Just two days before his assumed demise in a plane crash of unknown cause, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had addressed his fighters in a video message, announcing a focus away from Ukraine and towards Africa – a place where the mercenary group has already left a considerable footprint.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the address was one of the few since Prigozhin staged a mutiny in late June against Moscow in a feud around Wagner’s involvement in Ukraine and its absorption by the Russian military, which ended with a brokered deal, Wagner’s move to Belarus and an option for fighters to join either side.
Known hot spots of operation are the Central African Republic and Sudan, where Wagner has yielded military, political and economic control. According to the report, this includes fighting rebel groups and popular insurgencies for weakened governments, giving political strategy advice to state actors and running influence and disinformation campaigns on social media – as well as securing illicit or grey market economic opportunities, for example in mining, which are considered payment for services. In a larger context, the group is expanding Russian influence on the continent in a time when European governments are mainly retreating.
Wagner has more recently taken up military and political activities in Libya and Mali. In May, the group has been accused of killing 500 civilians in the latter country alongside a few al-Qaeda militants it was seeking out in the town of Moura. Data by conflict monitor ACLED also shows that Wagner Group engagement in the country focused on civilians. The group was also militarily active in Mozambique during the 2019 militant uprising, but was defeated there. It has been reported to be in contact with the military leadership of Niger, which came to power in a coup earlier this year.
According to The Guardian, analysts have detected spikes in violence in places where Wagner has been active in Africa. Yet, many atrocities against civilians the group has been accused of couldn’t been linked to them definitively, the Moura massacre being the exception. Furthermore, the group’s violent tactics have not proven effective in suppressing insurgencies long-term, The New York Times reports.
Ithaca Energy, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the UK, has reduced investments and is deferring some projects this year and next, due to the burden of the windfall tax Britain has levied on the industry.
The windfall tax, the so-called Energy Profits Levy, has prompted many companies operating offshore the UK to cut investments and review projects.
After the UK raised the windfall tax to 35% at the end of last year, Harbour Energy, the biggest oil and gas producer in the UK North Sea, backed out of the latest licensing round aimed at awarding more than 100 new licenses. Shell has said it would be re-evaluating each project comprising its $30.5 billion (25 billion pounds) planned investment in the UK energy system, and TotalEnergies has said it would slash its investment in the UK by 25%.
In its first-half results release, Ithaca Energy said this week that “until the fiscal regime is improved, as a direct result of the Energy Profits Levy, investment across our operated and non-operated portfolio has and will reduce, including the deferral and cancellation of certain 2023 and 2024 projects, impacting medium-term production outlook, with production in 2024 expected to be lower than 2023 levels.”
“As part of the Group’s strategy, we continue to leverage our M&A capabilities evaluating potential inorganic opportunities with the clear intention to increase our production in the medium-term.”
“The Energy Profits Levy continues to have a direct impact on investment in the UK North Sea and Ithaca Energy’s own investment programme across its diverse high-quality operated and non-operated asset base. We continue to constructively engage with the UK government to highlight the impact of the current fiscal regime to the industry’s outlook and to the UK government’s stated energy security and Net Zero ambitions.”
Also this week, Harbour Energy said it booked an $8-million loss for the first six months of this year – weighed down by the higher UK windfall tax rate and falling fossil fuel prices. For the same period of 2022, the firm reported nearly $1 billion in post-tax profit.
International Man: Since 2020, coups have replaced pro-Western governments in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and now Niger with governments more aligned with Russia.
What is your take on what is going on here?
Doug Casey: Every country in Africa is an artificial construct. They’re just random agglomerations of tribes. Their borders were created in the boardrooms of Europe with absolutely no respect for who lived there.
Every country on the continent has dozens of different tribes and clans flowing across its borders; most are at odds with each other. The idea that democracy has any meaning at all in Africa is ridiculous. It’s a fraud.
All of these governments have constant coups. And if they have an election, it’s usually one man, one vote, one time. If the leadership ever changes, it’s usually because of a coup.
In Africa, much more than in the West, the purpose of government is for the leader to steal as much money and garner as much power as possible for himself and his cronies. It has absolutely nothing to do with improving the state of the country.
International Man: Fourteen countries in western and central Africa do not have their own currency and use the CFA franc—controlled by France—as their currency.
A common theme among the coups was resentment towards France, the former colonial power.
How do you see the situation evolving?
Doug Casey: It’s perfectly understandable that many Africans resent European colonial powers. Nobody likes aliens of a different race, language, religion, and culture bossing them. On the other hand, the Europeans hugely raised their standard of living.
There’s an old joke, but it’s quite true, that when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, if he’d just thrown out a wheel, Africans should have been eternally grateful to the Europeans. But he would’ve had to throw out an instruction book as well—except nobody south of the Sahara would have been able to read it.
It’s too bad the Europeans conquered and forcefully colonized Africa instead of simply trading peacefully with the natives. Africa would have developed very differently and much faster. Of course, it’s also true that slaves, captured by Arabs and other tribes, were about all Africa had that was of any current value. Slavery was endemic worldwide. It only ended because Europeans brought forth the Industrial Revolution, making it uneconomic. In fact, it was still legal in Mauretania, where I spent a week or so a few years ago, until 1985. But there are still plenty of de facto slaves there.
It’s true that France exploits its ex-colonies by bribing or otherwise influencing local politicians to trade mainly with the mother country and use the CFA. But on the other hand, if the local governments had their own local currencies, they’d likely be even less prosperous than they are today. Why? Because they’d use Modern Monetary Theory, i.e., massive inflation, to generate government revenue. They can’t effectively do that with the CFA.
