Tag Archives: Scientific Integrity

Jul 23 2020

AOC’s Baseless Accusation That the U.S. Is a “Brutal, Barbarian Society”


Re-Posted from Just Facts Daily By James D. Agresti

April 16, 2020

According to democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Covid-19 pandemic is proving that the United States “is a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans.” As evidence of this, she claims that “40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency” before this crisis, and Covid-19 “is more than a $400 emergency.”

However, her “40%–$400” statistic is false, and the facts that broadly inform this issue reveal that:

  • government social programs, which AOC seeks to enlarge, depress workers’ savings, causing the very outcomes that she decries.
  • the people of the U.S. lead the world in charity.
  • middle- and low-income Americans are more financially capable of handling Covid-19 than the bulk of people in most developed countries, including those who live in more socialistic nations that AOC says the U.S. should emulate.

AOC’s Allegations

In a recent video, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) declared: “This is supposed to be the richest society in the world, and I think what this crisis is showing us is that this is only a rich society for a very small amount of people, and it is a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans because 40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency before this thing started. This is more than a $400 emergency, and we’re really going to have to step up and completely change our approach to our public systems.”

The “40%–$400” Statistic

The statistic cited by AOC stems from an annual Federal Reserve study of people’s “self-reported ability to handle unexpected expenses.” Contrary to her claim that “40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency,” the survey actually finds that 12% of U.S. residents fall into that category. Furthermore, the facts surrounding this 12% figure reveal that it overstates the portion of people who can’t afford such an expense.

Per the Federal Reserve’s report on this issue, “if faced with an unexpected expense of $400”:

  • 61% “of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement.”
  • 27% say they “would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense.”
  • 12% say “would not be able to cover the expense at all.”

Hence, AOC’s figure of “40%” includes people who would place the expense on a credit card and not pay it off right away. This is materially different from her claim that they “couldn’t even afford” it.

Moreover, the same report notes that another survey found 76% “of households had $400 in liquid assets (even after taking monthly expenses into account).” In other words, it’s not that they “couldn’t” immediately pay for an unexpected $400 expense; they just preferred not to do so. Given that 40% of U.S. residents carry a credit card balance “most or all of the time,” the “$40%–$400” statistic says little beyond that.

With regard to the 12% who claim they “would not be able to cover the expense at all,” consumer data shows that the lowest-spending 10% of U.S. households spend an average of $1,369 per year on entertainment and $208 per year on alcohol. That’s enough to handle about four $400 emergencies every year. Furthermore, these figures are based on household surveys, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains that they “are subject to deliberate underreporting of certain items.”

The fourth-lowest 10% of households—who are also included in AOC’s 40% figure—spend an average of $2,830 per year on entertainment and $320 on alcohol. This is enough to cover about eight $400 emergencies, which means the issue is not about a lack of money but how it is spent.

In spite of these facts, media outlets have published headlines like these:

  • “The Shocking Number of Americans Who Can’t Cover a $400 Expense”
    – Washington Post
  • “Nearly 40% of Americans Can’t Cover a Surprise $400 Expense”
    – MSN
  • “40% of Americans Don’t Have $400 in the Bank for Emergency Expenses”
    – ABC News
  • “Nearly 40% of Americans Can’t Cover a Surprise $400 Expense”
    – CBS News
  • “40% of Americans Can’t Cover a $400 Emergency Expense”
    – CNN

Also, the survey includes all “noninstitutionalized, civilian” adults who live in the U.S., not just “working-class Americans” as AOC asserts. Thus, it also includes non-working Americans and millions of unauthorized immigrants who are not legally allowed to earn income in the United States. Since these individuals often work off the books and don’t disclose the money, this potentially skews the results of such surveys.

Government Social Programs

Also belying AOC’s rhetoric about the inability of Americans to weather a Covid-19 crisis is the fact that taxpayers already pay for most of the living expenses of low-income households, including the vast bulk of their medical costs. Roughly 22% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, and as the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explains:

Beneficiary cost sharing, such as deductibles or co-payments, and beneficiary premiums are very limited in Medicaid and do not represent a significant share of the total cost of health care goods and services for Medicaid enrollees.

Beyond medical care, federal, state, and local governments provide a wide range of other benefits to low-income households. In 2015, the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified 82 federal means-tested welfare programs. When all of these benefits and other sources of income are included, U.S. households that are officially “in poverty” consume an average of more than $50,000 per year in goods and services. This amounts to 5.2 times the income they report to the Census Bureau.

Governments also shift the costs of some welfare policies to the private sector. A prime example is the federal law that requires most hospitals with emergency departments to provide an “examination” and “stabilizing treatment” for anyone who comes to such a facility and requests care for an emergency medical condition or childbirth—regardless of their ability to pay and immigration status.

