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Debt Rattle Christmas Day 2023

Dec 252023
 
 December 25, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Velázquez The Immaculate Conception 1619

 

• ‘I Did Not Ask Netanyahu For Ceasefire’: Biden (Cradle)
• How The Western Media Are Protecting The Israelis (Helmer)
• Houthis Brush Off US Threats, Vow to Intensify Anti-Israeli Ops (Sp.)
• Biden’s Attack On Nord Stream Was Aimed At Germany – Seymour Hersh (RT)
• Putin Now Serious About Negotiating End To War: Diplomats (ZH)
• Ukrainians Face A ‘Terrible Winter’ – Retired French General (RT)
• Time To Find ‘Another Way’ To Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Italy (RT)
• Moscow Hits Out At ‘Caveman Russophobia’ (RT)
• ‘Color Revolution’ Being Attempted In Serbia – Vucic (RT)
• Serbia Thanks Russian Spies For Warning About Color Revolution Attempt (RT)
• Polish President Blocks Budget Over State Media ‘Takeover’ (RT)
• Biden Rains on Trump’s Immunity as Trial Faces Delay (Sp.)
• Trump To Be on All Ballots or None: Minnesota Secretary of State (Sp.)

 

 

 

 


https://twitter.com/i/status/1738743983231074314

 

 

 

 

Pepe Escobar

 

 

Republic Democracy

 

 

 

 

He proudly stated…

• ‘I Did Not Ask Netanyahu For Ceasefire’: Biden (Cradle)

US President Joe Biden told reporters on 23 December that he did not ask for a ceasefire during his latest call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I had a long talk with Netanyahu today, and it was a private conversation,” the president said, adding that he “did not ask for a ceasefire.” The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed the Israeli war on Gaza and its “objectives and phasing.”The US president “emphasized the critical need to protect the civilian population, including those supporting the humanitarian aid operation, and the importance of allowing civilians to move safely away from areas of ongoing fighting,” according to the White House statement.

Biden’s phone call came one day after the UN Security Council passed a barebones resolution that called for increased humanitarian aid but failed to demand an immediate ceasefire. The Security Council had been trying to draft a resolution for several days but was forced to tone down the language at the insistence of US officials who opposed a call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The US and Russia abstained from the UNSC vote. Washington has vetoed two previous resolutions calling for a ceasefire. “This resolution has been watered down to the point that its impact on the lives of civilians in Gaza will be nearly meaningless,” said Avril Benoit of Doctors Without Borders.

On Saturday, Israel’s Broadcasting Authority revealed Tel Aviv is planning to switch to a new phase of the war in the coming weeks, bringing to an end to ground operations and shifting the focus to continued heavy airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. While Washington has been calling for a switch to lower-intensity operations to “protect civilians,” maintaining air raids of Gaza is expected to keep the staggering death toll on the rise. Young voters in the US have increasingly shown support for the Palestinian cause, plunging Biden’s approval ratings. A poll earlier this month showed that 53 percent of US citizens “disapprove of the president.”

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“..the Houthis have yet to make a mistake in spotting and hitting Israeli ships..”

• How The Western Media Are Protecting The Israelis (Helmer)

From the minute after the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the UK Maritime Trade Organisation (UKMT) learned that the oil tanker MV Chem Pluto had been hit by an exploding drone in the Indian Ocean 1,600 kilometres east of the Red Sea and Yemen coast, they also knew why. Through a joint venture between a Japanese and a Singapore holding company operating through a Dutch management cutout, the vessel is owned by Idan Ofer, an Israeli shipping magnate. The Chem Pluto strike is the second by a drone against one of Ofer’s vessels in the Indian Ocean. The first strike was on November 24, when the container carrier CMA CGM Symi was targeted in the northeastern sector of the Indian Ocean. The Symi is owned by Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping in Singapore.

On December 18, drone strikes were reported by CENTCOM against the Swan Atlantic oil tanker and the bulker MV Clara. The first vessel is owned by a Norwegian company but management, with hidden equity, belongs to the Israeli Zodiac group, owned by Idan Ofer’s brother, Eyal Ofer. The second vessel, the Clara, is owned and managed by a German company, Johann MK Blumenthal; no Israeli trace has been found to date, but the Houthis have yet to make a mistake in spotting and hitting Israeli ships. On November 19 they did more than that. On that day an Israeli-owned car carrier, Galaxy Leader, was captured by Houthi commandos in the Red Sea. Follow their operation as they filmed it; here is the vessel now receiving tourists at anchor off Al-Salif port, Yemen. Ownership by the Israeli Abraham Ungar was concealed behind by a Japanese ship management entity and a company registered under the Isle of Man-headquartered Ray Car Carriers, which in turn is owned by a Tel Aviv company called Ray Shipping.

Houthi political and military spokesmen have repeatedly made clear they are attacking Israeli shipping, as well as vessels of any nationality trading in and out of Israel’s ports. “Israeli ships are legitimate targets for us anywhere… and we will not hesitate to take action,” Major General Ali Al-Moshki, a Houthi military official, said on the group’s television station on November 20, following the capture of the Galaxy Leader. “If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” a Houthi press statement declared on December 9. CENTCOM and Pentagon releases to the press have also claimed to have intercepted Houthi drone and missile attacks on US warships in the Red Sea attempting to protect the Israeli-owned or Israel-bound shipping.

Less successful in hitting Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat, the Houthi campaign has been effective in cutting off the port by striking at vessels in the Red Sea, and then extending the range of strikes to the eastern Indian Ocean. Eilat accounts for 45% of car imports to Israel and 5% of all the goods imported to Israel by sea. The Houthi campaign has cut Eilat’s port revenue by 80% since October 7. The impact has expanded to all shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean if their management and ownership are based in the US and the European states allied with Israel in the Gaza war, and also with the US in the war against Russia in the Ukraine. It is this coalition of states which US Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin attempted to rally for naval convoy and counter-threat operations on December 18, calling the plan OPERATION PROSPERITY GUARDIAN.

This operation is now coming apart in recriminations because commercial vessel owners in France, Spain, and Italy have accepted that if they negotiate Israel-boycott deals directly with the Houthis, they can continue to operate through the Red Sea. They resent the commercial competition from Russia and China which are operating oil tankers and dry-cargo carriers without hindrance or threat. The obviousness of the targeting by the Houthis, and of Houthi deal-making by the Russians and Chinese, are being concealed, however, in the US and UK maritime industry media and the mainstream press. They are advocating maximum use of force by the Israel and US-led operation in the region to attack both Houthi and Iranian targets.

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That coalition fell apart in record time. Or did Austin just make it up to begin with?

• Houthis Brush Off US Threats, Vow to Intensify Anti-Israeli Ops (Sp.)

The Houthis have dismissed the US-led military coalition being assembled against them, warning that they have “multiple options” to continue targeting Israel if the IDF’s operations in Gaza aren’t halted. “If the Zionist regime does not stop its assaults on Gaza or anywhere else across the Palestinian lands and doesn’t lift its siege, our forces will exercise more options,” Maj. Gen. Mohammad Nasser al-Atifi, the Houthi-led government of national salvation’s defense minister, warned in a speech before other militia leaders late Friday. “Our eyes are monitoring and closely following the movements of the [Israeli] entity worldwide,” al-Atifi added. “The recent decisions by foreign military forces and their regional mercenaries have put many tasks before us, the most daunting of which is the exercise of vigilance and watchfulness,” the senior Houthi official said, referring to the US-led coalition.

Brig. Gen. Youssef al-Madani, commander of the 5th Military Region – situated to the east of the Red Sea along the coastal Al Hudaydah governorate, said his forces are fully cognizant of the “sensitivity” of the current phase of Houthi operations, emphasizing that the militias are “prepared, vigilant and eager to confront the Zionists and those who are fighting with them.” Al-Atifi stressed that the Houthis are fighting for the sake of the national security of the Arab and Islamic World, and that their actions “serve the interests of countries working to liberate themselves from the domination of the Zionist entity and the United States on a global scale.” “There are countries that cannot even consider using force because the situation requires brave and strategic decisions. The leader of the nation, Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, possesses courage, audacity and independent decision-making,” Al-Atifi said. He went on to slam the international community for failing to adopt an “appropriate” stance on Israel amid the ongoing Gaza crisis.

The Houthis managed to effectively shut down the Red Sea to Israeli-owned and Israeli-bound maritime traffic via a spate of hijackings, missile and drone attacks on commercial carriers over the past month, starting with the seizure of the Israeli-owned ro-ro car carrier Galaxy Leader on November 19. The unrelenting attacks prompted international shipping giants including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, and CMA CGM to suspend operations through the Red Sea, adding billions of dollars to shipping costs as vessels are forced to find alternate routes. Israeli ports have faced particularly heavy losses from the Houthis’ actions, with the nation’s Eilat Port facing an 85 percent drop in activity, and Israeli cargoes facing skyrocketing insurance costs. The US began amassing warships in the region last week, and on Monday Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, “an important new multinational security initiative under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces and the leadership of its Task Force 153, which focuses on security in the Red Sea.”

Austin listed ten nations he said were participating in the coalition, including the US, the UK, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Bahrain and the Seychelles. The Pentagon upped the number to “over 20 nations” on Friday, but did not elaborate on which countries specifically are involved. But part from the ships of US Task Force 153, which includes between three and five US destroyers, the British HMS Diamond missile destroyer and a Greek Navy frigate, the coalition is shaping up to include only a handful of troops from US-allied countries, including the Netherlands (which is sending two officers), Norway (10 officers), Australia (11 troops), Canada (three officers), and Denmark (one officer). France and Italy have each indicated that any naval forces they have in the region will remain under national command, while Spain said it will not take part in any military operation unless it is under the direction of NATO or the EU.

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“..The idea that a sitting US president would deliberately destroy a vital source of energy and of a close ally has been, as Freud would say, taboo..”

• Biden’s Attack On Nord Stream Was Aimed At Germany – Seymour Hersh (RT)

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines commissioned by US President Joe Biden was primarily aimed at Germany rather than Russia, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has claimed. The decision to destroy the key pipelines was prompted by US fears that Berlin might not follow Washington’s lead amid the Ukraine conflict, Hersh wrote in a new article on the affair on his Substack blog on Friday. The sabotage of the pipelines was ordered weeks before the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February 2022, Hersh wrote, adding that the American operatives assigned to it believed it was meant to deter Moscow. The attack on the pipelines was ready by late May, but “the plan was called off on short notice by Biden,” the journalist claimed. Instead, the team was tasked with planting explosives on the pipelines, which could be detonated remotely at a later date, he said.

The timing of the attack, which ultimately occurred in late September 2022, appeared to be aimed at Berlin rather than Moscow. “Biden’s timing seemed aimed at Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz. Some in the CIA believed that the president’s fear was that Scholz, whose constituents were lukewarm in their support for Ukraine, might waffle with winter coming on and conclude that keeping his people warm and his industries prosperous was more important than backing Ukraine against Russia,” Hersh wrote. The destruction of the pipelines played a major role in Germany’s economic hardships – the country, which once “dominated the world’s markets with its luxury cars and industrial machinery… is now in a process of what some have called rapid deindustrialization,” Hersh said.

Apart from this, Germany has experienced a surge in popularity of right-wing parties, including Alternative for Germany (AfD), and its economic woes have contributed to this. However, Washington’s “most controversial factor in Germany’s recent hard times” – the Nord Stream sabotage – remains largely ignored in the West, according to the journalist. “In the ten months since I published my first account of the Nord Stream sabotage the German government and media, as in the United States, have either ignored or provided alternate accounts of the how and why the pipelines were destroyed. The idea that a sitting US president would deliberately destroy a vital source of energy and of a close ally has been, as Freud would say, taboo,” Hersh wrote.

The veteran journalist provided his first detailed account on the pipeline attack on February 8, 2023, publishing a lengthy article relying on anonymous sources “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The allegations prompted strong denials from Washington, with US National Security spokesman John Kirby dismissing the report as a “completely false story” at the time. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March that he “fully agrees” with Hersh’s findings, suggesting the attack only benefited Washington to reinforce its position as a competing gas supplier to Europe.

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Dumb legacy media propaganda to climb back from earlier assertions. Not terribly impressed with how Tyler covers it.

Putin hasn’t changed his views or goals one bit. That is not true of the west. But then, they lost.

• Putin Now Serious About Negotiating End To War: Diplomats (ZH)

In a fresh weekend report The New York Times says that President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate an end to the nearly two year-long ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, at a moment most of the territory which forms the four ‘annexed’ oblasts remains firmly under Russian military control. However, to some degree, Putin has consistently held open the chance to negotiate… it’s just that “negotiate” in the Kremlin context would be on the basis of Crimea and the Donbass being fully recognized as Russian Federation territory. Until recently, the West considered this an impossibility, but US and European officials have more recently quietly admitted Moscow has more or less ‘won’. The NY Times quotes Putin in the following: Buoyed by Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and flagging Western support, Mr. Putin says that Russia’s war goals have not changed. Addressing his generals on Tuesday, he boasted that Ukraine was so beleaguered that Russia’s invading troops were doing “what we want.”

“We won’t give up what’s ours,” he pledged, adding dismissively, “If they want to negotiate, let them negotiate.” But in a recent push of back-channel diplomacy, Mr. Putin has been sending a different message: He is ready to make a deal. The report cites Russian diplomatic sources who say Putin has for the first time been open to ceasefire which would include a freezing of all frontline fighting. American officials say the same, per the report: “In fact, Mr. Putin also sent out feelers for a cease-fire deal a year earlier, in the fall of 2022, according to American officials.” “That quiet overture, not previously reported, came after Ukraine routed Russia’s army in the country’s northeast. Mr. Putin indicated that he was satisfied with Russia’s captured territory and ready for an armistice, they said.” Very obviously, Ukraine’s leadership and society has been fracturing under the strain of the invasion and immense death toll, with Kiev officials recently admitting monumental problems with manpower and ammo supply.

But the reality is that Russian society is likely facing deep fractures and uncertainty too, though it’s far less evident. Countless mothers, fathers, and families are grieving and dealing with the loss of loved ones killed in action. Conservative estimates have said at least 50,000 Russian troops have died in the war (and that is based just on data as of mid-summer). US officials have claimed a figure in the hundreds of thousands, but there are reasons to be doubtful of this. Angry families of fallen soldiers have increasingly formed the locus of a small but increasingly visible Russian anti-war movement, suggesting broader quiet societal angst concerning the direction of the war in Ukraine. They don’t want Ukraine to be Russia’s “endless war”.

[..] According to more in the NYT report on Putin’s supposed new-found readiness for serious negotiations: Mr. Putin’s repeated interest in a cease-fire is an example of how opportunism and improvisation have defined his approach to the war behind closed doors. Dozens of interviews with Russians who have long known him and with international officials with insight into the Kremlin’s inner workings show a leader maneuvering to reduce risks and keep his options open in a war that has lasted longer than he expected. While deploying fiery public rhetoric, Mr. Putin privately telegraphs a desire to declare victory and move on. “They say, ‘We are ready to have negotiations on a cease-fire,’” said one senior international official who met with top Russian officials this fall. “They want to stay where they are on the battlefield.”

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So pump more weapons into it?!

• Ukrainians Face A ‘Terrible Winter’ – Retired French General (RT)

A retired French general and former NATO commander has painted a chilling picture of Ukraine’s prospects over the next several months in its conflict with Russia, saying the best that Kiev and its Western sponsors can hope for is to avoid losing further ground this winter. “The Ukrainians are going to experience a terrible winter,” Jean-Paul Palomeros, ex-chief of staff for the French Air Force, said on Friday in an interview with online broadcaster Franceinfo. “We must not hide our eyes. At best, they will be able to defend the positions they currently have. We must not hope for better.” Palomeros, who served as one of NATO’s two strategic commanders after leaving the French Air Force in 2012, argued that European nations must boost their aid to Ukraine.

“Europeans must invest better and more if they want to be able to support the war effort in Ukraine,” he said. “For the moment, this is not the case.” The retired general made his comments as French President Emmanuel Macron visited France’s troops in Jordan, where he vowed to continue supporting Ukraine. “We cannot let Russia win,” the French leader said. However, Macron admitted in an interview on Wednesday with broadcaster France 5 that the US and its European allies had failed to cripple Russia’s economy through sanctions. He also acknowledged that an uncertain political situation in the US was clouding the outlook for Ukraine’s prospects. The latest round of European aid for Ukraine failed to pass earlier this month at the EU summit in Brussels, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban voted down the bloc’s €50 billion ($54 billion) pledge.

Meanwhile, a $60 billion US aid proposal for Kiev has stalled in Washington, where Republican lawmakers have opposed giving more money until Kiev and its backers come up with a clear victory strategy. US President Joe Biden’s administration has warned that without congressional approval, funding for Washington’s aid to Ukraine will run out at the end of this month. Palomeros lamented the increasing struggles in the West to provide Ukraine the support that it needs. “The message is clear,” he said. “Now we must match words with actions.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg conceded in an interview earlier this month that Ukraine had failed to achieve any battlefield breakthroughs during its long-awaited counteroffensive. “We have to be prepared for bad news,” he said of the outlook for Kiev. “Wars move in phases, but we must stand by Ukraine in good and in bad times alike.”

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“..while the West had succeeded in ensuring Ukraine’s “preservation,” its other goals remain unfulfilled..”

• Time To Find ‘Another Way’ To Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Italy (RT)

It is time for all countries involved in the Ukraine conflict to start looking for a political solution to the crisis, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said on Saturday. The defense chief noted, as quoted by the ANSA news agency, that as the fighting between Moscow and Kiev is about to enter its third year, “it is important to take paths that lead to a political solution.” He stressed, however, that these efforts must coincide with continued military support for Ukraine. The minister pointed out that while the West had succeeded in ensuring Ukraine’s “preservation,” its other goals remain unfulfilled. “What cannot be achieved militarily… can be achieved by opening a diplomatic and political front to try to achieve the same result through peace talks,” he said.

Crosetto also highlighted that “what existed before the war must be restored, and what could not be done with weapons must be done in another way.” NATO member states, including the US, which has emerged as Kiev’s main backer, have insisted that they would continue their support for Ukraine “as long as it takes” while taking steps to bring the embattled country closer to the bloc’s military standards. Russia, which has historically seen NATO’s expansion toward its borders as a threat, has said the Ukraine’s push to join the bloc was one of the key reasons behind the conflict. The Italian defense minister already warned in early October that the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev were unlikely to be resolved on the battlefield.

At the time, he explained that the “more time passes, the more the possibility of helping Ukraine with resources that are not unlimited decreases,” while pointing to serious problems Kiev had encountered in its unsuccessful attempts to push back Russian troops. Kiev launched a much-hyped counteroffensive in early summer but has failed to gain any significant ground while suffering heavy losses both in manpower and Western-supplied equipment. Moscow has estimated Ukrainian casualties since the start of the offensive at around 160,000 troops. While President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning talks with the current leadership in Moscow last autumn after four former Ukrainian regions overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, Moscow has repeatedly said it is ready for peace talks with Kiev.

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“..not at all surprised by Reinsalu’s statement, which goes in line with the ‘caveman’ Russophobia characteristic of modern EU politicians and the ‘collective West’ in general.”

• Moscow Hits Out At ‘Caveman Russophobia’ (RT)

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called out what it called “caveman Russophobia” after ex-Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu suggested that EU member states should prevent Russian embassies from opening polling stations for next year’s presidential election. The vote is slated for a three-day period from March 15 to 17, with the winner to be inaugurated in May. Speaking to RIA Novosti on Sunday, a Foreign Ministry representative said that Moscow is “not at all surprised by Reinsalu’s statement, which goes in line with the ‘caveman’ Russophobia characteristic of modern EU politicians and the ‘collective West’ in general.” It was also noted that the former Estonian minister’s proposal runs counter to the West’s professed adherence to the principles of democracy, with the right to vote being among its cornerstones.

“We see in this nothing but an attempt to introduce one more discriminatory measure against compatriots living in Estonia,” the ministry added. Russian officials also pointed out that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations does not oblige embassies to apply for the host nation’s permission to open polling stations on their premises – contrary to what Reinsalu appeared to suggest. The latter argued that it would be “absurd if European countries allow polling stations to open in Russian embassies on their territory in March.” Reinsalu later clarified to the media outlet Postimees that Moscow would have to request permission from the Estonian Foreign Ministry, which could refuse.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially filed papers to register as an independent presidential candidate with Russia’s Central Election Commission. If victorious, he would serve a fifth term in office. Several major Russian parties, including the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), and New People have also signaled they will put forward candidates. Furthermore, a number of public figures and politicians have also announced their intent to run as independents.

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Maidan 2.0.

• ‘Color Revolution’ Being Attempted In Serbia – Vucic (RT)

Pro-Western demonstrators have attempted to break into government buildings in Belgrade in what Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has called an attempted “color revolution.” Vucic claims he was tipped off about the plot beforehand. Thousands of opposition protesters gathered outside the Belgrade City Assembly on Sunday to protest the victory of Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) over the pro-EU Serbia Against Violence (SPN) coalition in parliamentary elections last week. The protest turned violent with a group of demonstrators attempting to batter down the doors of the building, until they were dispersed by police. “There is no revolution underway,” Vucic said in a public address. “Nothing will go their way,” he continued, referring to the protesters. “Those who swear to fight against violence have shown that they are real thugs.”

The SPN coalition emerged out of anti-government protests following a pair of mass shootings in May. While the protest movement initially demanded the resignations of Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic and intelligence chief Aleksandar Vulin, it soon called for the fall of Vucic’s government. Vucic claimed that the protest was sponsored by Western powers who wanted him removed from office over his cordial relations with Russia and refusal to abandon Serbia’s claim to Kosovo, citing reports from foreign intelligence services. He reiterated these allegations in Sunday’s address, thanking unnamed “foreign services” for letting his security services “know exactly what the thugs were preparing.” The term ‘color revolution’ describes a protest movement funded and organized by a Western government – usually the US.

Aimed at toppling leaders opposed to US interests, these revolutions are typically backed by American intelligence agencies, and organized by a panoply of US-funded NGOs. While the term became widely known following the 2003 ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia, the first successful use of color revolution tactics took place in Yugoslavia in 2000, when a US-backed student movement forced the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic. The anti-Milosevic movement began with claims that the Yugoslavian leader had engaged in fraud in that year’s election, claims bolstered by Western-funded ‘election monitors’ who were brought in. “Serbia is fed up with your revolutions,” Vucic said during the initial ‘anti-violence’ protests earlier this year. “Serbia is fed up with the arrival of those under foreign influence and the destruction of everything that is Serbian.”

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“When we shared that information with everyone else, they said: ‘Well, that’s Russian disinformation, that’s spreading fake news.’”

• Serbia Thanks Russian Spies For Warning About Color Revolution Attempt (RT)

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has expressed gratitude to the Russian security services, which alerted Belgrade to plans for riots in the capital. Pro-Western demonstrators attempted to break into government buildings in Belgrade on Sunday evening, in what Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called an attempted color revolution. While Vucic initially thanked unnamed “foreign services” for letting his security services “know exactly what the thugs were preparing,” Brnabic later revealed that Belgrade was tipped off by Moscow. “I feel that it is important, especially tonight, to stand up for Serbia and to thank the Russian security services who had that information and who shared it with us,” Brnabic told TV Pink on Sunday night. “I can only say thank you, and it probably won’t be popular with those from the West,” the prime minister said, adding, “When we shared that information with everyone else, they said: ‘Well, that’s Russian disinformation, that’s spreading fake news.’”

Anti-government protests erupted in Serbia on Monday, with the opposition accusing the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of “vote theft” during last week’s parliamentary elections, in which the party defeated the pro-EU Serbia Against Violence (SPN) coalition. Vucic dismissed the allegations as “lies,” claiming that the protests were sponsored by the West, which wants him removed due to his relations with Russia and refusal to abandon Serbia’s claim to Kosovo. Following the unrest in Belgrade, Vucic is expected to host Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko at his residence just across the square from the assembly where the protest took place, local media reported, citing the presidential press service. Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has also scheduled a meeting with the Russian envoy.

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“Poland’s state media, which include the TV station TVP, Polish Radio, and the PAP news agency, are the sole source of news for the approximately one-third of Poles who lack access to private media..”

• Polish President Blocks Budget Over State Media ‘Takeover’ (RT)

Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoed a 2024 budget bill on Saturday in protest at the newly elected government’s controversial overhaul of the country’s state media outlets. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s new cabinet revealed on Wednesday that it had fired the top executives at government-run TV and radio stations and news agency and appointed new management boards in their place, citing a need to restore “impartiality.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Duda explained that he could not consent to the bill, which included 3 billion zlotys (€690 million) earmarked for public media, “given the blatant violation of the Constitution and the principles of a democratic state of law.” “An attempt to finance public media through a budget related law (by the parliamentary majority) is in the current situation unacceptable,” he continued, vowing to send his own version of the budget through parliament “immediately after Christmas.”

This version will include the spending commitments promised by the ruling coalition led by Tusk. Duda urged the leaders of both houses of parliament to call sessions and adopt his draft before the year’s end. The new government would have fulfilled several of its electoral promises with the budget, which included a 30% pay raise for teachers and a 20% increase for public sector workers. The controversial overhaul came just a day after parliament approved a resolution calling for “all state authorities to immediately take action aimed at restoring constitutional order in terms of citizens’ access to reliable information and the functioning of public media,” seemingly fulfilling Tusk’s campaign pledge that he would “change the system of public media” in the space of 24 hours if elected.

The former European Council president and his allies had accused the government-run media properties of acting as propaganda mouthpieces for the Law and Justice (PiS) party previously in power by attacking its political enemies and fomenting anti-EU sentiment. Tusk’s predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki, denounced his replacement’s “illegal actions,” charging that the new coalition government intended to violate the law “at every step” and vowing to resist accordingly. “We will not allow for a dictatorship to be built in Poland,” the PiS politician wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. The party, which lost power to Tusk’s coalition in October’s elections, has pointed out that the management of public media properties can only be fired by the National Media Council. Poland’s state media, which include the TV station TVP, Polish Radio, and the PAP news agency, are the sole source of news for the approximately one-third of Poles who lack access to private media, according to the BBC.

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“Biden confirmed on Wednesday that Trump “certainly supported an insurrection..”

• Biden Rains on Trump’s Immunity as Trial Faces Delay (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden has said he sees no reason for presidents to enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, a position vehemently advocated by his predecessor Donald Trump. The statement came in response to a reporter’s question as President Biden left the White House for Camp David, where he plans to spend the Christmas holiday. The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday not to expedite a ruling on Trump’s immunity case was a setback for federal prosecutors seeking to begin a trial related to the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump maintains that his actions leading up to the events of January 6, 2021 were within the scope of his official duties.

The riot saw his supporters violently storm the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt lawmakers’ certification of Biden’s victory.The trial, scheduled to begin on March 4, was delayed after Independent Special Counsel Jack Smith sought an expedited resolution from the nation’s highest court to ensure the scheduled start date. With the Supreme Court granting the expedited request, a lower federal appeals court will now consider the immunity claim, raising the possibility that the trial could extend into the heart of the upcoming general election or beyond. Looking ahead to the 2024 race, Biden’s campaign plans to frame the upcoming contest, which will likely feature a rematch with Trump, as a replay of the 2020 showdown, but with even higher stakes.

Last week, Biden’s campaign circulated a memo characterizing Trump as a significant threat to US democracy, citing his behavior leading up to the January 6 events and his alleged threats against political opponents. While Biden confirmed on Wednesday that Trump “certainly supported an insurrection” on January 6, he stopped short of endorsing a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that could bar the former president from appearing on the state’s ballot. When asked, Biden said, “That’s up to the court.” The January 6, 2021 incident occurred when a mob of Trump supporters broke into the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the Electoral College vote count following Trump’s election loss, claiming it was rigged. Since the riot, more than 1,200 people have been charged with crimes related to the breach.

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“We’re never going to have a situation in this country where one or some cluster of states decides that Donald Trump is not on the ballot and everyone else decides he is..”

• Trump To Be on All Ballots or None: Minnesota Secretary of State (Sp.)

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said on Saturday that the Supreme Court will likely decide if former US President Donald Trump is allowed on all or none of the ballots in the 2024 Presidential election. Simon’s comments come after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump will not be allowed on the ballot in that state because it determined that he is responsible for the riot on January 6, 2021, and therefore had engaged in an insurrection or rebellion and is not eligible to hold office under the 14th Amendment. Trump has not been charged with insurrection or rebellion. The Colorado court stayed its order, expecting Trump’s legal team to appeal to the Supreme Court. Simon told US media in an interview on Saturday that the highest court in the land will “have to” take up the appeal.

“We’re never going to have a situation in this country where one or some cluster of states decides that Donald Trump is not on the ballot and everyone else decides he is,” Simon explained. “He will either be on the ballot everywhere or nowhere, and the US Supreme Court is going to make sure of that.” However, just because Simon is confident that the Supreme Court will ensure Trump’s inclusion on ballots nationwide will be all or nothing, he is not as confident that they will decide on the issue of whether the 14th Amendment applies to Presidents or if Trump engaged in an insurrection. “There’s so many different ways that the Supreme Court could go, there are multiple off ramps for them, for example, to decide the case without deciding the ultimate issue, which is, did Donald Trump engage in or help an insurrection?” Simon said. “They don’t have to decide that. There are a number of ways they can dispose of the case and get an outcome without deciding that question.”

Lawsuits in several states had tried to remove Trump from the ballot, but most were thrown out of court and were seen as longshot cases. The Colorado ruling surprised many. Officials in several Democrat-controlled states have argued the same could be done there, including California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, who on Wednesday, asked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to “explore every legal option” to remove Trump. Recent polling shows that Trump is leading his likely opponent in the 2024 election, President Joe Biden in seven swing states, which means he’d likely beat Biden if the election were held today. After the Colorado ruling, Trump took to his Truth Social, saying “I’m not an Insurrectionist.”

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Chemistree

Santa Mobile

 

 

Dog toys
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735177799970021804

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 13 2023

Aug 132023
 
 August 13, 2023  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather 1882

 

• Comer Ready To Subpoena Bidens’ Phone, Bank Records, Grant Immunity (JTN)
• Prosecutors Want To Interview Joe Biden In Classified Memos Case (JTN)
• Comer, Jordan Slam Hunter Biden Special Counsel ‘Coverup’ (ZH)
• Now THAT Is Ridiculous (Denninger)
• Appeals Court Judges Compare Biden Social Media Pressure To Mafia (JTN)
• Congress Probing FBI Collection Of J6 Phone Location Data (JTN)
• F-16 Training For Ukrainian Pilots Barely Getting Off the Runway (Sp.)
• Russia Committed To Principle Of Inadmissibility Of Nuclear War (TASS)
• Ray McGovern Has Never Been More Scared of Nuclear Catastrophe (SP)
• US-Led NATO Drowns Ukraine in a Bloodbath (SCF)
• US and NATO Arms Industries Hit Record $400 Billion in Sales (SCF)
• Italy Launches $550 Million Airbnb Case (RT)

 

 

 

 

Greenwald

 

 

Devine

 

 

 

 

Schweizer

 

 

How much longer can the wagons protect them?

