Why does he only wear the one t-shirt? *Vogue* couldn’t have lent him Gucci for the shoot?
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) July 28, 2022
Oh I’m sorry, I was supposed to mistake British Vogue for some kind of hard-hitting wartime journalism.
Carry on. https://t.co/Xs0U2LdqUr
Money Trail
All posts tagged Money Trail
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it, in partnership with the Department of Defense, agreed to purchase another 105 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot — for $3.2 billion
- The contract is intended to supply shots for a coming fall injection campaign and includes options to purchase up to 300 million doses
- The decision came after a June 28 meeting of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), which recommended that an Omicron-specific component be included in COVID-19 booster shots in the U.S.
- Pfizer stands to profit significantly from the contract and has forecast that its COVID-19 shot sales will reach $32 billion in 2022
- VRBPAC voted 19-2 in favor of recommending booster shots that are Omicron-specific, even though panel members expressed uncertainty and guesswork surrounding the booster rollout’https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-gives-pfizer-3-2-billion-for-ineffective-covid-vax_4592843.html?est=UigdwmwEKXx2q7GcV2%2FNCvzt0oyG8Bmi9bCPh2Chl7kfcEprKav6%2FKyOGaupfjV0cg%3D%3D
‘Chaos and collapse are spreading. Sri Lanka now has 2-3 days of bread left on store shelves, and both the government and the economy there are in a state of total collapse. Via DNAIndia.com:
All Ceylon Bakery Owners’ Association (ACBOA) on Sunday said that bakery products including bread will be emptied from the shelves in the next two or three days amid severe food shortage in the country.
ACBOA President NK Jayawardena said that bread may disappear from bakery shelves soon due to the prevalent fuel crisis and the shortage and price increase of all ingredients…
Meanwhile, a bank run is spreading across China as some of the country’s major banks announce a freeze on withdrawals, effectively declaring a “bail-in” scenario where people don’t get their money back. Via ZeroHedge:
A large crowd of angry Chinese bank depositors faced off with police Sunday in the city of Zhengzhou, and many were injured as they were taken away, amid the freezing of their deposits by some rural-based banks.
The banks froze millions of dollars worth of deposits in April, telling customers they were upgrading their internal systems. The banks have not issued any communication on the matter since, depositors said.
According to Chinese media the frozen deposits across the various local banks could be worth up to $1.5 billion and authorities are investigating the three banks.‘https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-12-china-bank-collapse-under-way-saudi-arabia-distances-from-the-petro-dollar-to-join-brics-monetary-order.html
‘This week, the global elites descended on Davos, Switzerland for their annual pow-wow and, as always, they used the occasion to promote their agenda for centralisation and control.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) event was once again a who’s who of the global elite, with business leaders, political figures, and celebrities all rubbing shoulders.
The WEF founder Klaus Schwab opened the event by declaring that the future will be “built” by those in attendance at Davos — a clear sign that these elites see themselves as the architects of the future, with the rest of us just going along for the ride.
Australia’s taxpayer-funded e-Safety Commissioner then suggested that human rights online should be “recalibrated”, particularly when it came to free speech.
The CEO of YouTube also spoke about censoring people.
You’d expect the Davos crowd to want to “recalibrate” our right to free speech. They only want free speech to suit the needs of the elite and censor any dissenting opinions that don’t fit their narrative.
J. Michael Evans, president of the Chinese Communist Party-linked Alibaba Group boasted to the elites of the development of a carbon footprint tracker by his company:
“We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their whole carbon footprint. What does that mean? Where they are traveling. How they are traveling. What are they eating. What they are consuming on the platform. We don’t have it operational yet, but this is something that we’re working on.”
Can you imagine such a device in the hands of extreme green zealots that are now ensconced in government?
A panel of elite bankers then told the forum that a centralised digital currency was but five years away. Last year, the British Government and the Bank of England were mulling over the idea of making such centralised digital currencies programmable, meaning the issuer of the funds could determine what you spend your money on, where you spend it and how much you spend.
And, of course, there was a lot of finger-wagging about climate change at Davos, with the irony somehow lost on the many attendees who flew in on their private jets to attend the Swiss talkfest about lecturing us mere mortals about the need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.
The spoof Twitter account World Ecommunist Forum perfectly summed up the hypocrisy with this tweet:
Many alternative media journalists and commentators who turned up in Davos were accosted by police who — both frighteningly and bizarrely — wore a badge declaring themselves the “World Economic Forum Police”. Fact checkers tried to cover it up by claiming the badge was merely commemorative but you can be the judge looking at this photo of the badge on a police officer who detained independent reporter Jack Posobiec.
Security was immensely beefed up for the global elite’s version of Woodstock with a 5,000 military personnel on duty and a no-fly zone in force.
The theme of Davos 2022 was supposed to be “Working Together, Restoring Trust”. Obviously they were working on control. But there can no trusting this crowd.’ https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/exposed-what-the-globalists-did-this?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MjUyOTI1MiwiXyI6ImNmZWY0IiwiaWF0IjoxNjUzNzE2NzgyLCJleHAiOjE2NTM3MjAzODIsImlzcyI6InB1Yi00NTQxODIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.XSC-5nTnHs3WO0DnrpHb3kdcotgn5XaoblBN-RStmyc&s=r
‘Last month, 33,333 properties across the U.S. faced foreclosure, a 181 percent jump from March 2021 and 29 percent pop from February, according to a report by foreclosure tracker Attom. The first quarter saw 78,271 properties with a foreclosure filing, a 39 percent from the previous quarter and 132 percent from last year.
