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Debt Rattle October 30 2022

Oct 302022
 
 October 30, 2022  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Balthus Girl at the window 1955

 

• Americans Support Quick Diplomatic End To War In Ukraine (ReSt)
• ‘Russia Will Lose The Energy Battle,’ Says IEA Chief Fatih Birol (EN)
• Russian Energy ‘Will Never Return’ – IEA (RT)
• US LNG Cannot Replace The Russian Natural Gas That Europe Has Lost (OP)
• Putin: “The Situation Is, To A Certain Extent, Revolutionary” (Escobar)
• ‘Massive’ Drone Attack On Black Sea Fleet – Russia (BBC)
• Russia Suspends Its Participation In Grain Deal (RT)
• British Navy Involved In Nord Stream 2 ‘Terrorist Attack’ – Russia (RT)
• German Bailout Of Struggling Energy Giant May Reach €60 Billion – BBG (RT)
• Orbán Says Hungary Is ‘Exempt’ From The Conflict (Dalos)
• Japan Unveils Massive Spending Package (RT)
• GM “Paused” Ads on Musk’s Twitter (WS)
• Writers, Publishers, Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal (Turley)
• UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate (Mish)

 

 

“Tough times never last but tough people do.”
~Robert H. Schuller

 

 

 

 

Tucker fair fight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clare Daly

 

 

 

 

Twitter just reinstated Peter McCullough, but there’s more:

Senator Ron Johnson @SenRonJohnson:
“Hearing Dr. Peter McCullough has been stripped of his medical certifications. On what basis did this occur? He has dedicated his life to saving others. This is outrageous and must be reversed.”

 

 

 

 

You read this, you think: a voice of reason. But they still have to resort to blatant lies: “The poll’s release comes after Vladimir Putin doubled down on Russia’s war in Ukraine by mobilizing reserves and issuing threats to use nuclear weapons after recent gains by the Ukrainian military near the country’s eastern border with Russia.”

Putin mentioned nukes exactly once, and that was long before Ukraine’s “recent gains”. It was also not a threat. It was a statement.

• Americans Support Quick Diplomatic End To War In Ukraine (ReSt)

Nearly 60 percent of Americans would support the United States engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the war in Ukraine, even if that means Ukraine having to make concessions to Russia, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Data for Progress on behalf of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also found that a plurality (49 percent) said the Biden administration and Congress have not done enough diplomatically to help end the war (37 percent said they had). The poll’s release comes after Vladimir Putin doubled down on Russia’s war in Ukraine by mobilizing reserves and issuing threats to use nuclear weapons after recent gains by the Ukrainian military near the country’s eastern border with Russia.


Moscow has also recently orchestrated referendums in some Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine on whether citizens there want to secede and become part of the Russian Federation, leading experts to believe that regardless of the outcome, Putin plans to illegally annex parts of Ukraine. The survey also found that 47 percent said they support the continuation of U.S. military aid to Ukraine only if Washington is involved in ongoing diplomacy to end the war, while 41 percent said they would support aid regardless of whether the United States is engaged in negotiations. Just six percent said Russia’s war in Ukraine is among the top three most important issues facing the United States today, with the top three being inflation (46 percent), jobs and the economy (31 percent), and gun violence (26 percent).

Read more …

Fatih Birol has been issuing nonsense for many years. That’s precisely why he’s kept his job all this time.

But it’s very simple: if you have all the “energy”, you cannot lose the battle for it.

• ‘Russia Will Lose The Energy Battle,’ Says IEA Chief Fatih Birol (EN)

Russia will lose the energy battle it is waging against the West, according to Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). “Just before the invasion [of Ukraine], about 65% of the Russian total gas exports went to Europe and 55% of the Russian oil export went to Europe,” Birol told Euronews on Friday afternoon. “Europe was by far the largest market, the largest client for Russia, and Russia lost this client forever. The biggest client.” Birol’s comments appeared to refer to the retaliatory action that the European Union has taken in response to the Ukraine war: a near-total oil embargo of Russian gas and a highly expensive push to diversify gas suppliers, mainly through liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Asked if Russia could replace European clients with other regions, Birol said that would not be easy because “a big chunk” of Russian gas originates in Western Siberia and then flows to Europe via pipelines. Building brand-new pipelines to China or India could take up to 10 years, he predicted, and a significant amount of technology and investment. “You are not selling onions in the market, you are selling natural gas. It’s a different business,” Birol said. “So to replace the natural gas exports to Europe with Russia is, in the short term, a pipe dream.” But Russia is not the only country going through troubled times. In his interview with Euronews, recorded at the IEA’s headquarters in Paris, Birol spoke of an international crisis of unprecedented scope and reach, wreaking havoc in all corners of the world.

“We are in the middle of the first truly global energy crisis. Our world has never, ever witnessed an energy crisis with this depth and with this complexity,” he said. “In the 1970s, we had an oil crisis, but it was only oil. Now we have oil, natural gas, coal, electricity. The reason is very simple: Russia, the country that invaded Ukraine, is the largest energy exporter of the world.” Birol described Europe as the “epicentre” of the storm and characterised its decades-long reliance on cheap Russian fuels as a “mistake” at the root of the present crisis. The IEA chief predicted the continent will be able to make it through the upcoming winter with just some “economic and social bruises” and no major damage — but only if the winter “is not too long and not too cold, and if there are no major surprises.”

Birol, however, expressed greater concern about the 2023-2024 winter, citing three key factors: Europe’s absence of Russian gas, China’s economic recovery and tighter conditions in the LNG markets. “In the next few years, we have to be ready [to deal] with volatile and high energy prices and we have to find solutions,” he said. “But to be very frank, this winter is difficult and next winter may be even harder.”

Read more …

More Birol.

• Russian Energy ‘Will Never Return’ – IEA (RT)

Russia may “never” regain its position in the global energy market due to Western sanctions in response to the country’s military operation in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its yearly World Energy Outlook, published on Thursday. The events in Ukraine are prompting a wholesale reorientation of global energy trade, leaving Russia with a much diminished position.All Russia’s trade ties with Europe based on fossil fuels had ultimately been undercut by Europe’s net zero ambitions, but […] now the rupture has come with a speed that few imagined possible … Russian fossil fuel exports will never return – in any of our scenarios – to the levels seen in 2021,” the agency said. It predicts that Russian oil and gas revenues will drop by more than half in the coming years, from around $75 billion last year to less than $30 billion in 2030.


Western sanctions prompted Russia, which previously supplied around 20% of the globe’s fossil fuels, to reorient its energy exports toward Asian markets, but according to the IEA the country is unsuccessful in finding markets for all of the flows that previously went to Europe. Longer term prospects are weakened by uncertainties over demand, as well as restricted access to international capital and technologies to develop more challenging fields and LNG projects, the agency explained. Overall, according to the IEA the world is facing a crisis of unprecedented depth and complexity in terms of energy, with a profound reorientation of international energy trade already underway. The agency predicts that the energy crisis is likely to force countries to speed up their energy transition, as solar and wind power, as well as electric vehicles, are deemed less vulnerable to political crises and sanctions than fossil fuels.

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Not even close.

• US LNG Cannot Replace The Russian Natural Gas That Europe Has Lost (OP)

Europe cannot rely solely on imports of U.S. LNG to offset the pipeline gas supply it will have lost from Russia when it starts rebuilding inventories after the end of this winter, according to BloombergNEF. So far this year, American LNG has been crucial in meeting demand in Europe, which is scrambling for gas supply and willing to pay up for spot deliveries, outbidding most of Asia. The United States is shipping record volumes of LNG to Europe to help EU allies and nearly 70% of all American LNG exports were headed to Europe in September, according to Refinitiv Eikon data cited by Reuters. However, the significant drop in Russian gas supply this year occurred only in June, meaning that Europe could still stock up on some Russian gas earlier this year.

Ahead of the 2023/2024 winter, however, the gap in gas supply in Europe will be much wider without Russian gas. Europe will not be importing much Russian gas—or none at all if Russia cuts off deliveries via the one link left operational via Ukraine and via TurkStream—compared to relatively stable imports from Russia in the first half of this year, before Moscow started gradually cutting volumes via Nord Stream in June until shutting down the pipeline in early September. “The year-on-year increase is not sufficient to offset a total cut in Russian piped supply with under half of these volumes met by LNG increases,” BNEF analyst Arun Toora said.

“The good news is that Russia looks close to having played its last card in terms of gas leverage over Europe. However Europe’s challenges will not disappear with the daffodils next spring,” London-based consultancy Timera Energy said in a winter gas market outlook at the beginning of October. Without most of the Russian gas supply, Europe will likely need to offset around 40 bcm of additional lost Russian flows next year. LNG alone cannot meet this volume, considering a lack of new global liquefaction capacity in the short-term, including in the U.S., limited further demand elasticity in Asia, and European regasification capacity constraints. Therefore, European demand will need to fall, Timera Energy said.

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“Putin in fact did nail where we are: on the edge of a Revolution.”

• Putin: “The Situation Is, To A Certain Extent, Revolutionary” (Escobar)

[..] the heart of the matter at Valdai is its 2022 report, “A World Without Superpowers”. The report’s central thesis – eminently correct – is that “the United States and its allies, in fact, no longer enjoy the status of dominant superpower, but the global infrastructure that serves it is still in place.” Of course all major interconnected issues at the current crossroads were precipitated because” Russia became the first major power which, guided by its own ideas of security and fairness, chose to discard the benefits of ‘global peace’ created by the only superpower.” Well, not exactly “global peace”; rather a Mafia-enforced ethos of “our way or the highway”.

The report quite diplomatically characterizes the freezing of Russia’s gold and foreign currency reserves and the “mop up” of Russia’s property abroad as “Western jurisdictions”, “if necessary”, being “guided by political expediency rather than the law”. That’s in fact outright theft, under the shadow of the “rules-based international order”. The report – optimistically – foresees the advent of a sort of normalized “cold peace” as “the best available solution today” – acknowledging at least this is far from guaranteed, and “will not halt the fundamental rebuilding of the international system on new foundations.” The foundation for evolving multipolarity has in fact been presented by the Russia-China strategic partnership only three weeks before imperially-ordered provocations forced Russia to launch the Special Military Operation (SMO).

The Valdai report duly acknowledges the role of Global South medium-sized powers that “exemplify the democratization of international politics” and may “act as shock absorbers during periods of upheaval.” That’s a direct reference to the role of BRICS+ as key protagonists. On the Big Picture across the chessboard, the analysis tends to get more realistic when it considers that “the triumph of ‘the only true idea’ makes effective dialogue and agreement with supporters of different views and values impossible by definition.” Putin alluded to it several times in his address. There’s no evidence whatsoever the Empire and its vassals will be deviating from their normative, imposed, value-laden unilateralism.

As for world politics beginning to “rapidly return to a state of anarchy built on force”, that’s self-evident: only the Empire of Chaos wants to impose anarchy, as it completely ran out of geopolitical and geoeconomic tools to control rebel nations, apart from the sanctions tsunami. So the report is correct when it identifies that the childish neo-Hegelian “end of history” wet dream in the end hit the wall of History: we’re back to the pattern of large scale conflicts between centers of power. And it’s also a fact that “simply changing the ‘operator’ as it happened in earlier centuries” (as in the US taking over from Britain) “just won’t work.” China might harbor a desire to become the new sheriff, but the Beijing leadership definitely is not interested.

And even if that happened the Hegemon would fiercely prevented it, as “the entire system” remains “under its control (primarily finance and the economy).” So the only way out, once again, is multipolarity – which the report characterizes, rather vaguely, as “a world without superpowers”, still in need of “a system of self-regulation, which implies much greater freedom of action and responsibility for such actions.” Stranger things have happened in History. As it stands, we are plunged deep into the maelstrom of complete collapse. Putin in fact did nail where we are: on the edge of a Revolution.

Read more …

“..in recent days, Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately delaying the passage of ships, creating a queue of more than 170 vessels.”

How does a massive attack solve this?

• ‘Massive’ Drone Attack On Black Sea Fleet – Russia (BBC)

Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out a “massive” drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. The attack began at 04:20 (01:20 GMT) and involved nine aerial and seven marine drones, Russian officials said. At least one warship is said to have been damaged in the strikes. Ukraine has not yet acknowledged the incident. Ukrainian troops have been successfully retaking territory occupied by Russians recently. Russia has replied by launching large-scale attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, particularly on the country’s energy grid. Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol, said Russia’s navy had repelled the latest attack. The strikes were the “most massive” on the city since Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian state media quoted the governor as saying.

He said that all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) had been shot down and no “civilian infrastructure” had been damaged. At least one vessel sustained minor damage, the Russian Ministry of Defence said. “In the course of repelling a terrorist attack on the outer roadstead of Sevastopol, the use of naval weapons and naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four marine unmanned vehicles, three more devices were destroyed on the internal roadstead,” a statement from the ministry read. Russia also claimed the ships targeted on Saturday morning were involved in ensuring the “grain corridor” as part of the international initiative to export agricultural products from Ukrainian ports.

The agreement, brokered by the UN and Turkey, allowed Ukraine to resume its Black Sea grain exports, which had been blocked when Russia invaded the country. It was personally negotiated by the UN secretary general and celebrated as a major diplomatic victory that helped ease a global food crisis. But Russia complains that its own exports are still hindered, and has previously suggested it might not renew the deal. In recent days, Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately delaying the passage of ships, creating a queue of more than 170 vessels.

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“Russia “is suspending its participation in the implementation of agreements on the export of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports..“

• Russia Suspends Its Participation In Grain Deal (RT)

Moscow has halted its compliance with a grain deal with Kiev, brokered by the UN and Türkiye, after Ukraine launched a major drone attack on ships involved in securing safe passage for agricultural cargo, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday.In a post on its Telegram channel, the ministry said Russia “is suspending its participation in the implementation of agreements on the export of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports”. It explained that the move was prompted by “a terror attack” against the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and civilian vessels involved in ensuring the security of the grain corridor. The ministry also alleged that the bombing was organized with the involvement of British military.

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Still no investigation results. Top secret.

• British Navy Involved In Nord Stream 2 ‘Terrorist Attack’ – Russia (RT)

Britain’s Royal Navy played a part in orchestrating and staging the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. The accusation follows the Russian Foreign Ministry’s claim that NATO conducted a military exercise during the summer, close to the location where the undersea explosions occurred. Writing on its official Telegram channel, the ministry alleged that Royal Navy operatives “took part in planning, supporting and implementing” a “terrorist attack” to blow up the gas pipelines on September 26. According to the Defense Ministry, the same British operatives were involved in the training of Ukrainian military personnel who recently attacked ships of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which were implementing a grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the UN and Türkiye.

The pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, abruptly lost pressure on September 26, following a series of underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. Both Western countries and Russia sounded the alarm about the incident, with Moscow denouncing it as a terrorist attack and calling for an investigation into the matter. In late September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that this summer, NATO conducted military drills not far from Bornholm, which featured intensive use of “deep-sea equipment’’. Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal, citing German officials familiar with the investigation, reported that the blasts which damaged the pipelines were caused by sabotage.

While the officials stopped short of naming the culprit, they were said to be “working under the assumption that Russia was behind the blasts.” Moscow has repeatedly denied that it had anything to do with the incident. Meanwhile, Sky News has cited a UK defense official as saying Nord Stream 1 and 2 could have been damaged by a remotely detonated underwater explosive device. At the time, the broadcaster said the pipelines might have been breached by mines lowered to the seabed, or explosives dropped from a boat or planted by an undersea drone.

Read more …

At some point, someone will say that is an awful lot of money to keep a bunch of neo-nazis in power.

• German Bailout Of Struggling Energy Giant May Reach €60 Billion – BBG (RT)

Berlin is getting ready to boost financial aid to Uniper, the country’s largest gas supplier, which has been brought to the brink of insolvency due to rising energy prices, Bloomberg reported citing sources familiar with the matter. According to the report, the government may up the aid to €60 billion ($60 billion). The plan comes as the company’s financial situation is quickly worsening due to growing wholesale gas prices prompted by diminishing flows from Russia. Uniper’s adjusted net loss for the first nine months of the year reportedly amounted to €3.2 billion ($3.2 billion). And if gas prices do not subside, which is unlikely due to the approaching winter and the subsequent growth in demand, the government will have to spend twice as much to bail out the energy giant than previously expected.

German authorities announced plans to nationalize Uniper last month as part of efforts to keep the energy industry afloat amid the crisis. Uniper has been promised around €31 billion in aid from Berlin’s €200 billion energy aid package. In exchange, the government will acquire a 98.5% stake in the firm, which effectively means its full nationalization. The law cementing the deal is reportedly scheduled to be confirmed by the German Senate on Friday, and the funds could be transferred to Uniper next week, Bloomberg sources said. In an interview with Bloomberg, German Deputy Finance Minister Florian Toncar said Berlin will do all in its power to ensure Uniper remains operational but did not comment on the size of the aid.

“Uniper is a crucial company for the gas supply in Germany, otherwise we wouldn’t jump to such high stakes,” he was cited as saying. While European benchmark gas futures have fallen about 70% from their August highs on nearly full storage and liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries, gas prices remain around three times higher than the five-year average. According to Uniper, the company is forced to pay much more for gas now than it did for the pipeline supplies from Russia.

Read more …

The Guardian found an anti-Orban Hungarian.

• Orbán Says Hungary Is ‘Exempt’ From The Conflict (Dalos)

The invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 will go down in the annals of European history. Russia’s undeclared war has cast an almost apocalyptic shadow. And it has dramatically altered the relationships that had prevailed between east and west since the collapse of the USSR. Whenever or however this armed conflict ends, it will undoubtedly take a long time for a new peace-guaranteeing equilibrium to be established. At the very least, the European Union and Nato now have to reckon with a hostile power on their borders and to prepare for a new phase of the cold war. Hungarians voted in general elections just weeks after the invasion, in April, and it seems reasonable to assume that the war next door had an influence on the result.

Given the climate of fear that the devastating “special military operation” created, Hungarians voted to keep Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in power rather than risk an untested six-party coalition. This assumption also underlies Orbán’s response, which is to stay out of the conflict to the point of being “exempted”, a position that has been condemned as a betrayal by Hungary’s western allies. Hungary refuses to allow arms shipments destined for Kyiv to transit Hungarian territory and blocks the extension of EU sanctions against Russia to the energy sector. This latter stance is intended to enable an already controversial Russian-Hungarian project to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube (Paks II) to go ahead unaltered. The exemption clearly goes too far, even if Hungary does have special interests that merit consideration.

It has a 136km (84-mile) border with Ukraine and there are roughly 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the Transcarpathian oblast in south-west Ukraine, many of them married to Ukrainians. It should be remembered that, while in purely geographical terms, Hungary stayed the same after 1989: the former Hungarian People’s Republic now borders five countries that owe their statehood to the end of the USSR and the dissolution of larger, multi-ethnic entities. To the south, the collapse of the former Yugoslavia led to the creation of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Its northern border is no longer with the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic but with Republic of Slovakia and independent Ukraine. What now connects most of these newer political entities with Hungary, and indeed its old neighbours, Romania and Austria, is EU membership.

Serbia is on the waiting list, Ukraine has been awarded candidate status. But in the 1990s, all these countries made the transition to parliamentary democracy, during which the rivalries between the various political groups played out openly and, not infrequently, violently. Every twist and turn and every internal conflict in these republics still affects Hungary’s interests because of the Hungarian minorities living there: 1.5 million in Romania, 500,000 in Slovakia, 300,000 in Serbia, 16,000 in Croatia, 15,000 in Slovenia and 150,000 in Ukraine.

Read more …

Japanese govt bonds are bought by the BOJ AND the citizens. A closed loop.

• Japan Unveils Massive Spending Package (RT)

The Japanese government has announced an economic package worth around 39 trillion yen (nearly $270 billion) to support the economy amid rising inflation and a weakening national currency, broadcaster NHK reported on Friday. The package includes local and central government spending, and is “aimed at overcoming rising prices and reviving the economy… to protect people’s livelihoods and businesses,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters in Tokyo. The government plans to lower utility bills to help households save an equivalent of $19 a month on electricity and $6 a month on gas, according to Kyodo News.


Inflation in Japan has seen its sharpest increase in 40 years, with core consumer prices in Tokyo, a leading indicator of nationwide figures, rising 3.4% in October from a year earlier, according to official figures. The increase has been attributed to rising energy, raw material and food prices amid the economic fallout of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as other factors, the Kyodo News said. The Bank of Japan, however, has been swimming against the global current of increasing interest rates as it kept its short-term interest rate at -0.1% on Friday. Last week, the Japanese yen fell to its weakest level against the dollar since August 1990, having lost more than a fifth of its value against the greenback this year alone.

Read more …

“..Twitter, is owned as of yesterday by the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. And the automakers that compete with Tesla, and are getting their clocks cleaned by Tesla, are now finding themselves advertising on Elon Musk’s platform.”

• GM “Paused” Ads on Musk’s Twitter (WS)

Automakers spend lavishly on advertising, and they advertise heavily in the social media. But now, one of the social media platforms, Twitter, is owned as of yesterday by the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. And the automakers that compete with Tesla, and are getting their clocks cleaned by Tesla, are now finding themselves advertising on Elon Musk’s platform. And when you think about it, that’s kind of a hoot. No one likes to advertise on a competitor’s platform, for all sorts of reasons, but particularly because on a social-media platform, the competitor gathers the consumer tracking data and can get important insights into current and potential customers and their reactions to the products and ads – without even passing on those insights to the automaker.

