3D: The Future of Advertising (Video)

 It's the weekend, so let's take a break with the future of advertising. 

What I find interesting is that Back to the Future II, got it right with 3D adverts.

Integrity. Dignity. Community by Dr Robert Malone

We are now over two years in the Covid-19 pandemic and publishing an article by Dr Malone is almost an act of dissidence. Isn't it amazing how fast the scientific (and social, and political) discourses have been maligned? To the point that it is now almost impossible? Whatever course the virus and our response to it takes in the coming months, the social damage is done. There is no turning back to the world pre-2020. From now on, whatever the issue, there is an orthodox and an heretic view. Governments decide within hours and the press let you know which is which. 

To paraphrase the Beatles: "Back in the USSR!"

Guest post by Dr. Robert Malone

In March of 1963, a great man came to Washington, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and changed the world by speaking from his heart about his dream.  Simple words that continue to resonate through time.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants.  The simple truths are what matter most.  Honest words, spoken from the heart, can change the world.

I am a physician and a scientist, highly trained and experienced in developing vaccines and other medicines, but I have also been a carpenter and a farm hand.  In my life, my wife, my family, my friends and my treasured horses have provided all that I could hope for.

It has not been an easy life, and I have seen hard times.  In walking my path, I have traveled from the arrogance and hubris of youth to arriving at awareness that peace and happiness flows like a fountain from a commitment to kindness, good works, and striving to help others.

I come to you with an open heart, as a physician committed to healing, bringing three simple words.  Each of which ring like bells in the soul of honest people.

Integrity.  Dignity.  Community. 

Integrity is a commitment to truth, in what you say, how you live, and how you treat others.

Dignity flows from respect, for ourselves, for each other, and for the world we live in.

Community is what binds us together, to each other, and gives our lives purpose and meaning.

Saint Augustine, the doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, famously said “The truth is like a Lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”

Harry Truman, a warrior against war profiteering, famously said “I just tell the truth, and they think it’s hell”.

These are my truths, and I believe that they are self-evident.

We should not have politicized the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

Regarding the genetic COVID vaccines, the science is settled.

They are not working, and they are not completely safe.

Now we have Omicron. These vaccines were designed for the Original Wuhan strain, a different virus. Whether they made sense for protecting our elderly and frail from the original virus is irrelevant.  So let’s stop arguing about that. We must look forward.

These vaccines do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.  In our daily lives, with our friends, with our families, we all know that this is true.

These genetic vaccines are leaky, have poor durability, and even if every man, woman, and child in the United States were vaccinated, these products cannot achieve herd immunity and stop COVID. They are not completely safe, and the full nature of the risks remain unknown.  In contrast, the natural immunity which healty immune systems develop after infection and recovery from COVID is long lasting, broad, and highly protective from disease and death caused by this virus.

If there is risk, there must be choice.

This is the fundamental bedrock truth of modern bioethics.

All medical procedures, vaccines, and drugs have risks.

All of us have the right to understand those risks, and to decide for ourselves whether we willingly accept those risks.

To deny this is to deny human dignity.

Evil has many roots. A willingness to deny human dignity is one of the largest.  In our hearts, and in our souls, we all know this is true.

Although I am a physician who is deeply committed to the Hippocratic oath, I am above all a husband, father, and grandfather.  I ask that you allow me a moment to speak to you about our children, and about our fundamental responsibility to protect them.

If nothing else, we must nurture and protect our children.  This is job one.  It is your job.  It is my job. It is not their job to protect us.  And during the last two years, our society and our public health response has failed to protect them.  Many things that our public health system has demanded we do to our children has directly harmed them.

Self-harm, suicide and drug abuse in children have taken off all around the world.  Anxiety, bullying, intimidation, coercion have become the norm. Measured IQ in the very young has dropped.  Fundamental childhood delays are easily measured.  And physical damage to children from injecting them with genetic vaccines in order to protect the elderly from a virus is occurring.

As a parent, it is ultimately your responsibility to protect your children. If they are harmed by these genetic vaccines, you are the one that will have to take care of them.  And you will carry that burden for the rest of your life and theirs. On average, between one in two thousand and one in three thousand children that receive these vaccines will be hospitalized in the short term with vaccine-caused damage.  Only with the passage of time will we know what long term damage may occur.  The vaccines do not protect our children from becoming infected with Omicron, and do not prevent infected children from infecting others.  In contrast, the pharmaceutical companies and the government are almost fully protected from any damages these products might cause to them.  If your child is damaged by these vaccines, you will be left alone with both your grief and the burden of care.

These genetic vaccines can damage your children.  They may damage their brain, their heart, their immune system, and their ability to have children in the future.  And many of these types of damages cannot be repaired.

So I beg you, please, get informed about the possible risks that your children may be damaged by these experimental medical products.  Don’t let anyone tell you what to do.  Think for yourself.  Because it is your responsibility to protect and nurture them.  If they are damaged, no state Governor, no federal public health official, no television doctor will be there to help you.  You, your family and your child will have to carry the load yourselves.

Are the mRNA vaccines counter-productive in the long term?

Guest post by Alex Berenson

The world’s most mRNA vaccinated countries now have shockingly high Covid infection rates. Hospitalizations and deaths are rising fast too. The mRNA experiment needs to stop. Immediately.

Something is rotten in Denmark.

And Australia.

And Israel.

Where nearly 1 percent of the entire population just tested positive for Covid.

Not in a month. Or a week. In one day.

You read that right.

On Saturday, Israel had 84,000 new infections, the equivalent of almost 3 million in the United States. Infections in Israel have risen unthinkably fast since late December. They’re are up 100-fold in one month, driven by the collapse of booster protection and the arrival of the Omicron variant.

Israel is not alone. Denmark reported 42,000 cases yesterday, equal to almost 2.5 million in the United States. France, the second-largest country in Europe, reported the American equivalent of about 12 million new infections in the last week. Australia had a tremendous surge in cases earlier this month, though it seems to be subsidizing for now.

Daily new infections in Israel:

 

These countries have very different population demographics and previous exposure to Covid. They even have very different weather; it is summer in Australia.

What do they share, then?

Incredibly high Covid vaccination rates, mostly with the mRNA vaccines. Israel is among the world’s most vaccinated countries. More than 90 percent of Israeli adults have been vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Almost 80 percent have received a booster dose, and several hundred thousand have gotten a fourth.

Yet Israel had more coronavirus infections in the last week than in all of 2020, before it began mass mRNA Covid vaccinations.

Omicron is much milder than Delta or the original coronavirus. So the data from South Africa – which was the first country where Omicron spread quickly – seemed to show.

But South Africa is quite lightly vaccinated. The more recent data from the highly vaccinated countries has not been as promising. Yes, Omicron is milder.

Even so, hospitalizations and deaths are spiking in countries like Israel and Denmark. In Israel, the number of severely ill patients has risen eightfold this month, and almost fourfold in the last two weeks – even though the true spike in infections has come only in the last few days, and hospitalizations typically lag infections. In Australia, deaths are up tenfold since in the last four weeks, although from a low base.

Daily new serious cases in Israel:

In part the rise has come because Omicron infections have reached such stunningly high levels that even a relatively low risk can lead to a significant number of deaths. And yes, many Omicron hospitalizations are incidental – they are people in the hospital for other reasons who just happen to test positive for Omicron.

