It seems they would like to implement a kinder and gentler version of feudalism. What is really going on here, and what is the end game?

Doug Casey: The middle class, the bourgeoisie, emerged with the death of feudalism, the inception of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and finally, the Industrial Revolution.

“Middle class” has been given a bad connotation in recent times. Leftists want everybody to believe that the bourgeoisie is full of consumerist faults. They’re mocked for being concerned with material well-being and improving their status. The elites feel threatened by them. Unlike the lower class plebs, grunt workers who don’t expect more from life.

Bourgeoisie simply means city dweller. Starting in the late Middle Ages, city dwellers were independent, with their own trades and businesses. Living in towns got them out from under the control of the feudal warrior elites.

Cities became intellectual centers, where the growing wealth of the bourgeoisie—the middle class—gave them the leisure needed to develop science, technology, engineering, literature, and medicine. Universities expanded the idea of education beyond the realm of theology. Commerce and personal freedom attracted the best of the peasants, who rose to the middle class. Cities ended feudalism, a system whereby everyone was born into a class and occupation, and was expected to stay there for life, obligated to pay taxes—protection money—to his “betters”. The rise of the bourgeoisie didn’t suit the ruling classes, who liked dominating society.

Capitalism developed as the bourgeoisie became wealthy. The rest is well-known history, but the point must be made that the creation of the middle class, capitalism, and bourgeois values elevated peasants from poverty and created today’s world.

But, then and now, a certain percentage of the population wants to control everyone else. The types who go to Bilderberg, the World Economic Forum, CFR, and the like see themselves as elite new aristocrats who should dominate the others. Even though most of them came from the middle class, now that they’ve “made it,” they like to pull the ladder up. And if not eliminate, at least neuter or defang the remaining bourgeoisie.

So what’s the end game?

I think it might look something like the movie Rollerball. Keep the plebs entertained while the elite, in the form of a corporate aristocracy, controls society.

International Man: Yuval Harari is a prominent World Economic Forum (WEF) member.

He suggested that the elite should use a universal basic income, drugs, and video games to keep the “useless class” docile and occupied. What is your take on these comments in the context of Feudalism 2.0?

Doug Casey: A nasty little fellow, Harari is what might be termed a court intellectual for the World Economic Forum. He’s there to provide an intellectual patina for the power members, who are basically the businessmen, politicos, and media personalities. They’re not thinkers or interested in ideas but philistines concerned with money and power. Harari gives them an intellectual framework to justify their actions and plans.

As far as his books are concerned, they amount to a lot of generic truisms, obvious observations, justifications of current trends, and a projection of how the world will evolve. As an author and thinker, he’s knowledgeable and intelligent but grossly overrated. He owes his success to promotion from the new wannabe aristocracy and their hangers on. He illustrates the advantages of being hooked up with power people.

Harari has gone from being just another college professor, living with his husband in Israel, to being an internationally famous multi-millionaire pundit.

He expects the “useless eaters” will be maintained on a subsistence basis until they die out. I’m not sure how much the Covid hysteria, followed by the vaccine, has to do with that. It’s becoming quite clear that Covid itself was an artificially constructed flu variant, mainly affecting the very old, very sick, and very overweight. The vaccine is useless in preventing Covid but has caused significant increases in morbidity and mortality among healthy recipients. Was it a trial run to cleanse the world of useless eaters?

I don’t know. But, based on what people like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot—among many others—have done in recent years, I don’t think it’s out of the question. No doubt, the new aristocracy wants to cement themselves in place. They certainly don’t like rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi when they visit Venice, Machu Pichu, and the like.

International Man: How does the WEF’s vision of “you will own nothing and be happy” compare to the previous feudal system of medieval Europe?

Doug Casey: Serfs, unlike slaves, had some rights; they owned tools and huts. But their position in society was fixed, they couldn’t easily move—rather like a medieval version of today’s 15-minute city. They had to recognize their betters, and not say anything challenging—like today’s increasingly draconian limits on free speech.

I expect that the gigantic amount of debt in society today will be the means of turning middle-class Americans into serfs. The lower classes are already welfare recipients who produce very little; they’ll soon be replaced by robots.

The better educated ones are buried under their college debts. But everybody is buried under growing credit card debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, and sometimes even tax debt.

If someone makes a lucky capital gain in the stock market or by selling his house, he might spend that money only to find that the government wants 20%, 30%, or 40% of the gain. So the gain, instead of a blessing, becomes a disaster in disguise.

Many people today are burdened by debt, living paycheck to paycheck. They’re barely getting by, under immense pressure to cover food and rent. They’d probably be quite willing to take a deal offering essentially “three hots and a cot,” a tiny apartment, internet, and some extra money to hang around Starbucks.

International Man: How do you see Feudalism 2.0 developing over the coming months and years? What can be done to resist this agenda?

Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach some type of a crisis—when anything can happen. Let’s look at some economic systems, as spelled out by Karl Marx.

In Communism, the Marxist ideal, the State owns both the means of production (factories, farms, and such) as well as consumer goods (houses, cars, and theoretically, even your clothes). Mao’s China is as close as anyone’s come.

Socialism is a way station to Communism. The State owns the means of production, but individuals can still own consumer goods. There are lots of countries with socialist ideals, but no real socialist countries. Cuba probably comes closest.

Fascism is an economic system where both the means of production and consumer goods are privately owned, but they’re both 100% State-controlled. Most of the world’s countries are fascist. The word was coined by Mussolini; he meant it to describe the melding of the State, corporations, and unions.

Few people know that Marx coined the word “capitalism”. It’s a system where everything is both privately owned and privately controlled. There are no purely capitalist countries.

In feudalism, a lord owns everything but grants fiefs to subordinates. An aristocracy is supported by the plebs through taxation. Feudalism is based on the plebs providing service and taxes to the lord in exchange for “protection” from other lords.

Now for some pure speculation on my part.

Most of the world’s governments, including that of the US, are terminally bankrupt. They’ll prove unable to meet their obligations. Meanwhile, the prospect of wars, secessions, and crime is growing. I suspect wealthy corporations and individuals will wind up supplanting most traditional governments.

The result could be called neo-feudalism.

The average person is looking for someone or something to save him, to kiss everything and make it better, when times get tough. With governments bankrupt and dysfunctional, solvent and powerful individuals and corporations could take their place.

Harari and his pals want to see the plebs given a guaranteed annual income, a place to live, and entertainment until the useless eaters fade away. But it won’t be as neat as Harari’s wet dreams imagine. The world will be chaotic. We may be on our way to an idiocracy as well, where the populace is dumbed down so they don’t get dangerous ideas.

No matter how things sort out, I think we’re looking at a chaotic and dangerous situation in the near term.

I don’t see voting as a solution. Notwithstanding the differences between Harris and Trump, it just amounts to choosing the lesser of two evils, which in this case would certainly be Trump. But even if you elected Mises, Hayek, Ron Paul, or Harry Browne, I’m afraid the tide of history would wash them away.

In any event, your vote doesn’t really count. Or perhaps I should say it counts about as much as a grain of sand on a beach with hundreds of millions of grains of sand. And even then, as Stalin said, it’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.

What can you do to resist the shape of things to come?

It’s an uphill fight because if you’re liberty-oriented, you’re part of a tiny minority at odds with the views of most of your fellow citizens, who’ve been indoctrinated by years of schooling, media, and entertainment. Collectivist memes are cemented in their minds. And when they talk to their contemporaries, they tend to mutually reinforce their beliefs.

