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Silver Lining: Corona Communism Helps You Lose Weight – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2020

Venezuela too has a weight loss plan that has resulted from the once prosperous country’s own experiment with communism. Venezuelans lost 19 lbs in 2016.

The intelligentsia, Neil Ferguson among them, has proposed an 18-month quarantine that is being rolled out to the public a few weeks at a time, as a temporary measure. You’re a damn fool if you think government will allow life to return to normal at the 18-month mark after they’ve dealt with the problem at hand.

After proposing several paths, the paper concludes with: “We emphasise that it is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time. How populations and societies will respond remains unclear.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/allan-stevo/silver-lining-corona-communism-helps-you-lose-weight/

By

An often overlooked detail about communism is how much more slender the people are.

The Cuban government to this day offers their people a weight loss plan.

It’s a mandatory plan that comes from preventing a functioning marketplace from working. The weight loss plan got more restrictive for a few years after the Soviet Union crumbled and stopped propping up Cuba. People went hungry. It got worse again after even petroleum-rich benefactor Venezuela fell apart at the hands of leaders with communist ideas.

Venezuela too has a weight loss plan that has resulted from the once prosperous country’s own experiment with communism. Venezuelans lost 19 lbs in 2016.

Then there is the horrific Holodomor, in which proud farmers in the USSR said they wouldn’t be subjected to the silly communist ideas from the flakey ne’er-do-wells  who led the putsch a decade earlier. Entire villages were declared excluded from the economy of the USSR and possession of a single grain of wheat could be punishable by death. Far worse than Cuba or Venezuela, those Ukrainian farmers living under communism grew so slender that they just disappeared into the ground. How many millions of men, women, and children died in the Holodomor is a subject for debate by historians. This took place in the breadbasket of Europe.

The perennially chubby Mao called his Chinese diet plan “The Great Leap Forward.” Again, exactly how many tens-of-millions died because of the forceful destruction of functioning markets and the politicization of food under Mao’s communist ideas is a matter for the historians. The number was too high.

Looking to pay homage to his neighbor’s efforts to encourage weight loss, Pol Pot called his diet plan “The Super Great Leap Forward.” Years of sheer human misery followed for millions of Cambodians. . Echoing Stalin, who would kill for a grain of wheat, or Mao, who would kill for a potato, Pol Pot’s government of Democratic Kampuchea stated “Hands off the people’s property! Not a single grain of rice, a single chilli, a single needle!”

Leaving individuals to their own devices allows the world to work pretty darn well. Central planners tend to poison virtually anything that they touch. The more powerful the central planner, the more toxic their touch. The more vital the industry they touch, the more toxic their touch. This lesson has been taught repeatedly throughout history and often requires use of arms by the more down-to-earth common folk for the intelligentsia and central planners to knock it off.

Somehow, America, the nation of immigrants, has not taken the time to learn the horrors that their ancestors escaped from. These horrors took place at the hands of central planners, and Americans have increasingly turned their country over to central planners.

Not only is the centrally planned health system unequipped to handle shock when we most need it to – further, predictable evidence that central planners should not be trusted with a health system – but now the central planners are being given control over virtually the entire economy in de facto martial law declarations now affecting many of the states.

America has received a 30-day free trial of communism. Recent announcements indicate it is being extended to a 60-day free trial.

So far I’m hearing rave reviews from some of the people I encounter throughout my day

“Thank goodness we’re safe,”

“I exercise a lot more,”

“I get to spend more time with my family,” and

“Look at the silver lining: at least it’s a chance to lose weight.” These are just some of the comments I’ve heard in the last 19 days of the shelter-in-place order. The silver lining is not an indication of how humans want to act, it’s a behavior under the most artificial and restrictive circumstances. 

People do not want to lose weight. Their behavior when left to themselves indicates what they want to do. Homespun wisdom taught that to many of us in the phrase “You don’t judge a person based on what they say, you judge a person based on what they do.” Needing a near total shutdown of an economy to find the time and opportunity to exercise and lose weight is a certain indication that one cares very little about weight loss.

Forgive what may appear as pessimism but there is no silver lining to consider.

In fact, you’d have to be a real a-hole at 10 a.m. on 9/11/2001 to say “look at the silver lining.”

The only reason those people aren’t self-aware of their a-hole status is that they don’t seem to see that it is only 10 a.m. on a “day” that will turn out to be a lot worse for America than that horrible 9/11 was.

There is no silver lining apparent to me in the tremendous human misery that has been brought to this world in the name of communism.

The effect of corona communism will be more death, more economic damage, more loss of life than 9/11.

And some may call it pessimism because I’m not looking for the sick, complacent silver lining of the problem at hand, a problem that is said to be “out of our control.”

If we don’t take it into our control, they’ll keep extending our free trial of communism.

Look. It say so right here.

The March 16, 2020 Neil Ferguson, Imperial College paper is cited by leaders globally as support for why the extreme lockdowns are good (which Ferguson doesn’t really say). What Ferguson et al., does say is that the 18-month quarantines that he proposes must be welcomed by the quarantined population for them to last.

After proposing several paths, the paper concludes with: “We emphasise that it is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time. How populations and societies will respond remains unclear.”

You heard it there from the most beloved expert of the moment: No one knows how people will respond, nothing like this has been tried, no one knows how long people will put up with it for.

It’s practically an invitation to revolt against the awful idea.

Do everything in your life to poo poo this idea.

•Get your church opened, especially on Easter as Becky Akers says – April 12, 2020. If your cowardly pastor can’t be bothered to let ten people sit social distanced from each other for an Easter Sunday service behind closed and locked doors fearful of the authorities like the early Christians did, the man’s a coward. Your suggestion and insistence might help him be a little more courageous.

