Apr 142021
 
 April 14, 2021  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Edgar Degas Leaving the paddock1866
Stolen from Gardner Museum March 18 1990, the single largest art theft in the world. Never recovered

 

Nearly A Quarter Of Registered Covid Deaths Are Not Caused By The Virus (DM)
More Brands Are Putting Money And Clout Behind Covid-19 Vaccine Ads (F.)
Big Pharma Uses Big Tobacco’s Strategy To Defeat Ivermectin (DR)
How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines (TNR)
Russia Accuses US, NATO Of Moving Troops To Its Border (AA)
Biden Urges Russia To De-Escalate Ukraine Tensions In Call With Putin (G.)
Russia Warns US Warships To Stay Far Away From Crimea “For Their Own Good” (ZH)
Biden To Withdraw US Troops From Afghanistan By September 11 (G.)
Joe Biden Is Proceeding With Donald Trump’s Biggest Arms Deal (HuffPo)
The Absentee Vote Logic of the New York Times (RCI)
CNN Staffer Admits Network’s Focus Was To ‘Get Trump Out Of Office’ (Fox)
Crackdown On Cryptocurrencies May Be Coming, Warns Kraken CEO (RT)
Republican Antitrust Bill Would Block All Big Tech Acquisitions (TC)
Mexico’s War on Obesity Sends Junk-Food & Sugary-Drink Giants Scrambling (WS)
Airborne Plastic Pollution ‘Spiralling Around The Globe’ (G.)

 

 

 

 

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.
– Noam Chomsky

 

 

We will never ever know the real numbers.

But 50% of under 25s having antibodies doesn’t seem to point to lockdowns as the main “success” factor.

Nearly A Quarter Of Registered Covid Deaths Are Not Caused By The Virus (DM)

Nearly a quarter of registered Covid-19 deaths are now people who are not being killed by the virus, new official figures show as Boris Johnson comes under renewed pressure from Tory backbenchers to end the third lockdown sooner than planned. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths which are registered are now people who have died ‘with’ the disease rather than ‘from’ an infection. This means that the person who has died will have tested positive for Covid-19 at some point, but that the disease was not recorded as the victim’s primary cause of death on their death certificate. Even though just 23 deaths were announced yesterday, the Prime Minister is continuing to resist calls from his own party to lift all coronavirus curbs ahead of schedule as he warned that cases will rise in the coming weeks as people meet with friends and family in pubs and parks.

Outdoor hospitality and non-essential retail reopened on Monday under the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown. Thousands of people rushed to high streets to splurge their cash on drinks, haircuts and clothes as economists predict a mini-boom fuelled by pent-up demand. However, in his downcast interview with Sky News, Mr Johnson even appeared to dismiss the efficacy of the vaccines his government has been busily rolling out this winter, as he claimed the shutdown – not jabs – had reduced the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths. ‘It is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers – in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections – has not been achieved by the vaccination programme,’ he said.

‘People don’t, I think, appreciate that it’s the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and in the figures that we’re seeing. So yes of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.’ Conservative backbenchers led by Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPs, have mounted a campaign to get the country opened up sooner than planned.

Boris
https://twitter.com/i/status/1381922550154981377

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A giant PR campaign for Pfizer, that’s all it is, paid for by the state.

More Brands Are Putting Money And Clout Behind Covid-19 Vaccine Ads (F.)

As the Covid-19 vaccine becomes more widely available, well known companies ranging from tech giants to beer brands are rolling out public service announcements to encourage people to get their shot. This past week, The Boston Beer Company debuted a new Sam Adams campaign promoting the vaccine featuring the brand’s “Cousin From Boston” character. The ad—created by the advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners—shows the “Cousin” getting vaccinated by a real healthcare worker at Fenway Park’s mega site. But right before getting his jab, he passes out from his fear of needles and dreams of the day he can once again meet up with friends at a bar. (Sam Adams is also offering $7 toward a celebratory beer to the first 10,000 people to share proof of vaccination with the hashtag #ShotForSam on social media.)

According to GS&P cofounder Jeff Goodby—the legendary creative behind the iconic “Got Milk” campaign and countless Super Bowl ads—humor is a good way to reach younger audiences, especially after a year as emotionally draining as 2020. “You know what humor did for me is it puts this in perspective,’ Goodby says. “It’s just an inoculation. We’ve had a million of them in our lifetime, and this one is actually for the good of the community around you as well as for yourself and I think we tried to get that across. And it leads to a certain liberation and togetherness. And beer of course, is central to togetherness. One of the great things about getting inoculated is you can drink beer with people.” While Sam Adams went with humor, it wasn’t without first testing the ad to make sure it would be well-received, despite the serious nature of the topic, says Boston Beer Company CMO Lesya Lysyj.

Before introducing the “Cousin” last year, Sam Adams had been taking a more serious tone, even before the pandemic began. “We felt like it was important to show him showing it since he’s so relatable,” Lysyj says. “And if that guy can do it, anybody can do it . . . We did feel like you could put yourself in the shoes of this guy.” Sam Adams isn’t alone in its messaging. In fact The Ad Council—a nonprofit with a long history of collaborating with marketers to create PSAs for a variety of causes—has raised more than $50 million to fund Covid-19 PSAs and other related initiatives with a goal of appealing to a wide audience. To promote mask-wearing, it teamed up with Warner Media and the CDC in February for “Mask Up America,” a PSA featuring characters—from Harry Potter to the Joker to hobbits from Lord of the Rings—all wearing face masks in iconic scenes.

And in March, it released a vaccine PSA featuring former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George Bush. Heidi Arthur, the Ad Council’s chief campaign officer, says the Covid-19 vaccine effort is the most complicated initiative undertaken by the organization, which also led polio vaccine efforts in the 1950s. “The amount of change can happen so quickly as the medical community learns more about the efficacy of vaccines and making sure that all of our messages and the content we’re creating is really where the science is because it can get very confusing for people with the flip of a switch,” she says.

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It’s about your money, not your health.

Big Pharma Uses Big Tobacco’s Strategy To Defeat Ivermectin (DR)

The Marlboro Man, as Dr. Mukherjee wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies, was the most successful smoking icon by 1955. Dr. Mukherjee describes how the Tobacco Industry fought back by twisting science against the public, first by arguing that an association does not prove cause and effect, and later by offering to perform the studies. The tobacco scientists argued that lung cancer was caused by genetics: if you were born with cancer genes, you developed cancer, and if you weren’t, you didn’t get it. Cigarettes might be associated with cancer, but they argued that more studies were needed if one were to actually “prove a causal link” between cigarettes and cancer. The actual cause of lung cancer, the tobacco scientists concluded, was faulty genetics and not cigarettes.

To assist with these studies, the generous Big Tobacco even offered to fund the research by founding the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. The TIRC is described further in The Emperor of All Maladies, a book I strongly recommend everyone read. The author writes how this ingenious strategy kept the tobacco companies in business and record-breaking profits for the next 50 years despite causing many millions of lung cancer deaths. Blurring or confusing the facts as a tactic proved remarkably effective. But by far, the craftiest ruse was for the Tobacco Industry to pretend to embrace the research and set up their own studies. Because by controlling the study design, they could control the outcome. The same strategy is now used against the public in this pandemic.

Their first victim was Hydroxychloroquine, which proved easy to discredit given that Donald Trump sounded unhinged in his praise for the drug. Later studies seemed to reinforce the belief that HCQ was ineffective; however when academic misconduct was found, it threatened to expose the effort. Big Pharma successfully distanced itself when the fraudulent articles were retracted and blamed on lone scientists acting by themselves. Dr. Tess Lawrie is a highly-respected and independent research consultant to the World Health Organization and NHS. Her work is routinely relied upon in the formation of International Practice Guidelines. She has found HCQ to have an effect against the coronavirus. Most tellingly, when Dr. Tess Lawrie performed her independent review of the data on Ivermectin, she removed the Fonseca study, which purported to show no benefit against COVID with Ivermectin use.

Dr. Lawrie explained, “They (The Fonseca Group) didn’t find that much of a difference between Ivermectin and the control arm. But the control arm received HCQ. So basically, there’s a comparison between two fairly active treatments.” Dr. Lawrie explained that there were many reasons to consider HCQ active against the virus. Thus, two patient groups were compared in Fonseca, both of which received effective drugs against COVID-19, and this was not considered a valid controlled trial of Ivermectin. Therefore the study was eliminated from the meta-analysis.

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Stay away from Bill.