When you’re in a group, it can be dangerous to have different beliefs, in much the same way that it’s dangerous for a chicken in a flock to have a feather out of place. The other chickens will peck it to death. Reigning ideas tend to be brutally enforced.

What can you do about this?

Other than trying to maintain your personal integrity, there’s not much you can do to roll back the tsunami. There wasn’t much that a freedom-loving Russian could do in 1917, a freedom-loving German could do in 1933, or a freedom-loving Cuban could do in 1959. Or a freedom-loving Venezuelan today.

The best you can do is to try to save yourself, your family, and your like-minded friends. Changing society for the better is a long shot. Although I hope Milei in Argentina proves me wrong.

International Man: What do you suggest individuals do to ensure they don’t become modern serfs if Feudalism 2.0 emerges?

Doug Casey: There are two types of freedom: physical and financial.

From a physical point of view, it’s important not to be tied down the way a serf might be. You don’t want all your possessions to be in one place where they’re easily controlled by the powers that be. Don’t act like a plant. Staying rooted in one place is not an optimum survival strategy for a human in tough times.

The powers that be are interested in controlling other people. It’s best to be a moving target, which makes you much harder to hit.

This is a problem for those of us who think that the US is still the land of the free. It’s not. It’s been devolving for decades. My guess is that over the next few years, perhaps starting with this election, the US will evermore closely resemble the other 200 nation-states that cover the face of the globe like a skin disease.

The single most important thing you can do is internationalize and make sure that all your assets aren’t in one bailiwick, under the control of one government.

From a financial point of view, it gives you the freedom to travel and move, especially with the coming FX controls and CBDCs. Use gold and Bitcoin. You should already have a good stash of both. If you don’t, it’s not too late to start accumulating and transferring assets into them.

Editor’s Note: The months and years ahead will be politically, economically, and socially volatile. What you do to prepare could mean the difference between suffering crippling losses and coming out ahead.

That’s precisely why, legendary investor and NY Times best-selling author Doug Casey just released this urgent report on how to survive and thrive. Click here to download the PDF now.

Traditional authority derives its power from long-standing customs and traditions, while charismatic authority is based on the exceptional personal qualities or charisma of a leader.

According to Weber, the legal-rational authority that characterises Western capitalist industrial society is based on instrumental rationality that focuses on the most efficient means to achieve given ends. This type of rationality manifest in bureaucratic power.

Weber contrasted this with another form of rationality: value rationality that is based on conscious beliefs in the inherent value of certain behaviour.

While Weber saw the benefits of instrumental rationality in terms of increased efficiency, he feared that this could lead to a stifling “iron cage” of a rule-based order and rule following (instrumental rationality) as an end in itself. The result would be humanity’s “polar night of icy darkness.”

Today, technological change is sweeping across the planet and presents many challenges. The danger is of a technological iron cage in the hands of an elite that uses technology for malevolent purposes.

Lewis Coyne of Exeter University says:

We do not — or should not — want to become a society in which things of deeper significance are appreciated only for any instrumental value. The challenge, therefore, is to delimit instrumental rationality and the technologies that embody it by protecting that which we value intrinsically, above and beyond mere utility.”

He adds that we must decide which technologies we are for, to what ends, and how they can be democratically managed, with a view to the kind of society we wish to be.

A major change that we have seen in recent years is the increasing dominance of cloud-based services and platforms. In the food and agriculture sector, we are seeing the rollout of these phenomena tied to a techno solutionist ‘data-driven’ or ‘precision’ agriculture legitimised by ‘humanitarian’ notions of ‘helping farmers’, ‘saving the planet’ and ‘feeding the world’ in the face of some kind of impending Malthusian catastrophe.

A part-fear mongering, part-self-aggrandisement narrative promoted by those who have fuelled ecological devastation, corporate dependency, land dispossession, food insecurity and farmer indebtedness as a result of the global food regime that they helped to create and profited from. Now, with a highly profitable but flawed carbon credit trading scheme and a greenwashed technology-driven eco-modernism, they are going to save humanity from itself.

The world according to Bayer

In the agrifood sector, we are seeing the rollout of data-driven or precision approaches to agriculture by the likes of Microsoft, Syngenta, Bayer and Amazon centred on cloud-based data information services. Data-driven agriculture mines data to be exploited by the agribusiness/big tech giants to instruct farmers what and how much to produce and what type of proprietary inputs they must purchase and from whom.

Data owners (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet etc.), input suppliers (Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, Cargill etc.) and retail concerns (Amazon, Walmart etc) aim to secure the commanding heights of the global agrifood economy through their monopolistic platforms.

But what does this model of agriculture look like in practice?

Let us use Bayer’s digital platform Climate FieldView as an example. It collects data from satellites and sensors in fields and on tractors and then uses algorithms to advise farmers on their farming practices: when and what to plant, how much pesticide to spray, how much fertiliser to apply etc.

To be part of Bayer’s Carbon Program, farmers have to be enrolled in FieldView. Bayer then uses the FieldView app to instruct farmers on the implementation of just two practices that are said to sequester carbon in the soils: reduced tillage or no-till farming and the planting of cover crops.

Through the app, the company monitors these two practices and estimates the amount of carbon that the participating farmers have sequestered. Farmers are then supposed to be paid according to Bayer’s calculations, and Bayer uses that information to claim carbon credits and sell these in carbon markets.

Bayer also has a programme in the US called ForGround. Upstream companies can use the platform to advertise and offer discounts for equipment, seeds and other inputs.

For example, getting more farmers to use reduced tillage or no-till is of huge benefit to Bayer (sold on the basis of it being ‘climate friendly’). The kind of reduced tillage or no-till promoted by Bayer requires dousing fields with its RoundUp (toxic glyphosate) herbicide and planting seeds of its genetically engineered Roundup resistant soybeans or hybrid maize.

And what of the cover crops referred to above? Bayer also intends to profit from the promotion of cover crops. It has taken majority ownership of a seed company developing a gene-edited cover crop, called CoverCress. Seeds of CoverCress will be sold to farmers who are enrolled in ForGround and the crop will be sold as a biofuel.

But Bayer’s big target is the downstream food companies which can use the platform to claim emissions reductions in their supply chains.

Agribusiness corporations and the big tech companies are jointly developing carbon farming platforms to influence farmers on their choice of inputs and farming practices (big tech companies, like Microsoft and IBM, are major buyers of carbon credits).

The non-profit GRAIN says (see the article The corporate agenda behind carbon farming) that Bayer is gaining increasing control over farmers in various countries, dictating exactly how they farm and what inputs they use through its ‘Carbon Program’.

GRAIN argues that, for corporations, carbon farming is all about increasing their control within the food system and is certainly not about sequestering carbon.

Digital platforms are intended to be one-stop shops for carbon credits, seeds, pesticides and fertilisers and agronomic advice, all supplied by the company, which gets the added benefit of control over the data harvested from the participating farms.

Technofeudalism

Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, argues that what we are seeing is a shift from capitalism to technofeudalism. He argues that tech giants like Apple, Meta and Amazon act as modern-day feudal lords. Users of digital platforms (such as companies or farmers) essentially become ‘cloud serfs’, and ‘rent’ (fees, data etc) is extracted from them for being on a platform.

In feudalism (land) rent drives the system. In capitalism, profits drive the system. Varoufakis says that markets are being replaced by algorithmic ‘digital fiefdoms’.

