Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

In October, the U.S. national debt reached $31 trillion, and the government is projected to wade another trillion dollars into the red in the 2023 fiscal year. The longer-term picture is even gloomier, with the deficit expected to double to $2 trillion by 2030.

Indeed, the longer the horizon, the worse things get. At 98% of Gross Domestic Product, the current national debt is the highest it’s been since just after World War II. On its current course, the debt will soar to 185% of the country’s entire economic output by 2052.

What’s particularly troubling is that the government’s 2022 $1.3 trillion-dollar deficit came at a time of near-record tax intake. At 19.8% of GDP, Uncle Sam’s 2022 tax haul was close to the all-time high of 20.5% set in 1944.

Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem — it has a spending problem.

What few people realize, however, is the extent to which the U.S. government’s disastrous trajectory is on autopilot, thanks to the fact that an ever-larger proportion of federal spending happens without Congressional action.

To understand why, it’s important to first understand that there are two main categories of government spending:

• Discretionary spending, which requires a vote by Congress as part of the annual appropriations process.

• Mandatory spending, which is dictated by previously-enacted laws and thus happens without an annual vote in Congress. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid comprise a big majority of mandatory spending.

Here’s where things have taken an ominous turn. In 1965, mandatory spending accounted for 34% of all federal spending. Today, that share has more than doubled, with mandatory spending representing 71% of federal outlays. With overall spending higher too, mandatory spending is much larger slice of a larger pie.

As much as it’s right to spotlight wasteful discretionary spending — like a $2.4 million National Science Foundation grant to promote dinosaur enthusiasm or $11.3 million to tell Vietnamese people to stop burning trash — the truth is that the annual budgeting process offers federal legislators a shrinking opportunity to make meaningful fiscal course corrections.

While mandatory spending can be adjusted by passing new laws, there’s a big problem with that: Meaningfully changing the trajectory of mandatory spending requires meaningful adjustments to Social Security and Medicare.

The mere idea arouses indignation among those who’ve been paying taxes into those programs for all their working lives. That’s understandable, since the government fosters the myth that Americans have Social Security and Medicare “accounts.”

However, the truth is that these programs increasingly operate not as savings accounts or insurance plans, but rather as schemes that redistribute money from current workers to retirees. Social Security already dishes out far more in benefits than it takes in via payroll taxes, and Medicare crosses into an annual deficit this fiscal year.

While former Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill rightly called Social Security the “third rail” of American politics, some Republicans have recently dared to propose touching both it and Medicare.

The Republican Study Committee — a group of House reps — in June of this year floated a budget that suggested:

• Gradually raising Medicare’s eligibility age to 67 and Social Security’s to 70, and then index both to life expectancy

• Withholding payments from those who retire early and earn more than a certain amount

• Reducing Social Security payroll taxes and redirecting them to private alternatives

• Phasing in means-testing for Medicare

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has proposed moving Social Security and Medicare from the mandatory spending category to the discretionary one, so that Congress is compelled to actively monitor and manage the programs — rather than contentedly looking the other way as their mandatory nature digs them deeper into a hole.

As the GOP went out on a political limb, Democrats naturally grabbed their saws. Henry Connelly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said “House Republicans are openly threatening to cause an economic catastrophe in order to realize their obsession with slashing Medicare and Social Security.”

The “catastrophe” comment refers to the notion that Republicans may make reform of the programs a condition for raising the federal debt ceiling yet again.

Republicans’ aspirations to reform Social Security and Medicare gave Democrats powerful midterm-election ammunition — with Democrats and allies pushing attack ads portraying the GOP as ruthlessly bent on shrinking the programs, apparently just for the sake of doing so.

President Biden pushed the theme hard down the campaign stretch: “They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare in a big way,” he warned in stump speeches with congressional candidates.

Without action, however, time is coming for Social Security and Medicare in a big way. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to run out around around 2035. Absent congressional intervention, that will trigger a 20% cut for everyone receiving benefits when the well runs dry. Medicare’s trust fund is projected to vanish in just six years, with less clarity on how shrinking resources will be apportioned.

As close as those two grim milestones are, to politicians of both parties whose principal aim is re-election, they’re critically still more than one election cycle away.

