The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate unchanged on Wednesday but sharply ramped up its expectations for economic growth — while affirming that it does not plan to raise interest rates until 2023. The central bank also curiously reworded the public statement accompanying its decision.
Why it matters: U.S. inflation expectations have shot up in recent months while unemployment remains historically high, making guidance on the Fed’s next steps particularly important.
What they’re saying: “The COVID-19 pandemic is causing tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world. Following a moderation in the pace of the recovery, indicators of economic activity and employment have turned up recently, although the sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic remain weak. Inflation continues to run below 2 percent,” the Fed said in a statement.
What it means: The Fed looks to be trying to have it both ways — acknowledging the economic recovery while also insisting that interest rates need to be kept low to assist it.
The Fed’s policymaking committee also voted to continue its quantitative easing program in which the central bank buys at least $120 billion of bonds a month.
What to watch: Inflation worries have taken center stage among investors, with a recent survey from Bank of America showing that it has displaced the coronavirus pandemic as the top concern among global fund managers.
Consumers also have shown increasing worries, with inflation expectations rising to their highest level in seven years, according to the New York Fed.
Google searches for inflation have jumped to their highest since record-keeping began in 2008, according to data from Deutsche Bank.
The bottom line: Powell has generally brushed off concerns about inflation, saying the Fed has the tools to tamp down inflation should it materialize.
“Bill Gates — What You Were Not Told,” reviews the personal and professional background of the Microsoft mogul, including a statement revealing his real motive for investing in vaccines — their 20 – 1 return on investment.
Story at-a-glance
After years of building a reputation as a “ruthless tech monopolizer,” Bill Gates 2.0 was launched with the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With this foundation, he reinvented and rebranded himself as one of the world’s most generous philanthropists.
However, Gates’ brand of philanthropy creates several new problems for each one it solves and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism.”
According to Gates, vaccines are phenomenal profit makers, with more than a 20-to-1 return.
Gates is now promoting the technocratic “reset” plan, which includes an aggressive climate change agenda, yet Gates’ extensive travel by private jet makes him a top polluter.
“Bill Gates — What You Were Not Told,” a segment of the Plandemic documentary, reviews the personal and professional background of the Microsoft mogul, Bill Gates. Contrary to popular myth, many see Gates as more of an opportunist than a genius inventor, and the video touches on several of the less honorable moments of his career.
After years of building a reputation as a “ruthless tech monopolizer,” Bill Gates 2.0 was launched with the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With this foundation, he reinvented and rebranded himself as one of the world’s most generous philanthropists.
Gates’ charity is not what it seems
Alas, as noted by AGRA Watch, Shiva Vandana, Ph.D., and others, Gates’ brand of philanthropy creates several new problems for each one it solves and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism.” As noted in the AGRA Watch article, “Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity,” published in 2017, advocates of philanthrocapitalism:
“… often expect financial returns or secondary benefits over the long term from their investments in social programs. Philanthropy becomes another part of the engine of profit and corporate control. The Gates Foundation’s strategy for ‘development’ actually promotes neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalization.”
Indeed, over the years, Gates has ended up in a position where he monopolizes or wields disproportionate influence over not only the tech industry, but also global health and vaccines, agriculture and food policy (including biopiracy and fake food), weather modification and other climate technologies, surveillance, education and media.
Not surprisingly, he’s tied to online fact checker organizations that strangle free speech, and recently told “60 Minutes” that to combat mistrust in science, we need to find ways to “slow down the crazy stuff.” What’s “crazy” and what’s not, however, is rarely as clear-cut as the mainstream media would like you to believe.
And, like a true philanthrocapitalist, Gates’ generosity ends up benefiting himself most of all. As discussed in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates billions to the very same companies and industries that the foundation owns stocks and bonds in.
As Gates himself reveals in the featured video, he figured out that vaccines are phenomenal profit makers, saying they’re the best investment he’s ever made, with more than a 20-to-1 return. The one thing that allows for this is the liability shield vaccine makers have been given by the government.
