Saturday, March 6, 2021

5 ways they’re trying to trick you into taking the Covid “vaccine”



The vaccine rollout is in full flow now, the daily tickers have had “people vaccinated” added to their red counters, and the improbably large number grows more improbably large every day. The sale of the century is very much on.

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Friday, March 5, 2021

Report: No chain-of-custody proof for 400,000 Georgia ballots

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In Georgia, a state Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes, county election officials still have not complied with a law requiring them to provide documents certifying the chain of custody of more than 400,000 mail-in ballots.

The request for the drop-box transfer forms was made by The Georgia Star News under the Georgia Open Records Law. Last July, the Georgia State Election Board passed an emergency rule requiring election officials to maintain the transfer forms.

But officials for the state's largest county, Fulton, and another major county, DeKalb, said they didn't know if they had the documents and promised to reply later, Georgia Star News reported.

But four months after the Nov. 3 election, those counties and 33 others have failed to comply with the law.

Overall, no chain of custody has been provided for an estimated 404,691 of the estimated 600,000 votes by mail-in ballot deposited in drop boxes, delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, Star News said.

The report pointed out the emergency rule passed by the election board last year "required that every county election office maintain a ballot transfer form that documented the movement of every absentee by mail ballot placed in a drop box and delivered to the county registrar prior to the election, with the number of absentee ballots picked up from each drop box, the signature of the two person team who picked up the ballots, the time of the pickup, and the time of the delivery of those ballot to the registrar, and the name of registrar who received those ballots."

In Congress, a bill sponsored by Democrats would nationalize election procedures, eliminating many of the security measures established by states, such as chain-of-custody and signature standards.

The Star News report noted Georgia's estimated 300 drop boxes were funded by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which was sponsored by a $350 million payment from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

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Texas AG: 'I can tell you there's lots of election fraud'

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says there's "lots" of vote fraud, and states that claim the problem is only nominal do so simply because they don't investigate.

"I can tell you there's lots of election fraud. We just don't come close to the resources we need in Texas to pursue all the election fraud we have, let alone what's going on in other states," he said in an interview with One America News Network.

He explained when he took over, the state had one prosecutor assigned to election fraud. Now there are three.

"Those prosecutors are busy all the time," he said. "They're overwhelmed with cases. The challenge of it is you have to develop the evidence, do the investigations. You can't just bring charges because you get a complaint.

"I think a lot of other states have not pursued these claims, have not put the resources behind it. So then the narrative is really easy to say that there's no election fraud because there's no one prosecuting it."

He said the solution in Texas is to keep expanding the prosecution team until they see the end of the problem.

"Since we've never gotten to the end of our cases. I would probably just keep increasing the size, like double, until we get to the point we're getting to the end of the cases," he said.

The report documented several recent cases of election fraud prosecution in the state.

Paxton advised other states, "It's better to fight the fight up front, than deal with it after the fact."

He said that during the recent election cycle, the state faced 12 lawsuits in which officials wanted to violate state law concerning mail-in ballots and other issues. The state won all 12.

See the interview:

Otherwise, he said, Texas would have been "a lot like Georgia" or states in which Joe Biden won narrow victories amid unconstitutional changes in election law and evidence of fraud and irregularities.

He pointed out President Trump won Texas by 620,000 votes, but in one county alone, a lawsuit had demanded permission to send out 2 million unsolicited mail-in ballots.

"We prevented a lot of the fraud that happened in these other states," he said.

The lawsuits challenging the validity of votes in the 2020 election largely were dismissed on procedural grounds rather than on their merits.

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Zika Was a Warm-Up for Covid; It Didn’t Fly

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LRC-share.jpg

I covered the Zika outbreak extensively in 2016. It was yet another fraud, and it collapsed under the weight of warnings to women to avoid pregnancy. Women wouldn’t obey in great enough numbers.

Basically, the official position was: an outbreak of microcephaly was occurring, worldwide, starting in Brazil. Babies were being born with smaller heads and brain damage. The cause was the Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes.

When I was exposing the lies, in 2016, I wasn’t questioning the existence of the Zika virus. Now, in 2021, I would be demanding proof that the virus had actually been isolated.

Here are excerpts from the many articles I wrote during the “Zika crisis”. There is more, much more to the story, but what I’m publishing here is enough to reveal the standard pattern of pandemic ops: pretend the “medical condition” is entirely the result of a germ; fake the exact cause; cover up ongoing government/corporate crimes.

EXCERPT ONE, 2016: There is no convincing evidence the Zika virus causes the birth defect called microcephaly.

Basically, Brazilian researchers, in the heart of the purported “microcephaly epidemic,” decided to stop their own investigation and simply assert Zika was the culprit. At that point, they claimed that, out of 854 cases of microcephaly, only 97 showed “some relationship” to Zika.

You need to understand that these figures actually show evidence AGAINST the Zika virus as the cause. When researchers are trying to find the cause of a condition, they should be able to establish, as a first step, that the cause is present in all cases (or certainly an overwhelming percentage).

This never happened. The correlation between the presence of Zika virus and microcephaly was very, very weak.

As a second vital step, researchers should be able to show that the causative virus is, in every case, present in large amounts in the body. Otherwise, there is not enough of it to create harm. MERE PRESENCE OF THE VIRUS IS NOT ENOUGH. With Zika, proof it was present in microcephaly-babies in large amounts has never been established.

But researchers pressed on. A touted study in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed Zika infected brain cells in the lab. IRRELEVANT. Cells in labs are not human beings. The study also stated that Zika infected baby mice. IRRELEVANT. Mice are not humans. And these mice in the lab had been specially altered or bred to be “vulnerable to Zika.” USELESS AND IRRELEVANT.

EXCERPT TWO, 2016: Millions of bees have just died in South Carolina, because Dorchester County officials decided to attack Zika mosquitoes from the air, from planes, with a pesticide called Naled.

The Washington Post reports, in an article headlined: “‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes.”

“The county acknowledged the bee deaths Tuesday. ‘Dorchester County is aware that some beekeepers in the area that was sprayed on Sunday lost their beehives,’ Jason Ward, county administrator, said in a news release. He added, according to the Charleston Post and Courier, ‘I am not pleased that so many bees were killed.’”

That’s the highest degree of outrage County Administrator Ward can muster? He’s not pleased?

If you want to dig further, you can discover that, despite assurances to the contrary, Naled, like other toxic organophosphate pesticides, harms humans as well. Organophosphates are neurotoxins. The original research was done in Germany, in the hunt for nerve-agent weapons.

And how about this? The cure for the problem causes the problem…

Naled, the organophosphate pesticide now being sprayed on Miami to kill “Zika mosquitoes,” has dire effects.

Reference: a 2014 study, “Neurodevelopmental disorders and prenatal residential proximity to agricultural pesticides: the CHARGE study.” [Environmental Health Perspectives, 2014 Oct;122(10):1103-9.]

Key quotes from the study:

“Gestational exposure to several common agricultural pesticides can induce developmental neurotoxicity in humans, and has been associated with developmental delay and autism.” [Emphasis added]

“We evaluated whether residential proximity to agricultural pesticides during pregnancy is associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or developmental delay (DD)…”

“Approximately one-third of CHARGE study mothers lived, during pregnancy, within 1.5 km (just under 1 mile) of an agricultural pesticide application. Proximity to organophosphates at some point during gestation was associated with a 60% increased risk for ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorders], higher for third-trimester exposures…and second-trimester chlorpyrifos [an organophosphate pesticide] applications…”

“This study of ASD strengthens the evidence linking neurodevelopmental disorders with gestational pesticide exposures, particularly organophosphates…”

The pesticide spraying affects pregnant mothers by raising the risk of neurological damage to their babies.

EXCERPT THREE: Here’s an “oops” Zika revelation:

“New doubts on Zika as cause of microcephaly.” ScienceDaily, 24 June 2016.

