Category Archives: Dystopia

The Illusion of Getting Rich While Producing Nothing

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Of all the mass delusions running rampant in the culture, none is more spectacularly delusional than the conviction that we can all get fabulously rich from speculation while producing nothing. The key characteristic of speculation is that it produces nothing: it doesn’t generate any new goods or services, boost productivity or increase the functionality of real-world essentials.

Like all mass delusions, the greater the disconnect from reality, the greater the appeal. Mass delusions gain their escape velocity by leaving any ties to real-world limitations behind, and by igniting the most powerful booster to human euphoric confidence known, greed.

Lost in the mania of easy wealth from speculative trading is the absence of any value creation in the rotation-churn of moving bets from one table to the latest hot game: in flipping houses sight unseen, no functionality was added to the house. In transferring bets on one cryptocurrency to another or from one meme stock to another, no value to the economy or society was created.

In the mass delusion that near-infinite wealth can be generated without producing anything, creating value has no value: the delusion is that I can get rich producing nothing but speculative gains, and then I can buy all the stuff somebody else is making.

The fantasy powering the speculative frenzy is once I get rich, I’ll stop working and live off my wealth. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how everyone can get rich via unproductive speculation, quit their jobs and then live off the productive work of somebody else who failed to get rich off speculation.

Maybe that’s why all the container ships are lined up at Long Beach, waiting to unload the goodies made in China for American speculators to buy. This is what happens when the incentive structure of the economy decays so that being productive has little upside (i.e., working is for chumps) while speculating is all upside (get rich quickly and easily).

Everyone knows great empires became great by transferring their critical supply chains to competing nations, living it up on borrowed/printed money, exploiting the highest bidder wins regulatory/governance system and incentivizing speculation while pushing wage earners into debt-and-tax servitude. Bone up on your history, Bucko; all great nations got there by quitting boring, tiresome productive work to speculate on illusions of value with borrowed money.

This is the result of monopolies and cartels becoming the financial and political power centers of the nation. Maximizing private gains is all that matters in this incentive structure, and so treating employees as chattel to lower costs, offshoring critical supply chains to squeeze out a few more dollars of profits, engineering products to break down (planned obsolescence), buying regulatory barriers and “free passes” and tax breaks galore with all the billions showered on financiers and other fraudsters by the Federal Reserve: in a word, a system that optimizes corruption.

This is how you hollow out a nation and guarantee collapse. The most rewarding “skillsets” are a sociopathological obsession with maximizing profits by any means available and speculating with Fed free money for financiers. The millions of “retail” speculators are simply picking up the cues being given by the billionaires who gained their wealth by issuing debt to fund stock buy-backs and other financial manipulations.

Working for monopolies and cartels is for chumps because monopolies and cartels have zero incentive to share profits with mere employees. Their profits are made not by taking care of their workforce but by regulatory capture, artificial scarcities and financialized destruction of competition: first, borrow billions thanks to the Fed and Wall Street, destroy the competition (for example, the taxi industry), then once the competition has been wiped out, jack up prices because now consumers have no choice other than another member of the cartel.

Speculative “wealth” is phantom wealth, a flickering illusion of prosperity. All speculative bubbles pop, and all speculative bubbles inflated by borrowed money and central bank manipulation pop even more ferociously than bubbles funded by actual savings.

By incentivizing speculation and corruption, reducing the rewards for productive work and sucking wages dry with inflation, America has greased the skids to collapse. As with all mass delusions, the incentives to continue believing are immense and the incentives to reconnect with reality few.

So in conclusion: the speculative gains to be made in the collapse of the mass delusion will be spectacular. There’s nothing like the collapse of a hollowed out, completely corrupt economy to generate outsized profits for nimble speculators. Just keep your speculative winnings on number 22 on the roulette wheel. (A Casablanca movie reference….)

In a Dark Wood

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By James Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Behold the photo (above) showing President “Joe Biden” getting his booster shot of the Covid-19 “vaccine,” with the news media clustered to the left of what is apparently a stage-set built in a larger chamber. Do you possibly ask yourself: why bother to build a set for this event in or under the White House somewhere — including even fake daylit windows — when there are any number of actual rooms in the White House perfectly suited to holding this grand event in real daylight? What is going on here?

And, by the way, how do we know that “JB” is getting an actual mRNA booster?  Or is it just 10 CCs of saline solution? Is not the syringe, after all, just another prop in the show? The video of this event was broadcast on cable TV channels and corporate media websites everywhere. None of them commented on the strange artificiality of the staging. And so, the mystery abides….

It only reinforces the creeping suspicion that absolutely everything about the “Joe Biden” regime is fake. And malevolently so. How else could it be that so many bad things are happening at the same time in this country if there was not some faction seeking to destroy it?

For instance, the vaccine mandates for medical personnel. In upstate New York, WNYT-TV reported yesterday that 200 employees of Albany Med, a large, regional teaching hospital, are placed on seven day’s unpaid leave prior to getting fired for refusing the vaccine. Andrew Cuomo’s replacement, new Governor Kathy Hochul, has blocked unemployment benefits for fired nurses and technicians if they persist in evading the vax. Doctors are included in the mix, too.

Of course, large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients — with Covid or any other health problem — so how does this policy help anyone? (Unless you consider that, with fewer staff on-duty, fewer Covid in-patients will be subjected to the medical malpractice of being placed on ventilators and treated with the killer drug Remdesivir.) Not only has effective early treatment with other drugs been banned from the official medical standards-of-practice across the USA, but mere talk about it has been banned, notably by Google’s YouTube app.

This coercion of health care workers is going on all over the country, of course, not just in New York state. These nurses and techs have been working around Covid patients for going on two years, and many of them have gotten the disease, with symptoms or without, conferring natural immunity. So, what is the point of forcing the vaxes on them? It is also a fact that vaccinated people are susceptible to catching the disease, and that, in any case, the vaccinated carry heavier viral loads than the un-vaxed, making them more efficient spreaders. It is also a fact that mass vaccination in the midst of a pandemic promotes the mutation of new variant viruses that increasingly are not affected by the vaccines.

Thursday night, CNN ran a segment with its house doctor, Sanjay Gupta, hectoring one Andrea Babinski, a La Crosse, Wisconsin, nurse who is quitting her job at Gundersen Hospital there rather than take the vax shot. Dr. Gupta, acting all perplexed, asked her why. Ms. Babinski said she was concerned about blood-clotting. Dr. Gupta dismissed her concern, saying, “If you’ve got a clotting disorder, you should get the vaccine.” Really…?

After the segment, Dr. Gupta and Anderson Cooper shook their heads in amused puzzlement over the nurse’s obdurate foolishness. They are apparently uninformed that the spike protein produced by the vaccine is known to bind onto the endothelial lining of blood vessels and promote blood clots, leading to a range of lethal events such as myocardial infarction and cerebral hemorrhage — heart attack and stroke — plus a broad array of organ damage and neurological disorders.

