caityjohnstone | Wealth
is a zero-sum game, as is its good friend power. The more power
everyone else has, the less power our current rulers would have over us.
This is why so much energy goes into ensuring that votes have as little
effect as possible on the operations of the state and making sure
everything stays the same no matter what the public wants.
Imagine
if ordinary people started having as much influence over the direction
human civilization will take as war profiteers, oil tycoons, globalized
wage slavers and Silicon Valley plutocrats. Imagine if the working class
had enough disposable income to begin funding grassroots political
campaigns, building their own media networks, or even funding think
tanks and NGOs to advance their own interests like plutocrats do today.
Imagine if everyone could afford to work less and relax more, and
finally start learning about what’s really going on in the world.
Wealth is meaningless if everyone is wealthy. Power is meaningless if everyone has power. The kings of our day have a vested interest in keeping everyone poor and powerless, because if everyone is king, then no one is king.
This
is why our status quo systems work the way they work, and this is why
you see a convergence of interests from such groups as corporate
plutocrats, plutocrat-owned politicians and media, the arms industry,
and military and intelligence agencies. These groups all have a vested
interest in preserving the status quo and the ability to put that agenda
in place, so they’ve fallen into a natural, de facto alliance with each
other toward that end.
It’s why we’ve seen a historic upward transfer of wealth
during the Covid pandemic, with billionaires raking in trillions while
ordinary people struggle with unemployment and soaring prices. And it’s
why that transfer of wealth has been happening for decades
since long before Covid. In a system where money is power and power is
relative, a ruling class naturally emerges which needs to suppress the
wealth and power of its subjects in order to continue to rule.
Workers around the world: lost $3.7 trillion in the pandemic Billionaires around the world: gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic
It's the biggest one-year wealth transfer in history, yet somehow barely anyone is talking about it.
Rulers
do not historically give up their rule voluntarily, so we can expect
this continual pattern of wealth obstruction via wealth extraction to
continue until people get tired of being kept poor and powerless by
those who benefit from their poverty and disempowerment and use the strength of their numbers to force the emergence of a more equitable system. We can also expect our rulers to do everything in their power to prevent this from happening, including propagandizing the public into accepting the status quo and believing that anything better is impossible.
Drastic
change in the not-too-distant future does seem to be inevitable,
though, if only because we’re headed toward environmental collapse or
nuclear winter if we don’t rise to the revolutionary occasion first.
Humanity’s self-destructive patterning is in a race with our better angels, and right now it’s anybody’s race.
tabletmag | One
of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars
over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the
richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a
dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of
synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of
Illinois, who helped put
Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B.
Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a
family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of
disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational
institutions.
I first wrote about the Pritzkers,
whose fortune originated in the Hyatt hotel chain, and their
philanthropy directed toward normalizing what people call
“transgenderism” in 2018. I have since stopped using the word
“transgenderism” as it has no clear boundaries,
which makes it useless for communication, and have instead opted for
the term SSI, which more clearly defines what some of the Pritzkers and
their allies are funding—even as it ignores the biological reality of
“male” and “female” and “gay” and “straight.”
The
creation and normalization of SSI speaks much more directly to what is
happening in American culture, and elsewhere, under an umbrella of human
rights. With the introduction of SSI, the current incarnation of the
LGBTQ+ network—as distinct from the prior movement that fought for equal
rights for gay and lesbian Americans, and which ended in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that LGBTQ+ is a protected class for discrimination purposes—is working closely with the techno-medical complex, big banks, international law firms, pharma giants, and corporate power
to solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic
species—which contradicts reality and the fundamental premises not only
of “traditional” religions but of the gay and lesbian civil rights
movements and much of the feminist movement, for which sexual dimorphism
and resulting gender differences are foundational premises.
Through investments in the techno-medical complex, where new highly medicalized sex identities are being conjured,
Pritzkers and other elite donors are attempting to normalize the idea
that human reproductive sex exists on a spectrum. These investments go
toward creating new SSI using surgeries and drugs, and by instituting
rapid language reforms to prop up these new identities and induce
institutions and individuals to normalize them. In 2018, for example, at
the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at the University of California Los
Angeles (where the Pritzkers are major donors and hold various titles),
the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology advertised several options
for young females who think they can be men to have their reproductive organs removed, a procedure termed “gender-affirming care.”
neuburger | But note in the first quote above the even larger problem Hudson
identifies: How can the West maintain living standards while also
de-industrializing and impoverishing the 99%?
He
answers it, indirectly, by talking about how the inflow of money from
Europe and other U.S.-dominated countries like Japan keeps the rich in
cash:
European economic shortages are a huge benefit
to the United States, which is making enormous profits on more expensive
oil (which is controlled largely by U.S. companies, followed by British
and French oil companies). Europe’s replenishment of the arms that it
donated to Ukraine also is a boon to the U.S. military-industrial
complex, whose profits are soaring.
But the United States is not recycling these economic gains to Europe, which is looking like the big loser.
None
of those profits is going to the people. Only the living standards of
the “One Percent” are propped up. (By “One Percent” I mean the upper
10%, a group that comprises our actual oligarchs, plus all those
well-paid souls who keep that ship afloat and its engines running.)
Which
leaves us with the original question: How will our wealthy keep control
if they keep impoverish voters? Hudson’s answer, implicit in a piece written earlier is stark:
“The
alternative to democracy is oligarchy. As Aristotle noted already in
the 4th century BC, oligarchies turn themselves into hereditary
aristocracies. This is the path to serfdom.”
