This “energy miracle” in the Lone Star State has to be one of the most remarkable energy success stories in history.
As a result of the impressive, “eye-popping,” and ongoing surges in Texas’s oil production over the last decade, the Lone Star State recently surpassed Canada’s oil output for the first time this year (except for a few previous outlier months when production in Canada dropped sharply, see chart below), and now produces more oil (4.6 million barrels per day) than all other countries except for Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (see map below).
And if the recent year-over-year output increases of 25-35 percent in recent months continue in Texas, it won’t be long before the state’s crude oil production tops Iraq’s daily output (of 4.7 million barrels), and it will only be Russia and Saudi Arabia that out-produce the Lone Star State.
The near quintupling of oil output in Texas, from about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2008 to what will likely be more than 5 million bpd by the end of this year—ranking the state as the world’s No. 4 oil-producing “nation,” fueled by 35 percent annual increases in recent months—has to be one of the most remarkable energy success stories in history.
And this “energy miracle” in the Lone Star State has nothing to do with Obama’s recent delusional claims of his alleged contributions to America’s new position as the world’s No. 1 oil producer, and everything to do with the contributions of free-market capitalism, Yankee ingenuity, technological innovation, revolutionary drilling and extraction techniques supported by modern Made-in-the-USA equipment, and, most importantly, the contributions of America’s many risk-taking “petronpreneurs” who are the real “miracle workers” in America’s amazing energy success story.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-01 14:57:042022-08-01 14:57:32Texas Now Produces More Oil Than Every Country in the World Besides Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq
The author of the article in question told FEE it was not a parody.
UN Chronicle, the official magazine of the United Nations, recently deleted a 2008 article titled “The Benefits of World Hunger.”
The article, which now leads to an “error page,” was written by George Kent, a now retired University of Hawaii political science professor. In the article, Kent argued that hunger is “fundamental to the working of the world’s economy.”
“Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive,” Kent wrote. “That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.”
UN Chronicle deleted the article after it began to cause a stir on social media. The magazine said Kent’s article should not be taken literally, contending that it was a work of parody.
“This article appeared in the UN Chronicle 14 years ago as an attempt at satire and was never meant to be taken literally. We have been made aware of its failures, even as satire, and have removed it from our site.”
In the face of looming food/energy shortages caused by disastrous climate policies, the UN says “Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.”
— The Real Andy Lee Show (@RealAndyLeeShow) July 6, 2022
Satire or Literal?
At first glance, there seems to be little reason to doubt the United Nations. As some writers have noted, previous works written by Kent include Ending World Hunger, The Political Economy of Hunger: The Silent Holocaust, and Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food.
These titles hardly suggest that Kent sees global hunger as a good thing. In light of this, some contended that he was taking an approach not unlike Jonathan Swift, whose famous essay “A Modest Proposal” cheekily argued that Irish families should alleviate their mean condition by selling excess children to the wealthy for food.
After reading the UN’s tweet, Yahoo’s report, and several other pieces of commentary on the subject, I initially agreed that Kent’s article likely was written as satire. However, closer examination and a brief conversation with Kent revealed that is not the case.
First, it’s important to note that Kent himself denies the article was intended as a form of satire.
“I don’t think the UN would have published it if they thought it was satire or advocacy,” Kent told Climate Depot in a recent phone interview.
In the interview, Kent explains he was not advocating global hunger but was intending to be “provocative” by saying certain individuals and institutions benefit from global hunger.
UN journal article explains ‘The Benefits of World Hunger’ – ‘Hunger has great positive value…Hungry people are the most productive people’ –
“No, it is not satire,” Kent told Marc Morano, founder and editor of Climate Depot. “I don’t see anything funny about it. It is not about advocacy of hunger.”
I reached out to Kent and asked if the quotes were accurate, and he told me they were, adding that he intends to publish a paper this fall that will further detail his views.
“Marc understood me very well,” Kent told me in an email. “I hope my current paper on who benefits from hunger helps to make my position clear to everyone involved in this discussion.”
Additionally, the article’s concluding paragraph supports Kent’s claim that the work was not designed as either satire or advocacy. A careful reading of the text suggests Kent is being quite literal when he writes that some people benefit from global hunger.
“For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields?” Kent wrote. “Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.”
One senses in these words disapproval. The global poor exist because the wealthy require them to exist. Global hunger exists because humans are simply not doing the moral and necessary things to eradicate it.
But what are those things? A glimpse at Kent’s 2011 Ending Hunger Worldwide offers a clue. In the summary of the book, readers are told the keys to tackling global hunger are “building stronger communities” and challenging “dominant market-led solutions.”
In Kent’s view, one gathers, global hunger is not a complex problem that is being addressed by free market capitalism; it’s a moral one that requires empowering intellectuals like Kent to solve it.
It’s also worth noting that reviews of Kent on Rate My Professor—which gives him a rating of 1.9 out of 5—suggest he’s, well, perhaps a bit of an ideologue.
“Avoid this man with your life. Very opinionated and if your opinion differs, you will fail. He’s the worst professor i’ve had,” one reviewer wrote.
“Horrible professor if you are not politically aligned with his values you WILL FAIL,” another contended.
“Very opinionated and unhelpful,” opined another. “Very critical and extremely boring. Unsupportive and irritating.”
Alleviating Global Hunger and the Rise of ESG
Whether Kent is a good professor or not, or whether his article was satire or literal, are questions that ultimately do not matter a whole lot in the larger scheme of things. What does matter are the policies that cause global hunger and the policies that alleviate global hunger.
And on this front, there has been stunning progress in recent decades. As Our World in Data shows, the percentage of undernourished people in developing countries has plummeted in recent years, falling from 35 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 2015.
How this happened is not a mystery. As economist Bob Murphy noted in FEE.org, the proliferation of free market capitalism has “gone hand-in-hand with rapid and unprecedented increases in human welfare.”
“As the World Bank reports, the global rate of ‘extreme poverty’ (defined as people living on less than $1.90 per day) was cut in half from 1990 to 2010. Back in 1990, 1.85 billion people lived in extreme poverty, but by 2013, the figure had dropped to 767 million—meaning the number of those living on less than $1.90 per day had fallen by more than a billion people.’”
Ironically, no better example of this can be found in recent decades than China, which has achieved nothing short of an economic miracle in recent decades. China saw its percentage of underweight children fall from 19 percent in 1987 to 2.4 percent in 2013. As recently as 1990, 66 percent of Chinese people lived in extreme poverty. By 2015, that figure was less than one percent.
How did China achieve this economic miracle? By pivoting to privatization following the death of Party Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), as I pointed out in 2019.
