Saturday, October 31, 2020

Twitter's Censorship "Endangers National Security": DHS Acting Secretary

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Twitter's Censorship "Endangers National Security": DHS Acting Secretary Tyler Durden Sat, 10/31/2020 - 19:30

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chad Wolf called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to “commit to never again censoring content” on its platform after the big tech giant temporarily suspended the account of Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan.

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf testifies at his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, on Sept. 23, 2020. (Greg Nash/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Twitter suspended Morgan’s account on Oct. 28 after he posted updates about the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The company reinstated the account 20 hours later on Oct. 29. In a letter addressed to Dorsey on Friday (pdf), Wolf said that Twitter’s recent action was “disturbing” and called the company’s censorship a national security threat.

“As the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies continue to rely on Twitter to share important information with the U.S. public, your censorship poses a threat to our security,” he wrote.

The Twitter by Morgan on Oct. 28 had a video of the progress of the wall along with the message: “CBP & U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.”

Screenshots of the tweet by @CBPMarkMorgan (L) and the email Morgan received from Twitter regarding his account suspension. (Courtesy of Mark Morgan)

Twitter’s moderators removed the tweet from public view and emailed Morgan, saying, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

“The acting commissioner’s tweet did none of these things. Read it. Watch the video,” Wolf told Dorsey in the letter. He also called Twitter’s action “unjustified,” adding that “the tweet is supported by data.”

“Whether you know it or not, CBP guards the front line of the American homeland. CBP repels and arrests thousands of violent criminal gang members each year. CBP rescues young girls who are forced into cross-border sex trafficking. CBP intercepts dangerous drugs and contraband, including enough of the opioid fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over,” Wolf asserted. “CBP fulfills the United States’ most obvious and essential law enforcement and national security responsibility to the people of our country. Your company may choose to be ignorant of these facts, but it is no less censorship when you choose to suppress them.”

“There was no reason to remove Mr. Morgan’s tweet from your platform, other than ideological disagreement with the speaker,” he added.

“Such censorship is disturbing.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies remotely during a hearing to discuss reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with big tech companies in Washington on Oct. 28, 2020. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Morgan’s suspension came on the same day that Dorsey and other big tech CEOs faced questioning during a Senate hearing to discuss reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 shields tech companies from liability for content posted on their platforms while letting them moderate content, including on political discourse.

Republican lawmakers used most of their time during the hearing to accuse the companies of selective censorship, while Democrats primarily focused on insufficient action against so-called misinformation that they said interferes with the election.

Both Wolf and Morgan traveled to the border in Texas on the following day, Oct. 29, to announce the nearly 400 miles of border wall system built under the Trump administration.

Wolf said that the border system has reduced narcotics smuggling in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas by 26 percent. He also said that in Yuma, Arizona, illegal entries in the areas with a border wall system decreased by 87 percent in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019. In Tuscon, Arizona, the wall system was an aid for border agents, with drug seizures down 25 percent from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020, Wolf said.

‘Intentional’ Censorship

In the letter to Dorsey, Wolf wrote that Twitter’s censorship was “intentional, not accidental.” He recounted that the CBP reached out to Twitter’s office of government affairs, and also appealed Twitter’s censorship decision, but the office ignored the CBP and Twitter denied the appeal.

“Only after CBP reached out to Twitter’s office of government affairs a second time and went public with this censorship, then finally Twitter admitted its bad judgment and unlocked the account,” Wolf wrote.

“I call on you to commit to never again censoring content on your platform and obstructing Americans’ unalienable right to communicate with each other and with their government and its officials, including the thousands of law enforcement officers at the DHS who work vigilantly and diligently to protect your safety every day,” he wrote.

Mark Morgan, former Border Patrol chief, in Washington on April 24, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Prior to his account being reinstated, Morgan told The Epoch Times that his suspension was “unbelievable.”

“Twitter is out of control in their clear bias against this administration and their blatant censorship of anything that may go against the policies of those who sit in cubicles in Silicon Valley,” he followed up in a statement.

Wolf’s letter to Dorsey came the same day Twitter decided to unfreeze the account of the New York Post. The outlet was unable to post content on its Twitter account since Oct. 14 after it shared a stories about alleged overseas business dealings of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Twitter stipulated that the outlet had to delete the original Biden Twitter posts before being able to tweet again, before changing its stance on Friday.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.



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Don’t want to send the kids back to school? Why not try unschooling at home



As schools resume for most Australian students, a new group of parents have emerged. These parents have decided to give home education a longer term try, finding their children have improved academically and benefited from the calmer home learning environment.

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Why Propaganda Is Vital In Upholding The Illusion Of A Democracy

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Why Propaganda Is Vital In Upholding The Illusion Of A Democracy Tyler Durden Fri, 10/30/2020 - 23:40

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Saker blog,

“Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and the trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, the wrong the right. In a country where opinion has sway, to seize upon it, is to seize upon power. As it is a rule of humanity that the upright and well-intentioned are comparatively passive, while the designing, dishonest, and selfish are the most untiring in their efforts, the danger of public opinion’s getting a false direction is four-fold, since few men think for themselves.”

-James Fenimore Cooper

Democracy is something that has been completely taken for granted here in the West. There is an ongoing triumph over past laurels, without paying heed to the road we have strayed from. We criticize others for failing to uphold a standard we consider ourselves the leaders of, but democracy is not something simply “acquired” and subsequently “retained,” it is not a “possession.” This is because a system of democracy is at every moment of its existence defined by the character of its citizenry. Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny.

For such a “creeping tyranny,” control is conditional to whether the citizenry is satisfied with an ever-growing “illusion of democracy.” Such a construct needs to give its subjects the impression that they have “free choice” in what shapes their future and their way of life, including: who will be their “friends” and who will be their “foes.”

And thus, War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda.

The Arthashastra written by Chankya (350-283 BCE) who was chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta (the first ruler of the Mauryan Empire) discusses propaganda and how to disperse and apply it in warfare. It is one of the oldest accounts of the essentialism of propaganda in warfare.

Propaganda is vital in times of war because it is absolutely imperative that the people, who often need to make the greatest sacrifices and suffer the most, believe that such a war is justified and that such a war will provide them security. To the degree that they believe this to be true, the greater the degree of sacrifice and suffering they are willing to submit themselves for said “promised security”.

