Today’s News 25th December 2023

• Born In A Police State: The Deep State's Persecution Of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens
  Born In A Police State: The Deep State’s Persecution Of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

  – Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist

  The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

  The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

  Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

  

  What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time?

  What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

  A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

  Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

  The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

  What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

  Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

  Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

  Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

  After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

  When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

  Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

  Consider the following if you will.

  Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

  Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

  Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

  Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

  From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

  Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

  Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

  From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

  Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

  While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

  Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

  Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

  Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

  Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

  Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

  Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

  Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

  Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

  Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

  Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

  Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

  Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

  We must do no less.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/25/2023 – 00:00

• Israel Routinely Dropping US-Supplied 2,000-lb Bombs In Dense Civilian Areas
  Israel Routinely Dropping US-Supplied 2,000-lb Bombs In Dense Civilian Areas

  As civilian casualties in the Israel-Hamas war continue to mount — surpassing 20,000 from a population of just 2 million — alarm is growing over Israel’s all-too-eager use of a particularly devastating weapon: the 2,000-pound MK-84 bomb.  

  Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. For most other militaries, that would be cause for restraint, particularly where the MK-84 is concerned, given its 3,280-foot hazardous blast radius. However, as the IDF presses its campaign against the militant group Hamas and its elaborate tunnel system, it’s exhibiting an unusually high tolerance for civilian harm.

  

  Proportionally, the rate of damage to civilian buildings in Gaza is already triple what Nazi Germany suffered from Allied bombs in World War II. On Friday alone, Israel reportedly killed more than 90 Palestinians, including women in children, when it leveled two houses in two different areas of Gaza. 

  One particularly vivid display of the MK-84’s sheer power — and Israel’s lack of restraint — came with the IDF’s Oct. 31 strike on Jabalya, in northern Gaza, which obliterated a large residential area. “[That strike is] something we would never see the US doing,” Larry Lewis, research director at the Center for Naval Analyses, tells CNN. “It certainly appears that (Israel’s) tolerance for civilian harm compared to expected operational benefits is significantly different than what we would accept.”

  

  For perspective, consider that the US military used only one MK-84 bomb during its entire fight with ISIS. However, it’s poured an astounding 5,400 of them into Israel’s arsenal since the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

  Defying IDF assurances that it seeks to minimize civilian casualties, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests that Israel has even dropped more than 200 MK-84 bombs in the area of South Gaza where it told Palestinians to flee for safety. 

  The IDF has brushed aside inquiries about its use of the extraordinarily destructive bombs. “Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage,” a spokesman told the Times, adding that the IDF “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

  Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated as safe for civilians in Gaza during the first six weeks of the war, a visual analysis by The New York Times found. See the full visual investigation here. https://t.co/0qPLwaT7td pic.twitter.com/Vm24DnViGn

  — The New York Times (@nytimes) December 22, 2023

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  “The devastation that we’ve seen for communities in Gaza is unfortunately co-signed by the United States,” John Chappell of the DC-based Center for Civilians in Conflict tells CNN. “Too much of it is carried out by bombs that were made in the United States.”

  Expect that damning fact to be long-remembered by the survivors of Israel’s Gaza campaign — and millions of others who sympathize with them. Whether one supports the US government’s arming of Israel or not, nobody should be so naive as to think it doesn’t endanger American lives — particularly when you consider the type of people who now control Israel’s arsenal. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 23:15

• 5 Things You Can Do This Christmas To Make The Marxists Miserable
  5 Things You Can Do This Christmas To Make The Marxists Miserable

  Authored by Kevin Downey Jr. via PJMedia.com,

  Why is Christmas the most wonderful time of the year? Is it all the mistletoeing and hearts that are glowing? Yeah, that all rocks, but my values — and kicks — revolving around Christmas joy have taken a holly jolly turn, and I’d like to get you on board.

  

  If you think eggnog and caroling are fun, wait until you get your bald-headed niecephew so mad zhe poops zher Che Guevara manties.

  FACT-O-RAMA! The commies hate when we mock them, so mock I shall until we lock the doors of Ark 2.0 and listen to them get flushed away like the human feculence they are or, should we lose, until they learn how to load, aim, and fire a gun as I face a firing squad for the hundreds of articles I’ve written making fun of the joyless frown clowns.

  But first a quick reminder from our favorite KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, who presciently told us back in the 1980s that there is ONE thing Marxism can’t overcome — Christianity. That is why they hate and fear us. This is why the miserable skanks show up to children’s Christmas choirs and bullhorn their support for terrorists who rape women and burn children alive. They utterly hate you.

  And don’t forget how the U.S. Capitol Police made kids stop singing the National Anthem lest the song “offend” someone. The rot is deep, my friends. Enjoy Christmas before it is outlawed.

  Remember, Christmas is the season to give, so let’s give it to the Marxists good and hard.

  #5  Mele Kalikimaka Is the Thing to Say

  This one is simple and yet devastating: say “Merry Christmas.” This is kryptonite to the simpering, pink-haired, troglodyte narcissists who believe that, in a world full of adults, their feelings mean something — like this jackpudding who laughingly tries to associate the phrase “Merry Christmas” with anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and, of course, hatred of the LGBTWTF crowd, all of whom, by the way, loathe Christians.

  PINKO-RAMA! The journalistic ambergris I quoted above managed to fit the words “diversity” and “inclusivity” into zhim’s victim manifesto. It only missed “equity.”  Commie Rating: Three out of Five Stars, Hammers, and Sickles.

  “KDJ, what if I say ‘Merry Christmas’ and a com-symp whines, ‘I don’t celebrate Christmas’?”

  You have several responses from which to choose:

  “Then don’t have a Merry Christmas!”

  “Try some diversity for a change.”

  “I was being inclusive. I didn’t know you’re a hater.”

  “Say ‘Happy Ramadan’ to Hamas when they are done slaughtering gay people, you homophobic pile of pig vomit.”

  Pro tip: Laughing as you say these things will denote mockery, and that is their Achilles heel. Also, belittling them with their own weapons is easy, effective, and fun to do.

  I’m aware that they judge us when we say “Merry Christmas.” I don’t care. Neither I nor my language will be controlled by some entitled, basement-dwelling dime museum or the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) that pulls its strings.

  # 4 Unvaccinated Christmas Parties

  When sending invitations via email or USPS, be sure to mention something like:

  “Warning: my family is unvaccinated, but in the spirit of Yuletide inclusivity, those who have blindly chosen to bend their knees and raise their sleeves for an experimental clot shot because Rachel Maddow told you to do so will be welcome as well.

  For those of you suffering from myocarditis, the defibrillator will be ‘first come, first served.'”

  # 3 Meat is Murder Tasty

  You undoubtedly have an annoying, Gaza-loving cousin who hates meat. In a sign of goodwill, prepare a few veggie burgers. Here is what to do when  “Dylan” raves over the taste and asks, “What’s your secret?” Tell it you added Worcestershire sauce, a dab of chocolate, honey, and sugar. When the meatophobe runs for the Ipecac, pretend you didn’t know that none of these ingredients are vegan.

  Calm the herbivore down by saying the vegetables were grown in your own garden with liberal (heh) amounts of climate-changing cow manure.

  I also suggest the following libation:

  “The Colonizer”

  • 3 parts Plymouth gin (it will remind people of a certain rock in Massachusetts)

  • .5 parts culturally appropriated tequila

  • 2 dashes of bitters (because liberals are bitter)

  # 2 Festive Lighting

  There is nothing the Mao-maos hate more than Christians projecting their values and their fun at the same time. I prefer to combine the secular and the religious for the one-two punch of Christmas lighting extravaganza. 

  The more Christmas lights you have, the more those testosterone dodgers will weep!

  Kids today don’t understand how the lights scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was a pivotal moment in history and changed the paradigm forever

  Lights on all the eaves and corners used to be insane, but now every town has a dude+ with the entire dang house covered pic.twitter.com/q0luxSFi2e

  — Brendon 🌪️🐻❄️ (@brendonme) December 21, 2023

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  # 1 Make Christmas Great Again: Re-elect Donald J. Trump

  The most vulgar and ostentatious display of liberal blubbering happened the day Donald Trump defeated harridan Hillary for the White House. The diaper-wearing femminiellos lost their minds, and we laughed like we were watching “Caddyshack” for the first time.

  Sure, the election is 11 months away, but let’s start their trauma early. Put some manic in their panic and get the ball rolling now. Post a “MAGA 2024” sign next to your inflatable Santa. Remember that the worst part about being punished as kids wasn’t the punishment itself, it was waiting for Dad to get home. Let’s make them cry until Election Day.

  MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN!!!

  🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🎅🎅🎅❄❄❄🦌🦌🦌🌲🌲🌲pic.twitter.com/R8LsL2KrH8

  — Alex De La Cruz (@AlexDLCMundo) December 23, 2023

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  Let’s keep laughing at the miserable “woke” stooges. Check out the new Christmas video short from my friends at “Jokes and a Point.” They know how to clown-slap a commie like no one else.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 22:30

• Iran 'Shortly' Expected To Execute Swedish Citizen Accused Of Spying
  Iran ‘Shortly’ Expected To Execute Swedish Citizen Accused Of Spying

  Via Middle East Eye

  Iran is “shortly” set to execute a dual Swedish-Iranian citizen accused of spying, according to the UN, after a Swedish court upheld the conviction of a former Iranian official.

  Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian disaster medicine researcher, was arrested in Iran on suspicion of espionage in 2016. He was accused in 2017 of having transmitted information to the Mossad – the Israeli intelligence services – on two people in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, which would have allowed their assassination between 2010 and 2012.

  

  “Disturbing news that Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali could be shortly executed on charges of ‘enmity against God’,” the UN human rights office wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

  There have been concerns that the decision by a Swedish appeals court to confirm the conviction of former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury this week could threaten the safety of Swedish prisoners in Iran.

  Noury stood accused of involvement in the mass execution of thousands of mainly left-wing prisoners in Iran in 1988, towards the end of the war with Iraq.

  The 62-year-old was convicted last year of “grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder” over his alleged role in a purge that saw at least 5,000 prisoners killed.

  Amnesty International has warned that “mounting evidence indicates that Iranian authorities are threatening to carry out Ahmadreza Djalali’s execution in retaliation for their unmet demands to pervert the course of justice in Sweden”.

  “The cruel toying with Ahmadreza Djalali’s life immediately after a Swedish court of appeals upheld [Noury’s] conviction and life sentence… heightens concerns that Iranian officials are holding Ahmadreza Djalali hostage to compel Sweden into a prisoner swap,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

  ICYI: The United Nations warns that an Iranian-Swedish citizen is facing imminent execution in #Iran after a Swedish court upheld the conviction of a former Iranian prison official. #Sweden https://t.co/r12919ly2k

  — Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) December 24, 2023

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  Iran has denied that there is any link between Noury’s conviction and the planned execution of any Swedish prisoners.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 21:45

• American Achilles In The War On Terror
  American Achilles In The War On Terror

  Authored by John J. Waters via RealClear Wire,

  Professor Emily Wilson has achieved celebrity status … for translating Homer.

  University students use her work, and it draws leisure readers as well. Beginning with her translation of the Odyssey in 2018 and continuing with the Iliad earlier this year, Wilson has presented as fresh and vivid material that is, admittedly, old and foreign.

  For years, the English translations of poets Robert Fagles and Robert Fitzgerald were responsible for passing Homer’s stories into the dreams and imaginations of modern Americans. So successful were the two Roberts that many readers reserved no space on their bookshelves for another scholar’s reading. Wilson’s new translation is worthy, though, and less for her words or ‘blank verse’ than her feel: for the players and their motivations certainly, but more so for their experience of the phenomenon of battle. Her work plumbs how it feels to fight and kill, what warriors seek to achieve through combat, and what a family stands to lose when a husband dons the helmet and marches off to war. Heroism nearly, but not quite, redeems the carnage. 

  

  Those who have seen war or studied it know how combat produces a cycle of loss and compensation, and fate deals out the portions of life in unfair and unexpected ways. This is one of the themes of the Iliad – how even the greatest warriors in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses,” Wilson writes in her introduction. “Loss can never be recouped.”

  The arc of history demonstrates the activity of warfare is always changing; weapons, technology, and troop formations are constantly in flux. But the condition of war, how people experience combat, remains largely unchanged. Rather than discuss the new text in isolation, I asked Professor Wilson to apply her knowledge of the Homeric poems and her own ideas to my observations of people participating in the drama of modern war. What follows is part one of our two-part conversation. 

  One evening in 2009, Alphonso told a story over beers at Pusser’s in Annapolis. There had been a Taliban ambush on a Marine logistics convoy. Someone he knew was involved. “I hope they jump me,” he said. “I want my share.” What comes to mind, hearing this vignette?

  This makes me think of Iliad Book 10. This ambush episode is very unusual in the poem, because most of the fighting in The Iliad takes place during the daylight hours, where warriors confront each other face-to-face. This is fighting at night. Odysseus and Diomedes volunteer to set an ambush of Trojan forces. The sequence shows the importance not just of cleverness and strategy, but also about the kinds of extra glory people can get in special missions. If something unexpected happens and you react just right in the moment, then you get a special kind of glory, as compared to what can be gained in the main campaign. I love Book 10 because it shakes up your ideas about the kinds of terrain where war takes place. The poem as a whole is interested in all different types of warfare, different types of landscape and how the norms of military encounters change in different arenas. Diomedes and Odysseus promise not to harm the Trojan spy, Dolon, then mercilessly kill him and hang up the bloody spoils, the weapons stripped from his body, to honor the goddess Athena, who loves spoils.

  Speaking of Alphonso’s “share” … I’m thinking of what Aristotle said about the “banquet of life.” Would Homer have contemplated this idea when he composed the Iliad?

  Absolutely. Many of the words that are often translated as fortune or fate literally suggest portion or share—these Greek words literally mean a “part,” as if a portion or share of life. It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory. I think the whole story of Achilles in the Iliad focuses on his disappointment about his tiny portion of life, as the son of a goddess who knows for sure that he will die if he stays to fight at Troy. He wants a portion of honor that compensates him for his small portion of life. The public humiliation he suffers from Agamemnon, when the Greek king takes from Achilles the concubine Briseis, means Achilles has been dishonored, so his already small portion of life is no longer balanced by a large share of glory.

  In 2010, Major Aaron Cunningham intoned to his students at the Infantry Officer Course about their reputations. “Your reputation begins right now,” he said. The thought planted among young Marine lieutenants that one’s reputation (as an officer, a Marine) has incalculable value in the military, much more so than in business or private life. Can you trace that idea back to the Iliad?

  Well, that is certainly a theme that runs all through the poem. The Greek term most closely analogous to “reputation” is kleos, which suggests what other people hear about you. For warriors, that goal of achieving undying kleos is definitional, and gives mortal heroes the chance to live on after death. You can be known for your physical characteristics, but also in the stories of who you are and how you have performed. Stories people tell can add up to kleos or they can lead you to shame. Great warriors in the Iliad, like Hector and Achilles, are deeply concerned with preserving their kleos, which entails being known as the greatest warrior among their people. Even when his family members and other Greek leaders are telling him to stop fighting and pull back, Hector has to keep going because he wants to secure the greatest kleos, both for his lifetime and after his death. 

  You rely on your sergeants and corporals in combat. You rely on anybody who has “done it before.” Having “done it before” is more valuable than all the education, weaponry and preparation—it’s certainly more valuable than personal connections or credentials. Why?

  Because if you don’t have experience on the ground, then there is no way you know how to judge events when they are changing fast. This question relates to the representation of different generations of warriors. Start with Nestor, the elder warrior. He has so many speeches about “back in my day” and so forth, which may seem like tedious digressions – but that character is crucial for reminding the listener that this is not the first war.  The battles Nestor has participated in, with the Lapiths and Centaurs, are just one mythical precursor, along with the earlier war of Heracles against Troy, and the Theban War, all of which are precursors to the Trojan War in the world of myth. The poem draws attention to the many cities around Troy that Achilles has already sacked, and to the experience of Diomedes who succeeded in sacking Thebes. These allusions remind us that the Greek army has been sacking and campaigning for a long time. When these named warriors convene in their council meetings, discussions center on what kinds of advice matter: from those who have fought the most; or, from those who have theoretical ideas without having tested them? I think The Iliad reminds us that experience matters, but also shows you that you do not win one war by fighting the last one. Nestor’s advice always hinges on “this is how it happened back then, but things are totally different nowadays.” Experience matters but there are still so many unknowns. The poem shows you that how fast things change on the battlefield. 

  The film Zero Dark Thirty consecrated the killing of bin Laden. The uniforms worn by Navy SEALs who participated in that raid hang in the 9/11 museum at Ground Zero. There have been so many movies about special operators. It seems the poets of our age sing of spec ops derring-do, over and over again. Why? 

  There’s just something so inspiring for people who have (and have never) served in combat to see people so clearly willing to risk their lives for the sake of a mission. I find it inspiring. I have so much admiration for people who put their whole being out there, to have complete skin in the game. That was the case in antiquity as well. Not every war is presented in simple valorizing or heroizing terms. The Iliad digs into the whole of the human spectrum about people but there is a deeper awareness of courage and how it really does matter.  Courage makes people more like the gods, who never die, or perhaps humans are sometimes imagined as even greater than gods. The warriors are always conscious that they could be killed, which makes their courage and sacrifice special.

  For the foot soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, though, there were endless patrols, missions and objectives. Tragedies and miracles forgotten or never known. For the foot soldiers, there are no tales of triumph, no heroes in single combat, no majestic treatments from Hollywood or in literature. Why is it disappointing for your exploits to be forgotten?

  To have been involved in something that involves so much pain and wounding and not even have the glory of being remembered as a character in the story is terrible. Part of what drives Achilles’ rage is that he wants to be the main character … all the time. The poem primarily focuses on the warrior-leaders and officer class, to use an anachronistic term, but we also have a sense of the common troops who are driven into battle, the kinds of pressure that is put on people who are not the named ones. We know the leading male characters but each of those leading figures brings along nameless men who will not be remembered but are taking just as much risk and fighting the same battles. The poem gives you some tools to understand that single combat between named protagonists is not exactly what war is. We have episodes where we get the name of a character, then, a line or two later, he is dead.

  Part of the story of how The Iliad represents the forgotten people is how it represents the women and old people who experience war as pure loss. Women and older people don’t have anything that they can win. The queen of Troy, Hecuba, does have an idea that there is something she could win if her son Hector can ward off the Greek armies, that she stands to win more if Hector succeeds. But for most people in the world of this poem, there’s very little to hope for, and even the most minimal hopes, like the hope of survival or freedom, are repeatedly not fulfilled.  It’s not that you’re a fool to have any kind of hope but most of the time when people have hope in this poem, it doesn’t work out.

  John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster), and a former deputy assistant secretary of homeland security.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 21:00

• Fast Food Places & Restaurants Open For Christmas Day 2023
  Fast Food Places & Restaurants Open For Christmas Day 2023

  While the vast majority of restaurants and businesses across the land will be closed on Christmas Day, with many also shuttered the day prior too (Sunday), there’s still well over a dozen fast food and coffee chains which have committed to opening their doors on Christmas Day. It’s become a growing trend over the last several years.

  

  Large retail and grocery chains which require a lot of employee manpower at any given time, such as Walmart and Target, will be closed, however. The below is a list of establishments which have announced their plans to remain open based on location…

  List is courtesy of NEXSTAR: Hours may vary by location; it’s best to check online or call ahead to confirm your location’s hours. 

  * * *

  Arby’s: Many locations will be open for Christmas, a representative for Arby’s tells Nexstar, but hours may vary. You can check your location’s hours online.

  Burger King: Because Burger King restaurants are individually owned, they may be open for Christmas with varying hours, a representative tells Nexstar. You can find local restaurant hours here. 

  Denny’s: The “always open” diner will, of course, be open on Christmas.

  Domino’s: Because Domino’s locations are independently owned, they may or may not be open on Christmas, according to a company representative. Some may also close for Christmas Eve. You can view your location’s hours online.

  Dunkin’: If you’re on the run and need some coffee, Dunkin’ locations will be open for Christmas, but hours may vary, according to a company spokesperson. Restaurant hours can be viewed online or through the chain’s mobile app.

  Golden Corral: Some of Golden Corral’s locations will be open on Christmas, though they may operate under limited hours. There may also be limited hours on Christmas Eve. You can check your restaurant’s hours here.

  IHOP: While IHOP locations are listed as being open online, you may want to check with your local restaurant before stopping in.

  Jack in the Box: Hours may vary by location, a company spokesperson tells Nexstar. You can check your Jack in the Box’s hours online. 

  McDonald’s: Like others on this list, McDonald’s locations may be open with varying hours for Christmas. You can find local hours online or in the McDonald’s app. 

  Noodles: Select Noodles locations will be open; you can check store hours here.

  Panera Bread: Hours may vary by store, according to Panera Bread. You can check your location’s hours online.

  Red Lobster: All Red Lobster locations will be open for dine-in and To Go on Christmas Day, the company confirmed earlier this year. You can find your restaurant’s hours here.

  Sonic: Because most Sonic restaurants are locally owned, their hours may vary on Christmas Day. You can find local hours here. 

  Starbucks: Some Starbucks locations will be open for Christmas; you can check location hours here.

  Waffle House: Known for being open all day, every day – and causing headlines when it closes – Waffle House locations will be open on Christmas. There’s even a song about it.

  Wendy’s: Many Wendy’s locations will be open on Christmas, but hours may vary. You can check the hours of your nearest location online.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 20:15

• Will The Guardians Of The Narrative Win?
  Will The Guardians Of The Narrative Win?

  Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

  Much that is happening in the spectacle of America’s legal-political  life today reminds me of some pages in Johan Huizinga’s great book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938). In a chapter on “Play and Law,” Huizinga distinguishes the unfolding of legal proceedings in advanced cultures, where strict adherence to process and abstract notions of right and wrong prevail, from the situation in more primitive cultures, where the ultimate criterion is victory.

  “Turning our eyes from the administration of justice and highly developed civilizations,” Huizinga writes, “to that which obtains in less advanced phases of culture, we see that the idea of right and wrong, the ethical-juridical conception, comes to be overshadowed by the idea of winning and losing, that is, the purely agonistic conception. It is not so much the abstract question of right and wrong that occupies the archaic mind as the very concrete question of winning or losing.”

  In this sense, I submit, Special Counsel Jack Smith, District Judge Tanya Chutkan, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the rest of the anti-Trump legal confraternity perfectly epitomize the atavistic persistence of archaic impulses in the law. People like me are always going on about “the rebarbarization of civilization.” The peculiar legal assault against Donald Trump is one instance (among many) of that phenomenon.

  It’s been going on for quite a while. The 2020 election, for example, took place during the period of eagerly embraced Covid hysteria. That hysteria provided a justification or, more accurately, an alibi for the numerous violations of the law in the conduct of the election. The Constitution of the United States stipulates that state legislatures are in charge of determining voting procedures. But various governors and secretaries of state, from blue states mostly, swept that Constitutional provision aside in their eagerness to assure the appearance of a Biden victory. Such anomalies were noted and commented on at the time but somehow never got traction. Why? Because the media, that great tool of The Narrative, determined that it oughtn’t to get traction.

  In subsequent months, the public has been treated to an efflorescence of similar and even more extreme anomalies as Donald Trump can barely turn his head without being indicted for something or other. I do not think that the public at large grasps how bizarre the quartet of indictments, proceeding in tandem in four separate jurisdictions, really is. It is unprecedented, yes, but it is also surreal. It is also a travesty of the legal process. The aim is not justice but the grubby partisan goal of removing a popular political rival from the field. The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James actually campaigned on the promise that she would “get Trump.” How is that OK? What has happened is that the law—or, more precisely, the paraphernalia and accoutrements of the law—is simply the weapon of choice, all else having failed. Those who point out that the effort to transform a political rival into a pariah is tantamount to banana republic tactics are right. But to say that is not yet to do justice the breathtaking situation in which a former president who happens to be, by a wide margin, his party’s favorite for the presidential nomination is treated worse than a common criminal. Common criminals, as a rule, are not subject to gag orders for trying to defend themselves.  “Shut up, or you might convince people you are being unfairly persecuted!” What a blow against “Our Democracy™” that would be!

  What’s happened this past week has put the proverbial icing on the cake.

  First, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot in that state because of his role in the January 6 jamboree.

  Yes, I know that one is supposed to describe that event as an “insurrection,” an event worse than Pearl Harbor, 9/11, even the Civil War. But no amount of agitated repetition can change the fact that what happened on January 6, 2021 was a far cry from being an “insurrection.” Tucker Carlson’s description of the event as a “protest that got out of hand” is much closer to the truth.  The surging crowd was not armed. The one shot that was fired that day was fired by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd. He murdered Ashley Babbitt who was trying to calm the crowd inside the Capitol. Byrd was exonerated, as were the federal agents responsible for the death of Rosanne Boyland.

