For 55 Percent Of Americans, 2020 Has Been “A Personal Financial Disaster”
By Michael Snyder | Activist Post | December 24, 2020
One of the big reasons why so many Americans are angry about the size of the “stimulus payments” in the COVID relief bill that Congress just passed is because this year has truly been a “financial disaster” for millions upon millions of people.
More Americans than ever before are just barely scraping by from month to month, and $600 is just not going to go very far. In 2020, small businesses have been getting slaughtered by the thousands, millions of Americans are in imminent danger of being evicted from their homes, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic first started. The U.S. has plunged into a brutal economic depression, and most of the country is desperately hoping that the federal government will do more to bail them out.
Of course the truth is that we can’t actually afford another 900 billion dollar “stimulus package” on top of all the other “stimulus packages” that were already passed this year.
We are already 27.5 trillion dollars in debt, and all of this reckless spending is putting us on a highway to hyperinflation.
But most Americans don’t really care that we are literally destroying our national finances. Most people are in desperate need of money, and the vast majority of them want checks from the government as soon as possible.
A OnePoll survey that was just released asked Americans about the current state of their finances, and that survey discovered that a whopping 55 percent of us consider this year to be “a personal financial disaster”…
While there is no question 2020 has been an unparalleled health challenge, many are not losing sight of how devastating the year was for their wallets as well. A new survey finds over half of Americans (55%) consider 2020 a personal financial disaster.
That is over half the country!
And for those that are employed, that same survey found that 62 percent are planning to take on a second job in 2021 in an attempt to make ends meet…
Among employed respondents (59% in total), seven in 10 say they need a raise at their job in order to make ends meet. Sixty-two percent plan on taking on a second job in 2021 to meet their financial goals next year.
That number can’t possibly be correct, can it?
Of course there aren’t that many jobs to go around. Already, there are millions upon millions of Americans that can’t find a “first job”. As I discussed the other day, we have got unemployed workers sleeping in lawn chairs or sleeping in their own vehicles because that is all they can afford at this point.
We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and this latest wave of lockdowns is making things even worse.
With so many Americans financially hurting, it shouldn’t be a surprise that millions of households are getting behind on their rent and mortgage payments…
One-in-seven renters with family incomes from $35,000 to $100,000 were not current on their rent in November. The overwhelming majority of these renters – 79.9% — expected to face eviction within two months. Similarly, 9.6% of homeowners with a mortgage were not current on their mortgage in November. And 56.1% of those homeowners expected they will be foreclosed on in the subsequent two months.
Congress keeps extending moratoriums on rent and mortgage payments, and that has been financially devastating landlords and mortgage holders.
At some point the moratoriums must end, and when that happens we are going to see a tsunami of evictions that will be absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, many Americans are going very deep into debt in a desperate attempt to keep themselves afloat financially…
More than one-third of households with incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 borrowed from credit cards, other loans as well as from friends and family to pay for their current expenses in November. Soon, debt payments will come due, burdening families that still suffer from long-term unemployment and added health care costs. This could mean rising credit default rates as well as spillovers of economic pain to other households, from who people borrowed to pay their bills.
If economic conditions were to “return to normal” in 2021, most Americans would be able to weather this financial storm just like they did in 2008 and 2009.
But things are not going to return to normal next year.
Instead, this new wave of lockdowns is going to cause thousands of more businesses to close and will force millions more Americans on to the unemployment rolls.
What we are doing to our small businesses is absolutely criminal. At this point, small business revenues are down more than 32 percent nationwide since the month of January…
Small business revenues have also taken a hit nationwide. The national average is a decrease of 32.1 percent in small business revenue since January. Washington D.C. had the worst loss in the nation at 61.6 percent. Oregon small businesses lost 16.3 percent. Illinois small businesses saw 39.2 percent decline in revenue since January.
Every day, more small businesses are closing up shop permanently.
Millions of hopes and dreams have been brutally crushed, and there is nothing that our politicians can say or do that will bring those businesses back to life.
If you have lost a business or a job this year, then that would definitely qualify as one of the “personal financial disasters” of 2020.
And as you have seen in this article, you are far from alone.
