Month: March 2022

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

The Western financial system and world reserve currency is now in open decline.

From Rigged to Fail to Just Plain Failing

Just two years ago, I wrote a book warning that Western markets in general, and US markets in particular, were Rigged to Fail.

Well, now, in real time, they are failing.

This hard reality has less to do with COVID or the war in the Ukraine and more to do with one simple force, which euphoric markets and clueless leaders have been ignoring for decades, namely: Debt.

As I wrote then, and will repeat now: Debt destroys nations, financial systems, markets, and currencies.

Always and every time.

As we see below, the inflationary financial system is now failing because its debt levels have rendered it impotent to grow economically, react sensibly or sustain its chronic debt addictions naturally.

The evidence of this is literally everywhere, from the Fed to the Petrodollar and the bond market to the gold price.

Let’s dig in.

The Fed: No Best-Case Scenarios Left

The Fed has driven itself, and hence the U.S. markets and economy, into an all-too predictable corner and historically dangerous crossroads.

If it turns to the left (i.e., more money printing/liquidity) to protect a record-breaking risk asset bubble, it faces an inflationary flood; if it turns to the right (and raises rates or tapers UST purchases), it faces a market inferno.

How did we get to this crossroads?

Easy: Decades of artificially suppressed rates, cheap credit and a $30T sovereign debt pile of unprecedented (and unsustainable) proportions.

The Dying Bond Bull

With so much of this unloved debt on its national back, no one but the Fed will buy Uncle Sam’s IOUs.

As a result, long-dated Treasuries are falling in price and rising in yield as Bloomberg reminds us of the worst drawdown for global bonds in 20 years.

In short, the central-bank created bond bull of the last 40-something years is now falling to its knees.

Ironically, the only path to more demand for otherwise unloved bonds is if the stock market fully tanks and stock investors flee blindly back into bonds like passengers looking for lifeboats on the Titanic.

Bonds & Stocks—They Can Fall Together Unless Saved by Debased Dollars

But as the “Covid crash” of March 2020 painfully reminded us, in a world of central-bank-driven bubbles, historically over-valued stocks and bonds can and will fall together unless the Fed creates yet another multi-trillion-dollar QE lifeboat, which just kills the inherent strength of the dollar in your wallet.

Hence and again: There’s no good options left. It’s either inflation or a market implosion.

Fantasy & Dishonesty—The New Policy

But this never stops the Fed from pretending otherwise or using words rather than growth to cover its monetary sins.

Despite almost a year of deliberately lying about “transitory inflation,” the Fed has swallowed what little pride it has left and admitted to a real inflationary problem at home.

In short, and as bond legend Mohamed El-Erian recently observed, the increasingly discredited Fed has no “best case” scenarios left.

The Fed, along with its economically clue-less politicians, have essentially devolved the once-great US of A from developed country into one that resembles a developing country.

In other words, the “American dream” as well as American exceptionalism, is being downgraded into a kind of tragi-comedy in real time—i.e., right now.

Nevertheless, the always double-speaking Powell is doubling down on more fantasy (lies) about rising US labor participation and growth to help “produce” the USA out of the debt and inflationary hole which the Greenspan shovel initiated many “exuberant” years ago.

But once again, Powell is wrong.

Labor Participation—The Latest Fantasy

Based on simple demographics, lack of love for US IOU’s, growing trade deficits (alongside rising deficit spending), and an over-priced USD, the US labor force participation will not be going up in time for the land of the world’s reserve currency to grow itself out of the 122% debt to GDP corner which the Fed has driven into (after decades of low-rate drunk driving).

Without increased labor force participation, the only DC option left to fight inflation is to either 1) raise rates to induce a killer recession (and market implosion) or else 2) slash government deficits by at least 10%.

Unfortunately, cutting deficits by 10% will also kill GDP by at least an equivalent amount, which weakens tax receipts and thus make it nearly impossible for Uncle Sam to pay even the interest alone on his national bar tab, as we’ve shown elsewhere.

