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The Corruption of Science. The Hydroxychloroquine Lancet Study Scandal /200610
The Corruption of Science. The Hydroxychloroquine Lancet
Study Scandal. Who Was Behind It? Anthony Fauci's Intent To Block HCQ on Behalf of Big Pharma
Dr. Anthony Fauci has not put forth a treatment
which could be applied against COVID-19. What he is saying is that there is no treatment. And then he
endorses the fake scientific study by Surgisphere which was subsequently retracted by The Lancet.
The Guardian has revealed the scandal behind the hydroxychloroquine study which was intent on blocking HCQ as a cure for COVID-19. "Dozens of scientific papers co-authored by the chief executive of the US tech company behind the Lancet hydroxychloroquine study scandal are now being audited, including one that a scientific integrity expert claims contains images that appear to have been digitally manipulated. The audit follows a Guardian investigation that found the company, Surgisphere, used suspect data in major scientific studies that were published and then retracted by world-leading medical journals, including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. ....
According to The Lancet:
... several concerns were raised with respect to the veracity of the data and analyses conducted by Surgisphere Corporation and its founder and our co-author, Sapan Desai, in our publication. We launched an independent third-party peer review of Surgisphere ... As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process
The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database, according to the Guardian could not be verified. It was false.
"I am truly Sorry"
Surgisphere CEO Dr. Sapan Desai was not in charge of the study. The lead author was Harvard Medical School professor Mandeep Mehra:
"I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry."
CEO Dr. Sapan Desai took the blame. Who was behind him?
The Surgisphere Scientific Scam. Who was behind it? Who "commissioned" this Report?
Was the pharmaceutical industry and vaccine lobby group behind this initiative? The Lancet acknowledges that the study received funding from the William Harvey Distinguished Chair in Advanced Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital which is held by Dr. Mandeep Mehra. In this regard, it is worth noting that Brigham Health has a major contract with Big Pharma's Gilead Sciences Inc, related to the development of the Remdesivir drug for the treatment of COVID-19. The Gilead-Brigham Health project was initiated in March 2020.
Was the Surgisphere study intended to provide a justification to block the use of HCQ, as recommended by Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to president Trump? Upon reading the study (prior to its retraction), "Dr Fauci, … grinned as he told CNN that "the data shows hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment …"Referring to the Surgisphere report: "The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for it [HCQ]," said Dr. Fauci. (quoted by CNN).
Here is the CNN's authoritative assessment of Surgisphere's report (prior to The Lancet's Retraction):
Seriously ill Covid-19 patients who were treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine were more likely to die or develop dangerous irregular heart rhythms, according to a large observational study [by Surgisphere] published Friday [May 22, 2020] in the medical journal The Lancet.
And Did CNN "retract" its earlier endorsement of this "fake scientific study"?
Dr. Anthony Fauci who is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has from the very outset led the campaign against hydroxychloroquine (largely on behalf of Big Pharma) invoking similar "scientific arguments" against HCQ, saying categorically there was no cure to COVID-19, and the only solution was the vaccine.
According to the Spectator:
The campaign to destroy hydroxychloroquine has been waged relentlessly, both by competitor pharmaceutical companies and those who want to destroy the US economy to advance their political agenda. It is shocking that it has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. But although the corruption of science for political and/ or financial gain has become a defining characteristic of our age, it is not a new story.
The publication of the Surgisphere study had an immediate impact: According to the Guardian, "Surgisphere data led to global trials of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 being halted in May, because it appeared to show the drug increased deaths in Covid-19 patients".
"Higher Risks of Death" if you take HCQ, according to the study. In the days following the fake Surgisphere Lancet report on May 22, several countries including Belgium, France, Italy, acted to halt the use of hydroxychloroquine. The study had concluded patients taking the anti-malaria drug had a higher risk of death than those who were not taking the medication
It is worth noting that prior to the conduct of the Surgisphere study, Dr. Fauci stated categorically that the use of HCQ had not been studied in relation to the coronavirus. "No proven drug": "Not Enough Known". Nonsensical and false statements.
What Fauci failed to mention is that Chloroquine had been "studied" and tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. Chloroquine was used in 2002 and tested against SARS-1 coronavirus in a study under the auspices of the CDC published in 2005 in the peer reviewed Virology Journal. The main conclusion of the article was that: Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread. It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.
The main author Dr. Martin J. Vincent together with several of his colleagues were affiliated with the Special Pathogens Branch of the Atlanta based CDC together with co-authors from a Montreal based partner research institution. The main conclusions of this study are that Chloroquine is a tested drug and can be used for SARS-corona virus infections.
Lancet: the article was retracted
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been deliberately blocking a drug which was endorsed by the CDC 15 years ago for treatment of SARS-1 Coronavirus. More recently, it has been used extensively in a number of countries in relation to the Coronavirus or SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak. Whose interests is he serving?
The original source of this article is Global Research: Click Here
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
For the Rich to Keep Getting Richer, We Have to Sacrifice Everything Else /200618
For the Rich to Keep Getting Richer, We Have to Sacrifice Everything Else
Original Source: Click Here.
Charles Hugh Smith
They're hoping the endless circuses and trails of bread crumbs will forever distract us from their plunder and the inequalities built into America's financial system..
The primary story of the past 20 years is the already-rich have gotten much richer, with destabilizing economic, social and political consequences. The Federal Reserve and its army of academic / think-tank / financier apologists, lackeys, toadies, apparatchiks and sycophants have several rather thin excuses to explain this away, including:
1. Gee, wealth/income inequality isn't quite as bad as everyone claims. (Actually, it's worse, but never mind unwelcome reality. Let us prove yet again how statistics can always be gamed.)
2. Wealth/income inequality is bad, but it's not the Fed's or policymakers' faults; the causes are all beyond our control: globalization, winner-take-all disruptive technologies, etc. We're just little old innocent bystanders. It's like blaming us for gravity, for goodness sakes.
3. Gosh darn it, the Fed is just trying to help the little gal and guy by digitally printing $6.4 trillion and giving it to parasitic, predatory financiers, banks, corporations and speculators; we're mystified how giving trillions to the already-super-wealthy somehow made them richer.
We've got hundreds of PhD economists working on some arcane mathematical models to help us understand the mystery of why giving trillions to the already-super-wealthy somehow made them richer. It's a real puzzle, but we have our best people on it-- yes siree, our best people.
4. We're perplexed why so little of the trillions we've handed the already-super-rich has trickled down to the little gals and guys struggling to keep their heads above water. We thought the last big tax-cut giveaway would do the trick, but dang, we're guessing it wasn't enough.
So we're thinking that giving the already-super-wealthy another $3 trillion or so might do the trick, and they might tip their maids, dog-walkers, gig drivers, yacht repair people, et al. a few extra bucks--but then maybe not, because the already-super-wealthy tend to be as greedy as all get-out. But we'll keep trying to shovel a few more trillion their way because there's just no other way to help the little people except to print up another trillion and give it to the already-super-wealthy.
What the well-paid army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, apparatchiks and sycophants never mention is that we as a nation have had to sacrifice everything else to ensure the rich will always get richer. Democracy was sacrificed so long ago there's no cultural memory of a time when "democracy" wasn't a pay-to-play bidding war between vested interests, insiders, billionaires, global corporations and political action committees pushing self-serving agendas.
