Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

This week it is being reported that the human population of our planet has now reached 8 billion.  We should all remember this moment, because soon the population of the globe will start getting much smaller.  In “End Times”, I explain that we are moving into one of the most chaotic times in all of human history.  There will be wars and rumors of wars, economic collapse, worldwide famines, horrifying pestilences and great natural disasters.  Needless to say, in such a future the global population would fall very rapidly.  But for purposes of this article, let’s imagine that none of those things will happen for the foreseeable future.  For a moment, let’s imagine that conditions will be pretty much like they are today for decades to come.  Unfortunately, even in such a wildly unrealistic scenario the human population of our planet would still plummet dramatically in the years ahead.  In fact, if current trends continue there will be hardly anyone left by the end of this century no matter what happens.

I realize that I have just made some very outrageous statements, and a lot of you are probably wondering how I could have come to such wild conclusions.

So let me take this one step at a time.

According to the UN, the population of the world just hit 8 billion for the first time ever.  The following comes from the official website of the United Nations…

The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released today on World Population Day.

“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.

But the population of our planet is not growing as rapidly as it once was.

In fact, even the UN is acknowledging that total population growth has dropped to just a trickle…

The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1 per cent in 2020.

In many wealthy areas of the planet, birth rates have already dropped well below replacement level.  This is true in the United States and Japan, and in Europe the population is steadily declining even though there has been a massive influx of migrants….

The European Union’s population shrank for a second year running last year, the bloc’s statistics office said on Monday, as the region reels from over two million deaths from the coronavirus.

According to Eurostat, the population of the 27 countries that make up the bloc fell by close to 172,000 from the previous year and over 656,000 from January 2020.

One of the big reasons why birth rates are falling in wealthy countries is because men in those nations are a lot less fertile than they used to be.  In fact, researchers have just released a study that shows that the decline in sperm counts “has only accelerated since the turn of the century”…

Plummeting sperm counts ‘threaten mankind’s survival’, researchers dramatically warned today.

Counts have more than halved since the 1970s.

And the decline has only accelerated since the turn of the century, according to a global analysis.

Once your sperm count gets low enough, it becomes almost impossible to have children.

So this is a really big deal.

According to the study, average sperm counts have been declining by 2.64 percent per year since the year 2000…

Results showed the mean sperm count fell by 51.6 per cent between 1973 and 2018 across men from all continents.

And concentrations have been falling by 2.64 per cent per year since 2000, quicker than the previous drop of 1.16 per cent annually from 1972.

Average sperm counts have already fallen into “the danger zone”, and if this trend continues average sperm counts will fall by another 50 percent in less than 20 years.

At that point, it is likely that the number of men that are infertile will be far greater than the number of men that are still able to have children.

And that is a recipe for catastrophic population decline.

If you are a man that wishes to remain fertile, one thing that you can do to help yourself is to stop carrying around your phone in your pockets.

Constantly exposing your genitals to microwave radiation is a really bad idea if you want to have kids.

Of course the human race is killing itself in countless other ways as well.

For example, even though we know that glyphosate causes cancer, we keep feeding foods that have been sprayed with it to ourselves and our children on a daily basis.

As a result, approximately 80 percent of the entire U.S. population now has glyphosate in their urine…

Part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found glyphosate in 1,885 of 2,310 urine samples representative of the population at large. Nearly a third of the samples came from kids, ranging in age from six to 18.

“Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the country, yet until now we had very little data on exposure,” Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, said Monday in a statement. “Children in the U.S. are regularly exposed to this cancer-causing weedkiller through the food they eat virtually every day.”

Why would we do this to our kids?

Are we insane?

Another way that we are literally killing ourselves is by our widespread use of plastics that contain cancer-causing chemicals.

When we dispose of a plastic item, it slowly starts breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces.  Over time, the pieces become so small that they can barely be seen.  There are trillions upon trillions of these “microplastics” in the air, water and soil all over the planet.  In fact, researchers have found microplastics wherever they have looked.  They have been discovered in the remotest parts of the Earth, they are in the rain that falls from the sky, and they now make up approximately 40 percent of the dust in our homes.

Unfortunately, these microplastics often contain cancer-causing chemicals, and studies have shown that exposure to microplastics can cause “cell death”…

Microplastic particles can cause cell death, cellular wall damage and allergic reactions in humans – at levels ingested by people via their food, a study has warned.

Researchers led from the University of Hull reviewed 17 previous studies on the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cells in a laboratory setting.

