Feb 132021
 
 February 13, 2021  Posted by at 10:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


James Karales Selma to Montgomery March Alabama 1965

 

Sputnik V Developers Work On Vaccine For Several COVID19 Strains At Once (RT)
South Africans Being Infected With COVID19 Variant Again After Recovering (RT)
The Bombhole Era (Matt Taibbi)
Cuomo And The Lincoln Project Are Media-Created Monsters (DP)
NY Dems Want To Strip Cuomo Of Coronavirus Emergency Powers (JTN)
Inside the Lincoln Project’s ‘Toxic’ Workplace (19th)
Lincoln Project Accused by its Own Co-Founder of Likely Criminality (Greenwald)
Lincoln Project Faces Questions Over The Spending And Compensation (Turley)
Trump Lawyers Argue His Jan. 6 Rhetoric Is ‘Protected’ Free Speech (JTN)
MSM’s Narrative About The Murderous Capitol Mob Has Collapsed (Cox)
Hillary Clinton Could Be Charged Under Precedent Set In Trump Trial (RT)
Great Reset? Putin Says, “Not So Fast” (Luongo)
The Trials of Wokery (Kunstler)

 

 

When you open Pandora’s box, things tend to come out.

@AceSix4
https://twitter.com/i/status/1360063639894507520

 

 

One of the stranger arguments. But sure, let’s inject some controversy.

 

 

 

 

Russia to the rescue.

Sputnik V Developers Work On Vaccine For Several COVID19 Strains At Once (RT)

The Gamaleya Institute behind Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine said it’s working on a technology that will lead to an effective jab against several coronavirus variants and which could also be swiftly updated to tackle new mutations.
The multiplying variants of Covid-19, which could turn out to be resistant to current vaccines and prolong the pandemic even further, have recently become a source of major concern for governments and medics around the globe. But the solution to the problem may be just around the corner, as the Gamaleya Institute’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, revealed that the Moscow-based research body “has developed a technology that allows to quickly and efficiently create vaccine agents that will include antigens not from one, but two, three, four or five different coronavirus variants.”


Such a vaccine should be able to provide immunity from all coronavirus strains that could threaten a population at any given time, Gintsburg said, in an interview with the Rossiya 24 channel. So far, all of the known mutations appear to be covered by the vaccines, but that may well change as RNA viruses like Covid-19 are the most rapidly changing objects in the world, he pointed out. The Russian multi-variant vaccine is currently in its research phase, with clinical trials scheduled to begin by the end of the year. The finished drug will likely be made available to customers in 2022, Gintsburg estimated. Numerous strains of coronavirus have been already discovered by scientists, but three of them are causing the most worries at the moment. The so-called UK, South Africa and Brazil variants have shown multiple changes in their spike protein, through which the virus attaches itself to human cells.

Read more …

“substantial or complete escape” from the human body’s neutralizing antibodies that target Covid-19..”

South Africans Being Infected With COVID19 Variant Again After Recovering (RT)

Some people in South Africa have been re-infected with variants of Covid-19 after they had already recovered from the virus, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said on Friday.
“We are now getting reports of people getting re-infected with the new variant of the virus, and there have been some initial reports from South Africa suggesting that people who have had prior infection could get infected again,” she told a WHO news briefing. Swaminathan did not specify the number of people re-infected in South Africa, but said that ongoing scientific studies are looking at how long antibodies protect people after they have contracted the virus.

The scientist did say that a recent UK study of health workers found that 85 percent of the cohort had developed protection against being re-infected with Covid-19 six to eight months after they first caught the virus. One study from South Africa published in pre-print format last month found the country’s indigenous mutation, 501Y.V2, showed “substantial or complete escape” from the human body’s neutralizing antibodies that target Covid-19. “These data highlight the prospect of re-infection” and may “foreshadow reduced efficacy” of vaccines, according to the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Another larger, more generalized study of 43,000 people with Covid-19 antibodies in Qatar concluded that re-infection is “rare,” and that natural infection elicited strong protection against the virus for at least seven months. The South African variant features more genetic mutations than previous forms of the virus, including the E484K mutation, which appears to have an impact on the body’s immune response, potentially increasing the likelihood of re-infection. It accounts for more than 80 percent of cases in South Africa, and has spread to at least 32 countries worldwide.

Read more …

“This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work.”

The Bombhole Era (Matt Taibbi)

News in the Trump years became a narrative drama, with each day advancing a tale of worsening political emergency, driven by subplots involving familiar casts of characters, in the manner of episodic television. It worked, but news directors and editors hit a stumbling block. If you cover everything like there’s no tomorrow, what happens when there is, in fact, a tomorrow? The innovation was to use banner headlines to saturate news cycles, often to the exclusion of nearly any other news, before moving to the next controversy so quickly that mistakes, errors, or rhetorical letdowns were memory-holed. The American Napoleon generated controversies at such a fantastic rate that stations like CNN and MSNBC (and Fox too) were able to keep ratings high by moving from mania to mania, hyping stories on the way up but not always following them down.

The moment the narrative premise of any bombshell started to fray, the next story in line was bumped to the front. News outlets paid off old editorial promises with new headlines: Ponzi journalism. This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work. As surveys by organizations like the Pew Center showed, the different target demographics in Trump’s America increasingly did not communicate with one another. Democrats by 2020 were 91 percent of the New York Times audience and 95 percent of MSNBC’s, while Republicans were 93 percent of Fox viewers. When outlets overreached factually, it was possible, if not likely, that the original target audience would never learn the difference.

This reduced the incentive to be careful. Audiences devoured bombshells even when aware on a subconscious level that they might not hold up to scrutiny. If a story turned out to be incorrect, that was okay. News was now more about underlying narratives audiences felt were true and important. For conservatives, Trump was saving America from a conspiracy of elites. For “liberal” audiences, Trump was trying to assume dictatorial power, and the defenders of democracy were trying to stop him. A symbiosis developed. Where audiences once punished media companies for mistakes, now they rewarded them for serving up the pure heroin of shaky, first-draft-like blockbusters. They wanted to be in the trenches of information discovery. Audiences were choosing powerful highs over lasting ones.

Read more …

View from the left.

