Month: September 2022

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

An energy policy that bans investment in some technologies based on ideological views and ignores security of supply is doomed to a strepitous failure.

The energy crisis in the European Union was not created by market failures or lack of alternatives. It was created by political nudging and imposition.

Renewable energies are a positive force within a balanced energy mix, not on their own, due to the volatile and intermittent nature of the technology. Politicians have imposed an unstable energy mix banning base technologies that work almost 100% of the time and this has made prices soar for consumers and threatened security of supply.

This week, Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, gave two messages that have grabbed many headlines. First, she announced a strong intervention in the electricity market, and then she stated at the Baltic Sea Energy Security Summit the proposal to increase renewables to 45% of the total generation mix by 2030. She considers that this is not an energy crisis but “a fossil fuel crisis.”

However, Ms Von Der Leyen’s messages have two problems. Europe’s energy crisis is due to intervention at a massive scale. Furthermore, massively increasing renewables does not eliminate the risk of dependence on Russia or other commodity suppliers.

The European electricity market is probably the most intervened in the world. More intervention is not going to solve the problems created by a political design that has made most countries’ energy mix expensive, volatile, and intermittent.

Ideology is a bad partner in energy.

Between 70 and 75% of the electricity tariff in most European countries are regulated costs, subsidies and taxes set by governments and, in the remaining part, the so-called “liberalized” generation, the cost of CO2 allowances has skyrocketed due to those same governments that limit supply of permits and the energy mix is imposed by political decisions.

In Germany, only 24% of all costs in a household bill are “supplier costs”, according to the BDEW 2021. The vast majority of costs are taxes and costs set by the government: Grid charges (24%), renewable energy surcharge (20%), sales tax (VAT) (16%), electricity tax (6%), concession levy (5%), offshore liability levy (0.03%), surcharge for combined heat and power plants (0.08%), levy for industry rebate on grid fees (1.3%). However, the “problem”, according to the messages of the President of the European Commission, is the market. Go figure.

It is surprising to read that Europe’s power markets are “free markets”, when governments impose the technologies within the energy mix, monopolize and limit licenses, prohibit investment in some technologies or close others, as well as forcing a rising cost of CO2 permits limiting their supply.

Intervention was to shut down nuclear power and rely massively on natural gas and lignite as Germany did. Intervention was to prohibit the development of domestic unconventional natural gas in Europe. Intervention is to shut down reservoirs when hydro power is key to lower household bills. Intervention is increasing subsidies at the wrong time and then raising taxes on efficient technologies. Intervention is to stop the gas pipeline that would double interconnections with France. Intervention is to prohibit lithium mining while talking of defending renewables, which need this commodity. Intervention is to fill the consumer’s bill with taxes and regulated costs that have nothing to do with energy consumption. Intervention, in essence, is the chain of errors in energy policy that have led Europe to have electricity and natural gas more than twice as expensive as in the US, as Durao Barroso warned in 2013.

European power prices are not expensive by chance, but by design. The exponential increase in subsidies, regulated costs and the price of CO2 emission rights are political decisions.

Eliminating baseload energies (nuclear, hydraulic) that work all the time and replacing them with renewables that need a backup of natural gas and heavy investments in infrastructure is expensive. It has been throughout Europe, and it will continue to be.

An energy transition must be competitive and guarantee security of supply, or it will not be. More intervention does not solve the problems.

European governments should worry about erasing from household bills all those items that have nothing to do with electricity consumption, including the cost of past planning errors, and lower taxes that are simply unaffordable. Those items should be in the national budget and other non-essential expenses should be cut to avoid rising deficits.

The market is not always perfect, but government intervention is always imperfect.

Governments are awfully bad at picking winners, but they are even worse at picking losers. Constant intervention leaves a trail of debt and cost overruns that all consumers pay.

What happens when the government intervenes? It closes nuclear power out of ideological obsession and then depends on 40% of its energy mix on coal, lignite, and gas, like Germany. Or it brings its flagship public company to the brink of bankruptcy by intervening tariffs, like France. Or, like Spain, it creates a diplomatic conflict with its largest natural gas supplier, Algeria, and, with it, doubles its gas purchases from Russia since the beginning of the war to July 2022.

Now, the European Union is rushing to install new floating regasification plants. More than thirty. The problem? That practically all the liquefied natural gas ships for this winter have already been contracted.

The same governments that refused to strengthen natural gas supply chains when it was cheap are now rushing to spend vast amounts on low-efficiency solutions.

Installing renewables does not eliminate dependence on natural gas. Renewables are, by definition, intermittent, and volatile as well as difficult to plan. Additionally, installing more renewables also requires huge spending on transmission and distribution investments, which makes the tariff more expensive.

