Category World Economic Form

Jun 11 2020

Dutch Scientist Warns this a a Crisis in Science


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jun 11, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

 

Jun 10 2020

Spain is in Partnership with Bill Gates


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jun 10, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

The new law in Spain for the “new normality” has been approved. Spain is in full partnership with Bill Gates. They’ve hammered out some of the final details of the rules. Spain will no longer be a destination for tourists. They are clearly cutting off 12% of GDP just to start.

So, masks are obligatory in all closed spaces (work, office, schools, transport, shops, etc… even at home when you receive friends/family who are not living with you in the same household – LOL), in cars when there is more than one person inside, and also outside on the streets and parks etc when one cannot maintain at all times a distance of at least 1.5 meters from other people. So, those living in rural areas or in small villages can, I suppose, go out without a mask. Tough luck in the crowded cities. The fine is 100 euro for not wearing a mask.
Also, everywhere one must keep 1.5 m “social distance”.

And now the best: these rules are in vigor UNTIL THERE IS A VACCINE. So, masks (and “social distancing”) forever in Spain.

On top of this, all transport companies offering transport between cities and provinces (i.e. buses, trains, planes, ships, etc) will have to get the name and contact of the passengers and give the records to the government when requested. So, it will be impossible to even travel between various parts of the country without the govt knowing exactly where you went, how long, etc. We were infinitely more free in communism in Central Europe than this!

Oh, the govt also updated the criminal laws to include some new “hate crimes” to the long list of “hate crimes” already inserted in the Spanish and pretty much all European criminal  codes. Now they’ve added, among others, “social exclusion” and “aversion to poor people” to the list. Yeah, so if you exclude someone from your social activities because you don’t like them, it’s a hate crime, I suppose. And if you have aversion to poor people, it’s a hate crime too. (“Hate crimes”, this most vile and unjust of all the PC/marxist inventions that have completely destroyed justice in Europe, are punished with much harsher sentences – and much longer jail terms – than other – i.e. real – crimes.)

PS. From July 1 tourists will be allowed to come to some areas of Spain (Balearic islands will be the first) BUT of course they will also have to wear masks and be “socially distanced” at all times, AND they will have to pass health checks at airports (upon landing) which, as a minimum, will include temperature measuring and filling out a health questionnaire. (I guess those who happen to have slightly higher temperature will be forcibly quarantined or sent back.) Good luck with getting any tourists! What sort of moron would pay to go on such a holiday in hell?

Since they’ve done nothing to stop the non-socially distanced mass “protests” against “racism” where thousands of people are tightly packed in main squares (Madrid, Barcelona, etc), and in fact the govt and the MSM are supporting these, it should at the very latest now be very obvious to everyone that all of this is a total fraud and BS. But the vast majority of people are so dumb these days they just accept and parrot everything the media and govt tells them.
There’s no hope left…

Jun 9 2020

Spain’s New Rule: Masks & Social Distancing or 100 Euro Fine


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jun 9, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

Spain’s new rules when their lockdown ends require masks to be worn at all times, even in 100-degree weather (40+), with the penalty of a 100 euro fine. It is clear that Spain is on the Gates agenda. It appears that Gates has conquered Europe. Spain will begin guaranteed basic income, which is in preparation for their move to a full-blown socialist state. They have destroyed their economy and the tourist industry will be finished this summer. Rumor has it that they intend to nationalize some companies and force non-environmentally acceptable companies to close. Europe is pushing its people closer to outright civil war.

Jun 8 2020

Canada’s Missing Protests


Protest is more valid when it targets people and events at home

Lloyd Billingsley image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 7, 2020

Canada's Missing Protests

In Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, thousands have been taking to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Canadians might wonder why recent events in Nova Scotia, Canada, did not likewise drive people into the streets.

Back in April, a denturist named Gabriel Wortman, disguised as a police officer, began shooting people at random. Instead of putting out an emergency alert in the style of measures against COVID-19, the RCMP opted for Twitter, not universally used in Nova Scotia or anywhere else.

