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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/2020_the_year_the_tree_of_liberty_was_torched

2020: The Year the Tree of Liberty Was Torched

“The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon

No doubt about it: 2020—a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom—was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.

Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians were accepted as the norm.

Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades and in the past year, in particular.

The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces continued to be a menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.

The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

COVID-19 allowed the Emergency State to expand its powers. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) could expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. While COVID-19 took a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, it also allowed the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, with talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, forced vaccinations, snitch tip lines and onerous lockdowns.

The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

America became a red flag nation. Red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws generally push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States. Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

The cost of policing the globe drove the nation deeper into debt. America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Yet America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart.

Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.

The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs, and then locked down and stripped of any semblance of personal freedom?

No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.

For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

So how do you not only push back against the government’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?

You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.

Take your cue from the Tenth Amendment and nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.

For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.

Nullification is one way of doing so.

America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.

Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.

The power to change things for the better rests with us, not the politicians.

As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.

We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent and push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the police state is marching forward, more powerful than ever.

If there is to be any hope for freedom in 2021, it rests with “we the people.”

 

 

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/31/america-keeps-claiming-governments-it-hates-are-paying-bounties-on-us-troops-in-afghanistan/

America Keeps Claiming Governments It Hates Are Paying Bounties On US Troops In Afghanistan

We’re now getting mass media reports that yet another country the US government doesn’t like has been trying to kill American troops in Afghanistan, with the accusation this time being leveled at China. This brings the total number of governments against which this exact accusation has been made to three: China, Iran, and Russia.

“The U.S. has evidence that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] attempted to finance attacks on American servicemen by Afghan non-state actors by offering financial incentives or ‘bounties’,” reads a new “scoop” from Axios, quoting anonymous officials who refused to name their sources.

“The Trump administration is declassifying as-yet uncorroborated intelligence, recently briefed to President Trump, that indicates China offered to pay non-state actors in Afghanistan to attack American soldiers, two senior administration officials tell Axios,” the evidence-free report claims.

The Axios report is already being circulated into public consciousness by mass media outlets like CNN. It is co-authored by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, whose career lately has been focused on churning out extremely aggressive narrative management about China for a liberal audience, including a ridiculous hit piece on The Grayzone and its coverage of Xinjiang which failed to list a single piece of false or inaccurate reporting by that outlet. This eagerness to help manipulate public perception of America’s number one geopolitical rival has seen Allen-Ebrahimian rewarded with plenty of attention from “sources” who provide her with endless career-amplifying “scoops”.

A few months ago, it was Iran we were being told is trying to use proxies to kill US troops in Afghanistan.

“US intelligence agencies assessed that Iran offered bounties to Taliban fighters for targeting American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, identifying payments linked to at least six attacks carried out by the militant group just last year alone, including a suicide bombing at a US air base in December,” CNN reported in August without any evidence.

Before that it was Russia this same accusation was being leveled at, with mainstream news media shamelessly regurgitating claims by anonymous intelligence operatives and then citing each other to falsely claim they’d “confirmed” one another’s reporting back in June. The story was sent so insanely viral by mass media narrative managers eager to pressure Trump on Russia during an election year that when the top US military commander in Afghanistan said in September that no solid evidence had turned up for this claim it was completely ignored, and to this day the liberal commentariat still babble about “Russian bounties” as though they’re an actual thing that happened.

Three imperialism-targeted nations, same exact accusation. Pretty soon they’ll be telling us that bounties are being paid on US troops in Afghanistan by China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Hezbollah, WikiLeaks, Jimmy Dore, and the entire staff of World Socialist Website.

The “Bountygate” narrative was one of the most brazen psyops we’ve seen rammed straight from the US intelligence community into public consciousness with no lube in recent years, and it was so successful that they’re just spraying it all over the place to see if they can replicate its effects on other targeted governments.

It is not a coincidence that the information landscape is so confusing and bizarre right now. Our psyches are being hammered with more and more aggression by mass-scale psyops designed to manufacture support for increasing aggressions against the governments which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized empire, because as China rises and the US declines we’re moving toward a multipolar world.

A movement toward a multipolar world should not be a frightening prospect–it’s been the norm throughout the entirety of human civilization minus the last three decades–but after the fall of the Soviet Union the drivers of the US power alliance decided that US global hegemony must be preserved at all cost. Drastic measures will be undertaken to try and retain hegemony, and propaganda campaigns is being rolled out with increasing urgency to grease the wheels for those measures.

Meanwhile we’ve got nuclear-armed nations brandishing armageddon weapons at each other with increasing urgency and unpredictability because a few imperialists decided the entire planet should be governed from Washington DC. This, to put it gently, is an unsustainable situation.

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/gasoline12-20.html

One Little Problem with the "All-Electric" Auto Fleet: What Do We Do with all the "Waste" Gasoline?

Back in the early days of the oil industry (1880s and 1890s), the product that the industry could sell at a profit was kerosene for lighting and heating. Since there was no automobile industry yet, gasoline was a waste product that was dumped into streams.

Why couldn't the refiners produce only kerosene? Why did they end up with "worthless" gasoline?

The answer is a barrel of oil produces a variety of products. While there is some "wiggle room" to produce more diesel and less gasoline, etc., it isn't possible to turn a barrel of oil into only one product.

John D. Rockefeller became very wealthy by cornering much of the oil market in the 19th century. But he didn't become fabulously wealthy until the 20th century, when the rise of automobiles created a market for all the "waste" gasoline.

Rockefeller became super-wealthy when all the products of each barrel of oil could be sold at a premium rather than just a portion of the products.

This reality has been forgotten: the price that can be fetched for a barrel of oil depends on the demand for all the products, not just a few of the products.

Those demanding an all-electric auto-truck fleet as a "green" alternative will re-create the dilemma of what to do with the "waste" gasoline. The world will still want fuel for all those container ships bringing all the goodies of a consumerist society, all those cruise ships visiting ports of call, jet fuel for all those exotic vacations enabled by 550 mile-per-hour aircraft, and oil-based lubricants, plastics and petro-chemicals, and so oil will still be pumped and refined, and almost half of it will be gasoline.

We can either use it or throw it away but we can't magically turn a barrel of oil into only one product.

This is a topic worthy of your understanding, so grab a vat of your favorite beverage and turn off all distractions.

Longtime readers know I've focused on energy-oil markets for 15 years. Despite ups and downs in price, the oil market has been remarkably stable.

This stability is about to transition to chronic instability: wild swings in price, shortages, and social chaos in both producing and consumer nations.

Let's start with the most basic dynamics in the cost of producing oil, refining it and selling the products at a profit.

1. As a general rule, a barrel of oil (42 gallons, 196 liters) yields a range of heavier and lighter products.

The price the producers can charge for each product--gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, propane, etc.-- depends on demand for each product.

If the price for one product falls drastically, the oil producer can't increase the price of some other product to compensate for the loss of income unless demand for the other products will support higher prices.

