Month: December 2022

The Nigerian government says that foreign-supplied weapons transferred from the West to the Ukrainian government have begun to proliferate in the west African region. The illegal arms have begun to “filter” to the region, Nigeria’s president said.

An urgent warning was recently issued by President Muhammadu Buhari himself. An official statement posted to the website of the Nigerian presidency’s office said that Buhari “urged more vigilance and tightening of security around borders, drawing attention to the increased number of arms, ammunition, and other weapons from the Russia and Ukraine war in the Lake Chad Basin.”

It marks the clearest confirmation yet that weapons intended for Ukrainian forces are exiting the country in large numbers, precisely as many observers feared given the billions of dollars worth of arms that have been pumped in over the course of the nine-month war.

President Buhari said, “Regrettably, the situation in the Sahel and the raging war in Ukraine serve as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in the Lake Chad Region. A substantial proportion of the arms and ammunition procured to execute the war in Libya continues to find its way to the Lake Chad Region and other parts of the Sahel.”

He continued, “Weapons being used for the war in Ukraine and Russia are equally beginning to filter to the region.”

“This illegal movement of arms into the region has heightened the proliferation of small arms and light weapons which continues to threaten our collective peace and security in the region. There is, therefore, the urgent need for expedited collaborative actions by our border control agencies and other security services to stop the circulation of all illegal weapons in the region,” Buhari noted.

Critics of the massive US weapons pipeline to Ukraine have long pointed out there’s no accountability or appropriate tracking once those arms enter the country, presenting ripe opportunities for criminals, terrorists, or lucrative black market arms sellers to take advantage. 

After #Nigeria‘s President Muhammadu Buhari’s clear warning, will we see more #US weapons making it into the hands of terrorist organizations?#Ukraine https://t.co/hkONcaWatV

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) December 3, 2022

In October, Finland began warning it too is seeing West-supplied weapons to Ukraine make their way to different countries, and falling into the hands of criminal gangs.

NBI, which is Finland’s federal National Bureau of Investigation, had sounded the alarm at the time, saying in a statement, “We’ve seen signs of these weapons already finding their way to Finland.” 

“Weapons shipped [by various countries] to Ukraine have also been found in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands,” NBI Detective Superintendent Christer Ahlgren was quoted in the Finnish media as saying. 

Authored by Daniel Flynn via The American Spectator,

In China, authoritarians flood Twitter with ads for prostitutes and pornography in an effort to prevent users from obtaining information about protests.

Authoritarians in the United States threaten to remove Twitter from more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide.

“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” Elon Musk tweeted, “but won’t tell us why.”

The powerful few want to impede the free flow of information to the vulnerable many. Suppression strikes intelligent observers as not a Chinese thing but a fetish of the powerful in whatever nation they reside. It appears cruder and more thuggish in China, and more passive-aggressive and sophisticated in the United States. But whether the state or a monopoly suppresses expression, does the crushing effect of it on a free society really differ?

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke of “monitoring” and “keeping a close eye” on Twitter (big sister is watching!), which, she claims, bears a responsibility to “take action” against “misinformation” and “hate.”

Does not the federal government bear a responsibility to ensure that the United States remains a free society?

Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor.  

Traditionally, the federal government assumed a massive role in ensuring, particularly when it came to communications, that no company controlled too much of the market share. During the 1940s, the feds forced NBC’s Blue Network to separate from the parent company. It eventually became NBC’s competitor ABC. Later, after decades of litigation, the government broke up the Bell System into the seven “Baby Bells” (four of which once again folded into “Ma Bell,” otherwise known as AT&T). This similarly resulted in a competitor to the monopoly in Verizon.

Now people in positions of power cheer on the consolidation of information. Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor. Privately, we may learn that political actors do much more than nudge.

“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself,” Musk tweeted Monday.

“The public deserves to know what really happened.”

And, of course, Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook’s decision to suppress the true Hunter Biden laptop story came about after the FBI issued a stern warning to them about disseminating “disinformation,” a euphemism that now means information that disturbs progressives.