The RCMP’s deadly delay prompted no mass protests across Canada

The delay allowed Wortman, heavily armed and driving a fake police car, to continue the shooting spree that would claim 22 lives. The RCMP’s deadly delay prompted no mass protests across Canada demanding police reforms and accountability. It was not the first time the vaunted RCMP would act in bizarre fashion.

Back in 2008, Timothy McClean, 22, departed the summer fair where had been working and boarded a Greyhound bus for Winnipeg. Sitting next to him was Vince Weiguang Li, a software engineer who came to Canada in 2001. Li suddenly brandished a knife and began stabbing McLean in the chest before beheading the victim and showing the severed head to terrified passengers.

When the RCMP showed up, they did not break into the bus and take down the killer. Instead they waited outside while Li effectively cannibalized McLean. According to news reports, the victim’s eyes and part of his heart were not recovered, but police found McLean’s nose and tongue in Li’s pocket.

In Winnipeg and across Canada, people did not take to the streets to protest this grotesque lapse by the RCMP. Neither did protests take place when Li was set free in 2017, less than 10 years after he murdered, dismembered and cannibalized Timothy McLean.

Last year in Windsor, Ontario, police claimed to have found the man who killed six-year-old Ljubica Topic in 1971, a cold case nearly 50 years old. Police claimed DNA had finally identified the killer, who was deceased, but declined to release the killer’s name, claiming that would violate the dead man’s privacy rights.

The Prime Minister’s racism failed to spark public protests, but when it comes to blatant racism it’s never too late

That was nonsense, and there was no valid reason to keep the identity secret. Even so, the RCMP, Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey and Premier Doug Ford did not demand the release of the dead man’s identity. The police had probably not identified Ljubica Topic’s killer, but the prospect of fraud did not fuel public protests in Windsor or Toronto.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who felt compelled to speak out on a hijab hoax in Toronto, was silent about the news of the cold case. In 2017, Trudeau gained fame for awarding $10.5 million to Omar Khadr, a Canadian-born al-Qaeda militant who killed an American soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer, in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.

In 2019 it emerged that Prime Minister Trudeau was fond of appearing in blackface and covering the “Banana Boat Song.” The Prime Minister’s racism failed to spark public protests, but when it comes to blatant racism it’s never too late.

In Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Canadians can protest in the streets all night long, perhaps singing, “daylight come and me want go home.” Protest is always more valid when it targets people and events at home, rather than some other country.

Jun 7 2020

UN Human Rights ‘Monitors’ Lecture the United States


They do not need the help of UN human rights “experts” from countries with far worse systems of government and economies than the United States

Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist image

Re-posted fro the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 6, 2020

Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur

Alarge group of United Nations human rights “monitors” decided to exploit the horrific killing of George Floyd at the hands of a former policeman by accusing the United States of “systemic racism that produces state-sponsored racial violence, and licenses impunity for this violence.”  These self-righteous blowhards asserted in their “Statement on the Protests against Systemic Racism in the United States” that “the problem is not a few bad apples, but instead the problem is the very way that economic, political and social life are structured in a country that prides itself in liberal democracy, and with the largest economy in the world.” They might as well have been on Joe Biden’s payroll as they accused President Trump of “using language directly associated with racial segregationists from the nation’s past” and threatening “more state violence.”

These Self-righteous blowhards asserted in their “Statement on the Protests against Systemic Racism in the United States”

Sadly, every country has its share of racists including, no doubt, the UN monitors’ own countries of origin. The United States is no exception. However, there is no “systemic racism” in the United States. Far from it. Americans elected an African-American as president twice with the strong support of white Americans. Major U.S. cities that have experienced both protests and riots in recent days have black mayors or police commissioners.

