Authored by Jake Johnson via Common Dreams,

The largest nuclear energy plant in Europe, located in southern Ukraine, lost all off-site power for the sixth time in a year as Russian forces carried out a massive missile attack on Thursday, once again raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe with continent-wide implications.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed dismay over the repeated near-misses at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and said he is “astonished by the complacency” in the face of such a threat.

“What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on,” Grossi said in a statement to the IAEA Board of Governors. “Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out. I call on everyone in this room today and elsewhere—we must commit to protect the safety and security of the plant. And we need to commit now.”

Grossi noted that Thursday marked the first time since November that the nuclear plant has lost all off-site power, sparking the activation of emergency diesel generators. The IAEA chief said there is enough diesel at the facility to power it for just over two weeks.

A constant supply of power to the plant is necessary to prevent a nuclear meltdown. “This is the sixth time—let me say it again, this is the sixth time—that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode,” Grossi said. “Let me remind you—this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe.”

Russian forces currently control the nuclear facility, which IAEA inspectors visited in September following months of grave safety concerns. In the wake of the trip, the United Nations agency issued a report warning that “any further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere.”

Last March, Greenpeace released an analysis similarly cautioning that a Zaporizhzhia disaster could “render vast areas of the European continent, including Russia, uninhabitable for decades.”

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear energy operator, told the Associated Press on Thursday that the power supply to Zaporizhzhia can be restored “within a day or two” and that emergency fixes to a disconnected power line are underway.

Energoatom has accused the Russian forces occupying the plant of compromising its physical integrity. Citing the nuclear energy firm, The New York Times reported earlier this week that “Russian soldiers have recently set up machine guns on the grounds of the plant, placed military equipment in engine rooms, covered windows with sandbags, and even carried out indoor welding work that has set off fire alarms.”

NOW – Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has lost all of its site power for the 6th time — IAEApic.twitter.com/nwH3bjP5dt

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 9, 2023

“Those actions come on top of damage from shelling last summer, including to an area where spent nuclear fuel is stored; disruptions to the plant’s management in power struggles with Russian occupiers; and the shutdown of the complex’s six reactors,” the Times noted.

During Thursday’s barrage, Russia reportedly launched more than 80 missiles in the direction of Ukrainian cities—dozens of which were intercepted, according to Ukrainian officials. AP reported that “the Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes were in retaliation for a recent incursion into the Bryansk region of western Russia by what Moscow claimed were Ukrainian saboteurs. Ukraine denied the claim and warned that Moscow could use the allegations to justify stepping up its own assaults.”

The bombardment came as the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to the war in the near future appeared virtually nonexistent after more than a year of deadly fighting, with Russia continuing its assault on Ukraine while western governments—principally the United States—continue to pump weapons into the war zone.

Read the rest here…

Last month, Tropical Cyclone Freddy formed off the North Australian coast in the Indian Ocean. It has now broken the record for the longest-lasting recorded storm as it churns off the coast of Madagascar. There are forecasts that it will make landfall again in the southern African country of Mozambique. 

Freddy developed off the North Australian coast on Feb. 6. The storm strengthened and crossed the entire South Indian Ocean before making landfall on Madagascar on Feb. 21 and then on Mozambique three days later.

“Meteorologically, Freddy has been a remarkable storm,” World Meteorological Organization (WMO) wrote in a press release, adding that its journey across the entire Indian Ocean and onto Madagascar “is very rare.”

On Tuesday, Freedy reached the 31-day milestone, forecasted to hit Mozambique at the end of the week (for the second time). It has now exceeded the longest-lasting tropical storm, which Hurricane John set in 1994, also lasting 31 days. 

“At this time, it does appear to be a new record holder for ‘longest-lasting’ recorded tropical cyclone… but we are continuing to monitor the situation,” Randall Cerveny, WMO rapporteur for weather and climate extremes, said in a statement. 

Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

The former Soviet Republic of Georgia experienced a serious Color Revolution attempt Tuesday night after radical pro-Western rioters tried to storm parliament in response to its passing of a bill requiring all organizations with at least 20% foreign funding to register with the authorities. The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) artificially manufactured the false narrative in the run-up to events alleging that the law is based on Russia’s related system even though it’s explicitly inspired by the US’.

This well-intended attempt to protect Georgia’s fledgling and admittedly imperfect democracy from foreign meddling per its sovereign right was subsequently exploited as the pretext for organizing a violent regime change against Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

The West wants to punish him for his pragmatic refusal to open up a “second front” in the US’ proxy war on Russia after he publicly exposed this plot in early December while also pledging never to arm Kiev either.

President Salome Zurabishvili, who was visiting the UN in New York during the unsuccessful regime change against Garibashvili on Tuesday night, threw her full support behind the riots in a video that peddled the West’s false information warfare narrative alleging that the bill is backed by Russia. Readers should be aware that she served most of her career as a French diplomat after having been born there and was previously that country’s Ambassador to Georgia up until 2004.

She only received Georgian citizenship at that time due to a deal between those two governments proposed by Mikhail Saakashvili following his successful Color Revolution the year prior in order for her to become his Foreign Minister. For all intents and purposes, Zurabishvili has since functioned as one the Golden Billion’s top “agents of influence” in Georgia. Despite the Prime Minister nowadays holding more power due to prior reforms, the Presidency still provides her with some sway over society.

It was within this context that Tuesday night’s violent seizure of power against Garibashvili was attempted, though Russia was already prepared for this scenario after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned in early February that something foul was indeed afoot in that former Soviet Republic. He told a popular TV anchor at the time that “The fact that they would like to turn Georgia into another irritant, to roll the situation back into the aggressive condition of the Saakashvili era is beyond doubt.”

It also deserves mentioning that the West’s latest Color Revolution attempt in the region took place amidst continued Russian gains around Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut”, which prompted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to warn that Russia could roll through the rest of Donbass if it captures that city. Earlier that same day and just hours before the attempted storming of parliament in Tbilisi, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu confirmed that a victory there would smash Kiev’s regional defenses.

To summarize the strategic dynamics on the eve of Tuesday night’s unsuccessful regime change in Georgia, the MSM had already manufactured the false narrative ahead of parliament voting on that country’s US-inspired foreign agents bill alleging that it symbolizes the country’s tilt towards Russia. This information warfare campaign is waged against its premier for his refusal in early December to open up a “second front” against that Eurasian Great Power to relieve pressure upon the US’ Ukrainian proxies.

The Georgian President, who’s arguably always functioned as one of the Golden Billion’s top “agents of influence”, happened to be in New York when everything unfolded and threw her full support behind those regime change riots. Earlier that same day, both Defense Minister Shoigu and Zelensky informed everyone that Russia could roll through the rest of Donbass if it captures Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut”. The stage was therefore set for attempting to violently overthrow Zurabishvili on Tuesday night.

