Greece Erects Massive Concrete Blocks On Border To Halt Migrant Wave From Turkey
As the rest of the globe is busy locking down borders amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Turkey has reportedly kept it migrant wave to the EU corridor open, resulting in continued chaos at Greek-Turkey border points, as desperate asylum seekers try any way possible to gain EU entry.
This now includes not just an ongoing militarized response on the Greek side to keep thousands from crossing illegally, but reportedly now erecting huge concrete blocks at key land crossings.
The completely shuttered border crossings with Turkey are beginning to resemble war zones akin to WWI trenches and fortifications:
“Greece on Friday placed 5-foot concrete blocks at its Kastanies border crossing with Turkey to stop the entry of asylum seekers,” Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reports.
For weeks since Erdogan said he had in an act of retribution aimed at uncooperative EU states ‘opened the gates’ on hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees from Idlib seeking entry into Europe, the border situation has seen running battles between throngs of migrants and Greek border guards.
See the massive concrete blocks being put in place in the footage below, also fortified with barbed wire:
Turkish media and officials have played up the ‘violent’ response by Greek security while downplaying and ignoring Turkey’s leaders actively facilitating the confrontations:
In the two weeks since asylum seekers were able to reach the border, nearly 2,500 have been wounded by Greek border guards who use disproportionate violence.
Last month, Turkey opened its borders to Europe for asylum seekers accusing the EU of failing to keeps its part of a 2016 refugee deal.
Athens, for its part, has slammed the accusations of Greek border guards firing on migrants as “fake news” and lies spun by the Turkish state.
Athens has the backing of the EU for its zero tolerance stance preventing mass entry of migrants out of Turkey, per The Greek City Times:
The Greek Army have been fortifying the Greek wall as the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan still refuses to engagein the EU directive, which aims to make all migrants move back from the border and return into Turkey.
Τhe Turkish side continued to provoke Greece by lobbing Molotov Cocktails and starting fires at several points along the border fence, to try to weaken the steel fence.
Interestingly, the dominant Syrian identity of the migrants has been widely questioned given video from the clashes often shows asylum-seekers speaking all kinds of regional languages from Pashtun to Urdu to Farsi, and not Syrian Arabic (Levantine dialect).
I think it’s safe to say the new crisis just killed the Schengen Treaty. That ridiculous document which guaranteed freedom of movement across the European Union finally hit something it couldn’t bully, COVID-19.
Regardless of whether you believe the pandemic is real or not, the reaction to it is real and is having real consequence far beyond the latest print of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The lockdown of Italy isn’t a temporary thing. Oh, the suspension of free movement is temporary, but it portends something far bigger.
It’s the beginning of the real political balkanization that’s coming to the European Union over the next few years. Old enmities and prejudices have not been stamped out under the boot heel of oppressive legislation coming from a bunch of disconnected technocrats in Brussels.
They have only been suppressed.
Because when there are existential threats there’s no time or desire to virtue signal about how we’re all one big happy dysfunctional family.
For decades Germany refused to lighten up on its fiscal inflexibility believing, rightly, that it shouldn’t subsidize profligacy in places like Italy, Spain and Greece if it didn’t want to.
At the same time, however, Germany transmitted those rules to the single currency regime of the euro. That was the price they forced on the rest of Europe.
This ensured that eventually they would have to do exactly that, subsidize or bailout debts, as the mispricing of labor and capital efficiency inherent in the any single currency applied over multiple economies drove capital to Germany and out from those countries.
Now Germans face the existential threat of COVID-19 imported into Europe mostly through Wuhan textiles workers in Milan’s leather shops/ Their leaders will force them to accept looser spending rules.
And do you think this will engender an outpouring of love and affection towards Italians?
If you do you might be delusional or an open-borders libertarian… but I repeat myself.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled for months she would spend more to satisfy the rising Greens on Germany’s political left.
Her finance minister, Olaf Scholz, unleashed the full force of Germany’s sovereign wealth fund to offer unlimited support to German businesses facing troubles because of this virus.
This is as good a cover story for the gargantuan holes in the balance sheets of zombie German banks as they were likely ever going to get folks.
ECB President Christine Lagarde was brought in to ram through the political changes needed to loosen Germany’s tie. She knew the only way the EU would survive the growing crisis within its non-functional sovereign debt market was to print money to the high heavens.
Or allow the union to break up. But, there is no Door #2 in Europe. All doors lead to Brussels.
Germany stood in the way of that while at the same time Merkel ruthlessly enforced Schengen. She weakened the political center in Germany and inflamed memories of a Germany which rampaged across Europe militarily in the 20th century through enforced austerity hollowing out less-efficient euro-zone economies.
So in the midst of this mess comes COVID-19 and the uncoordinated and inept response to it from the political center of Europe to date. Only now are they coming to the conclusion they need to restrict travel, after sitting on their hands for a few weeks while Italians died by the hundreds.
And do you think that’s engendering waves of love and affection among Italians towards Germans?
If you do then you don’t know Italians… at all.
And this is your signal that this is the beginning of the real crisis. Because while COVID-19 may have been the catalyst for the breakdown of capital markets, capital markets were simply waiting for that spark to occur.
Any other type of spark, a bank failure from a run of bad loans, could have been handled and absorbed. There was no Credit Anstalt the central planners weren’t prepared for.
They’ve been able to keep Deutsche Bank operational for the past few years, for pity’s sake, they could have handled any other single bank failure.
But with COVID-19 being the ultimate form of exogenous shock to the global economy there is no containing the financial contagion. And that’s why we saw a strong unwind of U.S. equities and a sharp rise in both the Japanese yen and the euro when this thing began.
Part of what had been pushing U.S. equities higher was the capital flow from Europe and Japan into the U.S. That reversed for short time as the eurodollar markets seized up and the demand for cash locally rose sharply.
It’s no different than what is happening here.
I went to my bank yesterday to grab some cash and finish our self-quarantine prep (we’d bought extra toilet paper weeks ago). The teller told me she’d moved out a lot more cash than normal and it wasn’t even the end of lunch hour.
The same thing on a larger scale was happening in Europe until Lagarde told the world that she wasn’t done blackmailing Germany to loosening its stance on fiscal rules at her presser on Thursday.
