Climate Lockdowns Are Coming: Part II
What About the Roads | October 16, 2020
In this three-part series we will exam the transformation from COVID lockdowns to climate lockdowns. In Part I we established a timeline of the dark side of the environmental movement and now we’ll be looking into the specifics of what a climate lockdown really means, and what impact current lockdown measures have had on the environment. In Part III we will see how it fits into the bigger picture of sustainable development as described by international organizations such as the United Nations and what can be done to derail this agenda.
As we saw in Part I of this series, the environmental movement has a dark streak running through it. Many of the architects of the movement hold a Malthusian, eugenics-obsessed view of the world and their fingerprints are all over the growing call for a global climate lockdown. A movement based on the best of intentions is once again being hijacked to centralize power and eviscerate human rights.
With that established it is time to closely examine what exactly Mariana Mazzucato is proposing when she threatens a climate lockdown. In her view, and those on whose behalf she writes, humanity must be willing to undergo a total restructuring of society at the hands of the elite in order to save the planet or continue to live in lockdown. The brave new world she envisions is a sort-of technocracy, a government based on the management of society by unelected technical experts. Ultimately, this vision is less about driving electric cars and switching to a plant-based diet and more about a hostile takeover of the world’s resources.
The Calls for A Climate Lockdown Begin
With Mazzucato’s questionable climate science already addressed it’s time to move on to investigating her criticisms of society as we know it. But first we need to understand where this message is coming from. Mazzucato’s story comes to us from Project Syndicate, a news organization which distributes “high-quality commentaries to a global audience.” The publishing of these commentaries is made possible by funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, and the Google Digital News Initiative among others. Let’s just say her view doesn’t exactly represent the disenfranchised or any grassroots movement.
Mazzucato’s opinion piece is more of a threat than anything else. She believes we are living through a series of crises during the “disease of the Anthropocene,” an anti-human echo from her environmental forefathers, that center around the climate, economic and social inequality, and public health. Neither government nor the private sector are capable of addressing such catastrophic situations in her estimation so we must undergo a “green economic transformation” or else be locked down like prisoners until the problem is resolved.
What she has to say on what would happen during a climate lockdown itself is actually quite brief:
Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.
The brevity of this proclamation is curious as these propositions for reducing carbon emissions and “going green” are nothing new. Environmentalists have been advocating for these changes for decades now, though notably without the need for literally confining people to their homes. The bulk of the article is dedicated to the overhaul of the economy, revealing her true message to the masses.
The Future In Her Eyes
This transformation entails building whatever an “inclusive, sustainable” economy is and requires that government assistance to the private sector be reigned in. Not by stopping the public-private revolving door, upholding justice through the legal system, enabling a free market, or simply ending taxpayer bailouts, but continuing all of these practices so long as the government attaches strict conditions to how that money is used. Governments should also add new taxes on raw materials and legislate “job guarantees” into existence somehow. Under this system the political and economical elite still siphon off money from the lower classes, but by dictating that “firms need to listen to trade unions and workers’ collectives, community groups, consumer advocates, and others” this fascist system will solve the problem of inclusivity.
The state must also continue to steer the course of finance through investments. When the financial crisis hit in 2008 it wasn’t the cozy relationship between Washington and Wall Street that kept money circulating through the financial sector rather than entering the larger economy, but “bad investments” on the government’s part. Bad because they didn’t invest long term in eco-friendly energy like wind power or support green infrastructure projects according to her. She gives no explanation as to how these investments would allow money to flow into Main Street.
When looking for positive examples of state investments she cites New Zealand’s “Wellbeing Budget” and the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB). The Wellbeing Budget is the name given to the New Zealand federal government’s fiscal budget for the year 2019 and represented a shift away from making monetary decisions based on GDP and towards spending based on “wellbeing”. It made for an excellent public relations move which portrayed a government concerned about the wellness of its people but in reality transferred many budgetary decisions to experts and bureaucrats rather than elected officials, a hallmark of a technocratic society. New Zealand has enacted one of the world’s harshest lockdowns in the name of the coronavirus which may be why it gets a nod here.
The SNIB is set to launch by the end of 2020 and while she doesn’t mention it in her article, Mazzacuto has played a key role in developing this institution. This state-owned institution will offer grants, soft loans, credit guarantees and co-investments to companies in pursuit of certain missions. These missions are still being finalized but aim to mimic the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which center around climate change, shifting demographics, and economic inclusion. Like New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget, the SNIB framework ultimately takes power out of the hands of the public and into the hands of a technocratic elite. The figures who will run the SNIB and direct it’s funds will be unelected and unaccountable to the public but will use taxpayer funds to steer the direction of the economy nonetheless.
These examples are the blueprints all nations should be using according to Mazzucato. In a follow-up interview with the Irish Times, she makes it unambiguously clear that central economic planning is the proper role of government:
This crisis, and the recovery we need, give us an opportunity to understand and explore how to do capitalism differently. This requires a rethink of what governments are for: rather than simply fixing market failures when they arise, they should move towards actively shaping and creating markets to take on society’s most pressing challenges… This will secure the direction of travel we want – green, sustainable, and equitable.
Given her connections to some of the world’s most powerful people it is highly unlikely that “we” refers to the common man. It seems clear that she is speaking on the behalf of the elite behind the scenes.
Mazzucato’s final claim, dropped out of nowhere and without citation or follow-up, is that an economy centered around renewable energy is the antidote to our otherwise disastrous future. She then menacingly reminds the reader that “radical change is inevitable,” so either go along with their plan, or face climate lockdowns while they do it anyway.
How Have Lockdowns Impacted The Climate So Far?
With much of the world under house arrest, carbon dioxide emissions declined in the first half of 2020 as one would expect. Correspondingly, air pollution dropped off in many industrialized areas. This was touted as a victory for the climate, especially when photos of the Himalayas, free of their usual smog in India, went viral. This was a relatively short-lived victory however as numbers began rising again in the second half of the year.
While air pollution dropped more plastic waste has ended up in our oceans than ever before. Disposable face masks have been worn, and disposed of, in the billions this year and are contributing to environmental degradation, littering in public places, and increasing the levels of microplastics in the oceans. Takeout dining has been a staple for many during lockdown which has meant single-use plastics have become more prevalent and sadly ended up in in the sea in increased numbers as well.