Consider the huge decline in demand for jet fuel as a result of global air travel dropping in the pandemic. Oil producers can't just raise the price of gasoline to compensate for the drop in the price of jet fuel.

If gasoline demand continues declining (due to fewer commutes, etc.) then producers can't charge more for diesel to make up the drop in the price of gasoline.

In other words, there has to be strong demand for all the products in a barrel of oil for producers to get enough money to extract, refine and transport the products globally.

Unlike the old days when producers could afford to throw away some petroleum products because their costs of extraction and refining were so low, now producers need more than $45/barrel just to break even.

This is what I'm calling Oil Paradox #1: if demand for any of the primary products is weak, producers can't afford to continue extracting and refining oil, even if there is strong demand for some products.

2. Transportation is the primary use of oil: 68% of all petroleum products are consumed by transport, 26% by industrial and 6% residential/commercial. (These are U.S. statistics, but the global demand is roughly the same.)

If demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel remains weak, the value of each barrel of oil will remain below break-even, even if the industrial need for some products (lubricants, etc.) is strong because these industrial products are essential to the world's industrial economy.

3. Much of the consumption of the past 20 years was funded by debt, which is now $277 trillion globally and accelerating. Humanity has borrowed and spent trillions on consumption, and what remains is the interest due on the debt.

This interest constrains future borrowing. The "solution" to interest is inflation, which devalues the interest due. But it also devalues the purchasing power of the currencies being inflated, and so everyone's money buys fewer goods and services.

This is the Debt-Inflation Paradox: the more interest you owe, the greater your need to inflate away the burden of interest. But inflation destroys the purchasing power of money, impoverishing everyone who needs the money to live.

There is no way out of this paradox: either the global economy defaults on its debts, destroying trillions in phantom wealth, or its currencies lose value, impoverishing everyone.

Since so much consumption is funded by debt, any reduction in borrowing, no matter how modest, will destroy demand for petroleum, triggering the Oil Paradox (producers can't charge enough to justify pumping and refining oil).

4. The pandemic has accelerated consumption trends that reduce demand for fuels. Remote work is here to stay, regardless of what you may read. Corporations can no longer afford to staff centralized offices in costly cities. Making everyone commute to offices is no longer financially viable.

Corporate travel is also no longer financially viable. As profit margins fall, the luxury of jetting to physical meetings is no longer justifiable except for senior management-- a few dozen people, not hundreds or thousands.

Tourism thrived in an economy of easy, low-cost credit and secure incomes. Lenders can no longer afford to lend to those with poor credit--notice how credit card limits have been drastically reduced--and incomes are no longer secure.

If the pandemic were the only issue, it would be possible to see a return to 2019-level consumption. But unsustainable debt loads will only get more unsustainable, so much of the consumption that was funded by debt will go away and not come back: the interest on all the existing debt remains to be paid, one way or another.

This decline in consumption has lowered the price of oil far below break-even for most producers. As the article below explains, there are two break-even prices for petroleum: one to get it out of the ground, refine it and deliver it to market, and the second for the social costs the oil pays for.

This is the famous Oil Curse: nations with oil reserves end up depending on selling oil for virtually all their revenues because it doesn't make sense to invest in less reliable, less profitable sectors.

As a result, Saudi Arabia can pump the oil for $45/barrel, but it needs a price of $85/barrel to pay all the social welfare costs it has promised its people.

If you glance at the charts in this article, you'll see the full break-even price of oil for OPEC nations is extremely high.

Breakeven crude oil prices are one metric of the economic constraints facing OPEC+ members

This generates Oil Paradox #2: low demand/low prices for oil may be financially viable in terms of extracting the oil, but the societies that depend on vast oil revenues will unravel if oil prices stay low, and that will disrupt production.

Roughly half of U.S. petroleum production is from tight shale and other unconventional oil sources. Many of these wells are no longer profitable and will be shut down once the producers' credit lines dry up. (This is already happening, triggering mass bankruptcies in the fracking industry).

The oil producing nations are basically surviving on $40/barrel oil by borrowing against future revenues. This is a dangerous game because if oil prices remain low their credit lines will eventually be withdrawn.

The oil producers need supply to fall drastically enough to raise prices back to the $80/barrel or higher level. But nobody can afford to cut their own production enough to reduce global supply enough to matter.

This introduces Oil Paradox #3: should petroleum producers succeed to slashing supply so oil goes to $85/barrel, the higher cost will push the fragile consuming nations into recession or depression, which will slash demand even more, which will require even deeper production cuts to maintain prices.

If we put all these paradoxes together, we see that oil markets are now intrinsically unstable and cannot return to stability because the mix of high break-even prices, declining demand and the end of debt-funded consumption cannot be resolved: high prices crush demand, low prices crush producers, and debt is crushing both consumers and producers.

Much hope is being placed on so-called renewable energy, most of which is not renewable but replaceable, as I've learned from Nate Hagens. A forest is renewable, a solar panel or windmill must be replaced every 20 years at enormous expense.

Right now all alternative energy sources--wind, solar, etc.-- generate no more than 4% of global energy consumption. (see chart below) Despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested, all the alternative energy sources are a tiny fraction of global consumption, and their supposed fantastic rates of growth is revealed on this chart as inconsequential: all this new energy doesn't replace a single drop of oil, it simply fuels additional consumption.

It will take a monumental investment and many years to get this to 10%. The reality is the vast majority of the global economy still depends entirely on petroleum for transport and industrial essentials such as lubricants.

How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone

Petroleum is now an unstable system and for all the reasons outlined above it cannot be restored to stability: just as time is a one-way arrow, so is the loss of stability.

What can we expect? Unstable systems are prone to wild swings to extremes and unpredictable collapses. So we may see collapses in the price of oil as we saw in March, and then rapid ascents in price above $100/barrel, which then crash once demand declines.

This unpredictability complicates projections and generates uncertainty. This is the final paradox (#4): the unpredictability of oil markets is itself a destabilizing force. Decisions on future production and consumption cannot be long-term, and this constrains investment in future production.

Regardless of what happens with vaccines and Covid-19, debt and energy--inextricably bound as debt funds consumption-- will destabilize the global economy in a self-reinforcing feedback.

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https://stephenlendman.org/2020/12/enemy-of-the-people/

Enemy of the People 

In the US, West and elsewhere, governments are enemies of ordinary people instead of serving them equitably.

The myth of America the beautiful, its claimed exceptionalism, the indispensable state and moral superiority are exposed and debunked by its war on humanity at home and abroad. More on this below.

In the Hollywood film, titled An Enemy of the People, a town doctor exposes the deception about nearby springs with alleged therapeutic powers, a scheme to boost tourism.

The doctor discovers that touted springs are polluted by toxic waste from the town’s tannery.

Wanting the news widely spread is opposed by the town’s mayor, wanting it suppressed, the whistleblowing doctor silenced.

Once respected, he’s intimidated and treated like a pariah, his daughter dismissed from school, rocks thrown at windows of his home.

