero visibility, very difficult to impossible travel, damage to infrastructure, and may paralyze the hardest-hit communities.” 

An insane amount of snow was dumped on Highmark Stadium, where the Buffalo Bills play, situated in Orchard Park, New York, in the Southtowns of the Buffalo metro area. The newest reports recorded 77 inches or about 6.5 feet. 

“Can you imagine 60-70 inches of snow in 24 hours!? That 66″ in Orchard Park (where the Buffalo Bills play) could be verified as a 24-hour record for New York State. (The U.S. record is 75.6 inches in Silver Lake, Colorado on April 15, 1921.),” meteorologist Matthew Cappucci tweeted. 

Here’s what people in Western New York state woke up to this morning:

My mom in Orchard Park, NY has gotten just a little bit of snow this weekend pic.twitter.com/0gJekz0MhE

— Wendy E Wallace (@WendyEWallace1) November 19, 2022

My car is under there…somewhere pic.twitter.com/uyJy4P0HNO

— Marlee Tuskes (@MarleeTuskesTV) November 19, 2022

the continuing saga of the snow mushroom… #buffalosnow #LakeEffectSnow #buffalo #LetsGoBuffalo (8 foot fence in the background) ❄️❄️❄️ pic.twitter.com/agnGjo5EMF

— MaryAnn (@n1temare74) November 19, 2022

What 6’ of snow looks like#BuffaloNY #buffalosnow #buffalolakeeffect #Buffalo #LakeEffectSnow #BuffaloStorm2022 pic.twitter.com/rNlsoaSyDL

— BuffaloWeather (@weather_buffalo) November 19, 2022

Something was venturing out in the snow this morning.
More lake effect coming late tonight…

“These are the ghosts who haunt us
As we live & as we breathe
These are the ghosts of the wood
& to us forever they cleave”
From “Ghosts” by CMP [me]#BuffaloStorm2022 pic.twitter.com/iMqmusj73B

— ♪ark roa♪/Viccin© together since 1999 🦊BluesBirds (@Viccin) November 19, 2022

Boston Mass had the “big dig” but we got one going on in East Aurora, NY too. It’s absolutely gorgeous & since we got no place to go….❄️❄️❄️ #BuffaloStorm2022 #LakeEffectSnow #SnowBelt pic.twitter.com/QODeh213x1

— Trish Lewis (@poodlewalker10) November 19, 2022

Gotta admit when I heard the @BuffaloBills were moving their game to #Detroit I thought they were wimping out.

Nope.#BuffaloStorm2022 #Buffalo#Bills #NFL pic.twitter.com/In8c1PudEf

— Norman Hermant (@NormanHermant) November 19, 2022

Almost 9 cans of beer deep in south Buffalo NY!! Hahaha pic.twitter.com/xBZgH0k9hT

— Roy Gregory (@BbqhonchoRoy) November 19, 2022

At least six million people are still under winter weather alerts across six Great Lakes states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York — this morning. 

Ahead of what we believed was going to be a historic storm, we wrote “”Paralyzing Snowfall” Could “Cripple” Buffalo With Feet Of Snow” and “New York Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Snowmageddon,” suggesting to readers in the region to get supplies and hunker down. 

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

A hotelier in the U.K. has rejected an offer in excess of £1 million from an agency acting on behalf of the Home Office to convert his hotel into accommodation for asylum seekers, it has emerged.

Richard Martin, who owns the 3-star Blazing Donkey Country Hotel in Sandwich, Kent, revealed he had been offered £1,080,000 and a guarantee of 100 percent occupancy for at least 12 months at the hotel if he permitted it to be used exclusively to house asylum seekers.

The hotel boss said he turned down the proposal as he “couldn’t think of anything more absurd.” He explained that he would have had to lay off staff at the restaurant and cancel hundreds of weddings booked at the venue.

“We spent 30 years building up the business, but the money doesn’t come into it,” Martin told local media outlet Kent Online.

“We didn’t consider the offer (…) at all, as our reputation would have been shattered overnight.

“Quite honestly, my wife and I felt repulsed and very angry that they would think I would ever consider it,” he added.