  Readers interested in what actually happened that day should consult Julie Kelly’s meticulous and indefatigable investigative reporting on the event. As for Trump himself, what was his role on that fateful day? Believing (as I do) that the 2020 election was rigged, he held a rally in DC during the course of which he urged his followers to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” to make their voices heard about an election they believed as flawed. He also took to Twitter (shortly before he was ejected from the platform) to urge his followers to eschew violence. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!” As insurrectionists go, that’s pretty pathetic, isnt it?

  The guardians of The Narrative have had to resort to an obscure clause in the 14th Amendment—a clause that was devised to prevent supporters of the Confederacy from assuming or reassuming public office—in order to keep Trump off the ballot or, in Jack Smith’s case, to charge him criminally.

  It hasn’t been been a great week for Jack Smith. Like the narrator in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” he hears “time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.” He is desperate to have Trump’s trial start March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, the day that, many observers predict, Trump will essentially sew up the the GOP nomination. Smith hopes that by having Trump in court on criminal charges before that will materially erode his support. Looking at how Trump’s polls have thus far responded to his persecution by the state, I’d say that was a dubious proposition, but there it is. Smith asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual appeals process for Trump and hear his case on an expedited calendar. On Friday, they refused, without comment and without dissent.

  

  Meanwhile, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and Law Professors Steven G. Calabresi and Gary S. Lawson have filed an amicus brief with the Court arguing that Jack Smith, a private citizen, has no standing as Special Counsel because Merrick Garland, who appointed him, lacked the authority to do so. Best line in the brief: “Improperly appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift, or Jeff Bezos.” (I had to look up Bryce Harper, but you know how it goes).

  It’s uncertain at this juncture what the Court will do or how, if at all, the brief by Messe et al. will affect the thinking of the Justices. I’d say that having someone of the stature of Ed Meese weigh in was significant, but who knows? The DC Circuit Court has already scheduled an expedited review of the case in DC, where an anti-Trump jury guided by an anti-Trump judge can be counted on to convict Trump of whatever he is charged with. The obvious bias of the judge and the jury pool are also things that belong to an atavistic conception of the legal process. But that is precisely where we are now.

  It would be interesting to know what Johan Huizinga would think of this brutal carnival in which one man is turned into a scapegoat in order to satisfy the blood lust of a barbaric vendetta.

  Unfortunately, he died in 1938. So we will just have to watch the unfolding of this unedifying spectacle ourselves.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 19:30

• Israel's Military Strikes Hezbollah Command Center In Serious Escalation
  Israel’s Military Strikes Hezbollah Command Center In Serious Escalation

  This weekend has witnessed a significant escalation between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah along the southern Lebanese border. 

  Israeli media reported that a Hezbollah command center has been attacked. “The IDF says fighter jets have hit a Hezbollah military headquarters in Lebanon in response to attacks on northern Israel today, including one that left a soldier moderately wounded,” TOI reports.

  

  This came following Hezbollah attacks on multiple Israeli military and civilian positions. The IDF then expanded its artillery shelling. While since Oct.7 exchanges of fire have been daily, the weekend saw an expansion of the frequency of these strikes.

  Northern Israel’s Kibbutz Menara was attacked in the Saturday flare-up in violence. The northern Israel community said: “The harsh reality is that from the beginning of the war, dozens of missiles were fired towards the kibbutz, most of them anti-tank missiles. As a result, at least 86 out of 155 apartments were affected with various degrees of damage,” according to an official statement issued by the Kibbutz. 

  On Friday some 20 rockets were fired on Israel from Lebanon within only a 24-period. Early in the Gaza conflict, some days might have witnessed a handful of rockets and mortars fired in what has remained a “limited” front. But it’s a deeply worrying sign that the ‘norm’ has now become dozens of projectiles exchanged on any given day.

  Soon after Oct.7, Israel began evacuating dozens of towns and settlements near the border, to within 2km of it, after Hezbollah rockets began raining down. At this point Israel says at least 80,000 of its citizens are still forced to stay away from their residences amid the Hezbollah threat. They have effectively become temporary refugees.

  In Gaza, the IDF issued a new casualty count over the weekend, as follows:

  The Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday the names of nine soldiers killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip throughout the previous day, bringing the number of troops killed over the entire weekend to 14, as the military deepened its offensive against the Hamas terror group.

  Five soldiers of the Combat Engineering Corps and a paramedic were killed by an anti-tank guided missile that hit a Namer armored engineering vehicle they were in, in southern Gaza. Another four were killed by bombs in two separate incidents during battles with gunmen in central Gaza.

  The deaths bring the number of troops killed since the start of the ground operation in late October to 153.

  Watch: Hezbollah has published a series of clips showing the continued degrading of Israeli defense communications facilities along the border…

  ⚡️Hezb-Allah published this video titled:

  تِلْكَ إِذًا كَرَّةٌ خَاسِرَةٌ… pic.twitter.com/7C62OugzVJ

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) December 23, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As for operation in Israel’s north, there have been conflicting accounts regarding Israeli leadership’s intentions. Some reports have claimed that Netanyahu wants to launch a preemptive war to eradicate Hezbollah along with Hamas. But others say Israel’s command understands that opening a full front with the Iran-backed paramilitary group might seriously overextend Israeli forces, also at a politically sensitive moment.

  Hezbollah is widely seen as a more formidable, better-armed force as well – and thus it could potentially become an even bloodier campaign than what’s taking place now in the Gaza Strip if a full war front is opened up.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 18:45

• Turns Out, Alcohol is Good For Your Health!
  Turns Out, Alcohol is Good For Your Health!

  Authored by Tony Edwards via DailySceptic.org,

  Will you sign up to Dry January this year? If you do, you won’t be alone.

  According to its organisers, you’ll join a staggering nine million drinkers who are expected to don the hair shirt of for a whole month.

  Why would you do it?

  To prove to yourself you’re not an alcoholic, to virtue signal or to improve your health ? 0ne or more of those certainly.

  

  Dry January was first invented 10 years ago by a U.K. charity called Alcohol Concern with a single purpose: “To reset after a month or two of holiday festivities (such as) office parties, fun nights out, and boozy nights in.”

  Fair enough, perhaps, after an over-indulgent Christmas. But the goalposts have since been uprooted and replanted throughout the whole year. In February 2023, the charity (now rebranded as Alcohol Change) launched another abstinence drive: “Sober Spring – your three month break from alcohol, your chance to break habits, start new ones and experience life alcohol-free.” Hmm… What with the invention of two more monthly clones, Sober October and Sober September, there soon won’t be many more days in the year for drinkers to quaff a bevy or two without looking over their shoulders to see who’s eyeing them accusingly.

  It’s beginning to look like a return of the Temperance Movement by stealth. In the 19th Century, drinkers were exhorted to “sign the pledge”, undertaking to renounce alcohol for life. Today, that pledge has now morphed into an app on your phone, enabling Alcohol Change to monitor your behaviour, and remotely shame you if you succumb to the temptations of the demon drink. In the 1800s, the Temperance Movement was all about preventing domestic violence; today it’s about preventing ill-health.

  I’m a medical research journalist and I first got interested in this issue after stumbling across the fact that although booze “contains” lots of calories, it does not make you put on weight. Clinical trials on human volunteers, as well as experiments on rats and mice, have demonstrated this surprising fact conclusively. The evidence is clear: if you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight. And yet the medical authorities have repeatedly told us that drinking causes weight gain, one of many health reasons to give up drinking.

  That mismatch between medical advice and medical evidence set me on the path of seeing what else ‘they’ were misleading us about. That led to a deep dive into the published medical research and my discovery that, although the health authorities were routinely bombarding us with anti-alcohol rhetoric, there are astonishing health benefits from drinking.

  Seriously? Can alcohol really be good for your health?

  Yes.

  In addition to the weight issue, the evidence shows that sensible drinkers have less heart disease, less diabetes, less dementia and often even less cancer than teetotallers. Those, plus a myriad of other health benefits, have the predictable upshot that moderate drinkers live longer and healthier lives than non-drinkers. Those discoveries were the meat of my 2013 book on the subject: The Good News About Booze, a deliberately populist title intended to disguise the fact that the book was a serious in-depth enquiry based on literally hundreds of references to evidence published in international medical journals.

  After that, I thought I had finished with alcohol as a topic, but I recently had a rethink.

  In the last seven years, without any evidence to support the clampdown, the medical authorities have begun turning the screws on drinkers. Again, it all started in Britain where in 2016 the existing alcohol guidelines were slashed in half, setting the upper safe limit at two units a day. What’s two units? Less than a pint of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of whisky – so almost a maiden aunt’s level of intake. Nevertheless, we were warned that exceeding even that very low level would harm our health. In fact, England’s then Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, went further, trumpeting that the latest research showed that “there is no safe level of alcohol intake”. Really? How come?

  It turned out she had commissioned a survey of the existing research data from Sheffield University– a questionable source, as Sheffield is a bit-part player on the international alcohol research stage. In any case, we now know, thanks to journalist Chris Snowdon’s Freedom of Information ferreting, that Sheffield initially reported quite a lot of Good News about alcohol and health. However, that displeased the CMO who ordered the university to downplay alcohol’s health benefits and ramp up its hazards. The final Sheffield report, which incidentally was never formally published in a peer-reviewed journal, then became the justification for the new British guidelines…. which were, to put it mildly, based on dubious science.

  Nevertheless, the 2016 British anti-alcohol initiative soon spread around the world, with many countries also reducing their guideline levels, sometimes to ridiculously low levels. For example, Holland, despite its liberal laws about marijuana smoking, now reckons that drinking more than half a bottle of lager a day will shorten your life. And even the French, who until a decade ago had no official guidelines at all, have now decided that drinking more than the quarter litre carafe of wine which every Frenchman has with his lunch, is a health hazard.

  I was puzzled. I was pretty sure the health evidence about drinking hadn’t significantly changed since my 2013 book, but I decided to check. Another deep dive into the evidence did indeed reveal some apparently worrying findings. There was a major Cambridge University research paper with a sample size of over half a million people which said it had disproved the idea that drinking had any health benefits whatsoever. An even bigger study conducted in China claimed the same. A third said that drinking wine is as dangerous as smoking.

  However, on examination, none of these stacked up. The Cambridge claim was straightforward misinformation: its study had in fact found health benefits from drinking, but had buried the positive findings in the depths of a voluminous appendix. The Chinese study was of questionable value, as it’s well known that Orientals genetically respond to alcohol very differently from Europeans. As for the ‘wine is as harmful as tobacco’ study, it offered not a scrap of evidence for the claim.

  By contrast, my deep dive into the research database did reveal some new, very positive information about alcohol and health – in particular, the benefits of wine. It also meant I could assess the value of the new entrants in the wine arena since my 2013 book: organic/biodynamic and alcohol-free wines. I was intrigued to discover what extra health punch they each might provide; the answers greatly surprised me.

  The result is a new book The Very Good News about Wine, which came out this month. Citing over three hundred studies published from the 1970s to the present, the book is a serious challenge to the anti-alcohol propaganda increasingly dominating the media – largely driven by a nefarious alliance of the medical authorities, a small coterie of vocal anti-alcohol activists and Alcohol Change.

  My hope is that people will use the book as an authoritative resource when they next hear another rent-a-pundit trotting out the old saw that wine’s supposed health benefits are “an old wives’ tale” (quote, Sally Davies). 50 years of solid medical data are a rare example of where the science is settled: it cannot easily be overturned by anything you might read in your daily newspaper, trumpeting the latest shock-horror discovery that a glass of wine will tip you into an early grave.

  So will you sign up to Dry January?

  Personally I won’t, as the medical evidence is overwhelming that drinking a few glasses of wine with an evening meal is good for one’s health. You may have different motives, of which proving to yourself you’re not an alcoholic seems superficially attractive. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to give up brushing your teeth for a month, or stop your daily exercise routines – two addictions you should embrace, as they’re obviously health-promoting. In principle, moderate wine drinking is no different.

  Of course, it’s ‘your body, your choice’ whether you take the January pledge or not. However, Alcohol Change probably won’t give a toss one way or the other. The organisation’s latest accounts show that their dry months marketing ploys have already netted them over £12 million in assets.

  Temperance propaganda is clearly Very Good News for them too.

  *  *  *

  The Very Good News About Wine by Tony Edwards is available on Amazon priced £10.99.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 18:00

• Dave Collum's 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 2
  Dave Collum’s 2023 Year In Review: Down Some Dark Rabbit Holes, Part 2

  Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology – Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu, Twitter: @DavidBCollum),

  This Year in Review is brought to you by healthcare, broken markets, law-and-order, and the case for a multi-year bear market…

  

  Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018) full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception, with Dave striking again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way.

  Contents

  Part 1 (Read Part 1 here)

  • Introduction

  • Contents

  • My Year

  • Healthcare

  • Investing – Gold, Energy, and Materials

  • Gold and Silver

  • Broken Markets

  • Multi-Decade Bull Market: 40 Years of Recency Bias

  • The Case for a Multi-Decade Bear Market

  Part 2 (see below)

  • Law and Order

  • Media

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  • Climate Change-Epilogue

  • News Nuggets

  • Lahaina Fires and DEWs

  • The War in Ukraine–Epilogue

  Part 3 (coming in January of 2024)

  • January 6–Epilogue

  • Woke Culture and Rising Neo-Marxism

  • Transgenderism

  • Pedophilia and Geopolitics

  Download a pdf of Parts 1 and 2 here.

  *  *  *

  Law and Order

  We have a law-and-order problem in which some facets look seriously problematic and others beyond repair. It is the perfect storm:

  • The opioid epidemic is raging unchecked. Although the Sackler family and big-cap pharma deserve credit, but massive fentanyl flows from China might be profit-driven or a Sun Tsu strategy (and maybe payback for the opium wars).

  • The response to Covid not only destroyed lives, it allows guys to walk into stores fully concealed by masks and nobody bats an eye. Crime becomes T-ball.

  • We have opened the borders to unimaginable numbers of undocumented immigrants. These are not the old-school Hispanics from South of the Border looking for work to send money home but rather military-aged men from around the world. Credible eyewitness accounts estimate 98% are non-Hispanic.1

  • Defunding the police in 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd riots emanated from the neo-Marxist brain trust. Add to that officers quitting because the job carries legal risks and you have gutted police forces. 911 calls go unanswered. Even in my small college town of Ithaca, NY the police force has been gutted. 911 calls at unsafe locations requiring police escorts are going unanswered.

  • We are long overdue for an economic downturn with all the accompanying pain and suffering, but it hasn’t started yet. Society is supposed to exit the top of economic cycles euphoric. I would call this dysphoric.

  • The current administration has politicized and weaponized the justice system from top to bottom with potentially profound consequences. This is a hot-button issue for me that distinguishes Biden et al. as uniquely treasonous.

  • A six-year-old Alabama boy was suspended from school and had his “permanent record” threatened for making ‘finger guns’ during a game of cops and robbers.2

  • Some good news: Three men accused of planning to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were acquitted on all counts.3 The other twelve unindicted conspirators—all working for the FBI—never saw the inside of a courtroom. The lives of William Null, Michael Null, and Eric Molitor will never be the same. The twelve FBI agents who set the trap should rot in hell. If I was a religious guy I would be quite optimistic. Do I sound mad?

  

  Immigration

  Our profound immigration crisis is squarely on the Biden administration and the psychiatric wing of the democratic party. See Invaded: The Intentional Destruction of the American Immigration System by J. J. Carroll in “Books”. The rallying cry to support open borders because “we are a nation of immigrants” is specious. We had vast unpopulated acreage for expansion westward, and the welfare state had not yet been invented. You cannot run an overdeveloped welfare state with open borders. The political right accuses the left of recruiting voters but that seems asinine; these undocumented democrats can’t vote legally for years if not decades, right? Well, the ass-clowns inside the beltway—the City Council—passed a law granting voting rights in local elections to undocumented aliens. It is said that Congress could have intervened, but they didn’t.4

  When a man flees war, he takes his family with him. When a man heads to war, he leaves his family behind. Our Nation is being infiltrated by Military-Aged Men from every corner of the globe.

  ~ Kari Lake, lingering United States Senate candidate from Arizona

  You can’t blame America’s border crisis on incompetence (Hanlon’s razor) because nobody is that incompetent. This is hauntingly similar to the immigrant invasion of Europe a few years back.5,6 My best guess is that globalists are trying to destroy the US, the primary bulwark against a New World Order. You begin by shredding the concept of borders. A darker consequence is described by a veteran border agent who was charged with grabbing military-aged men on terror lists called special interest aliens (SIAs) and deporting them. They were exceedingly rare and all of them were deported. This changed in 2020. He now estimates that over 100,000 of these SIAs have crossed the border in the last two years.7 That is a lot of sleeper cells. Let’s hope his theory that we will suffer relentless terror attacks is dead wrong. For now, let’s peek at the messes that pale in comparison.

  The immigrants hit the welfare state immediately. They are given a $2,200 per month allowance or a $5,000 debit card,8 bus and plane tickets, housing, food, and medical services.9 “They used to do the monitors on the ankles, and those were being cut off. So now they give them phones.” Unmarked buses deliver them to destinations in the middle of the night to avoid blatant detection and minimize the optics.

  They take our phones, but they don’t take our phone calls.10

  ~ Congressman Barry Moore, responding to testimony immigrants are given cell phones but then disappear

  Sanctuary cities like New York City came up with wildly progressive “Right to Shelter” laws, jamming immigrants into what used to be hotels and nursing homes. The mayor claims that half of New York City’s hotels (or at least what were hotels) are filled with immigrants living on the local taxpayers’ dime.11 The democrats, including NY Governor Kathy Hochul, are back peddling on this one. Bill Clinton declared, “It’s broken. We need to fix it… It doesn’t make any sense.”12 Then Adams lost his mind or played reverse psychology brilliantly and proposed that people invite these SIAs into their homes with rent paid by tax dollars. “It is my vision to take the next step to this faith-based locale and then move to a private residence.” The State of Massachusetts made a similar plea for AirBNB service from homeowners.13 Boston hotel reservations for a veteran-rich fan base to see the Army-Navy football game got canceled to house illegals.14 This is what they fought for?

  ABC sends reporters to Ukraine but advises their reporters to stay away from San Francisco.15

  ~ Jesse Watters

  Looting

  California is the home of many bad ideas including a particularly oleaginous dynastic douche bag whose presidential aspirations will be riding the wave of disasters on his watch. San Francisco authorities are a particularly brain-damaged crew. They decided that minor crimes like shoplifting should go unpunished as long as the tab stays below a $1000 threshold. These undocumented shoppers predictably morphed into flash mobs that could clear out a store like Biblical locusts. What the bliss ninnies in California failed to realize is that a functional system of law and order system is part bluff—the fine citizens far outnumber the cops—and the masses called their bluff. Major retailers pulling businesses out of Shit City include Nordstrom,16 John Chachas,17 165-year-old Gump’s,18 and Whole Foods.19 I imagine every other store will eventually leave. San Francisco is now Detroit but without Detroit’s charm.

  Stores like Walgreens and Walmart are chaining up their cabinets like an antique emporium, a failed business model requiring a massive staff to supervise and assist customers.20,21 The icty now has a real live pirate problem—argh!—in which thieves steal boats to steal other shit.22 San Francisco belatedly ended its mask mandate, but landlords are still waiting to charge rents.23 The city’s problems have it on the cusp of insolvency, looking at over $200 million in budget cuts to avoid a “doom loop.”24

  We’ll look carefully to see whether this is a one-off situation and they’re fundamentally law-abiding people…

  ~ Larry Krasner, progressive Philadelphia district attorney on arrested looters

  The devil is in the details:

  • While doing a story on the deplorable condition of San Francisco, the CNN truck under heavy surveillance by paid guards got ripped off in four seconds.25 Pit crews at the Indy 500 are studying the footage.

  • One ambitious guy got arrested ten times in one month. His tenth was at the police station, when he tried to retrieve his property with a stolen car.26

  • The Cruise robo-taxi startup supposedly running autonomous taxis in San Francisco—I did not know they existed yet—has discovered they are excellent for both amateurs and pros for quickies.27 I get the name “cruise”.

  • Police are urging people to carry air horns.28

  • Five percent of Target’s inventory somehow bypasses the barcode scanners.

  

  It should come as no surprise that looting spread to other cities when the locals realized that San Francisco didn’t lack the laws but rather the manpower to stop flash mobs.

  • Name-brand items like Tide detergent are not being carried because there is a strong black market for the good stuff….by the Tide Podlers.29

  • Portland, Oregon lost Walmart, REI, and Nike because of shoplifting.30,31 This is Kharma for the Portland lefties. Cracker Barrel is pulling out because there are too many lefties and not enough crackers.32

  Efforts to mitigate the damage ushered in by bad decisions led to more bad decisions and goofy solutions worthy of bullets:

  • Baltimore is suing Kia and Hyundai because their cars are too easy to steal.33

  • The democratic brain trust in Chicago came up with a great plan: ask the criminals to only shoot guns between 9 PM and 9 AM to minimize the risk of innocent people.34 That’s right up there with a proposal to have city-owned grocery stores as Walmart and Whole Foods exits, leaving behind “food deserts.”35

  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has decided her call to defund the police was boneheaded and is calling for more police to stem the soaring murder rate.36

  • A union in Los Angeles wants to fill all hotel rooms left vacant at 2:00 PM into rooms to be provided to the homeless.37 That would be all hotel rooms.

  • A prominent Minnesota Democrat changed her tune on defunding and dismantling the police department after a carjacker put some whoop-ass on her.38 “These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS.” Where is Kyle Rittenhouse when you need him?

  • The Austin, Texas police have urged robbery victims not to call 911 but rather call 311, the line for non-emergencies.39

  • The entire police force of Goodhue, Minnesota resigned.40

  • A left-wing Philadelphia journalist relentlessly mocked those concerned with rising crime in Democrat-run cities. In one tweet he was chortling at some guy predicting he would be dead if Biden got elected. He was shot to death in his home.

  

  Frontier Justice 

  My dad told me a story of a friend who was being shaken down by a two-bit thug. The cops said he could defend himself, so he bought a gun and, during the next shake-down, emptied it into the punk. Problem solved. Twitter is beginning to be populated with videos of store owners defending their property—exercising “castle doctrine.”

  

  When I was in NYC in the late 70s, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels patrolled the subway system to restore law and order. In a recent looting, a couple of patrons at Home Depot tackled a looter and constrained him with zip ties until the cops arrived. Meanwhile, to avoid legal risk, corporate America is firing employees who defend the stores.

  

  Are we entering a period in which vigilante justice is our only option? Such a turbulent period may be unavoidable, but invisible forces are opposing this response. Take the shopkeeper who got the drop on a thief threatening to pull a gun and managed to beat the crook with a stick. It was quite the win for the good guys until the district attorney decided to prosecute the shopkeeper for assault.42 That district attorney is worthy of the business end of a Louisville Slugger. When we punish the law-abiding citizens for defending their rights, society has stage-III syphilis.

  The Saga of Daniel Penny

  This brings us to the sad and ominous story of Daniel Penny and Jordan Williams. Mentally unstable Jordan Neely gets on the subway in NYC and starts threatening people: “I don’t care if I have to kill the motherfucker, I will. I’ll go to jail, I’ll take a bullet” recalled him saying by one passenger. “The people on the train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives.” Neely had been arrested 44 times43 for various subway assaults, including rearranging the face of an old lady. Riders panicked and dialed 911, which requires quite a risk to trigger 911 calls from New Yorkers.44,45 One of the witnesses who filmed the event told NBC that Neely got on the train and “began to say a somewhat aggressive speech, saying he was hungry, he was thirsty, that he didn’t care about anything, he didn’t care about going to jail, he didn’t care that he gets a big life sentence.”46

  After some delay, ex-marine Daniel Penny joined forces with African-American Jordan Williams to subdue Neely. Let me digress for a moment by explaining what this means. My wife has, on several occasions, delivered some ‘tude to a stranger that could have been avoided. (I especially appreciated the guff given to a heavily tattooed gentleman at a demolition derby.) I explained the flaw in her thinking as follows (paraphrased from memory, of course):

  Here is the deal, Sweet Potato: you could have left me with no option but to get physical. At that point, I am in a life-and-death situation. I have no choice but to get the drop on my would-be assailant and incapacitate him, possibly permanently, because I can’t afford to exchange punches. I will then end up in court and possibly even prison, so please stop picking fights for me.

  This may sound rash if you are a cloistered nitwit who has no idea how brutal street fights can be. I suggest you check out Twitter feeds including @FightMate or search “Fights at IHOP” on YouTube. The key message is that physical intervention is a serious step into the darkness. In the case of subduing an angry assailant, it can get worse owing to what is called “excited delirium” in which the state of the assailant’s agitation enables superhuman strength and irrational behavior. From a research paper in Police Practice and Research:47,48

  Researchers recognized excited delirium as “a state of extreme mental and physiological excitement, characterized by extreme agitation, hyperthermia, hostility, exceptional strength and endurance without apparent fatigue….Intervention options are less effective against people experiencing excited delirium. Unfortunately, this may mean more force will be necessary to overcome resistance, and with more force, there is an increased risk of officer and suspect injury…Excited delirium encounters can be dangerous medical emergencies that simultaneously place officers, subjects, and communities at risk. It’s recommended that officers who intervene in cases involving probable excited delirium respond with containment and quick, coordinated, multiple restraint techniques that minimize the suspect’s exertion and maximize their ability to breathe.