Given that, don’t expect any fruitful action on Social Security or Medicare anytime soon. You can, however, expect that anyone who attempts to tailor the programs to economic reality will be accused of cruel intentions— by disingenuous politicians who portray their own irresponsible inaction as the height of benevolence.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey: Invigoratingly unorthodox perspectives for intellectually honest readers 

Ukraine says its embassies across Europe are coming under attack with a “well-planned campaign of terror” – following last week’s embassy mail bomb incident at the embassy in Madrid, Spain – which injured a worker.

Over the past several days more than a dozen letters containing either explosives or bloody animal parts have been received by Ukrainian embassies or in some cases intercepted before they arrived.

“There have been 17 cases of embassies receiving either letter bombs, false bomb letters, or letters containing animals parts, like the eyes of cows and pigs,” CNN cited Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba as saying. 

The animal eyes are being interpreted as threats of more violence to come targeting Ukrainian diplomatic outposts in the West. In some cases the ambassadors in residence have had their names written on the envelopes. “This campaign is aimed at sowing fear,” Kuleba said.

Though there’s as yet no publicly disclosed evidence presented by authorities as to who is behind the series of letters and mail bombs, Kuleba pointed the finger directly at Moscow in his latest statement, saying, “Maybe this terror response is the Russian answer to the diplomatic horror that we created for Russia on the international arena, and this is how they try to fight back while they are losing the real diplomatic battles one after another.”

So far, “bloody” and threatening packages have been sent to embassies and general consulates in Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Vowing not to be intimidated, Kuleba said further, “We have grounds to believe that a well-planned campaign of terror and intimidation of Ukrainian embassies and consulates is underway.”

Several Ukrainian embassies around the world have been sent “bloody packages” containing animal eyes. Among them, reports Sky News, is the embassy in Croatia.https://t.co/ozcIZePDA4

— Balkan Insight (@BalkanInsight) December 2, 2022

“We will continue to work effectively for the victory of Ukraine,” he stressed, while also urging foreign governments in Europe to step up round-the-clock protection of its missions in their countries, including security of diplomatic personnel.

Spain especially is on high alert after a mail bomb was days ago even sent to the US Embassy in Madrid. It was reportedly intercepted before it arrived. 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A government watchdog has found no misconduct in IRS tax audits of former FBI Director James Comey and former acting and deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, putting to rest speculation that former President Donald Trump had pulled strings at the agency to target his political foes.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report (pdf) released on Dec. 1 that it had found no evidence that the IRS was in any way manipulated to pick Comey and McCabe for the audits.

The watchdog’s review came at the request of members of Congress and former IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, a Trump appointee who headed the tax agency at a time when Trump frequently criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in a probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that later morphed into the so-called “Russian collusion” investigation that Trump and his team denounced as a “witch hunt” meant to hurt him politically.

Neither Comey nor McCabe could be reached for comment on the watchdog’s findings.

Tax Audits Carried Out ‘Randomly’

The Inspector General’s report found that the audit selection process that saw Comey and McCabe face National Research Program (NRP) audits from the IRS was both random and carried out properly.

“Our assessment of the original sample selection process concluded that the IRS randomly selected TYs [tax years] 2017 and 2019 tax returns for NRP audits,” the report found.

The report also found that the IRS computer programs used to pick people for audits “categorized returns in the correct strata” and “correctly selected tax returns for audit.” The programs also “did not include malicious code that would force the selection of taxpayers” for an audit, the watchdog said.

While the report found no misconduct in the way Comey and McCabe were picked for the audits, it did note some general IRS shortcomings in the way the agency’s computer systems generate random selections, while noting that the watchdog is doing more work to scrutinize that process more deeply.

‘Maybe It’s a Coincidence’

Both Comey and McCabe in the past suggested they should not have been audited and questioned whether they were properly selected for tax-related scrutiny.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the I.R.S. to get at a political enemy. Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question,” Comey told the New York Times earlier this year.

“I think they handled the business OK, the person I dealt with was fine, but the question remains, how was I selected for this?” McCabe told CNN in an interview at the time.

An IRS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in July that there are guardrails in place to prevent the agency from being misused for political ends.

“Audits are handled by career civil servants, and the IRS has strong safeguards in place to protect the exam process—and against politically motivated audits. It’s ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals for National Research Program audits,” the spokesperson said.

