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Debt Rattle December 14 2024

Dec 142024
 
 December 14, 2024  Posted by at 10:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


René Magritte The menaced assassin 1927

 

• Trump Wants ‘Day One’ Ukraine Ceasefire – NBC (RT)
• Christmas Ceasefire Still Possible – Orban (RT)
• Trump’s Ukraine Envoy Pick Predicts End Of Conflict Within Months (RT)
• Ukraine Vows ‘Zero Gas Transit’ To EU (RT)
• Kremlin Reacts To Trump’s Stance On Long-Range Strikes Into Russia
• Clintons Open to Preemptive Pardon as Deep State May Abandon Them (Sp.)
• Modified Limited Hang-out (Kunstler)
• Mounting Boeing Delays Suggest Trump Won’t Fly In New Air Force One (ZH)
• Texas Lt Gov Patrick Wants To Buy Construction Materials Auctioned By DHS (JTN)
• Turley Raises Concerns Over DOJ Hiding FBI Informants At Jan. 6 (HUSA)
• NYC Mayor Eric Adams Stuns Lefty Reporters By Going Full MAGA (MN)
• Jeff Bezos’ Amazon To Donate $1 Million To Trump (RT)
• JD Vance Honors New York ‘Subway Vigilante’ (RT)
• United Kingdom Upholds Ban on Puberty-Blocking Drugs for Minors (Turley)
• Musk’s Charity Sent Most Money To His Own Entities – Bloomberg (RT)
• Elon Musk: “Starbase Is Going To Be A City” In Texas (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Rogan 5050

Kash

Don Jr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1867404091846275578

Vance

Elon

Pardon

 

 

 

 

The shooting stops on Jan 20 at the very latest, validating Trump’s promise. By then, peace negotiations will already have started.

• Trump Wants ‘Day One’ Ukraine Ceasefire – NBC (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump’s team has been working hard to broker a truce between Ukraine and Russia that could pave the way to peace talks, NBC reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Trump has repeatedly slammed the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict and claimed that it would have happened at all with him in charge at the White House. He campaigned on stopping the conflict even before inauguration, though that has proven to be a tall order. “Trump is really serious about wanting to get to a ceasefire on day one,” a source told NBC News. According to the outlet, Trump’s national security team has already held talks with the outgoing White House and the Kiev leadership.

Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg met with Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak last week. Meanwhile, outgoing President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan has been in touch with his prospective successor Mike Waltz to share “relevant information,” according to NBC. However, they reportedly have not explored strategies for a ceasefire or ending the conflict. The discussions are meant to ensure Trump is not surprised by any of Biden’s actions before the January 20 inauguration, according to an unnamed senior administration official.

“The goal is for the world to understand there is a desire for the time of transition to be seen as a strong America, working for peace and stability around the world, until President-elect Trump is sworn in,” transition spokesman Brian Hughes has said. Trump’s aides “hold a range of views” on Ukraine and have not yet presented “a conceptual or specific peace plan” to Kiev, NBC reported, citing former US officials in touch with the Ukrainians and two sources in Kiev. These sources described the Trump team’s contacts with Zelensky and his aides as “constructive” and “positive.”

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“Orban intimates Russia agreed to Christmas ceasefire proposal..”

• Christmas Ceasefire Still Possible – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that there is still time to consider his proposal for a Christmas ceasefire and a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. Speaking about the offer he made to Moscow and Kiev earlier this week in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban said “one side accepted it, the other rejected it.” Judging by comments coming from Ukraine, it is Kiev that is currently reluctant to support Budapest’s initiative. ”But there are still a few days until Christmas [December 25], and this may change,” he stressed. The Hungarian proposal is aimed at making sure that “no one should die, at least, on Christmas. If the parties can come to an agreement, there could be a ceasefire on Christmas – as was the case in the First World War,” the prime minister explained. “And if a large prisoner exchange could be agreed, then hundreds… of families could be made happy,” he added.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Orban had made such an offer to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their phone conversation on the previous day. Peskov did not say if Russia went along with the idea of having a truce during the holiday, but stressed that, in the hours following their phone call, Moscow provided a paper to the Hungarian embassy with its suggestions about how the prisoner exchange should happen. On Wednesday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky belittled Orban’s diplomatic activities, claiming that the Hungarian leader was only trying to “boost personal image at the expense of unity” in the EU in terms of supporting Kiev. “There can be no discussions about the war that Russia wages against Ukraine without Ukraine,” he wrote on X. Shortly after that, an aide to Zelensky, Dmitry Litvin, denied that any contacts between Kiev and Budapest on a proposed Christmas ceasefire and prisoner swap took place at all.

According to Peskov, unlike Ukraine, Russia “fully supports Orban’s efforts aimed at finding a peaceful settlement and resolving humanitarian issues related to the exchange of prisoners.” “Russia has never refused peace talks and has repeatedly stated its readiness to resume them on the basis of the Istanbul agreements of 2022. We proceed from the assumption that consultations on establishing peace will continue,” the Kremlin spokesman said. Earlier this year, Vladimir Putin said that, during the talks in Türkiye’s largest city, Ukraine was willing to declare military neutrality, to limit its armed forces, and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering security guarantees to Kiev.

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“..the Ukraine conflict will be solved “within the next few months” because Trump is “the only person” who can and will do it.”

• Trump’s Ukraine Envoy Pick Predicts End Of Conflict Within Months (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump could solve the conflict between Moscow and Kiev “within the next few months,” retired US Army General Keith Kellogg, slated to become a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has suggested. Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Kellogg did not rule out the idea that Trump could potentially invite both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to his presidential inauguration. “President Trump plays three-level chess, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did something like that. Could he do it? Of course, he could do it. He could make such a bold move,” Kellogg said, adding that he really believes the Ukraine conflict will be solved “within the next few months” because Trump is “the only person” who can and will do it.

Nothing should be put “beyond the realm of possible” at the moment, Kellogg said, adding that “he wouldn’t be surprised” by any unexpected moves made by the next US president. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to end the conflict between Moscow and Kiev literally overnight, yet he has never provided any precise details on how exactly he plans to achieve such a result. Earlier this week, he said that resolving the Ukrainian crisis and the hostility in the Middle East were among his “big priorities.” He suggested, however, that achieving the latter was “less difficult” than the former.

Moscow has previously expressed skepticism about Trump’s repeated pledges to somehow settle the Ukrainian conflict, dismissing his promises as campaign talk. Shortly after he secured the election win, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the promises of resolving the conflict overnight were clearly “an exaggeration of sorts.” “If the new [US] administration seeks peace rather than a continuation of the conflict, it will be better than the previous one,” Peskov said at the time.

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“The bloc’s policies will result in further deindustrialization, increased volatility on the gas market, and may lead to a new gas price shock and supply disruptions..”

• Ukraine Vows ‘Zero Gas Transit’ To EU (RT)

Ukraine will stop the flow of Russian natural gas via its transit network on January 1, Energy Minister German Galushchenko has confirmed. A key gas transit agreement between Moscow and Kiev is due to expire on December 31, and the Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly warned that it has no plans to extend it. Several EU countries continue to rely on Russian gas, despite the sharp drop in supplies due to sanctions on Moscow and a push by Brussels to sever energy ties with Russia. Ukraine has made preparations to shut off the gas, Galushchenko told the German-Ukrainian Business Forum in Berlin on Wednesday. “Our position is completely open. We are preparing for zero transit from January 1. And we have been [preparing] for a long time. This year alone we conducted several stress tests for our gas system to see how it will function with zero transit,” Galushchenko said, as quoted by the Ukrinform news agency.

The transit agreement between Ukraine’s state energy firm Naftogaz and Russia’s energy giant Gazprom was signed in 2019. Naftogaz praised the deal at the time as ensuring security on the domestic gas market. It also revealed that Gazprom had paid nearly $3 billion for the transit service, thus ensuring that the Ukrainian system would operate without a loss over the following five years. Ukraine’s transit network is connected to the pipeline systems of Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The EU still receives around 5% of its gas from Russia via Ukraine, according to the latest data. The Naftogaz transit system and the European arm of TurkStream are the only two remaining conduits for piped Russian gas to reach central and southern Europe.

The TurkStream gas pipeline runs from Russia to Türkiye via the Black Sea, and then continues to the border with EU member Greece. Russia has said it is ready to continue deliveries beyond 2024. Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller warned in October that the EU would be committing “energy suicide” by shunning Russian gas. The bloc’s policies will result in further deindustrialization, increased volatility on the gas market, and may lead to a new gas price shock and supply disruptions, Miller predicted. Similar concerns have been voiced by Hungary and Slovakia, the two EU nations most reliant on Russian gas. Budapest continues to receive more than a half of the gas it consumes from Russia under a 15-year contract signed with Gazprom in 2021. An increased reliance on TurkStream and replacing Russian gas with supplies from Azerbaijan for transit to the EU through Ukraine have been named as possible solutions.

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Peskov: “It is obvious that Trump understands what exactly is escalating the situation around the conflict..”

• Kremlin Reacts To Trump’s Stance On Long-Range Strikes Into Russia

US President-elect Donald Trump’s statement regarding Ukraine’s use of Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia is completely in line with Moscow’s stance on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Peskov was commenting on Trump’s sharp criticism this week of President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Kiev to conduct long-range strikes on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles. “The statement itself completely coincides with our position,” Peskov told reporters. “In this case we have the same vision of the reasons for the escalation.” He added that Trump’s thinking on the matter “appeals” to Russia. “It is obvious that Trump understands what exactly is escalating the situation around the conflict,” he said.

At the same time, the Russian presidential spokesman warned against “jumping ahead of ourselves” and predicting the actions of the incoming US administration. “Let’s wait until the moment when the president-elect takes his post in the Oval Office,” he advised. In an interview with Time magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year, Trump stated that he disagrees “very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” asking rhetorically: “Why are we doing that?” Trump said that missile strikes deep into Russia’s internationally recognized territory are “just escalating this war and making it worse,” and described such attacks as a “very big mistake.” The US president-elect’s comments came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian forces had launched six US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles towards an airfield in Rostov Region.

In response to Kiev’s attacks, Moscow hit a number of Ukraine’s key energy facilities overnight into Friday.Russia has repeatedly warned that long-range strikes using foreign-made weapons would escalate the conflict and be seen as NATO’s direct participation in the hostilities. In late November, Moscow used its new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system for the first time, striking the Yuzhmash military plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned at the time that if Ukraine’s attacks deep inside Russia continue, Moscow reserves the right “to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow the use of their weapons against our facilities.

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“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have outlived their usefulness to rich globalists..”

• Clintons Open to Preemptive Pardon as Deep State May Abandon Them (Sp.)

Former President Bill Clinton has indicated he is open to discussing a “pre-emptive pardon” for his wife, Hillary Clinton, with outgoing head of state Joe Biden, while maintaining that she has done nothing wrong. This development was anticipated, according to Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who tells Sputnik that Bill Clinton is also likely to seek a pardon for himself and his daughter. Ortel adds that the proposed pardon could cover a period starting much earlier than Hillary’s 2016 email scandal, which Bill Clinton mentioned on “The View” talk show. The alleged fraud and pay-to-play activities involving the Clinton Foundation were significant issues, according to Ortel, who has been investigating the charity for many years.

“As in the case of the first Biden family pardon, my view is that a federal pardon for the Clinton family will have to go back, perhaps, to 1992 and continue so long as ‘The Clinton Foundation’ and its affiliates may operate,” Ortel suggests. Earlier, Biden provided his son with an unusual blanket pardon covering all possible crimes between 2014 and 2024. The Clintons “have been insiders in a rigged political system at the federal level” since Bill’s first presidential campaign in 1992, Ortel claims. However, even a federal pre-emptive pardon from Biden “is likely to leave Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton vulnerable to state and foreign prosecutions, along with others,” the analyst believes. Bill Clinton’s readiness to discuss a pre-emptive pardon with President Joe Biden is likely influenced by FBI Director Christopher Wray’s decision to step down and Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel, according to Ortel.

Ortel suggests that Wray is part of the same cabal as former FBI Director James Comey, who allowed Hillary Clinton to escape consequences for her 2016 email scandal. In contrast, Patel has never been part of the D.C. “swamp” and played a key role in debunking the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which, based on then-CIA Director John Brennan’s declassified memo, may have been fabricated by Hillary Clinton to divert attention from her email scandal. According to Ortel, the Department of Justice (DoJ), FBI, and IRS have long covered up the Clintons’ apparent felonies, despite many being evident. “When the FBI finally spoke with me in December 2018, they focused on my connections with Peter Smith, Jerry Corsi, and Roger Stone, claiming they lacked the scope to investigate why so many in the Obama and Bush administrations might be interested in covering up Clinton Foundation crimes,” Ortel says.

If Patel takes charge of the FBI, he is expected to overhaul the bureau and could investigate the Clintons earnestly, according to Ortel. Reports indicate that Hillary Clinton is on Patel’s “government gangsters” list. The globalist elites and much-discussed US “deep state” may no longer shield the Clintons, as they have outlived their usefulness, Ortel says. “Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have outlived their usefulness to rich globalists,” Ortel states. The election defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the inability of the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens to produce a more vibrant and popular presidential candidate, apparently exposed their political bankruptcy.

As a result, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has long been considered an ally of the Democrats, dismissed the party’s gloom-and-doom warnings and openly signaled in October that a Donald Trump victory would be acceptable for Wall Street. “Should the Trump administration prioritize prosecuting charity crimes, starting with wealthy donors like Bill Gates and George Soros and wealthy ‘educational public charities,’ whistleblowers and the incoming administration could make America proud by [taking down] the Clinton family and many other charity grifters who, even today, seem arrogantly unrepentant and unbowed,” Ortel concludes.

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“.. a barrage of prosecutions against Mr. Trump himself, guaranteed to prevent him from ever running again, to bankrupt him, and to stuff him into prison for the rest of his natural life.”

• Modified Limited Hang-out (Kunstler)

For eight years — including the four when Mr. Trump as president — the FBI and DOJ worked tirelessly to run him out of office and make sure he could never return. The effort was prodigious and, astoundingly, it failed. It was launched initially to conceal the crimes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, especially their moneygrubbing in Russia around the Skolkovo project — Russia’s Silicon Valley — and the Uranium One scandal — which involved the sale of US nuclear assets to Russia’s state-owned Rosatom company. The Clinton’s problems became especially acute in the summer of 2016 when Hillary’s private (outside government) email server came to light with its thousands of potentially incriminating memos. Looked like trouble. The cure for that was to accuse candidate Trump of conniving with Russia, a sort of political homeopathy.

It began as a mere Hillary campaign prank — the Steele Dossier — but CIA Director John Brennan and Barack Obama dumped it in FBI Director James Comey’s lap, and asked him to run with it. Mr. Comey stupidly complied, and before long he marshaled the executive officers of the FBI into the massive hoax that became RussiaGate. The Mueller Investigation was intended to convert all that into a prosecutable Trump crime while covering up the FBI’s own crimes, but it proved a fiasco when the Mueller report issued in March, 2019, came up empty — to the horror of the Trump-deranged public. Inspector General Horowitz’s report on these FBI shenanigans came out in December of that year, finding little amiss besides some “errors” in FISA applications and FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s forgery of an email as to whether one Carter Page was ever a CIA asset. The big news media let it all slide.

Mr. Trump somehow survived, to the blob’s horror, and prepared to run for re-election. The 2020 election was a fantastic trip laid on the American public. Covid-19 allowed for drastic changes in voting rules. The Democratic Party managed in plain sight to maneuver the obviously senile Joe Biden to head their ticket, and an array of very conspicuous late-night frauds got him elected. On Jan 6, 2021, Republican legislators were poised to contest the results out of several swing states where the frauds occurred in the requisite Congressional certification ceremony. The law plainly allowed for such challenges. It could not be allowed to happen. Hence: the operations to interrupt the proceedings. The primary device would be the pipe bombs planted at the nearby DNC and RNC headquarters — terrorists on-the-loose!

The backup plan was to turn the large protest group gathered around the Capitol into a mob that would somehow provoke an evacuation of the building. Between the FBI’s assets (“confidential human sources”) planted in the crowd, plus the Capitol police firing rubber bullets and “flash-bangs” into them, and mysterious figures ushering-in protesters through unlocked security doors, the breach of the Capitol was accomplished and the lawmakers fled the building. Nancy Pelosi arranged for the national guard to not be called onto the scene to fortify the understaffed Capitol Police. She was thrilled at how well it worked (captured on film). And the pipe bomb caper was swept under the rug, despite a ton of evidence that indicated the person-of-interest on the scene was a federal contractor, his movements recorded in cell-phone records and closed-circuit cameras.

When the lawmakers returned late that night in a great fugue of histrionic consternation, the majority decided to dispense with those challenges to the vote in swing states. “Joe Biden” became president and the DOJ under new Attorney General Merrick Garland commenced a raft of vicious prosecutions against anyone and everyone present at the Capitol on Jan 6. The next step was to mount a barrage of prosecutions against Mr. Trump himself, guaranteed to prevent him from ever running again, to bankrupt him, and to stuff him into prison for the rest of his natural life.

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Should Elon start building planes?

• Mounting Boeing Delays Suggest Trump Won’t Fly In New Air Force One (ZH)

Aerospace giant Boeing warned earlier this year that supply chain snarls, persistent inflation, and workforce challenges have impacted the construction timeline of two new Air Force One presidential aircraft. A new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that continued delays indicate President-elect Donald Trump will not get to fly in the new Boeing 747s during his second term, with the latest projections targeting 2029 or later. Trump is frustrated with the delays. Here’s more from WSJ: “Frustrated with the delays, Trump raised the project with Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg when the two men spoke by phone in November. As he prepares to return to the White House, Trump has repeatedly asked advisers about the status of Boeing’s work. Boeing used to be a great American company, he has told aides, according to people briefed on the discussions. What happened to them? Trump has asked.”

In 2018, during President-elect Trump’s first term, Boeing received a $3.9 billion contract to build two new 747-8 aircraft for use as Air Force One. The aircraft were supposed to be delivered by the end of this year. Ted Colbert, head of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, spoke with Fox Bussiness in July, revealing that supply chain, inflation, workforce, and other challenges in building the airplanes pushed out delivery timelines. “Our team is fighting through a very, very challenging program – two very complex airplanes,” Colbert said at the time, adding, “We’ve done a ton of investment in our workforce and training, efficiency, work on the factory floor.” In 2023, the Biden administration decided to reverse Trump’s decision to switch to a red, white, and blue scheme, from the current white with two shades of blue, a design that dates back to the Kennedy administration. “The delay is startling given that Boeing isn’t building the planes from scratch,” WSJ noted.

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“.. will bid on all of that wall and we will buy it in Texas and we will give it to Donald Trump.” “I got a billion dollars in my pocket to do it..”

• Texas Lt Gov Patrick Wants To Buy Construction Materials Auctioned By DHS (JTN)

Texas GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he want to buy border-construction material being auctioned by the Department of Homeland and give it to President-elect Donald Trump. “Joe Biden is now hauling off the border wall that’s been lying down for years and he wants to auction it off starting at five dollars a piece,” Patrick told Fox News opinion-show host Laura Ingraham on Thursday. “Message to the White House right now: I will bid on all of that wall and we will buy it in Texas and we will give it to Donald Trump.”

Patrick also said he has the authority to spend Texas tax dollars that way. “I got a billion dollars in my pocket to do it,” he said. “I write the budget with [state] Sen. Joan Huffman. We have the money.” Border security was a top campaign issue for Trump this year, as it was when he first won the presidency in 2016. In Trump’s next term, he is expected to ramp up border security and perhaps conduct mass deportations and end birthright citizenship.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1867412563656683730

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“We’ve had cases in the past where the defense has argued that sources and agents have been extremely active in pushing people towards criminal conduct..”

• Turley Raises Concerns Over DOJ Hiding FBI Informants At Jan. 6 (HUSA)

Renowned legal scholar and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley sounded the alarm about the DOJ’s failure to disclose to Jan. 6 defendants that FBI informants were present in the U.S. Capitol that day in 2021, as detailed in a DOJ Inspector General report. In a Thursday interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum, Turley said the report raised “more questions than answers” about the FBI’s rumored role in inciting violence at the Capitol. The law professor specifically such information would have been critical to defendants of the Jan. 6 protests who fell victim to the Biden DOJ’s aggressive prosecutions. “In some ways, it raises more questions than answers. It does support Wray’s testimony that there were no undercover agents in the crowd,” Turley said, referring to FBI Director Christopher Wray. “I think that for others, there is going to be a lot of concern as to what the sources were doing there,” he said, as reported first by the Daily Caller.

DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz revealed that at least 26 FBI confidential human sources (CHSs) were present among the crowd protesting the contentious 2020 presidential election results. “Our review determined that none of these FBI CHSs was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6,” Horowitz found. Of the 26 agents, only three were summoned to the U.S. Capitol that day, Turley noted, before highlighting that FBI informants had previously been accused of inciting crimes. “We’ve had cases in the past where the defense has argued that sources and agents have been extremely active in pushing people towards criminal conduct,” Turley said. “We saw those allegations raised in the Michigan case involving the governor there.”

The FBI’s potential role in inciting violence was highlighted in the “kidnapping” plot of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Two men indicted in the alleged plot were acquitted by a jury, while two others faced hung juries. The latter two were convicted in a retrial. Turley argued that Jan. 6 defense attorneys would have used the FBI informants’ presence during the protests if they had known about it. “I think that some defense attorneys may raise the question as [to] why they weren’t told, if they weren’t told about the confidential sources that might have been involved tangentially with their own cases, because usually defense counsel says we want to know what asset, what personnel the government had there. So there is going to be questions of that kind, that arise,” Turley said.

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“I’m going to answer a few questions and then I am leaving because it’s not going to matter what I respond to anyway, you have your preconceived thoughts already.”

• NYC Mayor Eric Adams Stuns Lefty Reporters By Going Full MAGA (MN)

New York City mayor Eric Adams continued his recent pivot away from the Democratic Party and toward the incoming administration by declaring in a press conference that he will not provide any sanctuary for criminal illegal aliens. Adams met with President Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan Thursday and made remarks afterwards to the press that stunned reporters into silence. “We’re not going to be a safe haven for those who commit repeated violent crimes against innocent migrants, immigrants and long-standing New Yorkers,” Adams said after the meeting.

He continued, “From what I heard from the incoming head of ICE is that we have the same desire to go after those who are committing violent acts, repeated violent acts among innocent New Yorkers and among migration asylum seekers.” “That’s what I heard from him. And I was pleased to hear that, because we share the same desire,” Adams urged. “I’ve said this before, and I’m surprised the way everyone is attempting to state this is a ‘new coming of Eric Adams…[New York City] can’t be a safe haven for violent individuals,” the mayor said. Adams also referred to the hundreds of thousands of missing children who have been trafficked over the border.

“We have 500,000 children who had sponsors in this country that we can’t find. We can’t find them. We can’t find them. We don’t know if they’re doing child labor. We don’t know if they’re doing sex crimes. We don’t know if they’re being exploited – 500,000 children. There’s a level of hypocrisy…” Adams said. Adams then slammed the media, stating “I’m going to answer a few questions and then I am leaving because it’s not going to matter what I respond to anyway, you have your preconceived thoughts already.” Last week, Adams vowed to work with Trump on mass deportations, outlining that he doesn’t care if he gets ‘cancelled’ by leftists for it.

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How original.

• Jeff Bezos’ Amazon To Donate $1 Million To Trump (RT)

The US online giant Amazon has confirmed it will donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund and stream the ceremony as well, in what has been widely interpreted as a peace offering by CEO Jeff Bezos. The Washington Post, owned by Bezos since 2013, has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics since his first term in the White House. “Bezos is donating through Amazon,” a source told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The company has since confirmed this in a statement to CNN. In addition to the direct donation to the inaugural fund, Amazon’s Prime Video will stream Trump’s inauguration as an in-kind contribution valued at another $1 million. Bezos is also supposed to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida next week.

Bezos’ net worth has been estimated at almost $250 billion, so the amount of the donations is largely symbolic. The tech mogul began shifting away from overt support to the Democrats earlier this year, praising Trump’s “tremendous grace and courage under literal fire” after the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. He then vetoed the Post’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in October, causing no small consternation among staff and subscribers. Earlier this week, the Journal reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg would also contribute $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund. Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago last month and had dinner with the president-elect. Both gestures were seen as an attempt to atone for donating over $400 million to Democrats and to various institutions in majority-Democrat areas, and later banning the sitting president from Facebook and Instagram after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Donations to an inaugural committee are not subject to any contribution amount limitations, but need to be reported to the Federal Elections Commission as such. Earlier this month, at an event hosted by the New York Times, Bezos said he would try to talk Trump out of the idea that the legacy media is “the enemy of the people.” “What I’ve seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled,” Bezos said, suggesting that Trump might be amenable to persuasion. Meanwhile, SpaceX owner Elon Musk has emerged as one of Trump’s closest allies, first by buying Twitter in 2022 and ending most censorship on that platform, and later by openly endorsing Trump and donating an estimated $200 million to his re-election bid.

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What are the odds that Alvin Bragg will still have a job in the new year?

• JD Vance Honors New York ‘Subway Vigilante’ (RT)

US Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has invited Daniel Penny to be his personal guest at the upcoming Army-Navy football game in Washington, just days after a Manhattan jury cleared the former Marine of racially motivated murder charges. New York prosecutors had charged Penny, like Vance a former US Marine, with homicide over a May 2023 incident that ended in the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill black homeless man. Neely had entered a subway car shouting that “someone is going to die today,” before Penny and two of his friends subdued him. “Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone. I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun. I appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage,” Vance posted on X on Friday.

Earlier reports quoted anonymous sources saying that Vance had invited Penny to the presidential suite at the Washington, DC stadium, where President-elect Donald Trump is also expected to attend. The Army-Navy Game is played by West Point cadets and Annapolis midshipmen and is one of the most enduring rivalries in US college football. Following the handing down of the verdict on Monday Vance declared on X that it was “a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.” Penny himself denied being a vigilante or having any racial animus towards Neely, arguing he was only trying to defend the other subway passengers amid a spate of violent attacks on the network around that time. He did not take the witness stand during the trial.

Charges against Penny became a hot-button issue in the US, with Republicans such as Trump and Vance accusing the Democrats ruling New York of wanting to criminalize the defense of self and others, while Democrats tried to present the incident as driven by racism and bigotry. During the trial, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office repeatedly referred to Penny only as “the white man” and claimed he had “choked” Neely, setting up comparisons to the 2020 death of George Floyd that triggered a wave of race riots across the US. Bragg also prosecuted Trump on questionable grounds for alleged “hush money” payments, securing a conviction that is currently in legal limbo due to the outcome of November’s presidential election and Supreme Court rulings about executive immunity.

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This we need to stop. Woke destroys lives.

• United Kingdom Upholds Ban on Puberty-Blocking Drugs for Minors (Turley)

In the aftermath of the contentious Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Skrmetti over state bans on puberty blockers and gender-altering surgeries, the United Kingdom reaffirmed that it finds the risks far outweigh the benefits of such treatments for minors under the currently available scientific evidence. The move by the liberal Labour Party stands in sharp contrast with the portrayal of the Biden Administration and the treatment of the subject by the liberal justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was widely criticized for analogizing puberty-blocking drugs to taking aspirin. It appears that doctors in the UK are not ready to tell minors to just “take two puberty blockers and call me in the morning.”

UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said last week, “Children’s health care must always be evidence-led. The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.” The decision follows the release of the Cass Review, which was raised by the conservative justices as contradicting the factual representations of the Biden Administration, even leading Justice Samuel Alito to suggest that Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and the government might not have fulfilled their duty of candor to the tribunal. He noted that the Cass study found scant evidence that the benefits of transgender treatment are greater than the risks. He then delivered the haymaker: “I wonder if you would like to stand by the statement in your position or if you think it would now be appropriate to modify that and withdraw your statement.”

Streeting cited significant doubts about the benefits of puberty blockers while noting the “significant risks” to children. The government will allow puberty blockers to be administered to children in clinical trials. It is not clear if the Supreme Court will take “judicial notice” of the new decision, but it can. In fairness to Sotomayor, she was trying to argue that all treatments have risks in making her aspirin analogy. Yet, the comment was taken as trivializing the alleged harm and trauma raised by many in this debate. These studies clearly show greater risks than those associated with aspirin. However, what the Biden Administration was arguing (and the liberal justices were seemingly supporting) is that states would be barred by the Court from reaching the same conclusion as the UK and other countries. Indeed, Streeting echoed what the states argued to the Supreme Court that the government must “act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people, and follow the expert advice.”

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“..the IRS mandates that all charitable foundations deploy, on average, at least 5% of their assets a year..”

“..saw his net worth surpass a record $440 billion this week..”

• Musk’s Charity Sent Most Money To His Own Entities – Bloomberg (RT)

Elon Musk’s charitable foundation has reportedly failed to give away the amount of money required by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), while also sending millions of dollars to other entities controlled by the billionaire, Bloomberg reported on Friday. According to the outlet, which has obtained the Musk Foundation’s latest tax filing, the organization grew to $9.5 billion in assets last year while handing out $237 million in gifts, most of which went to Musk’s other nonprofits, such as The Foundation, X Prize Foundation, and Fidelity Charitable. The New York Times has reported that the tax filings suggest that the Musk Foundation fell $421 million short of the amount it was required to give away in 2023, meaning that the billionaire now has until the end of the year to distribute that money or be required to pay a sizable penalty to the IRS.

As noted by Bloomberg, the IRS mandates that all charitable foundations deploy, on average, at least 5% of their assets a year. Musk, however, has apparently missed that bar on numerous occasions. The entrepreneur, who is estimated to be the richest person on the planet, saw his net worth surpass a record $440 billion this week after an insider share sale of his privately held SpaceX, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk’s new fortune puts him nearly $200 billion ahead of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. He is also now worth more on paper than most US public companies, including Costco, Home Depot, and Netflix, as per Business Insider. Meanwhile, the entrepreneur has emerged as one of the top Republican donors this year and has become one of the most prominent members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. Following the Republican’s election victory last month, Musk also pledged to audit the entire US government and cut government spending by up to $2 trillion as the head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

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“SpaceX is why America is years ahead of the rest of the world in the space race. ..”

• Elon Musk: “Starbase Is Going To Be A City” In Texas (ZH)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has sent a letter to local officials in southern Texas outlining a new mission: to transform the remote area where the company launches rockets into an incorporated town named “Starbase, Texas.” SpaceX launches rockets on the southern tip of Texas at Boca Chica Beach, near the Mexican border. Incorporating the remote area would “streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world-class place to live—for the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity’s future in space,” the company wrote in a letter to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the county’s top elected official.

“As you know, through agreements with the County, SpaceX currently performs several civil functions around Starbase due to its remote location, including management of the roads, utilities, and the provision of schooling and medical care for the residents. Incorporation would move the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public body,” the letter said. AP News quoted Judge Treviño, who said there were incorporation talks in 2021. However, this was the first time a petition was officially filed. “Our legal and elections administration will review the petition, see whether or not it complied with all of the statutory requirements and then we’ll go from there,” the judge said. Earlier this year, the judge issued a local impact study finding that 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the rocket launch site.

SpaceX’s rapid expansion comes as Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, told investors last month that Starship launches over the next four years could exceed 400. CNBC confirmed on Wednesday that the latest valuation for SpaceX hit $350 billion based on a secondary share sale. As previously noted, SpaceX launched 362 metric tons of upmass to space in the third quarter. In other words, Musk’s company launched 86% of the upmass in the world, beating all rocket programs, including ones funded by nation-states. Starship’s fifth test flight in early October was groundbreaking… SpaceX is why America is years ahead of the rest of the world in the space race.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1867486338645471488

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SNL

 

 

Nixon

 

 

Recycle

 

 

Lion

 

 

Moose

 

 

Kidding

 

 

AI

 

 

Bird leaves
https://twitter.com/i/status/1867221356175294913

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 7 2024

Dec 072024
 
 December 7, 2024  Posted by at 10:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  80 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657-59

 

• Not a Joke (James Howard Kunstler)
• Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Biden’s Pardon Of His Son Hunter (JTN)
• Trump Confident About Getting Pete Hegseth Confirmed As Defense Secretary (JTN)
• National Police Association Strongly Endorses Kash Patel For FBI Director (JTN)
• NYC Mayor Eric Adams Hints At Switch To Republican Party (ZH)
• Jeff Bezos Expresses Optimism About Trump’s Deregulation Agenda, Offers to Help (ET)
• Congress, Trump Plan Law Enforcement Reform In DC To End Politicization (JTN)
• The Biden Family of Liars (Patrick Lawrence)
• Nothing Short Of Ukraine’s Surrender Is Negotiable With The US (Helmer)
• US Opens a Third Front Against Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Erdogan’s Idlib Shock Shadows “Kursk” (Alastair Crooke)
• The Elitist Tyranny Of “Western Democracy” Is Exposed And Crumbling (SCF)
• Orban Blames Biden For Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Hungary Vows to Block EU Budget Draft Unless Frozen Funds Released (Sp.)
• Dementia As A Military Strategy (José Goulão)
• Romanian Court Annuls Presidential Vote, Declares Election Do-Over (ZH)
• London Declining As Financial Center – Bloomberg (RT)

 

 

 

 

Barron

YMCA

Stephen Miller
https://twitter.com/i/status/1864507104285086147
https://twitter.com/i/status/1864849006209192132

Work from home
https://twitter.com/i/status/1864757348398698509

Vance

Nunes

Obama

Chicago

 

 

 

 

“Stare into the sun and begin to glimpse the size of what you’re up against.” — Mike Benz

I called the pardon Pandora’s box before. Jim has many names who would like a blanket pardon. And there are many more. Problem is, this erodes society itself.