But other factors may be at play too. Here are four facts:

1: Both the within-country and the between-country data show that people who are vaccinated but not boosted are at higher risk of Omicron infection than the unvaccinated.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

2: Thus vaccines will actually make hospitalization or death from Omicron MORE likely unless they somehow protect against serious outcomes from Covid infections more than they increase the odds of infection. That’s simple math.

At this point we have no way of knowing how those two factors interact. In other words, we do not know if Omicron is more dangerous to the unvaccinated than the vaccinated (putting aside any vaccine side effects).

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

3: It is unclear whether the vaccines interfere with the development of long-term post-infection immunity in people who are infected with Omicron.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

4: It is clear that a third vaccine dose temporarily reduces the risk of serious illness or death from Omicron.

But it is unclear how long that protection will last, and whether when it ends people who have received a third dose will be less or more vulnerable than those who are unvaccinated or have received two doses.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Put these four facts together and it is clear that to encourage booster shots for anyone – including the elderly – at this point is reckless, bordering on criminal.

I have not used language like this before. I did not discourage older people from the primary vaccination series. But the facts have changed and they continue to change, and not to face this reality is incredibly dangerous.

mRNA Covid vaccinations and boosters need to stop worldwide while we figure out what is happening. Not next week. Not tomorrow.

Today.

The Right to Healthy Food: Comorbidities & COVID-19

 Slowly, the picture about Covid-19 is getting clearer. What comes out of it is not only an indictment of an incompetent political system, but a much deeper disease of our society. What if our food and the way we produce it were a major cause of our poor health? 

 

Via Off-Guardian

In early 2020, we saw the beginning of the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’. The world went into lockdown and even after lockdowns in various countries had been lifted, restrictions continued.

Data now shows that lockdowns seemingly had limited if any positive impacts on the trajectory of COVID-19 and in 2022 the world – especially the poor – is paying an immense price not least in terms of loss of income, loss of livelihoods, the deterioration of mental and physical health, the eradication of civil liberties, disrupted supply chains and shortages.

Before proceeding, the distinction should be made between dying from COVID and dying with COVID.

Those classified as dying with COVID include people entering hospital and testing positive while there, but they died due to other reasons, or they had chronic underlying conditions which possibly caused their death and COVID may or may not have been a complicating factor.

In the US, the Center for Disease Control provides a list of comorbid conditions in COVID-19 patients, which includes cancer, chronic kidney disease, heart disease, Down syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Research conducted in a German hospital shows that for those who died after SARS-CoV-2 infection the median number of chronic comorbidities was four and ranged from three to eight. Arterial hypertension was the most prevalent chronic condition (65.4%), followed by obesity (38.5%), chronic ischemic heart disease (34.6%), atrial fibrillation (26.9%) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (23.1%). Of all patients, 15.4% had diabetes type II and chronic renal failure was noticed in 11.5%. The data suggests severe chronic comorbidities and health conditions in the majority of patients that had died after COVID-19.

The meta-analysis Prevalence of comorbidities in patients and mortality cases affected by SARS-CoV2: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2020) found that hypertension was the most prevalent comorbidity (affecting 32% of patients).

Other common comorbidities included diabetes (22%) and heart disease (13%). The odds ratio of death for a patient with a comorbidity compared to one with no comorbidity was 2.4. The higher the prevalence of comorbidities the higher the odds that a COVID-19 patient will need intensive care or will die, especially if the pre-existing disease is hypertension, heart disease or diabetes.

In 2020, just 1,557 people aged 1-64 with no underlying co-morbidities were listed as having died from COVID in England and Wales out of a population of about 59 million. For the tens of thousands who were categorised as dying with COVID, co-morbidities were prevalent.

UK data for 2020 shows that for ages 1-64 years, those who died with COVID had on average 1.71 co-morbidities. For those aged 65 and over, the figure is 2.02.

Patients with rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases have a 54% increased risk for COVID-19 infection and more than twice the risk for COVID-19 death, versus the general population, according to data published in the journal Rheumatology (2021).

In the paper ‘COVID-19 in patients with autoimmune diseases: characteristics and outcomes in a multinational network of cohorts across three countries’ (2021), which also appeared in Rheumatology, researchers compared influenza with COVID-19 and concluded that the latter is a more severe disease for people with these conditions, leading to added complications and higher mortality.

Of deaths in England and Wales where COVID-19 is listed, official government data shows the most common pre-existing condition recorded on the death certificate is diabetes (July to September 2021). This was identified in almost a quarter (22.5%) of ‘COVID deaths’.

Emerging data also suggests that obesity is a big risk factor for the progression of major complications such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), cytokine storm and coagulopathy in COVID-19.

A paper posted on the US Center for Disease Control website provides an overview of factors associated with COVID-19 deaths for a 12-month period. The study, Underlying Medical Conditions and Severe Illness Among 540,667 Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19, March 2020–March 2021, looked at records of hospitalised adults and found that 94.9% had at least one underlying medical condition.

The authors conclude that certain underlying conditions and the number of conditions were associated with severe COVID-19 illness. Hypertension and disorders of lipid metabolism were the most frequent, whereas obesity, diabetes with complication and anxiety disorders were the strongest risk factors for severe COVID-19.

Based on the findings, Dr Peregrino Brimahdata (a molecular biologist, medical doctor, college professor and a published researcher) notes that obesity by itself gave a 30% increased death risk, anxiety disorders gave a 29% increased risk of death and diabetes led to a 26% increased risk of death.

Brimahdata concludes that about two-thirds of ‘COVID deaths’ were patients who may be regarded as grossly unhealthy.

From the data presented above, it is clear that the vast majority of ‘COVID deaths’ (dying with COVID) are people who have serious, ongoing health conditions, the prevalence of which among the population has been rising year on year for decades and accelerating.

Food system

Although hereditary factors are involved, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute in London believe the growing popularity of Western-style diets is a major reason why autoimmune diseases are rising across the world by around 3% to 9% a year.

Professor James Lee from the institute recently told The Observer newspaper that human genetics has not altered over the past few decades, so something is changing in our environment that is increasing predisposition to autoimmune disease. His research team found that Western-style diets based on processed ingredients and with a lack of fresh vegetables can trigger autoimmune diseases.

Lee says that numbers of autoimmune cases began to increase about 40 years ago in the Western countries but are now also emerging in countries that never had such diseases before. These diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis.

It is estimated that approximately four million people in the UK have an autoimmune disease.

A Western-style diet is characterised by highly processed and refined foods with high contents of sugars, salt, and fat and protein from red meat. It is a major contributor to metabolic disturbances and the development of obesity-related diseases, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease – the top comorbidities where ‘COVID deaths’ are concerned.

But it goes beyond that because a lot of the health-related problems we see can also be traced back to modern farming methods and how food is cultivated, not least the toxic agrochemicals used. Michael McCarthy, writer and naturalist, says that three generations of industrialised farming with a vast tide of poisons pouring over the land year after year after year since the end of the Second World War is the true price of pesticide-based agriculture, which society has for so long blithely accepted.

Professor Carola Vinuesa, who heads another research team at the Francis Crick Institute, argues that fast-food diets can negatively affect a person’s microbiome – gut microorganisms which play a key role in controlling various bodily functions.

The gut microbiome can contain up to six pounds of bacteria and agrochemicals and poor diets are disturbing this ‘human soil’. Many important neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking.

Findings published in the journal ‘Translational Psychiatry’ provide strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease. Gut bacteria are also important for cognitive development in adolescence.

