Vincent van Gogh On the outskirts of Paris near Montmartre 1887
Jim Rickards @JamesGRickards
Brexit never had to happen except David Cameron called a referendum and lost. Freedom Convoys never had to happen except Trudeau and Fascist Freeland refused to listen. The coming general strike and supply chain collapse is on them. The elites sure are dumb.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1494832194573021186
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice asked self-custody wallet provider @nunchuk_io to disclose user information and freeze user’s bitcoin. This was the team’s response.
Bill Gates: Sadly
“Sadly, the virus itself – particularly the variant Omicron – is a type of vaccine. That is, it creates both B cell and T cell immunity. And it’s done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.” – Bill Gates
Sadly?pic.twitter.com/BJR0WECwDr— Laura Dodsworth (@BareReality) February 18, 2022
“By vaccinating children with this mRNA ‘vaccine’, you are actually suppressing their own robust immune system, making them vulnerable to other diseases.”
• Geert Vanden Bossche: Why The COVID Vaccine Is A Bad Idea For Kids (Loesch)
Dana (@DLoesch / @DanaLoeschRadio) talks with Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche on Twitter, and @GVandenBossche on GETTR), who has a PHD in virology – Certified Expert in microbiology and infectious diseases – with a long standing career in human vaccinology, and Dr. Vanden Bossche talks about the fact that it isn’t even necessary to inject children with this mRNA ‘vaccine’, as the FDA and Dr. Fauci (along with the pharmaceutical companies) want to do. He has previously pointed out that this virus is an infection in children, like the flu – and not a disease. By vaccinating children with this mRNA ‘vaccine’, you are actually suppressing their own robust immune system, making them vulnerable to other diseases.
Dr. Vanden Bossche mentions that these vaccinations will not – and CANNOT – eliminate a virus, but that our own immune systems CAN. The worldwide government push to inject these people, is actually making people more vulnerable, and any mandate needs to stop immediately. Governments doing this, are actually forcing this virus to evolve and avoid elimination, which certainly keeps the virus going indefinitely.
“..Omicron has the capacity to evolve into a much less benign variant..”
• Omicron A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing (Vanden Bossche)
Given the high and steadily increasing vaccine coverage rates in large parts of the world and the ongoing mass vaccination of children and continuation of booster campaigns, I am of the opinion that Omicron has the capacity to evolve into a much less benign variant, regardless of whether or not infection prevention measures are relaxed or lifted.
A coronavirus (CoV) can only replicate and mutate. The widely held belief that during the course of a pandemic viruses tend to become more infectious but less virulent is a myth—one kept alive by those who don’t understand the evolutionary dynamics of a pandemic. The latter are fully dependent upon the outcome of the interplay between the virus and the host immune system at a population level. Abiding by this ‘rule’ is the sole qualifier necessary to be an expert of viral pandemics. For several months I’ve been warning that continued mass vaccination and high vaccine coverage rates would prevent SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) from generating sufficient herd immunity to control, let alone end, the current pandemic. The advent of Omicron hasn’t changed my mind, on the contrary!
Now that mass vaccination campaigns have quickly rendered the virus resistant to the adaptive immune response (cfr. Omicron), I am fearful that this may have a snowball effect. I’ve been postulating that the mechanism of innate immune adaptation to viral exposure (i.e., through a process of epigenetic changes referred to as ‘training’) is compromised in the vaccinated population and I am now predicting that the resulting burden of infectivity will cause massive population-level immune pressure on Omicron. In an attempt to overcome high immune pressure on Omicron’s infectiousness, natural selection of viral mutants that are capable of resisting both the acquired SC-2-specific and the CoV-reactive innate immune response in vaccinees is likely to occur.
This post-vaccine reaction may represent an overly exuberant immune response..”
