Category Archives: History

Neil Oliver warns against digital central bank currency

In this 15 minute video.

Reminds of the “mark of the beast“:

“Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (From Revelation 13:16-17)

Thomas R. Schreiner writes about this on crossway.org:

“The beast is not confined to the Roman Empire; it refers to Rome but applies also to every manifestation of evil in all governments throughout history, and also to the final conflict to come at the end.”

The New ‘Good German’ and Totalitarian Technocracy

Ominous parallels to today

Article (from 21st October 2021) here.

Excerpts:

The 20th century watched in horror as the rising of dictatorial regimes quickly took the form of totalitarian technocracies. Technocracy is the science of social engineering, a regime of broad control over the population that grows in the shadow of power and under the guise of scientific knowledge and ‘consent’. The democratic process becomes increasingly irrelevant as decision-making ends up in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and favoured advisers, with public debate stifled by a homogeneous discourse, avidly propagated by the media, that favours the ruling elite’s diktats being imposed by so-called “experts” who claim the salvitic status of ultimate defenders of human life and guardians of a “science”.

Since the spread of the Wuhan virus at the dawn of 2020, it is possible to observe some visible signs that something remarkably strange is happening across the world in general, and the West in particular. Today, those who manage to resist the sweeping mesmerism of the media are able to observe disturbing signs that point to the rapid consolidation of a technocratic agenda on a global scale, one whose strength seems to far surpass the political, legal, and theological structures that had so far sustained the edifice of Western civilisation and cost centuries of conflicts to be consolidated.

[…]

After an extensive political and media campaign aimed at instilling, on a large scale and relentlessly, fear and anxiety amongst the population, a sophisticated media campaign with utilitarian and scientific overtones prepared the spirit of the average citizen to consent to the point of complicity with the atrocities that would be perpetrated on a massive scale on “undesirables”. Thus a kind of “new normal” can be gradually developed to potentially justify any atrocity that might be supposed on the basis of public safety and health of the people.

Accordingly, under the Nazi technocratic apparatus in full operation, every form of political dissent had to be meticulously silenced. Books or tracts opposed to the dominant narrative of the government were burned on huge pyres amid scenic parades, while the media (newspapers, magazines, cinema and radio) were committed to consolidating the prevailing governmental discourse, according to the censorship engendered by its notorious propaganda minister, Herr Doktor Joseph Goebbels.

[…]

Under Hitler, the dissident scientist risked imprisonment and death. Today’s dissenters do not risk  death, but certainly the loss of the professional accreditation and, although we have not yet seen a case, even imprisonment. Will medical scientists, heavily dependent on government payments to pursue their vocations, behave like the fellow travellers of National Socialism – taking benefits from government while claiming that, as individuals, they are not in any way responsible for the dictated policies they nevertheless implement?

The good medical practitioner will reject the use of individuals as instruments, as a means to an end. There is an urgent need today for medical scientists and pharmacologists not only skilled practitioners in their disciplines but who also possess a high sense of moral responsibility to question, probe, pose and criticise the trends of government-dominated science. The best defence against the prostitution and abuse of science is for scientists to unite in unofficial constituencies, both small and large, to create independent communities of individuals who are human beings first and scientists second. These constituencies will provide the pluralist checks and balances that alert the public to the irresponsible exploitation of medical science which poses threats not just to personal freedom and the rule of law but to the health of the average citizen. 

As you read this article, you may be surprised to see that so many similarities between then and now are unfolding before our eyes. Yes, Nazi Germany might indeed have some lessons to teach us. The grave danger is that the State and its apparatchiks have embraced the wrong ones.

King Charles: a reactionary ruler

Our green, mystical monarch harbours a deep suspicion of modernity, science and freedom.

Article by Tim Black.

Excerpt:

The problem is that Charles’s ultra-reactionary worldview no longer provokes the ridicule it might once have done. Quite the opposite. Our political and media classes now seem in love with his reactionary rantings – albeit their more diluted versions. They may have no idea what Traditionalism means or stands for, but they certainly share his climate-change apocalypticism. They may not be yearning for a conservative revolution, but in the declinist ambience of Charles’s screeds and speeches, they see a dim reflection of their own green-tinged disillusionment with modernity. Their own disenchantment with liberalism and democracy. And so they have been actively calling for him to abandon the neutrality of his predecessor. They even claim that his views on the environment are ‘uncontroversial’ and that expressing them would not violate any constitutional protocols.