Americans allow infringements on their freedom of speech because we imagine intolerance to that degree as remaining the domain of people who neither look like us nor sound like us. This speaks further to our small-mindedness.

This can happen here because it does happen here.

Elon Musk plays H.L. Mencken, who chomped the half-dollar of Watch and Ward Society moral crusader Frank Chase, played by Tim Cook, before selling him a copy of the American Mercury featuring a story about a prostitute. Ninety-six years later, we do not object much to prostitutes. Certainly, the Chinese, plastering them on Twitter to muck up searches on Wuhan or Chengdu, do not object to them. People increasingly object to differences of opinion or even facts that displease.

The Boston Common bigots merely arrested Mencken for offending them. The ones in Silicon Valley threaten to erase tens of billions of dollars from Musk’s fortune. More importantly, they seek to shrink the parameters of debate. This changes the very character of the United States, which, as anyone familiar with lawyer Andrew Hamilton’s courtroom speeches in the John Peter Zenger libel trial knows, predates the United States:

The question before the Court and you, Gentlemen of the jury, is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty. And I make no doubt but your upright conduct this day will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow citizens, but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor you as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny, and by an impartial and uncorrupt verdict have laid a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power (in these parts of the world at least) by speaking and writing truth.

Progressives increasingly resemble Bill Cosby, New York’s colonial governor and not the comedian/roofie enthusiast, in finding opposing views intolerable. This meant, under the previous Twitter regime, deplatforming Meghan Murphy, a Canadian socialist-feminist, for tweeting “women aren’t men”; the removal of “learn to code” tweets in mock homage to Joe Biden offering that advice to displaced miners; and the suspension of the New York Post’s account for sharing a true story that Twitter falsely deemed disinformation about the president’s son.

Elon Musk deserves gratitude for transforming Twitter from that woke wasteland into a vibrant Mecca for speech. Instead, Apple allegedly seeks to ruin his enterprise through restraint-of-trade practices. Similarly, Apple’s Chinese benefactors who make their iPhones now scour the devices of pedestrians to see if they contain Twitter and other apps.

The interests of Apple and China, then, coincide on much more than the manufacture of cheap iPhones. Tim Cook and Xi Jinping imagine that they hold the right to dictate what apps you may keep on your phone.

“This is a battle for the future of civilization,” Musk accurately tweets.

“If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

Specifically, that tyranny lies 13 hours ahead.

The COP27 climate change conference wrapped up last month. World leaders flew in private jets to Egypt to discuss how fossil fuels were quickly heating the planet to the point of no return, as humanity was doomed if crucial climate change policies weren’t implemented. But while the climate alarmist leaders met in the desert, November’s snowfall across the Northern Hemisphere was running at rates exceeding a half-a-century average. 

NOAA and Rutgers University released new data that showed snow cover across the Northern Hemisphere reached the highest level since measurements began in 1967 and are currently above the 56-year mean. 

Here’s the Rutgers Global Snow Lab snow coverage map across the Northern Hemisphere. 

And another from NOAA with more resolution. 

“Extensive snow extent early in the season is an indicator of persistent cold as we head into winter proper,” weather blog Severe Weather Europe said. 

Most mainstream media outlets overlooked this data because it is an inconvenient truth for the climate change narrative they’re pushing. 

A severe winter for the Northern Hemisphere might complicate power grids for western countries that are hellbent on disrupting energy flows by sanctioning Russia, forcing the world into the worst energy crisis in a generation. Since the US and Europe’s natural gas storage facilities have flipped into withdrawal season, the clock starts as storage levels could quickly wind down if temperatures stay below average, which would continue to boost energy prices. 

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An Arizona county’s board of supervisors certified their jurisdiction’s midterm elections results on Thursday at the order of a judge three days after they missed the statutory deadline of Nov. 28.

Judge Casey McGinley of the Pima County Superior Court instructed Cochise County’s board of supervisors to convene and declare the results official by 5 p.m. MT on Thursday.

McGinley ruled that the failure of two Republican supervisors to certify the results before the state’s legal deadline was illegal.

