Authored by Pepe Escobar,

When the lightning of History strikes, better cut to the chase in our first draft…

Here we go.

After the extraordinary events in Russia during The Longest Day, President Putin wins on all counts.

Among other feats, he has made an absolute, inter-galactic ass of the whole collective West MSM – all over again.

He rallied virtually every Russian to end the Special Military Operation (SMO) – or “almost war” (according to some business circles) quicker.

He – and the FSB – amassed a formidable list of traitors and 5th and 6th columnists, which will be properly dealt with.

And he now enjoys unlimited freedom to deploy de facto Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO) martial law powers.

As much as Putin helped perennial Lukashenko in August 2020, preventing regime change in Belarus, good ol’ Luka prevented Russia from sliding into civil war in June 2023.

A complex wide-ranging counter-terror op is now in effect in Moscow and beyond, while assorted Western sub-zoology specimens are stunned, dazed and confused: wasn’t that supposed to be Putin meeting his Czar Nicholas II moment?

A first glance at the chessboard tells us that all the pieces seem to be falling in their right places.

• Prighozin gets a golden parachute in Belarus.

• Shoigu may be about to be sacked, perhaps even Gerasimov (yes, there are deeply dysfunctional layers inside the Ministry of Defense).

• The Wagner musicians will be incorporated as a regular Army Corps.

• They may keep doing business in Africa: demand is huge.

So what really happened after The Longest Day?

Hefty CIA funds may have changed hands. But in the end the “coup” could turn out to be the Greatest Russian Trolling of the West Ever.

The Mother of All Maskirovkas

Once again, facts on the ground prove Putin is the undisputed champion of Russia. After keeping a strategic silence for a few hours, his intervention gathered full support from the civilian population, the FSB, the Chechens, the Army, the Communists, everyone.

The exact terms of the deal between Luka and Prighozin, with help from the governor of the Tula region, Alexey Dyumin, are still unclear.

Prighozin said he was satisfied with the terms. Peskov confirmed on the record that a criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped. A key Prighozin demand was the twin resignation of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov. That may – or may not – happen in the immediate future.

And that brings us to the still fascinating possibility this was the Mother of All Maskirovkas. Prigozhin sets up all this circus just to get a meeting in Moscow with Shoigu and Gerasimov.

Talk about an overkill just to go out on a date.

The Mother of All Maskirovkas scenario also implies a move worthy of 5D chess.

On Saturday, Wagner was 200 km away from Moscow.

Yet on Sunday, Wagner was 100 km away from Kiev.

Next level Sun Tzu Art of War, anyone?

Between sovereignty and betrayal

Alexander Dugin correctly points out how this was also an exercise in Sovereignty: “Only Sovereign Lukashenko, together with Sovereign Putin himself, confronted [Prighozin]…It turned out that many can frame the President and the people, acting in the shadows and apparently on his behalf, but saving the Fatherland in a critical situation is not their specialty.”

The corollary is that Russia needs “a sovereign elite, otherwise everything will repeat itself.”

As for the dazed and confused collective West, especially the NATO-Kiev junta, with everyone instantly rebranding Wagner from “terrorists” to “freedom fighters”, getting bogged down in their own swamp is the art they excel in.

Mainstream media spun that the proverbial “Western officials” were “taken by surprise” by the mutiny. That depends on the amount of funds that changed hands, and in which direction, during the preparation.

The SMO, now CTO keeps rolling along. The Russian Army continues to fight, undisturbed. The “counter-offensive” remains teetering over the edge of a cliff, ready to kiss the black void.

Putin winning on all counts implies the whole civilian population – and the military – engaged into preserving him and the Russian institutions, as well as perfecting them. There’s absolutely no nation anywhere across the collective West where we find this level of citizen support.

Russian politics is a special animal. It works at the highest level and also at grassroots level – unlike in the West, where the norm is deep hatred between the elites and the people.

Of course it should always be stressed it’s the less patriotic Russian oligarchs who run away every time something approaching The Longest Day takes place.

For a few hours, the West was betting heavily on the dismemberment of Russia. Not now. And not in the foreseeable future.

The succession is already being prepared, by Team Putin and selected patriotic oligarchs. Among the contenders, there’s a secret name that will stun everyone when it pops up. He’s still invisible in terms of public opinion, and works in the shadows. His name should remain secret for the time being.

As it stands, what matters is that Russia as whole emerged even stronger out of The Longest Day. The man and woman in the street showed himself and herself, once again, as a true patriot, ready to defend the Motherland whatever it takes.

There was no confrontation between those who are pro-Russian institutions and those who are pro-Wagner. People actually support both. People regarded Wagner like the “polite green men” who helped to peacefully retake Crimea in 2014. Facing them, there was not a single policeman or military.

So Putin is stronger than ever. But everyone should always keep this in mind: the one thing he can’t forgive is betrayal.

“Why exactly are we at war with Russia?”

Those are the verboten words that Tucker Carlson to utter at the start of Episode 7 Of his Tucker on Twitter series where he highlights the irony that the so-called ‘war for democracy’ is actually enabling dictatorship and tyranny.

With nuclear extinction a possibility and 1000s of lives and billions of dollars already wasted, “what’s the point” he asks, “are we really doing this so that the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs that financed their beachhouse.”

“Thankfully” the former Fox News star explains, “we have an answer.”

“The war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.”

Sounds familiar?