It would be premature to declare that he’s secure in his position despite the security services successfully defending parliament from the rioters since a lot could still happen to advance the US’ regime change agenda. Georgia is a deeply divided country that’s been under immense Western influence for the past two decades, during which time the Golden Billion managed to manipulate a sizeable proportion of the population into doing its geopolitical bidding.

There’s no dearth of “useful idiots” who can easily be misled into destabilizing their country to the detriment of its objective national interests due to their liberal–globalist ideology. This means that Georgia is therefore expected to become the latest front in the New Cold War seeing as how it’s unlikely that its latest crisis will be resolved anytime soon. The situation is extremely serious and the outcome of the US’ undeclared Hybrid War on Georgia could directly affect developments in Donbass.

*  *  *

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In the end, despite some expectations for fireworkers, Kuroda ended his central banking career with a whimper.

On March 9-10, the BOJ held its Monetary Policy Meeting (MPM), and in a unanimous vote decided to maintain the status quo across all monetary policy parameters, including yield curve control (YCC) and asset purchase programs, in line with most expectations. The tolerable band for the 10-year JGB yield was also kept at plus/minus 50bp. The BOJ also maintained forward guidance, which is tied to the pandemic situation and states that it “expects short- and long-term policy interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels,” as expected.

Ahead of the meeting, Goldman notes that “some market participants were of the view that the BOJ would eliminate YCC entirely or adjust it further at today’s MPM, as it was the last for Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, to alleviate the burden on the next governor, Kazuo Ueda.”

The BOJ maintained its overall assessment of the economy at “has picked up as the resumption of economic activity has progressed while public health has been protected from COVID-19.” By category, the BOJ downgraded its assessment on exports and production, to “they have been more or less flat,” from “have increased as a trend.” On consumption, the assessment was unchanged as “increased moderately,” while the BOJ added “despite being affected by price rises” to its statement.

Regarding the inflation outlook, the BOJ maintained the view that the CPI “is likely to decelerate toward the middle of fiscal 2023 due to the effects of pushing down energy prices from the government’s economic measures and to a waning of the effects of a pass-through to consumer prices of cost increases led by a rise in import prices.”

Meanwhile, the government’s proposal to appoint Kazuo Ueda as the next BOJ governor and Shinichi Uchida and Ryozo Himino as deputy governors (each to five-year terms) has been formally approved following majority endorsements by the Lower House on March 9 and the Upper House on March 10. The new leadership will take up their roles after Governor Kuroda’s term expires on April 8, and the current deputy governors’ terms end on March 19.

Japanese stocks maintained losses after the Bank of Japan reiterated an easing stance at its policy meeting. Market sentiment was hurt by the plunge in US bank shares on concern over the financial health of Silicon Valley Bank. The Topix Index fell 1.2% to 2,046.17 as of 12:35 p.m. Tokyo time, while the Nikkei declined 0.9% to 28,361.62. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. contributed the most to the Topix Index decline, decreasing 3.5%.

According to Credit Agricole the yen will track US Treasuries as investors await the next monetary policy moves by the Bank of Japan under the leadership of incoming Governor, Kazuo Ueda.

“JPY will continue to move inversely with UST yields. We would caution investors that further inversion of the UST yield curve could act as a cap on USD/JPY upside,” says David Forrester, strategist in Singapore adding that “Ueda will likely want to settle into the Governorship for a meeting or two before considering making any changes.”

“The relatively short deliberation and unanimous vote really shows the BOJ didn’t want to change policy today” which is good: the last thing the market needs now is even more shocks.

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) will end human freedom. Don’t fall for the assurances of safeguards, the promises of anonymity and of data protection. They are all deceptions and diversions to obscure the malevolent intent behind the global rollout of CBDC.

Central Bank Digital Currency is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, authoritarian social control mechanism ever devised. Its “interoperability” will enable the CBDCs issued by various national central banks to be networked to form one, centralised global CBDC surveillance and control system.

Should we allow it to prevail, CBDC will deliver the global governance of humanity into the hands of the bankers.

CBDC is unlike any kind of “money” with which we are familiar. It is programmable and “smart contracts” can be written into its code to control the terms and conditions of the transaction.

Policy decisions and broader policy agendas, restricting our lives as desired, can be enforced using CBDC without any need of legislation. Democratic accountability, already a farcical concept, will become literally meaningless.

CBDC will enable genuinely unprecedented levels of surveillance, as every transaction we make will be monitored and controlled. Not just the products, goods and services we buy, even the transactions we make with each other will be overseen by the central bankers of the global governance state. Data gathering will expand to encompass every aspect of our lives.

This will allow central planners to engineer society precisely as the bankers wish. CBDC can and will be linked to our Digital IDs and, through our CBDC “wallets,” tied to our individual carbon credit accounts and jab certificates. CBDC will limit our freedom to roam and enable our programmers to adjust our behaviour if we stray from our designated Technate function.

The purpose of CBDC is to establish the tyranny of a dictatorship. If we allow CBDC to become our only means of monetary exchange, it will be used enslave us.

Be under no illusions: CBDC is the endgame.

WHAT IS MONEY?

Defining “money” isn’t difficult, although economists and bankers like to give the impression that it is. Money can simply be defined as:

A commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. It is the medium in which prices and values are expressed. It circulates from person to person and country to country, facilitating trade, and it is the principal measure of wealth.

Money is a “medium”—a paper note, a coin, a casino chip, a gold nugget or a digital token, etc.—that we agree to use in exchange transactions. It is worth whatever value we ascribe to it and it is the agreed value which makes it possible for us to use it to trade with one-another. If its value is socially accepted “by general consent” we can use it to buy goods and services in the wider economy.

We could use anything we like as money and we are perfectly capable of managing a monetary system voluntarily. The famous example of US prisoners using tins of mackerel as money illustrates both how money functions and how it can be manipulated by the “authorities” if they control the issuance of it.

Tins of mackerel are small and robust and can serve as perfect exchange tokens (currency) that are easy to carry and store. When smoking was banned within the US penal system, the prisoners preferred currency, the cigarette, was instantly taken out of circulation. As there was a steady, controlled supply of mackerel cans, with each prisoners allotted a maximum of 14 per week, the prisoners agreed to use the tinned fish as a “medium of economic exchange” instead.

The prisoners called in-date tins the EMAK (edible mackerel) as this had “intrinsic” utility value as food. Out-of-date fish didn’t, but was still valued solely as a medium of exchange. The inmates created an exchange rate of 4 inedible MMAKs (money mackerel) to three EMAKs.

You could buy goods and services in the Inmate Run Market (IRM) that were not available on the Administration Run Market (ARM). Other prison populations adopted the same monetary system, thus enabling inmates to store value in the form of MAKs. They could use their saved MAKs in other prisons if they were transferred.

Prisoners would accept payment in MAKs for cooking pizza, mending clothes, cleaning cells, etc. These inmate service providers were effectively operating IRM businesses. The prisoners had voluntarily constructed a functioning economy and monetary system.

