Category: zerohedge

Ukrainian MP Valery Davydenko of the Dovira faction was found dead in his office bathroom with a gunshot wound to the head, according to a post by MP Ilya Kiva on his Facebook page and confirmed by local media.

“His body with a gunshot wound has just been found in the office of an MP Valeriy Davydenko. The circumstances are being investigated,” he wrote.

According to the Ukrainian Truth news agency, a weapon was found near the body.

“The body of MP Valeriy Davydenko was found in the toilet in his own office with a fatal gunshot wound to the head. An investigative police group is working at the scene,” said Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko, who added “Police and prosecutors will check all possible versions of the tragedy.”

Davydenko was a defendant in several corruption cases – including the theft of funds from the country’s Agriculture Fund. In February, 2014, Davydenko and Borys Prykhodko – another MP from the Dovira faction, were accused of embezzling US$75 million while Prykhodko was the First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Following Davydenko’s death, ex-People’s Deputy Ihor Mosiychuk called for the immediate arrest of Prykhodko, who he called the “accomplice in the theft of the agrarian fund.”

Did Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey just, sheepishly, issue a ‘mea culpa’ to all those innocent (mostly conservative) voices he has silenced in the last few years who dared to question the “Russia, Russia, Russia” narrative, the “Biden did nothing wrong” stories, the “Comey is an American hero” facts, and, of course, the “COVID started in a wet market” orgy of lies.

In a tweet, the outspoken provider of safe-spaces, retweeted an essay by Charles Eisenstein entitled “The Conspiracy Myth” which appears to go against everything Twitter has done.

So, we ask in all seriousness, why did Dorsey – who has shown himself, via his actions, to be an enemy of any non-establishment-sanctioned narrative with his suspension and banning of any tweets or twitter-ers that dare to offer alternate views – retweet an essay that raises doubts about the over-arching threat of “conspiracy theories” to snowflakes, promotes the idea of exploring all sides of an argument before dismissing it, and most ironically, rails against “information suppression” and centralized decisions based on someone’s “trustworthiness”?

Read the essay for yourself (emphasis ours):

The Conspiracy Myth

The other day I was amused to read a critique of The Coronation in which the author was absolutely certain that I am a closet conspiracy theorist. He was so persuasive that I myself almost believed it.

What is a conspiracy theory anyway? Sometimes the term is deployed against anyone who questions authority, dissents from dominant paradigms, or thinks that hidden interests influence our leading institutions. As such, it is a way to quash dissent and bully those trying to stand up to abuses of power. One needn’t abandon critical thinking to believe that powerful institutions sometimes collude, conspire, cover up, and are corrupt. If that is what is meant by a conspiracy theory, obviously some of those theories are true. Does anyone remember Enron? Iran-Contra? COINTELPRO? Vioxx? Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?

During the time of Covid-19, another level of conspiracy theory has risen to prominence that goes way beyond specific stories of collusion and corruption to posit conspiracy as a core explanatory principle for how the world works. Fuelled by the authoritarian response to the pandemic (justifiable or not, lockdown, quarantine, surveillance and tracking, censorship of misinformation, suspension of freedom of assembly and other civil liberties, and so on are indeed authoritarian), this arch-conspiracy theory holds that an evil, power-hungry cabal of insiders deliberately created the pandemic or is at least ruthlessly exploiting it to frighten the public into accepting a totalitarian world government under permanent medical martial law, a New World Order (NWO). Furthermore, this evil group, this illuminati, pulls the strings of all major governments, corporations, the United Nations, the WHO, the CDC, the media, the intelligence services, the banks, and the NGOs. In other words, they say, everything we are told is a lie, and the world is in the grip of evil.

So what do I think about that theory? I think it is a myth. And what is a myth? A myth is not the same thing as a fantasy or a delusion. Myths are vehicles of truth, and that truth needn’t be literal. The classical Greek myths, for example, seem like mere amusements until one decodes them by associating each god with psychosocial forces. In this way, myths bring light to the shadows and reveal what has been repressed. They take a truth about the psyche or society and form it into a story. The truth of a myth does not depend on whether it is objectively verifiable. That is one reason why, in The Coronation, I said my purpose is neither to advocate nor to debunk the conspiracy narrative, but rather to look at what it illuminates. It is, after all, neither provable nor falsifiable.

What is true about the conspiracy myth? Underneath its literalism, it conveys important information that we ignore at great peril. 

First, it demonstrates the shocking extent of public alienation from institutions of authority. For all the political battles of the post-WWII era, there was at least a broad consensus on basic facts and on where facts could be found. The key institutions of knowledge production — science and journalism — enjoyed broad public trust. If the New York Times and CBS Evening News said that North Vietnam attacked the United States in the Gulf of Tonkin, most people believed it. If science said nuclear power and DDT were safe, most people believed that too. To some extent, that trust was well earned. Journalists sometimes defied the interests of the powerful, as with Seymour Hersh’s expose of the My Lai massacre, or Woodward & Bernstein’s reporting on Watergate. Science, in the vanguard of civilization’s onward march, had a reputation for the objective pursuit of knowledge in defiance of traditional religious authorities, as well as a reputation for lofty disdain for political and financial motives. 

Today, the broad consensus trust in science and journalism is in tatters. I know several highly educated people who believe the earth is flat. By dismissing flat-earthers and the tens of millions of adherents to less extreme alternative narratives (historical, medical, political, and scientific) as ignorant, we are mistaking symptom for cause. Their loss of trust is a clear symptom of a loss of trustworthiness. Our institutions of knowledge production have betrayed public trust repeatedly, as have our political institutions. Now, many people won’t believe them even when they tell the truth. This must be frustrating to the scrupulous doctor, scientist, or public official. To them, the problem looks like a public gone mad, a rising tide of anti-scientific irrationality that is endangering public health. The solution, from that perspective, would be to combat ignorance. It is almost as if ignorance is a virus (in fact, I have heard that phrase before) that must be controlled through the same kind of quarantine (for example, censorship) that we apply to the coronavirus. 

Ironically, another kind of ignorance pervades both these efforts: the ignorance of the terrain. What is the diseased tissue upon which the virus of ignorance gains purchase? The loss of trust in science, journalism, and government reflects their long corruption: their arrogance and elitism, their alliance with corporate interests, and their institutionalized suppression of dissent. The conspiracy myth embodies the realization of a profound disconnect between the public postures of our leaders and their true motivations and plans. It bespeaks a political culture that is opaque to the ordinary citizen, a world of secrecy, image, PR,  spin, optics, talking points, perception management, narrative management, and information warfare. No wonder people suspect that there is another reality operating behind the curtains. 

