Michael Stenger, the former US Senate sergent-at-arms in charge of security during the January 6, 2021 US Capitol breach, died on Monday at the age of 71. The cause and circumstances of his death were not immediately clear.

A resident of Falls Church, VA, Stenger resigned the day after the J6 riot at the request of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had originally hired Stenger for the post in 2018.

Stenger was responsible for security in the Capitol and all Senate buildings, and serves as the Senate doorkeeper.

Senger's death was reported by ' Chad Pergram on Monday, and tweeted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who said that he was "found dead today."

Michael Stenger, Senate Sergeant at Arms on January 6th, was found dead today.. pic.twitter.com/9upvUwrdtl

-- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) June 28, 2022

According to former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, Stenger and former House Seargeant-at-Arms Paul Irving pushed back on an initial request to deploy the National Guard after it became obvious that large crowds were amassing on Jan. 6.

Stenger's death came one day before a J6 panel hearing that was abruptly added to the schedule, in which an aide to former White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows will testify to present "recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony."

Stenger said that the J6 riot went "well beyond disobedience."

A fresh report has confirmed what many already suspected - that the CIA is still very active inside Ukraine - especially with training as well coordinating weapons among its Ukrainian allies. The report details "a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training," based on US and European intelligence officials with knowledge of the operations. The report says Ukrainian forces are reliant on this Western clandestine network "more than ever" while outgunned by the Russians.

This comes months after investigative journalist Zach Dorfman's bombshell expose in which detailed how a prior 8-year long CIA covert program to train Ukrainian fighters helped provoke the Russian invasion. The only question that remained after that March report was the extent to which the CIA was still active in the ongoing fight against the invading Russians.

The new reporting confirms that the US program is not only active and ongoing, but appears larger in scale than previously thought given the CIA's close cooperation with the Ukrainians is happening both inside and outside the country, across multiple locations.

"Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials," the report indicates.

It appears much the CIA's work in Ukraine is centered on coordinating intelligence with local intel services and counterparts. "Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country -- on top of the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia gave up its siege of Kyiv -- hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking," NY Times continues.

Over the weekend, Canada also has been reported to have special operations troops inside Ukraine. This was reported months ago, but with a separate NYT report offering further confirmation. "Both CTV and Global News reported in late January that Canadian special forces had been sent to Ukraine, but National Defence did not comment on that deployment," writes Sunday. Back in January, a full two months before the invasion, disclosed the following:

These details further seems to authenticate those voices which have been insisting NATO and Russia are in fact waging a proxy war inside Ukraine, a label which Biden administration officials have previously sought to deny and downplay.

New York Times: The CIA has no idea what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. New York Times, 17 days later: Ukraine is full of CIA personnel. pic.twitter.com/zlea6upOWm

-- Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 25, 2022

Writes NY Times further of the international nature of Ukraine's on-the-ground assistance, "At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine."

But the report adds the caveat that "The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said."

This strongly suggests the very scenario that many long suspected: that CIA operations which had gone on for eight years in Ukraine didn't wind down or cease upon the Feb.24 start of the Russian invasion, but only increased and were ramped up. Of course, the same goes for the Pentagon's special operations presence inside the country and along its Western borders, particularly in Poland.

On Sunday, the Kremlin underscored angrily that even as such clandestine programs are made public via deliberate "leaks" to the media, Washington has refused to answer simple questions regarding Western operatives and mercenaries inside Ukraine - also after a couple of American fighters were recently captured.

So the NYT confirms that CIA and NATO "boots on the ground" have been in Ukraine all along, but two months ago you were a totally unhinged disinformation agent if you suspected this

-- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 26, 2022

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday:

She charged the West with only seeking to perpetuate the conflict, saying, "They are sparing no effort so that the conflict in Ukraine continued as long as possible. We remember what US 43rd President George Bush Jr said: Ukraine's mission is to kill as many Russians as possible.... They have endowed Ukraine and the Kiev regime with this duty.

"They are using (Ukraine - TASS) as an instrument and the entire logistics are centered round that - weapons supplies, sending people, anything to keep the conflict burning, as [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson told [French President Emmanuel] Macron today, to prevent the settlement of this situation. Otherwise, their plan will fail," Zakharova said according to TASS.

