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https://rumble.com/v464lai-how-to-be-the...-2024.html
2023 – The Year the World Saw the U.S. Emperor as Naked… and Grotesque
Strategic Culture Foundation
December 25, 2023
Seeing the naked truth is usually the first step before we can go on to realize the truth of beauty and decency. We might hope that the world is taking that first step.
American President Joe Biden likes to talk about “inflexion points” when he is lecturing about world affairs and the supposed superiority of the United States. This year is indeed an inflexion point.
It was the year that the entire world saw the truly hideous and criminal nature of U.S. power.
Washington’s fuelling of the futile conflict in Ukraine and the despicable slaughter in Gaza is a wake-up call for the entire world. The United States stands barefaced and grotesque as the primary purveyor of war. There can be no doubt about that. For many it is shocking, scandalous and frightening.
Tragically, it seems, for the world, every year’s end is an occasion to witness and lament conflicts, wars and suffering over the preceding 12 months. Often the causes of wars and suffering are seemingly unfathomable.
However, this year seems to be unique. The year ends with a horrendous massacre in Gaza that is unprecedented and perpetrated by Israel with the full support of the United States. The scale of deliberate mass killing in Gaza makes it a genocide. The fact that this abomination is occurring at Christmas time when the world is supposed to celebrate the divine birth of Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace – in the very place where he was born some 2,000 years ago makes the abomination all the more profane and damning.
What is particularly wretched is that the heinous destruction of children is happening in full view of the world. There is no remorse or pretence. It is full-blown premeditated murder done with cruelty and sickening impunity.
Virtually the whole world is horrified by the devastating, relentless violence and absolute violation of international law. The butchery by the Israeli regime cannot in any way be rationalized by the previous attack on Israel by Palestinian militants on October 7. Those killings by Hamas have been cynically used as a pretext for the subsequent and ongoing annihilation of Palestinian civilians.
This genocide could not happen without the crucial support of the United States for the Israeli regime. Financially, militarily and diplomatically, Washington is sponsoring the horror in Gaza as well as the Occupied West Bank.
This week saw the U.S. once again obstructing calls at the United Nations for a ceasefire and the urgent supply of humanitarian aid to more than two million people. The World Food Program has declared a catastrophic famine in the coastal enclave after more than 70 days of bombing and blockade by the Israeli regime. More than 20,000 people – mainly women and children – have been slaughtered with up to 7,000 more missing, presumably dead. Israeli troops are carrying out mass executions of terrified and traumatized human beings, according to UN rights monitors.
The United States is arming Israel to the hilt and enabling it. U.S. President Joe Biden has pointedly refused to join international demands for a ceasefire. The United Nations has voted by an overwhelming majority for a cessation of the violence. Washington has repeatedly rejected the world’s pleas because the Biden administration is obscenely amplifying Israeli lies and distortions. “Unwavering, unshakable support” is how the White House arrogantly boasts about it without a hint of shame that it is self-indicting.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions have been flown to Israel to carry out “indiscriminate bombing” (Biden’s own admission). One-tonne bunker-buster bombs have been dropped deliberately on refugee camps and hospitals. And still, the Pentagon shamelessly refuses to impose any red lines on the use of its munitions.
This genocide has Israeli fingers on the triggers but it is ultimately an American-sponsored genocide. Based on Nuremberg principles, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu would be both in the dock, accompanied by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin and their counterparts in Tel Aviv.
If there were previous international doubts about Washington’s systematic criminality, the whole world knows for certain now.
Significantly, too, American citizens are also repulsed by the barbarity and the fact that their government is an accomplice in a historic crime against humanity. Polls show that Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents ever, and his culpability for the genocide in Gaza is a primary reason for the widespread disgust, especially among younger Americans.
As things stand, there is a fair chance that 81-year-old incumbent Democrat will lose the presidential election in 2024 – less than 11 months away. Not that any of the Republican contenders are qualitatively better. American politics are in a crisis of chaos.
But this is not just about Biden or other individual U.S. politicians. The United States government and much of the corporate-controlled media stand full square behind Israel’s crimes. That has always been the case since the Israeli state was formed in 1948 through Washington’s skulduggery at the newly established United Nations, together with the old colonial power, Britain – the author of the infamous and treacherous Balfour Declaration that instigated Zionist dispossession of the indigenous people in the Holy Land, or what London called its Palestinian Mandate.