Martin said he “could not believe they even approached us, as the agency acting on behalf of the Home Office “must have known” that to convert the accommodation into a facility for asylum seekers would result in the redundancy of some staff and canceling hundreds of weddings.

There are now over 200 hotels across the U.K. who have accepted contracts to house asylum seekers at a cost of £7 million per day to the U.K. taxpayer.

Martin accused the government of “effectively becoming disruptors in the hotel industry” and added that he hopes “no other hotelier in the county worth their salt considers this sly approach.”

Finland has announced it will “build the wall” – along its lengthy border with Russia as relations between the two continue rapidly deteriorating due to the Ukraine war and Finland’s bid to join NATO.

The plan, unveiled Friday, is a 200-kilometer ‘high security’ fence along its border with Russia, which in total is 1,300km in distance. This comes amid fears that Moscow could use migrants to exert pressure on Finland, concerns that grew after President Putin’s ‘partial mobilization’ order was issued in September. 

At that time Finland reported surges of border crossing traffic as young men attempted to flee potential conscription to fight in the war in Ukraine. Since then, there have been widespread reports that many have returned, given the Kremlin declared the end of the mobilization period. 

According to the AFP, “The fence will be over three meters tall with barbed wire at the top, with particularly sensitive areas being equipped with night vision cameras, lights, and loudspeakers, project manager Ismo Kurki explained during a press conference.”

Finland shares the longest stretch of border with Russia among any EU member.

The political push to establish a high tech fence gained momentum and consensus especially last month, when Prime Minister Sanna Marin explained the following: 

“We were in agreement about the need,” Marin said after the meeting. “Now the government will bring concrete proposals to parliament.” Funding for the pilot section would be voted on by the start of next month, she said.

“It is a question of securing proper surveillance of Finland’s border,” Marin said. “We want to ensure our border guard has sufficient support to carry out appropriate and effective border control, and we need to be prepared for any disruptive situations.”

Below: the initial proposed distance considered and debated in October…

BREAKING:

The main political parties of Finland jointly agreed today to build a border fence with Russia.

The fence will cover 260 km of the border’s total length on 1300 km.

Initially, a trial stretch will be built and the entire fence should be completed within 4-5 years. pic.twitter.com/MDyMpy5j0c

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 18, 2022

The projected price for the 200km long stretch of fence is nearly $400 million, and is to be completed in three phases. Per the APF, “First, a pilot fence three kilometers long will be built at the Imatra border crossing in March 2023.” And following this, “Based on that experience, the second phase will see the construction of a further 70 kilometers of fence in areas near border crossings, starting in late 2023.” The final phase is expected to be complete by 2026 if the prior phases go as planned. 

Russia previously warned its Arctic neighbor against militarizing the border in relation to the controversial NATO bid. The Kremlin further stated that NATO positioning military assets and weaponry there risked setting off a nuclear arms build-up in the Baltic region. 

Authored by Robert Kogon via The Brownstone Institute,

After Germany’s “first” public television network, ARD, compared Elon Musk reducing Twitter censorship to “letting rats out of their holes,” Germany’s “second” public television network, ZDF, has now compared Musk to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels! (The network’s name Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen literally means “Second German Television.”)

Thus, last Friday, ZDF’s would-be comedy program, the “Heute Show,” posted the below tweet and photoshop.

The Tweet reads: “Thanks to Elon Musk, you’re allowed to say anything again on Twitter! Total freedom of speech! #heuteshow.” The caption, whose color scheme and font invoke Nazi-era propaganda, reads “Do you want total tweet?”

It is an allusion to Goebbels’s 1943 speech at the Berlin Sportspalast, in which the Nazi Minister of Propaganda famously shouted, “Do you want total war?” – in response to which audience members leapt to their feet shouting “Yes!” and raising their arms in the Hitler-salute.

The background image appears to show a Nazi Party rally with the swastikas replaced by the Twitter bird logo. Two smaller swastikas are still visible in the lower left-hand corner of the full-size image.

Leaving aside the extreme mental contortionism required to associate freedom of speech with Nazi Germany, if ever there was a don’t-throw-stones-in-glass-houses moment, this was it. For, as so happens, during the Second World War, the founding director of ZDF, Karl Holzamer, himself served in one of the propaganda units that none other than Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda embedded with the different divisions of the Germany military. 