Retirees face the harsh realities of not generating enough retirement income to sustain current spending habits amid the worst inflation in four decades.

Millions of Americans living out their golden years are readjusting their retirement income and altering spending behaviors to survive the inflation storm sparked by the Federal Reserve and the federal government's spending spree during COVID that sparked inflation which has since become a significant policy error. The Fed has since unleashed the most aggressive quantitative tightening scheme in decades to tame inflation and could easily tip the economy into recession later this year or in 2023. 

Financial turmoil has put retirees in a tough spot because they don't want to drain their savings and be forced to re-enter the labor market as Walmart greeters. 

So if retirees want to maintain their current standard of living, there's a new study by GOBankingRates that has found the top metro areas where baby boomers can comfortably survive for less than $1,500 a month.  

GOBankingRates found Odessa, Texas; Wayne, Indiana; St. Cloud, Minnesota; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Lawton, Oklahoma; and Lansing, Michigan, the most affordable areas where retirees could live out their golden years (currently) for less than $1,500. 

When Russia's re-branded McDonald's restaurants opened in Moscow earlier this month, they smashed sales records set when the locations were adorned with golden arches, according to a Reuters interview with the firm's chief executive.  

If it wanted to harken back to the earlier days of its predecessor, new brand Vkusno & Tochka could have posted a sign saying "Over 120,000 Served" after just one day in operation. In the first wave, 50 locations opened in Moscow on June 12 and 13, including the firm's flagship location on Moscow's Pushkin Square.   

"We have never seen such daily turnover in the whole time McDonald's has worked in Russia," Vkusno & Tochka CEO Oleg Paroev said.

Since the restaurants lost all rights to use McDonald's branding and trademarks, Vkusno & Tochka--which roughly translates to "Tasty and That's It"--is a completely new brand with a new logo, color scheme and names for the burgers and shakes. 

While acknowledging that the novelty and historic nature of the event drove the impressive throngs that crowded the restaurants on opening weekend, Paroev is hoping to beat owner Alexander Govor's goal to have a thousand stores in four to five years, eclipsing the 850 mark achieved by McDonald's before the firm bolted in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

McDonald's kept an option to reenter the market, reports Reuters: 

Govor, who previously ran 25 restaurants, said at the launch that he paid a 'symbolic' sum for McDonald's Russia and that the U.S. corporation had made it clear they would not exercise a 15-year buyback option.

In violation of Russian law, some former McDonald's franchisees are still operating with McDonald's branding, packaging and menus, but have renamed their Big Macs. Paroev doesn't like having to compete with these Russian ghosts of Ronald McDonald: "Of course we're not happy about this." 

While off to an auspicious start, Vkusno & Tochka is facing some adversity in the form of the U.S.-led trade war on Russia, as "a significant percentage" of the firm's ingredients are sourced overseas, says Paroev. 

 

Ken Griffin has had it with the Chicago crime cesspool.

The billionaire is moving Citadel's headquarters to Miami, the third major employer after Boeing and Caterpillar to announce the move of a corporate headquarters from Illinois in the past two months after the trading titan decried the city's crime rate and voiced frustrations with political leadership in Illinois.

In a letter to employees sent on Thursday, Griffin said he had personally moved to Florida and that his market-making business, Citadel Securities, would also transfer. He wrote he views Florida as a better corporate environment and though he didn't specifically cite crime as a factor, company officials said it was a consideration, the WSJ reported. Which reminds us: where is the Netflix special on inner city black-on-black crime in general, and Chicago's weekly murder spree in particular? Oh, it's not there... what a shocker.

The relocation will affect both hedge fund Citadel and Citadel Securities, the market making business, firm spokesman Zia Ahmed said Thursday according to Bloomberg, and marks the first step in a multi-year process that will involve the firm building a new office in Miami, which will serve as its global headquarters, and where a few hundred people will be based as soon as next year.

"Chicago will continue to be important to the future of Citadel, as many of our colleagues have deep ties to Illinois," Griffin wrote, before explaining that the ties will not be that deep. "Over the past year, however, many of our Chicago teams have asked to relocate to Miami, New York and our other offices around the world."