Source: New England Complex Systems Institute

“Brazil’s microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery — if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in other countries also hit hard by the virus? In Brazil, the microcephaly rate soared with more than 1,500 confirmed cases. But in Colombia, a recent study of nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika found zero microcephaly cases. If Zika is to blame for microcephaly, where are the missing cases?”

FOUR: It makes far more sense to listen to what South American doctors are saying about the areas where birth defects are occurring. These would be doctors who actually care about what is destroying lives and the lives that are being destroyed.

We have such reports passed along to us, thanks to Claire Robinson of GM Watch. She is one of those people who still makes the profession of journalism mean something.

Here are quotes from her most recent article, “Argentine and Brazilian doctors name larvicide as potential cause of microcephaly.”

“A report from the Argentine doctors’ organisation, Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, challenges the theory that the Zika virus epidemic in Brazil is the cause of the increase in the birth defect microcephaly among newborns.”

“The increase in this birth defect, in which the baby is born with an abnormally small head and often has brain damage, was quickly linked to the Zika virus by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. However, according to the Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, the Ministry failed to recognise that in the area where most sick people live, a chemical larvicide [pesticide] that produces malformations in mosquitoes was introduced into the drinking water supply in 2014. This poison, Pyriproxyfen, is used in a State-controlled programme aimed at eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes.” [Emphasis added]

“The Physicians added that the Pyriproxyfen is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese ‘strategic partner’ of Monsanto. Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor of mosquito larvae, which alters the development process from larva to pupa to adult, thus generating malformations in developing mosquitoes and killing or disabling them. It acts as an insect juvenile hormone or juvenoid, and has the effect of inhibiting the development of adult insect characteristics (for example, wings and mature external genitalia) and reproductive development. It is an endocrine disruptor and is teratogenic (causes birth defects).”

“The Argentine Physicians commented: ‘Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage.’”

“They also noted that Zika has traditionally been held to be a relatively benign disease that has never before been associated with birth defects, even in areas where it infects 75% of the population.”

“…The Argentine Physicians’ report…concurs with the findings of a separate report on the Zika outbreak by the Brazilian doctors’ and public health researchers’ organisation, Abrasco.”

“Abrasco also names Pyriproxyfen as a likely cause of the microcephaly. It condemns the strategy of chemical control of Zika-carrying mosquitoes, which it says is contaminating the environment as well as people and is not decreasing the numbers of mosquitoes. Abrasco suggests that this strategy is in fact driven by the commercial interests of the chemical industry, which it says is deeply integrated into the Latin American ministries of health, as well as the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organisation.”

“Abrasco names the British GM insect company Oxitec as part of the corporate lobby that is distorting the facts about Zika to suit its own profit-making agenda. Oxitec sells GM mosquitoes engineered for sterility and markets them as a disease-combatting product – a strategy condemned by the Argentine Physicians as ‘a total failure, except for the company supplying mosquitoes’.”

“…Abrasco added that the disease [microcephaly, other birth defects] is closely linked to environmental degradation: floods caused by logging and the massive use of herbicides on (GM) herbicide-tolerant soy crops – in short, ‘the impacts of extractive industries’.”

FIVE: In a recent greenmedinfo article—“What is the Zika Virus Epidemic Covering Up?” by Jagannath Chatterjee—the author traces other Gates-Brazil connections. For example:

“While investigating the procedures directed at pregnant women in the year 2015, shocking facts emerged. Acting as per a WHO [World Health Organization] decision to inject pregnant women with vaccines despite contraindications the Brazilian Government had allowed its pregnant women to become the equivalent of guinea pigs. Besides the tetanus vaccines (provided as Diphtheria Tetanus vaccines), the women had also received the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine in pregnancy. What is worse a DTaP vaccine was mandated for pregnant women in 2014. Citing a shortage of the DTaP vaccine the highly reactive [dangerous] DTP vaccine was also administered. Clearly huge risks had been inflicted on the unsuspecting women. None of these vaccines are known to be safe during pregnancy and the MMR and the DaPT/DPT vaccines are lapses that cannot be condoned. The rubella virus in the MMR vaccine and the pertussis component in the DPT vaccine are known to cause microcephaly…”

“The DTaP vaccine initiative to vaccinate pregnant women was financed by BMGF [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] funds…”

SIX: For example, every year in the US, there are 25,000 cases of microcephaly. And the literature is very clear about causes: any insult to the fetal brain during pregnancy can result in microcephaly. Severe malnutrition, falling down stairs, a blow to the stomach, a toxic street drug or medical drug or vaccine or pesticide, and so on.

SEVEN: For science bloggers who live in mommy’s basement and love the statements of the experts, try this. I’ll give you the full citation. Ready?

“Practice Parameter: Evaluation of the child with microcephaly (an evidence-based review)”; Neurology 2009 Sep 15; 73(11) 887-897; Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Practice Committee of the Child Neurology Society.

Here’s the money quote:

“Microcephaly may result from any insult that disturbs early brain growth…Annually, approximately 25,000 infants in the United States will be diagnosed with microcephaly…”

Bang.

Let me take apart that quote. Microcephaly can result from any early insult to the brain. Any.

That could mean a highly toxic pesticide, for example. It could mean severe and prolonged malnutrition of the mother. It could mean a toxic substance injected into the mother—a street drug or a vaccine. It could mean a physical blow. It could mean a mother’s chronic high fever. And so on.

Moving on: 25,000 cases, not just once, but every year in the US, means what? Christopher Columbus actually brought the Zika virus to America in 1492, and it lay dormant for a very long time and then, in the modern age, exploded on the scene in the US?

No. 25,000 cases a year in the US means we’re being treated to an unsupported major bullshit story right now about the Zika virus.

That’s what it means.

EIGHT: Now we have a January 27, 2016, Associated Press story out of Rio, published in SFGate: “270 of 4,180 suspected microcephaly cases confirmed.” That’s called a clue, in case you’re wondering. Of the previously touted 4,180 cases of microcephaly in Brazil, the actual number of confirmed cases so far is, well, only 270. Bang.

But wait, there’s more. AP: “Brazilian officials said the babies with the defect [microcephaly] and their mothers are being tested to see if they had been infected. Six of the 270 confirmed microcephaly cases were found to have the [Zika] virus.”

Bang, bang, bang. Out of all the microcephaly cases re-examined in Brazil, only six have the Zika virus. That constitutes zero proof that Zika has anything to do with microcephaly.

—end of my excerpts from 2016—

Getting the picture?

In 2015-16, the World Health Organization and the press whiffed on the Zika virus-microcephaly hustle.

But they re-grouped, analyzed their mistakes, and prepared a wall-to-wall messaging campaign for the next fake pandemic.

China would provide the model:

LOCKDOWNS.

House arrest of a major percentage of the global population. Economic devastation.

COVID.

As I’ve been demonstrating for the past year, the COVID story is as full of holes as Zika.

Reprinted with permission from Jon Rappoport’s blog.

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Lord Sumption Warns Civil Disobedience Has Begun Amid Lockdown Lunacy

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Lord Sumption Warns Civil Disobedience Has Begun Amid Lockdown Lunacy

Authored by Freddie Sayers via Unherd.com,

Jonathan Sumption was once the epitome of the Establishment - a brilliant barrister who represented the Government in the Hutton enquiry, Supreme Court Justice, supporter of the Remain campaign and esteemed historian of the Hundred Years’ War. But then Covid happened.

Over the past year, his unabashed criticism of lockdown policies has turned him into something of a renegade. It is a development that mystifies him; as he sees it, his views have always been mainstream liberal, and it is the world around that has changed.

In the course of our conversation, the retired judge doesn’t hold back. He asserts that it is becoming morally acceptable to ignore Covid regulations, and even warns that a campaign of “civil disobedience” has already begun.

You can read what he really thinks below. And watch our interaction on Lockdown TV - it was a fascinating conversation.

ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE:

“Sometimes the most public spirited thing that you can do with despotic laws like these is to ignore them. I think that if the government persists long enough with locking people down, depending on the severity of the lockdown, civil disobedience is likely to be the result. It will be discrete civil disobedience in the classic English way — I don’t think that we are likely to go onto the streets waving banners. I think we will just calmly decide that we are not going to pay any attention to this. There are some things you have to pay attention to: you can’t go to a shop if it’s closed. On the other hand, you can invite friends round for a drink, whatever Mr Hancock says. People are doing that to some extent already.

“Everyone will have their own different threshold. But I think that in the eyes of many people who disapprove of the lockdown, and some people who approve of it, we’ve reached that point quite a long time ago.”

ON THE ETHICS OF LAW-BREAKING:

“I feel sad that we have the kind of laws which public-spirited people may need to break. I have always taken a line on this, which is probably different from that of most of my former colleagues. I do not believe that there is a moral obligation to obey the law… You have to have a high degree of respect, both for the object that the law is trying to achieve, and for the way that it’s been achieved. Some laws invite breach. I think this is one of them.”

ON SACRIFICING CIVIL LIBERTIES:

“[Thomas] Hobbes believed in the absolute state — it didn’t have to be a monarchy, but it had to be absolute. He said that there was nothing short of the state actually killing people that the state should not be entitled to do. He was not, let us say, a believer in liberty. This is because of his experience of the anarchy which flowed from the civil war in England. Hobbes believed that we resign our freedoms unconditionally and permanently into the hands of the state, in return for security. Now, this is a model which ever since the rise of a recognisable form of modern Liberalism in the middle of the 19th century, has been almost universally rejected. But we have tended to revert to it during the current crisis. And I think that that is a very striking and very sinister development.

ON THE DANGERS OF PUBLIC FEAR:

“John Stuart Mill regarded public sentiment and public fear as the principal threat to a liberal democracy. The tendency would be for it to influence policies in a way that whittles away the island within which we are entitled to control our lives to next to nothing. That’s what he regarded as the big danger. It didn’t happen in his own lifetime; it has happened in many countries in the 20th century, and it’s happening in Britain now.”

ON THE FRAGILITY OF DEMOCRACY:

“Democracy is inherently fragile. We have an idea that it’s a very robust system. But democracies have existed for about 150 years. In this country, I think you could say that they existed from the second half of the of the 19th century — they are not the norm. Democracies were regarded in ancient times as inherently self-destructive ways of government. Because, said Aristotle, democracies naturally turn themselves into tyranny. Because the populace will always be a sucker for a demagogue who will turn himself into an absolute ruler…

“Now, it is quite remarkable that Aristotle’s gloomy predictions about the fate of democracies have been falsified by the experience of the West ever since the beginning of democracy. And I think one needs to ask why that is. In my view, the reason is this: Aristotle was basically right about the tendencies, but we have managed to avoid it by a shared political culture of restraint. And this culture of restraint, which because it depends on the collective mentality of our societies, is extremely fragile, quite easy to destroy and extremely difficult to recreate.”

ON BEING A LIBERAL:

“I regard myself as a liberal with a small L. Until the Covid outbreak, that was a very middle of the road position to be in. Since the outbreak, it’s become controversial, even in some people’s minds extreme. This is, I think, some indication of how far our national conversation has moved.”

ON WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD LEARN:

My first proposal is that governments should not treat information as a tool for manipulating public behaviour. They should be calmer than the majority of their citizens; they should be completely objective. My second lesson would be that governments dealing with scientific issues should not allow themselves to be influenced by a single caucus of scientists. They should always test what they are being told in a way that, for instance, judges test expert opinion by producing a counter expert, and working out which set of views stacks up best.”

ON HIS CRITICS:

“I would very much have preferred the kind of points that I have been consistently making for the last year to have been made by just about anybody else. Those colleagues or former colleagues who disapprove of what I’ve been doing have got a perfectly good point. But there are some issues which are so central to the dilemmas of our time, which are so important, where I think that you have to be prepared to stand up and be counted.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/05/2021 - 06:30

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Thursday, March 4, 2021

When Does This Travesty Of A Mockery Of A Sham Finally Implode?

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When Does This Travesty Of A Mockery Of A Sham Finally Implode?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The mutually reinforcing crises aren't in the future, they're here now, and Jay Powell's shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles.

How many more times do we have to watch Jay Powell claim his speculative bubble isn't a bubble, and that his massive expansion of billionaires' fortunes will magically create jobs for all those living in the real world he's created of stagnation, social depression and inequality?

In other words, when will this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? When will the Universe tire of the lies, fraud, embezzlement and corruption and bring the whole rotten charade down? When will we tire of the stale tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

We all know the Status Quo's response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham--smoke and mirrors, phony facades of "recovery", simulacrum "reforms," serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking, all based on borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, yen, euros and yuan, quatloos, etc. and funneling them to financiers, corporations, monopolies, cronies and billionaires.

When will the travesty of a mockery of a sham finally come to an end? How many more "saves" does the Ponzi Scheme of central banking possess? Wall Street and its vast army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, schemers, scammers, con-artists and profiteers will have us believe that the Everything Bubble is permanent and its continued expansion will hide all the systemic rot hollowing out America.

On the other hand, maybe manipulation, lies and artifice can no longer keep the Everything Bubble from popping. The chart I prepared back in 2008 (below) give us a flavor of the confluence of crises that are no longer in the future--they're here now.

Cycles are not laws of Nature, of course; they are only records of previous periods of growth/excess/depletion/collapse, not predictions per se. Nonetheless their repetition reflects the systemic dynamic of growth, crisis and collapse, and so the study of cycles is instructive even though we stipulate they are not predictive.

What is predictable is the way systems tend to follow an S-curve of rapid growth with then tops out in excess, stagnates in depletion and then devolves or implodes. We can see all sorts of things topping out and entering depletion/collapse: financialization, the Savior State, Chinese credit expansion, oil production, student loan debt and so on.

Since each mechanism that burns out or implodes tends to be replaced with some other mechanism, this creates the recurring cycle of expansion / excess / depletion / collapse.

Four long-wave cycles are plotted in the chart:

1. The credit expansion/renunciation cycle. a.k.a. the Kondratieff cycle. Credit expands when credit is costly and invested in productive assets. Credit reaches excess when it is cheap and it's malinvested in speculation and stock buybacks, and as collateral vanishes then credit is renunciated/written off.

This is inexact, but obviously the organic postwar cycle of expansion has been extended by the central bank money-printing / credit orgy.

2. The generational cycle of four generations/80 years described in the seminal book The Fourth Turning. American history uncannily tracks an 80-year cycle of crises and profound transformation: 1860 (Civil War), 1940 (world war and global Empire) and next up to bat, 2020, the implosion of the debt-based Savior State and the financialized economy.

3. The 100-year cycle of inflation-deflation described in the masterful book The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. The price of bread remained almost constant in Britain throughout the 19th century. In contrast, the 20th century has been characterized by inflation--the U.S. dollar has lost approximately 96% of its value since the early 20th century.

Another characteristic of this cycle is wage stagnation: people earn less even as costs of essentials rise, a dynamic that inevitably leads to political crisis and upheaval. The federal agencies have been tasked with masking the decline of the purchasing power of wages with heavily gamed statistics, but here's how to detect wage stagnation in the real world: calculate how many hours the average wage-earner had to work in 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2005 to pay for essentials and common non-essentials.

If you kept records of your expenses, you'd probably find, as I have, that my wages bought far more goods and services in 1975, 1985 and 1995 than they do now, even though the nominal wage was much lower.

Ask yourself how it is that jobs that paid $12 in 1985 still pay $12 an hour. How much does that $12 buy now compared to what it could buy in 1985? Precious little.

Jay Powell, you and the rest of your Wall Street lapdogs have failed the American wage earner. You've enriched the top 0.1% and impoverished the bottom 90%. As this RAND Corporation report documents, ( Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018) $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

4. There's a problem with oil, and it isn't the price or how much is left in the ground. Actually, there's a number of problems with oil: I explain one here: Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable (2/25/21).