It is crucial that when the people look at the “enemy” they see something sub-human, for if they recognise that said “enemy” has in fact humanity, the jig is up so to speak.

And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.

No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would put forth that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.

During WWI, on Dec 25th 1914, something rather unexpected occurred and a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front took place between the French/British soldiers and the German soldiers. Some even ventured into “no man’s land”, given its name since none left it alive, to mingle with the “enemy” and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps. A game of football took place as well. It is said that these truces were not unique to the Christmas period but that they were much more widespread during the holiday season.

These fraternisations would understandably make it quite difficult to return to combat against one another…for no apparently good reason. Some units needed to be relocated since they had developed friendships with the opposing side and now refused to fight them.

The lesson was quickly learned and propaganda was heavily pumped down the throats of the Allied countries, and by the course of just a few years, they no longer viewed the Germans as human.

The Battle For Your Mind

“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”

– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”

Mass propaganda is the very reason why in this so-called “age of information”, we are more confused and divided from each other than ever…

It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.

If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.

However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?

The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1). We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.

We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, there is a fear of that very thing, that to “know” will label you an outcast from a “healthy” society. That the simple desire to know is the beginning of rebellion.

It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains today a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.

What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”

Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted. And thus, by our failure to ask the right questions and seek the appropriate answers, we find ourselves increasingly in the unsettling position of a Winston…we are enslaved by the very lack of our own will.

In Orwell’s “1984”, there are three main super states in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that are in one combination or another constantly at war with each other and have been so for the last 25 years.

In the case of Winston, he has only known Oceania (the British commonwealths and U.S.), he knows essentially nothing of either Eurasia or Eastasia, except that sometimes Oceania is at war with Eurasia and sometimes it is at war with Eastasia. In fact, even this memory, that the enemy is not constant, is not something Winston is supposed to recollect or acknowledge. Just by doing this very thing, he is committing a “thoughtcrime”.

Winston’s experience begs the questions, if one were born into a fascist, totalitarian state would they know it? Of course, the state itself would not describe itself as such. How would you be able to compare your “freedom” with the “oppression” of the enemy, when all you were given was what the state chose to give to you?

How do you know that what has come to shape your convictions, your beliefs, your fears really belong to you, and were not placed there by another?

We are all very sensitive to this unsettling question because ironically, that has also been placed in us. It was what started this whole business of “mind control”, you see, it had to be done…for our “protection”.

Warfare in the 21st Century

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of skill.

– Sun Tzu

There a many different forms of warfare, but namely there is warfare that exists in the physical domain of aggression vs defense and warfare that exists in the mental domain of ideas.

The majority of tyrants from the ancient times to present day, have always had a network of powerful people behind them (whether they were aware of it or not) that opened up a path for them to sit on the throne so to speak. For example, we now know that there was a very direct support of Hitler coming from the Bank of England amongst other very influential institutions. That is, Hitler did not arise to power ‘naturally’ or by his mere merit.

The desperation of that economic environment in Germany was predictably formulated as a direct consequence of the Treaty of Versailles which was essentially a death sentence to the German people. And Hitler who had started to make a small name for himself was selected and endorsed as the ‘face’ of what had already been decided would be the fate of Germany.

Wars have almost always been the result of funding and organising from powerful groups with geopolitical interests, often of empire, who create an environment of disinformation and desperation amongst the people through economic and military warfare along with color revolutions.

However, once there was the creation of nuclear bombs, geopolitical warfare was changed forever.

Though we still use much of the same old strategies today, war is ever more located on the plane of ideas, and along with this the ever increasing focus on the manipulation of information and the populace’s perspective of who is good and who is bad.

The war that needs to be fought against the present tyranny is thus increasingly a mental war. In the case of the populace, all together they hold more power than they realise. The real crisis of today’s western thinking is that the people have forgotten how to think. Attention spans have gone down drastically along with a functional vocabulary. People are becoming more and more dominated by image based messages rather than content that requires more than a 10 minute attention span. Articles in the news keep getting shorter and shorter because people seemingly cannot be bothered with too much reading. Along with the serious decline in reading in replacement for quick entertainment (more successful than any book burning in history), people no longer bother to work for a comprehensive viewpoint. Information becomes an annoying barrage of ad campaigns, each yelling louder and more frequently than the other.

The solutions to our problems such as the oncoming economic collapse (in case you haven’t noticed we are doing everything the same as pre-2008), have their solutions in what Russia and China are presenting.

The initiation of war has almost always been presented as a false ‘necessity’, that is in response to the dominating geopolitical ‘balance’, which is basically meant to service the present system of empire, and the erroneous belief in zero sum game.

However, the idea that humans exist in a zero sum game, doomed to battle forever over a diminishing return of resources, was disproven time and again in modern history through the application of successful principles of national political economy. Notable examples of which include Colbert’s dirigisme of France’s 17th century (later revived during the presidency of Charles De Gaulle), the Hamiltonian system of America as exemplified by Abraham Lincoln’s Greenbacks, FDR’s New Deal, and JFK’s space program as well as its most recent expression of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

This system understands that fast money is parasitical and acts in direct opposition to the long-term investments required for projects that will revolutionise a nation’s infrastructure, including science-driver programs.

That debt for such long-term projects is not qualitatively the same as the present debt we see accruing today, and that debt towards investing for the future will always yield a higher return than the cost over time. This is why debt towards long-term investment on infrastructure and science driver projects, such as space exploration, will always be sustainable with a massive return quantitatively and qualitatively. Whereas, the gambling of fast money will very predictably lead to a collapse as was clearly indicated by the 2008 financial crisis, and which insanely has yet to be addressed with a serious bank reform.

The higher battle ground is being fought on the plane of ideas and which proposed ‘new system’ will replace the current collapsing one we are presently in. On the one side the hegemonic rule of a one world government who thinks that they can use force and oppression to rule and on the other side a multi-polar system of cooperating nation states committed to progress that will offer a real qualitative return for the future.

The Art of Doublethink

“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

George Orwell’s “1984” (Big Brother Mantra)

A truly immersive system of propaganda, which necessarily will be full of contradictions to the truth, absolutely requires that its subjects are compliant with “doublethink,” that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites.

Orwell identifies this under two forms of “doublethink”, which are “crimestop” and “blackwhite”. “Crimestop” meaning the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of a dangerous thought.

Orwell further states “It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments…and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short, means protective stupidity.”