The entire political order of the U.S. boils down to follow the money, as no cause or policy is what it claims. Somebody is inevitably angling for a self-serving sluice of cash that is politely hidden behind noble-sounding rhetoric (tm) delivered via micro-targeted ads served by the social media and advert-search monopolies.
Social cohesion has also been sacrificed, as there's nothing binding the nation together except I got mine greed, narcissism and anger, all of which fuel a blood-soaked circus of fragmentation and disorder.
The systemic asymmetries are so vast, so glaring, so sinful, that the nation's institutions have destroyed their credibility in their frantic efforts to justify the inequalities in wealth, income and power. Alarmingly, institutional insiders are completely tone-deaf when it comes to how their self-justifying bleating plays out in public.
Academics who've gorged on the $2 trillion in student loan debt that's turned the nation's youth into debt-serfs have no idea how lame they sound when they shrilly insist that their class is so valuable that, well, it's worth any price. Students should be thankful they received such incredible value for their $100,000. As for how students are supposed to pay it all back with crushing mountains of interest due the predatory lenders--not our problem.
Healthcare and Big Pharma CEOs must not realize how offensively clownish their defense of $1 million medical bills sound to people who are being forced into bankruptcy so the CEOs can collect an extra $20 million in stock options this quarter.
Yeah, we can really tell how much you care about our health. Bleat away, bozos.
So let's make sure we understand how America's system works. If you're a small business owner whose on the ropes, the federal government may loan you some money, but you have to personally guarantee the loan, meaning if your business fails, you're on the hook as an individual or household to pay the loan back with interest.
If you can't, then personal bankruptcy is your only alternative, meaning you're left with the '97 Corolla and the clothes on your back. Have a nice life, bucko, maybe you'll restore your credit in five years.
If you're the CEO of an airline or equivalent Corporate America darling, it's a much different story. That you borrowed $46 billion and blew it buying back your own stocks so you could cash in millions of dollars in stock options that boosted your personal wealth--never mind that, here's $50 billion in bailout money that won't require you to make any personal sacrifice whatsoever.
No clawback on the billions squandered buying back stock to enrich insiders and rapacious financiers: perish the thought that corporate management would ever be held responsible for anything--certainly not for fraud or embezzlement.
Consider this data base of 6,300 major corporate fines and settlements from the early 1990s to 2015 compiled by Jon Morse. Nobody made any personal sacrifices or paid any personal fines or served any prison time for any of these thousands of violations.
If you want $100 million to buy back shares in your own company, the Federal Reserve and the rest of Wall Street is delighted to help you. That the buyback will increase your personal wealth by $50 million for doing absolutely nothing for society or the nation--you generated no new goods, services, innovations, research or jobs--that's the way our system works.
Generating goods, services and jobs is for chumps. Get over it. The real money is made bellying up to the Fed's free money for financiers spigot.
If you want to save your small business--well, try working a second shift for free.
If you can't pay the staggering medical bills (neatly compiled in an inch thick sheaf of invoices), hey, life isn't fair, declare bankruptcy and start over, you're only 63.
What all the entrenched insiders in America's parasitic, predatory institutions don't dare admit is that to rig the system so they'll keep getting richer, we've had to sacrifice everything else. Having stripped the society and economy bare, there's nothing left but sound and fury, as if they're hoping the endless circuses and trails of bread crumbs will forever distract us from their plunder and the inequalities built into America's financial system.
Here's looking at you, Federal Reserve: here's a chart of your handiwork.
Original Source: Click Here.
The Fed's Casino Is In Flames, But Please Continue Gambling /200618
The Fed's Casino Is In Flames, But Please Continue Gambling
Charles Hugh Smith
Here's the thing about gambling: risk cannot be made to disappear, it can only be transferred to others.
Those taking seats at the gaming tables in the Federal Reserve's casino believe that they can't lose. Or more precisely, any losses they suffer will quickly be made good by the house, i.e. the Fed, which can digitally print as much currency as needed to restore order to the gambling.
The punters crowding around the tables have forgotten that gambling is inherently risky. The Fed can digitally print currency, but it can't force punters to play.
Unfortunately for all the punters crowding around the tables, the casino is on fire. The Fed's rigged games are in flames, and Head Tout/Fixer Jay Powell is telling all the nervous gamblers who smell smoke to please stay at the tables and continue gambling, the fire is under control.
But of course it's not under control, it's raging out of control, and to maintain the illusion of control, the Fed is buying chips in its own games: buying junk bond funds and corporate bonds.
The Fed's casino has operated on a simple principle: the Fed digitally prints trillions of dollars and hands the dough to broker-dealers in exchange for Treasury bonds, mortgage backed securities and now, junk bond funds and corporate bonds.
The new currency flowed into financial assets as banks, corporations and financiers borrowed money, leveraged it up and bought back their own shares or bought stocks.
What the punters don't understand is this mechanism isn't guaranteed. The players getting the freshly created dough don't have to buy stocks or junk bonds. They only do so when they are confident that there are plenty of greater fools at the tables to buy these assets at higher prices.
The pool of greater fools is drying up, and so the Fed has been forced to start buying its own gambling chips directly. This is an act of complete desperation, yet the punters at the tables who smell the smoke don't yet realize the fire is out of control and the entire casino will soon be engulfed in flames.
Here's the thing about gambling: risk cannot be made to disappear, it can only be transferred to others. The absence of risk in the Fed's casino is an illusion. The Fed's casino has transferred all the well-hidden risk to the entire financial system, which is now in danger as the Fed's burning casino triggers a conflagration few even imagine and virtually none think is possible.
So by all means, believe the soothing words of Head Tout/Fixer Jay Powell if you want, but realize that words and digitally printed currency won't make risk disappear. Rather, they only increase the risk of the fire spreading to the entire financial system.
Original Source: Click Here.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Trashing hydroxychloroquine based on faulty Surgisphere data /200604
Rush to trash hydroxychloroquine based on faulty Surgisphere data exposes fundamental flaws in profit-based medical ‘science’
4 Jun, 2020 10:30 | Get short URL
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
As the WHO and prestigious medical journal the Lancet back away from questionable data provided by healthcare analytics firm Surgisphere, ulterior motives for the rush to demonize hydroxychloroquine become clear.
The World Health Organization (WHO) sheepishly resumed testing the off-patent malaria drug hydroxychloroquine on coronavirus patients on Wednesday after pausing that arm of its ‘Solidarity’ clinical trial based on data that appeared to show the drug contributed to higher death rates among test subjects. That data, it turned out, came from a tiny US healthcare analytics firm called Surgisphere, and calling it faulty would be excessively charitable.
Not only is Surgisphere a company lacking in medical expertise – its employees included an “adult” entertainer and a science-fiction writer – but its CEO Sapan Desai co-authored two of the damning studies that used the firm’s data to smear hydroxychloroquine, already thoroughly demonized in the media thanks to its promotion by US President Donald Trump, as a killer. All data is sourced to a proprietary database supposedly containing a veritable ocean of real-time, detailed patient information yet curiously absent from existing medical literature.