“Democracy must prevail” exclaims Nancy Pelosi as Carlson offers bipartisan examples of warmongers pushing for ‘democracy’ and all the military-industrial complex enrichment that comes with it.

Carlson further mocks the rhetoric surrounding the war as a fight for democracy, highlighting the irony of supporting Ukrainian President Zelensky, who suspended democracy in his own country.

“we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that“

In fact, the Biden administration continual support for Ukraine despite Zelensky’s disregard for democracy, implies that their motives are questionable.

He argues that during wartime, politicians become powerful and can justify any action, including silencing political opponents, leading to a potential erosion of democracy.

Carlson suggests that those in Washington, including Republicans, support Biden’s stance on Ukraine because ending the war would threaten their power.

He concludes by speculating on the future of Joe Biden, pointing out his age-related decline and potential implications for the Democratic Party, suggesting that Gavin Newsom may be a potential successor.

Watch the full episode below:

Ep. 7 Irony Alert: the war for democracy enables dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/tk7aOZ4H6n

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 28, 2023

Full transcript below:

Hey it’s Tucker Carlson, you may have found yourself wondering recently as the world slides closer to nuclear Annihilation than any time in human history why exactly are we at war with Russia.

It seems like there’s a pretty significant downside to this particular foreign policy decision, starting with economic collapse and ending potentially with Extinction so is there a good reason we’re doing it so many innocent young people have been killed so many hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted some of them from the U.S treasury so what’s the point are we really doing this so the Biden family can repay its debts to the oligarchs who finance their beach house in Rehoboth.

We’re doing it so our government can continue to lie about its illicit bio labs in Eastern Europe so that flabby losers like Toria Newland and Tony Blinken can feel like they’re doing something important with their sad empty lives.

Really honestly there’s got to be a better reason for waging this the most pointless war of all.

What is it.

Well thankfully we have an answer: the war against Russia ladies and gentlemen the war against Putin and for Ukraine is in fact a war for democracy.

Watch and recall the motive the president has said many times “we’re focused on what we can do to support Ukraine’s effort to fight for their democracy”.

“Democracy must prevail. The Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and in doing so for ours as well.”

“Assisting and helping Ukraine win this fight for democracy and freedom and of course Ukrainian president zielinski understand that what’s at stake in Ukraine is bigger than just his Nation it is literally a battle for freedom and democracy themselves.”

“They are showing the world what an existential fight for democracy looks like.”

“President Zelenky and the Ukrainians have changed the course of history for the better and we unequivocally are with the Ukrainian people in their fight to remain a sovereign democracy.“

Unequivocally with the Ukrainian people to remain in democracy it’s a bipartisan view democracy must Prevail.

You just heard noted democracy expert Nancy Pelosi say the daughter of the mobbed up mayor of Baltimore as Pelosi puts it the Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and for ours as well that’s right for ours as well without Ukrainian democracy in other words we can have no democracy here if the ukrainians aren’t free.

Neither are we we must make sure they can vote in Kiev so we can continue to vote in Kansas City.

It’s really that simple and yet tonight we regret to tell you that we have a problem it looks like they’re not going to be able to vote in Kiev anymore and no for once it’s not Putin’s fault.

Democracy in Ukraine seems to be suspended by the world’s foremost democracy Advocate himself Field Marshal zielinski.

Watch:

“If we win” he says “we’ll let people vote otherwise no you vote” and we feel like it because ultimately we’re completely in charge and make all the rules.

Your job is to obey or be punished.

That’s our version of self-government.

Self means me – I’m the government now.

That’s not just any autocrat that’s our chief Ally in the war for democracy.

This is the guy who just announced he’s like did you cancel next year’s elections.

So you’ve got to wonder what the Biden Administration thinks of this – we can’t possibly continue to support zielinski, that guy, after he said that can we because in a clip less than 30 seconds long he just blew up our entire rationale for supporting his side in the war.

So we can’t support him.

Oh of course we can and we will.

Here’s Joe Biden from yesterday reaffirming America’s unequivocal support for Ukraine no matter what happened in Russia “we the United States should continue to support Ukraine’s defense and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity”.

So to recap we are currently fighting a war for democracy on behalf of a leader who just casually announced he’s happy to end democracy and our democracy and supporting leaders have no problem with that in fact they’re strongly for it.

Shocked?

You shouldn’t be.

Of course they’re for it. You should have seen this coming.

Wars for democracy always cancel democracy in the process – that’s why our leaders love them and they all do it – even The Virtuous leaders Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the British government under Winston Churchill through an entire opposition party into prison and let them rot for the duration – in some cases with their families.

So in a war for democracy you can do anything.

Imagine what a man might do who has fewer principles.

If that man say ran Ukraine he might seize churches arrest priests ban all criticism of himself disappear his political opponents and that’s happening.

Just last month zelinski threw a man called Gonzalo Lira into prison indefinitely for the crime of daring to write about the Ukrainian government in unflattering ways.

Now what’s interesting what separates this from other such cases is that lira is an American citizen, so Joe Biden who was quite a bit of SWAT as they say in Ukraine could have freed Gonzalo Lira within hours, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to – he didn’t say a word about it – he remains in prison tonight.

So that makes you wonder what’s the real motive here when normal people see War they see death and destruction, sadness and suffering; but that’s not what demagogues see – they understand it differently they know that War means power mostly for them.

During wartime everything they do can be justified – war is the gravest of all emergencies – imagine the coveted lockdowns times a thousand plus drones.

