Saturday, April 24, 2021

The US Recovery Is Weak, Especially Given the Size of the "Stimulus"

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The United States: Hardly A Recovery

There is an overly optimistic consensus view about the speed and strength of the United States’ recovery that is contradicted by facts. It is true that the United States recovery is stronger than the European or Japanese one, but the macrodata shows that the euphoric messages about aggregate GDP growth are wildly exaggerated.

Of course gross domestic product is going to rise fast, with estimates of 6 percent for 2021. It would be alarming if it did not after a massive chain of stimuli of more than 12 percent of GDP in fiscal spending and $7 trillion in Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion. This is a combined stimulus that is almost three times larger than the 2008 crisis one, according to McKinsey. The question is, What is the quality of this recovery?

The answer is: extremely poor. The United States real growth excluding the increase in debt will continue to be exceedingly small. No one can talk about a strong recovery when industry capacity utilization is at 74 percent, massively below the level of 80 percent at which it was before the pandemic. Furthermore, labor force participation rate stands at 61.5 percent, significantly below the precovid level and stalling after bouncing to 62 percent in September. Unemployment may be at 6 percent, but it is still almost twice as large as it was before the pandemic. Continuing jobless claims remain above 3.7 million in April. Weekly jobless claims remain above 500,000 and the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs—state and federal combined—for the week ending March 27 decreased by 1.2 million to 16.9 million.

These figures must be put in the context of the unprecedented spending spree and the monetary stimulus. Yes, the recovery is better than the eurozone’s thanks to a fast and efficient vaccination rollout and the dynamism of the United States business fabric, but the figures show that a relevant amount of the subsequent stimulus plans have simply perpetuated overcapacity, kept zombie firms that had financial issues before covid-19 alive, and bloated the government structural deficit and mandatory spending.

Would the United States economy have recovered as fast as it has without the deficit-spending stimulus plans? Maybe. I believe so because the entire recovery, both in markets and the economy, has been driven by the vaccine news and the process of inoculation. Most of the programs that have been implemented have had a small impact compared to the reopening of the hospitality sector and the vaccinations. The entire economic crisis came from the lockdowns and the virus and the entire recovery is the reopening and the vaccinations.

My main concern is that this monster deficit and debt program has been set as the minimum for the next crisis. No one has analyzed if the spending plans have been effective. In fact, in the eurozone no one seems to be concerned about the fact that countries that have spent between 20 to 30 percent of GDP in stimulus plans are now in stagnation. The mainstream message seems to be that if the spending plans have not worked it is because they were not large enough. Very few seem to be discussing the waste in public funding when the number one drivers of the recovery are the vaccine rollout and the reopening of the services sector.

It seems that governments want to convince us that they have saved the world when the reality is that the misguided lockdowns were the cause of the economic debacle and lifting them is the main cause of the recovery. In the process, trillions have been squandered. It is dangerous to accept that government spending no matter how much and what for is the only solution and even more dangerous to believe that the shape of the recovery is only a function of the size of the stimulus package. The problem was the virus and the government-imposed lockdowns, the solution is the vaccine and the reopening. The problem was caused by government’s lack of prevention and excess of interventionism and the solution is not more intervention.



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33 California colleges to require vaccine cards to attend in-person classes

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(OANN) – Two of the nation’s largest public university systems are introducing vaccination card requirements. On Thursday, California State University and the University of California announced students and staff will need proof of immunization to attend in-person classes this fall.

This decision came after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asserted that requiring COVID-19 passports for basic activities is government overreach. Other lawmakers have echoed that sentiment. North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) called the notion “un-American” and even signed an executive order banning such passports.

Many students are now raising questions about the validity of such an enforcement. Berkeley student Ben Chow weighed in by saying he’s unsure if he supports the mandate.

Read the full story ›

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Houston hospital will dismiss employees who refuse the COVID vaccine

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(THE BLAZE) – A hospital in Houston, TX will suspend or fire hospital workers who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine on or by June 7.

Pat Gray explained a new mandatory policy implemented at Houston Methodist Hospital requiring all hospital workers to be vaccinated by the set deadline or face dismissal. Currently, the hospital reported that 4 out of 5 Houston Methodist workers are vaccinated, and those who refuse the vaccine will face dismissal.

One hospital administrator said that getting vaccinated is a part of the sacred oath healthcare to do everything possible to keep patients safe and healthy.

Read the full story ›

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Friday, April 23, 2021

'Canceled People': Online database of victims of the new McCarthyism nears 200 listings



When political data scientist David Shor got fired for sharing research that found peaceful protests were more politically effective than violent protests, a skilled manual laborer in the Mountain West had an idea: Why not create a database of so-called cancelations?

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The woke choke which has Manhattan’s elite schools in thrall

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Metropolises like New York City have long been identified as epicentres of Western culture and cultural shifts. If this characterisation is accurate, the West best be warned.

There is a woke choke gripping Manhattan’s elite schools. Teachers are being sacked for their failure to uphold critical race theory; wealthy parents are threatening donation boycotts; some are simply giving up and removing their children from schools altogether.

Bari Weiss, a courageous journalist who was elbowed out of the New York Times last year for having the wrong opinions, has this year been drawing attention to the wokeification of elite schools around America.

A piece she penned in March called The Miseducation of America’s Elites centred on a school in West Los Angeles. Her byline tells the story all too well: “Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret.”

Weiss has since turned her attention to parallel events taking place in Manhattan schools. Last week, she published an essay by Paul Rossi, a maths teacher at US$57,000-a-year Grace Church High School. His letter begins:

As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace “antiracism” training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.        

“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race…  

Rossi’s letter includes an eerie account of what happened when he dared question the school’s radical race dogma. Though many students appreciated the breath of fresh air provided by his independent perspective, the head of the school informed him that he had caused “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems’”. Then a public reprimand of Rossi’s conduct was read aloud to every student in the school.

In Paul Rossi’s tell-all piece, he conceded:

I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.

His words were prophetic. Days later, Rossi was told that he was barred from teaching for the remainder of the school year, and that his contract would not be renewed.

In the aftermath, Paul Rossi called out the hypocrisy of the head of school George Davison for toeing the woke line in public, while admitting behind closed doors that Grace Church was “demonizing white people for being born”. Davison accused Rossi of misquoting him, until audio was released confirming Davison’s private admissions.

Indeed, what is increasingly clear about the woke phenomenon is not only that it prompts people to hold one view privately and express another in public—it causes them to publicly rebuke others for expressing views they themselves secretly hold.

Even as the dust was settling around the Rossi affair, Bari Weiss published another piece—this time from a Brearley parent. Brearley is a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with $54,000-a-year tuition. Weiss explains that, according to her research, prospective families are required to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission.

The parent begins his letter thus:

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult…       

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way.

The letter can be read in full here.

These incidents are not isolated. Former TV show host Megyn Kelly recently pulled her sons out of Collegiate, a $59,000-a-year, all-boys school, also in Manhattan. She conceded that Collegiate has long been known as a progressive institution, but was concerned by recent developments, particularly since the George Floyd riots:

I didn’t really care, most of my friends are liberals, it’s fine. I come from a Democrat family, I’m not offended at all by the ideology, and I lean center-left on some things. But they [Collegiate] have gone around the bend,… I mean, they have gone off the deep end.

Following this, another Manhattan school, Dalton, found itself mired in similar controversy. Parents   began pulling their children from Dalton when it was revealed that faculty and staff had signed an “antiracist manifesto” that demanded the elimination of certain classes if black students’ scores don’t equal those of white students; mandatory “diversity plot lines” in school plays; and an overhaul of the school’s curriculum.