More studies and information will surely come out in the months and years ahead but as of now this is the picture we have of the climate in a locked down world and it isn’t very convincing that by continuing these practices the world will be free of man’s impact on it. The desire for clear skies, clean air, and habitable oceans are all noble and improvements can and will be made but the idea that in order to achieve these things we need society reshaped at the hands of a shadowy elite is still insane and speaks to a larger agenda at play.
The Big Picture
When looking into the environmental impact of lockdowns there is a chilling refrain in the mainstream media. The initial decrease in emissions is cheered on but the rebound is seen as a sign that while the current lockdowns are doing some good it just isn’t enough (see here, here, here, here, here, and here to see that message repeated).
What is needed according to these writers and groups is a reengineering of society. This Great Reset will come at the expense of the many, to the benefit of the few. In the final installment of this series we will see how climate lockdowns and the reconfiguration of society fits perfectly into the big picture that the elite have in mind.
Bezos set to shower Greens with $billions
By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. | CFACT | December 22nd, 2020
“We’re in the Money” was a popular tune that caught the spirit of the last century’s Roaring Twenties. Now, one hundred years later, environmental groups can sing the same song — thanks to Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.
Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has announced that he is giving $793 million to 16 environmental groups to fight climate change and undertake other activities to save the planet. The largess comes from Bezos’s Earth Fund and is, he says, “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others.”
More than half of the donations are going to established, already well-funded green groups, with $100 million grants each going to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Groups purporting to be battling climate change aren’t the only ones getting the loot. Bezos is also turning his attention to “environmental justice,” and groups cashing in include the lesser-known Dream Corps’ Green for All, the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender and Justice, and the Solutions Project.
With natural gas having displaced coal as America’s leading source of electricity, environmentalists now plan to join hands with the incoming Biden administration to go after the fossil fuel, citing its alleged effect on the climate. And Bezos’s money will be used in a variety of projects to demonize natural gas. Manhattan-based EDF, whose annual budget is a stately $230 million, will pocket an additional $100 million from Bezos over the next three years. Most of that money will fund a satellite EDF plans to have put in orbit to monitor methane emissions.
“Thanks to this and other funding, we will cut methane pollution from the oil and gas industry by 45 percent by 2025, which will be the same 20-year benefit of closing a third of the world’s power plants,” longtime EDF head Fred Krupp assured the Washington Post (Nov.17). “Solving the climate crisis involves investments in a wide segment of solutions,” Krupp, whose organization would be a recipient of such investments, went on. “The obstacle isn’t finding solutions; it is securing the funding to scale solutions quickly. Our hope is that this gift encourages other philanthropists to support climate solutions on the scale needed.”
Washington, D.C.-based WWI is also getting into the satellite business. It plans to use its $100 million from Bezos to develop a satellite-powered land-use and carbon-emissions monitoring system that will focus on emissions’ impact on forests, grasslands, wetlands, and agriculture. WWI also wants to use some of the money to convert 450,000 school buses to all-electric power systems by 2030.
WWF, whose U.S. affiliate has an annual budget of about $300 million and whose global budget comes to $900 million a year, wants to use the Bezos cash to—raise more money. It plans to leverage its $100 million grant from Bezos to extract another $850 million from its “global partners,” including investors, foundations, and governments.
The Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, which will have to make do with a paltry $10 million, will use the money for a project to decarbonize buildings, with the goal of stopping the burning of natural gas in heaters, stoves, and boilers.
Other beneficiaries of Bezos’s Earth Fund include, according to the Post, the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, $43 million; ClimateWorks Foundation, $50 million; Eden Reforestation Projects, $5 million; Energy Foundation, $30 million; the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, $43 million; NDN Collective, $12 million; Salk Institute for Biological Studies, $30 million; the Solutions Project, $43 million; and the Union of Concerned Scientists, $15 million.
“We’ve Only Just Begun”
And remember: This is just the first tranche of Bezos’s donations to the greens. He has another $9.2 billion to pass out. With his fabulous wealth, Bezos has far eclipsed earlier celebrity benefactors of environmental causes such as CNN founder Ted Turner – once lovingly referred to by environmentalists as “Daddy Greenbucks” – and the late actor Paul Newman.
Many of the groups receiving Bezos’s money are little more than fronts for powerful corporate interests intent on profiting from the transformation from fossil-fuel-based energy to renewable energy. The Biden administration will use the climate to justify regulations on any activity deemed out of step with green orthodoxy. Flush with Bezos’s cash, environmental activists will make common cause with the Biden White House by launching lawsuits and disseminating propaganda to their hearts’ content.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
There Are Liars, Damn Liars And The United Nations
By Dr. John Happs | PA Pundits | December 16, 2020
When it comes to telling whoppers about climate change, weather extremes and any number of climate-related catastrophes, the United Nations has no equal. Their latest (2020) report proves this beyond any doubt.
Recently released is the UN’s report, dramatically titled: Human Cost of Disasters: An Overview of the Last 20 Years (2000-2019). This report stems from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and its Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).
The report Foreword tells us that:
“This report focuses primarily on the staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years.”
This is followed by the not unexpected attack on developed nations:
“But the odds continue to be stacked against them in particular by industrial nations that are failing miserably on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels commensurate with the desired goal of keeping global warming at 1.5 ̊C as set out in the Paris Agreement.”
The hyperbole continued:
“It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people.”
Any reader of this report will immediately see this is not a dispassionate, empirically-based document prepared by scientists who have carefully scrutinized the available literature on natural disasters. Rather it is the product of activists and alarmists, using hyperbole and silly phrases such as: “staggering rise in climate-related disasters”; “failing miserably on reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and “turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell.”
Apparently, the UN’s version of “the science and evidence” is not the same as the version embraced by the wider and more credible scientific community.
As always, the UN’s extreme alarmism is accompanied by the anticipated “tipping point” and “Last Chance” to avoid those “disastrous consequences” that simply never happen.
Here is a typical example:
“If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”
Anyone reading this UN report would do well to compare it with NOAA’s Dr. David Legates’s summary of the many failed predictions from climate alarmists.
In yet another tedious attempt to link carbon dioxide emissions with imaginary global warming and any natural disaster, we are told:
“This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1oC above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires.”
This should be enough for any sensible person to dismiss the report as more UN propaganda from officials who rely on the likelihood that few politicians will check their claims against actual data. The same UN officials know that the media, many politicians and Green NGO’s will continue to promote this alarmist nonsense.
The UN seriously expects everyone to believe that:
- We actually know what the pre-industrial global temperature was;
- We were able to measure the pre-industrial global temperature to an accuracy of 0.1oC;
- We have accurate records of global natural disasters over the last several centuries;
- Everyone will embrace the climate alarm nonsense that has been served up by the UN since 1988.