On Monday, the lone Democrat on the three-person panel, supervisor Anne English, voted against the motion to postpone the results, while Republican supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby voted to postpone.

Following the certification on Thursday, state officials in Arizona will now be able to proceed with statewide certification on Monday after the board voted 2–0 to certify the outcomes of the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

English and Judd cast the deciding votes to certify, with Republican Tom Crosby abstaining from the court-ordered hearing.

Cochise County’s Board of Supervisors sought to push back certifying the results in order to further review claims that the county’s voting equipment was not properly certified in accordance with the law.

According to election officials, the machinery was properly approved.

Cochise County, which borders Mexico, has always been a bastion of Republican and conservative voters.

Hobbs Sues Cochise Board

After the two Republican members of the board voted to delay certification, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who was declared the victor of the state’s governor contest, sued Cochise County earlier this week.

Cochise County “had a statutory duty to certify the results of the 2022 General Election” by Nov. 28., Hobbs said on Twitter, where she shared screenshots of the lawsuit.

According to Hobb’s lawsuit, failure to certify the results before Dec. 1 will “sow greater confusion and doubt about the integrity of Arizona’s election system” and asked the court to issue an injunction compelling officials to do so.

“The Board’s inaction not only violates the plain language of the statute but also undermines a basic tenet of free and fair elections in this state: ensuring that every Arizonan’s voice is heard,” the lawsuit (pdf) reads.

Hobb’s lawsuit stated that without the court’s intervention, she would have no choice, as Arizona’s chief elections official in her role as secretary of state, but to complete the statewide canvass by Dec. 8 “without Cochise County’s votes included.”

Read more here…

This week several major web browsers quickly severed ties with a mysterious software company used to certify the security of websites, three weeks after the Washington Post exposed its connections to a US military contractor, the Post reports.

TrustCor Systems provided ‘certificates’ to browsers to Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, which vouched for the legitimacy of said websites.

“Certificate Authorities have highly trusted roles in the internet ecosystem and it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware,” said Mozilla’s Kathleen Wilson in an email to browser security experts. “Trustcor’s responses via their Vice President of CA operations further substantiates the factual basis for Mozilla’s concerns.”

According to TrustCor’s Panamanian (!?) registration records, the company has the same slate of officers, agents and officers as Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which has sold communication interception services to the U.S. government for over a decade.

One of those contracts listed the “place of performance” as Fort Meade, Md., the home of the National Security Agency and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command.

The case has put a new spotlight on the obscure systems of trust and checks that allow people to rely on the internet for most purposes. Browsers typically have more than a hundred authorities approved by default, including government-owned ones and small companies, to seamlessly attest that secure websites are what they purport to be. -WaPo

Also of concern, TrustCor’s small staff in Canada lists its place of operation at a UPS Store mail drop, according to company executive Rachel McPherson, who says she told their Canadian staffers to work remotely. She also acknowledged that the company has ‘infrastructure’ in Arizona as well.

McPherson says that ownership in TrustCor was transferred to employees despite the fact that some of the same holding companies had invested in both TrustCor and Packet Forensics.

Various technologists in the email discussion said they found TrustCor to be evasive when it came to basic facts such as legal domicile and ownership – which they said was not appropriate for a company responsible for root certificate authority that verifies a secure ‘https’ website is not an imposter.

The Post report built on the work of two researchers who had first located the company’s corporate records, Joel Reardon of the University of Calgary and Serge Egelman of the University of California at Berkeley. Those two and others also ran experiments on a secure email offering from TrustCor named MsgSafe.io. They found that contrary to MsgSafe’s public claims, emails sent through its system were not end-to-end encrypted and could be read by the company.

McPherson said the various technology experts had not used the right version or had not configured it properly. -WaPo

In a previous case which illustrates the importance of trusting root-level authorities – a security company controlled by the United Arab Emirates, DarkMatter, applied in 2019 to have top-level root authority from their status as an intermediate authority with less independence. The request followed revelations that DarkMatter had hacked dissidents and even some Americans – after which Mozilla denied it root power.

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

With US and Global debt exploding prior to both assets and debt imploding, let us look at the disastrous consequences for the US and the world.

