Donald Trump is Pushing to End Healthcare Coverage for Millions

Even Obamacare’s biggest haters wouldn’t end it during the largest global health crisis in a century

To get us out of the Depression, FDR’s New Deal created a safety net for Americans and got people working again. In 2020, 1 in 4 Americans will be out of work. By pushing to end health coverage for millions — and limit it for tens of millions more — Trump is creating a Reverse New Deal, taking away our safety net as we loss employment.

Last week Trump doubled down on a meritless Supreme Court case to nullify the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) due to be heard this Fall. If successful, it would end health care coverage for 20 million more people and pre-existing condition protection would disappear for all.

It would also raise drug costs on millions of seniors, allow lifetime limits, end Medicaid expansion, raise prices on older people and people with pre-existing conditions, end out of pocket cost limits, end the public health and prevention fund, and end required preventive benefits:

Public Health and Prevention Fund: GONE
Marketplace tax credits and coverage for ~10 million people: GONE
Medicaid expansion currently covering ~17 million people: GONE
Protections for 133 million people with preexisting conditions when they buy coverage on their own: GONE
Allowing kids to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26: GONE
Ban on annual and lifetime limits: GONE
Ban on insurance discrimination against women: GONE
Limit on out-of-pocket costs: GONE
Improvements to Medicare, including reduced costs for prescription drugs: GONE
Essential Health Benefits: GONE
Required improvements to employer-sponsored coverage: GONE
Rules to hold insurance companies accountable: GONE
Small business tax credits: GONE

At a time of a global pandemic, when tens of millions more will be added to the list of people with preexisting conditions — and many will lose their jobs and require preexisting protections — this is an assault on older, poorer, and sicker Americans when they are getting ravaged by Covid-19.

During a pandemic, what puts me at risk puts you at risk.

At a time when some Americans are worried about their rights being infringed upon, Trump is asking Americans to give up rights so insurance companies can label people and deny them care.

In a time of COVID-19, ‘Obamacare’ still part of the action

WASHINGTON (AP) – COVID-19 could have stamped a person “uninsurable” if not for the Affordable Care Act. The ban on…

Just as we’re trying to contain outbreaks in this pandemic, Trump’s actions will only add fuel to the fire when hot spots break out.

National, state, and city uninsured rates would skyrocket.

The national uninsured rate would increase by 65%
In Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, the number of uninsured people would climb by more than 133%
In Florida, an additional 1.5 million uninsured people would drive up the state’s uninsured rate by 67%
The uninsured populations in Baltimore, Cleveland, Louisville, Philadelphia, Sacramento, and San Francisco would swell by between 130 and more than 170 percent
The uninsured populations in Albuquerque, Denver, Detroit, Portland, Seattle, Washington DC, and several California cities, including Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, San Diego, and San Jose, would roughly double, expanding by about 100 to 120 percent

All while Americans are losing access to health care in droves. 27 million more Americans have lost health care coverage due to Coronavirus. Trump is trying to keep it that way by trying to overturn the ACA.

Trump’s decision would be a massive blow to health care providers. At a time when we are bailing hospitals out with hundreds of billions of dollars, uncompensated care costs would increase by $50 billion.

It’s not as if this Reverse New Deal doesn’t benefit anyone. The rich will receive billions in tax cuts if Obamacare is overturned.

As Nicholas Bagley and I wrote about the original case, the case itself is a baseless cynical ploy that counts on judges acting on their politics:

Health care will define the midterms. Donald Trump’s move to gut Obamacare guarantees it.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party just put America’s health care squarely on the November ballot. After a year of…

Today, friend of the court briefs opposing this effort were filed by nearly everybody in health care — patients, clinicians, scientists, public health experts, conservatives, liberals. Over 70 leading health organizations and 56 leading legal and health experts filed amicus briefs. This would “plunge millions of Americans into an abyss of prolonged uncertainty.”

What’s next: Throughout the summer more briefs will be filed. Prior to the Coronavirus outbreak, the case was scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in October. Now it may be pushed off. We should know when in August.

Trump’s team of course is hoping for a delay. They don’t want this heard before the election. They would like to be able to pick more conservative Justices. It’s cynical.

I understand that the ACA has been a lightning rod issue for the last decade. As I came in to turn around and implement it, we had to spend nearly half our time defending it from attacks.

Trump has been no friend to Medicaid, Medicare or the ACA and his stance hasn’t been popular. Ripping out people’s health coverage and leaving them bare is hard to justify. But a global pandemic and manmade depression showed how much the ACA and more more are needed.

Still the pandemic was the perfect opportunity for Trump to back away from a fringe and radical effort to tear down the ACA. Who would end access to health care coverage during a time when 27 million new people have lost their coverage?

Even the greatest ACA haters wouldn’t get rid of it now. One would have to hate something far more than the ACA to pursue this now. The decision not only imperils the country, but Trump’s political future. The hatred and jealousy of Obama is all consuming.

Even in a global pandemic, some tribal habits run deeper: deeper than economic recovery, deeper than lives lost.

Those of us working across party lines to try to save lives know the favor would never be returned by this Administration if the roles were reversed. Yet we do it anyway. Too much is at stake. There is plenty of rhetoric that aims to divide the country right now. Most of it doesn’t amount to much. Some of it does but are natural tensions. Taking health care away in a pandemic rises to a special level.

Trump’s Reverse New Deal, taking health care coverage, liability shields for business, no front line protection, eliminated nursing home regulations, refusal to coordinate the Defense Production Act — they are all self-inflicted on top of the largest global health crisis of the century.

Why Crackpots, Lunatics, and Extremists Rule American Life — Even in a Lethal Pandemic

When I look around the world today, it strikes me that we’re living in the age of the sociopath. I don’t just mean that in the technical psychological sense of the word — a certain head of state and his goons come to mind — but first, in a deeper, truer, broader sense. Sociopathic: hostile to the idea, the notion, the purpose, of society. Not just “their” society or “mine” or “yours” — but the great and historic ideal of society itself. Sociopathy to the point that nations like Britain and America were simply unable to lock down in time, to protect society’s most vulnerable. Sociopathy to the point that Americans sunbathe on beaches while the death rate is the equivalent of a 9/11 every day. Sociopathy to the point that despite the fact that the infection hasn’t peaked yet, Trump is still trying to “reopen” the economy.

When you look at a generation of leaders failing ruinously to deal with any of the great challenges of the 21st century — inequality, climate change, mass extinction, stagnation, and now, a pandemic— it’s because most of them are profoundly, immovably hostile that there is such a thing as a society we should and must care for to begin with. When you look at fractured, riven countries, one after the other plunging into authoritarianism, it’s because large numbers of people have become deeply hostile to the notion of living in or being part of a society — not just theirs, but living beside anyone and caring for them, investing in them, nurturing them, period. When you see Americans protesting lockdown, armed with rifles— that, my friends, is textbook sociopathy, a kind of sneering contempt towards the idea that society exists, matters, counts, or is even necessary.

We are living in the age of the sociopath. Wherever I look, I see sociopathy at work. We often say that countries are divided today — but that’s not quite true, at least in the old sense of left versus right. What we should really see is that that many, many people have developed a deep enmity, hostility, antipathy to society itself. The idea of society. Its principles and values. Its founding notions, which I’ll come to. Its very essence. More and more people are simply rejecting “society” itself — not theirs, per se, but the concept itself.

The world is divided now into people that believe in society — and people that don’t, who believe in something more like tribalism, Darwinism, authoritarianism, hate, violence, and rage. That they should be supreme, above all others, that they are the center of the world, that nobody else and nothing else matters but them and their gratification. There is a kind of deep social nihilism at work in the world today — a kind of bitter disbelief that any kind of “we” exists. And from this hostility, this enmity, comes a surging aggression, bitterness, rage, animus — that’s tearing the world apart today, knocking back to turbo-charged regress. And it is this force at work in Britain and America’s responses to Coronavirus.

You don’t have to look much further than America — the world’s reigning champion of sociopathy — to see all this in action. America’s long championed the idea that, as Margaret Thatcher once famously said, “there’s no such thing as society.” You might not — but generations of American leaders advanced bizarre and strange notions that basically rested upon the idea of society not needing to exist. Hence, Americans privatized everything from energy grids to schools, hospitals and medicine, universities and roads. Generations of Americans came to be staunchly “conservative” — not genuinely interested in conserving anything, really, but only in tearing down whatever remained of a functioning society. They succeeded — to the point that today teachers are being armed in schools, suicide is skyrocketing, the average person’s life has fallen apart, all while billionaires are becoming trillionaires.

Of course, Americans didn’t believe in society because they couldn’t — America was founded on the notion that some people aren’t human at all, so society, in the modern sense, could never exist at all. Only something more like a caste system could, which is why the American elite and what’s left of the middle class (not much) still rejects the idea of society today. “I won’t stay home to save their lives! Those dirty, filthy people!” But much of the rest of the world doesn’t have this strange and grim history. And yet instead of having learned anything from all this, many nations are beginning to follow suit. What the…? And there’s Europe — slashing investment instead of spending.

America’s cautionary tale — its weird, foolish journey of sociopathy — contains many lessons for the future, for the world, even for Americans. Some of them are simple.

There’s a certain kind of American, now legendary the world over, who thinks that carrying a gun to Starbucks, not vaccinating their kids, denying their neighbors retirement, and denying their own families decent healthcare, is the pinnacle of intelligence, civilization, decency, and progress. The rest of the world, and the rest of America, has come to know such people as the American Idiot. The American Idiot, it seems, knows no bounds. Today, for example, their latest and greatest cause is to protest against lockdown, reopen a pandemic-ridden society where the infection rate hasn’t even fallen yet, thus ensuring that death on a mass scale becomes death on an historic one. The question therefore arises: are such people (for whom the idea of a society of equals, who people are to respect, care for, nourish, and protect) simply… sociopaths?

I mean that in this sense: to the American Idiot, society doesn’t really exist. Everyone is an enemy, a rival, an adversary, cannon fodder. Come down with a deadly pandemic? Too bad for you. You must have been weak, and only the strong survive. This kind of attitude, which betrays a stunning indifference to everyone else’s life or death, is surely the essence of sociopathy. So: are we living in the age of the sociopath? And isn’t that one of the things the pandemic proves, despite all the feel-good stories of doctors and nurses? That many of us have become hardened to the point of indiffierence about life and death? But can you have a functioning society made of sociopaths — and if you can’t, what percentage of sociopaths does it take to destabilize a functioning society for everyone else?