Incredibly, the UN produced a graph in 2020 that showed how climate-related disasters have actually declined:
Yet the UN’s latest report tells us there has been a “staggering rise in climate-related disasters.”
Director of the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) Dr. Benny Peiser has observed how:
“The UNDRR’s own data shows that climate-related disasters have actually been declining for 20 years.”
He added:
“The United Nations must immediately withdraw this report and apologize for misleading the public.”
I doubt there is much chance of that happening.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. is a well-respected scientist and recognised expert on natural disasters. He has criticised the UN report, saying that its data on disasters from the last century are flawed and therefore unreliable.
Pielke, along with other reputable scientists, has acknowledged that there has been an increase in financial loss due to natural disasters but this is not attributable to any increase in extreme weather events. Common sense (and insurance companies) should tell us we are seeing an increase in population with more people having more wealth and more assets to lose.
Additionally, financial losses due to natural disasters will inevitably increase as more people with more wealth and assets choose to live in accident-prone areas such as bushland, floodplains, earthquake-prone areas, eroding and subsiding coastlines.
Despite this increase in financial loss, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg points out:
“When you adjust damage costs for size of economy, which even the UN Sustainable Development Goals insists you should, the relative cost of disasters is declining, not increasing.”
We have reliable data from the last 30 years showing how the relative cost of disasters has declined:
Additionally, the UN’s own data show the number of deaths from natural disasters has almost halved in the last 20 years, compared to the number of deaths between 1980 and 1999:
In fact the global population has increased by more than 70% since 1980 whilst the death risk has fallen by around 60%.
Returning to the UN report’s dramatic and factually incorrect statement:
“This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1oC above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires.”
This is sheer nonsense. So what do the real data show?
During recent decades, heatwaves in the US remain far less frequent and severe than was the case during the 1930s.
Here is the Annual Heat Wave Index for the USA (1895 – 2015)
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Cold-related mortality remains a more significant and persistent problem, both in the UK and internationally. There are 20 times as many cold-related deaths as heat-related deaths worldwide, and the UK has had 35,000 cold-related deaths a year on average over the past 5 years.7
Gasparrini et al. (2015) in a study into Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperatures concluded:
“Most of the temperature-related mortality burden was attributable to the contribution of cold.”
Many of those deaths are attributable to people who have not been able to afford the rising costs of electricity or have no access to inexpensive, reliable electricity in their countries.
The UN report, with its obsession over imaginary dramatic global warming, ignores temperature data from satellites and radio-sondes. The UN also ignores reliable surface temperature data and paleo-data that contradict the report’s alarmism.
For instance, Rydval et al. (2017) constructed an 800 year paleo-temperature record for Scotland, showing no unusual recent warming:
https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/10093
Studies of past global temperature estimates show there is no evidence for any change in the globally-averaged near-surface temperature over the last 100 years.
There are over 90 peer-reviewed, published papers that dispute any claims of unprecedented global-scale modern warming.
In summary, there has been no detectable long-term increase in heat waves in the US or anywhere else in the world. Record high temperatures were recorded long before the widespread use of hydrocarbon fuels.
The UN report claims that we are seeing an increased frequency of droughts. This claim is also without any empirical foundation.
The Palmer Drought Index for the US has data going back over 100 years:
Apart from the 1930’s “Dust Bowl” years, there is no long-term trend in either dryness or wetness in the US and this remains true globally.
Cook et al. (2015) found that Mega-droughts during the past 2,000 years were worse and lasted longer than current droughts and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show no trend in the proportion of the globe in drought since 1950:
The UN report claims that we are seeing an increased frequency of flooding. This claim is also without foundation.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. observed:
“The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years. Remember, disasters can happen any time…. But it is also good to understand long-term trends based on data, not hype.”
The UN’s current report contradicts the IPCC’s earlier report in which Hartmann et al. (2013) concluded:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.”
Hartmann et al. (2013) added:
“The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.”
Hirsch and Ryberg (2012) noted that, in none of the four regions defined in their study, was there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing carbon dioxide levels.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02626667.2011.621895 The UN report said we are seeing an increased frequency of hurricanes. This claim is also without foundation.
Drs. Loehle and Staehling (2020) noted:
“We analysed the historical record of Atlantic basin and US landfalling hurricanes, as well as US continental accumulated cyclone energy to evaluate issues related to trend detection.”
They reported:
“Hurricane and major hurricane landfall counts exhibited no significant overall trend over 167 years of available data, nor did accumulated cyclone energy over the continental USA over 119 years of available data.”
https://www.thegwpf.com/no-trend-in-hurricane-activity-in-167-years-new-empirical-study-shows/
This is in agreement with findings from Drs. Pielke, Maue and Weinkle who reported:
“The analysis does not indicate significant long-period global or individual basin trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling TC’s of minor or major hurricane strength. The evidence in this study provides strong support for the conclusion that increasing damage around the world during the past several decades can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls, which adds confidence to the fidelity of economic normalization analyses.”
https://notrickszone.com/2020/01/10/distinguished-professor-time-to-retire-the-notion-hurricanes-are-slowing-down-much-less-attribution-claims/
Dr. Judith Curry points out that:
“Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, any hurricane causing catastrophic damage has been seized upon by climate alarmists as evidence of the horrors of global warming.
As if the record-holding hurricanes from the 1920’s through the 1950’s never happened.”
She added:
“I used to be concerned about ‘consensus enforcement’ on the topic of climate change. Now I am concerned about ‘alarmism enforcement.”
The UN report says we are seeing an increased frequency of wildfires. This is also without foundation.
Long-term satellite monitoring provides reliable data on global wildfires and, in contrast to UN alarmism, NASA has shown that between 2003 and 2019 global wildfires have declined by around 25%.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/16/irrefutable-nasa-data-global-wildfire-down-by-25-percent/
NASA has produced maps with fire locations and extent. These are based on observations from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) carried on the Terra satellite.
The National Interagency Fire Centre (NIFC) has provided data that support MODIS observations:
The UN promotes alarmist political/ideological nonsense about natural disasters and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The UN’s obsession with “reducing greenhouse gas emissions” begs the question:
Why do we need to reduce emissions when current levels are amongst the lowest in 500 million years and all life on the planet would benefit from more atmospheric carbon dioxide?
Another question might be:
How do we know when the UN is telling lies?
Answer: Usually when they release a report about climate change.
