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What Difference Does It Make?

What Difference Does It Make?

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What Difference Does It Make? Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2020 - 21:50

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

During questioning by Senator Ron Johnson in 2013 about the false narrative of a Prophet Muhammed video spurring a spontaneous demonstration, presented by National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding the Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, Clinton angrily responded with her now famous quote.

“With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference at this point does it make?”

 – Hillary Clinton

I’ve lately found myself saying “what difference does it make” regarding the outrages being inflicted upon myself and my fellow citizens on a daily basis.

I’ve been railing for years against out of control government spending; undeclared never-ending wars across the globe provoked by the military industrial complex; un-Constitutional surveillance of Americans by our Deep State government overseers; the extreme greed and criminality exhibited by Wall Street bankers as they pillage the national treasure; corrupt politicians of both parties paid off to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors; propaganda spewing fake news media corporations; the Deep State running things behind the curtain; and the destroyer of worlds – the Federal Reserve – debasing our currency as they enrich the few at the expense of the many.

I naively thought back in 2008 when I started writing articles, I could be part of a movement to change the course of the country. I went to Ron Paul rallies, got involved with the Concord Coalition, participated in the financial crisis documentary Generation Zero, convinced senior administration at Wharton to play David Walker’s documentary I.O.U.S.A. for the MBA students, did radio interviews, and spent most of my free time writing article after article about what needed to be done to reverse our downward spiral as a nation.

When I was censored on sites like Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense because they had sold out to the Wall Street cabal, I stumbled into blogging, with partner dust-ups, server issues, denial of service attacks and ad company censorship along the way. But I’m still slogging and blogging away twelve years later, through presidential coup attempts, market crashes, the Federal Reserve rescuing the .1% once again, the most overhyped flu in the history of mankind used as a means to destroy our last vestiges of liberty and freedom, and the evil oligarchs attempting to seize complete and final control over all the economic, social, political and military levers of our society.

I’m convinced there will be no consensus regarding an agreed upon presidential victor on November 4th, or possibly weeks after, or possibly ever. The amount of incompetence in handling mail-in-ballots by the USPO and those tasked with counting them will be off the charts. The level of fraud in attempting to win this election will be on a level never seen before, making Daley’s shenanigans to get Kennedy the necessary votes in 1960 seem like child’s play.

When a system is specifically designed in such a way that cheating is easy, there will be a significant amount of cheating. The stakes in this election have never been higher. The future path of the nation will be set in motion by the outcome of this election. But the truth is, no matter the outcome, the losers will not accept the verdict. That is when this Fourth Turning moves into its truly violent stage, making these urban riots in Democrat stronghold cities seem like minor league play acting.

I thought the situation in this country was dire in 2007 when David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., made this declaration:

“The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.

There are striking similarities between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. The fiscal imbalance meant the US was on a path toward an explosion of debt.

With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiraling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks. Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also are on an unsustainable path. Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernize everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems.” 

 David Walker – 2007

Hence, the name for my blog was ordained, as I concurred with Walker’s assessment and decided the purpose of my blogging would be to warn others about the unsustainability of our path in an effort to avert a disastrous outcome. It’s almost comical I thought our fiscal situation was dreadful in 2007, when the national debt stood at $9 trillion after 218 years as a nation, and our annual deficit was $161 billion. With the national debt currently totaling $26.5 trillion, our feckless politicians have added $17.5 trillion of debt in 13 years. Our current deficit is on pace to reach $4 trillion.

That is $11 billion per day. We are generating a deficit on par with 2007 every two weeks. If you told someone in 2007, when they were earning 5% on their Vanguard money market fund, thirteen years later they would be earning .06% on that same money market fund, unemployment would be over 10%, the country had averaged annual budget deficits exceeding $1 trillion per year, and GDP had averaged less than 2% per year, but the stock market was up 125% to all-time highs, they would have committed you to the loony bin.

The only way politicians could possibly get away with this outrageous level of debt spending is with the encouragement and collaboration of the Wall Street owned and controlled Federal Reserve.