Advertising on a competitor’s social media platform is a particular problem because of the vast amount of user data that those platforms collect – data on your customers and potential customers that you may actually not see yourself, unless the platform decides to share it with you. General Motors is the first automaker out the gate: It announced on the first day after Musk closed the acquisition of Twitter that it “paused” its paid advertising on Twitter. “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” GM said in a statement emailed to CNBC.

Stellantis, which owns the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram brands, among a bunch of other brands, tweeted this morning via its Citroën account, pointing specifically at the issue: “Hello to the social media platform owned by one of our competitors.” This isn’t about advertisers’ concerns, if any, with Musk’s potential content moderation policies. Musk already tried to soothe those fears with his open letter, addressed to advertisers, that was suddenly full of lovey-dovey language, posted on Twitter, of course. “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all.” And he said, “I very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain, and inform you.” And he said, “Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

Read more …

“The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

• Writers, Publishers, Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal (Turley)

We have been discussing the rising support for censorship on the left in the last few years. Silencing opposing views has become an article of faith for many on the left, including leading Democratic leaders from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama. What is most distressing is how many journalists and writers have joined the call for censorship. However, even with this growing movement, the letter of hundreds of “literary figures” this week to Penguin Random House is chilling. The editors and writers call on the company to rescind a book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett because they disagree with her judicial philosophy. After all, why burn books when you can simply ban them?

The public letter entitled “We Dissent” makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still “care deeply about freedom of speech.” They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm “in the form of censorship” is less than “the form of assault on inalienable human rights” in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights. Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist “we are not calling for censorship.” While the letter has been described as signed by “literary figures,” it actually contains many who are loosely connected to the “broader literary community” like “Philip Tuley, Imam” and “Barbara Hirsch, Avid reader.” It also includes many who are simply identified by initials or first names like “Leslie” without any stated connection.

Nevertheless, there are many editors and publishing figures who list their companies (including HarperCollins, Random House and other companies) and university presses (including Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan Northwestern, Oxford) with their titles in calling for censorship. The list speaks loudly to why dissenting or conservative authors find it more difficult to publish today. These are editors who are publicly calling for banning the publication of those who hold opposing views from their own. It also includes academics like Ignacio Leopoldo Götz Römer, Stessin Distinguished Professor Emeritus, New College of Hofstra University and Carole DeSanti, Elizabeth Drew Professor of English Language and Literature, Smith College (and former VP and Exec Ed, PenguinRandomHouse).

The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Barrett has been the singled out in the past due to her judicial philosophy (which is shared by many federal judges and millions of citizens). Her home has been targeted and activists have published school information on her young children. Recently, Rhodes College alumni sought to strip references to Barrett from the college because they disagree with her views. Her college sorority was even forced to apologize for simply congratulating her for being one of a handful of women to be nominated to the high court. No attack appears to be beyond the pale for media or the left. Barrett sat through days of such baseless attacks on her character, but even had to face attacks referencing her children. Ibram X. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, claimed that her adoption of two Haitian children raised the image of a “white colonizer” and suggested that the children were little more than props for their mother.

Read more …

We’re rich!

• UN Seeks $4 to 6 Trillion Per Year to Address Climate (Mish)

The Guardian reports UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’: “The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded. Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico. If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said. A study published this week found “large consensus” across all published research that new oil and gas fields are “incompatible” with the 1.5C target.”

What Would It Cost? Hooray! Only $4 trillion to 6 trillion per year. “A global transformation from a heavily fossil fuel- and unsustainable land use-dependent economy to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4–6 trillion a year,” stated the UN report (page 26 of 132).
Q: US$4–6 trillion a year for how many years?
A: Based on figure ES.6 (lead chart) least eight years.
Q: What Percent of GDP?
A: 4 to 9 percent for developing countries, and 2 to 4 percent for developed countries. And developing countries will gladly fork over up to 9 percent of GDP every year for eight years. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, the EU is burning more trees and coal. Burning trees is magically deemed environmentally neutral.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elephant drum
https://twitter.com/i/status/1586018731385397248

 

 

 

 

Steller’s sea eagle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1586251819071590400

 

 

 

 

Good boi

 

 

 

 

Lyrebird

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 13 2022

Oct 132022
 
 October 13, 2022  Posted by at 8:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Sunken lane 1884

 

• Putin ‘Totally Miscalculated’ Russia’s Ability To Occupy Ukraine – Biden (G.)
• Some of Us Don’t Think the Russian Invasion Was “Aggression” (Mike Whitney)
• NATO Planned A Pre-emptive Strike On Russia (Milacic)
• Europe: Lack Of Russian Oil Could Spark ‘Worst Energy Crisis In Decades’ (ZH)
• Energy Crisis In Europe Will Last For Years – Hungary (RT)
• Orbán: With Merkel, We Wouldn’t Have A War (EURActiv)
• Putin Says Russia Ready To Send Natural Gas To Europe Via Nord Stream 2 (OP)
• Leak Found In Key Russian Oil Pipeline To Germany – Polish Operator (RT)
• Russia Names Chief Suspect In Crimea Bridge Attack (RT)
• Putin Ponders EU’s Energy Future (RT)
• American Gas ‘Inferior’ To Russia’s – Putin (RT)
• 1962: Cool Heads Prevented A Soviet-US Naval Encounter Sparking A Nuclear War (RT)
• Saudi Arabia Unveils Biden Oil Demand (RT)
• NATO Eyes 10-Year Plan For Ukraine – Politico (RT)
• $1m Offer To Steele Shows FBI Misled Congress On Russia Probe: Kash Patel (JTN)
• Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Turns Negative Within Months (ET)
• Europe’s Pension Funds Are Gambling With Food Prices (EUO)
• ‘They Are Stealing Russia’ (Adam Curtis)

 

 

 

 

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1580132343758540800

 

 

 

 

Stop the Spread

Tulsi Joe Rogan

 

 

Tell me again: how did we get here?

 

 

 

 

Don’t know where Biden’s handlers get this stuff, but it’s nonsense. Or do they just want to make Putin look as stupid as Biden? Russia knew exactly what was going on nextdoor. On the same page as this article, the Guardian has a link to:

“Would Lukashenko really throw Belarus into a war Russia is losing?”

Says it all. Sad thing is, their readers believe this crap.

• Putin ‘Totally Miscalculated’ Russia’s Ability To Occupy Ukraine – Biden (G.)

Joe Biden has said he believes Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who badly misjudged his prospects of occupying Ukraine, but does not believe he would resort to using a tactical nuclear weapon. The US president told CNN on Tuesday that he believed his Russian counterpart had underestimated the ferocity of Ukrainian defiance in the face of invasion. “I think … he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated,” Biden said. “I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly.” When asked by interviewer Jake Tapper how realistic he believed it would be for Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, Biden responded: “Well, I don’t think he will.”


Biden’s comments came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused Russia of launching a “second wave of terrorist attacks” in the wake of the blast that engulfed Crimea’s Kerch bridge. Zelenskiy said in a video address that 20 of 28 missiles launched by Russia on Tuesday were shot down, as well as “most” of the 15 combat drones deployed. In smaller gains in announced by Ukraine’s Operational Command early on Wednesday, the army destroyed Russian equipment and an ammunition depot along Ukraine’s southern line. At least 23 Russian soldiers were killed, it said. Earlier, Zelesnkiy asked G7 leaders for more air defence systems and a monitoring mission on the Belarusian border, as Russia continued to attack key infrastructure in Ukraine with fresh missile strikes.

Biden 2016

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“They’re openly arming, training, funding, and directing Ukrainian troops to prosecute a war aimed at killing Russian soldiers and removing Putin from power.”

• Some of Us Don’t Think the Russian Invasion Was “Aggression” (Mike Whitney)

Imagine if the Mexican army started bombarding American ex-pats living in Mexico with heavy artillery-rounds killing thousands and leaving thousands more wounded. What do you think Joe Biden would do? Would he brush it off like a big nothingburger and move on or would he threaten the Mexican government with a military invasion that would obliterate the Mexican Army, level their biggest cities, and send the government running for cover? Which of these two options do you think Biden would choose? There’s no doubt what Biden would do nor is there any question what the 45 presidents who preceded him would do. No US leader would ever stand by and do nothing while thousands of Americans were savagely slaughtered by a foreign government. That just wouldn’t happen. They’d all respond quickly and forcefully.

But if that’s true, then why isn’t the same standard applied to Russia? Isn’t the situation in Ukraine nearly identical? It is nearly identical, only the situation in Ukraine is worse, much worse. And if we stretch our analogy a bit, you’ll see why: Let’s say, the US Intelligence agencies discovered that the Mexican government was not acting alone, but was being directed to kill and maim American ex-pats on orders from the Chinese Communist government in Beijing. Can you imagine that? And the reason the Chinese government wants to kill Americans in Mexico is because they want to lure the US into a long and costly war that will “weaken” the US and pave way for its ultimate splintering into many pieces that China can control and exploit. Does any of this sound familiar? (Check out the Rand Strategy for weakening Russia here)

So, let’s say, the Chinese are actually the driving force behind the war in Mexico. Let’s say, they toppled the Mexican government years earlier and installed their own puppet regime to do their bidding. Then they armed and trained vast numbers of troops to fight the Americans. They supplied these warriors with cutting-edge weapons and technology, logistical support, satellite and communications assistance, tanks, armored vehicles, anti-ship missiles, and state-of-the-art artillery units all of which were provided with one goal in mind; to crush America in a proxy war that was concocted, controlled and micro-managed from the Chinese Capital of Beijing. Is such a scenario possible?

It is possible, in fact, this very same scenario is playing out right now in the Ukraine, only the perpetrator of the hostilities is the United States not China, and the target of this malign strategy is Russia not the US. Surprisingly, the Biden administration isn’t even trying to hide what they’re up-to anymore. They’re openly arming, training, funding, and directing Ukrainian troops to prosecute a war aimed at killing Russian soldiers and removing Putin from power. That’s the objective and everyone knows it.

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“..the Third World War was prevented only thanks to the Russian special operation in Ukraine.”

• NATO Planned A Pre-emptive Strike On Russia (Milacic)

One of the largest French maritime exercises in the Mediterranean, POLARIS 21 (Préparation Opérationnelle en Lutte Aéromaritime, Résilience, Innovation et Supériorité), took place from November 18 to December 3, 2021 in the area west of the island of Corsica, between France and Spain. The exercise also included a segment on the Atlantic coast of mainland France. POLARIS 21 was set up entirely in the context of operational preparation on several fronts and had a high combat intensity, which was fully in line with the strategic vision of the Chief of the Armed Forces and the Mercator Acceleration 21 plan of the Chief of Staff of the Admiral of the French navy Pierre Vandier. In addition to naval warfare, the exercise also included the participation of many combat aircraft and surface-to-air defense.

[..] journalists came into possession of data related to the exercise POLARIS 2021. The data speak clearly about the advance preparation of the NATO to enter into an armed conflict with the Russian Federation in the event of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. According to the legend of the maneuvers, it was determined that in response to the alleged Russian intervention, the forces of the NATO coalition would form and send an aircraft carrier strike group led by the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the combat area in order to “stop the invasion and preserve the sovereignty of Ukraine.” The context and scenario of the “exercise“ (the consonance of the names of countries, settlements, the names of political figures, the specifics of maneuvers, etc.) became for the Russian Federation a signal of the real preparation of NATO to the start of hostilities against Russia, as it happened similarly to the operation of the United Defender alliance grouping of forces before the intervention in Libya (the exercises Baltops-2010 and Frisian Flag-2010), when, after the maneuvers at the sea ranges, a full-scale operation followed to overthrow of the legitimate government of Muammar Gaddafi.


POLARIS 2021 was also a demonstration of NATO support to Kyiv in the event of an armed conflict with Russia and was supposed to push Kyiv to start hostilities with the Russian Federation, after which the intervention of the NATO was supposed. In principle, NATO was looking for an excuse to attack Russia, with the factor of surprise, so that Russia would not be ready for an adequate response. In this situation, the preventive start of the Special Military Operation of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine became the only possible response to the inevitable aggression of the Kyiv regime and the NATO. There is no doubt that thanks to the Russian special operation in Ukraine and the fact that Russia launched a preventive strike, it was NATO that was surprised but also scared by the Russian determination to defend its interests. It is precisely this fact that is responsible for why there was not and will not be conflict between Russia and NATO, that is, the Third World War was prevented only thanks to the Russian special operation in Ukraine.

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“A European ban on most crude imports from Russia will come into effect in December..”

• Europe: Lack Of Russian Oil Could Spark ‘Worst Energy Crisis In Decades’ (ZH)

A European ban on most crude imports from Russia will come into effect in December. For EU leaders, the next task at hand has been finding new sources of crude oil ahead of what could be a very dark and cold winter. The move by EU countries to endlessly sanction Russia for President Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine by halting crude oil imports later this year is an attempt to “make the Kremlin pay” for the invasion, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently said. Though it’s only backfired as the Kremlin’s war chest has swelled by tens of billions of dollars as energy prices hyperinflate and new buyers are found in Asia. EU leaders have stepped up efforts to transition from Russian energy to other energy-rich countries, though they might find it challenging to increase energy imports due to limited spare capacity worldwide.

Monica Malik, the chief economist at the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, told the audience at an energy security panel hosted by the Institute of International Finance in Washington, DC, on Monday that the Gulf states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, won’t be able to increase production to replace Russian oil in Europe. After all, the world is moving into a much tighter oil market for the remainder of the year after OPEC+ cuts. This could unintentionally spur a supercycle in pricing as brent crude inches closer to $100 a barrel. So where will Europe source crude this winter if spare capacity worldwide is limited? Head of European Oil for Morgan Stanley Martijn Rats wrote in a recent note:

“The oil market is where it is because this question is so hard to answer. If we knew, we could all breathe a little easier.” Without spare capacity — EU leaders will find it challenging to source crude around the world because production cannot be quickly ramped up. Helima Croft, managing director at RBC Capital Markets LLC, warned, “I think we are facing the worst energy crisis in decades.”= Croft fears a populist backlash in Europe as sanctions against Russia has sparked a cost-of-living crisis. This could force some EU governments to focus on affordability. She said the probability of the US making deals with Venezuela or Iran to offset the energy crunch is unlikely. One top EU diplomat admitted: “Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia.”

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“..the sanctions “didn’t fulfill the hopes that were pinned on them,” while Europe is “slowly bleeding.”

• Energy Crisis In Europe Will Last For Years – Hungary (RT)

The ongoing energy crisis in Europe is set to be a long one and will extend to 2023 and 2024, and possibly beyond, warned Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, following a meeting of EU energy ministers on Wednesday. “We are now seeing the first global energy crisis in history, and it is long-term,” proclaimed Szijjarto, explaining that the crisis is being fueled by underlying “structural geopolitical reasons tied to security,” which require “long-term solutions.” The diplomat noted that “international institutions which still retain a small amount of common sense” also warn that this is a long-term crisis and a problem which will exist “not just this winter, but the next one and the one after that as well.”

Szijjarto also mentioned that Hungary’s own energy supply has been secured, after the country reached an agreement with Russia and has been receiving gas through the TurkStream pipeline without interruption. “That is why the Hungarian government pays special attention to ensuring the physical and legal functioning of the Turkish Stream, as this is a fundamental interest of our national security,” he said, noting that Hungarian gas storage facilities are filled at 48.2% of annual consumption, while the average fill level for Europe is currently at 26.9%.

Hungary receives around 80% of its gas from Russia’s gas giant Gazprom. While Russia has cut off gas supplies to a number of countries, Hungary signed a deal with Moscow in late August for additional deliveries on top of already-agreed volumes. Hungarian President Viktor Orban had previously accused the EU leadership of sparking the ongoing energy crisis by introducing “counterproductive” sanctions on Russian energy over Moscow’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. Budapest has repeatedly called for “the failed policy of Brussels” to be changed, noting that the sanctions “didn’t fulfill the hopes that were pinned on them,” while Europe is “slowly bleeding.”

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Probably true.

• Orbán: With Merkel, We Wouldn’t Have A War (EURActiv)

Russia’s war on Ukraine would not have happened if former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was still in office, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said during a visit to Berlin, where he met with both Merkel and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz.When Merkel announced that she would retire from politics, Orbán published a letter on his website saying the then-German Chancellor “understood us” and “we understood her”. Germany is Hungary’s main trading partner, accounting for approximately 27% of trade volume, while some 3,000 German companies are currently present in Hungary.

Merkel’s reaction to the 2014 crisis triggered by Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea was “a master stroke,” Orbán told a public event in Berlin on Tuesday (11 October), explaining that a war could have broken out at the time but was avoided due to the German chancellor’s actions.“Thank you, Angela!” he added. Asked whether this means the current war would have been prevented if the conservative ex-chancellor was still in office, Orbán said: “for certain.” Merkel, meanwhile, has been criticised since the onset of the Ukraine war for failing to reduce energy dependency from Russia and maintaining close economic ties with Moscow during her 16-year rule.

Nord Stream 2 pipeline, for many, Europe’s Achilles’ Heel, was a thorny issue during Merkel’s mandate. The pipeline, which aimed to carry 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Germany, was backed by Merkel but is now frozen due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Back then, eastern European countries opposed the project, but Hungary did not voice any significant opposition.

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It will take a rebellion against US and NATO. But all these countries are members of NATO.

• Putin Says Russia Ready To Send Natural Gas To Europe Via Nord Stream 2 (OP)

Russia is ready to supply gas to Europe on the one undamaged line on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if the EU wants to start the route, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an energy forum in Russia on Wednesday. Russia is ready to deliver additional volumes of natural gas to Europe this winter, but the ball is in the EU’s court to decide, Putin said, as carried by the Russian news agency Interfax. Putin also said that repairing the Nord Stream 1 and 2 lines that were found to have been sabotaged would only make sense if they will be used later, Interfax quoted the Russian president as saying. Nord Stream 2 was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia, for its part, shut down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely in early September, claiming an inability to repair gas turbines because of the Western sanctions. Before the Nord Stream 1 and 2 leaks were detected at the end of September, Putin said that Russia had nothing to do with Europe’s energy crisis and that if Europe wanted more gas, it just had to “push the button” on Nord Stream 2 and “everything will get going,” that is, lift the sanctions on Nord Stream 2. A few days later, Stephan Weil, Minister-President of the northwestern German state of Lower Saxony, said that Germany could never rely on Russia for energy supply again, and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project would never go ahead.

Another few days later, the suspected sabotage on Nord Stream 1 and 2 lines in Swedish and Danish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea put Europe on heightened alert over the security of its energy infrastructure. Norway posted soldiers from its Home Guard to protect energy infrastructure as Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, and its Scandinavian neighbors are increasing security following the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.

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This pipeline is from the 1960s. More than 50 years older than Nordstream. Not the same quality.

• Leak Found In Key Russian Oil Pipeline To Germany – Polish Operator (RT)

Polish operator PERN has said it’s discovered a leak on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Germany. The rupture was detected late on Tuesday by automated systems on one of the two strings of the pipeline, some 70 kilometers from the town of Plock in central Poland, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The damaged half was switched off immediately, and the other string continues to operate as normal, the company said. “At this point, the causes of the incident are not known,” PERN said, adding that its staff and firefighters were deployed to the site to assess the situation and secure the area.


The Druzhba pipeline is one of the largest oil transport networks in the world, spanning some 4,000km and bringing oil from Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany. The leak on the Druzhba pipeline follows explosions that were detected in late September on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, connecting Russia to the EU via Germany. The incident is widely considered to be the result of sabotage.

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“The list of people in custody includes five Russians..”

• Russia Names Chief Suspect In Crimea Bridge Attack (RT)

Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, has announced arrests over the attack on the Crimean Bridge. It has also revealed details of the alleged Ukrainian terrorist plot, including its mastermind.The agency accused the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of being behind the explosion, which damaged the strategic structure last Saturday. It claimed that Commander, Kirill Budanov, was personally responsible for the operation. Russia has identified 12 individuals as suspected accomplices in the plot and has arrested eight of them, the FSB said. The list of people in custody includes five Russians and three foreigners, who have citizenship of Ukraine and Armenia.


The FSB claimed that the deadly cargo came from the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The explosives were disguised as rolls with plastic construction film, which were shipped on pallets and weighed 22,770 kg, the statement said.Investigators said the shipment left Odessa in August and went through Ruse, Bulgaria, to Poti in Georgia. It was then moved to Armenia, a country which has a free trade agreement and a relaxed customs regime with Russia. It was then imported into Russia via Georgia on October 4, according to the timeline. The transportation paperwork identified a non-existent firm in Crimea as the final recipient, according to the Russian agency. But the set of documents was only the latest of several used to disguise the movement of the cargo, it added.

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Germany will have to stand up for itself.

• Putin Ponders EU’s Energy Future (RT)

Russia could move the transit volumes lost through the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines to the Black Sea region, by establishing a ‘gas hub’ in Türkiye for EU supplies, President Vladimir Putin has said. He pointed out it was possible to repair the damaged pipelines but that Russia and the EU should decide their fate.“We could … thus make the main routes for the supply of our fuel, our natural gas to Europe through Türkiye, creating the largest gas hub for Europe in Türkiye,” Putin said, during an address on Wednesday to the Moscow Energy Week conference. “That is, of course, if our partners are interested in this. And economic feasibility also matters, of course.”