There’s no question that France is ripping them off, but not nearly as badly as their own parasitic elites. Other than their own backward cultures, the problem is that these countries are chronically and enthusiastically exploited by their ruling classes through their governments. A group captures the government, uses it to steal all they can and ship the proceeds off to Switzerland. Or France to buy a chateau on the Côte-d’Or.
The ideal solution, of course, is to use gold as a currency. This was something that Muammar Gaddafi tried to do. But that was one of the reasons that the CIA, the US, and NATO overthrew him.
International Man: The largest American drone base in the world is in Niger, a country most US taxpayers would struggle to find on the map.
What is really going on here?
Doug Casey: It is strange that the US, which has no trade to speak of with Africa, has a division of the military called AFRICOM.
The US military is said to have roughly 1,200 soldiers in Mali, and I’d speculate about the same number in Niger. In other words, about two battalions of troops in each. But who knows what the real numbers are? Even though about a score of US soldiers have been killed there in the past few years (as far as I can determine from official sources), the US keeps it pretty quiet.
The question is: Why are they there? They say it’s to fight terrorism, but I think it’s mainly to justify their own existence. And, by the way, inadvertently turn primitive herders into “terrorists.” It appears the US places a lot of value on its bases in Niger, and is inducing neighboring countries to overthrow the new regime. Great. Just what West Africa needs is war fomented by the US.
Of course, Africa has always been a land for military adventures.
There are quite a few mercenary groups operating in Africa, including the Russian group Wagner. It makes sense. Government leaders, oil companies, and miners all need competent outsiders to help keep a lid on things.
When I was at Georgetown, one of the few individual classes that I actually remember was taught by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who subsequently became the US ambassador to the UN. She pointed out that Africa was a ripe territory for military adventurism—that even a small number of mercs could take over a whole country. Of course, that’s exactly what almost happened in the Congo about then. I suggest you look up Mike Hoare and Bob Denard, the two most famous mercs of the era. I had two unrelated intros to Denard, and it’s one of my great regrets that I didn’t fly to the Comoros to meet him after he took the place over.
Anyway, the fact is that the US government is training and arming any number of local armies in Africa now. It’s idiotic and will have at least three effects, none of them good.
First, making African armies militarily competent will just enable, even encourage, them to fight wars with each other.
Second, the main use of the military in Third World countries is to dominate the population. Which foments “terrorism.” That’s apart from the fact that almost all coups are done by the military.
Third, shipping arms to them essentially upgrades the means of mass murder. Things can be much worse than in Rwanda in 1994, when maybe 800,000 people were killed, mainly with machetes. You never hear about the African World War of 1996 to 2001, when 4-5 million people died.
It’s criminal idiocy to train soldiers and ship arms to these countries. The US will just wind up with much more competent and dangerous enemies. The so-called terrorists AFRICOM is killing with its drones, and SpecOp guys are primitive, mostly religiously oriented herders. They’ve got a genuine beef against their governments, who are supposedly allies of the US. Now they’ll have a real beef with the US as well.
Every one of these supposed US allies is only an ally as long as the money lasts or until the next coup. The weapons we send to Africa, just like the weapons going to the Ukraine, will wind up all over the world in the hands of unfriendly people.
International Man: Niger is one of the larger uranium producers in the world. Other African countries are well-endowed with strategic commodities.
Perhaps that’s why Africa has increasingly drawn the interest of the US, China, and Russia.
How do you see the geopolitical competition playing out in Africa?
Doug Casey: All the pundits talk about Niger’s uranium. They’re ignorant. Niger produces less than 5% of world supplies, and production has been dropping for years.
There’s no shortage of yellowcake in the market now at $55 per pound, which is not much above most costs of production. I’m bullish on uranium, but trying to mine it in a war zone makes no sense. Uranium has got zero to do with what’s happening in Niger. There are other things at play—mainly theft, banditry, secession, civil war, and general corruption. Uranium is just an excuse for US involvement. I was pleased to see Victoria Nuland, the pear-shaped neocon warmonger, treated with the respect she deserved, namely none, on her recent visit.
There’s no value in Niger, or the other Sahel countries. These places are just playthings for foreign powers. Trade amounts to someone offering a skinny cow for three emaciated goats or a couple of camels as a dowry. Niger may have 25 million people, but they’re liabilities, not assets—sorry to sound un-PC. These Sahel countries are each roughly the size of the Eastern US, but they’re basically desert and have very limited resources. If foreign aid dries up, their populations could drop 90% to the level they were before the French invaded. Of course, they won’t all starve; many will make their way to Europe. Or the US.
International Man: What investment or speculative opportunities do you see for taking advantage of the battle for strategic resources in Africa?
Doug Casey: Well, there is no such thing as “investing” in Africa. You can only speculate in Africa, and that’s based mainly upon politics and corruption.
Nothing happens in Africa without payoffs, connections, and under-the-table deals. That’s unlikely to change, and it’s why Africa will remain the world’s poor man for generations to come. Their main export will remain unprocessed commodities and impoverished young males.
Do I see opportunities there? Sure. But it’s strictly a matter of cold-blooded calculation of cost-benefit and risk-reward. Nothing is a long-term holding in Africa.
I’ll give you an example. The largest Russian gold company produces about 1/3rd as much as Newmont, but it sells at only 3% of Newmont’s market cap—even though its all-in-sustaining costs are comparable at $1,200 per ounce.
In other words, you can buy Russian gold mining companies with international assets for roughly ten cents on the dollar today. I think they’re probably a good buy, partly because most will eventually list in places like Dubai, and come closer to world market values.