•Practice civil disobedience. If you need some inspiration, American tax protestor Henry David Thoreau outlined the path of the American rebel so thoughtfully in his essay “Resistance to Civil Government.”

•Go outside as much as you can, especially where there is a shelter-in-place order. If you think someone might bug you – carry an apple with you in a shopping bag – to prove that you have made an essential trip to the store. That is the civil disobedience Italians have started engaging in.

•If you have something to say, get a bullhorn or a soap box and just start talking anywhere anyone will listen.

Many people disagree with what’s happening – government and the rest of us – but need some courage to do the right thing.

•Open your business. David Hathaway offers a reminder on what an “essential service” is, a category that many businesses fall into.

•Perhaps the most freeing civil disobedience is to psychologically refuse quarantine, government, and CNN as your only salvations and to take the attitude that you will reject their fear and take your own health and wellbeing into your own hands as Bill Sardi asks you to do.

•Turn on your camera and record what you see that doesn’t fit the narrative.

•Read widely. Find the narrative. Help others identify the narrative.

•Push the boundaries. Exceed the boundaries. Demand to live your life.

The intelligentsia, Neil Ferguson among them, has proposed an 18-month quarantine that is being rolled out to the public a few weeks at a time, as a temporary measure. You’re a damn fool if you think government will allow life to return to normal at the 18-month mark after they’ve dealt with the problem at hand.

This is 9/11 2.0 in front of us. The thousands who died on 9/11 and the billions in damage were nothing compared to the governmental response.

Since 9/11, millions have died as a result of the government response. There has been countless trillions of damage. Those people who died that day could have died for a purpose. They could have died in a relatively free society and taught us a lesson to live life bravely and to face death bravely just as many did on that day, to keep society even more free, and to get ourselves out of the affairs of others in all these backwaters. That could have been a lesson brought forth from an introspective examination of that day. They could have genuinely been martyrs for freedom.

That’s not what happened though. Many Americans didn’t let them become martyrs for freedom. Those deaths were made meaningless. Those deaths didn’t seem to cause a moment of hesitation to those who would destroy some of those freedoms that make the American way of life so unique. Those who died on 9/11 were conveniently used to further destroy America, and to wear away at those freedoms that have made America rather unique in the world. In their death they were turned into enemies of freedom, support for the authoritarian.

And today, we are faced with the prospect of countless more meaningless deaths. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The tiny number of men and women who die today over-and-above those who die on a regular day in America could just be part of what happens in a free society when people go through with their lives day-to-day. People die. Outbreaks occur. It doesn’t mean we should make that loss of life as impactful on the world as possible, and as harmful to as many people as possible. Death is part of life.

Some die in workplace accidents, some die in car accidents, some die from lifestyle diseases, some die innocently, some die from allergies, some die of heart attacks. That’s always been part of the American compact. You live your life the way you see fit and you deal with the consequences. We don’t follow it perfectly, but that’s mostly been the way the American compact works, and it’s mostly been supported by Americans.

Today is different. Today, the American compact is being abandoned in the name of illusory protection from a virus, protection that government can’t offer.

Presented with the options “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” American officials have suggested that a tiny fraction of lives can be prolonged by torching the American compact so that America looks a lot more like authoritarian China going forward. What an awful trade off.

That’s what these deaths are being used for. Those who died of Covid-19 are conveniently being used to make America look a lot more like China. To do away with the hard-earned recognition of the individual, and to do so in such a blinding, fear-filled, propaganda-fueled moment is such a waste of human achievement.

We’ve been offered our 30-day free trial of communism. The 60-day free trial has been announced. And the 18-month free trial is being planned. There’s little hope of turning back from this once we’ve followed much longer down this path.

That path is just wrongheaded. And needs those who know better to put an end to it. Or else, it will never end.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Be seeing you

 

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Dr Brownstein | Coronavirus XIV: The Good News is Still There But Not Reported By Mainstream Media

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2020

“So, my advice is STOP watching the news. They revel in the bad news and censor the good news. What good news am I talking about?

How about this news: Three US hospitals use of IV vitamin C and other low-cost, readily available drugs cut the death-rate of COVID-19-without the use of ventilators! A press release dated March 30, 2020 stated:

“If you can administer Vitamin C intravenously starting in the Emergency Room and every 6 hours thereafter, while in the hospital, the mortality rate of this disease and the need for mechanical ventilators will likely be greatly reduced,” says Dr. Pierre Kory, the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center and Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.”

https://www.drbrownstein.com/coronavirus-xiv:-the-good-news-is-still-there-but-not-reported-by-msm/?inf_contact_key=5e1f14412fe95f7e17190047185dd29c842e902fbefb79ab9abae13bfcb46658

Coronavirus XIV: The Good News is Still There But Not Reported By Mainstream Media

You wouldn’t know it, but there is still good news about COVID-19 out there. Listening to the media would make you believe that the sky is falling and we are all going to die from coronavirus.

Before I get into the good news, let me preface this article by stating that I am not minimizing the dangers of COVID-19. It is a serious illness as I have observed in both patients and friends. Thousands have died and, unfortunately, more deaths are coming. However, our fear level is much too high for this illness. Children are not dying in droves from this. Nor are children being maimed and paralyzed. This is not Ebola or hemorrhagic fever where the death rate is 50% or higher in those that get it. The final death rate from COVID-19 will probably be at or slightly higher than the regular yearly influenza death rate of 0.01%–once we start testing everybody to see how prevalent this illness actually is.

