by Vinicius Costa via Current News

For years, Americans have been allowed to enter (most of) Europe unrestricted, without overly strict checks or entry permits required

In some airports, like Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Fiumicino in Rome, they are even allowed to use eGates upon landing, like they’re Europeans.

Starting from November, however, they will be faced with additional bureaucracy.

Following years of deliberation, the Brussels-led bloc is finally reforming its border policy to meet the challenges of modern times, from security threats to irregular migration.

U.S. passport holders will not be exempt from further scrutiny when flying into the zone.

Starting from November 2024, if you’re an American, you should expect to get fingerprinted and registered upon crossing the European border, and there’s just no getting around it:

Why Is Europe Tightening Border Checks For Americans?

As confirmed by Ylva Johansson, the European Union Commissioner, the much-delayed Entry-Exit System (EES) of the European Union will launch on November 10 in an attempt to modernize the continent’s borders and strengthen security.

The EES is hardly a novelty–we’ve been reporting on it extensively over the past three years–but this is the first time the EU commissioner herself has confirmed a start date following multiplesetbacks.

In case you’re still wondering what the EES entails, it refers to a biometric system that will use a traveler’s digital photograph, personal information and fingerprints to control their border movements, as well as their length of stay.

In general, Americans can only remain in the continent, or more specifically, the 29-country Schengen Area for 90 days out of any 180-day period; this means any time spent in anyparticipating country counts towards the established limit.

For example, if you’re traveling long term and staying in Italy for a whole month, savoring your way through the southern Puglia region and going on a museum haul across the cultural hotspots of Florence and Rome, you’ll then only have 60 days to travel around 28 other Schengen countries.

As you should know by now if you’ve ever flown across the pond, European border officials continue to stamp passports of foreign arrivals, and those timed entries are usually their only indication as to how long an individual has remained in the Schengen territories.

From November onward, everything changes, and here’s how:

What Changes From November 10?

‘When that happens, it will be goodbye to passport stamping, hello to digital checks for all passengers from outside the EU‘, noted Johansson.

In effect, Americans––as well as all other non-European travelers––will be required to have their biometric data registered landing in Europe starting from November 10, with the information being stored in a database for three years.

This seems to coincide with the validity period for an ETIAS––Europe’s soon-to-be-launched travel permit also applying to Americans––so it appears re-registration will be enforced simultaneously following every ETIAS renewal.

In simpler terms, it might be that, if you’re a frequent traveler to Europe, this means applying for an ETIAS, and registering your data into the EES every three years, or earlier if you’ve recently renewed your passport.

Regarding ETIAS, the much-debated, controversial entry authorization system is set to be introduced from 2025 only, so you don’t need to worry about that specifically if you’re traveling in the Old Continent this upcoming winter.

Once the ETIAS is fully operational, you will not be allowed to board Europe-bound flights unless you’ve been pre-screened and submitted an application online in advance.

This is in fact less complicated than it sounds, as every ETIAS application is processed online, and the application process itself takes no longer than some minutes, with most travelers, particularly low-risk ones like Americans, being expected to get instant approval.

You will have to pay a €7 fee, though, and remember, holding a valid ETIAS does not guarantee entry into Europe: that’s still up for border officers to decide, and they will definitely take into account your profile as a traveler, and whether you have a history of respecting the 90 day rule or not.

That’s where the EES comes into play.

One thing is for certain: travelers will not need to undergo the registration process every time they enter and leave the bloc.

Long story short, out with passport stamps, in with fingerprinting and digital checks.

‘At every single airport, every single harbor and every single road into Europe, we will have digital border controls––all connected, all switched on at the very same time‘, concluded the EU Commissioner.

See more here traveloffpath.com

They don’t want smart people, they want obedient workers!

Remember that.

‘If Trump becomes President again in 2024…it will be the final death blow…to the Global Order…’ — WEF’s Yuval Noah Harari Advisor to Klaus Schwab

Authored by Riley Waggaman via Off-Guardian.org,

As expected, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was the hottest anti-globalist multipolar traditional RETVRN values conference of 2024 – possibly of all-time.

The unipolar world suffered non-stop humiliations during this mind-blowing freedom event. For example, Moscow Region governor Andrei Vorobyov made an incredible BRICS announcement during a titillating panel discussion about the joys of biometrics, causing the dollar to lose 50% of its value against the gold-backed ruble:

Biometrics is a tool that gives people better quality and more convenience in certain procedures, keeping them neat and tidy. You don’t need any papers or passports—that will all be in the past. Resisting it, in my opinion, is absurd.