The good cops who put their lives on the line every day far outnumber the rogue cops. According to data for 2019 as compiled in a “mapping police violence” database, police killed 28 unarmed blacks. Of course, each case should be thoroughly investigated and the officers responsible held accountable for any wrongdoing. However, some perspective is needed here. In 2015, during the Obama administration, the number of police killings of unarmed blacks had reached 78, which is 2.78 times the 2019 number. The number of unarmed whites killed by police in 2019 was 51. In 2015, the number was 91, which is 1.57 times the 2019 number. The trend line is down for police killings of unarmed blacks and whites, but the downward trend for police killings of unarmed blacks is more pronounced. Also, it is worth noting that, according to statistics reported to the FBI, nearly six times as many white law enforcement officers (40) were killed as a result of felonious acts in line-of-duty incidents in 2019 than black officers (7).

“The protests the world is witnessing, are a rejection of the fundamental racial inequality and discrimination that characterize life in the United States for black people, and other people of color,” the UN human rights monitors declared in their statement. But their monitoring failed to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protests, which President Trump has supported, and the violence besetting cities across the United States perpetrated by extremists and opportunistic thieves.

Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance

The thugs hijacking legitimate peaceful protests were responsible for killing a security officer with the Federal Protective Service. They killed a retired black police officer who was trying to provide security at a looted store. They have hurled Molotov cocktails in the direction of police in New York. As reported in St. Louis, four police officers were hit with gunfire. An NYPD officer was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Rioters also burnt a police precinct building in Minneapolis. They have looted and burnt down businesses. They tried to burn down Washington D.C’s historic St. John’s Church and vandalized St. Patrick Cathedral in New York. They have beaten up people trying to protect their property from being destroyed, looted or vandalized.

What are U.S. law enforcement officers sworn to protect the lives and properties of innocent Americans supposed to do in the face of vicious attacks that threaten their own lives? According to the authors of the UN “Statement on the Protests against Systemic Racism in the United States,” they shouldn’t look for any assistance offered by President Trump. That would amount to “more state violence.” What is the monitors’ solution instead? “Reparative intervention for historical and contemporary racial injustice is urgent, and required by international human rights law,” they wrote. By “reparative intervention” they mean paying reparations as penance for all the past “sins” of whites against blacks going back to the first white slaveholder in the 17th century. A more accurate name for such payments is protection money: whites must pay up or their so-called “white privilege” institutions will be destroyed and their own lives and property will be in danger.

Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, is the first signatory of the UN human rights monitors’ “Statement on the Protests against Systemic Racism in the United States. ” Her writings provide an example of the hatred for the United States harbored by UN human rights “experts” who also hate Israel.

Achiume: United States has no right to exclude Third World migrants

In an article that Achiume wrote, for instance, explaining why she thinks the U.S. and other western countries must admit any economic migrants who want to live in their countries, Achiume said: “As a sovereign or super-sovereign within neocolonial empire, I posit that the United States has no right to exclude Third World migrants.” In short, the United States must pay penance for its alleged past sins against not only African-Americans but against third world people everywhere who are bestowed with automatic victimhood status. U.S. borders must be opened to anyone from the third world because, in Achiume’s words, the migrants are “the harbingers of an imperial reckoning that cannot be delayed for much longer, even in the United States.”

Here is my message to Achiume and the other UN “monitors.” Butt out. As the world’s oldest existing constitutional democratic republic, the United States continues progressing towards achieving its aspiration of “a more perfect union” for all Americans. American history exemplifies the obstacles and the triumphs along the way, but the arc is towards more equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law. The United States is perfectly capable of taking care of itself without outside UN interference.

Minnesota’ attorney general, Keith Ellison, who is black, has taken over the prosecution in the killing of George Floyd. The ex-cop Derek Chauvin, who was responsible for killing George Floyd by using his knee to pin Floyd to the ground for nearly nine minutes, is now facing upgraded charges of murder. The other officers who stood by and watched have also been charged with aiding and abetting murder. The Department of Justice and FBI are investigating as a top priority the circumstances of the killing for possible federal prosecutions in the case.