Decades of duplicity and dissembling as a peace broker in the Middle East have been blown away by the horrendous massacre that has culminated at the end of 2023. Israel is carrying out a Final Solution that is comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. The Zionist regime has cynically used the Holocaust against Jews as a cover for its genocide against Palestinians. And many decent Jews around the world, including Holocaust survivors, are rightly mortified by the depraved association exploited by the Zionist regime.
What is happening in Gaza may be seen as a shocking revelation for the world of historic proportions. It is an eye-opener of the violence and lawlessness that the U.S. emperor has been systematically engaged in since it became the dominant world power almost a century ago. Following the Second World War and the defeat of European fascism – largely by the Soviet Union – the United States has taken up the fascist mantle, albeit unspoken and disguised with pretensions claims of democratic virtue. No other nation has waged as many wars and conflicts over the past eight decades as the U.S. The death toll from American imperialism runs to tens of millions of people with victims on every continent.
The conflict that erupted in Ukraine in February 2022 is another manifestation of Washington’s imperialist machinations. That war is approaching its third year and shows no sign of ending because the U.S. continues to weaponize the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, a regime that Washington and its European NATO allies installed in 2014 through a coup d’état. The hostilities in Ukraine – the biggest in Europe since the Second World War – were fomented by the United States as a proxy war to defeat Russia. The war could have been avoided if the U.S. and its European vassals had negotiated a diplomatic solution to NATO’s expansionist threat to Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not want a war in Ukraine. Respected American commentators like John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs and Scott Ritter have all confirmed with extensive analysis that Washington and its European allies are primarily responsible for creating the conflict – one that has cost the lives of as many as 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers and the displacement of 10 million civilians across Europe. Nearly $200 billion in Western public money has been wasted so far. Biden and the European Union want to donate another $100 billion to prolong this futile war.
America’s wars were always officially rationalized with some seeming plausible cause or mission. In the early decades of the Cold War, Washington claimed to be defending the “Free World” against Communist aggression in Korea, Vietnam, Africa and Latin America. When the Cold War supposedly ended in 1990-91 after the collapse of the Soviet Union due to its internal political problems, we then saw a spate of U.S. wars around the world against drugs, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and – most absurdly – defense of human rights.
The latest war in Ukraine is purportedly to defend democracy and sovereignty (of a Nazi Waffen SS-adulating regime in Kiev installed by the CIA!).
Nonetheless, the genocide in Gaza is the culmination, the final act. This is where all the history of U.S. crimes and fraudulence as a “noble exceptional democratic leader” finally comes unstuck.
It is an infernal climax for a global power, arguably the world’s first and last imperialist global hegemon. The whole of humanity can now see that all the American rhetoric and vanity is nothing but an ugly lie. The emperor is naked in all his crimes. The blood of children on his hands, his mouth drooling with lies. It was always so, but now universally evident.
One might ask, where do we go from here? Despite the abominable cruelty, suffering and misery, one can still hope that humanity will eventually find a way to live in peaceful coexistence. By respecting all those who abide by international law and basic moral precepts. Arguably, most of humanity is willing and capable of living in peace.
But to achieve that peace there must be no illusions and lies. There must be accountability and genuine atonement.
U.S. imperial power is damned. There’s no going back or reform. The capitalist economic system – evolved as oligarchic fascism and its two-party puppet show – driving imperialist barbarism must be called out and overturned. Biden is doomed, and Trump and so on are just more false prophets.
Seeing the naked truth is usually the first step before we can go on to realize the truth of beauty and decency. We might hope – for the sake of peace and ending much of the suffering – that the world is taking that first step.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/no_a...grotesque/
Break the Cycle: In 2024, Say No to the Government’s Cruelty, Brutality and Abuse
By John & Nisha Whitehead
December 27, 2023
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”—Edmund Burke
Folks, it’s time to break the cycle of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government for way too long.
Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2023.
The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
The president became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.
The cost of endless wars drove the nation deeper into debt. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense.
The courts failed to uphold justice. Time and time again, the Supreme Court failed to right the wrongs being meted out by the American police state. A review of critical court rulings over the past decade or so, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans became sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans were made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world. The Department of Homeland Security, which has led the charge to create a Surveillance State, has continued to deploy mandatory facial recognition scans at airports and gather biometric data on American travelers. Police were gifted with new surveillance gadgets. The Corporate State tapped into our computer keyboards, cameras, cell phones and smart devices in order to better target us for advertising. Social media giants such as Facebook granted secret requests by the government and its agents for access to users’ accounts. And our private data—methodically collected and stored with or without our say-so—was repeatedly compromised and breached.
