Sep 152022
 
 September 15, 2022  Posted by at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Salvador Dali Neo-Cubist Academy (Composition with Three Figures) 1926

 

Moscow Outlines ‘Diabolical’ Plan By Washington (RT)
“Prologue To Third World War”: Kremlin Reacts To Security Guarantees For Ukraine (ZH)
US, Ukraine Are In Talks To Transfer Fighter Jets & Longer-Range Missiles (ZH)
The Kharkov Game-Changer (Escobar)
Why Russia Will Still Win, Despite Ukraine’s Gains (Scott Ritter)
Ukraine Has Put World On Brink Of ‘Nuclear Catastrophe’ – Moscow (RT)
Top Hungarian Official Predicts Easing Of Sanctions (RT)
EU May Punish Hungary (RT)
Summit With Putin, Xi Will Showcase Alternative To Western World: Kremlin (AFP)
Ukraine Had A Huge Influence On The Soviet Union (Negopodin)
End of Covid in Sight – WHO (RT)
Why Health Officials Won’t Let Scientists Examine mRNA Vaccine Vials (Mercola)
Denmark ENDS Covid Vaccinations For Almost Everyone Under 50 (Berenson)
Climate Emergency Not Supported by Data: 4 Leading Italian Scientists (DS)
UK Sports Body Tells People Not To Ride Bikes During Queen Funeral (RT)

 

 

Art Berman @aeberman12
The real energy transition is a reduction in energy use. This will never happen VOLUNTARILY. Another slide from my talk last night at Houston Geological Society.

 

 

 

 

Twitter whistleblower

 

 

 

 

The Fibonacci week. How long do the days feel?

 

 

 

 

“..the EU began as a group of nations that banded together for mutual economic benefit through the deregulation of trade. Now “they are being corralled together” so their lives will become “colder, poorer, and harder,” she said.”

Moscow Outlines ‘Diabolical’ Plan By Washington (RT)

Ukraine’s newly published proposal for Western security guarantees is an invitation for the economic self-immolation of the EU, according to Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Russian diplomat believes that the proposed international agreement which Kiev released on Tuesday is an economic trap for EU nations set by the US with Ukraine’s assistance. Most of the measures included in the document “are already being implemented” by Kiev’s backers, but Washington’s EU allies are expected to pledge to keep the Ukraine aid money flowing for the foreseeable future, Zakharova said in an interview on Wednesday. If signed, the ‘Kiev Security Compact’ would mean “harsh slavery” for the bloc which it would not recover from anytime soon, she claimed.

“A total commitment to supporting the Kiev regime would simply mean immolation [for the EU]. And this proposal is addressed to nations that are debating how they can live through the winter,” Zakharova said, in reference to the energy shortages that EU member states are struggling to confront. Developed EU nations face an economic and humanitarian disaster after taking directions from the US on how to respond to the crisis in Ukraine, according to the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. The situation is ironic, she believes, as the EU began as a group of nations that banded together for mutual economic benefit through the deregulation of trade. Now “they are being corralled together” so their lives will become “colder, poorer, and harder,” she said.

This is Washington’s diabolical plan to destroy what was previously called the common European space. The Ukrainian security proposal was prepared by a group co-chaired by Andrey Yermak, the chief of staff of President Vladimir Zelensky, and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The 10-page document outlines NATO-like security guarantees for Ukraine by the US and its allies that would benefit Kiev until it formally joins the Washington-led military bloc. It also calls for continued military and financial aid for Ukraine by the guarantors.

Read more …

“..a “multi-decade” plan of investment, military training, and intelligence sharing to bolster Ukraine’s defensive capabilities as the country pursues full NATO membership.”

“Prologue To Third World War”: Kremlin Reacts To Security Guarantees For Ukraine (ZH)

Ukraine wants a ‘NATO-esque’ bloc which can be called upon to immediately defend borders with Russia, which was proposed by a working group established by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Crucially it would include the United States and other NATO allies providing Ukraine with “security guarantees”. Kiev officials stressed in unveiling the plan Tuesday that it’s not meant as a replacement for NATO, but as a legally binding alliance to be in place while Ukraine eventually pursues full NATO membership, as Newsweek describes of the proposal: “The Kyiv Security Compact (KSC)—proposed by Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky’s office, and former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen—would also establish a “multi-decade” plan of investment, military training, and intelligence sharing to bolster Ukraine’s defensive capabilities as the country pursues full NATO membership.”

The Kremlin’s reaction has been swift and fierce, with Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev warning that it is “really a prologue to the Third World War” if it gets enacted. He described that nuclear holocaust would be the end result. According to a translation of Medvedev’s reaction in state media, which had been posted in a statement to Telegram, he blamed “dull idiots” from “stupid think tanks” for concocting such a “hysterical appeal”. Medvedev wrote: “And then the Western nations will not be able to sit in their clean homes, laughing at how they carefully weaken Russia by proxy. Everything will be on fire around them. Their people will harvest their grief in full. The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt.”

“Yet still the narrow-minded politicians and their stupid think tanks, thoughtfully twirling a glass of wine in their hands, talk about how they can deal with us without entering into a direct war. Dull idiots with a classical education.” He said that already the conflict in Ukraine is sliding into unknown, unpredictable territory of escalation due to the West’s “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons.” He added to the statements as follows according to a translation: “The Kyiv camarilla gave birth to a project of “security guarantees”, which are a prologue to the third world war. Of course, no one will give any “guarantees” to the Ukrainian Nazis. After all, this is almost the same as applying Article 5 of the North Atlantic Pact (Washington Treaty) to Ukraine. For NATO – the same shit, only a side view. Therefore, it’s scary.”

Read more …

Insanity squared.

US, Ukraine Are In Talks To Transfer Fighter Jets & Longer-Range Missiles (ZH)

The US and its allies are in talks over whether to send Ukraine more advanced weapons in the future, including fighter jets, US defense sources have said, according to the Financial Times. The Kharkiv counteroffensive has apparently emboldened Ukrainian officials to press Washington harder for more advanced and longer-range weapons, now that some degree of success in rolling back Russian forces can be demonstrated. The idea is that if Ukraine’s forces can prove they’ve taken back significant territory with what defense systems the US has provided so far, they can ultimately make the case that the whole of the east and south is within their reach – and even the potential to liberate Crimea while they’re at it – if longer range and more advanced arms are made available.

The Financial Times reports this week that active discussions between the US and Ukraine are underway concerning Kiev’s weapons wish list: “A senior US defense official said Washington and its allies were discussing Ukraine’s longer term needs, such as air defenses, and whether it might be appropriate to give Kyiv fighter aircraft in the “medium to longer term”. To date, the US and its allies have declined to do so. But interestingly and quite tellingly, the report immediately follows with the acknowledgement that Ukrainian leaders are perhaps naturally incentivize to exaggerate battlefield gains at this moment. Here’s more from the FT as the Pentagon offers a “cautiously optimistic” assessment of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensives in the east and south:

“Ukrainian military officials have said in recent days they have taken more than 3,000 sq km of terrain in what has become Moscow’s biggest military setback since it was forced to scrap plans to conquer Kyiv. But late on Monday night President Volodymyr Zelenskyy practically doubled those claims as Ukraine’s forces continued to advance.” Something Ukraine has additionally long been asking for is longer-range missile systems. A Monday Wall Street Journal report detailed that Kiev is now requesting from the Pentagon the Army’s Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, a surface-to-surface missile system with the capability of reaching about 190 miles. This would be far and beyond the range of missiles transferred to Ukraine thus far in the conflict.

The Biden administration in the early months resisted sending longer range missiles, admitting its fears that doing so could draw the US and Russia into direct conflict – given longer range munitions means Ukrainian forces would have the capability of hitting inside Russian territory. This has already happened with Crimea, and even recently with bases inside Russia proper near the border. But now US defense officials are looking over a new strategy proposal and weapons request submitted by Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s force. WSJ details of the document: They argued that Russia has long-range cruise missiles that greatly outdistance the systems in the Ukrainian inventory. A turning point could come if the Ukrainians also had longer-range systems, they argued, specifically mentioning the ATACMS. “The only way to radically change the strategic situation is, without a doubt, for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to launch several consecutive, and ideally, simultaneous counterattacks during the 2023 campaign,” they wrote.

Read more …

“Sooner rather than later, gloves – velvet and otherwise – will be off. Exit SMO. Enter War.”

The Kharkov Game-Changer (Escobar)

Wars are not won by psyops. Ask Nazi Germany. Still, it’s been a howler to watch NATOstan media on Kharkov, gloating in unison about “the hammer blow that knocks out Putin”, “the Russians are in trouble”, and assorted inanities. Facts: Russian forces withdrew from the territory of Kharkov to the left bank of the Oskol river, where they are now entrenched. A Kharkov-Donetsk-Luhansk line seems to be stable. Krasny Liman is threatened, besieged by superior Ukrainian forces, but not lethally. No one – not even Maria Zakharova, the contemporary female equivalent of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods – knows what the Russian General Staff (RGS) plans, in this case and all others. If they say they do, they are lying.

As it stands, what may be inferred with a reasonable degree of certainty is that a line – Svyatogorsk-Krasny Liman-Yampol-Belogorovka – can hold out long enough with their current garrisons until fresh Russian forces are able to swoop in and force the Ukrainians back beyond the Seversky Donets line. All hell broke loose – virtually – on why Kharkov happened. The people’s republics and Russia never had enough men to defend a 1,000 km-long frontline. NATO’s entire intel capabilities noticed – and profited from it. There were no Russian Armed Forces in those settlements: only Rosgvardia, and these are not trained to fight military forces. Kiev attacked with an advantage of around 5 to 1. The allied forces retreated to avoid encirclement. There are no Russian troop losses because there were no Russian troops in the region.

Arguably this may have been a one-off. The NATO-run Kiev forces simply can’t do a replay anywhere in Donbass, or in Kherson, or in Mariupol. These are all protected by strong, regular Russian Army units. It’s practically a given that if the Ukrainians remain around Kharkov and Izyum they will be pulverized by massive Russian artillery. Military analyst Konstantin Sivkov maintains that, “most combat-ready formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now being grounded (…) we managed to lure them into the open and are now systematically destroying them.” The NATO-run Ukrainian forces, crammed with NATO mercenaries, had spent 6 months hoarding equipment and reserving trained assets exactly for this Kharkov moment – while dispatching disposables into a massive meat grinder.

It will be very hard to sustain an assembly line of substantial prime assets to pull off something similar again. The next days will show whether Kharkov and Izyum are connected to a much larger NATO push. The mood in NATO-controlled EU is approaching Desperation Row. There’s a strong possibility this counter-offensive signifies NATO entering the war for good, while displaying quite tenuous plausible deniability: their veil of – fake – secrecy cannot disguise the presence of “advisers” and mercenaries all across the spectrum.[..] This is an existential war. A do or die affair. The American geopolitical /geoeconomic goal, to put it bluntly, is to destroy Russian unity, impose regime change and plunder all those immense natural resources. Ukrainians are nothing but cannon fodder: in a sort of twisted History remake, the modern equivalents of the pyramid of skulls Timur cemented into 120 towers when he razed Baghdad in 1401.sIf may take a “hammer blow” for the RSG to wake up. Sooner rather than later, gloves – velvet and otherwise – will be off. Exit SMO. Enter War.

Read more …

“Winning a battle is one thing; winning a war another.”

Why Russia Will Still Win, Despite Ukraine’s Gains (Scott Ritter)

The Ukrainian battle plan has “Made in Brussels” stamped all over it. The force composition was determined by NATO, as was the timing of the attacks and the direction of the attacks. NATO intelligence carefully located seams in the Russian defenses and identified critical command and control, logistics, and reserve concentration nodes that were targeted by Ukrainian artillery, which operates on a fire control plan created by NATO. In short, the Ukrainian army that Russia faced in Kherson and around Kharkov was unlike any Ukrainian opponent it had previously faced. Russia was no longer fighting a Ukrainian army equipped by NATO, but rather a NATO army manned by Ukrainians.

Ukraine continues to receive billions of dollars of military assistance, and currently has tens of thousands of troops undergoing extensive training in NATO nations. There will be a fourth phase, and a fifth phase … as many phases as necessary before Ukraine either exhausts its will to fight and die, NATO exhausts its ability to continue supplying the Ukrainian military, or Russia exhausts its willingness to fight an inconclusive conflict in Ukraine.

[..] In the end, I still believe the end game remains the same — Russia will win. But the cost for extending this war has become much higher for all parties involved. The successful Ukrainian counteroffensive needs to be put into a proper perspective. The casualties Ukraine suffered, and is still suffering, to achieve this victory are unsustainable. Ukraine has exhausted its strategic reserves, and they will have to be reconstituted if Ukraine were to have any aspirations of continuing an advance along these lines. This will take months. Russia, meanwhile, has lost nothing more than some indefensible space. Russian casualties were minimal, and equipment losses readily replaced.

Russia has actually strengthened its military posture by creating strong defensive lines in the north capable of withstanding any Ukrainian attack, while increasing combat power available to complete the task of liberating the remainder of the Donetsk People’s Republic under Ukrainian control. Russia has far more strategic depth than Ukraine. Russia is beginning to strike critical infrastructure targets, such as power stations, that will not only cripple the Ukrainian economy, but also their ability to move large amounts of troops rapidly via train. Russia will learn from the lessons the Kharkov defeat taught them and continue its stated mission objectives.

The bottom line – the Kharkov offensive was as good as it will get for Ukraine, while Russia hasn’t come close to hitting rock bottom. Changes need to be made by Russia to fix the problems identified through the Kharkov defeat. Winning a battle is one thing; winning a war another. For Ukraine, the huge losses suffered by their own forces, combined with the limited damage inflicted on Russia means the Kharkov offensive is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory, one that does not change the fundamental reality that Russia is winning, and will win, the conflict in Ukraine.

Read more …

The IAEA can’t speak. Ukraine=NATO.

Ukraine Has Put World On Brink Of ‘Nuclear Catastrophe’ – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine’s attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant are creating an unacceptable risk, the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said on Tuesday. Moscow will act to prevent a disaster from happening, while the US does not seem to care about the potential damage to Ukraine and its European NATO allies, the speaker of the Russian parliament has said. “Kiev’s terrorist actions are putting the world on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. We cannot allow this to happen,” Volodin said, opening the legislature’s autumn session. While the US may be far away from the plant, “their NATO allies in Europe stand to suffer” in case of a radioactive release, Volodin noted, adding that the US government and EU parliaments are silent about the threat, but many other states around the world share Russia’s concern about the situation.

Russia has controlled Europe’s largest nuclear power plant since March. Attacks on the facility started in July, with the Russian Defense Ministry documenting more than 30 artillery and drone strikes, as well as two attempts by Ukrainian commandos to storm the plant, one during the visit of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission earlier this month. Kiev has accused Moscow of staging the shelling to make Ukraine look bad, even though its military eventually admitted to targeting the area.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, who personally led the mission to inspect the plant, said on Monday that both Russia and Ukraine are “interested” in a proposal for a local ceasefire and a security zone around the ZNPP. All of its six reactors are currently offline, due to the ongoing artillery threat. Moscow has rejected any notion of withdrawing its troops from the area, however, with the Kremlin saying that the only discussion at this time is “about forcing the Ukrainian side to stop the barbaric shelling” of the premises. In his remarks on Tuesday, Volodin said, “time has once again shown the correctness of the decision” by President Vladimir Putin to send troops into Ukraine in February.

Read more …

“The European Commission has reportedly backpedaled on the gas price cap and is currently working on a mechanism to tax the windfall profits of energy companies.”

Top Hungarian Official Predicts Easing Of Sanctions (RT)

The EU will review the sanctions on Russia and could lift some of them as soon as this autumn, Hungarian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade Tamas Menczer predicts. The restrictions imposed on Russian trade to punish it for attacking Ukraine have failed to change Moscow’s behavior and actually rewarded it with increased revenues, after they triggered a spike in energy prices, the MP said during an appearance on M1 TV on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the European countries that imposed the sanctions are facing energy shortages. “Reality knocks on the door of every country,”Menczer said, explaining why he believes the sanctions will be lifted sooner rather than later. Member states are set to review their sanctions policies later in the autumn.


The Hungarian MP confirmed that his country, which criticized the EU’s drive to decouple the economy of the bloc from Russian energy, opposed the idea of introducing a price cap on gas bought from foreign nations. He called the proposal absurd and impractical, citing Moscow’s promises to cut supplies to customers that try to dictate the price. The European Commission has reportedly backpedaled on the gas price cap and is currently working on a mechanism to tax the windfall profits of energy companies. Brussels is also urging EU nations to impose various energy-saving measures to better prepare for peak consumption during the winter. Last week, Hungarian Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover claimed that the EU is the “loser” in the Ukraine conflict due to the economic damage caused by the sanctions.

Read more …

“..as much as 70% of the funding due between 2021 and 2027 may be withheld from Hungary owing to non-compliance..”

EU May Punish Hungary (RT)

The European Commission will recommend withholding funds from the Hungarian government over allegations of corruption in the country, Bloomberg claimed on Wednesday, confirming earlier reports in the Hungarian press. The assessment is expected to be unveiled as soon as Sunday. The EU launched a probe against Hungary shortly after its prime minister, Viktor Orban, shored up his domestic position by winning the April general election in a landslide. The investigation was triggered under a recently adopted EU law that links payments of subsidies to member states to their compliance with the bloc’s rule-of-law norms.According to Bloomberg’s sources, the European Commission is almost ready to release its conclusions. The executive body is to recommend slashing the funding pending improvement in adherence to the norms, senior EU officials told the agency.

The final decision will be made within three months after the report is released, with a qualified majority of votes by the bloc’s members required to adopt it. Brussels may give Budapest a grace period of up to three months to follow its recommendations and to implement a number of measures that the Hungarian government promised to enact to alleviate the EU’s concerns, according to Bloomberg. According to EUobserver, a publication specializing in covering EU policies, as much as 70% of the funding due between 2021 and 2027 may be withheld from Hungary owing to non-compliance. The total sum would amount to over €40 billion, according to the Bloomberg report. The Orban government was blocked from accessing the EU money during the probe.

The anti-corruption measures that Budapest proposed in late August include creating a new authority to oversee the spending of EU funds and amending Hungarian laws on public procurements. The country’s justice minister, Judit Varga, met EU officials last week to discuss the package. The timeline for the release of the graft report was first revealed by the Hungarian newspaper Nepszava on Tuesday evening. Its sources said that 20% of EU subsidies were at risk of being suspended unless Budapest meets Brussels’ demands. The punishment, if implemented, would be the first case of its kind. The EU leadership has voiced concerns about the rule of law in several Eastern European countries, most notably Hungary and Poland.

Read more …

Half the world population.

Summit With Putin, Xi Will Showcase Alternative To Western World: Kremlin (AFP)

A regional summit this week where Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet China’s Xi Jinping and other Asian leaders will showcase an “alternative” to the Western world, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Putin and Xi will be joined by the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and several other countries for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on Thursday and Friday. The SCO — made up of China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four ex-Soviet Central Asian countries — was set up in 2001 as a political, economic and security organisation to rival Western institutions. The meeting will be part of Xi’s first trip abroad since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and comes with relations between Russia and the West shattered by the conflict in Ukraine. “The SCO offers a real alternative to Western-centric organisations,” Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow.


“All members of the SCO stand for a just world order,” he said, describing the summit as taking place “against the background of large-scale geopolitical changes”. The SCO, he said, “is the largest organisation in the world, it includes half the population of our planet”. Putin will hold talks with Xi, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday, Ushakov said, before attending the main session of the summit on Friday. On Friday he will also meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev. “The meeting with Xi is of particular importance, major international and regional topics will be discussed,” including the conflict in Ukraine and growing Russia-China economic ties, Ushakov said.

Read more …

History lesson.

Ukraine Had A Huge Influence On The Soviet Union (Negopodin)

Even now, many pages in the history of the Soviet Union remain a mystery. One of these concerns the ethnic composition of the country’s leadership. Such information was not published by the Party’s Central Committee until 1989, and biographies of members of the governing bodies during the entire Soviet period were not released until 1990, just before the dissolution of the USSR. All of these documents confirmed that many of its statesmen, politicians, diplomats, as well as military and intelligence officers, had been born in Ukraine. However, information about their ethnic origin was often omitted. Also, many of those who originated from Ukraine were registered as ‘Russian’ or simply as ‘Soviet’. This is why it is so difficult to assess the full scope of political influence Ukrainians had on the decision-making process in the Soviet Union.

It is true that Ukrainians contributed a great deal to building socialism. If we round them all up, we see that there had always been very large numbers of people from Ukraine in the top tiers of power. Two of them, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, ruled the country as general secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The country’s final ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev, was the descendant of Ukrainian peasants who had moved to Stavropol. [..] The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was managed by local elites, which is completely at odds with the modern myth of Ukraine having been an ‘oppressed nation’ in the Soviet Union. Moreover, so many Ukrainians held key positions in the Soviet government that any allegations made by the present-day Ukrainian authorities about the Ukrainian SSR struggling under the yoke of the Russian SFSR and being de facto Soviet Russia’s colony simply don’t have a leg to stand on.

On the contrary, by the 1950s, the Ukrainian SSR had become a full-fledged statelet that had its own constitution and flag and even parliament. In fact, its structure mirrored that of the government of the Soviet Union itself. Ukraine’s policy was determined by the Communist Party of Ukraine with the Politburo being its highest body of power; its legislative branch was represented by the Supreme Council (this later became the Verkhovna Rada); and executive power was wielded by the Council of Ministers.

Read more …

But vaccinate!

End of Covid in Sight – WHO (RT)

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared on Wednesday that the end of the Covid-19 pandemic is close at hand. While the virus is still spreading at the same level as last year, despite mass vaccination, deaths have fallen significantly. “We are not there yet. But the end is in sight,”Tedros said at a press briefing. Claiming that vaccination and other public health measures have reduced the threat posed by the virus, the WHO chief called on governments to push for 100% vaccination of vulnerable people and healthcare workers, and 70% vaccination of the general public.

“A marathon runner does not stop when the finish line comes into view, she runs harder with all the energy that she has left,” he said. “Now is the worst time to stop running.” The impact of vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and other public health measures on the virus’ spread has been a controversial issue, with near-totally vaccinated countries like Singapore still experiencing waves of infection this summer that dwarfed similar spikes in 2021 and 2020. Some 3.1 million cases of Covid-19 were confirmed globally in the week ending September 5, compared to 3.9 million in the same week in 2021, and 1.9 million in the same week in 2020.

Deaths have fallen, however, with 11,000 linked to the virus in the week ending September 5, the lowest weekly total since March 16, 2020. Tedros announced that the WHO would release six policy briefs for governments later on Wednesday, outlining the steps the organization thinks are necessary to avoid “more variants, more deaths, more destruction and more uncertainty.” Among these steps are the aforementioned vaccination push, the maintenance of infection control measures in hospitals, increased testing and sequencing, and the administration of appropriate treatment to patients.

Read more …

“However, what it will do very effectively, if you got reasonably intact mRNA, is to cause you significant harm. You are playing a game of chance with your immune system and what is in the bottle.”

Why Health Officials Won’t Let Scientists Examine mRNA Vaccine Vials (Mercola)

A 14-minute video (below) that has been overlooked for nearly two years has now resurfaced, exposing stunning information about the COVID-19 jabs and why health officials don’t want individual vaccine vials examined by independent scientists. The reason, it turns out, is because the vials are all different — and the mRNA in the shots “is not intact.” Both of these pose potentially serious problems. In an Aug. 31 Substack article, Steve Kirsch explains: “Even if you are getting 100% intact mRNA which would be really rare, you’re still not getting anything that resembles the virus. So the efficacy as far as PROTECTING you will be next to nothing. “However, what it will do very effectively, if you got reasonably intact mRNA, is to cause you significant harm. You are playing a game of chance with your immune system and what is in the bottle.”

The video notes that members of the European Parliament were only allowed to read the contracts with the drug makers after they’d been heavily redacted. Why the heavy-handed secrecy, even toward legislators? The finding that the mRNA in the shots was of questionable quality was revealed in a British Medical Journal feature investigation article published in March 2021. As explained by the author, journalist Serena Tinari, cyber attackers retrieved more than 40 megabytes of Pfizer COVID-19 jab data from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in December 2020. The hacked data was subsequently sent to journalists and academics worldwide. It was also published on the dark web. Some of the documents show European regulators had significant concerns over the lack of intact mRNA in the commercial batches sampled.