Those figures represent the highest number of foreclosures since March 2020 when nearly 47,000 U.S. homes held foreclosure filings, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence for ATTOM.’https://strangesounds.org/2022/04/the-foreclosure-avalanche-has-started-181-surge-to-highest-levels-since-march-2020.html
‘Some 13 years after the end of a civil war that saw 100,000 deaths, Sri Lanka is once again on the cusp of serious violence. Earlier today, the police opened fire on protesters in the town of Rambukkana. One person has died and at least ten people are said to be in critical condition. It’s the first use of deadly force against demonstrators who seem to have filled the entire island in recent weeks. Grainy footage shows half-conscious bodies being carried into hospital, bullet casings littering the quiet palm-lined streets.
This was meant to be a time of celebration. Buddhists are marking the new year while the country’s Muslim minority observe Ramadan. Instead, the country has been brought to a standstill by nationwide protests demanding that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign amid a crippling economic crisis.
Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, is now a ghost town. The savings of the country’s burgeoning middle classes have become worthless: the Sri Lankan Rupee is now the world’s worst-performing currency. India’s southern neighbour owes international lenders more than £21 billion, with just £1.7 billion in reserves. Shops and restaurants are closed and armed police patrol the streets. The price of vegetables has increased fivefold since 2021, while the cost of rice has doubled. Many residents say they are unable to eat more than one meal a day.
Rajapaksa, a Sinhalese Buddhist, was elected President in 2019 following the Easter Sunday terror attacks. To many Sri Lankans – particularly the country’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority, around 70 per cent of the population – he seemed the obvious choice to restore law and order, having served as defence secretary during the civil war. He is credited with bringing an end to the 26-year conflict, but not without allegedly committing an array of gross human rights abuses against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. It’s difficult to find a more polarising figure in South Asian politics.
Since his election, Rajapaksa has faced accusations of economic mismanagement, embezzlement and corruption. His brother, Mahinda, is the country’s Prime Minister and another brother, Basil, was finance minister until he resigned last week along with the rest of the cabinet. Basil implemented a series of ill-advised tax cuts back in 2019; Sri Lanka was subsequently locked out of international debt markets and has had to burn through its foreign exchange reserves to service sovereign bond payments.
The Rajapaksas were also behind a sudden decision to suddenly ban chemical fertilisers last May, without consulting farmers, which led to a disastrous drop in rice yields this year. They claimed that it would protect farmers from harmful chemicals which were causing kidney issues. Unable to afford food imports, Sri Lanka saw yields of domestically-grown rice fall by around 50 per cent.
In order to deal with the surging levels of debt, Sri Lanka announced a blanket ban on non-essential imports last year. Now, everything from milk powder to spare car parts are unavailable. Even school exams have been cancelled because the government can’t afford the paper on which to print the tests.
Fuel, gas and diesel shortages have become common. Sunrise in Colombo is met by crowds of residents heading to petrol stations and waiting, usually in vain, to fill up their vehicles. In an attempt to preserve supplies, the government is enforcing ten-hour daily power cuts across the country.
Unsurprisingly, Sri Lankans are angry. Last Saturday, in the largest protest to date, tens of thousands of Colombo residents took to the streets demanding regime change. Many also called for the Rajapaksa brothers to have their day in court. ‘It was never this bad during the civil war,’ one 43-year-old IT worker in Colombo explains. ‘At least then we had food to eat, power in our homes and fuel in our cars.’
It seems growing numbers of Sri Lankans agree. The weekend before last, Muslim leaders marched side-by-side with saffron-robed Buddhist monks before members of the country’s LGBTQ community joined them to break the Ramadan fast. You find groups of wealthy professionals chanting anti-Rajapaksa slogans alongside poor rickshaw drivers who can no longer afford fuel. Doctors and nurses are becoming a vocal part of the protests.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s largest public medical body, the Government Medical Officers Association, has declared a health emergency. Hospitals have run out of five life-saving drugs and the GMOA says there are shortages of another 180 medicines, as well as a lack of vital surgical and testing equipment. There are reports of several deaths due to a shortage of Tenecteplase, a drug administered to patients after heart attacks. Pharmacies surrounding Colombo’s leading cancer hospital are turning away patients. The GMOA is pleading with Sri Lankan expats to send essential drugs.
Yet the Rajapaksas remain resolute: Gotabaya has refused to resign. The country’s new finance minister, who attempted to quit less than 24 hours in the job, has said that reviving the economy will be a ‘Herculean’ task. He estimates Sri Lanka requires £2.3 billion in aid over the next six months to purchase essentials like food and fuel, in addition to meeting £5.3 billion of debt repayments for the rest of the year.
Many Sri Lankans blame high-interest Chinese loans for the crisis. Already, Sri Lanka has been forced to lease a new mega port to China in lieu of repayments. Spotting an opportunity, India has signed over £760 million of credit to Sri Lanka and talks are underway for a further £1.1 billion of financial support.
Back in Colombo, some are saying this is Sri Lanka’s ‘Arab Spring’ moment, as peaceful protesters seek to overthrow an autocratic government mired in corruption allegations and complicit in gross economic mismanagement. But for now, Sri Lanka’s notorious military continues to support the Rajapaksas. Whether that continues is an open question.
‘We haven’t seen anything like this for decades, there is no gas, no fuel, no food. The whole country is coming out onto the streets,’ one 22-year-old protester says. ‘The Rajapaksas have to go right now or it is going to be the end of us all.’’https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/04/sri-lankas-descent-into-chaos/
whatyareckon 