Mass shootings claimed more lives. Mass shootings have taken place at churches, in nightclubs, on college campuses, on military bases, in elementary schools, in government offices, and at concerts. In almost every instance, you can connect the dots back to the military-industrial complex, which continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.
The rich got richer, and the poor went to jail. Not content to expand the police state’s power to search, strip, seize, raid, steal from, arrest and jail Americans for any infraction, no matter how insignificant, the courts continued their practice of jailing individuals who are unable to pay the hefty fines imposed by the American police state. These debtors’ prisons play right into the hands of those who make a profit by jailing Americans. This is no longer a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is fast becoming a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations,” and its rise to power is predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a debtors’ prison guarded by a phalanx of politicians, bureaucrats and militarized police with no hope of parole and no chance for escape.
“Show your papers” incidents skyrocketed. We are not supposed to be living in a “show me your papers” society. Despite this, the U.S. government has introduced measures allowing police and other law enforcement officials to stop individuals (citizens and noncitizens alike), demand they identify themselves, and subject them to patdowns, warrantless searches, and interrogations.
Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we were only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—allowed. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.
Police became even more militarized and weaponized. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies continued to acquire weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.
Schools turned into prisons. So-called school “safety” policies, which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers, turned schools into prisons and young people into prisoners.
The government waged a renewed war on private property. The battle to protect our private property has become the final constitutional frontier, the last holdout against our freedoms being usurped. We no longer have any real property rights. That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut…none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp. At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back. Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.).
The plight of the nation’s homeless worsened. In communities across the country, legislators adopted a variety of methods (parking meters, zoning regulations, tickets, and even robots) to discourage the homeless from squatting, loitering and panhandling. One of the most common—and least discussed—practices: homeless relocation programs that bus the homeless outside city limits.
The government waged war on military veterans. The government has done a pitiful job of respecting the freedoms of military veterans and caring for their needs once out of uniform. The plight of veterans today is America’s badge of shame, with large numbers of veterans impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices, and increasingly treated like criminals— targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights—for daring to speak out against government misconduct.
The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government was overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. When in doubt, follow the money trail. It always points the way.
The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if freedom is to survive at all, “we the people” must refuse to allow the government’s abusive behavior to be our new normal.
There is nothing normal about egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, or pay-to-play politicians.
Let’s not take the mistakes, carnage, toxicity and abuse of this past year into 2024.
As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/no_a...and-abuse/
This Year, Americans Have Become Hungrier, Lonelier And More Desperate
By Michael Snyder
December 27, 2023
The ominous trends that we see all around us are taking us somewhere. Needless to say, 2023 was not a good year for our country. Hunger and homelessness have been absolutely exploding, the suicide rate just continues to go even higher, and there is chaos in the streets on an almost nightly basis. It is in this environment that the election of 2024 will happen. I expect election season to add an additional level of strain to our society, and I don’t think that our society will be able to handle it. We are headed for a nightmare, and at this point everyone should be able to see that.
When conditions deteriorate, it is often those at the bottom of the economic food chain that feel it first.
And right now food banks all over the nation are dealing with a tsunami of hunger…
Food bank leaders from all corners of the country tell USA TODAY their neighborhood pantries are serving more people while using less resources, as economic pressures continue to ravage the budgets of low-income Americans and service providers alike.
Since pandemic-era boosts to government food aid ended earlier this year in many states, families are turning to food banks to close a gap in need that feels like it has no end in sight.
Susannah Morgan, the president of Oregon Food Bank, says that she is literally witnessing “the worst rate of hunger in my career”…
“This is the worst rate of hunger in my career,” said Morgan, who has worked at food banks in Boston, San Francisco and Anchorage, Alaska. “It’s so large, it’s hard to wrap your head around.”
I don’t know what I have to do to convince some people that things really are this bad.
I keep sharing fact after fact in my articles, but some people out there are just not convinced.
One out of every five children in the U.S. does not have enough food to eat, but the reality of the suffering that is now taking place just isn’t sinking in for many of those that are still living the high life.
Meanwhile, homelessness in the U.S. is increasing at the fastest rate ever recorded…
The United States experienced a dramatic 12 percent increase in homelessness as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.
About 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness during the January snapshot. That’s the highest number since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007 to count the homeless population.
There are many out there that feel that such people need to “get a job” or “work harder”, but the truth is that most Americans are living on the verge of economic disaster because most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
At the same time, Americans continue to get even lonelier.
