Brickbat: If We Let You Teach, the Students Might Actually Learn Something

emptyclassroom_1161x653

Sacramento County, California, Public Health, has closed Capital Christian School, claiming that teaching is going on there. Under a state mandate, schools in counties with high levels of coronavirus cases, such as Sacramento County, cannot hold in-person high school classes. However, daycares are still allowed to operate. Capital Christian recently reopened its high school as daycare. Head of School Tim Wong denies it is providing on-site instruction but says that by being in daycare the high school students can get a level of support they can’t get at home while they individually work on their online assignments. The school faces fines of up to $1,000 a day if it remains open to high school students.

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German University Offers “Idleness Grants” To People Who Convince Jury They Deserve Money For Nothing

German University Offers “Idleness Grants” To People Who Convince Jury They Deserve Money For Nothing

Tyler Durden

Thu, 08/27/2020 – 04:15

Germany’s University of Fine Arts in Hamburg is offering “idleness grants” to applicants who can convince them they’d make the best of their “active inactivity,” according to The Guardian.

Three €1,600 (US$1900) scholarships will be awarded to applicants from across the country, who will need to convince a jury that their “active inactivity” will result in an impressive or relevant use of their time.

The application form – which has a deadline of September 15, asks just four questions; What do you not want to do? For how long do you not want to do it? Why is it important not to do this thing in particular? Why are you the right person not to do it?

“Doing nothing isn’t very easy,” said Friedrich von Borries, an architect and design theorist who came up with the programme. “We want to focus on active inactivity. If you say you are not going to move for a week, then that’s impressive. If you propose you are not going to move or think, that might be even better.”

The idea behind the project arose from a discussion about the seeming contradiction of a society that promotes sustainability while simultaneously valuing success, Von Borries said. “This scholarship programme is not a joke but an experiment with serious intentions – how can you turn a society that is structured around achievements and accomplishments on its head?” –The Guardian

Upon the delivery of an “experience report” in mid-January of next year, the university’s bursary will hand out the grants. According to von Borries, if awardees fail to live up to their planned “inactivity,” they won’t be punished. So, laziness all around.

“If you say you are not going to sleep, then you can only do that for a couple of days,” he said, adding “But if you say you are not going to shop then that’s something you could sustain for a lot longer.”

So, applicants are encouraged to set realistic goals.

Once the applications are in, they will be included in a November exhibition named The School of Inconsequentiality: Towards A Better Life, which will revolve around the question: “What can I refrain from so that my life has fewer negative consequences on the lives of others?”

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Wearing Face Masks Makes People Act Careless And Ignore Social Distancing, UK Study Finds

Wearing Face Masks Makes People Act Careless And Ignore Social Distancing, UK Study Finds

Tyler Durden

Thu, 08/27/2020 – 03:30

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

study carried out by Psychologists from the Warwick Business School in the UK has found that the wearing of face masks significantly increases carelessness where personal hygiene is concerned and causes people to basically ignore social distancing.

The study of 800 people found that they are lulled into a false sense of security when wearing a face mask, making them much more likely to dismiss other, better ways of countering the spread of coronavirus.

The psychologists noted that people were more relaxed and comfortable sitting or standing in groups, so long as they had a mask on, and that individuals start to disregard keeping their distance from others who are also wearing face masks.

The research also noted that these effects were more pronounced among people who believe that masks are effective against the spread of the virus.

“Our findings appear to be a classic case of risk compensation,” noted cognitive psychologist Ashley Luckman, one of the researchers, in comments to the Daily Mail.

When wearing masks, “people feel safer and are more willing to take other risks, such as decreasing the physical distance between them and others,” added Luckman.

“If the Government’s aim is to minimise transmission of the virus, its guidelines must be clear enough to prevent this trade-off, emphasising that masks are not an alternative to social distancing,” Luckman urged.

Another researcher, behavioural scientist Daniel Read, added “If countries need to return to greater levels of physical distancing due to a second wave of cases, that may be harder to implement than it was when mask use was low at the start of the pandemic.”