And the rally in the euro, which was already sick, died.
Annnnd…. it’s gone!
What we saw to end this week was an epic reversal of that capital outflow as the USDX and U.S. equities rallied while the euro crashed back to $1.11. And now that it’s started I don’t expect it to stop.
The Fed fired major blanks at the dollar-funding crisis in the credit markets this week. What is the ECB going to do to stop rates from rising in Europe as money flees their incompetence?
Fairy dust springs to mind, honestly. But, more likely there will be a very quick move to close the banks and cancel the use of cash while new rules are adopted and Lagarde turns to the IMF to bailout the ECB which can very easily go bankrupt here.
The weakest banking system in Europe serves a country on lockdown over this virus.
So, it doesn’t matter now that Germany has acquiesced, pledging its own savings and lifting fiscal restraints of euro-zone members. All the printing will does is feed the vortex of unpayable debt that is far bigger than their prodigious piggy bank.
The next stage of the crisis is here with the focus finally turning to Europe. The U.S., for all of its faults, is one nation with a unified debt market and an executive who can and has exercise powers necessary to keep the wheels from completely falling off the U.S. economy.
Will Trump spend money he doesn’t actually have? Yes. So what?
That money will go into a logistical pipeline that far outstrips Europe’s to combat a disease over a smaller population spread across larger distances. That limits the damage to the U.S. It ensures political stability that the EU cannot hope to compete with for the trust of spooked capital.
Add the global economy grinding to a halt. We’ll see the crisis emerge in Europe to feed a widening gyre of debt servicing that will look like a global bank run on dollar liquidity.
It will force fundamental reform of the euro and the ECB. They are necessary for the EU to survive this crisis in anything close to its current form.
I’m not laying odds that will work. Instead I expect Schengen’s suspension to hold and more countries go the way of the Brits by exiting the EU itself.
While this crisis is tailor-made to shove the federalization of Europe down the throats of what’s left of the German middle class, I don’t think it succeeds.
Until Germany is willing to bail out Italian banks, there is no solution to this.
And while I think Merkel is willing to fall on her sword to get this done, It may still not work.
How convenient it is that Merkel’s CDU just cancelled their April 22nd leadership vote because of this crisis. This forestalls any possibility of Merkel losing control of her party until after Germany begins its EU Commission Presidency.
Whatever she has planned she has to do soon. Her political capital is just about spent.
There will be no change of leadership during a crisis like this. She’s almost done completing the sell out of Germany to the EU begun by Helmut Kohl.
Just in time for the whole experiment to come crashing down.
Not Just Seniors: French Doctors Report 50% Of ICU Patients Under 60 Years Old, Netherlands Under 50
It’s beginning to look like someone’s lying, as both French and Dutch medical professionals are reporting that half of coronavirus ICU patients are under the age of 60 and 50-years-old respectively.
“MORE THAN 50% OF THE 300 #COVIDー19 CASES IN CRITICAL CONDITION IN FRANCE ARE UNDER 60,” tweeted The Atlantic‘s Rachel Donadio on Saturday.
CX: FRANCE NOW PUSHING EPIDEMIC LEVEL. All restos, cafés, non-essential stores closed. MORE THAN 50% OF THE 300 #COVIDー19 CASES IN CRITICAL CONDITION IN FRANCE ARE UNDER 60; France has 4,500 cases, which doubled in the past 72 hours, said head of French health service. Replaces: pic.twitter.com/DQFmigQYFE
Meanwhile in the Netherlands, over half are reportedly under 50 years old.
“Today there are between forty and fifty corona patients in critical condition on Dutch intensive care units. “More than half of those patients are under fifty years old. There are also young people. “” That says chairman of the Dutch Association for Intensive Care (NVIC) Diederik Gommers, in an interview with this site.” –AD.nl
Over half of the coronavirus patients in intensive care in the Netherlands are under 50 years old
On Saturday, AD documented the case of a 16-year-old boy with no disclosed underlying conditions who wound up in the ICU after complaining of nausea and headaches. He is currently on ventilation in a medically-induced coma.
16-year-old Sehraz from the Netherlands (via AD.nl)
“As long as he can’t breathe properly himself, they keep him artificially asleep,” said his 24-yaer-old brother Babor.
The reports suggest that COVID-19 is more than just a “boomer remover” – a phrase made popular by younger generations who think they’re invincible.
Considering that US hospitals are projected to be completely full come mid-May, the implications of the coronavirus impacting more than just the elderly are significant.
The new reports of younger ICU patients echo unconfirmed accounts from Italian doctors:
In which case, reports that COVID-19 is primarily affecting the elderly may be greatly exaggerated.
The decision to go-ahead with NATO’s biggest-ever war games in Europe at a time of heightened fears over the coronavirus sure raises questions about the military alliance’s stated purpose of maintaining security.
NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has said the Defender-Europe 20 exercises will not be cancelled due to the flu-like disease which has now spread to every country in the European Union causing hundreds of deaths so far.
Over the next five months some 17 allied NATO members will participate in military maneuvers across seven European states: in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All of the host nations have reported infections from the COVID-19 virus. “Host” being an operative word when it comes to also talking about the relationship with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn is quoted as saying that the coronavirus outbreak has “become a global pandemic” and the “worst has yet to come.”
In all, 37,000 troops are involved in the Defender-Europe 20 war games, the biggest contingency since the end of the Cold War nearly three decades ago. The U.S. is sending 20,000 personnel. Most of those troops will return to bases located in at least 20 American states. Thus, the risk factor of spreading the disease across Europe and the U.S. is significantly increased by the NATO events.
Going ahead with the European war games looks especially ill-advised given that U.S. forces in Asia-Pacific have cancelled similar military exercises that were scheduled in South Korea out of fears about coronavirus (COVID-19).
The Defender-Europe 20 events underway come amid reports that the U.S. Commander in Europe, Lt. General Christoper Cavoli, may have been infected after attending a recent military conference in Wiesbaden, Germany.
The top health advisor to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Brig. General Paul Friedrichs has also admitted that the number of COVID-19 cases among the Pentagon’s armed forces may be far higher than is being reported.
