Month: August 2024

Authored by Robert Knight via CoinTelegraph.com,

Industry figures are divided on a contentious Californian artificial intelligence bill that passed on Aug. 28. 

The new legislation will compel AI firms to implement new safety protocols, including an “emergency stop” button for AI models.

The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047) passed the California Senate 29–9 on Aug. 28.

The bill now goes to Governor Gavin Newson’s desk for ratification.

Elon Musk was among those who expressed support for the bill. On X, he said it was a “tough call” but favored the legislation due to the “potential risk” of AI.

Source: Elon Musk

Not all tech figures are similarly persuaded, however. OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon is among those who have criticized the legislation.

Calanthia Mei, co-founder of the decentralized AI network Masa, said she was not in favor of the new rules, suggesting they were the result of an undue rush to legislate.

“Premature regulations like this will not only drive talent out of California; it will drive talent out of America,” Mei told Cointelegraph. She added:

“The risk sits in the likely possibility that America’s current and proposed regulatory frameworks cap the growth of the AI industry.”

Raheel Govindji, the CEO of the decentralized AI project DecideAI, took a contrasting view.

“We are in favor of legislation,” Govindji told Cointelegraph. 

Govindji said DecideAI supports a killswitch controlled by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which is how they propose to democratize and decentralize an emergency stop.

AI is a fast-moving industry

The fast-moving nature of the AI industry has stoked fears about its unfettered development.

In an Aug. 22 letter, former staff and whistleblowers at OpenAI warned, “Developing frontier AI models without adequate safety precautions poses foreseeable risks of catastrophic harm to the public.”

But to others, the rapid pace of AI development is something to be celebrated rather than feared.

“In contrast to other transformative technologies, the speed of AI innovation is unparalleled. Builders are shipping new products, features and applications every day,” Mei said.

“We as builders don’t even know where the ceiling of AI is; how would the government know the ceiling of AI? Setting limits for high-potential technologies is unwise.”

Mei warned that the legislation’s ultimate cost would be to “drive talent out of the US” as it “did to crypto.”

Those in favor

Govindji proposes that a “DAO-controlled killswitch” could support the requirements of the legislation while still retaining “collective and transparent decision-making.”

The bill states that any AI model should be able to “promptly enact a full shutdown” but fails to define the meaning of promptly, leaving considerable room for interpretation.

For now, it is unknown whether a DAO model and its democratic voting system would be prompt enough to satisfy legislators. Govindji is confident it will. According to Govindji, DecideAI “will be ahead of the curve in providing AI which is a social good.”

AI firm Anthropic has also publicly supported the bill. 

In an open letter to Governor Newsom, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said, ”AI systems are advancing in capabilities extremely quickly, which offers both great promise for California’s economy and substantial risk […] We believe SB 1047, particularly after recent amendments, likely presents a feasible compliance burden for companies like ours, in light of the importance of averting catastrophic misuse.”

An earlier version of the bill forwarded criminal penalties for companies that failed to comply. After consultation with the industry, this provision was watered down to civil penalties only.

Bill SB 1047

Bill SB 1047 will only apply to “covered models,” with the definition of what models are covered shifting over time. 

On implementation, a covered model will be an AI that costs over $100 million to develop or “An artificial intelligence model trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 10^26 integer or floating-point operation.”

The federal government’s Government Operations Agency will adjudicate any changes to the computing power threshold.

In a letter to Governor Newsom, OpenAI’s Kwon argued that legislation toward AI should only be handled at a federal level “rather than a patchwork of state laws.”

Given the overwhelming concentration of tech and AI firms in California, SB 1047 might arguably be the de facto national legislation for now. 

The situation could change should the legislation cause AI firms to flee to other states, but to avoid SB 1047 entirely, the firms would also need to cease all operations and services in California.

It looks like the U.S.’s sole export is no longer just dollars and inflation…we’re also exporting the products of our rising crime rate.   

A new report last week says that stolen vehicles have become a “world epidemic” and that there is a rising number of stolen vehicles at east coast ports, according to CBS. 

The number of cars seized at the Port of Newark is on the rise, according to CBS News New York’s Derick Waller.

Jeffrey Greene, acting director at the Port of New York and Newark, oversees customs officials using x-rays to inspect containers and seize stolen cars. In one case, two junk vehicles concealed a pristine Mercedes, while another container held a stolen Chevy Silverado.

So far this year, they’ve seized 331 vehicles, on pace to surpass last year’s total. Investigators say West African markets, especially Nigeria, offer the highest prices. Social media videos show luxury SUVs being unloaded from containers, sometimes still sporting American license plates.

Greene commented: “So last year, the Port of New York-Newark here, we led the country in seized vehicles … We had 368 vehicles. That’s more than a car a day.”

The CBS report says young people are often recruited for car thefts, according to Homeland Security Special Agent William Walker, who leads an auto crime task force.

In one case, thieves in Totowa stole a luxury SUV by entering through an unlocked kitchen window to grab the key fob. Laura, a Morris County resident, tried storing her BMW keys in a “Faraday cage” to block devices used by thieves. Despite this, her SUV was stolen after thieves broke into her home through a locked window. 

Car thefts have surged in Newark, up 99% from 2022 to 2023. Montville Police Chief Andrew Caggiano is advocating for changes to New Jersey’s bail reform law, arguing that repeat offenders are frequently released, according to the report. 

“You can usually drive around at leisure with that plate on. No one will ever question you. It’s a world epidemic ... And it’s because the organized criminals, they’re probably laughing at us, actually, because they’re not only making lots of money, but they don’t have to, actually have to do much work,” former police officer Dr. Ken German said. 

Authored by Matthew J. Brouillette via RealClearPennsylvania,

In his recent speech at the Democratic National Convention, Gov. Josh Shapiro said his party carries the banner of “real freedom.” 

On everything from abortion (whose numbers have increased since the Dobbs ruling) to fictitious “book bans” (even though anyone can access and read any of the supposedly banned books), Shapiro claimed “real freedom” is on the ballot this November. 

But a look at Democrats’ record of heavy-handed rule shows their claims of “real freedom” are a mirage to distract from their real goal of using government force to make Americans comply with their agenda. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in education. In his speech, Shapiro equated “real freedom” with blocking kids from leaving public schools – no doubt a nod to his party’s platform, which officially opposes educational freedom. 

In states across the nation, Democrats fight tooth and nail to trap children – mostly minority children and kids in lower-income households – in failing, union-operated, government-run schools.  

As children and families crossing all party lines and spanning every demographic strive to escape the government-imposed, zip-code-driven confines that block equal educational freedom, Democrats continue to believe only the rich deserve access to diverse educational options. 

Even as they regale us with the virtues of public education, they send their own children to pricey private schools. Their supposed “freedom” ignores the freedom to choose the best educational environment, regardless of zip code or socioeconomic standing, and instead forces children without means to remain in terrible and even unsafe schools. 

The Left raises the ridiculous objection of “taxpayer funding for private education.” But when it comes to higher education, federal student aid embraces no similar discrimination. Furthermore, children are denied even the freedom to cross invisible school district boundaries to attend an alternative but better public school, gutting any claims the Left makes of supporting quality education for all. 

Of course, driving Democrats’ anti-educational-freedom agenda are powerful unions that are also behind another of the Left’s false claims of “freedom:” worker freedom.

While President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Shapiro, and others wax eloquent on the “freedom to join a union,” they oppose the freedom not to join a union or the freedom to leave a union at will. Indeed, Shapiro has repeatedly pledged that as long as he is in office, Pennsylvania will never become a Right-to-Work state – where workers are free to embrace or abstain from union membership without penalty. 