“We need more evidence to determine at what point the risks of reducing physical distance outweigh the benefits of wearing a mask,” he added.

The findings support the warnings of Sweden’s top expert on the coronavirus, who has warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.

“It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19,” said Anders Tengell, who has overseen Sweden’s response to the pandemic while resisting any form of lockdown or mask mandate.

“To start with having face masks and then think[ing] you can crowd your buses or your shopping malls — that’s definitely a mistake,” Tengell has emphasised.

“The findings that have been produced through face masks are astonishingly weak, even though so many people around the world wear them,” Tengell has urged.

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France & Italy Join Greece In Major Naval War Games ‘Show Of Force’ Against Turkey

France & Italy Join Greece In Major Naval War Games ‘Show Of Force’ Against Turkey

Tyler Durden

Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:45

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to make “no concessions” with Greece amid the rapidly escalating eastern Mediterranian gas exploration dispute, declaring Turkey will “do whatever is necessary” to secure its territorial rights in Wednesday remarks commemorating an ancient battle which saw Seljuk Turks victorious during an engagement with the Byzantine empire in the 11th century. 

“We don’t have our eye on someone else’s territory, sovereignty and interests, but we will make no concessions on that which is ours,” Erdogan said, while urging that Greece must “avoid wrongs that will be the path to ruin”. He underscored “We will not compromise what is ours… We are determined to do whatever is necessary.”

This even as Macron’s France has jumped fully onboard to defend Greece and Cyprus’ cause in preventing breach of their maritime territory and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).

Joint military drills, via Ekathimerini Drills

France has since confirmed deployment of its ‘Lafayette’ frigate and three Rafale fighter jets to Cyprus, also as what’s being described as a “massive maritime exercise” is underway in the eastern Mediterranean on Wednesday involving Greece, Cyprus, France and Italy.

Called the “Eunomia” military exercise, it’s a clear and firm signal to Turkey meant to – as Greece’s defense minister said, reinforce “the rule of law as part of the policy of de-escalating tensions.”

Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos spelled out specifically that  

“the initiative… aims to demonstrate the commitment of the four European Mediterranean countries to the rule of law as part of the policy of de-escalating tensions.”

The drills are set to run from Wednesday through Friday of this week.

Ironically enough this pits NATO allies against one another, with the EU recently firmly coming down on the side of defending Greek and Cypriot claims over and against an expansionist Turkey eager to gain hydrocarbon resources in the region, toward the goal of greater energy independence. 

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Berlin Bans Protest Against Pandemic Restrictions, Deploys Thousands Of Police

Berlin Bans Protest Against Pandemic Restrictions, Deploys Thousands Of Police

Tyler Durden

Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:30

Authorities in Berlin have banned a series of planned demonstrations against the country’s COVID-19 lockdown measures – claiming they were organized by “right-wing extremists” and would lead to the spread of the virus. The city is deploying several thousand police around the German capital this weekend, citing threats.

The German city notably did not ban a June Black Lives Matter protest  in which approximately 15,000 people turned out.

June BLM protest in Berlin

Meanwhile, the Assembly for Freedom had 17,000 registered demonstrators for the August 29 event before Berlin shut it down.

“We are still in the middle of a pandemic with rising infection figures,” said Berlin Interior Minister, Andreas Geisel. “This is not a decision against freedom of assembly, but a decision in favor of infection protection,” he continued, adding that Berlin should not be “misused as a stage for corona deniers… and right-wing extremists.”

About 20,000 people, including libertarians, constitutional loyalists, far-right supporters and anti-vaccination activists, marched in Berlin on Aug. 1.

Geisel said the organisers of that protest had deliberately broken rules they had previously agreed with police, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

“Such behaviour is not acceptable. The state cannot be given the runaround,” he said, adding he did not want Berlin to be a stage for conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists. –Reuters

Meanwhile, Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has called for a protest at the Brandenburg Gate against the ban.

The Senate is trampling on fundamental rights,” AfD said in a statement.