According to the president, Russian gas could still be supplied to the EU via one remaining part of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that remains intact, but the ball was now in the EU’s court on whether it wanted this to happen. Russia could open the gas taps on that line if the bloc wanted it to, Putin stressed. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines abruptly lost pressure last month, following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. The incident caused massive gas leaks, with large volumes entering the sea. The ruptures are widely considered to be the result of sabotage by an unknown party. The routes were designed to carry Russian natural gas directly to Germany, bypassing transit states, including Ukraine and Poland.

Moscow has called the incident a terrorist attack and said the US, a long-time critic of Germany’s reliance on Russian energy, stood to benefit most from the disabling of the routes, both politically and economically. Washington has denied any involvement. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy.” Neither pipeline was operational at the time of the breach. Berlin refused to certify the newer Nord Stream 2 after its completion last year, and Russia halted supplies via the older Nord Stream 1 in late August, citing sanctions-related maintenance problems.

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Inferior not in quality, but in competitiveness.

“..the US “sells its liquefied natural gas at four times the price that it sets for its own industrialists..”

• American Gas ‘Inferior’ To Russia’s – Putin (RT)

The US has ample opportunity to supply its shale gas to the EU now that Russia’s Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been made inoperable, but this gas is “inferior” to Russian natural gas supplies, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. “It is quite clear who the beneficiaries [of the Nord Stream incident] are… the US, of course, which can now supply energy resources at high prices… It is now possible for them to force large liquefied natural gas volumes on European countries, which are clearly inferior in competitiveness to Russian pipeline gas,” the President said at the Russian Energy Week forum. He explained that the prices on US-produced LNG are much higher than those on Russian pipeline gas, “everyone was well aware of this before, and now is even more so,” and added that there are additional risks regarding US deliveries.

“The risks lie in the fact that all this supply is very unstable and can ‘float away’ to other regions,” Putin said, adding that US tankers carrying LNG to Europe may divert from Europe if sellers will be offered a higher price elsewhere. Putin’s words echo the statements made by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire earlier this week. Speaking at the National Assembly, he said that it is unacceptable that the US “sells its liquefied natural gas at four times the price that it sets for its own industrialists” and called for a “more balanced economic relationship on the energy issue” to be established between Brussels and Washington.

Russia used to cover over 40% of the EU’s gas needs prior to the start of the military operation in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions. Supplies dropped dramatically this year, especially after one of the major routes for gas deliveries was severed due to the under-investigation explosions that damaged Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines last month. The US, meanwhile, ramped up its supply of LNG to Europe over the past months, up to a point where it now accounts for nearly half of the bloc’s LNG imports, nearly twice the share recorded in 2021.

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Do such heads still exist in the west?

• 1962: Cool Heads Prevented A Soviet-US Naval Encounter Sparking A Nuclear War (RT)

On October 1, 1962, four Soviet submarines, each equipped with nuclear-armed torpedoes, departed Kola Bay in the Barents Sea en route to Cuba. The mini-fleet was intended to secretly bolster a vast Soviet military presence on and around the island and protect the construction of defensive missile sites requested by Havana in the wake of the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs operation, in which Washington-backed rebel forces attempted to storm Havana and overthrow the popular Communist government of Fidel Castro. According to the private account of Vasily Arkhipov, the vice-admiral of submarine B-59, now published for the first time in commemoration of the event by the US National Security Archive, the weather during the transit was “generally conducive to keeping secrecy” over the long journey – “stormy weather, low clouds, low visibility, snow squalls, rain.”

Along the way, they detected “an elevated level of activity of anti-submarine aircraft radiolocation stations working in a short-interval regime,” but the covert convoy went unnoticed until October 18, when Soviet intelligence “intercepted a message from a French radio station informing some correspondents that Soviet submarines [had] entered the Atlantic and were now traveling to the American shores.” “How they discovered the submarine is hard to say…However, one can say with high confidence that the submarine was not discovered with aircraft radar,” Arkhipov claims. “[Soviet] commanders…were ordered to be on full alert and to continue to navigate in secret,” as a result, Arkipov recalled.


On October 24, the Soviet submarines arrived at their “designated areas” near Cuba, the very same day that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Washington’s high representative in Moscow that if US ships began searching Soviet merchant ships on the high seas, it would be considered piracy and he would give orders to Soviet submarines to destroy the harassing American vessels. It was a hugely tense situation and one that set the scene for what happened three days later, when a B-59 surfaced in order to recharge its batteries. According to the private account of Arkhipov, upon emerging it discovered: “An aircraft carrier, nine destroyers, four Neptune airplanes and three Trekkers, encircled by three concentric circles of coast guard forces…overflights by planes just 20-30 meters above the submarine’s conning tower, use of powerful searchlights, fire from automatic cannons (over 300 shells), dropping depth charges, cutting in front of the 5 submarine by destroyers at a dangerously [small] distance, targeting guns at the submarine, yelling from loudspeakers to stop engines, etc.”

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Output cut only after the midterms.

• Saudi Arabia Unveils Biden Oil Demand (RT)

Saudi Arabia has said that OPEC’s decision to cut oil production was based solely on economic considerations, not politics, and that the organization resisted pressure from the United States to put off the move for several weeks.The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday pushing back on allegations that the oil cut was intended to benefit Russia, insisting it is not “taking sides in international conflicts” or making “politically motivated” decisions.“These outcomes are based purely on economic considerations that take into account maintaining balance of supply and demand in the oil markets, as well as aim to limit volatility that does not serve the interests of consumers and producers, as has been always the case within OPEC +,” the ministry said, adding that the cut was approved “unanimously by all member states” of the organization.

While Washington suggested “postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month,” the Foreign Ministry said US officials were informed such a delay “would have had negative economic consequences.” The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the request from the United States, noting that Riyadh considered the idea a “political gambit by the [Joe] Biden administration to avoid bad news ahead of the US midterm elections.”However, a National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, denied that characterization, telling the outlet that US officials “questioned a Saudi analysis that the price of oil was about to plunge and urged them to wait and see how the market reacted.”

“It’s categorically false to connect this to US elections,” Watson said. “It’s about the impact of this shortsighted decision to the global economy.” President Biden responded harshly to the production cut, suggesting the move would help Moscow reap higher prices for its energy exports as Western nations seek to choke off the Russian economy in retaliation for the war in Ukraine. Biden also vowed “consequences” for Saudi Arabia, and though he did not elaborate what that could mean, top NSC spokesman John Kirby later told reporters that the White House would review the US-Saudi relationship to ensure “it is serving our national security interests.”


Saudi Arabia confirms Biden attempted to coerce them to postpone oil cuts until after the midterms

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Treating Ukraine as de facto NATO member. Not wise.

• NATO Eyes 10-Year Plan For Ukraine – Politico (RT)

The NATO alliance will soon launch a scheme to rebuild Ukraine’s defense industry over the next decade, hoping to phase out Soviet-era weapons in favor of Western gear as Washington and its allies pledge new rounds of military aid to Kiev. Officials from NATO and Ukraine are set to meet next week to discuss a “long-term commitment” to revitalize Kiev’s military-industrial complex following months of fighting with Russia, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing a senior NATO official. “We will be looking at defense planning requirements to get Ukraine fully interoperable with NATO,” the unnamed official said. “It’s about shifting away from Soviet equipment … to NATO-compatible Western equipment.” Though the NATO staffer offered few details about the rebuilding effort, they said it would focus on Ukraine’s longer-term needs and likely involve several international partners.

The initiative will be separate from another NATO project discussed by acquisition officials earlier this month, which also seeks to bolster Ukraine’s defense sector while replenishing Western stockpiles after heavy arms shipments to Kiev. Earlier on Wednesday, the so-called ‘Ukraine Defense Contact Group’ met to discuss continued military support, with Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov stating that air defense systems are his country’s “top priority.” US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said Washington and its allies would aim to provide such weapons, calling on members of the contact group to “chip in and help [Ukraine] rebuild and sustain an integrated air and missile defense system, specifically old systems.”

Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren, meanwhile, vowed to send additional anti-aircraft missiles during Wednesday’s meeting, saying the “only result [Russia] is achieving with [continued attacks on Ukraine] is that we are going to deliver even more.” Those pledges came soon after Germany delivered the first of four IRIS-T air defense systems to Ukraine, while France, the United States and Britain have each announced new weapons transfers of their own, including French truck-mounted howitzers, US-made NASAMS air defense systems and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles from the UK.

Maersheimer Cohen

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‘Nobody is going to catch us. We are going to break a constitutional republic’s 250-year tradition because we don’t like the guy in the White House, and we’re going to manufacture a crime on it.'”

• $1m Offer To Steele Shows FBI Misled Congress On Russia Probe: Kash Patel (JTN)

Following the bombshell revelation from the trial of Igor Danchenko that the FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million to corroborate his dossier, former House Intelligence Committee investigator Kash Patel said this proves the bureau knew it hadn’t been able to verify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and misled Congress. Danchenko, the primary source for the Steele dossier, is charged with five counts of lying to the FBI. As the prosecution opened its case against Danchenko Tuesday, Special Counsel John Durham questioned his first witness, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten. Auten testified that in early October 2016, the FBI offered Steele “up to $1 million” to provide corroborating evidence for his dossier, but the former British spy didn’t provide any such information to the bureau.

As a result, Steele wasn’t given the money because he was unable to “prove the allegations.” An application the FBI submitted to a FISA court on Oct. 21, 2016 for a warrant to initiate electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page included uncorroborated information from the dossier. Auten testified that before the FBI received the dossier, it didn’t have enough evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. Auten also said the FBI contacted other intelligence agencies regarding the specific allegations in the dossier, but none were able to corroborate them. Durham asked Auten, “On October 21, 2016 did you have any information to corroborate that information?” “No,” Auten replied. Patel was asked about the purported reward offer on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show Tuesday.

The House Intelligence panel chaired by then-Rep. Devin Nunes sent 17 congressional subpoenas “for information specifically related to payments and confidential human sources,” he said, “were denied this information, and we learn it four years after our investigation.” “That means somebody obstructed a congressional investigation with congressional subpoenas,” said Patel, a former national security prosecutor. This exposes “the depths that [the FBI] would go to to falsely corroborate the Steele dossier, which … shows they didn’t have it verified, which we’ve said the whole time,” Patel added. “And more importantly,” he continued, “they were willing to spend a million taxpayer dollars on shoveling political hot garbage through the federal court system just to surveil a political target that would have been totally baseless — it was baseless then.”

Referring to a group of senior FBI leaders during the James Comey era as “government gangsters,” Patel said “this bombshell” shows that they “were so arrogant, that they said, ‘Nobody is going to catch us. We are going to break a constitutional republic’s 250-year tradition because we don’t like the guy in the White House, and we’re going to manufacture a crime on it.'” Retired FBI supervisory special agent Bassem Youssef, one of the bureau’s most famous whistleblowers, said Tuesday’s revelation at the trial was unlike anything he ever saw in his three-decade FBI career.”Never in my entire career have I heard of such an offer to pay a source to corroborate their own information,” Youssef told Just the News. “The FBI queries other sources in order to validate the original source of information. It is unheard of that the FBI would offer to pay Steele $1 million to corroborate his own information.

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Just say no.

• Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Turns Negative Within Months (ET)

The effectiveness of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine against infection turns negative over time, according to a new study that was funded by the vaccine maker. The effectiveness of three doses—a primary series and a booster—against infection remained above 50 percent after 150 days against BA.1, a subvariant of the Omicron virus variant, researchers estimated. However, against more recent strains, including the currently dominant BA.5, the effectiveness turned negative. Against BA.2, BA.4, and BA.5, the effectiveness went negative after 150 days; against BA.1.12.1, the effectiveness turned negative after 91 days. Negative effectiveness means that a vaccinated person is more likely to contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, than an unvaccinated person.

Researchers with Moderna and Kaiser Permanente, which carried out the study, also found that people who received three Moderna doses were more likely to become infected when compared to people who received just two doses. Researchers said that they attempted to reduce potential bias by taking actions such as adjusting for comorbidities, but that some confounding may remain. They said that some of the negative effectiveness estimates “could be due to differential risk behaviors among vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals when protection from antibodies becomes minimal.” Hung Fu Tseng, a researcher with Kaiser Permanente Southern California and the study’s corresponding author, declined to provide evidence for the statement or otherwise comment on the negative effectiveness estimates.

A slew of other studies and analyses have found that the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines turns negative over time, including a study that estimated the protection for children aged 5 to 11 turned negative after 18 or 20 weeks, and an analysis of data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testing program that estimated the shielding turned negative around six months. Swedish researchers in September concluded that effectiveness turned negative within several months.

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“..these funds are funded by workers and yet they are “engaging in actions which destroy the living standards of those workers..”

• Europe’s Pension Funds Are Gambling With Food Prices (EUO)

Some of Europe’s largest pension funds are investing billions of euros in volatile commodity markets, risking the hard-earned income of millions of workers while fuelling a global hunger crisis caused in part by such investments, a new investigation has found. The findings also raise questions over whether the European Union’s continued drive to deregulate its financial markets will worsen the situation in the future. The rules governing the bloc’s capital markets are currently under review. Soaring prices of key commodities such as food and energy have triggered a cost of living crisis around the world, including in Europe. The United Nations said the increases may have also pushed an estimated 71 million people in developing nations into poverty.

Lighthouse Reports, a European non-profit newsroom, analysed the accounts of more than 70 major pension funds in Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Finland and Denmark. While some funds explicitly forbid speculating in commodities, especially in food, 15 are currently investing in them, with the three biggest buyers the Netherlands, UK and Denmark held a total of €37.6bn between them at the end of 2021. According to Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the findings show that pension funds are amongst the financial institutions that have aggravated the problem of investor speculation driving food prices. This is “particularly egregious” because these funds are funded by workers and yet they are “engaging in actions which destroy the living standards of those workers”, she said.

Most funds do not disaggregate between hard commodities, such as gold and oil, and soft commodities, such as agriculture and livestock, but experts say the ultimate impact — rising commodity prices — is likely to be the same. “Whether it is in food or energy, both are equivalently terrible from the point of view of workers and developing countries because a fuel price increase translates into prices of all other prices going up,” says Ghosh. In addition, commodity markets are risky to invest in, said Ann Pettifor, one of the few economists who predicted the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. “I don’t want my pension fund to go near something as volatile as a commodity market, basically, especially the ones in energy and in food,” she said.

Read more …

When Adam Curtis makes a film (series), you watch. When Adam Curtis writes, you read.

“..on how hyper-capitalism wrecked a nation – and why Liz Truss must take heed..”

In the 1990’s, Russia male life expectancy fell by 15-20 years. That’s what Putin inhereted.

• ‘They Are Stealing Russia’ (Adam Curtis)

The central mystery of our time is why, at a moment when the whole political and social system is out of control and in total chaos, no one seems able to imagine any alternative. The economic system is not delivering the good life it once promised, but is instead creating chaos and hardship for millions. Meanwhile, those in charge of the system are profiting massively from that chaos, feeding off the uncertainty. And the political class are in thrall to an economic theory that has become absurd and corrupted. I’ve just made TraumaZone, a series of films about another time when that was happening. It was in Russia in the 1990s after communism collapsed. Those in charge began an experiment to create an extreme form of capitalism. I made it because I don’t think we in the west understand what the Russians went through: a cataclysm that tore apart the foundations of society.

The films are made using a unique source of material: thousands of hours of raw footage recorded by BBC crews in Russia during that time, much of it never seen before. What makes it so extraordinary is that it records the experiences of Russians at every level of society as their world fell apart: from inside the Kremlin to the frozen mining cities of the Arctic circle, from life in the tiny villages of the vast steppes to the strange wars fought in the mountains and forests of the Caucasus. As I watched the footage I decided that I shouldn’t use my voice or paste music over it. The material was so strong that I didn’t want to intrude pointlessly, but rather let viewers simply experience what was happening, because it is was out of this – the anger, violence, desperation and overwhelming corruption – that Vladimir Putin emerged.

But as I made the films, the growing chaos here in Britain made me see parallels. There are of course vast differences between our society and the Russia of 30 years ago, but the more you find out about the extreme economic experiment there, and what is happening here now with the present government, the more you see that they both share very similar roots that have nothing to do with either capitalism or communism. The clue lies in the man who imposed the “shock therapy” experiment on Russia. Called Yegor Gaidar, he was at the heart of the communist establishment. His grandfather was the most famous writer of children’s books in the Soviet Union, and Gaidar had married the daughter of one of the Strugatsky brothers, science-fiction writers who wrote the novel the film Stalker was based on.

This economist who would become acting prime minister set out to create a perfect capitalist system in Russia. He had to do it fast, he said, to stop communism from ever returning. Overnight, he removed all controls over prices, while the government gave up on any attempt to manage the system. The aim, said Gaidar, was to create a new zone of perfect freedom in which, despite initial pain, the system would find its own natural equilibrium. But if you look closer, you will see that his plan had little to do with freedom. It was in fact an odd, machine-like vision of the world driven by pseudoscientific ideas.

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PressTV

 

 

US soldier

 

 

Hologram

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 31 2022

Jan 312022
 
 January 31, 2022  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Women running on the beach 1922

 

• 1 in 5 Canadians May Never Be Comfortable Without Masks, Vaccine Mandates (I.)
• Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers? (Bridge)
• Unvaccinated and Undeterred: Austria Holdouts Dig In Despite New Law (Y!)
• Concern As Republicans Push To Make Dubious Covid Cures Easier (G.)
• University of Minnesota Ivermectin Trial Nearing Completion (Star T.)
• Japan’s Kowa Says Ivermectin Effective Against Omicron In Phase III Trial (R.)
• University Offers Help To Students ‘Affected By A Free Speech Event’ (DM)
• US Close To Approving ‘Mother Of All Sanctions’ Against Russia (G.)
• EU Threatens To Halt Nord Stream 2 & Cut Russia Off From SWIFT (RT)
• Year in Review 2021 Part 3 – Rise of Global Authoritarianism (Dave Collum)
• Biden Promises To Replace Tom Brady With A Woman Of Color (BBee)

 

 

Joe Rogan

 

 

We are standing at the battle line.

 

 

U turn

 

 

 

 

Mass formation.

• 1 in 5 Canadians May Never Be Comfortable Without Masks, Vaccine Mandates (I.)

As we approach the second anniversary of the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic and viral case loads continue to break records, it’s not surprising that many Canadians are wary about “returning to normal.” A new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Global News shows that while one in five (18%) Canadians feel things are normal now, the same proportion (19%) say they’re not sure they’ll ever be ready to live without masks or vaccine mandates. Regardless of when Canadians feel the new normal will materialize, two thirds (64%) agree (27% strongly, 37% somewhat) that governments are not doing enough to facilitate the return to normal, a figure that is higher among Albertans[..].


How will we reach the new normal? Four in ten (38%) Canadians think mandatory vaccination is the most effective means of getting COVID-19 under control. This opinion is stronger among men (42% vs. 34% women) and Boomers (50% vs. 37% Gen X, 29% Millennials, 27% Gen Z). The use of border closings and rapid tests in the workplace are also both favoured by 14%. Relatively few Canadians believe that removing all public health measures and allowing COVID-19 to spread more quickly (10%), penalizing people who don’t get their vaccines (i.e. a tax, further restrictions, etc.) (9%), or shutting down all non-essential businesses (8%) would be the most effective way to get the pandemic under control.

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“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history..”

• Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers? (Bridge)

Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.


While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration. Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.” Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers. Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.


“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.” This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.

Sikh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487882022844448769

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“..there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,”

• Unvaccinated and Undeterred: Austria Holdouts Dig In Despite New Law (Y!)

Despite vaccination against Covid-19 becoming mandatory in Austria on Friday, musician Katharina Teufel-Lieli insists she won’t bow to pressure to get the jab. “I have the right to decide over my body… to simply say ‘no,'” the harpist told AFP at her home in Neumarkt-am-Wallersee, not far from the western city of Salzburg. Austria this week becomes the first European Union country to make Covid-19 vaccination legally compulsory for adults. Under the new law, those holding out against the jab can face fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,100) from mid-March after an introductory phase. Teufel-Lieli, 49, is one of tens of thousands to have joined massive demonstrations against the law and other coronavirus-related measures since November, when plans for the legal change were announced.

The mother of six said that she used to be “apolitical” but the state is “overstepping the mark” by “attacking people” through this act of “totalitarianism”. Access to certain services has already been restricted since last year under government-imposed measures. Entry to restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, non-essential shops, sports and cultural venues has only been permitted since November to those who are vaccinated or recently cured. This has sparked complaints within the retail sector about staff having to act as “an auxiliary police” in checking vaccine passes in shops. Frustrations since the beginning of the pandemic have also led opponents to create a new political party, known by its acronym, MFG which stands for People, Freedom, Fundamental Rights.

One of three MFG representatives to have already won a state legislature seat, Dagmar Haeusler, said that she just did not see the point of compulsory Covid vaccination. “If there was a valid reason, as with smallpox which has a mortality rate of 20 to 30 percent, we could talk about mandatory vaccination, which would benefit everyone. “But in the case of Covid-19, I don’t see the point,” the 38-year-old biomedical scientist and MFG co-founder told AFP. Demonstrators and other opponents say the measures just create a “parallel society” — with the unvaccinated forced to do things under the radar. According to Teufel-Lieli, there are already hairdressers willing to cater to those not vaccinated or cured, while people still have coffee together in private meet-ups, mostly organised over social networks. “In fact, there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,” she said.

