Russian gas Archives - The Automatic Earth

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch of large amounts of U.S. funds, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:

Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters; Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times; Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News; Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters; May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters. Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon.

As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.” As enormous as those sums already are, they were dwarfed by the Biden administration’s announcement on April 28 that it “is asking Congress for $33 billion in funding to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than double the $14 billion in support authorized so far.” The White House itself acknowledges that the vast majority of that new spending package will go to the purchase of weaponry and other military assets: “$20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region.”

It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are — particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.

“The ‘Boys from Davos’ plot out the future of the world.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523927620999475200

These people have no dictionaries.

• Lithuania Lawmakers: Russian Actions in Ukraine ‘Genocide’, ‘Terrorism’ (R.)

Lithuania’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to describe Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide” and “terrorism” and to call for a international tribunal, modelled on the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two, to prosecute suspected war crimes. The motion, co-sponsored by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, said Russian forces’ war crimes in Ukraine included the deliberate killing of civilians, mass rape, forcible relocation of Ukrainian citizens to Russia and the destruction of economic infrastructure and cultural sites. Moscow denies targeting civilians and calls its invasion, launched on Feb. 24, a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and the West say this is a false pretext for waging an unprovoked war of aggression.

“The Russian Federation, whose military forces deliberately and systematically select civilian targets for bombing, is a state that supports and perpetrates terrorism,” the Lithuanian parliamentary motion said. Lithuania’s move follows a similar unanimous vote by Canadian lawmakers on April 27 to call Russia’s attacks in Ukraine a “genocide”. Leonid Slutsky, head of the International Affairs Committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said the resolution was not legally binding and that it merely repeated what he called the United States’ Russophobic views. He said the resolution was part of an “anti-Russia project” and biased actions against Russia that “have nothing to do with reality,” the TASS news agency cited him as saying.

1/3 of Russian gas flows.

• Ukraine Halts Some Russian Gas Flows, Claims Battlefield Gains (R.)

Flows of Russian gas to Europe through a key transit point in Ukraine dried up on Wednesday, while Kyiv claimed battlefield gains over invading Russian forces, including the recapture of four villages around the second city of Kharkiv. Ukraine has remained a major route for Russian gas to Europe even after President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24. Mounting Western sanctions are seeking to ban or phase out the use of Russian energy, a major source of funds for Putin’s war effort and a vulnerability for Europe, especially Germany. Blaming the interference of Russian occupying forces for the suspension, Ukraine’s gas operator said on Tuesday it would redirect gas from the Sokhranivka transit point, which is in an area occupied by Russian forces, to another in a Ukraine-controlled area.

Early Wednesday data from the network operator showed zero nominations for Russian gas through the transit point. Since Russia was forced to abandon an assault on the capital Kyiv at the end of March, its main force has been trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbas region, using the city of Izyum near Kharkiv, in the northeast, as a base. Ukrainian troops have mostly held out against assaults from three directions, and top U.S. intelligence officials say the war is now at a stalemate. Putin appeared to be preparing for a long conflict, and a Russian victory in the Donbas region might not end the war, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in Washington on Tuesday. But the counterattack near Kharkiv could signal a new phase, with Ukraine going on the offensive and supply lines into Russia now potentially vulnerable.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian successes were gradually pushing Russian forces out of Kharkiv, which has been under bombardment since the war began. “But I also want to urge all our people … not to spread excessive emotions. We should not create an atmosphere of excessive moral pressure, where victories are expected weekly and even daily,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.

8 years

So West has been paying and training and arming the Ukrainian army for eight years… pic.twitter.com/txV6dB9rNq

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 10, 2022

pfrightening

• Are We Pfinding Pfizer Pfraud? -Part 1 (Gato Malo)

The pfizer data dumps are massive and disordered. They drop 50k pages without regard to completeness or order. Here, have a huge box of who knows what! This is a longstanding legal trick. And it works well. It’s the time honored fashion in which big companies bury small legal teams and create a $3 million bill just to sort and read the stuff. But here’s a fun little wrinkle: this time is not going to be like that. Battalions of interested parties are all over it. The documents are posted and reading and sorting them is crowdsourced. And many hands make for light work. And a lot of very skilled sleuths are at work here. No law firm in history has ever had an expert team like this. Never. The FDA and pfizer fought tooth and claw NOT to release this. I have ZERO doubt that they are dumping all the least awful and incriminating things first.