Gates, global climate czar
As mentioned in the featured video, Gates is financing an effort to divert solar rays from the Earth’s surface in an attempt to combat global warming — an irrational approach at best, considering the potential this has to devastate global agriculture.
His latest book also details his climate change recommendations, which just so happens to include urging governments to support the very companies he’s invested in and similar sleight-of-hand gestures.
Meanwhile, as noted by The Nation, Gates himself is a serious polluter, with a 66,000 square-foot mansion, a private jet, 242,000 acres of farmland (which makes him the largest farmland owner in the U.S.) and investments in fossil fuel-dependent industries such as airlines, heavy machinery and cars.
“According to a 2019 academic study looking at extreme carbon emissions from the jet-setting elite, Bill Gates’s extensive travel by private jet likely makes him one of the world’s top carbon contributors — a veritable super emitter,” The Nation writes.
“In the list of 10 celebrities investigated — including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton and Oprah Winfrey — Gates was the source of the most emissions. ‘Affluent individuals can emit several ten thousand times the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to the global poor,’ the paper noted. ‘This raises the question as to whether celebrity climate advocacy is even desirable …’”
Gates leads the technocratic takeover
Gates’ focus on climate change makes perfect sense once you realize that he’s part of the technocratic elite that, for decades, have been working to gobble up the world’s resources in anticipation for the Great Reset, previously known as the One World Order.
Over the past year, the need for the Great Reset has been announced by government leaders around the world, the clarion call being that we need to “reset” the global economy and the way we live, work, travel and socialize in order to make the world more fair and sustainable. Addressing climate change under the banner of a global emergency is part and parcel of that PR campaign.
If you’ve paid attention, you’ve probably seen the hints. During the initial lockdowns in the early part of 2020, there were a slew of articles talking about how nature and wildlife were thriving in the absence of human socialization and travel. At other times, the COVID-19 pandemic has been presented as a warning to us all as to what happens when you get out of sync with nature.
No real food for you
Gates clearly feels pressure to do his part to realize the technocratic dream. He told “60 Minutes” he is eager to see his various visions come to fruition within his lifetime, and he guesses he might have 20 or 30 years left. As reported by ZeroHedge:
“Gates is pushing drastic and ‘fundamental’ changes to the economy in order to immediately halt the release of greenhouse gasses — primarily carbon dioxide— and ‘go to zero’ in order to save the planet from long-prognosticated (and consistently wrong) environmental disaster. Changes we’ll need to make in order to realize Gates’ vision include:
Allocating $35 billion per year on climate and clean energy research.
Electric everything.
Widespread consumption of fake meat, since cows account for ‘4% of all greenhouse gases.’
Retooling the steel and cement industries, which Gates says account for 16% of all carbon dioxide emissions, to inject up to 30% of captured C02 into concrete, and create a different type of steel.
Widespread adoption of next generation nuclear energy to supplement wind and solar.
And since producing plants to make fake meat emits gases as well, Gates has backed a company which uses fungus to make sausage and yogurt, which the billionaire calls ‘pretty amazing’ … ‘The microbe was discovered in the ground in a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Without soil or fertilizer it can be grown to produce this nutritional protein — that can then be turned into a variety of foods with a small carbon footprint.’”
Indeed, Gates would like wealthy Western nations to switch entirely to synthetic lab-grown beef, and rails against legislative attempts to make sure fake meats are properly labeled as such, since that slows down public acceptance.
Gates again proves feudalism is a failed system
With his land ownership, Gates clearly is in a monopoly position (yet again!) to drive agriculture and food production in whatever direction he desires, and he wants us all to eat as much fake food as possible. As noted in a long and detailed article on Gates’ philanthrocapitalist endeavors by The Defender:
“Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.
“So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.”