Once War breaks out politicians become Gods with the power of life and death. So in a peaceful democracy you have to debate your political opponents in public and that’s tiresome but in a war for democracy you can just throw them in jail or have them executed. You can see that many in Washington are looking forward to that moment and that may be why they so fervently support Joe Biden – even many Republicans – against a potential opponent – the only opponent who opposes the war in Ukraine.

If you were to end the war their power would evaporate.

Last week a whistleblower produced WhatsApp messages from Hunter Biden proving that at the very least his father knew about his influence peddling businesses abroad and probably participated in them “I’m sitting here with my father” Hunter Biden wrote to his Chinese Partners demanding money as much as anything reported about the bidens over the last several years this was The Smoking Gun.

There it is right there in the message that would have been enough to a normal president it would have been more than enough to keep a normal president from running for office again but had virtually no effect on Joe Biden.

Most media Outlets ignored it completely or tried to spin Biden’s relationship with his son as some kind of moral Victory “the real meaning of the hunter Biden Saga as I see it” wrote Nick Kristoff of the New York Times “isn’t about presidential corruption but is about how widespread addiction is and about how a determined parent with unconditional love can sometimes reel a child back.”

He actually wrote that and if you doubt it you should know that view was common.Here’s the take from ABC “the hunter Biden story, the Scandal, the this, that, it’s also the story of a Father’s Love and Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son Hunter and will never treat him lesser than and so he is a father first take it or leave it.“

So whistleblower produces a text message showing that Joe Biden was in the room with his son when his son was selling influence to an enemy power the Chinese government and ABC’s take on it Joe Biden is a father first take it or leave it.

What accounts for a response like that?

Well that’s the way you talk when you’ve got nothing to fear from an upcoming presidential election – you don’t even bother to think of an excuse for your candidate because you don’t need to. Your country has electronic voting machines – Joe Biden got 81 million votes in 2020 and you’re pretty sure he can do it again.

In fact you know he can you’re not worried but actually they should be a little worried

The people who control Joe Biden – Susan Rice and the rest – know they can continue to run our government, writing the press releases, formulating the policies, and they can do it effectively forever, as long as Joe Biden gets dressed in the morning, and of course that’s their strong preference.

These are fervent opponents of change but the one thing these people cannot control is aging.

Joe Biden is old he’s 80 now he will be 85 at the end of the next term.

People imagine that old age is a long predictable progression from Acuity to permanent unconsciousness but often that’s not at all how it actually works.

When old people start to slide they tend to Slide fast.

Joe Biden has begun that descent.

Here he was yesterday and here’s what she wrote to me and I quote you can imagine my joy she called them right away and the next day they sent someone out to survey her yard as Beth wrote this is the best thing that’s happened in Rural America since the rural electrification act for electricity to farms in the 30s and 40s end of quote.”

End of quote you weren’t supposed to hear that – Joe Biden read the stage directions out loud –  that’s like eating the garnish that comes with your entree you’re supposed to know not to do that.

Joe Biden no longer does in a year or two he will be gone completely and there will be no hiding it at that point the Democratic party will face a secession problem.

If Joe Biden is re-elected next year and then forced to leave office during his term due to disability or death that means Kamala Harris will become president of the United States and nobody wants that not even her husband.

In real life nobody likes Kamala Harris.

That’s not an attack on her in fact it’s possible to feel pity for someone who’s so universally reviled. It is instead an observation of unchanging physical reality like gravity or photosynthesis nobody wants Kamala Harris to be president no one will benefit if she becomes president so logic suggests there’s going to be a change.

It’s going to have to be somebody else and whoever that person is is going to have to enter the race soon before the election after Biden drops out.

Who could that person be? We don’t know obviously this is all just guessing but we do know whoever that is we’ll have to have two essential criteria he’ll have to be as shallow ruthless and transactional as Joe Biden is and he’ll need to have flattery skills that are so polished and advanced they’d be considered Superior even in the Saudi Royal Court and there’s only one man in modern America who fits that description Gavin Newsom the governor of California and perhaps not coincidentally Joe Biden’s new closest friend.

“I am here Mr President” Newsom told Biden at an event that they did together last week. “I am here as a proud American as a proud Californian mesmerized by not just your faith and your Devotion to this country and the world we’re trying to build but by your results by your action by your passion by Your Capacity to deliver.”

I get mesmerized by you Joe Biden – imagine saying that as a compliment you couldn’t do it.

Few human beings could do it but Gavin Newsom had no problem at all those words rolled right off his Fork tongue. He never stopped smiling so if you’re looking for the leader of the coup there he is right there she’s in Kennedy’s motorcade.

One month ago, Wall Street lost its mind when Nvidia reported guidance that blew away consensus: in the aftermath of ChatGPT, it seemed as if the entire world suddenly wanted the company’s flagship A100 chip, helping send NVDA stock higher by almost 50% in days, pushing the company into the vaunted “cuatro comas” club.

And maybe they did… but maybe not. Maybe instead of a scramble by everyone to become the Apple of AI, something which only a small handful of cash-rich companies can even hope of achieving due to the vast capex sums required, all that happened was a rush by Chinese companies to rush and front-load orders before the chip export ban hammer falls, something we discussed most recently two weeks ago.