Keep in mind these folks wanted to take 75 years to disclose this. Only a court order pried it loose. But even with this first set of boxes, it’s starting to become apparent why they did not want anyone poking around. They knew all sorts of things they failed to disclose and many are doing good work on this. But what if the trial itself was pfraud? Because that would be seismic. It would not only severely implicate the FDA and pfizer alike, it would likely invalidate the liability protection granted under EUA and suddenly bourla and his merry band of vaxx aficionados might find themselves accountable. Bigly. And wouldn’t that be interesting? So if this looks like a plausible possibility, we really ought to dig in like busy little mice and see what all we can winkle out. Fortunately, some busy little mice have already been doing so. and what they found is, well, pfrightening.

“..1223 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab..”

Say Pfizer’s own docs. But no lack of reports saying they do not.

• The Covid Vaccine Boomerang (Maajid Nawaz)

Initially, the FDA took a strange step on behalf of Pfizer by demanding a full 75 years before releasing any of their vaccine trial data. Euronews reports: “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it now needs 75 years to fully release Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data to the public – twenty years more than it originally agreed on November 15.” So strange was this attempt, that a judge then had to order the FDA to release the Pfizer data: Reuters reports: “Jan 7 – Score one for transparency. A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months.”

So why did Pfizer and the FDA want to hide their data for 75 years? This week, the first batch of that judge-ordered data was released. Despite predictable media spin disguised as “fact-checking”, the basic and rather shocking revelation that 1233 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab is true. This is contained within Pfizer’s own adverse events report:

The public and smaller media outlets are finally beginning to wake up to the extent of the problem caused by the experimental mRNA jab in particular. Unherd cites: “On the other hand, Stabell-Benn and her colleagues found no statistically meaningful evidence in the trial data that the mRNA vaccines reduced all-cause mortality. The numbers of deaths from other causes including cardiovascular deaths appear to be increased in this group, compensating for the beneficial effect of the vaccines on Covid” No wonder Pfizer would rather pull out of countries entirely than to allow independent testing of their mRNA jab, locally. Reuters reports: “NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said on Friday it had withdrawn an application for emergency-use authorisation of its COVID-19 vaccine in India, after failing to meet the drug regulator’s demand for a local safety and immunogenicity study.”

Immunologist, virologist and the inventor of mRNA technology, Dr Robert Malone summarises the latest developments with Pfizer’s data here: “In my opinion withholding scientific data constitutes fraud, this is scientific fraud in my opinion. If I was to publish a study, in which I had a large body of epidemiological data, and I decided to only publish part of it, because I wanted to advance some agenda, I would be guilty of scientific fraud, the paper would be withdrawn, I would be kicked out of my academic institution. I would be guilty of scientific fraud. That’s what this is. And the CDC..I’ve watched it over the years become more and more and more a political arm, and not serving its function…They no longer release that detailed information.. they have become purely a political organisation, an arm of the Executive Branch and what they have done is in my opinion obscene.

And it is part of what’s under lied the attacks that Peter and I have sustained from the press.. if you think about it, the underlying thesis is: ‘well the CDC didn’t say that, so you’re spreading medical misinformation,’ but now we learn who’s really been spreading medical misinformation is the CDC. I think we’re all owed an apology… I think that this data that they have been withholding …it is a ton of information, they’ve been intentionally withholding it, that’s why we’ve been attacked, it is unjust… it turns out we have been completely vindicated. We have been speaking truth, and it’s a truth that has been hidden from the American public, and more importantly it’s been hidden from other physicians, and it’s been hidden from public health authorities..” Dr Robert Malone.

We know from Pfizer docs that their “vaccine” was never tested on pregnant women, only on 44 rats. So all reports this below is based on is about guinea pigs, tests taking place after it was said to be safe and effective, though nobody could have known that.

• Covid Vaccines Safe For Pregnant Women, Cut Stillbirth Risk – Review (G.)

Doctors have stressed the importance of Covid vaccinations for pregnant women after a major review found the shots were not only safe, but reduced the risk of stillbirth by 15%. Researchers at St George’s, University of London, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists analysed 23 published studies and trials that enrolled 117,552 pregnant women vaccinated against Covid, to assess the safety of the shots. The vast majority of the women received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which provided 89.5% protection against Covid infection seven days after the second dose. There was no evidence of greater risk from miscarriage, preterm birth or other pregnancy complications.

“We wanted to see if vaccination was safe or not for pregnant women,” said Asma Khalil, professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St George’s hospital in London. “It is safe, but what’s surprising, and it’s a positive finding, is that there was a reduction in stillbirths.” “So far, most of the data on vaccines in pregnancy have been about protecting the pregnant woman herself from Covid. Now we have evidence that the vaccines protect the baby too,” she added. The results are published in Nature Communications.

