Let the Banks Go Under and Put Money Into the Real Economy
[Economic]
Let the Banks Go Under and Put Money Into the Real Economy
by Michael Hudson & Ellen Brown
Posted August 30, 2020
Remember, the Federal Reserve helicopter only flies over Wall Street. It doesn’t fly over the economy. All this $4.5 trillion of quantitative easing, and all the $2 trillion that it’s created under the Trump by the CARES Act – all this could have been spent into the real economy. It could have been spent building infrastructure. It could have been spent supporting basic income. It could have been spent on the people and Main Street. Instead, it was only spent on Wall Street.
The idea is that if you buy an asset, you can always make a profit. That created the middle class from 1945 to about 2008. The way that almost all the middle-class wealth in America was accumulated was through the rising price of housing. In other words, every family that bought a house had to pay more and more of its income, and a higher and higher price to get a house. That’s enriched the people who were fortunate enough to have been able to buy real estate in 1945: white people, not blacks, not Hispanics; they were red-lined. But if you were a white person with a job, you could get onto the middle-class debt treadmill, and actually make it work for you – for a while. More…
The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit
[Social]
The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit
by Dr. Jason Fung
Posted August 29, 2020
The idea of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) is great. The reality, though, not so much. Human perception is often flawed, so the premise of EBM is to formally study medical treatments and there have certainly been some successes.
Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of NEJM wrote in 2009 that: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor”
This has huge implications. Evidence based medicine is completely worthless if the evidence base is false or corrupted. It’s like building a wooden house knowing the wood is termite infested. What caused this sorry state of affairs? Well, Dr. Relman another former editor in chief of the NEJM said this in 2002
“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful” More…
Life as We Know it May Soon be Over and Replaced by the New World Order
[Social]
Life as We Know it May Soon be Over and Replaced by the New World Order
By Brian Shilhavy
Posted August 28, 2020
If the Central Bankers get their way and replace all cash and currencies with a single digital currency, you could lose ALL of these choices, and personal privacy will be almost completely gone!
Do you think that once a mandatory COVID vaccine comes out, that you can just decide not to participate?
It won’t be so easy if there is a single digital currency that replaces all other currencies.
Your ability to participate in the marketplace, even from the “comfort” of your own prison cell home, will be 100% dependent on whether or not you meet the qualifications to participate in using the new digital currency, even if you have a positive ledger in “your” account.
So just think about the ramifications if your account in the Central Banks of the new digital currency system has not approved you for transactions because you do not have a COVID digital ID card showing you have been properly vaccinated with an approved COVID vaccine? More…
2020 Is The Year The Unseen Becomes Seen
[Spiritual]
2020 Is The Year The Unseen Becomes Seen
by Caitlin Johnstone
Posted August 27, 2020
2020 is the year of Julian Assange’s extradition trials, the Kafkaesque proceedings by which the US government is attempting to imprison the WikiLeaks founder for the rest of his life as punishment for exposing US war crimes. Assange started an innovative leak publishing outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth, and corrupt power responded by silencing and jailing him. They’ve proved him right about everything, right in front of everyone.
2020 is the year people began protesting police brutality, and police responded with ferocious and widespread acts of brutality. The massive deluge of video footage from these brutal police responses went viral all over the world. The argument about police brutality culture in the US police state was won clearly and decisively, right in front of everyone.
2020 is the year the most powerful government on earth responded to a pandemic virus with the largest upward transfer of wealth in history, leaving massive global corporations with record-high stocks while killing small businesses and throwing the rank-and-file public to the wolves after handing some of them a paltry $1200, all while failing spectacularly to address the threat of the virus itself. This financial abuse is happening right out in the open, right in front of everyone. More…
Powell & Iraq—How One Resignation May Have Stopped the Disastrous Invasion
[Politics]
Powell & Iraq—How One Resignation May Have Stopped the Disastrous Invasion
By Joe Lauria
Posted August 26, 2020
“My … purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, as well as Iraq’s involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions,” Powell began. Resolution 1441, passed by the Security Council three months earlier, had given Iraq one last chance to come clean with the UN’s WMD weapons inspectors or face “serious consequences.”
“My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” Powell told the council. “These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
Among the “facts” and “solid intelligence” Powell claimed were Iraq’s procurement of the now infamous aluminum tubes he said were to be used in centrifuges as part of Saddam’s effort to restart a nuclear weapons program. More…
Lockdowns, Coronavirus, and Banks: Following the Money
[Economic] [Social]
Lockdowns, Coronavirus, and Banks: Following the Money
by Anthony James Hall
Posted August 25, 2020
It usually makes sense to follow the money when seeking understanding of almost any major change. The strategy of following the money in our current convergence of crises in late summer of 2020 leads us directly to the lockdowns. The lockdowns were first imposed on people in the Wuhan area of China. Then other populations throughout the world were told to “shelter in place,” all in the name of combating the COVID-19 virus.
A presentation in August of 2019 by the Wall Street leviathan, BlackRock Financial Management, provides a telling indicator of foreknowledge. It was well understood by many insiders in 2019 that a sharp economic downturn was imminent.
