Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 148

How Do We Escape the Panopticon?

VN Alexander

Now that tech billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (who backed J. D. Vance) have bought the free and fair election of President Donald Trump for us in the United States, we are in danger of becoming a more “efficient” AI-surveilled and -run country.

The experiment in democracy that is the United States has not been conducted properly ever since the commitment to privacy was abandoned with the rollout of the new communications system known as the Internet. Tech companies collect information on all our Internet activity. Allegedly, they use our data to better serve us—with targeted ads—assuming we are keen to trade our rights to privacy for the right to be advertised at more efficiently.

In truth, most citizens cherish the inalienable rights that are acknowledged in the U.S. Constitution. But those rights have been eroded away slowly and subtly over time. We need to backtrack a number of decades, find where we veered off the path, and get back on it.

The United State Postal Service (USPS) appears early and prominently in the Constitution as a means of secure communication necessary for a functioning democracy. Thus, the institution has been able withstand calls for its end in recent decades—much to the chagrin of real estate developers who would love to buy-up cheap some lovely old stone buildings. My beloved former post office in SoHo, Manhattan is now a fancy Apple store. In D.C., the Old Post Office and Clock Tower Building, owned by Trump at one point, is now the Waldorf Astoria. In this essay, I will argue that the trend of phasing out the USPS needs to be reversed.

When I ran for Congress in New York on the Libertarian line in 2020, I made decentralized government and expanding the role of the USPS central to my campaign. I realized that we can protect online privacy and free speech by recognizing the Internet as the new post road.

[…]

Why the Post Office is in the Constitution

Democracy in the U.S. has undergone an existential crisis, in large part due to the fact that no one has any privacy on the Internet and all of our scraped data is centrally controlled by a few actors. We are both censored and afraid to speak.

In the First Article, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution, the new government is charged with the duty “to establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Clearly, the framers foresaw problems with a purely privately-owned and -run communication system and they created the USPS to protect our rights. It is a simple straight-forward argument that Clause 7 should be interpreted to keep up with technological advances.

[…]

If the Internet is reframed as the new post road, then our online communications would be protected by the Mail Theft Statute, according to which it is illegal to intercept any mail that is addressed to someone else. The law also prohibits the willful obstruction of mail delivery and tampering with or destroying someone else’s mail. These laws might be applied to packets of digital information that would travel along the lines of a USPS Internet cable line as easily as to packets of hard mail traveling along roads.

In the 1800s, when the means of communication began to change drastically with new technologies, Samuel Morse argued that, because telegraphs are “another mode of accomplishing the principal object for which the mail is established, to wit: the rapid and regular transmission of intelligence,” it was “most natural to connect a telegraphic system with the Post Office Department.” Telegraph technology was first deployed with U.S. government funding. Morse’s government allies tried to install telegraph wires underground and that was expensive. It took too long. Private industry swooped in, hung wires on trees and slapped up poles, and got the job done swiftly and cheaply.

Now, just about every street in America-the-beautiful is marred by ugly telephone and electrical poles.

And the way for the construction of the panopticon was paved.

How the Panopticon Was Built

The Constitution says the federal government is not allowed to spy on us, which is why third-party private entities have slipped into this role on behalf of the government, according to a number of lawsuits that are making their ways through the courts, notably Kennedy v. Biden.

Since their inceptions, companies like Facebook and Google have received funding from the government to build and deploy the technology that sucks up our data. Allowing the awful chimera of public-private partnerships to control our communications has been our undoing. To note an important example, Palantir Technologies, founded by Peter Thiel, is a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. Palantir works on top of the infrastructure created by Alphabet and Meta and gathers online activity in order to profile every U.S. citizen. Palantir, which appears to have replaced DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program, is justified as part of an unconstitutional precrime effort, as Whitney Webb has reported. Clearly, there needs to be a separation of business and state akin to the separation of church and state to stop the crony capitalism that is morphing into fascism. Although Peter Thiel has claimed to be a Libertarian, his Palantir is providing the tools for a totalitarian corporatist government.

Meanwhile also Thiel’s PayPal Mafia confederate, Elon Musk has been made rich with cheap Federal Reserve fiat money to back his various 4IR-adjacent ventures. With his Department of Defense contracts to built satellite surveillance infrastructure (Palantir is also a Starlink client), he is poised to some day put regional Internet Service Providers out of business, leaving the entire communications system under the control (ostensibly) of one billionaire.

But what can we do? Private companies aren’t mandated by law to respect our privacy or our right to free speech. So we put up with it and check off the “agree to terms” box. Then we feebly call on Congress to “regulate” the tech companies, which Congress will be pleased to do, asking the tech companies themselves to write the regulations, which will only end up codifying how often and in what way companies can “legally” steal our information and continue to censor us.

The real solution is already in the Constitution: we just have to enforce it.

Certain Products/Services Are Vulnerable to Monopolization

Anti-trust regulation is not the solution.

In August 2023, a U.S. District Court ruled that Google is in violation of anti-trust laws. Similarly, we can say Meta, the parent company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAp, monopolizes a huge portion of private communications. If Google or its parent company Alphabet is broken up, spawning numerous baby googles, they will likely end up colluding with each other, regaining centralized control over our communications, while maintaining the illusion of competition. When Bell Atlantic, the northeast’s main telephone company, was trust-busted it wound up spawning Verizon, which simply gobbled up the smaller competitors. When anti-trust laws were used to break up Standard Oil, this resulted in enormous profits for the stockholders of the various new companies and did not reduce the power of the oil industry leaders.

As Henry George observed in the late 19th century, owning and controlling finite natural resources and public infrastructure is distinct from other kinds of business activities that can be well regulated by the free market. People have as much of a choice of Internet service, electricity service, and cell phone service providers as they have choice which roads, train tracks, bridges, and ports to use. Communication and transportation systems tend to be centralized by nature.

[…]

Funding and Control of Public Infrastructure

I like the US Postal System. It does not run on tax dollars. People who choose to use the Post Office pay for the service. If only all government services, like Social Security insurance, medicine, and primary education, operated on a voluntary pay-per-use basis.

As Stephen Zarlenga, founder of the American Monetary Institute, cogently argued, it is not necessary to collect taxes to fund public infrastructure. If US Treasury notes were created for the purpose of buying the cable Internet lines and maintenance equipment from the providers that currently hold the contracts with the local authorities, the new notes would be backed by the value of the infrastructure purchased. As citizens pay the USPS to use the Internet, the asset would be more economically advantageous than gold locked in a vault.