• Vaccinating Teens for COVID Is Literally ‘Heartbreaking’ (Setty)
Pathologists who examined the autopsies of two teenage boys who died days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine concluded the vaccine caused the teens’ deaths. The three pathologists, two of whom are medical examiners, published their findings Feb. 14 in an early online release article, “Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in Two Adolescents Following the Second COVID-19 Vaccine Dose,” in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. The authors’ findings were conclusive. Two teenage boys were pronounced dead in their homes three and four days after receiving the second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 dose. There was no evidence of active or previous COVID-19 infection. The teens had negative toxicology screens (i.e. no drugs or poisons were present in their bodies).
These boys died from the vaccine. Histopathological examination of their cardiac tissue revealed an important new finding: Neither heart demonstrated evidence of typical myocarditis. Instead, the authors found evidence of microscopic changes consistent with a different form of heart injury called toxic cardiomyopathy. They wrote: “The myocardial injury seen in these post-vaccine hearts is different from typical myocarditis and has an appearance most closely resembling a catecholamine-mediated stress (toxic) cardiomyopathy.” [..] The pathologists determined there was a different mechanism of heart injury at play in these two boys, distinct from a purely infectious process that would result directly from a viral infection like COVID-19.
This is an important finding. There may be a way to distinguish cardiac injury resulting from a SARS-COV-2 infection from cardiac injury where the vaccine predisposes the patient to stress cardiomyopathy before contracting COVID-19. However, the authors are careful not to assume that cardiac injuries from COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines can always be sorted out under the microscope. They explain that stress cardiomyopathy, or “broken heart syndrome,” may also occur in a rare hyperinflammatory state that is known to occur in COVID-19 infection as well: “This post-vaccine reaction may represent an overly exuberant immune response and the myocardial injury is mediated by similar immune mechanisms as described with SARS-COV-2 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) cytokine storms.”
Yeadon
Dr. Yeadon petitioned the EMA on a pregnancy caution given the anticipated interaction between the Spike protein and syncytium, particularly the S2 component with is fully synthesized in the pregnant woman after taking it. Here is the rationale. pic.twitter.com/9AoxDEeMdP
— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) February 20, 2022
Dr. Yeadon indicates three reasons to defer in this situation: 1) no assurances on teratogenicity or birth defects, 2) no reproductive toxicology, 3) low-risk target group can be easily treated if high risk features to the respiratory illness. pic.twitter.com/KNCZFPmi4z
— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) February 20, 2022
“..men and women have very different ideas about what makes a face attractive and healthy..”
• More Attractive People Have Stronger Immune Systems, Study Says (SF)
The beautiful people get all the breaks. A new study finds an interesting link between how attractive someone is and the strength of their immune system. A team at Texas Christian University found that when people had to rate a group of photos based on the attractiveness of each person’s face, they consistently rated individuals with stronger immune health as more attractive than other photos in the study. Although beauty is often in the eye of the beholder, researchers say there has been a historical link between what societies consider attractive and reproductive success. The TCU team theorized that, because certain evolutionary traits tie into more mating success, people who seem more attractive to others may also appear healthier to the opposite sex.
To test that theory, researchers gathered 159 men and women and photographed each one without makeup and while displaying a neutral expression on their face. Study authors then took blood samples from each person to measure their levels of white blood cells — which battle disease and infections. The team then brought in 492 other people to rate members of the opposite sex in these photos based on their attractiveness. The volunteers did not have any information on each person’s immune health and only had that one neutral photo to base their rating on. Results show people with stronger immune systems were rated as being more attractive by the 492 volunteers.
“The current research suggests that a relationship between facial attractiveness and immune function is likely to exist,” corresponding author Summer Mengelkoch and her team write in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Interestingly, the study finds men and women have very different ideas about what makes a face attractive and healthy. Researchers found that, on average, women rated men with higher levels of NK (natural killer) cells as more attractive. These cells play a key role in fighting off and killing bacteria. Men, on the other hand, found women with lower NK cell levels in their blood more attractive. Study authors believe the reason for this is women with lower NK levels generally have higher estrogen levels — a hormone important to sexual reproduction.