Put simply, Democrats believe worker freedom extends only in one direction: toward unionization. And in the Left’s ideal society, workers aren’t “free” to join a union; they are “forced” to join a union in order to fund the union machine that bankrolls Democrats’ political campaigns. The Left’s freedom in theory is little more than coercion in practice. 

Worse, central to the Left’s “freedom” is the desire to force Americans to fund anything they claim is a “freedom.” 

The “freedom to earn a living wage” means government-mandated labor costs that force businesses to lay off workers and even shut their doors. “Reproductive freedom” has gone far beyond abortion’s legality and now means forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.

As for “freedom” of speech? Democrats deem it desirable only provided it doesn’t turn into “misinformation” or “disinformation,” which the Left often defines as anything that challenges their narrative. And where falsehoods actually exist, instead of debunking them, the Left seeks to censor them. 

In any discussion of “freedom,” we can’t forget – nor should we – that during COVID, Democrats, who claim they’re the party of “freedom,” set up government reporting hotlines to encourage Americans to report lockdown violators to the authorities. Indeed, in Democrat Tim Walz’s Minnesota, violators could be (and were) thrown in jail simply for seeking to maintain their livelihoods amid random shutdown orders that targeted small businesses while allowing major box stores to stay open. 

The Left’s “real freedom” looks an awful lot like tyranny. 

Without freedom, our representative democracy is, indeed, at risk. But freedom by necessity includes free expression, free association, educational freedom, and economic freedom. 

Americans seeking true freedom must look past Democrats’ rhetoric to their actions and recognize that you cannot claim to support the idea of freedom while opposing its substance. 

A bill in California that would ban local governments from requiring voter ID in elections passed the state’s far-left assembly, and how awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s approval or veto.

The measure would ban local governments such as Huntington Beach – where the City Council was just given voter approval to impose such a requirement – from requiring voters to prove their identity, and passes jurisdiction for such laws to the state.

“I have repeatedly told the Huntington Beach City Council members pushing this issue that if they were to produce any evidence of widespread voter fraud, I would lead efforts to change California’s voter eligibility rules. They have not produced any such evidence,” said Irving Democrat. Sen. Dave Min, whose Senate Bill 1174 passed the assembly in a 57-16 vote on Aug. 27.

The bill was approved 30-8 in the state Senate in May.

According to Min, the bill would protect against a “patchwork of varying election requirements” throughout the Golden State – blocking all cities from requiring voters to present a government-issued ID to vote. The ban also includes charter cities.

“We cannot have 100 different charter cities making up 100 different sets of voting rules, based on fringe conspiracy theories,” said Min, referring to those questioning the results of the 2020 election.

As the Epoch Times notes further, in a May 21 Senate floor hearing, Min said SB 1174 would create a statewide standard that prevents cities from enacting their own policies, which he said could create inequality.

Authored by Aaron Day via The Brownstone Institute,

he United States has had a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since the late 1990s—or possibly even as far back as the 1970s, depending on how you define it. Definitions matter. Just as the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Gray explores the complex dynamics of control and submission in a relationship, our financial system has evolved into what could be called “50 Shades of Central Bank Tyranny.”  

Each layer of our digital currency system peels back the seductive mask of freedom, revealing progressively darker shades of control. As we delve deeper, what seems like autonomy at first glance is only an illusion where more intricate and pervasive forms of dominance lay hidden, its grip tightening with every layer.

Our politicians work their sleight of hand by manipulating language itself to give a false impression, masking either a different intent or simply trying to gain the appearance of a victory with little or no actual underlying achievement. After all, the Patriot Act was anything but “patriotic.” The CARES Act, while sounding warmly empathetic, cared more about large multinational corporations than small businesses, about Big Pharma over American health, and above all, about the expansion of the surveillance state and protection of the censorship industrial complex over the liberty and free speech of the American people.

Just as 50 Shades of Gray reveals the intricate power plays in a seemingly consensual relationship, so too does our current financial system reveal its true nature as a digital dominatrix—one that has been steadily adding links to the chain of financial enslavement, tightening its grip on our autonomy for decades.

In this article, I will define what a Central Bank Digital Currency is by exploring its major categories. I’ll demonstrate that the US already operates with a form of CBDC, albeit without the flashy labels. I will also show that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can introduce more dystopian elements into this system—such as programming restrictions on when, how, and where you can spend your money without requiring Congressional approval.

However, the fear of central bank control over your transactions is, in fact, a red herring. The real threat lies with our government, which has already perfected the art of surveillance. Adding programmability is just the next logical step. Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are steering us toward the same destination: total digital control. They may use different words and different propaganda, but their goals converge. While we can’t simply vote out of this predicament, we can opt out entirely.

Context

If you have been following me at all, you know that I have been laser-focused on warning people about the threats of CBDCs for the past two years. This dedication led me to write a book, The Final Countdown, and even run for President to raise awareness about the issue. I handed a copy of my book to Vivek Ramaswamy, and after reading it, our conversations helped bring the CBDC issue to Donald Trump’s attention. Since exiting the race last October and becoming a Brownstone Fellow, I’ve traveled to 22 states to discuss the dangers of CBDCs.

Currently, I’m hosting over 15 four-hour workshops nationwide—and soon internationally—educating people on using alternative currencies to avoid CBDCs and evade The Great Taking, the carefully engineered process that could strip us of our stocks, bonds, and 401(k)s to benefit the largest banks through legal maneuvers across all 50 states.

I entered the crypto space in 2012, but it wasn’t until I saw friends and people I admired being arrested, imprisoned, or having their businesses destroyed by the federal government that I became truly passionate about this issue. Since I exited my personal bank account in 2019, this has impacted me personally. I started to research the topic and discovered that the crackdown on crypto was directly related to CBDCs. Put simply, the government needed to crack down on crypto to usher in a CBDC.

For two years, I have been traveling around the country (and soon the world) to warn people about the perils of CBDCs that could come right around the corner. But as I’ve dug deeper into the technical and legal aspects of this, I’ve come to the conclusion that we already have a CBDC. We have for decades. Our transactions are already surveilled. Banks and the government can censor our accounts. The money in our bank accounts is already digital (at least 92%). There is no need to worry about the future threat of CBDCs. We already have them. At this point, we are just fighting over our degrees of slavery. 

The Dollar Is Just an Entry in a Database

It becomes clear that we already have CBDCs when you start examining how money is created. 

As explored in my previous article, “You Might Own Nothing Sooner Than You Think,” modern commerce now flows through vast, centralized databases. These databases form the backbone of our financial system, housing everything from our bank account balances to our stock holdings. Money is no different. 

Let’s start with the basics of money creation: government borrowing. The government sells IOUs in the form of Treasury securities (bills, notes, and bonds) to the Federal Reserve. Where does the Federal Reserve get the money to buy these securities? They create it out of thin air. Or, to be more accurate, they simply add some ones and zeros in the database – an Oracle database, no less (thanks, Larry Ellison!). 

The Federal government then pays its bills through its account at the Federal Reserve. When checks are written for projects like a $3.4 million turtle tunnel in Florida or a $600,000 study on why chimpanzees throw feces, the funds are transferred from the Fed’s Oracle database to the accounts of vendors and employees at commercial banks, each maintaining their own separate databases. Some use Oracle, and others use Microsoft.

Here’s where it gets even more absurd: for every dollar deposited by its customers, a commercial bank can create nine new dollars in its database to loan out to other customers. We have a fractional reserve system, and for years (since 1992), banks were required to send 10% of the deposits back to the Federal Reserve to be held as reserves. Covid-19 legislation removed this requirement, and now banks aren’t required to have 10% at the Federal Reserve (although for a variety of other reasons they do still keep about that level at The Fed).