Changes to the gut microbiome are also linked to obesity. Increasing levels of obesity are associated with low bacterial richness in the gut. Indeed, it has been noted that tribes not exposed to the modern food system have richer microbiomes. Environmental campaigner Rosemary Mason lays the blame squarely at the door of agrochemicals, not least the use of the world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate.

Mason has written to the two professors from the Francis Crick Institute mentioned above, making it clear to them that it would be remiss to ignore the role pesticides play when it comes to the worrying rates of disease we now see. She brings their attention to concerning levels of glyphosate in certain cereals in the UK.

Based on an analysis of these cereals, Dr John Fagan, director of Health Research Laboratories, has concluded:

“The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals… is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”

Mason also refers the two academics to the paper Genetically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United States of America in the Journal of Organic Systems (2014).

It notes:

“The herbicide glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and its use is accelerating with the advent of herbicide-tolerant genetically engineered (GE) crops. Evidence is mounting that glyphosate interferes with many metabolic processes in plants and animals and glyphosate residues have been detected in both. Glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system and the balance of gut bacteria, it damages DNA and is a driver of mutations that lead to cancer.”

The researchers searched US government databases for GE crop data, glyphosate application data and disease epidemiological data. Correlation analyses were then performed on a total of 22 diseases in these time-series data sets. The Pearson correlation coefficients were highly significant between glyphosate applications and a wide range of diseases, including hypertension, stroke, diabetes prevalence, diabetes incidence, obesity, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, intestinal infections, end stage renal disease, acute kidney failure and various cancers. The Pearson correlation coefficients were also highly significant between the percentage of GE corn and soy planted in the US and most of the conditions listed above.

In 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, Baskut Tuncak, said:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a ‘silent pandemic’ of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

Consider that little is being done to address the food-related public health crisis. Then consider that governments are going all out to vaccinate children for a virus that seems to pose minimal risk to them. There is no logic to this approach.

While there is currently much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on the NHS, the health service was already creaking due to spiralling rates of disease linked to the food we eat. But do we see a clampdown on the activities or products of the global agrochemical or food conglomerates? Instead, we see that successive governments in the UK have worked hand in glove with them to ensure ‘business as usual’.

The UK government is going out of its way under the guise of a health crisis to undermine the public’s rights in order to supposedly manage risk and to ‘protect’ the NHS but has been all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing health crisis caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Meanwhile, the unvaccinated are being cast as irresponsible or much worse if we listen to the recent reprehensible outbursts from leaders like Macron or Trudeau for having genuine concerns about, for instance, vaccine safety and the logic behind mass vaccination across all ages and risk groups.

Given the prevalence of the underlying health conditions linked to ‘COVID deaths’, it is clear where the real irresponsibility lies – with government inaction for decades in terms of failing to tackle the corporations behind the health-damaging food they produce.

Chinese Debt Explosion (Video)

 This is a follow-up to the Video on China posted recently. This one is less centered on real estate but no less dire. The bubble the Chinese have blown is beyond compare and so will the explosion. We are reaching the limits of growth and China which is at the core of the current worldwide supply chain is teetering on the verge of the abyss. It should be obvious to everyone by now that sooner than later financial authorities will lose control. But somehow nobody seems concerned...

 

 

China Has Already COLLAPSED! You Just Don't Know It Yet... (Video)

 The story of 2022 is that there are 4 stones falling: The US dollar, the Euro, the Yen and the Yuan. Each with its own momentum as economic gravity doesn't work like physics. We discussed the Euro financial markets yesterday.  Today, it's China and its amazing real estate bubble...

 

 

Europe's Spendthrifts Are Stuck In Irreversible Debt-Traps

 It takes a long time to grow a debt bubble, but history shows that in reality it is not that long. 80 years on average, a human lifespan. If you take the early 1950s as the start of the current one, we are almost there, close to the end of the current one. What will give first? Debt in China? Profligacy in the US? Distortions in Europe? This article explains this last possibility. I agree. This would explain the Covid madness engulfing the continent...

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

A Euro Catastrophe Could Collapse It

This article looks at the situation in the euro system in the context of rising interest rates. Central to the problem is role of the ECB, which through monetary inflation embarked on a policy of transferring wealth from fiscally responsible member states to the spendthrift PIGS and France. The consequences of these policies are that the spendthrifts are now ensnared in irreversible debt traps.

Even in a Keynesian context, the ECB’s monetary policy is no longer to stimulate the economy but to keep the spendthrifts afloat. The situation has deteriorated so that Eurozone commercial banks appear to have credit restricted in New York, evidenced by the reluctance of the US banks to enter into repo transactions with them, leading to the market failure in September 2019 when the Fed had to intervene.

An examination of the numbers strongly suggests that even Eurozone banks, insurance companies and pension funds are no longer net buyers of Eurozone government debt. It could be because the terms are unattractive. But if that is the case it is an indictment of the ECB’s asset purchase programmes deliberately suppressing rates to the point where they are unattractive, even to normally compliant investors.

Consequently, without any savings offsets, the ECB has gone full Rudolf Havenstein, and is following similar inflationary policies to those that impoverished Germany’s middle classes and starved its labourers and the elderly in 1920-1923. That the German people are tolerating such an obvious destruction of their currency for the third time in a hundred years is simply astounding.

Institutionalised Madoff

Schemes to pilfer from people without their knowledge always end in disaster for the perpetrators. Central banks using their currency seigniorage are no exception. But instead of covering it up like an institutionalised Madoff they use questionable science to justify their openly fraudulent behaviour. The paradox of thrift is such an example, where penalising savers by suppressing interest rates supposedly for the wider economic benefit conveniently ignores the theft involved. If you can change the way people perceive reality, you can get away with an awful lot.

The mass discovery by the people of the fraud perpetrated on the people by those supposedly representing the people is always the reason behind a cycle of crises and wars. It can take a long period of suffering before an otherwise supine population refuses to continue submitting unquestionably to authority. But the longer the condition exists, the more oppressive the methods that the state uses to defer the inevitable crisis become. Until something finally gives. In the case of the euro, we have seen the system give savers no interest since 2012, while the quantity of money and credit in circulation has debased it by 63% (measured by M3 euro money supply).

Furthermore, prices can be rigged to create an illusion of price stability. The US Fed increased its buying of inflation-linked Treasury bonds (TIPS) since March 2020 at a faster pace than they were issued by the US Treasury, artificially pushing TIPS prices up and creating an illusion that the market is unconcerned about price inflation.

But that is not all. Government statisticians are not above fiddling the figures or presenting figures out of context. We believe the CPI inflation figures are a true reflection of the cost of living, despite the changes over time in the way prices are input. We believe that GDP is economic growth — a questionable concept — and not growth in the quantity of money. We even believe that monetary inflation has nothing to do with prices. Statistics are designed to deceive. As Lord Canning said 200 years ago, “I can prove anything with statistics but the truth”. And that was before computers, which have facilitated an explosion in the quantity of questionable statistics. Can’t work something out? Just look at the stats.

A further difference between Madoff and the state is that the state forces everyone to submit to its monetary frauds by law. And since as law-abiding citizens we respect the law, we even despise those with the temerity to question it. But in the process, we hand enormous power to the monetary authorities, so should not be surprised when that power is abused, as is the case with interest rates and the dilution of the state’s currency. And it follows that the deeper the currency fraud, when something gives, the greater is the ensuing crisis.