  From the above excerpt and all those videos I urged you to watch, if you release the constraint prematurely, you may die. Here is a good samaritan who paid a price:

  

  The bottom line is that if you get into it with some whackjob, you may have to kill him. A witness said that Penny “refrained from jumping in and using force to subdue Neely until there was a threat of violence,” but eventually Penny and Williams moved to constrain Neely. Some witnesses were concerned that Neely was looking a little sketchy (choking on his spit), but Williams (the black dude) assured them they were not choking him: “He’s not squeezing,” said Williams. Neely eventually stopped struggling and Penny and Williams released him 90 seconds later—I timed it49—and immediately positioned him on his side to optimize his breathing. He either died on the spot or died at the hospital, depending on your source. You might even be able to see Neely take a breath after Penny released him but that could be the non-scientific “death rattle.”50 Witnesses on the scene said Penny and Williams were heroes. “Mr. Penny cared for people. That’s what he did…This isn’t about race. This is about people of all colors who were very, very afraid and a man who stepped in to help them.”51

  

  The liars in the press looking to stir up a race war decided to create George Floyd 2.0 by vilifying Penny as a murderer while leaving the role of African-American Williams oddly in the shadows. (I keep saying African-American because some mouth breathers lack the intellectual minetailings to spot the racial motivations of the authorities.) They said Penny choked Neely for “15 minutes” rather than 90 seconds,52,53 ignoring the 13.5 minutes of excited delirium and that a real choke hold can knock somebody out in under 20 seconds. In 2020, I dug into what it takes to kill a guy by choking him while examining the Floyd death and the role of Derek Chauvin.54 It takes more than five minutes, not 90 seconds, before death becomes a risk. Daniel Penny described how the events played out.55

  

  Penny was charged with manslaughter. What about Williams who teamed up with Penny? They worked together as a team. Well, after a protracted couple of weeks, they eventually realized they had to pretend to indict him, but then all charges were dropped.56 So this is pure racism by the prosecutor. Did the district attorney succumb to public pressure? Not really. The district attorney who brought the charges was Alvin Bragg,57 the same Morlock who weaponized the judicial system for political gain by going rogue on Trump.58 He is a despicable opportunist. A piece of shit. Go get your fourth booster Mr. Bragg.

  The family that let Neely wander the subway and be homeless for a decade without finding a way to assist him suddenly decided that they cared about him quite deeply after all and have sued Daniel Penny for wrongful death.59 Good luck collecting after he is destroyed by legal bills.

  Why make such a big deal of this one event? First, this is January 6th revisited for me. The weaponization of the justice system will be a major contributor to the downfall of our nation. If you don’t think so, just wait until “the other team” is in power and they start putting your sorry ass in the slammer. More importantly, Bragg’s moves have sent a very clear message: never help a person in distress because you will end up being prosecuted. Just pull out your cell phone like every other coward in society whose testicles never descended and film the atrocity. It’s a shame Daniel Penny doesn’t have Alec Baldwin’s street creds. Well, time to move on cause this ship isn’t gonna sink itself.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Ideas that are annealed in the furnace of debate.

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  The media serves up an AI-generated image of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. telling you what he says and thinks. He is a total crank. Just ask the mainstream media filled with well-seasoned prostitutes trying to take him down. If, however, you actually listen to what he says, it creates a very different picture. He is this election cycle’s rising dark-horse progressive. Maybe I am not being fair to Vivek Ramaswamy who says all the right things from the right wing, but Vivek seems too produced, manifesting the authenticity of a boy-band. RFK Jr is the most exciting entrant to the political arena with no chance of inheriting the Oval Office. I have a long-shot bet that the DNC accepts their responsibility to serve up a potentially credible leader as their candidate and bites the bullet with a Kennedy nomination.

  

  Much the way Trump weaponized Twitter for his presidential run, RFK Jr and Ramaswamy have tapped the Age of the Podcast. Kennedy will do any podcast including Greenwald,1 Dave Smith,2 Lex Fridman,3 as well as such luminaries as Alex Jones (which I can no longer find), Mike Tyson,4 and Dane Wigington (of Chemtrails fame).5 Having binge-watched many podcasts and even spent some time on a Zoom call with Kennedy, I will say that he is not the perfect candidate but is attempting to express his ideas clearly and honestly. He is by no means a crank but rather an outspoken progressive who has been scarred by fights with powerful forces over decades as he legally battled regulatory capture. There have been stumbles, corrections, and maybe a few fibs, but he is also a very quick learn on complex subjects and can openly and frankly change his stance. For those who have an aversion to one of his views, chin up: he may learn and change.

  So let’s take a quick peek at my takes on his takes. This, of course, is paradoxical because I admonished you seconds ago not to read about what he said, but at least I provide the links to help you check.

  Anti-vaccine quack RFK Jr. has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president as a Democrat… Kennedy is such a healthcare menace, in 2019, even his cousins wrote an op-ed criticizing his anti-science views on life-saving vaccines.6

  ~ Jake Tapper, CNN talking head, DNC shill, and all-around jackwagon

  Vaccines.

  Kennedy’s views on vaccines are the stuff of legend. I will reiterate a couple but urge you to read The Real Anthony Fauci to understand his multi-decade battles with pharma that have left him bruised and battered with a deep-seated disdain for Fauci. I doubt any reasonable person can read 100 pages without getting irate. Kennedy’s public stance is that he supports all vaccines that are safe and effective, but he trusts few of them. He takes serious issue with their excessive use and with the manufacturers, after getting hit with $35 billion of legal penalties, demanding and getting a complete backstopping of all culpability by the government. When pharma is immune to the consequences of vaccine injuries, they will promote unsafe vaccines without fear of consequences.7 I agree with Kennedy.

  

  Lockdowns.

  He emphatically declared the lockdowns to have been unwarranted and the $16 trillion cost prohibitive.8 He refers to the pandemic and the State’s response to it as a coup d’etat, coming off as more libertarian than bark-eating liberal.9

  Only two families said they were claiming political persecution. The rest just told us openly they were coming here to make money, coming here for a better life. So, they didn’t even have that claim. And those immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into the country. We should stop that at the border…. They get extorted. They get raped. They get robbed.10

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Immigration.

  RFK was an open-border supporter. His sister Rory Kennedy created an award-winning 2010 documentary The Fence making a case against The Wall. But then he visited the border for two days in 2023 and morphed into an advocate of immigration control.11 On his visit, he found only two families claiming persecution with arguments that reached the legal bar. Hispanics were AWOL, with North Africans and Chinese representing the vast percentage of immigrants.

  I went down to the border feeling that Trump has made a mistake on the wall, but I feel like people need to be able to recalibrate their worldview when they’re confronted with evidence.

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Social programs.

  He is a classic social democrat, proposing programs for those not living the American dream that sound good but have little history of working. On the heels of his relatively new views on restricted immigration, one can’t help but wonder what his views on the homeless might become. His openly stated desire to bring US spending under control, however, causes him to overtly denounce solutions involving big-government programs. An old-school liberal with a fear of budget overrun is arguably not an old-school liberal.

  We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Israel.

  RFK’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot possibly be a minor campaign issue nor is it likely to be static over time given that the conflict is looking quite kinetic. He has, however, come out squarely in support of Israel:12,13,14,15 This might be shaped by an awkward moment in which he casually noted that the Chinese and the Jews showed a greater resistance to Covid.16 Those at the table flinched. On cue, he was immediately pegged as anti-semitic. It just so happens that he was quoting a scientific paper that showed the biochemical basis of his statement.17,18,19 What he learned that day is something Dave Chappelle relayed to Kanye West: nothing good comes from putting two words together—“the” and “Jews.”

  I have been fighting engineering solutions to environmental problems.20

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Climate Change.

  This is a hot-button topic for me, and my first exposure to Kennedy’s ideas appeared to be place him squarely in opposition. (See the section on “Climate Change.”) A video showed him threatening to jail climate deniers, which sounds like it might include me:21

  I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals that are there. I think those [politicians] are selling out the public trust. I think those guys that are doing the Koch Brothers bidding and who against all the evidence of the rational mind are saying that global warming doesn’t exist that they are contemptible human beings, and I wish there were a law you could punish them under. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish those politicians under, but do I think the Koch Brothers should be punished for reckless endangerment? Absolutely. That’s a criminal offense, and they ought to be serving time for it.

  He responded by pointing out that it was taken out of context and parsed very conveniently.21 I found his explanation in which he was referring to overt polluters to be extreme but not psychotic. Where it gets interesting is that he notes in other statements that climate issues are being “exploited” to impose “totalitarian controls” over the populace, drawing an analogy to Covid.22

  Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by … mega billionaires…The same way that Covid was exploited to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society and then to give us engineering solutions.ref yy

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Bitcoin.

  As a bitcoin agnostic, I don’t care too much but in a podcast with a bitcoin enthusiast he left me slack-jawed by his grasp of the nuances of cryptocurrencies.24 As noted above, he is a fast learner.

  If the government has the capacity to shut down your bank account and starve you to death and get you thrown out of your home and make it so you can’t feed your children, it has the capacity to make slaves of all of us.25

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Chemtrails.

  In a rather remarkable podcast, RFK chats with Dane Wigington, one of the more legendary promoters of how those streaks in the sky are nefarious actions of the New World Order. RFK largely played devil’s advocate on the existence and purpose of chemtrails. I will touch on this topic again, but Kennedy neither endorses nor summarily dismisses the chemtrail narrative.

  Ukraine.

  Kennedy laid out in detail that our foreign policy in Ukraine is atrocious and we should get the hell out of there.26,27 His position squares nicely with mine laid out in lurid detail in 202228 and amplified below. He also admits in the same Greenwald interview that he got duped by the Russia collusion story used to attack Trump and has now done a 180.29

  I would put a statue of Snowden in Washington. What Snowden released nobody in our country knew about. That the intelligence agencies were mining all of our data and spying on Americans…Assange I’m going to pardon.30

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  

  Opposition.

  As noted, I don’t think RFK is getting near the Oval Office. He got pushback that was reminiscent of Ron Paul in 2008 on almost every topic. Here are some examples of opposition showing its true colors:

  • The democrats tried to stop him from testifying to Congress on the evils of censorship.31 The irony of censoring talks on censorship was lost only on the Congressional democrats. He proceeded to beat them like rented mules in his testimony. He noted that the 101 Congressmen and women who signed the letter to censor him played the anti-Semite card.

  • RFK’s interview by Mike Tyson describing how the CIA whacked his father and how the case against Sirhan Sirhan would have crumbled had it gone to court was deleted by YouTube.32 As is becoming patently obvious, the CIA has the final say on all online media sites.

  • In an ABC interview, RFK got massively censored (edited) with a follow-up disclaimer that we are not allowed to see what he said because he made false claims about the vaccine.33 That is what worthless sacks of shit called “mainstream media” do in authoritarian states.

  • The DNC declared that they had “no plans to sponsor primary debates,” even with multiple candidates vying for the party’s nomination.34 They provided their full support to that child sniffing,35 compulsively lying,36 and underachieving former senator who is 51 cards short of a full deck. (Yes: I am fed up with Potus.) The DNC decided that the primary votes accrued by any candidate who even sets foot in Iowa or New Hampshire would default to President Brandon.37

  The CIA is the world’s biggest sponsor of “journalism.”38

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Many are unaware that the DNC is a private not-for-profit with the power to pick candidates any way they want. They were kept in check historically by two restoring forces: (1) anybody with a half of a brain would abandon them and start a new party, and (2) I could imagine that RICO charges could be levied for raising funds using pretenses. (Of course, the DNC has weaponized the Department of Justice, so that would never happen…unless the RNC regains power.) The superdelegate system is so lopsided that an interloper like Kennedy has no chance of commandeering the nomination; he is now an independent. I hope he does some damage. It is quite clear that the DNC has lost all moral or legal obligation to offer us a candidate even minimally capable of leading the nation. Cornpop39 would be an improvement over Biden.

  They’ve passed a rule that says any candidate who actively campaigns in New Hampshire that the delegates they win will not be allowed into the convention. It’s not a good template for Democracy.40

  ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Assassinations.

  It seems pretty clear to many that if RFK got even a whiff of the presidency he would follow in the family tradition and get his ass capped by the CIA to the applause of Big Pharma. He has been inflicting huge reputational damage to the CIA by accusing them of killing his uncle (JFK)41 and his father (RFK, Sr.) After years of turning a blind eye, he looked at the case against Sirhan Sirhan and suggested that Sirhan Sirhan was a product of MKUltra,42 the CIA’s program for brainwashing assassins-in-training and patsies. (Sorry folks, but MKUltra is real and, in my opinion, still today.)

  I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy, Jr is not warranted at this time.43

  ~ Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, after 88 days of stalling

  All viable presidential candidates have been offered Secret Service protection since his father was shot, but RFK, Jr was denied.44 When Joe Rogan asked him what he thought would happen if he managed to get into office, Kennedy replied, “I gotta be careful. I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it — at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions.” I suspect he would release the last of the Warren Commission papers, the ones that Tucker Carlson claims show the CIA did it.45 Watch for those little red laser dots on your chest, Bobby. I also fear that his flame burned brightly and dimmed too early. His social media presence may have peaked. The Onion showed why the Babylon Bee is the New King.

  

  Jeffrey Epstein.

  It turns out RFK, Jr. rode on the Lolita Express twice. Oh, here come the Guardians of Gotcha! Welp, it turns out to have been in 1993, the trips were to Florida, and he brought his wife and kids. Kinda puts the damper on the pervy shit.46

  Climate Change–Epilogue

  The Only Way to Get to 1.5 Degrees of Global Warming is Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money.1

  ~ John Kerry, US climate Czar

  

  As of 2016, I was largely on board the climate change narrative owing to my faith in the scientific community. After I was challenged to question that stance by my brother and a digital acquaintance, Dr. David Walker, I have done a U-turn and am sanguine with my current stance that climate change is the largest hoax in the history of science to paraphrase Richard Lindzen, geophysicist at MIT. The hoax is fueled by a combination geopolitical forces and tens of trillions of dollars of government largesse—an estimated $150 trillion over the next decades2—to buy adherents of many and complicit silence from others.

  “You don’t believe in climate change? What a Luddite!” is the rallying cry of the cultists, and I do not use the term cultists loosely. I wrote about my journey in 2019 (pg 53).3 This grift demanding an urgent response to ward off catastrophe decades from now will obstinately persist because it will always be decades from now. One of the early denialists, Michael Crichton, reminds us to read headlines from decades ago and ask how many catastrophic predictions played out as the panicky press declared.4 We are forever being shamed to do it for our children and grandchildren.

  I will not adjudicate the case again for my climate denial stance, but each year I top off my denial narrative with fresh tidbits. Here is a decent primer for those who did not realize it was a debate and not just “The Science.”5 For serious analyses and fabulous archival data, check out Watts Up With That?6 I also did a podcast with climate denialist, Tom Nelson, that touched upon climate change before I drove it off a cliff into darker topics.6a

  

  How can I possibly spit in the face of a massive scientific community that has reached a nearly perfect 97% consensus? Let’s begin with that 97% consensus narrative as one of the biggest lies. It stems from a horrifically bad survey of the literature in which half the papers were irrelevant, and by the miracles of statistical massaging, 0.4% of the papers claiming climate change is a crisis was spun into a 97% consensus.7,8,9 This garbage is cited widely by a community willing to knowingly live with the lie. There are many more lies. Princeton physicist and former presidential advisor, Will Happer, laments that they keep changing the data from the past to fit the narrative.10

  

  If you have to lie to make your point you don’t have a very good point.

  ~ Jimmy Dore

  The absence of credible scientists denying climate change is another whopper. A few hours of thoughtful pursuit will reveal that many prominent scientists—especially a large population of elite physicists—have nothing but scorn for the field (pg 53).11,12 Those doing good climate science—and there are undoubtedly many—are forced to sell their scientific souls through willful blindness and unwillingness because their professional lives depend on not calling out the con artists. The authorities and their captured media lied us into every military conflict for over a century. Metaphorical Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, and Communism are designed to be fought at considerable cost but never won. Replace “War” with “Grift” and you are getting closer to the truth. The Gell-Mann amnesia effect—our ability to doubt the media on subjects we understand but to believe all the others—allows these narratives to move forward unimpeded.

  Precious few are willing to question credentialed experts. We just witnessed a wholesale delusion because scientists and doctors were unwilling or professionally unable to challenge even a shard of the Covid narrative. Trust The Science.TM We never witnessed open and active debate. Those who questioned the narrative suffered massive destruction of their careers and livelihoods. To quote Elon Musk, to those who foisted the lie on otherwise decent people, “Go fuck yourselves.” Climate scientists who step in front of the climate narrative suffer a similar fate. To those pushing this narrative by preventing open and honest debate, “Go fuck yourselves.”

  

  The following nuggets are not intended to convince Eric Hoffer’s “True Believers”13 to re-evaluate their position—it would take an act of God to do that—but to throw more shade on the narrative to assist and perhaps entertain those already in doubt. Meanwhile, the Associated Press and other news agencies will continue to accept bribes to push the catastrophe narrative.14 The Flagulents will continue to stop rush-hour traffic by gluing themselves to the road,15 deface priceless paintings,16 vandalize gas-guzzling SUVs,17 and even block London’s pride parade.18 PBS will teach us to cope with “climate anxiety.”19 (Let me help: turn off PBS.)

  

  Claims 

  The press is a goldmine of preposterous claims illustrating the triumph of ignorance. Climate change is the default for brain addled journalists incapable of forming coherent thoughts on their own. Here are some of the ideas spewing from their brain stems:

  • Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plants growing more quickly. Because plants don’t consume all the CO­2 they absorb, that means more plants are releasing even more CO­2­ into the atmosphere!20 Nobody would buy this crap right? Think again…

  

  • There were 500 more major league home runs because of climate change over the last decade.21 So much for Big-League Science. For the sake of humanity, stop injecting the trees with steroids.

  

  • Climate change is causing kidney stones in children owing to dehydration.22 They say hospitals are opening up “stone clinics.”23 They are, no doubt, to be subsidized by money allocated to fight the crisis. Given that a couple-hundred-foot change in elevation or a few hundred miles north or south can alter the average temperature, parents should choose where they raise their kids carefully. If you live in New York, do not move to Pennsylvania.

  • The Messenger Business tells us climate change is ruining the quality of your beer (unless you still drink Bud Light, which has been declared turtle piss as of this year.)24

  

  The natural instinct of the entire world to blame every hiccup on climate change leads to a rhetorical question that haunts me. Recall all the problems we have faced and solved through clear-headed reckoning. Imagine that we were facing the loss of the raptors in the world because DDT was thinning their shells, causing a massive collapse in their populations. If that problem from the 1960s surfaced today, would we be able to get to that conclusion or simply blame it on climate change? Answer: We would royally fuck it up.

  Solutions and Mitigation

  Because of the pandemic of juvenile kidney stones and major-league home runs, we must do something. Some shockingly stupid solutions are being batted about:

  • The crowd blaming trees for expelling CO­2 has recommended mass deforestation.25

  • Britain’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) told the Limeys not to heat their homes in the evening. To get to the Net Zero target by 2030 either home heating or private jets are gonna have to go.26 To say the enthusiasm for the plan was muted would be an understatement.

  • Scotland chopped down 16 million carbon-sequestering trees to build windmills.27

  

  • Many support geoengineering as our savior. That is where you intentionally blanket the earth with a cloud of shit (aluminum particles, for example), to block the sun’s rays.28 I cringe at the damage they could do to the planet but chuckle at how blocking the sun would undermine that grand scheme to exploit solar energy. All of the solutions to the problems caused by bad weather rely on predictably good weather. In a 1995 Simpsons episode, Mr. Burns built a giant shade to block the sun as part of a plan to force the city to rely on his power plant,29 which explains why Bill Gates likes the idea so much. This idea is so insane that the solar-powered bright bulbs of Congress are now interested.30

  • Democrats in the State of Washington State want incarceration for those using gas-powered leaf blowers and edgers.31

  • Klaus Scwab’s daughter seems to be carrying the authoritarian standard into the fray by promoting “climate lockdowns.” She is from a mutant lineage. There are tons of fact checks denying this one. Collum’s Law: the more fact-checks, the more somebody is hiding something.

  

  • In one of the more comical chapters, the People’s Republic of California proposed a total replacement of gas-powered vehicles by electric vehicles (EVs) the same week that they asked the citizenry to abstain from charging their EV’s owing to the fragile grid.32 On the not-so-improbable chance Gavin Newsom rides in to save the Democratic ticket on a solar-powered steed, remember: you are voting for a member of a crime family.

  • Some Scientologists suggest it is time to bring back food rationing.33,34

  Green energy has two problems: it’s not really green, and it’s not really energy.

  ~ Alex Epstein

  • Gasoline cars spew out 3% of global CO­2 emissions,35 so go ahead and buy that Tesla, but you better check into the cost of replacement batteries (up to $20,00036) and generic repair work before you plunk down the cash. Also, hope it doesn’t blow the hell up.37

  • Get rid of gas stoves! This idea also came out of the Bad Idea Factory, California, but found its way inside the Beltway fast.38,39

  

  • RedState says couples are passing up having kids altogether.39 If you decide you don’t want to have any children, just call John Podesta to take them off your hands.

  • The Los Angeles Times endorses the occasional blackout.40

  

  • Daily Mail says some doctors suggest that using less anesthetic during surgery would measurably reduce our carbon footprint.41 Some doc tries that on me, and I will pull out of my shallow stupor and personally reduce their carbon footprint.

  • Introduce climate taxes.42 This one is already here and growing.

  • Gigantic solar-powered air conditioners could cool the Earth. OK. I made that one up, but it’s no dumber than some of the others.

  

  • The Federal Reserve has decided that climate change mitigation is under their jurisdiction now that they have gotten control over inflation and dollar debasement.43

  • The New York Times suggests that if we mate with shorter people this will decrease the carbon footprint of our offspring.44 It has added perqs if the little lady has a flat head.

  • We could elect a new president:

  

  It’s only gonna get worse with global warming and climate change ’cause people can’t live in certain parts of this world.45

  ~ Joy Bahar

  The Climate Grift

  At the turn of the century, the titans of industry and carpet baggers bribed politicians to stay out of their way. In the modern era with huge government budgets, politicians are bribed to hand over huge sums of what was formerly your money. We are in the Age of Grift, and climate change is running neck-and-neck with the War Machine.

  • The carbon baggers at JPMorgan Chase are going green by purchasing $200 million of carbon credits from several companies building a pipeline to ship CO­2 from somewhere to somewhere else. It’s kind of like the bathtub ring in The Cat in the Hat. The businesses haven’t any carbon and nobody has a clue what to do with it anyway, but the carbon credits (a generous grift from the government) will “neutralize the bank’s environmental footprint” whatever the hell that means. This clown show promises to be profitable as JPM cleans up by moving bathtub rings.46 The Fed hikes will do wonders to reduce carbon footprints of regional banks.

  • The Biden administration is increasing the tax credit for solar and wind facilities in low-income areas.47 Will that make the farmers wealthy—I presume they are not installing them in “the hood”—or cause them to lose their farms by eminent domain?

  • A new $4 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in Kansas is powered by enough coal to light up a small city (200–250 megawatts.)48 Leaving the idea of free market capitalism aside, why does a “$4.7 billion” plant need $6.8 billion subsidy from the ironicly named, “Inflation Reduction Act?”

  • China has fields packed with thousands of undriven electric cars left to rot (or explode).49

  • Batteries that consume huge natural resources, rely on massive child slave labor in the Congo, inflict environmental damage, and risk fires are a small price to pay for green soon-to-be toxic waste dumps masquerading as solar farms.

  If you actually have a superior product, you don’t need the government to force it on people. If someone has a competitor to the iPhone, we would never say, ‘Oh, let’s just give them some $10 billion in subsidies.50

  ~ Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein), climate pragmatist but naïve on “free market subsidies”

  New Science

  A few bits of scientific insight crossed my field of view despite my best efforts to stop consuming my relatively limited ATP and time on the issue. Some are new and others are new to me or just new perspectives.

  • Evidence from Greenland ice cores provides no support whatsoever of man-made climate change.51

  • Even as a chemist, it surprised me to learn that there’s more argon than CO2 in the atmosphere.

  • Arctic sediments show it was warmer 10,000 years ago and ice-free in the summers.52

  • Maine researchers noted a one-month spike of sea temperatures above the norm and declared a disaster.53 Check your gauges. Run a few controls. Statistically speaking, the odds of your panic being justified are 1/astronomical.

  • CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. 3% of that came from humans and 5% of that 3% came from the US. Ergo, CO2 from the US is 0.00006% of the atmosphere.54 And if you drive an electric car it will change this math by 1/1.0 google.