[…]

A government Internet service could be run as effectively as any private Internet service, if the employees were rewarded and punished based on the quality of their performances, as in any business. The Pendleton Act and the Civil Service Act of 1883 were passed to protect federal employees from being fired for partisan reasons. This has resulted in making it difficult to fire federal employees for any reason, allowing poor performers to stay on the job.

[…]

If the Internet cable lines could be maintained by the USPS, this would also solve the very serious problem of rural residents not having access to high-speed Internet because it is not profitable for private providers. The main point of having the USPS is making sure all citizens have equal access to a communication system.

The other point of the Post Office originally was to bring in revenue for the federal government. It’s rather quaint that the founders imagined the government would have to earn its keep rather steal money through taxation. Currently, U.S. cable companies enjoy a whopping 25% return on their investments, according to McKinsey Co. This includes delivery of TV, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, which is also derelict in its duty to prevent centralization of powers. The free market hasn’t been able to work its magic on this monopolized industry, which has some of the highest rates and poorest cable/Internet service in the developed world.

Today, delivery companies like UPS and FedEx are quite free to compete against the Post Office to deliver mail. Any delivery vehicle can use the roads, which are built and maintained by governments, but they have to obey the road rules. On a USPS Internet, different private companies could provide search engines, email readers, platforms, apps, and websites, like the cars that drive on the roads. But the information that is carried by those companies would be protected by the Constitution.

No embedded social media buttons. No third-party cookies. The provider you use would not be allowed to scan your email, listen in on your private conversations, record any of your activity across various websites or profile you. Your anonymity could be preserved. Platforms couldn’t sell your data or use it to train AI (which isn’t the marvel it’s purported to be). They would not be able to keep people who are subscribed to your feed from seeing your posts. They wouldn’t be able to rig your search results. Search engines wouldn’t be able to scan comments you’ve made on social media or in comments sections where the “intended recipients” are specifically limited to that forum. You would be able to delete your content at any time, and a copy of it could not be saved in their permanent file on you.

[…]

The New Public Square

YouTube is the new public square, according to comedian Jimmy Dore, who is not alone in making this argument. Discussing Candace Owen’s removal from the platform for speaking out against Zionism, Dore went further, saying that YouTube should be nationalized. I disagree with the idea of nationalizing web platforms (not just the lines), even as I sympathize with the motivation.

I liken YouTube to a private car driving on a public road and think it should be treated as such. But it is true that tax-payers have subsidized some of those Big Tech vehicles to such an extent that the public might have some claim to partial ownership. According to Kit Klarenberg, Google wouldn’t exist without funding from the CIA and the NSA. Facebook had similar support, reports Whitney Webb.

[…]

Via https://off-guardian.org/2024/12/19/how-do-we-escape-the-panopticon/

 

 

Autism, Made in the USA

By Richard Gale and Dr Gary Null

Over the past few decades, the dramatic increase in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), now diagnosed in 1 in every 36 children, has often been attributed to improved definitions for ASD and diagnostic tools. However, a closer look at government statistics reveals alarming trends in children’s health that go far beyond better diagnostics. Since the early 1990s, there have been staggering increases in several chronic conditions: ADHD rates have risen by 890 percent, autism diagnoses by 2,094 percent, bipolar disease in youth by 10,833 percent, and celiac disease by 1,011 percent.

[…]

Despite these concerning trends, our culture continues to elevate science as the ultimate authority on health and reality, often dismissing common sense, reason, and direct empirical observation. Ironically, physicians rely on patients to describe their symptoms—a testament to the importance of individual observations—while federal health agencies and influential organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics dismiss environmental factors in favor of subjective theories, such as genetic predispositions or chemical brain imbalances as the root causes for the majority of mental and behavioral disorders in children.

This reliance on ideology over empirical scrutiny extends to vaccine development, where standard double-blind placebo trials, the gold standard for FDA drug approval, are glaringly absent. Vaccines such as the hepatitis B shot for infants and the HPV vaccine Gardasil for adolescents have been approved with minimal scientific rigor, yet they are heavily promoted and, in many cases, mandated.

The media compounds the issue by amplifying the official narrative while systematically excluding dissenting voices.

[…]

Despite the dire state of children’s health and healthcare outcomes, no significant reform efforts have been made. There is an urgent need to reevaluate our priorities and address the systemic failures that have left children and families increasingly vulnerable in a broken medical system.

Every year, tens of millions of American children are vaccinated according to the vaccination schedule set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The current CDC schedule recommends over 27 vaccines by the time a child reaches two years of age, and up to six shots in a single visit. In good faith the majority of parents follow their physicians’ and the CDC’s assurances that vaccines are both safe and effective.  In order to protect the child and national population against disease, we must follow their recommendations.

[…]

Given that vaccines are mandatory for most children in public schools, it would seem reasonable they should be scientifically proven to be safe. However, in a careful analysis of many hundreds of articles in the peer-reviewed literature on toxicology and immunology, nowhere can we find evidence for these claims about vaccine safety being based upon a gold standard of clinical research: long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. What is glaringly absent is research examining the cumulative toxicological impact of the CDC vaccine schedule over a long period of time.

[…]

After taking an uncompromising look at the institutions and medical professionals claiming that vaccines are safe for our children, we find that just a brief review of our medical establishment reveals a corrupt network riddled with conflicts of interest and scandal, making it clear that we simply cannot trust our health officials on the issue of vaccine safety.

Federal health propaganda denies outright that vaccinations are a causative factor for the rise in severe childhood neurological disorders. However, the studies they base their belief are solely observational retrospective studies. Such studies categorically fail to meet any gold standard and are often criticized for being overly vulnerable to researcher bias and the use of confounding variables to intentionally skew results. Every major study cited by pro-vaccine advocates to argue against an autism-vaccine relationship is an observational or cohort study.

The increase in autism, starting in the late-1980s, was largely believed to be genetic — and this myth continues despite the serious biological gaps to prove that such causation is scientifically sound. Despite the CDC’s claims, the Institute of Medicine released a report stating that the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule has never been studied for safety. As far back as 1991, IOM has persistently urged the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct such studies.[1]

Do Vaccines Cause Autism? Vaccine Safety Continued and Profits Over Health

The argument against an autism-vaccine connection falls flat when we consider that the US government’s own Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has awarded families monetary restitution for children who became autistic following immunization. Three cases compensated by the VICP highlight a link between vaccines and autism in certain circumstances.