Original modelling estimates predicted that millions could die in the US. Dr. Fauci stated recently that the worst of the recent modelling estimates may result in 100,000-200,000 deaths. The 100,000-200,000 number is awful. But, it needs to be put in proper perspective. Let’s say that 200,000 Americans die of COVID-19. That means that COVID-19 will kill o.o6% of our population (200,000/329,500,000). In other words, 99.94% of us will survive. If it kills 100,000, 0.03% of us will die and 99.97% of us will live.

The death of 200,000 Americans is a big deal. But, I don’t think it deserves the fear level we are at right now. Another important point about these numbers is that COVID-19 primarily kills the elderly and those with co-morbid conditions. Those who do NOT fall into those categories have a LOWER risk of death from it. This should be wakeup call for all Americans to get healthy.   We are too heavy, eat poor diets and don’t exercise enough. Adopting a holistic health plan can not only help you feel better, it can lower your risk of dying from many diseases including COVID-19.

For comparison, 630,000 Americans die from heart disease each year.

So, my advice is STOP watching the news. They revel in the bad news and censor the good news. What good news am I talking about?

How about this news: Three US hospitals use of IV vitamin C and other low-cost, readily available drugs cut the death-rate of COVID-19-without the use of ventilators! A press release dated March 30, 2020 stated:

“If you can administer Vitamin C intravenously starting in the Emergency Room and every 6 hours thereafter, while in the hospital, the mortality rate of this disease and the need for mechanical ventilators will likely be greatly reduced,” says Dr. Pierre Kory, the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center and Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He explains that it’s the inflammation sparked by the Coronavirus, not the virus itself, that kills patients. Inflammation causes a condition called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which damages the lungs so that patients, suffering fever, fatigue, and the sense that their inner chest is on fire, eventually cannot breathe without the help of a ventilator.

The vitamin C is a combination therapy developed in 2017 by Dr. Paul Marik at Eastern Virginia Medical School.   He gives critically ill patients IV doses of hydrocortisone, vitamin C, and vitamin B1 within six hours of entering the emergency room. Dr. Marik reported a significantly lowered death rate in those treated with his regimen. When COVID-19 came to Virginia, Dr. Marik used his protocol. He reported saving four COVID-19 patients including an 86-year-old man admitted to the hospital with 100% oxygen. Elderly people on oxygen usually do not survive COVID-19.

Dr. J. Varon at United General Hospital In Houston reported saving 16 lives with this protocol. He reports that his patients are getting off the ventilator at 48 hours instead of 10-21 days!

My faithful readers know that I have been yelling as loudly as I can that all COVID-19 patients should be getting vitamin C IVs. IN FACT, they should be getting vitamin C IVs within six hours of entering the ER because data shows a markedly reduced mortality rate if the IV is started within six hours of admission. A delay above that markedly increases the death rate. Once 12 hours has passed, it is too late. There is no mortality benefit from the IV protocol.

So why isn’t IV vitamin C along with the other therapies Dr. Marik recommends being used in every COVID-19 patient? I am rarely at a loss for words, but here I am.

IT IS INFURIATING! I have shown you our success in treating COVID-19 patients with a holistic protocol that includes oral dosing of vitamins A, C, D, and iodine as well as IV vitamin C, ozone, and hydrogen peroxide. I passed along the information I presented above to two local hospitals and offered my services to explain how to properly administer IV nutrients. To date, I have heard that one of the hospitals is using vitamin C.  That is great news.  I hope the results mirror Dr. Marik’s results.

Conventional medicine can wait for a vaccine. At the Center for Holistic Medicine, we know there is not time to wait for a vaccine. Natural therapies work. It is time for you to find a holistic doctor who understands the best way to treat COVID-19 (and many other illnesses) is to support the host.  In particular, provide the immune system with the right nutrients so that it can appropriately fight back and overcome the disease.

Final Thoughts:

The press release regarding the success with vitamin C in treating COVID was sent to me late at night Monday (March 30, 2020).   On Tuesday morning, I had a meeting with my nurses and said, “Finally, the hospitals are going to start using vitamin C on COVID patients. They are going to see what we have been seeing.”

I guess I called that one wrong. I thought the press release would be the lead story on Fox, CNN, MSN, and every other media outlet. I thought there would be a run on IV vitamin C. I guess good news is not worth reporting. I say turn off the news. It is not worth watching. In fact, it is shameful. Where are the vitamin C reports? What about the reports that hydroxychloroquine appears to be helping?

Folks, there is other good news about COVID that I want to share. I will report that to you soon.

It is most important to keep in mind that if the worst-case modelling estimate comes true–200,000 die– 99.94% of us will be ok. And, I believe those estimates are too high.  More about that later.

To All Our Health,
~DrB

 

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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‘The alleged cure is immensely worse than the disease’ – spiked

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2020

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/03/the-alleged-cure-is-immensely-worse-than-the-disease/

Peter Hitchens on the dangerous folly of the Covid-19 shutdown.

In the past few weeks, society has been shut down, the economy has been put on hold, and civil liberties have been curtailed in the name of fighting against coronavirus. There has been hardly any scrutiny of or opposition against these ever-stricter measures. Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens has been one of the few dissenting voices in the media. He joined spiked editor Brendan O’Neill for the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract. Listen to the full conversation here.

Brendan O’Neill: We live in a country where parliament has been suspended, our most basic freedoms have been eroded, we are all virtually under house arrest, and there are a whole bunch of new rituals we all have to observe when we encounter other people, which is increasingly rare. Like me, are you a bit terrified by the speed and the ease with which Britain became this country?

Peter Hitchens: I wouldn’t say terrified – distressed and grieved, but not terrified. I am actually not shocked because in several controversies in recent years, where I have thought that the people of this country would stand against the way in which they were being bullied and messed around, I have noticed that there hasn’t been all that much spirit of liberty. I think there is an awful lot of conformism now in this country and people have accepted being pushed around.