The best measure of market distortions from deliberate actions of the monetary authorities we have is the difference between actual bond yields and an estimate of what they should be. In other words, assessments of the height of negative real yields. But any such assessment is inherently subjective, with markets and statistics either distorted, rigged, or unable to provide the relevant yardstick. But it makes sense to assume that the price impact, that is the adjustment to bond prices as markets normalise, is greatest for those where nominal bond yields are negative. This means our focus should be directed accordingly. And the major jurisdictions where this applies is Japan and the Eurozone.

The eurozone’s banking instability

A critique of Japan’s monetary policy must be reserved for a later date, in order to concentrate on monetary and economic conditions in the Eurozone. The ECB first reduced its deposit rate to 0% in July 2012. That was followed by its initial introduction of negative deposit rates of -0.1% in June 2014, followed by -0.2% later that year, -0.3% in 2014, -0.4% in 2016 and finally -0.5% in September 2019. The last move coincided with the repo market blow-up in New York, the day that the transfer of Deutsche Bank’s prime dealership to the Paris based BNP was completed.

We can assume with reasonable certainty that the coincidence of these events showed a reluctance of major US banks to take on either of these banks as repo counterparties, as hedge and money funds with accounts at Deutsche decided to move their accounts elsewhere, which would have blown substantial holes in Deutsche’s and possibly BNP’s balance sheets as well, thereby requiring repo cover. The reluctance of American banks to get involved would have been a strong signal of their reluctance to increasing their counterparty exposure to Eurozone banks.

We cannot know this for sure, but it is the logical explanation for what happened. In which case, the repo crisis in New York was an important advance warning of the fragility of the Eurozone’s monetary and banking system. A look at the condition of the major Eurozone global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) in Table A, explains why.

Balance sheet gearing for these banks is roughly double that of the major US banks, and except for Ing Group, deep price-to-book discounts indicate a market assessment of these banks’ credit risk as exceptionally high. Other Eurozone banks with international counterparty business deemed not significant enough to be labelled as G-SIBs but still capable of transmitting systemic risk could be even more highly geared. The reasons for US banks to limit their exposure to the Eurozone banking system on these grounds alone are compelling. And the persistence of price inflation today is a subsequent development, likely to expose these banks as being riskier still because of higher interest rates on their exposure to Eurozone government and commercial bonds, and defaulting borrowers.

The euro credit cycle has been suspended

When banks buy government paper, it is usually because they see it as the risk-free alternative to expanding credit to non-financial private sector actors. In the normal course of an economic cycle, it is inherently cyclical. Both Basel and national regulations enhance the concept that government debt is risk-free, giving it a safe-haven status in times of heightened risk. In a normal bank credit cycle, banks will tend to hold government bills and bonds with less than one year’s maturity and depending on the yield curve will venture out along the curve to five years at most.

These positions are subsequently wound down when the banks become more confident of lending conditions to non-financial borrowers when the economy improves. But when economic conditions become stagnant and the credit cycle is suspended due to lack of recovery, banks can accumulate positions with longer maturities.

Other than the lack of alternative uses of bank credit, this is for a variety of reasons. Trading desks increasingly seek the greater price volatility in longer maturities, central banks encourage increased commercial bank participation in government bond markets, and yield curve permitting, generally longer maturities offer better yields. The more time that elapses between investing in government paper and favouring credit expansion in favour of private sector borrowers, the greater this mission creep becomes.

As we have seen above, the ECB introduced zero deposit rates nearly 10 years ago, and private sector conditions have not generated much in the way of bank credit funding. Lending from all sources including securitisations and bank credit to a) households and b) non-financial corporations since 2008 are shown in Figure 1.

Before the Covid pandemic, total lending to households had declined from $9 trillion equivalent in 2008 to $7.4 trillion in 2019 Q4. And for non-financial corporations, total lending declined marginally over the same period as well. Admittedly, this period included a credit slump and recovery, but on a net basis lending conditions stagnated.

But bank credit for these two sectors will have contracted, allowing for net bond issuance of collateralised consumer debt and by corporations securing cheap finance by issuing corporate bonds at near zero interest rates, which are contained in Figure 1.

Following the start of the pandemic, lending conditions expanded under government direction and borrowing by both sectors increased substantially.

Meanwhile, over the same period bond issuance to governments increased, particularly since the pandemic started, illustrated in Figure 2.

The charts in Figures 1 and 2 support the thesis that credit expansion and bond finance had, until recently, disadvantaged the non-financial private sector. The expansion of government borrowing has been entirely through bonds bought by the ECB, as will be demonstrated when we look at the euro system balance sheet. They confirm that zero and negative rates have not stimulated the Eurozone’s economies as Keynesians theorised. And the increased credit during the pandemic reflects financial support and not a renewed attempt at Keynesian stimulation.

The purpose of debt expansion is important because the moment the supposed stimulus wears off or interest rates rise, we will see bank credit for households and businesses begin to contract again. Only this time, there will be a heightened risk for banks of collateral failure. And higher interest rates will also undermine mark-to-market values for government and corporate bonds on their balance sheets, which could rapidly erode the capital of Eurozone banks, given their exceptionally high gearing shown in Table A above.

Figure 3 charts the euro system’s combined balance sheet since August 2008, the month Lehman failed, when it stood at €1.43 trillion. Greece’s financial crisis ran from 2012-2014, during which time the balance sheet expanded to €3.09 trillion, before partially normalising to €2.01 trillion. In January 2015, the ECB launched its expanded asset purchase programme (APP — otherwise referred to as quantitative easing) to prevent price inflation remaining too low for a prolonged period. The fear was Keynesian deflation, with the HICP measure of price inflation falling to -0.5% at that time, despite the ECB’s deposit rate having been already reduced to -0.2% the previous September.

Between March 2015 and September 2016, the combined purchases by the ECB of public and private sector securities amounted to €1.14 trillion, corresponding to 11.3% of euro area nominal GDP. The APP was “recalibrated” in December 2015, extended to March 2017 and beyond, if necessary, at €60bn monthly. And the deposit rate was lowered to -0.3%. Not even that was enough, with a further recalibration to €80bn monthly in March 2016, with it intended to be extended to the end of the year when it would be resumed at the previous rate of €60bn per month.

The expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet led to the rate of price inflation recovering to 1% in 2017, as one would expect. With the expansion of credit for the non-financial private sector going nowhere (Figures 1 and 2 above), the Keynesian stimulus simply failed in this objective. But when in March 2020 the US Fed reduced its funds rate to 0% and announced QE of $120bn monthly, the ECB did what it had learned to do when in a monetary hole: continue digging even faster. March 2020 saw the ECB increase purchases under the asset purchase programme (APP) and adopt a new programme, the pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP). These measures are the reason why the volumes of the Eurosystem’s monthly monetary policy net purchases are higher than ever before, driving its balance sheet total to over €8.5 trillion today.

The ECB’s bond purchases closely matched the funding requirements of national central banks, both being €4 trillion between January 2015 and June 2021. The counterpart to these purchases is an increase in the amount of circulating cash. In other words, the ECB has gone full Rudolf Havenstein. There is no difference in the ECB’s objectives compared with those of Havenstein when he was President of the Reichsbank following the First World War; a monetary policy that impoverished Germany’s middle classes and pushed the labouring class and elderly into starvation by collapsing the paper-mark. Except that today, German society is paying through the destruction of its savings for the spendthrift behaviour of its Eurozone partners rather than that of its own government.