Griffin, 53, said just last month that he was reaching a tipping point with Chicago. The hedge fund and market maker, both of which he founded, combined employ more than 1,000 people in the city and pay hundreds of millions in taxes to liberal mecca that will now find itself in even more dire financial straits.

Griffin - with an estimated worth of $28.9 billion - is the wealthiest resident of Illinois and is among the world's top 50 wealthiest, so his departure and that of his hedge fund will hurt state tax collections on both the individual and corporate side. It will also be a blow to Chicago's philanthropic scene, where Griffin has given more than $600 million in gifts to educational, cultural, medical and civic organizations in the area.

The Citadel founder and Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune and the brother of former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, have had a running feud in recent years, lately over rising violence in Chicago.

In an April interview with the Journal, Griffin suggested he might move his operations out of Illinois because of a rising crime rate and incidents involving employees in the state's largest city. Data from the Chicago Police Department show that through June 19, murders are down 11% when compared with the same period a year earlier, while thefts are up 65%, motor vehicle thefts are up 40% and burglaries are up 31%.

"If people aren't safe here, they're not going to live here," he said then. "I've had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I've had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that's a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from."

Back in October 2021 Griffin revealed that "Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day, and that's a problem." He also said that he saw "25 bullet shots in the glass window of the retail space" in the building he lives in.

"It just tells you, like, how deep crime runs in this city. There is nowhere, where you can feel safe today walking home at 9:30 at night and you worry about your kids coming to and from school."

Caterpillar said earlier this month it was moving from its longtime Illinois base to Texas. Manufacturers have increasingly turned to the Southwest as a destination for new factories, drawn by available space, appealing tax policies and an expanding technology workforce. In May, Boeing said it was moving its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Va., in order to be closer to top federal officials.

As the WSJ reminds us, Citadel Securities has had a presence in Florida since March 2020, when employees started working from a high-end hotel there at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In his note to employees, Griffin said the new headquarters would be on Brickell Bay, "in the heart of Miami's booming financial district."

The decision makes Citadel the latest investment firm to move its headquarters or to open an office in a more tax-friendly jurisdiction during the pandemic, as quality-of-life factors took on new importance.  D1 Capital Partners and Elliott Management are among the firms that now have a presence in Florida, making it a new satellite of New York and Connecticut for the hedge-fund industry.

Griffin has donated $50 million ahead of Tuesday's Illinois primary to the campaign of Richard Irvin, a suburban Chicago mayor running for the Republican nomination for governor. He is also a major donor to efforts nationwide to try to help the GOP gain control of Congress in November.

The Pentagon is collaborating with Elon Musk's company SpaceX to investigate the possibility of using the company's rockets to drop troops and equipment into global flashpoints.

The military's work with the private space company covers a wide array of research initiatives, according to a partially redacted research agreement, originally obtained by The Intercept via a Freedom of Information Act request and made public on June 19.

The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (pdf), outlines the joint efforts of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) and SpaceX "to collaboratively investigate commercial space transportation capabilities as a transportation mode to expedite global delivery of Department of Defense (DoD) material and personnel."

USTRANSCOM is one of the military's unified combatant commands. It provides for the military's transportation needs, and heavily relies on commercial infrastructure and technologies to carry out its mission of projecting and sustaining military power.

There is a growing trend among military projects to tap commercial-first space technologies in order to convert them to military use at a much smaller cost than if the military were to research and develop its own technologies from the ground up.

Among the hoped-for outcomes of the research agreement is a rocket-based "quick reaction force," which would place troops or equipment anywhere in the world on short notice by leveraging SpaceX's Starship, a fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle that is currently in development.

The DoD believes that Starship's fully integrated and reusable launch and landing system could feasibly be ready between 2025 and 2030, and it has some very specific scenarios in mind for using the technology.

The less-than-subtle idea that the U.S. military could launch troops to Africa aboard a rocket was picked up on by The Intercept, which referred to the idea as a point-blank effort to stymie "a future Benghazi-style attack" by using militarized Starships to reinforce besieged complexes.

