Dec 062021
 
 December 6, 2021  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Joseph Mallord William Turner Sunrise over Plain, with Figures 1830

 

Omicron Made €9bn In Week For Top Pfizer And Moderna Shareholders (BN.ie)
We May Be Sterilizing an Entire Generation – Toxicologist (Mercola)
A Pandemic of Fear ‘Manufactured’ by Authorities – Risch (ET)
How Pfizer Silences World Governments in Vaccine Negotiations (C.org)
In A Word: Bull**** (Denninger)
Unvaccinated Canadians Can Be Banned From Grocery Stores In New Brunswick (TNC)
Fauci Downplays Severity Of Omicron Strain (ZH)
FDA In Talks To Streamline Approval Of Omicron-specific Vaccine (JTN)
Lawyer For Dying Patient Who Recovered On Ivermectin Urges New Thinking (JTN)
Michael Saylor: “Bitcoin Is The Oxygen Mask” (ZH)
Russia Is Primed For A Persian Gulf Security ‘Makeover’ (Escobar)
Santa To Replace ‘Naughty Or Nice’ List With ‘Vaxxed Or Unvaxxed’ List (BBee)

 

 

Reports of “extremely rare” events are not rare at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South African president

 

 

“Lovely – and all this ill-gotten gain and filthy lucre will be reinvested back into political lobbying, revolving doors and thus more insanity.”

Omicron Made €9bn In Week For Top Pfizer And Moderna Shareholders (BN.ie)

The discovery of the Omicron coronavirus variant caused the wealth of eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders to skyrocket by a combined €9 billion ($10.31 billion) in one week, according to campaigners. The campaigners from Global Justice Now said pharmaceutical executives are “making a killing from a crisis they helped to create”, with vaccine inequality helping to create the conditions for the Omicron variant to emerge. Moderna’s shares skyrocketed after the announcement of the variant and settled at $310.61 per share on December 1st, up 13.61 per cent from the previous Wednesday. Pfizer’s shares rose by 7.41 per cent from $50.91 per share to $54.68 per share. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel personally became more than $824 million richer in the week after the announcement of the variant, Global Justice Now said.

With the value of his shares rising from $6,052,522,978 to $6,876,528,630, he sold off 10,000 shares for $319 each on November 26th, the day after the variant was announced, cashing out $3.19 million. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla meanwhile made $339,236 in the week after the announcement of the variant, campaigners said, with his smaller portfolio rising from $4,581,035 to $4,920,270. Institutional investors also saw increased wealth, with Blackrock Inc’s Moderna and Pfizer shares increasing by more than $2.5 billion in the week after the announcement. Vanguard Group made a combined $2.7 billion; Moderna shareholders Baillie Gifford & Co increased by $1.6 billion; Morgan Stanley increased by $447 million; Flagship pioneering increased by $654 million; Pfizer investors State Street went up $1 billion; and Capital World gained $909 million.

Tim Bierley, pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now, said pharmaceutical companies “knew that grotesque levels of vaccine inequality would create prime conditions for new variants to emerge.” “They let Covid-19 spread unabated in low and middle-income countries. And now the same pharma execs and shareholders are making a killing from a crisis they helped to create. It’s utterly obscene,” he said.

Read more …

“..sperm can take up foreign mRNA, convert it into DNA, and release it as little pellets (plasmids) in the medium around the fertilized egg.”

We May Be Sterilizing an Entire Generation – Toxicologist (Mercola)

Janci Chunn Lindsay, Ph.D., is a molecular biologist and toxicologist and director of toxicology and molecular biology for Toxicology Support Services LLC. April 23, 2021, she delivered a three-minute public comment to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Her expertise is analysis of pharmacological dose-responses, mechanistic biology and complex toxicity dynamics. In her ACIP comment, Lindsay described how she aided the development of a contraceptive vaccine in the 1990s that ended up causing unintended autoimmune destruction and sterility in animals which, despite careful pre-analysis, had not been predicted.

She explains: “We were developing what was meant to be a temporary contraceptive vaccine, which was very attractive because it prevented fertilization rather than preventing implantation — or it should have; that was the idea. Unfortunately, even though quite a bit of analysis was done in different animal models to make sure that it did not have an autoimmune action, it did end up having an autoimmune action and caused complete ovarian destruction. Now it’s used in that manner [for permanent sterilization] in dogs, cats and other animals. So, that’s a cautionary tale of how animal studies can help us avoid mistakes in humans when they’re used properly, and when proper animal studies are done.”

We May Be Sterilizing an Entire Generation At the time, she called for an immediate halt to COVID-19 mRNA and DNA vaccines due to safety concerns on multiple fronts. In particular, she noted there is credible concern that they will cross-react with syncytin (a retroviral envelope protein) and reproductive genes in sperm, ova and placenta in ways that may “impair fertility and reproductive outcomes.” Not a single study has disproven this hypothesis, she noted. Another theory of how these injections might impair fertility can be found in a 2006 study, which showed sperm can take up foreign mRNA, convert it into DNA, and release it as little pellets (plasmids) in the medium around the fertilized egg.

The embryo then takes up these plasmids and carries them (sustains and clones them into many of the daughter cells) throughout its life, even passing them on to future generations. It’s possible that the pseudo-exosomes that are the mRNA contents would be perfect for supplying the sperm with mRNA for the spike protein. So, potentially, a vaccinated woman who gets pregnant with an embryo that can (via the sperms’ plasmids) synthesize the spike protein according to the instructions in the vaccine, would have an immune capacity to attack that embryo because of the “foreign” protein it displays on its cells. This then would cause a miscarriage. “We could potentially be sterilizing an entire generation,” Lindsey warned. The fact that there have been live births following COVID-19 vaccination is not proof that these injections do not have a reproductive effect, she said. Lindsay also pointed out that reports of menstrual irregularities and vaginal hemorrhaging in women who have received the injections number in the thousands, and this too hints at reproductive effects.

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Twitter label: “Misleading. Learn about emerging treatments for COVID-19 from health experts.”

However, “Risch has authored over 300 original peer-reviewed publications and was formerly a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology.” [..] ..an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health..”

A Pandemic of Fear ‘Manufactured’ by Authorities – Risch (ET)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of fear, manufactured by individuals who were in the nominal positions of authority as the virus began to spread across the globe last year, according to Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch. In an appearance on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, argued that by and large, what has characterized the entire CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic has been a “degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.” “Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few,” said Risch.

“By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t,” he added. “However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.” Risch has authored over 300 original peer-reviewed publications and was formerly a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology. The epidemiology professor suggested that individuals who held the nominal positions of authority during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 initially spread a much worse picture of the “dire nature” of the virus than was warranted.

That included the message that everybody was at risk, everybody could die from contracting the virus, everybody needed to find protection, everybody needed to stay in their homes and not socialize with others to protect themselves, and in this way protect society, Risch explained. “People were quite afraid of that message, as anybody would be…with the government, with authorities, with scientists, scientific people, with medical people in authority in the public health institutions, all saying the same message starting in about, February, March of last year. And so we all kind of believe this,” he said.

In the first two months of the pandemic, stringent lockdowns and mask mandates were implemented to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States and across the globe. Risch said that the types of messages issued by authorities led to widespread heightened anxiety levels. “All of our anxiety levels were raised, and we all made decisions to curtail, to various degrees, our exposures to other people, some more than others, but I think everybody had levels of anxiety that really affected how they carry out their life at that time,” he said.

