Rembrandt van Rijn Self portrait 1642
holy shit Jeffrey Sachs says “the most violent country in the world since 1950 has been the United States” then the moderator cuts him off and the audience applauds lmao
pic.twitter.com/43JDrt4Hw9— dilan (@dilanpcook) October 23, 2022
Shocking moment of truth on Bloomberg when Professor Jeffrey Sachs says he believes the US was behind the Nord Stream pipelines destruction. The reporters start to lose it, of course. pic.twitter.com/CteWb7utcv
— sarah (@sahouraxo) October 3, 2022
Biden
BIDEN on his student loan debt bailout: "It's passed. I got it passed by a vote or two."
What is he talking about? Congress never voted on it. pic.twitter.com/62Ov7znOfZ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 23, 2022
Call for peace talks, but only with Zelensky, who you know full well signed a decree forbidding any such talks. Then wash your hands and send more guns.
• White House Responds To US Lawmakers’ Call For Russia Talks (RT)
US officials have dismissed the idea of direct talks with Moscow without Kiev’s involvement, after some 30 Democratic representatives wrote a letter urging President Joe Biden to pursue a diplomatic end to the conflict in Ukraine. “We’ve been very clear: Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday, adding that “this is a decision that President [Vladimir] Zelensky is going to have to make when it comes to any type of conversation with Russia, any type of negotiation.” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby similarly stated on Monday that the Ukrainians must be part of any future negotiations.
“We’re not going to have conversations with the Russian leadership without the Ukrainians being represented,” Kirby said, as cited by the Washington Post. “Mr. Zelensky gets to determine – because it’s his country – what success looks like and when to negotiate.” Kirby noted the US administration “appreciates [the lawmakers’] very thoughtful concerns,” while Jean-Pierre admitted she hasn’t seen the letter. Both, however, insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin could choose to end the conflict “at any time.” In a letter to the White House on Monday, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (Washington) cited the “destruction” of Ukraine, the threat of nuclear war and the economic turmoil visited upon Europe as reasons to pursue a negotiated settlement.
Signed by prominent progressives including Ro Khanna (Pennsylvania), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), the letter acknowledged that the ultimate decision on when to return to the negotiating table remains Ukraine’s. However, it concluded by urging Biden to open “direct talks with Russia,” without suggesting what kind of compromises the lawmakers think Ukraine should make for peace. Ukraine’s president previously said he would never negotiate with Russia as long as President Putin is in power, and has vowed to seize four formerly Ukrainian regions that recently joined the Russian Federation, as well as Crimea, which voted to rejoin Russia in 2014.
“..the UK “rejected Russia’s allegations that Ukraine is planning actions to escalate the conflict.”
• Russia Warns US and UK About Ukraine’s ‘Dirty Bomb’ Plans (RT)
Moscow has discussed the threat of Kiev potentially using a “dirty bomb” with London and Washington at the level of the chiefs of the General Staff, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday. The Russian chief of defense, General Valery Gerasimov, raised his country’s concerns in a phone call with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, after having a similar conversation with his British counterpart, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. The Pentagon only mentioned that the two generals discussed “several security-related issues of concern” without providing any further details. It was the first such conversation between Gerasimov and Milley since May.
The British Defence Ministry said the phone call between Radakin and Gerasimov took place “at the request of the Russian Ministry of Defense,” adding that the UK “rejected Russia’s allegations that Ukraine is planning actions to escalate the conflict.” Radakin also “restated the UK’s enduring support for Ukraine,” the ministry’s statement added. London also agreed it was important to keep communication channels with Moscow open to “manage the risk of miscalculation and to facilitate de-escalation.” The developments came a day after Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu raised similar concerns in phone calls with the defense chiefs of the US, UK, and France. Moscow has been warning Western nations about Kiev’s alleged plans to use a “dirty bomb” to frame Russia for quite some time. The West, however, has remained largely dismissive of such warnings.
Earlier on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Kiev wants to frame Moscow as a “nuclear terrorist” by accusing it of using weapons of mass destruction and thus potentially launching a “powerful anti-Russia campaign.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also stated that the West’s disbelief in this scenario does not make the threat any less pressing. Kiev has denied Moscow’s allegations. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky also said that the only side capable of launching an attack using nukes is Russia itself. Meanwhile, the UN called on all sides of the conflict to show restraint. Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told a briefing on Monday that all parties should “avoid” any actions that could lead to miscalculation or further escalation of the already devastating conflict.