US president Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says he hopes Charles will continue to press for action on climate, claiming it ‘is a universal issue… not ideology’. ‘King Charles has been an environmentalist for 50 years’, opines the Washington Post. ‘Now is the time for him to make his case to the British people.’ Others have gone even further. ‘We are fortunate that our new king possesses a willingness to intercede in public life’, wrote one particularly excited ‘post-liberal’, just after Charles’s accession to the throne. ‘His instincts are good and just, and his decades-long critiques of globalisation, of our despoliation of our natural and built environments and our pell-mell rush towards the mythical horizon of progress have been tragically borne out by events’, he wrote.

This is what is most troubling. Not that Charles likes to think of himself as a 1920s-style conservative revolutionary, engaged in a project of often bizarre avant-gardist reaction. But the fact that these views chime so well with those of our political and cultural elites. His reactionary views, once the source of ridicule, are now theirs, too.

Economic Storms are Gathering

Jordan Peterson interviews Peter Schiff

Video.

From the video description:

Peterson draws upon his extensive research and relatable real-life experiences to illustrate how to develop attainable goals for intimate relationships, meaningful friendships, and your career. Transform the chaotic potential of the future into actuality — with a vision.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and economist Peter Schiff discuss the gold standard, the corruption and impending failure of the fiat system in the wake of inflation, why politicians are pushing inflation to astronomical new levels, and why they’re lying about it.

Peter Schiff is an economist, financial broker, author, frequent guest on national news, and host of the podcast, “the Peter Schiff Show.” Starting in 2005 Schiff took notice of the red flags signaling that economic unrest was looming, and correctly predicted the 2008 housing crisis. His attempts to warn the general public across a multitude of news and radio networks earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom,” and ever since then he has been looked on as a source not only to watch, but heavily consider.

In 2006, Schiff predicted the financial crisis that eventually hit in 2008. At the time, other economists laughed at him. See this clip for example.

Decline of Christian faith during Covid

Some proof from the US

Chuck Baldwin is a conservative American Christian who has been heavily involved in politics in the past. He has recently written a piece commenting on a survey showing a sharp decline in faith among nominal Christians in his country: “America’s Pulpits Under Indictment: Let the Adjustments Begin!”

The findings of that survey confirm something I predicted based on what I learned from Gary North. When I saw how churches throughout the world, but particularly in the Western world, reacted to Covid, I predicted a further decline of faith. The clergy’s reaction was in principle identical to what they did, according to North, during the Plague or Black Death. Back then, they fled the towns for the countryside instead of ministering to the sick and dying. This cost the church a lot of credibility and paved the way for the Renaissance. The Renaissance was an intellectual movement that delved into the writings and philosophies of pre-Christian ancient Greece and Rome, looking for sources of truth other than the Bible. This ultimately led to thought centred on the human being instead of God.

The Renaissance in turn led to the enlightenment which first relegated God to a role of disinterested and distant Creator (so-called “Deism“), until essentially discarding God entirely. The “death of God” (Nietzsche) then led to the horrors of the French Revolution which, after having been defeated and staved off (just about) for a century (in which time the Industrial Revolution brought untold blessings to untold millions), led to the various horrific, ideologically driven mass slaughters by the millions in the 20th century, a phenomenon which essentially has to this day not yet abated.

During Covid, the clergy didn’t flee the towns. Instead, they locked the churches, implicitly declared their services “non-essential” and fled into cyberspace and Zoom services. They thus relinquished spiritual space, so to speak, which will now be populated by alternative beliefs of all sorts. They had been seeping in for some time, but this seepage is now becoming a torrent.

It will be interesting to watch how the churches recover from this blow.

Addendum: There is an interesting other recent survey with a somewhat contrary message: “Surprising Surge Of Young Americans Turn To Religion“.

Zero Hedge writes:

The story of religious trends in America has been one of increasing disaffiliation among younger generations. But a new study reveals an unexpected resurgence of faith among youngsters in a post-Covid era. 

