Today’s News 25th February 2023

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

It should be clear to anyone paying attention during this current stage of instability in our modern era that something is very wrong in terms of American society. I’m not talking about ongoing issues of political corruption and economic mismanagement, I’m talking about something much more dangerous. I’m talking about the systematic derailment of our culture, heritage, principals, history and moral compass. I’m talking about the vicious devouring of the very sinews that hold our civilization together.

There is a cancer eating away at America, a concerted and organized effort to destabilize. For anyone who is familiar with the Conjuring movies, it’s a bit like a demonic invasion. As Ed Warren cautions, the three stages of attack are infestation, oppression and finally, possession. The little demon we are dealing with, though, comes with Antifa patches, rainbow flags and special pronouns.

This week I came across a statement by Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in which she called for a “national divorce”, a separation of conservative red states and far left blue states, a parting of ways due to our obvious irreconcilable differences. Leftists within the corporate media, of course, flipped out, accusing Greene of inciting treason and the destruction of the US.

While I don’t generally put much stock in the comments of politicians I think it’s important to address this particular sentiment because it echos the arguments made by the Liberty Movement and the alternative media for many years. It’s just surprising to hear a prominent public figure say what we have been saying for so long.

The frantic upheaval expressed by the political left in reaction to Greene is something I have written about in the past. In my article ‘Separation Or Purge? Sharing A Society With The Political Left Is Impossible’ published in February last year, I noted that leftists take a communistic approach to civil disagreement. They see the populace as chattel to be managed in the name of the greater good of the collective, not as individuals with the right to disassociate. From my article:

“Why not carry this process forward to its natural conclusion? Red states break from blue states and red counties break from blue state control and we live our lives the way we see fit. Let the leftists continue with their draconian economic and political models and see how well that goes for them. I guarantee they will be in financial ruins within a decade (the list of most indebted places in the country is dominated by blue states) and they will be begging to return to a union with red states (except for the zealots, which would lose influence as they continue to fail).

But this will not happen peacefully because, again, leftists cannot tolerate free activity. Their OCD will not allow them to be content with living in a collectivist state of their own; ALL states must be collectivist before they are satisfied. People are property to them; property of the collective, and people who are property cannot be allowed to make decisions without oversight.”

Globalism and progressive authoritarianism has been inching forward for a long time in the US, but only in the past ten years has the agenda become more obvious to the general public. During the covid lockdowns and mandates, people finally witnessed the true intentions of the political left, which widely supported draconian restrictions and called for brutal punishments for people that refused to comply. A large number of Democrats even supported Chinese-style covid laws including taking people’s children away and implementing forced internment.

This is the true face of the political left. Yes, there are moderates and issue focused progressives, but these people tend to keep their mouths shut and go along to get along when it comes to the woke extremists. The moderates are useless and rarely call out the gatekeepers on their own side.

To understand how we got to this place in our society and why leftist politics are poisonous to freedom loving people, you have to understand the concept of “deconstruction”.

It was globalist foundations (the super rich .001%) from the 1960s onward that funded and created the social justice left. This agenda has been going on for decades and is openly admitted in Alison R. Bernstein’s book ‘Funding The Future: Philanthropy’s Influence On America’s Higher Education’. Bernstein was the vice president of Education at the Ford Foundation and the former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton.

The woke ideology is an artificial edifice of astroturf activism. Their manifestos of “critical theory” are conjured using Marxist and communist methodologies and then adapted for American audiences, luring in useful idiots as they go.

The real power grab occurred in the late 1980s into the 1990s when deconstruction as a weapon for political and social upheaval was widely introduced into leftist circles. Before then “deconstruction”, derived from the work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, was often thought of as a mind game; a way to question long held standards that acted as a basis for critical thinking or philosophy. In the 1990s it became something else.

Derrida’s ideas were to question binary notions in philosophy, but globalists and leftists expanded it as a concept for questioning EVERYTHING. Not just questioning, but engaging in active hostilities against the foundations of civilization. Leftists see “structuralism” (order) as a target, and they hate anyone seeking to order society around rules, definitions and principles that rely on discrimination of certain behaviors.

For leftists, all traditional rules and protections must be sabotaged and all aberrant behaviors must eventually become accepted as normal. They believe that in this way society can be homogenized into a Utopian world of perfect equity. Discrimination of anything (except traditional principles) is considered by them to be taboo. Because if people are allowed to discriminate then that allows them to separate, and if people are allowed to separate, then collectivism of thought can never be achieved. The hive mind requires total conformity.

The purpose of deconstruction is to pick away at fundamental systems and definitions and attempt to show them to be inherently flawed, problematic or absurd. Usually this method relies on abstraction, appeal to emotion and subjective experience rather than true analysis. In fact, critical analysis is considered the enemy of social justice because it places facts and evidence above subjective experience and mere feelings.

Emotional and self absorbed people are easy to control. Critical people that value reason are harder to control. For leftists to prevail they must destroy critical thought and encourage reactionary emotion as the norm in society. And, if that doesn’t work, radical leftists argue that burning primary systems to the ground by force is preferred. The end game for them is not necessarily to be right, the end game is to win.

The deconstruction mindset views nothing as sacred and this includes moral compass. While arguing from a position of moral superiority, the political left will often rationalize highly immoral practices. For example, this is why we now see aggressive attempts by leftists to normalize the indoctrination of very young children into trans activism. This is why we are seeing hundreds of gender affirmation clinics with procedures for children springing up all over the country. This is why we are seeing numerous sexualized drag shows for kids, and why highly sexualized reading materials are being planted in school libraries.

This is why some leftists in the media are promoting pedophiles as a victim status group rather than aberrant criminals that need to be weeded out of society. Innocent children are fair game for them because the ends justify the means. Brainwashing and denigrating the next generation is the fastest path to their Utopia.

This is the inevitable progression of the deconstruction ideology. Morality is a “binary” based on what is right and what is wrong. It is the most vital binary for human survival and without it our species would self destruct, but this seems to be exactly what leftists and the globalist puppeteers behind them want. They see traditional morality as a restrictive and oppressive dynamic, another binary that must be eliminated. Thus, they propose moral relativism instead; the idea that conscience is merely a product of social conditioning and that right and wrong, truth and lies, good and evil are based on personal preferences.

It is, ironically, the recipe for ultimate evil. It is the philosophy of pure chaos. When individual conscience becomes the enemy of society because it is considered an “act of discrimination”, then only evil can prevail.

The concept of national separation when taken in context of the bigger ideological picture makes perfect sense. Leftists obsess over power, they obsess over collective acceptance even if obtained by force, they obsess over those that disagree with them. People who respect the foundations of individual liberty and the wisdom of reason cannot co-exist with the political left. Eventually, the leftists will try to destroy them, or they will have to secede. It’s inevitable.

I have called for separation and relocation many times over the years as the only PEACEFUL means of dealing with the problem of complete moral and political division. It’s the only way the conservatives and freedom minded people can exit our association with leftists without bloodshed. That said, I fully realize that leftists/globalists will never allow this to happen. If people are allowed to leave, then the leftists lose. The only way they can win is to eliminate (deconstruct) every alternative social structure. They will froth and rage over separation and call for war.

In fact, one of the first things they accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of doing was inciting civil war. She never argued in favor of this, THEY insinuated it, as if to say “Try to walk away from us, and we’ll kill you.”

At this stage I’m ready to say let them try and lets get this over with. There can be no diplomacy or reconciliation with groups that value leftist cultism and deconstruction ideology – The deepest intent of deconstruction is to poison the cultural well. The dream of leftists is to blow up the world because they see the our current civilization as oppressive to their narcissism. At the same time, globalists exploit that narcissism and use leftists as a battering ram to wreak havoc. Through chaos, they hope to erect a new world order in which all values, all principles and all morals are dead and psychopathy becomes “normal”.

One cannot reason with a monster, one can only erase that monster from existence.

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According to a new survey by the independent institute Levada Center, 75 percent of Russians said in January that they supported the actions of Russian military forces in Ukraine, as the survey is putting it.

This support dipped to 72 percent in September around the announcement of partial mobilization and again to 71 percent in December.

When the war had just started in March, support had been at 80 percent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the Russian state-controlled media environment explains why approval rating for Putin or the Ukraine war can stay so high despite the country now being extremely marginalized in the international community and enduring the hardships of sanctions and war mobilization. Despite the surveys carried out by an independent researcher, many Russians may still feel pressured to give a favorable opinion because of the system they live in. The Levada Center has in a release pointed out that, while surveys only show the behavior people are willing to display publicly, survey-taking behavior has not changed since the invasion. Some observers believe war approval to actually be lower.

As part of the same survey, Russians were asked what feelings the news of the mobilization caused in them. Fear was the most common answer given throughout all age demographics.

The second most common answer varied by age group, however.

Those above the age of 40 were also likely to feel pride for Russia, while those younger named shock as the second most common feeling in relation to the mobilization, followed by anger.