Addicts Are Predictable Creatures

So, what will this cornered and debt-drunk Fed do?

Well, what all addicts do—keep drinking—i.e., printing ever-more increasingly debased USD’s—which just creates more tailwinds for, you guessed it: Gold. (But also hard asset commodities in general, industrial equities and agricultural real estate.)

In the meantime, the Fed, the US Government and its corporate-owned propaganda arms in the U.S. media will blame all this new money printing and continued deficit spending on Putin rather than decades of financial mismanagement out of DC.

No shocker there.

But Putin, even if you hate him, sees things the headlines are omitting.

De-Dollarization and Petrodollar Rumblings—Uh Oh?

There are increasing signs of “uh-oh” in the world of the once-mighty Petrodollar.

From Trigger Happy to Shot in the Foot

As we’ve been warning in our most recent reports, Western financial sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine have a way of doing as much damage to the trigger-puller as to the intended target.

In simplest terms, freezing one county’s FX reserves and SWIFT transactions has a way of frightening other counter-parties, and not just the intended targets.

Imagine, for example, if your bank accounts were frozen for any reason. Would you then trust the bank that froze your accounts down the road once the issue was resolved? Would you recommend that bank to others?

Well, the world has been watching Western powers effectively freeze Putin’s assets, and regardless of whether you agree or disagree with such measures, other countries (not all of which are “bad actors”) are thinking about switching banks—or at least dollars…

If so, the US has just shot itself in the foot while aiming for Putin.

As previously warned, the Western sanctions are simply pushing Russia and China further together and further away from US Dollars and US Treasuries.

Such shifts have massive ripple effects which Biden’s financial team appears to have ignored.

And as everyone from Jamie Dimon to Barack Obama has previously warned, that’s not a good thing and is causing the broader world to re-think US financial leadership and US Dollar hegemony as a world reserve currency.

Saudi Arabia: Re-Thinking the Petro-Dollar?

Take that not-so-democratic “ally” of the US, Saudi Arabia, who Biden had called a “Pariah State” in 2020…

As of March, the news out of Saudi is hinting that they would consider purchases of oil in CNY as opposed to USD, which would signal the slow end to the Petrodollar and only add more inflationary tailwinds to Americans suffering at home.

One simply cannot underestimate (nor over-state enough) the profound significance of a weakening Petrodollar world.

It would have devastating consequences for the USD and inflation, and would be an absolute boon for gold.

Already, Xi is making plans to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, which is China’s top oil supplier. Meanwhile, Aramco is reaching out to China as well.

What Can Saudi Do with Chinese Money?

Some are arguing that the Saudi’s can’t purchase much with CNY. After all, the USD has more appeal, right?

Hmmm.

Considering the fact that US Treasuries offer zero to negative real yields, perhaps “all things American” just aren’t what they used to be…

Saudis have now seen that the US is willing to seize US Treasuries as a form of financial warfare.

Saudis (like many other nations—i.e., India and China) are certainly asking themselves if a similar move could be made against them in the future.

Thus, it’s no coincidence that they too are looking East rather than West for future deals, and Russia could use its new Chinese currencies to buy everything from nuclear plants to gold bars in Shanghai—just saying…

Oil Matters

Meanwhile, and despite the media’s attempt to paint Putin as Hitler 2.0, the Russian leader knows something the headlines are ignoring, namely: The world needs his oil.

Without Russian oil, the global energy and economic system implodes, because the system has too much debt to suddenly go it alone and/or fight back.

See how sovereign debt cripples options and changes the global stage?

Meanwhile Russia, which doesn’t have the same debt to GDP chains around its ankle as the EU and US, can start demanding payment for its oil in RUB rather than USD.

As of this writing, Arab states are in private discussions with China, Russia and France to stop selling oil in USD.

Such moves would weaken USD demand and strength, adding more inflationary fuel to a growing inflationary fire from Malibu to Manhattan.