“Blackwhite”, is the act of contradiction of plain facts, applied to an opponent. And when applied to the Party, it is the willingness to say black is white when the Party discipline demands it so.

As Orwell describes it 

“it means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past…The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons…The subsidiary reason is that…he must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off… [the precautionary reason] by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party.”

Orwell continues 

“The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest.”

That is, it is the Inner Party members who are the most indoctrinated, the best at inducing “mind control” or “doublethink” on themselves, and at the same time believe that it is the best and right thing to do.

Orwell describes “doublethink” thus: 

“The process has to be conscious , or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt…To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.”

What many fail to grasp when reading “1984” is that Orwell is not only the character Winston, he is also the character O’Brien. He is the Outer Party member-turned-revolutionary, and he is the Inner Party disciplinarian.

He is simultaneously the tormentor-programmer as well as the tormented-programmed.

Winston eventually breaks and releases the one thing that kept him human, his love and loyalty to Julia. In the end, an announcement is made that Oceania is ever nearer to winning the war and Winston looks up at a large poster of Big Brother and cries gin-filled tears of joy and relief, for he had finally come to love Big Brother.

He had become O’Brien.

So Who is the Said “Enemy”?

The enemy is our lesser selves.

Our most base fears, desires and obsessions. The voice that whispers in our ears telling us not to believe in anything genuine or honest, that the world we live in will ultimately destroy itself and thus it is all about looking out for number one. That it is our fate to be the playthings of higher powers.

This is the voice of a prisoner of Plato’s cave, neck shackled and looking at only shadows on a wall. This is not reality. This is the voice of someone who has been enslaved for most of their life. The voice of someone who has become so disempowered that they wholly accept whatever ugly condition is imposed upon them and will even work to defend it as necessary.

There is a way out of all of this, but you will have to become an optimist in order to see the solution.

“We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

– Abraham Lincoln



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Friday, October 30, 2020

NBC: 'Hunter Biden dossier' discredits 'right-wing conspiracy'

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President Donald J. Trump acknowledges an audience member after delivering remarks on the America First Healthcare Plan Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, at the Duke Energy Hangar in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

Echoing the 2016 election, establishment media justified its refusal to investigate the Biden-family, influence-peddling story by claiming it was the work of "Russian disinformation."

U.S. intelligence officials have denied the claim, and no evidence has emerged to support it.

Now, NBC News is reporting Friday in a story prominently linked by the Drudge Report that there's a "dossier" that explains everything.

Under the headline "How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge," NBC reports a 64-page document "that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump appears to be the work of a fake 'intelligence firm.'"

"One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake 'intelligence' document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China," NBC reports.

The document, the network says, is part of a "wider effort to smear Hunter Biden and weaken Joe Biden's presidential campaign, which moved from the fringes of the internet to more mainstream conservative news outlets."

NBC still calls the New York Post stories about the discovery of emails purportedly from a laptop abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden "unverified."

However, numerous people copied in the emails have confirmed their authenticity, and a cybersecurity expert conducted a forensic analysis examining the metadata and concluded the emails are genuine. Further, Joe Biden and his campaign have not denied that the emails are authentic, instead dismissing the evidence as a "smear."

Among those who have confirmed the emails are former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski, who turned over evidence to the FBI one week ago that he was vetted by Joe Biden himself to help the family set up a business negotiating a deal with a Chinese company tied to the communist regime.

On Thursday, a Justice Department official told Sinclair Broadcasting that the FBI launched an investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates in 2019 on suspicion of money laundering.

'Viral pile-on of conspiracy theories'

NBC, meanwhile, said the "fake intelligence document" preceded the "leak" of the Hunter Biden laptop by months, helping "lay the groundwork among right-wing media for what would become a failed October surprise: a viral pile-on of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden."

"The groundwork," however, already had been laid by still-unrefuted evidence published by Peter Schweizer in his 2018 book "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends." and a follow-up, "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite," which presents evidence that five members of the Biden family "cashed in" while Joe Biden was vice president.

After the New York Post report of an email documenting a $10 million deal with the Chinese firm CEFC China Energy for "introductions," Schweizer noted in a Fox News interview that the New York Times reported the Biden connection in 2018.

The Times reported Hunter Biden's business partner, Ye Jianming, wanted "access to the corridors of power in Washington" and he soon "was meeting with the family of Joseph R. Biden Jr."

Ye, who had ties to the Chinese military and intelligence service, has been a fugitive since being taken into custody by Chinese authorities in 2018 on suspicision of economic crimes.

The New Yorker, Schweizer pointed out, also reported a Chinese business executive said he met with Joe Biden during the 2013 trip to Bejing on Air Force Two in which Hunter Biden accompanied his father and struck a $1.5 billion deal with a state-owned Chinese firm.

WND interviewed Schweizer in April 2018 about his book "Secret Empires,"  which shows how lawmakers, on a massive scale, are avoiding scrutiny through "corruption by proxy," using family and friends as "middlemen."

Bobulinski claims that tactic -- of providing distance between the politician and the family's deals -- was at work in the Biden family's business, claming Joe Biden clearly was in charge.

Bobulinski told Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Tuesday he raised concerns in 2017 to the former vice president's brother Jim Biden, about Joe Biden's ties to the joint venture with the Chinese firm.

Bobulinski, a retired lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, said he remembered asking, "How are you guys getting away with this? ‘Aren't you concerned?’'"

He claims Jim Biden chuckled and replied, "Plausible deniability."

There's more

WND reported Oct. 16 that Schweizer also obtained emails separate from the cache reported by the New York Post, from former Hunter Biden business associate Bevan Cooney.

Among them were emails showing Chinese investors and Communist Party officials used Hunter Biden to secure a private, off-the-books meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

In September 2019, Schweizer released documents to counter ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos' claim that allegations of impropriety in the $1.5 billion investment deal had been debunked.

Schweizer noted at the time that the Biden campaign, among others, had tried to create the impression that Hunter Biden was only "passively involved" in the 2013 venture with a Chinese government-backed, private investment fund. But Schweizer posted online a copy of a document showing Hunter Biden was on the the "management team" of the fund, BHR Partners, as a board member. Further, Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer was vice chairman of the board and sat on the company's investment committee.

Significantly, the $1.5 billion deal with BHR Partners was struck 12 days after Hunter Biden traveled with his father on Air Force Two to Beijing.