“.. this situation did not suit the West and thus caused a genuine hysterics among our Western “colleagues..”
• Russian Warning To The UN Security Council (Saker)
Since during the eight years of bitter experience of the inhabitants of Donbass we know well, what the Kiev regime is capable of, a decision was made to cool down the militant ardour of the arrogant Kiev terrorists. With precision-guided missiles strikes and UAVs of Russian manufacture, were destroyed a large number of military installations, and also infrastructure facilities, [reducing] the military capabilities and undermining potentials of Zelensky’s repressive regime. Of course, this situation did not suit the West and thus caused a genuine hysterics among our Western “colleagues”, which we can observe in all its glory expressed during today’s meeting.
Naturally, as before, they do not want to see the truth and acknowledge that the civilian targets were hit and were damaged only in those cases when the drones were shot down near the targets by the Ukrainian territorial defense .. and because of that had deviated from the original course. Or the [damage happened] when civilian targets were hit by the Ukrainian air-defense missiles, which were not capable of Intercepting their targets. There are plenty of such cases, including recorded on video. Anyone who wants to, can watch them on the Internet. Right now Ukraine and its Western patrons are trying to spin another fake about the alleged deliveries to Russia of the Iranian UAVs, in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2231.
We reject any such attempts to draw the UN Secretariat into this unscrupulous game. An example of this is the letter distributed in the Security Council today by Germany, France and the UK with a de facto petition to the UN Secretariat to violate the article 100 of the UN charter and mandate, prescribed in the note of the President UN Security Council S/2016/44 of 16 January, 2016. The US went even further and in their letter directly demanded from the Secretariat to conduct an investigation that the Secretariat is not authorized to open. This is an egregious situation and we submitted our legal assessments in our response letter, which was circulated before this session. We are waiting for the Secretariat to fully confirm that it does not intend to go along with the violation of the UN charter [demanded] by these Westerners’ instructions, and will not conduct any such “investigation”.
“We expect constant power outages and problems with heating..”
• Ukraine Faces ‘Worst Winter In History’ – Head Of National Energy Giant (RT)
Ukraine is facing its harshest winter, which will be marked by ongoing blackouts, Yuri Vitrenko, the head of the state-owned energy giant Naftogaz, has said. In an interview with German outlet Handelsblatt, Vitrenko explained that “about 40% of the power generation plants were destroyed” by recent Russian airstrikes. “It will be the worst winter in our history. We expect constant power outages and problems with heating,” Vitrenko said in the interview published on Monday, adding that Moscow has also hit Ukrainian refineries. Ukraine is preparing for winter blackouts, the Naftogaz boss said, admitting that “it is impossible to 100% prevent problems” and the country therefore needs help from its partners.
In an interview with The Guardian in late August, long before Russia launched its offensive against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Vitrenko admitted that without Western financial support, Ukraine would “lack gas” and, consequently, might see its power system going down. In September, the Naftogaz boss urged Ukrainians to stock up on blankets and warm clothes, noting that this year’s heating season will start later and end earlier, while winter temperatures in apartments will be set at 17-18 degrees Celsius (62-64 degrees Fahrenheit), four degrees below the standard temperature. The ongoing shelling of Ukrainian infrastructure by Moscow prompted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky last week to ask his compatriots to ease pressure on the struggling energy system by limiting their use of electricity between 5 and 11 pm.
On Sunday, he also asked the local authorities “to consume electricity very consciously” and emphasized that “this is not the right time for bright shop windows and signs.” Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a shift in the military offensive in Ukraine on October 10, with Moscow’s forces launching massive long-range missile strikes on Ukrainian military, communication, and energy facilities. He accused Kiev of masterminding several “terrorist attacks” on Russian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge bombing attack.
“..the US president and the heads of European countries are becoming the sponsors and accomplices in nuclear terrorism..”
