Month: June 2020

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

The window to act before the next market break is likely very, very short…

As the market continues to seek out its maximum stupid price limit, it’s now decision time for investors.

If you’re still long stocks and bonds at this point: Do you now sell to protect your gains?

If you’re skeptical of today’s prices and sitting in cash: Is now the right time to start shorting the market?

If you’ve recently been laid off: Do any of the new options offered by the CARES Act that enable you to access retirement funds without penalty make sense for you?

With markets this overextended, your window of time to take action will likely be quite brief. An end to the currently rally could happen extremely quickly and brutally.

What make us say this?

Because here’s an example of the level of overvaluation we’re dealing with:

The Russell 2000 index — at a P/E ratio of 70x(!!) — has never been so richly valued. Remember: these are the smaller, weaker publicly traded companies, a material number of which will likely be going bankrupt later this year.

Over 40 million US workers laid off (so far). Q2 2020 GDP now expected to be down over -50%(!!). And half of all US small businesses expected to close down permanently.

And if you believe that fundamentals don’t matter, that only Fed liquidity does; note that the Fed’s buying spree has been tapering off for a month now:

Without sufficient liquidity, how long can the market remain at these ridiculous prices?

Not long, we predict. Which is why time is now of the essence.

As we do each week, we’ve once again asked the lead partners at New Harbor Financial, Peak Prosperity’s endorsed financial advisor, to share their latest insights into the road ahead for investors.

In the below video, we address the risks and rewards offered by shorting the market, retirement fund tapping/rollover strategies, and how the Fed is inflaming societal instability as it continues to dangerously deform prices:

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Anyone interested in scheduling a free consultation and portfolio review with Mike and John can do so by clicking here. And if you’re one of the many readers brand new to Peak Prosperity over the past few months, we strongly urge you get your financial situation in order in parallel with your ongoing physical coronavirus preparations. We recommend you do so in partnership with a  professional financial advisor who understands the macro risks to the market that we discuss on this website. If you’ve already got one, great. But if not, consider talking to the team at New Harbor. We’ve set up this ‘free consultation’ relationship with them to help folks exactly like you.

From the first time we heard Meg Whitman give her Quibi elevator pitch on CNBC last year, we had a feeling the digital media project, which boasts an impressive list of bold-faced names topped by Whitman and former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, was destined for the “dustbin of history,” as Trotsky would call it. bMany have compared the product to a more expensive, less useful b-version of YouTube. When the concept was first introduced to the public back in 2018, it was met with widespread befuddlement. And its launch has mostly been overshadowed by Disney+ and the handful of other new streaming products.

Despite being launched in the middle of a pandemic that left billions of people – and hundreds of millions of Americans – marooned inside their homes, desperate to be entertained, Quibi has managed to rack up just 1.3 million active users and 3.5 million downloads, less than 1% of Netflix’s total, and far short of where the company had hoped to be. What’s worse: none of those users are paying: the company is offering three-month free trials to all comers.

The discrepancy between active users and downloands means roughly 2/3rds of those who tried the product didn’t view it as “an essential entertainment product”, a designation that Quibi’s management views as essential for the company’s survival.

Though they’ve already approved some of the app’s more-popular series for a second season, and in the past few days the app has added new features enabling support for streaming on television, in contravention of Quibi’s initial mission. Whitman and others had originally envisioned Quibi as the perfect app for subway commuters, but the app’s narrow design meant that it was really only convenient to watch while commuting to work on mass transit. Unfortunately, the number of commuters is way down. And here’s the most hilarious part: By focusing so intently on the mobile experience and an alphabet soup of VC buzzwords, Whitmen & Co. designed a mobile streaming experience that could only be enjoyed on smartphones. Who wants to watch a video on your smartphone when you have your TV or laptop handy? Almost nobody.

In that spirit, Quibi finally enabled  upport for Apple’s Airplay this past week. Now, the company’s future depends on whether Katzenberg can pull off this pivot to a more home-friendly product. And he’s quickly running out of time, one analyst told the New York Observers.

“Because the 90-day free trials that Quibi offered when it launched in April will start expiring in July, the company urgently needs to remedy missteps made in its initial mobile-only streaming service introduction – the main one being a lack of casting from phones to TVs for content viewing on bigger screens,” Tammy Parker, senior analyst at leading data and analytics company GlobalData, said. “Providing support for Apple’s AirPlay in Quibi 1.3 is a significant improvement, as iPhone users can now cast Quibi videos to their Apple TV and compatible smart TVs.”