Their main problem was that they were reliant upon a monetary policy authority—the US prison administration—who issued their currency (MAKs). This was done at a constant inflationary rate (14 tins per prisoner per week) meaning that the inflationary devaluation of the MAKs was initially constant and therefore stable.

It isn’t clear if it was deliberate, but the prison authorities eventually left large quantities of EMAKs and MMAKs in communal areas, thereby vastly increasing the money supply. This destabilised the MAK, causing hyperinflation that destroyed its value.

With a glut of MAKs available, its purchasing power collapsed. Massive quantities were needed to buy a haircut, for example, thus rendering the IRM economy physically and economically impractical. If only temporarily.

Perfectly usable “money”

THE BANKERS’ NIGHTMARE

In June 2022, as part of its annual report, the BIS published The future monetary system. The central banks (BIS members) effectively highlighted their concerns about the potential for the decentralised finance (DeFi), common to the “crypto universe,” to undermine their authority as the issuers of “money”:

[DeFi] seeks to replicate conventional financial services within the crypto universe. These services are enabled by innovations such as programmability and composability on permissionless blockchains.

The BIS defined DeFi as:

[. . .] a set of activities across financial services built on permissionless DLT [Distributed Ledger Technology] such as blockchains.

The key issue for the central bankers was “permissionless.”

A blockchain is one type of DLT that can either be permissionless or permissioned. Many of the most well known cryptocurrencies are based upon “permissionless” blockchains. The permissionless blockchain has no access control.

Both the users and the “nodes” that validate the transactions on the permissionless blockchain network are anonymous. The network distributed nodes perform cryptographic check-sums to validate transactions, each seeking to enter the next block in the chain in return for an issuance of cryptocurrency (mining). This means that the anonymous—if they wish–users of the cryptocurrency can be confident that transactions have been recorded and validated without any need of a bank.

Regardless of what you think about cryptocurrency, it is not the innumerable coins and models of “money” in the “crypto universe” that concerns the BIS or its central bank member. It is the underpinning “permissionless” DLT, threatening their ability to maintain financial and economic control, that preoccupies them.

The BIS more-or-less admits this:

Crypto has its origin in Bitcoin, which introduced a radical idea: a decentralised means of transferring value on a permissionless blockchain. Any participant can act as a validating node and take part in the validation of transactions on a public ledger (ie the permissionless blockchain). Rather than relying on trusted intermediaries (such as banks), record-keeping on the blockchain is performed by a multitude of anonymous, self-interested validators.

Many will argue that Bitcoin was a creation of the deep state. Perhaps to lay the foundation for CBDC, or at least provide the claimed justification for it. Although the fact that this is one “conspiracy theory” that the mainstream media is willing to entertain might give us pause for thought.

Interesting though this debate may be, it is an aside because it is not Bitcoin, nor any other cryptoasset constructed upon any permissionless DLT, that threatens human freedom. The proposed models of CBDC most certainly do.

CBDC & THE END OF THE SPLIT CIRCUIT IMFS

Central banks are private corporations just as commercial banks are. As we bank with commercial banks so commercial banks bank with central banks. We are told that central banks have something to do with government, but that is a myth.

Today, we use “fiat currency” as money. Commercial banks create this “money” out of thin air when they make a loan (exposed here). In exchange for a loan agreement the commercial bank creates a corresponding “bank deposit”—from nothing—that the customer can then access as new money. This money (fiat currency) exists as commercial bank deposit and can be called “broad money.”

Commercial banks hold reserve accounts with the central banks. These operate using a different type of fiat currency called “central bank reserves” or “base money.”

We cannot exchange “base money,” nor can “nonbank” businesses. Only commercial and central banks have access to base money. This creates, what John Titus describes—on his excellent Best Evidence Channel—as the split-monetary circuit.

Prior to the pseudopandemic, in theory, base money did not “leak” into the broad money circuit. Instead, increasing commercial banks’ “reserves” supposedly encouraged them to lend more and thereby allegedly increase economic activity through some vague mechanism called “stimulus” .

Following the global financial crash in 2008, which was caused by the commercial banks profligate speculation on worthless financial derivatives, the central banks “bailed-out” the bankrupt commercial banks by buying their worthless assets (securities) with base money. The new base money, also created from nothing, remained accessible only to the commercial banks. The new base money didn’t directly create new broad money.

This all changed, thanks to a plan presented to central banks by the global investment firm BlackRock. In late 2019, the G7 central bankers endorsed BlackRock’s suggested “going-direct” monetary strategy.

BlackRock said that the monetary conditions that prevailed as a result of the bank bail-outs had left the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) “tapped out.” Therefore, BlackRock suggested that a new approach would be needed in the next downturn if “unusual circumstances” arose.

These circumstances would warrant “unconventional monetary policy and unprecedented policy coordination.” BlackRock opined:

Going direct means the central bank finding ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders.

Coincidentally, just a couple of months later, the precise “unusual circumstances,” specified by BlackRock, came about as an alleged consequence of the pseudopandemic. The “going direct” plan was implemented.

Instead of using “base money” to buy worthless assets solely from commercial banks, the central banks used the base money to create “broad money” deposits in commercial banks. The commercial banks acted as passive intermediaries, effectively enabling the central banks to buy assets from nonbanks. These nonbank private corporations and financial institutions would have otherwise been unable sell their bonds and other securities directly to the central banks because they can’t trade using central bank base money.

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) explain how they deployed BlackRock’s ‘going direct’ plan:

A notable development in the U.S. banking system following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid and sustained growth in aggregate bank deposits [broad money]. [. . .] When the Federal Reserve purchases securities from a nonbank seller, it creates new bank deposits by crediting the reserve account of the depository institution [base money] at which the nonbank seller has an account, and then the depository institution credits the deposit [broad money] account of the nonbank seller.

This process of central banks issuing “currency” that then finds its way directly into private hands will find its ultimate expression through CBDC. The transformation of the IMFS, suggested by BlackRock’s “going direct” plan, effectively served as a forerunner for the proposed CBDC based IMFS.

THE “ESSENTIAL” CBDC PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

CBDC will only be “issued” by the central banks. All CBDC is “base money.” It will end the traditional split circuit monetary system, although proponents of CBDC like to pretend that it won’t, claiming the “two-tier banking system” will continue.

This is nonsense. The new “two-tier” CBDC system is nothing like its more distant predecessor and much more like “going direct.”.

CBDC potentially cuts commercial banks out of the “creating money from nothing” scam. The need for some quid pro quo between the central and the commercial banks was highlighted in a recent report by McKinsey & Company:

The successful launch of a CBDC involving direct consumer and business accounts could displace a material share of deposits currently held in commercial bank accounts and could create a new competitive front for payment solution providers.