The Surgisphere-tainted study appeared to show increased risk of in-hospital deaths and heart problems with no disease-fighting benefits, confirming the suspicions of medical-industry naysayers already inclined to hate the off-patent drug due to the lack of profit potential and Trump’s incessant boosterism. Italy, France, and Germany rushed to ban hydroxychloroquine, citing “an increased risk for adverse reactions with little or no benefit.”
But such a shameless character assassination performed against a potentially-lifesaving drug – especially one with a decades-long track record of safety in malaria, lupus, and arthritis patients that came highly recommended by some of the world’s most eminent disease experts, including France’s Didier Raoult – could only be accomplished with help from industry prejudice. It required ignoring numerous existing studies showing hydroxychloroquine was beneficial in treating early-stage Covid-19 patients, as well as anecdotal reports from thousands of doctors who’d successfully used it.
It also required trusting a fly-by-night company with next to no internet or media presence to make decisions that could affect the lives of millions of people. It’s not like there weren’t warning signs Surgisphere was something other than the top-notch medical analytics firm it presented itself as. The company began life as a textbook publisher in 2008 and hired most of its 11 employees two month ago, according to an investigation by the Guardian, yet it claimed ownership of a massive international database of 96,000 patients in 1,200 hospitals worldwide. One expert interviewed by the outlet said it would be difficult for even a national statistics agency to do in years what Surgisphere had supposedly done in weeks, calling the database “almost certainly a scam.” Yet no one at the Lancet or WHO thought to look a gift horse in the mouth – not when that gift drove a stake through the heart of hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatment.
And while Australian researchers found flaws in the Surgisphere data just days after the May 22 publication of the Lancet study, noting that the number of Covid-19 deaths cited by the study as coming from five hospitals exceeded the entirety of Covid-19 deaths recorded in Australia at that time, the Lancet – instead of investigating just who this Surgisphere company really was, and why it had made such a glaring mistake – merely published a minor retraction related to the Australian data and put the controversy to bed.
The full-frontal assault on hydroxychloroquine was instead allowed to continue unchecked in the media, as mainstream outlets focused their energies on fluffing up remdesivir – a costly, untested drug manufactured by drug maker Gilead that has so far produced lackluster results in clinical trials – and stumping for an eventual vaccine. Hydroxychloroquine’s off-patent status meant it was a dead end as far as profits were concerned, while remdesivir and whatever vaccine is ultimately green-lighted will make a lot of people very rich. Perhaps hoping to throw their audiences off the real reason for their hydroxychloroquine hatred, several outlets hinted that Trump stood to make money off the drug (which costs about 60 cents per pill) – but even Snopes, no fan of the ‘Bad Orange Man’, had to pour cold water on that speculation.
The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine have – belatedly – published “expressions of concern” about the Surgisphere hydroxychloroquine study, and an independent audit is being conducted. But the problem of biased health authorities selectively embracing some trial results while rejecting others is unlikely to stop there.
The Lancet study is hardly the only one to show hydroxychloroquine lacks efficacy in treating Covid-19. Multiple studies conducted by the US National Institutes of Health on hospitalized (i.e. severely-ill) coronavirus patients have yielded poor results, but even the drug’s most ardent evangelists acknowledge it doesn’t help end-stage or very sick patients. Raoult has even claimed France banned the drug’s use in all but the most severely ill patients in order to discredit it as a treatment. The US National Institutes of Health was publishing studies in its journal Virology touting chloroquine as “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” as far back as 2005, yet ‘coronavirus czar’ Anthony Fauci throws shade at the drug whenever he gets a chance.
As long as deadly diseases like Covid-19 are seen as profit sources first and human rights issues second (or third, or tenth…), treatments that aren’t profitable will always be marginalized in favor of costly and frequently less-effective pharmaceuticals. Drug industry profiteering has already killed hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people in the US alone. Taking the profit motive out of healthcare can help ensure its body count stays as low as possible.
Original Source: Click Here.
The Guardian: Covid-19 study on hydroxychloroquine use questioned by 120 researchers and medical professionals
The Daily Mail: More than 120 top scientists criticise a series of FLAWS in study that found Trump-backed hydroxychloroquine drug raised the risk of death to Covid-19 patients and halted global trials
Open Letter: An open letter to Mehra et al and The Lancet: Concerns regarding the statistical analysis and data integrity
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Thursday, May 28, 2020
TINA's Orgy: Anything Goes, Winners Take All /200524
TINA's Orgy: Anything Goes, Winners Take All
Charles Hugh Smith
What nobody dares whisper is 'there is no alternative to collapse' because the system is now too fragile and brittle to survive.
TINA--there is no alternative--is throwing an orgy of money-creation, and it's one for the ages: The Federal Reserve has created over $3 trillion out of thin air in a few months and invited all the usual parasites, predators and speculators to the orgy.
You and I, mere taxpayers? We get to watch as our "betters" feast on the Fed's limitless bounty of free money for financiers and other parasites and predators. Of course we don't get a clear view of the proceedings; the orgy is all behind closed doors.
What we see is the threadbare comedy of Fed Chair Jay Powell coming out of the orgy to assure us that the orgy is all for the good of the country--ha-ha-ha. Those gorging on the Fed feast inside are in danger of laughing so hard at Powell's comedy routine they might choke.
Your share of the orgy is a bowl of thin gruel: $1,200. That wasn't distributed out of kindness or generosity; like all federal giveaways, it's real purpose is to give you enough cash to make your loan payments so all the parasites and predators in the Fed's orgy won't experience the terrible suffering caused by debt-serfs defaulting.
The excuse for the orgy is always the same: there is no alternative. We have to bail out the greedy corporations that borrowed billions to buy back their own stocks, the corporations that sold junk debt to finance their bonuses and dividends, the financiers who bought the risky debt, the speculators who front-run the Fed's purchases of assets and on and on in an endless parade of fraud and corruption--because if we don't bail out the speculators and other parasites, the whole financial system will implode and that would be terrible.
Terrible for who? To answer the question, we need to ponder the fundamental nature of the Fed and our financial system, which can be summarized in one line: anything goes, and winners take all.
Anything goes, because money buys political influence and so what was once illegal--buying back your own stock, advertising medications directly to consumers, etc.-- are not just made legal but normalized by constant propaganda in the corporate media that these forms of legalized looting are good for the nation because... well, that doesn't matter, just take our word for it.
When anything goes, the winners take all. This is how we've ended up with a unstable, fragile economy dominated by a handful of corporations in each sector whose sole purpose is to maximize profits by any means available, and it just so happens the most profitable arrangements are monopoly and cartels, and so that's what we have: an economy of high costs, enormous profits, low-quality goods and services for the bottom 95% and an extreme concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the winners.
This dynamic also characterizes the public sector, where anything goes if you can get away with it has generated a few winners-- employees of small school districts getting salaries of $350,000 and pensions to match, and so on--and a multitude of losers as actual services for the public decay even as costs soar. Naturally, questions about this are dismissed with TINA: there is no alternative.