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Demand opening the contracts in your own country. Stop pussy footing around.

How Pfizer Silences World Governments in Vaccine Negotiations (C.org)

A new Public Citizen report has revealed the extent to which Pfizer bullies governments in COVID-19 vaccine negotiations, including barring governments from discussing the agreements without Pfizer’s approval, retaining unilateral control to make key decisions and even securing an intellectual property waiver for itself. “Pfizer is taking advantage of countries’ desperation,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “Most of us have sacrificed during the pandemic; staying distant to protect family and friends. Pfizer went the other way, using its control of scarce vaccines to win special privileges, from people that have little choice.”In February, Pfizer was accused of bullying governments in a story published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Public Citizen has identified several Pfizer contracts, including with Brazil, Colombia, the European Commission and the U.S., that offer a glimpse into how the world’s second largest pharmaceutical corporation has gained the power to throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits all during the worst public health crisis in a century.The report outlines how Pfizer consistently utilizes six tactics to leverage power against governments worldwide. First, Pfizer silences governments through the use of nondisclosure provisions in many of its contracts. Brazil, for example, is prohibited from making “any public announcement concerning the existence… or terms” of the contract or commenting on its relationship with Pfizer without Pfizer’s prior written consent. Second, Pfizer can disallow governments from accepting additional donations of the Pfizer vaccine.

Third, Pfizer exempts itself from liability for intellectual property infringements, shifting the financial risk of Pfizer’s actions to government purchasers – despite Pfizer’s opposition to similar exemptions for manufacturers proposed at the World Trade Organization. Fourth, it gives the power to secret private arbitrators, not public courts, to decide issues on contract disputes. Fifth, Pfizer requires some countries to waive sovereign immunity, so it can go after state assets in case of a dispute. Finally, Pfizer gives itself sole power when it comes to making key decisions, including how vaccine deliveries will be prioritized if there is a supply shortage.

“Behind closed doors, Pfizer wields its power to extract a series of concerning concessions from governments,” said Zain Rizvi, law and policy researcher at Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program and author of the report. “The global community cannot allow pharmaceutical corporations to keep calling the shots.”Pfizer’s dominance over sovereign countries poses fundamental challenges to the global pandemic response. The U.S. government, and specifically the Biden administration, should use its considerable leverage to call on Pfizer to renegotiate its existing contracts and pursue fairer practices.

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“There was plenty of reason to believe the spike protein, alone, was dangerous even without the rest of the virus and this was known prior to mass-distribution of the jabs.”

In A Word: Bull**** (Denninger)

There is no reason to believe we can successfully, on a long-term basis, vaccinate against a coronavirus since we never have before in either man or beast. There is no reason to believe attempting to vaccinate against coronaviruses is safe because in many other instances it was proved to be not, and in some it resulted in fatality of many or all the animals under test upon rechallenge. One specific instance of wildly-enhanced disease occurred in cats, which is a species that we know can become infected by this virus. There is no reason to believe that deliberately inducing the presence of binding antibodies in a person to this virus, which we knew the vaccines did before the EUAs were issued, would be safe on a durable basis.

In fact we had every reason to believe that would be unsafe simply based on what that sort of antibody does on a biological basis. You would in fact be crazily homicidal to deliberately infuse only binding antibodies to this or any other virus into a person. There was plenty of reason to believe the spike protein, alone, was dangerous even without the rest of the virus and this was known prior to mass-distribution of the jabs. While getting infected certainly could lead to trouble in this regard infection is not certain where vaccination, once you do it, is. Further, the dosing for the vaccines is set to produce much higher levels of spike protein (and thus antibodies) in the body than does natural infection, so any such risk from the spike would be logically expected to be higher from vaccination than natural infection.

As regards children there is not now and never has been an argument for giving them a Covid-19 vaccine. They do not require or benefit from any protection that it might afford on a statistical basis and since we know there are dangers, many of which we have no way to quantify and will not be able to do so for ten or more years it is a rank violation of logic and the Hippocratic Oath, never mind gross negligence and malpractice, to administer or permit to be administered same to kids.

Read more …

Lock the door and throw away the key.

Unvaccinated Canadians Can Be Banned From Grocery Stores In New Brunswick (TNC)

Beginning Saturday, people in New Brunswick who do not show proof of full vaccination can be barred from entering grocery stores to buy food. The measure was announced as part of the province’s “winter action plan,” which allows any business, including grocery stores, the option of barring unvaccinated individuals. According to Health Minister Dorothy Shephard, it comes as the province sees a “very concerning” rise in COVID infections over the last two weeks, particularly among unvaccinated Canadians. The province reported 97 cases and 2 deaths since Thursday. The new restriction belongs to the first level of a three-level escalating alert system.


“The measures are not difficult,” Shephard said, adding “the power to keep us in level one is in our hands.” In a guide published by the federal government, Public Safety Canada names food as one of ten critical sectors of infrastructure, calling its preparation and delivery an Essential Service and Function. While provinces have been free to manage their own restrictions and lockdowns during the pandemic, grocery stores across the country have until now remained open to everyone. The announcement comes a day after Shephard warned New Brunswickers against making Christmas travel plans.

Read more …

The double barrel: induce enough panic, and then soothe it a little.

Fauci Downplays Severity Of Omicron Strain (ZH)

[..] with almost two weeks since the first appearance of the Omicron variant and with a distinct lack of any evidence that the new strain is more dangerous, or results in a greater number of more acute hospitalizations than the Delta or other variants, the narrative by the “scientific establishment” – which has burned through most if not all of its credibility in the past year by constantly ‘moving the goal posts’ to serve various political agendas – appears to be changing once again, and earlier today none other than the chief health propaganda shaman of the Biden admin, Anthony Fauci, indicated that “the U.S. was encouraged by reports from South African officals that the rapid spread of omicron hadn’t yet resulted in a spike in hospitalizations in that country, an indication that the strain could be less virulent.”

“Though it’s too early to really make any definitive statements about it thus far, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it,” Fauci said on Sunday in a CNN interview. He added that more review is needed to confirm that Omicron causes less illness than other variants, such as Delta, “but thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging.” Of course, making a blanket “all clear” determination would have made a mockery of all the fearmongering that was unleashed just last week, and so Fauci cautioned that it was too soon to make any “definitive statements” about the variant and encouraged Americans to get vaccinations and booster shots, adding that “you got to hold judgment until we get more experience.” Fauci’s comments came as the Biden administration reported that Omicron had spread to 16 US states.

The new variant’s many mutations suggest that it might not be effectively treated with some Covid-19 therapeutics and that it could evade the immunity provided by current vaccines, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said on Sunday in an ABC News interview. Despite the concerns over jab efficacy, Fauci said getting more Americans to take vaccine booster shots will be “really critical in addressing whether or not we’re going to be able to handle this.” As with Delta, boosters will elevate immunity levels to help prevent infections, or at least reduce the severity of illnesses caused by the variant, he said as it becomes apparent that the narrative is now shifting to using Omicron as a talking point for widespread use of booster shots.

“The vaccines that we are distributing now in the United States and throughout the world are directed against the original, ancestral or Wuhan strain,” Fauci told Jake Tapper, who unlike his pal Chris Cuomo, has yet to be fired. He added that “we feel certain that there will be some degree, and maybe a considerable degree, of protection against the Omicron variant if, in fact, it starts to take hold in a dominant way in this country.”

