The Arterburn Radio Transmission Podcast
The Arterburn Radio Transmission is a blend of cutting edge commentary, fused with guests who are the newsmakers and trailblazers of our time. Your host Tony Arterburn is a former Army paratrooper, entrepreneur, and historian. Tony brings his unique perspective to the issues facing our country, civilization, and planet.
The Arterburn Radio Transmission Podcast
#499 Gold's Hidden Secrets, Economic Nationalism, & The Rise of Bitcoin Reserves
What if the stability of our global economy hinged on the mysterious vaults of Fort Knox? Join us as we navigate the turbulent waters of the precious metals market, where the prices of gold and silver are skyrocketing amidst geopolitical chaos. Broadcasting from the lively city of Acapulco during Anarchapulco, we dissect the recent election outcomes and their repercussions. With vaults in London being depleted and transparency issues surrounding U.S. gold reserves, we uncover the intricate web of economic nationalism, trade deficits, and manufacturing decline in America. Elon Musk's interest in these developments adds another layer of intrigue, as we question the very foundations of our monetary system.
We embark on a historical journey into the world of U.S. gold reserves, revisiting critical decisions like FDR's controversial 1933 executive order. This chapter of history has left a legacy laden with secrecy and speculation about the current state of Fort Knox's reserves. As debates rage over the Federal Reserve's control and its constitutional implications, we ponder the potential fallout of discrepancies in gold holdings. Could undiscovered truths about America's gold reserves trigger political and economic upheaval? With over 8,100 tons said to be stored, the allure of gold continues to captivate and concern financial leaders worldwide.
Our conversation takes a dynamic turn as we explore the potential revaluation of gold and the possible introduction of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. Larry Fink's bold predictions for Bitcoin's future invite speculation about the interplay between digital and traditional assets. In a world where Trump labels Zelensky a dictator and Oliver Anthony speaks to the societal challenges of modern digital life, we scrutinize the complex relationships shaping our global landscape. From historical political dynamics to the voices calling for rural revival, this episode promises a thought-provoking exploration of the factors reshaping our world. Tune in for an insightful dialogue that seeks clarity amid today's economic uncertainties.
It's 11.59 at Radio Free America and this is Uncle Sam, with music and the truth until dawn. Right now, I've got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone. The chair is against the wall. The chair is against the wall. John has a long mustache. John has a long mustache. It's 12 o'clock, americans, another day closer to victory, and for all of you out there on or behind the lines, this is your song.
Speaker 3:veteran of three foreign wars, entrepreneur and warrior poet tony arterburn takes on the issues facing our country, civilization and planet.
Speaker 2:This is the Arterburn Radio Transmission. Well, it's episode 499. I wasn't going to miss today. I had to go through my archives to find one of the really old intros from the Arterburn Radio transmission going back to 2021. Because I don't have my normal files and audio uploaded here. I'm in Acapulco, mexico, for Anarchapulco.
Speaker 2:I spoke yesterday following Jeff Berwick, on Crypto Day and I'll get into a little bit of what I talked about. And I'm giving two different talks here. One, again on Saturday, is going to cover gold and humanity and the Great Reset kind of an historical dive. But I went into the chaos really yesterday. This unexpected, these black swan events that are happening rapidly throughout the financial system, dealing with commodities gold supply, silver supply. We'll get into a little bit of that, but it is the 20th of February 2025. Again, I am in Mexico today. If you're watching the video stream behind me, you can see the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez Beautiful out here. This is my second year in a row to be at Anarchapulco. Great folks, lots of good conversation, liberty-minded people. Last year was tough and we found a better way to be able to do the shows. I was on a podcast yesterday and I was able to do the David Knight show today. So anyway, I hope all of you are doing well. We're going to jump into some issues here. I know it's harder for me to have multiple tabs opened up on the laptop with the Wi-Fi, but I'm going to do the best I can. We've got some good stuff today.
Speaker 2:Going back to the consequence of the election outcome on November 5th, the fundamentals for the gold breaking its all-time high, for silver breaking its all-time high for silver breaking its all-time going into close to record highs the last year All those fundamentals are still there, regardless of what happened on November 5th. However, that, plus the chaos and the uncertainty, the geopolitical uncertainty about the global order of things, the financial system, that is thrown in a completely different set of variables, even the audit, the supposed audit, or now that Fort Knox has come under the attention of Elon Musk and Doge, I'm going to get into a little bit of that too today, because that's a variable that could cause a massive avalanche of unintended consequences because we haven't audited Fort Knox for over 70 years. Business and gold bugs and silver bugs We've been talking about this forever, except I didn't know that the senators like Rand Paul and Mike Lee had been asking to get in for over 10 years. I know Ron Paul had talked about it, but I didn't know that senator-level oversight. Even Rand Paul being in his home state, he couldn't get in. So there's something wrong there that is adding to the unknown and the uncertainty.