Speculating in Africa is somewhat analogous to that. It’s best done by buying foreign-listed companies with assets in Africa.
Africa is for playing politics and speculating—not investing.
Editor’s Note: The US government is overextending itself by interfering in every corner of the globe. It’s all financed by massive amounts of money printing. However, the next financial crisis could end the whole charade soon.
The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.
As I have noted in the past, the western world came within a knife’s edge of being completely subjugated and placed under perpetual medical tyranny by a coalition of government officials, globalist interests and corporate partners. Liberty movement analysts have talked often of “open conspiracy,” but it was not until the pandemic response that we truly witnessed the mask come off and the greater agenda revealed.
Not more than five years ago the most common retort from skeptics was that such a conspiracy was “impossible” because it was “too elaborate to organize.” Today these people look rather foolish. It is undeniable – There is a cabal of power elites, they are highly organized around the globalist ideology and they want total centralized control of society. It is an immutable fact supported by endless proof. The debate is over. The covid response ended it.
The list of crimes against civil liberties is long. The establishment and the political left (with the help of a handful of Neocons) tried to implement unprecedented authoritarian measures from business and church shutdowns to forced masking (studies show the masks are useless) to forced vaccination using experimental mRNA products with no long term safety testing. In some countries (including New Zealand and Australia) covid camps were actually built to imprison not just citizens traveling overseas, but non-traveling citizens as well. Legislation to build such camps was pushed in the US.
55% of Democrats wanted fines for unvaxxed Americans. 59% of Democrats wanted the unvaccinated forcefully confined to their homes. 48% of Democrats wanted prison time for anyone that questioned the vaccines. 47% of Democrats were in favor of government tracking of the unvaxxed. 29% of Democrats were in favor or taking children away from the unvaxxed.
So, if someone tells you there “are no sides” and that the conflict is an illusion created by the “false left/right paradigm,” you know they are full of manure. There are definitely sides and the globalists are not our only concern. And though there are always nuances to take into consideration, exceptions to the rule do not change the rule.
As many leftists openly admitted during the mandates, the goal was to make life so miserable for the unvaccinated that they would eventually comply in order to survive. In this way, establishment elites and leftists could claim that people “volunteered” for the vaccines and no one was forced. What they really meant was, no one was forced at gunpoint, but we all knew that threat was coming next.
Keep in mind that all of these measures were rationalized in the name of “saving lives.” No lives were saved by the mandates. The official median infection fatality rate of covid is a mere 0.23%. In other words, all of these constitutional violations were attempted over a virus that 99.8% of people would inevitably catch and easily survive. I continue to suspect that the establishment expected covid to kill far more people than it did – When lab created diseases get out into the wild they change rapidly, usually evolving to be more infectious but less deadly.
The cabal is not all powerful and certainly not infallible. They make mistakes often. The covid agenda relied on multiple disjointed factors that were difficult to predict and most of them had to work in tandem. One of those factors was the dependency on the political left (a group of weaklings) to act as useful idiots and mob enforcers. Frankly, leftists just aren’t frightening enough to inspire compliance.
Another factor was the assumption that the response of conservative and independent free thinkers would be limited and easy to control. Finally, most if not all state governments in the US had to enforce the mandates for the duration.
Globalists seem to have greatly underestimated the potential resistance to their agenda, specifically in the US where 50 million+ armed citizens were ready to go to war over the draconian restrictions. I think the vaccine passports were the KEY to the scheme; vax passports would have given the establishment full spectrum dominance of the economy with people unable to get jobs or purchase necessities without submitting to the mandates.
It was here that many conservatives, independents and dozens of red states (to my surprise) made their stand, and suddenly, like magic, the covid hysteria vanished. The media propaganda campaign went quiet (compared to the previous two years), and the mandates were abandoned in most places around the world. The globalists were not ready to risk a fight against a massive insurgency.
It has been suggested that the covid agenda is about to make a comeback with a new hyped up strain of the virus. If this is the case, then the attempt will hit a wall. With even more Americans aware of the pointlessness of the mandates and the masks it is unlikely to gain much traction. Of course, as long as the people behind these schemes remain unpunished, they will be free to try again and again until something sticks.
Government agencies and officials like Anthony Fauci remain unpunished for their numerous covid lies. Joe Biden remains unpunished for his attempts to supplant the Bill of Rights. The mainstream media and Big Tech companies remain unpunished for their collusion in propaganda and censorship efforts.
And, let’s not gloss over the fact that Donald Trump promoted the fast-tracked mRNA vaccine programs (I will admit that as far as I know he never called for people to be forced to comply).
He also placed many technocrats and globalists within his own cabinet who would later go on to help institute authoritarian policies. How much these people influenced him or lied to him is up for debate, but his current prosecution does not negate his role leading up to the lockdowns. If there is an election in 2024 and Trump re-enters the White House, remember that no president is going to save us from this fight, we must save ourselves.
The goal of the globalists will be to move swiftly into other crisis events, whether real or fabricated, to bring the population to heel. Enter today’s climate change hysteria…
The covid agenda and the climate change agenda are very similar in that they rely on a core fallacy. The lie is that these events are actually dictated by human behavior, and thus human behavior must be controlled in the name of the “greater good.” The idea goes beyond this, though, into the realm of collectivism; for the globalists and leftists assert that each individual action affects the lives of the rest of the population in a great and unedning hive. Therefore, every single person must have their lives micromanaged by the state to prevent some kind of chain reaction that leads to catastrophe for the precious bug colony.