One of the things that has gone badly wrong in America is that the idea of freedom itself seems to have turned sociopathic. I carry a gun to Starbucks, so kids have to do “active shooter drills,” and pretend to die, traumatizing them for life. I deny everyone else decent healthcare, access to medicine, a visit to the doctor. I withhold retirement and safety nets, and supports from everyone else. I’m “free” of obligations and responsibilities to care for, protect, and invest in anyone — including myself. But is that really freedom? Or is it something more like irresponsibility, negligence, and self-destruction? In America, freedom now means the right to inflict serious and injurious harm on a whole society. In the rest of the world, these actions are considered uncivilized. But when a society consists of people fighting for freedom as the right to injure everyone else, where can it really go except backwards and downwards, like America has?

If a people believe “society doesn’t need to exist,” they are also going to end up going without all the things that a society provides. Public goods will never develop — like public healthcare, affordable education, safety nets, and so on. As a result, inequality will skyrocket, because people will have to pay capitalists monopoly prices for the things they should have simply given each other. Because there’s little social investment in such a society, it will soon enough grow impoverished — after all, capitalists are hardly interested in sharing the wealth, and the gains they accumulate will simply go to yachts, mansions, and shares. All that describes America perfectly, doesn’t it?

Those economic effects are also accompanied by equally damaging sociocultural effects. No notion of a common wealth, a public interest, shared values can emerge if people don’t believe in society to begin with.That’s exactly what happened in America, too — there is literally no functioning notion of public interest or common good at work left in its institutions, which is why, for example, hedge funds are allowed to “raid pensions” (or, put in plain English, steal your money.)

In the end, these three effects — runaway inequality, growing poverty, which means the collapse of a middle class, and the erosion, the disappearance, of the notion of a public interest — what do they culminate in? They culminate, quite naturally, in the corrosion and eventual collapse of a democracy. After all, a democracy can hardly function when people don’t have anything left in common — when they are at each others’ throats, for the simple stuff of survival, whether money, food, healthcare, or education. Bang! You can see that lesson illustrated in the last catastrophic three years of America, during which democracy essentially imploded into fascist-authoritarianism (and if you think I’m kidding, go ahead and tell me who else puts kids in camps.)

But I think these basic lessons still don’t go nearly deep enough to really come to the heart of the matter. Why does “society” matter? Why should we believe in this thing, this project, this great ideal, this historic endeavour, called “society”?

One of the greatest lessons we’ve forgotten is what a “society” really is. The word “society” comes from “societas,” which means a kind of companionship, a certain association with others, or at least the hunger, the willingness to. But companionship also implies things which are crucial. It says we don’t act in bad faith. It says we regard others as our equals. It says we don’t try to stab them in the back. It says we aren’t just playing games with them, toying with them, for our own advantage — grinning, but only hoping to get one over on them.

All of these things seem to be vanishing, don’t they? And in fact, it’s exactly these things which seem to have vanished in our dislocated, zombified, post-modern age. We aren’t companions any more. We’re something more like adversaries, enemies, opponents. We are constantly battling one another, aren’t we? Our lives have become more and more defined by combat, by opposition, by difference.

But in what? For what are we constantly battling one another? Just the stuff of survival. In America, you are made to battle everyone else for…everything. Nothing is your right, really. You must fight bitterly for education, for healthcare, for a little bit of money, for food to eat, for a roof over your head. How can such people really be “companions” — when they are busy being enemies, opponents, adversaries? And when you look at the world this way, why would you want to stay home to keep others safe? And yet if a society is an organization of companions, of fellow travellers, of pilgrims all wearing humble cloth walking the same road — how can such a thing made of competition ever be a society?

And yet that is what the growth of capitalism to global proportions did. A few brave nations fought it — Canada, Europe, and so on — but in the end, even their resistance is crumbling. They too are slowly giving up on the idea of society as an organization of companions, of genuine equals. People in them too are becoming Americanized — being made to fight each other for the basics.

This kind of gladiatorial mode of organization isn’t a society, in the true sense. It’s just something more like a jungle, an arena, take your pick. I think the most accurate term is Social Darwinism — only the strong survive! Capitalism’s fundamental principle. But it’s profoundly incompatible with the essence of a what a society is. Capitalism says that we’re all greedy, stupid individuals, who have nothing but self-interest, after all, and that our only purpose in life is to blindly obey it, every nanosecond, so that we can maximize our own profits. But this starkly and absolutely incompatible with the following ideas: a public interest, a common interest, shared values, joint investment, public goods, me caring about you, virtue in any sense whatsoever. If the only person I am allowed, encouraged, rewarded to care about is me — then what room is there for a society to exist? If a million such people exist, do they make a society — or something more like its opposite, a ruthless Darwinist machine?

But isn’t that just what our institutions, from companies to schools to thinking itself do — reward people, train them, indoctrinate them, to only care about themselves, or at least care about themselves first and most? It’s no surprise, then, that every single kind of social institution you can imagine, from unions to marriage to friendship is in severe and ruinous decline. If we don’t believe in society, what need is there for any social bonds, really? Ah, but that’s exactly what capitalism wants. What do you call a group of people without social bonds? Prey.

We are going to have to rediscover — and reimagine — this great and beautiful idea of society if we want to survive the 21st century as societies. One of the biggest reasons that our societies are collapsing now is also one of the most obvious, hiding in plain sight — many of us don’t believe in society anymore. Not just in “ours” — but in the idea that there is anything beyond ourselves, our own appetites, our own advantage, our own aggressive, naked self-interest at all. That’s hardly a surprise. This century, middle classes are growing poorer — and people growing people struggle just to subsist.

And yet this sharp turn away from society, and towards narrow self-interest, is having catastrophic effects. It has corroded the idea of the public interest, of the common good, of shared values. It has breaking the back of democracy. It is causing a volcanic surge of white-hot rage to explode around the globe, as little entitled self-interesteers don’t win the power and control and status they need to feel secure. It is legitimating the worst of us, all over again, everything from the supremacism and fascism of Trumpism to the extreme nationalism of Brexit. It is causing the dislocation of technologically depressed generations, who, unable to form real bonds with one another anymore, are turning to drugs and suicide. The turn towards self-interest is especially ruinous in an age in which humanity needs to pull together if it wants to survive in any real sense of the word.

We are not going to make it as little groups of competitive, antagonistic individuals, battling for dwindling resources — playing out games of pointless, meaningless status competition for little capitalist baubles — while the capitalists laugh at our folly, stupidity, weakness, and powerlessness. The fascists and authoritarians that fill their pockets will pick us off one by one — after the tides and seasons have famished and starved us. We are only going to make it through this century as societies. In the end, as a society of the human race for the first time — as one band of companions, walking beside one another, not climbing atop one another, not dragging one another down, all on the same difficult and strange and beautiful road home. The one that leads us through the valleys of stardust and midnight, to our truest and deepest selves.

Coronavirus will accelerate and finalize America’s grim transformation into poverty, paralysis, and collapse — the lack of response to it will probably finish off what’s left of the American economy

Another 3 million people filed unemployment claims last week, bringing the total since the beginning of the pandemic to a staggering 33 million. How much is that, in context? The US labour force is 165 million people. 33 million people means a full 20% of the labour force is now unemployed.

But even that’s an understatement. Here’s another, truer way to think about it. These numbers mean that, since the the employment to population ratio has crashed to just fifty percent. That means: just half of the American population is now employed.

These are numbers so catastrophic they make economists like me shudder. They have no modern parallel whatsoever. They point to an emerging depression — call it the Coronavirus Depression — that’s probably going to be greater and worse than the Great Depression. That’s because even the Great Depression had a New Deal. America, instead, has Donald Trump.

Coronavirus — or more accurately — the lack of response to it will probably finish off what’s left of the American economy. America will end up a country with permanently lower levels of all the following: employment, income, savings, trust, happiness, assets, and so forth. America was already in the process of becoming something very much like a poor country, with the failed politics of one, too — but Coronavirus will accelerate and finalize America’s grim transformation into poverty, paralysis, and collapse.

I know that sounds improbable, maybe even absurd, to some. I don’t much like writing in such terms myself. So let me spell out just how and why.

These shocking, unreal unemployment numbers are like the shockwave of a great tsunami, or the tremors that signal an earthquake spiking off the Richter scale. They’re a beginning, something like a plume of smoke to be followed by a deafening explosion.

This presentation PROOVES WITHOUT DOUBT that America is in for a major fight that will put you and your family in the firing line, literally… So make sure you watch this presentation while it’s still online…

Why? The logic of depression is simple — Keynes discovered it a century ago. It involves two things: money, and confidence. An economy undergoes a shock — a stock market crash, a natural calamity, or, in this case, a pandemic. I lose my job. I stop spending. So do my neighbours. Our local businesses — who usually exist on the margin, with little in reserve — begin to go shutter their doors, as a small but crucial number of customers stays away. That causes yet another wave of unemployment, which causes yet another wave of bankruptcy, and so on. Until, at last, the vicious spiral has engulfed the whole economy.

By that point, five transformations have happened — that usually spell ruin for a generation or more.

First, because waves of businesses have closed, the nature of unemployment changes: it goes from a short term challenge to find work, to a long term lack of jobs at all. You can already see that happening in America. Many of the jobs lost now aren’t coming back — ever. Those businesses, small and medium sized ones, are gone for good. Their owners will spend years in liquidation — if they’re lucky. How many will ever start businesses again?

Bang! The few jobs that are left are “low-income service jobs” offered by mega-monopolies, which means delivering groceries and driving cars and walking pets. But they don’t provide stable incomes, benefits, guarantees, much less raises, career paths, and so on But when economy’s labour force…goes nowhere…what future can it really have?

That brings me to the second transformation depressions wreak. Economies grow permanently poorer. Yes, as in “forever.” That’s already happening in America, too. yesterday’s if not great but somewhat decent jobs were already being substituted away by the new, gruesome “gigs” that modern-day American techno-capital offers — driving an Uber, delivering an Instacart, selling a pallet on Amazon — but Coronavirus has accelerated that transition, massively. Megacorporations aren’t going to magically hire huge numbers of people once they’ve found out they can make do with permanently lowers levels of hiring. But lower levels of hiring across the economy mean that workers have less bargaining power. Bang! Incomes fall — the share of the economy going to working people craters. What’s the net result? Society grows poorer.

What happens to poorer societies? They’re left in a kind of terrible paradox, which is my third transformation: they can’t afford the very things they need to survive most. Why is it that the average American is the only person in the rich world by now who votes against their own healthcare, retirement, education, childcare, and so on? Because they can’t afford it. 80% of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck before Coronavirus. Who can afford to pay an extra 5% or 10% in taxes for decent social systems? Nobody, really, except the already rich — who don’t need them. Hence, the famous paradox of the American Idiot: people who vote against their self-interest. It’s not their fault, really: they have no choice. They can’t afford to vote for things like public healthcare.

America was already becoming too poor a society to have functioning public goods, like healthcare or retirement for all. Coronavirus is going to seal that fate. America will be poor now — far too poor to ever really make the transition to having decent public goods. Think of that full half of the American population who’s now not employed. How exactly are they going to afford the higher taxes it takes to have a European or Canadian style social contract? They struggled to before — and after Coronavirus, it’s going to be flatly impossible.