Almost all pregnant women admitted to UK hospitals for Covid treatment are unvaccinated. And while vaccine uptake among pregnant women rose from 23% in August to 54% at the end of last year, doctors believe thousands are still unvaccinated. In December, the UK government’s vaccine watchdog, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, made pregnant women a priority group for jabs after studies found women were more likely to become seriously ill if they caught Covid while pregnant.

All logic is gone now.

• FDA: Youngest Kids Vaccine Won’t Need To Hit 50% Efficacy Mark (EP)

The FDA’s top vaccine leader told a congressional committee on Friday afternoon that although the adult vaccines had to meet a 50% threshold for efficacy against Covid-19 infections, that same standard will not need to be met for the vaccines for the youngest group of children, for which a vaccine is not yet available. The agency is currently reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for this youngest group as it awaits further data from Pfizer on its potential three-dose shot. The agency previously scheduled and then canceled an adcomm to review data on two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine for children under the age of 5.

According to a readout of the meeting from the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, Marks explained that the FDA would not withhold authorization — despite previous guidance — for a pediatric vaccine solely because it did not reach a 50% efficacy threshold at blocking symptomatic infections. All of the other adult and children’s vaccines currently authorized in the US have lost significant amounts of efficacy due to the Omicron variant, but they still remain effective at reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death. “If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.

Meanwhile, Marks directly addressed concerns that the agency might slow-play the Moderna application and wait to review both applications together, saying that the VRBPAC meetings set for next month will be moved up if necessary. “Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said, according to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s account of the meeting. Marks also told Clyburn and his staff that VRBPAC members have reserved earlier dates, enabling FDA to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.” But he also explained that reviewing these vaccines for the youngest children involves more “complexity” than the review of adult vaccines, and the agency’s review process may require more time.

He also said that the emergence of new variants made the process of reviewing vaccines more complex, explaining it “was a little simpler for the original submissions in late 2020 when we didn’t have the variants and tons of immunogenicity data to go through.

What a surprise.

• $350 Million in Secret Payments to Fauci, Collins, Others at NIH Uncovered (ET)

An estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a nonprofit government watchdog. “We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told reporters in a telephone news conference on May 9. “We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers, meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers, to NIH scientists.”

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said. “We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said. “We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.” Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency.

Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci. The top five NIH employees measured in terms of the number of royalty payments that they received while on the government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments. Only Pastan continues to be employed by NIH, according to Open the Books.

“If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.”

• WHO Pandemic Treaty: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It (Mercola)

As noted by anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz in an April 28 Twitter post, the “WHO pandemic treaty serves as a backdoor to global empire.” COVID-19, while potentially deadly to certain vulnerable groups, simply isn’t a valid justification for handing over more power to the WHO, especially in light of its many inexplicable “mistakes” in this and previous pandemics. As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021, yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared. The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission. So, it seems clear that the effort to now hand over more power to the WHO is about something other than them being the most qualified to make health decisions that benefit and protect everyone.

It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State. Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop. With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.

[..] Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the World Economic Forum and all its installed leaders in government and private business were able to roll out a plan that had already been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover. In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment. Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, extend it into the healthcare systems of every nation and eventually implement a universal or “socialist-like” healthcare system as part of The Great Reset.

Empty apartments.

• The Chinese Slowdown: Much More Than Covid (Lacalle)

The most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and not only attributable to the covid-19 lockdowns. The lockdowns have an enormous impact. Twenty-six of 31 China mainland provinces have rising covid cases and the fear of a Shanghai-style lockdown is enormous. The information coming from Shanghai proves that these drastic lockdowns create an enormous damage to the population. Millions of citizens without food or medicine and rising suicides have shown that the infamous “zero covid” policy often disguises mass population control and repression. It is easy to use the covid-19 lockdowns as the reason for the weakening of the Chinese economy but that would be a gross simplification. The problem is deeper.

China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the crackdown on the private sector, which has led to a cut in investment growth. According to Nomura Research, China faces the worst slowdown since the covid outbreak in 2020 and the world should be worried about a further slide, as the challenges persist. Official gross domestic product (GDP) figures may be massaged to deliver the government’s target, but all other macro figures point to a much weaker growth. We must remember that there are two ways in which the Chinese government “boosts” real GDP: By publishing a low inflation and GDP deflator figure and by massively increasing credit and infrastructure spending. However, those two cannot disguise the importance of the weakening of the Chinese economy, because it is now structural.