Second, the conspiracy myth gives narrative form to an authentic intuition that an inhuman power governs the world. What could that power be? The conspiracy myth locates that power in a group of malevolent human beings (who take commands, in some versions, from extraterrestrial or demonic entities). Therein lies a certain psychological comfort, because now there is someone to blame in a familiar us-versus-them narrative and victim-perpetrator-rescuer psychology. Alternatively, we could locate the “inhuman power” in systems or ideologies, not a group of conspirators. That is less psychologically rewarding, because we can no longer easily identify as good fighting evil; after all, we ourselves participate in these systems, which pervade our entire society. Systems like the debt-based money system, patriarchy, white supremacy, or capitalism cannot be removed by fighting their administrators. They create roles for evildoers to fill, but the evildoers are functionaries; puppets, not puppet masters. The basic intuition of conspiracy theories then is true: that those we think hold power are but puppets of the real power in the world. 

A couple weeks ago I was on a call with a person who had a high position in the Obama administration and who still runs in elite circles. He said, “There is no one driving the bus.” I was a little disappointed actually, because there is indeed part of me that wishes the problem were a bunch of dastardly conspirators. Why? Because then our world’s problems would be quite easy to solve, at least in principle. Just expose and eliminate those bad guys. That is the prevailing Hollywood formula for righting the world’s wrongs: a heroic champion confronts and defeats the bad guy, and everyone lives happily ever after. Hmm, that is the same basic formula as blaming ill health on germs and killing them with the arsenal of medicine, so that we can live safe healthy lives ever after, or killing the terrorists and walling out the immigrants and locking up the criminals, all again so that we can live safe healthy lives ever after. Stamped from the same template, conspiracy theories tap into an unconscious orthodoxy. They emanate from the same mythic pantheon as the social ills they protest. We might call that pantheon Separation, and one of its chief motifs is the war against the Other.

That is not to say there is no such thing as a germ — or a conspiracy. Watergate, COINTELPRO, Iran-Contra, Merck’s drug Vioxx, Ford’s exploding Pinto coverup, Lockheed-Martin’s bribery campaign, Bayer’s knowing sale of HIV-contaminated blood, and the Enron scandal demonstrate that conspiracies involving powerful elites do happen. None of the above are myths though: a myth is something that explains the world; it is, mysteriously, bigger than itself. Thus, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory (which I will confess, doubtless at cost to my credibility, to accepting as literally true) is a portal to the mythic realm. 

The conspiracy myth I’m addressing here, though, is much larger than any of these specific examples: It is that the world as we know it is the result of a conspiracy, with the Illuminati or controllers as its evil gods. For believers, it becomes a totalizing discourse that casts every event into its terms. 

It is a myth with an illustrious pedigree, going back at least to the time of the first century Gnostics. Gnostics believe that an evil demiurge created the material world out of a preexisting divine essence. Creating the world in the image of his own distortion, he imagines himself to be its true god and ruler.

One needn’t believe in this literally, nor believe literally in a world-controlling evil cabal, to derive insight from this myth — insight into the arrogance of the powerful, for example, or into the nature of the distortion that colors the world of our experience. 

What is it that makes the vast majority of humanity comply with a system that drives Earth and humankind to ruin? What power has us in its grip? It isn’t just the conspiracy theorists who are captive to a mythology. Society at large is too. I call it the mythology of Separation: me separate from you, matter separate from spirit, human separate from nature. It holds us as discrete and separate selves in an objective universe of force and mass, atoms and void. Because we are (in this myth) separate from other people and from nature, we must dominate our competitors and master nature. Progress, therefore, consists in increasing our capacity to control the Other. The myth recounts human history as an ascent from one triumph to the next, from fire to domestication to industry to information technology, genetic engineering, and social science, promising a coming paradise of control. That same myth motivates the conquest and ruin of nature, organizing society to turn the entire planet into money — no conspiracy necessary.

The mythology of Separation is what generates what I named in The Coronation as a “civilizational tilt” toward control. The solution template is, facing any problem, to find something to control — to quarantine, to track, to imprison, to wall out, to dominate, or to kill. If control fails, more control will fix it. To achieve social and material paradise, control everything, track every movement, monitor every word, record every transaction. Then there can be no more crime, no more infection, no more disinformation. When the entire ruling class accepts this formula and this vision, they will act in natural concert to increase their control. It is all for the greater good. When the public accepts it too, they will not resist it. This is not a conspiracy, though it can certainly look like one. This is a third truth within the conspiracy myth. Events are indeed orchestrated in the direction of more and more control, only the orchestrating power is itself a zeitgeist, an ideology… a myth.

A Conspiracy with No Conspirators

Let us not dismiss the conspiracy myth as just a myth. Not only is it an important psychosocial diagnostic, but it reveals what is otherwise hard to see from the official mythology in which society’s main institutions, while flawed, are shepherding us ever-closer to a high tech paradise. That dominant myth blinds us to the data points the conspiracy theorists recruit for their narratives. These might include things like regulatory capture in the pharmaceutical industry, conflicts of interest within public health organizations, the dubious efficacy of masks, the far-lower-than-hyped death rates, totalitarian overreach, the questionable utility of lockdown, concerns about non-ionizing frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, the benefits of natural and holistic approaches to boosting immunity, bioterrain theory, the dangers of censorship in the name of “combatting disinformation,” and so forth. It would be nice if one could raise the numerous valid points and legitimate questions that alternative Covid narratives bring to light without being classed as a right-wing conspiracy theorist. 

The whole phrase “right-wing conspiracy theorist” is a bit odd, since traditionally it is the Left that has been most alert to the proclivity of the powerful to abuse their power. Traditionally, it is the Left that is suspicious of corporate interests, that urges us to “question authority,” and that has in fact been the main victim of government infiltration and surveillance.

Fifty years ago, if anyone said, “There is a secret program called COINTELPRO that is spying on civil rights groups and sowing division within them with poison pen letters and fabricated rumors,” that would have been a conspiracy theory by today’s standards.

The same, 25 years ago, with, “There is a secret program in which the CIA facilitates narcotics sales into American inner cities and uses the money to fund right-wing paramilitaries in Central America.”

The same with government infiltration of environmental groups and peace activists starting in the 1980s.

Or more recently, the infiltration of the Standing Rock movement.

Or the real estate industry’s decades-long conspiracy to redline neighborhoods to keep black people out.

Given this history, why all of a sudden is it the Left urging everyone to trust “the Man” — to trust the pronouncements of the pharmaceutical companies and pharma-funded organizations like the CDC and WHO? Why is skepticism towards these institutions labeled “right wing”? It isn’t as if only the privileged are “inconvenienced” by lockdown. It is devastating the lives of tens or hundreds of millions of the global precariat. The UN World Food Program is warning that by the end of the year, 260 million people will face starvation. Most are black and brown people in Africa and South Asia. One might argue that to restrict the debate to epidemiological questions of mortality is itself a privileged stance that erases the suffering of those who are most marginalized to begin with.