That’s another of depression’s vicious cycles: it makes nations poor, and they end up being unable to afford decent being modern societies at all, places in which people support one another with expansive social contracts, in the end — because when people can barely even afford self-preservation, how can they support anyone else’s quest for a better life, too?

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That brings me to my fourth transformation: as a result of depression, an economy’s whole structure tends to change. As groups, classes, segments. Think of America not so long ago. It’s structure resembled a bell curve. A broad middle class, a small number of rich, and a larger — but still small — number of poor. And then around 2010, for the first time, America’s middle class became a minority. The gentle bell curve was on its way to becoming something more like a U-shape: a caste society of very rich, and everyone else: the imploded middle and the old working class who became the left-behinds, all of whom became the new poor, that 80% living paycheck to paycheck.

Coronavirus will accelerate that change, too. America’s already dying middle and working class will finally crumble and coalesce into one vast permanent underclass. America will have effectively a massive pool of something very much like easily, algorithmically exploited technofeudal neoserfs — people who’ve reverted to servitude to make a living, only their overseer is an app. Those “low income service jobs” are economists’ jargon for “people becoming servants again.” To whom? To a kakistocracy, if you like — a class that’s the opposite of aristocrats, who were supposed, at least, to the best and brightest. America’s ruling class is now visibly made of predators, the kinds of men who put men in cages, or addict a whole society to painkillers, just to make more money they’ll never spend.

That brings me to my fifth and final transformation. What happens to societies with imploded structures? The gentle bell curve of a modern society — a broad middle — is so crucial because it underpins and anchors democracy. Democracy is a luxury. It takes time, money, effort. To be a democratic society. A society of servants is rarely a truly democratic one — think historically for a moment — for the simple reason that, well, servants are too busy being exploited around the clock to really engage with the res publica, the body politic. So when a society’s structure implodes from a gentle bell curve into a U-shape — it’s usually accompanied by political implosion, too. Into authoritarianism, theocracy, fascism, or any number of tyrannies.

Modern history’s full of examples. In the Arab world, in Latin America, or take the canonical example, Russia. As the Soviet Union failed, what emerged wasn’t a wise and gentle democracy — but Putin’s Neo-authoritarian dystopia. But that was inevitable — because Russia never really evolved much the past the U-shape of inequality, unable to develop the bell curve of moderation that democracy requires.

America’s social structure collapsing foretold the rise of Trumpism. If you understood what the implosion of the middle class meant in 2010, you could have predicted Trumpism a mile out — I did. And what I see today is…more, only worse. Societies growing poorer can’t just not afford functioning social systems — they can’t afford democracy, either. America was on that trajectory — but Coronavirus is like adding a rocket engine to it. How democratic a nation do you think America will be when a full half of its population is now not in employment? You can already see that Americans hover between despising each other, and being totally indifferent to each other. When self-preservation is an everyday struggle, that’s the result. But the struggle for American self-preservation is about to get a whole lot harder, more intense, more painful, more tragic. And that spells the end of America’s time as a democracy, too, most likely.

Furthermore, because in America, lockdown is being lifted prematurely — before the infection rate has even peaked — the emerging depression is going to linger. If the pandemic lasts another three months, six months, year — how long will the depression last? The answer is: every day of pandemic is going to add up to weeks, maybe months, of depression, as people lose confidence in visiting shops, spending money, or hiring anyone else. Just as in any relationship, once confidence is lost throughout an economy — it doesn’t magically spring back the next day: it takes far, far longer to regain confidence than it does to destroy it, and it’s much, much more expensive, too.

This is what a dying economy looks like. Yes, a dying economy is a nation plunging into poverty — like America. But what people often fail to understand is that it’s much more than that, too. A dying economy takes systems and institutions and public goods with it. A dying economy takes a functioning society with it — it’s gentle bell curve, it’s norms of trust and acceptance and coexistence and tolerance. And a dying economy, ultimately, takes a sane, decent, sensible politics with it — the basic elements of democracy — too.

When an economy dies, everything we cherish and treasure is dying. Jobs, yes — but so much more than that. What is really withering is human potential itself. What can a nation of people who’ve become servants, being exploited to the bone, accomplish, really? Discover, create, build, share, nurture? They will be too busy driving cars and cleaning homes and delivering gadgets — just to pay off that crushing mountain of unpayable debt — to create tomorrow’s great breakthroughs, whether books, films, vaccines, experiments. That’s the tragedy. See many breakthroughs happening in Russia these days? See much civilization, many great films or books or art or science? Even much democracy? Nope. That’s because it’s now a poor society, where the struggle for self-preservation has taken over — making anything nobler or greater or truer flatly impossible, an unaffordable luxury. That is where America is headed now as the Coronavirus Depression emerges as the first Greater Depression of the 21st century.

The economy may not be the roots of a society — call that something more like values, aspirations, ideals — but it is the trunk. And when the trunk is sundered or split by lightning — which is what this pandemic is — then no matter how strong the roots, often, the tree never grows full and strong again. That, my friends, is America’s probable future. Not “recovery.” But an accelerating descent into poverty, powerlessness, self-destruction, and chaos, by way of a depression, that will easily last a decade. It’s not pretty. And if you think all the above is what Americans so often call “negative”, then I invite you to consider this. Do you think that we can change the future without understanding the present?

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The hunger pandemic reminds of the movie the Hunger Games, as it is premised on similar circumstances of a dominant few commanding who can eat and who will die

By the end of 2020 more people will have died from hunger, despair and suicide than from the corona disease. We, the world, is facing a famine-pandemic of biblical proportions. This real pandemic will overtake the “COVID-19 pandemic” by a long shot. The hunger pandemic reminds of the movie the Hunger Games, as it is premised on similar circumstances of a dominant few commanding who can eat and who will die – by competition.

This hunger pandemic will be under-reported or not reported at all in the mainstream media. In fact, it has started already.

In the west the attention focuses on the chaos created by the privatized for-profit mismanagement of the health system. It slowly brings to light the gross manipulation in the US of COVID-19 infections and death rates – how allegedly hospitals are encouraged to “admit” COVID19 patients – for every COVID19 patient the hospital receives a US$13,000 “subsidy” (under Medicare), and if the patient is put on a ventilator (average death rate 40% to 60%), the “bonus” amounts to US$ 39,000. According to Dr. Senator Scott Jensen, Minnesota in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham:

“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”

(Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview)

In real life, poor people cannot live under confinement, under lockdown. Not only have many or most already lost their meager living quarters because they can no longer pay the rent – but they need to scrape together in the outside world whatever they can find to feed their families and themselves. They have to go out and work for food and if there is no work, no income – they may resort to ransacking supermarkets in the city or farms in the country side. Food to sustain life is essential. Taking the opportunity to buy food away from people is sheer and outright murder.

“Every child who dies from famine in the world – is a murder” – Jean Ziegler, former UN-Rapporteur on Food in Africa.

Whoever the architects behind this COVID-19 pandemic –who have the universal order to instruct national governments to follow strict total lockdown– are wittingly or unwittingly responsible for “crimes against humanity”.

This process is committed on a worldwide scale. It is unprecedented in the history of humanity. Only few countries have not or only partially following the total lockdown tyranny, and thereby saving a considerable segment of their social wellbeing and economy. Is the objective to dominate the world under a New World Order, aiming at a totally controlled and massively reduced world population?

Who will live and who will die? The stated objective of the depopulation agenda is to reduce world poverty. How? through tainted toxic vaccinations, rendering African women infertile. (The Gates Foundation with support of WHO and UNICEF have a track record of doing so in Kenya and elsewhere, see here Kenya carried out a massive tetanus vaccination program, sponsored by WHO and UNICEF); or letting the “under-developed”, the already destitute, die by famine – preventing them from access to sufficient food and drinking water. Privatizing water, privatizing even emergency food supplies – is a crime that leads exactly to this: lack of access due to unaffordable pricing.

Should this not be enough, “Lock Step” has other solutions to trigger food shortages. HAARP can help. HAARP has been perfected and weaponized. According to US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, weather modification can be used defensively and offensively, i.e. to create droughts or floods, both of which have the potential of destroying crops – destroying the livelihood of the poor.

And if that is not enough, the 2010 Rockefeller Report also foresees food rationing, selectively, of course, as we are talking about eugenics. Let’s not forget Henry Kissinger’s infamous words he uttered in 1970: “Who controls the food supply controls the people – the quote goes on saying,

“Who controls the energy can control whole continents;

who controls the money can control the world.” .

A recent Facebook entry (name and location not revealed for personal protection) reads as follows:

“….. In the poorer country, where I live, the entire village is on lockdown since March 16. Here the people have nothing to eat … The wife of my main worker was raped and beaten to death. She was of Chinese descent. In spite of not being allowed to go outside, the people were starving and rampaged walking miles from farm to farm destroying everything. I have lost my entire livestock, fruits, vegetables. The houses were burned and the vehicles, tools etc. stolen. I am bankrupt with nobody around who can give money to rebuild. My workers cannot be paid. Their families are also starving. More malnutrition and undernourishment which will lead to a higher starvation rate or death from other diseases. How many will commit suicide through landing on the streets completely impoverished? – How many died in India trying to walk literally up to thousands of miles to get back home in the hope of finding refuge, after all public transportation was shut down and all had to go into lockdown. I am sure that these numbers will be a lot higher than the number who have died from the virus as well as will increase the numbers for those dying of next year’s flue due to a weakened immune system.”

And as an afterthought …. “Maybe the elites are planning depopulation. It sure looks like it.”

This happened somewhere in the Global South. But the example is representative for much of the Global South, and developing countries in general. And probably much worse is to come, as we are seeing so far only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that worldwide unemployment is reaching never-seen mammoth proportions, that nearly half of the world’s workforce – 1.6 billion people -may be out of work. That means no income to pay for shelter, food, medication – it means starvation and death. For millions. Especially in the Global South which has basically no social safety nets. People are left to themselves.

The New York Times (NYT) reports (1 May 2020) that in the US millions of unemployed go uncounted, as the system cannot cope with the influx of claims. Add these millions to the already reported more than 27 million unemployed, the tally becomes astronomical. The same NYT concludes that the millions who have risen out of poverty since the turn of the century, are likely to fall back into destitution along with millions more. Latest FED forecasts predict unemployment could reach up to 50% by the end of 2020.

Dying of famine – mostly in the Global South, but not exclusively – is an atrocious death for millions, maybe hundreds of millions. Dying in the gutters of mega-cities, forgotten by society, by the authorities, too weak to even beg, infested with parasites due to lack of hygiene – rotting away alive. This is already happening today in many metropolitan areas, even without the corona disaster. These people are not picked up by any statistics. They are non-people. Period.