  • Over the last 10 years, the US has witnessed a statistically random (average) number of temperature records.55 “The 1930s are still champs!” according to climatologist John Christy.

  There are all kinds of myths and pseudoscience all over the place. I may be quite wrong, maybe they do know all these things, but I don’t think I’m wrong. You see, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something, and therefore I see how they get their information, and I can’t believe that they know it. They haven’t done the work necessary, haven’t done the checks necessary, haven’t taken the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don’t know, that this stuff is and that they’re intimidating people.

  ~ Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999).

  Now let’s look at a few charts for laughs.

  The average temperature over the last 10 years…

  

  The average temperature in all climate stations in February back to 1920…

  

  …or the number of record highs reported across all weather stations back to 1920…

  

  OK. This isn’t working. Let’s try average days between billion-dollar disasters over four decades…

  

  Bingo! Eat that, Dave, you climate denier! Now correct for changes in the US population (up 1.5-fold), real rather than corrupted CPI-based inflation, and monotonically expanding coastal land development, and you realize this plot is total bullshit.56 Ignore it, or chuck some tomato soup on a Renoir.

  Even if that plot were legit, let’s gander at deaths in Europe, a continent with some legendary wholesale death stats over the centuries, attributable to temperature extremes

  

  How ‘bout global deaths attributed to all extreme weather events…

  

  There is one stat that really got the Cult’s underwear in a bunch. NASA says that the Antarctica ice coverage has been growing for over a decade,57,58 but everybody’s underwear shot right up their asses this year when the quantity of Antarctica sea ice plummeted. The first figure below shows the drop that Helen Keller could see. The figure after that shows the much more useful and monumental drop in units of standard deviations.59 Six standard deviations is a one-in-a-billion event. This is extraordinary, especially in the absence of any foreshadowing. But first, take a peek at that other year in which it also dropped six standard deviations in November but then fully recovered in a month. Seems improbable, eh? Also, if you Google this story, you find plots with different fine structures—different jiggles and wiggles. This does not happen with real data.

  

  

  To explain this result, we bring out a modified version of Nassim Taleb’s story of Fat Tony:

  Vinnie: “Hey Fookin’ Tony. I have a legitimate coin and flip it heads 30 times in a row. [That’s a 1-in-a-billion probability.] What are the odds if I flip it again I’ll get tails?

  Tony: Zero.

  Vinnie: Nope. It’s 50:50 odds.

  Tony: It’s zero. The coin is rigged.

  Vinnie: I said the coin was legitimate.

  Tony: You lied.

  I don’t know what went wrong with their data, but somebody lied. The other maxim is that when data deviates from your model by six standard deviations, it’s time to get another model (said in the voice of Bullwinkle Moose.) A more thoughtful analysis says that the ice got pushed by high winds poleward, causing the mass to remain constant, but the thickness change went undetected.60 It still seems like 1-in-a-billion probability that the climate scientologists inadvertently failed to account for ice thickness, so I am going with, “you lied.”

  Opposition

  The overwhelming impression conveyed is one of impending disaster riding in on the menace of global warming.61 The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres refers to it as “global boiling.”62 Could you be anymore hyperbolic than that, Tony? I pay attention to prominent climate deniers if for no other reason than to feel like one of the cool kids. And I am seeing more and more papers challenging the climate clowns continue to surface. (I suspect the horrific performance of the scientific community’s handling of Covid might be growing some spines.) I find it especially encouraging there were some interesting cameo appearances by those willing to ponder alternative narratives.

  • Outspoken climate change expert and critic, Roger Pielke Jr., called it “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen” when a top academic journal retracted published research doubting a climate emergency after negative coverage in legacy media.63

  • I had been waiting for Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying to take a stand on climate change. While not prominent scientists in the usual sense, they are fearless and pedagogically brilliant. I was not disappointed as they tore at the scientific adipose hanging off the narrative.64 I tried to get Joe Rogan to take it on a few years back, but he balked and replied: “Is this anything you’ve ever spoken about publicly? It’s such a land mine discussion.” Getting on a Rogan podcast is my Holy Grail.

  • The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, John Clauser, joins a long list of elite physicists calling bullshit on climate change.65 His big gripe is the total failure to account for clouds, which are estimated to be 200 times more important than CO2­,66,67 noting that many are proferring “very dishonest information” and are guilty of “breaches of dishonesty.” “We’re talking about trillions of dollars…powerful people don’t want to hear that they’ve made trillion-dollar mistakes.” Of course, the climate community jumped on him immediately, noting he was just another old, white physicist who is not a member of The Cult. Once his views on climate change went viral, his scheduled talk at the International Monetary Fund was cancelled.68

  • A prominent climate scientist named Patrick Brown wrote an op-ed about the amount of bullshit he recently had to sling to get a climate change paper published in the elite journal, Nature.69,70 He admits to the hyperbole, omission of less flashy details, and focus on the flashy and spectacular parts necessary to “publish or perish.” It was a refreshingly honest confession, but as a 20-year veteran journal editor, I am unconvinced he understood the magnitude of the fraud he committed. He left academia a year ago “partially because I felt the pressures put on academic scientists caused too much of the research to be distorted.” He may have inadvertently left the publishing world altogether and maybe his current job too.

  • John Stossel interviewed Judith Curry.71 as part of her book tour.72 Judith was an elite climate scientist who broke from the narrative and was left to scientifically die on a (melting) ice flow.

  • Berlin voters appear to have had enough green activism, voting 82% to bag the idea of attaining Net Zero by 2030.73

  • Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana) hammered two cluelessness climate experts who were promoting tens of trillions of dollars in spending to repel global warming.74 They had no idea what would be done, the cost, and the effect. They were also incapable of predicting what the big polluters—China and India—would be doing during our period of great sacrifice.

  • The Climate analog of the Great Barrington Declaration—a petition to declare climate change is not an emergency—was passed around to carefully vetted elite scientists. It got over 1,800 signatures, including mine.75 (OK. Maybe not “elite” but carefully vetted.) I know names that are not there that should be, so this is a work in progress.

  • A University of Chicago poll shows that the belief in the climate narrative has slipped from 60% to 49% in the last five years. A more global poll showed 40% now believe the changes are natural.76 “The ‘official narrative’ on man-made climate change has been vehemently amplified by every single major government entity, corporation, media outlet and cultural institution in existence.”76a I’ll repeat, overplaying Covid and the vaccine may have come at a considerable loss of scientific credibility. How does the scientific community get its credibility back? Simple: stop lying your fucking asses off and clean the charlatans out of the field. Otherwise, GFY.

  • Fed Governor Christopher Waller has dared to proclaim that climate change does not pose “significantly unique or material” financial stability risks that the Federal Reserve should treat it separately in its supervision of the financial system. “Climate change is real, but I do not believe it poses a serious risk to the safety and soundness of large banks or the financial stability of the United States…I believe risks posed by climate change are not sufficiently unique or material to merit special treatment.”77

  • Michael Shellenberger, famous conservationist turned climate denier, testified to Congress this year on media censorship78 and gives brilliant talks about third rails.79,80

  Conclusion

  While Greta was faking arrests81 in a vain attempt to keep her carbon footprint well-funded and the fact-checkers were busting keyboards protecting her legacy, the globalists pushing the climate narrative for fun and profit appear to be replacing Greta with Stanford student Sophia Kianni as the face, voice, and physique of the climate movement.82 It is a tactical mistake, in my opinion, but I can see serious merits—an activist with benefits

  

  In moments of maximum frustration, I take an alternative approach by suggesting to my unsuspecting victims (formerly called friends) that we accept the climate predictions and ask, Do you really think you can see evidence of climate change by looking out the window? If the temperature is rising at some fraction of a degree per year, does the fact that your’s or Sophie’s ass was dripping sweat last summer tell you anything? (Is it getting warmer or is that just me?) Can you see where that heat spell in your hometown would fit on this long-term plot? See that flicker at the end? That is us emerging from what is referred to as “the Little Ice Age.”83

  

  Weber’s law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus. It has been shown not to hold for extremes of stimulation.84

  And if the sea level is rising 3 mm per year (which it has been doing for almost two centuries85), can you see it in the floods near your house? Can you see it in the chart below?

  

  Deaths Caused By Hurricane Hillary To Be Labeled Suicides.

  ~ Babylon Bee

  Will your beach house still be there in 50 years even if the sea level is not rising at all or hurricanes are not more frequent? Speaking of which, can you see the marked increase in hurricanes that is so obvious to Cultists and fear-mongering pundits?

  

  Finally, can you really detect the ramping up of natural disasters in general?

  

  If you answered yes to any of those questions, get your urologist to check you for kidney stones, breed with flat-headed hobbits, and buy a Tesla. The only electric vehicle that I would ever consider owning would be a two-seater with drink holders and room for two sets of golf clubs on the back.

  Let me close this chapter on a somber note. I used to think the climate cultists were comical, but their prevalence stems from a much deeper, darker plot playing a central role in rising neo-Marxism and authoritarianism. The globalists will be monitoring and curbing your carbon footprint while the bankers and the techies consolidate an increasing percentage of the global wealth.86 The merging of corporate and government interests is the definition of fascism. Despite a noticeable stalling this year, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scoring will be used to allocate bank credit only to the politically correct and connected. The bankers are telling corporations to “get woke or go broke.” You will either toe the line—endorse the narrative—or lose access to the banking system.87 Hey Larry Fink: GFY.

  Brandon Smith88 via Zerohedge89 noted that French President Emmanuel Macron says “the world needs a public finance shock” to fight global warming, noting the “the spiraling cost of weather disasters intensified by global warming”—a claim unsupported by any hard data—”is destabilizing.” Another globalist chimed in: “What is required of us now is absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions.” UN leader Antonio Guterres suggests tackling climate issues would “take a giant leap towards global justice.” Of course, trillions of dollars of “emission taxes” are locked and loaded for redistribution. The most authoritarian “Central Bank Digital Currencies” will be central to the globalists’ coup.

  Farming needs to stop because it is the biggest driver of climate change.

  ~ Young man on the street displaying the IQ of a walnut

  There is a war on farmers couched in the language of climate change. Farmers in Ireland and in Northern Europe have been nearly destroyed by the War on Farmers90,91,92 as brilliantly laid out by the Epoch Times.93 The claim is that farmers are creating nitrogen pollution from all that fertilizer. That is total horse shit. This thinly veiled authoritarian move superficially centralizes food production but also strips away farmland and slashes food production for reasons I cannot yet grasp. (One theory asserts that major tracts of farmland are being flushed free of farmers to make way for “smart cities.”)94 This “eating bugs” bullshit may be true, but it is also a distraction. The too-big-to-fail banks are already lining up to tell us what we can eat by controlling the money used to purchase food.95 John Kerry says that “food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience,” but he is a clueless liar.96 Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the US, but I cannot yet grasp what evil lurks in the skull of this Club of Rome eugenicist by birth and by actions.97 I wrote dozens of pages on rising authoritarianism back in 2021 (pg 242).98 It is coming faster than I thought.

  

  Let’s redo that and finish on a positive note. Here is the transcript of a compelling speech given to the Oxford Union by brilliant political satirist, Konstantin Kisin, who I had the extraordinary pleasure of sitting down for a chat this fall. I would have led with the speech, but it renders my analysis unneeded. I recommend listening to it,99 but here is the transcript. What is extraordinary is that I did not have to clean up the grammar, only add punctuation. He talks like this.

  Konstantin Kisin Oxford Union speech:100

  I want to talk to those of you who are woke and who are open to rational argument, a small minority I accept, because one of the tenets of wokeness, of course, is that your feelings matter more than the truth, but I believe in you. I believe there are those of you here who are woke, who are open to rational arguments. So let me make one. We are told that your generation cares more than any other about one issue in particular, and that issue’s climate change. We’re told that many of you suffer from climate anxiety. You wish to save the planet and, for tonight and tonight only, I will join you. I will join you in worshipping at the feet of Saint Greta of Climate Change.

  Let us all accept right here right now that we are living through a climate emergency, and our stocks of polar bears are running extremely low. I join you in this view. I truly do. Now what are we to do about this huge problem facing humanity? What can we in Britain do? We can only do one thing. You know why? This country is responsible for two percent of global carbon emissions, which means that if Britain was to sink into the sea right now it would make absolutely no difference to the issue of climate change. You know why? Because the future of the climate is going to be decided in Asia and in Latin America by poor people who couldn’t give a shit about saving the planet. It’s going to be decided by poor people in Asia and Latin America who don’t care about saving the planet. No thank you. No thank you. You know why? Because they’re poor. Because they’re poor. I come from Russia, which is not a poor country. It’s a middle-income country.

  Twenty percent of households in Russia do not have an indoor toilet. What they have is an outdoor toilet, and I don’t mean one of those nice porta loos that we get here. I don’t even mean a Glastonbury porta loo. I mean a wooden shack with a hole in the ground. The hole’s a collected fermented memory of the last 10,000 visits. How many of you are going to go home tonight and say, “Let’s rip out our bathroom and erect a Siberian shithouse in the back Garden”, and if you’re not why should they? 120 million people in China who do not have enough food? I don’t mean that they don’t get dessert. I mean they suffer from malnutrition; that means that their immune system is breaking down because they don’t have enough food. You’re not going to get them to stay poor.

  Imagine Xi Jinping, the leader of China. When you were ten years old there was a revolution—a cultural revolution in your country—and people came, and they threw your father in prison, your mother had to denounce him, your sister killed herself, and you, no longer enjoying the protection of your formerly powerful father, were sent to a village where you lived in a cave house. And here you are decades later; you have clawed your way up the bloody and greasy pole of Chinese politics to be the undisputed supreme leader of the very Communist Party that destroyed your family, and you know that the main thing you have to do to survive and to stay in power is to deliver the one thing that the people of China want: prosperity—economic growth. Where do you think climate change ranks on XI Jinping’s list of priorities? A third of all children who live in extreme poverty in the world live in India. That means they are starving and dying of preventable diseases now.

  Now about 15 months ago my wife got pregnant—not me, because we’re old school—and for nine months we talked about what our boy would look like, what he might do when he grows up. We looked at baby scans and videos on YouTube about what the fetus looks like at nine [weeks] and 12 [weeks] and 20 [weeks] and eventually he was born, and he is this cute little bundle of joy. He’s cuter than about eighty percent of puppies, right? Now if you said to me that I had a choice: either my son had a serious risk of starving or dying from a preventable disease in the next year or I could press a button and he would live, he would go to school, he would bring his first girlfriend home, he’d go to university and graduate and become a woke idiot. And then he’d get a job and get married and have children and become a man. But all I have to do is press this button and for every day of my son’s life, a giant plume of CO2 is going to get released into the atmosphere. Now you’re all very young, and most of you are not parents. Let me tell you something: there is not a parent in the world who would not smash that button so hard their hand bled. You are not going to get these people to stay poor. You’re not even going to get them to not want to be richer.

  And so I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen: there is only one thing we can do in this country to stop climate change, and that is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs that will create the clean energy that is not only clean but also cheap. And the only thing that wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright young minds like yours to believe that you are victims, to believe that you have no agency, to believe that what you must do to improve the world is to complain, is to protest, is to throw soup on paintings. And we on this side of the house are not on this side of the house because we do not wish to improve the world. We sit on this side of the house because we know that the way to improve the world is to work, is to create, is to build, and the problem with work culture is that it has trained too many young minds like yours to forget about that.

  Thank you very much.

  [loud applause]

  News Nuggets

  I love collecting news nuggets that tickle my fancy. They are usually a tad edgy. I was torn about whether to include them in part 2 on the logic that they are really part of the year being reviewed or holding them until the belated part 3, when sorting through more notes is likely to dredge up more human folly. I’ve chosen the former.

  Nuggets are presented randomly as follows:

  • A Chinese weather balloon flew across the country while people were mesmerized at how stupid we are. Seems likely that the entire story is slathered with bullshit. In an effort to regain public confidence the military shot down a kid’s high school science project,1 prompting Eddie Snowden to muse, “please tell me the white house did not spend the month of february scrambling jets to fire $400,000 missiles at the local hobby club’s TWELVE DOLLAR BALLOON.”

  • A 22-foot submarine taking tourists to the Titanic disappeared with all those onboard, which included the CEO of the OceanGate, the modern era’s Davy Jones. He didn’t want to hire “50-year-old white guys” noting that, they weren’t “inspirational” and that “anybody can drive the sub.” Although that was a bad call, Mate, at least you were politicaly correct.2 Titanic director James Cameron, who visited the Titanic 33 times onboard a submersible, suggested this was pretty stupid.3

  • As Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy struggled to stay out of prison we discovered her deep throaty voice was also faked.4,5 An excellent Holmes imitation surfaced.6 I still wonder if Cristine Blasey-Ford’s squeaky voice was real.

  • Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as Sam Bankrupt-Fraud or SBF for short, founder and destroyer of the FTX Crypto Exchange, was looking at serious jail time because he “misappropriated billions of dollars in customer money, defrauded investors, and violated campaign finance laws.”7,8 (This was covered in detail in the 2022 YIR.9) It should come as no surprise as the second biggest Democrat donor in the 2022 midterms and money launderer of Federal funds through Ukraine for the DNC that he is shedding charges faster than Hunter Biden (especially all campaign finance charges.10) A ruling in the Bahamas appeared to allow him to challenge the rest11 and even get his legal fees reimbursed.12 FTX hopes to restart its crypto exchange in 2024.13 He got some convictions and we await sentencing.

  • As many of you may recall, Paul Pelosi got hammered at the end of 2022. I would get hammered if I were married to Nancy, but this was by an assailant under highly suspicious circumstances delineated in the 2022 YIR. In 2023, the video of the incident surfaced.14,15,16 One is struck by two details: (1) it took long enough that one could fathom that the video was staged; and (2) while getting whacked with a hammer as the cops entered the Pelosi house, Paul did not spill his drink. Bravo! Nancy magnanimously noted that the assailant “has the right to a trial to prove innocence”, prompting Ben Shapiro to note “Uh it’s…innocent until proven guilty.”

  • In 2020, I took a risky tact by laying out why convicting Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd could be tricky because I thought the evidence was strong that Floyd died of an overdose. Well, I was wrong on two counts. The obvious one is that they convicted him. The less obvious is that according to the expert witness in the civil trial—a doc with considerable experience in treating this type of problem—said that Floyd definitely did not die from an OD or the knee on his neck, but rather two knees on his back. The owners of those knees got some time but nothing like Derek. Curiously, that obscure doctor would become rather famous in his views on Covid: it was Pierre Kory.17 Chauvin got stabbed over 20 times in prison this year. The surprising parts are that he lived and that the assailant was an FBI informant.18 Chauvin is appealing his conviction.19

  • Hobbyhorsing is claimed to be an environmentally friendly and much cheaper sport than equestrian events. “The main difference from equestrian sport is the replacement of a live horse with a plastic one.” Finnish teenagers who started this grueling sport hope to make it an Olympic event.20 The Canadians are considering it to train their Mounties.

  

  • Teenagers who took to swallowing Tide Pods have discovered they were gateway drugs to Benedryl—the “Benedryl Challenge”—to “trip their asses off.”21 It would be safer to vaccinate.

  • The train wreck in East Palestine dropping car loads of vinyl chloride caught the world’s attention and became clickbait for the ages. Attempts to block reporters from on-site coverage brought up first-amendment issues.22 There is no question that East Palestine has a problem—they are now a toxic waste dump23—but the horrors of it being a widespread catastrophe24 were put to rest by an analysis from blogger Doomberg noting that the hyperbole was over the top.25 I know who Doomberg was in his previous career and can say that nobody is more qualified to make such an assertion. The RNC Twitter feed turned it into a daily tally of the days since Biden did not visit the site. It is not obvious to me that is in his job description. The Babylon Bee wryly noted that Ilhan Omar withdrew her support of East Palestine after discovering it’s in Ohio.26

  • Mosquitoes were in the news. Four people from Sarasota, Florida got malaria. No biggie. It’s easily treated. On a more somber note, scientists concluded they can solve this problem by releasing mosquitoes genetically engineered to cause death in the female offspring to reduce the malaria risk.27 I went through the math and believe that the technology will not just cull the population but necessarily cause that particular species to go extinct. Of course, there are 3,500 more species of mosquitoes, but somehow, yet again, scientists appear to be underestimating the consequences of their interventions. This Michael Crichton talk is a phenomenal tutorial on why it is not nice to mess with Mother Nature.28 One scientist noted that “there is little doubt their full extinction could have indirect effects.”29

  • 176 pound, 5’ 5” Deuce Vaughn was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the sixth round. Recall that other loser, Tom Brady, went in the sixth round. The Deuce is Loose and jersey’s with the Galloping Toddler’s name and #42 were moving even faster. So far, The Deuce is not pummeling opposing teams, racking up 68 total offensive yards.

  

  • ‘Super Pigs’ are coming south from Canada.30 They are a cross between domestic pigs and European wild boars, weighing up to 600 pounds. They are said to be meaner than Canadian hockey players and more intelligent than the boneheads who created them.

  • It leaked out that Ebay ran a formal harassment/death squad to deal with news site founders who were not friendly to Ebay.31,32 Kinda makes you wonder what they were selling on Ebay.

  • A Delta flight spent 3 hours on the Arizona tarmac without air conditioning.33 Passengers were told they could leave but might not get to their destination for days. Paramedics wheeled three out on gurneys. Delta came clean with a mea culpa: “We apologize for the experience…which ultimately resulted in a flight cancellation.”

  • Baron Trump is now 12 feet tall.

  

  • John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, is now suspected to have been innocent.34 It was similar to RFK’s argument as to why Sirhan Sirhan could not have killed his father.35 It has the fingerprints of the CIA’s notorious mind-control program MK-ULTRA and its legion of psychiatrists all over it. They create patsies.

  • Michael Block became the only club pro in history to make the cut in the PGA Championship.36 Entering the final round in eighth place, he slipped up but then dropped an ace on 15, finishing high enough to make $300,000 and an automatic qualification for next year.

  • Speaking of golf, the Saudis have set up the LIV Tour and have been buying up exclusive rights to some of the best players with petrodollars. Desperate PGA execs were squealing about the Saudis’ human rights violations. Discussed mergers of the two leagues were sketched out in which the PGA would be in charge of holes 1-8 and 12-18 with the Saudis responsible for 9-11.

  • Tennis phenom Novak Djokovic won the U.S. Open after being banned because he was unvaccinated by beating another unvaccinated player. ESPN’s “Shot of the Day” was sponsored by Moderna.37

  • A historically literate 12-year-old kid was suspended from school for wearing the Gadsden flag from the Revolutionary War—”Don’t tread on me.”38 The school said it has “origins with slavery,” which is a claim completely void of facts. The kid looked smug even by teenager standards. Mom showed she shouldn’t be treaded on either…as did the Colorado governor and the Heritage Foundation. He should have worn a Che Guevara T-shirt. It kept the Twitter Memosphere active for days.

  

  • After a spectacular performance of providing four of the most illustrious anti-Fauci/anti-lockdown/anti-vaxxers on the planet—Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas, John Ionnides, and Victor Davis Hanson—in 2021, Stanford regressed to the mean. Their president was brought to his knees by a diligent freshman newspaper writer calling out fraud.39 At least he left before he could come under scrutiny of Congressional testimony about Hamas. Their entering class of neurosurgical residents managed to have no white men (outdoing the NBA), representing either great progress of the underrepresented or improbable discrimination.40 The Stanford Law School invited an elite judge to speak and then managed to humiliate themselves by denying him the right to speak with one of their deans leading the charge.41 You’d think the law school would teach about the Constitution. This is all coming on the heels of Stanford faculty members’ role in the 2022 FTX collapse42 and epiphanies that Stanford’s Internet Observatory is a CIA outpost and hub of censorship.43 There are more problems at Stanford delineated here.44

  Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled…There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

  ~ Michael Crichton

  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson tried to take over Stanford’s dominant lead single-handedly by taking on Del Bigtree on the vaccine debate and getting annihilated as he preached to Del about consensus science.45 In another podcast, he banged out support for transgender going against Michael Shermer, trying to make scientific arguments and arguing that separating boys and girls will “seem silly in the future.”46,47,48 Consensus—there is that word again—is that Neil’s brush with multiple accusations of inappropriate behavior some years back has put him over a barrel.49,50,51 I root for the guy because I think he does a great service, but he should stop digging.

  • The world’s smallest “Louis Vuitton” handbag just sold for $63,000 at Sotheby’s. It is 0.66 x 0.22 x 0.7 millimeters. It is not actually by Louis Vuitton. The NFT sold for almost twice that but is now worth zero.

  • The song of the year if not the decade—Rich Men North of Richmond by Anthony Oliver—captured the hearts and minds of America. Early attempts to paint this as a white supremacist’s anthem failed because everybody hates those motherfuckers. Montages of people’s facial expressions while listening to the song were fabulous and very cleverly focused on black men grooving.52

  

  • Black women are complaining about a shortage of black sperm donors.53 Seems legit.