The price isn't the issue, or the supply: it's how much energy wage-earners can buy out of their dwindling discretionary income, i.e. what's left after they pay higher prices for essentials.

If this is new to you, please read Gail Tverberg's work: Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away.

And Tim Watkin's work: A failure of complexity and Texas trip.

And Tim Morgan's work on his SEEDS model of how the economy actually works (it's energy that matters, not finance) Mapping the economy, part one and The map unrolled.

Or if you prefer video, watch Nate Hagens: Nate Hagens: The Collision (1 hour).

The mutually reinforcing crises aren't in the future, they're here now, and Jay Powell's shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles. The billionaires thank you, Jay, as they've been selling for months, leaving all the fools you conned holding the bag when your con-artist powers fade and your bubble pops.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

*  *  *

My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/04/2021 - 10:15

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House Democrats Pass Bill To Change American Voting Forever

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House Democrats Pass Bill To Change American Voting Forever

The House of Representatives in the late hours of March 3 passed a sweeping election reform bill that, if signed into law, would affect multiple aspects of the electoral process and campaign financing.

As The Epoch Times' Mimi Hguyen Ly notes, H.R. 1, also called the For the People Act, passed the Democrat-controlled House on a largely party-line vote of 220-210. All Republicans voted against the bill. They were joined by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the only House Democrat who voted against the bill.

The proposed legislation would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Democrats currently hold the smallest possible majority in the Senate, with 48 Democrats and two independent senators who caucus with them. It is unclear whether there would be enough support, with the bill needing 10 Republicans to overcome the filibuster.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has said he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk.

“This is called the For The People bill. And in doing so, we combat big, dark, special-interest money in politics and amplify the voice of the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday at an event prior to a vote on the bill.

However, as AmericanThinker's Andrea Widburg warns, if you thought the election in 2020 was bad, you'd better reach out to your senator to fight H.R. 1, which passed the House last night.  H.R. 1 takes every bad idea blue states adopted in 2020 — all with an eye to facilitating election fraud and increasing the number of otherwise ineligible Democrat voters — and nationalizes all of them.  It isn't just that this bill will mean that Republicans will have an even more uphill battle than usual in every election.  It also means that no federal election will ever be trustworthy — and an untrustworthy system is one that will inevitably fail.

John Fund says  H.R. 1 "is the worst piece of legislation I have ever seen in my 40 years reporting from Washington."  According to him, the bill, if it becomes law, "would cement all of the worst changes in election law made in blue states in 2020 and nationalize them."  He quotes Hans von Spakovsky, who summarized some of the worst aspects of the bill.  (The link Fund gives for Spakovsky is here, but it goes to a dead page.)

  • H.R. 1 would make fraud easier by forcing states to implement early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, online voter registration and no-fault absentee balloting

  • Degrade the accuracy of registration lists by requiring states to automatically register all individuals on state and federal databases. This would include many ineligible voters, including aliens

  • It would require states to allow 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to register. Combined with a ban on voter ID, this would allow underage individuals to vote

  • Require states to count ballots cast by voters outside of their assigned precincts, a recipe for election fraud

  • Mandate no-fault absentee ballots, which are the tool of choice for vote thieves, force states to accept absentee ballots received up to 10 days after Election Day and force states allow 'ballot harvesting'

  • Prevent election officials from checking the eligibility and qualifications of voters and removing ineligible voters

  • Ban state-voter ID laws by forcing states to allow individuals to vote without an ID and merely signing a statement in which they claim they are who they say they are

  • Create vague and broad language that could be used to criminally charge someone who questions the eligibility of a voter

  • Destroy the bipartisan composition of the Federal Election Commission and places a partisan majority in control of every aspect of our federal elections

  • Require states to restore the ability of felons to vote the moment they are out of prison

  • Force disclosure of names of Americans who donate to nonprofit organizations — thus subjecting them to political harassment

  • Declare statehood for Washington DC to be 'constitutional' despite evidence it is not

  • And finally, HR 1 would effectively ban nonprofits from contacting a member of Congress or their staff about pending legislation — a direct assault on the right of Americans to petition their government.

House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy put together a short video explaining some of the other problems with the bill:

Democrats did not design #HR1 to protect your vote. They designed it to put a thumb on the scale of every election in America and keep the Swamp swampy. pic.twitter.com/Csyu9AX6Ce

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) March 3, 2021

Because Republicans are honorable enough (or stupid enough) to believe that election fraud is wrong, the bill is an election boondoggle for Democrats.  It is they who are constantly trying to register everyone, from the newborn babe to the murderer to the irresponsible teen to the granddad who died decades ago.  Having all those names on the voter rolls, and making them impossible to purge, creates huge vistas for fraud — something we saw happen in blue states that have already implemented many of these changes.

And allowing the election to extend indefinitely ensures that Democrats will always win.  They'll just see how many votes they need after Election Day and keep submitting more ballots.  Eventually, in self-defense, Republicans will do the same.  At that point, citizens can just stop voting at all, because elections will have devolved into battles between crooks rather than the voice of the people.

Contact your senators and make let them know that, in the interests of American democracy, you are completely opposed to steps that will weaken Americans' ability to trust the integrity of their elections.  It's not just Republicans who should care.  Democrats should, too.

In D.C., the continued presence of the National Guard shows that the Democrats are frightened.  They fear that people who feel that they don't have a truly representative government will make themselves heard by other means.  If the Democrats continue with this mad plan to destroy voter integrity, they will become increasingly fearful of the American people.  It creates a volatile situation when the government fears the people because the government knows that it has done wrong.

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/04/2021 - 11:50

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How We Know SARS-CoV-2 Absolutely Leaked From a Chinese Lab



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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Wednesday, March 3, 2021

What Lies Ahead? The Grand Solar Minimum

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What Lies Ahead? The Grand Solar Minimum

Submitted by Luke Eastwood

We are all aware of the environnmental crisis that humanity (and all life on Earth) faces, characterised by the term ‘climate change’. Much of the current thinking in the scientific community is promoting the idea that our planet is rapidly warming due to excess CO2 (carbon dioxide) gas produced by humans in the last few centuries, and the last 70 years in particular.

While there is a very strong and hard to deny case to suggest that human activity is the main cause of environmental destruction, the premise that it is due primarily to CO2 emissions is beginning to look somewhat flawed. I am well aware that the previous sentence is likely to draw a lot of negative attention and criticism, with accusations of ‘climate denier’ being thrown at me. However, the situation is not that simple as to be a case of ‘global warming’ being the main influence or no influence at all.

The reality of the situation is complex. In my opinion the main drivers of the  environmental crisis are many, but put in simple terms – destruction of wild habitats, pollution due to industrialisation, over-use of soils, over-population, erosion of soils leading to desertification or barren, infertile landscapes, monoculture agriculture and climate fluctuations. Notice that I did not use the term ‘climate change’ which in the current scientific norm implies warming.

While the planet has undoubtedly warmed up, in part due to human activity and CO2 production, the current popular thinking completely ignores historical CO2 levels beyond the last millennium and also the primary input on temperatures on this planet and all eight of the planets in this solar system. That input, although largely ignored at the moment, is of course our sun, which on average generates 3.8 x 1026 Joules (energy) per second. Human energy usage per year is around 5 x 1020 Joules, which is about 1 million times less than the Sun produces during 1 second! In fact, in the whole of human history we have used less energy that the Sun produces in that 1 second.

So, given the above, it stand to reason that the energy of the Sun must have a significant effect on the energy available on this planet and the heat energy (temperature) that is captured by it, as it rotates around the Sun. If we look at the history of Earth, particularly through the use of ice-core samples, we can see that the temperatures on our planet follow a very distinct pattern. On a macro level this can be observed as a huge cycle of glacials (ice-ages) and interglacials, with the ice ages lasting many times longer than the interglacial (warm) periods.  We are currently in an interglacial, which began approximately 11,500 years ago and it is estimated that it will end some time within the next 50,000 years.