The article goes on to detail Gates’ “long-term strategy of mastery over agriculture and food production globally,” starting with his support of GMOs in 1994. Ever since then, Gates’ “philanthropic” approaches to hunger and food production have been built around his technology, chemical, pharmaceutical and oil industry partners, thereby ensuring that for every failed rescue venture, he gets richer nonetheless.
“As with Gates’ African vaccine enterprise, there was neither internal evaluation nor public accountability,” The Defender writes:
“The 2020 study ‘False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)’ is the report card on the Gates’ cartel’s 14-year effort.
“The investigation concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 18 countries that Gates targeted. Rural poverty has metastasized dramatically …
“Under Gates’ plantation system, Africa’s rural populations have become slaves on their own land to a tyrannical serfdom of high-tech inputs, mechanization, rigid schedules, burdensome conditionalities, credits and subsidies … The only entities benefiting from Gates’ program are his international corporate partners …
“His investment history suggests that the climate crisis, for Gates and his cronies, is no more than an alibi for intrusive social control, ‘Great Reset’-scale surveillance, and massive science fiction geoengineering boondoggles, including his demented and terrifying vanity projects to spray the stratosphere with calcium chloride or seawater to slow warming, to deploy giant balloons to saturate our atmosphere with reflective particles to blot out the sun, or his perilous gambit of releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in South Florida.
“When we place these nightmare schemes in context alongside the battery of experimental vaccines he forces on 161 million African children annually, it’s pretty clear that Gates regards us all as his lab rats.”
Gates Foundation seeded catastrophic COVID-19 policies
Gates, of course, has also played a leading role in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel who has a channel on Substack, Gates had a hand in the “criminally negligent coronavirus response policies” that killed an inordinate number of senior citizens in nursing homes in New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Schachtel points out that a common thread in these instances is that they listened to the frightfully inaccurate modeling forecasts from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which is funded and controlled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He writes:
“In March and early April, politicians were informed by the modeling ‘experts’ at Gates-funded IHME that their hospitals were about to be completely overrun by coronavirus patients.
“Modelers from IHME claimed this massive surge would cause hospitals to run out of lifesaving equipment in a matter of days, not weeks or months. Time was of the essence, and now was the time for rapid decision making, the modelers claimed.
“On two separate April 1 and April 2 press conferences, Cuomo made clear that his policy decisions were based off of the IHME model … In an April 9 briefing, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer referred to the IHME model in order to project deaths and the PPE resources needed for the supposed surge. It was the same story with the government of Pennsylvania.”
White House Coronavirus Task Force members Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, both of whom have substantial ties to Gates, also relied on the IHME forecast models. As noted by Schachtel:
“These models, and the policy decisions that were made by relying on them, set off a chain of events that led to indefinite lockdowns, complete business closures, statewide curfews, and most infamously, the nursing home death warrants.”
Delete that which no longer serves
The Gates Foundation also co-sponsored Event 201, a scripted tabletop exercise held mere months before the COVID-19 outbreak that ended up being remarkably prophetic.
Strangely enough, in an April 2020 BBC interview, Gates denied the simulation had occurred, saying that “We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.” In an article for National Herald India, Norbert Häring highlights Gates’ apparent forgetfulness, stating:
“It is true that if a little less emphasis had been placed on opinion manipulation, more attention could have been paid to health and economic policy. One of the four meetings was entirely devoted to this. But health and economic policies did get discussed. Gates can hardly have forgotten that.
“The video on control of public opinion is the most interesting one, as it helps to put in perspective the efforts in this regard, which we are currently experiencing. One participant tells us that Bill Gates is financing work on algorithms which comb through the information on social media platforms to make sure that people can trust the information that they find there.”
Gates has also erased other evidence where the truth is coming back to haunt him. Case in point: Gates-funded fact checkers have vehemently denied claims that Gates ever said we’ll need digital vaccine passports, passing it off as yet another crazy conspiracy theory.
But Gates did say that in a June 2020 TED Talk. Someone just edited that specific statement out of his speech after the quote started making the rounds on social media. In a December 11, 2020, article, The Defender presented the proof.