This was the claim during the covid farce, and it’s also the claim for climate change and carbon restrictions. They have fabricated yet another excuse for eliminating personal freedoms. For covid it was the air we each breath out that would supposedly destroy public health, and for climate change it is once again the air we breath out that will supposedly destroy the world. Coincidence? I think not.
During the lockdowns, numerous globalists and globalist connected climate researchers publicly expressed joy at the suggestion that covid lockdowns could be useful for reducing carbon emissions. The phrase “climate lockdowns” started circulating around major conferences and in various globalist funded studies.
These studies obviously show a precipitous drop in human based carbon emissions during the lockdowns, but still do not provide any evidence that man-made emissions actually cause climate changes. This remains the underlying con game of the climate narrative – Climate researchers with access to billions in government funds and think-tank funds happily operate on the ASSUMPTION that emissions cause warming, when in fact they have zero evidence to support this position. Correlation is not causation.
This summer, the media has been relentlessly pounding the climate propaganda drum to a degree that mimics the covid propaganda of a couple years ago. The nihilistic reports of impending “global boiling” are built upon a house of cards. Almost all climate crisis claims are based on records of a little over 100 years old. The Earth’s climate history is vast and there have been numerous warming periods much hotter than today. All of these warming events occurred during periods of ample animal and plant life and without human industry to blame.
he climate bogeyman is nothing more than another covid-like fraud, a vehicle for grabbing power and erasing our freedoms. There is no threat, and even if there was there is nothing that human beings could do about it since we have no bearing whatsoever on the course of the Earth’s temperatures. The world’s climate has been changing for millions of years, and there is no difference between the changes of today vs the changes of the past.
The globalists know that to achieve the “new world order” or the “great reset” they desire, a large percentage of the population has to be onboard. And since most people have a measure of conscience as well as self interest, their enslavement has to be presented as a positive. Tthey must be made to believe that by embracing slavery they are saving the planet and the lives of others.
None of this is true of course, but as long as the populace thinks they are doing good they can often be manipulated into supporting immense evil.
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While the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa tried to demonstrate unity at the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, the group is not as tightly knit as this week’s event and the lofty rhetoric employed afterwards would suggest. “BRICS has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous,” South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said, describing the bloc as “an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but have a shared vision for a better world.” Although it remains to be seen how equal the partnership will be considering the economic dominance of China within the group.
However, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest Global Attitudes Survey, China is seen quite critically in some fellow BRICS countries, with Indians in particular having a very critical view of their powerful neighbor. 50 percent of Indian respondents claimed to have a very unfavorable opinion of China, with another 17 percent viewing China somewhat unfavorably. Relations between the two countries have been worsening for several years over tensions along their ill-defined 2,100-mile border in the Himalayan region. 48 percent of Indians claimed to have no confidence at all in Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while 58 percent said that wouldn’t take Indian interests into account when making international policy decisions.
Brazilians showed similar levels of suspicion with respect to cooperation with China. While 50 percent of Brazilian respondents said that China wouldn’t take their country’s interest into account, 67 percent expressed little to no confidence in Xi Jinping to do the right thing at the global political stage. That translates to 48 percent of Brazilian respondents having a very or somewhat negative opinion of China, up from just 27 percent in 2019.
In 2012, I was asked by Wiley & Sons to write a book on China’s economic structure from my contrarian point of view. You may or may not recall that, at the time, China was the economic marvel of the world. Unlike most observers, I could see several critical problems with China’s political economy model and wrote about them in “The China Crisis.”
I identified seven key areas—given the basis upon which China or, more accurately, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operated—that made China’s economic model unsustainable. I wasn’t the first to see this. Gordon Chang wrote about it in 2001 in his book, “The Coming Collapse of China.” Mr. Chang predicted a collapse by 2011, which, of course, did not occur. This is an update of sorts.
Instead, China’s economic clout and technological prowess continue to grow and develop. That explains why, at that time and for the next seven years, all kinds of terms were coined to describe China’s burgeoning economic status. There was the “Beijing Miracle,” “The China Model,” “Chinese State Capitalism,” and other glowing pronouncements that gave near-unanimous affirmation of China’s progress and prognosis for a bright future.
In fact, many experts, economists, and observers were predicting that China’s state capitalism would be the model for emerging nations around the world because of how fast it had transformed China’s economy. It was also predicted that China would soon eclipse the United States in GDP and replace it as the global hegemon.
Regarding this last prediction, it’s important to acknowledge that it appears as if it’s actually coming to fruition. In that regard, however, keep in mind that it’s mostly due to U.S. policy failures rather than what China is doing.
But even our leaders’ traitorous actions that have aided our adversaries in Beijing can’t compete with or prevent the venal nature and deleterious policies that the CCP has inflicted upon the Chinese people for many decades. The United States and other Western nations’ financial and technological investments have certainly delayed the inevitable but won’t stop it.
At its root, of course, is the corrosive nature of corruption. For the CCP, corruption in the form of political graft, wholesale theft from the private sector, and abuse of the financial system are the means to maintain control and gain wealth. Obtaining absolute power is the end goal, not a healthy economy.
Below is a brief look at how seven factors erode the social and economic sustainability in China.
1. Excessive Overuse of Factors of Production
When greasing the palms of Party officials is the main requirement for a project or policy, waste and fraud are not only unavoidable but lead to inefficiency in leveraging factors of production. In 2013, China used 10 times more factors of production than the United States to produce the same product. Has that improved? It’s hard to say, as accurate statistics that reflect poorly on the CCP and Xi Jinping, in particular, are difficult to find.