The fragility of such a system is so extreme that the winners' only hope to hold onto their booty is to persuade us that the simulations of open markets and democracy they conjure up are "real" in the sense that we can't really see the Emperor's fine clothing but we accept that this must be a flaw in our own sight, rather than what it really is: self-serving institutionalized delusion: believe us when we assure you that there is no alternative.
So as the greediest and most parasitic few gorge on TINA's orgy, try not to bust a gut laughing at Jay Powell's comedy act justifying the orgy because really, there is no alternative other than a collapse of what deserves to collapse and what will collapse despite (or as a result of) the Fed's manic money-printing.
What nobody dares whisper is there is no alternative to collapse because the system is now too fragile and brittle to survive. TINA may get the last laugh after all.
Original Source: Click Here.
The Campaign Against HCQ /200528
The Campaign Against HCQ—Part II
Paul Craig Roberts
A few years ago the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a paper touting the safety of HCQ. But this was before HCQ with zinc was found effective if used earlier enough against Covid-19. Covid-19 turned HCQ’s effectiveness into a big problem for Big Pharma’s big profits.
The solution was another study by medical professionals some of whom have ties to Big Pharma and none of whom, apparently, are involved in the treatment of Covid patients. The study lumps together people in different stages of the disease and undergoing different treatments. It touts its large sample, but many of the patients in the sample received treatment too late after the virus had reached their heart and other vital organs. Most likely the people who died from heart failure died as a result of the virus, not from HCQ.
To be effective treatment has to stop the virus early. Waiting until the patient must be hospitalized has given the virus too much of a head start. Every doctor, and there are many, who reports success with the HCQ treatment stresses early treatment. President Trump used a two-week treatment with HCQ as a prophylactic as he was constantly coming into contact with people who tested positive for the virus. Many medical professionals who are treating Covid patients also use HCQ as a prophylactic.
The Lancet study was a rush job as it was essential for Big Pharma to prevent the spread of the HCQ treatment and awareness of its safety and effectiveness. The study’s authors completed the data collection around the middle of April and the study was published on May 22. As soon as it appeared, it was used to close down the World Health Organization’s clinical trial of hydoxychloroquine in coronavirus patients citing safety concerns. Most likely, the trial was aborted in order to prevent an official agency from finding out that HCQ worked.
The media, of course, used the suspended trial to cast more doubt on Trump’s judgment for recommending and using the treatment, the implication being that Trump had put himself at more risk from a heart attack than from the virus itself.
The Daily Mail, which is often somewhat skeptical of official reports, even misreported French virologist Didier Raoult’s report ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/04/11/professor-didier-raoult-releases-the-results-of-a-new-hydroxychloroquine-treatment-study-on-1061-patients/ ) of his success with treating 1,061 patients with HCQ/AZ as consisting of only a small sample of 30 patients ( https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8355273/WHO-says-SUSPENDING-trial-anti-malaria-drug-hydoxychloroquine-coronavirus-patients.html ). A small sample is considered to be inconclusive. Thus 1,061 people became 30.
The Lancet study claims a high mortality from HCQ treatment, reporting a death rate ranging from 5.1% to 13.8%. In response to a journalist when asked about this claim, Didier Raoult said that he and has colleagues have followed 4,000 of their patients so far. They have had 36 deaths and none from heart problrems for a death rate of 0.009%. According to The Lancet study, he should have between 204 and 552 patients dead from heart problems. He has zero. Raoult had more than 10,000 cardiograms analysed by rythmologists (a special kind of cardiologist) searching for any sign of heart problems.
NIH’s Dr. Fauci denies that Raoult’s hard evidence is evidence. On May 27 Fauci said, without showing shame of his ignorance or his lie, that there’s no evidence that shows the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective at treating COVID-19. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/499704-fauci-data-shows-no-evidence-hydroxychloroquine-is-effective-at-treating?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=30230
Perhaps what Fauci means is that no study undertaken by NIH or another Big Pharma friendly official body has been done and that only such studies constitute evidence.
When hard evidence such as Raoult’s is suppressed and misreported while “studies” doctored to produce a predetermined conclusion that serves Big Pharma profits are rushed into publication, we know that money has pushed ethics out of medical research. A number of concerned people have been telling us this for some time. We are past due to listen to them.
Private medicine is profit driven, which makes it susceptible to fraud. In long ago days fraud was restrained by the moral character of doctors and the respect for truth of researchers. These restraints, never perfect, have eroded as greed turned everything, integrity itself, into a commodity that is bought and sold.
The intent is to bury HCQ as a low cost effective treatment and to put in its place a high cost alternative whether effective or not, and to supplement this enhancement of profits with mass vaccination which might do us more harm than the virus itself. Big Pharma could care less. The only value it knows is profit.
This intent has garnered the support of the French, Belgium and Italian governments. Using The Lancet study and WHO’s termination of its HCQ trial as the excuse, the French government revoked its decree authorizing HCQ treatment. Belgium’s health ministry issued a warning against the use of HCQ except in registered clinical trials. Italy’s health agency wants HCQ’s use banned outside of clinical trials and suspended authorization to use HCQ as a Covid-19 treatment. https://www.rt.com/news/489904-italy-belgium-france-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus/
Does this mean that Raoult and his team who by treating Covid patients with HCQ have achieved the remarkable low death rate of 0.009% are prohibited from using the proven cure to save lives? Will Raoult and his team be imprisoned if they continue to save lives? What about the people who will die from the three government’s prevention of a safe and effective treatment? Will France, Belgium, and Italy accept responsibility for these lost lives?
I can’t avoid wondering if the revolving door between Big Pharma and the NIH and CDC which corrupts US public health decisions also operates in France, Belgium and Italy. Are European health officials elevating themselves by climbing over the dead bodies of their victims?
Original Source: Click Here.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
China /200517
China
Paul Craig Roberts
America can’t do without an enemy. An enemy is what funds America’s largest industry—military spending—and an enemy provides a national security focus which holds our tower of babel together.
During the Obama regime Russia was re-established as The Enemy. Trump’s intent to normalize relations with Russia, that is, to erase Russia’s enemy status, brought fire and brimstone down on his head from the military/security complex. The CIA Director actually denounced the elected American president as a traitor. The defeated Democrats, seeing the formidable military/security complex aligned against Trump, jumped in to recover their political loss by concocting “Russiagate.” Trump survived, but lost three years of his first term to a hoax created to drive him from office.
In Trump’s fourth year, the enemy has been relocated. Now it is China. Several developments contributed to changing the enemy to China. One was China’s growing willingness to stand up to Washington’s provocations and to speak back. One was Washington’s need for someone to blame for America’s large trade deficit. Another was the realization of China’s manufacturing and industrial prowess and the leadership China is taking in technology as exemplified by Huawei’s lead in 5G. Disturbed US communications technology companies, neoconservative hegemonic ambitions, and prospects for more military spending to contain China were given lobbying power by Trump’s verbal fight with China. These conflicts were given more potential by the rise of Covid-19 blamed on China.
A US Senator and right-wing radio speak of Washington making China pay for the cost of Covid-19 to the US by reneging on US Treasury debt obligations to China. It is hard to imagine a more stupid or implausible idea. As China could simply sell the bonds into the international market, Washington would need a list of identification numbers on China’s holdings and post them as instruments on which interest and principle would not be paid. As Treasuries are bought and sold in the market, it is not clear that the US Treasury knows who holds which bonds.
