Oct 182020
 


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1906

 

Prince Andrew, The Oligarchs And A New Bombshell For Joe Biden (DM)
Twitter Won’t Unlock NYPost Account Unless Hunter Biden Tweets Deleted (ZH)
Yes, The Hunter Biden Emails Are Authentic (Larry C Johnson)
Biden Attacks CBS Reporter For Asking About The Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)
The Clocks Struck Thirteen (Kunstler)
Facebook, Twitter Intervention Sets Dangerous New Double Standard (Taibbi)
The Barrett Hearing Left The Democrats Holding An Empty Sack (Turley)
Fed Officials Call For Tougher Regulation To Prevent Asset Bubbles (R.)
Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)
Halted Trials Raise New Safety Questions About ‘Rushed’ COVID19 Vaccines (ZH)
Fauci’s ‘Standard Of Care’ COVID19 Treatment Doesn’t Work (JS)
Berlin Court Overturns Restaurant Curfew (RT)
UK Fishing: Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire (YBL)

 

 

And we’re right back into Hunter Biden. All it takes for me is to hear James Clapper say only once that it’s all Russian disinformation. If there’s anyone here who still believes that, I feel for you,

 

 

Jon Stewart JoeBiden

 

 

Does anyone know if the Daily Mail still has an active Twitter account?

Prince Andrew, The Oligarchs And A New Bombshell For Joe Biden (DM)

Hunter Biden is a 50-year-old American lawyer whose elderly father Joe hopes in just over a fortnight to unseat Donald Trump at the U.S. Presidential election. He’s also a twice-married father of five kids (one via a fleeting affair with a former stripper) who has struggled with cocaine and alcohol addiction for most of his adult life and in 2014, when his dad was Barack Obama’s Vice President, managed to get booted out of the U.S. Naval Reserve for failing a drug test. This week saw a vintage ‘October surprise’ when the New York Post obtained footage of Hunter variously: lying in bed smoking a crack pipe; reclining in the bath with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; and starring in a 12-minute mobile phone video that, in the newspaper’s words, saw him hoofing class A narcotics ‘while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman’.

Most sensationally — if you believe the Trump camp, that is — it also published leaked emails that appear to implicate Joe in long-standing controversy over his son’s rackety business career. To understand why, you must first know that Biden Jr has for years been criticised for his lucrative but ethically questionable work overseas, which has often created apparent conflicts of interest with Joe’s official roles. For example, in 2014, when Joe, as Vice President, was helping to implement U.S. policy in Ukraine, Hunter took a highly-paid job with a Ukranian energy company called Burisma (of which more later). Around the same time, he built murky and contentious connections with Russia, helping his investment advisory firm Rosemont Seneca receive some $3.5m from the billionaire widow of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhov (best known on these shores for once donating £138,000 to Sadiq Khan’s Mayor’s Fund for London).

Then there was a somewhat dubious episode in China, where Hunter arranged for an entrepreneur called Jonathan Li, with whom he was setting up an investment fund, to hold a meeting (and enjoy a very public handshake) with Joe in a Beijing hotel lobby during an official visit. Such ventures, in regions of the world hardly known for their probity, have always smelled distinctly whiffy. So what, then, ought we to make of the revelation that, when his father was Vice President, Biden Jr was doing business in a fourth cash-soaked but highly corrupt country? Namely: Kazakhstan. The Mail can reveal that between 2012 and 2014, Hunter worked as a sort of go-between for Kenes Rakishev, a self-styled ‘international businessman, investor and entrepreneur’ with close family connections to the kleptocratic regime of his homeland’s despotic former president Nursultan Nazarbayev.


Hunter and Joe Biden (pictured left and right centre respectively) with oligarch Kenes Rakishev (far left).

Emails passed to this newspaper via anti-corruption campaigners from the Central Asian country reveal that Biden Jr held extensive meetings with Rakishev, who was looking to invest a portion of his personal fortune in New York and Washington DC. He also travelled to the Kazakh capital of Astana to hold business discussions. Hunter Biden then attempted to persuade Rakishev to buy into a Nevadan mining company, brokering a series of meetings with the firm, before convincing him to invest a cool million dollars with Alexandra Forbes Kerry, the film-maker daughter of Democrat Senator and former Presidential candidate John Kerry. Rakishev, who wrote messages in broken English, appears to have become intimate with the Vice President’s son, calling Hunter ‘my brother!’ and ‘my brother from another mother!’.