Trump told the New York Times through a spokesperson at the time, “I have no knowledge of this.”

‘Miniscule Chances’

The New York Times speculated in its report that strings may have been improperly pulled around the audits, claiming there were “minuscule chances” that Comey and McCabe would be picked at random and that their selection poses “extraordinary questions.”

The watchdog’s report appears to put those questions to rest.

“The credibility and integrity of the IRS are foundational to the success of our tax administration, and this report alleviates some concerns,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement to The Hill. remove

Comey, an Obama appointee, was fired by then-President Trump in May 2017 at the recommendation of the attorney general and deputy attorney general. The officials said Comey was “not able to effectively lead the bureau.”

McCabe, who succeeded Comey, was fired the following year by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee, at the recommendation of the FBI because he lied to the bureau about allowing information to be leaked to a reporter.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

On Friday night, veteran journalist Matt Taibbi released the first installment of “The Twitter Files” – evidence of Twitter’s interference in the 2020 US election provided by new owner Elon Musk.

The release details what ZeroHedge readers have known for a long time – that Twitter has been a deeply partisan, narrative-shaping arm of the Democratic party.

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson summed it up perfectly as ‘The biggest first amendment violation in modern history.’

Just read this and, as expected, Twitter’s far-left apparatchiks simply concocted the whole “maybe Hunter’s laptop came via a hack” excuse. Their M.O. was clearly: censor first, backfill an excuse later, pray Biden gets elected and then, hopefully, get away with the whole scheme. https://t.co/Z56KNfkYt2

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 3, 2022

In response to the bombshell evidence, presented by a veteran journalist engaged in journalism, pundits on the left pounced on Taibbi in comments that will bring shame on their houses for generations.

“Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world,” tweeted NBC reporter Ben Collins, adding that it as “Humiliating shit.”

Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating shit.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 2, 2022

Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, who’s never broken a major story, called Taibbi’s journalism a “sad, disgraceful downfall,” adding “Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth.”

Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he’ll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) December 2, 2022

Once a liar, always a liar, right?

Is this you, you gaslighting liar? https://t.co/2t2V8QgaGk pic.twitter.com/aZTBfKgjFw

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 3, 2022

The Bulwark‘s Tim Miller tweeted: “Matt Taibbi is very upset that the Biden campaign asked a platform to take down some revenge porn targeting the candidates son.”

Matt Taibbi is very upset that the Biden campaign asked a platform to take down some revenge porn targeting the candidates son.

I’m sure matt would be totes cool with people tweeting out his adult kids dick bc they didn’t like him and would not ask his buddy Elon to help. https://t.co/MyfmBe1c91

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) December 3, 2022

CNN‘s Elle Reeve tweeted: “It’s true: in 2014, I taught Matt Taibbi keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste,” adding “If I had not done that, maybe all this could have been averted. I am deeply sorry.”

It’s true: in 2014, I taught Matt Taibbi keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste. If I had not done that, maybe all this could have been averted. I am deeply sorry.

— Elle Reeve (@elspethreeve) December 3, 2022

And how would these people feel if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?

Meanwhile, some responses to the hackery and Twitter’s election interference:

The sad part of what journalism has become is that we were all raised on movies about what journalism should be and the heroes of those movies who sought the truth and fought through lies and danger to get it and bring it to the people, they are the villains of modern journalism https://t.co/aawW8dM6kZ

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) December 3, 2022

Government collusion with a corporation to silence citizens’ first amendment rights. Another conspiracy theory confirmed. #twitterfiles pic.twitter.com/wKUzVmHXlY

— Douglas Karr (@douglaskarr) December 3, 2022

Meanwhile, mainstream outlets have been spinning the release as a ‘rehash’ of things we already knew.

Here is how CNN is covering the biggest story of the year and the total collapse of their credibility — the Hunter laptop reveal by Twitter.

“Hey, how about that virus, eh?” pic.twitter.com/yTvvU17WI7

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 3, 2022

it’s a little crazy that someone had to pay $44BN for the public to gain access to this information

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 3, 2022

And while Elon Musk insists former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has a ‘pure heart,’ he is ultimately responsible for what happened under his watch (and direction?).