Imagine – such situations in large cities as well as in rural areas, under the Rockefeller “Lock Step”, the death toll could be even higher.

The current lockdown – brings everything to halt. Practically worldwide. The longer it lasts the more devastating the social and economic impact will be. Irretrievable.

How much is it worth to you to literally have an unlimited water supply for your family? The Water Freedom System Will Completely Change Our World

Not only production of goods, services and food – comes to a halt, but vital supply chains to bring products from A to B, are interrupted. Workers are not allowed to work. Security. For your own protection. The virus, the invisible enemy could hit you. It could kill you – and your loved-ones too. Fear-Fear-Fear – that’s the motto that works best – it works so well that people start screaming – gimmi, gimmi, gimmi- gimmia vaccine! – which brings a happy grin on Bill Gates’ face. As he sees the billions rolling and his power rising.

Bill Gates along with WHO “he bought” will become famous. They will save the world from new pandemics – never mind, their side effects – 7 billion people vaccinated (Bill Gates’ dream
) and nobody has time to care or report about the side effects, no matter how deadly they may be. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) may be slated for the Peace Nobel Prize – and, who knows, Bill Gates may become one of the next Presidents of the dying empire. Wouldn’t that be an appropriate reward for the world?

Meanwhile the rather cold-blooded IMF maintains its awfully unrealistic prediction of a slight “economic contraction” of the world economy of a mere 3% in 2020, and a slight growth in the second half of 2021. The IMF’s approach to world economics and human development – to social crisis, is fully monetized and lacks any compassion – and thus, becomes utterly irrelevant in the age of corona. Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, mere extension of the US treasury, they are passé in the face of an economic collapse, for which they are also in part responsible.

“Debt Jubilee”

What they should do – perhaps IMF and WB combined – is call for a capital increase of up to 4 trillion SDRs (as was suggested by some of the IMF Board Members) and use the funds as a special debt relieve fund, a “Debt Jubilee Fund” for Global South Nations. Handed out as grants. This would allow these nations to get back on their feet, back to their sovereign national monetary and economic policies, recovering their internal economy, with a national currency, public banking and a government-owned central bank, creating jobs and internal autonomy in food, health and education.

Why is this not happening? – It would require a change in their constitution and a redistribution of voting rights according to new economic strength of nations. China would become a much more important player – with a more important share and decision-making role. Of course, that’s what the US does not want to happen. But the unwillingness to adapt to new realities, makes these institutions irrelevant to the point that they should and might fade away.

Interestingly, though, two of the three economic projection scenarios of the IMF, foresee another pandemic, or a new wave of the old pandemic in 2021. What does the IMF know that we don’t?

Juxtaposed to the insensitive approach of the global financial institutions and the globalized private banking system, the World Food Program warns (25 April 2020) that the COVID19 pandemic will cause “famines of biblical proportions”; that without urgent action and funding, hundreds of millions of people will face starvation and millions could die as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As it is, every year about 9 million people die from famine in the world.

The WFP Executive Director, David Beasley, told the UN Security Council that in addition to the threat to health posed by the virus, the world faces “multiple famines within a few short months,” which could result in 300,000 deaths per day—a “hunger pandemic.”

Beasley added that even before the outbreak, the world was “facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II” this year due to many factors. He cited the wars in Syria and Yemen, the crisis in South Sudan and locust swarms across East Africa. He said that coupled with the coronavirus outbreak, famine threatened about three dozen nations.

According to the WFP’s “2020 Global Report on Food Crises” released Monday (20 April ), 135 million people around the world were already threatened with starvation. Beasley said that as the virus spreads, “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”

The famine pandemic is further exacerbated by the ongoing refugee crisis – which is also a catastrophe of misery – hunger, disease, lack of shelter – total lack of hygiene in most of the refugee camps.

Professor Jean Ziegler, Sociologist (University of Geneva and Sorbonne, Paris), Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Committee, recently visited the refugee camp of Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos. He described a situation where 24,000 refugees are cramped into military barracks that were built for 2,800 soldiers, live under calamitous circumstances – lack of potable water, insufficient and often inedible food, clogged and much too few stinking toilets…. diseases no end. COVID19 would just be a sideline.

These people who fled Europe-and-western-caused warzones, destroyed livelihoods – are being pushed back by the very European Union, as most countries do not want to host them and give them a chance for a new life. This atrocious xenophobic behavior of Europe is against the Human Rights that all EU countries signed and against internal EU rules. They are a sad reminder of what Europe really is – a conglomerate of countries with a history of hundreds of years of colonization, of merciless exploitation, plundering and raping of the Global South.

This abjectly atrocious characteristic – shamelessly continuing to this day – seems to have become an integral part of the European DNA. These wars and conflicts are willfully US-NATO made, for power, greed – to maintain the US military industrial complex alive and profitable – and as a stepping stone towards total world hegemony.

The refugees emanating from these conflict zones, their fate and famine will be added to those starving from the also man-imposed corona crisis. The death toll from sheer hunger and famine-related causes, may become astronomical by the end of 2020, way-way outweighing and dwarfing the doctored and manipulated COVID-19 figures.

Is there hope? Yes, there is hope, as long as we live.

The world has to wake up.

Seven billion people under lockdown- wake up! Realize, what is happening to you, all under false pretenses to control humanity, to digitize and robotize your very lives.

What better way to do this than under the pretext of locking you away “for your own safety”? – Defy these rules, stand up against these invisible omni-powerful self-appointed rulers, who only have the power, we, the People, give them, or allow them to take from us. Because all they have is money, and corrupted media that spread fear and more fear to keep locking you down.

My final words: follow you heart. Open your heart to love and beyond your five given and media-manipulated senses and enter a higher consciousness.

Get out of FEAR, get out of the lockdown, stand up for your rights, for your freedom. Because freedom and liberty cannot be bought with money, nor trampled by the media. They are inherently within us all. If enough of us open our hearts to LOVE, to an all-englobing love, we will overcome this small psychopathic elite.

If you’re interested in learning more old remedies, you should read The Lost Book Of Remedies.

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How Freedom Became Free-dumb in America

The American idiot is, by now, a figure that’s the stuff of myth and legend across the world. Nobody else is really quite sure: are Americans really like this? This…well…laughable? Yesterday, they were the kind of people who made their kids do “active shooter drills,” meaning masked men burst into classrooms…and pretend…to kill them. What the? Today, they’re the kind of people who happily congregate in parks and on beaches during a global pandemic…when the lunatic fringe amongst them isn’t protesting for “liberation” in the first place. What on earth?

I don’t use the term as an insult — the American idiot. I mean it in a precise way, as I try to remind people. For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots.

Now, I’m going to generalize. But I don’t mean that all Americans are idiots. I mean that, for example, more or less everyone who wants to carry a gun to Starbucks, deny their neighbours healthcare, make people beg for medicine online, and not let anyone in society ever retire…all of those people in the world, by and large, are Americans. Nobody else — nobody in the whole world at this point in history — thinks such things are remotely desirable. Hence, the American idiot. It means: the world’s largest and most hardened subset of idiots at this point, in the Classical Greek meaning of the word, is largely American.

You don’t have to think very hard to understand why my Italian friend laughed at such a person. We’ve had many serious conversations over the last few months. “How are things in Italy going”, I ask, trying to be gentle. He looks away, in grief, and says simply: “Dificile.” The dogs play. I wonder if his loved ones are OK. He tells me stories of a society pulling together, to fight a deadly disease, whose toll has been heavy and grave. Is it any wonder that, looking at Americans gathering in Central Park, on Long Beach, he’s shocked into laughter? We’re lucky he’s laughing. What he really feels, I’d bet, is a kind of horror, combined with contempt. The very same contempt the Greeks felt for…their idiots.

‘Freedom?’ I’d bet he thinks. ‘More like freedumb.’

When Matteo, when Ben, when every single person I know who’s not American, when the world looks at America, it sees the American idiot, and what it tries — and usually fails, because it’s lost for words — to express is something like this: can people really be this selfish? This oblivious? This…thankless? Why do they keep voting for less healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, happiness, trust, year after year — even the so-called good ones? What kind of people…why are the literally the only people left in the whole world who do that? And then…complain bitterly about not having…the very things…they deny each other? Who can even make sense of this, the bizarre circular firing squad of social suicide that America has become? But all those, of course, are key traits of the idiot. The answer — sadly, I think — is: yes, people can really be this way.

Perhaps because they don’t know any other way. Maybe because it’s all they’ve ever been taught or told. That’s not an apologia for the American idiot, by the way. Or is it? Even I wonder. Still, let me try to explain as best I can — America’s strange and complicated with freedom, one so perverse that freedom became twisted into something very much like its opposite. It has to do with the way Americans think — unsubtly, narrowly, single-mindedly — about what freedom is, and means.

About half a century ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided freedom into two categories — maybe you already know them. Negative freedom, or freedom from. And positive freedom, or freedom to. The theory then went — and this became the basis of generations of American thought — that only the freedom from was worth developing and cultivating.

The freedom “to”, on the other hand, was vilified as something that only communists and socialists would want. Why? Because my “freedom to” — say to be educated, or to be healthy — requires your input, help, cooperation. But American thinking — which became obsessed with individualism — couldn’t admit or permit that, because then maybe you weren’t “taking responsibility for yourself” and all the rest of the jargon.

All this dates back, of course, to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Uberman. It’s not too hard to see why a society that was born in slavery, and continued into segregation, in which horrors like crippling and maiming people for the color of their skin were perfectly alright — why a society like that ends up prizing freedom from. America’s obsession with freedom from dates right back to the slave-owner’s desire for freedom from government intervention, law, common decency, any tiny shred of humanity — to have the power to exploit and abuse human beings on an unthinkable scale. There’s a straight line from Nietzsche’s “master morality” naturally dominating the “slave morality” to Berlin’s “freedom from” any restraint on power — and that straight line is the one American thinking, still backwards, mired in the logic of domination and exploitation, traced.

Americans don’t like it when I make those links for them. But they are as plain as day. You only really have to look at Europe or Canada to see the contrast.

There, the idea of freedom itself evolved. Away from “freedom from” — which is what the early European revolution were about, for example, when the French abolished the formal class system, freedom from nobility and monarchy and so forth — and towards “freedom to.”

By the end of the Second World War, Europe had done something radical and transformative: written the “freedom to” into its constitutions. People would now have expansive freedoms to — freedom to have good healthcare, education, retirement, income, savings, and so forth. It’s true that today’s Europe is forgetting about that breakthrough, but it’s not true that it wasn’t history changing. The power of the freedom to gave Europe history’s highest standards of living — in just one human lifetime. Nothing has been seen like it ever before — and maybe nothing will be ever again.