Investing more in renewables is positive, but no politician can say that they are the only solution. The storage problem, the astronomical cost of a battery network and the necessary infrastructure, estimated at more than two billion euros if it were feasible, are key factors. If today Europe had a 100% solar and wind mix, it would be excessively volatile and intermittent, and in periods of low solar and wind availability it would increase dependence on natural gas, which is necessary as backup, and the need for hydro and nuclear, baseload energies that work all the time. Additionally, renewables, which are positive in a balanced energy mix, do not reduce dependence on other countries. Countries become dependent on China and other nations for lithium, aluminium, copper, etc.

Installing 45% renewables in the mix does not eliminate the dependence on natural gas, it only reduces it slightly in the part of the renewable load factor that is more stable (part of wind production). In fact, dependence on periods of low wind energy and low solar yield would be extremely high and, as we have already experienced, those coincide with periods in which gas and coal are more expensive due to greater demand.

If there is one thing that this crisis shows us, it is that what Europe needs is more market and less intervention. Europe arrived at this crisis due to a combination of arrogance and ignorance on the part of the legislators who control the energy mix. The importance of a balanced mix, with nuclear, hydro, gas and renewables is more evident every day.

Interventionist energy policy has failed miserably. More intervention is not going to solve it.

Thousands of UK pubs face closure this winter as soaring electricity bills signifies cost pressures will render the businesses uneconomical to operate. The question is, at what price does a pub need to charge a pint of beer to become profitable?

That question was answered by Tom Stainer, the chief executive of real campaign group CAMRA, who told the Daily Star that parabolic electricity prices suggest pubs would need to hike a pint of beer about 500% from 5 pounds to a “ridiculous” 15-20 pounds. 

Stainer said a “perfect storm” of energy hyperinflation “will affect just about every pub out there.”

Readers may recall a recent survey commissioned by trade publication the Morning Advisor revealed that 70% of pubs might not survive this winter if electricity prices continue to soar. 

Stainer outlined how a possible 500% increase in the cost of a pint to make a pub profitable is impossible because a summer survey showed that more than half of Brits already believe a pint is unaffordable. 

“And that was done before the cost of living crisis before everyone was looking at their own money. And before these huge energy bills came in,” he said. 

He pointed out UK’s macroeconomic backdrop is much worse today than the virus pandemic and hopes “with a new prime minister stepping in, the top of their inbox is going to be doing some help for hospitality.” 

Shop owners in the UK and Ireland have already been slapped with high-power bills. 

One such owner is Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland – and was charged nearly 10,000 euros for just over two months of energy usage. 

We noted, “The cost of electricity to the Poppyfields cafe for 73 days from early June until the end of August came in at €9,024.70 an increase of 250 percent in just 12 months. There doesn’t include the €812.22 in VAT, which brought her total bill to €9,836.92.”

“How in the name of God is this possible,” tweeted Dolan.

I got this electricity bill today, how in the name of God is this possible, we’re a small coffee shop in westmeath pic.twitter.com/uz5J8BePhB

— poppyfields cafe.🇺🇦 (@DolanGeraldine) August 29, 2022

Dolan’s example of soaring power costs for shop owners is only just the tip of the iceberg. Another example is a Twitter researcher, ‘Crab Man’ (@crabcrawler1), who found numerous shop owners already closing up shop (and it’s not even the cold season yet). 

Firebrick Brasserie. Lauder, United Kingdom. Had to close yesterday FOREVER, b/c of energy prices in the UK.

“energy prices that companies are charging – there is no price cap for businesses!!- have meant it is no longer sustainable for us to continue.”
https://t.co/67CrgVw7sd pic.twitter.com/NOvMTQpumR

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

“Closed our tearoom we’ve successfully run for 7 years due to increasing costs in food/petrol/ utilities. Can’t sustain the hikes.” pic.twitter.com/BW0bgqH1kO

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

More horror stories of energy hyperinflation decimating shop owners will be ahead. As for the possible beer price hike to 15-20 pounds a pint, it could make the neighborhood drunk sober because of the high costs. 

When the people’s livelihoods are affected — watch out — that’s an environment ripe for social unrest. It’s already happening in Prague this weekend and could spread like wildfire. 

Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

British troops have taken part in a training exercise alongside Swedish and Finnish armed forces as the two Nordic countries prepare their accession to the NATO military alliance.

Exercise Vigilant Knife, which took place in northern Finland from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2, was intended to further strengthen the interoperability of the three armed forces, the UK Ministry of Defence said.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “Whilst there is war in Europe, it is more important than ever to strengthen our international partnerships. We welcome Finland and Sweden’s application to join NATO and will continue to exercise together so we are ready to face shared security challenges.

“Exercise Vigilant Knife is an invaluable opportunity for UK personnel to develop their skills and experience of warfighting in cold weather conditions, enabling them to be effective on the battlefield alongside their Finnish and Swedish counterparts.”

Around 80 British army personnel took part in the exercise, travelling from the island of Santahamina in the south of Finland where they are undertaking a three-month training deployment as part of a security agreement between the UK and Finland.