No one deserves more blame for this fiasco than @jack Dorsey. It was his company — but for some reason he allowed his aggresssively partisan San Fran staff to take the reins in the crucial weeks before Election Day, then played dumb every time they abused the opportunity. https://t.co/4AsqhvMu0k

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 3, 2022

The last word goes to Andy Swan:

So… ya… it was rigged

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) December 3, 2022

Authored by Nouriel Roubini via Project Syndicate,

After years of ultra-loose fiscal, monetary, and credit policies and the onset of major negative supply shocks, stagflationary pressures are now putting the squeeze on a massive mountain of public- and private-sector debt. The mother of all economic crises looms, and there will be little that policymakers can do about it.

The world economy is lurching toward an unprecedented confluence of economic, financial, and debt crises, following the explosion of deficits, borrowing, and leverage in recent decades.

In the private sector, the mountain of debt includes that of households (such as mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, personal loans), businesses and corporations (bank loans, bond debt, and private debt), and the financial sector (liabilities of bank and nonbank institutions). In the public sector, it includes central, provincial, and local government bonds and other formal liabilities, as well as implicit debts such as unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go pension schemes and health-care systems – all of which will continue to grow as societies age.

Just looking at explicit debts, the figures are staggering. Globally, total private- and public-sector debt as a share of GDP rose from 200% in 1999 to 350% in 2021. The ratio is now 420% across advanced economies, and 330% in China. In the United States, it is 420%, which is higher than during the Great Depression and after World War II.

Of course, debt can boost economic activity if borrowers invest in new capital (machinery, homes, public infrastructure) that yields returns higher than the cost of borrowing. But much borrowing goes simply to finance consumption spending above one’s income on a persistent basis – and that is a recipe for bankruptcy. Moreover, investments in “capital” can also be risky, whether the borrower is a household buying a home at an artificially inflated price, a corporation seeking to expand too quickly regardless of returns, or a government that is spending the money on “white elephants” (extravagant but useless infrastructure projects).

Such over-borrowing has been going on for decades, for various reasons. The democratization of finance has allowed income-strapped households to finance consumption with debt. Center-right governments have persistently cut taxes without also cutting spending, while center-left governments have spent generously on social programs that aren’t fully funded with sufficient higher taxes. And tax policies that favor debt over equity, abetted by central banks’ ultra-loose monetary and credit policies, has fueled a spike in borrowing in both the private and public sectors.

Years of quantitative easing (QE) and credit easing kept borrowing costs near zero, and in some cases even negative (as in Europe and Japan until recently). By 2020, negative-yielding dollar-equivalent public debt was $17 trillion, and in some Nordic countries, even mortgages had negative nominal interest rates.

The explosion of unsustainable debt ratios implied that many borrowers – households, corporations, banks, shadow banks, governments, and even entire countries – were insolvent “zombies” that were being propped up by low interest rates (which kept their debt-servicing costs manageable). During both the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis, many insolvent agents that would have gone bankrupt were rescued by zero- or negative-interest-rate policies, QE, and outright fiscal bailouts.

But now, inflation – fed by the same ultra-loose fiscal, monetary, and credit policies – has ended this financial Dawn of the Dead. With central banks forced to increase interest rates in an effort to restore price stability, zombies are experiencing sharp increases in their debt-servicing costs. For many, this represents a triple whammy, because inflation is also eroding real household income and reducing the value of household assets, such as homes and stocks. The same goes for fragile and over-leveraged corporations, financial institutions, and governments: they face sharply rising borrowing costs, falling incomes and revenues, and declining asset values all at the same time.

Worse, these developments are coinciding with the return of stagflation (high inflation alongside weak growth). The last time advanced economies experienced such conditions was in the 1970s. But at least back then, debt ratios were very low. Today, we are facing the worst aspects of the 1970s (stagflationary shocks) alongside the worst aspects of the global financial crisis. And this time, we cannot simply cut interest rates to stimulate demand.

After all, the global economy is being battered by persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks that are reducing growth and increasing prices and production costs. These include the pandemic’s disruptions to the supply of labor and goods; the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on commodity prices; China’s increasingly disastrous zero-COVID policy; and a dozen other medium-term shocks – from climate change to geopolitical developments – that will create additional stagflationary pressures.