The seeming lack of cautionary measures by the U.S.-led NATO alliance is in contrast to growing public concerns for containing the disease. Italy – which has recorded the second highest fatalities worldwide after China – has placed a total lockdown on public travel for its 60 million population. Airlines across Europe have cancelled thousands of flights as some carriers go out of business altogether.
Sporting events across Europe including major soccer matches are being cancelled or will be held without attendance by fans. The six-nations rugby tournament has been thrown into disarray from match fixtures being rescheduled; a big match between Ireland and France due this weekend is postponed until October.
In Britain there are calls for parliament to be suspended after health minister Nadine Dorries was reported to have been infected. Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of complacency in dealing with the virus.
U.S. President Donald Trump has also come under fire for not taking sufficient containment measures or providing adequate resources such as testing kits. The official number of U.S. cases of COVID-19 is relatively low so far, but that is thought to be due to limited testing.
It would therefore seem reasonable in this context of pandemic risk that such a multinational event like NATO’s Defender-Europe 20 be called off. As it proceeds, the war games appear to a perfect vector for accelerating disease spread between two continents and beyond. Indeed, not parking these war games seems the height of carelessness.
How fitting that NATO should be so unresponsive to real need. This lumbering 29-nation military organization which consumes a combined annual budget of $1 trillion is a creature of habit and slavish ideology. Nearly 30 years after the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the world has moved on. But not, it seems, NATO. It continues to hold its war games supposedly defending Europe from “Russian invasion”.
If NATO can’t adjust to such glaring world realities as the end of the Soviet Union three decades ago, then no wonder its response to coronavirus is hardly fleet-footed. It’s the military equivalent of a dinosaur whose functioning is no longer supported by its environment.
The irony is that NATO’s obscene military largesse is crushing public finances that would otherwise be more usefully spent, such as building up healthcare infrastructure that would help mitigate crises like the coronavirus. Many other societal needs are chronically neglected because of exorbitant military budgets among NATO members. Donald Trump brags that he has cajoled European allies to fork out hundreds of billions more dollars on military budgets.
The coronavirus is but a stress-test on whole societies that have become hollowed out by excessive militarism and the corporate capitalist super-structure it serves.
Even before the coronavirus problem emerged in China earlier this year, the NATO war games in Europe (and elsewhere) have been a cause for much criticism. The geopolitical tensions that this U.S.-led militarism is engendering towards Russia and China have been deplored. Moscow has denounced the Defender-Europe 20 event as a “rehearsal for war” which is completely disconnected from reality. The inveterate Cold War ideology that drives NATO is imposing insecurity and risk of war on Europe in a way that makes a mockery of NATO claims about being dedicated to “security and defense”.
The reckless risk-taking with regard to inflaming a coronavirus pandemic is typical of NATO’s obsolete purpose. Like the disease itself, NATO is a parasite on host nations draining vital public resources. This organization should be “self-isolating”… 30 years too late.
The World’s Richest Have Lost Almost $1 Trillion In Covid-19 Wealth Wipeout
Well if there’s one thing that should make those without a pot to piss in happier about the widening inequality gap in this country, it’s that the world’s richest are losing a boat load of money – an inconceivable amount of money to many – as a result of the recent market pullback amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The world’s 500 richest people lost a collective $331 billion on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. This is the biggest one day drop in the eight year history of Bloomberg’s Billionaire’s Index.
It marks the end of a decade where Fed policy helped the rich accumulate $6.1 trillion in wealth. Many of those gains suffered huge losses over the last four days on the back of coronavirus fears and the plunge in oil prices.
The rich have lost 16% of their collective net worth since the beginning of the year, according to the Bloomberg index. The slowdown has affected every industry from every geography.
Charles Doraine, president of Doraine Insurance Group and a former wealth manager said: “People right now are afraid. Things are being introduced to the world of investing that have never been there before — health risks. This is stuff beyond the market’s normal fears and concerns.”
And anxiety about the virus is even gripping the super wealthy. Recall, days ago, we wrote about how some of the world’s richest were preparing for the pandemic. There has been a spike in demand for private jets, cancelled charity events and an “exodus to second homes,” Bloomberg writers.
On Thursday, many of the wealthy scrambled to get flights back to the U.S., from Europe, after President Trump announced his European travel ban.
Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma fracking billionaire, dropped off the billionaire’s index after losing almost half of his net worth due to the plunge in oil prices. Sheldon Adelson, who owns the Las Vegas Sands, is down about $11.7 billion since the beginning of the year. Carnival Corporation Chairman Micky Arison dropped six spots on the billionaire’s index after Carnival shares dropped to a 23 year low and the company announced it was suspending voyages.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saw a stunning $8.1 billion net worth drop in just one day.
But the effects aren’t just in the United States: Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, lost $9.5 billion in one day. Guilherme Benchimol, founder of XP Inc. in Brazil, lost his billionaire status as shares of his brokerage fell 34% below its December IPO price. And Russia’s two richest people are down a combined $65 billion this year, mostly as a result of Russia’s oil price war with Saudi Arabia.
On February 27, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made good on his many threats to send millions of migrants and refugees to Europe, despite a 2016 deal between Europe and Turkey to hold them. Apparently seeking to make Europe experience the full force of his intentions, Turkish officials sent busloads of migrants — predominantly young men from Afghanistan and Iran, according to several reports — to Turkey’s border with Greece.
“We prepared a plan with our colleagues and we are committed to arranging free buses for the refugees in Bolu towards the border town of Edirne,”said Tanju Özcan, the mayor of Bolu, a town in northern Turkey, 550 kilometers from the border with Greece.
“Refugees willing to go to Edirne can apply to the Bolu municipality and its branches. We are ready to assure the transport whatever the number [of refugees].”
In November, Erdogan had also threatened to release ISIS prisoners into Europe. Whether the migrants Erdogan sent to the border with Greece at the end of February currently include terrorists is not known. Migrating terrorists, research has shown, are a serious issue that seems to receive only scant attention in Europe.
In contrast to the migrant crisis of 2015, which saw more than a million migrants and refugees cross into Europe through Greece — as well as other frontline European nations — the current Greek government, which came into power in July 2019, has made it clear that its borders are closed.
“Welcome in Greece are only those we choose. Those who are not welcome will be returned. We will permanently shut the door to illegal human traffickers, to those who want to enter even though they are not entitled to asylum,” said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in November.