Compared to the clinical batches, i.e., the shots used in the clinical trial, 55% to 78% of the commercial shots had “a significant difference in % RNA integrity/truncated species.” In one email, dated Nov. 23, 2020, a high-ranking EMA official noted that the commercial batches failed to meet expected specifications, and that the implications of this RNA integrity loss were unclear. In response to the findings, the EMA sent a list of questions and concerns to Pfizer. While we do not know if and how the EMA’s concerns were actually addressed and corrected, the EMA authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 jab Dec. 21, 2020.

Read more …

Next please.

Denmark ENDS Covid Vaccinations For Almost Everyone Under 50 (Berenson)

Denmark will bar almost everyone under 50 from receiving more mRNA Covid jabs, the Danish Health Authority said yesterday. Denmark had already ended Covid shots for nearly everyone under 18. The new rules go much further. Danes under 50 will only be allowed to receive the shots if they are “higher risk of becoming severely [emphasis added] from Covid-19.” The Danish Health Authority has not yet defined those groups, but they will likely include only a handful of people, such as those receiving cancer treatments that suppress their immune systems. Pregnant women are unlikely to be included.

Denmark did not explicitly say the risks of mRNA jabs now outweigh their benefits for healthy people under 50. But that view is implicit in the announcement, which does not merely discourage but actually bans shots for those people, even though Denmark expects “a large wave of [Covid] infection” in the next few months. In other words, the health authority is not stopping shots because Covid has ended. It now believes most people are better off getting the coronavirus than taking more mRNA. The Danish move is particularly significant because Denmark has an excellent national health care system and has aggressively collected data on Covid and vaccines.

Denmark was among the first countries to stop giving Covid shots to healthy children and teenagers. Now other European countries are beginning to follow, with Britain ending mRNA shots for almost all children 10 and under. In yesterday’s announcement of the new policies, Denmark explicitly dropped any effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus and said that it will focus only on protecting people at very high risk: “We expect that a large part of the population will become infected with covid-19 during the autumn, and we therefore want to vaccinate those having the highest risk so that they are protected from severe illness.”

Read more …

It’s time for science. Before the climate lockdowns come.

Suppose the climate alarms follow the same pattern the Covid ones do. Take it from there.

Climate Emergency Not Supported by Data: 4 Leading Italian Scientists (DS)

Four leading Italian scientists have undertaken a major review of historical climate trends and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is not supported by the data. Reviewing data from a wide range of weather phenomena, they say a ‘climate crisis’ of the kind people are becoming alarmed about “is not evident yet”. The scientists suggest that rather than burdening our children with anxiety about climate change, we should encourage them to think about issues like energy, food and health, and the challenges in each area, with a more “objective and constructive spirit” and not waste limited resources on “costly and ineffective solutions”.

During the course of their work, the scientists found that rainfall intensity and frequency is stationary in many parts of the world. Tropical hurricanes and cyclones show little change over the long term, and the same is true of U.S. tornadoes. Other meteorological categories including natural disasters, floods, droughts and ecosystem productivity show no “clear positive trend of extreme events”. Regarding ecosystems, the scientists note a considerable “greening” of global plant biomass in recent decades caused by higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Satellite data show “greening” trends over most of the planet, increasing food yields and pushing back deserts.

The four scientists are all highly qualified and include physics adjunct professor Gianluca Alimonti, agrometeorologist Luigi Mariani and physics professors Franco Prodi and Renato Angelo Ricci. The last two are signatories to the rapidly growing ‘World Climate Declaration’. This petition states that there is no climate emergency and calls for climate science to be more scientific. It also calls for liberation from the “naïve belief in immature climate models”. In future, it says, “climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science”.

‘Extreme’ weather events attributed by climate models – somehow – to anthropogenic global warming are now the main staple of the climate alarmist industry. As the Daily Sceptic reported on Monday, Sir David Attenborough used a U.K. Met Office model forecast in the first episode of Frozen Planet II to claim that summer Arctic sea ice could be gone within 12 years. But the likelihood of hardy swimming galas over the North Pole by 2035 seems somewhat remote, not least because Arctic sea ice has been growing in many summers since 2012. According to a recent report from the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the end of August “sea ice extent is likely to remain higher than in recent years”.

EV-No

Read more …

The list of absurdities gets longer.

• 100 staff at Charles III residence sacked
• £200 million tax avoided by Charles on his inheritance
• 1,000 Cancer treatments cancelled for Monday
• Arrests for disapproving of unelected head of state
• Food banks closed on Monday

UK Sports Body Tells People Not To Ride Bikes During Queen Funeral (RT)

British Cycling has U-turned on its previous “strong recommendation” that people should refrain from using their bicycles during the Queen’s funeral next week. Though the UK government had stressed there was no obligation to cancel or postpone any events during a period of national mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last Thursday, some sports such as football have widely postponed matches as a mark of respect to the monarch. Adopting a similar stance, British Cycling released guidance that said it “strongly recommends that anybody out riding their bike on the day of the state funeral does so outside of the timings of the funeral service and associated processions, which will be confirmed later this week.”

This caused consternation among cyclists, with one noting that the funeral on Monday, September 19, clashes with their work hours. “Is it OK with you if I don’t follow your absolutely ridiculous advice and bike to work? Or would you rather I, as a mark of respect, pollute the air with my car? Maybe I can honk the national anthem on my horn?” they asked.British Cycling has since deleted the section of its guidance that says people shouldn’t cycle at all during the funeral for the 96-year-old Queen, but fresh recommendations have insisted that amateur cyclists should not go on rides with their clubs on Monday. “As a mark of respect to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, British Cycling’s guidance is that no formal domestic activities should take place on the day of the State Funeral, Monday 19 September,” it stated.

“This includes cycle sport events, club rides, coaching sessions and community programs (such as Breeze rides).”With good weather expected which often prompts long rides with clubs, this has also drawn criticism and has seen the organization dubbed a “joke” with conduct “worthy of the Stasi,” in reference to the former German state security service in operation from 1950 to 1990. Some cyclists have threatened to cancel their membership, with one balking that British Cycling is “an embarrassment at a time when hatred towards cycling feels at an all-time high.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul&Fauci

 

 

 

 

Wesley Clark

 

 


Bridge of Hands, Vietnam

 

 

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

 

 

 

Apr 272022
 


Raphael The miraculous draught of fishes 1515

 

A Recap Of The War In Ukraine (Gonzalo Lira)
Possible Romanian-Ukrainian Joint Offensive On Transnistria (T.)
Gazprom Cutting Off Gas Supplies To Poland, Bulgaria (Fox)
Ukraine Is Using Elon Musk’s Starlink For Drone Strikes (DW)
Elon Musk Slams Twitter’s Top Lawyer (DM)
Audio From Internal Twitter Meeting Leaked By Project Veritas (PM)
Durham To Call Former FBI General Counsel James Baker (Fox)
Text Message Makes Case ‘Materially’ Worse For Michael Sussmann (Hill)
Glenn Greenwald on Elon Musk Motives and Purchase of Twitter (CTH)
Denmark Suspends Covid Vaccination Campaign (IP)
Pfizer Seeks Authorization of COVID-19 Booster Shot for Ages 5 to 11 (R.)
Wimbledon Will Allow Unvaccinated Players To Compete – But Not Russians (GBN)
Alfa Bank Hoax Researchers Also Worked For Robert Mueller (Fed.)
Soros-funded Group Works Behind The Scenes With Biden Admin On Policy (Fox)
Financial Records Reveal Joe Biden Had $5.2 Million In Unexplained Income (DM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Jones reinstated
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519022153043218436

 

 

 

 

Twitter thread turned into an article by MoA.

A Recap Of The War In Ukraine (Gonzalo Lira)

Quick recap for those who haven’t followed what’s been going on in Ukraine but want to understand: 02/24: The Russians invaded from the south, south-east, east and north, in a lightning campaign. The Russians invaded with 190K troops—against 250K combat troops from Ukraine. The RF put 30K troops near Kiev—nowhere near enough to capture the city—but enough to pin down some 100K AFU defenders. The RF also launched several axes of attack, with reinforcements on standby (including a famed 40km long tank column), to see where they might be needed. Crucially—the Russian’s blitz on several axes pre-empted an imminent UKRAINIAN blitzkrieg. The AFU had been about to invade the Donbas. This was the immediate motivation for Russia’s invasion: To beat them to the punch and scuttle Ukraine’s imminent invasion—which they did.

Also, by attacking from the north and south, the Russians disrupted weapons supply chain from NATO. Had the RF only attacked in the east to prevent the AFU invasion of Donbas, there would have been an open corridor for resupply from the West. Threatening Kiev stopped that. So the main AFU army was left stranded in east Ukraine, with the rest of the Ukr. forces isolated and pinned down—with no easy resupply from the West. The RF then went about hitting AFU command/control and resupply links, further isolating and immobilizing Ukrainian forces. The Russians soon nominally controlled land the size of the UK in Ukraine—but it was a tenuous control. The south of Ukraine was more fully in Russia’s grip. The AFU around Kherson simply scattered. Mariupol became a clear battleground, as did the Donbas proper.

What the Russians initially wanted was to: • Short-circuit the imminent Donbas invasion – which they did. • Scare the Zelensky regime into negotiating a political settlement – which they failed to do. Kiev had no intention of negotiating a ceasefire because of orders given to them from Washington: “Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian!” Also, the Neo-Nazi goons around Zelensky threatened him if he negotiated and surrendered because they are terrified of the Russians. So Zelensky launched a massive PR and propaganda campaign, primarily to motivate AFU forces to fight to the death. Myths were created (Ghost of Kiev), false flags were carried out (Bucha, Kramatorsk) and relentless media stories were flogged relentlessly.

The Russians kept negotiating and trying to NOT destroy Ukraine infrastructure. In fact at first they were even trying to minimize AFU casualties. The evidence for this is overwhelming: The RF did not hit civilian infrastructure – water, electric, phone, transportation. They did not hit AFU barracks, command centers, government buildings, etc. The Russians’ initial priority was for a *negotiated settlement*. But by late March, they realized this was impossible. This is why the RF withdrew from Kiev. There was no sense putting men near the city when they were not doing what they were supposed to do – putting political pressure on the Zelensky regime to negotiate. This withdrawal was claimed as a “victory” in the “Battle of Kiev”! lmao

Read more …

A Telegram entry. Transnistria is “pro-Russian”. Romania is a NATO member.

Possible Romanian-Ukrainian Joint Offensive On Transnistria (T.)

I’ve already posted the translation of Igor Strelkov’s message on the possible Romanian-Ukrainian joint offensive on Transnistrian (“Pridnestrovian”) Moldavian Republic here – https://t.me/ZradaXXII/1898
Yesterday he posted additional info: Information about the joint preparation of the Romanian-Ukrainian coalition for the “cleansing” of Transnistria received additional confirmation. In addition to the units of the Moldovan army that are equipped with Romanian personnel as mentioned in my previous report on this topic, there is information about the training of entire military units on the territory of Romania proper and already disguised as Moldovan military. There is also information about the concentration of Ukrainian units on the border with Transnistria.

The “interest” of the Ukrainian military command is not only to give Kremlin a “political click on the nose”, but also has quite applied goals: the capture of the ammunition depots in Kolbasnaya, where a fairly large amount of ammunition for Soviet-made artillery systems is still being stored. The Moldovan authorities and military are openly afraid of war and do not even really hide their fears. But if (or rather, when) the order is given, absolutely no one will ask them. The Transnistrian army has zero chance to counter the offensive for any significant period of time without external support in the event of an attack from both sides (and this is exactly what is being planned, as the Nazi governor of the Odessa region Marchenko has already hinted).

And the Russian Armed Forces are currently unable to help Transnistria with anything but a certain number of missile strikes at infrastructure facilities. Our sources estimate the probability of the enemy attack on Tiraspol in April-early May already as “high”. https://t.me/strelkovii/2481

Read more …

“..deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline would stop Wednesday morning. The Yamal pipeline carries natural gas from Russia to Poland and Germany through Belarus.”

Gas prices in Europe are rising fast as we speak.

Gazprom Cutting Off Gas Supplies To Poland, Bulgaria (Fox)

Polish and Bulgarian officials said Tuesday that Russian energy company Gazprom informed them it was suspending natural gas supplies to the two countries for their refusal to pay in Russian rubles. The suspensions, which would take effect Wednesday, would be the first since Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that “unfriendly” foreign buyers would have to pay the state-owned Gazprom in rubles instead of dollars and euros. European leaders said they would not comply with the rubles requirement, arguing that it violated the terms of contracts and their sanctions against Russia over its military aggression against Ukraine. Only Hungary has agreed to Putin’s demands.


Around 60% of imports are paid in euros, and the rest in dollars. Putin’s demand was apparently intended to help bolster the Russian currency amid the Western sanctions imposed over the war. Poland’s state gas company, PGNiG, said it was informed by Gazprom that its deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline would stop Wednesday morning. The Yamal pipeline carries natural gas from Russia to Poland and Germany through Belarus. Poland has been receiving some 9 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually, fulfilling some 45% of the country’s needs. The Bulgarian Energy Ministry said it was also notified that Bulgaria’s supplies of Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline would cease on Wednesday.

Read more …

Unintended consequences?

Ukraine Is Using Elon Musk’s Starlink For Drone Strikes (DW)

Just after Russia’s invasion began in late February, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter to ask US billionaire Elon Musk to activate his Starlink satellites for use in Ukraine. Musk swiftly tweeted his response: “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.” Soon after, a number of terminals and powerful batteries arrived in Ukraine. Others soon followed. Fedorov took to Twitter again to express his gratitude: “Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk.” No secret dispatches, no long debates, no governmental or parliamentary controls: just a very public deal between a politician whose country has been attacked and an enigmatic billionaire who went on to challenge the aggressor, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to “single combat.”

What at first looked like a PR coup now seems to be playing a significant role in Ukraine’s defense. British media have reported that Ukraine’s army is making very successful use of Starlink for drone attacks on Russian tanks and positions. The Telegraph reported that Starlink is of particular military significance in areas where the infrastructure is weak and there is no internet connection. According to The Telegraph, the aerial reconnaissance unit Aerorozvidka is using Starlink to monitor and coordinate unmanned aerial vehicles, enabling soldiers to fire anti-tank weapons with targeted precision.

Only the system’s high data rates can provide the stable communication required, The Telegraph reported. An officer with the Aerorozvidka unit described the system to The Times: “We use Starlink equipment and connect the drone team with our artillery team,” he said. “If we use a drone with thermal vision at night, the drone must connect through Starlink to the artillery guy and create target acquisition.” The Times reported that the Aerorozvidka team runs about 300 information-gathering missions each day. Attacks are then carried out at night, according to the newspaper, because the drones, some of which are equipped with thermal cameras, are almost impossible to see in the dark.

Starlink satellites are intended to provide internet to undersupplied regions far from urban centers. The potential for using satellites to get information to people in regions where the internet is censored had been discussed. Few, however, had imagined that its initial use would be in a European war zone in which one of the aggressor’s first acts at the start of the invasion was to target and destroy power supplies and internet connections. Ukrainians have — or have regained — access to information. According to The Telegraph, Starlink is one of the most popular app downloads in Ukraine, enabling more than 100,000 people to stay updated about what is happening in the war, and to keep in touch with the outside world.

Read more …

There’s a story here, or actually more than one. Vijaya Gadde is Twitter’s top lawyer, “Trust & Safety lead”, and ‘moral authority’. But deputy counsel is…. (see below)

Elon Musk Slams Twitter’s Top Lawyer (DM)

Elon Musk has taken aim at Twitter’s top lawyer for censoring stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop after it was reported she’d sobbed at news he’d bought the firm. The tycoon – whose $44bn purchase of Twitter was confirmed Monday – issued a scathing tweet in response to reports Vijaya Gadde, 48, had been crying at news of the deal. He wrote: ‘Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.’ Musk was referring to the suspension of the New York Post’s account for its exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election. Initially dismissed as ‘misinformation’ by liberal outlets and social media networks, the laptop and its contents have since been verified by many of the same publications.

Gadde – who’s described as Twitter’s ‘moral authority’ – broke down in tears on Monday, Politico reported. She did so while briefing her team via videolink on the future of the company under Musk, following his $44 billion deal to takeover the company. Her future at the firm now looks shaky after her latest behavior was brought to the attention of the notoriously ruthless Musk. He is likely to slash Twitter’s policies on hate speech and misinformation, having previously branded himself a free-speech absolutist. Twitter staff have been told their jobs are safe for the six months the transfer of ownership is expected to take. But after that, workers like Gadde are likely to be among the first to get the boot.

She was pivotal in the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform for inciting unrest, and also played a key role in the decision to remove The New York Post’s account when they tweeted their reporting into Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter initially froze the New York Post’s main account after it published the story and demanded it delete tweets linking to the Biden articles. It justified the ban by citing a prohibition of distributing hacked material, before backing down when the story was proven to be legitimate.

Read more …

What a culture.

“Twitter locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform after it was revealed that @elonmusk has reached a deal to buy the company. The lockdown is to prevent activist employees from sabotaging the platform as revenge for the deal”

Audio From Internal Twitter Meeting Leaked By Project Veritas (PM)

Internal audio of Monday’s Twitter meeting leaked to Project Veritas reveals that leadership is fully cognizant of the free speech agenda that new owner Elon Musk wants to bring to the table. Project Veritas obtained a 45 minute recording of a company-wide call during which Twitter employees questioned board member, Bret Taylor, and CEO, Parag Agrawal, about the company’s direction following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform. Taylor began by saying, “I also just want to acknowledge all the emotions of today. It is an emotional day. I want to acknowledge it. By law, we are required to act in the best interest of our shareholders.”

Agrawal echoed the sentiments and said, “It’s important to acknowledge that all of you have many different feelings about what is happening. He continued, “Many of you are concerned, some of you excited, many people here are waiting to understand how this goes and have an open mind.” Agrawal added that the company’s current “content moderation” policies are “fundamental to keeping Twitter safe and growing.” “We’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity…As you’ve heard from all of us, we don’t have all the answers.”

[..] Elsewhere Tuesday, it was reported that Twitter Trust & Safety lead Vijaya Gadde got emotional with company staff in a reaction speech where she said the future of policies on the platform are currently unclear given the change in ownership. It’s unclear which insiders at the company leaked the audio to Project Veritas. But when it comes to company culture, according to a new New York Times piece, that some “employees have argued in internal messages seen by The Times that their co-workers have shifted too far to the left side of the political spectrum, making employees who support Mr. Musk’s plans too uncomfortable to speak up.”

All hands Twitter call

Read more …

Yes, Twitter deputy counsel, behind Vijaya Gadde, is James Baker…

The story goes that Sussmann “lied” to Baker. Who would then be whitewashed. Bit covenient? Baker had NO IDEA that Sussman was lying?

Durham To Call Former FBI General Counsel James Baker (Fox)

Special Counsel John Durham plans to call former FBI General Counsel James Baker to testify in the case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, who was recently indicted for making false statements to the FBI. During a virtual status hearing Tuesday, government prosecutors on Durham’s team signaled their intention to call Baker to testify as part of the Sussmann case. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal agent. Durham’s indictment alleges that Sussmann told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 that he was not doing work “for any client” when he requested and held a meeting in which he presented data and evidence of a purported secret communications channel between then-candidate Donald Trump and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin.

The indictment against Sussmann says he lied to Baker when he presented data linking the Trump Organization to a secret server that communicated with Alfa Bank. The indictment indicates Durham may be expanding his investigation to bring separate charges again Sussmann or additional defendants. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Tuesday asked both the government and Sussmann’s defense to continue moving forward in their discovery process, which could take months, due to the thousands of pages of classified material involved. During the hearing, government prosecutors said, at this point, that they had provided Sussmann’s attorneys with 6,000 documents – amounting to up to some 80,000 pages.

Earlier this month, in a court filing dated Oct. 20, Durham and his team outlined its first production of discovery to the defense, which included the thousands of documents, and documents received “in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities and organizations–including, among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies.” Cooper said he understood that the process would be cumbersome but urged both the prosecution and the defense to come up with a target date for a trial later this year or early next. Both the prosecution and the defense signaled they are aiming for a trial to begin in the spring of 2022. The next court date in the matter is set for a status hearing on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. Baker, who serves as deputy counsel at Twitter, left the FBI in May 2018 after serving as a top lawyer at the FBI. Baker was also a confidante of former FBI Director James Comey.

Read more …

3 weeks ago.

Text Message Makes Case ‘Materially’ Worse For Michael Sussmann (Hill)

On a Sunday night just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, top Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann allegedly texted his old friend, the FBI’s then-general counsel James Baker, to say that he urgently needed to convey “sensitive” information to the Bureau — “not on behalf of a client or company,” but just because he was a good citizen who wanted to help the government. The information, it turns out, was sculpted to portray Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee for president, as if he were in cahoots with the Kremlin. I say “sculpted” advisedly. In reality, according to the false-statements indictment against him, Sussmann was actually representing two clients: Rodney Joffe, an information technology expert, and the Democratic campaign of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Joffe, to whom the Sussmann indictment refers as “Tech Executive-1” and describes as angling for a job in the anticipated Clinton administration, was then working with a team of IT pros to curate records of internet communications. His objective, according to the indictment, was to project the appearance of a communications back-channel between Trump Tower in New York City and Alfa Bank, an important Russian financial institution with ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime. The Clinton campaign reportedly wanted to depict the allegation as so serious that the FBI was investigating it. Sussmann, the Washington insider who was billing his time on the Trump/Russia matter to the Clinton campaign, was the perfect messenger to get the FBI’s attention.

The existence of the critical text message was revealed [3 weeks ago] by prosecutor John Durham, the Justice Department special counsel who is investigating the origins of “Russiagate” — as the FBI’s probe of former President Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia is popularly known. Russiagate appears to have been ignited by bogus opposition research manufactured by the Clinton campaign, whose operatives hyped it to media outlets and government officials.

Read more …

Sort of what I said yesterday: he can’t make it any worse.

Glenn Greenwald on Elon Musk Motives and Purchase of Twitter (CTH)

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson previewed a discussion with Glenn Greenwald that will appear in full tomorrow on Fox Nation. In this segment {Direct Rumble Link Here} Greenwald gives his perspective on the motives of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter. Greenwald does a good job encapsulating the essential support most feel for the Musk effort. There are many people still uncertain about how this will all roll out, and Musk has been favorable to Big Govt in his two most famous endeavors, Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk’s phase of pushing back against speech and internet control is more recent, and as a result has left many people wondering about it.


As Greenwald notes, there really isn’t a downside for people who are trying to break the totalitarian and monopoly control systems on the internet. The upside benefits to on-line freedom, debate, discussion and the first real effort to stop internet censorship are well worth supporting. Greenwald eloquently puts an appropriate context to the battle.

Read more …

May many follow…

Denmark Suspends Covid Vaccination Campaign (IP)

Denmark, which in February lifted all curbs related to the coronavirus pandemic, said Tuesday it was suspending its widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position.” “Therefore, we are winding down the mass vaccination program against Covid-19,” said Bolette Soborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases. Around 81 percent of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6 percent have also received a booster.


Denmark noted a drop in the number of new infections and stable hospitalization rates. While invitations for vaccinations would no longer be issued after May 15, health officials anticipate that vaccinations would resume after the summer. “We plan to reopen the vaccination program in the autumn. This will be preceded by a thorough professional assessment of who and when to vaccinate and with which vaccines,” Soberg said. As a wave of the omicron variant hit the country last November, Denmark intensified its immunization campaign, accelerating access to booster shots and offering a fourth dose from mid-January to the most vulnerable.

Read more …

Criminal.

Pfizer Seeks Authorization of COVID-19 Booster Shot for Ages 5 to 11 (R.)

Pfizer Inc and its partner BioNTech SE said on Tuesday that they had submitted an application to the U.S. health regulator for the authorization of a booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years. The companies earlier this month reported data from a mid-to-late stage study showing a third dose of their shot increased protection against the original coronavirus version and the omicron variant among children in the age group. It is unclear how much demand there is for a third vaccine dose in the age group. Just 28% of children aged 5 to 11 years – around 8.2 million – are fully vaccinated, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There has also been some skepticism on the need for boosters in younger children given the reduced risk of severe infection and hospitalization in the age group. Pfizer and BioNTech have filed for the clearance of a 10-microgram booster dose for children 5 to 11 years. Adults receive a 30-microgram dose of the vaccine. The primary two-dose COVID-19 shot from Pfizer and BioNTech was authorized in the United States for children 5 to 11 years in October. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January authorized the use of a third dose of the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15. The agency has also authorized a booster shot for children aged 5 through 11 years who are immunocompromised.

Rival Moderna Inc is still waiting for a decision from U.S. regulators on the use of its primary COVID-19 series among age groups under 18 years. It plans to submit an application to the FDA for the authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine among kids six months to five years by the end of April.

Read more …

You don’t count anymore if you don’t ban some people.