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
The five key events in the fake pandemic
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | December 22, 2020
This article is a summary. I’ve written extensively on each of the five key events.
ONE: The false claim that a new virus was discovered and isolated.
No true isolation has been performed. The so-called genetic sequencing of the virus was actually a concoction, a cobbling together of pieces of data referencing segments of RNA. These segments were PRESUMED to be parts of the new virus—but researchers didn’t have the virus, so their presumptions amounted to fraud.
TWO: The erecting of a diagnostic test (PCR) for the virus they didn’t have. Obviously, no such test has meaning. It is built on the same sorts of absurd assumptions that led to the fictional discovery of the virus. However, strategically speaking, the test has produced millions of “positive results,” which are taken to mean “infected by the virus.” On this foundation of sand, the lockdowns were declared.
THREE: The Chinese lockdown of 50 million citizens, for no medical reason. This unprecedented event provided the model for other governments, and for the CDC and the World Health Organization. Now it was “acceptable” to imprison the global population and wreak economic devastation across the planet.
FOUR: The absurd computer prediction of 500,000 deaths in the UK and two million in the US, made by historically failed modeler, Neil Ferguson. His institute at the Imperial College of London is bankrolled by Bill Gates. Ferguson’s predictions were used to convince Trump and Boris Johnson that states of emergency and lockdowns were necessary.
FIVE: The forced premature deaths of millions of elderly people across the world—which were falsely called “COVID-19 deaths.”
These people were and are suffering from multiple long-term health conditions, made far worse by decades of medical treatment with toxic drugs. Terrified by a COVID diagnosis, then isolated from family and friends, they give up and die.
There are other important events, to be sure, but these are the key five.
The underlying fact that needs to be understood: what is called COVID-19 is not one condition. It is a variety of illnesses and effects stemming from different traditional causes RE-PACKAGED under the label, “COVID.”
Where authentic new conditions and causes may be involved, independent investigators need to look closely at such clusters of people, where they live. For example, the investigators should find out whether toxic vaccine campaigns were initiated in a community or region prior to declaration of the “COVID outbreak.”
TOPIC ARCHIVES:
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/virus/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/testing/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/pcr/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/lockdown/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/cases/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/neil-ferguson/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/old-people/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/nursing-homes/
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Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ): The Suppression of a Proven COVID Remedy
By Barry Kissin | Global Research | December 22, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been an FDA approved drug for over 65 years. It has been on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines since the list began in 1977. People have been safely treated with HCQ billions of times for malaria, lupus, HIV and rheumatoid arthritis. HCQ exerts both anti-inflammatory and antiviral effects.
Nevertheless, the FDA has caused many states to ban the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19 and made it very difficult to obtain a prescription elsewhere in the U.S. by foisting studies that greatly exaggerate a potential heart rhythm problem. In contrast, the CDC website says this about HCQ:
“With frequent dosing, rarely reported adverse events include cardiac arrhythmias in those with liver or kidney dysfunction … CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria … It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers … and children of all ages.”
On Nov. 19, Dr. George Fareed from California testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about successfully treating over 1000 COVID patients with HCQ. On Dec. 10, Fareed responded as follows to follow-up questions from Senator Josh Hawley:
“The earlier the treatment can be started after the start of the infection, the better … 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 anti-virals [like HCQ] so readily available. When (if ever) that happens, everything would improve dramatically.”
At c19study.com is an up-to-date list of the countries successfully treating COVID with HCQ, mostly in combination with zinc and an anti-biotic (azithromycin or doxycycline): India, South Korea, Indonesia, China, Greece, Russia, U.A.E., Turkey and countries throughout Africa, South America and Central America.
Suppression of HCQ is a central factor in why the U.S. has among the very worst rates of illness and death from COVID-19.
For example, BBC News published an article titled “How Turkey took control of Covid-19 emergency”: “Chief doctor Nurettin Yiyit says it’s key to use hydroxychloroquine early. ‘We have no hesitation about this drug. We believe it’s effective because we get the results.’”
A study in India, where HCQ is being widely used as a prophylaxis (preventative medication), concluded that:
“The pivotal finding of our study was the noteworthy benefits of HCQ prophylaxis … [T]he National Task Force for COVID-19 in India recommended once a week maintenance dose for seven weeks …”
Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., is a renowned Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications. This is how he describes the situation:
“There’s been a massive disinformation campaign that stretches from government to the media … The evidence in favor of hydroxychloroquine benefit in high-risk patients treated early as outpatients is stronger than anything else I’ve ever studied … The F.D.A. has relied on Dr. Fauci and his N.I.H. advisory groups to make a statement saying that there is no benefit of using hydroxychloroquine in outpatients … That’s led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who could have been saved by usage of this drug … People need to be writing or calling their congressmen and senators … [The] bureaucracy is in bed with other forces causing [it] to make decisions not based on the science …” (emphasis added)
HCQ is generic and costs a few dollars for an entire course.
As of the end May, there were over 150 million doses of HCQ in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). This stockpile is currently wasting away in government warehouses. On June 22, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) filed suit for an injunction against the March 28 order of the FDA that prohibits the use of this stockpile except for already-hospitalized COVID patients for whom it is too late. See aapsonline.org/hcqsuit
The only drug approved by the FDA for the outpatient treatment of COVID-19 is Remdesivir, a largely ineffective medicine manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, that costs over $3000 for a course.
The immensely wealthy pharmaceutical industry which cannot profit from a cheap and available remedy like HCQ is largely responsible for its suppression through its influence upon government agencies and the media.
An illustration of how the system works is described by the editors-in-chief of the two most prestigious medical journals in the world, namely The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, who cite the “criminal” pressures put on them by pharmaceutical companies, thus explaining how a series of negative HCQ studies got published. In the words of the editor of The Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton:
“If this continues, we are not going to be able to publish any more clinical research data because pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful … Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”
“Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies,” wrote Richard Smith, former editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
*
Copyright © Barry Kissin, Global Research, 2020
Why you shouldn’t believe the COVID vaccine is effective
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | December 21, 2020
I’ve covered the dangers of the vaccine. Now I want to show why it’s ineffective, even assuming the basic theory of vaccination is valid.
Peter Doshi, associate editor of the medical journal BMJ, and Eric Topol, Scripps Research professor of molecular medicine, wrote a devastating NY Times opinion piece about the COVID vaccine clinical trials.
They exposed the fatal flaw in the large Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna trials.