When reckless, greed driven, myopic, sociopath politicians are allowed to implement “solutions” geared towards benefiting their corporate masters and getting themselves re-elected, with no immediate adverse consequences for their actions because a bunch of spineless toady academics employed by the oligarchs will drop interest rates to zero and bailout badly run companies and governments by electronically producing $7.6 million PER MINUTE to cover these ultimately fatal “solutions”, the fate of the country is sealed.

It’s not a matter of if this empire built on debt implodes, it’s just a matter of when. And the “when” appears to be approaching rapidly, based upon the desperate measures being taken by the powers that be since the cracks in the system appeared in September 2019 , with repo market disfunction.

Any critical thinking, rational, peace-loving, law-abiding, golden-rule-following citizen of this country must be baffled, disillusioned, angry and depressed by the path being forced upon us by elected and unelected tyrants as they attempt to implement their formerly hidden agenda. The agenda of sociopathic, egomaniacal, billionaire oligarchs has always been the same – accumulating more wealth, power and control, using whatever means necessary to accomplish this mission in life.

We are allotted maybe 80 or so years on this planet to try and make a difference. Most normal people just want to find someone to love, raise a family, work at a job they don’t hate, be left alone by the government, find some enjoyment on a daily basis, and live according to the cultural norms which have proven to keep a society running peacefully and productively for centuries.

But, there are a very small minority who want to rule over others, accumulate the maximum amount of wealth possible using whatever means necessary, stop at nothing to gain control over all the levers of power in society, treat others as pawns, vassals and sheep in their game of brinkmanship with the other .1%ers, and willingly destroy a culture of shared sacrifice for future generations by inflicting a culture of greed, consumerism, selfishness, hate, and mistrust of others in it’s place.

This is how an invisible government (Deep State) is able to mold the minds of millions through government school indoctrination and incessant propaganda emanating from fake news corporate media mouthpieces for the oligarchy. They have slowly but surely gained control over the financial system through the capture of the Federal Reserve, control the media through capture of the six major news corporations, censor anyone and anything propagating truth through social media that conflicts with the approved oligarch narrative, use the military industrial complex to wage never ending wars of profit, surveille everything you post or say, and funnel billions to the corporate pharmaceutical sickcare complex.

To paraphrase George Carlin, they’re a small club and you’re not in it. But they need you to be willfully ignorant, believing the current fear narrative and distracted by your igadgets, instagram, facebook and twitter accounts, to successfully implement their plan of total control and enrichment at our expense.

It’s enough to make the average, decent, thoughtful, moral person say “what difference does it make” what I do at this point.

  • What difference does it make that a Deep State does exist and its sole purpose is to enrich itself through the manipulation and control of the financial, social, military, and cultural levers of society?

  • What difference does it make that the FBI, CIA, Congress and DOJ colluded with the outgoing president of the United States and national left-wing media corporations to conduct a coup against the incoming duly elected president of the United States, with no consequences as of yet?

  • What difference does it make that Julian Assange rots in a UK prison for the crime of revealing the treachery of the U.S. surveillance state and uncovering the DNC plot to steal the election for Hillary, while Edward Snowden is a fugitive in Russia for illuminating the deceitful un-Constitutional surveillance of every American by the Deep State operatives?

  • What difference does it make that an oligopoly of a several left-wing corporate media networks and a few Silicon Valley social media titans pretend to be journalists and proponents of free speech while colluding with one political party to spread misinformation, false narratives, and fake news, while suppressing and censoring factual truths which go against their narrative?

  • What difference does it make that the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen/Powell Put is real, giving the green light to Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, hedge funds, billionaire speculators and now unemployed millennial Portnoy patrons day trading on Robinhood with their $600 weekly government handout, to take excessive risk on margin, knowing they will be bailed out again and again.

  • What difference does it make that the Federal government and the Federal Reserve created a combined $6 trillion out of thin air since March to supposedly help the average family, which equates to about $46,000 for every household in the country, but the average household received maybe $2,000 to $3,000 depending on their situation? A curious person might wonder where the other $5 trillion went. How about Wall Street banks, hedge funds, connected mega-corporations, and billionaire oligarchs as the recipients.