• Not a Joke (James Howard Kunstler)

The Hunter Biden super-sized blanket pardon went over so well around the country that “Joe Biden” — or the shadowy league of not-quite-geniuses who run the twilight White House operation — floated the idea of issuing preemptive pardons for a few of the most spectacularly dishonest characters in US political life: Dr. Fauci, Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and Liz Cheney. Does “JB” plan on legally adopting them so he can claim he was moved to act out of a father’s love? Like every official act ever associated with the name “Joe Biden,” the preemptive pardon idea has that reality-optional feel. None of the three has been convicted of a crime to be pardoned for, or even been hauled-in for questioning by federal law enforcement agents on a probable cause writ. But a pardon would necessarily paint them as criminals, ipso facto. Would they accept a pardon, with what it implies, or run shrieking from it as from an apple polished with novichok?

The proffer of a pardon itself must amount to a declaration of probable cause, igniting the very legal process it seeks to dispose of. An inquiry would have to be launched to discover what laws these three desperadoes might have broken, followed perhaps by a grand jury to evaluate the evidence, and so on. “Joe Biden” himself might have to answer some basic questions, such as: at what time prior to issuing the pardon did he begin to suspect some laws had been broken? And, since the president’s chief duty is to enforce the law, was “JB” negligent and culpable himself for misprision of felonies? You know, of course, that the Supreme Court decided last summer in Trump v. United States (Docket No: 23-939) that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts. But the misprision of felonies is neither a presidential duty nor anything describable as an official act. Rather it would be grounds for impeachment, being a “high crime.”

Now, luckily for Joe Biden, his term-in-office is so close to its conclusion that impeachment must be considered off-the-table as a practical matter. He might be subject to prosecution, though, after the clock strikes noon on one-six-twenty-five. I doubt he will be present at Mr. Trump’s inauguration, so the US marshals will have to root him out of Delaware (or wherever) and haul him into the federal lockup in DC at exactly the moment Mr. Trump pardons the J-6 prisoners. Will they get to see “Joe Biden” coming into the joint on their way out? There would be a certain poetic symmetry in that, and hard to not admire the workings of Providence after all its foot-dragging. You might well ask: how many days, or months, will “Joe Biden” have to endure in solitary detention before the paperwork is in order for a proper arraignment? Considering how the process was applied to those J-6 culprits, a year would seem sufficient.

Pardon me for saying: I fear that “Joe Biden” might have started something that isn’t going to end well for “Joe Biden” and many others. The little goldfish bowl of the White House is surrounded by the vast, pulsating DC blob and its million-footed ranks of officials deserving of pardons. You know the floated names Fauci, Schiff, and Cheney were only representative samples, denoting a certain managerial class of blobists that runs to the thousands of federal employees at least. What about Garland, Monaco, and Gupta at DOJ, and their paladin prosecutor Jack Smith, and his many deputies? Or Comey, Wray, Abate, Sallet, McCabe, Rosenstein, Strzok, Page, Pientka, Priestap, McCord, Horowitz out of the FBI? Or Mueller, Weissmann, Dreeben, Van Grack, Rhee, and Quarles from that spin-off Special Counsel venture? Or Boasberg, Chutkan, and Sullivan in the DC judiciary? Or, Collins, Wallensky, Cohen and their many deputies in Covid-land?

Surely, they all deserve pardons now, and their crimes can be sorted out later. There would appear to be no precedent for a chief executive pardoning the entire federal government, or we would have heard of it by now. At the conclusion of the Civil War, Abe Lincoln issued a conditional pardon to Southerners — they had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union — but it did not include military officers and high-ranking Confederate officials. The blob of our time is a different breed of porpoise. Actually, it’s more like a systemic fungal infection of the body politic, requiring deep fumigation and exposure to sunlight. The proposed D.O.G.E advisory under Messrs Musk and Ramaswamy might answer as a “good enough” therapeutic approach, wholesale dismissal of entire agencies and departments, actually flushing away the malign parasites en masse, pardons not required.

What I await in the sunsetting “Joe Biden” presidency is whether he will go ahead and pardon the other members of the Biden family beyond just “first son” Hunter: brothers Jim and Frank and the wives and various offspring who received cash “gifts” from officials in foreign lands laundered into their personal bank accounts amounting to millions of dollars. None of them enjoy the much talked-about presidential immunity out of mere familial proximity to their illustrious relation, number “46” in the lengthening line of commanders-in-chief.

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“Only 30% of voters favored Biden’s clemency..” There are a lot of Democrats among the remaining 70%.

• Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Biden’s Pardon Of His Son Hunter (JTN)

Americans overwhelmingly oppose President Joe Biden’s pardon that erased his son Hunter’s federal tax and gun convictions, according to a new poll released Thursday. Pollster Scott Rasmussen’s Napolitan News Service survey found 62% oppose the pardon, including 41% who strongly opposed it. Only 30% of voters favored Biden’s clemency, The poll also found Americans rejected the rationale the 46th president offered in explaining his decision. Biden has said that Hunter Biden was unfairly targeted by prosecutors for political purposes, but 54% disagreed with his rationale, while 37% agreed. Voters were more sympathetic to President-elect Donald Trump, with 46% declaring they believed that the Department of Justice unfairly targeted him under Biden’s leadership, while 42% disagreed.

Biden pardon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1864668354079854993

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All they have is smear.

• Trump Confident About Getting Pete Hegseth Confirmed As Defense Secretary (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday appeared optimistic that he can get his choice for Secretary of Defense confirmed by the Senate early next year, despite recent criticism. Trump tapped former Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to lead the defense department last month, touting him as a major supporter of veterans and the military. However, allegations have surfaced recently, accusing him of sexual assault, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. The former president said he still has confidence in Hegseth, and that senators have told him that they will support his nomination. Hegseth met with multiple senators this week in an effort to reassure them that the reports are unfounded.

“It looks like Pete is doing well now,” Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in an interview that will air on Sunday. “I mean, people were a little bit concerned. He’s a young guy, with a tremendous track record actually. He went to Princeton and went to Harvard. He was a good student at both. But he loves the military and I think people are starting to see it so we’ll be working on his nomination along with a lot of others.” Trump said he has spoken to friends of Hegseth over at Fox News who have denied the allegation that the veteran has a drinking problem. Trump himself does not drink alcohol. “He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him through Fox, but I’ve known him for a long time,” the president-elect said. “He’s basically a military guy. Every time I talk to him, all he wants to talk about is the military. He’s a military guy.”

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“We are confident that under his stewardship, the FBI will thrive in its vital mission to protect and serve the American people..”

• National Police Association Strongly Endorses Kash Patel For FBI Director (JTN)

The National Police Association on Friday “strongly” endorsed Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s nominee for FBI director, and urged the Senate to confirm him. “We firmly believe that Kash Patel’s appointment as FBI Director will mark a pivotal moment for law enforcement and public safety across the United States. His leadership will bring a renewed focus on collaboration, ethical standards, and the relentless pursuit of justice,” the organization said in a statement. “We are confident that under his stewardship, the FBI will thrive in its vital mission to protect and serve the American people,” the group added.

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“Those who don’t like it, they will cancel me,” he said. “I say: Cancel me. I’m for America.”

• NYC Mayor Eric Adams Hints At Switch To Republican Party (ZH)

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has left the door open to returning to the Republican Party – a move that would upend the political dynamics in the nation’s largest city. In a pair of Friday morning interviews, Adams – who was a member of the GOP from 1995 to 2002, refused to rule out a switch back to the Republican Party. “I’m a part of the American party,” Adams told NY1 when asked directly about his political future. He reiterated the sentiment in a subsequent interview on PIX11, emphasizing that his allegiance lies with “American values” over partisan lines. “No matter what party I’m on or vote on, I’m going to push for American values,” he declared, urging leaders to work beyond political affiliations to solve voters’ problems. Adams’ comments come amidst heightened tensions within the Democratic Party, sparked by his growing relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1865033350072746187

While most Democrats have criticized Trump, Adams has avoided open conflict, even praising Trump confidant Elon Musk for his efforts to streamline government operations, Politico reports.The mayor is scheduled to meet with incoming border czar Tom Homan next week to discuss federal immigration policies. Adams has signaled tentative support for deportation plans targeting undocumented immigrants with serious criminal offenses, a position that aligns more closely with Trump’s immigration platform than his own party’s stance. Adams’ relationship with Trump takes on added significance in light of his ongoing legal battles. The mayor faces a five-count federal indictment, and Trump’s incoming administration is poised to replace the U.S. Attorney prosecuting Adams. Trump, who has repeatedly framed his own legal troubles as politically motivated, has expressed empathy for Adams’ predicament.

Speculation has swirled that the president-elect might extend a pardon to the mayor, further entwining their political fortunes.Despite his openness to a Republican pivot, Adams insists he plans to run for reelection next year as a Democrat. “That is what I’m proposing to do,” he told reporters Friday. However, his lukewarm endorsement of the Democratic Party and his past GOP affiliation leave room for doubt. Adams’ critics see his comments as a calculated effort to hedge his bets as Trump prepares to wield significant influence over New York City’s political and legal landscape. Local Democrats have expressed frustration, with some questioning whether Adams is using his position to align himself with Trump’s administration for political gain. Adams defended his controversial stance with a bold parting message: “Those who don’t like it, they will cancel me,” he said. “I say: Cancel me. I’m for America.”

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Bezos, like Zuckerberg, are all too aware of Elon Musk’s presence.

• Jeff Bezos Expresses Optimism About Trump’s Deregulation Agenda, Offers to Help (ET)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos expressed optimism about President-elect Donald Trump’s second term on Wednesday, voicing enthusiasm for potential regulatory rollbacks in the years ahead, even offering to personally help with the deregulatory effort like his business arch-rival Elon Musk. Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York on Dec. 4, Bezos said that there are “too many regulations in this country” and praised Trump’s commitment to slashing red tape. “I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.” Bezos said that, in his view, the United States is “so set up to grow” thanks to factors like abundant energy resources and the world’s best risk-capital system, and that eliminating barriers to growth is key to solving the nation’s most vexing economic problems, such as ballooning public debt.

“You’re going to solve the problem of the national debt by making it a smaller percentage of GDP,” he said. “That means you have to grow the GDP at three, four, five percent a year, and let the national debt grow slower than that. If you can do that, then this is a very manageable problem. The billionaire entrepreneur added that America’s many advantages are being undermined by burdensome regulations. “I’m very optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda, and I think he has a very good chance at succeeding,” he said. Bezos’ comments come weeks after his decision in October to bar The Washington Post, which he owns, from endorsing a presidential candidate. The move sparked backlash, with tens of thousands of readers canceling subscriptions and protests from veteran journalists at the paper.

In an op-ed, Bezos defended the decision, arguing that endorsements contribute to perceptions of bias in an era of widespread mistrust in the media and have little impact on election outcomes. During his interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos also addressed Trump’s contentious relationship with the press, saying he would work to dissuade the president-elect from seeing the media as an adversary. “I don’t think the press is the enemy,” Bezos said, adding that he believes Trump’s relationship with the media has become less adversarial in recent years as he has grown as a person, and is “calmer … more confident, more settled.”

During his first term, Trump frequently criticized Bezos, Amazon, and The Washington Post. In 2019, Amazon alleged in court that Trump’s animosity cost the company a $10 billion Pentagon contract, which the Biden administration later split between Amazon and Microsoft. Later in the interview, Bezos also commented on Musk’s regulatory role in the upcoming administration, expressing confidence that Musk would not use his influence to harm competitors. Bezos’s space venture, Blue Origin, is a rival to Musk’s SpaceX.

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“An important part of my platform for president is to bring back, restore, and rebuild Washington D.C. into the ‘crown jewel’ of the nation..”

• Congress, Trump Plan Law Enforcement Reform In DC To End Politicization (JTN)

Donald Trump and his political allies are promising law enforcement reforms and to fight crime in Washington, D.C., when he takes office again in January. Already, allies on Capitol Hill are preparing to launch investigations, new committees, and detail new priorities as the former president prepares to take the reigns on the executive branch for the second non-consecutive term. Some initiatives are taking aim at the nation’s capital, following promises from Trump on the campaign trail to clean up the city. Congress is looking to block disfavored city laws or using its power to shape the city’s budget, while Trump wants to enforce “tough on crime” policies in the district.

One congressman believes the security of the U.S. Capitol building itself and the politicization in the police force protecting the complex at the heart of the city should be the focus of a new select committee. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight says reforms are needed to root out undue political influence on the department’s leadership, exposed by a probe into the Capitol Police in the aftermath of the January 6 riot. “I believe we need a select committee that is focused on the security of the United States Capitol. You know, we’ve done a lot with our January 6 investigation, and have done more than anyone ever thought that we would do to get to the truth,” Loudermilk told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. He added: “But there’s one thing that we’ve uncovered that no one else can fix, except for the United States Congress, and that’s the issues we have internally.”

“You have the Architect of the Capitol, you have the Capitol Police, you have both Sergeant at Arms that collectively are responsible for securing this Capitol. I believe we need a select committee that is dedicated to looking into all of those to find the how politicized each of those organizations are, and even the Capitol Police Inspector General,” Loudermilk said. Loudermilk’s probe into the Capitol Police followed from a broader investigation spearheaded by his subcommittee into the security failures of January 6 and the conduct of the January 6 Select Committee. That probe has upended several of the narratives espoused by the former select committee and uncovered troubling failures, like the Capitol Police and Democratic leadership’s failure to act on warnings of violence ahead of the riot.

[..] At the same time, President-elect Trump has promised to bring changes to law enforcement in the wider city of Washington, D.C., which is still suffering from elevated violent crimes rates, though it has declined from high levels last year. “An important part of my platform for president is to bring back, restore, and rebuild Washington D.C. into the ‘crown jewel’ of the nation,” Trump said last year during his campaign at the same time that the city was experiencing its greatest spike of homicides since 1997. He has frequently reiterated a promise to “take over our horribly run” capitol city on the campaign trail, according to an Axios analysis of his speeches, press conferences and interviews about policy. As president, Trump will have many options to directly address issues he perceives with the city, For example, he could deploy the National Guard to the city to crack down on crime.

The president used this option during the Summer 2020 riots in the district following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis that sparked violent Black Lives Matter protests across the country. Trump will also have the opportunity to appoint a new federal prosecutor for the district who shares his law enforcement priorities. His congressional allies also have tools that could help Trump shape the city’s government and law enforcement. The Congress can exercise control of the district by imposing an oversight board to run the city’s budget. It did so once before in the 1990s when the city went bankrupt. Congress can also block or overturn laws implemented by the city government, as it already did once before with a bill many critics saw as being too soft on crime.

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Biden’s pardon is a carbon copy of the earlier rejected plea deal.

• The Biden Family of Liars (Patrick Lawrence)

With his shocking presidential pardon of his son Hunter, announced Thanksgiving weekend, when the maximum number of Americans would be watching football games and consuming potato chips, Joe Biden goes out just as he was the whole of his tatty career as a politician — a self-serving fiddler, indifferent to democratic process, ever going against his word. Peter Baker, that inimitable (thank goodness) clerk The New York Times posts as its chief White House correspondent, tells us in Wednesday’s editions, “We don’t really know how history will remember Joe Biden. It’s too early to say, obviously.” Actually, we really know at this point. Obviously. Much has been made of Biden as the family man torn between his duties as president and his compassion for an errant son as the victim of perverted justice. The Times unfolded a singular line of argument on Tuesday.

“President Biden was deeply concerned,” Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush reported, “that legal problems would push his son into a relapse after years of sobriety, and he began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon.” No other way out. Here we have Joe Biden pimping the helpless suffering of his son’s addictions (to alcohol and crack). It is of a piece with Biden’s very regular references, always for similar political advantage, to the death of his other son, Beau, and the earlier deaths of his first wife and daughter. The Rogers and Thrush piece now passes for news reporting Americans are invited to take seriously. It is one among countless others of its kind and quality that are together a measure of how the corruptions of the Bidens, father and son as well as others, have deepened an already severe crisis in American media and turned public discourse into bad afternoon television.

The reporting on the pardon has been defective since the White House released the Executive Grant of Clemency, along with Biden’s official statement, last Sunday. The Times, The Washington Post, the other major dailies and the broadcast networks all reported as if in unison that Joe Biden’s motivating concerns were the guilty verdicts Hunter Biden faces on gun-possession and tax-evasion charges. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced later this month. Biden père has told the nation his intent was simply to protect Hunter from a judicial system that political antagonists had unduly politicized. From the president’s statement:

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room—with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases. No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong.” You read a statement such as this and you have to wonder whether Joe Biden is capable of speaking truthfully in any circumstance bearing upon his personal interests.

The plea deal, negotiated in the summer of 2023, was indeed carefully negotiated — by Hunter’s attorneys and corrupt Justice Department prosecutors acting to keep the president’s son out of prison. The agreement collapsed not due to political pressure — there was none — but because an un-beholden judge with a commitment to the rule of law, Maryellen Noreika, read it and threw it out of court. The feature of the plea bargain that moved Judge Noreika to put an end to the negotiated arrangement was its stipulation that Hunter would be immune from further prosecution not only for the matters then tried — the gun and taxes charges — but for any other crimes he may have committed. Preposterous, Noreika rightly concluded.

Was Hunter Biden singled out as his father asserts? Not as his father asserts, but yes, singled out. He had made a mess of his life, breaching various laws while doing so, and was singled out for special treatment in a judicial system that plainly leaves elites and their families above the law. This context is essential to understanding why Joe Biden decided — and one strongly suspects this was not, as reported, a decision Biden considered and took over the Thanksgiving weekend — to grant his son clemency in the manner he did. The operative language in the official document, the raison d’être of the case, is this:

“Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN A Full and Unconditional Pardon For those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions)…” As is easily discerned, President Biden has reinstated, not quite verbatim but nearly, the terms of the plea agreement thrown out of court a year and a half ago — the agreement he defended in his official statement as fair and reasonable. He has granted his son precisely what Judge Noreika found objectionable — open-ended immunity for crimes “he has committed or may have committed or taken part in.”

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“Brown spilled the beans as part of a warfighting exercise to show light between Gerasimov and Putin,” a NATO military veteran comments. “It was underhanded, but typical.”

• Nothing Short Of Ukraine’s Surrender Is Negotiable With The US (Helmer)

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Charles Brown (lead image, right), has just revealed by press leak that he and the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, had talked by telephone last week, on November 27, and agreed not to disclose the contents of their call. If that was the point of agreement the two generals reached, Gerasimov has honoured it. Brown has just now decided to break his word. “At the request of General Gerasimov, General Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call,” the New York Times has reported Brown’s spokesman saying “after he was approached by a reporter about the call”. The newspaper omitted to say that Brown had leaked information about the call in advance, in order to prepare reporters to publish the exchange.

As an exchange of positions between the two generals, the Russian assessment is that once again the American side proves that nothing it says in private, agrees to in public, or signs on paper can be trusted. Sources say in Moscow that Gerasimov and the General Staff will dictate the terms for the end of the Ukraine war “proactively”; that is, when the battlefield is ready, and there is nothing left for Brown to fight or leak. Officially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) have not announced their “read-out” of the telephone conversation of November 27. The last of Brown’s calls was identified by the JCS three days earlier. The Russian Defense Ministry has made no disclosure. Boris Rozhin, who reports through the Colonel Cassad military blog, has not mentioned the telephone exchange. Neither has Yevgeny Krutikov, whose Mudraya Ptitsa blog and essays in Vzglyad report GRU-level intelligence.

The Foreign Ministry briefer was not asked about the call at her press briefing in Moscow on December 4, and she appeared to be unaware of it. The only publication in Russian to report the call was Meduza, an anti-Kremlin website in Latvia. In the New York Times version of Brown’s leak, it is claimed that Gerasimov said “the Oreshnik ballistic missile launch had been planned long before the Biden administration agreed to allow Ukraine to use American ATACMS to strike deeper into Russia.” This is spin, Moscow sources claim, to reinforce the Biden Administration’s line that development of the Oreshnik dates back to the violations of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which the Trump Administration claimed as its justification for withdrawing from the treaty in 2019.

The Moscow sources also believe the General Staff was certain from its intelligence of Ukrainian battlefield preparations that the US had been planning to use ATACMS against Russian territorial targets long before the Biden Administration announced its go-ahead. On November 27, Gerasimov told Brown that because the JSC had ignored the Oreshnik strike on the Yuzhmash plant on November 21 and used ATACMS on November 23 and November 25, there would be fresh Russian retaliation. That followed on the day after the Gerasimov-Brown telephone call. Massed Russian missile and drone strikes across the Ukraine on November 28 also targeted and killed US personnel operating ATACMS launchers in the Sumy region. Since then no new ATACMS launch across the border has been reported by the Defense Ministry in Moscow or by Russian military bloggers.

“Brown spilled the beans as part of a warfighting exercise to show light between Gerasimov and Putin,” a NATO military veteran comments. “It was underhanded, but typical.” A source close to Moscow speculates that Putin and Gerasimov had agreed they would try to sound out Brown, just as they have been sounding out President-elect Donald Trump.

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PCR is a broken record.

• US Opens a Third Front Against Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)

The problem with President Putin is that he never finishes anything. He has let Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, which should have ended in three weeks go on for three years and talks about ending it with negotiations, in which he will again be deceived. He does nothing while the US tries to overthrow the Georgian government and establish a hostile anti-Russian one. He never finished clearing Syria of hostile forces. Consequently, he left Syria and Russian interests exposed to the current US/Israeli coordinated mercenary attack on Syria, which has overrun Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, forcing 280,000 Syrians to flee. This is a massive defeat for Syria and Russia. How is it possible that such an obvious thrust was a surprise? Has the inability tp perceive threats become a Russian hallmark? Will Putin ever understand the consequences of his inaction, his tolerance of endless provocations, of US hegemonic intentions against Russia, Iran, and China?

What factual basis exists for Putin and Lavrov to think that Washington’s hegemonic intention will fade away? Is Russia’s foreign policy based on hope or on reality? Putin’s terms for ending the conflict in Ukraine are reasonable. But if Trump agrees to them, he will be blamed for America’s defeat, for selling out the Ukrainians to Putin, for whetting Putin’s appetite for more conquests, for helping Putin rebuild the Soviet Empire. The neoconservatives and military/security complex will use the propaganda to direct political campaign contributions to anti-Trump candidates for the House and Senate in the midterm elections. To prevail in this fight, Trump would have to convince voters that victory is defined in terms of achieving peace and the end of the conflict. Can Trump achieve this with a hostile media and the warmongers he has appointed to his cabinet? Are Putin and Lavrov aware of these constraints? Will Putin and Lavrov ever win and end a conflict before it spins out of control?

There is no sign of a proactive Russia in her dealings with the West. Putin’s inaction has convinced the West that he will not act. This belief deprives the West of a reason to stop its provocations. Putin has again validated the West’s belief by cancelling any Western restraint from lowering the threshold of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons by giving assurances that Russia is threatening no one with nuclear weapons. Possibly Ukraine has used up its military-capable population. Possibly the collapse of the French government will prevent NATO troops being sent to Ukraine. Possibly the Georgian government will withstand the Washington-directed color revolution. Possibly this time Russia will destroy the US and mercenary forces threatening Syria and not again leave the conflict unresolved. On the other hand, possibly events will spin out of control in Ukraine, Georgia, and Syria. The West is not demonstrating restraint, and the Russians are not proactive, which leaves the initiative in the hands of the West.

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Erdogan plays his familiar double role. “Reportedly, the Turkish initiative was hurriedly brought forward, to fit with Israel’s ceasefire plan.”

• Erdogan’s Idlib Shock Shadows “Kursk” (Alastair Crooke)

‘Doomsters’ is an occasional Russian expression used to categorise commentators that only see the ‘dark side to events’ (a vice quite prevalent during the Soviet era). Marat Khairullin, a highly respected Russian military analyst, says, “Today, a network of mercenary war bloggers has begun another round of moaning – this time about Syria, where apparently everything is lost for Russia”. “Many see the events in Syria (and some add Georgia to the mix) as attempts to open additional fronts against our country. Perhaps that’s true. But in that case, it’s more appropriate to draw direct parallels with the reckless attack on Kursk, which left the Ukrainian armed forces in an almost hopeless position”. Khairullin views the activation of this jihadist insurgency in Syria as a similarly ‘desperate’ act.

The background is that the Syria-Russia-Iran coalition had – thorough the Astana negotiations – “cornered the remaining Syrian terrorists into a 6,000 sq. km enclave. Without delving into the details, it was a process reminiscent of the [Ukrainian] Minsk Agreements—both sides were utterly exhausted and thus agreed to a ceasefire. Importantly, all sides understood this was only a temporary truce; the contradictions were so profound that no one expected the conflict to end”. Aleppo fell quickly these past days, as “one division of the Syrian National Army outright defected to the Islamists (read: Americans)”. The defection was a set up. Northern Aleppo was occupied by the Syrian National Army, fully controlled, armed and funded by Turkey, which dominates northern Aleppo. The key, Khairullin says, is this crucial point: The land is flat criss-crossed by few roads:

“ … whomsoever controls the airspace controls the country. Last year, Russia formed a new aerial unit called the Special Air Corps, reportedly tailored for overseas operations. It consists of four aviation regiments, including a regiment of Su-35s. Currently, just two Su-35s are overseeing the entirety of Syria’s territory. Imagine the impact when 24 such aircraft are deployed. And Russia is fully capable of such a deployment”. The second crucial point is that “Iran and Russia have drawn closer. At the start of the Syrian war, relations between the two were decidedly ‘neutral-hostile’. By late 2024 however, we now see a very strong alliance. Israel and the U.S., by violating the peace agreements through this Turkish insurrection, have provoked a renewed Iranian presence in Syria: Iran has begun to expand beyond its bases, redeploying additional forces into the country.

This gives Assad and his allies a direct pretext to expel the American and Turkish proxies from Aleppo and Idlib. This isn’t speculation — it’s straightforward arithmetic”. Syria, however, is a key component to the Israeli-American plan to remake the Middle East. Syria is both the supply-line for Hizbullah, as well as a hub of resistance to Israel’s “Greater Israel Project”. Now that the permanent ‘Anglo’ Security State unreservedly is backing Israel’s ambition to assert regional hegemony, the West has okayed Erdogan’s jihadist insurrection against President Assad. The aim is to split Iran from its allies, weaken Assad and to prepare for the putative Iran overthrow. Reportedly, the Turkish initiative was hurriedly brought forward, to fit with Israel’s ceasefire plan.

Khairullin’s point is that this Syria ‘ploy’ is akin to Ukraine’s “reckless attack on Kursk”, which diverted Ukrainian élite forces from the beleaguered Contact Line, and then marooned these forces in an almost hopeless position in Kursk. Instead of weakening Moscow (as intended), ‘Kursk’ inverted NATO’s original objective – by becoming opportunity to eradicate a major portion of Ukraine’s élite forces. In Idlib, the Islamists (HTS), writes Khairullin, “had gained dominance – imposing a strict Wahhabi regime and infiltrating the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army. Both groups are patchwork organizations, with various factions fighting over money, border crossings, drugs, and smuggling. Essentially, it’s a cauldron—not very combat-effective but highly greedy”.

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“The utter failure of that gamble has cost European and American taxpayers a combined $200 billion and could frighteningly escalate into a nuclear conflagration..”

• The Elitist Tyranny Of “Western Democracy” Is Exposed And Crumbling (SCF)

The charade of Western democracy is rapidly unraveling as so-called leaders and their dutiful media show themselves to be brazenly unaccountable to citizens while pursuing elitist, criminal interests. Biden using presidential powers to pardon his drug-addict felonious son – after promising he wouldn’t. Western media claims that the upsurge in conflict in Syria is a “civil war” and not due to NATO-backed terrorist proxies. Western support for genocide in Gaza and a fascist Israeli leader who is mass murdering his way to avoid court prosecution for years of corruption. Western support for a money-laundering NeoNazi regime in Kiev whose proxy war against Russia could spiral into nuclear annihilation. Western sponsoring of anti-government violence in Georgia after pro-EU groups lost an election there. The pro-West South Korean leader declaring police state powers to avoid prosecution for corruption.

That’s just a quick sample of something more ample in the West’s decaying image. The visit to China this week by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was another revealing fiasco. The obsessively anti-Russia Baerbock landed in Beijing not to prioritize improving trade relations with the European Union’s biggest global partner but rather to browbeat China with tedious allegations that it was helping Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. What’s more important? Getting along with China to bolster trade and jobs for millions of Germans and Europeans, or gratuitously grandstand over a wanton proxy war in Ukraine? Understandably, the Chinese authorities were not pleased by Baerbock’s insolence and gave her short shrift. She was snubbed by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi not affording a customary joint press conference after more than three hours of discussions.

In a separate statement, China again rejected claims that it was aiding Russia militarily in Ukraine. So here we have Germany’s top diplomat who is soon out of a job because her coalition government has collapsed and is facing new elections – but she flies to Beijing on taxpayer money to aggravate relations with China, whose annual trade with the EU amounts to over $700 billion. At her solo press conference in Beijing, Baerbock doubled down in her arrogance, accusing China of jeopardizing peace and security in Europe because it supports Russia. She claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was dragging Asia into the war with Ukraine. The double-think is astounding. Germany, the European Union, NATO, and the United States have done everything to drag the whole world into a war because of its reckless proxy machinations in Ukraine against Russia.

The utter failure of that gamble has cost European and American taxpayers a combined $200 billion and could frighteningly escalate into a nuclear conflagration. Baerbock turned reality on its head when she accused Russia of pulling Asia into the war in Ukraine. It is the United States, NATO, and European Atlanticist leaders who are expanding the proxy war to other regions, including the Middle East and Asia. Western so-called democracies and NATO are supporting the upsurge in violence in Syria by terrorist militias under the banner of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an internationally proscribed terror organization affiliated with Al Qaeda. Ukrainian military personnel and Turkey (which means NATO personnel) are reliably reported to be assisting the militants in Syria with drone technology.

Read more …

“Current US President Joe Biden wants to increase the scale of the conflict, Orban claimed, while President-elect Donald Trump is “pro-peace.”

• Orban Blames Biden For Ukraine Conflict (RT)

US interference triggered the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. His comments come after Moscow accused Washington of lacking “common sense and restraint” in its approach to the conflict. In an interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban said the United States had played a decisive role in the conflict. ”America is one of the main players in this war. Without America, this war would never have happened. Ukraine would not have been able to resist without America’s support,” the prime minister said, as quoted by the Magyar Nemzet newspaper. According to official figures, as of September 30, Washington had allocated a total of nearly $183 billion in aid for Ukraine, with $130.1 billion committed and $86.7 billion disbursed.

Current US President Joe Biden wants to increase the scale of the conflict, Orban claimed, while President-elect Donald Trump is “pro-peace.” Earlier this week, the US State Department announced $725 million in assistance for Kiev, including air-defense capabilities, munitions for rocket systems and artillery, and anti-tank weapons. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called on Kiev to lower the conscription age from the current level of 25 years, which Orban described as “terrible, because even more Ukrainians would die.” It’s time for American policies to change because they have become “unsustainable,” Orban argued. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday that Hungary was “pressing hard so that Donald Trump’s goal of ending this war quickly becomes a reality,” and warned that failure to achieve peace in Ukraine would increase the risk of escalation on a daily basis.

Trump, who is set to take over from Biden in six weeks, repeatedly pledged during his election campaign to end conflict within 24 hours of his inauguration on January 20. The proposals reportedly floated by Trump’s advisers include forcing Moscow and Kiev into negotiations by using military aid as leverage. Moscow has said it has yet to receive a detailed plan from Trump or his team regarding a potential resolution of the conflict. In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stated that Russia would not agree to any concessions that compromise its national security. The diplomat also claimed that there was a lack of common sense and “restraint in the West, in particular the US, where people seemingly underestimate” Russia’s resolve to defend its core national security interests.

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“Hungary will veto the European Union’s next seven-year budget draft unless it receives all blocked funds..”

• Hungary Vows to Block EU Budget Draft Unless Frozen Funds Released (Sp.)

The European Union withheld some 7.5 billion euros worth of payments to Hungary from the shared budget in September 2022 over alleged rule-of-law shortcomings, but Budapest’s blocking of EU funding for Ukraine’s war effort prompted Brussels to release some of the funds to Hungary in December. Hungary will veto the European Union’s next seven-year budget draft unless it receives all blocked funds from the bloc’s budget, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. “These 12.5 billion euros [held in Hungary’s accounts in Brussels] fulfill the requirements of the Hungarian economy until the end of 2026. We are entitled to more money besides these, this will be a problem after 2026.

‘In my opinion, we will certainly get them too. Because negotiations have started on a seven-year budget after 2027. It requires unanimity to pass. And I can say for sure that the money that we did not get in 2025-2026, we will have to get in 2027-2028, otherwise there will be no budget, we will not approve it,” Orban told Hungary’s media. The European Commission said in mid-December 2023, that it was ready to unfreeze 10.2 billion euros, roughly a third of Hungary’s total withheld funds, as it had received the latest clarification from Budapest about its claims about the rule of law in the country.

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“These leaders are mistaken and make us targets of the ricochets of their unconsciousness..”