Read more …

Cut them into little pieces, take their political power away.

Twitter Won’t Unlock NYPost Account Unless Hunter Biden Tweets Deleted (ZH)

By immediately condemning the Hunter Biden emails and photos published by the New York Post as the work of Russian hackers colluding with Rudy Giuliani, the MSM destroyed any credibility it might have had. As we pointed out earlier, more evidence has emerged to support Giuliani’s version of events – namely, that he was given a copy of the laptop’s hard drive and all of its contents by the owner of a Delaware computer-repair shop. But despite apologizing and acknowledging “straight up blocking of URLs was wrong”, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has apparently not finished punishing the New York Post, because three days after the account was initially frozen, the New York Post hasn’t been able to tweet, and according to a NY Post report, Twitter has frozen the New York Post’s account until the paper’s social media managers agree to delete six tweets about Hunter Biden.


“Anyone who looks at The Post’s Twitter feed can’t even see the tweets about the Biden stories, which have been replaced by messages saying, ‘This Tweet is no longer available,'” the Post wrote on Friday. Twitter previously said the Post’s Hunter Biden stories violated the website’s Hacked Media Policy which prohibits the display of “hacked” information, an allegation that the Post called “baseless.” However, on Friday, Twitter updated that policy, saying it will start labeling content that violates its rules rather than remove it altogether “unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them.” Confusingly, though, the company said that these changes wouldn’t apply retroactively, meaning that the NYP still must delete the tweets if it wants to use its account again, even though readers can’t even see them.

Read more …

Johnson knows the Issac family.

Yes, The Hunter Biden Emails Are Authentic (Larry C Johnson)

This story is very simple–Hunter Biden dropped off three computers with liquid damage at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Mac Issac, examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was okay and the data on the harddrive of the third could be recoverd. Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul Mac Issac repaired the hard drive and down loaded the data. During this process he saw some disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine, Burisma, China and other issues. With the work completed, Mr. Mac Issac prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden and notified him that the computer was ready to be retrieved. Hunter did not respond.

In the ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Issac made repeated efforts to contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed John Paul Mac Issac–i.e., he did not pay the bill. When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John Paul realized he was sitting on radioactive material that might be relevant to the investigation. After conferring with his father, Mac and John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office and spoke with an agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the material he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get lost. This was mid-September 2019.

Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John Paul’s business. He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device. Two weeks later, the intrepid agents called and asked to come and image the hard drive. John Paul agreed but, instead of taking the hard drive or imaging the drive, they gave him a subpoena. It was part of a grand jury proceeding but neither agent said anything about the purpose of the grand jury. John Paul complied with the subpoena and turned over the hard drive and the computer.

In the ensuing months, starting with the impeachment trial of President Trump, he heard nothing from the FBI and knew that none of the evidence from the hard drive had been shared with President Trump’s defense team. The lack of action and communication with the FBI led John Paul to make the fateful decision to contact Rudy Giuliani’s office and offer a copy of the drive to the former mayor. We now know that Rudy accepted John Paul’s offer and that Rudy’s team shared the information with the New York Post.

Read more …

Precisely what Trump has been accused of for years: attack the press. Note: Bo Erickson works for CBS, not exactly known as an anti-Biden network. So where’s the outrage?

Biden Attacks CBS Reporter For Asking About The Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)

For years, many of us have criticized President Donald Trump for his attacks on the media when they asked him about controversies involving him or his family. The media however has been largely silent as Democratic leaders have ratcheted up attacks on any journalists who question their positions or the party lines. That was evident recently when Speaker Nancy Pelosi bizarrely attacked CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer as an apologist for the Trump Administration simply because he pressed her on blocking the stimulus package. Other liberals piled on Blitzer for daring to challenge the party line. Now Joe Biden has attacked the first reporter from one of the networks who simply asked for a response to the unfolding scandal involving his son Hunter Biden. In emails found on the laptop,

Joe Biden is named in communications with foreign figures seeking influence over U.S. policy. Biden refused to comment and then disparaged CBS News reporter Bo Erickson for even asking him the question. Erickson simply asked “Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?” Biden responded “I have no response.” Then Biden added “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” Biden has been hammered for refusing to tell voters whether he will support packing the Supreme Court. This however concerns emails where there are not just allegations of influence peddling worth millions coming from China, Russia, and Ukraine but references to his knowledge or possible involvement. As I wrote recently, there is a striking refusal of the Biden campaign to offer the obvious responses to such allegations.

