Bill Gates is now best known as a philanthropist, not the guy who started Microsoft or was the avatar for everyone’s annoyance with Windows 95.
He’s also known for wanting to save us from ourselves.
Now, apparently, he wants to save us from the sun.
Gates, for those of you who don’t follow these things, has been big on both vaccination and pandemic prevention. Fair enough. That certainly means his moment has arrived.
However, he’s about as much of a lockdown guy as you can get — which is just fine if you’re a billionaire who can afford to hide away as if this were Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” but the real-world consequences for the rest of us can be, ahem, problematic.
However, while you may have been paying attention to his efforts on vaccination and lockdowns, you may not have noticed that one of Gates’ most controversial causes just got a go-ahead: A project that would help block out the sun.
This sounds a bit like the plot to “Highlander 2: The Quickening,” but it’s nothing near that science fiction-y.
According to Reuters, a Harvard University project plans to test out a controversial theory that global warming can be stopped by spraying particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun’s rays.
The project represents one of the most controversial aspects of what’s known as “geoengineering” — the idea that, to tackle issues like climate change, massive aspects of our ecosystem can be played with or changed. In this case, it would involve reflecting some of the sun’s rays to stop them from reaching Earth. Do you think this Gates-backed plan is dangerous? Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“Open-air research into spraying tiny, sun-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, to offset global warming, has been stalled for years by controversies – including that it could discourage needed cuts in greenhouse gas emissions,” Reuters reported.
“In a small step, the Swedish Space Corporation agreed this week to help Harvard researchers launch a balloon near the Arctic town of Kiruna next June. It would carry a gondola with 600 kg of scientific equipment 20 km (12 miles) high.”
The Harvard team, whose project is known as SCoPEx, is funded in large part by Gates, according to an August report in the U.K. Daily Mail. (Which gave the subject the wordy title: “Could dimming the sun save the Earth? Bill Gates wants to spray millions of tonnes of dust into the stratosphere to stop global warming… but critics fear it could trigger calamity”)
“The idea is simple: spray a bunch of particles into the stratosphere, and they will cool the planet by reflecting some of the Sun’s rays back into space. Scientists have already witnessed the principle in action,” Nature already reported in 2018. (Headline: “First sun-dimming experiment will test a way to cool Earth”)
“When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected an estimated 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that stretches from about 10 to 50 kilometres above Earth’s surface. The eruption created a haze of sulfate particles that cooled the planet by around 0.5 °C. For about 18 months, Earth’s average temperature returned to what it was before the arrival of the steam engine.”
There are several problems with this plan, not the least of which is that we don’t know what the unintended consequences might be. But to environmentalists, the problem is that it doesn’t solve global warming the way they want to do it.
“There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step. You can’t test the trigger of a bomb and say ‘This can’t possibly do any harm,’” said Niclas Hällström, director of the Sweden-based environmentalist think-tank WhatNext?
And while Hällström is worried about some of the same things that other people are — the potential to change rain patterns or crop yields — he’s also concerned that people aren’t concerned enough about the solution he wants, which is a transition to a zero-carbon society.
“Swedish society is increasingly calling for real, immediate solutions to climate change,” he said.
Right.
He’s not the only one, either.
“This is as much an experiment in changing social norms and crossing a line as it is a science experiment,” said Jim Thomas, co-executive director of Canadian-based environmentalist organization ETC Group, which opposes the idea.
But then again, Gates lives in this dream world where his advice on pandemics and global warming is given equal weight as his time developing Windows.
When it comes to the pandemic, Gates has said that he expects businesses and restaurants to remain shuttered for some time:
.@BillGates on Covid: “Even through 2022” we should be prepared for life to not return to “normal”
Says “sadly” it’s “appropriate” for bars and restaurants to close over the next “four to six months” pic.twitter.com/cmDD8pv3XR
“Bars and restaurants — in most of the country — will be closed as we go into this wave, and I think, sadly, that’s appropriate,” he said during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview earlier this month.
“The next four to six months really call on us to do our best, because we can see that this will end and you don’t want somebody that you love to be the last to die of coronavirus.”
He’s also called out fellow billionaire Elon Musk for his statements questioning the science behind mask-wearing.
“Elon’s positioning is to maintain a high level of outrageous comments,” Gates said in a July CNBC interview.
“He’s not much involved in vaccines. He makes a great electric car. And his rockets work well. So he’s allowed to say these things. I hope that he doesn’t confuse areas he’s not involved in too much.”
However, when it came to outrageous comments, keep in mind that in that same interview, Gates said that when it came to the coronavirus, “China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say they missed some things.”
In short, Bill Gates doesn’t have a particularly great handle on COVID, much less the current vaccine process. He panders to China. His work on the vaccine has been desultory at best. And now, what he wants us all to believe is that he’s got a handle on everything — including blotting out the sun to make the world cooler.
Get the economics on business-killing lockdowns together, Bill. Then we’ll see about your geoengineering gambit.
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” Edmund Burke, 1784
When are religious leaders going to issue demands to their members? Demands to express a duty to God first; above and beyond the restrictions of the State.
These leaders certainly believe God created humans with the quality of freedom. The Bible irrevocably states it. Therefore, under the cover of COVID, the State cannot remove that freedom.
The religious leaders must order their flocks to rebel.
Not just in order to attend church services; but to live without fear, out in the open, without hiding behind masks, without keeping their distance, without lockdowns, without sacrificing their right to earn a living.
Several Catholic prelates have declared the COVID fraud is being used as a rationale for creating an anti-spiritual new world order.
The next step is telling their Church members and believers to rebel, to choose The Good and God.
Every early story about every religion shows how the State power of the day had to be overcome. Is it now time to develop terminal amnesia about these origins?
