Inflation is a monetary phenomenon of too much money chasing too few goods.
It’s the result of the Wall Street owned and operated Federal Reserve’s money printing madness.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, trillions of dollars pumped up stock prices to the make super-rich and rich interests throughout the West and elsewhere richer than ever.
Corporate bosses also used Fed created money for large-scale stock buybacks to elevate their valuations.
Since Russia’s liberating SMO began, hegemon USA-dominated Western regimes exacerbated things by imposing unparalleled numbers of sanctions on the Russia Federation.
While adversely affecting its economy, European nations were more greatly harmed.
US policymakers didn’t consider how largely self-sufficient Russia is able to withstand the impact of Western sanctions.
Besides seeking to cause maximum harm to its enterprises and people, the Biden regime wants European economies adversely affected to benefit corporate America.
That’s how predatory capitalism works, exploiting other nations and vast majority of people everywhere to benefit the privileged few.
The latest US CPI showed inflation to be higher than expected.
It’s not the phony year-over-year 9.1% reported on July 13.
As calculated pre-1990 before the formula was rigged to appear much lower than reality, it’s around 17.3% — the highest level in over 75 years, what’s unlikely to ease any time soon.
It’s not “Putin’s price hike” as the fake Biden and those propping up his illegitimacy falsely claim.
Inflation has nothing to do with Russia’s liberating SMO.
As establishment economist Milton Friedman explained long ago:
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
And this from Friedman:
“If you listen to people in Washington, (they’ll) tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen, or it’s produced by grasping unions, or it’s produced by spendthrift consumers, or maybe, it’s those terrible Arab sheikhs who are producing it.”
“(N)one of (the above) produce inflation” because they don’t have a money-producing printing press like the Fed.
As long as there’s most money printed than things to buy, prices are pressured to rise.
The way to cool inflation is by slowing the rate of money creation.
Things have gotten so out-of-control in the US, UK and EU that most likely a stiff protracted economic downturn alone can get inflation under control.
According to analyst Doug Casey, annual US deficits are from one to two trillion.
The only way to finance them is by selling excess debt to the Fed.
And the only way it can do it is by continued money printing in amounts needed.
The Fed is the only major buyer of US debt — notably since the Biden regime confiscated around $330 of the amount held by Russia.
The handwriting on the wall should have been apparent much earlier earlier.
Nations concerned about being treated like Russia and others thinking they may be targeted one day are selling US debt, not buying it.
When the Fed buys government debt, “it monetizes (it) by crediting the federal government’s accounts with commercial banks with newly created dollars,” Casey explained.
Currency inflation pushes prices higher.
The fault is home-grown.
When occurs, currency depreciation is economically devastating.
The rich can handle adverse economic and financial conditions.
Ordinary people are harmed most.
Fed chairman and Treasury secretary Yellen are wrong.
Current US inflation isn’t “transitory.”
It’s deep-seated and not easing any time soon.
Casey believes it became “a permanent structure.”
“The state needs…massive (amounts of money creation) and credit to feed itself and its minions.”
Deep-seated inflation isn’t going away easily or soon in the US, UK or EU.
Hard times getting harder will be the bane of ordinary people throughout the US/West for some time to come.
low-motion genocide of unwanted Palestinians — especially Gazans — is indisputable proof that Zionism is tyranny by another name.
Its pure evil is extremist, morally and legally indefensible, undemocratic, hateful, ruthless, racist, destructive, and hostile to what people yearning to breathe free most cherish.
Contemptuous of legal, moral and ethical principles, its scourge threatens everyone and everything it touches.
In 2017, updated weeks earlier, B’Tselem minced no words about reality in Gaza, saying:
The Strip “is the scene of a humanitarian disaster that has nothing to do with natural causes.”
It’s “entirely man-made, a direct result of official Israeli policy.”
Its ruling regimes “can choose to change this policy and considerably improve the lives of Gaza’s residents.”
“It can also choose to continue this cruel, unjustifiable policy, which sentences…two million…Gaza(ns) to a life of abject poverty…inhuman conditions” and utter misery.
The Strip is unlivable for its long-suffering people.
Its economy in free-fall, youth unemployment is around 70%.
Its healthcare system virtually collapsed.
About 96% of its drinking water is too contaminated for safe human consumption.
Electricity is available for only a few hours daily.
Israeli regimes use deadly force on Strip residents at their discretion — while the world community of nations yawns and pretends not to notice — especially the debauched West.
Hegemon USA finances, supports, encourages and partners with Israeli human rights abuses and other grievous rule of law breaches.
A small handful of nations stand tall by condemning Israeli state terror.
They’re exceptions to the rule.
Without nowhere in sight international community support with teeth, they’ll be no end to Israeli slow-motion genocide of long-suffering Palestinians, especially not in Gaza.
Along with terrorizing its people, Israel controls its border crossings, airspace and offshore waters.
A virtual blockade exists — an act of war under international law.
Based on FOIA-obtained documents by the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Israeli regimes employ a “deliberate reductive policy” in Gaza.
Slow-motion genocide by another name, Israel restricts the caloric intake of Strip residents to a bare minimum amount needed to survive.
Since Friday, Israel has been terror-bombing Gazan residential areas, killing civilians in cold blood.
Through Saturday, at least 24 Strip residents were killed — including 6 children — over 200 others wounded, many seriously, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
PM Yair Lapid turned truth on its head, falsely claiming that IDF terror-bombing is based on “concrete threats (sic)” — what don’t exist.
According to IDF spokesman, Ran Kochav, terror-bombing of Gaza will continue for at least a week, ceasefire ruled out.
After Israel’s cold-blooded murder of senior Islamic Jihad (IJ) freedom fighter, Tayseer al-Jabari, on Friday, the IDF killed Khalid Mansour on Saturday, IJ’s southern Gaza military commander.
Like always before when Israeli regimes preemptively attack Palestinians, the Lapid regime invented a nonexistent threat to justify what’s indisputably unjustifiable, saying:
IDF strikes on Gaza aim to “remove a concrete threat against Israeli civilians” — bald-faced Big Lie.
Israeli terror-bombing threatens to escalate into full-scale war for the 5th time since the Jewish state’s 2008-09 Cast Lead aggression.
By open letter to the UN Security Council on Friday, the Al Haq human rights organization said the following:
The Lapid regime preemptively attacked Gaza with “excessive force including missiles and artillery shells.”
“Al-Haq warns that Israel’s aggressive attacks on the Gaza Strip disproportionally (affect) the civilian population.”
By any standard, the Lapid regime is guilty of war crimes.
Its war minister, Gantz, “approved a draft order of up to 25,000 soldiers for operations in and around Gaza and (began) calling upon its reservists in preparation for the escalation of violence (against) Strip” residential areas.
“Al-Haq strongly condemns Israel’s aggressi(on) in occupied Gaza, as well as its continued illegal blockade and use of collective punishment against” its two million people.
Days before preemptively attacking Gaza, the Lapid regime “closed all crossings into (the Strip), restricting movement of Palestinians, as well as inhibiting the flow of fuel to Gaza’s sole power plant, impacting the delivery of vital electricity resources.”
Al Haq’s call on Security Council members “to halt Israel’s indiscriminate and excessive attacks on Gaza, ensure the provision of vital humanitarian supplies and prevent further killings of the protected Palestinian population” fell on deaf ears.
US, UK and French veto power assures no end to Western support for Israeli crimes of war, against humanity and other grievous human rights abuses.
Separately on Saturday, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said the following:
IDF terror-bombing of Strip residential areas continues.
“PCHR fears that there will be more civilian casualties in an area considered among one of most densely populated areas in the world and where there is not any form of protection, including public and private shelters or even safe corridors.”
“PCHR brings to mind that in recent offensives on the Strip, civilians and civilian objects were always under IOF’s attacks as a way of exerting pressure on (freedom fighting) Palestinian armed groups.”
“PCHR emphasizes that these airstrikes violate the principles of necessity and proportionality while conducting directed attacks against densely populated areas and use of weapons based on collective punishment is a grave breach of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and amount to war crimes.”
“PCHR calls upon the international community to take immediate action to stop Israeli crimes and avoid any further deterioration of the humanitarian situation.”
In the run-up to and after establishment of the Jewish state on stolen Palestinian land in May 1948, its ruling regimes operated with impunity.