The Medicare Tracking System states that 48,465 people have died within 14 days of receiving a vax shot. Many had co-morbidities, of course, so not all the deaths can be directly attributed to the vaccines, but the public health authorities are averse to autopsies that might establish the truth of the matter. Anyway, the CDC has ruled recently that they will only count people more than 14 days out from a shot as being considered officially vaccinated — so none of those aforementioned deaths would have counted as vaccinated persons under the rule. Do you see how they are gaming the statistics to keep Americans as misinformed as possible?

Despite all the efforts to bamboozle the public, the “Joe Biden” regime has about run out the string on Covid paranoia, and wrung all of the political usefulness out of it. Going forward, it will only backfire on them. Do they think that wrecking hospital services while depriving thousands of health care workers of their incomes is a winning strategy? These are existential threats to US citizens.

Everything else under “Joe Biden’s” watch looks like a pyromaniac seeking to burn down the country. Over 10,000 Haitian interlopers have been surreptitiously dispersed from Del Rio, Texas, to nether regions of the USA. The government made no effort to vaccinate them — what does that tell you? Over 100,000 more invading opportunists from all over the world are reportedly heading to the southern border. A month after the fall of Afghanistan, and after this week’s hearings in both the House and the Senate, still nobody knows who gave the insane order to surrender Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul. The Democrats’ dishonest “infrastructure” bill is wilting in Congress. Food and energy prices are rising fast, with shortages on the horizon. The capital markets are wobbling. And Special Counsel John Durham is back on the scene with more actions against Hillary Clinton’s favorite law firm, Perkins Coie, facilitators of the seditious RussiaGate campaign. Put it all together and you have a mechanism that looks like a “Joe Biden” toaster.

Off in a far corner of the News-O-Sphere, someone affecting to be John McAfee dwells on a Telegram channel labeled “OfficialMcAfee.” John McAfee, for those who don’t know, was the wealthy inventor of antivirus computer software who found himself at odds with the US government, went rogue, and supposedly committed suicide in Spain last June. Now, he has apparently turned up on this social media app in a series of videos and cryptic info drops. Whether he is actually still alive, or perhaps recorded these videos before taking his life, is not known. But he had threatened to release terabytes of digital evidence against his antagonists, including video of sexual misconduct among well-known political figures connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein, as well as incriminating documents from the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign files from 2016. Those info dumps have commenced and the figure who appears to be John McAfee in the Telegram videos says that the dumps will contain incrementally more shocking material for weeks to come.

All of this activity is obviously weird to an extreme never before seen in national affairs prior to the deep fake era — to the degree that reality is almost impossible to establish for now. We are a people lost in a dark wood. When you are lost, the first thing you must do is stop your useless, self-defeating locomotion, hunker down in place, and carefully assess what’s around you. Even if everything else is murky and perplexing, one thing is known: there is a way out of these dark woods. Remain calm and alert and it will reveal itself.

Shockingly, CDC Now Lists Vaccinated Deaths as Unvaccinated

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By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Source: Global Research

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you’re not counted as fully vaccinated until a full 14 days have passed since your second injection in the case of Pfizer or Moderna, or 14 days after your first dose of Janssen, despite the fact that over 80% of deaths after the vaccines occur in this window. How convenient

Anyone who dies within the first 14 days post-injection is counted as an unvaccinated death. Not only does this inaccurately inflate the unvaccinated death toll, but it also hides the real dangers of the COVID shots, as the vast majority of deaths from these shots occur within the first two weeks

The CDC also has two different sets of testing guidelines — one for vaccinated patients and another for the unvaccinated. If you’re unvaccinated, CDC guidance says to use a cycle threshold (CT) of 40, known to result in false positives. If you’re vaccinated, they recommend using a CT of 28 or less, which minimizes the risk of false positives

The CDC also hides vaccine failures and props up the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative by only counting breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization or death

Hospitals are still also reporting non-COVID related illnesses as COVID-19

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While public health officials and mainstream media claim the COVID-19 pandemic is now “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,”1 we now know this claim is based on highly misleading statistics.

In a July 16, 2021, White House press briefing,2 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky claimed that “over 97% of people who are entering the hospital right now are unvaccinated.” A few weeks later, in an August 5, 2021, statement, she inadvertently revealed how that statistic actually came about.3

As it turns out, the CDC was looking at hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021 — a timeframe during which the vast majority of the U.S. population were still unvaccinated.4

But that’s not the case at all now. The CDC is also playing with statistics in other ways to create the false and inaccurate impression that unvaccinated people make up the bulk of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. For example, we now find out the agency is counting anyone who died within the first 14 days post-injection as unvaccinated.

Not only does this inaccurately inflate the unvaccinated death toll, but it also hides the real dangers of the COVID shots, as the vast majority of deaths from these shots occur within the first two weeks.5 Now their deaths are counted as unvaccinated deaths rather than being counted as deaths due to vaccine injury or COVID-19 breakthrough infections!

How CDC Counts Breakthrough Cases

According to the CDC,6 you’re not counted as fully vaccinated until a full 14 days have passed since your second injection in the case of Pfizer or Moderna, or 14 days after your first dose of Janssen. This is how the CDC defines a vaccine breakthrough case:

“… a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.”

In other words, if you’ve received one dose of Pfizer or Moderna and develop symptomatic COVID-19, get admitted to the hospital and/or die from COVID, you’re counted as an unvaccinated case. If you’ve received two doses and get ill within 14 days, you’re still counted as an unvaccinated case.

The problem with this is that over 80% of hospitalizations and deaths appear to be occurring among those who have received the jabs, but this reality is hidden by the way cases are defined and counted. A really clever and common strategy of the CDC during the pandemic has been to change the definitions and goalposts so it supports their nefarious narrative.

For example, the CDC has quietly changed the definition of “vaccine,” apparently in an attempt to validate calling the COVID mRNA gene therapies vaccines. In an August 26, 2021, archived version7of vaccine, the CDC defines it as a “product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

But a few days later, a new definition appeared on the CDC’s website,8 which now says a vaccine is a “preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” The differences in the definitions are subtle but distinct: The first one defined a vaccine as something that will “produce immunity.”

But, since the COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to stop infection but, rather, to only lessen the degree of infection, it becomes obvious that the new definition was created to cover the COVID vaccines.

