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Drag Queen Story Time is not okay – spiked

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2020

DQST performances underscore the idea that womanhood is a gaudy, sexualised costume. Children are introduced to the use of preferred pronouns and the concept, popularised by queer theory, that ‘gender is a performance’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/03/drag-queen-story-time-is-not-okay/

Jo Bartosch

 

I’m sure many of us have often thought that what’s missing from the early-years curriculum are men with plastic tits and spangly dresses reading books. But fear not, SNP MP Mhairi Black is on a mission to right this crushing injustice, championing the rights of queer-identifying five-year-olds across Scotland.

Last month, Black accompanied Nathan Mullen, a drag queen who performs under the name ‘FlowJob’, to Glencoats primary school to mark LGBT History Month. Mullen does work for an initiative for kids called ‘Drag Queen Story Time’ (DQST). And in addition to reading to reception classes at Glencoats, the pair educated the children about Section 28, a law introduced in 1988 (now repealed) that banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’.

Shortly after the visit, it became apparent that Mullen’s social media was full of adult content. A gale-force Twitterstorm erupted, with the Glencoats’ headteacher, Mullen and Black accused of failing in their duty to protect children. Predictably, those who questioned the rationale behind inviting an adult entertainer into a primary school were smeared as bigots. Black tweeted that the criticisms were homophobic, and that a visit from a gay MP and drag queen when she was at school ‘would have made an immeasurable difference’ to the ‘difficult childhoods’ endured by her and her ‘LGBT classmates’.

Unlike Black and Mullen, I came of age under Section 28, and I never want to see people hidden away or made to feel ashamed of who they love. But it is fair to ask who exactly benefits from DQST – because, arguably, it isn’t children.

Pioneered by ‘queer activist’ Michelle Tea, DQST events were first trialled in 2015 at a public library in San Francisco. Now it has migrated over to Britain, too. Last month the British Library promoted an event with children’s drag entertainer Alyssa Van Delle, calling Van Delle a ‘hot’ performer who will ‘have you on the edge of your seat and gagging for more’.

DQST claims to offer ‘queer role models’ to children. But despite the popularity of its events, it remains unclear how a man in a lurid frock will make kids with two mums feel supported, or how DQST serves to stop the bullying of kids who don’t conform. Britain is a remarkably tolerant country and many children will have a same-sex couple somewhere in their family; aunties Clare and Kate are likely to be better role models than adult entertainers with X-rated social-media feeds.

DQST has been widely praised as ‘teaching tolerance’, but one of the great things about young children is that they don’t really have any preconceptions to challenge. DQST seems just to be an opportunity for straight middle-class parents to feel worthy and to bond over a post-performance soy macchiato.

Still, there is something more sinister to DQST. The male drag performers going into schools and libraries are routinely introduced to children as ‘she’. In this way, far from challenging stereotypes, DQST performances underscore the idea that womanhood is a gaudy, sexualised costume. Children are introduced to the use of preferred pronouns and the concept, popularised by queer theory, that ‘gender is a performance’.

At a fundamental level, this creates a disjuncture between what the child knows to be true and what the child is compelled to say. In this way, DQST teaches compliance; it is the conceit of arrogant activists who seek to indoctrinate children, not educate them. That this is happening under the guise of ‘inclusivity’ and within libraries and schools is a bitter irony.

 

There is some disquiet from within the drag scene itself about DQST. Gay drag queen Kitty Demure has compared DQST to having ‘a stripper or a porn star to influence your child’.

In a video that rapidly went viral, Demure addressed DQST’s fans, who want to show the world they’re not ‘Nazis’ or ‘homophobes’, telling them: ‘Honestly, you’re not doing the gay community any favours. In fact, you’re hurting us. We have already had a reputation of being paedophiles, and being perverts, and deviants. We don’t need you to bring your children around.’

To my mind, DQST is a sinister attempt to force an adult ideology on to children. Accusations of homophobia have been weaponised to silence critics. As Mhairi Black’s reaction to the Glencoats controversy shows, motivations must not be questioned when they come wrapped in sparkles and rainbows.

It seems we have learned nothing. Yet again, fears of ‘isms’ and causing offence have been put ahead of safeguarding. I fear the legacy of DQST will last long after Mullen has hung up his wig and size-10 stilettos.

 

Be seeing you

 

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The Vatican Gorbachev | The Vineyard of the Saker

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2020

Like Gorbachev with Russia, Pope Bergoglio’s Perestroika aimed at reconstructing the Catholic Church, after Pope Benedict’s puzzling resignation. But Perestroika, for Bergoglio, meant making Catholicism compliant and consonant with the times, by a program of massive de-sacralization, the spiritual equivalent of privatization in the lay world of economy and business. In practice, he turned the Church into a servant of the new Masonic world-order in stars and stripes.

Many consider the transition from Pope Ratzinger to Pope Bergoglio as a watershed in the Catholic world. Namely, the conversion of the Church from a bastion of resistance against the antichristian powers of capitalist globalism, into an organization that embraces it.

Does the Vatican now see the Bible as progressives see the Constitution-A living (malleable) document?

https://thesaker.is/the-vatican-gorbachev/

By Jimmie Moglia for The Saker blog

Men judge by the complexion of the sky, the state and inclination of the day. Yet, to the perplexed observer it was difficult, in 2013, to guess what Pope Bergoglio was up to. For one, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was puzzling. After all, the last Pope to resign, 719 years earlier, was Celestine V, five months after his election, in 1294 AD.