September 22, the Times : “These Coronavirus Trials Don’t Answer the One Question We Need to Know”:
“If you were to approve a coronavirus vaccine, would you approve one that you only knew protected people only from the most mild form of Covid-19, or one that would prevent its serious complications?”
“The answer is obvious. You would want to protect against the worst cases.”
“But that’s not how the companies testing three of the leading coronavirus vaccine candidates, Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, whose U.S. trial is on hold, are approaching the problem.”
“According to the protocols for their studies, which they released late last week, a vaccine could meet the companies’ benchmark for success if it lowered the risk of mild Covid-19, but was never shown to reduce moderate or severe forms of the disease, or the risk of hospitalization, admissions to the intensive care unit or death.”
“To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting seriously sick. That’s not what these trials will determine.”
This means these clinical trials were dead in the water.
The trials were designed to show effectiveness in preventing mild cases of COVID—a cough, or chills and fever—which nobody should care about, because mild cases naturally run their course and cause no harm. THERE IS NO NEED FOR A VACCINE THAT PREVENTS MILD CASES.
Now I’ll explain WHY the clinical trials were only designed to show the vaccine could prevent mild cases.
The vaccine makers assume the SARS-CoV-2 virus is everywhere. Therefore, during the course of a clinical trial, the virus will descend from the clouds and infect a certain number of volunteers in the trial.
All those volunteers are healthy. They’re not old and frail. They’ve already been screened and eliminated, if they have a history of serious allergies.
So, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus attacks a few of these healthy volunteers, what are the odds it will cause serious cases of pneumonia, requiring hospitalization?
The odds are VERY long against.
How long do you think the vaccine makers would have to wait before, say, 150 of the healthy volunteers came down with serious pneumonia?
Five years? Ten? Forever?
Pfizer isn’t going to stand around and wait and wait and wait. Are you kidding?
No, they’re only going to wait until 150 volunteers (the preordained magic number) come down with a cough, or simple chills and fever—a mild COVID case.
Then they’re going to stop the clinical trial.
Then they’re going see how many of those 150 mild cases occurred in the people who got the vaccine, and how many cases occurred in the people who got the saltwater placebo shot.
This is how they find out how effective the vaccine is.
And indeed—according to Pfizer—most of the cases occurred in volunteers who got the saltwater placebo shot.
Therefore, Pfizer could claim the vaccine was effective in protecting against cough, or chills and fever. Mild cases of COVID.
That’s ALL Pfizer could say.
And THAT’S why the clinical trials were a failure. Because the trials were only set up to show prevention of mild cases—which nobody should care about.
I could go on and explain how the vaccine makers could fake even that useless claim, but I’ll leave it there.
The COVID vaccine is designed to prevent nothing important or significant.
All the rave reviews of the vaccine, the babbling about a historic breakthrough, the celebrations—complete and utter nonsense.
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
There are thousands of Covid strains, so this new scare is NO big deal, but politicians just love the new authoritarianism
By Peter Andrews | RT | December 21, 2020
The UK’s virus mutation is nothing but recycled alarmism, with no substance to justify the cancellation of Christmas and plunging us all into yet more misery. It’s unscientific, unjustifiable and unforgivable.
Let me set the scene. The world (we are told) is in the grip of a deadly plague. Health services (we are told) are on the brink of collapse. And just when you think things cannot get any worse, the horrific news comes down from on high that our invisible enemy has mutated into an even scarier form. Although it is too early to know anything of substance about it, it is entirely possible that it is more contagious, or more dangerous, or – who knows – maybe both.
Was that the situation at the weekend as the UK was plunged into what’s rapidly become its worst crisis since World War II (and certainly the worst self-induced one), just ahead of Christmas?
No, this was the precise situation FIVE MONTHS AGO, when I wrote about Spike D614G, a mutant variant of coronavirus that we were told could be up to NINE TIMES more contagious. You may not remember because that mutant strain turned out to be a total nothing burger. So why would this one be any different?
The name game
This time around, our Covid commissars haven’t even bothered to give the new strain a flashy name – it is called ‘VUI2020/12/01’. For those interested in what evidence ‘the experts’ have to excuse the panic they are sowing, here is their own one-page justification. Unsurprisingly it is a scant, wishy-washy patchwork of hasty findings, centring on already debunked PCR tests and the mystical ‘R number’. There is absolutely no suggestion it poses any additional threat.
These experts, styling themselves as NERVTAG (why do they love to come up with acronyms that sound as they came from a James Bond movie?), say they have “moderate confidence” that VUI2020/12/01 is more contagious than the supermarket-brand coronavirus. (Would it also be fair to say, then, that they have “moderate confidence” that it is not more contagious?)
In any case, I am tickled to see the name of our old pal Neil Ferguson pop up in NERVTAG, the man who screwed his mistress, screwed us all, and – we thought – screwed his career in the process. I think I am actually starting to like this nutty professor, who must have a neck of the purest, untarnished brass. Maybe it’s something you pick up on the London swinging circuit. As the old saying goes, you just can’t keep a good man down!
Meanwhile, a top Scottish doctor has remarked that there isn’t a shred of evidence that this strain is any more contagious (let alone deadly). Professor Hugh Pennington even notes that the timing of the announcement is ‘’very handy to cancel Christmas.” An entire group of anti-lockdown scientists have issued a challenge to Health Secretary Matt Hancock to back up his claims about the new variant. Professor Carl Heneghan is still waiting for evidence for the claim that the new strain is, precisely, 70 percent more contagious. And I hardly need to tell you by now that the fantastic Dr Mike Yeadon is having none of it.
Nothing new under the sun
Back in July, I made the argument that it would actually be a good thing if the Spike D614G strain was more contagious. I explained the school of thought that says that seasonal respiratory viruses, like the one that causes Covid, evolve to become less dangerous as they spread through a population. This is because respiratory viruses always have thousands of variants, some that increase the deadliness and some that reduce it. The deadliest ones sicken or kill their hosts quickly, before they have a chance to spread it to other people. But the least deadly ones, which cause no or mild symptoms, can hitch a ride in their hosts to many people who they can then infect and multiply. Thus, natural selection favours the mildest, most contagious strains.
I still believe in the logic of that theory, and I think it explains why the coronavirus is now endemic (i.e. everywhere) and by extension why all further restrictions are completely pointless and do only harm. I will not give Hancock and the rest of SAGE’s anti-scientific advisers the satisfaction of directly addressing this so-called new strain: as Prof. Pennington has suggested, it looks like a ploy designed to mislead the public into sacrificing Christmas, the only glimmer of hope that had got them through this harshest of winters.