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“..legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors..”

• Concern As Republicans Push To Make Dubious Covid Cures Easier (G.)

Republican state lawmakers across the United States have proposed – and in some cases passed – legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors who want to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to help prevent and treat Covid-19. But those treatments have not proven effective at preventing or treating Covid and infectious disease experts see the bills as examples of right-wing lawmakers politicizing medicine – a trend that is increasing as the pandemic wears on in America in to its third year amid an increasingly fraught political atmosphere. And so it goes with the latest suspect Covid-19 treatment that has become about more than just a drug, but rather about whether to trust established public health organizations or doctors who stray from their guidelines, and podcast and cable news hosts.


“We really need to have the politicians step aside and let scientists and public health officials make the decisions on what is going to be beneficial in preventing and treating Covid,” said Sunil Parikh, an associate professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. Kansas is one of at least 11 states, according to Buzzfeed, where Republican lawmakers have proposed, and in some cases passed, legislation to limit medical licensing boards’ ability to take action against providers who prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, another drug that has not been shown to be effective against Covid but nevertheless promoted by some politicians on the right. “We are leaving it up to medical professionals like it should be, not bureaucrats trying to maintain a single message,” said Kansas state Senator Richard Hilderbrand, the chair of the committee that sponsored the legislation.

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“..the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19..”

Just how crazy is that?

• University of Minnesota Ivermectin Trial Nearing Completion (Star T.)

University of Minnesota researchers expect to finish enrollment this week in the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, and the study’s highly anticipated results could be only a month away. The COVID-OUT study is reviewing three common drugs, including the antidepressant fluvoxamine and the diabetes treatment metformin, but gained attention for its inclusion of ivermectin. The controversial drug has been championed by opponents of COVID-19 vaccines, despite a warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that ivermectin is cleared only to treat parasitic infections, head lice and certain skin conditions. Anti-inflammatory benefits of all three medications prompted the U study, which was delayed by slow enrollment over the summer until the delta and omicron waves of the pandemic emerged.

Lead researcher Dr. Carolyn Bramante said the results will provide clinical guidance to doctors who are facing record pandemic cases and to the FDA about whether to authorize the drugs for treatment of COVID-19. “Sooner would have been better, but I’m really proud of my team,” she said. “We will be done very quickly.” Proven outpatient COVID-19 treatments have been limited, and supplies in Minnesota have been scarce. Providers in the state discontinued two types of monoclonal antibody infusions in December because they were ineffective against the omicron variant, and providers had to ration the effective types. New antiviral COVID-19 pills that have received emergency FDA approval are coming in small shipments every other week to Minnesota.

[..] The U trial is enrolling 1,100 patients with COVID-19 to receive fluvoxamine and ivermectin, alone or in combination with metformin, or a nonmedicating placebo for comparison. The study is tracking whether patients taking the drugs for 14 days avoid hospitalization and maintain healthy blood oxygen levels. Bramante said the drugs have potential to reduce excessive inflammation — a hallmark of some of the most severe and fatal COVID-19 cases. Ivermectin has been tried in other countries, such as India, with less access to vaccine, despite a World Health Organization warning against its use outside clinical trials until its benefits are proven. Some global studies of the drug have been debunked while others in the U.S. are behind the U study.

Duluth-based Essentia Health on Monday announced it was joining the ongoing national ACTIV-6 clinical trial that is studying ivermectin in combination with fluvoxamine and fluticasone, an inhaled steroid. “The aim of the study is to see if these medications make you feel better sooner and prevent hospitalization,” said Dr. Rajesh Prabhu, an Essentia infectious disease specialist. Bramante is not allowed to see the patient data from the U study until after enrollment is finished, but she said it is a positive sign that a data safety monitoring board has allowed it to continue. That means the drugs aren’t causing harm but also there is no proof yet they absolutely work or don’t work against COVID-19.

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Japan goes its own way.

• Japan’s Kowa Says Ivermectin Effective Against Omicron In Phase III Trial (R.)

Japanese trading and pharmaceutical company Kowa Co Ltd said on Monday anti-parasite drug ivermectin has been found effective for treating the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in a Phase III trial. The trial found ivermectin has “an antiviral effect” against the variant, Kowa said without providing further details. The firm has been working with Kitasato University, a medical university in Tokyo. Clinical trials evaluating the drug, which is used to treat parasites in animals and humans, are ongoing but promotion of the drug as a COVID-19 treatment has generated controversy. The drug is not approved for treatment of COVID-19 in Japan and the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has repeatedly warned against its use.

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Yes, it’s about vaccines.

• University Offers Help To Students ‘Affected By A Free Speech Event’ (DM)

Colorado State University is promoting resources aimed at students who claim to be ‘affected by a free speech event’ on campus. A sign was spotted on campus and posted to social media which reads: ‘If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources.’ The sign then proceeds to list 17 different departments or offices on the university campus that may be of help. It includes Multicultural Counseling, Incidents of Bias Reporting, the Office of Equal Opportunity, and a Victim’s Assistance Hotline. Even university staff are taken care of with specific services for employees including the Office of Ombuds, and the Employee Assistance Program.

The roll call continues with a host of departments and programs set up to assist minority students, including Student Diversity Program centers for Asian Pacific, Black/African, and Native Americans. LGBTQ+ are not forgotten either with various services and cultural resources designated for the community. Students with disabilities and given their own hotline together with women, through the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Campus Reform first reported on the sign. The sign was posted on the Instagram account Turning Point USA Rockies Territory. Turning Point Action is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses across the country. The account called out the school for ‘intolerance,’ adding, ‘We haven’t even had an event yet gotta love the intolerance of @coloradostateuniversity.’

Colorado State University, where tuition is $31,712 a year for out-of-state students, has been hostile in recent months to conservative organizations. Several incidents occurred during the fall 2021 semester. In one, a student was filmed harassing Turning Point group members calling them ‘right-wing goons’ and noting that ‘disrupting one of your activities is actually probably one of the most ethical and best things I can do with my time.’ [..]Also in the fall, a student was caught as they stole a sign advocating against vaccine mandates after the university threatened any student who didn’t register their vaccine status with arrest for trespassing. The university later clarified their policy saying that they were ‘not arresting students who are unvaccinated’, so long as they provided their vaccination information or declared an exemption.

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Whole cloth.

• US Close To Approving ‘Mother Of All Sanctions’ Against Russia (G.)

The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine. “We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war. “Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”

Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates. The negotiations come ahead of an expected UN security council meeting on Monday, at the request of the US, to give Russia the opportunity to explain its actions. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “We’re going to go into the council prepared to listen to Russia’s security concerns, but we’re not going to be distracted by their propaganda.”

On Sunday, Kyiv urged Moscow to pull back its troops from Ukraine’s border and continue dialogue with the west if it was “serious” about de-escalating tensions that have soared amid fears of a Russian invasion. Canada moved its Ukraine-based military units westward on Sunday and announced the temporary withdrawal of all non-essential employees from its Kyiv embassy, citing ongoing Russian threats along the border. “We will continue to take all precautions necessary to keep our Canadian Armed Forces safe and secure,” said Canada’s Defense Minister Anita Anand at a press conference in Kyiv. Canada has 900 military members supporting the Nato mission in Ukraine via “land, air and sea,” she said.

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Eurocrat

• EU Threatens To Halt Nord Stream 2 & Cut Russia Off From SWIFT (RT)

The EU is discussing the possibility of excluding Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system and completely putting a halt on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline if Moscow launches an invasion of Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has revealed. Speaking to CNN on Thursday, the Eurocrat said the EU would not rule out any possible angles for sanctions, adding that nothing is “off the table.” The EU and the US are currently working on a package of measures designed to deter Russia from considering a military incursion into Ukraine. Moscow stands accused of placing 100,000 troops on the border, with some alleging it is planning an attack. This claim has repeatedly been denied by the Kremlin.

Von der Leyen’s latest statement comes despite some reports that many foreign leaders have given up on some of the harshest sanctions, including on the financial and energy sectors, due to fears that the European economy and the continent’s energy security could see significant blowback. These include the suggestion that the EU could place a total ban on the usage of Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline that connects Russia to Germany. “I want to be very clear: Nothing is off the table, everything is on the table,” von der Leyen said when asked directly if the EU would make sure the energy system is stopped from ever being used. She repeated the same line when also asked about SWIFT. “The Commission is responsible for designing, shaping, and developing the sanctions – in the financial field, in the economic field, in the technology field. This includes everything,” she explained.

According to von der Leyen, any EU sanctions against Russia would have a devastating effect. Brussels is Moscow’s largest trading partner, and 75% of direct foreign investment in Russia comes from the EU, she explained, suggesting that economic measures would be painful. Earlier in January, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the EU and the US had refused to consider disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system. It noted that it could destabilize financial markets and help create an alternative payment infrastructure that would no longer be dominated by Western nations.

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Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
~ Albert Einstein

• Year in Review 2021 Part 3 – Rise of Global Authoritarianism (Dave Collum)

So, here we are at the third and final part of the 2021 Year in Review and it’s no longer 2021. Sorry about that pfuck-up. Think of it as not in 2021 but from 2021. You may have noticed that the first 200 pages (parts 1 and 2) were laced with a recurring catchphrase, “WTF is happening?” It was a literary device for noting that the events ceased to make sense within a conventional worldview, suggesting it is time to torch the old model and start anew. Our response to a disease that was killing a very small slice of the population was to sequester and vaccinate the entire population with an experimental drug of real but unquantified fatality rate. The apparent scientific illiteracy was not some mass psychosis. Y’all just got suckered by America’s Most Trusted Psychopathic Mass Murderer assisted by an epic media blitz sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry that had a distinct authoritarian quality.

During the brief period after uploading part 2 while grinding on this last portion, the Supreme Court took on the vaccine mandate issue, ruling that the only people forfeiting control of their own healthcare are the healthcare workersref 2 The court also illustrated their profound ignorance of the pandemic and what they were even charged to assess—the Constitutionality of mandates, not the efficacy.ref 3 The CEO of a major insurer reported a 40% spike in fatalities within the 18–65 age bracket that was not from Covid.ref 4 He said 10% would be a 3-sigma, once-every-200-year event: 40% is unheard of. Although he refrained from identifying a cause—deaths of despair, neglected healthcare, or a toxic vaccine—he knows precisely what did them in. They have been studying this stuff for centuries. I suspect his real message was that the insurance industry is about to contribute to inflation with rising premiums.

Meanwhile, the pathological liars running the covid grift decided after two years the masks you’ve been wearing served no medical purpose and that the vaccines don’t work either. Wait: who said the masks and vaccines don’t work?

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“I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!”

• Biden Promises To Replace Tom Brady With A Woman Of Color (BBee)

Legendary quarterback Tom Brady has announced his plan to retire from the NFL to spend more time carving little wooden toys for his grandkids. In response to the earth-shattering news, President Joe Biden has announced his commitment to replace the outgoing football star with a woman of color. “Listen, folks, it’s time,” said Biden to the press. “In the hundred-year history of the NFL, not a single quarterback has ever been a woman of color. That’s racist! We all know that poor women are just as smart and powerful as white kids. As president, I will nominate a new quarterback to replace Tom Brady that reflects America’s diversity.”


When told he doesn’t have the authority to nominate quarterbacks to the NFL, Biden told his staff he would just sign the executive order and let the courts deal with it later. “There’s no excuse,” said Biden. When I used to play Nine Pins with Jehoshaphat Jenkins and the townsfolk, we always used to let the black women play with us. I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!” So far, candidates being considered for the empty position include Michelle Obama, Tyler Perry, and Colin Kaepernick in a woman’s wig.

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McCullough

 

 

Super immunity

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle Boxing Day 2021

Dec 262021
 
 December 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Berthe Morisot After luncheon 1881

 

• Chaos And The Triumph Of Survival (Von Greyerz)
• Are Covid-19 Data Reliable? The Case Of The European Union (medRxiv)
• Door-to-door Covid Jab Teams To Be Sent To Homes Of Unvaccinated Britons (DM)
• On “Science” and Controversy (Malone)
• Covid Fearmongering Has Consequences Too (O’Neill)
• Slouching Toward Endemicity (Tucker)
• Researchers Fear Growing Covid Vaccine Hesitancy In Developing Nations (Nature)
• US Navy Warship Pauses Deployment After COVID-19 Outbreak, 100% Immunized (ET)
• LinkedIn Has Banned Me For Life For Making 3 Truthful Comments (Kirsch)
• German, Russian Envoys To Meet To Ease Political Tensions Over Ukraine (ZH)
• ‘Don’t Weigh Me’ Cards Aim To Reduce Stress At The Doctor’s Office (CNN)

 

 

 

 

Good observations from a gold dealer, of all people.

“So now everyone needs a booster every few months. With Big Pharma being both judge and jury plus benefiting from their own advice to the extent 100s of billions of dollars, how do we know the real truth?”

• Chaos And The Triumph Of Survival (Von Greyerz)

One of the most horrifying works of art is Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” painted in 1562. The painting depicts the end of life on earth. I sincerely hope that this is not what the world will literally look like in the next decade or two but metaphorically this is not an unlikely depiction of the chaos that could hit us all. The Black Death plague of the 14th century, which killed up to half of the world’s population, clearly had a major influence on the painter. The moral message is that when chaos hits, the destruction will affect everyone, rich and poor, young and old. No one will escape by power or devotion. The financial, economic and moral devastation which is about to hit the world will for more than 99.5% of the people come out of the blue like a flash from a clear sky.

For most people, coming events will thus be like the definition of the word CHAOS: “A state of total confusion and disorder”. CHAOS NUMBER 1: COVID Talking about disorder, just like the Black Death that inspired Bruegel’s painting, the world is now facing a global pandemic. But rather than the nearer 50% of global population that perished in the mid 1300s, today we are looking at total deaths from the current pandemic of 0.06% of the world population! And even that figure might be overestimated due to the classification rules applied. For that minuscule percentage the world has now been paralysed for the third year soon.

There are lockdowns, quarantines, compulsory vaccines with unlined boosters, covid passports, closed schools, closed offices, major industries like leisure haemorrhaging, airlines going bankrupt, shortages of labour, components, products, closed borders, and for the few people who dare to and can travel across borders, more bureaucracy, paperwork and tests than in a police state. At the same time money printing and credit creation have gone exponential. The politicians obviously blame the scientists for all the rules that they force upon the people. It is interesting that with almost 200 countries in the world, each country has different rules how to deal with covid. If all these rules were based on science, you would have thought that the rules would have been the same for all 200 countries.

Or could it be as many observers believe that the politicians use the pandemic to their own advantage. Or is it more likely that neither the scientists nor the politicians have got a clue how to deal with a disease that creates hardly any deaths in excess of normal deaths? In Sweden for example, there has been no lockdown, no quarantine, no closed shops, no mask requirement and industry has operated normally. Covid cases and deaths are at the lower range of the European average. Hmmm – so much for all these punishing rules in most countries. We were told that the vaccines would solve the problem but two shots haven’t so far as we were promised. So now everyone needs a booster every few months. With Big Pharma being both judge and jury plus benefiting from their own advice to the extent 100s of billions of dollars, how do we know the real truth?

As an example, I have a 19 year old vaccinated granddaughter who had Covid in August. Now she has got Covid for the second time, fortunately in the form of a normal cold. The government/scientist solution is clearly more vaccines at ever more frequent intervals. And still no one has properly tested the long term effects the vaccines have on our bodies. There just isn’t time for that!!? The consequences of these constant changing of rules and shutdowns will clearly have a devastating effect on an already very fragile world economy and financial system.

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The Science is made up.

• Are Covid-19 Data Reliable? The Case Of The European Union (medRxiv)

Previous studies have used Benford’s distribution to assess whether there is misreporting of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Data inaccuracies provide false information to the media, undermine global response and hinder the preventive measures taken by countries worldwide. In this study, we analyze daily new cases and deaths from all the countries of the European Union and estimate the conformance to Benford’s distribution. For each country, two statistical tests and two measures of deviations are calculated to determine whether the reported statistics comply with the expected distribution. Four country-level developmental indexes are also included, the GDP per capita, health expenditures, the Universal Health Coverage index, and full vaccination rate.


Regression analysis is implemented to show whether the deviation from Benford’s distribution is affected by the aforementioned indexes. The findings indicate that only three countries were in line with the expected distribution, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania. For daily cases, Denmark, Greece, and Ireland, showed the greatest deviation from Benford’s distribution, and for deaths, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Luxemburg had the highest deviation from Benford’s law. Furthermore, it was found that the vaccination rate is positively associated with deviation from Benford’s distribution. These results suggest that overall official data provided by authorities are not confirming Benford’s law, yet this approach acts as a preliminary tool for data verification. More extensive studies should be made with a more thorough investigation of countries that showed the greatest deviation.

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Back to the Middle Ages.

• Door-to-door Covid Jab Teams To Be Sent To Homes Of Unvaccinated Britons (DM)

Door-to-door teams armed with Covid jabs will be sent to the homes of unvaccinated Britons in plans being considered by Ministers to reach the estimated five million people yet to be inoculated. Discussions between the Department of Health, NHS England and No 10 over the past week have looked at a nationwide drive to send vaccine teams to areas with low uptake rates as a crucial way to avoid lockdown and other restrictions. It is also seen as a way to get jabs to rural areas or households where people cannot easily get to a vaccination centre. One Cabinet Minister last night backed the plan, saying: ‘I think anything that encourages the vaccine-hesitant is sensible,’ before warning: ‘The mood in the country is hardening against people who refuse to be vaccinated.’

‘I am all in favour of free choice but there comes a point when you cannot lock up 90 per cent of the country who are vaccinated for the ten per cent who refuse to be.’ Doctors have said up to 90 per cent of Covid patients in intensive care units are unvaccinated. The vaccination drive continued throughout Christmas Day. NHS England said thousands of first, second and booster jabs were given yesterday. Meanwhile more than 220,000 first doses of the vaccine were administered in the week to 21 December, up by 46 per cent compared to the previous week. First dose uptake in 18-24 year-olds rose by 85 per cent in the same period, and 71 per cent in 25 to 30-year-olds. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the rise in first dose uptake was ‘excellent’, as discussions were ongoing on how to reach more of the unjabbed.

Door-to-door jabs visits are already being trialled in one area of Ipswich, which led to an extra 150 people getting their first, second or booster jab in a weekend. Downing Street sources said the aim is to expand this to the rest of the country and try to reach the estimated five milllion unvaccinated. Dan Poulter, the Tory MP and NHS hospital doctor who has been doing shifts in London hospitals, welcomed the plan. He said: ‘In parts of London where there’s very low vaccine uptake, you’re bound to get a good uptake in jabs if you’re knocking on doors. ‘I think that would have a very positive effect in getting vaccination rates higher.’

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“The closest historical approximation to this monstrosity is the Catholic Church during the Spanish inquisition..”

• On “Science” and Controversy (Malone)

Good science (and good public health policy) requires conflict. There is no one “Science”. No single “truth”. Quality science is like a song sung by a choir. A solo scientist is usually better described as a philosopher or priest. Any individual claiming to embody “Science” or scientific truth is (by definition) no longer a practitioner of the intellectual discipline of modern science. The scientific process requires constant external challenge and criticism to reach a working approximation of truth. Such (typically autocratic, paternalistic) people lose the ability to maintain objectivity and typically transition to functioning as an enforcer of their version of reality. These people often resort to a form of crude binary thought – their version of the truth versus all alternatives. In contrast, the modern scientific practitioner approaches the effort to draw truth out of the unknown as something closer to mathematical calculus, a process of serial approximation which gradually approaches an asymptote hypothesized to be scientific truth.

Enter the trusted news initiative.[..] This intellectual obscenity purports to be able to discern and enforce scientific “truth” by defining truth as that which established public health bureaucracies (and singularly autocratic public health “leaders”) say it is. The trusted news initiative aggressively employs both globally coordinated media and the tools of modern big technology to censor, demean, de-platform, delegitimize and de-license all others who seek to document, advance or discuss alternative versions of officially endorsed reality. The trusted news initiative has functionally morphed into Orwell’s predicted ministry of truth. Backed by the combined power of national and international governmental structures, massive transnational investment funds the likes of which the world has never seen before, and the commercial assets (Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Tech) over which the funds exert horizontally integrated control through access to investment capital and structural leadership ties.


This is the most intrinsically anti-science global organization ever implemented in the history of modern man. The closest historical approximation to this monstrosity is the Catholic Church during the Spanish inquisition. When this history of this pandemic is written, the combined effect of the Trusted News Initiative and autocratic national and international public health leaders will be documented as being responsible for massive excess human suffering and loss of life due to suppression of the discussion and dissent which is critical for the modern scientific process to accurately discern evolving truth and inform effective public policy decisions. This must stop, before yet more avoidable, unnecessary suffering and loss of life accrues.

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“Two million cases a day, thousands of deaths a day — that is virtually all we heard in relation to Omicron.”