According to USA Today, “Americans are lonely and it’s killing them”, and at this point things are so bad that this crisis is being called “a new epidemic”…
America has a new epidemic. It can’t be treated using traditional therapies even though it has debilitating and even deadly consequences.
The problem seeping in at the corners of our communities is loneliness and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is hoping to generate awareness and offer remedies before it claims more lives.
“Most of us probably think of loneliness as just a bad feeling,” he told USA TODAY. “It turns out that loneliness has far greater implications for our health when we struggle with a sense of social disconnection, being lonely or isolated.”
It is especially bad during this time of the year.
There are so many people out there that are deeply, deeply hurting because they are so lonely.
They are trying their best to face a world that has gone completely mad, but that can be really difficult to do when you don’t have anyone to lean on for support.
Speaking of a world gone mad, retail theft has absolutely skyrocketed in many of our largest cities since 2019…
Crime-ridden New York City has seen the biggest impact with a 64 percent increase in retail theft, followed by Los Angeles with a 61 percent jump and Virginia Beach, Virginia, which has seen a 44 percent rise.
Each month, more Americans are descending into poverty and more Americans are turning to crime.
And it certainly doesn’t help that vast hordes of illegal immigrants are constantly being added to the mix.
Chaos in the streets has become an almost constant state of affairs in this country, and this year in Oakland there was even rioting on Christmas Eve.
Of course our leaders continue to exist in a bubble where none of these problems constitutes a serious crisis.
To them, everything must be just fine because they are doing such a wonderful job.
When he was recently confronted about the reality of the economic crisis that we are now facing, Joe Biden bluntly told the press to “start reporting it the right way”…
President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation.
In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden expressed confidence in the economy and ripped the reporters for the way it has been portrayed.
“All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way,” Biden said when asked about his economic outlook for 2024, according to a transcript released Sunday by the White House.
He wants the press to continue to spin things in a way that will make him look good as they always have done in the past.
But we have reached a stage where all of the charades are finally crumbling.
Conditions are bad now, and they are going to get even worse in 2024.
So brace yourself for what is ahead, because we are going to experience so much chaos during the year that is in front of us.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/mich...desperate/
What Really Happened in 2023 and What Comes Next
By Doug Casey
International Man
December 29, 2023
International Man: As we approach the end of the year, let’s take a step back, look at the Big Picture, and put 2023 into perspective so we can better understand what may come next.
Significant financial, economic, political, cultural, and geopolitical developments occurred in 2023.
On the cultural front, 2023 may be the year that the tide started to shift against the woke insanity.
BlackRock’s Fink dropped ESG. Woke movies continue to bomb at theaters. Bud Light, Target, and Disney continue to feel the pain of deliberately alienating their customer base.
What’s your take on the cultural developments in 2023?
Doug Casey: There are always reactions to major trends. These things are worth noting, but considering the virulence of the woke movement, the reaction has been tepid. There’s always a rearguard fighting for things as they are. And that’s wonderful because the Wokesters want to overturn the entire culture much the same way as the Jacobins overturned it in revolutionary France, the Bolsheviks overturned the culture in Russia, the Red Guards in China, or Pol Pot did in Cambodia.
The Wokesters are potentially just as dangerous because their way of thinking is everywhere in the West. They’re similar to the movements I’ve just mentioned in that they’re stridently against free speech, free thought, free markets, tradition, and limited government—nothing new there. But they’ve weaponized gender and race as well. They’re virulent, humorless, and puritanical. They see themselves as the wave of the future, but they’ve only repackaged the notions of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.
My view is that the Wokesters hate humanity and hate themselves. They’re dishonest, arrogant, and entitled. Look at the current scandal involving the diversity-hire presidents at Harvard, Penn, and MIT. They’re shameful embarrassments. The fact their boards of trustees installed these fools shows how deep the rot goes.
The Woke have ingrained psychological/spiritual aberrations. They don’t just control academia, finance, entertainment, and the media. They also dominate the State’s apparatus. Which means they basically have the law on their side.
Perhaps ESG is being de-emphasized by Blackrock, the new vampire squid, but that’s only because they fear losing money more than they value their beliefs. The more pernicious DEI remains a major cultural trend.
Where will it end?
Wokism is more than a passing fad. There’s a good chance it will end with a violent confrontation between people who have culturally conservative views and those who want to destroy Western Civilization and upset the nature of society as we know it.
International Man: 2023 was a year of major geopolitical developments.
It became evident to even the mainstream media that the war in the Ukraine was not going well for NATO.