One should be wary of caricaturing Boris Johnson and the rest of his cronies perpetrating this crime on the people as ‘Grinches’. They are nothing so amusing or cuddly. They are far, far worse than that, and make no mistake about it, they know full well what they are doing. The irrepressible Peter Hitchens has pointed out that Britain now resembles the cursed land from CS Lewis’ Narnia books, where it is “always winter but never Christmas.” I never thought the nightmare worlds of my childhood reading would manifest in reality; but this year, they have.
Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics
Utopia, Coming to a World Near You
Utopia 2013 (Kudos; Channel 4) — Created by Denis Kelly; Produced by Rebekah Wray-Rogers
By Patrick Corbett | OffGuardian | December 21, 2020
We’ve been told by the promoters of the pandemic, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and others that it’s ushering in an opportunity for a Great Reset and that Covid 19 is the doorway to it.
Independent reporters like Cory Morningstar and Whitney Web have told a similar story without the glossy optimism.
The WEF has been running ads showing attractive young people having a great time and saying…
It’s 2030, I don’t own anything and I’ve never been happier.
They don’t go into just who will own everything but as they haven’t proposed eliminating capitalism it isn’t hard to guess.
According to the consortium of capitalists and their organizations such as the World Economic Forum, World Bank and even the UN we have a technocratic revolution led by AI, robotics and nanotechnology to look forward to. There will be a huge reduction in the need for workers. Scenarios are proposed which anticipate some form of UBI for the unfortunate masses.
From that majority position it looks like a very gray dystopian future. And maybe that’s what they want the people who are wise to the Covid deception to be thinking as the worst case scenario. Because there’s something far more sinister embedded within the Great Reset. And that is depopulation.
And by depopulation I mean on a grand scale; perhaps taking the planet’s roster of humans down to around a billion.
When I previously thought of this idea, the image that came to mind was of an horrific blood spattered massacre not unlike a scene from The Walking Dead. Now I don’t think they plan actual physical mayhem, although god knows they don’t shy away from that sort of thing .
I suspect they’ve come up with something diabolically clever and, as often is the case, it’s hiding in plain sight.
Are they planning on using their mandatory vaccines they’ve hyped so relentlessly to vaccinate virtually the entire world’s population? And will the vaccine be programmed to sterilize 60% or more of the women in the world? At this point I think most people would have to sit with that for a while, if not outright snort their coffee out their nose.
And I am not a lone nut in considering this or contemplating the possibility. Dr. Mike Yeadon and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg both warn that the Pfizer vaccine will likely impair our ability to procreate.
The vaccine* contains a spike protein… called syncytin-1, vital for the formation of human placenta in women. If the vaccine works so that we form an immune response AGAINST the spike protein, we are also training the female body to attack syncytin-1, which could lead to infertility in women of an unspecified duration.
* This link no longer takes you to the above quote as WordPress has since suspended Health and Money News for violation of “Terms of Service.”
Dr. Mike Yeadon and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg are not some fringe medics with pet theories forged in fevered imaginations.
Dr. Yeadon was former Head of Research and vice-president at Pfizer and Dr. Wodarg is an MD, PhD, epidemiologist, lung specialist and former Chairman of the Health Committee of the Council of Europe.
Professor Sir John Bell, top UK Covid advisor and member of SAGE, startled his interviewer when he said:
these vaccines are unlikely to completely sterilize a population… say 60-70%.
Of course they wouldn’t include their own billionaire class. They, along with the Royals, seem to be extremely fertile as well as long lived. And they would need a cohort of people to serve them, both in high level positions and low. Below them (in economic class) are their political operatives, presidents on down, professionals, scientists, and the few specialized workers they still need.
And vaccines being used for birth control is not a new idea. They have been studied for some time for their efficacy towards that goal.
Here’s a worrisome quote from an August 1994 article in the FASEB Journal (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology), (“highly cited and consistently ranks among the top biology journals” ):
The authors conclude that their “findings provide insights to possible endocrinological effects of an hCG 3CTP-based WHO promoted birth control vaccine on which a phase I clinical trial has already been completed” and that “might not reliably fulfil major expectations with respect to safety and efficacy?’ We submit that the authors provided only a repetition of old information and biased speculation, which could be damaging to progress in this field.
The article is defending the WHO against claims of some researchers about the safety of their birth control vaccine 26 years ago.
Just imagine how neat that is for their plans. While they have the majority of people terrified they vaccinate them. Then, as easily as they ramped up their Potemkin pandemic, they wind it down. People, the great mass anyway, are kept perpetually on the back foot by bizarre policy shifts always in the interest of biosafety, of course. The sterilization plan takes some time for people to catch on. When it becomes apparent there are far fewer children being born they will have a plan to explain it. It was the Cvd; it was something.
It was at this point in writing this I became aware of a streaming television series (late to the game I was here). UTOPIA. Great title, rhymes with Dystopia.
Spoiler alert: I am going to reveal plot lines and incidents in what I consider an extremely well done dramatic series. Whether it was created with a purpose or was just a product of the zeitgeist, I don’t know. It could easily be classified as “predictive.”
It was initially a 2 season series 2013/14 in the UK followed in 2018 by an American version produced by Amazon and released this past September on Amazon Prime (more below).
The plot of both is the same in its essence. A thumbnail off the top of my head: A plucky band of misfits who share an obsession with a graphic novel entitled Utopia discover that a sequel has been produced and they set out to find it. But it seems some very deep state type forces also want it and will maim, kill and steal to get it.
Utopia 2020 (Endemol Shine North America, Kudos, Trallume Productions, Picrow, Amazon Studios; Prime Video) Created by Gillian Flynn; Produced by Huey M. Park
The novel was apparently the work of a somewhat unhinged genius who saw the world as far too populous and wanted to do something about it. The resulting dramas were (imo) very well done, compelling, fast paced frightening with obligatory plot twists and denouements. It was first shown on Channel 4 in the UK. The plot in broad strokes was that a frightening flu pandemic — the Russian flu — is let loose on the world resulting in widespread panic. (Starting to sound familiar?)
In the Amazon version: A mysterious “Mr. Rabbit” (billionaire?) has let loose a deadly pandemic which kills children with a case fatality rate Dr. Fauci would envy. And the billionaire owner of a pharmaceutical company (played by John Cusak) has a vaccine which offers a cure. Pretty soon the population is marching in the streets demanding to get the vaccine. Our ragtag gang of heroes deduces that the vaccine is meant to kill and maim people. That is until the character played by John Cusack tells them that the beauty of the vaccine is that it is not designed to kill, only to sterilize people.