  • What difference does it make that our so-called leaders are actively promoting multi-trillion dollar deficits, driving our national debt towards $30 trillion at a breakneck pace, insuring a financial crisis of epic proportions when the money printing ultimately produces inflation outside the stock market and the Fed gets trapped in their own web of deceit? Our debt saturated society implodes if short-term interest rates exceed 2%.

  • What difference does it make that the Federal Reserve used this pandemic as the excuse for bailing out their owners once again, as the gears of this debt-based Ponzi scheme were already seizing up before the pandemic? The Fed didn’t let a good manufactured crisis go to waste, allowing zombie banks, hedge funds and connected corporations to survive, while sentencing hundreds of thousands of small businesses to death.

  • What difference does it make that a flu which will not kill 99.97% of Americans, but has killed 80,000 seniors in long-term care facilities because tyrannical Democrat governors purposely put infected patients into the nursing homes, is being used to herd the barely sentient indoctrinated sheep into their pens as a trial run for eliminating all of our freedoms and liberty?

  • What difference does it make that a therapy (HCQ + Zinc + Zpack) which has been proven to be safe and highly effective in treating Covid-19, and only costs about $10, has been ridiculed and scorned by the corporate media, Fauci and Gates because they have a vested financial interest in Big Pharma $2,500 treatments and worldwide vaccination profits?

  • What difference does it make that scientific “experts” used faulty models to predict millions of deaths from this over-hyped flu, resulting in the greatest self-inflicted economic calamity in history, and have continued to fear monger the American public into never ending sheltering despite the factual evidence proving this China flu is only slightly more lethal than the yearly flu, but less lethal to young people than the normal flu?

  • What difference does it make that we pretend 30% of all mortgages aren’t in default, 30% of rent payments are not being made to landlords, students without jobs will ultimately pay their trillions in loans, bankrupt retailers and small business owners will make their rent payments, unemployed homeowners will pay their property taxes to local governments, and this will all work itself out with no negative financial consequences for anyone?

  • What difference does it make that the stock market sits at all-time highs, with valuations exceeding the 2000 dot-com bubble, corporate profits crashing, day trading newbie millennials buying bankrupt companies based on the advice of a sports betting self- promoting blowhard, with the savvy grey-haired veterans of the market exiting stage left? Those believing this folly can continue unabated are going to get it good and hard.

  • What difference does it make that Democratic mayors and governors have allowed their cities to be looted and burned based upon the false narrative of systematic institutional racism and the death of a drugged up black man at the hands of one bad white cop, as some sort of warped effort to pin these disasters on Trump? BLM and ANTIFA are nothing more than domestic terrorists, funded by Soros and his ilk, in an effort to undermine our society and implement their communist new world order agenda.

  • What difference does it make that Democrat governors continue to lockdown their states and not allow students to go to school in the Fall in an effort to keep the economy in a deep recession, so they can defeat Trump in November?

  • What difference does it make that Americans are denied their freedom to worship in church and send their children to school because it is too dangerous, but abortion clinics and liquor stores are allowed to operate, and massive protests and riots are encouraged by the same tyrants denying religious freedoms?

  • What difference does it make that not only do Democrats not want voter ID, but they now are using this over-hyped flu as an excuse to flood the nation with mail-in ballots in order to fraudulently steal the election in November? With a senile gaffe machine as their candidate, they will need every devious means to achieve victory.

I can openly admit that a curtain-like depression has engulfed me over the last few months. I see no reasonable solution or escape from the predicament our leaders have created. I work in my basement office, participating in a half dozen zoom meetings per day, as I try to help my employer navigate through the land mines placed by our government overlords. There has been very little enjoyment in our existence since this unnecessary national lockdown was executed. That seems to be the point.

They want us at each other’s throats over race, mask wearing, social distancing, and following the orders of tyrannical pea brained sociopath governors and mayors enjoying their roles as dictator. When the supposed conspiracy theorists, like myself, are the ones with unequivocal factual evidence to support our views, and the establishment depends upon false narratives and censorship, you know time is growing short and a violent clash is imminent.