Fact checkers also dismiss claims that subdermal microchips or digital tattoos will eventually be used to track and trace us, yet as noted by The Defender, Gates did commission MIT to develop an injectable quantum dot dye system to “tattoo” medical data on your body, and has patented technology that uses implanted biosensors that monitor body and brain activity and is tied to a crypto currency system.
He’s also invested tens of millions into microchip devices with remote-controlled drug-delivery systems, military contractors that track and trace pandemic infections and vaccine compliance, and has a greater than $1 billion investment in 5G video surveillance satellites and 5G antennas. When you put all of these things together, Gates’ plans start to take on a rather ominous feel.
Gates is the most visible figurehead of modern technocracy
Whether preplanned or not, the COVID-19 pandemic is clearly being used to usher in highly controversial changes that are unmistakably totalitarian-building, including the private take-over of government through public-private partnerships.
Surveillance has become the biggest for-profit industry on the planet, and your entire existence is now being targeted for profit. Among those who stand to profit the most is Gates himself.
For a better understanding of what you’re giving up by going along with the mainstream narrative that we need Big Tech to save us, see my article about social psychologist and Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff and her extraordinary book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”
You also won’t want to miss my interview with Patrick Wood, featured in “The Pressing Dangers of Technocracy.” He paints a picture that can be hard to swallow, especially if you’re just coming around to hearing about all of this for the first time, but it’s really crucial that everyone begin to understand what we’re facing.
Time is running out. To have any chance of stopping it, we must understand our trajectory, and unite to change the course Gates and others like him have set for us.
Peterson became famous for his stance against Canada’s compelled speech legislation, Bill C-16. “The bill adds ‘gender identity or expression’ to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Criminal Code,” according to Canadian law. Dr. Peterson served as a witness opposing Bill C-16 at the Canadian Senate.
In 2018, interviewer Cathy Newman was made speechless after Jordan Peterson pointed out the irony in her questioning Peterson’s “right” to risk offending others with his opinion while she herself had been stating her opinions at the risk of offending Peterson.
Although the psychologist has described himself as “a deeply religious person,” he’s never explicitly professed belief in the Christian Gospel accounts.
Until now, apparently.
During his conversation with Jonathan Pageau, an Orthodox Christian, Dr. Peterson rejected the claim that there is no significant difference between Christianity and other religions.
“The difference—and C.S. Lewis pointed this out as well—between those mythological gods and Christ was that there’s a historical representation of his existence as well, […] there’s still a historical story,” Peterson said, emphasizing that the figure of Christ was in fact “an actual person who actually lived” and who really did what the biblical narrative describes (i.e., the Christian [Jungian] “myth”).
“[S]o what you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth, and, in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things,” he explained.
Then Peterson began to cry as he professed his belief in the historicity of Jesus Christ and the biblical narrative:
“The problem is I probably believe that but I’m amazed at my own belief, and I don’t understand it.”
“Because I’ve seen, sometimes, the objective world and the narrative world touch—you know, that’s JUNGIAN synchronicity. And I’ve seen that many times in my own life and so, in some sense, I believe it’s undeniable.”
In Jesus “the narrative and the objective world touch,” cried Peterson.
“And the ultimate example of that, in principle, is supposed to be Christ, and that seems to me to be oddly plausible.”
“But I still don’t know what to make of it, partly because it’s too terrifying a reality to fully believe.”
“I don’t even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed critical race theory and pledged there is no room in his state’s classrooms for the controversial curriculum.
“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” the Florida Republican said Wednesday. “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”
DeSantis pledged that Florida’s curriculum will “expressly exclude” the teaching.
Gov. @RonDeSantisFL announces Florida's curriculum will "expressly exclude…Critical Race Theory."
“There's no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.” pic.twitter.com/7y2b40GqDk
Earlier this year, government employees in San Diego County, California, were forced to take part in critical race theory training, including a lecture stating that only white people are capable of being racist.
