Apr 282022
 
 April 28, 2022  Posted by at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Robert Rauschenberg Buffalo II 1964

 

Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)
Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)
Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)
Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)
DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)
Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)
Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)
Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)
Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)
Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates
Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)
CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)
Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

 

 

 

 

Euro and yen are getting crushed, ruble is at 52-week high.

@TFMetals: Gold has now been attacked TWICE today in an attempt to manipulate it back under $1880. The first was in London and the second, even higher volume attack came during the first hour of Comex trading.

 

 

 

 

Biden Scott Ritter 2002

 

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities” ~ Voltaire

 

 

“due to absence of payments in roubles”

Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)

At the same time as Russia has targeted railway lines as part of the effort to block U.S. arms shipments into Eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has now followed through on the previous warning to stop Russian gas supplies unless payments are made in non-sanctioned Rubles. Poland is obviously the primary target for retaliation here, as the NATO alliance is using Poland as the gateway for arms deliveries into Ukraine. According to multiple reports from the EU Russia has halted gas shipments into Poland and Bulgaria. (Reuters) “Gazprom Russia’s gas export monopoly, suspended gas supplies “due to absence of payments in roubles”, as stipulated in a decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin that aims to soften the impact of sanctions.”


There are conflicting reports as to whether Germany is paying Russia, or whether they are trying to avoid running afoul of the NATO alliance by reducing Russian imports. Ukraine President Zelenskyy is using the opportunity to reinforce his position that all European countries need to stop purchasing energy from Russia, or else they are not supporting Ukraine. However, it’s not as simple as it seems because multiple EU countries are dependent on Russia for energy products and there are no immediate alternatives. Russia is leveraging this dependency in an effort to break the western sanctions.

Read more …

“Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further..”

Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced. Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. For the EU, imports were about €44bn for the past two months, compared with about €140bn for the whole of last year, or roughly €12bn a month. The findings demonstrate how Russia has continued to benefit from its stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply, even while governments have frantically sought to prevent Vladimir Putin using oil and gas as an economic weapon.


Even though exports from Russia have been reduced by the war and sanctions, the country’s dominance as a source of gas has meant cutting off supplies has only increased prices, which were already high because of tight supply as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Crude oil shipments from Russia to foreign ports fell by 30% in the first three weeks of April, compared with rates in January and February, before the invasion, according to the CREA data. But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.

Read more …

Always a bit weird when western military “analyzes” Russia. Invariably they pretend to have a direct line into Putin’s brain.

Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)

IN spite of appearances and the beliefs of many, the main Russian assault in eastern Ukraine has not yet begun. Last Sunday, April 24, was Easter Sunday in the Russian Orthodox calendar; the feast lasts eight days until the commemoration of Our Lord’s second appearance to the Disciples after his resurrection and the confrontation with ‘doubting’ Thomas. Given Vladimir Putin’s well-documented devotion to the Orthodox religion, we might expect the main assault in eastern Ukraine to begin after that date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declaration that the offensive had begun was useful to Putin. It has caused both the Ukrainian people and the West to think that Russian forces are now fully committed. They are not. What has begun is the deep attack and the use of deception – two recycled Soviet techniques still in full use.

Deep attacks against infrastructure by air and missile strikes and on key targets, including stockpiles of Nato-supplied equipment, air defence systems, airfields and communications are now in progress. Preliminary artillery fire on close targets in the Donbas region is also certainly ongoing. In terms of deception, the Russians continue to be poised in the Black Sea threatening Odessa, but with probably insufficient forces to do more than this. However, it is clearly fixing Ukrainian attention, as the 5th (Reserve) Tank Brigade with its 90 T-72 main battle tanks has been moved there. For Putin, leaving Odessa as the only operational Ukrainian port will be a valuable bargaining chip once the Donbas operation is complete and he seeks to dictate a settlement. If a settlement is not achieved then this picture changes, more of which shortly.

So what can we expect to see when the main assault unfolds? First, combined arms assaults against Ukrainian regular forces in the Donbas and elsewhere on the eastern frontier to fix them. Zelensky’s statements that Ukrainian reserves are now being committed, including the 3rd (Reserve) Tank Brigade deploying to Izyum, and the 4th and 17th Tank Brigades deployed to Kharkov, may well be a bluff. If it is not, then such moves would be premature and play to the Russian script. That said, an encircling movement from Izyum to the south, on the western border of the Donetsk, would be a very clear indicator of the beginning of full offensive operations.

Operations in and around Mariupol will continue, but only to fix the attention of the West and its media. Mariupol is seen as the key to any corridor to the Crimea – but the route to the Crimea has been fully open since early March with the garrison of Mariupol confined to a small area and helpless to interfere.

Read more …

Here’s how nervous Elon Musk is making Washington.

Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)

The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a new board designed to counter misinformation related to homeland security, with a focus specifically on Russia and irregular migration. The board will be called the “Disinformation Governance Board, and will be headed by executive director Nina Jankowicz. Speaking with the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee on Wednesday afternoon, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “Our Undersecretary for Policy, Rob Silvers is co-chair with our Principal Deputy General Counsel, Jennifer Gaskell, in leading a just recently constituted misinformation disinformation governance board. So we’re bringing — the goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat.”