On a micro level, the Sun undergoes cycles of around 11 years  known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, which has been studied and recorded by humans for approximately 400 years. During each cycle the number of sunspots peaks and falls in a recognisable pattern. However, this pattern of approx. 11 years is itself part of a much longer solar pattern of solar minimums and solar maximums. For instance the Medieval maximum (grand solar maximum) lasted from 1100-1250 (warm period) and the famous Maunder Minimum (grand solar minimum) lasted from 1645-1715 (cold period). The later was known as a mini  ice age due the particularly drastic drop in global temperatures that affected crop-growth and led to bitter winters for a period of 70 years.

Scientists that study the sun are well aware of these periodic cycles both on the 11 year scale and on the larger scale of 70–100 years, known as the Gleissberg cycle. We have just finished a solar maximum cycle of around 70 years and are now heading into a both a new 11 year cycle and a new grand solar minimum cycle that will reach its lowest (coldest) point some time between 2030 and 2040.  You don’t need to take my word for it – this has been confirmed by NASA and by the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA). NOAA predictions of sunspot and radio flux appears to show a ‘full-blown’ grand solar minimum (GSM) which will last from the late-2020s to at least the 2040s.

This means that the coming solar minimum is going to be not only a grand solar minimum, but perhaps the worst one since the Maunder Minimum in the 1600s. One would expert this to have been front-page news, but outside of the scientific community this information is virtually unheard of and little understood. One must ask – why is this the case? The simple answer to this question is that the solar predictions destroy the current scientific and cultural narrative of ‘Climate Change’ in the form of warming.

There will indeed be climate change in the coming decades, but for the next 10 to 40 years it is going to get colder, not warmer! The same thing will happen on the 7 other planets in this solar system, because the main factor affecting planetary temperatures is the activity of the Sun. Given that so much time, effort and money has been invested in ‘global warming’ as a premise for change in how human society is run, it is very much an “inconvenient truth” that is beginning to arrive just at the time when we are beginning to take more affirmative action on environmental issues.

The controversial news that the Earth (and all 7 other planets) will cool down in the next 10-40 years is politically highly inconvenient and that is why it is being kept quiet. Getting rid of fossil fuels, caring for our environment, lowering industrial output, ending industrial farming and reducing livestock, plus a gradual reduction in the human population are all excellent goals.  Unfortunately the rationale for doing this, that has been sold to the public, is most likely entirely misguided.  The net effect of this false premise may well be that environmentalists and main-stream public scientists will look like fools by the end of this decade. The cooling of planet Earth may well be seen as justification to abandon environmental concerns and reform of our economic systems, which would be a terrible tragedy.

In order to avoid this highly likely total embarrassment, world governments and the scientific community need to admit that the coming dip in solar energy output is going to lead to the cooling of our planet for at least 2 decades, possibly 4 or 5 or even 7 decades!  This is not conspiracy, this is not mis-information or propaganda – this is proven, verifiable fact which can be validated by current solar observation, previous observation of sun cycles for 400 years and ice-core samples stretching back millions of years.

As someone who has been involved in the environmental movement since I was 16, when I joined a conservation group at college, I am very concerned about how this plays out. If the public feels that they have been lied to it may lead to a backlash and a disinterest in environmental issues. The reasons I outlined at the beginning of this article are more than sufficient for humanity to change its modus operandi. One does not need to concoct highly improbable narratives about the world ‘burning up’ within decades to justify environmental activism. In fact the coming GSM is likely to produce similar negative effects to predicted ‘global warming’, such as habitat loss, loss of farming land, a drop in food availability, migration, social unrest and possibly other problems too.

It is time that the whole ‘climate change’ theory was re-assessed and the known solar activity cycle as observed by NOAA and NASA taken into account. To fail to do so is total folly and only creates another problem, that will come back to haunt us if the grand solar minimum is ignored.  We do need to take better care of our world and learn to live far more harmoniously within it, but we need to base our actions on good science and not on misleading or inaccurate information.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/03/2021 - 19:20

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Truth & lies: Do we believe media, or our own eyes?

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Jim-Acosta-CNN-screenshot-600-cropped.jp

We have reached a remarkable place in our national condition where it is so accepted that the current political narrative is equal to "truth," whatever that narrative may be at the moment, that important people are perfectly comfortable telling obvious lies and relaxing in the comfort they will not be held accountable.

This week in testimony before Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed the bureau had no evidence of antifa or "fake Trump supporters" participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, protests on Capitol Hill. This in spite of the fact the FBI actually investigated and arrested now former-antifa activist John Sullivan, who posted publicly on social media of his plans to infiltrate the crowd of Trump supporters and taking pictures and video of himself disguised in MAGA paraphernalia while screaming obscenities trying to encourage the crowd to go into the Capitol building. Americans can see the pictures, watch the video and read the indictment for themselves, but the political narrative is the opposite of reality. And so, we are told – under oath – that the "truth" is the opposite of what we see with our own eyes.

On March 25, 2020, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an order requiring nursing homes in that state to accept known COVID patients. As a result, coronavirus ran rampant through New York nursing homes, killing thousands of elderly patients. In late May, the state's Health Department quietly removed the order from its website. As anger and accusations against Cuomo swelled from the grief of thousands of New York families over lost loved ones, the governor lashed back at them. More than five months after the results of his shockingly lethal order were undeniable, Andrew Cuomo denied it, anyway, stating that "it never happened." He went on to blame nursing home staff and the families of the deceased for infecting and causing the death of their loved ones. But compare New York to Florida, a state with a higher overall population and higher population of elderly, but dramatically fewer coronavirus deaths. What was the big difference between these two large states? Florida's COVID response sought to protect the elderly from the virus, while Cuomo's order packing coronavirus patients into nursing homes was a death sentence for thousands of elderly New Yorkers who had no way to escape and were the most vulnerable.

Then in January the Cuomo administration admitted to dramatically underreporting COVID deaths, including undercounting the state's nursing home deaths by nearly 50%. In February, Cuomo's top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted in a conference call with Democratic lawmakers that the Cuomo administration intentionally lied about the state's COVID numbers, citing fear of a federal investigation and blaming President Trump for making them scared to tell the truth. Notwithstanding these incredible revelations, within a few days Cuomo reversed again, angrily insisting that "all deaths … were always fully, publicly and accurately reported."

It is as though reality has no influence in what is said or what is repeated by the adoring mainstream media for their political heroes.

One would think the death toll alone in New York would be enough to cause media elites to offer critiques of Cuomo, or at least report the truth. Instead, the media's response to the incredibly disastrous COVID response in New York has been to celebrate the governor for his excellent leadership. Cuomo was even given an Emmy Award for some peculiar reason to commemorate his brilliance. At the same time, leftists and media have mercilessly attacked governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem in South Dakota as monsters presiding over mountains of dead bodies, while both states have dramatically better COVID outcomes by any measure than New York. One deranged writer at a national mainstream publication even went so far as to demand all COVID dead be buried at Donald Trump's home in Florida. For this political sect, their politics is their only reality.

It is this alternate reality to which Gov. Kristi Noem was referring on Saturday in her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. Noem pointed out the glaring difference between the media beatdown she received for South Dakota's COVID response while, at the same time, Cuomo was lionized by the media as a compassionate genius for the deadly disaster over which he presided in New York. At one point, when she appeared on the same episode of ABC News' "This Week" as Andrew Cuomo, host (and former Bill Clinton attack dog) George Stephanopoulos asked Cuomo to give Gov. Noem advice on how to properly handle COVID in South Dakota. Incredible!