Authored by Amy Gamm via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter on Thursday to the U.S. State Department demanding records and a briefing by the agency regarding its alleged funding of a “disinformation tracking group” that is blacklisting conservative-leaning news outlets.

The letter (pdf) cites as evidence the Washington Examiner’s series of investigative reports uncovering the State Department’s alleged partnership with activist organizations, specifically one “foreign organization,” to “suppress lawful speech and defund disfavored news outlets under the guise of combatting disinformation.”

“The Committee is disturbed by recent reporting that taxpayer money ended up in the hands of a foreign organization running an advertising blacklist of organizations accused of hosting disinformation on their websites, including several conservative-leaning news organizations,” Comer wrote.

The letter goes on to detail the Washington Examiner’s findings.

According to the outlet, major ad companies look to “nonpartisan” groups that claim to detect and fight “disinformation” online to help determine which news outlets and websites they should avoid.

Some of these “disinformation monitors,” the Washington Examiner went on to explain, “are compiling secret blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”

One such group is British Global Disinformation Institute (GDI), which has compiled a “dynamic exclusion list” of 2,000 websites and rates those outlets based on their “alleged disinformation ‘risk’ factor,” according to the Washington Examiner.

GDI’s website further explains its purpose. Calling itself an “independent, non-profit, open source, intelligence hub,” GDI “tracks disinformation and extremism across platforms online” to “serve a broad array of governments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], online platforms, and media.”

In his letter, Comer cites a $330,000 figure that, according to the Washington Examiner, GDI received from State Department funds.

“The federal government should not be censoring free speech nor policing what news outlets Americans choose to consume,” Comer wrote in the letter.

“And taxpayer funds should never be given to third parties with the intent that they be used to censor lawful speech or abridge the freedom of the press,” he continued.

While calling for the State Department to schedule a staff-level briefing “no later than March 2,” Comer went on to list the types of documents and communications that he demands the Department deliver to the committee by March 9 “to enable oversight of the Department’s administration of funds flowing to organizations working to censor lawful speech and suppress press freedoms.”

GDI’s Naughty and Nice Lists of US News Media Organizations

In Dec. 2022, GDI published a study, called “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States,” of 69 U.S. news websites that the organization analyzed between June and October 2022, placing each of them into one of five categories of disinformation risk—minimum, low, medium, high, or maximum.

GDI defines disinformation as “adversarial narratives, which are intentionally misleading; financially or ideologically motivated; and/or aimed at fostering long-term social, political, or economic conflict; and which create a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.”

According to its criteria, GDI found that the ten most disinformation risky websites were all conservative-leaning, including Newsmax (maximum), The Federalist (maximum), The American Spectator (maximum), the New York Post (high), Reason Magazine (high), RealClearPolitics (high), The Daily Wire (high), The Blaze (high), One America News Network (high), and The American Conservative (high).

In contrast, the ten least risky sites earning the “minimum-risk” or “low-risk” designation were NPR (minimum), AP News (minimum), The New York Times (minimum), ProPublica (minimum), Insider (low), USA Today (low), The Washington Post (low), BuzzFeedNews.com (low), The Wall Street Journal (low), and The Huffington Post (low).

As the UN commemorated World Day of Social Justice on February 20, we’re taking a look at one of the key challenges the world is facing in the coming decades: the gradual and largely irreversible shift towards an older population.

According to the United Nations Population Division, the number of persons aged 65 and older is expected to double over the next three decades, reaching 1.6 billion in 2050.

As Statista’s Felix Richter shows in the following chart, Asia is at the forefront of this trend, with Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan expected to have the highest share of people aged 65 and older by 2050.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While Japan is famous for its old population and was already topping the list in 2022, other Asian economies are in the middle of a significant shift, as life expectation has rapidly improved over the last decades and continues to do so. By 2050, roughly 40 percent of the populations of Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are expected to be 65 and older, which makes a huge difference to levels currently observed in highly developed regions, where the share of older people is in the low 20s.

“Population ageing is a defining global trend of our time,” the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs writes in its World Social Report 2023, calling it a “major success story” that brings both challenges and opportunities. One of the main challenges for countries with ageing populations is to ensure that the economy can support the consumption needs of a growing number of older people, be it by raising the legal retirement age, removing barriers to voluntary labor force participation of older people or by ensuring equitable access to education, health care and working opportunities throughout the lifespan, which can help to boost economic security at older ages.

Especially countries in the early stages of the demographic shift have the opportunity to plan ahead and implement the right measures ahead of time, to effectively manage the challenges that come with an ageing population.

Authored by John A. Burtka IV via RealClear Wire,

There is no subject of greater importance—and controversy—today in America than that of education. And nowhere is the clash between civilizational order and post-modern anarchy on greater display than with New College of Florida, a tiny liberal-arts college in Sarasota. The New York Times recently described the reaction of “students, parents, and faculty members” to Governor Ron DeSantis’s reforms of the college in a curious way: “a political assault on their academic freedom.”

As a tax-payer funded, public institution of higher learning, New College is—or at least ought to be—accountable to Florida’s citizens and elected officials. But, then again, the left is increasingly uncomfortable with representative government. It considers democratic institutions to be “messy.” Better to be ruled top down by “experts,” it claims.

At the same time, many conservatives rightly lament the role that universal public education has played in secularizing and liberalizing American society. But we cannot possibly hope to restore excellence to American education by exclusively relying upon private and voluntary associations, as they only impact a small minority of students.

Florida is leading the way. In the course of four years, the state has invested billions to raise teacher pay (with starting salaries over 15 percent of the national average), abolished sales tax on back-to-school shopping necessities, established a teacher’s bill of rights to hold public-sector unions accountable, and passed a parent’s bill of rights, which, among other things, forbids the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade. Florida has further provided new educational pathways for high school students in vocational technology programs, dual-enrollment programs, and apprenticeships. It has also explored the prohibition of DEI programs at state universities and replaced leadership at colleges like the University of Florida and New College.  

While each state will have its own unique set of needs and priorities, the transformation of Florida’s education system shows that it’s possible to raise standards, support students and parents, boost teacher compensation, fight radical ideologies, and win the broad support of the public. The ambition is not to create a single mode of education that applies to everyone—that would inevitably reduce educational standards to the lowest common denominator—but to use the power of politics and persuasion to apply top-flight learning to a variety of educational models, which respectively acknowledge the diversity of interests and capabilities of students.

For liberal-arts colleges, first and foremost, the classics must be put back in their rightful place in the core curriculum. Students have to be given the opportunity to step outside the confines of the 21^st century. This type of education allows the world to be seen more fully, and, to be sure, more honestly.

For research universities, federal funding for student loans must be eliminated, administrative staff must be reduced, and DEI initiatives must be replaced entirely with a new system based solely on academic merit. Universities should also be held liable in bankruptcy court for former students who default on student loan debt, and standards of excellence should be set for measuring advances and innovations in science and technology.

At the high school level, the majority of graduates should no longer pursue a college degree. A college education is not the measure of all things. It’s unjust to force young Americans with a variety of backgrounds and interests into a one-size-fits-all program—rooted in post-WWII nostalgia—that burdens them with debt and poorly equips them for professional, familial, and civic life. Vocational training and apprenticeships should be encouraged and companies should be incentivized to hire and train high school graduates directly until a paradigm shift becomes manifest throughout workplace culture. Fixing higher education in America requires a whole-of-society approach.

At the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, we’re meeting this challenge head-on next week in the Free State of Florida where we are partnering with the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation to host our first ever national faculty conference, the American Politics and Government Summit, which will convene professors and teachers from across the nation to explore the question of “Justice and the American Regime.” It will serve as an alternative to the American Political Science Association by providing scholars with a forum to civilly debate controversial topics and pursue truth. Moreover, they will be able to do this without fear of being canceled by the mob and needing to conform every thought and word to progressive dogmas.

Our effort as an educational and ideas organization is one small step towards reopening the American mind, and, I hope, returning sanity to an institution that has been held captive by narrow and self-destructive tendencies for far too long. But if we are to be successful at scale, we need to do more than host conferences and build associations. We need major, structural change in our public system of higher education. That will only come, at least in the next two years, from our elected officials at the state and local levels. The remarkable victories of both Governor DeSantis in Florida and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia prove that addressing excellence in education is a winning formula.

Parents, of all political stripes, want the best education possible for their children. They want them to grow up to be upstanding citizens, good fathers and mothers, successful in their careers, and respectful and kind to their neighbors. They want them to love America, not blindly, but out of a sense of gratitude and a desire to make this country a better place for all.

John A. Burtka IV is president and chief executive officer of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Follow on Twitter: @johnnyburtka

A massive, 4000-word scathing critique of American foreign policy was circulated by Chinese embassies hosted in Western countries this week, including to American officials and media. It included a lengthy laundry list of US crimes abroad and imperialist tactics.