In the same piece he adds, “All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC.”
People
make facile comparisons of modern America to the end of the Roman
Republic — without fully realizing that at the end of the Roman
Republic, the Republic did end.
So how will our oligarchs do it —
maintain control while impoverishing the governed? There’s really only
one answer — by ending the republic, both its fact and pretense.
There may be other ways, but I can’t think of them.
The US and its allies can impose sanctions without broad international
support, and can claim that the “whole world” supports them, and nations
can draw their own conclusions. But these are not national sanctions. The SWIFT prohibition isn’t, the
seizure of Russia’s FX assets wasn’t, and the EU not being a nation,
none of the EU sanction packages were national or sovereign sanctions either.
The US has actively and aggressively been trying to get other nations to
hew to its Russia sanctions, see its threats to China, Saudi Arabia,
India. But it's not the government of the U.S. which has imposed any of its sanctions regime.
This is an important and insightful way of thinking about sanctions: Sanctions are beyond the Rule of Law and Due Process. For
instance, this Russian or that Russian is sanctioned, absent any due process. I
would also classify the actions against the Unvaccinated as sanctions,
executive or bureaucratic orders
without due process. Even if there might be fair and just due process,
it is too late and expensive.
“Economic sanctions are the modern equivalent of ancient sieges,
trying to starve populations into submission. The devastating impacts of
sieges on access to food, health and other basic services are
well-known.” Sanctions are meant to hurt civilian populations–which makes them
the tactic of choice of cowards unwilling to send in their own
cannon fodder. Civilians dying in sanctioned countries don’t make it into
U.S. newspapers–not when there are blond Ukrainians to photograph.
jomodevplus |Sanctions cut both ways Unless
approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), sanctions are not
authorized by international law. With Russia’s veto in the UNSC,
unilateral sanctions by the US and its allies have surged following the
Ukraine invasion.
During 1950-2016, ‘comprehensive’ trade sanctions have cut bilateral trade between sanctioning countries and their victims by 77% on average. The US has imposed more sanctions regimes, and for longer periods, than any other country.
The
US has increased using sanctions since 2016, imposing them on more than
1,000 entities or individuals yearly, on average, from 2016 to 2020 –
nearly 80% more than in 2008-2015. The one-term Trump administration
raised the US share of all new sanctions to almost half from a third before.
During January-May 2022, 75 countries implemented 19,268 restrictive trade measures.
Such measures on food and fertilizers (85%) greatly exceed those on raw
materials and fuels (15%). Unsurprisingly, the world now faces less
supplies and higher prices for fuel and food.
Monetary
authorities have been raising interest rates to curb inflation, but such
efforts do not address the main causes of higher prices now. Worse,
they are likely to deepen and prolong stagnation, increasing the
likelihood of ‘stagflation’.
Sanctions were supposed to bring Russia to its knees. But less than three months after the rouble plunged, its exchange rate is back to pre-war levels,
rising from the ‘rouble rubble’ promised by Western economic
warmongers. With enough public support, the Russian regime is in no
hurry to submit to sanctions.
thelastamericanvagabond | While much of the “mainstream” world has spent the last few days
obsessing over and debating the celebrity spectacle surrounding American
actor Will Smith slapping American comedian Chris Rock, the
international elitists were meeting in Dubai for the 2022 World Government Summit.
From March 28th to the 30th, corporate media journalists, heads of
state, and CEOs of some of the most profitable companies in the world
met for discussions on shaping the direction of the next decade and
beyond. Anyone with a functioning brain should ignore the tabloids and
instead pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist
Technocrats.
Let’s take a look at the speakers and the panels, starting with Mr.
Great Reset himself, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.
Schwab gave a talk entitled, Our World Today… Why Government Must Act Now?. “Thank you, to his excellency for enabling this initiative to define a longer-term narrative to make the world more resilient more inclusive and more sustainable,”
Schwab stated during his address. The use of the term narrative is
important because in January 2021, Klaus and the World Economic Forum
announced the next phase of The Great Reset, The Great Narrative.
As with The Great Narrative event, the World Government Summit was
also held in Dubai. As I wrote during the Great Narrative meeting:
“While the political leaders of the UAE and Klaus
Schwab may promote themselves as the heroes of our times, we should
judge them according to their actions and the company they keep, not the
flowery language they use to distract us. The simple fact is the UAE
has a horrible record on human rights. The nation is known for deporting
those who renounce Islam, limited press freedoms, and enforcing
elements of Sharia law.”
During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“,
which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where
digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology
to alter our lives. Often associated with terms like the Internet of
Things, the Internet of Bodies, the Internet of Humans, and the Internet
of Senses, this world will be powered by 5G and
6G technology. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also
lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The
goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged,
every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social
malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores.
Immediately following Schwab was a panel which made no attempt to hide the goals of the globalists. The panel, Are We Ready for A New World Order?, featured Fred Kempe, president
and CEO of the Atlantic Council since 2007, as well as an anchor for
CNN and a former advisor to former US president George W. Bush. Before
joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at
the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years.
In fact, the Atlantic Council had a fairly large presence at the World Government Summit, including appearances by Defne Arslan, senior director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program, and Olga Khakova, Deputy Director of Global Energy Center of Atlantic Council.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Atlantic Council, I first reported in May 2018 that Facebook had partnered with the thinktank connected to NATO. I wrote:
“The Atlantic Council of the United States was
established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations.
Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes
and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The
Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an
umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the
Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATO works similarly to the Atlantic
Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military
officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are
favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATO is independent of
NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.
Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer
companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians,
journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement
their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO
governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have
made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows
individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of
hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually
selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public
policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the
family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have
spoken at or attended council events.”
unz |But
the largest feather in Kholomoisky’s cap is no doubt President Zelensky
himself. Kholomoisky’s channel created and ran the “Servant of the
People” show that featured Zelensky as an honest and intrepid President
of Ukraine dedicated to fighting corruption and defending the Ukrainian
people. When the elections came around, Kholomoisky’s people and his
media resources went all out in campaigning for their man. My personal
favorite play was when they bribed Facebook fortune-tellers to spin
prophecies about the coming of the president-that-was-promised and
thereby secured the superstitious peasant granny vote. If any Western
politicians are reading this, put down Sun Tzu and try some of this
Kholomoisky fellow’s stratagems during the next election cycle instead.
Now,
Russia has declared that they are planning to do a thorough
“denazification” campaign, which almost certainly means a thorough purge
of the Galician faction from the positions that they have taken since
Yushenko let them into the government. As for what will happen to the
oligarchs who bankrolled this whole operation, well, that’s still
somewhat up in the air. It’s worth point out that Russia used to have
dealings with them right up until the events of Euromaidan. The
arrangement was simple: Russia paid them to behave and not ally against
Russia with the West. As we can see looking back, this was clearly a
catastrophic strategy, and what’s worse, I can only shake my head at how
uncreative and uninspired it was—a cardinal sin in my book. The worst
possible outcome for Ukraine at this point is if Russia comes to a
compromise with some element of the existing power structure in Ukraine
once they wrap up the military operation. We now know that no
negotiations with the Galician faction are possible, so we can cross
them off the list. That leaves the Eastern Mafia. Rumors of
Kholomoisky’s imminent surrender aside, I can’t help but hope that his
chutzpah has finally crossed the line and that he will be forced to
spend the rest of his days exiled in Israel along with his puppet
Zelensky. As for the rest of the oligarchs, well, both Petro Poroshenko
and Yulia Timoshenko held photo-ops in Kiev with Kalashnikovs in their
hands, so we can cross them off the list as well. Further than that and
we enter the realm of pure speculation.
Clearly,
the best outcome would be for a military man from Russia with no
history of doing politics or business in Ukraine to come in and take the
reins as a vizier or military governor of sorts for a time. This
solution may offend committed ideologists and apologists for Liberal
Democracy (read: Oligarchy), but the hard truth of the situation that
Ukraine finds itself in is one in which literally no one who was
anywhere near the reins of power in that country for the last three
decades has his hands clean. These people all looted, collaborated and
murdered with near impunity for 30 years. With Russia now performing a
political prison break from Liberal Oligarchic Occupation Government
right before our very eyes, we can only hope that Ukraine will be able
to follow suit and break free from the shackles as well.
mintpressnews |The Mega Group — a secretive group of
billionaires to which Lauder belongs — was formed in 1991 by Charles
Bronfman and Leslie Wexner, the latter of whom has received considerable
media scrutiny following the July arrest of his former protege Jeffrey
Epstein. Media profiles of
the group paint it as “a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation’s
wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” focused on
“philanthropy and Jewishness,” with membership dues upwards of $30,000
per year. Yet several of its most prominent members have ties to
organized crime.
Mega Group members founded and/or are
closely associated with some of the most well-known pro-Israel
organizations. For instance, members Charles Bronfman and Michael
Steinhardt formed
Birthright Taglit with the backing of then- and current Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu. Steinhardt, an atheist, has stated that his
motivation in helping to found the group was to advance his own belief that devotion to and faith in the state of Israel should serve as “a substitute for [Jewish] theology.”
Other well-known groups associated
with the Mega Group include the World Jewish Congress — whose past
president, Edgar Bronfman, and current president, Ronald Lauder, are
both Mega Group members — and B’nai B’rith, particularly its spin-off
known as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Bronfman brothers were
major donors to the ADL, with Edgar Bronfman serving as the ADL’s honorary national vice-chair for several years.
When Edgar Bronfman died in 2013, long-time ADL Director Abe Foxman said,
“Edgar was for many years Chair of our Liquor Industry Division, Chair
of our New York Appeal, and one of our most significant benefactors.”
Other Mega Group members that are donors and major supporters of the ADL
include Ronald Lauder, Michael Steinhardt and the late Max Fisher.
As previously mentioned, Roy Cohn’s father was a long-time leader of
B’nai B’rith’s influential New England-New York chapter and Cohn was
later a celebrated member of its banking and finance lodge.
In addition, Mega Group members have
also been key players in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. For
instance, Max Fisher of the Mega Group founded the National Jewish Coalition, now known as the Republican Jewish Coalition — the main pro-Israel neoconservative political lobbying group,
known for its support of hawkish policies, and whose current chief
patrons, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, are among Donald Trump’s
top donors.
Though the Mega Group has officially
existed only since 1991, the use of “philanthropy” to provide cover for
more unscrupulous lobbying or business activities was pioneered decades
earlier by Sam Bronfman, the father of Mega Group members Edgar and
Charles Bronfman. While other North American elites like J.D.