As a light infantry company, British personnel provided anti-tank, sniper, and reconnaissance capabilities to the exercise and were primarily involved in both offensive and defensive actions to test the readiness of the Finnish forces alongside the Swedish unit.

New NATO Allies

The UK signed mutual security assurance declarations with Sweden and Finland in May. The two countries are also members of the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a coalition of 10 nations which cooperate to maintain the security of Northern Europe.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson exchange documents as they sign a declaration of political solidarity at the Swedish Prime Minister’s summer residence in Harpsund, Sweden, on May 11, 2022. (Jonathan Nackstrand /AFP via Getty Images)

On July 5, NATO’s 30 allies signed an accession protocol for Finland and Sweden, allowing them to join the alliance once parliaments ratify the decision, the most significant expansion of the alliance since the 1990s.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the Kremlin would respond in kind if NATO troops and infrastructure are deployed in the two Nordic countries.

Finland shares a lengthy land border with Russia, while Sweden shares a maritime border with Russia. The Nordic nations had resisted joining NATO for decades until the Russian invasion of Ukraine drastically altered the security situation in the region.

Authored by Roger Kimball via AmGreatness.com,

America has come perilously close to the edge of the point of no return…

Joe Biden certainly set the punditocracy abuzz with his neo-totalitarian performance piece at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday. The significance of that speech can be broken down into three parts, two of which have already received abundant commentary. 

The first has to do with the theater of the piece, its optics or stagecraft. As many commentators (myself included) noted, the feel of the event was distinctly, and distinctively, bombastic. The melodramatic red lighting, the presence of armed Marines flanking the president, and Biden’s hectoring, gesticulating delivery made the event seem eerily reminiscent of a speech by Stalin, Mao, or—the closest parallel—that diminutive former house painter who, for a few short years, mesmerized the world with his elaborately staged rallies before pushing ahead with more kinetic activities. 

To those who object that I am flirting with Godwin’s Law by invoking old AH, I reply that the flirtation was not mine but the doing of Biden’s producers and puppeteers. The visual similarity between Joe Biden’s event and some nighttime events at Nuremberg are just too striking to be coincidental. Leni Riefenstahl, as someone noted, would have been proud. Those who point out that Biden’s speech took place on September 1, a fraught day on the Polish border anno domini 1939, may be too ingenious for this historically illiterate age, but who knows? Often these things are, as our Marxists friends like to say, no accident. There are wheels within wheels. 

Which brings me to the question of the intent behind the theatrics. Was this exercise in garish, totalitarian kitsch a “gaffe,” as some are saying—an aesthetic miscalculation for which that blinking inarticulate muppet who is Biden’s press secretary will have to apologize? Apparently not, since she just said that the speech was “not political.” 

The entertainment committee never sleeps. 

A year or so back, I might have thought that the theatrics were inadvertent. I have changed my mind. Having watched Biden’s Justice Department morph into an American Stasi with the FBI conducting predawn raids against various Trump supporters, arresting former aides and confiscating the mobile phones and other property of his lawyers, I now think that the tactics of intimidation are part of a larger strategy. The FBI’s raid last month on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach residence, belongs in this category, as of course do the hundreds of indictments and incarcerations of January 6 protestors. Almost all of those unfortunate souls wind up being charged with minor torts like “parading” in or around the Capitol, yet are nonetheless thrown in a special D.C. gulag for months before being found guilty by biased juries and subject to enhanced sentences handed down by Trump-hating judges.

None of this is adventitious. Like the intimidating and slightly unhinged theatrics of Biden’s speech, they are all deliberate scare tactics, warnings to us all of what can happen to those who dissent. The spectacle of 87,000 newly minted IRS agents waiting in the wings is another part of that “shock-and-awe” campaign. 

Beyond Theatrics

So much for the theatrics of the speech. What about its substance? It was a tooth-and-claw attack on Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. How sharp were those teeth and claws? Trump and his supporters, said Biden, shaking his fists, represent “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” “The very foundations of our republic,” forsooth! A week earlier, he noted that the problem was “not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the . . . semi-fascism” of the MAGA agenda. 

The response to this unprecedented attack by a sitting president against his predecessor—as well as against the tens of millions (more than 74 million we are told) of his predecessor’s supporters—has been so robust that Biden felt it necessary to walk back his remarks, sort of. “I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,” he said Friday, after saying just that on prime-time television to the entire nation the night before. 

But wait, what is the MAGA (or, to quote the results of the lucubrations of Biden’s focus group, “ultra-MAGA”) agenda that is supposedly so dangerous? It’s worth keeping the meanings of these epithets in mind. When Donald Trump first proposed his “Make America Great Again” formula, he specified several things that it encompassed.  At the top of the list were efforts to restore American prosperity, in part by exploiting our enormous energy resources, in part by abolishing mischievous and burdensome regulation, in part by cutting taxes and providing incentives for American business to hire Americans and produce their goods in America. 