As for which features are likely to stand out and attract attention, researchers found a not-so-surprising list of qualities people look for in a pretty face. “Features such as clear skin, prominent cheekbones, bright eyes, and full, red lips have been deemed attractive throughout recorded human history,” the researchers write.
“..y’all do realize we are talking about invoking the Emergency War Measures Act against people charged with mischief, right?“
• Leaders of Freedom Convoy Charged With “Mischief” (CTH)
The need for control is a reaction to fear. What does the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fear so much that he invoked the first ever declaration of the Emergency War Measures Act? A group of middle class Canadians who challenged him. That’s it. That’s the sum total of the Trudeau justification. Need proof? Well, here’s the lead organizer of the Trucker rebellion, Tamara Lich, who triggered the declaration of a national emergency and invocation of the federal Emergency Act. What heinous crime against the state was she charged with? “Counseling to Commit the Offense of Mischief“. Think about it.
No, seriously, think about it. It is true that she may later be charged with removing mattress tags. However, for right now, the biggest domestic terrorist in the history of Canadian politics is currently charged with the same offense as if she stole the lids off the shampoo bottles at the hotel where the Liberal Party of Canada was holding their national convention. If the charge of “mischief” rings a bell for some of you, it’s likely because a very famous duo was previously charged with the same criminal offenses.
The Canadian Parliament is currently debating whether or not the members within government will support the use of the Emergency Act. The members of Parliament are spending hours waxing philosophically, with tremendous seriousness, about the need to support the same declaration that is used when Canada would decide to go to war with another country. And they are doing this because blue collar workers have infiltrated the capital city with a demand to remove COVID mandates. The crimes against the truckers are so serious, they require the invocation of the most massive weapon that can be deployed to remove the constitutional freedoms of Canadian citizens, in an effort to protect them from grave and serious harm stemming from… …. people charged with “MISCHIEF”.
It would be nice if someone, anyone, in the Canadian Parliament stood up and made this simple point. “Um, hey folks… ahem… I don’t mean to be all captain obvious and stuff… and I certainly do not want to deflate your sense of self-importance…. or the seriousness of the debate. However, that said, y’all do realize we are talking about invoking the Emergency War Measures Act against people charged with mischief, right?“
The cops don’t want to
Canadian government is treating truckers like ‘terrorists’: National Review fellow pic.twitter.com/BMoBMzfo2o
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) February 19, 2022
A bit half-ass. If the House votes on Monday/Tuesday to support Trudeau, what’s Kenney going to do? Or a judge?
• Alberta Premier Files Legal Challenge To End Trudeau’s Emergencies Act (ES)
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his UCP government are so disgusted by the federal Liberals’ imposition of the Emergencies Act to end the truckers’ blockade of downtown Ottawa that they will file a legal challenge in Federal Court in Ottawa early next week to end Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s arbitrary and high-handed action. In an exclusive interview with Postmedia, Kenney said the use of Canada’s most powerful law was “unjustified in the circumstances,” an “overreach,” a violation of due process and “an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction.” As a consequence, lawyers representing the Alberta government will be asking judges not to overturn the act, but rather to suspend its use in the current situation.
The premier doesn’t want anyone to misunderstand his motives. “The situation in Ottawa is serious. Law and order has to be restored.” Protesters cannot be allowed to blockade the core of any Canadian city, much less our capital, Kenney explained, no matter what their cause. “But the Emergencies Act was designed to come into effect at the failure of the state,” at a time when it was possible our democratic institutions might fall. “However, there is no insurrection or coup,” Kenney said pointedly. “Police services already have all the powers they need through provincial authority. All the tools already exist” to clear the blockade and restore order, Kenney believes. The feds, for instance, don’t need the power to “seize and freeze” people’s bank accounts and other assets.
The banking provisions of the Emergencies Act were, according to Kenney, “designed to interrupt terrorism financing,” to choke off the money supply of radical cells plotting attacks within Canada. Now, according to the premier, the Trudeau government is instead using those provisions to harass “people whose opinions they disagree with.” Federal Justice Minister David Lametti even hinted on CTV that the feds are even considering having financial institutions freeze the accounts of anyone who used a credit card to donate a few dollars to the convoy.Kenney thinks if the Trudeau-ites are allowed to get away with freezing the finances of their political opponents, even if only for a few days “it sets a very dangerous precedent.” “Let’s stick to the basics here — the basics of law enforcement.”