Cuomo And The Lincoln Project Are Media-Created Monsters (DP)

In the chaos of 2020, the national press corps used all of its magical mythmaking and storytelling powers to conjure two towering political heroes for a country in crisis. From the maw of the media machine, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Lincoln Project emerged as our alleged sentinels bravely battling a deadly pandemic and an authoritarian president — and supposedly leading us with principles and morality into a new era of accountability and integrity. For millions of credulous liberals already binging on West Wing reruns, the twin tales conjured some more of that good old-fashioned hope-and-change nostalgia, and seemed to serve as a cheeky reminder that not all heroes wear capes.


But in the last 24 hours, the entire façade has collapsed, revealing that those bravely trying to sound the alarm for months were right all along — and those benefiting from the media-driven fraud were attempting to evade accountability and self-servingly cover up a grotesquerie of mismanagement, corruption, and abuse. Will the wrongdoers face any consequences or accountability? Or will they be treated like the purveyors of previous frauds, like the Iraq War and the financial crisis, and continue to be platformed and valorized by the press corps? And will our media overlords engage in any self-reflection about the monsters they manufactured? The details of the two tales vary, but the narrative arcs are eerily similar. That they crescendoed in the same single news cycle makes their cautionary tales all the more poignant.

Read more …

About a year too late.

NY Dems Want To Strip Cuomo Of Coronavirus Emergency Powers (JTN)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was reprimanded on Friday by a group of New York Democrats who are demanding that the governor be stripped of his emergency powers that he has exercised in response to the coronavirus pandemic in New York state. The reprimand came in a statement from 14 lawmakers who were acting following the news that Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had admitted during a video conference call with Democratic leaders that the administration covered up the true extent of nursing home deaths in 2020 because they were concerned about a possible federal investigation by the Trump administration. The New York Post broke the story of DeRosa’s confession to the group of Democratic lawmakers who were thought to be put in a difficult situation as result of the coverup.


“While COVID-19 has tested the limits of our people and state — and, early during the pandemic, required the government to restructure decision making to render rapid, necessary public health judgments,” the prepared statement from the 14 Democratic state senators said — “it is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to the Governor are no longer appropriate.” “While the executive’s authority to issue directives is due to expire on April 30, we urge the Senate to advance and adopt a repeal as expeditiously as possible.”

Read more …

Very toxic. Tucker’s take is dead on.

Inside the Lincoln Project’s ‘Toxic’ Workplace (19th)

The Lincoln Project’s founders were some of the highest-profile players in Republican politics before they rejected Trump and became apostates within their own party. There was George Conway, a high-profile conservative lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, who was a top adviser to Trump. Weaver worked on Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaigns, as did Galen and Schmidt. Mike Madrid is a strategist specializing in Latinx voting trends. Jennifer Horn is a former GOP chair in New Hampshire. Wilson worked on Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral and Senate campaigns. Ron Steslow started his own consulting firm after working at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Conway was the first to leave in August, citing family obligations. Weaver took medical leave around the same time.

A three-person board — Galen, Madrid and Steslow — was created without input from some of the other co-founders. Eventually, disputes over that board, and its scope, led to bitter infighting that involved individual co-founders lawyering up and threatening one another with “oppo” research, Washington speak for the type of negative information amassed by a political campaign or organization to use against a rival. In late 2020, Conway stepped in to help mediate what was quickly becoming a civil war within the organization. Madrid and Steslow departed in December after signing nondisclosure agreements and receiving separation packages that those familiar with the negotiations describe as lucrative.

On December 21, the Lincoln Project paid Madrid’s firm, Grassroots Lab, two round sum payments of $1.1 million and $300,000. On the same date, it paid Steslow’s firm, TUSK Digital, $900,000. All of the payments were described as for “political strategy consulting” on campaign finance filings. The Lincoln Project was organized as a super PAC, meaning it could raise and spend unlimited sums of money but had to disclose only basic details about where the money was going. The firms that some of the co-founders brought with them to the Lincoln Project’s work became a source of internal frustration, as more than half of the nearly $90 million raised by the project flowed to firms controlled by its various founders. Once it was there, there was usually no way to track how they spent or kept it.

As of late January, Galen’s firm, Summit Strategic Communications, had received roughly $27.5 million from the Lincoln Project, with the bulk of that going to “independent expenditures” such as television or Internet advertisements and nearly $7 million to consulting. Steslow’s firm, TUSK, received $22.4 million, with $7.1 million for consulting. Schmidt’s firm, SES Strategies, received $1.5 million for consulting, but he told the Chicago Tribune he returned it. Madrid’s Grassroots Lab received nearly $2.2 million for consulting services. The Lincoln Project paid Horn directly in amounts of $5,000 or $10,000 per month, campaign finance filings show. In the fall, she began receiving additional payments from LPTV, but in all, her annual compensation was approximately $150,000, sources familiar with the situation said.

Tucker Lincoln Project
https://twitter.com/i/status/1360413135144771585

Read more …

George Conway. Strange player in all this.

Lincoln Project Accused by its Own Co-Founder of Likely Criminality (Greenwald)

The group of life-long Republican Party consultants who, under the name “The Lincoln Project,” got very rich in 2020 with anti-Trump online messaging has spent weeks responding to numerous scandals on multiple fronts. Despite the gravity of those scandals, its conduct on Thursday night was in a whole new category of sleaze. It not only infuriated their long-time allies, but also constituted the abuse of Twitter’s platform to commit likely illegal acts. That the primary effect of the Lincoln Project was to personally enrich its key operatives by cynically exploiting the fears of U.S. liberals has long been obvious. Reporting throughout 2020 conclusively demonstrated that the vast majority of the tens of millions of dollars raised by the group was going to firms controlled by its founders.


One of its most prominent founders — GOP consultant Rick Wilson — personally collected $65,000 from liberals through GoFundMe for an anti-Trump film he kept promising but which never came; to this date, he refuses to explain what he did with that money. A study conducted after the 2020 election found that the group’s effect on the election’s outcome was trivial to non-existent — not surprising given its penchant for spending money on ads that aired in electorally irrelevant places such as Washington, D.C. or which circulated almost exclusively in liberal cable news and social media venues, and thus had no purpose other than to enable its consultants to take large commissions from the ad spending. They were producing ads solely for liberals, with the overriding intent not of defeating Trump but inflating their net worth. And it worked: until they were no longer needed.

Read more …

Do they ever.