We are in the midst of a Fourth Turning Crisis. Strauss & Howe succinctly captured the coming societal implosion and distrust which would engulf the nation.

“In the pre-Crisis years, fears about the flimsiness of the social contract will have been subliminal but rising. As the Crisis catalyzes, these fears will rush to the surface, jagged and exposed. Distrustful of some things, individuals will feel that their survival requires them to distrust more things. This behavior could cascade into a sudden downward spiral, an implosion of societal trust. If so, this implosion will strike financial markets—and, with that, the economy.

 But as the Crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. Many Americans won’t know where their savings are, who their employer is, what their pension is, or how their government works. The era will have left the financial world arbitraged and tentacled: Debtors won’t know who holds their notes, homeowners who owns their mortgages, and shareholders who runs their equities—and vice versa.”

– Strauss & Howe

I firmly believe the next five months will determine the long-term viability of our nation in its current configuration. A myriad of possibilities are conceivable and almost all of them are bad. I can guarantee there will be no compromises or negotiated treaties. Even if Biden remains the nominee until November, there will be no winner declared on November 4. Accusations of fraud will be hurled by both sides, with the left-wing media doing their utmost to declare Biden/whoever the winner.

I believe this is when both sides take to the streets and minor clashes erupt into nationwide civil chaos. Since the government factions are already at odds, there will be no consistent approach to the chaos, and things will get out of hand rapidly. There are a number of unknown factors which will determine how things develop thereafter. Who will the military obey? How will Russia and China take advantage of our situation? What happens if the stock market crashes before or after the election? Could there be a real coup or assassination against Trump?

I’m under no false belief there is anything I can do to reverse the course which has been set by decisions made and not made by those wielding the reins of power over the last few decades. We will all be buffeted and set adrift in the tumultuous flood waters which will sweep away the last vestiges of a dying empire. We will need to depend upon our own guile, courage and intelligence to survive the approaching storms. Connecting with like minded people who you can depend upon will be essential. Lone wolfs will face a difficult road.

Having built a community through my website has mentally sustained many of us, but the ability to shutdown electronic communities will be easy for those in power. Neighbors and family will likely be your only options when things go south. Future generations will depend on us to make a difference. George Washington warned us about the type of men who would traitorously usurp and destroy the nation. Let’s pray we can defeat these evil men and set our country back on a path of liberty and freedom.

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

- George Washington

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The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal.

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Chronic stress and inflammation linked to societal and environmental impacts in new study

From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors…

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From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors can cause chronic inflammation in our bodies. Chronic inflammation is linked to serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer – and may also affect our thinking and behavior.   

Credit: Image: Vodovotz et al/Frontiers

From anxiety about the state of the world to ongoing waves of Covid-19, the stresses we face can seem relentless and even overwhelming. Worse, these stressors can cause chronic inflammation in our bodies. Chronic inflammation is linked to serious conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer – and may also affect our thinking and behavior.   

A new hypothesis published in Frontiers in Science suggests the negative impacts may extend far further.   

“We propose that stress, inflammation, and consequently impaired cognition in individuals can scale up to communities and populations,” explained lead author Prof Yoram Vodovotz of the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

“This could affect the decision-making and behavior of entire societies, impair our cognitive ability to address complex issues like climate change, social unrest, and infectious disease – and ultimately lead to a self-sustaining cycle of societal dysfunction and environmental degradation,” he added.

Bodily inflammation ‘mapped’ in the brain  

One central premise to the hypothesis is an association between chronic inflammation and cognitive dysfunction.  

“The cause of this well-known phenomenon is not currently known,” said Vodovotz. “We propose a mechanism, which we call the ‘central inflammation map’.”    

The authors’ novel idea is that the brain creates its own copy of bodily inflammation. Normally, this inflammation map allows the brain to manage the inflammatory response and promote healing.   

When inflammation is high or chronic, however, the response goes awry and can damage healthy tissues and organs. The authors suggest the inflammation map could similarly harm the brain and impair cognition, emotion, and behavior.   