“..the exact location will be announced closer to the start of the event because of the “paramount” concern for operational security.”
• U.S. ‘People’s Convoy’ Ready To Roll On Wednesday (JTN)
The “People’s Convoy,” a U.S. trucker protest against COVID-19 mandates, is set to begin on Wednesday in California. Inspired by the Canadian truckers’ “Freedom Convoy,” the People’s Convoy is expecting about 1,000 trucks to start the journey east, with more joining along the way. “We’re going to be starting the convoy out of Barstow, California,” Maureen Steele, the national organizer of the movement, told Newsmax, explaining that the exact location will be announced closer to the start of the event because of the “paramount” concern for operational security. “The Canadian convoy was pretty organic when it happened,” Steele said. “Ours, they had a month’s notice, so our concern is disruptive groups coming in. We’re trying to just prepare for counter-protests and to take safety precautions for that.”
Truckers can register with their license plates on the organizers’ website “so we know exactly who is in the convoy and to make sure that it’s going to be a safe ride,” she explained. According to the website, the organization is calling for the “declaration of a national emergency concerning the COVID-19 pandemic be lifted immediately and our cherished Constitution reign supreme.” The website has its own donation link instead of using GoFundMe or other crowdfunding services. Steele clarified that donations for the convoy will be held with a private bank to prevent them from being frozen by governmental opposition. “So our funds should not be able to be frozen or hijacked, and all the money is being held by this third-party firm, so we can assure that it absolutely gets to the truckers and it’s clean,” she said.
“That’s why it took so long. We have such an infrastructure built for this operation. It took us a while before we could come out.” The towns where the convoy plans to stop will be announced about 24 hours prior to their arrival for precautionary purposes, Steele said, but she did confirm that they will stop in Arizona and Texas. A few trucks will be ahead of the convoy “just to check in with law enforcement in towns ahead of the convoy, that if we’re going to be marshaling there that evening, to make sure they’re prepared for a massive convoy to roll into town,” Steele said.
Of course they did.
• West Promised Not To Expand NATO – Der Spiegel (RT)
A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French, and German officials discussing a pledge made to Moscow that NATO would not expand to Poland and beyond. Its publication by the German magazine Der Spiegel on Friday comes as expansion of the US-led bloc has led to a military standoff in Eastern Europe. The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which the Western officials made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO would not push into territory east of Germany.
“We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz. “NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added. A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is “unacceptable.” “We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe [sic],” said West German diplomat Juergen Hrobog. “We could not therefore offer Poland and others membership in NATO.”
The minutes later clarified he was referring to the Oder River, the boundary between East Germany and Poland. Hrobog further noted that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had agreed with this position as well. The document was found in the UK National Archives by Joshua Shifrinson, a political science professor at Boston University in the US. It had been marked “Secret” but was declassified at some point. Shifrinson tweeted on Friday he was “honored” to work with Der Spiegel on the document showing that “Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge.”
Screenshot of the minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting of US, UK, French and German diplomats discussing NATO and Eastern Europe © screenshot via Kommersant
“The concept of escalation dominance refers to the ability to increase military pressure and possibly resort to limited use of force, based on the logic that the stakes can be continuously increased until the other side is compelled to capitulate.”
• Does NATO Really Pose A Threat To Russia? (Diesen)
Russia has laid down its red lines, insisting that NATO expansion towards its borders poses an unacceptable challenge to its policy of so-called “indivisible security.” As the US-led military bloc insists it exists solely to defend its members, Moscow’s requests for mutual security assurances have revealed the two sides no longer even speak the same language. Western governments committed themselves to a new defensive doctrine in all the main pan-European security agreements signed in the 1990s. The principle of “indivisible security” was explicitly defined in these agreements as the “commitment not to pursue national security interests at the expense of others,” which reflected the larger objective of ending the dividing lines in Europe.