• Dementia As A Military Strategy (José Goulão)

The approval by the Washington Administration and immediate execution by the Nazi regime in Kiev of the launch of U.S.-produced tactical missiles known as ATACAM against Russian territory is a sign of the desperation that NATO and the Western world are going through in the face of the perceived military defeat, once again, now on Ukrainian territory. The most tragic and dangerous element of this decision by the real head of NATO to directly involve the alliance in the war against Russia is the fact that it was taken by a defeated and transitional U.S. president, senile and admittedly demented – always a sociopath – considered incapable of running for re-election but not of creating an imminent situation of nuclear war.

This is how the West works today: despair in the face of military defeat in a proxy war in which NATO – mainly the European Union – have invested almost everything, especially in budgetary resources and weapons, in addition to the squandering of essential means for their economies, leads to irresponsibility; And this, in turn, leads to decisions calling into question the survival of the eight billion people, as many as there are on the planet, to be taken (or at least announced) by a single sick individual, with cognitive capacities visibly and admittedly reduced to the tiniest species – but still enough for the warmongering and murderous impulses that marked his long life in the dominant imperial structures to come to the fore.

The decision to openly and effectively attack Russia using an individual without presidential legitimacy, but willing to kill his people in a losing war, was pronounced by an unconscious manipulated through the real system of power, the industrial, military and technological complex, currently in the hands of the criminal sect of neoconservatives who do not look at any means. even extermination, genocide and, ultimately, nuclear killing, to achieve their goals of controlling the planet globally. Many will think they are just crazy people raving about dominating the transnational levers of power, but they take themselves seriously. And we must take them seriously. It is almost certain that Joseph Biden did not read, or was unable to read, the new nuclear doctrine of the Russian Federation, fine-tuned after NATO, following the Western coup on Maidan Square, sponsored the war conducted by the then new Nazi-Banderist regime against Russian communities in the East of the country – now Russia’s de facto territory.

Anyone who hears or reads the opinions and statements of important Western leaders realizes that, as part of their irresponsibility and their autism, they do not give importance and do not take seriously the content of this doctrine. They interpret it as a propaganda document, intended to be a deterrent, but which does not correspond to the serious intentions of the Kremlin, sunk in a kind of congenital and deterministic weakness. That is, the West is desperately betting on a war whose ultimate objective is the destruction of the Russian Federation and its territorial transformation into a series of harmless and subservient states that allow the plundering of its goods and wealth, as happened at the end of the Soviet Union under the stylized consulate of Boris Yeltsin.

Western leaders even mock the content of this nuclear doctrine by assuring that Putin will never be able to apply it, which will be another of his manifestations of “weakness”. The worst thing is that if they pay to see it, we will all bear the price of this suicidal bet. These leaders are mistaken and make us targets of the ricochets of their unconsciousness, as has already happened with the effects of the economic sanctions on Russia.

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They’re blaming TikTok for the non-compliant candidate’s win..

• Romanian Court Annuls Presidential Vote, Declares Election Do-Over (ZH)

Something unprecedented just happened in the NATO and EU member country of Romania – a top court on Friday annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election. Essentially there will now be a ‘do over’ election. The Constitutional Court made the decision even as voting is still underway in the diaspora. “The electoral process for the election of the President of Romania will be resumed in its entirety, with the Government required to set a new date for the election of the President of Romania as well as a new calendar program for carrying out the necessary actions,” the court said in a statement. The court decided “to annul the entire electoral process for the election of the President of Romania… to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process” – in a controversial ruling which has simply never happened.

Calin Georgescu, the widely dubbed ‘far-right’ contender, came out on top in a first round of voting in a ‘shock’ outcome which left political opponents claiming Russian election interference. Apparently the ‘smoking gun’ is related to mere social media posts on platforms like TikTok. “The Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram,” The Associated Press details. Georgescu emerged top of the ballot after the Nov.24 first round vote, despite declaring no campaign spending, and was set to enter a run-off originally scheduled for Sunday against reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party.

Contributing to the dossier examined by the court on the alleged Russian election interference included the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunication Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, AP has noted further. Georgescu’s nationalist rhetoric has proven ultra popular as social media videos featuring him have racked up millions of views. But at least much of this would likely be genuine and organic, given that the vast majority of the population leans ultra-conservative. Also Romania has one of the highest church attendance rates in Europe, with the dominant religion being the very traditional Romanian Orthodox Church, which is also in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia on Friday vehemently denied that it is interfering in Romania’s election. This as Western media is already labelling Georgescu as “pro-Russian”. Similar controversy has lately engulfed politics in Georgia as well, where pro-EU street protests have continued.

“The campaign for the Romanian presidential election… is accompanied by an unprecedented outburst of anti-Russian hysteria,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the press in response to the reports. “More and more absurd accusations are being made by local politicians, officials and media representatives…,” she said. “We firmly reject all hostile attacks, which we consider absolutely groundless.” The European Commission at the same time says it’s closely monitoring the TikTok platform related to Romania’s election. NATO and Washington are also watching closely, given a Georgescu victory could have huge implications for the future of Western military bases and units inside Romania, on NATO’s so-called Eastern flank:” Romania is a serious military power, which is why the risk that NATO-skeptic, pro-Russia candidate Calin Georgescu will become its president next Sunday is confounding the alliance.

The country of 19 million has been a NATO member for two decades, and is the site of an airbase that is expanding to be the bloc’s biggest in Europe. It borders Ukraine; stares across the Black Sea at Russia-occupied Crimea; has sent arms and ammunition to Kyiv; and hosts a U.S. Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Deveselu, in southern Romania, where both Romanian and U.S. forces are based. But those international ties are deplored by Georgescu, who has condemned the Deveselu missiles as a national shame, campaigned for ending Romanian aid to Ukraine, and called for Russian wisdom in shaping foreign policy.” His rhetoric is similar to Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Italy’s Meloni…

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“British equities are currently trading at a record discount of over 40% compared to peers globally..”

• London Declining As Financial Center – Bloomberg (RT)

The number of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is decreasing at the quickest pace in more than ten years as a result of mergers and acquisitions by larger competitors and investment firms, Bloomberg has reported, citing data compiled by the outlet. In 2024, some 45 firms reportedly delisted from the London stock market, representing an increase of 10% compared to the whole of last year. It’s the highest number of companies to leave the exchange since 2010. At the same time, the volume of deals targeting UK corporations have soared 81% this year to more than $160 billion. Data tracked by the news agency also shows that only 11 companies have completed IPOs in London during the current year to raise a total of $1 billion, down 11% from the amount raised during the same period in 2023.

“Unless the UK gets its act together, it’s going to continue to lose ground and relevance,” Liad Meidar, managing partner at investment firm Gatemore Capital Management, told Bloomberg. “Quite simply, companies can’t get the right cost of capital. They can’t get the valuation they want.” Overseas private equity firms have been particularly active when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, the news agency noted. In November, Florida-based Starwood Capital Group completed the $852 million takeover of London-listed Balanced Commercial Property Trust last month. Sweden’s EQT recently closed the $2.7 billion acquisition of videogame services company Keywords Studios, while Chicago-based Thoma Bravo purchased cybersecurity software provider Darktrace for $5.3 billion. The media outlet noted that more new deals were expected to come in the near future.

Chief executive officer of UK-based insurance giant Aviva, Amanda Blanc, is reportedly trying to convince the board of the rival Direct Line Insurance Group to engage after making a $4.2 billion takeover bid. At the same time, US investment major General Atlantic has announced plans to acquire online training business Learning Technologies Group for $1 billion. The UK stock market remains popular with bargain hunters, Bloomberg said, noting that British equities are currently trading at a record discount of over 40% compared to peers globally. “If London wants to keep its place as the financial center of Europe, major reforms are needed,” said Joachim Klement, a strategist at British advisory firm Panmure Liberum, as quoted by the agency. “It is time for UK investment banks, the London Stock Exchange, and regulators to realize the seriousness of the situation and take action. Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes.”

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Covid

 

 

RFK

 

 

Winter dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1864847225018523989

 

 

Save horse

 

 

Cloud seeding

 

 

Ship engine

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 29 2024

Oct 292024
 
 October 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  82 Responses »


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

• Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)
• Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)
• Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)
• Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)
• Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)
• Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)
• Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)
• Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)
• I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)
• University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)
• Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)
• Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)
• How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)
• BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)
• Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)
• Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

 

 

 

 

ABC

MSG


https://twitter.com/i/status/1850691657303519451
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850654136293024210

Elon

Stossel

 

 

 

 

Trump is not looking for revenge. He and his X-men team have bigger fish to fry. Trump’s “revenge” will be that what happened to him since 2015 -lawfare- can never happen again.

“…the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants…”

• Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)

There’s almost nothing that Donald Trump likes better than throwing his adversaries off their game; he likes to be unpredictable, confusing and in charge. It gives him an edge in achieving his goals. He’s kept his adversaries guessing to the extent that he will pay them back for their lawfare and deep-state machinations, and not surprisingly, they expect the worst. Yet he has said repeatedly that victory in the election will be his revenge. They don’t know what to make of it. A Trump senior advisor made the following observation: “President Trump has made clear that success will be the best revenge,’ Trump senior adviser Brian Hughes said. ‘When others have weaponized government and legal institutions against him for political interference, he will return these institutions to their constitutional purpose of protecting Americans’ liberty and creating a safe and prosperous nation again.

But since the political Left almost always chooses to see deceit in Trump’s comments, they don’t believe he is sincere. He made it even more unpredictable for them with this: “Look when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump said. “And it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden, and you see all the criminality, all of the money that’s going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine.” And then Trump underscored it again, wanting to be sure there was no doubt in the minds of the Left that he could act against them: When asked during a Fox News interview on Wednesday if he plans to use the justice system to punish his political opponents, Trump said: “When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them.” Note that in both of the previous quotations, Trump commented on what he could do, not on what he would do.

Given the incidents of lawfare that Trump has had to endure, the hyperbole spouted by the mainstream media and the political Left, it’s no wonder that Trump would want to take revenge against those who have relentlessly criticized and attacked him. Jonathan Turley, law professor at Georgetown University, has commented several times on the pathetic and weak lawfare attacks that have been launched against Trump from various attorneys and district attorneys. He made this comment a few months ago about Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, who twisted the facts of a Trump misdemeanor to transform them into a felony: Like his predecessor, Bragg previously scoffed at the case. However, two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.

Pomerantz shocked many of us by publishing a book on the case against Trump — who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. He did so despite objections from his former colleague that such a book was grossly improper. Nevertheless, it worked. Bragg brought a Rube Goldberg case that is so convoluted and counterintuitive that even liberal legal analysts criticized it. It’s no wonder that Trump is relishing the discomfort and fear that he is eliciting in his opponents. They have spent years trying to ruin his reputation, insulting him, discrediting him and trying to humiliate him. Meanwhile, in reflecting on the 2016 election, Trump said the following about Hillary Clinton:

“I could have gone after Hillary. I could have gotten Hillary Clinton very easily. And when they say lock her up, whenever they said ‘lock her,’ you know, they’d start, 30,000 people, ‘lock her up, lock her up.’ What did I do? I always say take it easy, just relax. We’re winning. Take it easy. Take it easy.” He added: “I could have had her put in jail. And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible. You had the wife of the president of the United States going to jail. I thought it would be very bad if we did that. And I made sure that didn’t happen, OK? I thought it would be bad.” But now he has reached the point where striking fear in the hearts of his enemies seems righteous. Yet the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants. That will be devastating to the Leftist cause. It will also serve as his retribution.

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“They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?”

• Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)

After being indoctrinated for almost a decade to believe that their political opponents are secret Nazis ready to install a fascist regime, it’s not surprising that Democrats are freaking out over recent polls indicating a potential Trump win in the November elections. Convinced that America 2024 is going to be a repeat of Germany 1933, ignorant leftists are scrambling to determine whether or not to leave the US or “start a revolution.” The anxiety is palpable. The New Yorker recently asserted in an arduous and rambling article spanning centuries of political history and every rhetorical cliche imaginable that, essentially, Trump is likely to win. The outlet describes Kamala Harris as “virtuous” (which is laughable), but they suggest this trait is not respected enough within the American political sphere. They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?

They simply default to the old low-IQ and low effort accusations of “racism” and “xenophobia”. The New Yorker argues: “Even when it is utterly self-destructive – as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic. It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism…” The mass immigration from the third world continues in Britain because the same progressive elitists are still in charge despite the Brexit vote. That’s why the country is spiraling into a pit of criminality, mass stabbings and a rape epidemic. It’s the reason why the British voted for Brexit in the first place.

Brexit and the end of mass immigration is the will of the majority of the people, just as it’s the will of the majority of people in many parts if Europe and the US. Yet, leftists who pontificate endlessly about the virtues of democracy dismiss the majority when it suits them. It is this arrogance of the political left that has led directly to the rise of the right wing movement that so utterly terrifies them. The problem is, leftists never take responsibility because they see this as an expression of weakness, and also because their moral relativism allows them to rationalize any behavior as necessary “for the greater good.” Their main character syndrome spurs them to believe they are the ultimate good in the world, and if they are the ultimate good then anyone who dares oppose them must be the ultimate evil. This is why they have a tendency to demonize their political opposition in extreme ways. The New Yorker describes Trump as singularly dangerous, comparing him to mobsters, tyrants and even cancer:

“Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon. Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.” It may well rage out of control and kill its host…” And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why there have been at least two assassination attempts on Trump’s life; attempts which the leftist media then shamelessly blamed on Trump. It’s also gaslighting, considering the level of tyranny Democrats have engaged in under Biden and the contempt they have displayed for American ideals over the past decade. The fantasy world of the left is rife with paranoia built on a foundation of emotional sand rather than evidence. They see a new Trump term as the end of everything:

“Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.” He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents…” “When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate? Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies…”

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Which was worse? 1939 or 2024?

• Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)

When Donald Trump’s campaign announced plans for a rally at Madison Square Garden, Democrats and their media allies knew they had a problem. Trump was going to pack the house on their turf. So they wasted no time pushing the tired Hitler narrative and claimed that the choice of venue was an homage to a pro-Nazi rally held there in 1939. It wasn’t just liberals in the media pushing this narrative, either. Hillary Clinton accused Trump of “actually re-enacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.” “President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany. So I don’t think we can ignore it,” Hillary added. Then she doubled down.

“Now, it may be a leap for some people and a lot of others may think, ‘I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to say that.’ “But please open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country, because I think it is clear and present for anybody paying attention.” Even the Harris-Walz campaign joined in on the rhetoric. “Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Kamala’s running mate Tim Walz said at a campaign event in Henderson, Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.” Walz added, “And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

Well, the rally took place Sunday night, and boy, talk about the worst Nazi rally ever! In addition to the diverse speakers at the event, a black woman sang the national anthem.

And clearly, Jews didn’t get the memo that this was a “Nazi rally.”

The only Nazi symbols you saw at all came courtesy of the Democrats.

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“I’m asking you to be excited about the future..”

• Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)

During a historic rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden, president Trump urged that Kamala Harris is purely “a vessel” and in reality the MAGA movement is fighting against “something far more powerful.” Trump told the crowd, “We are not just running against Kamala — She means nothing. She is purely a vessel — We are running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party.” Trump further asserted that Biden and Harris are “perfect vessels because they’ll never give them a hard time. They’ll do whatever they want.” He continued, “I know many of them. It’s just an amorphous group of people. But they’re smart and they’re vicious, and we have to defeat them. And when I say the ‘enemy from within,’ the other side go crazy.”

Trump added that these people “are doing such harm to our country with their open border policies, record-setting inflation, ‘Green New Scam,’ and everything else they are doing. But we’re not going to let it happen any longer. We’re going to have the biggest victory in the history of our country on November 5 … We’re going to make America great again.” Elsewhere during his speech, Trump urged that his party is one of real unity and inclusion, while the other side is intent on fomenting hatred and division. “We bleed the same blood. We share the same home and we salute the same great American Flag. We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God,” Trump declared.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1850696878469337233

Trump vowed to make America stronger than ever before and to bring back the American Dream. Trump told the crowd “I’m asking you to be excited about the future,” further urging “this will be America’s new golden age.” The MSG event was a roaring success, despite deranged leftists demanding it be shut down claiming it was a literal ‘Nazi rally’.

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“You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October..”

• Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)

What were they thinking after they shoved “Joe Biden” into the abyss, like an old refrigerator over the edge of the landfill, and afterward settled — instantly it appears, with no process at all — on Kamala Harris to lead the party to victory in the fall election? I will tell you: they were not thinking at all. The collective mind of the Democrat elite was a vast vacuum devoid of thought, mass, or light, like a corner of deepest space, lacking even a particle of cosmic debris to evoke the existence of existence. Such mindlessness was the consummate expression of a party that for eight years worked every angle of political mental illness toward the loss of its mind, driven by whatever dark energy seeks escape from truth, life, and God — whatever is opposite of creation and being. What you are witnessing is a colossal act of being un-born. The party put out a call to the universe and the universe ordered. . . an abortion of the Democratic Party! You are reminded again: be careful of what you wish for.

And so do things stand one week before the election. You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October. Poor Kamala is just collateral damage at this point. She goes out before some manufactured audience and seven-minutes onstage delivering a door-dash order of precooked blather is all she can stand before being overwhelmed by the emptiness and futility of her task. . . and then she flees back to the waiting limousine (and the chardonnay bottle). Meanwhile, her allies — that is, the Democratic Party’s allies — play their own roles in this political abortion. The LA Times and the WashPo declined their usual proforma endorsements, two kisses of death. Those actions last week provoked nervous breakdowns in both newsrooms, cries of anguish, resignations, professional suicides.

The news media find themselves in a peculiar position, having gone along for years with the gathering mental illness of the Democratic Party, like incompetent parents in a large dysfunctional family, offering unconditional support for their kids’ intolerable and unacceptable behavior. They are flying to pieces now on the CNN chat panels. James Carville, the party’s shriveled Gollum, has gone to IV infusions of Jim Beam, seems like. Jake Tapper gets Sunday schooled by JD Vance and turns into a mewling cat-lady right before your eyes. Anderson Cooper goes all waxy and mute. Joy Reid surrenders to echolalia as her MSNBC fans are subjected to the guest list of P. Diddy’s “freak-offs,” ranting about Hitler. Lawrence O’Donnell is looking more and more like Vincent Price in Return of the Fly. Reality-optional hardly suffices to describe cable news these days.

You’ve got to ask: can they just let it be? Can they just let go of their insane Jacobin rebellion now and let it fade into history? Then, kick back, recuperate, get their minds right, put their house and family in order, and move on as a legit political faction in a functioning republic? Or, do they burn the asylum down? The signals are troubling. They are chattering about Mr. Trump “using the military” against them in the months to come — as if the Abrams tanks were going to roll up to DNC headquarters and blast away. By now, you know that such thoughts expressed by Democratic pols and news pals are always projections of their own wishes. The New York Times published just such a classic paranoid projection exercise last week “. . . telling Americans that if he [Trump] wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy.”

Surely it is too late, with early voting well underway, to stop any ballot harvesting and other election shenanigans as engineered by master fraudster Marc Elias. In fact, frauds are already being discovered (e.g., Lancaster County, PA.) Not a good look. It is exactly what a conspiracy (to commit election fraud) means in law, and the actual people who cooked the ballots and transported them are going to rat-out those who instructed them to do it. Wait for that, and wait for it to pop up elsewhere around the country. This time, watchers are watching, much more carefully.

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Stockman knows his numbers. Take the following, and then remember (you too, David) that Elon Musk says he can save $2 trillion on spending.

“Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage..”

• Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)

In the last weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump is slicing and dicing the Federal income tax nearly as fast as he served up fries at the McDonald’s drive-thru window last weekend. So far, he has proposed to extend the lower rates, family tax credits, and investment incentives of the 2017 Tax Act after they expire in 2025 and to also exempt tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime wages from the Federal income tax. Those items alone would generate a revenue loss of $9 trillion over the next decade, but he has recently proposed to also exempt firefighters, police officers, military personnel, and veterans from the Federal income tax as well. We estimate the latter would cost another $2.5 trillion in revenue loss over 10 years. As it happens, there are 370,000 firemen, 708,000 policemen, 2.86 million uniformed military personnel, and 18.0 million veterans in the US.

These 22 million citizens have an estimated average income of $82,000 per year, which translates to about $60,000 each of AGI (adjusted gross income). At an average income tax rate of 14.7% these exclusions would generate $250 billion per year of reduced income tax payments. In all, Trump has thus tossed out promises to cut income taxes by $11.5 trillion over the next 10-year budget window. In turn, these sweeping reductions would amount to upwards of 34% of CBO’s estimated baseline income tax revenue of $33.7 trillion over the period. Alas, even in the halcyon days of Reagan supply-side tax cutting no one really dreamed of eliminating fully one-third of the so-called crime of 1913 (the 16th Amendment which enabled the income tax).

10-Year Revenue Loss:
Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts: $5.350 trillion.
Exempt overtime income: $2.000 trillion.
End Taxation of Social Security benefits: $1.300 trillion.
Exempt Tip income: $300 billion.
Exempt Income of Firemen, Policemen, Military and Veterans: $2.500 trillion.
Trump Total Revenue Loss: $11.500 trillion.
CBO Income Tax Baseline Revenue: $33.700 trillion.
Trump Revenue Loss As % of Baseline: 34%.

Then again, Trump may have something virtually epic in mind. To wit, scrapping the income tax entirely in favor of taxing consumption via levies on imported goods and merchandise. “In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for Fox & Friends. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.” The New York Times is deeply alarmed: “The former president has repeatedly praised a period in American history when there was no income tax, and the country relied on tariffs to fund the government.” Actually, however, 19th-century America was even smarter than Trump realizes.

In 1900 total Federal spending amounted to just 3.5% of GDP because back then America was still a peaceful republic and had no Warfare State or even significant standing army at all. And save for the most advanced precincts of Europe, the Welfare State hadn’t yet been invented, either. So, yes, the so-called “revenue tariffs” of the 19th century did meet the income needs of the Federal government to the point of actually balancing the budget year after year between 1870 and 1900. Indeed, the actual annual surpluses were large enough to pay down most of the Civil War debt, to boot. Today, of course, the Warfare State, Welfare State, and the Washington pork barrels account for 25% of GDP. So Trump may be directionally correct in wanting to tax consumption rather than income, but, as usual, he’s off by about seven orders of magnitude when it comes to the size of the Federal budget that needs to be financed.

Still, Trump has stepped up to the plate when it comes to a 21st-century version of the revenue tariff. He has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports. Based on current US import levels of $3.5 trillion per year from worldwide sources and $450 billion from China, Trump’s tariffs would generate about $900 billion of receipts per annum. To be sure, Trump’s claim that these giant tariffs would be paid for by Chinamen, Mexicans, and European socialists is just more of his standard baloney. Tariffs are paid for by consumers, but that’s actually the hidden virtue of the Tariff Man’s favorite word. The truth is, government should be paid for via taxation on current citizens, not fobbed off in the form of giant debts on future citizens, born and unborn.

So if we are going to have Big Government at 25% of GDP rather than a 19th-century government at 3.5% of GDP, and Trump is a Big Government Man if there ever was one, better that the burden be placed on consumption, not production, income, and investment. After all, today the “makers” get hit good and hard by the current exceedingly lopsided income tax system. Thus, the top 1% pays 46% of income taxes, while the top 5% pays 66% and the top 10% pays 76% of all income taxes. On the other end, by contrast, the bottom 50% pays just 2.3% of individual income taxes, while 40% of all families pay no income tax at all. In any event, the math works out such that the proposed Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage and collection rate. So that’s a big step in the direction of fiscal solvency rather than more UniParty free lunches.

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“They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses..”

• Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Democratic rival Kamala Harris of misleading voters by attracting them to a rally in the belief that they would see a performance by pop superstar Beyonce. Over 30,000 people turned up at the Democratic event on Friday in Houston, Texas, with some expecting a free concert after it was announced that Beyonce would be present. MSNBC and the Washington Post reported ahead of the rally that the superstar singer would appear with Harris during the event, while NBC cited a source as saying that Beyonce was “also expected to perform.” Beyonce earlier approved the use of her song ‘Freedom’ as a soundtrack for the Harris campaign. The 43-year-old Houston native did take to the stage at the event with her former Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, before announcing that she was there as a mother and not as an entertainer.

In a speech that lasted less than five minutes, Beyonce urged rallygoers to support abortion rights, after Harris called on voters to “mobilize” on November 5 in support of reproductive freedom. “It’s time for America to sing a new song,” Beyonce added. “Our voices sing a chorus of unity. They sing a song of dignity and opportunity. Are y’all ready to add your voice to the new American song,” the singer said, welcoming Harris onto the stage. Speaking at a Michigan rally on Saturday, Trump hit out at the apparent failure of the Harris campaign to meet supporters’ expectations. “Beyonce went up and spoke for a couple of minutes and then left, and the place went crazy,” Trump stated, adding that “they booed the hell out of everybody.”

“They thought she was going to perform… it’s crazy. They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses. We don’t send buses. Everybody comes. We’re just going to make America great again. It’s very simple,” the former president added. Tim Murtaugh, a senior adviser to Trump, claimed that organizers of the Democratic rally had “lied to build a crowd.” While the front rows at the rally appeared supportive as Harris proceeded with her speech after seeing Beyonce off the stage, clips on social media indicated booing and heckling at the back, with some apparently leaving the venue in disappointment. The vice president has been backed by American pop sensation Taylor Swift as well as Usher, Eminem, and Cardi B, while Trump has received endorsements from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, rapper 50 Cent, and popular journalist Tucker Carlson.

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“Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction..”

• Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)

Donald Trump will leave the enforcement of any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to European powers, one of the former US president’s advisers has told the Financial Times. The plan is one of several floated by Trump’s advisers and allies, all of which involve the US refusing to deal with the aftermath of the conflict. Trump has promised to bring a rapid end to the ongoing conflict if he is elected president in November. However, he has offered few specifics as to how he would do this, save for pressing Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky into peace talks with US aid to Kiev as leverage. In the absence of any concrete peace plan, a host of Trump’s current and former advisers have outlined how they think the former president could achieve this goal.

One unnamed “long-term Trump adviser” told the Financial Times on Monday that the Republican candidate could resolve the conflict with “a reimagining of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015,” under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the majority Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. This time around, the adviser said, the deal would be enforced by EU peacekeepers. “There are two things America will insist on,” he said. “We will not have any men or women in the enforcement mechanism. We’re not paying for it. Europe is paying for it.” Reviving the Minsk agreements would likely present several major challenges.

After multiple European leaders admitted that they never intended to abide by the 2014 and 2015 agreements, Moscow does not believe that the EU can play the role of honest broker, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month. Furthermore, Donetsk and Lugansk – along with Kherson and Zaporozhye – have since joined the Russian Federation, and any peace deal must take into account this “territorial reality,” the Kremlin has said. Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who served in Trump’s White House, told the British newspaper that the US could “freeze the conflict” along the current front line, and negotiate a lasting settlement with Russia at a later date. Ukraine would not give up its territorial claims in the meantime, Fleitz said, explaining that this plan counts on delaying a final agreement until “Putin leaves the stage.”

However, Fleitz conceded that he does not speak for Trump and does not know the former president’s foreign policy plans. The most detailed proposal has been put forward by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Speaking to former US Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan last month, Vance said that the current frontline could be demilitarized and fortified, ensuring that “Russia doesn’t invade again.” In exchange, “Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The current American policy of “throw[ing] money at this problem, [and] hope[ing] the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory” is “stupid,” Vance told Ryan.

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“I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

• I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)

The US is not at war with Russia and should not seek one, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance has said, when asked whether he would brand President Vladimir Putin an “enemy” of America. The senator from Ohio was asked during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether he saw the Russian leader “as an ally or an enemy.” Putin is “clearly an adversary, he is a competitor,” but Washington needs to be “smart about diplomacy too,” Vance responded. ”Just because we don’t like somebody doesn’t mean that we can’t occasionally engage in conversations with them,” he suggested. Host Kristen Welker pushed him further on whether he would directly refer to Putin as an enemy. ”We are not at war with him. And I don’t want to be at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” the senator said. “I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

The same logic applies to China, Vance said, adding that he perceives it as a greater threat to American interests than Russia. The US may not like having to talk to its rivals, but in the case of the Ukraine conflict, resolving it will require negotiations, the senator pointed out. When asked whether former President Donald Trump would take the US out of NATO, Vance assured that he wouldn’t. If his running mate returns to office, the country will honor its commitment to the organization, but the bloc “is not just a welfare client, it should be a real alliance,” he said. Vance was referring to Trump’s criticism of insufficient defense spending by its European members.

Moscow has identified NATO’s enlargement in Europe as a threat to its national security and a key reason for the deterioration of relations with the West. The organization’s increasing involvement in Ukraine since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev and promise to bring Ukraine into the fold have contributed in a major way to setting off the ongoing hostilities, Russian officials have said. The current Democratic administration has pledged to stand by Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia and has pushed other nations to do the same. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Ukraine aid, Kiev’s troops are currently retreating along many parts of the front. Trump has claimed while campaigning that he would end the hostilities in 24 hours, if elected.

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“..he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education..”

• University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be the single most divisive election in our history. The public is split right down the middle with almost every group splintering between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. There is, however, one group that seems almost unanimous: professors. A new survey of more than 1,000 professors shows that seventy-eight percent will vote for Harris and only eight percent will vote for Trump. Other than a poll of the Democratic National Committee, there are few groups that are more reliably Democratic or liberal. For anyone in higher education, the result is hardly surprising. The poll tracks what we already know about the gradual purging of departments around the country of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting professors.

Indeed, the lack of political and intellectual diversity may be turning some donors and even applicants from higher education. With failing revenue and applications, universities are starting to re-embrace commitments to neutrality on political issues. Some, however, are doubling down on advocacy and orthodoxy. In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality” and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality “a retreat,” Roth compared Trump’s election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.” He added, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, that “we should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan.”

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values. So not only are professors voting en mass for Harris, Roth would have the schools themselves work openly for her election. That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many who are facing rising high tuition costs with relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views. There are obviously many reasons why faculty may reject Trump specifically, but this poll also tracks more generally the self-identification and contributions of faculty. A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

Notably, Roth acknowledged that the current lack of intellectual diversity in higher education had become so extreme that there might be a need for “an affirmative action program for conservatives.” However, he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education in calling for even greater political advocacy. There is little evidence that faculty members have any interest in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.

Recently, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity. This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges. Harvard has long dismissed calls for greater free speech protections or intellectual diversity. It shows.

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University professors are not the only group with such an outsized bias. MSM editors and writers have it just as much. And Bezos will not solve that by withholding an endorsement. His hiring practices need to change. Or his paper is toast.

• Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)

The Washington Post has abandoned its decades-long tradition of endorsing a US presidential candidate to earn back the trust of the American public, the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, has said. He explained his reasoning in an op-ed published by the Post on Monday after facing intense backlash from current and former staff. The newspaper has been endorsing candidates since 1976, but announced the suspension of the practice on Friday, prompting several editors to resign. The Post’s editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. According to CNN, the Post’s staffers had drafted an endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, which was ultimately not approved by the management. Bezos began his Monday’s op-ed by citing a recent Gallup poll, which found that nearly 70% of Americans have little or no trust in the media.

“Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” the entrepreneur wrote, adding that “most people believe the media is biased.” “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he continued. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” The founder of Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin admitted that the decision to drop endorsements so close to Election Day on November 5 was the result of “inadequate planning.” At the same time, he insisted that neither campaign had affected his decision-making, and that the move to abandon endorsements was not connected to last week’s meeting between Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, and Blue Origin top executives in Austin, Texas.

A total of 21 of the Post’s opinion columnists signed a statement, describing the non-endorsement as “a terrible mistake.” They argued that “this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.” Three of the newspaper’s 10-person editorial board have since stepped down. More than 200,000 people – or about 8% of the Post’s paid subscribers – had canceled their digital subscription by midday on Monday, according to NPR. The decision to end endorsements was criticized by many prominent journalists, including the Post’s former longtime executive editor Marty Baron.

Last month, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, announced that the newspaper would also not be making presidential endorsements. The move faced similar backlash, with editorials editor Mariel Garza resigning in protest. Throughout his campaign, Trump has blasted “the lying media” for what he said was a long history of unfair coverage of him and his time in office. The Harris campaign and allies have similarly accused pro-Trump media outlets of amplifying “desinformation.”

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“The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.”

• Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump’s ally Steve Bannon will be released from prison on Tuesday, exactly one week ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison at a federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2022 after he was convicted by a jury on two Contempt of Congress charges for not complying with a congressional subpoena. A judge had allowed Bannon, who was a first-time offender, to delay his sentence while he appealed the convictions but was eventually ordered to report to prison in July. The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.

Sam Mangel, Bannon’s prison consultant, told ABC News on Monday that Bannon taught U.S. history and government to other inmates while he was behind bars, and that he was respected by other inmates. “I’m sure he’s quite glad to put it behind him and move on with his life,” Mangel said. “From what I’m told, he feels he’s got a lot left to accomplish now.” Although Bannon will be released from the Connecticut prison, he still faces criminal charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud donors over the construction of a border wall on the United States southern border. That trial is scheduled for December, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.

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“..the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count..”