The team then compared the levels of microplastics required to cause cellular damage with those taken in via drinking water, seafood and table salt.

If you get enough plastic in your system, you will die.

And the amount of plastic that we create each year has been rising at an exponential rate.

So this is a health crisis that is only going to get worse.

But even if we were able to eliminate all plastic use immediately, this crisis would continue to escalate for a long time to come, because all of the plastic that we have already discarded will continue to slowly break down for decades.

Sadly, what I have covered in this article is just the tip of the iceberg.

The air that we breathe, the beverages that we drink and the food that we eat are all toxic.

If all that wasn’t enough, there are numerous other ways that we are literally committing societal suicide on a scale of epic proportions.

So the population of the world will not stay at 8 billion for long.

Even if global conditions remain relatively stable, a future of widespread infertility and mass death is ahead.

The clock is ticking for humanity, and the mess that we have created is way too big for us to fix on our own.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Authored by Sylvia Shawcross via Off-Guardian.org,

In the ridiculous world of the New Abnormal where we apparently find ourselves it is critically important to add your opinion to the cacophony of why we are who we are, where we are on the path to seeming totalitarianism and… why people are still wearing masks.

Here in Canada apparently 7 out of 10 members of the public would want mask mandates back while most of the rest of the world has abandoned the concept to the rearview mirror.

Perhaps understandable if you have a medical condition but now study after study. Peer-reviewed. Well-researched. Top quality medical journals. Top-of-the-line researchers. All saying these masks do very little good.**

Even Fauci himself said so once…before he changed his mind as he tends to do when the landscape changes with the weather. 

And in response, of course, drug companies and governments sponsored researchers in duelling studies to prove the opposite because that’s the game being played. It’s all about who you believe. It’s not about “the science”. Quite the game really.

In fact, most now know that masks are harmful in many cases, with children paying the biggest price by far on many different levels.

We know now masks don’t work for covid but perhaps they work for RSV or the flu? Maybe that’s why the push is on again. Because here in Canada it certainly is. Maybe that’s why we have the new narrative and being good abnormal citizens we must comply. Do you think?

Don’t be silly. We know why. We just don’t want to say.

So the Media and their polls have told us that 7 out of 10 people want to keep the masks. And why might that be?

They can hide their crooked teeth. Or their unbrushed teeth. Or their morning-after-the-night-before breath. They don’t have to wear make-up. Or shave. Or wash their faces or their children’s faces.

They can stick their tongue out at people without being caught. They can whisper without lip readers. They can smile and smirk and bite their lips. They can hide their cosmetic surgery in progress.They can hide their chin hairs and warts and zits and leftover food in their moustaches.

They can rob a bank or say whatever they want to strangers because no one knows who they are and even the cameras don’t know. 

God only knows what’s going on behind those masks!

But! Those mask-wearing people are free in a weird weird way. Advocates of the new abnormal have found a form of freedom from social norms behind a mask.

How is that possible? Is it possible that masks are freedom? No wonder we’re all mixed up. We don’t even know what freedom is anymore.

Or is it because we lost the freedom to have crooked teeth, no makeup and snarky opinions in the real world due to ever evolving relentless social norms and now have to hide for any sort of freedom…Hmmm… 

Seems to be true for a lot of things now doesn’t it?

(Except for anything sexual. You can pretty much proclaim or do anything publicly now. Except child molestation. You can apparently sniff but not anything else. But I’m doing that digression thing again…)

So, let’s get this straight— when we see someone in a mask are they to be feared as nasty snaggle-toothed leprous sneaky sociopaths with sharp tongues and nefarious intentions?

Or are they just victims grasping for what little freedom they can garner in a socially punishing world? Hmmm… It could well be either one… How would we know?

Nevertheless, this is all terribly alarming. WHAT is going on? 7 out of 10 of us!!! 

Well, I have a theory.  Beyond the usual theories of enforced enslavement, virtue signalling, forced shame, neurosis, herd-like conditioning, continued fear porn, dehumanization/objectification/subjugation/alienation, circumvention of facial-recognition systems, gateway moves to social credit scores, anti-feminist one-step-to-the-forced-wearing-of-shuttlecock-burkas assault and the ultimate theory that this poll is nonsense propaganda from our captured media.

All of these theories are as good as the next as long as science seems to have little to do with mask mandates. I mean, real science by independent researchers.