Different Testing Guidelines for Vaxxed and Unvaxxed

It’s not just the CDC’s definition of a breakthrough case that skews the data. Even more egregious and illogical is the fact that the CDC even has two different sets of testing guidelines — one for vaccinated patients and another for the unvaccinated.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC has recommended a PCR test cycle threshold (CT) of 40.9 This flies in the face of scientific consensus, which has long been that a CT over 35 will produce 97% false positives,10 essentially rendering the test useless.11,12,13

In mid-May 2021, the CDC finally lowered its recommended CT count, but only for patients who have received one or more COVID shots.14 So, if you have received a COVID injection, the CDC’s guidelines call for your PCR test to be run at a CT of 28 or less. If you are unvaccinated, your PCR test is to be run at a CT of 40, which grossly overestimates the true prevalence of infection.

The end result is that unvaccinated individuals who get tested are FAR more prone to get false positives, while those who have received the jab are more likely to get an accurate diagnosis of infection.

Only Hospitalization and Death Count if You’re COVID Jabbed

Even that’s not all. The CDC also hides vaccine failures and props up the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative by only counting breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization or death.

In other words, if you got your second COVID shot more than 14 days ago and you develop symptoms, you do not count as a breakthrough case unless you’re admitted to the hospital and/or die from COVID-19 in the hospital, even if you test positive. So, to summarize, COVID breakthrough cases count only if all of the following apply:

  • The patient received the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna shot at least 14 days ago (or one dose in case of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose injection)
  • The patient tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 using a CT of 28 or less, which avoids false positives
  • The patient is admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 and/or dies in the hospital

Vaccinated Probably Make Up Bulk of Hospitalizations

If vaccinated and unvaccinated were not treated with such varying standards, we’d probably find that the vaccinated now make up the bulk of hospitalizations, making the COVID pandemic one of the vaccinated. An August 30, 2021, exposé by The Epoch Times reveals what’s really happening on the front lines:15

“After a battery of testing, my friend was diagnosed with pancreatitis. But it was easier for the hospital bureaucracy to register the admission as a COVID case … The mainstream media is reporting that severe COVID cases are mainly among unvaccinated people … Is that what’s really going on?

It’s certainly not the case in Israel, the first country to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against the virus. Now it has one of the highest daily infection rates and the majority of people catching the virus (77 percent to 83 percent, depending on age) are already vaccinated, according to data collected by the Israeli government …

After admission, I spoke to the nurse on the COVID ward … The nurse told me that she had gotten both vaccines but she was feeling worried: ‘Two thirds of my patients are fully vaccinated,’ she said. How can there be such a disconnect between what the COVID ward nurse told me and the mainstream media reports?”

The heart of the problem is that the U.S. is not even trying to achieve an accurate count. As noted by The Epoch Times, “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have publicly acknowledged that they do not have accurate data.”

So, when you hear that cases are rising, and that most of them are unvaccinated, you need to ask: “Are these people who have had one vaccine and gotten sick, two vaccines and gotten sick, or no vaccines at all? Without more details, it is impossible to know what is really going on,” The Epoch Times says.16

All we do know, according to one doctor who spoke with The Epoch Times, is “the vaccines are not as effective as public health officials told us they would be. ‘This is a product that’s not doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to stop transmission of this virus and it’s not doing that.’”

Counting Non-COVID Illness as COVID Cases

On top of all of that, hospitals are still also reporting non-COVID related illnesses as COVID. As reported by The Epoch Times:17

“Health authorities around the world have been doing this since the beginning of the COVID crisis. For example, a young man in Orange County, Florida who died in a motorcycle crash last summer was originally considered a COVID death by state health officials …

And a middle-aged construction worker fell off a ladder in Croatia and was also counted as a death from COVID … To muddy the waters further, even people who test negative for COVID are sometimes counted as COVID deaths.

Consider the case of 26-year-old Matthew Irvin, a father of three from Yamhill County, Oregon. As reported by KGW8 News, Irvin went to the ER with stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea on July 5, 2020. But instead of admitting him to the hospital, the doctors sent him home.

Five days later, on July 10, 2020, Irvin died. Though his COVID test came back negative two days after his death and his family told reporters and public health officials that no one Irvin had been around had any COVID symptoms, the medical examiner allegedly told the family that an autopsy was not necessary, listing his death as a coronavirus case. It took the Oregon Health Authority two and a half months to correct the mistake.

In an even more striking example of overcounting COVID deaths, a nursing home in New Jersey that only has 90 beds was wrongly reported as having 753 deaths from COVID. According to a spokesman, they had fewer than twenty deaths. In other words, the number of deaths was over-reported by 3,700 percent.”

No Need to Fear the Delta Variant if You’re Unvaccinated

In a June 29, 2021, interview,18 Fauci called the Delta variant “a game-changer” for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it. Alas, in the real world, the converse is turning out to be true, as the Delta variant is running wild primarily among those who got the COVID jab.The Delta variant contains three different mutations, all in the spike protein. This allows this variant to evade the immune responses in those who have received the COVID jabs, but not those who have natural immunity, which is much broader.

In a June 30, 2021, appearance on Fox News (video above), epidemiologist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough pointed out that “It is very clear from the U.K. Technical Briefing19 that was published June 18 that the vaccine provides no protection against the Delta variant.”20

The reason for this is because the Delta variant contains three different mutations, all in the spike protein. This allows this variant to evade the immune responses in those who have received the COVID jabs, but not those who have natural immunity, which is much broader.

Even so, the Delta variant is far milder than previous variants, according to the U.K.’s June 18, 2021, Technical Briefing.21 In it, they present data showing the Delta variant is more contagious but far less deadly and easier to treat. As McCullough told Fox News:

“Whether you get the vaccine or not, patients will get some very mild symptoms like a cold and they can be easily managed … Patients who have severe symptoms or at high risk, we can use simple drug combinations at home and get them through the illness. So, there’s no reason now to push vaccinations.”

Contrast that with the following statement made by President Biden during a CNN town hall meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, in late July 2021:22

“We have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten a vaccination. It’s that basic, that simple. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, not going to the ICU unit, and not going to die. You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”

However, Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency doctor and visiting professor of health policy and management at George Washington University’s Milken School of Public Health in Washington, D.C., contradicted the president, saying he had led the American astray by telling them you don’t need a mask if you’re vaccinated, or that you can’t get it or transmit it. As reported by CNN Health:23

“In particular, Wen took issue with Biden’s incorrect claims that you cannot contract Covid-19 or the Delta variant if you are vaccinated. ‘I was actually disappointed,’ Wen said. ‘I actually thought he was answering questions as if it were a month ago. He’s not really meeting the realities of what’s happening on the ground. I think he may have led people astray.’”

CNN added that Wen had told their political commentator Anderson Cooper that “many unknown answers remain related to Covid-19, and that it is still not known how well protected vaccinated individuals are from mild illness … [or] if you’re vaccinated, could you still be contagious to other people.”