But while analysts praised the company for listening to its critics, the company simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to stand up to competitors like Disney+, which is offering a massive lineup of Disney content for $7.99 a month. That’s the same price as Quibi’s ad-free tier.

“It is commendable that Quibi has heard the critiques of its platform and is moving aggressively to make changes,” Parker said. “Unfortunately, the company’s early oversights were compounded by COVID-19 lockdowns that kept people at home. Reprioritizing casting as an essential feature in light of COVID-19’s impact on daily routines is essential to Quibi’s immediate and future prospects as it becomes a mobile-first, rather than mobile-only, service.”

If nothing else, Quibi is a cautionary tale of what happens when VC firms fixate too much on trends and buzzwords. People like Whitman became so entranced by our increasingly “mobile” world, that they forgot that most people have little use for a platform that can’t be enjoyed on a lazy Sunday in bed.

Authored by Daniele Pozzati via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Germany’s federal government and mainstream media are engaged in damage control after a report that challenges the established Corona narrative leaked from the interior ministry.

Some of the report key passages are:

• The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.

• The people who die from Corona are essentially those who would statistically die this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).

• Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there has been no more than 250,000 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths [25,100 in Germany] during the influenza wave 2017/18.

• The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.

A reproach could go along these lines:

During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.

So far, so bad. But it gets worse.

The report focuses on the “manifold and heavy consequences of the Corona measures” and warns that these are “grave”.

More people are dying because of state-imposed Corona-measures than they are being killed by the virus.

The reason is a scandal in the making:

A Corona-focused German healthcare system is postponing life-saving surgery and delaying or reducing treatment for non-Corona patients.

Berlin in Denial Mode. The scientists fight back.

Initially, the government tried to dismiss the report as “the work of one employee”, and its contents as “his own opinion” – while the journalists closed ranks, no questions asked, with the politicians.

But the 93-pages report titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management” has been drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the interior ministry and composed by external medical experts from several German universities.

The report was the initiative of a department of the interior ministry called Unit KM4 and in charge with the “Protection of critical infrastructures”.

This is also where the German official turned whistleblower, Stephen Kohn, work(ed), and from where he leaked it to the media.

The authors of the report issued a joint press release already on Mai 11th, berating the government for ignoring expert advise, and asking for the interior minister to officially comment upon the experts joint statement:

“Therapeutic and preventive measures should never bring more harm than the illness itself. Their aim should be to protect the risk groups, without endangering the availabilty of medical care and the health of the whole population, as it is unfortunately occurring”

“We in the scientific and medical praxis are experiencing the secondary damages of the Corona-measures on our patients on a daily basis.”

“We therefore ask the Federal Ministry of the Interior, to comment upon our press release, and we hope for a pertinent discussion regarding the [Corona] measures, one that leads to the best possible solution for the whole population”

At the time of writing, the German government had yet to react.

But the facts are – sadly – vindicating the medical experts’ worries.

On May 23 the German newspaper Das Bild titled: “Dramatic consequences of the Corona-Measures: 52,000 Cancer Ops delayed.”

Inside, a leading medical doctor warns that “we will feel the side-effects of the Corona crisis for years”.

Shooting the Whistleblower. Ignoring the Message.

As Der Spiegel reported on Mai 15th: “Stephen Kohn [the whistleblower] has since been suspended from duty. He was advised to obtain a lawyer and his work laptop was confiscated.”

Kohn had originally leaked the report on May 9th to the liberal-conservative magazine Tichys Einblick one of Germany’s most popular alternative media outlets.

News of the report went mainstream in Germany during the second week of Mai – but already in the third week media and politicians alike stopped discussing the issue by refusing to comment upon it.

Emblematic was the approach taken by Günter Krings, the representative for Interior Minister Horst Seehofer – the whistleblower’s boss:

Asked it he would treat the document seriously, Krings replied:

“If you start analyzing papers like that, then pretty soon you’ll be inviting the guys with the tin foil hats to parliamentary hearings.”

Men in tin foil hats – Aluhut in German – is a term used to describe people who believe in conspiracy theories.

Indeed one article by Der Spiegel adressing the Corona protest movement and the consequences of the leaked report contained the word “conspiracy” no fewer than 17 times!

And no discussions of the issues raised by the report itself.

Outside Germany the news has virtually gone unreported.

The Protest Movement – or “Corona-Rebellen”.

Germans begun demonstrating against Lockdowns as early as April.

And thousands of citizens keep showing up at demos every week-end, even as the government is easing the restrictions.

The demos are not merely against restrictions, which have actually been comparatively mild compared to many other Western countries.