• Covid Fearmongering Has Consequences Too (O’Neill)

The scaremongers have overplayed their hand. Omicron could prove disastrous, they warned. They scoffed at the early indicators from South Africa suggesting it was milder than Delta. ‘MYTH BUSTER’, declared the Sun when Chris Whitty poured cold water on the idea that Omicron might be milder than Delta. ‘Deaths could hit 6,000 a day’, screamed the Guardian, turning Sage’s worst-case scenario into a chilling headline. The news was full of it: we’re doomed. Yet now it seems pretty clear that these fearful prophecies were way off. Just a week after we were being bombarded with these visions of the Biblical horrors Omicron would visit upon our nation, it’s being reported that this variant really is milder than the Delta one. This raises some really serious questions for the expert classes who are meant to be guiding us through this health crisis. Have they lost the plot? And now, will they lose the trust of the people?

The turnaround in recent days has been extraordinary. Last week, suggesting that Omicron might be milder was dangerous, it threatened to undermine the seriousness of the pandemic. Whitty became visibly frustrated whenever this possibility was raised. The Twitterati pooh-poohed any positive news coming from South Africa. (First South Africa was wrongly blamed for the Omicron variant, then its experts were implicitly defamed as untrustworthy amateurs when they said to the world: ‘Guys, you’re overreacting.’) Two million cases a day, thousands of deaths a day — that is virtually all we heard in relation to Omicron.


The front pages are starkly different today. ‘Official: Omicron 50% less severe’, says the Mail. ‘Omicron hospital risk is two thirds lower’, says the Telegraph. Even the Guardian’s no doubt distressed headline-writers have had to admit that their earlier vision of another nightmarish wave of disease whacking Brexit Britain might have been a tad overdone. ‘Risk of hospital stay is 40% lower with Omicron variant’, the front page says. These good news headlines — yes, doom-mongers, we are allowed to call it good news! — spring from new studies into Omicron’s virulence. Researchers at Imperial found a 40 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation for Omicron in comparison with Delta. Edinburgh University went further — they reckon there is a 65 per cent lower risk of hospitalisation. A South African study says the risk is between 70 and 80 per cent lower.

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“Is that the sound of normalcy I’m hearing out there?”

• Slouching Toward Endemicity (Tucker)

Is that the sound of normalcy I’m hearing out there? Ever more authors and sources admitting that the virus is a medical problem that cannot be addressed or solved through politicized “mitigation measures.” This is what I’m reading between the lines of such news stories as this one: Early in the pandemic, many people seized on the hope that Covid-19 could be stopped in its tracks and buried for good once vaccines rolled out. But hope for a zero-Covid country fizzled for most scientists long ago. That amounts to a gigantic change in outlook and a terrifying illustration of egregious failure. It’s a sign of exhaustion and the realization of the futility of the battle. In this US in any case (if not in many other countries). But it had to come eventually.


Consider that Covid cases in both New York and Florida have reached record levels, and at some point increases in deaths are likely to follow, though not as bad as prior seasons. With both states dealing with similar trends, there is no point in the exhausting game of finger pointing that’s been going on for so long.

The charts themselves are a picture of astonishing policy failure: not the failure to stop the virus but rather the belief and policy that imagined that doing so was possible at all. The virus is still here and still on a seasonal march, perhaps causing less damage than in the past but it really does raise the burning question: what precisely was accomplished by almost two years of massive compulsory upheaval? In the last several months, we’ve seen the hysterics and rhetoric dialed back a bit. It’s been a long time since I’ve read any published millenarian fantasies of beating this virus into submission or oblivion. We’ve come a long way since March 2020, when Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx talked Trump into announcing two weeks to flatten the curve. Trump actually went further that day and expressed his view that he would “defeat the virus,” “taking a tough stance” to “get rid of the virus.”


This is the hidden meaning behind the White House’s new line that “This is not March 2020.” What precisely makes it different? A major part of the difference is the growing realization that the attempt to use state measures to “get rid of” the virus or control its seasonality was completely delusional.

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“Nature” deviating from science. The best thing we can do for these countries is to leave them alone.

• Researchers Fear Growing Covid Vaccine Hesitancy In Developing Nations (Nature)

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has long been recognized as a problem in high- and middle-income nations. But in some of the world’s poorest countries, lack of access to vaccines has been a much bigger hurdle. Now researchers say that as doses are trickling in, resistance to getting vaccinated is also emerging as a major issue in those nations. Scientists fear that persistent pools of unvaccinated people around the world will present a greater risk for the emergence of new variants of concern, such as Omicron. “When you have a lot of community transmission, that’s where variants will emerge,” says Jeffrey Lazarus, a global health researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain. Addressing people’s hesitancy is therefore crucial, to curb viral spread and to avert hospitalizations and deaths, he says.

Scientists report that hesitancy might now be contributing to the slow uptake of vaccines in some nations where large proportions of the populations remain unvaccinated. These include South Africa — one of the nations where Omicron was first detected — Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Papua New Guinea and Nepal. “We have more hesitant people in the global south than we ever thought we did,” says Rupali Limaye, a behavioural scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Although in many countries, limited supply is still the main problem, say researchers.

Until late October, the problem in many African nations “was that we just didn’t have enough doses”, says Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) in Durban. “But we now have adequate amounts of vaccines in most countries,” he says. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, just 64% of the vaccines supplied to the continent have so far been administered. In South Africa, for example, the number of doses administered each week has fallen to less than one-quarter of doses given at the peak of the vaccination drive in September. This is despite only 44% of adults having been vaccinated with at least one dose.

The calls on social media for more doses from Western countries are perplexing, says Espoir Malembaka, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is based in Bukavu, DRC. Four types of vaccine are now available in eastern DRC, “but we don’t see people really in a rush to get the vaccine”, except for travellers getting ready to board flights, says Malembaka. He believes that the problem is not access to, but mistrust of, the vaccines. Researchers say that countries might be struggling to get vaccines into arms for many reasons — some of which have nothing to with hesitancy — including poorly funded health-care systems, the fact that doses are often close to their expiry dates and logistical issues getting vaccines to remote regions. But people’s delay or refusal to get vaccinated is also part of the puzzle.

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Vaccinated and immunized would appear to be very different things.

• US Navy Warship Pauses Deployment After COVID-19 Outbreak, 100% Immunized (ET)

A U.S. Navy warship has paused its deployment to South America due to a COVID-19 outbreak among its “100 percent immunized” crew, the Navy announced on Christmas Eve. “USS Milwaukee (LCS 5), a Freedom variant littoral combat ship, remains in port as some Sailors test positive for COVID-19,” the U.S. 4th Fleet said in a statement. “The crew is 100 percent immunized and all COVID-19 positive Sailors are isolated on board and away from other crew members. A portion of those infected have exhibited mild symptoms. The vaccine continues to demonstrate effectiveness against serious illness.” The ship currently remains in port at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, located at the southeastern end of Cuba.


It had departed Dec. 14 from Mayport, Florida, and was heading into the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter-illicit drug trafficking missions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The U.S. 4th Fleet’s statement did not quantify the number of those infected, nor how many among them are exhibiting mild symptoms. The specific COVID-19 variant has yet to be determined. The ship is following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for contact tracing and testing. COVID-19 cases have recently increased drastically across the United States amid the spread of the contagious Omicron variant. The ship is also “following an aggressive mitigation strategy” in accordance with Navy and CDC guidelines.

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Censorship continues unabated. Steve Kirsch, Richard Werner…

• LinkedIn Has Banned Me For Life For Making 3 Truthful Comments (Kirsch)

Christmas came early for me. LinkedIn has determined that three of my posts were so egregious that I should be banned for life from LinkedIn. It’s now as if I never existed. LinkedIn is the sole judge, jury, and executioner of what constitutes “misleading or inaccurate” information and whether you violate their user agreement. They can terminate you at any time, for any reason. You have no recourse. Because I made 3 truthful, accurate statements that some people at LinkedIn considered to be misleading or inaccurate, my account (built up over nearly 20 years) is now permanently deleted. They could have simply restricted my ability to post. Instead, they chose to expunge my entire identity so nobody will ever know I existed. Wow. Instead of simply restricting my ability to post, they basically wiped out my entire identity so nobody can even see who I am anymore or what I accomplished.

My resume is gone. My awards are gone. Nobody can even find out I ever existed. I didn’t even get a chance to copy my profile before they wiped me out. All my contacts are gone. The record of my 7 companies I started: gone. No one will be able to lookup my history there anymore. It’s like burning books in the library. Wikipedia did the same thing to me. They removed the mention that I received a National Caring Award as retribution for speaking out about vaccine safety. This can happen to you if you too disagree with mainstream thought. America today is about conformity with mainstream thought. If you disagree, you lose your job, lose your ability to communicate, and they remove any record of your existence. I’m now lifetime banned on Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The reason I am not yet banned on Facebook is because I never post there.

[..] Hi Steve,

Your account was restricted due to multiple violations of LinkedIn’s User Agreement and Professional Community Policies against sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information:

Post on 9/26/2021: Inconvenient truth: >150,000 excess deaths in VAERS. Jeffrey Morris REFUSES to debate my team in a video RECORDED call. He writes papers but is AFRAID to have them publicly challenged.

Post on 9/22/2021: I just sent this to Eric Topol: Eric, I’m a big vaccine skeptic. I think the vaccines have killed over xxx people. Would you like to debate? You can do the world a HUGE service by showing people how ridiculous my assertions are. You can bring down all my 20 experts at the same time in a 1 hour debate. You’d end vaccine hesitancy. [had to xxx to escape censorship from LinkedIn ]

Post on 9/20/2021: Nicki Minaj was telling the truth. All the authorities were wrong. The facts are all with Nicki. The authorities cited no evidence to support their position. But they are the authorities so we should believe them NO MATTER WHAT the science actually says, right? The authorities NEVER make mistakes. https://lnkd.in/gqYieZyX

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New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz might play a positive part by refusing to be a puppet.

• German, Russian Envoys To Meet To Ease Political Tensions Over Ukraine (ZH)

With tensions over Ukraine spilling over and the western media now reporting that Russia is deploying mercenaries to East Ukraine in what is either a sharp escalation in “pre-kinetic” activity, or an acceleration in the false flag narrative, some hope for de-escalation emerged on Christmas Day when Reuters reported that according to a German government source, senior German and Russian government officials agreed to a rare in-person meeting next month in an effort to ease political tensions over Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and Russia’s Ukraine negotiator Dmitry Kozak agreed to meet after a lengthy phone conversation on Thursday.

The Reuters sources added that “Berlin doubts more than Washington whether Russia actually wants to attack Ukraine” and is keen to de-escalate tensions. While there has been no official comment from the German government, there have been a flurry of phone calls between western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months over Russia’s military build-up on the Ukrainian border and resulting fears of an invasion. Meanwhile,in-person meetings between senior Western and Russian government officials have been few and far between, though U.S. President Joe Biden held talks with President Putin in Geneva last June.

Since taking office this month, Scholz has emphasized the need for dialogue with Russia over its military build-up on the Ukrainian border while joining western allies in backing sanctions should Moscow invade. Germany has been accused by critics of being beholden to Putin because of its need for Russian gas, attacking construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between the countries, bypassing Ukraine. Berlin says Nordstream 2 is not political and would be only one of several pipelines transporting Russian gas to Europe. “The German side’s goal remains to achieve a swift reactivation of the Normandy format,” the German government source said, referring to multilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.

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This is just plain weird. The connection to Covid makes it even more so.

• ‘Don’t Weigh Me’ Cards Aim To Reduce Stress At The Doctor’s Office (CNN)

A body positivity website has created free “Don’t Weigh Me” cards for patients who find stepping on the scale at the doctor’s office stressful. The cards, created by California-based More-Love.org, are available for free to individuals, excluding the cost of postage. There is also the option for businesses to purchase the cards, at $35 per 100 cards. The cards read: “Please don’t weigh me unless it’s (really) medically necessary,” adding “If you really need my weight, please tell me why so that I can give you my informed consent,” as shown in photographs on More-Love.org: On the other side of the card is a list of reasons why it may not be medically necessary to weigh a patient. “Most health conditions can be addressed without knowing my weight,” is one reason, and “I pursue healthy behaviors regardless of my weight status” is another:

More-Love.org was founded in 2016 by Ginny Jones, according to its website, and describes itself as “an online resource that empowers parents to raise kids who are free from body hate, disordered eating, and eating disorders.” The group supports a “Health at Every Size” philosophy, based around the assumption that “the current practice of linking weight to health using BMI (body mass Iindex) standards is biased and unhelpful.”

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Debt Rattle November 23 2021

Nov 232021
 
 November 23, 2021  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  93 Responses »


Max Ernst Ubu Imperator 1923

 

• Germany Promotes Moderna Shot As The ‘Rolls-Royce’ Of Covid Vaccines (RT)
• German Politicians Refuse To Rule Out Mandatory COVID Vaccination (ZH)
• Australian Army Moves COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps (ZH)
• Gottlieb: ‘Fully Vaccinated’ To Include Boosters (Hill)
• Want 11% -> 25% Heart Attack Risk? For Most….. (Denninger)
• Monday Was The Deadline For Federal Workers To Be Vaccinated (NPR)
• System Strained As Military Personnel Seek Religious Waivers From Vaccine (WT)
• A Big Flip? (Jim Kunstler)
• Even Reuters Tripping Out On 55-Year Delay To Release Pfizer Vax Data (ZH)
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Kirsch)
• Pathologized Totalitarianism 101 (CJ Hopkins)
• Ukraine Boasts Of Blocking Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (RT)
• The Case for a Debt Jubilee (Richard Vague)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Germany is lost.

• Germany Promotes Moderna Shot As The ‘Rolls-Royce’ Of Covid Vaccines (RT)

The German health minister claimed that experts see the Moderna shot as the “Rolls-Royce” of vaccines, while likening the Pfizer jab to a “Mercedes” as the country looks to roll out booster shots to tame a fourth wave. Speaking on Monday, Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference that the government will insist on the use of the Moderna vaccine as a Covid-19 booster, warning that millions of shots could expire in the first quarter of 2022 unless used. Spahn said that some 16 million Moderna doses could go to waste unless they’re used in the coming months. “This is an important aspect, but it is not the decisive one. What’s crucial is that our BioNTech stock is emptying so fast that coming next week we won’t be able to deliver more than two-three million doses a week,” he added.


The minister emphasized that the preference of most Germans for the Pfizer vaccine was misled, as he claimed that experts call the Moderna shot the “Rolls-Royce” of Covid-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, the Pfizer vaccine, developed in partnership with German firm BioNTech, was more comparable to “Mercedes.” Germany is racing to deliver booster shots in an effort to tame a dangerous fourth wave of Covid-19, which has already led to a lockdown in neighboring Austria. Allaying fears of vaccine shortages, Spahn claimed that Germany had a combined 50 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna available until the end of the year. Earlier in November, an advisory committee said that people under the age of 30 in Germany should only receive the Pfizer vaccine, as it caused fewer heart inflammations in younger people than Moderna’s. France, among other nations, had already applied similar guidance.

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All history forgotten.

• German Politicians Refuse To Rule Out Mandatory COVID Vaccination (ZH)

In view of Germany’s dramatic Covid situation, and following last Friday’s news that neighboring Austria will impose a mandatory vaccination starting February, the debate about a general vaccination obligation is gaining momentum, with a growing number of political leaders saying they would not rule it out. On Thursday, the heads of the 16 federal states agreed that mandatory vaccinations for health workers should be carried out “on a facility-by-facility basis” and urged the federal government to implement this as soon as possible. But discussions for mandatory vaccines for the general population are also intensifying. According to TheLocal.de, during a press conference about the availability of mRNA vaccines on Monday morning, Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of introducing mandatory vaccination in Germany in the future.

“That is not a decision we can make today,” he told reporters. On Sunday evening, SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach had also raised the possibility of compulsory vaccinations in a talk show on the TV station Bild: “We must move towards vaccination obligation,” he argued. “Without compulsory vaccinations, we obviously won’t achieve the vaccination rate we need to get to.” On Monday morning the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced a seven-day incidence of 386.5, reaching a new high for the 15th day in a row. 30,643 new infections within 24 hours were also reported, although fewer case numbers are usually reported over the weekend. Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek also recently said that he would not rule out a general vaccination requirement.

“I was always actually an opponent of compulsory vaccination,” he told Deutschlandfunk radio. However, he now believes “that we need to talk about this issue relatively quickly.” “Personally, I am now actually in favour of this general vaccination obligation as a last resort,” he said. Bavaria is currently one of the worst-hit federal states in Germany: on Monday the Robert Koch Institut reported an incidence of 640 in the region. The president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, expressed restraint in the debate about compulsory vaccination, but said that it could be seen as “as a last resort” on ZDF television on Sunday. But he repeated his calls for people to get vaccinated voluntarily. “We must ensure that we get as many people as possible to vaccinate, and boost those who have complete basic immunisation,” he said.

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A change is needed. This will not end well.

• Australian Army Moves COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps (ZH)

The Australian army has begun forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territories to the Howard Springs quarantine camp located in Darwin, after nine new Covid-19 cases were identified in the community of Binjari. The move comes after hard lockdowns were instituted in the communities of both Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Saturday night. “Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” said Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, referring to the country’s five allowable reasons to avoid lockdown (buying food and supplies, exercising for up to two hours, care or caregiving, work or education if it can’t be done from home, and to get vaccinated at the nearest possible location).

“They can only leave for medical treatment, in an emergency, or as required by law.” “It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” he continued, adding “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.” “I contacted the Prime Minister last night. We are grateful for the support of about 20 ADF personnel, as well as army trucks to assist with the transfer of positive cases and close contacts – and to support the communities. We are doing an assessment today of what extra resources we might need from the Feds, and the Prime Minister is ready to help further – I thank him for that.” “We’re conscious of the fact that this can have some impacts on people’s mental health as well as their general well being,” Police Commissioner Jamie Chalkner told NT News.

Of note, the Northern Territories are home to a large percentage of indigenous Australians. As the Epoch Times’ Steve Milne notes: “According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2018-19, almost one in five Indigenous Australians lived in overcrowded dwellings (18 percent), compared to 5 percent of non-Indigenous Australians. Although this percentage had decreased from 27 percent in 2004, it still meant an estimated 145,340 Indigenous Australians were living in overcrowded dwellings in 2018-19. In addition, the more remote an area, the higher the proportion of Indigenous Australians living in overcrowded dwellings (26 percent in remote areas and 51 percent in “very remote” areas), compared to 8 and 22 percent in non-remote areas.”

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Pfizer board. Careful never to mention number 4.

• Gottlieb: ‘Fully Vaccinated’ To Include Boosters (Hill)

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that he expects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider Americans “fully vaccinated” when they receive a booster shot, adding that recommendations to change it would likely not happen this year. “Should the CDC say you need a booster to be considered fully vaccinated?” “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb on CBS. “I think at some point they’re going to, but not this year,” Gottlieb answered. “I think eventually this will be considered the three-dose vaccine, but I would be hard pressed to believe CDC is going to make that recommendation any time soon, in part because of this debate about whether or not younger people who are less risk should be receiving that third dose in states where governors are looking to do this, and I think some local communities will do it,” he added.


Gottlieb was also asked about CDC saying last week that all American adults could get a booster shot while specifically recommending that people over the age of 50 get their boosters. “I think the reluctant nature by which CDC has been stepping into this debate reflects a broader ambivalence or a broader debate happening in a public health community about whether the vaccines should be used as tools to protect people from bad outcomes from COVID, or whether they should be used as tools to try to end the pandemic and control transmission,” Gottlieb said. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky late last week signed off on a recommendation from a CDC advisory panel to broaden eligibility of the COVID-19 booster to all American adults.

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“..the only reason you got protection was due to a wildly elevated titer in the first place, and once it waned, which it inevitably would, you were going to get ****ed.”

• Want 11% -> 25% Heart Attack Risk? For Most….. (Denninger)

its actually worse in percentage terms. Yeah, that’s bad, and we’ll get to that. But first, another study. Because, well, why tell you that you likely screwed yourself once when we can get a two-fer at once? So on the first up I have a nasty prediction to make, and you’re not going to like it — but it is, once again, nothing more than reading the data and making a reasonable projection forward based on what it shows. If you remember one of the nightmare scenarios was an “ADE” sort of response to the jabs, which many so-called “experts” poo-pooed. They had no evidence to poo-poo it, by the way, and in fact the evidence all ran the other way from history. We had never successfully vaccinated against a coronavirus producing durable immunity and this is why; the previous trials all aborted out due to VEI (vaccine-enhanced infection) which covers ADE, OAS and a whole other litany of stupidity caused by using non-sterilizing “vaccines.”

Then this paper published, which confirmed it was in play with specific focus on these jabs. “In this study we profiled vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies as well as plasmablast-derived mAbs from individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine. Polyclonal antibody responses in vaccinees were robust and comparable to or exceeded those seen after natural infection. However, the ratio of binding to neutralizing antibodies after vaccination was greater than that after natural infection and, at the monoclonal level, we found that the majority of vaccine-induced antibodies did not have neutralizing activity.”

This was published in July of this year. It should have been the end of mass-vaccination attempts against Covid because it made clear that binding (infection-enhancing) antibodies were produced by the jabs in abundance and what’s worse the majority of the antibodies produced were worthless or harmful. In short the only reason you got protection was due to a wildly elevated titer in the first place, and once it waned, which it inevitably would, you were going to get ****ed. We also found a co-dominance of mAbs targeting the NTD and RBD of SARS-CoV-2 spike and an original antigenic-sin like backboost to spikes of seasonal human coronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 That’s even worse in that OC43 in particular is believed to have caused a Covid-19 like pandemic in the 1890s. Backboosting that virus, which circulates all the time in humans, is flat-out nuts because like Covid-19 the pandemic of the 1890s featured all manner of nasty death.