Although digital platforms require some form of capitalist production, as companies like Amazon need manufacturers to produce goods for their platforms, the new system represents a significant shift in power dynamics, favouring those who own and control the platforms.

Whether this system is technofeudalism, hypercapitalism or something else is open to debate. But we should at least be able to agree on one thing: the changes we are seeing are having profound impacts on economies and populations that are increasingly surveilled as they are compelled to shift their lives online.

The very corporations that are responsible for the problems of the prevailing food system merely offer more of the same, this time packaged in a  genetically engineered, ecomodernist, fake-green wrapping (see the online article From net zero to glyphosate: agritech’s greenwashed corporate power grab).

Elected officials are facilitating this by putting the needs of monopolistic global interests ahead of ordinary people’s personal freedoms and workers’ rights, as well as the needs of independent local producers, enterprises and markets.

For instance, the Indian government has in recent times signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with Amazon, Bayer, Microsoft and Syngenta to rollout data-driven, precision agriculture. A ‘one world agriculture’ under their control based on genetically engineered seeds, laboratory created products that resemble food and farming without farmers, with the entire agrifood chain, from field (or lab) to retail in their hands.

This is part of a broader strategy to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture, ensure India’s food dependence on foreign corporations and eradicate any semblance of food democracy (or national sovereignty).

In response, a ‘citizen letter’ (July 2024) was sent to the government. It stated that it is not clear what the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) will learn from Bayer that the well-paid public sector scientists of the institution cannot develop themselves. The letter says entities that have been responsible for causing an economic and environmental crisis in Indian agriculture are being partnered by ICAR for so-called solutions when these entities are only interested in their profits and not sustainability (or any other nomenclature they use).

The letter poses raises some key concerns. Where is the democratic debate on carbon credit markets. Is the ICAR ensuring that the farmers get the best rather than biased advice that boosts the further rollout of proprietary products? Is there a system in place for the ICAR to develop research and education agendas from the farmers it is supposed to serve as opposed to being led by the whims and business ideas of corporations?

The authors of the letter note that copies of the MoUs are not being shared proactively in the public domain by the ICAR. The letter asks that the ICAR suspends the signed MoUs, shares all details in the public domain and desists from signing any more such MoUs without necessary public debate.

Valuing humanity

Genuine approaches to addressing the challenges humanity faces are being ignored by policymakers or cynically attacked by corporate lobbyists. These solutions involve systemic shifts in agricultural, food and economic systems with a focus on low consumption (energy) lifestyles, localisation and an ecologically sustainable agroecology.

As activist John Wilson says, this is based on creative solutions, a connection to nature and the land, nurturing people, peaceful transformation and solidarity.

This is something discussed in the recent article From Agrarianism to Transhumanism: The Long March to Dystopia in which it is argued that co-operative labour, fellowship and our long-standing spiritual connection to the land should inform how as a society we should live. This stands in stark contrast to the values and impacts of capitalism and technology based on instrumental rationality and too often fuelled by revenue streams and the goal to control populations.

When we hear talk of a ‘spiritual connection’, what is meant by ‘spiritual’? In a broad sense it can be regarded as a concept that refers to thoughts, beliefs and feelings about the meaning of life, rather than just physical existence. A sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. Something akin to Weber’s concept of value rationality. The spiritual, the diverse and the local are juxtaposed with the selfishness of modern urban society, the increasing homogeneity of thought and practice and an instrumental rationality which becomes an end in itself.

Having a direct link with nature/the land is fundamental to developing an appreciation of a type of ‘being’ and an ‘understanding’ that results in a reality worth living in.

However, what we are seeing is an agenda based on a different set of values rooted in a lust for power and money and the total subjugation of ordinary people being rammed through under the false promise of techno solutionism (transhumanism, vaccines in food, neural laces to detect moods implanted in the skull, programmable digital money, track and trace technology etc.) and some distant notion of a techno utopia that leave malevolent power relations intact and unchallenged.

Is this then to be humanity’s never-ending “polar night of icy darkness”? Hopefully not. This vision is being imposed from above. Ordinary people (whether, for example, farmers in India or those being beaten down through austerity policies) find themselves on the receiving end of a class war being waged against them by a mega-rich elite.

Indeed, in 1941, Herbert Marcuse stated that technology could be used as an instrument for control and domination. Precisely the agenda of the likes of Bayer, the Gates Foundation, BlackRock and the World Bank, which are trying to eradicate genuine diversity and impose a one-size-fits-all model of thinking and behaviour.

A final thought courtesy of civil rights campaigner  Frederick Douglass in a speech from 1857:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

He has never owned anything.  He rents his bedroom, his furnishings, and his meager entertainments.  Each month, a digital account associated with his digital ID receives a number of central bank digital currency units.  How much he receives depends upon the number of hours he works at his government job, how much the government values his work, how much the government taxes him for the privilege of using public infrastructure, and how much of his income the government decides should be redistributed to other citizens in need.  After taxes, rents, utilities, and other assorted municipal, state, federal, and international fees are deducted from his earnings, he has little — if any — discretionary income.

If he chooses to save that income to invest in his future, the government informs him that his central bank digital currency units disappear within ninety days.  If he tries to purchase something that the government has banned, he forfeits what he currently has.  If he does something that the government deems contrary to his well-being, his social credit score decreases, and a fraction of his discretionary income disappears.

Every few weeks, a digital doctor (running on artificial intelligence) appears on the video screen in his apartment with a detailed list of all the “unhealthy” things he has done since their last interaction.  He is informed that a portion of his temporary savings will be redistributed to citizens with healthier habits.  His A.I. health monitor tells him that he must immediately report to the closest pharmaceutical distribution center so that he can be injected with the latest “vaccines.”  Failure to do so will result in the deactivation of all electronic entertainment devices and a permanent mark on his social credit record.

He is unhappy, and because the State’s A.I. supervisor has detected his unhappiness, the display monitor in his apartment encourages him to find personal meaning by “joining the fight against global warming.”  For a while, he does just that.  He attends community meetings in his apartment building where government officials talk about the importance of “saving the planet” by “owning nothing.”

He chats with anonymous strangers (bots?) on the State’s social media platform, and they all agree that the sacrifices they’re making to save the world are definitely worth it.  He wakes up one morning to discover that his social credit score has risen and that he has been rewarded with a few extra central bank digital currency units.  Still, our future man remains unhappy.

Then one day sirens blare, and his apartment monitor flashes with breaking news: the country is at war.  He listens intently but can’t figure out which foreign nations are attacking.  The trusted news anchors tell him that peace, prosperity, and freedom are all at risk.  He steps outside his tiny apartment to find other solitary renters fired up and talking excitedly about the battles to come.  He walks back inside to find his A.I. supervisor informing him that he has been personally selected to protect the homeland from its enemies.  For the first time in many years, our future man feels alive.

He soon finds himself in boot camp, where he enjoys regular exercise, discipline, and camaraderie.  Six months later, he and his new friends are shipped overseas.  Strangely, in all this time, nobody has explained whom they will actually be fighting.  All he knows is that they’re at war with “the authoritarians” who wish to “take our democracy.”  There is anticipation in his camp and endless talk of adventure.  Then, when everyone least expects it, a thunderous swarm of drones attacks from overhead.  Nobody has time to react.  Explosions seem to come from out of nowhere.  He sees the bodies of his friends torn to pieces.  Then everything goes dark.