Speaker 2:Then you look at headlines like the London bullion houses or the London exchange for gold and silver. Their vaults are being cleared out right now from multinationals and banking entities moving from London to the United States and repatriating gold and silver. 12.5 million ounces of gold, 40 million ounces of silver have been moved. This is going to cause, and is causing, supply shock. Swiss maker of gold and silver bars, arbor Herrarius, has put extra premiums on and stopped the future sales of physical gold bars. South Korea stopped trading in physical gold bars. They halted that a couple of weeks ago, as I've spoken about that, and other bullion houses have done the same thing. This is because there's a huge disparity and, I think, criminality behind the paper markets versus the physical markets, and what you have to understand is that this has gone on since the 1970s after really the Hunt family in Texas exposed the weakness in the silver market. Silver is one of the. We're going to talk about that today too, because that's how I finished with my talk yesterday here in Mexico is that the disparity that has long since been under the eye of gold bugs and people in the financial market who understand about the physical supply versus the paper supply and ETFs. We've long since said there's a problem.
Speaker 2:No one really knew what the issues were going to be in the short run, and especially now that we're in the thick of things. No one knew what it was going to be. Was the catalyst? I thought it would be de-dollarization over a long period of time, countries wanting to get out of the dollar getting into gold and then asking for their gold, or companies like JP Morgan just did a $4 billion move for physical gold for their clients. I thought it would be something like that, asking for delivery over the long haul. But no, it's the black swan event, folks. It's the unexpected, unintended consequences of tariffs.
Speaker 2:If you know me, I'm a huge fan of tariffs. I like tariffs if used for the purpose of economic nationalism and that's kind of like the same modern monetary theory or Keynesian economics. It all goes hand in hand. The two parties together supported NAFTA. They supported GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. They supported the Chinese coming in to the WTO. They supported all that because free trade is a god to them. They worship it and that's led to these massive trade deficits. It's led to the hollowing out of American manufacturing. It's led to the transfer of technology and sustainability, sovereignty all the stuff that was by design and planned and shipped off.
Speaker 2:Except when Trump comes back on the scene here at the second term number 47, he's talking about putting tariffs on countries, the BRICS nations, who don't comply with dollar hegemony. Putting 100% tariffs on those nations that don't use the dollar or try to dump the dollar or issue a competing currency against the dollar. Well, those nations aren't going to do that. They're not going to issue, in my opinion, they're not issuing a common BRICS currency. What they're doing is they're remonetizing all of their existing currencies against what truly is the world's reserve currency now and it has always been, except for this experiment we've been in since 1971.
Speaker 2:The dollar, I believe, is no longer the world's reserve currency. I think gold is. If you look at the holdings of central banks around the world, gold just supplanted the euro as number two in holdings. That's because of what happened with the Bank of International Settlements back in 2021, when gold was taken from a tier three asset to a tier one asset. The central banks are holding gold now and that's just supplanted the Euro as number two and the number one is the US dollar. But I think that's only temporary.
Speaker 2:As I said yesterday, I think it's a shadow of itself. It's a shadow of a shadow and we're watching de-dollarization happen and that's why a lot of these things are, I think, moving at a faster pace than even I had expected. The tariffs certainly caused an acceleration, but we're looking at the sovereign wealth fund. There's an executive order by Donald Trump for the sovereign wealth fund of the United States. It's using the resources gold, petroleum, coal I'm assuming, timber, whatever they're using. There's sovereign wealth funds based on the balance sheet and that's what's being created.
Speaker 2:That's the race that the rest of the world has been in for a long time, and we've just been around weaponizing the dollar, putting sanctions on people, losing dollar market share. Yesterday I spoke about look at the metrics of 2001,. But look at the metrics of 2001,. 75% of all financial transactions in the world went on in dollars and by 2024, it's down to the low 40% range. It's really dropping sharply after we put sanctions on Russia in 2022 and they bounced back. We didn't. We didn't bounce back, we just kept losing more and more market share that's something called money velocity, folks and we're losing that, and so that's why there's a race right now for commodities.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to go to the chat too, but I want to jump into first story of the day. By the way, I found something really cool that Oliver Anthony did a talk this last couple of days about AI and I want to play that clip. I'll read some of the article, but it's like seven minutes, but he does such a great job talking about. You know, technology can be a double-edged sword. I mean, we've grown up in the internet age and often and I'll get into this, but I often remember something my grandfather told me about. He was an entrepreneur and had done all of me, been a wildcatter and drilled for oil, he'd sold televisions, he'd done everything. I mean, he was. I think. At his funeral I called him an old school man of the world, kind of referencing Guy Clark.
Speaker 2:But we look at that and we look at all the technology that we have, and he had me look at that in 2005. And he said you know, back in the 70s, we just got more done. He goes because he had emails, he had a cell phone, he had all that. He said all the technology, all the fax machines, we didn't have that. We had a. You know, you could have an answering service at best, you know, and somebody would leave a message. And we just got more done. I'm beginning to suspect that's how it's working. Now we're running up against something that's totally new and that's AI, about the Fort Knox. This could be huge news and I think I've seen this movie before. I was recalling today talking to David and yesterday somebody was talking to me about the plot to Die Hard 3.