[…]

Beyond these cases, a study examining adjudicated cases in the VICP revealed that 83 children with autism were compensated for vaccine-related brain injuries. Most of these cases involved diagnosis of encephalopathy or seizure disorders accompanied by developmental regression and autistic symptoms. These cases challenge the federal health agencies public claims that no such connection has been recognized.[2]

For several decades we have been critiquing the scientific literature that both supports and cautions the CDC’s immunization schedule and the many vaccines and their toxic ingredients that children receive before reaching their sixth year.  For years mercury or thimerosal was the main culprit, and indeed the evidence for mercury’s contribution to the increase in ASD should no longer be debated. Despite thimerosal having been removed from most vaccines, aside from the influenza shots, the inclusion of aluminum as a vaccine adjuvant continues to be ubiquitous. Aluminum disrupts brain homeostasis by inducing oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic inflammation, posing significant risks to genetically susceptible children.

The National Library of Medicine lists over 3,000 references about aluminum’s toxicity to human biochemistry. Aluminum’s dangers, often found as alum or aluminum hydroxide in vaccines and food preparations, have been known since 1912, when the first director of the FDA, Dr. Harvey Wiley, later resigned in disgust over its commercial use in food canning; he was also among the first government officials to ever warn about tobacco’s cancer risks back in 1927.[3]

Aluminum compounds — either as aluminium hydroxide or aluminum phosphate — are the most common adjuvants found in vaccines, including the hepatitis A and B vaccines, DTP, Hib, Pneumococcus, and the HPV vaccine or Gardasil. JB Handley noted that back in the mid-1980s, a fully vaccinated child would have received 1,250 mcg of aluminum before turning 18 years of age. Today that same fully vaccinated child would be injected with over 4,900 mcg, a four-fold increase.[4]  And a child’s actual aluminum exposure is likely much greater because aluminum sulfate is used in the purification of municipal water.

[…]

Some of the research to discover aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines toxic levels and their adverse effects have found the following:

Aluminum inflicts strong neurotoxicity on primary neurons.[7]Aluminum-laced vaccines increase the aluminum levels in murine brain tissue leading to neurotoxicity.[8]Aluminum hydroxide, the most common form of adjuvant used in vaccines deposits mostly in the kidney, liver and brain.[9]Long term exposure to vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide (which is today an ingredient in almost all vaccines) results in macrophagic myofastitis lesions.[10]

Alarming health consequences of aluminum were reported in a 2011 study published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry led by Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic at the University of British Columbia. That study revealed that rates of ASD among children are greater in countries where children are exposed to the highest amounts of aluminum in vaccines. The authors also noted “the increase in exposure to Al [aluminum] adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD [autism spectrum disorder] prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades”. A later article by Dr. Tomljenovic, published in the journal Immunotherapy, discussed the neurotoxic effects of aluminum on the central nervous system. The study documents aluminum’s ability to trigger autoimmune and inflammatory responses, alter genetic expression and hence contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders.[11]

When Christopher Exely at Keele University analyzed brain tissue from children and teenagers diagnosed with ASD, he found consistently high levels of aluminum, with some of the highest concentrations recorded in human brain tissue. Aluminum was primarily detected inside inflammatory non-neuronal cells, such as microglia-like cells, across various brain regions, including the occipital and frontal lobes. These findings point directly to aluminum’s in ASD neuropathology in younger populations. Exley also systematically reviewed and analyzed 59 studies to assess the relationship between exposure to aluminum, cadmium and mercury and ASD. Significant associations were found, with aluminum and mercury levels in hair and urine positively linked to ASD. Again his findings underscore the aluminum’s neurotoxic potential impact on neurodevelopment. The study strongly advocates for reducing vaccine’s aluminum exposure among pregnant women and young children as a proactive measure to mitigate the increasing incidence of ASD.[12]

A University of Buffalo study further highlighted the urgent need to eliminate aluminum salts from vaccines due to their neurotoxic potential and possible association with ASD. The authors emphasize that replacing aluminum adjuvants in immunizations with safer alternatives should be prioritized as soon as possible to reduce long-term neurological damage and protect vulnerable children.[13]

In 2002, researchers at Utah State University conducted a serological study of elevated measles antibodies and myelin basic protein (MBP) autoantibodies from 125 autistic children and 92 children in a normal control group. MBP has been identified as playing a significant  role in the onset of autism. Ninety percent of the MMR antibody positive autistic children were also positive for MBP autoantibodies. The researchers concluded that “an inappropriate antibody response to MMR, specifically the measles component thereof, might be related to the pathogenesis of autism.

Despite the CDC’s consistent denial of an autism-vaccine relationship, researchers at Imperial College London examined the surge in ASD and speech impairment in the US over a six-year period. Their 2017 paper published in Metabolic Brain Disease identified a statistically significant link between higher vaccination rates and increased prevalence of these conditions. It found that a 1% increase in vaccination rates corresponded to 680 additional ASD cases thereby raising urgent concerns about vaccine components as potential environmental triggers for autism.[14]

Another disturbing case of government-industry knowledge about a vaccine-autism connection was a leaked 2011 document from GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers. Reported by VacTruth’s Christina England, the text admits the corporation had been aware of the autistic risks associated with its Infanrix vaccine, which combines diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, hepatitis B, inactivated polio and haemophilus influenza viruses. The report details adverse effects associated with autism, including encephalitis, developmental delays, altered states of consciousness, speech delays and other adverse reactions.[15]

The work of Dr. Roman Gherardi at the University of Paris has shown that when an aluminum adjuvant is injected in a mouse, the metal will find its way to the brain a year later. The significance of this discovery confirms the incidence of gradual ASD progression, and symptoms do not necessarily appear immediately after vaccination. Gherardi and his colleagues also discovered that the aluminum adjuvant remains in the tissues far longer than originally assumed. The Paris University study raises a serious concern over aluminum’s biopersistence, which Gherardi calls a “Trojan horse mechanism.” The adjuvant can lodge and accumulate in brain tissue for years, decades or perhaps a lifetime.[16] This raises a further concern about brain neuroinflammation caused by the buildup of aluminum plaque. Dr. Carlos Pardo-Villamizar at Johns Hopkins University published his paper “Neuroglial Activation and Neuroinflammation in the Brain Patterns of Patients with Autism.” His conclusions: autistic brains are permanently inflamed. This was the first independent study to actually look at the brains of people with autism.[17]

Even when the CDC’s own immunologist, Dr. William Thompson, whistle-blows and provides thousands of pages of scientific data and research proving a vaccine-autism connection, the matter is rapidly shoved under the table. In the case of Dr. Thompson’s release of confidential documents to a Congressional subcommittee, the CDC intentionally concealed its evidence that African American boys under 36 months had a higher risk of autism after receiving the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine or MMR.  The documents proved the CDC had previously known for years that neurological tics, which indicate brain disturbances, were associated with thimerosal-containing vaccines, notably the flu vaccine.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/autism-made-usa/5874947

Following Kuwait, Vietnam to De-Bank People Who Fail to Get Their Biometrics Scanned for Digital ID App

H P Lovingcraft

Bank accounts in Vietnam will have their online transactions halted and the transfer and withdraw of cash at ATMs blocked beginning January 1, 2025 if the account holder fails to register their biometrics (fingerprints and facial recognition) under regulations from the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and Vietnamese law. A similar move in Kuwait will de-bank those who fail to get fingerprinted by the start of the new year as well.