He awakes in a hospital severely injured, is called a hero, and is later sent home.  When he arrives, he notices breadlines outside the government’s genetically engineered food distribution centers.  He hears a beggar on the street joke that they should call them “insect-lines,” since that’s all there is to eat.  He learns that someone else has moved into his old apartment, but he is offered a new one because of his military service.  It is smaller and has even fewer furnishings than the one he lost.

He realizes that most of his former neighbors never returned from war and that many of the newcomers now living in their apartments look and sound like those people he was told to fight overseas.  Nothing makes sense.  His injuries torment him.  He feels even more lost and lonely than before he went to war.  His A.I. supervisor informs him that he has been added to a list of people considered “potential domestic terrorists.”  Remaining on this list will make it hard for him to work and live.

Then, one day, his digital doctor asks if he would like some assistance in ending his life peacefully.  “You can save others,” he is told, “by permanently reducing your carbon footprint.”  In agony, he wonders, “How did we get here?”

The shortest answer to our future friend is this: governments abandoned sound money.  They replaced gold coins with paper currencies.  They made it illegal for ordinary citizens to conduct business freely and demanded that government-issued bills be used in economic transactions.  Then they gave private central banks the authority to print these paper bills whenever they determined that doing so would be good for the economy.

Whose economy do wealthy central bankers protect — Wall Street’s or that of the working class?  Although putatively charged with financial duties to maximize employment and minimize inflation, central banks function as market manipulators and money printers for overspending governments.  By increasing the supply of paper currency, the price of consumer goods rises.  However, the numerical price of stock market shares also goes up.

These capital assets do not gain any real value, but their rising prices give the illusion of economic growth.  Many bad companies that would never survive in a free market become lucrative investment opportunities in fake markets.  Easy money sustains companies that produce no market value.  Who loses most in this artificial arrangement?  The poorest people who have no stocks and only limited cash savings.  They have watched the hundred-dollar bill hidden under their mattresses lose most of its value over the last fifty years.

Neither fiat currencies nor central banks have any functional place in free societies.  Governments that manipulate the value of money rig markets and steal from the working poor.  The wealthiest end up owning everything, while everyone else tries to balance life precariously on a tightrope of consumer debts, mortgages, long-term loans, and the growing prospect of insolvency.  This world that financial and political elites have built is unsustainable.  It is also a kind of economic slavery.

Because it is unsustainable, those who have benefited most from its creation will do anything they must to survive its collapse.  A crashing dollar does not matter if those who control the financial system today control the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.  Gross inequality and rampant poverty do not matter if governments can convince unhappy citizens that climate change, disease, and war require them to own less and sacrifice more.  Growing public anger does not matter if those with armies can censor speech, throttle food supplies, foment wars, and imprison dissidents.

Ponder this: how much of the story above seems foreign, and how much of it seems painfully familiar?  Your answer tells us just how much time we have left.

Image via Picryl.

To be clear, I don’t favor Russia any more than I favor Ukraine. The Kremlin has long had its own ties to the globalists, as I have outlined in numerous articles. How deep those ties go is up for debate – Maybe the honeymoon is over and Russia is truly done trying to get a seat at the globalist table. What I do know is that western elites want a world war and they have done everything in their power to start one.

Look at it this way: What if you were to make a list of all the covert and overt NATO operations in Ukraine and then flipped script? What if Russia was pursuing all the same agendas of destabilization, control and arms proliferation in Mexico (as the Soviets did in Cuba in the 1960s)?  If the US invaded Mexico preemptively it would be completely understandable.

Whether or not Putin is acting in the best interests of Russia doesn’t really matter. The war was inevitable anyway because NATO made sure it was impossible to avoid. But what purpose does such a proxy war serve? Well, it doesn’t serve much purpose at all…unless the goal is to instigate a wider world war between the East and the West. In that scenario the globalists benefit greatly.

They get a scapegoat for the economic collapse they’ve already set in motion. They multiply the global fear factor and make the public desperate for the political elites to step in and solve all their problems. And, they can get rid of their domestic enemies (conservatives and patriots) by accusing them of “working with Russia” to undermine the war effort if they dare to rebel against unconstitutional mandates.

Beyond that, they also get an opportunity to send young men (who might rebel) off to the meat grinder in Ukraine so that there’s no new generation of freedom fighters to deal with. World War III is a win-win-win for the Davos crowd, as long as it doesn’t go full-on nuclear holocaust and wipe out their carefully crafted surveillance states.

But how do they turn the proxy war into a world war without looking like the bad guys? That’s the trick, isn’t it?

The proxy (in this case, Ukraine) would have to take actions that provoke Russia into an explosive outburst. Russia would have to utilize tactics or weaponry that puts a vast number of civilians at risk, requiring greater NATO involvement and perhaps even UN intervention. They need Russia to level a major city containing hundreds of thousands of civilians. They need Russia to drop MOABs or nukes. They need a dramatic war crime; otherwise, the western public is not going to support boots on the ground or agree to a military draft.

Popular support for monetary and military aid in Ukraine is waning quickly and Ukraine knows they are about to lose. The Kursk offensive looks like an act of desperation triggered by this reality.

The Kursk region has almost no modern strategic value. It’s a rural agricultural area with a limited industrial base. It does have natural gas pipelines that send energy to Europe, but that doesn’t help Ukraine. They’re already in trouble with Germany for blowing up the Nordstream pipeline. There is also a nuclear power plant in the area but it’s too far away for Ukraine’s troops to seize it (They could try to destroy it with drones and cause a nuclear incident, but this would have to be done covertly without Ukraine taking direct credit).

Mainstream strategists argue that the Kursk operation was designed to force Russia to move crack troops away from the Donbas front where they are making impressive gains. This would allegedly slow down Russia’s attrition based offensive and change the direction of the war. But if that was the plan, it failed miserably.

Ukraine’s troops in Kursk have reportedly been contained. Using NATO-style maneuver tactics to invade Kursk has also done nothing to slow Russia’s advance as they are now primed to take the key city of Toretsk. They are also approaching Pokrovsk (the main staging ground for Ukraine’s forces in the east). These areas are heavily defended with long term entrenchments, but Russia is rolling right through them. The lines beyond these cities are thin or non-existent. Ukraine would immediately be forced to negotiate a cease fire.

Russia also launched the largest missile and drone strikes of the war in fifteen Ukrainian oblasts, causing even greater disruptions to utilities. This proves two things: The Russian military has NOT been diminished or crippled and they still have ample long range ordnance, despite what NATO officials originally claimed

There’s a reason why Kursk was so lightly defended by Russia – It’s not worth anything to Ukraine in terms of winning the war. That said, I would like to offer an alternative theory on why Ukraine made such a move…

The moment Ukraine crossed onto Russian soil the media and political narrative changed. The word today is that the Kremlin’s “red lines” are meaningless and that Ukraine has proven that Putin is “all talk” when it comes to nuclear weapons and metropolitan strikes. The discussion has turned to the use of US and European long range missiles deep into Russian territory. The Ukrainian government (with NATO behind it) is demanding that US and European officials allow them access to the big-boy toys.

Again, the Biden Administration has to at least appear resistant to this idea. They know if they openly give the green light to offensive ATACM strikes on Russian soil beyond the front that they will be seen as stepping over the line of logistical “support” into the realm of direct warfare with the Russians. Yes, I’m well aware that NATO intel and “advisers” have been on the ground in Ukraine since before the war began. The point is, it’s not official policy because the public would not accept it.

