News

Our central bank has been developing digital currency for some time, hoping to eliminate our ability to keep our business to ourselves.

Prepare for total control of your economic life. That is the message from Brownstone Fellow Aaron Day at his 4-hour workshop in San Jose, California last Saturday, May 11th.

Day has written the excellent book The Final Countdown, which carefully describes the increasingly aggressive assaults on our freedoms by our government and by the global elites. He has just begun a series of workshops around the country to deliver that message and to show us a way to resist. The book was published just last year, but Day acknowledges during the presentation that he had to make alarming updates to his slides from current news, not even weeks old – more government intrusion, more legislation, and more spurious arrests, all attacking our ability to interact freely and transact our business.

As in the book, the presentation begins with a fictional account of a family set in the near future in a Western democracy, but perhaps all too familiar to current denizens of China, with their controlled currency and social credit scores. The image is easy to dismiss; it could never happen here. And yet, Day goes on to show how it actually is happening here. With a litany of article after article, official statement after statement, and video after video he makes his case. It is happening – he leaves no doubt.

Day gives ample historical reference points as well. How did we get here? It has been a long time coming. The constant push of globalist powers to remove our freedoms and control all resources has been in the works for a century. Perhaps it has never been different; the powerful seek more power, and the levers of technocracy make that easier than ever. The difference now is that the reach is truly global. There has been ever-increasing control over food, water, energy, and even the space we occupy and the air we breathe. 

The particular focus of the workshop is on CDBCs in America and throughout the West. Our central bank has been developing digital currency for some time, hoping to eliminate our ability to keep our business to ourselves. In this new world, all our actions can be easily monitored, tracked, and nudged into whatever direction the elites deem right or beneficial to their wealth and status. 

Within the two hours of historical facts, somber reflections, and sometimes horrifying news, the audience did not sit quietly and take the emotional beating. On the contrary, there was already much knowledge of these events, grunts of awareness, gasps of disbelief – we all knew it, but perhaps didn’t know it was this bad, with all the detail that Day presented. 

Digital currency is in the works, folks, and it is undoubtedly coming, sooner than we all think. One more emergency is all it could take for the government to say we are all doing this now. 

The audience was generally older, probably retired, or with a nest egg they were hoping to protect from debasement. A lively bunch, clearly committed to freedom, voiced their questions often in the quickly paced session. Each query exhibited a tacit but palpable urgency from the attentive crowd, who are all fully aware that what Day exposits is not some futuristic dystopian fantasy, but soon to be the new reality as he predicts.

The age of the audience is to be expected, perhaps: with time and money on their hands, they are probably more aware of the unfolding events with a perspective of history and have more wealth to lose. Indeed, many of the questions the audience asked centered around their ability to maintain their legacy when a CDBC replaces the dollar – how do I protect my assets when the currency falls and centralized control follows? 

But that is not the point, says Day. The point is not that our money is a store of value; the point is that it is a medium of exchange. It is not the inherent value of gold or crypto that is important, whether it goes up or goes down; its importance is its utility and its freedom from tracking by the State.  

Viewing the importance of money through this lens of freedom and impact on the future, we could easily see that those with truly the most to lose were largely not present at the workshop. The young adults – whose lives will be impacted the most gravely should the economic stranglehold ensue – will not make their financial decisions freely according to their own obligations, their own goals, and their own dreams. 

Every purchase will ultimately have to pass the test of the State’s agenda: did they use too much gas or too much water? Did they say something against the State? Will it be possible for them to attain the kind of comfort that their parents attained, out of the State’s watchful eye? If Day’s CDBC roadmap to economic tyranny is deployed, he clearly demonstrates what follows, and he proves it by citing recent events. 

The second part of the workshop focuses on what can possibly be done to counter this insidious march into economic slavery. Unfortunately, as Day describes, it is not possible to simply pack up and move out. Even with ample wealth and mobility, escape is not possible. Day recounts the stories of several colleagues who tried a different way – many of them arrested for saying too much and being too influential. Live in a different country? Doesn’t matter. We’ll call our people there and have you picked up. 

No, the only true way to beat this movement into CDBC tyranny is to stand in the light and refuse to participate. Use other methods to transact your business wherever you can and get others to do likewise. See which businesses will accept payment in crypto, and get yourself a wallet. Giving the waiter a tip? Give her a Goldback. 

As Day also makes clear, no one such solution will work; we have to use them all, as the effort to undermine the options is well underway. You may have heard that the largest threat to the dollar, Bitcoin, has been subverted into a system to be controlled by insiders, who are ultimately influenced by the State. Roger Ver’s recent book, Hijacking Bitcoin, tells this story. Tellingly, Ver, a citizen of St. Kitts since 2014, was arrested in Spain at the behest of the US just weeks ago.