“From January 1, 2025, bank accounts that have not been reconciled or updated with biometrics will have their online transactions stopped. This is the reason why banks are simultaneously implementing programs to encourage customers to update their biometrics,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Updating biometric information and identification documents is now mandatory for customers based on important regulations of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and current laws. According to Decision 2345/QD-NHNN, SBV has required that from July 1, 2024, some types of online transactions of individual customers must be authenticated by biometric identification.”

The smartphone application is being expanded into what is described as a ‘super app’, a one-stop-shop for digital biometric identification, internet ID, medical ID and perhaps, in the future, a social credit score control grid.

“VNeID, short for Vietnam Electronic Identification, integrates various features across multiple sectors and is expected to become a national super application for digital transformation,” Tuoitre News said Saturday.

Importantly and perhaps alarmingly, the app was developed on the foundation of a vaccine passport during the Covid pandemic.

“Developed by the Ministry of Public Security’s National Center for Population Database in September 2019, VNeID, a mobile application, was built to check health and travel declarations amid the COVID-19 outbreaks,” Tuoitre News said Saturday.

There’s a carrot and stick approach to the move as well. While those who do not submit to biometric scans of their fingers and faces will be financially shut down, those who submitted their scans may earn financial rewards and prizes.

“…some banks have ‘rewarded’ customers who successfully update their biometrics. Specifically, MSB gives a 50.000 e-voucher to customers’ accounts after successfully updating from 4/12. This program applies to the list of customers who have not updated their biometrics as of 30/11. In total, there are 10.000 e-vouchers with a total value of up to 500 million VND for customers who do,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Techcombank also applies a program to give 50.000 Techcombank Rewards points to the first 6.000 customers who update their biometrics each week, until the end of December 31, 2024.”

Getting one’s biometrics scanned by certain dates even allows one the possibility of winning an iPhone, a device which, not surprisingly, can run the digital ID app the biometrics are linked to.

“VPBank also launched a gift program for customers who complete the biometric data update before January 23, 2025, with a total gift value of up to nearly 7 billion VND. Accordingly, each customer who successfully authenticates biometric data and updates new identification documents on both the VPBank app or at the VPBank transaction counter will receive a code to participate in the weekly lucky draw, the special gift is an iPhone 1 Promax worth 16 million VND/unit. The bank also gives a cashback e-voucher code worth 35 VND to all customers who successfully update biometrics and identification documents,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Agribank also implements a similar program when customers collect biometrics on the Agribank app will have the opportunity to receive iPhone 16 and many other gifts. BIDV decided to give away 130.000 VND (including 30.000 VND in transfer money and 100.000 VND in discount vouchers for movie watching, taxi calling, and shopping services on the BIDV app) if customers register and complete authentication. BIDV said that this program will be continuously deployed to December 29, 2024, applicable to the 10.000 customers who install biometrics the earliest each week.”

[…]

Via https://hellboundanddown.com/2024/12/17/following-kuwait-vietnam-to-de-bank-people-who-do-not-get-their-biometrics-scanned-for-digital-id-app/

IMF says lockdowns and restrictions even more severe than COVID are now needed to avoid a “climate disaster”

Dr Eddy Betterman

The only way to prevent a “climate disaster” from unfolding is for the governments of the world to impose lockdowns and other restrictions on humanity that dwarf those unleashed during the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “pandemic.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims that economy-crushing measures resulting in energy and food shortages, job losses and a total collapse of Western civilization are necessary to stop climate change.

What happened during COVID was just a test run for much worse “climate lockdowns” to come, according to the IMF. Scheduled disruptions that stop ordinary people, but not the elite, from living their lives are necessary to keep planetary temperatures stable, we are told.

“Under a ‘climate lockdown,’ governments would limit private vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling,” explained Mariana Mazzucato, an “agenda contributor” at the World Economic Forum (WEF), back in 2020.

“To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.”

A new normal forever

When the talking-heads at the IMF and the WEF started talking this way at the height of COVID, the general public started to get a bit concerned that the lockdowns and mask mandates for COVID would be extended beyond the “pandemic” into everyday life as part of a “new normal.”

We got that new normal, but the restrictions are still in limbo. It appears that one side, the globalist establishment, is pushing for full-scale global climate tyranny while the other, led by President-elect Donald Trump, appears to be dismantling the new normal.

Regardless, the IMF in a recent message issued a “call for global climate action” that far surpasses even the worst horrors of the “pandemic.” Tyrannizing the global population in this manner is how the IMF plans to maintain control amid a changing political and financial climate, which is what they are worried about losing.

Here is the propaganda video the IMF released earlier this month:

The global elite have about five years to achieve their drastic “net zero” ambitions. If they fail, the political climate will certainly shift away from them being in charge, which is what they are desperately trying to prevent from happening.

“To be clear, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the idea of the ‘climate cliff,’ primarily because there is no evidence of a causation relationship between carbon emissions and global warming,” reports explain. “In fact, there is no evidence that human industry has a warming effect on the climate whatsoever.”

“The real reason for climate controls and carbon taxes seems to have far more to do with wealth redistribution from developed nations over to developing nations. The agenda is about centralising the control of national wealth as well as individual liberties and private property. And the IMF, of course, would like to be one of the institutions at the helm of that wealth management empire.”

The climate tyranny agenda is centered on Western countries alone, just to be clear. Eastern countries will be conveniently exempt because what this is really all about is tearing down Western civilization and replacing it with something far worse.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/12/18/imf-severe-restrictions-needed-avoid-climate-disaster/

New Jersey residents suffering alarming symptoms after encounters with drones

Luke Andrews

Residents in New Jersey and the wider tri-state area claim they have become mysteriously ill after seeing drones in the sky.