Most of the nation is deeply hurting, and the road ahead is only going to get more challenging.
In the short term, “stimulus payments” from the federal government will definitely help tens of millions of suffering Americans.
But of course every additional dollar that our government borrows and spends just makes our long-term problems even worse.
A national economic meltdown has begun, and our politicians will try lots of things to mitigate the damage, but all of their “solutions” will only help temporarily.
This is going to be an exceedingly dark chapter for America, but most Americans still do not understand the true nature of the crisis that is now unfolding all around us.
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
WHO Deletes Naturally Acquired Immunity from Its Website
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | December 23, 2020
Maybe you have some sense that something fishy is going on? Same. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Coronavirus lived on surfaces until it didn’t. Masks didn’t work until they did, then they did not. There is asymptomatic transmission, except there isn’t. Lockdowns work to control the virus except they do not. All these people are sick without symptoms until, whoops, PCR tests are wildly inaccurate because they were never intended to be diagnostic tools. Everyone is in danger of the virus except they aren’t. It spreads in schools except it doesn’t.
On it goes. Daily. It’s no wonder that so many people have stopped believing anything that “public health authorities” say. In combination with governors and other autocrats doing their bidding, they set out to take away freedom and human rights and expected us to thank them for saving our lives. At some point this year (for me it was March 12) life began feeling like a dystopian novel of your choice.
Well, now I have another piece of evidence to add to the mile-high pile of fishy mess. The World Health Organization, for reasons unknown, has suddenly changed its definition of a core conception of immunology: herd immunity. Its discovery was one of the major achievements of 20th century science, gradually emerging in the 1920s and then becoming ever more refined throughout the 20th century.
Herd immunity is a fascinating observation that you can trace to biological reality or statistical probability theory, whichever you prefer. (It is certainly not a “strategy” so ignore any media source that describes it that way.) Herd immunity speaks directly, and with explanatory power, to the empirical observation that respiratory viruses are either widespread and mostly mild (common cold) or very severe and short-lived (Ebola).
Why is this? The reason is that when a virus kills its host, it cannot migrate. The more aggressively it does this, the less it spreads. If the virus doesn’t kill its host, it can hop to others through all the usual means. When you get a virus and fight it off, your immune system encodes that information in a way that builds immunity to it. When it happens to enough people (and each case is different so we can’t put a clear number on it) the virus loses its pandemic quality and becomes endemic, which is to say predictable and manageable. Each new generation incorporates that information through more exposure.
This is what one would call Virology/Immunology 101. It’s what you read in every textbook. It’s been taught in 9th grade cell biology for probably 80 years. Observing the operations of this evolutionary phenomenon is pretty wonderful because it increases one’s respect for the way in which human biology has adapted to the presence of pathogens without absolutely freaking out.
And the discovery of this fascinating dynamic in cell biology is a major reason why public health became so smart in the 20th century. We kept calm. We managed viruses with medical professionals: doctor/patient relationships. We avoided the Medieval tendency to run around with hair on fire but rather used rationality and intelligence. Even the New York Times recognizes that natural immunity is powerful with Covid-19, which is not in the least bit surprising.
Until one day, this strange institution called the World Health Organization – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – has suddenly decided to delete everything I just wrote from cell biology basics. It has literally changed the science in a Soviet-like way. It has removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website. It has taken the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines.
So that you will believe me, I will try to be as precise as possible. Here is the website from June 9, 2020. You can see it here on Archive.org. You have to move down the page and click on the question about herd immunity. You see the following.
That’s pretty darn accurate overall. Even the statement that the threshold is “not yet clear” is correct. There are cross immunities to Covid from other coronaviruses and there is T cell memory that contributes to natural immunity.
Some estimates are as low as 10%, which is a far cry from the modelled 70% estimate of virus immunity that is standard within the pharmaceutical realm. Real life is vastly more complicated than models, in economics or epidemiology. The WHO’s past statement is a solid, if “pop,” description.
However, in a screenshot dated November 13, 2020, we read the following note that somehow pretends as if human beings do not have immune systems at all but rather rely entirely on big pharma to inject things into our blood.