Holzamer served in a propaganda unit of the Luftwaffe or German air force. As noted in a 2012 article titled “Goebbels’s Soldiers” in the German daily Die Frankfurter Rundschau, Holzamer was embedded with the Luftwaffe during its April 1941 bombing of Belgrade and was “the first” to report on the German subjugation of the Yugoslav capital.

The online Lexikon der Wehrmacht, which also notes Holzamer’s service in the propaganda troops, cites Goebbels himself, who explained that “the Wehrmacht’s propaganda troops ensure the coordination between propaganda warfare and armed warfare in the theater of operations.”

As touched upon in my previous post here, Germany has been leading the global push for online censorship in recent years: notably, in the name of “combatting misinformation.” It is thus ironic that one of the explicit tasks of the propaganda troops in which Holzamer served was precisely to spread misinformation. According to the Lexikon der Wehrmacht, these tasks included: “war reporting…, combat propaganda (influencing the enemy)…, combatting enemy propaganda, camouflaging [German forces’] own operations by using targeted misinformation.”

The European Parliament has prepared a resolution recognizing Russia as a “terrorist state” – to be subject of a vote held during a session in Strasbourg next week, according to a spokesperson’s briefing at a Friday news conference . 

The largely symbolic resolution was drafted by the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and cites Russia’s “intimidation and destruction of Ukrainians as a nation,” according a draft previously seen by Euronews.

The political blocs Renew Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists are also said to be backing a formal declaration which could come as early as next Wednesday. 

While not legally binding, the resolution can be used for the EU to slap further sanctions on Moscow, and can create momentum for other countries like the UK to adopt the ‘terror state’ label for Russia. However, the UK has so far resisted these calls from some individual British politicians and officials. 

So far, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been the first to legally recognize Russia  as a terrorist state. 

The Biden administration has also thus far resisted some isolated Congressional calls to do so, as the Kremlin has warned such a measure would destroy all ties and communications. It would make negotiated settlement in Ukraine almost an impossibility.

So far it’s especially been the Pentagon which has sought to keep an open line of communications. The CIA director William Burns was also in Turkey this week meeting with this Russian intelligence counterpart.

But none of these efforts at keeping some kind of potential negotiations open would be possible if the US slapped a ‘terrorist state’ label on Russia. The US is also chiefly interested in pursuing prisoner swaps, with citizens like Brittney Griner now serving long prison sentences. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

This week it is being reported that the human population of our planet has now reached 8 billion.  We should all remember this moment, because soon the population of the globe will start getting much smaller.  In “End Times”, I explain that we are moving into one of the most chaotic times in all of human history.  There will be wars and rumors of wars, economic collapse, worldwide famines, horrifying pestilences and great natural disasters.  Needless to say, in such a future the global population would fall very rapidly.  But for purposes of this article, let’s imagine that none of those things will happen for the foreseeable future.  For a moment, let’s imagine that conditions will be pretty much like they are today for decades to come.  Unfortunately, even in such a wildly unrealistic scenario the human population of our planet would still plummet dramatically in the years ahead.  In fact, if current trends continue there will be hardly anyone left by the end of this century no matter what happens.

I realize that I have just made some very outrageous statements, and a lot of you are probably wondering how I could have come to such wild conclusions.

So let me take this one step at a time.

According to the UN, the population of the world just hit 8 billion for the first time ever.  The following comes from the official website of the United Nations…

The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released today on World Population Day.

“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.

But the population of our planet is not growing as rapidly as it once was.

In fact, even the UN is acknowledging that total population growth has dropped to just a trickle…

The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1 per cent in 2020.

In many wealthy areas of the planet, birth rates have already dropped well below replacement level.  This is true in the United States and Japan, and in Europe the population is steadily declining even though there has been a massive influx of migrants….

The European Union’s population shrank for a second year running last year, the bloc’s statistics office said on Monday, as the region reels from over two million deaths from the coronavirus.

According to Eurostat, the population of the 27 countries that make up the bloc fell by close to 172,000 from the previous year and over 656,000 from January 2020.