 

Police abuse in the United States is the exception, not the rule. Nevertheless, abuse against any civilian of whatever race or background by any law enforcement officer cannot go unpunished. Federal, state, and local governments must enhance their efforts to address the problem with more reforms, training, and guaranteed accountability.

Those efforts are already underway. As President Trump said, “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender or creed, they have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it.”

Peaceful protests are as American as apple pie. However, when anger turns from peaceful protest to violence that harms innocent people, including African-Americans who have seen their places of business destroyed, responsible government leaders must draw the line. They do not need the help of UN human rights “experts” from countries with far worse systems of government and economies than the United States.

Jun 5 2020

Civil Unrest Ignites on Schedule


Armstrong Economics Blog/Civil Unrest

Re-Posted Jun 5, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

(picture from Paris protest, credit Michel Euler/AP)

George Floyd’s death has sparked civil unrest throughout the world. In Athens, Greece, protestors flung firebombs at the US embassy. In France, President Macron urged citizens not to compare France with the US as he does not feel police brutality, racism, or government control is an issue there. French citizens seem to disagree as 2,500 people attended a rally in Lille, 1,800 in Marseille, and 1,200 in Lyon. Germany, Denmark, Italy, Britain, Brazil, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Syria, and countless other countries are experiencing a surge of protests standing in solidarity with the US. But the unrest runs even deeper than yet another murder by armed government workers.

After weeks on end of forced isolation, the people are waking up to the control that the government possesses over every area of their lives. Anger is overtaking fear as thousands are disregarding the CDC’s continued pleas to stay at home and avoid crowds. There is no rule of law. Governments can and will act in their own self-interests and continue to view the people as “the great unwashed” who are not worthy of basic human rights. They can kill us, take away our jobs, our freedoms, and destroy the economy at will. Is it any wonder that the people have lost confidence in their governments?

The chaos is cyclically unfolding on schedule. All confidence in the government has been abandoned due to the draconian measures forced upon the people in such a rash manner that it could not be ignored.

Jun 4 2020

Is Canada More Cult Than Country?


“Are we just a bunch of COVID kool-aid drinkers?”

Mark Gray image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 3, 2020

Is Canada More Cult Than Country?

Cults are often described as a religious sect considered to be extremist or false, typically under the thrall of a charismatic leader. However, even religious cults meet the general description “Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.”  In a broad secular sense, it could be said that cultists are devotees of false, reality-challenged, principles.

Is it possible that “conventional society” itself could become a cult? At first glance that would seem impossible because not everyone believes the same things. The point is, in a democracy, you don’t need everyone to believe the same thing, you just need enough believing voters to gain political power. Boom, the cult rules over everyone.

Psychological And Emotional Manipulation

Cults have to pick and choose their targets carefully, typically seeking those who are stressed or emotionally vulnerable with tenuous family connections. The grooming begins with “Love-bombing” whereby targets are showered with praise and affection.The feelings of validation and acceptance provide a sense of belonging and help build loyalty towards the group.

Isolation follows. People are physically and intellectually separated from outside influences of friends and family that could provide a reality check and contradictory information is censored. This allows the cult to gain control.

Maintaining control requires keeping the members ignorant and off balance, typically with a mixture of terror and love. Dissent is punished and obedience is lauded. Fear isn’t enough as people will break down and become a problem, so the cult provides a safe space to run to. The combination of fear and safety guides their path.

The brainwashing makes it exceedingly difficult for people to escape. Control of information stagnates intellectual development and prevents growth and understanding and without outside allies, it is hard to break the emotional bonds that have been developed.

It’s easy to look down at people who’ve been taken advantage of by a cult, to mock their emotional weakness and insult their intelligence but are we as a nation guilty of swallowing barrels full of kool-aid ourselves?

The Country Sized Cult

Psychological manipulation through emotional control and intellectual ignorance are the keys to a cult’s success and both can be managed if one controls the message. For the most part, our media and educations systems speak with a monolithic voice on all important matters.