How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines (TNR)

In April [2020], Bill Gates launched a bold bid to manage the world’s scientific response to the pandemic. Gates’s Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator expressed a status quo vision for organizing the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of treatments and vaccines. Like other Gates-funded institutions in the public health arena, the Accelerator was a public-private partnership based on charity and industry enticements. Crucially, and in contrast to the C-TAP, the Accelerator enshrined Gates’s long-standing commitment to respecting exclusive intellectual property claims. Its implicit arguments—that intellectual property rights won’t present problems for meeting global demand or ensuring equitable access, and that they must be protected, even during a pandemic—carried the enormous weight of Gates’s reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader.


How he’s developed and wielded this influence over two decades is one of the more consequential and underappreciated shapers of the failed global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Entering year two, this response has been defined by a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side. Gates’s marquee Covid-19 initiative started relatively small. Two days before the WHO declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced something called the Therapeutics Accelerator, a joint initiative with Mastercard and the charity group the Wellcome Trust to identify and develop potential treatments for the novel coronavirus. Doubling as a social branding exercise for a giant of global finance, the Accelerator reflected Gates’s familiar formula of corporate philanthropy, which he has applied to everything from malaria to malnutrition.

In retrospect, it was a strong indicator that Gates’s dedication to monopoly medicine would survive the pandemic, even before he and his foundation’s officers began to say so publicly. This was confirmed when a bigger version of the Accelerator was unveiled the following month at the WHO. The Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator, or ACT-Accelerator, was Gates’s bid to organize the development and distribution of everything from therapeutics to testing. The biggest and most consequential arm, COVAX, proposed to subsidize vaccine deals with poor countries through donations by, and sales to, richer ones. The goal was always limited: It aimed to provide vaccines for up to 20 percent of the population in low-to-middle-income countries. After that, governments would largely have to compete on the global market like everyone else. It was a partial demand-side solution to what the movement coalescing around a call for a “people’s vaccine” warned would be a dual crisis of supply and access, with intellectual property at the center of both.

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“Over 40,000 people and 15,000 units of military equipment and weapons will be deployed on Russia’s western border in the near future..”

“In the spring of this year, the joint armed forces of NATO began the largest exercise in the last 30 years, Defender Europe 2021..”

Russia Accuses US, NATO Of Moving Troops To Its Border (AA)

The US is moving its troops to Russia’s borders, a top Russian official said on Tuesday. Over 40,000 people and 15,000 units of military equipment and weapons will be deployed on Russia’s western border in the near future, Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said in a video conference with other military chiefs in the northern city of Severodvinsk. “In Poland and the Baltic states, US forces are being reinforced … the intensity of aerial reconnaissance has been doubled compared to last year, and the intensity of naval reconnaissance has increased by one-and-a-half times,” he said.


The minister accused the US and its allies of carrying out active military activities “with a clear anti-Russian orientation,” including up to 40 major military training events in Europe every year. “In the spring of this year, the joint armed forces of NATO began the largest exercise in the last 30 years, Defender Europe 2021,” he said. According to Shoygu, Russia redeployed two army and three airborne units to its western border “to counter the threat.”

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This is propaganda theater. It’s very obviously NATO that’s escalating tensions.

Biden Urges Russia To De-Escalate Ukraine Tensions In Call With Putin (G.)

In a phone call with Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden has called on Russia to de-escalate tensions with Ukraine and proposed a summit between the two leaders amid growing concern over a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border. The president emphasized the United States’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and expressed concern about Russia’s military buildup, the White House said. “President Biden reaffirmed his goal of building a stable and predictable relationship with Russia consistent with US interests, and proposed a summit meeting in a third country in the coming months to discuss the full range of issues facing the United States and Russia.” Biden expressed concern about Russia’s military buildup in the Crimea region of Ukraine and on Ukraine’s border, the White House said in a statement.


It said Biden also made clear that the United States will act “firmly” to defend its national interests in response to Russia’s actions, such as cyber intrusions and election interference. Biden also proposed holding a summit with Putin in a third country in coming months. The phone call came hours after Nato’s secretary general called on Russia to halt its military buildup around Ukraine, describing it as “unjustified, unexplained and deeply concerning”. Flanked by Ukraine’s foreign minister at a press conference on Tuesday morning, Nato’s Jens Stoltenberg said Russia had moved thousands of combat troops to Ukraine’s borders in “the largest massing of Russian troops since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014”.

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“The trend in the behavior of the Ukrainian side creates the risk of a resumption of full-scale military action.”

Russia Warns US Warships To Stay Far Away From Crimea “For Their Own Good” (ZH)

At a moment the United States appears poised to send its warships near Ukraine as a strong ‘deterrent message’ against Russian forces built up near the east Ukrainian border, Russia on Tuesday warned that US vessels better stay away from Crimea “for their own good”. A Kremlin statement further called the new US deployment into the Black Sea a serious “provocation” which serves no other purpose but to test Russia’s “strength” and “nerves”. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov issued the Tuesday warning as follows: “There is absolutely nothing for American ships to be doing near our shores, this is purely a provocative action. Provocative in the direct sense of the word: they are testing our strength, playing on our nerves. They will not succeed.”

“We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good,” he added. It was late last week that Turkey’s foreign ministry confirmed that it’s granted permission for US warships to use the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to enter the Black Sea. The Pentagon has downplayed the deployment by keeping mostly mum about it, only saying that it’s “routine” for US warships to patrol the Black Sea. The Kremlin has warned that it’s Kiev’s own actions and initial troop build-up in and near Donbass that is risking “broader war” in the region. Days ago Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “The trend in the behavior of the Ukrainian side creates the risk of a resumption of full-scale military action.”

Russia’s newest warning that US ships better not come near Crimea likely also have in mind Joe Biden’s first words addressing the long-simmering Ukraine crisis issued early in his presidency. He said in a February 26 statement that the US “will never” recognize Russia’s claims over Crimea: The United States does not and will never recognize Russia’s purported annexation of the peninsula, and we will stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggressive acts. We will continue to work to hold Russia accountable for its abuses and aggression in Ukraine.

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Trump wanted to do it but got obstructed by the Pentagon. So Biden can get all the glory. On 9/11, no less. Oh boy.

“The president has judged that a conditions based approach, which has been the approach of the past two decades, is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”

No, seriously, that’s not about Trump, it’s about Biden. Don’t try to make this up at home, they have professionals to do it for you.

Biden To Withdraw US Troops From Afghanistan By September 11 (G.)

Joe Biden will withdraw all the remaining US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a senior administration official has confirmed. The president is expected to make a formal announcement on Wednesday. There are currently about 2,500 US troops in the country, serving alongside 7,000 other foreign troops as part of a Nato coalition. Most, if not all, Nato allies are likely to withdraw in coordination with the US. “We will remain in lockstep with them as we undergo this operation. We went in together, adjusted together and now we will prepare to leave together,” a US official said. The drawdown of US troops will begin by 1 May, the withdrawal deadline the Trump administration agreed with the Taliban last year, and will be completed by the 9/11 anniversary.

“We went to Afghanistan to deliver justice to those who attacked us on September 11th and to disrupt terrorists seeking to use Afghanistan as a safe haven to attack,” a senior administration official said. “We believe we achieved that objective some years ago. We judge the threat against the homeland now emanating from Afghanistan to be at a level that we can address it, without a persistent military footprint in the country and without remaining at war with the Taliban.” The only remaining US military presence after September 11 this year will be security for the US embassy, a task normally carried out by marines. The Biden administration has said it will negotiate with the Afghan government over the precise security arrangements for the diplomatic mission in Kabul.

About 800,000 US soldiers and other military personnel have served at least once in Afghanistan since the US invasion in 2001, launched in the wake of the September 11 attacks. More than 2,300 have been killed, and 20,000 wounded. The US military orthodoxy until recently has been that any withdrawal from Afghanistan would have to be “conditions based”, meaning it was dependent on the security situation and the threat posed by the Taliban to the democratic and social gains of the past 20 years. The senior US official briefing reporters on the decision said: “The president has judged that a conditions based approach, which has been the approach of the past two decades, is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”

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“$23.4 billion in sophisticated weaponry”, but only after commitments to human rights.

Joe Biden Is Proceeding With Donald Trump’s Biggest Arms Deal (HuffPo)

President Joe Biden is advancing controversial Trump-era plans to transfer $23.4 billion in sophisticated weaponry to the United Arab Emirates, a State Department spokesperson told HuffPost on Tuesday – despite concerns from influential lawmakers and progressive activists, as well as the Biden administration’s promise to review the package. The news came amid an ongoing lawsuit by a nonprofit group called the New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs, which echoed criticism of the deal as potentially destabilizing for the Middle East. “While we will not comment on ongoing litigation, we can confirm that that the Administration intends to move forward with these proposed defense sales to the UAE, even as we continue reviewing details and consulting with Emirati officials to ensure we have developed mutual understandings with respect to Emirati obligations before, during, and after delivery,” the spokesperson said.