I have expressed my skepticism over how this laptop was found and when it was disclosed publicly. This could very well be the work of foreign intelligence. However, as I discussed this morning in the Hill, that does not mean that the emails and photos are fabricated. Many of us have long denounced Hunter Biden’s work as a classic influence peddling scheme. That does not make it a crime, but it is common form of corruption in Washington. These emails however, if true, would contradict Joe Biden’s past statements of his lack of knowledge or involvement. Moreover, it would shatter Joe Biden’s repeated assurance that his son did “nothing wrong.” One can argue over whether this is a crime, but few would say that there is nothing wrong with raw influence peddling worth millions with foreign entities.

Read more …

“..lawyers and lawfare do not amount to a supernatural protection force..”

The Clocks Struck Thirteen (Kunstler)

[..] one might suppose that Rudy Giuliani, working on an extremely consequential case for a sitting president, and being a former distinguished federal attorney experienced with, and fastidious about, the handling of evidence, took some pains to ascertain the authenticity of the documents he received. Having done so, one might also suppose that Mr. Giuliani had handed off this material to the Attorney General, Mr. Barr — along with documentation he’s known to have collected about the Biden family’s money-laundering trail through the Baltic states to process additional payments for services rendered above and beyond the millions paid to R. Hunter Biden by Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company whose board of directors he was installed on in 2014.

What all that evidence speaks of is a Biden & Co. foreign influence-peddling scheme that amounts to selling out the USA while Ol’ White Joe was vice-president carrying out official tasks in the countries that paid his son enormous sums of money. The evidence clearly contradicts Mr. Biden’s basic claim that he never spoke with his son, Hunter, about his business dealings. The evidence also indicates clearly that Mr. Biden, then vice-president, received a cut of the collected lucre distributed among the family members. In a normal America, these issues would prompt some sort of official inquiry possibly leading to indictments. But these are the most abnormal times, and the final weeks of a vicious national election that is an existential threat to that coterie of Deep State seditionists whose careers, reputations, and livelihoods are at stake in the outcome.

So, of course, their Ministry of Truth is pulling out all the stops to squash the story. But their hubris is showing. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, being mega-billionaires, probably think that they have the resources to hire every attorney in the known universe to guard their empires. One important lesson for the nation might come out of this: that lawyers and lawfare do not amount to a supernatural protection force. The truth has a mighty power of its own and there are moments in history when it manages to overcome organized evil.

Schachtel timeline

Read more …

“The decision to ban a New York Post expose about Hunter Biden flies in the face of years of “hack and leak” stories..”

Facebook, Twitter Intervention Sets Dangerous New Double Standard (Taibbi)

The only thing that should matter, when it comes to stories like this, is whether or not the material is true and in the public interest. This disturbing new confederation of media outlets and tech firms is rewriting that standard.The optics of a former Democratic Party spokesman suddenly donning a Facebook official’s hat to announce a ban of a story damaging to Democrats couldn’t be worse. Moreover, the Orwellian construct described in papers like the Times suggests that for tech executives, pundits, and Democratic Party officials alike, the lines between fake news and bad news, between actual misinformation and information that is merely politically adverse, have been blurred. It’s no longer clear that some of these people see a meaningful distinction between the two ideas.

The public can’t help but see this. While papers like the Times denounce the true Podesta emails as “misinformation,” and Facebook says the New York Post story must be kept out of sight until verified, the standard for, say, the Steele dossier was and is opposite. In that case, we were told “raw intelligence” should be published so that “Americans can make up their own minds” about information that, while “salacious and unverified,” may still be freely read on Twitter and Facebook, reported on in the New York Times and Washington Post, and talked about on NBC, so long as it has not been completely “disproven.”

As Erik Wemple of the Washington Post points out, even that last point is no longer true, but the Steele dossier and plenty of other products of what Axios calls “hack and leak” journalism continue to be embraced and freely distributed. The obvious double-standard guarantees that the tech platforms will henceforth be viewed by a huge portion of the population as political censors instead of standards enforcers, and moreover that mainstream press pronouncements about such controversies will be deemed automatically untrustworthy by that same population. A secondary problem involves the Hunter Biden/Ukraine story itself, which from the start teetered on conflicting narratives.