Despite the science-fiction overtones of the proposed project, rocket-based troops have long been in the sights of the DoD.

Way back in 1964, the proposed "Ithacus" project (pdf) presented "a concept for a rocket-powered troop transport which may potentially evolve from the reusable booster of tomorrow."

That project sought to visualize a future in which rocket technologies were co-opted by the military to be used as battalion-sized troop transports which could rapidly respond to crises anywhere in the world within an hour.

Fast forward 60 years later, and military leadership believes that that vision is coming to fruition with the prospect of applying SpaceX technologies to the problems of modern warfare.

Still, it is unlikely that space-based marines and rocketmen will be arriving on the battlefield any time soon, given the various technical and legal conundrums of crossing space and airspace with armed troops.

Nevertheless, the agreement noted two other key scenarios that would benefit from the technology.

The first is providing for critically vulnerable bases which are within missile range of hostile forces.

The second is providing logistical support to establish deployable airbase systems on the fly, which would help U.S. forces in conflict zones to stand up wholly operational forward bases to provide force projection in regions without a permanent presence.

Notably, each of the scenarios would meaningfully augment the United States' ability to conduct amphibious and island-hopping warfare in a potential conflict with communist China.

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), contends this is what the so-called "reset" looks like.

High food and fuel prices along with crushing interest rates are no accident. CAF explains, "..."

CAF's view of the economy is simple and tangible. CAF says, "This is a world where people are trying to get into real assets that can generate a yield..."

CAF says, "At some point, you have to realize we are in a war..."

CAF also talks about gold, silver, the CV19 injections and the fallout from them. She also talks about why it's more important than ever to hold onto the 2nd Amendment and your guns.

There is much more in the 1 hour and 5 min. interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts. (6.18.22)

The Hong Kong Dollar dropped to its weakest against the US Dollar this morning since April 2018. This is a major problem for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) because, as a reminder for some, the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) is pegged to a tight band of between 7.75 and 7.85 versus the U.S. dollar.

And today saw the HKD break below the lower bound of the peg, trading down to 7.8502/USD at its lows...

The main culprit behind the local currency's slump is the carry trade which has been reignited by The Fed hiking rates and potential capital flight out of China/HK.

This is an arbitrage, where traders take advantage of differences in prices, selling a low-yielding product (the Hong Kong dollar) to buy a high-yielding product (the US dollar). In this case, the price difference is between the local borrowing cost known as the Hong Kong interbank offered rate (Hibor) and the US borrowing cost known as the Libor.

As more traders pile on to the carry, more pressure is placed on the Hong Kong dollar, causing it to weaken further against the US currency. As the chart above shows there has been some shift in the carry-trade-pressure since HKMA has stepped in.

Nevertheless, HKMA is forced to step in and as CNBC reported, HKMA's Chief Executive Eddie Yue said last month that as it intervenes and funds flow out of Hong Kong's system, local rates should rise, removing the incentive for market players to conduct "carry trades", and hence keep the Hong Kong dollar trading within its band.

he said.

However, the size of the flows are starting to become significant... and are having less impact. According to HKMA, its aggregate balance will decrease to about HK$241.9 billion on June 23 (from HK$338 billion in May before the interventions began again).

That is almost HK$100 billion in reserves and The Fed's plan to hike rates (as many as twelve more times this year) will do nothing to help ease the situation (especially since China will not be tightening its policy anytime soon) - meaning any USDs sold in defense of the weaker HKD will be battling global carry trade flows driven by The Fed's tightening.

As we have detailed previously, China currently has a dilemma because it has to pick either to hike, and avoid capital flight, or cut and remain competitive with Japan, whose collapsing JPY means chinese exports are getting priced out of global markets.

The fund still has plenty of ammo to fight the carry trade pressure (for now) as we note the aggregate balance dropped to around HK$50 billion in 2019 after the last series of HKMA interventions to stop the currency weakening.

In 2018, as the HKD plunged on the same carry flow, the HKMA CEO reassured the public So far no such warning has been issued this time.