The long essay was first published in state-run Xinhua News agency, and is entitled “U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils”. It heavily focuses on Washington’s recent wars in the Middle East, which have killed many tens of thousands of people, as well as bullying sanctions on countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia which have had a strangling effect on entire populations.

For a sampling of the kind rhetoric contained in the essay, which at this point has semi-official status as a Chinese government document (again, given it’s being circulated by the Chinese embassy in D.C., among others), one section begins: “So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population.”

It repeatedly calls out American hypocrisy and says the US has departed from the very principles it has long espoused and claimed to represent: 

“The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.

This also comes the very week that China unveiled a peace plan intended to wind down the Russia-Ukraine war. To be expected, the plan was met with an icy reception in Europe and the US.

Below is the Chinese government document in its entirety, which was sent out to Western government officials and media late this week.

* * *

US Hegemony and Its Perils

Contents

Introduction

I. Political Hegemony—Throwing Its Weight Around

II. Military Hegemony—Wanton Use of Force 

III. Economic Hegemony—Looting and Exploitation

IV. Technological Hegemony—Monopoly and Suppression

V. Cultural Hegemony—Spreading False Narratives

Conclusion

Introduction

Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”

This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.

I. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Around

The United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights.

◆ Instances of U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs abound. In the name of “promoting democracy,” the United States practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “color revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries.

In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an “America for the Americans,” what it truly wanted was an “America for the United States.”

Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall perish.

The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of “color revolutions” — the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a “central role” in these “regime changes.” The United States also interfered in the internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called “People Power Revolutions.”

In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange, exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential election.

◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization “supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organization’s “bias” against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.

The United States has also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries’ activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest obstacle to realizing “a world free of chemical weapons.”

◆ The United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance system. It has been forcing an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” onto the Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.

◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the first “Summit for Democracy,” which drew criticism and opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host another “Summit for Democracy,” which remains unwelcome and will again find no support.

II. Military Hegemony — Wanton Use of Force

The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

China MFA uses United States’ financial subjugation of Japan as an example of the perils of US economic hegemony pic.twitter.com/izR31FFi3p

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) February 24, 2023

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

According to the book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were “spared” because the United States did not find them on the map.

◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019,” the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.

Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.

◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless.

The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.

The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as “pure looting.”

In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.

The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.

III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation

After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including “approval by 85 percent majority,” and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting “seigniorage” from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy.

◆ The United States exploits the world’s wealth with the help of “seigniorage.” It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.

◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon’s secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”

◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America’s strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.

◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America’s strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called “three lost decades.”

◆ America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population. “The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.

IV. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression

The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.

◆ The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly on technology.

In the 1980s, to contain the development of Japan’s semiconductor industry, the United States launched the “301” investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share.

◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept of national security, the United States mobilized state power to suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years.

The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China.

The United States has also practiced double standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United States was carried out.

◆ The United States solidifies its technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building small blocs on technology such as the “chips alliance” and “clean network,” the United States has put “democracy” and “human rights” labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude China’s 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the “5G clean path,” a plan designed to build technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect “cyber security.” The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its technological hegemony through technological alliances.

◆ The United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The list goes on.

U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the United States such as “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the United States is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that “do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules.”

V. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives

The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.

◆ The United States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows, publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.

There are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than 70 percent of the world’s market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.

◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself in “direct intervention,” but also in “media infiltration” and as “a trumpet for the world.” U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.

The U.S. government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks. Google often makes pages disappear.

U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an independent U.S. investigative website, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter’s public policy team to augment the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on a list he sent, six of which were to be given priority. One of the six was dedicated to justifying U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, such as by claiming that the attacks were precise and killed only terrorists, not civilians. Following Kahler’s directive, Twitter put those Arabic-language accounts on a “white list” to amplify certain messages.

◆The United States practices double standards on the freedom of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of other countries by various means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media such as Russia Today and the Sputnik from their countries. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube openly restrict official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have removed Russian channels and applications from their services and app stores. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.

◆The United States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate “peaceful evolution” in socialist countries. It sets up news media and cultural outfits targeting socialist countries. It pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night.

The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it: there are groups and individuals making up stories, and peddling them worldwide to mislead public opinion with the support of nearly limitless financial resources.

Conclusion

While a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community.

Countries need to respect each other and treat each other as equals. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their status and take the lead in pursuing a new model of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or alliance. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and rejects interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The United States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Smithsonian Institution has apologized for the conduct of its National Air and Space Museum employees who drove pro-life activists out of the museum during the March For Life Rally in Washington last month.

Tens of thousands of pro-life activists were in Washington on Jan. 20 to attend the annual rally in opposition to abortion. During the weekend event, some rallygoers chose to visit the Air and Space Museum but were kicked out over hats emblazoned with pro-life messages.

The incident during the pro-life rally prompted 40 Republican lawmakers to send a letter to Smithsonian Institution Director Lonnie G. Bunch III, demanding answers.

In their letter, the lawmakers raised allegations that museum employees repeatedly “accosted” pro-life students from a Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina. The students had been wearing blue beanie hats embroidered with the words “Rosary PRO-LIFE.”

The museum employees allegedly mocked the students, “called them expletives, and made comments that the museum was a ‘neutral zone’ where they could not express such statements.”

As a taxpayer-funded entity, the Smithsonian Institution and its various museums and buildings are generally prohibited from interfering in the free speech activities of its visitors. The Smithsonian Institution does not allow people to hold demonstrations or display placards, signs, and banners in its buildings, but political messages on articles of clothing are not prohibited.

On Tuesday, Bunch responded to the lawmakers, giving his assurances that the incident was a mistake and the Smithsonian Institution is taking corrective actions.

“This was an aberration and not reflective of Smithsonian values and practice of welcoming all visitors regardless of viewpoint,” Bunch wrote. “Visitors are not to be denied access based on messages on their clothing, and an error was made in this regard on January 20, 2023.”

Smithsonian Retraining Employees

Bunch told the Republican lawmakers he had directed the Smithsonian museum to provide employees with refresher training regarding its policies for visitors arriving after demonstrations in the nation’s capital.

“Additionally, I have directed that security personnel be provided with refresher training before any scheduled demonstration to prevent this from happening again,” Bunch wrote.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers who joined the letter to Bunch, told Fox News, “The Smithsonian has publicly acknowledged its employees’ wrongdoing, instituted refresher training, and taken immediate corrective action to remedy the situation and claims it will not happen again,” but said, “Congress will need to continue proper oversight of the Smithsonian and ensure that all Americans are welcome at the Air and Space Museum.”

Facing Lawsuit

While Bunch said the Smithsonian Institution has taken actions to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, the institution is facing a lawsuit for the Jan. 20 incident at the Air and Space Museum.

The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) filed a lawsuit against the museum earlier this month on behalf of parents and children impacted by the incident. The lawsuit names the museum, its leaders, and five unnamed John and Jane Doe police or security guards who took part in the Jan. 20 incident.

The ACLJ has also filed a lawsuit against the National Archives and four John and Jane Doe police or security guards who allegedly kicked another group of pro-life visitors out of the museum on the same day.

“What is so egregious about this particular targeting is that it was done by the very federal institution that is home to our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—the exact documents that call on our government to protect the freedoms of speech and religion, not trample on them,” ACLJ said of its lawsuit against the National Archives.

German magazine Der Spiegel has issued an anonymously sourced report saying that Russia is currently in negotiations with a Chinese manufacturer to purchase 100 drones, which comes after repeat dire warnings out of the US for Beijing not to provide lethal aid to Moscow.

While highlighting that China rejected these warnings communicated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “disinformation”, the publication wrote Thursday that “information obtained by DER SPIEGEL indicates that the planned cooperation between Beijing and Moscow goes even further than Blinken makes it sound.”

“According to that information, the Russian military is engaged in negotiations with Chinese drone manufacturer Xi’an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology over the mass production of kamikaze drones for Russia,” Spiegel continued.

The report specified that “Bingo has reportedly agreed to manufacture and test 100 ZT-180 prototype drones before delivering them to the Russian Defense Ministry by April 2023. Military experts believe the ZT-180 is capable of carrying a 35- to 50 kilogram warhead.”

The report further suggested that the design could possible be similar to Iran’s Shaheed 136 kamikaze drone, which Russia has heavily utilized on the battlefield, especially against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, such as power plants and heating facilities. 

There’s certainly cause for skepticism when it comes to the Germany media report, given Spiegel is extremely vague on any of its sourcing methods, not even identifying whether the source is a Western government official, or how it came by the information.

Also, recently National Security Council spokesman John Kirby laid out that “While there are indications that China may be considering the provision of lethal capabilities to Russia, we have not seen them make that decision, we have not seen them move in that direction.” Kirby further warned days ago that, “Frankly, China should not want to become tangibly involved in that.” Likely if there was significant evidence possessed by the German or another allied government, the White House would be running with it.