2. Inefficient Allocation of Economic Goods, Activity
This is related to No. 1 and is manifested in many ways, such as the theft of profitable companies by the Party and turning them into inefficient, debt-ridden “zombie” state-owned enterprises that destroy value and efficiency. It also transfers wealth from the middle class to the Party elite.
3. Stifling Innovation in Middle Class
Lack of freedom of information and the punishment of violators stifles innovation and creativity. Individuals are not allowed to solve problems by themselves. Successful private firms can count on being confiscated by the state at some point. Successful entrepreneurs who speak out about the abuses of the CCP are disappeared and reeducated. This engenders total fear of and reliance upon the state, both of which are what the CCP wants. Crushing individual creativity and innovation stifles a nation’s greatest resource—its people.
From critical areas such as food production to pharmaceuticals, corners are cut, and quality is compromised. Over the years, this not only negatively impacts the health and safety of the people, but it undercuts the authority and legitimacy of the Party.
5. A False Economy: Debt-based ‘Growth’ Is a Cancer on Economy
In a capitalist economy, most development is based on market need, which is determined by local prices and market conditions, which then attract capital. Distorted “development” driven by political expediency isn’t development but a waste of time, money, and resources.
The Evergrande collapse is a prime example of the CCP’s distortion of the economy. China’s overreliance on overdevelopment could be compared to healthy growth in muscle tissue from working out versus that of a cancerous tumor from exposure to toxicity. The former builds up strength and vitality; the latter destroys it. Thus, at some point, even state-owned debt from a state-owned central bank becomes unsustainable.
6. Rampant Pollution Making China Unlivable, Causing Social Unrest
China is one of the worst polluters in the world. For example, it is rapidly losing its arable land to toxicity from mining, manufacturing, and desertification. This is happening because decades of state ownership have led to indifference about what happens to the natural resources, also known as the “tragedy of the commons.” Losing arable land by either toxicity or desertification is not easily reversible and leads to greater dependence on external food sources to feed itself.
Water pollution is another environmental disaster brought about by the CCP. When I wrote “The China Crisis,” about 40 percent of China’s waterways either could not sustain life or were unsafe for human consumption. Today, that number is up to 70 percent. Moreover, 80-90 percent of its groundwater is undrinkable.
China’s air pollution is known for being the worst in the world, responsible for millions of premature deaths. State officials claim that air pollution is decreasing in China. Yet, at the same time, China is adding more coal mines for energy production, leading to more pollution, not less. The CCP’s inability to address its pollution crisis reveals its economic model’s failures, adding to civil unrest rather than social support.
7. Dystopian Depression Among Young Generation
When young people lose faith in their nation, they lose faith in their future. One outcome of that pessimism is the decision not to have children. China is not alone in this phenomenon, but like South Korea and Japan, it’s a big problem. Without the energy, drive, creativity, and belief of the young, the fall in population and its effects on consumption, taxes, and other economic factors make China’s economic future bleak.
Unfortunately, its unbalanced social and economic structure will lead to more excessive actions, internally and externally, as economic and social conditions worsen.
James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.
Young High Income Earners Are Flocking To Florida And Texas, New Study Shows
This month, financial advisors SmartAsset examined the most recent publicly available IRS data in order to try and determine where young professionals (aged 26-35) who earn $200K per year or more have been moving.
The study considered data from all 50 states and Washington DC, defining “high-earning households” as ones with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. Specifically, the study looked at
Inflow of young tax filers making $200,000 and above. This is the number of tax returns for people aged 26 up to 35 with adjusted gross incomes of at least $200,000 who moved into a state. Data comes from the IRS and for tax year 2021.
Outflow of tax filers making $200,000 and above. This is the number of tax returns for people aged 26 up to 35 with adjusted gross incomes of at least $200,000 who moved out of a state. Data comes from the IRS and for tax year 2021.
What they found was that rich young people are flocking to New Jersey and Connecticut. Across all age groups, New Jersey lost 2,617 high-earning tax filers in 2021. However, the state netted 1,048 new rich young professionals in the same year. This was the most dramatic reversal from the aggregate trends. Connecticut saw a similar, though less drastic, trend, the report showed.
Smartasset also found that high earners are youngest in Washington. Whether it’s compared with the rich population of all ages or the population as a whole, Washington has a disproportionately large number of young rich people. More than 13% of those making at least $200,000 in this state are between the ages of 26 and 35.
Despite losses, Washington DC remains exceptionally young and rich, the report said. DC lost nearly 700 high-earning tax filers aged 26 to 35, but still maintains a relative population higher than any state. More than 16% of people making over $200,000 fall into that age bracket.
And to the surprise of likely no one, Florida and Texas are once again No. 1 and No. 2. Florida gained a total of 2,175 high earners aged 26 to 35 after accounting for both inflows and outflows, while Texas gained a net 1,909. Despite the losses, New York (-5,062) and California (-4,495) still have the highest count of young high earners of any state by a wide margin.
The top 10 locations that high income young people are moving, per SmartAsset, are:
Florida: Florida gained a net of 2,175 high-earning tax filers between ages 26 and 35. While 3,391 were added in the state, 1,216 either moved or fell out of the income bracket. Most recently, there are 23,537 tax returns with over $200,000 income for this cohort. Florida is one of the nine states that doesn’t charge an income tax.
Texas: Texas actually saw more raw inflow of young, rich professionals than Florida, with 4,048 new filers in the given age bracket. But outflows were also higher at 2,139 filers, for a net migration of 1,909 into the state. Of nearly 700,000 tax returns with more than $200,000 income in Texas, 7% are for people aged 26 up to 35. Texas does not charge income tax at the state level.