Vaccinated Patients Flood Hospitals Around the World

The U.K. data showing the Delta variant is far milder than previous SARS-CoV-2 viruses deflates the claim that avoiding severe illness is a sign that the shots are working. Since the Delta variant typically doesn’t cause severe illness in the first place, it doesn’t make sense to attribute milder illness to the shot.

But if Delta is the mildest coronavirus variant yet, why are so many “vaccinated” people ending up in the hospital? While we still do not have clear confirmation, this could be a sign that antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) is at work. Alternatively, it could be that vaccine injuries are being misreported as breakthrough cases.

Whatever the case may be, real-world data from areas with high COVID jab rates show a disturbing trend. For example, August 1, 2021, the director of Israel’s Public Health Services, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.24 Signs of more serious disease among fully vaccinated are also emerging, she said, particularly in those over the age of 60.

A few days later, August 5, 2021, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients are fully vaccinated, and that they make up 85% to 90% of COVID-related hospitalizations overall.25

In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July were vaccinated.26

In Gibraltar, which has a 99% COVID jab compliance rate, COVID cases have risen by 2,500% since June 1, 2021,27 and in Iceland, where over 82% have received the shots, 77% of new COVID cases are among the fully vaccinated.28

Data from the U.K. show a similar trend among those over the age of 50. In this age group, partially and fully “vaccinated” people account for 68% of hospitalizations and 70% of COVID deaths.29

A CDC investigation of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, between July 6, 2021, through July 25, 2021, found 74% of those who received a diagnosis of COVID19, and 80% of hospitalizations, were among the fully vaccinated.30,31 Most, but not all, had the Delta variant.

The CDC also found that fully vaccinated individuals who contract the infection have as high a viral load in their nasal passages as unvaccinated individuals who get infected.32 The same was found in a British study, a preprint of which was posted mid-August 2021.33,34 This means the vaccinated are just as infectious as the unvaccinated.

Interestingly, a Lancet preprint study35 that examined breakthrough infections in health care workers in Vietnam who received the AstraZeneca COVID shot found the “viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with old strains detected between March-April 2020.”

What’s more, they found no correlation between vaccine-induced neutralizing antibody levels and viral loads or the development of symptoms. According to the authors:

“Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people.”

Not All Vaccinated Are Confirmed Vaccinated

As if all of that weren’t enough, there’s yet one more confounder. Just because you got the COVID shot does not mean you’ve been confirmed as having gotten the shot. You’re only confirmed “vaccinated” if your COVID injection is added to your medical record, and this sometimes doesn’t happen if you’re going to a temporary vaccination clinic, a drive-through or pharmacy, for example. As reported by CNN:36

“If you are among the countless people who didn’t get the doses at a primary care doctor’s office, there may not be any record of the vaccination on file with your doctor.”

To actually count as a “confirmed vaccinated” individual, you must send your vaccination card to your primary care physician’s office and have them add it to your electronic medical record. If you got the shot at a pharmacy, you’ll need to verify that they forwarded your proof of vaccination to your doctor. Primary care offices are then responsible for sharing their patients’ immunization data with the state’s immunization information system.

Patient-recorded proof of vaccination is only accepted for influenza and pneumococcal vaccines, not COVID-19 injections.37 What this all means is that, say you got the shot several weeks ago at a drive-through vaccination clinic and get admitted to the hospital with COVID symptoms. Unless your COVID shot status has actually been added into the medical system, you will not count as “vaccinated.”

This too can skew the statistics, because we know the CDC ascertains vaccination status by matching SARS-CoV-2 case surveillance and CAIR2 data using person-level identifiers and algorithms.38

As noted by John Zurlo, division director of infectious disease at Thomas Jefferson University, “the lack of reliable vaccine records complicates efforts to precisely understand vaccine effectiveness and determine how many local hospitalizations and deaths are resulting from COVID-19 breakthrough infections.”39

We’re in the Largest Clinical Trial in Medical History

In closing, it’s worth remembering that the COVID injection campaign is part and parcel of a clinical trial. As noted Dr. Lidiya Angelova in a recent Genuine Prospect article:40

“Many people are unaware that they are participating in the largest clinical trial test of our times. It is because World Health Organization, healthcare authorities, politicians, celebrities, and journalists promote the experimental medical treatments (wrongly called COVID-19 vaccines) as safe and efficient while in fact these treatments are in early clinical research stage.

It means that there is not enough data for such claims and that the people who participate are test subject.”

As shown in a graph on Genuine Prospect, under normal circumstances, clinical research follows a strict protocol that begins with tests on cell cultures. After that comes tests on animals, then limited human testing in four phases. In Phase 1 of human testing, up to 100 people are included and followed anywhere from one week to several months.

Phase 2 typically includes several hundred participants and lasts up to two years. In Phase 3, several hundred to 3,000 participants are tested upon for one to four years. Phase 4 typically includes several thousand individuals who are followed for at least one year or longer. After each phase, the data is examined to assess effectiveness and adverse reactions.

The timelines for these stages and phases were not followed for the COVID “vaccines.” Most Phase 3 trials concluded by the end of 2020, and everyone who got the shots since their rollout under emergency use authorization is part of a Phase 4 clinical trial, whether they realize it or not.41 And since the trials are not completed, you simply cannot make definitive claims about safety, especially long-term safety. As noted by Angelova:42

“When I worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) … I went to the course Ethical and Regulatory Aspects of Clinical Research … The first rule we learnt was ‘Clinical research must be ethical’ … All ethical aspects of clinical research are dismissed with the COVID-19 vaccines.

People should know that nobody can require such to participate in everyday activities like using public transportation, shopping, going to school and even hospital. People should know that they should not be punished for refusing to take the experimental medical treatments.

COVID-19 vaccines mass use and COVID-19 measures are an infringe[ment] of the Articles 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, 28 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).”

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Notes

1 The New York Times July 16, 2021

2 WH.gov Press Briefing July 16, 2021

3 Fox News

4 Mayo Clinic COVID Vaccine Tracker

5 Twitter DX Foundation September 2, 2021

6 CDC August 25, 2021

7 Web Archive August 26, 2021

8 CDC September 1, 2021

9 FDA.gov CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR July 13, 2020 (PDF) Page 35

10 Clinical Infectious Diseases September 28, 2020; ciaa1491

11 The Vaccine Reaction September 29, 2020

12 Jon Rappoport’s Blog November 6, 2020

13 YouTube TWiV 641 July 16, 2020

14 CDC.gov COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Case Investigation Guidelines (PDF)

15, 16, 17, 28 The Epoch Times August 30, 2021

18 PBS June 29, 2021

19, 21 Public Health England, SARS-CoV-2 Variants Technical Briefing 16, June 18, 2021 (PDF)