Lincoln Project Faces Questions Over The Spending And Compensation (Turley)

The Lincoln Project has had a rough couple of weeks. One of its co-founders, John Weaver, was accused of sexual harassment of young men and the Project attacked him as a sexual predator. As co-founders like George Conway denied any real familiarity or interaction with Weaver, others accused of the Project of turning a blind eye to his conduct. Then one of its other co-founders, Jennifer Horn, resigned in protest only to be attacked by other Project members as allegedly trying to get more money out of the organization. Now, the Lincoln Project is having serious questions raised over its compensation for co-founders and an accounting for tens of millions of dollars that may have gone to them or their own firms. Lincoln famously declared “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” but the Lincoln Project is accused of malice towards many but charity for a few.

[..] The latest controversy comes after an Associated Press story that the Project was able to raise over $90 million but only spent a third of that ($27 million) on advertisements during the 2020 campaign. The AP noted “That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.” It also suggested that the Project was using tactics to hide the money trial and spending decisions. Reporters Steve Peoples and Brian Slodysko said that “[t]he vast majority of the cash was split among consulting firms controlled by its founders, including about $27 million paid to a small firm controlled by Galen and another $21 million paid to a boutique firm run by former Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow, campaign finance disclosures show.”

I have been critical of some of the Lincoln Project commercials and advertisements. However, my main objection was its role in harassing and even doxxing lawyers who represented the Trump campaign or the Republican party. That effort was funded by thousands of lawyers as well as Democratic donors. At first, I thought the Lincoln Project could serve a useful role in establishing a Republican opposition base to Trump and add greater diversity in the party. Instead, it adopted increasingly juvenile and vicious ads that seemed to pander to the lowest common denominator in politics. This week the Lincoln Project ad features a chicken and taunts Trump for declining to testify despite the fact that presidents traditionally have not testified and such a decision should not be treated as evidence of guilt.

Yet, such commercials play well to donors and bring in more money. The question is whether the windfall of money was the byproduct or the purpose of the Project’s founding. The AP story suggests that the Project has used accounting systems that make it difficult to track payments. The Project can easily make this all transparent. While no one is going to run ads showing the founders juxtaposed with chickens, a few donors may want to know if the founders enriched themselves and their firms as part of the 2020 campaign.

Read more …

Pandora’s box.

Trump Lawyers Argue His Jan. 6 Rhetoric Is ‘Protected’ Free Speech (JTN)

Attorney David Schoen argued the impeachment managers relied heavily on media reports to make their case against Trump rather than actual evidence. He said people get more “due process” fighting a parking ticket than Trump did in this trial. Schoen also questioned why the House managers held the “never-before-seen” Capitol security footage and did not release it to the public or Trump himself ahead of the trial. Schoen also argued that the House impeachment managers “manipulated” Trump’s words when playing a clip of him saying there were “fine people on both sides” after the Charlottesville protest. The full remarks included Trump denouncing white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

The House impeachment managers focused heavily on Trump’s “fight like hell” comment during his Jan. 6 speech. Schoen showed video clips of Democrats using rhetoric that could be interpreted as violent. His video montage included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying Democrats have to learn how to “throw a punch” and former Vice President Joe Biden saying he would “beat the hell” out of Trump in high school. He also played clips of Democrats like then-Sen. Kamala Harris saying Democrats have to “fight” in the Trump era. “We like a good fight,” Harris said.

House impeachment managers argued that Trump’s “stop the steal” message was unprecedented. To respond to that argument, Schoen showed video of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton saying that you could be a major political party’s presidential nominee and have the election “stolen” from you. He also played Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown saying Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial election was “stolen” from her. Van der Veen played additional video of “robust” rhetoric from Democrats about punching Trump in the face and said the First Amendment should be applied “evenly.” “All robust speech should be protected and it should be protected evenly for all of us,” he said. “The Senate cannot ignore the First Amendment.”

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“..when lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) got caught lying on Wednesday about the content of an alleged telephone call between Trump and a Republican senator during the Capitol riot, he admitted that his claim was false and shrugged it off.”

MSM’s Narrative About The Murderous Capitol Mob Has Collapsed (Cox)

As their dishonest narrative collapses around them, mainstream media outlets and Democrat politicians are trying to hold together their latest bid to destroy Donald Trump, but some of the lies are getting too big to shrug off. I’m reminded of the media-speak popularized during the Trump era – lightly used words or phrases that became ubiquitous in the talking points, like “violating norms” – especially the term “debunked.” In the eyes of MSM and their controllers, Trump was a president who needed to be debunked thousands of times. Whether it was about the size of his Inauguration Day crowd, the animal-like savagery of MS-13 gang-bangers or the fact that Haiti is “a s**thole”, any Trump claim had to be debunked, false or not.

When an obnoxious loudmouth constantly blurts out things that lift the skirt on the ruling class’ treachery, his voice must be discredited. And even if just part of his story can be attacked, the rest will be forgotten. It’s like a Jenga game where all the pieces automatically fall down when one is removed. But the same standard doesn’t apply to the media’s own story lines. No matter how many times MSM and establishment politicians are exposed as liars — from the MLK bust in the Oval Office to the Russia collusion hoax — the people are supposed to keep believing the gist of their arguments. The Jenga tower can be levitating with entire floors missing, but the con artists insist that it’s still standing. We’re seeing it again in Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial. Giant holes have been blown in the MSM-DNC narrative about the January 6 “insurrection” at the US Capitol, but that’s not supposed to matter.

For instance, when lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) got caught lying on Wednesday about the content of an alleged telephone call between Trump and a Republican senator during the Capitol riot, he admitted that his claim was false and shrugged it off. “This is much ado about nothing because it’s not critical in any way to our case,” he said. Never mind that the point was apparently considered important enough to submit as evidence. Raskin was essentially allowed to wriggle out as if he said, “The fact that we’re lying about this doesn’t reflect whatsoever on the veracity of anything else we’re telling you.” A far bigger and more central piece of the impeachment Jenga tower shouldn’t be sloughed off so easily. In fact, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick is so central to the narrative that his cremated remains were displayed in honor at the Capitol Rotunda to remind everyone of the viciousness of the alleged Trump domestic-terrorism army.

The tale of the brutal Trump mob is always punctuated with the fact that five people were “killed” during the riot, er, “white-supremacist insurrection.” One of those people was Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters, who was fatally shot by a law enforcement officer. Three others were election-fraud protesters who died from health crises – a heart attack, a stroke and an unidentified medical emergency – during the January 6 demonstration and riot. The talking heads who wish Trump supporters dead in every other case are counting Trump supporters in the death toll from an incident perpetrated primarily by Trump supporters. It’s as if they’re leading a story on a hostage crisis by saying that 30 people were killed without mentioning that 25 of those were hostage takers, including 22 who died of food poisoning.