Are those stories buried because they are inconvenient?
“By 200 [AD], the [Christian] faith had permeated most regions of the Roman Empire, though Christians were mostly in the larger urban areas (Gaul, Lyons, Carthage, Rome). By 325, an estimated 7 million were Christians with as many as 2 million killed for the faith.”
Among the reasons for this vast persecution: “Christian refusal to worship or honor other gods was a source of great contention.”
“Christians were accused of being atheists because of their denial of the other gods and refusal of emperor worship. Thus, they were accused of treason to the state.”
“For many provincial governors, Christians were considered social radicals, rather than being persecuted specifically for their faith only.”
And now, in 2020, the major religious objection to COVID restrictions concerns the number of worshipers allowed inside a church during services?
Is this the evolution of faith, or its destruction, at the hands of the faithful themselves?
Is conscience “outmoded”?
Is civilization now so “advanced” that suffering and even dying for one’s faith is considered absurd?
Is bargaining with the State over whether 10 or 50 members can enter a house of worship the cutting edge of rebellion?
It seems to me people should renounce their religion, if they’re unwilling to go to the wall for it.
Just admit that what true faith requires is too much.
Jesus endured pain and torture, and surrendered his human form, in order to save humanity, but now faithful followers can declare their loyalty during online virtual services. Or from their cars, in a parking lot. Without feeling a tremor of conscience.
Over the years, I’ve heard many claims that America (and other Western nations) were created on the basis of Christian values. Putting aside counter-arguments, if that is the assertion, then where is the courage to back it up?
What good are these claims, if in a great crisis, there is no mass rebellion, out in the open, against the tyrannical State, on behalf of God?
Again, mass rebellion means the refusal to wear masks, the refusal to maintain distancing, the refusal to obey lockdowns or close businesses. It means reclaiming freedom.
But perhaps some people believe God wants obedience to the State. He wants his loyal followers to submit to the lockdowns. He wants worshipers to surrender to an all-encompassing secular new world order, in which citizens will function as pawns in a Brave New World technocracy. He wants the faithful to be stripped of their humanity.
If so, let’s hear THAT argument.
Months ago, I said pastors and priests and other religious leaders should stand up in their houses of worship and confess their lack of courage and resign their positions. Confess they are unworthy to lead congregations. Ask for the most brave to step forward and take over.
That’s a correct course of action.
Why should these religious leaders make superficial distinctions about the limits of rebellion? In order to maintain their non-profit status with the State? In order to keep their flock comfortable?
Jesus: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
But perhaps, in these enlightened times, people should worship a purported virus, and desert God.
Jon Rappoport
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.
So what is the unions’ price tag for reopening schools nationally? A cool $100 billion “investment,” as the left calls it. Smells more like ransom to us. The Democrat progressives and unions are holding your kids hostage.
Too cynical, you say? Not at all. Unions have been behind the closures all along.
Classic American school classroom. Photo: Andrew Postell, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I&I Editorial
Schools have been closed for the better part of a year now, for the putative reason that COVID-19 makes them unsafe. Only distance learning and Zoom and other online classes are safe enough for both teachers and kids, we’re told. Even though the science says otherwise, powerful teachers unions keep schools closed anyway. But why?
Let’s start with a blunt fact: The teachers unions — including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), along with a host of radicalized local unions — don’t have your kids’ best interests at heart, despite their well-funded, slick propaganda to the contrary.
They oppose reopening schools, despite overwhelming evidence they should be reopened immediately.
As a must-read piece in the American Institute for Economic Research recently noted:
Significant evidence shows that a truncated school year supplemented with online learning is vastly inferior to the education children get in-person. Virtual learning is particularly harmful to students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds who do not have sufficient resources to support their learning.
This is a looming disaster for all children, but especially for poor and minority kids.
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimated that school closures could cost the 24.2 million affected U.S. students nearly 5.53 million total years of life, largely due to lower incomes, less educational achievement, and worse health outcomes.
Higher levels of drug abuse and overdoses, massive increases in mental health hospital visits, along with surging suicide rates among children have been cited by the Centers for Disease Control as stemming from pandemic school closures.
Meanwhile, fears of schools becoming incubators for renewed surges of COVID-19 infections are grossly exaggerated, other studies and data show.
Start with the fact that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, just 168 kids 17 or under have died from COVID-19 through Dec. 19. That’s less than 0.05% of the total of nearly 300,000 COVID-19 deaths. By comparison, those aged 65 to 74 accounted for more than 21% of the total deaths.
Studies this year by peer-reviewed journals back these data up.
“COVID-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants,” a study in the British medical journal Lancet found.
Even the usually union-friendly New York Times was recently forced to admit: “Researchers once feared that school reopening’s might spread the virus through communities. But so far there is little evidence that it’s happening.”
The most cynical expression of unions’ lack of concern for students came earlier this year in Los Angeles, where the 35,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles demanded, among other things, that local officials defund the police; pushed for a “moratorium” on charter schools; and insisted policymakers enact Medicare for All, provide more welfare for illegal immigrants, and levy enormous new taxes on commercial properties and “wealth.”
Of course, none of these things have anything to do with education. They’re just part of the much broader extremist agenda of the far left, which now largely controls American education.
The frightening thing is leftist teachers unions seem to have a strong ally in Joe Biden, who recently suggested that it might be better to keep schools closed all year.
So what is the unions’ price tag for reopening schools nationally? A cool $100 billion “investment,” as the left calls it. Smells more like ransom to us. The Democrat progressives and unions are holding your kids hostage.
Too cynical, you say? Not at all. Unions have been behind the closures all along.
