Never Attribute To Malice That Which Can Be Explained By Stupidity

What we now know: 

1. Pfizer and others have a track record of racketeering. And the medical establishment receives a lot of money from big Pharma

2.  The Pfizer vaccine trials were fabricated – faulty to be charitable

3. The vaccine has rapidly waning efficacy

4. The Lancet paper shows that it does not prevent infection of or transmission by the vaccinated

5. Public Health England data indicates the vaccinated are more likely to contract the infection than unvaccinated, though paradoxically, the fatality rate for vaccinated is lower – but this may be because of issues in calculating the dominator, ie, the total number of unvaccinated

6. The VAERS, Eurovigilance and Yellow Card system all indicate vaccine-caused deaths and side-effects, far in excess of anything recorded for a prior vaccine – which the medical establishment is refusing to acknowledge / investigate

7. Recent analyses of VAERS data shows that the majority of deaths / side effects are concentrated in certain manufacturing lots, indicating that the scaling-up of manufacturing is not sufficiently quality controlled to be consistent.

8. There has been a concerted campaign by governments, media and the medical establishment to prevent early treatment protocols and mention of them

9. Uncertain longer term affects including ADE, etc

10. And in spite of all of the above emerging evidence, governments are doubling down on efforts to enforce vaccine mandates.

Move along, nothing to see here.

In regard to the above, Hanlon's Razor beckons us to believe that:

Officialdom has gone all in with vaccines because they see it as the path to keeping the economy open. They are too committed to that path, and not engaging in lock downs long enough to get infections down, and THEN to use quarantines and contact tracing. The US has been utterly un-serious about quarantines. Quarantines are perceived as being too punitive and perhaps too likely to produce a backlash.

Vaccine passports are basically a confidence scheme as well as part of a denial mechanism (that contagion is due to being unvaxxed, not the neo-vaccinoids having no sterilizing efficacy while rapidly fading over time). Vaccine passports are less difficult than a testing regime and contact tracing - and - can be outsourced to the private sector, thus buying friends.

Astonishingly false statements about the neovaccinoids predominate in the media and institutional mainstreams, the biggest being the make-believe that the neo-vaccinoids confer sterilizing immunity. Consequently, this counterfactual consensus delusion goes to the very top of institutional and political decision structures.

Archbishop Viganò’s Open Letter to Archbishop Gomez

insidethevatican  |  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 80, has written an open letter to America’s bishops expressing concern about various issues concerning the Coronavirus, and the vaccinations against the virus.

    The central concern of the former Vatican nuncio to the United States (2011-2016) is that the testing of the various vaccines has not yet been completed, and will not be completed in many cases until 2023 or 2024.

    Since there are already after nine months of vaccinations a number of reported cases of negative reactions to the vaccines, Viganò says that he, and other bishops, ought to be concerned about the announced plan of US President Joseph Biden (link) to vaccinate in the near future 28 million American children between the ages of 5 and 11.

    Since these children have, statistically, faced little danger from the Coronavirus, but might face some type of negative side effect from the untested vaccines, Viganò argues that it would be more prudent to postpone such massive vaccinations plans for such young children until the testing is complete.

    To persist in carrying out the plan would be a crime, Viganò maintains.

    The letter contains many footnotes to scientific articles — some little noted by the mainstream media — which the archbishop believes support his arguments.

    “I realize that it may be extremely unpopular to take a position against the so-called vaccines,” Viganò writes to Gomez, “but as Shepherds of the flock of the Lord we have the duty to denounce the horrible crime that is being carried out.”

    Here is Viganò’s text, when he sent to me yesterday, October 26, though the text is dated October 23, four days ago. —RM

The "Masters" Don't Quite Know What To Do With A Woke And Out LGB Community

tinkzorg |  In recent days, the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” has taken on a life of its own. At one point, four out of ten songs on the Spotify top 10 list were called ”Let’s go Brandon”. People are saying it as a form of greeting, or wearing it on t-shirts. For some, this is just a funny gag. For others, it is a source of significant and growing dread; dread about what is happening politically in the United States, and what the future now looks to have in store for them.

For those of you who don’t know the context: at a recent NASCAR event in New Jersey, the crowd could be heard chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!” after the race. During an interview with the winner of the race – a man named Brandon Brown – the flustered reporter, hearing the chant, then says on camera that the crowd must be very enthused for Brandon, as they’re all chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” in his honor. Of course, they crowd is doing no such thing, and she and everyone else knows it. This little episode, on its own, is hardly very remarkable or significant. Others slowly pick up on the story and mock the journalist involved. But at this point, it is merely just another day of ”fake news”, another day of the liberal media being the liberal media.

However, like a dangerous respiratory virus, this little ”Brandon incident” then incubates for a week or two, before blossoming out into something far more serious, into a true social event. People start saying ”Let’s go Brandon!” at random, both as a mockery of the sitting president, but also as a way to mock the now increasingly toothless media apparatus, who fewer and fewer seem to take seriously at all. And this is where things become truly interesting: as at least one pilot then tells his passengers ”Let’s go Brandon!” before takeoff, liberal America starts to actually freak out. At this point, think pieces are produced by NPR and others claiming that there’s a new form of conspiratorial ”code speak” that ”racists” are now using to note their displeasure with the sitting president. Others demand the offending pilot be fired, as it is obvious that he isn’t really saying ”Let’s go Brandon!”, he’s actually saying ”Fuck Joe Biden!”. The irony here should be quite obvious, as liberals are now decrying people for playing along with the very same cover story they invented out of thin air to cover up what is clearly growing dissatisfaction with president Biden.

Some have taken this to be just another funny episode of ”internet humor” leaking into the real world. But this is, to put it frankly, the delusions of an intellectual class who themselves enjoy being ironic on the internet, and who then quite myopically assume that everyone else must think and act the way they do. Middle aged female nurses, as a rule, do not use 4chan, nor are they versed in, or at all interested in, the finer points of ironic ”internet humor”. Political humor, coming from normal, working class people, might superficially resemble that of irony-poisoned college graduates. But in reality, they have very little in common.

Moreover, there’s a very large, very obvious flaw in this explanation of events. Again, the crowds at that NASCAR race weren’t chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” they were chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!”, and by all accounts, they certainly weren’t being ironic about that. No coded language was intented, no mental jiu-jitsu performed. Only when the media tried to use its incredibly hollow and thoroughly unimpressive powers of ”mind control” did people start with ironic mockery, and that mockery was aimed both at the president as well as the clear powerlessness of the chattering classes to control the narrative or get people to believe them. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, when airplane passenger hear the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” spoken over the intercom, they don’t necessarily hear just a joke, but also a reminder that a political conflict they had tried to suppress is very much still real.