Accelerated spread of stress and inflammation online   

A second premise is the spread of chronic inflammation from individuals to populations.  

“While inflammation is not contagious per se, it could still spread via the transmission of stress among people,” explained Vodovotz.   

The authors further suggest that stress is being transmitted faster than ever before, through social media and other digital communications.  

“People are constantly bombarded with high levels of distressing information, be it the news, negative online comments, or a feeling of inadequacy when viewing social media feeds,” said Vodovotz. “We hypothesize that this new dimension of human experience, from which it is difficult to escape, is driving stress, chronic inflammation, and cognitive impairment across global societies.”   

Inflammation as a driver of social and planetary disruption  

These ideas shift our view of inflammation as a biological process restricted to an individual. Instead, the authors see it as a multiscale process linking molecular, cellular, and physiological interactions in each of us to altered decision-making and behavior in populations – and ultimately to large-scale societal and environmental impacts.  

“Stress-impaired judgment could explain the chaotic and counter-intuitive responses of large parts of the global population to stressful events such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic,” explained Vodovotz.  

“An inability to address these and other stressors may propagate a self-fulfilling sense of pervasive danger, causing further stress, inflammation, and impaired cognition in a runaway, positive feedback loop,” he added.  

The fact that current levels of global stress have not led to widespread societal disorder could indicate an equally strong stabilizing effect from “controllers” such as trust in laws, science, and multinational organizations like the United Nations.   

“However, societal norms and institutions are increasingly being questioned, at times rightly so as relics of a foregone era,” said Prof Paul Verschure of Radboud University, the Netherlands, and a co-author of the article. “The challenge today is how we can ward off a new adversarial era of instability due to global stress caused by a multi-scale combination of geopolitical fragmentation, conflicts, and ecological collapse amplified by existential angst, cognitive overload, and runaway disinformation.”    

Reducing social media exposure as part of the solution  

The authors developed a mathematical model to test their ideas and explore ways to reduce stress and build resilience.  

“Preliminary results highlight the need for interventions at multiple levels and scales,” commented co-author Prof Julia Arciero of Indiana University, USA.  

“While anti-inflammatory drugs are sometimes used to treat medical conditions associated with inflammation, we do not believe these are the whole answer for individuals,” said Dr David Katz, co-author and a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine based in the US. “Lifestyle changes such as healthy nutrition, exercise, and reducing exposure to stressful online content could also be important.”  

“The dawning new era of precision and personalized therapeutics could also offer enormous potential,” he added.  

At the societal level, the authors suggest creating calm public spaces and providing education on the norms and institutions that keep our societies stable and functioning.  

“While our ‘inflammation map’ hypothesis and corresponding mathematical model are a start, a coordinated and interdisciplinary research effort is needed to define interventions that would improve the lives of individuals and the resilience of communities to stress. We hope our article stimulates scientists around the world to take up this challenge,” Vodovotz concluded.  

The article is part of the Frontiers in Science multimedia article hub ‘A multiscale map of inflammatory stress’. The hub features a video, an explainer, a version of the article written for kids, and an editorial, viewpoints, and policy outlook from other eminent experts: Prof David Almeida (Penn State University, USA), Prof Pietro Ghezzi (University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy), and Dr Ioannis P Androulakis (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA). 


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Acadia’s Nuplazid fails PhIII study due to higher-than-expected placebo effect

After years of trying to expand the market territory for Nuplazid, Acadia Pharmaceuticals might have hit a dead end, with a Phase III fail in schizophrenia…

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After years of trying to expand the market territory for Nuplazid, Acadia Pharmaceuticals might have hit a dead end, with a Phase III fail in schizophrenia due to the placebo arm performing better than expected.

Steve Davis

“We will continue to analyze these data with our scientific advisors, but we do not intend to conduct any further clinical trials with pimavanserin,” CEO Steve Davis said in a Monday press release. Acadia’s stock $ACAD dropped by 17.41% before the market opened Tuesday.