Day explains that this is the point of using every way possible to sidestep the use of the dollar. If one method gets too big it becomes compromised by attacks of the State. 

The other important takeaway from the workshop is the idea of self-custody. Any crypto account you keep, or any asset anywhere, should be kept under your own custody, where only you have the keys. This is not possible with many cryptocurrencies by their construction, and not possible if you leave custody with a bank. It’s a lot harder for the State to go after millions of anonymous accounts than to go after one central repository that has the keys. Day notes which cryptos do and don’t allow self-custody. If you trade crypto through a large exchange, they too will most likely keep the keys.

I have only touched on the depth and breadth of Aaron Day’s workshop. It is well worth the time to understand the evil before us and practical ways to combat it. We will all need to work together to keep our financial freedom. Get in touch with Aaron via email and ask him to visit your city and present his workshop, or sign up to receive information through his website. Share those valuable lessons with your family and friends, and pay particular attention to the youth. It is their world being taken from them before they even get the chance to call it their own.   

Every attendee walked out of the workshop empowered with practical tools for resisting the move to CBDC. We each had a crypto wallet set up on our phone, to which one of Aaron’s sponsors donated $5 in self-custody crypto. We also left with a New Hampshire Goldback, currently worth $5, and a Citizens for Sound Money 1/5 oz round of silver worth about $5. As Aaron explained, there is growing acceptance of these forms of payment everywhere. Goldbacks can be used in Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. The workshop also included a signed copy of Aaron’s book.

On my drive back home after the workshop I met some friends at a local pub. I tried out my newfound power as I attempted to buy a beer with the Goldback, going through all the waiters all the way up to the owner. He looked the gold foil leaf up and down examining the obvious care and purpose in its making. He scowled. “I don’t think so,” he said. 

We have a ways to go in California. I for one will keep trying, and encourage all to join me in the pursuit of economic freedom.

---

EMERGENCY FINANCIAL NEWS: Economist Warns The Collapse Has Already Begun – Will Be Worse Than The Great Depression

---

Let’s do everything we can to get rid of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act and to return to our traditional foreign policy of non-intervention.

The House of Representatives passed the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act” on May 2, by a vote of 320-91 in reaction to demonstrations on numerous university campuses and elsewhere against the brutal and genocidal policy of Israel in Gaza. The Act has now been sent to the Senate, where it seems certain to pass. This is an extremely dangerous bill that could criminalize the Bible, many Christian Churches, as well as any negative remarks about Israel and Jews. In brief, it threatens us with totalitarian thought control. We must do everything we can to oppose it.

First, let’s take an overview of the Act. It adopts the very broad definition of anti-Semitism of the “International Holocaust Remembrance Association.” The Act calls this definition “a vital tool which helps individuals understand and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism.”

What does this definition say? “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed in hatred of Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” How you can be anti-Semitic toward someone who isn’t Jewish isn’t immediately apparent.

The authors of the definition give someone examples of what they consider anti-Semitic. These include saying that the Jews control the media and Congress, saying that Israel is a racist state, propagating the “blood libel” that the Jews killed Jesus, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, and claiming that Jews in America have “dual loyalty.”

As a number of writers including Tucker Carlson and John Zmirak have pointed out, the definition allows large parts of the Bible to be banned. The most famous such passage is Matthew 27: 25. “His blood be upon us and our children.” This is the “blood libel” that the Act wouldn’t let us teach!

You might object that the Act would never be enforced in this way. The American people would never stand for it! But it would always be there, like a sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads. And don’t be so sure it wouldn’t be enforced! The Scottish Hate Speech Act was passed in 2021, and people predicted it would never be enforced. Beginning in April 2024, though, it has been enforced, and many people have been fined and imprisoned for violating it.

The biggest problem with the Act, though, isn’t the definition of anti-Semitism. If it were, we could substitute a more reasonable definition, such as “hatred for all Jews.” Even if this were done, however, we would still be in an untenable position. Banning any kind of speech, whether it is good or bad, is incompatible with a free society. As the great Murray Rothbard has taught us, all rights are property rights. Everyone can set the rules for speech on his own property, and no one has the right to control what anyone says on someone else’s property. This includes speech which counts as “offensive.” Of course, we don’t live in a libertarian society, but we should come as close as we can in practice to it. This means following the strictest possible interpretation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law. . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”. ‘No law” means “no law” and that includes laws against so-called “hate speech.” As the great legal scholar Dr. Wanjiru Njoya says, “Jews must learn to live in a world where people say offensive things about them, same as anyone else. You shouldn’t jail people for saying offensive things about Jews or Israel.”