McKinsey also noted, for CBDC to be successful, it would need to be widely adopted:

Ultimately, the success of CBDC launches will be measured by user adoption, which in turn will be tied to the digital coins’ acceptance as a payment method with a value proposition that improves on existing alternatives. [. . .] To be successful, CBDCs will need to gain substantial usage, partially displacing other instruments of payment and value storage.

According to McKinsey, a thriving CBDC would need to replace existing “instruments of payment.” To achieve this, the private “payment solution providers” will have to be on-board. So, if they are going to countenance displacement of their “material share of deposits,” commercial banks need an incentive.

Whatever model CBDC ultimately takes, if the central bankers want to minimise commercial resistance from “existing alternatives,” so-called public-private partnership with the commercial banks is essential. Though, seeing as central banks are also private corporations, perhaps “corporate-private partnership” would be more appropriate.

McKinsey state:

Commercial banks will likely play a key role in large-scale CBDC rollouts, given their capabilities and knowledge of customer needs and habits. Commercial banks have the deepest capabilities in client onboarding [adoption of CBDC payment systems] [. . .] so it seems likely that the success of a CBDC model will depend on a public–private partnership (PPP) between commercial and central banks.

Accenture, the global IT consultancy that is a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance global digital identity partnership, agrees with McKinsey.

Accenture declares:

Make no mistake: Commercial banks have a pivotal role to play and a unique opportunity to shape the course of CBDC at its foundation. [. . .] CBDC is developing at a much faster pace than that of other payment systems. [. . .] In the U.S. at least, the design of a CBDC will likely involve the private sector, and with the two-tier banking system set to remain in place, commercial banks must now step up and forge a path forward.

[click to enlarge]

WHAT MODEL OF CBDC?

By creating the new concept of “wholesale CBDC,” the two-tier fallacy can be maintained by those who think this matters. Nonetheless, it is true that a wholesale CBDC wouldn’t necessarily supplant broad money.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS)—the central bank for central banks—offers a definition of the wholesale CBDC variant:

Wholesale CBDCs are for use by regulated financial institutions. They build on the current two-tier structure, which places the central bank at the foundation of the payment system while assigning customer-facing activities to PSPs [non-bank payment service providers]. The central bank grants accounts to commercial banks and other PSPs, and domestic payments are settled on the central bank’s balance sheet. [. . .] Wholesale CBDCs and central bank reserves operate in a very similar way.

Wholesale CBDC has some tenuous similarities to the current central bank reserve system but, depending upon the added functionality of the CBDC design, increases central bank ability to control all investment and subsequent business activity. This alone could have an immense social impact.

The BIS continues:

[. . .] a more far-reaching innovation is the introduction of retail CBDCs. Retail CBDCs modify the conventional two-tier monetary system in that they make central bank digital money available to the general public, just as cash is available to the general public as a direct claim on the central bank. [. . .] A retail CBDC is akin to a digital form of cash[.] [. . .] Retail CBDCs come in two variants. One option makes for a cash-like design, allowing for so-called token-based access and anonymity in payments. This option would give individual users access to the CBDC based on a password-like digital signature using private-public key cryptography, without requiring personal identification. The other approach is built on verifying users’ identity (“account-based access”) and would be rooted in a digital identity scheme.

It is “retail CBDC” that extends central bank oversight and enables it to govern every aspect of our lives. Retail CBDC is the ultimate nightmare scenario for us as individual “citizens.”

While the BIS outlines the basic concept of retail CBDC, it has thoroughly misled the public. Suggesting that retail CBDC is the users “claim on the central bank” sounds much better than acknowledging that CBDC is a liability of the central bank. That is, the central bank always “owns” the CBDC.

It is a liability which, as we shall see, the central bank agrees to pay if its stipulated “smart contract” conditions are met. A retail CBDC is actually the central bank’s “claim” on whatever is in your CBDC “wallet.”

The BIS assertion, that CBDC is “akin to a digital form of cash,” is a lie. CBDC is nothing like “cash,” save in the remotest possible sense.

Both cash, as we understand it, and CBDC are liabilities of the central bank but the comparison ends there. The central bank, or its commercial bank “partners,” cannot monitor where we exchange cash nor control what we buy with it. CBDC will empower them to do both.

At the moment, spending cash in a retail setting—-without biometric surveillance such as facial recognition cameras—is automatically anonymous. While “token-based access” retail CBDC could theoretically maintain our anonymity, this is irrelevant because we are all being herded into a retail CBDC design that is “rooted in a digital identity scheme.”

The UK central bank—the Bank of England (BoE)—has recently published its envisaged technical specification for its CBDC which it deceptively calls the Digital Pound. The BoE categorically states:

CBDC would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is needed to prevent financial crime and to meet applicable legal and regulatory obligations. [. . .] Varying levels of identification would be accepted to ensure that CBDC is available for all. [. . . ] Users should be able to vary their privacy preferences to suit their privacy needs within the parameters set by law, the Bank and the Government. Enhanced privacy functionality could result in users securing greater benefits from sharing their personal data.

Again, it is imperative to appreciate that CBDC is nothing like cash. Cash may be preferred by “criminals” but it is more widely preferred by people who do not want to share all their personal data simply to conduct business or buy goods and services.

The Digital Pound will end that possibility for British people. Just as CBDCs in every other country will end it for their populations.

The BoE model assumes no possible escape route. Even for those unable to present state approved “papers” on demand, “varying levels of identification” will be enforced to ensure that the CBDC control grid is “for all.” The BoE, the executive branch of government and the judiciary form a partnership that will determine the acceptable “parameters” of the BoE’s, not the users, “privacy preferences.”

The more personal identification data you share with the BoE and its state partners, the sweeter your permitted use of CBDC will be. It all depends upon your willingness to comply. Failure to comply will result in you being unable to function as a citizen and ensure that you are effectively barred from mainstream society.

If we simply concede to the rollout of the CBDC, the concept of the free human being will be distant memory. Only the first couple of post CBDC generations will have any appreciation of what happened. If they don’t deal with it, the future CBDC slavery of humanity will be inescapable.

This may sound like hyperbole but, regrettably, it isn’t. It is the dictatorial nightmare of retail CBDC that we will explore in part 2, alongside the simple steps we can all take to ensure the CBDC nightmare never becomes a reality.

Part Two of this series is available on Iain’s SubStack.

Authored by Chris Bray via American Greatness,

This is such a great moment. I just realized what Tucker Carlson versus “the swamp” teaches us. I’m going to suggest that you ask yourself a single question and see if you can answer it, but give me a minute to get there.

So, if a girlfriend says to her boyfriend, “I know you went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and you had sex with her in her living room three times,” and then the boyfriend starts screaming and waving his arms around and shouting, “Oh right! You think I just go around having sex with everyone all the time! You’re so crazy!” Then, in fact, that boyfriend went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and he had sex with her in her living room three times. Compare this possible response: “I was with Brian on Thursday night, hanging out at the gas station and listening to Yo La Tengo on our headphones, and I haven’t seen Tiffany since that thing at the dog park.” Right?