The ECB now has an additional problem with price inflation picking up globally. Producer input prices in Europe are rising strongly with the overall Eurozone HICP rate for November at 4.9% annualised, and doubtless with more rises to come. Oil prices have risen over 50% in a year, and natural gas over 60%, the latter even more on European markets due to a supply crisis of its governments’ own making.

Increasingly, the policy purpose of the ECB is no longer to stimulate the economy, but to ensure that spendthrift member state deficits are financed as cheaply as possible. But how can it do that when on the back of soaring consumer prices, interest rates are now going to rise? Clearly, the higher interest rates go, the faster the ECB will increase its balance sheet because it is committed to not just covering every Eurozone member state’s budget deficit but the interest on their borrowings as well.

But there’s more. In a speech on 12 October, Christine Lagarde, the President of the ECB indicated that it stands ready to contribute to financing the transition to carbon neutral. And in a joint letter to the FT, the President of France and Italy’s Prime Minister called for a relaxation of the EU’s fiscal rules so that they could spend more on key investments. This is a flavour of what they said:

"Just as the rules could not be allowed to stand in the way of our response to the pandemic, so they should not prevent us from making all necessary investments," the two leaders wrote, while noting that "debt raised to finance such investments, which undeniably benefit the welfare of future generations and long-term growth, should be favoured by the fiscal rules, given that public spending of this sort actually contributes to debt sustainability over the long run."

The rules under the Stability and Growth Pact have in fact been suspended, and are planned to be reapplied in 2023, But clearly, these two high spenders feel boxed in. The Stability and Growth Pact will almost certainly be eased — being a charade, rather like the US’s debt ceiling. The trouble is Eurozone governments are too accustomed to inflationary finance to abandon it.

If the ECB could inflate the currency without the consequences being apparent, there would be no problem. But with prices soaring above the mandated 2% target that is no longer true. Up to now, the ECB has been in denial, claiming that price pressures will subside. But we know, or should know, that a rise in the general level of prices is due to monetary expansion, the excessive plucking of leaves from the magic money tree, particularly at an enhanced rate since March 2020 which is yet to be reflected fully at the consumer level. And in its duty to fund the PIGS government deficits, the ECB’s balance sheet expansion through bond purchases is sure to continue.

Furthermore, if bond yields do rise, it will threaten to undermine the balance sheets of the highly geared commercial banks.

The commercial banks position

With the economies of Eurozone member states stifled by the ECB’s management of monetary affairs since the Lehman crisis in 2008 and by more recent covid lockdowns, the accumulation of bad debts at the commercial banks is a growing threat to the entire financial system. Table A above, of the Eurozone G-SIBs’ operational gearing and their share ratings, gives testament to the problem.

So far, bad debts in Italian and other PIGS banks have been reduced, not by their being resolved, but by them being used as collateral for loans from national central banks. Local bank regulators deem non-performing loans to be performing so they can be hidden from sight in the ECB’s TARGET2 settlement system. Together with the ECB’s asset purchases conducted through national central banks, these probably account for most of the imbalances in the TARGET2 cross-border settlement system, which in theory should not exist.

The position to last October is shown in Figure 4. Liabilities owed to the Bundesbank are increasing again at record levels, while the amounts owed by the Italian and Spanish central banks are also increasing. These balances were before global pressures for rising interest rates materialised. Given the sharp increase in bank lending to households and non-financial corporations since March last year (see Figure 1), bad debts seem certain to accumulate at the banks in the coming months. This is likely to undermine collateral values in Europe’s repo markets, which are mostly conducted in euros and almost certainly exceed €10 trillion, having been recorded at €8.3 trillion at end-2019.[vi] The extent to which national central banks have taken in repo collateral themselves will then become a major problem.

It is against the background of negative Euribor rates that the repo market has grown. It is not clear what role negative rates plays in this growth. While one can see a reason for a bank to borrow at sub-zero rates, it is harder to justify lending at them. And in a repo, the collateral is returned on a pre-agreed basis, so it’s removal from a bank’s books is temporary. Nonetheless, this market has grown to be an integral part of daily transactions between European banks.

The variations in collateral quality are shown in Figure 5. This differs materially from repo markets in the US, which is almost exclusively for short-term liquidity purposes and uses high quality collateral only (US Treasury bills and bonds and agency debt).

Bonds rated BBB and worse made up 27.7% of the total collateral in December 2019. In Europe and particularly the Eurozone rising interest rates can be expected to undermine collateral ratings, which with increasing Euribor rates will almost certainly contract the size of the market. This heightens the risk of a liquidity-driven systemic failure, as repo liquidity is withdrawn from banks that depend upon it.

Government finances are out of control

The first column in Table B shows government debt to GDP, which is the conventional yardstick of government debt measurement relative to the economy. The second column shows the proportion of government spending in the total economy relative to GDP, enabling us to derive the third column. The base for government revenue upon which paying down its debt ultimately rests is the private sector, and the third column shows the extent to which and where this true burden lies.

It exposes the impossible position of countries such as Greece, Italy, France, and Belgium, Portugal and Spain, where, besides their own private sector debt burdens, citizens earning their livings without being paid by their governments are assumed by markets to be responsible for underwriting their governments’ debts.

The hope that these countries can grow their way out of their debt is demolished in the context of the actual tax base. It is now widely recognised that will already high levels of taxation further tax increases will undermine these economies.

We can dismiss as hogwash the alterative, the vain hope that yet more stimulus in the form of a further increase in deficits will generate economic recovery, and that higher tax revenues will follow to normalise public finances. It is a populist argument amongst some free marketeers today, citing Ronald Reagan’s and Margaret Thatcher’s successful economic policies. But in those times, the US and UK governments were not nearly so indebted and their economies were able to respond positively to lower taxes. Furthermore, price inflation was declining then while it is increasing today.

And as a paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff pointed out, a nation whose government debt exceeds 90% of GDP has great difficulty growing its way out of it.[vii]Seven of the Eurozone nations already exceed this 90% Rubicon, and their debts are still growing considerably faster than their GDP. At 111% the entire Euro area itself is well above it. Taking account of the smaller proportion of private sector activity relative to those of their governments highlights the difference between the current situation and that of nations that managed to pay down even higher debt levels after the Second World War by gently inflating their way out of a debt trap while their economies progressed in the post-war environment.

Additionally, we should bear in mind future government liabilities, whose net present values are considerably greater than their current debt. Over time, these must be financed. And with rising price inflation, hard costs such as healthcare escalate them even further. The position gets progressively worse as these mandated costs become realised.

There is a solution to it, and that is to cut government spending so that its budget always balances. But for socialising politicians, slashing departmental budgets is the equivalent of eating their own children. It is a reversal of everything they stand for. And it requires welfare legislation to be rescinded to stop the accumulation of future welfare costs. There is no democratic mandate for that.

Conclusion

Rising interest rates globally will affect all major currencies, and for some of them expose systemic risks. An examination of the existing situation and how higher interest rates will affect it points to the Eurozone as being the most likely global weak spot.

The Eurozone’s debt position pitches the entire global financial and economic system further towards a debt crisis than generally realised. Particularly for Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain in that order of indebtedness, the problem is most acute. They only survive because the ECB ensures they can pay their bills by funding them totally through inflation of the quantity of euros in circulation. The ECB’s entire purpose has become to transfer wealth from the more fiscally prudent member states to the spendthrifts by debasing the currency.