 

 

Event 201

 

 

 

 

“We’re getting closer every day to showing that Joe Biden was the ringleader in this, not Hunter Biden..”

• Comer Ready To Subpoena Bidens’ Phone, Bank Records, Grant Immunity (JTN)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Friday night pointedly dismissed the appointment of a special counsel in the Hunter Biden criminal probe as “another maneuver… to obstruct” Congress and vowed to escalate his investigation by subpoenaing Hunter and Joe Biden’s phone and bank records and offering witnesses immunity. “We’re getting closer every day to showing that Joe Biden was the ringleader in this, not Hunter Biden,” Comer said in an exclusive interview with the “Just the News, No Noise” television show just hours after Attorney General Merrick Garland shocked Washington by announcing that he was upgrading Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to a special counsel after four years of investigating the Biden family finances.

Comer dismissed Garland’s decision as ineffective, noting Weiss had years to bring serious charges and instead managed to construct a plea deal that spared Hunter Biden prison for tax evasion and gun charges that even the trial judge could not accept. “It’s another maneuver by the Justice Department to obstruct our investigation. I find it odd that, the day after I announced that we had put together a case that would win in court to subpoena Joe Biden’s personal bank records, then lo and behold, Merrick Garland strikes again,” Comer said.

“I assumed he would try to indict Trump or something. But no, he appoints a special counsel and he appoint the same person who had supposedly been investigating Hunter Biden for years, who let the statute of limitations expire on all of his obvious tax crimes, who tried to negotiate a sweetheart plea deal that led him off scot free. And less than two weeks later, after a judge rejects that sweetheart plea deal, Merrick Garland appointed special counsel for the sole purpose to obstruct our credible, effective oversight House investigation of Biden corruption.” Comer said he is now prepared to subpoena the credit card and bank records of the president and his son as well as their phone records to check witness allegations that Joe Biden got financial benefit from Hunter Biden’s clients and talked and met with them at various times.

“We’re at the point to where we put together a case where we have emails, we have text messages, we have pictures, we have bank records. Now we have sworn testimony from associates like Devon Archer. We are ready now to be able to subpoena the personal bank records of the Bidens,” he said. “What we’ve got now are their shady shell company. Now, we need the personal records,” he said. “Because when we show… that chart that shows China and Romania and Russia and the arrows go into shell companies and into the Biden’s family, we think there may be another arrow beyond the Biden family. And that would go to Joe Biden himself. And that’s what people have told us. That’s what the emails suggest. And that’s what we’re trying to determine now. And that’s where our investigation is headed.”

[..] “We’re going to continue to exercise our subpoena power. Hopefully, when we move to impeachment inquiry, that’ll be able to give us tools like granting immunity,” he explained. “If we could grant immunity. I think people like Devon Archer would have would have said a whole lot more. I think people like Eric Sherwood would tell a lot of things that that the Bidens have done that we know they’ve done, that everyone in America knows they’ve done.”

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Robert Hur? Almost forgot about him.

• Prosecutors Want To Interview Joe Biden In Classified Memos Case (JTN)

Special Counsel Robert Hur wants to interview Joe Biden in his classified memos investigation, and the president’s attorneys have been in negotiations for about a month. Hur was appointed last January, two months after special counsel Jack Smith was appointed to investigate former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to NBC News. The issues being negotiated include the time and place of the interview, as well as the scope of the questions. The reporting on this suggests that the investigation has a way to go before wrapping up, but “an interview with the person at the center of an investigation typically takes place near the end of the process,” according to NBC.


While most of the classified documents found starting in November of last year were related to Biden’s time as vice president, some went as far back as when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware. They were found in his office in Washington at the Penn Biden Center, at a second office of the Penn Biden Center in the Chinatown area of Washington, D.C. and at his home in Wilmington, Del. Trump was indicted on 37 counts based on seven charges in June in his classified documents investigation. One such charge was for a violation of the Espionage Act. Based on current polling, both Trump and Biden are well ahead in their races to be the nominees of their respective parties, setting up a 2024 rematch of the 2020 election for president.

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When the Weiss-negotiated Hunter plea deal was thrown out, Garland made Weiss a special counsel. What links the two moves is that both are designed to keep all information under wraps.

Garland and Weiss must know this will not be accepted -it’s against the law-, but they entered it on Friday, so they have a whole weekend in which Weiss is able to manipulate even more files than in his previous position.

Paul SPERRY: “By suddenly acquiring special counsel status, Hill investigators say embattled prosecutor David Weiss can now avoid testifying next month before the House Judiciary Committee and face grilling over reports he helped obstruct a broader investigation into Hunter Biden..”

Jack Posobiec: “The appointment of Weiss as a ‘Special Counsel’ allows the Biden DOJ to keep the investigation open indefinitely and stall all House requests for information to coverup the Biden family corruption ring..”

• Comer, Jordan Slam Hunter Biden Special Counsel ‘Coverup’ (ZH)

The Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, James Comer (R-KY) said in a Friday statement that the announcement of a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation is a DOJ “coverup.” “This move by Attorney General Garland is part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup in light of the House Oversight Committee’s mounting evidence of President Joe Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling ‘the brand’ for millions of dollars to foreign nationals,” Comer said in a lengthy statement shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of US Attorney David Weiss as special counsel, the Daily Caller reports.

“The Justice Department’s misconduct and politicization in the Biden criminal investigation already allowed the statute of limitations to run with respect to egregious felonies committed by Hunter Biden. Justice Department officials refused to follow evidence that could have led to Joe Biden, tipped off the Biden transition team and Hunter Biden’s lawyers about planned interviews and searches, and attempted to sneakily place Hunter Biden on the path to a sweetheart plea deal,” the statement continues.

“Let’s be clear what today’s move is really about. The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption. The House Oversight Committee will continue to follow the Biden family’s money trail and interview witnesses to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens, President Biden is compromised and corrupt, and our national security is threatened. We will also continue to work with the House Committees on Judiciary and Ways and Means to root out misconduct at the Justice Department and hold bad actors accountable for weaponizing law enforcement powers,” Comer continued.

House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan (R-OH) conveyed similar sentiments, telling the Caller: “David Weiss can’t be trusted and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption. Weiss has already signed off on a sweetheart plea deal that was so awful and unfair that a federal judge rejected it. We will continue to pursue facts brought to light by brave whistleblowers as well as Weiss’s inconsistent statements to Congress.” According to Garland, “The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” adding “I am confident that Mr. Weiss will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent manner, and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department.” We’re sure he’s quite confident.

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Denninger’s not the only one who noticed this bit: “Durham’s appointment was invalid for the same reason — remember that? Where was the screaming then?”

NOTE: Durham’s probe also took 5 years or so. And what was the result?

• Now THAT Is Ridiculous (Denninger)

There is a point that the in-your-face fraud reaches where one must that there is no longer a functional law enforcement capacity within a part of the government. In this case that’s the entire Federal government, as this is the DOJ itself and the AG of the nation, Garland: “Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, as well as any other matters that arose or may arise from that investigation.” Weiss is the US Attorney who presented a negotiated plea agreement to the judge over Hunter’s conduct that the judge rejected as it appeared to have included terms intended to mislead both the court and the justice system generally. She sent that back, correctly flagging two provisions including an apparent undisclosed immunity deal that was out-of-scope of the charges that were negotiated.

This is flat-out improper and what’s worse is that it appeared both Weiss and Biden’s defense counsel colluded to place said terms in an addendum that was not disclosed in advance of the hearing to the judge which was clearly intended to keep her from knowing about it until, they hoped, she’s signed off on it. Further there are allegations that Biden’s counsel attempted to tamper with the evidentiary chain by trying to represent themselves as being related to counsel for parties that filed other briefs and have them either sealed or stricken from the record entirely. There was quite a tap-dance around that (as its a crazy-level breach of ethics, a violation of the duties of an officer of the court, as all counsel are, and also arguably criminal fraudulent misrepresentation) but as far as I know there hasn’t (yet anyway) been any serious consequences — although the judge was clearly inclined to hammer the responsible parties for very good cause.

That alone is enough to drag Garland out of office by his hair. But there’s more: The appointment appears to be facially-illegal and Garland knows damn well that it is. “(a) An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision making, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.”

Weiss cannot be appointed to this position as he is a sitting US Attorney! It is explicitly unlawful under the CFRs for Garland to appoint him — or any other sitting US Attorney. By definition a “Special Counsel” must not be a person inside the US Government; that’s the entire point of a Special Counsel! This act by Garland is not only impeachable it is void as Weiss is not qualified and thus the appointment is an open, public, in-your-face fraud. Where does this leave us as Americans? Nowhere good — and at some point we, as Americans, are going to have to deal with this problem whether we like it or not. PS: BTW Durham’s appointment was invalid for the same reason — remember that? Where was the screaming then?

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“..this is a really nice social media platform you’ve got there, would be a shame if something happened to it..”

• Appeals Court Judges Compare Biden Social Media Pressure To Mafia (JTN)

Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod declared in court that the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to remove, throttle and suppress purported misinformation on COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop and elections reminded her of a mafia movie. That was just one of the most memorable examples of the frosty reception Justice Department Civil Division lawyer Daniel Tenny received Thursday from the three-judge panel considering whether to lift or modify last month’s ban on several forms of contact between the feds and companies — currently stayed by the 5th Circuit — as the First Amendment lawsuit led by Missouri and Louisiana proceeds. The back-and-forth at Thursday’s hearing resembled that between 6th Circuit judges and DOJ’s lawyer at a June hearing in a related social media censorship lawsuit against federal officials by users of X, formerly known as Twitter.

Both panels were appointed by Republican presidents. Echoing the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, the 5th Circuit judges repeatedly cited specific conversations from the factual record that suggest social media companies feared legal consequences for not complying with White House and agency requests to censor or diminish the reach of websites or social media postings of which the Biden administration disapproved. When Tenny claimed the injunction’s wording was so broad and vague it could ban the government from alerting the public about “untrue statements” about a natural disaster, Judge Don Willett countered that documented private conversations were the issue. Federal officials appeared to practice “fairly unsubtle strong-arming” and make “not-so-veiled threats” in the vein of “this is a really nice social media platform you’ve got there, would be a shame if something happened to it,” Willett said.

Tenny, upon hearing what the judges appeared to be interpreting as coercive pressure, tried to soft pedal the severity of that pressure. “The government is generically going to be angry” when companies resist taking action, but the communications show officials and companies alternating between “friendly” and “testy” conversations, not specific orders to comply “or else.” Judge Elrod didn’t seem particularly convinced, telling Tenny that “Or else” isn’t required when the government and companies have a “very close working relationship” that resembles a supervisor addressing a subordinate. The “irate messages” actually show high-ranking officials badgering counterparts about why they hadn’t taken action against specific accounts as requested, Judge Elrod said: “It’s like ‘jump and how high.'”

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“..you can’t just have the government sweep up everything about you trying to find out if you did something wrong.”

• Congress Probing FBI Collection Of J6 Phone Location Data (JTN)

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday launched a broad inquiry into the FBI’s use of “geofence warrants” to sweep up large buckets of Americans cell phone location data, a relatively new tool that is raising questions about search and seizure powers that date all the way back to the country’s founding, The tactic came to prominence during the Jan. 6 riot investigation when it was revealed more than 5,000 American phone devices had location data gathered by the FBI in a digital dragnet designed to identify anyone who was in or near the U.S. Capitol that fateful day. That geofence warrant plus revelations that the FBI accepted bank records volunteered by a major bank without seeking a warrant or subpoena have trigged concerns of both liberals and conservatives of a modern-day end run around the 4th Amendment.

“The use of geofence warrants raises serious Constitutional concerns,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter Thursday announcing the congressional inquiry. “First, location history data is not an exact science as the geo-location data represents only a probable estimation of a device’s location within a given radius and margin of error. Second, a geofence warrant is inherently tied to a specific location—not a known suspect, user, account, or crime. “For that reason, among others, courts have wavered on whether searches pursuant to geofence warrants comply with the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity,” Jordan added.

In an interview with Just the News, Jordan said the geofence warrant inquiry was part of a larger effort to help Congress modernize civil liberty protections in an era of unprecedented digital surveillance and technological data gathering that also includes bank records and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was abused during the Russia collusion scandal. “We know that regarding Jan. 6, a couple years ago that the FBI was looking to get your your phone data location, where you were in relation to the Capitol, were you around the Capitol,” Jordan told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And it was just sort of this blanket approach No predicate to say you know Sally Smith, or John Jones was here. We have reasonable belief they did this. We’d like to know we want to double check that. Nothing like that. Just a blanket.

“And then you couple this with what we learned from a testimony from a whistleblower at the FBI, a few months back, where Bank of America just turned over their customers debit card and credit card purchases in the DC area around Jan. 6 2021. I mean, this is scary stuff,” he added. “It’s so contrary to the principles that our country was founded on. Like, you can’t just have the government sweep up everything about you trying to find out if you did something wrong. That’s not how our system works. “But it sure looks like that’s what’s happening in modern day America, particularly with this Biden administration.”

Jordan’s letter raised a second concern that geo-fence warrants may have been “weaponized for political ends” by the Justice Department, approved against conservatives and Trump protesters but not against liberal activists from the 2020 George Floyd riots. “Federal law enforcement’s interest in geofenced data appears selective,” he wrote. “For example, in 2020, Minnesota police sought a geofence warrant to investigate violent rioting in Minneapolis and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) used geofence warrants to investigate arson throughout Kenosha, Wisconsin. However, it seems that the FBI did not pursue geofenced data to investigate the violent crime occurring at federal facilities during a similar time frame. “In contrast, the FBI readily used geofencing at an unprecedented scope and scale as a part of its investigation and prosecution of the events of January 6, 2021,” he added.

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They need to learn English first.

• F-16 Training For Ukrainian Pilots Barely Getting Off the Runway (Sp.)

Kiev might be clamoring for American-made F-16s amid its faltering counteroffensive, but the first Ukrainian pilots to undergo training on the fighter jets most likely will not be ready to fly them until next summer, according to a US report. A mere handful of six pilots will undergo the first round of instruction, with two other pilots picked as reserve candidates, according to cited senior Ukrainian government and military officials. However, this first group of pilots is not expected to wrap up training anytime soon, sources acknowledged to the outlet. The officials reportedly bemoaned delays by their Western patrons in implementing the instruction program. None of the previously touted “game-changing weapons” funneled from the West have made much impact on the catastrophically slow pace of Ukraine’s ground forces fighting in the ongoing NATO-Russia proxy war.

So begging for the multi-role US fighters to be added to the mix has become Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s mantra of late. While Kiev may have banked on its pilots being ready to fly the single-engine craft, which debuted in the 1970s and has been updated repeatedly, by as early as September, that appears to have been wishful thinking. While sending Patriot missile system, NASAMS, HIMARS, Bradley fighting vehicles, Leopard II tanks, depleted uranium shells, and, more recently, cluster bombs, to Ukraine, President Joe Biden spent close to a year denying Ukrainian appeals for F-16s. He backtracked as the special military operation continued, saying in May that he would green light training Ukrainian pilots on US-made jets, and supported the transfer of the combat planes by other countries. Eleven NATO countries pledged to support the training, expected to primarily take place in Denmark, Romania, and the Netherlands.

After the start of training was pushed back several times, officials were now cited as saying the effort was only gradually getting off the ground. There had previously been reports that the training had hit a major snag due to the language barrier. Now, the outlet said that even though the selected Ukrainian pilots were already fluent in English, at least four months of special English lessons in Britain were required for them to grasp the terminology associated with the F-16s. To complicate matters further, the language instruction for pilots is to take place simultaneously with lessons for Ukraine’s ground staff – suggested as being less proficient in English. The reason for this was because Denmark had allegedly demanded that entire crews be sent together to train.

The language hurdle is believed to have pushed back the beginning of actual combat training, anticipated to take six months, as far as to January, sources said. As for the second batch of pilots, ostensibly of the same size, they might be nowhere near ready to fly F-16s until the end of next year. It was added that 20 more Ukrainian pilots were currently ready for English-language training. “This is called dragging it out,” a Ukrainian official was quoted as fuming. However, the sources revealed that they feared railing openly against their US and European “benefactors” lest they “appear ungrateful.”

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“Our opponents know these provisions perfectly well..”

• Russia Committed To Principle Of Inadmissibility Of Nuclear War (TASS)

Russia is taking all necessary measures to guarantee national security but is firmly committed to the principle of the inadmissibility of a nuclear war, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday, commenting on the decisions made by Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States to not target strategic nuclear missiles. “The leadership of our country is firmly committed to the principle of the inadmissibility of a nuclear war. We proceed from the fact that there can be no winner in such a war and that it must not be unleashed,” the ministry said. “Russia is taking all necessary measures to ensure its national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty. And it will continue to do so.” According to the ministry, preventing a potential act of aggression against Russia and its allies “is among its highest state priorities.”

The ministry noted that the situation in the sphere of international security and strategic stability is degrading and “discussions about the expediency of measures on not targeting strategic nuclear forces, which have been in place between Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States since the early 1990s, have visibly invigorated.” “Calls are being heard to denounce the relevant agreements in which Russia takes part, “trigger a mechanism of nuclear deterrence,” and aim Russian missiles at the United States and the United Kingdom,” the ministry said. It recalled that on January 14, 1994, Russia and the United States signed the Moscow declaration, where the sides agreed not to aim strategic nuclear missiles at each other. A similar agreement with London was signed on February 15, 1994.

“These are political agreements and impose no legal obligations on the sides. Since they are not international treaties as defined in the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties of 1969, the procedure of their termination of denunciation is not regulated by international law,” the ministry said. “As for triggering the nuclear deterrence mechanism, in line with the provisions of the fundamentals of Russia’s state policy in the sphere of nuclear deterrence that were endorsed by the Russian presidential decree of June 2, 2020 No355, nuclear deterrence is carried out permanently with respect to certain states and military coalitions (blocs, unions) which view Russia as a potential enemy and possess nuclear weapons and/or other types of weapons of mass destruction or a considerable combat potential of conventional forces. One of the principles of nuclear deterrence is maintaining a certain part of forces and nuclear deterrence means on permanent combat alert. Our opponents know these provisions perfectly well,” the ministry stressed.

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“Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland… They have the reins of power and they’re telling Biden what to do. They have a sense of unreality that they can prevail. ”

• Ray McGovern Has Never Been More Scared of Nuclear Catastrophe (SP)

A retired CIA expert on Russia and rare voice of reason coming from the bowels of the American deep state, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on another edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. With world peace, nuclear weapon prudence and film critique on the agenda, McGovern and Scheer delve into a host of relevant issues stemming from the war in Ukraine and the history behind it. From Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” to CNN’s strange truthful broadcast on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the old boys from the Bronx prod each other’s encyclopedic minds to try and make sense of the state of the world.

While mixed opinions over the atomic bomb film fill the first segment of the episode, the conversation seems to always make its way back to the importance of potential nuclear war on the horizon. As McGovern said, “I spent six decades, count them, six decades following Soviet and now Russian policy. Most of that time professionally and now… really just as intently and I have never, never had so much fear that we are on the cusp of a nuclear catastrophe.” McGovern, an adviser to seven presidents, also dives into the motivations and ramifications of such reckless foreign policy decisions, made by people who supposedly check all the qualification boxes:

“Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland… They have the reins of power and they’re telling Biden what to do. They have a sense of unreality that they can prevail. That was very clear at their first major foreign policy adventure, where the Chinese were kind enough to come to Anchorage, Alaska and they were treated like the British imperialists treated the Chinese on the Yangtze River two centuries ago!” In the end, it is the citizens back home as well as the soldiers on the front lines who get dealt a bad hand from these decisions. McGovern points out the bleak realities of what these aid packages to countries like Ukraine really mean to all parties involved. The most sinister part being how it happens in front of people without them even knowing and that is by design, courtesy of McGovern’s famously coined military, industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academia, think tank (MICIMATT) complex.

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SCF op-ed last week.

• US-Led NATO Drowns Ukraine in a Bloodbath (SCF)

New figures indicate the Ukrainian military death toll is at least 400,000 after 500 days of conflict. The real figure may actually surpass 500,000. This is much greater than previously estimated, which was already dreadful. Yet, Washington incoherently keeps pushing the failed counteroffensive to the “last Ukrainian”. This bloodbath is an obscenity, a vast imperial crime, with no effort at all by the U.S. and European leaders to sue for peace. Crudely put, war is a racket and the warmongers make a packet. Not surprisingly, the actual casualty figures suffered by the Kiev regime’s military are a closely guarded secret. The NATO sponsors are also keeping a tight lip on the ghoulish losses because to do so would be an admission of the abysmal failure of their proxy war against Russia, and that would entail incurring an almighty political backlash from the Western public. Therein lies a diabolical Catch-22.

Nevertheless, despite the best efforts to conceal the carnage, up to recently several independent observers had estimated the death toll for the Ukrainian forces to be around 250,000 to 300,000 since the conflict erupted on February 24, 2022. Russian military casualties have been put at about 10 percent of those inflicted on the Ukrainian side. New data this week, however, indicate the scale of losses for the NATO-backed Kiev regime to be much higher. Satellite imagery cited by Intel Republic’s Telegram channel of newly dug cemeteries in Ukrainian territory suggests that at least 400,000 military personnel have died in battles with Russian forces. The graves presume individual bodies buried. In addition, not recorded are the countless dead who have been obliterated on battlefields or left to rot by Kiev regime commanders.

Another measure is gleaned from grim reports this week in the U.S. media that there have been 50,000 amputees among Ukrainian soldiers, according to the supply of prosthetic limbs from German manufacturers. Extrapolation from that figure of casualties corroborates the far higher estimate of war dead. Consequently, in light of the amputee numbers, comparisons have been made even by the U.S. media with the level of attrition seen during World War One. The latter is notorious for its horrendous and senseless slaughter of men. The comparisons are correct but strangely glided over by the U.S. media without dwelling on what should be compelling abhorrence towards the violence. If the battles in Ukraine have been previously called a “meat grinder”, then it would be accurate to refer to the country more as a bloodbath.

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SCF op-ed this week.

• US and NATO Arms Industries Hit Record $400 Billion in Sales (SCF)

Western weapons manufacturers are popping champagne corks over record sales with total revenues hitting $400 billion for last year. According to media reports, this coming year-end will see that record figure exceeded by another salivating $50 billion. Ukraine may be resembling a bloodbath, as we noted in last week’s editorial. But apparently, Western military corporations are swimming in a bonanza of profits and stock market investments. Most of this lucrative new business stems from NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which is heading toward its second year. There is no sign of a diplomatic effort from the West or the Kiev regime it sponsors to end the bloodshed.

The main corporate beneficiaries making a financial killing from Ukraine are by far the American firms. They include such behemoths as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and RTX (formerly Raytheon). But also enjoying soaring profits are arms makers in other NATO countries: BAE in the United Kingdom, Airbus in France, Netherlands and Spain, Leonardo in Italy, and Germany’s Rheinmetall. This week the Joe Biden administration requested another $24 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to Ukraine. It’s hard to keep track of the money flowing from NATO countries to prop up the Nazi regime in Kiev. Even the NATO authorities don’t seem to know the precise figures, such is the rampant corruption that is inevitably associated with the vast doling of funds. But estimates of total U.S. and NATO aid to Ukraine range from $150 billion to $200 billion over the past year alone.

What we are seeing is an audacious racket whereby the American and European public are subsidizing the funneling of their own taxpayers’ money into the coffers of weapons firms. And there is no democratic choice in the matter. It’s a fait accompli. Or, put another way, extortion. Of course, too, part of this huge scam is the hefty financial cuts for the inner circle of the Kiev regime, including its puppet president, Vladimir Zelensky, and the brazenly sleazy defense chief Aleksy Reznikov. It is reckoned that at least $400 million has been grafted by the top members of the regime from the arms bazaar flowing into Ukraine. Reznikov has even boasted that his country serves as a testing ground for NATO weaponry.

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“.. the company will have the right to sue hosts who have not paid the tax, and thus raise the funds to pay the government bill..”

• Italy Launches $550 Million Airbnb Case (RT)

Italian authorities have accused US-based online accommodation booking firm Airbnb of not paying roughly €500 million ($547 million) in taxes, national news outlet Il Sole 24 Ore reported on Friday. A probe has been launched by Italy’s Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate), a government body that enforces financial laws and collects taxes, according to the outlet. Italian legislation governing short-term rental platforms states that professional landlords that lease accommodation must pay a 21% flat-rate tax on income they receive from rentals. In cases with non-professional hosts, or property owners for whom rentals are not the main source of income, platforms such as Airbnb have to act as agents and withhold the tax from transactions, before turning it over to the authorities.

Non-professional hosts make up the majority of Airbnb offers. The platform has repeatedly tried to contest the Italian legislation, but has so far failed. The EU Court of Justice ruled in December last year that the Italian law does not contradict broader EU legislation, effectively giving Italy the green light to demand the tax from the platform. According to the report, Airbnb has been negotiating with the Italian Revenue Agency for months to identify the exact group of hosts for whom the company should act as a tax agent. The final bill will depend on the number of non-professional hosts that Airbnb represents, the news outlet noted. Analysts have warned that after Airbnb and Italy’s tax authorities come to an understanding, the company will have the right to sue hosts who have not paid the tax, and thus raise the funds to pay the government bill.

If the estimations are correct, the €500 million settlement will be the second-highest figure ever requested by Italy from an internet company, following the €870 million it demanded from Meta platforms. The multinational owner of Facebook and Instagram was accused of failing to pay VAT in the country earlier this year. In the last ten years, Italy’s authorities have stepped up efforts to battle tax evasion and have collected nearly €3 billion from multinationals that initially failed to pay tax, according to Il Sole 24 Ore. Over €800 million was collectively paid by internet giants Apple, Google, Meta, PayPal, and Netflix.

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3D

 

 

Draco

 

 

Mandarin duck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1690472670700175361

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 6 2022

Mar 062022
 
 March 6, 2022  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Marcel Duchamp The chess game 1910

 

• Why Putin Invaded Ukraine – And What’s Really Going On (Maajid Nawaz)
• War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth (Brenner)
• Not Exactly Chernobyl (Dmitry Orlov)
• How Russia Will Counterpunch the U.S./EU Declaration of War (Escobar)
• US/NATO Is in the Grip of a Demonic Death-Wish (Edward Curtin)
• Zelensky And The Fascists (MoA)
• Putin Will Declare War On Any Country Creating A Ukraine No-Fly Zone (ZH)
• When Ukraine Was Mightier Than China (Bivens)
• Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia (DW)
• ‘Key To White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into A Far-right Savior (G.)
• Most Already Had Robust Immunity (Girardot)
• License to Kill (Steve Kirsch)
• CDC Admits They Lied, And Granny Died (Denninger)
• On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity (Doomberg)

 

 

 

 

Why RT got banned?!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500057418235006979

 

 

 

 

Bryce Mitchell
https://twitter.com/i/status/1499995755515465730

 

 

 

 

Mandela

 

 

“Ukraine had a long history of cultural and political ties with Russia, dating to Kievan Rus of the 10th century that was founded by the Rurikid dynasty from Swedish vikings..”

• Why Putin Invaded Ukraine – And What’s Really Going On (Maajid Nawaz)

To emphasise, this article serves to analyse how to prevent the danger of World War III. Its purpose is not to defend Putin’s actions. To understand the conflict requires understanding the recent history, and what Russia’s national interests are in the region. Ukraine had a long history of cultural and political ties with Russia, dating to Kievan Rus of the 10th century that was founded by the Rurikid dynasty from Swedish vikings. It had been formally a part of the Russian Empire since the 18th century and remained in its sphere of influence. In 2010 Ukraine elected the pro-Russia Yanukovych as their president. Leaning towards Russia as he did, the new president Yanukovych was however not the US establishment’s preferred candidate. In 2013, Yanukovych cancelled an association deal between Ukraine and the EU.

In short, such an action required a response. With the second largest oil reserves in the world, and by controlling most of Europe’s gas supplies (which pass through Ukraine) Russia was perilously close to creating a Eurasian superpower to rival the US and end the hegemony of the US petrodollar. This is something that was recognised by Trump, despite the now proven hoax that he was captured by Putin. The US response came in 2014 as a Western backed bloody Maidan uprising (Putin would call this a coup) led to a change of regime. This uprising was backed and funded by the US establishment and her allies. Most worrying of all, it was perpetrated by the Neo-Nazi group Svoboda, founded by Andriy Parubiy.

Despite corporatist media denials, the neo-Nazi nature of Ukraine’s new pro-American regime is by now well established. With western backing, Svoboda swiftly began raising the armed neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which now serves as the Ukrainian National Guard. The US was arming the Nazi Azov battalion for three years, until it finally ended the open part of this cooperation in 2018. “House-passed spending bills for the past three years have included a ban on U.S. aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion, but the provision was stripped out before final passage each year…The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014, and its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, who previously headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine.

Several members of the militia, which has been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, are self-avowed neo-Nazis..Last year, online posts by the militia’s news service showed members testing U.S.-made grenade launchers at a firing range. The posts have since been deleted”. Canada, surprise surprise, was also involved in this arming and funding of Ukrainian Nazis. Replete with Western funds, the group promptly appears to have begun organising Nazi summer camps for children. As well as organising street patrols for Nazi blackshirts in order to maintain their grip on power. And mass Nazi rallies, glorifying Nazi collaborators. Russia responded to this regime change by helping Crimea secede, and by recognising Luhansk’s and Donetsk’s independence. The above is the background to the eight year war that had been waging in Donbas, which you would be forgiven for not knowing about due to a corporatist media blackout.

Maajid

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“Two-way mendacity between the chief executive and the so-called Fourth Estate. Cozy.”

• War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth (Brenner)

Here’s a stark example. On March 2 Biden was asked whether Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilian areas in Ukraine, the president says, “It’s clear they are.” An outright lie – picked up and transmitted without comment. The wrinkle in this instance is that this is the same lie that the MSM had been disseminating for days. Two-way mendacity between the chief executive and the so-called Fourth Estate. Cozy. Those who know better will be kept at bay – non-persons. So, we read in the august New York Times that Russia launches missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, while civilian casualties mount and the Russian offensive on Kharkiv stalls. All nonsense, all lies. Never corrected. They are just sub-heads in a fictional story designed to mythologize, to entertain, and to control thought. Straight out of 1984; who needs censorship?


A body politique incapable of enunciating and observing reasonable ethical standards of behavior should still find it within itself to engage in an honest discussion and debate on matters of supposed national consequence. Ukraine has shown, once again, that the U.S. is not so capable. Why does a president so casually lie in public? Well, for one thing, long experience tells him that he could get away with it. After all, most Americans still take at face value whatever they are told about the international scene despite their being lied to and deceived by their leaders. They lied about WMD in Iraq; they lied about the reception to be expected from the Iraq people, they lied repeatedly about the insurrection, they lied repeatedly about torture, they lied about General David Petraeus’ magnificent Iraqi national army that fled before Mosul.

Douglas MacGregor

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“..the rest of the world, which will still have to listen to fake news of Europe’s largest nuclear plant being blown up by evil Russians.”