I’m not sure parliament has been suspended exactly. It has just folded up or dissolved into a pool of blancmange. If it had any kind of leadership, it could insist on continuing to sit, just as it could have opposed the action or subjected it to anything remotely resembling scrutiny. But it just folded up and stole away in the night. All the institutions of civil society which are supposed to protect us did the same thing. The judiciary, the human-rights lot, the civil service, the media, parliament, Her Majesty’s Opposition and public opinion in general have simply failed to do their jobs. It has demonstrated that we don’t really have a civil society any longer.

In the Soviet Union, where I spent a lot of time, it was clear that there was only one official point of view and that people were being pushed around. I don’t recall ever being compelled to stay at home, and there was at least a pretence made of having a legislative body as well. But the point that strikes me here is that – particularly in the Eastern European countries, but also largely in Russia – most people regarded the Soviets’ rule with a certain amount of contempt and made jokes about it and realised they were being mocked and fooled. In this case, the population accepts what they are being told, without any question. It’s extraordinary. The old USSR would have loved to have had a population like that in the Western world and in the United Kingdom, which genuinely believes the propaganda and does what it is told. You could say, ‘The chocolate ration has gone up’, when in fact it has gone down and people will believe it.

‘In this lockdown, dissent is a moral duty’

Podcast

‘In this lockdown, dissent is a moral duty’

spiked

O’Neill: You have written some very solid pieces, questioning the need for this kind of shutdown. Let’s just talk for a moment about the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in. There is this novel virus, which undoubtedly causes great harm, especially to older people and to medically vulnerable people, and in response to it – which is unprecedented in human history – we have closed down virtually the whole of society and most of the economy, and in the process we have stored up immeasurable problems for the future. I think you have found it a bit of a struggle to convince people that this might not be the best way to tackle a virus?

Hitchens: It’s extraordinary. Again, the willingness of people to accept that ‘something must be done, and this is something, so we will do this’. The argument goes, ‘We have a problem, the way of solving it is to shut down the country and strangle civil liberties. Therefore, let’s do that.’

What I have been surprised by is how little examination there has been to whether there is any logic to this. It is as if you went to the doctor with measles and the doctor said that this was serious measles and the only treatment for it is to cut off your left leg. And he cuts off your left leg and then later on, you recover from the measles and he says, ‘This is fantastic. I’ve cured you of the measles, sorry about your leg.’ That is more or less what is going on now. We are being offered a supposed treatment which has nothing whatever to do with the problem.

Other countries have not resorted to these measures. We have modelled ourselves, bizarrely, on the most despotic country in the world, the People’s Republic of China, whose statistics are wholly unreliable and whose media are totally supine, so we can’t really know what is going on there. And in fact, all the countries which have had serious outbreaks of Covid-19, they have almost all reacted differently. Even Singapore and Hong Kong, which are widely praised for what they did, did different things. And yet, oddly enough, the results in Singapore and Hong Kong were quite similar. Japan has done something different. South Korea did something different. And again, the virus actually did not continue to grow at the rates which Imperial College apparently think are inevitable if we don’t shut down our society.

After the pandemic: whither capitalism?

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After the pandemic: whither capitalism?

Phil Mullan

Even if you went for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that because A happened, and B happened after it, B happened because of A, there isn’t even a basis for that – let alone anything remotely resembling research showing a causal relationship between a Chinese-type shutdown and the defeat of the disease. There are rational responses to this. And of course it seems to me, the crucial test of any policy, and indeed almost any human action, is not absolute right or absolute wrong – which very rarely arises in practical life – it is proportionality. Is the action in proportion to the problem?

If you look at the past and the problems which this country and its medical system have almost every winter, for instance with influenza, the complications of it are considerable. In one year recently, 28,000 people died of influenza because the vaccines didn’t work and it was a particularly virulent strain. The average number who die of influenza every year is 17,000 in England alone, and this does not cause the country to be shut down. It is doubtless tragic for all those involved, but you can’t use emotionalism to justify policy.

I have a quote here from Jonathan Sumption’s interview on The World At One on Monday because it simply hasn’t been stressed enough in the coverage of what he said. They have gone on about what he said about the police, which was a marginal part of what he said. His key point was this:

‘The real question is, is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hardworking people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt, depression, stress, heart attacks, suicides and unbelievable distress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable, and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all?’

Actually, that’s exactly what I think. But I’m not a former Supreme Court judge. I’m not one of Britain’s most distinguished lawyers. And I’m not one of Britain’s most distinguished historians. I’m not the deliverer of last year’s Reith Lectures. This is a perfectly valid sentiment expressed by somebody with considerable authority and wisdom. And it isn’t even reported by the media when he says it. They leave it out of the reports of what he says because no one is prepared to confront this.

There is an omertà – a total, supine, consensus over this matter. The complete failure to debate it is astonishing to me. And it’s the lack of proportion that Sumption is stressing there. Even if this were an effective policy, could it possibly be justified, given the disastrous results?

As I say, if you had a disease from which you might or might not recover, and you were offered the amputation of all four of your limbs, and perhaps your head, and were asked to sign a consent form, you would probably say no, even if it would kill you, because you would recognise that the cure was worse than the disease – a phrase which repeatedly occurs to me, even though Donald Trump has used it, which always puts people off. But it is the case.

The alleged cure – and it is only alleged in this case – is immensely worse than the disease, because what happens to a society which trashes its economy? I will tell you what happens. It is unable to afford proper health provision, all of its standards decline, its food gets worse, its air quality gets worse, its housing gets worse, its water quality gets worse, and everybody gets iller.

