Day: May 19, 2023

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Musk, Soros and the End of the Media

So, Elon Musk sure shook things up the other day with his interview on CNBC where he dared to break the Fourth Wall of media when he took a shot at George Soros comparing him to Magneto from Marvel’s X-Men.

It’s a brutally funny exchange as Musk carefully measures his response, takes his time and then goes into full pop culture legend mode invoking Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.

That CNBC flak wasn’t confused by this, he’s doing his job. He’s enforcing narrative control.

The choice of Magneto is an astute one, since it implies Soros’ childhood activities during World War II.

And while I appreciate Musk stepping on that third rail of media conformity, George Soros the philanthropist, I still maintain he’s closer to Sheev Palpatine than Erik Lehnsherr.

But what Musk really did was to question why media companies should always bow to the whims of their advertisers.

Musk has been subjected to advertiser boycotts since the day he walked in with the sink. Twitter’s business model needs to change. Advertising isn’t it. It’s only a part of it. Musk understands it needs to evolve because Twitter isn’t like legacy media companies.

Not one bit.

WEF Bloodletting

Musk did this after taking real flak from the internet for hiring World Economic Forum member and top-tier advertising executive Linda Vaccarino as the new CEO for Twitter.

Now, Vaccarino is a troubling hire but with Musk positioning himself as Mr. Free Speech in the common square, it may not be as bad as, “See Mother WEFfer, expect evil to follow,” as the initial Twitter outrage mob suggested.

I’ve told you for more than a year (November 2021, to be precise) that we are past Peak Davos, meaning Peak WEF. The WEF is now an easy bogeyman to tar someone with the broadest of guilt-by-association brushes.

The reality, however, is that viewed dispassionately, this year’s World Economic Forum was a mess, a bunch of globalist ghouls and their retinue of sycophants whistling past their own graveyards wondering where the next big score was coming from.

Top Ghoul Wrangler Soros himself didn’t even show up, preferring instead to suck the blood of the attendees of this year’s Munich Security Conference to ensure the trains to World War III would run on time.

Clubs like the WEF are only as strong as the talent they can keep. Is Vaccarino evidence of brain drain from the WEF? It’s not ludicrous. In fact, it’s more likely than she’s some wide-eyed ideologue.

I’m not saying it’s true, I’m saying it’s possible. So, distrust, but verify is your guide here.

The incentives line up nicely.

Musk needs to shore up Twitter’s relationships with advertisers to keep Twitter afloat.

Vaccarino brings instant credibility to the company.

If Musk is thinking in terms of a different kind of ad model, Vaccarino’s hire makes sense.

Talk to the Hand

The corporate orthodoxy imposed on media companies comes not just from retards like Reed Hastings at Netflix but also through the corruption of their boards by Davos generals like Blackrock and Vanguard.

Their real profit comes from exercising power. Sacrificing a quarter or two of profitability to put the vein tap in deep across the C-Suites of the S&P 500 and EuroStoxx 50 is hard to quantify on the balance sheet.

But Musk can say what he wants in public because that itself is a form of advertising for Twitter and/or Tesla that can’t be yanked by some ninny like Larry Fink or Alex Soros making a phone call.

He’s on their level and the company is private.

When your business model depends on advertising you’re their bitch. Musk knows this so you make the calculated move to attack Soros, becoming a hero to a vast audience spurned by Twitter when Soros, Fink and the rest of the WEF ran the place

One of the first blogs I wrote here in 2016 was called “The Authenticity Gap.” In handicapping that election correctly, that Trump would win, I made the point that despite his obvious deficits, he was far more authentic than Hillary.

Being comfortable being yourself is what drove Trump’s victory. The country was desperate for it and the swing voters were Millennials.

Well, guess what? Musk is shoring up his AQ – Authenticity Quotient – with not only his Millennial fanbois who buy Teslas, but even jaded Gen-X curmudgeons like me, even if I still spend most of my day in Distrust, But Verify mode.