“Conspiracy theory” has become a term of political invective, used to disparage any view that diverges from mainstream beliefs. Basically, any critique of dominant institutions can be smeared as conspiracy theory. There is actually a perverse truth in this smear. For example, if you believe that glyphosate is actually dangerous to human and ecological health, then you also must, if you are logical, believe that Bayer/Monsanto is suppressing or ignoring that information, and you must also believe that the government, media, and scientific establishment are to some extent complicit in that suppression. Otherwise, why are we not seeing NYT headlines like, “Monsanto whistleblower reveals dangers of glyphosate”? 

Information suppression can happen without deliberate orchestration. Throughout history, hysterias, intellectual fads, and mass delusions have come and gone spontaneously. This is more mysterious than the easy conspiracy explanation admits. An unconscious coordination of action can look very much like a conspiracy, and the boundary between the two is blurry. Consider the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) fraud that served as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Maybe there were people in the Bush administration who knowingly used the phony “yellowcake” document to call for war; maybe they just wanted very much to believe the documents were genuine, or maybe they thought, “Well, this is questionable but Saddam must have WMD, and even if he doesn’t, he wants them, so the document is basically true…” People easily believe what serves their interests or fits their existing worldview. 

In a similar vein, the media needed little encouragement to start beating the war drums. They knew what to do already, without having to receive instructions. I don’t think very many journalists actually believed the WMD lie. They pretended to believe, because subconsciously, they knew that was the establishment narrative. That was what would get them recognized as serious journalists. That’s what would give them access to power. That is what would allow them to keep their jobs and advance their careers. But most of all, they pretended to believe because everyone else was pretending to believe. It is hard to go against the zeitgeist. 

The British scientist Rupert Sheldrake told me about a talk he gave to a group of scientists who were working on animal behaviour at a prestigious British University. He was talking about his research on dogs that know when their owners are coming home, and other telepathic phenomena in domestic animals. The talk was received with a kind of polite silence. But in the following tea break all six of the senior scientists who were present at the seminar came to him one by one, and when they were sure that no one else was listening told him they had had experiences of this kind with their own animals, or that they were convinced that telepathy is a real phenomenon, but that they could not talk to their colleagues about this because they were all so straight. When Sheldrake realised that all six had told him much the same thing, he said to them, “Why don’t you guys come out? You’d all have so much more fun!” He says that when he gives a talk at a scientific institution there are nearly always scientists who approach him afterwards telling him they’ve had personal experiences that convince them of the reality of psychic or spiritual phenomena but that they can’t discuss them with their colleagues for fear of being thought weird.

This is not a deliberate conspiracy to suppress psychic phenomena. Those six scientists didn’t convene beforehand and decide to suppress information they knew was real. They keep their opinions to themselves because of the norms of their subculture, the basic paradigms that delimit science, and the very real threat of damage to their careers. The persecution and calumny directed at Sheldrake himself demonstrates what happens to a scientist who is outspoken in his dissent from official scientific reality. So, we might still say that a conspiracy is afoot, but its perpetrator is a culture, a system, and a story. 

Is this, or a deliberate conspiratorial agenda, a more satisfying explanation for the seemingly inexorable trends (which by no means began with Covid) toward surveillance, tracking, distancing, germ phobia, obsession with safety, and the digitization and indoor-ization of entertainment, recreation, and sociality? If the perpetrator is indeed a cultural mythology and system, then conspiracy theories offer us a false target, a distraction. The remedy cannot be to expose and take down those who have foisted these trends upon us. Of course, there are many bad actors in our world, remorseless people committing heinous acts. But have they created the system and the mythology of Separation, or do they merely take advantage of it? Certainly such people should be stopped, but if that is all we do, and leave unchanged the conditions that breed them, we will fight an endless war. Just as in bioterrain theory germs are symptoms and exploiters of diseased tissue, so also are conspiratorial cabals symptoms and exploiters of a diseased society: a society poisoned by the mentality of war, fear, separation, and control. This deep ideology, the myth of separation, is beyond anyone’s power to invent. The Illuminati, if they exist, are not its authors; it is more true to say that the mythology is their author. We do not create our myths; they create us.

Which side are you on?

In the end, I still haven’t said whether I think the New World Order conspiracy myth is true or not. Well actually yes I have. I have said it is true as a myth, regardless of its correspondence to verifiable facts. But what about the facts? Come on, Charles, tell us, is there actually a conspiracy behind the Covid thing, or isn’t there? There must be an objective fact of the matter. Are chemtrails a thing? Was SARS-COV2 genetically engineered? Is microwave radiation from cellphone towers a factor? Are vaccines introducing viruses from animal cell cultures into people? Is Bill Gates masterminding a power grab in the form of medical martial law? Does a Luciferian elite rule the world? True or false? Yes or no? 

To this question I would respond with another: Given that I am not an expert on any of these matters, why do you want to know what I think? Could it be to place me on one side or another of an information war? Then you will know whether it is OK to enjoy this essay, share it, or have me on your podcast.  In an us-versus-them war mentality, the most important thing is to know which side someone is on, lest you render aid and comfort to the enemy. 

Aha — Charles must be on the other side. Because he has created a false equivalency between peer-reviewed, evidence-based, respectable scientific knowledge on the one hand, and unhinged conspiracy theories on the other. 

Aha — Charles must be on the other side. Because he has created a false equivalency between corporate-government-NWO propaganda on the one hand, and brave whistle-blowers and dissidents risking their careers for the truth on the other. 

Can you see how totalizing war mentality can be?

War mentality saturates our polarized society, which envisions progress as a consequence of victory — victory over a virus, over the ignorant, over the left, over the right, over the psychopathic elites, over Donald Trump, over white supremacy, over the liberal elites…. Each side uses the same formula, and that formula requires an enemy. So, obligingly, we divide ourselves up into us and them, exhausting 99% of our energies in a fruitless tug-of-war, never once suspecting that the true evil power might be the formula itself. 

This is not to propose that we somehow banish conflict from human affairs. It is to question a mythology — embraced by both sides — that conceives every problem in conflict’s terms. Struggle and conflict have their place, but other plotlines are possible. There are other pathways to healing and to justice. 

A Call for Humility

Have you ever noticed that events seem to organize themselves to validate the story you hold about the world? Selection bias and confirmation bias explain some of that, but I think something weirder is at work as well. When we enter into deep faith or deep paranoia, it seems as if that state attracts confirmatory events to it. Reality organizes itself to match our stories. In a sense, this IS a conspiracy, just not one perpetrated by humankind. That might be a third truth that the conspiracy myth harbors: the presence of an organizing intelligence behind the events of our lives. 

In no way does this imply the New Age nostrum that beliefs create reality. Rather, it is that reality and belief construct each other, coevolving as a coherent whole. The intimate, mysterious connection between myth and reality means that belief is never actually a slave to fact. We are facts’ sovereign — which is not to say their creator. To be their sovereign doesn’t mean to be their tyrant, disrespecting and over-ruling them. The wise monarch pays attention to an unruly subject, such as a fact that defies the narrative. Maybe it is simply a disturbed trouble-maker, like a simple lie, but maybe it signals disharmony in the kingdom. Maybe the kingdom is no longer legitimate. Maybe the myth is no longer true. It could well be that the vociferous attacks on Covid dissent, using the “conspiracy theory” smear, signal the infirmity of the orthodox paradigms they seek to uphold.