"People have a right to know how precisely the Biden family was enriched, and what did Hunter Biden give them in return," Schweizer said in an interview in September 2019 with "Fox & Friends."

"He wasn't being paid for his expertise. He was being paid for something," he continued. "And I think we have a right to know what that something is."

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post NBC: 'Hunter Biden dossier' discredits 'right-wing conspiracy' appeared first on WND.



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How social media divides us



Does it feel like everyone is becoming more angry? It’s not your imagination, and it’s not confined to the United States. Across the world, democracies are crumbling and the main driver seems to be a global increase in political polarization.

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Fauci's Treacherous Ties to China and Globalists



Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

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Nine COVID Controversies

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Authored by Jeff Harris via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry. But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land.

Yes we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact. Here are nine facts backed up with data, in many cases from the CDC itself that paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens.

1) The PCR test is practically useless

According to an article in the New York Times August 29th 2020 testing for the Covid-19 virus using the popular PCR method results in up to 90% of those tested showing positive results that are grossly misleading.

Officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada compiled testing data that revealed the PCR test can NOT determine the amount of virus in a sample. (viral load) The amount of virus in up to 90% of positive results turned out to be so miniscule that the patient was asymptomatic and posed no threat to others. So the positive Covid-19 tests are virtually meaningless.

2) A positive test is NOT a CASE

For some reason every positive Covid-19 test is immediately designated a CASE. As we saw in #1 above up to 90% of positive Covid-19 tests result in miniscule amounts of virus that do not sicken the subject. Historically only patients who demonstrated actual symptoms of an illness were considered a case. Publishing positive test results as “CASES” is grossly misleading and needlessly alarming.

3) The Centers for Disease Control dramatically lowered the Covid-19 Death Count

On August 30th the CDC released new data that showed only 6% of the deaths previously attributed to Covid-19 were due exclusively to the virus. The vast majority, 94%, may have had exposure to Covid-19 but also had preexisting illnesses like heart disease, obesity, hypertension, cancer and various respiratory illnesses. While they died with Covid-19 they did NOT die exclusively from Covid-19.

4) CDC reports Covid-19 Survival Rate over 99%

The CDC updated their “Current Best Estimate” for Covid-19 survival on September 10th showing that over 99% of people exposed to the virus survived. Another way to say this is that less than 1% of the exposures are potentially life threatening. According to the CDC the vast majority of deaths attributed to Covid-19 were concentrated in the population over age 70, close to normal life expectancy.

5) CDC reveals 85% of Positive Covid cases wore face masks Always or Often

In September of 2020 the CDC released the results of a study conducted in July where they discovered that 85% of the positive Covid test subjects reported wearing a cloth face mask always or often for two weeks prior to testing positive. The majority, 71% of the test subjects reported always wearing a cloth face mask and 14% reported often wearing a cloth face mask. The only rational conclusion from this study is that cloth face masks offer little if any protection from Covid-19 infection.

6) There are inexpensive, proven therapies for Covid-19

Harvey Risch, MD, PhD heads the Yale University School of Epidemiology. He authored “The Key to Defeating Covid-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It” which was published in Newsweek Magazine July 23rd, 2020. Dr. Risch documents the proven effectiveness of treating patients diagnosed with Covid-19 using a combination of Hydroxychloroquine, an antibiotic like azithromycin and the nutritional supplement zinc. Medical Doctors across the globe have reported very positive results using this protocol particularly for early stage Covid patients.

7) The US Death Rate is NOT spiking

If Covid-19 was the lethal killer it’s made out to be one would reasonably expect to see a significant spike in the number of deaths reported. But that hasn’t happened.

According to the CDC as of early May 2020 the total number of deaths in the US was 944,251 from January 1 – April 30th. This is actually slightly lower than the number of deaths during the same period in 2017 when 946,067 total deaths were reported.

8) Most Covid-19 Deaths Occur at the End of a normal Lifespan

According to the CDC as of 2017 US males can expect a normal lifespan of 76.1 years and females 81.1 years. A little over 80% of the suspected Covid-19 deaths have occurred in people over age 65. According to a June 28th New York Post article almost half of all Covid suspected deaths have occurred in Nursing Homes which predominately house people with preexisting health conditions and close to or past their normal life expectancy.

9) CDC Data Shows Minimal Covid Risk to Children and Young Adults

The CDC reported in their September 10th update that it’s estimated Infection Mortality Rate (IFR) for children age 0-19 was so low that 99.97% of those infected with the virus survived. For 20-49 year-olds the survival rate was almost as good at 99.98%. Even those 70 years-old and older had a survival rate of 94.6%. To put this in perspective the CDC data suggest that a child or young adult up to age 19 has a greater chance of death from some type of accident than they do from Covid-19.

Taken together it should be obvious that Covid-19 is pretty similar to typical flu viruses that sicken some people annually. The vast majority are able to successfully fight off the virus with their body’s natural immune system. Common sense precautions should be taken, particularly by those over age 65 that suffer from preexisting medical conditions.

The gross over reaction by government leaders to this illness is causing much more distress, physical, emotional and financial, than the virus ever could on its own. The bottom line is there is NO pandemic, just a typical flu season that has been wildly blown out of proportion by 24/7 media propaganda and enabled by the masses paralyzed by irrational fear.

State and local governments in particular have ignored the rights of the people and have instituted outrageous attacks on freedom and liberty that was bought and paid for by the blood and sacrifice of our forefathers.

Slowly the people are recognizing the great fraud perpetrated on them by bureaucrats and elected officials who have sworn to uphold rights and freedoms as spelled out in the US Constitution. The time has come to hold these criminals accountable by utilizing the legal system to bring them to justice.

Either we act now to preserve freedom and liberty for our children and future generations yet unborn, or we meekly submit to tyrants who crave more power and control. I will not comply!



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Thursday, October 29, 2020

Glenn Greenwald On His Resignation From The Intercept

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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald quit his job this morning. In a bizarre, ironic, and disturbing commentary on trends in modern media, the celebrated reporter was forced to resign after writing a story criticizing both the Biden campaign and intelligence community — only to have it spiked by the editors of The Intercept, the news outlet he co-founded six years ago with the aim of preventing pretty much this exact situation.