• Russian Duma Speaker Compares ‘Kiev Regime’ To Al-Qaeda (RT)
The Ukrainian government employs the same tactics as Al-Qaeda in its conflict with Moscow, Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said on Monday. Writing on his Telegram channel, Volodin compared Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the Islamist group behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001. “Washington released information 20 years ago that Al-Qaeda terrorists led by Bin Laden got access to radioactive materials and were planning to make a ‘dirty bomb,’” he said. “The threat of using such a bomb in the US and Europe had existed until Bin Laden was killed in 2011.” Volodin claimed that Kiev had instructed its nuclear scientists to make a ‘dirty bomb’, while its forces shell the critical infrastructure of the Zaporozhye and Kursk nuclear power plants.
“Through financial and military aid to Zelensky’s regime, the US president and the heads of European countries are becoming the sponsors and accomplices in nuclear terrorism,” Volodin wrote. The comments came after Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned his British and French counterparts on Sunday about “a potential Ukrainian provocation” involving a ‘dirty bomb’. Zelensky dismissed the allegations and accused Moscow of threatening the world with nuclear weapons. “If Russia alleges that Ukraine is preparing something, it means only one thing: that Russia itself is preparing it,” Zelensky said on Sunday. Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of shelling the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which was seized by Russian troops after Moscow launched its military operation in the neighboring country. Zaporozhye Region voted in September to leave Ukraine and has since been admitted into Russia.
“Russia is working to eventually decommission all those US-controlled international organizations..”
• The ‘War of Terror’ May Be About To Hit Europe (Escobar)
[..] the arrival of General Winter in Europe portends a socio-economic descent into a maelstrom of darkness – unimaginable only a few months ago in the supposedly “garden” of humanity, so far away from the rumbles across the “jungle.”Well, from now on barbarism begins at home. And Europeans should thank the American “ally” for it, skillfully manipulating fearful, vassalized EU elites. Way more dangerous though is a specter that very few are able to identify: the imminent Syrianization of Europe. That will be a direct consequence of the NATO debacle in Ukraine. From an imperial perspective, the prospects in the Ukrainian battlefield are gloomy. Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) has seamlessly morphed into a Counter-Terror Operation (CTO): Moscow now openly characterizes Kiev as a terrorist regime.
The pain dial is incrementally going up, with surgical strikes against Ukrainian power/electricity infrastructure about to totally cripple Kiev’s economy and its military. And by December, there’s the arrival on the front lines and in the rear of a properly trained and highly motivated partial mobilization contingent. The only question concerns the timetable. Moscow is now in the process of slowly but surely decapitating the Kiev proxy, and ultimately smashing NATO “unity.” The process of torturing the EU economy is relentless. And the real world outside of the collective West – the Global South – is with Russia, from Africa and Latin America to West Asia and even sections of the EU.
It is Moscow – and significantly not Beijing – that is tearing apart the hegemon-coined “rules-based international order,” supported by its natural resources, the provision of food and reliable security. And in coordination with China, Iran and major Eurasian players, Russia is working to eventually decommission all those US-controlled international organizations – as the Global South becomes virtually immune to the spread of NATO psyops.
The plant was fine until Ukraine started targeting it.
• Full Demilitarization Area Around Zaporozhye NPP Impossible – Moscow (RT)
Russia has ruled out complete demilitarization of the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), but would support some kind of arrangement to ensure its safety, a senior Russian diplomat has said. “An agreement about demilitarization is impossible in principle. We cannot keep the station safe without guarding it,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the newspaper Izvestia on the sidelines of an international seminar on the prevention of nuclear war in Moscow. “Zone of protection is a different idea, and its parameters are being discussed,” he noted, referring to Russian contacts with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in remarks published on Monday.
Moscow is engaged with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and has observers from the UN nuclear watchdog stationed at the facility, Ryabkov said, adding that Russia has “nothing to hide.” The Zaporozhye NPP has been under Russian control since the early stages of the military operation in Ukraine. Kiev and Moscow accused each other of shelling the station on multiple occasions. Ukraine also claimed that Russia deployed heavy weapons at the site and used them to attack Ukrainian troops. Russia took over formal responsibility for the station earlier this month, after Zaporozhye Region voted in a referendum to split with Kiev and become part of Russia.