In 1979, China adopted its “household responsibility system,” giving many farmers ownership of their crop for the first time. This was followed by Communist Party leaders opening China to foreign investment, curbing price controls and protectionism, and implementing mass privatization of its economy.
The “market-led solutions” that Kent has disparaged have worked wonders for hunger alleviation. The same cannot be said for initiatives hatched by the central planners at the United Nations, the organization that published Kent’s controversial article on hunger.
Sri Lanka’s current food crisis stems directly from an effort to shift the country’s agriculture sector to organic farming, which saw the import of fertilizers banned and led the country to become an importer of rice instead of an exporter virtually overnight.
Many writers and thinkers are blaming Sri Lanka’s crisis on the global rise of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), which was started in 2004 under the auspices of—you guessed it—the United Nations to encourage “sustainable development.”
A food, energy, and financial crisis has brought down Sri Lanka's government. But the underlying cause is the fact that the nation's political leaders had fallen under the spell of green elites peddling “ESG” and banning modern fertilizers.https://t.co/En6rbDrsYu
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) July 10, 2022
And people are right to blame ESG. Writing for the World Economic Forum in 2016, economist Joseph Stiglitz said “Sri Lanka may be able to move directly into… high-productivity organic farming…”
This is a tragedy. And while George Kent is clearly wrong—there are no benefits to world hunger—one begins to understand why his 15-year-old article published by the United Nations is suddenly sparking so much interest
It’s not just Sri Lanka, after all. The Netherlands, Canada, and other countries are all making headlines with food schemes that are likely to goose their ESG score—but cause serious problems at a time when global hunger is on the rise for the first time in decades.
If our population were the same size as 500 years ago we'd be poorer and more polluted. Humans solve problems. https://t.co/3NnZVBNMgX
In light of current global policies, anti-population rhetoric, and the track record of twentieth century collectivist food schemes—Holodomor, Cambodia, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which saw tens of millions starve to death because of government policies—George Kent’s “The Benefits of World Hunger” article hit too close to home.
(Editor’s Note: We’ve posted George Kent’s 2008 entire article below since the United Nations removed the article from their site so readers can determine for themselves Kent’s purpose in writing the article.)
We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.
We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying “Will Work for Food.” Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?
More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of their wealth.
The conventional thinking is that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs. For example, an article reports on “Brazil’s ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom”. While it is true that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs, we need to understand that hunger at the same time causes low-paying jobs to be created. Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer? Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?
Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.
The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world, including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?
For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-01 14:47:402022-08-01 14:49:03UN Deletes Article Titled ‘The Benefits of World Hunger.’ Was It Real or Satire?
Texas border patrol agents seized $2.1 million worth of liquid methamphetamine from a vehicle attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico, according to authorities.
The seizure took place at the Rio Grande City Port of Entry, and the total weight of the liquid drug amounted to 110 pounds, CNN reported.
The bust allegedly occurred last Sunday after a 2012 Dodge was stopped by federal officials for further inspection while attempting to cross the border.
Federal agents at the entrance point unveiled the hidden stash via “non-intrusive inspection system” technology and brought in K-9 units as well, according to New York Daily News.
The alleged driver of the vehicle was an unidentified 41-year-old American citizen, the outlet added.
Both the drugs and the driver were handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for additional investigation.
Earlier this month, San Diego County, California, experienced one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history.
Officials followed a suspicious commercial-sized truck that crossed the border from Mexico, seized five thousand pounds of meth and arrested four men that hailed from Tijuana, Mexico.
President Joe Biden has completed his sixth quarter in office with a historically low average approval rating of 40%, according to a Friday Gallup poll.
This average represents the lowest sixth-quarter (which spans April 20 to July 19) results for a first-term president, and comes on the back of a July poll by Gallup which found Biden’s approval had fallen to 38% that month. Biden’s approval amongst independents fell to the lowest levels on record, with only 31% approving of his tenure, and his 78% approval among Democrats is tied for his lowest score with them, according to Gallup.
These results come as a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll finds that 50% of Democrat voters would prefer a presidential candidate other than Biden in 2024.
It would be extremely unusual for Biden to make significant gains in the seventh quarter, as the only president to do so was President George H. W. Bush, according to Gallup.
Biden’s approval amongst Republicans remains in the single digits at 5%, which is comparable to opposition-party approval among recent predecessors President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, according to Gallup. 87% of Republicans and 43% of independents strongly disapprove of Biden’s tenure, while just 6% of Democrats strongly disapprove.
Joe Biden’s approval rating just hit 38%, a new low. Look at the poll questions and results yourself. The most popular president in American voting history appears to have lost many of his supporters. https://t.co/vjQguO4z0N
Overall, 69% of those polled either moderately or strongly disapproved of Biden’s tenure, according to Gallup. While Gallup does not always ask about the intensity of approval or disapproval, 87% represents the highest “strongly disapprove” rating by an opposition party on record.
Only 83% of Democrats strongly disapproved of Trump, while 81% strongly disapproved of President George W. Bush at the height of their disapproval, according to Gallup. In contrast, only 75% of Republicans strongly disapproved of Obama at the peak of their disapproval.
Gallup stressed that the question of intensity is not regularly asked, being asked six times during Trump’s term and only four times during Obama’s first term, so it is “unclear if a party group has ever held more strongly negative opinions of a president than Republicans now do of Biden.”
“I understand that they’ve got a tough job,” said 44 year-old independent Clifton Heard, who voted for Biden in 2020, speaking to The New York Times about the Biden administration. “He wasn’t prepared for the job”
The Gallup poll sampled 1,013 adults, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-08-01 14:17:322022-08-01 14:35:51POLL: Biden Just Set A Record For Dismal Job Approval
The Biden administration is closing gaps in the border wall in Arizona, despite Joe Biden’s promise he would not build “another foot” of Trump’s border wall. Wouldn’t you love to know why Biden wants to build the wall, especially since Democrats have called the wall ‘racist’, making the Biden administration racist for building it? I would like to know, too, but all we get out of the White House is gaslighting. They’re not building the wall, the White House press secretary insists. They’re ‘cleaning up a mess left by the Trump administration.’ If you can figure out what that means, let me know.
Building the wall represents an about-face for an administration that has instituted numerous policy changes to open the border, changes I’ve documented in previous commentaries. The administration might be building the wall, but it’s still making policy changes to open the border at the same time, which makes absolutely no sense at all. The administration just confirmed it will be giving identification cards to illegal aliens. Border-jumpers should be detained and deported but, instead, the Biden administration is releasing them into the interior and now making it easier for them to travel by plane and access government benefits with a secure ID card. The administration’s recent announcement it will allow illegal aliens to apply for asylum online from anywhere in the world has been heavily criticized. One Senator called it an ‘open invitation to Chinese spies to enter the U.S.’.