“The irony,” Greenwald says, “is that a media outlet I co-founded, and which was built on my name and my accomplishments, with the purpose of guaranteeing editorial independence, is now censoring me in the most egregious way — about the leading presidential candidate, a week before the election.”

Greenwald becomes the latest high-profile journalist to leave a well-known legacy media organization to join Substack. You’ll be able to read the piece spiked by The Intercept at his new site here.

In a nutshell, the fatal sequence of events went as follows:

Greenwald, after commenting pointedly about the reaction by press and Democratic Party officials to the New York Post story, reached out to Intercept editor Betsy Reed to float the idea of writing on the subject.

The first hint of trouble came when Reed suggested that yes, it might be a story, if proven correct, but “even if it did represent something untoward about Biden,” that would “represent a tiny fraction of the sleaze and lies Trump and his cronies are oozing in every day.”

When Greenwald retorted that deciding not to report on one politician’s scandals because those of another politician are deemed worse is a “corrupt calculus” for reporters, Reed expressed concern. Based on this, on his comments on Twitter, and other factors, she worried that “we are headed for a conflict over the editing of this piece.”

Greenwald insisted he wasn’t planning an overwhelming amount of coverage but wanted to do a single article, reviewing the available facts and perhaps asking the Biden campaign to comment on the veracity of the Post story. Reed agreed that he should write a draft, then they could “see where we are.”

An aside: when reporters and editors interact, they speak between the lines. If an editor only ever suggests or assigns stories from a certain angle, you’re being told they don’t particularly want the other angle. If your editor has lots of hypothetical concerns at the start, he or she probably won’t be upset if you choose a different topic. Finally, when an editor lays out “suggestions” about things that might “help” a piece “be even stronger,” it’s a signal both parties understand about what elements have to be put in before the editor will send the thing through.

Reed explained that any piece Greenwald wrote on the Biden/Burisma subject would have to go through “the editorial process and fact-checking that we do with any story with this kind of high profile.” Peter Maass would edit, but Reed also noted that there was a lot of “in-house knowledge” they could all “tap into.”

By “in-house knowledge,” she meant the work of Robert Mackey and Jim Risen, two Intercept reporters with whom Greenwald clashed in the past. Risen had already loudly denounced the Post story not only as conspiracy theory, but foreign disinformation. Essentially, Reed was telling Greenwald his piece would be quasi-edited by people with whom he’d had major public disagreements about Russia-related issues going back years.

To this, Greenwald responded that this was a double-standard: when Risen wrote an article credulously quoting intelligence officials like James Clapper, John Brennan, and Michael Hayden (more on the extreme irony of this later) describing the Post story as having “the classic earmarks of Russian misinformation,” he could do so willy-nilly. But when Greenwald wanted to write an op-ed piece questioning the “prevailing wisdom on Biden and Burisma,” a team of people would would be summoned.

“The only reason people are getting interested in and ready to scrutinize what I write is because everyone is afraid of being accused of having published something harmful to Biden,” Greenwald told them. “That’s the reality.”

Then Greenwald wrote the piece — essentially an opinion piece, drawing upon publicly available information. In it, he criticized the media response to the Post story and noted, among other things, that the history of the Hunter Biden/Burisma story did not reflect well on any of the Bidens. Reed and Maass refused to publish it. Mass wrote:

Betsy agrees with me that the draft’s core problem is the connection it often asserts or assumes between the Hunter Biden emails and corruption by Joe Biden. There are many places in which the explicit or implied position is a) the emails expose corruption by Joe Biden and b) news organizations are suppressing their reporting on it. Those positions strike me as foundations to this draft, and they also strike me as inaccurate.

Maass added that he didn’t believe Greenwald had done enough to address the “complexity” of the “disinformation issue”:

Lastly, I think the disinformation issue should be handled with greater complexity. I think it’s totally right to point out the haste with which some journalists and experts are talking about Russia’s hand. But the argument that some people make about disinformation, and that I think you should address, is the way the materials are being used by Giuliani, the rightwing media, and Trump, to support an exaggerated and false narrative – a narrative that is not supported by the materials themselves…

Maass suggested Greenwald cut the piece and stick to a narrower essay about whether or not the press was directly asking Biden enough questions. Another irony: Greenwald was trying to criticize the rush to describe the Post story as disinformation, and Maass was essentially asking that he address the “disinformation issue,” even though the material’s veracity had not been denied, and the editors themselves didn’t seem to believe the laptop material was fake. Reed at one point wrote to Greenwald, “I agree with you that [the emails] appear to be mostly or entirely genuine, though authentication has been difficult in part because of the Biden camp’s refusal to address questions about authenticity.”

Greenwald, by then furious, noted that neither Maass nor Reed had identified a factual inaccuracy in the article, but rather disagreed with its conclusions and his assessments of the facts — his “positions,” rather than his information.

Greenwald added:

What a healthy and confident news organization would do -- as the New York Times recently did with its own Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project -- is air the different views that journalists have about the evidence and let readers decide what they find convincing, not force everyone to adhere to a top-down editorial line and explicitly declare that any story that raises questions about Biden's conduct is barred from being published now that he's the Democratic nominee.

In the end, Maass and Reed would not budge, and Greenwald resigned rather than accept what he described as being censored. The Intercept quickly put out an icy statement describing him as a “grown person throwing a tantrum,” adding that Greenwald was laboring under the assumption that “anyone who presumes to edit him is a censor.”

Anticipating the obvious criticism that the Intercept had betrayed its founding mission, they wrote, “It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not the Intercept.” Mourning the reporter he “used to be,” the Intercept editors defined the values that Glenn supposedly lost sight of as “an investigative mission… that involved a collaborative process.” In other words, absolute editorial freedom — but by group consent.

They then pulled out the go-to rhetorical device of media hall monitors in the Trump era, accusing him of being a secret Trump partisan, trying to “recycle… the Trump campaign’s… dubious claims, and launder them as journalism.”

I reached out to both Reed and Maass for comment this afternoon. Neither has responded.

In the last few weeks I’ve heard from multiple well-known journalists going through struggles in their newsrooms, with pressure to avoid certain themes in campaign coverage often central to their worries. There are many reporters out there — most of them quite personally hostile to Donald Trump — who are grating under what they perceive as relentless pressure to publish material favorable to the Democratic Party cause. Greenwald’s story mirrors some of the others, but his is more striking than some others on a few levels.