In 2018, federal, state, and local governments provided an average of $23,050 in social benefits to every household in the United States. The federal government defines these as “payments from social insurance funds, such as social security and Medicare, and payments providing other income support, such as Medicaid and food stamp benefits.” These alone are on par with the total average household income of Eastern Europe, including both private earnings and government benefits.

In addition, the federal government has recently enacted enough Covid-19-related legislation to nearly double its regular $2.6 trillion annual spending on social benefits. This includes but is not limited to $192 billion for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and an estimated $2.2 trillion for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Impact on Personal Savings

Such levels of government social spending, which AOC wants to increase, are the main reason why many workers don’t save more of their income. As detailed in 2016 working paper published by the European Central Bank:

  • “As the state organizes and offers more public insurance, there is less need for relatively poor households to hold precautionary savings, and more income might be used for consumption purposes.”
  • “social services provided by the state are substitutes for private wealth accumulation.”
  • “an increase in welfare state spending goes along with an increase—rather than a decrease—of observed wealth inequality.”

Furthermore, Americans must ultimately fund these programs, which hinders their ability to save. The $23,050 per household in social benefits that governments paid out in 2018 ultimately came from American households. Although high-income households bear a greater share of these costs than others, middle-income workers lose about 15.3% of their paychecks to social insurance taxes.

If, in contrast, these workers could have saved and invested a fifth of these taxes during their careers, each retired middle-income worker would have an additional $199,000 to $764,000 in savings today.

Voluntary Charity

Long before governments began providing appreciable amounts of social benefits, the U.S. led the world in charity, and it continues to do so.

In notes that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the 1780s, he described how Americans cared for the sick and poor with striking contrast to modern, government-run welfare programs:

  • Churches collected money and appointed modest, quiet people to deliver these resources and personally look after each person in need.
  • For the poor who had “neither property, friends, nor strength to labour,” farmers took them in, and churches paid these caretakers an annual sum to do this.
  • For the poor who were “able to help themselves a little,” churches supplemented their income so they could “live comfortably in their own houses, or in the houses of their friends.”
  • “Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor. Nearly the same method of providing for the poor prevails through all our states; and from Savannah [Georgia] to Portsmouth [New Hampshire] you will seldom meet a beggar.”
  • Sick people were “visited by all the neighbors,” who brought them food and took turns watching over them at night. Regarding this charity, Jefferson wrote:
    • It “is without comparison better than in a general hospital, where the sick, the dying and the dead, are crammed together, in the same rooms, and often in the same beds.”
    • Being in a home and under the care of a local community has advantages that outweigh the “regularities of medicine and regimen” in a hospital.
    • “Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse.”

In the 1830s, a French historian and political scientist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the U.S. and wrote a famous work entitled Democracy in America. In it, he stated that what “I most admire in America” is how people were personally engaged in advancing the welfare of society:

In the United States the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of solicitude [concern] to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own.

When a private individual meditates an undertaking, however directly connected it may be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the cooperation of the Government; but he publishes his plan, offers to execute it himself, courts the assistance of other individuals, and struggles manfully against all obstacles. Undoubtedly he is often less successful than the State might have been in his position; but in the end, the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the Government could have done.

Although federal, state, and local governments consume about 33.5% of the U.S. economy—at an average cost of $54,000 per year to every household in the nation—U.S. citizens still donate about $50 billion each year to charities that provide “direct services to people in need.” That equals an average of $1,316 for every person who is reportedly below the poverty line.

U.S. citizens also donate $38 billion per year to health charities, along with $59 billion to education charities, and $127 billion to religious groups, many of which serve the poor.

A 2016 study of 24 nations by the Charities Aid Foundation found that the people of the United States are most generous and donate 1.44% of the nation’s gross domestic product to charities. The next closest nation, New Zealand, donates 0.79%, or 45% less than the USA. Nations such as Finland (0.13%) and France (0.11%) donate less than one-tenth of the USA.

The Big Picture

The most comprehensive mass measure of people’s financial condition is their consumption of goods and services. This is the World Bank’s “preferred” indicator of material well-being due to “practical reasons of reliability and because consumption is thought to better capture long-run welfare levels than current income.”

The latest available data show that middle-income Americans and even the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of nations in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including more socialistic nations that AOC says the U.S. should emulate:

An important strength of this data is that it is adjusted for purchasing power to measure tangible realities like square feet of living area, foods, smartphones, etc. This removes the confounding effects of factors like inflation and exchange rates. Thus, an apple in one nation is counted the same as an apple in another.

Summary

Contrary to AOC’s portrayal of the USA as “a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans,” the key facts that inform this matter show that:

  • the lone statistic she used to support this allegation is false.
  • personal savings—the subject of her statistic—are depressed by government social programs that she champions and seeks to expand.
  • when it comes to charity, the people of the U.S. are the most generous in the world.
  • middle- and even low-income Americans have more material resources to weather Covid-19 than the majority of people in most developed nations
Jul 22 2020

Fake Noose Media and The Left Triggered by Cartoon


Daniel Scavino Jr. is one of Trump’s top people at the White House and recently he posted one of my cartoons on Facebook.