The collapse of the real estate bubble is the biggest problem. A research paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang estimated that the real estate sector accounts for around 29 percent of China’s GDP. It is impossible for the Chinese government to offset the impact of such a massive part of the economy with other high-growth sectors. Furthermore, real estate’s impact on the job market is hard to substitute. Economist George Magnus warned that the impact of the real estate collapse would last for years.

“..while the number of weather-related disasters [..] has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen..”

• BBC Climate Editor Made False Claims On Global Warming (DM)

A BBC Panorama documentary about global warming made a number of false claims, an internal investigation by the broadcaster has found. The programme Wild Weather, presented by climate editor Justin Rowlatt, said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true. It also claimed Madagascar was on the verge of the first famine caused by climate change – despite other factors being involved. The programme, broadcast last November to coincide with the COP26 climate conference, sparked two complaints investigated by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU). Last year Rowlatt’s sister Cordelia was among a number of Insulate Britain activists arrested for staging a protest at junction 3 of the M25.

Miss Rowlatt, who once appeared on TV advising her brother on how to be more environmentally friendly, pleaded guilty by post at Crawley Magistrates’ Court. She was fined £300 with £85 court costs and a £34 surcharge for committing a public nuisance on a highway. The introduction of Wild Weather said ‘the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come’. The ECU said this risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing. In fact, as noted by a recent report from the World Meteorological Organisation, while the number of weather-related disasters – such as floods, storms and drought – has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen because of improved early warnings and disaster management.

The Guardian is a two-faced monster.

• Priti Patel, Julian Assange Must Not Be Handed Over To The US (G.)

Priti Patel now has to make one of the most important decisions of her career: will she bow to heavy pressure from the United States and send a vulnerable man who has been convicted of no crime to face an indeterminate number of years in an American jail where he may experience intimidation and isolation? Her decision is imminent and all other legal avenues have been explored. This was the scenario 10 years ago in the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who, working out of his north London bedroom, trawled through the computer systems of Nasa and the US defence department in search of information about UFOs and left behind some mildly rude messages about the systems’ sloppy security. The home secretary was Theresa May, who halted extradition proceedings at the last minute.

Now Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and also a vulnerable man – who has been in Belmarsh high-security prison for three years without being convicted of any crime – is facing extradition, with the issue due to be decided this month. Once again, the home secretary has an opportunity to demonstrate, as May did, that respect for justice and humanity are much finer and more enduring qualities than appeasement. It is worth recalling the words of party leaders in support of McKinnon after Labour home secretaries – to their great shame – declined to intervene in the years after his initial arrest in 2002. Nick Clegg, then leading the Liberal Democrats in opposition, said that McKinnon “has been hung out to dry by a British government desperate to appease its American counterparts”.

David Cameron, before he became prime minister, had said: “McKinnon is a vulnerable young man and I see no compassion in sending him thousands of miles away from his home and loved ones to face trial.” The current case is different in that, while McKinnon remained at liberty, Assange has been held in custody alongside murderers and terrorists after the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy, seeking political asylum. He should have been given bail long ago to be with his wife, Stella Moris, whom he married in prison in March, and their two young children; he could simply be electronically tagged and monitored. It is also different in that he faces charges under the Espionage Act which carries a potential sentence of 175 years. And yes, the US criminal justice system does actually impose such medieval sentences.

Truth Social

BREAKING: Donald Trump posts new video slamming Biden on Truth Social: pic.twitter.com/tDV43jzwD0

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 9, 2022

Expodentially

'Expodentially' isn't a word, Joe pic.twitter.com/ZjRqqR1Lgt

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 11, 2022

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Debt Rattle April 28 2022

Apr 282022

April 28, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: CDC, censorship, DHS, Disinformation Board, Elon Musk, Fauci, FDA, Putin, Russian gas, Twitter 24 Responses »

Robert Rauschenberg Buffalo II 1964

• Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)

• Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)

• Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)

• Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)

• DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)

• Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)

• Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)

• Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)

• Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)

• Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates

• Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)

• CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)

• Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

Euro and yen are getting crushed, ruble is at 52-week high.

@TFMetals: Gold has now been attacked TWICE today in an attempt to manipulate it back under $1880. The first was in London and the second, even higher volume attack came during the first hour of Comex trading.