At a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole Wyoming, BlackRock representatives delivered a strategy for dealing with the future downturn. Several months later during the spring of 2020 this strategy was adopted by both the US Treasury and the US Federal Reserve. BlackRock’s plan from August of 2019 set the basis of the federal response to the much-anticipated economic meltdown. More…
The Global Reset – Unplugged. “The Deep State”
[Economic]
The Global Reset – Unplugged. “The Deep State”
By Peter Koenig
Posted August 25, 2020
Mind you, it’s all connected. There are no coincidences. The infamous Agenda 2021 which coincides with and complements the so-called (UN) Agenda 2030, will be duly inaugurated by the WEF’s official declaration of The Great Reset, in January 2021. Similarly, the implementation of the agenda of The Great Reset began in January 2020, by the launch of the corona pandemic – planned for decades with the latest visible events being the 2010 Rockefeller Report with its “Lockstep Scenario”, and Event 201, of 18 October in NYC which computer-simulated a corona pandemic, leaving within 18 months 65 million deaths and an economy in ruin, programmed just a few weeks before the launch of the actual corona pandemic. See COVID-19, We Are Now Living the “Lock Step Scenario” and this and this.
The ruling elite used the lockdown as an instrument to carry out this agenda. Its implementation would naturally face massive protests, organized and funded along the same lines as were the BLM protests and demonstrations. They may not be peaceful – and may not be planned as being peaceful. Because to control the population in the US and in Europe, where most of the civil unrest would be expected, a total militarization of the people is required. This is well under preparation. More…
The Secret to Corporate Power
[Politics] [Social]
The Secret to Corporate Power
By Kevin A. Young & Michael Schwartz & Tarun Banerjee
Posted August 25, 2020
In 1931, the philosopher John Dewey lamented that “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” Government “in general is an echo,” and at times a direct “accomplice, of the interests of big business.” Dewey was writing in the early years of the Great Depression, as unchecked capitalism had plunged the world into crisis and his government was doing nothing to solve the problem.
Today, as in Dewey’s time, big business’ control over the U.S. government is an open secret. We have formally democratic institutions, but the 1% exercises preponderant control over government policymaking. Statistical studies show that the preferences of non-wealthy people have little or no influence on policy. The 99% are well-aware of this fact.
In polls, over three-quarters of the public consistently says that government is “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves,” namely large corporations and the rich. In the years following the economic crash of 2008, the Pew Research Center found that around two-thirds agreed that the government’s response had benefited “large banks and financial institutions,” “large corporations,” and “wealthy people,” and that the rest of the population had benefited “not too much” or “not at all.” More…
An Open Letter to the Ocean Township Board of Education
[Community]
An Open Letter to the Ocean Township Board of Education
By Lynn Marie
Posted August 24, 2020
My Question to the Ocean Township School Board: What policies are in place to protect children from health issues resulting from forced masking? How will the school protect children from abduction (masking hides identifying features and muffles communication reducing their cries for help)?
Isolation (disguised as “social distancing” and/or virtual learning)
Children develop a sense of self by watching others and by mimicking play and social skills – and by interacting with one another. I can’t believe I have to point out this fact. Isolation destroys this natural connection. It is a prison. And more child abuse.
My Question to the Ocean Township School Board: What policies do you have in place to counsel children suffering from the unnecessary, yet mandated, social isolation and interruption of life-sustaining skills…and ultimately their feelings of depression, anxiety, displacement, and doom? More…
Welcome to the Crazed, Frantic Demise of Finance Capitalism
[Economic]
Welcome to the Crazed, Frantic Demise of Finance Capitalism
By Charles Hugh Smith
Posted August 24, 2020
The cognitive dissonance required to ignore the widening gap between the real economy and the fraud’s basic machinery–speculation funded by “money” conjured out of thin air–has reached a level of denial that can only be termed psychotic.
When scams start unraveling, the scammers become increasingly frantic to maintain the illusion of legitimacy and the delusion of guaranteed gains that are the lifeblood of every scam. One sure sign that the flim-flam is about to collapse is the manic rise of FOMO, fear of missing out, as the scammers jam the Ponzi scheme’s stellar returns to new extremes.
How did outright fraud come to dominate our economy? The answer is simple: infinite greed plus the decline of gains from “real capitalism,” i.e. increasing productivity via producing goods and services. The appeal of something for nothing is irresistible when “money” can be printed / borrowed out of thin air and used to run a fraud that exploits human greed. More…
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Quotable Sayings
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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You do not become a billionaire through labor. You become a billionaire through inheritance, corruption or economic rents – or, in most cases, some mixture of all three.
Grace Blakeley
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Mainstream American liberals think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by Fox and Donald Trump, and mainstream American conservatives think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by MSNBC and the Democrats, but the propaganda strings on both trace back to the same puppet master. And seeing that is just the beginning.
Caitlin Johnstone
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You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Deepak Chopra
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It is obvious that the US government is destroying Assange to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information. It is therefore also obvious that any journalist who fails to use whatever platform they have to speak out against Assange’s persecution has no intention of ever publishing anything that the US government doesn’t want published. Their silence on or support for what is being done to this man can and should be taken as an admission that they are nothing other than state propagandists.
Caitlin Johnstone
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It’s quite fitting that the – imperially pre-determined – judicial fate of Julian Assange is being played out in Britain, the home of George Orwell.
Pepe Escobar
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