There was also the Hamas attack and the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Azerbaijan defeated Armenia to reclaim a long-disputed territory.
Saudi Arabia welcomed Syria back into the Arab League, ended the war in Yemen, restored diplomatic relations with Iran, joined the BRICS countries, and expanded its economic ties with China.
These are just a few of the most prominent geopolitical events of 2023.
What do you make of the geopolitical situation and where things are heading?
Doug Casey: The end of US hegemony over the world in all areas is becoming obvious. The world resents being bullied and controlled by Washington, DC.
They realize that the US government is bankrupt and is living entirely on printed money. Its military is bloated and more expensive than the US can afford.
While it’s bloated, it’s also being gutted, unable to recruit new soldiers and sailors. It’s easy to see why that’s the case. They see pointless wars fomented everywhere. The type of people who traditionally join the military are disgusted by the woke memes circulating through the services. White males, who have always been the backbone of the military, are appalled at being actively discriminated against.
US hegemony is ending financially, economically, and militarily.
It’s obvious when you see that Biden and Harris, two utterly incompetent, ineffectual fools, are the nominal heads of the government. Not to mention all the degraded and psychologically damaged people in the cabinet. Of course, nobody has any respect for the US anymore.
The US hegemony of the last hundred years is on its way out. And as the old order changes, there are going to be upsets. The US will leave a vacuum that will be filled by other forces.
In fact, the US Government is the biggest danger to the world today. It’s not providing order. By sticking its nose into everyone else’s business everywhere, it’s promoting chaos. Its 800+ bases around the world are provocations. The carrier groups that it has wandering around are sitting ducks with today’s technology. The US is the main source of risk in the world, not safety.
US military spending is really just corporate welfare for the five big “defense” corporations, which build weapons suited for fighting the last war or maybe the war before the last war. For instance, a missile frigate or destroyer guarding a carrier might carry 100 vertically-launched anti-aircraft missiles at $2 million each. Each missile might succeed in shooting down a $10,000 drone. But what happens when the enemy launches 200 drones at once? The chances are the US loses a $2 billion destroyer, if not a carrier.
The US government is finding that they’re not only disliked but disrespected by countries and people all over the world. They’re increasingly viewed as a paper tiger. Or the Wizard of Oz. When they lose the fear factor, it’s game over.
International Man: In 2023, the US continued the trend of more political polarization.
What were the most consequential events on the US political front, and what do you think comes next?
Doug Casey: Let me reemphasize that the Jacobins who control Washington, DC, have the same psychological makeup as past revolutionaries I’ve mentioned. These people are incapable of changing their minds or reforming. I think they’ll do absolutely anything they can to retain power.
Meanwhile, traditional Americans in red states see that Trump is being railroaded with lawfare to derail his campaign. They’re angrier than ever, justifiably. The red people and the blue people really hate each other at this point—and can’t talk to each other.
The country has been completely demoralized as traditional values have been washed away. It’s now very unstable.
The coming election, should we actually have one, will be not just a political but a cultural contest. Culture wars are especially dangerous in the midst of a financial collapse and economic collapse.
International Man: The projected annual interest expense on the federal debt hit $1 trillion for the first time in 2023.
Americans are still paying for the rampant currency debasement during the Covid hysteria as the price of groceries, insurance, rent, and most other things continued to rise in 2023.
It looks like a recession is on the horizon.
What are your thoughts on economic developments in 2023 and your outlook for the months ahead?
Doug Casey: As an amateur student of history, it seems to me that the US has been moving away from the founding principles that made it unique for over a hundred years. I’m 77. I’ve watched it happen firsthand for much of that time.
The trend has been accelerating. The country is heading towards a massive crisis because it’s lost its philosophical footing. The result is going to be a really serious depression. I call it the Greater Depression.
The spread between the haves who live in multi-million dollar houses and the have-nots who live in tents isn’t new. After all, Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” What’s new is that the middle class is being impoverished. What’s left of the middle class is deeply in debt—student debt, credit card debt, car loan debt, mortgage debt. And if they’re not lucky enough to have a house with mortgage debt, they’re renting. And rents have gone up so rapidly that if the average guy has an unforeseen $500 expense, he can’t pay it.
That augurs poorly for consumption. It’s said, idiotically, that the American economy rests on consumption. It’s idiotic because it should be said that it rests on production. But I’m not sure the US produces that much anymore. Most of the people who “work” basically sit at desks and shuffle papers. Few actively create real wealth.
On top of that, the country is vastly over-financialized.