Wimbledon Will Allow Unvaccinated Players To Compete – But Not Russians (GBN)

Tennis players who are unvaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed to participate at this year’s Wimbledon Championships, organisers have said. This clears the way for Novak Djokovic to compete, after the Serb was denied entry to the Australian Open earlier in the year due to his vaccination status. Djokovic said earlier this year he would be willing to skip tournaments if he requires vaccination, however officials have confirmed that he will not need to do so in order to compete at the grand slam. The UK Government left Wimbledon with “no viable alternative” but to ban Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s Championships, chairman Ian Hewitt told the All England Club’s spring briefing.

Expanding on last week’s announcement that Wimbledon and the preceding grass-court events would be the first individual tennis tournaments to bar players from the two countries, Hewitt said the club was left with only two options – an outright ban or forcing players to sign declarations condemning the invasion of Ukraine. He said: “The UK Government has set out directional guidance for sporting bodies and events in the UK with the specific aim of limiting Russia’s influence. “After lengthy and careful consideration, we came to two firm conclusions. First, even if we were to accept entries from Russian and Belarusian players with written declarations, we would risk their success or participation being used to benefit the propaganda machine of the Russian regime, which we could not accept.

“Second, we have a duty to ensure no actions we take should put players or their families at risk. We understand and deeply regret the impact this decision will have on all the people affected. “But we believe we have made the most responsible decision possible in the circumstances, and there is no viable alternative within the framework of the government’s position to the decision we have taken in this truly exceptional and tragic situation”.

Read more …

What a cesspool.

Alfa Bank Hoax Researchers Also Worked For Robert Mueller (Fed.)

The U.S. Department of Defense and private individuals pumping the Alfa Bank hoax also assisted former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump for supposed collusion with Russia, newly discovered documents suggest. The Georgia Tech researchers embroiled in the Alfa Bank hoax prepared white papers for the U.S. Department of Defense about the Democratic National Committee hack and created a “Mueller List” on the Russian intelligence agency hackers, the newly obtained documents indicate. The white papers were prepared for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a section of the U.S. Department of Defense. A recent dump of documents from Georgia Tech reveals that explosive detail and several other facts connected to the continuing special counsel investigation into Spygate. Here’s a rundown.

Last month, The Federalist first reported that Special Counsel John Durham’s team asked lead Georgia Tech researcher Manos Antonakakis: “‘Do you believe that DARPA should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer_2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?’” Antonakakis responded that that was a question for the DARPA director, an implied acknowledgment that yes, DARPA had asked him to investigate the hack. In response, DARPA’s chief of communications denied any involvement “in efforts to attribute the DNC hack.” “Dr. Antonakakis worked on DARPA’s Enhanced Attribution program, which did not involve analysis of the DNC hack,” DARPA spokesman Jared Adams told the Washington Examiner.

Adams further told the Washington Examiner that “DARPA was not involved in efforts to attribute the Guccifer 2.0 persona, nor any involvement in efforts to attribute the origin of leaked emails provided to Wikileaks.” But now an email obtained by The Federalist indicates Georgia Tech researchers drafted a series of white papers for DARPA, including on the “DNC attack attribution,” and on what they called a “Mueller List” of “domains and indicators related” to DNC hackers. The email dated July 23, 2021 followed Durham dropping a second subpoena on Georgia Tech for more documents related to its investigation of the Alfa Bank hoax and other related issues. (More on that subpoena below). In that email, a lawyer representing David Dagon, the second Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax who also worked on the DARPA Enhanced Attribution program, shared a list of “documents/data sources” Dagon believed would be responsive to the subpoena of Georgia Tech documents.

Read more …

Soros keeps shaping the world he’ll never live in.

Soros-funded Group Works Behind The Scenes With Biden Admin On Policy (Fox)

A secretive group backed by millions of dollars from liberal billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes with President Biden’s administration to shape policy, documents reviewed by Fox News show. Governing for Impact (GFI), the veiled group, boasts in internal memos of implementing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as it works to reverse Trump-era deregulations by zeroing in on education, environmental, health care, housing and labor issues. “Open Society is proud to support Governing for Impact’s efforts to protect American workers, consumers, patients, students and the environment through policy reform,” Tom Perriello, executive director of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, told Fox News Digital.

“Their work gives voice to people often overlooked in a regulatory environment too often dominated by corporate interests,” he continued. “Our support for Governing for Impact’s work is publicly available on our website and we are transparent about our enthusiasm for their victories for American workers and families.” GFI, however, works to remain secretive. It is invisible to internet search engines like Google (an unrelated “Govern for Impact” is the only group that appears in a search). No news reports or press releases appear on its existence outside of a mention of its related action fund in a previous Fox News article on the $1.6 billion Arabella Advisors-managed dark money network, to which it is attached. But as the group attempted to conceal its operations, it sought talent on Harvard Law School’s website, which was discoverable. The posting, which no longer appears on the site, was for legal policy internships.

The Harvard advert said the group was established to prepare the Biden administration for a “transformative governance” and that it had produced “more than 60 in-depth, shovel-ready regulatory recommendations” for dozens of federal agencies. The listing also contained an email address ending in “@governingforimpact.org,” which is the group’s website that can only be accessed by those who know the URL. According to its website, Rachael Klarman, a Harvard Law School grad, steers the group. Her father, Michael Klarman, is a professor at Harvard Law and also has ties to progressive advocacy groups. He is an advisory board member of the left-wing dark money judicial group Take Back the Court. Last year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, invited him to testify before Congress on dark money’s “assault” on the judiciary system.

“Governing for Impact is the perfect example of the Left’s fake outrage over ‘dark money’ in politics,” said the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer, who discovered the group and alerted Fox News. “As a ‘fiscally sponsored’ dark money project that writes and pushes regulations from the shadows, hidden from the public and funded by one billionaire foundation, GFI embodies everything the Left pretends to abhor.” “Governing for Impact conducts and shares research designed to help ensure that the federal government works more effectively for everyday working Americans, not just for members of industry groups that have long devoted vast resources to pursuing their own policy agendas,” Rachael Klarman told Fox News. “We were founded in 2019 and have developed detailed regulatory recommendations for multiple federal agencies, which are published on our website,” she said.

Read more …

“Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter’s legal fees for his deal with a Chinese government-controlled company..”

Financial Records Reveal Joe Biden Had $5.2 Million In Unexplained Income (DM)

Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter’s legal fees for his deal with a Chinese government-controlled company, emails reveal. The revelation ties the president even closer to Hunter’s overseas business dealings – and makes his previous claims that he never discussed them with his son, even less plausible. Joe was able to pay the bills after earning millions of dollars through his and his wife’s companies after he left office as vice president. Some of the wave of cash came from their book deals and speaking engagements. But the president’s financial filings reveal that he declared almost $7million more income on his tax returns than he did on his government transparency reports, an analysis by DailyMail.com of the president’s financial records shows.

Some of that difference can be accounted for with salaries earned by First Lady Jill Biden and other sums not required on his reports – but still leaves $5.2million earned by Joe’s company and not listed on his transparency reports. The ‘missing millions’ – combined with emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop suggesting Joe would have a 10% share in Hunter’s blockbuster deal with the Chinese – raise a troubling question: did Joe Biden receive money from the foreign venture? In January 2019, Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge wrote an email to book-keeper Linda Shapero and Biden aide Richard Ruffner, saying Joe had agreed to pay his hundreds of thousands of dollars of bills. ‘I spoke with Hunter today regarding his bills. It is my understanding that Hunt’s dad will cover these bills in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career,’ Dodge said.

The assistant attached a spreadsheet of bills with the email, totaling $737,130.61. One of the last items was $28,000 in legal fees for the ‘restructuring’ of Hunter’s joint venture with the government-controlled Bank of China. The spreadsheet listed the bill as ‘Faegre Baker Daniels: BHR Restructuring’ costing $28,382 and due ‘ASAP’. BHR (‘Bohai Harvest RST’) is a private equity firm and one of Hunter’s two major Chinese business ventures. The joint venture was co-owned by the state-controlled Bank of China. Hunter’s personal attorney, George Mesires, is a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, now called Faegre Drinker. A separate October 2018 invoice from the law firm shows Hunter spent a total $68,933.41 on the ‘restructuring’ beginning in September 2016.

The same year Joe took on these bills from Hunter, he promised that ‘No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they are a cabinet member, will, in fact, have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.’ Yet not only did Hunter hold on to his 10% share of BHR through 2021, confirmed by White House press secretary Jen Psaki last February, the emails also indicate Joe knew about it, and even agreed to pay Hunter’s legal fees for the firm. The bills also include $412,309.23 in unpaid taxes dating back to 2015.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting paid to destroy crops
https://twitter.com/i/status/1518833782790537218

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Dec 292021
 
 December 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Sandro Botticelli Portrait of a Young Woman 1480 – 1485

 

Vaccine Expert Says Mass Deaths and Hospitalisations Are “Now History” (DS)
Can Someone Help Me Understand The White House Strategy Now? (Berenson)
3x Vaccinated More Than 4x As Likely To Have Omicron As Unvaccinated (eugyp)
93% Of People Who Died After Being Vaccinated Were Killed By The Vaccine (Kirsch)
RIP, ‘Pandemic Of The Unvaccinated’ (Welch)
WHO Warns Omicron Could Overwhelm Health Systems (G.)
Why Is Japan Crushing COVID? (Kirsch)
A Perfect Storm of Incentives (AIER)
CDC Drastically Drops Estimate Of US Omicron Cases (G.)
The Zoom Class Gets Covid (Tucker)
Biden’s Troubled Relationship With the Truth – and Consequences (RCP)
The Rise and Fall of Scientism. Do we Need a new Religion? (Ugo Bardi)
Forget The Straws, Over A Billion Masks -Per Month- Now Pollute The Ocean (Evie)
There Will Be No More NATO Expansion – Russia (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geert’s New Year message: What’s next in 2022

 

 

 

 

“The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago – intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely – that is now history in my view..”

Vaccine Expert Says Mass Deaths and Hospitalisations Are “Now History” (DS)

Professor Sir John Bell, a member of the Vaccines Taskforce, has expressed his optimism that “the horrific scenes that we saw a year ago”, which he says involved the NHS being pushed to breaking point along with mass deaths from the virus, “is now history”. For this reason, Bell has supported Boris Johnson’s move not to tighten Covid restrictions in England. The Mail has more. “The message came as a leading vaccines expert backed Boris Johnson’s refusal to toughen England’s Covid restrictions to bring them into line with the other Home Nations, saying that mass deaths and hospitalisations from the deadly disease are “history”.

Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and a member of the Vaccines Taskforce, said the public had been “pretty responsible” in its response to the spread of the Omicron variant. Speaking to broadcasters about New Year celebrations this afternoon, Care Minister Gillian Keegan said: “We have always said ‘act cautiously’ since this new variant came among us. “It is highly infectious and many people will know people who have caught this over the Christmas period. “So do be cautious, take an Lateral Flow Test (LFT) before you go out. Go to well-ventilated areas; I have been to a couple of outdoor parties actually, people have moved things to outside. “So just be cautious, but do try to enjoy yourself as well but cautiously.” It came as new figures showed the number of people in hospital with Covid in England is less than half the same time last year – despite cases being three times higher…

Johnson, who is at his Chequers country retreat, left it to Health Secretary Sajid Javid to face the cameras to announce the decision, although he later tweeted advice to Brits to exercise caution at the new year. “The Health Minister has taken advice and looked at the data. I think his judgment where we should go in the next few days is probably fine,” Bell told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “There are a lot of people who are aware that we are in the face of this large wave of disease. The behaviour of people in the U.K., in England in particular, has been pretty responsible in terms of trying not to go out and spending a lot of time exposing yourself to the virus.” He added: “The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago – intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely – that is now history in my view and I think we should be reassured that that’s likely to continue.”

Read more …

“..patients are being discharged as fast as they are being admitted.”

Can Someone Help Me Understand The White House Strategy Now? (Berenson)

Guys, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly: it is OVER. The Omicold (pronounced Immacold) variant is about to bring this clown show to its inevitable conclusion. I know none of our supposedly non-racist public health authorities were willing to believe the South African numbers, but we now have almost a month of data out of Denmark. They are real. And they are spectacular. Between Dec. 13 and Dec. 20, Denmark reported approximately 50,000 confirmed Omicron cases. Given the approximately one-week lag between infection and hospitalization, those people should be flooding into hospitals. EXCEPT THE NUMBER OF OMICRON PATIENTS IN DANISH HOSPITALS HAS NOT RISEN IN THE LAST WEEK.

You read that right. 50,000 positive tests the week before, no change in hospitalizations. Admissions have risen slightly, but patients are being discharged as fast as they are being admitted. The result: as of Dec. 21, Danish hospitals had 47 Omicron patients, with under five (the report is not more specific) in intensive care. As of Dec. 27, the hospitals had 51 Omicron patients, again with under five in intensive care. The question is no longer whether Omicron is a cold. It’s whether it’s as dangerous as a cold. (And, again, this has nothing to do with Covid vaccines; most South Africans are not vaccinated, and the pattern there was the same.)

The only sane political move at this point is to drop ALL mandates – vaccine and otherwise – and ALL asymptomatic or quarantine testing (dropping all non-hospital testing would be even better) – and declare victory and go home. Even if the country weren’t burned out on scare stories and sick of being lied to, the reality of these figures is already obvious to most people. (Including LeBron James.) When your media water-carriers have to write articles explaining the difference between Covid and a cold… it’s over. So why won’t Uncle Joe just say so? Because the current strategy isn’t working – not politically, and not for the country. It’s time to surrender to the ro like you did to the Taliban and to inflation. At least this time admitting the problem will fix it.

Read more …

“..the triple vaccinated were 4.45 times more likely than the unvaccinated to have Omicron..”

3x Vaccinated More Than 4x As Likely To Have Omicron As Unvaccinated (eugyp)

Norman Fenton points out an interesting tidbit in the 21 December UK Office of National Statistics infection survey, on “Characteristics related to having an Omicron compatible result in those who test positive for COVID-19”. The data is for infections from 29 November to 12 December. First, this remarkable passage from the results sheet: Those who have received three doses of a vaccine and test positive for COVID-19 are more likely to be infected with infections compatible with the Omicron variant compared with those who are unvaccinated, though individuals who had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine continued to be less likely to test positive for COVID-19, regardless of variant. It is too early to draw conclusions from our data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Omicron variant.

Yes, the numbers are very small. Yes, the 95% confidence intervals are enormous. Nevertheless: According to these numbers, the triple vaccinated were 4.45 times more likely than the unvaccinated to have Omicron, among those who tested positive for Corona. For comparison, those with recent travel abroad were 4.6 times more likely than the unvaccinated to have Omicron, while the double vaccinated were 2.26 times more likely, and the single vaccinated 1.57 times more likely. This squares entirely with the preliminary data from Denmark, which has the double vaccinated sliding into negative efficacy against Omicron (but not Delta) after 90 days. The authors of that study tried to talk away this awkward result by claiming that it “was likely the result of Omicron spreading rapidly initially through single (super-spreading) events causing many infections among young, vaccinated individuals.” The more the same effect is viewed in other data sets, the less likely that explanation becomes.

Read more …

The vaccine distributes the spike protein to locations where the virus does not.

Bhakdi and Burkhardt are critizied, of course, but let’s have the discussion.

93% Of People Who Died After Being Vaccinated Were Killed By The Vaccine (Kirsch)

I got an email recently from Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer, who urged me to check out this video. He wrote me this email on 12/24/21: “Steve, This is about the worst 15min I’ve ever seen. Mass covid19 vaccination is leading to mass murder. Mike” The video references this paper, posted on December 10, 2021, On COVID vaccines: why they cannot work, and irrefutable evidence of their causative role in deaths after vaccination by Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD. It has been getting a lot of attention lately. The authors did an autopsy in 15 patients who died (from 7 days to 6 months) after receiving the COVID vaccine. These were all cases where the coroner ruled as NOT being caused by the vaccine. They discovered that in 14 of the 15 patients there was widespread evidence of the body attacking itself, something that is never seen before. The heart was attacked in all 14 cases.


A number of salient aspects dominated in all affected tissues of all cases: • inflammatory events in small blood vessels (endotheliitis), characterized by an abundance of T-lymphocytes and sequestered, dead endothelial cells within the vessel lumen; • the extensive perivascular accumulation of T-lymphocytes; • a massive lymphocytic infiltration of surrounding non-lymphatic organs or tissue with T-lymphocytes. Lymphocytic infiltration occasionally occurred in combination with intense lymphocytic activation and follicle formation. Where these were present, they were usually accompanied by tissue destruction. VAERS as well as other independent studies shows the vaccines are killing people and that cardiac events were highly elevated. This study is consistent with those results. This work independently validates the analysis of Peter Schimacher who showed a minimum of 30% to 40% of the deaths after vaccine were caused by the vaccine.

Read more …

“..the problems with the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” message pre-date the variant that rendered it factually ludicrous.”

RIP, ‘Pandemic Of The Unvaccinated’ (Welch)

If you spend too much time observing the way politicians speak, you’ll pick up an almost perceptibly mechanical gear-shift in their heads when the brain-groove reminds them to reproduce an anecdote or talking point they have formulated so many times before. Occasionally the subconscious rebels against the alienating monotony with apologetic prefix clauses like, “That’s why I like to say,” or “I always tell the story that,” but the pre-sets mostly override such human twitches to deliver the desired political result. So it was for President Joe Biden’s counterproductive “pandemic of the unvaccinated” slogan, which the White House COVID-19 Response Team introduced in mid-July, and which the president was still regurgitating inaccurately as late as December 14.

In a local TV interview with News Center 7 in Dayton, Ohio, the president was asked about whether his administration would continue fighting his contested employer vaccine mandates in court. The politician-brain quickly whirred into gear. “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated,” Biden emphasized, on the same day that the omicron variant produced a one-day positive-case increase of 16 percent in highly vaccinated New York City. “That’s the problem. And so everybody talks about ‘freedom,’ and not to have a shot or have a test. Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? What about that?” What about that indeed.

New York City’s one-shot vaccination rate (of 92 percent for adults, 83 percent for kids between 13 and 17) “rivals any number in the free world,” Politico’s Jack Shafer observed last week, and yet somehow my vaccinated teen and boosted self spent Christmas under quarantine. The fact-checkers over at The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact generously rated Biden’s “vaccinated…do not spread the disease” claim as only “mostly” false, despite epidemiologist quotes like “[the] statement is not accurate,” and “vaccinated individuals can definitely infect other people.” But the problems with the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” message pre-date the variant that rendered it factually ludicrous.

On September 16, one week after Biden reversed serial administration promises by announcing an employer vaccine mandate (while using language such as “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us”), science writer Yasmin Tayag penned an Atlantic piece headlined “Stop Calling It a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.'” “Bullying the unvaccinated into getting their shots isn’t going to work in the long run,” Tayag predicted, in a piece surveying a field of study (behavioral science) to which the White House seems oblivious. “The way the mandates are being presented is driving a wedge between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. If the goal is to inoculate enough people to reach herd immunity, this approach may eventually backfire.”

Read more …

The WHO needs to maintain the narrative.

But in reality, the UK on Dec 27 had 143,071 “new cases” and 407 hospitalizations. Not overwhelming.

WHO Warns Omicron Could Overwhelm Health Systems (G.)

The World Health Organization has warned that the Omicron coronavirus variant could lead to overwhelmed healthcare systems even though early studies suggest it sparks milder disease, as daily case records fell across Europe and the US while China, South Africa and Germany brought back tough restrictions to stamp out infections. Covid-19 surges have wreaked havoc around the world, forcing many nations to make tough choices between economically punishing restrictions and controlling the spread of the virus. The United States has halved the isolation period for asymptomatic cases to try and blunt the disruption, while France has ordered companies to have employees work from home at least three days a week.

Contact restrictions were in place in Germany for the second year in a row heading into the New Year, as Europe’s biggest economy shuttered nightclubs and forced sports competitions behind closed doors. Despite facing a much smaller outbreak compared with global virus hotspots, China has not relaxed its “zero Covid” strategy, imposing stay-at-home orders in many parts of the city of Yan’an. [..] Beyond social strife, the pandemic has been punishing economically, in particular for sectors like travel. Some 11,500 flights have been scrapped worldwide since Friday, and tens of thousands more delayed, during one of the year’s busiest travel periods. Multiple airlines have blamed staffing shortages caused by spikes of Omicron cases.

The surge in the US has been fuelled by the Omicron variant, as well as large pockets of unvaccinated residents and a lack of access to quick and easy testing. President Joe Biden said Monday some US hospitals could be “overrun” but that the country was generally well prepared. He stressed that Omicron would not have the same impact as the initial Covid outbreak or the Delta variant surge this year. “Omicron is a source of concern, but it should not be a source of panic,” Biden said.

Read more …

“I wonder if it could be caused by the ivermectin? What do you think?”

Why Is Japan Crushing COVID? (Kirsch)

I cannot recall a time in American history where the medical boards would go after you for prescribing an approved drug off-label for a condition that is supported by over 60 positive studies and multiple peer-reviewed systematic reviews and meta-analyses which is the highest level of evidence-based medicine. Can you? Is there a cost-benefit analysis somewhere that I missed showing that ivermectin causes harm? If the cost-benefit analysis is clearly negative, how could those positive meta-analyses been published? Why is the FDA to be on the warpath against ivermectin? Check out this article: TrialSiteNews entitled “Feds Coming After Doctors & Pharmacies that Market Ivermectin as Effective & Safe for COVID-19.” Perhaps they don’t want you to take it because if people found out it works, the pandemic would be over? Wow. That would be really evil.

Let’s look at a country that is allowed to use ivermectin: Japan . Here’s an article describing how Japan is using ivermectin to combat COVID. Here’s an excerpt: “Ivermectin was discarded unceremoniously till now, but Japan has demonstrated that the drug can be used as a more effective cure and a permanent substitute for the Coronavirus vaccines produced by big pharmaceutical companies. The Pandemic in Japan was going out of control, yet the Japanese government was smart enough to look beyond vaccines in its COVID-19 containment efforts. In September, Japan deployed Ivermectin and legalising the use of the anti-parasitic drug has helped people recover from COVID-19 with more durable and long-lasting immunity.

Caseloads have come down rapidly without the need for booster vaccination doses. In Tokyo, there were around 6,000 cases in the middle of August, but the number has now dropped down to below one hundred. Japan is now overcoming the Coronavirus, with the number of COVID tests dropping from 25% in the fag end of August to just 1% mid-October. Ivermectin use is thus helping Japan permanently beat the COVID-19 Pandemic. If and when vaccine efficacy wanes, Japan will have a choice- using an anti-parasitic medicine as a permanent cure to ensure speedy recovery of infected patients with durable immunity. Japan has thus crushed Big Pharma with a small move- deploying the use of Ivermectin.”

Let’s look at death rates in Japan vs. the US. See a difference? On a per capita basis, Japan is beating the US by a factor of 17. As soon as Japan rolled out ivermectin, their death rates dropped rapidly to 0. I wonder if it could be caused by the ivermectin? What do you think?

Read more …

Is the Imperial College of London (ICL) the worst predictor ever?

A Perfect Storm of Incentives (AIER)

While most countries imposed lockdowns, Sweden resisted. The Swedish government recommended social distancing and banned gatherings of more than 50 people, but it did not require businesses to close. Because of differences in population mobility, density, size, and the environment, a comparison of Sweden to the United States isn’t possible. What is possible is a comparison of Sweden to Sweden. The Imperial College of London (ICL) produced the early forecasts of Covid deaths. These were the forecasts on which politicians based their policy decisions. Applying the ICL forecast model to Sweden, Swedish epidemiologists predicted that, by July 1 2020, Sweden would have suffered 96,000 deaths if it had done nothing, and 81,600 deaths with the few policies that it did employ. In fact, by July 1, Sweden had suffered only 5,500 deaths.

The ICL model overestimated Sweden’s Covid deaths by a factor of nearly fifteen. Early ICL forecasts indicated that, unchecked, Covid would kill 40 million worldwide in 2020, and that the number could be cut in half by social distancing and isolating the elderly. According to the World Health Organization, worldwide Covid deaths for 2020 totaled 1.8 million. The ICL model overestimated world Covid deaths by a factor of ten. For 2020, the same ICL forecasting model also predicted that, if the countries did nothing in response to Covid, up to 2.2 million people in the US and another 550,000 in the UK would directly die from Covid.

