Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

After weeks of clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Arab tribesman aligned with Deir Ezzor Military Council (DEMC), the SDF has imposed a curfew following a resumption of fighting on Monday. These ethnic tensions are boiling over in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, illegally occupied by the US and its SDF partners, as the Arab majority resists Kurdish rule.

Syrian media and activists reported that the SDF imposed the indefinite measure across a handful of towns in Deir Ezzor including Ziban, located close to the border with Iraq. Arab gunmen took over several positions in Ziban on Monday, during which a number of SDF fighters were killed, according to the pan-Arab TV station Al Mayadeen.

The SDF issued a statement saying the gunmen entered Ziban while “under cover of random artillery shelling” coming from the province’s government controlled town of Mayadeen. In Deir Ezzor, Damascus controls the area west of the Euphrates River, while Washington and their SDF proxy occupy Deir Ezzor east of the river. The Kurdish-led forces have accused the Syrian government of allowing the Arab militiamen to cross the Euphrates River.

The statement also claimed the SDF assisted in the evacuation of civilians to safe areas, namely nearby villages. Kurdish forces were also said to have fled the area in Ziban as the fighting exacerbated.

Though Washington has backed some Sunni Arab groups such as the DEMC in the region, the US mostly relies on the SDF to control about a third of Syria along with most of the country’s oil and wheat resources. There are roughly 900 US troops and an undisclosed number of contractors embedded with the SDF.

As a result of the illegal occupation, the Kurds have dominated the area much to the disliking of the Arab population. The resisting tribesmen along with their supporters complain about the Kurdish authorities’ corruption, drug smuggling, misallocation of resources, as well as the Arab population’s impoverishment and political disenfranchisement.

Syrian journalist Ibrahim Muhammad has explained most people living in the province “categorically refuse to be ruled by the Kurds.” The fighting started late last month when the SDF arrested the leader of the DEMC, Abu Khawla. Since then, more than 100 people have been killed.

Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, has said this current violence should not have surprised policymakers. “Anyone who was watching the deteriorating situation in Deir Ezzor wouldn’t have been surprised by this,” Ford told Middle East Eye.

“Arab grievances against the SDF go back years. Instead of the US addressing those concerns and moving Kurds out of Deir Ezzor and bringing in local Arab leaders, it sat on its hands,” the erstwhile diplomat added.

Lavrov accuses U.S. of double standards over Golan Heights and the Donbas region of #Ukraine

He quoted U.S. Sec. of State Blinken, who said that Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights is appropriate & that international law is not. #Syria https://t.co/fnOPV5mBYj via… pic.twitter.com/VzJoOT6DfR

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) September 24, 2023

The Islamic State took over large swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq as a result of the Barack Obama administration’s failed regime change operation which saw the CIA arming and funding rebel groups including al Qaeda affiliates. The proxy war killed hundreds of thousands of people but ultimately failed in its attempt to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The terrorist group was all but destroyed by Damascus with help from its Russian and Iranian allies. Despite the claims of US officials that the occupation is meant to deter the re-emergence of the terrorist group, the American occupation is instead designedly depriving Syria of vital resources amid Washington’s economic war.

The credibility of the International Energy Agency continues to wane as it continues to advocate for an urgent shift towards a decarbonized economy. According to the IEA, global fossil fuel demand must decline 25% by the decade’s end to ensure the world is on track for net zero by 2050. However, Christyan Malek, JPMorgan’s head of EMEA energy equity research, recently shared a note with clients about an emerging “very volatile supercycle” for fossil fuel, where demand is set to rise through 2030, sparking what he believes could be a massive global oil deficit that will propel prices well into the triple-digit territory through the end of the decade. 

Let’s begin with the OECD-funded energy watchdog’s latest forecast, which says coal, oil, and natural gas demand must decline by at least a quarter to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the world on track for net zero by the mid-part of the century. At the same time, it argues that the clean energy supply must exponentially rise to avoid shortages and price increases.

The IEA said “stringent and effective policies” under its forecast would “spur clean energy deployment and cut fossil fuel demand by more than 25 percent by 2030 and 80 percent in 2050”. 

It forecasted global oil demand will fall by 100 million barrels a day to about 77 million by 2030, adding natural gas demand should slide from 4,150 billion cubic meters in 2022 to 3,400 bcm by the end of the decade. 

IEA said the slide in demand would involve a 75% reduction in energy sector methane emissions by 2030, which would cost an estimated $75 billion or about 2% of the oil and gas industry’s net income in 2022. It pointed out “positive developments” in the clean energy space, including rapid adoptions of electric vehicles and solar panels. 

