Wow, the joys of mental decline; typing my name now, I ended up with “Pyjamas,” following Word’s suggestions, but I like it and will stick with it for today. Now that leads me to the issue of the corruption of Australian society, and it seems that Oz is getting even more rotten:
  https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-becoming-more-corrupt-warns-former-judge-20181113-p50fsp.html?fbclid=IwAR3Bls4VUSXRgpIFWUct5Wk6jpcOHKKOJmZl0LG2wdxBAAiJzb-PxwKn_U0

“Australia is becoming more corrupt because successive federal governments have failed to create an effective national anti-corruption body similar to the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption, a leading jurist has argued. Writing in support of a national anti-corruption body, David Harper, a former Court of Appeals justice at the Supreme Court of Victoria, noted that in 2012 Australia ranked seventh in Transparency International’s global corruption index, but that today we were ranked 13th. “The lack of a federal anti-corruption agency remains a reason why we have never come close to being corruption-free,” he has written in an opinion piece for the Herald. Mr Harper writes that the lack of an effective federal anti-corruption watchdog had allowed corruption to flourish undetected and, in turn, allowed federal politicians to hide behind the myth that the federal sphere is free of corruption.”

     We here, to relieve the high tensions of journalism, deadlines and all that exciting stuff at the bullpen, to get the freshest, juiciest articles to you, sometimes need to cool our brains down. So, we send each other logical and mathematical puzzles, to rattle the old neurons, and shake off the mental rust:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/the-threequestion-iq-test-fewer-than-one-in-five-people-can-answer-correctly/news-story/68086e096a7650356a3f87bebd134c2c
  https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/089533005775196732

(1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? _____ cents?

(2) If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? _____ minutes?

(3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? _____ days?

To The Australian        Henry Ergas, in methodically demolishing some of the latest arguments in favour of Aboriginal constitutional recognition ("This voice would have us shouting over the walls", 26/7), warns that enactment of the proposed "voice to Parliament" could "set off a dynamic whose effects are starkly at odds with its supporters' objectives." Well, yes and no, for while some of the advocates for the cause are good-hearted and well-intentioned, others, as can be seen from their words and actions in recent years, are not. They positively want trouble in order to further their cause of cleaving Australia in two. Ergas foresees unpleasant consequences if the government of the day rejects claims by this putative new body: resentment, fury and a damaging row. That negative behaviour will also manifest if the government finally concedes that the idea of constitutional recognition is unjust (which it is) or fated to lose any referendum. Australians generally must brace themselves with courage to face unpleasantness no matter what course the government adopts.
It would be better to face the music now, before it gets louder!
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age        Rachel Perkins quotes former chief justice Murray Gleeson's claim that the dispossession of our Aboriginal tribes "underwrote the development of the nation" ("Saluting a Liberal who understands", 25/7). That is a contestable assertion. It can as truly or more truly be affirmed that the Aboriginals' loss was caused by their failure to defend their territory and that the subsequent development of Australia resulted from the knowledge, skills and efforts of the newcomers. She wants "constitutional reforms" to "empower" her people and give them their "rightful place" in "their own country". What this means for other Australians (97%) is changes for the worse giving a very small and ill-defined group unfair advantages that might lead eventually to the establishment of a separate Aboriginal nation. Any "sense of estrangement" really felt by Aboriginals needs to be addressed in a wiser fashion than constitutional change.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     Refugees, a generation of super-brained workers, who are mostly rocket scientists, and who would have paid for boomer pensions, want to leave the northern socialist country of Denmark. Why? Is it racism? It is always racism. No, it is welfare cuts:
  http://www.thepolitics.online/2019/07/were-leaving-refugees-are-outraged.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR31jnXNM7vzSLKO138hwbQtGuGVZ1lQ5Z4smUoUThlRKvNnWzAbbM8Gt_c
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmqbtyfQ3f8

     Never mind, the rocket scientists will be flying their rockets to Sweden which welcomes the world. Good for you, Sweden.