Only last year, it was also revealed that billionaire John Paulson wrote to ultra-elite Manhattan school Spence to inform them he would no longer fund the school as long as it engaged in “anti-white indoctrination”. Wrote Paulson:

The advantages enjoyed by most individuals from middle or upper-income backgrounds today are the result of stable family backgrounds, high education levels, hard work, and personal responsibility.          

To attribute them to their race entails a blindness to the values that we rightly want to cultivate in our children. Our daughters are successful in school because they are disciplined and work hard…       

As you know we have been amongst the largest financial supporters of Spence. However, we will not continue to make donations to Spence while Spence continues on this path.

It is heartening to see this groundswell of pushback against the illiberal doctrines of wokeness. We must keep the pressure up if the students of tomorrow are to have any will to defend the Western liberal order that has secured the freedoms and opportunities we have enjoyed.

One practical way you can help is by signing the FAIR pledge. FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) is an organisation that has supported Paul Rossi through the Grace Church scandal.

The post The woke choke which has Manhattan’s elite schools in thrall appeared first on MercatorNet.



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FLY, YOU FOOLS!

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Bailing on Blue.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Minneapolis is my home. My happiest memories are here. It’s where I learned to ride a bike, had my first date, received my high school diploma.

But today, I’m too afraid to even walk in my neighborhood by myself.

The ACE Hardware down the street? The one that I used to bike to in the summer? Robbed twice in the past five days.

The Walgreens next to my elementary school? Molotov cocktail thrown into it.

The Lake Harriet Bandshell, where we spent countless Mother’s Days? Homeless encampment popped up next door.

These are the things you don’t read about in the news.

Ten minutes from my house, at 38th and Chicago, there is still an autonomous zone. Police are not allowed to enter. Residents have died because medical authorities couldn’t get through, and carjackers (of which there are MANY) will speed into the zone to escape officer pursuit.

My favorite dinner theater canceled its production of Cinderella because it was “too white.”

My church — my beloved, tiny, Lutheran church — organized social justice marches for our congregation while refusing to reinstate in-person services (they’re still virtual, by the way).

And how about the week of the 2020 riots?

We lived under a curfew for days while looters seemingly roamed freely. Friends fled their home at 3:30 a.m. because the auto parts store behind them was on fire. And then we watched in horror as our City Council members demanded that the city defund the police — as they hired armed security for themselves.

I no longer recognize Minneapolis. I no longer want to live here. We are done, and I am leaving.

Can’t say as I blame ya, kiddo. Sadly, though, what’s been done to Minneapolis is no different than what’s been done to many if not most other formerly-American blue cities and states. And until Americans come to grips with what the Democrat-Socialists truly are and resolve to rise up against them en masse, the Progressivist campaign of destruction and despair will grind on.



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Should Unvaccinated and Obese Be Penalized by Government?

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“Vaccine refusal will come at a cost — for all of us,” Edward-Isaac Dovere, a staff writer for The Atlantic, proclaims in an April 10, 2021, political commentary.1 Unvaccinated individuals “will have higher health care costs,” he says, and the vaccinated will have to foot the bill, either through taxes or insurance premiums.

This argument could have been made for decades, and can still be made today, for any number of groups. Obese individuals have far higher health care costs than those of normal weight. Insulin resistant people and those with Type 2 diabetes end up costing the health care system enormous sums. Who pays for them?

Overall, healthy individuals — people who generally do what they can to take good care of themselves to prevent chronic conditions — have always paid for those who are less particular about their diets and lifestyle.

The Economic Costs of Vaccination Vs. Vaccine Refusal

Dovere predicts the economic costs of vaccine refusal will begin to feature heavily as we move forward. He quotes Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who told him,2 “You have a liberty right, and that unfortunately is imposing on everyone else and their liberty right not to have to pay for your stubbornness.” Not surprisingly, Dovere and Inslee both focus on just one side of what needs to be a two- if not four-sided equation.

When making public health policy, you have an obligation to analyze both the benefit and the cost of any given policy. In this case, what might be the cost of vaccine side effects, both in terms of health care costs and lives lost? As of April 1, 2021, VAERS had received 56,869 adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, including 7,971 serious injuries and 2,342 deaths.3 By April 13, the had updated that death toll to 3,005.4

What might be the cost if the vaccines don’t work and you get sick anyway? As of April 15, 2021, some 5,800 Americans who had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 had been diagnosed with COVID-19 post-vaccination; 396 (7%) required hospitalization and 74 died.5 These cases are popping up all over the world.

The vaccines are not foolproof. In fact, so-called “breakthrough cases,” meaning cases in which a fully vaccinated individual is diagnosed with COVID-19 are to be expected. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised, seeing how the vaccine makers have acknowledged that the mRNA injections are not designed to actually make you immune to SARS-CoV-2.

You can still contract the virus and spread it to others. What the shots may do is lessen your symptoms if and when you get infected with SARS-CoV-2. So, of course people can still get sick, as they did before. Some will require hospitalization. Some will die — just like they did previously, before the vaccine.

Then there’s the question of whether vaccinated individuals end up being more susceptible to variants of the virus than unvaccinated individuals. Preliminary research6,7,8,9 found that people who had received both doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine were eight times more susceptible to contracting the South African variant of SARS-CoV-2, called B.1.351, (5.4% compared to 0.7%).

Unfortunately, the study was too small to glean any information about outcomes, so we don’t know whether they developed milder or more serious illness than unvaccinated people sickened by the same variant.

Either way, if vaccinated people are more susceptible to more dangerous variants (which they claim B.1351 is), why assume that unvaccinated people would incur higher health care costs? Variants are now cropping up all over the place, so maybe vaccinated people will end up being responsible for a greater share of medical expenses. Maybe, if they have milder illness and unvaccinated have more serious illness, the costs might end up about the same for each group.

May There Be Economic Benefits to Vaccine Refusal?

In my view, the notion that COVID-19 vaccines will end this pandemic is an illogical fallacy since these shots do not provide actual immunity. The fizz in Dovere’s argument starts going flat on that basis alone. But there’s much more.

To really determine what’s best for public health, you’d also want to do the benefit and cost analysis of not vaccinating and relying on naturally-acquired immunity in combination with immune-boosting strategies instead, such as improving vitamin D levels across the entire population, for example.

Only when you have made all of those calculations — the benefit and cost of vaccinating, and the benefit and cost of not vaccinating — can you compare the two and begin to make statements about how certain groups of people may incur higher health care costs, and which strategy is likely to save the most lives. As of right now, it’s pure guesswork as to who’s going to cost more in the long run.

For example, I don’t know of any actual data showing that the health of people who are planning to forgo the vaccine place them at increased risk of serious COVID-19. If I were to guess, and this is pure speculation, people who have decided not to get vaccinated may be doing so because a) they know they’re in a low-risk category and/or b) they are health-conscious people who feel confident that they can prevent and/or treat COVID-19 in other cost-effective ways, should they get sick.

There are a lot of data that need to be compiled and analyzed before we can start declaring the COVID-19 vaccination campaign a public health care success, let alone a cost-saving imperative.

Appeal to Illogical Reasoning

Dovere goes on to discuss some of the messaging campaigns employed to lure people out of their vaccine hesitancy:10

“Two appeals seem to work best: First, the vaccines are safe, and they’re more effective than the flu vaccine. Second, you deserve this, and getting vaccinated will help preserve your liberty and encourage the government to lift restrictions.