Unlike in the 2008 financial crisis and the early months of COVID-19, simply bailing out private and public agents with loose macro policies would pour more gasoline on the inflationary fire. That means there will be a hard landing – a deep, protracted recession – on top of a severe financial crisis. As asset bubbles burst, debt-servicing ratios spike, and inflation-adjusted incomes fall across households, corporations, and governments, the economic crisis and the financial crash will feed on each other.

To be sure, advanced economies that borrow in their own currency can use a bout of unexpected inflation to reduce the real value of some nominal long-term fixed-rate debt. With governments unwilling to raise taxes or cut spending to reduce their deficits, central-bank deficit monetization will once again be seen as the path of least resistance. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Once the inflation genie gets out of the bottle – which is what will happen when central banks abandon the fight in the face of the looming economic and financial crash – nominal and real borrowing costs will surge. The mother of all stagflationary debt crises can be postponed, not avoided.

Global macroeconomic headwinds increasingly mount, such as high inflation, quantitative tightening by central banks, elevated cross-asset volatility, increasing recession odds, and the Russia-Ukraine war, as the new year quickly approaches. 

A few days ago, we pointed out that the newly minted crypto millionaires who panic-bought luxury vehicles are dumping Mercedes G-Wagons and McLaren supercars as crypto winter worsen with the implosion of FTX. And possibly the selling is spreading to other luxury items such as watches. 

Besides fancy vehicles, fast money bought watches during the pandemic boom, and lots of them. Prices for Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet soared to astronomical levels, but as stocks, bonds, and crypto entered bear markets earlier this year, these watches began to drop in value. Earlier this year, we pointed out the top in the watch market in a note titled “Investors’ Clock Out’ Of Rolex Bull Market As Demand Cools.” 

Now the Subdial50 index, an index tracking the top 50 most traded second-hand luxury watches on the pre-owned market, is making new lows, and according to Bloomberg, “has fallen to levels not seen since before an unprecedented boom in 2021 and early 2022.” 

The decline shows the most sought-after watches from the top Swiss brands haven’t been able to maintain lofty prices hit during the pandemic when cash-flush consumers stuck at home snapped up Patek Nautilus, Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks and Rolex Daytonas in a frenzied search for the next hot asset class. Dominated by Rolex references including the Daytona ceramic bezel chronograph and GMT Master II, the Subdial50 Index has declined by almost 5% in 12 months and nearly 17% in half a year.

The falling demand coincided with declines in technology stocks and the crash in cryptocurrencies.

Secondary market prices for the Royal Oak “Jumbo” reference 15202 soared above £110,000 ($134,840) at their peak in March, more than doubling over 12 months. Now the watch is trading at around £70,000. -Bloomberg 

Boom/bust chart of the luxury watch market. 

And with the economy headed for more turmoil next year, as Citi chief economist Nathan Sheets warned this week to clients, that could mean watch prices have yet to hit bottom. 

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This sudden jolt of mainstream support comes as news breaks that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been personally pushing the US government to bring the Assange case to a close.

The Guardian’s participation in this letter is particularly noteworthy, given the leading role that publication has played in manufacturing public support for his persecution in the first place.

If The Guardian really wants to help end the persecution of the heroic WikiLeaks founder, the best way to do that would be to retract those many smears, spin jobs and outright lies, and to formally apologize for publishing them.

This is after all the same Guardian which published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated 2018 report that Trump lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, not once but multiple times.

Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time, and the Robert Mueller investigation, whose expansive scope would obviously have included such meetings, reported absolutely nothing to corroborate it. It was a bogus story which all accused parties have forcefully denied and no serious person believes is true, yet to this day it still sits on The Guardian’s website without retraction of any kind.

If @guardian truly wants the charges dropped against Julian Assange, a good way to facilitate that would be to retract and apologize for all the many smears and outright lies they’ve published about him to help manufacture consent for those charges.https://t.co/kUE6vlmbLl

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 29, 2022

This is the same Guardian which ran an article in 2018 titled “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride”, arguing that Assange looked ridiculous for continuing his political asylum in the embassy because “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US.” The article was authored by the odious James Ball, whose article begins: “According to Debrett’s, the arbiters of etiquette since 1769: ‘Visitors, like fish, stink in three days.’ Given this, it’s difficult to imagine what Ecuador’s London embassy smells like, more than five-and-a-half years after Julian Assange moved himself into the confines of the small flat in Knightsbridge, just across the road from Harrods.”