Suppose that ICL predictions of US and UK Covid deaths were overstated only by a factor of three. Then, in the absence of lockdowns and mandatory masks, the United States could have expected around 730,000 Covid deaths and the UK 180,000 in 2020. How many people actually died? In 2020, the number of direct deaths due to Covid were approximately 360,000 in the US and 77,000 in the UK. Thus, even assuming that the ICL model had a significantly smaller bias than it demonstrated elsewhere, the lockdowns appear to have only saved around 370,000 lives in the US and 103,000 in the UK. To further skew these estimates, the ICL model assumes nonpharmaceutical interventions only. The widespread availability in the US of a vaccine, beginning in mid-2020, further reduces the number of lives the lockdowns saved.

In short, however many lives the lockdowns did save, they were far fewer than what the ICL models predicted they would save. As with all things, lockdowns do not come without tradeoffs. Some people died of cancer, kidney disease, and other non-Covid causes because they were afraid to go to hospitals out of fear of contracting Covid. In Canada, cancer screening was suspended so that hospital resources could be devoted to Covid care. Early estimates show up to a 10 percent increase in cancer deaths as a consequence. In the US in the early days of Covid, there was a 30 percent decline in the number of people seeking initial treatment for kidney disease.

Read more …

CDC and WHO are useless. One of many things the pandemic has exposed.

CDC Drastically Drops Estimate Of US Omicron Cases (G.)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised down its estimates for US infection by the Omicron variant, stating it accounts for approximately 59% of all Covid cases in the US, not 73% as it previously said. Nevertheless, the figures issued Tuesday indicates that Omicron is spreading rapidly in the US, growing from a revised estimate of 23% of cases as of 18 December. The correction shows that until the week before Christmas, the Delta variant remained dominant. “Setting aside the question of how the initial estimate was so inaccurate, if CDC’s new estimate of #Omicron prevalence is precise then it suggests that a good portion of the current hospitalizations we’re seeing from Covid may still be driven by Delta infections,” Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, posted on Twitter.

The disparity in estimates, while confirming the rapid spread of Omicron, also speaks to relative lack of precision in detecting a new variant that can only be confirmed by genetic analysis. The news comes as the US surpassed its all-time total for new cases, according to figures from Johns Hopkins, with the daily total soaring above 512,000. However, the numbers come with the caveat that many testing centers were closed over the holiday weekend, and a CDC spokesperson told Politico that the number was likely an “overestimate” due to a delay in state reporting. Separately, the former US surgeon general Jerome Adams criticized the CDC for its revision Monday to cut Covid isolation periods from ten days to five.

“I love the CDC. Grew up wanting to work there and have been one of their most ardent defenders. I never dreamed the day would come when I would advise people NOT to follow their guidance,” Adams said in a tweet on Tuesday. “They wouldn’t even follow it for their own family.” The CDC also announced Tuesday that the United States has administered 505,013,980 doses of the Covid-19 vaccines. The figures show that US health authorities have administered 1,533,313 doses from a day earlier. The agency also estimated that more than 67 million people have received an additional dose of either Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine since 13 August, when the United States authorized a third dose of the vaccines for people with compromised immune systems.

Read more …

“This whole disaster would finally come to an end (or at least the end would begin) when it became obvious that the great strategy of class division and demarcation would fail to protect the Zoom class from infection.”

The Zoom Class Gets Covid (Tucker)

For nearly two years, we’ve wondered how this will end. In retrospect, the clue is in how it began. The initial lockdowns had a strong class-based component. The working classes were assigned the job of delivering groceries, tending to the sick, driving the trucks filled with goods, keeping the lights on, and keeping the fuel running. The professional class, among whom were the people who pushed lockdowns in the name of disease avoidance/suppression, were assigned the job of staying home in their pajamas and staying safe. It all happened seemingly in an instant. We all had to figure out whether our job qualified and what we should do. More striking at the time was the very notion that government bureaucrats could slice and dice the population this way, deciding what can open and what cannot, who must work and who must not, what we can and cannot do based on our station in life.

So it now seems obvious to me. This whole disaster would finally come to an end (or at least the end would begin) when it became obvious that the great strategy of class division and demarcation would fail to protect the Zoom class from infection. That day has finally arrived, with cases soaring in many parts of the country and hitting everyone of every class, whether they are being “careful” and adhering to the “mitigation measures” or not. What’s even more striking is how even the vaccines, which were supposed to codify the wisdom of class segregation, have not protected against infection. All of this seems to have taken place over the course of December 2021, with the arrival of the seemingly mild Omicron variant. Still the other variants circulate widely, causing various degrees of severity with or without hospitalization much less death.

In other words, millions from among all classes of people are finally getting sick. At this point, we seem to be seeing a big shift in attitudes. A lot of this comes from casual conversation. A person comes down with Covid, perhaps confirmed by the newly fashionable at-home tests. “Did you get vaccinated?” the person is invariably asked. The answer comes back: yes and boosted. That’s when the chill happens. It appears that nothing can ultimately protect people from this. In which case, it is time we change our tune. “Thousands who ‘followed the rules’ are about to get covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed,” headlines the Washington Post.

Feeling ashamed about getting covid-19 isn’t healthy or helpful, experts agree…. Remember: You’re not a failure. “Millions of other people have gotten sick,” (Seema) Varma says. “Unfortunately, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one. You’re not the first one to get covid, and you won’t be the last.” And that positive test, she reiterates, “doesn’t make you an irresponsible person.” So on the piece goes, with a complete flip of the narrative they have long preached: anyone who gets Covid has failed to comply, disregards of Fauci’s advice, probably lives in a Red state, rejects the science, and otherwise bears the mark of selfishness and the desire to put freedom ahead of public health.

Read more …

“..Manchin refused to be fooled. He announced that he won’t support the bill – effectively killing it in its present shape.”

Biden’s Troubled Relationship With the Truth – and Consequences (RCP)

President Biden’s approval rating has plummeted, and Democrats wonder why. The United States is facing hardships, but hardships alone don’t make a president unpopular. Leaders who are honest about the problems we face and forthright about the solutions they offer tend to do well (think, say, of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan). Unfortunately, that is not the leadership Americans are getting from this president. Instead, the Biden administration has tried to convince the public of things that are not just untrue but implausible. To note a few, Biden did not (and does not) have a “national strategy” to defeat COVID; our southern border is not “secure;” the Afghan withdrawal was not an “extraordinary success”; the current bout of inflation is neither “temporary” nor “a good thing”; and government spending never takes “the pressure off of inflation.”

Of course, politicians often overstate things and sometimes outright lie. Nothing new there. It’s the in-your-face nature of the administration’s falsehoods that is stunning. For a recent example, take Biden’s efforts to promote his Build Back Better bill. The administration often claims that the legislation really “costs zero dollars” because it is “paid for.” Most Americans realize that paying for something doesn’t make it free. Otherwise, literally everything would be free. Seriously, people get this. In fairness, Biden was attempting to state that BBB wouldn’t add to the deficit because taxing the rich would pay for it. But even that claim didn’t pass the smell test. Just about everybody outside of Washington, D.C., knows that government programs are never actually “paid for.” We are already borrowing from our great-grandkids just to cover our current profligate spending.

[..] The supply-and-demand dynamic and its impact on inflation seem to be mysteries to the administration – but not to most Americans. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the average American family will incur an additional $3,500 in expenses this year solely because of already-surging inflation. It’s the kind of thing people notice. Of course, the administration made this implausible claim only because the bill needed West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s support to pass. Manchin, however, made it clear that, with inflation already at a 40-year high, he wouldn’t support legislation that added to the deficit or further swelled prices.

Like most Americans (including Larry Summers), Manchin refused to be fooled. He announced that he won’t support the bill – effectively killing it in its present shape. Rarely deterred by reality, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then announced that the Senate would move forward with a vote on the bill nonetheless.

Read more …

“Scientism’s rituals need to be imposed by the government by means of stiff penalties..”

The Rise and Fall of Scientism. Do we Need a new Religion? (Ugo Bardi)

Unfortunately for the promoters of Scientism, there are enormous problems with their idea. One is that it can be defined as a “granfalloon,” to use Kurt Vonnegut’s term for “a proud and meaningless collection of human beings.” Even though many people see the new liturgy as a service for others, Scientism’s rituals need to be imposed by the government by means of stiff penalties. It is the same as when the Roman Government imposed sacrifices to the Emperor on pain of death. We haven’t arrived at that for the disbelievers of Scientism, so far, but we are clearly sliding in that direction.

A religion that needs to be imposed by force is doomed from the beginning. It means that it cannot create a stable kind of horizontal empathy” natural for human beings. You cannot create it on the basis of the idea that humans are filthy, germ-carrying bags, that need to be kept at a distance from each other or locked in cages. And masked people cannot really speak to each other, they are only expected to receive orders from above. It is a brutish form of “vertical” empathy, based on the powerful giving orders to the powerless. As it happened at the time of the Roman persecutions of Christians, people may lapse into formally surrendering in order to survive, but they remain ready to toss away the veneer of political correctness on the first occasion. Scientism may be already starting an irreversible decline, pushed down by its own supporters who bombard people from TV screens with sentences such as “trust science.”

Another enormous problem with Scientism is that it requires years of training for the adepts (“researchers”) to make them able to perform the complex liturgy required (“scientific experiments”), also because they need expensive liturgic equipment (“instrumentation”). The whole contraption is simply impossible to keep together in a society that’s rapidly sliding down to economic collapse. The Catholic Church lasted for nearly two thousand years, Communism (that the Italian Catholic writer Lorenzo Milani termed “a page torn out of the Christian books”) lasted less than a century. Will scientism last more than a decade? And if not, what will come afterward?

Read more …

“Mask waste from the year 2020 alone now makes up 7% of the Great Pacific garbage patch..”

Forget The Straws, Over A Billion Masks -Per Month- Now Pollute The Ocean (Evie)

Urban areas dominated by progressive leadership have dedicated green initiatives to banning single-use plastic like straws or utensils, and many bureaucracies now treat climate change as another public health crisis. Simultaneously, they mandate wearing masks in public places for the supposed safety of the general public, and are silent on the irrevocable damage masks are doing to our environment. Forget the straws – over 1.5 billion masks now pollute the ocean, but even the most publicly vocal on climate change are notably silent. Banning single-use plastic, like straws and utensils in restaurants and other businesses, is now the virtue signal du jour as far as communicating how climate-conscious a city is. But many – namely the public and the business owners who will be affected firsthand by these types of legislation – are understandably concerned about the realistic efficacy of such measures.

[..] Plastic straws and utensils aside, we’re now on the precipice of a genuine environmental crisis, one that was regrettably preventable. Even as lockdown proponents touted the benefits that stay-at-home measures had on traffic and air pollution, we were quickly learning that our “life-saving” disposable masks and other personal protective equipment were having the exact opposite effect. One report in Italy breaks down just how quickly this crisis took hold and became our newest environmental threat. During the country’s Phase II period, when lockdowns were beginning to lessen and public spaces were beginning to open back up, half a billion disposable gloves and one billion masks were needed – per month.

These statistics are frightening on their own when you begin to calculate how long masks and PPE have been needed, but they’re even more terrifying on a global scale. Marine and environmental researchers have estimated that in 2020, 1.56 billion face masks were released into oceans. By August 2021, 8.4 million tons of plastic trash were generated by 193 countries, including – but not limited to – Covid test kits, face masks, gloves, and plastic face shields, as well as the waste generated by unprecedented numbers of online shopping and e-commerce sites. Additionally, disposable masks are estimated to take 450 years to biodegrade. Mask waste from the year 2020 alone now makes up 7% of the Great Pacific garbage patch, an 80,000 ton mass of waste that resides in the Pacific Ocean.

[..] In July 2020, we learned that 85% of individuals who contracted Covid wore masks “always” or “often,” as reported by the CDC. A “systematic review” of 1,453 patients found “no difference in infection rates” between masked and unmasked patients. A study of healthcare workers in Japan conducted nearly 13 years ago discovered that “face mask use in healthcare workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of [common] cold symptoms.” We’ve also recently learned that cloth masks are “useless” against the Omicron variant, even though two months ago, we were told that “a well-fitting cloth mask could be better than or equivalent to a surgical mask that’s poorly fitting.”

Read more …

“We cannot tolerate NATO expansion. We will not just prevent it. We will put a stop to it..”

There Will Be No More NATO Expansion – Russia (RT)

At upcoming talks with Washington, Moscow will not only obstruct but will put a complete stop to any eastwards expansion of the US-led NATO military bloc, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said on Tuesday. Speaking to news agency Interfax, Sergey Ryabkov said his country would go into the negotiations with a clear agenda and reject any attempts by US diplomats to dilute the proposed agreement between the two parties. “Our leadership has repeatedly said we can no longer tolerate the situation that is developing in the immediate vicinity of our borders. We cannot tolerate NATO expansion. We will not just prevent it. We will put a stop to it,” Ryabkov said.


The talks, due to be held on January 10, will focus on two publicly released draft treaties that include a list of promises Russia wants to obtain from the US and NATO. As well as pledges that the bloc won’t expand eastwards, the proposals also include the end of Western cooperation with post-Soviet countries, the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe, and the withdrawal of NATO troops and missiles away from the Russian border. However, according to Ryabkov, the US wants to ignore Russia’s firm demands, instead proposing a less structured form of negotiations. “We should not come up with some kind of dimensionless agenda when it is in our interest to include topics that have long been sorted out through other channels. We have to focus exclusively on the two draft documents that we have presented,” he said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Dec 252021
 


Vincent van Gogh Field with Flowers near Arles 1888

 

Vaccines Must Be Given Monthly To Be Effective Against Omicron (Kirsch)
Vaccine Effectiveness Against Infection With Omicron Or Delta (Alexander)
Resist. The Time is Now. (Malone)
Over 150,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)
Reindeer Games (Kunstler)
Lies Damn Lies and Hospitalisation Statistics (Bendell)
Molnupiravir Is Good At One Thing — And That’s What Makes It Scary (WaPo)
Stricter Guidelines: Housemates, Young Children In Quarantine For 10 Days (AD)
There Are So Many Elephants In The Room (Rigger)
Football Icon Accused Of ‘Encouraging Vaccine Suspicion’ Over Heart-scare Cases (RT)
The End of The Pandemic Will Not Be Televised (BMJ)
Those Nasty Russians (John Kiriakou)
Bad Faith, Worse News, and Julian Assange (Snowden)

 

 

 

 

Biden LGB

 

 

The study we discussed yesterday, updated.

Vaccines Must Be Given Monthly To Be Effective Against Omicron (Kirsch)

I want to tell you what this really means and how it is being attacked. This paper means we will need to inject people every 30 days if we want to “protect” them. Based on what the vaccines do to our immune system, it’s likely that the needed interval will shorten with each booster. If people don’t get boosted as required, they will be MORE vulnerable to Delta and Omicron than if they weren’t vaccinated. That’s what NEGATIVE vaccine efficacy means. It doesn’t mean the protection wears off (like we were told). It means the OPPOSITE of what you were told: it means the vaccines helps the virus to infect you (by suppressing your immune system, probably permanently each time we are injected according to Dr. Ryan Cole). It means we were lied to.


In short, the vaccine is like a heroin addiction: once you’ve had a taste of it, you are hooked: you have to continue it for life if you want protection. If you stop it, you’re a sitting duck for the virus. What’s worse is our government is mandating this now. In light of this paper, they will change the vaccine mandates to force you to get vaccinated every month or you will be fired from your job. Their next move could well be to make it illegal not to be vaccinated. This seems like where things are headed based on what is happening in other countries where they are quickly stripping away your rights to do anything without a vaccination. And we have no clue what monthly (and later weekly) vaccination will do to your body. This has never been tested. My advice is simple. If you have been vaccinated, you need to stop now. Do not get the booster.

[..] Negative VE means the vaccine is helping the virus, not you. So at 60 days, the protection is close to zero, so if you want to maintain protection, getting vaccinated every 30 days is required. This isn’t a vaccine at all. This is basically stimulating your immune system so it is already “geared up” to fight the virus. That’s not what a vaccine is supposed to do. Furthermore, the negative VE after 90 days means you are hooked for life and I would guess (based on the mechanism of action), that we will need shorter and shorter dosing intervals for every booster you get (since it kills off your immune system every time). So it could very well be monthly boosters after the 2nd dose, weekly boosters after the 3rd dose, and perhaps daily boosters after the 4th dose to maintain your “immunity.” You can’t stop after that because if you stop, you’re in worse shape than if you never started.

Read more …

Dr. Paul Alexander about the same study.

Vaccine Effectiveness Against Infection With Omicron Or Delta (Alexander)

The key statement is: “VE against Omicron was 55.2% initially following primary BNT162b2 vaccination, but waned quickly thereafter. Although estimated with less precision, VE against Omicron after primary mRNA-1273 vaccination similarly indicated a rapid decline in protection. By comparison, both vaccines showed higher, longer-lasting protection against Delta.”

This is a devastating finding…in other words, the vaccine that has failed against Delta is even far worse for Omicron…see table and see figure below table…see where the green dot is (Omicron variant) in the vertical lines (blue is Delta) and the 2 edges of the bars (upper and lower lips) 91 days out for Omicron (3 months)….both Pfizer and Moderna show negative efficacy for Omicron…both below the ‘line of no effect’ or ‘0’…a devastating blow for both but catastrophic for Omicron…

The performance in this paper would get another vaccine pulled for the threshold efficacy was 50%…again, something other than science is at play with all things COVID and these vaccines. Moreover, despite these catastrophic results, they call for more failed vaccine, “In light of the exponential rise in Omicron cases, these findings highlight the need for massive rollout of vaccinations and booster vaccinations.” I need to pinch myself sometimes.

Read more …

“..the US HHS and other western regulatory authorities have succumbed to regulatory capture by Big Pharma.”

Resist. The Time is Now. (Malone)

If there has been one constant throughout these last two years, it has been the gross mismanagement and incompetence of government officials tasked with the public health response. How can we trust them to make intelligent, data-based decisions in the future? How can you trust them to decide what is best for your children? No, you have to personally own these decisions now. They will not be there to help if you or your child are damaged by these vaccines. And you will get no legal or financial relief. Both Pfizer and governments have been absolved of all legal accountability. You will have to bear that burden, financially and psychologically, for the rest of your life and that of your child.

In short, the issues here are much larger than just the specific examples of data manipulation, propaganda, censorship, advanced character assassination techniques, misrepresentation of the safety and effectiveness of these genetic vaccines, and suppression of the early treatment protocols empirically developed and tested by front line physicians from all over the world. Among the many unanticipated blowbacks will be lasting damage, not just to overall public trust in government, but to the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. What will happen is that the world will turn to India and China for pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Because the US HHS and other western regulatory authorities have succumbed to regulatory capture by Big Pharma.

What were previously globally trusted regulatory organizations have been corrupted due to the undue influence of the pharmaceutical industry that they were designed and intended to both promote and to regulate. The growing pharmaceutical industries of India and China have cost and performance advantages relative to the United States, UK and Europe, and will now be able to legitimately claim equivalence or superiority in quality and safety. But from the point of view of globalized transnational capital, this is largely irrelevant. Because the concept of nation-state is considered by those who manage these large pools of capital to be outdated, antiquated, and inefficient. This works just fine for Big Capital, because migration of the pharmaceutical industry to India and China will enable the transnational funds to extract more profit, and a greater return on investment.

Read more …

“..for 220M fully vaccinated, it’s 10,000 lives saved, but 150,000 or more people killed. So we kill 15 people to save 1. And we mandate it to boot.”

Over 150,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

A new independent study using analysis of excess deaths showed that our estimate of the number of excess deaths was consistent with what they found. Here are some quotes from the paper:

1/ Results from fitted regression slopes (p<0.05 FDR corrected) suggest a US national average VFR of 0.04% and higher VFR with age (VFR=0.004% in ages 0-17 increasing to 0.06% in ages >75 years), and 146K to 187K vaccine-associated US deaths between February and August, 2021.

2/ Comparing our estimate with the CDC-reported VFR (0.002%) suggests VAERS deaths are underreported by a factor of 20, consistent with known VAERS under-ascertainment bias

3/ Comparing our age-stratified VFRs with published age-stratified coronavirus infection fatality rates (IFR) suggests the risks of COVID vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure.

4/ Interestingly, our estimates of 133K to 187K vaccine-related deaths are very similar to recent, independent estimates based off of US VAERS data through August 28th, 2021 by Rose and Crawford (11).

In other words, these researchers found numbers similar to what we found, within a factor of 2. They agree that over 150,000 people have been killed by the vaccines so far. This is more than 3 times the number killed in combat in the Vietnam war; a war which lasted for nearly 20 years. However, there is no stopping condition for these vaccines and no member of Congress or the CDC is willing to draw a line in the sand and say, “The US government should halt the vaccines after X number of Americans have been killed.” A reasonable stopping condition is 32 people. In 1976 we stopped the H1N1 vaccine after just 32 deaths.

Today, the number of deaths allowed is unlimited. And there is no liability for the manufacturers. And there have been no payouts at all to the hundreds of thousands of vaccine injured. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nobody in Congress (or the mainstream media) seems troubled by the fact that the vaccines kill more people than they save. The Pfizer Phase 3 trial saved 1 life from COVID for every 22,000 people vaccinated. So for 220M fully vaccinated, it’s 10,000 lives saved, but 150,000 or more people killed. So we kill 15 people to save 1. And we mandate it to boot. Maybe someday, we’ll find one member of Congress who will actually pay attention to what the data says and say two words, “I object.”

Read more …

“..the Supreme Court is preparing to give “JB” his second colonoscopy of the season when they reconvene after New Year’s..”

Reindeer Games (Kunstler)

There is also the shell game currently being played by Pfizer and its two “vaccines” — the one still under an emergency use authorization called BioNTech, and Pfizer’s replacement for that, Comirnaty, which has received an FDA approval under shady circumstances. The catch is, Pfizer refuses to release Comirnaty in the USA because approved drugs do not enjoy that shield against liability. Pfizer’s BioNTech vaxx has injured and killed many thousands of people the past year. If the two vaxxes are the same, you can expect Comirnaty to kill and injure plenty of victims, and Pfizer will be sued up its pfizoo. Therefore, Pfizer is also working hard to confuse the public about whether the two drugs are actually the same or not.

Ohio University tried to pull a switcheroo with its vaxx mandate, saying they’d made Comirnaty available to students, which is obviously untrue, since Pfizer won’t release it. They are using the unapproved BioNTech. Ohio law (HB 244, in effect this past October) prevents Ohio public schools from mandating vaccines not approved by the FDA. Hence, students at Ohio University are suing the school over its vaccine mandate. Alas, the Omicron variant has turned into the Grinch that is stealing their Christmas. Omicron is so mild an illness that there has been perhaps one death from it in America — and who knows how chronically ill that patient was? (They won’t say, of course.) All week long, as it became increasingly evident Omicron was nothing to get worked-up about, the “Joe Biden” regime went into overdrive trying to cow the nation into another round of submission and more booster shots.

On Tuesday, the worked-up so-called president rolled out the phony trope that this latest act in the melodrama is a “crisis of the unvaccinated” — despite the fact that both vaxxed and unvaxxed are equally susceptible to Omicron, and the additional fact that Omicron spreads so effectively that in just a month it is displacing all the previous and more deadly Covid variants. Notice, though, that “Joe Biden” didn’t dare lay any lockdowns on the country, while the Supreme Court is preparing to give “JB” his second colonoscopy of the season when they reconvene after New Year’s to hear the cases against his vaxx mandate. You can infer that this might mean the end of the Covid 19 pandemic extravaganza that has so benefited the party in power.

It has given them free rein to the only policy exercise they know: pushing people around. If there’s any lesson that Americans need to draw about the Democratic Party’s motives during this two-year Covid horror show it is that “progressives” are determined to punish, coerce, and persecute the people of this land, while stealing as much of their wealth as possible, and driving our culture into a ditch. So, with Omicron on the scene like an unexpected reality-test, the Democrats may be fresh out of monsters to terrify the populace. As the horror movie ends and the screen fades to black, the audience is apt to walk out from under that mass formation spell into the winter sunlight, blinking and gasping at the insane ordeal they’ve been subjected to. It’s already happening in a bunch of blue cities whose Democratic bosses have discovered that de-funding the police was a shuck-and-jive they now have to answer for.

[..] This Christmas Eve, we can’t omit great thanks to some of the other brave medical researchers and doctors across the country who have sacrificed livelihoods to fight both for the peoples’ health and against the torrents of bad faith and dishonesty spewed out against the people of this land by their own government and its propaganda legions. Kudos to Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCollough, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Chris Martenson, Dr. David Martin, Dr. Steve Kirsch, Dr. Bret Weinstein, Dale Bigtree, Alex Berenson, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and many many others who are standing up against tyranny and coercion.

Read more …

Today’s hospitalization stats (“like when Pfizer says: 90 percent reduction!”) are based on a 2013 paper written by Big Pharma.