20 Covidcalltohumanity.org July 5, 2021

22 CBS 8 News July 21, 2021

23 CNN Health July 22, 2021

24 Bloomberg August 1, 2021 (Archived)

25 American Faith August 8, 2021

26 The Daily Expose July 29, 2021

27 Big League Politics August 4, 2021

29 Evening Standard August 20, 2021

30 CDC MMWR July 30, 2021; 70

31 CNBC July 30, 2021

32 NBC News August 7, 2021

33 Impact of Delta on Viral Burden and Vaccine Effectiveness in the UK (PDF)

34 CBS News August 19, 2021

35 The Lancet Preprint August 10, 2021

36 CNN April 26, 2021

37 Immunize.org Documenting Vaccination

38 MMWR August 27, 2021; 70(34): 1170-1176

39 Philadelphia Enquirer August 31, 2021

40, 42 Genuine Prospect August 31, 2021

41 Red Voice Media June 22, 2021

The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On “Indefinite Back Order,” the Machine Grinds to a Halt

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Setting aside the “transitory inflation” parlor game for a moment, let’s look at what happens when critical parts are unavailable for whatever reason, for example, they’re on back order or indefinite back order, i.e. the supplier has no visibility on when the parts will be available.

If the part that blew out is 0.1% of the entire machine, and the other 99.9% still works perfectly, the entire machine is still dead in the water without that critical component. That is a pretty good definition of systemic vulnerability and fragility, a fragility that becomes much, much worse if there are two or three components which are on indefinite back order.

This is the problem with shipping much of your supply chain overseas: you create extreme systemic vulnerability and fragility even as you rake in big profits from reducing costs. Speaking of costs, let’s look at the costs of having a large, costly, complex mechanism sitting idle in a non-functioning state due to some broken element for which there is no substitute available. Whatever productive capacity the mechanism, process, etc. had is now stuck at zero.

Buying a new replacement is extremely costly, and that’s not always available for all the same reasons that parts and components aren’t available. Finding someone to fabricate a new component is not easy due to the wholesale transfer of manufacturing moxie and capability overseas.

You might be able to find someone to weld a replacement strut, but try finding someone to fab a new bicycle derailleur or better yet, a multilayer semiconductor chip. What about 3-D fabrication? Doesn’t that solve this problem? If the part can be “printed,” yes, but there are limits on what can be 3-D fabbed. You can’t 3-D fab a complex thermostat or controller, for example. You can’t 3-D fab a rubber gasket, either, or a great many other bits of petrochemical-based manufacturing.

Scarcities are not limited to parts and components; skilled people can be scarce, too. For example, there is a limited supply of ICU doctors and nurses. The training required to work in an ICU is specialized and experiential; throwing someone with minimal training in is not a substitution that’s going to work. You can’t order an ICU staff from China or print one digitally the way the Federal Reserve creates currency out of thin air. It takes many years to train the staff to function at a high level in ICU.

A great many such labor scarcities exist for skilled workers who cannot be replaced except by someone with the same training and years of experience. This is one reason ICUs can break down: there is no replacement staff available, and no way to “print more.”

It turns out there’s also a scarcity of people willing to do the dirty-work jobs America needs done for wages that haven’t kept up with inflation. As I have explained here, the $1.65 minimum wage I earned in 1970, if factored for real-world inflation, is around $18 per hour, and arguably closer to $20 per hour.

The solution is to raise the pay to levels that attract workers, but then this requires raising prices on the good and services to the point that customers can no longer afford them.

But wait, can’t we automate all work and deliver full-gee-whiz free-money, no-work communism to everyone? I invite everyone who reckons this is in the realm of the do-able to design, program and manufacture an automated robot that can trundle out to the laundry room, pop open a broken clothes dryer, diagnose the problem, manage to find a new controller board, fit it correctly and properly reconnect all the little wiring bits, close it up, test it, lift the dryer back on the washing machine and do all that for the relatively modest cost of a human repairperson. When you accomplish fabricating and programming that robot to do all the work without instruction or oversight, by all means let us all know how much it cost to design, program and manufacture, what the payback of the development and manufacturing process will cost amortized over the (short) life of the robot and how reliable it is in the real world.

The point is, fantasies are nice but reality is far more demanding.

There can also be scarcities of competence. There may be replacements who claim competence, but when reality intrudes on the shuck-and-jive, their competence was illusory, and the net result is the entire institution can be described by President G.W. Bush’s memorable phrase, this sucker’s going down.

There can also be scarcities of institutional infrastructure and capacity. Once the institution, enterprise, state agency, etc. has been stripmined of redundancy, institutional memory and competence, then the first scarcity that cannot be replaced is the first domino that topples all the other dominoes of systemic vulnerability and fragility.

The Federal Reserve can print trillions of dollars and the federal government can borrow and blow trillions of dollars, but neither can print or borrow supply chains, scarce skills, institutional depth or competence. That nice shiny new semiconductor fab you reckon will resolve the chip shortage? You can print the billions of dollars needed in an instant, but the machinery, expertise and time can’t be conjured quite so easily. That fab is years away from completion no matter how many freshly conjured dollars you throw into the air.

When Critical Parts Are On “Indefinite Back Order,” the Machine Grinds to a Halt: that’s the U.S. economy in a nutshell.

A great many essential components in America are on indefinite back order, including the lifestyle of endless globally sourced goodies at low, low prices. That lifestyle is out of stock and cannot be replaced with financialization fakery.

Hey, Federal Reserve, can you conjure up a non-corrupt financial system, a domestic supply chain, and an economy of open competition, transparency, accountability and competence? If not, you are even more worthless than we feared.

The media’s addiction to Covid-19 ‘fear porn’ is perpetuating an ever-worsening cycle of societal damage across the world

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By Eva K Bartlett

Source: In Gaza and Beyond

Over the past year and a half, hysterical media reporting on matters Covid-19 has reduced some people to a fearful state of unquestioning compliance – including a great number of otherwise critically-thinking journalists.

With screaming headlines in bold and large font such as, ‘Will this nightmare ever end?’ and ‘Mutant virus skyrockets…’ and ‘Fear grows across the country: VIRUS PANIC’, and ‘Coronavirus horror: Social media footage shows infected Wuhan residents ‘act like zombies’, it is no wonder many people are in a state of panic.

In times when many are suffering mentally and physically under unnecessary and prolonged lockdowns, the incessant fear porn is causing excessive anxiety, which in turn will affect the health & mental well-being of some, if not many. 

In government documents from the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) dated from March 2020 advice was given saying: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging… This could potentially be done by trained community support volunteers, by targeted media campaigns, social media” 

I’d say the UK media campaigns certainly did the job, and other Western nations got similar directives. The UK government also became the nation’s biggest advertiser in 2020, make what you will of the potential ramifications that could have on cash-strapped newspapers and their supposed ‘independence’.