I wonder if Biden, Harris or anyone in their circle of “experts” thought that part through?

Given their strength in optics vs. their weakness as to math, geography and history, it’s quite clear they did not and could not…

Not to Worry?

Meanwhile, of course, the WSJ and other Western political news organizations are assuring the world not to worry, as USD FX trading volumes dwarf those of Chinese (Russian) and other currencies.

Fair enough.

But for how long?

Again, what many politicians and most journalists don’t understand (besides basic math), is basic history.

Their myopic policies and smooth-tongued forecasts are based on the notion that if it’s not raining today, it can’t rain tomorrow.

But it’s already raining on the US as well as US global financial leadership.

Meanwhile, Russia’s central bank is now in motion to increase gold purchases with all the new RUBs (not USDs) it will be receiving from its oil sales.

Investors must track these macro events very carefully in the coming weeks and months.

A Multi-Currency New World

The bottom line, however, is that the world is slowly moving away from a one-world-reserve-currency era to an increasingly multi-currency system.

Once the sanction and financial war genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back. Trust in the West, and its USD-led currency system, is changing.

By taking the chest-puffing decision to freeze Russian FX reserves, sanction Russian IMF SDR’s and remove its access to SWIFT payments systems, the US garnered short-term headlines to appear “tough” but ushered a path toward longer term consequences which will make it (and its Dollar) weaker.

As multi-currency oil becomes the new setting, the inflationary winners will, again, be commodities, industrials and certain real estate plays.

Gold Matters

As for gold, it remains the only true neutral reserve asset of global central bank balance sheets and is poised to benefit the most over time as a non-USD denominated energy market slowly emerges.

Furthermore, Russia is allowing payments in gold for its natural gas.

And for those (i.e., Wall Street) who still argue gold is a “pet rock” and “barbarous relic” of the past, it may be time to rethink.

After all, why has the Treasury Department included an entire section in its Russian sanction handbook on gold?

The answer is as obvious as it is ignored.

Chinese banks (with Russian currency swap lines) can act as intermediaries to help Russia use the gold market to “launder” its sanctioned money.

That is, Russia can and will continue to trade globally (Eurasia, Brazil, India, China…) in what boils down to a truly free market of “gold for commodities” which not even those thieves at the COMEX can artificially price fix—something not seen in decades.

De-Globalization

Stated simply: The mighty dollar and “globalization” dreams of the West are slowly witnessing an emerging era of inflationary de-globalization as each country now does what is required and best for itself rather than Klaus Schwab’s megalomaniacal fantasies.

The cornered US, of course, will likely try to sanction gold transactions with Russia, but this would require fully choking Russia energy sales to the EU, which the EU economy (and citizens) simply can’t afford.

In the meantime, a desperate French president is considering stimulus checks for gas and food. That, by the way, is inflationary…

History Repeating Itself

Again, the debt-soaked, energy-dependent West is not as strong as the headlines would have you believe, which means gold, as it has done for thousands of years, will rise as failed leaders, debt-soaked nations and world reserve currencies fall.

History, alas, is as important as math, price-discovery and supply and demand. Sadly, the vast of majority of modern leaders know almost nothing of these forces or topics.

If gold could speak in words, it would simply say: “Shame on them.”

But gold does speak in value, and it’s getting the last laugh on the currencies now weakening in our wallets and the debt-drunk leaders now squawking in our headlines.

The UN Refugee Agency on Wednesday updated its numbers of Ukrainian refugees, saying that since the invasion began on Feb.24 over 4 million people have fled the country. The report comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week issued another urgent call for Moscow to halt the invasion immediately and withdraw all forces.

Now in its second month, the UN agency said that the war has caused “a massive humanitarian crisis that is growing by the second” given the grim milestone of four million having fled.

Within Ukraine, the UN tallied at least 6.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), while it also deemed another 13 million “stranded” who are simply unable to escape their cities and towns amid the fighting.