The other point is one made by the extraordinary Professor Sucharit Bhakdi of Mainz University in Germany, an absolute genius in the microbiological method, who is utterly against these measures. He has said, what about the healthy old now they have been deprived of all the things that make life worth living? He reckons that this shutting down of their lives will be catastrophic, and almost certainly cause large numbers of deaths. So you can’t just say, ‘Oh, you don’t care about people dying’. That’s not what the argument is about. I care about people dying unnecessarily as much as anybody else, and my motives are as good as anybody else’s. It is just that my emotions are also driven by more intelligent thought, more reason and a better grasp of the facts.

O’Neill: I think Sumption’s intervention was very useful for a number of reasons. But one of them is what you have just touched upon, which is this really poisonous accusation that has been made against anyone who criticises the shutdown of society, which is, ‘You don’t care about old people,’ or even, ‘You want old people to die.’

Hitchens: Well, during the Iraq War, if you said, ‘Actually this war is wrong’, people said, ‘Oh, so you support Saddam Hussein’s fascist regime, do you? You believe that Saddam should be allowed to torture people, do you? That’s the sort of person you are, are you?’. And because of that shutting down of serious debate on a major matter, I think this should probably be called VMD – the virus of mass destruction. It is so very similar in the attempts to crush dissent.

O’Neill: They make this completely false distinction. They say this is a question of lives versus the economy. They talk about the economy as if it’s just some kind of abstract machine, just numbers and money and profits, when in fact the economy is people’s lives and their livelihoods. It’s how we create things, it’s how we produce things. Dr John Lee made a very good point in the Spectator, which is that this is lives versus lives. And that’s the kind of debate we need to be having.

Hitchens: That’s assuming, again, that the fundamental premise that shutting down the country will do any good is true, which I believe, is seriously in doubt. I’m a Christian, and there’s this wonderful part of the scriptures in which we are said to live and move and have our being in God. But in a material way, we live and move and have our being in the economy. If nobody is buying, if nobody is selling, if nobody is working, if nobody is serving, if nobody is being served, then there is nowhere for people to live, how do we pay for our houses and our meals? How do we raise our children? How do we support an education system? How do we pay doctors or build hospitals? If we have no economy at the moment, I would reckon, if we could only know the sums, we are probably throwing three or four district general hospitals into the sea or their equivalents in money every week.

Be seeing you

 

 

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Sunday

Posted by M. C. on April 5, 2020

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Sunday

Posted by M. C. on April 5, 2020

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A Sick Media | The American Spectator

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2020

This has resulted in an open dogmatism in which the media spends most of its time shutting down debates rather than holding them.

https://spectator.org/a-sick-media/

The other day Chris Hayes of MSNBC was pouting about the media’s coverage of Donald Trump’s press briefings. He called the airing of them “crazy.” He particularly didn’t like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell using one of them to talk about “reading the Bible.”

Hayes’ pouting captures the arrogance and secularist prejudice of the media perfectly. The media sees its role not as a reporter of news but as a propagandistic arbiter — a Big Brother that will tell the public what it can and cannot take seriously.

The media every day conforms more perfectly to Trump’s description of it as an “opposition party.” Its pulling away from presidential briefings during a national crisis vividly illustrates its status as an opposition party, engaged in a propaganda battle with a president whom it hates.

The more propagandistic the media becomes, the more it insists that its coverage is “factual.” But no one takes that seriously. As Trump once told the media, “You guys have a real problem. No one believes you anymore.”

The media has become all opinion, all the time. All the journalistic rigors of yesteryear have disappeared. Most hosts don’t even bother to fake up a just-the-facts mien. They now act like what they are: anti-Trump pundits who look high and low for new angles from which to attack him.

At the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Christiane Amanpour foreshadowed all of this when she declared openly that she believes in “being truthful, not neutral.” With that declaration, she was giving journalists permission to shed any semblance of journalistic detachment and become Trump bashers. She was pushing down the wobbly wall that once separated news hosts from pundits.

There was a time when the high priests of journalism would have condemned the idea of not covering a presidential briefing during a time of national crisis. They would have considered that a violation of the media’s vocation. But those days have ended. Now they applaud anchors for substituting their judgment for their audience’s.

Like the Democrats, for whom they serve as stenographers, the media sees itself as having a monopoly on “health and science.” This has resulted in an open dogmatism in which the media spends most of its time shutting down debates rather than holding them. Recall Chuck Todd’s arrogant disclaimer before a Meet the Press episode devoted to climate change:

Just as important as what we are going to do is what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter and human activity is a major cause, period. We’re not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled even if political opinion is not.

During the coronavirus crisis, it has issued many similar decrees. The media will let us know what is and what is not permissibly debatable, who is and who is not wearing the white hats, etc. Is it any wonder why audiences have tuned the media out? It has become obvious that the media is not in the business of informing audiences but manipulating them.

Chris Hayes and company exist to turn public opinion against Trump. What they label news is simply political warfare by other means. Most of the “anchors” who tell us that, unlike the president, they are “factual” come from Democratic Party politics. CNN overflows with them, from Chris Cuomo to Jim Sciutto to Jake Tapper.

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski once let the cat out of the bag by saying that it is “our job,” not Trump’s, to “control exactly what people think.” That’s why they are pressuring their bosses into ignoring Trump’s press briefings. He is beating them at their own game.

Whether or not the public wants to watch those briefings is a matter of indifference to them. The media feels entitled to determine what people should want to watch. To Chris Hayes, it is “crazy” that anyone would want to hear about the Bible during a national crisis. But what’s far crazier is anyone placing faith in an utterly fraudulent media.

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The $2 Trillion Stimulus Package Is Funding Your Own Surveillance | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2020

“public health data surveillance and analytics infrastructure modernization.”

