Monthly Archives: December 2025

The FDA has been a leading, and certainly the most important, cheerleader for the anti-obesity drug, never mind the substantial side effects, the high price, and the availability of much lower weight-loss alternatives like exercise and healthier eating. From A Midwestern Doctor at midwesterndoctor.com:

The GLP-1 saga epitomizes the unsustainable corruption within our medical system

Story at a Glance:

•In early 2023, a private conference with pharmaceutical industry leaders and investors highlighted anti-obesity and Alzheimer’s drugs as the next big money-makers and had the FDA head as its keynote speaker.

•Since then, the FDA has taken questionable steps to promote these drugs, particularly Ozempic, an anti-obesity medication. There’s been a massive push to get everyone, including children, on Ozempic, using shockingly aggressive marketing tactics.

•This rush is eerily similar to the fen-phen craze, a temporary weight loss drug later pulled from the market for causing severe heart and lung issues.

•Worse, Ozempic comes with serious side effects, including paralyzing the digestive tract. This article will address the above controversy and explore the common causes of obesity, including those rarely discussed.

Most of the food in America comes from just a few crops like corn, wheat, soy, and canola, largely due to farming subsidies that force farmers to mass-produce these crops and sell them below cost. These cheap crops are then turned into the processed foods we eat every day. This is problematic because:

Health Issues—These foods are unhealthy and contribute to major health problems like diabetes and obesity.

Natural Aversion—Our bodies naturally resist these foods, making them hard to sell.

Addictive Additives—To make them more appealing, addictive substances are added. In the 1980s, Big Tobacco bought the processed food industry and, much like they did with cigarettes, focused on making these foods as addictive as possible.

Chronic Illness—The resulting health issues create lifelong customers for industries like Big Pharma.

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Silver went up over $7 per ounce Friday. Alasdair Macleod, who’s been dead right about the gold and silver markets all year, has a unique take on what’s behind the move the huge move. From Macleod at alasdairmacleod.substack.com:

Steep price rises in silver lead to speculation about failures in derivatives. Mostly, it is ill-informed. This article sets out the true position and addresses the extent of the problem.

Social media commentary from at least one “expert” links the steep rise in silver with the Fed’s injection of $14.75bn into the repo market on Friday, saying it is a bailout of the big US banks’ silver positions which mark-to-market for margin purposes against soaring prices. It is simply not true, particularly when year-end book squaring across all banking activities is in progress. Comments about bank credit are usually made in the belief that bank credit is created on a fractional reserve basis and is therefore finite, which is incorrect.

Instead, banks lend credit into existence, and it is easy for a bank to create it out of thin air to keep its commodity dealing operations solvent. Banks enter into repos and reverse repos to balance their balance sheets, which is an entirely different function from financing positions. The Fed intervenes purely to keep repo and reverse repo rates within the FOMC’s target range.

It is also worth noting that banks are dealers in credit and for preference do not encumber their balance sheets with physical commodities. Instead, they deal in derivatives.

Margins in derivative dealing are slimmer than bank lending, which is why they are only profitable in very large quantities relative to a bank’s capital. Notional derivative obligations are large multiples of a bank’s access to underlying assets, which brings us to commodities and specifically precious metal derivatives where currently there are destabilising liquidity problems.

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$9 billion so far has been allegedly stolen by Somali rings in Minnesota. There may a lot more. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Left-wing Governor Tim Walz, under intensifying federal pressure, faces a widening Somali-linked fraud scandal in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors state that the scheme currently totals at least $9 billion, with the final figure potentially much higher. Recent reporting by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo alleges that some welfare funds were funneled into an overseas terrorist organization. Now, a bombshell video from a citizen journalist suggests the fraud extends beyond Medicaid into the state’s daycare system.

A 42-minute bombshell video by journalist Nick Shirley and a local private investigator documents an on-the-ground investigation in Minneapolis that alleges massive, ongoing fraud in government-funded social services. The main focus is on Somali-owned businesses in child daycare, adult/autism care, home healthcare, and non-emergency medical transportation programs that draw from the taxpayer-funded Child Care Assistance Program.

Shirley claims his team uncovered more than $110 million in questionable payments to Somali-owned businesses on just the first day of their investigation, as part of a broader welfare fraud scandal totaling upwards of $9 billion.

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h/t Who else? el gato malo

I’m spending Christmas with loved ones in Phoenix, so I’m taking a break from the blog. Have a Merry Christmas and enjoy the spirit of the holiday with your loved ones. Posting will resume Sunday, 12/28.