     Here is a revealing article by Eric Margolis who moved in intelligence circles who makes comments about the Epstein paedophilia honey pots, arranged to capture rich and powerful people on film, for blackmail, financial extortion and political control purposes. Australians should be interested in this affair because probably on a smaller scale, the same principle has been used to con your lower level elites, such as politicians, not that they would really need much by way of threats to keep them in line:
  https://ericmargolis.com/2019/07/the-honey-trap-on-e-71st/

“I’ve had many strange experiences in my decades of covering intelligence affairs. These run from being invited to KGB HQ in Moscow, Chinese intelligence in Beijing, US intelligence in Virginia, Libyan intelligence in Tripoli, South African intelligence, and even Albanian intelligence in Tirana. But none was odder than the day I was invited to lunch in New York City with the by now notorious figure Jeffrey Epstein. The golden boy of Manhattan and Palm Beach society now sits in a grim jail cell accused of having sex with underage girls. He’s been doing this in plain view since the early 1990’s but, until recently, he seemed bullet-proof. Soon after I walked into the entrance of Epstein’s mansion on E 71st Street, said to be the city’s largest private home, a butler asked me, ‘would you like an intimate massage, sir, by a pretty young girl?’ This offer seemed so out of place and weird to me that I swiftly declined. More important than indelicacy, as an old observer of intelligence affairs, to me this offer reeked of ye old honey trap, a tactic to ensnare and blackmail people that was old when Babylon was young. A discreet room with massage table, lubricants and, no doubt, cameras stood ready off the main lobby. I had arrived with Canada’s leading lady journalist who was then close to Epstein’s sometime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell and, it was said, procuress – something Maxwell denies. Bizarrely, Maxwell believed that I could get KGB Moscow Center to release satellite photos that showed the murder on his yacht of her father, the press baron Robert Maxwell, who was a well-known double agent for Israel and KGB, and a major criminal. …

     In my excitement, I upgraded my name, but not to worry, as in my state of mental decay, I am doing that when I get excited. And who would not be excited when they have their diatribes against the vile and filthy universities confirmed by a former antifa member:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/07/18/former-antifa-member-college-breeds-far-left-radicals/

“Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales argued this week that American colleges breed far-left radicals in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight this week to discuss the rise of far-left violence. Nadales, who joined Antifa when he was 16 years old, is now a conservative activist. Nadales described the evolution of Antifa as a far-left activist group. “I was in Antifa when I was just 16, almost 10 years ago. Back then it was just a group that went down to go protest against what we thought were fascists. However, Antifa is far more violent today than it ever was,” Nadales said. “This is not a laughing matter,” he continued. “People are being attacked because of Antifa. We have to be able to hold Antifa accountable.” Nadales argued that Antifa activists are born on colleges campuses all around the United States. He cited various professors that have endorsed political violence for the purpose of advancing far-left politics. One professor, Mark Bray of Dartmouth. To really understand Antifa, we have to go to the college campuses. Throughout the country, we have a lot of different professors who are advocating for violence,” Nadales said. “We have Mark Bray from Dartmouth [College] where he praises and advocates for political violence. More recently…we had a professor from Colorado State University who said that she was done talking to people on her opposition, that she was ready to punch them in the neck. Unfortunately, we are seeing a resurgence of political violence by the left.” “So you believe Antifa is being incubated on college campuses…by professors?” Carlson asked. “I think so. I think that’s where they are getting a lot of their philosophy from,” Nadales finished.”

     The battle is on, with a leading jurist saying that an indigenous voice to parliament would not undermine the power of parliament:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/gleeson-defends-indigenous-voice-proposal/news-story/d7d0ab0f0968b6395c253cf4ea65bf82?utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=BreakingNews