“The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said about the executive order at the time, adding that “these types of ‘trainings’ not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.”
Organizers for the campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom are confident they have more than enough signatures to turn in by the deadline on Wednesday in an effort to remove the Democrat from office.
Anne Dunsmore, campaign manager for Rescue California-Recall Gavin Newsom, said she expects that more than 2.1 million signatures will be submitted to county elections officials, which far exceeds the 1.5 million signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.
“There was a massive, massive amount of support,” Dunsmore told the Washington Examiner. “We turned in signatures from every single county. It’s been really amazing, and I think he’s got a lot to worry about.”
The recall campaign began in June, focused on Newsom’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, although Dunsmore says there was interest before then over concerns about high taxes and crime.
Earlier this week, Newsom announced his own countercampaign to get people to oppose the recall efforts, which his team said was driven by “a partisan, Republican coalition of national Republicans, anti-vaxxers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters.”
Signatures for the recall must still be verified by the secretary of state’s office. So far, more than 80% of the signatures collected have been validated. Elections officials have until April 29 to review the signatures.
The recall proposal must also go through a 30-day window during which supporters can withdraw their names from the petition.
Dunsmore said she isn’t concerned about any counterefforts against the recall petition, of which she said 36% was signed by people who did not identify as Republican.
“They don’t have access to the list of people who did sign. They don’t have enough time, and that would be a massively complicated thing,” Dunsmore said. “We’ve got every indication from them that they’re not doing that. What [Newsom’s] doing instead is an effort to get people to join the campaign against the recall. It’s sort of an optic, not anything that will have a real impact on the number of signatures.”
Outside of the recall, Newsom would face reelection in 2022. Multiple GOP challengers, most of whom supported the recall effort, have announced their gubernatorial campaigns for next year.
On Wednesday Biden White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki was asked about the endless stream of illegal aliens streaming into the US since Joe Biden opened the southern border. The US is currently facing its biggest migrant surge into the US in 20 years.
Kristin Fisher: Is there a limit or a cap to the number of unaccompanied minors that are going to be allowed into the US?
Jen Psaki: A limit or a cap? So should we send some kids who are 10 back at a certain point? Is that what you’re asking me?
Kristin Fisher: I’m not setting the policy here. I’m just asking what the Biden policy is.
Jen Psaki: Our policy continues to be, we’re not going to send a 10-year-old back across the border. That was the policy of the last administration. That’s not our policy here.
Dr. Steven Hotze M.D., a conservative activist and medical professional out of Houston, Texas, wants Americans to know the COVID-19 shot is not technically a “vaccine” and is actually “a dangerous, experimental gene therapy.”
“The so-called COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine at all. It’s a dangerous, experimental gene therapy,” he explains. “The Center for Disease Control, the CDC, gives the definition of the term vaccine on its website. A vaccine is a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease. Immunity is the protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without being infected.”
Continuing, the doctor says, “This so-called COVID-19 vaccine does not provide any individual who receives the vaccine with immunity to COVID-19. Nor does it prevent the spread of the disease.”
Because of this, “It does not meet the CDC’s own definition of a vaccine. That’s why it’s a deceptive trade practice, under 15 U.S. Code Section 41 of the Federal Trade Commission, for pharmaceutical companies who are producing this experimental gene therapy to claim that it’s a vaccine.”
Dr. Hotze alleges these companies, along with government health bureaucrats, are lying to the public by mislabeling the product.
The experimental gene therapy is “only designed to minimize your symptoms if you were to be infected with the COVID-19 virus.”
For those who might ask why the pharmaceutical companies would intentionally call the gene therapy treatments a “vaccine,” Dr. Hotze claims Big Pharma is attempting to shield itself “because vaccine injuries or deaths are exempted by law from any product liability lawsuits.”
With no published animal studies and no long-term human studies, individuals who are taking the experimental gene therapy “vaccines,” are basically Guinea Pigs for the scientific elite.