• Not Exactly Chernobyl (Dmitry Orlov)

I guess I’ll have to keep publishing some short notes on the situation in the Ukraine, since it’s all over the news and most of that is fake news. Overnight there was a ridiculous amount of noise about Zaporozhskaya AES, which is the largest nuke plant in Europe. President Zelensky proclaimed that it is the new Chernobyl and that all of Europe will need to be evacuated. He was obviously drunk at the time. What actually happened was: At 11:11 AM Moscow time (about an hour ago) the authorities of Zaporozhye Region announced that Zaporozhskaya AES is under control of the Russian forces. At 6:20 AM Moscow time the fire at the administrative building at Zaporozhskaya AES was extinguished with no casualties. It was probably set on purpose to create the media picture of “Europe’s largest nuke plant on fire!”

At 5:36 AM Moscow time the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that the fire in the area of Zaporozhskaya AES did not affect any of the main equipment at the plant. At 4:47 AM Moscow time president Zelensky goes live to announce that the Russians are trying to create a new Chernobyl. A likely story, that. Between 3:51 AM and 3:59 AM Moscow time fire crews were on site putting out the fire. Apparently, there wasn’t a lot for them to do. Between 2:00 AM and 3:30 AM Moscow time there was a shootout at the power plant’s administrative building. Somehow it resulted in a fire at the administrative building. So much for a new Chernobyl.

In other news, this morning the Ukrainian army launched a rocket attack on the headquarters of the Ukrainian Nazi “Azov” battalion. Ten Nazis were killed in the attack. This was punishment for their refusal to follow orders. In other news from this morning, Russia’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, is tightening up control by shutting down sources of disinformation and enemy propaganda, including: • Facebook • Meduza • BBC • Deutsche Welle • Radio Free Europe. Previously, “Echo of Moscow” and “Dozhd” were shut down. What this means is that fighting fake news in Russia is going to get a lot easier. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything for the rest of the world, which will still have to listen to fake news of Europe’s largest nuclear plant being blown up by evil Russians.

Yesterday’s negotiations between the Ukraine (the regime) and Russia resulted in an agreement on humanitarian corridors so that civilians can get out of cities where there is fighting going on. The problem with that is that the remaining Nazi battalions don’t particularly obey orders from the regime and like to use civilians as hostages and human shields. In all, the Russian demilitariazation campaign is going according to schedule. Ukraine’s nuclear installations are passing under Russian control undamaged. Infrastructure damage is quite limited (unless it is military infrastructure, in which case it gets blown up).

As far as denazification—the other goal of the Russian campaign—people are scratching their heads trying to figure out what that means and how it might happen. On the one hand, the Russians know them by name, face, voice print and perhaps even fingerprints, so it’s just a matter of hunting them down. On the other hand, the high-ranking Ukrainian Nazis and their families are currently fleeing the Ukraine and filtering out to the surrounding countries while simultaneously trying to organize terrorist attacks within Russia (unsuccessfully so far). To add spice, Ramzan Kadyrov, the intrepid Chechen chieftain, promised to track them down and kill them wherever they are. “We are everywhere in the world,” he said.

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“Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence.”

• How Russia Will Counterpunch the U.S./EU Declaration of War (Escobar)

Michael Hudson told me, “the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.” A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.

Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it: “Masks have dropped. The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment. Since the United States and its allies have neither the opportunity nor the spirit to try to do this in an open and honest military-political confrontation, sneaky attempts are being made to establish an economic, informational and humanitarian “blockade”’. Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp.

Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows. Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences. The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.

Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.

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“If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable?”

• US/NATO Is in the Grip of a Demonic Death-Wish (Edward Curtin)

Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia. Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine. In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.

Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless. In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews: . . . he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts. One: that the US needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”).

Two: the U.S.A. engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border. Three: the US has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia. This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say? Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with US/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.

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“The fascists in Ukraine are relatively few. But they have the guns and they will kill anyone who opposes them and their aims.”

• Zelensky And The Fascists (MoA)

On February 19, at the hight of the fire, Zelensky gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference. He prominently mentioned the Budapest Memorandum under which the Ukraine had given up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the USSR*: “Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”

One of the package decision Ukraine took in 1994 was the entering of Ukraine into the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Russia understood Zelensky’s remark in Munich as a threat by Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. It already has the expertise, materials and means to do that. A fascist controlled government with nukes on Russia’s border? This is not about Putin at all. No Russian government of any kind could ever condone that. I believe that this credible threat, together with the artillery preparations for a new war on Donbas, was what convinced Russia’s government to intervene by force. On February 22 Russia recognized the Donbas republics as independent states. On February 24 Russian troops crossed the borders into the Ukraine.

The aim set for the Russian military is to de-militarize the Ukraine and to de-nazify it. The first is easy to understand. The Russian military will simple destroy or disable all heavy weapons the Ukraine has. The second aim requires more explanation than the above interview with Dmytro Yarosh. As the Grayzone notes: “In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.” The threats from the fascists make it impossible for any Ukrainian politician to implement a sane policy that would lead to peace in the country. The fascists in Ukraine are relatively few. But they have the guns and they will kill anyone who opposes them and their aims.

They have been put into important state positions. (Besides that oligarchs like Kolomoyskyy pay and use them for their own purposes.) The problem is that such ideological groups, once firmly established, tend to grow. The Right Sector is holding ‘patriotic’ summer camps for young Ukrainians and the Ukrainian state is financing those. They are successful and Ukrainian youths is looking up to them. These developments are what Russia is afraid off. As Patrick Armstrong wrote at the start of the current intervention: “What [Putin] is talking about is what the Soviet Union tried to do from 1933 onwards: namely to stop Hitler before he got started. This time Russia is able to do it by itself. In other words, Putin feels that he is making a pre-emptive attack to stop June 1941. This is very serious indeed and indicates that the Russians are going to keep going until they feel that they can safely stop.”

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“That very second, we will view them as participants of the military conflict, and it would not matter what members they are..”

• Putin Will Declare War On Any Country Creating A Ukraine No-Fly Zone (ZH)

Ukraine’s President Zelensky and his top officials have over the past days been very openly urging a US and NATO imposed no-fly zone over the country, which would effectively bring American forces into a direct shooting war with Russia. On Saturday Russian President Putin issued a stern threat to any external power thinking about intervening by sending direct military forces. Putin made clear a no-fly zone would result in the Kremlin’s immediate declaration of war on any country intervening in such a way. The AP reported and translated his fresh comments made before civilian aviation industry members and pilots as follows: A no-fly-zone would spell war for any third party who tries to enforce one over Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has said. Speaking at a meeting with female pilots on Saturday, Putin said Russia would view “any move in this direction” as an intervention that “will pose a threat to our service members.”


“That very second, we will view them as participants of the military conflict, and it would not matter what members they are,” the Russian president said. Further he addressed the ratcheted up sanctions on Russia from the West, which are now serving to isolate Russia almost on levels akin to the US sanctions regimen on Iran – with of course the important exception that the US has not yet directly targeted Russian oil and gas exports. “Sanctions against us are like declaring war on Russia,” Putin said additionally in the meeting with military members. He further painted a positive picture of Russia’s strategy and military operations on the ground, at a moment many Western officials and pundits in the media have pointed out major problems for the invaders as Ukraine mounts a fierce ground resistance…

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“The average annual income for an entire household in recent years hovered around $2,000. (Or about $38 a week — how’s that for a paycheck?)”

• When Ukraine Was Mightier Than China (Bivens)

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine’s nuclear inheritance was second only to Russia’s. It included more than 2,600 (!) tactical weapons (for battlefield use), more than 1,200 on ICBMs, and a nuclear-armed bomber force. It was an arsenal larger than the arsenals of China, the U.K. and France combined. Ukraine gave it all away. That was a more hopeful time; the Chernobyl power plant disaster in the 1980s had turned many there against all-things nuclear, and the weapons seemed like an expensive headache. They were handed over to Russia to decommission and dismantle. It seemed logical since Russia already held all of the command and control infrastructure, as well as all facilities to design and manufacture warheads, enrich uranium, and dismantle decommissioned weapons.

In exchange, Ukraine got the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 document in which the United States and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s borders; to never use military force against Ukraine; and to initiate UN Security Council actions and other consultations if those pledges were ever breached. The memo fell short of a full treaty, was filed away and essentially never heard from again. Isn’t it funny how a formal document like this is now meaningless “because it’s not a treaty.” It was signed, in public ceremony, by top government leaders, as part of an incredibly solemn matter — Ukraine handing over all nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees. But it’s not a ratified treaty. So, oh well. Next time you sign something Ukraine, get a lawyer!

Contrast that with official attitudes toward a mere public assertion in 2008 — in paragraph 23 of what was basically a press release — that Ukraine will someday join NATO. That is not a treaty either, but somehow it’s worshipped like holy writ. It’s a press release summary of a meeting we Americans never voted on. Yet Washington’s more rabid foreign policy circles have long insisted upon it as a point of honor, and the White House refused to renounce it even unto the last days before the Russian invasion. In the years after Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons, that poor nation became ever more dysfunctional, corrupt, chaotic. The average annual income for an entire household in recent years hovered around $2,000. (Or about $38 a week — how’s that for a paycheck?)

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“If you want to hurt Putin a little, then save energy..”

• Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia (DW)

Germany is currently still dependent on Russian fossil fuels, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Thursday. He spoke out against a ban on energy imports from Russia in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “I would not advocate an embargo on Russian imports of fossil fuels. I would even oppose it,” he said after meeting German business leaders. “We need these energy supplies to maintain the price stability and energy security in Germany,” Habeck added. A shortage in supply could threaten social cohesion in Germany, he warned. Habeck stressed Germany “must free ourselves” from imports of Russia’s gas, coal, and oil. In February, Germany stopped the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. It has since joined other European nations in introducing a raft of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.


Berlin even overturned its longstanding practice of blocking weapons exports to conflict zones. Habeck, however, said Germany has already begun to feel the effects of those decisions. “The impact of the sanctions and of the war on all sectors of the economy is so strong that we can fear a big impact,” Habeck said. The minister said any hopes that Europe’s largest economy would return to post-pandemic levels later this year were dashed. “We had hoped that we will experience an upswing this spring, a recovery phase. But now we have the consequences of the war,” he warned. Habeck urged consumers do their bit by reducing consumption. “If you want to hurt Putin a little, then save energy,” he said.

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For the MSM, the narrative demands that Putin is an evil white supremacist. Never mind that it’s exactly what he’s fighting.

• ‘Key To White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into A Far-right Savior (G.)

“Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” asked Nick Fuentes, on stage last week at a white nationalist event. Amid a roar of applause for the Russian president, just days after he invaded Ukraine, many attendees responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!” It would be easy to dismiss the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in Orlando, Florida, as a radical fringe. But speeches by two Republican members of Congress – one in person, the other via video – guaranteed national attention and controversy. The backlash showed how the war in Ukraine has exposed the American far right’s affinity with Putin. That affinity is complicated by the tortured relationship between Russia and former president Donald Trump, whose rise Moscow supported with a covert operation to undermine US democracy.

Fuentes, a notorious antisemite, created AFPAC to coincide with the more mainstream Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where Trump was the headline speaker last Saturday. At AFPAC, Fuentes introduced the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who would this week interrupt the State of the Union address, rising to yell “Build the wall!” as an objection to Joe Biden’s immigration policy. But here she did not interrupt to object to the chanting of the Russian president’s name. “I don’t believe anyone should be canceled,” Taylor Greene told the attendees of the white nationalist conference. She lashed out at a wide range of topics from Marxism to cancel culture but avoided the invasion of Ukraine, saying even less on the topic than Russian state media.

Devin Burghart, executive director of Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: “In the world of the white nationalists, you are seeing a lot of support for Putin, as expressed by the cheerleading at AFPAC over the weekend.” Others agree, pointing to a shared socially and culturally conservative ideology, disdain for democratic systems and appreciation for a “strong man” form of government. There was also the fact that it was the current Ukrainian government whom Trump attempted – and failed – to bribe to investigate his political rival Biden: actions which led to his first impeachment.

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But do they still?

• Most Already Had Robust Immunity (Girardot)

Collectively, research and the pharmaceutical industry has been making the same mistake on Covid-19 as these well-intended smart American airforce engineers did nearly 80 years ago. They have essentially focused on the wrong information, the non universal part of the genetic material of the virus, which has been found to mutate the most. In January 2020, SARS-Cov2 was rapidly sequenced (see illustration), and immediately the research community started investigating its novelty (the red dot areas). How was Covid-19 unique? and different from SARS-Cov1? What was its mode of action?… Naturally, research started focusing on the now infamous Spike protein, the foundation for these upcoming mRNA and viral vector vaccines.But everyone was oblivious of the elephant in the room: Covid-19 shares 65-82% genome with other Coronaviruses!

Why is this so critical? Roughly 21,000 nucleotides are shared between SARS-Cov2 and other HCovs. And mild forms of coronaviruses, common colds, are permanently circulating the planet and have been infecting people for centuries: Billions of people have had to gain immunity against the most immunogenic parts of this long string of common RNA. Past infections have had to act as “vaccination campaigns”, only with a universal stable material: immunising against COVID-19 even before it ever existed. The concept is well known: it’s a phenomenon called “Cross-immunity”.Working in biotech, I am a big believer in biotechnology and the future of mRNA/DNA vaccines, notably in the fight against cancer. And if one believes in mRNA vaccines for Covid; one necessarily needs to believe that past coronaviruses have already immunised a big part of the population. They are based on the same underlying immunological processes.

As I have already described in several articles, beyond the breadth of antigen targets (larger from natural immunity), the main difference currently between current vaccines and natural immunity is the fact that natural immunity provides not only systemic immunity – like vaccines – but also sterilising mucosal immunity for a limited period (<2yrs) – which the vaccines do not provide unfortunately. The most prominent and visible clinical evidence of that sterilising immunity was the wide pervasiveness of the asymptomatic population witnessed throughout the globe, notably in very dense regions like Asia and Africa. Indeed, density-induced incidence levels are so high that a form of permanent immunity seems to exist in these countries through the form of a mucosal sterilising immunity

Makary masks kids

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“Is there a viable cause of action to stop any of this? I haven’t found it.”

• License to Kill (Steve Kirsch)

The most frustrating thing about this pandemic is that there is no doubt that the drug companies have killed over 150,000 Americans, yet nobody with authority to stop these vaccines wants to talk about the evidence. The vaccine program is done under the pretext of saving 10,000 lives (the Pfizer Phase 3 trial showed the drug saved approximately one COVID life for every 22,000 people fully vaccinated for the COVID variants existing over 1 year ago), but nobody really wants to look at the excess all-cause mortality caused by the vaccines (aka “the collateral damage”). Is there a viable cause of action to stop any of this? I haven’t found it. The law shields the drug companies, and everyone associated with the vaccination process from all liability. They basically have a license to kill.

The CDC should be criminally negligent for not recognizing the obvious safety signals. However, because they are an authority in the minds of the court, they can do no wrong. There is a “reasonable minds may differ” defense here and our courts believe that the CDC has reasonable minds. So how can there be negligence when reasonable minds don’t find a safety signal? It’s the perfect crime. You can literally get away with murder. People are being killed but nobody is being charged with a crime, AFAIK. Are there any district attorneys or state or federal prosecutors that can find a viable cause of action? The evidence of harm has been hiding in plain sight including:

  1. An estimated reportable adverse event rate of 20% of those fully vaccinated (there are over 200M vaccinated, 1M VAERS reports and VAERS is at least 41X underreported)
  2. An estimated death due to vaccine of over 150K Americans
  3. Embalmers reporting up to 93% of cases have telltale blood clots associated with the vaccine
  4. Blood before/after vaccination is visually very different
  5. Rates of myocarditis as high as 2% (Monte Vista Christian School and a private conversation with a DoD doctor)
  6. Rates of neurological damage as high as 4.5% (Israeli MOH survey).
  7. A minimum of 30% (Peter Schirmacher’s study) to 93% (Bhakdi’s study) of deaths post vaccine attributed to the vaccine
  8. A post-marketing survey disclosed by Pfizer consistent with the VAERS data reports
  9. An estimate of deaths and URF by Joel Smalley using death data in Massachusetts that confirms earlier numbers (Joel calculated a URF of 41, matching mine exactly as well as a deaths per million doses (dpmd) of 945 which is even higher than the 411 dpmd calculated by Mathew Crawford).
  10. The Skidmore paper, “How Many People Died from the Covid-19 Inoculations? An Estimate Based on a Survey of the United States Population,”
  11. German insurance company data estimate done by Mathew Crawford yielding an estimate of 120,000 deaths in the US caused by the vaccines


Blood clots

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“..the odds that bad things will happen goes up exponentially..”

• CDC Admits They Lied, And Granny Died (Denninger)

In fact we now have a very high level of evidence that the manufacturers, including specifically Pfizer and Moderna, gamed the trials by at least deliberate refusal to look. We know this because the trial in young people showed that protection goes negative within just a couple of months, that is, it makes you more likely rather than less to get infected. But the trials were designed only against symptomatic disease, they deliberately did not do surveillance testing on a regular (e.g. weekly) basis in the trial subjects to see if the shots were sterilizing and if they made infection more-likely in the first few weeks, they deliberately ignored or hid adverse events including deaths that were not reported where the public could see them and the doses were set inexplicably high which produced an antibody titer that, coincidentally, lasted the required three months to get the EUAs but were basically worthless or even enhanced infection by six months and the trial was….. coincidentally….. three months.

It was claimed this was not “gene therapy” yet the head pharmacy person from Bayer just said in public that it is, which of course we all knew if you had any sort of competence in reading anything because the jabs all were designed to be taken up into your cells and hijack their genetic machinery to make spike proteins. That’s gene therapy by definition yet if you say that on Twitter it gets your post restricted and if you say it on a Google ad-supported site or on Youtube it draws either a black ball ban on advertising or a strike on your channel — or even a ban. Yet it is absolutely true — and has always been true. The media won’t allow this to be discussed because they know damn well that the public perception is that gene therapy is a last resort sort of thing (e.g. if you have cancer) because it is dangerous and thus the public would refuse to take them.

Drug companies run trials for every single drug they produce. They are THE subject-matter experts in doing so because they have done it dozens or hundreds of times. This means they are in a perfect position to design trials to fit the test and if, in that environment, you give them a liability shield so they can’t be sued if they designed to the test and bad things happen the odds that bad things will happen goes up exponentially. I warned people repeatedly that I saw discontinuities in the public trial data — that is, intentional omissions that, were I trying to design an honest trial to prove that a given therapy was sterilizing and thus would increase public safety, not just personal safety, I would have included. I also pointed out that surveillance for adverse events, specifically full blood work before and after injections, would have almost-certainly detected the most-severe adverse events before the EUAs were issued and that work was intentionally not done because the “test” that the FDA set forth did not require it.

Chip Roy

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“If $20-30 trillion or more of global GDP spurns the preexisting reserve currency, is it still the reserve currency?”

• On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity (Doomberg)

The simple truth of a singularity applies whether it occurred in the past or will in the future: what transpires on the other side is unknowable from here. Given the horrific and still-unfolding events of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s collective response to it, one can’t help but wonder whether we are on the cusp of an economic singularity in which the laws and bedrock beliefs that formed the foundation of international economic order for decades break down. The consequences are similarly unknowable, but we suspect a great reset may indeed be upon us. Even if a ceasefire is announced moments after we publish this piece, shocking damage to the global economic system has undoubtedly already been done and certain genies won’t easily be put back into their bottles.

Before proceeding, we should state clearly that what follows is not a critique of the Western response to the invasion but rather an assessment of the potential first- and second-order consequences of these historic moves, as well as speculation on where some of the harshest economic crises might manifest in the near future. While we join in the hope that these measures achieve their desired direct effect, there’s no denying these are truly unprecedented times. The most stunning move by the US and its allies was cutting off the Russian central bank’s access to most of its $630 billion of foreign reserves. Without access, one wonders if these funds are really “its” reserves at all? What is ownership without access? No matter how justified that move might seem today, there’s no escaping that this action will reverberate for years to come. In a blunt opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” reporter Jon Sindreu had this to say about how central banks everywhere must now view their reserves:

“Many economists have long equated this money to savings in a piggy bank, which in turn correspond to investments made abroad in the real economy. Recent events highlight the error in this thinking: Barring gold, these assets are someone else’s liability—someone who can just decide they are worth nothing. Last year, the IMF suspended Taliban-controlled Afghanistan’s access to funds and SDR. Sanctions on Iran have confirmed that holding reserves offshore doesn’t stop the U.S. Treasury from taking action. As New England Law Professor Christine Abely points out, the 2017 settlement with Singapore’s CSE TransTel shows that the mere use of the dollar abroad can violate sanctions on the premise that some payment clearing ultimately happens on U.S. soil.” In for a shock, indeed.

In essence, Sindreu’s piece argues that this move substantially increases the risk that the US dollar loses its privileged status as the global reserve currency and, at a minimum, likely ensures a polarization of the global economy into at least two camps – the West in one and Russia/China/Iran/Saudi Arabia plus other targeted or aligned countries in the other. If $20-30 trillion or more of global GDP spurns the preexisting reserve currency, is it still the reserve currency? If reserves can be negated overnight, are they even reserves? How many other countries must hedge against the possibility of similar sanctions? Should we add India to the list?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

And you thought you were rid of him…

 

 

Convoy

 

 

Celente

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Debt Rattle February 19 2022

Feb 192022
 
 February 19, 2022  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  111 Responses »


Jan van Eijk The Arnolfini portrait 1434

 

• The Unmasking (Jim Kunstler)
• Police Horses Trample Demonstrators At Freedom Convoy Protest In Ottawa (TSun)
• Canada Parliament Axes Friday Plans To Meet Over Emergencies Act (GN)
• Canadian Clergy Rebuke Trudeau For Invoking Emergencies Act (Fox)
• The Democracy Disconnect in Canada (CTH)
• RCMP Orders Blacklist Of 34 Crypto Wallets (CS)
• Ottawa Freedom Convoy Tears Down Illusion of Democracy in North America (Ehret)
• Where Is The Uprising? (Denninger)
• Bill Gates: Natural Infection Doing “A Better Job” Of Bolstering Immunity (ZH)
• Biden Says He’s Convinced Putin Has Decided to Invade (Lauria)
• Putin To Personally Oversee Massive Nuclear Drill On Saturday (ZH)
• Putin Warned The West, But The West Didn’t Listen (RT)

 

 

 

 

Scott Atlas

 

 

 

 

“The unmasked are unmasking their masked antagonists.”

• The Unmasking (Jim Kunstler)

A “People’s Convoy” is assembling around Barstow, California (the capital of the Mojave Desert, where there’s plenty of room to assemble), with a launch date of February 23, next Wednesday, destination: Washington DC. Won’t that be… interesting? What will the government of “Joe Biden” do? Likewise invoke some sort of emergency powers? Declare yet another “insurrection” as with January 6, 2021? Mess with the truckers’ bank accounts, and those of the people who support them? Do they want to inspire a run on US banks at a juncture where the extreme fragility of the global banking system threatens to blow up financial markets? Standing by on that.

The US government, like Canada’s, has likewise been at war with its citizens. At least half the country has awakened to this unappetizing reality — even while somewhat less than half the country still catatonically follows whatever idiotic diktat the despotic bureaucracy spews out. Why, for instance, do so many still go about in face masks even where local regulations are lifted? (And especially in light of the overwhelming evidence that masks don’t work?) Answer: to signify that they are still against Trump, the evil leviathan said to be responsible for all the woes and injustices in the world and who threatens their ”safety”— meaning, their status as oppressed victims of “white supremacy,” including the guilty-and-penitent self-oppressed white people of the Left themselves. Yeah, it’s just that simple because we are in an epic episode of human social hysteria.

[..] The companies who produced the “vaccines’ are even on the run. Pfizer withdrew its application for an emergency use authorization in India, where the public health agency insisted on seeing the safety records Pfizer was obliged to furnish — and refused to. India is a big market for pharmaceuticals, some 1.39 billion. Pfizer’s stock has crashed nearly 10 percent the past two weeks. By the way, some of the states of India are notable for having battled Covid-19 with the mass distribution of early treatment kits containing cheap anti-virals such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, etc. The program was famously successful in reducing deaths there. The CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, has sold off $400-million of his own stock in the company and deleted his Twitter account on rumors that all-causes deaths reported by US life insurance companies show a shocking and mysterious rise in mortality that just may be attributed to the “vaccines” causing strokes, heart attacks, cancer cases, and immune system failures. (Moderna’s stock is also sinking.)

Neither the mainstream news media nor the US public health agencies are making any effort to investigate this now well-documented occurrence. We’re in the midst of a tremendous shift of public opinion. Winter is not over but the truth is budding now in a thousand places. The people are done kneeling docilly to be silenced and killed. They will not let this country, and many other nations in the Western Civ club, be destroyed without a fight. The unmasked are unmasking their masked antagonists. Stand by, now, to find out who has been behind all this deadly mischief. We will rip off their masks and the rule of law will be restored.

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“..instead of violence there were bouncy castles, hot tubs, pancake breakfasts, pig roasts, road hockey games, dancing and fireworks displays.”

• Police Horses Trample Demonstrators At Freedom Convoy Protest In Ottawa (TSun)

Turns out the lasting image of the Freedom Convoy protest at Parliament Hill will not be bouncy castles but that of a woman with a walker being trampled by a police horse. The violence the Prime Minister has expressed concern about during the three-week protest in Ottawa didn’t unfold until Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act police army was sent in to disperse the crowd. The three major incidents Friday, under a form of martial law, were grotesque. Video of Toronto Police Mounted Unit officers charging into the crowd and at least one horse trampling multiple people — including an elderly woman with a walker — was disturbing. But that was not the only troubling incident.

Another saw a protester behind a police line repeatedly being smashed with an officer’s rifle. And convoy organizer Benjamin Dichter also told the Toronto Sun “one of drivers had his truck windows smashed by Ottawa Police (with) guns drawn and (he was) dragged out of his vehicle by force.” It’s ironic when you think back to three weeks ago. “Of course I’m concerned,” Trudeau told The Canadian Press on Jan. 28. “A number of people are there without wanting to incite violence, but there are going to be, as we’ve heard, a small group of people in there who are posing a threat to themselves, to each other, to Canadians.” But instead of violence there were bouncy castles, hot tubs, pancake breakfasts, pig roasts, road hockey games, dancing and fireworks displays.


While Trudeau tried to pin the online postings of a Swastika and Confederate flag on the truckers, they brought in a crane to rise the Canadian flag and sang O Canada every day. They definitely wore out their welcome while clogging up the parliamentary district of Ottawa, not wearing masks and excessively honking their horns. But they didn’t cause violence. So why the heavy hand in their mission to win back the city? That’s the question Ottawa Police, the Prime Minister, Premier Doug Ford and Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson need to answer.

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Upcoming police action prevents House from discussing the legality of……police action.

• Canada Parliament Axes Friday Plans To Meet Over Emergencies Act (GN)

Friday meetings of the House of Commons and the Senate over the invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the so-called “freedom convoy” demonstrations were cancelled due to safety concerns. Government House Leader Mark Holland later confirmed that the debate will resume on Saturday, with Speaker Anthony Rota adding the House will sit from 7 a.m. to midnight Eastern. Debate is still expected to continue Sunday and Monday. Holland said the final vote on the measure will be held Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern. “I am looking forward to the historic and fulsome debate that lies ahead,” he said on Twitter. A note from Speaker Anthony Rota noted Friday’s cancellation is spurred on by an impending police operation set to take place by Parliament Hill and around Ottawa’s downtown core.

“The #HoC will not sit today, Friday, February 18. A police operation is expected in the downtown core of Ottawa. Given these exceptional circumstances, and following discussion with all recognized party leadership, the sitting today is cancelled,” wrote Anthony Rota, speaker of the House, in a tweet on Friday. NDP House Leader Peter Julian confirmed the cancellation on Twitter. “Around 4:30 AM this morning all four of us — the House Leaders in the House of Commons — agreed to cancel today’s House of Commons session that was scheduled to start at 7 AM. It is everyone’s hope that the Convoy will peacefully leave #Ottawa & will end their #OttawaOccupation,” Julian tweeted.

Rota cited concerns from the Parliamentary Police Service (PPS) and noted that all House Leaders were in agreement on the cancellation. “Given these exceptional circumstances, and following discussion with all recognized party leadership, the sitting today is cancelled,” Rota wrote in a letter Friday.

Crackdown
https://twitter.com/i/status/1494890874819551234

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“..in response to their singing, praying, dancing, candy floss, bouncy castles, speeches about the Constitution and outpourings of patriotic love for the country, your government has not only refused to meet with these citizens to hear their concerns, you have insulted, denigrated and lied about them..”

• Canadian Clergy Rebuke Trudeau For Invoking Emergencies Act (Fox)

A group of Canadian clergy sent an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week rebuking him for invoking the Emergencies Act to quell the Freedom Convoy and for other actions they described as “tyrannical.” “We are writing to you as representative pastors of Christian congregations from across the nation and as law-abiding citizens who respect the God-defined role of civil government and uphold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the highest law of our land, which recognizes the supremacy of God over all human legislation,” read the letter, which was signed by 29 clergymen and remains open for other Canadians to sign.

Explaining their repeated, earnest attempts to prayerfully redress their grievances with all levels of government regarding “indefinite suspension of civil liberties, coercive mandates and perpetual state interference in the life, freedom and worship of the church,” the pastors denounced Trudeau for cracking down on the Freedom Convoy instead of hearing them out. They emphasized that members of the clergy are a part of the convoy. “The Ottawa protest has presented your government with a wonderful opportunity to meet with and speak to ordinary Canadians lawfully and peaceably requiring the restoration of their constitutional rights,” they wrote.

“However, in response to their singing, praying, dancing, candy floss, bouncy castles, speeches about the Constitution and outpourings of patriotic love for the country, your government has not only refused to meet with these citizens to hear their concerns, you have insulted, denigrated and lied about them, further dividing a hurting and broken nation.” The pastors went on to rebuke Trudeau and his government for seemingly believing that they have the authority to bestow and remove fundamental rights at will. “Your government does not grant people the right to their bodily integrity, the right to work or earn a living, the right to decide for their children or to be with their families or dying loved ones, the right to gather to worship and obey God, the right to travel in their own land or enter and leave. Civil government exists to protect these pre-political and fundamental freedoms, not bestow and remove them as if it can function in the place of God.”

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“The Ministry of Peace is established to create war; the Ministry of Truth is established to create lies and propaganda; the Ministry of Love established to justify torture and beatings; and the Ministry of Plenty to control food production leading to starvation.”

• The Democracy Disconnect in Canada (CTH)

When the terms “freedom and liberty” are allowed to be defined as extremist sentiment, what you end up with are Canadian federal police beating people in the streets and arresting citizens who petition their government for freedom. Meanwhile, the ever fearful and politically correct conservatives in Parliament grasp their pearls while simultaneously cowering to avoid labels. Somewhere there is a radical called Saul Alinsky, the trainer of modern revolutionary communists and political leftists – who dedicated his training manual to Lucifer, smiling as he watches the results of his teachings. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen the worst of what is to come from this.