“Former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson has declared a new indigenous “voice to parliament” could be created through legislation — with only minimal references in the Constitution — without eroding the power of the nation’s politicians. Mr Gleeson, one of Australia’s pre-eminent legal figures, said the proposal for an indigenous voice — set out in the Uluru Statement from the Heart — would succeed if it maintained “parliamentary supremacy”. Rejecting suggestions by opponents that the voice could act as a “third chamber” of parliament, Mr Gleeson said the proposed new advisory body was a “worthwhile objective” to help governments draft policies that affected indigenous people. “It is difficult to see any objection in principle to the creation of a body to advise parliament about proposed laws relating to indigenous affairs,” Mr Gleeson said. Speaking in Sydney last night, Mr Gleeson, who was appointed chief justice by John Howard, said it was possible to give the new body constitutional status as an “appropriate form of indigenous recognition”. He said a successful model should not be constructed as a “one-line bill of rights”, warning that could “diminish the lawmaking power of the parliament”. The Constitution already gave the federal parliament powers to create special laws specifically for indigenous Australians. He said it should not offend anyone that a new representative body be established to advise the parliament on those laws. The proposal for a voice to parliament had the advantage of being “substantive and not merely ornamental”, suggesting it could be “constitutionally entrenched” but “legislatively controlled”. “Only the federal parliament can initiate a referendum. It has shown little appetite for proposals to limit its own power; and rightly so,” Mr Gleeson said. “Parliamentary supremacy is one of the essential safeguards of our liberal democracy. It is unlikely that parliament will propose a change to the Constitution in aid of indigenous recognition if the effect of the change will be to curtail its own legislative power. “That appears to have been well understood by the supporters of the voice. What is proposed is a voice to parliament, not a voice in parliament.”

     The world suffers from commodity fetishism, where everything has been converted to a money value, and where the money power controls everything. Some may feel that some things escape this net, such as air, but the global warming nonsense shows that even air will be reduced to a monetary value, and we will pay for air:
  https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is-monetizing-the-air-and-its-going-to-cost-you.html
  http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is.html

“You asked, "What's left to monetize? It appears the answer is 'very little.'" I respectfully disagree. The Biggest Enchilada of all is left. Air. Specifically carbon dioxide, CO2. We just have to figure how to get the yokels to agree to pay for that which was formerly free. Got it! First we browbeat them into believing its evil and that we have to tax it to save all life on Earth. Then, following in the finest traditions of the degenerate late medieval Catholic Church, we'll commission sellers of "Indulgences" to allow sinning at ever rising prices. a/k/a "Carbon Credit trading". This doesn't require any value added and the profits on "buy zero sell high" are limitless. This is the specific outline and the very same agencies that so love financialization of all kinds, $2 trillion dollar student debt to sustain obscenely paid college administrators and academics, endless academic credentialism and huge Hipster Cities sitting on container ports and mediating the China Trade, are all promoting this financialization of CO2 as hard as possible. This is why a nullity like the Paris Climate Accords continues to be pushed even after its proven every way possible that a) the biggest emitters like China and India won't adhere to them and b) even if they did the prescribed regimes will do nothing anyway. And its why I "don't believe" in it. Or rather, its why I believe its just the next and biggest financial scam.

     If the average white British person got into legal trouble, one would be foolish to think that the state would help out, or that there would be any pro bono lawyers lending their services. But add some colour, and oh boy, it is a different story:
  https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1155103/rotherham-grooming-gang-scandal-brothers-legal-aid-victims-sammy-woodhouse-child-sex-abuse

“THREE "pure evil" brothers have received up to £500,000 in legal aid after raping children in Rotherham - while dozens of their victims have yet to receive any compensation. Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain - known as Mad Ash, Bash and Bono - formed a violent, gun-toting, drug-dealing gang. They pleaded poverty despite running a petrol station, takeaways and an egg farm that supplies supermarkets, alongside owning a number of properties. A Freedom of Information request has revealed they were awarded £370,000 in legal aid for their costs in the 2016 crown court trial. This does not include other magistrates hearings and family court battles which experts say could tot up to £100,000 more. Survivors last night called the payout "outrageous" and "immoral". One top solicitor revealed that of the 86 victims he represents, 70 have not yet received any compensation payout. Dozens of others have received sums as low as £2,000. The Hussain brothers, who poured petrol over their victims, are said to have "owned" the South Yorkshire town for more than 10 years. Some girls were just 11 years old when they were raped, tied up and tortured and passed between abusers. Ringleader Arshid, 42, was jailed for 35 years, Bannaras 19 years, and Basharat was given 25 years. Sammy Woodhouse, 34, one of their 50 victims, said: "This is completely outrageous and immoral. "They have probably received 25 per cent more money than what the survivors of their abuse have had in total as compensation. "Something needs to be put in place to stop these people just laughing at the system and milking the taxpayer dry." Former youth worker Jayne Senior MBE, who helped expose the scandal, said: "I'm totally shocked and horrified.This is terrible. "These rapists and abusers are pure evil but they've had almost half a million pounds spent on them, yet these poor girls get nothing. "It feels like the judicial system is not set up to protect victims of some of the most horrendous crimes of abuse, torture and trafficking this country has ever seen."