Since OC43 circulates in the population on a roughly four-year cycle anything that enhances that virus is begging to whack people in size — but not from Covid-19, rather from another virus that usually is nothing other than a nuisance! Well, now we’re seeing the consequences. UM (Ann Arbor) is reporting a wildly-virulent outbreak of “the worst flu ever” but the testing for Covid is coming back negative. They’re claiming its a strain of flu but that’s even worse because that strongly implies that the immune damage isn’t Covid-19 specific. [..] We had plenty of warning and should have stopped the jabs immediately in healthy people when that data became apparent because the very last thing you ever want to do is potentiate some other disease with your so-called “strategy.” What’s even worse is that this was the only reasonable and plausible explanation for why the drug companies set dosing where they did (the presence of binding antibodies) which means everyone in both the FDA and drug companies knew ******ned well before the first EUA issued that these jabs were likely to do this.

But it doesn’t end there. It is reported that the hospitalization rate for “breakthrough” infections is in the neighborhood of 9%. That is roughly double the rate the CDC “estimates” for all Covid-19 infections. In addition the recent outbreak in a CT nursing home with more than a 10% fatality rate has made clear that in terms of actually protecting people from severe outcomes who need it most the vaccines are essentially worthless. In other words when your protection wanes you are at higher risk of getting severely ill. That too is logical given the binding antibody titers. In addition there are now a myriad number of reports of people who got Covid again after being vaccinated yet non-vaccinated second infection reports remain nearly non-existent. So if you had the disease and then take the jab the evidence is that it ruined your existing protection, at least in part. How bad that will get is unknown — but we’re going to find out.

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Let the stories be told.

• Monday Was The Deadline For Federal Workers To Be Vaccinated (NPR)

Monday marks the deadline for millions of federal employees to provide proof that they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate was imposed by President Biden in an executive order signed back in September. Federal workers will have all day today to turn in their proof of vaccination. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said experience with other similar mandates in the private sector indicates there could be a last minute rush to meet the requirements and submit paperwork. “We don’t see it as a cliff,” said Psaki in Friday’s briefing. For months the White House resisted vaccine mandates out of concern over backlash, but with the delta variant causing a surge in cases and the pace of vaccinations plateauing, Biden signed orders requiring all civilian federal workers and employees of federal contractors to provide proof of vaccination.


A similar requirement was instituted for members of the military and people working in nursing homes, hospitals and doctor’s offices. Although the CDC opened up booster shots to all adults on Friday, for now, the requirement is just for a single dose of the J&J vaccine or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. That could change if the CDC updates its definition of fully vaccinated to include boosters. As for the share of federal workers who have already gotten vaccinated, Psaki said the White House will be crunching the numbers throughout the day. But she insisted they aren’t expecting disruptions caused by people choosing not to be vaccinated. “No, we do not anticipate facing any governmental operational disruptions due to this requirement,” said Psaki. “And in fact the requirement will avoid disruptions in our view because vaccinations help avoid COVID.”

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“Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s been a complete and utter disaster every step of the way.”

• System Strained As Military Personnel Seek Religious Waivers From Vaccine (WT)

The military’s system of implementing a COVID-19 vaccination order for all those in the ranks is facing unprecedented stress as a historic number of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines say their faith should allow them to skip getting the shot. The result so far has been a massive logistical headache for Pentagon leaders and an unenviable task for the chaplains who find themselves in the crosshairs. It’s a dilemma that shows no signs of easing as the services’ vaccine deadlines come and go. With the Defense Department mounting an aggressive push to get service members vaccinated and force out those who refuse, sources across military branches said the sheer volume of faith-related exemption applications is unlike anything seen before.

Exact figures for most of the military services won’t be released publicly for another several weeks, but the few numbers available so far paint a behind-the-scenes picture of a system not designed to handle such a huge influx of waiver requests in a relatively short period of time. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and senior service heads say the vaccine mandate is a readiness issue, needed to protect those who serve and prevent COVID-19 outbreaks from sidelining troops or cutting short deployments and naval missions. But as in the civilian world, vaccine skeptics are proving hard to win over, even in the face of a direct order.

“They don’t have the resources to handle this in a serious manner,” said Sean Timmons, a Houston attorney who said his firm, Tully Rinckey PLLC, represents more than 100 military personnel seeking COVID-19 exemptions, most of them on religious grounds. “It’s a giant mess,” Mr. Timmons told The Washington Times. “Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s been a complete and utter disaster every step of the way.” Pentagon officials vehemently disagree with that characterization and stress that each service member who seeks a religious waiver from the federally mandated coronavirus vaccine is given a fair hearing and ample opportunity to explain their objection.

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“And on Sunday he did nothing, with apparent success.”

• A Big Flip? (Jim Kunstler)

Proposing a hypothetical: What if “Joe Biden” has worsening symptoms of an adverse reaction to his late September Covid booster shot? Does that account for the sudden flurry of interest in how his handlers might manage the problem of Kamala Harris? And what, is the problem with Kamala Harris? That she is Vice-president and next-in-line for Commander-in-chief in the (adverse) event that “JB” has to step aside. And why is that a problem? Because she is widely loathed and distrusted among those who know her in Washington.

That’s what bubbled up last week as “Joe Biden” went into Walter Reed Hospital for a checkup, including an alleged colonoscopy. What if that was not the test he had? What if they ran him through a CT scan or an MRI to detect neurological damage or vascular irregularities in his brain? (In 1988, “JB” did have a couple of brain aneurysms and endured a four-and-a-half-hour microsurgical craniotomy.) Briefly during this exam, Veep Kamala Harris carried the nuclear football, gaining no yardage in the process, but curdling the spinal fluxes of many casual observers in our nation’s capital. Later, the president’s doctors issued a detailed report that portrayed an elderly gentleman “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency….”

And so, for the next three days “Joe Biden” proceeded in his august duties. Late Friday, after the checkup ordeal, he successfully pardoned a Thanksgiving turkey (convicted of mis-gendering a capon). On Saturday, he successfully attended evening mass at a church in Wilmington. And on Sunday he did nothing, with apparent success. Today, he flies to Fort Bragg for a “Friendsgiving dinner” with soldiers. One must imagine that Kamala Harris could keep up with a schedule like that, though perhaps without successfully easing the woes and travails of the American people in this time of Covid, Climate Change, inflation, and white supremacist terrorism.

Of course, if it turned out that “Joe Biden” presented symptoms of an adverse reaction to his Covid booster shot, that might flip the government’s claim that the mRNA vaccines are harmless. It might actually blow away the entire rationale for pushing the American people around over all things Covid. It would drive a stake through the heart of the CDC and end the career of Dr. Anthony Fauci. It would end all the efforts to destroy small business and public school in the USA. It would also prompt severe reactions from the citizens in other advanced nations — especially among what is called the West — and put a stop to their lockdowns, health passports, and proposals for mandatory vaccinations.

So, you see, whatever might be going on with “Joe Biden” health-wise has got to be a national security matter. And so, considering that our government lies liberally about thousands of other matters of lesser importance, one can see that they would be motivated to not tell the truth about “JB’s” checkup.

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“..releasing the information could help reassure vaccine skeptics that the shot is indeed “safe and effective and, thus, increase confidence in the Pfizer vaccine.”

• Even Reuters Tripping Out On 55-Year Delay To Release Pfizer Vax Data (ZH)

Last week attorney Aaron Siri of Injecting Freedom reported that the FDA is going to take 55 years, or until 2076, to disclose all of the data and information it relied on before approving Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. Following its publication, we expected the usual constellation of conflicted neerdowell ‘fact checkers’ to shoot it down – or at least, spin what was going on. To our surprise, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Reuters – whose founder and former CEO sits on the board of Pfizer, looked into the matter and was apparently shocked. Here’s how they explain it:

“The 1967 FOIA law requires federal agencies to respond to information requests within 20 business days. However, the time it takes to actually get the documents “will vary depending on the complexity of the request and any backlog of requests already pending at the agency,” according to the government’s central FOIA website. Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA note in court papers that the plaintiffs are seeking a huge amount of vaccine-related material – about 329,000 pages. The plaintiffs, a group of more than 30 professors and scientists from universities including Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Brown, filed suit in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, seeking expedited access to the records. They say that releasing the information could help reassure vaccine skeptics that the shot is indeed “safe and effective and, thus, increase confidence in the Pfizer vaccine.”

But the FDA can’t simply turn the documents over wholesale. The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report filed Monday. The article explains how the FDA proposed releasing 500 pages per month on a rolling basis – informing the court that they only have 10 employees in the branch that would handle the review, and are currently processing around 400 other FOIA requests. “By processing and making interim responses based on 500-page increments, FDA will be able to provide more pages to more requesters, thus avoiding a system where a few large requests monopolize finite processing resources and where fewer requesters’ requests are being fulfilled,” wrote DOJ attorneys, citing other cases in which the 500 monthly page production was upheld.

The plaintiffs, on the other hand, point out that the FDA has 18,000 employees and a budget of $6 billion – and “has itself said that there is nothing more important than the licensure of this vaccine and being transparent about this vaccine.” Since the first batch of documents were released, people have already noted some disturbing findings. What could the rest of the documents reveal?

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1462513900390424591

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Kirsch may be taking it a step too far. It’s not a game show.

• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Kirsch)

I’ve been reading a number of comments from people who think that my million dollar offers aren’t serious. The people who doubt me are all people who don’t know me very well. There is no evidence of anyone who has ever attempted to negotiate a definitive agreement on any of my offers. The furthest it ever got is one time someone had their attorney contact my attorney and then when we called back, they hung up on us. Clearly, they were hoping to expose me and quickly learned I don’t bluff. Here is a list of my million dollar offers. They are all done to expose corruption or to show people that nobody can dispute our calculations, even with a very large incentive.

Open million dollar offers
I will bet anyone $1M that the CDC lying to everyone about number of deaths. If you think the CDC is telling the truth, this is an easy way to double your money for a few hours of effort.

$1M research grant if you think Mathew Crawford made a math error that would change the result. I’m offering a $1M research grant to the first researcher to publish a paper that disproves Mathew Crawford’s analysis of the death data that shows that the vaccines have killed over 150,000 people in the US.

$5M bet with Gavin Newsom for a blank piece of paper. See the article. If he takes the bet, I’ll happily write a term sheet. Who would turn down $5M for a blank piece of paper? If he was vaccine injured, he’d turn it down. If he wasn’t, it’s a free $5M he can keep or donate to his favorite charity. He can argue he doesn’t need it, but how about charities? When was the last time you saw Gavin give $5M to charity? The point is that even if he’s uber rich, he’d still take the offer in a heartbeat if he had nothing to hide. The fact he’s not accepting my offer shows most (but not all) people that he’s a hypocrite by forcing people to take a vaccine he knows can damage people for the rest of their lives.

Expired million dollar offers
FDA/CDC committee debate (expired November 19, 2021)
I offered any voting member $1M to debate our team. You got the money just for showing up to be questioned. No debate here to win. Just show up at the debate table for 5 hours. Up to 5 people could show up so worst case each person walks away with at least $200K for 5 hours of work. Who would turn that down? Turns out everyone did after I sent to their emails. Which proves to me one thing: they don’t like answering questions at all.

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“I am not advocating or condoning violence. But it is going to happen. It is happening already. Totalitarianism (even this “pathologized” version of it) is imposed on society and maintained with violence.”

• Pathologized Totalitarianism 101 (CJ Hopkins)

On November 19, 2021, the government of New Normal Austria decreed that, as of February, experimental mRNA injections will be mandatory for the entire population. This decree comes in the midst of Austria’s official persecution of “the Unvaccinated,” i.e., political dissidents and other persons of conscience who refuse to convert to the new official ideology and submit to a series of mRNA injections, purportedly to combat a virus that causes mild-to-moderate flu-like symptoms (or no symptoms of any kind at all) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%. Austria is just the tip of the New Normal spear. Prominent New-Normal fascists in Germany, like Der Führer of Bavaria, Markus Söder, and Minister of Propaganda Karl Lauterbach, are already calling for an allgemeine Impfpflicht (i.e., “compulsory vaccination requirement”), which should not come as a surprise to anyone.

The Germans are not going sit idly by and let the Austrians publicly out-fascist them, are they? They have a reputation to uphold, after all! Italy will probably be next to join in, unless Lithuania or Australia beats them to the punch.But, seriously, this is just the beginning of the Winter Siege I wrote about recently. The plan seems to be to New-Normalize Europe first — generally speaking, Europeans are more docile, respectful of all authority, and not very well armed — and then use it as leverage to force the new pathologized totalitarianism on the USA, and the UK, and the rest of the world. I do not believe this plan will succeed. In spite of the longest and most intensive propaganda campaign in the history of propaganda, there remain enough of us who steadfastly refuse to accept the “New Normal” as our new reality.

And a lot of us are angry, extremely angry … militantly, explosively angry. We are not “vaccine hesitant” or “anti-vax” or “Covid-denying conspiracy theorists.” We are millions of regular working-class people, people with principles, who value freedom, who are not prepared to go gently into the globalized, pathologized-totalitarian night. We no longer give the slightest shit whether our former friends and family members who have gone New Normal understand what this is. We do. We understand exactly what this is. It is a nascent form of totalitarianism, and we intend to kill it — or at least critically wound it — before it matures into a full-grown behemoth. Now, I want to be absolutely clear. I am not advocating or condoning violence. But it is going to happen. It is happening already. Totalitarianism (even this “pathologized” version of it) is imposed on society and maintained with violence.

Fighting totalitarianism inevitably entails violence. It is not my preferred tactic in the current circumstances, but it is unavoidable now that we have reached this stage, and it is important that those of fighting this fight recognize that violence is a natural response to the violence (and the implicit threat of violence) that is being deployed against us by the New Normal authorities, and the masses they have whipped up into a fanatical frenzy. It is also important (essential, I would argue) to make the violence of the New Normal visible, i.e., to frame this fight in political terms, and not in the pseudo-medical terms propagated by the official Covid narrative). This isn’t an academic argument over the existence, severity, or the response to a virus. This is a fight to determine the future of our societies.

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Curious detail:

“Ukraine and Poland have actively opposed the Nord Stream 2 project. The two countries were added to the certification process by the German regulator last week..”

• Ukraine Boasts Of Blocking Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (RT)

The new delay in approving the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany is down to Kiev’s lobbying efforts, Ukraine’s foreign minister claimed after Berlin’s regulator suspended the certification process. Speaking to the news channel Ukraine 24 on Monday, Dmitry Kuleba praised Ukraine’s attempts to delay the project’s approval. “Nord Stream 2 should have been operating and earning money a long time ago, but the fact that it still does not work and we are fighting against it is the result of our common endeavors,” he said. “Together with our partners, we have significantly slowed down the implementation of this project.” Kuleba also accused Russia of trying to find grey areas in EU legislation and create preferential conditions for the pipeline. He added that Ukraine, as well as Brussels and members of the 27-strong bloc, are united in their demands that Nord Stream 2 must meet “not only the letter, but the spirit” of the EU’s Third Energy Package.


The directive outlines the unbundling of the energy supply, the importance of independent regulators, as well as open and fair retail markets. The minister’s comments come after Berlin paused the certification process of the underwater pipeline last week. It will be halted until the company behind the initiative reorganizes itself in accordance with German law. Ukraine and Poland have actively opposed the Nord Stream 2 project. The two countries were added to the certification process by the German regulator last week. However, they do not have the power to block its implementation, and can only provide their opinions on the venture. Kiev has also warned it stands to lose billions of dollars if there is a decrease in the volume of Russian gas being exported through the Soviet-built pipeline network that spans the country.

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Calling Jay Powell. Vague has a new book out, I think.

• The Case for a Debt Jubilee (Richard Vague)

“In many of the most prominent ancient civilizations, including ancient Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Akkadia, Egypt, Sparta, Corinth, and China, excessive household debt was a huge and recurring problem. This may come as a surprise to a reader today, because ancient societies are often misleadingly described as barter-based. In fact, debt was a necessary and pervasive part of these earliest economies, and our ancient ancestors quickly developed a sophisticated understanding of debt and lending, with laws and institutions to govern that lending. Debt did then many of the same things that it does now: it facilitated payment for labor, allowed for the acquisition of supplies, and bridged the time between planting and harvest — the reaping and then the sowing of profit.

“Some families in these agricultural societies would find themselves with little option but to amass debts in order to live, but in time the burden of this debt could cause them to lose their land, their means of sustenance, and even their liberty, in the tragic form of debt bond servitude. … Interest rates were high and lenders quickly learned the power of compounding. Bouts of disease, drought, war, or other disasters often exacerbated citizens’ debt burdens. These ancient economies would sometimes reach the brink of collapse under the staggering weight of private indebtedness.

“For this reason among others, kings devised the practice of debt forgiveness or amnesty as a solution. A king might proclaim a debt amnesty for a number of reasons, as we will see, including to ensure that citizens were available to serve in his army and help build the great public works of that society. At first, historians were surprised to learn of this phenomenon, but archeologically documented instances of debt amnesty are numerous and growing, and refer to actual, and fundamental, debt practices in these cultures. In fact, some historians view this practice as conservative, counterintuitive as that may sound, since it was a mechanism that both preserved the practice of lending and kept those loans from overwhelming these economies.

“A key Old Testament passage, Deuteronomy 15:2-3, describes clearly the time when these debt amnesties were proclaimed: ‘Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for cancelling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you.’

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Debt Rattle September 22 2021

Sep 222021
 
 September 22, 2021  Posted by at 8:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  84 Responses »


Salvador Dali Portrait of Picasso 1947

 

• There Are No Shortcuts To The Scientific Truth (Vanden Bossche)
• mRNA Covid-19 Vaccination And Development Of Myopericarditis (Mrxiv)
• Pfizer Assures That Vaccine Is Almost As Safe For Kids As COVID (BBee)
• Delta Variant Only “Half As Infectious As Assumed” – JPMorgan (ZH)
• Now It Is TRULY Coming Apart (Denninger)
• Anti-Vaccine Protesters Clash With Police In Melbourne For 2nd Day (NPR)
• Biden’s National Security Advisor Implicated In Alfa Bank Russiagate Scam (RT)
• With Clinton Lawyer Charged, The Russiagate Scam Is Now Under Indictment (Maté)
• IEA Calls On Russia To Send More Gas To Europe Before Winter (G.)
• Kyle Bass: Xi Wants Evergrande Blowup To Help Lower Housing Prices (ZH)
• Medical Schools Update Hippocratic Oath To Exclude The Unvaccinated (BBee)

 

 

Mike Yeadon says if you persist and don’t get vaccinated now, it’ll all be over in a few weeks.

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

Flip the narrative around

 

 

Vanden Bossche reacts to “How the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19: A Darwinian perspective” Author: Emanuel Goldman; PNAS September 28, 2021 118 (39) e2114279118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2114279118

• There Are No Shortcuts To The Scientific Truth (Vanden Bossche)

[..] when mass vaccination was initiated, the question that really mattered was to know which part of the population would give more infectious variants a competitive advantage. It seems logical that more infectious variants can only enjoy a competitive advantage on a background that exerts selective immune pressure on viral infectiousness, i.e. on spike protein (as the latter is responsible for viral infectiousness). When people get jabbed in large numbers with S(pike)-based vaccines, this undoubtedly leads to massive S-directed immune selection pressure in the vaccinated part of the population. In contrast, the unvaccinated do not provide such competitive advantage to more infectious variants as they eliminate Sars-CoV-2 lineages without exerting immune selection pressure on viral infectiousness (i.e., on spike protein).

This is because unvaccinated either get asymptomatically infected, i.e., they overcome the infection thanks to their innate immunity, which is known to be multi-specific ( i.e., NOT variant-specific) or they contract symptomatic infection, which equally results in multi-variant-specific acquired immunity. In none of these cases does an unvaccinated person exert any immune selection pressure on viral infectiousness, i.e., on spike protein. The unvaccinated part of the population is, therefore, anything but a reservoir for the virus! On the contrary, their capacity to eliminate the virus in a non-selective manner will lead to a diminished concentration of more infectious immune escape variants in the unvaccinated population, and even in the overall population provided the unvaccinated part of the population represents a significant part of the overall population! (which is now increasingly becoming problematic).

[..] natural selection of more infectious variants happens within the vaccinated population, but not in the non-vaccinated population. This already explains why there was a fall in cases when the lockdown measures in the UK were abandoned and society opened up again. Opening-up society resulted in absorption of more infectious variants (i.e., the Delta variant) by non-vaccinated people. In this population, the Delta variant had no longer a competitive advantage (as unvaccinated individuals can effectively deal with ALL Sars-CoV-2 lineages).

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1 in 1,000 develop myo(peri)carditis, but males/females ratio is 29/2.

• mRNA Covid-19 Vaccination And Development Of Myopericarditis (Mrxiv)

Introduction Several case reports or small series have suggested a possible link between mRNA COVID vaccines and the subsequent development of myocarditis and pericarditis. This study is a prospective collection and review of all cases with a myocarditis/pericarditis diagnosis over a 2-month period at an academic medical center.