One of the big reasons why birth rates are falling in wealthy countries is because men in those nations are a lot less fertile than they used to be.  In fact, researchers have just released a study that shows that the decline in sperm counts “has only accelerated since the turn of the century”…

Plummeting sperm counts ‘threaten mankind’s survival’, researchers dramatically warned today.

Counts have more than halved since the 1970s.

And the decline has only accelerated since the turn of the century, according to a global analysis.

Once your sperm count gets low enough, it becomes almost impossible to have children.

So this is a really big deal.

According to the study, average sperm counts have been declining by 2.64 percent per year since the year 2000…

Results showed the mean sperm count fell by 51.6 per cent between 1973 and 2018 across men from all continents.

And concentrations have been falling by 2.64 per cent per year since 2000, quicker than the previous drop of 1.16 per cent annually from 1972.

Average sperm counts have already fallen into “the danger zone”, and if this trend continues average sperm counts will fall by another 50 percent in less than 20 years.

At that point, it is likely that the number of men that are infertile will be far greater than the number of men that are still able to have children.

And that is a recipe for catastrophic population decline.

If you are a man that wishes to remain fertile, one thing that you can do to help yourself is to stop carrying around your phone in your pockets.

Constantly exposing your genitals to microwave radiation is a really bad idea if you want to have kids.

Of course the human race is killing itself in countless other ways as well.

For example, even though we know that glyphosate causes cancer, we keep feeding foods that have been sprayed with it to ourselves and our children on a daily basis.

As a result, approximately 80 percent of the entire U.S. population now has glyphosate in their urine…

Part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found glyphosate in 1,885 of 2,310 urine samples representative of the population at large. Nearly a third of the samples came from kids, ranging in age from six to 18.

“Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the country, yet until now we had very little data on exposure,” Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, said Monday in a statement. “Children in the U.S. are regularly exposed to this cancer-causing weedkiller through the food they eat virtually every day.”

Why would we do this to our kids?

Are we insane?

Another way that we are literally killing ourselves is by our widespread use of plastics that contain cancer-causing chemicals.

When we dispose of a plastic item, it slowly starts breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces.  Over time, the pieces become so small that they can barely be seen.  There are trillions upon trillions of these “microplastics” in the air, water and soil all over the planet.  In fact, researchers have found microplastics wherever they have looked.  They have been discovered in the remotest parts of the Earth, they are in the rain that falls from the sky, and they now make up approximately 40 percent of the dust in our homes.

Unfortunately, these microplastics often contain cancer-causing chemicals, and studies have shown that exposure to microplastics can cause “cell death”…

Microplastic particles can cause cell death, cellular wall damage and allergic reactions in humans – at levels ingested by people via their food, a study has warned.

Researchers led from the University of Hull reviewed 17 previous studies on the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cells in a laboratory setting.

The team then compared the levels of microplastics required to cause cellular damage with those taken in via drinking water, seafood and table salt.

If you get enough plastic in your system, you will die.

And the amount of plastic that we create each year has been rising at an exponential rate.

So this is a health crisis that is only going to get worse.

But even if we were able to eliminate all plastic use immediately, this crisis would continue to escalate for a long time to come, because all of the plastic that we have already discarded will continue to slowly break down for decades.

Sadly, what I have covered in this article is just the tip of the iceberg.

The air that we breathe, the beverages that we drink and the food that we eat are all toxic.

If all that wasn’t enough, there are numerous other ways that we are literally committing societal suicide on a scale of epic proportions.

So the population of the world will not stay at 8 billion for long.

Even if global conditions remain relatively stable, a future of widespread infertility and mass death is ahead.

The clock is ticking for humanity, and the mess that we have created is way too big for us to fix on our own.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Authored by Sylvia Shawcross via Off-Guardian.org,

In the ridiculous world of the New Abnormal where we apparently find ourselves it is critically important to add your opinion to the cacophony of why we are who we are, where we are on the path to seeming totalitarianism and… why people are still wearing masks.

Here in Canada apparently 7 out of 10 members of the public would want mask mandates back while most of the rest of the world has abandoned the concept to the rearview mirror.

Perhaps understandable if you have a medical condition but now study after study. Peer-reviewed. Well-researched. Top quality medical journals. Top-of-the-line researchers. All saying these masks do very little good.**

Even Fauci himself said so once…before he changed his mind as he tends to do when the landscape changes with the weather. 