The demos question the entire Corona Narrative, and even more its principals, especially the role Bill Gates is playing, as the WHO second biggest donor (the first one since Trump suspended U.S. contribution).

Indeed the biggest such demos took place in Stuttgart on May 9th, where tens of thousands people assempled to say no – to the NWO.

Germans are saying no to any orwellian solution the government might one day impose out of a questionable “emergency status”, from mass surveillance Apps to mandatory vaccinations.

The leaked report has proved their fears to be well founded.

At least as far as the fake nature of the “Corona pandemic” is concerned.

The rest might soon follow.

Around the world, women pay high tax rates on period supplies like pads and tampons. These items are included in high sales tax brackets in many countries, ignoring possible reductions permissible for essential items or even declaring them luxuries before the law.

In the EU for example, countries have been free to depart from standard sales tax rates since 2007 and apply super discounted tax rates to feminine sanitary products. Still, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, many countries haven’t lowered their tax rates, with Hungary exhibiting the highest rate at 27 percent. Several Scandinavian countries, whether they are EU-members or not, tax at around 25 percent and Greece even raised the so-called “tampon tax” to 23 percent as part of the country’s austerity measures, according to Eurostat and media reports.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In the past 12 months, three Eastern and Central European countries – Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania – have lowered the “tampon tax” to 5 percent. Germany has also slashed taxes on feminine hygiene products to 7 percent from a high of 19 percent and Luxembourg has even gone as low as a 3 percent tax.

The UK and Cyprus already had their rate as low as 5 percent by 2018, similar to France, which charges 5.5 percent. Switzerland currently charges 7.7 percent but is looking to reduce that to 2.5 percent. Equally, Spain has been discussing changing the current 10 percent rate to 4 percent. The only country with no sales tax on period supplies in Europe is Ireland.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The 750 billion euro stimulus plan announced by the European Commission has been greeted by many macroeconomic analysts and investment banks with euphoria. However, we must be cautious. Why? Many would argue that a swift and decisive response to the crisis with an injection of liquidity that avoids a financial collapse and a strong fiscal impulse that cements the recovery are overwhelmingly positive measures. History and experience tell us that, indeed, the risk of disappointment regarding the positive impact on the real economy is not small.

The history of stimulus plans in the eurozone should alert us against excessive optimism.

As you may remember, the European Union launched in July 2009 an ambitious project for growth and employment called the “European Economic Recovery Plan”. A stimulus of 1.5% of GDP to create “millions of jobs in infrastructure, civil works, interconnections, and strategic sectors”. Europe was going to emerge from the crisis stronger than the United States thanks to the Keynesian impulse of public spending. However, 4.5 million jobs were destroyed and the deficit almost doubled while the economy stagnated. This was after the balance sheet of the European Central Bank had doubled between 2001 and 2008. That enormous plan not only did not help the eurozone get out of the crisis stronger, but we can debate whether it prolonged it, as by 2019 there were still signs of evident weakness. The tax rises and obstacles to private activity that accompanied this large package of expenses delayed the recovery, which in any case was slower than comparable economies.

We must also dismantle the idea that the European Central Bank did not support the economy in the 2008 crisis. Two huge sovereign bond buyback programs with Trichet as president of the ECB, rate cuts from 4.25% to 1% since 2008, and purchases of more than 115 billion euros in sovereign bonds. At the end of 2011, the ECB was the largest holder of Spanish debt, while it was accused of inaction.

During all this time, the balance of the ECB was greater than that of the Federal Reserve with respect to GDP, and in May 2020 it stands at 44% of GDP compared to 30% in the US.

Stimuli have never stopped in the eurozone. An additional ECB buyback plan in addition to the TLTRO liquidity programs with Draghi brought sovereign bonds to the lowest yields in history and to the ECB buying almost 20% of the total debt of the main states. This was such an excessive balance sheet expansion plan that, at the end of May 2020, excessive liquidity in the ECB was 2.1 trillion euros. Excessive liquidity was barely 125 billion euro when the so-called 2014 stimulus plan was launched.

No one can deny that the impact on growth, productivity, and employment of these enormous plans has been more than disappointing. Except for a brief period of euphoria in 2017, downward revisions to eurozone growth have been constant, culminating in the fourth quarter of 2019 with France and Italy in stagnation, Germany on the brink of recession, and a significant slowdown in Spain. The use of the excuses of Brexit and the trade war did not disguise that the economic result of the stimulus was already more than poor.

