The Digger

Thanks to James for this contribution! Photograph Source: David Shankbone –  CC BY 2.0 The global pandemic of COVID-19 has spread to almost every country on the planet earth. The virus will take many lives, disrupt communities and institutions, and leave behind trauma and a devastated world economy. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)  estimates  that by the end of 2020, global income will collapse by between $1 trillion and $2 trillion; the latter figure is a worst-case scenario, with falling oil prices making the problem even more acute for oil-exporting countries. Tumble of Finance Already over-inflated stock markets are now seeing deep drops. Central banks are using all their monetary resources to shore up the financial markets and to try to bail out as many sectors of the economy as possible. Even the generally stable central bank in Norway, advantaged by its massive energy sector, has  cut  its interest rate and has ...

Thanks to Kathleen Garvey for bringing this to our attention.  Since I had trouble formatting the video, I'll just post the transcript here.  If you wish to access the video you can use the link at the bottom of the page.  “The Federal Government Actually Paid Him”: How Steve Mnuchin Profited from the Housing Bust In his new book “Homewreckers,” investigative reporter Aaron Glantz looks at the devastating legacy of the housing bust and the key players who benefited as millions of people lost their homes and savings. A prominent figure in the book is Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s current treasury secretary, who at the time ran OneWest Bank and oversaw so many foreclosures he would later be dubbed “the foreclosure king.” Glantz says Mnuchin’s bank was even “subsidized by us, the taxpayers,” for kicking people out of their homes. “He struck a deal with the federal government where the federal government actually paid him when he foreclosed on families to mitig...

All Roads Lead to Dark Winter By  Whitney Webb and Raul Diego The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis – Event 201 and Crimson Contagion – share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks. During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.’ top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens – anthrax and Ebola among them – had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result. In addition to missing samples of anthrax, Ebola, hantavirus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been ...