The bond market has already largely collapsed, but it can get a lot worse as interest rates head back up to the levels that they were in the early 1980s and beyond.
Much lower stock prices are in the cards, both because of high interest rates and because people won’t be consuming such massive quantities of corporate produce.
The real estate market rests on a foundation of debt. It can easily go bust as interest rates go up. We’re already seeing this with office buildings across the country. And, of course, these office buildings are financed by banks. Banks are going to see a lot of defaults on loans they’ve made.
Meanwhile, bank capital invested in bonds has eroded because bond prices fall in proportion to the degree rise in interest rates, which have gone from close to zero to 5% or 6%. If banks had to mark their loans and capital investments to the market, most would already be bankrupt.
Can the government paper all these things over by printing yet more money? I suppose. But at some point very soon, the dollar will lose value very rapidly; it will be treated like a hot potato. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place.
International Man: This year, we saw the price of gold hit a record high, uranium reached $81.25 per pound, and Bitcoin more than doubled as it entered a new bull market. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up around 21% year to date as of writing.
What are your thoughts on what happened in the financial markets in 2023 and what could come next?
Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the US central bank, the Fed, has a gigantic amount of influence over the markets. They can employ “quantitative easing,” which means printing money—and “quantitative tightening,” which means decreasing the money and artificially raising interest rates.
They have many hundreds of Ph.D. economists on staff, but all these people operate on phony Keynesian theories of the way the world works. The consequences of building an economic system on a foundation of paper money and gigantic amounts of debt are potentially catastrophic.
At this point, the economy’s on the razor edge. If they push the print button and hold it down too long, we could go into a runaway inflation. Or, to tamp down inflation, they might raise interest rates and contract the money supply, which might set off a 1929-style credit collapse.
We’re caught between Scylla and Charybdis at this point. And I don’t believe it’s a question of a soft landing or a hard landing. It’s a question of how devastating the crash landing will be.
I hope they can wring one more cycle out of all this because I personally prefer good times to bad times, even if they’re artificial good times, because the bad times are going to be very real.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/doug...omes-next/
2024: Navigating the Storm
By Helena Glass
December 30, 2023
John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY
2024 is shaping up to be about Iran and China. Ukraine is dead. Israel has extended its bombing campaign to include Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. All while claiming Iran is the instigator of everything – sort of like a Trump did it mantra. Israel has been bombing Palestine for 70 years. Each time, the motive is the same – to displace as many as possible so as to reduce the population – a Bill Gates agenda. There are now 7 million Palestinian refugees across the globe out of a population of just 14.3 million. Lebanon alone houses 5 million.
Still, good ole hawk Lindsey Graham, is calling for the US to bomb Iran. Surely that will solve the problem… Of course he wanted us to bomb Russia and will probably call for us to bomb China should Taiwan come to the forefront before the US is ready to relinquish control. Putting all our ducks in a row, the only thing keeping us tied to Taiwan is ‘chips’. In addition to the Ohio Intel plant that will be the largest chip manufacturer in the world when it comes onboard in 2025, Intel has announced a new plant to be built in – Israel at a cost of $25 billion. The advent of AI is the main driver. And obviously, Israel is ready onboard for Intel in the midst of a “WAR”?
Nvidia (Pelosi owned stock) hit a valuation of $1 trillion this week as the chip revolution in AI will drive and reshape silicon valley. One product of Nvidia dubbed H100 GPU packs 80 billion transistors and sells for $30,000. Chips are used for storage, cloud computing, games, graphics, crypto mining, computers, electric grids, cars, etc… Every piece of technology is now completely reliant on ‘chips’.
Taiwan filled the void and will continue to do so until we create our alternative, at which point the US won’t give a fark if China reabsorbs the tiny country off its own shore. It’s all money.
What would we gain in reigniting a Middle East War with Iran central? Nothing of value – just more military spending to boost weapon supplies and sales back to the Middle East. While our dear traitor, Slava Ukraine Kinzinger, justifies the billions of funding for Ukraine by relaying the obvious – the money is actually spent to revitalize US weapons stockpiles while we send Ukraine our broken and obsolete – US Taxpayers actually give money to the government to give to the Military Industrial Complex – so they can build weapons to sell to other countries for a profit.
Taxpayers are thus subsidizing profits for private companies – without gaining from the sales… A Ponzi scam at its height. Not much different than the fact that US Taxpayer funds are allocated to Soros NGO’s which pay NO Taxes – so that Soros can bring in illegal immigrants and pay for riots. Lovely.