Pied Piper or not, he has the platform to drive the conversation where it was never allowed to go before. We can take it from here, folks.

No, I Said, “Tucker!”

And this brings me to Tucker Carlson, who announced to great fanfare that he’s bringing his erstwhile news show to Twitter, self-produced.

His two short videos since Fox canceled his show, putting him in contract limbo, have generated ratings that even his record cable ratings couldn’t match.

Advertiser boycotts hit Fox multiple times over things Carlson said on air. They don’t want the media to speak the truth, they want it, as Carlson pointed out in his last video, to tell you only the part of the truth that supports their agenda.

Musk has been subject to this since the day he walked into Twitter with a kitchen sink in his hand.

Every globalist tit-sucker and wannabe-brownshirt, but I repeat myself, threatened Musk with extinction. The EU threatened to ban Twitter. The Biden administration began official investigations.

It was all so breathlessly repeated in the compliant media one would have thought going long smelling salts would have been good investment advice for every case of the fucking vapors these people had.

Think back to the so-called “Discord Leaks” and the ruinous press conference with Dept. of Defense Spokesman John Kirby. We had ‘reporters’ openly asking how they could help the DoD suppress information about the war in Ukraine.

As I argued in my blog about this issue, the media was openly simping for the regime, torching what remained of its credibility to announce to the world they have joined that team against us.

Neither the content of these leaks nor the media’s response was revelatory to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the current state of politics. No, the noteworthy thing was that they were so willing to take off the mask so we could all stop pretending they were journalists.

When the media openly asks how they can help … we have crossed into new territory. Why?

Because it’s never been that way before. Yes, we knew the media were court stenographers, people like myself and Kit {Knightly at Off Guardian} have known this for more than a decade. But to openly torch what’s left of their credibility to support disinformation to keep the administration’s secrets is something very very new.

This wasn’t some double-secret 12-D chess maneuver by hyper-competent game players. This was far more what it looked like on the surface, a sphincter-clenching moment of raw panic from people whose lies were outed in pure damage control mode.

So, about that power of the advertisers, again? How do they have any when their platforms and networks have zero credibility?

Who does the CNBC flak dumbstruck by Musk’s Inigo Montoya impression thinks is really in charge here?

And Then the Lights Came On…

It was like that moment in the Pixar classic, UP, where Doug becomes Alpha:

The media is so used to bullying people into submission they don’t know what to do when it doesn’t work. But, why would you do that? Lose Money? It’s unthinkable.

Take a step back and see the reversal here. Do you really think Musk is scared of these quislings when I own the single biggest, and by far, most powerful communications platform in history?

The answer would be no.

And that reason is simple. Musk’s real heresy wasn’t returning something closer to free speech to Twitter. It was proving that the company could operate on 20% of its old budget and one-quarter of its staff.

That 80% cost reduction didn’t just equate to stabilizing the company, it freed it from the tyranny of the advertiser.

Musk doesn’t need advertising on Twitter the way Twitter needed advertising before him. The company wasn’t being run as a profit center measured in dollars.

Twitter was a loss leader for tyrants. The legacy media conglomerates are their policy makers and the ad executives their thought policemen.

Carlson can now self-produce a loss-leader for free speech while his lawyers roast Fox’s chesnuts and he, Musk and Trump can:

… build another Mar-a-Lago in their heads living TV-ad free for months with “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” the only choice on the in-house cable feed.

HTTPS://TOMLUONGO.ME/2016/10/06/HILLARY-AUTHENTICITY-GAP

Musk is now turning the entire cost structure of news media on its head. It was always going to happen, he just ripped the last band-aid off exposing the rot underneath.

The media companies and their advertising control model worked so well for so long because it costs billions to run a broadcast network. The on-air talent, the producers, the studio, cameras, travel, etc. are expensive folks. FOX’s makeup budget alone is more than my annual operating costs.

No wonder they just fired Laura Ingraham, too.

