Month: July 2022

Authored by Carla Peeters via The Brownstone Institute,

The world is now facing a man-made food catastrophe. It is reaching crisis levels…

Current policies in many parts of the world place a priority on climate change for realizing a green new deal. Meanwhile, such policies will contribute to children dying from severe malnutrition due to broken food systems, with shortages of food and water, stress, anxiety, fear, and dangerous chemical exposure. 

More negative pressure on farmers and the food system is asking for a catastrophe. The immune system of many people, especially children, has lost its resilience and has weakened too far with high risks for intoxication, infections, non-communicable and infectious diseases, deaths and infertility.

Dutch farmers, of whom many will face a cost of living crisis after 2030, have drawn the line. They are supported by an increasing number of farmers and citizens worldwide.

It’s not the farmers who are the most heavy polluters of the environment, but industries who make the products needed for a technocracy revolution to green energy, data mining, and Artificial Intelligence. As more of the WEF plans are rolled out by politicians, inequalities grow, and conflicts are rising all over the world. 

The strong farmers’ revolt in the Netherlands is a call for an urgent transition to a people-oriented, free and healthy world with nutritious food cultivated and harvested in respect to natural processes. The cooperation of ordinary people worldwide is on the rise to prevent a mass famine catastrophe caused by the plan of scientism and technocracy to rule and control the world by unelected scientists and elites.

Enough food, access to food is the problem

Farmers around the world normally grow enough calories (2,800) per person (while 2,100 calories/day would be sufficient) to support a population of nine to ten billion people worldwide. But still over 828 million people have too little to eat each day. The problem is not always food; it is access. The UN which wrote in 2015 in the Sustainable Development Goals goal 2: No hunger and malnutrition for all in 2030 will not be reached. 

Throughout history many times natural or manmade disasters led to food insecurities for longer periods of time, resulting in hunger, malnutrition (undernourishment) and mortality. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. Since the global pandemic began, access to food estimates show that food insecurity has likely doubled, if not tripled  in some places around the world. 

Moreover, during the pandemic, global hunger rose to 150 million and is now affecting 828 million people, with 46 million at the brink of starvation facing emergency levels of hunger or worse. In the hardest hit places, this means famine or famine-like conditions. At least 45 million children are suffering from wasting, which is the most visible and severe form of malnutrition, and potentially life-threatening. 

With global prices of food and fertilizers already reaching worrying highs, the continuing impacts of the pandemic, the political forces to realize climate change goals and the Russia-Ukraine war raise serious concerns for food security both in the short and the long term. 

The world is facing a further spike in food shortages, pushing more families worldwide at risk for severe malnutrition. Those communities which survived former crises are left more vulnerable to a new shock than before and will accumulate the effects, diving into famine (acute starvation and a sharp increase in mortality).

Furthermore, growth of economies and development of nations are currently slowing down due to a lack of workforce due to a sharp decrease in well-being and higher mortality rates. 

In the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government. 

Farmers will be forced to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock, in some cases up to 95%. For smaller family-owned farms it will be impossible to reach these goals. Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations. 

Moreover, a significant decrease and limitations of Dutch farmers will have huge repercussions for the global food supply chain. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States. Still, the Dutch government pursues their agenda on Climate Change while there is currently no law to support the implementation, while they will not change much in the planet’s major air pollution. Models used to arrive at the decision of the Dutch government are debated by acknowledged scientists. 

In no communication have Dutch politicians considered the effects of their decision on breaking a most important goal in the UN agreement: ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all in 2030. 

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka, a country whose political leader introduced zero Nitrogen and CO2 emissions policy, is now facing economic problems, severe hunger, and difficulties to access food upon a political decision that farmers were not allowed to use fertilizers and pesticides. Still, politicians responsible for Nitrogen emissions/climate change in other countries pursue the same green policy. 

Furthermore, experts are warning that heat, flooding, drought, wildfires, and other disasters have been wreaking economic havoc, with worse to come. Food and water shortages have been in the media. 

On top of that, Australian experts announce a risk for an outbreak of a viral disease in cattle. This could cause an A$80 billion hit to the Australian economy and even more real supply chain issues. Countless businesses and producers go bankrupt. The emotional toll they are facing to euthanize their healthy herds is immense and hardly bearable. It is pushing more farmers to end their life. 