Jankowicz was previously a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and had advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, according to Politico. Jankowicz also oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute. She announced the new Board via Twitter on Wednesday. Jankowicz has previously said that she was concerned that Twitter had determined early in 2022 to stop limiting speech from users about the 2020 presidential election, saying that “considering the long-term damage these lies do to our democracy,” she was “dismayed about this decision.”

Her view about elections, whether foreign or domestic, are that they “aren’t an end point,” but are “an inflection point,” and that the policies of social media companies as regards free speech “need to reflect that.” Jankowicz was an advisor to the government of Ukraine. She also stated her opinion that Hunter Biden’s laptop, the contents of which were reported by the New York Post, was Russian disinformation. This was entirely false. Jankowicz will be leading the charge against misinformation, of which she believed the laptop actually was an example. Jankowicz also does not appear to be a fan of free speech, saying that setting up free speech in opposition to censorship is “a false dichotomy.”

Read more …

This Nina Jankowicz, who will head the board, is herself a veritable disinformation engine.

DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)

I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter. Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media. Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.


NOTE: The Republicans did NOT pay for the Steele dossier.

This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded. In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative. Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program. All of this background aligns with the previous visibility of a public-private partnership between the bureaucracy of government, the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. social media. That partnership now forms the very cornerstone of the DHS/CISA effort to control what information exists in the public space. It is highly important that people understand what is happening.

[..] For two years the control mechanisms around information have been cemented by govt and Big Tech. Even the deployment of the linguistics around disinformation, misinformation and malinformation is all part of that collective effort. The collaboration between the government and Big Tech is not a matter for debate, it is all easily referenced by their own admissions. The current issue is how they are deploying the information controls. We have COVID-19, the vaccination effort and now Ukraine as examples of the collaboration to control information, to control what people are permitted to question and discuss on the internet. Now things are getting much more detailed, and more alarming.

Shortly after Elon Musk made a bid to purchase a single information platform, Twitter, and then expressed his intent to open the speech valves, former Obama administration intelligence officials wrote a letter warning about efforts to break up the information control by Big Tech and Social Media. That letter was shortly followed by a speech delivered by Obama himself where he specifically demanded that government take a larger role in the control of information, essentially promoting an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’ to control information in the public sphere.

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See Covid. See Russiagate. Parites like the DNC, the MSM and the Twitter snowflakes have convinced themselves they have a god-given right to censorship.

Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)

Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

This builds on a similar message Google’s subsidiary YouTube released last month, stating, “Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events. We are now removing content about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.” YouTube went on to say that it had already permanently banned more than a thousand channels and 15,000 videos on these grounds. Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin was deeply troubled by the news. “It is really disturbing that this is the trend that we are on,” she told MintPress, adding: It is a preposterous declaration considering that the victim is whoever we are told by our foreign policy establishment.

It really is outrageous to be told by these tech giants that taking the wrong side of a conflict that is quite complicated will now hurt your views, derank you on social media or limit your ability to fund your work. So you have to toe the line in order to survive as a journalist in alternative media today.” The most prominent victim of the recent banning spate has been Russian state media such as RT America, whose entire catalog has been blocked throughout most of the world. RT America was also blocked from broadcasting across the U.S., leading to the network’s sudden closure.

Read more …

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled..”

Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)

Leaked internal communications by Twitter employees reveal woke employees are overtaken by despair and anger about Elon Musk’s month-long effort to acquire Twitter. Musk announced he would purchase the company for $44 billion on Monday. The deal concludes a month-long saga that began with Musk first tweeting out polls and his thoughts about the decline of free speech on Twitter. On the business communication platform Slack, some Twitter employees vented against the new owner, leaked messages reveal. “Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” a site reliability engineer who identifies as a nonbinary transgender and plural person wrote.

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled,” wrote a senior staff software engineer who called Musk an “a**hole,” and tried to console his colleagues. “We’re all spinning our wheels, and coming up with worst case scenarios (Trump returns! No more moderation!). The fact is that [Musk] has not talked about what he’s planning on doing in any detail outside of broad sweeping statements that could be easily seen as hyperbolic showboating.” A senior staff video engineer announced he would be quitting, “Not the place to say it perhaps, but I will not work for this company after the takeover.”

Following the back-and-forth among multiple employees angry about the news, some warned that their communications on Slack could be searched. The employees then moved their conversations onto their personal devices using the encrypted chat application Signal. Twitter’s leadership appeared to predict an internal backlash and possible sabotage when it locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform through Friday. Leading up to Monday’s deal, Twitter employees had already been venting for weeks on Slack about Musk and defending the platform’s moderation enforcement.

Read more …

“The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything…”

Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)

A week ago Barack Obama let loose his inner fascist and gave an hour-long speech at Stanford University that deserved more attention than it got. “I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” Obama told his audience and then spent the rest of the hour proving he is anything but. In fact, the Obama that emerges in this speech is one scary dude. The one sentence that most alarmed me began thusly, “The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy.” “The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything. Does he expect to head the FCC or get appointed to the Supreme Court? Does he plan to engineer a Michelle Obama presidential bid? If any of these happens, God help us all.