     When I speak about conservativism, I think of John Howard as the modern example. This is not classical conservativism, which was a position, as in Burke, that saw the limits of all adventurous and radical social programs, and went instead to support tradition. The modern conservatives are not about conserving anything other than money for the elites. That is why they are big on the Great Replacement, which they see as a winner for the masters of the Universe.
  https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/amy-waxs-critics-unfairly-smeared-her-but-shes-wrong/

“Last week at the National Conservatism Conference, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax stirred up controversy with a comment about immigration that, yanked out of context, seemed clearly racist. In context, it’s not racist. It’s just wrong. And the reason it’s wrong should help us understand a vital truth: American civilization is now quite clearly distinct from European civilization, and that’s a good thing indeed. First, here’s what Wax said about immigration and race (via Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, with the most controversial elements highlighted): Here’s the argument in a nutshell. Immigration policy should take culture into account, and the culture that most closely matches our own comes from Europe and the “First World.” Depending on how you define the “First World” (lots and lots of people live in China and Japan), that region is mostly white. So, proper immigration policy will result in more white immigrants even if the intentisn’t to bring in more whites. She derides contrary arguments, including the idea that immigrant populations from all regions assimilate well into American culture, as the “happy fantasy” of “magic dirt” — the idea that mere presence in America transforms immigrants into productive members of the American civilization.”

     I like crystal balls and all of that hocus pocus. It takes one back to youth, to days at the carnival, with weird people doing fantastic things, like predicting economic collapse, my obsession:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/futurist-who-predicted-911-and-the-gfc-says-there-will-be-a-global-crash-by-the-end-of-next-year/news-story/1cbfb302a172303db20ab62fe6251ac6

“Chillingly, within the next three years, a popular world leader will be assassinated using autonomous drone technology, sparking an international outcry. Those are just some of the predictions of futurist Dr Richard Hames — who correctly foresaw 9/11 and the GFC, two of the biggest world events of the past two decades — but they’re not his “craziest”. “My craziest prediction is that within the decade we’re going to see almost a revolutionary change in how we think about politics, social enterprise and the economy,” Dr Hames said, citing climate change and the widening gap between rich and poor as key catalysts. “Governments will seriously consider how they can put a cap on personal wealth, thus challenging the capitalist framework. We will shift our thinking away from growth at all costs to how humanity thrives without growth and even negative growth. Economists will say that’s impossible, but it isn’t if you look at more things than just the economy.” To promote his tour of the country, Dr Hames has come out with a number of headline-grabbing pronouncements — including that a second financial crisis is just around the corner. “Since the global financial crisis none of the structural dynamics have changed, in fact I think they’re getting worse,” Dr Hames said. “There is going to be a global crash by the end of next year.” On President Trump’s 2020 prospects, he argues that “a lot of his base is actually falling away but in a number of ways the economy is going better in the US than anyone expected”. “The Democrats are in disarray, that’s a big part of it,” he said. “They’re fighting each other. I’m saying with almost 100 per cent certainty that he’s going to get back in.”

     Here are some juicy articles in the theatre of the absurd, showing the levels of madness of the progressives. Muslim representative Ilhan Omar, one of the “Squad’ thinks people should fear white men more:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/25/flashback-ilhan-omar-tells-al-jazeera-our-country-should-be-more-fearful-of-white-men/

“Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) suggested in a recently resurfaced interview that Americans should be “more fearful of white men” than radical Islamic terror. In an August 2018 interview with Al Jazeera host Medhi Hasan, the far-left “Squad” member was asked for her thoughts on the purported rise of Islamophobia in the wake of terror attacks such as the Manhattan bike path massacre that killed eight people. “I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country,” Omar claimed.”