If so, that doesn’t mean the orthodox paradigms are all wrong either. To leap from one certainty to another skips the holy ground of uncertainty, of not knowing, of humility, into which genuinely new information can come. What unites the pundits of all persuasions is their certainty. Who is trustworthy? In the end, it is the person with the humility to recognize when he or she has been wrong. 

To those who categorically dismiss any information that seriously challenges conventional medicine, lockdown policies, vaccines, etc., I would ask, Do you need such high walls around your kingdom? Instead of banishing these unruly subjects, would it hurt to give them an audience?

Would it be so dangerous to perhaps tour another kingdom, guided not by your own loyal minister but by the most intelligent, welcoming partisans of the other side?

If you have no interest in spending the several hours it will take to absorb the following dissenting opinions, fine. I’d rather be in my garden too.

But if you are a partisan in these issues, what harm will it do to visit enemy territory? Normally partisans don’t do that. They rely on the reports of their own leaders about the enemy. If they know anything of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s or Judy Mikovitz’s views, it is through the lens of someone debunking them. So give a listen to Kennedy, or if you prefer MD’s only, to David Katz, Zach Bush, or Christiane Northrup…

I would like to offer the same invitation to those who reject the conventional view.

Find the most scrupulous mainstream doctors and scientists you can, and dive into their world. Take the attitude of a respectful guest, not a hostile spy. If you do that, I guarantee you will encounter data points that challenge any narrative you came in with. The splendor of conventional virology, the wonders of chemistry that generations of scientists have discovered, the intelligence and sincerity of most of these scientists, and the genuine altruism of health care workers on the front line who have no political or financial conflict of interest in the face of grave risk to themselves, must be part of any satisfactory narrative.

After two months of obsessively searching for one, I have not yet found a satisfactory narrative that can account for every data point. That doesn’t mean to take no action because after all, knowledge is never certain. But in the whirlwind of competing narratives and the disjoint mythologies beneath them, we can look for action that makes sense no matter which side is right. We can look for truths that the smoke and clamor of the battle obscures. We can question assumptions both sides take for granted, and ask questions neither side is asking. Not identified with either side, we can gather knowledge from both.

Generalizing to society, by bringing in all the voices, including the marginalized ones, we can build a broader social consensus and begin to heal the polarization that is rending and paralyzing our society.

*  *  *

Is this a new mission statement for Twitter 2.0 – allow adults to be adults, erase the nanny-statism, and offer the world a platform to exchange ideas freely?

Days ago we took note of Secretary of State Pompeo’s somewhat rare epic ‘regime change tweet tirade’ which included no less than nine fiery statements coming in minutes aimed at ‘rogue regimes’ Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Though some pundits have noted the administration is looking for a “distraction” and way out of the nation’s corona-crisis, perhaps eager to claim an easy ‘victory’ prior to November on the foreign policy front, it does look as if things in both the Persian Gulf and even Caribbean (where 5 Iranian fuel tankers are inbound to deliver gasoline to Maduro’s Venezuela) are heating up and set for violent showdown. 

Amid an exchange of heightening threats and counter-threats between Tehran and Washington, Fox News reports that an elite US Marine unit is conducting ongoing ‘live-fire’ drills in the Persian Gulf. This is a clear “message to Iran” reports Fox’s Lucas Tomlinson.

“In a message to Iran, U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship does some target practice in Persian Gulf with the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit,” Thomlinson writes, also publishing rare photos of the late night operation. 

He further describes: “The live-fire training began on same day U.S. military warned Iran to keep back 100 meters from its warships after harassment by small gunboats from Islamic Revolutionary Guard last month.”

Days ago, on May 19, the US Navy issued an alert which Reuters described as “aimed squarely at Iran”.

It warned that all ships in the gulf must stay at least 100 meters away from U.S. warships or risk being “interpreted as a threat and subject to lawful defensive measures.”

“Armed vessels approaching within 100 meters of a U.S. naval vessel may be interpreted as a threat,” the official maritime alert said.

Reuters noted further, “The Pentagon has stated that Trump’s threat was meant to underscore the Navy’s right to self-defense.”

This was after multiple filmed incidents involving Iranian naval ‘fast-boats’ in high-risk maneuvers near American ships, aimed at harassing the US presence. 

As we’ve underscored before, a number of indicators suggest we are in for another hot ‘tanker war’ summer in the Gulf, akin to last year’s tit-for-tat escalation.

But this time around the potential for a major conflict is even more likely, given the US killing of IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January, which has significantly raised the stakes.

Authored by J.D.Salbego via CoinTelegraph.com,

The centralized financial system has compromised itself several times during the last two decades alone, and now it’s time for a serious change!

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Did you notice the song that Christian Bale’s character was jamming out to in his office when his partner came in to pull the money in The Big Short? Well, it happens to be my favorite metal band of all time: Metallica. And that song is called “Master of Puppets.” It’s almost ironic that as I was writing this article on the real truth behind what’s currently happening with the collapse of our financial and economic markets and calling it “Master of Puppets” — well, this movie scene popped in my mind. 

Yes, The Big Short is about the big 2008 financial crisis caused mainly by none other than the United States Federal Reserve. Spoiler alert! This will be one of the last times you read about any type of “correlation” here in this article.

Master of Puppets is Metallica’s third album, released in 1986, and it is probably the greatest metal album of all time. I still listen to it almost weekly. It’s great for working out or getting pumped up before a business meeting.

Anyways, back to the master. The curtain has been removed and the truth revealed: money is created out of thin air, and the banks and Wall Street are bathing in it.

To be very clear, there was a major and historical financial crisis by orders of magnitude already about to explode, and the COVID-19 pandemic just brought the economy to its knees a tiny bit quicker.

At a crucial intersection of events in time that couldn’t have been more bluntly shoved in your face, 16 million people in the U.S. lost their jobs (and it’s almost 36.5 million now.) And like a drunk driver recklessly running a red light at an intersection, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had the highest gains since 1938. All while the Fed was printing 4 trillion U.S. dollars out of thin air.

Where’s the correlation? Whoever can find it will prove reincarnation exists, as they must be J. P. Morgan himself, reincarnated in the flesh — only 100 years even more crafty and conniving. And the government and the Federal Reserve say Bitcoin (BTC) is backed by thin air?

Our economy and the Federal Reserve is built on sticks (debt), and remember what happened to that little piggy that didn’t use bricks? Let’s hope the strings become severed from the puppet master and like a bungee cord slap back into its face with the inertia and momentum of more than 150 years of control, lies and manipulation.