Beyond these theories is the “we’re in the Dark Ages during the plague years of 1346 or so again” theory of mine which I thought I might as well throw into the mix now that we’re all mixed up about freedom and stuff.

Not that there is a plague or anything really at the moment but because people’s reactions don’t change. Not through all these centuries. We’ve changed NOT at all.

Here’s my theory: People wearing masks are the flagellants of the dark ages during the plague years who would run around whipping themselves publicly for God’s forgiveness and atonement or something.

Now during the plague years we would have asked a priest about all this guilt and fear stuff that drive flagellants to be flagellants but today we ask the psychologists.

This is because many if not all of the first world countries have become atheistic and have abandoned religion. But human nature needs what human nature needs—hence the psychologists for priests e.g. or Fauci as Pope and Schwaub as God and Greta as Mother Mary Marx.

Some people believe either technology, money, or medicine has replaced religion but it is clearly evident that it is the Green movement. If we can accept that religion is something that people participate in every day in a meaningful way, then clearly the Green movement has it all. It has priests, codes of behaviours, dictates and forbidden things.

It has a hell (the world as it is going now) and it has a heaven (sustainable development in utopia) It has worshippers. It has the holy and the damned. It has flagellants. And the people now wearing masks are them.

After thirty or so years of being told  humans are responsible for killing the planet and being driven to weeping guilt over spending and frivolity and recycling and plastic and gas and beef-pork pies, humans are despicable.

They know it.

They’re guilty as hell. They want to be punished. They believe they deserve it and they are doing this as an appeal to their new Gods of the Environment. 

Masks appear not to be about the virus, but about supporting the true religion of the Environmental Zealotry in all its glory and condemnation no matter whatever absurd, illogical or terribly hurtful thing that might bring in whatever sphere of influence.

For many masks might even be called the uniform of the uninformed. 

No wonder they read the riot act to the truckers protest of Canada over things like mask mandates. Those heretics!

Well… that’s my theory. It’s as good as any of those other ones, isn’t it? Or maybe not. What do I know… As far as wearing masks is concerned, I appreciate that people are afraid and don’t wish to make too much light of it. Fear isn’t fun. It’s just important to know what to fear and why. Mostly I’m all for following the law of the land as long as the law isn’t an ass. That’s the hard part to figure out.

Here’s an earworm:

Remember the scene in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is piloting the SR-72 “Darkstar” hypersonic plane and slams the thrust lever for the engines all the way forward. The engines ignite in a fiery blast that propels Maverick to Mach 10.  

The propulsion system centered around the SR-72 Darkstar (a plane that is only a concept) is a turbine-based combined cycle, which merges a turbine engine with a ramjet. 

While there is no aircraft in the production stage with this insane propulsion system, ground-testing testing is underway. 

Hypersonic airplane developer Hermeus Corporation tweeted a video on Thursday of one of these engines transitioning from “turbojet” mode to “ramjet” insane mode. 

We just completed a major hypersonic milestone – turbojet to ramjet mode transition! pic.twitter.com/1jF7qAZavy

— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022

Hermeus believes the engine will propel an aircraft in turbojet mode to March 3. They said the transition to ramjet would push the aircraft to March 5. 

“This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality. Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports,” the company said. 

This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality.

Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports. pic.twitter.com/FTq6DZmXxI

— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022

Here’s more of how the engine transitions:

At low speeds Chimera is in turbojet mode – just like any jet aircraft. But as the temperature and the speed of the incoming air increase, turbojets hit their performance limit. This happens at around Mach 2. 

Chimera has a pre-cooler that reduces the temperature of the air coming into the turbojet. This allows Hermeus to squeeze out a bit more performance from the turbojet before transitioning to ramjet.

The company said they “will begin flight testing in late 2023.” 

While Darkstar speeds are not yet attainable, supersonic passenger aircraft will be available at the end of this decade, and hypersonic travel could be a mid/late 2030 story. 

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly working with Google to install “spyware” onto the Android devices of a million state residents without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula were among 1 million Massachusetts residents who had the state’s “COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA” app auto-installed without their consent, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonpartisan civil rights group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on Tuesday.

The app, once automatically installed, didn’t appear on the device’s home screen as newly-installed apps typically do. Instead, it was invisible and could only be found by opening “settings” and using the “view all apps” feature, according to NCLA.

This meant that many device users were unaware of its presence. Many have decried this as an invasion of privacy.