     The progressives, especially the US Democrats are proclaiming that there is a “new authoritarian,” which they see embodied in Donald Trump and populism. The writers here, especially Chris (US expiate) and Charles our American correspondence, and Richard Miller in London, have sought to counter this by articles based on news sources showing the real authoritarians are the Left. This theme, that the Left are the new technocratic authoritarians, has been argued for in scholarly detail in a fantastic, and highly significance book by Australian academic Salvatore Babones in The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts, (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018):
  https://www.amazon.com/New-Authoritarianism-Populism-Tyranny-Experts/dp/1509533095
  https://salvatorebabones.com/
  https://sydney.edu.au/arts/staff/profiles/salvatore.babones.php

Here is part of the blurb for the book:
“Salvatore Babones argues that democracy has been undermined by a quiet but devastating power grab conducted by a class of liberal experts. They have advanced a global rights-based agenda which has tilted the balance away from the lively and vibrant unpredictability of democratic decision-making toward the creeping technocratic authority of liberal consensus. Populism represents, contends Babones, an imperfect but reinvigorating political flood that has the potential to sweep away decades of institutional detritus and rejuvenate democracy across the West.”

     America’s latest scandal may be its biggest ever, which in a truly insane land, is saying something. The short of the long is that 1 percenter Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex offences, but previously got off rather lightly looks like going down big time now. He previously had a sex island in the ironic Virgin Islands, and he had leading world elites go there to allegedly have sex with under-age girls, no doubt filming everything. The conspiracy theories are flourishing about who would gain from this. 
  https://www.theorganicprepper.com/unbiased-epstein-scandal/
  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article221897990.html
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220951/Jeffrey-Epstein-charged-sex-trafficking-just-days-records-transported-minors.html

“Jeffrey Epstein is facing two criminal charges in the sex trafficking case filed by federal prosecutors on Saturday, according to an individual who is familiar with the proceedings. Those charges were filed by attorneys for the Southern District of New York after they spoke dozens of victims, who had also been interviewed by both the FBI and NYPD. Almost all of these women claim they were underage when they were asked to give Epstein massages at his Palm Beach or New York City homes, according to a law enforcement official. Those women - some of whom were just 14 at the time of these alleged incidents -  claim that these massages would then lead to Epstein asking that they perform a rape act on him in exchange for money. That same official said that the incidents for which Epstein is now being charged all occurred between 1999 and 2005. This is the same time period during which Epstein first made headlines after flying former president Bill Clinton to Africa on his private jet, which was later nicknamed the Lolita Express. Epstein, 66, will make his first court appearance on Monday in New York, less than 48 hours after he was taken into custody by federal agents at Teterboro Airport. It all happened just before 5pm on Saturday, when Epstein reentered the country for the first time since June 16, when he took off from the same airport bound for Paris. Prior to that trip, Epstein had been crisscrossing the US as he moved between his properties in New York City, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein's arrest was first reported by The Daily Beast, and comes in the wake of a three-part expose in the Miami Herald detailing his settlements with victims and sweetheart plea deal.”