The government issues an IOU to the Federal Reserve, which creates digital money in a database. The government pays its bills, the checks are deposited in commercial banks that create additional money, and a portion of it is sent back to the Fed—all in the form of digital entries in databases. If you add up the number of Central Bank and Commercial Bank databases globally, you wind up with more than 60,000 separate databases sending entries back and forth. 

What’s a CBDC?

When someone asks me, “What is a CBDC?” I start by examining the grammar of the question. A CBDC is a Central Bank Digital Currency. The Federal Reserve is our central bank, and our currency is already digital—the 1s and 0s are created out of thin air in an Oracle database. By this definition, we’ve had a CBDC for decades.

As of 2024, only 8% of US currency exists physically, leaving the other 92% digital. So, are we a 92% CBDC? We become a CBDC at the point at which greater than 50% of our currency exists digitally. 

Politicians and central bankers claim we don’t currently have a CBDC and wouldn’t likely agree with my definition. I have tried to understand their definitions and isolate the discrepancies. 

Generally speaking, when central banks, the World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN), World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) talk about CBDCs, at their core, they are defined as being digital, being a liability of the central bank (as opposed to being the liability of commercial banks), and if you recall from earlier, create their own money in their own separate database and provide only the small amount (10%) back to the central bank in the form of reserves.

This has always struck me as a difference without a distinction. Why? Because it’s the commercial banks that own the Federal Reserve—or at least, that’s the common belief. As a private entity, the true ownership of the Federal Reserve remains shrouded in secrecy, but by all accounts, it appears to be controlled by a cartel of private banks. I recommend G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island for more insight into this.

Here’s how it works: The money is initially created in the Federal Reserve’s database, and then it’s deposited into the separate databases of the very banks that own the Federal Reserve. These banks, in turn, create even more money based on those deposits.

Having dispensed with the idea that a currency issued by a central bank and a currency issued by a central bank that is then used as backing for the issuance of more currency by a commercial bank is effectively given the same thing given that the banks own the Federal Reserve, let’s address some other misconceptions about a CBDC.

Myth: If I have a CBDC, I will have an account directly with the Federal Reserve, and my bank will disappear.

Most people have the fear/belief that a Central Bank Digital Currency means they would have an account directly with the Federal Reserve, and the commercial banks would go away altogether. This is also one of the reasons many think CBDCs will never happen—because commercial banks will resist and fight to the death for their very survival. Yet none of the CBDCs launched (including China’s) have this structure. In China, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) creates the CBDC and then issues it to commercial banks.

The consumers don’t deal directly with the central bank. There are 134 countries pursuing a CBDC, and we haven’t seen any (including the US) contemplating cutting out the commercial banks. Therefore, I don’t think you can reasonably say that consumers having an account directly with the central bank constitutes a critical requirement for being a CBDC.

When you hear talking heads from the UN, WEF, World Bank, IMF, and others talk about CBDCs, you often hear programmability, surveillance and control, financial inclusion, and essential elements. Let’s do a test and see if the current dollar has or could have these “features.”

Programmability: The most dystopian fears about CBDCs revolve around their ability to be programmed. In theory, with their nebulous owners, governments, or central banks could embed rules dictating how, when, where, and even if you can spend your digital money. People often associate this kind of programmability with blockchain technologies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, using smart contracts and tokens (unique digital representations of assets, which I discuss in detail in this article). 

You don’t need new blockchain technology to enable programming. The Federal Reserve’s Oracle database and the Microsoft and Oracle systems used by commercial banks are programmable right now. Companies and individuals have been using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with these databases for years. Rules are already in place to flag certain transactions based on specific criteria—exactly what programmability is all about. So, while having a single, centralized digital currency might make it easier for Big Brother to enforce spending rules, the tech to do it is already alive and kicking in our current system.

The existing financial system relies heavily on complex algorithms and automated decision-making processes, influencing everything from payment processing to credit scoring. But what’s truly astonishing is the extent to which programming has already permeated our financial lives, with examples including credit cards that can shut off access to money based on carbon emissions, health savings accounts that only allow purchases of pre-approved medical expenses, transaction routing algorithms that prioritize certain merchants over others, anti-money laundering systems that flag suspicious activity in real time, and payment processors that can dynamically adjust interest rates and fees based on individual credit scores.

A complex series of algorithms and automated decision-making processes are already at work as you head to the home goods store to buy a new gas stove (while it is still legal). When you swipe your credit card to make the purchase, the payment processor’s algorithm checks your credit score to determine whether you’re eligible for the purchase, while the bank’s system reviews your account balance to ensure you have enough funds to cover the transaction.

Meanwhile, the anti-money laundering (AML) system runs in the background, flagging any suspicious activity that might indicate money laundering or other illicit activities. The algorithm also checks the merchant category code (MCC) for the home goods store, verifies that the purchase is within your approved spending limits, and calculates the interest rate and fees associated with your credit card based on your individual credit score. As the transaction is processed, the payment processor’s algorithm routes the payment to the store’s bank, and the funds are transferred, all in a matter of seconds, allowing you to take your new gas stove home and start cooking up a storm.

The Doconomy Mastercard, a co-branded card with the United Nations, takes programmability a step further by tying financial transactions to carbon emissions. The card uses algorithms to track the carbon footprint of every purchase, and if a user’s carbon spending exceeds a certain limit, the card can be declined or even shut off. This social engineering is achieved through a complex system that assigns a carbon score to each merchant and transaction, considering factors such as the type of goods or services being purchased, the location, and the mode of transportation used. The algorithm then calculates the user’s total carbon footprint and compares it to a predetermined limit, which can be adjusted based on the user’s individual carbon budget. If the limit is exceeded, the card can be restricted or shut off, limiting the user’s access to their money.

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are another example of programmability in the financial system. HSAs are tax-advantaged savings accounts that allow individuals to set aside funds for medical expenses. However, these accounts come with strict rules and limitations on what products and services can be purchased. The funds in an HSA can only be used for pre-approved health expenses, such as doctor visits, prescriptions, and medical equipment.

The account is linked to a debit card or checkbook, but the funds can only be used at merchants that have been pre-approved by the HSA administrator. This is achieved through a system of merchant category codes (MCCs) identifying the type of business or service provided. When an HSA card is swiped, the MCC is checked against a list of approved codes to ensure that the transaction is eligible for reimbursement. If the MCC is not approved, the transaction is declined, limiting the user’s ability to access their own funds for non-medical expenses. This programmability ensures that HSA funds are used only for their intended purpose while providing a convenient and tax-efficient way to save for medical expenses.

When a politician gives a speech claiming they are fighting the good fight against these horrible CBDCs on the basis of protecting Americans from having their money programmed, inform them about how the existing system works. No major technical upgrade is needed, and no significant laws have been passed to add more programmability. New rules and algorithms are developed every day, all without any public hearing, Congressional approval, or even a shoutout on your favorite financial news channel. 

Surveillance: If there’s one thing Americans are increasingly worried about, it’s that every single transaction will be under the government’s watchful eye. Ted Cruz didn’t mince words when he said, “The Biden Administration is actively working to create a new digital currency that will allow the government to spy on our transactions and control our financial freedom. We must stop this now.” Ron DeSantis has also made his stance crystal clear, declaring, “The Biden administration’s push for a Central Bank Digital Currency is all about surveillance and control. Florida won’t stand for it—we will protect Floridians’ financial privacy and security.”

And let’s not forget Senator Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming’s Republican senator, who’s a favorite among Bitcoin enthusiasts. She has also sounded the alarm: “I’m deeply concerned about the Biden Administration’s push for a CBDC. It could be used to gather information on Americans and potentially even control their spending. We need to ensure any digital currency system protects privacy and individual liberty.”