But even with all this said, many a reader will probably want to ask a simple question: why does any of this matter? Though I would argue that the sudden explosion of ”Let’s go Brandon!” in American culture actually means a very great deal, to truly explain why this joke is so funny to some, and so unnerving to others, we have to do so by way of a metaphor. To truly understand why many liberals are so scared of what others consider to still be merely a harmless joke, we have to talk a bit about a concept known as Kantai Kessen, the Japanese naval war doctrine during World War II. Do not worry, the relevance of this concept to today’s America will hopefully become clear as we go along.

The "Masters" Have Redefined The Meaning Of The Word Vaccine

technofog |   The CDC caused an uproar in early September 2021, after it changed its definitions of “vaccination” and “vaccine.” For years, the CDC had set definitions for vaccination/vaccine that discussed immunity. This all changed on September 1, 2021.

The prior CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination (August 26, 2021):

Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

The CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination since September 1, 2021:

Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

People noticed. Representative Thomas Massie was among the first to discuss the change, noting the definition went from “immunity” to “protection”.

Check out @CDCgov’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth: pic.twitter.com/4k2xf8rvsL

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021

 

To many observers, it appeared the CDC changed the definitions because of the waning effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. For example, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine falls over time, with an Israeli study reported in August 2021 as showing the vaccine being “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection for those individuals who had two doses of the shot back in January.”  The CDC recognizes the waning effectiveness, thus explaining their promotion of booster shots.

Of course, the usual suspects defended the CDC. The Washington Post, for example, cast doubt that the CDC changed the definition because of issues with the COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC tried to downplay the change, stating “slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.”

Internal CDC E-Mails

CDC emails we obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal CDC worries with how the performance of the COVID-19 vaccines didn’t match the CDC’s own definition of “vaccine”/“vaccination”. The CDC’s Ministry of Truth went hard at work in the face of legitimate public questions on this issue.

In one August 2021 e-mail, a CDC employee cited to complaints that “Right-wing covid-19 deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines…”

 

The "Masters" Have Circled Their Wagons To Protect Herr Doktor Fauci...,

Greenwald |  What is going on here is almost too self-evident to require elaboration. For years, The Post favorably covered the animal welfare work of this group without even remotely suggesting it had some nefarious ideological agenda, let alone investigating its finances. Only one thing has changed: their work in highlighting gruesome dog experimentations now has the possibility of undermining Dr. Fauci or harming his reputation, and thus The Post — acting like the pro-DNC liberal advocacy group that it is — set out to smear White Coat as right-wing MAGA activists in order to delegitimize and discredit their investigative work and, more importantly, give liberals a quick-and-easy way to dismiss their work as nothing more than an anti-science MAGA operation even though they are nothing of the sort.

Even more disturbing was the telephone call which Goodman had on Monday with Reinhard and another Post reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, assigned to the health and COVID beat. During that call, Abutaleb in particular repeatedly demanded to know whether White Coat was concerned that the activism they were doing on these dog experimentation programs could end up harming Dr. Fauci's reputation and thus make him less able to manage the COVID crisis. They even suggested that by encouraging people to call the NIH telephone lines to protest this experimentation, they might be making it difficult for people with questions about COVID to get through. The obvious premise of the entire conversation was one completely antithetical to the journalistic ethos: it is immoral to do anything that reflects negatively on Dr. Fauci now, no matter how true or warranted it might be, because his importance is too great to risk undermining him. (Request for comment from Reinhard was not responded to as of publication of this article, but will be added if supplied).

In general, as this controversy has unfolded, media outlets have expressed almost no interest in the immorality and atrocities of these taxpayer-funded dog experimentations, and instead have acted as political activists with only one goal: protect Dr. Fauci. PolitiFact, for instance, purported to fact-check White Coat's campaign (laughably calling them “a conservative watchdog group”) by implying they were lying. Aside from citing (but not verifying) NIAID’s denial that they funded one of the experiments, they acknowledged that they did indeed fund others, but then pointed out that nobody could prove that Fauci personally approved the funding for these experiments. Yet that is a claim White Coat has never made and which, in any event, is as unlikely as it is irrelevant given that, for thirty years, Fauci has been the head of the agencies conducting these experiments which have long been the target of activist protest. It is simply impossible that he was unaware of these controversies.

After speaking with the two Post reporters, Goodman told me that “it’s clear based on my conversations with them that rather than investigating the horrific puppy experimentation being funded with our tax dollars by Anthony Fauci — about which they have asked virtually nothing — they are instead interested in attempting to discredit our organization and #BeagleGate campaign in order to run defense for Fauci.” He also described the sudden change in The Post's behavior in reporting on them: “in just five 5 years, the paper went from featuring our group as a model of bipartisanship in the animal protection movement and highlighting our winning campaigns to end taxpayer-funded animal testing to now trying to smear us a conservative front group that doesn’t really care about animals, all because we dared to criticize St. Fauci.”

Bellotti described The Post's sudden turnaround this way:

Having personally witnessed the horrors of animal testing, I founded [White Coat] to unite liberty-lovers and animal-lovers, Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and vegetarians to fight against wasteful taxpayer-funded animal experiments. Widening the tent is how you win campaigns, and we’ve done this more effectively than any other organization, resulting in historic wins for animals, from shutting down the government’s largest cat experimentation lab to freeing monkeys from federal nicotine addiction experiments to bringing dog testing at the VA to record lows. This has all been done on a shoestring budget with overwhelming support from grassroots advocates and donors. Apparently for some though, disparaging Anthony Fauci for funding the abuse of puppies is a bridge too far. But, to suggest that we’re out to accomplish anything other the save animals from wasteful government spending and abuse is simply not true nor supported by any actual evidence.

Newspapers like The Post vehemently deny that they have any political agenda, insisting that they are devoted to non-partisan and apolitical reporting. Very few people believe this fraud any longer, which is why trust in journalism has collapsed so precipitously, but rarely do we see a test case that so vividly illustrates how they really function.