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hypothetical

Hillary Clinton Could Be Charged Under Precedent Set In Trump Trial (RT)

A lawyer for former president Donald Trump said the current impeachment drive is a partisan effort that could backfire on Democrats if they lose leverage, suggesting ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton could also be impeached. Responding to a question from Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) during Friday’s impeachment hearing, Trump attorney Michael van der Veen argued that the Obama-era secretary could face similar impeachment proceedings sometime in the future. “Is it not true that under this new precedent, a future House – facing partisan pressure to ‘lock her up’ – could impeach a former secretary of state, and a future Senate be forced to put her on trial and potentially disqualify her from any future office?” Rubio asked.

“If you see it their way, yes,” van der Veen said, referring to the Democratic impeachment managers. “If you do this the way they want it done, that could happen to the example there – a former secretary of state – but it could happen to a lot of people. And that’s not the way this is supposed to work.” The lead impeachment manager in the House, Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), pushed back, however, insisting Rubio’s hypothetical had “no bearing on this case,” as Clinton “was not impeached in office for conduct while in office.” At Friday’s hearing, the Trump lawyer also argued that the ex-president’s statements leading up to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill – which he is accused of “inciting” as the basis of the impeachment effort – were “virtually indistinguishable” from rhetoric used by American politicians for “hundreds of years.”

“Countless politicians have spoken of ‘fighting for our principles.’ Joe Biden’s campaign slogan was ‘Battle for the Soul of America.’ No human being seriously believes that the use of such metaphorical terminology is incitement to political violence,” van der Veen said. He added that while Trump at no point engaged in “language of incitement,” many Democrats in Washington have themselves resorted to “profoundly reckless, dangerous and inflammatory rhetoric in recent years,” singling out Clinton, who he said “ridiculously declared the [2016] election [was] stolen by Russia.”

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“Do you understand what you have done?”

Great Reset? Putin Says, “Not So Fast” (Luongo)

Did you happen to catch the most important political speech of the last six years? It would have been easy to miss given everything going on. In fact, I almost did, and this speech sits at the intersection of nearly all of my areas of intense study. The annual World Economic Forum took place last week via teleconference, what I’m calling Virtual Davos, and at this year’s event, of course, the signature topic was their project called the Great Reset. But if the WEF was so intent on presenting the best face for the Great Reset to the world it wouldn’t have invited either Chinese Premier Xi Jinping or, more importantly, Russian President Vladimir Putin. And it was Putin’s speech that brought down the house of cards that is the agenda of the WEF.

The last time someone walked into a major international forum and issued such a scathing critique of the current geopolitical landscape was Putin’s speech to the United Nations on September 29th, 2015, two days before he sent a small contingency of Russian air support to Syria. There he excoriated not only the U.N. by name but most importantly the U.S. and its NATO allies by inference asking the most salient question, “Do you understand what you have done?” having unleashed chaos in an already chaotic part of the world? As important as that speech was it was Putin’s actions after that which defined the current era of geopolitical chess across the Eurasian continent. Syria became the nexus around which the resistance to the “ISIS is invincible” narrative unraveled

And the mystery of who was behind ISIS, namely the Obama administration, was revealed to anyone paying attention. President Trump may have taken credit for beating ISIS, but it was mostly Putin and Russia’s forces retaking the Western part of Syria which allowed that to happen, while our globalist generals, like James Mattis, did as much damage to Syria itself and as little to ISIS as possible, hoping to use them again another day. And regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the U.S.’s policy in Syria, which I most definitely do not, it is hard to argue that Russia’s intervention there fundamentally changed the regional politics and conflicts for the foreseeable future.

Read more …

Jim needs some time to re-focus.

The Trials of Wokery (Kunstler)

How do you like the party you supposedly voted into power so far? Or is it perhaps too much to say they were actually voted into anything? And if so — if there was something, let’s say, a little irregular with the ballot tabulation, maybe even more than a little — have they not succeeded splendidly in pissing-off more than half the people across the land? And then attempted to rub that half’s faces into the squishy, fetid loam of the DC Swamp? I’d say that every move they make, every breath they take, seems calculated to spark a new civil war. Yesterday’s spiteful exercise in cognitive dissonance was a humdinger: Mr. Biden threatened to cut off travel to Florida for flouting his regime’s policy on Covid-19 lockdowns, while over in Texas (and several other states), he ordered a general unlocking-down of the border with Mexico, permitting the unchecked illegal ingress of thousands of possible Covid-19 carriers a day. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, responded, saying — if I may paraphrase — see you in court, asshole.

Meanwhile, the cancellation reign-of-terror among the regime’s self-appointed guardians of Wokeness rages on. In the name of diversity and inclusion, no one in the USA is allowed to publicly question the Woke narrative of the moment, or else be deprived of your livelihood. The New York Times fired forty-year veteran science reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., for using the freighted word “n*gg*r” while answering a student’s question about the history of the word’s usage, just as I am explaining his use of it in the incident at issue — that is, academically.

Though Mr. McNeil’s intent was incontrovertibly innocent as viewed by persons not insane — including, only briefly, the paper’s executive editor Dean Baquet — the decision to not sack Mr. McNeil provoked a reflexive uproar among the Times’s staff, as something in the wind might provoke a flight of grasshoppers transforming into a swarm of locusts, and Mr. Baquet reversed himself, forcing Mr. McNeil to choose demotion or resignation. Then, to make matters worse, the Times’s publisher, AG Sulzberger, spiked a column by nominally “conservative” op-ed writer Bret Stephens that attempted to argue some legalistic points about intent in the conduct of a witch hunt, an apparent affront to the Times’s witch-hunters, who seem to prefer their witch-hunting as a straight-up blood sport.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle February 13 2021

Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
  • Author
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  • #69641

    James Karales Selma to Montgomery March Alabama 1965   • Sputnik V Developers Work On Vaccine For Several COVID19 Strains At Once (RT) • South Af
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 13 2021]

    #69644
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    According to a recent report summarised in the Guardian, execs fat is responsible for 23% of deaths, far more than the number of deaths with covid.

    Trigger warning: But we are not even allowed to talk about ob*sity anymore without offending, so how can these live possibly be saved?