Challenging powerful interests comes with a price.

It risks paying dearly for the courage to speak freely on behalf of public health and welfare.

Made-in-the-USA covid is part of a diabolical social control scheme.

It’s combined with transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth from ordinary people to rich and powerful ones in record time.

Unacceptable lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, and mask-wearing —along with lost jobs and income — caused enormous harm and misery to millions of people so privileged ones can benefit.

It caused the Greatest Main Street Depression in US history that’s likely to be protracted.

The worst of it may lie ahead because the longer current conditions continue, the more harm done to most people.

US dark forces in cahoots with monied interests and press agent media are enemies of the people.

They’re responsible for what’s going on — elements in Washington for orchestrating it, Pharma for pursuing maximum profits at the expense of human health, and mass media for promoting the scam instead of exposing and debunking it.

All vaccines are hazardous to human health. Mass-vaxxing with fast-tracked, experimental, inadequately tested covid ones may prove most hazardous of all short and/or longer-term.

It’s vital for everyone valuing their health and welfare to say NO to the false promise of alleged protection from a virus that’s much the same as seasonal flu/influenza.

The vast majority of diagnosed covid illnesses are from the above that shows up annually worldwide like clockwork — unaccompanied by fear-mongering mass hysteria and all the rest.

We’re being lied to by government officials, Pharma, and their press agent mass media.

Throughout most of 2020, thousands of doctors, scientists, and others debunked fake news about covid and vaccines to the rescue.

They challenged the official falsified narrative. When followed as promoted, it risks loss of human health that’s too precious to lose.

The hazards of contracting what’s called covid are greatly exaggerated.

Around 99% of individuals  becoming ill from what’s called covid — that most always is seasonal flu/influenza — recover normally.

Pfizer’s former chief science official Dr. Michael Yeadon explained that “almost all” PCR tests for covid produce false positives, making them worthless.

Many other medical and scientific experts explained the same thing.

Research by Johns-Hopkins University assistant director of its applied economics program Genevieve Briand revealed that the percentage of deaths among all US age groups in 2020 is similar to the data in earlier years.

There’s been no increase in deaths of older Americans.

Her information published by Johns-Hopkins student newspaper was removed.

Falsely claiming it contained “dangerous inaccuracies” is part of a diabolical fear-mongering scheme to push the harmful to human health official narrative.

Large numbers of deaths from various causes have been erroneously attributed to covid — to artificially inflate its death count.

It’s part of state-sponsored — mass media promoted — fear-mongering to scare the public into compliance with draconian policies.

Information on safe, effective, inexpensive hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin to treat covid or seasonal flu/influenza is suppressed by government officials, Pharma and mass media — to promote hazardous to human health mass-vaxxing.

Editor Kamran Abbasi of the BMJ publication for healthcare professionals reported the following:

“Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain.” 

“Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.” 

“Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement.” 

“So too are (bought and paid for) scientists and health experts.” 

“The (so-called) pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.”

When most important throughout 2020, mass media abandoned journalism the way it’s supposed to be.

Ignoring truth-telling scientific evidence, they’ve consistently promoted the falsified official narrative instead of advocating for proven effective good health practices.

Reported numbers of covid illnesses and deaths have been falsified to promote mass-vaxxing.

Even the WHO belatedly acknowledged the inaccuracy of PCR tests — using terminology not easily understood by laymen.

Before FDA emergency use authorization for experimental Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, Children’s Health Defense warned that this technology “ha(s) serious downsides (and should) never (be) licensed,” adding:

“(L)arge mRNA molecules are ‘intrinsically unstable, prone to degradation’ and may over-activate the immune system.”

“(P)reclinical studies (show that) mRNA vaccines have displayed an ‘intrinsic’ inflammatory component that makes it difficult to establish an ‘acceptable risk/benefit profile.’ ”

“(G)enetically engineered COVID-19 vaccines are likely to start permanently altering genes, triggering autoimmunity and serving as the catalyst for other vaccine injuries or deaths.”

A high-risk, widespread human experiment is underway from licensing Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines that may cause enormous harm to countless numbers of people short and longer-term. 

It’s crucial for everyone valuing their health not to be a guinea pig for what later will likely be known as a failed experiment in treating what most often is seasonal flu/influenza — not needing this treatment.

 

 

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https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/12/23/2020-the-year-things-started-going-badly-wrong/

2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong

How today’s energy problem is different from peak oil

Many people believe that the economy will start going badly wrong when we “run out of oil.” The problem we have today is indeed an energy problem, but it is a different energy problem. Let me explain it with an escalator analogy.

Figure 1. Holborn Tube Station Escalator. Photo by renaissancechambara, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The economy is like a down escalator that citizens of the world are trying to walk upward on. At first the downward motion of the escalator is almost imperceptible, but gradually it gets to be greater and greater. Eventually the downward motion becomes almost unbearable. Many citizens long to sit down and take a rest.

In fact, a break, like the pandemic, almost comes as a relief. There is suddenly a chance to take it easy; not drive to work; not visit relatives; not keep up appearances before friends. Government officials may not be unhappy either. There may have been demonstrations by groups asking for higher wages. Telling people to stay at home provides a convenient way to end these demonstrations and restore order.

But then, restarting doesn’t work. There are too many broken pieces of the economy. Too many bankrupt companies; too many unemployed people; too much debt that cannot be repaid. And, a virus that really doesn’t quite go away, leaving people worried and unwilling to attempt to resume normal activities.

Some might describe the energy story as a “diminishing returns” story, but it’s really broader than this. It’s a story of services that we expect to continue, but which cannot continue without much more energy investment. It is also a story of the loss of “economies of scale” that at one time helped propel the economy forward.

In this post, I will explain some of the issues I see affecting the economy today. They tend to push the economy down, like a down escalator. They also make economic growth more difficult.

[1] Many resources take an increasing amount of effort to obtain or extract, because we use the easiest to obtain first. Many people would call this a diminishing returns problem.

Let’s look at a few examples:

(a) Water. When there were just a relatively few humans on the earth, drinking water from a nearby stream was a reasonable approach. This is the approach used by animals; humans could use it as well. As the number of humans rose, we found we needed additional approaches to gather enough potable water: First shallow wells were dug. Then we found that we needed to dig deeper wells. We found that lake water could be used, but we needed to filter it and treat it first. In some places, now, we find that desalination is needed. In fact, after desalination, we need to put the correct minerals back into it and pump it to the destination where it is required.

All of these approaches can indeed be employed. In theory, we would never run out of water. The problem is that as we move up the chain of treatments, an increasing amount of energy of some kind needs to be used. At first, humans could use some of their spare time (and energy) to dig wells. As more advanced approaches were chosen, the need for supplemental energy besides human energy became greater. Each of us individually cannot produce the water we need; instead, we must directly, or indirectly, pay for this water. The fact that we have to pay for this water with part of our wages reduces the portion of our wages available for other goods.