Read more …

Streamline has a positive vibe to it. Testing is so yesterday.

FDA In Talks To Streamline Approval Of Omicron-specific Vaccine (JTN)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky confirmed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is “already in conversations” to streamline authorization of a new COVID-19 vaccine specifically for the new omicron variant. The Hill reports that ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Walensky on Sunday, “Is there any world where you can see that moving much faster given we’ve already been through this?” The CDC director responded: “Much of that I would have to defer to the FDA, but they’re already in conversations about streamlining the authorization of this, of an omicron-specific vaccine, partially because much of the vaccine is actually exactly the same, and, really, it would just be that mRNA code that would have to change.


“FDA will move swiftly, and CDC will move swiftly right thereafter,” she said. Omicron was listed as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization shortly after Thanksgiving. Symptoms of omicron have been described as “extremely mild” by a South African doctor who helped discover the variant.

Read more …

We all do. But where’s the profit?

Lawyer For Dying Patient Who Recovered On Ivermectin Urges New Thinking (JTN)

An Illinois lawyer who helped a dying COVID patient win court-ordered treatment with ivermectin and survive says the episode reveals a deep need for American health professions to rethink their approach to a pandemic that has persisted nearly two full years. “There are obviously remedies that we’re not looking at,” attorney Kristin Erickson told Just the News. “And we need to think outside of the current standard of care that hospitals are giving. And if it’s not working, let’s look at outcomes and not finances.” Erickson represented 71-year-old Sun Ng of Naperville, Ill., who was on a ventilator for weeks and dying with COVID-19 when his lawyer won a court order Nov. 8 to force the hospital to treat him with ivermectin, an anti-parasitic and anti-inflammatory drug long used widely in the United States to treat disease like Lupus.

Within days. Ng recovered and is now back home walking and enjoying life, Erickson said. “After one day, he was able to do a breathing test he couldn’t do for 22 days,” she said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “After three days, he was off the vent for two hours. And then by the fifth day, he was off it entirely. So the hospital tried to file for, you know, a physician report, after he was off the vent, saying that ivermectin is not the reason he’s better. But clearly it is.” There are numerous studies — Erickson said she located 66 studies globally — that show ivermectin is effective in fighting and warding off the virus, and it is used in places like India and Bangladesh but not in the United States. Even the National Institutes of Health’s Web site recently showcased one such study conducted by foreign researchers.

“I think the fact that it is so cheap, you know, and not money-making, could be the reason that we don’t use, we don’t want to back it,” Erickson said. “We don’t want the studies here in the United States.” Erickson said the phones at her office and the New York group that assisted Ng have been ringing off the hook and the courts are likely to be inundated for similar interventions for other patients after what happened in the Ng case. “I don’t know what people’s motivations are,” she said. “Certainly ours here is to help people get what they need. I know there’s a lot of good-hearted people out there who want to save people, even in the hospital setting. Physicians and nurses, they want to do the right thing. But if hospitals aren’t allowing it, that creates a barrier for people who are hospitalized.”

Read more …

Feel lucky?

Michael Saylor: “Bitcoin Is The Oxygen Mask” (ZH)

[..] the bitcoin advocate notes that “money is that shared ledger of who owes what to whom,” explaining the difference between “weak money and strong money” in terms of being able to manufacture glass beads and dump them on Africa-past (glass beads are weak money) analogizing to the dollar (being able to ‘manufacture’ dollars and dump them on the world). Because of the inflationary impact on goods of this ‘manufacturing’ of dollars, you’re never going to catch up because you are being paid the currency: “the only way you can actually stay ahead is to grow your cashflows faster than the rate of monetary inflation… and that’s why the rate of expansion of the money supply is so critical.” Saylor makes the prescient point that while CPI dominates inflation discussions, “the government gets to pick what’s in that basket of goods and how it is weighted.”

The last decade has seen monetary inflation rise at around 14% per year… and the S&P has risen around 14% per year. The best inflation rate for an investor, Saylor explains, or for anyone who wants to stay wealthy or be wealthy – if you’re concerned about maintaining your economic purchasing power – “it’s the monetary inflation rate – the rate at which the supply of money is expanding.” Then Saylor takes us on a journey: “…the currency is to the economy what your blood is to your body… and economic energy or money is to the currency what oxygen is to your blood.” “So, common sense says that, if I keep sucking the oxygen out of the room, you’re going either suffocate or freeze to death…” “…and if I keep sucking the economic energy out of the currency, the economy collapses… and in the extreme you get ripped back to stone-age barter.”

“…when the money doesn’t work anymore, I have trade you cigarettes for bullets… and the problem with that is the economy becomes a million times less efficient.” “…how many countries in the world have a collapsed currency…66 of the dollarized [ZH: have an inflation problem]… there’s about 130 floating currencies and all of them are weaker than the dollar.” “The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and the US dollar is expanding… it was expanding 10% a year for a decade… it’s now expanding at 14% a year and expanded 34% over the past 12 months…” [..] “…thus the dollar is weakening… it’s like the oxygen is getting sucked out of the room…”

Saylor turns to Tucker and asks “..if I told you the oxygen is getting sucked out of the room… but there’s an oxygen mask dropped out of the ceiling over there, what would you do?” Tucker exclaims “I’d run for it!” Saylor replies “yeah, put the oxygen mask on…” concluding his analogy by explaining that “Bitcoin is the oxygen mask.”

Read more …

“..Chalous alone could supply as much as 52 percent of natural gas needs of the whole EU for the next 20 years..”

Russia Is Primed For A Persian Gulf Security ‘Makeover’ (Escobar)

Russia and Iran are forging a strengthened strategic partnership, not only geopolitical but also geoeconomic, fully aligned to the Russian-conceptualized Greater Eurasian Partnership – and also demonstrated by Moscow’s support for Iran’s recent ascension to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the only West Asian state to be admitted thus far. Furthermore, three years ago Iran launched its own regional security framework proposal for the region called HOPE (the Hormuz Peace Endeavor) with the intent to convene all eight littoral states of the Persian Gulf (including Iraq) to address and resolve the vital issues of cooperation, security, and freedom of navigation. The Iranian plan didn’t get far off the ground. While Iran suffers from adversarial relations with some of its intended audience, Russia carries none of that baggage.

And that brings us to the essential Pipelineistan angle, which in the Russia–Iran case revolves around the new, multi-trillion dollar Chalous gas field in the Caspian Sea. A recent sensationalist take painted Chalous as enabling Russia to “secure control over the European energy market.” That’s hardly the story. Chalous, in fact, will enable Iran – with Russian input – to become a major gas exporter to Europe, something that Brussels evidently relishes. The head of Iran’s KEPCO, Ali Osouli, expects a “new gas hub to be formed in the north to let the country supply 20 percent of Europe’s gas needs.” According to Russia’s Transneft, Chalous alone could supply as much as 52 percent of natural gas needs of the whole EU for the next 20 years.

Chalous is quite something: a twin-field site, separated by roughly nine kilometers, the second-largest natural gas block in the Caspian Sea, just behind Alborz. It may hold gas reserves equivalent to one-fourth of the immense South Pars gas field, placing it as the 10th largest gas reserves in the world. Chalous happens to be a graphic case of Russia-Iran-China (RIC) geoeconomic cooperation. Proverbial western speculative spin rushed to proclaim the 20-year gas deal as a setback for Iran. The final breakdown, not fully confirmed, is 40 percent for Gazprom and Transneft, 28 percent for China’s CNPC and CNOOC, and 25 percent for Iran’s KEPCO. Moscow sources confirm Gazprom will manage the whole project. Transneft will be in charge of transportation, CNPC is involved in financing and banking facilities, and CNOOC will be in charge of infrastructure and engineering. The whole Chalous site has been estimated to be worth a staggering $5.4 trillion.