Also at the top of the list was the integrity of our southern border, stanching the flow of illegal immigration, and rebuilding a military that had been woefully neglected during the Obama years. Elsewhere on the domestic front, Trump battled against political correctness and what has come to be called “identity politics.” He largely remade the federal judiciary, seeing three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court federal judges confirmed, all of whom were nominated because they subscribed to a Antonin Scalia-like judicial philosophy that limited the role of judges to interpreting the law in the light of the Constitution, not making law under the inspiration of their personal policy preferences. 

In the sphere of foreign policy, the MAGA agenda meant “putting America first.” He insisted that our NATO allies begin to shoulder their stipulated financial burden, challenged China on trade and military adventurism, and scuttled the disastrous Obama-era nuclear deal (since renewed) with Iran. Trump also stood firmly against the democracy-exporting (or, more accurately, “democracy”-exporting) policies of the Bush era. America would go to war not to promulgate democracy but only to defend its own interests. His Abraham Accords brought peace to the Middle East, a world historical achievement for which Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. 

And how did all that work out? Pretty well, I’d say. By the time Trump left office, America was a net exporter of energy; illegal immigration had slowed to a trickle; before the onslaught of COVID, his policies had resulted in the lowest unemployment in decades, the lowest minority unemployment ever. Wages were rising, especially at the lower rungs, and the stock market was booming. All-in-all, MAGA meant American prosperity and success. 

It did not, however, bode well for the elite globalist agenda which rested upon endless foreign wars, the neglect of American workers, and a disdain for traditional bourgeois values like hard work, family solidarity, and local initiatives. 

Biden’s handlers have attempted to co-opt or usurp the epithet “MAGA” and transform it into something ominous. But what it means is not some existential threat to “the very foundations of our republic.” On the contrary, it is an affirmation of the principles of limited government and individual liberty that undergird the foundations of the American republic. 

The Goal Is Control

Which brings me to the third current of significance in Biden’s performance. There was a theatrical aspect, a substantive aspect—the attack on Trump, his supporters, and all things MAGA—and there is the long strategic game implied not just in Biden’s speech but in the extraordinary, overweening activity of his administration.

In “Joe Biden and the Sovietization of America,” a column that will be published in the October edition of Spectator World (available online mid-September), I mention in passing the practice of Gleichschaltung, the attempt to bring all aspects of life into alignment with the governing philosophy of the state. The term was popularized in Germany in the late 1930s, but it describes a process that is common to all totalitarian societies (indeed, it describes the effort that puts the “total” in “totalitarian”). Among other things, it involves the politicization of all aspects of life, the surrender of individuality to ideology. George Orwell sketched the process in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Lenin and Stalin brought that fiction to real life in their iron-fisted control of life in the Soviet Union. Xi Jinping continues that legacy today in China. What we call “political correctness” hints at the program, for really to be politically correct is to suffuse every element of one’s life with the dogmas that the ruling consensus has defined as the correct orthodoxy. The fascistic formula “the personal is the political” gives one expression to this idea, since, taken seriously, it denies the legitimacy of the personal altogether. 

The Biden regime is making great strides in this direction. As Josh Hammer observes in a penetrating column, Biden apparatchiks are moving on multiple fronts to abolish the distinction between the public sector and the private sector. Late last month, the world was treated to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg confessing on Joe Rogan’s podcast that, yes, the FBI did in fact put pressure on the social media giant to bury news about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell”—news that very likely would have changed the results of the 2020 election had it been allowed to circulate. Entities like Facebook and Twitter, Hammer points out, “no longer qualify as meaningfully ‘private’ and have instead simply become appendages of the state.” They are simply part of the propaganda machine of the ruling party. Citing Missouri Attorney General (and U.S. Senate candidate) Eric Schmitt, Hammer describes the “vast censorship enterprise” promulgated by the state. Former U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) described aspects of this enterprise in his book Countdown to Socialism. 

But the goal of total control involves more than censorship. It also involves the insinuation of the state into the most intimate areas of our private lives. One example is the Biden regime’s new weaponization of Title IX legislation. This brief statute, which, in just a couple of lines, says that institutions that receive federal funds may not discriminate on the basis of sex, has been enlisted in the campaign to abolish natural sexual identity and replace it with a polymorphous, “gender fluid” model. Among other things, this radical new interpretation of Title IX gives teachers priority over parents on matters of sex and gender, requiring, for example, that “K-12 schools support socially transitioning children to a different gender without requiring notice to parents, the involvement of medical professionals, or legal documentation.” 

The late Andrew Breitbart liked to point out that politics is downstream from culture. Indeed it is. It saddens me to report, though, that the Left seems to have a livelier appreciation of this fact than the Right. Barack Obama came to office promising to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Obama laid the groundwork for that transformation. Now his bumbling, senescent protégé, aided by an army of Obama-era lieutenants, a compliant media, and a corrupt deep-state bureaucracy, is completing the job. 