Last December, nearly all Senate Democrats voted to try and block the sale, citing President Donald Trump’s rushed attempt to push it through and the UAE’s alarming violations of human rights at home and around the region. Biden put the deal – which would give the UAE the F-35 fighter jet, armed drones and associated bombs and missiles — under review shortly after becoming president. The administration has since been vague about that process. The transfers are incredibly complex and will take years to complete, so it was clear that they were not occurring yet. In January, an official told the Wall Street Journal that the UAE sales “were not frozen while they are being examined” – in contrast to Trump-era arms deals for Saudi Arabia, a UAE ally which has also faced growing criticism in Washington.

Still, many observers believed there was an effective pause on the deal and that at some point the administration would offer a public explanation of how it would handle the agreement. Democratic lawmakers and activists, who opposed to the deal because of the UAE’s aggressive activities across the Middle East, wanted to ensure the Biden administration was serious about the review, to the extent of possibly shrinking the package to pressure the Emiratis to respect human rights standards. U.S. officials will continue raising rights and geopolitical concerns with the Emiratis, the State Department spokesperson told HuffPost. “The estimated delivery dates on these sales, if implemented, are scheduled for after 2025 or later. Thus, we anticipate a robust and sustained dialogue with the UAE to [ensure] any defense transfers meet our mutual strategic objectives to build a stronger, interoperable, and more capable security partnership,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

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“..what of the Times’s cautions over decades that the most common sort of election fraud involves absentee voting?”

The Absentee Vote Logic of the New York Times (RCI)

To pass a law limiting the use of absentee ballots, as Georgia recently did, is no longer to choose a side in a legitimate debate over how to balance ballot integrity and ease of voting. Instead, to express concern about the risk of election fraud is seen as being engaged in a different sort of fraud — an illegitimate effort to disenfranchise the poor and minorities. The New York Times has aggressively insisted the last several months that worries over absentee and mail-in ballots, in particular, are dishonest violations of voting rights. Times staff opinion editor Spencer Bokat-Lindell wrote late in October that “[t]he effort to discredit and discourage mail-in voting” was the “culmination of a decades-long disinformation campaign by the Republican Party and others to suppress votes, especially those cast by Black and Latino Americans.”

Spencer Bokat-Lindell: Times opinion editor: Efforts to discredit mail voting are aimed at suppressing votes, “especially those cast by Black and Latino Americans.” Then what of the Times’s cautions over decades that the most common sort of election fraud involves absentee voting? But what of the Times itself, which for over two decades has warned readers that the most common sort of election fraud involves absentee voting? As recently as September, Times reporters Stephanie Saul and Reid Epstein quoted Richard Hasen, who teaches election law at the University of California, Irvine, saying that “[e]lection fraud in the United States is very rare, but the most common type of such fraud in the United States involves absentee ballots.”

In 2018 operatives working for the Republican candidate for North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District seat, falsified absentee ballots. Times reporters Alan Blinder and Michael Wines told readers that the state’s long history of election fraud was “under a spotlight.” They quoted lawyer Bill Gilkeson saying that “absentee ballots” were “where the fraud really happens.” In 2019 Blinder wrote, “The Ninth District controversy ranks among the highest-profile examples of modern election fraud,” one that “underscores how absentee ballots remain susceptible to abuse.”

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What comes below fake news on the scale?

CNN Staffer Admits Network’s Focus Was To ‘Get Trump Out Of Office’ (Fox)

A staffer for CNN spoke candidly to an undercover journalist about the political motivations the network had during the 2020 presidential election, boasting the left-leaning outlet helped defeat former President Donald Trump and even calling his own employer “propaganda.” In the first installment of what’s billed as a three-part #ExposeCNN campaign from the right-wing guerilla news outlet Project Veritas, network technical director Charles Chester shed light on how the network wanted to remove its nemesis from the White House and help now-President Biden. “Look at what we did, we got Trump out,” Chester said in a celebratory tone. “I am 100% going to say it. And I 100% believe it that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out.”

While similar videos are sometimes deceptively edited and taken out of context, many comments made by Chester throughout the video are longer clips that feature him speaking in clear, complete sentences. In a series of sitdowns with an undercover journalist over the past month, Chester — who bragged he was “one step down” from a director — claimed CNN was “creating a story” that questioned Trump’s health that “we didn’t know anything about,” calling it “propaganda” to help remove Trump from office. “Trump was, I don’t know, like shaking his hand or whatever… we brought in like so many medical people to like all tell a story that, like, it was all speculation that he was like neurologically damaged, that he was losing it, he’s unfit to, you know, whatever,” Chester said. “We were creating a story that we didn’t know anything about.”

While Chester claimed CNN wanted to help remove Trump from office, he also said the network wanted to promote the health and fitness of Biden. “We would always show shots of him jogging… him in his aviator shades and like you paint him as a young geriatric,” Chester said of Biden, before dismissing concerns that he wouldn’t make it a full term because he’s a fan of Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think we got him through this term,” Chester said “He’s not going to f—–g die, but I’m OK with that. [Harris] probably could be like a b—-h in like a board meeting and you’d hate her as a boss, but she’s f—–g real and better than what we got regardless.”

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“It would certainly send a message that the government sees this as a superior alternative to their own currency.”

Crackdown On Cryptocurrencies May Be Coming, Warns Kraken CEO (RT)

Governments around the world could start clamping down on the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to Jesse Powell, the chief executive of the Kraken exchange. “I think there could be some crackdown,” the CEO told CNBC, adding that regulatory uncertainty around crypto isn’t going away anytime soon. Powell’s words follow a recent anti-money laundering rule proposed by the US government that would require people who hold their cryptocurrencies in a private digital wallet to undergo identity checks if they make transactions of $3,000 or more. “Something like that could really hurt crypto and kind of kill the original use case, which was to just make financial services accessible to everyone,” Powell said.


He expressed hopes that “the US and international regulators don’t take too much of a narrow view on this,” noting that “Some other countries, China especially, are taking crypto very seriously and taking a very long-term view.” The chief executive said he feels the US is more “shortsighted” than other nations and is “susceptible” to the pressures of incumbent legacy businesses – in other words, the banks – that “stand to lose from crypto becoming a big deal.” “I also think it might be too late,” Powell added. “Maybe the genie’s out of the bottle and just trying to ban it at this point would make it more attractive. It would certainly send a message that the government sees this as a superior alternative to their own currency.

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The CIA will stop it. Big Tech=Big Intel.

Republican Antitrust Bill Would Block All Big Tech Acquisitions (TC)

There are about to be a lot of antitrust bills taking aim at Big Tech, and here’s one more. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) rolled out a new bill this week that would take some severe measures to rein in Big Tech’s power, blocking mergers and acquisitions outright. The “Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act” would ban any acquisitions by companies with a market cap of more than $100 billion, including vertical mergers. The bill also proposes changes that would dramatically heighten the financial pain for companies caught engaging in anti-competitive behavior, forcing any company that loses an antirust suit to forfeit profits made through those business practices.

At its core, Hawley’s legislation would snip some of the red tape around antitrust enforcement by amending the Sherman Act, which made monopolies illegal, and the Clayton Act, which expanded the scope of illegal anti-competitive behavior. The idea is to make it easier for the FTC and other regulators to deem a company’s behavior anti-competitive — a key criticism of the outdated antitrust rules that haven’t kept pace with the realities of the tech industry. The bill isn’t likely to get too far in a Democratic Senate, but it’s not insignificant. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who chairs the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, proposed legislation earlier this year that would also create barriers for dominant companies with a habit of scooping up their competitors. Klobuchar’s own ideas for curtailing Big Tech’s power similarly focus on reforming the antitrust laws that have shaped U.S. business for more than a century.

The Republican bill may have some overlap with Democratic proposals, but it still hits some familiar notes from the Trump era of hyperpartisan Big Tech criticism. Hawley slams “woke mega-corporations” in Silicon Valley for exercising too much power over the information and products that Americans consume. While Democrats naturally don’t share that critique, Hawley’s bill makes it clear that antitrust reform targeting Big Tech is one policy area where both political parties could align on the ends, even if they don’t see eye to eye on the why.