As a recent study of 835 school districts asserted: “Using data on the reopening decisions of 835 public school districts in the United States, we find that school districts in locations with stronger teachers’ unions are less likely to reopen in person even after we control … for differences in local demographic characteristics.”
But health concerns weren’t the reason for closures. They were a pretext.
As the study cited above noted, closures “provide additional benefits to union members by reducing childcare responsibilities, hours of direct instruction, and commute times. Furthermore, because teachers’ unions with more power are in better positions to influence school districts, we expect that school districts in locations with stronger teachers’ unions will be less likely to reopen with in-person instruction.”
In short, teachers unions are using COVID-19 to extort more benefits and more money from the education system for their members. They don’t care about the kids.
For his part, if he gains office, Biden will be more interested in keeping his solid union support happy than in sending kids back to school.
Polls show parents want their kids back in school. The only people who don’t want the schools to reopen appear to be leftist politicians and their union supporters. For the record, since 1990, the the NEA and AFT, the two largest teachers unions, have given Democrats at least 94% of their political contributions.
There’s a solution for this dilemma. De-unionize the nation’s public schools. Unions have damaged American education, dumbing down curricula, filling kids’ heads with anti-American socialist dogma, and presiding over decades of rising costs and declining or stagnant test scores. It’s time to restore local control by parents over education. A system that works.
This situation is the inevitable result of a government that tries to maintain the fiction that republican institutions are compatible with a welfare-warfare leviathan. Congress will continue to indulge this delusion until the system collapses. This collapse will likely be brought on by a collapse in the dollar’s value.
Last week Congress passed a massive coronavirus relief and omnibus spending bill. President Trump threatened to veto the bill, saying he wants an increase in the amount for “stimulus” checks authorized by the bill from 600 dollars to 2,000 dollars. The checks are designed to help those harmed by the lockdowns. President Trump also demanded a cut in some of the wasteful spending contained in the bill, such as the ten million dollars for gender programs in Pakistan. At the 11th hour, however, President Trump signed the bill.
President Trump’s veto threat came after many people complained that a 600 dollars one-time payment was insufficient, and that the payment could be higher if Congress cut spending on militarism, foreign aid, and corporate handouts.
The text of the 5,593-page bill was made available hours before the votes in the House and Senate. Representatives and senators were told the bill had to pass immediately or else government would shut down around Christmas. This does not excuse voting for the bill. Congress should have refused to vote for this bill until members had time to read it. Those who voted “yes” should not get away with claiming the bill needed to be passed before members could read it.
While it is understandable that many are outraged over the way this bill was rushed through, the real outrage is that the rushed passage of omnibus bills has become a yearly Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill. These spending bills are always full of outrageous special interest giveaways. This practice denies the average member of Congress a meaningful role in carrying out one of Congress’ two most significant constitutional duties — funding the government. Congress long ago abandoned its other main constitutional responsibility — declaring war.
Whether 600 dollars or 2,000 dollars, a one-time stimulus payment is hardly adequate compensation for the suffering the government lockdowns have inflicted on the American people. Stimulus checks will not reopen closed small businesses or stop increases in domestic violence and substance abuse. A government check will not restore educational and development opportunities denied to children stuck at home struggling with “virtual education.” A one-time check will not compensate workers for the health problems developed due to having to wear a mask for eight hours a day. The only just solution is to end the lockdowns, and never again allow overblown fears to justify shutting down the economy.
Funding the government via massive omnibus bills drafted in secret and rushed into law concentrates power in the hands of a select few representatives and senators. It also gives the president excessive influence over the appropriations process. This is exactly the opposite of what the Framers intended when they gave Congress power over government spending.
This situation is the inevitable result of a government that tries to maintain the fiction that republican institutions are compatible with a welfare-warfare leviathan. Congress will continue to indulge this delusion until the system collapses. This collapse will likely be brought on by a collapse in the dollar’s value.
The combination of the high-profile coronavirus bill with this year’s omnibus spending bill has brought new attention to Congress’ practice of funding the government via massive, unread appropriations bills. Hopefully, the anger people are expressing, instead of just disappearing once people receive their checks, will strengthen the movement to return to free markets and limited constitutional government. Liberty is a far better option than descent into economic chaos and totalitarianism.
Nevertheless, the aims of the WEF are not to plan every aspect of production and thus to direct all individual activity. Rather, the goal is to limit the possibilities for individual activity, including the activity of consumers—by dint of squeezing out industries and producers within industries from the economy. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”6
As I noted in the previous installment, the Great Reset, if its architects have their way, would involve transformations of nearly every aspect of life. Here, I will limit my discussion to the economics of the Great Reset as promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF), as well as to recent developments that have advanced these plans.
As F.A. Hayek suggested in his introductory essay to Collectivist Economic Planning, socialism can be divided into two aspects: the ends and the means.1 The socialist means is collectivist planning, while the ends, at least under proletarian socialism, are the collective ownership of the means of production and the “equal” or “equitable” distribution of the end products. Distinguishing between these two aspects in order to set aside the question of the ends and to focus on the means, Hayek suggested that collectivist planning could be marshalled in the service of ends other than those associated with proletarian socialism: “An aristocratic dictatorship, for example, may use the same methods to further the interest of some racial or other elite or in the service of some other decidedly anti-equalitarian purpose.”2 Collectivist planning might or might not run into the calculation problem, depending upon whether or not a market in the factors of production is retained. If a market for the factors of production is maintained, then the calculation problem would not strictly apply.
The collectivist planners of the Great Reset do not aim at eliminating markets for the factors of production. Rather, they mean to drive ownership and control of the most important factors to those enrolled in “stakeholder capitalism.”3 The productive activities of said stakeholders, meanwhile, would be guided by the directives of a coalition of governments under a unified mission and set of policies, in particular those expounded by the WEF itself.