What began Friday against Gazans is the latest chapter of how the scourge of Zionist tyranny operates.
Once again, two million Strip residents have no way to protect themselves from IDF terror-bombing.
What the Lapid regime scheduled for a week — for political, not security, reasons — could go on much longer.
How many nonthreatening Palestinian men, women, children and infants will die from Israel’s latest aggression?
How many more will be seriously injured or maimed?
How many Strip residents will lose all their possessions — destroyed by IDF missiles?
How many Gazan families will be homeless, their residences turned to rubble?
Once again, the scourge of Zionist tyranny is on display.
The late Palestinian American scholar, intellectual, activist, Edward Said, once called “serious public discussion” about Israeli crimes of war, against humanity and genocide against Palestinians the last taboo, adding:
“Abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty, even the sacrosanct military budget can be discussed with some freedom.”
“The extermination of native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag publicly committed to the flames.”
“But (decades-long Israeli) oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear.”
While cracks in the wall of silence appeared after Said’s remarks, one-sided US/Western support for Israel remains rock-solid.
It’s because of Zionist lobby power in the US.
Operating as unregistered foreign agents, AIPAC and dozens of other Zionist groups exert enormous influence on all things Israel in the US.
With rare dissenting voices, almost the entire Congress and US regimes — since Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize Israel straightaway after its establishment — support all things Israel, including its wars of aggression.
Their backing gives Israeli regimes virtual carte blanche to operate with impunity.
It’s been this way for the past 74 years with nothing in prospect for changing things.
You don’t have to be a prepper to know that all disasters are not created equal; just look at the last couple of years. COVID impacted the entire globe. In comparison, other “smaller” disasters might have had a huge impact locally, but were limited to smaller areas.
The war in Ukraine has really only impacted a very small percent of the world’s population, but it has captured the attention of almost everyone, as a possible portent of what is to come.
While wars are horrible, perhaps even more destruction can be caused by a total collapse of civilization. There are many such scenarios that exist, including conventional war, nuclear war, and an attack by an EMP; even a CME from the sun could being us to that point.
Granted, we shouldn’t assume that any and every major disaster will result in a collapse of society, but we should be aware of the possibility. When enough people die in enough critical positions, things stop working properly.
Some of those things include our government and government services like the police, fire, and rescue. When that happens, we start seeing society collapse. Perhaps even more importantly, we see law and order collapse.
Regardless of what happens to the government in any of these scenarios, they all have one thing in common: the collapse of the infrastructure and supply chain that we are so dependent on. We wouldn’t have fresh clean water piped directly into our homes, electric power at the flip of a switch, or any of a thousand products that we use every day.
If we’re talking about only a few days, most people will probably be okay. The average American family has about three days’ worth of food on hand and usually a couple cases of bottled water. Our homes will hold in some heat, keeping them from getting freezing cold for a day or two. But what then?
Watch this video below to find out the great secrets hidden by the government.
The truth is, modern society has been trained to be dependent on our infrastructure and supply chain. It’s not like anyone has intentionally trained us that way. I’m not talking conspiracy theory here. But we are raised with all our technology, our conveniences, our infrastructure, and the ability to run to our choice of stores to buy whatever we can afford.
We don’t know any other system and the younger we are, the more dependent we are on that system.
As part of that “training,” the average person no longer knows how to do the most basic survival tasks. They don’t know where to find water, how to purify it, where to find food (other than in the grocery store and restaurants), how to cook food without power, or even how to start a fire.
Even if they were given the tools that our ancestors used before everything became electrified, they wouldn’t know how to use them.
This leaves anyone who is not a prepper very vulnerable to a collapse of society. Most don’t even know what their survival priorities are, let alone how to come up with them on their own.
If you ask the average person on the street what those priorities are, they’ll probably tell you their cell phone, keys and credit card, not even understanding the question. One or two might come up with “food, clothing and shelter,” without understanding why, other than they had heard that somewhere.
While they will all come to a recognition of those priorities, that won’t happen until they become desperate.
Most Likely Group to Die First
The first thing that will cause people to die won’t be lack of food or water, it will be a lack of medicine. More than 131 million Americans take prescription drugs for chronic conditions. While some of those people could actually survive just fine without those drugs, there are also many who can’t.
Even those who can survive without them for a while, like people with high blood pressure, would very likely end up in serious trouble due to the combination of their underlying health and the stress of the situation.
The Next Killer We’ll Encounter
Water will quickly become a problem, as people run out of the bottles they have saved up. Most will look around them, trying to find whatever water they can. But many will drink that water without first purifying it, either because they don’t have the knowhow or don’t have the tools to use.
Sadly, there is some bad advice around, telling people things like they can filter their water through a T-shirt or other piece of cloth. That sort of advice can get people killed.
Yes, that T-shirt will remove some sediment from the water; but it’s not going to do anything about removing the microscopic pathogens that we really need removed. People will get dysentery from drinking that unpurified water and die of dehydration.
Those that don’t drink whatever water they can find won’t end up much better off. The human body is largely made of water, trapped in each and every cell. We can only live three to five days without water. If our bodies don’t receive sufficient water, those cells die.
As that process cascades, it can lead to the shutdown of entire organs and systems, leading to death.
Starving to Death isn’t Next
It would seem that the next likely problem people will face is starvation, but it probably isn’t. While food is important, we can actually survive for some time without it.
We’ll be hungry, along with a loss of energy and probably some loss of mental clarity after the first two weeks; but we won’t be in danger of dying of starvation that quickly. Most of us carry around too many reserves stored in our body’s fat for that to be an issue.
No, the next issue will be all those people out there who are hungry. The ones who take the hunger in their bellies and follow it, rather than following reason. Those people will start doing whatever they can to get food, even if that means crossing the line into crime.
Before starvation can begin to set in, those people will be out there with whatever weapons they can get their hands on, doing whatever they have to do in order to get food. Some of them will be even more motivated because their children are hungry; and there’s nothing that can make a parent more desperate than their child crying because they are hungry.
Many will die at the hands of those people before they end up reaching their own demise. That will probably come at the hands of someone who is better armed or better prepared then they are.
Before the First Few Weeks are Out
Disease always follows in the wake of disaster. I already mentioned those who will die from drinking contaminated water, but there will likely be a wave of people who die of disease that spreads through society, quite possibly through contaminated water supplies. One of the oldest known disease spreaders is water that becomes contaminate by people who are already infected by disease.
Without proper sewage service, it is easy for human waste, one of the most toxic substances on the face of the earth, to contaminate ground water and to become spread from person to person. You remember how much propaganda there was about washing hands during the COVID pandemic; that wasn’t false information.
Diseases, even deadly diseases, spread quickly via person-to-person contact. When there isn’t adequate water for cleaning, it allows them to spread faster.
Then There’s Starvation
Finally, people will start dying of starvation. It’s hard to say just how quickly that will start as there are many factors involved. The national obesity rate may help slow death by starvation, but fat cells don’t store nutrients, just energy. People can be fat and still die of starvation.
There are too many people who think they can live off the land, hunting, fishing, and gathering. But the reality is, no matter how good you are at those things, there will be too many people trying to survive that way. It won’t take long for the game to play out and the fish to become scarce. When that happens, most of those people won’t have a Plan B.
The starvation wave will probably start in about a month or so and will continue for the better part of a year. By then, those who survive will have figured out how to grow their own food. Either through community effort or their own, they will have enough food, water, and firewood to survive, even if they don’t have enough to thrive.
From there, things will start to improve, with the second year being better than the first and the third being better than the second.
How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic
This is what prepping is all about: becoming self-sufficient so we don’t need to depend on the infrastructure and supply chain. That’s the only true way that we can be sure that we will survive.
But these sorts of scenarios actually go far beyond just stockpiling food and water, as we’re talking about events that will destroy the very fabric of our nation. It’s not just survival for six months or a year; it’s not waiting for someone to rescue us; it’s being able to take care of ourselves the rest of our lives.
I don’t care how big a stockpile you build; it won’t feed you the rest of your life. There was a family on “Doomsday Preppers” who were preparing a ten-year stockpile, but they had no plan after that. Their survival retreat wasn’t someplace where they could grow food. In the kind of situation we’re talking about, they’d survive longer than most; but they would still die.