Bedlam from the left soon ensued. It was a cartoon I penned back in May and I depicted Dr. Fauci as a spigot spewing cold water on the country and washing the economy down the drain. I titled it “Dr. Faucet.” I made him look extra leaky, and he may be leaking everything to his boss, Bill Gates…but I can’t say for sure.

My cartoon made the news. I saw it flashed on CNN, MSNBC, and later on FOX, a network that for some reason has Chris Wallace as one of their personalities. The lying mass media, always looking for opportunities to attack President Trump, began spouting nonsense about Trump being ‘anti-science’ and discrediting the wisdom of the good doctor. Wallace was no different and flashed my cartoon at the president and asked for an explanation. Trump handled it (and the entire interview) very well and said he likes Fauci, but disagreed with him at times and he also pointed out a few of Fauci’s many errors. Trump said Scavino’s free speech is his own opinion.

I’ve been told (by some of the White House staff) that President Trump has seen my cartoons and it’s one of the reasons I was invited to the Social Media Summit last year. I won’t go into what caused me to be uninvited, but last weekend I at least got to know for sure that Trump has seen my work because I saw him looking at it. I chuckled when I saw it. I almost hoped he would say something positive about it such as “Way to go, Ben!” or some such. Of course, that didn’t happen but I decided to indulge myself and draw a cartoon about it. It’s rare that cartoonists do this, and I may be out of line, but I beg your indulgence because starting tomorrow I’m taking some time off.

I’ll be gone for about a week. I have not taken more than a couple days off in a long time and the wilderness is calling me. I’m going to go do some gold panning and I’ll enjoy getting away from the drawing table and the computer for a while. Too much bad news has taken its toll and I’ve found myself getting too angry. That’s not good for one’s health. I’m off to do some recovery.

Before I go I want to extend a very hearty “THANK YOU!” to all of you who have donated to our cause. We simply could not draw the cartoons without your help and when you look at our work on our site you’ll know you’re definitely a part of it. You make it happen.

The sun is going down in the west as I type this and soon I will be watching it go down while on the road. See you soon!

—Ben Garrison

Jul 22 2020

Another Crushing Blow to the Climate Fearmongers


Internationally-known climate alarmist defects

John Eidson image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—July 21, 2020

Michael Schellenberger

On his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative commentator Dennis Prager recently interviewed someone most people have never heard of: Michael Schellenberger. A passionate defender of the planet, the 49-year-old environmentalist is shown below in a picture taken in 1995 in Maranhão, Brazil.

A TIME magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award recipient, Schellenberger is a lifelong Democrat and environmental activist. An internationally respected energy expert, he has been asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and was invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as an Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Scientific American, Schellenberger has been one of the world’s most vocal environmental alarmists for the last 30 years.

On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

That was then.

In a 180-degree turn after realizing he’d participated in the two greatest scientific scandals in history — man-made global warming theory and renewable energy — Schellenberger is now offering a full-throated apology for assisting the climate fear industry in its relentless campaign to win support for draconian cutbacks in fossil fuel energy by terrorizing people of the world with hysterical claims of imminent climate collapse. 

The most high profile victim of that terror campaign was brainwashed with horrifying climate propaganda when she was eight.  Nine years later and now a true believer, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has become a deeply traumatized young woman, as shown in this 48-sec. clip.  Shellenberger’s website reports a survey showing that one in five children in the UK are suffering nightmares about Earth’s ever-changing climate.

Schellenberger, who believes nuclear energy is the only feasible way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels without crashing western economies, formally announced his mea culpa in an article titled, “On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare.” The article was published by Forbes, only to be taken down three days later without explanation, which shows that the dying climate fear industry still has enough clout to silence dissenting views. Schellenberger’s article, which I highly recommend, can be seen on his website.

Here are a few of his observations, each of which undercuts climate propaganda used to terrorize children (future voters) and other easily indoctrinated people:

  • Climate change is happening, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction.” Habitat loss and the killing of wild animals for food and body parts are greater threats to endangered species than climate change.
  • The Amazon is not the “lungs of the Earth.”
  • Fires around the world have declined 25% since 2003. The combination of a build-up of natural fuel (dead trees, underbrush) plus more houses near forests, not climate change, is why California and Australia recently experienced catastrophic fires.

Bottom Line: We’ve Been Fed a Pack of Lies

Bottom Line: We’ve Been Fed a Pack of Lies

Their apocalyptic predictions having failed to materialize for decades on end, the climate fear lobby defaulted to one of the Third Reich’s most effective propaganda techniques. Known as the “Big Lie,” it goes like this: If you’re going to lie, make it a Big Lie, keep repeating it and people will believe it. One of their biggest Big Lies is the terrifying claim that coastal cities face imminent demise due to global warming.