(That last idea is what Jerry Falwell Jr. focused on in the vaccination selfie he posted11 this week, captioned, ‘Please get vaccinated so our nutcase of a governor will have less reasons for mindless restrictions!’) Inslee hopes that emphasizing those points will persuade more Republican men to get their shots.”

Sometimes it can help to spell out a logical fallacy using different words. (Personally, I believe Falwell was simply trying to be funny, but Dovere and Inslee have apparently seized the “lift restrictions” angle as a social conditioning opportunity, so that’s really what I’m addressing here.)

One rewrite of Falwell’s plea could be: “Please ignore your current health status and potential vaccine risks and just obey so that our governor will have less reason to impose unconstitutional and unscientific limitations on our basic rights and freedoms.”

In my view, a more appropriate way to prevent “mindless restrictions” would be to peacefully disobey and/or take the governor to court, as has been done to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Supreme Court has ruled against him no less than six times, finding he abused his power, overstepped his authority and violated the Constitution with his pandemic restrictions on churches.12

Urging someone to take a vaccine to prevent an elected official — who can be unseated — from implementing unscientific and/or unconstitutional restrictions is hardly rational. Let’s not forget that cost-benefit analyses13 have actually been done for lockdowns — perhaps one of the most mindless of restrictions — and the cost is far greater than the benefit.

The cost of the lockdowns in the U.K., in terms of Wellbeing Years (WELLBY), is five times greater than might optimistically be saved, and may in reality be anywhere from 50 times to 87 times greater. The cost for lockdowns in Canada is at least 10 times greater than the benefit.

In Australia, the minimum cost is 6.6 times higher, and in the U.S., the cost is estimated to be at least 5.2 times higher than the benefit of lockdowns. A cost-benefit analysis performed for New Zealand, which looked at the cost of adding just five extra days of “COVID-19 alert level 4” found the cost in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) was 94.9 times higher than the benefit.

Should We Penalize Obesity and Vitamin D Deficiency?

If it’s determined that unvaccinated individuals need to be penalized socially, financially or otherwise, then how can we not also penalize other choices that significantly add to the COVID-19 burden? We know, for example, that vitamin D deficiency significantly raises your risk of COVID-19. In one analysis,14 82.2% of COVID-19 patients were vitamin D deficient.

I published a scientific review15 on the impact of vitamin D in COVID-19 in October 2020, co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel. You can read the paper for free on the journal’s website.

Another major COVID-19 factor is obesity. As reported by CNN16 March 5, 2021, the COVID-19 death rates were more than 10 times higher in countries where more than half the adult population was overweight, compared to countries in which the obesity rate was below 50%. The COVID-19 death rates also rose in tandem with the prevalence of obesity, thereby strengthening the link, according to the report, released by the World Obesity Federation.

At the lowest end is Vietnam, which has an obesity rate of 18.3% and a COVID-19 death rate of 0.04 per 100,000. Toward the high end is the U.S., which has an obesity rate of 67.9% and a COVID-19 death rate of 152.49 per 100,000. (Of course, this report used COVID-19 mortality statistics that have been proven to be wildly exaggerated, as detailed in my interview with Dr. Henele.)

Making an already dire situation worse, recent data17 show 42% of U.S. adults have packed on unwanted pounds, with an average weight gain of 29 pounds, since the start of the pandemic. Only 18% report undesired weight loss, with an average weight loss of 26 pounds.

Government Has Ignored the Value of Healthy Population

According to the World Obesity Federation report, obesity was the second most important risk factor for hospitalization and death from COVID-19 — old age being the primary risk factor — and as noted by Johanna Ralston, CEO of the World Obesity Federation:18

“Old age is unavoidable, but the conditions that contribute to overweight and obesity can be highly avoidable if governments step up and we all join forces to reduce the impact of this disease. The failure to address the root causes of obesity over many decades is clearly responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths."

Lead author of the report, Dr. Tim Lobstein, added:19

"Governments have been negligent, and ignored the economic value of a healthy population at their peril. For the last decade they have failed to tackle obesity, despite setting themselves targets at United Nations meetings. COVID-19 is only the latest infection exacerbated by weight issues, but the warning signs were there. We have seen it in the past with MERS, H1N1 and other respiratory diseases.”

Let’s Not Accept Hypocrisy and Double Standards

Even WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented on the report saying it “must act as a wake-up call to governments globally,” as "The correlation between obesity and mortality rates from COVID-19 is clear and compelling."

That said, let’s get back to Dovere’s argument that unvaccinated people are bound to incur higher health care costs due to COVID-19, and therefore there must be some way to penalize those people or force them into compliance.

If you cannot fathom penalizing obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes or vitamin D deficiency — conditions known to significantly raise your risk of severe COVID-19 — then how could you possibly consider penalizing an unvaccinated person based on that single parameter alone?

Using that logic, what, then, do we need to do about obese individuals, whose risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 is anywhere from 40% to 113% greater, and their chances of requiring intensive care 74% higher,20 than that of their non-obese peers? What do we need to do about people who just refuse to get their vitamin D levels up, and end up taking up the lion’s share of hospital beds?

To be clear, I am NOT proposing we penalize people based on their weight, metabolic flexibility or vitamin D status. I do not support that any more than I support penalizing unvaccinated people — and that is the whole point. Most would agree that this would be completely ridiculous.

My point is, if you cannot fathom penalizing obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes or vitamin D deficiency — conditions known to significantly raise your risk of severe COVID-19 — then how could you possibly consider penalizing an unvaccinated person based on that single parameter alone?

The question is especially valid because, again, vaccinated persons can contract and spread SARS-CoV-2 like anyone else. It’s really unclear how vaccinated people are “safer” than unvaccinated ones, when the only person standing to gain from these shots is the person getting it (in the form of milder symptoms when sickened).

Are You ‘Pure’ Enough for Your Government?

I think it’s important to realize that the COVID-19 vaccine campaign is less about protecting public health and more about creating the infrastructure and psychological climate required for the implementation of global tyranny, which will likely begin with the introduction of vaccine passports that are very similar to the China social credit system.

As discussed in “Vaccines Are the New ‘Purity Test,’” it can almost be likened to a loyalty test. Or perhaps it could best be described as a totalitarian submission test?

Getting private companies to require these vaccine passports only makes sense if there is a strong vaccine push, and this is one of many clues as to what’s really behind the stated “need” for the whole world to get vaccinated.

We’re not all at risk for COVID-19. For a vast majority of individuals, the vaccines make little or no sense, as for young, healthy individuals, their risks outweigh the benefit. Now they are pushing to vaccinate children, whose risk of getting COVID-19 is well-established as being profoundly minuscule.

They are at exponentially higher risk from many other factors. There are currently fewer than 500 children who are reported to have died from COVID-19, even with the massively manipulated causes of death. Remember, if you had a positive COVID test and died from terminal cancer or a motorcycle accident, you were classified as a COVID-19 death.

As you can see from the graph below, there are 10 higher risks of death than COVID-19 for children. To be logically consistent, the government would need to be equally rigid about addressing all of these causes as aggressively as they are pursuing COVID-19 vaccination for children.

10 leading causes of child and adolescent death in the U.S.

But it’s not about simply getting a vaccine into your arm. Ultimately, it’s about getting you tied into the digital system being launched in the form of vaccine passports. As explained by former Clinton adviser and author Naomi Wolf (whom I will be interviewing shortly) in a March 28, 2021, interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton:21,22

“‘Vaccine passport’ sounds like a fine thing if you don’t understand what those platforms can do. I’m [the] CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about your data.

Once this rolls out, you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all. It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency. Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans.

Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. You credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included … It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”

Dangerous Curves Ahead

Wolf also points out the horrific history of IBM, which developed a sophisticated system of punch cards that allowed Nazi Germany to create a two-tier society and ultimately facilitated the rounding up of Jews for extermination. Fast-forward to today, and IBM is now a leader in the vaccine passport business. I wrote about this in “IBM Colluded With Hitler, Now Makes Vaccine Passports.”

In Nazi Germany, the obsession with purity — both in terms of hygiene and race theory — drove the genocide of Jews, the old, the handicapped and the mentally challenged.

In present day, the public narrative has eerily followed Nazi Germany’s playbook for genocide, starting with the scapegoating of healthy people, as the rapid spread of COVID-19 was blamed on asymptomatic individuals not properly masking, social distancing and self-isolating.

That then grew into the nurturing of prejudice against people who refuse to wear masks, and now we’re seeing the narrative building toward persecution of those who do not want to get the vaccine. It will start with discrimination, and already, we’re hearing talk of how only vaccinated people ought to have the right to partake in certain social activities. If that is tolerated, then outright persecution will be the inevitable next step.

This is why I reject and counter commentaries such as that by Dovere. These half-baked, one-sided, persecutory arguments must be challenged at every turn, because they only lead us one way. And unless you’re part of the technocratic elite, you — regardless of how you feel about vaccination right now — do not want to end up there.

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Thursday, April 22, 2021

The Postal Service is running a 'covert operations program' that monitors Americans' social media posts



The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

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I first heard about Patrick Byrne around 2005 from my friend, the late John Perry Barlow, who was then staying with me at my parents’ apartment in Rio de Janeiro, while I was writing a book and he was advising the Brazilian government.

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Texas Ended Lockdowns and Mask Mandates. Now Locked-Down States Are Where Covid Is Growing Most

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Early last month, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced he would end the state’s mask mandate and allow most businesses to function at 100 percent capacity.

The response from the corporate media and the Left was predictable. California governor Gavin Newsom declared the move “absolutely reckless.” Beto O’Rourke called the GOP a “cult of death.” Joe Biden called the move “Neanderthal thinking.” Keith Olbermann insisted, “Texas has decided to join the side of the virus” and suggested Texans shouldn’t be allowed to take the covid vaccine. Vanity Fair ran an article with the title “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary with Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”

Other states have followed in Texas’s wake, and Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia are now all states where covid restrictions range from weak to nonexistent.

Georgia and Florida, of course, are both notable for ending lockdowns and restriction much earlier than many other states. And in those cases as well, the state governments were criticized for their policies, which were said to be reckless and sure to lead to unprecedented death. Georgia’s policy was denounced as an experiment in “human sacrifice.”

Yet in recent weeks, these predictions about Texas’s fate have proven to be spectacularly wrong. Moreover, many of the states with the worst growth in covid cases—and the worst track records in overall death counts—have been states that have had some of the harshest lockdowns. The failure of the lockdown narrative in this case has been so overwhelming that last week, when asked about the Texas situation, Anthony Fauci could only suggest a few unconvincing lines about how maybe Texans are voluntarily wearing masks and locking down more strenuously than people in other states. In Fauci's weak-sauce explanation we see a narrative that simply fails to explain the actual facts of the matter. 

Texas vs. Michigan

The Texas situation is just one piece of a state-by-state picture that is devastating for the lockdowns-save-lives narrative.

For example, let’s look at covid case numbers as of April 20.

Case numbers are a favorite metric for advocates of stay-at-home orders, business closures, mask mandates, and repressive measures in the name of disease control.

In Texas, the total new cases (seven-day moving average) on April 20 was 3,004. That comes out to approximately 103 per million.

Now, let’s look at Michigan, where a variety of strict mask mandates and partial lockdowns continue. Restaurant capacity remains at 50 percent, and the state continues to issue edicts about how many people one is allowed to have over for dinner.

In Michigan, the seven-day moving average for new infections as of April 20 was 790 per million—nearly eight times worse than Texas.

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By the logic of lockdown advocates, states with harsh lockdowns should have far fewer cases and less growth in cases.

This, however, is most certainly not the case. In New Jersey, for example, where lockdowns have been long and harsh, case growth is nearly four times what it is in Texas. And then there are Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Maine, and New York, all of which have new case growth rates of more than double what’s going on Texas.

Indeed, the only state with notably lax covid policies that’s in the top ten of case growth is Florida, which nonetheless is experiencing growth rates that are slower than in states run by lockdown fetishists like Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy.

Moreover, Florida’s covid-19 overall outbreak has been far less deadly than those in the states that embraced lockdowns long and hard. New Jersey, for example, has the worst covid death rate in the nation at 2,838 per million as of April 20. Right behind are New York and Massachusetts with total deaths per million at 2,672 and 2,537, respectively.

Florida, on the other hand, is twenty-eighth in the nation in terms of covid deaths, at 1,608. Texas has total deaths per million at 1,721.

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In other words, Florida isn’t likely to catch up to New York or New Jersey any time soon, and it's certainly not going to soon catch up with Michigan, which is leaving other states in the dust in terms of case growth. For those who are scared to death of covid, they’d be better off in Florida or Texas or Georgia than in the states that have long embraced lockdowns and claim to be “following the science.”

So how can this be explained?

The lockdown advocates don’t seem to have an explanation at all.

Last week, Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) struggled to come up with an explanation as he testified to Congress.

In previous weeks, Fauci tended to rely on the old tried-and-true claim that if we only wait two to four more weeks, cases will explode wherever covid restrictions are lessened or eliminated. Lockdown advocates tried this for months after Georgia ended its stay-at-home order, although Georgia consistently performed better than many states that continued their lockdowns.

But now that we’re six weeks out from the end of Texas’s mask mandate and partial lockdowns, Fauci could offer no plausible explanation. Rather, when pressed on the matter by Representative Jim Jordan, Fauci insisted that what really matters is compliance rather than the existence of mask mandates and lockdown mandates:
There’s a difference between lockdown and the people obeying the lockdown…. You know you could have a situation where they say, 'We’re going to lock down,' and yet you have people doing exactly what they want—
Jordan asked if this explains the situation in Michigan and New Jersey (and other states with quickly growing covid case rates). Fauci then claimed he couldn’t hear the question, and Jordan was cut off by the committee chairman.

No one who is familiar with the situation in states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia, however, would find it plausible that the spread of covid has been lessened in those areas by more militant use of masks and social distancing. Fauci's testimony was clearly just a case of a government “expert” grasping about for an explanation.

But don’t expect Fauci and his supporters to give up on insisting that New York and Michigan are doing "the right thing" while Texas and Florida are embracing "human sacrifice" as a part of a "death cult." 

The actual numbers paint a very different picture, and even casual observers can now see that the old narrative was very, very wrong.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

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This Trial Was A Disgrace

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Guest Post by Kurt Schlichter

This Trial Was A Disgrace

I don’t pretend to know if Derek Chauvin is guilty in the objective sense – Judge Mom, a conservative who sent a lot of people to jail as a prosecutor before doing it from the bench, made a convincing argument to me for a murder conviction soon after the incident – but I do know one thing. This trial was a travesty, a kangaroo court, and as a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

This is not to argue whether he is innocent or guilty. I don’t know. There were arguments both ways, and compelling evidence for both points of view. There was powerful evidence for his guilt. Say what you want about that videotape, but it’s solid evidence. And there was powerful evidence for his innocence – George Floyd was clearly in mid-overdose and, after all, fentanyl does have the side effect of killing you. That’s solid evidence too. This was no slam-dunk. A fair trial required careful thought and sober deliberations. And it required a process where neutral citizens could act as jurors to sort it out try to find the truth based on the evidence and the law, and only that. It required a process free of fear and intimidation. But let’s not pretend we got that here.