There is, I know, a point of no return, a point beyond which a society beset by totalitarian impulses must either rebel or succumb utterly. Are we there yet? I do not know. I do sense, however, that we have come perilously close to the edge. I pray that it is not too late. 

The city of Las Vegas, New Mexico, has 20 days of fresh water left, and officials are searching for alternative sources to prevent contaminated water from flowing to households and businesses, according to CNN. 

Not to be confused with Las Vegas, Nevada, the 13,000-person city in San Miguel County relies solely on the now contaminated Gallinas River, which is full of ash and debris after the Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak Fire. 

Las Vegas’ water treatment facility typically uses chlorine to clean the water, but it becomes carcinogenic when mixed with carbon-infused water because of all the ash. 

“We need to get the carbon out of the water before we add disinfection,” Las Vegas Utilities Director Maria Gilvarry recently told residents at a public meeting. 

We noted in late July (T-minus 50 days to no fresh water) that there was no immediate solution to fix the town’s water woes. Time is running out to find new water sources. 

City officials are testing water in a nearby lake that could be their saving grace and buy the water-stricken town a few months. The tests take several days, and the hope is the water has less ash that would allow it to be run through the treatment facility. 

“Our fingers are crossed on that,” Las Vegas Mayor Louie Trujillo said, adding the tests “will determine the quality of water we’re going to be sending to one of our reservoirs.”

Gilvarry said if the water source is good enough, the city would have about two months of added water capacity, enough time to install upgraded treatment systems capable of processing the sediment-heavy water. 

If the water tests are inadequate, city and state officials would implement a boil-water order and possibly increase rationings.

Las Vegas has entered the final countdown until it exhausts all fresh water. Residents have been learning to live with less. They might have to live with a lot less if an immediate solution isn’t found. 

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

The world is a confusing place. People do things that don’t make any sense, think things that aren’t supported by facts, endure things they do not need to endure, and viciously attack those who try to bring these things to their attention.

If you’ve ever wondered why, you’ve come to the right place.

Any casual reader of the alternate media landscape will eventually come up with a reference to Stanley Milgram, or Philip Zimbardo, the “Asch Experiment” or maybe all three.

“Cognitive Dissonance”, “Diffusion of Responsibility”, and “learned helplessness” are phrases that regularly do the rounds, but where do they come from and what they mean?

Well, here are the important psycho-social experiments that teach us about the way people think, but more than that they actually explain how our modern world works, and just how we got into this mess.

1. THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT

The Experiment: Let’s start with the most famous. Beginning in 1963, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments now referred to as the Milgram Obedience Experiments.

The setting is simple, Subject A is told to conduct a memory test on Subject B, and administer electric shocks when he makes mistakes. Of course, Subject B does not exist, and the electric shocks are not real. Instead, actors would cry, ask for help or pretend to be unconscious, all the while Subject A would be encouraged to carry on administering the shocks.

The vast majority of subjects carried on with the test and gave the shocks, despite the distress of “Subject B”.

The Conclusion: In his paper on this experiment Stanley Milgram coined the term “diffusion of responsibility”, describing the psychological process by which a person can excuse or justify doing harm to someone if they believe it’s not really their fault, they won’t be held accountable, or they do not have a choice.

The Application: Almost literally endless. All institutions can use this phenomenon to pressure people into acting against their own moral code. The army, the police, hospital staff – wherever there is a hierarchy or perceived authority, people will fall victim to the diffusion of their own responsibility.

NOTE: They made a decent film about Milgram, and the backlash his experiments caused called Experimenter. In recent years there has been a major pushback on this experiment, with articles in the MSM attacking the findings and methodology and new “researchers” claiming “it does not prove what you think it does.”

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2. THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

The Experiment: Only slightly less famous than Milgram’s work is Philip Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment, carried out at Stanford University in 1971. The experiment set up a mock-prison for a week, with one group of subjects designated “guards” and the other “prisoners”.

Both sides were provided uniforms, and prisoners were given a number. The guards were ordered to only ever address prisoners by their number, not their name.

There were a number of other rules and procedures, detailed here.

In brief, over the course of the week, guards became increasingly sadistic, dealing out punishments to disobedient prisoners and rewarding “good prisoners” in order to try and divide them. Many of the prisoners simply took the abuse, and in-fighting began between “trouble makers” and “good prisoners”.

Though technically not an “experiment” in the purest sense (there was no hypothesis to test, and no control group), and perhaps impacted by “demand characteristics”, the study does reveal interesting patterns of behaviour in its subjects.

The Conclusion: Prison guards became sadistic. Prisoners became obedient. All this despite no real laws being broken, no real legal authority, and no real requirement to stay. If you give people power and dehumanise those below them, they will become sadistic. If you put people in prison they will act like they are in prison.

In short, people will act the way they are treated.