Methods Prospective case series from 1st June 2021 until 31st July 2021. Patients were identified by admission and discharge diagnoses which included myocarditis or pericarditis. Inclusion criteria: in receipt of mRNA vaccine within one month prior to presentation; The CMR protocol included cine imaging, native T1 and T2 mapping, late gadolinium enhancement and post contrast T1 mapping. All CMR studies were read in consensus by two experienced readers. Diagnosis was based on clinical presentation, ECG/echo findings and serial troponins and was confirmed in each case by CMR. Incidence was estimated from total doses of mRNA vaccine administered in the Ottawa region for the matching time-period. This data was obtained from the Public Health Agency of Ottawa.

Results 32 patients were identified over the period of interest. Eighteen patients were diagnosed with myocarditis; 12 with myopericarditis; and 2 with pericarditis alone. The median age was 33 years (18-65 years). The sex ratio was 2 females to 29 males. In 5 cases, symptoms developed after only a single dose of mRNA vaccine. In 27 patients, symptoms developed after their second dose of. Median time between vaccine dose and symptoms was 1.5 days (1-26 days). Chest pain was the commonest symptom, but many others were reported. Non-syncopal non-sustained ventricular tachycardia was seen in only a single case. Median LV ejection fraction (EF) was 57% (44-66%). Nine patients had an LVEF below the normal threshold of 55%. Incidence of myopericarditis overall was approximately 10 cases for every 10,000 inoculations.

Summary and Conclusions This is the largest series in the literature to clearly relate the temporal relationship between mRNA COVID vaccination, symptoms and CMR findings. In most patients, symptom onset began within the first few days after vaccination with corresponding abnormalities in biomarkers and on ECG. Cardiac MRI confirmed acute myocardial and pericardial changes with the presence of edema demonstrated with both tissue mapping and late gadolinium enhancement. Symptoms settled quickly with standard therapy and patients were discharged within a few days. No major adverse cardiac events and no significant arrythmias were noted during inpatient stay. Further follow up will be required to ascertain the longer-term outcomes of this patient group.

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Almost not funny.

• Pfizer Assures That Vaccine Is Almost As Safe For Kids As COVID (BBee)

After conducting several trials, Pfizer has announced that their vaccine is now almost as safe for kids as getting COVID is. “We are very proud of this achievement,” said a Pfizer spokesperson. “We can now confidently say that there is only a very small chance your child will suffer life-altering complications or death from the vaccine. Chances are still a bit higher than the chances of your kid dying from COVID, but hey! Give us some credit here! Not bad, huh?”


Experts confirmed that even though there is a statistically 0% chance of kids dying from COVID, parents should still require kids to get the vaccine immediately, to make up for Pfizer’s financial loss from the FDA not approving booster shots right away. “Besides,” said one expert, “kids are puny and can’t even fight back with their skinny little arms and legs. Just get them vaccinated—to protect yourself—since your safety is the highest priority here.” Pfizer is hoping they can get kids fully vaccinated before their Q3 sales numbers come out.

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Is this research for a bank, or whould perhaps the WHO do it?

• Delta Variant Only “Half As Infectious As Assumed” – JPMorgan (ZH)

[..] over two months ago in early July, JPMorgan wrote a note about EM vulnerabilities to the COVID-19 Delta variant in which it drew attention to seven countries – the Philippines, Peru, Columbia, South Africa, Ecuador, Thailand and Mexico – which at the time looked particularly vulnerable due to a combination of low prevalence of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates. Given the widely accepted assumption that the Delta variant is much more infectious than prior strains of SARS-CoV-2, and given the prevailing trends in vaccination rates, JPMorgan then estimated that the spread of the Delta variant would push up the effective reproduction numbers (Re) significantly in these countries.

JPMorgan’s concern was that these seven countries would see significant gains in COVID-19 infections which would prompt further restrictive measures on mobility and mixing in some countries (EM Asia) or lead to worsening in public health and confidence in others (Latin America): “we thought that Re in the Philippines would rise from 0.92 to 1.97 as the Delta variant became fully prevalent. At an Re of 0.92 new infections are falling, while at an Re of 1.97 new infections are doubling every six to seven days.” What happened next was unexpected: JPMorgan policy research analyst David Mackie found that “the Delta wave was much milder than expected: none of these countries saw the gains in Re that we anticipated.”

This brings us to the latest note from JPM titled “What happened to the COVID-19 Delta wave in vulnerable EM countries?” in which the bank tries to explain just why it was so wrong with its modeling and assumptions. The bank starts off by showing the evolution of the reproductive numbers (Re) over the past couple of months for these seven countries. While Re did initially rise over the summer as the Delta variant spread, which led to an increase in infections, it was not by as much as expected. While on average, Re was expected to rise by 0.58 from the end of June to the time when the Delta variant was fully prevalent (from 1.07 to 1.65), the average rise was only by 0.24 (from 1.07 to 1.31); in other words, around half of the expected gain in Re did not occur.

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OSHA is a shaky basis.

• Now It Is TRULY Coming Apart (Denninger)

OSHA “rules” are not federal law; they’re regulations and if issued illegally are void. Law is made by Congress and confirmed (if signed) by the President, or if a veto is overruled. Until that happens it’s not law, it’s a bill and legally means nothing. Agencies can issue regulations but they must comport with the statutes — that is, the law that enables same. This is why the CDC’s mandate was tossed and, I remind you, the courts now have notice that under Biden’s administration being handed a “nice” defeat will be met with a middle finger so the odds of a second “nice” rebuke are now zero.

I predicted when this BS started that OSHA would fail in this regard for several reasons. Chief among them is that it is a major rule impacting millions. This is not an emergency situation at one company or even within a single industry; it is intended to blast the entire nation’s workforce at once with a mandate. This triggers a whole host of scrutiny requirements which are very unlikely to succeed and will be immediately challenged — along with filings asking for injunctions to bar enforcement until a ruling on the merits is made. Said ruling will require hearings, trials, and ultimately likely go before the US Supreme Court. It will take months if not years to go through that process. I remind you that an injunction requires:

1. You are likely to win. OSHA has not issued a rule of this sort of scope in a very long time, and certainly not on an emergency basis. The entire premise of an “emergency” 18 months into this pandemic is a joke; Congress has had a year and a half to consider legislation and has not. That standing alone like dooms the rule. But there’s much more — in order to argue that “the vaccinated” must be protected in the workplace from “the unvaccinated” you have to admit the vaccines don’t work! If you put that admission into writing then you just ate your own tail; the circular logic of that is obvious to anyone. If you don’t then only consenting persons, who choose not to be vaccinated, are at risk. Then there is the CDC Director’s direct testimony before Congress, under oath, in September 2020 in which he said masks were more effective than vaccines — and he meant surgical masks too as that’s what he held up. When liberty interests are implicated the least-intrusive means to accomplish the goal must be chosen; the government cannot take the most intrusive, and potential permanent harm is certainly as intrusive as it gets. Having admitted there is a better alternative OSHA will lose on that basis. There’s much more — but you just need to demonstrate probability of a win.

2. Irreparable injury that cannot be compensated for with money. Losing a job or worse, permanently damaging your health qualifies. No problem there.

3. The threatened injury if the order goes into effect exceeds that if not. The status quo is what that’s measured against; this one is somewhat of a tougher call, but likely wins.

4. The injunction is not adverse to the public interest. 100 million Americans are the public interest. This is not a majority rule question; impacting a huge number of people certainly reaches this threshold.

The courts are not stupid. Partisan although claimed to not be, yes. Biased although designed to resist that, yes. Typically deferential to the Executive (and especially Congress), yes, even though by the Constitution they’re all co-equal. But stupid? No.

Read more …

Note the ivermectin in the demands.

And when you see how the protesters are accused of being nazi’s, note the uniforms of the riot police.

• Anti-Vaccine Protesters Clash With Police In Melbourne For 2nd Day (NPR)

It’s been a violent few days in Melbourne, Australia, where construction workers and other demonstrators are clashing with police as they protest the government’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Amid the surging delta variant, officials in Victoria state — where Melbourne is the largest city — recently announced a vaccination mandate for construction workers that requires each employee to show proof of at least one dose by Thursday. Some 13% of the state’s active COVID-19 cases are linked to construction sites, according to local media. Construction workers who are opposed to the new restrictions have made their positions known in protests that have escalated in recent days.

After the government closed down tearooms at work sites, some workers took their lunch breaks outside on Friday. They set up tables and plastic chairs in multiple intersections in central Melbourne, blocking roads and holding up traffic. On Monday, people gathered outside the headquarters of the prominent Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union to protest the mandate, chanting and yelling before attempting to storm the building. Angry protesters threw bottles and smashed loudspeakers, according to local media reports. Riot police deployed on the scene allegedly used rubber bullets and pepper spray to disperse crowds, the BBC reported, adding that the headquarters building was damaged and “several people” were arrested in the process.

The union later issued a statement condemning the violence “in the strongest possible terms,” noting that an unspecified number of people were injured by violent acts, including the throwing of bottles. But it also distanced itself from the protesters, attributing the actions to “extremists or people manipulated by extremists.” “This crowd was heavily infiltrated by neo-Nazis and other right wing extremist groups and it is clear that a minority of those who participated were actual union members,” the statement said. Others have alleged that neo-Nazis and anti-vaccination groups organized on encrypted social media platforms before arriving at the protest in “hi-vis” clothing to look like construction workers.

Bill Shorten — the former opposition leader and current member of Parliament who serves as shadow minister for the national disability insurance scheme and for government services — said in a TV interview that some protesters were construction workers while others were “fake tradies.” “There is a network of hard-right, man-baby Nazis,” he said, “people who just want to cause trouble. … They want to complain about the vaccination, and they deserve to get the full force of everything that’s coming their way.”

Melbourne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1440315693040222221

Oz officer

Read more …

Better kick him out, Joe. Or will he kick you out first?

• Biden’s National Security Advisor Implicated In Alfa Bank Russiagate Scam (RT)

In any event, dossiers outlining the incendiary allegations were passed anonymously to every major US news outlet over the course of the 2016 presidential election campaign, with many eagerly seizing upon them. However, not all journalists were convinced, and several organizations refused to publish anything on the material. The Intercept issued a withering report on the charges a week prior to the vote, documenting how DNS records provided by the anonymous source “can’t really prove anything at all, and certainly not ‘communication’ between Trump and Alfa,” and no one “can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.” That same day however, Clinton drew attention to the “covert server” on social media, sharing a statement on the subject by her senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan, acting as if the information her team had passed to the media was new to her.

“This could be the most direct link yet between Trump and Moscow…This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide,” he boldly asserted. “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.” The indictment makes clear that Sullivan was a key player in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to publicize the Alfa Bank disinformation. It records how Sussmann was “alerted” to the Alfa Bank allegations by his tech executive client in July 2016, and “over the ensuing weeks, as part of their lawyer-client relationship,” the pair engaged with a Clinton campaign lawyer and individuals acting on the candidate’s behalf to share the false charges “with the media and others.”

In mid-September, that lawyer exchanged emails with the “campaign’s manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor” concerning the false charges, and Sussmann’s success to date with cultivating media interest. This contact was so significant, the lawyer specifically billed the Clinton campaign for the correspondence, an accompanying entry – titled “re: Alfa Bank Article” – naming Sullivan, the campaign’s manager and its communications director.

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I’m beginning to sense a pattern.

• With Clinton Lawyer Charged, The Russiagate Scam Is Now Under Indictment (Maté)

In accusing Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI, Special Counsel John Durham offers new evidence of the fabrications behind the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. The indictment of Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann offers new evidence that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that engulfed Trump’s term in office was itself the product of fabrications involving Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Although Sussmann faces just one count on a false statement charge, the 27-page charging document offers an expansive window into how the Russiagate scam began, and how Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, and establishment media figures dishonestly fed it to the public. Sussmann, until recently an attorney with Clinton campaign law firm Perkins Coie, is the second person to be charged by John Durham, the Special Counsel scrutinizing the Russia investigation.

Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting in which he tried to raise alarm about “secret communications” between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann gave then-FBI attorney Jim Baker documents and data purporting to show that computer servers associated with Trump and Alfa Bank were in regular contact. This was evidence, Sussmann argued, of a possible covert back channel. According to Durham, Sussmann told Baker that he was not working “for any client,” and was simply passing on information that had been provided to him by “multiple cyber experts” who had come across the suspicious web traffic. But according to the detailed indictment, Sussmann was in fact cooking up a politically motivated scam.

The theory of a purported covert Trump-Alfa channel had been concocted by an unnamed tech executive positioning himself for a top cybersecurity job in the anticipated Clinton administration. To spread the theory to the media and intelligence community, the executive and Sussmann “coordinated”, Durham says, with Mark Elias, a colleague of Sussmann’s at Perkins Coie and the top lawyer for Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Sussmann and Elias in turn coordinated with the private intelligence company Fusion GPS. Elias had already hired the firm – on Clinton’s behalf – to produce the Steele dossier, the collection of fabricated reports by ex-British spy Christopher Steele alleging a longstanding Trump-Russia conspiracy/blackmail relationship. According to Steele, it was Sussmann, in a July 2016 meeting, who first informed him about the Alfa Bank server story.

Elias kept Clinton campaign members informed as well, including the “campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor.” In February 2017, Sussmann also met with a CIA official to push the Alfa Bank narrative. Sussmann concealed this plot from the FBI, along with the fact that he was billing Clinton for his involvement. The meeting with the FBI’s Baker, for example, was charged to the Clinton campaign as “work and communications regarding confidential project.” In fact, according to Durham, “all or nearly all” of Sussmann’s work on the Alfa Bank story prior to meeting Baker was “billed to the Clinton campaign.”

Read more …

All they have to do is approve Nordstream 2.

• IEA Calls On Russia To Send More Gas To Europe Before Winter (G.)

The world’s energy watchdog has called on Russia to send more gas to Europe as the energy supply crunch bleeds across the continent, in a rare public rebuke of the Kremlin. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises global governments on energy policy, called out the gas-rich country for refusing to increase exports even as fierce demand has driven market prices to successive record highs, appearing to support claims that Russia is withholding supplies. “The IEA believes that Russia could do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season,” the Paris-based agency said.

“This is also an opportunity for Russia to underscore its credentials as a reliable supplier to the European market,” it said. The IEA’s intervention has come amid growing unease in Europe over Russia’s decision not to increase gas exports to Europe next month, despite record gas market prices across the continent. It said Russia had been “fulfilling its long-term contracts with European counterparts – but its exports to Europe are down from their 2019 level”. EU politicians have accused the Kremlin of deliberately withholding gas supplies while it awaits regulatory approval for a controversial pipeline project, Nord Stream 2, which would double Russia’s capacity to export gas to Germany.

Russia is not using all of its available pipeline capacity to export gas to Europe but state officials and executives at the state-owned gas company Gazprom have reportedly said it may increase gas sales to Europe once the pipeline has been approved.

Read more …

In his 10 years in charge, Xi profited greatly from letting real estate prices rise. Now he doesn’t want the blame.

• Kyle Bass: Xi Wants Evergrande Blowup To Help Lower Housing Prices (ZH)

Shortly before two Evergrande creditors confirmed to Bloomberg (under the guise of anonymity) that the Chinese developer-giant had missed bond payments due Monday, Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass returned to CNBC for an interview Tuesday morning for a telephone discussion with CNBC’s Joe Kernen to discuss the toxic Chinese economy and its unsustainable debt pile. Bass, one of the most vocal China hawks on Wall Street, has said it’s important to understand what, exactly, President Xi is looking for. According to Bass, China is “experiencing similar problems that we are in the US” when it comes to housing prices. Xi has been managing a broad-based crackdown on the Chinese economy all summer. Now, it’s time to confront the issue

Now, China is entering this period of weakness with over $50 trillion worth of credit in their system, with their annual GDP at around $15 trillion. Compared with China, the US had GDP of $17 trillion with another $12 trillion off-balance-sheet when Lehman collapsed. China is at 3.6x ahead of its “Lehman moment”, while the US was only about 1.7x. What’s more, China is still a relative newcomer to the capital markets business, Bass said. China adopted a western-style financial system in 2001 after they joined the WTO. Around the same time, Beijing’s population-control policies started to really bite, as China saw its birth rate dwindle. There are now 1.3 births per woman in China and you need to be at 2.1 to actually just sustain your population, Bass said.

So for many working-age Chinese males, population dynamics are at a critical level and the reason being is the Chinese men can’t afford houses so they’re all living with their parents and the fact that Evergrande went on a credit binge and built all of the housing and Chinese property took off because their central bank continued to print so much money. Now, it’s trying to rein in property prices and he’s trying to do it as quickly as possible because China’s on an unsustainable path lower. “Right now,” Bass says, everyone who believes China’s going to grow at 6% a year ad infinitum “is just dead wrong,” but if we just divorce ourselves from any value judgments about China and think about the the future of the plan of the globe – if we always think about the Chinese consumer and we all at one point wanted to move forward in a symbiotic way where we sell things to China, and their consumers buy things from us.

Read more …

2 BBees today.

• Medical Schools Update Hippocratic Oath To Exclude The Unvaccinated (BBee)

Members of The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) voted this week to make major changes to the Hippocratic Oath for the first time since the 1960’s. Specifically, the Oath for new doctors is being adjusted to exclude both the unborn and the unvaccinated. “The changes we’re making to the Oath are long overdue,” said Dr. Sarah Butcher, a member of the AAMC ruling council. “The concept that physicians should attempt to do no harm to the unborn or the unvaccinated has no place in modern society.” Butcher said the famous first line of the Oath will be updated to read, “I promise to do no harm unless it’s killing a little unborn baby who’s really not a person yet. Also, since anyone who refused the vaccine is basically asking to die of COVID, I will let them suffer and die a horrifying death to set an example for others.”


Several other changes are also being made to the Oath, including the following new sections: • A vow to wear a mask at all times, even while showering and sleeping, to prevent any possibility of spreading infection to others. • A promise to provide preferential treatment to BIPOC and LGBTQ populations whenever possible while ensuring that white male oppressors get sent to the back of the line. • Swearing to always follow the latest science, as defined by whatever new study CNN is reporting that day. In addition to the changes in the Oath, the AAMC also announced updates to the educational requirements required for new doctors. “The requirements for licensure have changed slightly,” Butcher said. “We now require licensed doctors to either have a traditional four-year medical school degree or at least 1,000 hours of experience surfing WebMd.”

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$16 is the wrong price. That should have been $19.

 

 

Romania
https://twitter.com/i/status/1440128722711957511

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 16 2021

Sep 162021
 
 September 16, 2021  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  81 Responses »


Pablo Picasso In “Le Lapin Agile” or harlequin with a glass 1905

 

• The Spike Will Not Be Found In The Blood. It Travels “Incognito” (Chesnut)
• Are Booster Shots Increasing Covid Spread And Covid Deaths? (Gato Malo)
• CDC Now Lists Vaccinated Deaths as Unvaccinated (Mercola)
• So You’d Like To NOT Have Society Collapse? (Denninger)
• 39% of Australians Unable To Perform Daily Activities After Vaccine (TE)
• Mask Mandates And Vaccine Passports Are A Performance (Stuart Waiton)
• 91% Of China’s Youth Aged 12-17 Are Fully Vaccinated Against Covid (RT)
• Are You Kidding Me, Pfizer, Volume 1 Gazillion (Berenson)
• A Slog Vaxicide Special (Ward)
• France Leads The Way In Holding Covid Incompetents To Account (RT)
• 33 Districts In Uttar Pradesh Are Now Covid-free (HT)
• EU Red Tape Prevents Russia From Boosting Gas Supplies To Europe – Lavrov (RT)
• US ‘Lost Focus’ In War On Terror – Oliver Stone (RT)
• Durham Reportedly Seeking Indictment Against Clinton Campaign Lawyer (JTN)

 

 

Looking worse, fast. I’m starting to think you will need ivermectin -and/or HCQ- to fight off the vaccine. Preferably, don’t get vaccinated, but if you have been, get ivermectin. And whatever you do, stay away from booster shots.

“We are very certain about this, the vaccine is directly killing individuals”.

“The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”

 

 

McCullough NZ the vaccine is directly killing individuals

 

 

Thread by @Parsifaler (Walter Chesnut). Yikes.

• The Spike Will Not Be Found In The Blood. It Travels “Incognito” (Chesnut)

The Autoimmune Mechanism. THE SPIKE WILL NOT BE FOUND IN THE BLOOD. IT IS TRAVELLING “INCOGNITO” INTRACELLULARLY. WE KNEW IT ENTERED CELLS VIA ENDOCYTOSIS IN 2008! Yesterday I observed that every cell the Spike Protein invades seems to cause the body to develop autoimmunity against it. I believe I have discovered the mechanism. It is a very brief and straightforward mechanism. Most likely many spikes do NOT stay on the cell surface, once they are expressed via spike protein therapied. The Spike is proven to be brought into the cell by Endocytosis. The spike protein is internalized into cells rapidly and is detected in cells within 5 mi, a hallmark of endocytosis. The amount of spike protein in cells continues to increase for up to 30 min. Thus, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein enters cells via endocytosis.

Once it is in the cell, its signaling damages mitochondria. The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2’s molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented. Once the mitochondria are damaged, this then activates the autoimmune response of the body. The accumulation of defective mitochondria led to overproduction of an inflammatory protein called type 1 interferon.

The findings suggest that failed quality control of mitochondria may cause Sjogren’s, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases through production of interferon. The Spike Protein then proceeds to travel from cell to cell via EXTRACELLULAR VESICLES. This means, of course, they will NOT BE FOUND IN THE BLOOD. We would not have been aware all this time. As the S1 unit has been found in monocytes 15 months post infection, it may be traveling intracellularly, executing a “Sherman’s March Through Georgia” on the mitochondria, resulting in multisystemic autoimmunity. Again, we have known the spike enters cells via endocytosis since 2008.