Even Germany is unwilling to take any of the migrants shuttled by Erdogan to the Greek-Turkish border. “I understand that Turkey is facing a very big challenge regarding Idlib,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated.
“Still, for me it’s unacceptable that he – President Erdogan and his government – is not expressing this dissatisfaction in a dialogue with us as the European Union, but rather on the back of the refugees. For me, that’s not the way to go forward.”
“We must not allow refugees to be turned into pawns for geopolitical interests,” announced German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. “No matter who tries, they must reckon with our resistance.”
“Don’t go to the border. The border is not open. If someone tells you that you can go because the border is open… that is not true” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, reportedly said. He also noted that the European Union “will take all measures, in accordance with EU rules and International law, to make full respect of the integrity of its borders”.
President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, actually thanked Greece for being Europe’s “shield”:
“This border is not only a Greek border but it is also a European border. And I stand here today as a European at your side,” she told the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“Turkey is not an enemy and people are not just means to reach a goal. We would all do well to remember both in the days to come. I thank Greece for being our European ‘aspida’ [the Greek word for shield].“
“As we have shown yesterday,” the European Commission’s vice-president for Promoting our European Way of Life, Margaritis Schinas, told reporters, “when Europe is tested, we are able to prove that we can hold the line and that our unity will prevail.”
On the face of it, the EU response appears to be a dramatic departure from the kind of talk that EU representatives normally present to the world on the topic of migration. As recently as on the UN’s International Migrants Day — which takes place every year on December 18 — the European Commission released a statement according to which:
“On International Migrants Day, we stand strong in our unequivocal commitment to respect and protect the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants [bold in original] as well as to ensure that migration takes place in a safe, orderly and well-managed way… Openness and solidarity are core values of the European Union”.
Is it possible that even the highest functioning bureaucrats of the European Union have realized that Europe — or at the very least Greece — has reached its limit?
Probably not. As the chaotic situation on the border between Turkey and Greece indicates, the EU does not have anything resembling a coherent migration policy in place. This situation persists despite the fact that it has been five years since Europe experienced its worst migration scenario in modern times, and even though Erdogan has been threatening Europe with opening his borders for years. Rather, the “solidarity” with Greece expressed by leading EU representatives seems to have come from having no alternatives other than relying on Greece to struggle with the situation. Greece has asked the EU to send aid from Frontex – the European Border and Coast Guard Agency — to launch a rapid border intervention at its sea borders in the Aegean. Frontex has agreed and will ask the EU member states to provide personnel and equipment.
The only “policy” in place appears to be the one enshrined in the Dublin Regulation. According to it, the responsibility usually falls on the first EU member state in which asylum seekers set foot. The regulation, in the words of the former Greek Foreign Minister Georgios Katrougalos, “…brings all the weight of the crisis to the frontline countries of the European Union”.
EU member states are currently debating how to stop Erdogan from increasing the pressure on the Greek border and generating a migrant crisis comparable in size to the one in 2015. Whatever the EU decides on this matter, it will only amount to crisis management. Even if the EU manages to resolve its issues with Erdogan, which is doubtful and bound to be only temporary, Europe’s fundamental problem will remain:
As long as migrants think that a better future awaits them in Europe, the welfare states, which have shown themselves extremely accommodating in receiving migrants and granting them all sorts of social rights, can continue expecting migrants to try breaching Europe’s borders. International initiatives such as the UN’s International Migrants Day and the UN Global Migration compact, which praise migration as necessary and beneficial, certainly do nothing to dissuade migrants from trying. Expect the current migrant crisis to repeat itself many times over in the years to come.
War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda. The Arthashastrawritten by Chankya (350-283 BCE) who was chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta (the first ruler of the Mauryan Empire) discusses propaganda and how to disperse and apply it in warfare. It is one of the oldest accounts of the essentialism of propaganda in warfare.
Propaganda is vital in times of war because it is absolutely imperative that the people, who often need to make the greatest sacrifices and suffer the most, believe that such a war is justified and that such a war will provide them security. To the degree that they believe this to be true, the greater the degree of sacrifice and suffering they are willing to submit themselves for said “promised security”.
It is crucial that when the people look at the “enemy” they see something sub-human, for if they recognise that said “enemy” has in fact humanity, the jig is up so to speak.
And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.
No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would put forth that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.
During WWI, on Dec 25th 1914, something rather unexpected occurred and a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front took place between the French/British soldiers and the German soldiers. Some even ventured into “no man’s land”, given its name since none left it alive, to mingle with the “enemy” and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps. A game of football took place as well. It is said that these truces were not unique to the Christmas period but that they were much more widespread during the holiday season.
These fraternisations would understandably make it quite difficult to return to combat against one another…for no apparently good reason. Some units needed to be relocated since they had developed friendships with the opposing side and now refused to fight them.
The lesson was quickly learned and propaganda was heavily pumped down the throats of the Allied countries, and by the course of just a few years, they no longer viewed the Germans as human.
The CIA’s Family Jewels and Operation Mockingbird
For us to understand the implications of modern propaganda and how it is used in warfare today, our story starts post-WWII with Churchill’s announcement of the “Iron Curtain” which launched the Cold War and has kept the East and West divided to this day.
Quickly after the Cold War was announced by Churchill, it was necessary to create a fervor of fear and paranoia amongst the American people in order to have them quickly forget the fact that the Russians were their greatest allies during both WWI and WWII, and to replace it with the image of a ghoulish race of boogeymen.
If Americans were to remember that the Russians had fought valiantly during WWII and had paid by far the largest sacrifice to the cause, that they had in fact been their comrades in arms against the brutality of fascism, if this were remembered then the Cold War division could never occur, and that was something that could not be tolerated by Churchill and the Empire. Thus terror was unleashed on the American people and McCarthyism was given precedence over the people’s right to question and form conclusions for themselves. That sort of thing could not be tolerated when the “enemy” could be anywhere; they could be your neighbour, your child’s teacher, your co-worker…your partner.