The IAEA, however, still refers to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe as Ukrainian. The agency stressed “the need to establish a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the facility, following frequent shelling at or near the plant in recent months,” in its latest briefing on the situation. Both Russia and Ukraine expressed discontent with the IAEA’s refusal to say who is responsible for the shelling of the plant. Speaking to Argentinian media last week, Grossi said his goal was to identify “the lowest common denominator” between the two nations and to ensure the physical safety of the nuclear site. He chose to ignore the mutual accusations, as taking “a militant or critical position” would have been detrimental to that goal, he explained in an interview with La Nacion newspaper.
“..the idea that Russia and the US will just fight an infantry war and cordially accept the results is ridicu-fucking-lous..”
• 1000s of Years of Human Progress or the Donbas in Ukraine? (Cosgrove)
Neocons: WTF are you thinking? There is no winning scenario for the US on the path we are currently on. If Crimea is in jeopardy (a region controlled by Russia for almost a decade which the citizens overwhelmingly support), Putin will nuke Ukraine. It’s a lose-lose for the US from there as we can either escalate and destroy the world or not and appear weak. Don’t think Putin will nuke? According to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, former nuclear planner for Rand Corporation with personal access to Nixon, stated that the former President was dangerously close to going nuclear on Vietnam. In an interview for Mint Press News, he discusses Nixon’s plan to use nuclear blackmail to end the war quickly. “‘There was pressure to make the war larger’” if the offer was rejected, the whistleblower noted, and ‘nuclear targets were picked.’”
If Vietnam, a country nearly 8,000 miles from the continental US, was enough of a headache that Nixon nearly pushed the button… what do you think Putin is thinking right now with a war on his border and having just resorted to conscription? So stop this NATO theatre near the border. Putin does not want to invade NATO and take over Europe (let alone all of Ukraine). And if the plan is to deploy these troops in the event that a nuke is used (as many have advocated for), the idea that Russia and the US will just fight an infantry war and cordially accept the results is ridicu-fucking-lous.
The risk-reward of our military support for Ukraine has reached unfathomable levels of insanity. By the State Department’s own analysis, there are no material differences in human rights protections between the governments of Ukraine and Russia. Who exactly are we helping by using Ukraine as our military sandbox? Maybe Zelensky and a few other lucky oligarchs, but certainly not the Ukrainians. Friday saw talks between the US and Russia for the first time since May. This is somewhat reassuring. Regardless… I’m officially a single issue voter: will you or will you not vote to send money/weapons to Ukraine? I’d vote for fucking AOC if she vowed to not give another dime to Ukraine and push for a peace settlement. I’d rather be alive in a genderless socialist dystopia than not at all.
The MSM is fully myopic. They can be, because they made their audience myopic. For all of them, free speech now equals harassment.
• Potential Mass Layoffs At Twitter Could Cripple Content Moderation (ABC)
Over the course of a monthslong bid to purchase Twitter, Elon Musk has signaled major changes at the platform. As Musk stands poised to acquire the company in the coming weeks, the transformation appears even more far-reaching than some anticipated. In discussions about his plans for the company, in recent months, Musk talked about potential mass layoffs that would reduce the staff by 75%, the Washington Post reported. While details of the potential layoffs remain limited, the move could compromise the platform’s capacity to police false or harmful content, with ramifications that extend to social issues like election integrity, experts told ABC News. The experience of a typical user could change significantly, they added, noting the possible rise of harassment and other forms of corrosive discourse.
Even if Musk’s Twitter deal does not come to fruition, the company’s current management has reportedly planned to cut its payroll by $800 million by the end of next year, the Post reported. A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment on the report of layoffs but confirmed to ABC News the existence of a company memo to employees obtained by Bloomberg News. “We do not have any confirmation of the buyer’s plans following close and recommend not following rumors or leaked documents but rather wait for facts from us and the buyer directly,” the memo by Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett said. Speaking at a Twitter all-hands meeting shortly in June, Musk did not rule out downsizing if he were to acquire the company. “Anyone who is a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about,” Musk reportedly told employees, according to tweets from Bloomberg reporter Kurt Wagner.