Allow me to highlight the point with two easily referenced examples from Canadian media (infiltrated with ideological stenographers) and contemplate the larger message against government saying we must “defend our democracy” while removing political protest. Notice the evolution of the collective narrative in just a few days. The word “freedom” is extremist (Feb 13) … Conservatives are “extremist” (Feb 18)

When “freedom and liberty” are defined as extremism, conservatives become defined as extremists. See how that works? Yes, linguistic judo and ideological training provided by Saul Alinsky, in his rules for radicals. In essence, Alinsky taught the budding communists to define the opposition, isolate them, ridicule them and marginalize them. Now, if you find yourself having a mental reference to a race of persons as defined during World War II, before Alinsky’s book was even written, your reference point is solid. Whenever we allow any entity, group, or collective echo-chamber to change the terminology, we are making a big mistake.


Orwell wrote about the outcome in his book 1984, where The Ministry of Peace is established to create war; the Ministry of Truth is established to create lies and propaganda; the Ministry of Love established to justify torture and beatings; and the Ministry of Plenty to control food production leading to starvation. These are not simply contradictions in words and terms, these are an earlier version of what David Mamet later described as necessary tools for modern leftists. In order to advance severe ideological positions, they must pretend not to know things. Ignoring contradictions is a feature of modern leftism, not a flaw.

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“..cryptocurrency donations being collected in relation to illegal acts falling under the scope of the Emergency Measures Act..”

• RCMP Orders Blacklist Of 34 Crypto Wallets (CS)

The Counter Signal has exclusively obtained an order sent by Trudeau’s federal police force, which demands that all FINTRAC regulated companies in Canada cease transacting with 34 cryptocurrency wallets. The wallets are alleged to be associated with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. The Counter Signal has confirmed at least one wallet which had contained over $1 million worth of Bitcoin as being a part of the HonkHonkHodl campaign to support truckers via cryptocurrency. Whether this demand from police will hamper access to the funds is still unclear. The police order comes via Trudeau’s extraordinary and self-prescribed emergency powers, and affects over 25 Bitcoin, worth approximately $1.4 million dollars.


“The Ontario Provincial Police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police are currently investigating cryptocurrency donations being collected in relation to illegal acts falling under the scope of the Emergency Measures Act,” the RCMP order begins. “Pursuant to the Emergency Economic Measures Order, under subsection 19(1) of the Emergencies Act, there is a duty to cease facilitating any transactions pertaining to the following cryptocurrency address(es).” Trudeau’s officers list 29 Bitcoin addresses, 2 Ethereum, and 1 wallet each of Cardano, Monero, and Litecoin. [..] “Any information about a transaction or proposed transaction in respect of these address(es), is to be disclosed immediately to the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at CryptocurrencyNHQ-CryptomonnaieDG@rcmp-grc.gc.ca,” the RCMP pleaded.

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Mark Carney ready to replace Justin?

• Ottawa Freedom Convoy Tears Down Illusion of Democracy in North America (Ehret)

Who would have thought that Canada would ever be a spark plug for a freedom movement against tyranny? As the editor of a Canadian geopolitical magazine for over 10 years and author of four books on Canadian History, I am a bit embarrassed to say that I certainly didn’t think that Canadians had this in them. The “monarchy of the north” certainly isn’t something that exudes revolutionary sentiment- having been founded on such non-revolutionary principles as “Peace, Order and Good Governance” which have stood in stark contrast to the significantly more inspiring “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” enshrined in the founding documents of our southern cousins.

Even our founding 1867 document (drafted over a champagne fueled month of hedonism in 1864) explicitly calls out the purpose of confederation not as a means of “supporting the general welfare” as was the case of the USA’s constitution in 1787, but rather “to promote the interests of the British Empire”. But here it is.

Countless thousands of patriots have driven across the country to bunker down in Ottawa in peace and high festive spirits which I had to see with my own eyes to believe demanding something so simple and un-tainted by ideology: freedom to work, provide for families and a respect for basic rights as laid out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (a 1982 upgrade to the embarrassingly oligarchical British North America Act of 1867). Mainstream media and political hacks have been working overtime to paint the Freedom convoy that converged on Ottawa on January 29 as an “insurrectionist movement” full of “white supremacists”, “Russian stooges”, and “Nazis” out to “overthrow the government”.

Even the Bank of England’s former governor (and World Economic Forum Trustee) Mark Carney chimed in on February 7 stating that “this is sedition” and that “those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law”. Carney, the perennial financial darling of Goldman Sachs and the City of London (and Prime Ministerial hopeful) called for a targeting of all those who donated money to this domestic terror operation. Faced with an organic civil rights movement of blue-collar truckers, farmers and tens of thousands of supporters who have convened on Canada’s capital to demand a restoration of their basic freedoms, the current Liberal government has failed to show even an ounce of humanity or capacity to negotiate.

This shouldn’t be a surprise for those who have seen the hypocrisy of neo-liberal “rules-based” order ideologues in action over the past few years who are quick to celebrate the “liberty” of citizens of Ukraine, Hong Kong, or Xinjiang when the outcome benefits the geopolitical aims of detached technocrats hungry for global hegemony.

Schwab WEF

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“According to the montage, skills are for special, gifted people only. They are learned by those special people quickly and easily. If someone isn’t an expert instantly, they never will be.”

• Where Is The Uprising? (Denninger)

Let’s take a moment and give props to the Canadian truckers who got their government’s and fellow Canadians’ attention. Good for them. They did something, along with those who walked fuel and food to them to keep the protest going. Great use of logistics and tactics, my hat is off to you! Truckers are pureblood allies. There is no argument that the truckers’ actions had an effect on the war. They arrived and fought on the battlefield. The government announced a crack down, so we’ll see how it plays out over the next few days. Contrast with the US: no widespread parking lots, everyone is still in trudge along to get along mode. There’s low level disruptions (keep vacationing in place!) in daily life, most notably in the supply chain. Even fat bitch Karens are noticing higher grocery prices and holes in shelves. But so far, pretty quiet.

Boston, New York City, and Minneapolis allowed vaxports. Vaxports are the equivalent of sucking government cock after it ****s you in the ass. Enjoy the taste of your own ****. The pure bloods haven’t burned the cities to the ground in a mostly peaceful protest. Why is that? What will it take to set things off? I don’t know. There’s two ways this ends: either 1% decides they’ve had enough, or we will be slowly boiled until we are grateful daddy government allowed us to exist in our own homes without a mask on Tuesdays. No, that’s not impossible. Over the past two years, as a people, we’ve demonstrated we will trade our humanity for safety. Tard Karen believes a magic filthy rag wards off a deadly plague. Others wear one for work so they have a place to live. Still others won’t rock the boat to remain part of their group.

[..] The plan isn’t perfect. The leader, the goals, or the tactics don’t align perfectly with yours. Oh no, but if it was, boy howdy, would you get off the couch and join them. This line of thought requires ignoring that the un-pure army produces desired results. One day, when the right allies appear, you’ll join them. One day… They aren’t doing it right. Sadly, an army already on the field is unlikely to recognize you as their Five Star General. If their actions work, support their efforts or shut the **** up and stay on the couch. Don’t derail a functioning battle plan. Those who disrupt working tactics have a special name: traitors. Another set of excuses is due to mindset. Mindset determines success or failure as much as tactics and logistics. Mindset is the result of life experience and it will not change overnight, if at all.

However, we deserve some leniency for not developing a killer, win-or-die mindset. Life hasn’t been trying to actively kill us for long enough soybois and girldicks require a safe space when someone uses the wrong pronoun. On the other hand, peace and ease allowed modern Western Civilization to flourish. But there is one item from pop culture that has destroyed mindset development so much, some evil mastermind is kicking himself for not inventing it: the montage. Yes, the montage. What does a montage imply? It only takes 3:30 to go from zero to hero. Any skill can be mastered in the time it takes to listen to the movie’s hit song. No failure, no missteps, no tangents where a single slice of the skill is drilled and drilled until practice is complete hell. None of that. According to the montage, skills are for special, gifted people only. They are learned by those special people quickly and easily. If someone isn’t an expert instantly, they never will be.

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Who cares what Bill Gates says?

• Bill Gates: Natural Infection Doing “A Better Job” Of Bolstering Immunity (ZH)

Speaking on Friday during the Munich Security Conference, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder and chairman, discussed how the threat posed by the COVID pandemic had “dramatically lowered”…while making a startling admission: that natural infection and spread was more effective at bolstering human immunity than vaccines. Speaking to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble during the annual conference in Germany, Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told the audience that a potential new pandemic would likely stem from a different pathogen than that belonging to the coronavirus family (maybe Ebola, perhaps?). But he added that advances in medical technology should help the world do a better job of fighting it – if investments are made now.

Girardot Seychelles
https://twitter.com/GirardotMarc/status/1494676665292795909

“We’ll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time,” Gates said. Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Gates said the worst effects have faded as huge swathes of the global population have gained some level of immunity. Its severity has also waned with the latest omicron variant. Amazingly, after years of denial, Gates seemed to acknowledge – albeit in a roundabout way – that the infectiousness of the omicron variant had played the key role in boosting human immunity to SARS-CoV-2.


According to Gates, it’s already “too late” to reach the WHO’s goal to vaccinate 70% of the global population by mid-2022. Currently 61.9% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine) but that’s okay, however, Gates said, as in many places, the virus itself, which creates a level of immunity, and has “done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.” “The chance of severe disease, which is mainly associated with being elderly and having obesity or diabetes, those risks are now dramatically reduced because of that infection exposure,” he said.

Malone mortality/cancer

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“Or maybe you are like some Ukrainians, including your president, who thinks this invasion is a figment of Biden’s imagination.”

• Biden Says He’s Convinced Putin Has Decided to Invade (Lauria)

President Joe Biden said Friday he’s convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in the coming days and that Russia would fail to create a new system in Europe that takes its security into account. “As of this moment I’m convinced he has made the decision” to invade, Biden told a reporter in response to a question at a White House press briefing. Asked how he knows this, Biden said, “We have a significant intelligence capability.” Biden also flatly asserted that the capital, Kiev, would be attacked: “Russian troops currently have Ukraine surrounded. We have reason to believe Russian forces are planning and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days. We believe they will target the capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”

If such a horrific scenario were true, wouldn’t Washington have sent its military to defend its ally? That the U.S. hasn’t, undercuts the credibility of U.S. intelligence. “We also will not send troops in to fight in Ukraine, but we will continue to support the Ukrainian people,” he said, apparently as they are being slaughtered in their beds by Russian bombs — the only conclusion that can be drawn. For Biden, supporting the Ukrainian people translates into $650 million spent by the U.S. in the past year to “bolster Ukraine’s defenses,” and U.S. arms manufacturers’ profits. Even with all this hardware, the Ukrainian military is no match for Russia’s, as the U.S. would be.

“The United States and its allies and partners will support the Ukrainian people,” Biden said. “We will hold Russia accountable for its actions. … The entire free world is united” against Russia and sanctions will be imposed once this invasion happens. If you were Ukrainian, living in Kiev, how would you feel if the president of the United States just said he’s convinced your city will be bombed by a major military power in days and all he’ll do for you is punish your attackers by hitting their finances? Or maybe you are like some Ukrainians, including your president, who thinks this invasion is a figment of Biden’s imagination.

Read more …

Planned.

• Putin To Personally Oversee Massive Nuclear Drill On Saturday (ZH)

The Russian military confirmed on Friday that it will move up nuclear weapons exercises which had been previously scheduled to take place later the year, as a warning to the West as the Ukraine crisis grows hotter. Typically the drills take place in the fall, but will now be part of the current climate of ‘muscle flexing’ as the region remains on the brink. The massive drills of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will take place Saturday, and President Putin will directly oversee it, according to the defense ministry. There were signs earlier in February that the drills would be moved up in time, as the FT wrote: “Russia generally holds its annual nuclear exercises — which involve testing intercontinental ballistic missiles from land, sea and air — in the fall. But the US believes Putin has decided to hold them earlier this year as a show of strength.”

Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov notified allies as well as Western countries about the Saturday drills in a Friday statement, saying it should be no cause for concern. Likely the maneuvers will center on the Black Sea Fleet out of the Crimean Peninsula, which will be taken by Ukraine and NATO to be highly provocative. A senior Biden administration official responded to the announcement that it was definitely “escalatory”. “Practice launches of ballistic missiles are part of regular training,” Peskov said. “They are preceded by a series of notices to other nations via different channels.”

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has issued an open invitation for Russia to host deployable nukes on Belarusian soil amid the Ukraine standoff, has been personally invited to watch the nuclear drills with Putin. According to Congressional testimony from last week by Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley and director of national intelligence Avril Haines, the Pentagon believes the exercises are a “show of force” aimed at both Ukraine and its Western backers in NATO. Analyst Rebeccah Heinrichs with the hawkish D.C. think tank Hudson Institute described that given Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, “It would be an extremely provocative and harbinger of messages if they did it concurrently with an invasion.”

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“As for the West, looking back at its self-destructive errors in recent years, one might consider Putin something of a prophet.”

• Putin Warned The West, But The West Didn’t Listen (RT)

[..] it’s worth noting what a Russian invasion of Ukraine would actually mean. For the past 15 years, ever since the Munich speech, Russian officials have been arguing against the unilateral use of force and demanding a UN-centered security system founded on international law. Were we to wake up one day and find that Russian tanks were rolling towards Kiev without any kind of excuse, it would amount to a complete abandonment of 15 years of argumentation as well as a negation of the entire legal/moral position built up by the Russian Federation in that period, a position reinforced just this month in the Putin/Xi statement. It would also be very odd. For you can hardly achieve the objective of a multipolar world based on the principles of UN supremacy and international law by means of a massive breach of those very same principles.


It would be extraordinarily self-defeating. A certain skepticism about the allegedly “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine is therefore due. It’s not impossible, but one has to wonder why, after so many years of consistency, Putin would suddenly change his position in such a drastic way. As for the West, looking back at its self-destructive errors in recent years, one might consider Putin something of a prophet. But if so, it’s a prophet in the guise of the Trojan princess Cassandra who was fated to be always right but never believed. Rather than taking heed of Putin’s warning, Western leaders have bludgeoned onwards, toppling Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, aiding rebels in Syria, attempting (and failing at) regime change in Venezuela, fighting and losing against the Taliban, sanctioning Iran, supporting revolution in Ukraine, and so on. It has not turned out well. We can’t say we weren’t warned.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

THE BIG LIE
https://twitter.com/i/status/1494720463595003905

 

 

Agenda 21
https://twitter.com/i/status/1494714977684439041

 

 

2/22/22 will be a once-in-a 248 year event.

Pluto is going to conjunct (return to) the United States.

The Last time this happened was on July 4th 1776, the exact founding day of America.

Astrologically, Pluto brings Destruction and Rebirth.

Rome fell when Pluto Returned.

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 7 2022

Feb 072022
 
 February 7, 2022  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  90 Responses »


René Magritte Meditation 1936

 

• Ottawa Mayor Declares State of Emergency Due to Convoy Protest (ET)
• Ottawa Police Threaten Arrests For Sharing Fuel With Freedom Convoy (RT)
• Canada Contracts To Deliver 100 Million Vaccine Doses Annually For Years (CBC)
• 6 Big Differences Between Natural Vs. Vaccine-Induced Immunity (Verkerk)
• Why Was There No Warp Speed for Therapeutics? (Suissa)
• EU Wants To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place For Another Entire Year (SN)
• Broad Support For Petition Puts A Lot Of Pressure On Corona Pass (Tr.)
• The Revolution Has Come For Joe Rogan (Techno Fog)
• Mark Zuckerberg Could Face Jail Time Under New UK Law (RT)
• Trapped in IMF debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And China (Norton)
• Biden Security Advisor Sullivan: Russian Invasion ‘Any Day Now’ (CNBC)

 

 

 

 

Bulford
https://twitter.com/i/status/1490418278157717518

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To anybody who is annoyed, we apologize. Please call Justin Trudeau, his office, and get these mandates lifted, and we’re out of here..”

Sending in the riot police when there is no riot…

• Ottawa Mayor Declares State of Emergency Due to Convoy Protest (ET)

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has declared a state of emergency due to the trucker protest that continues in the city’s downtown core. In a brief statement, the city said the decision reflects the “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents posed by the ongoing demonstrations and highlights the need for support from other jurisdictions and levels of government. ” “It also provides greater flexibility within the municipal administration to enable the City of Ottawa to manage business continuity for essential services for its residents and enables a more flexible procurement process, which could help purchase equipment required by frontline workers and first responders,” the city said in its statement. Protest organizers say their demonstration is peaceful.

The protest started as a demonstration by truckers against the federal government’s requirement for cross-border truck drivers to be vaccinated, but has since evolved into a large movement joined by people from across Canada to oppose different COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. Vehicle convoys came to Ottawa on Jan. 29, and many have stayed in the city, with trucks and other vehicles parked by Parliament Hill. Many protesters say they will remain until the mandates are lifted. Sounds of honking horns can be heard throughout the day in the Parliament Hill area, which residents are complaining about.Protest organizer Benjamin Dichter says people who are unhappy about the honking should be contacting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ask him to lift COVID-19 mandates.“To anybody who is annoyed, we apologize. Please call Justin Trudeau, his office, and get these mandates lifted, and we’re out of here,” Dichter said at a press conference in Ottawa on Feb. 6.

Trudeau has refused to meet with the protesters. Tom Quiggin, who is helping the organizers with “protective intelligence,” said many people across Canada have lost their jobs, homes, and businesses as a result of COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, and they have grievances too, which is why they are protesting in the nation’s capital. “Let’s remember most of Ottawa is government, huge number of civil servants here. They haven’t missed a paycheque. They’ve got pay raises, some of them have got back pay, most of them are working from home. Some of them who can’t work from home are just doing nothing and still getting paid,” Quiggin said at the press conference. “So yes, it’s unfortunate that they feel bad about the horns, yes, it’s unfortunate they feel bad about the disruption, but the rest of the country is hurting.”

Ottawa riot police

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In the middle of winter…

• Ottawa Police Threaten Arrests For Sharing Fuel With Freedom Convoy (RT)

Anyone who attempts to provide “material support” to the Freedom Convoy truckers and other anti-Covid-mandate protesters could be subject to arrest, Ottawa police announced, as Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency in the city. Police issued the warning on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. Asked whether “material support” included vital necessities like food and water, a police spokesperson told Fox News that the announcement “relates to hazardous materials that represent a public safety or fire hazard.” Officers on the ground in downtown Ottawa reportedly told the drivers that after midnight on Sunday, no gas and diesel cans or propane tanks would be allowed into the area.

Officially, the Ottawa Police Service would not comment on the alleged deadline, saying they do not speak about operations “for officer safety reasons,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. According to several videos shared on social media, police have already seized multiple batches of fuel from protesters, but there were no reports of arrests as of 9pm local time. Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon, citing “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents,” as the Freedom Convoy shows no signs of ending. “The situation at this point is completely out of control because the individuals with the protest are calling the shots,” Watson said, adding that the protesters have “far more people than we have police officers.”

Over the past week, authorities placed heavy barricades at key crossing points throughout downtown and closed multiple roads, effectively blocking new trucks with full tanks of fuel from coming into the so-called ‘red zone’, so the protesters started using gas cans. Now authorities are seeking to cut off this lifeline as well. The protesters have promised to hold the line until the government repeals its vaccination mandates and QR code “health passports.” Organizers have indicated that they plan to stay in Ottawa for the “long haul,” seeking donations from supporters to cover the costs of fuel, food and lodging. After fundraising platform GoFundMe froze some $7 million in donations following “discussions” with Canadian authorities, the movement regrouped on competitor GiveSendGo, raising another $3.8 million in less than three days.

Ottawa fuel

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Population Canada: 38 million.

• Canada Contracts To Deliver 100 Million Vaccine Doses Annually For Years (CBC)

Federal COVID-19 vaccine contracts mean Canada should get enough doses to give two or three more mRNA shots to every Canadian, every year, until at least 2024. But even as the National Advisory Committee on Immunization is now suggesting some Canadians get in line for their fourth doses, the World Health Organization is warning that “repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition” are not a sustainable plan to end the pandemic.The WHO’s vaccine technical committee said today vaccines need to become more effective at keeping up with emerging variants.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday there will be third and fourth booster doses available in this country if or when they’re needed.

Contracts signed last year provide for delivery of up to 65 million doses from Pfizer and 35 million from Moderna this year, followed by 60 million from Pfizer and 35 million from Moderna in each of the next two years. More than three in four Canadians already have their first two doses, and more than one in four already have a booster shot as Canadian health authorities try to cut off the Omicron variant. The variant is breaking through the original vaccines but is mostly not causing serious illness, even in those with just the first two doses. Dr. Srinivas Murthy, a British Columbia pediatrician and co-chair of the WHO’s clinical research committee on COVID-19, said the booster response is panicky politics not public health.

“It’s a continually boost and boost and boost and hope that the virus will eventually go away or will build up enough of a immunity wall so that the virus can’t creep over it and get into Canada,” he said. Murthy said with Omicron there is some data that suggests a third dose is doing better at preventing infection outright than the original two doses, but he said there is no evidence a fourth dose is helping at all.

Read more …

Good and long. Do read.

• 6 Big Differences Between Natural Vs. Vaccine-Induced Immunity (Verkerk)

Look again at figure 3 and note the vertical red lines we’ve inserted for all age groups 50 and older. The red line on the left of each of the lower 6 graphs intersects the horizontal axis on the date antibodies were found in 80% of the population. The red line on the right side intersects the horizontal axis on the date boosters were administered to 80% of that same age group. Note the many months that separate these two events. The take-home is that elevated antibodies were already widespread in the older age groups well before the booster campaign was even started — and even longer before coverage reached 80% of each of the age groups.


It’s also worth noting that antibody-mediated partial (non-sterilizing) immunity in heavily vaccinated populations is increasingly clouded by the fact that it is in essence “hybrid” immunity that, at least for a short period, includes naturally-acquired and jab-induced immunity. For any population group that isn’t vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease and COVID-19 death – which represents almost everyone since omicron has become dominant – the risk of serious adverse events almost certainly outweighs any benefits. Deception no. 2 can therefore be summarized as follows: Boris Johnson deceived the public when he said boosters were the reason the UK was ready to lift restrictions. One wonders, rhetorically, who put those words in his mouth? I, cynically speaking, just can’t imagine.

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We know why.

• Why Was There No Warp Speed for Therapeutics? (Suissa)

When Congress investigates our response to the pandemic, this ought to be the first question: Why was there no Operation Warp Speed for therapeutics, just as there was for vaccines? This question is crucial for the obvious reason that countless lives could have been saved, but also because a warp speed initiative for therapeutics might have minimized the relentless lockdowns and mandates that have devastated and divided our country, not to mention triggered a mental health crisis and forced millions of school children to isolate at home in front of computer screens. A lot may have changed in two years as we’ve learned more about the virus and its variants, but this truth hasn’t changed: We should have treated therapeutics a lot more seriously from the very beginning.

Why didn’t we? Congress must get to the bottom of this, but there are things we already know. For starters, we know the elephant in the room: drug companies make more money with vaccines. That’s just a fact. Whereas vaccines aim for 100 percent of a population and have repeat doses, therapeutics aim only for those who get sick. According to Nature magazine, global sales of COVID vaccines were expected to top $50 billion in 2021. It’s no surprise, then, that the warp speed initiative for vaccines was so speedy—the drug companies had a major financial incentive. We also know that the hyperfocus on vaccines had serious repercussions. Because vaccines prioritize mass protection over treatment, we were urged to protect ourselves at all cost.

This created a climate of fear, making us more willing to accept any public measure or mandate we believed would protect us. Eventually, it made us resentful of anyone who didn’t share our beliefs. Therapeutics nurture caution but not paranoia. You know that even if you get infected, there is a treatment. In recent months, as the health establishment has tried to catch up, more and more doctors have been using different sorts of therapeutics to help treat COVID, using the best data available. Unfortunately, without a massive, concerted and credible effort behind them, therapeutics are still seen as the stepchild to vaccines. This is tragic, because with millions of lives at stake around the world, therapeutics deserve to be at least equal partners. While vaccine efficacy can wane with time, as we’re seeing now with COVID vaccines, therapeutics are precision weapons that have no such limitation.

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My precious…

• EU Wants To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place For Another Entire Year (SN)

The unelected bureaucrat governors of the EU in the European Commission have proposed keeping the bloc’s COVID vaccine passport system in place for another entire year, despite the fact that many member countries are ramping down restrictions. In a notice on its website, the Commission states “Today the European Commission is proposing to extend the EU Digital COVID Certificate by a year, until 30 June 2023.” It continues, “The COVID-19 virus continues to be prevalent in Europe and at this stage it is not possible to determine the impact of a possible increase in infections in the second half of 2022 or of the emergence of new variants.”

“Extending the Regulation will ensure that travellers can continue using their EU Digital COVID Certificate when travelling in the EU where Member States maintain certain public health measures,” the statements adds. It continues, “The Commission is adopting the proposal today to make sure the European Parliament and the Council can conclude the legislative procedure in time before the current Regulation expires.” The move comes even as several countries, including Denmark, Norway, Italy, Sweden, France, in addition to non-EU countries such as Switzerland and England move to scrap restrictions including the vaccine passes. The European Commission admits in its statement that it is up to the individual countries whether they carry on using the EU COVID vaccine passport scheme.

“The domestic use of EU Digital COVID Certificates remains a matter for Member States to decide, the statement notes, adding “The EU legislation on the EU Digital COVID Certificate neither prescribes nor prohibits the domestic use of EU Digital COVID Certificate (such as for access to events or restaurants).” It also notes that “At the same time, where a Member State establishes a system of COVID-19 certificate for domestic purposes, it should continue to ensure that the EU Digital COVID Certificate is also fully accepted for those purposes. Beyond that, the Commission also encourages Member States to align their domestic validity periods with the validity period set at EU level for the purpose of travel.”

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Google translation from Dutch.

• Broad Support For Petition Puts A Lot Of Pressure On Corona Pass (Tr.)

Immediately abolish the corona ticket because the pass does not work and does not suit the Netherlands. In short, that is the message of a manifesto drawn up by the ‘Undistributed Open’ action group, led by CDA celebrity and former State Secretary Mona Keijzer. The call received support from hundreds of thousands of people over the weekend. The question that arises is: are politicians in The Hague sensitive to such a large movement and does this action herald the end of the QR code? Within 24 hours, the counter was already above 300,000 signatures, the limit that until recently existed to enforce an advisory referendum. By Sunday evening, 480,000 people had put their names to the petition.

The authors of the manifesto are against any form of a corona pass, now and in the future, because they believe that the damage caused by the pass – reduced freedom of movement for many Dutch people and polarization in society – is disproportionate to the marginal gain for public health. The corona ticket is currently mandatory in many places from the age of 13: in the catering industry, the cultural sector and in indoor sports (from 18 years). People get a QR code if they are vaccinated, cured or tested (3G). The manifesto is a logical consequence of a broadened opposition to the corona pass. The QR code has been a controversial subject since its introduction in September last year.

While demonstrations against the regular corona policy last year often did not attract more than a thousand demonstrators, there were 20,000 demonstrators in Amsterdam just before the introduction. Distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated was going too far for many people and there was a lack of good evidence, they said. When the coalition wanted to expand the pass to ‘2G’ at the end of November, whereby unvaccinated people no longer have access, the discussion became sharp. Omikron gave the resistance an extra push: due to the contagiousness of this milder variant, the effect of the pass is very limited, a recent study by TU Delft showed.

Read more …

Taliban tactics.

• The Revolution Has Come For Joe Rogan (Techno Fog)

The Taliban took back Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021, shortly after the Americans withdrew, tired and weary and broke after nearly 20 years of fighting. They seized control of the country in the broad and particular sense: setting up command in the presidential palace in Kabul and targeting the individuals who criticized the new government. By December 2021, regular Afghans and the members of the Afghan press who had expressed critical views of their new rulers had “been subjected to months of intimidation and fear.” The Biden Administration has adopted these same tactics, calling for their critics to be silenced by the Administration’s corporate and media allies.

After 20 years of trying to export Western values to Afghanistan, they ended up importing Taliban-style repression to the United States. And it only cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Now, the Regime and its comrades target Joe Rogan, an inquisitive comedian with a podcast. He is accused of spreading “misinformation” by those that illegally spy on their citizens and lies without remorse. In reality, this isn’t about misinformation. It’s that Rogan’s crimes are those of words and thought. They prosecute on behalf of the god they have created, searching to eradicate those guilty of the sin of blasphemy. The Taliban would be proud. We can be certain that the Regime is not concerned with the truth. Have you seen them struggle to explain the “evidence” that Russia was planning a false-flag in Ukraine to justify an invasion?

Or, consider how the COVID-19 misinformation originated from the U.S. government and its bureaucratic arms. In early 2020, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were both presented with arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered. Instead of investigating this issue, they saw to it that this theory was killed off. Despite – or perhaps because of – these lies, Fauci and Collins remain dear sons of the Regime. Reminders that “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” (The Christians of the Left – such as David French – even go so far as to say that you have a “spiritual problem” if you don’t trust Fauci and Collins. Both the left and the right make their idols.) They killed the truth before. Who is to say they’re not trying to do that with Rogan?

Read more …

Apparently we all could, for sharing Covid disinformation.

• Mark Zuckerberg Could Face Jail Time Under New UK Law (RT)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Big Tech executives risk ending up in jail if their social media platforms do not block content deemed harmful under upcoming online safety laws, UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has warned. Speaking to Times Radio on Saturday, Dorries said Zuckerberg, who heads Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and other tech bosses could “absolutely” be put behind bars if they did not comply with the government’s draft Online Safety Bill. She expressed hope that the legislation would be a “notice to the online platforms to say here it is, we’re letting you know what it is now, so start doing what you need to do.”


Under the bill’s proposed ‘duty of care’ regime, communications regulator Ofcom’s powers could jail tech executives for up to two years for failing to remove illegal content, The Telegraph reported. The government had announced on Friday that several new criminal offenses had been added to the bill, including revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people-smuggling, and sexual exploitation. The government claimed that naming these offenses would enable Ofcom to take enforcement action against non-compliant firms more quickly. But Dorries said these platforms “don’t need to wait for the bill” since they “have the powers to [take action] now.”

Read more …

Once a country is part of Brick and Road, it’s much harder for the CIA to work its magic.

• Trapped in IMF debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And China (Norton)

The United States constantly intervenes in the internal affairs of Latin America, organizing coups d’etat, destabilizing independent governments, trapping nations in debt, and imposing sanctions. Washington sees the region as its own property, with President Joe Biden referring to it this January as “America’s front yard.” Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, progressive governments in Latin America have increasingly looked across the ocean to form alliances with China and Russia. Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández did exactly that this February, taking historic trips to Beijing and Moscow to meet with his counterparts Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.