A little holiday humor from Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds:

As I said, having a sense of humor will get you in trouble nowadays, and this whole thing would be funny if I wasn’t in leg-irons.

Dear friends and family:

I’m writing this Christmas missive while my court-appointed lawyer trades cryptocurrencies on his phone. He was recently laid off by an investment bank and since he’s never been in court and has zero criminal justice experience, I expect my future missives will be postmarked Alligator Alcatraz.

I’m in a bit of a pickle at the moment, as I was arrested near the Canadian border while attempting to beat the high tariff fees by sneaking a load of lumber across the border via an old logging road. Apparently a drone spotted me. Since it was still dark, maybe they have infrared cameras on the drones now, who knows.

I might have skated through that bust except they ran some kind of scan on me and concluded I was a domestic terrorist. I know having a sense of humor will get you in trouble nowadays, but does my “Yoda for President” bumper sticker make me a terrorist?

They seemed to take an uncommon interest in the Grateful Dead logo on my rear window, and since the Dead have fallen out of the culture’s meme-scape, maybe they reckoned that was some secret membership sign or something.

I guess I didn’t do myself any favors when the interrogation started, because after a while I said, “If I had a wooden leg, would that make me a table?”

Apparently my lack of online activity raised a red flag, and my explanation that I’d been banned from every Big Tech platform only stoked their suspicion. I always joked that I should watch more videos of puppies and kittens to blend in some, and I guess that’s not far off the mark. If I’d viewed more videos of puppies and kittens, I might be a free man right now instead of a suspected terrorist heading for Alligator Alcatraz.

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The countries run by conservative nationalists are taking both covert and overt measures against the EU overloads. From T.L. Davis at tldavis.substack.com:

The issues highlighted in Deconstruction, the documentary we filmed in Europe and the US, continue to embroil all of Europe. It’s startling to see that what we thought of as a distinct possibility over a year ago, has become the present. We’ve made a film that was once considered a warning or a prophecy that has turned into an explainer of current conditions.

Viktor Orban continues to represent a Europe that has largely disappeared in the West and leads a coalition of Central and Eastern European nations who do not want the same fate. As we suggested should happen, these nations have banded together to form a new alliance of EU member nations. It may well spell the end of the EU all together. The authoritarian EU continues to try and drive unpopular policies with threats and sanctions of member states that don’t comply.

Where this matters, to those of us in the US, is that this same coalition of communist states (the EU), some leaning heavily toward police state status, are our allies. Think of that. We have enough allies that are Islamist states, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey come to mind. Why do we need English Islamists, or Irish Islamists, or French Islamists when we already have the real thing in the Middle East, where they can be of help to us logistically?

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You can celebrate Christmas, just don’t mention why we have a Christmas holiday. From Donald Jeffries at donaldjeffries.substack.com:

This is the most wonderful time of the year, as the song reminds us. The bright lights, the holiday treats, and the timeless music. I’ve seen more homes with elaborate, Chevy Chase-style lighting this year. Maybe it’s a silent way of rebelling against a system that frowns on Nativity scenes and actual Christmas Carols.

I understand the reason for the season. Although it’s almost a certainty that Baby Jesus wasn’t born on December 25, it’s still an important part of faith to acknowledge that he was born. Of the Virgin Mary. In a lowly manger, with no place for a bed. The Star of Bethlehem. The Three Wise Men. I’m old enough to have sat in the Oakton High School planetarium every December, while we watched a fascinating recounting of the story of the Star of Bethlehem. I don’t think there is any discussion of the Star of Bethlehem permitted in today’s schools. Anywhere. It’s a magical and riveting story, no matter what day of what month it actually took place. The masses still pay some homage to it. They enjoy Linus’s speech in A Charlie Brown Christmas. But do they really believe it? I recall reading a while back that a majority of Jesuit students didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. More importantly, they didn’t accept the divinity of Jesus. You know, the entire basis of Christianity.

Nowadays, in America 2.0, Jesus is a character on cartoons like Family Guy and South Park, to be mocked instead of worshiped. The primary signs of life for the religion can be found in the nondenominational churches. The “super” churches that preach the prosperity gospel. And, of course, emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus Christ. Call him a rabbi. It’s a wonder they don’t claim he wore a yarmulke. I have no idea what conventional protestants, who don’t use the Schofield Bible as a textbook, or my own Catholic faith, feature at Sunday service during the Yuletide season. I haven’t been to mass in a long time. Why has the film The Ten Commandments been traditionally aired on television at Christmas, and Easter? Why such a Jewish-centric exploration of the Old Testament, with Moses instead of Jesus as the star? Remember, all the television networks are headed by the non-Irish. A 2024 Gallup poll found that some 69 percent of Americans still identify as Christians.

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It was inevitable that the great global scramble for resources, led by the U.S., Russia, and China, would come to the Western Hemisphere. From Nick Giambruno at internationalman.com:

Below is a geopolitical map of the Western Hemisphere as I see it today.

The principal geopolitical foes of the US in the Western Hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—are firmly in the China and Russia camp.

Other countries can shift depending on the outcome of recent elections.

Here’s an overview of some of the most geopolitically important countries in the Western Hemisphere to help frame the broader picture.

Venezuela

A military confrontation over Venezuela appears increasingly likely.

Since Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999, Caracas has aligned itself with Russia and China. Venezuela’s vast oil and gold reserves make it a geopolitical prize. The country holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves—over 303 billion barrels, around 17 % of the global total—concentrated in the Orinoco Belt. That’s more oil than Saudi Arabia’s reported reserves.

For China and Russia, Venezuela represents a geopolitical foothold in America’s backyard—much like how the US uses Taiwan and Ukraine to do the same to Beijing and Moscow.

Trump’s renewed “war on drugs” is a thinly veiled pretext for the US to advance its geopolitical interests in the Americas.

Further, earlier this year, Washington labeled Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles as “foreign terrorist organizations,” a dramatic escalation without precedent. The designations paved the way for military and covert actions under counterterrorism authorities.

The US has amassed an impressive naval force off Venezuela’s coast in what Trump described as a campaign against “narco-terrorism.”

In reality, this looks more like classic gunboat diplomacy—the drugs-and-terrorism narrative is merely a thin patina of propaganda used to justify the policy. Venezuela is not a major cocaine producer, nor does it play any significant role in fentanyl trafficking.

Venezuela now stands at the crossroads of a changing world order. It’s difficult to imagine the US securing its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere while Venezuela remains in its current geopolitical orientation—promoting an ideology that Latin America should be independent of the US.

Guyana

Guyana has quietly become one of the most geopolitically significant states in the Western Hemisphere. Its oil boom, its vulnerability to a long-running territorial dispute with Venezuela, and its growing alignment with the US situate it at the forefront of the conflict over control of the Western Hemisphere.

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Dr. Fuellmich is a hero. From Stephen Karganovic at strategic.culture.su:

The vicious treatment allotted to the distinguished German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is comparable to the persecution of figures like Giordano Bruno.

Alongside the powers that be everywhere, Google’s still anonymous AI is also a pious believer in the virtues of free expression. It proclaims boldly and for all the right reasons that free speech is vital to democracy, in which it also claims to believe. It reminds us also, which is good to know, that freedom of expression promotes an informed citizenry and self-governance and ensures government accountability. Furthermore, that open dialogue and debate facilitate the “marketplace of ideas,” which is a vital condition for social progress and provides society with a much-needed “safety valve.” And finally, that the unhindered right to express one’s thoughts, beliefs, and values without fear is a fundamental aspect of human dignity and self-fulfilment. Amen, amen, amen.

In theory, all would heartily salute those noble sentiments. And that includes even some of their most ruthless violators, such as the German government.

For over a year after kidnapping him abroad, the German government kept prominent German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich in prison on contrived charges and under extraordinarily harsh and inhuman conditions, which were seemingly designed just to torment him. In Germany, for Dr. Fuellmich at least, the right to express one’s thoughts with dignity (never mind self-fulfilment) in the manner so movingly preached by Google’s AI avatar went out the window many moons ago.

How many are there who still remember who Dr. Fuellmich is and what he stands for, let alone are aware of his current plight?

For those who do not, a brief note is in order. Shortly after the sudden appearance of the Covid affair in 2019, Dr. Fuellmich, a prominent trial attorney from Gottingen, gained public attention by raising sensible questions about the nature and origin of the commotion which was becoming global in scope. Identical questions were on the minds of many, but few were capable of articulating them in legal terms as effectively as he was. Initially, his questions were formulated rather timidly, barely overstepping the unspoken bounds of permissible inquiry. There was nigh a suggestion of any “conspiracy theory” or frontal challenge to the integrity of the system that in a matter of weeks had improvised, for purposes then still unknown, a global health emergency which was the pretext for unprecedentedly comprehensive social disruptions and the imposition of hitherto inconceivable restrictions on elementary human liberties.

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