Same happened with semiconductors and double/triple ordering during peak covid, and the cycle is even more offset now with AI orders (NVDA) ahead of potential chip wars with China. https://t.co/LJwLEVEl5h

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 11, 2023

To be sure, it wouldn’t be the first time that Chines firms were double and triple ordering precious chips (it happened all throughout the post-Covid supply chain crunch) and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Nvidia was caught in the middle of the US-China chip war. Recall, it was just last August that NVDA stock tumbled (amazing to think it was “only” $150 back then) to get ahead of US chip export crackdowns, after the US has implemented new license requirements for Nvidia’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits – Nvidia’s highest-performance products for servers – in sales to China and Russia. Nvidia said last September the restrictions would cost it $400 million in that quarter.

But while the market quickly forgot that one of Nvidia’s largest revenue streams could be shut off at any time, and resumed bidding up the stock following the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 as the world lost its collective mind in the historic AI frenzy, the reality is that nothing had actually changed.

And early Tuesday evening the world got a reminder of just how little things had changed, when the WSJ reported that Washington could soon close loopholes in the sale to China of powerful chips used to train AI models, potentially denting sales to the world’s largest semiconductor market.

The Commerce Department could move as soon as early next month to stop the shipments of chips made by Nvidia and other chip makers to customers in China and other countries of concern without first obtaining a license, the people said.

The action would be part of final rules codifying and expanding the export control measures announced in October, some of the people said.

The move would further crimp China’s ability to build out AI capabilities after restrictions last year that cut off the most advanced AI chips made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. Nvidia responded to that move by making a version of its AI chips for the Chinese market called the A800 that fell below performance thresholds outlined by the Commerce Department. That chip replaced the A100, which is widely used in data centers to do AI computations.

But the new restrictions being contemplated by the Commerce Department would ban the sale of even A800 chips without a license, according to the WSJ sources.

The news sent Nvidia stock sliding more than 3% in after-hours trading in New York. Why? Because as we said last August, Nvidia gets about a fifth of its revenue from China, and any trade intervention by the US – which at this stage in the new cold war is just a matter of time – would cripple Nvidia’s value proposition.

While Nvidia led declines in shares of US chipmakers after hours, rival AMD also fell about 3%. The two lead the market for chips vital to the development of generative AI models such as ChatGPT.

In response to last summer’s regulations, Nvidia designed less-capable chips that fall under thresholds that require a license from the Commerce Department before export to China or other countries of concern. But Biden is now weighing action as soon as next month to expand the curbs to include those lower-powered semiconductors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

Such a move underscores the Biden administration’s determination to contain China’s technological rise and could stoke tensions between the two countries. The US is increasingly concerned about Beijing’s technological ambitions, including around the use of AI in military and scientific advances that could tilt the geopolitical balance.

Nvidia, which with a market cap just over $1 trillion has become the world’s most valuable chipmaker with a more than 80% share of the market for data center accelerator chips, and has been operating under rules that required approval for shipments to China of its A100 and new H100 parts. It was able to partially alleviate the impact on its finances by selling a modified version of the A100 that’s slower at accessing data, and therefore didn’t trigger the restriction.

But now Biden’s minions are going after those chips as well in hopes of delaying China in the global AI race, and the question is with the market having priced in virtually unlimited growth for the chip company, what will the threat of losing as much as 20% of its total revenue (and growth) mean to NVDA stock.

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Fear and Loathing in the City of Westminster

Our descent into City Airport was like the drop-ship scene in the movie Aliens. The BA CityFlyer Embraer 190, a narrow-body twin-engine airliner, rolled over into a 40-degree bank and started bucking like a mechanical bull. Simulated “chimes” began chiming frantically. Flight attendants bolted for their seats. The German businessman in the seat beside me, obviously a nervous flyer, immediately adopted the “brace” position. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and shouted into his ear like a drunken redneck, “WE’RE ON AN EXPRESS ELEVATOR TO HELL! GOING DOWN!”

And so began my latest trip to London. This time, I wasn’t there to talk to “the Left” or to hunt down endoparasitoid xenomorphs. I was there on Serious Conspiracy Theorist Business, which I explained to the chirpy MI6 operative posing as a “survey taker” that followed me out of Border Control asking questions about my “nation of residence” and my “experience with the passport scanners,” and so on. She was wearing one of those rubber “Mission Impossible” masks that made her look like a middle-aged British woman. I waited for an opportunity, head faked, juked right, and lost her in the crowd. As I entered the “Arrivals” lobby, I turned and shouted in her general direction, “NOT MY FIRST RODEO, MR. PHELPS!”

I don’t know what was up with all the shouting. I’ve been experimenting with different types of medication for this sinus condition I’ve had for months. My Sinus Specialist diagnosed me with “long” or possibly “permanent Covid,” or some yet-to-be-named debilitating syndrome caused by some other bio-weapon that produces cold-and-flu-like symptoms and has a survival rate of 99.8 percent. So, maybe it was bad reaction to my meds. Whatever it was, I was feeling jumpy.

And the climate-change apocalypse didn’t help. Emerging from the Tube in Westminster was like walking into an enormous open-air sauna. Bodies were lying all around on the sidewalks. AFP photographers in hazmat suits were taking pictures of the carnage. Herds of corpulent American tourists staggered through the streets in semi-fugue states sweating profusely and thumbing their phones like an invasion of alien albino hippos trying to call up to their UAPs and arrange for immediate emergency extraction. I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way down Tothill Street to my pod hotel, checked in, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in the maze of identical Kubrickian hallways that eventually led me to my luxury pod, and cleaned myself up for the night’s festivities.

What was I doing back in London in the middle of a heat wave? Well … OK, I’m allowed to tell you about it now. As you are probably aware, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Russell Brand were doing this public event last Thursday …

… but that’s not what I was really there for.