“The war has caused one of the fastest large-scale displacements of children since World War II,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a fresh statement. “This is a grim milestone that could have lasting consequences for generations to come.”

She added that “Children’s safety, wellbeing and access to essential services are all under threat from non-stop violence.” The UN is meanwhile in talks with Kiev authorities to attempt to better facilitate the safe exit of civilians from embattled regions. 

Number of refugees from Ukraine crossing Central and Eastern European borders after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from February 24 to March 29, 2022, by selected country (in 1,000s)

You will find more at Statista

Neighboring Poland has absorbed by far the most Ukrainian refugees, with US troops said be helping with logistics centers on the Polish side of the border. So far Poland has received more than 2.3 million – though many are going further to other EU countries.

Romania has taken over 608,000 as of this week, and tiny Moldova more than 387,000, with over 360,000 Ukrainians having entered Hungary.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Ukrainian officials called on the United Nations to push Russian forces away from the Chernobyl nuclear site to prevent a catastrophe, coming more than a month after the start of the invasion.

“Is the world ready for a nuclear catastrophe because of Russia’s bungling?” asked Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Telegram. 

“The occupiers set up an ammunition depot near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” she continued while adding that the “occupiers’ stupidity is worse than their villainy.”

In 1986, the Chernobyl plant’s reactor blew up and sent radioactive material across Europe and the former Soviet Union as Soviet officials sought to cover it up. Since then, workers have been stationed at the Chernobyl site to manage spent nuclear fuel and monitor radiation levels.\

Vereshchuk called on the U.N. to establish a mission in the region and prioritize demilitarizing the Chernobyl site. Russian troops have occupied the area since the first day of its invasion, which started on Feb. 24.

The Russian military said after capturing the plant that radiation was within normal levels and their actions prevented possible “nuclear provocations” by Ukrainian nationalists. Russia has previously denied that its forces have put nuclear facilities inside Ukraine at risk.

Valery Seida, acting general director of the Chernobyl plant, said he was told by witnesses that Russian military vehicles drove everywhere around the exclusion zone and could have passed the so-called Red Forest, a highly contaminated area.

A damaged administrative building of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, on March 4, 2022. (Press service of National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom/Handout via Reuters)

“Nobody goes there … for God’s sake. There is no one there,” Seida told Reuters in reference to the Red Forest.

Around a week after the start of the conflict, Russian forces took over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine. Both Ukrainian and Russian officials accused one another of trying to stage a false flag attack around the plant earlier this month amid reports that buildings on the Zaporizhzhia site were shelled.

The head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, confirmed this week that he traveled to Ukraine to monitor the situation. Grossi will travel to one of Ukraine’s nuclear plants, the agency said, without elaborating.

A statement posted by the International Atomic Energy Agency said he’s in talks with officials for “planned delivery of urgent technical assistance to ensure the safety and security of the country’s nuclear facilities and help avert the risk of an accident that could endanger people and the environment.”

Last week, U.N. officials warned that Russian shelling near Chernobyl was preventing workers from rotating their shifts after weeks of continuous work.

This seems like a strange place for a giant biolab.

As East London’s famed Canary Wharf financial district struggles to rebound from the COVID pandemic that inspired the ‘work-from-home revolution’ (leaving many of the district’s skyscrapers disappointingly vacant) the local landlord, Canary Wharf Group, has devised a ‘novel’ solution.

And that plan is: develop a 22-storey, 750,000 square foot block split between ‘wet labs’ and office space. The landlord hopes this new setup will ultimately provide the anchor for a thriving life-sciences cluster in East London (where the entire local economy has started to collapse due to a shortage of office workers to patronize local shops and other business). The project is expected to cost roughly $660 million.