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Feb. 23 called out what he called “media lies” over the Sunshine State banning the Advanced Placement (AP) course for African American Studies.

DeSantis said that the media “tried to create in Florida a narrative.”

“It’s basically a book ban hoax. It’s a hoax what they’re doing. And they’re trying to say that, because we have parental rights and because we have curriculum transparency, if you have a book that’s hardcore pornography in a library [that] 10-year-olds can access, a parent objects to that. That does not satisfy Florida [curriculum] standards. It should not be in the library with those young kids. And I think 99 percent of parents agree with that.”

DeSantis noted that Florida law requires the factual, unpoliticized teaching of African American history.

The governor accused critics of taking books off bookshelves to create a narrative to muddy the waters over the AP course ban, like one school taking a book about MLB Hall-of-Famer Hank Aaron “because it talks about he faced racial discrimination.”

“They’re doing that to try to create a narrative. They’re not doing that because Florida has a law like that or anything like that,” DeSantis said. “They know that’s not in the law, but they’re doing it because there’s enough people in corporate media who will just take that and will run with that.”

DeSantis last month blocked the teaching of the AP course that he said was politically biased and “pushing an agenda” on students. The course includes far-left content including Black liberation theology, the movement to abolish prisons, Black Lives Matter, a push for reparations, and queer studies. The College Board has since revised the curriculum.

Left-wing media has blasted the DeSantis administration for banning the AP course.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell inaccurately claimed that DeSantis “says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren.” She has since walked back her insinuation, though she took a shot at DeSantis and appeared to justify her premise.

“Governor DeSantis is not opposed to teaching the fact of slavery in schools, but he has opposed the teaching of an African American studies curriculum as well as the use of some authors and source materials that historians and teachers say makes it all but impossible for students to understand the broader historic and political context behind slavery and its aftermath in the years since,” she said on Feb. 22.

MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson also joined in the inaccurate media narrative, decrying that DeSantis is “happy with Black people being murdered on a regular basis.”

NAACP Legal Defense Fund President and Director Janai Nelson wrote in The New York Times that what DeSantis has done was “an unrelenting assault on truth and freedom of expression in the form of laws that censor and suppress the viewpoints, histories and experiences of historically marginalized groups, especially Black and L.G.B.T.Q. communities.”

Last year, DeSantis signed two education-related bills into law that attracted controversy mainly from the left.

The Florida Parental Rights in Education Act prohibits teaching sexual orientation and gender ideology to students K-3 and below.

The Stop W.O.K.E. Act codified Florida’s prohibition on teaching critical race theory for students K-12 and below—in addition to not allowing the teaching of only left-wing narratives, including the notion that, as a pamphlet from DeSantis’ office put it, “a person’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis refuses to give comments to NBC and its affiliates until Andrea Mitchell corrects a “blatant lie.”

As Epoch‘s Patricia Tolson notes, DeSantis’ office announced on social media that it will not consider any requests for interviews from NBC and MSNBC until Andrea Mitchell corrects her “blatant lie.”

During the Feb. 20 edition of her program, Mitchell failed to issue a correction.

At the end of her Feb. 22 morning broadcast, Mitchell issued a statement, saying she was “imprecise in summarizing Governor DeSantis’ position about teaching slavery in schools,” adding that “Governor DeSantis is not opposed to teaching the fact of slavery in schools but he has opposed the teaching of an African American Studies curriculum as well as the use of some authors and source materials that historians and teachers say makes it all but impossible for students to understand the broader historic and political context behind slavery and its aftermath in the years since.”

Mitchell did not identify the “historians and teachers” referenced in her statement. Nor did she report that Florida law requires the teaching of African American history, including slavery.

On Feb. 22, DeSantis’ press secretary Bryan Griffin responded on Twitter.

“To all of the bookers and producers reaching out to our office @NBCNews and @MSNBC for @GovRonDeSantis to join your shows, this will be the standard response from our office until @mitchellreports apologizes and your track record improves,” Griffin wrote, with an attached screenshot from a written response.

To all of the bookers and producers reaching out to our office from @NBCNews and @MSNBC for @GovRonDeSantis to join your shows, this will be the standard response from our office until @mitchellreports apologizes and your track record improves. pic.twitter.com/8kQcLLEVzW

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) February 22, 2023

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

“I think we need to take a step back,” the attached response begins. “There will be no consideration of anything related to NBC Universal or its affiliates until and at least Andrea Mitchell corrects the blatant lie she made about the governor … and NBC and its affiliates display a consistent track record of truthful reporting. Please feel free to pass this up and around the network.”

The housing mania in the Hamptons continues ahead of the spring market as an 800-square-foot oceanfront trailer is under contract for a mindboggling $3.75 million, the New York Post first reported.

Suppose the deal goes through next month. In that case, it will easily surpass another trailer located at Montauk Shores Condominium, the Hamptons’ finest trailer park, which sold for a record $1.85 million in 2022. 

Basic math reveals the trailer has a similar price per square foot cost as a luxury condo in New York City (of around $5,000). 

Real estate agent Will Gold with The Atlantic Team at Douglas Elliman represented the anonymous buyer. He told Business Insider:

“My client came to me asking if I knew of any properties on the ocean that were for sale, and at the time there wasn’t anything available.

“After digging around, this one struck their eyes.”

Gold said the transaction is off-market and has taken seven months of negotiating. 

“It’s beautiful, and it’s very high-end,” the real estate agent said, adding if Douglas Elliman listed the trailer today, it would fetch around $2.5 million. 

And this isn’t your average trailer park on the beach. NYPost said hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb and Vitamin Water co-founder Darius Bikoff own trailers in the community. 

“I know quite a few billionaires here.

“The most appealing aspect is the park’s quality of life. It’s a classic throwback to a summer community — relaxed and low-key in a funky way, like what Southern California must have been like in the 1950s, and it’s safe for kids,” Fred Stelle, resident and architect in Montauk, said. 

It’s not surprising the Hamptons have trailer park millionaires. 

Via SchiffGold.com,

Any suggestion of returning the monetary system to a gold standard is immediately met with howls of protest.

“It’s impossible!” we’re told.

But Bettina Bien Greaves who was a translator, editor, and bibliographer for economist Ludwig von Mises’ works argues that there is no practical reason we couldn’t return to a gold standard. The objections are almost all ideological. “If this basic obstacle could be overcome, however, a return to gold money would become a realistic possibility,” she wrote.

Peter Schiff has argued the private sector will eventually bring us back to a gold standard. He doesn’t think a new gold standard will be imposed by governments.

I think that the free market is going to reject the dollar and other currencies because they’re a flawed form of money because they are no longer a store of value.”

Greaves also believed market actions would be integral in any transition back to a gold standard. But there are steps the federal government could take — short of collapsing the entire monetary system, which is the path we seem to be on — to facilitate a return to sound money.

In 1995, Greaves wrote an article for FEE outlining some of the steps she thought would be necessary to return to a gold standard and sound money. As she points out, “There may be better ways and worse ways. Unfortunately, the science of economics cannot prescribe a correct, scientific, or ‘right’ way.” But considering her ideas and the monetary history she recounts shows that the path toward sound money isn’t impassible. It also reveals some of the monetary pitfalls that have brought us to the place we are today.

The following article was originally published by FEE in 1995. The opinions expressed by Bettina Bien Greaves do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold. 

There is no reason, technically or economically, why the world today, even with its countless wide-ranging and complex commercial transactions, could not return to the gold standard and operate with gold money. The major obstacle is ideological.

Many people believe that it would be impossible to return to the gold standard—Never! There are just too many people in the world, they say, and the economy is too complex. Many others look on a return to the gold standard as an almost magical solution to today’s major problems—big government, the welfare state, and inflation. What is the truth of the matter?

Certainly if the United States went on a gold standard, it would have to carry out many reforms. The federal government would really have to stop inflating, balance its budget, and abandon welfare state programs. Most voters are not ready for such reforms. And politicians, pressured by voters and special interest groups for favors, hesitate to pass them. Thus the major stumbling block to monetary reform is ideological. If this basic obstacle could be overcome, however, a return to gold money would become a realistic possibility.

Let’s consider possible ways for transforming our present paper and credit monetary system, based on fractional reserve banking, into a gold standard. There may be better ways and worse ways. Unfortunately the science of economics cannot prescribe a correct, scientific or “right” way. It can only help us choose among alternatives by analyzing their various consequences. A review of monetary history will also be helpful.

Several methods have been suggested for returning to a gold standard. All gold standard advocates agree that the goal must be to re-introduce gold as money, while making it possible to continue honoring outstanding contracts. The principal point on which they differ is with respect to the price that should be set for gold and how any existing paper currency should be defined.

The question of re-adopting gold as money always arises because inflation has persisted for some time, prices of almost everything, including gold, have risen, and the savings of the people have been eroded. Some gold standard proponents want to return to the pre-inflation gold/money ratio. Others want to raise the gold price to some arbitrary figure and allow the monetary expansion to play “catch-up.” Still others say that the least disruptive way would be to discover the current market gold/money ratio and redefine the dollar on that basis.