Hopefully, the need for the Danish government to apologize, as an investigative report on the cull of more than 15 million minks in November 2020 criticized the action that led to the misleading of mink breeders and the public and the clearly illegal instructions to authorities, will help politicians to reconsider such drastic measures on farmers.

Worldwide, farmers’ protests are rising, supported by more and more citizens who stand up against the expensive mandates for changes to “green policies” that already brought massive miseries and instability. 

At a ministerial conference for food security on June 29 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that worsening food shortages could lead to a global “catastrophe”.

Malnutrition responsible for more ill health than any other cause

The increased risk of food and water shortages the world is facing now will bring humanity to the edge. Hunger is a many-headed monster. For decades conquering world hunger has become a political issue in a way that it could not have been in the past. The use of authoritarian political power led to disastrous government policies, making it impossible for millions of people to earn a living. Chronic hunger and the recurrence of virulent famines must be seen as being morally outrageous and politically unacceptable, says Dreze and Sen in Hunger and Public Action, published in 1991.

 “For those at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger in the world would be a disaster. For those who need availability of cheap labor, hunger is the foundation of their wealth, it is an asset,” wrote Dr. George Kent in 2008 in the essay “The Benefits of World Hunger.” 

Malnutrition is not only influenced by food and water shortage, but also to exposures of extreme stress, fear, insecurity of safety and food, social factors, chemicals, microplastics, toxins, and over-medicalization. No country in the world can afford to overlook this disaster in all its forms, which affects mostly children and women in reproductive age. Globally more than 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. And this is in contradiction to what many people think is just a low-income country problem.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic began, about 8% of the population in North America and Europe lacked regular access to nutritious and sufficient food. A third of reproductive-age women are anemic, while 39% of the world’s adults are overweight or obese. Each year around 20 million babies are born underweight. In 2016 9.6% of the women were underweight. Globally in 2017, 22.2% of the children under the age of five were stunting, while undernutrition explains around 45% of deaths among children under five.

As stated by Lawrence Haddad, the co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report independent Expert Group, “We now live in a world where being malnourished is the new normal. It is a world we must all claim as totally unacceptable.” While malnutrition is the leading driver of disease with nearly 50% of deaths caused by nutrition related non-communicable diseases in 2014, only $50 million of donor funding was given. 

Malnutrition in all its forms imposes unacceptably high costs – direct and indirect – on individuals, families and nations. The estimated impact on the global economy of the chronic undernourishment of 800 million people could be as high as $3,5 trillion per year, as was stated in a Global Nutrition Report in 2018. While child deaths, premature adult mortality and malnutrition-related infectious and non-communicable diseases are preventable with the right nutrition.

This will be much more at this precious moment, as the population sharply increases in excess mortality and non-communicable diseases among the working age people as recently shown by insurance companies.

Famines cause transgenerational effects

Famine is a widespread condition in which a large percentage of people in a country or region have little or no access to adequate food supplies. Europe and other developed parts of the world have mostly eliminated famine, though widespread famines that killed thousands and millions of people are known from history, like the Dutch Potato famine from 1846-1847, The Dutch Hunger winter 1944-1945 and a Chinese famine of 1959-1961. 

The latter was the most severe famine both in terms of duration and number of people affected (600 million and around 30 million deaths) and led to a widespread undernutrition of the Chinese population in the period from 1959-1961. Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa and Yemen are countries with recognized famine. 

Unfortunately, global destabilization, starvation and mass migration are increasing fast with more famines to be expected if we do not act today.

Epidemiological studies of Barker and later of Hales showed a relation between the availability of nutrition in various stages of pregnancy and the first years of life and diseases later in life. Their studies demonstrated that people with metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases were often small at birth. More and more research proves the role of nutrition-related mechanisms influencing gene expression. Even the period prior to pregnancy might influence a later risk for insulin resistance or other complications of the fetus. 

As demonstrated in a study with 3,000 participants in Northern China, prenatal exposure to famine significantly increased hyperglycemia in adulthood in two consecutive generations. Severity of famine during prenatal development is related to the risk for Type 2 diabetes. These findings are consistent with animal models that have shown the impact of prenatal nutritional status on neuro-endocrine changes that affect metabolism and can be programmed to transmit physiologically across multiple generations through both male and female generations. Early life Health shock conditions can cause epigenetic changes in humans that persist throughout life, affect old age mortality and have multigenerational effects. Depending on which trimester the fetus is exposed to food deprivation or even stress alone a related disease later in life may vary from schizophrenia, ADHD to renal failure and hypertension among others. Other studies of famine exposure in people have produced evidence of changes in the endocrine system and to prenatal gene expression in reproductive systems.