• How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)

Those who control the Democrat Party are concerned about Kamala’s election chances. Little wonder. She represents the most anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-white, anti-peace regime in US history. Top Democrats are concerned that Trump will not only take the swing states, despite the multiple theft mechanisms Democrats have in place, but also some blue states. Polls are revealing that a majority of men of color see Trump as a leader of America and Kamala as a destroyer of America. Those who control the Democrat party, most certainly not the people, are also disturbed by reports of the heavy early voting by Trump supporters. Trump encouraged early voting, because in 2020 Democrats managed to prevent many Trump supporters from voting on election day.

The downside to early voting by Trump supporters is it gives Democrats an idea how many votes they have to steal in order to “win.” It is a no-win situation for Trump supporters. If you wait until election day, voting machine failure, closed precincts, and other excuses can be used to keep you from voting. But if you vote early, you signal to the Democrats how many votes they have to steal. They are well set up to steal them. The Democrats in two swing states have already said that it will be days before they will have the vote count. These days are the time they need to produce the fraud that wins for them. A Democrat and a free election are mutually exclusionary. Arizona officials, for example, say it will take 2 weeks to tabulate the vote count. The Democrats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they are unable to declare election results for several days after the election.

Until 2020–the Big Steal–the US has not had a problem of producing a vote count on time. Why do Americans accept the election theft implied by a delayed vote count with ballot boxes coming in by the truck loads long after voting is closed? On October 14, I reported on this website that the Biden regime had issued one month before the presidential election a military directive 5240.01. The directive says the US military can be used to come to the aid of civilian police to quell domestic disturbance and can use lethal force against US citizens. I provided a link to the directive. Fourteen days later I have seen no mention of this directive in the presstitute media.

Now ask yourself where the authority comes from for an executive branch cabinet department to overturn an act of Congress. Where did the Biden regime Department of Defense get the authority to overturn American tradition and the Posse Comitatus Act? That there has been no protest against this illegal and unconstitutional Defense Department directive indicates how close the US is to a tyranny. As we learned from the hoax “Jan 6 Insurrection,” it is a simple matter for those in authority to declare “insurrections.” They can do it again. It has now been admitted that 200 federal agents were at work on January 6 trying to orchestrate an insurrection. Next time there will be 2,000. As the Democrats are in power, they can create an “insurrection” prior to the vote count.

[..] So, some of the swing states have said that election results will not be timely reported. When the results are misreported, the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count. Putin and Trump can be blamed for an insurrection orchestrated by the FBI, and the Democrats will be declared by the American whore media as the winner. This sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t.

Read more …

“Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around.”

• The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)

The limited strikes on Iran carried out by Israeli fighter-jets early on Saturday morning Tehran time above all demonstrated the constraints under which even this extremist Israeli government has to operate. The bombings are said to have been limited to military targets, including missile manufacturing facilities.The first constraint Israel faced was logistical. The Netanyahu government could not have its fighter jets fly straight to Iran, which would have allowed a more extensive set of attacks. Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around. They would have had to bring along large hulking refueling planes. This long, clumsy flight path limited what the Israelis could accomplish.

Extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier not ruled out hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities or its oil fields. Iran, however, essentially held the GCC countries hostage, warning that if US-backed Israel hit Iranian oil fields, Tehran would retaliate against US-backed Arab oil monarchies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration is trying to woo those countries into recognizing Israel, and having a berserker Israeli government draw them into hostilities with Iran would instead make these Arab countries flee both the US and the possible Israeli embrace. For some diplomatic purposes, as with detente with Iran, Saudi Arabia has already gone to China instead. According to Middle East Eye, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had announced Tuesday that Iran had been promised by the Gulf Arabs that they would not allow their air space or soil to be used for Israeli attacks on Iran. At the same time, Joe Biden pressured Israel not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields.

I view Netanyahu as an adventurer who has been attempting to widen the war so as to force the Biden administration to support him. Although Iran backs Hamas, the CIA assessed that the ayatollahs had no idea Hamas was planning to carry out the October 7 attacks, and, indeed, that the Iranian leadership had declined to support Hamas during the past year precisely because they were furious that Yahya Sinwar had tried to drag them into a war without so much as consulting them. Iran also put pressure on Hezbollah not to provoke a war with Israel. That is, though Iran certainly supports anti-Israel guerrilla groups in the region and enjoys harassing the Israelis through them and their rockets and drones, it doesn’t appear to have acted aggressively given the ferocity of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza.

Netanyahu struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus last spring in an obvious attempt to bring Iran into the war, and Iran replied with a missile barrage that the US shot down. Then this summer Netanyahu assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the civilian head of the Hamas Party politburo (which is not the same as the al-Qassam Brigades paramilitary). The assassination was carried out in Tehran, in a clear attempt to get Iran’s goat. Likewise, Netanyahu’s creepy pager booby trap attack on Hezbollah personnel (and some Iranians, such as the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon) and his assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in September were in part aimed at humiliating Iran. Iran’s October 1 missile barrage at Israel was mostly shot down by the US, but some missiles got through and one hit an Israeli military base. This attack was revenge for the killings of Haniyeh and Nasrallah.

Israel’s riposte was so limited that it might well not elicit any response from Iran, drawing a line under this phase of the Israel-Iran conflict. But Netanyahu was forced into a limited response by the Arab Gulf states (two of which –Bahrain and the Emirates– recognize Israel) and by the Biden administration. The refusal of overflight permissions by the GCC states also limited what Israel could accomplished with its F-35s. I view Iran’s missile program as largely defensive. They have used it against Israel twice this year, and both came in response to Israeli provocations (provocations that I believe to be deliberate on Netanyahu’s part). Israel has made the point that its jets can now reach Iran with extensive refueling. Iran has made the point that a swarm of missile attacks can penetrate Israel’s missile defenses and hit an Israeli military base.

Each side is seeking some form of deterrence against the other, a deterrence that has broken down this year because of Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon and its anti-missile defenses. I think Iran will be satisfied if it feels that a restoration of deterrence has been achieved. I don’t think Netanyahu is defending; I think he is attacking and attempting to expand his influence in the region. For that reason, it will be difficult to reestablish deterrence between the two countries. For the moment, however, all-out war seems to have been averted.

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“..BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south..”

• BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)

The not so simple twists of fate always allow certain cities to make their mark in History in ineffable ways. Yalta. Bretton Woods. Bandung – a 1955 de-colonization staple. And now Kazan. The BRICS summit in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, under the Russian presidency was historic in more ways than one – followed with riveting attention by the whole Global Majority and with perplexity by a great deal of the declining Western order. It did not change the world – not yet. But Kazan should be seen as the departing station of a high-speed train journey towards the emerging multi-nodal new order. The metaphor was also spatial: the pavilions at the Kazan Expo center “station” holding the summit simultaneously connected to the airport and to the aero-express train to the city. The rippling effects of BRICS 2024 in Kazan will be perceived for weeks, months and years ahead. Let’s start with the breakthroughs.

The Kazan Manifesto
1.The Kazan Declaration. That is no less than a detailed diplomatic manifesto. Yet because BRICS is not a revolutionary agent – as its members do not share an ideology – arguably the next best strategy is to propose real reform, from the UN Agenda 2030 to the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the WHO and the G20 (whose summit is next month in Rio). The kernel of the Kazan Declaration – which had been debated for months – is to move in practice towards in-depth institutional changes and to reject Hegemony. The Declaration will be presented to the UN Security Council. There’s no doubt the Hegemon will reject it. This paragraph sums up the reform drive: “We condemn the attempts to subject development to discriminatory politically motivated practices, including but not limited to unilateral coercive measures that are incompatible with the 5 principles of the UN Charter, explicit or implied political conditionality of development assistance, activities, aiming at compromising the multiplicity of international development assistance providers.”

2. The BRICS Outreach session. That was Bandung 1955 on macro-steroids: a microcosm of how the new, really de-colonized, non-unilateral world is being born. President Putin opened and handed the floor to the leaders and heads of delegations of other 35 nations, most at the highest level, including Palestine, plus the UN Secretary General. Quite a few speeches were nothing short of epic. The session lasted 3h25. It will be circulating all across the Global Majority for years. The session tied up with the announcement of the new 13 BRICS partners: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkiye, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam. A strategic tour de force including 4 Southeast Asian powerhouses; the top two Central Asian “stans”; 3 Africans; 2 Latin Americans, and NATO member Turkiye.

3. The Russian BRICS presidency itself. Arguably no other nation would have been able to pull off such a complex and impeccably organized summit, held after over 200 BRICS-related meetings throughout the year across Russia conducted by unnamed sherpas, members of working groups and the BRICs Business Council. Security was massive – for obvious reasons, considering the odds of a false flag/terrorist attack.

4. Connectivity corridors. That is the main geoeconomic theme of Eurasia integration, and Afro-Eurasia integration as well. Putin explicitly named, more than once, the new growth drivers of the near future: Southeast Asia and Africa. Both happen to be key partners of several high-profile Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Additionally, Putin named the top two connectivity corridors of the future: the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese describe as the Arctic Silk Road – and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), where the three drivers are BRICS members Russia, Iran and India. So that translates as BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south, with ramifications in all latitudes. And with all the energy add-ons, with Iran positioning itself as a crucial energy hub, opening the finally feasible possibility of building the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, one of the unfinished sagas of what I described in the early 2000s as Pipelineistan.

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“..because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.”

• Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May, has revealed that he faced a potential second attempt on his life, due to his stance on the Ukraine conflict. Fico was shot at close range by an activist who opposed the PM’s views on relations with Kiev. An armed man was detained at an event commemorating a World War II battle in eastern Slovakia in early October, the prime minister revealed in an interview to Bratislava-based internet outlet Standard on Sunday. Fico said the man “hates” him because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.” According to the prime minister, “a fully loaded weapon” was found on the suspect when he passed through a metal detector. The event in question was held on October 6 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Dukla Pass between German and Soviet forces on the border with Poland. The celebrations were attended by Fico, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, and members of the government and parliament.

Fico has been an outspoken critic of the EU’s policy of providing lethal aid to Ukraine in its fight with Russia, calling instead for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. In May, Fico was shot four times at close range by a man who, according to Slovakia’s Special Criminal Court, was largely motivated by the decision by the prime minister and his government not to send arms to Ukraine. “I was lucky,” Fico told Standard, commenting on the shooting. He went on to describe the alleged shooter, Juraj Cintula, as a political activist who had attended Fico’s public meetings while “probably” planning the attack. Following the shooting, Fico argued that the assassination attempt emanated from foreign-backed politicians who refuse to accept his government’s policies that prioritize Slovakia’s interests over the agendas of major Western powers.

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“Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country..”

• Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

Volkswagen is looking to significantly reduce its workforce in Germany and shut down several factories in the country, amid a major overhaul aimed at lowering costs and increasing return on sales, the head of the carmaker’s Works Council has announced. Daniela Cavallo explained to employees in Wolfsburg on Monday that Volkswagen management is “absolutely serious” about the plans and that the move is “not saber-rattling in the collective bargaining round,” Reuters reported. Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country. The last time it shut down any of its facilities was in 1988 in the US. “It is a firm intention to let the locations’ regions bleed dry and the clear intention to send tens of thousands of Volkswagen employees into mass unemployment,” Cavallo said.

Her comments come as the automotive giant has been negotiating for several weeks with unions over plans to overhaul its business in order to remain competitive in light of weaker demand from China and Europe. She did not specify which of the ten Volkswagen plants operating in Germany would be shut down or exactly how many of its roughly 300,000 workers in the country would be laid off, but noted that all remaining facilities would be affected by the changes and that “none of them are safe.” Cavallo also stated that Volkswagen management is demanding a 10% pay cut and no pay raises for the next two years. Cavallo stressed, however, that the German government must urgently come up with a plan to ensure that the country’s economy does not “go down the drain.”

She noted that Volkswagen and other European companies are in agreement as to the nature of the problems they are facing, such as slower-than-expected electric transition as well as fierce competition from Chinese automotive brands entering Europe. “We are not far apart when it comes to analyzing the problems. But we are miles apart on the answers to them,” Cavallo said. Earlier this month, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that the German economy is expected to contract for a second year in a row as it struggles to keep up with soaring energy costs after cutting itself off from Russian gas. Over the past year, the German government has noted a 5.3% drop in the country’s industrial output as orders for domestic-made goods have also plummeted. Experts at the Berlin-based Forum for a New Economy have warned that Germany’s failures are expected to turn the 2020s into a “lost decade” for the country as it suffers “the worst economic downturn since World War II.”

Read more …

 

 

 

Oxi

 

 

Makary

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850974386528166152

 

 

Crow
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850822295465369739

 

 

Peggy and Molly

 

 

Squid

 

 

Good old days

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 26 2024

Oct 262024
 
 October 26, 2024  Posted by at 8:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  100 Responses »


Joseph Mallord William Turner The Sun Rising over Water 1825-30

 

• WaPo Bails On Kamala – Won’t Make Presidential Endorsement (ZH)
• Preparing for the Steal (TON)
• Hillary Clinton: Trump Is Reenacting 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi Rally (MN)
• Elon Musk Makes Major Donations To Help Republicans Take Back The Senate (JTN)
• ‘Secret Putin-Musk Calls” Claim By WSJ Dismissed By Kremlin (RT)
• Trump Requests Dismissal Of January 6 Case Over Jack Smith’s Appointment (JTN)
• Trump Open To Pardoning Hunter Biden (RT)
• Projected Trump Victory Driving Demand For Dollars – Standard Chartered (RT)
• Arizona Officials: Nearly 2 Weeks to Tabulate 2024 Election in Maricopa (ET)
• Judge Rules Bill Gates Must Face Vaccine-Injured in Dutch Court (Nevradakis)
• West Has Self-Isolated and Condemned Itself to Irrelevance – Doctorow (Sp.)
• BRICS+, What’s Next? (Pacini)
• UK Military ‘Not Ready To Fight’ – Defense Secretary (RT)
• British Government’s Investigation Of Novichok Is Poisoning Itself (Helmer)
• UK Snubs Council of Europe Over Assange Inquiry (DC.UK)
• This Is an Extermination’ (Muaddi)
• Kill Them All: Israel’s Extermination Of Palestinians In Gaza (Cradle)

 

 


Kirzhach Typography BRICS banknote design

 

 

Beck Rogan

 

 

Full 3 hour interview.

 

 

O’Leary

Vivek

Tulsi

Mika

Atlantic

Hillary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849679481620865142

Elon nazism

Nordstream
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849701546683990305

 

 

 

 

It’s Bezos of course. Doesn’t want to be on the losing side. “..for the first time in 36 years. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates..”

• WaPo Bails On Kamala – Won’t Make Presidential Endorsement (ZH)

Three weeks ago, the Teamsters Union became the second major union to announce that they would not endorse a presidential candidate after internal polling revealed 58% of its members back Trump vs. 31% for Harris. That was understandable – their own members overwhelmingly rejected Harris. This is different. On Friday, the Washington Post announced that it would not endorse a candidate for president either, for the first time in 36 years. “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” the outlet said in a statement. Colleagues are said to be ‘shocked’ at the decision, according to NPR.

The editorial page editor, David Shipley, told colleagues that the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, would publish a note to readers online early Friday afternoon. Shipley told colleagues the editorial board was told yesterday by management that there would not be an endorsement. He added that he “owns” this decision. The reason he cited was to create “independent space” where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote. Colleagues were said to be “shocked” and uniformly negative. Post corporate spokespeople have not responded to multiple messages left by NPR on the subject. As NPR’s David Folkenflik notes on X, “It is not clear whether Post owner Jeff Bezos or Publisher/CEO Will Lewis made the call.” The move comes after the Los Angeles Times similarly declined to endorse Harris – leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor, Marzel Garza.

Read more …

“..a hand count of all ballots [..] could create chaos and confusion on Election Day..”

• Preparing for the Steal (TON)

Georgia, the site of massive election misinformation, questionable results, incomplete audits and a mysterious come-from-behind razor-thin win by Joe Biden in 2020, appears to be at it again. Or perhaps we should say Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is at it again. Kylie Jane Kremer brought the matter to our attention through a series of posts on X. As Kremer notes, “Raffensperger sent an email, in a private capacity, that went to a list of trial lawyers across Georgia soliciting $5 million by November 1st to help in his effort for a 501(c)4 called “Election Defense Fund”, asking lawyers to donate or contact him via his private gmail account & personal cell phone number.” In the email, Raffensperger claimed that “Election deniers and conspiracy theorists have taken their anger to new levels, employing a variety of tactics including intimidation, legal challenges, and rule changes.

“In Georgia they have threatened, harassed, and sued election officials. And as you know, most recently the Georgia State Election Board was taken over by three individuals who have pledged to put partisanship over sworn duty.” Raffensperger appears to be referring to (and trying to intimidate) the three Republican members of Georgia’s five -person State Election Board, Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King. Raffensperger also appears to be attempting to intimidate and silence anyone who might challenge the outcome of Georgia’s 2024 presidential election. On September 20th, Johnston, Jeffares and King voted in favor of requiring a hand count of all ballots to ensure that the number of physical ballots equaled the machine count total at the precinct level. This new rule was opposed by Georgia state elections officials, including Raffensperger, who said it could create chaos and confusion on Election Day.

In advance of the vote by the State Election Board, Raffensperger issued a formal statement, claiming that “Activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process undermine voter confidence and burden election workers… misguided attempts by the State Election Board will delay election results and undermine chain of custody safeguards. Georgia voters reject this 11th hour chaos, and so should the unelected members of the State Election Board.” If you find it odd that Raffensperger would refer to his three fellow Republicans as “activists” while he worked to thwart common-sense changes that would dramatically increase the security of Georgia’s 2024 election, you’re not alone.

Raffensperger was apparently so concerned that he rushed to CNN-affiliate WSB, breathlessly claiming that “the State Election Board wants to take us back in time. I guess what they want is to see elections take until 3 a.m. like in Detroit, Michigan. We don’t want to do that in Georgia. Not on my watch.” Although the move by the three Georgia Republicans had the support of President Trump, lawsuits were immediately filed – and on October 16th a Georgia court blocked the rule changes, inexplicably declaring that they were “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

Read more …

Are they sychronizing these claims?

• Hillary Clinton: Trump Is Reenacting 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi Rally (MN)

Bitter presidential loser Hillary Clinton has claimed that Donald Trump is purposefully reenacting a 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. Appearing on CNN, Hillary stated “One other thing that you‘ll see next week is Trump actually re-enacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.” “I write about this in my book,” she added, hawking her turgid scribe. “President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazi fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany,” Hillary declared. So basically she’s saying that everyone who goes to Trump rallies is a nazi because she disagrees with their politics.

This stuff doesn’t work on anyone anymore. It actually just helps Trump now. Every time they say this, it exposes them. As we previously highlighted, a New York State Senator attempted to get the event at Madison Square Garden shut down, also equating it to the infamous Nazi rally. Democrats bravely defending democracy again by attempting to shut down the free speech of a major political party’s presidential nominee. The Senator claimed that the Trump event will “incite violence” and demanded (his actual words) that the venue cancel it to “keep our city safe.”

Read more …

At Polymarket, the Senate looks in the bag. The House, not so much.

• Elon Musk Makes Major Donations To Help Republicans Take Back The Senate (JTN)

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk has made multi-million dollar donations to help Republicans win back the Senate in November, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. Musk has emerged as a major voice for conservatives this election cycle, having aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump. Musk, who purchased X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, gave Trump his social media account back shortly after buying it, and endorsed the former president in August. The multi-billionaire donated $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund on Oct 1, according to Politico, and $2.4 million to The Sentinel Action Fund, which is a super Political Action Committee (PAC) that has been promoting several GOP Senate candidates. The Senate Leadership Fund is connected to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Republicans are hoping to keep control of the House and win back the Senate next month. They only need to flip two Senate seats in order to win the upper chamber. Musk also gave $300,000 to a group connected to the National Republican Congressional Committee in August. The money comes as the tech CEO builds his own super PAC called “America PAC,” which has devoted its resources on canvassing operations for Trump. Musk has poured $75 million into the PAC. Musk is worth an estimated $269 billion as of Thursday, according to Forbes. The bulk of his finances comes from Tesla, where he owns 13% of the shares. But he also owns a good share of SpaceX, which is worth over $200 billion.

Read more …

Another weird story.

• ‘Secret Putin-Musk Calls” Claim By WSJ Dismissed By Kremlin (RT)

A article in the Wall Street Journal alleging that Elon Musk has secretly made contact with Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials is untrue and is most likely linked to the entrepreneur’s involvement in the US presidential election, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The American billionaire and the Russian president had a single phone call before the Ukraine conflict escalated into full-blown hostilities in February 2022, Peskov told journalists, repeating what he had told the WSJ. ”Most likely, it’s just disinformation in the extremely confrontational electoral political fight [in the US]. The race is in its final phase, and the opponents do not shy away from anything,” the official suggested. The WSJ piece published on Thursday, mostly detailed Musk’s role as a private contractor for the US military and national security state, his stance on the Ukraine conflict and support for the Trump reelection campaign.

The newspaper claimed that the billionaire’s public statements about resolving the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which he has been making since late 2022, “mirrored some aspects of the Kremlin’s” position. The article cites “current and former US, European and Russian officials” who allegedly claim the calls, “a closely held secret in government,” have taken place. Several White House officials also reportedly told the outlet they weren’t aware of such contacts. The only Russian source cited in the text is a “former intelligence officer briefed on the situation,” who claimed that late last year Putin asked Musk not to activate the Starlink satellite system in Taiwan as a favor to Beijing. Musk’s SpaceX has no license to provide internet services in Taiwan, the newspaper noted.

In addition to Putin, the report claims that Musk has also been in contact with former Russian Prime Minister Sergey Kirienko, who currently serves as deputy head of the presidential administration. The billionaire declined to comment on the allegations, the WSJ said. Just weeks ago, there were allegations that Trump had been secretly in touch with Putin, and now it is Musk, Peskov told reporters, referring to a book by US journalist Bob Woodward, in which he claims a source told him that since leaving office, the Republican politician has spoken to the Russian leader on multiple occasions. Trump and Putin have both denied the claim.

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“Trump’s lawyers claimed that Smith was appointed by Garland as a “private citizen.”

• Trump Requests Dismissal Of January 6 Case Over Jack Smith’s Appointment (JTN)

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Thursday asked a judge to dismiss the January 6 case against him, arguing that special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, according to The Hill. Smith was not confirmed by the Senate but was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith has been leading two investigations into the former president, including a classified documents case that was dismissed earlier this year. However Smith is appealing the dismissal. The request was made to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., and centers around the same argument made in the classified documents case. Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that no legal statute gave Garland the authority to give Smith the amount of power he has as special counsel, and that the appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.

Trump’s lawyers claimed that Smith was appointed by Garland as a “private citizen.” “The proposed motion establishes that this unjust case was dead on arrival — unconstitutional even before its inception,” Trump’s attorneys wrote on Thursday. “Everything that Smith did since Attorney General Garland’s appointment, as President Trump continued his leading campaign against President Biden and then Vice President Harris, was unlawful and unconstitutional.” Trump is currently facing four charges in D.C., related to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Smith has until Oct. 31 to file a response.

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Hunter must hope Trump wins: “[Joe Biden] is “not going to do anything” to help his son and has ruled out exonerating him”.

• Trump Open To Pardoning Hunter Biden (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has stated that he might consider pardoning Hunter Biden if he is reelected in November. Hunter Biden was found guilty in June of three felonies in a federal gun trial, including lying about his use of illicit drugs when applying to purchase a firearm. Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, with his sentencing to be determined in a hearing scheduled for November. Last month, the 53-year-old also pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges, and potentially faces an additional 17 years in prison. Following the verdict, US President Joe Biden has said that he respected the judicial process and was “satisfied” that his son had received a fair trial. He also noted that he is “not going to do anything” to help his son and has ruled out exonerating him.

Speaking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Trump was asked if he would pardon Hunter Biden. The former president replied by stating that he “wouldn’t take it off the books,” despite the US Justice Department initiating multiple legal challenges against him, which Trump has described as a form of retribution by his political opponents. Earlier this year, a Manhattan jury found the Republican candidate guilty on 34 felony counts related to alleged hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and his role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riots. The former president recalled that unlike his opponents, he had refrained from prosecuting his rival Hillary Clinton following the 2016 election despite his supporters asking him to. “I could have gone after Hillary,” Trump said, noting that he ultimately decided against doing so because he thought it “would look terrible.”

Trump noted, however, that Hunter Biden has been “a bad boy” and that “all you had to do is see the laptop from hell.” At the same time, he pointed out that the whole story revolving around the US President’s son is “very bad for our country.” In 2020, the contents of Hunter Biden’s personal laptop, which he supposedly misplaced in a Delaware repair shop while high on crack, were leaked online, implicating the Biden family in multiple foreign corruption schemes. US intelligence officials have since tried to denounce the scandal as “Russian disinformation” despite the contents of the laptop having been verified as authentic.

Read more …

“The dollar has strengthened along with the rising probability of a Trump win in betting markets..”

• Projected Trump Victory Driving Demand For Dollars – Standard Chartered (RT)

Increasing belief on the financial markets that Donald Trump will win the US presidential election next month has been strengthening the dollar, Bloomberg has reported, citing British multinational bank Standard Chartered. Recent polls suggest that the Republican and his Democratic rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, are tied with less than two weeks to go before the election. According to the bank’s calculations however, 60% of the greenback’s gains in October are linked to growing wagers that the former president will win the November 5 vote, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. “The dollar has strengthened along with the rising probability of a Trump win in betting markets,” the outlet reported, citing a note by Steven Englander, head of global G-10 FX research at British multinational bank Standard Chartered.

Markets are pricing a 70% chance of a Trump win, added Englander. The world’s largest prediction platform, Polymarket, is attributing a near 64% probability that Trump will become the next US president. According to market research project PredictIt, Trump has a 58% chance of winning the election. The US national currency has risen by nearly 3% against the Euro in the past month, with Bloomberg reporting earlier that the greenback was on pace for its best month since 2022. While the election race has reportedly been the main driver for the dollar, other factors include the resilience of the US economy and a strong US jobs report from earlier this month, noted Bloomberg. Before the previous presidential election in 2020, markets expected that Joe Biden, rather than Trump, would win and offer fiscal stimulus. The expectations weakened the dollar in October of that year.

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Before you know it, people think this is normal.

• Arizona Officials: Nearly 2 Weeks to Tabulate 2024 Election in Maricopa (ET)

Officials in Arizona’s most populous county warned on Oct. 22 that it may take between 10 and 13 days to tabulate the results of the Nov. 5 election. County officials are asking “for the community’s patience,” Maricopa County Deputy Elections Director Jennifer Liewer said in a press conference on Oct. 22. “This year, we do expect that it will take between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all of the ballots that come in,” she said. “We want to make sure that this is a secure process, but we also want to make sure that it is an accurate process.” Assistant Maricopa County Manager Zach Schira said at the press conference, “If I have one message for voters here today, it is this: that the longer ballots and higher interest in this 2024 general election will create longer lines on Election Day, and that’s okay.” Schira said that if people want to avoid the long lines, they are advised to vote by mail or early in person.

Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates said the tabulation may take so long because the ballot is two pages, there are dozens of contests per ballot, and there is heightened interest in the presidential election. He said more than 2.1 million Maricopa voters are expected to cast their ballot for the Nov. 5 contest, noting that 400,000 people so far have voted. The “top message for voters” on Oct. 22 is “if you want to save time and avoid lines, vote early,” the county wrote on social media platform X. Voters have until Oct. 25 to request an early ballot, it noted. Early voting data compiled by the University of Florida show that Republicans have a 38,000-vote advantage in terms of early voting in Arizona. Only mail-in ballots have been returned so far, but the data show that 41.9 percent of early ballots have been submitted by Republicans, compared with 36.3 by Democrats. Independent or third-party voters make up about 21.8 percent of the total.

Arizona, considered a battleground state, is again expected to be a close race during the 2024 election. State election officials in 2020 certified the race in Arizona for Joe Biden over President Donald Trump by a margin of about 11,000 votes. In the aftermath of the 2020 contest, Trump and other Republicans alleged that Arizona’s election was marred by voter fraud, sparking a number of lawsuits against Arizona and Maricopa County officials that were all ultimately dismissed. For that election, county officials certified the results 17 days after Election Day, according to a statement issued on Nov. 20, 2020. A significant number of voters cast ballots early in person or by mail in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stay-at-home and lockdown orders and rules.

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The case includes Bourla, but not Von der Leyen?!

• Judge Rules Bill Gates Must Face Vaccine-Injured in Dutch Court (Nevradakis)

A Netherlands judge last week ruled that Bill Gates must face seven people injured by COVID-19 vaccines in court in the Netherlands. According to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the seven “corona skeptics” sued Gates last year, along with former Dutch prime minister and newly appointed NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and “several members” of the Dutch government’s COVID-19 “Outbreak Management Team.” Other defendants include Albert Bourla, Ph.D., CEO of Pfizer, and the Dutch state. “Because Bill Gates’ foundation was involved in combating the corona pandemic, he has also been summoned,” De Telegraaf reported. According to Dutch independent news outlet Zebra Inspiratie, the plaintiffs allege that Gates, through his representatives, deliberately misled them about the safety of the COVID-19 shots, despite knowing “that these injections were not safe and effective.”

Dutch independent journalist Erica Krikke told The Defender that the seven plaintiffs — whose names are redacted in the lawsuit’s publicly available documents — “are ordinary Dutch people, and they have been jabbed and after the jabs they got sick.” Krikke said that of the seven original plaintiffs, one has since died, leaving the other six plaintiffs to continue the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Leeuwarden. According to De Telegraaf, “Gates had objected because, according to him, the judges did not have jurisdiction.” Accordingly, the court first “had to rule in the so-called incident procedure,” De Andere Krant reported. Zebra Inspiratie reported that the hearing in this “incident procedure” took place on Sept. 18 and that Gates’ representatives disputed jurisdiction, but not the claim. According to De Andere Krant, Gates was represented by the Pels Rijcken law firm, based in The Hague, described as “the largest and the premier litigation law firm in the Netherlands.”

Gates did not appear at the Sept. 18 hearing, but attorneys for Gates argued that the court “had no jurisdiction over him because he lives in the United States.” However, in its Oct. 16 ruling, the Leeuwarden court ruled it does have jurisdiction over Gates. De Andere Krant reported that the court found “sufficient evidence” that the claims against Gates and the other defendants are “connected” and based on the same “complex of facts.” Other defendants who reside outside of the Netherlands, including Bourla, did not challenge the court’s jurisdiction. The court ruled Gates must pay attorneys’ fees and additional legal costs totaling 1,406 euros (approximately $1,520). A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 27. ‘Even if … your name is Bill Gates, you still have to go to court’ In remarks shared with De Andere Krant, Arno van Kessel, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, welcomed the ruling. “In its verdict, the court has clearly recorded the basis of our conclusions of claim,” van Kessel said.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender it is “quite interesting” that the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in Leeuwarden instead of The Hague, where normally, all cases against the government related to COVID-19 are filed. “In general, COVID-19 court cases have been very unsuccessful in the Netherlands,” Terhorst said. “There is a slim chance it will be successful.” She added: “I think most judges support the COVID-19 vaccination agenda and will find it hard to believe the vaccinations have caused injuries. So, we have a long way to go, regardless of the case.” Krikke shared a more optimistic outlook, saying that the court sent a message that “even if you are rich and your name is Bill Gates, you still have to go to court.” New Zealand-based independent journalist Penny Marie, who has closely followed the proceedings in this case, told The Defender she hopes the Oct. 16 ruling “will hopefully set a precedent and help plaintiffs in similar cases around the world regarding jurisdiction,” in cases “where the defendant does not reside in the country of the plaintiff.”

“For parties who make claims against those involved in the implementation of the Great Reset and other international actions, such as the COVID-19 emergency response initiated by the WEF [World Economic Forum] and imposed on all U.N. member nations, I hope that this ruling provides an opportunity for others to follow suit,” Marie added. At the Sept. 18 hearing, plaintiffs also delivered statements. According to Zebra Inspiratie, “One of the victims, who is very ill, was also given the opportunity to make a plea. She was no longer able to speak and was represented by her father. It was an emotional plea.” Krikke said the plaintiff’s father told the court that his daughter, who was previously healthy, fell ill after getting the COVID-19 vaccine and could no longer speak, telling the judge that he “would really like to speak to Bill Gates directly” to ask him what happened to his daughter. “After that, the judge was really quiet,” Krikke said. The Oct. 18 ruling also addressed the plaintiffs’ claims about Gates’ role in the WEF’s “Great Reset” project.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also affiliated with the World Economic Forum … an international organization whose statutory objective is to unite ‘leaders from business, governments, academia and society at large into a global community committed to improving the state of the world,’” the ruling states, adding: “This is a project aimed at the total reorganization of societies in all countries that are members of the United Nations … as described by [WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab] in his book Covid-19: The Great Reset. … “Characteristic of this political ideology is that this forced and planned change is presented as justified by pretending that the world is suffering from major crises that can only be solved by centralized, hard global intervention. One of these pretended major crises concerns the Covid-19 pandemic.” The ruling also states, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is affiliated with ‘Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance‘ … an international partnership in the field of vaccinations between various public and private entities.”

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“That day will come very early in 2025 if Trump wins on 5 November; it will come with a slight delay in 2025 if Harris wins..”

• West Has Self-Isolated and Condemned Itself to Irrelevance – Doctorow (Sp.)