For years, The Washington Post reported fairly and truthfully on this group, because none of its activities threatened any government officials whom the paper wishes to protect. Suddenly, when the work they have been doing for years began to reflect poorly on a government official vital to American liberalism, The Post launched a campaign that is not even thinly disguised but nakedly clear in its goal: to smear this group by impugning its motives and distorting its agenda so that its work is immediately and uncritically disregarded by the paper's overwhelmingly liberal audience.

If Strikes, Sick-Outs, And Bad Weather Continue - What Will Our Masters Do Next?

consentfactory |  Still, as mass hysterical as things are, count on GloboCap to go balls out on the mass hysteria for the next five months. The coming Winter is crunch time, folks. They need to cement the New Normal in place, so they can dial down the “apocalyptic pandemic.” If they’re forced to extend it another year … well, not even the most brainwashed New Normals would buy that.

Or … all right, sure, the most brainwashed would, but they represent a small minority. Most New Normals are not fanatical totalitarians. They’re just people looking out for themselves, people who will go along with almost anything to avoid being ostracized and punished. But, believe it or not, there is a limit to the level of absurdity they’re prepared to accept, and the level and duration of relentless stress and cognitive dissonance they are prepared to accept.

Most of them have reached that limit. They have done their part, followed orders, worn the masks, got the “vaccinations,” and are happy to present their “obedience papers” to anyone who demands to see them. Now, they want to go back to “normal.” But they can’t, because … well, because of us.

See, GloboCap can’t let them return to “normal” (i.e., the new totalitarian version of “normal”) until everyone (i.e., everyone who matters) has submitted to being “vaccinated” and is walking around with a scanable certificate of ideological conformity in their smartphones. They would probably even waive the “vaccination” requirement if we would just bend the knee and pledge our allegiance to the WEF, or BlackRock, or Vanguard, or whoever, and carry around a QR code confirming that we believe in “Science,” the “Covidian Creed,” and whatever other ecumenical corporatist dogma.

Seriously, the point of this entire exercise (or at least this phase of this entire exercise) is to radically, irrevocably, transform society into a monolithic corporate campus where everyone has to scan their IDs at every turn of an endless maze of perpetually monitored, eco-friendly, gender-fluid, ideologically uniform, non-smoking, totally meat-free “safe spaces” owned and operated by GloboCap, or one of its agents, subsidiaries, and assigns.

The global-capitalist ruling classes are determined to transform the planet into this fascistic Woke Utopia and enforce unwavering conformity to its valueless values, no matter the cost, and we, “the Unvaccinated,” are standing in their way.

They can’t just round us up and shoot us — this is global capitalism, not Nazism or Stalinism. They need to break us, to break our spirits, to coerce, gaslight, harass, and persecute us until we surrender our autonomy willingly. And they need to do this during the next five months.

Preparations therefor are now in progress.

America Has Lost The Covid Plot: Yet These mRNA Jabs And Jab Passports Keep Rolling Along....,

theatlantic |  We know how this ends: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. But what we don’t know—and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for—is how we are supposed to get there. We’ve avoided the hard questions whose answers will determine what life looks like in the next weeks, months, and years: How do we manage the transition to endemicity? When are restrictions lifted? And what long-term measures do we keep, if any, when we reach endemicity?

The answers were simpler when we thought we could vaccinate our way to herd immunity. But vaccinations in the U.S. have plateaued. The Delta variant and waning immunity against transmission mean herd immunity may well be impossible even if every single American gets a shot. So when COVID-related restrictions came back with the Delta wave, we no longer had an obvious off-ramp to return to normal—are we still trying to get a certain percentage of people vaccinated? Or are we waiting until all kids are eligible? Or for hospitalizations to fall and stay steady? The path ahead is not just unclear; it’s nonexistent. We are meandering around the woods because we don’t know where to go.

What is clear, however, is that case numbers, the metric that has guided much of our pandemic thinking and still underlies CDC’s indoor-masking recommendation for vaccinated people, are becoming less and less useful. Even when we reach endemicity—when nearly everyone has baseline immunity from either infection or vaccination—the U.S. could be facing tens of millions of infections from the coronavirus every year, thanks to waning immunity and viral evolution. (For context, the flu, which is also endemic, sickens roughly 10 to 40 million Americans a year.) But with vaccines available, not every case of COVID-19 is created equal. Breakthrough cases are largely mild; 10,000 of them will cause only a fraction of the hospitalizations and deaths of 10,000 COVID cases in the unvaccinated. The more highly vaccinated a community is, the less tethered case numbers are to the reality of the virus’s impact.

So if not cases, then what? “We need to come to some sort of agreement as to what it is we're trying to prevent,” says Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease expert at New York University. “Are we trying to prevent hospitalization? Are we trying to prevent death? Are we trying to prevent transmission?” Different goals would require prioritizing different strategies. The booster-shot rollout has been roiled with confusion for this precise reason: The goal kept shifting. First, the Biden administration floated boosters for everyone to combat breakthroughs, then a CDC advisory panel restricted them to the elderly and immunocompromised most at risk for hospitalizations, then the CDC director overruled the panel to include people with jobs that put them at risk of infection.

On the ground, the U.S. is now running an uncontrolled experiment with every strategy all at once. COVID-19 policies differ wildly by state, county, university, workplace, and school district. And because of polarization, they have also settled into the most illogical pattern possible: The least vaccinated communities have some of the laxest restrictions, while highly vaccinated communities—which is to say those most protected from COVID-19—tend to have some of the most aggressive measures aimed at driving down cases. “We’re sleepwalking into policy because we’re not setting goals,” says Joseph Allen, a Harvard professor of public health. We will never get the risk of COVID-19 down to absolute zero, and we need to define a level of risk we can live with.

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One Unadvertised Scheme - AMONG MANY - For Shaking Down "Middle-Class" Peasants

@seangotcher #housing ♬ San Tropez - Illect Recordings

msn |  In a video that’s garnered more than 2.4 million views on TikTok, Nevada real-estate agent Sean Gotcher criticizes the “iBuying” business model, in which companies buy and sell homes for a profit. In the video, he proposes that a nameless company has a website where many people search for homes “when they’re bored,” and he says that same company “uses that information to go into that ZIP code and start purchasing houses.”

In other words, he’s suggesting that companies such as Zillow are using the data they glean from people’s perusal of home listings on their sites to make decisions about which houses to buy as iBuyers.

Gotcher later argues that the company will buy 30 homes at one price, and then purchase a 31st home at a higher price. “What that just did is create a new comp,” Gotcher says, referring to comparable prices on nearby properties, which appraisers use to determine the value of a home for sale. He then says the company can turn around and sell the other homes at that new, higher price.