Getting to this point means developing a homestead; whether that’s a homestead out in the country, an urban homestead in suburbia or a commune-styled homestead on property purchased by your survival team. Homesteading is all about self-sufficiency; and building that homestead is the only insurance you can get.
The latest news is shocking!!!
Experts predict that an EMP strike that wipes out electricity across the nation would ultimately lead to the demise of up to 90% of the population.
The subject of Macron (we think it’s ‘Macron’ right now) is entirely puzzling. The MSM jumped on creating a solid identity with his ‘wife’ Bridget early on. But that has all unravelled, at least among those willing to be curious. Bridget has turned out to be another Michelle Obama or Jacinda Ardern. Benjamin Fulford has made certain claims about Macron in his blog from his Mossad intelligence sources (Mossad had a change of leadership last year; under the new head, plus overwhelming evidence of elite wrongdoing over ‘Covid’ and the ‘shot’ that Fuellmich and his team have amply demonstrated, especially in relation to Israeli citizens, Fulford’s contact(s) is (are) now a little more forthcoming).
So, Macron the child is rumoured to have been taken to Israel on the pedophilia circuit. ‘Bridget’, most likely Jean-Michel Trogneux, a man actually in his late 70s (see the image below), is believed to have been a client at some point along the way. A picture also surfaced of Macron the young child in a school class of peers, some of whom clearly have Downs Syndrome and other mental problems. The more that comes out, the more confusing the identity of the real man becomes. The research on Brigitte and Macron (the site will translate fully into English), done by combing through existing records and photos plus interviews, done credibly according to an expert in the field, points to puzzling and improbable gaps in Macron’s middle-class family history. Whoever is standing before us claiming to be him we have no idea about. We can’t point to a list of well-known actors as in the case of Biden. Did the real Macron ever go to France’s top university for those aiming at political careers? We wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that this was another Obama-type situation, where nobody at Columbia actually remembers him.
Trump apparently knew the raid on Mar-a-Lago was coming. Leaving critical files behind meant that these have to be put in the public domain. Let’s hope they are.
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The writer’s concluding thought shows the degree to which Europe has woken up to the fact that its fate is being dictated from another place entirely. Which, of course, has been the case for decades, since WWII.
If we follow the writer’s logic, we can still conclude ‘it’s all a movie’.
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Macron file seized at Trump: is the Deep State blackmailing our President?
LE COURRIER DES STRATEGES
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Everyone has now heard of the secret file on Emmanuel Macron seized by the FBI during its search of Trump’s home. Even BFMTV talked about it. Of course, no one knows exactly what this folder contains. Uncertainty increases the amount of sulfur that surrounds the mystery. The publicity given to this discovery nevertheless raises a question: are the American services issuing a warning to Macron, from a distance, to keep him under their influence, in particular to guarantee the “good treatment” of the Ukrainian crisis? (ER: And pretty much everything else)
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The FBI’s search of Trump’s home did not go unnoticed, even though it took place on August 8. Quite quickly, the “complosphere” announced that a secret file on Macron had been seized there. And… curiously, the cartel of the subsidized press, up to BFMTV (ER: France’s CNN), also mentioned it in the headlines.
For example, the Express:
FBI investigation: why is Trump hiding a “Macron file” in his safe?
Among the “top secret” files seized from Donald Trump on Monday August 8, one of them is of particular interest to Paris. According to the FBI, his label reads: “President of France”.
The wording is strange. What details, suddenly, on a search covered in principle by the secrecy of the instruction. Where did the French media get this clarification on a top secret file in Trump’s safe, with the label “President of France”? The answer is in the headline of the Express… the information comes from the FBI…
The strange chatter of the FBI
Incidentally, one wonders if the information disseminated… by the FBI is really aimed at the French public, or if it does not rather concern President Macron himself. Blackmailing an ally into standing still is a good old technique that has proven to be effective. And one can think that this technique has known a revival of youth over the past two or three years.
So a plausible reading of the information from this summer is that it constitutes a public warning to Macron of his necessary loyalty… if not… (ER: or to ‘Macron”s handlers)
A harsh management of the Ukrainian crisis?
To understand the reasons which push the American services to let the whole world know that they have a supposedly embarrassing secret file on Emmanuel Macron, it is necessary to delve into the news of August.
Thus, at the beginning of August, the Russian press announced that Vladimir Putin was breaking off communications with Macron, deeming him unfriendly. Here again, the sudden publicity given to a situation in force for two months gives the feeling that Russia wanted to “tackle” Macron and put him in a vulnerable position to force him to make concessions. Moreover, a few days later, Macron and Putin will talk again on the phone. They will decide to send inspectors to Zaporijia.
Meanwhile, the United States used the G7 to give its allies an armbar, demanding the Russian withdrawal from the Zaporizhia power station . In practice, this Zaporijia affair worries the American services, because it shows that Russia is part of a logic of lasting occupation of the territories it conquers.
Did the Americans suspect Macron of wanting to dissociate himself from his allies, knowing that Zelensky intentionally bombed the plant to create a nuclear cataclysm whose consequences would change the face of the conflict?
The end of abundance imposed by the United States?
On August 19, that is to say a few days after the announcement of the FBI’s secret file, Emmanuel Macron delivered his important contribution on the price of freedom, which we had to agree to pay, according to him, by supporting the Ukraine. The occurrence of this dark discourse a few days after the announcement of the FBI case is disturbing. (ER: This really angered the public.
Has Emmanuel Macron’s summer been busy searching for alternatives to war and its price, when the countless gas and electricity measures that are being announced could arouse popular anger? Did Macron have the temptation to preserve social peace in France by moderating his commitment in Ukraine? by sparing Vladimir Putin?
And, in doing so, did the Americans “catch up” with the overcoat by dangling the publication of embarrassing information about his private life? Certain insistent rumors indeed support the notion that the file in question would contain photographs taken in a nightclub in Africa. These may be gossip, but they are plausible.
For my part, it seems to me that if these photos really exist, their political effect would be very uncertain in the event of publication, and do not justify a major forfeiture on the part of the President.
It’s still too early to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Everything indicates, however, that Biden is holding his allies by the halter to force them to support an absurd war.
More than ever, the “American ally” holds Europe under its yoke.
“A number of (GOP House members prepared) impeachment articles against the” fake Biden they want introduced if Republicans regain control of the body in November midterms.
They accused him of “high crimes” on issues ranging from lack of border enforcement, all things flu/covid related and withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan a year ago in humiliating fashion.
GOP Rep. Bob Good was quoted saying:
“Congress has a duty to hold the (fake Biden) accountable for…failures of his constitutional responsibilities…”
“(A) new Republican (House) majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.”
And this from TheHill:
Ahead of this year’s November midterms, “dozens of conservatives either endorsed (the fake JB’s) impeachment formally, or suggested they’re ready to support it.”
Since undemocratic Dems usurped power by election-rigging and took office in January 2021, “(a)t least 8 resolutions to impeach” him were introduced — to no avail with Dems controlling Congress and the White House.
According to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s spokesman, Nick Dyer:
“She believes (that the White House imposter) should have been impeached as soon as he was sworn in, so of course she wants it to happen as soon as possible” if Republicans regain House control.
Reportedly, House and Senate majority leaders, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell respectively, are cool to the idea.
Impeachment of Clinton in 1998 and Trump twice gained them added public support.
No US president — legitimate or the other way around — was ever removed from office by impeachment.
According to Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution:
House members are empowered to impeach a sitting president.
Senate members have sole removal power, a two-thirds majority required.
Article II, Section 4 states:
“The president, vice president and all civil officers of the US shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Indisputable grounds exist to impeach and remove the selected, unelected, White House imposter from office.
Election-rigging is an indisputable high crime.
Since Dems usurped control over the three branches of government, they recklessly escalated proxy hot and sanctions war on Russia over Nazified Ukraine.
They risk going down the same road against China over Taiwan.
In cahoots with the Wall Street owned and operated Fed, they wrecked the economy by soaring inflation and disrupted supply chains.
They caused shortages of basic goods, increased poverty and food insecurity, and are heading things for likely protracted Main Street Depression conditions.
There’s no ambiguity about the fake Biden’s illegitimacy and unfitness for any public office.