Assuming this scheme could be successfully implemented, the problems begin. Reneging on debt is the practice of third world countries. If the US adopts this practice, other countries will wonder if their holdings are next. The market for Treasuries could disappear, leaving the Federal Reserve as the only purchaser. There would be no point in issuing bonds. Money would be printed to finance the deficit.
This, in turn, could affect the willingness of other countries to hold dollar-denominated assets such as equities. This would have negative effects on the stock market. The US dollar could lose its role as world reserve currency, which would mean that Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money.
Additionally, China has a range of retaliatory measures. The production facilities of many US corporations, such as Apple, are located in China. China is the favored location for the offshored production of US corporations. These facilities could be nationalized. In a number of cases the production facilities are not owned by the US firms. Instead, the US firms contract out their production to Chinese firms. China could stop the production of the products for US firms, steal the patents or brand name, or simply continue the production and re-brand it as a Chinese product. As the US does not respect laws of other countries or international law, there is no reason for China to respect US law.
The Chinese have mistakenly purchased a number of assets within the US. If the values of these assets equal or exceed the US assets located in China, the retaliatory policy would not pay for China.
When it comes to law, the US does not play fair. Washington has tried to hamstring Huawei by blacklisting the company and by pressuring NATO allies to reject Huawei technological products such as 5G. This policy has probably done more harm to US semiconductor corporations than to China as it has complicated US sales of chips to Huawei.
Washington’s effort to constrain Huawei’s international business also comprises an attack on the supply chains of global manufacturing, which has to displease first world global corporations. It assaults the idea of global dependence.
The US trade deficit with China is not China’s fault. It is the fault of the global US corporations that offshored their production to China. When the offshored products, such as Apple computers and iPhones, are brought back to the US for sale, they count as imports. Thus, it is US firms such as Apple, Nike, and Levi that are responsible for the US trade deficit, a responsibility shared by neoliberal economists who tauted globalism, which has come at the expense of first world work forces.
Globalism gave China its manufacturing base. China should use this base to develop its massive consumer market. It is not globalism that any longer serves China’s interest. With the largest consumer market in the world, China should shift its focus to internal development. The internal market is so vast that exports should be of no concern to China. China, awash in US dollar reserves that Washington threatens to disavow, has no need for foreign reserves. China’s strength is in her economy. This strength should be developed. The intelligent path for China is to throw away neoliberal junk economics and develop a Chinese economy.
This was the American way during the first half of my life. The US economy was so large that US firms were awash in profits without recourse to sales abroad. Producing domestically for domestic consumption meant that high value-added, high productivity jobs remained in the US where they fueled the growth of real income that guaranteed a rising aggregate demand, which supported a growing economy and ladders of upward mobility. Once offshoring began, these ladders were dismantled, and today the result is that American consumers lack the income growth to drive the economy.
China has won from globalism while America has lost. To avoid the American decline, China needs to cash out of globalism and construct its domestic economy. Not only would this be very advantageous for China, it would benefit the cause of peace by reducing points of conflict between the US and China.
Original Source: Click Here.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine: A Cardiologist's View /200516
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Original Source: Click Here.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Truth in America R.I.P. /200514
Truth in America R.I.P.
Paul Craig Roberts
In “freedom and democracy” America there is only official truth, and it is a lie. A person or website that speaks real truth is shunted aside as a “conspiracy theorist,” “Russian agent,” “racist,” “anti-semite,” or other such name with the purpose of discrediting the message and the messenger.
For example, when I told the truth that Russiagate was a hoax, which it has proved to be, an anonymous website, possibly a CIA or NATO operation called “PropOrNot,” included this website among its fake list of 200 “Russian agents/dupes.” The Washington Post, a believed long-time CIA asset, hyped the PropOrNot revelation as if it were the truth. With “Russiagate” in full hype, the purpose was to scare readers away from those of us who were exposing the hoax.
When in a book review of one of David Irving’s World War II histories I reported his finding that many Jews were killed by Nazis, but that the holocaust that took place was different from the official story, Zionist agents at Wikipedia put into my biography that I am a “holocaust denier.” Simply reporting a historian’s findings in a book review was all it took to be labeled with a name that in Europe can mean a prison sentence. Does this mean I cannot risk ever again traveling to Europe where Zionists on the basis of this spurious claim could have me arrested?
Because I investigated the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, interviewed many of the survivors, and reported the factual story, I was branded an “anti-semite.”
Because I reported conclusions of scientists, architects, and engineers about 9/11, I became a “conspiracy theorist.” In other words, in America today any dissent or merely the reporting of dissent, no matter how factual, is not tolerated.
The way those with agendas control the explanations is by shouting down those who provide objective accounts. Social media is part of the censorship. Explanations out of step with official ones are labeled “abusive,” and in “violation of community standards.” In other words, truth is unacceptble. Two weeks ago the Unz Review, a widely read website with dissenting views was kicked off of Facebook for being in violation of official opinion ( https://www.unz.com/announcement/our-facebook-ban-the-fatal-0-2/ ). The same thing happened to Southfront ( https://www.unz.com/article/an-in-depth-look-behind-the-scenes-of-southfront-censorship/ ).
Everyone who uses social media is by their use supporting censorship. Facebook imposes fascist censorship in order to protect official explanations. The presstitutes and universities do the same. In America truth has lost its value.
Even a public health threat like coronavirus is politicized. One would think that there would be an interest in accurate information is order to know what steps to take and which treatments offer promise. But that is not the case. If you are a Democrat you want the economy kept closed in hopes that a bad economy with people out of work and small businesses ruined will defeat Trump in the election. If you are a Republican you want the economy reopened ready or not in order to boost Trump’s reelection chances. Instead, attention should be focused on how to prepare for a successful reopening that can be sustained and not result in a flood of new cases and a second closedown as China has had to do ( https://www.rt.com/news/488509-china-second-city-coronavirus-lockdown/ ).
If you are Big Pharma, NIH, CDC, or the research professionals dependent on grants from these sources, you want a vaccine, not a cure. This means a long wait, assuming an effective and safe vaccine is possible. If you are a doctor involved in treating Covid-19 patients, you want a cure or a treatment that prevents the progress of the disease. The hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc, and intravenous vitamin C treatments, which have proved to be effective, are badmouthed by Big Pharma and its minions. In other words, the profit agenda over-rides health care and the saving of lives. There are reports that Facebook censures Covid-19 reporting that does not support the line that Dr. Fauci of NIH has taken.
The FDA is clearing the way for Gilead’s Remdesivir on the back of claims that HCQ, in safe use for decades, causes heart attacks ( https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/tale-2-drugs-lives-sacrificed-altar-money-power/ ). It is all about money. There are no profits for Big Pharma or a chance for patents for Dr. Fauci unless inexpensive HCQ, zinc, and Vitamin C can be sidelined.
The race for a vaccine is on ( https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/497218-what-you-need-to-know-about-four-potential-covid-19-vaccines ) as everyone wants the profits from the patent. Instead, effort should go into testing and refining what appear to be cures or at least treatments that prevent the virus’ progression. A vaccine might be iffy, and if the process is rushed people could be in danger from the vaccine as well as from the virus.