  • Here is a shocker. We found out this year that one of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged victims who wrote to Senator Grassley was a fraud.54 The good news is that she is being charged. That sordid character assassination was loaded with lies as noted in my 2018 writeup.55

  • With a not-so-improbable run of Michelle Obama for the 2024 election, the dirt is already flying, some of which looks self-inflicted. The big headline was that Barack is gay, which is said to be old news and should be irrelevant in 2023. The argument that he has lived a lie is disingenuous given that most gay men have. The drama, however, got curiouser when an ex-girlfriend from decades ago decided now was the time to rat him out on his fantasies56 with Barack’s brother piling on.57 The smear had begun long before that when a 2012 article in The Globe—not exactly the Gray Lady—suggested that somebody whacked three former lovers during his 2007 campaign.58,59 In 2023, however, it got very real when his rather studley personal chef named Tafari drowned in a midnight paddleboard accident. The police report had redactions and missing details on the 911 call, leading to speculation that it was either a midnight trist being managed60,61—Barack’s Chappaquidick—or something more sinister. Barack showed up on the golf course several days later with taped fingers and a shiner.62 (Beware of photoshop.) Defenders said the tape was for golf, but taping your fingers does not help your golf game.

  Yes, @BarackObama, please dry up and go away and retire to your beach front property and take your paddle board with you. We’re sick and tired of your BS.

  ~ General Michael Flynn, getting a little testy

  Larry Sinclair, a highly flawed individual by any standard and by his own admission, stepped forward in 1999 to announce that he had done crack and given blowjobs to then-Senator Obama.62 Why would he step forward? Well, it could have been politically motivated or an attempt to release the hounds to avoid getting suicided to keep the secret. Larry showed up again in 2023 looking a little worse for wear but telling the same story,63 scoring a Tucker Carlson interview.64 Scott Adams of Dilbert fame connects an arrest of Larry Sinclair by Beau Biden years ago with Joe’s placement on Obama’s presidential ticket.65

  Michelle certainly must have known about this and was OK with it. Excluding the guaranteed-to-be-excluded Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Michelle looks like the strongest candidate the DNC has to pull off a twelfth-hour substitution of Biden. That may be why the plot is thickening as we head into 2024. Get ready for debates about Sasha and Malia surrogate births,66 infinite loops of Joan Rivers’ offhand remark,67 Michelle praising Harvey Weinstein,68 dance routines with Ellen Degeneres,69 Pizzagate re-runs,70,71,72,73 and Chrissy Tiegen blurting out about trists with John Legend and the Obamas,74  multiple contacts of Epstein in the Whitehouse with now-dead Whitehouse counsel,75 Big Mike jokes, and endless memes, including this humorous deep fake starring Fake Hillary.76

  

  Lahaina Fires and DEWs

  On August 8, 2023, fires broke out in the historically interesting coastal town of Lahaina on Maui, destroying 2,000 structures and killing untold numbers (very untold). Contributing factors include:

  • the decision not to sound the alarm out of concern that it would confuse people;1

  • the power company’s failure to turn off the power, although the company claims the power was turned off six hours before the fires began exacting their damage;2,3

  • some guy deciding to turn off the water (which Wikipedia attributes to melted pipes) just days after posting a philosophical screed about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” underlying water rights;4

  • 80 mph winds from a hurricane 700 miles East blowing the fire from the inland hills through the town.

  • residents being told to shelter in place (like being told to stay in your twin-tower office on 9/11.)

  Warning

  I went to Wikipedia for some updates on fatalities and costs only to find that Wikipedia’s writeup5 was unrecognizable in the context of the two dozen pages of notes I had collected as the story unfolded. Wikipedia founder, Larry Sanger, personally told me that Wiki is worthless for politically tricky topics is under total control by Deep Staters. The Lahaina writeup concluded with scornful allusions to Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns, accusing the QAnon Army led by General Stew Peters. I am unable to determine where these QAnon guys came from and where they hang out. My hunch is that QAnon is a concoction of the CIA. I appear to be a member of this fictional tribe of misguided miscreants.

  FEMA projected the Lahaina death toll up to 2,000,6,7 which was slightly higher than Wiki’s number of 99. Biden offered $700 per household ($1.9 million total),8 which is slightly below the $12 billion listed by Wiki. Davvy Crocket would say that neither is appropriate because the money “is not yours to give” in an allusion to the Georgetown fires.9 Even so, the paltry Lahaina bailouts were awkward in the shadow of our generosity to Ukraine.

  The horror story was that the kids had been sent home from school, many to their deaths. Articles and videos began appearing with parents fruitlessly demanding information about their missing children.10 USAToday put the number of missing kids at 966,11 which doesn’t square with Wiki’s complete silence on the topic.12 Ten days later the Mayor of Lahaina still wouldn’t fess up as to how many children were missing.13 One family found the remains of their child and dog embraced, eliciting images of post-Vesuvius Herculaneum.14 The narratives just kept getting creepier.14a

  A Lahaina old-timer said he fled on foot because the departing traffic was at a dead standstill in the main artery out of town as the fires raged. He claims the cops had a roadblock, preventing people from leaving, and they were “just following orders.”15 Epoch Times reported that several other Lahaina residents survived only by “driving around or through the police roadblocks.”16 “We hoped to get to the highway and jaunt to the next bypass. Instead, we were blocked off by police and [traffic] cones.”

  Drone footage is dramatic while showing an odd selectivity in which the fires burned most of Lahaina, which is a narrow band along the north-south coast.17 Some buildings were incinerated to dust while others nearby remained unblemished.18,19 The embers had not cooled before the internet was filled with accusations of nefarious activity and lying.

  Unscrupulous investors are trying to take advantage of the fire disaster on Maui to take over properties…You would be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here.20

  ~ Hawaiian Governor Josh Green

  A Land Grab 

  Protests about a land grab appeared within hours of the fire. Catherine Austin Fitts, the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been a relentless proponent that suspicious destruction of property and property values are tied to real estate entrepreneurs looking to buy at fire sale prices (quite literally in this case).21,22 Her position at HUD may have given her insights into this grift. On cue, real estate speculators came in with buy-out offers to desperate residents as fast as they could find law firms to deliver them.23 This is predatory but also to be expected. What is odd, however, is that insurance companies immediately began declaring the houses not covered because they were not up to code.24 (Y’all may recall this happened in the Katrina aftermath too.) OK, you skanky whores: it was your job to assess their insurability when you issued the policies. This left homeless and destitute former homeowners grieving over dead loved ones with no promise of a forthcoming check. To top it off, tenants claimed they were receiving eviction notices within the week.25 This all smacks of collusion.

  

  The government’s role was very suspicious. The locals had been under pressure for years to sell, but Lahaina’s strict development codes designed to retain the town’s charm and history kept developers in check. There were also plans to turn Lahaina into a “smart city” (super high-tech), but zoning codes kept those plans at bay too. Both the facts and the waves of fact-checkers confirm the story.26

  I’m already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land, so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or to make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to people who were lost..But we don’t want this to become a clear space where then, yes, people from overseas come and decide they’re going to take it. The state will take it and preserve it first.27,28,29

  ~ Hawaiian Governor Josh Green, blaming foreign evil-doers

  Curiously, just one month before the fires Governor Green had declared by fiat that the strict building codes would be null and void in case of a natural disaster.30,31 Good timing, Governor. After the fires, the Governor suggested the state buy the land to protect it from speculators.32,33 And, of course, he would never then sell it to his land-speculating cronies, right?

  

  Speaking of wealthy cronies, Oprah and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) ended up on the hot seat for their fundraiser to help Lahaina.34,35 Multi-billionaires asking you to dig deep into your pockets to help a town in which they own huge tracts of property didn’t sit well. Oprah had scooped up 2,000 acres on Maui, 870 acres in 2023 alone.36,37 In 2017, she got guff when fires and mudslides near her house allowed her to scoop up nearby land on the cheap.38 It is so lucky that Oprah and, for that matter, many wealthy Lahainians, may benefit from these fires while the fires miraculously missed their houses.

  

  Authorities Take Cover

  It seems clear that the authorities realized they botched their response and went into full ass-covering mode. Links to Tweets with seemingly good info disappeared much like they did after the Las Vegas shootings. Residents were blocked from returning to Lahaina for several weeks.39,40 When was the last time you heard of that happening in a disaster zone? Supplies entering Lahaina by boat were being turned away, reminiscent of FEMA blocking Walmart trucks from helping Katrina victims.41 A Maui Times reporter was denied access to the town.42 Immediately after the dust settled, authorities built tall fences along the main artery through town, preventing filming of the wreckage. The official story that eventually emerged was that they were dust screens, although screening dust from what is unclear.43 The school buses were missing from the bus garage: where did they go after dropping the kids home?44 Hold that thought for Part 3.

  Suspicious Fires 

  We are now going to enter the Heart of Darkness. This is highly speculative material that deserves both serious consideration with considerable skepticism. The American Vagabond does well-documented deep dives into contentious issues and emerged from this one troubled.45 The Lahaina fires manifested oddities that had been noted in fires in California, across the continental US, and Europe that captured the imaginations of us QAnon types. They are claims not rigorously documented but with non-zero probabilities of being legit

  Videos from Maui asserting mysterious aspects of the fire appeared almost immediately. Locals hit TikTok hard, claiming these weren’t natural (kind of like a man-made virus). It is hard to say which opinions should carry weight, but there were a lot of them. The oval burn pattern shown below, for example, makes little sense in a wind-driven firestorm.

  

  Boats moored 50 yards offshore ignited.46 Meanwhile, desperate residents jumped into the surf to survive the fires.47 Even on the leeward side of the island, 80 mph winds would make that a harrowing experience. Many cars burned beyond recognition while others remained unscathed. Locals and the internet obsessed over burned cars with puddles of aluminum from wheel rims and engine blocks as well as melted auto glass.48 Locals show two burnt cars in a field with aluminum rims, engine blocks, and glass melted.49 The only fuel within the acre-sized lot was in the gas tank. The tall grass next to the car remained unburnt. I have struggled to ascertain if these are just generic car fires or something more.

  

  Oddly, the wind blew off the mountains East-to-West but the entire town stretching as a narrow band running North-to-South was taken out. Some witnesses said the winds came on abruptly. One felt tremendous pressure changes in her noggin akin to Havana Syndrome, and that cell service failed contemporaneously.50 Hold that thought. The 80 mph winds attributed to a hurricane 700 miles away fly in the face of meteorological data showing such high winds are not observed beyond 150 miles from the eyes of even large hurricanes.51

  

  Residents, including this veteran firefighter,52 claimed that the fires behaved unnaturally—too hot and exhibiting irrational travel patterns—but who the hell knows? Speculations began about how the trees all somehow survived while the houses only feet away were burnt to white ash. The fried buildings yet barely singed trees were eventually attributed to smart meters on the houses, which sounds like seriously hot bullshit.53

  

  

  Forensic arborist, Robert Brame, chimed in. He has investigated over 100 fires54,55,56 including many in California considered suspect.57,58 He notes cases in which highly flammable trees with high sap content—trees that he says he could “light with a cigarette lighter”—remain untouched whereas those with high water content get fried. Vegetation deeply rooted in swamps or along riverbanks was being destroyed down to the roots. Trees burning on the inside are particularly curious. Meanwhile, plastics were not getting burnt. Cars proximate to trees were frying but not the trees. Steel-belted radial tires or tires on rims burned whereas metal-free tires lying on the ground were left untouched. Fence posts with wire attached showed burning at the wood-metal contact:

  

  

  Lahaina and the DEWs

  So what is my point? Brame and many others59 have tried to force the Overton Window wide open by attributing the odd burn patterns to directed-energy weapons (DEWs). I used these assertions as an excuse to dig into DEW technology in earnest below, but let me for now simply say that they are weapons based on radio frequencies (lasers and masers) or particle beams that can either be ground- or satellite-based. In short, they are Ronald Reagon’s Star Wars program. Whether Lahaina was a target—laboratory if you will—DEWs are real and may be massively destructive. There are said to be two major ground-based facilities with DEWs in the US: one is on Maui.60,61 Go figure.

  Anything tarp-blue—cars, pool umbrellas, and houses—were said to be left unscathed.62,63 It is claimed that rich people in Lahaina had painted their houses blue,64 but this seems to be internet debris despite excessive fact-checking rousing my curiosity.

  Sensitivity to laser light, however, is color dependent as illustrated in this video in which all but the tarp-blue paper burns.65 I checked with a laser jock and confirmed this. Here’s what troubles me: Scott Savitz, senior engineer at Rand Corp, dismissed the whole laser theory, noting that “No one can start a wildfire and burn only specific colors.”66 When I catch somebody lying, I always ask, why? Starting forest fires is openly stated to be a military weapon and well within the DEWs capabilities.67

  As noted above, locals and The Internet obsessed over burned cars with puddles of aluminum and melted glass.68 I find the evidence odd, but they may just be car fires. The firepower of such high-tech weapons will be discussed below. For now, I would like to underscore one particular oddity to pique your interest: the Quebec fires this summer appeared to start in two dozen sites simultaneously: the video is compelling (50-second mark).69,70 I tried to capture the time sequence with two screen grabs:

  

  That buckshot plume pattern cannot possibly be spread by the wind: (1) airborne embers would follow the wind patterns lighting them sequentially downwind, and (2) it covers an area approximately 300 miles in diameter.71,72 A determined army of arsonists could, in theory, start them on cue, but so could a DEW in orbit. Laser sightings over Lahaina proliferated.73 These claims are suspect, but the carpet bombing with fact-checks is suspicious. One narrative was that the Chinese were monitoring the weather,74 which is highly suspect.

  He who controls the weather will control the world.75,76

  ~ President Lyndon Baines Johnson

  DEWs – A Tutorial 

  Lahaina aside, what can we say about DEWs? The Army put out a nice synopsis of milestones in the development of DEWs77 as did the Office of Technology Assessment.78,79 The latter is technical and thorough, but it is also unclassified and 40 years old. It foreshadows what may lurk behind the industrial-military complex paywall four decades later. A GAO report also summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of DEWs.80 High-energy lasers in the infrared-to-visible light produce a very narrow, highly focused beam of light, and are most likely used on single targets. The beam can be pulsed or continuous, generating a power capable of melting steel (or more). Millimeter wave weapons have larger beam widths than high-energy lasers and therefore can zap multiple targets at once. High-power microwave weapons producing more than 100 megawatts of power—150,000 times more powerful than a microwave oven—tend to be good for broader targets. The really powerful stuff is not mentioned, which in no way means that it doesn’t exist. Here is a well-referenced and intriguing off-off Broadway assessment from the recesses of the internet with considerable discussion of how weird it could all be, including Lahaina fire connections, weather control, etc.81

  Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

  ~ Noam Chomsky

  A few bulleted claims are in order. Some may stretch your imagination to its limit and be bullshit.

  • DEWs in the South Pole are claimed to cause earthquakes.82,83

  • A decade-old video of well-known physicist Dr. Michio Kaku (@MichioKaku) describes trillion-watt lasers that can alter the weather.84

  • The Hutchison Effect is said to cause “anomalous heating of metals without burning adjacent material,”85 which might include burnt cars while leaving vegetation intact.

  • Air Force documents discuss weather control by 2030, which means they have it already.86

  • The defense rag, National Defense, describes a 300,000-watt DEW based on a “spectral beam combination architecture,” delivered to the Pentagon by Lockheed Martin.ref87

  • Prominent policy wonk, Pippa Malmgren, alludes to directing space-based solar power to “a target on Earth and burn it to smithereens”88 while pondering use for green energy too. She also casually suggests WWIII has begun.

  • DEWs’ biggest technical challenge is penetrating clouds. A thesis from the Air Command and Staff College describes weather control to use clouds to defend against the scary DEWs.89 The author also describes laser-based missile defense involving burning holes through them. The author discusses 10 million watt lasers are coming. Using a terawatt tunneling pulse laser to burn a hole in the atmosphere to allow the destructive laser to reach its target is clever tech.

  • In a 2020 speech, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said China already has seriously dangerous DEWs,90 declaring we must dominate space.

  • Havana syndrome, which gets its name from the US embassy in Havanna, Cuba, was said to rattle the brains of embassy residents.91,92 This is referred to as fifth-generation warfare.

  • There are claims of an enormous DEW facility in Antarctica.93

  • An article in Forbes describes low-powered DEWs in the form of a microwave-based “heat ray” unveiled in 2001 to be used as non-lethal crowd control.94 The author notes, “The weapon is certainly effective; the problem is that it is too scary to use… those that are effective are not safe, those that are safe are not effective.” Terms like ‘pain beam’ have human rights activists up in arms (but probably reluctant to protest.)

  • The DEW story gives the Chemtrail theorists an interestingly new lease on lunacy. One claim is that they are seeding the atmosphere with particulate matter as a defensive strategy to prevent penetration of DEWs into our critical infrastructure. Other claims include geoengineering to cause global dimming as well as generalized weather control. None of these theories is high up on my probability scale. What keeps my attention? The massive fact-checking attempting to dismiss a lunatic-fringe theory that should require little comment.

  

  DEWs and 9/11

  Imagine, if you will (said in the voice of Rod Serling), that the DOD has nuclear-powered DEWs (as described in the 1984 report) that could deliver energy measured in megatons what you could do. Oh, that would be impossible, right? Impossible isn’t a fact; it’s an opinion. It is amazing how fast the impossible became fact on August 6, 1945:

  

  I am gonna drag y’all down the darkest of rabbit holes. I have no problem (no doubts actually) that 9/11 was an inside job. If the Truther Movement and the theory that 9/11 was not as we are told is unfamiliar to you, I would say you need a crash course. This five-minute montage is very snarky and very good.95 The New Pearl Harbor and Loose Change documentaries are your best all-expense-paid trip to the Dark Side.96,97,98 A 2023 vintage interview of architect and 9/11 expert, Richard Gage, brings up points I had not heard.99 New and compelling footage I had not seen asks where the hell is the plane that hit the Pentagon?100 While answering that, you might wonder where the plane went in Shanksville, PA, which was just a hole in the ground.101 Crash sites normally look like yard sales—shit everywhere.

  Enter Judy Woods, who has presented a model for 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers that even has the Truthers uneasy. She wrote a book102 and has done several talks and podcasts.103,104 Judy points to oddities about what occurred on 9/11 without concluding how, but she is clearly circling the DEW story without actually making direct references. She is not a good oral communicator. She sucks, actually. One interview said by detractors to destroy her and her credibility merely underscored her inability to communicate.105,106,107 I could have handled the interviewer after watching two of her presentations.

  Judy doesn’t talk about DEWs, but she does point out oddities that include the complete pulverization of the towers to dust (“dustification”), a very odd claim of weather control that morning, distortion of the Earth’s magnetic field, the small pile of debris from 100 stories of towers that failed to reach the height of the top of the lobby, and unexplained burnt cars and their odd distribution. She has many examples, but at the 30-minute mark she shows a “dustification” that I have not been able to independently confirm or refute but is truly extraordinary if real.108 The freeze-frame is shown below:

  

  The documentary Zeitgeist talks about 9/11 and how everything in the towers turned to dust.109 As noted by a first responder, “You don’t find a desk. You don’t find a chair. You don’t find a telephone. You don’t find a computer…The concrete was just pulverized.”

  To pull this all together, Lahaina is a multi-layered onion in which chicanery has taken root. The DEWs may not be part of the story, but they are undeniably real and of great interest to the superpowers. Their capacity to inflict carnage on their target is unknowable to the common man and QAnons. I am secure that what we know about them is dwarfed by what is top secret. Reality could knock rudely and unexpectedly like it did on August 6, 1945.

  DEWs provide unprecedented capabilities and produce a broad spectrum of hazards.110

  ~ Barbara Barrett, Secretary of the Air Force

  The War in Ukraine–Epilogue

  The Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.1

  ~ Lindsay Graham to Zelensky

  Lindsay is an unindicted criminal who is impossible to underestimate, but let’s move on. Last year I put my heart and soul into understanding the War in Ukraine as evidenced by the title, “All Roads Lead to Ukraine.”2 I found 40–50 serious thinkers who I felt were trying to get it right, a list that included Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Chris Hedges, Ray McGovern, John Pilger, John Mearsheimer, Jeff Sachs, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Scott Ritter, Colonel Richard Black, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jeff Sachs. Notable newcomers to the anti-NATO team include David Sacks (Elon’s former partner),3 Cornel West,4 RFK, Jr,5 Simon Hunt,6 and Donald Trump.7

  There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal. Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well. They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front… In the decisions adopted in Brussels, I recognize American interests more frequently than European ones…In a war that is taking place in Europe the Americans have the final word.7a

  ~ Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister

  If you think Russia’s military adventures in Ukraine were unprovoked and that this story is simply a fight for Ukraine’s democracy you have work to do: stop reading right now and read last year’s analysis.8 I collated the analyses of the serious pundits, scavenged the internet for data and anecdotes from the battlefield, and wove them into a narrative that is my best geopolitical analysis to date. Watch this speech by Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, as many times as you must to grasp how little you understand the politics underlying the Ukraine War.9 Billions are being committed to get Orbán to get with the program and oppose Putin.10 Watch recent rants from Jeff Sachs11 or Colonel Jeff Maness.12

  We demand an explanation on what basis China and Russia consider the whole world to be their region?

  ~ Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense, lacking introspection

  To those who say that assigning blame is simple—Putin attacked so he is necessarily evil—please answer the following questions: which country—Russia or the US—bombed more countries in the world and killed more people over the last 20 years? I don’t have the stats on Russia, but the US is estimated to have caused 4.5 million deaths during the War on Terror.13,14 Of those seven Muslim countries bombed by liberal democrat and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Barack Obama, how many attacked us? Let me help you out: it begins with a “z” and rhymes with “Nero.” I have 4.5 million whataboutisms resulting from our iatrogenic foreign policy to jam down your throat the minute you tell me Putin’s aggression is the whole story.

  

  The US wrecked Afghanistan for 40 years—destroyed that country mercilessly cynically ignorantly brutally. And they’re gonna do the same with Ukraine unless the Ukrainians wake up and say, ‘God we’re being killed by this approach.’15

  ~ Jeffrey Sachs, economist, Columbia University

  So how is the war going this year? An open letter written by 14 high-ranking ex-US military wonks in May calling for a swift diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine was published in the New York Times.16 The letter’s 14 signatories, after the requisite condemnation of Putin, called the war “an unmitigated disaster” and noted that “future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.” They emphasized the “serial invasions of Russia by foreign adversaries” and underscored the need to “understand the war through Russia’s eyes” with “strategic empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries.” In their words, “This is not weakness: it is wisdom.” They also underscored the part that all the mindless Ukrainian flag wavers always seem to miss: “Since 2007, Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s armed forces on Russian borders were intolerable—just as Russian forces in Mexico or Canada would be intolerable to the U.S. now, or as Soviet missiles in Cuba were in 1962…Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as especially provocative…NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive wars.” Seems pretty clear, eh? To repeat, go back and compare this letter’s key points to my 2022 write-up.

  NATO Document: NATO’s enlargement has been a historic success.

  John Pilger: I read that in disbelief.17

  Our dual goals are to degrade Russia’s military-industrial complex & reduce the revenue it can use.

  ~ Janet Yellen, former economist, said ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers & central bankers.

  NATO made a few miscalculations. They thought they could choke off Russia by kicking them out of the Swift banking system and cutting off their energy sales, isolating them from the world.18 Neither action dented Putin’s plans. The rising price of oil cranked up Russia’s cash flow from the global oil market. The Rooskies also know how to endure discomfort.

  Let’s imagine—obviously this situation which will never be realized—but nevertheless let’s imagine that it was realized: The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory, say Germany, and was arrested. What would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation. And in that case, all our assets—all our missiles et cetera—would fly to the Bundestag, to the Chancellor’s office.19

  ~ Dmitry Medvedev, responding to Germany’s threat to arrest Putin

  That is not to say that Putin didn’t flub a few things, but it was nothing that duct tape and some WD40 couldn’t fix. Scooch around and let me commie-splain that to you. He moved into Ukraine with a very small force, all evidence pointing to an attempt to throw a fastball past NATO’s and Volodymyr Zelensky’s chins to force them to meet him at the negotiating table. There is no evidence he wanted to take over Ukraine nor destroy its infrastructure: he simply could not and would not cede control of Ukraine to NATO. It was an existential risk—a bright line—for Russia. Although Zelensky tried to get to the negotiating table in April 2022, he misjudged the determination of NATO to ensure that Zelensky would never ink a deal.20 The US (sorry: NATO) wanted, to steal a phrase from Assange, “an endless war, not a successful war” to eventually destroy Russia, impose regime change, possibly gain control of vast resources via a more US-compliant regime as America’s 51st state, and line a few pockets with war profits along the way.

  

  You want World War III? Just tell the head of a nuclear power you are seeking regime change. While NATO flooded support into Ukraine, the Nordstream Pipeline and Kerch Bridge got bombed (more on that below). Realizing that negotiations were no longer an option, Putin quickly assembled a very large and highly weaponized army and took the war to the next level. In some twisted psychological defense against exhaustipation, this is where I lost interest. It was chess in 2022 with loads of propaganda rubbing Vaseline over the world’s lens. This year has turned Ukraine into a devastating meat grinder.