Along with other high crimes and misdemeanors, the illegitimate Biden regime continues war on Afghanistan by other means in multiple ways:
In pursuit of its war OF terrorism, not on it, the regime maintains illegal control of Afghanistan’s airspace.
According to a months earlier USCENTCOM statement:
When the Pentagon “authorizes (air) strikes…in Afghanistan, (it) won’t be negotiating with the Taliban about where and when (it’ll) drop bombs (sic).”
The Biden regime illegally considers the country “a free space” for US forces to operate in at its discretion — in flagrant breach of the UN Charter.
It went further by illegally and maliciously freezing around $9 billion held at the Wall Street-controlled New York Fed.
It was done to deprive the Taliban and millions of Afghans of access to the nation’s money — what’s vitally needed to prevent mass food insecurity from turning into widespread famine conditions.
Dominant Biden regime hardliners also ordered the US-controlled loan sharks of last resort IMF and World Bank to deny financial aid to Afghanistan.
And illegally imposed US sanctions on the nation remain in place with no prospect of their removal.
During 20 years of US occupation, the empire of lies and forever wars on invented enemies inflicted virtually every imaginable high crime against long-suffering Afghans.
The same reality applies to all nations raped and destroyed by hegemon USA throughout the post-WW II period — and earlier throughout the history of the self-styled indispensable nation.
If impeaching a nation and holding it accountable for high crimes too egregious to ignore was possible, the US would far and away top the list of offenders.
Dominant Biden regime hardliners are recklessly pushing things for direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and with China over Taiwan.
What’s building is the ominous threat of possible war in Europe and the Asia/Pacific against nations able to hit back hard with overwhelming power if belligerently attacked by an aggressor.
According to US MSM, the Biden intends to ask Congress for rubber-stamp approval of another $1.1 billion worth of arms to China’s breakaway province — once again in defiance of the One China principle.
What stood the test of time since enactment of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act — affirming no US intention to establish formal diplomatic relations with Taipei — has been virtually declared null and void by the Trump and Biden regimes, a hostile affront to China’s sovereignty.
At its Monday and Tuesday press briefings, China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t comment on the new US arms sale.
In response to an earlier US announced one to Taiwan, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhou Lijian, said the following:
US sales to the breakaway province “seriously interfere with China’s internal affairs, seriously damage China’s sovereignty and security interests, send a seriously wrong signal to Taiwan independence forces, and severely damage China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” adding:
“China will make a legitimate and necessary response according to how the situation develops.”
In response to the latest MSM reported upcoming arms sale to Taiwan, spokesman for China’s US embassy, Liu Pengyu, said the following:
“The US side needs to immediately stop arms sales to and military contact with Taiwan, stop creating factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and follow through on (its) statement of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence.’ ”
The new US arms package reportedly includes:
60 AGM-84L Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles for $355 million
100 AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder tactical air-to-air missiles for $85.6 million, and
$655.4 million for a surveillance radar contract extension.
On Tuesday, an unnamed Chinese official reportedly said that US arms sales to Taiwan strengthen pro-independence elements to resist reunification with the mainland.
At the same time, these sales to the island won’t change the military balance between Beijing and its breakaway province.
Repeated arms sales to Taiwan escalate regional tensions in pursuit of US imperial aims.
According to Bloomberg News on August 29:
“The State Department informally notified Congress of the sale late Monday,” adding:
“(N)otification marks the beginning of several weeks of staff consultations that will result in a formal arms-sale proposal from the State Department.”
“With support for Taiwan running high among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the package will likely face little resistance from lawmakers.”
According to the Biden regime’s State Department, it doesn’t comment on proposed arms sales until Congress is formally notified.
When approved, the latest package will be the largest one since a $2.4 billion sale to Taiwan in October 2020 and largest one since the illegitimate Biden regime usurped power by election rigging.
Its dominant hardliners and likeminded congressional members are recklessly challenging China by repeated arms sales — 4 so far by the Biden regime with a fifth package upcoming.
The Biden regime and Congress also increased numbers of provocative visits to the island.
And provocative saber-rattling transits through the Taiwan Strait by US warships risk direct confrontation with China by going too far.
Would either wing of the US war party tolerate the presence of Russian or Chinese warships positioned in international waters near the US east or west coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, or deployed near the US border in Canada or the United Mexican states?
No elaboration of what’s clear is needed.
What’s going on is part of US war on China by other means, including decades of repeated arms sales to Taiwan, a breached promise to go the other way.
On August 17, 1982, the US/PRC Joint Communique included a promise by the Reagan admin. to reduce arms sales to Taiwan.
Instead, since the January 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, over $70 billion worth of US arms have been sold to Taipei — further proof that hegemon USA can never be trusted, its word never its bond.
Last Friday, China’s Xinhua stressed the above reality, saying:
So-called US “rules-based international order (is code language for its longstanding pursuit of) hegemony (over other nations by) destroy(ing) rules and order” — as mandated by the UN Charter and other international laws.
US actions on the world stage prove time and again that its ruling regimes pursue what they “see fit.”
They repeatedly and illegally interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, toppling their governments, replacing them with subservient to US interests puppet rule.
At the same time, virtually everything the US agreed to with other nations it breached.
Time and again, Beijing stressed that Taiwan is sovereign Chinese territory to be reunited with the mainland.
That it won’t tolerate US interference in this core issue.
Challenging China over Taiwan risks direct confrontation.
Is that where things are heading?
If the empire of lies pushes things beyond a point of no return with China and Russia, will its core NATO allies go along or break with the US on this crucial issue to avoid possible global war with nukes?
If the worst of scenarios unfolds ahead between hegemon USA and Sino/Russia, will Britain, France, Germany and other Western states risk self-destruction by going along with their higher power in Washington or make a clean break in self-defense?
Gun Control is a favorite tactic for many politicians on the left. It allows them to shift the blame from the person, whose worldviews and political party often aligns with theirs, to a simple tool they can ban. With an all Republican everything, you’d think we wouldn’t have to worry, but that’s far from true. These people seemingly always find a way to infiltrate politics and attempt to strip us of our God-given rights. So what do we do? How do we fight back if gun control legislation is proposed or passed?
#1. Learn How To Make Your Own
California is the beacon of cruddy gun control laws in the United States. They’ve gone above and beyond to reclassify your standard semi-automatic rifle into what they call an assault rifle. What we’ve seen is people and companies outsmarting the legislature at every turn. One of the most famous means was building your own gun. Specifically AR 15s. AR 15s are always on the chopping block, but even California couldn’t stop the signal.
With the advent of 80% lowers Californians were able to again build their own rifles within the law. The AR 15 is hardly the only weapon you can build. In fact, an enterprising patriot build can manufacture their own semi-auto Sten gun, Glocks, MAC 10/11s, AK rifles and more. The main issue is going to be acquiring the skills and tools needed to make these weapons. It takes a little mechanical skill and a lot of different tools.
It would be wise to start learning the insides and outsides of guns now. Learn to build them, acquire the tools, and fire up the Youtube machine. Here you’ll find as hard as they try they can’t stop the signal. You can build your own with a little practice, and it’s perfectly legal to do so. You aren’t just building guns, you are learning valuable skills regarding the construction and design of firearms that could be invaluable if things got really bad.
Important below:
Today I’d like to share with you a “3-second survival hack” you can use to skyrocket your chances of protecting your loved ones during ANY crisis.
One fact we’ve seen over and over again with anti-gunners is that they know absolutely nothing about guns. If the power these people had wasn’t so terrifying it would be hilarious. Every time they open their mouths about guns they say something incredibly stupid. They simply target guns that look scary and that’s it. That’s why the gun ban matrix exists. The gun ban matrix is a list of features and guns unlikely to be banned because anti-gunners are idiots and don’t understand firearms.
These are the guns you should consider investing in should sweeping legislation occur. In case the situations getting drastic and confiscation begins things may move too fast for people to react. In that event a neutered gun is better than no gun.
The first guns to go are going to be the traditional targets for anti-gunners, the AK 47s, the AR 15s, the Tavors, and the usual suspects. They may be banned by name, or by the features they share. A good alternative to these semi-auto rifles is the Ruger Mini 14 and Mini 30 series. They can be purchased in not so scary configurations.