You might have noticed, though, that I’m still accepting Berlin’s old dichotomy: freedom from and freedom to. I reject it. I think the dichotomy itself is a mistake — maybe the formative mistake of American ideas. Isn’t good education also just freedom from ignorance? Good healthcare freedom from illness? And so forth. I think that a century ago, trying to neatly cleave freedoms into the good kind and the bad kind, American thinking made a huge, terrible mistake. One which trapped it to circle a desert for a century — and then find itself in a dead end.

You can see that dead end everywhere today.

In the cruelty, aggression, rage, violence, hate which characterize American life as especially brutal. Americans are always trying to escape from any kind of obligation or responsibility to…anything. Each other. History. The future. Just common decency. Even just basic humanity. Who else makes their kids…pretend to die? And then pretends that doesn’t scar kids for life? What the? That’s why the world doesn’t know whether to be horrified, shocked, repelled, or astonished by America — and it laughs. Nervously, oddly, baffled. What Americans don’t know is that that laughter is a world being polite.

Here’s how extreme America’s belief in freedumb — freedom as the absence of any kind of obligation or responsibility to anything greater than narrow, immediate, infantile self-satisfaction — has gotten. Americans aren’t just congregating in parks and beaches during a global pandemic. They’re literally the only people in the world who just voted against better healthcare (from Bernie and Liz) in the middle of a pandemic. Think about the scale of such folly for a moment. What kind of people vote for worse healthcare…during a pandemic? John Cleese would struggle to make a face that expressed the surreal tragicomedy of such a thing. But that’s what Americans did…what they do, over and over and over again.

Why? Because they still believe — even if they don’t think they believe — in Berlin’s tired, weary, flawed old distinction. Freedom has only come to mean the removal of any restraint — negative freedom — on the exercise of individual desire, the satiation of individual appetite. What freedom still doesn’t mean in America is any of the following, good healthcare, retirement, education, and so forth, because what freedom has never meant is any form of collective action.

Let me put that more sharply. What if the only way that I can have decent healthcare is for you to have decent healthcare — first? What if the only for me to have a decent retirement is for us all to have one, first? You see, that logic — which is the math of public goods — makes a mockery of Berlin’s dichotomy. Then, what we don’t need is simple “freedom from” some kind of restraint — but the “freedom to”…collectively organize, coordinate, take action.

Freedom from can give us liberty as individuals, it’s true, from kings, and even governments. But only the freedom to can give us liberty as societies, groups, classes, nations. These two kinds of freedoms might exist in tension — but try to have one without the other, and the result is a spectacular collapse. Freedom to without freedom from gave us the Soviet Union. But freedom from without freedom to gave us America, the failed state, the world’s first poor rich country. Gentle Europe, wise New Zealand, humble and kind Canada — which balance the two — have found a kind of miracle in that equilibrium.

Matteo and Ben often ask me: “What wrong with Americans?” All my non-American friends do, as do everyone’s. What they really mean is: “why don’t they get it? Why can’t they change?” I tell them that Americans will never really change. They used to think I was kidding. Looking at Americans voting down better healthcare during a pandemic…then happily crowd parks and beaches…after protesting for liberation from lockdown…they’re beginning to believe me.

Change? You know about sunk costs, I’m sure. You should let them go…but you can’t. Think of a bad relationship. You know you should break up. But how can you let all that investment go? So it is with Americans and freedom. They’re too invested in the fools’ idea of freedom that wrecked their future to really begin to understand that it is a fools’ definition of freedom. They’ll go on thinking, in my estimation, that freedom means things like this.

Carrying a gun to Starbucks — so kids have to do active shooter drills. Being able to “choose” between a million health insurance plans, none of which covers you — so that you don’t have to pay higher taxes to the hated government. Making everyone stand on their own two feet — even while every force in society is cutting those very limbs away. Never taking any kind of collective action as a society — that’s socialism! That’s communism!! Those things are bad!! They’re terrible!

No, my friends. Americans will never understand the miracle of European social democracy, of Canadian investment in each other, of New Zealand making a difficult, joyous peace with a broken past. They won’t. Because they can’t? Because they don’t want to? Because nobody teaches them about the gentle and beautiful power in cooperation, in dignity, in respect for the self and others as more than a thing of appetite? Because they’re trapped by a sordid history — which they secretly care little about overcoming?

Maybe, in the end, it’s just all the above.

Freedom! Here I am, the American idiot, carrying my gun to Starbucks, before I go to Walmart, where I’ll choose between a million different flavors of the Everyday Low Price, and then I’ll dream about being Great Again, while I drive my big car down the big, empty highway, listening to some bellowing mullah of capital and individualism and cruelty telling me to hate and rage a little more. Along the way, so what if I create my very own exploitation, abuse, misery, decline into poverty, despair, degradation, dehumanization? Hey! Don’t tell me any different!

Isn’t that what freedom really is?

AS IF YOU DID NOT KNOW NO ONE WANTS TO UTTER THE POSSIBLE TRUTH WHEN IT COMES TO THE COVID-19 VIRUS.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has the potential to cause not just millions of deaths but a global depression that will resemble a global war.

Ultimately both will be determined not by the spread of the virus in wealthy countries but how it evolves (which is almost impossible to predict ) in what is called third world countries.

Dare I say it if no vaccine is found with such a contagious virus unimaginable devastation is becoming a very real possibility.

Sure, if the current level of disruption is manageable our way of life will return drip by drip until the virus hits ill-equipped countries when it will return with a vengeance.

Then we won’t be worried then about the potential cascading economic effects.

It could end up for lack of better terminological words like Donal Dump’s might voice it, ” It’s going to be great. Really big and really really serious.”

What can be done?

The UN is too cumbersome.

The big powers of the financial world are exhausted from a decade of fighting anemic growth.

With global debt three times, the size of the global economy coordination of any global response is unlikely in an increasingly fractured world.

Multinational institutions have little or no teeth when it comes to day to day issues.

So we the people of the world (While vaccines are in development and initial treatments are showing some signs of success, the potential human impact of the disease is immense and a cause for global concern.) need to start thinking about it now and not just muddle through, hoping to put it all back together with sticking plaster over the next few years.

Broadly speaking, the economy will cease to function. Capitalism will be suspended.

At the outset, politicians will tend to prefer maintaining the current system – even though it will have been completely broken by Covid-19.

Globalization will go into reverse.

The speed of any reversal will depend on the type of government that emerges from the crisis. There is a higher likelihood of more nationalist, protectionist, and less cosmopolitan politicians emerging in countries traumatized by the virus.

The world is mired in the worst disaster of our times.

Unpalatable as it may sound, we must anticipate the even bigger problems of climate danger.

I fear they will be unimaginably catastrophic in countries with fragile infrastructures, economies, and medical services.

Of the 195 countries in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that virtually all have confirmed cases.

Despite compelling evidence of this danger, the climate crisis, too many, still feels futuristic.

The much-needed stimulus packages that governments are readying to revive their economies and lessen the suffering must ameliorate rather than aggravate the even more deadly climate crisis.

Should COVID-19 cases skyrocket in regions of extreme poverty, conflict zones and refugee camps the effects will be deadly and will jeopardize decades of global health progress and efforts to eradicate poverty for generations to come.

It is in these very places that the coronavirus can infect not thousands, but millions of people.

According to the World Bank, 10% of the world’s population lives on less than $1.90 a day. That’s 700 million or 7 billion fingers that can buy a bar of soap.

How we respond to this pandemic will reshape humankind.

No one is safe until we’re all safe

There are few times in collective memory that call us to a united human

community as now.

Our duty calls us to stop the third wave.

Politics and Corruption at the World Health Organization (WHO)

Would the world be getting along any better without this outfit, which is in theory such a good idea? Would we be in better health?

The question is as serious as it is relevant.

Though even one death is one too many, compared with the alarmist forecasts from this professional organisation that were foisted on all the ministries of health the world over, one could say that the H1N1 viral pandemic, version 2009, has so far produced not much more than a mouse.

But what a fabulous show for the media!

What a brilliantly organized panic!

How many millions of euros spent, and best of all, what worrying rumours, about the health risks linked this time to the vaccination, which might not even work!

Thus arose a psychosis that might have stolen the headlines even from a much more palpable threat, much more deadly and with effects that have already been felt to the bone by a large part of the world’s population: the climatic effects of pollution and of the way of life engendered by the currently prevailing ideology, that of extreme and unfair capitalism, “deregulated” as it is called in the sober phraseology of its well-heeled master thieves.

Meanwhile the media, ignoring for a moment its celebrities and football matches, chose to focus the limelight – and thus the gaze of the spectator sheep – on the representatives, experts and spokespersons of this organization, the WHO. Until this year its existence may have been news to some people, but now its importance is plain to see.

We have been shown people with serious faces and a professional air, the sort to whom ordinary mortals tend to ascribe genuine competence and evident integrity.

Their herald, elevated by some to hero, is called Margaret Chan. If her manner does not excite much sympathy, her curriculum vitae speaks for itself.

WHO: the Facts

Like other world organisations born from the ashes of the war of 1940-45 (the WTO, successor to GATT, the IMF, the UN, successor to the League of Nations), the WHO is a sort of transnational superministry, in this case for health.

Its power overrides that of its national equivalents. It is not subjected to genuinely democratic electoral procedures, in the sense of representing the choice expressed by the populations of its member countries. This is true of all these organisations that in fact control our daily lives in their respective fields. Its constitution came into force on 7 April 1948.

All these organisations are in a way like the arms, the tentacles of an enormous octopus whose purpose is to coordinate, improve and reinforce significant action on a planetary scale.

To clarify a crucial point: it would be misleading to think that these organisations undertake anything at all independently of each other. One could as well imagine that the liver can go on doing its own thing without being at all involved with the heart or the kidneys.

All of them work towards the same goals, each in their own specialist sphere, and all of them answer to the UN and to those who provide their funding.

The WHO has nothing to blame itself for

If you go to the official WHO site, you will of course get the impression that this organisation has a spotless record, and deserves to be praised for its humanitarian deeds.

It’s a bit like Monsanto, this multinational that dominates the market in agribusiness and wants to impose on the whole world its GM seeds complete with the Terminator gene (1), yet which tries to make you believe that the well-being and development of poor countries is its main concern.

Anyway, as in any court of law, it’s democratic, enlightened, modern, to give the “accused” party the chance to put its case.

As for the accusations of corruption and collusion with the pharmaceutical companies in the context of the worldwide vaccination campaign of 2009, it is Margaret Chan in person who has stepped up to the plate to defend the reputation of the WHO.

It’s important to realise that the accusations are weighty, well argued, and made by institutions that are well established, and pronounced by scientists and investigative journalists who are credible and trustworthy. It is difficult to dismiss all of them as a handful of conspiracy theorists, as regularly happens nowadays as soon as an interesting and well-argued debate is launched on a sensitive issue (the official version of the 9/11 attacks, the GIEC’s theory of global warming, Iran’s nuclear intentions, and so on).