  At the NATO Summit in Madrid [in June 2022]…it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.21

  ~ Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister

  Putin is clearly losing the war in Iraq.22

  ~ Joe Biden

  The Ukrainian-to-Russian kill ratio was estimated by guys like Colonel MacGregor (no doubt from Pentagon sources) as well as by the Israelis (who have great intelligence) at 6–10:1.23 Retired Marine Corps Colonel Andrew Milburn, who was training the Ukrainians on site, said that the Ukrainians in the battle for Bakhmut were “taking extraordinarily high casualties. The numbers you are reading in the media of about 70 percent…are not exaggerated.”24 Upwards of 500,000 Ukrainians have been either killed or incapacitated, which is worse because their care puts a drag on their society. Recruits were being placed in full combat just 5 weeks of training,25 with life expectancies estimated at “4 hours” according to an ex-Marine on site.26 I wonder if the 400,000 families think this border war was worth it. By the end of 2023, the Ukrainian draft had been expanded to include both genders and ages 7–70.

  I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.

  ~ John Pilger on Ukraine

  Nearly every war that had started in the past 50 years, has been a result of media lies.

  ~ Julian Assange

  I can hear y’all saying, “Wait a darn minute there, Dave. Those are not the numbers I’ve been hearing on CNN/NBC/NPR/NYT…” Let me help you out here again. Our intelligence owns all of those media outlets. The US propaganda machine is the size of Russia’s GDP. They lie like teenagers while blocking the counter-narrative from leaking into the public consciousness. This should not shock you by now. As an aside, of the 8 million Ukrainians who fled the war and country, an estimated 2 million headed to Russia.27

  NATO needs to be disbanded and we can get some peace on the continent of Europe because you are about to trigger World War III….We need to get our butts out of there.28

  ~ Colonel Rob Maness

  I’m sure if President Trump were president today, there’d be no war inflicting Europe and Ukraine.29

  ~ Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister in support of Trump, 2024

  Some notable events at ground level are worthy of the few bullets I have left:

  • A bunker 400 ft below ground with hundreds of Zelensky’s top leadership and dozens of NATO officials was rumored to have been taken out by a Russian supersonic missile in response to Ukrainian incursions into Mother Russia.30 I guess you might call it a bunker buster, but I might be mixing technologies. This story is suspect just like everything else.31 The hypersonic weapons, however, are serious.

  • What appeared to be a Patriot missile facility fired off dozens in short order, only to be taken out by what is said to be their target—a hypersonic Russian missile.32 The Whitehouse would not confirm or deny the reports.33

   I can see Ukraine from my dacha.

  ~ Vladamir Putin (in Sarah Palin’s voice)

  • The Ukrainians professed to have some victorious moments, but they were short-lived. A much-ballyhooed offensive—who uses the word ballyhooed?—that would finally put the Rooskies in their place fell flat almost immediately.

  • Leaked Ukrainian documents suggest the overall picture of Ukrainian combat power is atrocious owing to “systemic shell shortages”, very few tanks, 30,000 troops, and inadequate support from NATO (although still far too much in my opinion).

  • Ukraine supposedly had some victorious moments. A direct attack on the Kremlin seemed like a pyrrhic victory given that it had the kick of a bottle rocket and didn’t seem to phase two guys climbing a ladder toward the point of impact.34,35 Maybe the Meme Team gets the credit.

  

  Seymour Hersh generated headlines by reporting that the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline with orders straight from Biden.36 Of course, we all knew this, but Hersh’s connections bring it as close to official as if Karin Jean-Pierre announced it. (Moreso given how much shit she makes up.) The Germans blamed it on the Ukrainians using a yacht (face in palm),37 prompting Hersh to ask rhetorically, “They can’t be that stupid! Are they that stupid?”38 Former Polish defense minister Sikorski, having thanked the Americans for blowing it up in a tweet the day it happened, then blamed it on the KGB mastermind (code named: “The Professor”) working under the guise of the cruise ship, “The Minnow”, captained by “Gilligan.” Hersh called the Ukrainian role “a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans.”39 Why not just fess up? Simple. It was an act of war under international law. The charade must go on no matter how obvious the lie.

  

  If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints—even moral—left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies.40

  ~ Dmitry Medvedev, former Prime Minister of Russia

  Zelensky on the Edge. While Zelensky appeared to be starring in episodes of Dancing with the Stars to raise money and support, the pressure was having its effect. Journalist Paul Ronzheimer suggested, “Zelensky seems to me either completely exhausted, then again active, even cheerful … He answered some questions angrily, others emotionally.” Some suspect drugs or maybe it’s Zelensky’s body doubles.41,42 When Biden showed up in Kiev to pretend to care, with air raid sirens blaring they took no chances of a catastrophic incident by warning Putin not to bomb Kiev that day.43

  The Ukrainian government is one of the worst in the world—corrupt, controlled by a few rich people I mean really unfortunate for the people of Ukraine.44

  ~ Bill Gates

  Hersh suggests the Ukrainians have been using foreign aid on luxury cars and ostentatious lifestyles. This is my shocked face: :<O. Some of the generals and government are PO’d that Zelensky’s kickback—what we would call “10% for the Big Guy”—dwarfs theirs.45 In a surreal assertion, Hersh says Zelensky bought diesel from the Rooskies.46 If you are just going to blow up their diesel reserves anyway, you might as well sell it to them first. For Zelensky, it beats the Pentagon’s $400 per gallon price tag.47 The price does not matter because, technically speaking, he was spending US taxpayers’ money anyway. Ukrainians also allow Russian gas through the pipeline to Moldova to service Russian troops. This is a strange war.

  

  If China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war.48

  ~ Volodymyr Zelensky

  Xi Jinping: Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years, and we are driving this change together.

  Vladimir Putin: I agree.

  

  Zelensky and the Ukrainian people won the 2023 Charlemagne Prize for “work done in the service of European unification.”49 He is, however, what you would expect for a leader in that region of the world. Amnesty International castigated him for using children and other civilians as human shields.49 Ukrainians are arresting the Orthodox Priests.50 A slug of his administration resigned owing to a corruption scandal.51 It was not very democratic when he canceled the elections.52,53 We got all bent out of shape when Putin snarfed up a US journalist, but when Zelensky grabbed journalist Gonzalo Lira,54,55 the State Department was silent.56,57 Gonzalo became the front-runner for the 2023 Darwin Award when he live-tweeted his escape…and then got grabbed up.58

  Unbelievable, but it is a fact: we are once again being threatened with German tanks—Leopards—that have crosses [painted] on their sides…Those who expect to win on the battlefield apparently do not understand that a modern war with Russia will be utterly different for them. We are not the ones sending our tanks to their borders.59

  ~ Vladimir Putin

  Military Support

  Much to the West’s surprise, the War in Ukraine turned into a rather traditional artillery war from the onset, which lopsidedly favored the Rooskies. Russia has more tanks than all of Europe. The US has promised him 50-year-old Abrams tanks—we ain’t sendin’ the good stuff—but we make only 40 tanks per year at current production levels.60 Germany has stated plans to start production of tanks inside Ukraine and, unsurprisingly, Medvedev has promised to blow the shit out of the facilities with “salvos of Kalibr (cruise missiles) and other Russian pyrotechnic devices.”61 I am reminded of the Field of Dreams: “Build it and they will come.”

  Ukraine needs fresh young Americans to help fight on the ground war. The US will have to send their Son’s and Daughter’s… to war…and they will be dying.62

  ~ Volodymyr Zelensky, in his dreams

  The Bidens coerced me to pay $10 million in bribes. I’ve got 17 recordings of the Bidens as insurance.63

  ~ Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma

  Of course, this is a US-Russia war with the Ukrainians as pawns. The Russians have accused the US of planning a malaria-infested mosquito drop, but who knows.64 A huge hit on a Western munitions depot with depleted uranium munitions caused surging radiation levels.65 Again, the truth may be lost in the fog of war. The West offered F-16s66 and got a response from the Kremlin noting that F-16s can carry nuclear weapons to Moscow. Lavrov said they will not wait around to ascertain if these jets pose non-nuclear or nuclear threats.67 It doesn’t take a military genius to recognize that F16s will not be maintained or flown by Ukrainian pilots. The evidence of US casualties is mounting.68,69

  If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime.70

  ~ Jen Psaki, 2022, on rumors of Russia using cluster munitions

  We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy, and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here.71

  ~ Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister

  The idea that providing Ukraine with a weapon in order for them to be able to defend their homeland, protect their civilians is somehow a challenge to our moral authority, I find questionable.72

  ~ Jake Sullivan defending cluster bombs sent to Ukraine

  The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.

  ~ Joe Biden, on why they are sending cluster bombs

  President Biden approved sending cluster munitions to Ukraine even though 120 countries have banned them as inhumane and indiscriminate.73,74 They are as verboten as nerve gas. According to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Colin Kahl, “They will not use the rounds in civilian populated urban environments.”75 They also promised to keep track of them so that they don’t end up on the black market.76 I sure hope they didn’t cross their fingers. And on that note, Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine are showing up in Mexico.77 The Whitehouse confirmed that U.S.-supplied cluster munitions are now being deployed against Russia: ”We have gotten some initial feedback from the Ukrainians, and they’re using them quite effectively.”78 On cue, Putin says that they have a “sufficient stockpile” of the cluster bombs to use if necessary.79 Peachy.

  Russia is sliding into what can only be described as a civil war.80

  ~ Anne Applebaum, Putin detractor and wife of Radek Sikorski, former foreign minister of Poland

  Prigozhin

  One of the more interesting stories is the dynamics between Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military Wagner Group inflicting the most damage on Ukraine. On the surface, it appeared as though Prigozhin—a beast and psychopath by Western metrics—was turning against Putin. The Intercept noted that “Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist” but then gullibly went on to praise “brief and surprising bout of honesty when Prigozhin launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow.”81 The Western neocons led by Coup Master Victoria Nuland aka Victoria the Hutt “exploded with seemingly libidinal excitement” at the prospects of a civil war, ignoring that bit about pathological lying and disinformation.82 I doubted this narrative from the get-go as did Colonel MacGregor. I reached out to a veteran intelligence expert, Lee Slusher,83 who also doubted the story and noted that other trappings of a coup were missing. War is about deception—Maskirovska84—and this looked straightforward. As Prigozhin ostensibly moved toward Moscow to the applause of the Western propaganda machine (media), few noticed that the path moved his troops rather close to Kiev.85

  

  Then, without warning, the coup was called off and Prigozhin seemed to patch the rift between these two BFFs. Prigozhin claimed he was pissed off about blunders by incompetent officers in the general army. As Prigozhin and Putin negotiated a new path forward,86 a body language expert says that both Putin and Prigozhin were not showing “tells” of tension.87 All was well until Prighosin took a trip to North Africa. Alas, his plane was shot down, killing all on board. Presuming he died, which I think must be true given months have passed, it would be rash to assume that you know who brought him down. The West blamed Putin for causing discord in the ranks. Putin was reported to be scrambling in haste back to Moscow,88 telling me that he did not know it was coming. The situation was chaotic given Putin’s core support was hardcore nationalists who loved Prigozhin.

  Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.

  ~ Sen. Richard Blumenthal

  Fading Support

  The support for the war seems to be fading if my Twitter feed is any indicator. Week after week we heard Whitehouse pronouncements of support for Ukraine and little to nothing about the Lahaina Fires, the East Palestine chemical spill, massive inflation, and crushing debt.

  • An “accounting error” revealed another $6.2 billion for Ukraine, which sounds like somebody drew the “Chance” card: “Advance to Ukraine. If you pass go collect $200 billion.” Now they are fighting about the Debt Ceiling.

  • The US has been paying 2,500 euros to young adults in the Balkans on a US base in Poland. 60 Minutes discussed the vast support of Ukrainian domestic programs,89 which contrasts with events on the homefront.

  • Hersh ratted out the CIA for knowing about widespread corruption in Ukraine and the embezzlement of US aid.90 Knowing? How about fostering?

  • The Hungarian Foreign Minister claims that the other Eurowankers are expecting to commit to €5 billion per year. I am not sure how this squares with Orbán’s anti-war stance.91

  • In the fall, Team Biden put together a package of aid starting at $100 billion—about $500 per taxpayer (suckers)—but climbing from there.92 The logic of such a massive commitment is to avoid having to do another before the 2024 election. The deal was laced with some support from Israel to purchase a few Republicans, but I suspect the Israelis now have other plans for their munitions.

  Joe Biden has been slow in providing military resources to Ukraine.

  ~ Mike Pence, former Vice President and now former presidential candidate

  The Chinese expressed optimism the war was nearly over,93 and I shared that view, but I have no clue now. I suspect Putin will go for the gold and take nothing less than everything he wants.94 We may get the endless war that the neocons want, although the Palestine-Israel crisis may satisfy that desire. I stand firm that this war could have been avoided with no shots fired if the US had simply backed away from its push to militarize and annex Ukraine into NATO. Matt Orfelea (@Orf) makes great short videos: this one is sarcastically titled, “It’s not about NATO.”95 For those who think this isn’t all about NATO enlargement, maybe you ought to listen to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admit Putin went to war to prevent NATO from absorbing Ukraine.96

  The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.98

  ~ Jens Stoltenberg, New Nato Chief

  Allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member of our alliance.99

  ~ Jens Stoltenberg, New Nato Chief

  NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement.97

  ~ William Burns, CIA Director, 2007

  We should not be wasting US tax money and taking on more military obligations expanding NATO. The alliance is a relic of the Cold War, a hold-over from another time, an anachronism. It should be disbanded, the sooner the better…The expansion of NATO to these seven countries, we have heard, will open them up to the further expansion of US military bases, right up to the border of the former Soviet Union. Does no one worry that this continued provocation of Russia might have negative effects in the future? Is it necessary?100

  ~ Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas, 19 years ago

  I suspect that the Israel-Palestine crisis means we will hear almost nothing about Ukraine now, much to the relief of mass murderers Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, and Lindsay Graham who would have some ‘splainin’ to do if the press was inclined to call for it. Bottom line: 500,000 dead Ukrainians and the total destruction of Ukraine was for what goal? Well, they are getting digital IDs,101 although dental records are probably more practical.

  If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped…I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.102

  ~ Trump, excerebrating Kaitlan Collins on a CNN Town Hall

  War does not determine who is right—only who is left.

  ~ Bertrand Russell

  Conclusion

  Well, that was painful to write. I try to pick contentious topics that are ignored by others or unconventional angles on standard topics. I got a little kinky on a brief Obama writeup. I smuggled some bizarre ideas in the section on the scandalous Lahaina Fires that led me to directed-energy weapons. I was told that section has a strong Alex Jones flare to it. I’ll nervously accept that as a compliment.

  

  I hope I have one last section in me. This is the section warranting the title alluding to “rabbit holes.” I’ve sorted the notes and graphics and made progress on the key sections. With luck, it will examine the World of Woke and the Gender Wars, hoping to write my way to wisdom while focusing on the defense of vulnerable children and women’s sports. The soul-crushing adventure unlike any I have experienced was the dozens of hours spent digging into the global pedophile network and its implicit role in geopolitics. It inescapably leads to Satanic cults. Sounds like fiction, eh? Here is the one inescapable fact: over a million kids disappear every year. These numbers are only estimates but are not contested. We hear about the horror of it and are provided glimpses of the traffickers and archetypes of the perverts. However, there are awkward questions that are totally swept under the rug. Where do these children go? Who are the end consumers of a million missing children? The potential answers and their experiences are the stuff of nightmares.

  Pedophilia is the induction glue of the Deep State.

  ~ Robert D. Steele, CIA Whistleblower

  Before you leave, you might check out the books I’ve read over the last two years with brief critiques (book reports). And, with that, I will show myself to the door.

  Books

  Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

  ~ Henry David Thoreau

  I have too many blogs and articles to read to find time to read books, forcing me to go essentially 100 percent audio. Not so many years ago I had Amazon send me a link to all non-fiction audiobooks and then went through all 2,300 looking for interesting titles. There must be millions now. Although many think audiobooks are for long trips, the optimal time for me is about an hour. The long trips require I take a ritalin and then rotate through several audiobooks, trying not to get a speeding ticket. My 12-minute commute means that I can get through about a dozen books per year. When my wife asks me to run an errand, she is really asking me to read for a few minutes. And, unlike podcasts, they are one-decision listens. My wife gives me guff saying I am not reading: “You use your eyes, I use my ears, and Helen Keller used her fingers: what’s your point?”

  Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

  ~ Abraham Lincoln

  I particularly enjoy books that I call “sticky”—books that stick with you long after you’ve finished. As I age, this gets more elusive. I have books that I know I have read but only because a compile the list at the end of each year. Seems discouraging that I cannot remember reading them. I post the Emerson quote below every year to remind the reader that sticky is a nuanced concept. By habit, when I write my synopses, I read Amazon evaluations that oppose my own views—usually the weak ones since I pick my books carefully—to see what I missed and possibly address the criticisms.

  I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

  Smedley was a very famous and tough-minded World War I soldier who wrote the pocket guide to the sinister traits of the industrial-military complex long before Eisenhower’s famous speech. War has always been about bankers and arms dealers making profits. It is a very short, engaging read.1

  The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education by James Lindsay.2

  I am only half done, but this is an in-depth look at the rise of Marxism in the US. It is not for the faint of heart. I postponed it to read Chris Rufo’s book (below), which is a more neophyte-friendly analysis of the problems that have been marinating within our academic system for a half century.

  America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher F. Rufo.

  This is a fabulous read that traces the origins of modern-day neo-Marxism from early philosophers (prominently, Herbert Marcuse and his wife), through the turbulent 60s with militants like the Weather Underground, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and Huey Newton, to the present. The evolution of this school of thought was never broken, only quiet as they changed strategies from blowing up the American system to rotting it from within by grabbing control of academia. The revolution continued ever so quietly, but it evolved in baby steps to the very odd form of Marxism dominating many discussions on college campuses. The foundations of modern day “wokism” and its purpose of upending the status quo was in plain sight, but they were built incrementally and now have a vice grip on college campuses.All of this is not-so-unlike the appearance of Sharia Law inside Saudi Arabia.3

  The Canceling of the American Mind by Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff.

  Many of you will recall the brilliant treatise by Haidt and Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind. One can view this as a sequel; it is largely the brainchild of Rikki Schlott, a rapidly rising twenty-something star fighting the culture wars. It is a brilliant analysis of cancel culture, giving me pangs of PTSD throughtout the journey. The nuanced analysis of the implications is great. The authors hold a mirror up to me by pointing out places where the political right participates in cancel culture despite its reputation as being driven by the activist-left. (I still think it largely is.) My blood was curdling as she described, for example, how it has snuck into the psychiatric world where therapists are taking in the most vulnerable patients and then blaming them for their “white privilege” and other bizarro evils of being a non-minority.4 This is top-shelf reading material.

  These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.

  These two accomplished authors describe in lurid detail how the monstrous private equity firms such as Carlyle, KKR, and especially Leon Black’s Apollo rape and pillage companies. They buy them, start stripping assets and firing employees, take on huge debts to pay themselves huge compensation packages, and then eventually take the worthless shell of a company back into the open market. If monetary policy was tighter, there would not be enough dumb money to buy up these Potemkin companies, but there is so much stupid money, these guys can profit multiples of their investment. They destroy pensions, cause massive job losses, swallow up insurance policies, and mortally wound viable companies. If the world were just, these private equity guys would be taken behind the Eccles Building and dealt with. I am unclear why vigilante justice has not taken root (yet).5

  Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail by Ray Dalio.

  Like Druckenmiller, I have never been a Ray Dalio acolyte, but this book surprised me. In a nutshell it is a variant of Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning but with slightly different timescales (100- rather than 80-year cycles), and a much stronger emphasis on military and economic forces. I highly recommend it.6

  Behold a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper.

  This is about the New World Order and all sorts of Deep State secrets, which I am inclined to take very seriously. Unfortunately, it could quit halfway through, even though it is short.7 The 4.5 star rating with 235 entries suggests that maybe another crack at it would pay off.

  One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1 and 2: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein by Whitney Webb.

  This is a monumental effort to document massive white-collar crime over the last century. Volume 1 is pre-Epstein; volume 2 is the Epstein era, but not as much Epstein as you would expect. You could easily jump to volume 2, and it is better because you will know more of the players. I would rename it Encyclopedia of Crime, Corruption, and Grift. As my friend Rudy Havenstein said, it is not a book to be read left to right but rather used as a reference. I did the audio, but somebody sent me the hard copies, which gives me both. The more you know about the relationship of organized crime, intelligence agencies, banks, and other corporations the more you will get from the book. Guys like Roy Cohn—the badass of sexual blackmail and political kingmaking—gets a lot of coverage as do the Clintons. Trump gets winged a little but not as much as Trump haters would like. The Jewish mafia gets hit very hard, although I cannot detect antisemitism. You can’t help but conclude that above some quantity of wealth and power, the CIA and big-money power brokers have control. Whitney would have made more money if she had dumbed it down to a narrative, but she wanted to throughly document the corruption. In a podcast she noted that the first volume was important to slowly open the Overton Windows of the readers before hitting the modern era where dismissal of the story as fiction would be tempting. The Amazon critics totally missed her intention: they wanted an easy read.7,8

  Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia by Paul L. Williams.

  This was a natural follow-up to Whitney Webb’s encyclopedic analysis of the Deep State. Operation Gladio was set up as a for-profit drug trade to funnel profits into the hands of the three players. I knew the CIA and Mafia dabbled in the drug trade at serious levels. Williams makes a compelling case that these three groups were and likely still are the entire drug trade. The Vatican is the banker, the CIA clears serious geopolitical hurdles, and the Mafia gets the drugs to the street. You would be hard pressed to convince me that any other group would dare try to take over this market from these serious players. I find myself asking a simple question: does the CIA work for the US or is it just a US-domiciled international crime syndicate?9

  Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

  This 2019 condemnation of the media could have had a dated feel because a lot has gone south in the media since then—Covid, Ukraine debacle, Twitter files, his personal Congressional testimony on censorship—but it held up brilliantly. I thought it was a masterful autopsy on a media that is now largely dead on arrival now. Those who didn’t like it (low Amazon scores) were mostly thin-skinned Trumper supporters who were incapable of tolerating Matt from picking on “their guy.” They were. Matt has leaned hard left his whole life, but crosses political lines seamlessly. I loved the book.10

  Invaded: The Intentional Destruction of the American Immigration System by J. J. Carroll.

  As a 25-year veteran of patrolling the US-Mexican border, Carroll brings interesting views of what is actually happening down there and how the floodgates that the Biden Administration opened mutated a manageable problem into a potential catastrophe. It was helpful to me, but I would say it was light on the child trafficking, which is why I read the book. If there is a weakness, it is its exceedingly strong pro-Trump slant. I believe he is sincere, but that alone will prevent many doubters from becoming believers.11

  The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo and Chris Matthews.

  This is a 2021 reprint of the 1961 edition. It has a strong emphasis on brain washing in military contexts in which they analyze the near impossibility of captives successfully resisting being broken by their captors. The detailed protocols are painful to ponder. It migrates into a general discussion of propaganda. Some of the psychoanalytic ideas have given way to more modern analysis. I read it to understand the role of brain washing in sex trafficking. The conclusion is that a child under the control of determined adults has no prayer. They are converted into emotional slaves, requiring no physical incarceration.12

  Cave of Bones by John Hawks.

  This is a very short, riveting story of a cave discovered in South Africa in 2013 in which intrepid anthropologists crawled through an extraordinarily tight passage to find 1000’s of bones that included 25 complete hominid skeletons pulled out to date. It is a monumentally important discovery of bones of a small species of hominid that evolved in parallel with homo erectus. What is extraordinary is that they have found compelling evidence of culture (cave etchings) and ritual burials, phenomena believed to have appeared only as recently as 70,000 years ago by fully evolved homo sapiens. Many questions remain because it is a recent discovery. A curious theme that I have detected in previous books on anthropology emerged yet again: it is a community that is based on careful analyses of limited fragments leading to bold extrapolations that the field then embraces too strongly.13 When dogma is challenged, the old guard shits their pants, and they have done it in this case too.