Read more …

“We don’t really give out coal anymore due to climate change,” Toymaker noted.

Santa To Replace ‘Naughty Or Nice’ List With ‘Vaxxed Or Unvaxxed’ List (BBee)

In a major break with hundreds of years of Christmas tradition, Santa Claus will not be using his famous “Naughty or Nice” list this year. Instead, Father Christmas will be keeping a list of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. “With the pandemic entering its second Christmas season, Santa felt the traditional ‘Naughty or Nice’ list needed an update,” said North Pole spokes-elf Trudy Toymaker. “This year, he’ll be keeping track of all the good little children who get vaccinated, as well as the evil unvaccinated kids who want their family and friends to die.” Vaccinated children will receive lots of toys and goodies from Santa, while the unvaccinated kids will get skunked this Christmas. “We don’t really give out coal anymore due to climate change,” Toymaker noted.


“Instead, the unvaccinated kids will receive a box of masks, some hand sanitizer, and a pre-filled postcard to report their conspiracy-theorist parents to child services and the FBI.” Toymaker said thousands of Elves on Shelves have been dispatched to pediatrician’s offices around the country to keep track of which children are getting vaccinated. Santa’s tech team also plans to hack into children’s electronic medical records later this month to make sure nobody is missed. In addition to the new vaccine requirements, Santa is asking families to include a $20 bill with his traditional plate of milk and cookies this year. “This will help Santa offset rising costs due to inflation and elf labor shortages,” Toymaker said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brussels Sunday

 

 

Cyprus

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 6 2021

Viewing 23 posts - 41 through 63 (of 63 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #94526
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    ‘The “Golden Years” are when your Doctors steal your gold’ is an old saying in my neck of the woods, which needs to be updated.
    On the sentimental side, I am one of 4 kids my parents successfully and healthily raised to adulthood without health insurance in the late 1950’s -1960’s. Hell, you would sit in a waiting room equipped with ashtrays for hours and you paid what you could. In the late 1970’s, the community along with some wealthy donors built the Doctor H.A Tattersall community health center in Mountainhome PA. The tradesmen and many others donated their time and money.

    #94527
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Put this in your stocking and stuff it. I dare ye:

    Ak Dan Gwan Chil

    #94528
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    It was the day before Xmas and one of the kitchen girls came out and said to the owner that she had just finished stuffing the turkey! No sooner had she said it, she turned beak red, after realizing what she had just said!

    Cogent comment on the times we live in…

    Where there is no shame & anything goes!

    Where children are able to search for porn on Google before they learn to tie their shoes 😐

    Where the institution of marriage + family is a curse that men only agree to during mind altering events (falling in love/lust), while masses of depraved child EGOs riotously parade their debauchery & stick it in your face…And let you smell what they consider wrong.

    Where Namby-Pamby CULTS spawn legions of low IQ “leaders” that spread lies & propaganda against the Infinite’s “Real Reality”…

    Where those of Us few that notice the toxic sludge tsunami rolling over all humanity (excluding those living behind walls & armed security) spend our precious energy chatting each other up in a virtual reality, that roll over into nothingness the following day 😐

    There is no doubt a generational reset barreling down up Us, I just hope it’s not an extinction level event…

    Does anyone really see a way out of this madness that doesn’t involve mass causalities?

    Perhaps that’s why the CCP/NIH/Pharma teamed up to begin with? Planning/executing/hoping that a surreptitious culling would contain the inevitable cra$h?

    Woefully, with psychopaths running the show, a controlled demolition is a fools’ illusion, that unforeseen black swan events out of left field are inevitable…

    Moreover, regrettably we live in an age populated with fools, idiots, malcontents & cowards to a level never seen before (peace in our time), manifesting disasters that will soon eclipse anything, anyone, anywhere is prepared to survive ~ Even TPTB CULT of money, power, prestige & CONTROL.

    Buckleup kiddos…

    #94529

    WES- you have a book inside of you.

    #94530
    WES
    Participant

    SlimyAlligator:

    I had never heard of that explanation before! Learn something new every day! Thanks for sharing it!

    #94531
    WES
    Participant

    Bosco:

    I don’t think my Xmas stocking could handle them! Pretty wild!

    #94532
    ctbarnum
    Participant

    ‘ Sorry to all. I am not thinking clearly.”

    You’re not alone. A lot of us are having a difficult time thinking clearly, including myself. But then, we are the sane ones in the bunch. Kunstler has a good essay about Detmer’s interview about mass psychosis and our predicament today. I’ll be trying to get around my half-sister’s place in SW Virginia for a few days to get some peace of mind in the wilderness there.

    “The descent was provoked by the existential anxiety over the collapse of techno-industrial economies and the end of progress as-we’ve-known-it. (Have you noticed: it was the self-styled “progressives” who went the craziest?) As Dr. Desmet lays it out, the disconnectedness of contemporary life, its lack of meaning or purpose for many, leads to unendurable anxiety. All that inchoate fear seeks desperately to attach itself to some real object, some thing or some force that can be comprehended, fought, and triumphantly overcome. Finding such a target produces an intoxicating sense of communal connection, purpose, and meaning, driving actions that are often crazy and also absolutely impervious to rational debate.

    The angst in America was well established by 2016. A beaten-down middle-class suspected that left-of-center politicians did not have their interests at heart after years of off-shoring their jobs, and they managed to elect their avatar, Donald Trump, over the obviously unsympathetic globalist, Hillary Clinton — who snootily tagged her opposition “the deplorables.” Even so, the polls had her ahead by a mile. Then, by some weird twist of fate, she lost a few crucial counties in midwestern states she hadn’t bothered to visit, and was reportedly too plastered after midnight on election night to come down and console the troops at campaign headquarters. The shocking election outcome instantly deranged the nation’s entire managerial class and its thinking-out-loud interlocutors in the news media and on campus.”

    A Brief History of Epic Mass Madness

    And we haven’t been the same since. It has only gotten crazier. When and the flash point where we hit peak crazy, I don’t know. Once the COVID narrative is crushed, the establishment might begin acting as a rat backed into a corner. That might be peak crazy, but who knows.

    #94533
    ctbarnum
    Participant

    Spelled Desmet incorrectly in the link, but I haven’t edited a link yet..lol. Still, it’s a good talk. Our “leaders” and their sheep have too much confirmation bias going on to let their insanity go.

    #94534
    chooch
    Participant
    #94535
    sumac.carol
    Participant
    #94536
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Put this in your stocking and stuff it. I dare ye:

    Ak Dan Gwan Chil

    Bosco, thanks so much for that incredible music…
    Have never heard anything like it…

    #94537
    Henry
    Participant

    @maxwell-quest cool chart made a couple of tweaks:

    #94538
    Henry
    Participant

    @maxwell-quest sorry silly thing did not work, tried to add arrows for tree of the boxes.