In order to combat the “threat” of Soviet “propaganda” entering the U.S. and seducing Americans, Operation Mockingbird was created as a form of “control” over information dissemination during the period of McCarthyism. Operation Mockingbird was an “alleged” CIA program that was started in the early 1950s in order to control the narrative of the news. Though this role has never been confirmed entirely, in the CIA Family Jewels report compiled in the mid-1970s, it is confirmed that Project Mockingbird did exist as a CIA operation and that it was guilty of wire-tapping journalists in Washington.
At the helm of this project was none other than CIA Director Allen Dulles, an enemy of JFK, who by the early 1950s “allegedly” oversaw the media network and had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its function was to have the CIA write reports that would be used by a network of cooperating “credible” reporters. By these “credible” reporters spreading the CIA dictated narrative, it would be parroted by unwitting reporters (mockingbirds) and a successful echo chamber would be created across the world.
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), originally named Office of Special Projects but that was thought to conspicuous, was a covert operation wing of the CIA and was created by the United States National Security Council (NSC). For those who are unfamiliar with the origins of the NSC and its close relationship with the CIA, who was born on the same day, refer to my paper on the subject.
According to Deborah Davis’ biography of Katherine Graham (the owner of Washington Post), the OPC created Operation Mockingbird in response to addressing Soviet propaganda and included as part of its CIA contingency respected members from Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and others.
The Family Jewels report was an investigation made by the CIA to investigate…the CIA, spurred in response to the Watergate Scandal and the CIA’s unconstitutional role in the whole affair. The investigation of the CIA would include any other actions that were deemed illegal or inappropriate spanning from the 1950s-mid 1970s.
We are told “most” of the report was declassified on June 25, 2007 (30 years later) hoping that people would have lost interest in the whole brouhaha. Along with the release of the redacted report was included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.”
The most extensive investigation of the CIA relations with news media was conducted by the Church Committee, a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated the abuses committed by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS. The Church Committee report confirmed abundant CIA ties in both foreign and domestic news media.
It is very useful that there exists an official recognition that false news was not only being encouraged by the CIA under the overseeing of the NSC during the Cold War period, but that the CIA was complicit in actually detailing the specific narrative that they wanted disseminated, and often going so far as to write the narrative and have a “credible” reporter’s name stamped on it.
But the question begs, “Did the Cold War ever end?” and if not, why should we believe that the CIA’s involvement in such activities is buried in its past and that it has “reformed” its old ways?
Western Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News
In order to answer this question, let us visit the sad case of Udo Ulfkotte. Udo Ulfkotte is a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, 17 of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book “Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News” Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.
In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting crisis in Ukraine stating “I felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of us…I am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sided”.
In another interview Ulfkotte stated:
“it is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I don’t think so.”
Ulfkotte has publicly stated: “I am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. It’s not just about FAZ, this is the whole system that’s corrupt all the way.”
Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017, found dead in his home, it is said by a hear t attack. His body was quickly after cremated and thus prevented any possibility of an autopsy occurring.
You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks
The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act is a bipartisan bill that was passed into law in December 2016, it was initially called Countering Information Warfare Act. It was included together with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This bill was brought into effect just weeks before Trump was to enter office….hmmm, foreshadowing much?
Soon after the 2016 U.S. election, the Washington Post led the charge asserting that it was due to Russian propaganda that the U.S. elections turned out the way it did, that is, that Hillary had somehow, inconceivably, lost to Donald Trump and that the American people had been turned against her like a child caught in the middle of a messy divorce case. But there is no need here to set the record straight on Hillary, when Hillary herself has done suffice damage to any illusion of credibility she once had. That ultimately not even Hillary could hide the fact that her closet full of skeletons turned out to be the size of a catacomb.
But we are told that citizens do not know what is best for one’s self. That they cannot be trusted with “sensitive” information and in accordance act in a “responsible” manner, that is, to have a strong enough stomach to do what is “best” for their country.
And therefore, fear not subjects of the land, for the Global Engagement Center (GEC) is here to make those hard decisions for you. Don’t know what to think about a complicated subject? GEC will tell you the right way!
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow for the Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, and other Federal agencies in the year 2017 to create the Global Engagement Center (GEC). The GEC’s purpose in life is to fight propaganda from foreign governments and publicize the nature of ongoing foreign propaganda and disinformation operations against the U.S. and other countries.
Let us all take a moment to thank the GEC for such a massive task in the cause for justice all around the world.
The GEC had a very slow start in its first year, however, it has been gaining momentum in the last year under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who seems especially excited over the hiring of Lea Gabrielle as special envoy and coordinator of GEC.
Mike Pompeo was the CIA Director from 2017-2018. On April 15, 2019, Pompeo participated in a discussion at the Texas A&M University where he voluntarily offered the admission that though West Points’ cadet motto is “You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”, his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating “I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment”.
This is apparently the man for the job of dealing with matters of “truth” and “justice”.
Lea Gabrielle was approved for her position by Mike Pompeo, what are her “qualifications”? Well, Gabrielle is also CIA trained, and while assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), she “directed and conducted global clandestine strategic intelligence collection operations.” Gabrielle also “deployed in tactical anti-terrorist operations in hostile environments”. After 12 years of active duty service, Lea Gabrielle became a television news journalist, who worked at NBC and FOX News.
Noticing a pattern?
The CIA really does not have the best track record for their role in “managing” foreign wars and counter-insurgency activities. In fact, they have been caught rather red handed in fueling such crisis situations. And these are the people who are deciding what information is fit for the American public, and western public in general, and what is not fit for their ears.
Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil
On March 5, 2020, Lea Gabrielle testified on the role of GEC in countering state-sponsored and non-state propaganda and disinformation. Gabrielle states: “We have the full support of Secretary Pompeo who is committed to deploying a broad suite of tools to stop America’s adversaries from using disinformation, malign propaganda, and other tools to undermine free societies.” She goes on to acknowledge that the hearing is focused on countering Russian government and CCP disinformation and propaganda. She then goes on to outline her criticisms of both governments with no factual detail or evidence but rather generalised accusations and criticisms, obviously pulling from her experience as a news journalist for NBC.
Following this, Gabrielle proceeds to outline her “rules of engagement” in countering this offensive with what seems to be the beginnings of McCarthyism 2.0, amounting to a threat to anyone who dares not take a hard stance against Russia and China, that such a person will be considered complicit in essentially committing treason. Hell, if Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard (who was unconstitutionally prohibited from participating in the final democratic presidential debates) have both already been accused of being a Russian agent, what can we expect for the average Joe?