Rockefeller had previously used philanthropic giving as a means of
laundering their reputations, Bronfman’s approach to philanthropy was
unique because it was focused on giving specifically to other members of
his own ethno-religious background.
Sam Bronfman, as was detailed in Part I
of this series, had long-standing deep ties to organized crime,
specifically Meyer Lanksy’s organized crime syndicate. Yet, Bronfman’s
private ambition, according to those close to him, was to become a
respected member of high society. As a consequence, Bronfman worked hard
to remove the stain that his mob associations had left on his public
reputation in Canada and abroad. He accomplished this by becoming a
leader in Canada’s Zionist movement and, by the end of the 1930s, he was head of the Canadian Jewish Congress and had begun to make a name for himself as a philanthropist for Jewish causes.
Yet even some of Bronfman’s activism
and philanthropy had hints of the mobster-like reputation he tried so
hard to shake. For instance, Bronfman was actively involved in the
illegal shipping of arms to Zionist paramilitaries in Palestine prior to
1948, specifically as a co-founder of the National Conference for Israeli and Jewish Rehabilitation that smuggled weapons to the paramilitary group Haganah.
At the same time Bronfman was
abetting the illegal smuggling of weapons to the Haganah, his associates
in the criminal underworld were doing the same. After World War II,
close aides of David Ben-Gurion, who would later become the first prime
minister of Israel and was instrumental in the founding of Mossad, forged tight-knit relationships
with Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Mickey Cohen and other
Jewish gangsters of the period. They used their clandestine networks to
establish a vast arms smuggling network between the United States and
Zionist settlements in Palestine, arming both the Haganah and the Irgun
paramilitary groups. As noted in Part I of this report, at the same time
these gangsters were aiding the illegal arming of ZIonsit
paramilitaries, they were strengthening their ties to U.S. intelligence
that had first been formally (though covertly) established in World War
II.
After Israel was founded, Sam Bronfmanworked with
future Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to negotiate the sale of
Canadian armaments at half-price to Israel and the bargain weapons
purchase was paid for entirely by a fundraising dinner hosted by
Bronfman and his wife. Many years later, Peres would go onto introduce another future prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, to Jeffrey Epstein.
The rest of the Bronfman family’s
march on “the road to respectability” was undertaken by Bronfman’s
children, who married into aristocratic families such as the European Rothschilds and the Wall Street “royalty” of the Lehmans and the Loebs.
The Bronfmans’ newfound
respectability did not mean that their association with the Lansky-led
criminal empire had dissolved. Indeed, prominent members of the Seagrams
dynasty came under fire in the 1960s and 1970s for their close association
with Willie “Obie” Obront, a major figure in Canadian organized crime,
whom Canadian professor Stephen Schneider has referred to as the Meyer
Lansky of Canada.
However, Edgar and Charles Bronfman
were hardly the only members of the Mega Group with deep and
long-standing ties to the Lansky-led National Crime Syndicate. Indeed,
one of the group’s prominent members, hedge fund manager Michael
Steinhardt, opened up about his own family ties to Lansky in his
autobiography No Bull: My Life in and out the Markets, where he noted that his father, Sol “Red McGee” Steinhardt, was Lansky’s jewel fence of choice and a major player
in New York’s criminal underworld. Sol Steinhardt was also his son’s
first client on Wall Street and helped him jumpstart his career in
finance.
The ties between the Mega Group and
the National Crime Syndicate don’t stop there. Another prominent member
of the Mega Group with ties to this same criminal network is Max Fisher,
who has been described as Wexner’s mentor and is also alleged to have worked
with Detroit’s “Purple Gang” during Prohibition and beyond. The Purple
Gang were part of the network that smuggled Bronfman liquor from Canada
into the United State during Prohibition, and one of its founders, Abe
Bernstein, was a close associate of both Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz. Fisher was a key adviser to several U.S. presidents, beginning with Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as to
globeandmail | The Ontario government
says it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to millions
of dollars donated through online fundraising platform GiveSendGo to
the convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at several border crossings.
The
province obtained an order from the Superior Court of Justice that
prohibits anyone from distributing donations made through the website’s
“Freedom Convoy 2022″ and “Adopt-a-Trucker” campaign pages, said a
spokeswoman for Premier Doug Ford.
Ivana
Yelich said the order binding “any and all parties with possession or
control over these donations” was issued Thursday afternoon. She cited a
section of the Criminal Code that allows the attorney general to apply
for a restraint order against any “offence-related property.”
Donors
initially raised more than $10-million through GoFundMe, which
announced last Friday it was pulling the plug on the campaign and that
the money would be refunded. The site said it initially believed the
demonstration was going to be peaceful, but withdrew its support after
police and local leaders raised concerns it had become an “occupation.”
Convoy
organizers quickly set up new campaigns on Christian fundraising site
GiveSendGo. As of Thursday, “Freedom Convoy 2022″ had raised
$US8.4-million and “Adopt-a-Trucker” had amassed more than $686,000.
GiveSendGo posted a statement on Twitter Thursday night about its “Freedom Convoy” campaign.
“Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo,” it said.
“All
funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients
of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
Organizers
have also touted the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as another way to generate
funds for protesters and avoid other potential fundraising shutdowns,
including during a news conference that was livestreamed to supporters
on Wednesday.