The Application: Again, endless. We’ve seen it all through Covid, if you start treating people a certain way, the majority will go along with it and blame the minority who refuse to cooperate. Meanwhile, police forces around the world were suddenly granted new powers, and promptly abused them because the maskless and unvaxxed had been dehumanised in their eyes. Those reactions were engineered, not accidental.

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3. THE ASCH EXPERIMENT

The Experiment: Another experiment in conformity, not as brutal as Milgram or Zimbardo, but perhaps more unsettling in its findings.

First conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s, the setup is a simple one. You put together a panel of subjects, one real subject and a handful of fake subjects.

One by one the subjects are asked a series of multiple-choice questions to which the answer is always obvious, and all the fake subjects will get every answer wrong. The question is whether or not the real subject will maintain his own correct answer, or begin to conform with the group.

The Conclusion: While most people maintained their right answers, the “error rate” in the experiment group was 37% versus less than 1% in the control group. Meaning 36% of subjects eventually began to change their answers to align with the consensus, even though they knew they were wrong.

Around one-third of people will either pretend to change their minds for the sake of conformity or, more alarmingly, will actually alter their beliefs if they find themselves in the minority.

The Application: Staged or invented polls, falsified vote counts in elections, bot accounts on social media, astroturfing campaigns. Media headlines proclaiming “everyone knows X” or “only 1% of people think Y”.

There are a great many tools you can use in order to create the impression of a fake “consensus”, a manufactured “majority”.

NOTE: The experiment has been done a million times in dozens of variations, but perhaps the most interesting finding is that putting just one other person in the panel who agrees with the test subject seemed to reduce conformity by 87%. Essentially, people hate being a lone voice but will tolerate being in the minority if they have some support. Good to know.

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4. FESTINGER’S COGNITIVE DISSONANCE EXPERIMENT

The Experiment: The least well-known experiment on the list, but in some ways the most fascinating. In 1954 Leon Festinger created an experiment to evaluate the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, his setup was again quite simple.

A subject is given a repetitive and dull physical task to do (originally turning wooden pegs, but other variations use other tasks).

After the task is complete, the subject is instruced to go and prepare the next subject (actually a lab assistant) for the task, by lying and telling him/her how interesting the task was.

It’s at this point the subjects are divided into two groups, one group is offered $20 to lie, the other only $1.

This is the real experiment.

The Conclusion: After lying to the fake subjects, and being paid their money, the real subjects take part in a post-experiment interview and record their genuine thoughts on the task.

Interestingly, the 20-dollar generally told the truth, that they found the task dull and repetitive. While the one-dollar group, more often than not, claimed to have genuinely enjoyed the task.

This is cognitive dissonance in action.

Essentially, for the $20 group, the money was a good reason to lie to their fellow test subject, and they could justify their own behaviour in their head. But, for the $1 group, the meagreness of the reward made their dishonesty internally unjustifiable, so they had to unconsciously create their own justification by convincing themselves they weren’t lying at all.

In summary, if you offer people a small reward for doing something, they will pretend to enjoy it, or be otherwise invested, to justify only making a small profit.

The Application: Casinos, computer games and other interactive media use this principle all the time, offering players very little pay off knowing they will convince themselves they are enjoying playing. Big corporations and employers can likewise rely on this phenomenon to keep wages down, knowing that low paid workers have a psychological mechanism that may convince them they enjoy their jobs.

NOTE: A variation on this experiment introduces a third group, who are paid nothing to lie. This group is not affected by cognitive dissonance, and will honestly appraise the task just as the well-paid group do.

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5. THE MONKEY LADDER

The Experiment: Now this is a somewhat controversial addition to the list, but we’ll get to that later. It’s a very famous experiment you’ve probably heard cited dozens of times.

In the 1960s scientists at Harvard put five monkeys in a cage with a stepladder in the middle. Atop the stepladder is a bunch of bananas, however each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder they are all sprayed with ice-cold water. Eventually, the monkeys learn to avoid the ladder.

Then one monkey is removed and a new monkey is introduced. He naturally goes straight for the ladder and is set upon by the other four monkeys.

Then a second monkey is removed, and another new monkey is introduced. He naturally goes straight for the ladder and is set upon by the other four monkeys…including the one who was never sprayed.

They continue to replace each monkey in turn, until no monkeys are present who were ever sprayed with water, and yet they all refuse to go near the stairs and prevent all the new monkeys from doing so.

Now, the obvious conclusion here is that people can be conditioned to mindlessly follow rules they do not understand.

The only problem with that is that none of this ever happened.

Yes, that’s the controversy I mentioned earlier. Despite being easily found on every corner of the internet, despite magazine articles explaining it and animations recounting it…it never happened. The experiment appears to be entirely apocryphal.

No ladder, no monkeys, no cold water.

So while this supposed experiment doesn’t actually teach us about herd mentality, it does explain the modern world, because it shows us how easily a myth can be worked into a reality through sheer dint of repetition.