Biden Scott Ritter 2002

Watch #Biden in 2002 as he mocks US Marine Scott Ritter, calling him "Scotty Boy" and grinning as he repeats "it's above your pay grade."@kthalps @aaronjmate
See the full interview: https://t.co/O9EkOkpuXX pic.twitter.com/pyKemkqTJa

— Useful Idiots (@UsefulIdiotpod) April 26, 2022

“Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities” ~ Voltaire

“due to absence of payments in roubles”

• Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)

At the same time as Russia has targeted railway lines as part of the effort to block U.S. arms shipments into Eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has now followed through on the previous warning to stop Russian gas supplies unless payments are made in non-sanctioned Rubles. Poland is obviously the primary target for retaliation here, as the NATO alliance is using Poland as the gateway for arms deliveries into Ukraine. According to multiple reports from the EU Russia has halted gas shipments into Poland and Bulgaria. (Reuters) “Gazprom Russia’s gas export monopoly, suspended gas supplies “due to absence of payments in roubles”, as stipulated in a decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin that aims to soften the impact of sanctions.”

There are conflicting reports as to whether Germany is paying Russia, or whether they are trying to avoid running afoul of the NATO alliance by reducing Russian imports. Ukraine President Zelenskyy is using the opportunity to reinforce his position that all European countries need to stop purchasing energy from Russia, or else they are not supporting Ukraine. However, it’s not as simple as it seems because multiple EU countries are dependent on Russia for energy products and there are no immediate alternatives. Russia is leveraging this dependency in an effort to break the western sanctions.

“Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further..”

• Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced. Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. For the EU, imports were about €44bn for the past two months, compared with about €140bn for the whole of last year, or roughly €12bn a month. The findings demonstrate how Russia has continued to benefit from its stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply, even while governments have frantically sought to prevent Vladimir Putin using oil and gas as an economic weapon.

Even though exports from Russia have been reduced by the war and sanctions, the country’s dominance as a source of gas has meant cutting off supplies has only increased prices, which were already high because of tight supply as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Crude oil shipments from Russia to foreign ports fell by 30% in the first three weeks of April, compared with rates in January and February, before the invasion, according to the CREA data. But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.

Always a bit weird when western military “analyzes” Russia. Invariably they pretend to have a direct line into Putin’s brain.

• Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)

IN spite of appearances and the beliefs of many, the main Russian assault in eastern Ukraine has not yet begun. Last Sunday, April 24, was Easter Sunday in the Russian Orthodox calendar; the feast lasts eight days until the commemoration of Our Lord’s second appearance to the Disciples after his resurrection and the confrontation with ‘doubting’ Thomas. Given Vladimir Putin’s well-documented devotion to the Orthodox religion, we might expect the main assault in eastern Ukraine to begin after that date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declaration that the offensive had begun was useful to Putin. It has caused both the Ukrainian people and the West to think that Russian forces are now fully committed. They are not. What has begun is the deep attack and the use of deception – two recycled Soviet techniques still in full use.

Deep attacks against infrastructure by air and missile strikes and on key targets, including stockpiles of Nato-supplied equipment, air defence systems, airfields and communications are now in progress. Preliminary artillery fire on close targets in the Donbas region is also certainly ongoing. In terms of deception, the Russians continue to be poised in the Black Sea threatening Odessa, but with probably insufficient forces to do more than this. However, it is clearly fixing Ukrainian attention, as the 5th (Reserve) Tank Brigade with its 90 T-72 main battle tanks has been moved there. For Putin, leaving Odessa as the only operational Ukrainian port will be a valuable bargaining chip once the Donbas operation is complete and he seeks to dictate a settlement. If a settlement is not achieved then this picture changes, more of which shortly.

So what can we expect to see when the main assault unfolds? First, combined arms assaults against Ukrainian regular forces in the Donbas and elsewhere on the eastern frontier to fix them. Zelensky’s statements that Ukrainian reserves are now being committed, including the 3rd (Reserve) Tank Brigade deploying to Izyum, and the 4th and 17th Tank Brigades deployed to Kharkov, may well be a bluff. If it is not, then such moves would be premature and play to the Russian script. That said, an encircling movement from Izyum to the south, on the western border of the Donetsk, would be a very clear indicator of the beginning of full offensive operations.

Operations in and around Mariupol will continue, but only to fix the attention of the West and its media. Mariupol is seen as the key to any corridor to the Crimea – but the route to the Crimea has been fully open since early March with the garrison of Mariupol confined to a small area and helpless to interfere.

Here’s how nervous Elon Musk is making Washington.

• Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)

The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a new board designed to counter misinformation related to homeland security, with a focus specifically on Russia and irregular migration. The board will be called the “Disinformation Governance Board, and will be headed by executive director Nina Jankowicz. Speaking with the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee on Wednesday afternoon, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “Our Undersecretary for Policy, Rob Silvers is co-chair with our Principal Deputy General Counsel, Jennifer Gaskell, in leading a just recently constituted misinformation disinformation governance board. So we’re bringing — the goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat.”