Ontario’s
move to freeze access to the donations comes the same day as an
all-party House of Commons committee of MPs heard testimony from deputy
directors of Canada’s financial intelligence hub about how it doesn’t
cover crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe.
miamiherald | Maxwell was once a fixture on the New York social scene who possessed a Rolodex of names and direct phone numbers to former presidents, world leaders, billionaires and celebrities. She was also for years Epstein’s girlfriend and, according to testimony, managed his household in Palm Beach and other locales where the multimillionaire maintained estates.
At least two women have claimed that they were trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to powerful and wealthy men, including Prince Andrew, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Federal prosecutors purposefully seemed to steer the case around the potential minefield of identifying figures they referred to as “third parties” who were in Epstein’s orbit. All the men have denied the allegations.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, said the verdict shows that prosecutors were right not to focus on these other figures. “The government’s decision to streamline their case was the right choice,” he said.
Like Epstein, Maxwell hired a team of defense lawyers who filed a flurry of legal motions focused on undermining the credibility of the accusers and portraying them as prostitutes. “Depending on the age of the accusers during the time frame of the conspiracy, consent may be an appropriate and viable defense,’’ Maxwell’s attorneys said in one motion, noting that in Florida at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, “individuals under the age of 18 could be charged with commission of the crime of prostitution.”
Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief who oversaw the earlier 2005-08 case against Epstein, said the verdict should send a message to everyone in the criminal justice system.
“In 2005, early in our investigation, the Palm Beach Police Department recognized the importance of stopping Jeffrey Epstein and bringing him to justice. The department never bent to the power and influence brought to bear against us.,” Reiter said.
“Now that the courts have spoken, I hope and pray that the professionals in our justice system learn from this case. Law school professors should teach this case in legal ethics courses as an example of how not to treat victims of sex crimes and as a forewarning to prosecutors on how they can be influenced to fail in their duties to both victims and the public.”
Maxwell’s verdict comes three years after the publication of “Perversion of Justice,” a Miami Herald investigation that told in vivid detail how Epstein and his team of high-profile attorneys manipulated the criminal justice system more than a decade earlier allowing him to escape federal prosecution. It told the stories of the girls, now women, and how they were coping years after their encounters with Epstein. Despite the fact that the FBI had evidence he sexually abused at least 34 girls, Epstein served just 13 months in the Palm Beach county jail on charges that he solicited one minor.
lamag |In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.
Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.
“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear, which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”
That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”
The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.
“Beverly Hills is definitely a target,” says security expert David Perez, CEO of Omega International Group and a former Marine who previously worked security in the Clinton White House and at the Pentagon. “We’re telling clients, ‘Hey, don’t go out with flashy jewelry. Try to keep a lower profile. Instead of driving the Bentley, maybe just take the SUV. “
Or hit the streets in a luxo ride retrofitted with countermeasures like electrified door handles, run-flat tires and armor plating that can withstand military ordnance—say, the $650,000 Mercedes-Benz S680 Guard, which can repel assault rifle rounds and the detonation of hand grenades, or the $1 million tanklike SUV from Latvia’s Dartz Motorz Co.
strategic-culture | Were you following the news this last week? Vaccine mandates are
everywhere: one country, after another, is doubling-down, to try to
force, or legally compel, full population vaccination. The mandates are
coming because of the massive uptick in Covid – most of all in the
places where the experimental mRNA gene therapies were deployed en masse. And (no coincidence), this ‘marker’ has come just as U.S. Covid deaths in 2021 have surpassed those of 2020.
This has happened, despite the fact that last year, no Americans were
vaccinated (and this year 59% are vaccinated). Clearly no panacea, this
mRNA ‘surge’.
Of course, the Pharma-Establishment know that the vaccines are no
panacea. There are ‘higher interests’ at play here. It is driven rather
by fear that the window for implementing its series of ‘transitions’ in
the U.S. and Europe is closing. Biden still struggles to move his
‘Go-Big’ social spending plan and green agenda transition through
Congress by the midterm election in a year’s time. And the inflation
spike may well sink Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (BBB) altogether.
Time is short. The midterm elections are but 12 months away, after
which the legislative window shuts. The Green ‘transition’ is stuck too
(by concerns that moving too fast to renewables is putting power grids
at risk and elevating heating costs unduly), and the Pharma
establishment will be aware that a new B.1.1.529 variant has made a big
jump in evolution with 32 mutations to its spike protein. This makes it
“clearly very different” from previous variants, which may drive further
waves of infection evading ‘vaccine defences’.
Translation: a new wave of restrictions, more lockdowns, and –
eventually – trillions of dollars in new stimmie cheques may be in
prospect. And what of inflation then, we might ask.
It’s a race for the U.S. and Europe, where the pandemic is back in
full force across Europe, to push through their re-set agendas, before
variants seize up matters with hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and
non-vaccinated; with riots in the streets, and mask mandates at
Christmas markets (that’s if they open at all). A big reversal was
foreshadowed by this week’s news: vaccine mandates and lockdowns, even
in highly vaccinated areas, are returning. And people don’t like it.
The window for the Re-Set may be fast closing. One observer, noting all the frenetic Élite activity, has asked
‘have we finally reached peak Davos?’. Is the turn to authoritarianism
in Europe a sign of desperation as fears grow that the various
‘transitions’ planned under the ‘re-set’ umbrella (financial, climate,
vaccine and managerial expert technocracy) may never be implemented?