While these corporate stakeholders would not necessarily be monopolies per se, the goal of the WEF is to vest as much control over production and distribution in these corporate stakeholders as possible, with the goal of eliminating producers whose products or processes are deemed either unnecessary or inimical to the globalists’ desiderata for “a fairer, greener future.” Naturally, this would involve constraints on production and consumption and likewise an expanded role for governments in order to enforce such constraints—or, as Klaus Schwab has stated in the context of the covid crisis, “the return of big government”4—as if government hasn’t been big and growing bigger all the while.
Schwab and the WEF promote stakeholder capitalism against a supposedly rampant “neoliberalism.” Neoliberalism is a weasel word that stands for whatever leftists deem wrong with the socioeconomic order. It is the common enemy of the Left. Needless to say, neoliberalism—which Schwab loosely defines as “a corpus of ideas and policies that can loosely be defined as favouring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare”5—is a straw man. Schwab and company erect neoliberalism as the source of our economic woes. But to the extent that “antineoliberalism” has been in play, the governmental favoring of industries and players within industries (or corporatocracy), and not competition, has been the source of what Schwab and his ilk decry. The Great Reset would magnify the effects of corporatocracy.
Nevertheless, the aims of the WEF are not to plan every aspect of production and thus to direct all individual activity. Rather, the goal is to limit the possibilities for individual activity, including the activity of consumers—by dint of squeezing out industries and producers within industries from the economy. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”6
As Hayek noted, “when the medieval guild system was at its height, and when restrictions to commerce were most extensive, they were not used as a means actually to direct individual activity.”7 Likewise, the Great Reset aims not at a strictly collectivist planning of the economy so much as recommends and demands neofeudalistic restrictions that would go further than anything since the medieval period—other than under state socialism itself, that is. In 1935, Hayek noted the extent to which economic restrictions had already led to distortions of the market:
With our attempts to use the old apparatus of restrictionism as an instrument of almost day-to-day adjustment to change we have probably already gone much further in the direction of central planning of current activity than has ever been attempted before….It is important to realize in any investigation of the possibilities of planning that it is a fallacy to suppose capitalism as it exists to-day is the alternative. We are certainly as far from capitalism in its pure form as we are from any system of central planning. The world of to-day is just interventionist chaos.8
How much further, then, the Great Reset would take us toward the kinds of restrictions imposed under feudalism, including the economic stasis that feudalism entailed!
I call this neofeudalism “corporate socialism”—not only because the rhetoric to gain adherents derives from socialist ideology (“fairness,” “economic equality,” “collective good,” “shared destiny,” etc.) but also because the reality sought after is de facto monopolistic control of production via the elimination of noncompliant producers—i.e., a tendency toward monopoly over production that is characteristic of socialism. These interventions would not only add to the “interventionist chaos” already in existence but further distort markets to a degree unprecedented outside of centralized socialist planning per se. The elites could attempt to determine, a priori, consumer needs and wants by limiting production to acceptable goods and services. They would also limit production to the kinds amenable to the governments and producers who buy into the program. The added regulations would drive midsized and small producers out of business or into black markets, to the extent that black markets could exist under a digital currency and greater centralized banking. As such, the restrictions and regulations would tend toward a static caste-like system with corporate oligarchs on top, and “actually existing socialism”9 for the vast majority below. Increasing wealth for the few, “economic equality,” under reduced conditions, including universal basic income, for the rest.
The Coronavirus Lockdowns, the Riots, and Corporate Socialism
The covid-19 lockdowns, and to a lesser extent the leftist riots, have been moving us toward corporate socialism. The draconian lockdown measures employed by governors and mayors and the destruction perpetrated by the rioters just so happen to be doing the work that corporate socialists like the WEF want done. In addition to destabilizing the nation-state, these policies and politics are helping to destroy small businesses, thus eliminating competitors.
As the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) points out, the lockdowns and riots have combined to level a one-two punch that is knocking out millions of small businesses—“the backbone of the American economy”—all across America. FEE reported that
7.5 million small businesses in America are at risk of closing their doors for good. A more recent survey showed that even with federal loans, close to half of all small business owners say they’ll have to shut down for good. The toll has already been severe. In New York alone, stay-at-home orders have forced the permanent closure of more than 100,000 small businesses.10
Meanwhile, as FEE and others have noted, there is no evidence that the lockdowns have done anything to slow the spread of the virus. Likewise, there is no evidence that Black Lives Matter has done anything to help black lives. If anything, the riotous and murderous campaigns of Black Lives Matter and Antifa have proven that black lives do not matter to Black Lives Matter. In addition to murdering black people, the Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters have done enormous damage to black businesses and neighborhoods, and thus to black lives.11
As small businesses have been crushed by the combination of draconian lockdowns and riotous lunacy, corporate giants like Amazon have thrived like never before. As BBC noted, at least three of the tech giants—Amazon, Apple, and Facebook—have appreciated massive gains during the lockdowns,12 gains which were abetted, to a lesser extent, by riots that cost 1 to 2 billion in property damages.13 During the three months ending in June, Amazon’s “quarterly profit of $5.2bn (£4bn) was the biggest since the company’s start in 1994 and came despite heavy spending on protective gear and other measures due to the virus.” Amazon’s sales rose by 40 percent in the three months ending in June.