This is the same Guardian which published an article titled “Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange”, arguing that Assange defenders are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the US would try to extradite Assange because “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States,” because “why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?”, and “because there is no extradition request.”

This is the same Guardian which published a ludicrous report about Assange potentially receiving documents as part of a strange Nigel Farage/Donald Trump/Russia conspiracy, a claim based primarily on vague analysis by a single anonymous source described as a “highly placed contact with links to US intelligence”. The same Guardian which has flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin” (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word “alleged” on more than one occasion. The same Guardian which advanced many more virulent smears as documented in a 2018 article by The Canary titled “Guilty by innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the rules.”

There is, needless to say, no hint or suggestion in the Mueller Report that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange ever in his life, let alone 3 times in the Ecuadorian Embassy during the election. It would obviously be there if it happened. How can the @guardian not retract this?? pic.twitter.com/5ory1w0mfj

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019

Even the wording of the joint letter itself is dishonest when coming from The Guardian.

“This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database,” the letter reads. “But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.”

As we’ve discussed previously, the narrative that Assange recklessly published unredacted documents in 2011 is itself a dishonest smear, and the unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a real password being recklessly published in a book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding (the same Luke Harding who co-authored the bogus Manafort-Assange story). Assange took extraordinary measures to try and minimize the damage that was done by those Guardian reporters, but wound up getting thrown under the bus and blamed for their actions anyway.

If The Guardian is sincere in its stated desire to see the end of the persecution of Julian Assange, the single most effective thing it could do to help advance that goal would be to publicly acknowledge that it helped to deceive the world about him, and work to correct the record.

Guardian ran a campaign to demonise J.Assange in 2018, well-documented here. This is not just normal false reporting we expect from ultra-establishment media -it helped prepare the ground for Assange’s prosecution. Guardian needs further investigation. https://t.co/2lFTzO9cKG

— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) December 27, 2019

The only reason Assange’s case doesn’t have more support currently is because so much of the public has been deceived into believing that what’s happening is not the unconscionable persecution of a journalist for telling the truth, but rather the righteous prosecution of a sinister Russian agent who has broken laws and endangered lives. The Guardian easily played a larger role in manufacturing that collective misconception than any other single news outlet in the world, and as such it could do tremendous good by retracting and apologizing for its publications which fed into it.

This is the sort of thing a publication would do if it was really interested in truth, justice, and journalistic ethics. Is it what the people who run The Guardian will choose to do? I highly doubt it.

*  *  *

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Authored by John R. Lott Jr. & James Varney via RealClear Wire,

Violent crime is becoming common in Sweden, shocking residents of the famously placid Scandinavian nation, where horrific acts of violence have become “all too familiar,” according to Common Sense Media, part of a Swedish nonprofit organization.   

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

For over a decade there has been an open globalist obsession with the Chinese governmental model – A love affair, if you will. Many top proponents of global centralization including Henry Kissinger and George Soros have praised China in the past and hinted that the communist country is burgeoning into a major player within the New World Order. Soros expressed this exact sentiment way back in 2009, around the time that China began courting the IMF and issuing trillions in Yuan based treasury debt in order to join their global currency initiative.

Several years later, China was inducted into the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket. The CCP now avidly supports the creation of a new global currency system with the IMF in control.

This is a reality I have been writing about for many years: China does NOT stand in opposition to global centralization under the control of western oligarchs. All they want is a prominent seat at the table when the “Great Reset” kicks off and total centralization begins. But the above information only suggests an economic relationship between China and the globalists. Does the alliance go even further than that?

Recently, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum gave an interview to the Chinese government controlled CGTN at the APEC Summit. In that interview, Schwab praises China as a role model for many other nations. This might shock some people considering China’s economy is faltering, with their global exports plunging in 2022 and their housing market in shambles. This decline is in large part due to global stagflation, but also due to their insane “zero covid” policy which has kept the nation under pandemic lockdown for years.

Remember all those covid cultists who were cheering for China last year? Remember when they claimed that China was a perfect example on why lockdowns are necessary and proof that they work? Yeah, those people were morons.