Not that the Thursday event wasn’t fun. It was. Despite the rather pricey tickets, there was a good size house and spirits were high. Russell Brand was in top form, pouring out torrents of intellectual free-association like an English Neal Cassady and nailing the punchlines of all the jokes. Michael was also firing on all cylinders. He worked the house like a seasoned politician, whipping the crowd into a veritable frenzy of anti-totalitarian fervor. Stella Assange took the stage at one point and briefed us on the official crucifixion of her husband, which, sadly, now looks like a fait accompli. Matt, who had just made it to London that morning, and so was jet-lagged and delieriously sleep-deprived, dispensed with the speech he had rewritten on the plane, and just winged it, and somehow pulled it off … because that, as they say, is show biz.

Here’s the money part of Matt’s speech, which he paraphrased in London (emphasis mine):

“What Michael and I were looking at was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself. We certainly saw plenty of examples of censorship and de-platforming and government collaboration in those efforts. However, it’s clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves.“

Early the next morning, Michael, Matt, and a secret cabal of international journalists, editors, organizers, political satirists, academics, and other Very Serious People whose names I am not at liberty to mention gathered in an undisclosed location and spent the better part of the day sharing harmful misinformation and strategizing about how to defeat (or marginally disrupt) the network of governments, Intelligence agencies, global corporations, NGOs, and so-called disinformation experts known as the Censorship Industrial Complex. There were delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and other nominally sovereign countries.

This heretofore clandestine meeting was conducted in what appeared to be a WWII-era air-raid shelter that had been converted into a private BDSM club under military-level OPSEC protocols (i.e., the meeting was conducted according to the protocols, not the architectural conversion). I’m not entirely sure why that was. We weren’t doing anything even remotely illegal. However, given that I’m under criminal investigation here in Germany for tweeting the cover art of my book, and the IRS’s sudden interest in Matt, and Kit Klarenberg’s recent experience in Luton, perhaps the abundance of caution was warranted. The last thing we needed was the UK Thoughtpolice goose-stepping in like Basil Fawlty and dragging everyone off to Room 101.

Anyway, that’s what I was actually there for. I had never met most of the people in attendance, except online on the double-encrypted Russian-backed dark-web conspiracy-theorist channels where we hatch our right-wing-extremist plots to defend people’s rights to freedom-of-speech and engage in other harmful anti-Democracy behaviors. I’m still not sure who I actually met in London, as we were all wearing identical Mickey-Mouse masks and speaking through portable voice modifiers. (In any secret meeting like this, you have to assume you’ve been infiltrated!)

After the obligatory arguing about the agenda, we settled in and shared our country reports, which, unsurprisingly, were all variations on a theme. I won’t go into all the details. Michael Shellenberger’s non-profit has been tracking those developments. Matt Taibbi and Racket News are reporting it. Other alternative media outlets are reporting it. Millions of people all around the world are talking about it, writing about it, and arguing with each other about it. Your Twitter feed is probably full of it. Alex Gutentag just published a huge article about it.

So, what is it, exactly, that is going on?

The thing that was horrifying about listening to my colleagues reporting on the state of things in their countries — or, rather, the thing that should be horrifying but is becoming a mundane fact of life — is that more or less the same totalitarian program is being rolled out in countries throughout the world.

• The censorship.

• The official propaganda.

• The criminalization of dissent.

• The pathologization of dissent.

• The manipulation of our perception of reality.

• The coordinated transformation of the world into a smiley-faced neo-Orwellian police state in which politics no longer matters because society has been divided into two basic classes, i.e., “the normals,” who are prepared to mindlessly follow orders and parrot whatever official propaganda they are fed, and “the deviants,” or “extremists,” who are not.

Seriously, all satire aside, think about the implications of that.

As you sit there in whichever nominally sovereign country you’re sitting there reading this in, ask yourself, “how and why is this happening?” Then ask yourself, “why is it happening now?”

If you do not have answers to those questions, it might behoove you to attempt to come up with some. That is basically what I’ve been trying to do — in a satirical and sometimes not so satirical manner — in these Consent Factory essays for the last seven years. I’m not going to summarize it all again here. I’ve done that, repeatedly, in my essays and books. I did it the last time I visited London to give a talk at the Real Left Conference.

I did it again at this gathering in London. It did not go over all that well.

The thing is, most of us are so laser-focused on the trees that we cannot see the forest. But our adversaries see the forest. They see the forest like fucking eagles. They own the fucking forest and everything in it. While we hop like squirrels from tree to tree, distracted from distraction by distraction, from limited hangout by limited hangout, they are building a big fucking fence around it and deploying the Forest-Ranger Sturmabteilung.

I’m reminded of that infamous Karl Rove quote. He was referring to the USA, of course, but it was GloboCap (i.e., the Corporatocracy) that he was really speaking for whether he knew it or not …

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore … we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [The New York Times Magazine]

If we do not want to end up “studying that reality,” the global, pathologized-totalitarian reality that is being subtly and not so subtly implemented simultaneously in countries throughout the world, at some point we had better come up with some actual answers to those questions above.