The consequences of the new online asylum system have yet to be seen, but the consequences of earlier policy changes are already visible, and they are ruinous.
The masses of unaccompanied children pouring across the border have led to contracts costing hundreds of millions of dollars for a facility to house some of them in North Carolina while they await resettlement. The facility has rock climbing walls, an 8-lane swimming pool, mental health counseling, legal services – the works. I remember that a similar facility considered by the Obama administration during a previous alien child surge was canceled due to public outrage. Not this time.
Out of 30,000 catch-and-release aliens targeted to receive court summonses for failing to appear for immigration hearings, only 600 have been served. Officers call the exercise a “complete waste of time.” I call it a joke.
Federal air marshals had to be called in to help with the influx of illegal aliens at the border caused by Joe Biden’s open borders policies. The marshals escort aliens from processing facilities into the custody of border agents for release into the interior. Why authorities even bother with this step when the escort is for all of 50 yards is beyond me.
All this laxness has given rise to human smuggling operations inside the U.S. Last week, ICE found 73 illegal aliens living in six homes operated by smugglers in a wealthy area of Washington, D.C. It’s not clear who the cocaine found during the raid was for.
Building the wall in Arizona, while letting the alien invasion continue in Texas. Releasing aliens into the interior with summonses not worth the paper they’re written on while giving them secure ID cards. Continuing to tell the public the border is secure when obviously it is not – none of this makes any sense. But if you expect rationality from wild-eyed left-wing ideologues who hate America with a passion, you’re not going to get it. Who knows what the latest reversal is about, but it’s certainly not about admitting Trump was right, after all.
By the third week of July 2022, some 16,000 cases of monkeypox had been recorded across 75 countries, with the vast majority of cases occurring among homosexual and bisexual men. In the U.S., recorded cases were around 3,000, including two children
July 23, 2022, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unilaterally overruled this panel of advisers and declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC). Ghebreyesus made the decision to declare a PHEIC even though the WHO’s advisory panel opposed the declaration 9 to 6
According to Ghebreyesus, “for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups”
At present, the PHEIC appears to be financially motivated. Moderna is testing an mRNA injection for monkeypox, and in addition to the two smallpox vaccines already approved, Aventis Pasteur also has a smallpox vaccine that, while still investigational, could receive emergency use authorization
Disturbingly, in February 2022, the Wuhan Institute of Virology published a study in which they describe creating a portion of a monkeypox genome from scratch in order to develop a PCR test for monkeypox diagnosis. The National Institutes for Health in the U.S. also began studying a monkeypox drug in 2020
Ever since the first European cases of monkeypox were confirmed in early May 2022, many suspected smallpox or monkeypox would become the next global pandemic to justify continued tyranny and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.
Indeed, in early December 2021, media started signaling that smallpox might be the next pandemic. As it turns out, monkeypox1 is the same family as smallpox,2 but is nowhere nearly as lethal.
By the third week of July 2022, some 16,000 cases of monkeypox had been recorded across 75 countries, with the vast majority of cases occurring among homosexual and bisexual men. In the U.S., recorded cases were around 3,000, including two children.
As we saw with COVID-19, health authorities claim many of the infections have no known source of infection, suggesting it may be spreading in unknown ways. With COVID, they blamed it on “asymptomatic spread,” which was always a complete fallacy. Time will tell what they come up with here.
Monkeypox Declared a Public Health Emergency
As reported by The New York Times,3 as of late June 2022, World Health Organization advisers still did not recommend issuing an emergency declaration for smallpox, in large part because “the disease had not moved out of the primary risk group, men who have sex with men, to affect pregnant women, children or older adults, who are at greater risk of severe illness if they are infected.”
One month later, the panel was still deadlocked in disagreement, with six supporting a declaration and nine opposing it.4 Despite the lack of consensus, July 23, 2022, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unilaterally overruled this panel of advisers and declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC).5
That same day, the National Coalition of STD Directors also urged President Biden to follow the WHO’s lead and declare monkeypox a national public health emergency, and to allocate $100 million in emergency funding.6
According to Ghebreyesus, six versus nine “is very, very close,” and “Since the role of the committee is to advise, I then had to act as a tie-breaker.”7 In the real world, six versus nine is not “a tie.” So, clearly, the director-general was driven to act based on something else, and this silly justification was all he could come up with.
Importantly, the “public health emergency of international concern” declaration gives Ghebreyesus a number of distinct powers, including the ability to recommend how member states should respond to the outbreak, which of course includes the recommendation to mass vaccinate. As reported by The New York Times:8
“The WHO’s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response. The designation can lead member countries to invest significant resources in controlling an outbreak, draw more funding to the response, and encourage nations to share vaccines, treatments and other key resources for containing the outbreak.”
Monkeypox Virus Made by Wuhan Institute of Virology
In other words, “here we go again,” as predicted. And, as with COVID, there’s evidence that we may not be dealing with something that arose accidentally and naturally.
As discussed by Dr. John Campbell in the featured video, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China and the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. have coincidentally been working on the monkeypox virus and its treatment9 for some time.
The NIH, which has identified monkeypox as a potential bioterrorism agent, is currently studying the safety and efficacy of an antiviral called tecovirimat for the treatment of monkeypox. The study in question began September 28, 2020, and will run through the end of September 2025.
Meanwhile, the WIV published a study10 in February 2022, in which they describe creating a portion of a monkeypox genome from scratch in order to develop a PCR test for monkeypox diagnosis.
As explained by Campbell, they created a section (fragment) of the monkeypox virus’ genome in order to use that as a quantitative polymerase chain-reactive (qPCR) template. Curiously, the paper states that, because there’s never been a monkeypox outbreak in China, “the viral genomic material required for qPCR detection is unavailable.”
So, they created a version of the monkeypox genome on their own, using synthetic techniques such as viral DNA recombination. They basically built a new genome by stitching it together using a variety of (presumably known) gene sequences. The new DNA construct is then reproduced by growing it in yeast, and that yeast is subsequently used to assess the veracity of the PCR test.
Why did they choose this route? The monkeypox virus is readily available in several laboratories around the globe, most notably Africa, but also other countries, so why didn’t they just get it from one of those? As noted by Campbell, the idea that they have to synthesize their own virus because it’s unobtainable is simply not believable, and therefore raises a number of concerns.
What’s more, the paper even warns that “this DNA assembly tool applied in virological research could … raise potential security concerns … especially when the assembled product contains a full set of genetic material that can be recovered into a contagious pathogen.”
Now, to be clear, they did not create a full-length genome in this study. The genome fragment they used was only one-third of the full genome of the monkeypox virus, and this was supposedly done to prevent the accidental reverse engineering of an infectious virus. Still, it raises concerns about the risks inherent in creating synthetic viruses.