(b) Metals. Whenever some group decides to mine a metal ore, the ore that is taken first tends to be easy to access ore of high quality, close to where it needs to be used. As the best mines get depleted, producers use lower-grade ores, transported over longer distances. The shift toward less optimal mines requires more energy. Some of this additional energy could be human energy, but some of the energy would be supplied by fossil fuels, operating machinery in order to supplement human labor. Supplemental energy needs become greater and greater as mines become increasingly depleted. As technology advances, energy needs become greater, because some of the high-tech devices require materials that can only be formed at very high temperatures.

(c) Wild Animals Including Fish. When pre-humans moved out of Africa, they killed off the largest game animals on every continent that they moved to. It was still possible to hunt wild game in these areas, but the animals were smaller. The return on the human labor invested was smaller. Now, most of the meat we eat is produced on farms. The same pattern exists in fishing. Most of the fish the world eats today is produced on fish farms. We now need entire industries to provide food that early humans could obtain themselves. These farms directly and indirectly consume fossil fuel energy. In fact, more energy is used as more animals/fish are produced.

(d) Fossil Fuels. We keep hearing about the possibility of “running out” of oil, but this is not really the issue with oil. In fact, it is not the issue with coal or natural gas, either. The issue is one of diminishing returns. There is (and always will be) what looks like plenty left. The problem is that the process of extraction consumes increasing amounts of resources as deeper, more complex oil or gas wells need to be drilled and as coal mines farther away from users of the coal are developed. Many people have jumped to the conclusion that this means that the price that buyers of fossil fuel will pay will rise. This isn’t really true. It means that the cost of production will rise, leading to lower profitability. The lower profitability is likely to be spread in many ways: lower taxes paid, cutbacks in wages and pension plans, and perhaps a sale to a new owner, at a lower price. Eventually, low energy prices will lead to production stopping. Without adequate fossil fuels, the whole economic system will be disrupted, and the result will be severe recession or depression. There are also likely to be many job losses.

In (a) through (d) above, we are seeing an increasing share of the output of the economy being used in inefficient ways: in creating deeper water wells and desalination plants; in drilling oil wells in more difficult locations; in extracting metal ores that are mostly waste products. The extent of this inefficiency tends to increase over time. This is what leads to the effect of an escalator descending faster and faster, just as we humans are trying to walk up it.

Humans work for wages, but they find that when they buy a box of corn flakes, very little of the price actually goes to the farmer growing the corn. Instead, all of the intermediate parts of the system are becoming overly large. The buyer cannot afford the end products, and the producer feels cheated by the low wholesale prices he is being paid. The system as a whole is pushed toward collapse.

[2] Increasing complexity can help maintain economic growth, but it too reaches diminishing returns.

Complexity takes many forms, including more hierarchical organization, more specialization, longer supply chains, and development of new technology. Complexity can indeed help maintain economic growth. For example, if water supply is intermittent, a country may choose to build a dam to control the flow of water and produce electricity. Complexity tends to reach diminishing returns, as noted by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies. For example, economies build dams in the best locations first, and only later build them at less advantageous sites. These are a few other examples:

(a) Education. Teaching everyone to read and write has significant benefits because it allows the use of books and other written materials to disseminate information and knowledge. Teaching a few people advanced subjects has significant benefits as well. But after a certain point, the need for additional people to study a subject such as art history is low. A few people can teach the subject but doing more research on the subject probably won’t increase world GDP very much.

When we look at data from about 1970, we find that people with advanced education earned much higher incomes than those without advanced degrees. But as we add an increasing large share of people with these advanced degrees, jobs that really need these degrees are not as plentiful as the new graduates. Quite a few people with advanced degrees end up with low-paying jobs. The “return on investment” for higher education drops increasingly lower. Some students are not able to repay the debt that they took out in order to pay for their education.

(b) Medicines and vaccines. Over the years, medicines and vaccines have been developed to treat many common illnesses and diseases. After a while, the easy-to-find medicines for the common unwanted conditions (such as diabetes, high blood pressure and inflammation) have already been found. There are medicines for rare diseases that haven’t been found, but these will never have very large total sales, discouraging investment. There are also conditions that are common in very poor countries. While expensive drugs could be developed for these conditions, it is likely that few people could afford these drugs, so this, too, becomes less attractive.

If research is to continue, it is important to keep expanding work on expensive new drugs, even if it means completely ignoring old inexpensive drugs that might work equally well. A cynical person might think that this is the reason why vitamin D and ivermectin are generally being ignored in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Without an expanding group of high-priced new drugs, it is hard to attract capital and young workers to the field.

(c) Automobile efficiency. In the US, the big fuel efficiency change that took place was that which took place between 1975 and 1983, when a changeover was made to smaller, lighter vehicles, similar to ones that were already in use in Japan and Europe.

Figure 2. Estimated Real-World Fuel Economy, Horsepower, and Weight Since Model Year 1975, in a chart produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Source.

The increase in fuel efficiency between 2008 and 2019 (an 11 year period) was only 22%, compared to the 60% increase in fuel efficiency between 1975 and 1983 (an 8 year period). This is another example of diminishing returns to investment in complexity.

[3] Today’s citizens have never been told that many of the services we take for granted today, such as suppression of forest fires, are really services provided by fossil fuels.

In fact, the amount of energy required to provide these services rises each year. We expect these services to continue indefinitely, but we should be aware that they cannot continue very long, unless the energy available to the economy as a whole is rising very rapidly.

(a) Suppression of Forest Fires. Forest fires are part of nature. Many trees require fire for their seeds to germinate. Human neighbors of forests don’t like forest fires; they often encourage local authorities to put out any forest fire that starts. Such suppression allows an increasing amount of dry bush to build up. As a result, future fires spread more easily and grow larger.

At the same time, humans increasingly build homes in forested areas because of the pleasant scenery. As population expands and as fires spread more easily, forest fire suppression takes an increasing amount of resources, including fossil fuels to power helicopters used in the battles. If fossil fuels are not available, this type of service would need to stop. Trying to keep forest fires suppressed, assuming fossil fuels are available for this purpose, will take higher taxes, year after year. This is part of what makes it seem like we are trying to move our economy upward on a down escalator.

(b) Suppression of Illnesses. Illnesses are part of the cycle of nature; they disproportionately take out the old and the weak. Of course, we humans don’t really like this; the old and weak are our relatives and close friends. In fact, some of us may be old and weak.

In the last 100 years, researchers (using fossil fuels) have developed a large number of antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines to try to suppress illnesses. We find that microbes quickly mutate in new ways, defeating our attempts at suppression of illnesses. Thus, we have ever-more antibiotic resistant bacteria. The cost of today’s US healthcare system is very high, exceeding what many poor people can afford to pay. Introducing new vaccines results in an additional cost.

Closing down the system to try to stop a virus adds a huge new cost, which is disproportionately borne by the poor people of the world. If we throw more money/fossil fuels at the medical system, perhaps it can be made to work a little longer. No one tells us that disease suppression is a service of fossil fuels; if we have an increasing quantity of fossil fuels per capita, perhaps we can increase disease suppression services.