Some young adults had an awakening during Covid as the entire world crumbled around them. They were in search of a higher power to get through the government-forced lockdowns and controlled demolition of the economy, as well as watching loved ones and friends contract Covid-19 that some federal government agencies believe leaked from a Chinese lab.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new study commissioned by Springtide Research Institute found about one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds believe in a higher power, up from one-quarter in 2021. The findings were based on polling data from December. 

Continue reading here.

However: Will the churches be able to offer these young people a long-term spiritual home?

Beware Perfidious Albion as Britain Takes Lead Role in War Provocation

Perhaps more dangerous than a dying imperial power is a dying imperial side-kick flunky

Writes Finian Cunningham:

For the most part of the past century, the failed British empire was assigned the junior role as the butler to service the needs of the American empire. This special relationship involved London giving political and diplomatic cover for its American boss, as well as military services when required for one dirty war or another.

It is axiomatic that a dying empire is a dangerous beast, liable to lash out to salvage its waning power. The American empire has reached its death throes moment. But perhaps more dangerous than a dying imperial power is a dying imperial side-kick flunky.

Today, Britain is a broken-down impoverished de-industrialized wasteland whose shocking numbers of poor are like an army of living dead. It has long ago lost former colonies to parasite off. But there is one former colony – the United States – that might just be stupid enough to allow Perfidious Albion to manipulate a catastrophic war.

The tensions over the NATO proxy war in Ukraine with Russia are a powder-keg situation. And the British dirty-tricks brigade are the past masters that merit being closely watched.

Read the whole piece here.

Good short summary of Gary North’s theology

"which is anti-apocalyptic. It is in favor of slow, steady work in the fields, helping the poor, starting businesses, starting Christian schools, opposing foreign wars -- that sort of thing"

Article by Gary North of September 28, 2019:

Pope Francis was in Mozambique earlier this month. He was talking with Jesuit priests on September 5. What he said was published on September 26. This is my response.

The Pope was in Africa to promote his view of theology: liberation theology. It argues for wealth redistribution by the state.

A question came up.

Next came a question from Bendito Ngozzo, chaplain of the Santo Inácio Loyola High School: “Some Protestant sects use the promise of wealth and prosperity to make proselytes. The poor become fascinated and hope to become rich by adhering to these sects that use the name of the Gospel. That’s how they leave the Church. What recommendation can you give us so that our evangelization is not proselytism?”

What you say is very important. To start with, we must distinguish carefully between the different groups who are identified as “Protestants.” There are many with whom we can work very well, and who care about serious, open and positive ecumenism. But there are others who only try to proselytize and use a theological vision of prosperity. You were very specific in your question.

Two important articles in Civiltà Cattolica have been published in this regard. I recommend them to you. They were written by Father Spadaro and the Argentinean Presbyterian pastor, Marcelo Figueroa. The first article spoke of the “ecumenism of hatred.” The second was on the “theology of prosperity.”[3] Reading them you will see that there are sects that cannot really be defined as Christian. They preach Christ, yes, but their message is not Christian.

Specifically, he was talking about my father-in-law, but since I have always been the economist, he was talking about me. I followed his footnote. There were links to both articles in the footnote. I clicked on the first one. You can, too. Click here. We read the following:

Pastor Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) is the father of so-called “Christian reconstructionism” (or “dominionist theology”) that had a great influence on the theopolitical vision of Christian fundamentalism. This is the doctrine that feeds political organizations and networks such as the Council for National Policy and the thoughts of their exponents such as Steve Bannon, currently chief strategist at the White House and supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics.

“The first thing we have to do is give a voice to our Churches,” some say. The real meaning of this type of expression is the desire for some influence in the political and parliamentary sphere and in the juridical and educational areas so that public norms can be subjected to religious morals.

Rushdoony’s doctrine maintains a theocratic necessity: submit the state to the Bible with a logic that is no different from the one that inspires Islamic fundamentalism. At heart, the narrative of terror shapes the world-views of jihadists and the new crusaders and is imbibed from wells that are not too far apart. We must not forget that the theopolitics spread by Isis is based on the same cult of an apocalypse that needs to be brought about as soon as possible. So, it is not just accidental that George W. Bush was seen as a “great crusader” by Osama bin Laden.