Here’s more from the FT:

The company is partnering with Kadans Science Partner, a specialist Dutch developer, on the project, which is expected to cost at least £500mn to build according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The project, due to complete in 2026, is a key part of CWG chief executive Shobi Khan’s vision to transform the area and attract a wider array of tenants. The Wharf had changed from “what the old guard knew it as”, said Khan.

The financial district envisaged 30 years ago as a rival to the City of London was giving way to a mixed use neighbourhood with more leisure activities and homes, he added.

Even before the pandemic, as more banking jobs moved to the Continent and elsewhere in the wake of Brexit, it’s pretty clear that the financial services industry isn’t coming to the rescue.

“We’re down to 50 per cent financial services [tenants] and we’re broadening out to health and life sciences now. This is a city within a city,” he said.

But while the pandemic has undermined demand for commercial office space (just ask Blackstone), it has inspired a revolution in the life sciences.

About 120,000 people regularly worked at Canary Wharf before the pandemic, which stemmed the flow of workers to the area and starved local businesses of income. Khan said the number of people currently commuting in was at a pandemic high, but he would not give a figure. A number of landlords and institutions are investing in life sciences, confident that a focus on healthcare and scientific research – intensified by the pandemic – will keep demand for lab space rising.

Canary Wharf will still need to compete against other ‘life sciences hubs’ in London, as they’re not the only ones who see opportunity in biolabs. Oxford, Cambridge and the area around King’s Cross in north London already have acres of lab space and are anchored by top universities and research facilities. Those areas, nicknamed the “golden triangle”, have attracted the bulk of recent investment into life sciences property in the UK.

In other Canary Wharf news, staff at Citi’s Canary Wharf office are being forced to working from home after a major power failure across East London persisted into Wednesday, having knocked out computer networks and led to the activation of emergency electricity supplies, according to Bloomberg. HSBC, meanwhile, was forced to activate auxiliary generators at its headquarters in the district, per BBG.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

Mariupol was battered by Ukraine’s right-wing Azov battalion well before Moscow launched its military ops. In Russian hands, this strategic steelworks port can transform into a hub of Eurasian connectivity…

Mariupol, the strategic Sea of Azov port, remains in the eye of the storm in Ukraine.

The NATO narrative is that Azovstal – one of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works – was nearly destroyed by the Russian Army and its allied Donetsk forces who “lay siege” to Mariupol.

The true story is that the neo-Nazi Azov batallion took scores of Mariupol civilians as human shields since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and retreated to Azovstal as a last stand. After an ultimatum delivered last week, they are now being completely exterminated by the Russian and Donetsk forces and Chechen Spetsnaz.

Azovstal, part of the Metinvest group controlled by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is indeed one of the biggest metallurgic plants in Europe, self-described as a “high-performance integrated metallurgical enterprise that produces coke and sinter, steel as well as high-quality rolled products, bars and shapes.”

Amidst a flurry of testimonials detailing the horrors inflicted by the Azov neo-Nazis on Mariupol’s civilian population, a way more auspicious, invisible story bodes well for the immediate future.

Russia is the world’s fifth largest steel producer, apart from holding huge iron and coal deposits. Mariupol – a steel Mecca – used to source coal from Donbass, but under de facto neo-Nazi rule since the 2014 Maidan events, was turned into an importer. Iron, for instance, started to be supplied from Krivbas in Ukraine, over 200 kilometers away.

After Donetsk solidifies itself as an independent republic or, via referendum, chooses to become part of the Russian Federation, this situation is bound to change.

Azovstal is invested in a broad product line of very useful stuff: structural steel, rail for railroads, hardened steel for chains, mining equipment, rolled steel used in factory apparatus, trucks and railroad cars. Parts of the factory complex are quite modern while some, decades old, are badly in need of upgrading, which Russian industry can certainly provide.

Strategically, this is a huge complex, right at the Sea of Azov, which is now, for all practical purposes, incorporated into the Donetsk People’s Republic, and close to the Black Sea. That implies a short trip to the Eastern Mediterranean, including many potential customers in West Asia. And crossing Suez and reaching the Indian Ocean, are customers all across South and Southeast Asia.