Gabrielle concludes, “Both the Russian government and the CCP view censorship, media manipulation, and propaganda as appropriate tools to control public opinion. Both exploit open, democratic societies to further their own ends while tightening controls around their own countries.”
Don’t worry, the CIA will eventually admit that they are elbow deep in all of the above, it just won’t be released until 30 years from now…In the meantime, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspaper to stoke the fires for another war.
The world has already transitioned into panic about Covid-19. Widespread social, political, and economic disruptions have developed. Hard-hit countries, as we noted last week, have responded with a similar blueprint of shutting down their economies for virus containment purposes.
Social distancing has been one of the most widely enforced policies by governments, imposed on their citizens to mitigate the spread of the highly contagious disease. As a result, sex workers in many countries have seen their incomes crash as clients abide by the new public health policies, reported Vice News.
Let’s first start with defining social distancing. It’s a public health practice that aims to reduce disease transmission, including canceling large public gatherings, closing public spaces, working from home, and avoiding other people. The purpose is to slow down the outbreak to reduce the rate of infections and to reduce overwhelming the health care system.
Sex workers, many of which depend on the intimate physical interaction of their clients to get paid, are warning that social distancing could leave them penniless in the near term:
“A lot of sex workers are freaking out right now,” said Andrea Werhun, 30, a stripper based in Toronto.
Multiple sex workers told VICE their clientele volumes at clubs had seen a notable drop since social distancing policies have been implemented across North America.
“I feel like my career as a dancer is in jeopardy as it becomes increasingly less viable to hang out in crowds, which is kind of what I do every Friday and Saturday night in order to make money,” Werhun said.
Werhun said businessmen are a considerable part of her client book. Still, since corporations have told employees to work remotely and restrict travel – this has led to the decline in her business. She said strippers don’t have the luxury of a salary or sick days:
“It’s a big, big blow,” she said. “Locals and regulars are keeping sex workers afloat right now.”
She has yet to screen clients who could be carriers of the disease. Community spreading has already taken place in major metro areas in North America; the true extent of the spread is still unknown as test kits lack.
Americas Covid-19 Virus Map
Amanda Winters, 27, a stripper based in Miami, told VICE she started stripping to pay off student loans, and now she’s struggling to make ends meet as clients avoid clubs out of fear, they might contract the virus.
“I am getting more concerned about my financial situation,” Winters said. “On a stable schedule, I often would have two to four good clients a night…the past week—going on two now—I have had one full client.”
Winters said if the business at the Miami club remains low – she might be forced to live stream at home.
Taylor Stevens, 29, a diversified stripper bouncing between Toronto and Las Vegas, has live stream shows that are doing well. She said in recent weeks, traffic volume from Italy was off the charts.
Taylor Stevens
Toronto dominatrix Lady Pim told Vice she’s preparing for a Covid-19 downturn and has diversified her sex work.
“It’s kind of looking like parts of Canada could go into a time where we aren’t going to be able to leave our houses—then, your livelihood might be threatened, like, I’m not on salary, I don’t have sick days,” said Lady Pim.
“My sex work is diversified. I will still make a portion of my income doing it from home with Skype sessions, texting dominations, and phone call dominations, so a quarantine wouldn’t lead to a complete loss in income,” she said.
Lady Pim said quarantines would drive people to pay for online sex:
“If we’re in lockdown—just by ourselves, don’t have a partner, and don’t have any sex or kink outlets—then I can 100 percent see people turning around to do a Skype session or phone session.”
Smart strippers are now diversifying their sex work before a “coronavirus winter” leads to mass quarantines and an economic crash.
So here we are. Right on the cusp of that SHTF event that we’ve been prepping for all these years.
A global pandemic.
A breakdown in the supply chain.
Shoppers who are already becoming agitated and even violent.
We’re watching it all unfold in our hometowns and across our nation right now.
Yet, somehow, it still doesn’t feel real to me. Is it just me who finds this hard to fathom? Am I the only one who still thinks doubtful thoughts? Like “No way. It’s going to be okay. You’re overreacting. It’s a little scare, just like Ebola and MERS and SARS.”
I’ve researched and written about this stuff for years. I always knew it could happen. I was whole-heartedly convinced of these possibilities and yet when this situation began to move irrevocably toward disaster, I find myself, somehow, shocked.
I can’t be the only one who has prepared for this yet still feels stuck in normalcy bias, thinking “this isn’t going to get as bad as you think” even as I watch the events unfold around us pretty much like we in the survival community always predicted. There’s still that doubtful voice in my head, making me wonder about spending even more money on another “last” shopping trip.
Heck, maybe this makes me a bad prepper. A fake survivalist. A fraud.
Or maybe it’s only natural to think that life will keep moving on pretty much like it always has.
Will Covid-19 really be the thing that brings us down? Will the nation devolve into chaos? I’d like to say no with firm conviction. After all, there have been close calls before. But the rational part of me won’t allow that firm conviction, despite the part that says, don’t be silly, everything will be just fine after a brief blip.
I believe it’s okay to feel this way as long as you don’t allow it to get in the way of your preparations or of your acceptance of the disaster when it actually unfolds in all its shocking reality.
Maybe I’m oversharing here and a whole bunch of folks will unsubscribe. I don’t know. But if others are feeling the same way, I want you to know that you aren’t alone.
Instincts vs. Normalcy Bias
I think people have come down on one of two sides since the Covid-19 virus first came onto our radar back in late December or early January. Some people have thought, “This is the next plague” while others have thought, “So what? The flu is more deadly.” Now that we’re down to the wire, we’ll soon find out which line of thinking was the most accurate.
A lot of this goes down to a decision. Are you going to believe your gut or are you going to believe the logical normalcy bias that tells you this isn’t how things go in the United States of America?
But the logical side of me says, “This is the US. We will be just fine.” Because we’ve always been just fine in my lifetime. We were bruised and shaken, but bounced back with fierce resolve on 9/11. We were fine when Ebola reached our shores back in 2014. We recovered after Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy and all the other named storms that have hit. We’re Americans. We are resilient. It’s who we are.