The NCLA declared the action a “brazen disregard” of civil liberties, saying in a statement the app was installed “without obtaining any search warrants, in violation of the device owners’ constitutional and common-law rights to privacy and property.”

“This ‘android attack,’ deliberately designed to override the constitutional and legal rights of citizens to be free from government intrusions upon their privacy without their consent, reads like dystopian science fiction—and must be swiftly invalidated by the court,” said NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little in a statement.

‘Government May Not Secretly Install Surveillance’ on Devices

Other states and foreign countries mostly tried to persuade their citizens to voluntarily install contact tracing apps, even if it meant fewer people took it up, according to Sheng Li, litigation counsel for NCLA.

“The government may not secretly install surveillance devices on your personal property without a warrant—even for a laudable purpose,” Li said. “For the same reason, it may not install surveillance software on your smartphone without your awareness and permission.”

The NCLA has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the continued installation of the app on private devices “without the knowledge or permission of device owners.”

The lawsuit also asks the judge to make Massachusetts DPH work with Google to uninstall the app from “private Android mobile devices where the device owner did not give permission for such installation.”

The plaintiffs also want the state to declare that its actions violated Fourth Amendment rights and Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.

Read more here…

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,

The only thing as wrong as the pre-election predictions of a red wave is the post-midterm analysis declaring a rousing victory by the Democrats.

Midterm election results boost Biden 2024 hopes, Reuters reports. Democrats can’t rest on their midterm success, declares a column published in the Hill. Perhaps the most predictable, if irrelevant, spin came from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted that House Democrats “defied expectations with an excellent performance: running their races with courage, optimism and determination.”

The more germane point is that Democrats lost the House and Pelosi will have to hand the gavel over to Kevin McCarthy next year. This monumental development should stop the Democrats’ legislative agenda in its tracks. President Biden’s hopes of becoming another FDR is now a pipe dream.

Yes, the Democrats exceeded expectations, performing better than history or pre-election polls suggested, as they won many close races in the House and hung on to their narrow margin in the Senate. But if we take a step back, the magnitude of things comes into focus.

Just two years ago, Democrats enjoyed a resounding victory, keeping the House, taking effective control of the Senate, and installing Joe Biden in the White House. Despite their narrow majorities they operated as if they had won by a landslide. The party that continually claims to be on “the right side of history,” and insists that the American people overwhelmingly support its policies, made every effort to give the country a full dose of its vision.

Biden’s first two years were a Golden Age for Democrats. They rammed through trillions of dollars of new spending while advancing the goals of diversity, inclusion, and equity across the government.

Meanwhile, they and their allies in the media worked to delegitimize their Republican opponents, casting them as racist, fascist “election deniers” who posed an existential threat to the “soul of democracy.” During the summer, liberals were handed an unexpected gift when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the poorly reasoned (but now-popular) 1973 case that legalized abortion across the land.

Given all that, one might have expected them to consolidate their power during the midterms. Instead, they lost some of it. Democrats may be raising relieved cheers, but they cannot spin away the fact that 55% of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance and 67% say the country is on the wrong track.

The election was a repudiation of the Democrats’ vision – even as voters sent a strong signal that they like Donald Trump’s toxic politics even less. It is very possible that Trump will  rescue Democrats again in 2024 if Republican primary voters make him their party’s nominee once again.

Yes, all elections are a choice and Democrats can hope that the GOP keeps giving voters even more unpalatable candidates.

But that dynamic does not diminish the message voters sent to Democrats in the midterms. “We’re not as bad as the other guys” cannot be translated into an endorsement of one’s agenda.

The most telling comment following the midterms was Biden’s declaration that he will do “nothing” different in response to the results. Of course, he won’t. The Democrats are no longer a political party in the old American tradition – an ever-evolving group of people who have a general philosophy which they can quickly adapt to the changing will of the people. They are ideologues committed to a specific unbending set of ideas about the role of the welfare state and their concept of social justice.

They cannot change course because they are no longer running a slate of candidates but a set-in-stone philosophy whose correctness can never be questioned. They cannot admit defeat, because it’s hard for them to accept that the people do not embrace their “truths” (they just need more time). Election setbacks are just bumps in the road for them to ignore on their march to the promised land.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Nov. 17 defended leaving a congressional hearing abruptly and using an official bureau jet to go on vacation after telling a senator he was attending to business.

Wray, a Trump appointee, confirmed under questioning by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that he flew to Saranac Lake in New York from an Aug. 4 Senate hearing.

