Nov 122020
 


Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910

 

Divisive Pentagon Hire May Rush Troop Withdrawals Before Trump’s Exit (Axios)
Maricopa County GOP Chair Resigns Following Failure to Check Voting Machines
Russia Accused Of Undermining US By Not Recognizing Its Election Results (RT)
Nevada Whistleblower Describes Biden Van Vote Factory In Sworn Affidavit (WE)
Russian COVID19 Vaccine Sputnik V 92% Effective, No Serious Side Effects (RT)
Rural Hospitals Can’t Afford Ultra-Cold Freezers To Store COVID Vaccine (STAT)
Pfizer CEO Sold Millions In Stock On Same Day Of Vaccine Reveal (NYP)
Surge In Covid Cases Tests Sweden’s Go-it-alone Approach (FT)
Banks Around World In Joint Pledge On ‘Green Recovery’ After Covid (G.)
Gas Denied ‘Transition’ Fuel Status In Draft EU Green Finance Rules (EurActiv)
“Own Nothing and Be Happy”: The Great Reset’s Vision of the Future (OffG)
Left-Wing Jewish Labour Member Under Investigation For Antisemitism (LE)
School Bans Parents From Throwing Children Over 6ft Fence When Late (DM)

 

 

Joe promised not to declare victory until the election results were independently certified. And then, this being Joe, he forgot.

 

 

Yeah, we can’t have troop withdrawals. Let’s start by labeling him “divisive”. And then we heap praise on Biden’s prospective chief of staff Ronald Klain, who’s not at all divisive (Ronald Klain was Joe Biden’s White House chief of staff from 2009-2011):

Divisive Pentagon Hire May Rush Troop Withdrawals Before Trump’s Exit (Axios)

President Trump’s newly installed acting Pentagon chief is bringing on a senior adviser in a sign the administration wants to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East before the end of his presidency in January, three people familiar with the move told Axios. A senior administration official says a wave of firings at the Pentagon and the hiring of Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor is in part a settling of Trump’s personal scores — but senior White House officials also have made clear “they want them more publicly to talk about getting out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.” Trump, who ran in 2016 on a promise to bring U.S. troops home, is frustrated with the slow pace of withdrawing troops from the Middle East, another senior administration official said.

The president has told advisers on numerous occasions he wants troops home from Afghanistan by Christmas. In a 2019 interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Macgregor said he would advise the president to get out of Afghanistan “as soon as possible,” including removing the U.S. embassy from Kabul, and that talking to the Taliban was unnecessary. Macgregor also said the U.S. needs to pull its troops out of Syria immediately and America had no national interest there. He said, “We need to listen very carefully to the Iranians … find out what their interests are and look for areas where we can cooperate” and that the U.S. needs to “turn the operational control of the [Korean] Peninsula militarily over to President Moon and the Koreans.”

The Pentagon, in a statement to Axios, confirmed Macgregor has been hired as a senior adviser to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. It said Macgregor’s “decades of military experience will be used to assist in the continued implementation of the President’s national security priorities.” Since Joe Biden became president-elect, Trump has refused to concede the race — but he’s also moved rapidly this week to fire top officials in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership. That includes Mark Esper, as well as the former Defense secretary’s chief of staff and other high-level officials in charge of intelligence and policy. He is replacing them with those perceived as loyal to him.

Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is a Trump loyalist and regular Fox News commentator. He’s known for his questioning of conventional Army leadership and decision-making, including strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his extreme rhetoric about Muslims and undocumented immigrants. He was passed over earlier this year for the Pentagon’s top policy job amid reports Esper had concerns about him.

Tucker MacGregor Afghanistan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1326630978824007681

MacGregor Tucker May 1 2018

MacGregor Tucker Mexico Nov 6 2019
https://twitter.com/i/status/1192276635426279424

Read more …

Dominion.

Maricopa County GOP Chair Resigns Following Failure to Check Voting Machines

Rae Chornenky, the Maricopa County GOP Chair, has been forced to resign following her failure to sign the Certificate of Accuracy for the voting machines. Maricopa County in Arizona, which contains the state capitol Phoenix, has been at the center of attention following the election, being judged as crucial to President Trump’s chances of winning the state. At the time of writing, Arizona is still counting its votes, and a winner has not been declared by most media organizations, bar Fox and the AP. A number of allegations of voter irregularities have also arisen in Arizona. However, the Certificate of Accuracy, that should be signed by representatives of both parties, ensuring no fraud can occur, was not signed by any Republican.

Maricopa County GOP Chairman Rae Chornenky failed to show up to verify the document, leaving only Democrats and representatives from the Secretary of State to sign it. Arizona State Representative, and now State Senator-elect, Kelly Townsend, called on Chornenky to resign, along with her 1st Vice Chair Linda Brickman. “This is 100% unacceptable and has contributed to the collapse of Arizona voter confidence,” Townsend tweeted. As of Wednesday, Chornenky stepped down as Maricopa County GOP Chair. “I wish to thank Rae Chornenky for doing the right thing,” Townsend tweeted. “I place my full support behind the wishes/decisions of the full membership of the MCRC on how they decide to move forward.”

Before a photograph of the document had been released, Chornenky appeared to deny the claims on Twitter on Monday. “I’ll resign when you sprout even an ounce of integrity and obtain the intelligence to check your facts before spreading filth about a person whom you don’t know on a topic about which you have not the slightest clue,” Chornenky tweeted. The voting machines, which Chornenky failed to verify, have come under scrutiny themselves. Dominion, the company behind the machines used in Arizona and other states, not only have ties to the Clinton Global Initiative, but also continue to sell decade-old machines that have “known vulnerabilites” that make them susceptible to hacking.

Giuliani Dominion

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“The entire media coverage of Russia’s lack of congratulations is indeed intended to do the exact opposite – to heighten the legitimacy of Biden as the opponent of authoritarians.”