Covid-19 is now a big business for the pharmaceutical corporations, for bankruptcy lawyers, for fat cats who can buy up bankrupted businesses, and for labor service providers who will hire laid-off workers and lease them back to the firms that laid them off for a fee less than the cost to the firms of full-time employees. Many interests will be served but not that of the public.
Original Source: Click Here.
Big Pharma's Covid-19 Vaccine Will Be Paid in Lives & in Billions of Dollars /200510
The Cost of Big Pharma's Covid-19 Vaccine Will Be Paid in Lives and in Billions of Dollars
Paul Craig Roberts
Big Pharma and its minions such as Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield are determined to use Covid-19 to vaccinate us all at the expense our lives and pocketbooks. They are using the media, grant-dependent professionals, medical journals, and the presstitute media to conduct a campaign of disinformation about an inexpensive and successful treatment in order to pave the way for a likely unsuccessful, possibly dangerous, but very profitable vaccine.
The successful treatment is hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin and zinc. Hydroxychlorquine has been used for decades to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis and has a decades long record of safety. Despite its record of safe useage, Big Pharma and its hired hands have concocted a disinformation story that if you take it you will have a heart attack. As Trump endorsed hydroxychloroquine, everyone who is against Trump for other reasons has picked up Big Pharma’s line as it is another avenue toward the goal of discrediting Trump.
The fact of the matter is that medical doctors involved with Covid-19 treatment report highly successful results with hydroxychloroquine. I have posted a number of reports in which doctors and renowned scientists report the effectiveness and general safety of hydroxychloroquine.
See, for example:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/05/06/why-was-an-effective-cure-for-covid-19-withheld/
The reported success of vitamin C in the treatment of Covid-19 is also subjected to disinformation by Big Pharma and its minions.
The obvious disinformation campaign against successful and inexpensive treatments of Covid-19 has led many to the conclusion that the Covid-19 “pandemic was pre-planned from the beginning” ( see for example, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/modern-medicine-attempts-to-closet-hydroxychloroquine-hcq-forgo-targeted-therapy-of-high-risk-groups-in-setup-for-mass-vaccination/ ).
Whether pre-planned or not, Big Pharma and Bill Gates intend to cash in big time with a Covid-19 vaccine. In effect, Big Pharma and Bill Gates and their associated scum are murderers. They are killing people with their campaign against effective and affordable treatment.
This might strike some gullible people who trust the system as an excessive accusation, but Big Pharma has long made it clear that profit comes before life. Dr. Peter C. Gotzsche, professor of clinical research, director of the Nordic Cochrane Center, and chief physician of Rigshospitalet and the University of Copenhagen has documented that Big Pharma’s “medicines” are the third largest killer after heart disease and cancer ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deadly-Medicines-Organised-Crime-Healthcare/dp/1846198844/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=deadly+medicines+and+organised+crime&qid=1589058630&s=books&sr=1-1 ).
We have been sold on vaccines in the face of evidence of the harm they do to some people and the fact that they are used despite an imperfect understanding of the human immune system. Moreover, coronaviruses are not of a class that permits effective vaccines.
But we are going to get one whether or not it is effective and whether or not we want to be vaccinated. Bill Gates is working to make sure vaccination is mandatory for all. Otherwise you cannot leave your home or your FEMA containment center. Money is pouring not into known effective treatment but into vaccine research as companies and countries race for a patent. Bill Sardi reports that Chicago has “already purchased the syringes and spotted locations for vaccination stations” (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/modern-medicine-attempts-to-closet-hydroxychloroquine-hcq-forgo-targeted-therapy-of-high-risk-groups-in-setup-for-mass-vaccination/ ).
Americans need to come to grips with how money has corrupted everything. So many of the people and institutions we formerly relied on to speak truthfully are now dependent on grants from corporations, government agencies, and self-interested donors with agendas that truth is the casualty. Yes, scientists will now lie for money. Universities will produce “studies” that advance the donor’s agenda. Physicists dependent on Washington’s grants will hold their tongues when presented with obviously false claims such as massively constructed steel buildings built to withstand airliner collision collapsing into dust because of isolated low temperature fires and strikes by flimsy aluminum airplanes.
There are a number of ways that studies can be designed to produce a conclusion that a specific treatment is or is not effective. Consider hydroxychloroquine. A study can get poor results from this treatment by using it as a late stage treatment when Covid-19 has advanced beyond treatment. This appears to be the case with the New England Journal of Medicine report that “hydroxychloroquine use was not associated with a significantly higher or lower risk of intubation or death” ( https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410 ).
Like any disease, successful treatment needs to begin early, not at a late stage. The many doctors who report success with hydroxychloroquine stress that the treatment should begin early and not be used only as a last resort. It turns out that the NEJM study was funded by the National Institute of Health, a Big Pharma influenced organization that is hostile to a cure as opposed to a vaccine. It is also curious that the article, “Observational Study of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with Covid-19,” was quickly published in a few weeks instead of the usual lengthy time required to clear the peer-reviewed process. And it is also curious that many were primed to use the study to discredit hydroxychloroquine despite the inconclusive study.
A corrupt establishment and media that can sell us 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russiagate and a large number of other lies can also sell us on locking up a successful treatment in the closet while we await a vaccine.
Many decades ago George Stigler at the University of Chicago said that the trouble with regulation is that all regulatory agencies end up captured by the businesses they are tasked with regulating. Thus we see that the EPA is in the hands of polluters, bank regulation is in the hands of bankers, telecommunication regulations—5G for example—is in the hands of tech companies who stand to profit, and approval of new medicines is in the hands of Big Pharma as is the curriculum in medical schools. Doctors are trained to connect symptoms with tests and when confirmed by a test, the doctor looks up online the specified Big Pharma treatment.
My generation grew up without vaccines and without all of the associated illnesses associated with vaccines among the over-vaccinated youth of today. Today vaccinations begin at birth and increase into high numbers. Does the natural immune system ever develop?
That is an irrelevant question. The driving force behind vaccination is profit, not health. If we want a health system instead of a death system, Big Pharma must be nationalized and run by scientists on salaries without patent rights and “performance bonuses.”
Original Source: Click Here.
Gaslighting the Coronavirus – Dimitry Orlov /200501
Written by Dimitry Orlov
For the past few days I have been holding back on commenting on current events, all of which revolve around the new coronavirus panic, and doing as much research as I could because the substance of what’s happening has been unclear to me.
• Why shut down the global economy because of a virus that isn’t particularly dangerous and has only been responsible for just over 1% of the deaths so far this year and has only affected 0.04% of the population and has killed off a mere 0.0028% of it?
• Why quarantine healthy people instead of just the old and the sick? (In Sweden, to take a typical example, 90% of the fatal cases were among those older than 70.)
• Why shut down schools and confine children indoors if they don’t even get sick from this virus?
• Why tell people to remain indoors when lack of sunlight, exercise and exposure to a wide variety of antigens leads to weakened immune systems and higher rates of infection?