Long range strikes into Russia, I believe, will set in motion more Russian strikes on major cities in the west of Ukraine where the majority of the population lives. These areas have gone largely untouched during the duration of the war. Putin, despite what the media claims, has been careful to limit the targeting of larger civilian centers. That will end if NATO missiles hit Russian cities.

Kursk may have been an attempt to embarrass Russia into wild strikes on civilian targets, thereby giving NATO a reason to intervene. That’s one theory. Another theory is that the Kursk operation is designed to convince western policy makers and the public that there will be no nuclear repercussions; that Putin is all bluster and Ukraine should be given more advanced tools to bomb Moscow.

This narrative is largely promoted by the Atlantic Council, a globalist think-tank with ties to the World Economic Forum and the “Three Seas Initiative.” The Atlantic Council directly advises the Ukrainian government on all aspect of the war, including strategy through their Eurasian Center.  They also advise NATO through their Scowcroft Center. As their website notes:

“The Eurasia Center has worked tirelessly to respond to the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, using our well-respected and high-visibility platform and leveraging relationships in government, civil society, and the media to have great impact. The Eurasia Center offers recommendations directly to the U.S. administration and Congress, senior Ukrainian officials, European leadership, international media, and civil society. The Center tracks the military and political situation within Ukraine and advocates for stronger, faster measures to stall and mitigate the damage of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.”

I would argue that the Atlantic Council is the primary globalist “influencer” in the Ukraine war – The source for the majority of strategic decisions and propaganda. Their support of the ‘Three Seas Initiative” since 2014 has been the driving force in the effort to bring Ukraine into the EU and NATO (the primary reason why the war started in the first place).

Lindsay Graham, a Neo-Con and rabid proponent of using Ukraine as a proxy to ignite a war with Russia, has been participating in Atlantic Council projects since at least 2010.

It’s the Atlantic Council and their media contacts, in my opinion, that are pushing for large scale missile strikes into Russia. They are also the source for the claim that Putin’s red lines are a fake out. They state on their website:

“Ukraine’s offensive is now posing serious questions about the credibility of Russia’s saber-rattling and the rationality behind the West’s abundance of caution. After all, the Ukrainian army’s current invasion of Russia is surely the reddest of all red lines. If Russia was at all serious about a possible nuclear escalation, this would be the moment to make good on its many threats. In fact, Putin has responded by seeking to downplay the invasion while pretending that everything is still going according to plan.”

This is the same propaganda that has been spreading into most establishment media platforms in recent weeks. (As a side note, the Atlantic Council was also heavily involved in the funding of covid mandate and vaccine propaganda during the pandemic scare).

The idea that ballistic volleys into Russia using NATO supplied missiles won’t result in Putin using MOABs or nukes is truly insane. Keep in mind, long range strikes into Russia will do nothing to change the conditions on the ground in the Donbas.

Even if the globalists can’t convince western populations to give the thumbs up for ballistic attacks on Russia using weapons paid for with our tax dollars, the powers-that-be have a contingency plan. Ukraine has recently announced that they have developed their OWN long range ballistic missile, and those weapons supposedly don’t fall under the supervision of the US and Europe.

Eventually these kinds of strikes will lead to a Russian response that will appear brutal; and western warhawks will squeeze that event for all it’s worth. They’ll run with it straight to the Pentagon and demand a plan for US military conscription. If this is the agenda then they’ll need to make it happen BEFORE the elections in November.

Donald Trump is looking increasingly likely to be the winner of the presidential race. I have long held that the globalists will wrap up an economic collapse or a world war and throw it in Trump’s lap. They already tried to do the same thing with the covid pandemic and the inflationary crisis.

The timing of the Kursk offensive and the call for missile strikes on Russia is not a coincidence. Trump claims that his intention is to end the Ukraine war as quickly as possible once he enters office. This will likely mean a leveraged peace settlement that will involve Ukraine giving up the Donbas region to Russia. If Trump is sincere, then there are many elites in the Atlantic Council, the WEF and NATO that will not be happy.

They need to escalate the war into something bigger, something that can’t be undone. Right now, the war can be ended – All it takes is some diplomacy and forcing Ukraine to understand that they’re not going to get the Donbas or Crimea back no matter how many lives they sacrifice. But if there are massive civilian casualties on either side, the situation becomes irreversible. I suspect this is what the globalists want.

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

Hong Kong-based political analyst Angel Giuliano claims that Western allies are striving to assume total control over the media narrative by going after platforms like Telegram that facilitate the exchange of information minus the government intrusion.

There have also been a lot of other attacks on free speech as of late, including the recent FBI raid on the home of Scott Ritter, a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer. Or how about the death of Chilean-American journalist Gonzalo Lira while in Ukraine’s custody?

Independent journalist Richard Medhurst was also nabbed by British police earlier this month at London’s Heathrow Airport for criticizing the United States, Great Britain and Israel for committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Medhurst was arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act (2000).

“There is actually an oppression of journalists and freedom of speech in the West and especially in the EU,” Giuliano told Sputnik, a Russia-based media outlet.

(Related: Much like the United States, Ukraine claims to be a bastion of freedom and democracy even as the Zelensky regime persecutes Christians by banning the Orthodox Church.)

Free speech has become very “inconvenient” for the West

Concerning Durov, Western powers claim the Telegram founder did not do enough to stop allegedly criminal activities from being organized and discussed through the platform. If convicted, Durov faces up to 20 years in prison.

Durov expressed concerns to Tucker Carlson a few months back about the U.S. government’s mistreatment, indicating that he has been a target of Western intelligence services for a while.

U.S. cybersecurity officials wanted Durov to create special backdoor access for them to probe users’ private conversations. When Durov refused, warning that such a backdoor would enable more government abuses, Western intelligence put him in their crosshairs for elimination.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that they would try to get their hands on Telegram, to strike a deal with Telegram, saying ‘well, we release you; you give us a price and maybe we can buy you,'” Giuliano said, arguing that Durov’s arrest is likely serving as some kind of “bargaining chip.”

“What they say clearly at the EU is that they need to control the narrative because that’s everything,” he added, noting that freedom of speech and the First Amendment has become very “inconvenient” for Western governments. “The narrative you control controls the mind of the people.”

What makes Durov’s arrest curious is the fact that he became a French citizen just three years ago, the suggestion being that he is in good standing with the French government. In 2023, French media celebrated the fact that Paris had chosen “an exceptional and highly political procedure” in order to grant Durov citizenship.

Then, all of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, French authorities turned on Durov by capturing him at the airport.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk faces similar treatment now that he owns X (formerly Twitter) and has rebranded it as a social media platform that values free speech. Musk could one day find himself in handcuffs if he travels to the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Keep in mind that Elon Musk hasn’t actually complied with EU regulation. And in reality, he would be de facto also another target,” Giuliano said. Arresting Durov, he added, is “really a red flag overall for journalists and for whoever is actually spilling the truth, inconvenient truth.

In the comments, many people expressed concern that other platforms similar to Telegram might be next. Free speech is under attack. Learn more at Censorship.news.

Sources for this article include:

• SputnikGlobe.com
• NaturalNews.com

The European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries have also approved certain insects for human consumption, with clear labeling requirements for food products containing insects.

Gaps in US regulations have enabled “alternative protein” startups to enter the insect food market – with the backing of figures such as Bill Gates and government agencies including the United Nations (“UN”), the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) and the National Science Foundation.