We have another important example for caution. The so-called “Juncker Plan” or “Investment Plan for Europe”, considered as the solution to the lack of growth of the European Union, also had an extremely poor result. It mobilized 360 billion euros, many for projects with no real economic return or real effect on growth. Estimates of growth in the euro zone fell sharply, productivity growth stagnated and industrial production fell in December 2019 to the lowest level in years.

We must also be cautious with the green plans. All of us are in favor of a serious and competitive energy transition, but we cannot forget that a very important part of the European Union’s “green” plan attacks demand via tax increases and protectionist measures such as a border tax on countries that have not signed the Paris Agreement (but not to those who do not comply, those have no risk). This limits the potential for recovery and increases the possibility of an additional trade war.

We cannot ignore the negative impact on industry and employment of the massive “green” policy plans of the euro area of ​​2004-2018, which caused the countries of the European Union to suffer electricity and natural gas bills for households that are twice as those in the USA, while growth stalled.

What is the problem with European stimulus plans compared to those of the United States? The first and most important is they come from directed economy central planning. These are plans with a very strong component of political decisions about where and how they are invested. Political planning is an essential part of the largest parts of these stimuli, and as such, they generate poor growth and weak results. Thus, one of the big problems is that sectors that are already suffering from overcapacity are being “stimulated”, or a false demand signal is generated via subsidies, which then generates working capital problems and an alarming increase in the number of zombie companies. According to the Bank of International Settlements, the number of zombie companies in Europe has exploded amid stimulus plans. The past is bailed out and the economy is zombified. 

Another big problem is that the wrong sectors are stimulated while thousands of small companies that have no access to credit or political favour die. It is not a coincidence that the eurozone destroys more innovative companies or prevents them from growing when regulation forces 80% of the real economy to be financed through the banking channel while in the US it does not reach 30%. Can you imagine an Apple or Netflix growing via bank loans? Impossible.

Another big problem is the obsession with redistribution. By fiscally penalizing merit and success and sustaining public spending above 40% of GDP at any cost with higher taxes while subsidizing low-productivity sectors, the European Union incurs in a huge malinvestment risk when it rewards the subsidized sectors, or those close to political power while those with high productivity are penalized. It is no coincidence that Europe does not have technological champions. It scares them off by perpetuating the obsolete national champions and penalizing merit remuneration and alternative investment via taxation.

Nothing we just discussed changes in the newly announced plan package. It is the same, but much larger. And we cannot believe that this time will be different. While they tell us about green plans, the vast majority of the bailouts will go to aluminum and steel, autos, airlines, and refineries. Meanwhile, a huge tax increase in savings and investment may further drown start-ups, investment in research and development, and innovative companies.

The problem of the European Union has never been a lack of stimuli, but rather an excess of these. The European Union has chained one state stimulus plan after another since its inception. This crisis needed a strong boost to merit, innovation, private capital, and entrepreneurship with supply measures. I am afraid that, again, it has been decided to bail-out everything from the past and let the future die.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

The debate over the morality and practicality of forced vaccinations has been raging for many years, long before the coronavirus ever hit the US population. With the advent of the pandemic the narrative has shifted to one of “necessity”. The media and the majority of governments around the world now act as if mass vaccinations are a given; the “debate is over”, as collectivists like to say when they are tired of having to deal with any logical or factual complaints.

In the case of the novel coronavirus there is no vaccine yet; unless of course the virus was engineered or evolved in a lab (as more and more evidence is suggesting), and then perhaps there is one already developed. Typically, vaccines take years to test and produce, and whenever a vaccine is rushed onto the market very bad things tend to happen.

The vaccine debate often revolves around the issue of safety. Is a particular inoculation safe or poisonous? Does it have long term effects that are dangerous? Does it harm children with highly sensitive and underdeveloped body systems?  These are valid concerns, but ultimately the fight over vaccines has less to do with medical safety or effectiveness and more to do with individual rights vs government demands.

In other words, the more important questions are:  Should social engineering by governments and elites be allowed? Do people have the right to determine how their bodies are medically augmented or manipulated? Does the “security of the majority” take precedence over the civil liberties of the individual?  And if so, who gets to determine what freedoms will be taken away?

The Legal Argument

The purveyors of the forced vaccination philosophy usually make a legal or technical argument first before they appeal to the idea of “the greater good”.  They do this because they know that public perception often assumes (wrongly) that legal authority is the same as moral authority.

In 1905, the US Supreme Court was presented with Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, a case involving the subject of state enforced smallpox vaccination. The defendant argued on the grounds of the 14th Amendment that his bodily liberty was being violated by the state if he was subjected to arbitrary vaccination without his consent. The state and the Supreme Court felt differently (of course). The Supreme Court ruled against Jacobson on the grounds that his refusal to take the vaccine put other people “at risk”, and that “for the common good” states have certain “police powers” that supersede personal liberties.