Read more …

It was all only ever an election podium.

The Barrett Hearing Left The Democrats Holding An Empty Sack (Turley)

Benjamin Franklin once said, “it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.” It took almost 300 years, but Franklin’s observation finally has been proven demonstrably true. The three-day Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for federal appellate judge and Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett can best be described as an empty-sack confirmation that simply would not stand upright. From the outset, committee Democrats were dealing with a highly qualified nominee who has the intellect, the temperament and the background to be an exceptional justice. And that was the problem. Democrats decided to use the hearing as a springboard for the coming election. They never intended to put anything in the sack against Barrett.

Yet, to frame this effort, they advanced a number of false premises that collapsed on their own weight: “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is about to be killed”. Barrett was surrounded in the hearing room by photos of ill individuals who could perish without national health care. It made Barrett look like some judicial serial-killer. However, these were not her victims. Indeed, the entire premise was false. Senate Democrats were suggesting that the pending case of California v. Texas was just one vote shy of striking down the ACA. It left many of us watching in disbelief. While a district court struck down the whole act, an appellate court wanted to send it back to consider the elements of “severability.” The vast majority of experts believe that the striking down of one provision — the individual mandate provision — should not result in the loss of the entire act.

More importantly, a clear majority of the Supreme Court appears to believe that. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh both are expected to vote to uphold the rest of the act. Indeed, a Justice Barrett could well vote with them. What is clear is that it is extremely unlikely that the ACA is teetering on destruction. Numerically, the current head-counting means that it is as likely that a unanimous court would support severability as a five justice majority would strike down the whole act. None of that mattered, however, as Democratic committee members spun a conspiracy theory that Barrett’s nomination was all about supplying that needed fifth vote just before a Nov. 10 court hearing on the case. It was an empty sack that just laid there as Barrett explained this was a narrow question of severability and she has never ruled on the issue of severability.

“Abortions are about to become illegal in America”. Barrett is undeniably pro-life. She’s said so over and over. She also said she does not consider Roe v. Wade to be a “super precedent.” As such, the case is not inviolate and can be revisited. However, even if Barrett were to supply the fifth vote on the court to overturn Roe — which remains unlikely — it would not make abortion illegal. Indeed, former Vice President Joe Biden himself has explained why. He said recently that if Barrett helped overturn Roe, his “only response [would be] … [to] pass legislation making Roe the law of the land. That’s what I would do.” Put aside for the moment that forcing states to accept abortion, if it is no longer a constitutional right, could be challenging under the 10th Amendment.

The broader point is still valid: Such a decision would simply return the question to the states. And the majority of states likely would continue to guarantee the right to abortion as a legislative matter. In other words, Roe might end — but it would not end the right to choose, as a matter of state law. Ironically, Barrett is a huge defender of states’ rights and would likely defend pro-choice states in asserting such federalism powers.

Read more …

They are used to people taking their nonsense serious.

Fed Officials Call For Tougher Regulation To Prevent Asset Bubbles (R.)

Tougher U.S. financial regulation is needed to avoid the rise of excessive risk-taking and asset bubbles in the markets at a time when the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low, two senior Fed officials told the Financial Times in an article published on Saturday. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren told the newspaper that the Fed lacked sufficient tools to prevent companies and households from taking on “excessive leverage” and called for a rethink on issues related to U.S. financial stability. “If you want to follow a monetary policy … that applies low interest rates for a long time, you want robust financial supervisory authority in order to be able to restrict the amount of excessive risk-taking occurring at the same time,” the FT quoted him as saying.


“(Otherwise) you’re much more likely to get into a situation where the interest rates can be low for long but be counterproductive,” Rosengren said. Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said there was a need for stricter regulation to avert repeated interventions in the market by the Fed. “I don’t know what the best policy solution is, but I know we can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” he told the newspaper. “As soon as there’s a risk that hits, everybody flees and the Federal Reserve has to step in and bail out that market, and that’s crazy. And we need to take a hard look at that,” he said.

Read more …

Yes, it is serious.

Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)

Abstract. Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has disproportionately affected older individuals and those with underlying medical conditions. Research has focused on short-term outcomes in hospital, and single organ involvement. Consequently, impact of long COVID (persistent symptoms three months post infection) across multiple organs in low-risk individuals is yet to be assessed.