From the beginning, we had politicians, media hacks, cultural poohbahs, and Twitter twerps demanding a pound of flesh. This was not outrage over a perceived crime – it was a mob interested in scoring points. A literal mob. People burned down the town where it happened. And a lot of other towns.

So, in an environment of violent chaos, did our glorious establishment stand up to defend the justice system by doubling down on the due process protections every accused is entitled to?

Of course, it did because courage in the face of controversy is the hallmark of our magnificent elite. They are our betters and worthy inheritors of the greatest nation in human history.

I’ll give you a second to stop laughing.

No, instead our elite tossed out the most basic component of our justice system, the idea of due process and a fair trial because to not do so would have led to evil and dumb people calling them “racists” and they couldn’t handle that heat. They folded, joining in the chorus demanding blood – something very different than demanding justice.

A fair trial? What a joke. At every point, they stacked the deck. “Due process is apparently a luxury we can’t afford because BLM will get mad,” went the elite’s gutless reasoning. In fact, like free speech and freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial and due process matters most when defending that right is hard.

When you have to hear words you hate.

When someone rejects your faith (including pagan faiths like the global warming cult) in favor of his own.

When someone you don’t like is on trial.

That’s the thing about rights – the people you like never have to demand their rights, only the people you don’t.

What happened here? Well, they piled appellate issue on the appellate issue in a towering pile of errors that would, by all rights, lead a real court of appeals to toss this case back for a retrial.

The judge refused to change the venue. He made the case be tried in a city whose inhabitants set it aflame. Seems legit.

The judge refused to sequester the jury, making them pinkie swear to ignore the Class 5 hurricane of media attention. That’ll work.

The city council decided to settle the wrongful death case right during the trial. What a coinkydink.

Minneapolis’s goofy mayor demanded a conviction. Great.

Minnesota’s governor did too. Awesome

The loathsome Maxine Waters – as part of the Army, I had to help clean up the mess she made in 1992 in LA with her “No justice, no peace” incitement – decided to encourage violence if her preferred verdict didn’t come down. Spectacular.

The leftist scumbags did their part, splashing pig’s blood on the house of someone they thought had been a defense witness for the crime of giving testimony the mob disliked. Nothing to see here.

And the media did its part, ensuring that the jurors knew they’d be doxed if they got it “wrong” (and praised if they got it “right”). Oh, the media didn’t say it expressly – but the media still made it clear. Do you have any doubt our brave journalists would hesitate to hassle a juror for wrongverdicting? Democracy dies in darkness or something.

Oh, and the media also cheerled the prosecution throughout. Of special note is the genius “legal analyst” – Pro Tip: If the legal analyst is not Harmeet Dillon, Ron Coleman, or me, he/she/xe is probably going to be terrible – who inexplicably chose to say, on purpose, this: “Defense begins the closing by defining reasonable doubt, not with why #DerekChauvin is innocent. Think about that. #DerekChauvinTrial #GeorgeFloyd

Only an idiot would think about that. I am not going to insult your intelligence by explaining why that’s appalling. She apparently once worked at the Department of Justice, which does explain a lot.

Piled together, this was a towering heap of due process violations that made this trial a farce. Not because of the evidence, but because the establishment decided to tamper with the jury. No, no one overtly told the jurors how they had to vote, but did anyone need to? Do you imagine anyone on that jury was unaware of what was in store for them if they determined the evidence defined the narrative and acquitted?

No, you don’t. But don’t look to any appellate court to have the guts to do the right thing and send it back for a fair trial. Sadly, the smart money is on the jurists getting the message too.

The message was crystal clear, just as it was meant to be. And the jury came through – maybe. Maybe the jury really was convinced by the evidence and thought he was guilty. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was scared. And that possibility is unacceptable in a civilized and free society.

Yet, our elite will not just accept it. Our elite will celebrate it.

And that’s a disgrace.



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Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Doug Casey On The Shocking 2025 'Deagel' Forecast: War, Population Reduction, & The Collapse Of The West

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Doug Casey On The Shocking 2025 'Deagel' Forecast: War, Population Reduction, & The Collapse Of The West

Via InternationalMan,com,

International ManDeagel is a private online source for the military capabilities of the world’s nation-states. It recently released a shocking five-year forecast.

The report analyzes countries by projected population size, GDP, defense budget, and more.

In it, they predict a 70% reduction in the size of the United States population.

This is a bold prediction. What are your thoughts on this?

Doug Casey: I’ve got to say that I wasn’t familiar with Deagel - it keeps a low profile. Deagel is in the same business as Jane’s—which has been in the business of analyzing weapons systems for many decades.

A look at the Deagel website, which is quite sophisticated, makes it clear we’re not dealing with some blogger concocting outrageous clickbait. It seems to be well-connected with defense contractors and government agencies like the CIA.

They’ve predicted that about 70% of the US population, and about the same percentage in Europe, is going to disappear by 2025. It’s hard to believe that anybody in their position would make a forecast like that. There’s no logical business reason for it, especially since it was done before the COVID hysteria gripped the world. It stretches a reader’s credulity.

Could it possibly happen? It would be the biggest thing in world history. Does it have a basis in reality, or is it just some bizarre trolling exercise? I’m not sure—it’s hard to take almost anything from any source at face value these days. But for the last several years, I’ve been saying that World War III would basically be a biological war. Of course, it will have substantial conventional, nuclear, space-based, and AI/computer elements as well, but its most serious component will be biological. Essentially, it will involve the use of bacteria and viruses to wipe out the enemy. The odds are that it will be between the US and China. But since anyone with a CRISPR in their garage can hack the genome and DNA of almost anything and anybody… there are no limits to the possibilities.

Certainly, from the Chinese point of view, a biological war makes all the sense in the world. That’s because the Han Chinese share a lot of genetic similarities. Presumably, a bacteria or virus can be bred to favor the Chinese and take out most everybody else. The fact is that anything that can be done eventually will be done. It’s just the law of large numbers.

Somebody might respond, “Well, that’s horribly racist.” Of course it’s racist. Notwithstanding rational and philosophical arguments against it, all ethnic groups and countries are quite naturally racist. A fear of different racial and ethnic groups has been bred into humans, as a survival mechanism, over the hundreds of thousands of years since we became biologically modern.

All races and ethnic groups like to think that they’re “the best” or the most worthy, and that non-members are “other”, perhaps only marginally human. Biological warfare plays directly into feeling.

Americans who—like everybody else—see themselves as “the good guys”, believe we’re immune to that. However, don’t forget that the US pioneered modern biowarfare. Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been an epicenter of it for over 70 years, and there are undoubtedly many other more clandestine sites where US government agencies are working on biological warfare. No doubt the Chinese and other major powers are working clandestinely as well. It’s not something anybody wants to advertise for many reasons.

What shocks me is not that a biowar is being researched or even actively wargamed, but that a connected organization like Deagel is actually saying it publicly. It’s not like what goes on in the spook community is an open book.

Deagel doesn’t explicitly say what, exactly, will cause the great die-off. But there are many advantages to biological warfare over other types of warfare, so it will probably be featured. It’s probably inevitable, now that the technology has made it practical.

What are the advantages of biowar? What might wargaming generals like about it?

  • First, it doesn’t destroy materiel. That’s a huge plus. After all, what’s the point of conquering a country if all you have to show for it is a smoking radioactive ruin? That’s the major advantage of the neutron bomb, of course; it kills the people but limits damage to buildings. Bioweapons essentially make atomic weapons obsolescent.