In college, I took a Latin American Politics and Development class. When discussing Latin American medical care, Professor Eldon Kenworthy presented a deeply countercultural idea. Echoing a journal article by the scholar, Robert Ayres, Kenworthy maintained that building hospitals there costs lives. If, instead of erecting, equipping and staffing gleaming medical centers, this same money and human effort were devoted to providing clean water, good food and sanitation, the public health yield would be much greater. 

United States medical history bears out Ayres's paradox. The biggest increases in US life expectancy occurred early in the Twentieth Century, when people had increasing access to calories and protein, better water and sanitation. Lives lengthened sharply decades before vaccines, antibiotics or nearly any drugs were available, and a century before hospitals merged into corporate Systems.

Incremental American life span increases during the past fifty years reflect far less smoking, safer cars and jobs, cleaner air and less lethal wars more than they reflect medical advances. Books like Ivan Illich's  and Daniel Callahan's echo Ayres's critique. But PBS, CNN, B & N, the NYT, et al. censor such views.

The American medical landscape has changed radically in the forty years since I learned of Ayres' observation.

America spends three times as much, as a percentage of GDP, on medical treatments as it did in the 1960s. 

By 2020, America devoted 18% of its GDP to medicine. (By comparison, about 5% goes to the military). Adding the mega-costs of mass testing and vaccines etc., medical expenditures might now approach 20%. Although the US spends more than twice per capita what any other nation spends on medical care, American ranks 46th in life expectancy. US life expectancy has flatlined, despite growing medical spending and broadened medical access via the vaunted Affordable Care Act. 

Though medicine's high-cost and relatively low yield are right in front of anyone who thinks about their medical experiences and those of people they know, most never connect the dots; more medical treatments and spending are continually advocated and applauded. There's a regressive "if it saves--or even slightly extends--one life" medical zeitgeist/ethic.

As most medical insurance is employer-based, most people don't notice annual premium increases. Nor do they see the growing slice of tax revenues used to subsidize Med/Pharma. Thus, they continually demand more stuff, like IVF, extremely high-cost drugs, sex changes or psychotherapy, as if these were their right, and free. To say nothing of these treatments' limited effectiveness. 

As all are required to medically insure and to pay taxes, one can't simply opt out or buy only those medical services that one thinks justify their costs. With massive, guaranteed funding sources, aggregate medical revenues will continue to climb. 

Thus, Medical-Industrial-Government Complex has become a Black Hole for today's wealth. With great money comes great power. The Med/Pharma juggernaut rules the airwaves. Nonexistent until the 1990s, hospital System and drug ads now dominate advertising. By being such big advertisers, Med/Pharma dictates news content. Analysts who point out that lavish medical expenditures don't yield commensurate public health benefit have small audiences. Med/Pharma critics can't afford ads. 

Medicine has fed Coronamania. The TV news I've seen during the past 27 months painted a very skewed picture of reality. The virus has been misrepresented--by the media and government, and by MDs, like Fauci, often posing in white jackets-- as a runaway train that's indiscriminately decimating the American populace. Instead of putting into perspective the virus's clear demographic risk profile and the very favorable survival odds--even without treatment, at all ages, or promoting various forms of contra-Covid self-care, including weight loss--the media and medical establishment incited universal panic, and promoted counterproductive mass isolation, mass masking, mass testing, and treatment with ventilators and expensive, often harmful anti-virals. 

Later, mass injections were added to the "Covid-crushing" armamentarium. While the shots created many billionaires, and greatly enriched other Pfizer and Moderna stockholders, they failed, as Biden and many others had promised, to stop either infection or the spread. All of the many whom I know who have been infected in the past six months were vaxxed. 

Many--whose voices are suppressed by mainstream media--observe that the shots have worsened outcomes, by driving the development of variants, weakening or confusing immune systems, and causing serious near-term injuries. 

Further, people blindly, ardently believed in the shots simply because they were marketed as "vaccines" by bureaucrats wearing medical garb. Despite the shots' failure and the failure of other "mitigation" measures like lockdowns, masking and testing, many refuse to concede that Med/Pharma has had much--overwhelmingly negative-- influence over the society and economy and public health during Coronamania. Nonetheless, many billions of dollars have been--and are still being--spent to advertise shots that most people don't want. 