Speaker 2:That came up yesterday about looting the Federal Reserve and doing a head fake of the gold and blowing it up. It didn't make much sense in the 90s. The dollar was pretty stable even though it was fake. But you know we've done a pretty good job keeping people in the markets and inflation was, you know, moderately under control. It wasn't like now. They used to even believe it or not. Folks, they used to have debates on fiscal responsibility in the United States of America. All right, so let's get into this article. This is Kitco.
Speaker 2:Elon Musk cast doubt on $425 billion US gold reserved at Fort Knox ahead of a personal Doge audit. Gold reserved at Fort Knox ahead of a personal Doge audit. Fresh off his recent forays into the Treasury Department's payment system, tech billionaire Elon Musk is now gearing up to conduct an in-person audit of the United States gold reserves at Fort Knox on behalf of the Department of Government Efficiency. He put out a tweet that has the South Park guy that says and it's gone.
Speaker 2:Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the state where Fort Knox is located, said in an interview with Fox News on Monday that he invited Musk to review the gold reserve after failing to gain access to the facility for a decade. The gold reserve after failing to gain access to the facility for a decade. I quote I think some of them may not think it needs to be audited at all, but I think the more sunlight the better, the more transparency the better, paul said. The senator also insisted that even though the US dollar hasn't been explicitly backed by gold for 50 years, the precious metal still provides some of the value undergirding the greenback. It brings attention to the fact that gold still has value, and implicitly not implicitly, but gold still gives the value to the dollar, paul said. That's why we don't get rid of it. We've got it. The IMF has it, the World Bank has it, most of the central banks around IMF has it, the World Bank has it. Most of the central banks around the world have gold. It's an implicit trust that the dollar still has some backing. Well, he's absolutely right about that and we're going to some numbers here in case you didn't know and this is supposedly right we have 70 years no audit of the gold at Fort Knox, and I'll give you some more history.
Speaker 2:This is the side history, this is alternative history that you get into in my line of work. What you find is let's go back to 1933 when FDR signs his executive order and says you turn in your gold. It wasn't necessarily gold confiscation, but they just made it illegal for you to quote hoard gold. So FDR signs his executive order, people start turning in their $20 gold pieces, their $10 gold pieces, which $20 is basically an ounce. $10 is about a half an ounce, then the $5, which is like a quarter, and the $2.50, you got the Indians and the Liberty Gold coins and people start turning in their gold.
Speaker 2:Well, after this big turn-in happens and they stop all the coinage at the US Mint and get all of that. A big portion of that is melted down. And that gold, you wonder, did it go to Fort Knox? Is that part of our gold reserves? No, a big portion of that, and that was the plan all along was to go to the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, switzerland.
Speaker 2:And you might ask what is the BIS? It was started after World War I, by the way. But what does the BIS have to do with the United States? Well, it's because the Federal Reserve is not owned by you. It's an international banking consortium, it's a private corporation that controls the money supply of the United States. And so they wanted their gold. They gave the American people paper notes in exchange for their gold at $20 an ounce.
Speaker 2:And when all of that gold was turned in, franklin Roosevelt, along with his handler Harry Hopkins, who lived in the White House, by the way, that was Harry Hopkins, was much like Colonel Mandel House, who lived in the White House with Woodrow Wilson. See, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And Harry Hopkins was one of those people that was overseeing that the gold from $20 an ounce to $35 an ounce, and then reallocated the actual gold, which is money to the Bank of International Settlements, and so those of us who study history in regards to the monetary system and gold have often wondered how much gold does the United States have? Well, this article continues, it says, with over 8,100 tons at the end of 2024, according to the World Gold Council. This is the World Gold Council. This is how much they think the United States has. The United States has far and away the world's largest gold reserve. That should have an asterisk next to it too, because we don't really know about China.
Speaker 2:The lion's share of the nation's bullion is stored at the 108,955-acre Fort Knox complex, with the balance kept in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and that's where you get into the movie Die Hard 3, right, paul said he's been trying to make sure it's all there for over 10 years, without success. He received permission to enter Fort Knox in 2017, during the first Trump administration, but the timing of the trip didn't work out. Instead, then-treasurary Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Senator Mitch McConnell, the turtle, visited the vaults without him and returned claiming the gold was present. There's two people that I don't trust, and how would they know? You got to send a gold person there, somebody. I mean, you could just put some bars out. They don't know the difference. I didn't go down, but the Secretary of the Treasury and the senior senator from Kentucky did go down and attest that they believe they saw the gold down there.
Speaker 2:Well, folks, there's a huge difference between seeing what you believe is gold bullion and having an actual audit. Okay, I mean the amount of fake gold I've seen in my lifetime and people that unfortunately and really tragically believe that they have gold. I've seen older people that have got scammed and they lay stuff out on my counter and I don't even have to touch it but I can tell that it's fake. But there's really good fakes. I mean you'd have to have, you need like an independent committee with a diverse panel of people to actually do that audit. It's not something that's even visibly that doesn't lend that much credence at all. I mean it doesn't cost that much just to have some fake there. And you know this is I think I don't know if this would even come up.