The thrust of his speech was that “regulation has to be part of the answer” in combating online “disinformation.” As Obama made much too clear he and his pals get to determine what is and is not disinformation. The former president makes almost no attempt to hide his biases. A sentence that reads, “People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions” does not inspire a whole lot of confidence in the deplorable half of America. Nor does a sentence that reads, “There are still brand name newspapers and magazines, not to mention network news broadcasts, NPR [and] other outlets that have adapted to the new digital environment while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity.”

Those “highest standards” included sustaining for three years the fiction that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 election and salvaging Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, such as it was, by suppressing all news of Hunter Biden’s laptop under the pretext it was Russian disinformation. On the question of COVID, Obama insists, “People are dying because of misinformation.” He cites the refusal of 1 in 5 Americans to avoid “safe, effective vaccines” as proof of the same. Obama neglected to mention that more than a year into the COVID mania Gallup asked 35,000 Americans, “What are the chances someone with COVID must be hospitalized?” 41% of Democrats said more than 50%; another 28% of Democrats said 20 to 50%. The correct answer was 1-5%.

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“..that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6..”

Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is seeking answers from the Justice Department (DOJ) on whether the FBI “entrapped” defendants in the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and whether the high-profile charges in Michigan were politically motivated to hurt former President Trump before the 2020 presidential election. Greene on Wednesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that backs defense lawyer claims that four defendants charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer were steered by undercover FBI agents and informants. “The American people deserve a transparent justice system and law enforcement that keeps them safe, not entraps them in serious criminal activity in order to sway the outcome of a democratic election,” Greene and 11 other GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

After a 20-day trial, two of the four men were acquitted on April 8 of a conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer. Jurors couldn’t reach a verdict on charges against two other defendants, resulting in a mistrial. Their lawyers alleged entrapment, and the federal judge in the case allowed jurors to consider whether the FBI engaged in the prohibited practice of cajoling or tricking individuals into committing crimes. Prosecutors sought to show that the defendants were talking about the kidnapping plot before the FBI sting with one defendant posting a video saying, “We need to use brutal force against the government” in 2019, months before he met any agents or informants. In May 2020, another defendant was talking about “hanging” the governor.

[..] In an interview with Fox News Digital, Greene sought to make a link between FBI “entrapping” the Whitmer defendants and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. She questioned whether the FBI had any involvement or knowledge of those who broke into the Capitol and disrupted the House and Senate proceedings to certify President Biden’s Electoral College win. “The comparison of the two incidents, that’s what most people are just really concerned about – between Governor Whitmer and that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6,” Greene said.

Read more …

When is it time to bail out banks?

Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates

Spiking mortgage rates multiply the effects of exploding home prices on mortgage payments, and it has taken layer after layer of homebuyers out of the market for the past four months. And we can see that. Mortgage applications to purchase a home fell further this week and were down 17% from a year ago, hitting the lowest level since May 2020, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly Purchase Index today. The index is down over 30% from peak-demand in late 2020 and early 2021, which was then followed by the historic price spikes last year.

“The drop in purchase applications was evident across all loan types,” the MBA’s report said. “Prospective homebuyers have pulled back this spring, as they continue to face limited options of homes for sale along with higher costs from increasing mortgage rates and prices. The recent decrease in purchase applications is an indication of potential weakness in home sales in the coming months.” The culprit of the plunge in volume: The toxic mix of exploding home prices and spiking mortgage rates. The average interest rate for 30-year fixed rate mortgages with 20% down and conforming to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac limits, jumped to 5.37%, the highest since August 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly measure today.

The mortgage on a home purchased a year ago at the median price (per National Association of Realtors) of $326,300, and financed with 20% down over 30 years, at the average rate at the time of 3.17%, came with a payment of 1,320 per month. The mortgage on a home purchased today at the median price of $375,300, and financed with 20% down, at 5.37% comes with a payment of $1,990. So today’s buyer, already strung out by rampant inflation in everything else, would have to come up with an extra $670 a month – that represents a 50% jump in mortgage payments – to buy the same house. Now figure this with homes in the more expensive areas of the country where the median price, after the ridiculous spikes of the past two years, runs $500,000 or $1 million or more. Homebuyers are facing massively higher mortgage payments in those markets.

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“A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune.”

Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci walked back his comment that the US was no longer in the “pandemic phase” of COVID-19 — the latest jumbled messaging from President Biden’s chief medical adviser on the coronavirus. Biden administration officials and Fauci were scrambling Wednesday to emphasize that the country is still in the midst of a pandemic and that emergency measures are still needed after Fauci told PBS the precise opposite. “Here we are. It’s the end of April. It’s the spring of 2022. How close are we to the end of the pandemic?” Judy Woodruff of “PBS NewsHour” asked Fauci Tuesday. “We are certainly, right now, in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci replied.

“Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. “So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are,” he added. A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune. “We are in a different moment of the pandemic,” Fauci told the Associated Press Wednesday. The US has “decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase” after a winter surge, he added. “By no means does that mean the pandemic is over,” Fauci said in his 180-degree turnabout.