…it’s reasonable to assume that the allocation has something to do with collecting geolocation data from smartphones – ostensibly to track the spread of coronavirus, and to make sure all of us good boys and girls are practicing social distancing. Indeed, this is happening in numerous other jurisdictions, including Israel, Australia, and at least four European countries.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-2-trillion-stimulus-package-is-funding-your-own-surveillance/

by

From corporate bailouts to endowments for art, the $2 trillion stimulus package signed into law last Friday has been roundly criticized as a smash-and-grab robbery perpetrated by the country’s elite.

And rightly so.

However, there is another provision in the 1,000-plus page legislation that should concern Americans just as much as any of its negative fiscal or economic implications: funding for what seems to be a massive surveillance program.

Tucked away in a section labeled “emergency appropriations for coronavirus health response and agency operations” is a $500 million allocation to the CDC for “public health data surveillance and analytics infrastructure modernization.” There are few details, other than a line saying that the CDC will report to the House and Senate appropriations committees on the development of a “public health surveillance and data collection system for coronavirus” within 30 days of the law’s enactment.

This reporter asked for more details from a press officer at the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, but has not received a response.

Based on the numerous reports, it’s reasonable to assume that the allocation has something to do with collecting geolocation data from smartphones – ostensibly to track the spread of coronavirus, and to make sure all of us good boys and girls are practicing social distancing. Indeed, this is happening in numerous other jurisdictions, including Israel, Australia, and at least four European countries.

Another clue that the system will entail geolocation tracking is the exorbitant price tag, which leads one to believe that the program will be highly technical. At $500 million, the surveillance system is five times what the NSA spent over a three-year period on its failed bulk data collection scheme.

If these assumptions are correct – and to be sure, this is only speculation – we could be looking at the beginning of a government tracking system the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Either way, it’s hard to fathom how an agency that has failed so miserably in its response to the global pandemic would be rewarded with a $500 million influx – though even Andrew Yang has come to the realization that public bureaucracies are rewarded for failure.

Yes, it’s true that covid-19 tracking in the US is a mess, largely due to a lack of uniform reporting standards amongst the states. Not all states report the number of negative covid-19 test results, which has prevented researchers from estimating contraction rates. And not all report the number of coronavirus carriers that have had to be hospitalized, which would be helpful to know how dangerous this pandemic is.

But this could be addressed by the CDC mandating uniform reporting requirements among the states – low-hanging fruit that should hardly cost anything, let alone the GDP of a small Caribbean island.

And when it comes to tracking geolocation data, there’s no reason why that can’t be left to the private sector. The startup Tectonix Geo, for example, has already wowed Twitter with its demonstration about how a single Fort Lauderdale beach party can lead to the virus spreading around the country.

Many people said they were creeped out by Tectonix Geo’s demonstration, even though the company claims to be complying with privacy laws like Europe’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

If the thought of a private company tracking smartphones is hair-raising, then whatever the CDC plans on doing with that $500 million should be downright terrifying.

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Coronavirus Being Used to Scare You Away From Using Cash | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2020

Being bound to computers for transactions kicks the door wide open to hardcore surveillance of personal activity and location data. Being eternally on the grid means relentless taxation and negative interest rates, which the Federal Reserve is already gearing up for.

None of this bothers the well-heeled boosters of a cashless society or their lackeys in the media. They want Americans reading about the threat of coronavirus cooties on their cash, which is absurd.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/coronavirus-being-used-to-scare-you-away-from-using-cash/

by

Cash has been the target of the banking and financial elites for years. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to frighten the masses into accepting a cashless society. That would mean the death of what’s left of our free society.

CBS News, CNN, and other mainstream outlets are fearmongering again. Alarmism is nothing new in the media world, but this time, it’s not about triggering panic buying or even pushing a political agenda.

The war on cash is about imposing a new meta-narrative. As economist Joseph Salerno explains, the cashless society forces all payments to be made through the financial system. It doesn’t end with monopoly control over transactions, though.

Being bound to computers for transactions kicks the door wide open to hardcore surveillance of personal activity and location data. Being eternally on the grid means relentless taxation and negative interest rates, which the Federal Reserve is already gearing up for.

None of this bothers the well-heeled boosters of a cashless society or their lackeys in the media. They want Americans reading about the threat of coronavirus cooties on their cash, which is absurd.

Germs, of course, can loiter all over credit and debit cards, smartphones, ATMs, and every other cash alternative device. Too bad implanted microchip technology isn’t further along, the banksters must be thinking.

In another CNN article, readers are practically shamed for withdrawing cash to save during a crisis. Every sentence, every word, every letter of the article is nuts.

It begins by reassuring the reader that their bank account is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). There’s no mention of moral hazard from CNN. The fact that the federal government guarantees every bank account up to $250,000 encourages reckless financial and banking behavior. Not worth mentioning, CNN?

Prior to the end of World War II, there were $500, $1,000, and $10,000 bills in wide circulation. This cash was dissolved by the Federal Reserve in the name of fighting organized crime. This same argument is now being made against $50 and $100 bills by Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff.

In the Wall Street Journal, Rogoff also wrote that a cashless society would offer such benefits as “greater flexibility for the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy when necessary.”

He wrote those words in 2017. And these too:

“The Federal Reserve should be able to implement negative nominal interest rates vastly more effectively in the absence of large bills, which could prove quite important as a stimulative tool in the next financial crisis.”

Prophetic. And indeed, negative interest rates would require the assistance of outlawing cash, so that banking customers don’t cheat by simply drawing out on their accounts.

Pardon the pun, but it’s absolutely sick how COVID-19 is being used now as a launching pad for this cashless agenda. There’s nothing to fear about using cash during this time of social distancing.