Prepare for Another Round of Fearmongering — and Vaccinations
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is already urging those who may be at high risk for monkeypox — including those who attended the “Daddyland Festival” in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend — to get vaccinated.11
New York City started administering the smallpox vaccine in late June 2022. That’s not a typo. There is no specific monkeypox vaccine. They’re using the smallpox vaccine under the assumption that it might work because the two viruses are in the same family of pox viruses, but there’s very little evidence for this.12
The idea that smallpox vaccines may be effective against monkeypox comes from a 1988 non-randomized observational study13 in which 0.96% of vaccinated close contacts contracted monkeypox, compared to 7.47% of unvaccinated close contacts.
Two of the biggest problems with this assumption are that a) the vaccine used in that 1988 study was a first-generation vaccine that is no longer in use, and b) the current strain of monkeypox has undergone many mutations since 1988. So, there’s really no telling whether the vaccine will have any benefit at all.
As noted by Ira Longini, Ph.D., a biostatistician at the University of Florida and a WHO adviser, “The truth is, we don’t know the efficacy of any of these monkeypox vaccines.”14 Such facts notwithstanding, by July 22, 2022, some 18,000 New Yorkers had already received their first dose of smallpox vaccine.15
Two Types of Smallpox Vaccines in Use
There are currently two types of smallpox vaccine available in the U.S.:16 ACAM2000, which contains live replicating but weakened vaccinia virus and Jynneos (also sold under the names Imvanex and Imvamune), which uses a live but non-replicating modified vaccinia Ankara virus.
Jynneos was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2019 and is indicated for smallpox and monkeypox in adults aged 18 and older.17 Since it doesn’t contain replicating virus, it’s thought to be less hazardous than ACAM2000, but there’s no guarantee.
It’s also not supposed to spread the virus, which is something that can occur with ACAM2000 (which is using a live replication-competent virus). Those who receive ACAM2000 have to take careful precautions, for a full month, to avoid spreading the virus to others.
ACAM2000 is known to produce severe side effects, including myocarditis at a rate of 5.7 per 1,000 vaccinees.18 Jynneos is “believed” to have a lower risk for cardiac adverse events, but time will tell whether that’s true. As with the COVID shots, those getting Jynneos are basically volunteers in a vaccine trial, whether they realize it or not.19
Disturbingly, HIV-positive subjects who participated in Jynneos clinical trials saw a rise in HIV virus counts.20 Today, gay men are the primary recipients of this vaccine, and they’re also a group that tends to be more prone to have HIV-AIDS. So, there may be significant risks to this vaccine in this particular group.
The U.S. Department of Health has a stockpile of more than 200 million doses of ACAM2000, and they’ve vowed to provide some 296,000 doses of Jynneos, but it’s unclear which of the two vaccines is currently being administered.
If someone you know has received the ACAM2000 vaccine, be sure to take the same precautions as you would with someone who is infected with monkeypox (see below).
The hazard of live vaccines was recently made evident by a case in which an unvaccinated individual contracted polio from a person who had received an oral live poliovirus vaccine.21 (The U.S. only uses inactivated polio vaccine, but live polio vaccine is still used in many other countries.) So, if ACAM2000 were to be widely used, and people fail to take proper precautions, outbreaks of smallpox could be possible.
Aventis Pasteur also has a smallpox vaccine that, while still investigational, could still receive emergency use authorization.22 It too is replication-competent, and therefore could create outbreaks if used extensively.
At present, the WHO is not recommending mass vaccination,23 primarily because the smallpox vaccine is known to have its risks. According to the WHO, good hygiene and safe sexual behavior are, for now, your best prevention against monkeypox. I suspect that may change in time, however, especially considering Moderna is now working on an mRNA monkeypox injection.24 Preclinical investigation is already underway.
How to Protect Yourself Against Monkeypox
The monkeypox virus is spread via close contact with infected bodily fluids, not through the air, so to protect yourself against it, be sure to:25
Avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with an infected person. This includes avoiding kissing, hugging, cuddling and sex
Do not touch the rash or scabs
Don’t handle or touch the bedding, towels or clothing of an infected person
Do not share eating utensils or cups with an infected person
Frequently wash your hands with soap and water, especially after contact with sick people
If you are infected with monkeypox, isolate at home and avoid close contact with people and pets while you have active symptoms, such as rashes. On a side note, Campbell is concerned that the virus may start spreading to house pets and other animals found in suburban areas, such as squirrels, which could result in monkeypox becoming endemic in the West as it has been in Africa.
Interestingly, while monkeypox has historically resulted in painful rashes and pus-filled lesions all over the body, in most current cases, the lesions are localized to the genital and anal regions. So, clearly there are some differences between the current outbreak and the monkeypox of old.
Avoiding sexual contact appears to be a primary strategy to avoid infection at present, and that goes for women as well. While many are dismissing monkeypox as a “gay disease,” doctors warn that “anyone can get it.”26
This makes sense, since not all men who have sex with men are exclusively homosexual. Bisexuals who have sex with both genders will sooner or later spread it to female partners, and children can also be affected through skin-to-skin contact.
According to the CDC, the two children in the U.S. who were diagnosed with monkeypox had contact with “individuals who come from the men-who-have-sex-with-men community.”27 That said, homosexual and bisexual men and their partners are undoubtedly in the highest-risk category. As noted by Ghebreyesus:28
“Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”
The Financial Incentive Behind Monkeypox
COVID-19 has arguably been the greatest profit maker for Big Pharma of all time, and monkeypox is undoubtedly viewed as a similar future profit maker. The sad reality is, there’s so much liability-free money to be made in pandemic vaccines, they’re not likely to give up on them, and that requires keeping the world in a more or less constant health emergency.
As COVID fatigue is setting in and people are increasingly resisting the shots, monkeypox allows for a brand-new cycle of fear porn to be spun, and for new experimental vaccines to be rolled out. This, I fear, is why Ghebreyesus unilaterally decided to declare monkeypox a global health emergency.
Ghebreyesus may also be trying to push the pandemic treaty forward. Either way, his behavior is a foretaste of what we can expect if that pandemic treaty becomes reality. As noted by Dr. Robert Malone in a July 23, 2022, Substack article:29,30
“Clearly, the WHO committee did not reach the desired decision to declare a PHEIC, and so for some extraordinary reason Tedros stepped in … Tedros’ statements clearly demonstrate that he unilaterally substituted his own opinions for those of the convened panel, raising questions of his objectivity, commitment to process and protocol, and whether he has been unduly influenced by external agents.”