Fernández signed a series of strategic agreements, officially incorporating Argentina into Beijing’s international Belt and Road Initiative, while expanding economic partnerships with the Eurasian powers and telling Moscow that Argentina “should be the door to enter” Latin America. China offered $23.7 billion in funding for infrastructure projects and investments in Argentina’s economy. In the meetings, Fernández also asked for Argentina to join the BRICS framework, alongside Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Xi and Putin reportedly both agreed. “I am consistently working to rid Argentina of this dependence on the IMF and the US,” Fernández explained. “I want Argentina to open up new opportunities.” The Argentine president’s comments and meetings with Putin and Xi reportedly angered the US government.

Read more …

Fake news.

• Biden Security Advisor Sullivan: Russian Invasion ‘Any Day Now’ (CNBC)

A Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan warned on Sunday. “We are in the window,” Sullivan said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “Any day now, Russia could take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks from now, or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead.” Sullivan appeared on several morning news programs to discuss the ongoing situation in Eastern Europe. His appearances come after two U.S. officials said Russia has in place about 70% of the combat power it believes it would need for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The number of battalion tactical groups in the border region has risen to 83 from 60 as of Friday and 14 more are in transit, according to Reuters.

“We believe that the Russians have put in place the capabilities to mount a significant military operation into Ukraine and we have been working hard to prepare a response,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The form of attack could take different forms, Sullivan told NBC. Possible attacks could include annexing Ukraine’s Donbass region, cyberattacks or a full-scale invasion. “Part of the reason we’ve been working so intensively over the last few months is not just to prepare for one contingency but to prepare for all contingencies and to work with our allies and partners on what a response would look like in each of those instances,” Sullivan said. The U.S. and its allies have been clear the nations would act aggressively if Russia launches an attack. The U.S., for example, has threatened severe sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades.

The timeline for diplomatic negotiations could be dwindling. “We believe that there is a very distinct possibility that Vladimir Putin will order an attack on Ukraine,” Sullivan said on ABC’s “This Week.”If a full-scale Russian invasion occurs, thousands of civilians and troops could die, according to Reuters. Ukraine could suffer 5,000 to 25,000 troop casualties, the outlet reported, citing a U.S. official. Russia’s troop casualties could be between 3,000 and 10,000, and civilian casualties could range from 25,000 to 50,000, according to U.S. estimates. It would also prompt millions of Ukrainians to be displaced.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Turin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1490253682721574915

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 4 2022

Feb 042022
 
 February 4, 2022  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  101 Responses »


James McNeill Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket 1875

 

• 12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)
• Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)
• Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)
• What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)
• Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)
• British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)
• Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)
• Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)
• Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)
• Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)
• We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)
• Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)
• Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)
• North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)
• Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Lab Leak Conspirancy

 

 

 

 

“..no longer a “socially critical disease.”

• 12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)

Europe is accelerating steps to roll back COVID restrictions as efforts to control the spread of the virus have failed and countries downgrade the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2. Sweden and Switzerland joined Denmark, Norway, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Lithuania, France and the UK in announcing they will lift COVID restrictions and open up their countries. Top Israeli officials also announced this week they are abolishing the country’s “Green Pass” COVID vaccine passport for restaurants, hotels, gyms and theaters. The policy update will take effect Feb. 6, Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government said, pending approval by a parliamentary committee. Israel’s proof-of-vaccination policy will remain in effect for events such as parties or weddings.

“To continue the green pass in the same way can create false assurances,” said Nadav Davidovitch, an epidemiologist and public health physician advising Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government. “It’s not reducing infections in closed spaces like theatres. It needs to be used mainly for high-risk places like hospitals, elderly care homes, or events when you are eating and singing and dancing.” Sweden will lift all COVID restrictions by Feb. 9, the Swedish government said today. According to Politico, the Swedish Public Health Agency said it reassessed COVID as “not being socially critical” due to a better understanding of the Omicron variant, which is milder and associated with fewer hospitalizations.

“It’s time to open up Sweden,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. “The pandemic isn’t over, but it is moving into a new phase.” The decision to open Sweden came a day after Switzerland, citing high immunity levels and the milder Omicron variant, announced it will abolish mandatory work-from-home and the quarantine rules beginning today. The government also will lift health measures at the borders and tourists will no longer need to receive Swiss COVID certificates. The Swiss government said it planned to phase out other restrictions after consulting with 26 cantons, employers, trade unions and parliamentary committees.

[..] Just days before Sweden and Switzerland’s announcements, Denmark became the first country in the European Union to lift all COVID restrictions, reclassifying COVID as an endemic disease. Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke on Feb. 1 wrote a letter to the parliament’s epidemiology committee stating COVID was no longer a “socially critical disease.” Based on the recommendations of the committee, the government decided to scrap COVID restrictions. [..] Italy, France, Norway, Lithuania, England and Finland also relaxed restrictions, Bloomberg reported. “We should discuss whether it’s time for us to take a different viewpoint and start unwinding restrictions even with a high number of infections,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters. “I hope that we can be rid of restrictions during February.”

Read more …

“..effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated..”

• Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)

Israel’s coronavirus cabinet decided to abolish its so-called green passport program for most places of entertainment, including hotels, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters, effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated. The new policy will come into effect on Sunday, and will leave the proof of vaccination in place for events “with significantly greater risk of infection,” such as weddings and parties. The cabinet also decided to scrap the requirement to present a PCR test upon exiting the country. Following recommendations of the Health Ministry, the cabinet further scrapped the expiration date on green passports for anyone who has received a third or fourth dose of the vaccine, meaning those passes would be valid indefinitely.


But for people who have only had two doses, or who recovered from the virus but aren’t vaccinated, the pass will be valid for only four months from the date of the second dose or the recovery. Those who are not fully vaccinated and employed in the education, health and welfare sectors will still be required to undergo biweekly tests. The decisions come in the midst of Israel’s omicron wave, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saying that he predicts “one-and-a-half to two hard weeks ahead of us.” [..] Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported that the R number – the average number of people each coronavirus carrier infects – further declined on Tuesday to 0.92. Any number under 1 indicates that the pandemic is shrinking. The figure is calculated according to data from the previous 10 days.

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“..they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.”

• Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)

A couple of weeks ago, a new decree of the Draghi government established yet more rules restricting the lives of people who have not been injected with the latest vaccine booster and who therefore cannot show the latest version of the Green Pass. These second-class citizens, who have already been stripped of their right to move, work, and participate in a great number of social activities, are now forbidden from entering post offices to withdraw their pension, and they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.” In other words, the Italian government decides what kind of food and what other goods (if any) these people will be able to purchase.

Among Western countries, Italy has been one of those experiencing the most systematic denial of basic civil rights over the past two years. Coalition governments led first by Giuseppe Conte and then by Mario Draghi have empowered an unelected committee of “experts” called the Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, which has in turn empowered the governments by assigning a scientific aura to every decree, every action, and every word coming from the executive. This has resulted in an endless series of lockdown measures that for long periods have erased freedom of movement, the right to work, property rights over businesses and shops, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship, and even the distinction of jurisdictional spheres between church and political authority (with state bureaucrats closing churches and then handing out petty instructions on what rites could be carried out, how liturgies should be curtailed, and how many people if any could be present at masses and funerals).

In the meantime, the legislative branch has been humbled, and government by urgent decrees from the executive has become the norm. The very constitutional structure of the country has been bent, and a new concept called “stato di emergenza” (state of emergency) has been invented out of thin air, even though it is nowhere to be found in Italy’s republican constitution. If we were not living in the age of CNN, fake news, and outrageous subsidies handed out by politicians to newspapers and the media, one could legitimately wonder where the journalists were while all this was going on? In fact, journalists in Italy are among the main culprits of the current dystopian reality, since they have given platforms to “experts” who agreed with lockdowns and other measures that expanded government control over all aspects of life, while at the same time they ferociously mocked and ostracized doctors and scientists who dared to question the logic of outdoor mask mandates and curfews for restaurants.

Anybody who dared to point out the disastrous consequences of a prolonged lockdown on mental health and on people suffering from other pathologies, or the link between the economy and public health, was accused of being a “covid denier.” This is a pattern that surely readers recognize, as they have seen it in the US and many other countries over the past two years. The fact that virtually every opinion labelled by the media as “conspiracy theory” has turned out to be true just three or four months later has done nothing to shake the arrogance of the corrupt mass media, who are entrenched in their monopoly over the news cycle, thanks to their access to state funding and political favors. And this is true in Italy as virtually everywhere else.

Read more …

Nature Magazine tries hard to find a role for the vaccines. It’s not there.

The vaccines don’t want to help or boost our immune system, they want to take over its role. And that is every bit as bad as it sounds.

• What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)

Immune memory depends on more than just antibodies. Even when antibody levels drop, memory B cells can recognize a return invader, divide, and quickly start churning out antibodies to fight it. And the memory B-cell response improves over time, at least in the short term. Six months after vaccination, the individuals in Wherry’s study6 had elevated numbers of memory B cells that responded not only to the original SARS-CoV-2, but also to three other variants of concern. And then there are T cells, the third pillar of immune memory. On coming into contact with an antigen, these multiply into a pool of effector cells that act to wipe out the infection. Killer T cells quickly divide to assassinate infected cells, and various types of helper T cell secrete chemical signals that stimulate other parts of the immune system, including B cells. After the threat has passed, some of these cells persist as memory T cells.


Some people might carry memory T cells from past coronavirus infections — such as those that cause common colds — that can recognize SARS-CoV-2. These cells could help to fight the infection, or even stop it completely. One study7 found that health-care workers who were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but never tested positive had subtle signs of a response to infection. The researchers hypothesize that cross-reactive T cells shut the infection down before it could take hold. “These people did have an infection in a sort of loosest sense of the word,” says Mala Maini, an immunologist at University College London who led the study. But “there’s probably not much virus around because it’s being shut down very quickly”. This idea is still controversial, and the phenomenon might be rare. Memory cells typically can’t block infection in the way that neutralizing antibodies can, but they don’t necessarily need to.

With COVID-19, infection happens quickly, but it takes a little while to cause serious illness. That gives memory T cells some time to do their jobs. When re-exposed to a virus or booster, these cells will kick into overdrive, “proliferating like crazy”, Crotty says. “In a 24-hour period, you can get a tenfold increase in the number of your memory T cells.” That’s probably not fast enough to have much of an effect on getting sick, he adds. But it could be fast enough to prevent hospitalization. And it’s much harder for the virus to find a way around the T-cell response. That’s because T cells in one individual recognize different parts of the virus than do T cells in another individual. So a virus could mutate to escape one person’s T-cell response, but not another’s. “Escape is meaningless at the population level,” Crotty says. Also, T cells can see parts of the virus (or the spike protein) that antibodies can’t, including pieces that are less likely to mutate.

Read more …

More on RNA potential to change DNA, via reverse transcriptase. Don’t be a guinea pig.

• Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)

There is a gap in our knowledge in scaling short-term lab-based assays (using bacteria, animal cells, and animal models) for mutagenic activity with long-term risk to human health. Mutagens that are incorporated during cellular DNA synthesis are problematic for a developing fetus (where cells are undergoing rapid division), male germline cells (which continue to divide throughout life), and cancer risk (where the small fraction of human cells that are dividing have the potential to incorporate a mutation that could contribute to cancer development). Humans are exposed to mutagens throughout life—for example, DNA mutations are induced by x-ray imaging or during air travel—so there are levels of DNA damage that are considered to be largely inconsequential.


If the molnupiravir metabolite NHC really is a mutagen in dividing animal cells, how should negative data in an animal model be interpreted? Are such negative data sufficient to ensure long-term safety in humans, or does the lack of knowledge about the link between negative results in animal assays and long-term outcomes in human health need to be acknowledged? Molnupiravir use will come with some restrictions around short-term risks associated with reproductive health, but it may take years before potential long-term risks are understood. The best outcome, which is the assumption from the negative results in animals, is that molnupiravir treatment falls within the background level of exposure to mutagens that humans already experience and tolerate. The half-life of molnupiravir metabolites in human tissue is unknown.

[..] Molnupiravir has the potential to lower the disease burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections and help contain future emerging RNA viruses. However, how can its potential long-term effects as a mutagen be assessed? The following steps are suggested: Treatment should be restricted to those who will benefit the most, such as those who cannot tolerate other available treatments, those who have a preexisting condition that enhances the risk of COVID-19, and those who are more than 50 years of age and would be less affected by a potential long-term risk of cancer or reproductive risks. A registry of a cohort of people who received molnupiravir should be kept to longitudinally monitor the frequency of cancer and other potential outcomes so that the opportunity to understand the risk (or lack thereof) associated with the use of a mutagenic ribonucleoside as an antiviral is not missed.


Strategies to limit metabolism of mutagenic analogs from the ribonucleotide pool into the 2′ -deoxyribonucleotide pool should be explored to limit the potential DNA mutation load in the host. In addition, the viral population diversity should be evaluated after treatment with molnupiravir in those who fail to clear the virus to see whether the treatment accelerates viral evolution. Lethal mutagenesis has the potential to be an important antiviral strategy for RNA viruses, especially in emerging infections when there is an absence of virus-specific antivirals. The potential of this strategy should be exploited, but the possible risks should be acknowledged and addressed.

Read more …

Hmmm. A bit skeptical. The ONS provides stats in 100,000 person-years instead of 100,000 population, and for good reason, but what do they mean when numbers are very low?

• British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)

In December, the ONS published age-standardized data on the mortality rates of individuals in 5-year age sets in Britain, grouped by their “vaccination” status for the COVID-19 shots. The data accounts for the period from January 1 to October 31, 2021. The ONS tabulated “Monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19, per 100,000 person-years” but presented the data only for ages 18 and over. However, the jabs are available to children as young as 12, and those children are allowed to receive the shot against their parents’ wishes. In limited cases, children as young as 5 have been given a reduced dosage of the shots.


Nevertheless, as noted by The Exposé, a separate table outlining “deaths and person-years by vaccination status” includes 5-year age groups from 10-years-old and up. From the data provided, a calculation of the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years can be made. The rate per 100,000 person-years delineation is used in preference over the simpler 100,000 population calculation to better represent the mortality rates over a specific period of time, as people in one “vaccination” group – such as un-jabbed, single-jabbed, and double-jabbed – soon move into the next group.

[..] the 100,000 person-years calculation can be made, with the younger group coming out at 20.9 un-jabbed per 100,000 person-years and the older group at 15.9. Following this, the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years is worked out by dividing the number of deaths within each group by the 100,000 person-years calculation. The result is that for the 10-14 year group, the un-jabbed mortality per 100,000 person-years is 4.6 while the un-jabbed mortality rate per 100,000 person-years for the 15 19 group is 10.1. Using the same data set and calculation, the mortality rate for 10-14-year-olds who received one dose of the jabs suffered a 45.1 per 100,000 person-years death rate, while 15 19-year-olds with one jab suffered 18.3 deaths per 100,00 person-years.

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[..] the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020.. [..] by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent…

• Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)

The Government last month signalled its intention to scrap the legal requirement for infected people to self-isolate on March 24, and yesterday it was claimed that it will stop releasing daily Covid updates in April. To which I say ‘Rejoice!’ – but why can’t we end both practices today? And, while we’re about it, stop testing too. If you think such a course sounds alarmingly precipitate, allow me to explain why there is no need to delay a moment longer. The truth is that the advent of the highly infectious (although markedly milder) Omicron variant has changed everything. Last week the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) – the proportion of infected people who died of Covid – was hovering at around 0.95 per cent.


That is way below the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020 when testing was minimal. And since Monday, when the Office For National Statistics included ‘reinfections’ – people who have contracted the virus more than once – on its daily Covid dashboard for the first time, the CFR has plummeted still further. With the addition of hundreds of thousands of cases to the weekly total, by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent, a percentage akin to that of flu, an illness which currently has a fatality rate of between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent. The average age of death from Covid, meanwhile, remains at the pre-pandemic 82, with data from the US showing that 75 per cent of people who die with Covid have no fewer than four underlying serious conditions.

Read more …

Oh c’mon, we need to study that? “We found it remarkable, and striking..” says a doctor. How many lives were lost?

• Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)

Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death. Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels. Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One. The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.

Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, a Galilee Medical Center physician and Bar Ilan researcher who was part of the team behind the study. He noted that his study was conducted pre-Omicron, but said that the coronavirus doesn’t change fundamentally enough between variants to negate vitamin D effectiveness.

“What we’re seeing when vitamin D helps people with COVID infections is a result of its effectiveness in bolstering the immune systems to deal with viral pathogens that attack the respiratory system,” he told The Times of Israel. “This is equally relevant for Omicron as it was for previous variants.” [..] In June, researchers published preliminary findings showing that 26 percent of coronavirus patients died if they were vitamin D deficient soon before hospitalization, compared to 3% who had normal levels of vitamin D. They also determined that hospitalized patients who were vitamin D deficient were 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition than others.

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Attorney’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what.”

• Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)

Attorney Esther Bodek in Aurora, Colorado, also knows of a patient’s family members who were arrested when communications with a hospital went sour. She says requests from families of COVID-19 patients have flooded in since November. “It’s traumatizing,” Bodek said, “because it is a level of civil rights abuses that I have never encountered in my entire life.” In case after case, she’s seen a pattern of separating COVID-19 patients from their families and restricting visitation. “And during that period of time is usually when the remdesivir is administered.” Some families coming to her for help often strenuously object to treatment with remdesivir. When other treatments have failed, they desperately want to try things the hospital won’t allow, such as ivermectin and vitamins.

Those are part of a popular protocol used by independent doctors around the country and by people treating themselves at home. Bodek has fought many times to obtain those medications as a last-ditch effort to save a patient. She said the resistance she faces when dealing with the hospitals is maddening. “Any question about treatment starts immediate combativeness [by hospital staff], from what I’ve seen in the pattern of our cases,” she said. She’s had clients denied fluids and nutrition to the point of near-starvation. Since taking those cases she works night and day seven days a week. On the weekend, “I’ll be on the phone and talking to somebody in tears,” she said. “The hospital’s telling them they want to pull the plug and they’re trying to make a decision.

The doctor says, ‘We’re going to take him off life support now.’ And I’ve had to say ‘No! That’s not their choice!’” One of her clients works in billing in a hospital and told her that hospitals receive a bonus payment of $17,000 from the federal government for every patient confirmed to have COVID-19, Bodek said. A bonus payment of $37,000 is paid for any patient going on a ventilator, according to that client, Bodek said. [..] Bodek’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what. And if it happens that you’re admitted, have a medical power of attorney immediately written up to say no to remdesivir.” She’s looking into filing civil rights violations lawsuits if claims of medical malpractice won’t work. “I’m determined to find a way to stop this abuse,” Bodek said. “This is definitely a fight we’re not giving up.”

Read more …

Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

• Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)

At the beginning of January, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had just received his Covid vaccine booster and urged others to do likewise. At the end of January, Justin Trudeau posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19. Astoundingly, at the conclusion of his message Trudeau urged everyone to get the shots even though they failed to protect him from the disease. “Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,” he insisted. Trudeau’s message shows the depth of irrationality – bordering on insanity – to which many have fallen victim. We propose to call this phenomenon the Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

Those who suffer from VIS have largely lost touch with reality and things like common sense, evidence and logic no longer gain any traction in their thinking. Just to summarize the absurdity of the whole situation: Having been previously vaccinated, Trudeau gets additionally boostered and three weeks later contracts Covid-19. To put it in a different way, shortly after getting his third shot, Canada’s Prime Minister falls ill with the very disease against which these “effective” injections were supposed to protect him. But rather than repenting of his mistake, he goes on Twitter and advises the Canadian people to do the same. Where is any logic in this? Has Covid affected Trudeau’s brain? Or was it the injections that somehow diminished his capacity for thought and reflection?

If anything, Trudeau should be “Exhibit One” for why people should not get vaccinated and boostered, since he is now Canada’s poster boy for vaccine failure. Why, then, is he telling Canadians to do what he did? It cannot be because the vaccines and boosters will protect them against infection. The opposite is, in fact, the case. The data coming from all over the world is showing that the vaccinated are more likely to become infected than the unvaccinated. According to Steve Kirsch, “The numbers in the Denmark study described below are now confirmed by government data from Germany showing that vaccinated people are 8X more likely to develop Omicron than unvaccinated people. This is not surprising since a paper from Germany showed the same thing: the more you vaccinate, the worse it gets.”

Justin Trudeau, however, does not have to go to foreign lands to learn of vaccine failure. Below is a chart from Ontario which gives case numbers according to vaccination status. You will notice that the numbers for the fully vaccinated are more than three times those of the unvaccinated.

Read more …

“It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic..”

• We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)

In July 2015, the Federal Maritime Commission, a federal agency with little name recognition and even less influence, released a report sounding the alarm about the state of America’s ports. A congestion crisis had been building for years and was fast becoming untenable; even the country’s relatively tepid economic-growth rate was straining against decades of disinvestment at its most critical trading hubs. Chassis weren’t available, trucks couldn’t get in or out, and terminals stayed perpetually clogged. That crisis had “resulted from events that have developed or emerged over a considerable period of time and from within the system itself, rather than being the result of external shocks, such as unanticipated surges in container volumes or management-labor issues,” the report surmised.

“Many seem to think it is inevitable that embracing ‘business as usual’ will lead to significant further declines in the performance of the U.S. intermodal transportation system.” And then, of course, business went on as usual. Almost five years passed before the coronavirus announced itself on American shores, and another year after that before the disease gave an already fissured supply chain the nudge it needed to fully rupture. And while the circumstances of a global pandemic, its shutdowns and labor shortages, seemed exceptional, it was something as routine as a double-digit import growth, feared specifically by the FMC since at least 2006, that sent shipping container volume skyrocketing and brought the system to a grinding halt. A prophecy that few heard and no one heeded had finally come true.

Before the Biden administration was even sworn in, the ports were already in a state of chaos. It got worse throughout the year, and by the time the administration appointed its ports czar John Porcari and began looking toward emergency intervention, only minor measures were even available to remedy decades of bipartisan mismanagement. Today, congestion at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, collectively the nation’s largest, is “at historic high levels,” as the shipping giant Maersk announced in a customer advisory in late December. Reporting indicated that there were 133 vessels en route to San Pedro Bay, with delays stretching upward of 41 days. One ship in particular had left Busan, South Korea, on November 17 and was not scheduled to dock until January 2, a 47-day duration for a routine voyage that should take, at most, half that time. “It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic,” said Sal Mercogliano, an associate professor and maritime historian at Campbell University.

Read more …

Jemima Kelly’s FT ed. tries to defend Rogan, but what’s this?:

“..when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show..”

• Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)

The contrast between the vague virtue-signalling of the Sussexes’ statement and Rogan’s engaged response — which seemed authentic, humble and searching — shows why his show has become Spotify’s most popular podcast. With an estimated 11mn listeners per episode, the 54 year-old comedian and mixed martial arts commentator must be considered one of the most influential media figures in the world. With that power comes moral and intellectual responsibility and Rogan does not always seem totally aware of that. He was perhaps not mindful enough of the potential impact on his mainly young fans when he casually declared that if a fit and healthy 21-year-old asked him whether to get vaccinated, he would tell them not to.

He also gets his facts wrong sometimes, despite asserting them confidently. But when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show. One should not imagine that if Rogan were shut down, we would be rid of anyone wanting to pursue ideas that run against the grain. Nor should we want such a world — as Rogan points out in his video, some things once dismissed as conspiracy theories, such as the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origins, are now considered plausible. Conspiracy theories did not spring into being with the arrival of podcasts or the internet — Gallup polling suggests that in 1976, 81 per cent of Americans believed there had been a conspiracy to kill John F Kennedy, contrary to the official line.

It is surely healthier, then, to have someone like Rogan willing to discuss controversial opinions with those who hold them than to confine these people to a corner of the internet where they are less visible but also less easy to correct when they are wrong. That’s quite apart from the fact that it would be utterly ineffective for Spotify to oust Rogan. The idea that the company gives him a platform that he would otherwise lack is fanciful. When Spotify reportedly paid more than $100mn for the exclusive rights to Rogan’s podcast in 2020, it was so as to benefit from the platform he already had.

I told a friend that I might write about Rogan in my column this week. The response I got was “Oh, God!” and a grimace, quickly followed by a confession that she had actually never listened to his podcast. The truth is that many of the people castigating Rogan haven’t either. If they had, they would know that the presenter is an open-minded host who seeks out all sorts of opinions rather than blindly following those of a particular tribe, and who seems genuinely keen to pursue the truth. Joe Rogan doesn’t need Spotify, but Spotify needs him; maybe we all do.

Read more …

“Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them.”

• Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)

[..] social media companies and other corporations now regulate speech in the United States to a degree that an actual state media would struggle to replicate. Faced with a growing cancel culture, companies are scrubbing their platforms of dissenting viewpoints and converting forums into echo chambers. In the use of private companies, the left has achieved an ignoble distinction. While liberal writers and artists were blacklisted and investigated in the 1950s, liberal activists have succeeded in censoring opposing views to a degree that would have made Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) blush. Rather than burn books, they have simply gotten stores to ban them or blacklist the authors.

For these companies, there is no value to protecting the speech rights of dissenting voices with powerful politicians, academics, and even some in the media demanding more censorship. But then they went after Rogan. Rogan’s popularity is precisely due to the fact that he is uncensored in what he says. As many networks and newspapers have become more of an echo chamber, viewers and readers have fled en masse. Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them. While Young reportedly relies on Spotify for 60 percent of his royalty income, Spotify does not rely on Young or other rock stars for its primary profits. It is the reverse of market conditions from just a couple years ago.

The problem with controlling speech is that it has to be complete; it doesn’t work if there are alternatives to echo-chambered media. Rogan’s podcast is one of the biggest. With 11 million listeners, he surpassed cable and network audiences as well as the readership of the largest papers. His program allows people across the political spectrum to speak freely, including those who question official positions on vaccines and treatments. While Rogan has promised to be more careful in how information is presented on his show (and Spotify will add “advisories” on podcasts), his podcast survived the celebrity onslaught. As various investors seek to create free speech alternatives to Twitter and YouTube, there may be an emerging market for free speech products.

Read more …

North Korea doesn’t have much internet. But still funny.

• North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)

For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea’s strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites—the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen—intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un’s government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country’s networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom’s digital connections to the outside world.

Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government’s hackers might have launched a cyberattack against the rogue state to tell it to stop saber-rattling. But responsibility for North Korea’s ongoing internet outages doesn’t lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks—and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally—and by the lack of any visible response from the US government. So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming,” says the hacker. [..] “I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.”

Read more …

You’re inclined to say: EPIC! But it’s really just what every reporter should do every single time.

• Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

Earlier on Thursday the Biden administration and US intelligence came out with some explosive and outlandish claims, saying Russia is planning to release a video depicting graphic scenes of a “staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment,” as CNN described it. This in order to justify a military invasion of Ukraine, given the false flag operation would feature Russian-backed separatists under attack by Ukrainian forces. Given such a narrative has been advanced in public, grabbing global headlines, but without so much as a shred of evidence – even mainstream media pundits are scratching their heads. Watch Associated Press writer Matt Lee demolish the State Department’s Ned Price, who refuses to provide any level of proof backing the bizarre and surprising claims. “This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now!” Lee points out…


Peace?

[..] “Lee challenged Price, saying the State Department had presented “no evidence” that Russia has actually created a “crisis actor” video and insisting that he wouldn’t be satisfied with the administration’s claims alone. “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price responded.” Lee then pointed that given the extraordinary claims, some level of evidence is demanded given the mounting numbers of whopping government lies over the past two decades, including ‘Iraq WMDs’.


Price hid behind the “that’s classified” classic line often used whenever government officials want to shut down legitimate skepticism of their claims… “Like, ‘crisis actors’? This is Alex Jones territory you’re getting into,” he said. “Where is the declassified information?,” he repeated multiple times.In pressing for evidence to justify the administration’s claims, the veteran reporter referenced numerous U.S. intelligence failures that led to catastrophe in recent decades, including the “weapons of mass destruction” speculation that served as a pretext for America’s 2003 military intervention in Iraq as well as the U.S. timeline for Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban that was totally upended in August.

@StateDeptSpox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1489374971948376064

“We’re declassifying evidence Government X may try to misinform you”
“What’s the evidence you’re declassifying?”
“I just gave you the evidence”
“Uhhh, you just made a statement, that’s not evidence”
“If you don’t trust my bizarre claims, something is wrong with you”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

steroidbanking

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 2 2022

Jan 022022
 
 January 2, 2022  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , ,  63 Responses »


Caravaggio St. John the Baptist in the wilderness 1604

 

• Omicron Breaks Through Immunity in a Battle Against Delta (McCullough)
• Omicron Offers an Off-Ramp From Our Failed Pandemic Policy (ET)
• Stop Letting Them Test You: Breaking The COVID Construct (Fed.)
• My Secret Plan To End The Vaccine Madness (Kirsch)
• The Psychological Cruelty of Denying Natural immunity (Tucker)
• Not Vaccinating Kids ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’ – Fauci (RT)
• “Omicron DEATH!” (Taibbi)
• When Covid Vaccine With Lifelong Protection Might Be Available (RT)
• Forecast 2022 — Dumpster Fire Blazing on the Frontier of a Dark Age (Kunstler)
• 2021 Year in Review: Crisis of Authority and the Age of Narratives (Collum)

 

 

YouTube has now removed the Joe Rogan interviews of both Dr Robert Malone as well as Dr Peter McCullough.

 

 

The most heavily vaccinated large US county

 

 

 

With 92% of adults fully vaccinated and 67% boosted, cases in Iceland have skyrocketed to new highs — up 4,564% since they were credited with “hammering COVID with science”

 

Rogan/Abramson

Malone

 

 

“..Omicron appears to generate immunity not only against itself, but also against Delta..”

• Omicron Breaks Through Immunity in a Battle Against Delta (McCullough)

From an evolutionary biology perspective, we are witnessing the full range of ways a virus works to survive and propagate the species relying on hosts for replication and spreading to more hosts. As we were coming down from the formidable Delta outbreak curve, there was hope that natural immunity and whatever meager herd immunity that could have been building from mass vaccination would bring the COVID-19 pandemic to a low simmer.Instead, we have witnessed two months of building and now explosive epidemic curves all around the world with Omicron, the most highly mutated form of SARS-CoV-2. It is now clear that Omicron can infect those with previous COVID-19 infection and natural immunity, as well as those fully vaccinated, and of course, the smaller fraction of individuals who are COVID-19 naive.

While we have a mix of prolonged Delta cases and in many cases with moderate to severe symptoms, Omicron syndrome has been characterized as mild and brief with a notable absence of pulmonary symptoms. How did Omicron secure this large and growing ecological niche? We have learned that Omicron replicates at a 70-fold increased rate over Delta. Additionally, Omicron appears to generate immunity not only against itself, but also against Delta, the prior dominant variant. So as Omicron moves through the population rapidly, it is providing a larger immunologic barrier to further Delta expansion and will likely work to bring down the Delta curve as the same time the Omicron peak continues to build in a sharply upward, and hopefully brief spike in cases.

There are modeling studies suggesting that the dual Lilly (bamlanivimab and etesevimab) and Regeneron (casirivimab and imdevimab) monoclonal antibody products are unlikely to neutralize Omicron, leaving only sotrovimab by GSK as the remaining monoclonal antibody in our armamentarium for high-risk seniors who develop severe symptoms with Omicron. While many have said Omicron is “mother nature’s booster,” it will be some time before we can celebrate as the blend of Delta and Omicron, which present with similar features but take two separate clinical courses, is bound to confuse both the patients and the doctors trying to grapple with this new clinical reality.