Methods: An ongoing prospective, longitudinal, two-centre, observational study was performed in individuals symptomatic after recovery from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Symptoms and organ function (heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, spleen) were assessed by standardised questionnaires (EQ-5D-5L, Dyspnoea-12), blood investigations and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, defining single and multi-organ impairment by consensus definitions.

Findings: Between April and September 2020, 201 individuals (mean age 44 (SD 11.0) years, 70% female, 87% white, 31% healthcare workers) completed assessments following SARS-CoV-2 infection (median 140, IQR 105-160 days after initial symptoms). The prevalence of pre-existing conditions (obesity: 20%, hypertension: 6%; diabetes: 2%; heart disease: 4%) was low, and only 18% of individuals had been hospitalised with COVID-19. Fatigue (98%), muscle aches (88%), breathlessness (87%), and headaches (83%) were the most frequently reported symptoms. Ongoing cardiorespiratory (92%) and gastrointestinal (73%) symptoms were common, and 42% of individuals had ten or more symptoms. There was evidence of mild organ impairment in heart (32%), lungs (33%), kidneys (12%), liver (10%), pancreas (17%), and spleen (6%). Single (66%) and multi-organ (25%) impairment was observed, and was significantly associated with risk of prior COVID-19 hospitalisation (p<0.05).

Interpretation: In a young, low-risk population with ongoing symptoms, almost 70% of individuals have impairment in one or more organs four months after initial symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are implications not only for burden of long COVID but also public health approaches which have assumed low risk in young people with no comorbidities.

Read more …

Be a bit nicer to Putin perhaps?

Halted Trials Raise New Safety Questions About ‘Rushed’ COVID19 Vaccines (ZH)

In the interest of “transparency”, Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourlas released a statement on Friday outlining the timeline for when its experimental COVID-19 vaccine might be ready for approval for regular, non-emergency use. Much to Trump’s chagrin, CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said the earlier the company expects to apply for an emergency-use approval from the FDA would be the third week of November, after the election has come and gone. The news capped off what was a busy week for vaccine news, which started Monday night with reports that Phase 3 trials for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine have been paused after a participant came down with an “unspecified” illness.

While JNJ executives insisted their vaccine candidate likely wasn’t the cause, they brought in investigators and are now working to get the trial going again as quickly as possible. If what happened with the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is any guide, it could be weeks before US regulators sign off on allowing the trial to resume. AstraZeneca-Oxford trial in the US has been paused for more than a month. Back in September, AstraZeneca briefly halted global studies after UK regulators investigated a pair of patients who came down with symptoms of a rare illness which scientists worried might be connected with the vaccine. Trials in the UK and elsewhere restarted days later, but in the US, regulators have refused to allow the trials to resume.

Already, the time lost by JNJ and AstraZeneca-Oxford has pushed them out of the lead in the race to apply for an emergency use authorization from the FDA. Vaccine candidates being developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have taken the lead. But as Bloomberg pointed out in a piece published Saturday morning, both the AZ and JNJ vaccines relied on the same technique: the so-called adenovirus vector which was also used by the Gameleya Institute’s vaccine (aka Sputnik 5) and at least one of the leading Chinese vaccines. Still, if these investigations determine a link between the illnesses and the vaccines, this could bolster public skepticism, something that surveys have shown is already alarmingly high.

And this year, with Covid-19 vaccines entering strongly into the politics of the hour, transparency and trust are key to fighting a virus that’s hit more than 39 million people globally and hamstrung economies. If concerns about side effects in experimental vaccines in trials using adenoviruses are validated, it could boost skepticism in the general public and raise questions for other drugmakers.

Read more …

“Gilead recently inked a $1 billion deal with the European Union for a six-month supply fo the drug.”

Allegedly, this happened after Gilead knew the study results, but before publication. They had a few days’ window.

Fauci’s ‘Standard Of Care’ COVID19 Treatment Doesn’t Work (JS)

A pharmaceutical giant’s antiviral medication, which has been frequently touted by Dr. Anthony Fauci as the “standard of care” for COVID-19 treatments, does not work whatsoever, according to the biggest and most comprehensive study to date on the super expensive drug. Gilead’s Remdesivir, which costs Americans over $3,000 per treatment course after private insurance, is a total dud, according to a World Health Organization study that tracked over 11,000 COVID-19 patients in 30 different countries. The study concluded that Remdesivir (and several other COVID-19 “treatments”) has no positive effects for COVID-19 patients whatsoever. In fact, there was no demonstrable difference between patients in the control group and the treatment group.