He says (paraphrasing) “Imagine a world of only a billion people. Plenty to go around for everybody and they’ll be free to screw up as much as they want without destroying the planet.”
He is not a ranter like Hitler or even Klaus Schwab, he’s more like, well … Bill Gates. Only John Cusack doesn’t quite reach the level of creepy that Gates is able to convey.
In the UK version there is an oblique reference to the Georgia Guidestones at one point where one of the characters says that the optimal population of the world is 500 million, roughly 7% of what it is now. And another character says that they didn’t need to have a deadly pandemic, only one that people believed was one, to frighten them into taking a vaccine.
In 2014 HBO planned an American version of Utopia but dropped it over budget concerns. Amazon picked it up in 2018 and the American version starring John Cusak was released just months ago, September 2020. The American version keeps the same basic plot and in the beginning is almost identical to it’s British sire. It does diverge somewhere past the mid-point although the core of the plot remains.
Amazon Prime has now cancelled the series although the first season is still online as apparently is the UK version seasons 1 and 2.
Some of the press are saying it was cancelled because it…
failed to connect with an audience.
That is pure bullshit. It was a hit.
The very liberal online magazine, SLATE, vehemently argues that Utopia should never have been shown so they must be at least happy that it was cancelled. I would wager from their point of view far too many people already saw it. SLATE : said:
the results [ of broadcasting Utopia] are catastrophic —
Really? Are we not capable of discerning fiction and reality and if fiction is reality don’t we need to know that too?
This is what SLATE has to say is the problem with showing Utopia (my emphasis, bold and italics):
We are in the middle of an actual pandemic, a staggering number of Americans sincerely believe that that pandemic is a politically motivated hoax, and an equally staggering number believed vaccines were harmful years before COVID-19 emerged. It’s not the filmmakers’ fault we’re in this mess; it’s not their fault so much of the public is superstitious and gullible; and it won’t be their fault if Utopia gives some dumbass the confidence they need to quit wearing a mask and infect and kill you or the people you care about.
It will probably not be a revelation to you that SLATE is totally on board with the Covid narrative and thinks we who aren’t are dumbasses, superstitious, gullible and, without masks, loaded guns ready to kill people.
But even with the hyperbole above SLATE isn’t finished, they have to bring President Trump in via the back door, ie. QAnon (bold emphasis mine):
Even if everyone who sees Utopia is capable of distinguishing fact from fantasy — and that’s vanishingly unlikely in a nation that is sending QAnon followers to Congress — it’s impossible to enjoy a story where the heroes convince themselves that shadowy forces have manufactured a phony pandemic to trick people into taking a dangerous vaccine when those exact beliefs are helping to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Although it’s interesting to speculate, I don’t think it’s vitally important to know the intention of a drama that, sans the action movie veneer, is playing out in real time as we speak.
Leaving fiction aside for the time being, I am one of those “staggering numbers” who believe the novel coronavirus pandemic to be a gross exaggeration and was deployed as a controlled demolition of our lives as we have been living them.
So the question is do they plan a Great Reset of the current population (to 1804’s 1 billion) as well as all of their modern 4th Industrial Revolution wet dreams?
I’m seriously contemplating the prospect that, just as portrayed in Utopia, the vaccine they are clearly desperate for us to take — or else why would they need to force us — will not actually kill people. Or at least that will not be its principal target. It will be to sterilize us.
If that is the case it is genocide on a scale never seen before. Cusak in his role presents it as a benign solution to the intractability of overpopulation. But family is the beating heart of most of our lives. To rob people of the chance to create their own families is to take everything. It will make zombies of the people left.
But, of course, the people left will be too weak and demoralized to do much of anything. They may be offered distractions to live out their years, which will no doubt be shortened by those very same vaccines and the withholding of healthcare. But throughout there will be very little actual state killing. Just the drip drip turning into a tide of unborn children until their Utopia arrives: the world cleansed of the useless eaters. Billionaires can then enjoy their Neverland Ranch of a planet without those unwashed crowds of homo sapiens stinking the place up.
Do I think this is what they’re planning? I don’t know for sure but it’s my primary suspicion. It all fits once you can get your mind around the immense evil of it. They have never had much use for us. Railroad magnate Jay Gould famously said, “I can hire half the working class to kill the other half.”
His musing bespeaks a horrific fantasy of elimination.
We, the working class, were at best only to be tolerated for what use we could be to them. Now that we’re no longer that, it’s sayonara.
There’s one thing that puzzles me greatly though and that’s the role of China and Russia. The Great Reset seems to be run out of Klaus Schwab’s Fuhrer Bunker at the WEF and we can be certain that the globalist billionaire class, aka the ruling class Americans, Europeans and that gang of suckhole countries, the rest of The Five Eyes, are all on board.
Russia and China both seem to be getting along without the need of population reduction. And why would they mind if the West crashes their population? It would actually seem to be a benefit to them, unless the West is planning to be the Sparta of the future. And conversely wouldn’t the prospect of depopulation of their people just seem like an attempt to dupe them? I mean why would Russia and China go along with it when it would probably be seen as an attempt by the West to weaken them?
However I have a sneaking feeling that the Great Reset gang missed something somewhere that is going to backfire on them. I honestly have no idea except that when they destroy what it means to be human in the way that we are and they aren’t, they will have destroyed their own humanity and the result will be a painful implosion of their own selfhood. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking. And if they get that far there won’t be anything left of us either.
Imagine the dinosaurs lived for hundreds of millions of years. We know that because in our great hubris we studied them learning more than we know about ourselves. In comparison our time here will have been a very brief but spectacular strut across the stage.
Patrick Corbett is a retired writer, producer, director and editor who’s worked for every major network in Canada and the US except for Fox. His journalistic credits include Dateline NBC, CTV’s W-5 and the CTV documentary unit where he wrote and directed ‘Children’s Hospital’, the first Canadian production to be nominated for an International Emmy. You can follow Patrick on Twitter.
Government, Not Coronavirus, Is Killing Small Businesses
By Ron Paul | December 21, 2020
A video of a confrontation between Ventura County, California health officials and restaurant owner Anton Van Happen has gone viral. The health officials were ordering Mr. Van Happen to close his business because he allegedly violated California’s ban on outdoor dining. Mr. Van Happen asked the health officials if the government will pay his employees and his rent while his business is indefinitely closed.