Whenever liberty movement activists argue against forced vaccinations on constitutional grounds, THIS is the counter-argument that the government and statists will make. They will bring up Jacobson vs. Massachusetts and then claim that is the end of the discussion.

Essentially, the Supreme Court argued that the federal government could not interfere with state imposed forced vaccinations on the grounds of states rights and the 10th Amendment. Most people in the liberty movement will find this rather ironic, as it is bizarre to hear about the federal government defending states rights. But, this support of the 10th Amendment is highly selective.

First, let’s not forget that the Supreme Court has been wrong many times in the past. In the Dredd Scott case in 1834, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of slavery and the right of states to enforce the institution. They also argued that the 5th Amendment protected slave owners because freeing slaves meant depriving owners of their “property”.

The Supreme Court’s habit is to defend states rights and the 10th Amendment when people’s individual liberties are being quashed. However, if a case involves states protecting citizens from federal intrusion, the court flips and attacks states rights when they work in favor of individual liberty or self determination.

The Jacobson  vs. Massachusetts case may be the reason why Trump and the federal government have mostly left the lockdowns and emergency actions to the states.  The legal precedence was already established in 1905 on quarantines and forcing vaccinations through state police powers, so it only follows that the establishment would utilize the states to carry out such measures in the near future.

The “states vs federal government” debate sets up a false paradigm. There is no separation between state and federal governments when it comes to tyranny – both sides love it, though they pretend to be opposed to each other at times. That is to say, whether it is the federal government violating your constitutional rights or the state government violating your constitutional rights, the Supreme Court is often comfortable with both.

The truth they don’t want to discuss is that at bottom the Bill of Rights overrules them regardless of federal precedent or the 10th Amendment. The key to the Bill of Rights is that each American citizen has INHERENT LIBERTIES that supersede both federal and state power. These rights are inalienable. They cannot be violated today, and the law cannot be adjusted to violate them tomorrow. These rights and freedoms are ETERNAL.

The Supreme Court hisses with a forked tongue about the “spirit of the constitution” but ignores the clear and concrete intent as stated by the Founders. Statists argue in favor of the “living document” philosophy when it suits them as a means to change the original meaning and laws put forth in the Bill of Rights because this allows them to violate citizen freedoms under the guise of “legality”. But “legality” is not the same a morality. Legality is meaningless, and the Supreme Court is meaningless if it acts against the constitutional bedrock of the Bill of Rights and individual liberty as they have done numerous times in the past.

The Moral Argument

So, if we cannot rely on legality to protect us from state tyranny, what can we rely on? Forced vaccine advocates will say that morality is on their side as well, for if a person does not vaccinate they are putting the rest of society at risk of infection. Therefore, your individual rights must be violated in order to protect the rights of the rest of society. The problem is that Jacobson vs Massachusetts makes no logical argument supporting this assertion, and neither do forced vaccine proponents.

Look at it this way: How can a person that is not vaccinated “harm” people that are vaccinated? How are they putting those people at risk? If the vaccine actually works, then vaccinated people are safe from infection, aren’t they? So, the only person “at risk” is the person that chose not to vaccinate. This comes down to personal choice, there is no question of “the greater good” or social risk.

I find it fascinating that the people that argue fervently in favor of forced vaccinations (people like Bill Gates) also tend to be the same people that argue in favor of abortion rights.  So, “my body my choice” is acceptable when it comes to women ending the lives of unborn children, but “my body my choice” is not acceptable when it comes to mass vaccinations even though an unvaccinated person is a threat to no one.

Some vaccine advocates will then claim that unvaccinated people could be host to “mutations” that threaten herd immunity. The problem is that there is no evidence to support this argument. The vast majority of viruses tend to mutate into LESS deadly or infectious strains, not more deadly. The only mitigating factors would be if a virus was deliberately designed or engineered to mutate in an unnatural manner.

If a virus is designed to mutate into a vastly different and more deadly strain that can attack vaccinated persons then the vaccine was never useful to begin with, and forced vaccinations are pointless. Once again, if the vaccine is effective then there is simply no basis for the position that an unvaccinated person puts vaccinated people in danger.

The Conformity Argument

The next argument by pro-forced vaccination people is to ask “why”? Why do you care if you are vaccinated? What do you have to worry about? Just go along to get along, right…?

This argument reminds me of a common anti-gun narrative: Why do you need to carry a gun? Why frighten other people? The chances you will need it are slim, right…?