Now, without revisiting details, Tucker Carlson made three claims when he aired January 6 footage on his Fox News program Monday night:

1) The Viking-horned Jacob Chansley, who was charged with “violent entry” to the Capitol, and who was later depicted as having fought his way through the building to storm the Senate chambers, in fact walked the hall calmly in the company of police officers who didn’t try to stop him, and who in fact tried to open doors for him.

2) Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was depicted by the January 6 committee as a coward who ran, alone, from the mob, in fact, followed police directions and left an area with many other legislators.

3) Officer Brian Sicknick, who has repeatedly been depicted as an officer who was murdered by violent insurrectionists in the Capitol on January 6, can be seen walking around unharmed in the Capitol after he is supposed to have been killed.

Also, Carlson explicitly said that some people were violent at the Capitol on January 6.

So watch what the political class is saying about Carlson’s broadcast:

Republican Senator Thom Tillis reacts to Tucker Carlson releasing never before seen J6 footage:

“I think it’s bullsh*t.”

Welcome to the DC Uniparty. pic.twitter.com/jenVBLeYxH

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 7, 2023

Thom Tillis isn’t responding to Carlson’s narrow, specific fact claims; he’s responding to his cartoon version, steamrolling details and flattening the thing he’s supposedly talking about. George W. Bush was especially fond of this maneuver, but most politicians use it all the time: “Some say,” they say, and then say something that no one is saying, and then pretend to respond to it. “Some say we should let the terrorists win, but Americans know that’s an irresponsible view.” If you respond to your critics by not responding to your critics but instead respond by inventing their position so you can attack your own rhetorical creation, you can’t respond to your critics.

So ask yourself one thing: In all the post-broadcast ranting about the Tucker Carlson Menace—and let’s not kid ourselves, he may invade Poland at any moment—how many politicians and media figures have you heard specifically addressing Carlson’s three narrow fact claims about Chansley, Hawley, and Sicknick?

When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air.

How many times have we seen this maneuver? Q: You said the vaccines were 100 percent effective, and that everyone who gets them immediately becomes a dead end for the virus. Was that true? A: Ohh, I know that some people are anti-vaxxers who don’t believe in science, but I don’t have any patience for these conspiracy theories.

It’s topic-shifting, quite thinly disguised. Again: When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response.

But finally, one person actually did offer a specific response to one of Carlson’s specific claims, and it’s a response that swallows its own tail. The Washington Post quotes a memo from Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, disputing the story about Chansley:

The claim by Carlson that Capitol Police served as ‘tour guides’ for Jacob Chansley, the horn-wearing ‘QAnon Shaman,’ was ‘outrageous and false,’ Manger wrote. He said that Capitol Police were badly outnumbered on Jan. 6, and that, ‘Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.’

[….]

Some of the video aired by Carlson showed Chansley being accompanied by several Capitol Police officers as they walked through the hall during the riot. One of the officers was previously featured in a 2021 HBO documentary, ‘Four Hours at the Capitol,’ and said that ‘The sheer number of them compared to us, I knew ahead there was no way we could all get physical with them, so I took it upon myself to try to talk to them.’ The officer is then seen on video walking behind Chansley as Chansley walks into the Senate Chamber.

We didn’t do that; also, we did do that, but it was a tactic. If the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers because they felt outnumbered and were trying to prevent a confrontation, then the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers. The thing presented as a claim that Carlson lied about concedes the exact thing that Carlson claimed, but then tries to explain it, but still just ends up conceding it. Take it from the Washington Post, in a supposed debunking: An officer said that he just talked to Chansley; then he walked into the Senate chambers with him.

That’s what happened, and no one actually claims otherwise.

In a major expansion and overhaul of its navy, Australia is planning to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear powered submarines beginning in the next decade, Reuters and others are reporting. US as well as European officials have disclosed the future deal as part of a “landmark defense agreement between Washington, Canberra and London, four U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in a deal that would present a new challenge to China.”

The impending agreement is seen as central to the relatively new AUKUS partnership, and the major sub deal is expected to be announced when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego Monday.

When the partnership was first announced and formalized eighteen months ago, President Biden said of it, “We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” and that “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”

The nuclear submarines at center of the expected deal cost $3 billion each and will initially be built in Virginia and Connecticut. But sources say other submarines could be built in the UK and Australia while utilizing US technology and assistance. 

The AUKUS partnership has multiple defense components components, chief among them the development of the nuclear submarine capability for Australia. This has been known since the AUKUS agreement was announced in Sept. 2021, but this week marks the first time specifics have been revealed.

Other components include security cooperation in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and undersea capabilities. While the US, the UK and Australia already take part in common security arrangements, and all three participate in the Five Eyes alliance, an intelligence-sharing arrangement that also includes Canada and New Zealand, the AUKUS security structure provides for the technology cooperation needed to share nuclear submarine technology and other common efforts in a region where China poses growing security concerns.

But Western leaders while discussing AUKUS have taken pains to avoid calling out China directly, but it’s clearly aimed at countering Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, and certainly China sees it as directly impacting its own defense priorities – and has accused Australia of severely violating prior commitments to not introduce nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to its military.

Authored by Ramesh Thakur via The Brownstone Institute,

At first slowly but in recent weeks with seemingly gathering pace, two trends have emerged.

On the one hand, many of the core claims behind lockdowns, masks, and vaccines are unravelling and the prevailing narrative has been in retreat on all three fronts.

But there is still a long way to go, as indicated by the cussed refusal of the Biden administration to let Novak Djokovic play at Indian Wells.

On the other hand, the explosive lockdown files in the UK have blown apart the official narrative. We the sceptics were right in our dark suspicions of the motives, scientific basis, and evidence behind government decisions, but even we did not fully grasp just how venal, evil, and utterly contemptuous of their citizens some of the bastards in charge of our health, lives, livelihoods, and children’s future were. “Hell is empty, And all the devils are here” (Shakespeare, The Tempest) indeed. They will have to build a new circle of hell to accommodate all the perpetrators of evil let loose upon the world since 2020.

A mistake is when you spill coffee or take the wrong exit ramp off the highway. Lockdown was a policy pushed hard by politicians and health chiefs even against scientific dissent and substantial public opposition, using tools from every tyrants’ playbook of disinformation and lies whilst attacking and censoring truth. The depth of public opposition went unrecognized because the fear-peddling media colluded in not reporting on protests.

Genuine mistakes were few and are forgivable. Most were deliberate distortions of reality, outright falsehoods, and a systematic campaign to terrorize people into compliance with arbitrary diktats interspersed with efforts to vilify, silence, and cancel all critics by using the full powers of the state to co-opt, bribe, and bully. All in pursuit of the most maddening public policy insanity of modern times because it ignored existing canons of pandemic planning in blind panic just when calm was most needed. To call lockdown a mistake is to trivialize the shock to society.