However, our resilience may not be enough to conquer a crisis that was badly mishandled from the get-go. It may not be enough to overcome less than a million hospital beds in a country with more than 327 million people. The enemy is a virus we know hardly anything about and we can’t even believe the numbers out there from Chinaorour own government.
People are getting tense.
This afternoon when I heard there was a press conference in the Rose Garden at 3 pm, I had a bad feeling. I wondered if my calculations were off when I figured that we could begin to see major quarantines in about a week. I headed to the store with my 19-year-old daughter to get there ahead of the crowds that would certainly be imminent if such an announcement was made. We picked up extra cat litter, extra pet food, some hardware, and extra frozen vegetables.
When I went to the grocery store, I saw that frozen veggies were on sale 10 for $10. I grabbed 10 bags of frozen spinach and saw a rotund angry-looking woman glaring at me. I gave her a “what?” look and she said, “Aren’t you going to leave any for other people?”
I said politely, “I’m sorry. Did you want some of the spinach?” I picked up 3 bags from my cart and offered them to her.
She said, “No, I don’t want any spinach. A$$hole.”
I replied calmly, “Okay, well, have a nice day” and left with my spinach. I wasn’t about to get into an altercation at Kroger over a one-dollar bag of spinach the other woman didn’t even want. It looks like that de-escalation course I took paid off because my first instinct was not to be pleasant and disregard her insults.
I saw the tension on people’s faces as they pushed their carts quickly up and down the aisles, the tunnel vision obvious. If someone stopped in an aisle – a common thing to do at the grocery store – the folks behind them would give a loud sigh of annoyance. I even saw a couple of people bumping into others with their carts – whether it was carelessness or deliberately done, I couldn’t tell.
I left the store with my purchases, happy to get out of there and content with what I had. I know that I’m as well-stocked as I can get with the money that I have. If it’s not enough, then we’ll move through plans B, C, and the rest of the alphabet.
The official response
I can’t be the only person who finds the official response to be much too little, far too late.
To be perfectly clear, I don’t really blame the President or the Vice President. They’re in a rather impossible situation in which no matter what they do, the outcome is bad. If they shut everything down completely, there would be panic the likes of which we’ve never seen. And the economic fallout would be exponentially worse than it already is.
This also impairs their ability to be totally forthcoming. While people in the preparedness community would prefer brutal facts over soothing fiction, most people really don’t want to know how bad things are or how bad they’ll become. So the government will continue to dance around the subject until they can dance no more and we reach a point where the truth is obvious to even the most obvious clinger to normalcy.
On the other hand, the press conference at the White House left me feeling even more uneasy than I had felt before.
Parading a bunch of CEOs before us and showing that ridiculous flow chart that looked like something a 4th grader might hand in for a school project certainly did nothing to make me feel like things were “under control.” I don’t care at all what the head of CVS pharmacies thinks about the outbreak or his ability to keep stores running.
In fact, the main thing I gathered from that is that CVS, Walmart, and Target will be the distribution points that remain open during the crisis. Mom and Pop stores may not have access to warehouses or supplies. This way it will be easier for the government to ration things out and enforce rules like “one bag of rice per household” should it come to that. I actually posted an article about this topic a few months back.
I thought that President Trump looked and sounded unwell during the press conference. Whether that is the effect of stress or he’s become ill, it’s impossible to say.
All in all, I was not reassured by anything in that press conference.
What is exponential growth?
Rationally, I’m aware that with the increase in confirmed cases and the exponential spread of this virus, we’ve probably passed the point of no return. The New York Times explains exponential growth with this chart. These are the number of cases confirmed on certain dates.
Jan. 21 — 1
Jan. 28 — 5
Feb. 4 — 11
Feb. 11 — 14
Feb. 18 — 25
Feb. 25 — 59
Mar. 3 — 125
Mar. 10 — 1,004
And on the morning of March 14, we’re up to 2175 cases.
As the “drive-through” testing facilities open up with free tests, we can expect that number to grow quite a lot.
The magnitude of the outbreak creeps up on you; it doesn’t look like things are growing very much, and then suddenly they are. Today, the U.S. is up to at least 1,714 known cases and we’re only a couple of days on from when it was 1,004. It’s going to be 4,000 by Monday, and then it’s going to be 8,000 by next Wednesday, and then it’s…. Exponential growth is staggering when it takes over.
Exponential growth is a classic pattern in which numbers stay small initially, but then you end up with very large numbers very quickly. If you start with a certain number, and then multiply that number by a growth factor every day, depending on what that growth rate is, you’ll see the cumulative number doubling over a certain time period.
What really matters is how high that growth rate is. In the U.S. right now, according to Our World in Data, confirmed Covid-19 cases are increasing by about 30 to 40 percent per day and the total number is doubling about every two days. (source)
This is exactly the situation that China, Italy, Iran, and all the other countries with massive outbreaks have found themselves in and the United States is probably next.
Is the SHTF really happening?
We are still at a stage in a shell game and nobody knows which shell the SHTF is hiding under. Nobody knows if we can reel things in and gain control of the situation. Nobody knows if we’re going to go the way of Italy, where an entire nation is locked down and singing from their balconies to raise morale in a desperate situation.
I wonder if people who have lived through horrible situations ever imagined in their wildest dreams how bad things would get. I know that in Selco’s book, SHTF Survival Stories, he wrote about this. Nobody ever truly expected things to happen the way they did. There was a period of adjustment and all the rules changed but a lot of folks didn’t accept the changes soon enough and they did not survive.
When I silence the part of my mind that says, this can’t be happening, I’m only left with the realistic part that says, “Yes. It is.”
While we don’t 100% know how this pandemic will play out in our country, we have to be ready for things to go badly. In her book, The Covid-19 Survival Manual, Cat Ellis talked about the inability of our hospitals to handle thousands of patients. We have less than a million beds in a country of 327 million people. And most of those beds are not in places equipped to handle highly contagious sick people. And what about the people with other health issues? Our medical system won’t be able to handle exponential growth no matter how hard they try or how much they want to help.