    Here’s another alternate for saving lives: did you know that mosquito borne illnesses (malaria, dengue, zika, etc.) kill nearly 2.7 million people each year and rising? Why aren’t people freaked out about this obvious worldwide menace? Masks help but if everybody would cover their entire bodies then mosquito bites would be drastically reduced. We need head-to-toe mandates and we need them now. Also, don’t forget to publicly shame anybody seen in shorts or sandals because they are killers ! (/sarcasm)

    On another note, anybody else notice that the daily deaths in Sweden have dropped to zero?
    https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se (scroll down for the daily death graphic)
    Once again, it appears that the non-panicked approach of Sweden was correct. The “deadly” virus has now burned out there.

    #69645

    On another note, anybody else notice that the daily deaths in Sweden have dropped to zero? Once again, it appears that the non-panicked approach of Sweden was correct. The “deadly” virus has now burned out there.

    35 deaths Feb 12

    #69646
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Covid charts, all actual metrics, like deaths and hospitals dropping. Tests remain flat. Another proof that tests give massive false positives on motor oil and papyas. Tests mean nothing. Cases mean nothing.

    South Africans Being Infected With COVID19 Variant Again After Recovering (RT)”

    Yes, but it was reported in the news, is it therefore false? Oh and how many masks today? Zero? 37? Are we opening or shutting schools? We are in actual fact opening borders with Mexico, testless, not even for Measles or Tuberculosis, while keeping all states locked down without tests. Obviously, just like medical care, the only place you can DENY medical care is a hospital. The only FREE people in the U.S. with civil rights are non-citizens. I literally need to leave and re-enter illegally.

    “Bombholing”

    Or “Cornholing” because of the graphic action that is occurring to you daily when you tolerate this.

    “But in the last 24 hours, the entire façade has collapsed,”

    Don’t worry. As above, no one will remember. Its already “Lincoln who? They sound like Republicans, didn’t-you-just-expect” I just knew they Derp State liked them, therefore they were unprincipled abusive rapists, and was correct again. Cuomo is a Democrat, therefore a mass murderer, just like Baltimore, Chicago, and San Fran. So easy.

    “Dems Want to Strip Cuomo of Coronavirus Emergency Powers (JTN)”

    There were no emergency powers to begin with. They are a legal fiction. Still I appreciate them maybe someday following the law for a change. Interesting part they’re not talking about. Trump out. Lincoln still goes down. Biden director still exposed and fired. More Pedos still arrested. Maxwell still in jail. Burma still toppled. Cuomo still exposed and investigated. So I’m sorry, since the whole Right is gone and Mr. Q was a fiction and there are no good guys, where is this unstoppable march coming from? A box of Cracker Jacks? Since when have parties exposed and arrested themselves?

    Tucker is pretty soft. They’ve been raping Congressional page-boys like Rubio for decades. But unlike Rubio, not everyone likes it. If of age, just propositioning them is not a crime. Clearly unethical and I would remove support, but not a crime. The missing money is a crime.

    “Trump Lawyers Argue His Jan. 6 Rhetoric Is ‘Protected’ Free Speech (JTN)”

    Yes, but nobody cares. It’s all theatre for my side, and we don’t ask or watch the other side. Airtight echo chambers. Everything said so far has been known all along, if you could be bothered.

    Here’s my take, unprovable. We know The Afro-latino head of the Proud Boys was an FBI informant, carefully prevented by supra-legal means to not be there that day. We know they knew all about the planning and chatter that was going on openly in Facebook and Twitter, but NOT Gab (it’s not technically possible to coordinate that platform). We know they knew this by police backup they refused to deploy six times. We know that the cameraman owned and interviewed by CNN is further left than Antifa, he is on tape saying he can’t believe they’re getting the red hats to follow them, and that they really must erase this incriminating footage later. We know Mr. Viking-horns is also pro-left, also being in his open social media profile back when. Mr. Bear has a Hammer-and Sickle tattoo on his hands. Mr. Confederate flag is the child of more FBI employees and Democrats. We know from phone and credit card records which AntiFa members where in the crown, along with paid Ukrainian militias. We know they knew about the pipe bombs, set ahead of time.

    So…wow, what a set of amazing coincidences, yet nothing happened. They did a photo shoot where it’s clear every person in the room is press or press pass, stopped for op, neatly positioned spaced. They pranked Pelosi’s podium but didn’t even take it out of the building. While police watched.

    How about this: they had a plan to get all the violent, gun-toting, mouth-breathing, hillbilly ignoramuses red hats in one place, it would be a breeze to incite them to riot, take over the Capitol, and invoke a response causing them to lose the moral high ground, while your professionally-placed pipe bombs blow up due to capitol police being forcefully withheld at all costs by the Mayor, the doors opened and tools handed out the windows by pre-placed insiders?

    Guess what: didn’t happen. And that’s why we won. I believe law has been inside way back, shut off these paths, swapped bombs, but also kept their mouths shut. Here a month later, no one knows — even ASKS who placed them? ON the 10,000 cameras in the Capitol and city? Uh-huh. However, the Derp State, being robotic minions devoid of imagination, have their marching orders and simply go on to REPORT it happened, forever. Even when it’s obvious to a blind bat it didn’t. You know, like when the virus proved not to be dangerous. At all. They just reported it anyway. A year later, STILL no death rate, STILL nobody notices. So AOC then REPORTS she was attacked, there-were-people-in-Nakatomi-tower-everywhere, Hans Gruber almost blew her up if not for that crazy John McClane policeman breaking in while she hid under her desk, and narrowly escaped, hours before Trump’s speech and anyone knew anything would happen.

    Never happened.

    And the Conressional minions, as they feared for their lives of the violent attack, breaching an openly free city, with open doors, from open, waving selfie-taking policeman, between un-breachable velvet ropes, they barely survived.

    Never happened.

    Ah, but here’s my point: from the first moment the media was primed for, they just REPORTED IT DID. AOC just SAYS IT DID. The impeachment, which might make sense in that circumstance, just PROSECUTED AS IF IT DID, and so on.

    Again, by the way. Just like the last Impeachment, with the transcript released. This is like the third year running of this, if you don’t count all the massive – and now totally missing – shootings under Obama going back 15 years.

    They’re trying to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, that will wake you up and go: “Huh. A pandemic with no death rate? That makes no sense.”

    “An insurrection where the police are held back and the public tours the building while no one – not even the Capitol Policeman – is harmed in any way? 20 minutes before Trump is even finished speaking? Huh. That makes no sense.”

    But no one does. No one asks. No synapses fire. Y’all are driving me plumb crazy.