Before coming to that, a few preliminary observations to summarize where we are at.

What is Now Known and Generally but Not Universally Admitted

Covid is now endemic. It will circulate throughout the world and keep returning with mutating variants. People who have been infected and/or vaccinated can contract and transmit it. Consequently we have little choice but to learn to live with it. What is important is to make sure the right policy lessons are learnt so that never again, neither for a novel coronavirus nor for any other infectious disease, do we go down the path of public policy insanity to lock up an entire city or country with the discovery of 1-10 cases and bring all social, cultural and economic activity to a shuddering halt – or give total power and control to sociopaths and psychopaths.

Meanwhile what is particularly striking is just how many suspicions voiced by sceptics from early 2020 onwards and mocked as conspiracy theories have turned into plausible claims and accepted facts:

1. The virus may have originated in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology;

2. Covid modeling was dodgy and dressed up outliers as reasonable case scenarios;

3. Lockdowns don’t work;

4. Lockdowns kill through perverse consequences and inflict other damaging harms, including interruptions to critical life-saving children’s immunization campaigns in developing countries;

5. School closures are particularly bad policy. They did not curb transmission but they did cause long-term harm to children’s education, development and emotional well-being;

6. Masks are ineffective. They stop neither infection nor transmission;

7. Infection confers natural immunity at least as effective as vaccination;

8. Covid vaccines do not stop infection, hospitalization, or even death;

9. Covid vaccines do not stop transmission;

10. The safety of vaccines using new technology had not been definitively established, neither for the short term nor for the long term;

11. Vaccine harms are real and substantial but safety signals have been summarily dismissed and ignored;

12. mRNA vaccines are not confined to the arm but spread rapidly to other parts, including reproductive organs, with potentially adverse consequences for fertility and births;

13. The harm-benefit equation of vaccines is, like the disease burden itself, steeply age-differentiated. Healthy young people did not need either initial or booster doses;

14. Vaccination mandates don’t increase vaccine take-up;

15. Vaccine mandates can fuel cross-vaccine hesitancy;

16. Suppression of sceptical and dissenting voices will lessen trust in public health officials, experts and institutions, and possibly also in scientists more generally;

17. Estimates of “Long Covid” were inflated (CDC estimate of 20 percent of Covid infections against UK study’s estimate of 3 percent) by using generalized, non-specific symptoms like mild fatigue and weakness;

18. Health policy interventions involve policy trade-offs just like all other policy choices. Cost-benefit analysis is therefore an essential prerequisite, not an optional add-on.

The Lockdown Files

The last three years have seen lives lost in the millions with tens of millions more yet to be accounted for in the coming years, civilized lifestyles destroyed, previously inviolate freedoms shredded, civil liberties turned into privileges to be granted on the whim of bureaucrats, law enforcement officers corrupted into street thugs brutalizing the very people they are sworn to serve and protect, businesses destroyed, economies wrecked, bodily integrity violated.

The Lockdown Files, a treasure trove of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages in real time between all the principal policymakers on Covid in England while Matt Hancock was the Secretary of Health (2020–26 June 2021), offer an unparalleled and gripping window into the amoral and cynical arrogance circulating in the corridors of power. The daily drip-feed of revelations in the Telegraph is akin to watching with fascinated horror a slow-motion train wreck. Schadenfreude doesn’t come any more delicious. 

The files are littered with flippant remarks, mocking comments and contempt for citizens. Among the revelations about the Johnson government:

• The government knew there was no “robust rationale” for including children in the “rule of six” (the maximum number of people who could meet at any given time), but backed the controversial policy anyway.

• Facemasks were introduced in secondary schools in England after Johnson was told it was “not worth an argument” with Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon over the issue, despite England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty saying there were “no very strong reasons” to do so. In other words, political calculations were knowingly prioritized over schoolchildren’s needs.

• A plan to lift restrictions were dropped after Johnson was told it would be “too far ahead of public opinion.”

• Consultants were paid over £1 million a day for more than a year on the totally ineffectual test and trace program, turning the scheme into the embezzlement of public funds to line private pockets.

We now know just how punch drunk on tyranny the political, bureaucratic, scientific, and journalist class was during the pandemic. The ruling elites, when liberated from democratic accountability and media scrutiny, morphed seamlessly into morally cavalier and inhumane petty tyrants. Averse to alternative ways of thinking outside the echo chamber, they developed neuralgia to any idea that might challenge lockdown fanaticism.

Lockdown sceptics like the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) who argued for the elderly and frail to be protected were demonized as dangerous “Covid deniers” who wanted to “let it rip” in a callous and cruel strategy of herd immunity. But government officials whose policies had a direct, catastrophic impact on the health of the elderly and frail were treated as heroes and unimpeachable voices of moral authority.

Sociopath, Psychopath, or Both?

Among the revelations about Hancock:

• More than 40,000 residents of care homes in England died with Covid. Hancock was advised by Whitty in April 2020 to test everyone entering the care homes. He rejected the advice because testing capacity was limited and, for political (PR) reasons, he prioritized reaching his grandiose, self-imposed target of 100,000 daily tests in the lower risk general community over protecting the care home residents, despite repeated claims of having thrown a “protective ring” around the homes. Patients discharged into care homes from hospitals were tested but not those coming in from the community. That is, “focussed protection” of the GBD was the right way to go. Instead Hancock rubbished the GBD and belittled its three eminent epidemiologist authors.

• Social care minister Helen Whateley told Hancock that stopping visits to care homes by spouses was “inhumane” and risked the elderly residents “just giving up” after prolonged isolation, but he refused to budge.

• He rejected advice in November 2020 to shift from 14-day Covid quarantine for people who had been in close contact with anyone infected, to five days of testing because it would “imply we’ve been getting it wrong.” Talk of a sunk cost fallacy. Over 20 million people in total were told to self-isolate even if they had no symptoms. God I feel vindicated for refusing flatly to join Australia’s clunky test and trace program.

• In a discussion on how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions, Hancock suggested “We frighten the pants off everyone” and Project Fear was born. Simon Case, Britain’s most senior civil servant, said the “fear/guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the third lockdown in January 2021.

• Informed of the emergence of the alpha/Kent variant in December 2020, Hancock and his aides canvassed the ideal time to “deploy” the new variant in order to sustain public fear of the virus to ensure continued compliance with directives.

• A member of his team asked if they could “lock up” Nigel Farage after he tweeted a video of himself at a pub in Kent, because the troublesome politician was such a thorn in the government’s side.

• Hancock and Case mocked people forced to isolate in quarantine hotels, joking about returning travelers being “locked up” in “shoe box” rooms. Case wished he could “see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a premier inn shoe box.” Informed by Hancock that 149 people had entered “Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will,” Case replied: “Hilarious.”