The supranational, globally-hegemonic, post-ideological system of power that runs our world — whatever you need to call it — has answers to those questions. It has a story. It is a story about a beneficent global empire governed by authoritative scientific experts who are trying to save the world from Whatever and protect everyone from “disinformation” and “harmful” speech, ideas, and so on. Like every good story, it has an antagonist. Us. We are the official enemy. Right, Left, libertarian, anarchist, Islamic fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalist … it does not make one iota of difference. There is only the Empire, and those who oppose it. The Empire does not give a shit why. It is conducting a global “Clear-and-Hold” operation, wiping out internal resistance and establishing ideological uniformity. It could not care less what you think you believe in. All it wants is mindless obedience and rote repetition of its propaganda. That’s how totalitarianism works.

And there I go with my story again. If anyone has a different story that makes sense of the last seven years — and arguably the last 30 years — honestly, I would love to hear it. My story fills me with fear and loathing, but the only other coherent story I’m hearing at the moment is the Empire’s story, and I think we all know how that one ends.

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration approved the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s congestion tax scheme to charge drivers entering New York City’s midtown Manhattan. The tax is the first of its kind in the nation, expected to fleece hardworking Americans between $9 and $23 per day to drive through the district, reported Bloomberg. 

“Congestion pricing will reduce traffic in our crowded downtown, improve air quality and provide critical resources to the MTA,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

Hochul said, “I am proud of the thorough environmental assessment process we conducted, including responding to thousands of comments from community members from across the region.”

She added: “With the green light from the federal government, we look forward to moving ahead with the implementation of this program.” 

The MTA operates NYC’s subways, buses, and rail lines. It’ll be responsible for implementing the tax scheme as soon as April 2024. Bloomberg said motorists driving south of 60th Street would be able to use an E-ZPass. 

The new tax aims to fleece motorists and raise $1 billion of new annual revenue for the MTA. NYC officials want to reduce the number of daily vehicles entering the district by up to 20%.

Meanwhile, in a joint statement from Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Sen. Bob Menendez, and Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.—all Democrats, they said, “This is nothing more than a cash grab to fund the MTA.” 

The new tax will put a paywall around the elite financial district and bar lower-income motorists from entering because of the cost of entry. 

Via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Jim Caviezel, a Christian actor of “The Passion of the Christ” fame, said he wants his upcoming thriller “Sound of Freedom” to shed light on the reality of child sex trafficking in the United States and warn parents of what he called a “pedophile agenda” that has been pushed for decades.

The film stars Caviezel as Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security agent who, after rescuing a young boy from traffickers, learns that the boy’s sister is still captive. He quits his job and puts his life at risk as he embarks on a mission deep into the jungle of Colombia to save the girl.

In an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Caviezel and the real Tim Ballard said what the film depicts, as dark and disturbing as it may be, is based on real events and people.

“I will say, it is a true story, absolutely,” Caviezel told host Jan Jekielek. “Every character is real. Every bad guy is real.”

“At the end of the film … it showed all the good guys, the bad guys, the kids, and it said where they are today,” said Ballard. “We know where they are. Those are real kids, every one of them. Some of them work for us. Some of them have actually rescued people from human trafficking as young adults.”

In 2013, Ballard left his government job to found Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a non-profit organization working with law enforcement around the world to rescue children from exploitation and help survivors recover. They have been operating in places where instability and conflict make women and children more vulnerable to trafficking, including countries like Ecuador, Mexico, and Ukraine.

Tragically, according to OUR, the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of children in those countries is being fueled and propelled by a growing U.S. customer base.

“The big numbers: $150 billion a year are made off the backs of men, women, and children as slaves,” Ballard said, noting that some 27 million people around the world live in slavery, with 6 million of those being children.

“It’s estimated that 2 million of those [children] are specifically designated for the commercial sex trade,” the former federal agent continued. “The United States is number three for destination countries for human trafficking, number one the consumption of child rape videos, and we are now approaching number one in production of child exploitation material.”

‘A Huge Weapon Against the Evil’

In 2019, Ballard testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing that an expanded, strengthened U.S.–Mexico border barrier provides an “effective tool” in combating those trying to smuggle children into the country for the purposes of selling them for sex. He now believes that the countries’ poor border enforcement might be part of a broader agenda catering to this lucrative market.

“Why are there over 85,000 unaccompanied minors showing up in the last two years at the southern border and are delivered to sponsors with no background check, no DNA testing?” he said. “Thousands of these kids … showing up alone with a name: ‘Call this number, please, and take me to my sponsor.’ They call the number and they show up.”

“The fake news media outlets are also propelling this agenda that don’t call them pedophiles. They want to call it minor attracted persons, or MAP,” he added. “Sexualizing kids, giving kids right to consent, pushing God out of education—all the platforms the organized pedophile groups have been peddling, the woke left is now implementing them.”

For parents and concerned Americans, Caviezel said his film will help them better understand the reality and what they need to do to protect their loved ones.

“The film is very powerful because it shows you how routinely [child sex trafficking] occurs,” he told Jekielek. “But it also helps you. It weaponizes you to know what the warning signs are. A mother and a father have to guard their children and protect them. And by sticking your head in the sand is not protecting your children.”

“When you walk out of there, you won’t get up just like you did on ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or on ‘Schindler’s List,’” the actor added. “And the difference between ‘Schindler’s List’ and this film, is that ‘Schindler’s List’ was 50 years too late. We’re doing this right now during the time. And this is a huge weapon against the evil.”

Read more here…

While things such as daylight savings time, skipping breakfast, skyrocketing energy bills and making the bed ‘too vigorously’ have been floated as causes for heart attack and strokes (and totally nothing else), you can now add ‘exercising too hard’ to the list.