Past the Mini 14 and Mini 30, there is the fixed magazine SKS rifle. It’s often left off ban lists, and it’s affordable and common. It’s limited to ten rounds, but with stripper clips, you can reload quite fast with practice.
Past this level we get into manually operated firearms, this includes pump-action shotguns, and lever and bolt action rifles. A good lever action rifle is a rapid firing gun and in the right caliber can hold up to 14 rounds. These guns are highly unlikely to be banned without a full constitutional amendment.
#3. Don’t Give A Single Inch
With the recent Las Vegas shooting there has been an increased interest in banning a firearm accessory known as a bump fire stock. These accessories are rather dumb and useless, and in no way did it make the shooter more lethal. Regardless of how dumb and useless they are there is no reason the firearms community should let them be banned without a fight. With the NRA even saying the ATF should reevaluate bump fire stocks.
This is how gun control starts, with tiny little cuts. We let them take one dumb accessory and next time they’ll push for something else, and they’ll keep pushing. Give them nothing, not a single inch. As gun rights advocates we have to defend what we have and go on the offensive. Fight back and take our God Given rights back.
#4. Push Back and Push Back Hard
If legislation gets passed regarding gun control, and I mean any legislation at all, we have to push back. The vast majority of gun owners are law abiding, tax paying, job having citizens who want nothing more than to live in peace. We all know actual gun control will do absolutely nothing to strip criminals of firearms, just good people who already obey the law.
If gun control happens as law abiding gun owners we have to flood the legislator’s offices with our demands. We have to protest, we have to write letters, we need to march on the capitals. In 2012 the gun community did an amazing job of coming together to resist any form of gun control. We need that same response to every law that passes, heck we need that reaction every gun control law that is even proposed.
We need to push at the local, state and federal level. Work every angle possible. We have to keep supporting companies that agree with our God-given rights, we have to join gun rights organizations of every kind. We literally have to put our money where our mouth is.
#5. Focus on the Small Politics as Much as the Large
It’s easy to forget the importance of local politics when it comes to federal gun control. Local and state politics can make all the difference. We saw Sheriff’s in states across the union step forward and say they would refuse to enforce federal gun control laws in their counties. We saw states and municipalities adopt laws that would act to nullify federal gun control laws.
If we can’t toss the anti-freedom and anti-gun bastards out of federal offices we can at least elect the right people at the local and state level to ensure the laws are useless.
Resist
As American citizens, we owe it to future generations to resist. Resist with every fiber we have. Resist gun control measures with everything we can. We need to prepare for the worst and always ready to resist.
Will it be waged with nukes able to end life on earth by mass destruction and nuclear winter?
Cities turned to smoldering rubble can be rebuilt.
Radioactive contamination is long-lasting.
If occurs from enough detonations, nuclear winter threatens all life forms with extinction.
Physician, nuclear expert, anti-war activist, Helen Caldicott, earlier explained the following:
“If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”
A “single failure of nuclear deterrence (could) start nuclear war.”
Devastating consequences would follow, potentially killing “tens of millions of people, and caus(ing) longterm, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of earth’s protective ozone layer.”
“The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.”
Nuclear winter is the ultimate nightmare.
Einstein stressed the following:
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
The risk is greatly heightened by Washington’s criminal class, especially undemocratic Dems.
Paul Craig Roberts stressed it saying:
A Dem-controlled “new Third Reich…Nazi” regime runs hegemon USA — “one far more dangerous thanks to the digital revolution (and thermonukes), a godsend for tyrants.”
The vast majority of Americans and others throughout the West haven’t escaped from “The Matrix in which their minds are trapped.”
So they don’t realize how greatly their lives and well-being are endangered by diabolical gangsterism running their nations.
On August 26, ResponsibleStatecraft.org (RS below) explained the following:
The Biden regime intends “naming” a Pentagon “military assistance mission in (Nazified) Ukraine…”
It’ll be a separate command like Operation Desert Storm or Operation Enduring Freedom — a US general and support staff running it.
This step represents a virtual US declaration of war on Russia in less than so many words.
It indicates no end to what RS called a “a long hard slog.”
It signals longterm US military support for Nazified Ukraine and use of its territory as a Pentagon base for perpetual confrontation with Russia.
It risks crossing the line from proxy to hot war between the world’s dominant nuclear powers.
Planned months in advance — begun 4 weeks after the made-in-the-USA mother of all false flags to that time — preemptive war on nonthreatening, nonbelligerent Afghanistan by the empire of lies lasted weeks shy of 20 years before a humiliating Biden regime pullout last August.
Will US war on Russia surpass it in length?
Or will nukes be used to end it sooner — and with it planet earth as now exists and all its life forms?
Perpetual war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy — how military Keynesianism on steroids operates.
Enemies are invented to advance hegemon USA’s aims for unchallenged control of world community nations, their resources and populations — by brute force and other diabolical means.
Well over 1,000 Pentagon bases worldwide are platforms for waging forever wars on humanity.
Their existence threatens everyone everywhere, including:
Large-scale Main Operating Bases, Forward Operation Sites (major installations but are smaller than MOBs) and Cooperative Security Locations.
The latter posts are to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest numbers of troops.
The existence of the above bases has nothing to do with providing homeland or regional security.
They’re launching pads for perpetual US aggression on invented enemies.
In cahoots with diabolical CIA actions, they’re also for toppling independent governments by coups or color revolutions, assassinating their leaders, propping up friendly despots, illicit drug trafficking, suppressing beneficial social change, and replacing democracy as it should be with vassal rule subservience to US interests.
A state of permanent war defines how the empire of lies operates at home and worldwide.
On establishing a new military command for perpetual war in Ukraine on Russia, RS quoted senior advisor to Concerned Veterans of America, Dan Caldwell, saying the following:
“This move could signal to other actors in the conflict — particularly (Ukraine and Russia) — that (hegemon USA) is planning on getting significantly more directly involved in the war itself.”
“That of course could lead to the war being prolonged and raise the risk of escalation between (US-dominated) NATO, and” the Russian Federation.
Separately, retired US Lt. Col. Daniel Davis explained the following:
“Putting a name on an operation is far more significant than merely coming up with a catchy tagline.”
“It confers an intent to provide longterm, sustained, and expensive support to one side of a war” against invented enemy Russia.
It’s at a time of growing economic crisis conditions throughout the US/West — a reason for dominant Biden regime hardliners to want the the subject changed as a way to try staying in power.
Separately the Libertarian Institute noted what I discussed in an article last week:
Likely incoming UK prime minister, Liz Truss, replacing BoJo in early September, “declared (her willingness) to kick off thermonuclear warfare” once in power in a matter of days.
Last week, she minced no words, saying: “I’m ready to do it.”
In cahoots with Washington’s criminal class, humanity trembles with the likes of them in charge — their fingers on the nuclear trigger, their willingness to squeeze it.
The political “elite” clearly look on the rest of us as cattle to be herded, tagged, corralled and culled by their betters. That view of the rest of humanity justifies all manner of crimes against the herd and explains why their treatment of the citizenry who place their trust in them is so amoral.
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that justifying their egregious treatment of the citizenry by pointing out the alleged dangers of the pandemic does not hold water. These people knew damn well that the alleged pandemic, based on fraudulent tests, false stats and outright propaganda lies, was not the threat it was made out to be, not even close.
Who is responsible for inflicting unethical behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on the British people?
The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure – or ‘affect, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ in the language of behavioural science – throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as a means of ‘nudging’ people’s cohttps://www.pandata.org/mpliance with restrictions and the vaccine rollout has been widely criticised. Ethical concerns about the Government’s use of these psychological techniques in their messaging campaign arise from several aspects of this form of influence: the wilful infliction of emotional distress on the general population as a means of increasing conformity; the failure to seek informed consent from those targeted; the contentious and non-evidenced public health policies which these strategies helped to implement; and the fact that ‘nudges’ commonly exert their influence below a person’s level of consciousness, thereby fuelling the accusation that they are manipulative.
But who is primarily responsible for inflicting these morally dubious, and often damaging, behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on British citizens?
There are four groups of stakeholders who could feasibly be responsible for these egregious actions:
British Psychological Society (BPS)
Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
Elected politicians and their civil servants
To date, all four seem to be shirking any responsibility. Indeed, when probed, the responses of these collectives resemble a duplicitous hybrid of a police officer’s, ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, and the reggae musician Shaggy denying his misdemeanours with the mantra, ‘It wasn’t me’.