Although, Russia was weak in the 1990s and the West could ignore these security guarantees by expanding NATO. Russia has now recovered, established firm red lines, and has demanded security guarantees based on these existing pan-European security agreements. The US and NATO, however, insist that “indivisible security” is interpreted as the right to choose alliance membership freely. The creative re-interpretation of very specific agreements does not clarify how the expansion of Cold War military alliances would achieve the overarching objective of ending the Cold War legacy of dividing lines in Europe.
[..] not long ago, it was commonplace across the West to argue that President Trump could start a major war with another great power. More recently, US Senator Roger Wicker casually suggested that America could engage in a war with Russia over Ukraine, in which even the use of nuclear weapons should not be taken off the table. Evelyn Farkas, the former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia in the Obama administration, and former senior adviser to the Supreme Allied Commander in NATO, also penned an op-ed in which she argued that “The US Must Prepare for War Against Russia over Ukraine.”
Even if Washington would not follow the reckless advice of going to war with Russia, the growing US military presence along Russian borders can give the US escalation dominance. The concept of escalation dominance refers to the ability to increase military pressure and possibly resort to limited use of force, based on the logic that the stakes can be continuously increased until the other side is compelled to capitulate. With the knowledge that the US could defeat Russia in a war, the US could use its ability to escalate tensions to compel Russia to capitulate on strategically important issues.
“..hundreds of millions of dollars in NATO lethal aid is being sent, supposedly for defense, but which Vershinin said could be intended instead for an offensive that could potentially set a trap for Russia.”
Yes. But Putin has seen this coming from miles away, too.
• US Doubles Downs on Russian ‘Invasion’ Rhetoric (Lauria)
The U.S. began in November to portray the Russian troop deployment as an invasion force and has since worked its message into a crescendo of daily warnings of an imminent attack. In Spring 2021, Russia made a similar deployment near the Ukraine border and yet there were no Washington cries of invasion then. So what changed? This time the Russian troop movement coincided with Moscow presenting draft treaty proposals to the U.S. and NATO drawing a deep redline after decades of objecting to the Western military alliance moving ever closer to Russia, a country that was invaded by and defeated the largest European powers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The U.S. reacted to these bold proposals by changing the subject. They moved from the defensive to offense with a supreme distraction: the maniacal mantra of “the Russians are coming.”
NATO routinely carries out military deployments and exercises near Russia’s borders. Moscow never screams “invasion” when U.S. war planes practice cruise missile strikes at the Russian frontier. Instead Russia presented proposals that would see: • NATO roll back forward troop deployments from former Warsaw Pact states, now NATO members; • NATO would not admit Ukraine and Georgia as members and • The U.S. would remove long-range missiles in Romania and Poland and not deploy new ones in Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO have so far rejected the Russian draft treaties out of hand, except on the missile issue, which Washington is ready to negotiate (Joe Biden has promised not to deploy missiles in Ukraine.)
The New York Times could not, however, stop itself from mocking Russia on Thursday with a story, which it seems to have just discovered, headlined, “On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk: A U.S. missile facility in Poland is at the heart of an issue animating the Kremlin’s calculations over whether to go to war against Ukraine.” Instead of withdrawing forward NATO deployments from Eastern Europe, the U.S. delivered a slap in the face by sending more NATO troops to the east. This was supposed to be in response to the alleged Russian threat to Ukraine, where no U.S. or NATO troops are being deployed.
Instead hundreds of millions of dollars in NATO lethal aid is being sent, supposedly for defense, but which Vershinin said could be intended instead for an offensive that could potentially set a trap for Russia. In Blinken’s scenario, “The government will issue proclamations declaring that Russia must respond to defend Russian citizens or ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Next, the attack is planned to begin.” If Russian regular units enter Donbass to protect ethnic Russians and Russian citizens there from the offensive, that would be the invasion the U.S. is screaming about. It would unleash the “mother of all sanctions,” as a U.S. Senate sanctions bill against Russia has been called.