“You were going on vacation?” Hawley asked.

Wray said, “I was, yes.”

Hawley asked, “So, you left a statutorily required oversight hearing in order to go on a personal vacation to the Adirondacks?”

Wray said, “I took a flight to go visit my family, as had been previously arranged in conjunction with leadership of the committee.”

Hawley then cited Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who had asked Wray to remain for longer during the August hearing so members could ask more questions.

At one point, Grassley said, “I assume you’ve got other business,” to which Wray answered affirmatively.

“And you said you had a plane to catch. You had somewhere to go. And now we find out it was for vacation?” Hawley said.

Wray said, “The reference to other business was not a reference that day, it was a reference to the following week when Sen. Grassley and I were going to see each other in Iowa, when I had other business in Iowa. And I did, in fact, see him then.”

Grassley’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“So you had to leave the hearing early because you’re gonna see him later in Iowa? You had a week,” Hawley said.

Wray said, “No, I had to leave when I said I was going to have to leave as had been previously organized with the leadership.”

A bureau spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times that Wray followed federal guidelines on using government aircraft. Wray said he’s required to use an FBI plane when he travels, regardless of the reason, and that he pays for each trip. Wray said on Nov. 17 that the bureau would comply with requests for receipts.

Hawley noted that a number of FBI whistleblowers have come forward in recent months, alleging that the bureau is violating federal guidelines in its treatment of Jan. 6 defendants and employees.

“Frankly, I think you should have been gone a long time ago, and given your behavior recently, it only makes it more clear,” Hawley said.

During the hearing, Wray said the FBI wouldn’t retaliate against the whistleblowers, although some have offered differing accounts.

Wray declined to talk about matters related to what the whistleblowers have reported.

“We have, as we speak, a number of personnel matters that are underway,” he told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “For reasons I’m sure you can appreciate, we can’t discuss that.”

Johnson said, “That’s always your excuse. I understand how you remain above the law by using that excuse repeatedly.”

The United States has famously been called a melting pot, due its demographic makeup of various cultures, races, religions, and languages. But what shape does that mixture take? And how has it changed over time?

Beginning over 100 years ago, this video from Kaj Tallungs assesses how America’s demographics have changed from 1901 to 2020. It uses data from multiple sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the Human Mortality Database.

A Look at the Total Population

As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop notes, the most obvious takeaway from this animation is that America’s population has soared over the last century. America’s population grew from 77 million in 1901 to over 330 million in 2020—or total growth of 330% over the 119 years.

And the U.S. has continued to add to its population totals. Here’s a brief look at at the population in 2021 by regional breakdowns:

And here’s a glance at how some of the population shakes out, across the top 10 most populous states in the country:

Demographic Breakdowns

Diving a little deeper, the country’s demographic breakdowns have also changed significantly over the last 100+ years. While the share of men and women is an obvious near-even split, age and race distributions have changed drastically.

For starters, though birth rates have remained fairly strong in the U.S., they have been slowing over time. This is similar to many other Western countries, and can eventually result in a larger share of elderly people as well as an increased financial cost of subsidizing their care. Additionally, fewer births results in a depleting workforce as the young population shrinks.

The shares of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and people of two or more races have also been growing. In fact, between 2010–2020 the population of people identifying as two races or more increased by a whopping 276%.

Here’s a glance at some of the other demographic growth rates over the 2010-2020 period:

• Black or African American alone population: +5.6%

• Asian alone population: +35.5%

• Hispanic or Latino alone population: +23%

• White population: -9%

Looking Ahead

Like many countries, a “graying” of the population will become a concern in the United States.

By 2060, it is expected that 95 million Americans will be over 65. But the share of those 18 and under will also continue to grow (albeit at a much slower pace) from 74 million people in 2020 to 80 million in 2060.

Another interesting insight from the Census Bureau is that from 2016–2060, the American-born population is expected to grow by only 20%, whereas the foreign-born population—the share of population who will immigrate to the U.S.—is expected to rise 58%.

True to the melting pot moniker, America’s demographics will continue to change dramatically over the coming decades.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

A series of revealing texts and tweets by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, the once high-flying but now belly-up crypto exchange, had the following to say about his image as a do-gooder: it is a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.” 

Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town. 

As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew. 

This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?

Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes. 

Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look. 

Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Ramdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know. 

Regardless, the study and especially the conclusions turned out to be bogus. David Henderson and Charles Hooper further point out an interesting fact:

“Some of the researchers involved in the TOGETHER trial had performed paid services for Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron, and AstraZeneca, all companies involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines that nominally compete with ivermectin.”