Many outside the media world will miss the subtleties of what makes this tale so crazy. Some may even think it’s unreasonable for a reporter to quit rather than “accept editing.” To understand why that’s not what’s going on here, one has to know the unique history of The Intercept.

On February 10th, 2014, Greenwald, documentarian Laura Poitras, and fellow reporter Jeremy Scahill announced the creation of an aggressive new investigative outlet, backed by the deep pockets of eBay founder and billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

It was big news in the media world. Greenwald and Poitras had been working on one of the great scoops in recent times, helping former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden come forward about a secret, illegal mass surveillance program conducted by the U.S. government. After bringing the story to light, Snowden was forced into exile, and Greenwald in particular became the subject of denunciations by colleagues and politicians alike, with some prominent officials openly calling for his prosecution and jailing.

The Intercept was designed specifically to be a place where journalists would be protected from such intimidation and editorial interference. As they wrote in their introduction:

Over the past seven months the journalists who have reported on these documents from the National Security Agency have been repeatedly threatened by a wide range of government officials… None of this will deter the journalism we are doing. A primary function of The Intercept is to insist upon and defend our press freedoms from those who wish to infringe them.

Greenwald recalls today: “We saw in the media, reporters were quoting CIA officials about Snowden and about me. They were essentially stenographers. The Intercept was created to avoid that.”

Again as noted in the announcement six years ago, Intercept writers were to be encouraged at all times to speak their minds, no matter who might take offense. This, they said, was another core part of the organization’s mission:

The editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed… Our journalists will be not only permitted, but encouraged, to pursue stories without regard to whom they might alienate.

The whole idea of The Intercept was to create a hands-off, journalist-run enterprise where mistakes like the WMD fiasco could never happen. If the journalists themselves were put in charge, the thinking went, there could be no pressure from above to conform to clearly flawed official narratives like the WMD case, or to back off stories like the Snowden affair.

The traditional method of controlling the press — as described by legendary independent journalists like I.F. Stone — was the quiet aside by the boss, “a little private talk,” where a “hint that the reporter seems irresponsible, a little bit radical” would be dropped. Getting the message, and fearing for his or her job, the reporter backs off. Or, in cases like the Iraq war runup, the strategic dismissal or un-hiring of a big name with the wrong views — Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura — makes sure the rest of the employees get the message.

Greenwald co-founded the Intercept with this exact scenario in mind, building a structure where “little private talks” with bosses would never happen, and there couldn’t be high-profile dismissals for ideological reasons.

What he didn’t guess at was that even in an atmosphere where managerial interference is near zero, a collective of independent journalists can themselves become censors and enforcers of official orthodoxies. In some cases, journalists will become more aggressive propagandists and suppressors of speech than the officials from whom they supposedly need to be protected. This is what happened with The Intercept.

It’s a long story, but the punchline is that the self-editing journalists at the Intercept somewhere along the line began to fall for what will look, years from now, like a comically transparent bait-and-switch operation. They’ve been suckered into becoming parodies of their original incarnation.

In the Obama years, progressive journalists were infuriated by the disclosures of whistleblowers like Snowden and Chelsea Manning, and aimed their professional ire at the federal government for war crimes, drone assassination, and mass abuse of surveillance authority. The bugbears of the day were intelligence officials who ran these programs and deceived the public about them: people like CIA directors Hayden and Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

These intelligence community leaders only a few short years ago served an administration that sought a “reset” with the systematic human rights violator that was Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a country then-President Obama dismissed throughout his tenure as a “regional power” that acts “not out of strength, but out of weakness.” The consistent posture of the Obama administration — the Obama-Biden administration — was that Russia ranked far below terrorists as a potential threat to the United States.

After 2016, however, these officials presented themselves as norms-defending heroes protecting America against the twin “existential” threats of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Russia, just a few years ago described by Rachel Maddow as a harmless “gnat on the butt of an elephant,” was now reinvented as an all-powerful foe mounting an influence campaign of unprecedented reach, with everyone from Trump to the Green Party to blogs like Truthdig and Naked Capitalism, to congresswoman and war veteran Tulsi Gabbard, to Bernie Sanders, all potentially doing the bidding of a Cold War foe bent on “sowing discord” on our shores.

A key part of this propaganda campaign was the continual insistence that any criticism of the Democratic Party was, in essence, aid and comfort to our Red Enemy. Would-be progressive journalists horrified by Donald Trump accepted this logic with enthusiasm. Over the course of four years abandoned their traditional mistrust of the security state to transform themselves into a squad of little Pavik Morozovs, anxious to stamp out traitors to the cause and keep the news business clean of “Russian” misinformation that might help Donald Trump get re-elected.

Greenwald never bought this line. In July of 2017, he reported on the creation of new organizations like the Alliance For Securing Democracy, that united Bush-era neoconservatives like Jamie Fly with Democrats like Hillary Clinton foreign policy advisor Laura Rosenberger. Groups like this, and the Atlantic Council, advocated for more aggressive foreign policy aims and tighter controls over Internet content, using new paranoia about Russia as the glue for the expanding alliance.

As press enthusiasm for the Trump-Russia story widened, progressives began to invite old enemies back into the fold. People like “Axis of Evil” speechwriter David Frum and Weekly Standard editor and key Iraq War proponent Bill Kristol became regular guests on CNN and MSNBC, while ex-spooks like Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, and a long list of others were given TV contributor deals, now serving as the press instead of facing criticism from it.

“The prevailing power center is Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the Democratic Party,” Greenwald says. “In the Trump era, they managed to convince everyone to view anyone who opposes Trump as allies.”

Greenwald’s opinions on these issues attracted indignation from former friends and colleagues alike, who denounced his criticism of Democrats as unpatriotic and unacceptably immoral behavior for an ethical reporter in the Trump era. He began to be criticized, by journalists, for refusing to take the word of secret services.

When the New Yorker wrote an astonishingly vicious profile of Greenwald, describing his refusal to accept theories of Russian subversion as a pathology inspired by a difficult childhood and confusion over his sexuality, his nominal boss and co-worker, Reed, was happy to chime in about things Greenwald does that are “not helpful to the left.”

She talked about Greenwald having inspired social media followers “who are so convinced that they are being lied to all the time that anything that the intelligence community says can’t possibly be true.” She added that “it’s not helpful to the left and to all the candidates and causes we favor to continue to doubt the existence of some kind of relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign.”