    #94539
    John Day
    Participant

    I spent a a lot of time editing and excerpting today, and there’s a picture “inside the box”
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/12/reality-flails-narratives.html

    Gail Tverberg, Is it possible that the world is approaching end times? (This approach may recruit a new group of readers for this important perspective.)
    I frequently write that the world economy is, in physics terms, a dissipative structure that is powered by energy. It can grow for a time, but eventually it reaches limits of many kinds. Ultimately, it can be expected to stop growing and collapse.
    It seems to me that the world economy is showing signs that it has reached a turning point. Economic growth stopped in 2020 and is having trouble restarting in 2021. Fossil fuel energy of all types (oil, coal and natural gas) is in short supply, relative to the world’s huge population. Ultimately, this inadequate energy supply can be expected to pull the world economy toward collapse.

    The world economy doesn’t behave the way most people would expect. Standard modeling approaches miss the point that economies require adequate supplies of energy products of the right kinds, provided at the right times of day and year, if they are to keep from collapsing. Shortages are not necessarily marked by high prices; prices that are too low for producers will bring down the energy supply quickly. A collapse may occur due to inadequate demand…
    We are not used to living in a world where very little that is published by the Mainstream Media makes sense. But when we live in a time where no one wants to hear what is true, the system changes in a bizarre way, so that a great deal that is published is false.

    Economists have chosen instead to make models that assume no limits are ahead. They seem to assume that all problems will be fixed by innovation, substitution and the pricing mechanism. They produce forecasts suggesting that the economy can grow endlessly in the future. Based on these forecasts, they provide input to models that reach the conclusion that amazingly large amounts of fossil fuels will be extracted in the future. Based on these nonsensical models, our problem is not the near-term limits that we are reaching; instead, our chief problem is climate change. Its impacts occur mostly in the future

    .A corollary to this belief system is that it is we humans who are in charge and not the laws of physics. We can expect governments to protect us. We don’t need any outside help from a literal Higher Power who created the laws of physics. We need to listen to what the authorities on earth tell us. In fact, in troubled times, governments need more authority over their citizens. The many concerns regarding COVID-19 make it easy for governments to increase their control over citizens. We are told that it is only by following the mandates of governments that we will get through this strange time…

    In fact, we are colliding with resource limits, right now. This seems to be what produced the bizarre situation experienced in 2020…

    As time went on, it became very clear that the true nature of the COVID-19 epidemic was being hidden from citizens. It was, and is, not a terribly dangerous illness if it is treated properly with any number of inexpensive medications including aspirin, ivermectin, antihistamine and steroids. In fact, the severity of the disease could also be lessened by taking vitamin D in advance. There really was not a great deal of point to the vaccines, except to enrich the vaccine manufacturers and those who would benefit from the sale of the vaccines, including Anthony Fauci and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

    It also became clear that the vaccines don’t really do what a person might expect a vaccine to do. They do tend to stop severe illness, but taking vitamin D in advance would provide pretty much the same benefit. They don’t stop COVID-19 from circulating because vaccinated people can still catch COVID-19. The vaccines seem to have any number of side effects, including raising the risk of heart attacks.

    The historical period most similar to the current period, in terms of shortage of energy supply, is that between World War I and World War II. At that time, the Jews were persecuted. Now, there is an attempt to divide the world into Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, with the Unvaccinated persecuted. When the economy cannot produce enough goods and services for all members of the economy, the economy seems to divide into almost warring parts….

    Europe is the part of the world where the push for vaccinations is now highest. It is also in terrible shape with respect to energy supply. By ostracizing the unvaccinated, European countries can attempt to cut back their economies to the size that their energy supply will support, without admitting the real problem…

    It is disturbing to think that we may be living near the end of the world economy, but there is an upside to this situation. We have had the opportunity to live at a time with more conveniences than any other civilization. We can appreciate the many conveniences we have.

    We also have the opportunity to decide how we want to live the rest of our lives. We have been led for many years down the path of believing that economic growth will last forever; all we need to do is have faith in the government and our educational institutions. If we figure out that this really isn’t the path to follow, we can change course now. If we want to choose a more spiritual approach, this is a choice we can still make.

    Is it possible that the world is approaching end times?

    #94540
    John Day
    Participant

    The Ethical Skeptic presents a well developed, detailed, graphically supported and logical case that SARS-CoV-2 actually escaped from a Chinese lab in early 2018, spread and mutated more slowly than announced, was kept as a mystery, though Chinese (and other) people were hospitalized a lot in 2018 and 2019. Chinese SARS-CoV-2 cases were actually in a final third-wave peak when “discovered” in Wuhan in late 2019.
    Due to natural immunity, China was able to have great success with lockdowns, as it would have had with doing nothing at all.
    The rest of the world was misled, but found ways to make political lemonade out of the lockdown-lemon. Regions of Asia and Oceana, like India and Australia, actually had a lot more herd immunity by 2020, which was explained and dealt with in different ways.
    The saga of the lost Omicron variant is also investigated in detail. This variant has a last common ancestor with other COVID strains a long time ago, which could (barely) have happened if it derived from an initial lab leak in March 2018, but it may well have been released later, even intentionally, due to its specific engineered characteristics. It is not more deadly, but quite different, and does evade the antibodies to January 2020 spike protein very effectively.
    If this virus is actually spread more through (Gross!) aerosolized fecal particles, then a mode of spread to whitetail-deer is readily explained, and also some of the early patterns of mass epidemics in the US. Mapping graphs explain this.

    China’s CCP Concealed SARS-CoV-2 Presence in China as Far Back as March 2018

    The Twilight of the Narrative​, ​​ Posted on the Seneca Effect blog
    ​… One of the main changes wrought by the internet is the shattering of “grand narratives”…
    As the corona event drags on interminably, there are those in the dissenter camp who still think the “narrative is about to crack” any day now and the “truth” will be revealed.
    This mindset from the old, pre-internet world is no longer valid in the world we live. There is no unifying narrative any more that is going to crack and be replaced by a better, more truthful narrative. Rather, there are now just a seemingly infinite number of sub-narratives with a dominant narrative imposed on top of them…
    Narratives must evolve organically with a feedback loop between top-down and bottom-up. The increasing use of censorious tactics in the last couple of years reveals the underlying weakness of the dominant narrative. The powers that be have gone all out in attempting to hold together a narrative that itself doesn’t make sense as it is changed willy-nilly according to purely political considerations.
    It’s tempting to think the politicians are doing it on purpose with some larger objective in mind. But what if there is no larger objective? What if these tactics are simply what is required now to create any type of dominant narrative at all? What if these tactics are now the price you pay to create a narrative? …
    The price to create a dominant narrative has gone up for a number of reasons but one is that the internet opened the floodgates on the flow of information and allowed multiple alternative narratives to be created…
    The public discourse which existed prior to the internet was facilitated through a system in which the media was known as the “fourth estate”. Its job was to hold government to account. Of course, this was not a perfect system but, as the saying goes, it seems it was better than all the others. It was certainly better than the system we have now where the media does not hold the government to account at all and is little more than a public relations branch of the government…
    Whatever the ethical dimensions of these issues, what lies beneath is the fact that the media companies are no longer viable businesses capable of existing without government support. Because they are now reliant on government money, their function as the fourth estate that holds government to account has also all but disappeared. That’s a problem for them but it’s also a problem for the government. The “official narrative” is transmitted through the legacy media. If the legacy media goes away, so does the narrative… The government needs the media as much as the media needs the government.
    I would argue that the public also needs the media. It needs the media to act as its representative. That was the whole point of the Fourth Estate arrangement. The public paid for the media and that meant the media had an incentive to represents the readership’s interests. But that is all gone now…
    “The system” can no longer control the discourse the way it previously could. This is not a trivial matter. It leads us back to one of Plato’s most dangerous ideas which is the Noble Lie… We could soften it by calling them myths or ideals but the effect is the same. The myths and ideals are the glue that holds things together and, according to Plato, without them society will disintegrate.
    Our post-internet public discourse provides some evidence for this assertion. It has become completely detached from reality or, to put it another way, it represents only one version of reality: the one that comes from the top-down. This process is especially advanced in the US. It hit a fever pitch with the Trump presidency and has not relaxed since. There are now at least two mutually incompatible narratives going on in the US meaning that agreement about the fundamentals which hold society together is called into question on an almost daily basis…
    As a result, a large proportion of the population no longer has any faith whatsoever in the system. That holds true no matter who is in power. The dominant narrative is now nothing more than the story told by those in power.
    In Australia and much of Europe and Canada, we are just now catching up with the US. Here in Melbourne, more than a hundred thousand people marched against the government last weekend. The Premier’s response was to write them off as “thugs” and “extremists”. It reminded me an awful lot of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” moment. When politicians no longer feel like they need to accommodate the interests and opinions of a substantial proportion of the population you know the narrative is already fractured…
    The same goes for the demonstrators in Europe who are simply ignored by the mainstream media. Because the public discourse no longer pretends to reflect reality, nobody really believes in it including the people who nominally go along with it. Deep down they also must know that it is fake…
    We are entering a time when even the idea of a centralised narrative is no longer believed in. If Plato was right, this fact alone is an existential threat to the state and it is understandable that the state would strive to fix the problem. But it’s almost certainly too late…
    Will that lead to the disintegration of the state? Plato would have said yes. We may be about to test that theory.
    ​https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-twilight-of-narrative-why-truth.html#comment-form