    And now. The whole city is chained off for nobody, no attacks, no threats, nothing, while Biden signs 100 executive orders that he says are the sole purview of dictators. No synapses fire. Nothing is odd. All systems normal.

    Media daily reports things that didn’t happen, the opposite of things that happened. We read and believe and credit them. All systems normal. Okay then.

    From yesterday, amazing article by Flores:

    The Globalist Dilemma: How to Implement a 4th Industrial Revolution Without Losing Power

    The Elites are not going to survive this. Too bad, so sad. The problem is they are going to take as many of you with them as they can, every minute you don’t use your head and play along.

    #69647
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Raul: “One of the stranger arguments. But sure, let’s inject some controversy.”

    Actually, I had to double check this wasn’t a post in the Babylon Bee. This piece is using humor to poke fun at the stupidity of the accepted mainstream narrative surrounding the use of lockdowns to keep people safe and healthy against a disease. It uses a very real issue (overweight people and health issues) to do so.

    Dr D employs this same technique in his posts here, which is why I find myself thinking, “he has a point …” Many stand up comics also use hyperbole to make a point. George Carlin was a master at this. His routines on extremely controversial topics (rape and abortion come to mind) made people uncomfortable because he brought up some good points, but he simultaneously had people laughing in spite of themselves. It’s a way to open people’s minds to a different way of looking at tough topics. Comedians are much needed in society, which is why censoring them is so detrimental.

    Not sure I’ve actually conveyed what I mean to convey with this comment. Others here who are better at expressing “concepts” can maybe jump in and help me out?

    #69648
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “CNN’s Anderson Cooper Compares Capitol Riot to Rwandan Genocide” | CBN News

    Except for the part where in the Rwandian, and indeed by definition any genocide, people actually die. And in a genocide, people are distinguished by race, thus “genos”. And they have to have an “intent to destroy” rather than wandering off without acting. So other than them being opposites, they’re exactly the same.

    Never happened. But I guess they needed some more bombholing.

    Meanwhile, back in reality:

    “”Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;
    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

    All of which are regularly done by Congress AGAINST the people. Pick a group. Right now it’s anyone Left or Right who doesn’t approve the Narrative(TM) enthusiastically ENOUGH.

    #69649
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    ENDEMIC

    Once it was shown that Covid was not affected by warm weather it was obvious that it would become endemic. Now it is becoming officially recognised that this is the case and that it could be around for decades!

    Where do we go from here?

    Do we carry on with lockdowns for decades or do we adapt to reality and manage the disease?

    There is a fantasy that if we are all vaccinated it will be over for good. Already new variants are showing some current vaccines to be ineffective. We do not know how long the vaccines are effective for – do we need vaccinating annually, or every 6 months? Do we need new vaccines for new variants? Do countries have to totally isolate from the rest of the world to stop new infections?

    Their is a growing list of cheap drugs and supplements which have been shown to reduce the need for hospitalisation, reducing the instances of death and ‘long covid’. The advantage of these is that they effective against all viruses and all their variants.

    I suspect that this will end up being the only practical way of dealing with this disease. Any country pursuing continuous lockdowns will end up as a third world country, although that may be the goal! [The Great Reset]

    https://www.rt.com/news/515448-eu-coronavirus-forever-vaccine/

    #69651
    zerosum
    Participant

    VARIANTS COVIDS

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/scientific-brief-emerging-variants.html

    Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants
    Updated Jan. 28, 2021
    Multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants are circulating globally. (GO TO ARTICLE TO READ MORE INFO)
    The SPHERES consortium: Since early in the pandemic, CDC has led a national consortium of laboratories sequencing SARS-CoV-2 (SPHERES) to coordinate US sequencing efforts outside of CDC. The SPHERES consortium consists of more than 160 institutions, including academic centers, industry, non-governmental organizations, and public health agencies.
    Through these efforts, anonymous genomic data are made available through public databases for use by public health professionals, researchers, and industry.

    https://nextstrain.org/sars-cov-2/

    Nextstrain SARS-CoV-2 resources
    Around the world, people are sequencing and sharing SARS-CoV-2 genomic data.
    (FORGET “CHINA VIRUS” story)
    (GO TO ARTICLE TO READ MORE INFO)
    work is made possible by the open sharing of genetic data by research groups from all over the world. This work is made possible by the open sharing of genetic data by research groups from all over the world.

    https://cov-lineages.org/lineages/lineage_A.html

    Table 1 | Summary of lineage & sub-lineages
    (GO TO ARTICLE TO READ MORE INFO)
    A United_Arab_Emirates 19.0%, Germany 14.0%, China 13.0%, USA 6.0%, Japan 5.0% 2019-12-30 645 1310
    Root of the pandemic lies within lineage A. Many sequences originating from China and many global exports; including to South East Asia Japan South Korea Australia the USA and Europe represented in this lineage

    A.1 USA 82.0%, Australia 8.0%, Canada 6.0%, UK 1.0%, New_Zealand 1.0% 2020-01-19 2647 2873
    A North American lineage

    A.2 Spain 74.0%, UK 6.0%, Panama 5.0%, USA 3.0%, Portugal 2.0% 2020-02-17 1176 1405
    Mostly Spanish lineage now includes South and Central American sequences, other European countries and Kazakhstan.

    A.2.2 Australia 92.0%, New_Zealand 3.0%, Canada 2.0%, USA 2.0%, UK 1.0% 2020-03-17 445 520
    Australian lineage nested within the diversity of A.2

    A.2.3 UK 99.0%, Spain 1.0% 2020-03-12 204 208
    Scottish lineage nested within the diversity of A.2

    https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-variant-found-in-uganda-is-of-potential-biological-concern-2021-2
    (GO TO ARTICLE TO READ MORE INFO)
    A coronavirus variant, with a ‘similar change’ to the fast-spreading variant in the UK and US, has emerged in Uganda
    Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce Feb 12, 2021, 3:34 AM
    A coronavirus variant found in Uganda has a similar change to a fast-spreading variant in UK and US.
    The variant in Uganda, called A.23.1, is “of potential biological concern,” GISAID said.
    The likely impact of its mutations is not yet clear.

    A coronavirus variant has been detected in Uganda that has a mutation similar to the fast-spreading variant in the UK, and has quickly become the most common coronavirus in Uganda’s capital city Kampala, a pre-print study reported Thursday.