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“In Mexico City, the local government has proposed a law that would ban the sale, delivery and distribution of packaged foods with a high caloric and energy content and sugary drinks to children..”

Mexico’s War on Obesity Sends Junk-Food & Sugary-Drink Giants Scrambling (WS)

Since Mexico’s government has passed one of the strictest food labeling laws on the planet in October last year, all soft drinks cans and bottles, bags of chips and other processed food packages must bear black octagonal labels warning of “EXCESS SUGAR”, “EXCESS CALORIES”, “EXCESS SODIUM” or “EXCESS TRANS FATS” — all in big bold letters that are impossible to miss. Many states have also introduced legislation making it much more difficult for retailers to sell junk food and sugary drinks to children. Evidence from other countries suggests that warning labels can be effective. Chile started requiring them in 2016. It also limited cartoon food packaging, prevented schools from selling unhealthy foods, restricted TV adverts, and banned promotional toys.

Over the next two years, sugary drink sales in Chile plunged by 23%. According to one study, the labels reduced the likelihood of people choosing sugary breakfast cereals by 11% and sugary juices by almost 24%. A nightmare for the companies affected. The prospect of something similar transpiring in Mexico, a country almost seven times larger than Chile and that consumes more processed food than any other country in Latin America, unnerved global food and beverage companies. The United States, EU, Canada and Switzerland, home to some of the world’s biggest food companies, tried to derail the new legislation. But to no avail. The arrival of Covid-19, which has proven to be particularly lethal to people with three comorbidities — obesity, diabetes, and hypertension — has strengthened the government’s case and resolve.

Over a dozen of Mexico’s 36 state governments have banned or are in the process of banning the sales of soft drinks and junk food to children. In Mexico City, the local government has proposed a law that would ban the sale, delivery and distribution of packaged foods with a high caloric and energy content and sugary drinks to children. The law will also ban the presence of soft drink vending machines in schools. Mexico’s Senate also recently passed a law that will compel educational authorities to prohibit the sale of foods with low nutritional value and high caloric content in the vicinity of school facilities while promoting the establishment of healthy food outlets. There are also moves afoot to restrict the advertising of foods high in fat, salt, sugar and saturated fats on children’s television channels.

These moves have raised concerns that the government is overstepping its bounds. The business lobby group Coparmex said that banning the sale of junk food and sugary drinks to minors represents a frontal attack on commercial freedom and freedom of choice. It will also have serious economic consequences for businesses in the retail sector. But those consequences are dwarfed by the economic and health impact of widespread obesity. This is particularly true in the time of Covid when the risk of death from the virus is about 10 times higher in countries where more than half of the population is overweight, according to a report released in March by the World Obesity Federation.

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Either our bodies find a way to incorporate plastics, or we’re doomed.

Airborne Plastic Pollution ‘Spiralling Around The Globe’ (G.)

Microplastic pollution is now “spiralling around the globe”, according to a study of airborne plastic particles. The researchers said human pollution has led to a global plastic cycle, akin to natural processes such as the carbon cycle, with plastic moving through the atmosphere, oceans and land. The result is the “plastification” of the planet, said one scientist. The analysis calls plastic pollution one of the most pressing environmental issues of the 21st century. It indicates that the billions of tonnes of plastic discarded into the oceans and land and being broken down into tiny pieces are being thrown back into the air by road traffic and winds over seas and farmland. People are already known to breathe, drink and eat microplastics and the other research suggests levels of pollution will continue to rise rapidly.

The scientists said this “raises questions on the impact of accumulating plastics in the atmosphere on human health. The inhalation of particles can be irritating to lung tissue and lead to serious diseases.” Prof Natalie Mahowald, at Cornell University in the US and part of the research team, said: “What we’re seeing right now is the accumulation of mismanaged plastics just going up. Some people think it’s going to increase by tenfold [per decade]. “But maybe we could solve this before it becomes a huge problem, if we manage our plastics better, before they accumulate in the environment and swirl around everywhere.” She said clearing up ocean plastic could help reduce the amount that gets thrown back up into the atmosphere, and that more biodegradable plastics could be part of the solution.

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined airborne microplastics, which have been far less studied than plastic in oceans and rivers. The team had more than 300 samples of airborne microplastics from 11 sites across the western US, the best dataset available globally. These were the basis for atmospheric modelling that estimated the contribution from different sources, the first such study to do so. Virtually none of the airborne microplastics came directly from plastic being discarded in cities and towns, the scientists found, but were the result of road traffic and winds across oceans and farmland whipping up plastic particles already in the environment. “We thought population centres would be a much better source, obviously, but it just didn’t work out that way,” Mahowald said. “Resuspension [of microplastics] makes the most sense with this set of data.”

[..] Microplastic pollution has been detected across the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. The revelation in December of small plastic particles in human placentas was described by scientists as “a matter of great concern”.

Read more …

 

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Mick Jagger’s take on Covid. Easy Sleazy. With Dave Grohl.

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle April 14 2021

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)
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  • #73124

    Edgar Degas Leaving the paddock1866 Stolen from Gardner Museum March 18 1990, the single largest art theft in the world. Never recovered   • Near
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 14 2021]

    #73125
    Polder Dweller
    Participant

    The WEF knew about the benefits of vitamin D for the immune system way back in 2017 and still our governments ignore it.

    Vitamin D could be much more important to your health than you think.

    #73126

    The WEF knew about the benefits of vitamin D for the immune system way back in 2017 and still our governments ignore it.

    And still the amounts recommended (400-600 IU daily) are completely inadequate.

    #73129
    ctbarnum
    Participant

    Thanks again for the great links, Raul. I would like to add one I found last night that serves as a fairly good summary and analysis by Sahra Wagenknecht of the people that comprise “cancel culture.” The text is in German, so I had to translate using Google. This kind of aligns with the recent article by Matt Taibbi that asked what happened to liberalism.

    “What makes the lifestyle left so unsympathetic in the eyes of many people, especially the less fortunate, is their obvious tendency to regard their privileges as personal virtues and to glorify their worldview and way of life as the epitome of progressiveness and responsibility. It is the complacency of the morally superior that exudes many lifestyle leftists, the all too intrusive conviction that they are on the side of good, law and reason. It is the arrogance with which they look down on the world, the needs, even the language of those people who have never been able to attend university, tend to live in a small-town environment and get the ingredients for their barbecue evening from Aldi simply because that money must last until the end of the month. And it is the unmistakable lack of compassion for those who have to fight much harder for their little wealth, if they have any at all, and who perhaps because of this sometimes appear tougher or grimmer and are in a bad mood. ”

    The Lifestyle Left

    #73130
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “The WEF knew about the benefits of vitamin D” They also knew about HCQ and co, since Fauci is the one who established that as medical fact back in the SARS days. When you know that, how do you come to any other conclusions than that they are actively PREVENTING all cure, all Vitamin D, by giving you 10 years prison in the U.K. if you see the sun or break “quarantine”. You know, the quarantine law they never passed and isn’t law. It’s all an “accident”? What does it take?

    “The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective. – Noam Chomsky

    It’s worse than that: as I often say, the educated are of a neurotype and upbringing that makes them far MORE likely to accept indoctrination and are pointedly selected to be the most obedient, the least skeptical and objective.

    They should go down to the local speakeasy and get more black eyes, like the bourbon-sucking reporters once used to. It’s not a bad neurotype, and we’d all prefer that we could be trusting of our boss and just do our jobs, but when the nation and world looks like “A Fistful of Dollars”, (“Yojimbo” to you natives) the only thing trusting your boss does is get you killed. And your daughters hauled off to Little St. James.

    Since it’s based on a neurotype, it’s very difficult for them to overcome this, that’s what they need suspicious low-life rednecks for. So they have very carefully been poisoned against their own cure and salvation: to think they’re all that, and never listen to or take advice from the larger community, even when that community is being systematically murdered in an ethnic cleansing campaign. They’ll die first, in present experience, taking us with them, which they already have. NAFTA and 30,000 a year dead in opioids alone. Not done helping yet.

    Is it so hard to listen? The other guy may not be right, but he’s got a point, he’s got his lived experience. Why do I have to remind you he’s a human being, not the untermensch? You’re say you’re the good guys: shouldn’t you have to remind me?

    “Nearly A Quarter Of Registered Covid Deaths Are Not Caused By The Virus (DM)”

    I heard they’re now back-changing the old death certificates here to cover their tracks. They say “Heart Attack”, Hospital got paid $57k for “covid”, and so something needs to be done. That something is more lying, cheating, and stealing. I haven’t seen proof but would be most expected thing in the world. There’s no lie Americans won’t tell.