    #94541
    John Day
    Participant

    ​Jim Kunstler picks up the narrative thread..
    For instance, a new study and warning from the American Heart Association concluded that mRNA vaccines dramatically increase risk of developing heart disease between 11 and 25 percent. Twitter slapped an “unsafe” warning on anyone attempting to transmit this news on its sacred app. Unsafe to whom, or what? Why, to the sacred narrative, of course, which is that the USA must be kept in a never-ending paranoid uproar over Covid — certainly until at least past the 2022 elections, in order to maintain all the emergency mail-in ballot provisions that enable voting fraud…
    Meanwhile, the emerging reality of Omicron is that it has a much lower transmission coefficient than its predecessor, the Delta variant, and produces only mild symptoms of illness…
    Anyway, two federal judges rendered decisions striking down Acting President Fauci’s vaccine mandates. The second ruling, penned by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of Louisiana’s Western District, featured a particularly lusty and detailed diagnosis of the mandate’s constitutional impropriety, and extended the injunction against vax mandates to all fifty states.
    This leaves the USA in a distinctly exceptional position among the other nations within the loose confederation of Western Civ. Thanks to manifestations of sanity on the federal bench, the vax mandates appear DOA here now, while Austria and Germany have rushed into full-blown psychotic fugues over Omicron, announcing harsh punishments for their unvaxxed…
    The Covid psychosis is just a reassignment of the Trump derangement, which was provoked by the generalized anxiety about collapsing industrial societies. The reasons for the collapse are not hard to grok: a declining resource base, especially affordable, economically plausible oil, a financial system purposefully detached from on-the-ground material reality, and sets of grossly foolish over-investments in complexity…
    ​https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/fury-rising/

    Do you know why there isn’t an EUA [emergency use authorization]​ for fluvoxamine?​ Steve Kirsch​
    The drug works. Amazingly well. Better than anything else against COVID when given early. So why isn’t there an EUA?
    ​ ​The Pfizer 6-month trial showed no all-cause mortality benefit; in fact, if anything, it showed that the vaccine killed more people than it saved. Sure, one COVID life was saved per 22,000 fully vaxed, but the all-cause mortality strongly favored the placebo (21 died in vaccine group vs. 17 in placebo). Doctors rush to recommend it. Nobody is skeptical.
    ​ ​Fluvoxamine on the other hand actually demonstrated a 12 times reduction in all-cause mortality in the Phase 3 trial. It really saved lives and the difference was dramatic in the clinical trial: “There was one death in the fluvoxamine group and 12 in the placebo group for the per-protocol population (OR 0·09; 95% CI 0·01–0·47).” But the NIH ignored the drug and didn’t even mention this astonishing result on the NIH treatment guidelines. The study wasn’t even mentioned at all in the guidelines. It was like it never happened.​..
    ​ ​Why isn’t there an EUA for fluvoxamine? The reason is simple. We tried. And after 6 weeks of waiting, we were told that to get an EUA for a repurposed drug, you have to partner with a drug company in the EUA application. Because no drug company will partner with us, even if we pay all the filing costs, there won’t be an EUA. Ever.
    https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/do-you-know-why-there-isnt-an-eua

    #94542
    John Day
    Participant

    Now or Never, The Great Transition Must Be Imposed, Alastair Crooke Thanks Eleni in colonial Athens for this series of stories.
    Were you following the news this last week? Vaccine mandates are everywhere: one country, after another, is doubling-down, to try to force, or legally compel, full population vaccination. The mandates are coming because of the massive uptick in Covid – most of all in the places where the experimental mRNA gene therapies were deployed en masse…
    Of course, the Pharma-Establishment know that the vaccines are no panacea. There are ‘higher interests’ at play here. It is driven rather by fear that the window for implementing its series of ‘transitions’ in the U.S. and Europe is closing. Biden still struggles to move his ‘Go-Big’ social spending plan and green agenda transition through Congress by the midterm election in a year’s time…
    ​ Time is short. The midterm elections are but 12 months away, after which the legislative window shuts. The Green ‘transition’ is stuck too (by concerns that moving too fast to renewables is putting power grids at risk and elevating heating costs unduly​)​…
    ​ ​It’s a race for the U.S. and Europe, where the pandemic is back in full force across Europe, to push through their re-set agendas, before variants seize up matters with hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and non-vaccinated; with riots in the streets, and mask mandates at Christmas markets…
    …Is the turn to authoritarianism in Europe a sign of desperation as fears grow that the various ‘transitions’ planned under the ‘re-set’ umbrella (financial, climate, vaccine and managerial expert technocracy) may never be implemented?
    ​ ​Cut short rather, as spending plans are hobbled by accelerating inflation; as the climate transition fails to find traction amongst poorer states (and at home, too); as technocracy is increasingly discredited by adverse pandemic outcomes; and Modern Monetary Theory hits a wall, because – well, inflation again…
    ​ ​There are powerful oligarchic interests behind the Re-Set. They do not want to see it go down, nor see the West eclipsed by its ‘competitors’. So it seems that rather than back off, they will go full throttle and try to impose compliance on their electorates: tolerate no dissidence.​..
    As one high ‘lodge’ member, favouring a form of global governance notes, to make people accept such reforms, you must frighten them.
    ​Yes, the collective of ‘transitions’ must have their ‘Big, overarching Narrative’ – however hollow, it rings (i.e. the struggle to defend democracy against authoritarianism). But it is the nature of today’s cultural-meme war that ultimately its content becomes little more than a rhetorical shell, lacking all sincerity at its core.
    It serves principally, as decoration to a ‘higher order’ project: The preservation of global ‘rules of the road’, framed to reflect U.S. and allied interests, as the base from which the clutch of ‘transitions’ can be raised up into a globally managed order which preserves the Élite’s influence and command of major assets…
    Western foreign policy becomes less about geo-strategy, but rather is primordially focussed on the three ‘big iconic issues’ – China, Russia and Iran – that can be given an emotional ‘charge’ in order to profitably mobilise certain identified ‘constituencies’ in the U.S. domestic cultural war. All the various U.S. political strands play this game.
    ​ ​The aim is to ‘nudge’ domestic American psyches (and those of their allies) into mobilisation on some issue (such as more protectionism for business against Chinese competition), or alternatively, imagined darkly, in order to de-legitimise an opposition, or to justify failures. These mobilisations are geared to gaining relative domestic partisan advantage, rather than having strategic purpose.​..
    ​ Russia and China therefore face a reality in which European and U.S. élites are heading in the opposite direction to epistemological purity and well-founded argument. That is to suggest, the new ‘normal’ is about generating a lot of contradictory realities, not just contradictory ideologies, but actual mutually-exclusive ‘realities’, which could not possibly simultaneously exist…
    ​ ​This is a highly risky game, for it forces a resistance stance on those targeted states – whether they seek it, or not. It underlines that politics is no more about considered strategy: It is about being willing for the U.S. to lose strategically (even militarily), in order to win politically.​..
    ​These countries understand exactly the point of these value and rights-loaded ‘rules’. It is to force compliance on these states to acquiesce to the ‘transitions, or, to suffer isolation, boycott and sanction – in a similar way to the choices being forced on those in the West not wishing to vaccinate (i.e. no jab; no job).​..
    ​But do the U.S. practitioners of meme-politics, absorb and comprehend that the stance by Russia-China – in riposte – is not some same-ilk counter-mobilisation done to ‘make a point’? That their vision does stand at variance with ‘the rules’? Do they see that their ‘red lines’ may indeed be ‘red lines’ literally? Is the West now so meme-addicted, it cannot any longer recognise real national interests?