To The Australian        Mark Leibler continues a notable furphy in the current debate about Aboriginal constitutional recognition ("Clear voice without the repercussions of a third chamber", 20-21/7). He writes misleadingly that "the intellectual drive behind the constitutional amendment for an advisory voice emanates from constitutional conservatives, including Liberal MP Julian Leeser." That drive comes from other sources too, but the fact is that Mr Leeser is not a conservative on this topic at all. The real conservatives are Keith Windschuttle, Frank Salter, John Stone and Andrew Bolt (to name just four). Promoting faux-conservatives as conservatives is a devious trick which should be dropped. Leibler is also less than courteous to opponents of constitutional change when he disparagingly refers to them as "nay-sayers" who, he quite wrongly implies, have been proved wrong with their "dire predictions for native title and the apology to the Stolen Generation." The apology never had a genuine popular mandate and was based on an unreliable document ("Bringing Them Home"); and the ongoing saga of "native title", based on the very questionable High Court decision in Mabo, has become a national scandal, tending towards a dangerous separatism, which needs to be halted.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age        It may be true that former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson "delivered a landmark speech making the legal and ethical case for an Aboriginal voice to be enshrined in the Constitution" ("Joyce U-turn on Indigenous voice", 20/7), but how successful was it? His distinction between "a voice to Parliament, not a voice in Parliament" ignores the fact that the voice he recommends would have some of the influential power that the present two chambers possess. Moreover, it could be strengthened by future legislation, as he admitted - perhaps by a Marxist-inspired ALP government. It could also lead to findings by a politicised High Court against the true national interest. Gleeson claimed that the dispossession of the Aborigines "underwrote the development of the nation", but it can be said with more truth that their failure to defend their territory caused their loss and that the development was the result of the knowledge, skills and efforts of the newcomers. In general he failed to answer the cogent case that has been put against constitutional recognition by men of the calibre of John Stone, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt..
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     This international bestseller caused a few ripples when it was learned that, for this English language version, some references to the power wielded by the Rothschild family which appeared in the original 2017 Spanish first edition, have been omitted. A storm in a teacup: the author appears genuinely to have avoided negative bias against any political, ethnic or religious group. He is a colonel in the Spanish army and was formerly chief of counter-intelligence and security for the European Army Corps. He is said to be one of Europe’s top specialists in geopolitics, terrorism and intelligence.

     It is a sobering account, drawing from worldwide evidence taken from the near and far past, as well as present time. It is an antidote to much of the half-baked idealism common in Australia among political commentators and agitators. In his introduction Banos remarks: ‘The powerful have always tried to seize control wherever their tendencies can reach…..It’s important that we are aware of these strategies that allow the powerful to rule the world. We like to think of ourselves as free individuals who make autonomous choices about our lives….. However, we are in fact continually being induced to make certain choices, and the same thing is happening at the geopolitical level – countries are manipulated into making particular decisions and alliances, and their populations have no say in the matter.’

     I assume that the US did make it to the moon as stated in the official narrative, since the conspiracy theories on this one has been met with solid replies. Sure, we conspiratorial types can argue amongst ourselves on that one in the pub, but the important question is whether the US could do it today, with all its AI, and IT and other two-lettered pieces of tech magic. The answer is “no”;
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/20/ret-general-robert-spalding-moon-landing-couldnt-happen-todays-deindustrialized-america-weve-lost-all-china/

“Lessons learned from the Apollo 11 moon landing — particularly the need for nationalized industrial policy involving investments in research and development and protective policies for vital industries — are being lost, said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Rick Manning. Spalding began by noting China’s usurpation of America’s prior dominance in the realm of telecommunication technology manufacturing and development since the space race era. “Let’s just look at the state of our telecommunications,” Spalding said. “There was such a large industrial effort for the space race. Back then, we were spending two percent of GDP on research and development. We had the industrial base that was the envy of the world. AT&T, at the time, was a monopoly, and with Bell Labs, was the standard for telecommunications.” Spalding continued, “When you look at America today, we have no telecommunication equipment manufacturers left that are American companies. When China entered the WTO in 2001, from that time period to 2017, we lost 78,000 factories. We unemployed 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. In the same time, we spent trillions in the Middle East.”

     I am not really interested in the moon landing conspiracy stuff, since I am impressed by the fact that lasers can be shot at the moon to hit some object there that reflects them back, presumably, unless the moon object was put there by extra-terrestrials. Anyway, who cares? Man is not going to the moon on a daily basis, so technology seems to have fizzled out:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-17/why-so-many-believe-moon-landing-was-hoax

“If progress is inevitable, why don’t we have hotels on the moon? For some, it is easier to believe that the moon landing was fake than to accept that technological innovation has just stopped. The Hiatus in Progress
But wait, don’t we have smartphones now, the internet, and all sorts of cool gadgets and apps that didn’t exist 50 years ago? True, the fields of electronics and telecommunications have seen enormous advances, but these few hotspots of innovation cloak the fact that, in almost all other areas, technological development has ceased. Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel documented this decline in his book Zero to One, in which he describes several surprising facts: