If you are old enough, you probably remember Michael Milken’s first professional life as a Titan of industry. He built great enterprises in a hurry, at risk, and at mostly profit to the investors. He was a force of nature. In his second professional life, after being prosecuted for financial misdeeds in the ’80s—he has since been pardoned by President Trump—he has focused on philanthropy. He is still a force of nature and has probably done as much in the war on cancer as anyone alive. He remains what he was, active and effective regarding every good thing. Having followed Michael’s career for years, I met him for the first time this month when I took part in an education panel he hosted in Florida. The panel consisted mostly of college presidents, and the question before us had to do with why elite colleges have gone bad. The cause of these colleges going bad is very deep, but it is mostly this: they no longer understand their purpose as the pursuit of truth. Instead, they see it as training their students to be revolutionaries. The search for the truth is a hard discipline at any level. At the highest level, it requires a lifetime. The classics say it requires even courage. One must focus upon each thing that is studied and attempt to hold these things together in one’s mind. Being trained to be a revolutionary requires different virtues. First, the student must think he can perfect the world and think he knows how. Second, he must learn to comply. These seem opposite, but they are inextricable. Revolution today is made easy by the view that the standards of perfect and imperfect, of good and bad, are completely subjective. Each of us decides what things mean. Each of us has a right to ouropinions, whatever they are. This way of thinking does not make young people thoughtful; it makes them adamant. Some others are bored into passivity. Gaining strength by declaring that opinions hold no value doesn’t create a forceful revolution. And who wants a limp revolution? So asserting the holiness of the cause is essential. But it can’t be a genuinely holy cause because holy things are uncreated. The cause needs to be created by men, and it’s even better if it’s implausible or fantastical. If it lacks coherence and is built on ignorance, then its followers can be certain that it is uniquely their own. Recently, the rising cause on college campuses has been support for the terrorist group Hamas. It identifies the murdered Jews of last October, and not the murderers themselves, as evil. This is a grave matter not only for elite colleges, but for our nation. We are the most successful and longest-enduring free republic in human history. We have a constitution to protect our freedom, but our practices under that constitution have become warped. The cause of the warping is closely related to why elite colleges have gone bad. The Constitution aims to protect our liberties under the “laws of nature and of nature’s God.” These laws are proclaimed in the first sentence of the most beautiful political document ever written, the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln, arguing against slavery, called these laws the “father of all moral principle in us.” Our elite colleges and many others have repudiated these laws. They recognize no laws above us, written in nature or ordained by God, to command what we do. They teach that we can remake the world as we please. This teaching is the basis of the American form of totalitarianism: scientific, comprehensive, ever advancing. It is evil. Read 1984. Much of the blame for this madness has come upon Harvard, the oldest and most elite college in America. One must condemn what Harvard has become, but also one should wish Harvard well. It is an old institution that has been great, and there is still some greatness in it. It must return to its old purposes if it is to save its freedom and recover its interest in the truth. To read more about the causes of the decline of education, read the “1915 General Declaration of Principles”bythe American Association of University Professors, of which John Dewey was founder and president. Also instructive is an article I wrote years ago titled “Why the GOP is Flunking Higher Education” and an exchange about it I had with former president of Boston University John Silber.
One of the latest GMO Frankenfoods is Piggy Sooy, a soybean genetically engineered to contain pig protein. One or more undisclosed pig genes are spliced into conventional soya to create a soybean with 26.6% animal protein
Moolec, the U.K.-based company that developed Piggy Sooy, is also working on developing a pea plant that produces beef protein. The company claims these transgenic hybrids will provide similar taste, texture and nutritional value as meat, without the high cost of cultured or lab-grown meat alternatives
June 21, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture authorized the sale of cell-cultivated chicken from Good Meat and Upside Foods. Both plan on rolling out their synthetic chicken to “high-end” restaurants across the U.S. first, while they scale up production
Researchers have discovered that CRISPR-Cas gene editing wreaks havoc in the plant genome, causing several hundred unintended genetic changes to occur simultaneously “in a catastrophic event” that ripples across large parts of the genome
‘Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ 6,000-word essay, recently published in left-wing publication The Monthly, shows conservatives were correct in predicting the Albanese Labor government would be a meddling, bigger-spending, anti-capitalist nightmare.