• Why struggle to create a vaccine and vaccinate everyone when this virus happens to be a safe, effective and freely available inoculant against itself for the vast majority of healthy people?
• Why emphasize artificial lung ventilation when (in New York, for example) 80% of the patients who are hooked up to ALV machines die?
• Why tell everyone to wear face masks when they only stop 95% of virus particles (at best) and so delay the amount of time it takes to get infected from 10 seconds to as much as three minutes?
After some research and some thought I have been able to arrive at a single answer to all of these questions. But first, let’s examine some of them.
First, let’s handle the question of vaccination. There is a measles vaccine, yet it kills 140,000 a year. There is a pneumococcus vaccine, yet it kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year. There is a hepatitis B vaccine, yet it kills 140,000. There is a tetanus vaccine, yet it kills 89,000 annual deaths. There is a rotavirus vaccine, yet it kills 800,000. There is a HPV vaccine, yet it kills 250,000. There is a tuberculosis vaccine, yet it kills 1.5 million. There is an influenza vaccine, yet it kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year. None of these are considered pandemics, cause entire economies to be shut down or, or call for any extraordinary measures at all.
And then there is the novel coronavirus which has killed 218,187 people to date (the vast majority of them very old and/or very sick)—and this is considered to be a problem to be solved with all possible haste. Some infectious disease experts have suggested that the entire populace may be required to shelter in place until a vaccine becomes available. Meanwhile, deaths from the novel coronavirus largely fit within the usual mortality of the flu season.
The northern hemisphere winter was warmer than usual, and some of the elderly and sick people who would have been killed off by any of the usual influenza viruses (including other coronaviruses) during any of the previous three flu seasons were claimed by the novel coronavirus.
But even this is uncertain because it is unclear whether these 218,187 deaths were actually caused by the coronavirus or whether the coronavirus just happened to be present in their bodies at the time of death. Furthermore, a lot of people were diagnosed as suffering from this coronavirus based on symptoms which are not too different from those caused by other viral agents.
Lastly, the vast majority of those who have died from it had what are called comorbidities. Elderly immunocompromised morbidly obese diabetics with high blood pressure, cancer and other potential fatal ailments have been particularly susceptible. If you discard all fatal cases with comorbidities and only consider young healthy people, then the number of deaths where the new coronavirus is obviously the root cause may turn out to be as low as zero.
Confirmed novel coronavirus cases number less than 3,147,626 worldwide, which is 0.04% of the world’s population. This barely adds up to a cough and a sneeze. As this virus has spread throughout the world the increase in cases has slowed, but the number of confirmed cases could yet double or even triple, adding up to as much as three coughs and three sneezes. But then the World Health Organization enters the fray.
The WHO makes gratuitous use of appellations such as “world” and “health” but is actually a semi-private entity lavishly financed by Bill Gates and Big Pharma, which is owned by a handful of highly inbred oligarchic entities that include Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Northern Trust and State Street, which in turn own each other in various convoluted ways.
WHO’s main function is to scare people into getting vaccinated and accepting expensive drug regimens (barely half of which do any good at all), thus funneling resources toward Big Pharma.
The World Health Organization establishes thresholds to determine whether to declare an influenza epidemic that range between 2.5% and 5%. The novel coronavirus misses the mark by a thousand-fold, yet the WHO has declared it to be the cause of a global pandemic.
If this seems like an extreme overreaction, that is because this is an extreme overreaction.
Some conspiratorially-minded people may surmise that this is a conspiracy, but it isn’t. It is yet another blatant attempt to confiscate a chunk of the world’s wealth by requiring it to buy something worthless, just like this same set of medical/financial interests did with the relatively worthless Tamiflu antiviral medication during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of 2009-10 which caused a mere 18,036 deaths worldwide. This is a specific group pursuing its own group interests.
There are other disparate interests that are pursuing their own aims by fighting (or attempting, or pretending to fight) the awful-terrible-horrible novel coronavirus global plague that could easily carry off 0.005% of the world’s population and as much as 0.05% of the planet’s septuagenarians.
The Chinese have taken the novel coronavirus outbreak as a chance to train for repelling a biological warfare attack. To argue that this coronavirus is indeed the agent of a biowarfare attack is to argue for something extremely stupid because it just isn’t effective as a biowarfare agent. It’s almost as bad as Novichok, which was touted as being able to wipe out entire armies but only managed to sicken five people and kill just one of them. It doesn’t matter whether this coronavirus leaked out of a dead bat or a biowarfare lab, or both—it just isn’t any good as a weapon. But the Chinese government imposed extreme, unprecedented controls over much of the population and the economy.
The Russians followed suit, with the difference that while the Chinese saw these extreme measures as temporary, setting up makeshift hospitals, the Russians seized on them as a chance to fundamentally upgrade the entire health care system, setting it up to effectively handle any future biological warfare attacks.
In doing so, the Chinese and the Russians pursued different goals. The Chinese need to find a way to stop shipping actual physical manufactured goods to the US in exchange for pieces of paper or promises to pay, all of which are about to become worthless, without triggering a dangerous escalation. The need to do so with all necessary haste became obvious in mid-August of 2019, when it turned out that banks were no longer to accept US Treasury debt instruments as collateral for overnight loans. These were supposedly the safest investments in the world that made up the world’s largest and most liquid financial market—until it turned out that they weren’t that at all.
China’s exports to the US comprised around 20% of its total exports, and this number needed to be reduced. With the entire West heading into a major economic recession, China also had to partially reorient its economy away from exports and toward domestic capital investment and consumption. A global panic and an economic reset provoked by the new coronavirus has been useful in furthering the goal of reducing China’s dependence on the US while hiding behind the smokescreen of a plausible force majeur incident.
Russia’s goals in stoking the coronavirus panic are somewhat different from China’s. Unlike China, whose military standoff with the US has been limited to posturing around maritime routes and control over disputed Spratly Islands, Russia has been forced to deal with a more serious attempt by the Pentagon to rekindle the Cold War.
There have been NATO troops holding training exercises within artillery range of Russia’s second-largest city, NATO instructors training and arming Ukrainian Nazis who are shelling Russian passport-holders who inhabit the eastern portions of the Ukrainian area, and the Pentagon setting up and operating multiple US biowarfare laboratories in some of the countries that neighbor Russia.
At this point neither nuclear nor conventional war between Russia and the US is at all likely. The US never developed the capability to win a nuclear conflict with Russia using a preemptive first strike and the US could never even dream of conquering Russia in a land war.
This leaves biological warfare as the only possible course of action for the Pentagon should it decide to attack Russia, and the Russians appear to have taken this threat quite seriously. In response, the US has demonstrated abject fecklessness in facing of the coronavirus pandemic, even to the point of being forced to accept Russian humanitarian aid—flown in on military transport jets, just to stress the point.
While China must solve the problem of reorienting its export flows away from the rapidly failing US and liquidating its hoard of dollar-denominated financial paper, Russia has no such problems, since it does very little trade with the US and has liquidated its dollar-denominated reserves. However, in spite of efforts to diversify its trade relationships, it still does a great deal of trade with the rapidly failing EU.