Russia Accused Of Undermining US By Not Recognizing Its Election Results (RT)

The same people who spent four years accusing Russia of interfering in America’s internal affairs are now attacking Moscow for not meddling. It’s another curious case of something previously described as ‘Russophrenia’. Russia has explained that it will hold off congratulations to Biden until the US election has been officially called, or his rival Donald Trump concedes. You may think this is a reasonable approach to demonstrate respect for the democratic process amid a contested election. But you would be wrong according to the Western mainstream media, which explains this is an effort by authoritarian leaders to keep their man in Washington. It is also apparently evidence of Moscow supposedly still supporting Trump and Putin fearing that the morally righteous Biden will hold the evil Russians accountable yet again.

No matter that the US State Department, long America’s primary ‘democracy promotion’ vehicle, has reminded foreign leaders that the count has yet to be completed. The narrative of Russiagaters in the media immediately collapses once you factor in how China and Mexico have also indicated they will wait for the official election results. Trump started a trade war and a Cold War against China and his principal foreign policy objective has been to curb the rise of China. [..] What is Moscow achieving by not recognizing Biden? After four years of checking under the bed for Russians, these accusations only need to rest on innuendos, and they collapse once articulated. One can make a reasonable argument that Russia would benefit from a divided America.

Much like the West attempting to sow divisions within Russia, it could be beneficial for Moscow to have divisions in an America that casts Russia as the principal enemy that must be confronted. However, how do delayed congratulations sow divisions in the US? The failure to obtain Russia’s blessing and support is presented by the liberal political-media class as a badge of honor that proves the anti-Russian credentials of Biden. The Republicans are for the same reason not using Russia’s delayed congratulations to advance the legitimacy of their efforts to investigate alleged election fraud. The entire media coverage of Russia’s lack of congratulations is indeed intended to do the exact opposite – to heighten the legitimacy of Biden as the opponent of authoritarians.

Read more …

A sworn affidavit is no joke.

Nevada Whistleblower Describes Biden Van Vote Factory In Sworn Affidavit (WE)

A second sworn affidavit from a whistleblower who was an election worker in Clark County, Nevada, claims mail-in ballots were improperly filled out in a Biden-Harris van outside a polling place. A redacted copy of the affidavit signed on Nov. 8 and obtained by the Washington Examiner puts weight behind some of the claims first detailed by American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp, who is helping lead the charge for the president’s legal efforts in Nevada. In a Sunday press conference, Schlapp said that an election worker saw a van “marked Biden-Harris” with open ballots inside.

The whistleblower, who worked as a poll worker from Oct. 17-30, complained about a Biden-Harris bus or van that was often stationed outside the polling place that would often have “speakers, dancers, music and other festivities going on” and whose organizers had to be told “several times a day” to “stay 100 feet from the polling location.” He also said that voters without proper identification were permitted to cast provisional ballots. The biggest shock claim, though, dealt with improperly filled out ballots in the van belonging to supporters of presumptive President-elect Joe Biden, whom he saw while on a lunch break walk on Oct. 28 or 29.

“I personally witnessed two people handing multiple unopened mail in ballot envelopes to two other people who then opened and filled out the ballots against the side of the Biden/Harris van,” the affidavit said. “The same two people who marked the ballots then put the marked ballots in official pink and white envelopes. These people were not poll workers.” he affidavit continued: “By my final walking lap, there were 5 or 6 additional people who formed a human wall, which moved as I walked by, apparently in an attempt to block my view of the four people who were opening envelopes, marking ballots, and placing those ballots in the pink and white return envelopes.”

The whistleblower recalled reporting the incident to a supervisor, who then called the Clark County Elections Office, to no avail. “Someone there told her nothing could be done about the ballots or envelopes being handled outside at the Biden/Harris area,” the whistleblower said in the affidavit. The elections office added that “ballot harvesting is legal in Nevada,” according to the affidavit, but that practice is not what the whistleblower detailed.

Tucker Dead people vote

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“The researchers say six months will be necessary to make sure that participants of the study do not develop dangerous side effects.”

So much for Russia rushing its vaccine.

Russian COVID19 Vaccine Sputnik V 92% Effective, No Serious Side Effects (RT)

The developers of Russia’s pioneering Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine say their formula appears to show 92 percent efficacy and no serious side effects, based on the preliminary results of a large-scale Phase III clinical trial. The vaccine is being tested in a large-scale double-blind survey involving 40,000 volunteers. Preliminary results based on the observation of 16,000 participants indicate that the drug does a good job of protecting people from the coronavirus, the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology said on Wednesday. According to the statement, there were 20 confirmed Covid-19 cases among the group, which consisted of volunteers who were injected either with the vaccine or a placebo.

The effectiveness of Sputnik V is estimated at 92 percent, meaning it boosts the immune system enough to fend off the coronavirus in just over nine out of ten people. The subjects of the Phase III testing were not the only ones to receive the jab. Russia registered the vaccine in August after it was proven safe in a smaller Phase II survey and made it available to volunteers from high-risk groups, like doctors in Covid-19 wards. The developers observed 10,000 of those people and now say the results showed a similar efficacy rate of over 90 percent. The report said that, as of Wednesday, “no unexpected adverse events were identified as part of the research.” Some of the vaccinated people reported flu-like symptoms such as fever, fatigue and headache, or pain at the injection site, but those were all short-term.

The Gamaleya Institute promised to publish a report on its findings in a world-leading medical journal after an evaluation and to provide access to a full clinical trial report once the tests are fully complete. The researchers say six months will be necessary to make sure that participants of the study do not develop dangerous side effects. The vaccine is based on two types of human adenoviral vector, with two shots administered three weeks apart.

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Let alone the third world.