The trend towards insect-based foods is linked to the UN’s Agenda 2030 SDGs, promoting sustainability and forced behavioral modifications.

“The insect craze is intimately connected to the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” said Michael Rectenwald, author of ‘The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unravelling the Global Agenda’.

“The World Economic Forum – perhaps the largest driving force behind so-called ‘alternative proteins’ – frequently touts Singapore’s compliance with Agenda 2030, so the decision to prioritize insect-based foods is not surprising,” Seamus Bruner, author of ‘Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life’ and director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, said.

Proponents of insects as food for humans, including the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (“FAO”), claim that they are more sustainable and have a lower carbon footprint compared to traditional livestock. However, animal-based foods like beef, pork, and poultry are more efficient and healthy sources of protein.

“The truth is that beef, pork, poultry and other animal-based foods are the most efficient and healthy sources of protein. These climate fanatics pushing insect-based foods are scaring people into adopting less healthy diets,” Bruner told The Defender.

While advocates see insects as a viable protein source for the future, there are concerns about safety and health risks, such as parasites and allergies, and it raises questions about the motives behind promoting insect-based foods.

“The justification for insects is to produce protein using fewer inputs: to save the planet by reducing climate change, methane from cows, less pollution,” Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, said. “But just because it is protein doesn’t mean it’s good for us.”

Nass cited parasites that could be spread by insects, difficulties in digesting insects, and common allergies to chitin – commonly found on the exoskeleton of insects.

She suggested that one reason behind the shift to insects as food is “to cause emotional harm: to degrade, debase, downgrade human beings” and that beef is “being demonized,” potentially to “weaken the species.”

Dutch journalist Elze van Hamelen told The Defender that using insect ingredients for pet food also poses a risk to public health, citing a 2019 study that found parasites in 244 of 300 insect farms and pet stores that were investigated.

In Singapore, local businesses are embracing insect-based foods, with some already offering insect-infused dishes. Educational programs are being implemented to inform consumers, including children, about the benefits of consuming insects.

Some educational programs began before approval had been obtained.  For example, Singapore’s first start-up to make food from insects conducted workshops and educational sessions at almost a hundred schools before the Singapore Food Agency approved insects for human consumption. Surveys conducted after the program found that about 80% of students would be willing to try the insects after they are approved.

Educational programs are part of the psychological techniques deployed to get people to accept insects as food.  Several studies in 2020, 2021, and 2022 suggested that behavioral science concepts like nudging should be used to influence public acceptance of insect-based foods. The truth is that nudging is already being widely used to implement the UN’s Agenda 2030.

According to Rectenwald, “sustainability” is code language for coerced reductions in consumption and forced behavioral modifications.

In addition to debasing people and so gaining psychological power over them, there is enormous financial gain to be had for those driving the insect-based diets agenda.

“Bill Gates claims his investments in alternative proteins are to save the planet,” Bruner said. “What he does not say is that they are part of a strategy to monopolize the protein industry – for profit – as he lobbies to ban animal-based competition.”

The above is summarised from the article ‘Sign of Things to Come: Singapore Approves 16 Insects for Human Food’ by Michael Nevradakis, PhD, as published by The Defender.  You can read the full article HERE.

Featured image: Fried silkworm pupas in Thailand. Silkworms are among the species on Singapore’s list of insects approved for human consumption. Source: The Guardian.

But if dengue fever continues to rip across the globe like it has been, or if H5N1 mutates into a form that can spread easily from person to person, fear of what is coming next could potentially revive the negotiations.

On Friday, the WHO publicly admitted that negotiations had ended without producing a final draft of the treaty.  The following comes from ABC News…

On Friday, Roland Driece, co-chair of WHO’s negotiating board for the agreement, acknowledged that countries were unable to come up with a draft. WHO had hoped a final draft treaty could be agreed on at its yearly meeting of health ministers starting Monday in Geneva.

“We are not where we hoped we would be when we started this process,” he said, adding that finalizing an international agreement on how to respond to a pandemic was critical “for the sake of humanity.”

Driece said the World Health Assembly next week would take up lessons from its work and plot the way forward, urging participants to make “the right decisions to take this process forward” to one day reach a pandemic agreement “because we need it.”

At one time, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had such high hopes for the treaty, and he still insists that “anything is possible”…

Addressing a sullen final day of negotiations, the WHO chief insisted, “This is not a failure.”

“We will try everything — believing that anything is possible — and make this happen because the world still needs a pandemic treaty,” he said.

Since the treaty is dead for now, this means that the WHO will not be running the show when the next global pandemic arrives.

And we should be very thankful for that.

But it is just a matter of time before there are renewed calls for a treaty, because we are already seeing some very chilling things happen all over the globe.

In areas that have tropical climates, dengue fever is spreading at an unprecedented rate.

This disease is also known as “bone crusher fever”, and there have already been millions of confirmed cases in 2024…

Australian travellers are being warned of a sharp increase in a potentially deadly virus, commonly known as the ‘bone crusher fever’ — with more than five million people now contracting the condition – and cases almost doubling in 2024 alone.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and 1Cover Travel Insurance, dengue fever — a potentially fatal acute infectious disease caused by a virus and transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito — has seen a rise likely due to increased post-Covid travel and the El Niño climate cycle.

Earlier this week, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) reported that dengue fever outbreaks are happening globally, with a “higher-than-usual number of cases” being witnessed in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and The Pacific.

We have never seen an outbreak of dengue fever on this scale before.

And it is here in the United States too.

In fact, Miami has become the “epicenter” for the spread of dengue fever in this country…

Miami’s role as the gateway to Latin America has also made it the US epicenter of dengue fever.

Cases of the mosquito-borne illness in Florida have more than doubled this year compared with the same period in 2023, as unsuspecting travelers have carried the virus back from the Caribbean and Southern Hemisphere. Now, authorities are working to keep the disease from infecting the local mosquito population before this summer’s heavy rains turbocharge the risks.

Malaria is another disease that is spread by mosquitos that is causing major problems all over the world this year.

Could it be possible that researchers that have been purposely breeding tens of millions of mosquitos have made a huge mistake?

The bird flu is also making lots of headlines right now.

At the end of last week, officials at the CDC warned that they are bracing themselves for the “possibility of increased risk to human health”…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a summary on Friday that it is preparing for the “possibility of increased risk to human health” from bird flu following an outbreak among dairy cows and two confirmed human cases.

H5N1 has already resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of birds over the past couple of years, but as long as it wasn’t affecting humans most people weren’t too concerned.

Well, now it has been infecting cows all over the country, and 19 of 23 wastewater sites in Texas recently tested positive for the virus…

In Texas, for example, 19 out of 23 wastewater sites were found to contain traces of the virus between early March and the end of April, according to Texas Wastewater Environmental Biomonitoring. Meanwhile, the state has some 400 dairy farms, and just 14 herds have tested positive for bird flu to date, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The bird flu has also been showing up in grocery store milk from coast to coast, but experts insist that we should not be concerned because the virus is killed by the pasteurization process.

But officials are warning us not to drink raw milk because they believe that it could “make you very sick”…

As the avian influenza virus, type A H5N1, continues to spread to an unknown number of dairy cows, health experts are informing the public milk and other dairy products are still safe to consume – with one major exception.

When a cow is infected with bird flu, high amounts of the virus can be detected in its milk. However, the pasteurization process kills off or inactivates the virus, the Food and Drug Administration says.