Celestine V was a monk who disliked publicity and crowds, and there is evidence that he did not want to be elected in the first place. For, after his election, he promptly issued an edict confirming the right of a Pope to abdicate. His successor, Boniface VIII, annulled all Celestine’s other edicts but the one about abdication. He then imprisoned Celestine in a castle, to prevent him from being elected by others as an anti-pope.

It was a time when competing clerical parties elected a different pope, each calling the other the anti-pope. Eventually there were simultaneously three of them, an issue finally resolved by the Council of Konstanz in 1414-1418. Those interested may watch the related video I produced https://tinyurl.com/ybk23rgs

Historically, the multi-pope emergency mirrors the US Cabal declaring the puppet Juan Guaido’ as ‘legitimate’ president of Venezuela, and biting their lips for having failed, so far, to carry out their coup in Caracas.

In his ”Divine Comedy”, Dante Alighieri positions Celestine V in an anti-chamber of Hell, and refers to him as “he who made for cowardice, the great refusal.” (“Colui che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto!”).

Dante is actually even more unkind towards Celestine’s successor Pope Boniface VIII, a Dante’s contemporary. He anticipates Boniface ending up in the eighth circle of Hell, among the avaricious and the practitioners of simony. They – each of them – live head-down in a hole, unable to see what is happening outside. Their feet burn in eternity, thanks to a type of high-performance, high-temperature, long-lasting cooking oil.

One such hole hosts a previous simonizing Pope, Nicholas III, who, hearing noises but unable to see, thinks that Dante is someone else and asks, “Are you here already, Boniface (VIII) ?” Dante used this escamotage to predict the after-life destiny of the simonizing Boniface, still alive when Dante wrote the Comedy.

By the way, Boniface VIII also launched the first Holy Year (Annus Sanctus) in 1300 AD, seen by apologists as an instrument to fortify the Church, and by critics as a marketing tool to extract fees from pilgrims, in exchange for a plenary indulgence. Read the rest of this entry »

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Another African Tragedy – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2020

Guterres’ suggestion that global warming is the cause of today’s plague is sheer nonsense. Locust infestations have been feared and revered throughout mankind’s history. Devastating locust attacks in Egypt around 1446 B.C. were mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. “The Iliad” describes locusts taking flight to escape fire. Plagues of locusts are also mentioned in the Quran.

Africa’s locust plague is man-made. Economic development organizations and activist nongovernmental organizations have foisted “agroecology” on the poorest nations — an organic-style agriculture.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/walter-e-williams/another-african-tragedy/

By

Here are a few headlines about an African tragedy: “Africa’s Worst Locust Plague in Decades Threatens Millions” (The Wall Street Journal), “‘Unprecedented’ Locust Invasion Approaches Full-Blown Crisis” (Scientific American), “Somalia Declares Locust Outbreak a ‘National Emergency’” (The National) and “UN Calls for International Action on East Africa Locust Outbreak” (Bloomberg Green). This ongoing tragedy is mostly man-made, according to an analysis by Paul Driessen, who is a senior policy adviser with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Driessen says that billions of desert locusts have attacked the eastern Africa nations of Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. According to the U.N., the locust attack in Kenya is the worst in 70 years and the worst in 25 years for other east African nations. Locusts are destroying crops and threatening tens of millions of Africans with lost livelihoods and starvation. These locust swarms can blanket 460 square miles at a time and consume more than 400 million pounds of vegetation daily. They reproduce fast, too, meaning locust swarms could be 500 times bigger in six months.

Africa’s locust plague is man-made. Economic development organizations and activist nongovernmental organizations have foisted “agroecology” on the poorest nations — an organic-style agriculture. They promote the virtues of peasant farming. So how do these poor farmers fight the locust plague? Driessen says: “Desperate Africans are responding with ‘time-tested’ methods: whistling and shouting loudly, banging on metal buckets, waving blankets and sticks, crushing the bugs perhaps even roasting and eating them, under UN-approved nutrition programs. In Eritrea, they are using ‘more advanced’ methods: hand-held and truck-mounted sprayers. In Kenya, police are firing machine guns and tear gas into the swarms!”

Antonio Guterres of Portugal, the U.N. secretary-general, claimed global warming as a cause of the problem. He said there is a link between climate change and the unprecedented locust crisis plaguing Ethiopia and East Africa. Guterres said: “Warmer seas mean more cyclones generating the perfect breeding ground for locusts. Today the swarms are as big as major cities and it is getting worse by the day.”

Guterres’ suggestion that global warming is the cause of today’s plague is sheer nonsense. Locust infestations have been feared and revered throughout mankind’s history. Devastating locust attacks in Egypt around 1446 B.C. were mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. “The Iliad” describes locusts taking flight to escape fire. Plagues of locusts are also mentioned in the Quran.

Driessen concludes: “A primary reason this plague of locusts has overwhelmed East Africa — indeed, perhaps THE primary reason — is that the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, other UN agencies and multiple environmentalist NGOs have been extolling and imposing ‘agroecology’ on Africa. This highly politicized ‘movement’ rabidly opposes hybrid seeds, synthetic insecticides and fertilizers, biotechnology, and even mechanized equipment like tractors! Acceptance of its tenets and restrictions has become a condition for poor farmers getting seeds and other assistance, and their countries and local communities getting development loans and food aid.”