Rural Hospitals Can’t Afford Ultra-Cold Freezers To Store COVID Vaccine (STAT)

Large urban hospitals across the U.S. are rushing to buy expensive ultra-cold freezers to store what’s likely to be the first approved Covid-19 vaccine. But most rural hospitals can’t afford these high-end units, meaning health workers and residents in those communities may have difficulty getting the shots. The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech, seems to provide 90% immunity according to early data released on Monday. But there’s a catch: The vaccine has to be stored at -70 degrees Celsius. Typical freezers don’t get that cold, making distribution of this vaccine a logistical nightmare.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised state health departments against purchasing ultra-cold freezers — which cost $10,000 to $15,000 each — saying other vaccines with less demanding storage requirements will be available soon. Hospitals with money to spare are flouting this guidance. Four major health care systems, from North Carolina to Ohio, North Dakota, and California, told STAT they had bought additional ultra-cold freezers, while Jefferson Health in Philadelphia said it has leased five units.

About 20% of the hospitals that work with Vizient, one of the largest group purchasers for U.S. hospitals, have bought -80 C freezers, said Azra Behlim, its senior director of pharmacy sourcing and program services. Vizient works with 60% of hospitals nationwide, suggesting that more than 10% of hospitals have shelled out for their own freezers. She couldn’t provide a breakdown, but another major group purchasing organization, Premier, said most of its clients buying ultra-cold freezers were academic medical centers.

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He must have had very little confidence in the vaccine.

Pfizer CEO Sold Millions In Stock On Same Day Of Vaccine Reveal (NYP)

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla cashed in on his company’s coronavirus vaccine breakthrough. The executive sold more than $5.5 million worth of Pfizer stock on Monday — the same day the drugmaker said its experimental COVID-19 shot was more than 90 percent effective, records show. The groundbreaking development sent Pfizer’s share price surging as high as $41.99 that day, its highest level in more than a year. Bourla dumped more than 132,000 shares for $41.94 apiece, just five cents shy of that peak, according to a Tuesday securities filing. Those shares amounted to more than 60 percent of Bourla’s Pfizer stock holdings, the filing shows. He still owns 78,273 shares directly plus another 3,539 that are held indirectly.


The filing says the sale had been arranged in advance under a so-called Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows corporate executives to make predetermined stock transactions in compliance with insider trading laws. Bourla adopted the trading plan in August of this year, according to the document. Bourla — who got more than $15 million in total direct compensation from Pfizer last year, records show — wasn’t the only Pfizer honcho to make a well-timed trade on Monday. Sally Susman, the Manhattan-based company’s executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer, dumped more than 43,000 shares to the tune of about $1.8 million, according to another securities filing. The sale was similarly made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan Susman adopted in November 2019, the filing says.

Read more …

Myth. Boom.

Surge In Covid Cases Tests Sweden’s Go-it-alone Approach (FT)

Do not judge Sweden until the autumn. That was the message from its state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in May and through the summer as he argued that Sweden’s initial high death toll from Covid-19 would be followed in the second wave by “a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low”. Now the autumn is here, and hospitalisations from Covid-19 are currently rising faster in Sweden than in any other country in Europe, while in Stockholm — the centre for both the first and second waves in the country — one in every five tests is positive, suggesting the virus is even more widespread than official figures suggest. “So far Sweden’s strategy has proven to be a dramatic failure,” said Lena Einhorn, a Swedish virologist and prominent critic of its strategy.

“Four days ago we had eight times higher cases per capita than Finland and three and a half times more than Norway. They were supposed to have it worse off than us in the autumn because we were going to have immunity.” Even Sweden’s public health agency admits its earlier prediction that the country’s Nordic neighbours such as Finland and Norway would suffer more in the autumn appears wrong. Sweden is currently faring worse than Denmark, Finland and Norway on cases, hospitalisations and deaths relative to the size of their population. “We also see that many other countries in Europe that had a big effect during the spring that had lockdowns and now again have lockdowns also see a big increase now.


So it seems to follow this pattern that if you had a lot of cases during the spring you also see a lot of cases now,” Sara Byfors, a specialist at the health agency, said in response to a question from the Financial Times. She added: “We don’t know why this is.” Mr Tegnell himself told the FT’s Global Boardroom event on Wednesday that it was “a big mystery” who had immunity and who did not. But he insisted Covid-19 was a “long-term haul” and that having a sustainable strategy that could work for many months or even years was the most important thing. Sweden is persisting with its strategy of standing out from other European countries by not ordering a formal lockdown. Instead, the public health agency issues recommendations on social distancing, hand hygiene, and working from home. It is the only European country not to compel people to wear face masks outside hospitals.

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But of course. Want to save the planet? Ask the banks.

Banks Around World In Joint Pledge On ‘Green Recovery’ After Covid (G.)

The world’s publicly financed development banks have pledged to tie together their efforts to rescue the global economy from the Covid-19 crisis and the climate emergency, using their financial muscle to assist a green recovery for poor countries. But the banks stopped short of pledging an end to fossil fuel finance, and did not set out firm targets for how much funding they would devote to a green recovery in a declaration signed on Thursday by 450 development banks worldwide. Poverty and climate campaigners said publicly funded banks and rich country governments needed to do much more to address the shortfall in finance to poor countries to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the ravages of climate breakdown.

A report by the OECD group found that rich countries provided about $79bn in climate finance in 2018, an increase of about 11% on the previous year. However, the annual growth rate has halved: in 2016 climate finance was $59bn, which grew by 22% to $71bn in 2017. The total is also still well short of the target of $100bn a year of climate finance for developing countries from 2020, agreed under the UN more than a decade ago. The $100bn pledge is one of the cornerstones of the UN climate talks, as poor countries have agreed to curb their greenhouse gas emissions in return for receiving such help. The OECD also found that climate finance from private-sector sources was failing to grow at the levels needed to reach the $100bn target.