    “More Brands Are Putting Money and Clout Behind Covid-19 Vaccine Ads (F.)”

    If slave-owning, wealth-extracting, planet-wrecking, union-busting, wage-opposing, bottle-peeing corporations are for it, it’s got to be good for you. Get yours today! Operators standing by!

    As said yesterday, apparently Irony is dead. A mere step ahead of the rest of us.

    Russia Accuses US, NATO of Moving Troops to Its Border (AA)”

    I have heard after running a spot-test, the war is off for now.

    However, prophesy going back 500 years say that the generation will sleepwalk with open eyes into a nuclear-type exchange. And finally, after all these years, that now seems extremely likely. There is nobody stupider than the modern man, except the air-locked experts and generals at the top, who actually believe the bulls—t they’ve been swimming in. But not right now. 4 years or more out at least. And it will come from a place no one expects, although having set the stage with open eyes, it will be seen as inevitable consequence of their tomfoolery later.

    But what do you think we could do? We elected like the last four Presidents who said they would NOT go to war. We riot in the streets. No one’s listening. The real power is hidden, and it’s unaccountable. …I mean except in Europe, where they already know the EU is completely unreal, undemocratic, and unaccountable. “You’ll vote that referendum until you get it right. Failing that, we’ll sign a treaty in Lisbon to get around endless, embarrassing, serial failures in the referendum.” “Bringing Democracy to the world one bullet at a time.”

    “Biden Urges Russia to De-Escalate Ukraine Tensions in Call with Putin (G.)”

    That’s strange. I didn’t know Biden could speak. What will Putin do with the most popular President in world history? Who more people voted for than were registered? Ah, Australia, ya got nothing on us. 100% voter compliance? We voted One hundred and TEN percent of all U.S. Voters. There were 147M registered and 74M + 80M people voted in 2020. Eat that. We’re No.1.

    “Biden to Withdraw US Troops from Afghanistan by September 11 (G.)”

    My only problem with this is that because Biden said it, it’s a lie.

    We went to Afghanistan to deliver justice to those who attacked us”

    I rest my case. No one in Afghanistan attacked you. Saudi Arabians attacked you. You gave them limitless arms and money to attack MORE civilian buildings, which they’re still doing 20 years later cluster bombing civilians. Unlike what I thought back then, the lies really can go on forever, and ever, and ever, and ever.

    But if he said it, if it’s published, it’s a lie. Look at the Gaetz-meeting thing out of the NY Times yesterday. They don’t even care. They didn’t even call. Look at the guy arrested for criticizing AOC in the mildest way humanly possible, calling her “Underwhelming”. The Intercept was her press agent without even calling Wentz, a far-leftist Progressive “Left, Bitches”, that AOC is not.

    Didn’t call, didn’t ask, didn’t care. If they printed it, it’s a lie. Applause all ‘round. Attack Fox for asking and interviewing people who are alarmed at the loss of all freedoms and free speech. You don’t have to defend Fox: if you don’t like that they got “statements”, posted the story, then cover it yourself.

    But I can’t complain. Kimmel interviewed Hunter, calling him “Stunning and Brave”, an American hero and all around swell guy. I say that to all $1B crackheads who illegally had federal agents cover for him on multiple federal firearms felonies.

    Flickerman

    Yes that’s Colbert. It’s never been more appropriate.

    “The Absentee Vote Logic of the New York Times (RCI)”

    Hahahaha! They used the word “Logic” and “New York Times” in the same sentence. “Words mean whatever I say they mean. The only question is which is to be master—that’s all.”

    Neurotype heads nod. “You’re so smart and cool, NY Times. Your support of snitching and deplatforming people for their private, locked conversations so we could be more like Chairman Xi were awesome. Hey, go get Glenn Greenwald and Substack next: they’re journalists with free speech.”

    Rooky-dooky. One helping of anti-all-free speech coming up!

    Logic: They printed it. It’s a lie. The end.

    CNN spoke candidly to an undercover journalist”

    Wow, not a lie. “Journalists” get “Statements” and print them. However, it wasn’t Fox who did this because they’re not journalists. But it’s always a pleasure to see a single honest word be published, even if it’s on accident.

    “Crackdown on Cryptocurrencies May Be Coming, Warns Kraken CEO (RT)”

    Yes, there’s a big raid out there somewhere. But since the prices are nearly as rigged as all other markets, that’s hardly a surprise. Right now they’re letting it run, maybe near $100K, so they’ll have weak hands to attack, kill, and eat. But $1 to $60,000? I can spend that.

    “In Mexico City, the local government has proposed a law that would ban the sale, delivery and distribution of packaged foods with a high caloric and energy content and sugary drinks to children..”

    Mommy knows best.

    “Mama’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true
    Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you
    Mama’s gonna keep you right here under her wing
    She won’t let you fly but she might let you sing
    Mama’s gonna keep baby cosy and warm
    Ooh baby, you’ll always be baby to me”

    I don’t want to be a baby. I want to be a man. How about you stop promoting monopoly and subsidy on every other front and maybe your “Drink Milk” campaign can complete? Does Italy need this law? Sweden? Then why do they need it in Mexico and New York? Are they less good, less human?

    “Leave me alone.” The original first motto of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugio_cent

    Actually it was “Mind Your Own D—n Business” but same thing.
    fugio

    They can’t. They are mentally ill. Unfortunately people who LET them are also mentally ill.

    Don’t be that guy.

    Meme going around: the community-focused natural utopia the Left speaks of is what the Right already has and lives in rural America. Oddly, they are against it and want to destroy it instead of saying “Thank you, we’re saved.” But if they stopped hating things, what would their ego do all day?

    #73133
    Mr. House
    Participant
    #73134
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Who wants to bet they paused the J&J shot and haven’t informed us of how many adverse mishaps have occurred? Wouldn’t want any bad PR. Wouldn’t be lying about the others would they?

    #73135
    Germ
    Participant

    Somewhat Euro-centric, but a terrific look at the data.

    Wow – we have been seriously mislead by the powers that be during this ‘pandemic’.

    #73136
    zerosum
    Participant

    At Last!
    Good news for the ordinary people.

    • Mexico’s War on Obesity Sends Junk-Food & Sugary-Drink Giants Scrambling (WS)

    “…. consequences are dwarfed by the economic and health impact of widespread obesity. This is particularly true in the time of Covid when the risk of death from the virus is about 10 times higher in countries where more than half of the population is overweight, according to a report released in March by the World Obesity Federation. Data has shown that while age is the predominant factor affecting risk of hospitalization and death from Covid-19, being overweight comes a close second.
    In the past 20 years the number of obese and overweight people has tripled, with 75% of the population now overweight
    ——-
    https://www.investopedia.com/articles/wealth-management/120215/blue-collar-vs-white-collar-different-social-classes.asp#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,construction%2C%20mining%2C%20or%20maintenance.
    SUITS
    White-collar workers are known as suit-and-tie workers who work in service industries and often avoid physical labor. The blue-collar stereotype refers to any worker who engages in hard manual labor, such as construction, mining, or maintenance.
    When the blue collar refers to you as “a suit”, its not a compliment.
    ——

    #73137
    zerosum
    Participant

    There’s room at the inn.
    There are bigger fish in the fish tanks

    Bernie Madoff dies in prison at age 82


    Bernie Madoff dies in prison at age 82
    A court-appointed trustee has recovered more than $13 billion of an estimated $17.5 billion that investors put into Madoff’s business.

    At the time of his arrest, fake account statements were telling clients they had holdings worth $60 billion.

    Texas Nonprofit Hires Biden Transition Official – Then Lands Half-Billion Dollar Contract To Manage Border Crisis
    Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Uses Call Options To Buy Microsoft Ahead Of Big Govt Contract

    #73138
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    • Nearly A Quarter Of Registered Covid Deaths Are Not Caused By The Virus (DM)
    “The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)…”

    The latest data also includes this underreported statement about total deaths from all causes:
    This is the fourth consecutive week that deaths have been lower than the five-year average in England [2015-2019].”

    Digging deeper into the data for the most recent 4-week period, I found that if you take “Deaths involving Influenza and Pneumonia” and add this to “Deaths due to COVID-19” [this will be overcounting the deaths since there is some overlap], the total of these overcounted deaths (including Covid deaths) is still

      less

    than the 5-year average (2015-2019) for “Deaths involving Influenza and Pneumonia” during the same 4-week period.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest

    #73139
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Dum dum dum dum. Wearing the dum dum hat:

    https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/04/office-reopening-anxiety-fear-mistrust.html

    Yeah, it’s what you think it is. With non-stop irrational, thought stopping fear fest. “I’ve been vaccinated, so I’m more scared than ever I’m going to get Covid”. Huh? “Obviously, having been vaccinated, we’ll all wear masks all day.” What? “Although I’m vaccinated, no one is safe until we reach herd immunity.” Should I go pummel your science teacher? What’s coming out of your pie-hole right now.