We need to ask ourselves, why the Act has been passed at the present time. The answer is obvious. It is to block all criticism of Israel. And Israel should be criticized, because of the genocidal policy it is following in Gaza. The US government, led by brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers, have supported Israel with money and advanced weapons throughout Israel’s invasion. Anthony Blinken, “our” Secretary of State, flew to Tel Aviv as soon as the invasion started and, standing beside war criminal “Bibi” Netanyahu, said, “I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew.” See here.

Is it “anti-Semitic” to report this? One of the examples the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Association’s definition of anti-Semitism is to say that Jews have a strong influence on American foreign policy. But it’s the simple truth.

And what policy do Blinken and his cohorts support? It is Israel’s policy to exterminate the Palestinians who live in Gaza. The great Ron Unz has called it “the greatest televised massacre of civilians in the history of the world.” Under the Act, Unz could be prosecuted for saying that, because saying that Israelis are committing genocide, or comparing then to Nazis, is forbidden.

As if that were not bad enough, conditions in Gaza are getting worse. Because of Israel’s constant bombing and interdiction of food shipments to Gaza, a famine is occurring there. According to Cindy McCain, the Director of the World Food Program, “There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it’s moving its way south.” Now it will reach the south, because Israel has just blocked food shipments to Rafah.

Should calling attention to horrendous news like this be an offense punishable by jail? You don’t have to be a libertarian to recognize that we can’t have a free society under the censorship conditions this Act would impose.

Many Jews would have to be banned by this standard. The eminent Jewish historian Omer Bartov said last November that “functionally and rhetorically we may be watching an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide.” His worst fears have come to pass since then. He too would be banned under the Act. So would Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer.

Jews who criticize Israel’s war could also be banned under the Act. For example, some very religious Jews are anti-Zionist and don’t recognize Israel as a legitimate state. They could be charged with anti-Semitism. Also, what about Orthodox Jews who don’t recognize conversions to Judaism supervised by Reform rabbis? If they say that such converts aren’t Jewish, they could be charged under the Act as anti-Semitic. So could Reform rabbis who mock the Orthodox as benighted reactionaries.

One of the oddest aspects of this whole deplorable business is that the Act bans statements that the Jews have a lot of political power. One wonders how the Act passed by the astonishing margin of 320 to 91 without pressure from the Israeli Lobby. The sellout Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is bought and paid for. How then can the Act ban a statement that is obviously true and that the passage of the Act shows to be true?

One target of the Act is the heroic university students who are protesting what is going on in Gaza. The sponsors of the Act depict them as lawbreakers who need to be suppressed to preserve “law and order”, but students protests against criminal wars are part of the American tradition. Student protests against LBJ’s criminal war against Vietnam helped bring down his presidency. Libertarians and all other lovers of freedom should never forget that we are anti-war.

Of course the neocons behind the Act don’t see matters this way. These days, students often learn about news through social media platforms like TikTok. Many students learned about what was going on in Gaza though discussions on that platform, and because of this, the neocons in Congress voted to force TikTok’s parent company to sell it within 270 days; if not, it will be banned in America. As Dr. Ron Paul notes, “ The head of the Anti-Defamation League was actually caught on tape complaining about the “TikTok problem.’”

When we talk about the neocons, we should never forget that they got us into the disastrous invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. The US government killed a million people –half of them children thanks to the US starvation blockade — and cost us trillions of dollars. Despite this—or maybe because of it—neocons like Robert Kagan still praise the Iraq war today. This is the sort of person behind the Act.

In my opinion, the evidence for Israeli genocide is overwhelming, and those who want to ban people from saying so are calling for a ban on the truth. But suppose you disagree. You should still oppose the Act. As John Stuart Mill said in his great On Liberty (1859): “But the peculiar evil of silencing an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;. . .those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

The great Albert Jay Nock said about censorship that “this degrading enervation of a whole people is rather a heavy offset to the benefits gained by a policy of expediency.”

You shouldn’t be surprised that neocons like Kagan smear this great libertarian and anti-war crusader as an anti-Semite.

We should take the opportunity provided by the Act to engage in a full and frank discussion of American foreign policy. Why are we supplying billions of dollars in aid to a country engaging in genocide? Why are we supporting Ukraine in a war against Russia that could lead to a thermonuclear war? What groups benefit from these policies? By the way, if you are looking for real anti-Semites, you should start with the pro-Nazi Azov Brigade backing the tyrannical dictatorship of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Let’s do everything we can to get rid of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act and to return to our traditional foreign policy of non-intervention, following the guidance of Dr. Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard.

---

Learn Why The Globalists Are Killing Their Own Monetary System

---

Crash only the latest in a string of bizarre incidents involving boats and aircraft

Images out of Galveston, Texas, show a barge ran into the Pelican Island Bridge on Wednesday, causing a partial collapse and sending unknown chemicals into the water.