At the 2014 New York Times’ DealBook conference, Al Gore said, “I was in Miami a few weeks ago, and on a sunny day, fish from the ocean were swimming in some of the streets.”  In attempting to frighten voters to think the entire city would soon be submerged, Gore blamed the incident on melting ice caused by global warning.

No so.

According to Miami’s TV7 News, the National Weather Service attributed the flooding to a combination of causes, primarily “high astronomical tides due to the lunar cycle.” In other words, melting ice from global warming didn’t cause the flooding.  The moon did.

Like other coastal cities, Miami does have issues with flooding.  But despite Gore’s doomsday preachings, the city’s contemporary coastline appears the same as it did nearly a hundred years ago.  The side by side comparison below is from Schellenberger’s website, and is used here with his permission.

Miami Beach: Then and Now

Miami Beach: Then and Now

 

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

Al Gore: Elmer Gantry of “saving the planet”

Shellenberger’s must-read new book, “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” comes on the heels of another crushing blow to the climate fearmongers. Earlier this year, Michael Moore’s jaw-dropping “Planet of the Humans” was released. The feature length documentary, which can be seen for free on YouTube, exposes “renewable energy” for what it is: a brazen environmental hoax that’s done little more than pour billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of Al Gore and other climate snake oil salesmen.

The increasingly discredited theory that human use of fossil fuels is rapidly destroying the planet is also a hoax, which I wrote about in “The Cynical Plot behind Global Warming Hysteria.” Despite what’s reported by the corrupt western media establishment, renewable energy and AGW theory are not about saving the planet. They’re about amassing wealth and authoritarian political power in the hands of a few.

Some additional words about the Elmer Gantry of “saving the planet”

Global movements that demand trillions of dollars in new taxes should be judged by the credibility of their most outspoken advocates. In the environmental arena, no one is more outspoken than Al Gore. Few insiders have personally profited from the renewable energy scam more than the former vice president.

When he left office in 2001, his net worth was estimated at $1 million to $2 million. Since then, his wealth has skyrocketed to $300 million, and if the climate change legislation he advocates is enacted, he stands to become a billionaire. Much of his enviable fortune has come as an inside investor in government-backed renewable energy projects, many of which went belly-up, but not before politically connected insiders made off with millions, leaving hardworking U.S. taxpayers stuck with the bill.

Like all wealthy eco-preachers, the Elmer Gantry of renewable energy uses his immense wealth to indulge in lavish living. When asked by Rep. Marsha Blackburn during his 2009 testimony before Congress whether he personally profits from his advocacy of global warming, Pastor Al professed a vow of poverty: “Every penny I have made I have put into a non-profit deal, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is out of greed, you do not know me.” If you’ve never seen the tense encounter, you do not want to miss it:

Turned out Rep. Blackburn knows him quite well. As the proud owner of a gargantuan green energy fortune, Pastor Al looked her squarely in the eye and denied making even a penny of profit. If every penny he makes goes into a non-profit deal, how did he end up with $300 million? The same way his alter ego pilfered money from the Lord: by concealing his true stripes.

Please consider buying a copy of Michael Schellenberger’s important new book and sharing his pro-nuclear energy message with your friends.

Jul 21 2020

Where Will YOU Draw the Line?


Wearing an ineffective and downright harmful mask is now a daily event for most Americans.

Bill Gates and his paid-for medical tyrants along with the globalist Illuminati got their way on this one. Mass compliance through fear is working for them. They are accustoming us to do what we’re told while giving up our freedom. What do you think they’ve been discussing at all those Bilderberg meetings?

They own the mass media, which has drummed out a steady beat of fear for many months now. They don’t tell us about their satanic pedophiles at the top. They don’t tell us about the mass theft by the Fed that benefits only them—the global elite. They lie and exaggerate as they fan the flames of COVID-19 hysteria constantly—and they blame it all on Trump. Their planned scamdemic has succeeded just as Gates’ supercomputer predicted it would. Things are going according to plan.

Isn’t it strange how the top .001 percent—the unelected elite who own most of the world—now shut down businesses and run our lives over a medical issue. Our elected officials go along for the ride. Most governors and big city mayors are puppets of the globalists.

Many of us have complained loudly about the masks. I made a scene at the local post office. All the sheeple there were complying dutifully. I shouldn’t call them sheeple—they HAD to wear them if they wanted to carry out their postal business. I did not—my mail went back to the truck. They sported their face mufflers as they lined up next to signs that tersely ordered them worn. People obey ‘authority,’ and when the mass majority obeys, then everyone else complies.

The time for resistance is over. The mask pushers won. It reached critical mass. Anyone objecting is now seen as a nut job. I got treated like that at a grocery store. I was the ONLY one without a mask and the checkout clerk barked her orders at me to obey social distancing. I was a disease in her eyes. The globalists managed to divide and conquer humanity in a mere few months.