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Child Trafficking Protesters Gathered Outside Buckingham Palace To Condemn “Pedophile” Prince

Child Trafficking Protesters Gathered Outside Buckingham Palace To Condemn “Pedophile” Prince

Tyler Durden

Thu, 08/27/2020 – 02:00

Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

This Saturday in London, protesters gathered outside of Buckingham Palace as part of a demonstration against child exploitation. Protesters shouted accusations of “pedophile” outside the gates of the palace, in reference to Prince Andrew’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking ring.

The protests were organized through a Facebook event page called, ‘Freedom For The Children Global Walk London.’

A post on the event page read:

 “The purpose of this walk for change is to bring awareness to the current reality of child exploitation within our own communities and around the world. Let’s show our devotion and determination toward protecting these children, our communities most vulnerable, by requesting change and reformation within our government and law enforcement agencies to ensure that justice is brought in such a manner that it will significantly reduce instances of child exploitation while promoting awareness in order to end this ongoing issue.”

In footage later released of the protest, protesters can be seen waving banners with Prince Andrew’s face along with messages condemning his crimes.

Meanwhile, Prince Andrew has been dodging investigators that want to question him about the accusations made by some of Epstein’s victims.

New York prosecutors have said that the prince has “completely shut the door” on cooperating with authorities. They are now considering what further legal action can be taken.

Andrew continues to deny any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s many crimes, despite a growing body of evidence indicating that he was involved.

Manhattan Attorney Geoffrey Berman described the prince as a “co-conspirator.”

“Contrary to Prince Andrew’s very public offer to cooperate with our investigation into Epstein’s co-conspirators, an offer that was conveyed via press release, Prince Andrew has now completely shut the door on voluntary cooperation and our office is considering its options,” Berman said, according to the Guardian.

Andrew has previously promised to help investigators with the case, but has since removed himself from public life. He has also refused requests for interviews that investigators have sent him. He has stepped down from his official royal position and is now more than ever the black sheep of the royal family.

After the arrest of alleged Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is also said to be good friends with Andrew, the prince has canceled all of his travels and business trips outside of the UK, likely out of fears that he will be arrested as well.

According to a former member of the Royal guard who worked on Prince Andrew’s security detail, The London Metropolitan Police have destroyed evidence that could have revealed where Prince Andrew was on the night that he is accused of having sex with a teenager that was being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell.

The night in question is March 10th, 2001, as well as the morning hours of March 11. Virginia Giuffre, who was known by the name Virginia Roberts at the time, says that she was taken to London by Epstein and Maxwell and was expected to have sex with Prince Andrew. Giuffre says that she was just 17-years-old at the time.

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Want To Boost Economic Growth? Tell Government To Spend Less

reason-debt

Intellectuals are supposed to speak truth to power. Unfortunately, some seem to be more interested in saying what everyone expects them to say, which only reinforces the status quo. Thankfully, a few scholars are resisting this trend, fighting for what is true rather than what is popular.

Case in point: a recent Hoover Institution paper by economists John Cogan, Daniel Heil and John Taylor, which makes the case for a reduction in spending now in order to positively impact the economy.

It’s refreshing to see their research, considering that we live in a world where pundits and even economists bend over backward to make the case that more debt is not a problem and that more fiscal stimulus is desirable. Never mind that the arguments that intellectuals offer to defend these claims aren’t supported by the academic literature. Consider the mistaken notion that more spending will stimulate the economy and somehow reduce the debt burden of the policy in the first place. Research overwhelmingly confirms that, for a variety of reasons, the return of government spending on economic growth is much less than the money spent.

Then there’s the argument that interest rates are low and hence, it’s a good time to take on more debt—despite the chance that variable interest won’t always be that low. But more debt, even at low rates, still means more interest payments. Before COVID-19, the United States paid close to $400 billion in interest payments annually, or 8 percent of our budget. It’s only going to get worse now. Japan, for instance, has a massive amount of debt, despite its 0 percent long-term interest rates. Its debt repayments are its second-largest budget item.