  • Second, bioweapons can be structured to attack only certain racial groups. That’s potentially either a big advantage or disadvantage to China. The diverse population of the US could also be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on who strikes first. But, on the bright side, you can perhaps immunize your own population, or at least the military and “essential” workers, to control the damage.

  • Third, bioweapons are very cheap and easy to fabricate. Anyone with access to a good high school chemistry lab is in business. There’s no need for expensive and tricky U-235 or, for that matter, any of the junk toys the Pentagon spends hundreds of billions on.

  • Fourth, bioweapons don’t need sophisticated delivery systems; again, no need for B-2s, B-52s, cruise missiles, ICBMs, or any of that. A sick tourist or two, or a few packages sent in the mail, can get the job done.

  • Fifth, bioweapons, whether they’re viruses or bacteria, not only offer plausible deniability but the potential to blame a third party. You can launch an attack, and nobody can really be sure who did it. Or even that an attack is, in fact, being launched.

There’s every advantage to biological warfare from an aggressor’s point of view. And, the aggressor doesn’t even have to be a nation-state, which is, of course, another excuse for governments to further clamp down on their populations, as COVID has shown. Guns are good self-defense weapons, and governments are trying to eliminate them; basement biowar labs are strictly offensive. Imagine the bureaucratic enforcement possibilities.

International Man: In addition, Deagel included a lengthy disclaimer, which states:

“After COVID, we can draw two major conclusions:

  1. The Western world success model has been built over societies with no resilience that can barely withstand any hardship, even a low-intensity one. It was assumed, but we got the full confirmation beyond any doubt.

  2. The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so-called Great Reset.”

Doug, you’ve written extensively about the economic, political, cultural, and social decline in the US—long before it became a popular topic of discussion.

Has anything changed in your perspective on the future of the US?

Doug Casey: No. I’m afraid the election of actual Bolsheviks in 2020—and I don’t use that term lightly—has sealed its fate. Not to mention that the nomenklatura in most major cities and states are cut from the same cloth.

In point of fact, the US is on such a self-destructive path that the Chinese don’t have to do anything in order to win. All they need to do is lay back and be quiet. The West is destroying itself.

As for this COVID crisis, it impresses me as 80% hysteria, a bad flu season that has been blown out of proportion. It’s well known (insofar as anything can be known, considering the abysmal quality of reporting and the extreme politicization of the issue) that COVID mainly affects the elderly, the sick, and the obese. The average age of descendants is 80; however, the ages of those who die are rarely mentioned. The media reports the number of COVID cases constantly, but that’s as meaningless as counting who gets a common cold. Anyway, aren’t all those who get infected become immune? A virus—like the Hong Kong flu, the Asian flu, the Bird flu, and the Swine flu—goes viral, then goes away. Even the Spanish flu, which was actually serious, came and went without destroying the economy. Nonetheless, the public has been so terrorized that they’re panicking to take potentially dangerous experimental injections. Even though there are numerous cheap drugs that can mitigate the virus after diagnosis, they’re never prescribed. The opinions of physicians and world-class scientists who differ with Fauci—an overpaid lifelong government employee—are actively suppressed. However, this is a whole different subject.

There is one thing I question about Deagel’s statement that you quoted: “The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through something called the Great Reset.” That’s a very odd statement because the crisis isn’t extending the life of the dying economic system. It’s putting the final nail in its coffin. It would be nice to hear how they figure that out, as COVID seems to be medically vastly overblown. The Great Reset has nothing to do with preserving the current economic system; it’s about formalizing a new one.

Here’s a wild and crazy thought. What if the real problem isn’t so much the COVID virus itself.

What if the real problem is the new vaccines. What if, after X number of months or years, they turn out to have very deadly effects? There’s a reason new drugs are tested over a period of years, which is far from the case here. Ted Turner, Bill Gates, and numerous others who think they’re “elite” have long said that the earth’s population ought to be reduced radically, perhaps by 80%. Is it too shocking to believe that some group would take advantage of this to cull the human population? It’s something that would be hard to believe even in a science fiction novel. But it now appears to be technically feasible. History is replete—overrun, actually—with psychos who try to destroy everybody once they get in power.

In point of fact, science fiction is a much better predictor of the future than any think tank has ever been. So maybe there’s a Dr. Evil at large, anxious to eliminate deplorables and other undesirables. If he exists, I doubt today’s woke transgender version of James Bond can counter him. Who knows where this is going? But it’s the wrong direction, and the trend is still accelerating.

International Man: The disclaimer in the Deagel report goes on to say,

“The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome. As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.”

Is the Western civilization seeing a confluence of crises coming together in a perfect storm?

Doug Casey: That’s a very good point. It seems like everything is starting to happen at once and at a hyperbolically accelerating rate. While the worlds of science and technology are approaching Ray Kurzweil’s utopian Singularity, the worlds of politics and sociology are approaching a dystopian anti-Singularity.

Let’s briefly look at the financial, economic, social, and political aspects of the potential collapse.

We’re absolutely en route to a gigantic financial crisis, featuring the destruction of the US dollar. And with it, the savings of a large percentage of the planet’s people will be impoverished because their savings are in dollars. Much of the value people thought they had in stocks, bonds, real estate, pensions, and insurance could disappear.

That’s bad enough, but what’s worse are the economic consequences. We’re likely to see wholesale unemployment, a collapse in business activity, and corporate bankruptcies, even while taxes go up radically. I’m increasingly of the opinion there will be a crack-up boom along the way; however, we might be entering that as we speak.

What’s even worse are the social ramifications, such as critical race theory, which emphasizes the differences between race groups, creating actual race hatred. One consequence of the financial and economic upsets will be riots like those of 2020. The mass migration of people from alien cultures who don’t share Western values into the US and Europe is destabilizing. The US has, in fact, become a multicultural domestic empire.

The political consequences are evident. The Biden people in Washington, D.C. are exactly the same personality types who took over Russia in 1917 or France in 1789. They aren’t going to let go of the apparatus of power now that they’ve got it. They will find a way to re-install themselves in 2024.

What about the military? The US spends something like $1 trillion on defense annually, but nobody knows for certain. These budgets are complicated; military spending is hidden here, there, and everywhere. It doesn’t defend the United States; it just antagonizes foreigners. It’s also interesting that the Department of Defense is now trying to root out conservative political views from the rank-and-file soldiers.

But let’s get back to what could collapse the populations of North America and Europe by over 50%. Perhaps Deagel is anticipating a serious collapse of complex society because food won’t be grown, processed, and sent to cities. Maybe COVID is seen as just a catalyst. Most people in today’s highly urbanized world, from cubicle dwellers to ghetto rats, are incapable of surviving for more than a week if supply chains break.

International Man: The report also discusses a prediction regarding a potential war that involves Russia and China against the US.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it likely that we’ll see a conflict of this kind during the 2020s?

Doug Casey: As I said earlier, a war, at least with China, seems inevitable. It will likely be fomented by the US because, as the economy goes bad, governments always look for somebody else, an outsider, to blame.

At this point—and I recognize this will outrage jingoists and nationalists—the US government is actually the most dangerous force on the face of the planet. Much more dangerous than the Chinese, the Russians, or anybody else. Why? The US government is unique in actively and aggressively looking for trouble absolutely everywhere, sticking its nose into everything. Only the US has troops in a hundred other countries and is fighting hot wars in several more.