Cuts to the content moderation workforce would align with statements made by Musk in recent months about his commitment to the principle of free speech, suggesting that Twitter should permit all speech that stops short of violating the law, the experts said. “Content moderation will be a lot harder without people doing content moderation,” Zeve Sanderson, the executive director at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told ABC News. “If there is more harassment and other forms of toxic speech, if there is more misinformation and disinformation, then people’s experience on the platform is going to be really different,” he added.
Because: Whose circus is it anyway? It’s OUR circus.
• Cheney: Trump Won’t Be Allowed To Turn Jan. 6 Testimony Into ‘Circus’ (Hill)
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Sunday said the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will not allow former President Trump to turn his testimony to the panel into a “circus.” Cheney told moderator Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the committee would treat any deposition with the former president with “great seriousness.” “We are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath,” Cheney, one of two Republicans on the panel, said. “It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves.”
“He’s not going to turn this into a circus. This isn’t going to be first debate against [President] Biden and the circus and the food fight that became,” the lawmaker added. The House committee, which wrapped up its final hearing on the Jan. 6 attack this month, unanimously voted to subpoena Trump before it formally issued a subpoena to the former president. Lawmakers are probing 19 areas of interest, including many covered during the series of hearings the committee held over the summer, in the subpoena. They include potential communications seeking to evaluate former Vice President Mike Pence’s role in certifying the 2020 election as well as efforts to communicate with state lawmakers, election officials and leaders at the Justice Department about the 2020 election.
“We don’t want to hear that Republicans need another year to do an investigation. I’ve done that here.”
• Hunter Biden’s Laptop Documents At Least 459 Legal Violations (DW)
A year-long exploration of Hunter Biden’s laptop has yielded a 630-page report that its authors say document 459 violations of state and federal laws and regulations by President Joe Biden’s son and his business partners. Marco Polo, a nonprofit formed by a one-time aide to former President Trump to enable a team of cyber gumshoes to take a deep dive into the laptop that the crack-addled Biden left at a Delaware repair store, claims the report is a road map for local, state, or federal prosecutors to pursue charges. The group also sent its report to each member of Congress. The timing of the report’s release, coming two weeks before the midterm elections, has a certain symmetry to the laptop’s initial introduction to the public.
In 2020, days before the election, the New York Post published news of the laptop’s existence, as well as bombshells from it, but social media suppressed the story after the FBI had warned companies of so-called misinformation. This time around, the timing is similar, but other factors are reversed. Legacy outlets have acknowledged that the laptop’s files are authentic, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey admitted that censoring the laptop was a mistake, and the social media platform is being sold to free-speech advocate Elon Musk. The team put together by Garrett Ziegler, Marco Polo’s 26-year-old founder, has mined the laptop with digital savvy, and produced a thorough report that is anything but vague or superficial, weighing in at 1 gigabyte because of the number of screenshots from the laptop.
“I’ve been focusing on this for 13 months,” Ziegler told The Daily Wire. “It was really a thing of necessity. I recognized how rich the material was. It requires utter focus. It is so hard to write something comprehensive about it and do anything else on the side.” “There’s been some phenomenal writing so far on the sex and degeneracy,” he added, but “The focus of the report is on crimes … I had a compulsion to log every crime, even the state-level statutes. The mission is simple: Hold Republicans’ feet to the fire. We don’t want to hear that Republicans need another year to do an investigation. I’ve done that here.” The report, which reviewed the laptop’s emails, videos, calendar items, photographs, phone records, financial documents and more, but also provided context and explanation, serves as a “Rosetta Stone of white- and blue-collar crime under the patina of ‘the Delaware Way,’” the report says.
“Since peaking at 9.5% in 2014, recycling rates have been steadily decreasing..”
• Recycling Plastic A ‘Failed Concept’ – Greenpeace (RT)
Plastic recycling has turned out to be a “failed concept” used by global corporations as a “smokescreen,” Greenpeace USA has said, urging companies to focus on abandoning single-use plastic. In a report titled ‘Circular Claims Fall Flat Again’ and released on Monday, the environmental organization stated that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by US households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons, or 5%, were recycled. “After more than 30 years, it is time to accept that plastic recycling is a failed concept. Unlike with paper or metals, there are two insurmountable barriers that prevent plastic recycling from ever working at scale: toxicity and economics,” Greenpeace said.