After witnessing or reading about the devices, residents revealed how they started coughing, suffering from a blocked or runny nose or experienced puffy, watery eyes.

One woman in New Jersey said she became so sick it felt like she was ‘coughing up my lung’, while a second in New York City said her blocked sinuses must be because of the drones over Staten Island.

DailyMail.com heard from another New Jersey resident who said they had developed a stuffy nose and swollen runny eyes after the drones flew over their home.

But doctors told DailyMail.com after reviewing the symptoms that it was ‘extremely unlikely’ these sicknesses were linked to the drones.

They pointed out it was now the start of flu season and other illnesses like Covid, RSV and norovirus become more common around this time.

Dr Thomas Moore, an infectious diseases expert, said: ‘It is entertaining to try to blame sickness on the condensation trails of planes or drones, but the actual explanation is much more mundane.

‘It is respiratory virus season, and just being around humans at this time of year can cause you to get ill.’

Dr Bill Schaffner, also an infectious diseases expert, added: ‘This is not being beamed down from above but spread among ourselves, and it is not too late to get vaccinated.

Some people have been reporting falling ill after viewing the drones

In New Jersey, firefighters have been asked to wear hazmat suits if they need to handle a drone that has crashed

‘I don’t think we have to worry about a relationship between the drones and symptoms of people down below.

‘We are at the beginning of respiratory virus season, and a lot of people will start to develop coughing, sneezing and not feeling well just by co-incidence.’

People’s reports come as unexplained drone sightings have mounted throughout the Northeast, which have been spotted over military bases and airports in recent weeks.

The FBI, White House and officials from other agencies have said there is no evidence the drones pose a threat to public safety.

An official from the FBI added: ‘I think there has been a slight over-reaction.’

Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas added: ‘If there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly.’

In one case, a woman in the tri-state area posted about her illness on TikTok with the caption: ‘I’m not saying it has anything to do with the drones, but I’m also not NOT saying it has anything to do with the drones.’

In the video, she said: ‘Do you live in the tri-state area and are you sick like me?

‘My sickness started out as pains like everywhere, my entire body hurt, my hair hurt… and then it just kept morphing into different stages.

Swarms of drones have been spotted in the skies of New Jersey for weeks, sparking officials to call for a ‘limited state of emergency’

‘I had the water works dripping from my nose where I went through two boxes of tissues in as many days, where all I could do was kinda go from the couch to the bed and back again… and then we moved on to the stuffed up sinuses.’

In another video posted yesterday, Andrea — an artist in New York City’s Lower East Side — also linked her illness to the drones.

‘I’m sick with this sinus congestion because of the drones over New Jersey and Staten Island, it’s pretty close to here. I think that’s what it is.

‘Every night I am feeling worse and worse, and last night was like the worst night of them all, and it turns out the drones were shooting, they were shooting, I think that’s what caused my sinus infection.’

And in a third video that New Jersey resident Shawna posted, she said: ‘Anyone else really f****** sick and coughing up a lung right before Christmas and it didn’t start happening until the drones showed up?’

Illnesses tend to surge around this time of year because of a mixture of people staying indoors more to beat the cold and mixing more over the Christmas and New Year periods.

Latest surveillance suggests about 5.4 percent of Covid tests were detecting the virus in the week to December 7, up from the 3.9 percent a month ago.

The state’s governor Phil Murphy has said that the drones do not pose a risk to public safety

Hospitalizations for flu-like illness are also rising, up 14 percent to 3.3 percent of patient admissions in the week to December 7 compared to 2.9 percent two weeks beforehand according to data.

And there are also similar upticks being detected in cases of RSV and norovirus.

New Jersey is also one of the eight states in the US that are now recording ‘moderate’ levels of flu-like illness, a sign the state’s flu season is starting to take off.

Dr Moore added: ‘Just breathing can actually cause someone to exhale invisible droplets that can travel at least 18 inches from someone’s face, while speaking can cause the droplets to travel three feet.

‘These droplets can carry respiratory pathogens like viruses, and can then be breathed in by others causing an infection.

‘At the same time, the cold weather causes people to spend more time crowded together indoors, raising the likelihood that they will breathe in the droplets and get an infection.’

He said the symptoms people were describing sounded similar to the flu or another respiratory infection.

The drones first appeared over New Jersey’s skies more than a month ago, and are now spotted every night — occasionally more than 50 at any one time.

Biden has tasked the federal Government with establishing the cause of the apparent ‘swarms’, and has struggled to offer an explanation.

The aircraft have been spotted in coastal areas, around the Picatinny Arsenal and over Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14198585/new-jersey-drones-resident-mystery-health-symptoms.html

The Greek Colonies You Never Learned About in School

Introduction to Ancient Greek Colonies

History with Cy (2021)

Film Review

This film traces the history of Greek colonies founded between 750 and 550 BC. What they refer to as “colonies” ranged from pirate stations and trading outposts to genuine colonies founded by settllers from various Greek city-states. Most were in the western Mediterranean (the eastern Mediterranean was already colonized by more powerful empires, such as Persia), the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea.

The founding of Greek colonies followed an overpopulation crisis that developed throughout Greece in the 8th century BC. With aristocrats owning most of the arable land, there was no room for families to expand on a mountainous peninsula. Eventually all the city-states relied on overseas colonies for grain and other foodstuffs. Many younger Greeks preferred to emigrate to the colonies, where there was no aristocracy, and it was easy to acquire more land. In most cases, the colonies were far more prosperous than the city-states that founded them.

In 775 BC colonists from the city-states of Calcus and Iritea founded the first Greek colony was settled on Pithekoussai, an island off the west coast of Italy. These early settlers became extremely prosperous trading wine, metal products, pottery and ceramics to the Etruscans in northern Italy for tin, silver and iron (which they shipped back to Greece. However by 700 BC they abandoned Pithekoussai for Zancle (in Sicily), Neapolis (Naples) and Cumae (in southern Italy).

Between 730 and 700 BC a new Greek colony was founded every other year in Southern Italy, mainly to supply grain and other agricultural products for the Corinth, Calcus, Rhodes, Crete and other city-states that founded them. Sometimes the settlement process was peaceful and in some cases Greek settlers forcibly expelled the indigenous tribes they encountered. On the island of Sicily, there was also ongoing conflict with the Phoenicians (Carthaginians) who had settled western Sicily. There was also conflict between the Ionian and Dorian colonies in southern Italy and Sicily.