It’s said, for instance, that the Russians are aggressors because they may retake the Crimea and the Donbas region. Most Americans, who can’t even find these places on the map, are unaware that Crimea had been part of Russia since it was taken from the Ottomans in the 18th century and is mostly populated by ethnic Russians. Nikita Kruschev arbitrarily transferred it from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 for personal political reasons shortly after Stalin’s death. The current problem started only after the US fomented a coup d’etat, a so-called color revolution, in Ukraine in 2014. It then made sense for Putin to retake it, much like the US tried to overthrow Castro after he ousted Batista.

In any event, it’s a problem between Russia and Ukraine and none of our business. The Biden regime butting in is somewhat analogous to Russia threatening war over the US owning Puerto Rico. We don’t need a serious war with Russia over nothing.

Taiwan is similar. Historically, it’s just a secessionist Chinese province—or not. Perhaps it’s a government in exile. But no matter; these are meaningless legalisms. Frankly, I’m on the side of Taiwan, but it’s none of our business whether they go to war with each other. US government intervention could easily start a conflict with China. It might end with the sinking of a couple of US carrier groups, or it might evolve into World War 3.

And, of course, we’re still in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Plus Africa and God knows where else. The US is unnecessarily and stupidly whacking hornet’s nests everywhere in the world, bankrupting itself and making enemies, setting the stage for something really significant.

*  *  *

The 2020s will likely to be an increasingly volatile time. More governments are putting their money printing on overdrive. Negative interests are becoming the rule instead of the exception to it. One thing is for sure, there will be a great deal of change taking place in the years ahead. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/21/2021 - 21:40

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SECOND STUDY This Time From CDC WEBSITE Confirms Stanford Study on Face Masks Being Harmful – ...

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Why are US medical experts not telling Americans of the dangers of wearing masks?
Why is Big Tech censoring this message?

by Joe Hoft
TheGatewayPundit.com

More support for health concerns with wearing masks has been uncovered.  This report was published and presented at the CDC website in June 2020.  

It was brought to our attention today, that a report was published at the Hayride in March that is similar to our report from yesterday noted below:

In March, the Hayride reported on the results of another mask study posted on June 10, 2020, at the CDC website.  This study confirms our reporting from yesterday that masks aren’t just a nuisance but can cause serious health problems. The article recently uncovered was published by the CDC and it states in black and white the side-effects of wearing a mask, specifically related to the masks trapping carbon dioxide or CO2.  The article states the masks cause breathing resistance that could result in a reduction in the frequency and depth of breathing, known as hypoventilation, in as little as an hour of wearing a mask.  The article further went on to elaborate on the side-effects of increased CO2 concentrations in the mask wearer that include:

  1. Headache;
  2. Increased pressure inside the skull;
  3. Nervous system changes (e.g., increased pain threshold, reduction in cognition – altered judgement, decreased situational awareness, difficulty coordinating sensory or cognitive, abilities and motor activity, decreased visual acuity, widespread activation of the sympathetic nervous system that can oppose the direct effects of CO2 on the heart and blood vessels);
  4. Increased breathing frequency;
  5. Increased “work of breathing”, which is result of breathing through a filter medium;
  6. Cardiovascular effects (e.g., diminished cardiac contractility, vasodilation of peripheral blood vessels);
  7. Reduced tolerance to lighter workloads.

The Hayride reports:

The Hayride has covered this in the past specifically regarding the cognitive loss caused by COVID masks trapping CO2 where according to a Harvard Study breathing in as little as 945 PPM of CO2 lowers cognitive ability 15% and at 1400 PPM of CO2 cognitive ability reduces by 50%… What is also disturbing is not only the brain damage that is caused by the masks, but the adverse cardiovascular effects on the heart and lungs along with the reduction of blood sugar and dehydration.

We also discovered that the Stanford report from our article yesterday was censored by Twitter last week when former Trump campaign staffer, Steve Cortes, tweeted out the results of this study.

Why are US medical experts not telling Americans of the dangers of wearing masks?   Why is Big Tech censoring this message?



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What Big Ag Doesn’t Want You to Know: Small Farms Can Feed the World

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small-farms-can-feed-the-world-feature.j

Sustainable, local, organic food grown on small farms has a tremendous amount to offer. Unlike chemical-intensive industrial-scale agriculture, it regenerates rural communities; it doesn’t pollute rivers and groundwater or create dead zones; it can save coral reefs; it doesn’t encroach on rainforests; it preserves soil and it can restore the climate. Why do all governments not promote it?

For policymakers, the big obstacle to global promotion and restoration of small-scale farming (leaving aside the lobbying power of agribusiness) is allegedly that, “it can’t feed the world.” If that claim were true, local food systems would be bound to leave people hungry and so promoting them becomes selfish, short-termist and unethical.

Nevertheless, this purported flaw in sustainable and local agriculture represents a curious charge because, no matter where one looks in global agriculture, food prices are low because products are in surplus.

Often, they are in huge surplus, even in the hungriest countries. Farmers will tell you they are going out of business because, as a result of these surpluses, prices are low and continuously falling. Indeed, declining agricultural prices are a broad trend continuing, with the odd blip, for over a century, and applying to every commodity. This downward trend has continued even through a recent biofuel boom designed to consume some of these surpluses. In other words, the available data contradict the likelihood of food shortages. Despite the rising global population, food gluts are everywhere.

Global food models

The standard justification for claiming that these surpluses will one day turn into global food shortages comes from various mathematical models of the food system. These models are based on food production and other figures supplied to the UN by national governments. Whereas anecdotal or local evidence is necessarily suspect, these models claim to be able to definitively assess and predict the enormous, diverse and highly complex global food system.

The most prominent and most widely cited of these food system models is called GAPS (Global Agriculture Perspectives System). GAPS is a model created by researchers at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. These models — and most often GAPS — are thus what is being cited in any quantitative discussion of future food needs. GAPS, for example, is the basis for the common ‘60% more food needed by 2050’ prediction, what Britain’s chief scientist John Beddington called “a perfect storm” facing humanity.

How reliable are these food system models?

In 2010 Professor Thomas Hertel of Purdue University gave the annual presidential address of the U.S. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He chose to discuss the ability of mathematical models like GAPS to predict future supplies (this work was subsequently published). Hertel told his audience that those models are faulty.

What Hertel highlighted is that economic analysis has plainly shown that food supplies respond to long-term prices. That is, when prices for food items increase, food production also increases. For example, when prices increase, it becomes more worthwhile for farmers to invest in boosting their yields; but when prices are low there is little such incentive. Other actors in the food system behave similarly.

Yet global food models, noted Hertel, have adopted the opposite interpretation: they assume global food supplies are insensitive to prices.

In the firm but diplomatic tone expected of a presidential address, Hertel told his audience:

“I fear that much of this rich knowledge has not yet worked its way into the global models being used for long run analysis of climate, biofuels and agricultural land use … it is not clear that the resulting models are well-suited for the kind of long run sustainability analysis envisioned here.”

This is rather important. Since the whole point of these models is long-term prediction, if global food models underestimate the ability of food systems to adjust to higher demand, they will tend to predict a crisis even when there isn’t one.

Like all mathematical models, GAPS and other food system models incorporate numerous assumptions. These assumptions are typically shared across related models, which is why they tend to give similar answers. The reliability of all such models therefore depends crucially on the validity of shared assumptions like the one Hertel focused on.

Hertel’s analysis therefore prompts two important questions. The first is this: If GAPS contains an assumption that contradicts the collective wisdom of conventional agricultural economics, what other questionable assumptions hide in global food models?

Surprisingly though, given the stakes, scarcely any attention has been devoted to rigorous independent testing of these crucial assumptions.