Let’s consider, in turn, each group of actors who might be responsible.
British Psychological Society (BPS)
The BPS is the professional organisation representing psychologists in the UK. Several of its prominent members have been actively involved in SAGE, providing psychological advice to Government about how to maximise the impact of the covid-19 messaging campaign. One of the central roles of the BPS is to ensure that its members practice in a responsible and morally acceptable way. According to its Code of Ethics, psychologists should respect ‘consent’ and ‘self-determination’, while always ensuring ‘the avoidance of harm and the prevention of abuse or misuse of their contribution to society’. Given this remit, and the BPS’s role as the guardian of ethical psychological practice, presumably this learned organisation would thoroughly address our concerns about ‘nudging’, expressed in a letter signed by 46 psychologists and therapists, and submitted on the 6th January 2021.
But no, they were having none of it!
An initial response from Dr Debra Malpass (Director of Knowledge and Insight) questioned whether the ‘nudges’ under scrutiny were actually covert, asserted that it was ‘not appropriate’ for the BPS to respond to concerns about unnamed psychologists, and that they were ‘incredibly proud’ of the ‘fantastic work done by psychologists throughout the pandemic’. When it subsequently became apparent that our questions had not been addressed by their ethics committee, we prompted them further and on the 1st July 2021 Dr Roger Paxton (chair of the BPS Ethics Committee) responded, stridently arguing that:
The psychological strategies deployed were ‘indirect’ rather than covert;
The application of psychology in this instance fell outside the realm of individual health decisions (so the ethical requirement to obtain informed consent was not an issue);
Levels of fear within the general population were proportionate to the objective risk posed by the virus;
The psychologists’ role in the pandemic response demonstrated ‘social responsibility and the competent and responsible employment of psychological expertise’.
Dr Paxton’s claims constitute a misleading cocktail of distortion, evasion and disingenuousness.
So if the guardians of ethical psychological practice deny any wrongdoing – ‘move along, nothing to see here’ – who else might be responsible for the unethical application of behavioural science?
Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
In 2010, in the Prime Minister’s office, the BIT was spawned: ‘The world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy’. The psychological strategies deployed by the BIT have been described as providing ‘low cost, low pain ways of nudging citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act’. Many of these techniques of persuasion act – to various degrees – below people’s conscious awareness.
Since its inception, the BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who, along with at least two other BIT members, also participated in the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its covid-19 communications strategy. Over the last decade, the BIT has witnessed major expansion and now operates in many countries across the world.
Importantly, a 2010 document describing behavioural science techniques and co-written by Professor Halpern states: ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74). More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be’ (p375). As such, the leading voice of the BIT contradicts the above-mentioned Dr Paxton, chair of the BPS Ethics Committee.
The malevolent influence of the BIT in promoting deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating as weapons of influence can be detected in a (subsequently redacted) document advising front-line healthcare staff about how to effectively promote the covid-19 vaccines. The paper – the product of a collaboration between the BIT and the NHS – included recommendations to ‘leverage anticipated regret’ in older people by telling them that the ‘over 65s are three times more likely to die if you get COVID’ and to tell young people that ‘normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination’ [my emphasis].
In light of the abuse of behavioural science throughout the covid-19 pandemic, have members of the BIT been announcing their disapproval? One of their former founder members, Dr Simon Ruda, has recently expressed concern, stating that ‘the most egregious and far-reaching mistake made in responding to the pandemic has been the level of fear willingly conveyed on the public’ – another comment at odds with Dr Paxton’s testimony. In contrast, the current BIT practitioners have remained silent about the ethical basis of their recent work, despite their sphere of influence broadening into many areas of our day-to-day lives, including zero-carbon green messages in the media and the work of Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs (the latter involvement potentially implicated in tragic consequences for some of those targeted).
Intriguingly, on the 31st January 2022, I received an email from the BIT’s communication department denying any responsibility for the Government’s use of fear, shame and scapegoating in their covid-19 messaging. According to this spokesperson, ‘none of the examples you reference were actually our work or anything we worked on at all, and we categorically do not believe in using fear as a tactic’.
So it’s an emphatic, ‘It wasn’t me’ from the BIT.
Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
The SPI-B is one of the subgroups that provided expert advice to SAGE throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Its membership includes mainly behavioural scientists and psychologists, alongside representation from other professions such as sociology and criminology. The number of BIT members involved is at least three; it is not possible to give a definite number as four members of the SPI-B have opted to remain anonymous. Prominent figures within the BPS – including Professor Susan Michie – also participated in the work of the SPI-B.
According to its terms of reference, the SPI-B offers the government the ‘best possible behavioural science advice’ to inform the response to covid-19, by providing ‘strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic and associated government policy’.
In regards to transparency about who holds responsibility for the decision to inflict unethical ‘nudges’ upon the British people, it is unfortunate that meetings are not routinely minuted. However, the SPI-B do publish an occasional ‘high-level summary’ of their activities and recommendations, and one of these documents suggest a substantial degree of culpability for the government’s use of fear, shame and peer pressure in their covid-19 messaging strategy.
The (now-infamous) minutes of the 22nd of March 2020 announced that ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened … The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’. In addition, the same document encouraged the victimisation of an outgroup with its recommendation that, ‘Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours’ and that ‘members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other’. More ominously, the ‘nudgers’ advised ministers to, ‘Consider use of social disapproval for failure to comply’. Furthermore, it seems that these behavioural-science experts were aware, even then, of the dangers of harnessing peer-to-peer censure in this way: ‘Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism’ (my emphasis).
Laura Dodsworth’s excellent piece of investigative journalism for her book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, revealed that several participants in the SPI-B held major concerns about the group’s recommendations. One group member, educational psychologist Gavin Morgan, expressed the view that his colleagues ‘went overboard with the scary message to get compliance’ and confirmed there was no exit plan from the fear narrative. Another – who wished to remain anonymous – recalled that, in March 2020, ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance & decisions were made to ramp up fear’. The same SPI-B member described their use of fear as ‘dystopian’ and ‘ethically questionable’, and went on to say that, ‘It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared’. A third group member (again anonymous) offered more generalised criticism: ‘People use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise … We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’.
In light of the incriminating SPI-B minutes, together with the grave concerns expressed by some members of the group, it was reasonable to expect that the SPI-B co-chair – Professor Ann John – would accept some responsibility for promoting the use of unethical ‘nudges’ during the covid-19 pandemic. Such an opportunity arose when Professor John was invited to appear in front of the Government’s Science & Technology Committee on the 30th March 2022. (She had actually been scheduled to give evidence on the 2nd March but, due to unforeseen circumstances, did not attend). Perhaps, for the first time around the issue of behavioural science as deployed in the pandemic, we would hear acknowledgement of errors by an expert in a position of power. Or maybe expressions of humility, of lessons learned, an apology and a pledge to never err in this way again.
Sadly, not a bit of it.
During her interview, Professor John denied any responsibility for the unethical use of covert psychological strategies over the last two years. When challenged by MP Graham Stringer about the strategic decision to indiscriminately ramp up fear (as referenced in the SPI-B minutes of the 22nd March 2020) she responded, ‘I was not actually sitting on the SPI-B then’. When further pressed on this issue, Professor John implausibly claimed that her group advised against using scare tactics as a way of increasing compliance with covid-19 restrictions, stating ‘We never advised on upping the level of fear. I think it was presented as part of the evidence base … we absolutely advised that fear does not work’.
In an early part of the interview, Professor John contradicts her group’s terms of reference by insisting that the SPI-B was not trying to change people’s behaviour, but instead pursuing the altruistic motive of ‘ensuring that disproportionate and unintended impacts were not felt by different sectors of society’. When Graham Stringer asked which ethical framework her group was operating within, she shirks any responsibility for ensuring the morality of her group’s output, saying that, ‘although we present the advice, where policy decisions are made the Government have an advisory group on ethics’.
So it’s another resounding ‘It wasn’t me’ from the SPI-B.