The most remarkable aspect of this alternate reality in which American elites choose to reside is not the fact that it exists, but how aggressively they are willing to insist that alternate reality is true and that the actual reality we can all see is, in fact, a lie. They start with the story they want to be true and then ignore all facts, statistics, photos, video – even their own previous words – and any other inconvenient truth to create their own alternate reality with which to attack their political opponents. We saw this play out for years with the Russian collusion hoax, the 2000 election recounts and even the October Surprise accusations against President Reagan. When political elites, supported by their allies in media and the tech sector, and ordinary people cannot even agree on reality, one has to wonder how much longer we can pretend there is any hope of actually governing or addressing our nation's pressing issues.

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

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Monday, March 1, 2021

Federal Law Prohibits COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates



This will be a legal nightmare unless it is settled once and for all by a higher court, but federal law makes it clear that Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) drugs may not be mandated by employers. Further, your opt-out choice may not be used to discriminate against you. ⁃  Patrick Wood

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Mandatory Quarantines Unnecessary For Deadly Virus



(NaturalHealth365) Dr.

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Annual Flu Deaths Scam Unwittingly Exposed and Replaced by the COVID Deaths Scam



During the past 10 years that Health Impact News has been publishing the truth about vaccines and exposing the corruption and lies in the pharmaceutical industry and their marketing branch, the U.S.

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Sunday, February 28, 2021

What "Normal" Are We Returning To? The Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge

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Perhaps we need an honest national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality, social depression and the failure of the status quo.

Even as the chirpy happy-talk of a return to normal floods the airwaves, what nobody dares acknowledge is that "normal" for a rising number of Americans is the social depression of downward mobility and social defeat.

Downward mobility is not a new trend--it's simply accelerating. As this RAND Corporation report documents, (Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018) $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

Time magazine's article on the report is remarkably direct: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% -- And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.

"The $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."


I've been digging into downward mobility and social depression for years: Are You Really Middle Class?

The reality is that the middle class has been reduced to the sliver just below the top 5%--if we use the standards of the prosperous 1960s as a baseline.

The downward mobility isn't just financial--it's a decline in political power, control of one's work and ownership of income-producing assets. This article reminds us of what the middle class once represented: What Middle Class? How bourgeois America is getting recast as a proletariat.

This reappraisal of the American Dream is also triggering a reappraisal of the middle class in the decades of widespread prosperity:The Myth of the Middle Class: Have Most Americans Always Been Poor?

Downward mobility excels in creating and distributing what I term social defeat:In my lexicon, social defeat is the spectrum of anxiety, insecurity, chronic stress, fear and powerlessness that accompanies declining financial security and social status.

Downward mobility and social defeat lead to social depression.Here are the conditions that characterize social depression:

1. High expectations of endlessly rising prosperity instilled as a birthright no longer align with economy reality.

2. Part-time and unemployed people are marginalized, not just financially but socially.

3. Widening income/wealth disparity as those in the top 10% pull away from the bottom 90%.

4. A systemic decline in social/economic mobility as it becomes increasingly difficult to move from dependence on the state or one's parents to financial independence.

5. A widening disconnect between higher education and employment: a college/university degree no longer guarantees a stable, good-paying job.

6. A failure in the Status Quo institutions and mainstream media to recognize social depression as a reality.

7. A systemic failure of imagination within state and private-sector institutions on how to address social depression issues.

8. The abandonment of middle class aspirations: young people no longer aspire to (or cannot afford) consumerist status symbols such as luxury autos or conventional homeownership.

9. A generational abandonment of marriage, families and independent households as these are no longer affordable to those with part-time or unstable employment.

10. A loss of hope in the young generations as a result of the above conditions.

The rising tide of collective anger arising from social depression is visible in many places: road rage, violent street clashes between groups seething for a fight, the destruction of friendships for holding "incorrect" ideological views, and so on.

A coarsening of the entire social order is increasingly visible: The Age of Rudeness.

Depressive thoughts (and the emotions they generate) tend to be self-reinforcing, and this is why it's so difficult to break out of depression once in its grip.

One part of the healing process is to expose the sources of anger that we are repressing. As psychiatrist Karen Horney explained in her 1950 masterwork, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization, anger at ourselves sometimes arises from our failure to live up to the many "shoulds" we've internalized, and the idealized track we've laid out for ourselves and our lives.

The article The American Dream Is Killing Us does a good job of explaining how our failure to obtain the expected rewards of "doing all the right things" (getting a college degree, working hard, etc.) breeds resentment and despair.

Since we did the "right things," the system "should" deliver the financial rewards and security we expected. This systemic failure to deliver the promised rewards is eroding the social contract and social cohesion. Fewer and fewer people have a stake in the system.

We are increasingly angry at the system, but we reserve some anger for ourselves, because the mass-media trumpets how well the economy is doing and how some people are doing extremely well. Naturally, we wonder, why them and not us? The failure is thus internalized.

One response to this sense that the system no longer works as advertised is to seek the relative comfort of echo chambers--places we can go to hear confirmation that this systemic stagnation is the opposing ideological camp's fault.

Part of the American Exceptionalism we hear so much about is a can-do optimism: set your mind to it and everything is possible.

The failure to prosper as anticipated is generating a range of negative emotions that are "un-American": complaining that you didn't get a high-paying secure job despite having a college degree (or advanced degree) sounds like sour-grapes: the message is you didn't work hard enough, you didn't get the right diploma, etc.

It can't be the system that's failed, right? I discuss this in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: the top 10% who are benefiting mightily dominate politics and the media, and their assumption is: the system is working great for me, so it must be working great for everyone. This implicit narrative carries an implicit accusation that any failure is the fault of the individual, not the system.

The inability to express our despair and anger generates depression. Some people will redouble their efforts, others will seek to lay the blame on "the other" (some external group) and others will give up. What few people will do is look at the sources of systemic injustice and inequality.

Perhaps we need an honest national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality and the failure of the status quo that avoids polarization and the internalization trap (i.e. it's your own fault you're not well-off).

We need to value honesty above fake happy-talk. Once we can speak honestly, there will be a foundation for optimism.

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"Slippery Slope" - Vaccine Passports Are A Technical & Ethical Minefield

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"Slippery Slope" - Vaccine Passports Are A Technical & Ethical Minefield

Authored by Melinda Mills, op-ed via The Financial Times,

I remember the evening a co-worker arrived at our door waving a phone, beaming “I’ve got it!” His Android mobile was the only way to use the UK government app that let EU citizens apply for UK settled status after Brexit. After some unsettling jokes about uploading my private biometric data on his device, we completed the deed and he disappeared into the night. As governments around the world ponder digital vaccine passports, that evening remains in my mind.

Vaccine passports are essentially certificates that link proof of vaccination to the identity of the holder, a potential silver bullet to return to our pre-Covid-19 lives. Before the pandemic, the EU was working on plans for cross-border electronic certificates to replace the paper booklets that many travellers carry. At this week’s EU summit some leaders pressed for further steps towards coronavirus passports.

A recent Royal Society report that I led came up with 12 different criteria that would need to be satisfied to make such passports feasible. This is a complex ecosystem that requires an understanding of everything from immunity and infection to technology, ethics and behavioural factors. But the underlying question must be: what would a vaccine passport be used for?

The head of Heathrow airport has called for digital health certificates to reboot international travel. Estonia and Iceland already link e-vaccination certificates to travel and exclusion from quarantine. Greece is pressing the EU to move quickly. There are precedents such as the airline industry group Iata’s travel pass initiative. But would these certificates only be required for international travel or could they be needed for getting a job, attending a football match, or buying some milk?

Israel recently introduced a green pass heralded as “the first step back to an almost normal life”. It opens entry to gyms, cinemas, hotels and meets some our technical criteria such as verifiable credentials, portability, (attempts at) security for personal data and interoperability. It is valid for six months after a second dose and for “those who have recovered from coronavirus”.