Returning to Gold at an Artificially High Rate

Great Britain suspended specie payments in 1797 and inflated during the Napoleonic Wars. She finally returned to the gold standard in 1821, 24 years later. On the theory that it was only honorable to recognize debts made in British gold pounds at the old ratio, she re-established the 1797 gold/pound ratio. However, not all the debts outstanding in 1821 dated from before 1797. Many loans had been made in the interim. Persons who had borrowed relatively cheap inflated British pounds, then had to pay back their loans in higher-valued gold pounds. This worked a special hardship on tenants, farmers, merchants and others.

Britain abandoned the gold standard again in World War I. Before 1914, London had been the world’s financial center. When the war started in August, shipments to England of gold, silver, and goods from all over the world were immediately disrupted. The shortage of funds put London’s banks and stock exchange in crisis and they closed down for a few days. When they reopened, a debt moratorium was declared and the Bank Charter Act of 1844, fixing the gold/pound ratio and tying the quantity of paper pounds issued to the gold bullion reserves, was suspended. As the war continued and the government’s costs increased, the government inflated more and more. By 1920, after the war was over, inflation had proceeded to such an extent that prices had tripled and the gold value of the British pound had fallen 10 percent on world markets, from US$4.86 to US$4.40.

Faced with a devalued pound that was worth less on the market than it had been, the British again chose, as they had after the Napoleonic wars, to try to return to gold at the pre-war, pre-inflation rate. On April 28, 1925, England went back on the gold standard at the artificially high rate for the pound of US$4.86. The immediate effect was to price British goods out of the world market. For instance, U.S. importers who had been paying US$4.40 to buy a British pound’s worth of British wool or coal, now had to pay about 10 percent more. England was heavily dependent on exports, especially of coal, to pay for imported food and raw materials for her factories. As the cost of her goods to foreign buyers went up, they could buy less and British exports declined. Her factories and mines were hard hit. To keep the factories and mines open and men working, money wages would have had to be adjusted downward. This drop in money wages would not necessarily have affected real wages for, with the return to gold, the pound was worth more. But the unionized workers resisted and refused to work for less. Many went on the dole. And many went out on strike. Prices and production were seriously disrupted. Finally, on September 20, 1931, England announced that she would again suspend gold payments and go off the gold standard. The consequences were disastrous. The British monetary experiment played an important role in bringing about and prolonging the world depression of the 1930s.

Returning to Gold at an Artificially Low Rate

To consider returning to the gold standard in the United States at the long-since outgrown ratios of $20.67, $35.00, or even $42.42 per ounce of gold is obviously completely unrealistic. The U.S. dollar is now selling (mid-1995) at about $385 so that the value of the dollar has declined to approximately 1/385th of an ounce of gold. To re-value it at 1/20th, 1/35th or even 1/42nd of an ounce of gold would constitute an artificially high revaluation of the dollar and would undoubtedly lead to even more disastrous consequences than those resulting from the return to gold in Britain in 1925.

Realizing the problems England encountered in trying to establish an artificially high dollar/gold ratio, some gold standard advocates go to the opposite extreme and suggest an artificially low ratio. We are free, they maintain, to select any definition of the dollar we want. They then suggest dividing the quantity of gold mathematically by the total number of dollars in circulation, in commercial bank deposits, in checking accounts, and even in cashable savings accounts. By this method they arrive at several possible prices for the dollar, respectively $1,217/ounce, $2,000/ounce, $3,350/ounce, or even $7,500/ounce. Given the fact that an ounce of gold has been trading on the world market at about US$385, offering to pay any of these higher prices for a single ounce of gold would have an extremely inflationary influence. Prices would start to climb until they reflected the new dollar/gold ratio. For instance, anything that cost the equivalent of one gold ounce in today’s market would soon rise to $1,217, $2,000 or whatever.

An announcement that the U.S. planned to start paying something between $1,217 and $7,500 for an ounce of gold would immediately lead to the import of gold into this country at an unprecedented rate. It would spark a tremendous increase in gold mining, gold processing, and all related activities, to the detriment of all other production. To attempt to return to a gold standard at any such rate would be extremely disruptive of all prices and production. It would also destroy completely the value of all dollar savings and all outstanding contracts or commitments expressed in U.S. dollars. As practically all international production and trade depend on the dollar, this would bring business transactions to a halt worldwide.

Returning to Gold at the Market Rate

The goal of returning to a gold standard must be (1) to reintroduce gold and gold coins as money, without producing deflation and without causing the economy to go into shock, while permitting the fulfillment of outstanding contracts, including those of the U.S. government to its bondholders, and (2) to arrange for the transfer of gold from the government’s holdings into private hands, so that gold coins would be in circulation daily. As pointed out above, before this can happen, there must be a major ideological shift in the climate of opinion. The voters must be willing to be more self-reliant and accept personal responsibility for their actions. And the politicians must refrain from asking for more government spending at every turn. If this ideological stumbling block to establishing a gold standard could be overcome, if the people were willing to forgo welfare state spending and were determined to reform their monetary standard and introduce gold money once more in the United States, and if politicians would cooperate, then a shift from our paper and credit monetary system could be accomplished without radically disrupting the market, prices, and production.

Advocates of the gold standard should not be deterred by the three reasons given by critics who believe a gold standard could not work: that there isn’t enough gold to serve the needs of the world, with its increasing population and its expanding production and trade; that gold would be an unstable money; and that a gold standard would be expensive.

In the first place, there is no shortage of gold. The size of the world’s population, and the extent of production and trade are immaterial; any amount of money will always serve all society’s needs.[1] Actually, people don’t care about the number of dollars, francs, marks, pesos, or yen, they have in their wallets or bank accounts; what is important to them is purchasing power. And if prices are free and flexible, the available quantity of money, whatever that may be, will be spread around among would-be buyers and sellers who bid and compete with one another until all the goods and services being offered at any one time find buyers. In this way, the available quantity of money would adjust to provide the purchasing power needed to purchase all available goods and services at the prevailing competitive market prices.

In the second place, gold would be a much more stable money than most paper currencies. The purchasing power of government- or bank-issued paper currency may fluctuate wildly, as the quantity is expanded or contracted in response to the “needs” of business and/or political pressures, causing prices to rise or fall sharply. Under a gold standard, there would be some slight cash-induced price increases when the quantity of gold used as money rose, as more gold was mined, refined, and processed; and there would be some slight cash-induced price declines as the quantity of gold used as money fell, when gold was withdrawn from the market to be devoted to industry, dentistry, or jewelry. However, under a gold standard, price changes due to such shifts in the quantity of money would be relatively minor and easy to anticipate, and the purchasing power per unit of gold would be more stable than under an unpredictable paper currency standard.

In the third place, although it would cost more to introduce gold into circulation than a paper currency that requires no backing, in the long run a gold standard is not at all expensive as compared to paper. Again and again throughout history, paper moneys have proven to be extremely wasteful and expensive; they have distorted economic calculation, destroyed people’s savings, and wiped out their investments. Yale economist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), writing long before the world had experienced the disastrous inflations of this century, estimated that “our attempts to win [cheap money] have all failed, and they have cost us, in each generation, more than a purely specie currency would have cost, if each generation had had to buy it anew.”[2]

Once it is agreed that the introduction of a market gold money standard is the goal, here are the steps to take:

• First: All inflation must be stopped as of a certain date. That means calling a halt also to all expansion of credit through the Federal Reserve and the commercial banks.

• Second: Permit gold to be actively bought, sold, traded, imported, exported. To prevent the U.S. government from exerting undue influence, it should stay out of the market for the time being.

• Third: Oscillations in the price of gold would diminish in time and the “price” would tend to stabilize. At that point a new dollar-to-gold ratio could be established and a new legal parity decreed. No one can know what the new dollar-to-gold ratio would be. However, it is likely that it would stabilize a little above the then-current world price of gold, whatever that might be.[3]

• Fourth: Once a new legal ratio is established and the dollar is newly defined in terms of gold, the U.S. government and the U.S. Mints may enter the market, buying and selling gold and dollars at the new parity, and minting and selling gold coins of specified weights and fineness. Gold might well circulate side by side with other moneys, as it did during the fiat money inflation time of the French Revolution, so that parallel moneys would develop, easing the transition to gold.[4]

• Fifth: The U.S. Mint should mint gold coins of certain agreed-upon fineness and of various weights—say one-tenth of an ounce, one-quarter, one-half, and one ounce, etc.—and stand ready to sell these gold coins for dollars at the established parity and to buy any gold offered for minting.[5] As old legal tender dollars were turned in for gold, they should be retired, so that gold coins would gradually begin to appear in circulation.