Speaker 2:By the way, and this is one of the consequences of elections. Have consequences is something. The chaos that's built into this. I said all the fundamentals drove gold up to break its all-time high 30-something odd times in the last year are still there, plus all of this, and so we're in uncharted waters. All the fundamentals plus the chaos, and then the shock of what could be a major scandal. Let's hope that it's there and everything's stable, because it'll cause a lot of pain If there's something inherently wrong with the gold supply.
Speaker 2:But while we're at it, let's go look at the Federal Reserve. Let's go look at this private institution that holds the wealth of the US. Who gave them that power? Well, they took it themselves. By the way, it's not even constitutional. They shouldn't have that. The Constitution clearly states that only Congress can coin money, and it has to be gold and silver specie. And it doesn't say that an international banking consortium of globalists control your money supply.
Speaker 2:Mike Lee says here as a senator, I've tried repeatedly to get into Fort Knox. And it says Fort Knox, you can't come to Fort Knox. And he says me why? Fort Knox, it's a military installation Me, I'm a senator, I go to military bases all the time. Fort Knox, you still can't come because you can't. Elon Musk says it would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox.
Speaker 2:Well, if you really dig down deep into the underpinnings of what makes global power structures function, what you'll find is that these nations, they guard their gold and their gold holdings are more secretive than their nuclear weapons. And I often wondered you know, at some level, at some point, the cards have to go back on the table and we've been running this free-floating fiat currency experiment since August 15, 1971. Currency experiment since August 15th 1971. And that was really just the official departure from the gold standard.
Speaker 2:As I've said for many, many shows, for many years that if you go back and you look at the 1960s, we took the silver out of our coinage, starting in 1965. And that was a subtle tip of the hat, if you will, to the rest of the world that we had expanded our money supply, that we were not going to back it and we were paying for guns and butter in Vietnam. They called it Lyndon Johnson, called it the Great Society. On the Mekong, we had the space race, we had the Cold War. We expanded the money supply and we start by debasing our coins. That's what the Romans did. All great nations rise on sound money and economic nationalism and they decline on fiat currency and free trade. I don't make the rules, it's just how it works and so that's what we did, and the rest of the world took notice.
Speaker 2:You had economist Robert Triffin thrown into the mix at that time, testifying before Congress. There's something called Triffin's Dilemma, which I think we're about to find out. What Triffin's Dilemma is all about, which is, if you are the world's reserve currency and you've stocked all these central banks around the globe with your currency and that currency gets repatriated back to its home economy, how does that not cause massive devaluation and hyperinflation? How do you run the world's reserve currency and then suddenly you don't without a currency collapse? Well, you just have a currency collapse. That's what you would have.
Speaker 2:The US Treasury holds the world's largest gold stockpile of 8,100 tons, but the value of the gold hasn't changed since 1972, when the price was set at $42 an ounce. Now this is important. What you'll find is that after 71, the central banks they did the same thing. It was 1972-73 that they halted the price of gold on most balance sheets at that spot price of $42 an ounce, and so that's been held, especially the gold that was before 1973, held on the balance sheet at about that. So a revaluation would reset these other currencies a lot easier than we have it. We've got the amount of debt, the amount of obligations that the US has. It doesn't touch it. As a matter of fact, some analysts have noted that if the government revalued its gold reserves at current prices, which are above $2,900 an ounce, it could add more than $760 billion to the Treasury Department's coffers. Well, okay, that's good, because that would be $760 billion in actual value. But if you listen to my show, you understand that since 2023 or so or the last quarter going into 24, we add a trillion dollars in debt to the balance sheet every 90 days.
Speaker 2:Speculation surrounding the US government's gold hoard started to ramp up earlier this month after newly minted Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said that he would monetize the asset side of the US balance sheet. However, on February 13th, bloomberg reported that an unnamed source said that his idea was not quote under serious consideration among President Donald Trump's top economic advisors. Some market analysts have also suggested this might not be the best way for the government to improve its balance sheet. Well, yeah, when you traffic and fake, this is going to be the fight. That have so much dependence on the Fed monetizing their businesses, their holdings, access to cheap liquidity and debt that to tie anything to have any sort of fixed value is going to destroy the current fiat models. That's how insidious things have become models. That's how insidious things have become.
Speaker 2:Making this gold to market $3,000 an ounce proves the asset liability ratio of the Fed, but it only gets into the neighborhood of major US banks like Goldman Sachs. He said the US Federal Reserve has a 12 to 1 asset liability ratio. With revalued gold, every $1 of assets has $12 of liabilities. Major US banks have 11 to1 asset liability ratio. The US Federal Reserve has a 179 to 1 asset liability ratio. With $42 gold, every $1 of assets has $179 of liabilities. This is the upside down. Nikki Shields, head of the research and metal strategy at MKS PAMP, said in a note on Thursday that funds generated would be a drop in the bucket, as US debt is north of $36 trillion. While this remains a hypothetical debate, shields also said it's unclear whether this would be bullish or bearish for gold. However, she did highlight some risk, as this would be a one-off boost for the Treasury Department. A second risk is that the revaluation would come as gold prices are trading near all-time highs.