The Texas doctor adds, “These ‘vaccines,’ which are manufactured using cells derived from human babies that were aborted in the 1970s, should more accurately be called an experimental gene therapy. They are an untested, unproven experimental gene therapy that poses a much greater danger to your health than COVID-19 itself.”
Dr. Hotze explains how major pharma company Moderna was founded in 2010 as ModeRNA Therapeutics because they were interested in developing experimental gene therapy using synthetic mRNA for the treatment of various diseases.
“Moderna has never successfully developed a product for treatment of any disease prior to this,” he states. “An experimental gene therapy using synthetic mRNA to treat an infectious disease has never been attempted in humans, because of its failure in previous animal studies.”
The synthetic messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) experimental gene therapy has previously immune system hyper-reactions during animal testing.
Dr. Hotze warns a similar side-effect could take place in humans when they are later exposed to the same coronavirus against which they had been previously vaccinated.
The auto-immune response could set people up for a lifetime of serious inflammatory disease.
According to Dr. Hotze, when people who take the COVID shot start to get even sicker due to the mRNA therapy, anti-vaxxers and “variant strains” of the virus will be blamed.
However, since the experimental gene therapy is being labeled a “vaccine,” the companies producing these potentially harmful products are exempt from being sued for any injury caused by vaccinations.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the federal government provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for researching bat coronaviruses.
“Through our research and some great researchers out there working in various levels of the press, they have discovered that through the NIH, we did have grant dollars that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ernst said in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.
She continued, “This project that they had at Wuhan was being subsidized by U.S. taxpayers … I am going to the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General to investigate and get to the bottom of this. I also have a bill which would require every project from all of our federal agencies that are supported with federal funds to include a price tag with the cost so that it is easily found by taxpayers.”
“So yes, we have actually subsidized research at the Wuhan lab — how scary — and for a number of years we actually had U.S. diplomats that were warning us about the dangers associated with this lab, and yet we were subsidizing it,” Ernst stated.
Marlow identified the Wuhan virology lab as a possible origin of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
“We don’t really know whether or not the the lab is [connected] to the virus, because China destroyed all this evidence,” Marlow remarked.
Ernst replied, “We can’t connect the dots. We haven’t been able to do that for certain, but the implication is out there, and regardless of the coronavirus, we do know that our dollars were pouring into communist China to support [this] research being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. How disappointing that we are sending our dollars to communist China when we should be using those dollars right here in our own country to do our own research with our own resources. … It is truly an outrage. I don’t care if it’s ten cents; it’s still an outrage whatever the number.”
The National Institute of Health (NIH) sent at least $600,000 to China’s state-run virology laboratory in Wuhan via EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a left-wing nonprofit based in New York City that alleges a link between “climate change” and pandemics. EcoHealth Alliance failed to disclose the money it sent to the Chinese government’s Wuhan laboratory came from an NIH grant, the Daily Caller reported.
Virtually all of EcoHealth’s revenue comes from government contracts and grants.
A major television watchdog group and an anti-porn organization that advocates for sexual abuse survivors are pushing back against the Grammys for featuring sexually explicit content during prime-time viewing hours and normalizing prostitution and porn culture.
During Sunday’s awards show that aired on CBS, the program featured a performance of the hit song “WAP,” which stands for wet a– p—- by artist Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.
“In a performance that could have been cut from a hardcore pornography film, CBS allowed a glamorization of stripping and prostitution to be broadcast in front of a national audience — a portion of which were children — for no other reason than for TV ratings,” said Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, in a statement shared with The Christian Post.
Even though the song is popular, that kind of performance should never have been allowed at the Grammys, Hawkins asserted.
“Prostitution and stripping are never empowering for women, as they set up systems that exploit and oppress women. CBS has contributed to furthering the sexual exploitation of women and contributed to the ‘normalization’ of porn culture,” Hawkins added.
Parents Television Council President Tim Winter described the performance as “entirely unfit for a primetime network television broadcast.”