Cut short rather, as spending plans are hobbled by accelerating
inflation; as the climate transition fails to find traction amongst
poorer states (and at home, too); as technocracy is increasingly
discredited by adverse pandemic outcomes; and Modern Monetary Theory
hits a wall, because – well, inflation again.
Are you paying attention yet? The great ‘transition’ is conceived as a
hugely expensive shift towards renewables, and to a new digitalised,
roboticised corporatism. It requires Big (inflationary) funding to be
voted through, and a huge parallel (inflationary) expenditure on social
support to be approved by Congress as well. The social provision is
required to mollify all those who subsequently will find themselves
without jobs, because of the climate ‘transition’ and the shift to a
digitalised corporate sphere. But – unexpectedly for some ‘experts’ –
inflation has struck – the highest statistics in 30 years.
There are powerful oligarchic interests behind the Re-Set. They do
not want to see it go down, nor see the West eclipsed by its
‘competitors’. So it seems that rather than back off, they will go full
throttle and try to impose compliance on their electorates: tolerate no
dissidence.
bloomberg | To show how exclusive you are, there’s nothing like turning away a billionaire.
Two
members of the three comma club were among those nominated to join
R360, a new, invitation-only investment and networking group for
people with net worth of $100 million or more. Neither billionaire made
it past the membership committee, according to Charles Garcia, one of
the group’s managing partners.
“I took some grief for that,” said the 60-year-old
entrepreneur, a consummate networker who founded Sterling Financial
Investment Group in the late 1990s and chaired South Florida chapters of
wealth network Tiger 21 for many years. “One person seemed to want to
leverage the group to benefit their own business activities, and the
other didn’t want to integrate his family.”
Neither of those are in line with the values
considered core to the group. Members with those values — which include
honor, entrepreneurial grit and generosity of spirit — are invited to go
on a three-year “journey” to gain mastery across six kinds of capital:
financial, intellectual, spiritual, human, emotional and social. A
three-year family membership costs $180,000.
There are countless formal and informal networks
for wealthy individuals and families, and R360 aims to find a place
among them. Tiger 21, perhaps the most widely known group, has nearly
1,000 members paying dues of $30,000 a year.
For the ultra-wealthy, these groups provide a
sort of confidential, supercharged coaching network on everything from
figuring out one’s purpose in life to learning more about philanthropy
to understanding the blockchain.
“When people get
wealth of $100 million or more, their issues are far greater than for
people who are wealthy but not at that level,” said Michael Cole, 61,
one of R360’s managing partners and the former chief executive officer
of Cresset Asset Management. “They’ve achieved success, and are looking
more at how can I make an impact on things that matter to me — for
myself, for my family, for society.”
Then there are philanthropic networks, such as
the invite-only Synergos Global Philanthropy Circle, founded by Peggy
Dulany and her late father, David Rockefeller, with more than 100 member
families around the world. Like R360, GPC describes membership as
a journey — a year-long cycle of “inspiring, engaging and connecting
philanthropists and social investors to create a better world.” Dues are
$25,000 a year.
These independent groups are in addition to those those formed by private banks
and high-end wealth-management firms, which pour resources into
building networks designed to connect, educate, entertain — and retain
— their ultra-wealthy clients and their children.
They can also be flourishing businesses
themselves. Tiger 21 was founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Michael
Sonnenfeldt, who sold roughly a 50% stake to private equity firm
Education Growth Partners in 2019 for an undisclosed sum.
R360
is set up as a limited partnership, with 48 founding partners
contributing $350,000 each, which equates to about a 60% ownership. The
group wants to add about 50 members a year until reaching 500 in the
U.S. and 500 abroad. Garcia stresses that R360 will never be sold, and
that “the idea is to have this around 100, 200 years from now.”
charleshughsmith |Though no one dares confess this publicly, America is now a moral cesspool. As a result,
the moral legitimacy of the nation’s leadership has been lost. Every nook and cranny
of institutionalized America is dominated by self-interest, and much of the economy is
controlled by profiteering monopolies and cartels which wield far more political power
than the citizenry.
Civic virtue has been lost. What remains is elite self-interest masquerading as civic virtue.
In his Farewell Address, President Carter explained that "The national interest is not always
the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must
not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility."
Social cohesion, civic virtue and moral legitimacy are the foundation of every society,
but they are especially important in composite states.
America is a composite state, composed of individuals holding a wide range of regional,
ethnic, religious and class-based identities. The national identity is only one ingredient
in a bubbling stew of local, state and regional identities, ethnic, cultural and religious
identities, educational/alumni, professional and tradecraft identities, and elusive but
consequential class-based identities.
Composite states are intrinsically trickier to rule, as there is no ethnic or cultural identity
that unifies the populace. Lacking a national identity that supersedes all other identities,
composite states must tread carefully to avoid fracturing into competing regional, ethnic
or cultural identities.
Composite states must establish a purpose-based identity that is understood to demand shared
sacrifice, especially in crisis. In the U.S., the national purpose has been redefined by the
needs of the era, but never straying too far from these core unifying goals: defending the
civil liberties of the citizenry from state interference, defending the nation from external
aggressors, and serving the common good by limiting the power of special interests and
privileged elites.
We've failed to limit the power of privileged elites, failed to demand greater sacrifices
of the wealthy in exchange for power, and so the moral legitimacy of the regime has been lost.
And with the ascendance of self-interest and the elite's abandonment of sacrifice,
social cohesion has been lost.