The governor of Russia’s second-most-populated region, explaining the inevitable convenience of biometrics—which will replace archaic “papers” and “passports”.

Nothing is being hidden. They’re speaking very frankly. It’s all out there, in the open.

There is even a helpful “recap” of the panel discussion published by SPIEF. Behold the “highlights”:

source: https://forumspb.com/

“I am for biometrics … Everything I do is based on biometrics, everything is based on fingerprints, because I’m took lazy to carry cards with me and it’s much more convenient to just [login/pass/go] through my face,” pontificated an expert panelist.

Was the BRICS Multipolar Happy Order incapable of finding a single panelist who had reservations about turning eyeballs into IDs? Igor Ashmanov, a member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, had to shout his objections from the bleachers because they wouldn’t let his dirty anti-biometric ideas onstage:

source: Telegram

Friend of the blog Simplicius posted a Twitter-summary of Igor’s very rude unipolar objections to biometrics:

This guy sounds like Edward Slavsquat. Great minds think alike.

“Yes, but Russians like biometrics, the most convenient of all forms for identification, which will replace ‘papers’ and ‘passports’,” you might be saying to yourself for some weird and tragic reason.

Take the wheel, nakanune.ru:

People in Russia are narrow-minded and have not yet realized how beautiful, convenient and progressive biometrics are. Therefore, whether they want it or not, the authorities will introduce it wherever possible. Approximately the same reasoning (without these words, but with this meaning) was heard at SPIEF in the section devoted to biometrics. Nakanune.RU provides characteristic statements about the attitude of business towards people.
At first, the presenter of the Russia 24 channel, Maria Kudryavtseva, advertised biometrics, showing how she enters the Unified Biometric System using her face and even the greeting “Hello, Maria!” appears there, which she enthusiastically shows to the audience.
At the same time, there was a feeling of a white gentleman showing “digital beads” to the local natives. And the whole “discussion” came down to one thing—intrusive advertising. It is characteristic that the governor of the Moscow region Andrei Vorobyov, who is a public servant, but showed himself to be a business lobbyist, was also involved in this.
As with artificial intelligence in healthcare , the panel included only proponents of biometrics. Those who might object were simply not invited. Those present were mainly engaged in advertising. Old people do not understand the digital world, but young people were already born with a gadget in their hand, they are very flexible, progressive, digital. They understand how convenient, cool and fast it is. In general, the conversation became very revealing in its vacuity and disregard for the position of citizens.
The first question to the speakers was provocative: is society ready to use biometrics? That is, don’t people want it, does the country need it, not what it will give, not what the risks are—but is society ready, as if the issue has been fundamentally resolved. Which is obscene. Let us recall that according to a 2023 survey , a third of Russians have a positive attitude towards taking biometrics, but almost half are opposed—48%.
[…]
Vorobiev spoke as if he had gone back in time a hundred years ago and was telling backward people of the past about the wonders of the technology of the future. Here are just a few quotes.
“You don’t need a paper or a passport, all this will be a thing of the past, it’s absurd to resist it. We all already use biometrics, including children at school… It’s convenient, you don’t need to twist anything, you just look and that’s it,” said Vorobiev. […]
It is characteristic that one of the main experts in the field of artificial intelligence in the country, a member of the Human Rights Council, Igor Ashmanov, was not invited to the section, who was forced to make remarks from the audience several times, and the section participants politely drew attention to the fact that someone might disagree. So, when Lebedev said that all people are for biometrics, he objected that this was not true. And when they started talking about different points of view, he very briefly but accurately described what was happening.
“You haven’t invited anyone to the presidium, you’re all blowing the same tune! As a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, I hear completely obscene advertising, and nothing more!” said Ashmanov.

What’s wrong with this freak?

Larry Johnson comments on the U.S. State Department preventing Scott Ritter from flying to Russia to attend SPIEF 2024 as a speaker.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Have a Florida condo? Can you afford a $100,000 or higher special assessment for new safety standards?

After the collapse of a Surfside Building on June 24, 2021that killed 98 people, the state passed a structural safety law that is now biting owners.

Not only are insurance rates soaring, but owners are hit with huge special assessments topping $100,000.

New Florida Law Roils Its Condo Market

The Wall Street Journal reports New Florida Law Roils Its Condo Market

Condo inventory for sale in South Florida has more than doubled since the first quarter of last year, to more than 18,000 units. While the sharp rise in Florida home insurance costs is driving some to sell, most of the units on the market are in buildings 30 years or older. Under the new law, buildings must pass milestone structural inspections no later than 30 years after they are built.