Read more …

“..an opportunity for leaders to use the novel Omicron variant to save face..”

• Omicron Offers an Off-Ramp From Our Failed Pandemic Policy (ET)

IGiven the magnitude of our failure as a society in dealing with COVID, and the cardinal rule that human beings (but especially politicians) will go to gargantuan lengths to avoid responsibility, I posit that Omicron provides an off-ramp that doesn’t require admission of guilt. We need to halt the highly objectionable COVID policies being employed today, while giving up, for now, the assigning of blame. Omicron has changed the game. With the preliminary research in, the data appears to show several things:
• Omicron is more contagious than Delta and other variants
• COVID vaccines seem to do little to stop Omicron infection
• Remarkably, there is some evidence that Omicron is breaking through natural immunity from previous variants
• Omicron is much less severe than other variants, with many scientists comparing its symptoms to the common cold
• Omicron is unexpected—its high level of mutation leaves scientists asking questions

Whatever the past reality, the difference in risk from COVID infection between the vaccinated and unvaccinated now appears to be lower than it was with previous variants. Whatever the past reality, the unvaccinated are not more a danger to society than the vaccinated. As the infection goes endemic, many people will get the virus, irrespective of vaccination status or past inflection. The obsession with asymptomatic testing for COVID can be left behind with heads held high, as can masks. Ignorance of the past power of natural immunity vs. the virus becomes a non-issue at present. And, unlike past variants, Omicron is indeed a bit of an enigma in terms of both its genetics and of how it functions.

In other words, a perfect opportunity to effect a dramatic shift in pandemic policy, for example to policies laid out in the Great Barrington Declaration and past pandemic public health standards. Vaccine mandates can be dropped in an instant, policy can indeed be “left to the states” as President Biden has suggested, and state leaders can also follow in kind. It’s an opportunity for leaders to use the novel Omicron variant to save face, as an “off ramp” off the current authoritarian and unpopular policy track, enacting policies that will have them celebrated and also work well, helping us start to heal our society. The sooner, the better.

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“Have local health care “experts” done anything to gain my trust? Or have they done everything they possibly can to betray it?”

• Stop Letting Them Test You: Breaking The COVID Construct (Fed.)

DC Health is giving out “Home COVID-19 Testing Kits” at libraries across the capital city. At the majority of these sites, you’ll be handed two plastic, red, white, and blue envelopes per person. “Muriel Bowser, Mayor,” they read at the bottom. “Testyourselfdc.com.” “Isn’t that wonderful!” you might be thinking, as you tear open the seal. “I want to be sure these winter sniffles aren’t COVID before I see my mother, or visit grandpa, or go away with some friends.” Inside the envelopes, you’ll find a one-ended Q-tip (a “Nasal Self Swab”), wrapped in plastic; an official-looking LabCorp test tube, wrapped in plastic; and instructions to report your name, race, age, and sex to the city government, stick the Q-tip up your nose, deposit it in the test tube, put the “specimen bag” in the return envelope and drop it off at “one of the District’s specimen collection boxes by 8 p.m. the same day.”

Staring at this kit Wednesday morning, sniffling, I thought, “Why would I do that?” Seriously, why the hell would I do that? Do I live in Florida, where if seriously ill, I’ll be given access to monoclonal antibody treatments while family, friends, and neighbors go about their lives? Do I live in Georgia or Texas, where I’d receive the same? Or Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana? Or do I live in a city where the numbers will be rushed to the press, schools will be shuttered, mask mandates will be extended, new restrictions on the eternally wicked “unvaccinated” will be rolled out, and if I have a bad case I’ll have to drive hours to find a pharmacy willing to fill a doctor’s prescription? Have local health care “experts” done anything to gain my trust? Or have they done everything they possibly can to betray it?

By and large, Omicron is the sniffles. A cold; maybe some aches, and the sniffles. If you live on the East Coast, you might already know more than a dozen people with Omicron and aside from an occasional fever, every one of them is fine. “But don’t forget,” the headlines blare – “a man died in Texas last week.” Don’t you dare believe your lying eyes. “Just because the per-individual risk of severe illness may be lower,” CNN’s resident doctor politician warns, “that doesn’t mean on a societal level Omicron doesn’t pose a real risk.” “Omicron’s cold-like symptoms mean UK guidance ‘needs urgent update,’” The Guardian newspaper screams.

“You’re looking,” the president of the United States threatened, “at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.” It’s like we’re not experiencing this bug ourselves; like we’re incapable of observing it in our friends and families, and seeing what it does. It’s like we trust the “experts” more than we trust ourselves; damn our eyes. But if we dare take a step back and process the very thing we’re told we’re living through, we might recognize – more than ever – the increasingly obvious truth that COVID is a construct: a word we’ve been trained to fear more than the disease itself. COVID means fear, control, and lockdowns because we’ve allowed people to make it mean fear, control, and lockdowns.

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“Find a way to discredit the “authorities” in a way that the “blue pill” public can relate to..”

• My Secret Plan To End The Vaccine Madness (Kirsch)

There is no one thing that ends the madness. Each activity contributes to moving the ball forward. The good news is that people in healthcare are getting really upset now and many are sacrificing their jobs to speak out. So I think this will end sooner than later. As always, our biggest “convincer” is the vaccine itself. Sooner or later doctors and nurses are going to have to stop ignoring the side effects and speak out just as occurred here. I’m currently of the belief that there are only two basic ways to victory: 1/ End the censorship of doctors. Enable the 30% of “red pill” healthcare providers to speak out without fear of retribution 2/ Discredit the authorities. Find a way to discredit the “authorities” in a way that the “blue pill” public can relate to, e.g., a debate, show “hidden camera footage,” get The New York Times to run a whistleblower story, etc.

Here are some of the activities I’m involved in now (in my copious free time while not writing Substack articles):

  1. Enable doctors to speak the truth without fear of retribution from medical boards and hospitals. Stopping the censorship of doctors either in a single state, or across the country with a coordinated day where 100,000 healthcare providers speak out at the same time. This includes activities such as suing state medical boards for violating the free speech rights of doctors and creating a special substack to coordinate action
  2. Get RFK Jr. on Rogan
  3. Publicizing the actual rates of child injury from school medical officials and making this public with names of the institutions
  4. Discredit the ringleaders (Fauci, CDC) with evidence that they can’t defend. This is harder than it sounds. For example, Malone mentioned the Biden / Modi call. Professor Peter Schirmacher who is beyond reproach showed at least 30% of the deaths post-vaccine were caused by the vaccine, but the CDC was able to get the story quashed and the mainstream media refused to acknowledge it.
  5. Survey of the public on vaccine side effects using professional polling organizations to show the CDC has been lying the American people
  6. University study of vaccine side effects so that the survey can be published in peer-reviewed medical journals making it hard to challenge
  7. Showing people what is in the vials (analysis done by a very trusted actor). Multiple brands, multiple batches, multiple labs. Just to remove all doubt. This one thing alone can end it instantly depending on what they find.
  8. Debate with prominent pro-vaxxer(s). This is a low probability event. Nobody on their side wants a fair debate. We couldn’t even get pond scum like @ZdoggMD to the debate table. Even very low-profile people like “Your local epidemiologist” wouldn’t debate. Apparently, all these “experts” are deathly afraid of being challenged publicly.
  9. Careful athlete/pilot adverse event analysis that survives every fact checker showing comparison with previous years.
  10. Expose Gavin Newsom as lying about his vaccine injury (requires a relative to permanently end his Newsom relationship so that is hard).
  11. Using humor to educate people on what is going on (similar to JP Sears videos). I’m talking with comedian Tyler Fisher about this (he does a great Fauci impersonation).
  12. Convince some prominent narrative supporters to switch sides, e.g., imagine if Sanjay Gupta told the truth about the vaccines and then was fired from CNN. Or a prominent writer for the New York Times to blow the whistle. These acts of courage will start to wake people up.
  13. Creating mass awareness, e.g., I’m funding the Jan 23 Defeat the Mandates March on Washington event and follow @dchomecoming on Twitter.
  14. Continue to educate people on the evidence in plain sight. Sadly, this moves the needle very slowly. For example, it’s crystal clear from the data that masks do nothing, but people can’t read science so they keep their masks on.
  15. Get people like Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Brian Tyson, etc. back on Twitter so that their voices can be heard and not silenced.
  16. Organize volunteers. We have hundreds of volunteers. If you want to help, register your skills here on the resource registration form.
  17. Encourage all my followers to do something to advance the ball on a daily basis. Can you convince one person a week to switch? Can you share your success with others?

If you have other ideas that you think will help move the needle, let me know in the comments. There are many approaches, but convincing the public is the hardest since they trust their doctors. The fastest way to win this is either: 1/ Get lots of doctors to convince their peers/speak out in unison and/or 2/ Thoroughly discredit Fauci/CDC in a way the public will embrace. By discrediting the top authority figures, the entire narrative topples.

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“You promote despair. You create a permanent state of fear. You rob people of optimism. You create dependency and promote sadness. No one can live this way. And we do not have to.”

• The Psychological Cruelty of Denying Natural immunity (Tucker)

Covid’s coverage of the country is so broad now that everyone knows one or many people who have had it. They share stories. Some are short bouts. Others last a week or longer. Nearly everyone shakes it off. Some people die from it, particularly the elderly and infirm. And this universal tactile experience has also given rise not so much to another round of panic – that is certainly there – but exhaustion and the great question: when will all this end? It ends, as the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration said, with the arrival of population immunity. In this sense, it is like every pandemic that has come before. They swept through the population and those who recover have lasting immunity to the pathogen and probably others in the same family.

This happens with or without a vaccine. It is this upgrade of the immune system that provides the way out. And yet even now, millions of people have not been made aware of the payoff to confronting the virus. They have been denied hope that it ever will end. They simply do not know. The authorities have not told them. Yes, you can find out if you are curious and read competent opinion on the topic. Maybe your doctor has shared that view. But when you have the leading voices in public health seeming to go out of their way to pretend that natural immunity does not exist, you are going to throttle that knowledge in the general population. The immunity passports do not recognize it. The people who are fired despite having demonstrated robust immunities know this all-too-well.

Of all the scandals and outrages of the last two years – the incredible failings of public officials and the silence of so many people who should have known better – the strange silence on acquired immunity is among the worst. It has a medical cost but also a huge cultural and psychological one. This is not just an arcane matter of science. It is a main means by which the population can see the other side of the pandemic. For all the fear, suffering, and death, there is still hope on the other side, and we can know this because of our awareness of how the immune system works.

Take that away and you take away the possibility of the human mind to imagine a bright future. You promote despair. You create a permanent state of fear. You rob people of optimism. You create dependency and promote sadness. No one can live this way. And we do not have to. If we know for sure that all this suffering was not for naught, the universe and its functioning seem a bit less chaotic and appears to make a greater degree of sense. We cannot live in a pathogen-free world but we can confront this world with intelligence, courage, and conviction that we can get to the other side and live even better than we did before. We do not need to give up freedom.

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It’s all about Pfizer’s immunity.

• Not Vaccinating Kids ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’ – Fauci (RT)

White House health adviser Anthony Fauci has pushed back on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children based on the low number of serious cases among minors, insisting their arguments don’t make sense. During an appearance on NewsNation’s ‘Morning in America’ on Thursday, he took a blunt approach with those hesitant to vaccinate their offspring. After host Adrienne Bankert observed that only zero to four children per 1.1 million in the US had required hospitalization due to Covid-19 last week, despite a general surge in cases, Fauci said the rationale of parents who refer to such statistics to justify declining to immunize their kids “doesn’t make any sense.” “We vaccinate children for any number of childhood diseases when the mortality of those diseases is far less than the mortality and the morbidity of Covid-19 in children,” Fauci said.


With a rising number of child hospitalizations, it was the “responsibility” of parents to vaccinate their children, he went on. He acknowledged that children were at “less” risk of experiencing severe outcomes from Covid than those in other age groups, however. “It’s true that when you compare hospitalizations and severe illness in young children compared to adults, particularly the elderly, there’s no doubt that the likelihood of getting seriously ill for a child is less than for an adult when you’re dealing with Covid-19,” Fauci said, though he added that this did not mean “children don’t get seriously ill.” They are “suffering” and “dying,” Fauci noted, adding that this would be “avoidable” if their parents simply vaccinated them. Children aged five and up have been eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the US since November. As cases surge across the county, significantly increased by the Omicron variant, so have the number of minors admitted to hospital.

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“..an address urging calm from President Mumbles..”

• “Omicron DEATH!” (Taibbi)

It was the world’s loudest record-scratch when the WHO in the first week of December said the ominous “Omicron variant” of Covid-19 had been detected in 38 countries, but without any known deaths.No deaths? How could that be? In the United States in late November, we’d already skipped past the stunned-curiosity phase and moved straight into active mass panic, with “fallout from the Omicron variant” causing the Dow to fall 652 points in a day when news of the mutant contagion arrived. Right away, we had a travel ban from southern Africa, an address urging calm from President Mumbles, and a declaration of a “Variant of Concern” from the CDC, as “scientists raced” to learn more about this “almost Frankensteinish” new strain of Covid-19.

The next month of Omicron coverage offered a fascinating window into our Covid-fixated future. For most of December, we were presented with an unbroken string of scare stories that in many cases actively buried the lede on the most important question: is this thing going to kill me? The Washington Post on December 14th, for instance, ran a story about how the “CDC warns” that a “punishing wave” could be coming as soon as January. The piece noted Omicron was “dramatically more transmissible” and “a more slippery foe when encountered by neutralizing antibodies,” but ignored the issue of lethality altogether, which would seem impossible to do by accident. “How deadly is the Omicron variant? WHO releases death report,” wrote the Express U.K. earlier this week, with the following sub-headline:

OMICRON cases have increased more than tenfold since authorities identified the first UK infections in November, but scientists’ knowledge of the variant has increased in kind. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its first death report this weekend, outlining how dangerous it really is. Reading that headline hits your fear center, making you anxious to know just exactly “how dangerous it really is.” What does that mean? Scrolling down, you first read that Omicron mutations “allow it to escape immunity provided by both vaccine doses,” that “it reduces two doses of Pfizer to 30 percent effectiveness, with AstraZeneca potentially down to zero,” and that while boosters can restore effectiveness to 75 percent, “many are at Omicron’s mercy.” Not good! Only far down the piece do you read that since the WHO’s “no deaths” report in early December, the disease has “spread rapidly, and one person in the UK has died with the new variant… Recent data suggests the disease Omicron causes is milder than its predecessors…”

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Why the obsession with vaccines?

• When Covid Vaccine With Lifelong Protection Might Be Available (RT)

A Covid-19 vaccine potentially able to give lifelong protection has proved effective on mice and primates and is set for clinical trials. Production is planned for 2024, Japanese scientist Michinori Kohara told the Japan Times. With all the existing Covid-19 vaccines requiring booster shots to remain effective, the emeritus investigator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science decided to create one based on the 18th-century smallpox vaccine, which is credited with the elimination of the deadly disease. “I have worked on various vaccine technologies such as the adenovirus and messenger RNA, but the vaccine using the vaccinia virus vector is the most powerful of all with few side effects,” Kohara said, adding that the vaccine “can induce antibodies and lifelong immunity.”

According to the researcher, one shot of a recombinant vaccinia virus containing the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains effective for more than 20 months, and “there is no other vaccine that can achieve these effects.” Two shots taken three weeks apart increase neutralizing antibodies tenfold, he said. Testing the vaccine on avian flu-infected mice and coronavirus-infected macaques proved to be effective. Clinical trials are set to start in the first half of 2023 with the participation of 150 to 200 volunteers. If the trials, which will be conducted by Japanese pharmaceutical company Nobelpharma Co., turn out to be a success, the final phase will be launched. Mass production is planned for 2024 at the earliest.

Meanwhile, a number of new vaccines are being developed around the world. Cambridge University professor Jonathan Heeney recently announced trials of a new needle-free Covid-19 jab that he hopes will be able to give broader protection against Covid variants and other coronaviruses. A new Russian vaccine against the coronavirus, called Convasel and created by the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, is set to be registered before the end of the first quarter of 2022, the head of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova, said on Friday.

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“Dr. Anthony Fauci’s treasonous public health empire, the murderous pharmaceutical companies, the recklessly dishonest news media, and a demonic host of federal agencies..”

• Forecast 2022 — Dumpster Fire Blazing on the Frontier of a Dark Age (Kunstler)

The American people have been played backwards and forwards, inside and out, through and through, and up and down; driven to the very edge of national suicide by a combine of enemies within and without. If China’s CCP wanted to take maximum advantage of a weakened, confused USA, they couldn’t have found more zealous help-mates than the seditious Democratic Party, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s treasonous public health empire, the murderous pharmaceutical companies, the recklessly dishonest news media, and a demonic host of federal agencies, especially the three-stooge “Intel Community” — the CIA (Moe), DOJ (Larry), FBI (Curley) — plus the many secret horror chambers in the Pentagon. Throw in the Big Tech tyrants, the Marxist mandarins on campus, and the satanic narcissists of Hollywood. Oh, and let’s not forget the evil principality of grift and swindling that is Wall Street.

We still don’t know exactly what role the CCP and its Peoples’ Liberation Army played in the origins of Covid-19, and we don’t know because the US government doesn’t want us to know — because they had a role in it — and the news media won’t lift a finger to find out, either, because they are the propaganda arm of the regime in power. We do know an awful lot about the operations of Dr. Fauci and his colleagues in funding the development of the virus in Wuhan for the purpose of introducing a wildly profitable set of “vaccines” which, if anything, prolonged and exacerbated the pandemic, and harmed or killed millions all over the world.

We also know that this same set of players in public health and Big Pharma gamed the clinical trials that preceded the emergency use authorizations that loosed the “vaccines” on the people, and that they deliberately obstructed and suppressed proven treatments with inexpensive off-patent drugs that would have saved many hundreds of thousands of lives if they had been allowed within so-called standards-of-practice that rule medicine these days. The same gang fudged their statistical reporting wherever possible, especially by failing to fix the kludgy CDC VAERS website for listing adverse reactions to the “vaccines,” but also in creating conditions that made it impossible to discern actual Covid deaths from “vaccine” deaths, and deaths either caused by co-morbidities or extraneous occurrences such as highway accidents or gunshot killings.

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One can be forgiven for thinking that the years are getting longer, because Dave Collum’s review does all the time. It now takes as long for you to read as it takes him to write. That is, a whole year.

Well, at least he has one reliable source left:

• 2021 Year in Review: Crisis of Authority and the Age of Narratives (Collum)

I am an openly white, right-leaning, closeted hand-sexual male with audacious opinions. I promise, however, that I will sling barbs without regard to race, creed, or color. If I think you are a douche bag, I will say so. When anger consumes me, however, it gives way to angst because somebody may have suckered me into playing a role in some higher authority’s master plan to disrupt the American Dream. As we are being dazzled by the Harlem Globe Trotters, recognize that we are the Washington Generals. Remember the olden days when the wealthy and powerful nefariously assaulted the unsuspecting populace? If caught, scandal followed, heads rolled, and we moved on, leaving us plebes with the sense that justice was served. Since the government was small relative to GDP, the systemic corruption represented a few percent of the system. It’s now growing like a tumor and devoid of consequences for the powerful. In the Age of Narratives, we snarf down platters of propaganda served by powerful media empires. This bread and circuses is free but leaves us marinating in ignorance.

It’s a trap Mickey: the cheese is not free! The Western media is now the arm of the State, no better than Pravda. Failed business model led the media into the oldest profession. How many narratives have we fallen for? How many have you fallen for? I think you owe it to yourselves to replay the tape from years past and ask whether you were duped. Malcolm Gladwell’s latest (see Books) suggests we are hard-wired to trust. As social animals, we cannot function if we don’t. It’s difficult to push back but push back we must. The more highly politicized the topic—climate change, pandemics, vaccines, elections, central banking, foreign wars—the greater the urgency to repel. I offer up one of several quotes from Gore Vidal, a thought-leader canted profoundly left whom I have come to view as the intellectuals’ George Carlin: “Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.” ~ Gore Vidal

Sources and Social Media. I am a Twitter long hauler with 70,000 followers but haven’t yet figured out how to monetize the micro-fame enough to buy a mocha Frappuccino. I do, however, find it a useful sounding board. One tweeter—probably a Twitter bot—captured the essence: “If you need something researched for free and you don’t feel like doing it just post a tweet about it that’s mildly incorrect and wait.”~ @InternetHippo

My Twitter long hauling has occasionally been interrupted by Twitter time-outs. They range from 12 hours to ponder the err in my ways for posting an inappropriate link to Bichute or The Lancet, to a full week for calling Tony Fauci “a skanky whore.” A permanent ban would (will) be painful because I have old and new friends there—Rudy: I love ya man!—who enrich my life with their wisdom. New posse members joining the already eclectic mix include @JonNajarian (getting me closer to winning CNBC Twitter Bingo), scholar and author @BretWeinstein (see Books), actor @AdamBaldwin, polymath rapper @ZubyMusic, and waves of bitcoin hodlers. Favorite news sources include podcasts—I am an audiophile—as well as blogs and newsletters by Tony Greer, James Grant, Jesse Felder, Bill Fleckenstein, Automatic Earth, Grant Williams, Ron Griess of The Chart Store, Chris Martenson, emails from a woman named Denise, and the 500 lb. gorilla of the internet—Zerohedge. I know I’ve missed many more. Apologies.

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Tongue

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 7 2021

Nov 072021
 
 November 7, 2021  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Sleeping peasants 1919

 

• US Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s Federal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate (NYP)
• Federal Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s ‘Big-Company’ Vaxx-Mandate (ZH)
• Pfizer “Vaccine”: Kill 200 To ‘Save’ One? (OffG)
• How Long Does Vaccine Based Immunity Last? (SRMD)
• Pfizer Board Member Gottlieb: Pandemic Could Be Over In US By January (CNBC)
• Bootleggers, Baptists, and Vaccine Mandates (AIER)
• Scientific Journals Censor Science: Removal of Myocarditis report in VAERS (TSN)
• Feds Pay Zero Claims For COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries/Deaths (ZH)
• When Pandemics Collide: The Interplay Of Obesity And Covid-19 (PMC)
• Assange, Fiancee Sue Uk For ‘Preventing Them From Marrying In Prison’ (DM)

 

 

“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.”

 

 

 

 

“Something very dark is going on.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1457002810063609859
https://twitter.com/i/status/1457032388232597505

 

 

Big win. Key line:

“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.”

• US Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s Federal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate (NYP)

A federal appeals court in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration’s latest COVID-19 vaccination mandate, giving the government until Monday afternoon to submit a response. An emergency stay, issued Saturday from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, prevents the White House from requiring all full and part-time workers at private-sector companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or get tested weekly and wear face masks. In its decision, the court cited “grave statutory and constitutional” concerns about the government’s mandate, which is scheduled to take effect on January 4. The mandate — issued Thursday under a new rule by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — would apply to some 84 million Americans.

It has been challenged in court by more than two dozen states, including Texas, Missouri and Louisiana. Employers who don’t comply could face fines of up to $14,000 per infraction, according to the government’s guidelines. “We will have our day in court to strike down Biden’s unconstitutional abuse of authority,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted after news of the stay was announced Saturday afternoon. A petition filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and representing 10 other states, declared the vaccine mandate is “unconstitutional, unlawful and unwise.” It also challenges OSHA authority, claiming the agency does not have the jurisdiction to implement the regulations.

“Its unlawful mandate will cause injuries and hardship to working families, inflict economic disruption and staffing shortages on the states and private employers,” reads the petition. In September, the president promised to impose a flurry of vaccine mandates after the Delta variant led to a spike in COVID-19 infections, ending what Biden called the “summer of freedom” from the deadly virus. “A distinct minority of Americans supported by a distinct minority of elected officials are keeping us from turning the corner,” Biden said in a White House address. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.” The government has until Monday at 5 pm to challenge the stay.

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Will need to read a number of reports to get the relevant details. Note: there will be as many appeals as cases brought.

• Federal Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s ‘Big-Company’ Vaxx-Mandate

A federal court has issued a temporary victory in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandate issuing a stay on the controversial federal government regulation in Texas. “Yesterday, I sued the Biden Admin over its unlawful OSHA vax mandate,” Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted Saturday. “WE WON. Just this morning, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues,” the 5th Circuit stayed the mandate. The fight is not over and I will never stop resisting this Admin’s unconstitutional overreach!” As Fox News reports, earlier in the week, Paxton sued the Biden administration over the mandate and argued that the move to force workers at companies with over 100 employees to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing is “flatly unconstitutional.”

“Biden’s new vaccine mandate on private businesses is a breathtaking abuse of power,” Paxton tweeted Friday. “OSHA has only limited power & specific responsibilities. This latest move goes way outside those bounds. This ‘standard’ is flatly unconstitutional. I’m asking the Court to strike it down.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit said it would quickly consider whether to issue an injunction against the vaccine and testing requirements, ordering the Biden administration to file initial legal papers by late Monday afternoon. A number of trade groups have issued warnings about the mandate, saying that it would exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks and staffing shortages nationwide. The White House remains confident the mandate will stand up to legal challenges.

“We are very confident that it can,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “As for the legal side of this, let me be crystal clear to avoid what appears to be possible misinformation or disinformation around the emergency temporary standard being a vaccine mandate. That would be on its face incorrect as has been explicit for months. It is a standard for safe workplace to either comply with weekly testing or to be vaccinated.”

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“It’s literally the worst NNTV in the history of vaccination.”

• Pfizer “Vaccine”: Kill 200 To ‘Save’ One? (OffG)

This is the absolute risk reduction for Pfizer/BioNtech (each group had over 18,000 people):
Injection Group: 8/18,198 = 0.04%
Placebo Group: 162/18,325 = 0.88%
Absolute risk reduction = 0.84%

From the “absolute risk reduction”, you can then calculate the “number needed to vaccinate” (NNTV). This is the rough number of people you need to inject in order to definitely prevent one case/death. To continue the example above, if your vaccine reduces the odds of infection from 10% to 1% (an ARR of 9%), you need to vaccinate eleven people to prevent one infection, giving you an NNTV of 11. Again, the NNTV of the Covid vaccines are much, much, MUCH higher than 11. Estimates range from between 88 and 700 to prevent a single case, and anything up to 100,000 to prevent one solitary death. And remember, all this data was for adults. Children are at a far lower risk from Covid – both in terms of hospitalisation and death. In the US, children aged 5-11 have a 99.992% chance of surviving “Covid” – so it naturally follows the NNTV for this group will be far, far higher than for adults.

But, now that the FDA has approved Pfizer’s “vaccine” for emergency use on children aged 5-11, “far, far higher” is not good enough. We need to calculate an actual figure for the “number needed to vaccinate” in order to hypothetically protect one child from dying “with Covid”. Fortunately for us, someone else has already done it. Writing on his Substack, economist Toby Rogers PhD has collated the numbers from Pfizer’s own trials, the FDA and the CDC and done a very thorough write up. You can read the whole thing here, we’ll just present you with some of the highlights: As of October 30, 2021, the CDC stated that 170 children ages 5 to 11 have died of COVID-19-related illness since the start of the pandemic. (That represents less than 0.1% of all coronavirus-related deaths nationwide even though children that age make up 8.7% of the U.S. population).

The Pfizer mRNA shot only “works” for about 6 months (it increases risk in the first month, provides moderate protection in months 2 through 4 and then effectiveness begins to wane, which is why all of the FDA modeling only used a 6 month time-frame). So any modeling would have to be based on vaccine effectiveness in connection with the 57 (170/3) children who might otherwise have died of COVID-related illness during a 6-month period.At best, the Pfizer mRNA shot might be 80% effective against hospitalizations and death. That number comes directly from the FDA modeling. I am bending over backwards to give Pfizer the benefit of considerable doubt because again, the Pfizer clinical trial showed NO reduction in hospitalizations or death in this age group.

So injecting all 28,384,878 children ages 5 to 11 with two doses of Pfizer (which is what the Biden administration wants to do) would save, at most, 45 lives (0.8 effectiveness x 57 fatalities that otherwise would have occurred during that time period = 45). So then the NNTV to prevent a single fatality in this age group is 630,775 (28,384,878 / 45). But it’s a two dose regimen so if one wants to calculate the NNTV per injection the number doubles to 1,261,550. It’s literally the worst NNTV in the history of vaccination. 630,000 children injected with 1.2 million doses to save one life. That’s incredibly inefficient. However, it could be even worse than that. As we covered last week, according to statistics cited at the VRBPAC meeting, only 94 children from the 5-11 age group have died. If this lower figure is correct, the NNTV to prevent a single death jumps up to 915,641.

In other words, in order to hypothetically prevent a single child from dying over a six month period, you would have to inject nearly one million children with almost two million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Read more …

We need solid research into this.

• How Long Does Vaccine Based Immunity Last? (SRMD)

It’s unfortunate that the drug companies decided to end their trials early, by giving active covid vaccine to the members of the placebo group after just a few months. It means that there is no long term follow-up of the covid vaccines from randomized trials, and there never will be. This means that we are instead forced to rely entirely on observational data as we try to understand how safe and effective the vaccines are over the longer term. That is why a recent study out of Sweden is so very interesting. It is currenly available as a pre-print and can be found here. The purpose of the study was to determine how effective the vaccines are at protecting against covid over the longer term (i.e. after more than a few months). This was a registry based study, so it’s not surprising that it is coming out of Sweden. Sweden is generally acknowledged as being better than any other country at collecting and sorting large quantities of population data and using it to produce these types of studies.

The authors of the study began by identifying all people residing in Sweden who had been fully vaccinated against covid-19 by late May 2021. At that time, three different vaccines were being used in Sweden: Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca. The vaccinated people were then matched individually against people of the same age and gender, and living in the same municipality, who hadn’t been vaccinated. In total, 1,684,958 individuals were included in the study. They were followed until October to see if they developed covid-19. So, what did the study show? As would be expected, the vaccines were very effective at preventing symptomatic covid around two months out from vaccination. This is what the randomized trials showed, and it’s the reason the vaccines were approved for use. Overall, the reduction in relative risk at 31-60 days out from vaccination was 89%.

However, after those first two months, there was a rapid decline in efficacy. At four to six months, the vaccines were only reducing the relative risk of infection by 48%! This is pretty interesting when we consider that governments had initially set the bar for approving the vaccines at a 50% relative risk reduction. So, if the trials had been required to run for six months before presenting results instead of only running for two months, then the vaccines would have been considered too ineffective to be worth bothering with, an would never have been approved. Well, that’s not quite true. One vaccine did still provide a better than 50% relative risk reduction at six months – the Moderna vaccine. At four to six months, the relative risk reduction with the Moderna vaccine was 71%. Pfizer was at the same time point only offering a 47% reduction in risk, and AstraZeneca was at that point not doing anything whatsoever to lower risk.