  The Enemy Within by David Horowitz

  This political rant was too lopsided. I am no fan of books that force a false equivalence of both sides of a story even when one side is moronic, but this book had no nuance. It is pure right-wing from start to finish. (reminding me of one of Kim Strassel’s books.) The right might enjoy it and use it to strengthen their talking points, but it will just make them more rigidly angry. The left will make it 10 percent through and then quit. Nobody will be converted. This is very unlike Taibbi’s book for the open minded reader. The 1,100 favorable reviews were quite likely 100% right of center.15

  Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice by Vivek Rmaswamy

  This book was clearly one of those books you write to launch your campaign. It was fine but you could also just watch a couple of podcasts and get the same messages. Ramaswamy is a fascinating addition to the public stage, stating almost everything traditional conservatives and right-leaning libertarians will like. The problem I have is that he seems too polished—produced like a boy-band.16

  The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal by Nick Bryant

  This book was hugely influential in my pursuit of the role of pedophile networks on geopolitics. There are documentaries out there, but they are so low budget that I do not recommend even watching them. This treatise was thorough and convincing. The central bad guy was a highly connected political operative named Larry King (no relation to the famous one) who worked at the orphanage named Boys Town made famous by several movies. Larry had political reach up to the Whitehouse. The witnesses in the scandal are all broken with multiple personalities, broken lives, and drug addictions, but Bryant brilliantly chases leads and cross references testimony. Although many of the horrors of sex trafficking children are clear, the breadth of the network, which reached cities around the country, was not really the core story. When the network began unraveling the gloves came off. The chief of police was worthless—he was one of the local pervs—while the attorney general of Nebraska shut everything down. A citizen group hired a former state cop to investigate, and his very dogged pursuit of the truth landed him and his son in a corn field from an unexplained plane crash. The FBI destroyed witnesses—horrifically, eventually flipping some to turn on the others and testify they were liars. Threats of perjury to the witnesses were stifling. A grand finale was when one persistent witness ended up in the Nebraska Supreme Court facing a judge assigned to the case who had no legal standing to handle the case but very quickly displayed his role in subverting justice. Throughout the story the local Omaha Newspaper attacked the accusers and the group of concerned citizens. Curiously, Bryant falls short of naming the famous purchasers of the kids, but Whitney Webb picks up that trail in Volume 2 of her book. Of course, Wikipedia calls it a hoax but, as told to me by the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, the FBI and CIA have total control over Wikipedia. The biggest challenge in reading about organized pedophilia networks is that they are so far outside your world view—way outside most people’s Overton Window—that it is difficult to grasp.17

  Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression by Christopher Knowlton

  This is the most recent book on the legendary 1920s Florida real estate bubble. It is especially useful to those interested in market structures to remind themselves there is “nothing new under the sun.” (Sorry.) It was a classic boom-euphoria-total bust story. It was an entertaining historical treatise on the origins of famous cities in Florida as they started life as basically swamps. The Florida today owes its origin story to this mania. The banks started failing in 1925 and everybody shook it off as those nuts in Florida. Then banks throughout the south began failing and the same rationalization was used. By the mid 30s, 12,000 banks had failed nationally. Florida real estate is given credit for being more than just a trigger but rather major proximate cause of the Great Depression. By the end, the four biggest players ended up destitute. In a modern era, they would be saved by your money.18

  The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet

  I was reluctant to read this because I thought it would be another Covid book, which I was trying to put behind me. I was pleasantly surprised that it was much more general and an excellent treatise explaining how bad ideologies take hold within the populace. The message is that it is not just evil guys at the top taking control of the gullible masses but the ideology gaining control of everybody. The malaise in societies—isolation, lack of goals, frustration—tees up the call for change and leads to somebody promising a solution. (It sure feels like that is happening.) It is a warning not to trust credentialed experts. He leans heavily on the scholarly writings of Hannah Arendt without falling into a trap of taking it so deep that the average reader can’t grasp the message—a Gladwellian reductionist approach.19

  The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State by Aaron Kheriaty

  I was drawn to Covid by Kheriaty’s massive overview of the Covid epidemic and our deeply flawed response like a moth to a flame. Aaron started as the head of the University of California—Irvine’s Director of Medical Ethics Program at the medical school, where he was commandeered to run the University’s vaccination program and eventually morphed into a militant doubter. To my shock, he went down every dark rabbit hole, joining the ranks of the Covid-vaccine battlers whose world view has become profoundly dark. I enjoyed the overview of a topic I had been pounding on for two years. I asked Aaron if he was predisposed to go down rabbit holes or if the flawed Covid narrative came out of left field. He basically said he knew there were issues in the world, but that the whole story hit him like a truck. If somehow you still think the covid story presented to the populace was legitimate then you ought to read this book and get a CT scan.20

  The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman

  It is ironic that by the time I wrote this review, I could not remember anything that was in the book. I used Amazon reviews to remind remind me what I had read: “Oh yeah. Now I remember.” Well, that didn’t even happen. I bet I liked it—the 5,000+ reviews did—and the topics look great, but I really don’t recall reading it. Every book I’ve read on the brain and neuropsychology and neuralplasticity are blurring together I guess. Maybe the Amazon reviewers wrote reviews before they had forgotten what they had read it.21

  Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer

  Stephen is a prolific investigator on all things Deep State. I had already read Overthrow (it was great) and The Brothers, the story of Allen and John Foster Dulles (good). Don’t read this book to feel good about the world. This is a horror story about the role of Sidney Gottlieb (no relation to Scott that I could find) who ran the CIA’s most demented mind-control programs, including the infamous MKUltra. I must confess that I was not aware of how much above-the-fold the MKUltra program had become in the early 70s. These guys were totally twisted bastards. While the Department of Defense grabbed German rocket scientists (logically) the CIA grabbed all the doctors (possibly including Mengele, although that is not completely clear.) They put them on payroll and had them continue their studies of human torture at Fort Detrick. They eventually morphed their efforts into brainwashing using psychedelics (LSD et al.) The goal was to create foot soldiers of the type protrayed in the Bourne Identity. When outed, they claimed it didn’t work and terminated the program. There is no evidence that either is true. Having read volumes on the CIA, I am convinced that they have their paws on absolutely everything with no adult supervision. It is such a sleeper cell-based model that I am in no way convinced that the head of the CIA has a clue what is going on in his organization.22

  The Illuminati by Jim Marrs.

  I was hoping to get my arms around the elusive Illuminati, the small group of global players who some people believe still rules the world. Almost 700 reviewers like it with a 4.5 star rating, but 10% into the book they were talking about aliens from distant planets, and that was enough for me.23

  The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang.

  I had high hopes but wasn’t getting shit out of it. There was too much Chinese history that removed all sense of stickiness. I quit. I read a half-dozen books on the Middle East years ago and got nothing from them either. I did not have an intellectual framework to hang the information from. Too many foreign names, places, and concepts.24

  2022 Books

  Because I ran out of gas, my 2022 bibliography never got published. I try to choose my reading materials carefully enough that they do not go out of date.

  The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Stephen Lee Myers.

  While trying to sort out complex stories, I avoid reading books. I want to assemble a narrative rather than reiterate somebody else’s. Of course, even the pieces have embedded narratives and may be laced with propaganda. It is my compromise. However, I broke my no-book rule this time by reading The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin25 recommended by America’s favorite Roosky, Lex Fridman. I must admit it seemed remarkably balanced and unbiased until the moment Putin was elected President. From that page on, Myers had nothing favorable to say—not one positive word. It was as though a new author took control, some aggressive editing was inserted, or the Zebra changed the color of his stripes at that moment. I should add that, while conceding he is a sociopath by Western standards, my opinion of Putin as a world leader is many standard deviations to the favorable side of the norm in the West. We in the US of A elect idiots.26

  The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel.

  This was a great discussion of how people stumble into trouble handling money and investing. It has a little touch of Millionaire Next Door and is at about that level of intensity. The number of new insights was not high, but I like how Morgan formulates the ideas. It would be an excellent book for a young adult. I will warn you: at the end of the book he goes on to tell you to buy a 60:40 portfolio, which shocked reviewers looking for a magic formula.27

  The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor.

  Ed is one of the legends in the history of markets. I thought this was going to be another one of those books that offers marginal new insights but articulates the principles with a flare, but I was pleasantly surprised the underlying details were more than I expected. The book hammers home the point that cheap money as exemplified by artificially low interest has, without fail, ended in tragedy. Authentically low rates—rates set by price discovery rather than autocratic central bankers—are emblematic of a sluggish economy. He also notes that every time rates drop to 2%, a crisis is not far behind. Assuming he was referring to nominal rates, we are royally hosed. If he was alluding to real rates, a new metaphor will be needed. The case is well made that, no matter what, intervention in price discovery within the credit markets is problematic and should be minimal. There is nobody alive today who remembers such a market, so that is a problem.28

  The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  I had started this book and progressed enough in my 2021 Year in Review to give it a ringing endorsement. Having finished it, I would say the >24,000 rave reviews on Amazon are not wrong. This book will warp your mind and force you into one of two diametrically opposed conclusions: either Anthony Fauci is a mass murder and has been so for decades—I am not being metaphorical here—or Robert Kennedy should be sued into bankruptcy. Kennedy names names, quotes experts, and references it all. His army of fact checkers and lawyers were charged with keeping him out of bankruptcy court. I have yet to read a single credible push back against the book, suggesting Kennedy will retain his inherited wealth. It is overwhelming tales of rigged clinical trials using such notable subjects as inner city foster kids (14,000 of them). If Kennedy is correct, Fauci and many others should be frog-marched to Nuremburg, tried, and, if convicted, hung from their necks until dead.29

  Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It by John Abramson.

  So let us assume some of you don’t trust Kennedy because he does have a sketchy reputation no doubt created by big-cap pharma. Harvard Medical School’s John Abramson wandered into the world of big-cap pharma corruption when he determined that Merck’s Vioxx was killing tens of thousands of consumers, leading to the most expensive recall in history. This is a tell-all about the seedy world of clinical trials and drug marketing. Case studies examine the corruption that has taken hold within the world of clinical studies, which includes pharma, fly-by-night clinical trial companies, the FDA, and academic institutions helping commit fraud. I now have a new policy: never take a drug that doesn’t cure a specific medical condition. Y’all can take those drugs to change some blood level of some biochemical marker, but I will not. It better cure an infection, significantly reduce pain, or clean up a rash. Claims by others that 75% of all drugs currently prescribed do nothing are credible. Heads up: Abramson was writing his book in 2022, so comments about the efficacy of the vaccine were probably filler and founded on little evaluation of the data. As an aside, more than 70 percent of mainstream media’s ad revenues come from pharma. The ads are not to sell you or your doctor drugs with unpronounceable names that let you wander through life with a smile on your face. It is to capture the media with addictive revenues.30

  The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan.

  Peter is a career demographer with early training at Stratfor, the private intelligence group that got wrapped up after a cyber attack got ahold of 2 million potentially touchy emails. He suffers from being a neocon and from unbelievably high confidence in predictions of future global events that probably require more circumspection. With that said, his data is probably excellent and predictions are provocative. By example, while everybody thinks China is going to dominate the World, he predicts the complete collapse of the Han dynasty in 10–15 years. He systematically looks at shrinking populations and their role in deglobalization, which will not be fun. An important take-home message for me was that the US’s projection of power around the globe since WWII—a non-Monroe-Doctrine approach to geopolitics—was the most critical ingredient that allowed unfettered global trade. No other military can project their power globally to keep the sea lanes open. The deglobalization that he predicts (with great confidence) as inevitable and imminent, will be highly inflationary, which I think makes total sense. Americans should take heart: Peter makes a good case that the coming decades will suck for us too but not as bad as for everybody else.31

  The War on the West by Douglas Murray.

  Doug is one of the social justice warriors fighting against the other social justice warriors who are indoctrinating the globe with neo-Marxist ideas. He is a fluid writer. If you are moderate or right of center, you will be highly entertained (and a bit discouraged) by his analysis of the state of the world. If you are a neo-Marxist, he will either piss you off royally or carry out a world-class intervention on your world view.32

  The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer.

  This analysis of mass movements written in 1953 retains extraordinarily relevance to the present. Hoffer talks about how mass movements start, who the players are, where the movements get their oxygen from, and why they sometimes succeed or fail. The recurring theme is that ideas first proferred by intellectuals—the “talkers”—articulate foundational principles. This could be Satoshi to the Hodlers, Mercuse to the woke crowd, or the scientists to Climate Cult. The highly visible and often stunning fanatics are unflatteringly characterized as having little to show for their lives in the present, rendering them happy to support change for the unknown future because it must be better. They are looking for meaning in the group that their personal lives lack and distance themselves from blame for their wretched existance. Often the movement involves self-sacrifice, whether it is ancient clerics forfeiting all Earthly belongings and pleasures or modern-day climate activists who claiming they will give up modern conveniences for the lofty goal of saving Mother Earth. Hoffer’s book has the potential of changing your world view.33

  War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination Audible by General Robert Spalding.

  This book complements Pillsbury’s book (below) in that it analyzes and interprets a recently translated and relatively little-known book on Chinese military strategy entitled, “Unrestricted Warfare” written by two Chinese colonels in 1999. Robert attempts to understand the mind of the Chinese military leaders and their deep-seated philosophy that anything and everything can be weaponized, which contrasts with the West’s view that warfare is largely kinetic (blow shit up.) It was not sticky—China is a seriously foreign world to me—but should be read for those trying to understand China. May God have mercy on your souls.34

  Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by Peter Schweizer.

  Peter has documented the vast corruption of those inside the beltway and how they pilfer huge sums of money by selling us down the river. He is probably best known for Clinton Cash and Secret Empires. Red-Handed thoroughly documents the corruption of US politicians by China. Alas, it reads a bit like an Excel spreadsheet with column 1 being the names of all elected officials and political operatives and column 2 being their vig. The sheer magnitude of the grift is nauseating. I am in contact with Peter and expressed my condolences for his depressing life prowling the Swamp.35

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury.

  Michael is an ex-CIA agent—if there is such a thing as an ex-CIA agent—who was the man in China. Of course, this narrative was vetted so caveat emptor. With that said, he describes Mao’s hundred-year plan to re-enter the world of global politics and become the dominant power within 100 years. You will not find such long-range thinking in the West although some people are old enough to have done so. In the event, Pillsbury claims to have completely misjudged China’s approach for the first 25 years of his career. He emphasizes their penchant for patience and deception. Everybody does this in warfare, but the Chinese have brought it to a Sun-Tzu-like art-of-war level. They avoid at all costs taking on a strong opponent directly. And, you may have noticed, China does not have a history of offensive warfare. They defend themselves.36

  Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America by Charles Murray

  I am a Charles Murray fan. (Incoming!) I loved Coming Apart. This short treatise on the invasion by neo-Marxists was enjoyable. I recommend you read Doug Murray’s book (no relation) instead.37

  Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky

  Noam was being Noam. He is a detail guy, sometimes at the expense of the reader. This 1980’s vintage treatise focuses on the bullshit we were fed as the US overthrew various banana republics. Alas, it was scholarly but dry. I would recommend Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. It is an easy read, describing our aversion to democracies around the world. (We tolerate some, but prefer to work with cigar-toting dictators.) Noam had a huge influence on Taibbi’s thinking. I know Noam is a commie and went totally off the rails on Covid, but he is still a genius worthy of your attention.38

  Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

  Continuing with my propaganda theme and its relationship to rising authoritarianism, I went straight to the 1926 seminal treatise on the field. Ed figured out how to sell pianos to the wealthy, cigarettes to women, and refrigerators to eskimos. He describes how the entire populace is immersed in propaganda and how it works. I cannot say it was my favorite book but a must read for those professing to care about enroaching authoritarianism. (If you can’t see it, I cannot help you.) The funny part was that he kept saying politicians hadn’t yet figured out how to exploit the tools. Well, Eddie: they certainly corrected that little gap in their knowledge. I have since discovered that the spooks exploited Ed and his ideas too.39

  The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.

  My authoritarian theme dragged me to the pinnacle of the field. Hannah is a legend. Unfortunately, her writing is brutal. I chatted with a friend who spent two years in an attic hiding from the Nazis who is a genius (Nobel Prize and all). He said she was difficult to read. It is a must for some but tough on me.40

  The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard.

  Arrrgh. This was a fun read about the pirates who set up shop in the Caribbean with a strong emphasis on their empire’s home base at Nassau. The 17th century pirates are not well documented. Their booty—Spanish gold—raises a question: if you steal gold and you are stuck in the Caribbean, what do you do with it? As the piracy market evolved, the quality of the booty decreased. Grabbing linen and barrels of some marginally edible crap is less exciting and profitable than bullion from galleons. As the story goes, life on a pirate ship was considerably more enjoyable than on a sovereign naval ship. The book dovetails well with Eric Jay Dolan’s Leviathan that describes the growth of the whaling industry and how it founded the New England industrial juggernaut.41

  What Darwin Didn’t Know: The Modern Science of Evolution by Scott Solomon.

  As a genetics major I had a particular affinity for evolutionary theory. This trimester-length course from the Great Courses Series (see Amazon) was really enjoyable. After wandering through the historical backdrop of evolutionary theory, it brings the listener up to speed on what has changed and the revolutionary new advances in the field. I suspect it is friendly to the non-scientist, but I could be wrong.42

  Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway.

  I decided to take a retrospective look into the 2020 election after my pulse had dropped a few notches. Mollie presents a one-sided view of the tricks of electioneering. You have three choices: (a) assume what she says is bullshit, (b) assume both sides do it, and there are just as many bad stories about the right she skipped over, or (c) reconcile why the Democrats are just so much more devious than republicans. I followed the story closely and found it credible and comfortably within the guard rails. The Republicans appear to be outplayed, even though I am confident they do nefarious things to corrupt elections (like place polling stations in horrible places). I am confident that the 2020 election had no guard rails because too many people on both sides of the aisle convinced themselves that Trump was the second coming of Hitler. I also distinguished “corrupted” where profound biases leaned heavily to achieve an outcome from “rigged” where the actual voting process was broken profoundly. Hemmingway’s narrative provides a convincing tale of corruption. Some of the stories are horrifying while all of the stories, when put together in one narrative, are nauseating. The case that it was rigged is speculative: the opportunity to rig it was there, but is the evidence that it was rigged undeniable? No. I fall back on the belief, however, that if it could be rigged, they rigged it. Every other imaginable attempt to pull Trump out of power was used. I doubt they would overlook any possibility. As an audiobook, it was fine. I am not sure I would want to take valuable reading time to rehash this sordid chapter of history.43

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 16:40

• A "Textbook" Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event Appears To Be Unfolding
  A “Textbook” Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event Appears To Be Unfolding

  Meteorologists on social media channel X are posting weather models about the increasing threat of a so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) over the Arctic, which could unleash wintry weather across the eastern half of the US in the new year. 

  “A textbook sudden stratospheric warming event looks to be unfolding,” private weather forecaster BAM Weather (BAMWX).

  Judah Cohen, Ph.D. and an atmospheric and environmental scientist who studies the polar vortex, told FOX Weather an SSW event takes “about two weeks for the effects of the sudden stratospheric warming to impact our weather.” 

  Cohen expects that cold air will pour into the Lower 48 in the new year, although the specifics of the event remain uncertain. 

  Yale Climate Connections wrote in a recent note, “The odds of a snow-favoring East Coast cold wave will be boosted if a sudden stratospheric warming happens to develop in January.” 

  “Sudden stratospheric warmings involve a rapid and dramatic rise in temperature — as much as 80 degrees Fahrenheit — within the polar stratosphere, together with a disruption in the stratospheric polar vortex. That disruption typically either splits the vortex or pushes it southward, along with associated Arctic air masses,” the weather service ran by Yale Center for Environmental Communication. And it’s the splitting of the polar vortex that delivers the blast of Arctic air to the Lower 48 region. 

  

  Cohen posted, “All models now agree on a Polar Vortex stretch. Major warming still possible.” 

  Sometimes all you need is a good stretch. Looks to me that the ECMWF has capitulated to the Americans (GFS & me), all models now agree on a #PolarVortex stretch. Major warming still possible. I stand by my implications with what I wrote in yesterday’s blog https://t.co/Gg8N2KHLUk pic.twitter.com/wLenj5yZt8

  — Judah Cohen (@judah47) December 21, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meteorologist Mark Margavage said, “The 12z EPS Control run is showing the granddaddy of all Polar Vortex disruptions with a major Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event and split of the PV. This would be the most impactful scenario of the 4 presented today.” 

  The 12z EPS Control run is showing the granddaddy of all #PolarVortex disruptions with a major Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event (#SSWE) and split of the PV.
  This would be the most impactful scenario of the 4 presented today. @PvForecast @judah47 @TonyPannWBAL #wxtwitter #wxX https://t.co/XezMHPHAYv pic.twitter.com/DsIP46AwYe

  — Mark Margavage (@MeteoMark) December 23, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  BAMWX forecasts “a **late Jan into Feb** legit winter pattern for the central/eastern US!”

  A text book sudden stratospheric warming event looks to be unfolding esp. if you ask the EPS data.

  My interest is increasing for a **late Jan into Feb** legit winter pattern for the central/eastern US!

  The wild card is can this SPLIT the #polarvortex?

  It certainly displaces… pic.twitter.com/y8OFOmElWE

  — BAM Weather (BAMWX) (@bamwxcom) December 21, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “It appears as if there could be a legitimate risk developing for a mid to late Jan major blast of Arcitic air and stormy weather,” BAMWX noted, adding, “Exact timing is still a bit up for grabs but very encouraging if you’re a lover of snow and cold.” 

  Merry #Christmas Eve.

  My gift to you is a day 14 #PolarVortex total split and breakdown.

  It appears as if there could be a legitimate risk developing for a mid to late Jan major blast of #Arcitic air and stormy weather.

  Exact timing is still a bit up for grabs but very… pic.twitter.com/Y6y3gtR87I

  — BAM Weather (BAMWX) (@bamwxcom) December 24, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “Interest rising for cold lovers in Jan with the polar vortex coming under attack in the next couple of weeks. Possible Sudden Stratospheric Warming?” weather forecasting company MetDesk said. 

  Take a look at how December is panning out across the planet so far. Mixed in Europe with cold in the NE but mild for N America. Interest rising for cold lovers in Jan with the polar vortex coming under attack in the next couple of weeks. Possible Sudden Stratospheric Warming? pic.twitter.com/la6xP9Hnzf

  — MetDesk (@metdesk) December 20, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The combination of a potential SSW and an El Niño winter in the Mid-Atlantic, which typically leads to wetter-than-usual conditions, might suggest the next major snowstorm is approaching in the new year. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 16:00

• The Grinch Who Overpriced Christmas: Biden's Christmas Tree Inflation
  The Grinch Who Overpriced Christmas: Biden’s Christmas Tree Inflation

  Authored by Catherine Salgado via PJMedia.com,

  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow… money.

  The Grinch in the White House is at it again, as inflation drives up the price of Christmas trees.

  I’m dreaming of an affordable Christmas, just like the Orange Man used to know… Unfortunately, ever since Joe Biden moved into the White House with his son the prime Naughty List suspect, inflation has been making the holidays harder for American families.

  At Halloween, candy prices were up 13% thanks to Biden inflation. 

  At Thanksgiving, inflation on many dinner staples including bread, cookies, and uncooked poultry were much higher than the alleged average inflation rate. Now it’s Christmas trees.

  

  The Western Journal cited Fox Business, the National Christmas Tree Association, and the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA) to report that “the cost of Christmas trees is up 10 percent from 2022, with the average tree now costing consumers between $80 and $100.” Artificial trees are even more impacted by inflation than real trees, because of increased production cost. Sounds like a good reason to get a real tree instead of an artificial plastic bush.

  Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, explained, “According to our 2023 survey, 52 percent of artificial Christmas tree owners purchased their tree for under $200, and 27 percent paid $200 to $400.” Of course, the prices for artificial trees can vary, depending on a number of factors, including the size and the retailer.

  ACTA found from polling, however, that 94% of respondents still intend to purchase at least one Christmas tree for their homes this year, even though 78% of consumers are (understandably) worried about inflation.

  Of those consumers, 77 percent confirmed they would opt for an artificial tree rather than a real one…The case of Christmas trees is just one in a long list of products and services that have drastically increased in price since Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

  According to an October analysis from the Heritage Foundation, inflation is currently at a 40-year high and shows little sign of abating.

  Inflation was below the Federal Reserve target when Sleepy Joe took office, but no longer.

  “After a year and a half of Biden’s runaway government spending and borrowing, prices were rising almost that fast in a single month, with annual inflation reaching 9.1%—6.5 times the rate Biden inherited,” Heritage explained.

  Warner is glad that Americans are still in the holiday spirit, in spite of the Man with the Bag (of cocaine), but recommended an early Christmas tree purchase to beat the rush.

  Have yourself a merry little Christmas in spite of inflation, and don’t let President Grinch with the brain that’s two sizes too small freeze your holiday cheer!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 15:20

• The Fed Is Afraid… Of Something
  The Fed Is Afraid… Of Something

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via DollarCollapse.com,

  In the last issue we covered how Ecoinmetrics posited that the Bitcoin rally wasn’t being confirmed on-chain and that there was a chance of a 10% pullback in the month following his analysis, which was published November 22.

  We did get a pullback, from $44K, which touched bottom around $40K before reversing, for a roughly 10% retracement.

  If that was the pullback, it was kind of a snoozer, lasting all of 72 hours (although as I type this on Dec 17, it does look as if Bitcoin is weakening around the low-40’s – and could drop below 40K over the next few days).

  If you are new to this sort of thing (this is your first Bitcoin cycle), you should be warned that there will be larger pullbacks, in the order of 25% or more. Or more.