The New York Times summarized the results of the study: “In the end, no drug or combination reduced mortality, the chances that mechanical ventilation would be needed, or time spent in the hospital, compared with the patients without drug treatment,” Dr. Fauci is heavily invested in Remdesivir succeeding. Since 2014, he has dedicated massive taxpayer resources into studying and hyping Gilead’s product through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which he has led since 1984. Fauci’s NIAID both conducted and funded much of the development of Remdesivir. Over $40 million in taxpayer dollars used in the development of Remdesivir can be traced directly to grants delivered by Fauci’s agency. Additionally, the NIAID is currently sponsoring two separate, major clinical trials on the Gilead product.

In April, the Dr. Fauci chief touted Remdesivir as the best available product to combat COVID-19: “The data shows that Remdesivir has a clear cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. This is really quite important. It’s highly significant,” he said in an April press conference. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” Fauci added, describing the drug as the “standard of care” for COVID-19 patients. Fauci’s optimism was not backed by any particular evidence. The “successful” study that he was touting in April was funded by Gilead itself. And even that study showed a lack of success in treating COVID-19 patients. Still, with the backing of Fauci and others in the public health bureaucracy, Gilead secured a $1.2 billion deal with the U.S. government for 500,000 treatment courses. Additionally, Gilead recently inked a $1 billion deal with the European Union for a six-month supply fo the drug.

Read more …

“According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), most new cases of the disease are being traced to meetings between families and friends, religious gatherings, meat-processing plants, hospitals, nursing homes and other sources, the court explained.”

Berlin Court Overturns Restaurant Curfew (RT)

There is no evidence that keeping restaurants shut at night would significantly slow down Covid-19, so Berlin’s curfew order infringes on business freedoms, a court in the German capital has ruled. The Friday decision deals a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to the latest surge in coronavirus cases, under which all German federal states agreed earlier this week to enforce common social distancing guidelines. The Berlin administrative court sided with the owners of 11 restaurants, which petitioned for an emergency injunction to overturn an order that forced them to remain closed between 11pm and 6am. The measure came into force last Saturday, putting Berlin under curfew for the first time in seven decades.

Berlin authorities failed to prove that the measure was necessary to slow down the spread of Covid-19, the ruling said. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), most new cases of the disease are being traced to meetings between families and friends, religious gatherings, meat-processing plants, hospitals, nursing homes and other sources, the court explained. So, the curfew constituted a disproportionate infringement of business freedom. The court also rejected the idea that the curfew was necessary to enforce a ban on serving alcohol at night, which the restaurant owners didn’t challenge in their complaint. People should be presumed to be complying with the ban, it said. The ruling can be appealed to a higher court.

Earlier this week, Germany’s 16 federal states agreed on a set of measures meant to curb the ongoing surge in Covid-19 cases. They include harsher restrictions on gatherings, stricter mandates for wearing facemasks and curfews. Chancellor Merkel said she was not satisfied with the new guidelines because she believed they were not harsh enough “to avert disaster.”

Read more …

A treaty from 1666…

UK Fishing: Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire (YBL)

Somebody once said, when Britain left the EU we didn’t fall into a void but into something far worse. This was in respect of aviation and the thicket of international agreements which preceded the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA), but it applies equally to fishing and the common fisheries policy. Leaving the common fisheries policy, meant we actually fell into the 1964 London Convention on Fisheries, which gave 13 other European states the right to fish in British waters between six and 12 nautical miles from our coast. So, we had to withdraw from that convention, which we did by announcing in July 2017 that we intended to do so and DEFRA Secretary Michael Gove then gave the required two years notice.

This initiated a period of consultation with stakeholders, leading to a new fisheries bill that is about to drop anchor on Tuesday as it reaches the report stage in the House of Commons. However, the Belgium ambassador Willem van de Voorde, has put a dogfish among the prawns, so to speak, by raising the question of a treaty dating back to 1666 signed by King Charles II, which granted 50 Flemish fishermen from Bruges “eternal rights” to fish in English waters. This caused a bit of a flurry in British newspapers, with the Daily Express as usual suggesting that “desperate Brussels” were using it to try and settle the “Brexit fishing row.” But Belgian newspapers were reporting this back in 2017. NWS Flanders News quoted the then Flemish prime minister Geert Bourgeois suggesting a solution to the fishing problems was this 350-year-old treaty. Mr Bourgeois even produced a copy of it on television.