    The newly emerged coronavirus variant has evolved separately from the variant in the UK, which is from the “B lineage” and called B.1.1.7. The variant in Uganda is from the “A lineage,” and referred to as A.23.1 in the study.

    According to Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Flu Data (GISAID), A.23.1 is a lineage itself that has a number of variants of “potential biological concern”, of which the variant in Uganda is an example
    From June to October 2020, lineage A viruses accounted for only 25% of viruses in the Kampala region. By December 2020, 49 of the 50 sequenced samples from the Kampala region belonged to the new A.23.1 lineage, the authors said.

    There have been more than 39,000 Ugandans known to be infected with COVID-19, and 328 people have died according to the World Health Organization..
    A.23.1 variants have been detected in other countries as well as Uganda, including the UK, Rwanda, Canada, and Cambodia, according to GISAID.

    In the UK, A.23.1 is being formally investigated by Public Health England because it has the E484K mutation — the mutation that is found in the variant in South Africa, that scientists believe helps it evade antibodies.
    There are 43 reported cases of A.23.1 in the UK, according to Public Health England (PHE). The A.23.1 variant with E484K is different to the variant in UK, B.1.1.7, which also appears to have evolved into a E484K mutation and has been designated a “variant of concern” by PHE. There have been 22 people in the UK infected with the B.1.1.7 variant that has a E484K mutation, according to PHE.

    Today, is the new normal

    #69653
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    If you read anything today – make it this one. Thank you Dr D: The Globalist Dilemma article is beautifully written and presented. It reveals what THEY are focused on and why. It also begins to make the case for how THEY will FAIL and why.

    It introduces: the impending rotation of the elites and their desire avoid this, freezing time, the change to post-modernity from post-industrialism, and most exciting (to me) – “the paradigm shift in consciousness not only among the people, but also among the elites. That shift in consciousness is today called the ‘Great Awakening’.”

    It’s all about THEM. Managing the COLLAPSE to their benefit is their focus. THEY can be stopped.

    #69654
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    One more zinger concept: Clearly the Financialization of Everything has about exhausted itself (since there is nothing much left to financialize), THEY have to find a new source of power. “Therefore, the ruling class has moved to transform itself from a financialist plutocracy into a technocratic oligarchy.”

    #69655
    kultsommer
    Participant

    For democracy to really function great majority of people should be fully aware of what Matt Taibi is telling in the video.
    Or Dan Savino makes that presentation only to be received by the blind eyes and deaf ears. If one has opposing view to mine but I know that he/she is aware what I just mentioned that I can respect and contemplate it. My thoughts somewhere along this lines that I did not express correctly in my exchange with Mr. House month or so ago, re democracy. Another misunderstanding of it, this time outside of political life, is that EVERYBODY can have an opinion about ANYTHING and freely expressing with that trembling but self assured voice of “conviction”. That would be one of the things that immigrants from the “other side of curtain” would have noticed, but were promptly reminded that they are coming from “iron fist rule” and better start enjoying high kite fly of expressing oneself regarding sweater knitting or quantum physics that one knows nothing about. Literary CLASSICS were star rated buy the amazon book purchasers!
    I immensely enjoy Kunstler’s wit in writing. Blog, regardless on later focus on politics of the US, is mainly about energy depletion which does not prevent line of commentators to light up like teenage girls on hearing the name of an teen-idol the moment internal combustion engine is mentioned by someone and often off topic.

    #69656
    kultsommer
    Participant

    On side note: Jimmy Dore on YouTube with Max Blumenthal lately as a guest. Integrity and intelligence at it’s finest.
    No surprise to me that they are viewed as “you know what”, even by regular working man in the country, because they do not view, say majestic Hoover dam – built in one of the darkest times in the US history, as a colossal waste of money through government provided work and not appalled by it.

    #69658
    WES
    Participant

    O.K. I think I get it now! If I am “woke” that really means I am asleep!

    So we have a “show” trial going on in Washington DC that nobody is covering so you can’t watch!88 There is no judge presiding. There is no crime. How do you spell “k-a-n-g-a-r-o-o”?

    We had a scripted “riot” scene on capital hill employing leftist actors starring as conservatives! Did they get extra danger pay for acting in this violent theatre play?

    It is nice to know that someone was smart enough to label their Ponzi scheme “Lincoln”, rather than dot.com, to better fleece liberals of their money. A fool and their money are soon parted! Being deep state approved, the DofJ will protect the schemers from their kool-aid victims and nobody will be charged since obviously no crime was committed!

    #69659
    WES
    Participant

    Dr. D:

    Yesterday I was reviewing an end of the year report from a Canadian gold miner that I own. They mostly operate of number of small mines in northern Canada but have one mine in Findland and one in Mexico.

    Since these mines are in remote locations, the miner has been spending over a $1.5 million per month providing heath services to deal with keeping their miners and the mining communities they live in safe from covid.

    What really struck me is that they provided a table showing the numbers of all detected cases of covid at each mine and their local communities plus recoveries.

    From this table, Mexico stood out like a red thumb! Canada and Findland had a few dozen cases in total. Mexico had nearly 300 cases or about 10 times as many!

    So joe letting 100s of thousands of people entering the US from Mexico, untested, is a disaster in the making!

    #69660

    WES- Labrador probably has humidity which makes cold soooo much colder. Dew point here is running around -27C. Itchy and scratchy and sparky to boot!
    The Annunaki want gold, but I am not sure what they’ll give us for it. /s
    And of course, the problem of gold is “liquidity”- the dang stuff is sitting under thirty-billion gallons of water! ;o

    I have felt there was a huge element of pitting overweight folks against everyone else- it’s a thing no one talks about. So of course They made it really hard to stay fat in “these uncertain times”…/s

    “The fact that we’re lying about this doesn’t reflect whatsoever on the veracity of anything else we’re telling you.”
    Something. I just don’t know what.

    Is there some reason someone can’t come along and gather those q-sters together for real? Isn’t that the usual result when a force is created as a device? There’s an army out there without a leader.

    Masks, masks- we need more masks!
    And money for the heroes!
    To plumpen up the checks to them,
    We’ll just add extra zeroes.

    Tests, tests- we need more tests!
    We must maintain the panic!
    How else to gather all the loot
    If people won’t stay manic?

    Rules, rules- we need more rules!
    How can we live without ‘em?
    And we’ll withhold the world from those
    Who’d ever dared to flout ’em!

    #69661
    WES
    Participant

    Susmarie108:

    Regarding “financialization” in the US.