Elected politicians and their civil servants
One can credibly argue that the ultimate responsibility for the methods used in the Government’s covid-19 communications strategy lies with the elected politicians and their senior advisors. While expert scientists are bound by their professional codes to practice ethically, it is the government decision makers who decide what policies to unleash upon its citizens. Yet attempts to trigger some serious reflection about the Government’s use of behavioural science have, to date, been unsuccessful.
One exception to this collective inertia of our politicians has been the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) that is focusing on ‘Pandemic Response and Recovery’. I – and several others with serious misgivings about the ethics of ‘nudging’ – were invited to present our concerns to the APPG on the 28th February 2022. Members of the APPG listened with interest to our presentation and one of the co-chairs of the group – Graham Stringer – subsequently put some of our specific questions to Professor John (as discussed above).
The previous month, I had sent another letter (co-signed by 55 health professionals) to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) (a Commons select committee chaired by William Wragg MP) formally requesting an independent inquiry into the Government’s use of behavioural science. I received a prompt response from a PACAC administrator informing me that an inquiry into the Coronavirus Act 2020 was already underway, one element of their remit being to consider behavioural science, and the committee was still accepting oral evidence. I asked if I, or another psychologist with concerns about ‘nudging’, could be given the opportunity to contribute. Alas, no such invitation was forthcoming. I continued to press the PACAC for a stand-alone inquiry into state-sponsored behavioural science, but – to date – they have made no commitment to conduct such a review. Indeed, when my local MP asked the PACAC about the prospect of such an inquiry he was informed by an administrator that ‘there are no current plans to do so’.
Further indication of our elected MPs’ disinterest in exploring the ethics of ‘nudging’ came in the form of the omission of any mention of behavioural science or propaganda in the draft terms of reference for the Inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic, published on the 10th March 2022. This glaring exclusion has been highlighted in the feedback to the inquiry; one can only hope that a behavioural science review is included in the finalised terms of reference, but it is difficult to have confidence that this will be the case.
It is plausible that Government ministers, and their senior civil servants, are reticent about the prospect of further scrutiny on this issue. Maybe the publically expressed concerns in the aftermath of Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, have prompted some high-level introspection regarding their strategic deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating on the British people. Whatever is occurring in the corridors of power, it is apparent that our elected representatives are – with a few exceptions – keen to convey the message, ‘Move along; nothing to see here’.
Concluding comments
Throughout the covid-19 era the world has witnessed an unprecedented campaign of propaganda ostensibly aimed at increasing compliance with lockdowns and other restrictions. In the UK, and many other countries, a prominent weapon within this crusade has been the strategic use of a range of behavioural-science techniques, including the covert (and ethically dubious) deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating. The British people have a right to know which state-funded players were responsible for the decision to resort to these distress-evoking methods of persuasion that have caused significant collateral harms.
To date, there has been a stark reluctance for any stakeholder – behavioural scientist or political official – to accept responsibility for these manipulative and damaging tactics. The BPS and the politicians in the PACAC apparently see nothing remiss in the Government’s use of ‘nudges’, while the behavioural scientists in the BIT and SPI-B insist they are in no ways culpable. In the implausible event that all these stakeholders hold no responsibility for scaring, shaming and othering citizens into submission, who else could it be? Behavioural scientists are now ubiquitous across government departments – including the Cabinet Office, the Home Office’s Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) and the Counter Disinformation Cell – so perhaps the blame resides in one or more of these groups? Or maybe it is the commercial advertisers the Government has commissioned (at huge expense) to broadcast their covid-19 messaging?
The political “elite” clearly look on the rest of us as cattle to be herded, tagged, corralled and culled by their betters. That view of the rest of humanity justifies all manner of crimes against the herd and explains why their treatment of the citizenry who place their trust in them is so amoral.
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that justifying their egregious treatment of the citizenry by pointing out the alleged dangers of the pandemic does not hold water. These people knew damn well that the alleged pandemic, based on fraudulent tests, false stats and outright propaganda lies, was not the threat it was made out to be, not even close.
Watch this video below to find out the great secrets hidden by the government.
Who is responsible for inflicting unethical behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on the British people?
The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure – or ‘affect, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ in the language of behavioural science – throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as a means of ‘nudging’ people’s cohttps://www.pandata.org/mpliance with restrictions and the vaccine rollout has been widely criticised. Ethical concerns about the Government’s use of these psychological techniques in their messaging campaign arise from several aspects of this form of influence: the wilful infliction of emotional distress on the general population as a means of increasing conformity; the failure to seek informed consent from those targeted; the contentious and non-evidenced public health policies which these strategies helped to implement; and the fact that ‘nudges’ commonly exert their influence below a person’s level of consciousness, thereby fuelling the accusation that they are manipulative.
But who is primarily responsible for inflicting these morally dubious, and often damaging, behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on British citizens?
There are four groups of stakeholders who could feasibly be responsible for these egregious actions:
British Psychological Society (BPS)
Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
Elected politicians and their civil servants
To date, all four seem to be shirking any responsibility. Indeed, when probed, the responses of these collectives resemble a duplicitous hybrid of a police officer’s, ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, and the reggae musician Shaggy denying his misdemeanours with the mantra, ‘It wasn’t me’.
Let’s consider, in turn, each group of actors who might be responsible.
British Psychological Society (BPS)
The BPS is the professional organisation representing psychologists in the UK. Several of its prominent members have been actively involved in SAGE, providing psychological advice to Government about how to maximise the impact of the covid-19 messaging campaign. One of the central roles of the BPS is to ensure that its members practice in a responsible and morally acceptable way. According to its Code of Ethics, psychologists should respect ‘consent’ and ‘self-determination’, while always ensuring ‘the avoidance of harm and the prevention of abuse or misuse of their contribution to society’. Given this remit, and the BPS’s role as the guardian of ethical psychological practice, presumably this learned organisation would thoroughly address our concerns about ‘nudging’, expressed in a letter signed by 46 psychologists and therapists, and submitted on the 6th January 2021.
But no, they were having none of it!
An initial response from Dr Debra Malpass (Director of Knowledge and Insight) questioned whether the ‘nudges’ under scrutiny were actually covert, asserted that it was ‘not appropriate’ for the BPS to respond to concerns about unnamed psychologists, and that they were ‘incredibly proud’ of the ‘fantastic work done by psychologists throughout the pandemic’. When it subsequently became apparent that our questions had not been addressed by their ethics committee, we prompted them further and on the 1st July 2021 Dr Roger Paxton (chair of the BPS Ethics Committee) responded, stridently arguing that:
The psychological strategies deployed were ‘indirect’ rather than covert;
The application of psychology in this instance fell outside the realm of individual health decisions (so the ethical requirement to obtain informed consent was not an issue);
Levels of fear within the general population were proportionate to the objective risk posed by the virus;
The psychologists’ role in the pandemic response demonstrated ‘social responsibility and the competent and responsible employment of psychological expertise’.
Dr Paxton’s claims constitute a misleading cocktail of distortion, evasion and disingenuousness.
So if the guardians of ethical psychological practice deny any wrongdoing – ‘move along, nothing to see here’ – who else might be responsible for the unethical application of behavioural science?
Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
In 2010, in the Prime Minister’s office, the BIT was spawned: ‘The world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy’. The psychological strategies deployed by the BIT have been described as providing ‘low cost, low pain ways of nudging citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act’. Many of these techniques of persuasion act – to various degrees – below people’s conscious awareness.
Since its inception, the BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who, along with at least two other BIT members, also participated in the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its covid-19 communications strategy. Over the last decade, the BIT has witnessed major expansion and now operates in many countries across the world.
Importantly, a 2010 document describing behavioural science techniques and co-written by Professor Halpern states: ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74). More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be’ (p375). As such, the leading voice of the BIT contradicts the above-mentioned Dr Paxton, chair of the BPS Ethics Committee.
The malevolent influence of the BIT in promoting deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating as weapons of influence can be detected in a (subsequently redacted) document advising front-line healthcare staff about how to effectively promote the covid-19 vaccines. The paper – the product of a collaboration between the BIT and the NHS – included recommendations to ‘leverage anticipated regret’ in older people by telling them that the ‘over 65s are three times more likely to die if you get COVID’ and to tell young people that ‘normality can only return, for you and others, with your vaccination’ [my emphasis].
