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Opinion

Freedom Day? You have a barcode on your forehead – The Spectator

Our government has used Covid as an excuse to turn Australians into digital products. It is the perfect scam. Every dictatorship knows that humans are cheap, renewable, and disposable. Our digital identities are worth a fortune to the right third-party buyer, while the ability to track and control our movements presents a unique opportunity for politicians wishing to manage democracy instead of being a victim of its whims. 

http://archive.today/2021.10.11-231353/https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/10/freedom-day-you-have-a-barcode-on-your-forehead/

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News

World’s richest ten people – including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – ‘are half a TRILLION dollars richer since Covid-19 pandemic began’ – Daily Mail

  • An Oxfam report has investigated growing inequality caused by the pandemic
  • The wealthiest 1,000 people recouped their losses within ten months of the virus
  • But the world’s poorest could take ten years to recover from their hardship
  • The top ten richest have added billions to their fortune despite the global crisis  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9182661/Oxfam-urges-radical-economic-rejig-post-COVID-world.html

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News

Analysis: Vaccine bond sales to soar to fund COVID-19 shots for poor countries – Reuters

Socially conscious bond investors will be targeted in a coming wave of vaccine bond deals that will seek to provide billions of dollars for the speedy rollout of COVID-19 shots for developing countries.

http://archive.today/2021.09.06-150913/https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccine-bonds-idINKBN28W0M9

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News

The Case for a Coronavirus-Vaccine Bond – The New Yorker

Drugs are a risky business and, for equity investors hoping to eventually share in the profits, each stage of development presents an escalated risk. Lo reasoned that substantially lowering the risks, even if it meant correspondingly lowering the rewards, could attract investment instead from ordinary bond markets—that is, from managers of pension funds, university endowments, and sovereign-wealth funds, who control a great deal of money and generally invest in low-risk, low-return assets. 

Given how uncertain vaccine markets are, the paper notes, governments (“public-sector interventions,” and so forth), would need to guarantee a vaccine bond by committing in advance to purchase and stockpile vaccines. The paper’s most creative suggestion is for a subscription model, a kind of vaccine Netflix, where governments would pay an annual fee to a new international-development fund, one that could perhaps be managed by the G7. The fund could float a bond to both advance vaccine biotechs and to make market commitments to Big Pharma. The virus, the markets, and the science are global.

…it would be much better for the government to say that the money is not from taxpayers. “We’re borrowing it from the rest of the world. And if and when you succeed, or any of the other hundred and fifty projects—that could have been funded, but aren’t being funded right now—succeeds, all the bond holders will get paid. That would be great. Everybody earns a return.”

http://archive.today/2020.08.15-143205/https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-case-for-a-coronavirus-vaccine-bond

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News

Belarus president unwilling to accept additional terms to get foreign loans – BelTA

According to the president, the World Bank has showed interest in Belarus’ coronavirus response practices. “It is ready to fund us ten times more than it offered initially as a token of commendation for our efficient fight against this virus. The World Bank has even asked the Healthcare Ministry to share the experience. Meanwhile, the IMF continues to demand from us quarantine measures, isolation, a curfew. This is nonsense. We will not dance to anyone’s tune,” said the president.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200707005229/https://eng.belta.by/president/view/belarus-president-unwilling-to-accept-additional-terms-to-get-foreign-loans-131164-2020/

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Publications

COVID-19 STRATEGIC PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE PROGRAM AND PROPOSED 25 PROJECTS UNDER PHASE 1 – The World Bank

The World Bank’s COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Program (SPRP) was set to run from 2020 – 2025.

On March 3, 2020, the Board of Executive Directors endorsed the World Bank Group (WBG) to take urgent action supporting client countries’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/993371585947965984/pdf/World-COVID-19-Strategic-Preparedness-and-Response-Project.pdf

Archived link: https://archive.today/2021.12.28-212011/https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/993371585947965984/pdf/World-COVID-19-Strategic-Preparedness-and-Response-Project.pdf