Developing countries received, in 2018, about $14.6bn in private-sector investment in climate-related activities, from green technology to increasing resilience to storms and floods. This figure was scarcely changed from the previous year, though was an increase of about $4.5bn from 2016. The average annual increase from 2016-2018 was $2.2bn. There are also wide disparities in how the investment is distributed. According to the report, only about 14% of climate finance is going to the world’s least developed countries, and only about 2% is going to the “small island developing states”, which are in danger of inundation from storms and sea level rises.

Read more …

How to power a complex society.

Gas Denied ‘Transition’ Fuel Status In Draft EU Green Finance Rules (EurActiv)

Power plants fuelled by natural gas will not be classed as “sustainable” or “transition” investments in Europe unless they meet emission limits which are so low that none are currently able to comply, according to draft EU rules seen by EURACTIV. The new standards will be tabled in the coming weeks under the EU’s sustainable finance taxonomy, which determines what type of investments make a substantial contribution to the EU’s fight against climate change. Failing to obtain the EU’s green label could deprive those power plants of billions of euros in funding as private investors seek shelter in investments seen as climate-friendly. To qualify as a “sustainable” investment, gas power plants must not emit more than 100 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour, according to the draft rules, seen by EURACTIV.

But the 100g CO2 limit would also prevent gas plants from being labelled as a “transition” technology on the way to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the industry, this would hamper Poland’s efforts to replace its ageing fleet of polluting coal power stations with cleaner gas plants, which emit on average half the amount of CO2. Combined cycles gas plants “are currently at 350-300g today which means investors in countries like Poland may not be able to consider CCGT investments as a transition activity,” said James Watson, secretary-general of trade association Eurogas. “We fully expect natural gas to be classed as a ‘transition’ activity,” he said. “But the 100g threshold will unfortunately not allow this,” he told EURACTIV.

Environmentalists, for their part, hailed the draft EU rules for shutting the door to fossil gas investments being labelled “green”. “The gas lobby has had its core request conclusively rejected,” said Rebecca Vaughan, an analyst tracking industry lobbying for InfluenceMap cited by Reuters. In December last year, the European Investment Bank (EIB) decided to stop all unabated fossil project financing from end-2021, a move welcomed by green activists. “That’s the world we’re in now: fossil gas is not sustainable,” said Dave Jones from Ember, an independent climate think-tank focusing on the global electricity transition. “It’s perhaps disappointing even that the taxonomy didn’t set zero as the threshold,” Jones told EURACTIV.

Read more …

Dystopia 2.0.

“Own Nothing and Be Happy”: The Great Reset’s Vision of the Future (OffG)

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting at the end of January in Davos, Switzerland, brings together international business and political leaders, economists and other high-profile individuals to discuss global issues. Driven by the vision of its influential CEO Klaus Schwab, the WEF is the main driving force for the dystopian ‘great reset’, a tectonic shift that intends to change how we live, work and interact with each other. The great reset entails a transformation of society resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceuticals corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

Using COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions to push through this transformation, the great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which older enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or absorbed into monopolies, effectively shutting down huge sections of the pre-COVID economy. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs will be carried out by AI-driven machines. A happy smiling face is depicted while a drone delivers a product to a household, no doubt ordered online and packaged by a robot in a giant Amazon warehouse: ‘no humans were involved in manufacturing, packaging or delivering this product’; rest assured, it is virus- and bacteria-free – because even in 2030, they will need to keep the fear narrative alive and well to maintain full-spectrum dominance over the population.

The jobless (and there will be many) could be placed on some kind of universal basic income and have their debts (indebtedness and bankruptcy on a massive scale is the deliberate result of lockdowns and restrictions) written off in return for handing their assets to the state or more precisely the financial institutions helping to drive this great reset. The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘saving the planet’. Of course, the tiny elite who rolled out this great reset will own everything.

Read more …

Jeremy Corbyn could have been Jewish himself, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Left-Wing Jewish Labour Member Under Investigation For Antisemitism (LE)

The Labour Party is understood to be investigating comments from a Wirral councillor which followed a report into how antisemitism was handled. Cllr Jo Bird, who represents Bromborough, spoke in a video published last week which discussed a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into anti-semitism within the Labour Party. The damning EHRC report detailed “specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political interference”, but also noted “a lack of leadership within the Labour Party on these issues”, which it said was “hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism”. The EHRC “uncovered serious failings” in the way complaints were handled, until at least 2018, during which Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader.

Reacting to the report at the end of last month, Mr Corbyn said Jewish Labour members were right to expect the party to deal with anti-semitism “and I regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should.” But he added: “The scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party”. He has since been suspended from the party over his reaction to the report. Cllr Bird, who is Jewish, responded to the report in the video, stating: “In Jeremy’s case, the evidence confirms what the twice elected leader of the Labour Party said, ‘One anti-semite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons’. “The [EHRC’s report] also agrees with our human right to say this [in page 27].

The Labour leadership have commented publicly on the EHRC report and an individual case. If they can do it, then so can we! “Jeremy Corbyn should be reinstated, without further ado.” She added: “I’m speaking in a personal capacity. I am a Jewish woman. My Jewish great grandparents fled fascism in Europe and my grandad’s cousins perished in the Holocaust. “I have experienced warmth and welcome at almost all levels of the Labour party. 46,000 members voted for me in the NEC (National Executive Committee, Labour’s ruling body) by-elections earlier this year. Thank you very much!”

Read more …

Desperate times.

School Bans Parents From Throwing Children Over 6ft Fence When Late (DM)

A school in France has banned parents from throwing their children over its 6ft fence when they’re running late. Trillade primary school in Avignon, southern France, put up ‘no throwing’ signs outside the school entrance depicting an adult throwing a child. It comes after parents running late reportedly resorted to throwing their children over the fence after missing the 8.30am deadline. The notices include instructions to late parents to come back at 10am or 3pm when the gates are reopened. The school’s head teacher, Sanaa Meziane, said she’d had enough of ‘irresponsible’ parents.