The most important answer to the gun question is “Because it’s my right to carry and I plan to exercise it. Also, your fear of guns does not take precedence over my constitutional freedoms.” The same goes for forced vaccination: Because it is my right to refuse to have ANY pharmaceutical product injected into my body. Your fears of infection do not matter to my constitutional rights. If you want to take the vaccine then that is your choice. Leave me out of it.

Arguing about hypothetical threats is a waste of time. I carry a firearm because I have the right to have a means of defense just in case I need it. I refuse vaccinations because I have a right to avoid potential bodily harm just in case I have suspicions of a faulty product.

And is there reason to be concerned about faulty vaccines? Absolutely. Mass vaccinations programs that were rushed to the public have a track record of harming people’s health.

With globalists like Bill Gates, an obsessive champion of depopulation at the forefront of the Covid-19 effort, I have no plans to accept any coronavirus vaccine. Bill Gates has funded numerous experimental vaccine trials through the World Health Organization, including Polio vaccination programs.  It was these same programs that led to viral outbreaks of polio in various countries and hundreds of paralyzed children. In fact, the vaccines caused more cases of Polio than the wild-type virus. This if VERIFIED FACT, admitted by the WHO and other mainstream sources, though numerous leftist media outlets continue to deny it.

At most, the WHO and Gates can claim that the infections were “accidental”. But if this is the case, it would still suggest that vaccines developed by Gates Foundation programs and the WHO should not be trusted.

In 1976 a swine flu scare enabled the initiation of a government funded mass vaccination program. The vaccine was faulty and was canceled in less than 10 weeks after causing hundreds of cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological condition that leads to temporary paralysis and sometimes death.

In 2008, Swiss company Novartis tested a Bird Flu vaccine on the homeless and poor population of Poland. The vaccine trial paid participants $2, and they were told the inoculation was for the “normal flu”. According a homeless center in the area at least 21 people died right after they participated in the trial.

A GlaxoSmithKline executive by the name of Moncef Slaoui was recently tapped by Donald Trump to head up the government’s effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine. This appointment should be highly concerning to the public. Why? Because Glaxo has a dark history in vaccine development, including an incident in Argentina in 2007-2008 when they were fined after a pneumonia vaccine trial allegedly caused the deaths of at least 14 babies. Slaoui was in charge of Glaxo’s vaccine division at the time.

Statists that argue in favor of forced vaccination will dismiss all of these examples as mere “accidents” that are “rare”. Others will claim that fighting the pandemic is worth the risk of a “few deaths” due to some faulty vaccines. But this does not address the core issue of the battle against forced vaccination programs.  Does a minority of elites in government or even a majority of useful idiots in the general population have the right to declare ownership of your body in the name of an arbitrary “greater good”?  I say no, which is why I will NOT be conforming to any forced vaccine measures and I am willing to take extreme actions to defend myself from them if necessary.

As mentioned above, if a vaccine works, then there is no need to force people to take it. It will protect those that want it and the only risk is to those that choose not to use it. Frankly, the people in charge of the vaccine effort are not to be trusted, they have open ideological agendas that are questionable to say the least. Allowing them to dictate what goes into our bodies is akin to slavery at best, and possible mass death at worst.

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Disposable plates, silverware, and straws are making a comeback in California. New guidelines issued by the CDC recommend restaurants use plasticware by default as a way to limit the spread of the virus upon reopening. 

Environmental groups have become infuriated with the new recommendation, as it now means all their hard work to ban plastic straws and push a “Green” New Deal could come to an abrupt end (maybe temporarily) because according to the CDC, throwaway dishes, utensils, napkins, and tablecloths could reduce virus spread.

California recycling and clean water groups recently delivered a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, questioning how exactly plasticware diminishes the probabilities of contracting the virus and also accused petrochemical companies of “trying to influence CDC guidelines for reopening food establishments in their favor.”

“The idea that the CDC recommends that single-use disposable items should be preferred seems a little illogical to me,” Chris Slafter, interim coordinator of Clean Water Action’s ReThink Disposable program, which provides grants to restaurants and advises them on how to transition and replace plasticware to more sustainable products, told Politico. “Someone still has to handle that item before it goes into a customer’s hand.”

In pre-corona times, California and its green activists led the way in eliminating plastic straws and other petroleum‐based plastics from the restaurant industry as they have long criticized the items eventually end up in the oceans, polluting and killing wildlife. 

We recently noted that microplastics have also ended up in human stool. 