It’s true that there is a certain logic in having a measure of collaboration between the WHO and the pharmaceutical companies that produce the medications.

However it is legitimate to ask questions about the exact part played by these firms in the decisions finally taken by the WHO, and on their real influence.

According to the WHO, there are many guarantees in place for managing potential conflicts of interest, as well as how they are perceived by public opinion.

The external experts who advise the WHO are […] obliged to provide a declaration of absence of conflict of interest as well as full professional and financial details that might compromise the impartiality of their opinions. Procedures are in place to identify, research and evaluate any potential conflicts of interest, to divulge them and take appropriate measures, such as excluding an expert from a consultative body, an expert study group or a meeting.

Still according to the WHO, the members of the Emergency Committee have to swear to the absence of any conflict of interest. The members of the Committee are chosen from a list of about 160 experts covering a range of areas of public health. The international health regulations (IHR) that came into force in 2007 envisage also a ruling that aims to coordinate the response to public health emergencies on an international scale, such as the H1N1virus pandemic. But the IHR also includes provisions for setting up, if a pandemic arises, an Emergency Committee that advises the Director General on such questions as the need to raise the level of alert, to recommend temporary measures, and so on. All the members of the Emergency Committee will have signed a confidentiality agreement, provided a declaration of no conflict of interest, and agreed to devote time as a consultant to fulfil their duty, without compensation.

Admirable principles, but without any basis in fact!

More details regarding France:

Who are the French experts? On behalf of France, we find among the consultants for the WHO and the Group SAGE, several members of the Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP), an agency that lists its industrial partner as Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi Aventis. We also find Prof. Daniel Floret, President of the Comité Technique de Vaccination, who lists numerous collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry; several members of the Sanofi Pasteurlaboratory, declared as such; a member of the Sanofi Pasteur MSD laboratory; and some other members from the pharmaceutical industry who are based in France.

Thanks to the site Santé log for providing the extracts (in italic, above) of a document from the WHO.

The WHO must give an account of itself

If, unlike most people who only stop to admire the window display, we actually go into the shop, we’ll discover two things:

While the fine words are there to soothe our feelings of distrust, it is still true that the close ties between the WHO experts and the pharmaceutical industry are very dangerous, very obscure and difficult to unravel.

Without being a conspiracy theorist for the fun of it, as if it was a sport or a pastime – as the crusaders backing the official versions and the window-dressing of the official sites seem to think – one thing is clear to my mind, that being obscure does not sit well with being truthful.

If the complexity that characterizes all modern institutions bewilders the outsider and puts major hurdles in the way of ordinary people like me pursuing their interests, it is an unintended consequence of modernity and of the ever-multiplying range of tasks and objectives.

Being deliberately obscure is something else. It is intended to hide something, to conceal intentionally.

The financing of the WHO

Have you ever heard anything about public-private partnerships?

In the beginning, the WHO was supposed to receive funds only from the governments of United Nations members, but a few years ago, in order to swell its coffers WHO set up what it calls a “private partnership” that allows it to receive financial support from private industries. But which industries?

Since that time its credibility, seriously tarnished, has not improved very much, and its independence is seriously questioned because of its total lack of transparency with regard to the scientific proof that supports its recommendations, and its collusion with the multinationals. It is obvious that on the world stage, business and politics have a powerful influence on health. (2)

The spotless reputation of the WHO was already besmirched by a book that came out in 1997, Le OMS : Bateau ivre de la santé publique [The WHO, the drunken sailor of public health], ed. L’Harmattan, by Bertrand Deveaud, a journalist, and Bertrand Lemennicier, professor of economics, who had spent two years making enquiries throughout the world and consulting numerous official and confidential reports. Two medical journals well-respected by the profession had already sown doubts as to the integrity and the infallibility of the WHO, The British Medical Journal (BMJ) in regard to the management of the bird flu in 2005, and The Lancet (3), which described the WHO as an institution that was corrupt and on its last legs.

I leave you to ponder awhile these phrases, reported by the journalist Sylvie Simon in one of her articles (4), particularly the passages in bold (my emphasis):

Doctors Andrew Oxman and Atle Fretheim, from the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services and Dr John Lavis, from McMaster University in Canada, interviewed the management of the WHO and analysed its various recommendations. Andrew Oxman concluded that “it is difficult to evaluate the confidence thatone can have in the recommendations of the WHO without knowing how they were prepared.”* (*Obscurity).

“We know that our credibility is at stake,” admitted Dr Tikki Pang, director of research for the WHO. “The lack of time and the shortage of information and of money can sometimes compromise the work of the WHO.” Some senior officials of the organisation have also admitted that in many cases the proof that was supposed to be the basis of a recommendation did not exist.

Many testimonies have revealed that when the results don’t match those that the industries and companies are hoping for in order to validate their products, standards are altered and the results manipulated.

Contrary to any procedure that is genuinely scientific and independent, which should base its conclusions on the verified results of its experiments, it seems that the tendency is to do just the opposite, and that results are adapted to produce the desired conclusions; desired that is by the firms producing the medicines, vaccines, and other products concerned.

To cite one example:

Dr Oxman criticized the WHO for having its own quality control methods. In 1999 when its views on the treatment of hypertension were criticised, mainly because of the high price of the medicines recommended without any proof that they were more effective than cheaper ones, the Organisation published some “recommendations for preparing recommendations” which led to a revision of the advice on treating hypertension. (5)

Other murky issues have been brought to the surface by courageous researchers: cholesterol and statins (6), mobile telephony, with manipulation of the data on the harmfulness of electromagnetic radiation (7)…and of course, serious doubts are being expressed on the real danger of the 2009 viral H1N1 pandemic, which has enabled the pharmaceutical companies to rake in millions of dollars of profit.

The bank JP Morgan on Wall Street estimated that, thanks mainly to the pandemic alert issued by the WHO, the pharmaceutical giants, who also finance the work of the ESWI run by Albert Osterhaus, were set to make $7.5-$10 billion profit. (8)

The ESWI, European Scientific Working group on Influenza, describes itself as “a multidisciplinary group of leaders of opinion on the flu, whose purpose is to fight against the repercussions of a flu epidemic or pandemic”. As its members themselves explain, the ESWI, directed by Osterhaus, is the central pivot “between the WHO in Geneva, the Institut Robert Koch in Berlin and the University of Connecticut in the United States”.

The most significant thing about the ESWI is that its work is entirely financed by the same pharmaceutical laboratories that are making millions thanks to the pandemic emergency, while it is the pronouncements made by the WHO that compel the governments of the whole world to buy and to stock the vaccines. The ESWI receives funding from the manufacturers and distributors of the H1N1 vaccines, such as Baxter Vaccines, MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and others, including

Novartis, who produces the vaccine, and the distributor of Tamiflu, Hofmann-La Roche.(9)

Who is Albert Osterhaus?

Nicknamed “Dr Flu”, Albert Osterhaus, the best known virologist in the world, official consultant on the H1N1 virus to the British and Dutch governments and head of the Department of Virology in the Medical Centre of Erasmus University, has a seat among the élite of the WHO gathered together in the SAGE Group, and is president of the ESWI, which is supported by the pharmaceutical industry.

In its turn the ESWI recommended extraordinary measures to vaccinate the whole world, considering that there was a high risk of a new pandemic which, they insisted, could be comparable to the terrifying pandemic of “Spanish” flu in 1918. (10)

Albert Osterhaus is not the only senior consultant to the WHO whose name is implicated in the dossiers on corruption and possible collusion between the WHO and the pharmaceutical firms, and an industry that wants to sell its products whatever it costs: others are David Salisbury (3)(9), Frederick Hayden (9), Arnold Monto (9), Henry L. Niman, Klaus Stöhr (11).

Professor David Salisbury, who is attached to the British Ministry of Health, is the head of SAGE at the WHO. At the same time he directs the Consultative Group on H1N1 at the WHO. Salisbury is a fervent defender of the pharmaceutical industry. In Britain the health action group One Click (10) accused him of concealing the proven correlation between vaccine use and the steep increase in autism in children, as well as the correlation between the vaccine Gardasil and cases of paralysis and even death.

Dr Frederick Hayden is at the same time member of SAGE at the WHO and of the Wellcome Trust in London; in fact he is one of the close friends of Osterhaus. In exchange for “consultative” services, Hayden receives money from Roche and from GlaxoSmithKline as well as from other pharmaceutical giants engaged in producing goods connected with the H1N1 crisis. (12)

There is yet another member of the WHO enjoying close relations with the vaccine manufacturers who profit from SAGE’s recommendations, in the person of Dr Arnold Monto, a consultant paid by the vaccine manufacturers MedImmune, Glaxo and ViroPharma. (13)

[interview with Wolfgang Wodarg]…Without going so far as outright corruption, which I’m sure exists, there are a hundred and one ways in which the labs can bring their influence to bear on decisions. I noticed specifically, for example, how Klaus Stöhr, who was the head of the epidemiology department at the WHO during the time of the bird flu, and who had therefore prepared the plans for dealing with a pandemic that I referred to earlier, had meanwhile become part of the senior management at Novartis. And similar links exist between Glaxo, Baxter, etc. and influential WHO members. These big firms have “their people” in the system and somehow manage things so that good political decisions are taken – that’s to say, decisions that enable them to pump the maximum amount of money out of the taxpayers. (14)

As for “Dr Flu” Osterhaus, it’s so bad that the Dutch Parliament (15) has serious doubts about him and has opened an enquiry into conflict of interest and bribery.

Outside the Netherlands and the Dutch media, only a few lines in the well-respected British journal Science(16) have made mention of the sensational investigation into the affairs of Osterhaus, who still has the confidence of his Minister of Health.

What all these experts have in common is the concealment of their connections with the pharmaceutical companies while they hold a senior and influential position in the decision-making hierarchy at the WHO, and the fact that they are never challenged. The conflict of interest is obvious, yet systematically minimized.

It is not their expertise or their intrinsic competence that is being questioned, but their independence and their integrity.

The whole matter is sufficiently serious, given the topic in question – our health, to sow doubt and to justify pursuing every investigation, every question, with means that match the urgency of the issue, and by organizations of irreproachable reputation that are truly independent.