Jankowicz was previously a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and had advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, according to Politico. Jankowicz also oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute. She announced the new Board via Twitter on Wednesday. Jankowicz has previously said that she was concerned that Twitter had determined early in 2022 to stop limiting speech from users about the 2020 presidential election, saying that “considering the long-term damage these lies do to our democracy,” she was “dismayed about this decision.”

Her view about elections, whether foreign or domestic, are that they “aren’t an end point,” but are “an inflection point,” and that the policies of social media companies as regards free speech “need to reflect that.” Jankowicz was an advisor to the government of Ukraine. She also stated her opinion that Hunter Biden’s laptop, the contents of which were reported by the New York Post, was Russian disinformation. This was entirely false. Jankowicz will be leading the charge against misinformation, of which she believed the laptop actually was an example. Jankowicz also does not appear to be a fan of free speech, saying that setting up free speech in opposition to censorship is “a false dichotomy.”

This Nina Jankowicz, who will head the board, is herself a veritable disinformation engine.

• DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)

I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter. Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media. Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.

NOTE: The Republicans did NOT pay for the Steele dossier.

This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded. In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative. Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program. All of this background aligns with the previous visibility of a public-private partnership between the bureaucracy of government, the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. social media. That partnership now forms the very cornerstone of the DHS/CISA effort to control what information exists in the public space. It is highly important that people understand what is happening.

[..] For two years the control mechanisms around information have been cemented by govt and Big Tech. Even the deployment of the linguistics around disinformation, misinformation and malinformation is all part of that collective effort. The collaboration between the government and Big Tech is not a matter for debate, it is all easily referenced by their own admissions. The current issue is how they are deploying the information controls. We have COVID-19, the vaccination effort and now Ukraine as examples of the collaboration to control information, to control what people are permitted to question and discuss on the internet. Now things are getting much more detailed, and more alarming.

Shortly after Elon Musk made a bid to purchase a single information platform, Twitter, and then expressed his intent to open the speech valves, former Obama administration intelligence officials wrote a letter warning about efforts to break up the information control by Big Tech and Social Media. That letter was shortly followed by a speech delivered by Obama himself where he specifically demanded that government take a larger role in the control of information, essentially promoting an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’ to control information in the public sphere.

See Covid. See Russiagate. Parites like the DNC, the MSM and the Twitter snowflakes have convinced themselves they have a god-given right to censorship.

• Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)

Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

This builds on a similar message Google’s subsidiary YouTube released last month, stating, “Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events. We are now removing content about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.” YouTube went on to say that it had already permanently banned more than a thousand channels and 15,000 videos on these grounds. Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin was deeply troubled by the news. “It is really disturbing that this is the trend that we are on,” she told MintPress, adding: It is a preposterous declaration considering that the victim is whoever we are told by our foreign policy establishment.

It really is outrageous to be told by these tech giants that taking the wrong side of a conflict that is quite complicated will now hurt your views, derank you on social media or limit your ability to fund your work. So you have to toe the line in order to survive as a journalist in alternative media today.” The most prominent victim of the recent banning spate has been Russian state media such as RT America, whose entire catalog has been blocked throughout most of the world. RT America was also blocked from broadcasting across the U.S., leading to the network’s sudden closure.

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled..”

• Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)

Leaked internal communications by Twitter employees reveal woke employees are overtaken by despair and anger about Elon Musk’s month-long effort to acquire Twitter. Musk announced he would purchase the company for $44 billion on Monday. The deal concludes a month-long saga that began with Musk first tweeting out polls and his thoughts about the decline of free speech on Twitter. On the business communication platform Slack, some Twitter employees vented against the new owner, leaked messages reveal. “Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” a site reliability engineer who identifies as a nonbinary transgender and plural person wrote.

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled,” wrote a senior staff software engineer who called Musk an “a**hole,” and tried to console his colleagues. “We’re all spinning our wheels, and coming up with worst case scenarios (Trump returns! No more moderation!). The fact is that [Musk] has not talked about what he’s planning on doing in any detail outside of broad sweeping statements that could be easily seen as hyperbolic showboating.” A senior staff video engineer announced he would be quitting, “Not the place to say it perhaps, but I will not work for this company after the takeover.”