By the way, locusts are not only a threat to crops; they threaten people in another way. In early January, a Boeing 737 on final landing approach to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, found itself in the midst of a massive cloud of locusts swarming above the airport. The insects were sucked into the plane’s engines. Their bodies were splattered across the windshield blinding the pilots to the runway ahead. The Boeing 737 climbed above the swarm. The pilot depressurized the cabin so he could open the side window and reach around to clear the windshield by hand. Diverting to Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, the pilot was able to land the plane safely.

Be seeing you

Three human plague cases are reported in Santa Fe County ...

It’s Climate Change!

 

 

 

 

 

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Keep It Simple and Question: Propaganda, Technology, and Coronavirus (COVID-19) – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2020

The CDC claims there will be 18,000-46,000 deaths this season but
only 2,946 have so far died of the flu and the peak months for flu have
ended. Where are those 15,000-46,000 additional deaths going to come
from?

…the essential fear that the powerful use to manipulate and control people is the fear of death.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/edward-curtin/keep-it-simple-and-question-propaganda-technology-and-coronavirus-covid-19/

By

My father, a well-educated lawyer with a very sophisticated mind, used to advise me to “keep it simple.” By simple he didn’t mean simplistic. He meant fundamentally logical and to the point. So I will do that here and stick to some simple realities, now that understanding what is going on in the world has become an idiot’s game played by the corporate mass media to confuse people.

I have been writing about the dangers of technology for many years. Not all technology, of course, for the pencil I am writing this with is a technology, and an amazing and underappreciated one. I am referring to the techno-scientific, digital, high-tech sort, the world of computers, cell phones, genetic engineering, biological weapons development, etc. You know, all the stuff that has made our lives easier.

Two of the major problems the world faces – world destruction with nuclear weapons and the poisoning of the earth’s ecology and atmosphere – are the result of the marriage of science and technique that has given birth to the technological “babies” (Little Boy and Fat Man) that were used by the U.S. to massacre hundreds of thousands of Japanese and now threaten to incinerate everyone, and the chemical and toxic inventions that have despoiled the earth, air, and water and continue to kill people worldwide through America’s endless war-making and industrial applications.

Technology and technique, the technical way of thinking that undergirds it, are what we should fear most, not the will-o’-the-wisps marched out daily by the corporate mass media to create fear and panic. Those are ghost fears that should only frighten children.  But as I have written before, most Americans are children, living inside a doll’s house of illusions and delusions while government and intelligence forces and their mass media accomplices play with them through technological propaganda.

For every problem caused by technology, a technological “solution” is always offered that creates further technological problems ad infinitum.  But since people have been taught to love technology, they embrace the alleged technological “solutions” that are necessitated by the problems caused by the original technology.  It’s a circle game.

In our technopoly, logical thinking has become illogical; cause and effect, means and ends have been inverted.  The causes of our problems are touted as the means to end them. These “solutions” are always offered with a straight face, as if they made perfect sense.  This is how societies operate when in the grip of myths.  In this case, the myths of science, progress, and history.  Such myths render the obvious invisible as they create a hopeless inevitability in people who can imagine no alternative and have been convinced that science is the secret to salvation and the means to the things they have learned to desire, including longevity and perhaps “immortality.” And these things have become the means to additional means in an endless loop from which, by definition, ends are absent.  As a result, the search for truth, celebrated as a goal of science, is slyly eliminated.  Keeping it simple becomes harder and harder.

The important point is that the entire system of propaganda works on fear that is promulgated via the electronic media: television, cell phones, and computers. It is pumped out non-stop.

The fear is the fear of death, the fundamental human fear that the powerful know how to manipulate to control people.

Death that can come at the hands of fabricated enemies, disease, or state forces that will get you if you step too far out of line.  Russia, China, Iran, corona virus, Julian Assange, and Chelsey Manning being a few prominent recent examples of what to fear and what will become of you if you resist the fear-mongering and lies, and are brave.

Since today’s news is dominated by the fear of coronavirus, here is a partial list of other diseases that since 2003 we were told loudly and repeatedly would become pandemics and decimate the human race.  Diseases to be very afraid of since they were coming for you if you weren’t very vigilant and forgot to wash your hands.

2003 SARS

2005 Avian Flu

2009 Swine Flu

2012 West Nile Virus

2014 Ebola

2016 Zika

Well, they didn’t, very far from it; they were like scam telephone calls that scare the gullible into believing the message that they will be immediately arrested if they don’t send $1,000 to Mr. X somewhere.  But just like the color-coded terrorism warnings under George W. Bush, the pandemic alerts regularly pressed the panic button and kept fear in the air, until the panic balloon later burst under careful scrutiny, but at a point when most people had ingested the false fear of the earlier headlines and were not about to follow-up.

Now we have Coronavirus (COVID-19).  So beware.  Let us show you how to wash your hands and protect yourself.

Ten minutes viewing of any of the major television networks news shows is like entering a house of horrors at an amusement park.  After viewing one, you want to wear your football helmet and mask, go to bed, and never get up.  They ooze fear, as is their intent.

The game is both obvious and subtle.  Even while COVID-19 is hyped, here and there the media throw in exaggerated figures on the regular flu, as if to say: we are fair and objective; both are bad, even if the coronavirus might soon become a pandemic.