Lies Damn Lies and Hospitalisation Statistics (Bendell)

I know that most of us who are not specialists in this topic do not have time to look into the statistics or at who produces them. Also, when some of us do make the time, we invite being shamed for moving outside ‘our lane’ or ‘disrespecting experts’. Therefore, as a Professor with a specialism in methodology but absolutely no medical science training, I decided to write up my journey of discovery as I tried to understand the processes behind those big claims on reductions of hospitalisation. The process was frustrating. For the first days I kept discovering a lack of explanation about how the statistics on big reductions in hospitalisation had been produced. For instance, the UK report #50 does not say anything about how it calculates the figures of over 90 percent reductions in hospitalisation. Nothing!

I had to go back months to find some references to the methodology – which I found in report #17. However, the report did not explain it either and cited another paper for the methodology. I found that study and read it, only to find that it did not explain the methodology and referenced yet another paper for the explanation. As an academic I know this is not uncommon – nearly everyone can be a bit sloppy with their references and provide a reference to a study which does not fully explain what one is asserting. However, as this was a government report to inform and justify policy on a pandemic that is affecting everyone’s lives, I expected better than what I get from my students. I continued on my quest for the elusive source of the method for producing the statistics on the wonderful vaccine effectiveness.

Upon reading that next paper, I found it offered no explanation of rationale for the method! I will say more about each paper and link to them later. But first I want to tell you why this matters… After following a trail of references cited by each paper, I arrived at an explanation for the statistical method on reduced hospitalisation, from 2013. That paper was the main source for the idea that this particular method gives us credible statistics on vaccine effectiveness. Guess what? No, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I often demonstrate in my research how the power of capital influences much in our lives. So it was not a surprise to me to read that this paper was written by members of the pharmaceutical industry. It proposed and defended a method for calculating vaccination effectiveness that would inevitably “prove” vaccination effectiveness.

I concluded that the exciting claims that there are over 90 percent reductions in hospitalisation due to vaccination are actually instances of our medical authorities misleading the public by using dubious statistical methods from the pharmaceutical industry to prove the effectiveness of their vaccines. Furthermore, without needing the clinical trials that the medical establishment typically require. If you read on, I will explain how it works. I invite you to investigate it yourself. Or you could decide not to bother and instead just think I should have ‘stayed in my lane’ so you can go back to pretending that pharmaceutical companies care for us, the medical bureaucrats they have trained are critical thinkers defending the public, and that the politicians know what they are doing.

Read more …

Left out here: Molnupiravir changes the virus genome. What are the odds it can change yours as well?

Molnupiravir Is Good At One Thing — And That’s What Makes It Scary (WaPo)

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration made what may be the most momentous drug-approval decision in its history: It granted emergency-use authorization for Merck’s molnupiravir to treat covid-19. This approval is significant not because molnupiravir is an especially good drug, but because it is a rather ineffective and dangerous one. In particular, molnupiravir might create new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that evade immunity and prolong the pandemic. The problem with molnupiravir lies in its mechanism of action. Unlike any previous antiviral drug, molnupiravir does only one thing: It introduces mutations into the viral genome. We are already familiar with the fact that viruses naturally mutate to evade immunity; the many mutations of the spike protein in omicron, for example, allow it to evade the antibodies created by prior infections or vaccines.

Molnupiravir relies on inducing even more mutations so that eventually the virus’s proteins are damaged beyond function. That molnupiravir can mutate SARS-CoV-2 to death has been demonstrated in the controlled conditions of a petri dish and lab animal cages, leading Merck to test it in covid-19 patients in clinical trials. But people are not petri dishes or lab animals, and while molnupiravir works to some extent, it has not worked very well in covid-19 patients. Specifically, molnupiravir reduced hospitalizations by only 30 percent. In contrast, Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid, which works by a different mechanism and was also approved this week by the FDA, reduced hospitalization by 89 percent. (My lab does research on drugs using the same mechanism as Paxlovid — inhibition of the viral protease enzyme — independently of any company affiliations.)

This means that most of the time that molnupiravir was given the opportunity, it failed to inhibit viral replication enough to allow the patient to avoid hospitalization. Merck’s own research, published Thursday, explains why. It found that viable virus can still be detected in some patients on the third day of treatment with the drug. That means that for at least several days, the drug is in the body mutating the virus — but not all virus genomes have picked up enough mutations to die off. For those initial few days, then, the patient is a breeding ground for viable mutated viruses. The first days of molnupiravir treatment present a clear opportunity for mutant viruses to be transmitted to family members or caregivers.

Viral evolution is a process of selecting for rare mutations that are beneficial to the virus. It doesn’t matter if just one out of the billions of copies of viruses in an infected individual mutates to a higher level of fitness. That single copy, either by evading existing antibodies or replicating to yet higher levels of fitness, will become amplified either in that patient or in the next person infected. The worst-case scenario is worrisome. As long as molnupiravir is in use somewhere in the world, it could generate repeated cycles of new variants, with people desperately taking the drug to fight the new variants it spawns, creating a vicious positive feedback loop while causing more suffering and deaths.

Read more …

Google translate from Holland. They lost it. Completely.

Stricter Guidelines: Housemates, Young Children In Quarantine For 10 Days (AD)

Until today, people who have already had corona or were vaccinated did not have to quarantine if a roommate tested positive. They only had to be tested at the GGD on day five. Children from 0 to 4 years old were also excluded. The RIVM is now tightening the isolation and quarantine guidelines because of the advance of the omikron variant. Housemates and close contacts of an infected person are also not allowed to come into large groups or in crowded places for the first ten days after the last contact and must avoid contact with vulnerable people. However, the quarantine may be ended in the event of a negative test at the GGD, on day five after the last contact with the infected person.


Anyone who has tested positive once in the last eight weeks does not need to be quarantined or tested. According to the RIVM, they probably still have enough antibodies in their bodies. The stricter guideline does not apply to healthcare workers who have worked with protective equipment. Crew members of international flights are allowed to quarantine after day five. The isolation rules are aligned. From now on, everyone who has tested positive, with and without complaints, is advised to go into isolation for seven days after a positive test. People without complaints who still develop complaints during the isolation must then be in isolation again for seven days.

Read more …

“Perhaps the most pernicious of all is the asymptomatic transmission hypothesis. It is this, more than any other, that has driven most of the absurdity and tyranny.”

There Are So Many Elephants In The Room (Rigger)

The problem I have, with the “official” version of the covid narrative, is that it is not internally self-consistent and there are more elephants in the room than there is space. These are not subtle buggers at all. They’re not hiding behind the sofa – there’s at least 20 of them sitting on the thing, drinking tea and smoking weed, whilst discussing the finer points of Wittgenstein. If I tried to list all the problems I have with the official version of all things covid I would probably be here until next Christmas. I had a chat with two of the elephants sitting on my sofa. They’re on their 10th cup of tea and quite animated. Having torn Wittgenstein apart they’re laying into covid now.

One of them, Nelly, had had enough and was packing her trunk – she wanted to say goodbye to the covid circus. What you stupid humans have forgotten, she said, is to follow the scientific method. You just can’t see what’s right there in front of your pitifully small noses. It works like this, she said. You formulate hypotheses, your best guesses as to what’s happening. You then test those hypotheses against what you observe. If you’d done that with covid, you wouldn’t now be up Loxodonta Creek without a paddle. If you frame all-things-covid in terms of hypotheses, instead of scientific “fact” it becomes much clearer.

• Asymptomatic transmission is a significant driver : hypothesis

• Lockdowns significantly slow down transmission and/or save lives : hypothesis

• Masks have a significant effect on transmission : hypothesis

• Keeping 6ft away from people reduces transmission : hypothesis

• The only way out of this is vaccination : hypothesis

• Surfaces are a significant source of infection : hypothesis

These are just some of the hypotheses we have been treated to. They are NOT facts. They are “guesses” which need to be checked against observation. Instead, they’ve been adopted like some kind of Holy Writ. In the process we’ve adopted all sorts of bizarre behaviours in pursuit of an illusory “safety”. None of those hypotheses listed above have successfully passed the test of experiment. Perhaps the most pernicious of all is the asymptomatic transmission hypothesis. It is this, more than any other, that has driven most of the absurdity and tyranny.

Curiously, though, we might have actually made this one come true to some extent. If you have a medical product that doesn’t stop the virus replicating, but does stop your body from producing the usual symptoms of infection, it seems at least plausible that you have a situation where use of this product turns you into a genuine asymptomatic transmitter. But like any other hypothesis, this needs testing too.

Read more …

“I want people to look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation, and give us some answers as to why so many sportspeople are suffering from heart issues. It’s not difficult.”

Football Icon Accused Of ‘Encouraging Vaccine Suspicion’ Over Heart-scare Cases (RT)

The English Premier League recently revealed that 77% of its stars are fully vaccinated against Covid while 84% are on “the vaccination journey” – meaning they have had at least one jab. That rate lags someway behind other top leagues in Europe, with Italy’s Serie A, the German Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga all reporting full vaccination rates of over 90% among players. The Premier League has seen a surge of cancelations in recent weeks as Covid outbreaks have struck teams across the league, with some suggesting the blame lies with unvaccinated stars. According to a report in the New York Times, which looked at the reasons behind vaccine reluctance, medics at some clubs cited the likes of former England internationals Matt Le Tissier and Trevor Sinclair as “encouraging suspicion” of Covid jabs by referring to on-field heart scares.

Football has seen several high-profile cases of players suffering heart problems in recent months, including the shocking collapse of Denmark star Christian Eriksen at Euro 2020 and the retirement of Barcelona forward Sergio Aguero. Ex-West Ham and Manchester City player Sinclair – who became a TV pundit after his retirement – posted a controversial tweet in November in which he pondered: “Everyone I speak to about these heart problems suffered by footballers (which worryingly seem to be happening more regularly) are they linked to covid vaccines or not??” Elsewhere, Southampton legend Le Tissier – known as one of the most skillful stars of his generation – has been a vocal critic of vaccine mandates.

Appearing on GB News earlier this month, he demanded an inquiry into the series of players who have suffered heart scares, which was added to by Manchester United’s Victor Lindelof in his team’s most recent match against Norwich City. “It’s been very concerning for me, watching the sport that I love and that I played for 17 years,” said Le Tissier, 53. “And it’s been very concerning to me that in all that time I never once saw any footballer leave the pitch because of heart issues. “Now I’m sorry, but if anybody can look at what is happening now in the world of sport and say it’s normal for all of these people to be having heart issues in football matches, cricket matches, basketball matches, any sport you wish. “The amount of people that are suffering is going through the roof. And I would call for an investigation because it might not be to do with the vaccines. “But let’s have an investigation to find out what it is. But even saying that deems you to be some kind of anti-vaxxer.

“I want people to look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation, and give us some answers as to why so many sportspeople are suffering from heart issues. It’s not difficult.” Doctors such as Professor Sanjay Sharma, the UK’s leading sports cardiologist, have been adamant that the jab is not to blame, telling the Daily Mail that “my feeling is that this is probably a statistical cluster rather than something on the rise.” Sharma said the cases involving Eriksen and Aguero, among others, “were nothing to do with Covid or the vaccine.” After Eriksen’s collapse in the summer, officials at his former club Inter Milan also moved to quell speculation by stating that he had not been vaccinated. Some have pointed to the increased intensity of the game as a potential cause of heart issues in players, or the fact that cases tend to be amplified now because of increased media scrutiny and through social media.

Read more …

“.. it will occur gradually and unevenly as societies cease to be all consumed by the pandemic’s shocking metrics.”

”..the covid-19 pandemic will be over when we turn off our screens and decide that other issues are once again worthy of our attention.”

The End of The Pandemic Will Not Be Televised (BMJ)

While visual depictions of epidemics have existed for centuries, covid-19 is the first one in which real time dashboards have saturated and structured the public’s experience. Some historians have observed that pandemics do not conclude when disease transmission ends “but rather when, in the attention of the general public and in the judgment of certain media and political elites who shape that attention, the disease ceases to be newsworthy.”8 Pandemic dashboards provide endless fuel, ensuring the constant newsworthiness of the covid-19 pandemic, even when the threat is low. In doing so, they might prolong the pandemic by curtailing a sense of closure or a return to pre-pandemic life.

Deactivating or disconnecting ourselves from the dashboards may be the single most powerful action towards ending the pandemic. This is not burying one’s head in the sand. Rather, it is recognising that no single or joint set of dashboard metrics can tell us when the pandemic is over. History suggests that the end of the pandemic will not simply follow the attainment of herd immunity or an official declaration, but rather it will occur gradually and unevenly as societies cease to be all consumed by the pandemic’s shocking metrics. Pandemic ending is more of a question of lived experience, and thus is more of a sociological phenomenon than a biological one. And thus dashboards—which do not measure mental health, educational impact, and the denial of close social bonds—are not the tool that will tell us when the pandemic will end.

Indeed, considering how societies have come to use dashboards, they may be a tool that helps prevent a return to normal. Pandemics—at least respiratory viral pandemics—simply do not end in a manner amenable to being displayed on dashboards. Far from a dramatic “end,” pandemics gradually fade as society adjusts to living with the new disease agent and social life returns to normal. As an extraordinary period in which social life was upturned, the covid-19 pandemic will be over when we turn off our screens and decide that other issues are once again worthy of our attention. Unlike its beginning, the end of the pandemic will not be televised.

Read more …

Kiriakou is ex-CIA.

Those Nasty Russians (John Kiriakou)

The New York Times reported this week that Russia is preparing its public for potential war with the United States. Moscow is “promoting patriotism” by training high school students in history and military history, according to the Times, and that Russian media outlets are saying that the country considers itself to be “surrounded by enemies” and may be forced to defend itself “as it did against the Nazis.” Going even further, the Times added that Russia had already “massed troops on the border with Ukraine,” a lie that has been perpetuated in the mainstream media all across the United States. Where do we even begin to pick this story apart? I’m not a Russia expert. But if I learned anything at the C.I.A., it was critical thinking and the necessity for basing my conclusions on facts.

First, every country teaches its children history, including military history. Indeed, education in the United States is rich in military history. Every student learns about the the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iran War, and Afghanistan, to name just a few of our “glorious campaigns.” (I put myself through graduate school by teaching high school history for two years.)

Second, anybody who has paid any attention to the news over the past five years knows that the U.S. media have accused Russia of all sorts of misdeeds without a lot of proof. It was Russia that “stole” the election in 2016 from Hillary Clinton through Wikileaks. It was Russia that pitted Americans against each other through social media advertising during the 2020 election. It was Russia that “invaded and occupied Ukraine” in violation of international law.

Third, according to the Times and other outlets, Russian troops are massed on the Ukraine border ready to invade at the drop of a hat. That’s simply not true. There are between 70,000 and 90,000 Russian troops on the border, the same number that have been there for the past eight years. An “invasion” would require at least 300,000 troops, according to military analysts. Around 100,000 Russian troops are in Yelnya, Russia, which is 160 miles from the Ukraine border and is closer to Belarus than it is to Ukraine. There is no imminent threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Fourth, the Russians actually are surrounded by enemies. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, and Poland, all former Soviet Russian allies, are all now members of NATO. Ukraine is begging to join NATO and is the recipient of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, also former Soviet republics, all host U.S. military bases. It should be no surprise to anybody that the Russians feel threatened militarily (after also being sanctioned and threatened constantly with “serious consequences.”)

Read more …

“What will be the State Department’s response when the Republic of Iran demands the extradition of New York Times reporters for violating Iran’s secrecy laws?”

Bad Faith, Worse News, and Julian Assange (Snowden)

I agree with my friends (and lawyers) at the ACLU: the US government’s indictment of Assange amounts to the criminalization of investigative journalism. And I agree with myriad friends (and lawyers) throughout the world that at the core of this criminalization is a cruel and unsual paradox: namely, the fact that many of the activities that the US government would rather hush up are perpetrated in foreign countries, whose journalism will now be answerable to the US court system. And the precedent established here will be exploited by all manner of authoritarian leaders across the globe. What will be the State Department’s response when the Republic of Iran demands the extradition of New York Times reporters for violating Iran’s secrecy laws?

How will the United Kingdom respond when Viktor Orban or Recep Erdogan seeks the extradition of Guardian reporters? The point is not that the U.S. or U.K would ever comply with those demands — of course they wouldn’t — but that they would lack any principled basis for their refusals. The U.S. attempts to distinguish Assange’s conduct from that of more mainstream journalism by characterizing it as a “conspiracy.” But what does that even mean in this context? Does it mean encouraging someone to uncover information (which is something done every day by the editors who work for Wikileaks’ old partners, The New York Times and The Guardian)? Or does it mean giving someone the tools and techniques to uncover that information (which, depending on the tools and techniques involved, can also be construed as a typical part of an editor’s job)?

The truth is that all national security investigative journalism can be branded a conspiracy: the whole point of the enterprise is for journalists to persuade sources to violate the law in the public interest. And insisting that Assange is somehow “not a journalist” does nothing to take the teeth out of this precedent when the activities for which he’s been charged are indistinguishable from the activities that our most decorated investigative journalists routinely engage in.

Read more …

 

 

Why I Don’t Want to Show my Vaccine Passport

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Dec 202021
 
 December 20, 2021  Posted by at 2:43 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

 

Sometimes the best information comes from unexpected sources. That is certainly true this weekend. Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson had a very revealing Twitter talk with Graham Medley, chair of COVID modeling for UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). But first, to get in the mood, a graph on Omicron from South Africa, because that’s what they’re all talking about:

 

 

And if you don’t find that convincing (because it’s “only” South Africa), Robert Malone has your back with his take on a Danish study.

The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark

Denmark, as of December 9, 2021. Denmark has one of the highest RT-PCR testing capacities in the world and screens all positive RT-PCR tests with an Omicron-specific PCR – allowing screening for Omicron. There have been 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases identified in Denmark. The earliest Omicron cases in Denmark occurred before South Africa announced the emergence of this variant. Most cases were fully (76%) or booster-vaccinated (7.1%); 34 (4.3%) had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of cases with available information reported symptoms (509/666; 76%) and most were infected in Denmark (588/644; 91%). One in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases, indicating widespread community transmission. Nine cases have been hospitalized, one required intensive care and no deaths have been registered.

Highlights:
· 1.2% of cases have been hospitalized
· 0.3% in intensive care
· 0% deaths.

· 83% were fully or booster vaccinated, 17% not vaccinated (including 2.6 vaccine started)
· 4.3% had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection
· 91% have no travel history, 9% reported travel

My take: this study is important because although there are studies and spokespeople from South Africa stating similar results, the Danish population in terms of age, body weight, life expectancy, etc. is more similar demographically to the US population. This Danish study suggests that Omicron will affect the American population similarly.

I wrote earlier today: “Mild” is a four letter word. Well, for politicians and media and drugmakers, that is.

 

Then, the UK. Where word today is that 12 people have died WITH Omicron and 104 are in hospital WITH Omicron. Dying WITH Omicron is not the same as dying FROM Omicron, and being in hospital with it says nothing either, if you don’t know a patient’s age, history, comorbidities etc. And a “case”, as that word is abusively used all the time, is in reality just a positive test with the inherently flawed PCR procedure, and 99.7% of positive tests never go anywhere. Meaningless.

The UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, predicts “anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day” (42,000 a week) from Omicron, and I read somewhere there’s a 2 million cases per week prediction. But there’s something about SAGE’s working methods that you really should know: they only focus on bad or worse scenarios. And it’s not even strictly their fault: good or mild scenarios are simply not their assignment.

Here are Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson and SAGE chair of COVID modeling Graham Medley:

My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee

The latest Sage papers have been published, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. He’s a professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron with very gloomy scenarios and making the case for more restrictions. But JP Morgan had a close look at this study and spotted something big: all the way through, LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients. Adjust for this, it found, and the picture changes dramatically:-

“Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’ So JP Morgan had shown that, if you tweak one assumption (on severity) then – suddenly – no need for lockdown. Why was this scenario left out? Why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact on Omicron modelling not presented by SAGE modellers like Prof Medley to ministers – and to the general public? I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out). The Spectator data hub has a page devoted to past Sage modelling vs actual, and I wanted to make sure I was not being unfair to Sage in my selection or presentation of those charts.

The latest Sage paper-drop – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – refers to ‘scenarios,’ not predictions. Prof Medley emphasises the distinction: saying something could happen is not saying that there’s a realistic chance of it happening. But then why do SAGE modellers publish some scenarios and not others? I then jumped to ask Prof Medley.



Revealingly, he seemed to think my question odd: if it’s quite plausible that Omicron is mild and doesn’t the threaten the NHS, what would be the point of including that as a ‘scenario’? He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are. “We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.” Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown? “Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.”


Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are? From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

Isn’t that the craziest thing? I think Nelson may be right, and politicians may not be looking for deliberately misleading (to the downside) studies. But those are still all they get, and base their policies upon.

And for some people involved, I am not so sure. Like for Anthony Fauci, and for Pfizer. And of course, the problem with SAGE modeling is probably repeated in 100 other countries, by all the so-called experts, and they feed off each other. Count your blessings.

 

Meanwhile, the UK increased its PCR testing by some 65% recently, so what are we really talking about, if not apples and bananas?

Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing

Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday. Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands. It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth. It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph below with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows. Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.

But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing. How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.

 

The CDC doesn’t like the term “mild”, and neither do the media. because it makes for poor clickbait. They all prefer terms like “grim”, “soar”, “rocket”, “leap”. And they love the words “patients” and “deaths”. As US deaths were down by, what, 30%? (Note in the graph how deaths decreased).

CDC issues grim forecast warning that weekly COVID cases will jump by 55% to 1.3 MILLION by Christmas Day and that deaths will surge by 73% to 15,600 a week as Omicron becomes dominant strain

Grim new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have predicted that US COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73 per cent to 15,600 a week by January 8, and that cases will rocket to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day. The agency revealed projections on Wednesday afternoon that show America will suffer up to 15,600 new Covid deaths a week as of January 8 – or 2,228 deaths per day – a 58 per cent increase from 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, equivalent to 1,285 deaths a day. Another CDC prediction estimates that between 620,000 and 1.3 million Americans will have been diagnosed with Covid by the week that ends on December 25 – Christmas Day. That represents a 55% leap on the 840,000 cases that have been recorded over the last week.

Omicron will likely become the dominant Covid strain in the coming weeks, and cause a massive surge of cases shortly after Christmas, one expert has warned, likely fueling the surge the CDC predicts. Dr Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told DailyMail.com that an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner. ‘As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,’ he said. ‘This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.’

He believes it will become the dominant strain in the UK – which recorded a record 78,610 cases on Wednesday – in the coming days, and that the U.S. will follow around two weeks later. Cornell University in upstate New York is suspected to be home to the first US Omicron cluster, after 930 students were diagnosed with the virus in recent days. The college says every one of the positive tests it has sequenced so far has been the Omicron variant. A Cornell spokesman hasn’t said exactly how many Omicron cases have been identified, but added that they expect most, if not all, the 930 cases to be caused by the new variant.

Read more …

And Tony Grinch Fauci is not about to be outdone by the CDC.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said on Sunday that record-breaking death rates could occur as the COVID Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. Fauci made an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper pressed the leading infectious disease expert on where he believes the pandemic is headed. Tapper asked, “Do you expect new record high numbers for cases? And what about hospitalizations and deaths?” “Yes, well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen,” Fauci replied.


“We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.” [..] “It is going to be tough,” Fauci said. “We can’t walk away from that, Jake. We can’t, because, with Omicron that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”

If and when you’re suffering under yet another lockdown and/or any other restrictions, you should know they are for naught. There is no indication to date that Omicron will fill up hospitals, or ICUs, or that it will kill millions of people.

But that for now refuted scenario is still why those restrictions are being put in place, why you are being told not to hug your intensely lonely grandma for Christmas. Useless. And why everyone is told to get a booster, and soon another. Also useless.

It’s time for all of you to grow a spine and a pair of balls (sorry, ladies, just a manner of speech) and start living your lives again. Time to get rid of Fauci, and of Pfizer, and SAGE, and fill in your local/national bunch of experts. Because as long as they are there, they will hog the limelight, and you will never be able to start to live your life again.

A simple Christmas message.

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

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

 

Dec 202021
 


Berthe Morisot The old track to Auvers 1863

 

My Tweets With The Chairman Of The Sage Covid Modelling Committee (Nelson)
New York, UK: Covid Case Records, Hospitalizations And Deaths Remain Low (JTN)
The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark (ES)
Runny Nose, Headache, And Fatigue Are Commonest Symptoms Of Omicron (BMJ)
CDC Forecast: Covid Cases Will Jump By 55%, Deaths Will Surge By 73% (DM)
Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron (NW)
COVID-19 Protocolists are Killing People. By-Demand NOW (Lyons-Weiler)
‘The Moment Of Truth Has Come’ For Russia & NATO – Moscow (RT)
Israeli-led Central Bank Simulation Preparation For Great Reset – Yeadon (DT.nz)
China & Russia Are Ready To End US Dominance Of Global Finance (Diesen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RFKjr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1472536661116563457

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson tweets with Graham Medley—chair of COVID modeling for UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Turns out SAGE doesn’t model mild scenarios, because those don’t require government actions. The gov’t sees only extreme scenarios.