But this could be problematic. Current vaccines protect against severe disease, but we do not yet know whether they stop transmission, how quickly immunity wanes or if they are compromised by emerging variants. Whether someone who has “recovered” meets immunity criteria remains a question. In addition to an expiry date, we would need the ability to revoke a vaccine passport. Israel’s warning of severe punishment for forgery is another reminder of what could go wrong.

There is also the question of mission creep. Recall the UK’s early digital contact tracing app, which raised concerns about privacy, government surveillance and private sector data sharing. Or consider the technical problems with the Tawakkalna app, introduced in Saudi Arabia, which is used for entry into many places but recently froze.

All vaccine passports have the potential to block people from essential goods and services and exclude those who lack identification or do not own or cannot afford a smartphone.

The RS criteria for a workable vaccine passport included equity, ethics and non-discrimination. That means we must ask who would we exclude? There is higher vaccine hesitancy among ethnic minorities and the jabs are being rolled out by age. Plus some people are excluded entirely: children, pregnant women and those with allergies.

Others worry of a slippery slope towards digital health or ID cards. We are already partway there, as I discovered, with Apple’s link with healthcare institutions which allows me to download my immunisation and medical records on to my iPhone. This technology could mean greater efficiency in the health system and better outcomes. But there would be serious ethical concerns if a vaccine QR code that tracks movement is linked to other data — say housing and immigration status — without our knowledge, or if it increases surveillance of already disadvantaged groups.

Credit cards and social media data hold a wealth of behavioural and location data, that companies regularly mine. With vaccine passports, it will come down to trust in government and that can only be won through transparency. There is a risk that the government expends time and money to create a passport system only to have the public recoil in horror.

We also shouldn’t forget we are globally interconnected. When travel resumes, visitors and workers will cross borders and need global standards such the WHO’s Smart Vaccination Certificate. This could be a legal minefield of issues. Human rights and data protection need to be weighed against a duty of care and commercial freedom to act. Governments may make vaccine passports mandatory on economic grounds or to protect public health. Or they may decide to dodge that bullet, but allow businesses to require them instead.

There is also the question of whether a domestic vaccine passport is worth the investment. That depends, of course, on vaccine rollout, virus mutation and other factors. To work, a substantial proportion of the population needs to be vaccinated with universal access, which in most countries is months away. In the meantime, let’s put the pieces of this puzzle together and carefully judge if we like the picture that emerges. 

*  *  *

The writer directs the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at Nuffield College, Oxford university

Tyler Durden Sun, 02/28/2021 - 22:35

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Despite news blackout, awesome COVID-19 protection is available

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Following is an exclusive excerpt from the new book, “Pandemic Blunder: Fauci and Public Health Blocked Early Home COVID Treatment” by Joel S. Hirschhorn. The author has a long history of working on health issues, including being a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association. A member of both the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and America's Frontline Doctors, Hirschhorn has authored several books and hundreds of articles.

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Pandemic blunder is defined as the failure of the United States public health system and federal agencies to support and promote early home/outpatient treatment for the COVID-19 pandemic disease. Considerable medical information and data convincingly show that when given early, a number of proven safe, cheap, generic medicines and protocols knock out the coronavirus. Early means within the first few days of getting symptoms or a positive test. Some pioneering and courageous doctors have been using innovative approaches to prevent their COVID patients from needing hospital care and facing death. Many doctors support the view that 70% to 80% of COVID deaths could have been prevented – and still can for future victims of the disease.

This book does more than describe the pandemic blunder, particularly in terms of the influence of Dr. Anthony Fauci. It can help Americans protect their lives by not being victimized by disinformation and propaganda from leftist media. Pandemic management has failed because of corrupt forces aiming to make billions of dollars from expensive medicines and vaccines. There has been widespread dereliction of duty on the part of many local, state and federal government officials.

Developing a personal strategy to stay healthy

The beginning of any personal strategy to stay healthy and survive the COVID pandemic is a deep appreciation for the undeniable truth that there are proven ways to save lives. This is the profound truth about the big pandemic blunder, meaning the failure of the public health system to support early home/outpatient COVID treatment. …

A number of statements by credible sources are presented here to convince you of life-saving truths:

* The white paper on the website of America’s Frontline Doctors by Dr. Simone Gold in the summer of 2020 concluded: “What we do know is that 70,000-100,000 excess American lives have been lost due to lack of access to HCQ.”

* On Fox News in July 2020, Dr. Harvey Risch said, “75,000 to 100,000 lives will be saved” with use of the controversial medicine, and “we’re basically fighting a propaganda war against the medical facts.” Later in October 2020, after many more deaths, Risch wrote in the Washington Examiner: “Many or most of the 220,000 deaths in the United States to date could have been prevented by widespread HCQ use that the FDA blocked. It is the FDA that is responsible for these deaths, not the president.” But Fauci is the power behind the throne, dictating FDA actions. What Risch said holds true now, with a much higher number of deaths.

* Dr. Brian Tyson has said that between 75% and 80% of the over 200,000 deaths thus far could have been prevented by using HCQ!

* In November 2020, Dr. Peter McCollough said: “Public health historians will look back and call out a blunder. The lack of investment, execution of large-scale clinical trials, and implementation of available oral medications in a sequenced regimen, conceptualized by doctors in early April, was responsible for the greatest amount of human suffering and death in our nation’s history. The avoidable loss of life is in the hundreds of thousands. The great gamble on the vaccine was a race in time in which ‘warp speed’ was simply not fast enough for those ill now and over the months to come before immunity closes out the crisis.”

* Also in November 2020, Dr. Zev Zelenko said: “There is a cure for COVID-19 as well as effective prevention options. The Zelenko Protocol could have saved over 200,000 lives.” Considering that this was when the national death figure was close to 280,000, this translates to about 70% of lives that could have been saved. But in his December 2020 published study “COVID-19 outpatients: Early risk-stratified treatment with zinc plus low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: a retrospective case series study” in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, Zelenko found an 80% reduction in deaths among those receiving early home treatment with his protocol.

* In November 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said thousands of people have died because doctors have ignored treating COVID-19 patients early with the use of alternative drugs, notably HCQ. ''Thousands of people have died because we’ve ignored it. That’s a question we’re asking: Why?'' Johnson added, “There’s a host of things we should have explored, we should be using, we should be letting doctors be doctors. And we should be celebrating their courage and their compassion rather than raking them over the coals and calling them names. … This is ridiculous.''

* In December 2020, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, who appears often on Fox News, said that with HCQ use, “probably over 100,000 deaths could've been easily avoided.” How much over is the question. He added that because of the U.S. rejection of hydroxychloroquine, “we've stressed our health care system, we've almost crashed our economy, and we've destroyed small business, and potentially, sadly, we may have really wounded ourselves from a military standpoint and a health care standpoint for years to come.”

* Also, in December 2020, Dr. Pierre Kory said: “The effective vaccines for which we have all been waiting are coming very soon, but not soon enough to save the tens of thousands who are projected to die before the widespread distribution of the vaccines can be completed. Right now, COVID-19 is a runaway train barreling down the tracks, and if you’re on those tracks, ivermectin can help lift you out of harm’s way.”

* In his second Senate hearing on early home/outpatient treatment in December 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson emphasized that probably hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost because of inattention to the use of the safe, low-cost HCQ and IVM generics for early home/outpatient treatment. At the same hearing, Dr. Rajter emphasized that “we cannot stand by and let hundreds of thousands of patients go untreated,” with the clear inference that otherwise there would be hospitalizations and deaths. He emphasized that IVM destroys the COVID virus in 48 hours.

The most important point is that the data on the advantage of using HCQ (with a 70% reduction in deaths) imply saving about 200,000 U.S. lives in November 2020, when the total deaths were about 280,000. This savings figure of course will increase as the number of deaths, sadly, keeps increasing without wide home/outpatient use of HCQ or IVM, likely along with other medicines and supplements.