In short, Ghebreyesus is acting like a corrupt dictator, and it’s not difficult to figure out who the beneficiaries might be. In a recent review31 by Pandemics Data Analytics (PANDA), they detail the corruption by the WHO, global leaders and governments around the world during the COVID pandemic. As noted by Malone:32
“This review empowers you with key information to help you assess the WHO’s candidacy as an authoritative global public health organization … It is a must-read by anyone who is interested in public health, the global COVID-19 WHO policies that almost all nations followed, and the full extent of the corruption …”
There’s no doubt the WHO should not be given the sole authority to make medical decisions for the whole world, and Ghebreyesus’ decision to “break the tie” when there really wasn’t one is a perfect example of what can and probably will happen if the WHO is given that power.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-08-01 09:50:432022-08-03 07:47:49VIDEO: Is Monkeypox the Next HIV, Planned Out 5 Years Ago?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-01 09:35:202022-08-01 09:40:42Watch ‘Bloody Hill — The Seven Abominations of January 6’ Documentary
The world-famous Tavistock clinic has been forced to close.
Halfway through her investigation into transgender medicine for children in the UK, Dr Hilary Cass has shut down the only gender clinic in the country, radically reorganized the provision of transgender medicine and cast a shadow over its safety. Transgender medicine in the UK is in disarray, following similar turmoil in Sweden, Finland and France.
The Tavistock clinic – which has been “the model for treating trans people around the world” — will be forced to close and a new system of regional clinics will replace it. It is not, according to her interim report, “a safe or viable long-term option in view of concerns about lack of peer review and the ability to respond to the increasing demand.”
Dr. Cass is a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, so she is well qualified to pass judgement on the activities of the controversial clinic.
In an open letter to England’s National Health Service, Dr. Cass, who was appointed the chair of an independent review of gender identity services for children and young people in late 2020, spoke with a candour which has been rare in discussions of transgender issues. “My interim report highlighted the gaps in the evidence base regarding all aspects of gender care for children and young people,” she said, “from epidemiology through to assessment, diagnosis, support, counselling and treatment.”
She zeroed in on the single most controversial issue, the use of puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. Her judgement is devastating. She declared that there is a “lack of clarity about whether the rationale for prescription is as an initial part of a transition pathway or as a ‘pause’ to allow more time for decision making.”
“We therefore have no way of knowing whether, rather than buying time to make a decision, puberty blockers may disrupt that decision-making process.”
A further concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e. maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement).
If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences.
In short, the use of puberty blockers to pause sexual maturation so that children can decide which gender they want is self-defeating. It may make them less able to make a mature decision on issues which have lifelong consequences. In the words of Keira Bell, a young British woman fought a court battle with the Tavistock and who began taking puberty blockers at 16:
“This so-called ‘pause’ put me into what felt like menopause, with hot flushes, night sweats, and brain fog. All this made it more difficult to think clearly about what I should do.”
Trustworthy research must be a priority for the NHS, says Dr Cass. Without it, “the evidence gap will continue to be filled with polarised opinion and conjecture, which does little to help the children and young people, and their families and carers, who need support and information on which to make decisions.”
UK supporters of transgender rights put a brave face on the bad news. Mermaids, one of the most vocal advocacy groups, said “We welcome the Cass recommendations and are cautiously optimistic that we might finally see positive change and investment in the current system, after years of pain and anguish which has caused untold damage to the health and wellbeing of trans young people and their families.”
The extraordinary thing about developments in the UK is that across the Atlantic, there is no evidence of an evidence gap. The Biden Administration is vigorously promoting transgender medicine and leading medical associations have endorsed puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The American media have almost completely ignored the extraordinary events in the UK.
However, the British press, which is robustly progressive on most social policies, cheered the shuttering of the Tavistock clinic. The Times editorialized about “the scandal”:
“Science should never be prisoner to ideology, nor should scientists be intimidated into muting doubts about current practice. The Tavistock’s reliance on puberty blockers has been compared to the 20th-century craze for curing mental illness with lobotomies. It is based on little clinical evidence but becomes a universal cure. Children are subject to myriad factors affecting their mental health: anorexia, self-harming, isolation and ruptured relationships. Body dysmorphia should be set in the context of overall pediatric care, as it now will be. Worries about the Tavistock’s obtuse ideology have long been highlighted by writers for The Times. At last the health service has listened.”
Now that this scandal has been exposed, will Keira Bell’s heart-breaking message survive a trip across the Atlantic? — “I was an unhappy girl who needed help. Instead, I was treated like an experiment.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-08-01 07:55:212022-08-01 07:56:35VIDEO: The UK’s Transgender Castle Comes Tumbling Down
In 449 B.C., the Roman government passed the Law of the Twelve Tables, regulating much of commercial, social, and family life. Some of these laws were reasonable and consistent with an economy of contract and commerce; others prescribed gruesome punishments and assigned cruel powers and privileges given to some. Other regulations fixed a maximum rate of interest on loans of approximately 8 percent. The Roman government also had the habit of periodically forgiving all interest owed in the society; that is, it legally freed private debtors from having to pay back interest due to private creditors.
In 45 B.C., Julius Caesar discovered that almost one-third of the Roman citizenry was receiving their grain supply for free from the State.
The Roman government also set price controls on wheat. In the fourth century, B.C., the Roman government would buy grain during periods of shortages and sell it at a price fixed far below the market price. In 58 B.C., this was improved upon; the government gave grain away to the citizens of Rome at a zero price, that is, for free.
The result was inevitable: farmers left the land and flocked to Rome; this, of course, only made the problem worse, since with fewer farmers on the land in the territories surrounding Rome, less grain than before was being grown and brought to the market. Also, masters were freeing their slaves and placing the financial burden for feeding them on the Roman government at that zero price.
In 45 B.C., Julius Caesar discovered that almost one-third of the Roman citizenry was receiving their grain supply for free from the State.
To deal with the financial cost of these supplies of wheat, the Roman government resorted to debasement of the currency, that is, inflation. Pricing-fixing of grain, shortages of supply, rising budgetary problems for the Roman government, monetary debasement and resulting worsening price inflation were a continual occurrence through long periods of Roman history.
Spending, Inflation and Economic Controls Under Diocletian
The most famous episode of price controls in Roman history was during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 244-312). He assumed the throne in Rome in A.D. 284. Almost immediately, Diocletian began to undertake huge and financially expensive government spending projects.
There was a massive increase in the armed forces and military spending; a huge building project was started in the form of a planned new capital for the Roman Empire in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) at the city of Nicomedia; he greatly expanded the Roman bureaucracy; and he instituted forced labor for completion of his public works projects.
The Roman government stopped accepting its own debased money as payment for taxes owed and required taxes to be paid in kind.