He told the Washington Post Wednesday: “The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question during her daily press briefing over why emergency measures are still needed if the “pandemic phase” is over. “Well, what Dr. Fauci was saying is that we are in a different phase of this pandemic, and that’s absolutely true,” Psaki said, adding that the level of hospitalizations and deaths has come down.

Read more …

What a surprise!

CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)

CDC and FDA officials ‘altered’ Covid guidance and even ‘suppressed’ findings related to the virus due to political pressure, a bombshell report suggests. Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country’s pandemic guidance. They unearthed allegations of ‘political interference’ in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with. In its 37-page report, the GAO warned that neither agency had a system in place for reporting allegations of political interference. It also said they had failed to train staff how to spot and report this. Whistleblowers said they did not speak up at the time for fear of retaliation, because they were unsure how to report the issues or believed leaders were already aware.

This is just the latest in a growing patchwork of reports suggesting politicians influenced ‘scientific’ papers during the pandemic for their own ends. On Tuesday, the Biden administration’s top medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci declared the U.S. is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid, citing low cases and hospitalizations. But health experts were quick to question the claim — buried at the end of an interview with PBS’ NewsHour — suggesting he may have bungled his words and should only have said the nation was in a phase of ‘low hospitalizations’. ‘A few respondents from CDC and [Food and Drug Administration] FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings,’ GAO investigators wrote in the report.

‘Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of Covid-related scientific findings.’ The GAO report published last week looked into the two agencies, alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America’s top research institution— and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — in charge of natural disaster response. All are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which in February was branded as at ‘high risk’ for fraud, mismanagement and abuse by the GAO in a separate report.

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“We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”

Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

The legacy media has been like pigs at a trough today and yesterday with the publication of an atrocious ‘peer-reviewed’ ‘scientific’ article by Dr. David Fisman, Dr. Ashleigh Tuite, and a graduate student. After all, with raw public health data unable to support the only COVID-19 narrative that has been deemed acceptable, fresh fuel was apparently needed. Lots of media outlets have been reporting on this study; one of them being CTV News. Here is the headline for their article: “Being with unvaccinated people increases COVID-19 risk for those who are vaccinated: modelling study” This kind of messaging will only fuel hatred and segregation and the potential development of harmful policies. And it is all in the name of bad science.

As a researcher who has published and reviewed many scientific papers, I can tell you that the article by Fisman, et al. is the worst one that I have ever seen. The ‘peer reviewers’ of this article should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to be published, and the editor even more so. If the Canadian Medical Association Journal does not promptly retract this article, they will have made themselves an embarrassment among scientific publishers. This paper by Fisman, et al. is only thinly veiled hate speech under the guise of science. Before I walk you through the numerous massive errors in this paper, let me first show you one example of the messaging regarding the impact and relevance of the paper.

Fisman was quoted by CTV News as saying “We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”. The only reason why Fisman is trying to turn people against other people is due to the abject failure of the COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ to function like vaccines. That is to say that the purpose of a vaccine is to protect people from a pathogen; to prevent both the disease and transmission of the causative agent. Such a medical product does not require one to pit people against people. Fisman has inappropriately labelled critically thinking people as an enemy when the actual culprits are SARS-CoV-2 and overly rushed jabs of exceptionally poor quality and highly questionable safety that have been pushed as the sole solution at the expense of all others.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

@TexasLindsay has a whole series of these “animations”, for many countries. This is Greece.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519028584345710594

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle April 28 2022

Viewing 25 posts - 1 through 25 (of 25 total)
  • Author
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  • #106956

    Robert Rauschenberg Buffalo II 1964   • Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH) • Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasi
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 28 2022]

    #106958
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Saint Saraphim of sarov

    A life to be studied for those looking for other……….

    Thanks for that Ilargi…..

    #106959
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    With the Saint Seraphim piece, my day is already complete. Thank you kind sir.

    @DrD – JMG responded to a question and mentioned pondering the behavior of China now… said he has thought it might be about quashing some internal uprising. Will be curious for your thoughts over time with regard.

    #106960
    Dr. D
    Participant

    There’s no end to Twitter jokes: “Leftists Worried Elon Musk Will Turn Twitter into a Place Where Terrible People Post Bad Opinions and Fight with Each Other All the Time” –BBee

    Oh noes!

    “Eccentric Billionaire Accomplishes More for Free Speech in One Afternoon than Republicans Have in Decades” –BBee

    They shouldn’t oversell it. Republicans have done much, much less than that. And equal opportunity:
    https://media.babylonbee.com/thumbs/article-10993-1-thumb.jpg
    PartyAffiliation
    “Democrats Continue Proud Tradition of Wearing White Masks to Show Political Affiliation”

    Core values!

    “Poland is obviously the primary target for retaliation here,”

    Target? Retaliation? Wtf? Apparently now not only have the leaders never honestly paid for anything, but their hired reporters never have either. I’ll make it simple: You pay for things FIRST, then you take them from the store. And you don’t pay for them in Quatloos, you pay in whatever the shop tells you to. Or you don’t get any.

    JHC, is that really so hard? No one is persecuting you. Nobody’s “targeting” your ethnicity when they ask you to PAY FOR GOODS.