So the Donetsk People’s Republic, possibly part of the future Novorossiya, and even part of Russia, will be in control of a lot of steel-making capacity for southern Europe, West Asia, and beyond.

One of the inevitable consequences is that it will be able to supply a real freight railroad construction boom in Russia, China and the Central Asian ‘stans.’ Railroad construction happens to be the privileged connectivity mode for Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And, crucially, of the increasingly turbo-charged International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

So, mid-term, Mariupol should expect to become one of the key hubs of a boom in north-south routes – INSTC across Russia and linking with the ‘stans’ – as well as major BRI upgrades east-west and sub-BRI corridors.

Interlocked Eurasia

The INSTC’s main players are Russia, Iran and India – which are now, post-NATO sanctions, in advanced interconnection mode, complete with devising mechanisms to bypass the US dollar in their trade. Azerbaijan is another important INSTC player, yet more volatile because it privileges Turkey’s connectivity designs in the Caucasus.

The INSTC network will also be progressively interconnecting with Pakistan – and that means the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key BRI hub, which is slowly but surely expanding to Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s impromptu visit to Kabul late last week was to advance the incorporation of Afghanistan to the New Silk Roads.

All that is happening as Moscow – extremely close to New Delhi – is simultaneously expanding trade relations with Islamabad. All three, crucially, are Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members.

So the grand North-South design spells out fluent connectivity from the Russian mainland to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan), to West Asia (Iran) all the way to South Asia (India and Pakistan). None of these key players have demonized or sanctioned Russia despite ongoing US pressures to do so.

Strategically, that represents the Russian multipolar concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership in action in terms of trade and connectivity – in parallel and complimentary with BRI because India, eager to install a rupee-ruble mechanism to buy energy, in this case is an absolutely crucial Russia partner, matching China’s reported $400 billion strategic deal with Iran. In practice, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will facilitate smoother connectivity between Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.

The NATO universe, meanwhile, is congenitally incapable of even recognizing the complexity of the alignment, not to mention analyze its implications. What we have is the interlocking of BRI, INTSC and the Greater Eurasia Partnership on the ground – all notions that are regarded as anathema in the Washington Beltway.

All that of course is being designed amidst a game-changing geoeconomic moment, as Russia, starting this Thursday, will only accept payment for its gas in rubles from “unfriendly” nations.

Parallel to the Greater Eurasia Partnership, BRI, since it was launched in 2013, is also progressively weaving a complex, integrated Eurasian network of partnerships: financial/economic, connectivity, physical infrastructure building, economic/trade corridors. BRI’s role as a co-shaper of institutions of global governance, including normative foundations, has also been crucial, much to the despair of the NATO alliance.

Time to de-westernize

Yet only now the Global South, especially, will start to observe the full spectrum of the China-Russia play across the Eurasian sphere. Moscow and Beijing are deeply involved in a joint drive to de-westernize globalist governance, if not shatter it altogether.

Russia from now on will be even more meticulous in its institution-building, coalescing the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the SCO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Eurasian military alliance of select post-Soviet states – in a geopolitical context of irreversible institutional and normative divide between Russia and the West.

At the same time, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will be solidifying Russia as the ultimate Eurasian bridge, creating a common space across Eurasia which could even ignore vassalized Europe.

Meanwhile in real life, BRI, as much as the INSTC, will be increasingly plugged into the Black Sea (hello, Mariupol). And BRI itself may even be prone to re-evaluation in its emphasis of linking western China to western Europe’s shrinking industrial base.

There will be no point in privileging the northern BRI corridors – China-Mongolia-Russia via the Trans-Siberian, and the Eurasian land bridge via Kazakhstan – when you have Europe descending into medieval dementia.

BRI’s renewed focus will be on gaining access to irreplaceable commodities – and that means Russia – as well as securing essential supplies for Chinese production. Commodity-rich nations, such as Kazakhstan and many players in Africa, shall become the top future markets for China.