In the process, based on figures provided by the Bank for International Settlements the banking system is contracting credit to the private sector, and it is not even accumulating government bonds, which is a surprise.  Much like banks in the US, Eurozone banks have become increasingly distracted into financial activities and speculation. The difference is the high level of operational gearing, up to thirty times in the case of one major French bank, while most of the US’s G-SIBs are geared about 11 times on average.

This article points to these disparities between US and EU banking risks having been a factor in the US repo market failure in September 2019. And we can assume that the Americans remain wary of counterparty exposure to Eurozone banks to this day.

That the ECB is funding net government borrowing in its entirety indicates that even investing institutions such as pension funds and insurance companies, along with the banks are sitting on their hands with respect to government debt. It means that savings are not offsetting the inflationary effects of government bond issues. It represents a vote to stay out of what has become a highly troubling and inflationary situation. The question arises as to how long this extraordinary situation can continue.

It must come to an end some time, and by destabilising a highly leveraged banking system the end will be a crisis. With its GDP being similar in size to China’s (which is seeing a more traditional property crisis unfolding at the same time) a banking crisis in the Eurozone could be the trigger for dominoes falling everywhere.

As for the euro’s future, it seems unlikely that the ECB has the capability of dealing with the crisis that will unfold. It has cheated the northern states, particularly Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg to the benefit of spendthrifts, particularly the political heavyweights of France, Italy and Spain. It is a rift likely to end the euro system and the ECB itself. The deconstruction of this shabby arrangement should prove the end of the euro and possibly of the European Union itself.

Mass Formation: Deployed on You After Over 200 Years of Study

 More than the virus itself, this is what I have been focusing on over the last 2 years. The ability to mold public opinion has progressed tremendously over the last 100 years, first with mass medias, but more recently it has become qualitative and much more granular while adapting to the Internet. It is unfortunately China which is at the forefront of this trend with it's total control of the Internet and its social credit system. But Western countries are catching up fast and in doing so reviving the 1930s dream of combining the state and giant corporations into a techno-fascist state. What is going on right now is by no means an accident, it is a deep historical trend which is just reasserting itself after the long post war hiatus of freedom and prosperity. Will it be kept at bay once again? I hope so in the long term but remains extremely pessimistic in the short term. The forth turning we have just entered, like winter is not only here to stay. It may only be the beginning!  

Via Dr. Robert Malone

Junior academics cited by “Forbes”, AP, Reuters and “The Independent” have not done their homework

Today in “factchecking the factcheckers”, junior academics cited by Forbes, Associated Press, Reuters and The Independent have just not done their homework concerning the work of Professor Dr. Mattias Desmet of the University of Ghent in Belgium. All I can say about this is that I hope that their naive, ignorant, grandstanding statements to the press are brought up during their future Academic Tenure and Advancement reviews.

But there has been an amazingly coordinated effort to shoot the messenger and actively character assassinate (or “defenestrate”) me as a surrogate while avoiding any reference to the highly credentialed academic Professor Dr. Mattias Desmet who actually developed the theory and has documented the extensive evidence in an upcoming academic book. So, what can we learn from this in the short term?

Clearly, Google was not the only corporation triggered by Joe Rogan podcast # 1757 which previously reached #1 podcast ranking worldwide, has been referred to as “the most important interview of our time” and has been seen by over 50 million viewers. But what absolutely has been generated by all of the coopted reactionary press and Big Tech titans metaphorically tripping over their shoelaces is a massive trove of real time data validating the brilliant Mass Formation intellectual synthesis developed by Professor Desmet over the last two years.

In this coordinated propaganda and censorship response, we can clearly see the hands of the BBC-led Trusted News Initiative, the Scientific Technological Elite, the transnational investment funds and their World Economic Forum allies which control Pfizer and most of Big Pharma, Legacy Media and Big Tech (and many national governments) acting in real time to suppress a growing awareness by the general public of having been actively manipulated using crowd psychology tools to generate clinically significant fear and anxiety of COVID-19 (otherwise known as “Coronaphobia”) to advance their agendas on a global scale. Multiple governments have now admitted to actively using fear and ‘Mass Formation’-related theories as a tool for totalitarian population control during this outbreak. This is occurring at the same time that Omicron is destroying the legitimacy of government and WHO propaganda concerning the “Safe and Effective” mRNA vaccines and associated mandates.

But what confuses me is why the western press is all following the same narrative as Forbes, which is now owned by a Chinese media holding company. Is this all really just about China wanting to advance a New World Order agenda, and working in a coordinated fashion together with captured western legacy media and their transnational fund overlords?

Break out the popcorn, because we have an “approved narrative” dumpster fire in progress.

 

“I don’t see how people could claim that ‘mass-formation’ doesn’t exist or has never been scientifically studied. The term just refers – it goes without saying – to the process of the formation of a mass or a crowd. Mass formation has been studied for over 200 years, beginning with such scholars as Gustave Le Bon, Freud, McDougal, Canetti, Hannah Arendt, etc. In the twentieth century, psychologists such as Ash and Sheriff have studied mass formation experimentally.

Some of these scholars did explicitly use the term mass-formation, others didn’t. But what they studied was basically the same: the way in which individual’s mental states is influenced by their tendency to conform to group thinking. I myself have over 100 publications on Web of Science, a large part of them focusing on how individuals’ personality structures is influenced by their relationships with other people. Once you understand the basic mechanisms through which individual’s personality is in the grip of the opinion of other people, you understand the elementary mechanisms at work in this enormous psychological process that is happening when a mass emerges in a society.

In my upcoming book: The psychology of totalitarianism, I analyze and describe the way in which the psychological process of mass formation got stronger and stronger throughout the last two centuries and eventually leads to totalitarian thinking and in the end also to the emergence of totalitarian states.”

Mattias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium

 

Covid 19: Scientist letter to the government in Israel

This is a very good example of the push back around the world.

Unfortunately, most people are not aware of this. The narative and the medias are so completely under control that most people still believe that there is indeed a consensus around the Covid vaccine. To undo the damage will be a long and winding road, with progressive governments in most Western countries still doubling down on repressive policies. And why not since clearly nothing works!

Professor Ehud Qimron, head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University and one of the leading Israeli immunologists, has written an open letter sharply criticizing the Israeli – and indeed global – management of the coronavirus pandemic.

Professor Ehud Qimron (center) at Tel Aviv University (Haaretz)

 Open letter to the authorities (this is a mechanical translation from the original Hebrew):

Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure

In the end, the truth will always be revealed, and the truth about the coronavirus policy is beginning to be revealed. When the destructive concepts collapse one by one, there is nothing left but to tell the experts who led the management of the pandemic – we told you so.

Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail. You do not admit it, because you have admitted almost no mistake in the last two years, but in retrospect it is clear that you have failed miserably in almost all of your actions, and even the media is already having a hard time covering your shame.

You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge. You insisted on attributing every decline of a wave solely to your actions, and so through false propaganda “you overcame the plague.” And again you defeated it, and again and again and again.

You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007,” p. 26).

You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people. You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well.

You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020.

You refused to adopt the “Great Barrington Declaration,” signed by more than 60,000 scientists and medical professionals, or other common-sense programs. You chose to ridicule, slander, distort and discredit them. Instead of the right programs and people, you have chosen professionals who lack relevant training for pandemic management (physicists as chief government advisers, veterinarians, security officers, media personnel, and so on).