The agency’s latest projections come weeks after IEA boss Fatih Birol said, “We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era, and we have to prepare ourselves for the next era.” He noted global oil demand growth will peak before 2030 as the shift to clean energy economies picks up pace. 

Birol’s comments were immediately met with a rare rebuke from OPEC, who said: “It is an extremely risky and impractical narrative to dismiss fossil fuels, or to suggest that they are at the beginning of their end.”

“In past decades, there were often calls of peak supply, and in more recent ones, peak demand, but evidently neither has materialized. The difference today, and what makes such predictions so dangerous, is that they are often accompanied by calls to stop investing in new oil and gas projects,” the cartel said.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais also said the IEA’s “narratives only set the global energy system up to fail spectacularly. It would lead to energy chaos on a potentially unprecedented scale, with dire consequences for economies and billions of people across the world.” 

IEA has gone from a market observer to a green energy cheerleader and is undoubtedly risking its reputation by pushing climate change narratives. The problem: there’s no imminent climate catastrophe, and the world doesn’t need to destroy the economy for rapid energy transition. 

In fact, JPM’s Malek sees the future much differently than IEA. He said, “Put your seatbelts on. It’s going to be a very volatile supercycle.” 

The energy guru expects a perfect storm to unfold, where a lack of investment in new oil production, coupled with production cuts from OPEC+, will only lead to much higher prices. 

On top of all this, Malek expects the global oil deficit to hit a record 7mmb/d in 2030, a staggering projection difference from the IEA’s. 

To sum up, the IEA’s credibility is at risk by promoting ‘green’ propaganda (last month, 1,600 scientists said there is no climate emergency).  

Authored by Richard C Cook via ScheerPost.com,

Read Part 1 of this series here.

Why is the U.S. refusing to call a halt to the Ukraine madness? Why can’t an era of “Peaceful Coexistence” in Europe and the world be declared or at least sought? How about détente with Russia? With Russia and China? What is wrong with that?

We’ll start peeling the onion by looking at the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Of course, President Eisenhower warned us against the MIC over 60 years ago in his “Farewell Address” of January 20, 1961. Among other remarks he said:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Today about 2.1 million people are employed by the defense industry. According to Acara Solutions, a major MIC recruiting firm, their average annual salary is $106,700, 40 percent higher than the national average. The companies they work for produced revenues in 2022 of $741 billion. How much of their production is high-priced junk, no one knows. The performance of U.S.-produced armaments in the Ukraine conflict does not seem impressive. No modern U.S. weapons have ever been tested in an industrial-type war against an equal adversary.  

The MIC also includes active-duty uniformed personnel of 1.37 million and reserves of 849,000. There are 750 U.S. military bases in more than 80 countries outside of the U.S. More than 100,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Europe. Annual salary and benefits of the military are currently $146 billion per year, escalating with COLAs compounded at two to three percent annually, sometimes more. Some former U.S. military personnel are assumed to be fighting in Ukraine as mercenaries or helping direct the fighting from safe locations like Kiev or Lvov. 

Then there are the civilian employees. According to the DoD, it employs more than 700,000 civilians “in an array of critical positions worldwide,” with compensation totaling about $70 billion. According to the Government Accountability Office, we may also add 560,000 contractor employees, whose compensation is typically higher than the career workforce. 

We can also add hundreds of thousands of executives, managers, employees and contractors of the three-letter Deep State agencies, such as the CIA, NSA, DEA, FBI, and now DHS, etc., who interface with the MIC day in and day out and are part of the same fabric of state-sanctioned force and enemy identification and interdiction.   

Added to the above are members of Congress who vote on military budgets and make the laws that protect the MIC from accountability, lobbyists who pressure those members to cast votes favorable to their MIC clients, private sector financial service employees who handle the retirement accounts of the MIC multitude, foreigners who are employed at overseas bases, and various scoundrels and hangers-on. I would include in the latter category the multitude of MIC cheerleaders from Hollywood who produce trashy spectacles like Top Gun. 

On top of everything else, there are millions of retirees drawing annuities in excess of what most working-class Americans earn, many of these retirees double- or triple-dipping with lucrative jobs in business or government.

Each of the above individuals supports multiple family members, workers, and vendors within the civilian economy who, with the ripple effect and velocity of money, keep entire towns, cities, states, regions, and industries afloat. An example is building the F-35 that has workers assembling it in 350 congressional districts. It is probably no exaggeration to say that given the vast exiting of civilian U.S. factories and jobs over the last half-century to cheap-labor countries abroad, the MIC is probably the principal economic engine of the U.S. as a whole.