    On. And on. And on. And on.

    You know what REAL states think of this? You’re all a bunch of privileged, entitled, crybaby weaklings that should be put out of your misery. Let’s take over Brooklyn and liquidate it back to Ohio where it was stolen from, one pension fraud at a time.

    When you’re stupid, uneducated, and weak, how long can you expect to stay rich and in power?

    #73140
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Mr. House posted the link to this justifiably angry (in my view) rant by Kurt Denninger. Some samples:

    “It ought to be obvious that playing parlor tricks on your body’s cells to produce the “spike protein” — not introducing it directly into your body which is incidentally the actual definition of a vaccine, but tricking your cells to produce it instead (and which has now been magically redefined to count as a “vaccine”) is inherently dangerous. You’d think that a decade or more of both animal and human trials, with very close follow-up on every single human so-exposed, with all of the data written up and presented to the world in public would be required to know if this sort of malarkey has unknown but severe danger associated with it. Among other risks doing this could result in cells in very unpleasant places (e.g. your heart, spleen, etc.) taking up said “instructions” and being damaged, leading to an immune response in a very bad place that could injure or kill you, or it might lead your body to target your own cells since by definition the cells that take up said “programming” and produce the protein are diseased. If either of those things happen then the very same thing that kills you when Covid goes badly might kill you as a result of the vaccine either immediately or somewhere down the road when challenged either by the original virus — or some other as yet not-identified stimulus.”

    “At the same time we also continue to ignore the mountain of evidence that early treatment works; this was known back in the first months of 2020 but of course if you have any early treatment that works then you cannot get an EUA for a vaccine and this would interfere with people making money since they’d have to run said full and normally-expected set of tests first. Of course if you ran the full set of tests you would have also found the problems and thus those people who died from the jab would still be alive and since the therapies in fact do work most of those who died of Covid-19 would also still be alive and, without the fear generated by a big body count that can be splayed all over the media there’d be no market for said vaccines either.”

    “We’re talking about a disease that, among non-morbid, is roughly as hazardous as Chicken Pox in a child — a risk anyone older than about 30 was deliberately exposed to by their parents, author included.”

    Idiocy: Experimental Vaccines And Spike Proteins
    by Karl Denninger
    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=242059

    #73142
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “When you’re stupid, uneducated, and weak, how long can you expect to stay rich and in power?”

    That is an excellent question i posed to my father in different words the other week. The people who believe this shit the most are the corporate types, and after having worked with them for a decade or so, if it came down to civil war they’d lose very quickly. Which then makes you wonder if those who now use them as a blunt weapon have also considered this?

    #73143
    Mr. House
    Participant

    @Doc robinson

    I found this comment to be very apt to how this entire thing feels

    “BRAVO!!!!!

    A tour de force that ranks up there with Martin Luther and his Ninety Five Theses of 1517. This column, and many others, is an exposure of the corruption of the Covid 19 Dogma and a plea for a rational discussion of it.

    Instead of a Church in Wittenberg, we have your column and the internet. May this column go viral.

    Big Pharma/Big Medicine/CDC/FDA are the modern day equivalents of the Roman Catholic Church. They sell us the lie of the “vaccines” to absolve us of our sin of covid 19, no different than selling us indulgences to absolve of us of spiritual sin in the old days.

    You did not challenge the Holy Writ lest you be excommunicated!!! Luther refused to recant and was excommunicated in 1520. Just like the censoring, banning, de-monitizing, sanctioning, firing, of anybody that challenges the Covid-19 Dogma. It is likely as forever as the Roman Catholic Church – they haven’t reversed Luther’s 1520 excommunication either.

    As the Dominican Friar Tzetzel said, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory into heaven springs.” Just like we are “saved” by the first jab into our arms. Oh wait! You still have to give even more pennies for salvation, just like having to mask and social distance after the jab.

    Fauci is Pope Leo X – Lending authority to the Dogma while making $$ to build his modern day St. Paul’s Basilica. Just like the Pope’s of old, he must split the cash with the modern day Ceasars of Social Media, Big Pharma and Big Gov – to maintain control over the wayward sinning masses. No one must stray from the flock!!!

    Members of academia & big business, doctors and Karens, are the akin to the priests of the time, in on the scam. Instead of pennies of the poor, they demand obedience in masking, social distancing, vaccines.

    Martin Luther’s central tenet was that salvation came through God’s grace, by accepting Christ as the messiah and personal acceptance of your sins. It did not require a ginormous Church hierarchy, money and coercion to obtain. Hence it was such a threat that the entire Church mobilized against him.

    It does not require an enormous infrastructure to deal with covid 19 either. So much can be done on the personal level. Avoiding diabetes & obesity, using vitamin D and OTC supplements, ivermectin, HZQ, inhaled steroids, washing your hands, etc.

    But you can’t build St. Peter’s Basilica when people take their salvation into their own hands and your coffers are empty!!!

    Just as Martin Luther caused a fundamental and irreconcilable split in the Roman Catholic Church that persists 600 years later, so will this mismanagement of the covid 19 pandemic result in irreparable damage to every part of our society and economy.

    History is Prophecy.”

    Blackcrow

    #73144
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    How does vitamin D become ignored by authorities entrusted to promote and protect public health?

    We’ve heard ample answers based on evil intentions and conspiracies based thereon.

    I’m interested in how a thing actually happens, not the theoretical why (such as ‘because Power X wants Y to happen). How do well-meaning MDs and PhDs let themselves be led around by the nose, by paycheck and bureaucratic rules, to do things that are grossly destructive of public health? I’d rather not hear depictions of cacking laughter by Bill Gates or senile lustful gurgling by Soros.

    I’m looking for insights into how “good Germans’ support policies they would detest under other circumstances. I’m interested in how everyday slobs like you or I sign off on things we don’t believe in, especially when the context is dire danger?

    Mr. House and Dr.D already set that ball in play, I further it with this comparison:

    a) “When you’re stupid, uneducated, and weak, how long can you expect to stay rich and in power?”

    b) countless claims that The MIghty Elites(tm) are orchestrasting this down to the mnicroscopic RIFD chip level.

    I’ll venture my own trial answer: when the mandarins are led so long by larcenous lunatics whose plans never make sense when framed against the proclaimed aims of those plans, you just do what the man says, period. Plans that are full of shit become the norm, and we’re trained from infancy to embrace the norm.

    It’s the tyranny of the yes men, from upper management “little managers” to 3-job wage-earners “just doing their job(s)* “.
    *which, btw,. probably leads to the homogenization of workplace policies we see today

    It’s what Harlan Ellison described long ago:

    Q: “One of your books, The Glass Teat, had on its back cover the words AMERICA: CHANGE IT…OR LOSE IT! Do you think we’re losing it?
    A: “We lost it long ago. Look at our country, for Chrissake. We’re nothing but purchasing machines for giant conglomerates. We’re ruled by the tyranny of the stupid.”

    #73145
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Harlan Ellison is great, used to have a book of his short stories a few years ago. May have to search for that again.

    #73146
    Mr. House
    Participant

    I think the comment i posted above answers your question. Until some Martin Luther like figure makes a convincing argument about the dogma and why it shouldn’t be followed, which won’t happen until plebs really start to grumble about most of this nonsense, which won’t happen until they finally realize things aren’t going back to normal ever.

    #73147
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Just like most people thought, ya know, QE would go away and they’d return their balance sheet back to normal. Which was proven not to be the case in 2019, but they didn’t have to explain that because covid. Some of us realize that once you make the choice to embark on that road, you ain’t coming back. Which was what led us here in 2008, perhaps Raul is the Martin Luther type figure? 😉

    #73148
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Doc Robinson

    “• Nearly A Quarter Of Registered Covid Deaths Are Not Caused By The Virus (DM)
    “The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)…” etc…”

    I took you to task recently for pointing out discrepancies between reality and reports of Covid the Horror Virus. My point at the time wasn’t the validity of examining the data. My point was how to use the wishy-washy data collage created in most minds by All Those Graphs (oy) in a way that could reliably get people to shake free from the destructive official covid narrative-and-policies.

    You seem to be answering that poorly asked question with your post above: you put in bold the logical conclusions these graphs point to: we should fear the official reportage/response to covid more than covid itself.