We’ll see this pattern repeat itself with a mandatory vaccine. Will this be the final line in the sand? Will Americans finally grow a backbone and yell, “NO!” If they don’t, we’ll move onto Gates’ next step: A worldwide digital ID. What comes with that? A cashless system. A social credit system. The Chicoms already has part of this plan in place. Gates, the central bankers, Silicon Valley, the socialists, and the big globalist corporations want to control every aspect of our lives. Their high-tech noose is around our necks. The time to start kicking is now—not after we drop.

We’ll see their mark of the beast. No buying and selling until one is part of their demonic control grid. And, like communist China, there will be concentration camps. The Chicoms are rounding up millions of Chinese Muslims right now and forcing them onto trains….gulag bound.

Think that can’t happen here? It will. All we have to do is keep complying.

—Ben Garrison

Jul 19 2020

A Warning from Yugoslavia – Don’t Follow What We Did (YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO)


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics

Re-Posted Jul 19, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

Jul 18 2020

PART TWO: Videos on Bill Gates and his Handmaiden Dr. Anthony Fauci and Their Plan to Reduce the Word’s Population that Google doesn’t want You to See!


Bill Gates was a ruthless businessman and used any means legal or not to achieve his goal. Ho he accomplished that is not the story here but the bottom line was after he retired he created a 501(c)(3)  Foundation, The Bill & Melisa Gates Foundation twenty years ago in 2000. The stated goal was the created an illusion that this foundation was created to help the poor and destitute of the world, nothing could be further from the truth. The foundation started off with $46.8 billion and Gates started giving large grants to implement his stated goals.

No one knows exactly how much money Gates gave away but it was, without doubt, tens of billions of dollars over the past 20 years. Gates made sure the world knew what he was doing through his extensive publicity efforts. However strangely the latest financial records of the foundation indicates that it’s assets are probably worth over $100 billion today. So it would seem that Gates was doing more than giving away grant money. So what was his real purpose of this foundation?

Initially his focus seemed to be on Climate change and how it was imperative that we stop using carbon based fuels that were creating Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and that was causing the temperature of the planet to increase and that that increasing temperature would in the near future destroy civilization itself.  Gates was not alone in this believe as Al Gore the former President Clinton VP was also on board with this idea. I became aware of this is a famous TED talk where Gates indicated that that to get to zero emissions of Carbon Dioxide production my humans would have to go to zero. Later it became obvious that this college drop out was not educated as he was being influence by those that followed the dis bunked theory of Tomas Malthus found in his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Which basically stated that the growth of the population would out strip the ability to feed it and that would create famine and war. 222 years later, today, we know that was not true.  But Gates apparently does think it is true and it seems that his REAL GOAL is to significantly reduce the world’s population.

The following bits of videos will show that Gate and Fauci (a hired hand of Gates) probably created this COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan China and hid its release in China and the World Health organization until it had spread world wide. This two both need to be tried for Crimes against Humanity for example from a NIH 2005 study, that found that “hydroxychloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.” Fauci has been rejecting the use of this and has been preaching the Gates vaccine solution. The report stated:

“We report, however, that hydroxychloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-COV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of hydroxychloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations.

Conclusion

hydroxychloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS COV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chydroxychloroquine prior to or after SARS COV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-COV antiviral compounds.”

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Jul 17 2020

Reflections on the French Revolution: A Model for U.S. Civil War?


Marxist revolutionaries in the U.S. are using the French Revolution as a model for the Civil War over control of America’s soul in this time. Are current violent events across the nation a foreshadowing of a Reign of Terror, in this nation?

Dennis Jamison image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—July 16, 2020

Reflections on the French Revolution: A Model for U.S. Civil War?

Contrary to the romanticized European notions and the intellectually fraudulent myth that the French Revolution was a victory for a people striving for freedom, the truth is finally coming to light. The holiday normally celebrated in France as a revered holiday, known as Bastille Day, being the spark that ignited France’s march to freedom is an illusion. Unfortunately, European Marxists had long held that the French Revolution was a real victory for the people—the proletariat. Yet, after centuries, French writers are beginning to honestly look at this tragic European history as a failure to provide freedom in France.

While the storming of the Bastille is renowned as the key event that sparked the French Revolution, within four years, the ideals espoused in the more formal Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in August of 1789 had been hijacked by the Friends of the Constitution that later morphed into the Society of the Jacobins. The Jacobins used their previous name to disguise their true intent to manipulate or dominate the development of the French Constitution and to ultimately execute the king.

In a dual initiative, the Jacobin political party rose rapidly from 1789 to 1793 to become the most influential political party in the French Revolution. During this period the acting government evolved into the National Constituent Assembly, as King Louis XVI became impotent in the midst of such genuine political upheaval. But, the descent into chaos took place in stages. After the National Assembly abolished feudalism in early August, it passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen on August 28, 1789. This very idealistic document had been drafted by the Abbé Emmanuel Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette (oddly, members of the First and Second Estates respectively). Thomas Jefferson even provided consultation on the document since he was serving as the U.S. Minister to France at the time.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen has been hailed as comparable to the Declaration of Independence and declared a model for human rights in the world. Yet, it is a very European-oriented document—strong on theory, but short on substance. There were 17 Articles that were practically broken as quickly as they had been voted upon. Highly idealistic, they were all humanistic in origin: Article One stated: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.” The real problem with this ideal is who determines the common good? What standard of public good is being used as the measurement?