I wish reporters and economists would stop asserting, like the Wall Street Journal recently did, “the example of Japan has shown that debts can rise for a long time, well above 200 percent of GDP, without sparking a fiscal crisis.” Really? I would have thought that Japan’s two decades of no growth and wage stagnation could be considered a crisis.

Moreover, Japan is quite different than the United States and can get away with more overall debt than we could. That’s because most Japanese securities are held in the Social Security trust fund that’s owned by the government. This means that net public sector debt is actually significantly lower in Japan than in the United States.

Enter the new paper by Cogan, Heil and Taylor, which finds that, when faced with an inevitable debt explosion in our future, the only viable and desirable option is for Uncle Sam to limit expenditures as a share of GDP, around the 20 percent ratio that prevailed before the pandemic. The authors find that this approach avoids the “potentially large increase in future federal taxes.” Better yet, they actually find that the policy would boost both short- and long-term GDP.

This research will be added to decades of empirical evidence that spending-based consolidations are expansionary in the long term and, sometimes, can boost growth in the short term, too. However, my excitement with the paper is actually rooted in their scholarship and methodology, not just their conclusions.

Here’s why: The traditional objection against spending cuts is that they hurt demand (consumption), but this study shows that a reduction in spending actually increases consumption in the short run and into the long run. That’s because, in the same way people tend to increase their savings during a recession due to fear of the future, consumers also consider the long-term tax implications of today’s spending measures. They’ll increase their spending and investment habits in anticipation of future tax cuts—or, at the very least, no future tax hikes. The result is that the growth in output resulting from the spending restraint is driven primarily by consumption, which should be politically salient. The authors, however, also highlight that, as expected, investment reacts positively in the long run.

At a time when flawed arguments for more government spending and more debt are reemerging, this paper goes against the big government status quo and offers a blueprint for us to not only regain control of our spiraling debt but also do so in a way that will boost short- and long-term economic growth by boosting demand and then investment.

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Want To Boost Economic Growth? Tell Government To Spend Less

reason-debt

Intellectuals are supposed to speak truth to power. Unfortunately, some seem to be more interested in saying what everyone expects them to say, which only reinforces the status quo. Thankfully, a few scholars are resisting this trend, fighting for what is true rather than what is popular.

Case in point: a recent Hoover Institution paper by economists John Cogan, Daniel Heil and John Taylor, which makes the case for a reduction in spending now in order to positively impact the economy.

It’s refreshing to see their research, considering that we live in a world where pundits and even economists bend over backward to make the case that more debt is not a problem and that more fiscal stimulus is desirable. Never mind that the arguments that intellectuals offer to defend these claims aren’t supported by the academic literature. Consider the mistaken notion that more spending will stimulate the economy and somehow reduce the debt burden of the policy in the first place. Research overwhelmingly confirms that, for a variety of reasons, the return of government spending on economic growth is much less than the money spent.

Then there’s the argument that interest rates are low and hence, it’s a good time to take on more debt—despite the chance that variable interest won’t always be that low. But more debt, even at low rates, still means more interest payments. Before COVID-19, the United States paid close to $400 billion in interest payments annually, or 8 percent of our budget. It’s only going to get worse now. Japan, for instance, has a massive amount of debt, despite its 0 percent long-term interest rates. Its debt repayments are its second-largest budget item.

I wish reporters and economists would stop asserting, like the Wall Street Journal recently did, “the example of Japan has shown that debts can rise for a long time, well above 200 percent of GDP, without sparking a fiscal crisis.” Really? I would have thought that Japan’s two decades of no growth and wage stagnation could be considered a crisis.

Moreover, Japan is quite different than the United States and can get away with more overall debt than we could. That’s because most Japanese securities are held in the Social Security trust fund that’s owned by the government. This means that net public sector debt is actually significantly lower in Japan than in the United States.