You have not set up an effective system for reporting side effects from the vaccines and reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page. Doctors avoid linking side effects to the vaccine, lest you persecute them as you did to some of their colleagues. You have ignored many reports of changes in menstrual intensity and menstrual cycle times. You hid data that allows for objective and proper research (for example, you removed the data on passengers at Ben Gurion Airport). Instead, you chose to publish non-objective articles together with senior Pfizer executives on the effectiveness and safety of vaccines.

Irreversible damage to trust

However, from the heights of your hubris, you have also ignored the fact that in the end the truth will be revealed. And it begins to be revealed. The truth is that you have brought the public’s trust in you to an unprecedented low, and you have eroded your status as a source of authority. The truth is that you have burned hundreds of billions of shekels to no avail – for publishing intimidation, for ineffective tests, for destructive lockdowns and for disrupting the routine of life in the last two years.

You have destroyed the education of our children and their future. You made children feel guilty, scared, smoke, drink, get addicted, drop out, and quarrel, as school principals around the country attest. You have harmed livelihoods, the economy, human rights, mental health and physical health.

You slandered colleagues who did not surrender to you, you turned the people against each other, divided society and polarized the discourse. You branded, without any scientific basis, people who chose not to get vaccinated as enemies of the public and as spreaders of disease. You promote, in an unprecedented way, a draconian policy of discrimination, denial of rights and selection of people, including children, for their medical choice. A selection that lacks any epidemiological justification.

When you compare the destructive policies you are pursuing with the sane policies of some other countries — you can clearly see that the destruction you have caused has only added victims beyond the vulnerable to the virus. The economy you ruined, the unemployed you caused, and the children whose education you destroyed — are the surplus victims as a result of your own actions only.

There is currently no medical emergency, but you have been cultivating such a condition for two years now because of lust for power, budgets and control. The only emergency now is that you still set policies and hold huge budgets for propaganda and consciousness engineering instead of directing them to strengthen the health care system.

This emergency must stop!

 

The Defenestration Of Dr. Robert Malone

 I am personally a great fan of Dr Malone. His statements are well built, balanced and if anything, he knows what he is talking about. He may be wrong, sometimes, we all are on occasions. But this is no reason to shut him up. The censorship of the big internet companies is a crime against free speech and should be denounced vigorously. If not now, when?

Commentary authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

Dr. Robert Malone is a U.S. virologist and immunologist who has dedicated his professional existence to the development of mRNA vaccines.

In the 1980s, Malone worked as a researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he conducted studies on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology. In the early 1990s, Malone collaborated with Jon A. Wolff and Dennis A. Carson, two eminent scientists, on a study that involved synthesization.

In fact, Malone is the father of mRNA vaccines. He has served as an adjunct associate professor of biotechnology at Kennesaw State University, and he co-founded Atheric Pharmaceutical, a company that was contracted by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in 2016.

As you can see, Malone is no ordinary man. In fact, he’s a rather extraordinary man. Before embarking on a distinguished career in science, Malone worked as a carpenter and as a farmhand. Becoming a doctor was a lofty aspiration, but through hard work and determination, his dream became a reality. Over the course of three decades, Malone has established himself as one of the most competent people in the fields of virology and immunology.

Dr. Robert Malone (L) speaks at the Global Covid Summit in Nashville, Tenn., on Dec. 18, 2021. (Courtesy of Global Covid Summit/Screenshot via NTD)

Why, then, is he considered “a pariah” (in his own words) by so many of his peers? Why did Twitter recently suspend his account?

Malone is arguably the most qualified person in the world to speak on what we as a society should and shouldn’t be doing during the pandemic. Yet for reasons that will become abundantly clear, he finds himself ostracized, largely silenced, and cut off from the scientific community. Why?

Two months before his Twitter account was suspended, Malone wrote a rather prophetic Twitter post:

“I am going to speak bluntly,” he wrote.

“Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press. They are trying to delegitimize us and pick us off one by one.”

He finished by warning that this is “not a conspiracy theory” but “a fact.” He urged us all to “wake up.”

Sadly, many of us are still asleep.

In my research for this piece, it seems clear to me that Malone has been silenced, not because he’s some quack spouting nonsense, but because he challenged—and still challenges—the overarching narrative about vaccines and the lethality of COVID-19.

Malone was recently interviewed by Joe Rogan. For the uninitiated, Rogan is the host of one of the most influential podcasts in the world. At one point during the three-hour interview, Malone referred to Dr. Anthony Fauci as Tony Fauci, a man he knows personally. Malone, in other words, knows where all the skeletons are hidden. The same is true for Dr. Peter McCullough, another world-renowned expert who has appeared on Rogan’s podcast.

Prior to writing this piece, I consulted both Malone and McCullough.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a briefing at the White House on Dec. 1, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Over the course of the past 18 months, Malone has been painted as some kind of anti-vax fringe scientist, a man of questionable merit who’s spouting nonsense.

Well, he’s not. Malone happens to be vaccinated. All he has ever asked for is the chance to have frank and honest discussions on vaccines.

In his own words, vaccines have “saved lives. Many lives.”

“But it is also increasingly clear that there are some risks associated with these vaccines,” Malone said. “Various governments have attempted to deny that this is the case. But they are wrong. Vaccination-associated coagulation is a risk. Cardiotoxicity is a risk. Those are proven and discussed in official USG communications, as well as communications from a variety of other governments.”

Malone isn’t a crazed conspiracy theorist: He’s a man who’s intimately familiar with the benefits and the risks of vaccines. He’s a proponent of informed consent. Perhaps before letting someone inject a vaccine into your body, you should be fully informed of the risks involved, he says. He isn’t an unreasonable man.

Nevertheless, in this age of faux outrage and fabricated storylines, society needs a fall guy, a boogie man, a sacrificial lamb. Malone fits the bill. He knows too much. It’s much easier to discredit a decorated physician—who challenges the overarching narrative—than it is to actually debate him.

Zero Degrees of Separation

The story goes deeper. In 2019, the BBC established the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a partnership that now includes organizations such as Facebook, Twitter, Reuters, and The Washington Post. We’re told that it was established to tackle “disinformation in real time.” TNI was ostensibly designed to wage a war on “fake news.”

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears to have been designed to promote very specific narratives and to silence any dissenting voices, such as Malone’s. Instead of trusting the TNI, we should question the motives of its members.

After all, The Washington Post recently published a piece asking people to stop criticizing President Joe Biden. The message is clear: Stop being mean to the president, even if the president is being mean to you (on more than one occasion).

Then, there’s James C. Smith, chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He sits on the board of directors for Pfizer, a company that’s responsible for the creation of vaccines with questionable efficacy and that has a history of manipulating data. In short, Pfizer is a company with a questionable reputation. Nevertheless, Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla was recently named CNN’s Business CEO of the Year. Make of that what you will.

When one thinks of TNI (and the mainstream media in general), various terms instantly spring to mind. “Objectivity” isn’t one of them. “Highly compromised” and “conflict of interest” do come to mind, however.

Speaking of objectivity, or the lack thereof, in August 2021, The Atlantic ran a much-cited hit piece on Malone, which was high on accusations, but low on actual evidence. It attacked his character and credibility—repeatedly. Rather intriguingly, the article, like all of The Atlantic’s COVID-19 articles, was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The former is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation owns stock in Johnson & Johnson, a company whose vaccine has been associated with the development of blood clots—the very thing Malone has been warning us about for the better part of two years.

People might scoff. But contrary to popular belief, democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in broad daylight. Its death is slow and protracted, one by a thousand cuts rather than by one fatal stab.