Speaker 2:This is not the first scheme involving the government's gold holdings that potential Trump advisers have floated in the news, stephen Moran, trump's nominee to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has suggested the US government could sell its gold and use the proceeds to buy other currencies. That's not a good idea. This would weaken the US dollar, giving the nation a trade advantage Still not a good idea. Folks, where we're headed. If you actually are paying attention, if you look at the amount of gold buying by central banks, which is unprecedented as I said yesterday in my talk, in 2009, the gold buying by central banks wasn't zero, but it was almost zero and if you go, look at the chart and then it starts to go up and to the right up and to the right up and to the right and it continues and they continue to break records. The reason is is what I alluded to earlier Gold, because this is the yesterday I put into my search engine before I went on.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to ask the AI a quick question. And that is what's the end of Gresham's Law? So you look at Gresham's Law and that's the theory. Really, it's a law. It's not really a theory. It's when bad money enters a system, good money goes into hiding, and I've always said until it doesn't, because something always happens to bad money, it goes to zero or it has a crash or it's no longer trusted, and that's the key. So on the other side of Gresham's Law, good money goes back into the system, because bad money dies Human history. Further and further you go back.
Speaker 2:Gold has always been a part of our story, even John Maynard Keynes. That's where you get Keynesian economics. That's where you get the really insane theory. That's a theory, the insane theory that if you use government stimulus and spending, that you can balance the economy by just creating money out of thin air. It's also known as the modern monetary theory or, as David Knight calls it, the magic money tree. Well, that's ridiculous on so many levels. And then you look at some of the stats that I've found over the years and I was reading an article today governments have created about $150 trillion in new currency, but it only goosed their economies by about $46 trillion, so the return on investment is awful right. So Keynes had that theory post-World War II and he called gold a barbarous relic. But he was an economist and when he was speaking about our ancient history, even Keynes recognized that without gold, like the ancient Babylonians or the cradle of civilization, mesopotamia, sumer itself, cradle of civilization, mesopotamia, sumer itself. They wouldn't have had a coherent trade or coherent economy, or maybe even survived through as many centuries as they did, without a stable means of trade, which was gold. Even Keynes recognized that.
Speaker 2:I want to see about anything less than this article we can go into. Selling the US gold reserves would also impact the reserves of emerging market central banks that have been accumulating the precious metal at record rates for the last three years. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Selling the US gold reserves would also impact the reserves of emerging market central banks. Yeah, it would flood the market, it would devalue them. So this is a we are in a very interesting spot.
Speaker 2:There's those that believe that we're going to remonetize our own currency and back it by gold, and then you have those who believe that there's going to be a Bitcoin strategic reserve, a BSR. There's many in the political sphere that want to do that and sell the gold to buy Bitcoin and sell the gold to buy Bitcoin. I find this interesting. I'd also have you pay attention to some of the comments from Larry Fink recently from BlackRock, when he was over at the World Economic Forum in Davos and he said that there would be $700,000 Bitcoin. I don't think he's ever given a price prediction model before. But if you do the math, $700,000 Bitcoin, that is on parity with the market cap of gold. So if Bitcoin trades at $700,000, then that is the $16 or so $17 trillion market cap that would rival gold. So I'm not saying I know what that means, but to me that's all language and something you should pay attention to.
Speaker 2:The West has been at war with gold for a long time, folks Since 1971, because gold went from $35 an ounce to $800 an ounce in the 70s. And after that you had the concerted effort between central banks, primarily the Federal Reserve in the West, to work with the paper markets and bullion houses to suppress the price of gold. As a matter of fact, the Hunt family of Texas. They bought physical silver and they were buying massive quantities, just ordering, using their oil holdings and their wealth to corner the silver market. And so other people did the same thing. They started buying up, speculating on physical silver and it exposed a real problem with the dollar because it drove it to $52.50 an ounce in 1980. And $52.50 in 1980 is like $300 today in purchasing power and that still is, by the way, 45 years on, still the all-time high for silver. Since that time there's been a great effort and, side note, the Hunt family was deep-stated for their trouble and bankrupted Not completely, because I told a story yesterday of how, as a young real estate broker, I sold a three-acre track to the Hunt family and how strange it was.
Speaker 2:When I was about 25, 26, my dad sold a piece of property. I went to go close it and they had a private title company in Fort Worth and nobody else was in there. And they just have somebody brings in the paperwork and you sign it and nobody's in this office. I don't know, it was one of the weirdest things that I've ever seen. But they still have a great amount of wealth. But they were put through the wringer and never again. Nobody ever touched that again. By the way, nobody ever said I'm going to corner the silver market. Warren Buffett did some moves with silver, but mostly through paper in the 1990s and then abandoned it, because if you do that, you expose something fundamentally wrong with our currency system.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to go to the chat and check on everybody. This is always fun. I, like you, know making sure that we put these shows up. I want to keep it consistent because I have so many great people that message me and interact with me through the shows and wonder what happens if I don't put one up. And so, even if I'm on a, this is very much a working vacation being in Mexico, but I want to make sure I still get a transmission out regardless. Let me take this off the screen and I'm going to go talk to the chat really quick. Thanks everybody for being here.