In a pre-Covid loop across Central Asia, one constantly heard that China builds plants and high-speed railways while Europe at best writes white papers. It can always get worse.

The EU as occupied American territory is now descending, fast, from center of global power to the status of inconsequential peripheral player, a mere struggling market in the far periphery of China’s “community of shared destiny.”

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Why would someone be enraged by a law that prevents teachers from exposing children to sexual indoctrination and demands parents are kept in the loop on classroom lessons? It’s obvious; they’re mad because they like the idea of grooming kids and they don’t want the process interfered with in any way.

First, however, I think we need to understand what grooming really is, and it’s not only about sex. One of the most pervasive cancers within our society today is social justice based communism. In every way the ideology is predicated on lies and disinformation, but this deceit is merely a tool to achieve an end goal – The reeducation or brainwashing of future generations into the leftist fold.

Leftists often talk about notions of “community,” but community is a voluntary structure. When they say they want “community” what they really mean is that they want collectivism, and collectivism is by definition NOT voluntary but forced through violence or coercion or propaganda. To these ends, leftists seem to have gravitated like sharks into the public school system, specifically to prey on the easiest targets in the ocean; your children.

I’ve recently heard the argument that the Florida bill should not be called an Anti-Grooming bill because “not all gay people are groomers.” I don’t think anyone made that claim anyway. What we are saying, though, is that all SJWs are indeed groomers and this is the root problem.

They have been doing this in subtle ways for many years, but in the past 5 years their methods have become rather careless and obscene. The grooming of children in today’s public schools is not only relegated to sexualization, it also involves ideological molding and cultism. When leftists refer to Florida Bill 1557 they call it the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” but this has nothing to do with the basic notion of homosexuality, this is about the political weaponization of homosexuality and transexuality (among other things). This is about using sexual orientation to propagandize children and create new little soldiers for communist social justice.

Just as I have said many times in the past when it comes to pop culture and movies, the existence of gay people or “diversity” is not the problem, it’s the communism that’s the problem. We don’t want your communism infecting our entertainment and we certainly don’t want it around our children. Set aside the fact that there is no science whatsoever to support the concepts of gender fluidity that are usually addressed in these lessons.

Some Florida teachers and SJWs are up in arms this week as Governor Ron DeSantis signs the dreaded 1557 bill into law. The claim? That this bill is somehow a violation of their free speech rights. Watch the news report below for an example:

First, I think this needs to be said – Public school teachers are not important. I’m sure there are many good ones out there and this is not an attack on them. What I am saying is, the glorification and worship of teachers is out of place in our society and completely overblown. At some point along the line leftists in particular decided that teachers are the emissaries of moral order and equity and their jobs should be treated as sacrosanct. This is nonsense.

Teachers are mere employees of the district they work in, that is all. Parents pay the taxes that pay their salaries. The parents are the employers, the parents are the boss and what they say goes. Teachers need to understand this; the parents own you, so get used to the idea. You are not special.

Furthermore, the views expressed in the interview with the gay Florida teacher above showcase some unhinged misconceptions and assumptions. First, the new law does not say that a teacher is not allowed to mention they are gay, but frankly, NO teacher should be discussing their private lives with their students anyway. At no point in my childhood did I ever hear a teacher talk about their home lives or who they were sleeping with; this is a new trend within the past decade. Not long ago teachers specifically avoided such idiocy in order to prevent rumors from circulating through the school halls about them.

And yes, we did have at least one gay teacher, and he never discussed it in the classroom, ever. His job was not under threat for doing so, he was just a professional.

This kind of professionalism is not acceptable to leftists because they view the classroom as more than just a place of academia, they view it as a place for engineering conformity, as well as a personal therapy bubble for themselves. I can’t count how many videos I have seen in the past few years of teachers “coming out” to their students in a desperate play for attention and applause. The narcissism inherent in this behavior is stunning. Teachers have turned theirs classrooms into environmental extensions of their own mental deformities and insecurities and now lay these problems in the hands students.