International relations analyst Gilbert Doctorow, in an interview with Sputnik, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s firm stance at the recent BRICS summit, highlighting Russia’s growing influence on the global stage despite Western efforts to isolate the country. Doctorow pointed out that the success of the summit, which brought together nations representing nearly half of the world’s population, demonstrates Russia’s strong global posture and the failure of anti-Russian sanctions. “Because of the important guests, numbering more than 25 heads of government, it has been impossible for major media in the West to ignore BRICS and Russia,” Doctorow said, noting how this undermines the narrative of Russia’s supposed isolation. The analyst further speculated how Russia leveraged its BRICS presidency to advance innovative goals, such as establishing commodity exchanges and a reinsurance pool, positioning the country as a constructive leader.

Doctorow emphasized that these achievements send a clear message: “Russia is not isolated; on the contrary, the Collective West has self-isolated and condemned itself to irrelevance.” “The BRICS message of a multipolar world, of respect for the sovereignty and unique cultures of each nation will surely have an impact on Europeans’ perception of Russia and of themselves,” Doctorow added, stressing the long-term significance of BRICS in shaping global politics. The analyst also predicted the Ukraine crisis will conclude in 2025, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election. “This will be all the more the case when the United States puts an end to the Ukraine war by withdrawing its financial and military assistance to Kiev. That day will come very early in 2025 if Trump wins on 5 November; it will come with a slight delay in 2025 if Harris wins because Congress will resist any further appropriations to Kiev,” Doctorow speculated.

Isolated

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“This is waging information warfare.”

• BRICS+, What’s Next? (Pacini)

The hype created for BRICS during this year has surpassed that for the U.S. elections, the outcome of which now will not be as binding as before. This is a fact. When 2024 opened, many were concerned about the great risks involved, having as many as 76 countries in the world in election session, with the U.S. dominating. The rhetoric of the hegemon, however, no longer works as it used to. Until a few years ago, everything that happened in the U.S. was of global interest, the press was ready to devote front pages and social media was filled with dedicated content, while financial markets went crazy at the slightest sign of instability or danger. Everyone was hanging on Lady USA’s every word. That is no longer the case today. One of the great successes in the infowarfare undertaken by the BRICS countries under Russia’s presidency is to have ousted America from its media centrality. Or, rather, at the center it has remained only in vassal countries, such as Europe or the Commonwealth.

But the rest of the world is no longer so interested, and the rest of the world is the majority of the world. This is a detail that needs more attention. True, the U.S. alone has a great deal of power, certainly greater than a great many other states; but the geometries of power vary cyclically, as History teaches us, and all empires sooner or later must come to terms with their denouement. The strategy undertaken, hand in hand with the geo-economic strategy, meant that the media attention of the “rest of the world” was tuned to facts and events that concerned the rest of the world, no longer the Hegemon. There’s a rest of the world, indeed, there is the world and the United States, and the West. The world is no longer “the West” to which “the rest” is added. The perspective has changed. In the media language it was a small semantic revolution whose echo will be ever greater.

The primary effect was a kind of disorientation, because people were not used to emphasizing news from certain areas of the planet. Nor was there sufficient training to do so. So it was that the BRICS countries first launched a series of national platforms for analysis and dissemination of information, and then started a BRICS-branded information apparatus, which was already very detailed, widespread and accurate, providing for the technical training of professionals. It was a matter of having to teach how to tell the world without being seduced by the mythological sirens of the Atlantic. The side effect is that a new generation of experts is on the horizon of a world to be described with different eyes, and as is well known, the main power of the mass media is to tell the world, that is, to give an image of it, describe it, create thought forms of what the world is and how to imagine it for the future.

The result we can say has been positive: in the countries of the multipolar world there is no longer the “America first” rule, and come the end of October there is no need to talk about the U.S. elections as the event of the year. On the other hand, one is aware that Harris or Trump, the problem of the U.S. remains the same, and in any case, neither competitor has any intention to dethrone Zionism, nor to participate at the Pax Multipolaris table. Still on infowarfare, Russia has played a master game. We had already talked about this months ago: the repeated announcement of the new BRICS currency with partial gold base, then of BRICS Pay, then of UNIT replacing SWIFT, then of the financial operations of the New Development Bank, repeatedly occurred always and only in conjunction with particular moments when the dollar market was to be destabilized, creating difficulties for the U.S.-U.K. and favoring BRICS investment and the process of de-dollarization.

It was very obvious and almost trivial that these new systems would not be activated as early as this year, because they require millimeter planning and transition times that are not immediate, especially since we are dealing with a large number of states with different currencies, different laws, different trade. The important thing to do was to promote the new system, scare the opponent, destabilize the market, persuading more and more countries to leave the orbit of a Western-centric system that is collapsing. This is waging information warfare.

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“..very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. What we have not been ready to do is to fight..”

• UK Military ‘Not Ready To Fight’ – Defense Secretary (RT)

The UK military is unprepared to fight in a major conflict and would not be able to deter the enemy if a war breaks out now, British Defense Secretary John Healey has acknowledged. The British army, navy and air force have been “hollowed out” and “underfunded” during the 14 years of the Conservative Party’s rule, Healey said in his appearance on Politico’s Power Play podcast on Thursday. When the UK Labour Party came to power in July, “we expected things to be in a poor state – but the state of the finances, the state of the forces, was far worse than we thought,” he added. “The UK, in keeping with many other nations, has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. What we have not been ready to do is to fight. Unless we are ready to fight, we are not in shape to deter,” the defense secretary stressed.

“This is at the heart of the NATO thinking. We have got to not just be capable of defending our NATO nations, but more importantly we have got to be more effective in the deterrence we provide against any future aggression,” he added. Britain and other members of the US-led military bloc need to “innovate” and “take the new technologies and some of the lessons from Ukraine and make what we do more lethal and therefore a stronger deterrence,” Healey said. When asked to comment on the defense secretary’s statement, a spokesman for the Labour government insisted that “this Government will always do what is required to defend the country. The UK’s Armed Forces are amongst the best in the world and offer a 24/7 defense of the UK, operating alongside our allies and partners to prepare for any event.”

“The Strategic Defense Review [which was launched in July] will look at the threats we face and the capabilities we need so that our Armed Forces are better ready to fight, more integrated and more innovative,” he said. On Thursday, The Telegraph reported, citing a senior defense source, that the new UK budget, which will be announced next week, will “almost certainly” not provide more money to the Defense Ministry. According to the government’s figures, Britain’s army, navy, and air force have entered 2024 with just over 138,000 active-duty personnel, the lowest number since the end of the Napoleonic wars. The army alone had seen its headcount shrink from more than 100,000 in 2010 to 75,110 by the start of this year.

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“The quality of the evidence of Russian Novichok runs from weak to preposterous; the legal presentation from tendentious to inadmissible.”

• British Government’s Investigation Of Novichok Is Poisoning Itself (Helmer)

The British Government’s investigation of the alleged Novichok attacks against Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which they survived, and Dawn Sturgess, who died, has now run for six and half years. The public presentation of evidence and witnesses has completed its first week; the second week of hearings will begin next Monday, October 28. The hearings will end in the first week of December. A report of the conclusions will follow months later. The judge presiding is a retired Court of Appeal judge named Anthony Hughes – titled Lord Hughes of Omberseley – is also a consultant lawyer. Hughes advertises that he is available for engagement on private cases at his London office, telephone +44 (0)20 7242 3555. His terms of engagement from the Home Office, his job now, is to manage the Government’s two imperatives. The first is to protect the British government narrative to ensure no one disbelieves the Russians did it, as then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced on the BBC on March 17, 2018.

Judge Hughes’s website claims he is presiding in “an independent Inquiry into the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death in Salisbury on 8 July 2018.” Independent of Russia is certain. Hughes opened the proceeding on March 25, 2022 by saying: “The issues raised by the terms of reference include those of the utmost gravity, including the allegation which has been publicly made of Russian state responsibility for the killing of Ms Sturgess indirectly.” In fact, the terms of reference make no such allegation. Hughes then announced he had appointed Emilie Pottle, a London lawyer, to represent three Russian military officers whom the British prosecutor has charged with attempted murder. Married to a “freelance writer” who has worked in the Iraqi and Libyan warzones with UK and US forces, Pottle is being paid by the Home Office to appear. Last week as a Crown prosecutor, she fed leading questions to medical and police witnesses.

The judge’s assisting lawyer, Mark O’Connor QC revealed last week that he has concluded what has to be proved, and expects witnesses to do the same. “I want”, O’Connor asked Wayne Darch, deputy director of the regional ambulance service and supervisor of the medics who attended the Skripals and Sturgess, “to start, if I may, with the question of what understanding or training ambulance staff had of or for nerve agent, organophosphate poisoning before the Skripal poisoning in March 2018, and we will work then forward in the chronology, okay?” Working forward in the chronology means, for the British government, that the Hughes proceeding will work backward to prove retrospectively that the Russian government ordered and carried out the Novichok assassination plot of 2018. So far, not a single British newspaper, television or social medium has reported differently.

The second imperative for Hughes is to protect the British Government from the case for negligence which the Sturgess family lawyer, Michael Mansfield KC, is making to support his claim for a multi-million pound payout for compensation of their loss to the Sturgess family, her boyfriend Charles Rowley, and to Mansfield himself and his associated lawyers. The first attempt at Mansfield’s legal strategy of “dosh for Dawn’s death” did not succeed in the High Court in mid-2020. The Hughes proceeding is Mansfield’s last, big chance.to accuse the British secret services of culpable negligence in failing to anticipate the Russian strike against Sergei Skripal on March 4, 2018, and to protect the British public from the Novichok fallout the alleged Russian assassins left behind.

The contradiction between the first and second imperatives grows obvious with every session. The quality of the evidence of Russian Novichok runs from weak to preposterous; the legal presentation from tendentious to inadmissible. But to earn his ransom Mansfield must accept as true what he cannot prove to be lies. He and his money-shot are motivated by the legal principle known as claim of right – you can’t steal from a thief.

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“The UK government is effectively partaking in the cover-up, in a way that only a guilty party would.”

• UK Snubs Council of Europe Over Assange Inquiry (DC.UK)

Britain’s Home Office is making a “grave mistake” by ignoring a call from the Council of Europe to review its treatment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has warned. The Council’s parliamentary assembly, of which the UK is a member, passed a resolution earlier this month designating Assange as a “political prisoner”. Assange endured five years in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London before being released in June, and flying to his native Australia. The UK government had incarcerated him while the US pursued extradition proceedings in the British courts. His treatment has outraged the Council of Europe, which was created in the aftermath of World War Two with strong backing from Winston Churchill. Its resolution urged the UK authorities to conduct a review “with a view to establishing whether he [Assange] has been exposed to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, pursuant to their international obligations”.

It found the UK authorities “failed to effectively protect Mr Assange’s freedom of expression and right to liberty, exposing him to lengthy detention in a high-security prison despite the political nature of the most severe charges against him.” Declassified asked Britain’s Home Office what its response was to the Council of Europe’s call. The government department deflected the question, replying: “The longstanding extradition request for Julian Assange has been resolved. As is standard practice, all extradition requests are considered on an individual basis by our independent courts and in accordance with UK law.” The demands of the parliamentary assembly are not binding on European governments but they are “obliged to respond”. Stella Assange, Julian’s husband, told Declassified the Home Office is making a “grave mistake” in refusing to heed the Council of Europe’s call.

She said: “We know that the Crown Prosecution Service has disappeared key documents relating to Julian’s imprisonment and refused to provide information, first to a journalist, and now to the court, that might shed a light on the political side of Julian’s persecution in the UK. “It is one thing for rogue elements in the CPS to collude with foreign governments to persecute a publisher and attempt to cover their tracks. It is quite another for the UK government to stonewall in this manner in the wake of an independent report by the Council of Europe and a vote by the overwhelming majority of the chamber calling on the UK to carry out an investigation.” She added: “The UK government is effectively partaking in the cover-up, in a way that only a guilty party would.”

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“..with the aim of forcibly expelling the population in service of the Israeli plan to empty the north. This has now come to be called “the Generals’ Plan.”

• This Is an Extermination’ (Muaddi)

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians across northern Gaza have been forced on a death march by the Israeli army since Monday, October 21. Northern Gaza is being emptied of its inhabitants, and one of Israel’s strategies in achieving this goal is to take out the area’s few remaining social institutions: hospitals. As part of its ongoing offensive on northern Gaza, the Israeli army has been trying to clear out the entire area north of Gaza City for the past 18 days. At least 200,000 people continue to stay there, many of them fearing, according to local testimonies, that they will be targeted on the way south or in Israeli-designated “safe zones,” which have been consistently bombarded over recent months. The ongoing siege includes a second siege-within-the-siege on the Jabalia refugee camp, accompanied by a massive bombing and shelling campaign that is forcing tens of thousands of people to leave their homes.

Many of them have headed to Beit Lahia, and particularly to Kamal Adwan Hospital. Over the past 18 days, the hospital has been issuing daily calls for help, warning of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. The Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia is one of three functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza governorate. The hospital is the only fully functional medical center in the north, with a specialized neonatal section for newborns. The two other hospitals in Gaza are barely functional. The Indonesian Hospital in the town of Sheikh Zayed went out of services last week after Israeli troops besieged it and invaded its surroundings. Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, smaller in size, has suspended most of its services and only functions at a limited capacity. On Tuesday, October 22, the al-Awda Hospital’s director, Bakr Abu Safiyeh, told al-Ghad TV that Israeli quadcopter drones were opening fire directly on the hospital.

Dr. Baker said that Israeli quadcopters were also opening fire on anybody moving in the streets, including ambulances. According to the hospital director, an Israeli strike targeted an ambulance carrying a mother who had just given birth. The mother was killed, Dr. Baker said, and the baby was later found alive by rescue teams and was taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital’s neonatal section. Named after Kamal Adwan, a Palestinian resistance leader assassinated by Israel in Beirut in 1973, the hospital has become a central destination for the wounded and the displaced. Like most other hospitals in Gaza over the past year of genocidal war, Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only remaining public space in northern Gaza that offers services and provides shelter, representing the backbone of Gazan civil society and social cohesion. That is why Israel is targeting it, with the aim of forcibly expelling the population in service of the Israeli plan to empty the north. This has now come to be called “the Generals’ Plan.”

Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.

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“No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by ‘the world’s best snipers.’ And they’re dead-center shots..”

• Kill Them All: Israel’s Extermination Of Palestinians In Gaza (Cradle)

The holocaust engulfing Palestinians in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels of horror, epitomized by a harrowing video that swept across social media of 19-year-old Shaaban al-Dalou, burning to death while still connected to an IV drip. This was no isolated tragedy – it was emblematic of the escalating genocide. On 13 October, an Israeli airstrike ignited the makeshift tents sheltering dozens of displaced Palestinian families in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Amidst the inferno, Dalou’s 17-year-old brother Mohammed described his agony: “I can’t describe the feeling. I saw my brother burning in front of me, and my mother was burning.” Mohammed had managed to escape when he heard the strike, but his brother Shaban and their mother did not. His father saved his 10-year-old brother from the flames, only for the child to succumb to his burns days later, according to the New York Times.

The horrifying video was followed a week later by photos showing soldiers expelling Palestinians from half-destroyed residential blocks at gunpoint. Israeli drone footage published by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan captured images of Palestinians rounded up and forced to walk south through Gaza’s post-apocalyptic landscape without any possessions. Many Palestinians who refused to obey evacuation orders, often delivered by announcements made by hovering quadcopter drones, were massacred by Israeli artillery and airstrikes. Rescue workers and civilians attempting to save others have been shot at by Israeli forces or simply rounded up and ‘disappeared.’ There have been reports describing numerous instances where Palestinians were targeted while trying to help injured individuals. This has left the people of Gaza without any medical or emergency services, forcing a complete halt on health and civil defense services.

Even hospitals were not spared. Critically injured patients and the doctors treating them faced the same impossible ultimatum – evacuate or die. After returning home, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza expressed their shock at how many children arrived at the hospitals, shot not only once but twice, directly in the heart and head. “No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by ‘the world’s best snipers.’ And they’re dead-center shots,” surgeon Mark Perlmutter told CBS News.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

BART

 

 

Cameras

 

 

Umbrella

 

 

Scooby
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849867938360345077

 

 

Sagan

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 4 2022

Jul 042022
 
 July 4, 2022  Posted by at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Salvador Dali Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion 1930

 

• Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)
• To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States
• Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)
• Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)
• Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)
• NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)
• Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)
• Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)
• Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)
• US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

 

 

“France now imports more Russian liquefied natural gas than at any time in history, writes Welt.
The requirement to pay for gas in rubles does not apply to LNG supplies, and France has as many as four terminals for receiving such tankers.”

 

 

Dude

 

 

Myocarditis cases in USA, Ages 12-20:
2019: 16
2020: 9
2021: 2,301

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MSM still can’t do normal reporting on Ukraine. Because Russia keeps winning.

• Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)

Russia claimed control Sunday over the last Ukrainian stronghold in an eastern province that is key to achieving a major goal of Moscow’s grinding war. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military reported that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Luhansk province. President Volodymr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal but said the fight for the city was still raging on its outskirts. If confirmed, Russia’s complete seizure of Luhansk would provide its troops with a stronger base from which to press their advance in the Donbas, a region of mines and factories that President Vladimir Putin is bent on capturing in a campaign that could determine the course of the entire war. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that Russia’s troops, with a local separatist militia, “have established full control over the city of Lysychansk” and now hold all of Luhansk, according to a ministry statement published Sunday.

As is typical with such descriptions, the Russian statement characterized the victories as “the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Separatists in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk, which make up the Donbas and are home to significant Russian-speaking populations, declared independence from Kyiv in 2014 and their forces have battled Ukrainian troops there ever since. Russia formally recognized the self-proclaimed republics days before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian forces fought fiercely for Lysychansk in recent days after the neighboring city fell last week. On Sunday evening, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military confirmed on social media that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk “to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders.”

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy noted the withdrawal. But he added that “Ukraine does not give anything back” and vowed to return with more modern weapons. Citing his forces’ success in recapturing other territory, he promised, “There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.” Earlier, Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were still battling Russian soldiers on Lysychansk’s outskirts “in a very difficult and dangerous situation.” “We cannot give you the final judgment. Lysychansk is still being fought for,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv given alongside Australia’s visiting prime minister. He noted that territory can move quickly from one side to the other.

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Good advice. And a good day for it too.

• To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States (Mises)

Most commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which overturns Roe v. Wade—has focused on the decision’s effect on the legality of abortion in various states. That’s an important issue. It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision’s effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal. After all, the ruling isn’t so much about abortion as it is about the federal government’s role in abortion. State governments are free to make abortion 100 percent legal within their own borders. Some states have already done so. The court’s ruling limits only the federal government’s prerogatives over abortion law, and this has the potential to lead to many other limitations on federal power as well. In this way, Dobbs is a victory for those seeking to limit federal power.

The decentralization is all to the good, and there’s nothing novel about it. Historically, state laws in the US have varied broadly on a variety of topics from alcohol consumption to divorce. This was also true of abortion before Roe v. Wade. Moreover, decentralizing abortion policy in this way actually works to defuse national conflict. This is becoming even more important as cultural divides in the United States are clearly accelerating and become more entrenched. Rather than fight with increasing alarm and aggression over who controls the federal government—and thus who imposes the winner’s preferences on everyone else—people in different states will have more choices in choosing whether to live under proabortion or antiabortion regimes.

In other words, decentralization forces policymakers to behave as they should in a confederation of states: they must tolerate people doing things differently across state lines. This will be essential in avoiding disaster, and laissez-faire liberals (i.e., “classical liberals”) have long supported decentralization as a key in avoiding dangerous political conflicts. Ludwig von Mises, for example, supported decentralization because, as he put it, it “is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil … wars.”

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Huh? “If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.”

• Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)

This July 4th, as you fill up your car or truck, you might be tempted to blame President Joe Biden for high gasoline prices. You shouldn’t, say some experts. It’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault, they say. The US had to cut off Russian oil imports to punish Putin for invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden himself has blamed the American energy industry. “At a time of war,” Biden wrote in an open letter to the industry on June 15, “high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable… companies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product.” But US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years.

Running refineries at a higher capacity than that risks damaging the equipment. As such, Biden isn’t just wrong, he insulted some of the hardest working people operating in one of the most dangerous industries in America. But, on May 12, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands. Biden and his defenders said he had to block the expansion of the Virgin Islands refinery, given how polluting it was. But had Biden’s EPA allowed the Virgin Island refinery to expand, the owners would have poured nearly $3 billion into retrofitting the plant so it produced gasoline and other products more cleanly, while significantly increasing production at the same time.

Furthermore, anybody who cares about air pollution and climate change should want more oil and gas drilling, not less. US emissions declined 22% between 2005 and 2020, mostly because cheap natural gas has replaced coal. In truth, there are many things Biden could have done, and still should do, to lower energy prices. He could invoke the National Defense Act to accelerate the rate of oil and gas permits. He could set a floor of $80/barrel for re-filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which would be a powerful incentive for the industry, because it would prevent prices from falling to unprofitable levels. Biden could announce trade agreements with American allies to supply them with liquified natural gas, which would incentivize more natural gas production and lower prices. If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.

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“99% of gas stations in America are small business owned. The average gas station’s profit actually DROPPED from April to May. ”

• Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has criticized President Joe Biden for calling on oil companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, prompting the White House to come to the US leader’s defense on Sunday. “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril,” Biden tweeted Saturday. “Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now,” Biden added. Bezos said Biden’s remarks amounted to “either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.” “Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” the US billionaire tweeted Saturday.

Gasoline prices at the pump have become a symbol of broader price rises in the United States, and they are sapping Biden’s approval rating ahead of legislative elections in November. Biden has regularly attacked oil companies, saying they only care about profits and not the well-being of the average consumer. The companies say in turn they have increased production to try to tame prices but that these are set on the world market and are subject to dynamics that are not under the control of US oil giants. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter Sunday that oil prices have dropped about $15 a barrel over the past month. “But prices at the pump have barely come down. That’s not ‘basic market dynamics.’ It’s a market that is failing the American consumer,” she wrote.

Gasoline prices have been above $5 a gallon since early June, which is unprecedented in the car-crazy nation. Prices have fallen slightly since, but remain far from the $3 a gallon level of a year ago. John Kirby, White House spokesman on national security issues, also defended the president Sunday in an appearance on Fox News. “The president is working very, very hard across many fronts… to try to bring that price down,” Kirby said.

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Governors refuse.

• Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)

In a rare move, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley has sent letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin demanding that authorities put an end to picketing and “threatening activity” outside the homes of SCOTUS justices. The letter seeks to use state laws to achieve what the Justice Department has clearly rejected under federal law. If the letter prompts arrests, we could see a major free speech challenge in the courts. The timing of the letter, however, is particularly interesting and may reflect a recognition of the limits of the federal law. Like most Americans, I have denounced these protests targeting the homes of justices as excessive and reckless (though one law professor actually suggested that such protests could be more aggressive).

However, I have also questioned the use of a federal law to arrest protesters. Under a federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1507, any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” I believe that a court would declare the use of the federal law against protesters on public sidewalks to be unconstitutional. There are issues of free speech, assembly, and vagueness that would be likely raised in federal court. Indeed, if you apply the broad interpretation of the law, even protests outside of the Supreme Court building could result in arrests since courthouses are also included.

However, the timing is particularly interesting. After the release of the decision in in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I noted that it would be even harder to use this law because the statute refers to “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty.” With the release of the decision, there is no chance that the protesters are interfering, impeding, or influencing the decision. Thus, even if the constitutional arguments were rejected, a court could question whether the law can be read as applying to protests generally against the justices for their views. That is what makes the date so interesting. Dobbs came out on June 24, 2022. One week later, Curley sought enforcement of state laws as an alternative to federal enforcement.

It may reflect the view that, even if the law is constitutional to arrest protesters, it would be narrowly construed in light of the fact that Dobbs is now on the books. Since it was clear for weeks that the Justice Department would not enforce the law to arrest protesters outside of these homes, the timing of the letter could reflect a dwindling likelihood of enforcement in light of the end of the term. Curley wrote Gov. Hogan: “I would respectfully request that you direct the Maryland State Police to enforce Maryland and Montgomery County laws that squarely prohibit picketing at the homes of Supreme Court Justices who reside in Maryland.” Both the Maryland and Virginia governors responded by calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to use his authority under federal law to stop the protesters.

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That’s a first for me. Sounds crazy.

• NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul once again signed sweeping gun legislation into law on Friday that created several severe new restrictions on obtaining a gun in the state, including drastically increasing concealed carry regulations and requiring applicants to turn over social media history. According to the the legislation, part of Hochul’s new criteria to obtain a concealed carry permit will be an applicant giving the government a list containing three years of history of their current and inactive social media accounts. Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

Potential applicants will also be required to show “good moral character,” meaning “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others. At a press conference regarding the new legislation, Hochul said “we are creating a definitive list of sensitive locations where individuals will not be able to carry firearms.” This list includes “schools, summer camps, libraries, daycares, parks and playgrounds, places children gather, theaters, museums, entertainment venues, places of worship for religious observation, polling places, educational institutions, and health medical facilities. Federal State Local government buildings, homeless and domestic violence shelters, places where alcohol is consumed, restaurants, bars, public transportation, subway buses, airports and at public demonstrations and rallies, and in Times Square.”

Another new rule is a “Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property Owners.” Hochul said of this law, “We are making ‘no open carry’ the default position for private businesses. That means that any business, grocery store, retail, private home, place that wants to allow guns on their premises will have to demonstrate that and establish that they put a sign out there that says concealed carry guns are welcome here.”

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She is a strange story.

• Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)

The January 6 committee’s key witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, called the committee “bs” in a text message obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. On Feb 1. Hutchinson sent a text to a conservative activist with connections to the First Amendment Fund, which is a group started by the American Conservative Union that helps Trump officials cover costs for Jan. 6 lawyers. Matt Schlapp said Hutchinson approached CPAC for help through the First Amendment Fund. Schlapp said he is happy they did not end up assisting her because she was relaying White House “hallway gossip as fact.” In the text message, Hutchinson says: “Hey (redacted)! This is Cassidy Hutchinson. Kind of a random question, but do you still work for the Schlapp’s at the ACU?” To which the person responded, “Hi, Yes!”


Hutchinson then said, “Do you happen to know a First Amendment fund POC I could reach out to? I was subpoenaed in early Nov., but the committee waited to serve me until last week (after Ben’s deposition).” “I had to accept service because the U.S. Marshalls came to my apartment last Wednesday, but I haven’t made contact with the Committee. I’m just on a tight timeline and just trying to figure out what my options are to deal with this bs,” Hutchinson added. In another text message reviewed by the Daily Caller, Hutchinson told the conservative activist that she does not want things to get “unnecessarily elevated” in regards to the Jan. 6 committee. Hutchinson made headlines after testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, where she claimed former President Donald Trump lunged for the steering wheel in an effort to reroute the car to the Capitol where protesters were gathering. Sources close to the Secret Service have denied her claims.

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Kulldorff tries too hard to sound reasonable. No, they are not safe. So say so.

• Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)

Covid-recovered people have natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. So, the benefit of vaccination is – at best – minimal. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as in the randomized trials, there is a negative risk-benefit difference. Why are we mandating people in this group to be vaccinated? It is both unethical and damaging to public health. While everyone can get infected, children have a minuscule risk of covid mortality. There is very limited safety data from the trials on children. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as for adults, the harms outweigh the risks. Children should not receive these vaccines. Older people above 70 have a much higher risk of covid mortality than the population in the Fraiman study. If their risk of adverse reaction is the same, then the benefits outweigh the harms.

Hence, older people who have never had covid and are not yet vaccinated may benefit from these vaccines. However, we do not know if they are better than the Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca vaccines. It is unclear from the clinical trial data whether the benefits outweigh the risks for working-age adults who have not been vaccinated and who have not already had covid. This is true both historically, for the original covid variants, and currently for the newer ones. The Fraiman study analyzes data after the first and second doses. Both risks and benefits may differ for booster shots, but no randomized trial has properly evaluated the trade-off. These results concern only the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Fraiman et al. did not analyze data on the adenovirus-vector vaccines marketed by Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca.

Benn et al. found that they reduced all-cause mortality (RR=0.37, 95% CI:0.19-0.70), but nobody has used trial data to analyze AESIs for these vaccines. Critically, the Fraiman and Benn studies had a follow-up of only a few months after the second dose because Pfizer and Moderna, unfortunately, terminated their randomized trials a few months after receiving emergency use authorization. Of course, a longer-term benefit can provide a basis to tolerate negative or neutral short-term risk-benefit differences. However, that is unlikely since we know from observational studies that mRNA vaccine efficacy deteriorates a few months after the second dose.

There may also be long-term adverse reactions to the vaccine regarding which we do not yet know. Since the randomized trials ended early, we must look at observational data to answer that question. The publicly available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is of low quality, with both under- and over-reporting. The best observational data is from CDCs Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and FDA’s Biologics and Effectiveness Safety System (BEST), but there have only been limited reports from these systems. Fraiman and colleagues have produced the best evidence yet regarding the overall safety of the mRNA vaccines. The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.

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Haven’t followed the Spartacus group for a bit.

• Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)

SARS-CoV-2 was not the product of natural zoonosis. It was not the product of an accidental lab leak, either. It was the product of deliberate, willful bioterrorism by what I’ve come to call the Biodefense Mafia. This Biodefense Mafia grew out of an expansion of USAID, DARPA, BARDA, and DTRA-affiliated civilian biolabs, both in the US and elsewhere, thanks to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program and Robert Kadlec’s expansion of biodefense after Amerithrax. That initial expansion of the Biodefense Mafia involved Kadlec awarding rigged contracts to Fuad El-Hibri’s company, BioPort, for anthrax vaccines. BioPort was a spinoff of DynPort, which, in turn, was spun off from the American mercenary company DynCorp in a partnership with Porton in the UK.

Yes, the same DynCorp that Kathryn Bolkovac blew the whistle on in Bosnia for sex trafficking of young girls, the same DynCorp that continued to receive US State Department contracts even after soliciting “dancing boys” in Afghanistan, and the same DynCorp whose OV-10 Bronco turboprops loaned from the US State Department for coca eradication crop dusting with RoundUp in Colombia happened to have the same tail number as a helicopter mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, N474AW, on one of the aircraft. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Kadlec again awarded rigged contracts for COVID-19 vaccines to Fuad El-Hibri and Emergent BioSolutions, which is what BioPort renamed themselves to. Emergent BioSolutions came under fire due to the scandalous condition of their vaccine manufacturing facilities and the poor quality-control practices exercised there.

Throughout the 2000s, Michael Callahan was part of an effort by the US State Department called the BioIndustry Initiative, authorized in the Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2002, where US scientists would visit various former Soviet biowarfare labs in Russia and discuss technologies the Soviets developed that could be patented, commercialized, marketed, and “peacefully” used in drugs and therapies. He was on the ground in Wuhan in 2019 and 2020, as DARPA’s “Man in Wuhan”, suggesting that the H2 blocker famotidine might be useful for treating COVID-19, based on observations of patient data.

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Nothing against drag queens, but don’t push them on little kids.

• US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

The drag queens were out in force across New York’s recent Pride parade triggering cheers and waves with their flamboyant and extravagant costumes. But this year the world of American drag has been marred by growing fears of violence and intimidation as they have been specifically targeted by conservatives and extremist far-right and militia groups amid a general rise in anti-LGBTQ hate. One of the main targets for rightwing ire has been Drag Queen Story Hour events where drag queens will read books to children at public libraries. Three weeks ago at a reading in a library in San Lorenzo, 30 miles from San Francisco, a group of men, one wearing a T-shirt stenciled with the image of an assault rifle, interrupted a drag performer reading The Kindness Book to pre-schoolers, frightening all.

Authorities said at least five men who appeared in the black and yellow uniform aligned with the extremist Proud Boy group hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at the story hour’s performer, Panda Dulce, who later said the interruption was “a brazen act of vitriolic intimidation”. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime. Members of the same organisation – designated a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Group – also disrupted a Pride story-time event in South Carolina where kids were being read Daddy and Dada and Heather Has Two Mommies. One parent was told they were a child abuser. Last week a drag event at a California bar, Mojos, was cancelled after protestors yelling homophobic abuse sought to enter the premises.

The pattern of intimidation, in cases not limited to the intimidation of drag queens, comes as Pride month itself has become a target for rightwing extremists in the US. Recently in Idaho a group of far-right Patriot Front extremists were arrested amid fears they intended to attack a Pride march in the state. Drag queens themselves, however, are standing their ground.

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Chinatown

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 9 2022

Feb 092022
 
 February 9, 2022  Posted by at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  104 Responses »


René Magritte L’éternité 1935

 

• The Pentagon’s Response To The DEMD Data Is An Even Bigger Story (Blaze)
• Pfizer Quietly Adds Language Warning On Data (ZH)
• Let The Re-Writing Of Covid History Begin? (Rossini)
• Joe Rogan Shows Us The Real Purpose Of Cancel Culture (OffG)
• The Blue Stack Strikes Back (Jilani)
• First Canadian Provinces Scrap Covid Mandates (RT)
• Towing Companies Refuse to Move Freedom Convoy Trucks (TC)
• Johnson & Johnson Stops Covid-19 Vaccine Production (RT)
• Americans Have ‘Lost Touch With Reality’ – Russia (RT)
• Scientists Divulge Easy Way To Lose Weight (RT)
• Elon Musk Gives Views On ‘Traditional’ Media (RT)
• Lithium Price Rockets Nearly 500% In A Year (G.)
• Jeff Bezos’ Yacht Can Count On Rotten Eggs (Engelen)

 

 

Jerrycans
https://twitter.com/i/status/1491204379294277632

 

 

 

 

India’s ambassador

 

 

 

 

Calgary police officer

 

 

She loves school

 

 

Why the changes when you know Renz has all the files?