Speaker 2:By the way, let's go to Rockfin. Over on Rockfin on the America Unplugged channel, it's really kind of hard for me to see. If you look behind me, you can see the Pacific Ocean. The sun's coming in. It's a little bit hazy on my screen but I see Jason Barker's there. The was that Tickhan Bennett. Okay, that's good to see you, karen Carpenter, and we've got Guard.
Speaker 2:Goldsmith says go, tony, I've got to, we've got to do a show. Guard, I was actually talking about you. The other night I was here meeting and had a great time visiting with Gareth Ike and his lovely wife. They were just wonderful people. They're here at the resort and we spent the last couple of days talking and I brought you up, guard, somebody that needs to go on Gare's show if you haven't already I see. Oh, and Melissa's in the chat too. Yeah, melissa's also here with me. It's good to see all of you guys. And then I've got the channel up on Rumble. Oh, hold on, let me pause this real quick. This is pretty good. Birdhouse Blue says if Doge selects Geraldo Rivera to inspect the vault, I'm going to be a little bit skeptical. That's a good classical reference there. Birdhouse Blues, if many people don't remember, geraldo Rivera, had this huge show where he's going to reveal what was in Al Capone's vault.
Speaker 2:Back in that Was that the 80s, I think. Um Harp says uh, tony, I thought it was against the law to take guns in New Mexico and you took two. Well, thank you know. There's no gym here, so I've been, um, I've been every day. I get up and I've been doing, uh, knuckle push-ups. I've been doing some Hindu squats and I do a. I get up and I've been doing knuckle push-ups. I've been doing some Hindu squats and I do a little bit of abs and I just do that.
Speaker 2:If I do that every day, then I won't turn into what did Rocky say in Rocky IV? He's telling Apollo Creed when they're watching their old fight footage, and he was like that ain't us anymore, apollo. We're turning into regular people. So I'm try not to turn into I. By the way, you it as I get older and I, you know, I still go to the gym and it's just not like it used to be as I I. It hurts, you, you know, and you're like you gotta, how bad do you want it? You know you're in good shape, well thanks, you know it really hurts, like even uh, being outside of the the gym and even just doing like everything hurts. But hey, uh, I'd rather do that and hurt than uh, than turn into, as rocky said, regular people. Uh, burnhouse blue says thanks a lot, richard n.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nixon didn't have a lot of choice. We had run into a real problem inflating the money supply, the liabilities, the height of the Cold War, and the other countries wanted that gold and we said no, because we don't have it If you come to, and that's how you stop the run on the dollar at that point. But the problem is, instead of having a real conversation about fiscal responsibilities and cutting things and growing the economy, we went on the fiat experiment and we're about to reach the end of that experiment. All right, and we'll do a little foreign policy real quick. And then I want to end talking about this.
Speaker 2:I'm going to play Oliver Anthony, who had a great talk on AI and technology and just what's happening to humanity in general with the rise of technology and how it's infecting us not affecting us infecting us. I did that on purpose, by the way, all right, so let's put up this article that I found on antiwarcom, mainly because it made me chuckle. I think Zelensky, if there was like a betting market on people that don't have a great political future, I would start, wasn't it? You know, boris Johnson had this same kind of thing. Where I just go, how is this disheveled moron held office so long? I mean, obviously he's a post turtle. He's been propped up by people. Let me put this up on the screen. This is antiwarcom Made me chuckle.
Speaker 2:Trump calls Zelensky a dictator who has done a terrible job. Okay, this is too much fun. You know, this is okay. So this is some of the things that you wouldn't get with a Harris election, and I am in no way, shape or form, captured by the fulcrum of the left-right paradigm, folks. So I'm not, you know, don't send me a MAGA hat, okay, but this is funny and just karmically funny. The comments come from Trump after Zelensky said the US president was living in a disinformation space.
Speaker 2:On Wednesday, president Trump called Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky a dictator who has done a terrible job, as the two leaders are trading barbs amid renewed US diplomacy with Russia. Think of it a modestly successful comedian Zelensky talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the US and Trump, would never be able to settle. This is what Trump wrote on Truth Social. Well, those anti-Russian policies were going on under the Trump administration, and I've said I mean foreign policy from 2017 to 2021. Under the Trump regime was carried in the shadows somewhat, but it was the same policy and that's why we couldn't even carry out US foreign policy under that time. Everything was being subverted. Does anybody remember when Trump met with Putin and Putin gave him a soccer ball? And there was supposed to be a device and soccer ball, according to mainstream media analysts who had connections to the CIA. I always thought that was just so bizarre. They always want tensions with Russia.