‘Parents arriving after the bell were literally throwing their kids,’ she told The Times, adding that she believed it was only a matter of time before a child was injured. Following recent terror attacks in France, security measures at many schools in the country has been ramped up. Teachers in many schools are not allowed to leave classrooms once the gates are locked.


Trillade primary school in Avignon, southern France, put up ‘no throwing’ signs outside the school entrance depicting an adult throwing a child

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 12 2020

Viewing 24 posts - 1 through 24 (of 24 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #65471

    Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910   • Divisive Pentagon Hire May Rush Troop Withdrawals Before Trump’s Exit (Axios) • Maricopa County GOP Chair Resigns Fo
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 12 2020]

    #65475
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Did anyone here ever get a chance to read Nefarious objectives by dimtri orlov? Its behind a paywall and i’m curious what the entire gist was.

    #65477
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Suppose you were one of the evil geniuses who run the global economy. Of course, you would want to continue running it in a stable, secure, profitable manner in spite of any problems that might crop up now and again. You would want to solve these problems swiftly and efficiently without drawing any undue attention to yourself and your evil ways. What, then, would you currently see as the major problems crying out for a swift, preemptive solution, and how should you address them?

    First, you’d note that there is a major problem developing with the world’s energy supply. This has been endlessly predicted since the mid-1990s, but various technological advancements and geopolitical maneuverings have pushed the final crisis off by two decades. But now the final crisis is getting closer and closer. New resource discoveries have fallen so far behind production that there is no hope of ever catching up. The last great hope for the US and the world, which was fracking, is now failing, having never made much of a profit. Most of the companies involved have either gone bankrupt or are about to. Renewables, in the form of electricity from wind and solar, have proven to be too expensive and disruptive for electric grids because of their intermittency coupled with the impracticality of storing large amounts of electricity. Geopolitical gambits, such as trying to topple Venezuela’s government and steal its oil, or to sanction Russia into behaving like a gas station with its economy in shreds, have all failed. Energy returned on energy invested—a difficult to calculate but ultimately decisive measure of the feasibility of any energy venture—is continuing to decline.

    Being an evil genius rather than just some ignorant amateur armchair pilot, you would be fully cognizant of the fact that failure to do something to balance fossil fuel energy supply against demand would cause global economic collapse. Since the advent of coal-based industrialization, economic growth has always been accompanied by a proportional increase in the use of fossil fuels. But further such increases now appear to be impossible. The existing global economy relies on credit to sustain production, and on continuous growth to remain creditworthy. In this scheme, the only alternative to continuous economic growth is economic collapse. And so you start looking for ways to rebalance the energy equation by shutting down parts of the global economy while allowing others to continue to grow. Since nobody is particularly eager to stampede toward the abattoir, your task is to find a way to mislead them into doing so voluntarily, supposedly for their own good.

    The next question to decide is which industrialized nations are ready for the meathook. You would observe that certain countries have been continuously living beyond their means. They have been endlessly borrowing money far in excess of their economic growth potential and their ability to ever repay the debts they are now taking on is precisely nil. Chief among them is the United States, which has been living on borrowed time for decades now and whose mammoth debt dwarfs all previous excesses combined. Coupled with the gradual loss of reserve currency status by the US dollar and the concomitant loss by the US of the exorbitant privilege of printing money as needed, this has placed the US at the epicenter of the inevitable financial collapse. You would interpret the REPO panic of August 2019, when interest on overnight loans that used US federal debt as collateral spiked to 10%, as a crack in the carefully maintained Potemkin village façade of the US financial system.

    Turning attention to the fiscal situation in the US, you’d notice that the US is no longer able to finance its ever-growing budget deficits by borrowing from abroad because foreigners who are now net sellers of US debt instruments. You are shocked to discover that the US government is now borrowing close to half of what it spends, accumulating short-term debt twice as fast as it could possibly hope to repay it, and nonchalantly planning to roll it over into more short-term debt while borrowing even more in the years to come. An image comes to you of a particularly bullheaded bull standing in the middle of railroad tracks and attempting to stare down an oncoming train.

    Being a financial genius, you know all there is to know about pyramid schemes, and you readily identify this state of affairs as a pure pyramid scheme. Since pyramid schemes all fail, and since they tend to do so more or less instantaneously, you start looking for a way to front-run its collapse in order to maintain control of the situation. Your main short-term objective would be to avoid a worldwide panic by placing the global economy into something like a medically induced coma, feeding it an intravenous drip of free money. This pause would give you an opportunity to make some necessary changes, some of them cosmetic, some quite dramatic.”

    #65478
    zerosum
    Participant

    Don’t lose battle field superiority.
    Send the AI machines.
    Bring the troops home.

    #65479
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    If it is true that the PTB are planning for a reset, making covid financial support contingent on massive neoliberal changes, it would seem that any country, such as Sweden, that decides not to follow the “lockdown everything hard and often” approach would represent a serious threat to this agenda.

    #65482
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ Mr. House
    Its coming.
    We will see the many ways of of controlling the supply of energy, the distribution, and reduction of the demand to the essential, critical elites that are essential to the survival of elites.
    One of the effects of the lockdowns is to restrict the travel of the rif-raf and the controlling of “essential travel”.

    #65483
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “any country, such as Sweden, that decides not to follow the “lockdown everything hard and often” approach would represent a serious threat to this agenda. ”

    Well that would explain all the bad press they’ve been getting since they bucked the trend.

    #65484
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Yes, don’t you know Peace is divisive? It’s War that really brings us together. See? So War ≠ Peace – that would be silly. No. But War = Good and Peace = Bad. Obviously.
    This is how you know that Biden/Obama, with 5 new wars and dropped so many bombs on brown people they ran out of bombs, is “Good”, and Cheeto, who wants to stop wars, participating in 3 major peace agreements, is “Bad.”