China’s economy is now in freefall with their manufacturing base under extreme stress from the mandates. Furthermore, it would appear that the Chinese populace is finally fed up with the draconian conditions and are rising up in revolt.

In the video below, protests erupt at Foxconn’s flagship iPhone plant in China after workers marched out of the factory. They had been held there in quarantine against their will with poor working conditions and little food.

The Chinese government sent hazmat clad troops to put down the rebellion while stomping protesters into the ground. Take note and remember this video when you hear about Apple’s hostility to Elon Musk’s free speech policies on Twitter – Apple loves authoritarianism, as do all globalist run corporations.

China continues to terrorize the citizenry with secret police visits to vocal dissenters and fleets of drones hovering above city streets monitoring foot traffic and blaring propaganda messages. Some drones even spray unknown chemicals across entire city blocks. In the meantime, China has fully implemented digital vaccine passports systems tied to public venues and retail stores. You cannot function in a major Chinese city without an up-to-date vaccine passport or a negative covid test taken every couple of weeks.

All of these events and conditions are often treated as disconnected or coincidentally associated. No one is asking the right questions. The big question being WHY? Why is the Chinese government sabotaging its own economy with lockdowns and oppressing the population to the point of open revolt (a rarity among the normally subservient Chinese people). Why keep the lockdowns going when it is clear to the rest of the world that the pandemic is over and that the lockdowns and masks never worked to begin with?

I would ask CCP officials a simple question that many of us in America also asked our own government a over a year ago: If the vaccines work, why enforce mandates and lockdowns? If it’s because the vaccines don’t work, then why try to force the population to take the jab? Beyond that, if the masks and lockdowns work, then why is China facing yet another supposed covid infection wave?

Obviously the CCP does not care about the well being of the average Chinese citizen. There is no logic to anything they are doing, just as there was no logic to anything Biden, Fauci and the CDC were doing in the US. The difference is, Americans were able to force the globalists in the US to abandon their mandate agenda, likely because we are heavily armed and they realized too many of us were non-compliant. In China, there is no civilian militia equivalent.

The country was a dystopia before, now it is something different – It is an experiment in technocratic tyranny that is being taken to the extreme. China is willing to starve, arrest, beat and even kill people who they claim they are trying to protect from the virus.

It is no mistake that nearly every policy China is implementing is a direct copy of policies suggested by the WEF and institutions like the Imperial College of London back in 2020 at the start of the outbreak. The globalists argued that “we are not going back to normal” and that the public would have to sacrifice many of our freedoms in order to stop the pandemic. In reality, none of their policies were effective in stopping the spread, but they were very effective at suppressing the populace. And in the case of China, nothing did ever go back to normal.

The unspoken rationale, in my view, connects directly back to China’s long term relationship to the globalists and their desire to be a part of the New World Order, also referred to as the “multipolar world order”, the 4th Industrial Revolution, the Great Reset and a dozen other names. If you want to know the real globalist vision for the future, take a look at China today and then multiply the pain and suffering another hundred fold. China is a beta test.

Perhaps it’s a test to see what level of tyranny people are willing to endure. Maybe a test of the functionality of different surveillance systems and control mechanisms. Maybe a practice run for the inevitable riots and rebellion that would occur in numerous countries and the best way to deal with them. Globalists like Klaus Schwab are not only interest in China as an economic role model, he sees China as a societal role model for much of the west, with some tweaks here and there.

The problem for the establishment is that if there are visible examples of freedom despite covid, then other nations will start to question the necessity of their own lockdowns. Even the Chinese people are starting to fight back. They can’t implement their NWO one country at a time, they will have to oppress many countries at once.

As I have been saying for the past year to some of the more nihilistic people in the liberty movement who think all it lost, understand that you are lucky to be living in the US right now and you should be thankful for the millions of conservatives that actively and vocally refused to comply with the mandates and vaccines. They saved the country from greater tyranny. If the globalists had got what they really wanted, we would look a lot like China right now.

We hovered close to that black sun and danced with the devil, but we are not beaten.

As it stands, China continues to represent a model of authoritarian dreams; a research study in mass psychological torture. Far from being a counter-point to the globalists, it is actually a globalist work in progress. Watch what happens there closely, because the evils perpetrated there will eventually be attempted here at home.

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