Rusdoony and I started Christian Reconstruction in the late 1960’s. I was his recruit. Neither of us is remotely apocalyptic. We hold a view of eschatology called postmillennialism, which is anti-apocalyptic. It is in favor of slow, steady work in the fields, helping the poor, starting businesses, starting Christian schools, opposing foreign wars — that sort of thing. Our view has always been this: shrink the state.

The article is a hatchet job. The author clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But that didn’t stop the Pope from recommending the article. The author may not have known about me, but he knows about my position: Rushdoony’s. He has misrepresented this position.

Continue reading here.

Is the collective West nearing the end of a cycle?

Or are we still in mid-cycle? And could it be an epochal point of inflection?

Writes Alastair Crooke:

The levelling project being essentially nihilistic becomes captured by the destructive side of the revolution – its authors so absorbed with dismantling structures that they do not attend to the need to think policies through, before launching into them. The latter are not adept at doing politics: at making politics ‘work’.

(Interenstingly, this applies not only to foreign policy, such as Ukraine and Taiwan, but also to Covid and climate change policies.)

Thus, discontent at the welling string of western foreign policy flops grows. Crises multiply, both in number and across different societal dimensions. Perhaps, we are closening to a point of beginning to move through the cycle – toward disillusionment, retrenchment, and stabilization; the prerequisite step to catharsis and ultimate renewal. Yet, it would be a mistake to underestimate the longevity and tenacity of the western revolutionary impulse.

“The revolution does not operate as an explicit political movement. It operates laterally through the bureaucracy and it filters its revolutionary language through the language of the therapeutic, the language of the pedagogical, or the language of the corporate HR department”, Professor Furedi writes. “And then, it establishes power anti-democratically, bypassing the democratic structure: using this manipulative and soft language – to continue the revolution from within the institutions.”

Three articles about the decline of the US

The world's leading power is finished

I’ve been reading lewrockwell.com regularly every day for over 20 years now. I have never seen a collection of articles like the one two days ago, Saturday. No less than three of the usual 12 articles were devoted to the coming collapse of the USA.

Here’s no. 1: James Howard Kunstler, The Season is Here

Excerpts:

The transgender movement has crystalized into the Party of Chaos’s favored instrument for enforcing its ethos of unreality on a population obdurately stuck on thinking in categories, on making hateful distinctions between things. Better to live in a protective miasma of undifferentiated sensation than a cruel state based on pattern recognition where one is incessantly prompted to understand how objects and life-forms around us differ, where things begin and end, and what all that means relative to your own ideally amorphous existence.

[…]

Now, in the spring of ’23, Woke is suddenly mutating into a general wake-up call. The animals are stirring from their long sleep of compliance as ruin stalks the land. The season of concentrating the mind is here. When it becomes a matter of sink-or-swim, people once again remember the difference between being dead or alive. The test is on.

Expect three evolving dynamics to stipulate our country’s zeitgeist in the stirring months to come. First, the collapse of our project for using Ukraine to destabilize Russia, an enterprise so feckless it could have only been conceived by the dead-of-brain. Our geniuses of foreign affairs screwed the pooch on this one. It’s almost too obvious that they never cared about the people of that sore-beset land. Notice, they do not even use the word “peace” in any of their confabulations about what’s going on there, because it is the opposite of what they seek, which is…chaos unending.

Thus, others will end the project for us — namely, our antagonist there, Russia — and the regime of “Joe Biden,” for the second time in its mortifying two years-plus of rule, will be left holding its limp, generative member in its collective hand, another humiliation for our over-reaching imperial soldiery — and the deluded empty suits commanding it. Will they be able to pretend this time, as they did in Afghanistan, 2021, that there’s nothing to see here, folks? Just a blizzard of press-releases declaring “mission accomplished” or some-such other craven bullshit? I don’t think so. The reaction may be enough to bum-rush “Joe Biden” and Company out of office. His grotesque family rackets (including the Ukraine grifts) will finally and magically come to the public’s attention, and that’ll be all she wrote for “JB”— except for the historians waking from their own long catatonic spells to record the disaster they will swear they couldn’t see coming.