    “Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is a Trump loyalist”

    I get a kick of them saying this. So Trump was supposed to appoint a DISLOYALIST to the new posts? A traitor or two, maybe an insubordinate? What is meant by “he’s promoting people who are loyal to him”? Check me on this, but I think appointing people who agree with your vision and will obey their bosses’ orders is really, really normal.

    The Green Horseman of the Apocalypse, to shut off all Carbon, squeeze down all human work like food that keeps them alive, oh and note now Green = Covid. Huh? Sounds a lot like you were planning this for Global Warming, then that failed and did it for “Climate Change” then that failed and you tried a World War in Syria and Iran and that failed, then tried to release something dangerous and that failed, then blamed something close to the common cold, and … drum roll… THAT’S why we need Green New Deal Insider-owned, untracked Carbon Credits, deadly worldwide forced austerity and a total economic reset under worldwide martial law authoritative Socialism. ‘Cause “Covid”! Or ‘cause “Racism”. Yes, the offical BLM solution to Racism is: government control of the means of production, aka Socialism. Equal logic. That is to say: none at all.

    “You’ll get nothing and like it!!!” – Klaus. My God if I made that up, you’d think I was joking. Nope!

    And why? Any infinitely compounding fiat money system lives 40 years before you start needing $2T per quarter, then month, then day, then hour…

    “It’s not whether you win or lose, but where you place the blame.” And those poor, desperate, imprisoned citizens ain’t gonna blame themselves! That’s what our prostitutes the Universities and Media are for! Killin’ more folks. Always shuttin’ off power, cuttin’ off food, killin’ some folks.

    “A worker for Dominion in Michigan provided an affidavit to @RudyGiuliani stating 100k ballots for Biden were brought in to “catch up with Trump.”

    That is quite an allegation; I hope you have some evidence to back it up.

    “Nevada Whistleblower Describes Biden Van Vote Factory in Sworn Affidavit (WE)”

    Amazing because even parking the van by the polling station is a crime. You’re not allowed to have political signs or people anywhere near the voting booths. But with 100 affidavits in one state alone and 11,000 criminal complaints and rising, with 650,000 fake votes claimed in PA, no surprise.

    So…strategy time: Remember ol’ John Podesta’s TIP war game, the one published in USA Today? USA Today pride themselves on 6th grade reading level that’s apparently too advanced for reporters to read? Yeah.

    So if there is voter fraud, as Pompeo said yesterday, “the Constitution is very clear”. And it is. For one thing, there is a Voting DAY. Not month. 2nd, Bush v Gore 2001 says ballots must be treated equally. They are definitively not, that fact is easy to prove, which are most of Trump’s legal cases so far – not fraud.

    So Constitution says what? We have a Voting DAY, set by LEGISLATURE, not random judges. Then the vote lets Legislature choose Electors, who then meet in December and cast their votes, presumably the votes of the public, vs faithless electors, which the Democrats approved of and promoted back in ’16.

    So what happens if you have allegations of 650,000 cases of fraud in that state?

    The Legislature can do what they like. They could call another election: however, time is short. They recount or audit the election, which they are doing. They can hear as many cases presented to the court, which they are doing. And then? If the election is tainted and run out of time?

    The State Legislature can either send the Electors or NOT send them. They can either certify the election as proper and fair, or NOT certify it. If they won’t send electors, I believe it goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, who vote state-by-state.

    OR…stay with me here, they can say “We cannot certify this election as fair AND we can’t remedy or re-vote in time, AND therefore, as the elected representatives of the people of Pennsylvania, we ourselves will choose the State Electors.”

    So? So the Republican Legislatures of the exact states Podesta referred to – the ones with DNC Governors who would insure a 20-point Biden win using open fraud – can with total legality throw out any election with plausible problems.

    The more fraud, the more likely it is, the more NECESSARY it is, the more required, demanded, the more LEGAL it is, that they discard the vote. So the more windows the DNC boarded up, the more election monitors they ejected, the more certain it was Donald Trump would win via Legislative action. And that’s why he’s playing golf and not leaving.

    Podesta and several of the illiterate-media articles said there would therefore be TWO sets of conflicting Electors. Not so. The governors Clearly and Implicitly have NO jurisdiction whatsoever. They are entirely prohibited from sending electors any more than I could send them from my house.

    So let them fraud the election. The more the better. The bigger it is, the better I like it. Why? Because UNLESS EVERYBODY IS UNHAPPY NOTHING WILL BE FIXED. Like Bush v Gore wasn’t bad enough? Watching 120% of voters vote in Detroit in the 2016 recount wasn’t enough? And BOTH parties need to demand it, loudly.

    Democrats need to demand election reform, new machines, new safeguards, since at the moment RNC is on board.

    So again. Fraud? Thanks! That makes it just SO much easier.

    Well, it’s only dawning on them slowly, with in Vox and other Yale-educated illiterates that something is happening. They don’t know what, but something. You know, this would have been a lot easier if they’d read the Constitution once. It’s only four pages. Too hard: bored already.

    #65485
    zerosum
    Participant

    Vaccine question

    1. Do all or anyone who has had or tested positive, have antibodies for covid19 need to get the vaccine?
    2. In other words. Is the vaccine for people who did not get covid19?
    3. Would you need a test to see if you had gotten covid19 before getting the vaccine?

    #65486
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/12/murder-hornet-nest-us-washington/
    A nest filled with hundreds of ‘murder hornets’ was destroyed ‘just in the nick of time,’ officials say
    Teo Armus
    November 12, 2020

    Note:
    The protection needed to prevent getting a bite from a hornet.
    II would recommend the same protection for covid19

    #65487
    Mr. House
    Participant

    i ain’t getting no vaccine

    #65488
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    RE: Tucker – fraud exists and some dead people voted. You should be worried!

    I get why he is the “most watched news guy” on teevee. His formula for story telling is brilliant, including his style and strategic implementation of the topic. He draws you right in! What is left behind (intentionally) is the big picture perspective directed at quantifying the size and scope of the problem and the potential solutions for solving it.