Due to its toxicity, plastic cannot be recycled back into new food-grade plastic products, the organization explained, adding that “the flood of 400 million tons/year of cheap new plastic production kills the business case for large-scale investment in plastic recycling.” The situation is further aggravated by the high costs and complexity of the recycling process, given that different plastics have different characteristics and thus must be treated differently. But, most importantly, the organization said, “thousands of types of synthetic plastic materials produced are fundamentally not recyclable.” Since peaking at 9.5% in 2014, recycling rates have been steadily decreasing, especially since China ceased accepting Western plastic waste in 2018, the report states.
Therefore, Greenpeace urged companies to stop using the “false path” of plastic recycling as “a smokescreen to divert attention from the systemic changes that are needed.” “Instead of continuing on this false path, companies in the US and around the world must urgently phase out single-use plastics by replacing their packaging with reuse and refill systems and offering packaging-free products,” it said. Greenpeace USA senior plastics campaigner Lisa Ramsden told AFP that corporations such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé and Unilever are some of those that have been promoting recycling for decades but have “shirked all responsibility” for the effectiveness of the process.
America has become Forrest Gump-istan.
• Chaos Is As Chaos Does (Jim Kunstler)
Then there’s us, Crazyland, formerly known as the USA, floating the possibility of a nuclear missile exchange, as if that were any kind of workable answer to the completely unnecessary war we instigated in the crossroads of Eurasia. Now, the word is out that a 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” strike force is assembling in Romania, next door to Ukraine, for some supposed incursion into the war zone — where there would be a fair chance of them getting slaughtered. Are you serious, Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley, or is this just some new deranged Woke vaudeville act in your continuing effort to humiliate the US Armed Forces?
Factor in, of course, the fast-approaching midterm election, which seems to have driven the “Joe Biden” regime and its Party of Chaos into a fugue of extreme desperation as they face a possibly massive repudiation at the polls that will put them out of business for many election cycles to come — if not permanently — and bring an end to the Wokester-Jacobin freak show. How the Democratic Party became hostage to the worst array of political ideas ever assembled remains a profound mystery. How do they persist supporting a Covid “vaccine” campaign that is now obviously false and dangerous? Is it simply an inability to acknowledge a terrible mistake? Or is it — as things seem — something darker, a deliberate effort to inflict harm on the American people? Kind of looks that way.
Several states quickly and loudly opted out of “vaccine” mandates for schools since the CDC’s advisory committee’s bizarre 15 to 0 vote to include the janky mRNA shots on the childhood “schedule.” How did “JB” & Company imagine that a wide-open border along with big cash gifts to border-jumpers was going to play with the economically sore-beset public? Who imagined that drag queens grinding their junk in children’s faces was a winning ploy? Who told them that Americans would approve of turning the FBI into a Gestapo, barging into politically-targeted households with SWAT teams before dawn? How did they forget that there is a first amendment to the constitution that forbids the government to interfere with freedom of speech? Who is actually behind this insanity?
“Zero Covid Hell”
• The Disastrous Effects of the “Zero Covid” Policy in China (Ugo Bardi)
“Eugenic and cultural superiority” Really? Actually, it is not surprising that people, more or less everywhere, see themselves as the best people in the world. The West has a century old tradition of this idea, well expressed by Rudyard Kipling as the “White Man’s Burden.” But I found it hard to believe that the Chinese, intelligent as they are, would not realize the mess in which they find themselves with their insistence on evidently ineffective “Zero Covid” policies. You may have read about people locked shut in their apartments, streets closed by barbed wire, universal masking everywhere, forced testing and vaccination, household pets exterminated, and much more. It is a situation that Eugyppius correctly described as “Zero Covid Hell”. Can’t the Chinese realize that they are being bullied by a government that’s thinking only of its own survival?
And yet, it turns out that Chuck was right, as it is often the case. I realized that all of a sudden, a few days ago, while I was listening to the talk of a Chinese colleague at an online conference. One of the things she said was that the cultural superiority of China over the West is demonstrated by the willingness of Chinese citizens to wear face masks all the time. That doesn’t happen, she said, with the unruly Westerners, who refuse to act in harmony with each other and wear such a simple and completely harmless device as a face mask. She didn’t mention the genetic superiority of the Chinese, but it was just a small step to get there from what she said.