Following the back-and-forth among multiple employees angry about the news, some warned that their communications on Slack could be searched. The employees then moved their conversations onto their personal devices using the encrypted chat application Signal. Twitter’s leadership appeared to predict an internal backlash and possible sabotage when it locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform through Friday. Leading up to Monday’s deal, Twitter employees had already been venting for weeks on Slack about Musk and defending the platform’s moderation enforcement.

“The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything…”

• Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)

A week ago Barack Obama let loose his inner fascist and gave an hour-long speech at Stanford University that deserved more attention than it got. “I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” Obama told his audience and then spent the rest of the hour proving he is anything but. In fact, the Obama that emerges in this speech is one scary dude. The one sentence that most alarmed me began thusly, “The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy.” “The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything. Does he expect to head the FCC or get appointed to the Supreme Court? Does he plan to engineer a Michelle Obama presidential bid? If any of these happens, God help us all.

The thrust of his speech was that “regulation has to be part of the answer” in combating online “disinformation.” As Obama made much too clear he and his pals get to determine what is and is not disinformation. The former president makes almost no attempt to hide his biases. A sentence that reads, “People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions” does not inspire a whole lot of confidence in the deplorable half of America. Nor does a sentence that reads, “There are still brand name newspapers and magazines, not to mention network news broadcasts, NPR [and] other outlets that have adapted to the new digital environment while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity.”

Those “highest standards” included sustaining for three years the fiction that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 election and salvaging Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, such as it was, by suppressing all news of Hunter Biden’s laptop under the pretext it was Russian disinformation. On the question of COVID, Obama insists, “People are dying because of misinformation.” He cites the refusal of 1 in 5 Americans to avoid “safe, effective vaccines” as proof of the same. Obama neglected to mention that more than a year into the COVID mania Gallup asked 35,000 Americans, “What are the chances someone with COVID must be hospitalized?” 41% of Democrats said more than 50%; another 28% of Democrats said 20 to 50%. The correct answer was 1-5%.

“..that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6..”

• Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is seeking answers from the Justice Department (DOJ) on whether the FBI “entrapped” defendants in the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and whether the high-profile charges in Michigan were politically motivated to hurt former President Trump before the 2020 presidential election. Greene on Wednesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that backs defense lawyer claims that four defendants charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer were steered by undercover FBI agents and informants. “The American people deserve a transparent justice system and law enforcement that keeps them safe, not entraps them in serious criminal activity in order to sway the outcome of a democratic election,” Greene and 11 other GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

After a 20-day trial, two of the four men were acquitted on April 8 of a conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer. Jurors couldn’t reach a verdict on charges against two other defendants, resulting in a mistrial. Their lawyers alleged entrapment, and the federal judge in the case allowed jurors to consider whether the FBI engaged in the prohibited practice of cajoling or tricking individuals into committing crimes. Prosecutors sought to show that the defendants were talking about the kidnapping plot before the FBI sting with one defendant posting a video saying, “We need to use brutal force against the government” in 2019, months before he met any agents or informants. In May 2020, another defendant was talking about “hanging” the governor.

[..] In an interview with Fox News Digital, Greene sought to make a link between FBI “entrapping” the Whitmer defendants and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. She questioned whether the FBI had any involvement or knowledge of those who broke into the Capitol and disrupted the House and Senate proceedings to certify President Biden’s Electoral College win. “The comparison of the two incidents, that’s what most people are just really concerned about – between Governor Whitmer and that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6,” Greene said.

When is it time to bail out banks?

• Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates

Spiking mortgage rates multiply the effects of exploding home prices on mortgage payments, and it has taken layer after layer of homebuyers out of the market for the past four months. And we can see that. Mortgage applications to purchase a home fell further this week and were down 17% from a year ago, hitting the lowest level since May 2020, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly Purchase Index today. The index is down over 30% from peak-demand in late 2020 and early 2021, which was then followed by the historic price spikes last year.

“The drop in purchase applications was evident across all loan types,” the MBA’s report said. “Prospective homebuyers have pulled back this spring, as they continue to face limited options of homes for sale along with higher costs from increasing mortgage rates and prices. The recent decrease in purchase applications is an indication of potential weakness in home sales in the coming months.” The culprit of the plunge in volume: The toxic mix of exploding home prices and spiking mortgage rates. The average interest rate for 30-year fixed rate mortgages with 20% down and conforming to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac limits, jumped to 5.37%, the highest since August 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly measure today.