It is not the WHO that should investigate the WHO

It’s as if the accused was allowed to lead the enquiry into the crimes imputed to them. If I were an impartial prosecutor, not aiming for scandal or publicity but only for the truth, whatever it may be, even if it is worse than the worst of the lies, I would call to the bar:

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, president of the Health Commission of the Council of Europe. This member of the German parliament, an epidemiologist, has just requested the Council for a commission of enquiry. In his interview with the paper Der Spiegel, Dr. Wodarg did not hesitate to talk about “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century”. (17)

Next, Alison Katz,

A researcher who spent 17 years at the WHO, and who on 22 January 2007 sent an open letter to the new director of the agency, the Chinese Margaret Chan, accusing the organisation of “corruption, nepotism, violation of its statutes and ineffectiveness in its internal control system”, and concluding that “the WHO has become a victim of neo-liberal globalisation”. She denounced “the commercialisation of science and the close ties between the industry and academic institutions” and “corporatist” private science, and considered that “the WHO ought to be the leader of a movement to transform the way in which scientific research is done, including its sources of funding, as well as the acquisition and use of knowledge” and that the officials of an international organization do not have the right “not to know”. (18)

Lastly, Tom Jefferson, a renowned epidemiologist, member of the Cochrane Collaboration, an organisation of independent scientists including a commission that evaluates all the studies carried out on influenza. In an interview given to the German magazine Der Spiegel, he revealed the consequences of the privatisation of the WHO and the way in which health has been turned into a money-making machine. (19)

Tom Jefferson: “[…] one of the most bizarre characteristics of this flu, and of all the saga that has played out, is that year after year people make more and more pessimistic forecasts. So far none of them has come true, but these people are still there repeating their predictions. For instance, what happened to the bird flu that was supposed to kill us all off? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that the whole industry is starting to hope for a pandemic.”

Der Spiegel: “Who are you referring to? The WHO?”

J: “The WHO and those in charge of public health, the virologists and the pharmaceutical laboratories. They’ve created a whole system around the imminence of a pandemic. There is a lot of money at stake, as well as networks of influence, careers and whole institutions! And the minute one of the flu viruses mutates we’d see the whole machine roll into action.” (20)

When he was asked if the WHO had deliberately declared a pandemic emergency in order to create a huge market for the H1N1 vaccines and medications, Jefferson replied:

“Don’t you find it remarkable that the WHO had changed its definition of a pandemic? The old one specified a new virus, one that spread rapidly, for which there was no immunity and that caused a high rate of illness and of death. Now these last two points on the levels of infection have been deleted, and that’s how the A flu became classed in the pandemic category.” (21)

Very conveniently, the WHO published the new definition of a pandemic in April 2009, just in time to enable them, on the advice coming from, among others, SAGE, “Dr Flu” (alias Albert Osterhaus), and David Salisbury, to declare that mild cases of the flu, renamed A H1N1, signalled a pandemic emergency. (22)

Yes, Tom Jefferson, Alison Katz, Wolfgang Wodarg, among others, and investigative journalists who are neither conspiracy fanatics nor yes-men, would be on my list of witnesses to call.

Conclusions

Strangely enough, while the media were so agitated at the peak of the virus panic during 2009, as soon as a few rumours started spreading about strange goings-on at the WHO involving some scarcely known names, they switched off the spotlights, preferring to redirect the docile spectators to more amusing topics such as the antics of Johnny Hallyday, the comeback in Belgian women’s tennis, the escapades of Michel Daerden or of Nicolas Sarkozy (politicians Belgian and French respectively), and the hopeful proclamations of Barack PeaceObama – at the same time hinting that, while that was all well and good, we should still, as our obedient ministers were saying, be sure to go and get vaccinated while the wicked flu was offering a brief respite.

The dirty conspiracy rumours of corruption, the names so well-known in the business but so unknown to the general public – let’s forget them! Above all, let’s not rock the boat!

The vaccines have been bought, the recommendations given and millions of doses of poison already injected.

Does the truth frighten us so much that we prefer lies, and more and more of them, in our controlled lives, even when it is our health that is at stake?

It may all look very complicated but actually it is very easy.

For each new item of information, a “lite” sweetened version is made up, relayed by the bought-and-paid-for media and sold to us, the viewers, who swallow it without question.

The main drivers of this globalisation are fear and ignorance, the result of this insipid simplification of everything, which takes away any depth, any questioning that is necessary, in fact indispensable, if one wants to understand what is really happening.

It’s the same again with terrorism, where any unexplained event is always blamed on the same scary monster: Al Qaeda – without raising the slightest query about this attribution.(23) An explosion? Al Qaeda. A hijacking? Al Qaeda. An attack on civilians? Al Qaeda. An earthquake? Al Qaeda.

It’s the same again with the dogmatic statements about manmade global warming. This no longer brooks any discussion, any further research, any questioning: it’s a heresy to even think of it. Human CO2 is the Al Qaeda equivalent of the uncertainty factor in global warming.

It’s the same again with pandemics and other health cataclysms of the future. As the GIEC tells us about CO2, the WHO simplifies the problem for us and we thank them: “Get vaccinated. Don’t ask any questions. We have the most trustworthy and competent experts. The pharmaceutical firms, overflowing with philanthropy, are working day and night to save us.” And we believe it.

Humanity of the 21st century is in grave danger, a deadly danger that lurks within each of us.

It’s not Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (24), this Nigerian student of 23, the Christmas present from Al Qaeda to the war strategy of Peace Obama.

It’s not a virus, the St Valentine’s present to Baxter, GSK, Novartis and the rest.

It’s not our CO2, Nature’s present to our bankrupt politicians. It’s not even Al Gore, that serial sweet talker, condemned by the courts in Great Britain for no less than 11 flagrant lies and misrepresentations noted in his film, which inconveniences only the truth. (25) It’s not Al Qaeda, or any other extremist Islamic organisation.

All those are nothing but scary monsters that press the fear button, that’s to say, they are enemies but relatively minor ones.

It’s our abdication. That’s our enemy number one.

We are living in a time when globalisation has not, as it was expected to in the beginning, brought about a world that is better governed, more just, more transparent, but on the contrary, has created a system that is harder to decipher and understand, and is all-powerful.

This brew of omnipotence and dense secrecy, of being all-powerful and totally resistant to democratic investigation, is deadly. That’s the greatest threat to mankind today.

We have surrendered, preferring to go on deluding ourselves, when so many signs that something is going wrong should have impelled us to regain control.

Instead of which we put ourselves in the hands of these great authorities who are suspected of bribery and corruption, endowed with bad faith and a cynicism that balks at nothing.

Guided by the media and looking only at the things they turn their spotlight on, held by the hand, we choose to believe them instead of asking questions.

Given the present situation, I’ll answer my own question without hesitating:

The world would be getting along much better without these international organisations whose original mission has been hijacked for the sake of financial profits for the few.

As far as the WHO is concerned, we would be in much better health.

Are Enemies Lining Up for Revenge in the Wake of the Coronavirus?

When in trouble politically, governments have traditionally conjured up a foreign enemy to explain why things are going wrong. Whatever one chooses to believe about the coronavirus, the fact is that it has resulted in considerable political backlash against a number of governments whose behavior has been perceived as either too extreme or too dilatory. Donald Trump’s White House has taken shots from both directions and the response to the disease has also been pilloried due to repeated gaffes by the president himself. The latest mis-spoke, now being framed by Trump’s press secretary as sarcasm, involved a presidential suggestion that one might consider injecting or imbibing disinfectant to treat the disease, either of which could easily prove lethal.

So, the administration is desperate to change the narrative and has decided to hit on the old expedient, namely seeking out a foreign enemy to distract from what is going on in the nation’s hospitals. The tale of malevolent foreigners has been picked up by a number of mainstream media outlets and has proven especially titillating because there is not just one bad guy, but instead at least four: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The accepted narrative is that America’s enemies are now taking advantage of a moment of weakness due to the lockdown response to the coronavirus and have stepped up their attacks, both physical and metaphorical, on the Exceptional Nation Under God. The most recent claim that the United States is being targeted involves an incident in mid-April during which a swarm of Iranian gunboats allegedly harassed a group of American warships conducting a training exercise in the Persian Gulf by crossing the bows and sterns of the U.S. vessels at close range. The maneuvers were described by the Navy as “unsafe and unprofessional” but the tiny speedboats in no way threatened the much larger warships (note the photo in the link which illustrates the disparity in size between the two vessels).

Donald Trump characteristically responded to the incident with a tweet last Wednesday: “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” Although no context was provided, the president commands the armed forces and the tweet essentially defined the rules of engagement, meaning that it would be up to the ships’ commanders to determine whether or not they are being harassed. If so, the would be able to open fire and destroy the Iranian boats. Of course, there might be a physical problem in “shooting down” a gunboat that is in the water rather than in the air.

In the Mediterranean the threat against the U.S. consisted of two Russian jet fighters flying close to a Navy P8-A submarine surveillance plane. The Russian fighters were scrambled from Hmeymim air base in Syria after the U.S. aircraft approached Syrian airspace and Russian military facilities. One of the fighters, a SU-35 carried out an “unsafe” maneuver when it flew upside down at high-speed 25 feet in front of the Navy plane.

Also in mid-April, North Korea meanwhile fired cruise missiles into the Sea of Japan amidst rumors that its head of state Kim Jong Un might be dead or dying after major surgery. President Trump was unconcerned about the missiles and also commented that he had received a “nice note” from the North Korean leader.

Wars and rumors of wars notwithstanding, China continues to be the principal target for Democrats and Republicans alike on Capitol Hill. GOP congressmen are reportedly urging sanctions against China while there are already a number of coronavirus lawsuits targeting Chinese assets in U.S. courts, at least one of which has a trillion dollar price tag. Theories about the deliberate weaponization of the Wuhan virus abound and they are also mixed in with stories of how Beijing unleashed the weapons and is now engaged in Russia style social media intervention to promote the notion that the United States has proven incapable of handling what has become a major medical emergency. However, those who are pushing the idea that the Chinese communist party has declared war by other means fail to explain why the government in Beijing is so keen on destroying its largest export market. If the U.S. economy goes down a large part of the Chinese economy will go with it, particularly if China’s second largest export market Europe is also suffering.

The craziness of what is going on in the context of the disruption caused by the coronavirus has apparently increased the normal paranoia level at the top levels of the U.S. government. Pentagon plans to fight a war with Russia and China simultaneously, first mooted in 2018, are still a work in progress in spite of the fact that Washington has fewer cards to play currently than it did two years ago. The economy is down and prospects for recovery are speculative at best, but the war machine rolls on. Many Americans tired of the perpetual warfare are hoping that the virus aftermath will include demands for a genuine national health system that will perforce gut the Pentagon budget, leading to an eventual withdrawal from empire.

In spite of the hysteria, it is important to note that no Americans have been killed or injured as a result of recent Iranian, Russian, Chinese and North Korean actions. When you station ships and planes close to or even on the borders of countries that you have labeled as enemies it would be reasonable to expect that there will be pushback. And as for taking advantage of the virus, it is the United States that has suggested that it would do so in the cases of Iran and Venezuela, exerting “maximum pressure” on both countries in their times of troubles to bring about regime change. If those countries that are accustomed to being regularly targeted by the United States are taking advantage of an opportunity to diminish America’s ability to intervene globally, no one should be surprised, but it is a fantasy to make the hysterical claim that the United States has now become the victim of some kind of vast international conspiracy.

