Authored by John Cody via Remix,

Germany’s former top domestic spy chief, Hans-Georg Maaßen, said in a new interview that Europe is facing an unprecedented crisis due to mass immigration, that Islam is well poised to conquer Europe, and that Germany and Austria could do much to stop the crisis but are choosing not to.

“A completely different culture is approaching us. We are not at all prepared for this, as we’re incapable of resolving conflicts even by means of violence, like family clans do from the Arab states. These people resolve conflicts by violence, whereas people in Central Europe think that this can only be done through the courts,” said Maaßen, who served as president of the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) from 2012 until 2018, said in his interview with FPÖ TV.

“The Europeans will succumb to Islam. On the one hand, because they are unable to even see this conflict coming, and on the other, because they are incapable of resolving conflicts in a similar fashion,” he said, stating that “the end result will be the gradual destruction of our European cultures.”

Maaßen described Europeans as living without a vision or mission, whereas other competing cultures have a clear idea of what they are and what their objectives are.

“We don’t know where we want to go. What should Germany or Austria look like in 2030? We are living only in the moment, and therefore we are losing out to others who have a religion or ideology, who know where they want to go. We lack a mission,” he continued. “Mostly Muslims come to us with a completely different awareness of culture, religion and family. In secular Europe, religion and family — if they are still important at all — are a matter for the individual, but in these cultures it is a matter for the clan.”

Population replacement by design

Maaßen said that European politicians are actively allowing mass immigration because, according to him, “our politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accepts immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics selects the people of the state and influences the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals.”

Maaßen said during the interview that countries like Germany and Austria have the tools necessary to stop immigration, but they are making a conscious choice not to.

“Germany and Austria could start rejecting people at the borders from one day to the next — due to the third country regulation,” the former spy chief stated. “Furthermore, the state could deport or ensure voluntary departure for “hundreds of thousands of foreigners who do not want to integrate and who could commit crimes and continue to depend on social benefits from the state.”

One of the major sticking points for Western governments is that third nations have refused to take back foreign nationals, but Maaßen said there are a host of tools for dealing with these recalcitrant nations.

“It should also be possible to persuade third countries to take back their own nationals after deportation orders. If they don’t do it, you could ‘freeze their assets,’ prevent (their citizens) from traveling to Europe and other things. You have to persuade these states to behave in accordance with international law,” he said.

Maaßen doubts that Germany’s politicians are planning to take any serious measures against illegal immigration despite the growing risks, especially from violent cultures.

“Why aren’t migrants simply turned back at the borders?” asks Maaßen. He points to the latest “migration summit” in Germany, where he said he saw “showcase politics” or “dummy politics,” where the main points that were raised were more money for asylum seekers and faster asylum procedures. However, nobody asked the most crucial question: “Why are we letting these people into Germany and Europe in the first place?”

“Why don’t we force countries like Italy and Greece to finally do what they are supposed to do according to the European treaties, namely sensible border protection? Why do we let these people come to us, feed them and spend billions on them, while many locals, poor pensioners with a 920 euro pension after a full working life, have to collect bottles?”

As Remix News has previously reported, millions of German seniors are living in poverty, and increasingly, they are being removed from their own homes to make way for the record influx of migrants coming into the country.

Muslim majority by 2200?

Maaßen’s warnings may be prescient, as Europe rapidly undergoes demographic change. Pew Research has already noted that Europe’s Muslim population may triple by 2050 to 76 million in a comprehensive report. However, over a longer timeframe, PSU Research Review predicts a Muslim majority by 2200, while in certain EU countries, such as Greece, Ireland, France, Belgium, and Britain, more than three quarters of the population will be Muslim.

…

Read more here…

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well.

The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.

At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel.

Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.

The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.

Hundreds of such incidents are now occurring on a daily basis—as the country is leaving its Weimar phase and heading at warp speed into normalizing Jew-hatred and worse. Instructors singled out Jewish students in classes at UC Davis and Stanford. Pro-Hamas students ripped down posters, swarmed public buildings, and disrupted traffic.

A pro-Israeli demonstrator in Los Angeles was hit on the head and killed by a pro-Palestinian university professor.

Jewish students were trapped in a Cooper Union university library surrounded by pro-Hamas demonstrators. At MIT, Jewish students were warned to keep away from particular areas of the campus deemed dangerous for them.