    I then ask: what sound bites/memes will cross the authoritarian trust layer and stick in people’s heads in a way that stands out for them more, and sticks in their mind more, than the steady drivel coming from trusted authorities via the media?

    See, the usual game is to decry the reigning Mammon-meister (for extreme example: Trump derangement syndrome) and generate energy for appointing a replacement Mammon-meister who will supposedly fix the problem although this almost never happens. This is one reason why I shy from the standard solidarity strategies, using political team sports to change officials who will supposedly fix things but rarely do. It mostly devolves ointo divide’n’conquer.

    But I am all for finding ways to penetrate mass hypnosis so that individuals will stand up and act individually. It only takes a very few individuals standing up to the madness not by opposing it BUT BY IGNORING IT. Well, IGNORE is not the right word, which is ARROGATE.

    Messages that make individuals decide to trust their own reason, knowledge, and intutition, so the more audacious can take action whereupon the other kids follow, as they’ve done since kindergarten first indoctrinated them with the Power of Peer Pressure.

    Norma Rae

    #73149
    Noirette
    Participant

    Ukraine.

    Orlov has written a piece (link) detailing that Putin’s suprise (as I wrote before, Putin may surprise us..) in the matter of the Donbass (or DLPR, though strictly speaking the two terms are not equivalent.) ! = > Simply evacuating the people there, and settling them in Russia.

    Putin’s Ukrainian Judo

    My thoughts had not gone that far, I did figure that maybe about a million or two or more? ppl would hot-foot it out of the DLPR in case of a serious kinetic war. (Since 2014, 600K DLPR ppl have become Russian – probably an underestimate, e.g. children not registered..and others were dual citizens to begin with…)

    About a million ppl have left Ukr. >> Russia since 2014 (and most of these are from the East, if not all, the overlap is hard to figure and Orlov doesn’t dig into the nos.) also probably an underestimate?

    Ukr’s official pop numbers are questionable (nothing special about that), but imho checking world bank, econom. stats, etc. as well as estimates – it *must* be more who left. They become illegals, grey workers, or married (become legal) in many places, and even in Russia.

    Orlov has the pop. of DLPR at about 3.5 M, Russia can absorb them. (Naturally, some no. would not join, would move to W. Ukr. or elsewhere, or stay put to die, so subtract.) Orlov’s idea is very seductive.

    Before I read this piece I was thinking about the absolutely catastrophic population stats of Ukr. – that with such nos. in any case it cannot survive in any form, not even by breaking up into parts. –> As massive immigration is NOT on the cards.

    One ex. (from wiki data, all numbers are rough, we are talking major trends here, details be damned) in pyramid of ages, two peaks for women living in Ukr at present:

    women aged 36: 385K (born just before ‘independence’)

    women aged 60: 380K (born in ‘boom’ USSR period)

    girls aged one (i.e. after first birthday, survived): 180K

    Such demographics spell the death of a .. Nation? Territory? that Never Was.

    image from wiki:

    https://bit.ly/3shRaiq

    #73150
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    madamski: “…what sound bites/memes will cross the authoritarian trust layer and stick in people’s heads in a way that stands out for them more, and sticks in their mind more, than the steady drivel coming from trusted authorities via the media?”

    Aye, there’s the rub. Grassroots are up against authorities aided by teams of psychologists, public relations firms, and media.

    #73151
    John Day
    Participant

    Madamski said: “But I am all for finding ways to penetrate mass hypnosis so that individuals will stand up and act individually. It only takes a very few individuals standing up to the madness not by opposing it BUT BY IGNORING IT. Well, IGNORE is not the right word, which is ARROGATE.

    Messages that make individuals decide to trust their own reason, knowledge, and intutition, so the more audacious can take action whereupon the other kids follow, as they’ve done since kindergarten first indoctrinated them with the Power of Peer Pressure.”

    Reply: “42”, Life, The Universe and Everything
    (Also, “To Infinity and Beyond!”)

    Obscurantist John about to bike to work: Howdy and bye-bye , fellow sentient beings 🙂

    #73152
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Thomas Harrington has written a must-read article, “You are Damaged and Only We Can Repair You” in which he looks from a literary angle at the end of our era.

    This is an agonizingly true take, from a bookish perspective, on something that has been clear from an industrial and economic angle: that society has come to the end of a wave and there is no sign of the next one. We are beached, and for the first time there is no industrial or cultural revolution on the horizon.

    Despite the hype there was no Age of the Internet. There was only the continuation of data over wires, that began with the telegraph two centuries ago, but which now flowed in greater volume, becoming an tsunami of bits that no-one really knew what to do with. Instead of revealing new industries, the most powerful impact of the Internet was to kill price discovery and arbitrage by destroying the fine mesh of business that interweaves society, thus unleashing a penny-pinching race to the bottom.

    In place of the architect of the universe we got the infernal accountant, ever slicing and dicing the numbers, driving forward at full tilt with his eyes glued to the rear-view mirror.

    Harrington’s article shows how this was no mere economic phenomena. It destroyed the balance of our market economy — which was more vulnerable than we thought — when it broke the connection between production and consumption. It trashed the relationship between time, experience, labour and care, and the value that society put on that investment of effort. The work ethic being the last leg that provided support to culture and society, the latter soon collapsed.

    Indeed we can also lay the blame on the Enlightenment which was far less enlightened than popularly imagined. The canon of liberty and human rights that we celebrate was the work, as ever, of dissidents. The fetishization of science led people out of the dark only to lock them in a cupboard — bereft of their spirituality, of any responsibility to heal themselves, of any understanding as to why they were conscious and, therefore, what they should do. Whatever the reader’s religion or philosophy, it is clear that “as much as you can afford” was a very poor answer.

    What about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, you might cry. Look closely and you will see it is about resisting revolution. It is an attempt by bankers and billionaires to lock in their current advantage by seizing assets and utilities: from water and farmland to energy and living space. This is accomplished by the mass generating of money under the excuse of Covid stimulus, most of which is going to the billionaires, their corporations and foundations. Inflation will soon render this money worthless, but not before they’ve bought out Main Street and the locked down middle class.”

    http://moneycircus.blogspot.com/2021/04/forget-mars-its-our-planet-theyre-taking.html

    #73153
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Aye, there’s the rub. Grassroots are up against authorities aided by teams of psychologists, public relations firms, and media.”

    Hmmmm

    https://twitter.com/sallyKP/status/1382005525160792071

    #73154
    WES
    Participant

    The whole covid pandemic can easily be summarized as:

    Money over health.
    Money equals power.

    #73155
    Germ
    Participant

    @ Madamski – How was Vit D advice ignored?

    Who knows- but many docs were screaming from the rooftops!

    You can actually see what the medics themselves are taking. Scroll down to see their their names, and doses they’re taking on the far right. Most are taking 4000IU a day, but many are taking even more and some 10,000+ IU.

    https://vitamindforall.org/letter.html

    #73156
    Noirette
    Participant

    Extra comments on Ukr. population.

    There is a surplus of males to age 38, a sign of high abortion and high infanticide (not that any solid nos. are available, not blaming anyone..)

    Peak pop. for males in UKR is age 34 => 395K (similar to ‘peak’ women aged 36 and 60); these men were born right before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the first public neon sign of the dissolution of the USSR.

    Subsequently, a consequent no. men have moved out of Ukr. to work — absconded (who know where) — have died because milit. conscription, criminal activity, diseases untreated (AIDS for ex.) or not registered for x y z reasons.

    Too sad.

    https://bit.ly/3shRaiq

    #73157
    Arttua
    Participant

    “On the day that 🇮🇱 Israel launched their💉they were averaging 14 ⚰️/ day.

    Every day after that until 19th March 2021 the average number of ⚰️ was higher than on 💉launch day.

    AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAILY DEATHS:
    Before 💉: 11
    After 💉: 33

    Experts say the coincidence is NOT causal.”
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1373333873103400962.html

    Rather disturbing numbers, and the link includes many more countries.

    #73158
    Germ
    Participant

    “CNN Insider admits they hyped COVID to drive ratings. Hoped more people died.”

    #73159
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @madamski & Mr House re: Ellison’s view

    Midas World – Frederik Pohl. ‘The Midas Plague’ (1954) describes a society with compulsory consumption: automobiles to washing machines. The machines build, man must consume…or be considered antisocial. You’re given a stipend (UBI?) that ‘expires’ via the consumption quotas.