While cults have to be careful in their target selection, a country sized cult has no restrictions because every citizen is targeted. The goal is simply to convince enough citizens to gain political control. Unfortunately, success forces everyone to live with the cult’s rules.

Censorship is evil, as are those who engage in it. It doesn’t protect us from “bad” information, it ensures conformity by restricting the information available for consumption and contemplation. It boxes us into an intellectual corner thereby setting limits on societal understanding. In other words, censorship keeps us ignorant and ignorance is an exploitable condition.
Emotional control tactics come in all shapes and sizes, from subtle persuasion to vile coercion.

Virtue signalling is a type of love-bomb that says, “look at how good we are, and how bad you are”. It has a dual personality that reflects both submission and superiority. By submitting, one is warmly welcomed by acceptable society where they can show superiority by shaming and excluding from the group those who refuse.

Reusable shopping bags and COVID masks are great examples

Reusable shopping bags and COVID masks are great examples. Unless kept meticulously clean, reusable bags are unsafe when they turn into bacteria and virus farms. COVID masks don’t prevent catching the virus because they aren’t sealed, and some have pores larger than the virus. They virtue signal concern but virtue signalling is not an act of virtue because virtuous behaviour is that which honors and respects truth and reality.

The phrases “willful ignorance” and “lack of nuance” are more aggressive forms of emotional manipulation that insinuate the target lacks the intellectual capacity to properly understand the situation. They are used to emotionally bully opponents into accepting one’s own beliefs about the subject. For instance, one is willfully ignorant if they don’t accept the scientific consensus on “climate change” that the sun has little to do with it. Nuance can be viewed as the weighing and measuring of information at the appropriate time and place in the thinking process. Some information is irrelevant or overwhelmed by other factors. Dismissing such data isn’t a sign one “lacks nuance”, it’s an indicator of intelligence. Using the phrases as slurs, however, is an obvious attempt to coerce, not teach.

The vilest manipulation tactics are direct attacks on a person’ character and can induce a mob mentality within the cult. Indiscriminately labelling people who disagree as some form of racist, xenophobic, bigot can cause people to lose their livelihoods and sometimes their lives when the mob starts braying for blood. They are typically used against those whose understanding and expertise threaten the state of ignorance that has been carefully and deliberately crafted in the cult.
The underlying theme of Cult Canada is government is good, big government is better, and totalitarian government is best.  Climate and COVID alarm are media manufactured fears where more government is the solution.

An Admission Of Ignorance

Norway’s health chief admitted that they could have controlled COVID-19 without the lockdown and avoided some of the unfortunate impacts of the lockdown.  It’s an admittance they acted hastily in ignorance, a refreshing dose of honesty sadly missing in the Canadian landscape.

Some of us warned back in March that we were making an incredible mistake. It wasn’t a guess. It was the knowledge that the media does manipulate emotions in service to an agenda and that the data challenged models could only be guessing. They, and the experts, were absolutely ignorant. That, and logic rule number one, bad information leads to bad consequences.

We’re willingly destroying ourselves so tell me, how are we not a cult?

Jun 3 2020

Huawei is an International Threat


But the Meng Wanzhou Case is the Wrong Battle

Colin Alexander image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 2, 2020

Huawei, Meng Wanzhou

Both Canada and the US botched the extradition case against Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei that’s still pending. You don’t have to like anything about China to know that the case for extraditing Meng to the US compounds tensions for no useful purpose.

Here’s a summary of what happened. On December 1, 2018 Canada Border Services officers detained Meng on arrival by air in Vancouver, where she owns sumptuous homes. The RCMP then formally arrested her on a provisional US extradition request. The US alleged that she was involved with multiple financial institutions in breach of their sanctions against Iran.