Mr. Van Happen is hardly the only small business owner worried about how to pay bills during the lockdowns. Many small businesses operate on a narrow profit margin, so being forced to “temporarily” shut down or limit the number of customers they can serve is a virtual death sentence.
The lockdowns have already caused as many as 200,000 small businesses to permanently close. Lockdowns, by shrinking the number of employers, lead to long-term unemployment or lower wages for many workers.
While governments have terrorized small businesses, they have typically deemed the big chain stores “essential businesses” so they can remain open. The lockdowns are thus another government policy that gives big businesses a competitive advantage over their smaller competitors.
The benefits big businesses get from the lockdowns — including fewer competitors, more customers, and a job market with more workers competing for fewer jobs — may explain why many big businesses are not fighting the lockdowns. Instead, most big retail chains are requiring their workers and customers to wear masks. Many big businesses may soon deny service to those who refuse to receive a Covid vaccine.
One would think that progressives who claim to oppose policies that benefit big corporations like WalMart, Target, and Amazon would oppose the lockdowns. Sadly, even many progressives are unquestioningly parroting the Covid propaganda and demonizing those who dissent.
By slowing down the development of herd immunity among the population, the lockdowns could put those truly at risk in greater danger. Lockdowns have also had negative effects such as increases in drug and alcohol abuse and increases in domestic violence. Meanwhile, many schoolchildren are deprived of the opportunity to interact with their teachers and their peers. Instead, these children are subjected to the fraud of “virtual learning.”
Resistance to Covid tyranny is growing as more people figure out that lockdowns and mandates are both unnecessary and harmful. This resistance was largely started by small business owners faced with a choice between obeying the government or making sure they, and their employees, can feed their families. Small business owners have been leaders in recent anti-lockdown protests across America.
Eventually the resistance will grow to the point where the politicians will be forced to either double down on authoritarianism or admit the lockdowns were a mistake. Either way, those of us who know the truth must resist the Covid tyranny until government officials no longer terrorize small businesses for the crime of serving willing consumers.
Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.
2020: The Year we Sold Our Liberties For a Medical Tyranny
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | December 19, 2020
This year has seen what looks like the birth of a new religion. Let us call it Covidianity. It has its Prophets (eg. Neil Ferguson); its Priesthood of experts (eg. Whitty and Vallance); its own Soteriology (eg. The Vaccine of Salvation); its evangelists (eg. Piers Morgan); its own eschatology (eg. The New Normal); and of course its heretics (anyone questioning the data or the narrative).
Not everyone who has adopted the bizarre practices of Covidianity is a Covidian. Many have been cowed into it somewhat unwillingly; many have been bamboozled into it somewhat unwittingly; and many others just do not seem to have thought through what is being done to them, much less whether it is right, necessary and proportionate. But there are definitely true Covidians, and you can recognise them by their insistence that all bow down to their cult, and that those who refuse should be shamed.
In one sense, this religion has come upon us at warp speed. There we all were, going about our business at the start of the year, not particularly suspecting that there would be anything particularly out of the ordinary in 2020, and suddenly, wham! Yet in another sense, many of the ingredients were already in place long before this year, and they were simply brought together in one large melting pot to produce a toxic brew of fear, hysteria and irrationality on a truly epic scale.
Those ingredients include: A society that had abandoned belief in the Triune God and hadn’t quite managed to find a replacement to fill the void; a society obsessed with Safetyism, and the general sterilisation of life; a society glued to the Propaganda Box in the corner of the room with millions hanging on the every word that proceeds from it as if it were the very Oracle of God; and a society that had, by and large, utterly forgotten what freedom actually means.
What this has given us is a society seeking an arche (first principle) to hold everything together; one trying to stave off death by eliminating every potential risk; one that looks unquestioningly to the Government, the media and assembled experts to tell them how to do this; and one that has proved itself willing to give up freedoms won through blood, sweat and tears centuries ago to achieve it. In short, we have arrived at the planned, technocratic oligarchy that C S Lewis warned of us of over half a century ago:
“The new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend.”
And here’s Dwight Eisenhower saying much the same thing in his farewell address in 1961:
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Sound familiar?
The irony of all that has happened this year is that in our apparent attempt to eliminate risk, we have given up our lives. That is, we have placed apparent safety so high up on the list of priorities that it has become a god, governing how we are to live, breathe and have our being, and it so dominates our everyday lives, that it makes normal life impossible, sucking out joy, meaning, and purpose. It is, as Lewis said, a tragic way to live:
“Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.”
One can understand how people in a plague situation would accept the suspension of normal life for a time, since you don’t mess about with an illness that wipes out something like 60% of the population. But for a coronavirus with an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26%? For a virus which has caused deaths — as a proportion of the population — to return to levels not seen since … ooh … those dark days of 2000:
And yes, I know that Covidian Logicians will claim that the deaths are not higher because we did all that weird stuff like shutting down the country and wearing bizarre face gear and making sure we didn’t sing loudly and so on. Then again, Covidian Logic claims lots of things which aren’t true, and the fact is there is no evidence whatsoever to show that these measures had any effect in terms of altering mortality rates.
For the illusion of safety — a mess of pottage — we have sold the heritage, and the liberties that were bequeathed to us by those who have gone before, which it was our duty to preserve for those who are to come. As Edmund Burke taught us:
“Society is indeed a contract … It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
We have betrayed our ancestors and our descendants, and the idea that we will just get these liberties back is a woeful misunderstanding of how the world works. Firstly, human nature being what it is, those in power who have developed a taste for authoritarianism rarely like to give it up. And secondly, liberties take centuries of long hard work to grow up, but can be hacked down in a short time — as has happened to us in 2020. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for reinstating them speedily.
Having said that, perhaps there is still time. Perhaps there is still a window of opportunity for us to step back from the brink of this absurd Medical Tyranny, with its false promises of safety, and instead embrace life and freedom. But this would mean rejecting this misery of Covidianity without any further delay, and taking a good long draught of whatever it was they used to drink in Rohan:
“Eowyn: I fear neither death nor pain.
Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire.”
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From the Archives
The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | February 16, 2023
Since 9/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America’s political elite. Whether it is illegally spying on Americans or blowing Somali dissidents to pieces, invoking terrorism provides all the cover needed for Washington policymakers. But the disastrous results of granting politicians a blank check to fight terrorism should have been undeniable almost 60 years ago.
Back in the 1960s, terrorism was what the communists did. Anti-terrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War II. … continue
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