• Hancock fought furious internal battles to hog the vaccine media limelight. He preened about his pictures in the media and boasted how the pandemic could propel his career “into the next league.”

• He told other ministers to “get heavy with the police” to enforce lockdown restrictions and then boasted that “The plod got their marching orders.” This raises questions about the legality of interfering with the operational instructions of police.

• Intoxicated by his own brilliance and infallibility, Hancock attacked vaccine czar Dame Kate Bingham, the chief of the National Health Service (NHS) Lord Stevens, and CEO of the Wellcome Trust (and now top scientist at the WHO) Sir Jeremy Farrar.

• He schemed with his aides, with the help of a secret spreadsheet, to deny rebellious party MPs funding for pet projects in their constituencies if they did not fall in line, including a new centre for disabled children and adults.

I can relate therefore to this online comment on one of these stories in the Telegraph: “Hancock was intellectually stunted pondlife before the pandemic and still is now, but with more slime and a bit of a stink to him.” Or, to put it in more technical language: Hancock comes across as an ego-driven total f…wit.

The state criminalized quotidian activities like sitting on a bench in the park, walking on the beach and meeting with extended family. Public health messaging was weaponized to normalize and sacralize spirit-sapping levels of social isolation. Even East Germany’s Stasi did not stop the elderly from hugging their grandchildren. Elderly patients were forced to die alone and surviving family members were banned from saying final farewells and denied the solace of a full funeral.

Hancock was able to get away with exercising his lust for power because his prime minister, Boris Johnson, proved to be lazy, weak, and vacillating. The vivid description of Johnson by fired top aide Dominic Cummings – an out of control “shopping trolley” lurching from side to side in a supermarket aisle, depending on who he last talked to – has been amply validated by the leaked files. The instinctual libertarian rapidly morphed from a lockdown sceptic into a zealot.

Lessons

The Lockdown Files confirm that politics informed the policymakers in most of the key decisions on how to manage the pandemic. Accordingly, while medical specialists can debate the technical details of different medical approaches, policy specialists should be among the lead assessors in evaluating the justifications for and results and effectiveness of the policy interventions.

The existing frameworks, processes and institutional safeguards under which liberal democracies operated until 2020 had ensured expanding freedoms, growing prosperity, an enviable lifestyle, quality of life and educational and health outcomes without precedent in human history. Abandoning them in favour of a tightly centralized small group of decision-makers liberated from any external scrutiny, contestability, and accountability produced both a dysfunctional process and suboptimal outcomes: very modest gains for much long-lasting pain. 

The sooner we return to the conviction that good process ensures better long-term outcomes and acts as a check against suboptimal outcomes alongside curbs on abuses of power and wastage of public funds, the better.

Interventions rooted in panic, driven by political machinations, and using all the levers of state power to terrify citizens and muzzle critics in the end needlessly killed massive numbers of the most vulnerable while putting the vast low-risk majority under house arrest. The benefits are questionable but the harms are increasingly obvious. The Johnson government in general and Hancock in particular revalidate Lord Acton’s astute observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

They weren’t following the science but Hancock’s ego and career ambitions. He exploited Johnson’s “stonking” laziness and shallowness. The Lockdown Files reveal a government gone rogue that viewed and treated the people as enemies. The UK, US, and Australia don’t need an inquiry strung out over years, focused on small details to the neglect of the big picture, with the tame conclusion that lessons will be learnt but blame cannot be apportioned. Instead we need criminal charges, and the sooner the better.

Britain’s top civil servant acted more like a partisan political hack than an apolitical, neutral and loyal-to-the-elected-government of the day civil servant. Case’s bias, immaturity, poor judgment, and unwillingness to support the PM with accurate, balanced, and impartial information were such as to warrant instant sacking. His hubris is such that he is yet to submit his resignation despite the publication of these appalling exchanges with Hancock who had effectively taken over the government. 

The fact that as the “absolutely cringe-worthy” revelations came tumbling out, PM Rishi Sunak insisted Case has his confidence reflects poorly on Sunak’s judgment.

Flawed process produced bad outcomes. 

In a modern-day version of sacrificing virgins to appease the viral gods, the young have lost many more years of their life to buy a few more lonely, miserable months for the infirm old. 

If the vast sums thrown at Covid had been redirected to the leading killer diseases and upgrades to public health infrastructure, using the standard quality-adjusted life years (QALY) metric, many million deaths would have been averted around the world over the coming decades. 

If we fail to heed the lessons of the last three years, we will indeed be condemned to repeat them, not just for new pandemics of infectious diseases but also for other crises like the “climate emergency.”

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Webster’s Dictionary defines a useful idiot as a “naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.”

Lenin is thought to have originated the phrase when referring to communist sympathizers in the West.

What is your take on this term? Is it still applicable today?

Doug Casey: Today’s make-believe democracies are overflowing with useful idiots. They latch on to one lame-brained notion after another, perhaps to give meaning to their confused and pointless lives. They’re a bit like cats chasing the red dot from their master’s laser pointer. The Ukraine, Covid, sex perversions, Trump, racism, climate change—it’s one thing after another.

Climate change is one of the central scams being promoted by the World Economic Forum as part of their Great Reset. It seems everything that comes out of the WEF—I can’t think of any exceptions — is antithetical to the traditional values of Western Civilization, prominently including free markets and personal liberty.

We’ve discussed the COVID hysteria and what looks like World War III starting in the Ukraine. But the biggest thing, with the longest legs, is climate change. Full disclosure: I believe in climate change. The climate has been changing constantly since the world came together about four and a half billion years ago. And it’ll continue to change.

The problem, however, isn’t climate change itself but the process of indoctrinating the public, especially young people, with the belief that humanity is destroying Mother Earth.

They’re given snippets of science, like the fact that the world has been generally warming since the mid-19th century. Well, sure, it has because the planet went through what’s known as the Little Ice Age from the 16th through the 19th centuries. It has cyclically been warming for the last 150 years. As a matter of fact, the world has been warming since the end of the last Great Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago.

The “global warming” people have found a great excuse for changing not just the economy but the way literally everything works. My view is that they’re basically anti-human—they actually hate and fear people. It’s why Yuval Noah Harari, the mincing court intellectual of the WEF, often refers to them as “useless eaters.” He may be right. But what’s insane is that someone like him could gain the power to make serious decisions. People like him applaud massive population reduction.

Especially, it would appear, of what Hillary called “deplorables” in the Western world. They see people as the enemy. Some idiots among them are useful, but they’re all expendable.

It’s easy for the “elite’—who are actually parasites—to influence those that they refer to as “the masses.” That’s partly because the average person has no grip on either science or history. Any episode of Jay Leno’s Jay Walking, or Mark Dice’s current equivalent on Youtube, offers plenty of anecdotal proof. They’ll ask what seem like average, reasonably intelligent people the simplest of questions. They can’t answer any of them. A typical response to the question “Who won the American Civil War” might be “The Germans?”. The only questions they can answer correctly are about pop and sports stars.