Cumae (in Italy) was one of the first Greek colonies, settled by colonists from Euboea to create an outpost to trade with the Etruscans in northern Italy. The settlers’ defeat of the Etruscans at Cumae in 474 BC prevent the Etruscans from expanding their own colonies into southern Italy (see The Extensive Trade Networks of the Ancient Etruscans).

The Greek colonies on the southern Spanish and French coast were mainly trading posts. Founded in 600 BC by citizens from the city-state of Volcae, Massalia (modern day Marseilles) was an exception. Although the indigenous tribes welcomed them, the Greeks did battle with the Phoenicians to claim the region. Nearby colonies of Nikai and Emporium supplied silver, iron, tin and lead to Massalia, which exported these raw materials to Greece. Massalia also traded wine to Celtic tribes in Gaul’s interior and eventually taught the Celts how to grow grapes.

The island of Thrace had 30 Greek colonies, founded between 720 and 700 BC, by settlers from Calcus and Corinth. The new residents forcibly displaced the indigenous population.

Cyrene (in modern day Libya) was founded in 630 BC by residents from Thera, which literally ran out of food. Each family was expected to send one son, on pain of death, to the new colony. It became one of the most prosperous Greek colonies, providing the mainland with grain, wool, oxides and silphium (a laxative)

The numerous Greek colonies along the Black Sea were an important source of precious metals, copper and tin.

 

Are Conditions Right for 9/11 Truth and Anti-War Activists to Finally Join Forces?

Craig McKee

They seem like they should be natural allies.

But somehow, the Anti-War and 9/11 Truth movements have not really been able to come together to advance their related causes.

Both agree that we’re being lied to on a regular basis about wars and foreign policy agendas, but not all in the two movements agree that 9/11 was one of those lies.

And that’s a shame given the number of wars justified by the 9/11 deception.

Given recent world events – particularly the dangerous willingness of the outgoing Biden administration to risk World War 3 by backing the launching of long-range missiles into Russia – one might wonder whether there is a new opportunity for the two movements to find common ground. The timing seems particularly good since there is now greater willingness on the part of political figures like Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, Russell Brand, and Jill Stein to openly question the 9/11 official story.

To figure out why the two movements haven’t worked together more closely, one must look at what happened in the years right after 9/11. Was it simply a lack of communication and understanding? Or was possible cooperation prevented by agents of the deep state?

Anti-war activist and 9/11 truther Phil Restino has been fighting on both fronts since he became an active opponent of the Iraq War in the early to mid 2000s. He particularly remembers being angered by George W. Bush’s flippant comments at the 2005 White House Correspondents’ Dinner about the government’s inability to produce the weapons of mass destruction that it had claimed were in Iraq. (Not only did Bush make a joke about looking for the WMDs under the podium, but politicians and journalists in attendance laughed along with him.)

“Kids were coming home in body bags every day, and they were laughing.” Restino says.

He talks about how he wanted to end the wars taking place after 9/11 even before he realized that 9/11 was a false flag.

“I remember watching the buildings coming down on 9/11 and thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,’” he explains. “But the power of the media and all the propaganda arms is just amazing. So that questioning went away, and the narrative was plugged in.”

But once he did see through the deception, he committed himself to exposing the truth about 9/11 and ending the wars that resulted.

“It was just common sense,” he says. “The wars are based on the 9/11 lie, and these are the 9/11 wars.”

Restino, who spent two years in the Army (although not in combat), approached the group Veterans For Peace about starting a new chapter in Central Florida, where he lives. Joining the chapter was famed veteran, whistleblower, and peace activist Col. Bob Bowman, who had headed up the government’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1970s.

US Mass Mobilizations: Wars and Financial Plunder

Bowman ended up protesting what the Reagan administration did with SDI in the 1980s, which led to him being attacked and ostracized by many of his military colleagues. He went on to become an active member of Veterans For Peace as well as working for 9/11 Truth until his death in 2013.

Restino explains that his idea in 2005 was to approach local Vietnam veterans about joining the new chapter, but that wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped.

“I thought if they had this information about how much of a lie this was, they would not allow what happened to them – being lied into that war – to happen to this generation.”

Unfortunately, he adds, many veterans likened questioning the war to “not supporting the troops who were in harms way.”

Restino points out that in the early years after 9/11, truthers and peace activists did find themselves allied to a greater degree than they were later. He recalls being part of a major Anti-War protest in Washington D.C. in 2005 that was attended by people like George Galloway, Cindy Sheehan, and Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman who also became a voice for 9/11 truth.

But as time went on, Restino noticed that the leadership of major peace groups like Veterans For Peace and CODEPINK was cool to the idea of pursuing challenges to the 9/11 story. Meanwhile, rank and file peace activists were being discouraged from questioning 9/11 by being branded as “conspiracy theorists.”

As to why the leaders of the Anti-War Movement were not interested in 9/11 Truth, Restino posits that the movement may well have been co-opted, pointing out that while the FBI’s COINTELPRO program was supposedly discontinued in 1971, efforts to infiltrate activist groups continue to this day.

“Those who pulled off 9/11 to justify the wars that followed had to know there would be some kind of anti-war movement,” Restino says. “To think that these guys didn’t have people in place in the 9/11 Truth and Anti-War movements is naïve at best.”

Other longtime peace activists – who are also active in 9/11 Truth – will suggest that infiltration of the peace movement has played a significant role in keeping the two factions from combining their efforts.

Longtime Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker, author of the essential book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11, says he remembers going to an Anti-War conference in Boston years ago, and he noted that 9/11 was obvious in its omission from the agenda.

“We know that agents of the state have long infiltrated the peace movement – and then the 9/11 Truth Movement, and that these agents’ orders would include stymying of mutual

Also, Cheryl Curtiss, who has participated in both movements (she and I are co-facilitators of the monthly 9/11 and Other Deep State Teleconference) says that the Anti-War Movement gained prominence after 9/11, particularly because the Bush administration falsely blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11, a charge that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The peace movement got really huge after 9/11,” she explains. “I mean, at one point there were something like 15 million people around the world protesting at the same time against the war in Iraq.”

Curtiss says that those in the peace movement knew that the justification given for the war was based on lies, but only some were prepared to also question 9/11.

It is obvious now, as it was to many in those first few years of the new millennium, that wars are almost always justified by lies and propaganda. Lies continue to be told about what happened on 9/11, just as they were to justify the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries.

Today, new lies are being added to justify new wars and new mass murder. It is essential that we have the courage to see through the kinds of deceptions that get us into wars if we ever want to break the pattern. The Anti-War and 9/11 Truth movements both understand the damage these lies do.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/conditions-911-truth-anti-war-activists/5875069

Israel ready to annex the West Bank, but why now?