The first thing you have to know about dealing with Asians is the culture of face. Losing face, or incurring public humiliation, strikes at the core of identity and honor. In all cultures, a favorable personal disposition and mutual respect between leaders helps to enable good outcomes in international affairs. Similarly, antagonism exacerbates challenges. It’s especially risky to humiliate a powerful adversary from a position of weakness, and Canada stands against China as a mouse against a carnivorous dragon.

Canada’s Extradition Act

Given the symbiotic relationship between Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it was foreseeable that China would regard Meng as having quasi diplomatic status, and would deliver reprisals following her arrest. That connection threatens security throughout the western democracies. And that relationship is why the CCP wants to maintain it. The imprisonment without charges of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor could hardly have come as a surprise. Nor the trade reprisals.


Canada’s Extradition Act provides for the political oversight that China evidently expected to work in Meng’s favor. It says this, under the subhead Minister’s approval of request for provisional arrest:

The Minister [of Justice] may, after receiving a request by an extradition partner for the provisional arrest of a person, authorize the Attorney General to apply for a provisional arrest warrant …

What the Minister may do, the Minister may also decide not to do. The Act also says “the Minister is responsible for the implementation of extradition agreements.” Although it might be problematic to abort the process once started, implementation could presumably end at any time during the process.

Violating US sanctions against Iran is not an offence under Canadian law, and not therefore a valid reason for extradition under the Act. But it was only on January 28, 2019, eight weeks after her arrest, that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) additionally announced financial fraud charges against Meng. In February DOJ came up with the further charges that Huawei had stolen trade secrets from the US company,  T-Mobile.

Both the US and Canada have better ways to deal with Chinese assertiveness

Arguably, the US put Canada in a jam with the extradition request. Nevertheless, what could Canada have done? And was China entitled to expect Meng’s release after her arrest?

As happens in Canada’s slow-moving justice system, the extradition process has been delayed for a year and a half and counting. Why didn’t Meng appear before a judge for a summary disposition within a week, or two at the most? Evidently, the Americans didn’t have their case ready by then for offences that would have been criminal in Canada. So the court could have thrown out the claim for extradition summarily. Then she could have left Canada and stayed away.

After the US produced the new charges, and given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s love-in for China and all things Communist, the CCP could have expected that Meng’s case would be amenable to pressure on the justice system—as in China. With politics, big business and the justice system so closely aligned in Canada, the CCP will have known that the SNC Lavalin case was only a rare instance when a few honest people couldn’t stomach the corruption. (There are obvious self-serving reasons why Canada’s lawyers and judges uphold self-regulation so strenuously and resist credibly independent oversight.)

Instead, last month BC’s Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes almost certainly ruled correctly in law to sustain Meng’s extradition. But that’s not the point. Both the US and Canada have better ways to deal with Chinese assertiveness than proceeding with her prosecution. Even if the US extradited her and sentenced her to life imprisonment, what good would that do?

Reallocation of capital investment and reducing reliance on the supply chain from China

Reallocation of capital investment and reducing reliance on the supply chain from China comprise the primary recourses for countering real and prospective hostile action by Huawei and the CCP. Whatever Meng’s prominence, she’s only a cog in the machine.

Faced with increasing pressure from the US government, last year Huawei announced that it was moving its entire research operations to Canada. But given China’s predations, do we need that? What about Canada standing solid alongside the US against Huawei in parallel with their withdrawal from the extradition process for Meng—and, presumably, to obtain the release of Kovrig and Spavor?

Since Huawei began expanding into Canada in the late 2000s, the company received $22 million in corporate welfare from the cash-strapped government of Ontario, as well as tax credits from the federal government. For the future, however, the recourse available, and clearly necessary, is for the US and Canada to rein in Huawei and, especially, to exclude it from involvement in the 5G network.

Having won a significant victory in court, the US is now in a position to be magnanimous from the high ground by reversing an unnecessarily provocative action against Meng that serves no purpose. Recognizing that there’s a not-so-cold trade war with China, it’s important to fight battles that are winnable and effective. Meng’s case is not one of them, neither for the US nor for Canada.