Pimavanserin, a serotonin inverse agonist and also a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist, is already in the market with the brand name Nuplazid for Parkinson’s disease psychosis. Efforts to expand into other indications such as Alzheimer’s-related psychosis and major depression have been unsuccessful, and previous trials in schizophrenia have yielded mixed data at best. Its February presentation does not list other pimavanserin studies in progress.

The Phase III ADVANCE-2 trial investigated 34 mg pimavanserin versus placebo in 454 patients who have negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The study used the negative symptom assessment-16 (NSA-16) total score as a primary endpoint and followed participants up to week 26. Study participants have control of positive symptoms due to antipsychotic therapies.

The company said that the change from baseline in this measure for the treatment arm was similar between the Phase II ADVANCE-1 study and ADVANCE-2 at -11.6 and -11.8, respectively. However, the placebo was higher in ADVANCE-2 at -11.1, when this was -8.5 in ADVANCE-1. The p-value in ADVANCE-2 was 0.4825.

In July last year, another Phase III schizophrenia trial — by Sumitomo and Otsuka — also reported negative results due to what the company noted as Covid-19 induced placebo effect.

According to Mizuho Securities analysts, ADVANCE-2 data were disappointing considering the company applied what it learned from ADVANCE-1, such as recruiting patients outside the US to alleviate a high placebo effect. The Phase III recruited participants in Argentina and Europe.

Analysts at Cowen added that the placebo effect has been a “notorious headwind” in US-based trials, which appears to “now extend” to ex-US studies. But they also noted ADVANCE-1 reported a “modest effect” from the drug anyway.

Nonetheless, pimavanserin’s safety profile in the late-stage study “was consistent with previous clinical trials,” with the drug having an adverse event rate of 30.4% versus 40.3% with placebo, the company said. Back in 2018, even with the FDA approval for Parkinson’s psychosis, there was an intense spotlight on Nuplazid’s safety profile.

Acadia previously aimed to get Nuplazid approved for Alzheimer’s-related psychosis but had many hurdles. The drug faced an adcomm in June 2022 that voted 9-3 noting that the drug is unlikely to be effective in this setting, culminating in a CRL a few months later.

As for the company’s next R&D milestones, Mizuho analysts said it won’t be anytime soon: There is the Phase III study for ACP-101 in Prader-Willi syndrome with data expected late next year and a Phase II trial for ACP-204 in Alzheimer’s disease psychosis with results anticipated in 2026.

Acadia collected $549.2 million in full-year 2023 revenues for Nuplazid, with $143.9 million in the fourth quarter.

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Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare…

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Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare quotes the soothsayer’s warning Julius Caesar about what turned out to be an impending assassination on March 15. The death of American liberty happened around the same time four years ago, when the orders went out from all levels of government to close all indoor and outdoor venues where people gather. 

It was not quite a law and it was never voted on by anyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, people who the public had largely ignored, the public health bureaucrats, all united to tell the executives in charge – mayors, governors, and the president – that the only way to deal with a respiratory virus was to scrap freedom and the Bill of Rights. 

And they did, not only in the US but all over the world. 

The forced closures in the US began on March 6 when the mayor of Austin, Texas, announced the shutdown of the technology and arts festival South by Southwest. Hundreds of thousands of contracts, of attendees and vendors, were instantly scrapped. The mayor said he was acting on the advice of his health experts and they in turn pointed to the CDC, which in turn pointed to the World Health Organization, which in turn pointed to member states and so on. 

There was no record of Covid in Austin, Texas, that day but they were sure they were doing their part to stop the spread. It was the first deployment of the “Zero Covid” strategy that became, for a time, official US policy, just as in China. 

It was never clear precisely who to blame or who would take responsibility, legal or otherwise. 

This Friday evening press conference in Austin was just the beginning. By the next Thursday evening, the lockdown mania reached a full crescendo. Donald Trump went on nationwide television to announce that everything was under control but that he was stopping all travel in and out of US borders, from Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. American citizens would need to return by Monday or be stuck. 

Americans abroad panicked while spending on tickets home and crowded into international airports with waits up to 8 hours standing shoulder to shoulder. It was the first clear sign: there would be no consistency in the deployment of these edicts. 