The invasion of trans and gender fluid rhetoric, along with critical race theory, is at times about the ego of the teacher, but it is also at times a game meant to inspire submission in the group. When a teacher walks into a classroom and starts bloviating about their sexual identity and pronouns looking for approval from the children, how often are those children allowed to disagree with the concepts? When they do disagree, how often do these teachers use their position of authority to hound these students into silence or submission? How often do teachers inspire mob mentality in other students and encourage them to go on the attack against any kids who don’t conform?

This is a major threat to the psychological health and development of children. Florida leftists are complaining that they must now walk on eggshells in terms of what they say in the classroom, but they have never had a problem making students walk on eggshells when it comes to what they are allowed to disagree with in the classroom.

The interesting thing about all this is the SJW response to being called out, or being caught. Even after years of bragging about how they are indoctrinating children in their classes all over social media, they will inevitably claim that laws like those implemented in the Florida bill are pointless because the agenda “doesn’t exist.” That’s right, all that excited blabbering on twitter and Tiktok about luring kids into gender bending and the religion of pronouns, and suddenly conservatives are just “overreacting” or “paranoid?” In countries like Canada, LGBT indoctrination is the norm in some schools and has been for several years, yet we are supposed to believe that there is no plan to do the same in the US?

LGBT activists have declared in the past that they are “coming for our children.” The typical M.O. of leftist activists is to openly admit their agenda and then when they get blowback they didn’t expect they claim it was all “satire.” You remember this little gem of a video?

Leftists say this is all little more than a joke, but their actions say otherwise. Monty Python is satire. Blazing Saddles is satire. The above video is definitely not satire. Leftists in our modern era have no understanding of satire so the argument rings pretty hollow. They do understand gaslighting though, and when all else fails SJWs exploit this common fallback. It’s in their nature to lie while doubling down.

At bottom, if there is no need for the Florida law to exist because there is no indoctrination going on in classrooms, then these teachers have nothing to worry about and should not be complaining. Why complain if there is no agenda?

It is here that I think we need to address a bigger issue which SJWs often screech about, and that’s the idea of “Gatekeeping.” I’m going to say it right here and now: GATEKEEPING IS GOOD. It always has been and it always will be. The idea that we must be accepting of everyone all the time is foolish and insane. Some people are not compatible with truth or with reason, and they need to be kept away from vulnerable institutions such as schools and away from innocent children that make up the lifeblood of our future.

The conservative argument has always been that not all change is good, and not all change is progress. Some changes are regressive rather than progressive. Some changes are simply designed to do harm, and some people are simply evil. Discrimination in some respects is absolutely necessary in order for our core values and principles to survive. There are times when discrimination is necessary for our very nation and culture to survive.

Leftists always turn to the old standby argument when they are faced with the prospect that the culture at large does not want them around; they cry that “We live in a democracy” and inclusion is somehow a prerequisite. In other words, if you go against them you are going against your own values of freedom. This is nonsense.

We are not a democracy, of course, we are a democratic republic and there is a big difference, but that is a discussion for another article. According to the non-aggression principle, freedom does not apply to the people that are trying to destroy it. Leftists do not get to target freedom for destruction and then cry victim and proclaim their love of freedom when people get in their way. Gatekeeping is good because certain pillars of our society need to be kept inoculated against the destructive methods of the political left. These people do not belong here. They do not deserve freedom, and they do not deserve to live among people that actually love freedom.

The debate on anti-grooming is really a debate on the necessity of gatekeeping. Leftists support it when they think they are in control and they attack it when they think it’s going to be used against them. I can’t imagine any area of our culture more vital to protect than our children; and this is where gatekeeping must be employed with full force and without mercy. Florida is doing it right, let’s hope the rest of the country follows their example.

*  *  *

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.