BONUS: MONKEY LADDER REDUX

That’s right, it doesn’t stop there, there’s another twist.

National Geographic did actually recreate the fictional monkey ladder experiment using people:

One subject walks into a doctor’s waiting room filled with fake patients. When a bell sounds, all the fake patients stand up for a second and then retake their seats.

After this process repeats a few times, the fake patients are slowly removed one-by-one until only the subject of the experiment remains. Then secondary real subjects are introduced one at a time.

The experiment seeks to answer the following questions:

a) Will the original subject stand up at the bell without knowing why?

b) Will they will continue to stand up when they are alone in the room?

c) Will they then teach this behaviour to the new subjects?

The answer to all three appears to be “yes”.

Now, while far less scientific than the other four experiments, I include this here for a very specific reason. The above video of the experiment doesn’t just record the conforming behaviour but describes it as possibly beneficial. Adding that herd behaviour saves lives in the wild and is “how we learn to socialise”.

A very interesting take, don’t you think?

So, while the fake monkey experiment that never happened was used to teach us about the perils of herd mentality, its nonexistence actually teaches us about the perils of non-primary sources and the group consciousness’s ability to confabulate.

Meanwhile, the real monkey experiment is used to sell us the idea that herd mentality does exist but is potentially a good thing. Raising the possibility the whole thing could have been staged, simply to promote conformity.

…Isn’t the world a strange and confusing place?

*

So, there they are. Five of the most critical pieces of psychological research ever done, hopefully going forward nobody will be left in the dark when these concepts or experiments are referenced.

But the point of this article is not to just make you, the reader, understand these experiments…it is also meant to remind you that they do.

The people in charge, the elite, the 1%, “The Party”. The powers that be – or shouldn’t be – whatever you want to call them.

They know these experiments. They have studied them. They’ve probably replicated them countless times on grand scales and in unethical ways we can barely imagine. Who knows exactly what takes place in the dank dark dungeons of the deep state?

Just remember, they know how the human mind works.

• They know they can make people do anything if they reassure them they won’t be held responsible.

• They know that they can rely on people to abuse any power they’re given, OR believe they are powerless if they’re treated that way.

• They know that peer pressure will change a lot of people’s minds even in the face of undeniable reality, especially if you make them feel completely alone.

• They know that if you offer people only a small reward for completing a task, they will make up their own psychological justification for taking it.

• They know that people will mindlessly do whatever everyone else is doing without ever asking for a reason.

• And they know that people will happily believe something that never happened if it is repeated often enough.

They know all of this. And they use that knowledge all the time – All. The. Time.

Every commercial you see, every article you read, every movie they release, every item on the news, every “viral” social media post, every trending hashtag.

Every war. Every pandemic. Every headline.

All of them are constructed with these principles in mind to elicit specific emotional reactions that steer your behaviour and beliefs. That’s how the media works, not to inform you, not to entertain you…but to control you.

And they have it down to a science. Always remember that.

A far-left psychiatry professor who sued Yale for firing her over unhinged comments she made against then-President Donald Trump, just had her lawsuit tossed by a federal judge, according to the Hartford Courant.

Lee argued that Yale fired her in response to a January 2020 tweet that characterized “just about all” Trump supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis,” and that Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.”

She also tweeted that Trump was “worse than Hitler,” and then when challenged, stuck her other foot in her mouth – tweeting “Donald Trump is not an Adolf Hitler. At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more than himself to gain the respect of his followers.“

Just incredible stuff here…my god. pic.twitter.com/Hq2QcMiuzN

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 2, 2020

Lee, herself clearly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), used her Yale credentials to author a book, conduct interviews, and form a group – the “Independent Expert Panel for Presidential Fitness” – all aimed at taking down Trump over what they said was a lack of mental fitness.

Crickets over Biden’s obvious dementia, by the way.

Lee came under scrutiny from colleagues and leaders at Yale, as The Western Journal‘s Jared Harris notes.

Dr. John Krystal, chair of the university’s psychiatry department, blasted the political activity happening under the guise of professional conduct.

“I want to emphasize that you did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment,” Krystal wrote in a 2020 letter to Lee. “You made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment.”

“For that reason,” he continued, “the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees.”

One major factor in Krystal’s reaction to Lee’s political action is likely the “Goldwater Rule,” a professional standard from the American Psychiatric Association that warns against diagnosing someone without an evaluation.

While it seems like an obvious step in diagnosis, Lee, who is not a member of the APA, argued that the danger from Trump outweighed the need for clinical evidence.

Citing a supposed “duty to warn” the public about Trump’s mental state, Lee filed a lawsuit arguing that her own unhinged assault against the president wasn’t partisan slander but a professional obligation.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the New York Post on the controversial speech of President Joe Biden in Philadelphia. The speech has received sharply different reviews from “disgusting” and “hateful” to a historic declaration of war against the enemies of the state. Some like Elie Mystal insisted that the speech did not go far enough because all Republicans are white supremacists, not just MAGA Republicans. I thought the speech was divisive and inflammatory. However, it was not the content but the optics of the speech that was particularly unsettling.  Framing Biden were two Marines standing like nutcracker props in a highly political speech. His use of the Marines (and the Marine band) violated long-standing rules for shielding the services from such political events.