So are we going to tell what adds up to tens of millions of people, sorry, your services are no longer needed? Good luck with that. And isn’t it obvious that all these people, especially the higher echelons, are going to do everything within their power to persuade us that their jobs are so essential that without them we will shortly be overwhelmed and eaten alive by every “enemy” on the planet? 

If you doubt what I am saying, ask any retired colonel or general who has hired himself out as a talking head to CNN or MSNBC. It’s also why DoD has formally declared Russia and China our two “adversaries,” because, after all, you have to point the finger at someone and blame them for your own dysfunctional society.

But as I witnessed personally in my NASA days, many MIC personnel never do a lick of honest work, or are mainly occupied with paper shuffling or other busywork, especially with work-at-home now the vogue, with many spending their days surfing the internet, or worse, while drawing a level of pay that puts most civilian workers in the shade. 

Not to mention stay-at-home mothers, teachers and caregivers, first responders, law enforcement personnel, food service employees, or the unemployed, underemployed, or homeless. Yet many of these people, while working hard for low pay, if any, have a sense of fulfillment and self-worth that surpasses the swarms of MIC bureaucrats who can’t help but feel degraded in their superfluous and often pointless vocational stagnation. 

Is all this enough to create an imperative for World War III? You tell me. It certainly has to be a contributing factor. Plus it saps the nation’s natural strength. We could even say that the U.S. war machine is a cancerous tumor that has metastasized throughout the entirety of American society, polluting and corrupting every aspect of life, including the body politic, the environment, the entertainment industry, the mass media, education, scientific research, etc. 

It was the military, for example, that supported planning for the U.S. lockdowns during the COVID so-called pandemic, as documented by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in his monumental indictment of Big Pharma/MIC collusion in his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. 

A subset of the question whether the MIC could drive us to war for its own selfish reasons is whether a president, a political party, or the Deep State itself could use the MIC to generate a war to save their own sorry asses at a time of scandal or possible election loss, along the lines of the movie Wag the Dog? 

We’ll leave that an open question for now. At least Tucker Carlson seems to think so in his forecast that the Biden administration will spark a hot war with Russia before the 2024 election. Of course, we can’t know what they are really planning, because they hide behind billions of classified documents and imprison those who dare to lift the veil of secrecy. We are vaguely aware that the top dogs have their own “continuity of government” plans with hidden bunkers, an “underground Pentagon,” caches of MREs that can last decades, etc. Just don’t ask to see any of this.

Every war the U.S. has fought since Korea, including the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, has been an MIC bonanza. Then there’s the simple fact that if you are an individual possessing a weapon of any kind, whether a military pistol or an ICBM, despite the protocols that govern their use, you still fantasize about using that weapon on somebody. This alone creates a societal imperative towards war. Plus I have had the wife of an MIC worker tell me straight up that she favored war because otherwise how would their family eat? 

Another way to look at it is that we have a deeply entrenched system of military socialism. I happen to think it’s very corrupt, very inefficient, and very dangerous. 

IS BRICS+ VS. THE WEST DECIDING THE PARAMETERS OF THE CONFLICT?

This brings us to the subject of economics. The national level of expenditure on the MIC and its role as the central tent pole of the U.S. economy certainly point to economic motives in any stampede to war. But wealth depends on resources and their exploitation. In fact, the seizure of the world’s resources had become a finely-honed specialty of the European powers, with the U.S. joining in the later stages, during the entire era of colonization. Even today, the populations of former Western colonies continue to work the farms, plantations, mines, and transport facilities of Western owners.

Of course, the Europeans and Americans have been justifying their expropriation of the resources of other countries for centuries by virtue of ideologies like “right of conquest,” “survival of the fittest,” “white man’s burden, etc.,” always proclaiming shock at native resistance. During the 19th century, such resistance was decisively subdued by the invention of the Maxim machine gun. 

The U.S. gained early experience in grabbing the land and its bounty through dispossession of Native Americans and the massive growth of slave-worked plantation agriculture. Westward expansion brought the taking of land for gold and silver prospecting. By the time the U.S. began to gain colonies, the rich soil of Hawaii offered wealth to pineapple growers. A prime motive of the Spanish-American War was confiscation of Cuban sugar plantations. In Central America it was bananas and coffee. In Chile it was copper. 

At the turn of the 20th century, U.S. bankers lent money to the British to aid them in fighting the Boers in order to secure the incredible deposits of diamonds and gold beneath the surface in South Africa. We also know that U.S. bankers saw a great business opportunity in the chance to lend money to Britain and France in order for them to prosecute World War I against Germany. After that war, the Rockefeller oil empire began its expansion into the Middle East. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is suspected to have baited Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor because there was nothing better than a good war to boost employment after failing to create a full-employment economy during the Great Depression. When the “War on Terror” commenced, the chief topic on the agenda at President George W. Bush’s staff meetings was the takeover of Iraq’s oil fields. 