My Tweets With The Chairman Of The Sage Covid Modelling Committee (Nelson)

The latest Sage papers have been published, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. He’s a professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron with very gloomy scenarios and making the case for more restrictions. But JP Morgan had a close look at this study and spotted something big: all the way through, LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients. Adjust for this, it found, and the picture changes dramatically:-

“Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’ So JP Morgan had shown that, if you tweak one assumption (on severity) then – suddenly – no need for lockdown. Why was this scenario left out? Why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact on Omicron modelling not presented by SAGE modellers like Prof Medley to ministers – and to the general public? I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out). The Spectator data hub has a page devoted to past Sage modelling vs actual, and I wanted to make sure I was not being unfair to Sage in my selection or presentation of those charts.

The latest Sage paper-drop – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – refers to ‘scenarios,’ not predictions. Prof Medley emphasises the distinction: saying something could happen is not saying that there’s a realistic chance of it happening. But then why do SAGE modellers publish some scenarios and not others? I then jumped to ask Prof Medley.

Revealingly, he seemed to think my question odd: if it’s quite plausible that Omicron is mild and doesn’t the threaten the NHS, what would be the point of including that as a ‘scenario’? He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are. “We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.” Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown? “Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.”


Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are? From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

Read more …

Mild. A four letter word.

New York, UK: Covid Case Records, Hospitalizations And Deaths Remain Low (JTN)

Authorities reported record-breaking COVID-19 case counts in multiple major regions across the world late this week, offering further signs of the omicron variant’s high transmissibility. However, hospitalizations and deaths attributable to the disease remained much lower than earlier surges, suggesting a shift in the pandemic after roughly two years of natural immunity and about a year of vaccinations. The United Kingdom had two back-to-back record-breaking days this week, posting case numbers tens of thousands higher than the earlier one-day record almost exactly a year ago in January. New York State had a less-dramatic yet still firmly record-breaking day as it struggles with its own surge there.


Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said the has set another single-day positive COVID case record with nearly 22,000 positive cases reported in 24 hours, abc7ny.com reported Saturday. Yet in both cases, hospitalizations and deaths have remained markedly lower than in lower surges: In New York deaths have risen slightly since the beginning of the month but have continued on the largely flat trajectory they’ve held since the summer. Deaths in the United Kingdom have remained similarly low, and hospitalizations in both regions are lower than in earlier surges. “The omicron symptoms have been very mild,” Yves Derouseu, the emergency services director at Lenox Hill Hospital, told NBC4 New York. “The impact on those vaccinated has been clinically mild. It’s not converting to admissions to the hospital, or deaths.”

Read more …

The study is at the link. The text here is Robert Malone’s summary of it (https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/omicron-today).

The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark (ES)

Denmark, as of December 9, 2021. Denmark has one of the highest RT-PCR testing capacities in the world and screens all positive RT-PCR tests with an Omicron-specific PCR – allowing screening for Omicron. There have been 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases identified in Denmark. The earliest Omicron cases in Denmark occurred before South Africa announced the emergence of this variant. Most cases were fully (76%) or booster-vaccinated (7.1%); 34 (4.3%) had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of cases with available information reported symptoms (509/666; 76%) and most were infected in Denmark (588/644; 91%). One in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases, indicating widespread community transmission. Nine cases have been hospitalized, one required intensive care and no deaths have been registered.

Highlights:

· 1.2% of cases have been hospitalized

· 0.3% in intensive care

· 0% deaths.

· 83% were fully or booster vaccinated, 17% not vaccinated (including 2.6 vaccine started)

· 4.3% had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection

· 91% have no travel history, 9% reported travel

My take: this study is important because although there are studies and spokespeople from South Africa stating similar results, the Danish population in terms of age, body weight, life expectancy, etc. is more similar demographically to the US population. This Danish study suggests that Omicron will affect the American population similarly.

Read more …

The circle is round. If you can’t tell the difference bwteen Covid and a cold, you must get jabbed.

Runny Nose, Headache, And Fatigue Are Commonest Symptoms Of Omicron (BMJ)

The UK government has been urged to update its list of symptoms for covid-19, after early data showed that cold-like symptoms were the most commonly reported by people with the new omicron variant. Data released on 16 December by the Covid Symptoms Study,1 run by the health science company Zoe and King’s College London, show that the top five symptoms reported in the app for omicron infection were runny nose, headache, fatigue (either mild or severe), sneezing, and sore throat. This initial analysis was based on positive cases in London, which was selected because of its higher prevalence of omicron than in other parts of the UK. The government still lists fever, cough, and loss of sense of smell or taste—which were the most common with the alpha variant—as the covid symptoms to watch out for.

Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid Study app, who has been calling for the list of symptoms to be updated since the emergence of the delta variant,2 said a change was overdue. “The messaging from the government is just not clear on this,” he said. “I think most people know what cold-like symptoms are. I would probably just add [to the list]: ‘Have you got cold-like symptoms?’ We need to educate people, go back to the basics, and say that if you’ve got cold-like symptoms keep away from people. You shouldn’t be waiting for the three classic symptoms.” To compare delta and omicron, London data were selected from a week where delta was dominant (a sample of 363 cases from 3-10 October 2021) and compared with the most recent data (847 cases from 3-10 December 2021).

This initial analysis found no clear differences between delta and omicron in the early symptoms (three days after testing). Spector said it was vital that members of the public were aware of the symptoms to look out for, particularly in areas such as London that have very high rates of omicron infection. “If you do have symptoms of a mild or bad cold, it’s highly likely that you’ve got covid if you’re in an area like London at the moment,” he said. Spector said the UK was now an international exception in not listing cold-like symptoms as likely indicators of covid infection, noting that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and European countries such as Spain and France had all updated their advice. “The UK is the odd one out,” he said. “They should amend it if the majority are presenting that way.”

Read more …

And after all that “mildness”, the CDC and Fauci think it’s still Halloween…

CDC Forecast: Covid Cases Will Jump By 55%, Deaths Will Surge By 73% (DM)

Grim new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have predicted that US COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73 per cent to 15,600 a week by January 8, and that cases will rocket to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day. The agency revealed projections on Wednesday afternoon that show America will suffer up to 15,600 new Covid deaths a week as of January 8 – or 2,228 deaths per day – a 58 per cent increase from 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, equivalent to 1,285 deaths a day. Another CDC prediction estimates that between 620,000 and 1.3 million Americans will have been diagnosed with Covid by the week that ends on December 25 – Christmas Day. That represents a 55% leap on the 840,000 cases that have been recorded over the last week.

Omicron will likely become the dominant Covid strain in the coming weeks, and cause a massive surge of cases shortly after Christmas, one expert has warned, likely fueling the surge the CDC predicts. Dr Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told DailyMail.com that an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner. ‘As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,’ he said. ‘This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.’

He believes it will become the dominant strain in the UK – which recorded a record 78,610 cases on Wednesday – in the coming days, and that the U.S. will follow around two weeks later. Cornell University in upstate New York is suspected to be home to the first US Omicron cluster, after 930 students were diagnosed with the virus in recent days. The college says every one of the positive tests it has sequenced so far has been the Omicron variant. A Cornell spokesman hasn’t said exactly how many Omicron cases have been identified, but added that they expect most, if not all, the 930 cases to be caused by the new variant.

Read more …

There is absolutely nothing to justify a warning like this.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron (NW)

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said on Sunday that record-breaking death rates could occur as the COVID Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. Fauci made an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper pressed the leading infectious disease expert on where he believes the pandemic is headed. Tapper asked, “Do you expect new record high numbers for cases? And what about hospitalizations and deaths?” “Yes, well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen,” Fauci replied. “We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.”

The Omicron variant was first reported by researchers in South Africa last month, after being detected in several southern African nations. It was detected in the U.S. earlier this month and has now been reported in most states. Experts predict that it will overtake Delta as the dominant variant in the U.S. in a few weeks. Fauci predicted that the country is in for a difficult time as the Omicron variant continues to spread and take over. “It is going to be tough,” Fauci said. “We can’t walk away from that, Jake. We can’t, because, with Omicron that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.” Fauci also refuted the notion, expressed this week by Vice President Kamala Harris, that officials did not see COVID-19 variants coming. He reiterated that what is surprising about Omicron is not that it happened at all, but rather the number of mutations it seems to possess.

“We definitely saw variants coming,” he explained. “What was not anticipated was the extent of the mutations and the amino acid substitutions in Omicron, which is really unprecedented. It kind of came out of nowhere, where you have a virus that has 50 mutations, 30 of which are in the spike protein, and 10 or 12 of which are in the receptor binding domain. I mean, to me, that’s really quite unprecedented.”

Read more …

“You’ll be told that your loved one cannot stay off the oxygen support long enough to get nutrition, and then you’ll be told they are not tolerating the feeding tube.”

COVID-19 Protocolists are Killing People. By-Demand NOW (Lyons-Weiler)

Once your loved one is admitted for COVID-19 to a hospital full of protocolists, monoclonal antibodies are no longer an option. No reason is given, it’s just protocol. Once your loved one is admitted to a hospital full of protocolists for COVID-19, you cannot get the doctors to vary from the protocol with options other than those they are told they can use. Those options? -O2 support -Lovenox -Remdesivir -Vitamin D&C -Nasal cannula feeding tube -Intubation (ventilator) -Palliative care -Comfort care -Cremation, or relocation for embalming. If your loved one does not want Acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol, or Ibuprofen (e.g., Motrin), but instead wants aspirin, it’s a no-go. Aspirin, by the way, helps break up microclots in the lungs. You’ll only get push-back on the risk of bleeding with long-term use.

COVID-19 is an acute condition. But hey, they have their protocols. Forget about Ivermectin. Forget about Hydroxychloroquine; the faked studies and Fauci tanked that option with bullshit logic. Forget about N-Acetyl-Cysteine, which helps the body increase O2 saturation levels. Forget about The COVID-19 Frontline Doctors protocols, I-MASK+, MATH+, and forget about Dr. Peter McCullough’s amazing dynamic and multi-faceted approach to treating COVID-19. Forget about all of these unless you are in a conservative county and can get a conservative judge to back patient choice. If you have time. And you won’t. Your loved one will be on oxygen support, like a bipap, maybe for a day. And then some doctor will start talking about how important it is they get some nutrition.

You’ll be told that your loved one cannot stay off the oxygen support long enough to get nutrition, and then you’ll be told they are not tolerating the feeding tube. Then they will tell you they want to intubate your loved one because feeding them is easier that way. You’ll learn that no one comes off the ventilators. Protocolism is killing people. Protocolists are killing people.

Read more …

“We have taken this step and proceed from the fact that it will no longer be possible to somehow brush it [the security proposals] off.”

‘The Moment Of Truth Has Come’ For Russia & NATO – Moscow (RT)

Moscow’s new proposals for security guarantees are aimed at averting a potential military conflict with NATO, Russia’s deputy FM has said, noting that the country’s relations with the US-led bloc have reached a tipping point. The comprehensive deal, proposed to the US and NATO this week, serves the best interests of all the parties involved, and is designed to avoid a potential military showdown through political dialogue, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said Saturday. “[By proposing the deal] we make it clear that we are ready to talk about how to transform a military or a military-technical scenario into a political process that will strengthen the military security of all states within The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Euro-Atlantic area and Eurasia,” Grushko told the Soloviev LIVE YouTube channel.

Should the West ignore Moscow’s attempt to rein in the tensions, Russia will resort to “creating counter-threats” of its own, the minister said, referring to potential deployment of new weapons systems within Russia’s borders. “It will [then] be too late then to ask us why we’ve made such decisions, why we’ve deployed such systems,” he said. Arguing that increasingly strained Russia-NATO relations have reached “the moment of truth,” which calls for a “fundamental decision,” the minister stressed that the ball is now in NATO’s court. “We have taken this step and proceed from the fact that it will no longer be possible to somehow brush it [the security proposals] off.”

The idea of a comprehensive, legally binding security agreement with the West was first floated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two separate draft documents, presented by Russia to Brussels and Washington on Wednesday, laid out the main principles of peaceful coexistence of Russia and the US-led military bloc in Europe, Moscow said. Unveiling the proposals, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov explained that Russia insists on written guarantees since the ties with the West currently suffer from “an almost total lack of mutual trust.” Ryabkov pointed out that many verbal promises, given by Western politicians to Russia back in 1990, including NATO’s pledge to not expand eastwards, have been subsequently broken.

Read more …

“..property, will be seized and people’s ability to purchase enough food not to starve, will depend upon them holding an up-to-date vaccine passport..”

Israeli-led Central Bank Simulation Preparation For Great Reset – Yeadon (DT.nz)

A banking crisis simulation conducted recently in Israel is preparation for the ‘Great Reset’, according to Mike Yeadon, former chief scientific officer for Pfizer and pandemic critic. The 10-day simulation concluded on 9 December in Jerusalem, and invovled central bank representatives from Israel, USA, UK, UAE, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as representatives from the IMF, World Bank, and Bank of International Settlements. The simulation was based on a catastrophic cyber attack scenario, in which the entire world financial system was brought down, leading to a ‘run on banks’ requiring emergency liquidity in multiple currencies, paralysing the global financial system. Targets would included foreign exchange markets, bond markets, loss of data integrity and compromised transactions between exporters and importers.

The solution to such an event would require international cooperation and coordination of monetary policy. Measures would include a coordinated bank holiday, debt repayment grace periods, SWAP/REPO agreements and coordinated delinking from major currencies. Dr. Mike Yeadon believes the simulation is a front for a planned financial reset, which he expects to take place sometime after March 2022.= The financial reset itself is the actual manifestation of what the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Claus Schwab has called The Great Reset, where ‘You will own nothing and be happy’. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a ‘graduate’ of the WEF. Yeadon believes electronic representation of individual currencies will end, and that it is entirely possible people will lose everything they think they own by way of financial assets.


Yeadon believes other real assets, mostly property, will be seized and people’s ability to purchase enough food not to starve, will depend upon them holding an up-to-date vaccine passport. According to Yeadon, that’s the ultimate tool of coercion: VaxPass or starvation. According to a post on Yeadon’s Telegram channel: • Banks will close for several days, and online banking will be offline. People won’t be able see their balances. • ‘Debt holidays’ will be implemented, including the cancellation of debts, noting that one person’s debt is another person’s savings. • ‘Coordinated delinking from major currencies’ will see the end of balances in USD, GBP and EUR. Individual currencies will presumably be rebased and ‘severely haircut’ into Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Read more …

Yeah, yeah, demise of the dollar and all that. What gives this guy’s ignorance away is this quote: “China has invested trillions of *dollars* into its Belt and Road Initiative..”

China & Russia Are Ready To End US Dominance Of Global Finance (Diesen)

De-dollarisation, the reduced reliance on the US dollar as a reserve and transaction currency, is immensely challenging as the dominant role of the US dollar has defined the international financial system for more than 75 years. The dollar has continued its strong position for three main reasons: the huge size of the US economy, the preservation of the dollar’s value by keeping inflation low, and the open and liquid financial market. As the US economy is in relative decline, inflation is out of control, and its financial markets are used as a weapon – the foundations for the enduring role of the dollar are quickly coming to an end.

A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value.

[..] China and Russia have also developed their own rating agencies and replaced the dominant position of Visa and Mastercard in their respective countries. This new financial architecture is complemented with an energy partnership and a technological partnership as neither China nor Russia wants to be reliant on American high-tech industries as they move into the fourth industrial revolution. Furthermore, China and Russia seek to avoid US-dominated transportation corridors. China has invested trillions of dollars into its Belt and Road Initiative for new land- and sea corridors, while Russia has advanced a similar but more modest program that includes developing the Arctic as a maritime route in partnership with China.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Lord Sumpton

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scripted?!

 

 

 

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

 

Sep 062021
 


Henri Matisse Landscape with a bench 1918

 

Arctic Has Enough Reserves To Supply Russia For Centuries – Russian Official (RT)
Children Can Get Covid Vaccine Even If Parents Are Opposed, UK Minister (RT)
GP’s To Be Paid £10 More For Every Child They Inject With A Covid Vaccine (DE)
Potential Jurors In Theranos Trial Sent Home For Being Unvaccinated (JTN)
Ivermectin: A Multifaceted Drug Of Nobel Prize-honoured Distinction (NIH)
Denmark Overtakes Sweden As The Restriction-free Nordic Nation (Unherd)
About The Rolling Stone Invermectin Article (Holden)
COVID Vaccines Have Killed Over 200,000 Americans (Kirsch)
The #$%! Captured Medical Journals (Kory)
Desperate Money Printing Leads to Depression – Dr. Marc Faber (USAW)

 

 

Another good morning from Athens.

 

 

The last surviving mantra was: but they DO keep your from getting severely ill! That’s gone too…

 

 

 

 

There goes your climate.

Arctic Has Enough Reserves To Supply Russia For Centuries – Russian Official (RT)

Russia will step up development of oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, which are sufficient to last the country centuries, according to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak. “The potential of the Arctic zone is huge. Speaking about offshore resources only, those are 15 billion tons of oil and around 100 trillion cubic meters of gas. That will suffice for decades, hundreds of years if they are required and it is economically reasonable,” Novak said during the educational marathon ‘New Knowledge’ earlier this week, as cited by TASS. These resources are too costly to extract so far, but Novak says the government is optimistic and has already taken steps to develop the means for it.


“Those are rather expensive projects, which require provision, certain subsidies, including on taxes, return on investment. The government has provided such incentives for projects like that. Certain taxes have been slashed to zero for offshore projects,” Novak stated, noting, however, that Russia will only dip into its Arctic resources in the case that other regions fail to provide them. At the Eastern Economic Forum that took place in Russia’s Vladivostok this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country bears a “huge responsibility” to have a “prudent” attitude toward natural resources of the Arctic. “For Russia, this is of tremendous importance – the development of the region… The Arctic accounts for 18% of our territory and [its] reserves of raw materials are necessary not only to our country, but to the whole world,” the head of state said at the plenary session of the EEF. “In this sense, we have a huge responsibility to treat this wealth prudently and thoughtfully,” Putin stressed.

Read more …

Too many people fail to see how crazy this is, on multiple fronts.

Children Can Get Covid Vaccine Even If Parents Are Opposed, UK Minister (RT)

Asked by Times Radio’s Tom Newton Dunn what would happen if a teenager’s parents said no to vaccination but the teenager said yes, UK vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said they would still be able to get jabbed without permission. Claiming that the NHS “is really well-practiced in this because they’ve been doing school immunisation programmes for a very long time,” Zahawi told Newton Dunn on Sunday said that “what you essentially do is make sure that the clinicians discuss this with the parents, with the teenager, and if they are then deemed to be able to make a decision that is competent, then that decision will go in the favour of what the teenager decides to do.”

Newton Dunn questioned, “So to be clear, the teenager can override the lack of parental consent? If a teenager really wants a jab and is only 15, the parents say no, the teenager can have it?” to which Zahawi responded, “They’d need to be competent to make that decision, with all of the information available.” Bizarrely, on the same day, Zahawi told Sky News that children would require parental consent to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Asked by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips whether he could “assure parents that if there is a decision to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds, it will require parental consent,” Zahawi declared, “I can give that assurance, absolutely.”


Despite the fact that the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) refused to recommend on Friday that healthy children between the ages of 12 and 15 be vaccinated against Covid-19, given they are considered extremely low risk, the government is still pushing for vaccination – with The Times newspaper reporting that child vaccination could occur as early as next week. JCVI’s deputy chairman, Professor Anthony Harnden, noted on Saturday that “the health benefits from vaccinating well 12- to 15-year-olds” are only “marginally greater than the risks,” and said that any decision should ultimately require “parents’ consent.”

Read more …

Hold my beer. They found a way to make it even crazier. Every child is now a walking tenner.

GP’s To Be Paid £10 More For Every Child They Inject With A Covid Vaccine (DE)

The Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 injection is now being given to children over the age of 12 who are classed as vulnerable or live with others classed as vulnerable, and a Daily Expose Investigation can reveal that all GP’s are to be paid £22.58 for every dose given to a child as an incentive, the search engine Google is trying to hide it, and the NHS is advising vaccinators that parental consent is not required. On the 3rd September 2021 the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) announced they were not recommending the Pfizer Covid-19 injection be offered to all children over the age of 12. However, they did announce that even more children would be eligible by extending the list of underlying conditions that put children into the vulnerable category.

Of course there was cause for celebration with the announcement that an experimental injection would not be given to the children of the United Kingdom, but the celebrations were short lived because instead of flat our refusing to recommend the jab the JCVI instead passed the buck to the four Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO’s) of the United Kingdom, meaning the fate of the nations children now lies firmly in the hands of Professor Chris Whitty and his colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Government also sent a letter the four CMO’s upon the JCVI’s announcement instructing them to review the JCVI’s decision with immediate effect, showing how desperate they really are to give an experimental injection that does not prevent infection or transmission to children.


So desperate in fact that the Health Secretary Sajid Javid has already instructed the NHS to prepare for vaccinating children. One has to question why they are so desperate when the latest Public Health data shows that 75% of Covid-19 deaths in the summer third wave consist of people who were vaccinated, and shows that the jabs seem to be increasing the risk of hospitalisation and death significantly, rather than reducing it by the claimed 95%.

Read more …

“‘If you excuse those (unvaccinated) people, you no longer have a representative jury..’

Potential Jurors In Theranos Trial Sent Home For Being Unvaccinated (JTN)

A federal judge sent potential jurors home who weren’t vaccinated against COVID-19 during the jury selection process for the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the medical science company, Theranos. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, an Obama-appointed judge, sent home nine potential jurors in the California fraud case being tried in the Northern District of California. The judge said his aim was to keep jurors and their families healthy. In this case, both the prosecution and defense supported the decision, meaning it apparently won’t be grounds for appeal by either side. “While choosing an all-vaccinated jury may be within a court’s power to safeguard jurors,” according to Reuters, “critics say it could reduce the fairness of trials.”


“‘If you excuse those (unvaccinated) people, you no longer have a representative jury,’ said Christina Marinakis, a jury consultant with litigation consulting company IMS.” Holmes is charged with wire fraud and conspiracy. She and her co-defendant and former lover, Ramesh Balwani, are accused, according to The Epoch Times, of “perpetrating a scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars as they claimed Theranos’s blood testing laboratory services were revolutionary and readily available despite knowing Theranos could not consistently produce accurate and reliable results for some blood tests.” The next court date is slated for Sept. 8. in San Jose.

Read more …

The Peru data look strong. McCullough is one of the authors.

Malone tweet: “This says it all: “During mass IVM treatments in Peru, excess deaths fell by a mean of 74% over 30 days in its ten states with the most extensive treatments. Reductions in deaths correlated with the extent of IVM distributions in all 25 states with p < 0.002.”

Ivermectin: A Multifaceted Drug Of Nobel Prize-honoured Distinction (NIH)

In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, in its only award for treatments of infectious diseases since six decades prior, honoured the discovery of ivermectin (IVM), a multifaceted drug deployed against some of the world’s most devastating tropical diseases. Since March 2020, when IVM was first used against a new global scourge, COVID-19, more than 20 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have tracked such inpatient and outpatient treatments. Six of seven meta-analyses of IVM treatment RCTs reporting in 2021 found notable reductions in COVID-19 fatalities, with a mean 31% relative risk of mortality vs. controls.


During mass IVM treatments in Peru, excess deaths fell by a mean of 74% over 30 days in its ten states with the most extensive treatments. Reductions in deaths correlated with the extent of IVM distributions in all 25 states with p < 0.002. Sharp reductions in morbidity using IVM were also observed in two animal models, of SARS-CoV-2 and a related betacoronavirus. The indicated biological mechanism of IVM, competitive binding with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, is likely non-epitope specific, possibly yielding full efficacy against emerging viral mutant strains.


Read more …

“..the Danish government no longer considers Covid-19 a ‘critical threat to society.’”