It’s absolutely true: The world is full of useful idiots. They’re useful to the ruling classes who want to change everything. In fact, just last week, the Aspen Institute, one of the world’s best-known think tanks, sponsored a climate change conference featuring Kamala Harris and Gloria Estefan as the twin keynote speakers.

It’s a pathetic comedy. A couple of useful idiots are talking to an audience of useful idiots about something that none of them know absolutely anything about.

International Man: Today, we see a lot of useful idiots among average people—especially children and young adults—whipped up into a hysteria over so-called “climate change.”

Popular culture, the media, Hollywood, academia, Wall Street, politicians, and other authority figures reinforce the climate alarmist narrative.

Are these people being duped into supporting an agenda they don’t fully understand? What is really going on here?

Doug Casey: The fact is that Congress critters live in an echo chamber. They’re there to pass laws and regulations governing what other people can and can’t do. And for that reason, they all believe that they have a right to push their agendas. They’re narcissists who love power. That’s why they’re in Washington.

Congress is largely populated by people like AOC, the race-baiting socialist bartender, the mentally disabled John Fetterman, and George Santos, the pathological liar. Almost every Congress critter is an embarrassment. They didn’t run for Congress because they’re good people but because they’re power-hungry narcissists.

Useful idiots are annoying enough when you see them in sports, the media, and Hollywood. But they tend to concentrate in Congress, where they’re actively dangerous.

International Man: Recently, climate brats—young Westerners with psychological problems—glued themselves to priceless paintings in various museums.

Another group threw cake on the Mona Lisa.

Yet another threw tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting.

The perpetrators of these destructive acts did so to draw attention to a fictitious climate emergency.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: They’re trying to draw attention to lunatic beliefs by destroying great works of art. That alone is proof that they are, in fact, deranged. These people have real psychological problems. That they aren’t severely punished but are taken seriously proves how degraded the West has become. But it’s just getting what it deserves. Very sad…

It’s one thing to try to get the attention of other people, so they listen to what you have to say. But destroying the great art of Western Civilization is really where their heads are at. Destroying Western Civilization is an active part of their insane agenda. They’re deeply unhappy with themselves, but they blame it on Civilization.

Their severe psychological problems are illustrated by the kind of people populating the Biden administration. Everyone from the tranny who dresses up in an admiral’s costume to Pete Buttigieg, who plays the female part of a couple with his boyfriend, to the former assistant secretary in Biden’s Office of Nuclear Energy who was that was caught stealing women’s clothing again and again. Biden himself, his Attorney General Merrick Garland, almost all of the top military people…

This is all part of a syndrome.

International Man: While these climate brats seem to be engaging in isolated acts, the reality is that climate alarmism is dictating government policy and corporate decisions and pumping unimaginable distortions into the global economy.

Where is this trend headed?

Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion and even accelerate until they reach a crisis. And that’s where we’re heading right now. Even if we don’t reach a crack-up crisis, which I suspect we will, even if saner heads prevail and start to reverse the trend, it’s going to take many, many years to first slow the trend and then reverse it. So there’s not much cause for optimism.

International Man: Given everything we discussed today, what are the investment implications?

Doug Casey: Put money in things that everybody has been taught to hate but are necessary for Civilization to continue. This means energy—uranium, oil, natural gas, and coal—and metals like gold and copper—resources in general.

Fortunately, the stocks of companies that produce these things are very cheap, with many selling for single-digit P/Es, and double-digit dividends. The mining and energy industries are very un-PC. ESG dictates that you shouldn’t put money into any kind of extractive industry. It’s generally very expensive or impossible to get permits for development, so the stocks are very cheap. I’d like to believe that reality will reassert itself, and these things will go up a lot.

The general stock market is still way overpriced. Plus, a crypto bubble still exists, evidenced by things like Dogecoin, which was created as a joke and serves no useful purpose. It still has a market cap of about $11 billion dollars. I think that can almost be used as an indicator of how much of a bubble the economy is still in.

*  *  *

We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms. But this is just the beginning…

Most people don’t realize the terrible things that could come next, including negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and much more. If you want to know how to survive what the central bankers and the Deep State have planned, then you need to see this newly released report from legendary investor Doug Casey and his team. Click here to download it now.

The Virginia first-grader who shot his teacher in January won’t be charged for the attack, and the Newport News prosecutor says he’s still considering whether the boy’s parents should face criminal charges.  

Speaking with NBC News, prosecutor Howard Gwynn said the “prospect that a 6-year-old can stand trial is problematic” because, at that age, a child can’t comprehend the legal system or collaborate with an attorney working to defend him. Whatever the prosecutor’s misgivings, it is theoretically possible for a 6-year-old to face criminal charges in Virginia.

Two months after the disturbing classroom shooting at Richneck Elementary, Gwynn is still pondering the legal destiny of the six-year-old shooter’s parents:  

“Our objective is not just to do something as quickly as possible. Once we analyze all the facts, we will charge any person or persons that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime.”

On Jan. 6, 25-year-old first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was critically wounded when one of her students shot her once with his mother’s 9mm Taurus handgun, which she’d legally purchased. Zwerner was seated at a table when the boy — who’d firmly established a pattern of behavior problems and disturbing incidents with staff and students — suddenly opened fire.  

While there was no confrontation immediately before the shooting, it came one day after the boy was issued a one-day suspension for breaking Zwerner’s cell phone. 

In Virginia, it’s a misdemeanor crime to leave a loaded gun accessible to a child under 14, with a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

The shooter’s parents claim the pistol had a trigger lock and was “secured” on the top shelf of the mother’s closet. They also said they’ve “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.” 

“We have to make our decision based on our ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a crime occurred,” said Gwynn.

It’s conceivable the parents could be charged with contributing to a minor’s delinquency. They say the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” while detained at a medical facility after the shooting. 

Meanwhile, Zwerner is expected to file suit against the school district, which has already ousted its superintendent and an assistant principal in the wake of the shooting. In January, Zwerner’s lawyer said three teachers sought intervention against the child.

On the day of the shooting, a school staff member searched his backpack on a tip that the child might be packing heat. They didn’t find it, and administrators chose not to involve the police. The search happened around 11:30 am and the shooting took place about two-and-a-half hours later.  

Other school staff members have spoken out against school officials’ disregard of warnings about the shooter and a tendency to ignore other problem students in a drive to bolster the school’s ratings. 

“We see students being assaulted (and) we see teachers being assaulted…daily,” said elementary teacher Djifa Lee at a school board meeting. “[Disciplinary] referrals are so closely tied to accreditation, and this puts educators and office staff or administrators in a tough position.”

“Every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students and other staff members are being hurt,” said high school librarian Nicole Cooke. “Every day, they’re hit. They’re bitten. They’re beaten. And [violent children] are allowed to stay so that our numbers look good.”