Now, in post-corona times, with California’s restaurant industry crashed (according to OpenTable data from late May), eateries that have been opened with carryout only and ones that have just fully reopened, have turned to plasticware over the CDC’s new sanitary guidelines. 

Restaurants in other states have also followed the new guidelines with the switch to disposable menus, plates, silverware, etc. 

However, Stanford University epidemiologist Steven Goodman does not see a difference in plasticware from regular plating, in terms of reducing virus spread, as he notes, there’s still human staff behind the scenes making the food.  

“It doesn’t sound like there should be a big difference if they’re handled carefully,” Goodman said. “Washing the plates well should get rid of [the virus], and so the only difference could be how they’re handled between the time when they are on the table and in the sink or in the washing machine.”

Sharokina Shams, the California Restaurant Association’s vice president of public affairs, told Politico in an email response that “many of the current local public health orders (which are a response to the coronavirus pandemic) do put an emphasis on single-use products, and cities have been moving to suspend the ban on plastic bags.”

“It’s also interesting to note that the number of delivery and takeout orders went up during stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders. If that becomes a long-term pattern, you may see the demand for single-use products rise,” said Shams. 

And just like that, who would’ve ever thought California’s green movement would get derailed by a virus. 

Authored by Kevin Smith via Off-Guardian.org,

In the last 30 years, there have been many big events which have been questioned. Iraq is the classic example of where a relative few questioning the pretext of that invasion (Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMDs) were insulted and smeared but later vindicated.

Today, in the background of the risk of world conflict and threat to health and our way of life arising from Covid-19, it’s never been more important to be sceptical and understand evidence.

Earlier in my career, I used to adjudicate financial disputes between two parties, weigh up the evidence, and decide the most likely scenario.

So, in terms of what’s going on in the world, I’m interested in narratives which are open to challenge and the thinking and motives of those in power, the media, and experts behind them. And particularly how the public watching and listening process these messages.

First, before reading on, watch this clip, which I think is hilarious and vaguely relevant to what I’m going to say:

For those not familiar with the actors, this was a press conference held by Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat in 2018. Bellingcat is an Atlantic Council-funded online investigative website which has looked into the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane, alleged chemical attacks in Syria, and the Sergei Skripal incident.

Graham Phillips, who crashed the event, is an independent UK journalist. He was there to ask Higgins what evidence he had for concluding Russia was responsible for the Skripal incident.

Someone unfamiliar with the background watching the clip might view Phillips as an amusing but disruptive, perhaps even unhinged, character who should have been escorted away by the police sooner.

Yet appearances can be deceiving. Those aware of Bellingcat, Higgins, and their highly suspect investigations, will know that the some of the questions Phillips was posing about the evidence for Skripal were pertinent.

Secondly, many people think they are not qualified to research or question the politics or science behind government decisions.

I can understand people with busy lives accepting narratives about events in far-away parts of the world. But Covid-19 should really change that given the impact that lockdown may have on our lives for years to come.

This is what Lord Sumption, former member of the English Supreme Court, said about Covid-19 on BBC Radio 4 recently:

What I say to them is I am not a scientist but it is the right and duty of every citizen to look and see what the scientists have said and to analyse it for themselves and to draw common sense conclusions.

We are all perfectly capable of doing that and there’s no particular reason why the scientific nature of the problem should mean we have to resign our liberty into the hands of scientists.

We all have critical faculties and it’s rather important, in a moment of national panic, that we should maintain them.

Lord Sumption is right. I often didn’t have expert knowledge of the area I was adjudicating on. It wasn’t necessary as we would rely on expert evidence, typically independent or from two sources. What I did was just weighing up information — an ability most of us have when applying ourselves.

Evidence comes in many forms: testimony, circumstantial, documents, and research or expert studies.

Below are some established concepts of assessing evidence as well as some pointers about the reality of today’s global scene that’s relevant when reviewing sharply conflicting narratives.

HISTORY AND TRACK RECORD

This is a good initial indicator. Similar to detectives investigating a murder, they will be guided towards a suspect who has a criminal record.

In the case of Western governments, their advisors, and media, a look at their previous record on a whole range of important issues will show they’ve been wrong.

However, we should be mindful that just because they’ve always been wrong, that it doesn’t follow they are this time around.

For example, based on their past track record, we should certainly view governments’ response to Covid-19 with scepticism initially and ask questions. The information which flows from this and other material will make up the main body of evidence.

ONUS OF PROOF

Taking Covid-19 as just one example, it amazes me when someone says, “you seem to think lockdown is not necessary, it states on the news that it’s working, so what proof do you have that it isn’t?”