Today, the MIC has one overriding mission: protect the overseas interests of big U.S. banks, investment and hedge funds, and multinational corporations. The biggest U.S. defense firm is Lockheed, which itself is largely owned by three giant hedge funds: State Street, Vanguard, and BlackRock. The CIA is there to control foreign governments, overthrow them as needed, and keep foreign leaders and journalists on the payroll while quaking with fear for their careers or even lives. The paradigm is most egregious in Europe, which the Anglo-Americans view as vassals, with the E.U. a policeman. NATO is an enforcement mechanism for U.S./U.K. control, not to defend against Russia, which today has no discernible interest in political control over Europe, even if it were capable of making such a move, which it isn’t.

Rather than defend against a non-existent Russian threat, the West would love to get its hands on Russian oil, gas, and mineral resources, as it began to do in the 1990s before Putin took over and fostered a nationalistic revival. The U.S. had long been targeting the Caspian Basin and Central Asia, which now seemed vulnerable with the separation from Russia of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. These countries are still in play for the West, as are the microstates of the Caucasus. 

The 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine was partly for acquisition of Ukrainian land and resources, including the fertile farmland of the steppes. Big players are Cargill, ADM, and BlackRock, along with numerous E.U. companies. Despite global warming and professions of getting rid of fossil fuels, trying to get hold of hydrocarbons worldwide remains a matter of Western urgency. 

But with the current situation, another dimension is “dollar hegemony.” This brings us to BRICS. Perhaps the biggest threat to Western economic imperialism is the formation of the economic compact consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. As the Ukraine conflict deepens, BRICS expansion has become of particular importance to Russia, as it is obviously a means of outflanking the West and beating it at its own geopolitical game. 

At the South African BRICS summit of August 22-24, 2023, six new nations were added: Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina, leading to BRICS+. Added to the earlier rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the effects of BRICS and its expansion are seismic. Additional nations that have expressed an interest in BRICS are Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Gabon, Kazakhstan, and at least a dozen others. 

The potential of BRICS is the inclusion of half or more of the world’s population. BRICS economies had overtaken G-7 economies by 2012, and the gap between BRICS and G-7 economies is widening irreversibly.

GDP is not a viable measure of economic performance for “reserve currency” nations like the U.S. that can print money “out of thin air.” But there is a linear relationship between real goods production and energy. Thus a much more reliable economic performance evaluation can be inferred from electricity generation, as the following chart illustrates:

The following can be noted:

• The BRICS economies overtook G-7 economies in 2012, with the gap increasing steadily since.

• G-7 economies have not witnessed any growth since the 2008-2009 “Great Financial Crisis.”

• G-7 economies have shrunk by 6 percent since their peak in 2007.

• BRICS economies were 50 percent greater than G-7 economies by 2020.

• BRICS+ economies (BRICS plus six candidate countries) were 60 percent greater than G-7 economies by 2020.

The graph also explains why the BRICS nations are not pursuing aggressive policies, despite Western propaganda, as they view time as being on their side. Naturally they refuse the “reserve currency” prerogative which allows G-7 countries to siphon hard earned wealth from the rest of the world. The most worrying aspect for the U.S. is the obvious intention of BRICS to foster trade exchanges in local currencies, bypassing the primacy of the dollar, and secondarily the Euro. 

According to Stephen Jen, CEO of Eurizon SLJ Capital Ltd. and former IMF/Morgan Stanley economist, “The dollar share in foreign reserves has lost about 11 percent since 2016. The decisive event has been Western sanctions and the freezing of Russia’s dollar reserves.” He adds: “Taking purchasing power into account the BRICS nations currently account for 32 percent of global economic output, compared to 30 percent covered by the G7 countries.” This differential is bound to worsen as new nations are added to BRICS.

As BRICS, ASEAN and other countries increasingly trade in national currencies in lieu of Western reserve currencies, this results in weakening of those Western currencies, as evidenced by the drop in their purchasing power, aka inflation. Over time, the standards of living commensurate with the production of tradable goods will result in growing poverty in the U.S. and the EU that will result in social instability. But the damage will fall largely to the lower income echelons, resulting in growth in an already unsustainable wealth disparity, with the GINI factor for wealth distribution in the U.S. reaching 0.85 in 2020. 

This explains several observations:

1. Why BRICS do not find it necessary to issue a new currency: Trade in national currencies will bring an end to the wealth siphoning mechanism of U.S. dollar hegemony. 