Having myself been deeply focused on exposing war propaganda and other media lies around Syria, Palestine, Venezuela, and elsewhere over the years, my default position has become one of deep cynicism on mass media reporting. Yes, you can find nuggets of truth, or even excellent journalists in mainstream publications, honestly challenging the narratives.

But those are few and far between, generally you find copy-paste propaganda emanating largely from the bowels of the USA and the UK.

A study by Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR) noted, “most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.” 

Those agencies are AP, Reuters, and AFP. SPR notes:

“The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.”

Given all of this, I’ve come to believe that with regard to media reporting on Covid-19, my cynicism is well-deserved.

Covid-19 reporting has increasingly been utterly absurd, with stories of people dropping dead in the streets, ice rink morgues to cope with the mountains of bodies, footage of an overcrowded New York hospital (that just happened to be of an Italian hospital), claims of animals testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, and more recently reports of people dying post-jab but we are told ‘it could have been worse!’

This campaign of fear caused the public to massively overestimate the lethality of Covid-19, which as un-alarmist voices note has a survival rate of over 99%. 

When months into the outbreak it became apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was far less lethal than first predicted, the media and talking heads moved from talking about ‘Covid deaths’ to ‘positive cases’. 

Although relatively early on a goat and pawpaw tested positive for Covid-19, instead of then scrutinizing the accuracy of the PCR test as a means of ‘detecting Covid-19’, the media continued to hype the rise in Covid ‘cases’. 

In lockstep, ‘Covid testing’ was increased dramatically using the PCR test (recently revoked by the CDC). This inevitably pumped up the number of ‘cases’, which mass media have in turn promoted non-stop, this in turn gave ammunition to those enforcing lockdowns and vaccines.

By now hundreds of vocal doctors, nurses, virologists, immunologists, and other professionals actually worth listening to, whose data and experience counter the hype pumped out in media have very quickly disappeared from social media, or otherwise deemed quacks, and are thus largely silenced. This leaves the general public mainly getting their information via hyped-up media. 

Alongside this, there have been relentless ad hominem attacks on journalists who pose legitimate questions and uncomfortable truths about the official narratives around Covid-19. 

For offering perspectives which contradict the standard narratives around Covid-19, journalists have been deemed conspiracy theorists, pandemic-deniers, right-wingers, selfish… I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few slurs. 

When it comes to matters Covid-19, it is suddenly unacceptable to question ‘The Science’, question the authorities, or question the same media that sold us WMDs in Iraq and chemical attacks in Syria.

Media are the drivers of Covid hysteria, and it is the daily bombardment of fear porn that confuses average people and enables tyrannical powers to be brought in, largely unchallenged. 

As it is the responsibility of journalists to expose lies around wars of aggression, it is also the duty of journalists to do so around Covid-19. For some journalists who have stubbornly refused to hold power to account, instead toeing the line on all things Covid, it appears their fear is of losing an audience and not of a virus.

Whether or not you agree with dissenting voices’ questions and criticisms, we have the right to ask and make them. We do so, knowing that remaining silent in the face of the brutal Covid measures is a guaranteed path to tyranny.

Smart Dust: A Tiny Part of What They’ve Got Planned For You

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By Mickey Z.

Source: Dissident Voice

Thanks to corporate media, anything outside the accepted parameters of debate (e.g. CNN vs. Fox, NY Times vs. Wall Street Journal) is considered beyond the pale. Thus, when I wish to introduce you to what the transhumanists in charge have planned for you, by default, I sound like a fringe weirdo in a tinfoil hat. This highly efficient system keeps the rabble in line by encouraging each of us to do the enforcing of such censorship. We willingly limit our own access to information — in the name of “justice” or “science,” of course.

With that in mind, I offer you a 2-minute video on “smart dust” in the hope you have enough attention span and open-mindedness to focus that long:

Keep in mind that the above video is already five years old. In tech years, that might as well be a century. As far back as 2013, MIT was talking about “How Smart Dust Could Spy On Your Brain.” Smart dust (or “neural dust”) is already here, already in use, and will soon be a daily part of your life — whether you ask for it or not. Are you okay with that?

Smart Dust is comprised of “many small wireless microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). MEMS are tiny devices that have cameras, sensors, and communication mechanisms to transmit the data to be stored and processed further. They generally range from 20 micrometers up to a millimeter in size. They are usually connected to a computer network wirelessly and are distributed over a specific area to accomplish tasks, usually sensing through RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology.”

You can probably see what they’ve been given the nickname of “dust.” In fact, they can even be distributed via tiny, unmanned aircraft that would serve as crop dusters of sorts. Without being detected, they’d spray the virtually invisible motes over a large area and collect information that way. They are so small, you’d never know they were there — perhaps gathering info on you. How small? The prototype smart dust currently measures 0.8 millimeters x 3 millimeters x 1 millimeter can be only 1 cubic millimeter or less in size — possibly as small as 100 microns per side. 

Some of you, I’m certain, are already embracing this sci-fi kind of idea as yet another fine example of  “science.” Before you get too misty-eyed about such “progress,” please allow me to remind you that smart dust was developed by (surprise, surprise) the U.S. military. More specifically, it is the brainchild of the notorious DARPA — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. These are the same folks who brought you mind-control weapons, cyborg insects, synthetic blood, mechanical elephants, programmable shape-shifting matter, and so much more.

So, go back and re-read the details above and recognize how easily smart dust could be weaponized. Even better, accept the reality that step one (as always) was weaponizing smart dust. And now, digest the fact that those well-intentioned and good-hearted souls in the military want to implant smart dust inside you… for your own good, of course.

“Neural dust represents a radical departure from the traditional approach of using radio waves for wireless communication with implanted devices,” said Doug Weber, a DARPA program manager. “The soft tissues of our body consist mostly of saltwater. Sound waves pass freely through these tissues and can be focused with pinpoint accuracy at nerve targets deep inside our body, while radio waves cannot. Indeed, this is why sonar is used to image objects in the ocean, while radar is used to detect objects in the air. By using ultrasound to communicate with the neural dust, the sensors can be made smaller and placed deeper inside the body, by needle injection or other non-surgical approaches.”

I’ve already told you about the Internet of Bodies. And I’ve also already told you about the Pentagon’s openly-discussed plan to insert microchips inside us to “protect” us. With smart dust, they could just let the technology waft down from the sky and have you unknowingly inhale it. Why is no one talking about this? I ask you to re-visit my opening paragraph for that answer. To even talk about smart dust is to be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” Once again, those in power have trained the public to do the policing for them. Somewhere, Goebbels is drooling.