  Remember that – and remember our guidance to people experiencing fear, uncertainty or doubt during said pullbacks:

  The number one attribute required to navigate a full Bitcoin cycle is conviction. The entire point of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto was to provide the basis for that.

  If anybody here got shaken out during this pullback (we have a lot of new readers to the list), my advice would be to close out your positions here and unsubscribe from this list.

  What did happen on Dec 13th, was the Fed basically pivoted: they held the benchmark rate, again – then signalled that they were now looking toward cuts in 2024.

  The dot plot moved immediately to reflect a 75bp cut over 2024:

  With even unofficial Fed spox Nick Timiraos (“Nikileaks”) seemingly caught flat-footed:

  “The Powell pivot begins.

  Dec 1: “It would be premature to … speculate on when policy might ease.”

  Dec 13: Rate cuts are something that “begins to come into view” and “clearly is a topic of discussion.”

  What a difference two weeks can make.”

  In his WSJ piece, Timiraos basically officially canonized the Powel Pivot:

  “Powell’s remarks, along with new projections showing Fed officials anticipated three rate cuts next year, marked a notable U-turn. For more than a year, he had warned that they would raise rates as much as needed to lower inflation even if that triggered a recession.”

  What changed?

  “The comment about rate cuts was surprising because just two weeks ago during an appearance at Spelman College in Atlanta, Powell said it was too soon to speculate about when lower rates might be appropriate.”

  Typically the Fed tries not to rock the boat in an election year, and this time out the boat is balanced atop a razor:

  • CPI core print came in at 4% YoY; still well above the target – or even the posited, modified, raised inflation target of 3% (as per Paul Krugman’s shilling and even Fed issued think pieces).

  • Cutting rates, while not directly expanding the money supply, will create looser credit conditions that will almost certainly reignite inflation.

  • Assets are already reacting with stonks, gold and Bitcoin all reversing sharply higher (well, Bitcoin actually reversed off its low before the Fed minutes).

  • Inflation and asset bubbles are clubs that Trump and the rest of the GOP contenders will happily use to bludgeon Biden, or whoever the Dem nominee will be (to be sure: whoever wins the election will almost certainly continue on a path of monetary debasement, blowout deficits and out of control debt.)

  • So for the Fed to telegraph rate cuts that herald a “Fed Pivot” which many commentators have gone on record to say “can’t happen”, they must see something dead ahead that has them back-pedalling.

  The market is intuiting the Fed is scared of something; what could it be?

  Speculation abounds across FinTwit:

  M2 money supply contracting for the first time since WWII:

  

  via@GameOfTrades

  The imminent tapping out of the Fed’s Reverse Repo Facility:

  

  Even a crash in the “Second Hand Rolex Watches” index (I think that one is satire).

  

  Via @DeItaone

  But what I’m looking at is something we’ve touched upon in previous issues, and that’s the unrealized losses the major banks are suffering at the hands of higher interest rates:

  

  Looks nasty. Via @Schuldensuehner

  Whatever it is, it’s something which at the moment is so esoteric that there are still strong elements of denial that this is the beginning of a Fed pivot at all; John Hussman comes to mind, pointing out that the dot plot (which is currently forecasting 75bp worth of cuts in 2024) is never really accurate (the correlation is around 0.6, apparently), and that no previous Fed pivot has occurred from these equity valuations.

  I get that. And Hussman is an investing legend, but he’s also been calling for a HUGE crash for a LONG time and if the Fed really is pivoting, that might not happen (we get a different kind of crash, in the currency, for starters).

  What this does remind me of, is the time the Fed did an actual pivot in 2019: after more than ten years of ZIRP and QE, Powell finally started trying to normalize rates in 2018 – and the markets promptly shit the bed.

  

  From “The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto”

  The Fed came out and said “we made a mistake hiking”, stopped trying to normalize, and did three cuts over 2019.

  Markets took off accordingly, but something still seemed to have come unglued under the hood; weird things were happening with reverse repos and the corporate bond markets (sound familiar?) until according to some observers, the Fed and the world’s central banks caught a big break in 2020: the Covid pandemic erupted. Now the central banks had the perfect excuse to “run their playbooks on steroids” and flood the world with liquidity:

  “By the end of ’19, and because of what happened with the corporate credit meltdown a year prior, the Fed had its Black Swan game plan in hand. They needed COVID but destroyed an opportunity. What the system needed was reserves.” — Danielle DiMartino Booth

  Without that fortuitous turn of events, the banking system would have been in real trouble. (And given how the “lab leak” hypothesis now looks plausible, one really does wonder if some of the conspiracy theories around a “plandemic” were in the ballpark.)

  *  *  *

  This post was an excerpt from The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, learn more here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 14:40

• Carry On Carolling! Why Bizarre Warnings About Christmas Customs Should Be Ignored
  Carry On Carolling! Why Bizarre Warnings About Christmas Customs Should Be Ignored

  Authored by William Brooks via The Epoch Times,

  American historian Paul Kengor has amply documented the early poems and plays of Karl Marx, which are “rife with pacts with the devil, suicide pacts, violence, vengeance, fire, despair, destruction, and death.”

  

  Marx hated God, and Marx’s disciples have been at war with religion for more than 100 years. In the hypersecular domain that Father Richard Neuhaus described as “the naked public square,” the left remains deeply disturbed by the survival of Christianity.

  Over recent months, the Canadian Department of National Defence seemingly made a bid to disallow prayer on Remembrance Day, and a recent Human Rights Commission report called Christmas a racist observance “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.”

  Days ago, thousands of U.S. university students marched with anti-Semitic, “Red-Green” Islamo-Marxist mobs that disrupted Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in U.S. cities.

  As yet, attacks on Judeo-Christian culture don’t have the full endorsement of prevaricating progressive politicians. Nevertheless, legions of academics, “woke” professionals, and state apparatchiks are clearly establishing an anti-religious path for our political elites.

  The Campaign Against Christmas Music

  Secular progressives have sought to purge Christianity from public spaces for decades, and one of their more bizarre assertions is that Christmas music is bad for our mental health.

  Several years ago, a British psychologist, Linda Blair, warned that listening to Christmas music could damage our psychological well-being by triggering feelings of stress. She said Christmas songs bring on thoughts of things that we feel obliged to do over the Christmas season, such as shopping for gifts or planning for a family dinner.

  Ms. Blair’s contentions have been making headlines in news outlets for the past several years. In November 2017, a CBS News story began with, “Christmas music may take mental toll, psychologist says.” Within days, a Fox News report echoed, “Christmas music is bad for your mental health, British psychologist says.”

  The same irrational warnings have been repeated year after year. In 2019, a Fox 32 Chicago headline read, “Christmas music can negatively impact your mental health, psychologist suggests.”

  In mid-December 2021, a publication of the British Psychological Society invited people to look at building “new traditions and ways of celebrating” because COVID-19 was casting “uncertainty over traditional Christmas plans.” A January 2022 Psychology Today column by London-based psychiatric consultant Rafa Eufa led with: “Christmas Is Over. What a Relief! The forced happiness of the winter holidays can be stressful for many.”

  Writing in a more recent edition of Psychology Today, Raymond Leone, a director of medical music therapy, described a “Love/Hate Relationship With Christmas Music” and asserted that “Christmas music can sometimes feel imposed on us.”

  When similar seasonal anxieties appeared this year, it was déjà vu all over again. Writing in the “Health” section of Business Insider, writer Rosalind Ryan asserted that “there’s a reason why some Christmas songs make you cry.” She went on to allege that Christmas songs “may be written in a certain way to trigger feelings of sadness.”

  In November, openly Christian Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo finally treated all of these silly allegations with the contempt they deserve. “There are some ‘Grinches’ who just want to extinguish anything that has even the whiff of God or faith about it,” he reported from the streets of New York City.

  Christmas Promises Peace Not Trauma

  It’s clear that Christian customs have become less welcome in the public square, and the left has developed a particular dislike for the celebration of Christmas.

  Over recent years, ordinary North Americans have experienced considerable levels of distress. But sensible people aren’t blaming their troubles on exposure to multiple replays of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

  The actual source of our stress is contained in the catastrophic social and economic policies that have been introduced by misguided neo-Marxist ideologues.

  For most citizens, reckless spending, porous borders, high energy costs, inflated food prices, family disintegration, homeless encampments, unprecedented levels of crime, fraudulent election procedures, corrupt politicians, racial division, failing schools, mob violence, and censorship are all considerably more disturbing than Christmas music.

  For centuries, Christmas has amounted to more than just the formal observance of a theological event. Advent and the twelve days of Christmas are festive occasions that focus on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the arrival of the Magi who recognized the Christ child by offering gifts.

  Christmas festivals include feast days, family reunions, concerts, good cheer, gift-giving, and of course the enjoyment of sacred music. It’s an opportunity to share a love for God and a natural affection for fellow human beings.

  Sometimes, religious customs can get lost in too many extravagant events and parties. But Christmas always serves to renew our spirit of charity and remind us of obligations to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, forgive the guilty, care for the sick, love our opponents, and do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

  This year, we will celebrate Christmas in Wales and plan to take great pleasure in attending a carol service at the 1,500-year-old Newport Cathedral, whether the British Psychological Society recommends it or not.

  The insightful Father Richard Neuhaus was firmly convinced that the survival of truly free societies depends almost entirely on our capacity to remain informed by the philosophy and values of Judeo-Christian traditions.

  The promise of Christmas is peace and goodwill, not despair and psychological trauma.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 14:00

• One In Five Americans Will Flock To Church This Christmas
  One In Five Americans Will Flock To Church This Christmas

  One in five Americans will be heading to church on Christmas this year, according to a survey by Statista Consumer Insights.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, of the six countries included in the survey, Brazil had the highest share of people saying they intended to go to a Christmas mass this year: around one in three respondents (31 percent).

  Next came Mexico (24 percent) and the United States (19 percent).

  The tradition is even less common in France and the United Kingdom, where only 9 percent of respondents said they would go to church this year.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 13:25

• The Battle For Higher Education
  The Battle For Higher Education

  Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClear Wire,

  Higher education is making news these days.  In Congressional testimony, the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn couldn’t tell whether calling for the genocide of the Jews constituted harassment without knowing the context.  The effects of their testimony reverberate.

  

  Days later, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a lengthy report condemning “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.”  Prominently featured was a detailed complaint about New College of Florida, where I serve as admissions director.

  These seemingly unrelated events are but two parts of a single story.  The Ivy League and the AAUP, as representatives of today’s academic leadership, are pleased and proud of the institutions they’ve built.  Florida’s public education system has taken the lead in promoting institutional reform—with New College as the poster child. 

  Needless to say, incumbent leadership doesn’t welcome any reforms at their cozy institutions.  They perceive our reforms as threats to American higher education as we know it.  Their perception is correct.  Their problem, however, is that academia as we know it bears little resemblance to academia as most Americans believe it to be. 

  The incumbents have spread a gloriously self-serving myth system.  In their telling, their institutions are bastions of liberal values, civil discourse, and the free exchange of ideas.  They’re open to the finest representatives of every community, perspective, and viewpoint.  They’re engaged in educating a new generation in the fine art of critical thinking. 

  The truth, however, is almost the polar opposite of that myth.  America’s universities are country clubs for insiders who have dispensed with independent thought as the price of belonging.  Under the seemingly high-minded ideal of “faculty governance,” faculty make all important decisions: Hiring, firing, promotion, tenure, curriculum design, publication in prestigious journals, the appropriate paths for research, and the flow of research funding.

  Does faculty governance work?  The AAUP, which represents faculty members from across the country, is clear: America’s professors are highly impressed with the performance of America’s professors.  Most of the complaints in the AAUP report hinge on the usurpation by outsiders of decisions that “belong” to the faculty. 

  In reality, faculty governance enshrines conventional wisdom into a governing ethos from which none may deviate.  Over the past few decades, a deeply illiberal “Critical Theory,” rooted in the same utopian socialism that birthed Communism and Fascism, has assumed that dominant role. 

  Critical Theory casts history as a constant struggle between “oppressor” groups and “oppressed” groups.  “Intersectionality” ties them all together, so that all struggles pitting any oppressor against any of the oppressed are manifestations of the same struggle.  All actions of the oppressed are thus justifiable as blows for liberation and justice.  Deterrence or retaliation against even the most seemingly barbaric acts merely perpetuates oppression.

  It’s enough to make your head spin.  It’s also a fine line along which universities must dance.  Academic leaders must be open and proud of their beliefs without ever allowing anyone to note their implications.  On a critical theoretic campus (which is most of them), determining whether calling for a genocide of the Jews constitutes harassment does indeed require context—it’s just not a context to which the leadership can admit.

  The relevant context has little to do with behavior or message; it rests entirely upon the identity of the speaker.  A “white” student wearing a swastika T-shirt calling for genocide is harassing the Jews; a “student of color” wearing a Palestine T-shirt with an identical message is not.

  Admitting as much, however, would give away the game.  America’s finest campuses would be revealed to be anti-liberal, anti-freedom, anti-discourse, hotbeds of privilege and racial categorization.

  Therein lies the true state of “academia as we know it” and the true goals of those of us committed to reform.

  In one of the clearest articulations of these competing forces, longtime Harvard donor Bill Ackman enumerated the ways that Harvard had deviated from the school he had believed it to be.  New College President Richard Corcoran showed that our goal in the reform movement is to rebuild American academia into the type of institution whose loss Ackman laments. 

  Corcoran then invited Harvard’s refugees to join us at New College.  Anti-reform critics scoffed at the improbability.  The message behind his invitation, however, is one that every participant in campus life needs to hear.  In the current climate, they face an unenviable choice.  They can sacrifice their minds, their souls, and their safety to the cause of earning a prestigious degree.  They can incur deep personal and professional risks in fighting for their institutions from the inside.  Or they can join us at institutions that have proudly embraced the cause of higher education reform—beginning with New College and the rest of the Florida State University System.

  Those choices frame the battle for the future of higher education in America: Incumbents fighting to preserve a deeply illiberal, hateful, discriminatory status quo vs. reformers seeking a return to traditional liberal education.  If you want to understand why we in the reform movement get so much hatred from the incumbents, look no further.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 12:50

• Israel Says Army Will Soon End Ground Operation In '3rd Phase Of War'
  Israel Says Army Will Soon End Ground Operation In ‘3rd Phase Of War’

  Israel’s Broadcasting Authority on Saturday reported that the Netanyahu government is planning to switch to a new phase of the war, but gave a vague timeline which indicated this change will only happen in the coming weeks, if at all. Infantry troops will be withdrawn, and Israeli forces will continue focusing on heavy aerial bombardment, according to the plan.

  “The Israeli army is preparing to move to the third phase of the fighting in Gaza in the coming weeks,” the Israeli broadcaster said. This is to involve “ending the ground operation in the Strip, reducing forces, and demobilizing reserve forces.”

  

  “The third phase includes ending the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, reducing army forces and demobilizing reserves, resorting to air strikes, and establishing a buffer zone on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip,” according to official sources.

  The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they’ve killed thousands of Hamas militants, as well as wiped out the top ranks of the more “elite” Golani Brigade, which has reportedly been forced to withdraw in order to “reorganize its ranks.”

  The Israeli broadcaster further said the IDF “took control of most of the northern Gaza Strip area, while it faces great difficulties in moving forward in the southern Gaza Strip area.”

  But this hasn’t been without a significant cost, as regional publication Middle East Monitor writes:

  At least 472 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground operation in the Palestinian enclave on Oct. 27, according to Israeli army figures.

  The Walla news website and the Israeli Channel 12 broadcaster reported Thursday that one of the units in Gaza, known as the Golani Brigade, had lost 44 soldiers in 70 days of fighting. The brigade left Gaza to “reorganize their ranks and visit their families for a few days,” it was reported.

  Israeli sources have said this number means the Golani Brigade has lost a quarter of its troops.

  Previously, Biden admin officials pressed Israeli counterparts to quickly wind down the intensity of the Gaza campaign. International pressure has mounted on both Israel and the White House, given the immense civilian death toll. Palestinian sources say that over 20,000 mostly civilians have been killed.

  Israel has countered that many thousands of these were actually Hamas militants, and has further accused the Gaza Health Ministry of inflating the casualty figures. However, there’s global consensus that civilian deaths have mounted at an unprecedented rate.

  Meanwhile, Israel is unlikely to clear Gaza’s vast tunnels anytime soon, also as the IDF proceeds with trying to flood them with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean…

  Operational update from area of Issa within Gaza City:

  🔺Soldiers of the Yiftah Battalion and combat engineering forces struck Hamas headquarters and eliminated terrorists.

  🔺Soldiers of the Paratroopers Brigade, who were operating in the area, located and discovered a number… pic.twitter.com/Fw8Vk5dfC3

  — Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) December 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This fresh weekend Israeli announcement of soon moving to a new “phase” of the war seems a direct response to Washington’s request – or is at least meant to temporarily placate White House calls for a shift in tactics.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 12:15

• Rocky Mountain High: Why Trump Should Love The Colorado Ruling
  Rocky Mountain High: Why Trump Should Love The Colorado Ruling

  Authored by Tim Donner via RealClear Wire,

  

  The Colorado Supreme Court, acting as supplicants for the enemies of Donald Trump seeking the most extreme remedy for driving the former president into the ditch, may have just unwittingly gifted the former president a Rocky Mountain high – in the polls. 

  This time, four left-wing Colorado justices attempting to kneecap Trump were not even going to wait on due process – the very foundation of law – to effectively declare Trump guilty of insurrection, a crime for which he has not, repeat not, even been charged. After believing their attempts to wipe Trump off the ballot would be a knockout punch, it is the left that is about to get walloped to the canvas with a right hook. 

  But how, you say, is this good news for Trump? Let us count the ways. First, we know that every time he has been targeted and indicted based on novel legal theories never before applied, his popularity has only increased. Second, this decision provides him with yet more valuable and indisputable evidence – perhaps the best yet – supporting his claim of persecution by the establishment left. He can enjoy that benefit without the liability of actually being banned from the ballot once the U.S. Supreme Court likely shoots down the Colorado ruling, thus bringing similar efforts in other states to a halt.

  But there’s more. Third on the list of how the left is hurting its own cause with its lawfare crusade against Trump is its whole argument that Trump threatens “democracy” as never before. That assertion hardly stands up when it boots Trump off the ballot: “This is hands-down the most anti-democratic opinion I have seen in my lifetime,” said famed constitutional attorney Jonathan Turley.

  A subset of democracy is reason number four: election interference. Even after its constitutionally dubious changes to election law on the fly in key swing states in 2020 that undoubtedly handed the election to Joe Biden, the left has crowed from the rooftops that Trump is an election denier intent on interfering with the electoral process. Now that they are trying to remove him from the ballot, what are they going to say? This is textbook election interference, though of a kind rarely, if ever, witnessed before. 

  Fifth, even Trump’s primary opponents – Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis – have again had little choice but to jump to the defense of their rival despite his overwhelming lead, further strengthening Trump’s candidacy and all but ending the Republican presidential primary, if it wasn’t over already.

  Leftists constantly indicting Trump have actually gotten the reaction they envisioned: forcing the GOP to support Trump. The idea was that Biden would then sail to another term against a convicted criminal sure to repel the American electorate in the end. The strategy has turned into the most classic backfire we have witnessed in some time.

  The Persecution of Donald Trump

  For starters, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton concocted a phony scandal to drive Trump out of the 2016 presidential race and then out of the Oval Office for treason. Then they impeached him. Then they impeached him again. Then, they raided his home. Then they indicted him. Then they indicted him again, and again, and again. Now, in a widespread effort to make sure no one will even have the opportunity to vote for him, Colorado is just one of more than a dozen states joining the effort to disqualify Trump. The first five states attempting to remove Trump were shot down in court. But cases in 13 more states remain to be litigated, and they will certainly be influenced by the Colorado ruling and any subsequent decision by the high court. But the Rocky Mountain State will stand in infamy as the first to pull the legal trigger on the most extreme measure available to generate a desired outcome, knowing if it succeeds, it will be open season on Trump throughout the country.

  Democrats’ obsession with Trump has featured one overarching theme: They cannot leave well enough alone. Until they started throwing the book at Trump with one untested stretch of legal theory after another, their man Biden was running ahead of Trump. But with each successive indictment, Trump has risen further to the point of now holding a solid, if not commanding, three-point lead according to the RealClearPolitics Average. Who knows where polling would stand if the left had actually allowed the voters to process Jan. 6 for themselves? That infamous day takes on a fresh context with the removal of Trump from the ballot. Overkill?

  At the same time, you must give the nihilistic Swampocracy in Washington credit for persistence and ingenuity, if nothing else. It has seemingly done everything that popped into its deranged mind to be sure, dead certain, guaranteed, that Trump will never again become president. How infuriating it must be to see every one of its attempts backfire. Rest assured, Colorado will be the latest. We can’t afford to take a chance on the voters’ judgment, screams the terrified left. Does this not sound like the plan cooked up in 2016 to make sure Trump would never be elected in the first place?

  Rocky Mountain Low: Colorado Justice

  The decision in this purple-turned-blue state begs many obvious questions for everyone from political junkies to disinterested voters. The Jan. 6 rally-turned-protest-turned-riot falls so far short of an act of insurrection as to make a mockery of the term. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, cited in the Colorado decision, was ratified for one purpose: to prevent Confederate soldiers from seeking national office following the Civil War. An insurrection requires an organized plan to overthrow the government – which did not exist on that dark January day in 2021. If there is not enough evidence to even indict Trump for insurrection, then how can he possibly be removed from a presidential ballot on that basis? 

  Like virtually every one of the 91 charges pinned on him in four venues, this is the first time a court has ever ruled on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is not dissimilar to the argument about another section of the 14th Amendment regarding so-called birthright citizenship: It was written and intended for the distinct purpose of making slaves citizens but is now employed successfully by immigration activists to confer upon anyone born even an inch inside our border permanent citizenship, even if they entered the country and remain here illegally.

  Though it would appear highly unlikely, think what it would mean if the U.S. Supreme Court either refuses to act or affirms the Colorado ruling. Not only would many other states with similar lawfare suits trying to get Trump wiped off the ballot be emboldened, but it also opens wide the door for any reason – or no reason – to remove any candidate from a ballot going forward based on the personal opinions of judges. This from a party that has been screaming about democracy dying in the darkness of Trump.

  Do we not base our republic first and foremost on the ability of voters – not courts – to cast their ballots for the person they choose? Despite no such constitutional provision, there could perhaps be a quasi-legitimate argument that a convicted felon should be removed from the presidential ballot, but to do so before justice has been served and due process granted tells you everything you need to know about those willing to go to the ends of the earth to stop the man now favored to become the next president. It is stuff not of a constitutional republic but a banana republic. The left’s failure to recognize all the flashing red lights they have set off with their single-minded persecution of Donald Trump will, one expects, come back to haunt them in the end.

  Tim Donner is senior political analyst at LibertyNation.com. He is a former candidate for the U.S. Senate, entrepreneur, and founder of the nonprofit One Generation Away.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 11:40

• Taunting Biden, Iran Now Threatens To Close Mediterranean Sea Over Gaza War
  Taunting Biden, Iran Now Threatens To Close Mediterranean Sea Over Gaza War

  Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to respond to Iran or its Middle East regional proxies in some way (the Houthis and Hezbollah). Not only has global shipping been forced to divert from the Red Sea amid what at this point has been dozens of drone and rocket attacks, but American bases in Syrian and Iraq have come under attack more than 100 times since mid-October, in relation to Israel’s operation in Gaza.

  But Tehran itself is now pressuring the White House, openly taunting Biden in relation to his support to Israel. In a Saturday statement the Iranian government threatened that the Mediterranean Sea could be “closed” due to ongoing Israeli and US “crimes” in Gaza. The threat is significant—whether they could actually ever accomplish such a thing is another question entirely.

  

  “They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, (the Strait of) Gibraltar and other waterways,” Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi was quoted in state media and Reuters as saying.

  “Yesterday, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz became a nightmare for them, and today they are trapped… in the Red Sea,” Naqdi said

  In more normal times this would be ignored and taken as a delusional threat and claim. But the reality is that already some Mediterranean ports, especially Israeli ones, are seeing their imports plummet. Still, it’s unclear how exactly Iran’s military would hope to accomplish ‘closing’ off of the Mediterranean:

  The White House on Friday said Iran was “deeply involved” in planning operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

  Iran has no direct access to the Mediterranean itself and it was not clear how the Guards could attempt to close it off, although Naqdi talked of “the birth of new powers of resistance and the closure of other waterways”.

  This also appears a response to the Friday White House charge that Iran was “deeply involved” in planning attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which US Navy warships on repeat occasions have responded to.

  At various times the US has intercepted drones and missiles from Yemen, but has yet to attempt to hit back directly at Houthi positions.

  

  A growing list of countries have meanwhile rejected the US plan for a large naval coalition to secure Red Sea shipping against Houthi attacks, as we reported earlier. 

  Reuters earlier indicated that about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/24/2023 – 11:05

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