It’s not just Republicans waving the flag while bleating about privacy. Even Elizabeth Warren, who has advocated for CBDCs, has said, “If we’re going to create a digital dollar, we have to make sure it works for everyone, not just the wealthy, and that it protects consumer privacy.” 

How noble. How patriotic. How completely divorced from the reality of their voting records. Our current digital dollar is and has been highly tracked and censored for decades. 

In the US, the government has various methods to gain access to financial transaction information, depending on the type of information and the circumstances. Here are some of their methods:

Let’s put this into more personal terms. I could write an entire book with just case studies about how the government has used surveillance techniques to target people. I have friends in prison for non-violent crimes made possible by this very surveillance. 

I’ve picked these two gems because they highlight just how extreme the surveillance measures are with our banking system as it is today. 

The Case of Rebecca Brown: Civil Asset Forfeiture Gone Wrong

In 2015, Rebecca Brown’s father, Terry Brown, was driving from their home in Michigan to visit family in New Jersey. He was carrying $91,800 in cash, and his daughter spent years saving to buy a house. Terry didn’t trust banks (wise man), so he withdrew the money and carried it with him for safekeeping.

While driving through Pennsylvania, a state trooper pulled him over for a minor traffic violation. When the officer discovered the cash, he immediately became suspicious, despite Terry’s clear explanation that the money belonged to his daughter and was intended to buy a house. Without any charges or evidence of a crime, the police seized the entire $91,800 under civil asset forfeiture laws.

Rebecca and her father spent over a year and thousands of dollars fighting to get their money back. The case garnered national attention, highlighting the abusive nature of civil asset forfeiture laws that allow law enforcement to take money from innocent people without any proof of wrongdoing. Eventually, the money was returned, but only after a long and costly legal battle that left the family financially strained and emotionally exhausted.

The Story of Nick Merrill: Gagged by a National Security Letter

Nick Merrill owned a small New York internet service provider (ISP). Out of the blue, one day in 2004, his life completely changed when the FBI served him with a National Security Letter (NSL). The letter demanded that he turn over confidential customer records, and it came with a gag order. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, including his lawyer, about the request.

Merrill was horrified. The FBI didn’t provide any evidence or court order—just the NSL. He couldn’t challenge the letter in court because the gag order made it illegal to speak about it. Merrill felt his constitutional rights had been violated, but had no visible recourse. 

For years, Merrill fought the gag order in secret, unable to tell even his closest friends what was happening. It wasn’t until 2010—six years later—that Merrill finally won the right to speak publicly about his case, becoming the first person to challenge an NSL gag order successfully. The experience left him deeply shaken. And as he was the first to challenge an NSL successfully, we don’t know how many people have had a similar experience. 

So, let me recap this for you: the NSA already bulk collects our financial data, the IRS uses AI in conjunction with the IRS to monitor our spending, the banks already have rules (programming) to track for suspicious behavior, and between the Patriot Act and National Security Letters, we can be spied on without court approval and may not even be able to talk about it (even with a lawyer). 

Our money is digital, and it’s already under heavy surveillance. How much worse can it get? At first, I thought maybe folks like Cruz, DeSantis, and Warren didn’t realize how deep the surveillance rabbit hole already goes. But then I dug deeper. Despite their public outcry about privacy, Ted Cruz voted for the US FREEDOM Act, which reauthorized parts of the Patriot Act, including those pesky NSLs. Warren backed it too, while pushing to strengthen the Bank Secrecy Act. DeSantis? Same deal—he voted for the US FREEDOM Act and supported efforts to tighten the Bank Secrecy Act’s grip.

Financial Inclusion: One of the most absurd claims and a perfect demonstration of Orwellian doublespeak from globalist organizations like the WEF, UN, and Bank of International Settlements is that CBDCs will promote financial inclusion. 

When they say CBDC, what they really mean is banning physical cash. Remember that no formal definition states that you can’t have a CBDC alongside physical cash. The very definition of CBDC itself is not only contested between these groups, but it also has shifted and become more narrowly defined as time progresses. In part, I think this is to deflect from how authoritarian the existing system already is. You can have both cash and a CBDC like we already do in America, and many of the other pilot programs worldwide contemplate either having physical cash alongside CBDCs or gradually phasing out cash. So, again, definitions matter. BIS and WEF “inclusion” means they’ll strip away cash and call it progress.

Here’s the kicker: about 4.5% of Americans are unbanked and depend on physical cash to survive. Under a CBDC system, use of the system and carrying out transactions require permission, and that permission can be denied. Banks could completely exclude these people from the economy—left without any means of exchange. That’s not inclusion; it’s worse than the current situation. It’s explicit exclusion. 

Tokenization: The IMF and BIS have been peddling a semantic argument that a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is only truly “digital” if it’s tokenized, i.e., assigned a unique, trackable token to each unit of currency. However, this distinction is largely a matter of terminology rather than substance. The vast majority of money already exists in digital form, stored in databases such as the Federal Reserve’s Oracle database or commercial banks’ Oracle/Microsoft databases. The real debate is not about whether money is digital but about who controls the digital ledger. In the US, the divide seems to be along party lines, with Democrats advocating for a central bank-issued, tokenized currency, while Republicans, led by Cynthia Lummis, push for commercial bank-issued stablecoins. However, this distinction needs to be more precise, as both options are equally programmable, surveillable, and controllable by the government.

Moreover, commercial banks own central banks, rendering the distinction between the two largely moot. Tokenization doesn’t magically make something “digital;” it’s simply a different type of digital representation. Ultimately, whether it’s a central bank-issued token or a commercial bank-issued stablecoin, the result is a programmable, trackable, and potentially oppressive digital currency threatening individual freedom and autonomy.

CBDC Finally Defined 

We have a central bank digital currency. Politicians and globalist organizations like the UN/WEF/BIS like to shift the goalposts, adding narrow definitions that get more tyrannical with each new redefinition. 

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are no longer a future concept but a present reality. We’re not waiting for their implementation; they’re already here, and we’re now measuring the degrees of tyranny that come with them. The CBDC Tyranny Index is a tool designed to help us understand the level of control and surveillance that comes with these digital currencies.

Instead of letting them frame the debate by adding new bells and whistles to the definition of CBDC, I’ve created an index issued as a scoring system to determine the level of tyranny. The index consists of several categories: surveillance and monitoring, control mechanisms, cashless society, tokenization, issuer, globalization, and crypto regulation. Each category has a score, and the sum of these scores indicates the level of tyranny. The higher the score, the more oppressive the CBDC.

We’re already at the Bondage Level, with a score that indicates a significant loss of freedom and autonomy. But it’s not going to stop there. The cut-off for the Servitude Level is 120 points, and there are multiple ways to reach that threshold. One way is through the increased use of AI-powered monitoring, combined with a cashless society and tokenization. But make no mistake; this is just one possible path to Servitude. We know the end game: a global digital currency tied to a social credit system where every transaction is tracked and controlled. This is the dystopian future that’s discussed in my book, The Final Countdown.

How We Can Fight Back

I wrote this article to make one thing perfectly clear: we already have a CBDC. CBDCs aren’t a future threat, they are a present reality. The existing system is already digital, programmable, and trackable. Politicians, central bankers, and globalist organizations keep shifting the definition of CBDC to deflect from the fact that we already have one and to groom us for even deeper shades of tyranny. 

We need to take ownership of the definition of CBDCs to make their intentions clear – which is that they are moving towards absolute digital enslavement and a global technocracy. 

We must hammer and meme the bondage, servitude, and enslavement CBDC tiers and explain the different elements of the CBDC tyranny index. We need to bring awareness to the fact that Republicans and Democrats are both complicit in bringing about this tyranny, both complicit in the semantic manipulation of the definition of CBDCs, and both are actively working towards passing legislation that elevates the level of tyranny from bondage to servitude. 