2. Why Russia and China are trying to maintain non-confrontational policies despite provocations: As trade away from the U.S., UK, and EU increases with growing use of national currencies, political instability, particularly in the most de-industrialized Western nations, will result. Social discontent and political instability can already be witnessed throughout the West. This will only increase as impoverishment spreads due to depreciating currencies, leading to eventual implosion of the neoliberal political system. Thus Russia, China, and other sovereign nations have adopted a policy of “wait it out” rather than risk a kinetic war which would result in the deaths of millions. Nevertheless, these countries are embarking on an accelerated program of military development, along with strengthened alliances, in case war is inevitable. 

3. Why the West is embarking on highly aggressive policies: The neoliberal cabals in control of the West realize that the changes occurring in the world, particularly as regards the monetary and financial global architecture, spell their doom, and hence are increasingly acting hysterically, fomenting conflict and chaos wherever they can. 

It is dollar hegemony, dating back to the World War II-era Bretton Woods Agreements and the Nixonian removal of the international currency gold peg, that has allowed the U.S. to attempt overcoming its massive trade deficit and its public debt at $33.1 trillion and growing. Only by selling trillions of dollars of Treasury bonds to foreign countries, especially China, Japan, and Korea, has the U.S. been able to straddle the globe with the hundreds of military bases and other facilities it relies on to secure a world order friendly to its interests. For decades, foreign countries have needed dollars to trade in petroleum and other commodities. But with BRICS, that imperative may end sooner rather than later. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen has said this will never happen, but other policy makers are seeing the writing on the wall. 

Are the prospects of BRICS so serious that the U.S. could launch World War III against its main powers, Russia, China, and now Iran, as a last-ditch act of desperation as its entire world order veers toward collapse? 

It hardly bodes well that these three nations, along with North Korea, have been identified by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee as the new “axis of evil.” She speaks for much of the U.S. political class. 

*  *  *

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Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Authoritarian control freaks out to micromanage our lives have become the new normal or, to be more accurate, the new abnormal when it comes to how the government relates to the citizenry.

This overbearing despotism, which pre-dates the COVID-19 hysteria, is the very definition of a Nanny State, where government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

Indeed, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

This tug-of-war for control and sovereignty over our selves impacts almost every aspect of our lives, whether you’re talking about decisions relating to our health, our homes, how we raise our children, what we consume, what we drive, what we wear, how we spend our money, how we protect ourselves and our loved ones, and even who we associate with and what we think.

As Liz Wolfe writes for Reason, “Little things that make people’s lives better, tastier, and less tedious are being cracked down on by big government types in federal and state governments.”

You can’t even buy a stove, a dishwasher, a showerhead, a leaf blower, or a lightbulb anymore without running afoul of the Nanny State.

In this way, under the guise of pseudo-benevolence, the government has meted out this bureaucratic tyranny in such a way as to nullify the inalienable rights of the individual and limit our choices to those few that the government deems safe enough.

Yet limited choice is no choice at all. Likewise, regulated freedom is no freedom at all.

Indeed, as a study by the Cato Institute concludes, for the average American, freedom has declined generally over the past 20 years. As researchers William Ruger and Jason Sorens explain, “We ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.”

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

When the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the individual rights of the citizenry, we’re in trouble, folks.

Federal and state governments have used the law as a bludgeon to litigate, legislate and micromanage our lives through overregulation and overcriminalization.

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

You don’t have to look far to find abundant examples of Nanny State laws that infantilize individuals and strip them of their ability to decide things for themselves. Back in 2012, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg infamously proposed a ban on the sale of sodas and large sugary drinks in order to guard against obesity. Other localities enacted bans on texting while jaywalking, wearing saggy pants, having too much mud on your car, smoking outdoors, storing trash in your car, improperly sorting your trash, cursing within earshot of others, or screeching your tires.

Yet while there are endless ways for the Nanny State to micromanage our lives, things become truly ominous when the government adopts mechanisms enabling it to monitor us for violations in order to enforce its many laws.

Nanny State, meet the all-seeing, all-knowing Surveillance State and its sidekick, the muscle-flexing Police State.

You see, in an age of overcriminalization—when the law is wielded like a hammer to force compliance to the government’s dictates whatever they might be—you don’t have to do anything “wrong” to be fined, arrested or subjected to raids and seizures and surveillance.

You just have to refuse to march in lockstep with the government.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

This is the police state’s superpower: empowered by the Nanny State, it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

Indeed, if you were unnerved by the rapid deterioration of privacy under the Surveillance State, prepare to be terrified by the surveillance matrix that will be ushered in by the Nanny State working in tandem with the Police State.

The government’s response to COVID-19 saddled us with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.