What would happen to a university president who warned black or Latino students to keep clear of areas where she could not guarantee their safety from other students?

A bankrupt media deserves much of the blame. They daily broadcast Hamas’s suspect casualty figures, as if that terrorist organization has ever been capable of speaking the truth.

The Western news regurgitated “500 dead at a Gaza hospital,” due to a supposedly deliberate Israel bombing. In fact, the hospital parking lot was hit by an errant Islamic Jihad missile intended to kill civilians in Israel.

No matter—few reporters apologized for spreading Hamas-fed misinformation, despite the previous Hamas lies that they never harmed civilians, that tunnels were not beneath hospital grounds, that they did not murder 1,200 Israelis; or their lies that Hamas gunmen do not rape, when they engaged in mass rape on October 7.

The media normalizes Hamas’s atrocities by treating it as if it were an ordinary government, not a murderous terrorist clique that decapitates civilians, takes children as hostages, and mutilates those it slaughters. That the terrorist organization has kidnapped at least ten American citizens and killed perhaps another 31 is lost on the “journalists,” many of them Americans who could care less about the fate of their fellow citizens.

The media fixates on the Israeli response to mass murder, but rarely the mass murder of 1,200 Israeli civilians that prompted the current war. During ceasefires do Israeli terrorists drive into Gaza cities, and shoot and kill innocent civilians—and then brag, as did Hamas recently, that such murdering will only increase?

Sometimes the anti-Semitic hatred reaches Orwellian levels of absurdity. A British reporter asked an Israeli official whether his country valued life less than Hamas did because it had agreed to Hamas’s demand to release three convicted terrorists in exchange for one Israeli captive. The media fawned over a released disfigured Gazan terrorist – without mentioning that her injuries came from a car bomb she exploded in hopes of killing Jews.

The media is further emboldened by the Biden administration. When asked about the outbreak of anti-Semitism across the U.S. – nearly 60 percent of hate crimes are committed against Jews, who make up 2.5 percent of the population – Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed them with the false claim that the White House “had not seen any credible threats” to Jews. And then she claimed that the real danger to American residents was Islamophobia and threats to Arab-Americans. Hate crime and interracial crime statistics do not support Jean-Pierre’s assertions, which prompts the question of why she made them in the first place.

Note that almost all the violence in demonstrations over the current war comes from the pro-Hamas side that shouts “river to the sea” genocidal threats, swarms the Capitol rotunda and the White House wall, disrupts traffic, occupies bridges at peak traffic, defaces private and public property, shouts down speakers on campus, harasses passers-by, and often battles the police. One wonders whether, should the U.S. military be forced to try to rescue American captives, the demonstrators would cheer for the American troops or Hamas hostage-takers.

Abroad, the world has gone even crazier.

The United Nations has appointed Iran—a theocratic, terrorist-supporting government that kills dissidents and takes hostages—as the chair nation of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum. What a cruel joke.

But what would one expect from the UN when its secretary-general, António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, a former Portuguese socialist politician, condemns the Israeli response to October 7, but rarely, if ever, the Hamas mass killing of civilians that prompted it. Right after the mass killing Guterres opined, “The attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” According to the secretary-general’s logic, I suppose, Pearl Harbor, the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not happen in a vacuum either.

When told that an Irish citizen hostage was freed by Hamas, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar declared that the “lost” child was finally “found.” In other words, he wished to hide the obvious fact that a terrorist organization had kidnapped an Irish citizen child, held her hostage for 50 days, and released her only when Israel gave up convicted terrorists to obtain her release.

Our domestic political leadership is not helping the situation.

Just days after October 7, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with the foreign minister of the now often hostile Turkish government, were calling for a cease-fire to prevent an Israeli response.

When the Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israeli cities went off course and damaged a Gaza hospital (leading to the fake story that Israel bombed the hospital), President Biden joked, “You got to learn to shoot straight.” Did Biden mean that, had the terrorists only launched a successful terrorist rocket into Jewish neighborhoods, there would have been no ensuing controversies?

Biden later apologized for doubting fatality figures provided by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas—a terrorist organization that has lied about the hospital “bombing,” denied it had tunnels under hospitals, denied that it had engaged in mass rape in Israel, and has supplied no proof of its civilian casualty numbers. Has Hamas released figures of how many of its terrorists were killed, and does it separate those numbers from lost “civilians?” And so are there really vast new cemeteries in Gaza to handle the 15,000 graves for those who, Hamas asserts, were killed?