    Nina Jankowicz is breathtaking. I didn’t know such one-sided people existed, even in politics.
    Also opening the war on speech by the government, they clearly opened the war on Musk on NBC, ABC… Breathtaking again, the hero of the left, instantly and in seconds is a Nazi. Like Bernie was. “We have always been at war with Elon.” He gets his money from PutinHitler, not our using government subsidies to buy his self-immolating cars.

    “ Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN) “
    I wouldn’t say universal censorship is “new”.

    “The way I’m going to evaluate”

    Sir? You’re retired. You don’t have any power at all. Unless when both Joe and Psaki said you were the real President they weren’t kidding. And they WERE kidding, right?

    “Those “highest standards” included sustaining for three years the fiction that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 election and salvaging Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, such as it was, by suppressing all news of Hunter Biden’s laptop”

    Now why people no trust “the Experts”? Is it JUST because they are wrong 100% of the time or something else?

    “Biden administration officials and Fauci were scrambling Wednesday to emphasize that the country is still in the midst of a pandemic and that emergency measures are still needed after Fauci told PBS the precise opposite.”

    Experts! We say all things, and their opposites! We can’t possibly be wrong! I R the Scienz!

    “what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”

    Protected how? From whiffle bats? Or do you mean vaccines don’t work?

    “they will have made themselves an embarrassment”

    No they won’t. Everyone knows they’re incapable of embarrassment.

    Bill Hwang Arrested: Archegos Owner Charged with Racketeering, Securities and Wire Fraud”

    This was routinely using infinite leverage to buy and short 5-15% of the stock while using loopholes to illegally avoid reporting. The SEC could not POSSIBLY miss $35 BILLION created overnight to do this. He was finally arrested? Finally ONE arrest? I guess he wasn’t in the right club or trying to do what they do every day (illegal naked shorting with infinite 0% leverage) too large and drawing too much attention. You have to illegally short Overstock and MyPillow, AMC and GameStop, not Pfizer and Meta, what’s wrong with you?

    But hey, free money, invested in stonks, what’s the harm?

    “A median-priced new home in the U.S. is roughly $77,000 more expensive than it was a year ago” — MarketWatch

    Oh yeah! That! Did YOU triple your average income of $40k this year to pay for that? No? Oh well: Hwang did! Sucks to be you!

    P.S. that means your taxes went from $4k to $8k. Did you get that there $800/mo raise for the taxes alone, not for petrol, heating, food, or rent? Gee I wonder why homebuying has stalled 30%? Why do Millennials now work half a lifetime and can’t buy a house?

    There’s nothing you can say. They literally don’t care.

    Found this, literally the procedure and purpose of making everyone as fearful and miserable as possible:

    ““But Shang Yang was not content with the mere absence of active resistance. In the passage “Weakening the People,” the Shang jun shu argues that “a country which has the right way is concerned with weakening the people” because “a weak people means a strong state and a strong state means a weak people.” Shang Yang wanted to create “a condition of complete good government” in which “husband and wife and friends cannot abandon each other’s evil, cover up wrongdoing and not cause harm to relatives, nor can…the people mutually conceal each other from their superiors and government servants.”

    To achieve this goal, the Qin state introduced mutual surveillance so that “those whose businesses
    were connected should have different interests.” Based on the household registration system, the Qin state held households of five collectively responsible for any member’s transgressions; at the same time, the state offered handsome rewards for family members and neighbors to report on one another. Shang Yang applied the same technique to state officials who were in charge of overseeing the people.”

    “While the stated goal of linked liability was to create a condition in which “deserters from the ranks[had] no resort and stragglers [had] nowhere to go,” the actual consequence was far more penetrating. By instilling mutual mistrust in the most basic social ties – between husband and wife in the family, between neighbors in the local community, and between colleagues in the workplace – even the mildest dissent could be nipped in the bud.”

    “By fashioning “a people who would of their own accord enforce the legal dictates of their masters,” the Qin court could simultaneously maximize surveillance, minimize resistance, and lower the costs of domination. In short, Shang Yang achieved “the ultimate dream of domination: to have the dominated exploit each other.
    -pp 184-186, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe by Victoria Tin-Bor-Hui

    Yes, every state is strongest when its people are weakest. I’m sure that worked out great.

    Like this: “People do not fear death when the rulers demand too much of life.”

    Random sources:
    Java-MayNotPost

    What the heck happened here? With science being okay-accepted at +40% level forever, in 2016 Democrats suddenly, instantly, believed all “science” and experts at a 65% level. That’s like a religious conversion. A cult even. Not because they do it, but because where did this doubling of your belief in something come from?

    Of course, the chart DID come from the scientific media experts. So it IS probably a lie.

    “538” also then concluding, from posting this chart, where their side reversed 200 years of opinion one afternoon in 2016 as proof that their people are smart and run by science. No joke. Because Science changes overnight? With their minds and opinions, which are grounded in hard science? And of course their enemies are ignorant, violent rednecks who don’t believe glyphosate is safe as water, fools. Convicted felons like Pfizer and Monsanto told you so, and the FDA, run by Monsanto, approves it. To say otherwise is clear misinformation.