Have you seen the 25-54 demo ratings?

The media companies had to depend on the kindness of strangers to even stay in business.

Today most of the distribution has been decentralized, i.e. Twitter and personal ISP fees. Physical production tools are cheap. Bandwidth is cheaper. The overhead of running a small broadcast company with a private subscription model is a far lower percentage of top-line revenue than any big network.

The legacy media can neither buy your loyalty nor coerce your conformity.

Now shit-posters cum ‘investigative journalists‘ like Brian Krassenstein whose tone deaf defense of Soros is what prompted all of this have to work that much harder to protect him.

And thanks to Twitter and things like it, the world is your research department. Now, the best voices, the best talent, spend their time curating what they see. More time for enjoying life, less time wasted sucking up to Sith Lords.

That was Tucker Carlson’s real power when he was at Fox. He’s now free of all of those constraints.

If you want to see where Carlson is headed once he’s doing a free show on Twitter, just look to Megyn Kelly.

That’s where the editorial bias is now, not in the corporate boardrooms.

You are the ultimate arbiter of what you deem valid. Your eyeballs are all that matters. Your consent.

These are only some of the reasons why Musk owns the most powerful media company in the world.

Does he need to pay Tucker Carlson $20+ million to be on his network? No. Carlson pays Musk.

Does Musk need to hire Carlson a production team? No.

A research team? No.

A legal team to fact check everything? No.

The reason why Musk can’t be bought is because Musk doesn’t need the advertisers.

The advertisers need Musk.

Musk knows it. Carlson knows it. The paid influencers know it. Soros knows it.

What Twitter now does, if its algorithm is set to neutrality, is assist everyone in finding whatever audience they want to attract. The media companies can’t maintain the purity of the signal or enforce the groupthink, because they don’t own the means of production anymore.

All they can do is flood the zone with low quality bots.

And the thing that scares them more than anything else is the day when Musk rolls out the real revenue maker for Twitter. The one where they can’t bribe us with money or power because neither of those things buys dignity.

Reprinted with permission from Gold Goats ‘n Guns.

The post Musk, Soros and the End of the Media appeared first on LewRockwell.

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If You Live in a Major US City, It’s Probably Time To Move

Although this may seem to be an article focusing on Chicago, please realize Chicago is only being used as an example of the moral decay and corruption in virtually every major city in the United States. It serves as a stark warning to relocate if you are in one of these areas.

As noted by ReallyGraceful in the video above, Chicago, Illinois, ought to be “a haven of the United States.” The third largest city in the U.S., it’s filled with world-class architecture and technological advancements. It’s a center for manufacturing and transportation industries and has become a tech sector mecca.1

But rather than being the apple of America’s eye, Chicago has become known as “a center for murder, crime and corruption.” A person is shot every three hours and 41 minutes in “The Windy City.” This despite having some of the toughest gun control laws in the country.

Someone is murdered every 15 hours and 54 minutes in Chicago. According to statistics cited in the video, you’re more likely to be murdered in Chicago than die as a civilian in the Ukraine-Russia war. The violence in Chicago is primarily Black on Black, and most victims are Black men under the age of 25. How did this happen? How did Chicago become a center for crime rather than advancement?

Chicago’s Failed Policies

Lori Lightfoot, a Black gay Democrat, became mayor of Chicago in 2019. In the summer of 2020, she went along with the nationwide movement to defund the police. In August she pledged to cut the city’s police budget by $80 million, but a month later she changed her mind and in the end “only” cut the budget by $59 million.2

To her credit, she rejected the community’s call for eliminating police altogether and replacing them with social workers and medical professionals, saying she does “not support defunding the police” and could not “responsibly enact any policies that make communities less safe.”3

Clearly, Lightfoot understood the value of police presence, seeing how she made sure she had a squad of 71 police officers protecting her personal home.