Debt explosion leading to the currency becoming worthless has happened in history for as long as there has been some form of money whether we talk about 3rd century Rome, 18th century France or 20th century Weimar Republic and many many more.

So here we are again, another monetary era and another guaranteed collapse as von Mises said:

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit expansion”

This disastrous borrowed prosperity, with ZERO ability to repay the surging debt,  will lead to one of the three consequences below:

1. THE US$ GOES TO ZERO

2. A US DEFAULT

3. BOTH OF THE ABOVE

The most likely outcome is number 3 in my view. The dollar will go to ZERO and the US will default. The same will happen to most countries.

I outline the consequences for the world at the end of his article.

Many people say that the US can never default. That is of course absolute nonsense.

If a country prints worthless debt that nobody will buy in a currency that no one wants to hold, the country has definitely defaulted whatever spin they put on it.

In the next few years, not just US but all sovereign debt will only have one buyer which is the country that issues the debt. And every time a sovereign state buys its own debt, it has to issue more worthless debt that nobody will touch with a barge pole.

Printing more money to pay for previous sins has never worked and never will.

And this is how money dies, just like it has throughout history.

The current monetary era started with the foundation of the Fed in 1913 and the acceleration of debt and currency debasement since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. With just over 100 years into this era, it is now approaching the end, like they all do.

Global currencies are already down 97-99% since 1971 and we can now expect the final 1-3% decline for all money to become virtually worthless. This is of course nothing new in history since every single currency has always gone to ZERO. We must of course remember that the final 1-3% move means a 100% fall from today. The final collapse is always the quickest so it could easily happen in the next 2-5 years.

DEBT, DEBT AND MORE DEBT

Let’s look at how it has all evolved.

Although US debt has increased virtually every year since 1930, the acceleration started in the late 1960s and 1970s. With gold backing the dollar and therefore most currencies UNTIL 1971, the ability to borrow more money was restricted without depleting the gold reserves.

Since the gold standard prevented Nixon to print money and buy votes to stay in power, he conveniently got rid of those shackles “temporarily” as he declared on August 15, 1971. Politicians don’t change. Powell and Lagarde recently called the increase in inflation “transitory” but in spite of their bogus prediction, inflation has continued to rise.

Since 1971 total US debt has gone up 53X with GDP only up 22X as the graph below shows:

As the widening Gap between Debt and GDP in the graph above shows, it now takes ever more debt to achieve increases in GDP.  So without printing worthless money, REAL GDP would show a decline.

So this is what our politicians are doing, buying votes and creating fake growth through printed money. This gives the voter the illusion of  increased income and wealth. Sadly he doesn’t grasp that the illusory increase in living standard is all based on debt and devalued money.

Let’s also look at US Federal Debt:

Since Reagan became president in 1981, US federal debt has on average doubled every 8 years. Thus when Trump inherited the $20 trillion debt from Obama in 2017, I forecast that the debt would double by 2025 to $40t. That still looks like a valid projection but with the economic problems I expect, a $50t debt by 2025-6 cannot be excluded.

So presidents know they can buy the love of the people by running chronic deficits and printing money to make up for the difference.

But if we look at the graph above again, it shows that debt has gone up 35X since 1981 but that tax revenue has only increased 8X from $0.6t to $4.9t.

How can any sane person believe that with debt going up 4.5X faster than tax revenue that the debt can ever be repaid.

Even worse, with US interest payments on the debt surging from around 0% to probably 5% by 2025 the interest on the debt will climb to $2 trillion or circa 30% of the annual budget.

So with higher interest rates, higher deficits and rising inflation the scene is set for a high or hyper-inflationary period in the next few years.

FED PIVOT?

So virtually every observer believes that the Fed (and ECB) will not just stop raising interest rates but pivot and lower them again.

In my view this will not happen except for possibly very short term. The 40 year interest rate downtrend finished in 2020 and the world is unlikely to see low or negative rates for many years or decades.  High inflation and high rates will continue for years. But as we see in the 40 year chart of the 10 year US treasury below, there will be many corrections in the coming uptrend.