    From: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-being-anti-science-is-now-part-of-many-rural-americans-identity/
    “He described how one of the biggest benefits he’d seen at the [public] dinners was that … affected groups could ask questions and voice their concerns — and that they were heard, whether or not what they said made a difference in the decisions.”

    Ah, so like the EU or Student Council, you just PRETEND you care, gaslight them, ignore them, and do what you want because you have power. That is: just Lie. Duh. Got it! I’m sure that’ll work great in building trust and obedience. In governments and experts.

    “We see that scientific information is very, very clearly cherry-picked,” she said. Increasingly, she sees people looking for information that already supports their worldview, and that’s happening on the right and left. For her, this includes policymakers who have a role to play in solving issues like climate change. 
    The challenge is how to penetrate these bubbles.”

    Why do we need to violently penetrate the bubbles? Because I’m right and they’re stupid, duh. That’s how we have a conversation: You do what you’re told.

    The frame for this article is something about duck hunting and how the experts succeeded. …After being the ones who screwed everything up and destroyed the bayou, the forest, the ducks, the economy, and the town for 40 years. Now why don’t they trust the Feds and the experts? And the body, inside the article’s frame, after screwing up their one job, the swamp, the earth, the economy, and the town, why don’t they trust our scienz about Covid?

    Because every day it’s this maybe? “Plastic Grocery Bag Bans Actually Boost Sale of Small Plastic Garbage Bags: Study” No kidding. And don’t think the plastic companies don’t know it. And lobby for it even.

    Other experts and helpers: “Fort Worth, Texas Becomes First City Government In The US To Mine Bitcoin” The top is in. Not on BTC price maybe, but mining as there are almost no coins left. Then they can stop complaining about the electric it uses.

    “Fauci Admits “Pandemic Phase” of COVID Is over” CNN officially anti-science, and strongly disagrees. But then, Fauci disagrees too. With Fauci. Who was quoting Fauci when debunking Fauci.

    And you wonder why children have mental illness? They’re not the only ones.

    #106961
    aspnaz
    Participant

    When NATO officers are captured in Mariupol, given that they are effectively mercenaries, should the Russians torture them in the same way as Al Queda were tortured and assasinated by the USA? The USA is not at war with Russia, according to the USA, so how could they complain?

    More interestingly, as everything these days is information warfare, should Russia release videos of the NATO officers being tortured? Would that enable the NATO coutries to escalate the war as planned? This is the first global war where the USA is pro-torture, pro-assassination and pro-murder-of-prisoners-of-war. How should the Russians respond to these baltant breaches of the Geneva convention when dealing with NATO officers?

    #106962
    zerosum
    Participant

    TAE just showed you the truth
    Read Them and Weep

    ‘Ministry of Truth’

    • Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)
    • DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)

    information is warfare
    … to control what information exists in the public space. It is highly important that people understand what is happening.
    ….. denying, minimizing or trivializing or banning or deranking or suppressing or cherry-picking,

    Modern warfare tools

    Economic warfare
    The Deceptionor
    The manipulators
    The sanctionnor
    The banker
    The lever
    The strangleholdor
    The chockor
    The censorror
    The entrapmentor
    The silensor
    The encrypted chat application ‘Signal’

    • Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)
    `• Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)
    • Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

    #106963
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Dr D. Breathtaking is the word. I stand before the madness and see it truly for what it is and have to question to myself “what the hell am i doing here, I don’t belong here” – to quote Radiohead.
    My arm is healed well enough to begin light work and I reached out to some old clients in Melbourne to plant their winter vegies for them and get the yard under control and were super excited to have me back …. I just had to be vaccinated of course.
    Are you kidding me? I mean really. People – it turns out love a segregated society which financially and socially punishes the permaculture gardeners for being nature-loving savages. Call me a coon and be done with it you enlightened fucktards.
    Oh and while we are on Melbourne – Data showed median house values in Melbourne rose 0.5 per cent over the month, recovering from the 0.2 decline in December 2021. The strong monthly gain drove up the average house value in the city to currently sit at $1,002,464; the first time houses in the city went beyond the six-figure threshold.

    Over the year, house prices in the city have risen by 17.8 per cent.
    Yeah enjoy indentured slavery you abject morons. I hope you take in the breathtaking new york style crime smell coming your way. But it will be okay because Obama will kindly moderate your hate speech just enough so you feel safe in your tiny house toilet block you will live in with 8 other people, painted yellow and blue.
    Luckily for me a local who is double jabbed (he affectionately calls it state poison)to save his business absolutely HATES the government and is setting up a system of local work to bypass CBDC’s. He has offered me work. I love that he gets how shit this is and wants actually prefers to have an un-poisoned person work for him.
    Now I can slowly claw my way back to financial stabilty.

    #106964
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Because every day it’s this maybe? “Plastic Grocery Bag Bans Actually Boost Sale of Small Plastic Garbage Bags: Study” No kidding. And don’t think the plastic companies don’t know it. And lobby for it even.

    I can understand that. Even though I use reusable grocery-bags for full grocery orders, for a lot of other stuff, I get those disposable plastic bags because I actually do use them for other things once I get them home.