Wash your hands after handling cash, but don’t give up your moolah. Preserve your health, your privacy, and your liberty.

Reprinted from The Advocates for Self-Government.

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Krugman Calls for Price Controls

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2020

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2020/04/krugman-calls-for-price-controls.html

It is difficult to believe that Paul Krugman was trained as an economist.

He is now calling for price controls.

It is precisely during a crisis that it is more important than ever for price signals to be in operation so that businessmen and entrepreneurs know where to direct their skills, talent and product.

Price controls distort these signals and result in less of the most important products demanded to be produced and delivered.

–RW

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Ground Control to Planet Lockdown: This Is Only a Test — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2020

The absolutely key issue is how the West was caught completely unprepared for the spread of Covid-19 – even after being provided a head start of two months by China, and having the time to study different successful strategies applied across Asia.

There are no secrets for the success of the South Korean model.

South Korea was producing test kits already in early January, and by March was testing 100,000 people a day, after establishing strict control of the whole population – to Western cries of “no protection of private life”. That was before the West embarked on Planet Lockdown mode.

Forced vaccination and ID implants

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/02/ground-control-planet-lockdown-only-test/

Pepe Escobar

As much as Covid-19 is a circuit breaker, a time bomb and an actual weapon of mass destruction (WMD), a fierce debate is raging worldwide on the wisdom of mass quarantine applied to entire cities, states and nations.

Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only is not stopping the spread of Covid-19 but also has landed the global economy into a cryogenic state – with unforeseen, dire consequences. Thus quarantine should apply essentially to the population with the greatest risk of death: the elderly.

With Planet Lockdown transfixed by heart-breaking reports from the Covid-19 frontline, there’s no question this is an incendiary assertion.

In parallel, a total corporate media takeover is implying that if the numbers do not substantially go down, Planet Lockdown – an euphemism for house arrest – remains, indefinitely.

Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry and Stanford biophysicist, was spot on when he calculated that China would get through the worst of Covid-19 way before throngs of health experts believed, and that “What we need is to control the panic”.

Let’s cross this over with some facts and dissident opinion, in the interest of fostering an informed debate.

The report Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted was co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci – the White House face of the fight –, H. Clifford Lane, and CDC director Robert R. Redfield. So it comes from the heart of the U.S. healthcare establishment.

The report explicitly states, “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

On March 19, four days before Downing Street ordered the British lockdown, Covid-19 was downgraded from the status of “High Consequence Infectious Disease.”

John Lee, recently retired professor of pathology and former NHS consultant pathologist, has recently argued that, “the world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of the total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu).”

He recommends, “a degree of social distancing should be maintained for a while, especially for the elderly and the immune-suppressed. But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear.”

That’s essentially the same point developed by a Russian military intel analyst.

No less than 22 scientists – see here and here – have expanded on their doubts about the Western strategy.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, has provoked immense controversy with his open letter to Chancellor Merkel, stressing the “truly unforeseeable consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe.”

Even New York governor Andrew Cuomo admitted on the record about the error of quarantining elderly people with illnesses alongside the fit young population.

The absolutely key issue is how the West was caught completely unprepared for the spread of Covid-19 – even after being provided a head start of two months by China, and having the time to study different successful strategies applied across Asia.

There are no secrets for the success of the South Korean model.

South Korea was producing test kits already in early January, and by March was testing 100,000 people a day, after establishing strict control of the whole population – to Western cries of “no protection of private life”. That was before the West embarked on Planet Lockdown mode.

South Korea was all about testing early, often and safely – in tandem with quick, thorough contact tracing, isolation and surveillance.

Covid-19 carriers are monitored with the help of video-surveillance cameras, credit card purchases, smartphone records. Add to it SMS sent to everyone when a new case is detected near them or their place of work. Those in self-isolation need an app to be constantly monitored; non-compliance means a fine to the equivalent of $2,800.

Controlled demolition in effect

In early March, the Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases, hosted by the Shanghai Medical Association, pre-published an Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai. Treatment recommendations included, “large doses of vitamin C…injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. The duration of continuous use is to significantly improve the oxygenation index.”

That’s the reason why 50 tons of Vitamin C was shipped to Hubei province in early February. It’s a stark example of a simple “mitigation” solution capable of minimizing economic catastrophe.

In contrast, it’s as if the brutally fast Chinese “people’s war” counterpunch against Covid-19 had caught Washington totally unprepared. Steady intel rumbles on the Chinese net point to Beijing having already studied all plausible leads towards the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus – vital information that will be certainly weaponized, Sun Tzu style, at the right time.

As it stands, the sustainability of the complex Eurasian integration project has not been substantially compromised. As the EU has provided the whole planet with a graphic demonstration of its cluelessness and helplessness, everyday the Russia-China strategic partnership gets stronger – increasingly investing in soft power and advancing a pan-Eurasia dialogue which includes, crucially, medical help.

Facing this process, the EU’s top diplomat, Joseph Borrell, sounds indeed so helpless: “There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. […] China has brought down local new infections to single figures – and it is now sending equipment and doctors to Europe, as others do as well. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the U.S., it is a responsible and reliable partner. In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU (…) We must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”

That takes us to really explosive territory. A critique of the Planet Lockdown strategy inevitably raises serious questions pointing to a controlled demolition of the global economy. What is already in stark effect are myriad declinations of martial law, severe social media policing in Ministry of Truth mode, and the return of strict border controls.

These are unequivocal markings of a massive social re-engineering project, complete with inbuilt full monitoring, population control and social distancing promoted as the new normal.