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gives a speech, regarding the ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hamas, in front of the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem on June 3, 2024 [Saeed Qaq – Anadolu Agency]

by Dr Ramzy Baroud

Israel is getting ready to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The annexation will be a major step backwards on the road to Palestinian freedom and will likely serve as a catalyst for a new Palestinian uprising. Although annexation has been on the Israeli agenda for years, this time around a “great opportunity” — in the words of extreme far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — has presented itself and, from an Israeli point of view, cannot be missed.

“I hope we’ll have a great opportunity with the new US administration to create full normalisation [of the Israeli occupation],” he was quoted as saying by Israeli media. This is not the first time that Smotrich, along with other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between Donald Trump moving back into the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel’s nominal borders.

Two things make Israel’s far-right optimistic about Trump’s return to the Oval Office: the Israeli experience during Trump’s first term in office, when the US president allowed the occupation state to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights and occupied East Jerusalem; and Trump’s more recent statement in the run-up to the elections.

Israel is “so tiny” on the map, said Trump when addressing the pro-Israel group Stop Anti-Semitism at an event in August, asking aloud: “Is there any way of getting more?” The statement, absurd by any definition, prompted joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green light for further annexation of Palestinian land.

Israel’s aims for colonial expansion have also received a boost in more recent days.

Following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel immediately invaded large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate, less than 20 kilometres from the capital, Damascus. What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.

Israel occupied nearly 70 per cent of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law. That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem have been expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank. Like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the West Bank is also recognised as illegally occupied under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annex any Palestinian or Arab land. It is allowed to do so, however, due to US-Western support and international silence.

But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?

Aside from the “great opportunity” linked to Trump’s return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on 19 July, followed by the issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 21 November, no action was taken to actually hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions with direct US support.

The Democratic administration of Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at the very least, not at all critical.

With all of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility. In fact, Smotrich has already informed “workers of the Defence Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank” about his plans to “shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area,” the Times of Israel reported on 6 December.

While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank under international law, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.

Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant.

It was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereign state, which has never materialised. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?

Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians, but is unlikely to succeed.

Annexing the West Bank at a time when Palestine — in fact, the whole region — is in turmoil, is a recipe for perpetual war. From the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, that will be another “great opportunity”, as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

[…]

Via https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241216-israel-is-ready-to-annex-the-west-bank-but-why-now/

Peter Thiel Reveals How Scared Oligarchs Are Of The People

Caitlin Johnstone

Billionaire Peter Thiel had a fascinating televised moment the other day when asked by Piers Morgan what he thought about the public making a hero of the man suspected of murdering health insurance CEO Brian Thompson. The way he stumbled and stuttered when trying to answer the question gives a lot of insight into how terrified such people are of the public turning against them one day.

“And to those who think this shooter is a hero, because he did it because he said this healthcare executive is presiding over a healthcare system which kills thousands of Americans by denying them cover, what would you say to them?” Morgan asked.

Thiel paused for a long time, and then stuttered for a long time, and then eventually got out the words, “It’s, I don’t know what, what to say? I, I think I still think you have, you should try to make an argument. And I, I think this is, this is you should, you know, there may be things wrong with our health care system, but you have, you have to make an argument, and you have to try to find a way to convince people and and change, change it by by that, and this is, you know, this is not going to work.”

For those who don’t know, Thiel is a proper deep state oligarch who owes his vast fortune to his enmeshment within the US military-intelligence machine. His company Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. He backed Trump in 2016, and Vice President-Elect JD Vance was a protégé of his, so this man is thoroughly entrenched in the halls of power.

Thiel’s blustering response when asked what he thought about the public support we are seeing for the practice of assassinating health insurance CEOs reveals a lot about the kinds of things that keep men like Peter Thiel up at night.

Plutocrats like Thiel are constantly thinking about the fact that ordinary people vastly outnumber them and can kill them at any time. They think about it way more often than ordinary people do. It’s a point that they are acutely aware of at all times. It consumes their attention. They are always working on manipulating public consciousness to ensure that we don’t think as much as they do about how many more of us there are of them, and how we don’t have to put up with their domination of our society if we don’t want to.

As Michael Parenti once put it:

“I tell students when they say, ‘Oh they don’t care what we think. They ignore us’, and all that, and I say, ‘Oh no, no. That’s the only thing they care about you. The only thing they care about you is what you’re thinking. They don’t care if you eat correctly, they don’t care how your living conditions are, they don’t care that they’ve built up an inhuman and irrational traffic system that’s strangulating us and polluting our air, they don’t care about anything. The only thing about you they care about is what you’re thinking. In the morning, they start, ‘What’s going to be the story today? How do we manipulate, how do we control, how do we contain, how do we influence, how do we act upon what it is that they have in their minds?’”

Manipulating public consciousness is of existential importance to the ruling class, because no matter how many billions of dollars you amass, at the end of the day you’re still a soft skin sack of blood and bones like anybody else, and you share a society with huge numbers of people who can very easily hurt you if they want to. That’s why our minds are constantly being hammered with propaganda into accepting the status quo politics upon which our rulers have built their kingdoms.

But we’re seeing the propaganda losing its grip on our minds. Hollywood tried to train people to believe heroes look like soldiers and cops, or billionaires using their wealth to become Iron Man and Batman, and then the people chose as their hero a guy who was arrested for shooting a health insurance CEO. The other day a DJ threw up pictures of the suspected shooter Luigi Mangione during his concert and drew cheers from the crowd — and this was at a Disney-themed show.

So that’s why the empire managers are pushing to get their killer robots up and running as quickly as possible.

https://twitter.com/Antiwarcom/status/1868460498490196220

Israel is reportedly preparing to deploy dozens of weapons systems in the West Bank which are capable of firing deadly rounds without human intervention, meaning fully autonomous killing machines as opposed to remote-controlled. These killer robots have already been in use on Israel’s border with Gaza.

Various military robots have been tested in Gaza since Israel’s onslaught on the enclave began last year, and now they’re expanding the field testing of their murderbots to the West Bank as well. Of all the horrible things Israel and its western backers do to the Palestinians, among the most evil is the way they use them as lab rats to field test new weapons systems so the rest of the empire can learn how effective those systems are.

You may be sure that empire managers like Peter Thiel are watching these developments with keen interest. Militarized robots are the anti-guillotine. They’re the final solution to the ancient “there are a lot more of us than there are of our rulers” problem. Everyone with wealth and power has been eyeing their incremental rollout with intense interest while trying to play it cool.