The effects of periods of famine or undernutrition have predominantly been seen in people with low social economic income. However, 1 in 3 persons in the world suffered from some form of malnutrition in 2016. Women and children are 70% of the hungry. There is no doubt that undernutrition increased further during the past six years. Stunting and wasting increased in the most vulnerable. Two out of three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential. 

The hungry people in countries like Sri Lanka, Haiti, Armenia ,and Panama are the tip of the iceberg, opening the eyes of many citizens worldwide to a fast-growing problem as a result of the lockdowns, mandates and coercive policies in climate change, drought and the Ukraine war.

Citizens of the world have been facing for years: excess mortality, a fast decline in infertility and childbirth with a threat to human rights for women and more diseases. 

Shocking reports of the UN and WHO acknowledged the health of people and environment is declining. The world is moving backwards on eliminating hunger and malnutrition. The real danger is that these numbers will climb even higher in the months ahead.

The truth is that food innovation hubs, food flats (vertical farming), artificial meats and gene and mind manipulations will not be able to tackle the depressing state humanity is facing.

Zero-Covid policy has brought humanity at risk in its existence. Covid-19 vaccines with a risk for harm have been rolled out even for children under five years, hardly at risk for a severe disease, but undernourishment that greatly increases susceptibility to major human infectious diseases has not been taken care of. 

Conflicts are growing worldwide, increasing instability. Citizens will no longer accept policies without a clear harm-cost benefit analysis.

We need to act now to decrease food and fuel prices immediately by supporting farmers and effective food systems for nutritious food to heal the most malnourished (children and females at childbearing age) in the population. 

Let us hope for a return of Hippocrates’ principle: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

Starting Monday, it will be a criminal offense in Israel to pay more than the equivalent of $1,700 in cash to a business or $4,360 in cash to individual, as the government intensifies its ongoing war on tangible money.

It’s a war that began in earnest with the 2018 passage of the Law for the Reduction in the Use of Cash. Israeli businesses and individuals began facing limits on cash transactions in January 2019. However, on Aug 1, those limits are being slashed nearly in half. 

“We want the public to reduce the use of cash money,” Tamar Bracha, who’s responsible for carrying out the law for Israel’s Tax Authority, told The Media Line.

“The goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market, mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash. By limiting the use of it, criminal activity is much harder to carry out.”

Israel also limits the extent to which cash is used in transactions involving multiple payment methods. If the total transaction value is more than the above thresholds, cash may only be used for 10% of the purchase. Car purchases are given a higher, 50,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekels) limit — about $14,700. 

Violators are subject to penalties that can reach 25% of the transaction for individuals and 30% for businesses. According to Israel National News, the government has amassed the equivalent of $5 billion in fines since restrictions began in 2019.

Not all transactions are affected, as The Media Line explains: 

There are some exemptions to the new law: charitable institutions, which are most common in ultra-Orthodox society; and trade with Palestinians from the West Bank, who are not citizens of Israel. In the case of the latter, deals including large amounts of cash will be allowed, yet they will require a detailed report to Israel’s Tax Authority.

However, in Israel’s phased approach to eliminating cash from society, those exceptions are destined to expire.   

Next, Israel’s finance ministry plans to deliver a proposal to parliament to criminalize the mere possession of cash exceeding a certain sum. One version of the proposal set the possession cap at the shekel equivalent of just $14,700. 

Limits like Israel’s are just one way to work toward “de-cashing” a population. A 2017 International Monetary Fund paper outlined other tactics, including abolishing large-denomination bills, imposing reporting requirements on cash transactions over a certain threshold, requiring the declaration of cash when entering or leaving a country, or applying an additional tax when cash is used. Various countries and economic blocs have already started implementing measures from this menu. 

A war on cash isn’t the only way Israel is leading the way to an authoritarian future; it has also:

• Started technical trials for a central bank digital currency, which could help eradicate cash and maximize control

• Implemented digital vaccination passports that helped bar the unvaxxed — including those who were unboosted — from participating in various aspects of life.

• Maintained a controversial database storing the biometric data of millions of citizens. 