The groundwork laid with COVID-19 is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

Consider how many more ways the government could “protect us” from ourselves under the guise of public health and safety.

For instance, under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.

When combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, these preemptive mental health programs could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”

This is how it begins.

On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

Having conditioned the population to the idea that being part of society is a privilege and not a right, such access could easily be predicated on social credit scores, the worthiness of one’s political views, or the extent to which one is willing to comply with the government’s dictates, no matter what they might be.

COVID-19 with its talk of mass testing, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities was a preview of what’s to come.

We should all be leery and afraid.

At a time when the government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state, it won’t take much for any of us to be considered outlaws or terrorists.

After all, the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably. The Department of Homeland Security broadly defines extremists as individuals “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

At some point, being an individualist will be considered as dangerous as being a terrorist.

When anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism, “we the people” have little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like, whether or  not you’ve done anything wrong.

In an age of overcriminalization, you’re already a criminal.

All the government needs is proof of your law-breaking. They’ll get it, too.

Whether it’s through the use of surveillance software such as ShadowDragon that allows police to watch people’s social media activity, or technology that uses a home’s WiFi router and smart appliances to allow those on the outside to “see” throughout your home, it’s just a matter of time.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s no longer a question of whether the government will lock up Americans for defying one of its numerous mandates but when.

The Netanyahu government has just pulled off a major diplomatic victory, reaching a longtime goal toward upgrading US-Israel relations. 

US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has agreed to Israel’s entry into the US Visa Waiver Program, which means that for the first time Israeli citizens will be able to travel to the United States visa-free. It will take effect Nov. 30, according to US officials.

“The designation of Israel into the Visa Waiver Program is an important recognition of our shared security interests and the close cooperation between our two countries,” Mayorkas said in Wednesday statement confirming Israel’s upgraded status.

And Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the designation as “a critical step forward” in the US strategic partnership with Israel “that will further strengthen long-standing people-to-people engagement, economic cooperation, and security coordination between our two countries” – as quoted in Axios.

“This important achievement will enhance freedom of movement for U.S. citizens, including those living in the Palestinian Territories or traveling to and from them,” he added, in reference to reciprocity. Israel will now allow US passport holders visa-free travel in return, including theoretically Palestinian-Americans.

However, Arab groups and Palestinian activists have charged that Israel has failed to change its entry policies in practice, and that it will still discriminate against Palestinians, even if they are US citizens. According to Al Jazeera:

On Tuesday, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said it had filed a lawsuit against Israel’s VWP designation. “Credible reports and ADC’s own investigations have shown that Israel failed to meet all of the legal requirements for admission,” the group said.

Abed Ayoub, the ADC’s executive director, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that by letting Israel into the programme, the Biden administration “has endorsed and embraced Israeli discrimination and apartheid”.

“With this decision, the US government will be sending a message that not all American passport holders are equal,” Ayoub said.

This significant step in US-Israel relations comes after last week President Biden and PM Netanyahu met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Relations have been on the rocks, given the controversial judicial reform initiative in Israel, and the fact that Netanyahu was never invited to the White House after being sworn in again as prime minister. Netanyahu took it as a personal affront, but this Visa Waiver Program upgrade is being seen as a breakthrough.

Authored by Amanda Brown via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has launched a United Nations declaration that calls for action to protect what it calls “information integrity” and to tackle “disinformation.”

Ms. Joly launched the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online jointly with Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Hanke Bruins Slot during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20.

“Information integrity is essential to help ensure the strength of democratic processes and to protect fundamental rights,” says a joint statement by Canada and the Netherlands.

“The erosion of information integrity, including the propagation of disinformation, weakens the strength of democratic engagement.”

In a speech on Sept. 20, Ms. Joly said the declaration is a “concrete step toward establishing global norms on disinformation, misinformation, and information integrity,” the National Post reported.

Speaking to the U.N. on the same day, Ms. Bruins Slot said the emerging online environment makes it difficult to determine what is and what is not truthful.

“Every day, the world is flooded with disinformation and misinformation. Rapid advances in technology—particularly generative AI—make it more and more difficult to tell fact from fiction,” she said.

Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan, and South Korea are among the 30 countries that have signed the declaration.

The declaration promotes concepts such as respect for “the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information.”

It says signatories need to “take active steps to address misinformation and disinformation targeted at women, LGBTIQ+ persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples.”

Some initiatives are the result of international collaborative efforts to shape the flow of information, and others have been conceived closer to home.

Canada’s participation in the Rapid Response Mechanism, established by G7 leaders at the 2018 G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, monitors the digital information environment. Its goal is to encourage cooperation among member countries to provide a coordinated response to “foreign state-sponsored disinformation” and the “evolving foreign threats to democracy.”