    #106965
    zerosum
    Participant

    If the ‘Ministry of Truth’ would not lie, it would say that our social/economic system can operate because everybody is lying.

    #106966

    Prog, Parag – life is a joke.
    [“prog” in British slang means to plunder, or the food gotten by begging. Also, a “progressive”]

    “Run for breast cancer”
    “Donate for domestic violence”
    “Give to the War in Ukraine”
    “March for child abuse”
    “Committee for mental illness”

    “Jankowicz was previously a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center”
    So her expertise is lying. Got it.

    #106967
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    I recommend reading all Brook’s thread:

    #106968
    brazza
    Participant

    “But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.” Guardian

    It was indeed a cunning trap … one that all but 27 people saw several months ago. In fact some of us wondered what on earth could make Germany go along with it. US troops and bases in their almost disarmed country perhaps?

    #106969
    Susan C
    Participant

    re: China

    This past week I read a series of articles about China written by Eric Mertz on a new substack page called General Crisis Watch. Much of what I read there sounded realistic.

    #106970
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Please stop re-broadcasting the Dr. Fungus Hour. Lead by example.

    #106971
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Is it a coincidence that Afghanistan war ends and the Ukraine begins? We got all of a four month break from the last 20 years of endless war……..

    #106972
    willem
    Participant

    I guess NPR will soon be reporting to the DHS also?

    #106973
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “I stand before the madness and see it truly for what it is and have to question to myself “what the hell am i doing here, I don’t belong here””

    I accepted this fate years ago and decided to make the best of it. Though it often feels like I’ve been consigned to a ‘prison planet’, it’s a wonderful school of learning because there are so many bad examples. A master once counseled his student: “Those who are too good for this world are adorning some other.”

    As one who is often guilty of lazy thinking and sloppy language skills, I very much appreciate the commentary of Dr. D. I love how he picks things to pieces, exposing the contradictions, fallacies, and ego contamination. It reminds me of a book I once read called, The Crest Jewel of Discrimination. One needs a mind like a razor in order to separate the real from the unreal. The average mind is unable to slice and dice an issue into its various interrelated components. The result is a limited mentality that thinks in ego-driven, emotional, amorphous blobs. If it thinks at all.

    Called my sister in NY this morning to touch base. Since we are both getting on in years, we talked about how health issues start encroaching on our activities, and how it’s so difficult to stay fit. She then confided that she’s been experiencing a strange numbness in her hands and feet lately. My first instinct was to ask when she got her booster, but I bit my tongue knowing that it was a bridge too far. I expressed my concern, but otherwise kept silent. As I’ve mentioned before, she lives in the belly of the beast, NY, and her husband is a news junky. Plus, she has enough on her plate without burdening her with the plandemic, its masterminds, and their transhumanist geopolitical agenda.

    So, when she finally got around to wishing someone would put a bullet in Putin’s head, I could no longer keep silent. I told her that it’s important to realize that everything you’re exposed to in the media on Ukraine is a lie. It’s all war propaganda. Then I shared my admiration for Putin, and expressed how good he’s been for the Russian people. That’s when smoke started belching from her tailpipe, along with ball bearings and gear fragments. “We are all entitled to our opinion”, she said after a pause. Little does she realize that her opinions are not her own.

    When one is fully immersed in the Matrix, trying to point out their slavery is next to impossible. Like Morpheus told Neo: “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself…The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

    For most, it’s all they can do to survive in the Matrix, but for us here at TAE that’s not good enough. We want to be free. And we want truth and our individual sovereignty, hell be damned!

    Sorry for the long post. I guess it makes up for being quiet the past few weeks.

    #106974
    willem
    Participant

    I like this idea from Dr. Robert Malone. It is a quiet way for like-minded free thinkers to spot each other, and perhaps it would give them a chance to reach out and form community with one another more easily.

    https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/a-white-band-to-show-support-against?s=r

    When I try to engage others on these things, I sometimes get reactions similar to the one Maxwell Quest got from his sister. But even when the reaction is milder, I find that even having an intelligent conversation is almost impossible. Once in a great while, I meet someone and have an interesting verbal dance where each of us kind of probes the other subtly to establish some common ground. It’s great when it works, but it doesn’t happen often.

    I don’t like “in your face” symbology where I boldly assault strangers with my sympathies by displaying something obviously polarizing–you just can’t make connections that way. The plain white band is a nice touch.

    #106975
    Archie
    Participant

    Excellent interview with Bruce Gagnon. Leopards don’t change their spots.

    Bruce Gagnon: I often share the story about Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and the military-industrial complex that existed in the late 1800s. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were brought onto the reservation in South Dakota. They only surrendered to the U.S. Army because their people were starving. Washington had sent snipers on trains to ride across the western plains and shoot any buffalo they came in contact with. They decimated the herds. The hearts of the native people were broken – they saw the evil enemy they were facing in the flesh.

    The U.S. Civil War ended in 1865 and the Indian Wars soon after. The military-industrial complex was worried about its future. They had artists make renderings of Crazy Horse supposedly back on the warpath.