In light of the abuse of behavioural science throughout the covid-19 pandemic, have members of the BIT been announcing their disapproval? One of their former founder members, Dr Simon Ruda, has recently expressed concern, stating that ‘the most egregious and far-reaching mistake made in responding to the pandemic has been the level of fear willingly conveyed on the public’ – another comment at odds with Dr Paxton’s testimony. In contrast, the current BIT practitioners have remained silent about the ethical basis of their recent work, despite their sphere of influence broadening into many areas of our day-to-day lives, including zero-carbon green messages in the media and the work of Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs (the latter involvement potentially implicated in tragic consequences for some of those targeted).
Intriguingly, on the 31st January 2022, I received an email from the BIT’s communication department denying any responsibility for the Government’s use of fear, shame and scapegoating in their covid-19 messaging. According to this spokesperson, ‘none of the examples you reference were actually our work or anything we worked on at all, and we categorically do not believe in using fear as a tactic’.
So it’s an emphatic, ‘It wasn’t me’ from the BIT.
Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
The SPI-B is one of the subgroups that provided expert advice to SAGE throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Its membership includes mainly behavioural scientists and psychologists, alongside representation from other professions such as sociology and criminology. The number of BIT members involved is at least three; it is not possible to give a definite number as four members of the SPI-B have opted to remain anonymous. Prominent figures within the BPS – including Professor Susan Michie – also participated in the work of the SPI-B.
According to its terms of reference, the SPI-B offers the government the ‘best possible behavioural science advice’ to inform the response to covid-19, by providing ‘strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic and associated government policy’.
In regards to transparency about who holds responsibility for the decision to inflict unethical ‘nudges’ upon the British people, it is unfortunate that meetings are not routinely minuted. However, the SPI-B do publish an occasional ‘high-level summary’ of their activities and recommendations, and one of these documents suggest a substantial degree of culpability for the government’s use of fear, shame and peer pressure in their covid-19 messaging strategy.
The (now-infamous) minutes of the 22nd of March 2020 announced that ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened … The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’. In addition, the same document encouraged the victimisation of an outgroup with its recommendation that, ‘Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours’ and that ‘members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other’. More ominously, the ‘nudgers’ advised ministers to, ‘Consider use of social disapproval for failure to comply’. Furthermore, it seems that these behavioural-science experts were aware, even then, of the dangers of harnessing peer-to-peer censure in this way: ‘Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism’ (my emphasis).
Laura Dodsworth’s excellent piece of investigative journalism for her book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, revealed that several participants in the SPI-B held major concerns about the group’s recommendations. One group member, educational psychologist Gavin Morgan, expressed the view that his colleagues ‘went overboard with the scary message to get compliance’ and confirmed there was no exit plan from the fear narrative. Another – who wished to remain anonymous – recalled that, in March 2020, ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance & decisions were made to ramp up fear’. The same SPI-B member described their use of fear as ‘dystopian’ and ‘ethically questionable’, and went on to say that, ‘It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared’. A third group member (again anonymous) offered more generalised criticism: ‘People use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise … We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’.
In light of the incriminating SPI-B minutes, together with the grave concerns expressed by some members of the group, it was reasonable to expect that the SPI-B co-chair – Professor Ann John – would accept some responsibility for promoting the use of unethical ‘nudges’ during the covid-19 pandemic. Such an opportunity arose when Professor John was invited to appear in front of the Government’s Science & Technology Committee on the 30th March 2022. (She had actually been scheduled to give evidence on the 2nd March but, due to unforeseen circumstances, did not attend). Perhaps, for the first time around the issue of behavioural science as deployed in the pandemic, we would hear acknowledgement of errors by an expert in a position of power. Or maybe expressions of humility, of lessons learned, an apology and a pledge to never err in this way again.
Sadly, not a bit of it.
During her interview, Professor John denied any responsibility for the unethical use of covert psychological strategies over the last two years. When challenged by MP Graham Stringer about the strategic decision to indiscriminately ramp up fear (as referenced in the SPI-B minutes of the 22nd March 2020) she responded, ‘I was not actually sitting on the SPI-B then’. When further pressed on this issue, Professor John implausibly claimed that her group advised against using scare tactics as a way of increasing compliance with covid-19 restrictions, stating ‘We never advised on upping the level of fear. I think it was presented as part of the evidence base … we absolutely advised that fear does not work’.
In an early part of the interview, Professor John contradicts her group’s terms of reference by insisting that the SPI-B was not trying to change people’s behaviour, but instead pursuing the altruistic motive of ‘ensuring that disproportionate and unintended impacts were not felt by different sectors of society’. When Graham Stringer asked which ethical framework her group was operating within, she shirks any responsibility for ensuring the morality of her group’s output, saying that, ‘although we present the advice, where policy decisions are made the Government have an advisory group on ethics’.
So it’s another resounding ‘It wasn’t me’ from the SPI-B.
Elected politicians and their civil servants
One can credibly argue that the ultimate responsibility for the methods used in the Government’s covid-19 communications strategy lies with the elected politicians and their senior advisors. While expert scientists are bound by their professional codes to practice ethically, it is the government decision makers who decide what policies to unleash upon its citizens. Yet attempts to trigger some serious reflection about the Government’s use of behavioural science have, to date, been unsuccessful.
One exception to this collective inertia of our politicians has been the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) that is focusing on ‘Pandemic Response and Recovery’. I – and several others with serious misgivings about the ethics of ‘nudging’ – were invited to present our concerns to the APPG on the 28th February 2022. Members of the APPG listened with interest to our presentation and one of the co-chairs of the group – Graham Stringer – subsequently put some of our specific questions to Professor John (as discussed above).
The previous month, I had sent another letter (co-signed by 55 health professionals) to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) (a Commons select committee chaired by William Wragg MP) formally requesting an independent inquiry into the Government’s use of behavioural science. I received a prompt response from a PACAC administrator informing me that an inquiry into the Coronavirus Act 2020 was already underway, one element of their remit being to consider behavioural science, and the committee was still accepting oral evidence. I asked if I, or another psychologist with concerns about ‘nudging’, could be given the opportunity to contribute. Alas, no such invitation was forthcoming. I continued to press the PACAC for a stand-alone inquiry into state-sponsored behavioural science, but – to date – they have made no commitment to conduct such a review. Indeed, when my local MP asked the PACAC about the prospect of such an inquiry he was informed by an administrator that ‘there are no current plans to do so’.
Further indication of our elected MPs’ disinterest in exploring the ethics of ‘nudging’ came in the form of the omission of any mention of behavioural science or propaganda in the draft terms of reference for the Inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic, published on the 10th March 2022. This glaring exclusion has been highlighted in the feedback to the inquiry; one can only hope that a behavioural science review is included in the finalised terms of reference, but it is difficult to have confidence that this will be the case.
It is plausible that Government ministers, and their senior civil servants, are reticent about the prospect of further scrutiny on this issue. Maybe the publically expressed concerns in the aftermath of Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, have prompted some high-level introspection regarding their strategic deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating on the British people. Whatever is occurring in the corridors of power, it is apparent that our elected representatives are – with a few exceptions – keen to convey the message, ‘Move along; nothing to see here’.
Concluding comments
Throughout the covid-19 era the world has witnessed an unprecedented campaign of propaganda ostensibly aimed at increasing compliance with lockdowns and other restrictions. In the UK, and many other countries, a prominent weapon within this crusade has been the strategic use of a range of behavioural-science techniques, including the covert (and ethically dubious) deployment of fear, shame and scapegoating. The British people have a right to know which state-funded players were responsible for the decision to resort to these distress-evoking methods of persuasion that have caused significant collateral harms.
To date, there has been a stark reluctance for any stakeholder – behavioural scientist or political official – to accept responsibility for these manipulative and damaging tactics. The BPS and the politicians in the PACAC apparently see nothing remiss in the Government’s use of ‘nudges’, while the behavioural scientists in the BIT and SPI-B insist they are in no ways culpable. In the implausible event that all these stakeholders hold no responsibility for scaring, shaming and othering citizens into submission, who else could it be? Behavioural scientists are now ubiquitous across government departments – including the Cabinet Office, the Home Office’s Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) and the Counter Disinformation Cell – so perhaps the blame resides in one or more of these groups? Or maybe it is the commercial advertisers the Government has commissioned (at huge expense) to broadcast their covid-19 messaging?
Whoever it is, we need to know.
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