The Liberal government has enacted legislation to shape the information space, with bills C-18 and C-11 being passed in recent months.

The Online News Act, Bill C-18, which passed in June, has been framed as an attempt to defend democracy by bolstering the coffers of flailing legacy media with money from Big Tech.

In reaction to the new legislation, Meta has restricted Canadians’ access to news content in their feeds, to avoid sharing revenue with media outlets. Google has threatened to take action but hasn’t yet.

The Liberal government also passed Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, in order to boost Canadian content and to regulate some aspects of online streaming and social media.

A new bill to address “online harms” is also in the works, but it does not appear to be a legislative priority for the government at this time.

Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as the number of migrants passing through the Central American country on the way toward the US surges, Reuters reported. 

“I have instructed the security ministry to take a firm stance with anyone who takes Costa Rica’s kindness for weakness,” Chavez older reporters, referring to recent riots caused by migrants crossing the country.

Chavez explained the tsunami of migrants is coming from Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Yemen, Bangladesh, and even China. He noted, “We all know that throughout the Americas there is a migration crisis.” 

Since the beginning of the year, nearly 400,000 migrants have crossed the border from Panama into Costa Rica. 

The migrant crisis is only going to escalate moving forward. Biden’s complete lack of action has signaled to millions that American’s borders are completely open and the blue states’ decisions to subsidize them with free housing, jobs and care might as well be a red carpet… https://t.co/wKdiAFEvWG

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 27, 2023

Costa Rica’s migrant chaos comes as President Biden’s disastrous open southern border crisis has sparked a record-breaking month for August. According to the US Customs and Border Protection, 232,972 migrants were encountered at the US-Mexico border in August. 

Biden greenlighted migrants worldwide in a June 20 statement marking World Refugee Day: “Welcoming refugees is part of who we are as Americans – our nation was founded by those fleeing religious persecution. When we take action to help refugees around the world, and include them, we honor this past and are stronger for it.” 

In recent weeks, all hell has broken out at Eagle Pass, Texas, and other border crossings as migrants flood the southern border via an easy commute through Mexico by freight train. 

Holy sh*t.

New video shows a massive train loaded with illegal migrants headed for the US border.

pic.twitter.com/t5GjpbkIar

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 17, 2023

NEW – Drone footage reveals hundreds of migrants on trains headed for Eagle Pass, Texas, and the U.S. southern border.pic.twitter.com/avYTTWx0he

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) September 26, 2023

Waves of undocumented migrants have disembarked from the trains in Mexico and are hiking the final 20 miles in to Eagle Pass, Texas. pic.twitter.com/4ZUUHBMnja

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 27, 2023

Law-abiding taxpayers need to ask why the Biden administration is pushing disastrous open border policies to flood illegals into metro areas ahead of the presidential election. These devastating policies are against the will of the majority and only supported by a fringe minority of political elites and progressive billionaires. 

Via Middle East Eye,

A report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday says that the US has added Egypt to its list of countries believed to be using child soldiers.

According to the report, the designation by the State Department comes after a number of independent investigations, which found that Egypt’s military has been conducting joint operations with allied militia groups in northern Sinai that recruit children.

These operations often included combat against groups such as the Islamic State-affiliated Wilayat Sinai. Some of those recruited to fight were as young as 16, and were used for various tasks, including logistics and combat operations.

Previous reports and investigations have revealed that the child soldiers were wounded or killed in the fighting. HRW also cited a number of videos shared on social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok, which have depicted child soldiers engaging in military operations.

Last month, the UK-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR) said that between 2013 and 2022, children as young as 12 were enlisted, with some under 18 directly participating in hostilities.

Others were tasked with spying, delivering food to military checkpoints and disassembling explosives, the group found. HRW’s findings, released on Tuesday, come after a months-long investigation by SFHR, partly based on testimonies from the children’s relatives, pro-government militia members and a child allegedly enlisted by armed forces.

Under international law, governments are prohibited from recruiting children under the age of 15 for any purpose. Such recruitment by either a government or armed groups is listed as a war crime in the International Criminal Court statutes.

SFHR said it was calling on the Egyptian government to “immediately halt the recruitment, enlistment and use of children under 18 as combatants or in military support roles that expose them to danger”.

Before the Ukraine war, Egypt consistently ranked second in the world among highest US foreign aid recipients…

Summary executions

The IS faction Wilayat Sinai has been directly responsible for the deaths of some of the child soldiers, including through executions.

In one instance, a 17-year-old was beheaded in front of his father with a scalpel, and his head was then left by a railway crossing in his village as a warning to others alleged to have worked with the Egyptian authorities.