To finance all of these government activities, Diocletian dramatically raised taxes on all segments of the Roman population. These resulted in the expected disincentives against work, production, savings, and investment that have long been seen as the consequences of high levels and rates of taxation. It resulted in a decline in commerce and trade, as well.
When taxation no longer generated enough revenue to finance all of these activities, Emperor Diocletian resorted to debasement of the currency. Gold and silver coinage would have their metal content reduced and reissued by the government with the claim that their metallic value was the same as before. The government passed legal tender laws requiring Roman citizens and subjects throughout the Empire to accept these debased coins at the higher value stamped on each of the coin’s faces.
The result of this was inevitable, too. Since in terms of the actual gold and silver contained in them, these legal tender coins had a lower value, traders would only accept them at a discount. That is, they were soon devalued in the market place. People began to hoard all the gold and silver coins that still contained the higher gold and silver content and using the debased coins in market trading.
This, of course, meant that each of the debased coins would only buy a smaller quantity of goods on the market than before; or expressed the other way around, more of these debased coins now had to be given in exchange for the same amount of commodities as before. The price inflation became worse and worse as the Emperor issued more and more of these increasingly worthless forms of money.
The penalty imposed for violation of these price and wage controls was death.
Diocletian also instituted a tax-in-kind; that is, the Roman government would not accept its own worthless, debased money as payment for taxes owed. Since the Roman taxpayers had to meet their tax bills in actual goods, this immobilized the entire population. Many were now bound to the land or a given occupation, so as to assure that they had produced the products that the government demanded as due it at tax collection time. An increasingly rigid economic structure, therefore, was imposed on the whole Roman economy.
Diocletian’s Edict Made Everything Worse
But the worst was still to come. In A.D. 301, the famous Edict of Diocletian was passed. The Emperor fixed the prices of grain, beef, eggs, clothing, and other articles sold on the market. He also fixed the wages of those employed in the production of these goods. The penalty imposed for violation of these price and wage controls, that is, for any one caught selling any of these goods at higher than prescribed prices and wages, was death.
Realizing that once these controls were announced, many farmers and manufacturers would lose all incentive to bring their commodities to market at prices set far below what the traders would consider fair market values, Diocletian also prescribed in the Edict that all those who were found to be “hoarding” goods off the market would be severely punished; their goods would be confiscated and they would be put to death.
In the Greek parts of the Roman Empire, archeologists have found the price tables listing the government-mandated prices. They list over 1,000 individual prices and wages set by the law and what the permitted price and wage was to be for each of the commodities, goods, and labor services.
A Roman of this period named Lactanius wrote during this time that Diocletian “ . . . then set himself to regulate the prices of all vendible things. There was much blood shed upon very slight and trifling accounts; and the people brought no more provisions to market, since they could not get a reasonable price for them and this increased the dearth [the scarcity] so much, that at last after many had died by it, the law was set aside.”
The Consequences and Lessons from Roman Economic Policy
Roland Kent, an economic historian of this period, has summarized the consequences of Diocletian’s Edict in the following way:
“ . . . The price limits set in the Edict were not observed by the traders, in spite of the death penalty provided in the statute for its violation; would-be purchasers finding that the prices were above the legal limit, formed mobs and wrecked the offending traders’ establishments, incidentally killing the traders, though the goods were after all of trifling value; traders hoarded their goods against the day when the restrictions should be removed, and the resulting scarcity of wares actually offered for sale caused an even greater increase in prices, so that what trading went on was at illegal prices, therefore, performed clandestinely.”
The economic effects were so disastrous to the Roman economy that four years after putting the Edict into law, Diocletian abdicated, claiming “poor health” – a euphemism throughout history reflecting that if the political leader does not step down from power, others will remove him, often through assassination. And while the Edict was never formally repealed, it soon became a dead letter shortly after Diocletian left the throne.
Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, a leading historian on the ancient Roman economy, offered this summary in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926):
“The same expedient [a system of price and wage controls] have often been tried before him [Diocletian] and was often tried after him. As a temporary measure in a critical time, it might be of some use. As a general measure intended to last, it was certain to do great harm and to cause terrible bloodshed, without bringing any relief. Diocletian shared the pernicious belief of the ancient world in the omnipotence of the state, a belief which many modern theorists continue to share with him and with it.”
Finally, as, again, Ludwig von Mises concluded, the Roman Empire began to weaken and decay because it lacked the ideas and ideology that are necessary to build upon and safeguard a free and prosperous society: a philosophy of individual rights and free markets. As Mises ended his own reflections on the civilizations of the ancient world:
“The marvelous civilization of antiquity perished because it did not adjust its moral code and its legal system to the requirements of the market economy. A social order is doomed if the actions which its normal functioning requires are rejected by the standards of morality, are declared illegal by the laws of the country, and are prosecuted as criminal by the courts and the police. The Roman Empire crumbled to dust because it lacked the spirit of [classical] liberalism and free enterprise. The policy of interventionism and its political corollary, the Fuhrer principle, decomposed the mighty empire as they will by necessity always disintegrate and destroy any social entity.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-01 07:23:262022-08-01 07:26:08How The Roman Government Destroyed Their Economy
(CNN) New York City officials declared monkeypox a public health emergency Saturday, saying the city is the epicenter of the state’s outbreak and the move will boost measures to help slow the spread of the disease.
“We estimate that approximately 150,000 New Yorkers may currently be at risk for monkeypox exposure,” Mayor Eric Adams and Dr. Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the city’s health and mental hygiene department, said in a joint statement. “This outbreak must be met with urgency, action, and resources, both nationally and globally, and this declaration of a public health emergency reflects the seriousness of the moment.”
It comes just a day after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order declaring a state disaster emergency, saying “more than one in four monkeypox cases in this country” are in the state. Among several other actions, the governor’s order expands the number of people eligible to administer monkeypox vaccines, requires providers to send vaccine data to the state’s health department and will boost ongoing response efforts including efforts to get more vaccines and expand testing capacity, the governor’s office said……
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-01 07:14:162022-08-01 09:41:20100 Days To Midterms: New York Becomes Second Major U.S. City to Declare Health Emergency
But the Biden Administration continues to appease this hideous terror regime. Begging them to re-enter a more dangerous version of the Iran Nuclear Deal. The Biden Administration is an utter disgrace. And no coverage from the mainstream media. Where is the Republican Party on this?
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is planning to construct nuclear warheads and has threatened to pulverize New York, it said on two of its affiliated Telegram channels on Saturday.
Iran expert Ben Sabti tweeted that an IRGC “Telegram channel threatens to produce atomic warhead for missiles,” citing the IRGC telegram channel message: “Iran can immediately return to Emad project and build an atomic bomb if Natanz facilities are attacked.”