The Dems will get us to the servitude level through a Central Bank-issued, tokenized dollar under the guise of financial inclusion. This is the current policy under President Biden’s Executive Order 14067. The Republicans will get us there through enhanced surveillance and by giving monopoly control of tokenized commercial bank digital currency to the largest banks, most likely under the guise of stopping illegal immigration, terrorism, and money laundering. 

I highlight the behavior of politicians on both sides of the aisle, not because I think you should write or call your Congressman. We can’t vote our way out. All of the legislation that added the programmability and surveillance has been bipartisan. Every fiat currency in human history has failed, and even the last 5 global reserve currencies only lasted 84 years. The difference this time is that it is a controlled demolition. They are doing it intentionally to bring in a wholly digital control system. 

The way forward is through radical non-compliance and adopting monetary alternatives that are outside the state’s control. In 2019, I stopped using a personal bank account and started using self-custody crypto, gold, and silver. In light of the recent revelations about the hijacking of Bitcoin (I recommend reading Hijacking Bitcoin for more information) and its traceability, I have moved to privacy coins like Zano and Monero and use physical gold, goldbacks, and silver as well. I am currently hosting 4-hour workshops in cities across the US and soon internationally as well where I show people exactly how to obtain and use alternative currencies as a substitute for the dollar. . 

By exiting the dollar now, we can end our bondage, stave off complete digital enslavement, and build a future based on free will and centralization. We need not cry about the loss of our current system. We should set fire to tears and begin a freer, decentralized future. 

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Chicago has a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion. Tack on another $2.9 billion for a proposed teachers’ contract plus an unknown amount for firefighters.

Chicago’s Budget Gap

CBS News reports Chicago Faces $982 Million Budget Shortfall for 2025

Mayor Brandon Johnson is projecting a $982 million city budget shortfall for 2025, nearly double the spending gap he faced in his first year in office, thanks to rising personnel costs, drops in some key tax revenues, and expiring one-time budget solutions he relied on to balance the 2024 budget.

Johnson declined to say if he would raise property taxes, authorize legalizing video gambling in Chicago, or approve placing slot machines at the city’s airports as ways to raise new revenue to balance the budget for 2025. He also would not rule out the possibility of layoffs or a hiring freeze.

“The chickens have come home to roost. It is time to get busy,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan public finance watchdog group.

“Springfield is not coming to the aid of the city anytime soon. Springfield has its own issues that it has to deal with. Springfield also needs to see that the city is actually taking care of its own house before it’s going to come with any additional help,” Ferguson said.

Soft Landing Hoot of the Day

 “We’re working to provide as soft of a landing as possible,” said Johnson.

Expenses Up, Revenues Down

• Budget Director Annette Guzman said the city is expecting continued drop in revenue from the personal property replacement tax – a tax on corporations collected by the state and passed on to local governments. The city saw a drop of $169 million in revenue from that tax in 2024, and is expecting an even bigger drop in 2025.

• The Chicago Board of Education also recently approved a Chicago Public Schools budget plan that does not include a $175 million payment for pensions for nonteaching staff at the district, a cost the city once covered, but that CPS had paid for over the last four years until now, and Johnson’s budget team isn’t expecting the district to cover that cost for 2025.

• Another factor putting pressure on the city’s budget for next year is ongoing contract talks with the union for the city’s firefighters and paramedics, who have gone more than three years without a new contract.

Chicago Teachers Union $2.9 billion Deficit

In addition to the above, please note the CTU’s Proposed Contract would tack on another $2.9 billion.

Chicago Public Schools officials said Tuesday that the Chicago Teachers Union’s contract proposals would result in a deficit of at least $2.9 billion for the 2025-26 school year, a hole more than five times the current projection and growing as large as $4 billion by 2028.

They also threw cold water on the idea of borrowing to pay for the additional costs, noting the district is already weighed down by a ton of debt, much of it taken out at moments of crisis. That marked the first time CPS had publicly addressed a private proposal by Mayor Brandon Johnson for district officials to take out a short-term, high-interest loan to pay for a CTU contract as well as a pension payment that his office is demanding be covered by the district. CPS officials had pushed back on that idea privately.

The union, which in recent weeks has grown increasingly critical of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and his approach to the budget, is reportedly asking for 9% annual raises for teachers, plus promises that every school will have a baseline of staff that will allow for small class sizes and a variety of arts, music and physical education classes. The CTU also has made proposals around more preparation time for elementary school teachers, housing for homeless students and support for migrant children.

The union pointed to revenue initiatives that the city and state could explore, like more heavily taxing millionaires and corporations — which would require changes to state law — or seeking federal funding for school building improvements.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Johnson proposes a “short-term, high-interest loan to pay for a CTU contract .”

Then what?

Let’s give credit where credit is due. No matter how stupid you think Chicago’s mayor is, every election the city manages to find someone worse.

Even Lori Lightfoot was better than this.

However, any thinking person knew this in advance. Johnson was hand picked by the CTU to screw the city, screw the taxpayers, screw the corporations, and screw the kids.

March 13: Chicago Teachers’ Union Seeks $50 Billion Despite $700 Million City Deficit

March 15: Congratulations to NY, IL, LA, and CA for Losing the Most Population

August 11: Net Zero Climate Policies Could Leave the Midwest in the Dark

July 2: In Chicago There’s Under a 50 Percent Chance Police Show Up If You are Shot

Brandon Johnson is the worst mayor in Chicago history, and that’s saying quite a bit.

If you live in Illinois, get the hell out before unions take every penny you have.

By the way, if you want to vote for a Chicago bailout and massive tax increases to pay for it (even if you don’t live in Chicago), then vote for Kamala Harris.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

We previously discussed the case of a student (known as “D.A.”) in Michigan who was ordered to remove his sweater with the popular phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon.” We now have a ruling from U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney in the Western District of Michigan. In D.A. v. Tri County Area Schools. Judge Maloney rejects the free speech claim and rules that school officials can punish a student for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt. I believe that he is wrong and that the case sets a dangerous precedent.

“Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a familiar political battle cry not just against Biden but also against the bias of the media. It derives from an Oct. 2021 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”

“Let’s Go Brandon!” instantly became a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.

In this case, an assistant principal (Andrew Buikema) and a teacher (Wendy Bradford) “ordered the boys to remove the sweatshirts” for allegedly breaking the school dress code. In the first such incident, D.A. removed the sweater only to reveal a teeshirt underneath with the same slogan. He was then told to go get a teeshirt from a school official to remove both clothing items.

The school ordered the removal of the clothing as obscene and in violation of the school code. However, other students are allowed to don political apparel supporting other political causes including “gay-pride-themed hoodies.”

The district dress code states the following:

“Students and parents have the right to determine a student’s dress, except when the school administration determines a student’s dress is in conflict with state policy, is a danger to the students’ health and safety, is obscene, is disruptive to the teaching and/or learning environment by calling undue attention to oneself. The dress code may be enforced by any staff member.”

The district reserves the right to bar any clothing “with messages or illustrations that are lewd, indecent, vulgar, or profane, or that advertise any product or service not permitted by law to minors.”

The funny thing about this action is that the slogan is not profane. To the contrary, it substitutes non-profane words for profane words. Nevertheless, “D.A.” was stopped in the hall by Buikema and told that his “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirt was equivalent to “the f–word.”