What this note at the World Health Organization has done is deleted what amounts to the entire million-year history of humankind in its delicate dance with pathogens. You could only gather from this that all of us are nothing but blank and unimprovable slates on which the pharmaceutical industry writes its signature.
In effect, this change at WHO ignores and even wipes out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology. It is thoroughly unscientific – shilling for the vaccine industry in exactly the way the conspiracy theorists say that WHO has been doing since the beginning of this pandemic.
What’s even more strange is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. What’s amazing about this claim is that a vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure. Why I had to type those words is truly beyond me. This has been known for centuries. There is simply no way for medical science completely to replace the human immune system. It can only game it via what used to be called inoculation.
Take from this what you will. It is a sign of the times. For nearly a full year, the media has been telling us that “science” requires that we comply with their dictates that run contrary to every tenet of liberalism, every expectation we’ve developed in the modern world that we can live freely and with the certainty of rights. Then “science” took over and our human rights were slammed. And now the “science” is actually deleting its own history, airbrushing over what it used to know and replacing it with something misleading at best and patently false at worst.
I cannot say why, exactly, the WHO did this. Given the events of the past nine or ten months, however, it is reasonable to assume that politics are at play. Since the beginning of the pandemic, those who have been pushing lockdowns and hysteria over the coronavirus have resisted the idea of natural herd immunity, instead insisting that we must live in lockdown until a vaccine is developed.
That is why the Great Barrington Declaration, written by three of the world’s preeminent epidemiologists and which advocated embracing the phenomenon of herd immunity as a way of protecting the vulnerable and minimizing harms to society, was met with such venom. Now we see the WHO, too, succumbing to political pressure. This is the only rational explanation for changing the definition of herd immunity that has existed for the past century.
The science has not changed; only the politics have. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous and deadly to subject virus management to the forces of politics. Eventually the science too bends to the duplicitous character of the political industry.
When the existing textbooks that students use in college contradict the latest official pronouncements from the authorities during a crisis in which the ruling class is clearly attempting to seize permanent power, we’ve got a problem.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
Meet ‘Dr’ Tony Blair, warmonger turned vaccination guru and health passport promoter
By Neil Clark | RT | December 23, 2020
Former British PM Tony Blair is calling for millions to be vaccinated with a single dose in a radical acceleration of the vax programme and also for the roll-out of health passports. But what, exactly, is his medical expertise?
‘Listen to the experts.’ ‘Follow the science.’ Two phrases we’ve heard ad nauseam in 2020.
But who qualifies as an ‘expert’ or ‘scientist’ is highly selective. A whole host of medical and scientific professionals who have argued against lockdowns as an anti-coronavirus strategy have been dismissed as ‘cranks’: we saw that quite clearly in the way the distinguished authors of the Great Barrington Declaration were treated.
By way of contrast, those with no qualifications in ‘the science’ have been elevated as public health gurus, simply because they are pro-lockdown and espouse the ‘official narrative’.
The most obvious example of these double standards is Bill Gates, a rather geekish multi-billionaire American computer software tycoon with a nice line in sweaters who is regarded as the ‘go-to’ man by leading news channels on what we should do next about Covid-19.
Gates’ funding of public health bodies and university departments – and media outlets too – is extraordinary. But that shouldn’t hide the fact that he is not a qualified doctor. Yet criticise Gates’ interventions and you’ll be screamed at by the very same people who say we shouldn’t be listening to experienced medical/scientific professionals who take a very different view. And so it is with Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
‘The Blair Creature’ – to give him Peter Hitchens’ wonderful nickname – has emerged, on the day before Christmas Eve, to call for as many people as possible in Britain to get a special New Year present. “The aim should be to vaccinate as many people as possible in the coming months,” Blair writes in The Independent.
The target should be to cover a majority of the population by the end of February. “We should consider using all the available doses in January as first doses, that is, not keeping back half for second doses,” he continues. That’s despite the two vaccines in question only being licensed on the basis that people receive two doses.
Let’s remind ourselves of Tony Blair’s qualifications for giving advice on vaccination programmes. Er, he doesn’t have any. He studied law at Oxford where he played in a pop group called Ugly Rumours. He became a barrister, not a doctor or scientist. Then of course he went into politics, bombing various countries.