However, while there is an understandable temptation to label Chalmers’ love letter to big government as “socialism”, that’s not quite right.
It embodies something that could prove far worse.
Chalmers’ promise to “redesign markets for investment in social purposes, based on common metrics of performance” sounds innocuous.
As does his purported optimism that “2023 will be the year we build a better capitalism” that is “uniquely Australian”.
However, this supposedly better capitalism, or “values-based capitalism”, as he puts it, is not uniquely Australian.
It’s been virulently propagated internationally for decades by the likes of Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), under the banner of “stakeholder capitalism”, and is a core component of the WEF’s Great Reset initiative.
The Great Reset is a proposed alliance between big government and big business to “reset” the global economy post-pandemic, by pushing companies to adopt “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) policies as a condition of operation.
ESG policies are characterised by identity politics and radical climate action, and are determined in part by faceless, unelected corporate elites.
It’s not socialism; it’s neo-feudalism.
ESG policies are the “values” of Chalmers’ “values-based capitalism”.
We know this because his essay bears a striking resemblance to the type of stakeholder capitalism outlined in Klaus Schwab’s 2022 co-written book, The Great Narrative, a sort of sequel to his 2020 book The Great Reset.
This, for anyone who holds right-of-centre values, should be cause for alarm.
Chalmers describes a core component of values-based capitalism as enabling investors “to work out the climate-risk rating of a firm just as a lender can work out a credit-risk rating”.
“In 2023, we will create a new sustainable finance architecture, including a new taxonomy to label the climate impact of different investments. That will help investors align their choices with climate targets, help businesses who want to support the transition get finance more easily…This strategy begins with climate finance,” he continues.
Similarly, in The Great Narrative, Schwab says stakeholder capitalism “welcomes the idea of legislative action to define with precision the benchmarks for ESG reporting and performance”.
“In the same way that companies have an obligation to report their financial results…in the not-too-distant future they will have a similar obligation to report on ESG metrics… governments will make the last call for setting the legal obligations, targets and incentives around ESG standards.”
Ultimately, the purpose of both values-based and stakeholder capitalism is to justify politicians working with corporations to create big government policies, and insidiously exert the kind of control over markets and individuals that, in isolation, is unpalatable to your average voter.
This is the antithesis of democracy.
Jim Chalmers can claim all he wants that his values-based capitalism is the right thing for Australians, but he seems to forget that values are often subjective.
While he may believe that markets geared towards controlling citizen’s behaviour is a moral good, others (like me) believe this is – at best – overly stubborn.
‘The “you’ll eat bugs and like it” agenda is obvious and out in the open. Rarely a week goes by that we do not cover a new aspect thereof. This week’s edition comes from CNN. The channel’s new CEO, Chris Licht, signaled that the network will take a more middle-ground approach versus its traditional liberal positions since the turn of the millennium. Lucht started by firing host Brian Stelter. But it’s still CNN and it’s still mainstream media.
The network provided free advertising for “researchers” at Wonkwang University in South Korea. They presented a “meaty, savory mealworm powder seasoning” at the American Chemical Society fall meeting last week. In Hee Cho, one of said researchers, repeated all the usual talking points: “edible insects are superfoods,” “bugs are good source of protein,” etc. They hope their worm powder will “feel satisfying and familiar to consumers.” But now Klaus and company are taking matters to an even more disturbing level.
It started on September 3, 2019. Magnus Söderlund, a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, did an interview on TV4 that day. The segment focused on “mannisko-kötts branschen,” which literally translates to “the human flesh industry.” While invoking “climate change,” Söderlund, who is also a behavioral scientist, said that human beings can be “tricked…into making decisions.” He went on to say that everyone needs to be “awake to the idea” of eating human flesh to save the environment.
Fast forward to July 23, 2022. The New York Times published an article entitled, “The Taste of Cannibalism.” The article talks about a recent strings of books, television shows and movies that makes humans “look…delicious to one another.” Granted the article isn’t as blatant as the Söderlund interview. But just like the “eat bugs” narrative started out slow and quickly accelerated this year, the same thing is likely with cannibalism. Stay tuned.’https://thecovidblog.com/2022/08/30/cannibalism-rockefeller-foundation-12-more-sudden-deaths/
whatyareckon 