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen asserted that rights are derived from the state—-in this case, the National Assembly. Article Three of the Declaration stated:  “The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. Nobody, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.”

So, this was a decree of national sovereignty, and theoretically, it eliminates the need for a king if the National Assembly is declaring itself as sole and genuine sovereign over all of France. In other words, this legislature declared itself to be the sovereign rule at the heart of the nation. At this stage of the French Revolution, it appears fine that rational men are able to reason with one another. It is similar to the Continental Congresses of the rebellious British Colonies. But, one fundamental difference lies in the Declaration of Independence: the rights of men are derived from God, thus rights derived from decree by national leaders, or the government, are opposite from the concept of God-given rights, and the purpose of government being to protect the inalienable rights from God.

This difference between the two revolutionary actions is quite significant, yet the secular world does not easily acknowledge it. Although the United States is a nation based on the value of the rule of law, it is based upon the concept that government is primarily necessary in order to secure or protect the rights of the people, and it is the consent of those governed that provides the government its basis of power. However, underlying this system is the fundamental belief that there is a God who rules over the affairs of men, which means accountability to the “Supreme Judge of the world.”

In mid-May 1790, the National Assembly abolished the rights of all nobility, followed by the government control of the clergy through the Civil Constitution of the French Clergy, adopted in July of 1790. Since France was a Catholic-dominated nation in that time, the national government essentially decreed that the Catholic clergy were all suddenly government employees, and the state confiscated all church property. This must have been where Karl Marx got the idea that all private property should be turned over to a socialist government. But, the French did not know they were communists at the time, except they called themselves commoners or the Communes.

By November 27th, all of the clergy was to swear their allegiance to France—no notion of free exercise of religion. So, the clergy had been artificially disengaged from Rome—-the mother church, and while the Pope protested, he had little power over the new French government. Even the King of France had virtually no power over the French government; yet, the National Assembly was supposedly moving to create a new Constitutional Monarchy. And, when the Assembly finally established and ratified a Constitution in September of 1791, King Louis signed it. But, that would not matter,  even though a new French Republic was proclaimed one year later, in 1792.

On January 21, 1793, exactly four months after the Constitutional Republic was established, the people executed King Louis XVI. That ended the Constitutional Monarchy because, without a monarch, only one half of the equation exists. Once the king was executed, it opened the pathway for anyone to be executed. This was the turning point of the revolution into a more rapid descent into confusion, chaos, rampant suspicion, and widespread accusation, condemnation, and the execution of individuals without much control. In short, the people’s revolution, imbued with noble ideals, deteriorated into a reprehensible bloodbath of horror during the Reign of Terror.

A diligent student of history would recognize that the French Constitution did not last long. The French Republic that had been established in 1792 by the new constitution, which the king signed, was technically dead when they killed the king in 1793. But, the precious constitution the people had fought so valiantly for was essentially shredded by 1799. Practically, the French Revolution ended after ten years, after the French people had bankrupted their country, and after the people elected Napoleon Bonaparte as the lone Consul to help salvage their dreams. In the end, the people’s revolution failed to truly establish a stable nation of freedom and liberty; tyrants and tyranny smashed them completely. It is not a glorious history; it is a tragic history.

The question would be whether the Marxist revolutionaries in the U.S. are using the French Revolution as a model for the Civil War over control of America’s soul in this time. Are current violent events across the nation a foreshadowing of a Reign of Terror, in this nation? A popular concern over police brutality could be hijacked by the terrorist groups and could quickly devolve into confusion, chaos, rampant suspicion, widespread accusation, condemnation, and murders of innocent people with little control. Oh, wait! This, and more, is already happening right now – in 2020!

Jul 16 2020

The New Abnormal is Global Socialism


The new abnormal, heavily advertised and promoted by the Democrat Party and woke sycophants is a huge disaster unfolding

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh image

Re-posted from The Conservative Tree House By  —— Bio and Archives—July 15, 2020

The New Abnormal is Global Socialism

“Socialism is government force to control and change society.” – Paul B. Skousen

Ihave seen socialism creep into American education since 1979 when Jimmy Carter established the now massive bureaucracy called the Department of Education which became the blue print of socialist indoctrination in America. Through my experience first as a graduate student and then as a teacher in America, I also witnessed socialism advance in academia.

As a former citizen of a socialist republic for twenty years and after years of examining American society, I have seen in action most of the 46 goals of socialism as described by Paul B. Skousen in his book, The Naked Socialist.