Read more …

“..we are seeing such a strong surge in deaths from a delta variant that looks to have a much lower CFR than prior variants..”

• Are Booster Shots Increasing Covid Spread And Covid Deaths? (Gato Malo)

israel has been playing an interesting role as a bit of a canary in the coal mine. They have been pushing vaccines, vaccine passports, and now boosters harder than just about anyplace else on earth. They also make a good lab as they report solid (by covid standards) data and occupy only one regional climate zone so we do not need to adjust for heterogeneous seasonal surges within the aggregate (as we do in the US). And one thing is becoming very clear: whatever they are doing is not working and even their health ministers are having to admit this. This dip was (as i expected) driven by a drop in testing and reporting due to rosh hashanah (and will likely dip again late this week for yom kippur) but next week, we should be starting to get clearer data again.

With over 30% of the total population now having had a booster shot since the commencement of that program in earnest on august 1st, we should be able to get a sense of efficacy. I ran the series of booster uptake and plotted it vs deaths per day. What i saw looked like cause for concern and appears to validate calls from the departing FDA vaccine experts to get a good, hard look at this data before doing anything aggressive. Boosters began to rise and by the time they hit even 0.5%, deaths were starting to rise with them. the two move in near perfect lockstep. Clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but this is an awful lot of signal to ignore out of hand especially given our strong reasons to presume causal linkage. (that said, the alignment with seasonal surge poses difficulties in separating signal source)


It’s further worrying that even with a 67% vaccination rate at the beginning of this rise and a significant portion of the population having already had exposure to covid and cohorts of the highest risk already having been depleted in past waves, that we are seeing such a strong surge in deaths from a delta variant that looks to have a much lower CFR than prior variants. (0.4% vs 1.1% per UK variants of concern data) It has barely attenuated at all (and it’s not clear we’ve reached highs. Consider the “false flat” from last year and how much later this surge was this year. We could be at the half way mark. This will bear watching.)

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“..if you have received a COVID injection, the CDC’s guidelines call for your PCR test to be run at a CT of 28 or less. If you are unvaccinated, your PCR test is to be run at a CT of 40..”

• CDC Now Lists Vaccinated Deaths as Unvaccinated (Mercola)

According to the CDC,6 you’re not counted as fully vaccinated until a full 14 days have passed since your second injection in the case of Pfizer or Moderna, or 14 days after your first dose of Janssen. This is how the CDC defines a vaccine breakthrough case: “… a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.” In other words, if you’ve received one dose of Pfizer or Moderna and develop symptomatic COVID-19, get admitted to the hospital and/or die from COVID, you’re counted as an unvaccinated case. If you’ve received two doses and get ill within 14 days, you’re still counted as an unvaccinated case.

The problem with this is that over 80% of hospitalizations and deaths appear to be occurring among those who have received the jabs, but this reality is hidden by the way cases are defined and counted. A really clever and common strategy of the CDC during the pandemic has been to change the definitions and goalposts so it supports their nefarious narrative. For example, the CDC has quietly changed the definition of “vaccine,” apparently in an attempt to validate calling the COVID mRNA gene therapies vaccines. In an August 26, 2021, archived version7 of vaccine, the CDC defines it as a “product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

But a few days later, a new definition appeared on the CDC’s website,8 which now says a vaccine is a “preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” The differences in the definitions are subtle but distinct: The first one defined a vaccine as something that will “produce immunity.” But, since the COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to stop infection but, rather, to only lessen the degree of infection, it becomes obvious that the new definition was created to cover the COVID vaccines. It’s not just the CDC’s definition of a breakthrough case that skews the data. Even more egregious and illogical is the fact that the CDC even has two different sets of testing guidelines — one for vaccinated patients and another for the unvaccinated.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC has recommended a PCR test cycle threshold (CT) of 40.9 This flies in the face of scientific consensus, which has long been that a CT over 35 will produce 97% false positives, essentially rendering the test useless. In mid-May 2021, the CDC finally lowered its recommended CT count, but only for patients who have received one or more COVID shots. So, if you have received a COVID injection, the CDC’s guidelines call for your PCR test to be run at a CT of 28 or less. If you are unvaccinated, your PCR test is to be run at a CT of 40, which grossly overestimates the true prevalence of infection. The end result is that unvaccinated individuals who get tested are FAR more prone to get false positives, while those who have received the jab are more likely to get an accurate diagnosis of infection.

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“I give this right up into the Christmas season when Biden’s mandate allegedly will go into effect before it totally screws the economy.”

• So You’d Like To NOT Have Society Collapse? (Denninger)

Go ahead Governors, let businesses mandate jabs and masks. Let Biden get away with his bull****. Don’t put in place E/Os and don’t call back the legislature into special session right here and now, today, and put a conclusive stop to all of it. I give this right up into the Christmas season when Biden’s mandate allegedly will go into effect before it totally screws the economy. With that, down goes the market, commercial real estate detonates (what happens when that Lowes closes due to lack of staff and so do another couple of nice big-box stores for the same reason down the street — everywhere at once!) and with it the debt markets.

There are already places where WalMarts are being forced to close to restock shelves as they’re so short of people and can’t hire more, having put in place employee mandates which enough prospective and current employees are responding to with “**** that!” that the only option remaining to them is to lock the doors and repurpose the few people they do have. This area is tourist-heavy and now, with schools allegedly back open, the traffic shifts — down a bit now, down more as we go into the winter. That local places still can’t manage to hire tells the tale — the people are tired of the abuse and, for the offered wage, they won’t apply or work. Give someone 18 months to figure out how to give you the finger and many will do exactly that.

On top of this you have all of those who complied with said mandates and now are out sick, many with the coof which, the company and the government assured us all would not happen if you just rolled up your sleeve. Of course they lied and still are, trying to claim it’s “rare” that people get materially ill after being vaccinated against Covid. That’s just the latest line of bull**** and, given the sick rate among those who have been jabbed it’s obvious if you pay a single bit of attention. Good luck Biden along with governors and local officials — you’re going to need it, and were I you in this market today I’d be rather careful if you’re not ok with a 201k — which is what you might have left of your 401k as we approach Christmas.

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It gets worse fast.

• 39% of Australians Unable To Perform Daily Activities After Vaccine (TE)

The National Centre for Immunisation and Research (NCIRS) in Australia are currently leading a collaboration with the Australia’s Government known as AusVaxSafety. The group has been conducting active vaccine surveillance of the Covid-19 vaccines in use in Australia to “ensure their ongoing safety”. Up to the 16th August 2021 over 1.4 million Austalians had partipated in the surveillance completing more than 2.4 million safety surveys, outlining their experience following the Covid-19 vaccination and the published results show the following –


Pfizer Vaccine – 1st DoseFollowing the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine 1,007,479 people responded to an SMS/email about their health in the three days after having the jab. The results show that 37.2% reported having an adverse reaction, with 374,832 reporting at least one adverse event. 0.5% of participants also reported seeing a doctor or attending hospital in the three days following vaccination due to an adverse reaction. This equates to 5,037 people. Whilst 6.7% of participants reported missing work, study or routine duties for a short period – meaning 67,501 people were left unable to perform daily activities following their first dose of the Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 injection.

Pfizer Vaccine – 2nd Dose Following the 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine 770,864 people responded to an SMS/email about their health in the three days after having the jab. The results show that 56.4% reported having an adverse reaction, a significant increase on the percentage of people who reported having an adverse reaction after having their first dose of the Pfizer jab. 1.3% of participants also reported seeing a doctor or attending hospital in the three days following vaccination due to an adverse reaction. This equates to 10,021 people – double the number of people who reported seeking medical attention after having the first dose despite there being 237,000 less particants in the 2nd dose survey. However, a huge 21.2% of participants were left unable to perform daily activities, that’s 163,423 people who reported missing work, study or routine duties.

Read more …

Dr Stuart Waiton is a senior lecturer in sociology and criminology at Abertay University. He is a columnist for the Glasgow Herald, author of three books, and is currently writing a book entitled The Criminalisation of Everything.

• Mask Mandates And Vaccine Passports Are A Performance (Stuart Waiton)

The illiberal actions of Western nations over Covid are as much about a worrying shift in politics as it is about ‘the science’. Some very basic freedoms that we have traditionally enjoyed are in grave danger. In America, Joe Biden is putting pressure on workers to get the vaccine. Without proof that you do not have Covid, or evidence of vaccination, you will no longer be able to enter a workplace that has more than 100 staff. This policy will affect two-thirds of the workforce – around 100 million people. While many liberals in America have understandably reacted with outrage at changes to abortion regulations in places such as Texas, the idea of bodily autonomy as a basic human right, a right that should apply to vaccinations, barely gets a mention.

In France, vaccine passports have been introduced in cultural and leisure venues – cinemas and museums, as well as bars, restaurants, cafés, trains… Basically anywhere and everywhere you go in that country, you will be expected to show your papers. In England, thus far, vaccine passports have been ruled out. However, in Scotland, the governing Scottish National Party (SNP) have once again shown that it is always prepared to take authoritarian measures one step further than their English counterparts by introducing passports for major venues. Suggesting a puritanical dimension to this policy, not only are outdoor venues of 10,000 people and indoor venues of 500 being targeted, but all “sexual entertainment venues” will need evidence of vaccination.

Despite the fact that 84% of over-18s have had both jabs, the policy in Scotland is being introduced, in part, and arguably in large part, to put pressure on younger people to get a vaccination for a virus that has little or no effect on them.

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Again: Yikes!

• 91% Of China’s Youth Aged 12-17 Are Fully Vaccinated Against Covid (RT)

Just over 90% of students in China aged 12-17 have received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, state media has revealed. Despite the high inoculation rate, the Ministry of Education has urged caution in schools over the virus.
On Wednesday, People’s Daily shared that the two-dose vaccination rate of teachers and students over 18 years old stands at 95%, slightly higher than the rate among younger pupils. Despite the wide vaccine coverage among China’s school children, the Ministry of Education has issued a notice imploring institutes and schools to make Covid prevention and control a top priority.

The statement came after China’s National Health Commission warned that coronavirus infections were circulating at a primary school in Putian, a city home to three million in East China’s Fujian Province. The region has recorded over 150 local cases in five days, prompting some cities in other parts of the country to impose travel warnings before major holidays. A number of cities in Fujian province, such as Quanzhou and Fuzhou, have decided to suspend primary schools and kindergartens, with others switching classes to online learning.

The Chinese government has manufactured and authorized two of its own Covid jabs. While the domestically produced vaccines have been given the green light for administration to children as young as three, authorities have yet to expand the inoculation campaign to the under-12s. Several regions across China started vaccinating its teenagers against Covid in July, including the capital Beijing. Figures from the National Health Commission showed that China has so far managed to administer close to 2.16 billion vaccine doses.

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“..it conducted a single “Phase 1” trial that covered 12 people over 65..”

• Are You Kidding Me, Pfizer, Volume 1 Gazillion (Berenson)

The FDA just released its briefing book for Pfizer’s request for a third dose of Comirnaty (or is that BNT162b2? No matter! It’s approved either way, sorta). It is every bit the mess we all expected. Let’s go to the highlights: Pfizer basically hasn’t bothered to test the booster AT ALL in the people actually at risk – it conducted a single “Phase 1” trial that covered 12 people over 65. The main Phase 2/3 booster trial (beware efforts to cover multiple “phases” of drug research at once, you want it bad you get it bad) included no one over 55. No one. As in NONE. Which makes total sense – why test the booster in people who actually need it because they’re at high risk from the ro? Nothing good can come of that. So that’s our trial design. Now safety:

Of the 300 people who received the booster, one had a heart attack two months later. No worries, Pfizer concluded it wasn’t related. Yay! Five percent of recipients had enlarged lymph nodes. How about effectiveness? Well, we don’t have enough data – or any data, really – telling us how well the booster will work. But the FDA made Pfizer go back and review its data from the pivotal clinical trial from last year. Pfizer compared people who received the vaccine with those who received the placebo and THEN the vaccine (the best we can do at this point, since Pfizer blew up the trial by giving placebo subjects the vaccine, double-yay!) Pfizer concluded that your annual risk of getting Covid-19 IF YOU ARE VACCINATED is about 7 percent.

Further: “An additional analysis appears to indicate that incidence of COVID-19 generally increased in each group of study participants with increasing time post-Dose 2 at the start of the analysis period.” Oh. But don’t worry, Uncle Joe already told you you can get your booster on September 20. If it’s good enough for our fearless leader, it should be good enough for the FDA, amirite? SCIENCE!

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“The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”

• A Slog Vaxicide Special (Ward)

One can observe categorically that medical researchers in Australia, India, France, the US, Germany and Japan are showing why the mRNA Covid “vaccines” tested by Oxford Recovery on dogs killed all the vaccinated animals. The detailed nature of deadly Cytokinic overreaction is closely allied to the study of how ‘autoantibodies’ develop. These little mothers are not always good news. Antibodies are produced by our B cells in two ways: (i) randomly, and (ii) in response to a foreign protein or substance within the body. Initially, one B cell produces one specific kind of antibody. In either case, the B cell is allowed to proliferate or is killed off through a process called clonal deletion. Normally, the immune system is able to recognise and ignore the body’s own healthy proteins, cells, and tissues.

But sometimes, the immune system ceases to recognise one or more of the body’s normal constituents as “self,” leading to production of pathological autoantibodies. When this happens, these psycho antibodies go into a frenzy of destruction. The more the body is exposed to mRNA formulations, the more certain death becomes. That certainty helps to explain the emerging narrative about “booster” shots of “vaccine”. This is Anthony Fauci of the US CDC from a live media interview five days ago: “You know, I think we are going to need boosters. And I think very likely, when we look back on this, the proper complete regimen for good full protection will almost certainly be three shots – the first two that we’ve spoken about and a late third boost several months later.”

For the already vaxxed, that would make five jabs in all….and no doubt, a new strain would miraculously appear to justify a 6th and 7th top-up. The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death. In a bid to head off awkward questions about the efficacy of such drugs, Fauci then resorted to the current default lie: “This is still an outbreak, a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And when you look at the percentage of cases, particularly those that wind up with severe consequences leading to hospitalization, it is overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated.”

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That would be Macron?!

• France Leads The Way In Holding Covid Incompetents To Account (RT)

Former French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn faces a possible prison term and heavy fine for “endangering the life of others” in her mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, as France leads the way in making its leaders accountable. Despite the massive failures by governments and public health officials across the globe in dealing with the pandemic, it’s only the dead that really pay any sort of price. Most of the so-called experts simply move on, retire, or fade back into academia or big pharma where many of them came from. Not so in France, where the appetite for accountability has landed former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn in la merde,having just been indicted by the Court of Justice of the Republic – a special court established specifically to hold government ministers accountable for their actions – for “endangering the life of others” through mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has cost the French 115,000 lives. If found guilty, she faces a year in jail and a €15,000 fine.

Buzyn, a former doctor, did not have a good pandemic. She stood on the steps of the Elysee Palace in January last year and foolishly declared, “The risks of the coronavirus spreading to the population are low.” Ooops. But Buzyn is not the only French politician with their neck on the block. Her successor, Health Minister Olivier Véran, is also under investigation, along with former Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe. Surely, this is the sort of ministerial accountability that every democratic nation should be enforcing. Too often, incompetent, bungling, and plainly dishonest politicians escape sanction when they step aside, trying to present their resignation – or sacking – as some kind of noble gesture for which they should be congratulated, not imprisoned.

[..] But what about the rest of the Covid clowns around the world, with their misinformation, backtracking on guidance, exaggeration, underestimation, and sheer, cack-handed incompetence? Right up there is WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who, when meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, was full of praise for China’s containment of the coronavirus. The very least we could expect would be the WHO boss clearing his desk. In the US, Dr Anthony ‘Flip-flop’ Fauci faced his own messaging problems, having initially announced that the pandemic posed a “very, very low risk to the United States,” in January 2020. Since then, there have been more than 40 million reported covid cases in the US and around 652,000 deaths. I hope he likes golf, because Dr Fauci might soon have a lot more time to work on his handicap.

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Ivermectin.

• 33 Districts In Uttar Pradesh Are Now Covid-free (HT)

There are no active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in 33 districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government informed on Friday. About 67 districts have not reported a single new case of the viral infection in the last 24 hours, the government said, noting the steady improvement of the Covid-19 situation in the state. [..] Overall, the state has a total of 199 active cases, while the positivity rate came down to less than 0.01 per cent. The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent. As per the state’s health bulletin, Uttar Pradesh reported only 11 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths in the last 24 hours. The fresh cases came out of 2.26 lakh samples that were tested in the last 24 hours.


As of Friday, the state government has conducted 7.42 crore tests, according to the data published by Uttar Pradesh’s health department. On the vaccination front, around 7 crore people in the state have received their first dose of the jab. The vaccination coverage in the state has exceeded 8.47 crores, out of which, 12 lakh people have been inoculated in the last 2 hours. Meanwhile, the overall nationwide tally climbed to 33,174,954 after recording 34,973 cases in the last 24 hours. This was around 19% lower than Thursday when the country had logged 43,263 fresh infections. The death toll stands at 442,009.

India home kit.

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As prices are soaring all over Europe, the EU keeps playing politics. My guess is Merkel will put a stop to that. She does’t want to leave her country in a state of huge unrest.

• EU Red Tape Prevents Russia From Boosting Gas Supplies To Europe – Lavrov (RT)

Despite the completion of Nord Stream 2, Europe should not expect the Russian pipeline to start deliveries this year due to bureaucracy within the EU, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned on Wednesday. “Now the process of obtaining the necessary permits from the German regulator is underway. The process is not fast. The beginning of 2022 has been indicated,” Lavrov told the press. Experts say this could be the reason behind the current surge in gas prices, which have been smashing records for several days now. According to the press secretary of the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), Fita Wolf, Nord Stream 2’s certification may take several months, a prospect which practically forces market participants to raise prices.


To add to the problem, the pipeline’s main adversaries, Ukraine and the United States, have both vowed to complicate the certification procedure. According to Lavrov, there will be many roadblocks before certification is finally granted. “I have no doubt that attempts to attack this gas pipeline will continue,” the Russian foreign minister said. Gas prices in Europe have risen 20% since the start of trading on Wednesday. The price of October futures on the Dutch TTF exchange exceeded $964 per 1,000 cubic meters by 11am GMT, ICE data shows.

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There was ever any focus.

• US ‘Lost Focus’ In War On Terror – Oliver Stone (RT)

On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, in a conversation with RT, award-winning director Oliver Stone condemned the US response as rooted in “exaggerated hype to go to war” and a misguided attempt at revenge-seeking. Stone condemned the bloody-minded drive for vengeance that characterized the US’ reaction to the attacks from the outset. “‘We’ve gotta get them for this’ – [but] we didn’t even know who ‘them’ were!” he exclaimed to Going Underground’s Afshin Rattansi on Wednesday, pointing out that it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, rather than the better-known terrorist bogeyman Osama Bin Laden, who put together the entire plan “in his brain.”

“We lost focus in that moment – we were terrified, horrified, but we didn’t really look at what happened. We should have looked at why. A lot of [the government’s reasoning] was BS. A lot of it was exaggerated hype to go to war by the US and Israel,” Stone explained. Regarding US President Joe Biden’s controversial pullout from Afghanistan, Stone’s was a rare voice of support, insisting he “didn’t think it was a bad withdrawal at all” and that the sense of crisis was inflated by the media. “I appreciate a man who isn’t rushing to judgment like Bush was or Trump would be. A man who thinks about things and is deliberate … Most American presidents would fold – change their minds because of the polls,” which are “always tough on presidents.”

Stone observed that the reasons the terrorists gave for the 9/11 attacks were relatively simple: former president George H.W. Bush’s decision to station US troops on Saudi holy land and the US’ increasingly ‘one-sided’ support for Israel, despite international law. “We should have looked at why [the attacks occurred]. Bush said they envy our freedoms, but that was nonsense. They did it because of two reasons, as Osama stated very clearly,” Stone continued. “Instead of disengaging when the war was over in November, we sent in a huge amount of troops, didn’t understand the landscape, went out again and again on patrols, and, as we did in Vietnam, [the US Army] antagonized people by just being there.”

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Coming too close to Clinton?

• Durham Reportedly Seeking Indictment Against Clinton Campaign Lawyer (JTN)

Special counsel John Durham reportedly is seeking a grand jury indictment against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer at a Democratic-allied law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. According to the New York Times, the charge is said to be related to an alleged false statement to the FBI about a client’s identity when Sussmann pushed now-debunked claims about secret communications between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Durham “has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

Prior testimony and documents show Sussmann, who worked at Perkins Coie, delivered allegations about the Alfa server to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in fall 2016. Baker has told invetsigators Sussman told him his approach was not on behalf of any client. But Sussmann told Congress he made the approach on behalf of a computer security client. The newspaper said Durham’s team has obtained records showing Sussmann billed work on the Alfa Bank matter to the Clinton campaign, the newspaper said. Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean M. Berkowitz and Michael S. Bosworth, acknowledged Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, but denied wrongdoing.

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they told the Times. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name. Durham has until the weekend to charge Sussmann because of a five-year statute of limitations, the newspaper said.

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McCullough Delta
https://twitter.com/i/status/1438056517001904130

 

 

 

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