What explains the collective madness?

For the last 40 years, while Western leftists have naively supported Palestinian terrorists, their governments have appeased terrorist-supporting Middle Eastern governments for very practical reasons. The old subtext to such mollification was that 500-million irate Arab Muslims, and a Middle East with 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves, in realist terms, simply argued against the interests of 10 million Israelis.

But now there are two new, venomous elements in the matrix.

One is that the racist DEI industry assumes that all intersectional nonwhite communities are victims of white privilege and supremacy. Therefore, as permanently oppressed, they are declared incapable of being racist themselves. And so they can harass with impunity the supposed victimizers—in this case American Jews, who are declared culpable whites.

So the oppressed, according to the DEI bible, cannot be anti-Semitic, though many certainly are. And they apparently cannot be held accountable for their hatred or frequent violence.

Secondly, in the last two decades there has been an epidemic of immigration into Western nations from the Middle East. In often-divided democracies like ours, politicians seek to appease as many pressure groups as possible, whether citizen voters or merely resident demonstrators, to acquire and maintain power.

Such pro-Hamas demonstrators, rah-rahing from a free, prosperous, and secure West, expect no rebuke for their obvious hypocrisy in cheering on an autocratic, dictatorial Hamas that has wrecked the economy of Gaza, shoots dissidents, and allows no free expression. And Middle Eastern guests and immigrants are never reminded that their very demonstrations are predicated on not being physically present in their homelands, where they might be shot for what they say and do freely in the West.

We are on a trajectory similar to that of 1930s Germany.

Every time a student is cornered, harassed, or threatened; a high school mob tries to swarm and harm a teacher; a government spokesperson dismisses such hatred; or American soldiers are targeted by Iranian-fed terrorist organizations; the madness, racism, and anti-Semitism will increase—until it reaches a saturation point of abject violence in our streets.

Once a society mainstreams the values of thuggish brownshirts, and ignores their “from the river to the sea” eliminationist chants and screams of “beat the f—king Jew,” then the next emboldened step is foreordained.

True, most Americans were appalled by October 7 and accept that every nation has the right to defend itself from terrorist killers. Most Americans deplore vicious demonstrators and their calls for violence on behalf of the Hamas death cult. And most Americans want their President to demand the release of American hostages and to deter Iranian-backed terrorists who attack U.S. military personnel in the region.

But unless the public demands that their universities enforce on campus the Bill of Rights and the right to move freely in safety, that police enforce laws against mob violence on America’s streets and in our schools, and that the United States stops greenlighting mass immigration from anti-Western nations and extending student visas to residents of anti-American, terrorist-supporting, and autocratic Middle East regimes, then in suicidal fashion we are headed for a 1930s nightmare.

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The sense of helplessness that has gripped the Chinese people on and off since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago is again returning as the country grapples with an unidentified pneumonia outbreak that is sickening children and overwhelming hospitals.

In strollers, or carried by their parents, sick children have been filling hospital waiting rooms, hallways, and spilling outside the main gates. They wait for hours hoping for their number to be called on the loudspeaker before the day is over.

Waiting up to 12 hours is not uncommon—if one can get in line at all. After staying past midnight in a hospital hallway teeming with people, a Beijing resident shared a photo while holding a ticket number in the 1800s—the placement in the day’s queue—reminding would-be visitors to bring a stool with them, because “there’s nowhere to sit if you need to get an IV drip.”

From north to south, the spike in children’s respiratory hospitalizations is shutting classrooms and pushing health authorities to issue a flurry of announcements telling teachers and students who feel unwell to stay home.

“Everyone in the class is coughing—you can’t even hear what the teacher is saying,” a man surnamed Chen told The Epoch Times, recounting what he heard from his school-aged daughter from Beijing.

Just like three years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears dismissive of the disease’s risk, telling a concerned World Health Organization that there are no “unusual or new pathogens” or clinical symptoms.

The regime partially attributed the uptick to a mid-October upgrade in a respiratory surveillance mechanism, and asserted that the existing Chinese hospital capacities have been sufficient to handle the situation.

Beijing’s explanation, which the international health agency as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have quoted verbatim, has convinced few in China or abroad.

The acting director of WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in a Nov. 29 press briefing that the organization is “following up with the situation in China” and assessing “the health care capacities around the world” in dealing with these types of new infections.