The amount of truth that’s starting to become available and acknowledged by the general public about our governments and financial institutions is alarming, and hopefully this will be a stepping point into a new paradigm or, what I like to say, a “new world order.”

The Fed and the government’s economic strategy is just putting an already used Band-Aid (quantitative easing and debt monetization) on a gunshot wound. It’s not fixing the real problem. And for obvious reasons.

The U.S. has for years substantially spent trillions of dollars more than it brings in. To date, the debt owed by the federal government is over $25 trillion. Even more unfathomable to see, with some very complicated calculations, is that it’s looking like an estimated, or near, amount of $100 trillion will need to be printed (out of thin air), or what the Fed likes to call “increase the monetary base,” in order to bail out and keep institutions afloat.

This would then create the ripple effect of causing global economies to reach hyperinflation such as has been never seen before. That’s called a lose-lose (or no-win) situation caused by none other than our government, the banking system, Wall Street and their combined mismanagement of our economies.

Understanding economics and monetary policies can be complicated for many, even myself, but it’s not complicated enough where I will not speak up and just sit here as the blind sheep being led by the wolf in sheep’s clothing to my bitter end.

To clarify, as it’s important: Bitcoin will never be a replacement for a nation’s central bank currency or new digital currency that’s in development now. It’s more the digital gold of the 21st century and onward.

But most importantly, and much like the U.S. fighting for its freedom and control from an unfair controlling centralized system such as England, it was the first to step in thousands of years of oppression to launch a revolution.

Like Joan of Arc or Che Guevara, who became martyrs for the better of society, Bitcoin itself has taken the beating from its first inception — including being declared a national security issue — but it was so powerful in igniting a revolution that it withstood all the hardships and persecution that the governments and central banks cast upon it. So, what it serves to be is the Medal of Honor for this new paradigm shift of the people’s money, leading the future of money with a more transparent, fair and peer-to-peer monetary system.

The more we talk about this, the more people may eventually get it — I hope. The general public should really try to understand this. It’s all credits and debts and leveraged positions and margins.

Remember that incredible luncheon scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where Matthew McConaughey’s super Wall Street broker character educates a young and hungry rookie broker, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, breaking down how the real system works? Matthew McConaughey, with a straight face and twist of sarcasm, says, “Fugayzi, fugazi. It’s a wazzy, it’s a woozy. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It is no matter. It’s not on the elemental chart. It’s not f—— real.”

Just so you know: This system doesn’t just apply to brokering trades on the stock market. It applies to all the banking, monetary and financial systems around the world. 

Fairy dust old money is just a hierarchically controlled propaganda belief system.

Blockchain-based new money is the P2P, fair and transparent people’s-money.

That’s exactly right. Thank you, Martin Scorsese and your screenwriters, for this brilliantly creative scene. Yet it’s fair to say that this part of the scene was definitely outshined by the more memorable “rookie numbers” part.

But as history has continuously proven to us, unfortunately, much of the population takes comfort in the machine (the “master”), no matter the consequences. As some say, “Ignorance is bliss.” 

Maybe they were so caught up in the genius writing and humor from Scorsese and these two brilliant actors that they missed it. I know I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

So, as the banker artistically creates his leveraged position out of thin air, like abstract images flow out of the tip of Dali’s paintbrush — or Scorsese’s brain to film — I ask you: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

Finally, the cat is out of the bag, though unfortunately only hindsight is 20/20, and time will tell what changes actually occur after this mess. Hopefully it’s different this time. 

As says the famous “possible quote” of Henry Ford (most people don’t know the real facts behind that quote) that was paraphrased by congressperson Charles Binderup on March 19, 1937, in the House of Representatives:

“It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Want to know how the banking system really works? Here it goes:

You don’t deposit cash at a bank. You actually just lend it to the bank, and when you go to draw on that account, you are just creating a transaction inputted on a digital ledger. You are not actually drawing out your original money. The banks then charge you fees to actually lend them money as well in the form of monthly account fees, overdraft fees and all the other small print fees that sneak in.

When the bank deposits money in your account in the form of a credit — for instance, if you buy a house — it’s not an actual credit, it’s really a debt that it repackages and calls a mortgage by leveraging its position and creating a profit margin for the services of lending you part of your own money back that you originally gave it, as well as all its other customers’ money. There is only one form of real money in this transaction, and that is the money that you originally gave the bank. It’s basically holding a lien over you and on your new house with the money you and its other customers let it borrow, which it turned around and let you borrow again and charged fees on it. All it did was “artistically” create a leveraged position and profit margin by creating a credit and debt out of thin air.

The stark reality is that there really is no money. This centralized system is just conjured up credit, debt and margin entries on a centralized ledger that’s agreed upon (consensus) by a centralized group of participants.

Two weeks ago, when showing the uncanny correlation between defaults and the unemployment rates, we predicted that the number of Chapter 11 filings that is about to flood the US will be nothing short of biblical.

All that was missing was a catalyst… and according to Bloomberg that catalyst arrived in the past week or so, as retail landlords have been sending out thousands of default notices to tenants, who in turn have experienced a collapse in foot traffic, sales and cash flow due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and are simply unable to pay their debt obligations.

According to Bloomberg, restaurants, department stores, apparel merchants and specialty chains have been receiving notices from landlords – some of whom have gone as long as three months without receiving rent.

“The default letters from landlords are flying out the door,” said Andy Graiser, co-president of commercial real estate company, A&G Real Estate Partners. “It’s creating a real fear in the marketplace.”

Pressure from default notices and follow-up actions like locking up stores or terminating leases was cited in the bankruptcies of Modell’s Sporting Goods and Stage Stores Inc. Many chains stopped paying rent after the pandemic shuttered most U.S. stores, gambling that they could hold on to some cash before landlords demanded payment.

The stakes are enormous, and landlords are suffering, too. An estimated $7.4 billion in rent for April hasn’t been paid, or about 45% of what’s owed, according to a recent analysis by CoStar Group, which also found that just a quarter of of expected rent payments have been received by landlords.

“If the landlords don’t put a pause on their actions, you’re going to see more bankruptcies.”

The question then becomes who will bail out the landlords, and whether their creditors will be just as generous in accepting forbearance.

That said, receipt of a default notice don’t necessarily mean a retailers will get booted anytime soon, especially since there is nobody waiting in line for the real estate: some landlords are merely sending letters to preserve their legal rights while discussing the situation with tenants, and to assure their spot as a prepetition creditor once the default tsunami begins in earnest.

One such company, Simon Property Group Inc., says it’s in active negotiations with merchants at its malls, and has been taking their tenants’ financial status into account. “The bottom line is, we do have a contract and we do expect to get paid,” said CEO David Simon during the company’s May 11 earnings call.

“The landlords do have the legal contract,” said Green Street Advisors senior analyst, Vince Tibone. “However, from a practicality standpoint, a lot of these retailers are on the brink of bankruptcy and simply cannot pay right now.”