That would be taking to the limit Secretary of State Mike “we lie, we cheat, we steal” Pompeo’s assertion, on the record, that Covid-19 is a live military exercise: “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

All hail BlackRock

So as we face a New Great Depression, steps leading to a Brave New World are already discernable. It goes way beyond a mere Bretton Woods 2.0, in the manner that Pam and Russ Martens superbly deconstruct the recent $2 trillion, Capitol Hill-approved stimulus to the U.S. economy.

Essentially, the Fed will “leverage the bill’s $454 million bailout slush fund into $4.5 trillion”. And no questions are allowed on who gets the money, because the bill simply cancels the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the Fed.

The privileged private contractor for the slush fund is none other than BlackRock. Here’s the extremely short version of the whole, astonishing scheme, masterfully detailed here.

Wall Street has turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills wallowing in the market before the end of the year.

The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.

So essentially this is a Fed/ Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money – with BlackRock as the undisputable winner.

BlackRock is widely known as the biggest money manager on the planet. Their tentacles are everywhere. They own 5% of Apple, 5% of Exxon Mobil, 6% of Google, second largest shareholder of AT&T (Turner, HBO, CNN, Warner Brothers) – these are just a few examples.

They will buy all these securities and manage those dodgy special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) on behalf of the Treasury.

BlackRock not only is the top investor in Goldman Sachs. Better yet: Blackrock is bigger than Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined. BlackRock is a serious Trump donor. Now, for all practical purposes, it will be the operating system – the Chrome, Firefox, Safari – of Fed/Treasury.

This represents the definitive Wall Street-ization of the Fed – with no evidence whatsoever it will lead to any improvement in the lives of the average American.

Western corporate media, en masse, have virtually ignored the myriad, devastating economic consequences of Planet Lockdown. Wall to wall coverage barely mentions the astonishing economic human wreckage already in effect – especially for the masses barely surviving, so far, in the informal economy.

For all practical purposes, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has been replaced by the Global War on Virus (GWOV). But what is not being seriously analyzed is the Perfect Toxic Storm: a totally shattered economy; The Mother of All Financial Crashes – barely masked by the trillions in helicopter money from the Fed and the ECB; the tens of millions of unemployed engendered by the New Great Depression; the millions of small businesses that will simply disappear; a widespread, global mental health crisis. Not to mention the masses of elderly, especially in the U.S., that will be issued an unspoken “drop dead” notice.

Beyond any rhetoric about “decoupling”, the global economy is already, de facto, split in two. On one side, we have Eurasia, Africa and swathes of Latin America – what China will be painstakingly connecting and reconnecting via the New Silk Roads. On the other side, we have North America and selected Western vassals. A puzzled Europe lies in the middle.

A cryogenically induced global economy certainly facilitates a reboot. Trumpism is the New Exceptionalism – so that means an isolationist MAGA on steroids. In contrast, China will painstakingly reboot its market base along the New Silk Roads – Africa and Latin America included – to replace the 20% of trade/exports to be lost with the U.S.

The meager $1,200 checks promised to Americans are a de facto precursor of the much touted Universal Basic Income (UBI). They may become permanent as tens of millions of people will be permanently unemployed. That will facilitate the transition towards a totally automated, 24/7 economy run by AI – thus the importance of 5G.

And that’s where ID2020 comes in.

AI and ID2020

The European Commission is involved in a crucial but virtually unknown project, CREMA (Cloud Based Rapid Elastic Manufacturing) which aims to facilitate the widest possible implementation of AI in conjunction to the advent of a cashless One-World system.

The end of cash necessarily implies a One-World government capable of dispensing – and controlling – UBI; a de facto full accomplishment of Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. Anyone is liable to be erased from the system if an algorithm equals this individual with dissent.

It gets even sexier when absolute social control is promoted as an innocent vaccine.

ID2020 is self-described as a benign alliance of “public-private partners”. Essentially, it is an electronic ID platform based on generalized vaccination. And its starts at birth; newborns will be provided with a “portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.”

GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, pledges to “protect people’s health “ and provide “immunization for all”. Top partners and sponsors, apart from the WHO, include, predictably, Big Pharma.

At the ID2020 Alliance summit last September in New York, it was decided that the “Rising to the Good ID Challenge” program would be launched in 2020. That was confirmed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) this past January in Davos. The digital identity will be tested with the government of Bangladesh.

That poses a serious question: was ID2020 timed to coincide with what a crucial sponsor, the WHO, qualified as a pandemic? Or was a pandemic absolutely crucial to justify the launch of ID2020?

As game-changing trial runs go, nothing of course beats Event 201, which took place less than a month after ID2020.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with, once again, the WEF, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, described Event 201 as “a high-level pandemic exercise”. The exercise “illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”

With Covid-19 in effect as a pandemic, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was forced to issue a statement basically saying they just “modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction”.

There’s no question “a severe pandemic, which becomes ‘Event 201’ would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions”, as spun by the sponsors. Covid-19 is eliciting exactly this kind of “cooperation”. Whether it’s “reliable” is open to endless debate.

The fact is that, all over Planet Lockdown, a groundswell of public opinion is leaning towards defining the current state of affairs as a global psyop: a deliberate global meltdown – the New Great Depression – imposed on unsuspecting citizens by design.

The powers that be, taking their cue from the tried and tested, decades-old CIA playbook, of course are breathlessly calling it a “conspiracy theory”. Yet what vast swathes of global public opinion observe is a – dangerous – virus being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.

The most plausible scenario for our immediate future reads like clusters of smart cities linked by AI, with people monitored full time and duly micro-chipped doing what they need with a unified digital currency, in an atmosphere of Bentham’s and Foucault’s Panopticum on overdrive.

So if this is really our future, the existing world-system has to go. This is a test, this is only a test.

 

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