It’s akin to their saying Trump is really scary, but look how scary the socialist Sanders is.  You don’t want either.  You want the one we will tell you to want who will protect you.  Listen to us, for we are here to advise, so you will consent.

The news reports about the regular seasonal flu are most interesting.  If you peruse the media across all platforms, including alternative sources, you will see people repeating as fact the numbers of flu deaths in the U.S.A. so far this flu season (October 1, 2019 until today).  The numbers range from 12,000 to 18, 000 and higher, from CNN, CBS, NBC, etc.  Try it.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the “flu deaths” for this season will be 18,000 to 46,000.  However, if you dig down into the CDC figures and look at its table, which few do, you will see that the actual number of flu deaths claimed by the CDC for this season so far is 2,946. They also claim the number of cases is decreasing and this season doesn’t look particularly bad. (Go here, scroll down, and click on “View Data Chart”).

Isn’t that strange?  A bit of a simple discrepancy, wouldn’t you say?  Why would the CDC do that, and why would the media repeat it?

The CDC claims there will be 18,000-46,000 deaths this season but only 2,946 have so far died of the flu and the peak months for flu have ended.  Where are those 15,000-46,000 additional deaths going to come from?

What kind of game is going on here?

To repeat: the essential fear that the powerful use to manipulate and control people is the fear of death.  Death in many guises: physical, social, psychological, etc. But the fear of death must be used in a way that is very confusing and scrambles people’s thinking while it frightens them.

If we keep it simple and examine what there really is to fear, it is the growth of the sophisticated modern technology in the hands of governments and corporations that has destroyed privacy, poisoned people and the earth, created digital dementia on a vast scale, allowed propaganda to flourish as never before, and is poised to blow the world to smithereens with nuclear weapons.

Then, of course there is the biologic disease warfare research and development that the U.S.A. has been involved in since it brought the German scientists here after WW II (Operation Paperclip) to continue the work they did for Hitler.  Genetic research and the creation of virulent forms of viruses and bacteria became twisted into a system of science and medicine funded by the government to serve duel purposes that have become hard to distinguish.

So instead of panicking, perhaps it is better to ask some simple questions and seek simple answers.  Maybe start by checking the CDC data and then asking what those anthrax attacks following the attacks of September 11, 2001 were all about, and why the U.S.A. refused in the summer of 2001 to sign the Protocol to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) that would have added verification procedures to the BWC.  Maybe read Graeme Mac Queen’s eye-opening book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception.

Maybe see that the mass media reports about the coronavirus conceal more than they reveal.

Keep it simple and question.    

 

 

 

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What Would Murray Say About the Coronavirus? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2020

These draconian quarantine measures are an overkill. The COVID-19 coronavirus, as it is now called, is infecting and killing no more people than what occurs in a common cold/flu season (2.5% death rate among infected individuals). For comparison, the 2017 flu season in the U.S. caused a reported 2 deaths per 100,000.”

Why has a panic developed over this disease? Here we can again learn from Murray. He taught us to follow the money, and in this case, drug manufacturers and developers of vaccines stand to profit if they can frighten enough people.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/lew-rockwell/what-would-murray-say-about-the-coronavirus/

By

Murray Rothbard died in January 1995, long before this year’s coronavirus scare. But the principles this great thinker taught us can help us answer questions about the coronavirus outbreak which trouble many of us. Would the US government be justified in imposing massive involuntary quarantines, in order to slow down the spread of disease? What about vaccines? If government scientists claim that they have discovered a vaccine for coronavirus, should we take it? If we refuse, can the government force us to do so? These are the sort of problems we can solve if we look to Murray for help.

The fundamental rule for deciding whether anyone, including the government, is justified in using force to make us do something we don’t want to do is the Nonaggression Principle (NAP). As Murray put in in “War, Peace, and the State,” “No one may threaten or commit violence (‘aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor.”

You might at first think that you can use the NAP to justify forced quarantines against the coronavirus. Suppose someone had a deadly disease that would always spread to others if he came in contact with them. Probably the person would want to isolate himself and not infect others, but if he refused, wouldn’t the people in danger be justified in isolating him? He is a threat to others, even if he doesn’t intend to harm them.

Thinking about this case can lead us astray, and here is where Murray can help us most. In his great book The Ethics of Liberty, he says, “It is important to insist, however, that the threat of aggression be palpable, immediate, and direct, in short, that it be embodied in the initiation of an overt act. Any remote or indirect criterion—any ‘risk’ or ‘threat’—is simply an excuse for invasive action by the supposed ‘defender’ against the alleged ‘threat.’” Murray hammers home the point later in the book. He says, “Once one can use force against someone because of his ‘risky’ activities, the sky is the limit, and there is virtually no limit to aggression against the rights of others. Once permit someone’s ‘fear’ of the ‘risky’ activities of others to lead to coercive action, then any tyranny becomes justified.”

When we apply what Murray says to the coronavirus situation, we can answer our question about forced quarantines. People are not threatening others with immediate death by contagion. Rather, if you have the disease, you might pass it on to others. Or you might not. What happens if someone gets the disease is also uncertain.

The key fact about the disease is that we know very little about it. We talk about the “coronavirus,” but we don’t know that the disease is caused by a virus. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that it isn’t. Bill Sardi interviewed a renowned expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Lawrence Bronxmeyer. Dr. Bronxmeyer pointed out that “Antibiotics cannot be used for viruses. If a virus, then why aren’t antiviral drugs working but antibiotics are?”