“..tying Russia down for the foreseeable future in an Iraq-style military quagmire..”
• “Operation Cyclone: Ukraine Edition” – Is This The Real Plan? (O’Reilly)
Ukraine has been under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan, a CIA and MI6-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with the Russian Federation. With the ongoing collapse of the global COVID-19 media narrative following the highly coincidental timing of last month’s World Economic Forum Davos Agenda virtual event, a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine has now taken centre stage amongst corporate media outlets with a track record of promoting war and regime change in countries refusing to kowtow to the demands of the US-NATO hegemony.
A media narrative which has seen thousands of US and British troops being deployed to Eastern Europe as a result – a highly provocative action and one, that should even a minor miscalculation occur amidst the current tensions, could easily escalate into a full-blown military conflict between East and West. Recent comments by current Ukrainian President Zelensky however, in which he poured cold water over the idea of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the recent supply of over 90 tonnes of weaponry to Kiev by the United States amidst the current tensions, and US President Joe Biden stating himself that Washington would not engage militarily with Russia, would suggest that although the possibility of the current crisis inadvertently spiralling into a global conflict between Russia and NATO remains, that that is not the current intention of the West.
Rather, a plan seemingly exists to provoke Russia into intervening in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine to protect the predominantly ethnic Russian inhabitants of the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, before drawing Moscow into a wider guerrilla conflict in the rest of Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe, with the intentions of tying Russia down for the foreseeable future in an Iraq-style military quagmire.
“If I were Putin and I wanted Ukraine, I would just take it. I would say, you Americans took Iraq and Libya. The Israelis stole Palestine. I’m taking Ukraine.”
• The Washington Post: The Voice of the CIA (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Washington Post has always been a CIA asset. The CIA used the Washington Post to orchestrate the Watergate narrative used to drive President Nixon out of office. The CIA wanted Nixon gone, because Nixon was threatening the military/security complex’s budget and power by making arms control agreements with the Soviets and by opening to China. The CIA was afraid to assassinate Nixon because of the suspicion it was under for assassinating President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy. So the CIA used the Washington Post to assassinate Nixon politically. The entire history of the Washington Post is one of fake news. The latest fake news from the disinformation sheet claims that the Russian troop pullback is a “deliberate ruse to mislead the United States and other world powers” about Russia’s planned invasion of Ukraine. “Anonymous US intelligence sources” (the CIA) are cited as the source.
First of all, the Russian troops were part of an exercise, not an invasion plan. But push this fact aside and ask yourself what is the point of Russia concealing its plans? If Russia wants to invade Ukraine, no one on earth can do anything whatsoever about it. So why hide it? Indeed, with satellites overhead a force concentrated for invasion cannot be hidden. The presstitute who wrote the story and the CIA that dictated it are thinking in WW II terms when modern surveillance capabilities did not exist. Ask yourself also why Russia needs to create a false flag attack in order to justify invading Ukraine. If Russia wants Ukraine, Russia has plenty of up front reasons.
One is to prevent Ukraine from being a NATO member and hosting US missile bases on Russia’s border. Another is that Ukraine is part of Russia and had been for 300 years until the Americans broke it off from Russia when Russia was to weak to do anything about it. Another reason is that Ukraine has violated the Minsk Agreement and continues to attack the Russian population in the Donbass region. In actual fact, Russia doesn’t need any excuse, because no one can stop them. Also ask yourself what is the point of an excuse. No matter how good it is, Washington and NATO would not believe it. The excuse would do no good and serve no purpose. In fact an excuse would be worse than no excuse, because the excuse would simply result in the endless refutation of the excuse. If I were Putin and I wanted Ukraine, I would just take it. I would say, you Americans took Iraq and Libya. The Israelis stole Palestine. I’m taking Ukraine.
“Judge Mehta’s opinion seems to reinforce the view that Trump’s speech was protected, too.”