I probably don’t need to elaborate on this lazy thinking except to say that the onus is on those who assert to prove. So, the duty is on the government to show that lockdown is working by directly reducing infection, and most importantly, is necessary in the big scheme.

The media is a main channel to communicate such evidence, but statements of “we don’t know” or “it’s too early to tell” or “trust the science”, contradictions, and scare stories have been typical of the entire Covid-19 response.

Meanwhile, many sceptical experts and independent commentators have brought much to the table in terms of scientific studies and the questioning proportionality of lockdown measures.

The sceptics as yet have not had the same air-time to put forward their case. But people need to remember that the government has not discharged the onus of proof over Covid-19, and historically, rarely do over other events.

MOTIVES

We go back again to our detectives. Who has most to gain from pushing a certain narrative? With Iraq, there were clear agendas in Washington to go to war, so much so that stories appeared in the press of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. When this nonsense was dismissed, we moved to the threat of WMDs. We went to war out of a determination by Bush and Blair.

Today, I believe that the UK government is realising their lockdown response was driven by blind panic after receiving incorrect advice on potential mortality rates from their scientists.So, their main motive now is to prevent an angry backlash against the damage caused by lockdown.

Mixed up in all events from Iraq to Covid-19 are the combined interests of numerous parties such as NATO-funded NGOs and investigative sites such as Bellingcat, career journalists, arms industry lobbies, and big pharma. These vested interests include money, career advancement, power, and ideology.

For example, in deciding whether to get involved in Syria, selfish interests worked together. This is why one war after another has been a disaster.

Independent journalists and activists don’t generally have the same motivations and therefore their opposition to their government’s Syria policy is based on the horror of the destruction and threat to world peace.

Thus, understanding the main players and their motives is crucial to understanding evidence.

TACTICS

I recall when adjudicating disputes, the lengths one party would go to, to mislead or pressurise me.

The government, in pushing the narrative of the day, is no different, and has many tools in its armoury, not least a compliant media.

Blaming others, dumbing-down debate, and distracting their audience towards less important issues are classic tactics. For example, when the Covid-19 debate should be about whether lockdown is proportional and necessary, the media focus on scare stories, lack of equipment for health service staff, and blaming China.

The government and media also build a ‘unifying’ theme, encouraging weekly clapping for health workers and constant TV adverts telling us to “stick together to see it through”.

But the mask slips when dealing with the dissenters. Heavy-handed policing of lockdown and outright censorship of those who question the necessity for lockdown, even extending to the views of respected but non-government experts.

Twitter mobs sucked into the frenzy of fear and the new ‘unity’ emerge to smear and insult those questioning the government position.

These tactics have been used prior to every war and during every crisis, only for the narrative to later collapse.

A sign that these people are wrong is that if their position had merit, they wouldn’t censor and would debate.

One of their tactics is to label anyone who questions the prevailing narrative as “conspiracy theorists”. Unfortunately, some dissenters, rather than stick to the position that the government has serious questions to answer, go on to speculate and develop theories which can’t be proven. This provides the opportunity for those pushing official narratives to dismiss powerful arguments based on one error or supplementary theory.

EXPERTS AREN’T ALWAYS RIGHT

I know from experience that experts are often wrong — possibly due to a bias, an under- or over- emphasis on certain evidence, a method, or an inability to think a little outside of their field. The results can be seen in all professions, for example, in miscarriages of justice and the experts which advised governments on WMDs, chemical weapons use in Syria, and Covid-19.

As such, the government messages of “trust the experts” should be treated with caution.

[Especially when they are selective about who qualifies as an “expert”, and ignore prominent figures who disagree – ed.]

PREJUDICE

We all have conscious and unconscious prejudices or accepted viewpoints based on peer pressure. One example which comes to mind is among some even in alternative media circles. They say, “Assad is a brutal dictator, but didn’t gas his people”.

They’ve looked at the evidence to establish the latter, but have unconsciously swallowed the unsubstantiated media propaganda on Assad as a person.

Peer pressure, pre-determined positions, and ideology are barriers to independent thinking. But just being mindful of these pitfalls when reviewing evidence helps to get to a more open-minded mindset.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To those who’ve researched and studied evidence and applied this to global events, it’s apparent that mainstream thinking at all levels doesn’t resemble the reality. Nowadays, a mainstream position on the most important events can be ripped to shreds.

Covid-19 and lockdown are by far the biggest event which has affected all our lives. Therefore, I’d expect the important questions about the real risks and proportion to gather pace.

In the meantime, we should spend the time in lockdown looking at the evidence in the round.