Further, the disease, fortunately, is not the great danger that it is being played up to be. “Fear of the COVID-19 coronavirus may be misplaced. More people are killed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (1.7 million) in a year than the few who have been infected (~80,000) or have died (less than 2000) of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

It is projected that the “COVID-19 Coronavirus” will peak worldwide in March and then return in a second but lesser peak in September, in accordance with Yang’s Wuhan study from 2004 to 2013, describing the annual TB surges in Wuhan, China.

Saying the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus is inevitable, a CDC (Centers for Disease Control) official advised Americans “brace themselves” and prepare to shut down public schools, avoid going to church, and self-quarantine their families.  These onerous measures are for a virus that has infected just 53 Americans (Feb. 25), mostly among people who traveled recently to China.”

Murray would agree with Sardi, who says about quarantining Americans, “The coronavirus infects and then produces symptoms 3-5 days later (the incubation period).  However, maybe a 2-week quarantine period is not long enough. A recent study says the maximum incubation period is 24 days.  That is a long time to quarantine human populations.

These draconian quarantine measures are an overkill. The COVID-19 coronavirus, as it is now called, is infecting and killing no more people than what occurs in a common cold/flu season (2.5% death rate among infected individuals). For comparison, the 2017 flu season in the U.S. caused a reported 2 deaths per 100,000.”

Why has a panic developed over this disease? Here we can again learn from Murray. He taught us to follow the money, and in this case, drug manufacturers and developers of vaccines stand to profit if they can frighten enough people. We all remember the “swine flu” panic of several years ago. Doctors developed a vaccine to prevent people from getting the alleged disease, and this vaccine killed many people. When Gerald Ford was President, there was also a “swine flu” panic, and you can watch Murray laughing at the panic here.  If he were with us today, he would be laughing at the fearmongers, warning us about the dangers of vaccines, drugs, and quarantines, and reminding us that the main danger we face is the tyrannical and predatory State.

Be seeing you

 

 

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The Fed Slashes Rates as Powell Declares Economy “Strong” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2020

But if fundamentals are so strong, why the need to enact the biggest rate cut in more than a decade?

https://mises.org/wire/fed-slashes-rates-powell-declares-economy-strong?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=40a3b87a67-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_31_06_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-40a3b87a67-228343965

The Federal Reserve this morning slashed the target federal funds rate by 0.5 percent today. According to CNBC:

The Federal Reserve moved to an enact an emergency interest rate cut after officials saw the coronavirus having a material impact on the economic outlook, Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday.

Powell held a news conference following the central bank’s decision to cut overnight interest rates by half a percentage point. He said the Fed “saw a risk to the economy and chose to act” in a cut announced at 10 am ET.

“The magnitude and persistence of the overall effect on the U.S. economy remain highly uncertain and the situation remains a fluid one,” he said. “Against this background, the committee judged that the risks to the U.S. outlook have changed materially. In response, we have eased the stance of monetary policy to provide some more support to the economy.”

With this change, the target rate now is back down to 1.25 percent. The target rate was last at this level during mid-to-late 2017, in the midst of several rate hikes as the Fed dared to allow rates to climb. During that period, the Fed repeatedly declared the US economy to be “moderately strong” or “strong,” although it proceeded with extreme caution even then.

target

Since July 2019, however, the Fed has returned to cutting the target rate, fearing that the economy is weakening. Then in August 2019, it began pumping liquidity into the repo market in an effort to shore up hedge funds and banks.

All the while we’ve been assured everything is fine.

Today’s rate cut of 50 basis points, however, is the largest rate cut since December 2008, in the midst of the aftermath of the financial crisis.

change

This Is Fine!

The Fed’s announcement comes only days after Powell announced on Friday that “The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. However, the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity.”

But if fundamentals are so strong, why the need to enact the biggest rate cut in more than a decade?

This is the usual flip-flopping we’ve been witnessing for years from the Fed. The Fed announces that the economy is stable and strong, but then it refuses to raise the target rate. Or the Fed may even cut the target rate, just as “a precaution.”

Those with particularly astute memories may recall the unfortunate similarity between Powell’s statement and John McCain’s declaration in September 2008 that “The fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times.”

In cases like this, it may be prudent to completely ignore the first part of the sentence about economic strength. The only information of importance lies in the second part of the sentence—the part about “difficult times” or “evolving risks.” The similarity between these two patronizing statements, of course, does not mean that Powell will be proven wrong in the same time frame as McCain. The Fed has become quite adept at creating new bubbles when old ones appear to weaken and at propping up market confidence with new bailouts, such as we saw with 2019 rescue of the repo markets.

So, the fact that we’re seeing some downturns now does now necessarily mean a full blown recession is right around the corner. Although the coronavirus outbreak presents serious problems in terms of the supply chain, the problems in Asia could actually drive more capital to the safety of the US and the dollar, postponing the economic reckoning in the US into the future yet again.

After all, other aspects of Fed policy show that the days of stimulus are far from over. The Fed is now nearly back to peak levels in terms of its portfolio, signaling that it is not at all willing to let the market have its head in terms of pricing Treasurys and a variety of other assets. The Fed knows there’s just not enough demand out there to soak it all up. As Doug French recently pointed out, after all, the private banks still haven’t shed all their shadow inventory, even in this booming economy.