Denmark Overtakes Sweden As The Restriction-free Nordic Nation (Unherd)

Denmark, a country whose approach earlier in the Covid pandemic was thought of as the opposite of Sweden, with early border restrictions and school closures, has now overtaken its neighbour as the most restriction-free country in Scandinavia. An article in today’s Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish broadsheet, observes: “It seems like an upside-down world all of a sudden: that the Danes, who at the start of the pandemic gave Swedish travellers the cold shoulder on the Öresund bridge and told them to turn back because Swedish Covid restrictions were too mild, are now letting go of the reins altogether. “

Nightclubs in Denmark have been open since last week, and as of September 10th, guests will no longer need to show their “Coronapass” which serves as proof of vaccination or a recent negative test. Despite having higher case numbers than Sweden, all the remaining restrictions will be lifted — the Danish government no longer considers Covid-19 a ‘critical threat to society.’ Sweden is progressing more cautiously. The administration has set out a 5 stage plan for lifting restrictions, and stage 3 was passed on July 15th, including an end to the requirement to wear masks on public transport and an increase in permitted restaurant table sizes from 4 to 8.


Stage 4, including the removal of all restrictions on size of gatherings, was pencilled in for September but, as case numbers are gently rising in Sweden, the date has not yet been confirmed. Health officials have warned that it could be delayed further, with some restrictions lasting into next year.

Read more …

Twitter thread. Many eggs on many heads. But who notices anymore?

About The Rolling Stone Invermectin Article (Holden)

We’ve got to talk about the Rolling Stone invermectin article. Turns out the story about rural hospitals so flooded with ODs that they couldn’t treat other patients was made up, entirely invented. A lot of people took the bait, and I’ve got the screenshots.

Read more …

PDF slide show that lacks the voice-over he said he’s doing. Excess deaths investigation.

COVID Vaccines Have Killed Over 200,000 Americans (Kirsch)

Read more …

Twitter thread.

The #$%! Captured Medical Journals (Kory)

Now lets talk about the #$%! captured medical journals. High impact ones will ONLY publish studies that although they show benefit, don’t meet statistical significance. Then they write stuff like “this does not support the use of IVM in COVID” This randomized trial compares the effects of ivermectin vs placebo on time to symptom resolution within 21 days among patients with mild COVID-19. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389

Meanwhile, so much unprecedented crazy shit has happened in journals to positive studies of IVM and other repurporsed drugs it is INSANE. First, know that in the FLCCC’s over 100 year academic career (1500 papers), never has any been retracted after passing peer review.. Here we go:
1) Frontiers in pharmacology (funded by BMGF) retracted our paper… AFTER passing rigorous peer review
1a) They then retract other accepted repurposed drug papers.. editors quit en masse
2) Lancet Respiratory retracted Bryant meta-analysis..AFTER peer review
3) NEJM rejected Cadegiani’s proxalutamide paper…AFTER passing rigorous peer review & holding it for a month
4) Eli Schwartz, researcher from a top university in Israel, did a sophisticated double blind RCT showing faster viral clearance with IVM & cant get it published
5) Shouman’s RCT showing massive reductions in transmission within households treated with IVM.. reviewed then rejected by NEJM, Frontiers (again), and EMRO (the WHO’s prestigious journal) after holding for a long time – another “tactic”: delay, defer, deny


Another positive IVM prophylaxis trial held by JAMA for 2 months.. without sending out for peer review.. then returned with an apology. Delay defer deny. The high impact journals let you see the science Pharma wants you to see, not the science that is out there. Sad sad state.

Read more …

Haven’t seen him in a while. Like him best for riding his motorcycle all the way through Europe and to and through China.

Desperate Money Printing Leads to Depression – Dr. Marc Faber (USAW)

Legendary investor, economist and market forecaster Dr. Marc Faber thinks central banks (CB) are not going to cut back the money printing. Just the opposite. He predicts CBs are going to print even more money at a faster pace to hold the failing economic system together for a little while longer. Dr. Faber explains, “What is perceived to be safe, namely cash, isn’t safe anymore. It is unsafe. You ask me what is safe? I don’t know what is safe anymore when you have money printers who print money indefinitely. I don’t think they can stop. I actually think they have to accelerate their money printing. So, stocks may go up, but in real terms, it doesn’t mean your standard of living will go up. Maybe the standard of living of the 50 richest people in the world will go up, but not the standard of living of the typical American . . . or the average American. That standard of living will go down. . . . All the money printing is a desperate measure to keep the voters from rebellion.”

Dr. Farber predicts that not only are we going to see more asset inflation, but dramatic wage inflation too. Dr. Faber, who holds a PhD in economics, says, “What I think will happen, and most people have not really considered, we will get wage inflation. For the first time since the late 1970’s, we will get accelerating wage inflation, and in some cases, quite dramatic. In some states, the minimum wage is $15. I could see that going up to $30 per hour very quickly. I don’t think inflation is ‘transitory’ (as the Fed proclaims). We will not have stagflation. We will have something worse. We will have rising prices and a depression in the standard of living of most people.” Dr. Faber says the U.S. stock market is “overpriced and over-owned.” He likes stocks in foreign countries, real estate “far outside the cities” and physical gold, silver and some cash. Faber also likes some crypto currency in one’s portfolio.


Dr. Faber is less worried about the economic picture and more worried about the rise of socialism and communism in the western world. Faber contends socialism destroys economies and liberty. Faber points out, “I can tell you one feature of all the socialist countries I have visited in my life, and all of them had less freedom, less happiness than we have, and the standards of living were substantially, not a little bit, but substantially lower than they are in the free capitalistic world. . . . I am sorry to say that I think the western world has gone down a very dangerous path where essentially, through zero interest rates, everything is free. Then you get the unintended consequences.” So, with inflation going up and the standard of living going down in the West, is the possibility of war going up? Faber says, “Correct. I think once this Covid19 thing is over, the elite, the ones who make the money, will go to war. That is the last recipe to keep the population together.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Engineering Inventions

 

 

I don’t want you here
https://twitter.com/i/status/1434350759047417856

 

 

 

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

 

Aug 152021
 
 August 15, 2021  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  119 Responses »


Henri Matisse Luxury, calm and pleasure 1904

 

Taliban Launches Offensive On Kabul (Sp.)
Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals (Crawford)
Covid-19 Injections Dangerous For Mothers and Babies (Yeadon)
Class Action Lawsuit Says Vaccine Has Killed 45,000 People (Rumble)
Children Born During Pandemic Have Lower IQs (G.)
Well, ****…. (Denninger)
French Study Claims ADE Occurring In Delta Variant Infections (TMN)
Denmark Abolishes All Corona Measures (FFN)
New Covid Variants ‘Will Set Us Back A Year’, Experts Warn UK Government (O.)
Booster Shots Will ‘Be Obligatory For Trips Abroad And Care Home Staff’ (DM)
The Teens Who’d Prefer To Catch Covid Than Have The Vaccine (DM)
I Wish To Take A Little Walk With You And Talk, Deliberately, About This (TLR)

 

 

233

 

 

China will recognize the Taliban. And then build a pipeline.

 

 

Crick

 

 

Killer T cells

 

 

“US intelligence agencies who said just 4 days ago that Kabul could fall in 90 days have revised the figure to 72 hours.”

Taliban Launches Offensive On Kabul (Sp.)

Biden short

The Taliban* has already taken control of all of Afghanistan’s border crossings, leaving the Kabul Airport as the only route out of the country. Taliban insurgents have launched an offensive on Kabul, having surrounded the Afghan capital, the country’s Interior Ministry announced on Sunday. According to the ministry, the terrorists are entering the capital from all sides. The Office of the President of Afghanistan has taken to Twitter to say that the country’s security and defence forces have the situation under control “in coordination with international partners”. The tweet added that gunfire was heard in several remote areas of Kabul. A source told Sputnik that the Taliban had already taken control of Kabul University and raised the group’s flag in one of the city’s districts.

The Associated Press has cited officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to release the information, as saying there hadn’t been any fighting yet. The insurgents are said to be in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh, and Paghman. Less than an hour ago, a member of the negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Matin Bek, urged people not to panic and claimed that the Afghan capital was safe. Shortly before the Taliban entered Kabul, the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan, the last post still under the Afghan government’s control, fell to the terrorist group. Thus, the insurgents now control all of Afghanistan’s border crossings. The insurgents took control of the key eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday, just hours after seizing the northern bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The United States, meanwhile, is sending more troops to the encircled capital to help evacuate its civilians and diplomatic staff as the risk of a Taliban takeover of Kabul became more clear. Earlier this week, US intelligence assessed Kabul could be isolated within 30 days and fall to the Taliban within 90 days.

Read more …

It’s a neat little trick.

Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals (Crawford)

We get to section 2.3, and this is where things get really crazy. This is where signals (for assessing safety/danger of the vaccines) get defined. Subsection 2.3.1 begins (emphasis mine), “CDC will perform PRR data mining on a weekly basis or as needed. PRRs compare the proportion of a specific AE following a specific vaccine versus the proportion of the same AE following receipt of another vaccine (see equation below Table 4). A safety signal is defined as a PRR of at least 2, chi-squared statistic of at least 4, and 3 or more cases of the AE following receipt of the specific vaccine of interest. ” Only a real dork would emphasize the word ‘and’, right? A logic dork, mind you, but we’ll get to that…

First, note that PRR is the proportional reporting ratio, and these PRR numbers are the outputs of a function defined by the CDC based on four variables (which they list in a table as capital letters, then apply in a function as lower-case letters, which always makes me a little uncomfortable as I rarely see such sloppy transition from definitions to application, and somehow they always seem to come from government documentation where I worry about ass covering and plausible deniability).

Look at the numerator of this formula. The variables a and b are specific to each vaccine. Now, consider what would happen if an extremely dangerous vaccine were introduced that resulted in 20 times as many AEs of all types as all the other vaccines to which it gets compared.

The PRR remains invariant in the scaling of adverse events!

This means that one vaccine that kills and cripples 20 or 50 or 1,000 times as much as a very safe vaccine will show the same PRR (mild adjustments for variables c and d notwithstanding), and no safety signal will be identified by the CDC. By design. In my circle of discussion, I’ve found out (to my dismay) that this definition of PRR has also been used for other vaccines. Just during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, important safety signals have come and gone without notice, such as the MedDRA term “death” showed up as a signal in dispersion analysis in February, but no longer does due to the rising quantity of so many other AEs, which forces structural mean-reversion of the PPR function (toward 1) by inflating the denominator. In other words, the number of an AE, a, is normalized to the total number of adverse events (not the number vaccinated, or doses), the ratio of which is then normalized again to the aggregated totals (fraction c over c + d) from other vaccines.

Read more …

“..there isn’t an aware person who wouldn’t call a halt at this point.”

Covid-19 Injections Dangerous For Mothers and Babies (Yeadon)

The covid-19 vaccines currently subject to emergency use authorisations all share a common and novel feature: they are gene-based products. Instead of containing a small amount of killed or live-attenuated pathogen, they instead comprise genetic code, instructions as it were to manufacture in our own cells a part of the pathogen. In some products, the genetic code is of DNA & use a weakened respiratory virus to ensure delivery to our cells, or of messenger RNA (the intermediate between the DNA of our genes and the protein product thereby manufactured). There is a further commonality: they cause the recipients cells to manufacture a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called the spike protein. This is literally the spike projecting outwards from the spherical object that contains the virus itself.

As detailed elsewhere in this packet of information, coronavirus spike proteins are biologically active and they initiate the blood coagulation cascade among other properties. It is alleged that it is the induction of blood coagulation in various locations in the body which is responsible for a high proportion of the serious adverse events including deaths which are being reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the USA and in analogous databases elsewhere. The rate of fatal outcomes following covid-19 vaccination, usually from clotting or bleeding disorders, is extraordinary and exceeds that from any previous vaccine by a very large amount, which this reviewer estimates is of the order of 60-fold.

That this astonishingly high rate of adverse events after vaccination is a consequence of two factors: 1. The manufacturers were simply not required to study the way the product moves around the body after injection and 2. They were not required to study the functional effects of the genetic code within the product after administration. There are no products on the mass market which operate in this way. It is my expert opinion that this is the greatest failure of medicinal product regulation in relation to reproductive health since thalidomide and is very much greater in terms of societal impact. It is imperative that all these products be suspended until improved safety testing can determine whether there are any groups in whom the benefits outweigh the risks.

[..] It is essential to lay out the backdrop to the current position with clinical use of covid-19 vaccines, for one reason: we have NEVER, since thalidomide, exposed women of childbearing potential (WOCBP) and ESPECIALLY NEVER pregnant women to ANY novel, experimental pharmaceutical product without that product first having completed a full battery of reproductive toxicology tests. Even after this crucial step, pilot studies are always conducted in a small number of pregnant women to minimise risk to the developing fetus. Neither of these essential steps have been undertaken.

[..] This new data, which shows that women do raise antibodies to a component of their placenta after vaccination with the Pfizer/BioTech product, raises serious concerns for fetal safety. It is not safe to assume that this will not have adverse consequences on successful pregnancy. It is not safe to assume that the other vaccines will not have similar effects. Again, as with the distributional study, a presumption of risk, potentially severe, arises from these clinical observations, and there isn’t an aware person who wouldn’t call a halt at this point.

Read more …

“There are effective treatments. It’s unnecessary to test asymptomatic people because the CDC says that they don’t spread the virus.”

Class Action Lawsuit Says Vaccine Has Killed 45,000 People (Rumble)

Michael Green has filed a class action lawsuit at first representing 1,200 first responders against the Governor & Mayor’s vaccine mandates with thousands more expected to join. Michael Green says that the vaccine is killing people all around the country. There are effective treatments. It’s unnecessary to test asymptomatic people because the CDC says that they don’t spread the virus. Honolulu Fire Captain Kaimi Pelekai gives an emotional testimony about losing his job because he doesn’t want to put this experimental vaccine in his body that is killing people.

Read more …

Mean score drops from 100 to 78.

Children Born During Pandemic Have Lower IQs (G.)

Children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before, a US study suggests. The first few years of a child’s life are critical to their cognitive development. But with Covid-19 triggering the closure of businesses, nurseries, schools and playgrounds, life for infants changed considerably, with parents stressed and stretched as they tried to balance work and childcare. With limited stimulation at home and less interaction with the world outside, pandemic-era children appear to have scored shockingly low on tests designed to assess cognitive development, said lead study author Sean Deoni, associate professor of paediatrics (research) at Brown University.

In the decade preceding the pandemic, the mean IQ score on standardised tests for children aged between three months and three years of age hovered around 100, but for children born during the pandemic that number tumbled to 78, according to the analysis, which is yet to be peer-reviewed. “It’s not subtle by any stretch,” said Deoni. “You don’t typically see things like that, outside of major cognitive disorders.” The study included 672 children from the state of Rhode Island. Of these, 188 were born after July 2020 and 308 were born prior to January 2019, while 176 were born between January 2019 and March 2020. The children included in the study were born full-term, had no developmental disabilities and were mostly white.

Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fared worse in the tests, the researchers found. The biggest reason behind the falling scores is likely the lack of stimulation and interaction at home, said Deoni. “Parents are stressed and frazzled … that interaction the child would normally get has decreased substantially.” Whether these lower cognitive scores will have a long-term impact is unclear. In the first few years of life, the foundations for cognition are laid, much like building a house – it’s easier to add rooms or flourishes when you’re building the foundation, Deoni said. “The ability to course-correct becomes smaller, the older that child gets.”

Read more …

“In mid-December, before the first person had full vaccinated immunity, cases were falling dramatically in the United States. Herd Immunity. For real. It was over. We had suffered, but, had we not been stupid, Covid was more-or-less finished with us.”

Well, ****…. (Denninger)

“Antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection is a safety concern for vaccine strategies. In a recent publication, Li et al. (Cell 184 :1-17, 2021) have reported that infection-enhancing antibodies directed against the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein facilitate virus infection in vitro, but not in vivo. However, this study was performed with the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Since the Covid-19 pandemic is now dominated with Delta variants, we analyzed the interaction of facilitating antibodies with the NTD of these variants. Using molecular modelling approaches, we show that enhancing antibodies have a higher affinity for Delta variants than for Wuhan/D614G NTDs.

We show that enhancing antibodies reinforce the binding of the spike trimer to the host cell membrane by clamping the NTD to lipid raft microdomains. This stabilizing mechanism may facilitate the conformational change that induces the demasking of the receptor binding domain. As the NTD is also targeted by neutralizing antibodies, our data suggest that the balance between neutralizing and facilitating antibodies in vaccinated individuals is in favor of neutralization for the original Wuhan/D614G strain. However, in the case of the Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity. Thus, ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors).”

You stupid, stupid bastards….. Coronaviruses have a long history of doing this sort of thing and its one of the reasons we’ve never managed to have a vaccine developed for them before; it simply doesn’t work. But we were sure it wouldn’t happen this time. It had happened all the other times, but not this time. We were so sure we didn’t need to take the several years required to prove it. We’re smart! We have the new technology, never before deployed in man or beast, which we were absolutely certain would evade the risk that had always, in previous trials, derailed attempted vaccines. Oh, and there were also billions of dollars involved for the companies involved and many newly minted billionaires to be, including the NIH itself who holds some of the patents involved.

So here’s what happened. In mid-December, before the first person had full vaccinated immunity, cases were falling dramatically in the United States. Herd Immunity. For real. It was over. We had suffered, but, had we not been stupid, Covid was more-or-less finished with us. Yes, there were and would remain some of us who hadn’t gotten it, and the extremely rare person who could get it a second time, that would continue to get the virus. It was, however, over. But we were stupid. We jabbed a huge percentage of our population. And as has occurred every other time with coronavirus vaccine attempts the virus mutated around the protection and in fact used the vaccine antibodies to enhance infection. Delta is in fact promoted by those who were vaccinated. As with all other Covid variants most people get a mild or no real illness, but some people get hammered.

However, prior infection doesn’t help if you got jabbed since you took a drug that helps the virus attack you. We created a third wave by our own stupidity: Stupidity seen in nation after nation, but only in nations with high vaccine prevalence; Israel, the UK, Iceland and here in the United States. Don’t run the bull**** on me that this isn’t happening: Not only is the science now in on how its happening but Israel and Palestine, two nations literally next door to each with one having near 100% vaccination and the other about 10% could not be more-stark. Palestine is seeing a small uptick in infections while Israel is getting hammered. The “smartest men in the room” screwed not just a nation — bad enough — but an enormously-large part of the world. Including, quite possibly, you. There’s a reason we’ve never attempted to vaccinate against coronaviruses before. THIS IS THE REASON!

Read more …

Would new vaccines help? Only until the next one.

French Study Claims ADE Occurring In Delta Variant Infections (TMN)

A new study by French researchers from Aix-Marseille Université has alarmingly found that ADE or antibody dependent enhancement is indeed occurring in infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant. The study findings were peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Infections. ADE or antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection is a safety concern for vaccine strategies. A misleading earlier study reported that infection-enhancing antibodies directed against the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein facilitate virus infection in vitro, but not in vivo. This study however was performed with the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Importantly since the COVID-19 pandemic is now dominated with Delta variants, the study team analyzed the interaction of facilitating antibodies with the NTD of these variants.

Utilizing molecular modeling approaches, the team showed that enhancing antibodies have a higher affinity for Delta variants than for Wuhan/D614G NTDs. The study team demonstrated that enhancing antibodies reinforce the binding of the spike trimer to the host cell membrane by clamping the NTD to lipid raft microdomains. This stabilizing mechanism may facilitate the conformational change that induces the de-masking of the receptor binding domain. As the NTD is also targeted by neutralizing antibodies, the study data suggest that the balance between neutralizing and facilitating antibodies in vaccinated individuals is in favor of neutralization for the original Wuhan/D614G strain. Alarmingly, in the case of the Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity.

Hence antibody dependent enhancement or ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors). Under these circumstances, second generation vaccines with spike protein formulations lacking structurally-conserved ADE-related epitopes should be considered. [..] It should be noted that all current Covid-19 vaccines (either mRNA or viral vectors) are based on the original Wuhan spike sequence. In as much as neutralizing antibodies overwhelm facilitating antibodies, ADE is not a concern. However, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants may tip the scales in favor of infection enhancement. The study’s structural and modeling data suggest that it might be indeed the case for Delta variants. The study team concludes and warns that ADE may occur in individuals receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors) and then exposed to a Delta variant.

Read more …

But The Science!

Denmark Abolishes All Corona Measures (FFN)

Danish parliament recently decided in Copenhagen that all Corona measures should be ended from October 1. There will therefore no longer be a mask requirement and the test regime will be abolished. The Danes will then no longer have to provide evidence of whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated, or whether they have tested positive or negative. All Corona measures are being lifted in view of the increasing incidence figures in Denmark, reported RT Deutsch. Since the beginning of July this value has risen from 31 to 107,2 (as of August 8). At the same time, the upper limits of this Corona indicator has increased significantly. At the same time, the incidence limits are increased significantly: In communities from 300 to 500 infected people within seven days, in the districts from 500 to 1000.

However, the prerequisite is that an increasing number of Covid-19 patients does not overload the health care system. Denmark’s SSI infectious diseases agency said it no longer relied on vaccination to achieve herd immunity in the country. Tyra Grove Krause, the SSI’s acting academic director, said a new wave of infections were expected after people return to work and school at the end of this summer, but it should not be cause for alarm. “It will be more reminiscent of the flu,” Krause said. Overall, the current vaccination rate is just under 58,4 percent of fully vaccinated people in Denmark. In Germany, this value is only slightly lower at 54,5 percent (as of August 8) but vaccine advocates have been persistent in their fear-mongering and pressure on the unvaccinated.

Tyrolean lawyer Dr. Renate Holzeisen, meanwhile strongly recommended that all employers refrain from vaccination pressure or compulsory vaccination, because most of them were “obviously not even aware of the far-reaching legal consequences associated with it”. The fact that the so-called Covid-19 vaccines, according to the official approval documents of the EMA and the European Commission were not developed and approved for the prevention of infection with the SARS-COV-2 virus, but solely to prevent a more severe course of the disease, were conditionally approved for this reason alone, Holzeisen underscored.

The official approval documents therefore show that these substances cannot interrupt the chain of infection because the people treated with them can become infected and thus be infectious. Practice also proves that people who are completely “vaccinated” become infected with the virus and even have the same viral load as “unvaccinated people” as the CDC, among others, has admitted. It is therefore clear that any Covid-19 “compulsory vaccination” actually lacks any justification. All pressure, including moral pressure (alleged act of solidarity with one’s neighbor) is therefore illegal in terms of criminal and liability law based on the official approval documents.

Read more …

But we knew they were coming?! Why didn’t you prepare?

New Covid Variants ‘Will Set Us Back A Year’, Experts Warn UK Government (O.)

Ministers are being pressed to reveal what contingency plans are in place to deal with a future Covid variant that evades current vaccines, amid warnings from scientific advisers that such an outcome could set the battle against the pandemic back a year or more. Recent papers produced by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have suggested that the arrival of a variant that evades vaccines is a “realistic possibility”. Sage backed continued work on new vaccines that reduce infection and transmission more than current jabs, the creation of more vaccine-production facilities in the UK and lab-based studies to predict evolution of variants. With the arrival of a new variant seen as one of the main dangers that could intensify the crisis once again, prominent scientific figures stressed the risks.

Prof Graham Medley, a member of Sage and a leader of the government’s Covid modelling group, said it was “clearly something that the planners and scientists should take very seriously as it would put us back a long way”. “It is not that different to the planning that needs to be done between pandemics – a new variant that was able to overcome immunity significantly would be essentially a new virus,” he said. “The advantage would be that we know we can generate vaccines against this virus – and relatively quickly. The disadvantage is that we would be back to the same situation we were in a year ago, depending on how much impact current immunity had against a new variant. Hopefully, evolution is slow, so that new variants arise that are only marginally evasive rather than one big jump.”

Dr Marc Baguelin, from Imperial College’s Covid-19 response team and a member of the government’s SPI-M modelling group, said preventing the importation of variants of concern with “moderate to high immune-escape properties would be critical, as these could lead to future waves orders of magnitude larger than the ones experienced so far”. “It is unlikely that such a new virus evades entirely all immunity from past infection or vaccines,” he said. “Some immunity should remain at least for the most severe outcomes such as death or hospitalisation. We would most likely be able to update the current vaccines to include the emerging strain. “But doing so would take months and means that we might need to reimpose restrictions if there were a significant public health risk. The amount of restrictions would be a political decision and would need to be proportionate with how much this virus would evade current vaccines.”

Read more …

Not long ago all of it was voluntary. All of it.

Booster Shots Will ‘Be Obligatory For Trips Abroad And Care Home Staff’ (DM)

Booster jabs are set to be compulsory for travel abroad and care home staff in plans under discussion by Ministers. A source close to the talks about Covid certification told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The assumption is that you will be required to have the most up-to-date health passport. ‘So if the advice is to have a booster six months after your second jab, then that is what you’ll need.’ At the moment, double-jabbed Brits can go to amber list countries without having to quarantine upon their return. Booster vaccines will be compulsory for care home workers once they are rolled out, a senior Government source said. This will add to the legal requirements for care home staff, who from October will have to be double-jabbed to work in the sector, subject to parliamentary approval.