In subsequent videos, Gotcher takes on Zillow and Redfin more directly, criticizing their respective business practices.

“I’m happy to see the conversation that’s occurring at every printer in every real estate office about data storage, mixed with buying power and recognizable marketing is finally happening outside our office doors so more can participate in the discussion,” Gotcher, who works for Level Up Real Estate in Henderson, Nev., told MarketWatch in an email.

The video subsequently garnered even more attention on Twitter when a person with the username Gladvillain shared it after learning that the user’s mother had sold her home to Zillow. Many users claimed that Zillow was purchasing “all of the homes,” and said they planned to boycott the platform.

Both Zillow and Redfin contradicted the video’s claims. “The internet has empowered millions of consumers with more information, transparency and tools in real estate to help them make smarter real estate decisions, many provided by Zillow for more than a decade,” a Zillow spokesperson told MarketWatch in an email. “Unfortunately, the internet can also sometimes be a source of misinformation and falsehoods — as is this case.”

A Redfin spokesperson added that the company doesn’t “have the share to manipulate the market nor do we have any desire to, because intentionally overpaying for homes would be a terrible business model.”

Real-estate experts debunked many of the points made in the viral video, and argued that other forces are to blame for the country’s competitive, pricey housing market.

“If you could rig the residential housing market that easily, the Realtors would have done it long ago,” said Gilles Duranton, a real-estate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

 

 

Billionaires Were Undistracted And Undeterred By The Controlavirus Shenanigans...,

ips |  U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth surge $1.8 trillion during the pandemic, their collective fortune skyrocketing by nearly two-thirds (62 percent) from just short of $3 trillion at the start of the COVID crisis on March 18, 2020, to $4.8 trillion on August 17, 2021, according to a report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS). A table of the top 15 billionaires is below and the full data set is here.

Elon Musk has seen his wealth increase by an eye-popping $150 billion during the pandemic, a gain of over 600 percent.

America’s billionaire bonanza demonstrates the flaws in our current economic and tax systems President Biden and Democrats in Congress are trying to remedy by advancing a $3.5 trillion budget package, which has already passed the U.S. Senate and is being considered in the U.S. House today. If it becomes law through the budget reconciliation process this fall, it will aid communities and working families by making healthcare, eldercare, childcare, housing and education more affordable, investing in clean energy, expanding the Child Tax Credit and providing 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. It will be paid for by making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and it will not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year.

Not only did the wealth of billionaires grow, but so did their numbers: in March of last year, there were 614 Americans with 10-figure bank accounts; this August, there are 708. Their $1.8 trillion of increased wealth alone over 17 months, which will not be taxed unless they sell their assets, would pay for more than half of Biden’s 10-year $3.5 trillion investment package.

21st Century Slavery Looks A Lot Like 19th Century Slavery

motherjones |  When I first came to the Dominican Republic 30 years ago evidence of forced labor in the sugar harvest was glaringly obvious: Men with shotguns guarded locked gates to trap workers in the cane fields. But the International Labor Organization’s indicators of forced labor include more subtle abuses like the hazardous working conditions, low pay, and other issues cane workers regularly describe today.

“We’re talking about coercive forces that are psychological, coercive forces that are driven by debt,” said Duncan Jepson, managing director of the international anti-trafficking group Liberty Shared. “And that’s slightly more subtle than methods of violence.”

One Sunday morning, Euclides and I went to a batey for an Evangelical church service, under a patchwork of red and blue tarps affixed to wooden poles. We’d been invited by a couple I’ll call Efrain and Noni. Noni paced back and forth before the congregation, microphone in her hand, leaning back, giving it everything.

In contrast to his wife, Efrain sat quietly in a folding chair. He’s a “mixer,” part of a team of fumigators who sometimes use sticks ripped from trees to stir chemicals in open 55-gallon drums. Despite Central Romana’s promises to provide health care to workers, Efrain told us he has to pay for much of it himself, which has pushed him into spiraling debt. Together with expenses caused by his brother’s thrombosis, he now owes 30,000 pesos—about $600, or nearly three months’ pay. The lender charges 10 percent per week, Efrain explains: “If you borrow 1,000 pesos, you have to give this person 100 pesos per week in interest.” Yearly, that adds up to 520 percent interest.

More than two dozen cane workers told us their salaries are so low that they’ve turned to money lenders in nearby towns. A municipal firefighter who has a side business making loans to cane workers explained that while Central Romana doesn’t operate the loan shark rings, the company’s low wages leave workers desperate and willing to pay exorbitant rates. One of the ILO’s elements of forced labor is “fraudulent debt from which workers cannot escape.”

It’s a brutal cycle, Efrain tells us. The canecutters are in debt until they die.

Sugar is not the only thing that’s made the Fanjuls so rich. Their profits are sweetened thanks to the politics of the United States. Not only does Central Romana benefit from a tariff program under which the Dominican Republic gets a greater share than any other sugar-exporting nation—with the company filling nearly two-thirds of that quota—but it also profits from a congressionally authorized federal price-support program that inflates the value of each pound by about 10 cents. Vincent Smith, an agricultural economist and critic of the program, estimates the Fanjul family is “getting at least $150 million a year” in net benefits from the program, with another $25 million going to Central Romana’s imports. “That’s a very substantial concentration of benefits on a very small number of folks,” Smith says.

Some of that money goes back to seed the American political system. Over the last 20 years, Big Sugar has spent more than $220 million on campaign contributions and lobbying to sustain the price-supports and oppose stricter dietary guidelines, with 40 percent of that, according to OpenSecrets, coming from Fanjul-affiliated companies and lobbying groups. Smith, citing Federal Election Commission data, points out that the Fanjul empire and allied sugar organizations spend 10 million every year on lobbying and campaign contributions. “They’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts,” says Sheila Krumholz, OpenSecrets’ executive director. “It’s a very good investment.”

 

Prince Andrew Blames Underage Girls For Making Him F*ck Underage Girls...,

pagesix |  Prince Andrew’s attorneys made the shocking claim that the woman suing him for allegedly raping her when she was a teenager was actually a sex trafficker tasked with procuring “slutty girls” for pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The Duke of York’s legal team made the accusation against accuser Virginia Giuffre in a Friday motion to dismiss her Manhattan federal court suit against him.