The second question is this: Is it significant that the error identified by Hertel will tend to generate predictions that are unnecessarily alarmist?

Critiquing the critical assumptions

In a new peer-reviewed paper, “The Myth of a Food Crisis,” I have critiqued FAO’s GAPS — and by extension all similar food system models — at the level of these, often unstated, assumptions.

“The Myth of a Food Crisis” identifies four assumptions in food system models that are especially problematic since they have major effects on the reliability of modeling predictions. In summary, these are:

1. That biofuels are driven by ‘demand.’

As the paper shows, biofuels are incorporated into GAPS on the demand side of equations. However, biofuels derive from lobbying efforts. They exist to solve the problem of agricultural oversupply. Since biofuels contribute little or nothing to sustainability, land used for them is available to feed populations if needed. This potential availability (e.g., 40% of U.S. corn is used for corn ethanol) makes it plainly wrong for GAPS to treat biofuels as an unavoidable demand on production.

2. That current agricultural production systems are optimized for productivity.

As the paper also shows, agricultural systems are typically not optimized to maximize calories or nutrients. Usually, they optimize profits (or sometimes subsidies), with very different results. For this reason, practically all agricultural systems could produce many more nutrients per acre at no ecological cost if desired.

3. That crop “yield potentials” have been correctly estimated.

Using the example of rice, the paper shows that some farmers, even under suboptimal conditions, achieve yields far in excess of those considered possible by GAPS. Thus the yield ceilings assumed by GAPS are far too low for rice and probably other crops too. Therefore GAPS grossly underestimates agricultural potential.

4. That annual global food production is approximately equal to global food consumption.

As the paper also shows, a significant proportion of annual global production ends up in storage where it degrades and is disposed of without ever being counted by GAPS. There is thus a very large accounting hole in GAPS.

The specific ways in which these four assumptions are incorporated into GAPS and other models produces one of two effects. Each causes GAPS to either underestimate global food supply (now and in the future), or to overestimate global food demand (now and in the future).

Thus GAPS and other models underestimate supply and exaggerate demand.

The cumulative effect is dramatic. Using peer-reviewed data, the discrepancy between food availability estimated by GAPS and the underlying supply is calculated in the paper. Such calculations show that GAPS and other models omit approximately enough food annually to feed 12.5 billion persons. That is a lot of food, but it does perfectly explain why the models are so discrepant with policymakers’ and farmers’ consistent experiences of the food system.

The implications

The consequences of this analysis are very significant on a number of fronts. There is no global shortage of food. Even under any plausible future population scenario or potential increases in wealth, the current global glut will not disappear due to elevated demand. Among the many implications of this glut is, other things being equal, global commodity prices will continue to decline. The potential caveat to this is climate chaos. Climate consequences are not factored into this analysis. However, for people who think that industrial agriculture is the solution to that problem, it is worth recalling that industrialized food systems are the leading emitter of carbon dioxide. Industrializing food production is therefore not the solution to climate change —­ it is the problem.

Another significant implication of this analysis is to remove the justification for the (frequently suggested) adoption of special and sacrificial ‘sustainable intensification’ measures featuring intensive use of pesticides, GMOs and gene edited organisms to boost food production. What is needed to save rainforests and other habitats from agricultural expansion is instead to reduce the subsidies and incentives that are responsible for overproduction and unsustainable practices.

In this way, harmful agricultural policies can be replaced by ones guided by criteria such as ecological sustainability and cultural appropriateness.

A second implication stems from asking: if the models err on such elementary levels, why are critics largely absent? Thomas Hertel’s critique should have rung alarm bells. The short answer is that the philanthropic and academic sectors in agriculture and development are corrupt. The form this corruption takes is not illegality — rather that, with important exceptions, these sectors do not serve the public interest, but their own interests.

A good example is the FAO, which created GAPS. The primary mandate of FAO is to enable food production — its motto is Fiat Panis — but without an actual or imminent food crisis there would hardly be a need for an FAO. Many philanthropic and academic institutions are equally conflicted. It is no accident that all the critics mentioned above are relative or complete outsiders. Too many participants in the food system depend on a crisis narrative.

But the biggest factor of all in promotion of the crisis narrative is agribusiness. Agribusiness is the entity most threatened by its exposure.

It is agribusiness that perpetuates the myth most actively and makes best use of it by endlessly championing itself as the only valid bulwark against starvation. It is agribusiness that most aggressively alleges that all other forms of agriculture are inadequate. This Malthusian spectre is a good story, it’s had a tremendous run but it’s just not true. By exposing it, we can free up agriculture to work for everyone.

Originally published by Independent Science News.

The post What Big Ag Doesn’t Want You to Know: Small Farms Can Feed the World appeared first on Children's Health Defense.



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Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Derek Chauvin found guilty of murdering George Floyd

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Derek Chauvin hears guilty verdicts on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. (Video screenshot)

With cities across the nation on alert, a Minneapolis jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.

The prosecution argued the iconic nine-minute video shows Chauvin made an ego-driven decision to remain on George Floyd's body, refusing to give him aid or take his knee off of Floyd's back and neck as onlookers pleaded with him. The defense asked the jury to take into account the 16 minutes of video from officer body cams that shows Floyd – in a state of excited delerium, high on fentanyl and suffering from heart disease – constantly resisting arrest, declaring "I can't breathe" while officers tried to seat him in the vehicle then demanding they put him on the pavement. Chauvin's defense argued the officer's knee restraint was a procedure approved by the Minneapolis Police Department. Prosecutors contended the officer should have been aware that Floyd no longer needed to be restrained because he was dying.

More than 3,000 National Guard soldiers were deployed in Minneapolis along with state and local police officers, sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement personnel to prepare for any reaction to the verdict.

Chauvin's bail was immediately revoked and he was led away handcuffed. His sentencing is scheduled to take place in eight weeks.

See Judge Peter Cahill read the verdict:

BREAKING: The jury finds former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd: 2nd degree intentional murder, 3rd degree murder, and 2nd degree manslaughter pic.twitter.com/FW5XDAZwob

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 20, 2021

The 'right' verdict

President Biden and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., had advocated for a guilty verdict.

Earlier Tuesday, Biden said the jury should reach the "right" verdict and "the evidence is overwhelming," indicating he believed Chauvin was guilty.

Q: @JoeBiden has talked about the importance of an independent judiciary, why is it appropriate for him to weigh in on the Chauvin verdict?@PressSec: "I don't think he would see it as weighing in on the verdict..."

Reporter: "He did call for the 'right verdict,' though." pic.twitter.com/iyjJO8RRTJ

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 20, 2021

Waters was attending an anti-police rally in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on Saturday night when a reporter asked her asked what would happen if Chauvin wouldn't be found guilty of murdering George Floyd.

"We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business," Waters said.

The judge in the Chauvin case, Hennepin County Judge Peter A. Cahill, rebuked Waters by name when defense counsel Eric Nelson brought up her remarks after the jury was sequestered on Monday.

Nelson argued for a mistrial.

"I just don't know how this jury can really be ... that they are free from the taint of this," Nelson told the court. "Now that we have U.S. representatives threatening acts of in relation to this specific case. It’s mind-boggling."

Cahill dismissed Nelson's motion for a mistrial but gave him hope for an appeal if his client is found guilty.

"I'll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned," Cahill said.

"I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function," the judge said.

A Black Lives Matter social-media influencer, Maya Echols, issued a threat in a since-deleted Tik Tok video.

"If George Floyd’s murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is gonna break loose. Don’t be surprised when buildings are on fire," she wrote. "Just saying."

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