All of the above has become easier to employ thanks to the pandemic. To explain that, we need to meet Klaus Schwab — the founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and author of a book called The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Here’s how the WEF explains this concept: 

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

To repeat: “a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” This is transhumanism. It’s an ideology that proposes that technology can and must “enhance” the human mind and body and they are already working to “prove” this theory. Men like Schwab believe we must connect the physical, digital, and biological domains via steps like “implantable technologies such as smart tattoos, smart dust, smart pills, and other implantable smart functionalities.” They want to turn your heartbeat into your digital ID. Schwab and his ilk also support work going on in areas like designing human genomes, and simulating, monitoring, or even influencing brain activity, both in medical and non-medical applications. (P.S. Elon Musk is also currently setting up a company that links brains and computers.) Click here to watch Schwab telling Charlie Rose about his plans to edit your genes. 

Most people would’ve probably cast a wary side-eye at such suggestions — until Covid-19. For 18 months, the powers-that-be have successfully scared the population into believing anything they decree. They’ve also coerced and manipulated billions into allowing novel nanotechnology to be injected into them without a second thought. Never mind thinking, the masses are lining up to serve as unpaid PR people for the experimental jab.

With such widespread and enthusiastic compliance, there seems to be little to stand in the way of Schwab, the World Economic Forum, DARPA, Big Pharma, and the transhumanist agenda. They are counting on you going along without asking too many questions. But there’s the catch. You still can demand and reclaim autonomy over your mind and body. For starters, all you need to do is a little self-loving homework to see what they have planned for you and then… just say no. Unless, of course, you’d prefer having your consciousness uploaded to the cloud. 

Amazon, “Economic Terrorism” and the Destruction of Competition and Livelihoods

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Off-Guardian

Global corporations are colonising India’s retail space through e-commerce and destroying small-scale physical retail and millions of livelihoods.

Walmart entered into India in 2016 with a US$3.3 billion take-over of the online retail start-up Jet.com. This was followed in 2018 with a US$16 billion take-over of India’s largest online retail platform, Flipkart. Today, Walmart and Amazon control almost two thirds of India’s digital retail sector.

Amazon and Walmart have a record of using predatory pricing, deep discounts and other unfair business practices to attract customers to their online platforms. A couple of years ago, those two companies generated sales of over US$3 billion in just six days during Diwali. India’s small retailers reacted by calling for a boycott of online shopping.

If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

AMAZON’S CORPORATE PRACTICES

In the US, an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee concluded that Amazon exerts monopoly power over many small- and medium-size businesses. It called for breaking up the company and regulating its online marketplace to ensure that sellers are treated fairly.

Amazon has spied on sellers and appropriated data about their sales, costs and suppliers. It has then used this information to create its own competing versions of their products, often giving its versions superior placement in the search results on its platform.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) published a revealing document on Amazon in June 2021 that discussed these issues. It also notes that Amazon has been caught using its venture capital fund to invest in start-ups only to steal their ideas and create rival products and services.

Moreover, Amazon’s dominance allows it to function as a gatekeeper: retailers and brands must sell on its site to reach much of the online market and changes to Amazon’s search algorithms or selling terms can cause their sales to evaporate overnight.

Amazon also makes it hard for sellers to reduce their dependence on its platform by making their brand identity almost invisible to shoppers and preventing them from building relationships with their customers. The company strictly limits contact between sellers and customers.

According to the ILSR, Amazon compels sellers to buy its warehousing and shipping services, even though many would get a better deal from other providers, and it blocks independent businesses from offering lower prices on other sites. The company also routinely suspends sellers’ accounts and seizes inventories and cash balances.

The Joint Action Committee against Foreign Retail and E-commerce (JACAFRE) was formed to resist the entry of foreign corporations like Walmart and Amazon into India’s e-commerce market. Its members represent more than 100 national groups, including major trade, workers’ and farmers’ organisations.

JACAFRE issued a statement in 2018 on Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart, arguing that it undermines India’s economic and digital sovereignty and the livelihoods of millions in India. The committee said the deal would lead to Walmart and Amazon dominating India’s e-retail sector. It would also allow them to own India’s key consumer and other economic data, making them the country’s digital overlords, joining the ranks of Google and Facebook.

In January 2021, JACAFRE published an open letter saying that the three new farm laws, passed by parliament in September 2020, centre on enabling and facilitating the unregulated corporatisation of agriculture value chains. This will effectively make farmers and small traders of agricultural produce become subservient to the interests of a few agrifood and e-commerce giants or will eradicate them completely.

Although there was strong resistance to Walmart entering India with its physical stores, online and offline worlds are now merged: e-commerce companies not only control data about consumption but also control data on production and logistics. Through this control, e-commerce platforms can shape much of the physical economy.

What we are witnessing is the deliberate eradication of markets in favour of monopolistic platforms.

BEZOS NOT WELCOME

Amazon’s move into India encapsulates the unfair fight for space between local and global markets. There is a relative handful of multi-billionaires who own the corporations and platforms. And there are the interests of hundreds of millions of vendors and various small-scale enterprises who are regarded by these rich individuals as mere collateral damage to be displaced in their quest for ever-greater profit.

Thanks to the helping hand of various COVID-related lockdowns, which devastated small businesses, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn (trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020.

In September 2020, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before COVID. Jeff Bezos – his fortune constructed on unprincipled methods that have been well documented in recent years – increased his net wealth by $78.2bn during this period.

Bezos’s plan is clear: the plunder of India and the eradication of millions of small traders and retailers and neighbourhood mom and pop shops.

This is a man with few scruples. After returning from a brief flight to space in July, in a rocket built by his private space company, Bezos said during a news conference:

I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.”

In response, US congresswoman Nydia Velazquez wrote on Twitter:

While Jeff Bezos is all over the news for paying to go to space, let’s not forget the reality he has created here on Earth.”

She added the hashtag #WealthTaxNow in reference to Amazon’s tax dodging, revealed in numerous reports, not least the May 2021 study ‘The Amazon Method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax’ by Richard Phillips, Senior Research Fellow, Jenaline Pyle, PhD Candidate, and Ronen Palan, Professor of International Political Economy, all based at the University of London.

Little wonder that when Bezos visited India in January 2020, he was hardly welcomed with open arms.

Bezos praised India on Twitter by posting:

Dynamism. Energy. Democracy. #IndianCentury.”

The ruling party’s top man in the BJP foreign affairs department hit back with:

Please tell this to your employees in Washington DC. Otherwise, your charm offensive is likely to be waste of time and money.”

A fitting response, albeit perplexing given the current administration’s proposed sanctioning of the foreign takeover of the economy, not least by the unscrupulous interests that will benefit from the recent farm legislation.

Bezos landed in India on the back of the country’s antitrust regulator initiating a formal investigation of Amazon and with small store owners demonstrating in the streets. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) announced that members of its affiliate bodies across the country would stage sit-ins and public rallies in 300 cities in protest.