Sean Lin, microbiologist and former lab director at the viral diseases branch of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, expressed frustration over the WHO’s reliance on China’s regime for information.

“How can you trust the Chinese government data?” he told The Epoch Times.

Many lawmakers in Washington, especially Republicans, see the same thing happening in China now.

“We have no ability to trust the Chinese,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), told The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD on Nov. 30, a day after signing a letter demanding that the CDC investigate the outbreak in China.

“They’re not forthcoming, they don’t want to lose face, and as a result, people die.”

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), a practicing surgeon, similarly believes “China’s going to do everything possible so that they don’t look like they’re the genesis of another pandemic.”

“I don’t trust anything the Chinese say—not a word,” he told NTD. “You get burned once, you don’t get burned again.”

A Fast Spreading Pathogen

Around this time last year, the regime abruptly abandoned its draconian zero-COVID restrictions after forcing the Chinese population to live for years in an on-again, off-again lockdown with food and other basic needs hanging in the balance.

In the first 20 days of December 2022, an estimated hundreds of millions contracted the virus. The influx of infections and deaths overloaded hospitals and crematoriums.

Children have been particularly hard hit during the current pneumonia outbreak. Major Chinese pediatric hospitals across China have reported receiving up to 10,000 patients each day in recent weeks.

The Tianjin Children’s Hospital hit a daily record of 13,171 patients recently. The hospital’s director, Liu Wei, penned a letter pleading for understanding from the public, emphasizing that the medical workers are also parents, some with their own sick children.

Other health workers from the northeastern megacity confirmed the same pattern is repeating throughout Tianjin if not elsewhere. Going to the doctor at a hospital, for many Chinese, means waiting in the wee hours of the morning in front of their computer screen to secure a placement number, which is limited daily.

“Even when our children get sick, we also have trouble getting a number. We also have to keep refreshing the screen to see if a number becomes available,” one Beichen Hospital staff member told The Epoch Times. Further north, in Jilin Province, a staff member from the Second Hospital of Jilin University said the hospital was booked for the next seven days.

In some hospitals, the waiting rooms were so packed that children and their families had to line up outside the hospital gate. Tents, camping beds, foldable chairs, and blankets were all put into use, while those needing intravenous treatment brought hangers and lifting hooks to self-administer an IV during the wait.

Feeling the pressure, authorities in the northern Chinese city of Sanhe have dispatched workers in hazmat suits to sanitize campuses. A man from Beijing, Mr. Liu, told The Epoch Times that the hospital he was staying in had put out a mask mandate and limited family visits to a two-hour window each evening.

People in the thick of it speak uneasily of how fast, and persistent, the disease has been taking hold.

On Chinese social media site Weibo, an elementary school teacher from southern China’s Hunan Province shared how the entire class fell sick overnight and stayed home. The teacher also called in sick after a night of head-splitting high fever, hand tremors, ringing in ears, and a dry cough that brought sharp lung pain.

A Beijing mother of two, whose entire family recently suffered from the disease, referred to a local school in which half of the students became afflicted despite all the precautionary measures.

“There’s not much you can do,” she told The Epoch Times. “Mask up and cover yourself as much as you like, you get infected all the same.”

It’s also hard to completely shake it, she added. Days after the coughing and sneezing ceased, a student believed to have recovered became feverish again.

Read the rest here…

It’s such an open secret and so much of a ‘given’ assumption that it can just be casually written straight into the New York Times headline at this point…

Nuclear missile program you say? (What nuclear program—nothing to see here… or the country’s worst kept secret.) Militant Rocket Hit Base Linked to Israeli Nuclear Missile Program…

“A rocket most likely fired by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel struck an Israeli military base where, experts say, many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a visual analysis of the attack’s aftermath by The New York Times.”

The report details the highly dangerous episode, noting that while no missiles or warheads were directly hit, a large fire was sparked and nearly spread to storage facilities that contained “sensitive weaponry” at the Sdot Micha military base in central Israel.

One weapons expert was cited as saying there may be up to 25 to 50 nuclear-capable Jericho missiles at the base where the fire raged. However, the nuclear warheads themselves are likely stored at a separate base, according to the analyst. But clearly the base in central Israel was directly targeted by Hamas, or also possibly Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – which worked in concert.