“Artists have every right to confound empowerment with debasement, and sexiness with debauchery, but a broadcast television network carries a higher standard — especially during the times when children are likely to be in the audience. Shame on CBS,” said Winter in a statement released Monday.
Jim Denison of the Denison Forum noted that he remembers the “wardrobe malfunction” from the 2004 Super Bowl where artist Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s blouse and exposed her breast during the final moments of the halftime show.
The Federal Communications Commission fined CBS and several of its affiliates $550,000 as a result of the incident, but the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately tossed those fines.
“Now it seems that we are subjected to such ‘malfunctions’ on prime time television regularly,” Denison mused.
Twitter users had mixed reactions, with some taking to the platform to celebrate the performance, while others voiced disgust given that children could be watching.
NCOSE added in a Monday blog post that the performance “highlights long-standing issues of systemic racial and sexual injustice that still pervade in our society and which are grossly profited on by corporations,” like major media companies which deceptively frame the exploitation as empowering.
“[A]s feminism championed the rights of women and the civil rights movement did the same for people of color, many of those who ‘benefited’ the most from those oppressive systems — a cohort that is predominantly affluent, powerful, and white — only had to slightly tweak their ‘PR’ so they could continue to traffic in and profit from racist and sexist themes through the commercial sex industry. All under the banner of ’empowerment,’ NCOSE said.
Normalizing the commercial sex industry and other oppressive systems like strip clubs is not about understanding and celebrating unique cultural representations and expressions of sexuality, the organization added.
“Instead of empowerment, CBS allowed the propagation of regressive themes that reinforce and normalize racial and sexual injustice,” NCOSE said.
WHO and the EMA are investigating reports of blood clot-related injuries and deaths after the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, but both say there’s no reason to stop using the vaccines.
More than 20 countries have either suspended or said they will delay Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccinations based on reports of deaths or injuries — in most cases related to blood clots — in healthy people who received the vaccine.
Prosecutors in Northern Italy announced Monday they had seized a batch of 393,600 shots of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine following the death of a 57-year-old man hours after he was vaccinated, reported Reuters.
Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) is standing firm in its support of the vaccine. In a press conference today, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “This does not necessarily mean these events [deaths and injuries] are linked to the vaccine, but it’s routine practice to investigate them, and it shows that the surveillance system works and effective controls are in place.”
According to news reports, WHO’s vaccine safety experts were meeting today to discuss the vaccine. WHO had previously said that an ongoing analysis by its vaccines advisory committee has not established a causal link between the vaccine and blood clots and countries should keep using it, reported The Telegraph.
Regulators in Europe also defended the vaccine telling news outlets that the “benefits outweigh the risks.” Still, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is investigating reports of blood clots in vaccine recipients and will release its findings Thursday, according to Nasdaq.com.
EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke said today during a news conference that there was no indication the incidents, which she called “very rare,” had been caused by the vaccine, but experts were assessing that possibility.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, not yet approved for emergency use in the U.S., is being distributed under WHO’s COVAX program, funded by Bill Gates. The company plans to file for Emergency Use Authorization with the U.S Food and Drug Administration in the upcoming weeks.
In Italy, Piedmont’s regional government suspended use of AstraZeneca’s batch ABV5811, which is different than the batch of AstraZeneca vaccine seized last week in Sicily after the sudden deaths of two men who had recently been vaccinated.
The Italian government had previously said there was no evidence of a connection between the deaths and the vaccine, and had allowed the AstraZeneca vaccine to continue to be administered even after other countries had suspended use of the vaccine.
Other countries that have hit pause on AstraZeneca:
Norway, which is investigating reports of young healthy people who experienced brain hemorrhages and blood clots after being vaccinated. On March 12, the Norwegian Medicines Agency and Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) reported an unexpected death from a brain haemorrhage after an AstraZeneca vaccine was administered. A day later the agencies received three more reports of severe cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages in younger people who had been vaccinated and were receiving hospital treatment. All of the patients showed reduced numbers of blood platelets.