(c) Suppression of Weeds and Unwanted Insects. Researchers keep developing new chemical treatments (based on fossil fuels) to suppress weeds and unwanted insects. Unfortunately, the weeds and unwanted insects keep mutating in a way that makes the chemicals less effective. The easy solutions were found first; finding solutions that really work and don’t harm humans seems to be elusive. The early solutions were relatively cheap, but later ones have become increasingly expensive. This problem acts, in many ways, like diminishing returns.

(d) Recycling (and Indirectly, Return Transport of Empty Shipping Containers from Around the World). When oil prices are high, recycling of used items for their content makes sense, economically. When oil prices are low, recycling often requires a subsidy. This subsidy indirectly goes to pay for fossil fuels used to facilitate the recycling. Often this goes to pay for shipment to a country that will do the recycling.

When oil prices were high (prior to 2014), part of the revenue from recycling could be used to transport mixed waste products to China and India for recycling. With low oil prices, China and India have stopped accepting most recycling. Instead, it is necessary to find actual “goods” for the return voyage of a shipping container or, alternatively, pay to have the container sent back empty. Europe now seems to have a difficult time filling shipping containers for the return voyage to Asia. Because of this, the cost of obtaining shipping containers to ship goods to Europe seems to be escalating. This higher cost acts much like diminishing returns with respect to the transport of goods to Europe from Asia. This is yet another part of what is acting like a down escalator for the world economy.

[4] Another, ever higher cost is pollution control. This higher cost also exerts a downward effect on the world economy, because it acts like another intermediate cost.

As we burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels, increasing amounts of particulate matter need to be captured and disposed of. Capturing this material is only part of the problem; some of the waste material may be radioactive or may include mercury. Once the material is captured, it needs to be “locked up” in some way, so it doesn’t pollute the water and air. Whatever approach is used requires energy products of various kinds. In fact, the more fossil fuels that are burned, the bigger the waste disposal problem tends to be.

Burning more fossil fuels also leads to more CO2. Unfortunately, we don’t have suitable alternatives. Nuclear is probably as good as any, and it has serious safety issues. In my opinion, the view that intermittent wind and solar are a suitable replacement for fossil fuels represents wishful thinking. Wind and solar, because of their intermittency, can only partially replace the coal or natural gas burned to generate electricity. They cannot be relied upon for 24/7/365 generation. The unsubsidized cost of producing intermittent wind and solar energy needs to be compared to the price of coal and natural gas, not to wholesale electricity prices. There are a lot of apples to oranges comparisons being made.

[5] Among other things, the growth of the economy depends on “economies of scale” as the number of participants in the economy gradually grows. The response to COVID-19 has been extremely detrimental to economies of scale.

The economies of many countries changed dramatically, with the initial spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, we cannot expect these changes to be completely reversed anytime soon. Part of the reason is the new virus mutation from the UK that is now of concern. Another reason is that, even with the vaccine, no one really knows how long immunity will last. Until the virus is clearly gone, vestiges of the cutbacks are likely to remain in place.

In general, businesses do well financially, as the number of buyers of the goods and services they provide rises. This happens because overhead costs, such as mortgage payments, can be spread over more buyers. The expertise of the business owners can also be used more widely.

One huge problem is the recent cutback in tourism, affecting almost every country in the world. This cutback affects both businesses directly related to tourism and businesses indirectly related to tourism, such as restaurants and hotels.

Another huge problem is social distancing rules that lead to office buildings and restaurants being used less intensively. Businesses find that they tend to have fewer customers, rather than more. Related businesses, such as taxis and dry cleaners, find that they also have fewer customers. Nursing homes and other care homes for the aged are seeing lower occupancy rates because no one wants to be locked up for months on end without being able to see other members of their family.

[6] With all of the difficulties listed in Items [1] though [5], debt based financing tends to work less and less well. Huge debt defaults can be expected to adversely affect banks, insurance companies and pension plans.

Many businesses are already near default on debt. These businesses cannot make a profit with a much reduced number of customers. If no change is possible, somehow this will need to flow through the system. Defaulting debt is likely to lead to failing banks and pension plans. In fact, governments that depend on taxes may also fail.

The shutdowns taken by economies earlier this year were very detrimental, both to businesses and to workers. A major solution to date has been to add more governmental debt to try to bail out citizens and businesses. This additional debt makes it even more difficult to maintain promised debt payments. This is yet another force making it difficult for economies to move up the growth escalator.

[7] The situation we are headed for looks much like the collapses of early civilizations.

With diminishing returns everywhere, and inadequate sources of very inexpensive energy to keep the system going, major parts of the world economic system appear headed for collapse. There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep the world economy growing rapidly enough to offset the down escalator effect.

Citizens have not been aware of how “close to the edge” we have been. Low energy prices have been deceptive, but this is what we should expect with collapse. Low prices tend to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They also tend to discourage high-priced alternatives. Unfortunately, all the wishful thinking of the World Economic Forum and others advocating a Green New Deal does not change the reality of the situation.

 

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56070.htm

US War Machine Masquerading as Country

The late and not-so-great Republican Senator John McCain once provocatively described Russia as “a giant gas station masquerading as a country”.

Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate and fellow Republican Senator, was quoted in US media over the weekend channeling McCain’s contemptuous description of Russia.

Russophobia among the American political class has become hysterical over the past week since prominent media outlets reported on an alleged massive cyber-attack attributed to Russian agents.

For any objective reader, such “reports” (more accurately “propaganda”) are ludicrous. There is no evidence to support the lurid claims of Russian hacking. The “story” – as in countless other “stories” in the past about alleged Russian malfeasance, from election interference to bounty-hunters killing US troops in Afghanistan – relies on anonymous sources, innuendo and gullible journalists.

It’s so obviously a psychological operation orchestrated by the US military-intelligence nexus which is facilitated by hacks at the New York Times and other major outlets who are in the pocket of the CIA.

The Pavlovian response among the American politicians is a classic demonstration of ideological conditioning. Republicans and Democrats are accusing Russia of committing an act of war from the alleged cyber-assault. They are hence braying for a “cyber-retaliation” against Russia.

Recall from whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about Vault 7 that the CIA and the National Security Agency have digital weaponry to carry out cyber warfare which can be then falsely attributed to others.

It is entirely plausible that the latest purported Russian hack-attack is in actuality a digital false flag perpetrated by US intel agencies and amplified by the servile media.

The timing of all this is highly significant. Just as Joe Biden is formally confirmed as the president-elect last week there is the massive media furore over a supposed Russian “act of war”.

Biden has dutifully indicated that he will take appropriate counter measures against Russia. As if girding for confrontation, Biden said:

    “We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber-attacks in the first place… We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners. Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation.”