The Times concludes that what happened on Oct.7 was even scarier in terms of the potential for a bigger catastrophic event than previously believed:

“But the targeting of one of the most sensitive military locations in Israel shows that the scope of the Oct. 7 attacks may have been even greater than previously known — and that rockets can penetrate the airspace around Israel’s closely guarded strategic weapons.”

This strongly suggests that on Oct.7 there was an ultra-risky moment that Israel’s strategic nuclear arsenal came under direct fire (again, the arsenal that’s not supposed to exist). 

The dangerous near-miss seems akin to the highly volatile and long-running standoff between Russian and Ukraine forces at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

But in the case of Hamas, it’s a ragtag low-tech group of Islamists that apparently came very close to devastating a highly sensitive facility.

Below: the visual investigation compiled by the Times showing a large scorched area in the aftermath of the missile strike…

Hamas Nearly Hit Israeli Nukes, NYT reports.

▪️A rocket most likely fired by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel struck an Israeli military base where, experts say, many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a visual analysis of the… pic.twitter.com/oRjeQFKIqD

— EHA News (@eha_news) December 4, 2023

The fresh Monday report noted, “The Times first identified the fire caused by the attack on Sdot Micha using public NASA satellite imagery for detecting wildfires. There has not been a fire — from any cause — of similar magnitude at the base since at least 2004.”

Now, about two months out from the devastating Hamas terror raids of Oct.7, more and more shocking details from that day have been revealed which increasingly confirms the significant planning and sophistication of the multi-pronged attack. More and more pressure and public outrage has been directed at the Netanyahu government and military establishment for the unprecedented intelligence failures.

This has also included that revelation that “Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show,” as a separate NYT report detailed. “But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.”

By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

Front-end Treasuries have rallied big in the past month, but labor market data will pose a key test for traders this week.

Yes, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did reiterate on Friday that the central bank is prepared to tighten policy further, but was just jawboning against the recent loosening of financial conditions rather than a statement of real intent given the clear disinflationary momentum we have seen of late.

The two-year Treasury yield, which was hovering around 5% before softer-than-inflation readings for October, has since shed some 40 basis points. While the decline has made the maturity look rather rich on the curve, some optimism is justified by comments from Governor Christopher Waller who became the first Fed official to explicitly open the door to rate cuts.

As I see it, the two-year maturity has a subjective 60% probability of entrenching its richness, even if the security may only consolidate its gains between now and the year-end. A crucial first test will come as soon as this week, with ADP employment numbers due on Wednesday and non-farm payrolls data for November on Friday. Curiously, the median forecasts on both expect an improvement from prior numbers, but yet another print that shows employers expanded their payrolls for an umpteenth successive time in this cycle isn’t likely to tell the Fed anything that it doesn’t already know about the resilience of the labor market.

Instead, look at the jobless rate, where the number is forecast to stay unchanged at 3.9%. A reading lower than that will puncture the current rally in rates, for that would pretty much rule out any enthusiasm for the sooner-rather-than-later rate cuts that traders have firmly positioned themselves for. The Fed reckons that a print higher than 4% will be required to bring the labor market back into balance. An acceleration in hourly earnings will also sully the bullish mood in the Treasury markets.

As world leaders gathered over the weekend 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

Authored by Maryanne Demasi via The Brownstone Institute,

The recent findings of DNA fragments in the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines has led many to question why the FDA, which is responsible for monitoring the quality and safety of the vaccines, has failed to sound the alarm.

For years, the FDA has known about the risk posed by residual DNA in vaccines. Its own guidance to industry states:

“Residual DNA might be a risk to your final product because of oncogenic and/or infectivity potential. There are several potential mechanisms by which residual DNA could be oncogenic, including the integration and expression of encoded oncogenes or insertional mutagenesis following DNA integration.”

Put simply, the FDA acknowledges the possibility that fragments of DNA left over by the manufacturing process can be incorporated into a patient’s own DNA, to potentially cause cancer.

FDA and WHO guidelines consider the amount of residual DNA in a single dose of traditional vaccine should not exceed 10 ng (one billionth of a gram).

But this limit – used for traditional vaccines – is unlikely to be relevant to the mRNA vaccines whose lipid nanoparticles can penetrate inside cells to deliver the mRNA efficiently.

A recent preprint paper by Speicher et al analysed batches of the monovalent and bivalent mRNA vaccines in Canada.

The authors found “the presence of billions to hundreds of billions of DNA molecules per dose in these vaccines. Using fluorometry all vaccines exceed the guidelines for residual DNA set by FDA and WHO of 10 ng/dose.”