One of those moments in which you feel your painstakingly assembled worldview crumbling around you. Did she really say that? After the conference, I contacted her separately. I asked her if she was sure that face masks are harmless. And I sent to her a link to a peer-reviewed paper showing the many negative effects of masks on health. She answered me very politely, thanking me for the link, and saying that face masks are basically harmless; hence they have to be worn all the time in public. End of the discussion.
“20 million dead by the injection,
2.2 billion injured …”
• I Hope People Can Imagine The Scale Of What Is Happening Here (Hodkinson)
“20 million dead by the injection,
2.2 billion injured …” “I hope people can imagine the extent of what is happening here.
An unimaginable slaughter that is not yet over, because this number is the current estimate first.
It does not include future deaths of a similar kind that will come to you!”
Immune escape.
• Unvaccinated Children Are ‘Our Only Hope’ For Herd Immunity – Geert (ET)
For nearly two years, vaccine expert and virologist Geert Vanden Bossche has been on a mission to raise awareness of why healthy children should not receive COVID-19 vaccines. Vanden Bossche, who has 30 years of experience in the vaccine industry, claims that it is primarily the unvaccinated children and adults who can generate herd immunity.“The children are our only hope still, to generate herd immunity,” Vanden Bossche told The Epoch Times. “And herd immunity means, thanks to their natural immunity, they can kill the virus, they can sterilize the virus.” It is only herd immunity that “will be able, at the population level, to dramatically reduce infectious pressure and to tame the pandemic so that it can transition into an endemic phase,” he added, since the “vaccines cannot do this.
“On the contrary, the vaccines lead to the breeding of more and more infectious variants, which is enhancing the infectious pressure in the population.”Herd immunity is defined as when a percentage of the population becomes immune to a disease—either through a previous infection or vaccination—which acts to stop or slow down the spread. Yet, vaccines have never significantly contributed to ending influenza pandemics in the past. The virus in each pandemic had largely run its course and became endemic. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1 virus, began in March 1918 and ended in the summer of 1919 without the use of any vaccines. The 1957 Asian flu (H2N2) pandemic ended in 1958 with limited use of the flu vaccine. And in both the 1968 H3N2 and 2009 H1N1 pandemics, the pandemic had already reached its peak by the time the vaccines were ready, so demand for the vaccines declined.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the first time that mass vaccination is being done in the middle of a pandemic. According to Vanden Bossche, mass vaccination with vaccines cannot prevent infection during a pandemic when there is high infection pressure because it leads to immune escape, a phenomenon where a virus can escape the host’s immune system. The late Nobel laureate and virologist Luc Montagnier was also against vaccinating the entire population during a pandemic. In May 2021, he called the mass vaccination program “a huge scientific error” and that the “history books will show that it is the vaccination that is creating the variants.” Supporters of vaccination allege that the vaccines do not create more variants, arguing that the virus has mutated several times prior to the vaccine roll out in December 2020 and that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks. Vanden Bossche disagrees.
He said that while variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can occur naturally, it is the COVID-19 injections that are driving the process. The most important reason why children should not receive a COVID-19 vaccine is to protect their innate immune system from being compromised, according to Vanden Bossche. The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defense against foreign pathogens. Children are “equipped with a special kind of antibodies that we call innate antibodies,” Vanden Bossche said in a video this summer, which “only lasts for some time during childhood and after that they disappear.” “These innate antibodies have an incredibly important function because they will help the child to kick off its own immune system,” he said, adding that these antibodies may be able to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 and many other viruses that are encountered.
Marik
https://twitter.com/i/status/1584692426790211586
Oborne
Peter Oborne Demolishes Boris Johnson's Legacy @obornetweets pic.twitter.com/WTcVXLlJjs
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) October 21, 2022
Plates
Watch these plates
These plates find their equilibrium as objects always seek a minimum energy state, (a stable state)
because of the first and second laws of thermodynamics: energy conservation and entropy increase.pic.twitter.com/oPU46EMsW1
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 24, 2022
Bats
An endless stream of bats pour from a cave. Cueva de los Murciélagos, Mexico.pic.twitter.com/Ti18ddL113
— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) October 24, 2022
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