    Yes, there is voter fraud – it exists and it happened. And yes dead people voted as there appears to be evidence that some of those ballots were returned (Tucker does not say how he verified this). Here is the part of the story he failed to trace/examine in detail: who filled out those ballots, what could the impact have been, what could/should be done about it and who is responsible for implementing the improvements?

    It is likely that the ballots of deceased folks were filled out by everyday people and not some organized fraud operation (unless it is discovered that all of these ballots went to the same address). So the problem is random. What is the scope?

    Well…it’s easy/essential to bump the Social Security data file of deceased individuals (and you know those SS guys are on top of that list) within the last X years for any given State up against their 2020 Voter Data file. You would quickly determine EXACTLY how many questionable ballots were mailed in this cycle for any given State. This is basic data management 101 – and I am certain that your Boards of Election/Voter Data managers already take this step. Hell, when my husband passed in 2016 the Social Security folks let the bank know within days and our house payment drawn on his bank account would not process; if banks can ID the dead so can the Registrar of Voters! My guess is that these numbers are very small. Given the complex nature of the “systems” in place and the level of co-ordination required to manage them effectively, I can see how a few dead souls would still be hanging out on the voter rolls.

    Tucker says that 41,000 people (in NV) were identified as not having voted and or did not update their registration in the last 10 years (so you are able to make queries and manage the data?!). Then the question becomes – should this group receive a ballot? Did they? I would NOT have mailed them one. The way to handle this group of potential voters would to have had the Registrar of Voters/BOE mail them an “update your voter information to receive a ballot” postcard in September. My guess is that this is done in some States but not all.

    So Tucker, why not use your mighty platform to solve problems and not just talk about them? That means you have a responsibility to offer up potential solutions. How about asking your viewers to weigh in? They are on the ground and have additional expertise and insight. The numbers indicate that many people (on both sides) believe the election was not fraud free – so why not harness this opportunity?

    Time for complete and total election reform! Time to develop national standards for maintaining Voter data that States are responsible to implement. If in-person voting is identified as more secure then make polling places convenient and available for everyone everywhere (no more standing in line for 4 hours). If there is to be “all in one day voting” then make it a paid, national holiday.

    #65489
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910”

    I would be very happy to make a spot for this artwork on my living room wall.

    “Joe promised not to declare victory until the election results were independently certified.”

    What Joe Biden wants or doesn’t want is irrelevant. His job was to be a figurehead, while other actors drove Trump from office. Joe is a fairly impotent man in himself, most of his power being drawn from the offices he has held. He is currently like a leaf in a hurricane, being driven by forces outside of his control.

    “Divisive Pentagon Hire May Rush Troop Withdrawals Before Trump’s Exit (Axios)”

    Not going to happen. All those military bases in the Middle East are needed to control the oil resources, while at the same time pester the hell out of surrounding nations that get in our way. You can’t “take the oil” unless you put a gun to their head. The petro-dollar system must be defended at all costs, no matter how many nations must be destroyed.

    All of the lower-level drama that seems to occupy the news cycle from day to day can only be understood by looking down from the high-level game of global hegemony. As Caitlin Johnstone cleverly pointed out, the average American is like a little child who is given a video game controller that is unplugged. He sees all the action on the screen and thinks he is playing, but it’s the big kids whose controllers are plugged in, and they are the ones controlling the game. He doesn’t realize he is being placated, that he is the victim of a lie, but is content nonetheless, happy in the illusion he is a participant.

    #65491
    John Day
    Participant

    Progress picture of banana patch on blog
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/counting-every-vote.html

    The Saker figures the Deep State will win again, but hedges that opinion:  Furthermore, as those familiar with Hegelian dialectics know, each action eventually results in a reaction and the notion that 70’000’000+ voters will simply accept what is self-evidently a coup against not only Trump, but also the US Constitution itself, is ridiculous. If anything, these people will now come to realize that while the US is facing no real foreign threats at all (except those it created itself), there is most definitely an internal threat, in the sense of the United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office, and that this reality gives them the right, and even duty, to “resist tyranny”.
      You have probably heard Joe Biden declaring that he wants to heal the wounds, restore unity, rule for all US Americans and the like. I don’t think that this is only empty political rhetoric, though that is part of it too. Mostly, I believe that the Dems are terrified because they know for a fact that they stole the election and this is why after four years of the most divisive and irresponsible rhetoric against Trump, “the racist system” and all the rest of the crap, they are now making a 180 (they are experts at that!) and pleading for calm, peace and unity.
    That ain’t going to happen.
      Finally, a word to those who like to say that there is no difference between the Dems and the GOP, that this is all a fake conflict: friends, you are both right and massively wrong. You are right when you say that the DNC and the RNC are like indistinguishable twins. But what you are missing are two crucial things:
      Factions inside one party can actually go after each other much harder than against their common enemies. I think of the SS vs the SA in Nazi Germany or the Trotskysts vs the Stalinists in the Soviet Union and during the Spanish Civil war.
    But, even more crucially, this is not a contest between the Democrats and the Republicans, it is a contest between a “rejected outsider” and both the DNC and RNC!http://thesaker.is/the-deep-state-vs-the-deep-country/

    How to be a less than human collection of living organs (Probably just more Russian propaganda, right?)Own Nothing and Be Happy”: The Great Reset’s Vision of the FutureWorld Economic Forum’s video tells us about the plans for humanity in the year 2030  With the link completely severed between food production, nature and culturally embedded beliefs that give meaning and expression to life, we will be left with the individual human who exists on lab-based food, who is reliant on income from the state and who is stripped of satisfying productive endeavour and genuine self-fulfilment.  
      Technocratic meddling has already destroyed or undermined cultural diversity, meaningful social connections and agrarian ecosystems that draw on centuries of traditional knowledge and are increasingly recognised as valid approaches to secure food security (for example, see Food Security and Traditional Knowledge in India in the Journal of South Asian Studies).
      The massive technocratic transformation currently envisaged regards humans as commodities to be controlled and monitored just like the lifeless technological drones and AI being promoted.
      But do not worry – you will be property-less and happy in your open prison of mass unemployment, state dependency, track and chip health passports, cashlessness, mass vaccination and dehumanisation.