New Jersey: New Jersey had the most drastic reversal of the migration trend across all age groups. While high earners generally left, the mix of high earners leaned more into the 26 to 35 crowd. 3,311 new tax filers fell under the $200,000 bracket in this age range, while 2,263 left.
Colorado: Like Texas and New Jersey, those ages 26 to 35 make up a particularly high percentage of people earning over $200,000 (7%). A net 754 tax filers in this income bracket was added to the state after 1,681 migrated in and 927 migrated out.
North Carolina: North Carolina had a total of 13,621 tax returns filed for high earners aged 26 to 35. This demographic makes up 5.9% of all people earning over $200,000 in the state. Across all age ranges, North Carolina had the third-highest net migration of high income earners.
Connecticut: Young people making over $200,000 increased in Connecticut more than the rate across all age groups. Out of 8,274 tax filers in this group, 660 were net additions after a 1,404 inflow and 744 outflow.
Washington: Washington state has the benefit of no state income tax and the highest proportion of young high-earners when compared with the $200,000+ cohort as a whole. A net 464 new high earners were added to the state thanks to a 2,660 inflow and 2,196 outflow.
Tennessee: With a total of 7,345 high earners filing in Tennessee between the ages of 26 and 35, the state added a net of 441 new high earners in this group. 868 high-earning young people moved into Tennessee, while 427 moved out. Tennessee also does not charge state income tax.
Arizona: Arizona gained a net 321 new filers with greater than $200,000 in income between the ages of 26 and 35. While 832 new tax filers in this cohort came to the state, 511 left.
South Carolina: South Carolina rounds out the top 10, with 318 net new young high-earners in the state, for a total of 95,584. Six hundred and one new tax returns were filed at this level, while 283 moved out of state.
Though some may be thinking, “Not again,” there are many who never stopped living as they did in those two years when fear—symbolized by the face covering worn alone while driving vehicles and even when exercising—became a religion heralded by media and public health officials.
However, Priscilla Romans, a former nurse and now a patient advocate, told The Epoch Times that there’s a better way.
“People need to be empowered to take their health care back into their own hands so that they can make informed decisions,” Ms. Romans said.
Most importantly, she said, don’t give in to fear.
“When people ask me, ‘Is this really going to start happening all over again,’ my comment to them is, ‘I don’t know if this is real or not, but I do know that fear makes people sick,’” Ms. Romans said. “So, when we empower people, we infuse them with hope so that they don’t have to be afraid.”
Hope, Ms. Romans said, is a medicine not to be underestimated.
She’s witnessed hope’s benefits firsthand in her patient-advocacy business, Graith Care, which provides patients with alternatives to being solely dependent on the “white coats” of the “medical industrial complex” to determine the right course of treatment.
“People not only get sick from fear but also can make bad decisions and listen to people they can’t trust, which is why I’m very passionate about them getting proactive and having a patient advocate to show them alternatives instead of relying on pharmaceuticals with potential adverse reactions,” Ms. Romans said.
‘They Are Scared of Going Back’
Graith Care began when many patients and medical professionals were seeing how broken the system really was long before COVID-19 brought its corruption to the surface.
“I launched Graith Care from my own home not knowing what was around the corner with all the vaccine mandates, protocols, and the use of drugs like remdesivir that, in many cases, have been deadly,” Ms. Romans told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
Since then, she’s expanded her business to help people throughout the United States and internationally.
To help those who can’t afford patient advocacy care, she’s set up a nonprofit called Graithful Giving for donations.
In her work, she’s seen the worst of what COVID policies had to offer, from hospital treatment protocols to vaccine injuries.
“My concern with these headlines coming out is that people are still fearful,” she said. “Right from the beginning, people were told to isolate when they shouldn’t have been isolating.”
Some of them went to hospitals and were put on drugs like remdesivir, which only made them sicker, and was fatal in many cases, she said.
“We tended to see more males get caught up in the hospital system,” Ms. Romans said. “Those wives are struggling and have PTSD from having to see their husband dying in a hospital bed. They are very scared of going back.”
A patient advocate, she said, can help navigate the hospital system if one needs to be admitted, but also keep them out of the hospital with other treatments.
Later in the pandemic, people were told to take a vaccine from which Ms. Romans is still seeing injuries, she said.
“It’s happening a lot,” she said. “People’s immune systems have been compromised by this vaccine.”
Morris Brown College in Atlanta and the film company Lionsgate led the way to mandating masks this week as news reports and editorials preached about the “uptick” in cases, while several hospital systems followed suit.
Meanwhile, the resurgence of excitement over face coverings is promoted on media platforms where public health officials and academics like Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, responded with a resounding “yes” to a question from PBS NewsHour on whether people should be wearing masks—in crowded places and at home—while encouraging social distancing and vaccines.
“My question is, what happens next? These headlines are a slippery slope, and we want to make sure people are better educated, stay ahead of the eightball, and not panic,” Ms. Romans said. “We want people to think on their own instead of just saying ‘yes’ to everything. We prefer that people are empowered with the information to make informed decisions.”
‘History Repeating Itself’
Dr. Richard Bartlett, a physician of 30 years in Texas who was involved in the effort to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data released by the Food and Drug Administration, told The Epoch Times that though he has seen an increase in COVID cases over the past five days, their symptoms are on par with flu cases rather than the severity of the Wuhan and delta variants of COVID.
“This is clearly history repeating itself as far as an attempt to control the masses,” Dr. Bartlett said.