So at this point we’re essentially looking at a race to see if the oligarchic empire can manufacture the necessary environment to allow the use of robotic security forces to lock their power in place forever before the masses get fed up with the increasing inequalities and abuses of the status quo and decide to force a better system into existence.

[…]

Via https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/17/peter-thiel-reveals-how-scared-oligarchs-are-of-the-people/

“The Timing Is Absolutely Terrible”: German Government Collapses Just One Week After French Implosion

Zero Hedge

Europe is disintegrating as legacy political regimes are collapsing over across the world.

Just one week after Marine Le Pen precipitated the collapse of the French government, on Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German Parliament on Monday, a defeat that effectively ended the increasingly unpopular government he has led since 2021 and ushered in elections early next year.

German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.

The collapse of the government just nine months before elections had been scheduled was an extraordinary moment for Germany, once Europe’s powerhouse but now a laughingstock at the mercy of both China and Russia. This will be only the fourth snap election in the 75 years since the modern state was founded, and it reflected a new era of more fractious and unstable politics in a country long known for durable coalitions built on plodding consensus.

The confidence vote, in the same month that the French government fell, deepens a crisis of leadership in Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges. The war in Ukraine has reached a pivotal moment, with Russia set to make decisive territorial gains and perhaps even push on toward Kiev, while president-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States. And now, Europe’s largest and second largest economies are in the hands of a caretaker governments, as the continent is sent reeling in a tailspin of chaos and revulsion to the status quo.

Scholz had little choice but to take the unusual step of calling for the confidence vote after his three-party coalition splintered in November, ending months of bitter internal squabbling and leaving him without a parliamentary majority to pass laws or a budget. And now, the political uncertainty could last for months. The elections are expected to be held on Feb. 23, but even if, as expected, his party does not finish first, Scholz would remain in place as a caretaker chancellor until weeks after that. He would step down only after a new coalition forms, which will probably not happen until April or May according to the NYT..

Seven parties will go into the campaign for Parliament with a realistic chance of gaining seats, and some on – especially on the right – are poised for very strong showings, according to polls.

The campaign is likely to be dominated by several issues that have roiled Europe in recent years. Germany and France, traditionally the two most influential countries in the European Union, are mired in debates over how best to revive their struggling economies, breach growing social divides, ease voter anxieties over immigration and buttress national defense.

Meanwhile, the establishment EU partners are looking warily toward Russia, where Putin has escalated threats about the use of nuclear weapons amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine, and where states like Germany have been providing Kiev with long-range missiles to be used deep inside Russia, in the process ensuring that relations with Moscow are abysmal for years to come.

And in typical social-democrat fashion, the leading European politicians have also been vexed by their deteriorating economic relationship with China, which has grown into a formidable competitor for many of their most important industries but has not become the booming consumer market for European products that leaders long envisioned. Instead, China has promptly become the world’s biggest producer of cars, making a mockery of what was once Germany’s most important and profitable industry, and no lies in tatters.

And they are bracing for the start of the new presidential term for Trump, who has threatened a trade war and the end of the United States’ commitment to the NATO alliance that has guaranteed Europe’s security for 75 years.

The combination of challenges has proved politically catastrophic for Europe’s legacy powers. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named his fourth prime minister in a year and is under mounting pressure to resign. Macron says he will stay in office and try to repair the deep fissures in his government over the 2025 budget. Scholz’s government faced similar budget challenges, along with growing concerns about how to rebuild the German military in the face of a belligerent Russia and Trump’s criticism of NATO.

As even the liberal NYT admits, it is an inopportune time for Germany to be plunged into a grueling winter election campaign and a political freeze that could last until a new government takes power.

The even more liberal Bloomberg News, made a stunning admission that “Germany’s Economy Is Unraveling Just as Europe Needs It Most”, and notes that “Germany is reaching a point of no return. Business leaders know it, the people in the country feel it, but politicians haven’t come up with answers.”

That has set Europe’s largest economy on a path of decline that threatens to become irreversible.

Following five years of stagnation, Germany’s economy is now 5% smaller than it would have been if the pre-pandemic growth trend had been maintained.

In short, Germany is heading straight for a historic economic and political collapse.

“The timing is absolutely terrible for the E.U. — basically, these multiple crises are hitting the E.U. at the worst possible time, because the bloc’s traditional engine is busy with itself,” Jana Puglierin, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, referring to Germany and France.

The war in Ukraine and the need to bolster Germany’s military — and what that will cost — will be among the urgent issues likely to dominate the election campaign, along with the floundering economy, failing infrastructure, immigration and the rise of the political extremes. Badly behind in the polls, Scholz is planning to highlight his caution when supplying Ukraine with weapons, especially sophisticated offensive hardware. Which, of course, is a U-turn to Germany’s legacy position which was literally the opposite, and took advantage of every opportunity to arm Zelensky and deposit more euros into his slush fund.

In any case, Scholz will have to fight hard to persuade voters to give him another chance. For now, it is Mr. Merz, a longtime figure on the political stage, who is widely expected to be the next chancellor, given his party’s strong lead in polls.

The three other mainstream parties are also led by well-known politicians, two of whom held important posts in the government: Christian Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, whose falling out with the chancellor helped precipitate the collapse of the coalition; and Robert Habeck, the economic minister and lead candidate for the left-leaning Greens.

But in Germany’s fractious political landscape, no single party is likely to win an outright majority, leading to potentially tricky negotiations to build a coalition more functional and durable than the one that failed.

That necessity probably means that opponents cannot be criticized too heavily because they are all potential coalition partners. But it may also present mainstream parties with difficult decisions about whom they chose to work with.

All of the mainstream parties have said they would refuse to partner with the conservative Alternative for Germany, parts of which are being monitored as a threat to the Constitution by the domestic security services. Nonetheless, the party, which is known as the AfD and is ascendant in the polls with 18 percent approval, continues to gain ground.

As noted at the time, in the closely watched state elections in September, both the AfD and a newer, extreme-left party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, had their best showings ever. But mainstream parties still consider them an anathema, making it hard to form governing coalitions in those states. The results could portend equally messy coalition haggling in Berlin after a national vote, though the political fringes are less popular nationally than they are in those eastern states.

But given the likely vote tally, many political watchers predict a return of the grand coalition of the center between the conservative CDU and the progressive Social Democratic Party, which governed Germany for 12 of the past 20 years.

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/political/timing-absolutely-terrible-german-government-collapses-just-one-week-after-french