According to a new study in the Physics of Fluid, researchers concluded that an elevated heart rate can cause strokes in people with blocked carotid arteries, which occurs through a process of stenosis – where the carotid arteries located on both sides of the neck become clogged with fat an cholesterol, forming a plaque that narrows the artery.

The NY Post reports that stenosis can be difficult to catch early, and is dangerous because it limits blood flow to the brain, which can result in a stroke.

And according to the Cleveland Clinic, some 16.5 million (5%) of Americans have carotid artery stenosis.

Contributing factors to stenosis include smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, high blood pressure or cholesterol, or diabetes.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur used a computational model to simulate blood flow in carotid arteries at three stages of stenosis: without blockage, with a mild 30% blockage and with a moderate 50% blockage.

They compared the effect of an exercise-induced heart rate at 140 beats per minute, which can be achieved by a brisk walk for some obese people, and resting heart rates of 67 and 100 bpm.

Healthy patients and those with only slightly blocked arteries appeared to have exercise be beneficial for maintaining healthy blood flow.

However, the results for those with moderate to severe blockage were concerning. –NY Post

According to author Somnathj Roy, “Intense exercise shows adverse effects on patients with moderate or higher stenosis levels,” adding “It substantially increases the shear stress at the stenosis zone, which may cause the stenosis to rupture. This ruptured plaque may then flow to the brain and its blood supply, causing ischemic stroke.”

Stroke, which is 80% preventable, is the #5 cause of death in the United States, according to the American Stroke Association.

“While stressful exercises may be beneficial for improving the cardiac performance of healthy individuals, the same may bring in extremely adverse consequences at elevated heart rates on account of extensive physical activities for patients having extensive arterial blockages, if not performed in supervision of specialized experts,” according to the report.

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Public Substack,

Congress must defund and dismantle the corrupt Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and fire its director, Jen Easterly

One of the big questions that those of us involved in exposing the secret U.S. government censorship effort have been asking ourselves over the last few months is: did the people involved know that they were breaking the law?

That question appears to have been answered with a resounding yes by the House Judiciary Committee. Yesterday it released its report, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded with Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,” on government censorship.

“It’s only a matter of time,” wrote a former assistant general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in an email to a colleague, “before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”

The “we” in that sentence refers to the network of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations that we and others have dubbed the Censorship Industrial Complex.

That Complex includes the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

Its leader, Kate Starbird, responded to the former CIA official, Susan Spaulding, by saying, “Yes. I agree. We have a couple of pretty obvious vulnerabilities.”

But one day later, Starbird dismissed the notion that she and her colleagues were doing anything wrong.

The real problem was, she explained, that “current public discourse (in part a result of information operations) seems to accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms” and that CISA may face “bad faith criticism” for its censorship.

What is “malinformation”?

It’s accurate information that might lead people to come to the wrong conclusions — or do things that Starbird, Spaulding, and their allies didn’t want them to do, like not getting vaccinated against Covid-19.

In truth, America’s taxpayer-funded censors view themselves not only as the good guys but as superheroes.

One of the leaders of the Censorship Industrial Complex, Jen Easterly, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the U.S. government’s Department of Homeland Security, has as her Twitter photo a cartoon image of herself as a superhero complete with a cape.

The harsh reality is that Easterly, Starbird, and Spaulding have more in common with China’s censors than they do with America’s founders.

…

Those tactics appear to have been lifted whole cloth from George Orwell’s censors in “1984.” Totalitarianism begins, after all, with the corruption of language.

…

[Congress] should demand that Easterly be fired and CISA defunded and dismantled. If CISA is engaged in any worthwhile non-censorship activities, they should be moved to an agency staffed by people who don’t think it’s their business to regulate our “cognitive infrastructure” and imagine themselves to be superheroes.

Subscribers can read Michael’s full note here…

A record number of Americans are expected to hit the roadways this July 4th weekend. Despite elevated inflation straining households, there’s still a lot of pent-up travel demand after the pandemic years. Even with surging travel demand, fuel consumption is unlikely to exceed pre-Covid levels due to more efficient vehicles and the proliferation of EVs. 

“We’ve never projected travel numbers this high for Independence Day weekend,” Paula Twidale, Senior Vice President of AAA Travel, wrote in a new report released Monday. 

Twidale said, “What this tells us is that despite inventory being limited and some prices 50% higher, consumers are not cutting back on travel this summer. Many of them heeded our advice and booked early, another sign of strong travel demand.”

AAA projects more than 43 million motorists will drive at least 50 miles from their homes between June 30 and Tuesday, July 4. That’s a 2.4% increase versus 2022 and 4% compared to 2019. If travel by buses, trains, cruise ships, and planes is added, then a record 50.7 million Americans are expected to travel. 

Bloomberg pointed out that while record travel is expected for the holiday weekend, “widespread adoption of more efficient vehicles means fuel demand nonetheless remains muted — and might never get back to pre-pandemic rates.” Data from the Environmental Protection Agency shows the average car is more fuel efficient, getting about 33.3 miles per gallon. Also, the increasing number of EVs decreases fuel product demand at retail pumps. 

Americans are still traveling and spending money despite negative real wage growth for the past two years, along with soaring credit card balances and the highest interest rates in a generation. 

The next test for the consumer will be if they still can splurge on travel on late summer Labor Day weekend. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism…

That refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is fascism.

But the “F” word has become totally incomprehensible and useless through misuse so there is clarity to be gained by discussing the older term.