It makes sense that the Moderna vaccine would offer better protection than the Pfizer vaccine. Although the vaccines are virtually identical, the dose in the Moderna vaccine is three times higher. This is likely the reason why Moderna has been associated with much higher rates of myocarditis, which is why it is no longer approved for use in people under the age of 30 here in Sweden.

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But only if you consume our products.

• Pfizer Board Member Gottlieb: Pandemic Could Be Over In US By January (CNBC)

The Covid-19 pandemic could be over in the U.S. by the time President Joe Biden’s workplace vaccine mandates take effect in early January, Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. The vaccine requirements from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration begin on Jan. 4 for any company with at least 100 employees. Some 84 million private sector workers must get either their second Moderna or Pfizer shot or one dose from Johnson & Johnson by that date or face regular testing for the virus. “These mandates that are going to be put in place by Jan. 4 really are coming on the tail end of this pandemic,” said Gottlieb, who’s also a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

“By Jan. 4, this pandemic may well be over, at least as it relates to the United States after we get through this delta wave of infection. And we’ll be in a more endemic phase of this virus.” All companies complying with OSHA’s new rules must also start enforcing indoor mask mandates for unvaccinated employees starting Dec. 5. Those personnel must also begin submitting weekly negative Covid tests after Jan. 4 to enter the workplace, and anyone who tests positive should quarantine. The federal mandate contains exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Employees who work exclusively outdoors, at home or in settings where others aren’t present are also exempt from the rules.

OSHA’s guidance doesn’t mandate that businesses pay for their employees’ Covid tests or masks, but any company caught dodging the rules could face fines of anywhere between $13,653 to $136,532 for intentional noncompliance. Gottlieb’s comments came in the wake of data from Pfizer that indicated its Covid antiviral pill, when paired with an HIV medication, slashed the potential for hospitalization or death by 89% in adults at risk for severe complications. Combining the pill with an HIV medication slowed the metabolism, allowing the Covid antiviral to work longer in the body. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview Friday morning with “Squawk Box” before Gottlieb spoke that the company will submit data on the therapeutic to the FDA before Thanksgiving.

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“The Bootleggers supported the ban, too, but only because they would enjoy a thriving black market on those days and profit from illegal alcohol sales.”

• Bootleggers, Baptists, and Vaccine Mandates (AIER)

In 1983, economist Bruce Yandle developed the Bootleggers and Baptists framework to explain his belief that durable government action tends to come about with the support of two types of interest groups: those with moral interests and those with financial interests. Yandle appeals to early twentieth-century blue laws, which prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Baptists, the moralists, were motivated by their beliefs that Sundays should be respected as a day of prayer and rest, not drinking. The Bootleggers supported the ban, too, but only because they would enjoy a thriving black market on those days and profit from illegal alcohol sales. Durable government action, according to Yandle, tends to emerge with the support of coalitions that share a common goal even if they don’t share common motivations.

In a global pandemic, it has not been difficult to find a plethora of public health pieties. Nor has it been hard to find profiteers, especially pharma. I doubt that Anthony Fauci has any financial interests in the Moderna/NIAID vaccine — though investigators should look. He’s in it for the glory. Still, the Moderna/NIAID partnership puts the Bootleggers and Baptists on the same team. Fauci, President Biden, and all the MSM sentinels are the moralists in this equation, that is, if Prof. Yandle will permit a not-so-bright line between moralism and savior complex. They want to be known as the ones who beat the pandemic. One might even say Fauci has been planning for this his whole career. Now he graces us with his presence daily on SAHM programs such as The View, basking in the lamps, reminding us to wear our masks and get our vaccines.

The decrepit Biden, though he needs help getting up on that high horse, once bestride it, holds his mighty executive pen aloft and commands the multitudes to get the jab or else. Waiting in the wings are shadowy corporate figures, such as Moderna’s Bancel, prepared to execute these technocratic plans using billions of dollars inked in red. Though howls against Big Pharma were once prominent in the Progressive Playbook, those have mysteriously been redacted like Anthony Fauci’s FOIA’d emails. When one stops to think that these billions will have to be repaid by the very children who won’t have a choice but to get these vaccines, much less likely Covid, she might find the idea nauseous. A considerably more disturbing thought, though, is that Fauci probably suspected all along that NIH funding led to the creation and (accidental) release of a virus that has killed 5 million people as of this writing.

Anthony Fauci is a monopsony on funding for infectious disease research. He clearly does not want to be known as the guy in charge of funding the pandemic, even inadvertently. His defensiveness, his untruths before Congress, and his moth like draw to camera lights — all seem to reveal a man who, in his moralism, refuses to acknowledge that his agency had any hand in the damage Covid dealt. He wants to be America’s doctor, and his grand plan has always been to vaccinate the world. In his favored scenario, he would not be viewed not as a negligent bureaucrat but a savior. And he wants to keep it that way. The researchers? The intermediaries? The pharma execs? They’re in it for the money upon which their careers depend.

My hypothesis, therefore, tentative but bold, is that economist Bruce Yandle must have seen this coming a mile away. The vaccine mandates of 2020-2021 is a story of Bootleggers colluding with Baptists. The only question that remains, then, is whether we’re going to let them get away with it.

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Cancelling McCullough.

• Scientific Journals Censor Science: Removal of Myocarditis report in VAERS (TSN)

Dr Peter McCullough, MD, one of the most cited physicians in the world, an eminent practitioner of internal medicine, a cardiologist and epidemiologist, co-wrote a report with Dr Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a virologist and epidemiologist in Canada, called ‘A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products.’

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Paying means acknowledging damage. Look at the restrictions…

• Feds Pay Zero Claims For COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries/Deaths (ZH)

In fiscal year 2021, the U.S. government paid $246.9 million in claims for vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Not a single payout was related to Covid-19 vaccines. Each person with a “provable” injury from a Covid vaccine could claim up to $379,000 from a special Covid vaccine fund set up by the federal government. The payout for death could be as high as $370,376. However, according to an OpenTheBooks.com investigation, the federal government didn’t pay a penny for Covid-vaccine claims. The special fund for these claims is called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). There were only 1,357 claims filed that alleged “injuries/deaths from the Covid vaccines,” and 53 were listed as deaths, according to recent reporting by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

By contrast, the self-reporting Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) lists 16,310 deaths related to Covid vaccines. Of these, “5,326 of the deaths occurred on Day 0, 1,or 2 following vaccination[.]” The low number of applicants to the CICP fund for injuries or death from the Covid vaccine suggests that people don’t know the special fund exists. The “normal” vaccine fund, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), has existed since 1988 and provides compensation for injuries or deaths associated with most vaccines routinely administered in the United States (such as pediatric and seasonal influenza vaccines), according to the Congressional Research Service. Last year, this fund paid out $246.9 million in vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Payouts include $250,000 for a vaccine-caused death and $250,000 “for pain and suffering and emotional distress.”

A special vaccine court handles these claims. However, in the case of Covid-19 vaccines developed and approved under Project Warp Speed, deaths resulting from a Covid vaccine would pay out through the CICP and would pay more money than a vaccine-related death in normal times. Since the benefit for a death caused by a Covid-19 vaccine is $370,376 for fiscal year 2021 and $50,000 per year for lost employment income (with a lifetime cap to be “generally $379,000”). So, the death benefit is $120,376 higher than for other vaccines ($250,000). However, there is no equivalent to the VICP’s $250,000 “for pain and suffering and emotional distress” under the current Covid-19 parameters. Here are some other differences between the two vaccine-injury funds:

• No attorney fees. The Covid fund is not authorized to provide reimbursement for attorneys’ fees. Therefore, lawyers have less incentive to represent claims.
• Injured children receive small payouts. A Covid vaccine-injured child would only be reimbursed for “reasonable medical expenses.” Since the child survived and isn’t employed, there’s no other compensation.
• Narrow window to file a claim. The Covid fund allows a one-year window to file a claim whereas the regular vaccine fund has a three-year window.
• And sure enough, the CICP fund hasn’t paid out a dime in Covid-vaccine claims. HHS bluntly states online, “As of October 1, 2021, the CICP has not compensated any Covid-19 countermeasures claims.”

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A good bit on inflammation, something I find sorely lacking in most reports. There’s no way chronic and systemic inflammation is not a huge factor in Covid.

• When Pandemics Collide: The Interplay Of Obesity And Covid-19 (PMC)

Among 20,133 patients hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 infection across 208 hospitals in the United Kingdom, obesity was identified in 10.5% [2]. Worse, obesity was a strong predictor of mortality (HR 1.33; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19 to 1.49) after adjusting for other comorbidities. Between March 1 and April 8, 2020, 5279 patients at NYU Langone Health tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 [3]. Of these, 2741 (51.9%) required hospitalization, 990 (36.1%) developed critical illness requiring intensive care unit (ICU) services, and 665 (24.3%) died. In multi-variate analysis, obesity (especially a BMI>40 kg/m2) emerged as a risk factor for both hospital admission (OR 2.5; 95% CI:1.8 to 3.4) and critical illness requiring ICU services (OR 1.5; 1.0 to 2.2).


In another report from New York City, among 3615 individuals who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, 775 (21%) had a BMI of 30 34 kg/m2 and 595 (16%) had a BMI of 35 kg/m2 or higher [4]. Among patients under 60 years old, those with a BMI of 30 34 kg/m2 were 2.0 (1.6 2.6) times as likely to be admitted to the hospital and 1.8 (1.2 2.7) times as likely to be admitted to the ICU, as compared to those with normal range BMI. In a cohort from Mexico of 51,633 SARS-CoV-2 positive cases and 5332 related deaths (10.3%), the obese, as compared to non-obese, had a higher rate of mortality (13.5% versus 9.4%), critical illness (5.0% versus 3.3%), and ventilator support (5.2% versus 3.3%) [5]. Data from France found a higher rate of obesity in those SARS-CoV-2 patients who were critically ill and required mechanical ventilation (Odds ratio of 7.36 [1.63 33.14] comparing BMI e”35 vs. <25) [6″ ].

These data highlight the devastating impact of one pandemic (obesity) on another (COVID-19). Obese individuals may have a compounded risk for acquiring more severe COVID-19 disease. First, individuals who are obese undergo gross structural and cellular level changes which puts them at greater risk for ischemic heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and respiratory disease, which are themselves risk-factors for acquiring COVID-19 disease. Second, obesity-specific structural changes can make caring for obese patients who acquire COVID-19 disease logistically challenging. Finally, there may be a link between obesity and SARS-CoV-2 specific receptors found in adipose tissue, possibly rendering obese individuals more susceptible to acquiring more severe disease.

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“The wedding stand-off began in May when Stella approached the prison chaplain to ask about arranging a ceremony. After an initial response, no further help was forthcoming. On October 7, Assange formally asked the Governor’s office to agree to a Belmarsh wedding, but he has had no reply.”

• Assange, Fiancee Sue Uk For ‘Preventing Them From Marrying In Prison’ (DM)

Julian Assange and his fiancee Stella Moris are bringing legal action against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and the Governor of Belmarsh Prison, accusing them of preventing the couple from marrying behind bars. They fear the obstacles put in the way of their wedding by UK authorities are linked to a US-backed political war against the Wikileaks publisher and campaigner. In September it was revealed the CIA had drawn up plans to kidnap or kill Assange during his seven years exiled in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. The agency also spied on his family and friends and led a campaign of misinformation against him. Stella, 38, a lawyer, said: ‘Those catch-or-kill plans were not implemented but other hostile measures were and this is the sting in the tail.

‘It’s part of an enormous conspiracy against Julian which makes itself felt in all that we try to do. ‘A wedding would be a moment of happiness, a bit of normality in insane circumstances. Julian needs things to hold on to because daily life is a struggle for him in Belmarsh and there is so much uncertainty about his future. ‘Our love for each other is the one thing which has carried us through and being married would be another bulwark in our emotional defences. ‘There is no reason for political interference in what is a basic human right. The CIA revelations show the lengths some agencies are willing to go to in their persecution of Julian.’ Assange, 50, and his fiancee have been engaged for five years, have two children and are both practising Catholics. They have been asking since May for help to arrange their wedding in Belmarsh.

[..] Stella is adamant their wedding ceremony would have no legal impact on extradition since his right to a family life in the UK is determined by the fact that their sons Gabriel, four, and Max, two, are British citizens. She also has rights of residency, having lived in Britain for 20 years, although she was born in South Africa. On Friday, the couple opened legal action paving the way for a judicial review. The case is brought against the Justice Secretary and Belmarsh Governor Jenny Louis. The wedding stand-off began in May when Stella approached the prison chaplain to ask about arranging a ceremony. After an initial response, no further help was forthcoming. On October 7, Assange formally asked the Governor’s office to agree to a Belmarsh wedding, but he has had no reply.

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“Any system you contrive without us will be brought down.”
— Leonard Cohen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401284243733594119

 

 

The sights I have to look at every day.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle October 26 2021

Oct 262021
 
 October 26, 2021  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  84 Responses »


M. C. Escher Relativity Lattice 1953

 

• Who Will They Blame When Everyone is Vaccinated?
• Concerns About Suboptimal Vaccine Antibodies Erasing Natural Immunity (Blaze)
• Informed Consent Disclosure To Vaccine Trial Subjects (NIH)
• Why Won’t The CDC or FDA Reveal The VAERS URF? (Kirsch)
• 200,000 Grannies, No Problem. A Few Puppies? (Denninger)
• Consider the Lowly Sandflies (Kunstler)
• The Age of Exterminations (VI): The Great Famine to Come (Ugo Bardi)
• Biden’s “C’mon, Man” Defense Will Not Fly on Religious Freedom (Turley)
• Hertz Orders 100,000 Teslas For Rental Cars (Byte)
• ‘Unthinkable’ For High Court To Lift US Extradition Ban On Julian Assange (DM)
• Allegation Of CIA Murder Plot Game-changer In Assange Extradition Hearing (R.)
• A Guide To The US Appeal In The Assange Extradition Case (Gosztola)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Jensen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1452753030391246854

 

 

They will always find a witch to burn, or drown.

Problem is, how are we going to tell the vaxxed that they are in grave danger?

• Who Will They Blame When Everyone is Vaccinated?

A question we have been asking for several months: Who are the political officials going to blame for rising COVID infection and hospitalization rates when the vaccination rates are well over 90 percent? What happens on a sociological scale when a vaxxed society realizes there is no magic panacea afforded by the vaccination narrative? Author Jack Cashill takes those questions head-on in a Spectator article noting we only need to look at Waterford, Ireland, to see the dynamic where an almost completely obedient and vaccinated population of 99.7% is facing rising COVID infection rates despite their good citizenship:


Cashill – […] “The arbitrary evolution of Irish COVID policy over the past 18 months has made it clear that public health officials and government policy makers have no idea what they are doing. If proof were needed, County Waterford provides it. According to data published on October 21, Waterford City South has the nation’s highest 14-day incidence rate at 1,486 cases per 100,000 and Tramore-Waterford City West has the third highest at 1,122 cases per 100,000. This is despite internal travel bans and the county’s more than 90 percent vaccination rate. Although Waterford is running three times the rate of the nation writ large, Ireland as a whole is not faring particularly well, especially given its draconian restrictions. In the seven days preceding October 21, Ireland reported 2,026 new cases. To put that number in perspective, wide-open Florida had 2,262 cases during that same period with a population more than four times greater than the Irish Republic’s.”

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More vaccines -> More Covid.

• Concerns About Suboptimal Vaccine Antibodies Erasing Natural Immunity (Blaze)

In many areas of life, half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. But when it comes to vaccines, the opposite is true. Half-baked antibodies injected throughout the entire population can make the virus even stronger and negate people’s natural immunity. Thus, all the defenses of the leaky vaccine suggesting that it at least conveys “some” protection are actually extremely concerning, a point driven home by a nugget in the most recent surveillance report from Public Health England (PHE). On page 23 of PHE’s “COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 42,” British health officials report a shocking finding. They believe their serology tests are underestimating the number of people with prior infection due to “recent observations from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) surveillance data that N antibody levels appear to be lower in individuals who acquire infection following 2 doses of vaccination.”

In other words, the vaccine might be reducing the all-important N antibodies that one generates from natural infection. Kudos to former NYT reporter Alex Berenson for discovering this important point. Until now, we’ve been operating under the assumption that those with prior infection don’t need the vaccine to boost immunity and taking the shots would only expose them to the growing risk of side effects. However, what if the shots are actually sliding back the natural immunity generated in those with previous infection? What if that is related to the macro concern that a narrow-spectrum vaccine with suboptimal antibodies that only recognize the “S” (spike) protein of the virus but not the “N” (nucleocapsid) of the virus will cause B cells in those with the vaccine to learn to produce only S antibodies, which are slower-acting and less sterilizing (don’t stop transmission) than N antibodies, which are faster-acting and are more effective in their protection against the virus?

It’s not like we weren’t confronted with some other warning signs that the vaccine could perhaps negate some of the immunity acquired from prior infection. In March, researchers from Mount Sinai in New York and Hospital La Paz in Madrid posted a preprint study indicating that at least the second Pfizer shot might weaken T cell immunity. In a shocking discovery after monitoring a group of vaccinated people both with and without prior infection, they found “in individuals with a pre-existing immunity against SARS-CoV-2, the second vaccine dose not only fail to boost humoral immunity but determines a contraction of the spike-specific T cell response.” They also note that other research has shown “the second vaccination dose appears to exert a detrimental effect in the overall magnitude of the spike-specific humoral response in COVID-19 recovered individuals.”

Thus, mass vaccinating with leaky suboptimal antibody production could serve as a Trojan horse and make people more susceptible to an ever-enhanced virus. It’s not like we had no warning about the possibility of viral enhancement through waning and suboptimal vaccine-mediated antibodies. On page 52 of Pfizer’s “Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for an Unapproved Product Review Memorandum,” it is admitted that antibody dependent disease enhancement was a possibility in the long run with waning efficacy. “However, risk of vaccine-enhanced disease over time, potentially associated with waning immunity, remains unknown and needs to be evaluated further in ongoing clinical trials and in observational studies that could be conducted following authorization and/or licensure,” write the FDA regulators in the memo.

[..] According to PHE data, 86% of all U.K. residents over age 12 have received at least one shot, including nearly everyone in a vulnerable age bracket. Yet the summer and early fall curve, as presented by Worldometer, has blown out the magnitude of the case curve last year when nobody was vaccinated, and the daily numbers are reaching close to their winter peak.

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Vaccines killing off antibodies is not a new idea. This is from March 2021.

“Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease.”

• Informed Consent Disclosure To Vaccine Trial Subjects (NIH)

Aims of the study: Patient comprehension is a critical part of meeting medical ethics standards of informed consent in study designs. The aim of the study was to determine if sufficient literature exists to require clinicians to disclose the specific risk that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen disease upon exposure to challenge or circulating virus.

Methods used to conduct the study: Published literature was reviewed to identify preclinical and clinical evidence that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen disease upon exposure to challenge or circulating virus. Clinical trial protocols for COVID-19 vaccines were reviewed to determine if risks were properly disclosed.

Results of the study: COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.

Conclusions drawn from the study and clinical implications: The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for informed consent.

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Steve keeps pushing.

• Why Won’t The CDC or FDA Reveal The VAERS URF? (Kirsch)

VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It is the official system relied upon by the FDA and CDC for adverse event tracking. For example, if you report an adverse event in V-Safe, the app they told you about when you got vaccinated, you are told to file a VAERS report. It is essentially the mother of all adverse event reporting systems for vaccine events in the US. There is nothing more comprehensive than VAERS. The most important thing to know about VAERS is that it is always underreported. This is widely known. To properly interpret any safety data, you must know the underreporting factor (URF). For example, the famous Lazarus report estimated the VAERS URF to be over 100:

“Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health.” The Baker paper, Advanced Clinical Decision Support for Vaccine Adverse Event Detection and Reporting, showed that “the odds of a VAERS report submission during the implementation period were 30.2 (95% confidence interval, 9.52–95.5).” In other words, the VAERS URF was at least 30 (since the system wasn’t perfect, 30 is a lower bound of the URF in that study), but they estimated that it was likely between 9.5 and 95.

The URF is normally calculated for very serious events since these are required to be reported for all vaccines by healthcare workers. That URF can then be applied to less serious events to create a conservative estimate of the true incidence rate (since less serious events would have a higher URF). The method for calculating the URF is well known. Sadly, the CDC has erroneously assumed that Vaccine Safety Datalink represents a fully reported comparator. This is clearly false as can be seen from slide 13 in ACIP Chair Grace Lee’s presentation delivered on August 30, 2021:

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“Fauci slaughtered tens of thousands of AIDS sufferers by blocking Bactrim in HIV+ persons for years, arguing he needed “controlled trials” first to “prove” that it worked to prevent PCP.”

“.. in the case of HIV it was AZT. This time its intentionally falsely labeled drugs that are called “vaccines” yet are not, along with a new drug from Merck that may be even more dangerous than the jabs.”

• 200,000 Grannies, No Problem. A Few Puppies? (Denninger)

If you want to know why God is sipping on a cold one and laughing at the evil in our nation and indeed the world you need nothing more. Fauci slaughtered tens of thousands of AIDS sufferers by blocking Bactrim in HIV+ persons for years, arguing he needed “controlled trials” first to “prove” that it worked to prevent PCP. We already knew it did, by the way, having learned that in the late 1970s with Leukemia patients — it cut the mortality rate of people with Leukemia during chemo by a huge amount. Fauci claimed that wasn’t good enough. 30,000, roughly, Americans got shoved in the hole, dead from PCP, as a result. This time around Fauci proclaimed that we had “insufficient evidence” to recommend that people use HCQ, Ivermectin, Budesonide and a whole host of other things at first indication of Covid-19.

The answer was “vaccines”, which did not exist for 11 months, and were not rolled out in size for a full year. In both cases pharmaceutical companies made billions; in the case of HIV it was AZT. This time its intentionally falsely labeled drugs that are called “vaccines” yet are not, along with a new drug from Merck that may be even more dangerous than the jabs. Two hundred thousand Grannies and Grandpas, mostly, died during the last 18 months without even being able to say goodbye to their loved ones, having been denied drugs that might have worked and might not have — but which were almost certainly better than being dead. If they did nothing, so what? Dead is dead, right? Well, neither Ivermectin or Budesonide killed me. I used both when I got Covid in August.

I do not know if Ivermectin appreciably impacted the course of the disease because I hit it early and hard and thus perhaps it did nothing (hard to prove otherwise, isn’t it?) but the budesonide reversed symptom progression within 12 hours of initiation of use. I cannot attribute that change to mere chance. Is it proof? No. But do I believe it worked? You bet. And I’m still here; neither killed me, nor did either do any harm I can detect (nor did the virus itself) to my cardiopulmonary function from pre-infection baseline. Will any of these drugs work for everyone? Nope. Does vaccination? Nope.

St. Elizabeth’s, as of 10/22, makes quite clear that people winding up in the hospital, ICU or with a tube down their throat on a vent happens all the time in fully-vaccinated people. None of that is “rare” and, I remind you, this is a major hospital chain all over NE KY along with a couple of other states. Do the jabs “reduce the risk”? Probably. Do they work as well as using drugs at first hint of trouble? Since these “breakthroughs” that land people in the hospital, ICU or on a vent are hardly RARE — they’re extraordinarily common despite the lies the media, CDC and other hospitals have told — I maintain that I made the correct choice as I did not wind up in a hospital at all and now I have presumptive immunity that actually works unlike these “jabs” which, on the data certainly appear to NOT.

Read more …

“Dr. Fauci is ever more emblematic of the American predicament: maniacs and doofuses in charge of powerful institutions strategically positioned to wreck the country.”

• Consider the Lowly Sandflies (Kunstler)

Some flinched when Dr. Fauci commanded the children of America to take the mRNA shots fraught with deadly side effects, but now it’s out that the agency he has controlled for decades like a Byzantine despot, the NIAD, gave a $1.6 million grant to a lab in Tunisia — that world-beating center of the bio-sciences — to study what happens when puppy-dogs are pinned down so that ravenous sandflies can chew their snouts off. I guess it didn’t go to well for the puppies. (And doesn’t one wonder exactly what was learned doing that?) We are not Tunisia, of course, at least not yet. We are the mighty USA, a nation imbued with the moral spirit of Walt Disney, and for us this puppy-dog caper might just be an experiment-too-far.

We’ll have to stand by months, maybe years, to find out what the effects are of mRNA shots in human children, but two known possibilities stand out: inflammation and scarring of the heart (myocarditis + sequelae), and an incrementally disabled immune system. Do you really want those shots in your children? — America might ask. And how does Dr. Fauci imagine the child vaxx program would be carried out? In the schools, I suppose, where the subjects of the experiment can be conveniently rounded-up every day. Would you suppose that roughly half the parents in the land would then withdraw their kids from the public school system and, if so, what becomes of the system when they’re gone? Not anything good, I promise you.

But consider that it is already a rotten system ever more incapable of turning out citizens who can speak English, write a coherent sentence, and add up a column of figures, let alone name the capital of Tunisia (warning: trick question!). Dr. Fauci is ever more emblematic of the American predicament: maniacs and doofuses in charge of powerful institutions strategically positioned to wreck the country. For now, they strangely enjoy protection within this matrix of captive institutions while carrying out their nefarious missions. So, the question arises: do Americans wish to live in a wrecked country?

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Seneca.

• The Age of Exterminations (VI): The Great Famine to Come (Ugo Bardi)

Note how, in the calculation, the world population decline starts around 2050, some three decades after the start of the crash of the industrial and agricultural systems. Why is it that the population keeps growing while people are starving? Unlikely, to say the least. It is hard to quantify people’s intention to have children or not have them, so the modelers used past data on birthrates as a function of the gross domestic product (GDP). It was equivalent to “running in reverse” the demographic transition that took place in the 1960s when natality had collapsed in many regions of the world in parallel with an increase of the GDP per capita. The result was that a contraction of the GDP would cause people to have more children? These assumptions were later reconsidered and different results were obtained in 2004.

Now, the population starts declining around 2030, less than a decade after that food production starts collapsing, and that looks much more reasonable. Yet, even this curve has problems: would you really believe that in the midst of the great turmoil of the global collapse the result would be such a gentle decline? More likely, all the four horsemen of the apocalypse would enter the game and generate a disastrous general crash. This is called the “Seneca Effect.” You see the typical shape of the Seneca Curve in the figure: decline is much faster than growth. Models such as the one used for the “Limits to Growth” cannot reproduce a really sharp Seneca Curve because they do not consider the many possible “tipping points” that may affect the world system. But the historical data tell us that the Seneca shape is the typical behavior of population collapses. Here is the example of the data for the great famine in Ireland (From Ugo Bardi’s book “The Seneca Effect.”) You can clearly see the “Seneca Shape” of the curve, with a sharp decline following growth.

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“..the federal government must show that the burden imposed furthers a “compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means” of furthering that interest.”

• Biden’s “C’mon, Man” Defense Will Not Fly on Religious Freedom (Turley)

“Come on, man,” seems to be President Biden’s signature response to any uncomfortable question. The phrase is meant to be both dismissive and conclusive in ending inquiries, frequently used to counter reporters before often walking away. Indeed, it is so often repeated that it appears on T-Shirts or coffee mugs and in remixes. This week, however, it was not the pesky press but freedom itself that got hit with a version of the comeback. When asked during a CNN town hall program about those still objecting to taking COVID vaccines, Biden mocked them and their claimed rights with “Come on, ‘freedom.’ ” He then called for any police officers, firefighters, medical personnel or other first responders to be fired en masse if they refuse to be vaccinated.

Biden’s response to the question was applauded by the CNN audience, as if to say “Freedomm Ptff, that is so last century.” And he reduced any vaccine refusals to claiming “I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID.” He is not alone in such rhetoric. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared that police officers refusing to take vaccines are insurrectionists. The problem is that the courts already recognize some religious exemption arguments. Those arguments are based on both the constitutional protection of religious values but also laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(a), which declares unlawful any “employment practice for an employer … to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual’s … religion.”

The federal government also is subject to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits the government and other covered entities like the District of Columbia from “substantially burden[ing]” a person’s exercise of religion. Under RFRA, there is no “Come on, man,” defense. Instead, the federal government must show that the burden imposed furthers a “compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means” of furthering that interest. There is a move in many states to refuse to allow such exemptions, but courts have pushed back. In New York, the state is appealing a preliminary injunction against its refusal to allow religious exemptions to its vaccine mandate. A lower court found the governor’s mandate “has effectively foreclosed the pathway to seeking a religious accommodation that is guaranteed under Title VII.”

Likewise, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this month affirmed such a preliminary injunction against Western Michigan University. The university allowed students to ask for individual exemptions but failed to grant religious exemptions under its discretionary policy.

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“The deal caused Tesla’s market valuation to hit the $1 trillion mark.”

“It’s a striking decision given that Hertz filed for bankruptcy last year..”

• Hertz Orders 100,000 Teslas For Rental Cars (Byte)

Rental car company Hertz has ordered 100,000 Tesla Model 3s as part of a massive push to electrify its fleet — the largest purchase of electric vehicles ever, according to Bloomberg. It’s a massive deal reportedly worth $4.2 billion, pushing the automaker’s valuation past the $1 trillion mark for the first time ever. Shares were just two dollars shy of reaching the $1,000 mark on Monday, a new record for the Elon Musk-led company. Musk’s own net value soared in response to the news as well, crossing the quarter trillion mark. “Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we’ve only just begun to see rising global demand and interest,” Hertz interim CEO Mark Fields told Reuters.


It’s a striking decision given that Hertz filed for bankruptcy last year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the company’s market value has recovered, Bloomberg reports. Even more so, it’s a major win for Tesla, giving vast numbers of potential customers a first-hand look at the electric carmaker’s offerings when they travel. Bloomberg reports that Hertz is hoping to push maintenance and refueling costs down by switching to electric cars, as well as planning to build out a customers-only charger network. To celebrate the deal, Hertz hired quarterback celeb Tom Brady for a cheesy ad, showing off its new Tesla fleet. Now, the ball is in Tesla’s court to deliver the vehicles. “There is quite an execution journey ahead of us,” Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn told Reuters.

Read more …

“‘It would be such a stain on the system in this country that I certainly hope there will be enough pressure and realisation of how devastating it would be for this country ..”

• ‘Unthinkable’ For High Court To Lift US Extradition Ban On Julian Assange (DM)

The editor-in chief of WikiLeaks believes it would be ‘unthinkable’ for the High Court to lift a US extradition ban on website founder Julian Assange. Speaking ahead of a crunch hearing at the High Court this week, Kristinn Hrafnsson said would be ‘totally unacceptable’ for judges to overturn a decision blocking the extradition of the Australian activist. The High Court is due to hear an appeal this week against a January decision not to extradite the 50-year-old to face charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military files due to concerns that he would be a suicide risk in a US prison. And Mr Hrafnsson told a press briefing in London on Monday: ‘It is unthinkable that the High Court will come to any other decision but to uphold the magistrates’ court decision. Anything else is totally unacceptable.


‘It would be such a stain on the system in this country that I certainly hope there will be enough pressure and realisation of how devastating it would be for this country if somehow the judge comes to the decision of reversing the magistrates’ court decision.’ The briefing panel, which also included Mr Assange’s lawyer and partner Stella Moris and director of international campaigns at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Rebecca Vincent, said the forthcoming hearing follows an investigation, published by Yahoo News, which alleged plots to abduct or kill Mr Assange. A security firm, under investigation in Madrid, is also alleged to have spied on Mr Assange on behalf of the CIA while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and been part of the alleged plot. Ms Moris said: ‘This is a game-changer going into the appeal because it shows the true nature, the true origins, the true criminality of the US actions against Julian and it completely taints any semblance of legality of this appeal going into it.’

Read more …

It certainly should be.

• Allegation Of CIA Murder Plot Game-changer In Assange Extradition Hearing (R.)

The partner of Julian Assange said on Monday a media report that the CIA had plotted to kill or kidnap the WikiLeaks founder was a game-changer in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. U.S. authorities will this week begin their appeal against a British judge’s refusal to extradite Assange – who is wanted on 18 criminal charges including breaking a spying law – because his mental health problems meant he would be at risk of suicide. Last month, Yahoo News reported CIA officials had drawn up options for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration for dealing with Assange while he was holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, including assassinating or kidnapping him.

[..] “This (Yahoo report) is a game changer going into the appeal because it shows the true nature, the true origins, the true criminality of the U.S. actions against Julian,” his fiancee Stella Moris, with whom Assange has had two children, told reporters. WikiLeaks came to prominence when it began to publish thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010. Soon afterwards Sweden sought Assange’s extradition from Britain over allegations of sex crimes. When he lost that case against extradition in 2012, he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy. He was finally dragged out from the embassy in April 2019 and jailed for breaching British bail conditions, although the Swedish case against him had already been dropped.

U.S. authorities then sought his extradition. Although the British judge on Jan. 4 rejected Assange’s arguments that the case was political and an assault on freedom of speech, Moris said there was a real risk that, if found guilty, he would be held in a maximum security prison in almost total isolation. That would lead him to attempting suicide, Moris concluded. U.S. lawyers aim to challenge the ruling against U.S. extradition and the evidence given by a key expert at a two-day High Court appeal hearing in London starting on Wednesday. No result is immediately expected, and Moris said the process could be fast, with Assange extradited by next summer, or it could take years. “Both prospects are terrifying,” she said. Currently, Assange is being held at London’s top security Belmarsh Prison where Moris visited him on Saturday, saying he looked very thin. “He was looking very unwell,” she said.

Read more …

Kevin Gosztola spells it all out.

• A Guide To The US Appeal In The Assange Extradition Case (Gosztola)

On October 27, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom will hear the Crown Prosecution Service argue on behalf of the United States government that a lower court improperly blocked the U.S. from extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The proceedings in London are expected to last two days and will involve five grounds for appeal that were previously approved by the High Court of Justice. (Two were reinstated by the court after a hearing on August 11.) District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on January 4 that Assange’s mental health was such that it would be “oppressive to extradite him” to the U.S. But two days later, she accepted the U.S. government’s objections and ordered him to remain in jail while her decision was appealed.

Assange is detained at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in London, a high-security prison where he has been held since he was expelled from the Ecuador Embassy on April 11, 2019. He faces 18 charges—17 of which are charges under the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a U.S. law passed in 1917 that the Justice Department has increasingly wielded against media sources who share “classified” documents or talk about sensitive information with journalists. Because Assange is the first publisher to be charged under the law, press freedom organizations around the world have roundly condemned the political prosecution. It also is part of a troubling development where the U.S. government increasingly seeks to impose its domestic laws on foreign nationals. Assange is an Australian citizen and has no ties whatsoever to the United States.

Each of the charges, aside from a conspiracy to commit a computer crime offense, solely relate to the documents that were submitted by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks in 2010: the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs, the U.S. State Embassy cables, and the Guantanamo Files. The general allegations in the indictment against Assange directly criminalize the publication of information.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Still eating
https://twitter.com/i/status/1452481253647785996

 

 

 

 

You may have noticed that: 13 x 13 = 169 and 31 x 31 = 961 which makes the two operations true even if read in reverse.
But this is not the only case.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle September 14 2021

Sep 142021
 
 September 14, 2021  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Claude Monet The Manneporte at Étretat 1886

 

• Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)
• Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)
• Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)
• Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)
• Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)
• Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)
• Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)
• New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)
• LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)
• FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)
• Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines
• Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)
• US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)
• Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

 

 

Gestetner

 

 

India

 

 

Kory/Ivory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great source that references tons of studies.

• Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)

The spike protein is a type of protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that helps the virus infect cells. The COVID vaccines available in the U.S. work by getting the body to produce this protein (with some modifications) so that the body will generate neutralizing antibodies to it. It turns out that the spike protein by itself, even without the rest of the virus present, has been shown to cause harm to the body. In Part I of this article I’ll summarize some of the studies that show this. This is not really controversial at this point. However, what is controversial is that some people have asked: if spike is dangerous, might we be endangering people by giving them vaccines that make the body produce spike?

Fact-checking articles that try to shoo away this concern usually refer to the fact that the spike encoded by the vaccines are different from “wild-type” spike (spike from the virus), and for this reason, they are safe. They also state that there is no evidence that the vaccine spike is harmful. In Part II, I’ll look into the evidence that shows that vaccine-encoded spike is not harmless. In Part III, I’ll discuss how most responses to concerns about vaccine-encoded spike usually misconstrue the concern, or don’t actually back up their statements with any real data. In Part IV, I’ll argue that we should consider the possibility that vaccine-encoded spike protein can cause lasting harm even in people that don’t have obvious or serious “adverse events” from the vaccine. In Part V, I’ll link to statements from other scientists or doctors who have concerns about the vaccines.

Before we go any further: I am not anti-vax. I am double-vaxed with Moderna. I used to be a biologist. I believe vaccines have saved many lives. However, not all vaccines are the same. And not all vaccines are equally safe, and we need to be able to have an open and honest discussion about this.

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“It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity,..”

• Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)

There is recent research on the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous for those who have already had COVID-19 and have recovered with inferred robust, complete, and durable immunity. These patients were excluded from the FDA-approved clinical trials performed by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. From these trials, the safety profile was unknown when the products for approved for Emergency Use Authorization in 2020. There has been no study demonstrating clinical benefit with COVID-19 vaccination in those who have well documented or even suspected prior COVID-19 illness.

A medical study of United Kingdom healthcare workers who had already had COVID-19 and then received the vaccine found that they suffered higher rates of side effects than the average population. Rachel K. Raw, et al., Previous COVID-19 infection but not Long-COVID-19 is associated with increased adverse events following BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccination, medRxiv (preprint), (last visited June 21, 2021).

The test group experienced more moderate to severe symptoms than the study group that did not previously have COVID-19. The symptoms included fever, fatigue, myalgia-arthralgia, and lymphadenopathy. Id. Raw found that in 974 individuals who received the BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccine, those with a prior history of SARS-CoV-2 or those who had positive antibodies at baseline had a higher rate of vaccine reactions than those who were COVID-19 naive. Mathioudakis et al. reported that in 2020 patients who underwent vaccination with either mRNA-based or vector-based COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19-recovered patients who were needlessly vaccinated had higher rates of vaccine reactions. Krammer et al. reported on 231 volunteers for COVID-19 vaccination, 83 of whom had positive SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the time of immunization.

The authors found: “Vaccine recipients with preexisting immunity experience systemic side effects with a significantly higher frequency than antibody naïve vaccines (e.g., fatigue, headache, chills, fever, muscle or joint pains, in order of decreasing frequency, P < 0.001 for all listed symptoms, Fisher’s exact test, two-sided).” To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors or those with suspected COVID-19 illness or subclinical disease who have laboratory evidence of prior infection. It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity, and is superior to vaccine immunity which by comparison has demonstrated massive failure including over 10,000 well-documented vaccine failure cases as reported by the CDC before tracking was stopped on May 31, 2021.

There are no studies demonstrating the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors, and there are three studies demonstrating harm in such individuals. Thus, it is my opinion that the COVID-19 vaccination is contraindicated in COVID-19 survivors, many of whom may be in the student population. Multiple laboratory studies conducted by highly respected U.S. and European academic research groups have reported that convalescent mildly or severely infected COVID-19 patients who are unvaccinated can have greater virus-neutralizing immunity—especially more versatile, long-enduring T- cell immunity—relative to vaccinated individuals who were never infected.

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BMJ, September 2020. T cells and vitamin D. A year later, the UK still recommends 400 IU per day, which guarantees people will get very sick. Fauci takes 6,000 IU.

“When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D..”

• Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)

All this should have shifted the focus of efforts towards T-cells at an early stage – the real question is why mainstream media and others continued to focus efforts and narrative on antibodies. Is it because vaccines are good at provoking antibody responses but not so great at generating T-cells? Some of the vaccines presently under trial do elicit some T-cells but it seems that neither the quantity nor variety are hugely impressive. Does this matter? Apparently so: Research establishments including Yale found that in mild or asymptomatic cases, many T-cells are produced. These were highly varied, responding not just to parts of the Spike, S protein or Receptor Binding Domain but to many other parts of the virus [1, 4-6]. Notably, in these mild cases there were few or no detectable antibodies.

Conversely, the severely ill produced few T-cells with less variety but had plenty of antibodies. What is also of interest is that men produced fewer T-cells than women, and unlike women, their T-cell response reduced with age [7]. So why are some people unable to mount a good protective T-cell response? The key to this question might be a 10-year-old Danish study led by Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen [8]. Geisler noted that “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,”, and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, “they won’t even begin to mobilize.”

In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cells from their inactive naïve state. The question of whether T-cells might also need a continuing supply of vitamin D to prevent the T-cell exhaustion and apoptosis observed in some serious COVID-19 cases [9] deserves further research. High levels of vitamin D are also critical for first line immune defences including physical mucosal defences, human antiviral production, modulating cytokines, reducing blood clotting and a whole host of other important immune system functions [10]. The obese, diabetics and people of BAME origin are far more deficient in vitamin D and men have lower levels than women.

Another intriguing clue is that Japan has the highest proportion of elderly on the planet but despite lack of lockdowns, little mask wearing and high population densities in cities, it escaped with few COVID deaths. Could this, at least in part, be because of extraordinarily high vitamin D levels of over 30 ng/ml in 95% of the active elderly [11]? By comparison, UK average levels are below 20ng/ml [10]. Vitamin D is made in the skin from the action of UV sunlight, food usually being a poor source, but the Japanese diet includes unusually high levels. Sunny countries near the equator (e.g. Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka) also have very low COVID related deaths.

The results of the first vitamin D intervention double blind RCT for COVID was published on 29 August by researchers in Córdoba, Spain. This very well conducted study produced spectacular outcomes for the vitamin D group (n=50), virtually eliminating the need for ICU (reducing it by 96%) and eliminating deaths (8% in the n=26 control group). Although this was a small trial, the ICU results are so dramatic that they are statistically highly significant [12]. Substantially more vitamin D is required for optimal immune function than for bone health. It seems Dr Fauci is not ignorant of this, having apparently confirmed on TV and by email that he takes 6,000 IU daily! (see Dr John Campbell on YouTube Vitamin D and pandemic science, 16 September 2020). Meanwhile the US’s health body continues to recommend only 600-800 IU and the UK’s, only 400 IU.

Read more …

“By vaccinating the unvaccinated, increasing our testing and masking, and protecting the vaccinated, we can end the pandemic. That’s exactly what we are committed to doing.” – Kamala Harris

Never before in history has there been a need to “protect the vaccinated.” There isn’t one now unless the jabs not only don’t work, in some percentage of people who took them they make infection worse — and they know it.”

• Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)

While you can excuse Biden for being a demented old coot and unable to think before his mouth opens you can’t make that argument for Kamala. Her statement above is proof that what Biden said the other day was not an accident. Indeed, he was likely reading off a teleprompter and it is an official position of the US Federal Government at all levels. This in turn implies they know the vaccines not only have failed they are potentiating infections instead of protecting against them. Why else would you “protect the vaccinated”? But wait: Who caused all these people to be put in the position where they are more likely to get ****ed? That would be the CDC, NIH, Fauci personally and both the Trump and Biden Administrations. What might be scaring the crap out of them? Perhaps data like this:

Add to that anecdotal reports so far about people who were fully vaccinated not only winding up in the hospital and dying but crashing very rapidly — somethin that hasn’t happened throughout the time we’ve had Covid-19 here in the United States and which isn’t happening in unvaccinated persons. Gee, isn’t that something — especially when on the data we also know, and even Fauci has admitted it, that being previously infected and recovered is extraordinarily good protection — far better than that afforded by these vaccines. He refused to answer said question in a presser the other day. In other words for the previously-infected the jabs only offer risk, no benefit, exactly as does a HPV shot for a nun, who is in fact celibate and virginal, in a convent. Now that “potential risk” from not collecting the data before jabbing a huge number of Americans appears to be on the verge of turning into very real and lethal risk!


There is no way to know whether those currently-anecdotal reports will turn into an unavoidable cascade of cases that absolutely nobody will be able to ignore. Don’t you think we should have figured all of this out before we went on a stabby spree with lightly tested technology that you cannot turn around and undo if it goes badly? We would have found out and halted what may well be an incipient disaster if we didn’t proceed with “Warp Speed” and instead went through the regular process of gathering that long-term data while allowing the use of these jabs only by those at the highest degree of individual “bad outcome” infection risk (such as residents of nursing homes who have, on average, six months of remaining life and thus long-term risks are, for most of them, irrelevant.) They tried to kill you and got jabs into 200 million American arms — although whether it was intentional or simply stupidity and greed that drove what happened is up for debate — and now they’re trying to cover it up.

Read more …

Mercola has already taken this down again, as he does standard now, I’m sorry. We should save his pieces in their entirety.

Fleming: “The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.”

• Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)

In his book, “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” Dr. Richard Fleming documents evidence showing SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon created over the past two decades. Once you conclude that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon, you must also recognize that the COVID shots are nothing more than the genetic reproduction of that bioweapon. In other words, they are bioweapons too. The same people involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these COVID shots. Health care workers are injecting people with something they cannot possibly give informed consent for, which means health care workers are violating their Hippocratic Oath.

Health care workers who give these COVID shots are also violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Treaty, the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and other legal statutes. Helping you take control of your health in these crazy times is Dr. Richard Fleming, a prolific author in addition to being a physicist, a nuclear cardiologist, researcher and attorney. Here, we discuss his latest book “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” slated for release September 7, 2021. It’s currently available for preorder on Amazon. It’s an incredibly well-documented book and contains history that many of us aren’t aware of. As it turns out, the creation of this virus goes back not a year or two but two decades.

[..] “You see real efforts to produce viruses, coronaviruses, in particular. Spike proteins of coronaviruses to be even more specific, as I show in the book, paid for by the federal government by people who say they were not involved in gain-of-function research. Well, their fingerprints are on the documents, or on the published papers or on the grants or on the patents. You can’t say that you’re not involved in things when the documents show differently. They show the work and the money that came out of the federal government that went to Peter Daszak at EcoHealth, that went to Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other places. For me, as a researcher, obviously, once I start to investigate something, the only way you can stop me from doing that is to put a bullet in my head.

Otherwise, I’m going to stay after it. There are things that are not in the book that are going to come out in international criminal court, things I’m saving for that, because this virus is, by definition, a biological weapon. It violates the biological weapons convention treaty. You just have to look at the definitions. It provides nothing useful to humanity. It’s dangerous. When Fort Detrick is involved and the Department of Defense is involved … and you see these monies and you see the people that are involved, you realize that … the United States was playing China, China was playing the United States, and you saw who got caught in between. And they’re still playing the game. For lack of a better term, this book is an indictment.

That’s now my attorney hat going on saying that I have provided in this book evidence that I would take to a grand jury … I’m not somebody who is going to give up on having these people dealt with, because all the freedoms that we have lost, and the rights that we have lost as individuals, not to mention just the numbers of people who have died. My argument is … the reason why they died is because they didn’t get treatment for the inflammation and the blood clotting that I and other doctors have shown works. The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.

At no other time in American history have doctors looked at patients and said, ‘We can’t do anything for you. Go home and come back when you get sicker.’ We have always treated people with breathing problems with medications for breathing problems. We’ve always treated people with clotting problems with medicines to stop the clotting. And so, the reason why this is so critical to understand is because the same people who were involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these vaccines.”

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Twitter thread. “Could this be a vax escape lineage?”

• Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)

A new delta sublineage AY.33 has been designated that (to me) appears to be the most critical delta sublineage designated so far. (journos please don’t yet write about it, this has not been scrutinised by the science community) The defining Spike mutation is S:Q613H, a mutation that has already been studied in the context of other variants due to it’s closeness to the mutation S:D614G which got fixed last summer. The other spike substitutions on top of standard Delta are S:T29A, S:T250I, S:T299I. This lineage grabbed my attention not because of its high growth rate but because of its high number of extra spike mutations that is a clear outlier on the current delta tree (see screenshot).

The lineage is most common in Belgium but also growing in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland and has already been observed in more than 25 countries. The first observation was in Japan mid-June in a traveller from Morocco. The second observation was in Morocco. Using timetree, the lineage seems to have arisen in April/ May. Belgium has strong ties to Morocco so it’s plausible that the lineage is widespread in North Africa where unfortunately there is very little sequencing activity (last sequences is 3mo old and this precise lineage). At this point in time, it’s difficult to estimate growth advantage because in no country has this lineage reached more than 10% and we only have a few weeks of data. But using naive methods, it’s plausible that the transmission advantage could be between 10-70%.

Comparing transmission advantages it’s interesting to see that the growth rate seems to be higher in countries with higher vaccination rate Spain: advantage ~70% (left)
Denmark: ~30%
Belgium: ~30%
Germany: ~20%
Switzerland: ~10% (right)
Could this be a vax escape lineage?
If I was a lab scientist, I’d take a close look at this lineage and study neutralising antibody titers. Any comments are very welcome! If you think there’s something fishy going on that could explain this, please comment! 8/

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“..that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare..”

• Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)

Joe Biden is looking a little Grinchy, having decided to fire the unvaccinated across America as we head toward the holidays. Even though the end of enhanced unemployment benefits has not brought back millions of former employees who’ve held out since the COVID lockdown, Biden decided it would be wise to fire a lot more people, mandating last week that all businesses with more than 100 employees terminate any employees who continue to refuse the government’s experimental, warp-speed vaccine. While President Biden may think he’s going to strong-arm people who don’t want to get vaccinated into a strong shot in the arm by punishing them with poverty and the threat of losing their homes as we enter the holiday season, he may find he find he has just enraged them and increased their willingness to take a stand against forced medication.


If so, that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare. I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, I see a number of small businesses already running fewer hours due to lack of employees and running with reduced menus or partially empty shelves due to unattainable supply. Has Jumpin’ Joe not stopped to think that an additional major drain of employees to run shops and move products around the nation does not add up to the kind of holiday retail season that can put companies in the black and may be all it takes to shove an already fading economy into a black winter hole? Will major trucking companies like Swift being forced by the nation’s ruler-by-decree to lay off hundreds of Trump-loving truckers help the nation with its widespread shortages?

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Step 1.

• New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)

New York City’s largest teacher’s union has won a battle to keep teachers and other educators employed if they suffer from certain medical conditions and don’t want to comply as a result with the Big Apple’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. An arbitrator ruled late Friday that teachers with certain documented medical afflictions must be offered assignments outside of classrooms and be kept on the city’s payroll. Other educators who don’t want a COVID-19 vaccine must be offered unpaid leave that keeps in place their health coverage or a severance package. City officials announced last month that all 148,000 Department of Education employees would have to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with limited exemptions.

The city planned to remove people who were granted an exemption from the payroll, infuriating the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the city’s largest teacher’s union. “That was it for us,” Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president, said on NY 1 this week. That prompted pushback, which ultimately resulted in the arbitration decision, even after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio seemed to publicly reverse the stance in a press conference on Wednesday. De Blasio said that few cases of medical or religious exemptions being granted are expected, “but they will be honored” if approved. “Those folks will continue to work for us in some capacity, in some location. We got to work that through,” he added, referring to the arbitration.

Mulgrew said the pushback from the union resulted in the reversal. “After our demand for independent arbitration, the city backed off its initial position that all unvaccinated personnel be removed from payroll, and will offer out-of-classroom work for those with certified medical or other conditions,” he said in a statement after the arbitrator’s decision was released.

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Step 2.

• LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)

Los Angeles police department (LAPD) employees have sued over requirements they get vaccinated for Covid-19, alleging that the department has created a “hostile work environment” for the unvaccinated and that the mandate violates employees’ privacy and civil rights. The suit is one of several aggressive challenges to vaccine mandates by police unions and officers across California, some of whom have threatened mass resignations in response to new rules. It comes as staff at law enforcement agencies remain unvaccinated at disproportionately high rates. LA’s vaccine mandate requires city employees to be vaccinated by 20 October unless they are approved for a specific religious or medical exemption.

Six LAPD employees over the weekend asserted in a federal complaint that that policy and its implementation infringed on their rights to “bodily integrity” and constituted “coerced medical treatment”. The complaint says that officials have threatened to lay off thousands of officers who refuse to get the jab. The lawsuit comes amid increasingly fraught debates over employer vaccination mandates in America, which escalated last week after Joe Biden announced the government would temporarily mandate that employers with more than 100 employees require workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly.

The federal government and California have had public sector mandates in place for months, but some cities have adopted stricter requirements – that employees must be vaccinated and cannot submit to regular testing as an alternative. The LA suit, which was brought against the city, the police chief and several other government officials, claims that weekly testing is “highly intrusive”. It alleges that officers have not been given enough time to apply for exemptions, after a Monday deadline.

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“Dr Marion Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).”

As such, her voice was essential in approving the Pfizer vaccine. That happened on August 23. On August 30, she resigned. What’s going on?

• FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)

A group of senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials – including two who announced they will soon resign – have authored a report disagreeing with the White House’s plan to roll out COVID-19 vaccine boosters next week. In a report published in in The Lancet on Monday, the 18 officials write that there is no evidence supporting the need for boosters because fully vaccinated people still have high levels of protection against hospitalization or death. Instead, they say, vaccine doses should be donated to areas with lower vaccination rates to prevent the emergence of more COVID-19 variants. Although the administration is ready to roll out boosters starting September 20, President Joe Biden said last week that any decisions – including when to authorize boosters and who should receive them – will be left up to the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The group of FDA authors of the new report include Dr Marion Gruber and Dr Philip Krause, who plan to step down in the coming months due to disagreements over the rollout of vaccines. ‘Although the idea of further reducing the number of COVID-19 cases by enhancing immunity in vaccinated people is appealing, any decision to do so should be evidence-based and consider the benefits and risks for individuals and society,’ the officials wrote in the report. ‘COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe disease, including that caused by the Delta variant. ‘Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting.’

[..] Last month, health officials announced the those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine would be eligible for a third shot eight months after receiving their second, starting September 20. The move was pending approval from the regulators like the FDA, though, and it appears they will not be approved by the planned roll out date next Monday. Gruber and Krause were frustrated by the decision from the White House to make the public announcement for the shots before approval, leading to the pair – who are crucial to the FDA’s process of approval of vaccines – announcing they will soon resign. Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Krause is the deputy director of CBER.

The office is responsible for regulating ‘biological products for human use under applicable federal laws,’ according to the FDA. In essence, the office is largely responsible for making final decisions regarding things like vaccines, and making sure they are safe for human consumption. Gruber is one of the most important figures in the approval of vaccines. Now with senior officials choosing to publicly oppose the measure, the White House’s plans could be in turmoil.

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100s of people and a $1 million fund.

• Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines

The Swedish government has announced a new proposal that would see those who have taken coronavirus vaccines and have been injured as a result will be entitled to compensation. The Swedish government announced the new proposal on Thursday, with Social Minister Lena Hallengren commenting: “Serious side effects of vaccines against COVID-19 are uncommon, but as an individual, you should be sure that financial compensation is paid in the event of injury.” “With this bill, the state takes it upon itself to pay the compensation for damage due to approved vaccines against COVID-19, in cases where a vaccine is not covered by Pharmaceutical Insurance or if the Pharmaceutical Insurance money is not enough,” Hallengren added.

The new law comes after the Swedish Board of Pharmaceutical Insurance made moves in December of last year to limit insurance liability in the case of injuries caused by vaccines during the Wuhan virus pandemic. “Due to the limitation of Pharmaceutical Insurance, there is weaker protection for possible serial damage caused by vaccines against COVID-19 than for other medicines. The government, therefore, considers that there is a need for the State to supplement Pharmaceutical Insurance in this regard,” the government stated in a press release. The new law would come into force in December but retroactively grant compensation to anyone injured as a result of the vaccines prior to that date. The government has also proposed to set aside 10 million Swedish kronor (£837,761/$1,159,443) to fund the initiative.

Compensation for injuries related to the vaccine is harder to access in other countries — like the United States, where lawyers have told prospective clients they may be unable to claim any compensation. Lawyer Altom Maglio told news service Reuters in July that his firm had been contacted by around a hundred people but said that despite his firm representing many people with vaccine-related injuries in the past, those looking to get compensation regarding the coronavirus vaccines were out of luck. Earlier this year, the Canadian federal government opened a vaccine injury compensation programme but stated only those with “a serious and permanent injury” would be eligible for any compensation.

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“senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity..”

The Guradian changes tack, from dewormer to a more ‘reasonable’ approach.

• Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)

Despite outstanding questions over Ivermectin’s efficacy, several advocacy organizations have been on a nearly year-long campaign to mainstream the drug. Two of the most prominent groups backing Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment are the UK-based British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (Bird) and the US-based Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). The FLCCC started as a non-profit network of doctors attempting to establish protocols for Covid-19 patient care in the initial days of the pandemic. The group became an early advocate for the use of steroids in treatment, and in late 2020 shifted its focus to Ivermectin, arguing the drug was a low cost option that could both treat and prevent the virus while vaccines were not widely available.

Bird, a non-profit group of doctors in the UK, took on a similar advocacy role. Its members published analyses promoting the drug, and the group started a now-defunct GoFundMe to “help us get life-saving drug approved for Covid-19”. The fund had raised around $44,000 as of last month. The FLCCC also solicits donations on its website, and in July it received a $100,000 award from a Malaysian charitable trust. Doctors in both groups have been on a media blitz during the last year, publishing protocols and promotional material on Ivermectin, giving interviews to news outlets, holding panels and appearing on major podcasts. But other doctors have cautioned the groups have relied on weak data, ignored studies that show Ivermectin is not effective and made numerous misleading claims in their push for the drug – such as FLCCC tweeting last month that “this could all be over by the end of August” and one founding member comparing restrictions on Ivermectin to genocide.

[..] Co-founder and president of FLCCC, pulmonary care specialist Dr Pierre Kory, has also found allies among influential politicians and media figures who have spoken critically of Covid-19 vaccines. At a December 2020 hearing chaired by senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity and made misleading statements about vaccinations causing death, Kory called Ivermectin “the solution to Covid-19”. The appearance boosted Kory’s online following and led to appearances on several popular podcasts that have questioned vaccinations. In June, Kory was a guest on Joe Rogan’s top-rated podcast, telling Rogan’s millions of listeners that his “dream is that every household has ivermectin in the cupboard” while suggesting that technology companies were censoring discussion of the drug.

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All I can see in this is utter madness.

• US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)

Purdue Pharma, the bankrupt maker of the OxyContin painkiller, on Monday obtained court approval to pay up to $7.1 million in incentive payments for five top executives if they meet certain goals, despite opposition from U.S. government lawyers. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, signed off on the executive incentive plan at the conclusion of a virtual hearing. His ruling comes about two weeks after he said he would approve Purdue’s reorganization plan, which rests on a $10 billion settlement of opioid-related litigation. read more The judge said repeatedly during Monday’s hearing that he does not consider the incentive payments “bonuses” because even if they are paid out in full, the executives would still only fall in the middle of the total compensation range for executives at major pharmaceutical companies.

The incentive payments, he said, are essentially part of the executives’ salaries, he added. “It’s easy — too easy in fact — to say that an incentive program is always a bonus,” Drain said. “No doubt my ruling will be construed by some as authorizing large bonuses to executives. I do not believe that is in fact the case here,” he added. “A bonus is something you get over and above median compensation.” He rejected an argument from the U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog, the U.S. Trustee, that Purdue failed to show that the 2021 incentive plan is truly incentivizing, rather than a bonus for executives who are simply showing up to work. The U.S. Trustee frequently objects to bonuses for executives of companies that are in bankruptcy.

[..] Drain approved Purdue’s reorganization plan on Sept. 1, but the process of implementing it is ongoing. The plan rests on a $10 billion settlement that resolves thousands of lawsuits accusing the company and its owners, the Sackler family, of fueling the opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of its products. The Sacklers contributed approximately $4.5 billion to the settlement in exchange for the release of future opioid-related litigation. Under the plan, Purdue will reorganize as a public-benefit company with profits steered toward victims of the crisis through opioid abatement programs. A handful of states that opposed the settlement have already filed appeals. More than 500,000 Americans have died since 1999 from opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Xi is taking a big risk not bailing them out.

• Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

It took Evergrande less than a day to go from denying “rumors” of bankruptcy (as per a statement posted on its website earlier today), to confirming that a bankruptcy is imminent. In a filing on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday, Evergrande which was busy trying to convince angry Chinese mobs that they will get their money and/or apartments and that it has no plans of default, the company all but conceded that a bankruptcy is imminent when it said it has hired notable bankruptcy advisors Houlihan Lokey and Admiralty Harbour Capital as joint FAs to “assess the firm’s capital structure”, a well-known euphemism of “prepare to file for bankruptcy.” And just so there was no doubt as to what is coming next, the company said if it’s unable to repay debts on time or get creditors to agree to extensions or alternative arrangements, it may lead to cross-default.

It quickly went downhill from there, with the company saying that it expects “significant continuing decline” in contract sales in September, resulting in “continuous deterioration” of cash collection, according to the statement. That will place “tremendous pressure” on the group’s cashflow and liquidity. Finally, guaranteeing that a default is just a matter of days if not less, the company admitted that it has failed to make “material progress” on the sale of stakes in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd. and Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd., while the sale of its office building in Hong Kong hasn’t been completed within the expected timetable.

In short a total disaster, and all this is happening a tens of thousands of Chinese are starting to feel insurrectiony – the real thing, not that January 6 tourist trap – and if they suffer losses, and in a company with $300BN in debt they will suffer major losses, their protests which have been largely peaceful to date will turn quite violent. As we reported this morning, police descended on Evergrande’s Shenzhen headquarters late Monday after dozens of people gathered to demand repayments on overdue wealth management products. Protesters numbered in the hundreds on Sunday, Caixin reported. In addition to equity investors who are about to lose everything, the company is also facing angry homebuyers, creditors and even its own employees… who are also about to lose everything.

“It looks like they are working on debt restructuring after no concrete results on asset disposals, and the first task is to stabilize the holders of wealth management products which could be a social issue,” said Daniel Fan, a credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It seems the developer is working on rescheduling pretty much all onshore debt, and the next step is to do the same for offshore investors. Translation: a bond default is imminent, and the only question is what will creditors get in return.

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Hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1437071028744867842

 

 

 

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