“Things don’t just happen. They’re made to happen.” — John F. Kennedy
So now we know how the Democrats devised their evil scheme for our innocent children. The clinical steps to grooming kids was the template for the Democrat run public education system.
What is really going on here? The destruction of civilization. By destroying gender, family, etc. you destroy civilization.
The steps predators take to groom children for sexual abuse bear a remarkable resemblance to some modern lesson plans in American elementary schools, according to descriptions clinical experts provided to the Daily Caller.
Proponents of introducing Critical Gender Theory curricula and graphic sexual education to young children in schools have rejected the “groomer” pejorative critics recently began lobbing at them. Still, the grooming methods that experts outlined for the Caller bear a striking resemblance to some of the newer sexual education lessons the fringe political left is pushing into classrooms.
The most common tactics groomers employ are cultivating a positive reputation within a community, introducing sexualized topics or imagery to kids, isolating them from their parents, and encouraging them to keep secrets, experts told the Daily Caller. Each of these red flags have manifested themselves in classroom policies or public programs for children across America in recent years.
“I can’t think of too many times where I would think that an unrelated person should say, ‘Don’t say this to your parents,’” Daniel Pollack, professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University, told the Daily Caller.
“[Parents] should be informed [about sex education], especially the younger kids are,” Chris Newlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, said. “I’m just not a fan of things being held secret from parents, and kids being told not to tell.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-01 06:36:292022-08-01 15:03:27The Clinical Steps To Grooming Kids Match Exactly What They’re Being Taught In Schools
The war between messy realities and smooth illusions may determine our future.
Pass a Tesla on the street or pick up an Apple Magic Mouse and you encounter the sleek simplified aesthetics that underlie the mindset of the new technocracy. Apple used Picasso’s Bull, a set of drawings that reduce the animal to a stylized cubist abstraction, as the basis for its own minimalist aesthetic reductionism. It’s an aesthetic that meshes with Big Tech’s love of frictionless experiences that make complex processes appear deceptively simple.
Eliminating the extrusions on a car or a computer peripheral doesn’t actually make them any simpler to construct or to operate. It’s a marketing strategy that also shapes how people think of technology. Early computer kits were messy assemblies of wire and circuit boards. The early internet was a sprawling assortment of unregulated content. That was around the time that science fiction author William Gibson, a foremost promoter of Cyberpunk, coined the term “cyberspace”. A generation later, Gibson even more radically envisioned the internet disappearing and being reduced to a few apps on the phone. And that is what happened.
A sizable percentage of the population now experiences the internet by flicking through platform apps like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Google, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Amazon. People flocked to frictionless experiences that simplified the internet from a bewildering jungle to a few apps whose algorithms offered customized push content to provide a distraction for a few minutes or hours. And those platforms ended up in charge of our society and our culture.
Free speech was the first casualty of the simplified internet. Most people give it away for convenience. And they never missed it until suddenly they realized that they wanted to say or hear things that the new platforms no longer allowed. Big Tech wanted people to keep on clicking, but not in a way that disrupted their business model, their politics or culture.
The problem wasn’t just censorship. The nature of how people experienced the internet had been fundamentally altered from open to closed, from pull to push and from independent distribution to a few centralized hubs. Senate hearings and threats of Section 230 intervention wouldn’t turn back the clock on not just how the internet was run, but how people used the internet.
And how people used the internet was also how speech, culture, and politics now worked.
The frictionless internet was both a model and a microcosm of a frictionless society, one in which the complex processes of the political system were ‘simplified’ and people did what they were told without realizing that is what they were doing. Cass Sunstein’s ‘Nudge’ suggested using sensible “choice architecture” to “nudge” people to make the right decisions. The book by the future and former Obama official came out a few years after Time Magazine declared “You”, as embodied by the social web, to be its “Person of the Year”
“You” turned out to be “Them”. Personalized recommendations were omnipresent nudges. Web 2.0 wasn’t empowering, it was profoundly disempowering. Moving from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ content turned netizens into passive feed consumers who were being distracted from their lack of agency with a bombardment of fake controversies and social media spawned nonsense. The two defining modes of Web 2.0, narcissism and trolling, were responses to the medium that also defined our society and our culture which is now one long battle between narcissists and trolls.
Early algorithms like Google’s PageRank that were bottom-up instead became top-down. The only true way to simplify everything was to rig it. And as the internet became everyday life, the difference between rigging the feed and rigging political systems became meaningless.
American elites envied the “frictionless democracies” of Europe where committees and stakeholders determined outcomes while allowing the public the illusion of participation. European elites appeared to synergistically merge media, political and corporate leadership into a smoothly running machine that amplified the right ideas and suppressed the wrong ones.
American politics was an old gas-guzzler with tail fins, fuzzy dice and smoke coming out of the hood while the elites wanted a sleek simplified electric car where all the dirty stuff happened out of sight and the public showed up on cue to vote the way that they were told.
Obama began the technocratic simplification of American politics. His brand was Picasso’s Bull applied to politics, a modernistic sketch, an abstraction, a set of delineations that simplified much, but offered nothing. Elites were impressed with how Obama simplified complicated issues with hollow aspirational platitudes. The more he spoke, the less he had to say, but the more moved the elites were by all the unspoken depths that they were sure lurked underneath.
“We are the ones we have been waiting for” was the embodiment of Web 2.0. Much like the “You” in YouTube, Obama and Big Tech were seizing power, not turning it over. The illusion of social participation was that power was being transferred to those who showed up instead of those running the system. And public frustration with the glass ceiling of the technocratic betrayal led to cultural backlashes on the internet and everything from Trump to Brexit.
Politics is meant to be ugly and messy by design. A too tidy politics has been rigged.
Frictionless politics eliminated debate and dissent. Or as Obama recently argued, “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.”
Democracy is based on a behind the scenes consensus, as he put it, “what to do about climate change” that has no room for someone who says, “This is a hoax that the liberals have cooked up.” Political debate can’t extend to questioning premises, only pathways to outcomes. In a frictionless democracy, captive conservatives can offer “free market solutions” to global warming or racial inequality, but they can’t question whether these should be on the agenda.
The manufactured consensus in which people are allowed to differ on tactics not agenda items is the simplification of electoral politics that has taken hold in many first world countries. It is what leads people to think of different parties as flavors or variations on a theme. The illusion of choice fools many, but not all, especially as real problems take hold and cannot be addressed because they do not fall within the ideological premise of the artificial consensus.
Democracy that is all sleek lines, a mere hint of form, seeks to rid itself of the messy disagreements under the illusion that the elemental truth of a civilized society lies in eliminating the mess rather than embracing it. Europeans used to think this way, but Americans knew better. The Founding Fathers embraced the mess and made it the epicenter of our political experience. Radicals think that they are discrediting the Constitution when they delve into its messy history. To simplifiers who think like teenagers, the messy cannot be ideal and true.