There is no historical record of any American president ever issuing global travel restrictions like this without a declaration of war. Until then, and since the age of travel began, every American had taken it for granted that he could buy a ticket and board a plane. That was no longer possible. Very quickly it became even difficult to travel state to state, as most states eventually implemented a two-week quarantine rule. 

The next day, Friday March 13, Broadway closed and New York City began to empty out as any residents who could went to summer homes or out of state. 

On that day, the Trump administration declared the national emergency by invoking the Stafford Act which triggers new powers and resources to the Federal Emergency Management Administration. 

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document, only to be released to the public months later. The document initiated the lockdowns. It still does not exist on any government website.

The White House Coronavirus Response Task Force, led by the Vice President, will coordinate a whole-of-government approach, including governors, state and local officials, and members of Congress, to develop the best options for the safety, well-being, and health of the American people. HHS is the LFA [Lead Federal Agency] for coordinating the federal response to COVID-19.

Closures were guaranteed:

Recommend significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Issue widespread ‘stay at home’ directives for public and private organizations, with nearly 100% telework for some, although critical public services and infrastructure may need to retain skeleton crews. Law enforcement could shift to focus more on crime prevention, as routine monitoring of storefronts could be important.

In this vision of turnkey totalitarian control of society, the vaccine was pre-approved: “Partner with pharmaceutical industry to produce anti-virals and vaccine.”

The National Security Council was put in charge of policy making. The CDC was just the marketing operation. That’s why it felt like martial law. Without using those words, that’s what was being declared. It even urged information management, with censorship strongly implied.

The timing here is fascinating. This document came out on a Friday. But according to every autobiographical account – from Mike Pence and Scott Gottlieb to Deborah Birx and Jared Kushner – the gathered team did not meet with Trump himself until the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Saturday and Sunday. 

According to their account, this was his first real encounter with the urge that he lock down the whole country. He reluctantly agreed to 15 days to flatten the curve. He announced this on Monday the 16th with the famous line: “All public and private venues where people gather should be closed.”

This makes no sense. The decision had already been made and all enabling documents were already in circulation. 

There are only two possibilities. 

One: the Department of Homeland Security issued this March 13 HHS document without Trump’s knowledge or authority. That seems unlikely. 

Two: Kushner, Birx, Pence, and Gottlieb are lying. They decided on a story and they are sticking to it. 

Trump himself has never explained the timeline or precisely when he decided to greenlight the lockdowns. To this day, he avoids the issue beyond his constant claim that he doesn’t get enough credit for his handling of the pandemic.

With Nixon, the famous question was always what did he know and when did he know it? When it comes to Trump and insofar as concerns Covid lockdowns – unlike the fake allegations of collusion with Russia – we have no investigations. To this day, no one in the corporate media seems even slightly interested in why, how, or when human rights got abolished by bureaucratic edict. 

As part of the lockdowns, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, as set up in 2018, broke the entire American labor force into essential and nonessential.

They also set up and enforced censorship protocols, which is why it seemed like so few objected. In addition, CISA was tasked with overseeing mail-in ballots. 

Only 8 days into the 15, Trump announced that he wanted to open the country by Easter, which was on April 12. His announcement on March 24 was treated as outrageous and irresponsible by the national press but keep in mind: Easter would already take us beyond the initial two-week lockdown. What seemed to be an opening was an extension of closing. 

This announcement by Trump encouraged Birx and Fauci to ask for an additional 30 days of lockdown, which Trump granted. Even on April 23, Trump told Georgia and Florida, which had made noises about reopening, that “It’s too soon.” He publicly fought with the governor of Georgia, who was first to open his state. 

Before the 15 days was over, Congress passed and the president signed the 880-page CARES Act, which authorized the distribution of $2 trillion to states, businesses, and individuals, thus guaranteeing that lockdowns would continue for the duration. 

There was never a stated exit plan beyond Birx’s public statements that she wanted zero cases of Covid in the country. That was never going to happen. It is very likely that the virus had already been circulating in the US and Canada from October 2019. A famous seroprevalence study by Jay Bhattacharya came out in May 2020 discerning that infections and immunity were already widespread in the California county they examined. 