In a section of the legal filing, Andrew, 61, alleged Giuffre, 38, was “involved the willful recruitment and trafficking of young girls for sexual abuse,” by the financier, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail before he could be tried for assaulting underaged girls.

“She was like the head b—h. She’d have like nine or 10 girls she used to bring to him. She never looked like she was being held captive,” Philip Guderyon, a former boyfriend of Giuffre’s, was quoted as saying in the court document.

Crystal Figueroa, whose brother also dated Giuffre, said the accuser asked her for help finding victims for Epstein, according to the court filing.

“She [Giuffre] would say to me, ‘Do you know any girls who are kind of slutty?,’” lawyers alleged Figueroa said.

Giuffre has alleged she was recruited into Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation in 2000 by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of procuring women and underage girls for the billionaire, and is awaiting trial in Manhattan federal court.

Giuffre claims Andrew sexually assaulted her three times — including once in Manhattan — at the behest of Epstein, charges the disgraced royal has denied.

The prince’s latest offensive accused her of fabricating the charges for a “payday,” while also referencing Giuffre’s 2009 agreement with Epstein, which lawyers said should block any legal action she could take against Andrew.

 

You Ain't In Trouble Cause Epstein Was Your Boy, You In Trouble For F*cking Underaged Girls!!!

CNN  |  The American chief executive of Barclays (BCS), Jes Staley, is stepping down with immediate effect following an investigation by British regulators into his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the bank said on Monday.

The investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was disclosed by Barclays in early 2020 and focused on how Staley had characterized the relationship to his employer.

 

Barclays and Staley were made aware on Friday evening by the FCA and the PRA of the preliminary conclusions of their investigation.

 

"In view of those conclusions, and Mr Staley's intention to contest them, the board [of Barclays] and Mr Staley have agreed that he will step down from his role as group chief executive and as a director of Barclays," Barclays said in its statement on Monday. 

 

"It should be noted that the investigation makes no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Mr Epstein's alleged crimes, which was the central question underpinning Barclays' support for Mr Staley following the arrest of Mr Epstein in the summer of 2019," the bank added, saying it was not appropriate for it to comment further.

 

A spokesperson for the FCA and PRA said the regulators "do not comment on ongoing investigations or regulatory proceedings" beyond confirming the actions detailed in the statement from Barclays.

 

Epstein, a multimillionaire and convicted pedophile who was charged with sex trafficking by US federal prosecutors, died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.

 

Staley had been running Barclays since late 2015. Prior to that he worked for more than 30 years at JPMorgan (JPM), where he served as head of its investment banking division. His relationship with Epstein dated back to 2000, when he became head of JPMorgan's private bank. 

 

"He was already a client. The relationship was maintained during my time at JPMorgan, but as I left Morgan it tapered off quite significantly," Staley told reporters on a call in February 2020.

 

Asked then whether he regretted his relationship with Epstein, Staley said: "Obviously I thought I knew him well and I didn't. And for sure with hindsight of what we all know now I deeply regret having had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein."

 

 

The Nazis Created By Liberal Democracy...,

Harpers |   It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him—or his wife—to dinner.

He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him—he despises, for instance, Mr. B—because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly anti-Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity.

Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.

There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.

 

The Collapse Of Liberal Democracy

eand |  Let me pause for a moment. There are only really a handful of liberal democracies on earth — and America and Britain are their chief exemplars. What does liberal democracy mean? Broadly, it means that public goods are to be privatized. Because nobody deserves anything from the social surplus as an inherent, constitutional human right. They might deserve the right to carry guns, sure — but a portion of the social surplus, meaning healthcare, retirement, income, a place to live, etcetera, as constitutional rights? Forget it. Everyone is to “stand on their own two feet,” and not be a “liability.” Society is to be ruled by competition, the more intense and brutal the better, which is the machine that winnows the wheat — the talented, ruthless, cunning, amoral, indifferent — from the chaff. Even the average person is better off this way, because all those Nietzschean ubermen are the smartest and cleverest and most productive, who lift up everyone’s living standards, with wondrous “innovations” and ideas and creations.

Again, take a moment to really understand the linkages in all those disparate ideas. How they add up to a whole paradigm, a whole praxis, known as “liberal democracy.” Why? Because…

We now understand that all that is false. If it were true, any of it, then American and British living standards wouldn’t be falling so catastrophically. They wouldn’t have been falling for decades now. They would have kept on rising. The whole causal chain which liberal democracy’s Grand Experiment was based on — individualism, greed, selfishness, hyper-competition, leading to productivity and innovation, leading to rising living standards for all, fuelling political stability and happiness and trust — we now know the whole theory is false.

Know. This isn’t politics anymore. Now we’re in the realm of knowledge, of facts, of empiricism. Politics is about beliefs. I believe this form of political order works, because it leads to eudaimonia. People have believed many such things — in feudalism, theocracy, communism, fascism. Intelligent people, thoughtful people — they know. Because there is something to know. It’s not a political belief that feudalism or fascism don’t work as forms of political order — it is a fact which we know, the lesson earned with blood and tears and tragedy.

And now we are learning the same thing about liberal democracy. We are beginning to know. The answer to a very great question. The outcome of a Grand Experiment. We are not in the realm of casual “politics” anymore, meaning political beliefs. We are now in the realm of knowledge about political economies, which is a very different thing. Now we know that liberal democracy doesn’t work, either, right alongside fascism and communism.

Interestingly, we also know that liberal democracy appears to decay into fascism. The widespread poverty and implosive living conditions it produces, in the end, as the rich get richer, and the middle becomes an underclass, ignite the atomic bomb of fascism right in the heart of a society.

 

Silicon Valley's Conservative Past And Nazi Dystopian Future

jacobin | Unlike Steve Jobs, who embraced the counterculture and sought to infuse the tech industry with some of its values, Thiel has long been hostile to the Left and all its cultural offshoots. Like Noyce before him, he believes that the Left’s influence slows technological progress and sets humanity back.

Thiel has been described as a libertarian because he funded initiatives like the Seasteading Institute for a time and has advocated for deregulation and slashing government spending on welfare and social programs. But he doesn’t just want a smaller state. He wants a particular kind of state, one reminiscent of the early days of Silicon Valley, when the tech industry and pro-capitalist governments collaborated to exercise global hegemony.