This loss is reflected in the bitter partisanship, the increasingly Orwellian attempts to
control the mainstream and social media narratives, the debauchery of "expertise" as
dueling "experts" vie for control, the fraying of social discourse, the substitution of
virtue-signaling for actual civic virtue, the institutionalization of white-collar crime
(collusion, fraud, embezzlement, etc.), the increasing reliance on Bread and Circuses (stimulus,
Universal Basic Income) as real opportunity dissipates, and the troubling rise in shootings,
crime, random violence and plummeting marriage and birth rates.
The unraveling of social cohesion has consequences. Once social cohesion unravels, the
nation unravels.
strategic culture | With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation,
the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound.
The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population
reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery.
It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions
remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of
the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We
have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the
greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.
Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create
anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its
pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable,
self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction.
We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious
interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also
about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims
(remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their
occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’
because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to
power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and
terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the
operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards
socio-political aims.
Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends.
The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic
oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance,
and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for
finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because
automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net
losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial
‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced.
theeconomiccollapseblog | Over the past couple of years we have become accustomed to expecting
the unexpected, but soon we many have to start anticipating the
unthinkable. In this article, I am going to be discussing a couple of
potential scenarios that would have been unimaginable to the vast
majority of Americans just a few short years ago. Unfortunately, our
world is now changing at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and
many things that were once “unimaginable” could soon become reality.
Let’s start by talking about the record-setting heat wave which is
making the epic megadrought in the western half of the country even
worse. Many western farmers planted crops this year hoping that weather
conditions would eventually turn in their favor, but that has
definitely not happened. In fact, at this point 88 percent of the West is experiencing at least some level of drought.
2021 has been the worst year of this multi-year megadrought so far,
and last week was the worst week for this drought up to this point in
2021. Old temperature records were shattered all over the West, and
some areas were already seeing triple digits by 8 o’clock in the morning…
The West is in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave
this week, as all-time records were shattered and daily records broken
in over a dozen states.
Even by desert standards, the heat wave in the Southwest is atypical.
On Thursday, the National Weather Service in Tucson tweeted that the
city recorded a temperature of 100 degrees at 8:14 a.m., the second
earliest time in the day recorded since 1948.
That is crazy.
Can you imagine hitting triple digits before you have even finished your morning coffee?
Summer had not even officially begun yet last week, and yet new all-time record highs were being established all over the place…
Record-breaking temperatures spread from California to
Montana this week. On thursday, the all-time high temperature was tied
in Palm Springs, California at 123 degrees, breaking the previous June
record of 122 degrees.
Salt Lake City tied its all-time record high of 107 degrees. The old
record was notably set in July — when temperatures are usually at their
highest for the year in that region. This comes after daily record highs
were broken Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Salt Lake, each with
temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
We have never seen anything quite like this in the state of Utah.
With drastic limits placed on what little water he has,
Tom Favero said he and many farmers along this west side of Weber County
were forced to watch some crops die. “We’ve all made serious choices of
what fields we can water and what we can’t,” Favero said.
Another Utah farmer that lost a lot of corn and an entire field of barley said that it really “hurts” to see his hard work go to waste…
Farmer Dean Martini pointed at one of his fields. “That
corn there, where I can’t water, I don’t have the water. It makes me
sick to see it go to heck like that.”
With limits on amount and time, he said there wasn’t enough water
flowing to make it across his fields. While some of the corn dried up,
he had to let a whole field of barley go too. “It hurts buddy. That
hurts,” Martini said.
Of course this is just the beginning.
If this summer is as hot and as dry as they are projecting, we could see catastrophic crop failures all across the West.
And that is really bad news, because the state of California alone produces more than a third of our vegetables and about two-thirds of our fruits and nuts.
A few years ago, hardly anyone would have imagined that we would be
facing a crisis of this magnitude in 2021, but here we are.
Paleoclimatologist Kathleen Johnson is quite “worried” about what will
happen this summer, and she is warning that this drought is shaping up
to be the worst the region has experienced “in at least 1,200 years”…
I’m worried about this summer – this doesn’t bode well,
in terms of what we can expect with wildfire and the worsening drought.
This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that
we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years.
theatlantic | When you come into money as I
did—young, scared, and not very savvy about the world—you are taught
certain precepts as though they are gospel: Never spend the “corpus”
(also known as the capital) you were left. Steward your assets to leave
even more to your children, and then teach them to do the same. And
finally, use every tool at your disposal within the law, especially
through estate planning, to keep as much of that money as possible out
of the hands of government bureaucrats who will only misuse it.
If
you are raised in a deeply conservative family like my own, you are
taught some extra bits of doctrine: Philanthropy is good, but too much
of it is unseemly and performative. Marry people “of your own class” to
save yourself from the complexity and conflict that come with a broad
gulf in income, assets, and, therefore, power. And, as one of my uncles
said to me during the Reagan administration, it’s best to leave the
important decision making to people who are “successful,” rather than in
the pitiable hands of those who aren't.
I
took far too long to look with clarity upon these precepts and see them
for what they are: blueprints for dynastic wealth. Why it took me so
long is a fair question. All I know is that if you are a fish, it is
hard to describe water, much less to ask if water is necessary, ethical,
and structured the way it ought to be. As long as no one so much as
raised an eyebrow about the ethics of the CRAT, the CRUT,
and the credit swap, who did I think I was to query the fundamentals? I
did not have the emotional courage to go down that path.