What that implied was two crucial points: there was zero hope for the Zero Covid mission and this pandemic would end as they all did, through endemicity via exposure, not from a vaccine as such. That was certainly not the message that was being broadcast from Washington. The growing sense at the time was that we all had to sit tight and just wait for the inoculation on which pharmaceutical companies were working. 

By summer 2020, you recall what happened. A restless generation of kids fed up with this stay-at-home nonsense seized on the opportunity to protest racial injustice in the killing of George Floyd. Public health officials approved of these gatherings – unlike protests against lockdowns – on grounds that racism was a virus even more serious than Covid. Some of these protests got out of hand and became violent and destructive. 

Meanwhile, substance abuse rage – the liquor and weed stores never closed – and immune systems were being degraded by lack of normal exposure, exactly as the Bakersfield doctors had predicted. Millions of small businesses had closed. The learning losses from school closures were mounting, as it turned out that Zoom school was near worthless. 

It was about this time that Trump seemed to figure out – thanks to the wise council of Dr. Scott Atlas – that he had been played and started urging states to reopen. But it was strange: he seemed to be less in the position of being a president in charge and more of a public pundit, Tweeting out his wishes until his account was banned. He was unable to put the worms back in the can that he had approved opening. 

By that time, and by all accounts, Trump was convinced that the whole effort was a mistake, that he had been trolled into wrecking the country he promised to make great. It was too late. Mail-in ballots had been widely approved, the country was in shambles, the media and public health bureaucrats were ruling the airwaves, and his final months of the campaign failed even to come to grips with the reality on the ground. 

At the time, many people had predicted that once Biden took office and the vaccine was released, Covid would be declared to have been beaten. But that didn’t happen and mainly for one reason: resistance to the vaccine was more intense than anyone had predicted. The Biden administration attempted to impose mandates on the entire US workforce. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, that effort was thwarted but not before HR departments around the country had already implemented them. 

As the months rolled on – and four major cities closed all public accommodations to the unvaccinated, who were being demonized for prolonging the pandemic – it became clear that the vaccine could not and would not stop infection or transmission, which means that this shot could not be classified as a public health benefit. Even as a private benefit, the evidence was mixed. Any protection it provided was short-lived and reports of vaccine injury began to mount. Even now, we cannot gain full clarity on the scale of the problem because essential data and documentation remains classified. 

After four years, we find ourselves in a strange position. We still do not know precisely what unfolded in mid-March 2020: who made what decisions, when, and why. There has been no serious attempt at any high level to provide a clear accounting much less assign blame. 

Not even Tucker Carlson, who reportedly played a crucial role in getting Trump to panic over the virus, will tell us the source of his own information or what his source told him. There have been a series of valuable hearings in the House and Senate but they have received little to no press attention, and none have focus on the lockdown orders themselves. 

The prevailing attitude in public life is just to forget the whole thing. And yet we live now in a country very different from the one we inhabited five years ago. Our media is captured. Social media is widely censored in violation of the First Amendment, a problem being taken up by the Supreme Court this month with no certainty of the outcome. The administrative state that seized control has not given up power. Crime has been normalized. Art and music institutions are on the rocks. Public trust in all official institutions is at rock bottom. We don’t even know if we can trust the elections anymore. 

In the early days of lockdown, Henry Kissinger warned that if the mitigation plan does not go well, the world will find itself set “on fire.” He died in 2023. Meanwhile, the world is indeed on fire. The essential struggle in every country on earth today concerns the battle between the authority and power of permanent administration apparatus of the state – the very one that took total control in lockdowns – and the enlightenment ideal of a government that is responsible to the will of the people and the moral demand for freedom and rights. 

How this struggle turns out is the essential story of our times. 

CODA: I’m embedding a copy of PanCAP Adapted, as annotated by Debbie Lerman. You might need to download the whole thing to see the annotations. If you can help with research, please do.

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Jeffrey Tucker is the author of the excellent new book 'Life After Lock-Down'

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 23:40

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