US MONEY SUPPLY GROWING AT 74% ANNUALISED

Between August 1971 and August 2019 US money supply grew at 6.1% p.a.

In August 2019, the hangover from the 2006-9 Great Financial Crisis hit the financial system again resulting in major support actions from the Fed and other central banks.

So the fresh problems emerged before Covid and before Ukraine. But those two new crises obviously exacerbated the systemic problems that had been put on ice for 10 years. This led to massive money printing and M1 in the US no longer increased at 6% annually but at a hyperinflationary 74% p.a. as the graph below shows.

$25 TRILLION GLOBAL LIQUIDITY/DEBT INCREASE AT ZERO COST

Central banks are always wrong and always behind the curve. They kept short term rates at zero or negative for over a decade. From 2009 to 2019 the balance sheets of major central banks increased by $13t. But then from Aug 2019 to 2022 an explosion in central bank debt took place, expanding their balance sheets $23t from $13t to $36t. All the same reasons that I discuss in the paragraph above regarding US money supply are obviously also valid for global debt expansion.

There is nothing like free money! The banks created this money at ZERO cost. They did no work and nor did they produce any goods or services. All they needed to do was to press a button. And with interest rates at zero or negative, many central banks were actually receiving interest from the lenders.

What a beautiful Ponzi scheme. CBs print/borrow money and then they are paid for the pleasure of borrowing this money.  Any private swindler launching such a scheme like Ponzi or Madoff would spend the rest of his life in prison but the bankers are praised for “saving” the system.

What virtually no individual understands is that this free money then enters the financial system as having a real intrinsic value. As with all Ponzi schemes, the current financial system will collapse too as the holders of the fake paper money realise that the money is worthless and that the emperor is totally naked.

That will be the final phase of the current monetary system with unlimited money printing as the $2.3 quadrillion debt pyramid collapses which I discussed in this article and also in this interview with Greg Hunter USA Watchdog .

This is what the global financial system looks like: 

The estimated $2 quadrillion gross derivatives is today quasi debt but will one day  become real debt, as central banks attempt to rescue the financial system. When counterparties fail, the gross will remain gross. So in total the world will face a $2,3 quadrillion debt resting on $2 trillion of central bank gold, a 0.1% coverage.

Within the next five years or so, the triangle is likely to be inverted with central bank gold as the foundation at the bottom. But instead of gold being only 0.1% of global liabilities, it will be as much as maybe 20%. That 200x revaluation of gold will be a combination of the value of global assets and liabilities collapsing and gold rising.

Personally I don’t believe in a lasting formal reset with a new currency system backed by gold. I cannot see the three major gold producers/holders China, Russia and India agreeing with the US on a revaluation. It is also questionable if the US has anywhere near the 8,000 tonnes of gold they are declaring. Also, China and Russia probably have considerably more gold than they are declaring.

Instead, after the fake paper market in gold has collapsed, the price must be based on supply and demand of unencumbered physical gold or Free Gold. But that can only happen after the current financial system based on fake money, debt and derivatives no longer functions. 

CONSEQUENCES

But before that, the world must pay for the excesses of the last 50 years. The consequences will be dire as we are facing a major cataclysm or disorderly reset which will involve:

• DEBT DEFAULTS – SOVEREIGN, CORPORATE  & PRIVATE

• BURSTING OF EPIC BUBBLES IN STOCKS, BONDS & PROPERTY

• MAJOR GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICTS WITH NO DESIRE FOR PEACE

• SECULAR FALL OF LIVING STANDARDS DUE TO HIGHER COST OF ENERGY & ENERGY SHORTAGES

• FOOD SHORTAGES LEADING TO MAJOR FAMINE AND CIVIL UNREST

• POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTABILITY & CORRUPTION

• NO COUNTRY WILL AFFORD SOCIAL SECURITY OR PENSIONS

• INFLATION HYPERINFLATION AND LATER DEFLATIONARY IMPLOSION

I sincerely hope that these predictions will not take place. Because if they do, everyone will suffer dramatically for an extended period. No one, rich or poor will avoid these problems.