    Newspapers in the big cities across the U.S. printed stories about Crazy Horse raping white women and killing children. Soon the public was led to express their outrage and “the people demanded something be done”. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The Congress in Washington immediately swung into action and appropriated more funds for the Indian Wars – while Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were sitting on the reservation in South Dakota without a gun to their name.

    This story has been repeated legions of times since – leading up to Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine. And the public relations script coming from Washington is always so familiar.

    #106977
    chooch
    Participant

    #106978
    HerrWerner
    Participant

    @maxwell-quest well put. I have many relationships with blacked-out, taped-off topics that dare not be mentioned. Polite rules of yesterday (don’t talk religion or politics) have been replaced by a galaxy of hot-button no-go topics. Expressing even a conversational calm doubt in the narrative (“hey, do masks really help?” or “hey, what about when NATO attacked Libya?”) brings down white-hot heat. They project onto me a whole suite of dangerous untrue conspiratorial “beliefs” that I don’t hold but they believe I must be carrying around. That I’m stupid, anti-science(tm) “Projecting the shadow” a al Jung. (silly psych-101 stuff! I mean super-easy to spot the projection once you look for it. Total cult behaviour. Life-of-Brian crowd behaviour, “follow the gourd! the holy gourd of Jerusalem!”)

    I have just *one* friend that sees through the Ukraine info that pours from the news direct and unfiltered from Zelenskyys crazed mind. She’s pissed about the hypocrisy of tears for Ukraine and DGAF for Libya. She’s a recent immigrant, perhaps that’s why, less conditioned by the ceaseless propaganda of the last 20 years in the west. The Life of Brian is just as apt as The Matrix.

    A while back articles linked ‘childhood stress’ as a cause of maladies such as “vaxxine hesitancy” and “ukraine narrative hesitancy” or some such thing. My childhood experience was of being bullied, frequently, and when I sought help from “authorities,” I got not help or relief but indifference, contempt, more bullying. Which developed into a lifelong skepticism of authority – my best defense these last several years. My childhood stress was quite unremarkable compared to the suffering many ppl endure, and I only mention mine because – as @phoenixvoice said – “not all coping strategies are detrimental” 🙂 [this last paragraph shamelessly copied from my own post late the other day :D]

    #106979
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks friends.
    Good comments today.
    I’m cramming for Family Practice Board Recertification Exam Saturday, though I’m still under-investigation for disparaging vaccines last year. If they let me take the exam THEN de-certify me, they keep all the fees.
    In my reply to their notification letter, I asked them for the $500 back if the decertify me.
    They have it all figured out, I suppose…

    Oxymoron, i’m glad somebody is making sense down under.

    The vaccinated ARE threatened by the unvaccinated, but they are 3 times as threatened by the vaccinated & boosted, I think…

    #106980
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    #106981
    zerosum
    Participant

    The # of $ in aids to Ukraine keeps going up … $50 Billion and counting.
    Remember, when they send guns and bullets it comes from inventory that has already been bought and paid for by the gov.

    Therefore, who is getting the money for guns and bullets that has already been paid when they were put into inventory?
    ——

    @John
    Day
    Does Recertification involve lying by saying “I’m sorry” (but “I was right”)

    #106982
    WES
    Participant

    It is amusing to see that the vaccinated are still afraid of us unvaccinated! Too bad the vaccinated don’t realize that by only associating with the vaxxed, their worst nightmare, catching covid, is much more likely to come true! Worst still, the vaxxed have no idea that their shortened lives are threatened by the vaccine’s multiple poisons. As Mark Twain said, you can not easily convince someone they have been lied to.

    There are still some Ukrainians left so the war to the last Ukrainian is still on. But there are definately a lot fewer Ukrainians than yesterday. Russian artillery crews continue practicing their rather deadly craft. Sadly two-thirds of all Ukrainians will be killed just by artillery shelling. Too few Ukrainians are surrendering. It is hard to understand how so many Ukrainians could be so brainwashed but then again I look at how many (most) Canadians were vaxxed.

    The ability of the neo-nazis in Mariupol to make cement has been lost as the noose around the steel plant tightens. The number of neo-nazi wounded has risen from 400 to 600. I assume the dead have also increased too. The Russians figure there were 8,100 neo-nazis in Mariupol to start with. Of these 1,300 surrendered and 4,100 have been killed leaving about 2,600 initially trapped. That number has likely been dropping every day based on 200 more wounded.

    The Russians have pin pointed all of the neo-nazi’s bunker locations. They have plenty of water but are running short on food as their main supply of food was accidently vaporized by the Russians. May 9th holiday is rapidly coming up for the neo-nazis. The Russians have sent negotiators to Mariupol so something may be up.

    I remember very well being in Moscow in the days leading up to the major May 9th Russian holiday. Moscow was basically digging itself out of from winter’s grimy existence and getting ready to welcome spring. Little old ladies were all out in force with brooms tidying up the mess winter had left behind on all the sidewalks and streets. Gray Moscow was bravely springing back into life. I never got to see the big parade as I was whisked to my coal mine in Siberia, where winter still had a firm grip on the region and was only reluctantly yielding to spring. There was still big broken pieces of ice floating on the river and patches of snow where the sun didn’t yet shine.

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