The manipulation going on here is as transparent as it is brazen. The American Deep State of military-industrial complex and its intelligence agencies are itching for a more aggressive policy towards Russia and China. US hegemony and corporate profits depend on it. It looks like Russia is being prioritized as the main enemy. And it looks like Biden, predictable as ever, is lapping up the script for renewed aggression.

Which brings us back to the late McCain and Romney’s depiction of Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country”. They are of course referring to Russia’s prodigious oil and gas natural wealth.
Something no doubt America’s imperial planners would love to get their lusting hands on.

But it is pathetically ignorant of such American politicians to denigrate Russia as being all about hydrocarbons. This vast country with millennia of history has provided some of the world’s greatest cultural talents, from Tolstoy to Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky to Mendeleev, and many more luminaries in the realms of science and technology, art and philosophy. It also liberated Europe from the tyranny of Nazi Germany, which American and other Western capitalists had stealthily financed the rise of during the 1930s.

By contrast, in its couple of centuries of existence, the United States has provided modest cultural contributions. What’s more, it has been a much bigger destroyer of culture than it has been a creator.
From genocidal wars against its own native people, the US became an implacable imperial power waging near-continuous wars in every corner of the world, the death toll from which is in the tens of millions.

The US spends $740 billion on war machines every year – more than 11 times Russia’s defense budget. The US has 800 military bases around the world in over 70 countries. It is illegally occupying countries, bombing and killing civilians.

The United States is a war machine masquerading as a country whose political class and mass media are so throughly brainwashed as to be beyond redemption.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/20/why-theyre-denying-you-healthcare-and-financial-support-during-a-pandemic/

Why They’re Denying You Healthcare And Financial Support During A Pandemic

An old adage known as Betteridge’s law of headlines asserts that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

There’s a Bloomberg story trending on Twitter right now about China having the ability to control the weather, with the headline reading “Has China Mastered Weather Modification? Should We Worry?”

According to Betteridge, no.

It just goes on and on and on. Every single day the western mass media are bashing us in the face with stories about horrifying scary things other countries are doing which we all need to be afraid of, and from which we must turn imploringly to our own kind and beneficent rulers for protection.

Today China is controlling your weather. Yesterday the Russians were hacking your mind. The day before it was Kremlin microwave guns. Before that it was Chinese super soldiers. Tomorrow Venezuela will be using communist gamma rays to ruin your performance in bed.

And on and on and on and on. And, strangely, at no time will these media institutions warn you about the fact that your government is constantly murdering people in other countries every single day while you and your neighbors struggle to survive.

Right now the hot topic in US lefty discourse is the fact that Americans are struggling financially and medically as a result of Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdowns, yet the US government is doing virtually nothing to help with this. Americans received a piddling one-time $1200 payment eight months ago, and now after all this time they’re looking at receiving an even more ridiculous one-time $600 stimulus check.

There’s also the debate that’s been raging in US left circles over the call initiated by commentator Jimmy Dore for House progressives to force a floor vote on Medicare for All legislation, a big part of the argument being that it’s more important than ever to start pushing for a normal healthcare system in the United States right now. Millions of people are being thrown off their employer-provided insurance during the economic downturn and it is both a necessary and opportune time to either implement universal healthcare or at least draw public attention to which elected officials are standing in its way.

Both the campaign to get the US government to implement a proper healthcare system, and the fight to get meaningful financial support during the pandemic, will fail. Necessarily.

They will not fail because there’s a lack of public support for these things. They will not fail because of the number of seats controlled by members of a given party in the House or the Senate. They will not fail because “It’s just not realistic right now”.

They will fail, ultimately, because an entire globe-spanning empire depends upon keeping Americans struggling financially.

The US has a system of deliberately institutionalized poverty because if wealth were more evenly distributed in the most powerful nation on earth, there’d be no ruling class to ensure the domination of the globe-spanning empire. Plutocrats wouldn’t be able to use their massive wealth advantage to buy up influence over the political class and control public thought by purchasing mass media outlets and other mechanisms narrative control in order to ensure the continuation of the global status quo upon which those plutocrats have built their kingdoms. The system would belong to the people.

This is the real wall US progressives keep crashing into in their fight for economic justice in America. Ultimately their efforts to work within the official political system to implement economic justice fail because that system is set up to preserve economic injustice. It’s not ultimately about this or that political faction or any one particular politician, it’s the fact that there’s a massive amount of power riding on the ability to keep Americans too poor and powerless to interfere in the operation of the nation which serves as the hub of a massive global empire.

It’s like attempts to end the war in Afghanistan. Anyone who isn’t a brainwashed dupe knows there’s no legitimate reason for western forces to continue that 19-year occupation, yet whenever there’s a major push for withdrawal something always comes up. We can’t leave because of Al-Qaeda. We can’t leave because of women’s rights. We can’t leave because of Russian bounties. The official talking heads of the political/media class agree that it would be great to withdraw from Afghanistan, but for this or that blah blah reason, “It’s just not realistic right now”.

The unspoken reality is that those troops are in Afghanistan primarily due to that nation’s prime geostrategic location relative to the most powerful nations who oppose the dictates of the US-centralized empire, namely China, Russia, and Iran. The fall of those unabsorbed governments is the only thing that could ever bring about a military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In the same way, the American left is fed all kinds of reasons for why they need to remain impoverished for a few more years until conditions change in some way, when really the only reason is because there’s a massive globe-spanning power structure which depends on their remaining impoverished. It’s a larger-scale version of the real reason why Palestinians need to remain oppressed instead of treated as equal citizens in Israel: there’s just too much power riding on the control of that crucial geostrategic part of the Middle East for a population with no loyalty to the empire to be given any control over what happens there.

American leftists and progressives will keep crashing into this wall, over and over and over again, every time they try to work within the official US political system to ease the crushing poverty and inequality in the wealthiest nation on earth. If by some miracle they are able to overcome all the many, many, many obstacles built into the plutocrat-controlled system and put themselves in a position to implement policies of economic justice by following all the rules to a ‘t’, there will be an antisemitism scandal. There will be a Russia scandal. Someone will say they were raped. Whatever needs to happen to keep the people from obtaining wealth and power which could disrupt the global world order which depends on endless warmongering that benefits zero ordinary Americans.

Americans will never succeed in fighting economic injustice by appealing to the official US political system, no matter how many charismatic lefty politicians they find and no matter how energized their grassroots campaigns are. Only direct action outside the system, with the people using the power of their numbers to force real change, stands any chance of changing this.

But the bastards have bolted shut that escape route as well. People are prevented from using the power of their numbers to force real change by a highly sophisticated domestic propaganda operation controlled by the media-owning plutocratic class and heavily influenced by sociopathic government agencies. As long as people are being successfully propagandized by mass media manipulation into accepting the status quo, they will never rise up and make it change.

So the US left needs to address the problem of establishment narrative control first, before any change can even begin to occur. This can happen by way of a grassroots information rebellion with a sufficiently forceful push to help their countrymen realize that they are being propagandized. Trust in the mass media is at an all-time low and our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high, so we absolutely do have the ability to pry the rapey fingers of the establishment manipulators out of the minds of the public and help people see that they can have something better. If enough people awaken to the lies of the propaganda machine, they can shrug off the oppression machine like a heavy coat on a warm day, without a shot fired.