    Now or Never: The Great ‘Transition’ Must Be Imposed

    #94543
    John Day
    Participant

    ‘Ideological Fanaticism’: The Folly of Seeing Human Systems as Hardware​
    ​It seems that the ‘politics of fear’ may be ‘crossing the aisle’. But, in this shift, Big Tech cannot ride so easily to the Establishment’s rescue. With the vaccine meme, it has been relatively routine for the Tech social media to censor and delete all contrarian opinion, whether credentialed or not; but when it comes to inflation, ‘fact-checking’ becomes not just redundant, but counter-productive, for the ‘facts’ are visible with every purchase made. And every consumer can attest that prices are rising well above 6.2%​ …
    ​ On the whole, the ‘meme-politics of lockdown and vaccine mandates’ may be fading, but the inflation meme and the economic aftermath meme has only just begun​.
    ….this dualistic way of ratiocination runs through all of western modernity. Tech vaccines are the solution to the Covid virus. And, forced (human) separation is good for placing the malware into quarantine. The real-economy is the hardware that Central Bank ‘software’ will protect against recessionary pathogens. The Davos’ Re-Set will upload new global software for a ‘fairer, greener future’. A fourth Industrial Revolution is the digital technological management that will clean out Climate malware. Etc, etc.
    ​ ​In reality, all these are highly complex network systems, not susceptible to dualistic intervention. They work – if they work – as organic wholes. At best, we face systemic instability, as a result of these naïve ‘software’ interventions. At worst, systemic collapse.

    ‘Ideological Fanaticism’: The Folly of Seeing Human Systems as Hardware

    U.S. Supremacy by Any Other Name​ ​
    ​ ​Great Power competition it turns out, is nothing other than the globalist, U.S.-centred, rules based world order. The U.S. abstains from ‘transforming’ (i.e. colour revolutionising) the CCP, because it can’t; that tool still applies to lesser fish (i.e. Nicaragua)…​
    ​All energy is directed to keeping the creaking system aloft (whether the EU’s, or the American ‘rules of the road’), rather than finding real solutions. Cleavages open, that cannot be politically contained; resentments bubble away; crises are managed, not resolved; time is played for; reform is incremental and then, suddenly, unilateral; and, in the end, stasis reigns. It is called Merkelism in Europe (after the German Chancellor)…
    ​ ​On the other hand, bad as this is (given the economic crises facing us), its greater ‘sin’ (as articulated by Sullivan) is his demand for global ‘rules’, whose scaffold is simply “the interests and values of the U.S. and its allies and partners”. Sullivan says that the U.S. no longer seeks to transform China’s system (that is good), but insists that China operate within an ‘order’ built around U.S. interests and values – tout court. And, as Sullivan indicated, U.S. diplomatic effort is to be directed at coercing Chinese compliance to this system. Nowhere are the costs to allies mentioned, who would have to forego their relations with China or Russia, in order to please Biden.
    ​ ​The bigger ‘sin’, quite simply, is that the time for such haughty ambitions has passed. The world balance has changed qualitatively, and not just quantitatively. Both China and Russia – the other two components to General Milley’s tri-partite world – have said it plainly enough: They refuse lectures by the West.

    U.S. Supremacy by Any Other Name

    ​Alastair Crooke points out that American politicians are in the very long established habit of taking cheap little actions (like the War in Grenada) for immediate political gain, while ignoring critical long term implications and erosion of political relationships and strategic advantages. Russia and China do not suffer such short-termism.​
    Losing Militarily & Strategically, in Order to ‘Win’ Politically (but Ephemerally)
    In the wake of the Kabul withdrawal débacle, the U.S. administration is in a tearing hurry to give Biden the semblance of foreign policy success.

    Losing Militarily & Strategically, in Order to ‘Win’ Politically (but Ephemerally)

    #94544
    John Day
    Participant

    China also has very real political and economic stresses and looming financial default. China will need a face-saving war of national unity behind Xi and the CCP when the financial house of cards collapses, or they will face a power transition.
    Former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe warns China in a global forum that militarily attacking Taiwan would inevitably trigger war with Japan (territorial waters) and thence with the US, and be economically ruinous.
    A CCP official replied to insult Abe personally, but the message was clear, and “unofficially official”. It is the case that no power alliance can allow Taiwanese chip manufacturing to fall exclusively into the hands of an adversary. It is completely critical to any advanced economy.​ This would be a major war. It would have to be. Thanks Kimo.
    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2021/12/02/commentary/japan-commentary/shinzo-abe-beijing-message/

    There is a lot of complexity as NATO , Russian-Ukrainians, and Ukrainian power elites jockey for any kind of strategic advantage, which would make a move favorable. Russia much prefers that things calm down, prefers to prevent an attack on the Donbass by Ukraine/NATO, and must keep Ukraine/NATO from having a beguiling military advantage. Turkey’s Erdogan plays a very risky and fancy global power game.
    ​ ​In a Friday phone call Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Ukraine is using Turkish-made drones against pro-Russia separatists in the war-torn Donbass region. Putin put the Turkish leader on notice over the “destabilizing” activity of the continued drone transfers from Turkey to Ukraine.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/putin-denounces-ukraines-use-turkish-drones-erdogan-call