Speicher et al also reported finding fragments of DNA larger than 200 base pairs (a measure of the length of the DNA) which also exceeds FDA guidelines.

Notably, the authors commented that for the Pfizer product, the higher the level of DNA fragments found in the vaccine, the higher the rate of serious adverse events.

Some experts say the risk of genome integration in humans is very low, but a recent publication in Nature found that around 7 percent of cells are integrated when mixed with a transfection solution containing linear pieces of DNA.

Is the FDA Concerned?

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to insist that any residual DNA contamination in the Covid vaccines is not a problem and that it “stands behind its findings of quality, safety, and efficacy for the mRNA vaccines.”

“While concerns have been raised previously as theoretical issues, available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the minute amounts of residual DNA do not cause cancer, or changes to a person’s genetic code,” added the FDA.

The FDA would not provide the “available scientific evidence” to support its claim, but it’s worth noting that the vaccines’ own product labels show that genotoxicity and carcinogenicity tests were not carried out prior to their use.

David Wiseman, a research bioscientist involved in medical product development and co-author on the study by Speicher et al said the FDA’s claim that there is no evidence of a cancer link is becoming “untenable.”

“The CDC’s own analysis on the vaccine’s safety signal in VAERS shows there could be a signal for some cancers,” said Wiseman pointing to a report he co-authored and sent to the National Academies.

In the table (highlighted in yellow), a safety signal is considered to be significant, and worthy of further investigation, if the value in the column marked PRR exceeds 2 and the value in the Chi-Square column exceeds 4.

The FDA would not confirm if it found levels of DNA that exceeded acceptable levels, nor if it was investigating further.

Instead, after months of enquiries, the FDA sent boilerplate responses to me (and other media) saying, “With over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified.”

In response to a list of questions about its testing and oversight, the FDA said it “does not have any additional information to provide at this time.”

Poor Manufacturing Oversight

We now know that Pfizer’s vaccine used in the clinical trials (PROCESS 1) was manufactured differently to the vaccine that was injected into the wider population (PROCESS 2).

This switch from PROCESS 1 to PROCESS 2 is what introduced the plasmid DNA impurities (see red circles), which could change the safety profile of the vaccine.

I asked the FDA if it had any human data on the comparison of the two processes.

The agency pointed me to the FDA’s EUA review memo dated 20 Nov 2020 which suggested that the testing was “ongoing.”

The three-year old document stated that “A more comprehensive comparability assessment encompassing additional lots from multiple DP manufacturing nodes is ongoing and the results will be provided to the EUA upon completion of the study.”

When I asked the FDA for access to the “ongoing” results, I was instructed to obtain the information from Pfizer, but the drug company did not respond to my enquiries.

A Freedom of Information request by Nick Hunt of the Daily Sceptic may explain why.

Pfizer promised the regulator that it would compare the safety and immunogenicity of the two processes in participants and report back by February 2021, but it seems those studies were never done.

The FOI stated:

…in October 2020 an exploratory objective was added in the C4591001 study to describe safety and immunogenicity of vaccines produced by manufacturing “Process 1” or “Process 2” in participants 16 to 55 years of age. This exploratory objective was removed and documented in protocol amendment 20 in September 2022 due to the extensive usage of vaccines manufactured via “Process 2”. Thus, this process comparison was not conducted as part of the formal documentation within the protocol amendment.[emphasis added]

Wiseman said, “Given the magnitude of the process change, from my experience in medical product development, these sorts of biological comparability studies would certainly have been expected to be undertaken by Pfizer.”

He added, “the fact that Pfizer was given a free pass indicates a significant lapse in regulatory oversight.”

Kevin McKernan, the genomics expert who made the discovery of DNA fragments in the vaccines earlier this year, says there’s “no incentive” now for Pfizer to carry out this comparative testing. 

“It’s speculation on my part, but I suspect they might’ve seen increased adverse events with the commercial batch and buried the data knowing the train had left the station at that point,” said McKernan.   

“There was no political will to stop vaccinating, and Pfizer probably knew the regulators would let them get away with not testing the commercial batches for the population,” he added. 

*  *  *

Republished from the author’s Substack

A new report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) shows that buy now, pay later (BNPL) adoption among young adults, particularly those with low education, is soaring. This trend is becoming increasingly prevalent in countries experiencing high inflation and where households tend to have higher debt levels. 