    “Own Nothing and Be Happy”: The Great Reset’s Vision of the Future

    SARS-CoV-2 is endemic. It will never go away. That is impossible now. Take 5000 units/d of vitamin-D, please.Biden ‘Science’ Advisor Calls For 4-6 Week Nationwide Lockdown To Avoid “COVID Hell”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-science-advisor-calls-4-6-week-lockdown-avoid-covid-hell

    Here are some of my blog posts regarding COVID:Bill Gates knew what was coming, already last year, but COVID was already global, too.  https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/03/bill-prophet.htmlEvidence that SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from Ft Detrick MD bioweapons lab by June 2019:  https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/answers.htmlEvidence, expert testimony, that SARS-CoV-2 could not possibly have occurred naturally in animals and jumped to humans last year.https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/origins-of-covid.html
    SARS-CoV-2 treatment recommendations  https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/origins-of-covid.html
    Paul sends this story about Hawi, Hawaii adapting with sharing of food in spirit of Aloha. I miss Hawi, North Kohala. Nice people. Nice place.https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/big-island-restaurants-closed-permanently-covid-15714246.php

    #65492
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @ Dr. D – well said! This particular observation rings true to me…

    “The more fraud, the more likely it is, the more NECESSARY it is, the more required, demanded, the more LEGAL it is, that they discard the vote. So the more windows the DNC boarded up, the more election monitors they ejected, the more certain it was Donald Trump would win via Legislative action. And that’s why he’s playing golf and not leaving.”

    @ Mr. House – capturing my imagination!

    @ John Day from yesterday – Om Shanti dear Heart.

    #65493
    John Day
    Participant

    Auto formatting made a little mess there…

    #65495
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-covid-19-lockdown-shopping-1.5798641
    Long lineups at Winnipeg retail stores ahead of level red restrictions coming Wednesday
    Many Walmart shoppers seen stockpiling milk instead of toilet paper this time
    Nicholas Frew · CBC News · Posted: Nov 11, 2020 7:41 PM CT | Last Updated: November 11

    Hundreds of shoppers waited outside stores like the Walmart in Winnipeg’s Garden City area and the Costco in St. James on Wednesday afternoon. The lineups at those particular stores wrapped around the corners of each building.
    ITS FREEZING COLD

    #65497
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Will Trumpism survive? [Assuming Biden is declared the winner]

    It seems to me that the choice was between globalism [Democrats] which pitches American workers against those who will work for a dollar an hour, and Trumpism which aims for a self-contained economy where ‘Made in America’ becomes the rule.

    Can Trump supporters run against Republican encumbents, especially those quick to acknowledge Biden as victor. Can they take over the whole Republican party? If not then could they form a third party?

    There does seem to be some fallout where Trump supporters are abandoning Twitter in favour of Parler, which promises no censorship.

    They feel stabbed in the back by Murdoch and Fox but what can they do to have their views heard? It would be amusing if they joined together and bought CNN, which may soon be going cheap!

    With 70 million upset Trump voters will they fade away to nothing or will they shake everything up?

    #65499
    a kullervo
    Participant

    In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still [a given underestimated percent of the population]; however in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity [(…)] and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals [(…)]. Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid people] fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.
    Carlo Cipolla, in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

    Greetings,

    The “Compliant”* will never allow themselves to lose face by acknowledging they have been duped by the “mask & lockdown” sham, that they are more gullible than little kids; thus, the only way forward will probably include a double down on the hysteria which will be welcomed with glee by the “Compliant”, because it will reinforce their righteousness and will expose once and for all the wicked ways of those opposing the lunacy; a witch-hunt usually ensues.

    The complete short essay where Carlo Cipolla outlines the core of the current predicament can be found at

    http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/

    * The “Compliant”* = those willingly accepting the Surveillance State/Great Reset/Green (Horseman of the) Apocalypse (thank you, Dr. D) currently being foisted upon the citizenry by the “Enablers” (thank you, zerosum).

    #65500
    Bill7
    Participant

    This gentleman’s take on the mcElection has seemed accurate to me, so far, though I take issue with his seeming definition of “the left”, who as I see it, are actually neo-fascist wokeFolk carrying water for the Very Few:

    “..The mainstream media and the Biden campaign are already preemptively declaring Biden the winner. This sets the stage for a dangerous dynamic; consider what would happen if leftists go into December/January under the assumption that they have the presidency in the bag, when suddenly it is all snatched away from them? This narrative creates the ultimate rage scenario for the political left; they will consider Trump a usurper of the presidency and from that point on they will rationalize any and all mob violence. This civil unrest will be blamed entirely on Trump and conservatives..”

    Get Ready For Chaos Regardless Of Who Ends Up In The White House

    #65501
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Anticlimactic: “With 70 million upset Trump voters will they fade away to nothing or will they shake everything up?”

    Bingo. It’s possible we are looking at a third party push in the near future that makes all the third party hopefuls coming before look like they belong in the Mickey Mouse Club.

    #65502
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Finally! Concerte evidence that production of clickbait has been automated and handed to AI:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-administration-expected-revamp-focus-white-collar-crime

    #65503
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ Huskynut
    I would say, “Planning for 2024.
    Cutting a path off from Trump before he even starts to think of it.”
    ( A couple of old men who won’t retire and enjoy the few years that they got left on this earth.)

    #65504
    John Day
    Participant

    Thank You Susmarie 108

    @All-Y’all: I would not assume this election has been decided yet.
    The DNC battle plan was made fairly clear , well ahead of time, massive vote rigging.
    What does Giuliani have in his bag?

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