A President who suggests the answer to a global pandemic is…injecting disinfectant…drinking it…and that’s after he cut funding for the WHO. “Lockdown liberation” protesters who call the act of staying at home “slavery.” Government after government which disregarded warning after warning about said pandemic…to catastrophic effect.

When I look around the world today, I see shattering ignorance at work, like never before in our lifetimes. Shall I name a few kinds? Bigotry, racism, hate, xenophobia, nationalism, greed, spite, cruelty, fascism. Ignorance upon ignorance, of all the devil’s many kinds.

But the really strange, bizarre, and weird thing isn’t all that — ignorance has always been around, hasn’t it? It’s that today, ignorance is willful. Deliberate. Proud. Boastful, cocky, and exultant. Pompous, high-sounding, and aggrandizing. It waves banners and sings chants and discusses philosophies. Ignorance today thinks of itself as Aristotle by way of Descartes and Kant. The really strange thing about now is that ignorance parades itself as enlightenment.

Ignorance — of every kind, day after day. That’s bad enough. But ignorance proudly presenting itself as wisdom, truth, and enlightenment? In bestsellers, through YouTube “personalities”, by college professors? Now that’s tragedy and comedy both. And yet people buy it. Why? I think this weird phenomenon — of flaunting ignorance as grand-sounding enlightenment — is made of a fatal cocktail of cognitive dissonance, infantile regression, and malignant narcissism.

Let’s start with the first one. I tell someone a fact. “Hey, do you know that Americans live five years less than Europeans?” Bang! Along comes a string of justifications, denials, misinformation, Fox News talking points, followed by mistrust, personal attacks, and finally, rage. Here’s another example. “Hey, did you know Brexit will cost you thousands every year, and make you poorer to begin with?” Snap! The very same string, in response. Don’t you think that’s odd? I do.

What happened, really? Instantly, massive cognitive dissonance was triggered. New information, which conflicts sharply with preexisting beliefs. Old myths. In this case, that America’s exceptional, special, the best, a Promised Land. Or British triumphalism, the idea that by carrying on, it will win, it doesn’t need anyone else, and never has. Whatever the myths may be, the point is the same. New information confronts old myths. The old myths triumph — in a frenzy of defensiveness, people end up lashing out, instead of “processing”, that is to say, accepting, understanding, tolerating, the new information.

Now, people can only ever really decide in favour of new information is the cost discarding old myths is reasonably low. If it doesn’t hurt, them, in other words. But it seems to hurt them immensely, almost absurdly, to discard these old myths. It seems to damage their self-coherence at an existential level, and thus, result in activating a traumatized person’s fight-or-flight response. Hence, the price of discarding the old myths is impossibly high to meet, which is why you can’t reason with a Trumpist or fascist of any kind, ever with facts, logic, or evidence.

But why would the price of discarding old myths be so impossibly high? After all, we do it every day, in littler ways, perhaps. Well, people must already feel fragile. Uncertain. Unstable, even. These myths must be all that is shoring up their identities, their egos, and their sense of morality, too.And so what people are really protecting, by clinging to these old myths — whether of exceptionalism, specialness, triumphalism, or racism — is themselves. At an existential level. “I still exist!! This is the only way I can belong! This is all that defines me! There’s nothing else in me!” (We’ll come back to that.) So this trend of ignorance masquerading itself as enlightenment, where people lash out the moment they’re presented with truths, is a kind of desperate, last-ditch self-preservation. But which self are they trying to preserve?

Well, what kind of people do we call those who need grandiose fairy tales of their omnipotence to feel secure? Children. And what the phenomenon of ignorance parading itself as enlightenment reveals about those who do it is that they have regressed to a childlike state. The fairy tale allows the child to exist, to belong, to feel safe, to feel unique, the only one, the chosen one — the knight or the damsel, take your pick — and in that way, to feel loved in the way that they need to be loved. When people cannot handle the cognitive dissonance of mundane everyday truths, and cling to grandiose myths instead of being able to process, integrate, and accept new truths, it’s stark evidence that they are regressing into a simpler, safer world — because functioning adults don’t need to feel omnipotent, singular, grandiose.

But why would adults, who’ve regressed to childlike states, need to feel grandiose, all-powerful, the only ones in all the world? Because the world is indeed a hostile, frightening place these days. One can hardly survive these days, by meekly following the rules. One must conform, keep one’s head low, try not to stick out. Survival is an act of obedience in the collapsed world that predatory capitalism has created. What is that world really like, though, to experience? It’s a world which constantly tells you have no intrinsic worth. That you are without inherent value. You are only as good as what you can be used for. If you cannot be used for anything, then your just fate is essentially to be left to die. You’re powerless, aren’t you? Ah, you see? Who else needs absolute power, but those who feel powerless inside?

In other words, predatory capitalism creates a world that constantly tears away at people’s sense of self — which is precisely why people are always seeking to shore those absent selves up with grandiose myths of how special, unique, and wonderful they are. There is nothing left inside a person under predatory capitalism — even their sense of self has been taken away from them. They are constantly trying to earn it back, with consumption, with status, with luxuries, with signals, by being the richest, hungriest, strongest, the perfect one with the perfect life. People under predatory capitalism are always trying to earn their missing selfhood back by preying on others, so that they’re the only ones who are loved, needed, desired, in all the world. (Only then can they feel, for just a fleeting moment, no just like they’re safe, whole, or true — but like they exist at all.)

But what is a person with nothing inside called? A narcissist. The narcissist isn’t what we often think — the one who thinks too much of himself. He is the one who thinks too little. So little, in fact, that he has no inherent sense of worth, meaning, belonging, purpose, or value. He is nothing, to himself. And so he constantly needs reassurance, praise, flattery, admiration. Even in destructive, abusive, and ruinous ways. He calls that “love”, and though it isn’t love, only power — it’s the only kind of relationship he is capable of.

Remember the phenomenon of flouting ignorance as enlightenment? Isn’t that what it’s really about? Power? It’s power over you. Power over the world. Power over society. The power to if not earn your praise, then at least demand your submission, your pain, your helplessness — which is what gives the malignant narcissist the validation they need to fill up that hole where a self should be. The pain of your powerlessness is the only thing that can validate the malignant narcissist’s self-existence.

Yet the malignant narcissist has come to exist because predatory capitalism has made him a mirror image of itself — it has left nothing in him at all, not even a self. There’s just an absence, an emptiness, where a self should be — which is insatiable. And so it must be fed with aggrandizing myths, that the narcissist is the only one who matters, counts, exists. But that means that his existence must come at the price of you, me, facts, reality, and, ultimately, even the whole world burning down. The more you suffer — the more I exist. The only thing that makes you feel powerful is my powerlessness — because capitalism has burned a hole through the place where a self should be.

Hence, ignorance parading itself as enlightenment. It’s the defining mood, phenomenon, way of the times we live in. Perhaps you and I, though, should be wiser than those who proudly, boastfully devote themselves to it.

THE CORONAVIRUS PLANNEDEMIC IS AN ACT OF WAR DESIGNED TO CRASH THE GLOBAL ECONOMIES AND BRING IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER WITH A DIGITAL ID

In the United States last week, stimulus checks are going out and I know people who have received them, I have not so far. Those $1,200 checks account for almost $500 billion of the total package, so where did the $1.5 trillion dollars go? They sold this whole thing as something that would primarily ‘benefit the people’, but which people exactly are receiving the other 75% of that massive mountain of money? Here’s something for you to chew on, Jeff Bezos’ wealth increased by $24 billion dollars this week while you were so excited with your $1,200 distraction money. First rule to apply when you need to figure out something that makes no sense is who stands to benefit the most? That’s rule number one.

Rule number three is understanding we are living in certified end times, and the New World Order must rise to the forefront. Now figure out what the first two rules are.

Here we are at roughly the one month mark since the Plannedemic lockdown here in America went into effect, other nations like Italy, Israel, the UK and others had already been locked down. So what does the view at this level look like? It looks like exactly what I thought it looked like a month ago, a real virus hijacked and weaponized, combined with a worldwide campaign of fear and disinformation designed to make us so afraid that in the ‘fog of war’ we wouldn’t see what the elites we actually doing. ‘Toilet paper shortage’ that’s really a psy-op. But we who have the Holy Spirit saw this coming from a mile away.

“Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.” Acts 13:40,41 (KJB)

In the United States this week, stimulus checks are going out and I know people who have received them, I have not so far. Those $1,200 checks account for almost $500 billion of the total package, so where did the $1.5 trillion dollars go? They sold this whole thing as something that would primarily ‘benefit the people’, but which people exactly are receiving the other 75% of that massive mountain of money? Here’s something for you to chew on, Jeff Bezos’ wealth increased by $24 billion dollars this week while you were so excited with your $1,200 distraction money

First rule to apply when you need to figure out something that makes no sense is who stands to benefit the most? That’s rule number one. Rule number two is who is in what position after the changes take place. Rule number three is understanding we are living in certified end times, and the New World Order must rise to the forefront. Any questions? From the very beginning we have been lied to by China, by the World Health Organization, by Bill Gates, by Anthony Fauci, by the CDC, by all of them. Time to rouse from slumber, Christian, there’s a war on.

New World Order elite Jeff Bezos Gains $24 Billion While World’s Rich Reap Bailout Rewards

FROM YAHOO NEWS: The world’s richest person is getting richer, even in a pandemic, and perhaps because of it. With consumers stuck at home, they’re relying on Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. more than ever. The retailer’s stock climbed 5.3% to a record Tuesday, lifting the founder’s net worth to $138.5 billion.

The pandemic has brought the global economy to a near standstill and pushed almost 17 million Americans onto the unemployment rolls in the span of three weeks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. signaled Tuesday that loan losses fueled by the unprecedented job cuts — many of them in the retail sector that Amazon so efficiently disrupted — could rival those incurred after the 2008 financial crisis.

Yet Jeff Bezos and many of his wealthy peers have seen their fortunes recover in recent weeks, helped by the boost given to markets by unprecedented stimulus efforts by governments and central bankers. While the combined net worth of the world’s 500 richest people has dropped $553 billion this year, it has surged 20% from its low on March 23, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index

“The wealth gap, it’s only going to get wider with what’s going on now,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. “The really wealthy people haven’t had to worry. Yes, they’re less wealthy, but you haven’t had to worry about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over your head.” READ MORE

A Nice Overview Of The Trail Of Lies Around The Coronavirus

The World Health Organization is Bill Gates favorite group of end times elites, to paraphrase the old 70’s commercial, he liked them so much he bought the company!

Economist Destroys China – Calls Coronavirus An Act of War

Economist Danielle DiMartino Booth calls what China has done an act of war, she talks about the economic impact the coronavirus is going to have on the future and what the aftermath is going to look like in a sit-down with Patrick Bet-David.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last days before the Rapture of the Church

If you’re interested in learning more old remedies, you should read The Lost Book Of Remedies.

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