    #73160
    Germ
    Participant

    Karl’s latest:

    “Idiocy: Experimental Vaccines And Spike Proteins”:

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=242059

    #73161
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Doc Robinson

    “Aye, there’s the rub. Grassroots are up against authorities aided by teams of psychologists, public relations firms, and media.”

    And as powerful as all that is, it’s nothing compared to in-the-flesh peer influence.

    A person expressing the courage of their convictions, doing so with as little oppositional energy as possible but instead, self-affirmative energy, asserting rather than fighting (fighting is a subset of assertion not vice-versa, as so many people unfortunately believe), can override an amazing amount of hypnotic programming. The hypnotized are already primed to follow, but to get their attention, it is wise to do it on terms outside those defined by the media narrative.

    But it’s not that I want people to go around spreading the word or such. That is necessary but only effective if it follows, or is immediately accompanied by, action. It needn’t be more than quietly telling a restaurateur that you love his joint and won’t come back until the masking nonsense is totally gone.

    Not that I don’t see this as a fight. Doh. All life involves struggle. But I do hate to see us so often hypnotized with fear* of the Vast Overarching Orwellian Whatever. It’s like some decaying Boomer movie hero said: “Never tell me the odds, kid.”
    *I read loads of rage against the system here, but anger is a secondary emotion based on the primary emotions of pain or anticipated pain (i.e. fear)

    Never tell me the odds is true in attempting to bake a perfect cake as attempting to circumvent the self-destructive power paroxysms of failing megalomaniacs and the myriad shades of minion attached thereto (including you and me). I suppose I could summarize via extreme over-simlification and cite the adage that “It’s easier to enjoy liberty now and apologize* later.”
    *or fight, or go to jail, or get clobbered, or… you know: consequences.

    I think WES gets down to the primary schematic herre: “Money over health. Money equals power.”

    I’ll add that money equals only some of the power, and its power is ephemeral. Real power is people making decisions and taking actions, period, and there’s still way more of that than money power, but people won’t know it until the money power disintegrates. Show them how. Not by rallying them against this or for that, but by showing them what freedom actually looks like. Most of them have seen so few genuine examples. If you feel your liberties are being taken away, exercise them. Make them strong by use. It’s like vitamins, exercise, sunshine, fresh air, and good food for making one’s immune system strong against an army of hostile microbes (including an oddity called covid).

    Build an enviable sociopolitical hard body that others will envy and want to emulate. Be at least a little bit brave, at least a bit of a hero. Else why are we talking about this stuff? Oh, it passes the time handily but so does quilting or playing banjo. We’re here not just to learn and commiserate and, than goodness, amuse. There’s also a consensus among us that we’re kinda screwed, and only a miracle can save us.

    Well then, be a miracle.

    boo

    The Miracle Fairy Godmother Wants YOU!!!

    Heroics

    #73162
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Madamski said:

    I’m looking for insights into how “good Germans’ support policies they would detest under other circumstances.

    I’ve posted in the distant past that I’m, ummm, related to a mid-level health official in a deeply Blue coastal state. As such, it brings me into occasional, incidental contact with a fair cross section of our state’s health department working on Covid-19 response. I’ve pondered your implied question myself at length, and I’ve come to a couple conclusions.

    One is that process absolutely rules over results. If it looks like plausibly good process they’re going to go with that as a first choice. Process doesn’t require much thinking, it takes no risks, it allows one to focus on the minutiae of how far apart toddlers have to sit at lunch or how many square feet per person should be allowed in an exercise facility, based on stone tablets sent from the CDC. Nobody gets fired or even denied promotion if you’ve done good process.

    Second, being a Blue state, everyone is plugged into the dominant monoculture media, so they’re never exposed to anything that challenges their world-view (my relative was given a Dr. Fauci bobble-head doll as a gift, I kid you not).

    Finally, these are well-meaning, highly trained professionals who have spent their entire careers doing measurable good in the world (in the areas of antibiotic resistance, Hepatitis C policy, influenza campaigns, just to quote a few that I’m familiar with) by implementing CDC protocols. Most of them have worked at the CDC at one time or another, they have friends at the CDC now, and their current jobs and pay and status are completely beholden to CDC grant money that they apply for every year (the sad reality is that a lot of, perhaps the majority, of our state’s health department communicable disease department wouldn’t even be funded without the CDC money). To pry one of their heads open just a tiny crack to suggest that perhaps the CDC is missing the boat on something like Covid-19 treatment is a non-starter. Their faith is absolute and unshakeable. And so that is how you get good Germans.

    #73163
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Rototillerman

    Thank you for your insight. It fits my understanding of homo sapiens like me. Everyone tends to stand where they sit. Cognitive dissonance is painful. Denial is easy if the group does it with you. Being an individual is so scary it’s almost illegal. But I, being only a single person, suck at being a group, even on heavy drugs in the company of raving schizophrenics.

    But then, we live in a nation that tells us to be glad and grateful that we aren’t sold off into slavery. Instead, we.get.to.sell.ourselves into slavery!!!!

    #73164
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Germ

    “How was Vit D advice ignored? Who knows- but many docs were screaming from the rooftops!”

    I suspect there will be sa major backlash within the medical community as soon as they see how the loss of faith in, and ability to consult with a doctor, caused by the official covid narrative/response, is hurting both their business model and their ethics.

    fwiw, I’ll cut them this bit of slack: docvtors are always telling people to get more vitamin D, and people are rarely diligent about doing so. Granted, most docs these days suck at recommending anything. I have had 5-6 doctors tell me about how everyone is chronically low on D, but it was easy to forget to take ther vitamins because hey, I felt fine enough and they never explained the specifics: it will keep you from getting sick for the most part.

    So they probably feel a sense of futility about recommending D while also being incompetent communicators. John Day explained how D is crucial to immune systems and I haven’t looked back, taken it diligently since, if only because at my age I hate getting “just the flu” (which is itself nothing to take lightly even when I was 30).

    The failure of doctors to effectively convey what they know about vitamin D before there was a pandemic and motivate us to take it tells us that even without a pandemic, our health care system has become the sick old man of modern medicine. It’s McDonald’s mediicine: “You want fries health with those pills that will keep you from dying from being so unhealthy in ways easiuly treatable from home?”

    #73165
    WES
    Participant

    Madamski:

    Sadly, I sit where I stand! A concession to old age!

    Russian serfs got sold with the land.
    American serfs get sold with the dollar!

    Funny my wife just told me the vaccines don’t work!
    It has just been discovered ivermectin works!
    I said, I have only been trying to tell you this for over a year!
    She only believes what other people tell her!
    Maybe these other people are starting to slowly figure things out?
    Like maybe they have been continuously lied to?

    I am talking to a brick wall!

    #73166
    Bill7
    Participant

    “..How can people read this fearmongering bunkum and not see that it is designed to terrify and manipulate the masses into sheeplike compliance?

    There’s no denying that the variant is being used to fuel the Covid hysteria and perpetuate the repressive social restrictions. So, the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we can trust what we are being told by the media and the public health officials?

    And the answer is “No”, we cannot trust them. They have repeatedly misled the public on all manner of topics including masks, asymptomatic transmission, immunity, Infection Fatality Rate, social distancing and now variants. According to Sunetra Gupta, who is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow:

    “…some of these variants could be more transmissible, but the truth is… even with a marginal increase in transmissibility… that does not have much of a material effect or difference in how we deal with the virus. In other words, the surge of the virus cannot be ascribed to a new variant….

    The other question is are these variants more virulent, and the truth is we don’t know, but it is unlikely because the data don’t seem to say so despite the scary headlines…Pathogens tend to evolve towards lower virulence….because that maximizes their transmissibility…It is much more probable that these strains will not be materially so different that we would have to alter our policies.” (Sunetra Gupta: Are these new variants more transmissible?” You Tube)..”

    https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/pure-unalloyed-evil/

    #73167
    zerosum
    Participant

    “Pathogens tend to evolve towards lower virulence”
    I want to take a different point of view ….
    The immune system tend to evolve towards being able to neutralize virulent viruses.

    #73168
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Pathogens tend to evolve toward neither higher nor lower virulence. They evolve, that is mutate, and follow whatever opportunities avail. Sometimes nastier works better; other times, more benign. There is no hard-coded genetic pathogenic imprint that evolves one way or antoher of itself.

    In the long haul, and I mean very long haul, they will lean toward the benign insomuch as a) what zerosum says, and b) ultimately a species makes the most and most successful copies of itself by ingratiating itself into a tolerable give and take with its host species.

    But we’re very much in the short haul now, a time when more nasty is as likely as less nasty, especially since in the short run more nasty usually translates into more copies of the virus.

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