That said, Lightfoot also implemented some of the most draconian lockdown policies in the country and pressured Chicagoans to get the experimental COVID jab. She also launched a universal basic income pilot program, which is yet another way to get people hooked on government assistance.

All the while, crime surged. In December 2021, Lightfoot begged the federal government for additional law enforcement resources to address out-of-control crime rates.4

In April 2023, Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor to lose reelection, ostensibly due to her failure to rein in crime. Remarkably, the new mayor is anything but hard on crime and is even more permissive than she was.

Contrary to Lightfoot, who at least pushed back against the irrational if not suicidal “defund the police” movement, the new mayor, Democrat Brandon Johnson, a former union organizer and Cook County commissioner, was a staunch supporter of police defunding, and to this day defends looting as “an outbreak of incredible frustration and anguish” caused by “a failed racist system.”

Meanwhile, Walmart, a major donor to the Democrat Party, is now closing four of its eight Chicago stores due to rampant theft and looting. Walmart simply can’t afford to stay there. Protesters gathered outside Walmart, criticizing its decision, but in the end, economics rule — even in Democrat-controlled areas.

Decriminalization of Crime Leads to Lawlessness

Remarkably, the Democrat trend to decriminalize theft, looting and even violent crime and murder — because “racism and inequality” — is resulting in more crime. Who could’ve guessed that lack of law abiding would lead to lawlessness?

As noted by Cook County prosecutor Jason Poje, who in early May 2023 resigned from his post that he’s held for 20 years, “This State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster.” He continues:5

“… the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.

Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of these so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation …

The current people in charge of this state, including the [State’s Attorney’s Office] suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding … we live in a society with adversarial court and criminal justice processes.

Defense attorneys, legal aid clinics, Public Defenders, defendant advocate groups … they fight like hell to protect the rights of criminal defendants. And they should. Their work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must be done ethically and evenhandedly.

When both sides vigorously defend their positions, a balance is reached between protecting rights while preserving some sort of order and safety. Once we start doing too much of the defense’s job, once we pull our punches, once we decide that it’s worth risking citizens’ lives to have a little social experiment, that balance is lost.

The unavoidable consequences are what we are witnessing in real time, an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families pulling up stakes, and the bodies piling up …”

Chicago is not alone in this folly. Seattle, Los Angeles and many other Democrat-run cities have implemented similar policies, and the end result is the same everywhere. Why are political leaders implementing policies that, obviously, will result in more rather than less crime?

ReallyGraceful has a theory. She believes these insane policies are intentionally implemented because the end justifies the means since it is a desired outcome.

She suspects large brick and mortar stores and small shops alike are intentionally being pushed out of the big cities so that “only those with the money and infrastructure to support online shopping can survive.” In other words, it’s a consolidation program. The end goal is to transition to a traceable central bank digital currency and online shopping.

Beyond that, we have the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) well-laid plans for the cities of the future.6,7 They want tiny self-contained vertical cities where your every move is surveilled and countryside excursions are forbidden. To get there, they must destroy the old infrastructure and rebuild according to new specifications.

According to the WEF, cities worldwide will gain 5 billion new inhabitants by 2050.8 In all, they predict 80% of the global population will be pressed into cities. Never mind the fact that city living has long been linked to stress, depression and increased aggression.9

So-called “isobenefit urbanism” plans include building cities where essentials are all within a 1-mile walking distance.

This makes sense, considering the green goal to have all electric cars by 2050 is a fantasy that cannot be achieved. There aren’t enough minerals on this planet to replace existing gas-powered cars with EVs. The plan is simply for average people to not have a car.

Coordinated Effort to Unleash Lawlessness Across America

The key takeaway here is that the promotion of lawlessness is not restricted to Chicago. Chicago is just one example of the moral degradation that is happening in virtually every major U.S. city.

Violent criminals are released from prisons in many major cities and state prosecutors are either handing out slaps on the wrist or refusing to prosecute violent offenders altogether. That’s intentional. You don’t have to have some special Ph.D. to realize that if there’s no punishment for looting and murder, more people will loot and kill.