When Rand Paul suggests that America needs a flat tax, I have to interject – would I want my accountant to surgically remove my tonsils? I think NOT!
So, here is my 10 point RESET: 1. A 40% pay reduction for every member in Congress. 2. Each Congressional member is allocated 1 aid with a salary pegged to GDP PP. 3. ALL NGO’s are taxable at a flat rate of 25%. 4. Reduce number of Federal government agencies to ten. Establish a fixed budget per agency that can only increase by 3% per year maximum. 5. Eliminate all national security subset organizations including CSIS, NED, CIA, NSA, etc… 6. Use the National Guard on a rotation basis to cover our borders and natural disasters. 7. Return the Military to its core – no bases outside of the US. Rehab every usable base in the US to meet 3rd level criteria. 8. Each state shall have one governor and zero senators. 9. Before troops can be sent to instigate a war anywhere – a vote by The People must be made. 10. Eliminate all subsidies, all sanctions, and all pensions – everyone is on the same playing field.
When Soros declared that the last two countries that would fall by his hand would be America and Russia. When the globalization agenda picked up steam and suddenly we lost track of everything. Soros set about to achieve his Agenda. He tried. Diligently so. But he lost Russia and he is precipitously close to losing the US. Only due to one miscalculation. Social Media. His brain didn’t wrap around that particular phenomena and it will cost him the entire Gamut. And he hasn’t the Power to undo what is known. His solution? Pretend it never happened…. Pathetic.
So, that means he is going to double down on America 2024 as a last hurrah to prove he isn’t a complete failure and save his ego before he dies. The Big Money is looking to the other side already. Hedging their bets as to who will come out alive. They could care less about Soros’ ego.
What are the odds? Who is in favor? Because, in the end, nothing will change unless everything changes. It IS A RESET – just not the one envisioned by the Bolsheviks. A RESET where we keep our money. And Laissez Faire in ALL regulations – buyer beware – no law suits. Just figure it out. It could work. Just a bit of mental realigning.
It may be that 2024 is a deciding factor in the game after the election for decades to come. When the Bolsheviks came to the Soviet Union to initiate assassinations and coups, the Russian realm numbered 150 million people in 1917. At the time of the Revolution there were only 200,000 members of the Bolsheviks who ultimately took control over 150 million. For 70 years.
There are many positives that could prevail in 2024 if we stay united. Recognize the ultimate goal and let go of this media enquirer mentality.
Bottom line: Trump is the Candidate. They have yet to reveal their ace card – next Spring they will announce a Biden replacement. The media will be consumed with the audacity! And something else will happen behind the scenes – like an errant bomb on Iran. Blame it on Russia. Realize the gaff. Backtrack the gaff. And soon the bomb is forgotten.
IF Iran reacts, then the spin will put them as the initiator. Russia will warn them to remain -placid. They will comply. US will become infuriated and attempt a False Flag.
Bottom Line – Trump is not on the same plane with every thought process of the MAGAts, we are a society that expects only perfection. Not even Jesus would pass the perfection test demanded today. A lion pushed into his Den is a lion ready for battle. We must be Lions. A Lions Pride. Trump is the ONLY leader that can endure the onslaught and still win. Loyalty is an honor, it is a gift, it should be the solidarity that unites.
Let’s Be That.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/no_a...the-storm/
https://rumble.com/v45i7r3-the-most-biza...s-far.html
https://rumble.com/v45tc59-trump-evolves...media.html
2024 Will Be The Year Of The Prepper: Those Unprepared For The Myriad Of Catastrophes Facing Americans Will Not Survive The Coming Upheaval
December 31, 2023
By Susan Duclos - All News Pipeline
People are prepping, stocking up on supplies in case of a catastrophe, more than ever and it appears that trend will continue into 2024.
With the possibility of a global nuclear world war, civil unrest, the Biden regime's lawfare campaign against Donald Trump, and the targeting of "MAGA" Americans by Biden's FBI, food costs that continue to be much higher than under Trump, Americans living paycheck to paycheck, Republicans being "swatted" at a high rate recently, and more, there is more reason than ever to be prepared for disaster.
Globally there is a high risk of World War III, with nuclear nations like China and Russia becoming more hostile to the U.S. and much of the world tired of American leaders thinking they have the right to dictate to the rest of the world, which indicates that the U.S. would likely see more damage and loss of life in any WWIII scenario.
Our "woke" military has reached "crisis levels of low recruitment" in early 2023, and by the end of the year had still come up far short of recruitment goals.