But yet again we’re left with the question: if the Fed is slashing interest rates while “fundamentals are strong,” what must it do when things aren’t so “strong”? Negative rates and QE seem to be the logical next step.

On the other hand, the Fed has apparently not yet hit the panic button when it comes to interest paid on excess reserves (IOER). Today, it announced a cut to “the interest rate paid on required and excess reserve balances” down to 1.10 percent. The IOER is another tool the Fed uses to manage how much money leaves bank reserves, thus entering the real economy. The higher the IOER rate paid, the lower the opportunity cost banks face in keeping reserves locked up in reserves. In January, the interest paid on these reserves was up to 1.60 percent. The gap between the target federal funds rate and the IOER rate can be interpreted as an indicator of how badly the Fed wants to push reserves out the door of the banking system. In late 2019, the gap had been 20 basis points. But since late January, the Fed has narrowed this gap to 15 basis points, suggesting less urgency in the need for liquidity. Today’s cut to 1.10 percent keeps that gap at 15 basis points. This is a more moderate position than if the Fed had cut the IOER rate even more than than fed funds rate.

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WATCH: Bloomberg Tries to Defend Using Armed Guards While Pushing Gun Control

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2020

Being a deplorable means you are not as responsible, intelligent, moral as “them”.

The gimmee free stuff snowflakes are just as deplorable in “their” eyes. They can’t see the forest for the Play-Doh.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/02/watch-bloomberg-tries-to-defend-using-armed-guards-while-pushing-gun-control/

by AWR Hawkins

An attendee at the March 2, 2020, Fox News town hall asked Mike Bloomberg why he pushes gun control for the common man but surrounds himself with armed security.

The attendee said, “You have an armed security detail that is likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines you seek to ban the common citizen from owning. Does your life matter more than mine or my family’s?”

Bloomberg responded by admitting to having an armed detail, and suggesting he needs armed protection because he gets more threats than the common man.

On February 3, 2020, Breitbart News reported that Bloomberg enjoyed armed security even as he campaigned on a platform of gun control for the common man.

The New York Post reported on Bloomberg referring to the NYPD as his “own army,” while Mayor of New York City. And on January 25, 2019, NRA-ILA reported that after his tenure as mayor ended, “Bloomberg hired some of the same  [NYPD] officers from his security detail to work for him privately.” Yet he continued to push gun control for average Americans.

In 2017 Fox News’ sTucker Carlson pointed to the hypocrisy of Bloomberg’s actions:

So Bloomberg is campaigning on gun control for the common man but availing himself of good guys with guns for self-protection.

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A Return to Beauty – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2020

Beauty and government dictate are not something I would equate. That said Trump is certainly correct about government architecture, at least the post depression variety.

Ayn Rand and Howard Roarke strike again.

https://www.takimag.com/article/a-return-to-beauty/

Theodore Dalrymple

The guilty flee when no man pursueth, says Proverbs, but it does not follow from this that the guilty do not flee when they are indeed pursued. The guilty also have a tendency to argue when they know that they are in the wrong, as for example architects who continue to deny that, for the past seventy years at least, they have been disenchanting the world by espousing a dysfunctional functionalism and constructing buildings so hideous that they make Frankenstein’s monster look like Clark Gable.

I refuse to think so ill of architects as human beings as to believe them to be totally unaware of what they have done. Rather, I pity them. They are like those unfortunate government spokesmen who have to defend the indefensible in public, which is always a disagreeable and nerve-racking thing to have to do. As government spokesmen invent a language full of polysyllabic euphemism to disguise the catastrophe their masters have wrought, so architects speak a language that is either incomprehensible or, where comprehensible, entirely beside the point.

I take as an example the response of a university professor of architecture to President Trump’s executive order making the classical style of architecture compulsory for new federal buildings of any size or cost in the Washington area. I do not name the professor because my target is the guild or sect to which he belongs rather than the individual. His article objecting to the executive order is typical of many.

He begins with the argument from authority: He cites a number of American architectural organizations that are highly critical or fearful of the president’s executive order. But this is like canvassing the opinion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the KGB, and the Red Army to find out whether communism was as bad as it was painted. It is precisely the nature of the architects’ authority that is at issue.

“A triangular wheel would be an innovation, but it would not be an advance.”

The president’s executive order starts from what seems to me an indisputable premise, that much if not most of the federal building carried out in the past half century has been at best undistinguished and at worst hideous. But in the 1930s and even later, federal buildings that were (and will always be) a great adornment to the city, such as the Supreme Court and the Jefferson Memorial, were built. And it is not possible that what was possible then should not be possible now.

According to the executive order, classical architecture that takes its inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome symbolizes the American founding aspiration toward democracy and the rule of law. Critics point out that both were slave societies, says the professor, and indeed that the slave-owners in the Southern states of America built neoclassical mansions on their plantations. I think both arguments miss the point, though simply to reject the classical world because it was slave-owning is to deny its other and longer-lasting legacy, and would also—in logic—be to reject the founding of the American republic because some of the American founding fathers were slave-owners (and not a woman among them). History is, or ought to be, more than the backward projection of our current moral enthusiasms or obsessions.