When I look at how grocery stores and discount stores across the country look like a horde of locusts went through and decimated the inventory, I know this is a bad sign. When a friend who manages a large grocery store says to me, “Our truck was only half full today. If buying and inventory continue like this, we will be out of food by Monday,” I can only imagine the havoc that stores out of food will wreak.
It’s going to be like Black Friday times a thousand, something I’ve written about for years.
This entire thing is surreal, isn’t it?
If I’ve written about and prepared for the SHTF for years and am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that we’re in the early stages of it, what must it feel like for someone who is brand new to the concept?
It’s one thing to watch it happen someplace far away from the screen of our laptops or televisions but entirely another to watch it unfold at home. However, we have to accept it and we have to act quickly and decisively. One of the most important things I’ve learned from Selco is about accepting the new rules.
One of the most important things he taught me is to adapt quickly (immediately) to the “new rules” that apply when the SHTF. And to do that, you need to know what it’s like so you won’t be shocked…frozen…paralyzed by the things taking place right in front of you. When there is a new set of rules, the old rules no longer apply. The rules about waiting patiently for the government to save you? The rules about how people won’t walk up and steal from you in broad daylight because they’ll be arrested? The rules that you will get paid for your work and then you can go to the store and buy what you need?
Those rules will be gone. And when you start seeing these new rules appear you will know that the sh*t has hit the oscillating device and the world as you knew it has changed.
The other part of my mind knows that it could. And that’s the part which propels me through getting prepared despite what the doubtful side whispers.
It’s not just you.
So if you’ve found yourself not quite believing what you’re seeing, not quite believing that all hell could break loose in America at any point now, you aren’t alone. If you look at everything heading to hell on a greasy slide and think it doesn’t feel real, it’s not just you. I’m feeling that way myself.
I’m sharing this because I bet a lot of people are feeling the same way. Second-guessing themselves. Doubting themselves. Feeling like they aren’t good preppers. You aren’t alone and I’ll bet a whole lot of folks who won’t admit it feel this way too.
We don’t believe it because we don’t want to believe it. We never actually wanted to be right when we stockpiled and learned skills and bought more supplies that we actually had room to house.
But the thing that puts us ahead in this situation is that we prepared anyway. We learned anyway. And when we see the more obvious signs of a societal breakdown we will be able to accept it a lot faster than those who never even considered it.
Enterprising Opportunists Confronted At Costco For Lysol Wipe Profiteering
A Vancouver couple has come under fire for buying up literal truck-loads of Lysol disinfecting wipes from a local Costco and reselling them for a significant markup, according to Toronto Star reporter Douglas Quan.
Yesterday I went to a Costco store, where I stumbled across this couple loading their pickup with piles of Lysol wipes. They hit up all the local Costcos daily, clearing shelves of wipes/liquid cleaner and re-selling them on Amazon. https://t.co/sYQhfxkUrG via @torontostar
Quan was on-scene to report on people stocking up on supplies when he ran into the couple, Manny Ranga and Violeta Perez, who told Quan they were buying in bulk and reselling on Amazon.
“Before I even got to the front entrance, I stumbled across this couple who were loading up the back of their Ford pick-up truck with these stacks and stacks of Lysol disinfecting wipes,” Quan said. “Naturally that piqued my curiosity, and so I approached them and started chatting with them.”
The pair explained to Quan how they hit several Costco locations every day in Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby, buy up all the Lysol wipes and cleaning liquid on hand, then turn them around for re-sale on their Amazon store Violeta & Sons Trading Ltd.
“It’s a big opportunity with all these products,” Ranga told the Star.
Quan says they had what appeared to be hundreds of cases stacked up on Costco pallets — enough that Ranga had to take two trips to get them all home.
“They were attracting a fair amount of attention from shoppers going in and out of the store. I wasn’t the only person there that, you know, couldn’t help but stop and stare,” he said.
“One woman came up and remarked, ‘Gosh, is that all for you?‘ And another woman later on came by and said, ‘Wow, someone’s making a lot of money today.'” –CBC
A six-pack of wipes sells for around $20 at Costco, but goes for around $80 online, according to the c ouple. Ranga told Quan they’d spent around $70,000 on bulk buys and raked in around $100,000 in sales.
Amazon has since suspended the couple’s account, according to CBC.
Other profiteers have also been cut-off from online selling platforms. The New York Times is out with a Saturday piece on Tennessee brothers Matt and Noah Colvin, who set out on a 1,300 mile journey in a U-Haul truck to buy thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes, mostly from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” as “The major metro areas were cleaned out.”
An Amazon merchant, Matt Colvin, with an overflow stock of cleaning and sanitizing supplies in his garage in Hixson, Tenn.Credit…Doug Strickland for The New York Times
Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic. –New York Times
Then, Amazon pulled his items along with thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks – suspending sellers and warning others that if they continue to price-gouge they’ll lose their accounts.
Ebay has followed suit with even stricter measures which prohibit the US sale of masks or sanitizer.
In early February, as headlines announced the coronavirus’s spread in China, Mr. Colvin spotted a chance to capitalize. A nearby liquidation firm was selling 2,000 “pandemic packs,” leftovers from a defunct company. Each came with 50 face masks, four small bottles of hand sanitizer and a thermometer. The price was $5 a pack. Mr. Colvin haggled it to $3.50 and bought them all.
He quickly sold all 2,000 of the 50-packs of masks on eBay, pricing them from $40 to $50 each, and sometimes higher. He declined to disclose his profit on the record but said it was substantial.
The success stoked his appetite. When he saw the panicked public starting to pounce on sanitizer and wipes, he and his brother set out to stock up. -NYT
Now, Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of sanitizer with no idea where to sell them.
Hand sanitizer that Mr. Colvin is keeping in a storage locker.Credit…Doug Strickland for The New York Times
“It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” he said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?'”
Massachusetts nurse Mikeala Kozlowski had some harsh words for disinfectant profiteers as she continues a fruitless search for sanitizer since before she gave birth to her first child on March 5.
“You’re being selfish, hoarding resources for your own personal gain,” she said.
Meanwhile, companies like Amazon have justified their crackdown as violating their policies.
“Price gouging is a clear violation of our policies, unethical, and in some areas, illegal,” said Amazon in a statement. “In addition to terminating these third party accounts, we welcome the opportunity to work directly with states attorneys general to prosecute bad actors.”