The treaty was discovered in an archive in 1963. Apparently, a Bruges alderman then “ventured out into British waters to test it out”. “He deliberately had himself arrested by the British hoping they would take him to court. However, this didn’t happen. Documents from the British archives later revealed that it was advised against taking the Belgian to court, because of fears concerning the 1666 Charter. They were afraid it would still be in force”, Bourgeois’ spokesperson explained afterwards. The spokesperson admitted the chances the 1666 Charter would still apply are small, but added: “It’s not completely impossible that it still grants Bruges fishermen certain rights”. It’s not clear how Gove intends to withdraw from that one. But no doubt if it gets to that stage, he will give it a try.

However humorous it might be, British fishermen are unlikely to be laughing at the guidance for UK fish exports to the EU, released in September by the UK government and updated again last week. It looks formidable to me. After 1 January 2021, UK fishermen will need to follow the same byzantine rules that are currently in place for exports of fish from non-EU countries. The guidance says they will need an export health certificate, except for direct landings of fresh fish in EU ports from UK-flagged fishing vessels, plus a catch certificate that needs to be validated and sent to the importer. They may also need direct landing documents, and a storage document if the product has been stored, and a processing statement if the product has been processed.

Read more …

MusicWasBetter

 

 

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.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
~ Mark Twain

 

 

This is majestic. Don’t miss.

Morgan Freeman. Black History Month. “How are we going to get rid of racism?” Stop talking about it.

 

 

Supercomputer virus spread

 

 

 

 

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

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle October 18 2020

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #64557

    Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1906   • Prince Andrew, The Oligarchs And A New Bombshell For Joe Biden (DM) • Twitter Won’t Unlock NYPost Account Un
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 18 2020]

    #64559
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Tim Pool covered the “Misinformation” article I took such umbrage with, but he had a different focus. His takeaway was the reporter being mystified that no one she met cared about headlines. The neither credited the stories, nor importantly even the subjects that the NY Twitterati wrote, obsessed over, cared about.

    Like Simpson’s “Principal Skinner” they then ask themselves: “Am I out of touch? Has been? No, I say! I’m still cool, it’s the kids that are wrong!”

    This was in reference to the 11+ (or was it 11,000?)-point lead Biden has. You know the one in EVERY newspaper, EVERY poll. …Oh and the one the Biden campaign said last night IS FAKE. Biden himself just said he’s not in the lead? Yes, so get out there and vote, people! To the Batcar, no time to lose!

    This came up because the early votes are in, and they are traditionally Democrat (let’s not ask), and these earlies are traditionally D+30. Okay, then the narrative is we have the Red Illusion that Trump won, then we riot, murder and secede like Mr. Podesta said. Nope. Michigan is in and it’s 30% DNC BUT 40% GOP (we didn’t open the envelopes, so technically we don’t know who they voted for). So in theory, Michigan is ALREADY lost, BEFORE the Red Wave. Go Whitmer!

    Worse for Podesta – and this is beyond the bad of failing to tie it up in courts past Jan 22 without RBG – WE MAY KNOW THE RESULTS ELECTION NIGHT. How? If everyone carefully mailed early, and the rest of the rolls show up in person, there are no outstanding ballots left to open. Or not enough to change the outcome. An outcome that in MI is like 300% more GOP voted than expected.

    Barrett does not consider “Roe v. Wade to be a “super precedent.”

    She is correct. In fact, such a thing may not (legally) exist. Although Row is important to our society and system, it’s a crap ruling. Virtually nonsensical. You know, like Dred Scot was a crap ruling that everybody knew wasn’t legal but they wanted it just made it up. ….And ACA…and…but let’s not go on all day. So we have a privacy issue, and that suddenly flips 200 years of law regarding … and this is legally, here: … murder cases? So you can murder someone because we’re not allowed to ask? Because: mailed contraception. C’mon. And this is a Federal-level issue and not State because…? Anytime they “suddenly realize” 200 years of tradition is legally reversed, get suspicious. Because there’s nothing new under the sun, it’s judicial activism. They had pregnancies in 1789, and they had pandemics too.