Consider, as an obvious example, Big Pharma. It funds the regulators. It maintains a revolving door between corporate management and regulatory control. Government often funds drug development and rubber-stamps the results. Government further grants and enforces the patents.

Vaccines are indemnified from liability for harms. When consumers balk at shots, government imposes mandates, as we have seen. Further, pharma pays up to 75% of the advertising on evening television, which obviously buys both favorable coverage and silence on the downsides.

This is the very essence of corporatism. But it is not only this industry. It ever more affects tech, media, defense, labor, food, environment, public health and everything else. The big players have merged into a monolith, squeezing out the life of market dynamism.

The topic of corporatism is rarely discussed in any detail. People would rather keep the discussion on abstract ideals that are not really operational in reality. It’s these ideal types that split right and left; meanwhile the really existing threats sail under the radar.

And that is strange because corporatism is much more of a living reality. It variously swept through most societies in the world in the 20th century, and vexes us today as never before.

But corporatism has a long ideological history that actually stretches back two centuries. It began as a fundamental attack on what was then known as liberalism.

Liberalism began centuries earlier with the end of the religious wars in Europe and the realization that permitting religious freedom was overall good for everyone.

It lessens violence in society and still retains the opportunity for the vigorous practice of faith. This insight gradually unfolded in ways that pertained to speech, travel and commerce generally.

By the early 19th century, following the American Revolution, the idea of liberalism swept Europe. The idea was that the state could do no better for society than to let it develop organically and without a purpose-driven end state, a centralized authority that seeks to achieve a specific goal or purpose, often seen as a greater good or common end that justifies the restriction of individual liberties.

In the liberal view, in contrast, liberty for all became the sole end state.

Standing against traditional liberalism was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), the German philosopher who explained the loss of territory at the end of the Napoleonic Wars as merely a temporary setback in the German nation’s historical destiny.

In his vision of politics, the nation as a whole needs a destiny that is consistent with his postulated laws of history. This holistic view was inclusive of church, industry, family and individuals: Everyone must march in the same direction.

The whole reaches its pinnacle in the institution of the state, he wrote in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which “is the actuality of the ethical idea, “the rationality of the ethical whole,” the “divine idea as it exists on Earth” and a “work of art in which the freedom of the individual is actualized and reconciled with the freedom of the whole.”

If all of that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, welcome to the mind of Hegel, who was trained in theology foremost and somehow came to dominate German political philosophy for a very long time.

His followers split into left- and right-wing versions of his statism, culminating in Marx and arguably Hitler, who agree that the state is the center of life while only arguing about what it should do.

Corporatism was a manifestation of the “right-wing” version of Hegelianism, which is to say that it did not go so far as to say that religion, property and family should be abolished, as Marxism later suggested. Rather each of these institutions should serve the state, which represents the whole.

The economic element of corporatism gained steam with the work of Friedrich List (1789–1846) who worked as an administrative professor at the University of Tübingen but was expelled and went to America where he became involved in the establishment of railroads and championed an economic “National System” or industrial mercantilism.

Believing that he was following up with the work of Alexander Hamilton, List advocated national self-sufficiency or autarky as the proper managerial trade for trade. In this, he stood against the entire liberal tradition that had long rallied around the work of Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.

Such is a brief look at the intellectual roots and development of corporatist thinking, complete with its most noxious ideological elements. The focus on a purpose-driven nationalism in each case comes through dividing and conquering the nation, usually by a “great man,” and allowing the “experts” to run roughshod over the desires of the common people for peace and prosperity.

The corporatist model was deployed in most countries during the Great War, which was the largest experiment in central planning in cooperation with munitions manufacturers and other large corporations.

It was deployed in combination with conscription, censorship, monetary inflation and a large-scale killing machine. It inspired an entire generation of intellectuals and public managers.

The U.S. New Deal, with its price controls and industrial cartels, was largely managed by people such as Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979) who was inspired to rally around corporatism by his experience in this war. The same pattern repeated in the Second World War.

This brief history only takes us only to the middle of the 20th century. Today corporatism takes a different form. Rather than national, it is global in scope.

In addition to government and large corporations, today’s corporatism includes powerful nongovernment organizations, nonprofits and huge foundations built by huge fortunes. It is as much private as it is public. But it is no less divisive, ruthless and hegemonic than it was in the past.

It has also shaved off most of its egregious (and embarrassing) teachings, leaving in place only the ideals of world governments working directly with the largest corporations in media and tech to forge a single vision for humanity on the march, such as spelled out daily by the World Economic Forum. With that come censorship and restrictions on commercial and individual liberty.

That is only the beginning of the problems.

Corporatism abolishes the competitive dynamic of competitive capitalism and replaces it with cartels run by oligarchs.

It reduces growth and prosperity. It is invariably corrupt. It promises efficiency but yields only graft.

It expands the gaps between rich and poor and creates and entrenches deep fissures between the rulers and ruled. It dispenses with localism, religious particularism, rights of families and aesthetic traditionalism. It also ends in violence.

Corporatism is anything but radical. The word is a perfect descriptive of the most successful form of statism of the 20th century.

In the 21st century, it has been given new life and an ambition that is global in scope.

But as regards the highest American ideals and enlightenment values of freedom for all, it really does represent the opposite.

It is also the single most vexing problem we face today, far more of a going concern than old archetypes of socialism and capitalism. Also in the American context, corporatism can come in forms that masquerade as both left and right.

But make no mistake: The real target is always liberty traditionally understood.