In Miami, about 38% of the housing stock is condos, the highest of any major metropolitan area in the U.S., according to Zillow. Of those buildings, nearly three-quarters are at least 30 years old. For those that have large repairs looming, many owners are scrambling to sell before Jan. 1 when building reserves must be fully funded to be in compliance with the law.

“I think this is just the beginning,” said Greg Main-Baillie, an executive managing director at real-estate firm Colliers, who oversees 40 condo renovation projects across the state.

Owners are struggling to find all-cash buyers because mortgage lenders are increasingly unwilling to take on the risk associated with these units. “It’s not the buyers that aren’t qualifying,” said Craig Studnicky, chief executive at ISG World. “It’s the buildings that aren’t qualifying.”

State law previously allowed condos to waive reserve funding year after year, leading many buildings, including the nearly 50-year-old Cricket Club, to keep next to nothing in their coffers. Now, about 40 units in the building of 220 are listed for sale but are seeing little interest.

“These units are practically being given away,” said Sari Papir, a retired real-estate agent who has lived in the Cricket Club with her partner Shaul Szlaifer since 2018. “Even if we found a buyer, what could we buy with the pennies we’d receive for our unit?”

Some are worried developers may already be purchasing condos in the building for a potential takeover, where a developer tries to gain control of a building to knock it down and build a newer, more luxurious one. These condo terminations are happening up and down the state’s coastline. While the rules can vary by building, if enough people vote to sell their units, the others have to follow along.

No Way to Escape the Assessment

Those who cannot sell and don’t have the special assessment, will be evicted and their units seized for whatever the Associations can get for them.

South Florida listings have doubled in the past year to over 18,000. Few of those units will sell, and those that do sell will be at a huge haircut.

The Journal noted the plight of Ivan Rodriguez who liquidated his 401K to buy a condo for $190,000. He then faced a $134,000 special assessment. Eventually he sold the unit for $110,000.

Got the Insurance Blues?

Auto insurance is up more than 20 percent from a year ago. In many places, private home insurance isn’t available at all. Consumers are steaming.

Insurance data from the BLS, chart by Mish

On February 17, 2024 I asked Got the Insurance Blues? Auto and Home Insurance Costs are Soaring

Car insurance is on an amazing run. For 13 straight months, insurance is up at least 1.0 percent. For 20 straight months car insurance is up at least 0.7 percent.

Home insurance, if you can get it at all from any private insurer, is also rising at a fast clip.

If you live in a flood zone, hurricane zone, or fire zone, insurance may be very difficult to get.

Proposition 103 Backfires, State Farm to Cancel 72,000 California Policies

Citing wildfire risk, State Farm will not renew policies on 30,000 homes and 42,000 business in California. Blame the state, not insurers.

On March 26, I noted Proposition 103 Backfires, State Farm to Cancel 72,000 California Policies

Proposition 103 limited the annual increases of insurance companies. State Farm responded by cancelling 72,000 policies.

The Idiot’s Response

Carmen Balber, the executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said “The industry is not going to start covering Californians again without a mandate.”

“That is why we think the legislature needs to step in and require insurance companies to cover people.”

Force companies to cover people. What a hoot. The insurers would all leave and everyone would be on the “FAIR” plan.

Think!

Think carefully about where you want to live. And if it’s a condo, you better be prepared for huge special assessments.

The United States is seeking to establish global dictatorship in the digital sphere, said Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, at a meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Information Committee.

According to him, conditions are being created for total control over the digital space with the possibility of “disconnecting” any information alternative to the Western mainstream.

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” says the UN’s quest for total tyrannical control of your life is coming sooner than you could imagine.

Newman explains, “The bigger story here that people are not paying attention to is the UN is coming together in September… and they are having ‘The Summit of the Future.’ “

“They are telling us they are going to bring out radical drastic reforms in the structure of the UN… and the power of the UN. Think of it as the biggest power grab ever at the global level. The Secretary General of the UN (António Guterres) has put out briefs where he is calling for the UN to be the one world global dictatorship with him at the helm. In emergencies, the UN would have all power in emergencies and have all power to oversee emergency response…
They say the crisis could be a climate crisis, an economic crisis, environmental crisis, pandemic crisis, black swan crisis or maybe something from outer space. So, basically, anything could be a crisis, and when the Secretary General declares a crisis, all power and authority would go to the UN. This is like a blank check on the wealth and liberty on every person on the planet, and this is coming soon. It is imminent. This is coming in September at the UN, and it is a power grab of historic proportions.
They know their time is short, and they are going for the big enchilada here. This is really a summit for a tyrannical future…
They want control of every aspect of your life.”