Yet here he is pontificating as if he’s some kind of world expert on vaccine programmes. But rather than focus on his lack of qualifications in immunology, the same ‘centrist’ crowd (many of whom hurled rather large stones at the genuine experts who did oppose lockdowns), laud the intervention of ‘The Blair Creature’. Tony is speaking, so we all must stop whatever we’re doing and listen.
Really? I’ll only start listening to Blair’s advice when those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that he assured us could be assembled and launched within 45 minutes turn up. Why on earth should we trust someone who launched an illegal war based on false accusations?
This is not even about the vaccine. It’s about loud ‘this is what needs to be done’ statements on Covid-19 coming from people who have no medical education, while those who do are being sidelined for not toeing the ‘party line’.
It’s not just mass ‘single dose’ vaccinations by the end of February that Blair is keen to see rolled out. He wants health passports too. “Prepare for a form of health passport now,” he says. “I know all the objections, but it will happen. It’s the only way the world will function and for lockdowns to no longer be the sole course of action.”
This is another example of ‘it’s not what is said, but who says it’ in operation. For several months, a number of commentators (myself included) have warned about the roll-out of health passports and how our freedom to travel, attend sports and cultural events, or even go to the shops could be dependent on us possessing one.
But we were dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists’ or worse, even though the World Economic Forum has been enthusiastically promoting such schemes.
Now Tony Blair, the great idol of those who spend their lives calling others ‘conspiracy theorists’, says that health passports “will happen”. Got that? “Will happen.” Not ‘might happen’, or ‘will happen if governments and the public decide they’re a good thing’, but “will happen”.
There is not meant to be any debate on the matter. The Davos elites have decided. We plebs are merely expected to wait in line for our jabs, and then gratefully receive our health passports without which we won’t be able to do things we took for granted just 12 months ago.
Following ‘doctor’s orders’? Or implementing a dystopian ‘Great Reset’ political agenda with terrible consequences for personal liberty? You decide.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66
WHO continues to go full Ministry of Truth
By Charles Rotter | What’s Up With That? | December 23, 2020
‘Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.
Orwell’s 1984
The climate wars which reached fever pitch a decade ago gave us a window into this sort of behavior by government bureaucrats.
The Internet and new media have given us additional visibility into the unrepentant behavior of those who would lie to us for our own good. I cannot overstate my disgust with those who have completely destroyed the credibility of the medical establishment.
God help us if something serious actually occurs.
Here is the WHO rewriting history and definitions to further their agenda.
Orwell did not envisage how simple it would be for the Ministry of Truth to rewrite history when it’s on the Internet.
Here is the current page where this content resides.
Notice in this video embedded below, this lying bureaucrat claims: “We have no therapeutics” and postulates a case fatality rate of 1%.
Covid-19 relief package asks Americans to fund their own oppression while stuffing the pockets of the powerful
By Helen Buyniski | RT | December 22, 2020
The massive ‘Covid-19 relief plus’ bill passed by Congress is a slap in the face to Americans from politicians whose backhands never seem to tire. Is a single $600 payment the going price of a human soul these days?
At over 5,500 pages (around twice the length of the previous longest bill, passed in 1986), the bill has passed both House and Senate without being read by the vast majority of those voting in favor. Congressional leaders took the must-pass nature of the $900 billion package of long-overdue Covid-19 assistance as a green light to lard the attached $1.4 trillion ‘omnibus’ bill with controversial legislation that would never pass otherwise. Some of this has already been revealed, to the horror of the American people.
The spurious add-ons aren’t the typical harmless-yet-ridiculous pork one finds in some mega-bills, either. One disturbing section dramatically expands copyright law to the point that anyone caught in “unauthorized streaming” of copyrighted content more than once could face 10 years in prison – even if they didn’t know the content was protected.
In an unconscionable giveaway to major entertainment conglomerates, the bill creates a new “copyright claims court” to further skew copyright law against independent content creators, who already face frequent content takedowns on YouTube and other platforms for what is technically (and legally) “fair use.” This court will be staffed with taxpayer-funded attorneys, who – the bill specifies – can only be paid as much as the highest-paid senior federal employee. That’s a relief!