“There was never any science to back up the multifaceted campaign forced on the American people: masks, lockdowns, social distancing, and later the vaccines. There were no randomized control trials saying this was safe and effective just as there were no randomized control trials for the medical tyranny over the last three years.”
Because of COVID policies, people died alone in hospitals without loved ones at their side being able to say goodbye, Dr. Bartlett recalled.
“That might have been acceptable in a communist regime, but we have patient rights that have been abused, and there were no randomized control trials saying that this was a good idea,” Dr. Bartlett said. “They put plastic bags over patients’ heads as a COVID protocol when someone tested positive for COVID. This was never backed up by randomized control trials saying that was safe and effective.”
Basic patient autonomy—or “your body, your choice”—was trampled, he remembered.
Informed Consent
Physicians and public health officials pushed vaccines on the American public without giving informed consent, not only regarding the financial conflicts of interest the officials had with the companies that made them but also regarding their potential adverse reactions.
“I think this is another power grab, and I’m concerned that we’re going to see more of the same unless the people demand basic patient rights for their children, parents, and spouses,” Dr. Bartlett said.
Dr. Bartlett referenced a 1995 speech made by former President Bill Clinton on a final report on human radiation experiments conducted by the federal government between 1944 and 1974.
The speech, he said, should have been remembered during this time when American citizens once again became the subjects of an experiment, but this time with novel vaccine concoctions.
President Clinton apologized for the experiments conducted by departments such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Public Health Services, along with the help of several universities such as Vanderbilt.
“Informed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo,” President Clinton said in the speech. “In too many cases, informed consent was withheld. Americans were kept in the dark about the effects of what was being done to them. The deception extended beyond the test subjects themselves to encompass their families and the American people as a whole, for these experiments were kept secret and they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security, but for the simple fear of embarrassment. And that was wrong.”
Trying to Mask Children
Dr. Eric Hensen, a Texas physician who’s still facing repercussions from not complying with the now widely discredited mask mandates issued during the pandemic, studied how masks negatively affect health.
Echoing Dr. Bartlett, he said the masks are about control.
“It’s ridiculous and I’m already seeing that they’re trying to put them on kids again, but it’s just going to retard their growth and development, not to mention their social development,” he told The Epoch Times.
Yet public health officials avoid discussing the harms that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines have caused.
“There’s politics at play,” Dr. Hensen said. “I think there are a lot of doctors who bury their heads in the sand and do as they are told to keep their jobs. Eighty percent of doctors work for someone, so they have what’s called the golden handcuffs. If they break out of the narrative, they get fired.”
Dr. Hensen is an independent physician and has maintained an unrelenting defiance of the mask mandates at the cost of a continued legal battle with the Texas Medical Board that charged him with “unprofessional or dishonorable conduct that is likely to deceive or defraud the public” based on a complaint that he wasn’t wearing a mask while treating a patient in 2020.
“Being an experienced ear nose and throat, head and neck surgeon with extensive knowledge and training in the upper airway, I was well aware of the limitations of wearing a facial covering of any kind and aware of the dangers of wearing these face coverings,” Dr. Henson told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
‘You Have All the Authority’
Dr. Hensen has never seen credible evidence of masks stopping transmission of COVID, he said, but he has seen what harm they’ve caused.
“They make symptoms worse by increasing the viral load into the nasal cavity, which makes you sicker,” he said. “People get ‘mask mouth’ which leads to gingivitis and dental diseases. They cause respiratory problems from breathing harder, thus sucking the virus deeper into their lungs, as well as breathing in the polypropylene plastic fibers, which can cause lung cancer.”
One study (pdf) Dr. Hensen referenced presented “the Foegen effect theory,” which posited that “deep re-inhalation of hypercondensed droplets or pure virons caught in facemasks as droplets can worsen prognosis and might be linked to long-term effects of COVID-19.”
People who wear masks also experience a weakened immune system caused by an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels and a drop in blood oxygen saturation levels, leading to increases in heart and respiratory rates, he said.
“They become much more prone to infections,” he said.
To those who don’t want to play along this time with the authoritarian health policies, Dr. Hensen said it’s important to remember the concept of individual sovereignty forgotten during the pandemic.
“You have all the authority,” he said. “That’s what our forefathers established for us. We’re not under a king, and our representatives and public health officials work for us, not the other way around.”
Alabama Ready To Be First To Kill Inmate By Forced Breathing Of Nitrogen
Alabama is ready to pioneer a new means of executing convicts — by forcing a condemned man to breathe pure nitrogen.
That man is Kenneth Eugene Smith. Now 58, Smith was convicted in 1988 for killing the wife of a preacher — in a murder-for-hire scheme initiated by that preacher, who hoped to cash in on a life insurance policy and pay off his debts. The victim, Elizabeth Sennett, was found dead in the couple’s home on Coon Dog Cemetary Road in rural Colbert County, having been bludgeoned with a fireplace tool and stabbed nine times in what was supposed to look like a home invasion.
Smith and his partner in crime carried out the murder for payments of just $1,000 each. That partner was executed in 2010. The preacher spared everyone the legal hassle: After investigators honed in on him, he confessed to his sons and their families that he’d had an affair and hired the killers — then immediately strolled to his old pickup truck, sat in the front seat and shot himself, fatally.
An attempt to execute Smith via lethal injection in 2022 was called off when executioners struggled to insert an IV tube into his vein. Now the Alabama attorney general is ready to give it another go, this time using “nitrogen hypoxia.” On Friday, AG Steve Marshall asked the Alabama Supreme Court to set a date.