Raw milk, on the other hand, is not pasteurized. “Raw milk can be contaminated with harmful germs that can make you very sick,” the CDC says on its website.

Many scientists are worried that it could be just a matter of time before the bird flu mutates into a form that can spread very easily among humans.

Let us hope that is not true, because more than 50 percent of the humans that have tested positive for H5N1 since 2003 have ended up dead.

We live at a time when it has become so easy for just about anyone to monkey around with a deadly disease and release it into the public.

Personally, I am entirely convinced that deadly diseases will play a major role in reshaping society during the apocalyptic era that is ahead of us.

Our ability to create deadly diseases now far surpasses our ability to control them, and the fear that global outbreaks create will be used by those that wish to accumulate power for themselves.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The plot involves centralizing the world’s farms in the hands of just a few wealthy individuals who plan to cut almost one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by radically altering the way food is grown.

The report touts the proposed changes in nice-sounding terminology that claims food production will continue in such a way as “to feed a growing population.” The reality, though, is that the proposal threatens to eliminate large swaths of agricultural production that in turn could lead to famine and starvation.

“While the food on your table may taste good, it is also a hefty slice of the climate change emissions pie,” claims Axel van Trostenburg, a World Bank figure.

The good news is that the global food system can heal the planet – making soils, ecosystems and people healthier, while keeping carbon in the ground. This is within reach in our lifetimes, but countries must act now: simply changing how middle-income countries use land, such as forests and ecosystems, for food production can cut agrifood emissions by a third by 2030.”

(Related: COP28 head Sultan Al Jaber believes that the crusade against earth-based fuels is misguided as well because oil and gas are not contributing to global warming.)

The end of food

Instead of promoting diverse agricultural practices that local family farmers have been honing for centuries – such practices are good for the environment rather than bad – the World Bank wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater by getting rid of agriculture entirely in some areas.

We are seeing that push in the Netherlands and other parts of Western Europe. And now the World Bank is proposing even more agriculture reductions because it claims the climate is warming from all the food people are growing.

“Action should happen across all countries to get to net zero, through a comprehensive approach to reducing emissions in food systems, including in fertilizers and energy, crop and livestock production, and packaging and distribution across the value chain from farm to table,” the World Bank says.

As usual, the globalists are proposing a one-size-fits-all solution to standardize farming practices even though local ecosystems vary widely from place to place. It does not matter to them, though, because the investment returns from their proposal are massive.

“Annual investments will need to increase to $260 billion a year to cut in half agrifood emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050,” the World Bank says.

“Making these investments would lead to more than $4 trillion in benefits, from improvements in human health, food and nutrition security, better quality jobs and profits for farmers, to more carbon retained in forests and soils.”

Greed is once again ruling the day, and the shortsightedness of these globalists will spell their own undoing. Once they, too, run out of food, all that money they are stealing will be worthless because there will be no food left for them to buy with it.

“Ultimately, the World Bank’s ambitious project to restructure global agriculture underestimates the risks of unintended consequences, including food shortages, economic disruption, and increased hardship for the most vulnerable,” warns Watts Up With That.

“History teaches that centralized interventions in complex systems such as global agriculture often lead to outcomes opposite those intended, driven by a failure to account for the organic and evolved nature of these systems. The portrayal of these interventions as low-risk and high-return is not only misleading but potentially dangerous, paving the way for a future where the global food supply is less secure and more susceptible to the whims of bureaucratic mismanagement.”

Climate lunacy is destroying the world. Learn more at Climate.news.

Sources for this article include:

• WorldBank.org
• WattsUpWithThat.com
• NaturalNews.com

What is happening in the West today is a concentrated push for global communism.  We could bicker about precise definitions — whether we are under attack from Marxists, socialists, Leninists, Trotskyites, Maoists, or other “revolutionaries” — but the end goal is clear.

A small group of global “elites” seek to use ideological and economic leverage to centralize political power and direct all human activity.  They seek the abolition of private property.  They seek absolute control over individual lives and local communities.  They are rebuilding twentieth-century totalitarianism with the privacy-destroying surveillance technologies of the twenty-first century.

Most Western nations are working together to promote a public vision that achieves their private totalitarian goals.  Governments do not care about “hate speech”; they are dedicated to seizing control of the press, punishing dissent, censoring political opposition, and regulating public debate.  Governments do not care about “climate change”; they are dedicated to seizing control over all economic activity by first establishing a monopoly on available energy.  Governments do not care about “systemic racism,” “social justice,” or “income inequality”; they are dedicated to maximizing social divisions and distorting the meaning of fundamental rights, so that they may undermine long-cherished personal liberties.

Governments do not care about “gun violence”; they are dedicated to disarming their populations and making it impossible for them to fight back against tyranny.  Governments do not care about minimizing vicious and costly wars; they are dedicated to distracting their citizens with false threats to their personal security.  Governments do not care about maintaining the integrity and value of their monetary currencies; they are dedicated to printing and spending money that inflates household costs, taxes middle class savings, maximizes Wall Street profits, and increases welfare dependency.

Governments do not need to create central bank digital currencies to stave off economic disaster; they are dedicated to creating economic disasters, so that they can justify a future communist system that runs on privacy-destroying CBDCs.

We are right now in the middle of a war.  It is as threatening to human civilization as the Cold War.  However, it is rarely discussed except on the pages of alternative news media.  By ignoring it, our compromised corporate press work to keep the war secret and the public confused.  The most consequential war today is not flaring in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or the Asia-Pacific.  It is a quiet, chilling war raging between States that seek absolute control over society and citizens who insist on defending their constitutional rights and personal liberties.  Everything Western governments do must be seen through the lens of this broader conflict.

For two centuries, Marxists have debated and fought each other over a salient point: should they patiently wait for the supposed contradictions of free market capitalism to naturally usher in their communist Utopia?  Or should they actively promote societal conditions that speed the “revolution” and their beloved “fundamental transformation” along?  So sure of Marx’s conception of historical materialism and its determinative impact on humanity’s future, plenty of nineteenth and twentieth-century intellectuals urged steady restraint.  They used democratic elections to elevate Marxist socialists into political offices, but they cautioned against the use of violence to accelerate a process that they understood as foreordained.

Communist Utopia, however, is not foreordained, and the longer that Marx’s disciples had to wait for their “revolution,” the more anxious they became.  Patience evaporated because Marx has always been a false prophet.  In order to create a Marxist future that is wholly unnatural, his followers eventually realized that coercion and violence are instrumental to their vision.  Just like the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, Marxism requires everyone to “drink the Kool-Aid.”  And just as with Jim Jones’s astonishing cult, Marxism always leads to “revolutionary suicide.”

Marxists cannot square their practical failures with Marx’s theoretical promises yet stubbornly refuse to learn from the contradiction.  Failed ideologues who push false visions of the future inevitably become more coercive and violent as failures pile up.  This is Marxism’s lasting mark upon history — bloody stains and mass graves wherever it has been imposed.

Some of Marxism’s most staunch defenders reluctantly acknowledged this truth last century.  Karl Kautsky — a devout Marxist, colleague of Friedrich Engels, and influential theorist for Germany’s Social Democratic Party — excoriated Vladimir Lenin’s socialist revolution in Russia: “Among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, Terrorism, which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale execution, is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all.”