But it needs to happen soon, because our rulers understand this as well. This is why we’ve been seeing escalation after escalation in internet censorship protocols being rolled out by government-aligned Silicon Valley tech giants; they know they need to cut us off from our ability to wake each other up. And they know they need to hurry, because we’re already rapidly beginning to do exactly that.

That’s where you need to place your emphasis if you ever want economic justice, America. On overthrowing the establishment propaganda machine, and doing it now. Save yourselves and you might just save the entire world.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/worthless-pcr-tests-covid/5733045

Worthless PCR Tests for COVID. “Almost all” PCR Tests Produce False Positives

PCR tests are a scam. They don’t work as claimed.

Yet their widespread use provides a foundation for manipulating people to be vaxxed with experimental, hazardous to human health vaccines.

PCR tests produce false positive results up to 90% of the time.

According to former Pfizer chief science advisor Dr. Mike Yeadon, PCR tests are junk science.

They lack credibility, creating a covid outbreak crisis that would not exist without them.

We’re being lied to by government officials, Pharma and their media press agents.

Asked if “(w)e are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting…all based on what may well be completely fake data on this coronavirus,” he said:

“Yes.”

“It is now established that at least 30% of our population already had immunological recognition of this new virus before it even arrived.”

“COVID-19 is new, but coronaviruses are not.”

“Almost all” PCR tests produce false positive results.

According to 22 eminent scientists, around 97% of PCR tests for covid produce false positive results.

The test “contains so many molecular biological design errors that it is not possible to obtain unambiguous results.”

“It is inevitable that this test will generate a tremendous number of so-called “false positives,” rendering them worthless.

“The test cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral fragments.”

“Therefore, the test cannot be used as a diagnostic for intact (infectious) viruses, making (it) unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus and make inferences about the presence of an infection.”

Dr. Pascal Sacre calls the flawed PCR test a way to “mislead humanity (by) using a (worthless) test to lockdown societ(ies).”

“Let’s stop this debauchery of RT-PCR testing,” he said.

“It is time for everyone to come out of this negative trance, this collective hysteria, because famine, poverty, massive unemployment will kill…many more people than” any virus.

What’s going on “is not normal.”

“We cannot let our rulers, for whatever reason, organize our collective suicide any longer.”

What’s going on with mass media complicity is a diabolical new world order plot against free and open societies.

Dark forces in the US and their complicit partners behind it want them eliminated everywhere.

They’re doing it by scaring us to death over nothing to get their way.

Without worthless mass-testing, they’ll be no more reported mass covid outbreaks, no mask-wearing, social distancing, and lockdowns.

Normalcy will return if state-sponsored mass deception ends.

....

http://endoftheamericandream.com/for-55-percent-of-americans-2020-has-been-a-personal-financial-disaster/

For 55 Percent Of Americans, 2020 Has Been “A Personal Financial Disaster”

One of the big reasons why so many Americans are angry about the size of the “stimulus payments” in the COVID relief bill that Congress just passed is because this year has truly been a “financial disaster” for millions upon millions of people.  More Americans than ever before are just barely scraping by from month to month, and $600 is just not going to go very far.  In 2020, small businesses have been getting slaughtered by the thousands, millions of Americans are in imminent danger of being evicted from their homes, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic first started.  The U.S. has plunged into a brutal economic depression, and most of the country is desperately hoping that the federal government will do more to bail them out.
 
Of course the truth is that we can’t actually afford another 900 billion dollar “stimulus package” on top of all the other “stimulus packages” that were already passed this year.

We are already 27.5 trillion dollars in debt, and all of this reckless spending is putting us on a highway to hyperinflation.

But most Americans don’t really care that we are literally destroying our national finances.  Most people are in desperate need of money, and the vast majority of them want checks from the government as soon as possible.

A OnePoll survey that was just released asked Americans about the current state of their finances, and that survey discovered that a whopping 55 percent of us consider this year to be “a personal financial disaster.
  
While there is no question 2020 has been an unparalleled health challenge, many are not losing sight of how devastating the year was for their wallets as well. A new survey finds over half of Americans (55%) consider 2020 a personal financial disaster.

That is over half the country!

And for those that are employed, that same survey found that 62 percent are planning to take on a second job in 2021 in an attempt to make ends meet…

    Among employed respondents (59% in total), seven in 10 say they need a raise at their job in order to make ends meet. Sixty-two percent plan on taking on a second job in 2021 to meet their financial goals next year.

That number can’t possibly be correct, can it?

Of course there aren’t that many jobs to go around.  Already, there are millions upon millions of Americans that can’t find a “first job”.  As I discussed the other day, we have got unemployed workers sleeping in lawn chairs or sleeping in their own vehicles because that is all they can afford at this point.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and this latest wave of lockdowns is making things even worse.

With so many Americans financially hurting, it shouldn’t be a surprise that millions of households are getting behind on their rent and mortgage payments…

    One-in-seven renters with family incomes from $35,000 to $100,000 were not current on their rent in November. The overwhelming majority of these renters – 79.9% — expected to face eviction within two months. Similarly, 9.6% of homeowners with a mortgage were not current on their mortgage in November. And 56.1% of those homeowners expected they will be foreclosed on in the subsequent two months.

Congress keeps extending moratoriums on rent and mortgage payments, and that has been financially devastating landlords and mortgage holders.

At some point the moratoriums must end, and when that happens we are going to see a tsunami of evictions that will be absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, many Americans are going very deep into debt in a desperate attempt to keep themselves afloat financially…

    More than one-third of households with incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 borrowed from credit cards, other loans as well as from friends and family to pay for their current expenses in November. Soon, debt payments will come due, burdening families that still suffer from long-term unemployment and added health care costs. This could mean rising credit default rates as well as spillovers of economic pain to other households, from who people borrowed to pay their bills.

If economic conditions were to “return to normal” in 2021, most Americans would be able to weather this financial storm just like they did in 2008 and 2009.

But things are not going to return to normal next year.

Instead, this new wave of lockdowns is going to cause thousands of more businesses to close and will force millions more Americans on to the unemployment rolls.

What we are doing to our small businesses is absolutely criminal.  At this point, small business revenues are down more than 32 percent nationwide since the month of January…

    Small business revenues have also taken a hit nationwide. The national average is a decrease of 32.1 percent in small business revenue since January. Washington D.C. had the worst loss in the nation at 61.6 percent. Oregon small businesses lost 16.3 percent. Illinois small businesses saw 39.2 percent decline in revenue since January.

Every day, more small businesses are closing up shop permanently.

Millions of hopes and dreams have been brutally crushed, and there is nothing that our politicians can say or do that will bring those businesses back to life.

If you have lost a business or a job this year, then that would definitely qualify as one of the “personal financial disasters” of 2020.