Enter the new paper by Cogan, Heil and Taylor, which finds that, when faced with an inevitable debt explosion in our future, the only viable and desirable option is for Uncle Sam to limit expenditures as a share of GDP, around the 20 percent ratio that prevailed before the pandemic. The authors find that this approach avoids the “potentially large increase in future federal taxes.” Better yet, they actually find that the policy would boost both short- and long-term GDP.

This research will be added to decades of empirical evidence that spending-based consolidations are expansionary in the long term and, sometimes, can boost growth in the short term, too. However, my excitement with the paper is actually rooted in their scholarship and methodology, not just their conclusions.

Here’s why: The traditional objection against spending cuts is that they hurt demand (consumption), but this study shows that a reduction in spending actually increases consumption in the short run and into the long run. That’s because, in the same way people tend to increase their savings during a recession due to fear of the future, consumers also consider the long-term tax implications of today’s spending measures. They’ll increase their spending and investment habits in anticipation of future tax cuts—or, at the very least, no future tax hikes. The result is that the growth in output resulting from the spending restraint is driven primarily by consumption, which should be politically salient. The authors, however, also highlight that, as expected, investment reacts positively in the long run.

At a time when flawed arguments for more government spending and more debt are reemerging, this paper goes against the big government status quo and offers a blueprint for us to not only regain control of our spiraling debt but also do so in a way that will boost short- and long-term economic growth by boosting demand and then investment.

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In Convention Speech, Mike Pence Said Joe Biden Will Repeal Trump’s Tariffs. If Only That Were True.

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As he capped off the third night of the Republican National Convention, Vice President Mike Pence may have briefly given voters hope that the trade war with China could soon come to an end.

Discussing China in his convention speech, Pence claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “wants to repeal all the tariffs that are leveling the playing field for American workers.”

Don’t get your hopes up. No matter who wins November’s general election, a wind-down of the import taxes that President Donald Trump imposed on Chinese-made goods is unlikely to be a priority.

Biden has carefully avoided committing to doing much of anything about Trump’s tariffs if he wins. Biden does indeed have a long track record in supporting lower barriers to trade—as a member of the Senate, for example, he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which substantially reduced tariffs and boosted American jobs by making trade freer. But as the contemporary Democratic Party steered him leftward, he backed away from that stance on the campaign trail this year.

Most recently, Biden’s campaign walked back some imprecise comments in which the candidate appeared to endorse ending Trump’s tariffs. The Biden campaign has also published a trade policy platform that includes such questionable ideas as a mandatory “Buy American” provision that would increase what the federal government has to pay when it makes purchases. The platform also parrots some of the Trump administration’s misguided talking points about America’s supposed dependence on imported medical goods.

So there’s no sign that Pence’s accusation that Biden would lift Trump’s tariffs on China is true. What’s more worrying, though, is that Pence seems to believe those tariffs are “leveling the playing field for American workers.”

Really? American manufacturing dipped into a recession last year—even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck—and a major culprit was those same tariffs (along with tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on imported steel and aluminum). Tariffs are nothing more than taxes, and the Trump administration’s tariffs have raised taxes on American consumers and businesses by an estimated $57 billion annually.

Trump touted those tariffs as necessary pain for future gain, but the benefits haven’t arrived. The limited trade deal Trump struck with China late last year—a deal that did not result in the lifting of any tariffs—was supposed to boost Chinese purchases of American agricultural goods, manufacturing supplies, and energy. But data tracked by the Peterson Institute for International Economics shows that China is not coming close to meeting those obligations. When asked about it, Trump has mostly shrugged off any concerns.

Trump’s tariffs hiked costs for American businesses and consumers, and the trade war’s benefits appear to be illusory. Biden absolutely should want to scrap Trump’s trade barriers. Unfortunately, Pence is wrong to promise that he will.

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The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed

The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/26/2020 – 23:45

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

All over the Western world ever since 9/11 there have been incremental steps towards what many liberty advocates would call a “police state”; a system in which governments are no longer restricted by the boundaries of civil liberties and are given the power to do just about anything they want in the name of public safety.

The use of “the law” as a tool for injecting tyranny into a culture is the first tactic of all totalitarians.