BNPL allows consumers to spend money they don’t have over a number of interest-free installments, which are generally unreported to credit bureaus. The overuse and poor understanding of BNPL terms can be disastrous for consumers and lead to overindebtedness. 

A surge in BNPL use was seen during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to Adobe Analytics, BNPL use on Cyber Monday hit a record high, up 43% from a year ago. 

While the White House celebrated record holiday sales, a closer look at the data revealed a concerning trend: an increasing number of consumers are resorting to BNPL services for big-ticket items and essential goods, such as groceries. The reliance on BNPL indicates debts could be stacking up on consumers, which could strain service debts immensely. 

BIS provided a simple breakdown of how BNPL services differ from credit cards. 

The volume of global BNPL transactions and daily active users of BNPL services continues to skyrocket. 

BNPL is the most popular in Australia, then across the West and China:

The popularity of BNPL varies widely around the globe (Graph 6). The countries with the highest adoption rates are Australia and Sweden. Other countries with significant BNPL uptake are China, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.

BIS finds the average BNPL user is under 35, has a low income, and lacks education: 

Younger and tech-savvy individuals, including “Millennials” and “Generation Z,” often do not possess credit cards (PYMTS (2023)) and are generally less financially literate than older generations (Lusardi and Mitchell (2023)). Consistent with this, a survey of US BNPL services reveals that they are more often used by individuals with low-income levels and less educational attainment. 

“There is evidence from the United States that BNPL users are particularly risky,” BIS said. 

BNPL-fueled record holiday sales are nothing to cheer about as it only shows working poor consumers are adding even more leverage and insurmountable debts as Bidenomics fails. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in the Georgia election case that the charges should be thrown out because it’s a violation of his “free speech” and also noted that if he wins the 2024 presidential election, the Fulton County trial cannot go through.

During a roughly six-hour hearing in Fulton County on Dec. 1, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee asked Mr. Sadow what would happen if President Trump wins the 2024 election and if the trial hasn’t occurred yet.

“Under the Supremacy Clause and its duty to the president of the United States, this trial would not take place at all until after he left his term of office,” the former president’s attorney said in response, according to a live stream posted on the judge’s YouTube page.

It means that the former president wins the 2024 election and Judge McAfee agreed that he shouldn’t be tried until he leaves office, which would delay the trial date to at least January 20, 2029.

Responding to the claims, Fulton County prosecutor Nathan Wade said Ms. Willis “has no interest in interfering or getting involved in this presidential election” and said she is trying “to move this case forward.” He added, “Our obvious goal is, and has been, to stick to our August trial date.”

The judge did not issue any rulings from the bench during the Dec. 1 hearing. He also has not scheduled a new trial date for the case.

In a recent court filing, Ms. Willis’ office said prosecutors expect the proceedings to run until early 2025, which would run in tandem with the ending months of the 2024 presidential campaign. National polls show that President Trump is overwhelmingly the Republican favorite for president, including in key primary states.

The former president’s lawyers said the former president would prefer not to be on trial in August 2024, noting his status as the leading Republican presidential candidate.  State prosecutors previously have said they are seeking a trial date around that time, which would come about three months before the presidential election next November.

“It’s very possible at that time, that my client will be running for election for president of the United States for the Republican Party,” Mr. Sadow told the judge, saying “the preference would be that he not be on trial during the time that he is campaigning,” according to reporters in the court.

“Can you imagine the notion of the Republican nominee for president not being able to campaign for the presidency because he is, in some form or fashion, in a courtroom defending himself?” he asked.  “That would be the most effective election interference in the history of the United States.”

But Mr. Wade disagreed with his assertion, telling the court: “This trial does not constitute election interference. This is moving forward with the business of Fulton County.“

“I don’t think it in any way impedes defendant Trump’s ability to campaign,” Mr. Wade added.

Also in the hearing, his attorneys argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ indictment also effectively criminalizes the right to engage in political activity under the the First Amendment.

Mr. Sadow told a judge that “you take the facts as alleged in the indictment … as applied constitutionally with the First Amendment, you’ll find that it violates free speech, freedom of petitioning, all the expressions that the First Amendment is designed to protect, and therefore the indictment needs to be dismissed.”

Over the summer, Ms. Willis’ office charged President Trump and 18 others, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with conspiracy to allegedly overturn the 2020 election results. Several co-defendants—including attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis—have pleaded guilty in return for a plea deal with prosecutors.