There
was another reason for my inaction, and I am deeply ashamed to say what
it was. But here goes: Having money—a lot of money—is very, very nice.
It’s damn hard to resist the seductions of what money buys you. I’ve
never been much of a materialist, but I have wallowed in the less
concrete privileges that come with a trust fund, such as time, control,
security, attention, power, and choice. The fact is, this is pretty
standard software that comes with the hardware of a human body.
As
time has passed, I have realized that the dynamics of wealth are
similar to the dynamics of addiction. The more you have, the more you
need. Whereas once a single beer was enough to achieve a feeling of
calm, now you find that you can’t stop at six. Likewise, if you move up
from coach to business to first class, you won’t want to go back to
coach. And once you’ve flown private, wild horses will never drag you
through a public airport terminal again.
Comforts,
once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become
necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common
feeling with the rest of humanity.
I
tell you all this not to defend myself; that’s between me and my
conscience. I am telling you this because human nature is a mighty
force, and fighting it requires understanding it.
What has caused me to question my indoctrination has been ethics.
commondreams | A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
finds that the U.S. continues to suffer from the extreme and growing
wealth and power of inherited-wealth family dynasties – and the growth
of their extreme wealth accelerated during the pandemic.
The report, “Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America’s 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality,”
tracked the 50 wealthiest families from 1983 to 2020 using data from
Forbes. IPS researchers found that by 2020, the 50 families had amassed
$1.2 trillion in assets. For the 27 families on the Forbes 400 list in
1983, their combined wealth had grown by 1,007 percent and for the five
wealthiest dynastic families, their wealth increased by a median 2,484
percent during 37 years. The Walton family led the pack with an increase
of 4,320 percent, while the Mars candy family saw its wealth increase
3,517 percent.
“When we focus on the surging fortunes of
first-generation billionaires – and their shocking tax avoidance – we
forget to look at the troubling growth of dynastic families and the
changes in tax policies that will enable the children of today’s
billionaires to become tomorrow’s oligarchs,” said Chuck Collins,
co-author of the report and author of the new book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.
“In
a healthy democratic society with a functioning tax system, wealth
disperses over decades as people have children, pay their taxes, and
give to charity. But with a weak tax system on wealth – as confirmed by
the recent leak showing low billionaire taxes – we are now seeing
wealth accelerate over generations, leading to consolidated wealth and
power,” he said.
The report finds that inherited wealth
dynasties are growing due to an inadequate tax system, excessive hiding
of wealth in dynasty trusts, and low charitable giving by
multi-generational wealth dynasties. It also finds that members of the
inherited wealth generation are using their wealth and power to rig the
rules to get more wealth and power. Some are even using their charitable
donations and political giving to press for lower taxes.
Other key findings from the report include:
Dynastic
wealth grows much faster than the wealth of ordinary families. The 27
families who were on the Forbes 400 list in 1983 had a median increase
in their net worth, adjusted for inflation, of 904 percent over those 37
years. In contrast, between 1989 and 2019—the most recent year
available—the wealth of the typical family in the U.S. increased by just
93 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The
wealth of the very top grew even faster. The five wealthiest dynastic
families in the US have seen their wealth increase by a median 2,484
percent from 1983 to 2020. For example:
In
1983, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his children were worth just
$2.15 billion (or $5.6 billion in 2020 dollars). By the end of 2020,
Walton’s descendants had a combined net worth of over $247 billion, an
inflation-adjusted increase of 4,320 percent.
The
Mars candy dynasty has seen its wealth increase 3,517 percent over the
past 37 years, from $2.6 billion in 1983 (in 2020 dollars) to $94
billion by 2020. The Mars family also stands out for the miniscule
amount of money they have stored in family foundations—$48 million as of
2018—in contrast to the large sums they have spent on public policy
advocacy to change tax laws.
Dynastic wealth
is persistent and consolidating. Of the 20 wealthiest families on the
list in 2020, 13 were already in the top 20 in 1983. Only 4 of the top
20 wealth dynasties are new to the list since 1983.
Wealth
for dynastic families has grown significantly during the COVID-19
pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the top 10
families on the Forbes dynasty list have had a median growth in their
net worth of 25 percent.
Dynastically
wealthy families wield a great deal of political power, and use it to
further their interests. The report profiles dynastic family members who
spend millions lobbying for favorable tax, labor, and trade policies,
give to candidates, campaigns and PACs, serve on policy advisory boards;
and even serve in government themselves. For example, members of the
Busch, Mars, Koch, and Walton families have together spent more than
$120 million over the past ten years on lobbying directly for tax,
labor, and trade policies favorable to their businesses and investments.
Dynastic
families exploit their philanthropic power too, through charities and
foundations. The report examined more than 248 foundations set up by the
top 50 families, housing more than $51 billion in assets. While many
move much-needed revenue to broader public interest charities, others
fund groups working to reduce taxes on the wealthy and roll back
regulations that constrain corporate profits. Some funnel millions to
donor-advised funds, which can fund dark-money political advocacy. And
in a few cases, family members have used them to compensate themselves.
The
report profiles all of the 50 families, including the Waltons, the
Kochs, the Mars family, and many others, some well-known and some
relatively unknown. The report explains the dangers from the extreme
consolidation of dynastic wealth and power.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...