The idea is that by simply writing government criminality into the law books, that criminality somehow becomes justified by virtue of legal recognition. It’s all very circular. Whenever government abuse of the people is initiated, it’s always initiated in the name of what’s “best for society as a whole”. To save society, the individuals that make up a society must be sublimated or destroyed. This mentality is the complete opposite of what the Founding Fathers in America fought and died for, but as Thomas Jefferson once said:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

In countries like Australia, which claim to value Western democratic principles of liberty and rule by the people, the perception is that civil rights are codified into the legal framework just as they are in the US. However, there are some glaring differences and issues; specifically, Australian citizens (like many European citizens) have absolutely no means to compel their government or the elites that influence their government to limit themselves. It is these nations, in which the populations have been mostly disarmed and pacified, that any agenda for tyranny will first be established. But we will get to that in a moment…

Make no mistake, there is a very OPEN and easily identifiable agenda on the part of globalists to establish a heavily centralized police state system in every country they are able. This is not “conspiracy theory”, this is conspiracy fact.

For many years now there have been numerous analysts, economists and geopolitical experts in the alternative media that have predicted and warned the public about the globalist strategy of “order out of chaos”. In other words, the ultra-wealthy power brokers that hold influence over most governments on Earth seek to “reshape” the existing social order through the creation of crisis and disaster. By engineering public desperation, they hope to lure us into accepting restrictions on our freedoms that we would have never considered otherwise.

The goal of a single global economy and government has been spoken of by elites time and time again, yet it is still to this day called “conspiracy theory” or “paranoid delusion”. I could quote these elites and their organizations all day long, but I’ll cite a few choice statements to make my point.

As former Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton and Council on Foreign Relations member Strobe Talbot wrote in an article for Time Magazine in 1992 titled ‘America Abroad: The Birth Of The Global Nation’:

In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

As elitist and Fabian Socialist HG Wells outlines in his non-fiction treatise titled ‘The New World Order’:

“…When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.”

And how about one of my favorite revealing quotes from Trilateral Commission member Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson? He wrote in the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg. 558) in an article titled ‘The Hard Road To World Order’:

In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”

Members of globalist foundations and think-tanks like the CFR have inhabited nearly every US government office and presidential cabinet for the past several decades. This includes the two dozen or so CFR members in Donald Trump’s cabinet.  Draining the swamp? Not going to happen.

As Harpers Magazine candidly revealed in a 1958 expose titled ‘School For Statesmen’:

“The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common, they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for “the purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all powerful one world government.”

The easiest method for the globalists to get what they openly say they want is to either conjure a crisis or exploit an existing crisis in order to “erode sovereignty”. The current pandemic fits this plan perfectly, but before sovereignty can be eliminated on a national level they need to undermine sovereignty on an individual level first.

Actions within the US and nations allied to the US suggest an accelerated attack on personal liberties is at hand.

There are sister foundations to the CFR in many other countries. For example, in Australia they have the highly embedded and influential Strategic Policy Institute, which has been consistently advocating for complete centralization of government power in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Their stated plan is to concentrate policy administration in the hands of a new “commission” or “department” made up of the “brightest minds”. This commission would not be tasked with getting Australia back to normal, but convincing the public to ACCEPT the “new normal” beyond the pandemic.

The ASPI enthusiastically heralds the idea in an article titled ‘Coronavirus Response A Chance To Reimagine Future For Australia’:

The agenda of such a department now is not about getting Australia back to normal after the pandemic. It’s about re-imagining what Australia can be and how we can thrive and prosper in our future beyond the coronavirus and in light of drought, bushfires and climate change. Think about the kind of new economy we can have after the forced, rapid adoption of dispersed home working and schooling through digital means. We can be the leading digital economy the prime minister desired before the pandemic, not by 2030 but much earlier.”