If you think the “depopulation” or murder program by the Deep State is some sort of conspiracy theory or myth, think again. Newman says:

“One of the interesting things about going to the UN conferences is they are totally open and totally transparent about the fact that they think there are way too many of us on this planet.
We are taking up their space and consuming their resources. They say this openly.
They say there are way too many people having way too many babies, and we have to drastically cut back on the number of people on the planet. They have a whole agency dedicated to this called the UN Population Fund.”

One sure fire way to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time is war. Newman says:

“They have understood, the globalists, the Deep State, the evil doers and the sick cabal, have understood for a very long time that war was the best mechanism for bringing about their totalitarian one world government.
This is not speculation on my part. This is what they say. Their game plan is war, famine, energy crisis and economic crisis. These are all tools and catalysts for accelerating this agenda.
If millions of people die in a third world war, and it does not matter if it is Iran and Israel, or China and Tiawan, or Ukraine and Russia, it really does not matter, they want millions and millions of people dead so people will give up their attachment to the nation state, self-government and individual liberty and give up anything, money or freedom, anything to make it stop.”

Now, how are they going to make this world integration possible?  How are they going to convince 196 or so nations to give up their sovereignty and their nationhood? Simple, says Alex Newman, step by step:

“How do we get from where we are today? — a world of sovereign states, self-governing nation states — to where they want to be, a world effectively controlled by the United Nations? And his answer was, it kind of summarized all is findings — the fastest way is war, the threat of war, and grave crises. …

 

You also get the radical acceleration of globalism. This is like a super-catalyst of globalization.  So now you have the Finns and the Swedes, who forever have resisted NATO, didn’t want to be a part of this, now they’ve joined NATO.

You’ve got the European Union saying, Oh, you’ve got the big, scary Putin over there, we have got to deepen our integration, we’ve got to have a single European military to respond to this aggression, etc., etc. What does Putin do? He says, golly, look at this dangerous European Union. They’re bringing NATO right up to our border, we need to deepen the Eurasian Union, the Eurasian Economic Union he is building.

This is their strategy. Henry Kissinger outlined it in his book World Order published in 2014. He said that the contemporary quest for world order involves the creation of the concept of order within the various regions, and so then you have the African Union, the European Union, the Eurasian Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in South America they’re doing the Union of South American Nations — the UNASUR and UNASUL. Up here in North America they’re doing the North American Union (NAFTA), which they’re building out very rapidly. All over the world, these regional governments, accelerated through war. And then what is Kissinger saying? Well, then you find a way to relate these regional orders or regional governments to one another until they’re all subsumed into the United Nations.

So this is their game plan. War and famine and energy crises and economic crises, all of these are tools and catalysts for these agendas; and if millions of people die…”

Tucker Carlson: US Deep State blackmails Congress into submission 

“Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people on the intel committee, including people who run the intel committee.”

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: According to a recent study by Investopedia, the classic middle-class American Dream now costs over $3.4 million.

That’s the estimated lifetime cost of marriage, two children, cars, homes, healthcare, education, and retirement. It’s now entirely out of reach for many Americans.

What do you make of this? How did this happen?

Doug Casey: The fact is, despite the fact that his standard of living has been slipping over the past 50 years, the average American today lives much better and longer than a king during pre-industrial times. There were never any guarantees that Americans would live in the lap of luxury for their entire lives.

We got to this high standard of living for two reasons. One, people tended to produce more than they consumed and saved the difference. And two, technology has been improving at almost the rate of Moore’s law for the last 200 years.

However, there’s no guarantee that either of these fonts of progress will continue, especially since savings are being wiped out by the destruction of the dollar. A lack of savings means there won’t be a capital pool to finance further advances in technology.

But there are other serious things at work, termites eating away at the foundations of civilization. It’s become customary for Americans to think that it’s okay for some people to live their entire lives without producing at all and to live at the expense of others. A lot of the country is on welfare. And many more are buried in consumer debt, which means they’re either living off the capital others have saved in the past, or they’re mortgaging their own futures.

On top of that, since about 1980, the main export of the US hasn’t been Boeings or soybeans; it’s been dollars. Foreigners have accepted those paper dollars in exchange for real wealth. They’re really just another form of debt. At some point—soon—they’ll repatriate them in exchange for titles to land and companies.

Capital is also being destroyed by the constant wars that the US fights against trivial countries on the other side of the world.

The fact is that our institutions, from corporations to academia to government, have become corrupt, ineffectual, and bloated. The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that, in the physical world, things inevitably degenerate over time. That’s also true in the world of human action. In general, as any institution gets old, it winds down. That’s true of the US, and it’s apparent to everyone—at least anyone outside of the Washington Beltway.