As reported by TechCrunch, Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram platforms saw a 15 percent rise in users, which brought revenues to a grand total of $17.74 billion in the first quarter.14 Facebook’s total users climbed to 3 billion in March, or two-thirds of the world’s internet users, a record. Apple’s revenues soared during the same period, with quarterly earnings rising 11 percent year-on-year to $59.7 billion. “Walmart, the country’s largest grocer, said profits rose 4 percent, to $3.99 billion,” during the first quarter of 2020, as reported by the Washington Post.15
The number of small businesses has been nearly cut in half by the covid-19 lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots while the corporate giants have consolidated their grip on the economy, as well as their power over individual expression on the internet and beyond. Thus, it would appear that the covid lockdowns, shutdowns, partial closings, as well as the riots are just what the Great Resetters ordered, although I am not hereby suggesting that they did order them. More likely, they have seized the opportunity to cull from the economy the underbrush of small and medium-sized businesses in order to make compliance simpler and more pervasive.
In the end, the Great Reset is merely a propaganda campaign, not some button that globalist oligarchs can push at will—although the WEF has represented it as just that.16 Their plans need to be countered with better economic ideas and concerted individual actions. The only reasonable response to the Great Reset project is to defy it, to introduce and promote more competition, and to demand the full reopening of the economy, at whatever peril. If this means that smaller-scale producers and distributors must band together to defy state edicts, then so be it. New business associations, with the aim of foiling the Great Reset, must be formed—before it’s is too late.
1. F.A. Hayek, “The Nature and History of the Problem,” in N.G. Pierson and F.A. Hayek, Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 14.
9. “Actually existing socialism” is a term used to describe socialism as it existed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. It became a pejorative term used sarcastically by dissidents in socialist countries to refer to what life was really like under socialism, rather than in the perfidious books of Marx and his epigones.
Scott Horton proves the truism that Libertarians can clearly see both sides of partisan issues. Scott Horton and Pete Quinones sat down to review 2020. Here’s a peek at what they discussed.ImpeachmentWhat’s going on in Ukraine?Trump was impeached over UkraineBiden’s unqualified son worked in UkraineBiden fired the prosecutor of his son’s company in UkraineA Ukrainian testified at Trump’s impeachment trialA U.S. Ambassador was caught picking Ukraine’s prime ministerIt all comes back to Ukraine. Listen to Scott connect the pieces.
COVID 19Most of us agreed that “15 days to flatten the curve” was reasonable. But forced lockdowns are un-American. The Left think that the virus spreads through disobedience to the state.The Right think virus is not serious, and so precaution is thrown to the wind.Scott argues that there’s irrationality on all sides. Listen to his prediction on why the worst is yet to come.George FloydGeorge Floyd’s death almost became the U.S. government’s worst nightmare. Then we got divided against each other, instead of united against the state.Find out what went wrong, and why it still matters, to left-wingers and right-wingers.Stolen ElectionTrump was framed for treason, and half the country thinks the election was stolen. But Scott makes a good argument that Trump’s loss is his own fault.
is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Amid the pandemic lockdowns, riots and a very controversial election, America’s politicians raced to out-woke each other. From the obscure to the obvious, all listed here pledge allegiance to the flag…of critical social justice.
Here they are, starting on the local level and going all the way up to the top.
10. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey simply must be mentioned in any review of performative wokeness in 2020. After the death of George Floyd – an African-American man whose death during a botched arrest was attributed to an officer kneeling on him, rather than Covid-19 or fentanyl present in his system – rioters set a police station and the surrounding block on fire. From there, the riots spread to the neighboring St. Paul and then across America.
Frey’s reaction was to take a knee and wail like a professional mourner at Floyd’s funeral, as if he were best friends with the man. He also tried to join the “protesters” two days later and declare his devotion to social justice, only to be chased off by demonstrators calling on him to resign. He hasn’t been heard from much since.
9. Minneapolis City Council
Yet the 13-member city council apparently decided to outdo Frey in public displays of wokeness. Composed of twelve Democrats and one Green, the council first voted to “defund the police” – outright replace the Minneapolis PD with a “reimagined public safety” agency. Except three of them then hired private security – at taxpayer expense of $4,500 a day – for themselves, saying they had received threats. City council chair Lisa Bender famously told CNN that being able to call the police when your home is being invaded “comes from a place of privilege,” in one of the stupidest statements of 2020.
Since then, the council has voted to spend an extra $500,000 to hire new police officers, only to slash the police budget by $8 million – in the name of ‘racial justice’ and ‘equity’ of course. They did so while lamenting the 537-percent increase in carjackings and a 17-percent spike in violent crime in general, as if that was entirely unrelated.
8. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan
For three weeks in June, Black Lives Matter activists and Antifa occupied several blocks of downtown Seattle, declaring it a Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), also known as Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, initially insisted it was “not a lawless wasteland of anarchist insurrection” but “a peaceful expression of our community’s collective grief and their desire to build a better world.”
“We could have the summer of love,” she told CNN. When criticized by President Donald Trump, she shot back: “Seattle is fine. Don’t be so afraid of democracy.”
CHAZ protesters, meanwhile, stormed City Hall and demanded Durkan’s resignation. Eventually, they even showed up outside her house – whose location had been kept secret since Durkan’s days as a federal prosecutor. Only then did Mayor Jenny decide that maybe CHAZ wasn’t a summer of love and democracy, and moved to dismantle the shantytown.
For example, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health stated the following during the first wave of the pandemic,
If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live and then you were also found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death, despite if you died of a clear alternative cause it’s still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who is listed as a COVID death that doesn’t mean that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of death.
During the first wave, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had to announce a change to how it tallies coronavirus deaths due to complaints that it inflated the numbers.
The Facts:Ontario public health clearly states that deaths will be marked as COVID deaths whether or not it’s clear if COVID was the cause or contributed to the death. This means that those who did not die as a result of COVID are included in the death count.
Reflect On:Why is there so much confusion surrounding this pandemic? Why is there such a strong campaign of censorship of information that is going hand in hand with it?