Coupled with last year’s dramatic expansion of what counts as ‘copyrighted material’ in Europe, which could potentially criminalize even reaction GIFs and memes, the move is an assault on artists and ordinary internet users alike at a time when people have been presented with no choice but to live their lives online.
Adding insult to injury, the bloated aid package will lavish Israel with a whopping $3.8 billion in grants and foreign aid – much of it earmarked for purchasing weapons frequently used to violate international law – and dump hundreds of millions more on such paragons of human rights as Egypt and Sudan.
Americans, meanwhile, get a pitiful $600 each as many states remain economically shut down with no end to the ‘new normal’ in sight. The eviction moratorium that was set to expire at the end of the month has been extended to the end of January, staving off the flood of destitute Americans into the streets for another month. While $25 billion has been set aside for rental assistance, that’s just over a third of what Americans owe, and the procedure for accessing that money is (perhaps deliberately) complex.
The porkstravaganza isn’t entirely evil, of course. Many of the provisions merely represent garden-variety greed and venality ($193.4 million for HIV/AIDS relief workers to buy and insure “official motor vehicles,” the foundation of a ‘Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’) while others are just baffling (the creation of an educational campaign warning people not to store portable fuel containers near an open flame). There’s $325 billion in small business aid – for those businesses that haven’t closed their doors for good yet – and $15 billion for those cultural venues that have been lucky enough to hang on. But the overall tenor of the legislation is, as the hive-mind of Twitter put it earlier this week, “let them eat cake” – and the cake has already been left out in the sun for a few days.
Nevertheless, many Americans, driven to desperation by nearly 10 months of grinding government-enforced poverty, are willing to embrace the bill solely because of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it $600 payment. Worse, they’re attacking those few members of Congress who had the spine to vote against this phone-book-sized insult masquerading as a relief bill. Congress is supposed to have 72 hours to read any proposed legislation, a rule which was unsurprisingly waived as if the relief measures would simply evaporate if they weren’t passed immediately.
Americans – and the politicians who are supposed to represent them – shouldn’t be forced to choose between groveling for crumbs from the ruling class table and getting nothing at all. If the government and its corporate masters insist on keeping the economy shut down, it’s their responsibility to pay the people to sit on their hands, that is, unless they want those hands picking up pitchforks and torches instead.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Just Say No To COVID Travel Bans
By Jordan Schachtel | December 22, 2020
We’ve seen this movie before, and it ended with the largest power grab in world history.
“It’s just a travel ban.”
“It’s just two weeks to stop the spread.”
“It’s just for non-essential workers.”
“Just wear a mask. It will allow for society to reopen.”
“It’s just a ‘pause’ on non-essential activities and businesses.”
2020, the year that will be defined by corona hysteria and unprecedented global power grabs, is coming to an end, and the simulation is apparently resetting. The conversation surrounding coronavirus mania has somehow reverted back to square one, with:
“It’s just a travel ban to the UK.”
Social media and news feeds are now rife with prominent politicians, “public health experts,” commentators and reporters discussing the merits of a travel ban to the United Kingdom, after reports surfaced that the Brits have discovered a new strain of the coronavirus, which is being advertised as 70% more infectious (!) than the last variant. According to the “public health experts,” it’s time to panic again, and take dramatic action to stop this virus.
Over 40 countries have now decided — following the reported discovery of the new variant of the coronavirus — to impose travel bans from the United Kingdom. With that has come a new pressure campaign in the United States, led by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other lockdown advocates, to launch a new round of travel restrictions.
It seems that so many across the political spectrum have learned absolutely nothing from the pandora’s box of tyranny that was opened up at the beginning of the year, following the failure of travel bans to stop the spread of a respiratory virus with a 99.9% recovery rate.
Like it or not, the United States is a very interconnected nation, serving thousands of international flights per day. The U.S. is not New Zealand. We are not a tiny island nation that can just cut itself off from the rest of the world at a moment’s notice. If there’s a virus reportedly spreading across the Atlantic, it’s probably already here, too.
Additionally, many in the corona hysteria space seem to not understand the rudimentary science behind mutations. They’re seemingly too busy panicking and demanding further restrictions to be thoughtful about what to do next.