Unable to accept that violence is inextricably linked to Marxism, Kautsky echoed the naïve complaint that history cannot be “hurried.”  History’s “speed,” however, has never been the source of Marxism’s violence.  Marxism’s internal fallacies, disregard for personal freedom, and imposition of unnatural human relationships create the necessary conditions for terror, bloodshed, poverty, agony, and angst.

What is important to understand is that the various Western projects active today all reflect this long conflict among Marxists about the best way to achieve their “revolution.”  Sure, there still remain a few residual peaceniks in the faculty lounge who believe — as Kautsky did — that human societies will naturally evolve into Marxist Utopias and “equitable” communes from the sheer deterministic forces of historical materialism.  There are far more, however, who believe political repression, terror, and violence are essential for success.

Standing somewhere in the middle — for the time being, at least — are the great majority of governmental and non-governmental forces pushing demonstrable forms of Marxist socialism under the guise of public policies ostensibly meant to advance environmentalism, mass migration, pandemic preparedness, minority rights, or “sustainable” economic development in impoverished communities.

We are familiar with their many names: the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset,” the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda,” the “Green New Deal,” the “Build Back Better” initiatives, George Soros’s “Open Society Foundations,” and the World Health Organization’s “Pandemic Treaty.”  There are many others, of course.  Every perceived global problem provides Marxist socialists with an opportunity to “solve” that problem by constructing financial and governmental institutions that advance their “revolution.”  They believe that they can “speed up” the “progression” of human history by creating painful conditions that justify communism’s architecture.  The vast majority of globalists who run central banks, newsrooms, intelligence agencies, administrative departments, legislative assemblies, religious nonprofits, and too many corporate boardrooms are all “true believers.”

Make no mistake, when these Marxist globalists conclude that an increasingly popular resistance force within Western society threatens their “long march” toward domination, they will not throw up their hands in defeat, shrug, and concede, “Well, that’s democracy.”  In their twisted totalitarian minds, only ideological allies merit “democratic” respect or civil rights protections; ideological foes deserve dictatorial force and bloody despotism.

Just as Lenin justified “violent revolution” and defended “unrestricted power, based on force and not on law,” today’s globalists showed us who they are during the “Reign of COVID Tyranny.”  Within a matter of weeks, they threw free speech, bodily integrity, religious freedom, due process, and economic liberty right out the window.  In his short book, The Defense of Terrorism, Leon Trotsky argues that organized violence against opponents of the “revolution” is morally right.  Today’s J6 political hostages serve as a tragic testament that D.C. ignominiously agrees.

Image: david__jones via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Specifically, I studies the 1971-1981 stagflation crisis for reference and I found some startling similarities. It was one of the worst economic declines in American history next to the depression, and it’s an event that almost no one talks about. A lot of people (specifically Gen Z) believe that our current era is the worst financial era of all time and that their generation has been shafted by previous generations.

This is inaccurate; the stagflation disaster of the 1970s was far worse. That said, it shows us where our country is eventually headed and it’s not looking good. What is a manageable economic crunch today has the potential to become a calamity tomorrow.

One issue that I’m fascinated by that usually isn’t mentioned in mainstream economic discussion is quality degradation – The way in which products, services, construction, manufacturing, style and availability tend to break down when inflation suddenly spikes. This process is known as “skimpflation” and it was rampant in the 1970s and early 1980s. Most Americans today think of the 70s as a happy-go-lucky era of disco, bell bottoms and psychedelics, but in reality it was economically dismal.

Examining real life images and footage from the decade compared to the 1950s to 1960s, there was a stark shift in the quality of life. From the quality of cars, to the quality of clothes, to the quality of housing. Some US cities (like New York or Philadelphia) looked like warzones complete with rubble strewn slums. After sky-high inflation for several years causes a doubling and tripling of retail prices along with growing unemployment rates, the environment starts to feel real ugly.

Skimpflation And The Food Pyramid Agenda

Another aspect of life that takes a hit is the quality of diet and the ability of families to feed themselves. Most people are familiar with the concept of “shrinkflation” – The habit of companies to shrink portion sizes while keeping their packaging and prices the same in order to offset inflation in production costs without consumers noticing. However, skimpflation is another way in which companies will attempt to avoid raising prices on the shelf, and that’s by lowering the quality of ingredients, along with encouraging the public to eat less nutritious (and less expensive to produce) foods.

The 1970s was the decade that gave birth to the processed food market and the microwave cuisine, at least on a wider scale. This was the decade when American food truly took a nose dive. The ease of processed foods was offset by the poor nutritional content. They were cheaper, but the quality sucked and we are still living with the repercussions of that trend today.

There were, of course, counter-culture movements working against the adoption of processed foods, including “know your farmer” type organizations and organic movements. But as we are all well aware, the cheap processed foods eventually won. Society embraced the market because they had to. Prices were so high that it was the only way they could feed their families everyday.

Interestingly, the Food Pyramid that we were all taught about as children in public schools was introduced to the western world in 1972. The pyramid was actually first used by the Swedish government in direct response to food inflation and was designed to encourage the populace to eat cheaper food-stuffs (primarily cereals, dairy products, pastas and carbs). Governments have been using subsidies to promote the consumption of low cost and low quality foods ever since.

I’m recounting these trends from the 1970s because we are seeing a very similar agenda today, though it is far more insidious in nature. Economic decline is a favorite tool for the establishment to control the behavior of populations, including dietary habits.

Dollar Losing Buying Power? Switch To Lab Grown Meat And Bugs…

It’s no coincidence, for example, that there has been a massive push by government agencies and corporations to acclimate the public to the idea of fake lab-grown meat products. For now, fake meats are more expensive than real meats so there’s no incentive for the public to consume them, but if inflation continues to drive prices higher eventually real steak will cost far more than artificial steak and people may be convinced that the fake stuff is a viable alternative.

Then there’s the notion of western consumers eating bugs for protein instead of beef or chicken or pork. Beyond the claims that this will somehow “save the climate” from global warming (which is a complete falsehood backed by zero concrete evidence), the powers-that-be also suggest that bugs will be far more affordable than hamburgers in the near future.

Bugs are traditionally a starvation food. They are only a staple in countries where famine is common or where governments aggressively restrict normal agriculture. Bug protein also has a habit of giving people parasites. The only way westerners could be convinced to eat bugs as a part of their regular diet is if inflation crushes the regular meat market.

Let The Peasants Eat Cereal…

Another form of skimpflation is the shift even further to the bottom of the food pyramid. Recently, Kellogs CEO Gary Pilnick suggested in an interview with CNBC that Americans will eventually start ‘eating cereal for dinner’ because the cost is so much cheaper per portion. In other words, cheap processed carbs will become a mainstay of the American diet because a lot of people won’t be able to afford anything else. Pilnick brags that Kellogs is well placed for this coming change in the food market…

The marketing for this idea is already well underway. Various companies are promoting an end to traditional healthy homemade dinner habits and a switch to unconventional and cheaper processed foods. The thrust of the Kellogs campaign relies on poverty. Meaning, they are banking on the expectation that Americans will be poorer in the near term and that this condition will continue for years to come.

Just as we saw during the 1970s stagflation crisis, there is a rush to cut quality in all goods and services, but food is a major target. Today, it’s about convincing the market to consume more carbs and processed foods and less protein.  Tomorrow, it will be about abandoning established agriculture altogether and having all our food manufactured in labs.   The elites seem to be planning for a significant financial crisis beyond what we have already dealt with and this is evident in their efforts to sell the reconstruction of our dietary habits based on poverty rather than prosperity.

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