International Man: As the American middle class continues to shrink, it seems the “New American Dream” is to merely get by and make ends meet.

People will have to rent instead of own. They may not be able to afford kids, pets, ribeye steaks, or retirement. They’ll have to take on a lot more debt.

The “New American Dream” looks more like the WEF’s “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: It’s rather shocking that in a traditionally middle-class society like the US, that the “one percenters”—typically those wired to the State and major corporations—now own about one-third of the total wealth.

What’s even more shocking is that the bottom half of society only owns 2% of the country’s wealth. That kind of an imbalance makes for instability. No wonder it’s said that the average guy can’t lay his hands on even $500 cash if there’s an emergency. No wonder a criminal like Klaus Schwab can promote his “You’ll own nothing and be happy” meme and not be hung from a lamp pole— a lot of people now feel they’d be better off in that kind of world.

Increasingly, the wealth of the country is owned by corporations and their top management. It used to be said that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” I used to believe that because General Motors actually created cars, and that was good. But we’ve devolved. GM and other major corporations have become defacto arms of the State. Taxes, staggering regulations, subsidies, and bailouts have destroyed free-market capitalism.

The capitalist system in the US is long gone. We’ve devolved into classical Mussolini-style fascism, which is to say, State corporatism, where corporations and the State work hand-in-glove.

It’s euphemistically called a public-private “partnership.” The people in government and the people in top corporate levels scratch each other’s backs and reinforce each other’s positions. They feed each other power and money. This makes for a highly politicized society, where connections, not production, are what count.

For instance, in the last election, $14 billion was spent on campaign spending to get the hoi polloi to vote for one party or another. But only a fifth of that money came from small donors—the rest from the wealthy and corporations. Of course, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer as our highly politicized society degenerates.

International Man: Many people look back on how they viewed the future and how it was portrayed in movies. Many thought we would have flying cars by now, among other futuristic luxuries.

Instead, we have a declining standard of living, and people look back on the good old days.

Where do you think this trend is headed?

Doug Casey: We’re heading in the wrong direction at an accelerating rate because there’s been a breakdown of moral fiber in society. People, in general, no longer understand what’s right and what’s wrong—or what’s good and what’s evil. They’re taking less responsibility for their individual lives and what happens around them.

We’ve gone from a high-trust society, where you didn’t need to lock your car or your front door, to a low-trust society, where everybody is constantly observed, and security is of critical importance.

At the same time, the country has generally gone from having low time preferences and being future-oriented to high time preferences; “I want it all, and I want it now.” They’re not as future-oriented as they once were.

Going back to the question of moral fiber breakdown, the economic observer Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” People wanted to show off expensive cars and clothes to advertise to other people that they were more successful. But now, because of all the debt in society, anyone can have a nice car. And nobody even cares about nice clothes anymore; everybody wears the equivalent of T-shirts and jeans.

The trend setters have moved from owning and displaying frivolous goods to displaying frivolous ideas—like Wokeism. Everybody is adopting those ideas, to show that they’re hip, in-the-know, and part of the cognoscenti. In the past, adopting the conspicuous consumption lifestyles of their betters would only make them poor. Adopting these degenerate ideas makes them stupid and immoral—which is much worse.

International Man: What advice do you have for struggling middle-class people who are about to be kicked down to the lower class?

Doug Casey: First and most important, don’t go to college unless you need a STEM degree—Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math.

Going to college today does nothing but misallocate four critically important years of your life, permanently indebt you, and corrupt your mind with the idiotic ideas that Marxist professors and administrations cram down students’ throats. Educate yourself. Read constantly.

Next, work to become self-employed, not to “get a job.” You don’t want to rely on a job that somebody else gives you. And save your money—but don’t save in fiat dollars. Save in gold. When you have sufficient savings, learn to speculate and invest.

International Man: As you’ve noted, The Greater Depression is a period in which there will be a significant decline in the general standard of living.

Is there any way to make lemonade out of these lemons?

Doug Casey: We’re well into what I’ve long called The Greater Depression. But I’d point out that most of the real wealth in the world will still exist – it’s just going to be owned by different people.

The opportunity will exist for nimble entrepreneurs and speculators to do well, even as most people’s standard of living drops. But the big question is: For how long will the societal trend that we’re now on continue going down?

When Rome collapsed over a period of several hundred years, living well and peaceably got harder and harder as Europe entered the Dark Ages. Even if you had a lot of money, it really didn’t do you that much good. That’s why it’s important to preserve what’s left of the idea of America.