Millions are set to be offered a third jab from September after Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced the roll-out to priority groups. A Minister told the Mail on Sunday the ‘logical’ move will be to make the booster shots a requirement for travel, adding that the most up-to-date Covid certification for travel will become as normal as the need to have a yellow fever jab to enter certain countries. Last night Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said: ‘If I were the Government I would tread carefully on this. Booster jabs will take a while to get to the majority of the travelling public. ‘And there are issues around whether they are necessary – some scientists say that they may not be necessary.’

Meanwhile talks about what booster jabs will mean for domestic certification are still at an early stage within Government. One insider said that, as domestic passports have only been announced for nightclubs, discussions over whether boosters will one day be required for entry are still in ‘very early days’. The Government will make its decision on boosters following final advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which is reviewing the scientific evidence on the third jabs. The JCVI previously issued interim advice in June that Brits ‘should be prepared’ for another round of inoculations.

Read more …

The article doesn’t know whether to agree or not.

The Teens Who’d Prefer To Catch Covid Than Have The Vaccine (DM)

Trawling through Government Covid statistics might seem like a strange hobby for a 16-year-old. But when he isn’t practising on his guitar, or watching TikTok videos, that’s what Jacob Mellor can be found doing. And thanks to his keen interest in ‘the data’, he has come to a decision – one that could have a profound impact on his own health and that of those around him. Earlier this month, when it was announced that all 16- and 17-year-olds would be offered a Covid jab, Jacob promptly announced he would be opting out. All the evidence, he says, shows this virus is not a threat to him. And so he feels it would be better to catch Covid, and develop natural immunity, than to have a vaccine.

‘From the beginning we’ve been told that this virus didn’t affect kids,’ says Jacob, from Croydon in South London, who attends an independent school. ‘We even had assemblies about it at school, telling us why we shouldn’t worry because it’s just a cold for people my age. ‘So why should I take a vaccine to protect against something I won’t get ill from? Especially when I know there’s a risk involved with having it. The risk is small, I appreciate that, but it’s still there and I can’t get over that.’ Not only does Jacob have no qualms about catching Covid, he is almost looking forward to it. ‘It would be a good thing, in my eyes. I’d build a strong immunity and I wouldn’t have to worry about risks, like I would with the jab,’ he says.

‘Loads of my friends had Covid last year and the worst that happened was that they were stuck in bed for a couple of days. We all see Covid as something we’re not really bothered about. If I get it, it might suck for a few days, but I’ll be immune, so there’s a benefit to me.’ According to Jacob’s mother Sally, her eldest child – who is one of three, with siblings aged 14 and nine – is ‘an independent thinker’ and has been ‘brought up to appreciate the value of natural immunity’. Sally, a 51-year-old creative director for a major retailer, and husband Steve, 49, a recruitment director, haven’t been vaccinated either. ‘I believe in natural immunity, and I’m nervous about the lack of long-term data about the Covid vaccine,’ she adds.

‘We were a family that would be outside in the dirt and around animals, and I told the kids this would protect them from allergies and make sure they could fight off infections. ‘So Jacob has always asked questions when it came to vaccines, from a very young age – like why did he have to have a tetanus booster, for instance – although he did have all his childhood jabs.’ While more than 16,000 of Britain’s 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds took up the Government’s offer to get jabbed last weekend, thousands, like Jacob, are not as enthusiastic. The latest Office for National Statistics Covid survey suggests one in ten of them don’t plan to have the vaccine.

Read more …

“But *NOW* you are the problem. You are guilty. You are an extremist. You didn’t change at all. Something else changed. But notice how the spotlight on what changed is YOU, and not the origin of the change?”

I Wish To Take A Little Walk With You And Talk, Deliberately, About This (TLR)

Something shifted after the election of Barack H Obama in 2008. Something subtle that was quietly taking place in the background that surfaced just slow enough so that most people didn’t notice. But before getting to that, let’s first just look at the DHS announcement as presented in their words. Look at this small sentence and the worldview it expresses: ..”Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.”.. Notice the word “perceived”? The government imposed mandates, mask and vaccination requirements are only “perceived government restrictions.” In essence, the chains that bind your expressions of liberty and freedom are merely figments of your imagination.


The needle being forced into the arm of federal workers by the Federal Government is only the perception of a forced medical treatment. Your perception of what they are doing is the problem. You must therefore correct your wrong-thoughts to eliminate the wrong perception. Yes, Dear Leader appreciates your compliance. Your reluctance to change your perception is what identifies you as an extremist. Think about that for a moment with your friends and family. The label of Domestic Extremist is applied to the target who is reluctant to change their perception. The target is transparently innocent of any wrongdoing. They are doing, feeling, believing, and ultimately living, exactly the same as they always have…. but something now is different. You are transparently innocent, yet you are now guilty and labeled. This takes our conversation to an inflection point.

When Barack H Obama was elected/installed as the President of the United States, the people in/around him brought forward a new approach. While the U.S. media had always been biased, manipulative and dishonest, there was something more that changed after the installation of The One, the Lightbringer… and it was assisted by the rise of Big Tech and Social Media. The shift coincided with the merge between the intelligence apparatus and the new platforms of social media. The speed of the shift aligned with the speed of technology that was driving communication. Together the intelligence apparatus, the customary U.S. media and Big Tech began testing how far and how fast they could control the outlook of Americans. Historic leftists, progressives, used to justify their own behavior, and the behavior of their tribe through the media.

History is replete with leftist media excusing the behavior of the transparently guilty. The media would create narratives to justify extremism they aligned with. The transparently guilty were excused and defended. We became used to seeing this. However, when traditional media merged in ideology with social media, no longer was they trying to excuse or justify the transparently guilty of accountability; starting around 2011 & 2012 what the new-era attack started to do was falsely accuse the transparently innocent. Together with ideological institutions in government (Obama’s crew ie. DOJ etc.), the customary U.S. media and Big Tech began testing how far and fast they could control the outlook of Americans… to accuse the transparently innocent. The shift was directly proportional to the training, teaching and development of the crew that came with Obama. All classically trained Saul Alinsky followers.

The Harvard police officer (James Crowley), just doing his job…. that led to Henry Louis Gates outrage, that led to the big PR effort and the beer summit. “Never let a crisis go to waste”… All optically and narrative controlled. Then came George Zimmerman, then Darren Wilson, then The Baltimore Six,… all, again, transparently innocent – but the media framework was exactly the opposite. They were able to label the transparently innocent as ‘guilty’, just by controlling information. Skip through the years of numerous examples as the orchestration continued. The manipulative effort is driven by political intent. Take a transparently innocent person and manipulate a narrative to make them guilty Now, pause for a moment and go back to the current DHS announcement.

What does this current DHS terrorism bulletin do? It exactly continues the process. Government is now expanding the targeting of the transparently innocent. You hold the same ideas, outlooks, worldviews, and expectations of Liberty and Freedom that you held yesterday, last week, last month and perhaps even long before 9-11-01… But *NOW* you are the problem. You are guilty. You are an extremist. You didn’t change at all. Something else changed. But notice how the spotlight on what changed is YOU, and not the origin of the change? You are the problem. Not those changing the structures of freedom or liberty… YOU are the guilty party. See how they did that? See the shift now?

Read more …

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

Woke Python

 

 

Mining

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

May 312021
 


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

 

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

 

 

 

 

Slowly redefining, eroding legal language.

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

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

Employees Sue Hospital over Vaccine Mandate (L&C)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Bit confusing?!

Masks Achieve Nothing In Terms Of Spread (Guerra)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

The Basic Foolishness With The Path (Denninger)

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

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

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

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

Read more …

We don’t see much virus news from China.

Travel Restrictions & Partial Lockdown Imposed In Guangzhou (RT)

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


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

Read more …

200 is a lot.

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Don’t pay taxes, get bailed out instead.

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

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


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

Read more …

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

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

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

Read more …

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Aug 182019
 


Pablo Picasso Dora Maar 1937

 

A Global Recession May Be Coming A Lot Sooner Than Anyone Thought (Henrich)
Why Negative Rates Will Devastate The World (ZH)
US National Debt Spiked $363 billion in 2 Weeks, $1 Trillion in 12 Months (WS)
UK Parliament Cannot Stop Brexit, Johnson To Tell Macron And Merkel (R.)
Leaked Docs : UK Faces Food, Fuel And Drugs Shortages In No-Deal Brexit (R.)
Jeremy Corbyn Has Called the Extreme Centrists’ Bluff (Jacobin)
The Gall of Ghislaine Maxwell
Hong Kongers Brave Rain To Join Anti-Government Rally (R.)
Kiwi Publishers Face Censorship Demands From Chinese Printers (Stuff)
Denmark Offers to Buy U.S. (Borowitz)
World’s Nations Gather To Tackle Wildlife Extinction Crisis (O.)

 

 

I think it’s not so much the US inverted yield curve that hints at a global recession, but the fact that many countries have such curves.

A Global Recession May Be Coming A Lot Sooner Than Anyone Thought (Henrich)

On Tuesday, equity markets across the globe jumped at the news that the Trump administration would delay some of the new tariffs on China it had announced earlier this month. But just one day later, global stock markets sold off hard due to ever-weakening economic data in Europe and Asia and further yield curve inversions. Call it a major hangover. The reversal in tariffs did not come from a position of strength. It came as a result of global economic reality sinking in and crushing US markets. Turns out trade wars are not easy to win and the global growth picture is not looking good. Last week, the UK announced negative GDP growth for the past quarter.

This week, it’s Germany announcing shrinking GDP with its 10-year bond hitting a record negative 0.62% yield. Then there’s Europe seeing negative industrial production, and China announcing its lowest industrial production growth in 17 years. The collapse in global bond yields has been a theme since October of last year, with 10-year US Treasury bonds dropping to 1.6% from their October 2018 high of 3.23%. Now that the two-year/10-year Treasury yield curve has inverted, the recession alarm bells are ringing. Why? Because every single recession in the past 45 years has seen a yield curve inversion preceding it.

History suggests that on average a recession begins 22 months after a yield curve inversion. It’s not until about 18 months after an inversion that the stock market turns negative. Yet Bank of America Merril Lynch numbers indicate that we have less time. For the 10 yield curve inversions since 1956, the S&P 500 peaked within approximately three months of the inversion six times. Following the other four, the S&P 500 took 11 to 22 months to peak. Twenty-two months of growth vs. three months? That’s quite a big gap. Both of these historical studies suggest there is room for markets to make new highs in the next few months. In fact, one can imagine several scenarios on how these new highs could come about.

Read more …

Deflation. Aka “a “Japanification” of every major bond market…”

Why Negative Rates Will Devastate The World (ZH)

It has been a thesis over 20 years in the making, but with every passing day, SocGen’s Albert Edwards – who first coined the term “Ice Age” to describe the state of the world in which every debt issue ends up with a negative yield as capital markets and economies collapse into a deflationary singularity – is that much closer to having the victory lap of a lifetime. Although, we doubt he is happy about it. Commenting on the interest rate collapse he has been (correctly) predicting ever since he first observed Japan’s great bubble bust of the 1980s and which resulted in both NIRP and QE, and which he (correctly) expected would spread across the rest of the world, leading to a “Japanification” of every major bond market…

… Edwards said that what bond markets are telling us is “that the cycle is ending with the central banks having failed to drive core CPI inflation higher. So Japanese-style outright deflation lies ahead at a time when western economies have piled debt sky high.” Needless to say that’s not good, not least of all because we now live in a world in which the bond universe with negative yields continued to grow at an exponential pace, rising rapidly over the past two weeks and reaching a record $16.4 trillion…

Read more …

Really? Your pension fund?

US National Debt Spiked $363 billion in 2 Weeks, $1 Trillion in 12 Months (WS)

The US Gross National Debt has jumped by $363 billion in the two weeks since President Trump signed the law that suspended the debt ceiling. This surge pushed the total debt to $22.39 trillion. That’s up by $1.01 trillion from 12 months ago. And these are the good times. Watch this debt balloon during an economic downturn! Whoopee! Note the technical term at the top right of the chart:

The question, “Who the heck is buying all this debt” – because every dime has to be bought by some entity – is becoming increasingly nerve-wracking, particularly as the trade war with China puts the possibility out there that Chinese entities might dump their US Treasury securities, much like Russia has already done. But Russia was only a small-ish holder. China is – or rather was – the largest one. So we got some answers on Thursday when the Treasury Department disclosed in its TIC data how much of this debt was held, bought, and dumped by foreign investors through June. Foreign investors bought hand-over-fist. But not the Chinese!


All foreign investors combined – so “foreign official” holders, such as central banks, and foreign private-sector investors such as banks and Mexican billionaires – held $6.64 trillion in US Treasury bonds and bills, having raised their holdings in the month of June by $97 billion, and over the 12-month period by $411 billion, all of it driven by frantic buying over the past seven months. In dollar terms, this $6.64 trillion held by foreign investors is a record (blue line). In terms of the percentage share (red line) of total debt, it’s a far cry from the record maintained from July 2012 through May 2015, when it maxed out at 34.1% of total Treasury debt. The share dropped to 28.5% at the end of last year. Under the recent surge in buying, it has ticked up to 30.1%:

The chart below shows [the] three big groups of holders of US Treasury securities through June: US government-administered funds, such as the Social Security Trust Fund and US government pension funds (gray), US individuals and entities other than the government (red), and foreign holders (blue):

Read more …

They’re not going to take his word for it.

UK Parliament Cannot Stop Brexit, Johnson To Tell Macron And Merkel (R.)

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Westminster parliament cannot stop Brexit and a new deal must be agreed if Britain is to avoid leaving the EU without one. In his first trip abroad as leader, Johnson is due to meet his European counterparts ahead of a G7 summit on Aug. 24-26 in Biarritz, France. He will say that Britain is leaving the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a deal, and that the British parliament cannot block that, according to a Downing Street source. The United Kingdom is heading towards a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Johnson has repeatedly vowed to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the Brexit divorce.


After more than three years of Brexit dominating EU affairs, the bloc has repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, agreed in November. The prime minister is coming under pressure from politicians across the political spectrum to prevent a disorderly departure, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn vowing to bring down Johnson’s government in early September to delay Brexit. It is, however, unclear if lawmakers have the unity or power to use the British parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31 – likely to be the United Kingdom’s most significant move since World War Two.

Read more …

Apparently older docs, things have improved since. But only to the extent that it’s not “up to 85% of trucks using the main channel crossings “may not be ready“, now it’s ‘just’ 50-60%.

Leaked Docs : UK Faces Food, Fuel And Drugs Shortages In No-Deal Brexit (R.)

Britain will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show. The Times said the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios. They said up to 85% of trucks using the main channel crossings “may not be ready” for French customs, meaning disruption at ports would potentially last up to three months before the flow of traffic improves. The government also believes a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic will be likely as current plans to avoid widespread checks will prove unsustainable, the Times said.


“Compiled this month by the Cabinet Office under the codename Operation Yellowhammer, the dossier offers a rare glimpse into the covert planning being carried out by the government to avert a catastrophic collapse in the nation’s infrastructure,” the Times reported. “The file, marked “official-sensitive” — requiring security clearance on a “need to know” basis — is remarkable because it gives the most comprehensive assessment of the UK’s readiness for a no-deal Brexit.” The United Kingdom is heading towards a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly vowed to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the Brexit divorce.

Read more …

“Healing bitter division is one of two great preoccupations haunting politics in the United Kingdom since the 2016 Brexit referendum — the second is hating Jeremy Corbyn. ”

Jeremy Corbyn Has Called the Extreme Centrists’ Bluff (Jacobin)

Healing bitter division is one of two great preoccupations haunting politics in the United Kingdom since the 2016 Brexit referendum — the second is hating Jeremy Corbyn. On Wednesday, the Labour leader wrote a letter to the other main opposition parties proposing an alliance to block a No Deal Brexit, a prospect that has now become uncomfortably plausible with Boris Johnson as prime minister. Under the proposal, Corbyn would call a vote of no confidence in Johnson’s government; once the motion is carried he would step in to become a caretaker prime minister for a brief term. Corbyn’s powers would be limited; he couldn’t introduce new legislation. The sole purpose of his tenure as prime minister would be to negotiate a postponement of the Brexit deadline and call a general election.

Labour would then campaign for a new EU referendum with a Remain option on the ballot. The suggestion is calm, serious, and thoughtful. Most importantly, it includes a promise of a campaign for that second vote that so many centrists have loudly rallied for; the election everyone on the Left has longed for; and as mentioned, it severely limits Corbyn’s powers, but importantly, also blocks No Deal. It should bring everyone on board. Sensible parties were furtively positive: Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party) and the Scottish National Party said they were interested in discussing the idea when they appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

But with this proposal, Corbyn has called the bluff of the extreme centrists and the obsessive Remainers. Since his scheme involves an election in which Labour would campaign for a second referendum, with Remain on the ballot, attacking Corbyn now means attacking the very ideas they claim to be fighting for. Sure enough, the Liberal Democrats shot the proposal down immediately, stating they would never countenance backing Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, even if it meant stopping a No Deal Brexit ..

[..] the hideous truth is now revealed, confirming what many on the Left have long been saying about the Liberal Democrats, the Independent Group, and a huge number of highly vocal centrist ultras on social media: for all their yelling that stopping Brexit is their sole concern, as long as stopping Brexit means Corbyn in a position of power — however minor and effectively powerless — they would prefer economic obliteration. Given the choice between Corbyn spending a few weeks merely acting out a pre-agreed script, on the one hand, and medicine and food shortages, a tanked pound, an economy in ruins, and widespread social panic, many centrists would choose the latter. Their hatred for Corbyn really does expand to fill so much of their mind as to incapacitate them.

Read more …

Interesting thing here is not the article, but the wider setting of the photo. C’mon Bill Barr, have her picked up. Your credibility melts away while you sleep.

The Gall of Ghislaine Maxwell

On Thursday afternoon, the New York Post published a picture that, the newspaper reported, was taken at an In-N-Out Burger in the San Fernando Valley, on Monday, and sent in by an anonymous source in Los Angeles. The photo showed Ghislaine Maxwell sipping a shake and munching on fries and a burger while sitting alone at one of the restaurant’s outdoor tables. [..] the central figure of the Epstein affair in the past week has been Maxwell. The youngest of Robert Maxwell’s nine children, and reportedly his favorite, Ghislaine attended Marlborough, a boarding school in England, and Oxford. Her father sent her to New York as his emissary, in 1991, to foster the Daily News, which he had recently purchased.

After his ignominious death, she was left with a mere hundred thousand dollars per year to live on. She began to sell real estate, and soon started dating Epstein, who was well connected. A multitude of pictures from the past three decades in which the socialite is seen beaming, cheek to jowl, wearing gaudy Upper East Side-lady finery, with a variety of bold-faced names at various galas, give the impression that she would have attended the opening of an envelope as long as it was gold-embossed. But, in 2016, not long after Giuffre’s defamation suit, Maxwell abruptly disappeared from public view. On Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported that she was residing in a mansion outside Boston, in Manchester-by-the-Sea. But before the surprise of that revelation had abated, the picture from Los Angeles delivered a new jolt.

Read more …

8.18

Hong Kongers Brave Rain To Join Anti-Government Rally (R.)

Thousands of protesters, most clad in black, gathered under a downpour for an anti-government rally at a Hong Kong park on Sunday, in the eleventh week of what have been often violent demonstrations in the Asian financial hub. The turnout for the rally could show whether the movement still has broad-based support after the ugly scenes witnessed during the past week when protesters occupied the city’s airport, for which some activists apologized. Anger over a now-suspended bill that would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China erupted in June, but the rising unrest is fueled by broader worries about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place after Hong Kong’s return from British to Chinese rule in 1997.


“Hong Kongers are tired of protesting, this is really the last thing they want. It’s bloody hot and it’s raining. It’s a torture just to turn up, frankly,” said a 24-year-old student named Jonathan. “But we have to be here because we have no other choice. We have to continue until the government finally shows us the respect that we deserve,” he said. Seated on concrete soccer fields in the sprawling Victoria Park in the city’s bustling Causeway Bay district, protesters held placards with slogans including “Free Hong Kong!” and “Democracy now!”, and umbrellas to shield them from the heavy rain.


Victoria Park almost completely filled up as of 2pm, the official starting time of the rally.

Read more …

Print your own books.

Kiwi Publishers Face Censorship Demands From Chinese Printers (Stuff)

It seems innocent enough: a map of the US on the inside cover of a young adult novel. The kind that teenagers would use to trace a fictional character’s journey. But a China-based printer told Kiwi publisher One Tree House that there would be a one-month production delay while the map was vetted by Chinese authorities. In order to get Brian Falkland’s Cassie Clark: Outlaw published in time to ship an Australian order, One Tree House had to get the book printed in Auckland at double the cost. It’s one example of several Stuff uncovered of publishers running into hold-ups as Chinese printers get maps checked over to ensure they adhere to Beijing policy – whether they’re textbooks or works of fiction.


Printing books in China is cheaper than in other countries, with quality and service also said to be first-rate. But Chinese printing companies are subject to censorship laws, with books combed for references that might be politically sensitive to Beijing, such as Taiwan and Tibet. One Tree House co-director Jenny Nagle, who’s also the NZ Society of Authors chief executive, said the policy meant her business had to take a cost hit when Cassie Clark: Outlaw was printed late last year. “I was surprised because it’s such an innocuous thing. It’s a simplified map showing a fictional character’s journey across America,” said Nagle. Mary Varnham, editor-in-chief at publisher Awa Press, also met with a one-month production delay during a 2018 re-print of the travel book Antarctica Cruising Guide.


Young adult novel Cassie Clark: Outlaw contains a map of the US that a Chinese printer took exception to.

Again, the offending item was a map. “The book has a map of Antarctica which doesn’t mention China at all, but it still had to go through this vetting process,” Varnham said. “I’m assuming they’re checking references to Taiwan and things, but obviously they want to check all maps.” She said it was “much more expensive” to print books in Australia or New Zealand, but the quality was also much better in China. “It’s obvious that you just wouldn’t send a book to China if it’s highly critical of China in some way, because they would definitely, I imagine, refuse to print it. So there’s a kind of self-censorship there.”

Read more …

Not bad. But Trump made his offer mostly in jest, and only when he heard Denmark had trouble meeting its obligations (whether that’s true I don’t know). Also, US congress tried to buy Greenland in 1867, and Harry Truman tried again in 1946.

Denmark Offers to Buy U.S. (Borowitz)

After rebuffing Donald J. Trump’s hypothetical proposal to purchase Greenland, the government of Denmark has announced that it would be interested in buying the United States instead. “As we have stated, Greenland is not for sale,” a spokesperson for the Danish government said on Friday. “We have noted, however, that during the Trump regime pretty much everything in the United States, including its government, has most definitely been for sale.” “Denmark would be interested in purchasing the United States in its entirety, with the exception of its government,” the spokesperson added.


A key provision of the purchase offer, the spokesperson said, would be the relocation of Donald Trump to another country “to be determined,” with Russia and North Korea cited as possible destinations. If Denmark’s bid for the United States is accepted, the Scandinavian nation has ambitious plans for its new acquisition. “We believe that, by giving the U.S. an educational system and national health care, it could be transformed from a vast land mass into a great nation,” the spokesperson said.

Read more …

Guaranteed failure. The same world’s nations want economic growth.

World’s Nations Gather To Tackle Wildlife Extinction Crisis (O.)

From giraffes to sharks, the world’s endangered species could gain better protection at an international wildlife conference. The triennial summit of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), that began on Saturday, will tackle disputes over the conservation of great beasts such as elephants and rhinos, as well as cracking down on the exploitation of unheralded but vital species such as sea cucumbers, which clean ocean floors. Extraordinary creatures being driven to extinction by the exotic pet trade, from glass frogs to star tortoises, may win extra protection from the 183-country conference. It may even see an extinct animal, the woolly mammoth, get safeguards, on the grounds that illegal elephant ivory is sometimes laundered by being labelled as antique mammoth tusks.


The glass frog is among the species being driven to extinction by the exotic pet trade. Photograph: Alamy.

Ivonne Higuero, the secretary general of Cites, said: “Cites is a powerful tool for ensuring sustainability and responding to the rapid loss of biodiversity – often called the sixth mass extinction – by preventing and reversing declines in wildlife populations.” The destruction of nature has reduced wildlife populations by 60% since 1970 and plant extinctions are running at a “frightening” rate, according to scientists. In May, the world’s leading researchers warned that humanity was in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the planet’s natural life-support systems, which provide the food, clean air and water on which society ultimately depends.

Read more …

 

Carol Steele “Dancing On Ice – Dalmatian Pelican” 2019. Location: Lake Kerkini, Northern Greece