That last link above asks "Why don’t young Americans want to join?", completely ignoring the "wokeness" factor, the gay recruitment videos, the transgender nonsense within the military, and the lowering of physical standards and battle readiness. Joe Biden has even given away so much ammunition and weapons that the U.S. military is unprepared for any war, much less a world war.
What is meant by the "transgender nonsense" above is the fact that after Biden began occupying the White House, the Department of Defense (DOD) issued a release which stated that the U.S. military would provide "gender transition" care.
The revised policies prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or an individual’s identification as transgender, provide a means by which to access into the military in one’s self-identified gender provided all appropriate standards are met, provide a path for those in service for medical treatment, gender transition, and recognition in one’s self-identified gender, and seeks to protect the privacy of all Service members and to treat all Service members with dignity and respect.
This point is not made as part of transphobia, but rather battle readiness, because gender transition surgeries put that member out of commission for at least six weeks, and American taxpayers are funding them.
War is not the only issues facing America, as the Biden regime is using lawfare against the leading opponent of the opposite party, Donald Trump, for the 2024 presidential election, angering nearly half the nation.
A HOT CIVIL WAR ON THE HORIZON
We are in the midst of a semi-cold civil war right now, with some violence, but the blood is not flowing freely in the streets as of yet. The U.S. is like a powder keg right now, and the Biden regime, liberal activist judges and prosecutors, are throwing gas and matches at it, just waiting for the entire nation to burn.
The FBI is targeting "MAGA" supporters as domestic terrorists. Think about that for a moment. MAGA simply means "Make America Great Again," and those that believe in doing that are now direct targets of the U.S. Government under Biden.
What do they use as their excuse for targeting conservatives? See below:
The anonymous official, one of over a dozen current or former government officials specializing in terrorism interviewed by Newsweek, claimed that the FBI is attempting to prevent any domestic terrorism that could lead to an incident like the January 6 Capitol storming.
Really? They ignore the fact that George Floyd liberal rioters that literally tried burning cities down. They ignore the recent "swatting" attempts against Republicans and a constitutional lawyer calling them out for the lawfare against Trump. The FBI ignore civil unrest from anti-Israel pro-Hamas supporters in America.
Law enforcement responded to Turley’s Fairfax County home after an individual placed the bogus emergency call.
The Fairfax County Police Department confirmed that the caller falsely said somebody was shot at Turley’s address.
The incident comes one day after Turley spoke out against “swatting” during an interview with Fox News Digital.
This is a dangerous practice that can get someone killed, yet there have a slew of them in recent days, a couple on Christmas Day.
There was more violence in just the George Floyd riots alone, than on January 6, 2021, yet the FBO is not targeting the liberals involved, or Black Lives Matter groups that committed most of the violence. We aren't seeing special categories created by the FBI against those that participated in the most violent or dangerous events, just MAGA supporters, citing Jan. 6.
So, yes, a hot civil war is on the horizon, and it isn't going to take much more for it to blow up.
AN ANGRY NATION....
Republicans, some Democrats and Independents are also angry as hell about the economy. While the media claims it is thriving under Joe Biden, many Americans cannot even afford three meals a day, since grocery prices have not returned to what they were before Biden's policies were enacted.
90% of Americans are concerned with grocery and food prices. 87% with overall inflation, because while inflation has lowered, prices are still much higher than when Trump was in office. Other issues concerning the majority of Americans can be seen in the graph above.
While 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, the Biden regime has spent more than $75 billion on Ukraine since February 2022, rather than using said funds to help those in need right here at home.
The Joe Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute. (This figure does not include all war-related U.S. spending, such as aid to allies.)..
Despite the fact that the majority of Americans oppose more U.S. funding for Ukraine, Joe Biden just announced another $250 million military aid package to Ukraine, and has a much larger request for Ukraine held up in Congress.
The point here is that Americans are mad, whether it is liberals angry about....well everything these days, conservatives angry at the Biden regime for the state of the nation and targeting Trump supporters, and everyone angry at the cost of living and the state of the nation, tensions are high and extremely ripe to take a cold civil war and turn it hot.
BOTTOM LINE
Prepping has become mainstream to a point, meaning both the right and the left are starting to prep, although the term prepping is perhaps not exactly correct for the liberals doing it, since most seem to think that 60 or 90 days is enough until "the government" comes to help.
In the event of a world war, economic collapse, or mass civil unrest, the government will not be showing up like a knight in shining armor, and it will be up to Americans to fend for themselves.
https://allnewspipeline.com/2024_Will_Be...repper.php
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