• Ruling Against Trump Leaves More Questions Than Answers On Free Speech (Turley)
A “one-of-a-kind case.” Judge Amit Mehta’s description of the litigation against four principal speakers at the Jan. 6 Trump rally may have been as much a prayer as a portrayal. As famed Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Hard cases make bad law” — and the litigation against President Trump and his associates is a hard case that just proved Holmes right. In consolidated cases brought by Democratic members of Congress and Capitol Police officers, Judge Mehta ruled on motions to dismiss by the former president, his son Donald Jr., former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), as well as several extremist groups like the Oath Keepers. The judge dismissed the claims of a violent conspiracy against Trump Jr. and Giuliani, and he invited Brooks to file a motion to dismiss on the same grounds. He rejected arguments that their speeches at the rally caused the subsequent rioting in the Capitol.
Yet, while admitting that the case raised difficult constitutional questions, he declined to dismiss the claim against Trump. The ruling will now allow a long-awaited appeal on core constitutional questions, including the protections for inflammatory speech. Most analysts expected that groups like the Oath Keepers would likely remain in the lawsuit, given their active role in the rioting and the recent charges of seditious conspiracy filed against them. The most controversial parties were the speakers at the rally near the White House before the riot. The judge’s 112-page opinion makes easy work of dismissing the claims against the other speakers. These speeches were reckless but constitutionally protected. Giuliani’s declaration — “Let’s have trial by combat” — has been cited by some critics as a clear incitement to an insurrection, but the judge found such arguments were implausible and that Giuliani’s words “were not likely” to cause a riot.
He also found that Trump Jr.’s comments on the election were “protected speech,” and he rejected claims that Brooks urging Trump’s supporters to “start taking names and kicking ass” could be the basis for liability. I previously wrote that the claims against these four Jan. 6 speakers might find “a sympathetic trial judge” but that “they will likely fail on appeal, even if they survive the trial level litigation.” All but one of those claims are now dismissed on the trial level. Moreover, Judge Mehta’s opinion seems to reinforce the view that Trump’s speech was protected, too. The judge could well be reversed on the threshold question of immunity, raised by Trump, that presidents cannot be sued for speaking on matters of public interest. Mehta was honest in saying that “this is not an easy issue” and that “the alleged facts of this case are without precedent.”
The EU forced Greece to sell its national rail operator for €45 million. And pay the foreign buyer €50 million a year.
• How Trains Abolished By Switzerland Are Now Back In Business In Greece (Bersi)
Delays, breakdowns, cancellations… For years, ETR 470 trains were the biggest headache of the Swiss railways. In the end, the Swiss sent them for scrap. But the Italian railways — which has been running all Greek passenger trains since 2017 — presented the very same trains as state-of-the-art. “Stay away from these trains,” say executives who know them first hand. So why is this train — that has repeatedly put passengers in danger in the past — getting a new lease of life? Twenty years ago, the Swiss press dubbed the ETR 470 train — serving the Milan-Switzerland route — ‘Pannenzug’, meaning ‘breakdown train’. Meanwhile, the website that documented its problems was named CessoAlpino, meaning (in elegant translation) ‘Alpine toilet’.
Two former officials familiar with this train, who were contacted by Investigate Europe and Reporters United, find it hard to believe that the five remaining ETR 470s not sent to the scrapyard are now being touted as the future of the Athens-Thessaloniki rail link — the most important route in the Mediterranean country. “The advice from Switzerland: hands off these trains,” says Walter Finkbohner, former secretary of the board of directors of Cisalpino AG, the subsidiary of Italian and Swiss railways that bought the ETR 470s from the manufacturer, Fiat Ferroviaria in the 1990s. “Buy proven trains or new trains. There is nothing for free in life,” he adds. But Greece is not in a position to accept such recommendations, nor to choose which rolling stock circulates on its tracks, since its railways were fully privatised five years ago, as required by its creditors.