What Happened: Ontario (Canada) Public Health has a page on their website titled “How Ontario is responding to COVID-19.” On it, they clearly state that deaths are being marked as COVID deaths and are being included in the COVID death count regardless of whether or not COVID actually contributed to or caused the death. They state the following,
Any case marked as “Fatal” is included in the deaths data. Deaths are included whether or not COVID-19 was determined to be a contributing or underlying cause of death…”
This statement from Ontario Public Health echoes statements made multiple times by Canadian public health agencies and personnel. According to Ontario Ministry Health Senior Communications Advisor Anna Miller,
As a result of how data is recorded by health units into public health information databases, the ministry is not able to accurately separate how many people died directly because of COVID versus those who died with a COVID infection.
Again, this means when we observe the COVID-19 death count in Ontario, Canada, we are observing an inaccurate number given the fact that those who died with COVID may not have necessarily died as a result of it. Theoretically if a person committed suicide and tested positive for COVID or died in a car crash, of a heart attack, of cancer, diabetes or any other illness, they are also included in the COVID death count. Let’s not forget the fact that a positive PCR test does not mean one has COVID.
This has been common theme during the span of this pandemic so far. For example, in late June Toronto (Ontario, Canada) Public Health tweeted that “Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a result of COVID-19 are included in the case counts for COVID-19 deaths in Toronto.”
It’s not just in Canada where we’ve seen these types of statements being made, it’s all over the world. There are multiple examples from the United States that we’ve written about before.
For example, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health stated the following during the first wave of the pandemic,
If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live and then you were also found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death, despite if you died of a clear alternative cause it’s still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who is listed as a COVID death that doesn’t mean that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of death.
During the first wave, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had to announce a change to how it tallies coronavirus deaths due to complaints that it inflated the numbers.
The only issue is that we can’t know how many people have been added to the COVID death count in multiple places across the globe that did not actually die as a result of COVID. Theoretically, this could drive the global death count significantly lower than the official numbers we are getting.
At the end of the summer the CDC put out data showing that 94% of deaths that have been marked as COVID deaths had at least two or there other causes listed. Out of all the deaths that have been labelled as a COVID-19 death in the United States up to the end of August, for 6% of them COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned and for 94% of the deaths there were other causes and conditions in addition to COVID-19. The CDC states that “for deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.” So how do we know that COVID was the cause for many of these deaths or even contributed? Many believe COVID was the cause and even contributed to the comorbitities listed. You can view the updated numbers here in table 3 from the CDC as they are similar.
We also saw this very early on in Italy, where 99 percent of those who were marked as COVID deaths had multiple comorbidities.
With the last two examples it’s important to mention that COVID may have been the cause or even a contributing factor. We already know that people with comorbidities as well as the elderly are the most vulnerable. We also know that for people 70 years and younger the survival rate of the virus is 99.95 percent, according to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD,PhD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine. This is why approximately 50,000 doctors and scientists have now signed The Great Barrington Declaration strongly opposing lockdown measures, citing information showing that they are doing more harm than good and explaining that we don’t have to lockdown everything to protect the vulnerable. There are, according to them, more proper and efficient ways of doing so.
Why This Is Important: There are a lot of questions on the minds of many people, not only with regards to the severity of the virus, PCR testing, and the measures being taken by governments to combat it, but also the fact that information, evidence, science and expert opinion during this pandemic has been heavily censored. A lot of scientists and doctors have been doing their best to create awareness about this as we don’t hear a peep from the mainstream about it. Social media outlets have been censoring and blocking information that opposes the official narrative that’s beamed out by government health authorities. It’s odd how one scientist, like Dr. Anthony Fauci for example, can get all the air time in the world and given instant virality, yet thousands of other experts it the field who share an opposite opinion are completely ignored. It raises a lot of questions and red flags.
Over the last few months, I have seen academic articles and op-eds by professors retracted or labeled “fake news” by social media platforms. Often, no explanation is provided. I am concerned about this heavy-handedness and, at times, outright censorship. – Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH (source)
The bottom line is, science is being suppressed, and this is no secret. Below is a tweet from Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard professor of medicine that emphasizes this point, which was also recently emphasized by Kamran Abbas, a doctor, executive editor of the British Medical Journal, and the editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. He has published an article about COVID-19, the suppression of science and the politicization of medicine. There are many examples to choose from, I thought I’d simply mention these few to get my point across. It’s also not surprising to find conflicts of interests among government COVID advisors.
“In January 2020, when much of the world remained blissfully unaware of the coming global pandemic, UPMC was already at work developing a vaccine to protect against the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, known as SARS-CoV-2. That month, before the state of Pennsylvania had a single case of Covid-19, UPMC formed a “coronavirus task force,” which was initially focused on lobbying the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to obtain samples of live SARS-CoV-2 for research purposes. That research was to be conducted at the Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) housed within UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research. A day after the director of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research, W. Paul Duprex, revealed UPMC’s efforts to access the SARS-CoV-2 virus, he announced that the virus samples, containing an estimated 50 to 60 million coronavirus particles, were already en route to the university. At the time, UPMC was one of only a handful of institutions on the CDC’s short list to receive live SARS-CoV-2 samples.“
“The aforementioned Harvard researchers patented their methodology of using anthrax in this way for the production of a vaccine in 2002. This means that the anthrax-based “vaccine” currently being developed by UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research would have to develop a new method that utilizes anthrax in much the same way so as not to infringe on the patent, which is unlikely. The other alternative is that UPMC would pay the patent holders for use of their methodology if they want to commercialize it in a vaccine. Yet, given UPMC’s business model in general, as well as that of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research specifically, this also seems unlikely.”