I am naturally not predicting, like a Cassandra, (my 2017 article with a timely gold projection) that this disorderly reset will absolutely take place. Only future historians will tell us what actually happened.

But what I am saying is that the risk of a major catastrophe has never been higher in history, whenever it actually happens.

Physical gold and silver will not save you but clearly be the best financial insurance you can hold.

Most important is a support system of family and friends. Remember also that in addition to family and friends, some of the best things in life are free like nature, music, books and many hobbies.

The crypto industry continues to “pick up the pieces” after its epic collapse over the last 6 months, culminating in the implosion of FTX last month.

Three Arrows Capital, another firm that went under due to the plunging price of bitcoin, is in the process of being liquidated. Those in charge of dispersing of its assets are now looking to raise $30 million from the sale of a superyacht called “Much Wow”.

We first wrote that the yacht was being considered for sale in the bankruptcy this summer.

On Friday, a filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York by the company’s liquidator, Teneo, confirmed that it had recovered $35.6 million in cash, $2.8 million from forced redemptions and “over 60” different crypto tokens and NFTs, Coingape reported.

Teneo is also seeking $30 million from the sale of the yacht, which is said to be worth $50 million. According to the report, founders of 3AC used company funds to purchase the yacht, but never made its final payment. 

The yacht is currently “in insolvency proceedings in the Cayman Islands”, the report says. 

Company founder Kyle Davies recently “criticized liquidators for refusing to engage with them constructively,” the report continues. Teneo has spoken out and said that they Davies and founder Zhu Su are delaying the return of funds to creditors. 

The founders are in Bali and Dubai, respectively, and their U.S. citizenship is “unclear”, making it difficult to subpoena them. 

Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

In October, the U.S. national debt reached $31 trillion, and the government is projected to wade another trillion dollars into the red in the 2023 fiscal year. The longer-term picture is even gloomier, with the deficit expected to double to $2 trillion by 2030.

Indeed, the longer the horizon, the worse things get. At 98% of Gross Domestic Product, the current national debt is the highest it’s been since just after World War II. On its current course, the debt will soar to 185% of the country’s entire economic output by 2052.

What’s particularly troubling is that the government’s 2022 $1.3 trillion-dollar deficit came at a time of near-record tax intake. At 19.8% of GDP, Uncle Sam’s 2022 tax haul was close to the all-time high of 20.5% set in 1944.

Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem — it has a spending problem.

What few people realize, however, is the extent to which the U.S. government’s disastrous trajectory is on autopilot, thanks to the fact that an ever-larger proportion of federal spending happens without Congressional action.

To understand why, it’s important to first understand that there are two main categories of government spending:

• Discretionary spending, which requires a vote by Congress as part of the annual appropriations process.

• Mandatory spending, which is dictated by previously-enacted laws and thus happens without an annual vote in Congress. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid comprise a big majority of mandatory spending.

Here’s where things have taken an ominous turn. In 1965, mandatory spending accounted for 34% of all federal spending. Today, that share has more than doubled, with mandatory spending representing 71% of federal outlays. With overall spending higher too, mandatory spending is much larger slice of a larger pie.

As much as it’s right to spotlight wasteful discretionary spending — like a $2.4 million National Science Foundation grant to promote dinosaur enthusiasm or $11.3 million to tell Vietnamese people to stop burning trash — the truth is that the annual budgeting process offers federal legislators a shrinking opportunity to make meaningful fiscal course corrections.

While mandatory spending can be adjusted by passing new laws, there’s a big problem with that: Meaningfully changing the trajectory of mandatory spending requires meaningful adjustments to Social Security and Medicare.

The mere idea arouses indignation among those who’ve been paying taxes into those programs for all their working lives. That’s understandable, since the government fosters the myth that Americans have Social Security and Medicare “accounts.”

However, the truth is that these programs increasingly operate not as savings accounts or insurance plans, but rather as schemes that redistribute money from current workers to retirees. Social Security already dishes out far more in benefits than it takes in via payroll taxes, and Medicare crosses into an annual deficit this fiscal year.