Judge Maloney ruled that:

A school can certainly prohibit students from wearing a shirt displaying the phrase F*** Joe Biden. Plaintiffs concede this conclusion. Plaintiff must make this concession as the Supreme Court said as much in Fraser … (“As cogently expressed by Judge Newman, ‘the First Amendment gives a high school student the classroom right to wear Tinker’s armband, but not Cohen’s jacket [which read {F*** the Draft}].’”) The relevant four-letter word is a swear word and would be considered vulgar and profane. The Sixth Circuit has written that “it has long been held that despite the sanctity of the First Amendment, speech that is vulgar or profane is not entitled to absolute constitutional protection.” …

If schools can prohibit students from wearing apparel that contains profanity, schools can also prohibit students from wearing apparel that can reasonably be interpreted as profane. Removing a few letters from the profane word or replacing letters with symbols would not render the message acceptable in a school setting. School administrators could prohibit a shirt that reads “F#%* Joe Biden.” School officials have restricted student from wearing shirts that use homophones for profane words … [such as] “Somebody Went to HOOVER DAM And All I Got Was This ‘DAM’ Shirt.” … [Defendants] recalled speaking to one student who was wearing a hat that said “Fet’s Luck” … [and asking] a student to change out of a hoodie that displayed the words “Uranus Liquor” because the message was lewd. School officials could likely prohibit students from wearing concert shirts from the music duo LMFAO (Laughing My F***ing A** Off) or apparel displaying “AITA?” (Am I the A**hole?)…. Courts too have recognized how seemingly innocuous phrases may convey profane messages. A county court in San Diego, California referred an attorney to the State Bar when counsel, during a hearing, twice directed the phrase “See You Next Tuesday” toward two female attorneys.

Because Defendants reasonably interpreted the phrase as having a profane meaning, the School District can regulate wearing of Let’s Go Brandon apparel during school without showing interference or disruption at the school….

The court does not explain what will constitute a “reasonable interpretation” of non-profane words as profane. It is not clear if the same result would be reached by an agreement among students as to the hidden meaning of some other common expression akin to the code of “as you wish” in The Princess Bride. Judge Maloney seems to think that, so long as there is a profane meaning for some, there is a right to bar the expression.

Judge Maloney offers a tip of the hat to free speech before eviscerating its protection:

This Court agrees that political expression, the exchange of ideas about the governance of our county, deserves the highest protection under the First Amendment. But Plaintiffs did not engage in speech on public issues. Defendants reasonably interpreted Let’s Go Brandon to F*** Joe Biden, the combination a politician’s name and a swear word—nothing else. Hurling personal insults and uttering vulgarities or their equivalents towards one’s political opponents might have a firm footing in our nation’s traditions, but those specific exchanges can hardly be considered the sort of robust political discourse protected by the First Amendment. As a message, F*** Joe Biden or its equivalent does not seek to engage the listener over matters of public concern in a manner that seeks to expand knowledge and promote understanding.

The court’s narrow view of the content of this speech is, for me, jarring and chilling. The “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan is more than just a substitute for profanity directed at the President (which itself has political content). It is using satire to denounce the press that often acts like a state media. It is commentary on the alliance between the government and the media in shaping what the public sees and hears.

Judge Maloney relied heavily on the Court’s 1986 decision in Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser which dealt with a nomination speech of student Matthew Fraser for a friend running for high school vice-president. The speech made juvenile illusions to sex like “I know a man who is firm—he’s firm in his pants, he’s firm in his shirt, his character is firm—but most … of all, his belief in you, the students of Bethel, is firm.”

The Court ruled that “it is a highly appropriate function of a public school education to prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse.” It added that “schools, as instruments of the state, may determine that the essential lessons of civil, mature conduct cannot be conveyed in a school that tolerates lewd, indecent, or offensive speech and conduct[.].”

The Plaintiffs accepted that the school could prohibit a sweatshirt reading “F**k Joe Biden.” While the Court had found that “F**k the Draft” was protected for adults in Cohen v. California, it ruled that schools are different and stated in Fraser: “As cogently expressed by Judge Newman, ‘the First Amendment gives a high school student the classroom right to wear Tinker’s armband, but not Cohen’s jacket.”) (citing Thomas v. Bd. of Educ., Grandville Cent. Sch. Dist., 607 F.2d 1043, 1057 (2d Cir. 1979)).

However, the Plaintiffs cited other lower court decisions striking a balance in such cases. For example, in B.H. v. Easton Area School Dist. the Third Circuit in a similar case ruled that:

Under Fraser, a school may also categorically restrict speech that—although not plainly lewd, vulgar, or profane—could be interpreted by a reasonable observer as lewd, vulgar, or profane so long as it could not also plausibly be interpreted as commenting on a political or social issue.

This was obviously commenting on a political or social issue, but the court declined to follow the ruling from another circuit on the question.

I disagree with the decision as sweeping too far into the regulation of political speech. Notably, politicians have used the phrase, including members of the House of Representatives despite a rule barring profanity on the floor. On October 21, 2021, Republican congressman Bill Posey concluded his remarks with “Let’s go, Brandon.” It was not declared a violation of the House rules.

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I criticize what I refer to as “functionalist” interpretations of free speech that have allowed endless trade offs in barring or allowing speech. By protecting speech for its positive function in society, it allows for greater censoring of low-value as opposed to high-value speech.

My view of free speech as a human right is not absolute and I recognize the need for schools to maintain civil discourse. However, the decision by Judge Maloney reflects the slippery slope of functionalism in more narrowly defining the protection of free speech. The default of Judge Maloney is to limit speech even when it is not overtly profane and concerns a major political controversy.

In my view, the school is engaged in unconstitutional speech regulation under a vague and arbitrary standard. The discretionary authority recognized by Judge Maloney sweeps too deeply into protected speech for high school students and offers little clarity on what is permissible political commentary.

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

If you’ve been wondering how it’s possible for so many woke movies, streaming series and video games to continually fail yet still get made, the answer is of course ESG funding.  These products don’t necessarily have to bring in consumer dollars because the companies already got paid by an army of NGOs and government programs. 

Though the flow of ESG cash has slowed dramatically ever since central banks started raising interest rates there’s still a long list of projects that were initiated several years ago that are finally being released today.  This is why, despite the complete public rejection of woke propaganda and dying ESG, we are still being inundated with far-left media.

For many years it has been suspected that leftist government officials are involved in directly financing social engineering projects using public tax dollars.  In film and TV the influence is more obvious, but what about video games (the largest entertainment market on the planet)?

We recently discussed the exposure of a AAA video game called ‘Dustborn’ funded by the Norwegian Government and the EU.  The game features a cast of queer activist characters that use the “power of words” to cancel and manipulate their opponents.  They also use various methods to bully their allies to do more for them.  The game is set in the near future of 2030 in a balkanized America run by “white conservative fascists.” The backdrop of the game was apparently inspired by the 2020 elections.

The intellectual disconnect is fascinating – Since at least 2016 the US has suffered increasingly under far-left oppression rather than far-right, starting with woke “cancel culture” supported by international corporations, then the BLM and Antifa riots supported by Democrat politicians, and finally culminating in an attempt to institute long term medical tyranny under the Biden Administration.  But we’re not going to see any video games about that.

The terminology for this kind of media is “predictive programming”:  The use of propaganda to “inoculate” consumers against certain ideas and information the government does not want them to entertain.  And, not surprisingly, the EU is not the only bureaucracy engaging in this activity.  

New information has come to light that the US government is involved in the same brand of social engineering and they openly admit to their goals in a funding program for modern video games launched in 2021.  

The US State Department and Embassy in The Hague ran a “competition” for a $275,000 grant through it’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).  The project revolved around “counter-disinformation” – creating a video game that influences teens against common conservative arguments surrounding politics, DEI, climate change, economics and even covid.  The initial iteration of the game is called “Cat Park”, likely a beta test for future propaganda games.