In sum, there is a clear, compelling and medical basis for believing that a great many lives could have been saved and, in the future, could be saved through the use of the various medicines and protocols presented earlier. It is almost incomprehensible that we have a government and public health system that still is not doing everything feasible and proven to greatly reduce COVID deaths, in the range of 70% to 80%. It is morally repugnant and a disgrace. No wonder the terrific doctors active in the early home/outpatient treatment movement are filled with anger over what is not being used on a wide, national scale. …

Victor Davis Hanson, a leading conservative thinker, has introduced this apt description of the reality about leftist thinking stemming from the history with HCQ: “This Hydroxy Effect – hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed – is dangerous to the country at large.”

Though the mainstream media has not done stories on all the lives that could have been saved by using early home/outpatient treatment, they have done countless articles blaming insufficient contagion controls for not preventing deaths. For most Americans, such a position seems ludicrous, considering so many months of disruptive and costly contagion controls, especially various types of lockdowns. …

How to get the best information and ignore and discount bad information and propaganda

This book is just the beginning of getting sound, reliable information to protect your life, whether or not you get a COVID vaccine. There has been far too much panic about the pandemic. The major reason for that is the strategy of the leftist media to weaponize negative data to maintain a crisis atmosphere enabling political powers to do what they want.

Then what do you do?

The first thing is to depend on information from “conservative” sources and avoid paying attention to COVID information from leftist, mainstream sources. In the former category are shows on Fox News, especially Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. There are a multitude of conservative websites, many of which have been identified in the previous parts of this book. Of particular note are websites that have published pandemic articles by this author; they include WND.com, lifesitenews.com, globalresearch.ca, unz.com, opednews.com, nolanchart.com. Another important website is americasvoice.news, which airs the Steve Bannon War Room show that has often given reliable information on the pandemic.

For data on the pandemic for the U.S. and other nations, there is worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

Perhaps more importantly, ignore and discount COVID information that amounts to disinformation and propaganda on all the major leftist media, including the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as CNN and MSNBC. Stay away completely from social media for reliable information. …

Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has made the great point that FDA has no legal authority to regulate the practice of medicine. Nevertheless, by its actions on HCQ, for example, it ends up doing exactly that.

One of the pioneers for early home treatment, Dr. George Fareed, in December 2020 emphasized this: “Sadly, many infected people and primary care doctors and doctors in ERs follow the NIH and Dr. Fauci stipulations with no effective treatments offered. We need to have the NIH/FDA/CDC formally acknowledge the importance of early treatment with moderately acting, safe antivirals so readily available. When (if ever) that happens, everything would improve dramatically.”

Briefly, here are some points to remember if you hear about or read for yourself medical studies that conclude that HCQ or IVM is unsafe and ineffective.

Many such studies have used these drugs too late in the process of COVID infection. Mostly such studies have wrongly used what should be considered valid early treatment for hospitalized patients whose infection has progressed beyond the early virus replication stage. Although there have been many studies showing HCQ or IVM effective for hospitalized patients, the key is whether those patients were given the medicines early enough to be effective. But the majority of negative studies on HCQ or IVM gave the medicines too late to be effective.

In some other negative studies, the dosages of HCQ or IVM have been too high, or generally inconsistent with what positive studies have used successfully. Another shortcoming of many negative studies is that there was no use of zinc. Often negative studies include very small numbers of participants using the tested drug.

How to prepare for home/outpatient treatment

A basic decision is whether you want to obtain medicines and supplements that, as discussed in the previous section, have been found safe and effective for COVID prevention and cure.

Besides the information provided previously here, there are some very useful websites. Two of the best ones are the websites of America’s Frontline Doctors and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both have details on protocols that have achieved respect by medical professionals.

Another very useful site is c19protocols.com. There are two main sections: one for early treatment and one for prevention. Each provides links to specific websites providing detailed information.

Yet another useful site that is updated frequently is covexit.com. It provides many videos covering both treatment and news. Of special value are videos featuring some successful frontline doctors using early home/outpatient COVID treatment. You must learn to use the feature at the bottom of the home page to progress to other pages.

A website particularly useful for getting information on prophylaxis is COVID19criticalcare.com. It tends to focus on the use of IVM rather than HCQ.

For getting links to published studies, go to c19study.com. It has sections on HCQ, IVM, supplements, as well as remdesivir.

Another useful website is medicineuncensored.com run by Dr. James Todaro, an early proponent of HCQ, that offers a broad range of useful information

Also to be used is the website of Dr. Zelenko (vladimirzelenko.com) that has much useful information. And the website rationalground.com, which is also very useful. …

How to find a doctor to get necessary medicines

As long as home/outpatient treatment is blocked by NIH guidelines denying approval for any such treatment, the vast majority of American doctors won’t be using medicines like HCQ and IVM. That imposes a challenge on those people who want to use a protocol for either COVID prevention or early cure. There are three websites that offer assistance in finding a doctor who can help you get a safe and proven protocol.

The website c19protocols.com has a section “physicians/facilities offering early treatment.”

There are many links that are very useful in finding doctors to consider. One of the best links is to the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (aapsonline.org) that you can access separately. This group has an extensive listing of doctors in specific locations across the nation. It also has a free, extremely useful document titled “A Guide to Home-Based COVID Treatment.” This is regularly updated.

Another good website is americasfrontlinedoctors.com. It offers a detailed section on obtaining HCQ. Users can check what their state situation is for obtaining HCQ. Another section helps users find a doctor and prescription through use of telemedicine.

Prophylactic use of generic medicines and supplements

Though most of the attention has been given to HCQ and various cocktails including it for early home/outpatient COVID treatment, the prophylactic or preventive use of various medicines and supplements has also received attention. In other words, people can choose not to wait until they get COVID symptoms or a positive test. This is the easiest form of home/outpatient treatment, though if you choose to use a prescription medicine, you still need to see a physician willing to prescribe what you want to use.

All of us can take personal initiative to protect our lives, and this can be seen as competitive to taking a vaccine. Considering significant uncertainties about how long immunity lasts with the new COVID vaccines, as well as about effectiveness for older people and those with serious underlying medical conditions, staying with preventive action may be justified.

To begin, this author, based on many months of researching the medical literature, has been using what many others have concluded is a sensible preventive cocktail. For your consideration is the use of these supplements: quercetin, zinc, and vitamin D. The quercetin acts as a substitute for HCQ in that it gets zinc into cells. Typical use is to take a zinc supplement that supplies 50 milligrams; this could be a supplement product such as zinc sulfate labeled as 220 milligrams or a zinc gluconate labeled as 50 milligrams. Quercetin is typically sold as 500 milligrams. Vitamin D is available with 2,000 IU. One or two daily cocktails of one each of the three supplements is a safe and sensible prophylactic cocktail. All of these three supplements have been safely used for many decades.

Dr. Ramin Oskoui has talked about zinc and vitamin D, and says he suggests all his patients take them as prophylaxis. It's “a simple health measure that could be implemented easily.” He has expressed dismay as to why supplementation has not been officially recommended.

Indeed, as to the big pandemic blunder, it is somewhat amazing that public health agencies do not work hard at promoting the use of common supplements as a preventive or prophylactic measure against the coronavirus, especially for vulnerable older people and others with serious comorbidities.

Vitamin D in particular has received much attention at the website COVID.us.org, which provides many references for finding evidence that this vitamin reduces the risk of COVID infection. There are some doctors who recommend much higher doses than 2,000 IU once or twice a day, such as 10,000 IU daily. Also, many doctors have advocated taking high doses if one gets COVID symptoms.

A Harvard Medical School publication said this: “Vitamin D may protect against COVID-19 in two ways. First, it may help boost our bodies' natural defense against viruses and bacteria.

Second, it may help prevent an exaggerated inflammatory response, which has been shown to contribute to severe illness in some people with COVID-19.”

“Pandemic Blunder: Fauci and Public Health Blocked Early Home COVID Treatment” by Joel S. Hirschhorn is available now at Amazon.

The post Despite news blackout, awesome COVID-19 protection is available appeared first on WND.



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