Speaker 2:The Post came after Zelensky said Trump was living in a disinformation space in response to his criticism of Ukraine not holding elections and for not reaching a deal with Russia earlier in the war, before the invasion. I would like to have more truth with the Trump team, zelensky said. Trump also brought up the lack of elections in Ukraine in his post on Truth Social. On top of this, zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is quote missing. He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A dictator without elections. Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have a country left.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a new era that we're in. Maybe we just called it a new era, but we're going to actually have some winding down of this, it looks like. Unless there's a false flag of epic proportions folks and they tried that They've been trying false flags for a long time the Nord Stream Pipeline. Does anybody remember that? Trump said his administration was currently successfully negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine? Us and Russia officials agreed on Tuesday during the talks in Saudi Arabia to work to normalize diplomatic relations and toward an end of the war. Quote Biden never tried. Europe has failed to bring peace and Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going.
Speaker 2:I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. Think about that. Think about millions folks, millions have unnecessarily died. That's why I've been saying for years I truly think that Zelensky is evil. You look at the inability, that cold, whatever that rationality, and it's not even Machiavellian. I think it's beyond that, because to be Machiavellian you would have some semblance of mine of total victory or some outcome that benefits you in a power struggle. I don't even understand what the goal has been.
Speaker 2:Vice President JD Vance also took aim at Zelensky over his criticism of Trump. The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president's mind by bad-mouthing him in public. Everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration. Well, zelensky, you know they did a political obituary of Richard Nixon in 1962 during his failed attempt to beat Pat Brown in the run for governor of California. That you know happened to run into the same election cycle as the Cuban Missile Crisis and people united behind Kennedy. And that's where you have Nixon famously comes out and says just think of what you'll be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. And then they did a famous political obit about Nixon. Well, that was, you know, to quote Mark Twain. You know the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. That was a bridge too far, but I think they should run one for Zelensky, because this doesn't look good.
Speaker 2:And I, you know, is this schadenfreude? Do I have schadenfreude right now? That's the German word for taking pleasure, being happy to see the misfortune of others. I generally don't do that, but he's such an evil, evil man and has presided over, almost brought the world to nuclear Armageddon because of his inability to have any nuance or seek peace. He's not a peaceful man, so I don't have any respect for him.
Speaker 2:All right, we've got about 11 minutes left. Wwcr cuts off right at the top of the hour, so let's go into this article that's up on Zero Hedge I want to get into. Let me stop this screen. This is a really interesting talk. Put this up Again. Zero Hedge. Oliver Anthony. We are the last humans in world history to remember what life was like before AI.
Speaker 2:Oliver Anthony, a former factory worker who emerged from the woods of Virginia, gave national attention in the late summer of 2023 with the song Rich Men North of Richmond great song, by the way. The song became number one on iTunes, resonating as an anthem for over 80 million Americans who've been smeared, ignored, mocked, slandered and robbed by the deep state that President Trump and Elon Musk and Doge are firing en masse. Now Anthony has elevated his message and warning about the dangers of the technological society. On Tuesday, anthony spoke with the Alliance for Reasonable Citizenship event in London. The big question is why was this internet-famous singer invited to speak at a conference with world leaders and how do his credentials compare to those of others in the room? I'm going to put this up. That is a good question, but I thought the sentiment here, and this runs about seven minutes, so I'll hang on. I want you to hear this because it truly is insightful.
Speaker 3:I appreciate for your opportunity, for your time. I've only got a few minutes here so I've written some things down so you don't have to listen to me ramble, but there is an evil. I have seen under the sun the sort of error that arises from a ruler. Fools are put in many high positions while the rich occupy low ones. I have seen slaves on horseback while princes go on foot like slaves.
Speaker 3:Since August of 2023, I have received a flood of messages, social media, email, handwritten letters. I've had I don't know how many conversations with people face-to-face probably thousands at this point, and I realize now that we don't have any clue to how many around us are really broken, how many are silently suffering and barely hanging on. More often than not, they start the message with hey, I'm a nobody, but Followed by horrors of addiction, mental illness, financial and household struggles, oftentimes incredibly complicated stories that I suspect they may have never told anyone before. But they still have hopes of a hopeful future and they don't want to give up, no matter what. And it kills me because these people, they aren't nobodies as they describe themselves. Our modern society's convenient, comfortable, fragile little existence is oftentimes carried on the backs of these self-declared nobodies, and forgive my generalization, but in the modern world we are so busy idolizing the genuine nothings of society the self-centered celebrities, spineless politicians, clickbait, social media influencers. It seems from my perspective that oftentimes these people live comfortable little lives, while many of our real heroes are drugged through the mud and never once given a genuine thank you for it. But it's not just them that are hurting. We all are, I mean. That's why you're here at this conference, right? That's why people have traveled from all over the world to gather here. You all realize that it's time to do something. So, to set the record straight, I'm not here as an intellectual or a psychologist or a politician, or even a respected member of society. All things considered, I'm a high school dropout who lives in a log cabin in the woods in Virginia. I myself am just a 32-year-old nobody. So I'm just here today as the messenger.