In a letter to PM Modi, prior to the visit of Bezos, the secretary of the CAIT, General Praveen Khandelwal, claimed that Amazon, like Walmart-owned Flipkart, was an “economic terrorist” due to its predatory pricing that “compelled the closure of thousands of small traders.”

In 2020, Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh (DVM) filed a complaint against Amazon and Flipkart alleging that they favoured certain sellers over others on their platforms by offering them discounted fees and preferential listing. The DVM lobbies to promote the interests of small traders. It also raised concerns about Amazon and Flipkart entering into tie-ups with mobile phone manufacturers to sell phones exclusively on their platforms.

It was argued by DVM that this was anti-competitive behaviour as smaller traders could not purchase and sell these devices. Concerns were also raised over the flash sales and deep discounts offered by e-commerce companies, which could not be matched by small traders.

The CAIT estimates that in 2019 upwards of 50,000 mobile phone retailers were forced out of business by large e-commerce firms.

Amazon’s internal documents, as revealed by Reuters, indicated that Amazon had an indirect ownership stake in a handful of sellers who made up most of the sales on its Indian platform. This is an issue because in India Amazon and Flipkart are legally allowed to function only as neutral platforms that facilitate transactions between third-party sellers and buyers for a fee.

UNDER INVESTIGATION

The upshot is that India’s Supreme Court recently ruled that Amazon must face investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for alleged anti-competitive business practices. The CCI said it would probe the deep discounts, preferential listings and exclusionary tactics that Amazon and Flipkart are alleged to have used to destroy competition.

However, there are powerful forces that have been sitting on their hands as these companies have been running amok.

In August 2021, the CAIT attacked the NITI Aayog (the influential policy commission think tank of the Government of India) for interfering in e-commerce rules proposed by the Consumer Affairs Ministry.

The CAIT said that the think tank clearly seems to be under the pressure and influence of the foreign e-commerce giants.

The president of CAIT, BC Bhartia, stated that it is deeply shocking to see such a callous and indifferent attitude of the NITI Aayog whch have remained a silent spectator for so many years when:

…the foreign e-commerce giants have circumvented every rule of the FDI policy and blatantly violated and destroyed the retail and e-commerce landscape of the country but have suddenly decided to open their mouth at a time when the proposed e-commerce rules will potentially end the malpractices of the e-commerce companies.”

Of course, money talks and buys influence. In addition to tens of billions of US dollars invested in India by Walmart and Amazon, Facebook invested US$5.5 billion last year in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms (e-commerce retail). Google has also invested US$4.5 billion.

Since the early 1990s, when India opened up to neoliberal economics, the country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital which ride roughshod over democratic principles and the needs of hundreds of millions of ordinary people. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration and the NITI Aayog.

The CAIT has urged the Consumer Affairs Ministry to implement the draft consumer protection e-commerce rules at the earliest as they are in the best interest of the consumers as well as the traders of the country.

Meanwhile, the CCI probably will complete its investigation within two months.

Australia Continues Its Plunge Into Authoritarianism And Military Brinkmanship

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

Australia has joined the US and UK in an “enhanced trilateral security partnership” called AUKUS with the unspoken-yet-obvious goal of coordinating escalations against China. Antiwar reports:

President Biden and the leaders of Australia and the UK announced a new military agreement on Wednesday aimed at countering China. The pact, known as AUKUS, will focus on the sharing of sensitive military technologies, and the first initiative will focus on getting Australia nuclear-powered submarines.

US officials speaking to CNN described the effort to share nuclear propulsion with another country as an “exceedingly rare step” due to the sensitivity of the technology. “This technology is extremely sensitive. This is, frankly, an exception to our policy in many respects,” one unnamed official said.

This deal will replace a planned $90 billion program to obtain twelve submarines designed by France, an obnoxious expenditure either way when a quarter of Australians are struggling to make ends meet during a pandemic that is four times more likely to kill Australians who are struggling financially. This is just the latest in Canberra’s continually expanding policy of feeding vast fortunes into Washington’s standoff with Beijing at the expense of its own people.

If readers are curious why Australia would simultaneously subvert its own economic interests by turning against its primary trading partner and its own security interests by feeding into dangerous and unnecessary provocations, I will refer them once again to the jarringly honest explanation by American political analyst John Mearsheimer at a debate hosted by the Australian think tank Center for Independent Studies in 2019. Mearsheimer told his audience that the US is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the regional hegemon in the East, and that Australia should align with the US in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.

“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”

Mearsheimer claimed that China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert this economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the US dominates the Western Hemisphere”, and explained why he thinks the US and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.

“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said. “Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.”

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

So there you have it. Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US.

This new move happens as Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner announces his government’s policy for Covid-19 restrictions once the territory’s population is 80 percent vaccinated which will include “lockouts” during outbreaks wherein people will only be allowed to work and move freely in society if they verify that they are vaccinated using check-in measures which Gunner literally calls a “freedom pass”.

“I’ll say it again and again. If you want your life to continue close to normal, get your jab,” Gunner said. “For vaccinated people, the check-in app will basically be your freedom pass. For people who make the choice to not get vaccinated, no vax means no freedom pass. We’re working with other governments now to get this technology ready.”

This is in alignment with what we’ve been told to expect as the rest of Australia prepares to roll out the use of vaccine passports.

And we continue to see other authoritarian escalations in Australia which have nothing to do with Covid as well. Authorities have been proposing new legal provisions which will allow Australian visas to be cancelled and citizenship revoked in entirely secret proceedings based on information provided by secretive government agencies. The horrifying Identify and Disrupt bill which allows Australian police to hack people’s devices, collect, delete and alter their information and log onto their social media was passed through Parliament at jaw-dropping speed last month. Neither of these escalations are Covid-related.

People who just started paying attention to Australian authoritarianism during Covid often get the impression that it’s entirely about the virus, but as we discussed previously the actual fundamental problem is that Australia is the only so-called democracy without any kind of statute or bill of rights to protect the citizenry from these kinds of abuses. This is why Australia is looked upon as so freakish by the rest of the western world right now: because, in this sense, it is. People call it a “free country”, but there has never been any reason to do so.

Covid has certainly played a major role in the exacerbation of Australian authoritarianism, but it’s a problem that was well underway long before the outbreak. Back in 2019 the CIVICUS Monitor had already downgraded Australia from an “open” country to one where civil space has “narrowed”, citing new laws to expand government surveillance, prosecution of whistleblowers, and raids on media organizations.

This slide into military brinkmanship and authoritarian dystopia shows no signs of stopping. The abuses of the powerful will continue to grow more egregious until the people open their eyes to what’s going on and begin taking action to steer us away from the existential dangers we are hurtling toward on multiple fronts. If there is any good news to be had here, it’s that if such a miracle ever occurs it will then be possible to immediately course correct and start building a healthy society together.