Here is the column:

President Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia has produced sharply different responses from the media. On CNN, it was praised as a rallying cry for patriots. On conservatives sites, it was denounced as hateful and divisive.  For many of us, however, the optics was a glaring distraction with the intense red background and prominently placed Marines framing the President. The use of the Marines and the Marine band raised concerns given the clearly political purpose of the speech. Indeed, the networks did not view the speech as an address to the nation and refused to give the White House primetime slots.

While White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured the media that “it’s not a political speech,” it was unabashedly political from calls to get the vote out to direct attacks on “MAGA Republicans” and Donald Trump. That again raised the legal questions over the use of the Marines in such a speech. Even CNN flagged the concern over the use of the Marines and CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins stated the obvious that “it was a very political speech.”

The optics of the speech instantly became a source of Internet chatter with the weird red background that made the President look like he was giving a stump speech from Dante’s Inferno. Indeed, it almost had that High Chancellor Adam Sutler look from V for Vendetta. (The comparison ultimately did not end with just the optics. Sutler warned his inner circle that “every day…brings us closer to November” and “I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos…to remember why they need us!”).

However, it was the use of the Marine guards that most stood out — framing the President as he declared Trump supporters to be a threat to democracy . Biden denounced “MAGA Republicans” thirteen times as well as repeated references to his past and possible future political opponent, Donald Trump.

The speech was obviously political, as noted by CNN’s Collins, as a “full frontal attack” on his political opponents.

The United States has long drawn a line between the work of federal employees in public service and the use of such employees for political purposes. The Hatch Act was passed in 1939 to curtail the political activities of civilian federal employees.

The Marine Corps expressly forbids personnel from being used or participating in such political events.

“Active duty members will not engage in partisan political activities, and all military personnel will avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.”

The other services have also drawn a bright line against such appearances. Army officials, for example, stress that their rules bar such involvement because “actual or perceived partisanship could undermine the legitimacy of the military profession and department.”

In Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 the long list of prohibited involvement in political events include:

“Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces, except as a member of a joint Armed Forces color guard at the opening ceremonies of the national conventions of the Republican, Democratic, or other political parties recognized by the Federal Elections Committee or as otherwise authorized by the Secretary concerned.”

These rules also expressly bar the wearing of uniforms at such political speeches: “The wearing of the uniform by Service members … is prohibited … during or in connection with furthering political activities, private employment, or commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship … for the activity or interest may be drawn.”

There are obviously gray areas for a president who is necessarily accompanied by members of the military. Moreover, drawing the line between what is a presidential address and what is a political speech is often difficult. Presidents are politicians and often use official statements to slam their critics or opponents. Such events often have color guards and military bands.

The enforcement of such rules are also rather anemic. Even violation of the Hatch Act are routinely brushed aside by presidents and both the Biden and Trump administrations have violated the Act in the past.

Yet, what is interesting is the relative silence of many in the media on the use of these Marines as virtual nutcracker props for a political speech. The media overwhelmingly condemned President Trump for his picture in front of St. John’s Church after the clearing of Lafayette Park in 2020. While the media falsely claimed that the park was cleared for the photo ed, many criticized the photo with military and law enforcement officials as inappropriate. Later, Gen. Mark A. Milley, apologized for being in the photo, declaring “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

Yet, Milley has said nothing about supplying not just the Marine Band but Marines to stand directly behind Biden at a political speech as he denounced his political opponents as threats to democracy and part of what he was called a “semi-fascist” movement. Those Marines stood at attention as the President declared “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” (Apparently, nothing says that you are against fascism as much as labeling your political opponents enemies of the state with Marines on either side of you).

The use of the Marines would certainly seem to “create a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Moreover, the message sent to other military personnel, particularly other Marines, is that support for the President’s opponents is considered a threat to the constitutional Republic.

The Washington Post previously objected to the use of the Marine band at the White House when President Trump was viewed as giving a political speech. During the Trump Administration, others joined such criticism including Members of Congress and public interest groups.

Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Post that the use of the band was a “big violation” since “Americans who see uniformed military personnel at partisan political functions may assume the military has a partisan identity. Presidents running for reelection always have to take extra care to keep their military aides out of their campaign activities.”

Those voices are, thus far, silent in President Biden’s use of these Marines for a highly partisan and divisive speech.

Winston Churchill once said that it is “always dangerous” for military to find themselves mixing with politics because “they enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed.” That was never more evident as two young Marines stood at attention as their president accused millions of their fellow citizens of being enemies of the constitutional Republic. They deserved better from the President.