Other children were seriously wounded during their work, including several injured while trying to defuse explosives, SFHR said. Since 2015, local tribes in the area have formed a pro-government militia.

The conflict has caused military and civilian casualties, although it is difficult to gauge the full picture as journalists have often been barred from the area.

Tis the season to strike. 

Following President Biden’s unprecedented visit to the picket lines of United Auto Workers in Michigan on Tuesday afternoon, by night, tens of thousands of members of the Culinary and Bartenders Unions in Las Vegas voted by 95% to authorize a strike against some of Sin City’s largest casinos and resorts. 

“Now, Culinary and Bartenders Unions negotiating committee is authorized to call for a strike at 22 casino resorts properties on the Las Vegas Strip between the largest employers MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, and Wynn/Encore Resorts. The Culinary Union, which is now authorized to call for a strike at any date or time, has not yet set a strike deadline and continues negotiating in good faith with all gaming companies,” Culinary Workers Union Local 226 wrote in a press release. 

BREAKING: Culinary Union announces 95% have voted yes to authorize a Citywide Strike.

Negotiations continue with @MGMResortsIntl), @CaesarsEnt, & @WynnLasVegas next week.

Culinary Union is now authorized to call for a strike any day.#OneJobShouldBeEnough pic.twitter.com/j0IzmCkyNN

— Culinary Union (@Culinary226) September 27, 2023

Both unions represent 60,000 hospitality workers across Nevada, of which 53,000 are based on the Vegas Strip. In Vegas alone, 40,000 workers are employed at the 22 casino resorts, with many of them working for MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn/Encore Resorts. They noted that “negotiations with casino/hotel employers for a new 5-year contract” are underway. 

“Today, Culinary and Bartenders Union members have sent the strongest message possible to the casino industry to settle a fair contract as soon as possible. We have negotiations scheduled next week with MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn/Encore Resorts and it’s up the three largest employers in Las Vegas to step up and do the right thing,” said Ted Pappageorge, Secretary-Treasurer for the Culinary Union. 

Pappageorge continued, “If these gaming companies don’t come to an agreement, the workers have spoken and we will be ready to do whatever it takes – up to and including a strike. Workers brought every single one of these companies through the pandemic and into a great recovery, and workers deserve a fair share. Companies are doing extremely well and we are demanding that workers aren’t left behind.”

The unions are asking for better wages, benefits, job security protections, and reduced workload, among other things.  

If the unions strike, it raises the question of whether President Biden will stand on picket lines along the Vegas Strip with kitchen staff and bartenders. 

And any new labor contract that meets the unions’ demands will only force casinos and resorts to raise drink and food prices: inflation. 

By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

The decline in China’s home construction has been remarkable, almost rivaling the US housing crisis of 2008.

It raises the question: Why are commodity prices so resilient if one of the biggest buyers is in malaise?

It turns out China’s demand for raw materials is more robust than the overall economy. In other words, there’s some decoupling between China’s housing activity and commodities.

US rates and crude oil remain the two most-important variables driving asset prices globally now. WTI crude rose to a one-year high near $94 a barrel. Ten-year yields jumped to 4.6%, pushing the dollar stronger along the way.

The strength in oil, and more broadly the resilience of raw materials, seems at odds with a sluggish Chinese economy, considering the commodity-heavy housing sector remains in trouble. The floor space of newly started housing averaged about 87 million square meters over the past 12 months, marking a 60% decline from a peak in 2021. That isn’t far from the slump in the US housing market during the financial crisis.

Yet, China’s import volume of commodities from oil and coal to iron ore remains in-line with the trend growth, as shown in this chart from UBS. What gives?

For oil, it’s easier to understand. The US consumes 20% of global oil, compared with China’s 15%. So part of the oil price increase reflects a strong US economy, plus OPEC+ output cut. And in China, while the economy struggles, measures of transportation such as domestic flights and trucking have already risen above the pre-pandemic level, underpinning the demand for fuel.

UBS’s strategists including Manik Narain noted two other supportive factors: strength in infrastructure and manufacturing investments, as well as export demand for commodity-sensitive products (steel) and inventory rebuilding (coal). Bloomberg also reported that railway construction has been robust.

In a report published Wednesday, Goldman Sachs’s strategists Nicholas Snowdon and Aditi Rai also pointed out that the demand for copper and aluminum is supported by growth in renewable energy, the power grid and property completions. For example, China’s solar installations this year have surged.

So the demand for commodities at idiosyncratic, micro levels is outperforming China’s macro economy. Is this a structural change? That remains to be seen. But for anyone who is bearish on China, shorting commodities hasn’t been a great trade so far.