Next, we will go through the tipping-point where a critical mass of the population — not just in America, but throughout Western Civ, and even beyond — realizes that they have been poisoned and injured by the mRNA “vaccines” they were so eager to line up for. It will produce a special sort of collective agony centered around a raging despair that leads with astonishing speed to prosecutions. The torpor and uncertainty of the past three years evaporates and the machinery of law actually starts cranking again, and in the right way — not as a mere instrument of coercion and intimidation, but to actually seek justice.

Third will be the transformation of a raging inflation into a ruinous debt deflation that leaves Americans, one way or another, with no money. At the same time, the people will wake to the wrecking of their energy and food supply. A line will appear drawn in the ground from sea to shining sea, as by a cosmic power, and everybody… the formerly Woke, the unvaxxed, the penitent and unrepentant, the middle and lower orders especially, who suffer most harshly… will find themselves all on one side of that line in opposition to the wicked who have brought a hard rain upon them. And there you will finally see the beginning of your long-promised hope and change. No need even to wait for it. At long last, it’s upon us.

Here’s no. 2: Bionic Mosquito, Woe to the Bloody City

Excerpts:

John 8: 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

How did we get here?  Wilson answers:

We thought we could have honesty and integrity and good government without having to confess the name of Christ. In all of this, secularism has been the foundational lie. We have been unwilling to bring our Christian faith to bear on public affairs in any direct manner. And because of this, we are now dwelling in clown world.

And this points to the institution that carries the largest weight in this fall.  It isn’t even that we have been unwilling to bring our faith to bear, it is that many churches are on the side of the lying team – from gender confusion to Scofield’s dream for supporting the chosen people.

… whatever else the separation of church and state means, it does not mean you get to tell lies so long as the content of the lies was political.

Here’s no. 3: Doug Simpson, Is It Too Late For Us?

Excerpts:

I’ve wondered if this is the same situation we face today in America? Could it be that the season has also passed for America’s healing? Could it be that it’s time to ask our Heavenly Father in all His mercy to end this facade we once knew as America? It’s just a question.

[…]

We have mistakenly believed that America is too big to fail. We have mistakenly believed that because of America’s blessed beginnings from those days at Plymouth plantation that God would always protect us no matter how corrupt we became. We understand that everything else in our lives needs our personal effort, such as, work, marriage, and family, but somewhere along the line we bought into this notion that how this nation turns out is strictly up to the Lord.

Sorry, but it does not work like that.

Things have now gone so horribly bad, become so utterly and profoundly corrupt — just like what happened to my wife’s body — that, as with her, we are far beyond any reasonable expectation of healing. That’s where I see America today. We are literally living on life support in the cancer ward. And no longer can we blame it on the Republicans or the Democrats, or Joe Biden, or the Bushes, Obama, or Trump. It is not their fault. It is my fault. It is your fault.

Does my saying so offend?

I, too, have never cared much for Chicken Littles who run around saying the sky is falling. But I strongly fear that it’s now too late for this once great America. We are now reaping what we have sown for at least four generations. Yet we pray that God will, by some miracle, send a hoard of angels down and clean up this mess — a mess for which we, and we alone, are quite responsible.

Doesn’t the Lord love America? Yes, I am sure He does. But He loved other countries and civilizations that went under. Did He have a purpose for America. Yes, but He seeks a people that will represent that purpose. And wasn’t that purpose to establish His kingdom on Earth — as it is in Heaven? I could be wrong, but, over time I seriously doubt the Father cares what chunk of land on which that happens. The America that was meant to be is no more. In my view, as with my wife, the season has passed.

[…]

I believe the season for America’s healing has passed. Yes, I hope I am wrong, but I desperately fear that this time I am not. The evil cancer that rages throughout our nation’s body at this time in history, is unlike any before. Yes, I do believe God is capable of stopping it and healing this nation. But He first must get our attention, so that He can use us to accomplish that task. I hate to think what it might take to get our attention.

Other than Grace, which was the only real free gift of God, everything else requires our earnest participation. Am I telling you to stop praying? Not at all. Pray harder. But this time put something with that prayer, otherwise save your breath.

Good news. God will not be denied. Because more important than America’s survival, is the establishment of His kingdom on earth. We could very well be dead as a nation, but God will raise up another people in another country, in another time — like happened one time in America — and continue to build his kingdom on earth.

And it may just happen right where you are now standing.