• The Pentagon’s Response To The DEMD Data Is An Even Bigger Story (Blaze)

One thing is clear about the revelation of the 2021 military epidemiological data and the military’s response to it: There is undoubtedly a public health and national security crisis in the military, and the Pentagon’s reaction only seems to be concerned with exonerating the vaccine, not fixing its own alleged problem. It’s now certain that the military’s health surveillance system — DMED — showed a massive increase in sickness and injury diagnoses in 2021 over previous years, particularly in the neurological, cardiovascular, oncological, and reproductive health categories. The military, in a very terse and cryptic statement to PolitiFact last week, admitted as much, but claimed without any further explanation that the data in the system accessed by several military doctors working with attorney Thomas Renz was only a “fraction” of the true numbers that existed. In the words of the Pentagon spokesman, it was a “glitch in the database.”

Where those true numbers existed, why they weren’t in the system for five years, what exactly was in the system, and why the 2021 numbers were accurate according to the DOD account remain a mystery. However, one by one, the military public health officials have been adding back random numbers to the 2016 through 2020 codes. I’m told by Renz and two of the whistleblowers that throughout the past week, they have queried the same data again, and in most of the ICD categories, they have found that the numbers from 2016 through 2020 were “increased” exponentially to look as though 2021 was not an abnormal year. This has been done without any transparency, any press release, any statement of narrative, and sloppily in a way that makes the already unbelievable narrative simply impossible to believe.

In addition to believing that every epidemiological report for five years was somehow completely tainted with false data — including during the first year of the pandemic itself — we would have to believe that the minute they discovered this from Renz, they suddenly discovered the exact numbers. A five-year mistake fixed overnight! Just take a look at the following statement given to the Epoch Times, the only other public comment delivered by an authorized Pentagon spokesman: “Comparing the DMED database to the source data contained in DMSS, AFHSD discovered that the total number of medical diagnoses from 2016-2020 that were accessible in DMED represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses for those years. In contrast, the 2021 total number of medical diagnoses were up to date in DMED. Comparison of 2021 to 2016-2020 resulted in the appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the under-reported data for 2016-2020. AFHSD has taken DMED offline to identify and correct the root-cause of the data corruption,” said Maj. Charlie Dietz.

That’s it! They are only concerned with downplaying any potential culpability of the vaccine, not explaining how they were flying blind, according to their official narrative, on such an important endeavor for so many years. Just consider the fact that at last week’s meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), officials revealed that they have been monitoring vaccine safety data from the DOD, among other places.

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Full immunity, but not from investors.

• Pfizer Quietly Adds Language Warning On Data (ZH)

Two weeks ago, the FDA begged a Texas judge to delay production on the first monthly batch of 55,000 pages of Covid-19 vaccine data submitted to the agency by Pfizer. Originally, the agency was set to produce just 500 pages-per-month. Now, Pfizer – which just forecast $54 billion in Covid-related sales in 2022, appears to be anticipating some bad news, as evidenced by several redline changes in their Q4 earnings releases. As Rubicon Capital’s Kelly Brown notes on Twitter, the changes center around disclosures of unfavorable safety data. For example, in Q4 they added: “or further information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data, including by audit or inspection.”

More from Brown, who notes that Pfizer is now highlighting “concerns about clinical data integrity…” The company also notes that Covid-19 may “diminish in severity or prevalence, or disappear entirely.”

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“Truth and Liberty go hand-in-hand; as do lies and tyranny.”

• Let The Re-Writing Of Covid History Begin? (Rossini)

It took much too long, but it appears that the tide of public opinion has finally turned. The term “trust the science” has suddenly lost its luster, especially when it comes from the mouth of a politician or so-called “expert.” The meanings of the words “science” and “expert” have been blown to pieces. But such is always the case when politicians get involved in things they shouldn’t be involved in. They have an uncanny ability of destroying everything they touch. Well, they touched the words “science” and “expert” and made them completely unrecognizable. I’ve heard the phrase “You can’t tell what’s true anymore” more than enough times over the last several years. We’ve all had a front row seat in what a so-called “post-truth” world looks like — It looks like totalitarian tyranny! Truth and Liberty go hand-in-hand; as do lies and tyranny.

Miraculously, as public opinion has changed, so has the “science”! Imagine that. The “science” now says that masks, lockdowns, and mandates are bad. If only the “science” crystal ball had said such things two years ago! Imagine all the pain, suffering and death that could have been avoided. One must also wonder, if public opinion didn’t change, would the “science” have remained unchanged as well? Who knows? But as the tyranny is (reluctantly) peeled away, the predictable re-writing of history has begun. Think of the Iraq War as an analogy for what you should expect going forward. The mania of lies and smears that led up to that failed war was deafening. Now think about today… How many people actually admit to supporting the Iraq War? Roughly… You can probably count them on one hand. Very (very) few people. Only the hard-core warmongers will admit to it.

Well, as Covid “history” is fabricated and branded into digital ink, you can be sure to see the same behavior from the lying class. Denial, followed by more denial: “I never supported the wearing of masks.” “I was always against lockdowns.” “Vaccine passports? What do you think I am, some kind of Nazi?” Be prepared, because just as people will not admit that they supported the Iraq War, so will they start changing their tunes about being petty dictators for a solid two years. The blame will also be offloaded onto a fictional collective. Be prepared to see the word “we” over and over: “We” should have known better. “We” made mistakes. “We” need to do a better job. The government needs more money. “We” thought that the masks, lockdowns & “vaccines” would work.

Tucker More & more people dying in the prime of life

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“Far more likely is that it was created and deployed to discredit Rogan’s COVID-questioning without having to engage with the Covid sceptic evidence or arguments.”

• Joe Rogan Shows Us The Real Purpose Of Cancel Culture (OffG)

Joe Rogan has just been cancelled. Again. It’s not about covid “misinformation” this time. No, now he’s a racist. Some enterprising young mind combed through 13 years and hundreds of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, and cut together around twenty instances of Rogan using “the n-word”. This video was shared by award-winning musician India Arie, and used to explain her pulling her music from Spotify’s platform in protest of Rogan’s continued presence there. Rogan claims that these clips are all taken out of context in his recent apology video, and none were ever intended to be racist. This may well be true…we can’t check for ourselves, because Spotify removed all the episodes. These important bits of context were, naturally, removed from the viral video. Besides, it has since been said that context doesn’t even matter.

And you know what, they’re right. The context doesn’t matter, perhaps the intention doesn’t even matter, what matters is “Why now?” Some of these clips are over twelve years old, and yet there have never been any calls to boycott Spotify or cancel his show until just the last couple of days. Were they not racist before? Or was everyone just OK with the racism? Could there be something else behind this? …but why bother pausing the hate-fest to ask questions, right? The only message that matters is – Joe Rogan is a racist now, and streaming giant Spotify have pulled over seventy episodes of his show from their platform as a result. Of course the cyber-torches and internet-pitchforks coming for Joe Rogan is nothing new. Having preached the tenets of a healthy lifestyle, promoted alternate Covid treatments, and invited dissenting experts onto his show, Rogan has obviously been on the establishment’s hit list for a while.

[..] Rogan’s uses of “the n-word” are not new. They are all several years old and from 23 separate episodes, all multiple hours long. And there are almost 1800 episodes of the show to plough through if you decide to go searching. So making this video is at least two days’ work of simply watching the episodes – and that’s assuming you know where to start looking. And that’s before editing or trying to make it “go viral”. Was all this done on a whim by some bored pro-vaxxer? Does that sound likely? Far more likely is that it was created and deployed to discredit Rogan’s COVID-questioning without having to engage with the Covid sceptic evidence or arguments. It’s even possible the video may even have already existed before the current controversy. After all, why create this climate of stifling sensitivity if you don’t have the tools to use it?

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“It’s designed to look like they’re doing something, but they’re not doing anything. It’s more spectacle than substance.”

• The Blue Stack Strikes Back (Jilani)

[..]The U.S. government, forbidden by contemporary constitutional law from simply censoring Rogan itself, dispatched Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to reinforce President Joe Biden’s message imparted last year that social media platforms are “killing people” by allowing too much freedom of speech about the pandemic, the virus, and the vaccines. “People have a right to make their own decisions, but they also have a right to accurate information to make that decision with,” Murthy told MSNBC. “This is not just about what the government can do,” he coyly noted, “this is about companies and individuals recognizing that the only way we get past misinformation is if we are careful about what we say and use the power that we have to limit the spread of misinformation.”

Murthy’s message reinforced the media outlets that had taken aim at Rogan, inspiring a wave of new reports not only focused on his discussions of COVID but also labeling him problematic in other regards. The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, whose role in this ecosystem is to disguise Democratic Party talking points as humor, criticized a segment in which Rogan and author Jordan Peterson poke fun at the absurdity of modern racial categorization, noting that nobody is actually “white” or “Black.” CNN signal boosted Noah’s criticism, as did a range of other outlets. Other activists found old clips of Rogan mentioning (but not using) racial slurs. Eventually, Spotify got the message. It announced new platform rules that include adding advisories to select content dealing with COVID.

It began deleting dozens of older Rogan episodes that contained transgressive content. Its CEO promised to devote $100 million of company money on content from “historically marginalized groups,” which in this case is likely to be defined exclusively by progressive activists (don’t expect a lot of sponsored podcasts on Asian American opposition to racial preferences in college admissions). In the span of a week, Rogan posted two separate apologies for his past content. The authors of the open letter that initiated the firestorm, however, are not satisfied. One of them told Rolling Stone that the Spotify advisories will just create a “‘false balance’ problem. It’s designed to look like they’re doing something, but they’re not doing anything. It’s more spectacle than substance.”

These activists know how to play the game. If you look back at any of the recent controversies over free speech—from QAnon to COVID to the last two presidential elections—this is how things work when a development or outcome is seen as unfavorable or undesirable by the favored political camp. First, activists create a panic about misinformation or offensive speech. Second, the social media platforms try to meet them halfway by introducing measures like warning labels. Third, the activists realize they’ve drawn blood, and continue to push for outright censorship. Finally, the social media platforms give in and remove the offending voice from their platforms altogether.

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Nothing much changed so far.

“Kenney just says he won’t bring back the vaccine passport “Unless we redefine full vaccination as having three shots”. Kenney said that “would make practical sense… make a requirement that people get a third shot.”

• First Canadian Provinces Scrap Covid Mandates (RT)

Canada’s province of Saskatchewan announced on Tuesday it would stop requiring vaccine passes and masks. It comes as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted on the effectiveness of Covid-19 mandates amid trucker protests gripping the capital Ottawa. The prairie province, situated between Alberta and Manitoba, said it would stop requiring vaccine passports from next week and allow the mask mandate to expire at the end of February. It is one of the first Canadian provinces to offer a roadmap to ending the virus restrictions. Praising the soon-to-be-phased-out restrictions for helping to stem the spread of the virus, Premier Scott Moe, however, noted that they had created “two classes of citizens,” arguing that “the benefits of this policy no longer outweigh the costs.”

Urging Canadians not to “judge” their neighbors over their vaccination status, Moe said people should be entitled to decide whether to get vaccinated or not. “This government is going to respect that right,” he added. Another province, Alberta, also moved to ditch the restrictions on Tuesday. From midnight on Wednesday, residents will no longer be required to provide proof of vaccination in public places, and from Monday next week children aged 12 and under would no longer be required to mask up. Compulsory masking will no longer apply to students in schools. “We’ll never be able to do a full accounting of the extent of the pain and hardship that restrictions have caused,” Premier Jason Kenney said.

[..] PM Trudeau has refused to meet with the truckers or hear their demands, referring to them as a “small, fringe minority” engaged in violence and hateful conduct. In a speech to the parliament on Monday, he accused the truckers of “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives,” and demanded that their protest “has to stop” because the people of Ottawa and Canadians in general “deserve to get their lives back.” On Tuesday, the PM defended the mandates and restrictions his government put in place during the pandemic, saying they worked and will not be removed any time soon. “I can understand frustrations with mandates, but mandates are the way to avoid further restrictions,” he told reporters.

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“..heavy-duty tow trucks can transfer air from their system to the trucks to release their brakes. However, he added that “we have all the capabilities on our tow trucks to do it … but I don’t think anyone would want to.”

• Towing Companies Refuse to Move Freedom Convoy Trucks (TC)

“I’ve contacted them all and they’re all refusing, as of today, to provide heavy tow truck work,” city manager Steve Kanellakos told reporters Monday evening, according to a report from the CBC. “Right now we’re reviewing their contracts or standing offer, and reviewing what actions we can take to deal with this unprecedented situation,” Kanellakos added. There are currently more than 400 trucks parked throughout the city in protest, which began over a week ago. The drivers have said that they will not move the trucks until the COVID vaccine mandates for drivers doing trips between the US and Canada are lifted. Kanellakos said that Mayor Jim Watson has also been reaching out to towing companies in other cities, but none are willing to help stop the protest.

“Right now, the consensus seems to be that many of them — or most of them — don’t want to do the work because … they rely on on the the heavy truck industry for their livelihood, and they don’t want to damage that part of their business,” Kanellakos said. “That’s the position they’re taking, at least.” The CBC report added that deputy police chief Steve Bell confirmed that they are having trouble finding a willing tow truck operator in “every jurisdiction that’s faced this, and it’s forcing us to come up with some creative solutions.” While Bell wouldn’t say what those creative solutions may be, he did say that they are moving “toward a position where we’re not going to let the tow truck operators … be an obstacle to ending what’s occurring.”

Also speaking to the CBC, Trucker Lloyd Crowe said that there is no way the city will be able to move the trucks without cooperation from the drivers who are protesting. “If you know anything about truck air brakes, once you pull that button, all 18 wheels are locked,” Crowe told CBC on Wednesday. “Nothing can move it, except maybe a big wrecker. And no wrecker worth his salt is going to come anywhere near this, because they’re on our side.” David Allen, president of Gary’s Towing in Thunder Bay told the news organization that while it would be hard, he does not believe that it is impossible. He explained that heavy-duty tow trucks can transfer air from their system to the trucks to release their brakes. However, he added that “we have all the capabilities on our tow trucks to do it … but I don’t think anyone would want to.”

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Curious.

• Johnson & Johnson Stops Covid-19 Vaccine Production (RT)

US multinational Johnson & Johnson suspended production of its Covid-19 vaccine late last year amid a massive push by the federal government and health officials to promote getting inoculated, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the situation. The pause in production is reportedly temporary, but the one plant producing the vaccine in the Dutch city of Leiden has apparently shifted its focus to producing a potentially more profitable vaccine for an unrelated virus. It’s unclear if the production pause has affected the availability of the single-jab Covid vaccine, as the company has a stockpile of doses. However, one person familiar with the situation says the suspension could mean a reduction in output of a few hundred million doses.


The plant is expected to produce more after a few months’ break. Other facilities are awaiting regulatory approval or to actually be up and running to produce the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to the NYT report. Organizations that distribute the vaccine worldwide told the NYT they were unaware of the production pause, with some expressing concern about the timing. “This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything, when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance,” Dr. Ayoade Alakija, co-head of African Union vaccine distribution. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s offering requires only a single shot for the initial inoculation, while the others are delivered via two shots.

Read more …

Long ago.

• Americans Have ‘Lost Touch With Reality’ – Russia (RT)

Washington’s rhetoric about the possibility of imposing colossal sanctions on Russia is so outrageous that Moscow sees little point in even responding, one of the country’s top diplomats has said. In an interview with RIA Novosti on Tuesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin was asked about the possibility of Washington imposing unprecedentedly harsh measures on the Russian energy and financial sectors, including additional sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking the gas fields of Siberia to consumers in Germany. “It’s long been clear to everyone that American legislators have lost touch with reality and are living in a kingdom of their own phobias regarding our country, churning out obscurantist plans to deter Russia on all fronts, with any justification or without one,” Pankin replied.


“I don’t see the point in reacting to the Capitol’s routine initiatives about this. We can only repeat once more our regret about what has happened, and confirm that there will inevitably be negative consequences from the harsh restrictions laid on us by the Western initiators of such measures,” the diplomat added. Asked whether Russia is prepared for the possibility of being cut off from the SWIFT banking system, which some American and European leaders have threatened if Moscow decides to invade Ukraine, Pankin said, “Our hope is that, as opposed to Washington’s completely unjustified movement towards the ‘sanction field’, reason will still prevail in Brussels and these measures will not happen, which would damage the stability of the international finance system itself, as well as global economic recovery and the possibility of fulfilling the [UN initiative] Sustainable Development Goals on time.”

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Sleep.

• Scientists Divulge Easy Way To Lose Weight (RT)

Sleeping more can help people to consume less calories per day and to lose weight, if those healthy sleeping habits are maintained over a prolonged period of time, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, Illinois. The findings were published on Monday in peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The clinical research involved 80 adults aged between 21 and 40. All the participants qualified as overweight with a body mass index ranging from 25 to 29.9, while ‘normal’ body weight falls into the range between 18.5 and 24.9. All the participants also had habitual sleep of 6.5 hours per night or less. The research was conducted for a prolonged period of time, running from November 2014 to October 2020.

The participants were observed for a two-week period to establish a baseline and were then randomly separated in two groups. The control group continued with their sleeping habits without any intervention, while another group received “an individualized sleep hygiene counseling session,” aimed at prolonging their bedtime to some 8.5 hours. No further support beyond the counseling was provided to the participants, who continued to sleep in their own beds, though they wore tracking devices to register the duration of their sleeping time. “Most other studies on this topic in labs are short-lived, for a couple of days, and food intake is measured by how much participants consume from an offered diet,” lead researcher Dr Esra Tasali at the University of Chicago’s Sleep Center stated.

“In our study we only manipulated sleep and had the participants eat whatever they wanted, with no food logging or anything else to track their nutrition by themselves.” The sleep duration was increased for the sleep extension group by 1.2 hours per night on average, which led to a significant decrease in energy intake compared to the control group. The people from the sleep extension group consumed some 270 kilocalories on average less, which is quite significant given that recommended daily intake is 2,000 kilocalories for women and 2,500 for men. “No significant treatment effect in total energy expenditure was found, resulting in weight reduction in the sleep extension group vs the control group,” the study reads.

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Fear sells, not just negative news.

• Elon Musk Gives Views On ‘Traditional’ Media (RT)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known for his prolific tweeting, questioned his 73 million followers about why “traditional” media outlets operate as a “relentless hatestream” before then engaging in discussions with his followers on the topic. “Why is the “traditional” media such a relentless hatestream? Real question,” Musk tweeted on Monday. This post was quickly followed by another, clarifying the billionaire’s position. “Most news outlets attempt to answer the question: ‘What are the worst things happening on Earth today?’ It’s a big planet! Obviously, some bad things are happening somewhere at any given time, but focusing relentlessly on those does not give an accurate picture of reality,” he wrote.


Musk then engaged in debate with followers, disagreeing with one view that “negative news sells better,” pointing to some popular “citizen podcasts” which “aren’t negative.” “Maybe part of why traditional media outlets are so negative is because old habits die hard? They so rarely even try to be positive,” Musk added, sharing his frustration over the constant flow of the “news that makes one sad & angry.” The degree of Musk’s apparent disdain for traditional news media became known when he agreed with another commenter who said the target audience of most media was “the amygdala of the bottom 50% of humanity.” “Sadly true,” the carmaker’s chief executive wrote.

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When everyone’s got an EV, they’ll be useless.

• Lithium Price Rockets Nearly 500% In A Year (G.)

Lithium prices have “gone ballistic” as surging electric vehicles sales worldwide create massive demand for the critical component of lithium-ion batteries. According to figures from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI), the price of the lithium-rich raw material spodumene rose 478.3% between January 2021 and January 2022. In January alone the price of spodumene jumped 45.5% to US$2,400 a tonne, up from $1,650 in December. Similar price rises were recorded for lithium carbonate and hydroxide – refined lithium at different stages of purity – over the past year. BMI is forecasting the price will continue to increase for at least the next six month off the back of massive demand for battery cells.


In January the consulting firm McKinsey predicted the market for lithium batteries would grow to at least $360bn by 2030, with growth averaging 20% a year until the end of the decade. But some analysts have sounded a note of caution as lithium pricing can be volatile – demand can grow quickly but new mines open and increase supply, dropping the price again. Tim Buckley, an energy transition analyst and director of Clean Energy Finance, says demand for lithium is likely to remain high. “It’s unsustainably high – it’s gone ballistic. It’s just brilliant to watch – the world’s transforming before our eyes,” Buckley said. “Nothing excites financial markets more than a 500% increase in prices.”

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Google translation from Dutch.

• Jeff Bezos’ Yacht Can Count On Rotten Eggs (Engelen)

Not so long ago there was a ship whose fortunes could serve as the perfect symbol of the age in which we were then. And no, I’m not talking about the Titanic, that monument of hubris and stupidity, which went down on its maiden voyage and disappeared into the icy ocean with 1,522 people on board, and with that, two years before the outbreak of the First World War, announced the end of the bourgeois belle époque. Not to mention the Probo Koala, that tanker full of chemical waste on its way to the Ivory Coast to discharge its toxic cargo, which suddenly became the focus of our nascent environmental consciousness, only to then, like a hot potato, to be shifted from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, to end up in the harbor of Amsterdam where it lay rotting for months and acted as a constant reminder of the end of our ecological innocence.

No, I’m talking about that Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, which, with over four thousand passengers on board, ran aground at nightfall off the coast of Italy, at the port of Giglio, and began to overturn slowly, because the sun-tanned captain of the ship, and I’m exaggerating oly a little here, let his Moldovan sweetheart give him a blowjob during the maneuver. Meanwhile, a new ship has forced itself as a symbol on our collective consciousness. I am, of course, talking about the three-masted three-masted ship owned by Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, which is currently being built at a cost of half a billion dollars at yacht builder Oceanco in Alblasserdam and is nearing completion. It would be a sailing yacht with a length of 127 meters long and a height of 55 meters, which, according to news agency Bloomberg, sets a new standard in the wonderful world of superyachts, with many undisclosed details.

In order to be able to choose the sea in the future, however, the yacht has to cross the Nieuwe Maas through the Koningshaven in Rotterdam. As it happens, the iconic Lift Bridge blocks the passage of the yacht: up to 44 meters high, the mouth of the bridge can be opened, too low for the masts of Bezos. And so, despite previous promises to residents, the city council has pledged to dismantle the bridge one more time to allow the yacht to escape. It is again the perfect fusion of an era, in this case of the corona pandemic entering its third year in three weeks, and of the neoliberal nature of the crisis that accompanied it. The measures taken by the state to prevent the spread of the virus and to prevent healthcare overload have had major redistributive consequences. Not only have the billions in monetary easing by central banks further exacerbated wealth inequalities, as the insane house and apartment prices in major cities illustrate: good for investors, bad luck for residents.

The shutting down or throttling of social intercourse has also greatly favored some and disadvantaged others. Household consumption expenditure did not fall during the four so-called lockdowns. What has happened is that one retail channel (the middle class with its physical stores) has been closed and the other retail channel (Amazon) has remained open, with a massive shift in terms of employees, logistics, turnover and thus profits from one channel to another. [..] That is what makes this such a significant event: after two years of corona measures, we have finally arrived in the neofeudal caste society that Thomas Piketty has been warning about since 2014. In that world, ordinary citizens with their bridges are only set pieces in the lives of the super rich. Knowing that will help you understand a little better why Twitter – another such platform – is circulating the call to treat Bezos’ ship with rotten eggs as it passes. You can hardly miss him!

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Brand/Taibbi

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 14 2021

Nov 142021
 
 November 14, 2021  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Landscape 1920

 

• The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)
• CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)
• Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)
• Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)
• Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)
• Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)
• CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)
• As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)
• Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)
• God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Melbourne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1459635157070233602

 

 

 

 

“..unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.”

• The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)

Someone texted this article to me and asked me what I thought. My immediate reaction is that if you are vaccinated, you’d want to move to Texas. And if you are unvaccinated, I suggest you move to another state where you will be safer! OK, just kidding. The study says this: “From January 15, 2021 to October 1, 2021, unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.” Wow. A 40X death benefit. That’s impressive. I read the Pfizer Phase 3 6 month study and it showed just a 2X death benefit. But the numbers were small there. The study also says this: “According to the state’s study, between Jan. 15 and Oct. 1, “unvaccinated people were 45 times more likely to have an infection with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.”

OK, if the Texas study is right, then how do we explain the Harvard study Figure 1? The line should slope the other way since cases would be way down the more fully vaccinated you are. And how do we explain the UCSF study which showed the same viral loads for vaccinated and unvaccinated which means the vaccine didn’t work at all? Here’s what one of my team members wrote (I think she missed seeing the full report): “If you can get the data, I can try to make a proper interpretation. This one they present, is clearly garbage.” Another wrote: “My best friend in Dallas is a firefighter and EMT who drives ambulances. He told me before I flew to San Juan that almost everyone they drove was vaccinated.” Whoops! That anecdote has to be pretty embarrassing for their study! Reality seems to match the Harvard study.


Generally, the techniques they use to game these studies are: • Definitions of “vaccinated” restricted • Most cases during period of legacy variants • No accounting for naturally immune • No accounting for early treatment • Since unvaxxed are tested in the hospital with all kinds of fatal conditions and the vaxxed are not, many dying of other conditions are swept into the unvaxxed C19 group without clinical C19. All designed to frighten Texas into vaccinating.

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There’s that definition of “Naturally Immune” again.

• CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says it has no record of people who are naturally immune transmitting the virus that causes COVID-19. The federal health agency was asked during the fall by a lawyer on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network for documents “reflecting any documented case of an individual who: (1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.” Persons who recover from COVID-19 are also known as naturally immune. In a response dated Nov. 5 and made public this week, the CDC said it does not have any documents pertaining to the request.

The CDC confirmed to The Epoch Times that its Emergency Operations Center did not find any records responsive to the request. The agency declined to say whether any documentation had been found between Nov. 5 and Nov. 12, directing The Epoch Times to file a Freedom of Information Act Request for that information, which it did. “You would assume that if the CDC was going to crush the civil and individual rights of those with natural immunity by having them expelled from school, fired from their jobs, separated from the military, and worse, the CDC would have proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual. If you thought this, you would be wrong,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer who sought the records on behalf of the network, said in a blog post.

The CDC’s disclosure drew responses from several medical experts, including Johns Hopkins Dr. Marty Makary, who said it underlined how little data the agency has released concerning the recovered. Makary called on the CDC to make public data on any re-infections that have resulted in hospitalization or death, with information on the patient’s comorbidities or lack thereof. “CDC should be transparent with data on natural immunity. Instead we get glimpses from FOIA requests like this one,” he wrote on Twitter.

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“She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated..”

• Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)

Houston Methodist has suspended privileges for a Houston doctor after officials claim she was ‘spreading dangerous misinformation’ about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist with a popular private practice on Kirby Drive, has been outspoken about vaccine mandates and treatments. She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated. Friday night, a spokesperson with Houston Methodist said her privileges had been suspended pending an investigation. In response, Dr. Bowden defends her tweets, and said she has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and her colleagues. Her suspension came just days after the U.S. Surgeon General released a guide to stop misinformation, which he called an urgent threat to public health.

Houston Methodist officials posted a statement on Twitter about Bowden’s suspension. “Dr. Bowden is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. These opinions, which are harmful to the community, do not reflect reliable medical evidence or the values of Houston Methodist, where we have treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 inpatients, and where all our employees and physicians are vaccinated to protect our patients.” The hospital added she is “spreading dangerous misinformation which is not based in science.” Houston Methodist said Bowden recently joined the medical staff and, as of Friday, had never admitted a patient. She also told the hospital she is vaccinated, as is required.

Her attorney, Steven Mitby, released a statement Friday night. “Dr. Mary Bowden is a Stanford-trained physician who owns a successful medical practice in Houston and has provided top quality care to thousands of Houstonians. Dr. Bowden has treated more than 2,000 patients with COVID-19, many with co-morbidities, and has yet to have one of her patients end up in the hospital. Her early treatment methods work and are saving lives. If America had more doctors like Dr. Bowden, COVID outcomes would be much better. Dr. Bowden is not anti-vaccine. Like most Americans, Dr. Bowden believes that people should have a choice and believes that all people, regardless of vaccine status, should have access to the same high quality health care without discrimination. Dr. Bowden has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and is proud of the work she has done along with her colleagues at Houston Methodist.”

“The press is hunting physicians in coordination with Big Pharma.”

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The first expert annihilated by Fauci and Pfizer et al.

• Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)

Former White House Coronavirus Response team member Dr. Scott Atlas blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield in a new book saying that he was “disgusted” by their dismissal of scientific data he presented to them during the Trump administration. In the book, “A Plague Upon Our House” which Fox News Digital obtained an advance copy of, Atlas says he presented data and studies showing that schools should be reopened and that children are not significant spreaders of the coronavirus but was virtually ignored by Fauci and others on the team. “As I finished, there was silence,” Atlas wrote. “No one offered any contrary data. No one spoke of scientific studies. No one even mentioned the discredited Korea study. Zero comments from Dr. Birx. Nothing from Dr. Fauci.

And as always, not a single mention by Birx or Fauci about the serious harms of school closures. In my mind, this was bizarre. Why was I the only one in the room with detailed knowledge of the literature? Why was I the only one considering the data on such an important topic with a critical eye? Were the others simply accepting bottom lines and conclusions, without any analytical evaluation? Weren’t they supposed to be expert medical scientists, too? I waited.” Atlas said that Birx told him his opinion was “out of the mainstream” and said he was part of a “fringe” group of people who believed schools should be opened. “Meanwhile she insisted that all experts agreed with her,” Atlas wrote.

“I shook my head, thinking of some of the world-class epidemiologists who agreed with me—John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford—and wondered if she or Fauci had ever read a single publication by them.” Atlas wrote that he “explained with numbers” that children did not have a significant risk of illness or death from the virus and cited statistics from New York City, California, and elsewhere documenting that while also noting data from Sweden showing zero deaths despite schools not closing and also not imposing mask mandates. “The icing on the cake was the evidence that almost all coronavirus transmission to children comes from adults, not the other way around,” Atlas wrote.

“That was not a predicate for opening schools, given the massive harms to kids if they were closed. But that evidence was already shown by contact tracing and other studies in Iceland, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Opened schools and childcare centers did not show significant dangers to children, adults, or teachers…”They found zero instances of a child passing the infection to an adult.” Atlas says Redfield responded to the data by saying “the jury is still out.” “I was disgusted at Redfield’s apparent lack of knowledge, shocked at his ignoring the scientific studies that had been published from around the world,” Atlas wrote. “I looked around the room, wondering if anyone else understood the glaring incompetence on display. Clearly, Pence needed more input.”

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“..she refused to attend meetings where he would be present..”

• Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)

‘By the time I arrived, lockdowns had already been implemented throughout the country for months—including strict business restrictions and school closures as well as quarantines of healthy, asymptomatic people,’ he writes. ‘Those lockdowns were continually pushed, successfully, by Drs. Fauci and Birx to nearly all governors and throughout the media. ‘Those policies – the Birx-Fauci lockdowns – were widely implemented, and they were destroying America’s children and families. ‘Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of deaths kept piling up, including tens of thousands of elderly Americans – their policies were in place and were failing.’ Throughout, he portrays his role as critical thinker, asking awkward questions of the conventional wisdom while his opponents sought to block the president’s wishes.

Why, he asks, were scientists developing and promoting White House policy when their role should have been to offer advice and expertise to the nation’s elected leaders. Instead, Atlas says he pushed for reopening coupled with shielding of those at risk. Testing and isolating healthy people, he said, was a waste of time and resources, and compounded a culture of fear. Leaks quickly suggested he was pushing for a policy of ‘herd immunity,’ essentially by letting the virus spread until the level of natural immunity meant the coronavirus had nowhere left to go. He denies that is what he was proposing, instead describing how he once described the principle of ‘herd immunity’ in a meeting. ‘Not once did I advocate allowing infections to spread – not in that meeting nor in any other meeting, and never to the president,’ he says.

Throughout, he expresses frustration that the White House coronavirus task force was dominated by the views of Fauci and Birx – even as they advocated policies that contradicted Trump’s stated desire to reopen schools and businesses. Trump’s inner circle, he writes, seemed reluctant to rock the boat and reduce the power of two advisers that were popular with the public ahead of the election. ‘They had let Birx and Fauci tell governors to prolong the lockdowns and school closures and continue the severe restrictions on businesses – strategies that failed to stop the elderly from dying, failed to stop the cases, and destroyed families and sacrificed children,’ he writes. ‘The closest advisers to the president, including the VP, seemed more concerned with politics, even though the task force was putting out the wrong advice, contrary to the president’s desire to reopen schools and businesses.’

The result, he says, was dangerous and confusing mixed messaging from the White House. Atlas resigned in November, shortly before his term was due to end. Since then Fauci has been a target of Republicans, who accuse him of flip-flopping in his recommendations and of misleading the public over ‘gain-of-function’ research that they say may have triggered the pandemic. Both have been unstinting in their criticism of Atlas. In recent closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Birx accused Atlas of using incomplete information to draw dangerous conclusions.