• Sixth: The financing of the U.S. government must be divorced completely from the monetary system. Government must be prevented from spending any more than it collects in taxes or borrows from private lenders. Under no condition may the government sell any more bonds to the Federal Reserve to be turned into money and credit; monetization of the U.S. government’s debt must cease! A 100 percent reserve must be held in the banks for all future deposits, i.e., for all deposits not already in existence on the first day of the reform.

• Seventh: Outstanding U.S. government bonds held by non-U.S. government entities, must be fulfilled as promised.[6]

• Eighth: To avoid deflation, there should not be any contraction of the quantity of money currently in existence. Thus prices and outstanding debts would not be adversely affected. U.S. government bonds held by the Federal Reserve as “backing” for Federal Reserve notes may be retained, but should not be used as the basis for further issues of notes and/or credit. No bank may be permitted to expand the total amount of its deposits subject to check or the balance of such deposits of any individual customers, whether private citizen or the U.S. Treasury, otherwise than by receiving cash deposits in gold, legal tender banknotes from the public or by receiving a check payable by another bank subject to the same limitations.[7]

• Ninth: The funds collected over the years from employees and employers, ostensibly for Social Security, were spent as collected for the government’s general purposes. Thus the U.S. government bonds held as a bookkeeping ploy in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund are mere window-dressing. These U.S. bonds may be canceled. To keep its “promises” to those who have been led to expect “Social Security” benefits in their old age, arrangements could be made to phase out the program by a number of devices, including payments from the general tax fund to current retirees, to the soon-to-be-retired and, on a gradually declining basis, to others in the system—down to, say, ages 40-45 years. The program could then be closed down. No more Social Security “benefits” would be paid out and no more taxes would be collected for “Social Security.” People would have to become personally responsible for planning for their own old age and retirement. Without “Social Security” taxes to pay, they would be better able to save. Moreover, given a sound gold standard, they would be confident that their savings would not be wiped out by inflation.

After the Reform

For U.S. monetary reform to be carried out it is essential that the U.S. government balance its budget and refrain from spending more than it collects from taxes and borrows from willing lenders. The prerequisite for this, as noted above, is a change in ideology. Once the public and the politicians were determined to cut government spending, reform would become a realistic possibility.

When the United States is again on a gold standard, the old legal-tender paper money could continue to circulate until worn out when it would be returned and replaced by gold coins. New issues of paper notes would not be designated “legal tender.” But they should be strictly limited, always fully convertible into gold, and issued only against 100 percent gold. Gold coins would also be in daily circulation; should they start to disappear from the market, this would serve as a warning that the government was violating its strictures and starting once more to inflate.

Those who think that a gold standard would place such rigid limits on the market that money lending would no longer be possible should be reminded that what fully convertible money precludes is not moneylending per se. Individuals and banks would, of course, still be able to lend, but no more than the sums savers had accumulated and were willing to make available. What the gold standard prevents is the involuntary lending by savers, who are deprived in the process of some of the value of their savings, without having any choice in the matter. Fully convertible money under the gold standard prevents more than one claim to the same money from being created; while the borrower spends the money borrowed, the savers forgo spending until the borrower pays it back.

Under the gold standard, banks would have to return to their original two functions: serving as money warehouses and as money lenders, or intermediaries between savers and would-be borrowers. These two functions—money-warehousing and money-lending—should be kept entirely separate. But that will not preclude a great deal of flexibility in the field of banking. With today’s modern developments, computerized record-keeping, electronic money transfers, creative ideas about arranging credit transactions, credit cards, ATM machines, and so forth, lending and borrowing, the transfer of funds and money clearings could continue to take place rapidly and smoothly under the gold standard and free banking, even as they do now. However, under a market gold standard people need no longer fear the ever-impending threat of inflation, price distortions, economic miscalculations, and serious malinvestments.

Ukraine receives the most military aid from the United States: Since the beginning of the war and as of Jan. 15, 2023, $46.6 billion in financial aid for military purposes has flowed to the country now at war with Russia.

When calculating the average annual costs (in 2022 prices) of previous wars in which the United States has been involved in, the true magnitude of the country’s Ukraine aid expenditure can be seen.

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, the payments to Ukraine have already exceeded the annual military expenditure of the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010. The U.S. military costs in the Vietnam War, the Iraq War and the Korean War were significantly higher – according to calculations by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy as part of its Ukraine Support Tracker.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In the Vietnam and Korean wars, the high usage rate of ammunition and other supplies cost a particularly large amount of money, in addition to the wear and tear of equipment and numerous other assets such as the care of the wounded. Further complicating matters in each case was the great distance to the theater of operations. Although the U.S. maintained a number of bases in Southeast Asia, the large weapons systems and the required replacement components all had to be shipped or flown across the Pacific. In addition, a large fleet of aircraft carriers was always deployed off the coast of Vietnam. The numerous missions of the air force also caused significant costs.

In the U.S., criticism of the scale of military aid to Ukraine is already coming from within the Republican ranks.

Some of the U.S. Republicans in Congress have announced that they intend to block aid to Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the day after his visit to Kyiv, U.S. President Biden underscored his country’s commitment to continued support of the Ukrainian war effort. Speaking in Warsaw, Poland, he said:

“This is not just about freedom in Ukraine. It’s about freedom of democracy in general”.

In addition to the military aid detailed in this infographic, the U.S. has also supplied weapons and equipment worth over $5 billion.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

All this suggests a strategy that’s only available to those few nations with these capacities: weaponize global depression.

Before we get started, I need to stipulate that I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about weaponizing global depression: I don’t agree or disagree, I don’t “like” it or dislike it, I have no emotional investment in whether you “like” it or “dislike” it or if we agree or disagree. I’m addressing the topic because it’s an interesting dynamic.

The general assumption now is that everything is propaganda, i.e. that every shred of content has been stripped of the 90% of messy reality to leave the shiny 10% that protects someone’s vested interests and emotional stake. While propaganda is indeed ubiquitous and overabundant, not everything is propaganda. Propaganda is always certain about XYZ. Analysis, on the other hand, is always skeptical of neatly packaged, over-simplified received wisdom and alive to the uncertainties embedded in the messy 90% of reality edited out of propaganda.

We’re quite fond of the illusion that our “likes” and “winning the argument” matter. They don’t. Winning arguments, collecting “likes” and basking in the warmth of confirming our biases don’t change anything. We cling to the illusion they matter because it gives us a warm and fuzzy sense of agency when in reality our agency is limited to our individual/household responses to all that we don’t control or influence.

A third illusion is that policymakers control everything. They don’t. Certain decisions topple dominoes, others are equivalent to closing the gate after the horses left. They’re for show only; the 90% of messy reality is running off on its own now and policymakers dancing the humba-humba around the campfire (i.e. the illusion of control) aren’t going to stop what’s unfolding on its own dynamics.

I’m not trying to persuade you of anything or solicit a “like.” I’m simply discussing an interesting dynamic.

With all that out of the way, let’s look at weaponizing global depression. The key to this dynamic is the asymmetries built into the global economy.

One important asymmetry is energy, with exporting (producer) nations on one end and importing (consumer) nations on the other. A very small number of nations/regions occupy the middle: they export or import relatively little energy, as they are largely self-sufficient and can make do with what they produce themselves. They aren’t reliant on exports for income or imports to keep their economy from collapsing.

Another key asymmetry is currencies and bond markets which are one integrated system: currencies are valued by the liquidity, depth, risk premium and yield of the bonds denominated in the currency.

A lot of people have a lot of opinions about currencies, and unfortunately many of these opinions are detached from the basic reality that currencies and bond markets are one system.

If a currency and its bonds don’t trade freely on the global market, i.e. they’re pegged to another currency (RMB to the USD for example) or capital controls limit the liquidity and depth of the market for the bonds, this places intrinsic constraints on the risk characteristics and thus the value of the currency and the bonds.

If the risk is high (or difficult to measure), demand for the bonds and currency will be limited. The issuing nation / central bank will be constrained in how much new currency / bonds it can issue without pushing the value off a cliff.

In other words, currencies and the bonds backing them have asymmetric risk premiums, liquidity and valuations. For players in size, for example sovereign investment funds, illiquid bonds are risky because when it comes time to dump their $10 billion stake, the market is bidless: there are no buyers in that size at any price.

Risk is tricky. It tends to become visible only after it’s too late. Yes, there are hedges, blah-blah-blah, but at size there are no hedges.

A range of asymmetries arise between exporters of energy and consumers of energy in a global depression. Once demand for goods and services falls off a cliff, demand for the energy to generate those goods and services also falls off a cliff. As marginal demand is swept away, marginal enterprises, loans and employment are also swept away.

Far fewer people can afford to jet around the world and frequent restaurants, so demand for jet fuel, etc. also plummets.

Energy consumers aren’t concerned with the cost of producing energy: that’s your problem. As the price of oil / natural gas drops below production costs, consumers are cheering. (Recall that price is set on the margins: if demand falls faster than production, price collapses.)