And in response, of course, drug companies and governments sponsored researchers in duelling studies to prove the opposite because that’s the game being played. It’s all about who you believe. It’s not about “the science”. Quite the game really.

In fact, most now know that masks are harmful in many cases, with children paying the biggest price by far on many different levels.

We know now masks don’t work for covid but perhaps they work for RSV or the flu? Maybe that’s why the push is on again. Because here in Canada it certainly is. Maybe that’s why we have the new narrative and being good abnormal citizens we must comply. Do you think?

Don’t be silly. We know why. We just don’t want to say.

So the Media and their polls have told us that 7 out of 10 people want to keep the masks. And why might that be?

They can hide their crooked teeth. Or their unbrushed teeth. Or their morning-after-the-night-before breath. They don’t have to wear make-up. Or shave. Or wash their faces or their children’s faces.

They can stick their tongue out at people without being caught. They can whisper without lip readers. They can smile and smirk and bite their lips. They can hide their cosmetic surgery in progress.They can hide their chin hairs and warts and zits and leftover food in their moustaches.

They can rob a bank or say whatever they want to strangers because no one knows who they are and even the cameras don’t know. 

God only knows what’s going on behind those masks!

But! Those mask-wearing people are free in a weird weird way. Advocates of the new abnormal have found a form of freedom from social norms behind a mask.

How is that possible? Is it possible that masks are freedom? No wonder we’re all mixed up. We don’t even know what freedom is anymore.

Or is it because we lost the freedom to have crooked teeth, no makeup and snarky opinions in the real world due to ever evolving relentless social norms and now have to hide for any sort of freedom…Hmmm… 

Seems to be true for a lot of things now doesn’t it?

(Except for anything sexual. You can pretty much proclaim or do anything publicly now. Except child molestation. You can apparently sniff but not anything else. But I’m doing that digression thing again…)

So, let’s get this straight— when we see someone in a mask are they to be feared as nasty snaggle-toothed leprous sneaky sociopaths with sharp tongues and nefarious intentions?

Or are they just victims grasping for what little freedom they can garner in a socially punishing world? Hmmm… It could well be either one… How would we know?

Nevertheless, this is all terribly alarming. WHAT is going on? 7 out of 10 of us!!! 

Well, I have a theory.  Beyond the usual theories of enforced enslavement, virtue signalling, forced shame, neurosis, herd-like conditioning, continued fear porn, dehumanization/objectification/subjugation/alienation, circumvention of facial-recognition systems, gateway moves to social credit scores, anti-feminist one-step-to-the-forced-wearing-of-shuttlecock-burkas assault and the ultimate theory that this poll is nonsense propaganda from our captured media.

All of these theories are as good as the next as long as science seems to have little to do with mask mandates. I mean, real science by independent researchers.

Beyond these theories is the “we’re in the Dark Ages during the plague years of 1346 or so again” theory of mine which I thought I might as well throw into the mix now that we’re all mixed up about freedom and stuff.

Not that there is a plague or anything really at the moment but because people’s reactions don’t change. Not through all these centuries. We’ve changed NOT at all.

Here’s my theory: People wearing masks are the flagellants of the dark ages during the plague years who would run around whipping themselves publicly for God’s forgiveness and atonement or something.

Now during the plague years we would have asked a priest about all this guilt and fear stuff that drive flagellants to be flagellants but today we ask the psychologists.

This is because many if not all of the first world countries have become atheistic and have abandoned religion. But human nature needs what human nature needs—hence the psychologists for priests e.g. or Fauci as Pope and Schwaub as God and Greta as Mother Mary Marx.

Some people believe either technology, money, or medicine has replaced religion but it is clearly evident that it is the Green movement. If we can accept that religion is something that people participate in every day in a meaningful way, then clearly the Green movement has it all. It has priests, codes of behaviours, dictates and forbidden things.

It has a hell (the world as it is going now) and it has a heaven (sustainable development in utopia) It has worshippers. It has the holy and the damned. It has flagellants. And the people now wearing masks are them.

After thirty or so years of being told  humans are responsible for killing the planet and being driven to weeping guilt over spending and frivolity and recycling and plastic and gas and beef-pork pies, humans are despicable.