Thanks to the Western sanctions imposed on it in 2014 over its reunification with Crimea, as well as the ensuing countersanctions, it has implemented a successful policy of import replacement. Now that Western economies are failing, it has to also implement a policy of export-replacement, reorienting resource and production flows toward domestic consumption, further embracing the concept of limited autarky. This is no minor task, and the coronavirus provides a useful smokescreen behind which the economy can be switched to manual mode, so that the government can effectively direct the process of transforming the economy.
While China and Russia seem able to find constructive uses for the coronavirus pandemic, its functions for the EU and for the US seem entirely destructive for these two political entities.
In the case of the EU, the pandemic gave the constituent nations a chance to reassert their sovereignty while the central bureaucracy in Brussels was demonstrated to be incapable of any constructive response, belatedly closing EU borders even after most countries have already done so on their own.
Anti-EU sentiment is rising in Italy and elsewhere, and it is starting to seem more likely that Brexit will have set off a domino effect of EU exits by other countries. This will provide openings for various European countries to shrug off the yoke of “universal European values” and find their own way by formulating saner policies on issues such as migration and negotiate bilateral trade relationships both within and outside Europe.
In the US the pandemic is being used to prosecute a sort of civil war as the Democrats attempt to use it, and the unfolding economic crash, to unseat Trump and replace him with some other political cadaver. Meanwhile, the leadership of various states are finding less and less common ground with the federal authorities and are grabbing more political power for themselves while making plans to go their separate ways.
The list of actors who use the coronavirus pandemic for their very different and often contradictory aims can be extended virtually ad infinitum. But what if we try to factor out the common term, to use a mathematical metaphor? What factor appears in every term of the equation and can therefore be moved outside the parentheses? It is the factor of absolute control: restrictions on movement, restrictions on behavior, restrictions on what businesses may operate, and constant medical testing.
As I wrote in my book Shrinking the Technosphere, “The reason for extending life for as long as possible, no matter how little sense this makes, is to be found in the abstract teleology of total control. The technosphere’s compulsion is to control everything. It is unacceptable to it for old people to decide when to die all on their own. Death cannot be left up to a subjective judgment; it must be the objective outcome of a technical, measurable process.”
In that book, I defined the technosphere as “…an emergent global intelligence that hates all forms of life, likes physics and chemistry, hates anything that it cannot dominate or control, is adept at using humans for its own purposes, but is quite ready to kill them when they are no longer needed or when they get in the way, which it can easily do because its most advanced and effective technologies are its killing technologies—conventional, nuclear and chemical weapons; germ warfare; and political technologies that send people into battle.”
Since the unjustifiably harsh response to the novel coronavirus is a global phenomenon, the imposition of totalitarian control measures can be treated as a manifestation of an emergent global intelligence that transcends the narrow interests of any one country or group of countries but follows an agenda of its own. What could provoke the technosphere to lash out in such a way?
There are two important global processes which, while they will affect the US particularly severely, go far beyond its geographic confines.
One is the still relatively gradual process of dethroning the US dollar from its position of dominance. Until the coronavirus pandemic disrupted much of the global economy, most of its participants were interested in preserving some measure of stability to the dollar system. But now that trade has already been disrupted, an opening has been created to dump the dollar without necessarily causing economic damage significantly worse than already exists. The actions of the Federal Reserve, which is in the process of monetizing a large proportion of existing US government debt and virtually all of the new debt being issued to cover the ever-growing budget deficit, are undermining the dollar as well. Although the term “debt monetization” is being used to describe what’s happening, issuing currency with which to buy up worthless promissory notes stretches the definition of “debt” beyond any reasonable limit, while “monetization” is far too dignified a term for such a desperate delaying tactic. As a consequence, some analysts do not see US dollar-based global financial system holding up too far beyond this year.
The other process is the rapid transition of the US from the world’s largest producer of oil to one of the smallest, because the fracking bonanza has largely run its course. It has never really made any money, since fracked oil is, for technological reasons, always too expensive to sustain economic growth. And now, with an economic depression setting in, economies at a standstill and oil futures trading in the negative territory (where market participants are willing to pay producers to get out of having take delivery of the oil when the contract matures) the fracking industry is going bankrupt, production is falling, and in less than a year it is likely to be down by as much as 70%. At that point, any attempt at economic recovery in the US will involve having to start importing large quantities of oil from a world supply that, with the exception of fracked oil from the US, hasn’t expanded much since 2005.
From Shrinking the Technosphere, again: “From the point of view of the technosphere, the biosphere is simply there to provide it with resources and services. Its view of the biosphere demonstrates the technosphere’s striking mental deficit: it is unable to see limits. Until it runs up against them, it simply can’t see them, and assumes that natural resources are infinite. And when it does run up against them, it invariably treats the problem as a financial problem. For example, when oil prices spiked, it was automatically assumed that the problem had nothing to do with resource depletion but was entirely due to lack of investment in the oil industry. Sure enough, increased investment eventually resulted in increased production and a glutted oil market, but the fact that the increased investment became necessary had everything to do with resource depletion: the resources that could be produced most cheaply were the first to become depleted. What’s more, the effect of increased investment is temporary; like rust, resource depletion never sleeps, and at some point the level of spending needed to maintain production becomes impossibly high.”
Here I wish to correct myself: the technosphere can indeed see physical limits. In 2019, it appears to have come to the common realization that the fracking bonanza in the US has pretty much run its course and that no further expansion in the use of oil, and therefore no further economic expansion, would be possible. But a globalized regime cannot be maintained without constant expansion. The only solution was for the technosphere to fracture into zones, some of which can then be de-funded and deprived of access to oil. In order to realize this plan, the entire planet had to be placed under lock-down, and the only way to do that is to scare everyone with a supposedly deadly virus.
One last excerpt from my book: “…[I]t becomes necessary for the technosphere to periodically apply some discipline, in order to keep the dream of infinite technological progress in the service of humanity from starting to look a bit threadbare. The way this is done is by presenting any alternative to endless progress as an unmitigated disaster: it’s either total control or the apocalypse. There are many different varieties of the apocalypse, featuring various combinations of asteroids, zombies, deadly viruses, space aliens, shark-bearing waterspouts over Los Angeles… the list is endless.”
The technosphere looked at the list and picked “deadly viruses.” And there you have it.
It may be difficult for you to take on board the concept of an emergent global intelligence that transcends the confines of every nation, continent and civilization. You may not see it, but once you do you are unlikely to be able to un-see it because it is just too glaringly obvious. It is beyond obvious: it is directly in your face. Perhaps it would be easier for you to consider it as a sort of mass psychosis in need of a cure. Or perhaps you would prefer to view it as an instance of demonic possession in need of an exorcism:
“And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They were imploring Him not to command them to go away into the abyss. … And the demons came out of the man and entered a herd of swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.” [Luke 8:30-31, 33]
Whatever metaphor you choose, the first step is to free your own mind. Once you do, you may realize that the entire global coronavirus fiasco of 2020 may not have been without some benefits. For example, numerous people around the world, coming out of the coronavirus lock-down, are now surely having some of these realizations:
• The internet is no replacement for actual face-to-face contact.
• A city easily becomes a prison and the countryside is a better choice for people who want to remain free.
• The economy doesn’t matter as much as being among people who are willing to help each other.
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