Not long after Romoff took over the Center’s reins, he made his intentions clear to faculty and staff, stating at one 1995 UPMC meeting that his “vision” for the future of American health care was “the conversion of health care from social good to a commodity.” Motivated by profit above all else, Romoff aggressively expanded UPMC, gobbling up community hospitals, surgery centers, and private practices to create a “health-care network” that has expanded throughout much of Pennsylvania and even abroad to other countries, including China. Under Romoff, UPMC has also expanded into the health-insurance business, with 40 percent of the medical claims it pays out going straight back into places of care that are owned by UPMC—meaning UPMC is essentially paying itself.
In addition, since UPMC is officially a “charitable nonprofit corporation,” it is exempt from property taxes and has special access to the tax-exempt municipal bond market. UPMC can also solicit tax-deductible grants from private individuals and organizations, as well as governments. These grants totaled over $1 billion dollars between 2005 and 2017.
Despite these perks being officially justified because of UPMC’s “charitable institution” status, the UPMC board, with Romoff at the top, have seen their own multimillion-dollar-per-year salaries continue to climb. Perhaps this perk also comes from UPMC being a nonprofit corporation, as there are no stockholders to whom Romoff and the board must explain their increasingly exorbitant salaries. For instance, Romoff made $8.97 million last year as UPMC’s CEO, a marked increase over the $6.12 million he had raked in the prior year.
UPMC’s financial chicanery is so out of control that even Pennsylvania’s attorney general has taken action against it, suing UPMC in February 2019 for violations of the state’s charity laws based on their “unjust enrichment” and engaging in “unfair, fraudulent or deceptive acts or practices.” Though UPMC decided to settle out of court, the Center and Romoff came out of the affair relatively unscathed.
Now, thanks to the crisis caused by Covid-19, UPMC is once again on the path toward growing even larger and more powerful in pursuit of Romoff’s ultimate goal, which is, in his own words, to make UPMC the “Amazon of health care.”
In this fourth installment of the The Last American Vagabond series“Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex”, the “nonprofit” health-care behemoth that is UPMC is squarely placed at the intersection of post-9/11 “biodefense” public-private partnerships; corporate-funded academics who shape public policy on behalf of their private-sector benefactors; and risky research on dangerous pathogens that threatens to unleash the very “bioterror” that these institutions claim to guard against.
The Odd Trajectory of UPMC’s Covid-19 Vaccine Efforts
In January 2020, when much of the world remained blissfully unaware of the coming global pandemic, UPMC was already at work developing a vaccine to protect against the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, known as SARS-CoV-2. That month, before the state of Pennsylvania had a single case of Covid-19, UPMC formed a “coronavirus task force,” which was initially focused on lobbying the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to obtain samples of live SARS-CoV-2 for research purposes. That research was to be conducted at the Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) housed within UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research. A day after the director of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research, W. Paul Duprex, revealed UPMC’s efforts to access the SARS-CoV-2 virus, he announced that the virus samples, containing an estimated 50 to 60 million coronavirus particles, were already en route to the university. At the time, UPMC was one of only a handful of institutions on the CDC’s short list to receive live SARS-CoV-2 samples.
UPMC later stated that they began work on a vaccine for Covid-19 on January 21st, weeks before the February 14th announcement that the virus was on its way to the university. That original vaccine candidate used the published genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, released in early January 2020 by Chinese researchers, to synthetically produce SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins that would be transported into cells by an adenoviral vector, which is commonly used in a variety of vaccines. The vaccine candidate was nicknamed PittCoVacc, short for Pittsburgh Coronavirus Vaccine.
A little over a month after the live SARS-CoV-2 samples were received by UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research, UPMC received a $5 million grant from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an international organization founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India along with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant was officially awarded to “an international academic-industry partnership” that the Center for Vaccine Research had recently formed with the Institut Pasteur in France and Austrian vaccine manufacturer Themis. Soon after, in May, Themis was acquired by vaccine giant Merck, which began recruiting volunteers for human trials earlier this month on September 11. Merck has incrediblyclose ties with UPMC, particularly its commercialization arm known as UPMC Enterprises.
The CEPI grant seems to have drastically altered the Center for Vaccine Research’s interest in the original adenovirus-vector vaccine candidate, PittCoVacc, as the CEPI grant was specifically aimed at funding a different vaccine candidate that instead uses the measles virus as a vector. The measles virus and the genetic manipulation of measles for use in the measles vaccine is, notably, the principal research interest and expertise of Center for Vaccine Research director Paul Duprex.
This measles-based vaccine candidate has been described as “a modified [genetically altered] measles virus that delivers bits of the new coronavirus into the body to prevent Covid-19” as well as an “attenuated [genetically modified yet weakened] measles virus as a vector with which to introduce genetic material from SARS-[CoV-]2 to the immune system.” The combination of this weakened measles virus and SARS-CoV-2, per Duprex, will produce a “more benign version of coronavirus [that] will acquaint a person’s immune system” with SARS-CoV-2. No vaccine using this modality has ever been licensed.
On April 2nd, less than a week after the CEPI award had been announced, the UPMC researchers who had developed the original vaccine candidate using the more traditional adenovirus-vector approach published a study in EBioMedicine (a publication of themedical journal Lancet) that reported promising results of their vaccine candidate in animal studies. The news that a US institution was among the first in the world to develop a Covid-19 vaccine candidate with promising results from an animal study was heavily amplified by mainstream US media outlets, with those reports noting that UMPC was requesting government permission to quickly move onto human trials.