• Joined a group of eight countries working toward development of “digital identities.”

• Aggressively implemented facial recognition programs.   

I once warned that the architecture of oppression was near.

It has arrived.https://t.co/Ph9s3qhlwH

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 8, 2021

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

Germany, which has been high-and-mighty within the European Union and has imposed austerity against weaker European economies such as in Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, is now demanding that other EU member nations bail Germans out of what will soon inevitably be an energy-emergency that results from Germany’s having complied with America’s demand to not only join with America’s sanctions against Russia, but to even terminate Germany’s Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline that was supposed to be increasing – instead of (as now will be the case) decreasing – Russia’s natural-gas supplies to Europe.

Germany was, until recently, the industrial motor of the EU, and therefore has the most to lose from reduced and far costlier energy-supplies; but this has now happened, and will escalate in the coming winter. As those energy supplies get reduced, energy prices will rise, then soar, and Germany’s economy will get crushed. Germany’s leaders (like in the other EU nations) complied with the American anti-Russia sanctions demands (which are based on faked ‘information’); and, as a result, the German public will soon be freezing, even while Germany will be spending astronomically higher prices for energy than it had previously been paying. The plunging energy supplies from Russia will be replaced by increased supplies from other countries (including America) whose energy is far costlier than Russia’s; and only a small fraction of those reduced supplies from Russia will be able to be replaced at all. Something will have to give, probably the EU itself, because the resultant rapidly escalating internal hostilities between EU nations — especially between Germany and the nations that it now expects to bail it out of this crisis – could blow the EU itself irrevocably apart.

This will be happening at the same time when the EU – which was extremely committed to reducing or even eliminating both nuclear and fossil fuels and especially coal – is suddenly rushing to increase greatly its use of those non-green fuel-sources, and when European voters who had placed those people into power will not like seeing their leaders turn 180 degrees now into the opposite direction, toward global warming. Previously unanticipated new questions will inevitably become raised. Furthermore, the transitions back to fossil fuels can’t even possibly be done as fast as Europe’s leaders are promising; and, as a consequence, not only will Europeans be chilling-out and shivering during this coming winter, but their leaders will have a lot of explaining to do that can’t be explained except by admitting that they had been wrong – terribly wrong and unprepared – and this undeniable fact will cause political chaos, as the mutual recriminations about their multiple failures will embitter Europeans about the entire EU project, the project of creating one single incomprehensibly bureaucratic U.S.-satellite European mega-nation, the “European Union,” that is composed of virtually all European nations. Nostalgia about the past, of beautiful independent European nations, and bitterness about the future, of “north versus south” (etc.) in Europe, will take over, weakening the EU’s fabric, and bringing into question the entire post-WW-II cross-Atlantic alliance (subservience, actually to the Russia-hating U.S. Government), both America’s NATO and its political twin, the U.S.-dominated EU and its thousands of American servants in Brussels.

The most-recent comprehensive evaluation of the energy-needs of the EU nations is the September 2008 “Europe’s Dependence on Russian Natural Gas: Perspectives and Recommendations for a Long-term Strategy” by Richard J. Anderson of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, funded by the U.S. and German Governments. It made clear that the lowest cost and fastest-growing fuel in Europe (unless EU countries would institute polices to change this, which didn’t occur) was pipelined natural gas from Russia, and that this was especially so regarding electricity-production, industrial uses, and chemical feedstocks for plastics etc.

That’s what has happened – Russian dominance of Europe’s energy-supplies (and industrial supplies) – and, as-of 2008, the countries that were the most dependent upon cheap Russian pipelined natural gas were (see this image there): Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Turkey, Austria, Czechia, Greece, Finland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Presumably, those are the nations that will be especially “chilling out” this coming winter, in order to continue America’s political domination over Europe.

The supposed moral imperative that has supposedly triggered this “chilling-out” is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as being Russia’s inevitable ultimate response to America’s coup grabbing of Ukraine in February 2014 and NATO’s insulting-to-Russia insistence that this U.S.-made new Russia-hating Ukrainian regime has a sovereign right to place American missiles on Russia’s border only a mere five-minute striking-distance to nuking Moscow – that’s the EU’s supposed moral-imperative reason to turn Russia (Europe’s cheapest energy-supplier) off as being a supplier of energy to Europe.

But, as a result of turning off Russia’s energy-spigots in Europe, the EU itself might become destroyed, and a mere has-been economically, culturally, industrially, and otherwise, just so that Europe will remain as being vassal-nations to America (its “dispensable” nations, like all the rest are), instead of to become what it always should have been, and naturally would have been – the radiant glory of the world’s largest continent: Eurasia, a Europe that includes Russia, instead of that endangers Russia.

The glory of Europe is done for, finished as what it was, and the only real question now is how fast? Oh – and WHY? Why did Europe’s leaders do this? That will be the real EU-killer question.

The Europe that was, is gone – killed by the regime in Washington DC, using its many hired agents in Europe, and their hired guns in NATO.

*  *  *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ – duping the public.

Authored by Michael Anton via CompactMag.com,

The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again. In fact, they made this clear in 2020, in a series of public statements. Simply for quoting their words in an essay for The American Mind, I was mercilessly mocked and attacked. But they were quite clear. Trump won’t be president at noon, Jan. 20, 2021, even if we have to use the military to drag him out of there.

If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now. But you don’t have to imagine. They tell you every day. Liz Cheney, Trump’s personal Javert, has said that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today – greater than China, than our crashing economy, than our unraveling civil society.

That’s rhetoric, of course, but it isn’t merely that. It’s safer, and generally more accurate, to assume that your adversaries mean what they say.

If you doubt this, ask yourself: When was the last time they acted more moderately than they talk?

Even if it is just rhetoric, the words nonetheless portend turbulence. “He who says A must say B.” The logic of statement A inevitably leads to action B, even if the speaker of A didn’t really mean it, or did mean it, but still didn’t want B. Her followers won’t get the irony and, enthused by A, will insist on B.

Take some time to listen to the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be long; five minutes should do. Then spend another five or so reading the statements of prominent politicians other than Trump. To round it out, sacrifice another five on leading intellectuals. It should become abundantly clear: They all have said A and so must say—and do—B.

And B is that Trump absolutely must not be allowed to take office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Why? They say Jan. 6. But their determination began much earlier.

And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process?

Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. The old America—the one in which Republicans cared about the heartland and weren’t solely valets to corporate power, Democrats were pro-worker and anti-war, and Bill Clinton and The New York Times could advocate border security—is in the process of being replaced, if it hasn’t already been, by one in which there is only one acceptable opinion on not just these, but all other issues.

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.

Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

People I have known for 30 years, many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war, and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally, unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many such cases.” How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?

More to the point: How are we supposed to get through the next two and a half years? The regime would prefer to get its way via the path of least resistance. The ideal situation, at least for those of a less punitive cast of mind who would be satisfied seeing Trump gone but not necessarily in jail, would be for Trump to just walk away. But how likely is that? He doesn’t, to say the least, seem primed for a graceful exit in which he passes the baton to Ron DeSantis (or whomever). Even if he did, how many in his base would convince themselves that the fix was somehow in? “They threatened his children,” etc. That kind of thinking leads not to demoralization but to outrage. That might be irrational, but this isn’t a math competition; it’s politics in a hyper-partisan, supercharged time.

Since the long goodbye has about as much chance as Kamala Harris completing a sentence without cackling,

Plan A is to use the Jan. 6 show trials to make it impossible for Trump to run again, or barring that, to win again.

But that isn’t working; at least, not well enough.

They may have dented Trump a little in opinion polling, but not nearly enough to prevent him from getting the GOP nomination. Perhaps they still can; I doubt it, but who knows? But more likely, even if they do further damage, Trump will have plenty of time to get his numbers back up.

And the ruling class will surely help him in that endeavor by being ever-more radical, hateful, and incompetent. They have shown time and again that there is no moderation in them. They can’t let up even a single mile per hour, not even when easing back is in their clear interest. Whether they are driven by the demands of their base, their own internal conviction, or some supernatural force, I couldn’t say.

Plan B is for the Jan. 6 committee to lay the groundwork for an indictment of Trump.

The Justice Department is already leaking that “seditious conspiracy” might be the charge.

Now, I personally believe that such a charge would be ludicrous. Seditious conspiracy, when it is charged at all, which it rarely was before Jan. 6, is typically reserved for the likes of Omar “Blind Sheikh” Abdel-Rahman, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. And they are going to try it against a former president, for phone calls and texts ambiguously connected to a protest in which many walked through doors held open by Capitol Police, minimal property damage occurred, the only people who died were unarmed protesters, and which may have been a setup, or at least egged-on, by the feds.

I am under no illusion that I’m going to convince regime apparatchiks of any of this. However, if any are reading, I would ask them the following. I know you think it’s perfectly obvious that “Trump Is Guilty!” and that anyone who doesn’t agree is not merely insane, but A Danger to the Republic. But just as I know I can’t convince you, I also know that you can’t convince 100 million Trump supporters. Do you realize that, too? Do you consider it a feature, not a bug?

Moreover, if the regime goes forward with this, it’s going to try him in the District of Columbia’s 77 percent Democratic and 92 percent virulently anti-Trump jury pool, which lately has been acquitting obvious Democratic miscreants and convicting Republicans on silly charges that never used to have been brought in the first place.

It’s just a fact—perhaps, to many, a baleful fact—but nevertheless a fact that somewhere between a third and half the country is going to find this totally illegitimate and be outraged by it.

I know what some of our masters are thinking because they are already saying it: Justice must be done, come what may. We must stand on principle, consequences be damned. This sounds noble in the abstract.

Is it? I suspect some of them are thinking: 

This is win-win for us. If we convict him, or damage him enough that he can’t run, and there isn’t a huge backlash, then mission accomplished. Or if there is, well, those people were already, or soon-to-be, insurrectionists and so we will be justified in unleashing the security state against them. Indeed, there are benefits to flushing them out now, before they are fully organized for the “Second Civil War” we know the insurrectionists are already plotting.

At any rate, a conviction would all but ensure a Senate vote under Article I, Section 3, making Trump constitutionally ineligible to run (at least half the Republicans would sign on).

But what if, somehow, Trump is acquitted or gets his case tossed out?

Then I think you will see the same indignant reaction, but from the other side. Suddenly it will be Blue America declaring all our institutions, and especially the courts, illegitimate. You might even see some attempts at blue secession, e.g., “Calexit.”

Plan C, if none of this works, is to have Trump declared ineligible under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.

This is riskier than Plan B. If they couldn’t get a Senate vote in favor (and, absent a conviction, I don’t think they could), it would come down to a mere court opinion.

If you think Trump’s base will howl over a conviction in a DC kangaroo court, wait until you see their reaction to some Democratic-appointed appeals judge saying Trump can’t run. Even if the regime got the Supreme Court to uphold that 9-0 (and they won’t), Trump’s base won’t accept it.

Plan D—just beat him at the ballot box—is also risky. The country is in desperate shape. Biden is enormously unpopular. Harris is spectacularly unpopular. Getting rid of one of them will be hard. Getting rid of both? The first black, South-Asian, and female vice president and heir apparent? Does anyone think the race-and-sex-obsessed Democratic base of 2024 is going to tolerate that?

And then who do they replace them with? Gavin Newsom? A ciswhite male? Even if they can get past that non-trivial problem, which they can’t, Newsom has no appeal outside deep-blue America. I’m not saying he would certainly lose, but it’s dicey as hell, especially with a demoralized base and the very strong likelihood that the state he governs will be deep in recession by election time.

Plan E is to cheat. I know what you are thinking. But I’m not talking about Dominion voting machines. I mean the kind of “pre-cheating” that the regime boasts about as “election fortification”: change the rules in advance in ways that favor Democrats and hurt Republicans, especially in swing states. There is no question that they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? It worked last time, and the more overt cheating they can avoid, the better.

They are already using the federal government to thumb the scale in favor of Democrats. Biden’s Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting,” requires “every federal agency to submit a plan to register voters and encourage voter participation. It also required agencies to form strategies to invite nongovernmental third parties to register voters.” That is to say, a federal takeover of state elections by the Biden administration. This is a replay, with federal power, of the $400 million in “Zuckerbucks”—money donated by the tech-oligarch founder of Facebook—that pre-rigged the last election, but this time with taxpayer dollars, a White House aide (Susan Rice) coordinating, and cabinet agencies like Housing and Urban Development implementing, in conjunction with leftwing NGOs. That combination will be hard to beat.

But suppose it is. There is always cheating-cheating. If you believed that Trump presents an unprecedented threat to the republic, would you really object to a few boxes of extra ballots falling off trucks near vote-counting headquarters in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta? When the Survival of Our Democracy Is on the Line?

One has to tip one’s hat to the rhetorical disadvantage they have imposed on us. All questioning of any election they win is denounced as paranoid, unpatriotic, “racist,” and a threat to the integrity of the process. (Never mind that they always do it when the right wins; see, for instance, 2000, 2004, and 2016.) The questionable practices such as late-night ballot dumps that lead to our questions are never explained, much less ended. They get to engage in shenanigans that make elections look fishy; we get blamed for saying they look fishy. When we point out that, hey, something looks off there, the response is invariably: How dare you sow doubt about the election! You are undermining confidence in Our Democracy™. Not their shenanigans, but our doubts undermine confidence.

But there is reason to wonder if they can get away with it next time. Whatever happened in 2020, a supermajority of Republicans doesn’t believe that the election was on the level. The regime is extremely worried about this, which is why the propaganda on it is so intense. They know that to pull off a win in 2024, and have it accepted by the 2020 doubters, the next election is at least going to have to look a lot cleaner than the last. Making it look cleaner is hard to do without actually making it cleaner. The downside to that, though, is obvious.

So the choice before them is: Do what(ever) they did last time—and more so, if necessary—and risk an even bigger reaction, or take their chances that they can win a fair fight. (The latter assumes that they have complete control of their minions who run elections at the local level.) But to repeat a point: Perhaps they consider the reaction a feature, not a bug?

Which leaves Plan F, which they have already sketched in broad outlines. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, but they have made clear that “under no circumstance” can Trump be allowed to take office again. Among the “circumstances” covered by the word “no” would seem to be an Electoral College majority, or a tie followed by a House vote in Trump’s favor.

What happens then? Well, in the words of the “Transition Integrity Project,” a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become “a street fight, not a legal battle.”

Again, their words, not mine.

But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.

On Sept. 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic—sistership of the ill-fated Titanic—collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke, despite both vessels traveling at low speeds, in visual contact with one another for 80 minutes. “It was,” writes maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, “one of those incredible convergences, in full daylight on a calm sea within sight of land, where two normally operated vessels steamed blithely to a point of impact as though mesmerized.”

Our sea isn’t calm, nor are our vessels normally operated. But we do seem headed for a point of impact, with the field of vision before us as clear as it was on that day.

And the regime isn’t changing course. It must want this—or else is so high on its own supply that it can’t see what it is doing.

Rest assured, if what I fear might happen, happens, we will be blamed for it.

And the fire next time will make their reaction to Jan. 6 look like a marshmallow roast. I don’t know which possibility is scarier: that they haven’t thought any of this through, or that they have.

*  *  *

Michael Anton, a former National Security Council staffer in the Trump White House, is a lecturer in politics at Hillsdale College’s Washington, DC, campus.

This year’s edition of ‘The World’s 50 Best Restaurants‘ by publishing group William Reed Business Media has just been released.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, the ranking is one of the most highly anticipated events of the culinary calendar.

The so-called “Oscars of gastronomy” have named the Danish restaurant Geranium as the top restaurant in the world, followed by Central in Peru’s Lima and Disfrutar in Barcelona, Spain.

The top ten roundup includes three Spanish and four Latin American venues.

Founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Geranium has quickly climbed to the top of the 50 best restaurants list, moving from 49th place in 2012 to second place last year. Geranium specializes in meat-free dishes and was the first restaurant in Denmark to obtain three Michelin stars.

The highest ranked US restaurant was ground-breaking Korean eatery Atomix in New York City, which placed 33rd on the list.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants was first launched 20 years ago by the British magazine Restaurant Magazine, as an alternative to the Michelin stars system. The ranking has faced criticism in recent years for elitism, with claims of jurors favoring restaurant owners they know, and for restaurants only in Europe or North America having won the top places.

 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Hill on a shift in the rhetoric in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. From politicians to pundits, pro-life positions are being treated as virtual hate speech.

The demonization of those with pro-life views is meant to cut off any debate on the basis or scope of abortion rights. It is the latest attack on free speech as critics seek to silence those with opposing views.

Here is the column:

With the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, it is no longer enough to be pro-choice. Indeed, the term “pro-choice” has been declared harmful by the now ironically named “Pro-Choice Caucus.” Today, it seems you must be anti-pro-life to be truly pro-choice — and, across the country, pro-life viewpoints are being declared virtual hate speech.

We have seen this pattern before.

With the rise of the racial justice movement on campuses across the country in 2020, a mantra emerged that it was no longer enough to not be a racist, you must be anti-racist. As National Public Radio’s media critic explained, “you’ve got to be continually working towards equality for all races, striving to undo racism in your mind, your personal environment and the wider world.”

Similarly, after the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it seems, you must be anti-pro-life and stop others from voicing their views.

On Sunday, almost half of the University of Michigan’s incoming medical school class walked out of a “White Coat Ceremony” to protest keynote speaker Dr. Kristin Collier. Collier was not planning to discuss abortion, but — because she holds pro-life views — students launched an unsuccessful campaign to block her from speaking.

The cancel-campaign petition had the usual nod to free speech before calling for it to be gutted. According to the Michigan Daily, the petition — signed by hundreds of incoming, current and past students — declared that “while we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care.” In other words: We support a diversity of viewpoints so long as we don’t have to hear any opposing views.

Ironically, until four years ago, Collier was “a pro-choice atheist” who admitted that she had “great animosity towards those who held either pro-life views or deeply held religious commitments.” When she held those views, she was a celebrated professor with a long line of publications in peer-reviewed journals. She then had a conversion on the issue after speaking with a senior faculty colleague, Dr. William Chavey, a professor of family medicine who was pro-life — and she quickly became persona non grata.

She is not alone at the university.

A week earlier, a campaign was launched to fire football head coach Jim Harbaugh after he declared, “I believe in having the courage to let the unborn be born.”

Harbaugh is accustomed to penalty calls for unnecessary roughness on the field, but nothing likely prepared him for what came next. While he is widely known to be a devout Catholic, his public statement of his values was considered an outrage by some and made his continuation as coach unacceptable to them, even though he just signed a five-year, $36.7 million contract.

In addition to calls for his termination, Harbaugh was accused of being “full of deep seething hatred of women” and “publicly expressing his distaste for women’s rights.” The liberal Palmer Report posted (with thousands of “likes”) that “no one who actively attempts to deny women their most basic rights should ever be allowed to hold a position of influence at a public university … He’s a public employee. Fire his ass.”

Actually, being a public employee is one reason Harbaugh was not fired. As a public university, Michigan is subject to the full weight of the First Amendment.

Many others are not protected like Harbaugh, however. Some pro-life workers face long, hard fights against companies eager to satisfy pro-choose advocates. In 2017, Charlene Carter, a former Southwest Airlines flight attendant, was fired for posting criticism of the Transportation Workers Union of America (TWU) and its president, Audrey Stone, for their pro-choice positions. Southwest allegedly told Carter that Stone and the union contacted the company and cited her comments as threatening or harassing; Southwest then fired her. Five years later, this month, she was awarded more than $5 million for her wrongful termination.

There is an obvious effort to portray pro-life views as inherently threatening, making most any countermeasures justified. Recently, some pro-life centers and churches have been attacked. Even some crisis pregnancy centers, offering support to pregnant women and alternatives to abortion, have been denounced as a threat to women. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has declared that “crisis pregnancy centers … are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help. … We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.”

Sen. Warren, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and other Democrats in Congress have sponsored a bill that would shut such centers and hit charities with fines of $100,000 or “50 percent of the revenues earned by the ultimate parent entity” for violating the act’s “prohibition on disinformation” related to abortion.

Similar crackdowns are being pushed by some Democratic governors. Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) vetoed $20 million in funding for groups and advertising offering non-abortion resources and counseling. Such counseling efforts were denounced as “deceptive” attempts to “prey” on women.

While some activists have previously argued that pro-life views or advertisements like “abortion hurts women” constitute “hate speech,” the Supreme Court has refused to allow such laws as the Ku Klux Klan Act to be used against abortion protesters as being motivated by a “class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus.”

Demonizing pro-life viewpoints avoids the need to deal with abortion’s details. While a majority today support Roe, an even greater number support limits on abortion. A recent poll conducted by Harvard found that 72 percent of Americans would allow abortion only until the 15th week of pregnancy or support an even more restrictive law. That view transcends party affiliation; even 60 percent of Democrats believe abortion should be prohibited after the 15th week or a more restrictive limit.

Yet, clearly, some do not want to have a debate of the issue while pushing virtually absolute rights to abortion. It is far easier to attack those who voice pro-life views as monolithic, “theology-rooted” extremists. One benefit in being anti-pro-life is that you can be anti-free-speech — all in the name of being pro-choice.