According to FBI data, on average, murder and manslaughter in U.S. cities with a population over 10,000 increased 26% between 2010 and 2020; rape increased by 38%, aggravated assault by 29% and car theft by 48%.

Those are averages. Some cities are far worse than others.10 To dig deeper, see CBS News’ “Murder Map,”11 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Homicide Mortality by State” map,12 and/or World Population Review’s “Cities with the Most Murders 2023” map.13 It’s worth noting that 18 of the 20 cities with the highest murder rates have Democrat mayors.

Save Yourself — Move Out of the Cities

My advice? If you live in a big city — any major metropolitan area — consider moving to a smaller one, preferably in a less “woke” state where lawlessness is not openly embraced and accepted as some form of “equity” arrangement.

Your and your family’s safety, security and long-term welfare may depend on it, because it’s only going to get worse from here. We can easily predict this because the degradation we’re currently seeing is clearly intentional.

10 Cities and States Homeowners Are Fleeing

Since the pandemic began, we’ve seen an unprecedented exodus from Blue cities across the U.S. The top 10 cities homeowners have been fleeing are:14

  1. San Francisco
  2. Los Angeles
  3. New York City
  4. Washington, D.C.
  5. Boston
  6. Chicago
  7. Detroit
  8. Denver
  9. Seattle
  10. Philadelphia

People are also fleeing certain states more than others. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 10 states with the highest population loss in 2021 due to relocations were:15

  1. New Jersey
  2. Illinois
  3. New York
  4. Connecticut
  5. California
  6. Michigan
  7. Massachusetts
  8. Louisiana
  9. Ohio
  10. Nebraska

Safest Cities in America

As for where to relocate, taking a peek at crime statistics can be helpful. As of 2022, the following 10 towns and townships were rated the safest.16 Additional lists of low-crime areas can be found here17 and here.18

  1. Lewisboro Town, New York
  2. Wayland, Massachusetts
  3. Rye, New York
  4. Broadview Heights, Ohio
  5. Franklin, Massachusetts
  6. Norfolk, Massachusetts
  7. Sparta Township, New Jersey
  8. Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey
  9. Berkeley Heights Township, New Jersey
  10. Holden, Massachusetts

As for the states people are flocking to, the top 10 states that have seen the greatest influx are:19,20

  1. Florida
  2. Texas
  3. North Carolina
  4. South Carolina
  5. Tennessee
  6. Georgia
  7. Arizona
  8. Idaho
  9. Alabama
  10. Oklahoma

To Rebuild, We Must Address the Real Problems

This article hit home for me as I was born and raised in Chicago and about as native as they come as I went to kindergarten, grade school, high school, college, medical school and residency all within the city limit of Chicago. Thankfully, I left over 12 years ago and escaped to sunny Florida.

I agree with ReallyGraceful who states that what we’re seeing is the Hegelian Reaction in real-time: Problem, Reaction, Solution. They’re intentionally creating a problem that they know will result in a certain reaction, so that they can then introduce a preplanned “solution” — a solution that centralizes and cements power at the top of government.

And, while there is a political divide, there are rotten apples and Great Reset promoters on both sides. For example, some Republican leaders are now calling for the U.S. military to intervene and restore order, but that’s just part of the same agenda. The result is more government control and power. Military intervention is the last thing we should hope for.

What we really need to do, as a society, is to take a cold, hard look at the problems that government is ignoring or trying to sweep under the rug, because that’s where the solutions lie. The real problems that need to be addressed can be summed up as:

The only ones who can fix these problems are We the People. We have to change how we live and interact in our local communities and stop looking to the government for solutions. Government is in the business of creating problems to introduce fake solutions that centralize power. We need to identify and address the real problems, and only we can do that.

Sources and References

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Article Video – The Monarchy Substitution and Pandemic Fraud – Monday, May 15, 2023 By Anna Von Reitz

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