    But look at it the other way: suppose Roe drops, then what? Then it would go back to the states. The End. Wow, sounds terrible. Like 40 states would still allow it, and there’s a nationwide superhighway system. NJ and MA can get what they want, but they’d have to leave Alabama alone, and who wants that? End of the world for everyone, I’m sure. But then how will they harangue people to vote? We’d have to make up something else to get the peasants to fight and this was working so well. My feeling is nobody knows the law, never thought or read a second, and don’t care because they love fighting and ignorance more than strategy and peace. Although contentious, if you drilled down to the details 95% of people who think about it would have certain allowances and certain exceptions; that is: they’re not zealots. It’s just a matter of which exact permissions and denials would be legal. So without a media and parties working feverishly to keep us apart, we’d come to an acceptable compromise, where nobody gets what they want and they can all be equally unhappy.

    UK Fishing: Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire (YBL)”

    There is no treaty. You enforce it with gunboats. This “We do it with cannons and you back down to your level” has been done before. Like in 1666, and every day since. That’s the nature of mankind and always has been. We do talk and cooperate mostly, but at the end, behind it all, there we are. Do you think Germany will invade England and start a nuclear war over flounder? With what army and navy? It will get worked out and that’s even IF BoJo just said, “My kids took a crayon and drew purple squiggles on this map we’re enforcing: don’t fish here.” That’s what they did in Iraq. And Syria, just last year. Everyone loved it then. Why is Bristol different?

    And if I were Flanders, I would agree with the British Navy. The earth is covered with such situations. From Islands in Vancouver to the Irish border, to the Sakhalin Islands. The Statue of Liberty is standing on one. Read a book. It’s entertaining but irrelevant.

    #64560
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    I heard about the Biden campaign’s gloomy internal polling numbers. It’s not exactly shocking that voters aren’t responding well to the Democrats running the even-more-senile-than-Trump guy with a running mate (who is likely to be the real effective president at some point) who is an overambitious cop whom nobody likes.

    #64563
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ V. Arnold
    Stay safe. Don’t step into anything soft.
    ——-
    If you are interested in reading history from a different point of view.

    Before the Bidens ‘Did’ Ukraine, There Was Iraq – and Serbia


    Before the Bidens ‘Did’ Ukraine, There Was Iraq – and Serbia
    by
    James George Jatras
    Today many people remember Iraq, some have a clue about Ukraine. But Serbia, which preceded them, is off the radar screen of most Americans.
    —–
    • Fauci’s ‘Standard Of Care’ COVID19 Treatment Doesn’t Work (JS)

    Wrong …. Check out where all those billions of $ ended up.

    It appears that C19 has diverted more money than all previous wars.

    For example,
    1. the Billions that all the airlines, hotel, restaurant etc., are claiming to have lost.
    2. The billions of $ that I/we did not spend and must still be in our bank accounts
    3. The trillions that the gov. spent on C19
    —–
    In Canada B.C. they are having early voting and mail in voting. The procedures that I saw, experienced, would make it impossible for anyone to do massive fraud and get away with it.
    I don’t think that the various USA voting procedures would be any different.
    —–
    Ohh! Good!
    TAE has something else to read
    FBI = Disinformation
    WHY, WHO, WHERE, WHEN?
    (shift the responsibility for something to someone else.)

    #64564
    Bill7
    Participant

    The Dems half of the duopoly’s job (for their donor class, not the people) is to lose the election,
    then blame the so-called “deplorables” for the loss (“stupid voters”!), then start a Civil War (see
    “Antifa”™ and BLM™) over a result that the Donor Class actually wants.

    Why on earth else would they be running Harris-Biden?

    -Bill7

    #64566
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    @Bill7: There’s certainly a lot of reason to think that. For one thing, there’s the Democratic Party’s surrogates and advocates consistently sending out the message on the Internet that “we’re absolutely entitled to your vote no matter what, so fork over, peons!” How is that going to resonate with voters who are the least bit undecided? And for another thing, there’s the fact that Trump volunteers are going around knocking on doors to talk to voters, while the Democratic Party apparatus is doing…what, exactly?

    But if this is what the donor class wants, why foment the civil unrest over it? I guess the Occam’s Razor answer to that question is so that the establishment can implement martial law. They certainly have been busy getting their snazzy, new surveillance-state apparatus all fired up and ready to go, so I’m sure they’re horny to start using it in an even bigger way.

    #64567
    Bill7
    Participant

    Nothing to add to your comment Mister Roboto, except that I concur. They haven’t been miltarizing the cops since the Bubba C
    years for nothing..

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.