Moreover, modernism and its successors are much more tainted by fascist and communist ideologies. And while I do not think that classical buildings are in any way aesthetically redolent of slavery—one does not look at the Maison Carrée in Nîmes and think “slavery”—modern buildings frequently speak of megalomania, both of the architect and his patron, and it is true that dictators have sometimes built in a style that one might call tyrant-classicism. But high modernism was certainly in vogue for much of the Soviet Union’s existence, with horrible results, combining hideousness of design with shoddiness of execution. Moreover, many of the originators of modernism were themselves of very totalitarian disposition—they explicitly wanted to legislate the style of architecture for the whole world—and their inhumanity is obvious from what they built.

However, the political associations of classicism and modernism (and its successors, such as brutalism and deconstructivism) are beside the point. What is important is that classical architecture, even when not of the very best, is never as bad as the kind of things that Thom Mayne builds. It can achieve grandeur through elegance and not merely by size, or by a tendency to make human beings about as welcome in its precincts as weevils in a packet of flour. What is important is to build well and beautifully, and I do not see how anyone could fail to come to the conclusion that (for example) the National Gallery of Art in Washington is incomparably superior to the recent extension of the Tate Modern gallery in London.

But the nub of the professor’s argument is this: “I fear that [the executive order] will ultimately stifle innovation and reverse recent federal support for architectural experimentation.” In other words, it will cramp the architects’ freedom to build whatever they feel like building—with the results that are to be seen everywhere.

Innovation and architectural experimentation are not good in themselves. They are to be judged by their results, not by their newness, their originality or unprecedentedness. It would be an innovation to build a skyscraper of refrigerated butter, but the fact of its innovation would not be enough to save it from reprobation. A triangular wheel would be an innovation, but it would not be an advance.

The article bears out precisely what the executive order’s preamble says: that the modernists and their successors pay no regard to beauty. The professorial author extols the new American embassy in London as follows:

[The embassy] combined provocative design with the latest advancements in security, while incorporating green building systems that reduced energy costs. Together, I believe [it] project[s] the image of a technologically advanced and enlightened U.S. federal government.

Not a word of its beauty, not surprisingly, since it is a monstrosity, admittedly one among many other monstrosities.

And why provocative design? Who is to be provoked, and what for? Architecture is not a cartoon, a play, a novel, a joke. Note also the absence of all mention of beauty or elegance in this dithyramb—for a very good and sufficient reason. If anything could bear out precisely what the executive order says to justify its promulgation, it is this.

What the building projects is not enlightenment, but total inhumanity, a tendency to dictatorship, a deeply skewed scale of values, a total lack of aesthetic discrimination, and a surrender to a self-generating and perpetuating clique. As Thom Mayne, one of the leaders of that clique, put it, he would like to build only for other architects, the only persons qualified to judge and to admire what he does. Yet surely even he has an inkling, at some level in his mind, that he has made the world a little worse than he found it.

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Joe Biden Inadvertently Schools Conservatives and Libertarians on Tax Deductions – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2020

The millennial, X, Y, Z…whatever sheeple continue to believe free stuff will be free.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/laurence-m-vance/joe-biden-inadvertently-schools-conservatives-and-libertarians-on-tax-deductions/

By

Like the other Democratic presidential candidates, former senator and vice-president Joe Biden has a tax plan—a plan to raise taxes.

To raise an additional $3.4 trillion government revenue over the next decade to address climate change, infrastructure, health care, and higher education, Biden has put forth ten specific proposals.

Eliminate stepped-up basis. Appreciated assets transferred by a decedent can no longer be “stepped up” to fair market value at the time of death.

Raise the top rate on ordinary income. Increase the top income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent.

Tax capital gains and dividends at ordinary rates. Increase the top capital gains and dividends tax rate from 23.8 percent to 39.6 percent.

Limit itemized deductions. The reduction in tax liability per dollar of deductions cannot exceed 28 percent.

Raise the corporate tax rate. Increase the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

Impose a minimum tax on corporate book income. C corporations with more than $100 million in book income would be required to pay the greater of normal corporate tax liability and 15 percent of book income.

Raise the tax rate on foreign profits. Decrease the global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) deduction thereby increasing the effective tax rate on corporate income earned by foreign affiliates from 10.5 to 21 percent.

Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Eliminate certain tax credits for oil, gas, and coal production, including expensing of exploration costs and percentage depletion cost recovery rules.

Eliminate real estate loopholes. Eliminate the ability of owners of appreciated real estate assets used in a trade or business to defer capital gains taxes when exchanging the asset for property of “like kind.”

Impose sanctions on tax havens. Impose sanctions on countries that facilitate corporate tax avoidance.

Additionally, concerning tariffs, which are merely taxes under another name, Biden has said that some of Trump’s tariffs should come off, but others should go on. Biden has also said that he supports a financial transactions tax. And regarding the 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax, which is currently levied on the first $137,700 of employee wages, Biden would also apply it to wages above $400,000.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) projects that Biden’s tax plan would raise between $2.3 trillion (including macroeconomic effects) and $2.6 trillion (not including macroeconomic effects) over the next ten years—not the $3.4 trillion that the Biden presidential campaign estimates. I suppose this can be considered a good thing.

About the only real good thing about Biden’s tax plan is that he is not proposing a wealth tax like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

What I want to focus on is Biden’s attempt to limit how much taxpayers can use deductions to reduce their tax liability. As pointed out above, he is calling for capping the value of tax deductions for the wealthy at 28 percent. Biden’s campaign claims that this would raise $310 billion over the next ten years.