As the funding notice states:

“Successful proposals will incorporate active inoculation theory and address current disinformation and propaganda tactics. The delivered product should be modular, scalable, and expandable so that later iterations could address additional problem sets, such as violent extremism and health misinformation. The game will be piloted simultaneously with players in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and lessons learned from these pilots will inform the final version of the game intended ultimately for global audiences…” 

The GEC partners with numerous globalist institutions including the Global Disinformation Index, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, and Moonshot CVE.  They claim to be focused on foreign adversaries, but they are aggressively opposed to “populism” and view conservative ideals as a “threat to Democracy.”  In other words, they see you as the enemy as much as they see China or Russia as the enemy.

In 2021 members of Congress wrote a complaint to the GEC in which they argued that the institution was straying from its original mission.  They included the video game project, noting that it was designed to: 

“Produce a ‘counter-disinformation video game’ that programmed audiences to associate citizen critiques of government waste, fraud, and abuse with a social media disinformation campaign.”     

Inoculation Theory upholds that “individuals who are exposed to weakened versions of arguments against currently held attitudes formulate resistance, and the ability to form counter-arguments to future threats to those attitudes.”

What does that mean?

To simplify, they portray weak strawman arguments within popular media to make their political opponents look ridiculous.  The public consumes this media and is thus convinced that the government narrative is the proper narrative, while anyone who dares challenge that narrative is automatically ignored, even if their position is based on facts and evidence.  The US government is using American tax dollars to pay for psychological weapons that will be used against American citizens.

This agenda to infuse woke ideology into every aspect of western culture has been ongoing for quite some time, but any criticism of it in the past was immediately called “conspiracy theory.”  Only in the last couple of years has the evidence mounted to the point that even normies can no longer deny it.

By Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

As tourists complete their strolls to the White House from the east along Pennsylvania Avenue, they pass a relatively unremarkable, columned office building that overlooks Lafayette Square — oblivious that, behind its walls, bureaucrats are quietly inflicting poverty, illness and death on innumerable innocents around the world.

The Freedman’s Bank Building doesn’t house CIA or Department of Defense officials, but rather the US Treasury’s little-known Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Instead of orchestrating airstrikes or insurgencies, these bureaucrats impose mass suffering via economic warfare, collectively serving as the tip of the spear that is America’s ever-expanding economic sanctions regime.

The term “banality of evil” was coined by intellectual Hannah Arendt after she watched the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who, from his post atop the inscrutably-named Office IV B 4, oversaw the grim logistics of funneling Jews into German concentration camps.

Arendt said she was struck to find Eichmann “neither perverted nor sadistic,” but “terrifyingly normal.” Rather than a rabid ideologue or psychopathic antisemite, Arendt found herself observing a boring bureaucrat whose diligent performance of his assigned duties was largely motivated by a mere desire for career advancement. “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous,” Arendt later wrote.

Arendt’s characterization sparked great controversy. In subsequent decades, some historians have challenged her assessment of Eichmann, and philosophers have wrestled with her proposition that one can do evil without being evil.

Whatever the appropriateness of Arendt’s application of “the banality of evil” to Eichmann, it’s safe to say the individual employees of OFAC — mostly lawyers — similarly aren’t perceived by people around them as malevolent. If you live in the vicinity of the capital, an OFAC worker might be the congenial coach of your child’s soccer team or a friendly face at a volunteer event.

However, regardless of their personalities and sincere convictions that they’re engaged in public service, the stark reality is that many OFAC employees spend their workdays carrying out the mass victimization of people who’ve done no harm to the United States or its citizens. To paraphrase Arendt, these people may be quite ordinary, but their deeds are monstrous.

Considering, just for starters, the direct and indirect effects of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon’s Central Command has arguably caused the most 21st-century harm to innocents of any organization in the world. However, staffed with a mere 300 or so bureaucrats, OFAC is surely the leader on a harm-per-employee basis.

Sanctions are often perceived as a welcome alternative to war. In fact, they are merely a different form of war — one that can also produce dead bodies and misery on a grand scale, with the vast majority of the victims having no responsibility for their governments’ supposedly offending actions. (While sanctions are also deployed against terrorists and drug cartels, my focus here is on economic warfare waged against entire countries.)

The power of American sanctions springs from the US dollar’s domination of international trade and finance. As the Washington Post recently explained:

“To deal in dollars, financial institutions must often borrow, however temporarily, from U.S. counterparts and comply with the rules of the U.S. government. That makes the Treasury Department, which regulates the U.S. financial system, the gatekeeper to the world’s banking operations. And sanctions are the gate.”

Sanctions come in a variety of flavors, including the freezing of assets, barring of financial transactions, and blocking of exports or imports. There are also “secondary sanctions” aimed at non-American parties who dare to conduct business with a sanctions target.

Though they’ve long been part of the American arsenal, sanctions use rose sharply during the 1990s and exploded after 9/11 with the “war on terror” and the accompanying surge in US foreign interventionism and regime-change campaigns. In 2000, there were 912 designated entities; by 2021, there were 9,421.

Via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, presidents have broad, unilateral power to impose sanctions to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security. The determination of what constitutes such a threat also rests in the president’s hands, and they unsurprisingly apply an expansive interpretation.

Sanctions can also originate in Congress. Eager to bolster their national security credentials and curry the favor of interest groups like pro-Israel organizations, legislators introduce them with abandon: In the 117th Congress that ended in January 2023, members introduced more than 350 sanctions bills.

“It is way, way overused, and it’s become out of control,” former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Caleb McCarry told the Post, casting OFAC employees as victims. “They are good professionals who have all this political work being shoved on them. They want relief from this relentless, never-ending, you-must-sanction-everybody-and-their-sister, sometimes literally, system.”

Washington’s bipartisan sanctions compulsion surely causes OFAC employees some workplace stress and perhaps a few skipped happy hours. For countless innocents in targeted countries, OFAC-enforced sanctions cause everything from unemployment, ruined career aspirations, financial insecurity and poverty to depression, hunger, disease and death.

Lest you think that harm to civilians via economic warfare is akin to unintended “collateral damage” in conventional warfare, champions of sanctions often make clear that the infliction of misery on civilians is a central aim:

• “Denying money and supplies to Cuba [will] bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of [its] government.” — Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lestor Mallary in a 1960 memorandum.

• “Iraqis will pay the price while [Saddam Hussein] is in power. All possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone.” — George H.W. Bush’s then-deputy national security advisor Robert Gates.

• “[Sanctions] make people suffer. They hurt. They can destroy.” — Former OFAC director of global targeting Robert McBrien, seemingly speaking not with remorse, but awe.

• “Critics [have] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.” — Rep. Brad Sherman.

When confronted with the harm that economic warfare causes to innocents, sanctions architects point to “humanitarian carveouts” — provisions that grant exceptions for the transfer of certain goods like food and medicine. However, due to sanctions’ blend of complexity, bureaucracy and harsh punishments, even those exceptions often fail to materialize in the real world.

That’s typically because of so-called “de-risking,” a term used to describe financial institutions’ flatly refusing to be party to any business involving a sanctioned country — rather than attempting to parse OFAC rules on a case-by-case business, with the specter of million- or even billion-dollar fines and reputational damage hovering overhead. Of course, even if carveouts worked as advertised, they divert attention from the fact that broad economic warfare inevitably harms innocent people. 

To appreciate the true nature of OFAC’s work, consider a sampling of cruel outcomes visited upon guiltless people in three targeted countries, starting with Iraq.

Among many other types of goods, the US-led, 1990s economic war on Saddam Hussein-led Iraq prevented the country from importing water pumps and chlorine, which were desperately needed to repair and run water treatment plants ruined by American bombs. However, pumps and chlorine were classified by the US government as “dual-use” items that could conceivably be used for sinister purposes — in Iraq’s non-existent weapon of mass destruction program — and were therefore blocked by the sanctions regime.