However, as noted above, landlords are of course still stuck with their own bills – including bank debts which they’re expected to pay. On Thursday we reported that US malls are in a crisis which started in January as vacancies hit a record high.

And earlier Friday we reported that US retailers have accounted for the bulk of defaults over the past two months, as they were forced to temporarily close stores in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Retailers Neiman Marcus Group, J.Crew and J.C. Penney have already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month in the United States. But the real bankruptcy wave was just waiting for the unspoken covid-related grace period to end, and for the default notices to start flying.

The letters began arriving in March and early April, “but the rate of such notices picked up materially in late April and early May,” Stage Stores said. Some landlords began locking the company out “and threatened to evict the debtors and dispose of the in-store inventory.” The company also said that “responding to and managing these default notices and related litigation outside of Chapter 11 would have been a monumentally difficult task.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of investors out there looking to buy retailers in a Chapter 11,” said Grasier, adding “Landlords and retailers need to really come together and realize that this a shared pain.”

Some landlords get it, according to Tom Mullaney, managing director of restructuring at real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. Retailers he represents are getting default letters that are understanding and sympathetic; other landlords strike a more combative tone.

What’s more interesting is the action, or lack of it, by the landlords afterward, Mullaney said. “In a lot of cases, the letters that are being sent aren’t being followed up on,” he said – the landlords are simply preserving their legal rights. Maybe they just don’t have the fund to retain lawyers?

Others, meanwhile, are just taking the law into their own hands: some property owners have run out of patience and have locked out Mullaney’s clients. “The environment is getting pretty testy and emotional on both sides of the table,” he said. “The only thing worse than being a retailer right now is being a retail landlord.”

Following his departure from the Obama administration in 2017, former Vice President Joe Biden established three charitable organizations; the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware, and the Biden Cancer Initiative.

And as the Washington Free Beacon notes, many of Biden’s nonprofits have become landing spots for his former – and potentially future – White House aides.

The Penn Biden Center, which had a “soft opening” in March 2017 and officially opened its doors in February 2018, has served as a national security council-in-waiting for Biden, employing his top White House foreign policy advisers Colin Kahl, Michael Carpenter, and Jeffrey Prescott. –Free Beacon

Yet, when asked about their sources of funding, the Biden entities have been anything but transparent. For example, when the Free Beacon asked a Biden Center spokesman about its funding, they said it was “a question for my colleagues at main university.” Penn spokesman Stephen MacCarthy simply blew off multiple requests for comment, as did the Biden campaign.

The Biden Cancer initiative, which had $2.1 million in assets in 2018 before suspending operations last year, similarly declined to provide a list of donors.

And the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware has also refused requests for transparency by the Free Beacon.

What we do know, however, is that the University of Pennsylvania received a 300% increase in donations since the Biden Center’s soft opening – from $31 million in 2016 to $100 million last year, according to records from the Department of Education. The largest contributor? China – which contributed $61 million in gifts and contracts between March 2017 and the end of last year. In the preceding four years – before the Biden Center opened, Penn took in just $19 million from China.

The donations included a $502,750 “monetary gift” in October 2017 from the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, a Chinese government agency that helps administer the regime’s “Thousand Talents Plan.” Federal prosecutors claim the program is linked to Chinese espionage operations at American universities and have prosecuted academics for hiding their involvement in it. Other contributors included China’s Zhejiang University, the China Merchants Bank, and the China Everbright Group, a state-owned investment group, according to federal records. –Free Beacon

Is this why Joe Biden has been soft on China?

Or was Biden downplaying China due to the $1.5 billion private equity deal his son Hunter inked in 2013, weeks after the two Bidens flew to China on Air Force Two?

Back to the lecture at hand, many of the Chinese contributions to the University of Pennsylvania were listed as coming from “anonymous” donors – which experts have called an “easy tactic” which allows the Chinese to penetrate the US education system.

“Anonymous giving to universities is an easy tactic the Chinese Communist Party can use to further its pernicious influence in American universities,” said Indo-Pacific studies fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, Michael Sobolik.

Between March 2017 and the end of 2019, Penn received $21 million from China spread across 23 anonymous gifts. In the preceding four years, the university had just five donations from China totaling under $5 million.

“Policymakers should investigate this vulnerability further and take necessary steps to close the loophole,” said Sobolik. “If universities and professors are lax in their reporting, the Department of Education, and when appropriate the Department of Justice, should hold them accountable.”

Government watchdog group, The National Legal and Policy Center, filed a complaint with the Department of Education on Wednesday requesting an investigation into Penn’s anonymous Chinese funding, according to the Beacon, which received a copy.

“Joe Biden’s affiliation with the Penn Biden Center further raises concerns of foreign influence not unlike those raised when the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in donations while Hillary Clinton was running for president,” reads the complaint, which asks the DoE to “refer the matter to the Department of Justice for civil enforcement in federal court, and seek recoupment of all costs to the U.S. government for investigating and enforcing the reporting and disclosure laws of China monetary gifts and contracts.”

The anonymous contributions could also run afoul of federal law that requires universities to disclose the source of any foreign donation or contract over $250,000, according to the NLPC.

“The reporting and disclosure violations of gifts from China to U of Penn and its Penn Biden Center are both numerous and flagrant,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel for NLPC. “The Department of Justice should take swift enforcement action in federal court and recoup all costs getting them to comply with the law.”

The NLPC said in its letter the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Biden Center were “particularly vulnerable to China government influences due to the large amounts of China donations and contracts” at the school.

Penn’s investment in the Penn Biden Center has been significant: a luxe D.C. office directly across from the U.S. Capitol Building in addition to employment for Biden’s longtime foreign policy aides; highly promoted conferences featuring Biden conversing with foreign leaders; and a total of $900,000 in payments to the former vice president, according to his tax records. –Free Beacon

The website for the Biden Center – which is part of the University of Pennsylvania’s “Penn Global” department – features photos of Biden meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping and other world leaders. It handles the university’s foreign research and outreach programs, which have become increasingly focused on China in recent years, according to the report.

According to the Penn Global website, the university has “over 20 international partnerships with Chinese institutions” and has conducted “over 350 research projects and instructional activities in China.”

In 2015, a $10 million research-matching funding program was launched. The China Research and Engagement fund was designed to fund Penn medical research in China – which has included studies to improve the country’s pork production – as well as aeronautical engineering projects to help China reach its national aviation goals.

You don’t say?

 

Remember when ex-Google Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared on CNBC earlier this month for an interview with Andrew Ross “the Sork” Sorkin – an interview that swiftly devolved in Schmidt chiding the Trump Administration for its impudence while defending the longstanding ties between the Chinese Communist Party leadership and Silicon Valley’s elite and warning about the purportedly extraordinarily high costs of ‘economic decoupling’.