    ​These are Mach-9 hypersonic “Zircon” anti ship missiles with 600 mile range, in fixed positions on remote islands​. Russia does not announce plans, just facts-in-existence.
    This gives Russia a moderating position between the US/Japan and China, not in the Taiwan Straits, but the oceans around northern Japan. It also affords some further protection to the Russian east coast. It would exclude hostile military ships within striking range.
    Russia Deploys Anti-Ship Missiles Near Japan On Disputed Kuril Islands
    ​ ​The status of ownership of the islands, which Russia de facto currently controls and has small bases on, is still unresolved since the end of WWII as a treaty regarding their status is still being negotiated.
    ​ ​On Thursday the Russian Defense Ministry announced the military has stationed its Bastion coastal missile defense system on a remote part of the island chain near Japan, identified as the island of Matua. These are considered “shore-based anti-ship missile systems” – seen as also potentially threatening to Japan’s Western allies, given for example US warships have recently traversed nearby waters.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-deploys-anti-ship-missiles-near-japan-disputed-kuril-islands

    #94545
    John Day
    Participant

    Russia is primed for a Persian Gulf security ‘makeover’​ , Pepe Escobar
    Russia is the one state with the necessary clout, tools, sweeteners and relationships to nudge the Persian Gulf into a new security paradigm
    ​…Essentially, Moscow is reviving the Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf Region, an idea that has been simmering since the 1990s. Here is what the concept is all about.
    ​ ​So if the US administration’s reasoning is predictably short-term – we need Iranian oil back in the market – the Russian vision points to systemic change.
    ​ ​The Collective Security Concept calls for true multilateralism – not exactly Washington’s cup of tea – and “the adherence of all states to international law, the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.”​ …
    ​ Geopolitically, Russia holds the definitive ace: it maintains good relationships with all actors in the Persian Gulf and beyond, talks to all of them frequently, and is widely respected as a mediator by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and other GCC members.
    ​ ​Russia also offers the world’s most competitive and cutting edge military hardware to underpin the security needs of all the parties.​..
    ​ ​And that brings us to the essential Pipelineistan angle, which in the Russia–Iran case revolves around the new, multi-trillion dollar Chalous gas field in the Caspian Sea…
    Chalous, in fact, will enable Iran – with Russian input – to become a major gas exporter to Europe, something that Brussels evidently relishes. The head of Iran’s KEPCO, Ali Osouli, expects a “new gas hub to be formed in the north to let the country supply 20 percent of Europe’s gas needs.”
    ​ ​According to Russia’s Transneft, Chalous alone could supply as much as 52 percent of natural gas needs of the whole EU for the next 20 years.
    ​ ​Chalous is quite something: a twin-field site, separated by roughly nine kilometers, the second-largest natural gas block in the Caspian Sea, just behind Alborz. It may hold gas reserves equivalent to one-fourth of the immense South Pars gas field, placing it as the 10th largest gas reserves in the world.
    ​ ​Chalous happens to be a graphic case of Russia-Iran-China (RIC) geoeconomic cooperation. Proverbial western speculative spin rushed to proclaim the 20-year gas deal as a setback for Iran. The final breakdown, not fully confirmed, is 40 percent for Gazprom and Transneft, 28 percent for China’s CNPC and CNOOC, and 25 percent for Iran’s KEPCO.
    ​ ​Moscow sources confirm Gazprom will manage the whole project. Transneft will be in charge of transportation, CNPC is involved in financing and banking facilities, and CNOOC will be in charge of infrastructure and engineering.
    ​ ​The whole Chalous site has been estimated to be worth a staggering $5.4 trillion.​..
    ​ Crucially, Moscow also reiterated its full support for Tehran’s position during the current JCPOA round in Vienna, as well as in other Iran-related issues reaching the UN Security Council.
    ​ ​The fine print on all key Chalous aspects may be revealed in time. It’s a de facto geopolitical/geoeconomic win-win-win for the Russia, Iran, China strategic partnership.
    https://thecradle.co/Article/columns/4179

    ​Ray McGovern speculates about Biden-Putin talks tomorrow.
    Nobody knows, and we won’t really know. We’ll have to watch for actions.
    (China is invisibly sitting next to Russia. They do not have identical interests, but a lot of overlap, these days.)​

    Biden-Putin Talk Tuesday With Xi in the Wings

    #94546
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Wow, all this transnational existential hyperbole, when right here at home (USA) we have civilization breaking paradigms unfolding…

    Like how is it possible, with all of the hard facts concerning the disastrous roll-out of the mRNA concoctions, that We are still looking down the barrel of the .gov gun, with “parents” offering up their children to the altar of medical experimentation?

    How is Fauci still taken seriously, not in handcuffs, the BIG pharma pollution in our national health agencies NOT a national crisis?

    How is it that partisan politics are allowed to run roughshod on the rule-of-law, using the alphabet agencies as defacto enforcement thugs for the DnC?

    What fallout are we really looking at concerning the theft of the 2020 national elections in vidid detail, where people are left to believe a colour revolution coup d’etat has seized control of our nations’ levers of power?

    How close are We to a genuine disruption in just-in-time supply chains failing?

    Just how long will these misfits be taken seriously?

    I realize the simple answer is mass formation psychosis into CULTS, but it certainly seems we approaching a black swan event, a breaking point…

    I guess we’ll have to wait until our backs are up-against-the-wall & the clock has run out ~ But Americans are too volatile, too freedom minded, far too violent, to go quietly into the night like New Zealand, Australia, Austria & the EU is presently doing.

    Will the oligarchs get their reset after all?

    #94547
    TAE Summary
    Participant

    * Pro-vaxxer: A person that supports vaccinations and mandatory vaccination laws
    – I don’t always get vaccinated but when I do I get twelve doses

    * Big Pharma: We may be sterilizing an entire generation, but don’t worry, their kids will be just fine

    * How Pfizer rapes countries: Get them drunk with fear, get them behind closed doors, threaten them, silence them, then stick it to them

    * Fauci Grammar: He cannot make declarative statements but is real good at imperatives, questions and commands

    * FDA Streamlines Omicron Approval
    – Steamline v.: To construct or design in a form that offers the least resistance
    – FDA renames current variant to Ogasmicron in honor of spasmodic profits

    * Bitcoin is the oxygen mask; US Treasury Crypto Dollar will be the ventilator

    * Famous Defenses:
    – Harvey Weinstein: I represent movies. Any attack on me is an attack on movies.
    – Bernie Madoff: I represent high finance. Any attack on me is an attack on high finance.
    – Captain Edward Smith: I represent the seamanship. Any attack on me is an attack on the seamanship.

    #94602
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    @Dr. D, thanks for that Huxley quote. It is added to my list of quotes, which include plenty from Fabian Socialist Aldous Huxley (Wedgewoods, Daltons, Darwin, Huxley)…

    “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
    ~Aldous Huxley

    “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
    ~Aldous Huxley

    “The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.”
    ~Aldous Huxley

    Aldous Huxley – The Ultimate Revolution ‘Brave New World’ (Berkeley Speech 1962) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WaUkZXKA30

    “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and SCHOOLTEACHERS”… Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution…”
    ~Aldous Huxley

    ‘Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.’
    ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

    “Medical science has made such fantastic progress that there are barely any healthy people left.”
    ~Aldous Huxley

    “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
    ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

    “If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled”
    -Aldous Huxley

    Aldous Huxley – The Ultimate Revolution ‘Brave New World’ (Berkeley Speech 1962)

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