This original vaccine candidate, however, was mysteriously dropped from subsequent reports and statements from UPMC regarding its Covid-19 vaccine efforts. Indeed, in recent months, Duprex’s statements on the center’s Covid-19 vaccine candidates no longer mention the once-promising PittCoVacc at all. Instead, new reports, citing Duprex, claim that the only UPMC vaccine candidates are the CEPI-funded measles-vaccine candidate and another, more mysterious vaccine candidate, whose nature has only been recently revealed by documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Equally odd is that recent media reports on the original vaccine candidate have stopped mentioning UPMC at all, instead citing only Themis, its new owner Merck, and France’s Institut Pasteur. There are no reports indicating a break-up of the original “academic-industry partnership” that had received the CEPI grant. It seems that this is what may have come to pass, as Duprex stated that the UPMC measles-vector vaccine candidate had partnered withthe Serum Institute of India for mass production, first for trials and then for public use, depending on how the vaccine advances through the regulatory process. In contrast, Themis/Merck have stated that their vaccine is being produced in France. It remains unclear what the relation is between these two, and apparently analogous, vaccine candidates.
Though Duprex has been relatively forthcoming about the nature of the first UPMC vaccine candidate (i. e., the CEPI-funded measles-vector vaccine), he has been much more tight-lipped about its second vaccine candidate. In late August, he told the Pittsburgh Business Times that the second vaccine candidate that UPMC was developing “works by delivering genetic material coding for a viral protein instead of the entire weakened or killed virus as is standard in other vaccines.” Yet Duprex declined to state what vector will be used to deliver the genetic material into human cells. Recent FOIA revelations, nevertheless, have revealed that UPMC’s second vaccine candidate involves genetically engineering a combination of SARS-Cov-2 and anthrax, a substance better known for its potential use as a bioweapon.
Corona-thrax
The recently obtained documents reveal that the BSL-3 lab that is part of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research is conducting eyebrow-raising research involving combining SARS-CoV-2 with Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax infection. Per the documents, anthrax is being genetically engineered by a researcher, whose name was redacted in the release, so that it will express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is the part of the coronavirus that allows it to gain access into human cells. The researcher asserts that “the [genetically engineered anthrax/SARS-CoV-2 hybrid] can [be] used as a host strain to make SARS-CoV-2 recombinant S protein vaccine,” and the creation of said vaccine is the officially stated purpose of the research project. The documents were produced by the University of Pittsburgh’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which held an emergency meeting on June 22nd of this year to “discuss specific protocols involving research with the coronavirus,” which included a vote on the aforementioned proposal.
Edward Hammond, the former director of the Sunshine Project, an organization that opposed chemical and biological weapons and the expansion of “dual use” biodefense/bioweapon research, obtained the documents. Other FOIA documents recently obtained by Hammond have revealed an “explosion” of risky Covid-19-related research at other academic institutions, such as the University of North Carolina, which has already had lab accidents involving genetically engineered variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Hammond told The Last American Vagabond that the experiment, which he dubs “Corona-thrax,” is “emblematic of the pointless research excesses that often characterize the response of scientists to the federal government throwing billions of dollars at health crises.” Hammond added, “While I don’t think that Corona-thrax would be infectious, it falls into the categories of pointless and crazy. The biggest immediate risk of all this activity is that a researcher will deliberately or inadvertently create a modified form of SARS-CoV-2 that is even more difficult to treat, or more deadly, and this virus will escape the lab. It only takes a stray droplet.”
Jonathan Latham, a virologist who previously taught at the University of Wisconsin and who is the current editor of Independent Science News, agreed with Hammond that the Corona-thrax experiment is odd and said that he was “concerned here specifically about the research process and the risks of these specific experiments at Pittsburgh.” In an interview with The Last American Vagabond, Latham asserted that it is “unusual by historical standards . . . the combining of two highly pathogenic organisms in a single experiment.” He did note, however, that such studies for the purposes of vaccine research have become more common in recent years, as is made clear in a 2012 study.
Few experiments have been conducted that specifically utilize anthrax in this way. Since 2000, the studies that have examined the use of genetically modified anthrax as a potential vaccine vector have been affiliated with Harvard University. One of these studies was on the use of anthrax as a vector in a potential HIV vaccine and was jointly conducted in 2000 by Harvard researchers and the vaccine company Avant Immunotherapeutics (now part of Celldex).
Despite reporting positive preliminary results in their experiments, Avant/Celldex did not fund further experiments into a vaccine that used this anthrax-based modality, and it does not currently market or have any such vaccine in its product pipeline. This suggests that, for whatever reason, this company did not see much value in this vaccine, despite the preliminary study with Harvard claiming that the methodology was safe and effective.
The Harvard researchers involved in that 2000 study, however, continued to investigate the possibility of an anthrax-based HIV vaccine in 2003, 2004, and 2005, though without corporate sponsorship. Related yet different research has explored the use of “disarmed” anthrax components as an adjuvant in vaccines and as the basis for enzyme-linked immunospot assays.
The aforementioned Harvard researchers patented their methodology of using anthrax in this way for the production of a vaccine in 2002. This means that the anthrax-based “vaccine” currently being developed by UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research would have to develop a new method that utilizes anthrax in much the same way so as not to infringe on the patent, which is unlikely. The other alternative is that UPMC would pay the patent holders for use of their methodology if they want to commercialize it in a vaccine. Yet, given UPMC’s business model in general, as well as that of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research specifically, this also seems unlikely.
Also odd is what sort of incentive UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research possesses for the Corona-thrax experiment. There are currently over a hundred vaccine candidates that use existing and tested vaccine platforms in pursuit of a Covid-19 vaccine, a fact Duprex himself has acknowledged. As Hammond told The Last American Vagabond, “It is perfectly obvious that there are numerous existing vaccine platforms for Covid-19 and that some of them will, sooner or more likely later, succeed. There is no serious need for some sort of quite strange bacterial platform, much less one that happens to be anthrax. It’s completely unnecessary and frankly bizarre.”
Classic American school classroom. Photo: Andrew Postell, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