Chafkin writes that, especially after 9/11, Thiel was “no longer much of a libertarian, if he’d ever been one in the first place.” He’d originally positioned PayPal as an anti-establishment innovation that would give everyone their own Swiss bank account and “unilaterally strip governments of the power to control their own money supplies.” But he later complied with financial regulations and worked with the FBI to find money launderers — the same people whom he had described as personal Swiss bank account–holders. He benefited handsomely from the collaboration.

As he became a more prominent right-wing political figure by backing Trump, appearing at the 2019 National Conservatism conference, and funding so-called right-wing populist candidates like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance, his companies also became more closely entwined with the US government. Thiel had invested in SpaceX and cofounded Palantir, two companies that rely heavily on lucrative public contracts, and even went so far as to sue the US government to gain access to them. Palantir, in particular, is a data-mining company that works with both major corporations and the US military and intelligence community.

Regardless of whether they identify as liberal or conservative, the tech industry’s leaders are embracing the military-industrial complex.

In 2019, Thiel took to the pages of the New York Times to argue for tech companies to work more closely with the US military. He criticized decades of US policy toward China and called out Google for opening an AI lab in China as it canceled an AI contract with the Pentagon — effectively accusing it of helping the enemy. In seeking to stoke a Cold War nationalism centered around opposition to China, Chafkin explains, Thiel wants “to bring the military-industrial complex back to Silicon Valley, with his own companies at its very center.”

And he’s not the only tech executive who feels this way — just the first to come out and say it, paving the way for the others. In February 2020 Eric Schmidt, whom Thiel once called “Google’s minister of propaganda,” wrote his own Times op-ed calling for the United States to take China’s technological threat more seriously. “For the American model to win,” he wrote, “the American government must lead.” A few months later, Zuckerberg positioned Facebook in opposition to China in front of US lawmakers, while other companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have continued to fight for major contracts with the US military.

Regardless of whether they identify as liberal or conservative, the tech industry’s leaders are embracing the military-industrial complex. Thiel is not an outlier; he’s just a few paces ahead.

For The Moment - Establishment Signals Its Grudging Rejection Of Hot Civil War

realclearpolitics |  Bill Maher argued against masks, vaccine mandates at work, firing people with immunity, and more on Friday's edition of 'Real Time' on HBO. Maher declared the pandemic was over and it is time for everyone to give up and "resume living," telling viewers there will always be a variant.

"Just resume living," Maher said. "I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what? It's over. There's always going to be a variant. You shouldn't have to wear masks... I haven't had a meeting with my staff since March of 2020. Why?"

"Also, vaccines, masks. Pick one! You've got to pick. You can't make me mask if I've had the vaccine," he said. "I saw it today, people outside alone, walking with a mask. It's so stupid. It's an amulet. A charm people wear to ward away evil spirits. It means nothing."


"Can't we get people to understand the facts more?" Maher asked.

Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan told Maher she has "broken up" with COVID and has had enough.

"I have broken up with COVID. It's not working for me anymore," she said.

"I can't keep up," Flanagan later said. "And you know what? I've had cancer. I'm triple vax'd. If it gets me, fair play to it because it will put up a fight against me. But I'm not staying in my house again."

Sen. Chris Coons (D-CT), Maher's other guest, argued pandemic mitigation efforts are still needed because the entire world has not recovered.

"So in the United States, in most of the western world, we're ready to be done with this, but we're not done until the world is safe and we're not safe as a world until the world's vaccinated," Coons said.

"Except the world recognizes natural immunity, we don't," Maher responded. "Because everything in this country has to go through the pharmaceutical companies. Natural immunity is the best kind of immunity. We shouldn't fire people who have natural immunity because they don’t get the vaccine."

"If someone is willing to be a fireman, if someone is willing to be a policeman, if someone is willing to go into a burning building and says, 'I'm just not that afraid of COVID and I don't want to take the vaccine,' that should be enough," Flanagan said.

"You shouldn't be losing a job, you shouldn't be furloughed without pay, the guy that saves lives because he doesn't want to take the vaccine. It's ridiculous," she added.

"For unvaccinated hospitalization risk - unvaccinated. 41% of Democrats thought it was over 50%... Hospitalization rate for the vaccinated is actually 0.01% and the rate for the unvaccinated is 0.89%. So in both cases, the correct answer is less than 1%. They thought it was over 50%. How do people, especially of one party, get such a bad idea? Where did that come from?" Maher asked.

Do The NeoVaccinoid Mandates Seem Like "Political Opportunism" Or A Master Plan?

strategic-culture |  Even as scientific studies show that vaccines alone cannot extricate humanity from the Covid-19 crisis, governments are rushing headlong towards the creation of a ‘vaccinated economy’ without any consideration for the consequences. It’s time for an injection of sanity and informed democratic debate.

An astonishing thing happened this week that should have – were it not for a media industrial complex that coddles and cossets the powers that be – incited journalists to scream bloody murder around our increasingly imprisoned planet. What the world got instead was the deafening cacophony of crickets.

When a reporter asked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about the possibility of the Pacific island nation being fragmented into two distinct classes of citizens – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – Arden didn’t miss a beat as she responded with her trademark Cheshire grin, “That is what it is. So yep. Yep.”

After being further prodded by the deferential journalist as to why she favored apartheid, Ardern, who has already mandated vaccines for government employees or else, responded, unscientifically, that “people who have been vaccinated will want to know that they are around other vaccinated people; they’ll want to know that they’re in a safe environment.”

Under normal conditions – that is, before scientific inquiry was sent back kicking and screaming to the Dark Ages – Ardern’s outrageous remark would have been greeted by robust and vigorous debate from both the political and medical communities. After all, the vaccinated should feel absolutely at ease mingling among the unvaccinated in stuffy public places given that they are, supposedly, protected? Isn’t that the point of the vaccines, to protect the vaccinated and get us back to some semblance of ‘normal’? If not, then why the incessant push to jab every single person on the planet, and not just once, as initially promised, but multiple times? The answer, at least according to Queen Ardern, is so that everyone can feel “confident” once again among their fellow man. That makes absolutely zero sense, especially as new studies show no discernible decrease in infection rates among the vaccinated. So why hedge our bets when just the opposite seems to be happening?

VAERS Is Supposedly Used By Public Health Officials To Detect Signals

The signals began ringing loudly in December 2020, when first covid shots were administered, and quickly became deafening. They were that loud, and the extraordinary magnitude of them has been and continues to be ignored by our government at all levels in Washington DC, all levels!

Senators this week demonstrated that they could put the heat on, witness AG Merrick Garland — when they want to take something seriously.