The bridge has been shut down for traffic on both sides, and the barge was struck by large pieces of concrete and train tracks.

Power was out at the Texas A&M University Galveston for a period of time, but the campus Facebook page soon announced it was restored.

The incident is similar to the cargo ship that hit Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

This week, it was revealed the boat that hit the Baltimore bridge lost power twice before running into the overpass.

This article will be updated when more information about the cause of the wreck is available.

---

Slovakia’s anti-WEF Prime Minister Robert Fico has survived an assassination attempt and is now in a “life-threatening condition” after he was airlifted to hospital. Known as one of the most fierce anti-globalist leaders in Europe, […]

The post PM Who Refused To Sign WHO Pandemic Treaty in ‘Life-Threatening Condition’ After Assassination Attempt appeared first on The People’s Voice.

Social media users claimed painting intentionally meant to represent throne’s allegiance to Satan.

Social media users examining King Charles’ official portrait spotted satanic symbols they believe may have been intentionally inserted to represent the British throne’s allegiance to Satan.

The unveiling of King Charles’ first official portrait on Tuesday sparked a massive discussion about the artist’s fiery red rendition.

Image credit: AARON CHOWN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

---

Image credit: AARON CHOWN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Many on social media claimed the painting contained more than meets the eye, pointing out when the image is mirrored, flipped upside-down and the distorted images are placed side-by-side, it produces a bizarre effect revealing demonic shapes, including the appearance of a satanic baphomet.

Zoom in the center and it’s clear as day ? pic.twitter.com/20rSLcvP2y

— Jeremy (@JeremyJPatino_) May 15, 2024

BAPHOMET pic.twitter.com/WI8WRwmrkY

— David Nwawe (@ThisDaeve) May 15, 2024

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the baphomet is an “invented pagan or gnostic idol or deity that the Templars were accused of worshipping and that was later embraced by various occult and mystical writers.”

The painting also led to a few memes.

---

The globalists are increasing their attacks on Infowars and the stakes have never been higher!

Please consider donating and visit InfowarsStore.com for merch, nutraceuticals and survival gear.

---

---

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher

We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or a Nanny State Idiocracy. 

Whatever the label, this overbearing despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

As the Regulatory Transparency Project explains, “There are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing hundreds of thousands of people to write and implement regulations. Every year, they issue about 3,500 new rules, and the regulatory code now is over 168,000 pages long.”

In his CrimeADay Twitter feed, Mike Chase highlights some of the more arcane and inane laws that render us all guilty of violating some law or other.

As Chase notes, it’s against the law to try to make an unreasonable noise while a horse is passing by in a national park; to leave Michigan with a turkey that was hunted with a drone; to refill a liquor bottle with different liquor than it had in it when it was originally filled; to offer to buy swan feathers so you can make a woman’s hat with them; to enter a design in the Federal Duck Stamp contest if waterfowl are not the dominant feature of the design; to transport a cougar without a cougar license; to sell spray deodorant without telling people to avoid spraying it in their eyes; and to transport “meat loaf” unless it’s in loaf form.

In such a society, we are all petty criminals.

In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent. 

The bigger the government grows, the worse the red tape becomes.

Almost every aspect of American life today, including the job sector, is now subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control.

Whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 4 American occupations requires a license.

According to business analyst Kaylyn McKenna, more than 41 states require that makeup artists be licensed. Twenty-eight states require a license before you can work as a residential painter. Funeral attendants, whose duties include placing caskets in visitation rooms, arranging flowers and directing mourners, have to be licensed to do so in Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

Case in point: in New Jersey, in what journalist Billy Binion describes as “yet another example of the effects of overcriminalization, which increases interactions between civilians and police with little benefit to actual public safety,” police went so far as to arrest a teenager and seize other teen’s bicycles for so-called traffic violations and a failure to register their bikes with the state.

This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

That explains how a fisherman can be saddled with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water. Or why police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public unless portable toilets are also made available. Or how states across the country, in a misguided attempt to disperse homeless populations, have criminalized sitting, sleeping, or resting in public spaces; sharing food with people; and camping in public.

The laws can get downright silly.

For instance, in Florida, it’s against the law to eat a frog that was used in a frog-jumping contest. You could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

“Such laws,” notes journalist George Will, “which enable government zealots to accuse almost anyone of committing three felonies in a day, do not just enable government misconduct, they incite prosecutors to intimidate decent people who never had culpable intentions. And to inflict punishments without crimes.”

Unfortunately, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill.

In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation.

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes. 

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with many doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments.

This is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

---

EMERGENCY FINANCIAL NEWS: Economist Warns The Collapse Has Already Begun – Will Be Worse Than The Great Depression

---