‘I was constantly raising the alert in the doctors’ meetings of the depth of my concern about Dr. Atlas’ position, Dr. Atlas’ access, Dr. Atlas’ theories and hypothesis, and the depths and breadths of my concern,’ she said. She also confirmed that she refused to attend meetings where he would be present. ‘I felt like by my presence and my discussions with him, by even legitimizing my responses to him, that I was giving his theories credibility,’ she said.

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“..a mortality rate of 2/million..” What’s the myocarditis rate?

• Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)

Background Deaths in children and young people (CYP) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are rare. Quantifying the risk of mortality is challenging because of high relative prevalence of asymptomatic and non-specific disease manifestations. Therefore, it is important to differentiate between CYP who have died of SARS-CoV-2 and those who have died of an alternative disease process but coincidentally tested positive.

Methods During the pandemic, the mandatory National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) was linked to Public Health England (PHE) testing data to identify CYP (<18 years) who died with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. A clinical review of all deaths from March 2020 to February 2021 was undertaken to differentiate between those who died of SARS-CoV-2 infection and those who died of an alternative cause but coincidentally tested positive. Then, using linkage to national hospital admission data, demographic and comorbidity details of CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 were compared to all other deaths. Absolute risk of death was estimated where denominator data were available.

Findings 3105 CYP died from all causes during the first pandemic year in England. 61 of these deaths occurred in CYP who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. 25 CYP died of SARS-CoV-2 infection; 22 from acute infection and three from PIMS-TS. 99·995% of CYP with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test survived. The 25 CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 equates to a mortality rate of 2/million for the 12,023,568 CYP living in England. CYP >10 years, of Asian and Black ethnic backgrounds, and with comorbidities were over-represented compared to other children.

Interpretation SARS-CoV-2 is very rarely fatal in CYP, even among those with underlying comorbidities. These findings are important to guide families, clinicians and policy makers about future shielding and vaccination.

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Goal posts are made to be shifted.

• CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out. Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over. Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal. The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines. Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months. The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread. “We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said. To Dr. Oliver Brooks, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, it was a sobering new message, with potentially worrisome effects.

With just 58.5% of all Americans fully vaccinated, “we do need to increase” the uptake of COVID-19 shots, said Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts Healthcare in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, he said, Jones’ unexpected admission “almost makes you less motivated to get more people vaccinated.” Brooks said he worries that as the CDC backs off a specific target for herd immunity, it will take the air out of efforts to run up vaccination levels. And if public health officials stop talking about the “herd,” people may lose sight of the fact that vaccination is not just an act of personal protection but a way to protect the community. A public tack away from the promise of herd immunity may also further undermine the CDC’s credibility when it comes to fighting the coronavirus.

Read more …

“BREAKING REPORT: Judge in Rittenhouse Trial receiving MULTIPLE THREATS ahead of closing arguments..”

A fair trial? Not possible. Media. Found it remarkable that hardly anyone knows the people he shot, after they attacked him, were not black.

• As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)

The Mayhem Watch is on. Closing arguments in the trial of “Kenosha Shooter” Kyle Rittenhouse are expected Monday, and after weeks of hype, the country is primed to explode again. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers announced 500 National Guard troops will be on hand for potential post-verdict “unrest,” which seems almost guaranteed, no matter the result.

As with all major news stories lately, the Rittenhouse case saw idiosyncrasies wash away as coverage accumulated, with pundits pounding the trial into yet another generalized referendum on American culture war. Prestige media made Rittenhouse a stand-in for the Proud Boys, January 6th, school board protests, anti-mask protests, QAnon, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, “Domestic Terrorism,” fascism, school shooters, and every other naughty thing, with everyone from then-candidate Joe Biden to The Intercept blithely declaring him a white supremacist. The efforts to cast Rittenhouse as a symbol of racism and white rage have been awesome in quantity and transparently, intentionally provoking, with even leading papers like the New York Times standardizing a practice of underscoring Rittenhouse’s race (“white teenager”) while leaving the identities of those shot out of coverage. Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his old outlet, The Intercept, noted Rittenhouse’s race 20 times in one piece while keeping schtum about the color of those shot. This has gone on for so long, we’ve seen a foreign newspaper misreport that the two people killed in the case were black. In the public consciousness, they might as well have been.

Because Rittenhouse from the day of the shooting was made a symbol of Fox-watching, Trump-loving conservatives, he was also quickly adopted in red media as a hero, which “he surely wasn’t,” as Andrew Sullivan put it. This turbo-charged the freakout even more, as Rittenhouse’s defenders turned his case into a referendum on everything from media coverage of last summer’s protests of Black Lives Matter to the performance (or non-performance, as it were) of police during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake demonstrations, to a dozen other things that made public passions rise in the last year.

Rittenhouse in other words became a symbol of so many things to so many people that the specifics of his legal case have ceased to be relevant. There seems to be no such thing as an editorialist who has negative feelings about, say, Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys, yet also believes that incident can’t be evidence since it happened after the shooting. Everyone picks a side and stays there. Pundits are telling us that any opinion on how the jury should rule can only be understood as a reflection of racial attitudes. “If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse, you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” is how Tweeter-with-beard and sometimes-journalist David Leavitt puts it.

Read more …

Not the Onion. Can’t decide who’s crazier, he or Zuckerberg.

• Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)

Humanity will move most industry into space and allow only a select few to remain on our planet, which will be turned into a natural resort, according to self-funded space explorer Jeff Bezos. The Amazon billionaire enthusiastically shared his predictions for what human civilization will look like in the future – with him personally helping to bring that future closer – during a talk at the annual Ignatius Forum in Washington, DC. He expects vast cylindrical space colonies spinning to create artificial gravity for millions of residents to take over most industrial production. Meanwhile, Earth will be turned into a natural reserve with restricted access similar to US national parks today.

“This place is special, we can’t ruin it,” the founder of Amazon said of our planet. “Millions of people will move from Earth to space over time. And that’s the vision of Blue Origin – millions of people working in space,” he said, referring to his own firm. “Over centuries, most or many of the people will be born in space. It will be their first home. They will be born on these colonies, they will live on these colonies. They may visit Earth the way you would visit Yellowstone National Park,” Bezos predicted. He said that the colonies themselves “will have rivers and forests and wildlife,” which arguably brought his speech out of the realm of futurology and towards optimistic science fiction.

Amazon is infamously resourceful when it comes to squeezing its workers for every drop of productivity. That’s why the similarly rosy description of ‘Amazon factory towns’ solving economic inequality in the US was met with horror, when it was proposed by a Bloomberg columnist in September. Bezos referred to Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, who proposed the concept of space habitats in 1976, as the source of inspiration for him. He said the sort of expansion he predicted was inevitable, if humanity is to grow in a sustainable way. “This Earth can support, let’s say, 10 billion people to a certain degree. We’d have to work really hard to figure out how to do that without degrading the planet… The solar system can support a trillion people,” he said.

Read more …

We know where to send Bezos.

• God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

In a bold announcement to all of His children, God unveiled the creation of an ultra-realistic metaverse where people can talk, learn, and work with other people, stating this unique new metaverse will be called “Universe.” “This is more realistic than any virtual reality I’ve experienced before,” said reality enthusiast Miles Kann while walking through one of the Universe’s city parks in real-time. “I can literally smell the fresh air, touch the cool grass, and interact with other players in incredible ways.” Another early adopter of God’s Universe demonstrated how detailed and immersive the player-to-player interaction was as she showed off her humble home, complete with husband, children, and dog.


She thanked God for providing her with a sense of purpose and fulfillment unmatched by any competing product. Critics were quick to point out possible bugs in the Universe, listing wars, injustices, violence, and disease, and suggested God either label it “Early Access” or reboot altogether. These criticisms, however, were countered by God’s supporters who were well-versed in the instruction manual, stating a truly realistic Universe must come with the full experience of joy and pain, choice and accountability, life and death, but that the end game was worth it. According to witnesses, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg screamed in terror at the frightening, immutable reality of God’s Universe.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 31 2021

May 312021
 
 May 31, 2021  Posted by at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Edgar Degas Landscape with Path Leading to a Copse of Trees 1880-92

 

• Employees Sue Hospital over Vaccine Mandate (L&C)
• Vaccine Passports For Cross-Border Travel Take Off In Europe (RT)
• DHS Walks Back Claim US Taking “Close Look” At Vaccine Passports (ZH)
• Masks Achieve Nothing In Terms Of Spread (Guerra)
• The Basic Foolishness With The Path (Denninger)
• Travel Restrictions & Partial Lockdown Imposed In Guangzhou (RT)
• Over 200 Republicans Press Pelosi To Back COVID-19 Origin Probe (ZH)
• Denmark Helped NSA Spy On EU Leaders, Snowden Says Biden ‘Deeply Involved’ (RT)
• ‘Silicon Six’ Tech Giants Accused Of Inflating Tax Payments By $100bn (G.)
• Senate Preparing $10 Billion Bailout Fund For Jeff Bezos Space Firm (IC)
• Julian Assange’s Father and Brother Announce US Tour (CD)

 

 

 

 

Slowly redefining, eroding legal language.

From 2 days ago: “The updated guidelines say employers may offer incentives for employees to provide documentation showing they have been vaccinated since requesting this proof “is not a disability-related inquiry” or an “unlawful request” under federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Today: “..the coronavirus vaccines available in the U.S. are no longer considered “experimental” because they have “completed clinical trials and have been authorized for emergency use.”

• Employees Sue Hospital over Vaccine Mandate (L&C)

A group of 117 Houston-area hospital employees on Friday filed a civil lawsuit against an employer hospital’s coronavirus vaccine mandate. The lawsuit alleges that the mandate violates both the Nuremberg Code and U.S. statutes that allow Americans to refuse “unapproved” medical treatments. It also alleges violations of Texas labor and employment laws. That “people” are “trying to force you to put something into your body that you’re not comfortable with to keep your job is just insane,” lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges told Houston CBS affiliate KHOU. The defendants are The Methodist Hospital, the Methodist Hospital System, and Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital. The people in charge of those entities responded to the litigation by saying the plaintiffs are but a small minority of voices among 26,000 employees and that it is “legal for health care institutions to mandate vaccines.”

The sharply worded 56-page complaint argues that the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market were authorized merely as “emergency” measures and, thus, are not fully “approved” vaccines. At the top of the document are words attributed to David Bernard, the CEO of Houston Methodist San Jacinto Hospital: “100% vaccination is more important than your individual freedom. Everyone [sic] of you is replaceable. If you don’t like what your [sic] doing you can leave and we will replace your spot.” Those alleged words did not sit well with the plaintiffs. “For the first time in the history of the United States, an employer is forcing an employee to participate in an experimental vaccine trial as a condition for continued employment,” the lawsuit argues.

The document continues by alleging that the defendant hospital “became the first major health care system in the country to force it [sic] employees to be injected with an experimental COVID-19 mRNA gene modification injection (‘experimental vaccine’) or be fired.” “Methodist Hospital is forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment,” the lawsuit’s opening paragraph also says. The Washington Post on May 14 reported that the coronavirus vaccines available in the U.S. are no longer considered “experimental” because they have “completed clinical trials and have been authorized for emergency use.” The same report quotes a bevy of experts who asserted that the current vaccines are safe while noting that millions of Americans have been vaccinated without serious harm.

Read more …

You can be the healthiest person in the world, but it makes no difference.

• Vaccine Passports For Cross-Border Travel Take Off In Europe (RT)

Greece and Denmark have become the first to launch Covid-19 vaccine passports for travel within the EU, as the bloc pushes for all member states to adopt the system and US officials say they’re considering the idea. The two countries rolled out the new passes on Friday in separate press conferences, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis calling them a “fast lane to facilitate travel” in Europe and help “restore freedom of movement.” While some EU states, including Denmark, had already implemented their own internal vaccine certificates, the new passports can be used for cross-border travel, in line with a March proposal by the European Commission.

The Greek and Danish passports are managed through a smartphone app that shows a user’s vaccination status and the last time they were tested for coronavirus. Both also use a scannable QR code to quickly relay the information, though paper versions will also be made available. The EU has pressed for all 27 of its member states to adopt a bloc-wide passport by July 1, agreeing to the plan in principle last week ahead of the summer tourism season. The push comes after the bloc called for an easing of the travel restrictions imposed at the height of the pandemic, recommending that members allow foreign visitors if they are fully vaccinated. While the European Parliament has yet to formally approve the passport scheme, several countries have already moved ahead.

In addition to Greece and Denmark, Ireland also announced plans on Friday to adopt an international Covid pass by July 19, while the UK’s National Health Service recently updated its digital passport app for cross-border travel. The passports will also be valid in non-EU nations Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, according to the European Commission. As the passes gain traction across Europe, US officials have said they are also eyeing the concept for foreign travel, with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Alejandro Mayorkas telling ABC on Friday that the Biden administration is “taking a very close look at that.” A DHS spokesperson later clarified, however, that there would be no “federal mandate” for any kind of vaccine pass, adding that the government would help Americans only to meet entry requirements in other countries.

Read more …

“The Biden administration has previously said multiple times that it will not require vaccine passports, or proof of vaccination, on the federal level. However, the administration is working with private companies to set guidelines for passport systems.”

• DHS Walks Back Claim US Taking “Close Look” At Vaccine Passports (ZH)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday walked back comments made by the agency’s chief, who suggested earlier in the day that the federal government was “taking a very close look” at the idea of requiring vaccine passports to enter or leave the United States. “Looking ahead to summer, Europe and other countries are going to open up. Could we see vaccine passports to travel internationally either into or out of the U.S.?” an ABC “Good Morning America” host asked Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the DHS. “We’re taking a very close look at that,” Mayorkas responded. But DHS said Mayorkas was only talking about how Americans will need to use such passports to enter other countries.

“We’ve always said we’re looking at how we can ensure Americans traveling abroad have a quick and easy way to enter other countries. That’s what the secretary was referring to; ensuring that all U.S. travelers will be able to easily meet any anticipated foreign country entry requirements,” an agency spokesperson told news outlets. “There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential,” the department also said. The White House had responded to Mayorkas’ statement by saying the same thing. Asked to explain his comments, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One:

“Again, the U.S. government recognizes that other countries have or may have foreign-entry requirements. We will be monitoring these and helping all U.S. travelers meet those, but we will not be—there will be no federal mandate requiring anyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.” The Biden administration has previously said multiple times that it will not require vaccine passports, or proof of vaccination, on the federal level. However, the administration is working with private companies to set guidelines for passport systems. A variety of groups have raised concerns about vaccine passports, arguing it would be an overreach of government authority to require vaccination proof. A number of states have banned requiring of passports, such as Georgia, and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) announced Friday they were introducing a bill that would ban them.

Read more …

Bit confusing?!

• Masks Achieve Nothing In Terms Of Spread (Guerra)

Latest analysis shows yet again – yet again – what we already knew from 40 years of published research. And also empirically from simply glancing over the past year’s real-world data. Masks don’t work! Our main finding is that mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states. 80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mandates induced greater mask compliance but did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima). We infer that mandates likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth [15], as growth rates were similar on all days between actual or modeled issuance dates and 6 March 2021. Higher mask use (rather than mandates per se) has been argued to decrease COVID-19 growth rates [11].

While compliance varies by location and time, IHME estimates are robust (derived from multiple sources [17]) and densely sampled (day-level precision). Higher mask use did not predict lower maximum growth rates, smaller surges, or less Fall-Winter growth among continental states. Mask-growth rate correlation was only evident at minima. This may be an artifact of faster growth at fewer normalized cases, as well as regional differences in case prevalence early in the pandemic. States in the high mask quintile grew at similar rates as states in the low mask quintile after maxima (when interstate total case differences were smaller than before minima). In addition, mask use did not predict normalized cases at minima, and low mask growth curves trailed those of high mask (particularly Northeast) states before minima.

Growth maxima and Fall-Winter surges did not differ between Northeast and other states. Northeast states exhibited the highest seroprevalence up to at least July 2020 [24] and constituted 80% of the top quintile of mask use, which may explain their comparatively lower Summer growth. Overall, mask use appears to be an intra-state lagging indicator of case growth. There is inferential but not demonstrable evidence that masks reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Animal models [25], small case studies [6], and growth curves for mandate-only states [16] suggest that mask efficacy increases with mask use [11]. However, we did not observe lower growth rates over a range of compliance at maximum Fall-Winter growth (45-83% between South Dakota and Massachusetts during maxima) [17] when growth rates were high.

Read more …

“..you must use very large amounts of the substance in order to get enough of it where you want it and the unwanted part can and does cause problems in other parts of the body.”

• The Basic Foolishness With The Path (Denninger)

Moderna, for example, is not a new company. They have repeatedly tried to get their mRNA technology to be taken up preferentially by parts of the body that have some disease or disorder and thus attempt to treat that. It has never worked, because while some preference can be expressed for the particular particles injected too much of it winds up in other places where it’s not wanted and causes problems. Let me repeat this for emphasis: Nobody has managed to come up with an injected, complex substance such as “nanoparticles” that are only taken up by the tissues desired and not by any of the others. This in turn means you must use very large amounts of the substance in order to get enough of it where you want it and the unwanted part can and does cause problems in other parts of the body.

This is why Moderna, despite ten years of trying, has never before had a successful therapy licensed anywhere. We were told that this sort of thing does not happen with these shots. But there was zero proof of this; in fact, quite to the contrary, there was ten years of evidence by this company’s trials itself that said it was the exact opposite; specificity simply could not be guaranteed and too much would spill over into other places. We now know it happens with the mRNA shots as well, both directly and indirectly. The second pillar of the development of these vaccines was the claim, which the CDC still makes by the way, that the spike protein alone is harmless. Thus, even if some of the material was taken up in the wrong place (not the muscle and the lymph system) it was ok because it wouldn’t hurt you.

Unfortunately we now know that’s false as the spike alone is not inert and harmless; the first indications of that in scientific papers came in September of 2020 and development was not halted until the risk could be characterized. The CDC is knowingly lying in their public statements; that the spike portion of the virus is “harmless” is simply not subject to reasonable scientific support at this point in time. Yes, inducing antibodies in the circulation is what you want to happen. Causing spike protein components and the intact spike protein to be found in the circulation, however, you definitely do not want to happen because we now know, on the body of evidence, that both S1 standing alone and the whole spike are pathogenic — that is, they cause disorders in the body.

Indeed the evidence is quite strong that when you get hammered by Covid the reason you get hammered is that the infection becomes systemic and the part of the virus that causes the systemic problem is the spike when it gets into the circulation and then is disseminated through the body’s systems. We now know that the spike protein alone is capable of producing abnormal clotting absent the rest of the virus — that is, the entire virus isn’t necessary to do it and it’s not the virus infecting cells and replicating in them that causes it; it is the spike alone that induces the body to inappropriately produce blood clots where they do not belong.

Read more …

We don’t see much virus news from China.

• Travel Restrictions & Partial Lockdown Imposed In Guangzhou (RT)

Border control and a partial lockdown have been imposed in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, after a cluster of the Indian variant of the coronavirus was discovered there. People leaving Guangzhou, a provincial capital of 15.3 million, must test negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours before the trip. Roughly 520 flights were canceled at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, one of the world’s busiest air travel hubs, as of 11:40am local time on Monday, CNA news agency reported, citing aviation data provider VariFlight.


Authorities earlier announced stay-at-home orders for residents of several streets in the city’s Liwan District, where the first infected patient was discovered on May 21, and restricted travel on the subway and buses. Large gatherings were banned across Guangzhou, while indoor venues were told to operate at limited capacity and targeted mass-testing programs were launched. Chen Bin, the deputy chief of the provincial health commission, was cited by Xinhua as confirming on Sunday that all locally transmitted cases found in Guangzhou since May 21 were linked to the B.1.617 coronavirus strain, also known as the Indian variant.

Read more …

200 is a lot.

• Over 200 Republicans Press Pelosi To Back COVID-19 Origin Probe (ZH)

More than 200 House Republicans are putting pressure on their Democrat counterparts to get down to the COVID-19 origins and hold the Chinese regime accountable for the pandemic coverup. “We request that you instruct the appropriate Democrat committee chairs to immediately join Republican calls to hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accountable for its role in causing the global COVID-19 pandemic,” stated a May 28 letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The effort was led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), Minority Whip Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.), and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference and joined by 209 House Republicans.

The lawmakers said Pelosi had “falsely claimed” that “questions about the CCP’s liability” were a “diversion” – likely referring to Pelosi’s remarks from last May describing then-President Donald Trump’s blame on China as an “interesting diversion.” “There is mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab, and the CCP covered it up. If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide,” they stated in the letter. “[E]very American family that lost someone deserves answers about the origin of this terrible virus,” they continued, adding that “House Democrats’ ongoing refusal to allocate investigative resources to get those answers is an affront to them.” “China can’t get away with this. Americans deserve answers,” Scalise wrote in a May 28 tweet.

The lawmakers cited a growing pile of evidence that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan lab, an idea that many media outlets and scientists had initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory. A State Department fact sheet, released during the final days of the Trump administration, suggested researchers with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in the vicinity of the seafood market initially thought to be the outbreak’s origin, fell ill with COVID-19 like symptoms in autumn 2019. Recently, an undisclosed intelligence report also surfaced saying three WIV staff were sick enough to seek hospital care that November.

Read more …

What is Merkel going to do about Denmark? Her anger over having her phone spied on sure went away fast.

• Denmark Helped NSA Spy On EU Leaders, Snowden Says Biden ‘Deeply Involved’ (RT)

The US National Intelligence Agency received support from Denmark in spying on European politicians, according to a new joint media report, something President Joe Biden is well-informed to answer for, says Edward Snowden. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank Walter-Steinmeier are among those who were spied on by the NSA with the cooperation and help of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE), according to the European media investigation. The US spying on not only its own citizens, but also leaders in foreign countries is an accusation that came to light in 2013, mostly thanks to documents leaked by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower – though he remains a fugitive in the US – Edward Snowden. Snowden’s leaks specifically revealed Merkel’s private cell phone had been monitored by US authorities.

The new revelations come as a result of multiple European news outlets – including Danish state broadcaster DR, German NDR, Swedish SVT, Norwegian NRK and French Le Monde among others – obtaining access to internal reports and information from Danish Secret Service sources. According to the investigation, politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and even Danish finance industries were also targeted by the NSA with the help of Danish spies. The Danish government has reportedly known about the cooperation for years and forced FE leadership to step down in 2020 after discovering the full extent of the relationship following an internal investigation. They did not, however, report the findings to any European Union allies.

The spying was primarily done through hijacking Danish electronic communications systems as the country has landing stations for subsea internet cables between numerous countries, such as Germany and Sweden. By using politicians’ and officials’ phone numbers, authorities were able to pull texts and phone calls, while those being spied on were none the wiser. Snowden, who made his revelations about the NSA while Biden was vice president, says the current president is “well-prepared” to answer the accusations and that there should be a requirement of “full disclosure” from both Denmark and the US. “Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around,” he tweeted. “There should be an explicit requirement for full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well.”

Read more …

“Overall, they paid $219bn in income tax over the past decade, 3.6% of their total revenue of more than $6tn.”

• ‘Silicon Six’ Tech Giants Accused Of Inflating Tax Payments By $100bn (G.)

The giant US tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of inflating their stated tax payments by almost $100bn (£70bn) over the past decade. As Chancellor Rishi Sunak called on world leaders to back a new tech tax ahead of next week’s G7 summit in the UK, a report by the campaign group Fair Tax Foundation singled out Amazon, Facebook, Google’s owner, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft. It said they paid $96bn less in tax between 2011 and 2020 than the notional taxation figures they cite in their annual financial reports. . The six firms named handed over $149bn less to global tax authorities than would be expected if they had the paid headline rates where they operated, Fair Tax Foundation said.

Overall, they paid $219bn in income tax over the past decade, 3.6% of their total revenue of more than $6tn. Income tax is paid on profits, but the researchers said the Silicon Six companies deliberately shift income to low-tax jurisdictions to pay less tax. Based on companies’ regulatory filings, the report found that Amazon, the internet retailing and cloud services provider run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, collected $1.6tn of revenue, reported $60.5bn of profit and paid $5.9bn in income taxes this decade. Amazon would have been expected to pay $10.7bn in taxes on those profits based on international tax rates, the report said. The tax paid as a percentage of profit was just 9.8% over the period 2011-20, the lowest of the so-called “Silicon Six”.

An Amazon spokesperson disputed the calculations as “extremely misleading”. “Amazon is primarily a retailer where profit margins are low, so comparisons to technology companies with operating profit margins of closer to 50% is not rational,” the company said. “Governments write the tax laws and Amazon is doing the very thing they encourage companies to do – paying all taxes due while also investing many billions in creating jobs and infrastructure. Coupled with low margins, this investment will naturally result in a lower cash tax rate.”

Read more …

Don’t pay taxes, get bailed out instead.

• Senate Preparing $10 Billion Bailout Fund For Jeff Bezos Space Firm (IC)

Now that Jeff Bezos’s space flight company Blue Origin has lost a multibillion contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Congress is prepping the ground for Bezos to win a contract anyway, ordering NASA to make not one but two awards. The order would come through the Endless Frontier Act, a bill to beef up resources for science and technology research that’s being debated on the Senate floor this week. An amendment was added to that legislation by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to hand over $10 billion to NASA — money that most likely would go to Blue Origin, a company that’s headquartered in Cantwell’s home state.


Cantwell’s amendment is no sure bet though: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a last-minute amendment Monday to eliminate the $10 billion. “It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in America,” Sanders told The Intercept Tuesday. The Bezos space company had been competing against SpaceX for a contract to put astronauts on the moon, the first such trips since 1972, but lost the bidding process with a price tag twice that of SpaceX. NASA announced the award to the Elon Musk-owned company last month.

Read more …

“My brother Julian Assange has effectively been a prisoner for over a decade because he published evidence of war crimes..”

• Julian Assange’s Father and Brother Announce US Tour (CD)

The father and brother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are planning a nationwide tour of the United States next month to advocate for the release of the detained journalist and for the Biden administration to drop its extradition effort—and to highlight the broader implications that his prosecution has for global press freedom. John and Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s father and brother, will kick off the #HomeRun4Julian tour in Miami on June 6, then travel to over a dozen U.S. cities for the rest of the month, wrapping up in Washington, D.C. in July. Some events will be live-streamed, and the pair plans to meet with activists, journalists, and policymakers along the away. “My brother Julian Assange has effectively been a prisoner for over a decade because he published evidence of war crimes,” said Gabriel Shipton in a statement Thursday. “The U.S. government wants to make an example out of him to deter journalists and whistleblowers.”

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle May 28 2021

May 282021
 
 May 28, 2021  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Brassaï Couple on a bench, Paris 1932

 

• Suppressing Data On Ivermectin Cost ‘Half A Million Lives’ – Kory (WT)
• Inhaled Nanobodies Could Be New Secret Weapon Against Severe Covid (RT)
• US Sitting On ‘Raft’ Of Unexamined Virus Intel (ZH)
• Fort Detrick Base Is Full Of Suspicions – China (RT)
• Rand Paul: “Fauci Cannot Investigate Himself; Get Him Under Oath” (SN)
• California Launches Largest US Covid Vaccine Lottery Yet (G.)
• Facebook Now Banning Anyone Who Says Virus Wasn’t Created In Wuhan Lab (BBee)
• Bezos Weaponizes The Washington Post Homepage (DP)
• Biden’s Budget Assumes a Massive Retroactive Capital Gains Tax (Mish)
• Socialism for 1% Capitalism 99% (Braund)
• CNN Hires Trump As News Anchor To Recover Lost Viewers (BBee)

 

 

Just how crazy is this? You can say that the vaccines are not approved, but not that they haven’t been appropriately tested?

 

 

Hodkinson

 

 

“It’s literally criminal.”

• Suppressing Data On Ivermectin Cost ‘Half A Million Lives’ – Kory (WT)

In a recent Zoom call, Dr. Pierre Kory of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance outlined numerous details showing the World Health Organization (WHO) knowingly suppressed data on the effectiveness of ivermectin against the virus in order to benefit the vaccine interests of Big Pharma. “It’s criminal,” Kory said. “It’s literally criminal.” The drug “could have saved half a million lives this year if it had been approved.” The WHO, Kory contends, is simply taking part in the tactics of a time-worn “Disinformation Playbook.” The term was coined by the Union of Concerned Scientists 50 years ago to describe the strategies corporations have developed over decades to “attack science when it goes against their financial interests.”

It consists of five parts:
The Fake – Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.
The Blitz – Harass scientists who speak out with results reviews inconvenient for industry.
The Diversion – Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.
The Screen – Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies.
The Fix – Manipulate government officials or processes to influence policy inappropriately.

In the full Zoom call, since removed by YouTube but available on Bitchute, Kory describes how the five tactics have been deployed against the scientific findings on ivermectin. One example is the corruption of leading medical journals, whose editors refuse to allow ivermectin studies to advance to peer review. The most egregious institutional participant, however, is the WHO. Kory is the lead author of a scientific review of the studies on ivermectin worldwide, which was published in the May-June edition of The American Journal of Therapeutics. As reported on the FlCCC website, there have been a total of 56 trials involving 469 scientists and 18,447 patients. Of these, 28 were randomized control trials (RCT), the type of trial considered highly authoritative in the medical community.

Together these have shown an 85 percent improvement as a preventative against the disease when taken before exposure. There has been a 78 percent patient improvement when administered early and a 46 percent improvement when delivered late. A 74 percent improvement in mortality was found and a 66 percent improvement across multiple areas in the 28 randomized control trials. Within only 10 days of publication the paper on ivermectin was rated number 13 most-read among the more than 200,000 other scientific publications that appeared during that time, Kory reports. Out of the 17.7 million papers that have been tracked by the rating source since it began, the ivermectin study is already ranked 246.

Read more …

I’ll take ivermectin instead.

• Inhaled Nanobodies Could Be New Secret Weapon Against Severe Covid (RT)

In search of ways to complement jabs or to treat patients who can’t be vaccinated, scientists have tested inhalable anti-Covid nanobodies on hamsters, saying they’re effective in fighting the virus by targeting its spike protein. The promising new findings came courtesy of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, marking the first time nanobodies have been tested for inhalation treatment of the coronavirus disease. Nanobodies are similar to monoclonal antibodies, widely used in certain cancer treatments, but are smaller in size and boast a lower cost of production, which may prove key to a global rollout should the treatment gain regulatory approval in future. The researchers previously identified some 8,000 nanobodies which they whittled down to just one highly effective or “ultra potent” version called Nb21, which they then bioengineered to better slot together with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.


Their aerosolized nanobody, named Pittsburgh inhalable Nanobody-21 (PiN-21), is said to have reduced the number of infectious virus particles in the test subject hamsters’ nasal cavities, throats and lungs by a million-fold. “We are very excited and encouraged by our data suggesting that PiN-21 can be highly protective against severe disease and can potentially prevent human-to-human viral transmission,” said co-senior author Yi Shi. The study says that hamsters who inhaled PiN-21 at the time of infection experienced no Covid-19 related weight loss, compared to the control group, which received a placebo and lost 16% of their initial body weight within a week of infection. This would be the equivalent to an adult human losing 20lbs (9kg) in one week, it said. Test subjects who inhaled PiN-21 experienced milder changes in lung structure and severely reduced inflammation following infection than the placebo group.

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‘an extraordinary amount of computer power’, ‘databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.”

• US Sitting On ‘Raft’ Of Unexamined Virus Intel (ZH)

Hours after President Biden promised to release the ‘full report’ from US Intelligence community’s 90-day examination of where COVID-19 originated – unless there’s something he’s unaware of… …the New York Times reports, there’s things he’s unaware of. Namely, ‘a raft of still-unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery,” according to anonymous senior administration officials. In other words, the US government has been sitting on a large collection of intelligence in perhaps the most important investigation into an economy-wrecking global pandemic, as China destroyed evidence and has refused to cooperate with international probes.

According to the report, Biden’s call for the new investigation was in response to the ‘new’ evidence. While officials declined to describe the new evidence, they are hoping to apply ‘an extraordinary amount of computer power’ to analyze what the Times speculates may be ‘databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.” Biden’s call was also meant to spur American allies and intelligence agencies to scour their own evidence, such as “intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence,” to assess whether the Chinese government covered up what happened.

Astute readers will note that the NYT substitutes its own facts, framing any lab release as of course “accidental,” and suggesting that Biden only dismissed the lab origin theory “until the Chinese government this week rejected allowing further investigation by the World Health Organization.” In reality, plenty of evidence existed which the entire leftist establishment and their media surrogates flatly branded a ‘debunked conspiracy theory’ after then-President Trump promoted it, while the World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) parroted CCP propaganda that the virus could have only emerged via ‘natural origin’ (as opposed to the Chinese lab manipulating bat coronaviruses in the same city that the pandemic started).

Read more …

Two can play that game.

• Fort Detrick Base Is Full Of Suspicions – China (RT)

Beijing has called on the US to provide an explanation for a respiratory disease in northern Virginia and a large-scale outbreak of e-cigarette disease in Wisconsin after Washington launched a new probe into Covid-19’s origins. Speaking on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian asked the US to reflect on its own role in the pandemic and not “dump” responsibility on China alone. Citing the 33 million Covid-19 cases in the US and 600,000 deaths, Zhao asked “How safe is your conscience?” “I also want to emphasize that the Fort Detrick base is full of suspicions. There are more than 200 biological laboratories in the United States spreading around the world. How many secrets are there?”