However, despite the Loudon rape fiascos, which senators used to slap Garland around with, Garland the Magnificent remains in office. And his order to FBI to treat parents complaining about public school corruption remain “domestic terrorists” remains in place far as I know.

Save for Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, none of them have lifted a finger, while thousands and tens of thousands dead, permanently disabled, maimed, injured, blinded, cancers that were in remission came back, ditto herpes, thousands of miscarriages and who knows how many thousands of women now permanently sterilized? from these poisons sold as preventive medicine. Among many, many other injuries. And hospitals across the land fire skilled medical staff for saying anything about this grotesque bestiality. These are not hospitals; they are charnel houses!

What are these shots actually preventing, —- if 85% of those dead after covid shot got the disease anyways?

Below is data indicating how out of control the covid shot injuries are, which also indicates the moral turpitude of Congress, Biden, and his men [and Trump’s advocacy of “warp speed” vax], et al.

Note what happens in Dec. 2020.

all adverse events reported to VAERS
Dec., 2019 3,455
Jan., 2020 3,082
Feb., 2020 2,986
Mar., 2020 2,232
Apr., 2020 2,022
May, 2020 1,946
Jun., 2020 1,844
Jul., 2020 2,186
Aug., 2020 2,961
Sep., 2020 4,576
Oct., 2020 6,265
Nov., 2020 4,510
Dec., 2020 15,594
Jan., 2021 70,266
Feb., 2021 57,719
Mar., 2021 78,168
Apr., 2021 105,689
May, 2021 63,606
Jun., 2021 44,649
Jul., 2021 36,000
Aug., 2021 103,533
Sep., 2021 49,428

after covid shot-only reports to VAERS
Dec., 2020 10,891
Jan., 2021 66,581
Feb., 2021 54,550
Mar., 2021 74,461
Apr., 2021 102,189
May, 2021 61,113
Jun., 2021 42,374
Jul., 2021 33,564
Aug., 2021 100,718
Sep., 2021 47,158
Oct., 2021 29,144
Total 622,743

In the 11 months preceding covid shot rollout, Jan — Nov 2020,
34,701 adverse events reported to VAERS — for ALL vaccines combined.

In the 11 months since, Dec 2020 to Oct 2021,
622,743 adverse events for covid-only shots

Nearly 17 times more, or 1,685% more.

This is what vaccine failure looks like.

This is what government failure looks like.

Had the CDC and US Food and Drug Administration been serious about adverse events and in particular, the percentage of those either having covid or not, they would have done something to ensure that there would be data on this, for each and every VAERS report submitted.

In particular, regarding VAERS reports in which death occurs after covid shots.

While 100% data on this may seem like pie in the sky, the least we should expect is what Pfizer and Moderna claimed was 95% Vaccine Effectiveness VE. Which as we now know was base, rank, propaganda and deception, at best.

Irrespective of the fact that the actual VE of these poisons tends toward zero, one can at the very least expect that the percentage of VAERS reports on who did and did not test positive for this disease should have at a minimum been ~ 43%.

43% is the CDC estimated VE, from average of previous decade’s [through 2019/2020 flu season], of influenza shots.

Instead, only 16.42% is actually reported in VAERS data bank. That’s bad, that’s really unconscionably bad.

VAERS data shows that of all the after covid shot deaths,
2.54 % reported “SARS-COV-2 TEST NEGATIVE”
13.88% reported “SARS-COV-2 TEST POSITIVE”

Where are the other 83.58% ???

Thus, only 16.42% of this essential data is actually, as of Oct. 29 data, known via VAERS.

Assuming these proportions are at least in the ball park, this means
~85% of after covid shot deaths tested positive
~15% tested negative.
[13.88/16.42 = 84.531, or 85% rounding; 100-84.531 = ~15%]

8,086 deaths after covid shot reported to VAERS x 21X = ~165,000 actual deaths.

165,000 x 0.85 = ~144,211 died with positive test
165,000 x 0.15 = 21,631 died with negative test.

Total = ~ 165,842

Rose says that these deaths are caused by covid shots.

IM Doc And Jimmy Dore: Anti-Mandate Does Not Equal Anti-Vaxx

I have ordered tens of thousands of vaccines in my lifetime.

We have not had near the time or ability to completely assess this situation with the COVID vaccines. And certainly with what we know about the COVID vaccines now, there are really no big benefits for “public health” in general. There is enormous benefit for individual patients that are at high risk and I have spent inordinate amount of my time trying to convince these people to go for it.

In the vaccinated, it appears the contagion can be spread and caught likely just as easily as in the unvaccinated. Therefore, the risks and benefits are all on the individual side and not on the community side. This is completely different than in most of the childhood vaccines which lead us to sterilization and decreased spread to zero. Our COVID vaccines currently will be able to do no such thing. We can greatly impact high-risk individual lives with these vaccines and we should all be trying to do that – but impacting the course of spread in a vast population is much different with these COVID vaccines than say with measles. It is unfortunately simply not going to work that way until/if we get better vaccines.

If the COVID vaccines worked like the measles vaccine, we would not be having all the discussion about “protecting the vaccinated” would we? If they worked like they were early on promised, the vaccinated would not have to worry for a second about the unvaccinated. The consequences and problems would theoretically all be on the unvaccinated. We can behave that way with certainty with the measles and mumps vaccines with just microscopic levels of breakthrough. But the COVID vaccines offer no such protection. I applaud anyone who gets vaccinated – especially those in higher risk situations. I spend large amounts of my day every day doing just that. But given the way these were sold, and given what has occurred, I blame no one for being hesitant. It is my job to convince those high-risk to overcome their doubts. But demonizing anyone who has concerns and having them fired is just completely inappropriate.

I really do wish Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo and even Dr. Wen and Dr. Fauci could spend just one day with me – and see what all the confusion and chaos has wrought in the minds and souls of my patients. I really do.

Public health has no business mandating these for individuals in this situation. Heart disease and strokes have killed more people than COVID this year – but you do not hear the public health authorities mandating that every adult take LIPITOR. Why not?

It is because coercion simply does not work in these situations. Coercion often severely coalesces resistance. Look around you. Much research has been done on this in the past. Just look at Dr. Fauci’s take on coercion and vaccine mandates from just last autumn before the vaccines arrived. What he said then and what he is saying now cannot both be true. (Of course when looking for that link, I was able to find 3 different contradictory things he has said about vaccines in the past year). There has been no sudden sea change in decades of public health research. And what he said last autumn had years of public health research and wisdom behind it. He appropriately exempted from his statement last year Health Care workers (and I would add the military) – which are not at all “the public” in public health.