Producers care very deeply about the cost of production and the price of the energy they export. Energy exporters are still bound by the commodity curse: it’s so easy to make money selling energy, and so hard to compete in the global economy for other means of production, and so the producers depend on selling energy for a consequential share of the national income. The exporters have no substitute for the share of their national income derived from exporting energy.

The asymmetry in currencies and bonds plays out in the consumer nations. The few nations that can issue new currency and bonds without destroying the purchasing power of the currency can issue whatever currency they need to fund social welfare for those who lost their jobs. Yes, fewer people can afford pricy air travel, vacations and eating out, but they’ll make do with preparing food at home and much cheaper forms of amusement.

Those nations that can’t print more currency without destroying its purchasing power don’t have this luxury. Belt-tightening is all well and good until a “nothing left to lose” revolution sweeps away the ruling elite.

The producer nations dependent on energy exports have an equallky difficult set of constraints. They can try to cut production to match plummeting demand, but game theory strongly favors cheaters who announce production cuts but pump as much as they can to maximize revenues as the price of energy drops.

Most energy exporters have built up savings in the form of central bank reserves and sovereign wealth funds, but they now discover another asymmetry in global depressions: the value of their stocks and bonds has plummeted, and even precious metal prices are dropping as everyone is forced to liquidate savings to fund the exporters’ insanely high social welfare / military expenditures.

Why would bonds lose value? As the demand for buyers of newly issued bonds explodes higher (to fund deficit spending), bond yields rise globally as nations compete for the dwindling pool of capital willing to buy potentially risky bonds. As bond yields rise, the value of all existing bonds tumbles off the cliff.

So not only could energy revenues fall by half or more, the value of reserves could also fall dramatically. Nations dependent on energy exports will face a one-two punch with no viable Plan B to replace energy revenues with revenues from some other source.

Energy producers can cut production but they’ll still be selling fewer units for far less money. Energy prices below production costs are “impossible” until there’s competition for declining consumer demand. The frictionless pathway is to slash prices to maintain national income, and sell off the reserves and sovereign wealth fund assets to fund social welfare and military budgets.

This works for a while, but not for long. A global depression isn’t just deeper than a recession, it’s longer. Depressions occur when all the policy gimmicks reach diminishing returns and they fail to restore “growth” in credit and consumption. Eventually the energy exporters have to cut their government spending, and that will inevitably trigger social and political disorder.

Their difficulties are painfully visible to all, and the demand for any bonds they issue will be low due to the risk that the national enterprise is spending far more than it’s bringing in and therefore could go bankrupt.

Add up these asymmetries and we find a very few winners and many losers. The winners are limited to those nations with these five capacities:

1. Self-sufficiency in energy, or close enough to manage with modest imports from friendly neighbors or allies.

2. Not dependent on energy revenues for the bulk of national income.

3. The capacity to sell newly issued bonds without reducing the purchasing power of the currency, i.e. the risk premium and yield are more attractive than competing issuances of bonds.

4. Maintain a freely traded (i.e. price and risk discovered by the market), liquid market in size for its bonds.

5. A diverse, adaptable economy that maintains deep, liquid, transparent markets for goods, services, risk, credit, bonds and other financial assets.

Systems are defined by their constraints. Should oil fall to $40/barrel and stay there due to declining demand, various constraints start limiting policy options. If savings are depleted to maintain the illusion of solvency,’ various constraints start limiting policy options. If there’s no demand for newly issued currencies / bonds, various constraints start limiting policy options.

Messy realities tend to generate the illusion that an array of policy options still exist, but eventually these will be pared away by the systemic asymmetries and constraints. Dancing the humba-humba around the campfire (such fun!) and spewing propaganda (if you’d just agree with me, everything will be fine!) won’t change anything.

The most diverse, adaptive economies with the largest and most transparent markets and the most balanced energy production and consumption will be the winners, and every other nation will struggle due to the constraints and asymmetries described above. It’s just the way systems function.

I discuss these dynamics in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal.

All this suggests a strategy that’s only available to those few nations with all five capacities: weaponize global depression by jacking up bond yields and tightening credit so the increasingly fragile global economy slips off the cliff into a recession that quickly becomes entrenched in depression by decades of policy extremes that are finally generating unintended consequences that cannot be reversed.

The ensuing global depression will be bearable for those with the five capacities, and a system-breaker for everyone else.

It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. Systemic asymmetries and constraints present opportunities for the few and risks for the many.

I’m not claiming weaponize global depression is inevitable or even likely. What I am exploring is the potential for global depression to be weaponized as a policy option or as an unintended consequence of actions that stretch asymmetries and constraints to the breaking point.

Where does that leave us as individuals and households? It’s best to take the long, emotionally detached view and and devote ourselves to maximizing our own Self-Reliance. The less we depend on high debt, high consumption and fragile global systems, the better off we’ll be.

New Podcast: Turmoil Ahead As We Enter The New Era Of ‘Scarcity’ (53 min)

*  *  *

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.  Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

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The crisis of masculinity in the movie “Fight Club.”

Fight Club follows the boring life of the narrator (Edward Norton). He is a middle-class, white-collar worker who feels emasculated and unfulfilled in his everyday existence.

Through the narrator’s encounters with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a charismatic and enigmatic soap salesman, he is introduced to a world of underground fight clubs where men gather to release their primal urges and reconnect with their sense of masculinity.

This leaves us with today: Masculinity is in crisis across the Western world as ‘wokeism’ spreads like a virus. 

Research and critical studies have shown that global sperm counts are declining worldwide—at an accelerating rate. There’s a war on masculinity by Western governments and megacorporations; and there are even early school education programs transforming a generation of men into ‘beta males’ while some young adults become confused about their gender. 

It might make sense why there’s a concerted effort to change men into beta status, generally because they play by the rules of society. They don’t question and stay compliant with the government — just as the narrator of Fight Club did when working in his boring cubicle.  

Only through fight club, or rather exercise, was the narrator able to regain the alpha male status.

Not everyone needs to join a boxing club or find some underground fight club, as new research shows simple blue-collar work has benefits and boosts masculinity. 

“Occupational factors, such as physical demands and work schedules, were associated with higher sperm concentrations and serum testosterone among men in the EARTH study.

“We already know that exercise is associated with multiple health benefits in humans, including those observed on reproductive health, but few studies have looked at how occupational factors can contribute to these benefits.

“What these new findings suggest is that physical activity during work may also be associated with significant improvement in men’s reproductive potential.

“What these new findings suggest is that physical activity during work may also be associated with significant improvement in men’s reproductive potential,” first study author Lidia Mínguez-Alarcón, a reproductive epidemiologist in Brigham’s Channing Division of Network Medicine and co-investigator of the EARTH study, stated in the press release. 

The study was a collaborative effort between scientists at the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health and Mass General Brigham to evaluate the effects of the environment and lifestyle factors on masculinity/fertility.

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

Geopolitics play a major role in the outlook for global economies. But more importantly, today, we must look at the world through the prism of geoeconomics.

What is “geoeconomics”? Obviously, it’s a portmanteau from the words geopolitics and economics. There’s nothing new about considering those disciplines in the same context.

Wars are geopolitical and are often won through industrial capacity, which is primarily economic. Economics and global strategy have always been entwined. What is new is the idea that economics are not just an adjunct of geopolitics, but are now the main event.

This does not mean that warfare is over or that military prowess no longer matters… It means that the major powers in a globalized age will base their calculations on economic gain and loss, and will use economic weapons not as ancillaries, but as primary weapons.

This change was described at the beginning of the new age of globalization by strategic thinker Edward N. Luttwak in a 1990 article titled “From Geopolitics to Geo-Economics: Logic of Conflict, Grammar of Commerce.”

Luttwak wrote that the end of the Cold War and the start of globalization meant that armed conflict was too costly and uncertain for great powers. Economic interests would now be the arena for great power conflict.

Luttwak wrote, “Everyone, it appears, now agrees that the methods of commerce are displacing military methods – with disposable capital in lieu of firepower, civilian innovation in lieu of military-technical advance and market penetration in lieu of garrisons and bases.”

Luttwak concluded, “While the methods of mercantilism could always be dominated by the methods of war, in the new ‘geoeconomic’ era not only the causes but also the instruments of conflict must be economic.”

To be clear, Luttwak’s analysis principally applied to great powers including the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, members of the EU and Commonwealth nations including Canada and Australia. Luttwak recognized that middle powers such as Israel, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea and some others might still find warfare beneficial.

He did not rule out the fact that great powers might intervene in wars involving these middle powers, such as the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.

His point was not that war was obsolete, but only that it would not involve direct confrontation between great powers. Interventions and wars involving lesser states would still be on the table.

Geoeconomics – great power competition using economics as a goal and a weapon – is an excellent tool for analyzing the two critical hotspots in the world today. These are Russia’s role in Ukraine and China’s threat to Taiwan.