For some reason, SBF just knew that he was supposed to oppose repurposed drugs, though he knew nothing about the subject at all. He was glad to fund a poor study to make it true and the New York Times played its assigned role in the whole performance. 

It was just the start. A soft-peddling Washington Post investigation found that Sam and his brother Gabe, who ran a hastily founded Covid nonprofit, “have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations and other initiatives intended to improve biosecurity and prevent the next pandemic.”

I can do no better than to quote the Washington Post:

The shock waves from FTX’s free fall have rippled across the public health world, where numerous leaders in pandemic-preparedness had received funds from FTX funders or were seeking donations.

In other words, the “public health world” wanted more chances to say: “Give me money so I can keep advocating to lock more people down!” Alas, the collapse of the exchange, which reportedly holds a mere 0.001% of the assets it once claimed to have, makes that impossible. 

Among the organizations most affected is Guarding Against Pandemics, the advocacy group headed by Gabe that took out millions in ads to back the Biden administration’s push for $30 billion in funding. As Influence Watch notes: “Guarding Against Pandemics is a left-leaning advocacy group created in 2020 to support legislation that increases government investment in pandemic prevention plans.”

Truly it gets worse:

FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine accelerator, write his memoir.

Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from the organization are on hold.

And worse:

The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and $175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”

More:

Guarding Against Pandemics spent more than $1 million on lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House over the past year, hired at least 26 lobbyists to advocate for a still-pending bipartisan pandemic plan in Congress and other issues, and ran advertisements backing legislation that included pandemic-preparedness funding. Protect Our Future, a political action committee backed by the Bankman-Fried brothers, spent about $28 million this congressional cycle on Democratic candidates “who will be champions for pandemic prevention,” according to the group’s webpage.

I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books. The first auditor to have a look has written: 

“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”

It was the worst example of a phony perpetual-motion machine: a token to back a company that itself was backed by the token, which in turn was backed by nothing but political fashion and woke ideology that roped in Larry David, Tom Brady,  Katy Perry, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton to provide a cloak of legitimacy. 

Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas April 2022

And you can’t make this stuff up anymore: FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby. 

I will tell you what infuriates me about these billions in fake money and deep corruptions of politics and science. For years now, my anti-lockdown friends have been hounded for being funded by supposed dark money that simply doesn’t exist. Many brave scientists, journalists, attorneys, and others gave up great careers to stand for principle, exposing the damage caused by the lockdowns, and this is how they have been treated: smeared and displaced. 

Brownstone has adopted as many in this diaspora as possible for fellowships as far as the resources (real ones, contributed by caring individuals) can go. But we cannot come anywhere near what is necessary for justice, much less complete with the 8-digit funding regime of the other side. 

The Great Barrington Declaration was signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, which, apparently, six years prior had received a long-spent $60,000 grant from the Koch Foundation, and thus became a “Koch-funded libertarian think tank” which supposedly discredited the GBD, even though none of the authors received a dime. 

This gibberish and slander has gone on for years – at the urging of government officials! – and Brownstone itself faces much of the same nonsense, with every manner of fantasy about our supposed power, money, and influence swarming the darker realms of the social-media dudgeons. In fact, the actual Koch Foundation (probably unbeknownst to its founder) was funding the pro-lockdown work of Neil Ferguson, whose ridiculous modeling terrified the world into denying human rights to billions of people the world over. 

All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principle actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart. 

Then the New York Times, instead of decrying this criminal conspiracy for what it is, writes puff pieces on the founder and how he let his quick-growing company grow too far, too fast, and now needs mainly rest, bless his heart. 

The rest of us are left with the bill for this obvious scam that implausibly links crypto and Covid. But just as the money was based on nothing but puffed air, the damage they have wrought on the world is all too real: a lost generation of kids, declined lifespans, millions missing from the workforce, a calamitous fall in public health, millions of kids in poverty due to supply-chain breakages, 19 straight months of falling real incomes, historically high increases in debt, and a dramatic fall in human morale the world over. 

So yes, we should all be furious and demand full accountability at the very least. Whatever the final truth, it is likely to be far worse than even the egregious facts listed above. It’s bad enough that lockdowns wrecked life and liberty. To discover that vast support for them was funded by fraud and fakery is a deeper level of corruption that not even the most cynical among us could have imagined.