They know it.

They’re guilty as hell. They want to be punished. They believe they deserve it and they are doing this as an appeal to their new Gods of the Environment. 

Masks appear not to be about the virus, but about supporting the true religion of the Environmental Zealotry in all its glory and condemnation no matter whatever absurd, illogical or terribly hurtful thing that might bring in whatever sphere of influence.

For many masks might even be called the uniform of the uninformed. 

No wonder they read the riot act to the truckers protest of Canada over things like mask mandates. Those heretics!

Well… that’s my theory. It’s as good as any of those other ones, isn’t it? Or maybe not. What do I know… As far as wearing masks is concerned, I appreciate that people are afraid and don’t wish to make too much light of it. Fear isn’t fun. It’s just important to know what to fear and why. Mostly I’m all for following the law of the land as long as the law isn’t an ass. That’s the hard part to figure out.

Here’s an earworm:

Remember the scene in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is piloting the SR-72 “Darkstar” hypersonic plane and slams the thrust lever for the engines all the way forward. The engines ignite in a fiery blast that propels Maverick to Mach 10.  

The propulsion system centered around the SR-72 Darkstar (a plane that is only a concept) is a turbine-based combined cycle, which merges a turbine engine with a ramjet. 

While there is no aircraft in the production stage with this insane propulsion system, ground-testing testing is underway. 

Hypersonic airplane developer Hermeus Corporation tweeted a video on Thursday of one of these engines transitioning from “turbojet” mode to “ramjet” insane mode. 

We just completed a major hypersonic milestone – turbojet to ramjet mode transition! pic.twitter.com/1jF7qAZavy

— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022

Hermeus believes the engine will propel an aircraft in turbojet mode to March 3. They said the transition to ramjet would push the aircraft to March 5. 

“This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality. Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports,” the company said. 

This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality.

Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports. pic.twitter.com/FTq6DZmXxI

— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022

Here’s more of how the engine transitions:

At low speeds Chimera is in turbojet mode – just like any jet aircraft. But as the temperature and the speed of the incoming air increase, turbojets hit their performance limit. This happens at around Mach 2. 

Chimera has a pre-cooler that reduces the temperature of the air coming into the turbojet. This allows Hermeus to squeeze out a bit more performance from the turbojet before transitioning to ramjet.

The company said they “will begin flight testing in late 2023.” 

While Darkstar speeds are not yet attainable, supersonic passenger aircraft will be available at the end of this decade, and hypersonic travel could be a mid/late 2030 story. 

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly working with Google to install “spyware” onto the Android devices of a million state residents without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula were among 1 million Massachusetts residents who had the state’s “COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA” app auto-installed without their consent, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonpartisan civil rights group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on Tuesday.

The app, once automatically installed, didn’t appear on the device’s home screen as newly-installed apps typically do. Instead, it was invisible and could only be found by opening “settings” and using the “view all apps” feature, according to NCLA.

This meant that many device users were unaware of its presence. Many have decried this as an invasion of privacy.

The NCLA declared the action a “brazen disregard” of civil liberties, saying in a statement the app was installed “without obtaining any search warrants, in violation of the device owners’ constitutional and common-law rights to privacy and property.”

“This ‘android attack,’ deliberately designed to override the constitutional and legal rights of citizens to be free from government intrusions upon their privacy without their consent, reads like dystopian science fiction—and must be swiftly invalidated by the court,” said NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little in a statement.

‘Government May Not Secretly Install Surveillance’ on Devices

Other states and foreign countries mostly tried to persuade their citizens to voluntarily install contact tracing apps, even if it meant fewer people took it up, according to Sheng Li, litigation counsel for NCLA.

“The government may not secretly install surveillance devices on your personal property without a warrant—even for a laudable purpose,” Li said. “For the same reason, it may not install surveillance software on your smartphone without your awareness and permission.”

The NCLA has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the continued installation of the app on private devices “without the knowledge or permission of device owners.”

The lawsuit also asks the judge to make Massachusetts DPH work with Google to uninstall the app from “private Android mobile devices where the device owner did not give permission for such installation.”

The plaintiffs also want the state to declare that its actions violated Fourth Amendment rights and Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.

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