Speaker 3:I believe that many of the problems identified at this conference are quite possibly symptoms of a bigger problem. We currently exist in an age of rapid digital immersion. The current average American teenager will have spent something like 30,000 hours by the time they are 30 on social media. The average American spends six to nine hours a day staring at devices, and whether it's a city sidewalk, a family dinner table, the receptionist at an office, even people driving their damn cars down the roadway, I constantly see the struggle between maintaining conscious attention in the real world and the overwhelming pull we feel towards the digital one. And in my unprofessional opinion, neuroplasticity has made us increasingly digitally proficient, but at a cost of being digitally dependent. And if being hired on as a London cab driver can change your brain on an MRI scan, and if life experiences like PSD can alter the DNA in sperm, what irreversible alterations will 30,000 hours of staring into algorithmically fed state of hypnosis do to the human mind or to their offspring? And in this short breath of time, we live in a state of existence that quite possibly no one else in world history has.
Speaker 3:We have both access to instant global connectivity, infinite information and consumer-level access to artificial intelligence. But we are the last few humans in world history who remember what life was like before it. We are the last few humans in world history who remember what life was like before it. We are the last living people in history to have experienced life before the digital age, and I fear that it may become nearly impossible for younger generations to even differentiate the digital world from the real one before the end of my lifetime. There is nothing inherently wrong with technology. There is nothing wrong with instant connection, and there is nothing inherently wrong with technology. There is nothing wrong with instant connection and there is nothing intrinsically bad about access to abundant information, but what is bad is the lack of control and agency we have over these systems and, without realizing it, we are being programmed and our culture is becoming commodified. Therefore, the more time we spend on these digital information systems, the more we revert to the mean of one of a fixed set of broad internet cohorts. In other words, the more time we spend online, the more commoditized our culture, the more tribal our psychology and the more vulnerable we become.
Speaker 3:When the floods first came to Western North Carolina last year, where I used to live, there were tens of thousands of people who showed up to help from all over the country. No one asked them, no one paid them, and most of the world has no idea they were ever even there. I was there the same day that the governor of North Carolina came for his little photo op. He made a public announcement that day saying that the current statewide death toll with the floods. Oh, I'm sorry. He made a public announcement that day with the current statewide death toll of the floods. But that same morning alone volunteer veterans with cadaver dogs that I had met with had pulled 15 bodies out of a single pile of debris near the KOA campground in Swannanoa. The statewide count at that point had to have been well into the hundreds. I believe the number the governor used that day was 28.
Speaker 3:In fact there was a reefer truck that sat for two days full of bodies because the morgues were overflowing and while FEMA was hoarding donated generators and denying people on their applications, it was the nobodies of the world that were driving ATVs and Jeeps with chainsaws up mountain roads rescuing people. There was two guys we met that hot-wired a bulldozer from a quarry to cut a navigable path through a washed-out road in two days that the state said would take months, allowing supplies to people who hadn't had contact with anyone in over a week. Volunteers were working 16 hours a day taking supplies on everything from horses to helicopters. It was humanity there in front of my very eyes, and it was in that seven days in North Carolina that changed everything for me. It was people, saving people Even with lack of leadership, failed protocols and overwhelming inefficiency from the state. The nobodies took up the slack, and so I'm just here to remind you that we don't need our false idols. We should no longer rely on politicians who bow down to money to manage our city or our states. We need to find the real leaders everywhere and empower them.
Speaker 3:Western North Carolina was proof to me that there is an army of good people left in this world who want to do good things. We just have to give them places to gather and give them the ability to act. And so I'll close with this Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong, for, like the grass, they will soon wither. Like green plants, they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. And so I'll see you on April the 5th in Spruce Pine, north Carolina, for the first official gathering. It is now my life's mission to revive rural America, one town at a time. It's called the Rural Revival Project, so thank you for listening.
Speaker 2:Absolutely powerful, ladies and gentlemen Sorry I had to reset my mic there at the end, I was feeding that audio through but absolutely powerful and something is afoot here. You pay attention to the consciousness that underpins our civilization, not only here in the West, but around the world. This is something that's going on. Decentralization is the future, and the elites, the World Economic Forum, klaus Schwabian types they're fighting against history. The New World Order is in direct conflict with the trajectory of mankind, and so I'm happy to report that there is good things to look at, and especially rhetoric like that that you don't see, haven't seen in our lifetime, especially the last 30, 40 years in pop culture, so that is something really important to watch.
Speaker 2:I don't have much more time. Arterburngold more Paratroothers coming soon. Be sure and tune into that, share the links and give us a good review when you can. I've got some great announcements coming in through Wolfpack and Wise Wolf, gold and Silver. Be sure and go and check that out. If you've got Bitcoin, you want to use it as cash, and check that out. If you've got Bitcoin, you want to use it as cash. We're the first and only precious metals dealer in America to deal with Bitcoin as cash and no fee. Other dealers take it, but they always charge a fee, just like a credit card. I don't do that. That's part of the symbiotic relationship we're creating there just to bring some more value and do something a little bit different. That's been my mission all along, so I appreciate each and every one of you. I'll see you next week for episode 500. So take care of each other. End of transmission.