And as you have seen in this article, you are far from alone.

Most of the nation is deeply hurting, and the road ahead is only going to get more challenging.

In the short-term, “stimulus payments” from the federal government will definitely help tens of millions of suffering Americans.

But of course every additional dollar that our government borrows and spends just makes our long-term problems even worse.

A national economic meltdown has begun, and our politicians will try lots of things to mitigate the damage, but all of their “solutions” will only help temporarily.

This is going to be an exceedingly dark chapter for America, but most Americans still do not understand the true nature of the crisis that is now unfolding all around us.

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/phantom-middle-class12-20.html

Our Phantom Middle Class

Of the many things we cannot bring ourselves to admit, one of the most consequential is that our vaunted middle class is illusory, a phantom of our imagination rather than a reality. The reality is the vast majority of the nation's wealth and income has been diverted from the middle class to those at the pinnacle of the wealth-power pyramid and the technocrat / financier insider class (the top 10%) that serves the interests of those at the pinnacle.

This transfer has accelerated rapidly in the 21st century as virtually all the real income gains of the past 20 years have flowed to the top 0.1%. This RAND study found that America's elites siphoned $50 trillion into their own pockets in the past two generations: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018. (Please look at the "Fruits of Financialization" chart below.)

The earnings of the top 0.1% grew 15 times faster than the earnings of the bottom 90% (See chart below) as wages' share of the economy continues its 50-year decline.

As for wealth: the top 0.1% own more than the bottom 80% (see chart below) and the top 1% own 40% of all private wealth and the top 10% own 90%.

If the top 10% own 90% of the wealth and has captured virtually all the income gains of the past 20 years, then isn't it obvious America has no middle class? What the traditional middle class--generally defined as the 50% between the bottom 40% and the top 10%--own is debt and a feeble grasp on very thin reeds of capital.

Please ponder the chart below of the $1.7 trillion in student loan debt burdening those who bought the narrative that a college diploma was a passport to the security of the middle class. The debt load carried by those clinging on to aspirations of middle class security is staggering. As I've noted here before, burdening powerless students with uncertain futures with trillions in high-interest debt would have been viewed as criminal two generations ago, but now it's celebrated by those reaping the interest from precariat debt-serfs.

Broadly speaking, the key assets of the middle class are capital and agency, with capital being defined as financial, intellectual and social capital that generates income, earned and unearned, and agency defined as control over one's life and options and having a say in public decision-making.

Understood in this way, the 50% between the bottom 40% and the top 10% own precious little income-producing capital and possess very little agency. The political class serves the top 0.1% and only gives lip-service to the PR-worthy convention of a middle class in the form of platitudes. In terms of control over one's options, those claiming middle class status cling to jobs because they need the healthcare insurance coverage provided by the employer, not because the job is rewarding.

As for possessing skills, much of the workforce has few producer skills, as the consumer economy devotes inordinate attention not to producing but to marketing, speculation and complying with counterproductive regulations and bureaucratic file-shuffling.

Once the con of printing trilions of dollars out of thin air dissolves and the nation has to balance its books in the real world, these file-shuffling and speculative skills will no longer generate meaningful income.

The last vestiges of financial security for the middle 50% are pensions and ownership of a home, which is less a real asset and more a call-option on the current housing bubble. This phantom "wealth" is one encounter with reality away from disappearing into the mists of speculative extremes imploding.

As for pensions, these promises on future energy and income gains are only geared for an economy of ever-expanding energy, productivity and production of surplus goods and services. As America has substituted speculation for these real-world gains, pensions are also one encounter with reality away from disappearing into the mists.

The American Dream was based on broad-based access to acquiring capital and agency, access which has narrowed to the top slice of the economic order. Even the top 10% is misleading, as the vast majority of capital and agency are held by the top 1% and to a lesser degree, the top 5%. The actual capital and agency of those below the 5% mark falls off rapidly, effectively reaching near-zero about the 15% mark.

As the chart "wages aren't keeping up" shows, the purchasing power of "middle class" wages has plummeted, meaning less income is available after paying all the big-ticket essential expenses. The Federal Reserve has played a game of lowering interest rates so households can lower their interest expenses by refinancing their mortgages, but this game has ended; interest rates cannot drop any further without entering negative rates, a zone of insolvency for the banking sector.

In other words, the game of creating the illusion of real wage gains is over.

What happens when America finally admits its middle class is a phantom of feel-good fantasy? We may well find out in the next four years. 

....

And regarding this from the previous article " these promises on future energy and income gains are only geared for an economy of ever-expanding energy " the fracking miracle/mirage/illusion is imploding:

https://srsroccoreport.com/the-collapse-of-u-s-shale-oil-production-has-now-begun/

The Collapse Of U.S. Shale Oil Production Has Now Begun

It’s Official.  The collapse of U.S. shale oil production has begun.  The mighty Shale Oil BOOM has now finally turned into a BUST.  While the pandemic shutdowns sped up the process, the collapse of the U.S. shale industry was going to occur, regardless.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, shale oil production will continue to decline below 7.5 million barrels per day in January.

At the peak last year, the top five shale oil fields combined production reached nearly 9.2 million barrels per day.  Since the shutdowns during March-April, many of the companies curtailed shale oil production.  However, all of these wells have now been brought online, but the massive decline rate is kicking in due to a lack of drilling and completion activity.

As we can see in the chart below, shale oil production in these five fields fell from 9.16 million barrels per day during the peak in 2019 to 7.27 million barrels per day forecasted next month (January).

In a little more than a year, the combined shale production from these five fields declined by 1.9 million barrels.  The data in the chart above is shown in thousand barrels per day.  According to Shaleprofile.com, these five fields add more than 11,000 new wells in 2019.  In looking at the new well trend data for Jan-Oct 2020, I would be surprised to see more than a total of about 5,000 wells added this year.

While the Permian suffered the highest decline in shale oil production, the biggest loser in percentage terms was the Anadarko Field.  Oil production from the Anadarko declined from 603,000 barrels per day (b/d) at the peak last year to a forecasted 363,000 bd in January.  That’s a stunning 40% decline in a little more than a year.

The Niobrara in Colorado reported the next largest decline at 34%, followed by the Eagle Ford (-30%), Bakken (-22%), and Permian (-18%).  The average percentage of production decline from the fields since the peak last year was 21%.

Oil Geologist Art Berman produced this chart showing where he forecasts U.S. oil production by September 2021.

Art believes total U.S. oil production will decline to 7.7 million barrels per day by September 2021.  However, I don’t believe this forecast will happen because his chart shows total U.S. oil production will be approximately 10.2 million barrels per day by January 2021.  The EIA reports that U.S. oil production is 11.0 million barrels per day on Dec 11th.

It’s probably more realistic to forecast a decline to 9.5-10 million barrels per day by September 2021.  We will see.  Regardless, the mightily U.S. shale oil Boom has now turned into a Bust.  While it will take 5-10 years to collapse by 75%, it’s not ever coming back.