Dr. Pal Andre Holme is treating the three health workers at Olso University Hospital. He told Norway’s VG newspaper that it was “very unusual” to see such young patients with such “low levels of blood platelets.” Holme’s said, “These are healthy young people who have not had any kind of disease before, who then get severe blood clots. You have to ask questions whether there is a connection with the vaccine, which I do not consider unlikely.”
In its report, the NIPH called for anyone under the age of 50 who experienced “large or small bruises” after being vaccinated to visit a doctor.
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Sweden announced today it was suspending the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports of abnormal blood clotting in recipients, according to NPR. The Swedish Public Health Agency said it would suspend use of the vaccine until the EMA reveals findings from its ongoing investigation.
Bulgaria paused the vaccine as a precautionary measure last week after a woman died of heart failure 15 hours after receiving the shot, reported Reuters. “Until all doubts are dispelled … we are halting inoculations with this vaccine,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said in a statement.
Ireland said on Sunday it was suspending the country’s rollout of the AstraZeneca’s vaccine, The Telegraph reported. Dr Karina Butler, head of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, told Irish state broadcaster RTÉ that the committee had made the decision after Norway reported a “cluster of four serious, very rare, very serious clotting events” in young healthy people.
Germany suspended the vaccine as a precautionary measure this week after the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said seven cases of cerebral vein thrombosis had been reported. Spahn said Germany’s vaccine authority, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, “considers further investigation necessary after new reports of cerebral brain thrombosis in connection with vaccination in Germany and Europe.”
The Paul Ehrlich Institute said the EMA should decide “whether and how the new findings will affect the approval of the vaccine.”
Indonesia Monday suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine saying it was waiting for a full report from the WHO before administering any more of the vaccines.
South Africa, as previously reported by The Defender, suspended plans to distribute the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in February after a study showed only 10% efficacy at protecting against mild and moderate COVID-19 cases from the new South African variant.
Venezueladecided it will not authorize or license AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine at all due to complications in vaccinated recipients. The country had reserved 1.4 to 2.4 million doses through COVAX.
Some countries still on board:
Despite safety concerns, some countries are moving forward with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Last week, Thailand became the first country outside Europe to temporarily suspend using the vaccine due to safety concerns, according to Associated Press. But Thailand’s health authorities reversed course and decided to move forward. The Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and members of his cabinet received the first shots.
“There are people who have concerns,” Chan-ocha said after he received the first dose. “But we must believe doctors, believe in our medical professionals.”
In the Philippines, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said his country would not suspend use of the vaccine because the benefits outweighed any risks.
“There is still no clear data that shows that the blood clotting was caused by AstraZeneca. If such data will come out, maybe we will also stop the use of AstraZeneca,” Roque said. “As of now, our experts are saying again that the benefits we get from using AstraZeneca are larger than the side effects of this vaccine.”
Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt said his country “absolutely, clearly and unequivocally” supports the rollout of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine and would not suspend vaccinations, with plans to import and manufacture 70 million vaccine doses from the vaccine maker. Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said there was no evidence so far that the vaccine causes blood clots.
Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said Monday Health Canada regulators are “constantly analyzing all the available information about vaccines and have guaranteed those approved in Canada are safe for use.” The government’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization today approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for people 65 and older — it had previously limited the approval for people under age 65 due to “limited information on its efficacy,” MSN reported.
According to Reuters, AstraZeneca reviewed its own safety data and said on Sunday there was no evidence of increased risk of blood clots from its COVID vaccine. A monthly safety report will be made public on the EMA website next week, the company said.
WHO said global distribution of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine remained undisrupted, though TGR reported investigations into AstraZeneca concerns have triggered far-reaching reactions with thousands of cancellations of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. In Veneto Italy alone, 50% of planned vaccination appointments with AstraZeneca were cancelled since Saturday, reported the president of the region, Luca Zaia.