Simplification suggests that life is simple. And that technology simplifies problems rather than complicates them. Thinking this way makes it all too easy to believe in preposterous abstractions like Modern Monetary Theory or Zero COVID. To simplify is to believe that following experts and relying on simple answers will create a natural unity like Obama’s right side of history. When political philosophies replaced religion, they outsourced Divinity to experts and to the invisible hands of whatever guiding force they believed governed all human affairs.
To deny it is political heresy or misinformation. The categorization of classes of speech as “misinformation” or “disinformation” merges politics and technocracy, reducing political dissent to a computer problem. Ideas become binary, either true or false, sorted based on expert opinion. Technology did not originate this familiar tyranny. but its aesthetics make it seem logical and rational. Riefenstahl and Eisenstein made the Nazis and Communists seem heroic figures struggling for the soul of man. Technosimplification is even more pernicious in the way that it suggests that the problems have been solved and all it takes is clearing away the excess.
Simplicity can be more dangerous than totalitarian grandiosity because the cult lies within. Its invisibility makes it more seductive. Totalitarians wanted to overwhelm society while the simplifiers underwhelm it. Less is more, society could stand to lose pounds, conveniences, and complexities. Individualism isn’t a political crime, it’s an inconvenience. Morality is a trend and the conscience surrenders to the algorithm. You will own nothing and be happy.
The minimalism that makes anti-aspirationalism seem aspirational also made anti-capitalism into capitalism. It tapped into eastern philosophy to envision a seamless future that would replace the industrial revolution with a unity of art, technology and culture. That way of looking at the world remains central to key Big Tech giants like Apple, Netflix, and Facebook. Its hodgepodge of zen and business jargon is often mocked, but still defines the machine.
The internet, like the rest of our society, is at war between its messy truths of human nature and the technology underneath and the sleek simple aesthetics that make abstract socioeconomic theories seem realizable with a smooth technocracy and better AI. Progress comes from embracing the messiness of human nature and technology, repression comes from smoothing it away. That war between messy realities and smooth illusions may determine our future.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-08-01 06:19:272022-08-01 06:20:03The Frictionless Politics of the Social Technocracy
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00John Droz, Jr.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJohn Droz, Jr.2022-07-31 15:16:242022-07-31 15:16:24AWED Newsletter: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.
Hannah Arendt’s eyewitness assessment of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as “terribly and terrifyingly normal” took the world by surprise.
Nine months after the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann died at the end of a noose in Israel, a controversial but thoughtful commentary about his trial appeared in The New Yorker. The public reaction stunned its author, the famed political theorist and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). It was February 1963.
Arendt’s eyewitness assessment of Eichmann as “terribly and terrifyingly normal” took the world by surprise. Her phrase, “the banality of evil,” entered the lexicon of social science, probably forever. It was taken for granted that Eichmann, despite his soft-spoken and avuncular demeanor, must be a monster of epic proportions to play such an important role in one of the greatest crimes of the 20th Century.
“I was only following orders,” he claimed in the colorless, matter-of-fact fashion of a typical bureaucrat. The world thought his performance a fiendishly deceptive show, but Hannah Arendt concluded that Eichmann was indeed a rather “ordinary” and “unthinking” functionary.
How callous! A betrayal of her own Jewish people! How could any thoughtful person dismiss Eichmann so cavalierly?! Arendt’s critics blasted her with such charges mercilessly, but they had missed the point. She did not condone or excuse Eichmann’s complicity in the Holocaust. She witnessed the horrors of national socialism first-hand herself, having escaped Germany in 1933 after a short stint in a Gestapo jail for “anti-state propaganda.” She did not claim that Eichmann was innocent, only that the crimes for which he was guilty did not require a “monster” to commit them.
How often have you noticed people behaving in anti-social ways because of a hope to blend in, a desire to avoid isolation as a recalcitrant, nonconforming individual? Did you ever see someone doing harm because “everybody else was doing it”? The fact that we all have observed such things, and that any one of the culprits might easily, under the right circumstances, have become an Adolf Eichmann, is a chilling realization.
As Arendt explained, “Going along with the rest and wanting to say ‘we’ were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible.”
Eichmann was a “shallow” and “clueless” joiner, someone whose thoughts never ventured any deeper than how to become a cog in the great, historic Nazi machine. In a sense, he was a tool of Evil more than evil himself.
Commenting on Arendt’s “banality of evil” thesis, philosopher Thomas Whitewrites, “Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened.’”
Perhaps Hannah Arendt underestimated Eichmann. He did, after all, attempt to conceal evidence and cover his tracks long before the Israelis nabbed him in Argentina in 1960—facts which suggest he did indeed comprehend the gravity of his offenses. It is undeniable, however, that “ordinary” people are capable of horrific crimes when possessed with power or a desire to obtain it, especially if it helps them “fit in” with the gang that already wields it.
The big lesson of her thesis, I think, is this: If Evil comes calling, do not expect it to be stupid enough to advertise itself as such. It’s far more likely that it will look like your favorite uncle or your sweet grandmother. It just might cloak itself in grandiloquent platitudes like “equality,” “social justice,” and the “common good.” It could even be a prominent member of Parliament or Congress.
Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, I suggested in a recent essay, were peas in the same pod as Eichmann—ordinary people who committed extraordinarily heinous acts.
Hannah Arendt is recognized as one of the leading political thinkers of the Twentieth Century. She was very prolific, and her books are good sellers still, nearly half a century after her death. She remains eminently quotable as well, authoring such pithy lines as “Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians,” “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution,” and “The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.”
Some of Arendt’s friends on the Left swallowed the myth that Hitler and Stalin occupied opposite ends of the political spectrum. She knew better. Both were evil collectivists and enemies of the individual (see list of suggested readings below). “Hitler never intended to defend the West against Bolshevism,” she wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “but always remained ready to join ‘the Reds’ for the destruction of the West, even in the middle of the struggle against Soviet Russia.”
To appreciate Hannah Arendt more fully, I offer here a few additional samples of her writings:
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
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The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.
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The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied—as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels—that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.
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Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change—no matter how. Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it they articulate it, and by articulating it they make the people somehow love it. They were told before, thou shalt not kill; and they didn’t kill. Now they are told, thou shalt kill; and although they think it’s very difficult to kill, they do it because it’s now part of the code of behavior.
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The argument that we cannot judge if we were not present and involved ourselves seems to convince everyone everywhere, although it seems obvious that if it were true, neither the administration of justice nor the writing of history would ever be possible.