The spokesman said that there was an unexplained respiratory disease in northern Virginia in July 2019 and a large-scale outbreak of e-cigarette disease in Wisconsin. “When will the US release detailed data and information on relevant cases to the international community? The United States owes an explanation to the international community.” The Maryland-based US Fort Detrick center hosts a biolab which has become a hot topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to issue a “cease and desist order” to halt operations at the germ lab over safety concerns.

Zhao’s comment comes after US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he was giving intelligence agencies 90 days to pinpoint the origins of Covid-19. Biden said his administration would continue to push China to “participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.” Reinforcing a statement from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC on Wednesday evening, Zhao called on the US to stop “ignoring facts and science” and refrain from “repeatedly clamoring to reinvestigate China.”

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Good idea.

• Rand Paul: “Fauci Cannot Investigate Himself; Get Him Under Oath” (SN)

Senator Rand Paul, who has spearheaded the renewed push to investigate the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, has called for Dr Fauci to be placed under oath and made to testify about the murky ‘gain of function’ research he was involved with funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Paul also urged that Fauci “needs to be excluded from the investigation” because he is too deeply involved in the whole thing. Appearing on Fox News, Paul spoke about the funding that Fauci and the NIH supplied to China. “Well, sure it’s a lot. And there are some reports that it added up to millions over time. But the other thing he said was that there was no gain of function in the application. There are scientists who looked at the application and who absolutely and categorically disagree with him,” Paul noted.

“The other evidence that we have is Dr. Shi from the Wuhan lab published a paper that is clearly about gain of function and it that she thanks her group and Dr. Fauci for funding that paper. So there are a lot of contradictions going on,” Paul added. “I think Dr. Fauci should be made to testify under oath about the money that was given to the lab,” Paul said, adding “The good news is yesterday I passed an amendment on the Senate floor that says no more gain of function money can be sent to China.” “The bottom line, he cannot investigate himself. If he was responsible for giving this money. He has every incentive to cover it up and not reveal the truth about it because if the pandemic did come from the lab, he would have great culpability in this,” Paul further emphasised.

The Senator, who continues to receive death threats after being so vocal against Fauci, added that “he can’t be investigating this, nor can any of his people that he picks be investigating this. He needs to be excluded from the investigation.” “This is very important because this could happen again,” Paul warned, adding “I mean, they are experimenting with the SARS virus, which is 15 times more deadly than COVID-19. COVID-19 kills 1%… more than 3 million people. If SARS got out of the lab, that could be 50 million people. This is a very important task ahead of us. We have 11 labs in our country that do this kind of research.”

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Just how crazy is this? Does anyone find it normal?

• California Launches Largest US Covid Vaccine Lottery Yet (G.)

California has become the latest state to offer a vaccine lottery to incentivize getting the coronavirus vaccine – launching the nation’s most valuable single prize draw: $1.5m. The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Thursday that residents will be eligible for a total of $116.5m in prize money giveaways, a windfall aimed at getting millions more vaccinated before the nation’s most populous state fully reopens next month. The state’s reopening is pegged for 15 June, and on that day a drawing will be held to award 10 vaccinated people the top prize. Another 30 people will win $50,000 each, with those drawings starting 4 June. Anyone 12 and older who has received at least one shot will be eligible. And the next 2 million people who get vaccinated will get $50 gift cards.


The state estimates about 12 million Californians 12 and older have not been vaccinated. About 63% of the 34 million eligible have gotten shots, though the pace has slowed markedly in recent weeks as infection rates have plummeted to record lows. Ohio this week announced the first $1m winner of its “Vax-a-Million” contest, as well as the first child to win a full college scholarship. The scheme saw more than 2.7 million adults register for a chance to win. Colorado and Oregon also offered $1m prizes. New York is raffling 50 full scholarships to children 12 to 17 to public universities and colleges in the state, selecting 10 winners each of the next five Wednesdays. That California is turning to cash prizes to encourage vaccinations marks a major turnaround from earlier this year, when Californians clamored for shots, with some driving or waiting in line for hours to get one.

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Babylon Bee is on a roll.

• Facebook Now Banning Anyone Who Says Virus Wasn’t Created In Wuhan Lab (BBee)

Facebook has updated its community standards today, declaring that anyone who says the COVID-19 virus wasn’t developed in the lab in Wuhan will be banned for sharing fake news. Mark Zuckerberg, may he live forever, announced the change from his royal throne today to a group of reporters gathered in his royal throne room. “Hear ye, hear ye!” Zuckerberg announced. “From henceforth, anyone saying the virus wasn’t created in a lab shall be banned! While previously, those who said the virus was created in a lab were hanged, this royal decree hereby reverses the order, and now, those who deny the obvious truth that it was created in a lab shall be declared anathema and sentenced to die!”


Zuckerberg’s royal scribes then began scrubbing the old rule from the giant Community Standards tablets displayed in the throne room and chiseling the updated rule on top. “So it is written, and so it is done!” announced Zuckerberg. And the people rejoiced and began feasting upon the lamb, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies.

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Amazon as the great defender of the minimum wage. Gutsy.

• Bezos Weaponizes The Washington Post Homepage (DP)

A few years after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, he said it was because it “is the newspaper in the capital city of the most important country in the world” and “has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy.” Now, with more and more legislators scrutinizing his company’s business practices, his newspaper is playing that role — as an advertising platform in defense of Amazon. On Tuesday, hours after the Washington Post reported that the D.C. attorney general is bringing an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, the front page of the Post’s website was festooned with native ads from Amazon portraying itself as a devoted supporter of a higher federal minimum wage.

The Post ads, which appeared almost like editorial content, are part of a broader campaign by Amazon highlighting its support for a $15 minimum wage. Left unsaid: Amazon only begrudgingly agreed to a higher wage for its own workers after serious public shaming. The company has also continued to bankroll corporate lobbying groups that are leading the fight against a minimum wage hike, and the Washington Post editorial board has campaigned against a $15 wage. Amazon’s ad spending with the newspaper is nothing new: The company has disclosed spending $40.5 million with the Washington Post since 2013 on advertising and digital content, including $8.1 million last year, according to its proxy statements.

The company’s latest ad on the Post homepage was designed to make the tech giant look progressive in advance of the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday and the news that it’s acquiring legendary film studio MGM. If you were casually glancing at the Post page Tuesday, you may not have realized the Amazon language was an advertisement, since portions of it were included in the Washington Post masthead banner. Text boxes in the banner said: “Since 2018, Amazon has paid at least $15/hour. It’s time to raise the $7.25 federal minimum wage.” Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, noted Tuesday that “these ads aren’t clearly marked as ads, and that crosses a line.”

[..] Of course, as the Washington Post headline noted when Amazon announced it would raise its minimum wage to $15, it did so “following criticism” — most prominently from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., who launched a petition to Bezos in August 2018, demanding that he pay his workers “a living wage and improve working conditions at Amazon warehouses all across the country.” Sanders also introduced the “Stop BEZOS Act,” legislation to put a 100-percent tax on government benefits received by workers at large companies, after a report by the New Food Economy found that thousands of Amazon workers were on food stamps.

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“His budget and tax hikes are headed to the gutter. Beyond infrastructure, it’s unclear if Biden can pass anything.”

• Biden’s Budget Assumes a Massive Retroactive Capital Gains Tax (Mish)

Biden seeks to hike the top rate on capital gains to 43.4% from 23.8% for households with income over $1 million. He also wants to make the increase retroactive and force capital gains realization at death as well. The WSJ reports Biden’s Budget Said to Assume Capital-Gains Tax Rate Increase Started in April. • Leaders of six biggest U.S. banks, testified to Congress Thursday warning against a retroactive change. • Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), wants to maintain a lower tax rate for capital gains than for ordinary income. • Lawmakers from farm states, including Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) and Rep. Cindy Axne (D., Iowa) have objected to the changes on capital gains at death. Biden wants to make it retroactive so that millionaires cannot accelerate gains now. And he wants to make gains taxable at death to prevent heirs from holding.

In short, Biden wants his tax hikes now and later too. He continues to appease the Progressives. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the budget is sustainable because long-term yields are below the rate of inflation, conveniently held there by the Fed. The budget also assumes no recession for at least another 9 years despite the fact they happen about every 5 years on average. Finally, Biden’s budget not only assumes retroactive tax hikes but those hikes will bring in more money than the nonpartisan congressional budget office assumes. Meanwhile, Enough is Enough, a Democratic Governor Courageously Says “No More Taxes”

There is bipartisan support for about $900 billion in infrastructure spend, far short of the $2.3 trillion Biden seeks. There is no bipartisan support for tax hikes. Moreover, Biden cannot afford to lose a single Democrat Senator on any issue, but the net impact of all his tax and budget proposals suggests he has lost at least 3 Senators. His budget and tax hikes are headed to the gutter. Beyond infrastructure, it’s unclear if Biden can pass anything.

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“Banks can continue to lend money at interest in order to cover their costs, and make a reasonable profit, but they should not be permitted to create new money at interest..”

• Socialism for 1% Capitalism 99% (Braund)

Banks create money by making loans to their customers. This method accounts for around 97 per cent of the money in circulation. Nearly all money is created as debt, repayable at interest. This means that all loans have to be repaid with money also created as debt and loaned at interest. No wonder the economy struggles, when the system of money creation heaps cost upon unnecessary cost. And no wonder the banks generate such enormous profits. This system, known as fractional reserve banking, is an integral part of the nexus of unearned wealth: Banks’ shareholders earn dividends from the super-profits extracted by the process of money creation; banks loan money to their own investment arms to finance speculative activities which undermine the real economy and then pay themselves unwarranted bonuses from the proceeds; and money issued as debt helps drive up asset prices, especially land, through the housing market and the market for commercial property.

Not only does the system of money issue skew the economy in favour of the already wealthy, it places an unnecessary burden on genuine entrepreneurs by charging them for the use of money. Money is not wealth, but it is required to pay for land, labour and capital. Why should enterprising businesspeople pay a premium for the use of money, when without it business is impossible? It gets worse: Through the activities of credit card companies, banks try to cover up their economic misdemeanours by lending money for consumption to those unable to earn enough to get by. This creates an impression that the economy is in good health because people keep spending. In fact, UK personal debt, at £1,452bn is roughly equivalent to the country’s GDP.

If they are to remain in private ownership, banks must be obliged to work under a revised system of full reserve banking: they should only lend money which they can fund from deposits and reserves. If the money supply needs to be increased, new money can be issued through banks by a central authority. Banks can continue to lend money at interest in order to cover their costs, and make a reasonable profit, but they should not be permitted to create new money at interest, and they should be required to compete for business by offering the best possible savings and borrowing rates to their customers. The current system of money issue widens the gap between rich and poor by concentrating its lending for investment on large corporations, while charging the economically excluded exorbitant rates on borrowing for consumption. It conspires against an optimal supply of money by ensuring that the quantity of money in circulation never reflects the amount of wealth being created, thus introducing instability into the economy and driving the damaging cycle of boom and bust.

Read more …

More Babylon Bee.

• CNN Hires Trump As News Anchor To Recover Lost Viewers (BBee)

In order to bring back the viewers it’s lost since the 2020 election ended, CNN is rehiring the biggest draw for its audience: former President Trump, who will host all the news segments every night on prime time.
“What we’ve discovered since the election is people only watched our station to see Trump, so we’re hiring him to anchor our programs,” said Bob CNN, owner and founder of the cable news station. “This will finally get our ratings out of the dump.” During his first night on the job, Trump simply yelled about election fraud for two hours. “Very sad, very pathetic, worst-run election in history, maybe ever! Worse than North Korea!” he said to an audience of millions, CNN’s largest in many months.

“Frankly, any ballot cast against me is suspect. You really believe that someone would walk into an election booth and look at me and Sleepy Joe and choose Sleepy Joe? No. Can’t happen. Fake news. Not good. Sad!” After this, the rest of the hosts for the night just yelled about Trump yelling about election fraud. According to Trump, the deal was “the biggest deal in the history of television, maybe ever.” Rumors indicate that Trump was given a majority share in the company, billions of dollars, and unlimited Diet Coke. According to insiders, the headquarters of CNN will also be moved to Mar-a-Lago as part of the deal. After the announcement, CNN’s ratings skyrocketed, and they’re finally outperforming the WNBA, soccer, and Saturday Night Live.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle January 24 2021

Jan 242021
 
 January 24, 2021  Posted by at 10:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  21 Responses »


Amedeo Modigliani Elvira Resting at a Table 1919

 

• EU Vaccine Delays Dog Effort To Speed Up COVID Inoculations (EN)
• Delaying Second Dose Of Vaccine Increases Risk Of New Resistant Strain – Sage (Ind.)
• WHO Advisor: COVID19 Pandemic Likely Started Via Lab Leak (TSun)
• ‘Miraculous’ Ivermectin Approved For Use In The US For COVID19 (LS)
• Lancet Retracts Study That Claimed HCQ Is Ineffective (NF)
• Moderate Republicans Push Back On Biden’s Economic Plan (NBC)
• Rand Paul Says Chief Justice Roberts Won’t Take Trump Impeach Trial (NYP)
• Seattle Police and City Attorney Take Hardline Stance Against Antifa (PM)
• Bezos, Zuckerberg $18 Billion Richer In Biden’s First Days In Office (F.)
• Jeff Bezos, Amazon Refuting Mail-in Votes For Unionization (Outkick)
• Eurostar Near Collapse, Asks for Bailout, Becomes Hot Potato (WS)
• Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism (OffG)

 

 

 

 

“Italy’s coronavirus commissioner said that vaccinations had been cut from 80,000 a day to 28,000 a day, Italian media reported. He said Italian authorities were considering taking legal action against Pfizer..”

• EU Vaccine Delays Dog Effort To Speed Up COVID Inoculations (EN)

AstraZeneca’s EU vaccine shipments will be delayed, the EU’s health commissioner said, in yet another obstacle to the bloc’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout. “The EU Commission and Member States expressed deep dissatisfaction with this,” Stella Kyriakides tweeted on Friday after member states heard from AstraZeneca representatives. The AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine is expected to receive approval from the European Medicines Agency this week, and any delay or shortage of doses could be a significant speed bump as member states race to vaccinate their populations amid a worsening COVID-19 crisis. The emergence of more transmissible variants of coronavirus has caused significant concern in Europe with the UK reporting record daily hospitalisations and deaths due to the virus mutations.

Johnson warned on Friday that early evidence showed the new variant could be more deadly as well. Countries are racing against the clock to vaccinate as many people as possible before the variants spread further. But Pfizer said just last week that fewer doses would be available in the EU in late January and early February due to quality tests at the manufacturing plant in Belgium. Some EU countries have since had to cut vaccinations amid the delays, prompting criticism of the pharmaceutical companies behind the vaccines. Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s coronavirus commissioner, said that vaccinations had been cut from 80,000 a day to 28,000 a day, Italian media reported. He said Italian authorities were considering taking legal action against Pfizer, AP reported.


Authorities in Germany’s most populous state said that due to delays in delivery of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine they would halt first vaccinations. North Rhine Westphalia had received 100,000 vaccine doses less than originally planned, the state said. Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn said that “we are currently in a phase in which the worldwide demand for corona vaccines is very high.”

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Well, that’s too bad then. Because you’ve run out.

• Delaying Second Dose Of Vaccine Increases Risk Of New Resistant Strain – Sage (Ind.)

Delaying doses of coronavirus inoculations will increase the chances of a vaccine-resistant strain of Covid-19 emerging, government scientists have warned. In new reports, released by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), experts also warned that resistant new variants were a “realistic possibility” driven by the virus reacting to increasing levels of natural immunity among the population. The government’s decision to delay the second dose of vaccines to 12 weeks rather than three, to try and give more people some protection from the virus, has sparked anger among frontline health workers who fear they are being left at increased risk from infections.

There have also been suggestions from Israel, that have yet to be fully validated, that the protection from a first dose could be far less than originally thought. In papers released on Friday, Sage scientists there was an “increased risk of virus replication under partial immunity after one dose than after two doses, so in the short term, delaying the second dose would be expected to somewhat increase the probability of emergence of vaccine resistance – but probably from a low base. “Is such an increase material? It is not currently possible to quantify the probability of emergence of vaccine resistance as a result of the delayed second dose, but it is likely to be small. The UK currently has more than 1,000 Covid-19-related deaths each day and has limited supplies of vaccine.


“In the current UK circumstances the unquantifiable but likely small probability of the delayed second dose generating a vaccine escape mutant must be weighed against the measurable benefits of doubling the speed with which the most vulnerable can be given vaccine-induced protection.”

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While his WHO colleagues are still in China?!

• WHO Advisor: COVID19 Pandemic Likely Started Via Lab Leak (TSun)

One year after the pandemic started, World Health Organization advisor Jamie Metzl wants China to come clean about the origins of the COVID-19 virus. The Kansas City-born, New York-based Metzl, who served as Deputy Staff Director of the Foreign Relations Committee under then Senator Joe Biden (2001-2003) and before that on the National Security Council (1997-99) and the State Department (1999-01) under President Bill Clinton), theorizes it was most likely an accidental lab leak in Wuhan. “There’s no irrefutable evidence,” said Metzl, who was appointed to the WHO’s expert advisory committee on human genome editing in 2019 and is also the author of Hacking Darwin. “There’s just more evidence and as more evidence arrives, the case for accidental lab leak, in my view, increases.”

We caught up with Metzl down the line from San Miguel de Allende: What about the original theory that this all started in a wet market in Wuhan? That was a lie. And the Chinese government knew very early on that that was a lie. And so in the face of overwhelming evidence in May of last year, the Chinese government shifted its position. Do you get the idea of scary viruses being created in a lab may seem a little sci-fi? It may feel like sci-fi to people but what’s happening is sci. There is a field of study called “gain of function” research, which is highly controversial in which some scientists amplify the virility of viruses. We know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in gain of function research on bat coronaviruses.


Is it because this specifically started in China that we still don’t know how COVID-19 started? If there had been an outbreak in Congo or some country in Africa and that country, in the earliest days of the pandemic, prevented World Health Organization investigators from going onto the scene of the outbreak, for nearly a month, the world would have gone berserk. Will a change of the U.S. administration help find an answer? Biden will be tougher on China than President Trump because President Biden is very smart and strategic and he understands that American power and American strength doesn’t rest on bluster, it rests on principles, it rests on partnerships, and alliances and accountability. And the Trump administration unfortunately gave China a pass by over politicizing the question of the origin of the virus by alienating America’s partners and allies.

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So when’s the big rollout?

• ‘Miraculous’ Ivermectin Approved For Use In The US For COVID-19 (LS)

Following the diligent efforts of physicians associated with a group called Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has upgraded their recommendation for the “miraculous” drug ivermectin, making it an option for use in treating COVID-19 within the United States. The result comes one week after Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory—founding members of the FLCCC, along with Dr. Andrew Hill, researcher and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), presented their data before the NIH Treatment Guidelines Panel. A press release from FLCCC explains the “new designation upgraded the status of ivermectin from ‘against’ [the drug’s use] to ‘neither for nor against,’ which is the same recommendation given to monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma, both widely used across the nation.”


“By no longer recommending against ivermectin use,” the statement said, “doctors should feel more open in prescribing ivermectin as another therapeutic option for the treatment of COVID-19. This may clear its path towards FDA [Food and Drug Administration] emergency use approval.” “Ivermectin is one of the world’s safest, cheapest and most widely available drugs,” explained Dr. Kory, President of the FLCCC Alliance. “The studies we presented to the NIH revealed high levels of statistical significance showing large magnitude benefit in transmission rates, need for hospitalization, and death. What’s more, the totality of trials data supporting ivermectin is without precedent.”

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How many lives could have been saved?

• Lancet Retracts Study That Claimed HCQ Is Ineffective (NF)

A leading medical journal has issued a retraction of their endorsement for a study that concluded the anti-viral drug hydroxychloroquine was ineffective against the COVID-19 virus. This retraction appears to validate the claims then-President Trump made about the medication being a frontline drug in the battle in the pandemic. The Lancet, a respected online medical journal, issued an apology to its readers in an edition last year after the retraction. “We deeply apologize to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused,” the publishers of The Lancet said.

Compared to the significantly more expensive medications being used to treat the virus, hydroxychloroquine – a drug widely used to treat malaria – is relatively inexpensive and universally available. Hydroxychloroquine ranges in price from $0.30 to $6.63 per dose depending on location. The Lancet’s endorsement of the study was withdrawn because the Surgisphere Corporation, the company that provided data, refused to provide full access to the information it based its study on. Peer review medical journals typically engage in third-party peer review to validate the findings. The Surgisphere Corporation said it refused to release the study data because it would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements, raising questions about the study’s legitimacy.


“Based on this development, we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources. Due to this unfortunate development, the authors request that the paper be retracted,” The Lancet said in a statement. In the now debunked study, researchers concluded that hydroxychloroquine didn’t aid in curbing the COVID-19 virus. It went on to say that the drug caused heart problems and appeared to elevate the risk of death. The study was immediately embraced by the beleaguered World Health Organization and other groups causing research into the use of the drug to combat COVID-19 to stop.

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Let the games ….. continue.

• Moderate Republicans Push Back On Biden’s Economic Plan (NBC)

Key moderate Republicans in the Senate dismissed quick action on President Joe Biden’s top priority of a $1.9 trillion economic package, indicating that the $1,400 stimulus payments he requested could take months, or never arrive. Democrats need to convince 10 Republicans in the Senate, which might require asking for less funding than Biden initially requested, or bypassing the 60-vote threshold utilizing a parliamentarian maneuver. Biden’s team appears ready to mount an aggressive campaign to get Congress to act, a departure from the previous administration that largely failed to engage lawmakers on legislative priorities and did not spend political capital on getting bills passed.

Republicans who would be critical to get to the finish line said they’re open to additional money to speed up distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, but balked at Biden’s overall price tag. Some called on Biden to pare back the plan while others suggested waiting a few months to see if the economic need persists. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the most moderate Republicans, said she’s “sympathetic” to boosting vaccine funds but doesn’t see the justification for a bill “that is so big.” “It’s hard for me to see when we just passed $900 billion of assistance why we would have a package that big,” Collins told reporters Thursday. “Maybe a couple of months from now, the needs will be evident and we will need to do something significant, but I’m not seeing it right now.”


Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, called Biden’s request “significant,” adding that “the ink is barely dry on the $900 billion” bill. “And so it’s going to require, I think, a fair amount of debate and consideration,” she told reporters. Sen. Mitt Romney R-Utah, a conservative who has a track record of breaking with his party, told NBC News that he isn’t inclined to borrow another $1 trillion or even $500 billion for a broad economic package. “My own view is that what’s holding back the economy is Covid, not money,” he said. “I want to do everything we can to get the Covid vaccines out. But once the Covid vaccine is out and people are inoculated, I believe you’ll see the economy coming back.”

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Stretching the law.

• Rand Paul Says Chief Justice Roberts Won’t Take Trump Impeach Trial (NYP)

As Democrats plunge ahead with a post-term impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a key question remains: Will Chief Justice Roberts take the case? Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky says he won’t — making the exercise “a fake, partisan impeachment,” the lawmaker told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Friday. Paul claimed Roberts has “privately said he’s not supposed to come unless it’s an impeachment of the president.” According to the US Constitution, “when the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside” — a requirement not made for any other impeachment case. As lawmakers debated the legitimacy of impeachment, the Biden administration continued to keep its distance from the issue.

“Congress is going to do what Congress does,” Ashley Etienne, Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director, told MSNBC Saturday. One thing Trump enemies in Congress appear to be doing is grasping at straws — even reaching back to a post-Civil War amendment. Several Dems have floated the idea of punishing Trump with the 14th Amendment’s rule that shuts those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” out of elective office. “I certainly think there is a 14th Amendment avenue separate and aside from impeachment,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told The Hill.

But the stricture, which was written to prevent former Confederate loyalists from regaining power as the United States struggled through Reconstruction, has not been used since — and would spark a long judicial battle if Congress attempted to invoke it, legal experts say. Meanwhile, with Trump no longer in the White House, Republicans like Paul continued to deride the impeachment as “an illegitimate procedure.” Roberts, who has not said publicly whether he will preside over the trial, has two more weeks to decide. After the House of Representatives’ impeachment managers on Monday read their articles of impeachment accusing Trump of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot, the Senate will delay the trial until the week of Feb. 8 so that President Biden can get his administration up and running, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday.


If Trump is convicted with a two-thirds majority of the Senate, Schumer could call for a second vote, this one requiring only a simple majority, barring him from holding elective office again. But conviction will require the votes of at least 17 Senate Republicans — an increasingly remote possibility, as more party members climb aboard Paul’s argument that only a sitting president can be impeached. “It’s going to be tough to get even a handful” of GOP defectors, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) told CNN — because “everybody has views that it’s kind of a constitutional concern.”

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The Seattle Times never mentions the term Antifa. It’s just an idea.

• Seattle Police and City Attorney Take Hardline Stance Against Antifa (PM)

As Antifa militants take to Seattle’s streets on a near-daily basis following the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the city’s police and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes are responding with a promise to bring the hammer down on violent protesters. In an announcement on Saturday, the city’s interim police Chief Adrian Diaz announced that his department is coordinating with the city attorney to enact a strict new policy to arrest and prosecute protesters who destroy property during street demonstrations. Diaz said that the new enforcement policy will take effect this Saturday, when a demonstration has been planned for Occidental Square. Prosecutions will increase under the new order.

In his speech, Seattle’s top cop said that he has wanted to crack down on the violent militants for months, and that its becoming clear following Biden’s inauguration that their protests have no real cause. “They’re focused on breaking windows, and these are things we need to work on,” he said, reported Seattle Times. A spokesperson for the police said that suspects in low-level crimes were not even booked into jail last year due to coronavirus concerns, and that the policy of not booking those who commit misdemeanors is unlikely to change. However, individuals released on bail who are re-arrested will likely be prosecuted now. Diaz said that police will take a hardline approach to repeat offenders.


“We will be prosecuting these crimes from now on,” he said. “When we don’t have any form of accountability for people — and many of them are coming from outside the city — they will continue to do that activity, and we can’t have that.” In addition to the prosecutions, police will be deploying in extra numbers starting Saturday and will coordinate law enforcement efforts with the Washington State Patrol and federal agents to prevent protesters from entering freeways and federal buildings. “We would like to protect buildings from being vandalized in the first place, and don’t want to cause undue conflict. It’s safer for protesters and officers to not be drawing that line, so to speak,” said Diaz. Earlier this week, Antifa rioters vandalized and looted the historic Starbucks, a Democratic Party office, and numerous local businesses in protest of the newly inaugurated president.

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How much more stimulus do we need to keep making them richer? It will stop somewhere.

• Bezos, Zuckerberg $18 Billion Richer In Biden’s First Days In Office (F.)

The world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, had a very good week. The Amazon CEO got $10 billion richer, bringing his net worth to $191.5 billion. He’s got an $8.3 billion lead over Tesla CEO Elon Musk (net worth: $183.2 billion), who briefly claimed the top spot this month before falling back to second place. Even better for Bezos? His boost this week comes in part thanks to the departure of Donald Trump, a constant critic of Amazon and the Bezos-owned Washington Post. President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday, sending tech stocks soaring on optimism over his administration’s Covid-19 vaccine and stimulus plans.


Amazon ended the week up 6.1%, Facebook gained 9.2% and Google parent Alphabet rose 9.5%, beating the S&P and Dow Jones Industrial Average’s weekly gains of 2% and 0.5%, respectively. On Inauguration Day, Amazon executive Dave Clark sent a letter to Biden offering Amazon’s resources to help distribute the vaccine. “We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination effort,” he wrote. Clark also took the opportunity to advocate prioritizing vaccinating Amazon’s 800,000 employees, most of whom are essential frontline workers.

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Ha ha ha.

• Jeff Bezos, Amazon Refuting Mail-in Votes For Unionization (Outkick)

Jeff Bezos — a strong Democratic supporter — and Amazon are aiming to postpone a unionization vote at one of its warehouses in Alabama, the Wall Street Journal reports. Interestingly, Amazon has requested that the National Labor Relations Board reconsider allowing mail-in voting, claiming that the mail-in voting process has “serious and systemic flaws.” Got that? Bezos and Amazon are doing all they can to prevent any shady activity when workers cast their ballots for unionization, and they are particularly concerned about the integrity of mail-in ballots. You are likely trying to figure out how that adds up, right? The Washington Post, owned by Bezos, called any claims of mail-in voter fraud by Donald Trump and his supporters dangerous and inexcusable.

Amazon even banned Parler from its servers, in part to ensure no one could claim voter fraud occurred from mail-in ballots back in November. But stop trying to make it make sense. It is not supposed to add up. In this case, mail-in voting is disadvantageous for Bezos and his e-commerce behemoth. Therefore, they now consider mail-in voting seriously flawed. An Amazon spokesperson tells CNN the company is seeking a “valid, fair and successful election” and suggests that only in-person voting can ensure that. Hmm, interesting perspective. Amazon has, thus far, fended off unions in the United States. If a majority of ballots vote in favor of unionization, hourly Amazon workers would send an L right up to Bezos’ office.


Bamazonunion.com explains that a union at Amazon would “give us the right to collectively bargain over our working conditions including items such as safety standards, training, breaks, pay, benefits, and other important issues that would make our workplace better.” The NLRB says, “A mail ballot election will enfranchise employees who cannot enter the voting location for health reasons or due to positive COVID tests.” Fearing an unfavorable outcome, however, Amazon now insists that current COVID outbreaks aren’t dangerous enough to warrant this NLRB decision.

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In a train in a tunnel with COVID. No thanks.

• Eurostar Near Collapse, Asks for Bailout, Becomes Hot Potato (WS)

Eurostar, the company that operates the cross-Channel train service that connects the UK with France, Belgium and the Netherlands, is on the brink of collapse, the company’s management warned this week. With passenger numbers down 95% in the final quarter of 2020 and revenues down over 80% over the course of 2020, it is now “on a drip” and in desperate need of extra cash, says Christophe Fanichet, a senior executive of France’s state SNCF railways, which is the majority shareholder of Eurostar. “I’m very worried about Eurostar. The company is in a critical state, I’d even say very critical,” he said.

In 2019, Eurostar shuttled 11 million passengers — including many businessmen and women — from London St Pancras to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. While generally more expensive than budget air fares, it is quicker, more comfortable, and drops off passengers in the center of their chosen city of destination. But like the airlines, its whole business model has been upended by the virus crisis. At present, the company is operating only two services a day, a far cry from the two trains an hour it used to operate during peak times before the pandemic. And most of those trains are less than a quarter full. More than 90% of its workers have been furloughed.

It’s a similar story across Europe’s railway sector. Passenger numbers have plunged between 70%-90% as lockdowns, social-distancing rules, and concerns about the risks of using public transport have taken their toll. The industry is estimated to have racked up losses of €22 billion in 2020, according to CER, a Brussels-based commerce group representing passenger and freight prepare operators. That’s similar to the total losses accrued so far by Europe’s airlines. Thousands of workers are on government-subsidized furloughs. “It’s a totally extraordinary situation,” said Libor Lochman, CER’s executive director. “There is no comparison for it, and it can and will lead to the bankruptcy of a number of companies, unless there is the political will to prevent it”.


Just as happened last Spring, travel restrictions are tightening across Europe and borders are closing as countries try to counter the spread of new strains of the Covid-19 virus. France announced on Thursday that visitors from the UK, which is no longer part of the EU, will need to observe a seven-day quarantine and undertake a PCR test on their arrival. The UK already has a quarantine system in place for travelers from the EU. These latest travel restrictions have compounded Eurostar’s woes. It could run out of money by April, according to industry sources. To stave off that fate, the company is asking for government support of the kind already doled out to many airlines. Eurostar has already tapped shareholders for €200 million and is apparently loath to do so again, particularly given the recent tightening of travel restrictions.

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Monsanto.

• Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism (OffG)

In the above short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”. He, along with thousands of other farmers, are mobilising against three important pieces of farm legislation that were recently forced through parliament. To all intents and purposes, these laws sound a neoliberal death knell for most of India’s cultivators and its small farms, the backbone of the nation’s food production. The farmer says: “Corporates invested in Modi before the election and brought him to power. He has sold out and is an agent of Ambani and Adani. He is unable to repeal the bills because his owners will scold him. He is trapped. But we are not backing down either.”

He then asks whether ministers know how many seeds are needed to grow wheat on an acre of land: “We farmers know. They made these farm laws sitting in air-conditioned rooms. And they are teaching us the benefits!” While the corporations that will move in on the sector due to the legislation will initially pay good money for crops, once the public sector markets (mandis) are gone, the farmer says they will become the only buyers and will beat prices down. He asks why, in other sectors, do sellers get to put price tags on their products but not farmers: “Why can’t farmers put minimum prices on the crops we produce? A law must be brought to guarantee MSP [minimum support prices]. Whoever buys below MSP must be punished by law.”

The recent agriculture legislation represents the final pieces of a 30-year-old plan which will benefit a handful of billionaires in the US and in India. It means the livelihoods of hundreds of millions (the majority of the population) who still (directly or indirectly) rely on agriculture for a living are to be sacrificed at the behest of these elite interests. Consider that much of the UK’s wealth came from sucking $45 trillion from India alone according to renowned economist Utsa Patnaik. Britain grew rich by underdeveloping India. What amount to little more than modern-day East India-type corporations are now in the process of helping themselves to the country’s most valuable asset – agriculture.


According to the World Bank’s lending report, based on data compiled up to 2015, India was easily the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution. The World Bank thus exerts a certain hold over India: on the back of India’s foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange. The plan involves shifting at least 400 million from the countryside into cities.

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