“The consequences…were visible in pediatric wards,” wrote Andrew Cockburn. “Every year the number of children who died before they reached their first birthday rose, from one in 30 in 1990 to one in eight seven years later. Health specialists agreed that contaminated water was responsible.”

When confronted with an estimate that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died from sanction-inflicted malnutrition and degradation of water purification and sanitation systems, then-UN ambassador Madeleine Albright infamously told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, “We think the price is worth it.”

Under sanctions for 45 years, Iranian innocents have also suffered from OFAC’s work. For example, a 2019 report by Human Rights Watch found that patients with rare diseases struggled to obtain essential, imported medicines, as were patients at a pediatric cancer treatment center.

OFAC’s predation of Iran has also amplified the suffering of people with epidermolysis bullosa, a rare disease that causes blistering of the skin and mucous membranes. Iran’s supply of a special kind of foam dressing evaporated when a European producer ended all business in Iran due to US sanctions. The domestic alternative dressing “often gets attached to the blisters, causing excruciating pain for the patients,” according to an attorney representing a health organization.

Meanwhile, though typically measured at the macro level with yardsticks like GDP, general economic damage created by OFAC-enforced sanctions have also caused misery for individual Iranians — from inflation-hammered families compelled to buy rotting food, to young people who can no longer afford to live on their own, to small-business owners driven to bankruptcy.

Syria is another OFAC victim in a region on the receiving end of an outsized share of America’s economic warfare. After ravaging the country with a failed, decade-long regime-change war that boosted al Qaeda affiliates in hopes of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s government, the United States went all-in on sanctions that supposedly seek to oust him via economic strangulation.

The centerpiece is a 2020 law with a profoundly Orwellian name: the Caesar Civilian Protection Act has inflicted widespread harm on Syrian civilians. These sanctions target not only Syria’s central bank and essential industries like oil and gas, they even explicitly aim to bar the reconstruction of areas devastated by the war.

Before that war, Syria’s GDP stood at $68 billion. In 2019 — the year before the Ceasar sanctions were launched — Syria’s GDP had fallen to $22.6 billion. By 2021, it had crumbled to just $9 billion. As Syria’s currency collapsed, prices soared, making it difficult for Syrians to afford food or fuel — particularly Syrians whose jobs have vanished.

Thanks in part to the dispassionate computer keystrokes of OFAC bureaucrats 5,900 miles away, 90% of Syrians are impoverished, and more than half — about 12 million men, women and children — live with food insecurity. In some areas of the country, 28% of children are victims of stunted growth.

With legitimate international commerce thwarted, some Syrians have pivoted to the drug trade, producing a high-margin, synthetic stimulant called Captagon and exporting the pills to other countries across the region, fostering rising levels of addiction. Via that consequence, the 2020 sanction law’s titular “civilian protection” promise falls flat both inside and outside the target country.

Given these terrible outcomes, one might expect a compassionate person working in the sanctions realm to treat the topic with a certain sober grimness. However, much as Eichmann exhibited, in the words of Thomas White, a seeming “disengagement from the reality of his evil acts,” former OFAC Director John Smith cheerfully opened a 2022 podcast appearance by declaring he was “very happy to be here talking about my love of economic sanctions.”

Some readers may be inclined to defend OFAC employees on the basis that they don’t set US policy, but merely carry it out. Not coincidentally, that was the core of Eichmann’s defense too. Eichmann was hanged to death. Like many of his agency’s alumni, OFAC director Brad Smith may graduate from imposing mass suffering on behalf of his government to a far more lucrative post in the private sector, advising businesses on navigating the very thicket of thorny regulations he cultivated.

Meanwhile, those who linger at OFAC in roles that sustain broad economic sanctions should confront a damning fact: they’re earning a paycheck by victimizing innocent men, women and children on a massive scale.

* * *

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com  

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

Gold recently hit $2,500 marking an all time record high.

The reality is, there’s a very good case to be made that gold is still quite cheap compared to its trajectory. It’s possible that in a few years, $2,500 gold could look remarkably inexpensive.

Not to be overly dramatic, but Kamala Harris is a big reason why.

I’m not a D or R kind of guy, but it’s impossible to ignore the impact of the upcoming election on the future of the US.

At a press conference a few weeks ago, reporters asked Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, about the upcoming Presidential election and whether or not the Fed was modeling any potential policy changes depending on the outcome.

But the Fed Chairman was almost proud of the fact that the election outcome didn’t factor into their planning at all.

The Fed considers itself apolitical. Powell seemed to think it was somehow wholesome and responsible to completely ignore perhaps the single most important factor that could drive the economy in the coming years—the outcome of the Presidential election.

Two people with diametrically opposed views will clearly make a massive difference on the economy.

I saw a report yesterday that, since she stole the nomination exactly one month ago, Kamala has raised $500 million. That brings her total campaign war chest to a massive $1 billion.

It’s funny because I seem to remember Rep. AOC saying that, “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.” In this case, I’m inclined to agree with AOC.

Kamala took a half billion from Biden— the legitimate nominee— and raised another half billion by making the most outrageous claims and lying her ass off, without even bothering to sit for basic interviews or take legitimate questions.

She’s been coronated without scrutiny, and only now are we starting to see how she views the economy.

She seems to understand that a lot of people are suffering, and she at least partially diagnoses it accurately as the result of inflation. But she has no understanding of where the inflation comes from.

There’s no discussion of the government’s role in running multi-trillion dollar deficits, the unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, and continuing to rack up trillions of dollars in debt every year, even though there’s no longer a national emergency.

Her plans will undoubtedly cause higher deficits and more inflation.

For example, subsidizing housing is obviously only going to make everything cost more.

Giving new home buyers a free $25,000 just means houses will become $25,000 more expensive.

It’s exactly what happened during the pandemic when they started handing out stimmy checks— there was no increase in goods and services, just more money floating around, so prices went up.

The same thing will happen with housing and everything else the government pours “free money” into. But they have no understanding of this.

None of that factors into her thinking. To her, inflation is always and everywhere the result of corporate greed.

And her solutions to inflation involve essentially criminalizing “greed” and throwing the full force and weight of the federal government into attacking the private business sector.

Now she’s talking about using the government and the legal system to go after private businesses. She’s attacking grocery store chains, accusing them of being greedy when their profit margins are a measly 2-3%. Apparently, that’s greedy.

The Biden Administration has gone out of its way to destroy competition, even though competition is one of the most important factors in keeping prices low.

They attack oil companies and prevent the expansion of US energy production. Of course that makes energy prices higher, which in turn makes the price of everything else higher.

This is why it’s ultimately very difficult to see the dollar surviving as the global reserve currency through a single term of a Kamala administration. Her policies will create higher deficits, balloon the national debt, and drive up inflation.

The nature of a good reserve currency is stability. Foreign governments and institutions require stability in the reserve currency. Countries around the world are desperate for something they can actually rely on—something that won’t be inflated away or subject to a gargantuan national debt.

Another key element of a reserve currency is strength. Someone who backs pro-Hamas protesters is anything but strong.

This is why gold is reaching all-time highs.

Yes, some of it is investor speculation. But the biggest driver of gold prices is central bank demand, and they’ve been buying literal tonnes of gold.

To me, this is a clear and obvious sign that they are preparing for an end of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

Gold is a likely and very reasonable reserve asset for them to hold in lieu of dollars, because it has a 5,000-year history of maintaining its value. Central bankers know that they can trade gold for other currencies or strategic assets, and it is this sentiment that is driving their gold purchases.

In short, central banks around the world are trading dollars for gold.

If Kamala wins, that trend will almost certainly continue, resulting in the eventual end of the dollar as global reserve currency.

And I’d expect the price of gold to go a lot higher from there.