Because the downside about decoupling, Schmidt said, is that if China turns elsewhere for ag products and other products, “they’re not coming back” (this as China continues the charade of upholding the trade deal because President Xi needs an excuse to buy US agricultural products without looking weak)

The former Google chairman’s comments on China begin around the 13-minute mark.

In a report that reads like an Intel community plant, largely since it dropped just hours after the US announced plans to add 30+ Chinese firms to a blacklist over their involvement with China’s state security apparatus, CNBC claimed early Saturday morning that Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon have all been caught providing tech services to several companies that were added to a US blacklist last year by President Trump over allegations that they helped Beijing build the security apparatus use to imprison 1 million Muslims in Xinjiang.

Top10VPN, a site that reviews virtual private network (VPN) services and researches topics on privacy, said in a report that it had identified U.S. technology giants that provide “essential web services that power these companies’ websites.”

CNBC reached out to the U.S. firms named in the report as providing such services to the blacklisted Chinese surveillance companies. None were immediately available for comment.

In October, some of China’s most valuable surveillance artificial intelligence firms were put on the U.S. Entity List, a move designed to restrict their access to American technology. That is the same blacklist that Huawei sits on.

Washington alleged that “these entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups” in China’s Xinjiang region.

The territory has made headlines for its detention and “re-education” camps that reportedly hold an estimated 1.5 million Muslims, many of them for violating what Amnesty International describes as a “highly restrictive and discriminatory” law that China says is designed to combat extremism.

Even more bizarre, the US companies provided mostly basic services like website and email hosting, raising questions about why these Chinese firms even needed these American partners in the first place.

According to Top10VPN, some of the services provided by U.S. tech firms include hosting the surveillance firms’ website and emails to authentication methods.

The head of research at the cybersecurity firm that leaked the report to CNBC said that by providing these “essential” services, the US firms helped their Chinese customers develop “highly invasive surveillance products”…kind of like most free-to-use products released by Google and Facebook?

“Through providing essential web services to these controversial companies, U.S. firms are playing a part in the proliferation of highly invasive surveillance products that have the potential to undermine human rights around the world,” Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN, said in the report.

Aside from the big names mentioned above, a number of other smaller US firms were named. Top10VPN said it compiled its report via a combination of techniques including analyzing traffic between certain sites for these Chinese companies.

Top10VPN said it identified that U.S. firms were involved using a combination of public tools, examining source code of websites and analyzing traffic to those sites.

The company alleged that Amazon and Google are providing web services for Dahua Technology and Hikvision, two Chinese blacklisted companies. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s services are reportedly being used by SenseTime and Megvii, two of China’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-ups.

A number of other U.S. technology companies were named, including website authentication and encryption companies Digicert, Lets Encrypt, Entrust and GeoTrust. Domain name hosting firm GoDaddy was on the list as well as cybersecurity company Symantec, which is now known as NortonLifeLock. Stackpath, which works on the delivery of internet content, was also named.

Twitter and Facebook were also named as providing content delivery network services to Hikvision.

CNBC has reached out to all the American firms that were named to request for comment on the report. Symantec declined to comment, and CNBC did not hear back from the rest of the companies.

China’s surveillance firms have been caught up in the tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The administration of President Donald Trump has carried out a campaign against Chinese firms, with Huawei being the most high profile target, that aims to cut off their access to American technology.

But Top10VPN’s Migliano claimed the company’s report shows a relationship still remains between the U.S. and China’s firms.

“Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to decouple the American and Chinese technology sectors, the continued presence of American companies in more discreet settings shows that cooperation between the two remains,” Migliano said.

This is just one more thing to keep in mind next time you see an executive from a big tech firm criticizing President Trump while defending China and the WHO.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

How does one define an economic “reopening”? I think most people would say that a reopening means that everything goes back to the way it was before the crisis; or at least as close as possible.  Most people would also say that a reopening is something that will last.  Simply declaring “America has reopened” while keeping many restrictions in place in certain parts of the country is a bit of a farce.  And, reopening with the intention of implementing lockdowns again in a matter of weeks without explaining the situation to the public is a scam of the highest order.

For example, states like New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey have extended their lockdowns; with LA’s extension remaining ambiguous after they initially declared restrictions for another 3 months. New York’s lockdown is extended to the end of May (so far). This is the case in many US states and cities, while rural areas are mostly open. This is being called a “partial reopening”, but is there a purpose behind the uneven approach?

As I predicted in my article ‘Pandemic And Economic Collapse: The Next 60 Days’, the restrictions will continue in major US population centers while rural areas have mostly opened with much fanfare. The end result of this will be a flood of city dwellers into rural towns looking for relief from more strict lockdown conditions. In about a month, we should expect new viral clusters in places where there was limited transmission. I suggest that before the 4th of July holiday, state governments and the Federal government will be talking about new lockdowns, using the predictable infection spike as an excuse.

This is happening in Northeast China right now – another resurgence has occurred and 100 million people are now subject to quarantine restrictions. China’s reopening is barely two weeks old, and concerns of infection “flare ups” were widespread when the announcement was made. Now the mainstream media seems to be confused; is China open, or locked down? Of course, we may never know how bad the problem is and was in China as their numbers have been shown to be utterly rigged and suppressed from the beginning, but the point is that the phrase “reopening” is meaningless there, just as it will be meaningless here in the US.

This is part of the plan. The farce of reopenings does indeed have a purpose. I discuss this in great detail in my article ‘Waves Of Mutilation: Medical Tyranny And The Cashless Society’ published in April. The globalists are clearly the only beneficiaries of this event; with a world-wide surveillance state now openly on the table along with an accelerated shift into digital currency systems, the globalists are either taking advantage of this crisis to push their agenda, or they ENGINEERED the virus and caused the crisis to push their agenda.

In white papers published by globalists at the Imperial College of London as well as MIT, the plan is openly admitted. They suggest using “waves” of economic openings and then lockdowns to control the spread of the virus. The timelines seem to vary, but in general the models call for a one month open, two months closed cycle. The goal is to deliberately increase infections every couple of months in specific regions of a country, then declare economic shutdown and quarantine measures once the spread reaches a certain level; this is meant to continue until a vaccine is developed, which could take years.

When the globalists at MIT say “We are not going back to normal”; this is what they mean. Right now, the general public (at least in some parts of the country) is cheering the reopenings, but what they don’t realize is that the reopenings are an illusion. Restrictions are going to remain in place in many states and cities, while they will be lifted and then re-instituted in others. In fact the situation is going to become much worse over time, by design.

The next lockdown, whenever it is announced, will be absolutely devastating to the US economy which is already in a downward spiral. The mitigating factors will be how effective central bank stimulus is at stalling the freefall (not very effective so far).  Other factors include the percentage of small businesses that survive the first lockdown and how many jobs those businesses can bring back to the economy. The first lockdown may be survivable for a large percentage of Americans and businesses; the second lockdown will financially destroy all but the most prepared. And make no mistake, there WILL be many more lockdowns over the next couple years.