    Pre this financialization, Wall Street typically represented about 6% of the US economy.

    After financialization, Wall Street now represents about 12% of the US economy!

    Do you think these greedy bastards on Wall Street, doing God’s work, are going to let anyone stop them from growing larger? They 100% own the private Fed!

    They will keep trying to grow larger and larger until their bubble bursts! Only their greed will stop them!

    Meanwhile all we can do is wait and hope we can survive the mess they leave us.

    #69662
    WES
    Participant

    Susmarie108:

    Just to follow up, one of the reasons the US gov deregulated Wall Street is so Wall Street could not only “financialize the US but also the entire world!

    It was also part of keeping the US dollar as the world reserve currency.

    #69663
    WES
    Participant

    my parents said know:

    You are 100% correct, the air in Labrador during winter is extremely dry! And guess what! I suffer from very dry skin, red rashes, and severe allergies. No victim C & D up there by the tree line!

    I suffered terribly and was always sick with colds, etc. I always had bloody noses. To stop them, my Mom would pack my nose with long narrow strips of Vaseline coated cloth. The thing was, I didn’t know any better because it was the only world I knew of, so I was happy. Funny thing was, we had no radio or TV to entertain ourselves. We had to entertain ourselves. I didn’t know I was deprived!

    The main reason my family moved from Labrador down to Montreal in 1965 was because of multiple health issues. I was always sick, then next my brother, and then my Mother (early arthritis). My sister was the only one healthy! It was hard for my Father because after 25 years, he had risen to the top.

    The second reason was for schooling. The local school only went up to elementary grades then it was off to boarding school 300 miles south.

    I went from maybe 10 classmates in grade five, to a school with six grade 5 classes of 30 in Montreal! Needless to say I struggled! Being hard of hearing didn’t help either! But it was critical my parents moved when they did or it would have been too late for me.

    I eventually managed to drag myself through electrical engineering in Toronto, though it wasn’t very pretty. My younger brother was a gifted student so he was put into a more challenging class. He went on to take mechanical engineering at Waterloo, Canada’s MIT and now works for GM in Detroit. My younger sister of course loved it being a social butterfly. She went to the same Toronto school I did.

    We all had to leave Quebec to continue our education because we weren’t French. The 1970s a sad time in Quebec’s history. Instead Ontario got all of the best and brightest plus company headquarters. Montreal is no longer Canada’s biggest city.

    One thing a I noticed about being from up north, a certain type of toughness to being in isolated areas that city folks don’t seem to have. It served me (and brother too) very well when I was a service engineer in Milwaukee, building mining equipment in remote mines all around the world. I was often sent to finish projects from other more talented engineers who couldn’t take it any longer and had cracked up. Nobody builds mines in nice places with nice hotels or nice restaurants!

    #69665
    WES
    Participant

    V. Arnold:

    Following up on your comment about the cultural differences of gold between the west and the rest of the world.

    Obviously you have travelled the world a little bit so you know Asia’s views of gold, first hand! I have traveled to over 20 countries and I can tell you they all share Asian’s view of gold!

    Only in Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, have citizens not faced upheavals in the last century, so their citizens have a disdain for gold.

    However, in Europe that isn’t the case! Gold has saved many in the last 100 years! Same for China, Russia, Middle East, and Africa!

    Here is one story I read about a German Jew trying to leave Germany in the mid 1930s before the door slammed shut. They were not allowed to take anything of value like foreign money, gold, or jewelry out of Germany. They could only take one trunk of clothing per family. This person had a friend, who was a jeweler, make the trunk’s hinges, corner protectors, and latches, out of gold. The Germans naturally throughly searched the trunk of clothes. That small amount of gold gave his family a new start in the west.

    It kind of reminds me of a story about a Belgium man during WW2. He worked in an industrial plant. At quiting time he would put his lunch bucket into a wheelbarrow and wheel it to the guard house. The guards would check his lunch bucket and his clothes to see if he was stealing anything. Then he left with the wheelbarrow. Ever day, at quiting time, he put his lunch bucket into the wheelbarrow, and left.

    Nobody seemed to noticed that he was stealing wheelbarrows!

    #69666
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    The data for the reported reactions to the Covid vaccines in the UK (through Jan 31) were made public recently.
    Just a few of the many reactions listed just for the Pfizer vaccine:

    Deafness (12 reports)
    Blindness (5 reports)
    Blindness transient (2 reports)
    Vision blurred (126 reports)
    Immune system disorders (308 reports)
    Herpes zoster [shingles] (97 reports)
    Locked-in syndrome (1 report)
    Paralysis (15 reports)
    Abortion spontaneous (5 reports)
    Hallucination (38 reports)

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/960150/COVID-19_mRNA_Pfizer_BioNTech_vaccine_analysis_print.pdf
    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions

    A related article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ):

    The UK’s medicines regulator has described the first safety data related to covid-19 vaccines as “reassuring,” with most side effects reported being mild and in line with those seen with other types of vaccine. “The benefits continue to far outweigh the risks,” said June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
    https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n363

    A response to that article, from a retired public health physician in England:

    Respectfully, I remind the CE, that she has barely a few weeks of Yellow Card Reports. These are early side-effects. How does she jump from the early reports to the assumption that there will not be any significant severe effects in the longer term?
    https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n363/rapid-responses

    #69667
    WES
    Participant

    Doc Robinson:

    Seems like they purposely omitted the number of deaths!

    #69668
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Wes
    Following up on your comment about the cultural differences of gold between the west and the rest of the world.

    Obviously you have travelled the world a little bit so you know Asia’s views of gold, first hand! I have traveled to over 20 countries and I can tell you they all share Asian’s view of gold!

    That’s interesting. I knew Russia, Ukraine, and Poland shared Asian’s view of having /owning gold.
    It’s also interesting that the 4 countries you say disdain gold are all native English speaking countries…
    Could the U.S.; nah! Whatever could I be thinking…??? 😉

    #69716
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    “It kind of reminds me of a story about a Belgium man during WW2. He worked in an industrial plant. At quiting time he would put his lunch bucket into a wheelbarrow and wheel it to the guard house. The guards would check his lunch bucket and his clothes to see if he was stealing anything. Then he left with the wheelbarrow. Ever day, at quiting time, he put his lunch bucket into the wheelbarrow, and left. Nobody seemed to noticed that he was stealing wheelbarrows!”

    Deep moral or something in that.

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