This reminds me immediately of the post 9/11 push to rapidly remove constitutional protections while the public was blinded by fear and confusion.  As US globalist Rahm Emanuel would say:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

The ASPI reveals the true agenda, which is the complete federalization and unilateral implementation of law without public approval. The plan is to do this by exploiting the pandemic event to its full potential and then applying the rapid societal changes in government structure. This will then be carried on long after the coronavirus disappears in the name of the economy, welfare programs and so-called “global warming”. The pandemic response is just a means to an end, and the end game is total dominance of the population.

I focus on Australia and the surrounding regions in particular because this seems to be the place where globalists are enforcing technocratic policies first. Or at the very least, they are test-running their strategy and using Australians as guinea pigs. When the ASPI says they plan to keep the pandemic changes in place well after the virus is gone, they aren’t just talking about shifting into a digital economy.

Right now, Australia and New Zealand are slamming citizens with perhaps the most draconian measures yet in the Western world. These are policies that the elites want to introduce everywhere, but they are going full bore in Australia, and it just keeps getting worse.

In various areas of Australia “Level 4” response measures have been enforced for at least the next six weeks, including curfews, strict mask policies including people being forced to wear masks OUTSIDE (contrary to everything science and virology has to say about low possibility of transmission in sunlight and open air), residents are not allowed to travel more than 3 miles from their homes and only one person from a household is allowed to leave at any given time. Citizens violating these rules are subject to $10,000 fines or arrest. And yes, people are being arrested simply for not wearing mask or being too far from home.

In New Zealand, the situation has become exceedingly grim and I think it should be treated as a warning to Americans specifically as to our potential future is we allow the narrative of “public health security” to be turned into a vehicle for tyranny.

While Australia has been using quarantine facilities to force people considered high risk to isolate, NZ quarantine camps are now fully under the control of the military, and ALL citizens that test positive or are suspected to have Covid can be separated from their families and placed in the camps, which are hotels converted into prisons.

It is the complete erasure if personal liberties all because of an increase in cases which has amounted to a mere 525 deaths in Australia and 22 deaths in New Zealand.

I believe the reason Australia and New Zealand have been targeted with this level of restrictions first is because they have been almost fully disarmed and have no means to defend themselves from government overstep. That said, I see signs that similar measures will be attempted in the US as well. In states like New York, there are low key programs to set up Covid checkpoints stopping and checking vehicles coming into the state. This is where heavier restrictions start.

First, checkpoints will be established in the name of keeping infected people out of a state or city. Then, those same checkpoints will be used to keep people from leaving a state or city. Then, checkpoints will be set up at random to test people for fever or symptoms of illness. If allowed to continue, the natural progression of checkpoints is to terrify the population into not traveling anywhere for any reason. Like in Australia and NZ, people will effectively be imprisoned in their homes. At this stage, bringing in laws or executive orders punishing people for leaving home will be easier; they will have already acclimated to being trapped at home anyway.

Furthermore, elites and globalists within the US are calling for hard lockdowns for at least six weeks, just like the Level 4 lockdowns in Australia. Federal Reserve member Neel Kashkari recently asserted that Americans are saving more, thus they should be subjected to hard lockdowns “because they can afford it”.

Virginia is planning mandatory Covid vaccinations, even though vaccines for SARS like viruses have proven impossible to develop in the past, and rushed vaccines have a history of harming or killing people rather than protecting them. Set aside the issue that giving government the power to force citizens to inject anything into their bodies is immoral.

What’s next? Covid camps? Well, yes, unless Americans make a hard stand. Mainstream media outlets have been suggesting this strategy for months. The Washington Post applauded the use of forced isolation camps in other nations and asks why the US has not yet used them beyond ports for foreign travelers? The reason is this: Many Americans will not go along with such measures, and will use force in-kind against anyone trying to lock them up because of a virus that is a moderate threat at most to a small percentage of the population.

That said, don’t assume that the establishment will not eventually try it here. They will. Be ready when they do so. Look to the actions in places like Australia and NZ and ask yourself, am I willing to go along with that? And if so, for how long? Because the globalists intend for these restrictions to become the “new normal”. They intend for this nightmare to last forever.

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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32y8OmY Tyler Durden