Pharmakeia: By Thy Sorceries Were All Nations Deceived

topical-bible-studies  |  A study of the Greek words pharmakeia (Strong's 5331) and pharmakeus (Strong's 5332).

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance:
"5331. pharmakeia ... from 5332; medication ('pharmacy'), i.e. (by extension) magic (literal or figurative)."
"5332. pharmakeus ... from pharmakon, (a drug, i.e. spell-giving potion); a druggist ('pharmacist') or poisoner, i.e. (by extension) a magician."

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary:
"pharmaceutical ... from Greek pharmakeutikos ... a medicinal drug."
"pharmaco- ... Greek pharmako-, from pharmakon ... medicine : drug."
"pharmacology ... the science of drugs."
"pharmacy ... from Greek pharmakeia ... the art or practice of preparing, preserving, compounding, and dispensing drugs ... a place where medicines are compounded or dispensed ... DRUGSTORE." 

The words in bold in the following verses, unless otherwise noted, are the King James Version translations of the Greek word pharmakeia, and represent every occurrence of pharmakeia in the New Testament.

Galatians 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft [RSV: sorcery], hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Revelation 9:20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Revelation 18:1 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Revelation 18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
22 And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;
23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

---

The word in bold in the following verses is the King James Version translation of the Greek word pharmakeus, and represents the only occurrence of pharmakeus in the New Testament.

Revelation 21:7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

 

COVID-19 ERASED The Regulatory And Trial-Related Hurdles To IMMENSE PROFIT

unlimitedhangout |  How did Moderna know that COVID-19 would create those conditions months before anyone else, and why did they later claim that their vaccine being tested in NIH trials was different than their commercial candidate? 

In late 2019, the biopharmaceutical company Moderna was facing a series of challenges that not only threatened its ability to ever take a product to market, and thus turn a profit, but its very existence as a company. There were multiple warning signs that Moderna was essentially another Theranos-style fraud, with many of these signs growing in frequency and severity as the decade drew to a close. Part I of this three-part series explored the disastrous circumstances in which Moderna found itself at that time, with the company’s salvation hinging on the hope of a divine miracle, a “Hail Mary” save of sorts, as stated by one former Moderna employee. 

While the COVID-19 crisis that emerged in the first part of 2020 can hardly be described as an act of benevolent divine intervention for most, it certainly can be seen that way from Moderna’s perspective. Key issues for the company, including seemingly insurmountable regulatory hurdles and its inability to advance beyond animal trials with its most promising—and profitable—products, were conveniently wiped away, and not a moment too soon. Since January 2020, the value of Moderna’s stock—which had embarked on a steady decline since its IPO—grew from $18.89 per share to its current value of $339.57 per share, thanks to the success of its COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet, how exactly was Moderna’s “Hail Mary” moment realized, and what were the forces and events that ensured it would make it through the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) process? In examining that question, it becomes quickly apparent that Moderna’s journey of saving grace involved much more than just cutting corners in animal and human trials and federal regulations. Indeed, if we are to believe Moderna executives, it involved supplying formulations for some trial studies that were not the same as their COVID-19 vaccine commercial candidate, despite the data resulting from the former being used to sell Moderna’s vaccine to the public and federal health authorities. Such data was also selectively released at times to align with preplanned stock trades by Moderna executives, turning many of Moderna’s highest-ranking employees into millionaires, and even billionaires, while the COVID-19 crisis meant economic calamity for most Americans. 

Not only that, but—as Part II of this three-part series will show, Moderna and a handful of its collaborators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seemed to know that Moderna’s miracle had arrived—well before anyone else knew or could have known. Was it really a coincidental mix of “foresight” and “serendipity” that led Moderna and the NIH to plan to develop a COVID-19 vaccine days before the viral sequence was even published and months before a vaccine was even considered necessary for a still unknown disease? If so, why would Moderna—a company clearly on the brink—throw everything into and gamble the entire company on a vaccine project that had no demonstrated need at the time?

So Let Me Get This Right, You MuhFuggah's Still Working Out mRNA's Kinks?

phys.org  |  Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene therapies in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific messenger RNA sequences in cells, and that detection then triggers production of a specific protein from a transgene, or artificial gene. 

Because transgenes can have negative and even dangerous effects when expressed in the wrong cells, the researchers wanted to find a way to reduce off-target effects from gene therapies. One way of distinguishing different types of cells is by reading the RNA sequences inside them, which differ from tissue to tissue.

By finding a way to produce transgene only after "reading" specific RNA sequences inside cells, the researchers developed a technology that could fine-tune gene therapies in applications ranging from regenerative medicine to cancer treatment. For example, researchers could potentially create new therapies to destroy tumors by designing their system to identify cancer cells and produce a toxic protein just inside those cells, killing them in the process.

"This brings new control circuitry to the emerging field of RNA therapeutics, opening up the next generation of RNA therapeutics that could be designed to only turn on in a cell-specific or tissue-specific way," says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study.

This highly targeted approach, which is based on a genetic element used by viruses to control gene translation in host cells, could help to avoid some of the side effects of therapies that affect the entire body, the researchers say.

Evan Zhao, a research fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and Angelo Mao, an MIT postdoc and technology fellow at the Wyss Institute, are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Biotechnology.

RNA detection

Messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules are sequences of RNA that encode the instructions for building a particular protein. Several years ago, Collins and his colleagues developed a way to use RNA detection as a trigger to stimulate cells to produce a specific protein in bacterial cells. This system works by introducing an RNA molecule called a "toehold," which binds to the ribosome-binding site of an mRNA molecule that codes for a specific protein. (The ribosome is where proteins are assembled based on mRNA instructions.) This binding prevents the mRNA from being translated into protein, because it can't attach to a ribosome.

The RNA toehold also contains a sequence that can bind to a different mRNA sequence that serves as a trigger. If this target mRNA sequence is detected, the toehold releases its grip, and the mRNA that had been blocked is translated into protein. This mRNA can encode any gene, such as a fluorescent reporter molecule. That fluorescent signal gives researchers a way to visualize whether the target mRNA sequence was detected.

In the new study, the researchers set out to try to create a similar system that could be used in eukaryotic (non-bacterial) cells, including human cells.