Meanwhile, Greenwald’s former editor at Salon, Joan Walsh, said Greenwald’s refusal to buy the Russia story was “motivated by real disdain for what the Democratic Party has become,” which she explained meant:

The ascendance of women and people of color in the Party, and the fact that that coalition defeated Bernie Sanders.

All agreed that Greenwald couldn’t possibly just have a different opinion, or be insisting on seeing evidence before believing a collusion story that, by the way, turned out to be wrong. His ideas came from being sexually confused, misogynistic, racist, and financially desperate.

Or was it even worse? Glenn more than anyone got the treatment other reporters like myself, Aaron Mate, and Ken Vogel of the New York Times got, for crossing established narratives on Russia or Ukraine: he was accused of being a Russian stooge, even a literal spy. His favorite critics on that score have been those same old, once-disgraced neoconservatives, as well as officials in the Democratic hierarchy, and, of course, other reporters:

Throughout the last four years, Greenwald has been one of the only people in the media world to speak out about some of the more preposterous claims made by Democratic Party partisans, from the pee tape to charges that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset to walked-back bombshell stories like the Afghan bounty story. One of his consistent themes is that only a person like him, with fame and financial security, is able to safely challenge orthodoxies in this business.

The significance of what’s happened with the Intercept is that even journalists working in companies they founded can’t get away from these pressures. For every public story like Greenwald’s, there are dozens more you don’t hear about, involving media members who can’t speak out. Not all of them are dealing with the same issues, but dynamics are often similar.

The Intercept and many media outlets have gotten turned around by the Trump phenomenon. It’s a difficult time for reporters, with an unstable and potentially dangerous president. Some have been convinced to change the way they used to do business, to make sure they are not accused of having helped such a person get elected.

Many in the press have therefore talked themselves into the proposition that questioning things like the Trump-Russia collusion theory, or the reflexive dismissal of adverse information about politicians like Biden as foreign disinformation, can have no purpose beyond pro-Trump partisanship. In service of this, they’ve surrendered their own traditional roles as questioners and arbiters of fact, giving that power over to the same people and institutions whose poor performance, record of deception, and corruption helped inspire voters to make such a desperate choice in Trump in the first place. They’ve not only allowed intelligence community narratives to drive the press, they’ve invited it.

When the likes of Brennan, Clapper, and Hayden wrote a joint letter decrying the recent Post story as a seeming Russian mischief, they were very careful in what they said. They used the term “information operation” instead of “misinformation,” and prominently included the line, "We do not have evidence of Russian involvement."

However, in the recent Intercept story quoting that letter, describing the Post story has having “the classic earmarks of Russian misinformation,” the the line about not having evidence was left out.

“The CIA letter was more honest than The Intercept,” is how Greenwald puts it.

A few years ago, reporters had the intelligence community on the defensive. Now, reporters are ratting each other out on their behalf, with the aim of creating an absolute political monoculture. Having pushed out one of journalism’s most accomplished members, they’ve nearly succeeded.



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Von Greyerz: "Get Ready For The Biggest Collapse In Human History"

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Von Greyerz: "Get Ready For The Biggest Collapse In Human History" Tyler Durden Thu, 10/29/2020 - 20:25

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

Liftoff & Collapse

Get ready for the biggest collapse in the history of mankind. It will be devastating and reach all parts of society, economic, financial, political & social.

But wait, it won’t happen just yet. Because before that the world will experience a LIFTOFF in markets of gigantic proportions. This will be the grand finale of this financial era. It will involve inflationary liquidity injections of proportions never seen before in history and lead to a massive explosion in many asset markets.

Most investment assets will benefit as the disconnect between markets and reality grows to distortionary proportions.

TRUMP – YOU WIN! BIDEN – YOU WIN!

So there we have it. For investors the outcome of this election is totally irrelevant. In four years time, the difference for the economy and markets between a Trump or Biden victory will be insignificant.

Either one of them only has one choice. They are both facing a bankrupt country which has been running budget deficits since 1930 with four years of exception in the 1940s-50s. The Clinton surpluses were fake. Also, the US has had trade deficits for almost 50 years. The consequence has been an exponentially surging debt which was under $1 trillion when Reagan became President in 1981 and is now $27t. In the next four years, a $40t debt is guaranteed as I forecast four years ago but as the financial system implodes, the debt could easily run into $100s of trillions or $ quadrillions when the derivative bubble bursts.

The global financial system should have collapsed already in 2006-9 but the central banks managed to delay the inevitable demise for over a decade.

SUPER CYCLE BULL MARKETS END IN EUPHORIA

What we must understand is that the end of an economic supercycle doesn’t happen quietly. No, the conditions need to be uber-euphoric with maximum bullishness for the economy and stocks. This means that before this era is over, markets must surge in the final months, even double over a 9-18 months period.

Multiple factors are now in place for this to happen. Firstly both presidential candidates will need not just fistfuls of dollars but quantum computers that can print the required trillions and quadrillions of dollars.

The convenient excuse they have is of course Covid. Individuals not working need money, companies need money, municipalities, states and the Federal government need money.

But we mustn’t forget how the end of the final phase of this economic era started. This was back in Aug-Sep 2019 when the Fed and the ECB shouted out from the roof tops that were going to do what it takes to save the system. They didn’t tell us what the problems were, but it was clear to some of us who understood the fragility of the financial system that it was in dire straits. When the last crisis started in 2006, the Fed’s balance sheet was $830b. At the end of the Great Financial Crisis in 2009, the balance sheet had grown to $2t.

But no one must believe that the problem had been solved by 2009. All it was, was a temporary stay of execution. Why otherwise would the Fed’s balance sheet have grown by another $5t since 2009. Just looking at the predicted budget deficits in the next 4 years, plus accelerating problems in the financial system the Fed’s balance sheet is likely to explode in coming years.

LIQUIDITY INJECTIONS WILL GIVE SHORT TERM BENEFIT TO THE ECONOMY

So the conditions are in place for the biggest liquidity injection in financial history. For many years we have experienced a total disconnect between economic reality and markets. The coming acceleration in money printing and liquidity injections in to the financial system will be so overwhelming that it will not just fuel markets but also give a short term, albeit artificial, boost to the economy.

This is a typical course of events at the beginning of an inflationary phase which leads to hyperinflation as the currency collapses.