While former Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill rightly called Social Security the “third rail” of American politics, some Republicans have recently dared to propose touching both it and Medicare.

The Republican Study Committee — a group of House reps — in June of this year floated a budget that suggested:

• Gradually raising Medicare’s eligibility age to 67 and Social Security’s to 70, and then index both to life expectancy

• Withholding payments from those who retire early and earn more than a certain amount

• Reducing Social Security payroll taxes and redirecting them to private alternatives

• Phasing in means-testing for Medicare

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has proposed moving Social Security and Medicare from the mandatory spending category to the discretionary one, so that Congress is compelled to actively monitor and manage the programs — rather than contentedly looking the other way as their mandatory nature digs them deeper into a hole.

As the GOP went out on a political limb, Democrats naturally grabbed their saws. Henry Connelly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said “House Republicans are openly threatening to cause an economic catastrophe in order to realize their obsession with slashing Medicare and Social Security.”

The “catastrophe” comment refers to the notion that Republicans may make reform of the programs a condition for raising the federal debt ceiling yet again.

Republicans’ aspirations to reform Social Security and Medicare gave Democrats powerful midterm-election ammunition — with Democrats and allies pushing attack ads portraying the GOP as ruthlessly bent on shrinking the programs, apparently just for the sake of doing so.

President Biden pushed the theme hard down the campaign stretch: “They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare in a big way,” he warned in stump speeches with congressional candidates.

Without action, however, time is coming for Social Security and Medicare in a big way. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to run out around around 2035. Absent congressional intervention, that will trigger a 20% cut for everyone receiving benefits when the well runs dry. Medicare’s trust fund is projected to vanish in just six years, with less clarity on how shrinking resources will be apportioned.

As close as those two grim milestones are, to politicians of both parties whose principal aim is re-election, they’re critically still more than one election cycle away.

Given that, don’t expect any fruitful action on Social Security or Medicare anytime soon. You can, however, expect that anyone who attempts to tailor the programs to economic reality will be accused of cruel intentions— by disingenuous politicians who portray their own irresponsible inaction as the height of benevolence.

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

Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey: Invigoratingly unorthodox perspectives for intellectually honest readers 

Ukraine says its embassies across Europe are coming under attack with a “well-planned campaign of terror” – following last week’s embassy mail bomb incident at the embassy in Madrid, Spain – which injured a worker.

Over the past several days more than a dozen letters containing either explosives or bloody animal parts have been received by Ukrainian embassies or in some cases intercepted before they arrived.

“There have been 17 cases of embassies receiving either letter bombs, false bomb letters, or letters containing animals parts, like the eyes of cows and pigs,” CNN cited Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba as saying. 

The animal eyes are being interpreted as threats of more violence to come targeting Ukrainian diplomatic outposts in the West. In some cases the ambassadors in residence have had their names written on the envelopes. “This campaign is aimed at sowing fear,” Kuleba said.

Though there’s as yet no publicly disclosed evidence presented by authorities as to who is behind the series of letters and mail bombs, Kuleba pointed the finger directly at Moscow in his latest statement, saying, “Maybe this terror response is the Russian answer to the diplomatic horror that we created for Russia on the international arena, and this is how they try to fight back while they are losing the real diplomatic battles one after another.”

So far, “bloody” and threatening packages have been sent to embassies and general consulates in Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Vowing not to be intimidated, Kuleba said further, “We have grounds to believe that a well-planned campaign of terror and intimidation of Ukrainian embassies and consulates is underway.”

Several Ukrainian embassies around the world have been sent “bloody packages” containing animal eyes. Among them, reports Sky News, is the embassy in Croatia.https://t.co/ozcIZePDA4

— Balkan Insight (@BalkanInsight) December 2, 2022

“We will continue to work effectively for the victory of Ukraine,” he stressed, while also urging foreign governments in Europe to step up round-the-clock protection of its missions in their countries, including security of diplomatic personnel.

Spain especially is on high alert after a mail bomb was days ago even sent to the US Embassy in Madrid. It was reportedly intercepted before it arrived.