While colorless, odorless nitrogen comprises 78% of the air we breathe daily, breathing 100% nitrogen will theoretically cause the prisoner to first pass out and then die.
“Placed into a pure nitrogen environment, the convict would be unconscious within a minute (possibly even after a breath or two) and would be dead soon after,” Charles Blanke, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, told Fox News. “Its failure rate, that is, cases in which the prisoner survives, would likely be much lower than what we see with current death penalty methods.”
Alabama has yet to provide details on its planned methodology — for example, whether inmates would be placed in a gas chamber or simply fitted with a special mask. If it’s the latter, a good seal is essential to ensure the death isn’t prolonged by oxygen in the execution room.
The nitrogen hypoxia method has been on the books in Alabama since 2018. Oklahoma and Mississippi have likewise authorized the method, but none have used it yet. Lethal injections have proven increasingly problematic, owing to shortages of the drugs used in the process.
Those shortages are driven in part by manufacturers not wanting their product used to kill people — even the most evil ones. In 2011, Hospira, the only domestic producer of one of three lethal-injection ingredients — sodium thiopental — stopped making it. In 2012, the FDA made it illegal to import the drug to be used in executions.
Given its novelty, nitrogen hypoxia will be ripe for legal challenges on behalf the condemned. “No state in the country has executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia and Alabama is in no position to experiment with a completely unproven and unused method for executing someone,” Equal Justice Initiative attorney Angie Setzer told Associated Press.
Alabama doesn’t have to prove the humanity of nitrogen execution. “The burden is on the condemned inmate to show that it is torturous rather than the burden being on the state to show that it’s not,” said Richmond University law professor Corinna Barrett Lain in an interview with Scientific American. Lain’s choice for most humane method? Firing squad.
Alabama death row inmates are literally lining up to be polished off via nitrogen. In legal action dating back five years, several inmates have sued to be killed that way, rather than lethal injection.
The Biden administration is investing up to $24 million to develop messenger RNA-based (mRNA) platforms and technology aimed at more effectively fighting cancer and other diseases.
The administration’s new biomedical research agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), is providing the $24 million investment in the “Curing the Uncurable via RNA-Encoded Immunogene Tuning” (CUREIT) project, according to an Aug. 23 statement from the White House.
CUREIT will be led by a team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
The funding will be granted over a three-year period.
The latest investment is part of President Biden’s “Unity Agenda” announced during his 2022 State of the Union address; which the president says is aimed at bringing both Republicans and Democrats together to make progress on issues such as combating cancer, and tackling the opioid epidemic and mental health crisis.
“Last year, as part of his Unity Agenda, President Biden worked with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to establish and fund ARPA-H to drive breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat cancer and other diseases,” the White House statement reads. “Through CUREIT, ARPA-H is now moving aggressively to deliver on their mission, and to advance the goals of the Biden Cancer Moonshot and the President’s Unity Agenda,” the statement continues.
According to the White House, the aim of CUREIT is to create a “toolbox of mRNA and related technologies that could be used to ‘turn on’ helpful immune responses,” such as prompting immune cells to target and attack cancerous tumors.
The technologies could also extend to autoimmune disorders, transplants, and infectious diseases, the White House said.
Multiple COVID-19 vaccines, including those from Pfizer and Moderna, have been developed using mRNA technology platforms.
The White House said those vaccines have saved “millions of lives in the United States and around the world” and that a “toolbox” of mRNA platforms could help ” transform the fight against cancer and other difficult diseases.”
Various experts, including doctors and professors, have raised concerns over mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Retsef Levi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times in February that the shots are causing “an unprecedented level of harm, including the death of young people and children.”
Multiple studies have also linked the messenger RNA vaccines with myocarditis, a potentially life-threatening inflammation of the heart, as well as vascular and organ damage.
The virus itself also can cause myocarditis.
According to a statement from Emory University, many types of cancer—as well as other debilitating diseases— have dysregulation of the immune system at their core. This impairs the body’s ability to control the immune response, leaving patients more vulnerable to the disease.
“Immune modulation is a way to enhance the body’s immune response,” the university said. “The conventional methods of immune modulation—vaccines, antibodies, small molecules, and cell-based therapies—face limitations in their ability to engage immunity and manufacturing complexity,” university officials wrote.
To overcome these limitations, researchers at the University’s Santangelo lab will develop a “novel class of mRNA-based drugs” to precisely “turn on or turn off” genes in individual immune cells. In other words, the mRNA-based drugs will directly target immune cells within the body, prompting the creation of target proteins that may improve immune function and fight against cancer.
Researchers will also combine messenger RNA-expressed antigens and gene modulators “outside the body” to prevent and treat diseases.
“By combining mRNA-encoded antigens with gene modulation technology, we will be able to radically enhance specific immune responses,” said Philip Santangelo, PhD, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology.
“This technology, which operates transiently without modifying DNA, can offer a potential breakthrough in treating cancers, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases,” he added.
In a statement Thursday announcing the new multi-million dollar investment, President Biden called it “an important step forward” in achieving his ambitious goal to create breakthroughs in how to prevent, detect, and treat cancer and other diseases.
“I’ve long said that America can be defined by a single word: Possibilities. My Unity Agenda is bringing both parties together in that spirit — to get big things done for the American people. There is more work to do, but there’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together,” the president said.
“A skilled team at Emory University in Atlanta will work to adapt these technologies to turn more cancers into curable diseases,” he continued. “This is a bold endeavor that has the potential to transform the fight against cancer and other difficult diagnoses,” President Biden concluded.