The remaining 15 defendants in the case, including President Trump, have pleaded not guilty. The former president, who faces charges in three other jurisdictions, has said it’s part of a wide-ranging campaign to denigrate his political chances.

Ms. Willis had also asked the judge to set a final plea date of June 21, writing that prosecutors would consider plea deals up until that date and intend to recommend the maximum penalties at any sentencing hearings after that. Judge McAfee said Dec. 1 he wasn’t sure that was necessary, that the district attorney could independently set a date after which she wouldn’t consider plea deals.

Attorney Buddy Parker, who represents lawyer and co-defendant John Eastman, told the judge his client is concerned about the possibility of a trial date being set in 2025, saying that would mean it was more than a year that his case would be pending.

“There are a number of defendants, as noted, who are not running for the presidency of the United States,” Mr. Parker said, adding that his client would like to be tried separately from President Trump because of the complications involved and would even be in favor of going to trial before August.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped a bombshell and almost unbelievable revelation, on Monday saying it has broken up a major Cuban spy operation that went on for decades at the highest levels of government.

Former US ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha has been arrested at his Miami home for secretly acting as a spy for Cuba “for more than 40 years” in a development which may be without precedent. The case is being called the “highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government by a foreign agent.”

73-year old Rocha spent his career rising through the ranks of the State Dept and foreign service, having began as a desk officer for Honduras all the way back in November 1981, after attending Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown University.

“For decades, Rocha allegedly worked as a covert agent for Cuba and abused his position of trust in the U.S. government to advance the interests of a foreign power,” a DOJ press release stated.

The US government said he secretly represented Cuban interests while in high ranking diplomatic positions, thus he had the ability to manipulate American foreign policy toward that end.

He was finally caught after such a long career serving dual purposes when he bragged to an undercover FBI agent that he had done “decades” of work on behalf of Cuba. The DOJ detailed this as follows in the wake of his being taken into custody last Friday:

The complaint alleges that, in a series of meetings during 2022 and 2023, with an undercover agent from the FBI posing as a covert Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence representative, Rocha made repeated statements admitting his “decades” of work for Cuba, spanning “40 years.”

When the undercover told Rocha he was “a covert representative here in Miami” whose mission was “to contact you, introduce myself as your new contact, and establish a new communication plan,” Rocha answered “Yes,” and proceeded to engage in a lengthy conversation during which he described and celebrated his activity as a Cuban intelligence agent.

The DOJ has sought to make clear these activities went far beyond some mere lobbying relationship, given that in the secretly recorded conversation with Rocha, the retired ambassador referenced the US as “the enemy”: 

Throughout the meetings, Rocha behaved as a Cuban agent, consistently referring to the United States as “the enemy,” and using the term “we” to describe himself and Cuba. Rocha additionally praised Fidel Castro as the “Comandante,” and referred to his contacts in Cuban intelligence as his “Compañeros” (comrades) and to the Cuban intelligence services as the “Dirección.” Rocha described his work as a Cuban agent as “a grand slam.”

The case details also make clear that US authorities believe he was acting as an agent of Cuba from the very beginning of his service in the US State Dept in the early 1980s. If this is what Cuban intelligence could successfully do, what about Washington’s much bigger and powerful rivals?

A Cuban spy, Victor Rocha, was just caught after 40 years in the US Government.

He was an employee of the US State Department, served as a US Ambassador and even got on the National Security Council.

If Cuba has spies at this level for 40 years… imagine China, Russia and Iran. pic.twitter.com/E00expXAZl

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) December 4, 2023

Rocha reached his high ranking diplomatic positions by the late 1980s, which included the following successive roles through the 1990s and early 2000s:

• First Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico;
• Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic;
• Department of State employee, as the Director of Inter-American Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council, with special responsibility for, among other things, Cuba;
• Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba;
• Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and
• November 1999 until in or around August 2002: Ambassador to Bolivia at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia.

It has not been revealed the precise ways or moments in which he benefitted Cuba or potentially influenced US policy. Interestingly, he was posted in Cuba at various times in which Washington did not have official relations with the Castro government, which has also long been under crippling sanctions. 

One key question that will naturally arise: given the length and span of his being a Cuban spy at top echelons of the State Department, are there more foreign moles? It seems this is the likely scenario, especially given this period reaching back into the 1980s marked the tail end of the Cold War.