The Western narrative that Putin is the bad guy bent on conquering Ukraine is false. Putin had warned the West about not pushing its advantage in Ukraine for over 20 years. While Putin was amenable to NATO expansion, he always drew the line at Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia. In 2004, NATO crossed Russia’s red line by admitting Lithuania to membership, but there was little Putin could do to stop it.

The 2008 nomination of Ukraine to NATO was an unforced error. Putin had been content to leave Ukraine as a neutral buffer state. The West was not and pushed Putin too hard. Now Putin has pushed back. Why is Ukraine so important to Russia?

A quick glance at a map shows that Ukraine in NATO or even a pro-Western Ukraine is an existential threat to Moscow. The line from Estonia in the north to Ukraine in the south forms the letter “C” that encircles Moscow from the north, west and south.

Parts of Ukraine actually lie east of Moscow, opening that region to attack from the west, something that has not happened since the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. If Ukraine will not become neutral, then Putin must control it, at least the eastern half, by force if necessary.

This has obviously happened.

But conquering Ukraine was not and is not Putin’s main goal. What he wanted the whole time was a Ukraine that would not join NATO, neutrality in the Ukrainian government and full operation of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea (too bad the U.S. blew it up!).

If Putin could have gotten all or most of that through negotiations, there was no reason to invade Ukraine. The threat to do so will have served its purpose.

That outcome would have been a perfect illustration of Luttwak’s geoeconomics definition. The goals were commercial (dependence of Western Europe on Russian natural gas), and the tools were commercial (pipelines) even though the players were sovereign states (Russia and the U.S.).

The U.S. has imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine. But these sanctions have had little impact on Russia, as I predicted before the war. Sanctions were imposed on Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and have had no material impact on Russian behavior.

Before the war, Russia already moved over 20% of its reserves into physical gold bullion stored in Moscow. This gold is worth about $140 billion at current market prices. Because the gold is physical, not digital, it cannot be hacked, frozen or seized.

Importantly, U.S. sanctions have not affected exports of Russian oil or natural gas. Russia provides about 10% of all the oil produced in the world. It’s simply impossible to sanction Russian oil sales.

We still hope that Russia and the U.S. avoid direct armed conflict in Ukraine, although they keep climbing the escalation ladder.. Energy prices will probably go higher, which helps Russia. The losers are Ukraine and global energy users.

The second critical hotspot today is the potential for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Will it happen? The case against such a war is basically in the scenarios described above.

Events would likely escalate and spin out of control, resulting in a large-scale conflict. Gains are possible for China, especially if the U.S. does not come to the aid of Taiwan. Still, the risks are too high, and the costs are too great. Instead of an invasion, China could continue its rhetoric and its military readiness, but otherwise bide its time.

This is where Luttwak’s definition of geoeconomics casts a new light. In a pre-globalized world, China might well attack. In the post-globalized world, China might refrain militarily while continuing its progress in technology, natural resources and value-added manufacturing. This path requires cooperation, not confrontation, with the U.S. and Western Europe.

My estimate is that China will refrain from an invasion consistent with the geoeconomic thesis. At the same time, Xi Jinping will continue threats and economic confrontation with the West.

Investors should expect the following from this unstable confrontation: The U.S. and China will continue to decouple economically. Supply chain disruptions will grow worse before they get better. A new supply chain configuration will emerge involving more onshoring and shorter transportation lanes.

China’s growth will lag and it will be unable to make the technological leaps it needs to escape the middle-income trap and become a high-income developed economy. Over time, excessive debt and adverse demographics will overtake China’s ambitions and leave it an aging and low-productivity shell.

China’s economic problems will sustain its demand for energy and put a floor under energy prices. Manufacturing costs will rise as China’s labor pool evaporates. Investors should not rule out a financial crisis in China that would spread to a global collapse in capital markets, probably worse than those of 2008 and 2020.

But geopolitical tensions will disrupt global supply chains, which will result in higher input prices and transportation costs. That’s a receipt for sustained inflation, and higher interest rates.

And any form of uncertainty is a plus for the one safe-haven investment that never fails — gold.

While Americans are preoccupied with balloons and other stories that are mostly for show, more serious thinkers are applying themselves to oil, natural gas, gold, the dollar, technology and other geoeconomic benchmarks.

We noted earlier this week, “JPMorgan Chase & Co. might spark a trend among other Wall Street banks to restrict chatbots in the office.” And we were correct. 

Bloomberg reported that Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co. are restricting AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT. 

The Wall Street banks have blocked employees’ use of ChatGPT because of compliance issues with third-party software. 

Bank of America execs told employees that ChatGPT is prohibited from business use, Bloomberg said, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. Internal meetings at BofA revealed the chatbot technology must be properly vetted before it can be used for business communications. At Deutsche Bank, a spokesperson said the staff could no longer use the chatbot.  

A Wells Fargo spokesperson said: 

“We are imposing usage limits on ChatGPT, as we continue to evaluate safe and effective ways of using technologies like these.”

At Citigroup, the bank has blocked all access to ChatGPT, while Goldman Sachs restricted AI-powered bot on the trading floor, according to Financial News, citing sources. 

JPMorgan was the first big bank to clamp down on the ChatGPT earlier this week. The move was primarily based on compliance issues tied to third-party software. 

Financial News explains the reason for the wave of Wall Street banks banning ChatGPT this week: 

Highly-regulated banks and financial institutions are notoriously cautious about allowing their employees access to third-party software and websites. Most still do not enable staff to access social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram when working in the office or using company devices.

US regulators also handed out more than $2bn in fines to a dozen large investment banks for employees’ unauthorized use of messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, largely by those in trading floor functions.

Before the ban, Bloomberg noted some of the uses of ChatGPT by industry insiders:

• A salesperson at a US bank used ChatGPT’s search engine on his personal device to get an overview of a client. The task was completed in less time than it would take to scour the internet, but the person said it couldn’t be used in an internal report and had to be cross-checked for accuracy.

• An oil trader used a version of ChatGPT to write a research note on the outlook for crude. It read well, she said, but the information was out-of-date and had to be fixed. 

• A stock trader in Taipei used it to compile key takeaways from US earnings, sparing himself tedious copying and pasting between documents. Still, he based investment decisions on his own notes. *

• And a bond trader in mainland China wrote routine reports on policy analysis using AI to save time — part of which she then spent carefully fact-checking.

… and just like that, 15 seconds later — ChatGPT writes a full year outlook on the oil market. 

There’s no doubt the AI-powered platform has saved the time of some traders and bankers. But some have called that into question: 

“It may save time, but we don’t know if it’s true, which is the biggest downside of the tool.

“It can be used like an intelligent colleague in the office, going over your work and improving it,” Oded Netzer, a professor at Columbia Business School who researches data and technology, told Bloomberg.

Even with the chatbot’s impressive array of capabilities — from writing research reports to computer code, poems, songs, and even entire movie plots, to passing law, business, and medical exams, it’s not perfect, and some of the answers it produces has been found to have errors or be incredibly woke, and racist.

The head of trading at a top bank in the US spoke with Bloomberg under the condition of anonymity. He said ChatGPT has its limitations, explaining trading pits were automated years ago by algos but pointed out other segments of banks, such as fixed-income markets, could be automated down the line. 

And why the hesitation to quickly embrace ChatGPT? Well, there’s this: “When the SEC knocks on your door and asks why did you execute that transaction, you have to have a better answer than, ‘Well, the machine told me to,'” Larry Tabb, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, explained. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

MSNBC extremist contributor Jason Johnson declared Thursday that the Republican Party no longer exists and that it is now just a front for a terrorist organisation.

Johnson made the comments during a discussion centred on the release of previously unseen footage from the January 6th Capitol incident.

House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s provided the unreleased security camera footage to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, immediately triggering the far left.

Johnson commented on the move, stating “I’m not being incendiary when I say this, I’ve been saying this for a long time… There is no Republican Party. They’re a dime store front for a terrorist organization.”

“You took an investigation into a federal attack, an attack on our federal government, and gave it to a journalist who is a supporter of terrorism,” Johnson charged, adding “This is dangerous.”

Johnson whined that that Carlson “doesn’t have security clearance,” and declared “we don’t know if it ends with Tucker Carlson! He can hand it to anybody else. He can hand it to Jesse Waters, right? He can hand it to anybody. All sorts of incompetent people who are in favor of overthrowing this government in a violent fashion.”

Johnson went on, “there are terrorists in this world, [and] some in Congress right now, who want to overthrow our legitimately elected government. And they’ve just given this man information that he can distribute to anybody.” 

Watch:

Imagine for a second what the result would be if the videos had been provided to MSNBC, rather than Carlson.

The footage given to Carlson amounts to around 44,000 hours of video from the security cameras at the Capitol.

Leftists are freaking out about the move solely because Carlson has previously questioned the established narrative of what went down, and highlighted how it has been used as propaganda by Democrats.

“A Propaganda Lie”: Tucker Carlson Sums Up Democrats’ Blockbuster TV Show Trial

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