The Covid overreaction has to some extent also piggy-backed on TV programs that have, for decades, glorified medicine in TV shows like Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, M.D., Medical Center, MASH, Gray's Anatomy and House. Wearing white coats connotes virtue, just as did wearing white hats in Western movies. 

Given the cumulative PR onslaught of the ads and shows, medicine is widely seen as more effective than it is in real life. A few years ago, I heard some woman-in-the-street say, during a TV news clip, "If they make me change my doctor, it will be like losing my right arm." 

Many hold such polar views. Medicine is the new American religion. Given such fervent belief in medicine's importance and the sense of entitlement regarding expanding medical treatments, government and insurance money is relentlessly overallocated to medicine. 

Do these expenditures improve human outcomes? During the first Scrubs episode, resident J.D. complains to his mentor that being a doctor was different than he had envisioned; most of his patients were "old and kind of checked out." His mentor responds, "That's Modern Medicine: advances that keep people alive who should have died a long time ago, back when they lost what made them human."

This largely describes those said to have died with Covid. Most people have disregarded that nearly all who died during the pandemic were old and/or in poor health. Most deaths have always occurred among the old and ill. Occasionally, sitcoms keep it realer than real people do.

Aside from not helping much and misspending resources, and extending misery, medicine can be iatrogenic, i.e., it can cause illness or death. Hospital errors are said to cause from 250,000 to 400,000 American deaths annually. Perhaps medical personnel try to do a good job. but when the bodies of old, sick people are cut open or dosed with strong medicine, stuff happens. Even well-executed surgeries and many medications can worsen health. 

Further, though few know it, a brew of excreted medications and diagnostic radionuclides daily pours down drains across the US and world and ends up in streams and rivers. For example, the hormones in widely-prescribed birth control pills feminize and disrupt aquatic creatures' reproduction. There are books about all of this, too, though such authors never appear on Good Morning America. 

Faith in medical interventions also lessens individual and institutional efforts to maintain or improve health. If people didn't abuse substances, ate better and moved their bodies more, there would be much less demand for medical interventions. And if people spent less time working to pay for medical insurance, they could spend more time taking care of themselves and others. Overall, America could spend a fraction of what it spends on allopathic medicine and yet, be much healthier. There are also plenty of books about this. 

Given its place at the center of American life for 27 months, and counting, Covid has been--and will be--used to further intensify the medicalization of individual lives, the economy, and society. By exploiting and building an irrational fear of death, the Medical Industrial Complex will promote the notion that we should double--or triple--down on medical and social interventions and investments that might marginally extend the lives of a small slice of the population. Or, in many instances, shorten lives. 

But most people who live sensibly are intrinsically healthy for many years. Given enough nutritious food, clean water and a decent place to sleep, most people will live a long time, with little or no medical treatment. While intensive medical interventions can marginally extend the lives of some old, sick people, medicine can't reverse aging and it seldom restores vitality. 

If the media were honest brokers, the Covid mania would never have taken hold. The media should have repeatedly pointed out that the virus only threatened a small, identifiable segment of a very large population. Instead, captive to its Med/Pharma sponsors, the media went full-frontal fearmonger and promoted intensive, society-wide intervention. Social, psychological and economic catastrophe ensued.

Additionally, many doctors who could have spoken against the Covid craziness stayed silent so as not to jeopardize their licenses, hospital privileges or favored status with Pharma, or just because they were schooled in allopathic orthodoxy and hold fast to that faith. Props to those courageous few who broke ranks. 

The Med/Pharma/Gov establishment, including the NIH and CDC, hasn't saved America during 2020-22. To the contrary, Covid interventions have worsened overall societal outcomes. These net harms should have inflicted--and, depending on longer-term vaxx effects, may yet inflict--a big black eye on the Medical Industrial Complex. 

If so, Med/Pharma will spend tens of billions of PR money to distort what's happened for the past 27 months, and to portray well-paid medical personnel, administrators and bureaucrats as selfless heroes. Many gullible Americans will buy this slick revisionism, including its portrayals of healthy-looking people walking in slow motion on beaches or across meadows in golden light, accompanied by a contemplative solo piano soundtrack.