Joe Biden understands a principle that some conservatives and libertarians have yet to grasp: decreasing tax deductions increases taxes.

Tax deductions reduce one’s income subject to tax. One will pay less in taxes the greater the number, and the greater the amount, of deductions that he qualifies for. Eliminating or reducing the value of tax deductions has the same effect as raising tax rates: less money in the pockets of Americans and more money in the pockets of greedy, profligate Uncle Sam. Any support for eliminating or reducing tax deductions should be seen as a call to raise taxes—even if the supporters are conservatives and libertarians whining about how much “complexity” deductions add to the tax code, how much deductions “distort” the tax code, how much deductions “subsidize” high-income taxpayers, and how much deductions encourage people to make “economically unwise decisions.” All tax deductions are good; it doesn’t matter whom they benefit or why Congress enacts them.

Tax deductions—and their cousins tax exemptions, tax breaks, tax loopholes, tax shelters, tax incentives, and tax credits (as long as they are not refundable)—are not subsidies that have to be paid for. Since there is no chance that the income tax will be eliminated or the tax rates substantially reduced, the importance of tax deductions cannot be overstated. As long as Americans have an income tax, the more deductions they can take to lower their tax liability the better.

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Humanity Is Making A Very Important Decision When It Comes To Assange – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2020

“Should journalists be jailed for exposing US war crimes? Yes or no?”

That’s the debate now. Not Russia. Not Sweden. Not whether he followed proper bail protocol or washed his dishes at the embassy. That’s old stuff. That’s obsolete. That’s playing defense.

Truth, or lies?

Light, or darkness?

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/01/humanity-is-making-a-very-important-choice-when-it-comes-to-assange/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

The propagandists have all gone dead silent on the WikiLeaks founder they previously were smearing with relentless viciousness, because they no longer have an argument. The facts are all in, and yes, it turns out the US government is certainly and undeniably working to exploit legal loopholes to imprison a journalist for exposing its war crimes. That is happening, and there is no justifying it.

So the narrative managers, by and large, have gone silent.

Which is good. Because it gives us an opening to seize control of the narrative.

It’s time to go on the offensive with this. Assange supporters have gotten so used to playing defense that it hasn’t fully occurred to us to go on a full-blown charge. I’ve been guilty of this as well; I’ll be letting myself get bogged down in some old, obsolete debate with someone about some obscure aspect of the Swedish case or something, not realizing that none of that matters anymore. All the narrative manipulations that were used to get Assange to this point are impotent, irrelevant expenditures of energy compared to the fact that we now have undeniable evidence that the US government is working to set a precedent which will allow it to jail any journalist who exposes its misdeeds, and we can now force Assange’s smearers to confront this reality.

“Should journalists be jailed for exposing US war crimes? Yes or no?”

That’s the debate now. Not Russia. Not Sweden. Not whether he followed proper bail protocol or washed his dishes at the embassy. That’s old stuff. That’s obsolete. That’s playing defense.

Now we play offense: “Should journalists be jailed for exposing US war crimes? Yes or no?”

Demand an answer. Call attention to them and demand that they answer. Dig them out of their hidey holes and make them answer this. Drag them out into the light and make them answer this question in front of everyone. Because that is all this is about now.

Don’t get sidetracked. Don’t get tricked into debating defensively. Force the issue: the US government is trying to establish and normalize the practice of extraditing and imprisoning journalists for exposing its misdeeds. That is the issue to focus on.

You will find that anyone who dares to stick their head above the parapet and smear Assange now gets very, very squirmy if you pin them down and force them to address this issue. Because they cannot answer without admitting that they are wrong. And that they’ve been wrong this entire time. It’s a completely unassailable argument.

We now have two and a half months to prepare for the second half of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing: all of March, all of April, and half of May. We’re going to need all that time to seize control of the narrative and make it very, very clear to the world that a very important decision is about to be made by the powerful on our behalf, if we don’t make that decision for them.

This really is do or die time, humans. If we allow them to extradite and imprison Julian Assange for practicing journalism, that’s it. It’s over. We might as well all stop caring what happens to the world and sit on our hands while the oligarchs drive us to ecological disaster, nuclear annihilation or authoritarian dystopia. It’s impossible to hold power accountable if you’re not even allowed to see what it’s doing.

If we, the many, don’t have the spine to stand up against the few and say “No, we get to find out facts about you bastards and use it to inform our worldview, you don’t get to criminalize that,” then we certainly won’t have the spine it will take to wrest control of this world away from the hands of sociopathic plutocrats and take our fate into our own hands. We are deciding, right now, what we are made of. And what we want to become.

This is it. This is the part of the movie where we collectively choose the red pill or the blue pill. We are collectively being asked a question here, and our answer to that question will determine the entire course we will take as a species.

So what’s it going to be, humanity?

Truth, or lies?

Light, or darkness?

A world where we can hold power to account with the light of truth, or a world where power decides what’s true for us?

A world with free speech and a free press, or a world where journalists are imprisoned whenever they expose the evils of the most powerful institutions on this planet?

A world where we all actively fight to free Assange and get the job done, or a giant, irreversible leap toward the end of humanity as we know it?

Do we free Assange?

Or do we sit complacent with our Netflix and our KFC and trust the authority figures to do what’s best?

Do we take the red pill?

Or do we take the blue one?

Choose your path, humans.

Choose wisely.

 

____________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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