As author Steve Levitsky once wrote, democracies don’t often die at the hands of military generals, “but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.”

“One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion,” he wrote. “Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”

Apply these lines to the pandemic, and Levitsky’s words carry more weight than ever before.

In the United States, one must not question the efficacy of masks, vaccines for kids, the logic (or lack thereof) of lockdowns, or the unconstitutional nature of vaccine mandates. What about the little matter of vaccine breakthrough deaths? Don’t ask any questions.

But wait, if science can’t be questioned, doesn’t this make it propaganda? Hush now. Don’t you love America? Don’t you want people to live, rather than die? Then shut up and get the vaccine, then the booster shot, then the booster-booster shot. We, the arbiters of truth, know what’s best for you. Somewhat ironically, these self-appointed arbiters of truth spout no shortage of lies.

Is it any surprise, then, that more and more Americans continue to lose faith in the mainstream media and the government? Yet here we are, being condescended to by the likes of CNN’s Don Lemon and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. Worse still, we’re supposed to take orders from Fauci, a man who supposedly represents science, yet goes out of his way to smear scientists. Why would a man of science attack the very thing that he’s supposed to represent?

According to numerous reports, Fauci has repeatedly deceived the American people. It’s important to remember that Fauci is, first and foremost, a talking head for the U.S. government. In reality, he’s a politician with a medical degree.

To quote the author Gillian Flynn, the author of “Gone Girl”: “The truth is malleable; you just need to pick the right expert.”

Who better than Fauci, a highly qualified individual with his own fan club? But don’t be fooled. Fauci might act like he answers to no one, but he does. He answers to the U.S. government. Who, then, does the government answer to? Big Pharma, it seems.

In 2019, the Roosevelt Institute published a fascinating report, “The Cost of Capture: How the Pharmaceutical Industry has Corrupted Policy Makers and Harmed Patients.” The report outlines the many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry has shaped policies through corporate capture. This is a phenomenon that sees private industries use their significant financial and political influence to manipulate a state’s decision-making apparatus. The report warned about the dangers of lobbying and of deeply flawed medical research.

What we’re seeing is the convergence of Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Government. Let’s call it the unholy trinity, with Big Tech doing the bidding of Big Government, and Big Government doing the bidding of Big Pharma.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, YouTube has removed the Joe Rogan episodes featuring Robert Malone and Peter McCullough. Why? Because when it comes to viruses and vaccines, these are among the most notable and accomplished experts in the world. They appear to know things that the government doesn’t want us to know. Additionally, Google, the owner of YouTube, appears to be closely involved with the U.S. government.

What we’re left with is the equivalent of a digital dictatorship, with even the most qualified people being silenced, ostracized, and, in some cases, defenestrated. Robert Malone is a wise man, an honest man, and a highly credible man. The grief that has come his way—and continues to come his way to this day—is unwarranted. But as he knows only too well, this is the price one must pay for challenging the unholy trinity.

The Death Of Truth

 This trend is truly frightening!

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Over the past several days I have had some time to think, and my thoughts have repeatedly turned to the current state of the Internet.  For a couple of decades after it was popularized, the Internet was one of the greatest tools for free speech that the world has ever seen.  It allowed ordinary people like me to share truth on a massive scale with other ordinary people all over the planet.  I have always been grateful for that opportunity, but now our ability to share truth with one another over the Internet is being systematically eroded.  Nobody can deny that this is taking place, because it is literally happening right in front of our eyes.  Over the past decade, control of the Internet has become increasingly centralized. 

The big tech companies have become exceptionally powerful, and they have become addicted to using that power to suppress speech that they do not like.

This is an extremely dangerous trend, because the Internet has become the primary way that the vast majority of us communicate with one another.  It truly is our modern version of “the marketplace of ideas”, but now the big tech companies are absolutely determined to distort it into something else entirely.

At this point, there are a whole host of ideas that you aren’t allowed to freely discuss on the Internet anymore.

In fact, there are a whole host of questions that you aren’t even allowed to ask.

When a society gets to a point where you aren’t even allowed to ask questions, that is a very clear sign that you are living under a very oppressive authoritarian regime.

Years ago when they started banning various prominent voices we all knew that it wouldn’t end there.

And it hasn’t.

Today, the big tech companies have no problem banning literally anyone.  For example, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene just got permanently banned on Twitter…

Twitter permanently blacklisted the personal account of a sitting member of Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over the New Year’s weekend. “Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Rep. Greene said, in a statement responding to the ban. “That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies.”

Rep. Greene has one of the largest followings on social media of any Republican member of Congress. Prior to her ban, she had over 465,000 followers on Twitter, meaning the Republican party and conservative movement has lost one of its most influential accounts on the platform.

Five years ago, if you told me that the big tech companies would start banning our politicians in Washington, I would have told you that you were crazy.

But now nobody is safe.  Once Twitter and Facebook banned a sitting president, we all knew that there was no going back.

Of course the pandemic has given the big tech companies an excuse to push their levels of censorship to even higher levels.  Just a few days ago, Twitter banned Dr. Robert Malone just before he was interviewed by Joe Rogan…

Dr. Robert Malone played a key role in the invention of the mRNA vaccine, the type of vaccine that is being administered to many Americans in an effort to stave off COVID-19. Malone has often been critical of the use of the vaccines, as well those in the media and government who support them.

He shared a great deal of research on his Twitter account, which had more than half a million followers.

“We all knew it would happen eventually,” Malone said on his Substack. “Today it did. Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye. That means I must have been on the mark, so to speak. Over the target. It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries.”

So now it appears that Twitter is preemptively banning people.

We truly have entered “Minority Report” territory, and that is extremely chilling.

Considering everything that has been happening with the pandemic, you would think that we would want to hear what one of the inventors of mRNA technology has to say.  Dr. Robert Malone has decades of experience, and he had been one of the most respected names in his field.

But because he has viewpoints that don’t align with the official narratives being pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, he is being blacklisted by the big tech companies.

If you think that you can get around all the censorship by simply refusing to use the big tech company platforms, you are wrong.

Just consider this example.  Gateway Pundit is reporting that T-Mobile is literally erasing links to their articles from text messages…

Hi Jim. In one of the screenshots you can see where my sister tried to send me your website link four times but I never got it. The other two screenshots it shows me sending a link to one of your articles, that’s the one with the picture of the fox in it. In the other screenshot from my sister it shows that she never received the link. The text message it still has the fox in it. I hope this helps. But what I realized is it’s actually just my boost T-Mobile carrier that’s blocking your links. I have a friend in the 949 area code and he was able to send it to his wife, however, I can only receive it in a group text. Let me know if you have any more questions. Thanks. Mark.

I have had a similar experience with articles written by Mike Adams of Natural News.  When I try to send links to Natural News through Facebook Messenger, the links are simply erased from the messages somehow.

That is the level of censorship that we are now facing.

They literally want to control what we see, what we hear and what we think.  And of course this is setting the stage for a level of authoritarianism unlike anything we have ever seen before in all of human history.

Without freedom of speech, all of our other freedoms will rapidly become meaningless.

Sadly, at this point freedom of speech in the United States is getting pretty close to being completely wiped out.

Our Republic is rapidly dying, and millions upon millions of Americans are cheering as it happens.

The big tech companies have become the arbiters of truth, but most of the “truths” that they are relentlessly pushing are actually lies.

I don’t know if there is a way out of this mess, but we must find one, because the future of our society hangs in the balance.