If a virus has mutated into an even more transmissible form, that can mean that the virus has become less lethal. This also means that mitigation and suppression pseudoscience measures, such as lockdowns, masks, curfews, and the like have even less of a chance of working this time around, given that they did not work to slow or stop the spread with a less transmissible variant.
If a disease with an approaching 99.9% recovery rate is becoming more transmissible, and possibly even less lethal, the idea that we should take dramatic, sweeping action to “fight” it is absolutely preposterous. Before corona madness, anyone who advocated for a travel ban to stop seasonal influenza or the common cold would have been laughed out of the room. The discourse surrounding “stopping the spread” of a virus has become so nonsensical and pointless, yet at the same time, these people and organizations are credentialed as “experts,” when their record of absolute failure would demonstrate otherwise.
We need to stop the spread of corona hysteria by rejecting any and all restrictions in the name of fighting a virus. Stop empowering government bureaucrats and “public health experts” to run roughshod over our lives. As we observed over the course of the year, a travel ban can fast transform into a devastating lockdown, when the travel ban inevitably fails in its mission. The only path forward involves advocating solely for a full reopening and a restoration of individual rights, not more restrictions in the name of stopping a virus that we have no control over.
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.
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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What’s actually IN the US “Covid Stimulus Bill”?
The answer to that is nothing like as simple as you’d expect, given the name.
OffGuardian | December 22, 2020
The US congress just passed their Covid stimulus bill, or the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021” to give its official title. So what’s actually inside it? What has just been passed into law?
The answers to that is “nobody really knows”, least of all the members of congress, who passed the law without reading it, as they so often do. It’s the longest bill in US history, at over 5500 pages and it sailed through the voting mostly sight unseen.
We’ve downloaded a copy of the full document and will embed it for those of you patient or masochistic enough to tackle the whole thing. We’ve read some already, and will point out the highlights:
- “Foreign aid” is a big winner. Egypt is getting $1.3 billion, Sudan, Israel and Ukraine get over 500 million each, and many other countries around the world sizeable contributions, much of which will be spent on “defense”. Which is to say sent straight back to America via massive arms purchases.
- Not all the money being sent overseas is for buying weapons, some is for backing coups. Venezuela and Belarus get special mention here, each getting their own section of the bill detailing how terrible their “illegal regimes” are. There’s also a large section on “combating Chinese influence”.
- For some reason there’s another section on copyright law, which makes illegal streaming copyrighted content a federal crime, punishable by up to three years in prison.
- Nearly 300 million is put aside to develop influenza vaccines and prevent a future influenza pandemic.
- 4 BILLION dollars for the Gates-funded GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.
- Vaccine “misinformation” is also a concern, and the bill provides for a pro-vaccine propaganda campaign – or rather a “PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGN ON THE IMPORTANCE OF VACCINATIONS”
So – huge amounts of foreign aid, support for various coups, totally irrelevant copyright laws, provisions for pro-vaccine propaganda campaigns… it’s not your typical “stimulus bill” so far, is it?
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
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Trans agenda is ‘normalization of sadism’ – US author
RT | September 23, 2026
The US Democratic Party has embraced a transgender agenda that amounts to “the normalization of sadism,” author A.J. Rice has said, warning that radical trans policies would return if the party is allowed to regain power.
Speaking to RT’s America First host Scotty Nell Hughes about his new book, ‘The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity’, Rice argued that activists have gained significant influence in schools, medicine, and corporate America while people who questioned the agenda have faced pressure to stay silent.
The author described the “trans mafia” as the sprawling network of people and institutions that have helped the movement gain influence. He singled out parts of academia, wealthy backers, and corporations, and stated that providers of transition-related treatment also have a financial incentive to keep young people in their care indefinitely.
Rice argued that the consequences of these policies ultimately fall on children who are being drawn toward gender-affirming medical treatments and on girls who are expected to share locker rooms or compete in sports with biological males.
He noted that while voters rejected the Democrats’ approach to gender in 2024, the party, which has been “captured by madness,” has since only doubled down and is seeking what is effectively “the normalization of sadism.” … Full report
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