Skousen’s highly accurate list describes the promotion of socialism and the U.N. as “the only hope for the world.” (#1 and #2)

As many Americans know, the U.N. and its many affiliates have managed to convince 178 countries to sign the U.N. Agenda 21 in 1992, later morphed into U.N. Agenda 2030, a document which controls every aspect of our economic and private lives through SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT and subservience to the whims of globalists, beginning with abolishing of private property and destroying the U.S., the last bastion that stands in its way.

The global green economy has been promoted for decades and the Democrat Party has officially forced it through the passing of its Green New Deal, which is neither green, nor new, nor a deal. It is a subjugation of the U.S. economy to the globalist U.N. Agenda 2030. (#4)

We saw the influence of the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. affiliate, and its false claims about Covid-19 which pretty much destroyed the robust U.S. economy and left millions unemployed, all for the common good.

Environmentalists and CDC doctors became controllers of everything we do as human beings and business owners. Everything was brought to its knees in a mere five months, including religion, education, and organized sports.

Liberals and the socialist Democrat Party have been advocating no borders and vilifying President Trump for securing the border. (#3)

One-world currency servicing the one world government is already being touted through the cashless society.  A fully cashless economy means EVERYTHING is digital, traceable, and controlled. (#5)

A Cashless Society

No cash means, among many other nefarious elements of control:

  • No odd jobs to make an extra payment for your mortgage or car
  • No summer cash earned during school
  • No cash from Grandma inside birthday cards and on holidays
  • No more piggy banks or savings for a special event/trip
  • No more rainy day fund
  • No more quick sale of that old bike or garage sales
  • No more hiring of teenagers to cut your lawn
  • No more collection for charity

Banks will have total control over every single penny you earn and it will be recorded electronically. If you misbehave or belong to a divergent thinking group, your electronic money will be unreachable until such a time that you have been scored socially adequate. Every movement will be recorded and traceable, no more off the grid economic activity. Every penny in your possession will be taxed and no more jobs under the table. There will be no more criminal and underground economic activity. (#27)

Somehow, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the nation is running out of change and stores are encouraging people to stop using cash. They say, money is dirty (it is literally and figuratively) and can easily spread disease. We seem to have managed fine since the invention of coins and paper money stashed in strange places circulated for millennia but suddenly they have become public enemy number one. (#5)

The paid mobs of rioters/protesters are holding glossy and preprinted signs advocating the U.N. goal of private property elimination, of private land, of wealth

Control of the Internet and installing a thought police on social media has become a way to silence and censor conservative and libertarian points of view under the excuse that such thoughts violate “community standards.” Such obscure community standards include only leftist opinions. Facebook, Twitter, and Google do a pretty good job of policing opinions they dislike and wish to squash. (#6)

Mobs of violent protesters and rioters and the vagina-hat women’s marches screech about economic equality,  which strictly speaking is impossible. Equal pay is also impossible as we all have different levels of education, qualification, experience, work ethic, skill, willingness to do dangerous and unpleasant jobs, etc. We also have employment laws in place that bar job discrimination based on race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, culture, or disability. (#8)

In line with U.N. Agenda 2030 recommendations, we have already seen many advances in regulating all transportation under the ruse of pollution limits, fuel efficiency, and preventing further damage to the environment. (#15) This also includes the nationalization of energy production under the excuse of equal access to natural resources. (#16)

The paid mobs of rioters/protesters are holding glossy and preprinted signs advocating the U.N. goal of private property elimination, of private land, of wealth, of suburbia living because it is socially unjust. People can only live well if all land is used for the “common good,” a key word for the communist collective. (#17)

Hollywood and the media have promoted for decades pornography, gender fluidity, and other promiscuous activities in order to destroy the family unit, marriage, and the Christian faith. (#18, #20, #21) Any degeneracy has been portrayed as “normal, natural, healthy.” (#19) Deviations from the two biological sex distinctions have mushroomed. (#22)

Students are controlled through socialist, social justice written textbooks and revisionist history in schools and NGO-driven (non-profits) environmentalism synchronized with U.N. Agenda 21

Using the environment as a ruse, socialist globalists have created a one world governing body (under United Nations) in order to control any economic activity and development as a SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT lynchpin goal.

The population has been forced into making “ecologically correct” choices – low-flush toilets, low-water washers, electric or hybrid cars, recycling, mandatory recyclable packaging, low-energy use appliances, CFL bulbs, solar panels, and rationed electricity access via controlled smart meters. (#32)

Students are controlled through socialist, social justice written textbooks and revisionist history in schools and NGO-driven (non-profits) environmentalism synchronized with U.N. Agenda 21 17 sustainable development goals. (#37)

The media has done a spectacular job of advancing socialism into society by controlling information and misrepresenting reality through daily lies in non-ending indoctrination of the pliable masses and low information voters. The juvenile attacks and insults on the President Donald J. Trump are never-ending and based solely on lies. (#38)

Socialism has marched unimpeded and is now devolving into Marxism, aided and abetted by other sources and means:

Presenting work as optional by providing funds from government for economic stimulus spending, unemployment (caused by the same people issuing the “generous” help from taxpayer dollars or from baseless money printing), endless welfare, illness, retirement. (#40)

Socialism has been a tragedy, failing miserably in all the tyrannical Communist Party-ruled socialist republics

  • Ignoring the Constitution and brainwashing people that it is an old-fashioned document. (#41)
  • Present Founding Fathers and American heroes as exploiters who did not care for the downtrodden. (#42) Making heroes out of cowards who burn the American flag and loot and burn stores while ignoring the real heroes. Use mobs to destroy historical statues and replace them with Marxist symbolism.
  • Discredit American culture and history in schools; present the discoveries and inventions of white men as supremacist and racist; use Caucasian academics to teach that whites are successful because of a media-manufactured construct called “white privilege.” (#43)
  • Government regulations in education, welfare, mental health, social agencies, arts, media, hospital care, doctor care, pharmaceuticals in an attempt to control everything. (#44)
  • Overt installation of socialism, beginning with the socialists in Congress, schools, and academia. (#45)
  • Use chaos and panic driven by the media and a viral crisis (Covid-19) to deploy top-down government control around the world and restriction on personal rights and freedoms—where and how to shop, worship, walk, get food, see a doctor, and how long to wear an oxygen-reducing mask. (#46)

The new abnormal, heavily advertised and promoted by the Democrat Party and woke sycophants is a huge disaster unfolding. Socialism has been a tragedy, failing miserably in all the tyrannical Communist Party-ruled socialist republics, but, if you ask the average indoctrinated and well-fed American students, they think that socialism/communism are better alternatives to the “evil” capitalism. I know firsthand, it is a gross distortion of reality.

Jul 15 2020

Black Death Plague Returning in Asia


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jul 15, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

I have explained that Socrates shows that this coronavirus is nonsense. The risk of a more serious disease comes in 2022. There are three new diseases forming in Asia. First, there is a new coronavirus that causes pneumonia, which is far more lethal than this concocted version that appears to have been manufactured to set in motion this Great Reset. Next, we have swine flu which has also just appeared and is far more serious than the nonsense they have used to kill the economy. Believe it or not, our RELIABLE sources have CONFIRMED that there are a few cases appearing of the Black Death — the bubonic plague — which killed around 50% of the population during the 14th century.

An old word of caution has been, “Be careful what you wish for!” This currency nonsense has been exploited to terrorize the population in order to deliberately redesign the world economy. There is ABSOLUTELY no historical precedent to lock down the entire world economy/population. You quarantine the sick, not the healthy. By forcing people to wear masks, they are breaking the bonds of civilization. From here on out, many will look at anyone else as a potential threat. That is the goal, for it prevents organized resistance. You cannot tell any facial expressions if they are joking or nasty. This is how you destroy society and it was the very objective of the Communists. We seem to be following the playbook of Joseph Stalin.

Jul 15 2020

Redesigning the World – The Great Reset


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jul 15, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Melbourne is getting locked down again. 5 million people on lockdown for 6 weeks at least! ‎People will only be allowed to leave home to go to work (if they can’t work online), grocery shopping, or for medical reasons.
‎All because of 191 alleged virus cases.

Catalunya is now mandating obligatory masks even where there are no people. In all public places incl. if you’re the only person there (say in a deserted park or street at a time when there is no one else).
They’re also openly saying masks and “social distancing” will be part of life now for the long term, i.e. forever or until everyone is vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Spain has extended the moratorium on payment of mortgages and rents for another 3 months (until end of September). No doubt they’ll keep extending it much longer than that. So, since March people don’t need to make their monthly mortgage and/or rent payments. In theory, the unpaid mortgage debts are just accumulating and will need to be paid once the moratorium ends (yeah, good luck with that). Rents won’t be paid, obviously, because there is no realistic way landlords could get this accumulated unpaid money from tenants. At present (and likely at least until the end of the year) they can’t even evict any tenant.
So everything will keep getting extended….and everyone will still pretend that once the “virus” is gone (or everyone is vaccinated) things will just switch back on and everything will return to normal.

PG

QUESTION: What about the rest of the billionaires. Can’t they see what these people are up to? Why have they not come to you to try to promote Socrates worldwide?

GW

REPLY: They think the people will simply surrender all their rights, their future incomes, and their assets just as Marx did. This is going to be very critical, for the rise in civil unrest Socrates has been forecasting is becoming obvious to many. The number of inquiries we are getting on a global scale is very interesting.

I have had no inquiries of that sort. You would think that some who are more Libertarian would start to take notice. But I doubt they will do so until it actually begins to threaten them directly. They fail to understand that this is a serious agenda and it is being well-organized and EXTREMELY well-funded. I would love to hear from some who are Libertarians — but I am not sure there are any. Most seem to be suffering from a guilt complex of earning too much and think they have to give back to the world by joining this New Green World Order that will ensure their own demise. They do not understand the politics behind the scheme.