The Italian state company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane (FSI) bought 100% of TRAINOSE, the Greek rail operator, for a mere €45 million. The privatisation contract remains secret, but people familiar with its terms, such as the current vice-minister for infrastructure and transport, Giorgos Karayannis, dub it “colonial”. This is unusually strong language from a member of a conservative government. The Greek transport ministry has agreed to subsidise the Italian company to the tune of €50 million a year to run certain routes, as outlined in a Public Service Obligations (PSO) contract.
“The $240 billion loss in market capitalization was the largest one-day loss in US corporate history.”
• Zuckerberg’s Facebook Empire Collapsing (RT)
Once the world’s sixth largest firm with a valuation of over $1 trillion, Facebook’s parent company Meta finished Thursday’s trading with a value of $565 billion. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the social media giant has tumbled out of the world’s 10 largest companies by market value, hammered by its worst monthly stock decline ever.
The stock rout has placed Mark Zuckerberg’s company in 11th place behind Chinese Tencent Holdings. Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) holds the ninth spot. The list of the world’s most-valuable companies, ranked by market capitalization, includes Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nvidia. Data shows that the value wiped out by the selloff in Meta’s shares exceeds the market caps of all but eight companies in the S&P 500 Index. Meta’s share price is down about 40% year-to-date after the company reported two weeks ago that its social media platform Facebook lost about one million users from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2021. That’s the first such decline for the company in its 18-year history.
Meta’s stock plummeted 26.4% on February 3 after the company released its weaker-than-expected outlook. The $240 billion loss in market capitalization was the largest one-day loss in US corporate history. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth is down more than $46 billion from the beginning of the year, he’s currently worth $78.8 billion.
Originally published in the Prince Arthur Herald.
12/12/2014 12:59pm EST | Updated February 11, 2015
• Why Canada Will Become a Dictatorship Under Trudeau (Dickin)
It’s becoming clearer as the days of Trudeau’s Liberals wear on: if elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau would turn Canada into a dictatorship. This is the man who admitted he “admires China’s basic dictatorship.” It wasn’t just a sarcastic comment – he seriously said that he admires the dictatorship because they can get things done quickly. And it’s becoming clearer that Trudeau not only admires the dictatorship — he runs the Liberal Party like one too. How else can one explain the police-enforced acclamation of Andrew Leslie as the Liberal candidate for Orleans? Even with hundreds of Liberals attending the meeting to show their support for another candidate (and former Trudeau leadership rival), it was clear from the beginning that Leslie was Trudeau’s hand-picked favourite, and certainly wouldn’t be stopped by pesky processes like “democracy.”
Just the imagery of Trudeau’s chosen candidate being selected with police intervention is scary. It shows that Trudeau doesn’t just admire China’s dictatorship — he would practice one if he had the chance. The nomination in Orleans is only the latest rigged “open nomination.” Despite Trudeau’s promises to actually, you know, practice democracy, at least a half dozen Liberal nominations have been rigged or tampered with through the direct intervention of Trudeau’s office: mysteriously disqualifying candidates, changing nomination dates, paperwork going “missing,” and using dirty “back-room” politics to ensure the leader’s candidate is chosen at any cost. But those are only Liberal candidates; surely Trudeau would loosen his grip on his caucus colleagues once they’ve been elected, wouldn’t he? Unfortunately, no.
The Liberal caucus randomly learned one morning early last year that their leader had come up with a new diktat: that all Liberals would be expected, no, required, to vote pro-choice. When Trudeau’s pathetic attempted defence (that they were “the party of the Charter,” obviously missing those small sections about freedom of conscience and religion) agitated more than a few Liberal MPs, he attempted to invent some weird “grandfathering” rule. But then he went back on that too. The result is that Liberal MPs who dare question the diktat of Trudeau are being punished. Those who dare disagree have already been punished, resigned, or indicated that they won’t seek another term in office — at least not under the iron fist of Trudeau.
Very eloquent protester
CANADA—Video update from protestor in Ottawa, posted around 12am Eastern.pic.twitter.com/9shpUcKNgK
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) February 19, 2022
https://twitter.com/i/status/1493408984270835714
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