The paralysation of the world economy due to Covid will probably peak with the current second wave and therefore add to the optimism in markets. But no one must believe that the pandemic is the cause of the problems in the world economy. No, it has just been a very vicious catalyst which hit an already fragile financial system.

When Covid gradually slows down, the initial optimism combined with the flooding of the system with printed money might last for a year or so. But as the world realises that you cannot solve a debt problem with more debt, the real difficulties in the economy and the financial system will reemerge with a vengeance.

FROM BOOM TO BUST

So let us look at a possible scenario of events following the election:

New president will flood the economy with money & boost stocks

Initial market volatility will settle down quickly and investors will respond optimistically to the new president’s promises of support to every corner of the economy.

Stock markets will surge and could double over a 9-18 month period. No cash will be left on the sidelines. Both institutions and retail investors will throw all the cash they have at the stock market. There will be a frenzy which will surpass the tech stock boom in the 1990s. There will be fanfares and blazing guns as the market seems unstoppable.

But after the likely short-term boom, there will be tears as markets fall by over 90% in real terms. And sadly most investors will ride the stock market all the way down. The big difference this time is that central banks will not and cannot save them.

COMMODITIES WILL BOOM

The biggest beneficiary of this coming boom will be commodity markets which are at a 50 year low versus stocks. Looking at the chart below, the minimum target would be commodities outperforming stocks by 4 to 1. Eventually a new high in commodities against stocks is likely. This would mean commodities outperforming stocks by 20x. The first part of this outperformance will come as stock markets rise. But the final phase will be when general stock markets collapse and commodities continue to strengthen. Goldman Sachs expect commodities to rise 28% in 2021. They expect inflation plus a commodities deficit will drive prices higher. And this is of course what the chart below tells us.

PRECIOUS METALS WILL SHINE

Gold, silver and platinum will vastly outperform stocks. The Dow – Gold ratio will initially reach 1 to 1 where it was in 1980 when gold was $850 and the Dow index 850. Eventually the ratio will reach at least 0.5 to 1 which means that the Dow will lose 97% against gold in the next five years.

Goldman Sachs expects gold to reach $2,300 in 2021 but I believe that target is too conservative. Before gold breaks out above the August high at $2,074, a correction down to $1,800-20 is possible and would not change gold’s unstoppable rise. In this latest phase, gold is in a bull market or more correctly, the currencies are in a bear market since 1999. The continued debasement of the currencies is guaranteed by the central banks since they only have one option – TO PRINT AND PRINT AND PRINT until money dies.

We must remember that gold is the king of the metals and therefore the safest precious metal to hold. But initially at least, silver and platinum will strongly outperform gold but with massive volatility.

Vital to hold physical metals stored in safe vaults in the investor’s name, outside the banking system. It is important not to forget that the risks in the financial system will be at a maximum for the next few years and a failure can happen at any time.

PRECIOUS METALS MINING STOCKS

For the smart investor, this is where more money will be made than in any area of stocks or other investments. Especially the juniors will really shine. But this is a market for specialists. So either best to follow some of the smartest investors in this area or to buy an index of these stocks. There will be many 10-20 baggers and even some 100 baggers but obviously also some losers. So important to have a spread.

The biggest risk with mining stocks is that they are normally held within the financial system. So even though they are a terrific investment opportunity, they are not the best form of wealth preservation. Therefore it is safer to have a much bigger allocation to the physical metals which, even though they will underperform the mining stocks, will see massive capital appreciation.

The chart below shows XAU gold – silver index against the Dow since 1983 when the XAU was introduced. Since then the XAU has lost 95% against the Dow. This fall is likely to be reversed in the next few years with the XAU going up 20x against the Dow . For Dow investors this means losing 95% against mining stocks.

And sadly, this is what will happen to 99% of investors as they stick to their ordinary stocks and miss the most incredible opportunity.

DOLLAR

Printing unlimited amounts of money always has consequences. Since 1971 the dollar has lost 98% in real terms which means against gold since gold is the only money that has survived in history.

The dollar is now starting its final journey to ZERO and as the table shows, even a weak and artificial currency like the euro will outperform the doomed dollar.

A falling dollar will accelerate US inflation until it leads to hyperinflation.

INTEREST RATES

Interest market is probably the most contrarian of all trades today. The whole investment world, including the Fed and the ECB believe that rates will stay at zero or below for years to come. Normally when consensus is that strong, the opposite is more likely to happen.

Also, rising a weaker dollar will cause higher inflation which will put upward pressure on rates. As investors start selling the long end of the bond market, short rates will eventually follow.

Precious metals normally benefit from negative real rates which means that inflation is higher than interest rates. Gold can still rise strongly with high nominal rates as long as inflation is higher. We saw this happen in the 1970s to the early 1980s when rates reached 20% and gold went from $35 to $850. During that time, inflation remained higher than rates.

I remember this period well as I experienced it in the UK with my first mortgage reaching 21%.

FROM BOOM TO BUST

So there is now an opportunity for all investors to double their money in the stock market in the next 9-18 months as ever more liquidity will fuel stock markets.

But a Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) warning is in place here. Asset markets are already in a major bubble and the financial system is so fragile that it could break at any time.

So rather than chasing the last leg of this bull market which most investors will do, it will be much better to look at safer alternatives.

I have outlined them above. Physical precious metals and precious metals stocks will outperform all other markets. And these all present the best risk. Both the metals and the metal stocks will boom in the final phase of the stock market boom. And as stock markets top and then crash, the precious metals sector will continue to perform extremely well as currencies are debased.

As I stated above, the general stock market is likely to lose at least 95% against the precious metals sector in the next five years.

There has probably never before been such a clear choice in investment markets but sadly most investors will miss it. They will instead stick to their conventional portfolio which will include a lot of the already overvalued tech stocks.

Holding gold and silver stocks will be the investment opportunity of a life time. But since they are held within a vulnerable financial system, we believe that a these holdings should represent a much smaller percentage than physical metals.

To hold physical gold, silver and platinum outside the fragile banking system is the ultimate form of wealth preservation and insurance against a debt infested and unsafe financial system.

With a portfolio of some precious metals stocks and physical metals, investors will be able to ride out the coming storm and volatility in markets and also benefit financially. Of course there will be volatility also in the metals market but the trend in the next 5+ years is virtually guaranteed.

So better to avoid the coming boom and bust in the general stock markets and stick to metals.



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