The mortgage on a home purchased a year ago at the median price (per National Association of Realtors) of $326,300, and financed with 20% down over 30 years, at the average rate at the time of 3.17%, came with a payment of 1,320 per month. The mortgage on a home purchased today at the median price of $375,300, and financed with 20% down, at 5.37% comes with a payment of $1,990. So today’s buyer, already strung out by rampant inflation in everything else, would have to come up with an extra $670 a month – that represents a 50% jump in mortgage payments – to buy the same house. Now figure this with homes in the more expensive areas of the country where the median price, after the ridiculous spikes of the past two years, runs $500,000 or $1 million or more. Homebuyers are facing massively higher mortgage payments in those markets.

“A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune.”

• Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci walked back his comment that the US was no longer in the “pandemic phase” of COVID-19 — the latest jumbled messaging from President Biden’s chief medical adviser on the coronavirus. Biden administration officials and Fauci were scrambling Wednesday to emphasize that the country is still in the midst of a pandemic and that emergency measures are still needed after Fauci told PBS the precise opposite. “Here we are. It’s the end of April. It’s the spring of 2022. How close are we to the end of the pandemic?” Judy Woodruff of “PBS NewsHour” asked Fauci Tuesday. “We are certainly, right now, in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci replied.

“Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. “So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are,” he added. A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune. “We are in a different moment of the pandemic,” Fauci told the Associated Press Wednesday. The US has “decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase” after a winter surge, he added. “By no means does that mean the pandemic is over,” Fauci said in his 180-degree turnabout.

He told the Washington Post Wednesday: “The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question during her daily press briefing over why emergency measures are still needed if the “pandemic phase” is over. “Well, what Dr. Fauci was saying is that we are in a different phase of this pandemic, and that’s absolutely true,” Psaki said, adding that the level of hospitalizations and deaths has come down.

What a surprise!

• CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)

CDC and FDA officials ‘altered’ Covid guidance and even ‘suppressed’ findings related to the virus due to political pressure, a bombshell report suggests. Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country’s pandemic guidance. They unearthed allegations of ‘political interference’ in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with. In its 37-page report, the GAO warned that neither agency had a system in place for reporting allegations of political interference. It also said they had failed to train staff how to spot and report this. Whistleblowers said they did not speak up at the time for fear of retaliation, because they were unsure how to report the issues or believed leaders were already aware.

This is just the latest in a growing patchwork of reports suggesting politicians influenced ‘scientific’ papers during the pandemic for their own ends. On Tuesday, the Biden administration’s top medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci declared the U.S. is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid, citing low cases and hospitalizations. But health experts were quick to question the claim — buried at the end of an interview with PBS’ NewsHour — suggesting he may have bungled his words and should only have said the nation was in a phase of ‘low hospitalizations’. ‘A few respondents from CDC and [Food and Drug Administration] FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings,’ GAO investigators wrote in the report.

‘Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of Covid-related scientific findings.’ The GAO report published last week looked into the two agencies, alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America’s top research institution— and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — in charge of natural disaster response. All are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which in February was branded as at ‘high risk’ for fraud, mismanagement and abuse by the GAO in a separate report.

“We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”

• Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

The legacy media has been like pigs at a trough today and yesterday with the publication of an atrocious ‘peer-reviewed’ ‘scientific’ article by Dr. David Fisman, Dr. Ashleigh Tuite, and a graduate student. After all, with raw public health data unable to support the only COVID-19 narrative that has been deemed acceptable, fresh fuel was apparently needed. Lots of media outlets have been reporting on this study; one of them being CTV News. Here is the headline for their article: “Being with unvaccinated people increases COVID-19 risk for those who are vaccinated: modelling study” This kind of messaging will only fuel hatred and segregation and the potential development of harmful policies. And it is all in the name of bad science.

As a researcher who has published and reviewed many scientific papers, I can tell you that the article by Fisman, et al. is the worst one that I have ever seen. The ‘peer reviewers’ of this article should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to be published, and the editor even more so. If the Canadian Medical Association Journal does not promptly retract this article, they will have made themselves an embarrassment among scientific publishers. This paper by Fisman, et al. is only thinly veiled hate speech under the guise of science. Before I walk you through the numerous massive errors in this paper, let me first show you one example of the messaging regarding the impact and relevance of the paper.

Fisman was quoted by CTV News as saying “We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”. The only reason why Fisman is trying to turn people against other people is due to the abject failure of the COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ to function like vaccines. That is to say that the purpose of a vaccine is to protect people from a pathogen; to prevent both the disease and transmission of the causative agent. Such a medical product does not require one to pit people against people. Fisman has inappropriately labelled critically thinking people as an enemy when the actual culprits are SARS-CoV-2 and overly rushed jabs of exceptionally poor quality and highly questionable safety that have been pushed as the sole solution at the expense of all others.