In the meantime, international banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan have seen to it that small businesses are hit hard by the crisis by funneling bailout money and paycheck loans to their larger clients over the smaller businesses that the money was intended to go to. Of the 300,000 clients of JP Morgan that applied for an emergency loan through the government bailout program, only 18,000 actually received one and many of these clients were NOT small businesses.

If the cycle of lockdowns continues, small businesses will be wiped off the map. The elites have rigged the economic game; they control where every dollar of the bailout money goes, and many of their corporations are the only institutions that are equipped to survive the onslaught. Some of these companies will go down, but in the long run the goal, in my view, is total centralization of production and distribution.

This is exactly what happened during the Great Depression when JP Morgan and other major banks devoured thousands of small local banks across the country and removed them as competitors from the system. After the depression, banking was completely centralized into the hands of a select few mega-companies. Today, they are attempting to erase all localized small business competition to international corporations.

Taking over the business infrastructure of entire nations and removing all independent competition is only one incentive for the lockdowns to continue. There is also the process of acclimating the public to the idea that lockdowns are the “new normal”. While I do see resistance in certain parts of the world, including the US, many countries in Asia and Europe have witnessed a rather sheepish response to the idea of medical tyranny. I also see an immense wildfire of unconstitutional legislation and illegal state measures being rolled out in the US while the public is distracted by financial circumstances and the virus threat.

Certainly, it appears that most Americans hate the lockdowns. But will they be fooled by the “reopening” into complacency for the next several weeks while the government gets ready to hit them with the next round of restrictions? Will they be so caught off guard they won’t know how to react? Imagine the economic devastation of just one more nationwide lockdown event? It will be carnage, and a lot of hope within the population will be lost.

This will lead to two possible paths: Submission, or rebellion. Either the majority of the American people will accept the lockdowns as a new fact of everyday life, or they will become so enraged by the destruction of their economy that they will revolt.

If the intent is to keep the cycle going until a vaccine is introduced as elitist publications assert, then we have a LONG way to go and this first lockdown was child’s play compared to what comes next.

The excuse for the wave model will be that they need to control and slow the spread of infection over time to avoid overwhelming our medical infrastructure. But this makes very little sense to me at this stage. Perhaps within the first month or two of the pandemic this was somewhat logical, so that we could gauge the threat of the virus. What we know right now is that the virus is at least three times more deadly that the average annual flu; which is something to be concerned about, but not something we should be destroying our economy over.

Frankly, there’s no logic to the wave model unless the agenda is to destroy the economy. If the goal is to continue infecting the population until everyone has developed an immunity or a vaccine is offered, then why not simply remove all the lockdowns permanently and get it over with now? This would result in far less deaths in the long run compared to economic collapse. If the goal is so-called “herd immunity”, then we can achieve that much faster through viral transmission than waiting years for a vaccine that may or may not work.

But the elites don’t care about “herd immunity”; what they care about is is control. The vaccine narrative itself is a form of control. You have to wait for the establishment to save you. You have to wait for them to allow the economy to be opened, even for a short period of time, so that you can then be allowed to work or run your business. You have to wait for permission to live your normal life. And, if the elites get their way, you won’t be given permission until you accept immunity passports, tracking apps and a vaccine.

I will be covering the vaccine issue in a future article, but the underlying message that the public is hearing daily is that you no longer have the power to make decisions for yourself, you must wait for instructions. While the coronavirus is something that should be taken seriously (to a point), the wave model is not an acceptable solution to the problem.

And while many conservatives are looking to Trump to obstruct lockdowns in the future, I would recommend they not hold their breath.  Trump has flip-flopped many times on these issues, including his position on whether or not lockdowns should be left to the states.  With a cabinet overflowing with globalists and banking elites, I would not put much hope in intervention from the White House.

Do not be fooled by the reopening. It is not real because it is not meant to last. It is a steam valve to calm public outrage and to condition us to periodic tyranny. The elites believe that we will eventually acclimate to lockdowns as long as we have a reopening to look forward to a couple months down the road. They believe that our tendency to rebel will be suppressed by false hopes that the next reopening will be a permanent reopening. They believe that after 18 months or more of the wave model we will be so desperate for normalcy that we will do anything to get it, including willingly giving up every last ounce of freedom we have left. This is the true purpose of the pandemic.

*  *  *

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Where we are in a nutshell: in the past 8 weeks there has been a 38 million rise in US unemployment coupled with a $10 trillion forecast loss in global GDP through 2021; this however has been offset by $4 trillion of asset purchases by central banks resulting in a $15 trillion surge in global equity market cap.

But now that with every passing day more of the global economy is reopening as the coronavirus crisis fades away (at least until a second wave emerges), what investors and ordinary people care about is not where we are but where we are going. To answer that question, here is an detailed overview of the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy through various real-time, high frequency data compiled by JPM as it appears right now, weeks if not months before it makes it into official “adjusted” economic reports.

First, a snapshot of COVID-19 infection count and regional spread:

The latest data on-ground mobility data suggests that there is a long way before normal.

While air traffic is dismal, here too there a slight rebound in mostly non-commercial flights; commercial air traffic remains a disaster, however.

While credit card spending has seen a modest rebound, and consumer activity is clearly starting to recover, restaurant bookings in the US remains dismal.

Some more snapshots of consumer activity looking at retail traffic, footfalls and deliveries.

While hotel, box office and transportation use remains dismal, supermarkets are going strong. Unfortunately for those who believe Facebook that ad spending has normalized, they are in for a shock.

The labor market, unfortunately, remains an unmitigated disaster:

Both industrial and manufacturing activity in the US has been crippled, but it is starting to rebound.

So how about China, after all it’s supposedly all “fixed” now. Unfortunately, the real-time data paints a vastly different picture.

While coal consumption has recovered, power use in the epicenter of Hubei province, remains roughly half of normal.

In Europe, it’s – as usual – a tale of two halves: the northern nations where things are largely normal, and the Mediterranean states where the pain is largely concentrated.

Finally, some mobility charts, first in the UK…

… and then Europe.

In an exclusive interview set to air Sunday, President Trump tells Sharyl Attkisson that he believes he is making inroads in draining the Washington swamp.

“If it keeps going the way it’s going, I have a chance to break the deep state. It’s a vicious group of people.”

– President Trump on “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson”

Also in the interview:

• The president calls churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions “essential services” and says they must be allowed to open

• Sharyl asks if someone review his tweets before he sends them out

• Trump weighs in on the biggest strength and weakness of Joe Biden

• He talks about the latest allegations about FBI misconduct and spying on his campaign

• Sharyl ask about mixed messages the government is sending on the anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine

• She also asks President Trump how he can press to investigate allegation about Biden and Ukraine— without appearing to be doing the same thing Democrats did to him in 2016.

Here’s how to watch…