Aug 102022
 
 August 10, 2022  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Gustav Klimt Field of poppies 1907

 

Is The US Preparing To Throw Zelensky Under The Bus? (Diesen)
Zelensky Aide: Counterattack Claims Part Of Kiev’s ‘Information Warfare’ (RT)
Welcome To The Third World (Matt Taibbi)
FBI Even Searched Melania’s Wardrobe Inn Trump Raid (Devine)
Judge Who OK’d Mar-a-Lago Raid Once Obama Donor, Jeffrey Epstein Lawyer (NYP)
Trump Ally Rep. Scott Perry Says The FBIs Seized His Cellphone (Fox)
EU Break-up Now Inevitable (Saxty)
Z for Zorro (Batiushka)
Hungary Offers Solution To Resume Russian Oil Supply (RT)
Lies, Damned Lies, and the Jan. 6 Committee (Sperry)
The Global Debt Scam – Day of Reckoning? (Salamah)
How Greece Became Europe’s Worst Place For Press Freedom (Pol.eu)
US Occupation Loots Most Of Syria’s Oil: Ministry (AlMa)
Lockdowns Increases Obesity, And Obesity Increases Covid Risk (DM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australia bombshell

 

 

Taiwan

 

 


EU imports of Russian Energy

1. Oil:
Jan – May 21: €25 bn
Jan – May 22: €43 bn
=> +71%

2. Gas:
Jan – May 21: €6 bn
Jan – May 22: €21 bn
=> +260%

3. Coal:
Jan – May 21: €1.5 bn
Jan – May 22: €4.0 bn
=> +170%

 


German front yr power futures have reached 411 €/MWh today.
Germany consumes about 500 TWh electricity annually. So at current prices the economy’s power bill stands at €205bn.
The 2010s average was €20bn.
The German electricity bill went up by €195bn. That’s 5% of GDP.

 

Myocarditis

 

 

 

 

“..there needs to be a fall guy to take the blame for the pending disaster..”

Is The US Preparing To Throw Zelensky Under The Bus? (Diesen)

Until very recently, the US successfully upheld the international image of Zelensky as some sort of reincarnation of Winston Churchill. Washington dominated the information war in which the complexity of the proxy fight was simplified with dichotomous imagery of the two leaders. Zelensky and Putin were successfully portrayed as a virtuous democrat versus a vicious dictator, a victorious David versus a failing Goliath. Presenting conflicts as a struggle between good and evil is an ideal strategy to mobilize public support and to depict the lack of compromise as a moral position. However, when a war is lost and compromise is necessary, the narrative must be changed. President Joe Biden must defend his weak political position at home and allies must be reassured about American resolve, thus there needs to be a fall guy to take the blame for the pending disaster.

While Washington will continue to send more weapons to bleed Russia, it appears to be simultaneously preparing for defeat by no longer shielding Zelensky from criticism. sIt has been a remarkably difficult month, so far, for Zelensky in the Western media, which had previously withheld all criticism. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, closely linked to the White House, reported that “there is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine – considerably more than has been reported.” Friedman also detailed Washington’s growing concerns about Ukrainian corruption and mismanagement, a topic that has been denounced as Russian propaganda since February. This is the same media that until recently repeated every line from Zelensky, including labeling the mass surrender in Mariupol as an “evacuation.” No more.

It is seemingly also no longer taboo to report on the internal divisions in Ukraine as a source of failure. The New York Times reports on Zelensky’s reckless purge of the military and security services, while the Washington Post accuses Zelensky of sidelining mayors and centralizing control over all recovery aid “to weaken any future political rivals.” Sky News, a very anti-Russian news agency, also aired a segment with the title “Zelensky ‘not all he’s portrayed as’ by Western media.”An anchor accused Zelensky of dismantling Ukrainian democracy by seizing control of the national media, banning political opposition parties, and arresting the opposition leader. All true, but previously taboo..

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“All public remarks by Ukrainian officials are part of information warfare against Russia..”

“He ruled out Kiev’s military defeat as a possible scenario, predicting that Western nations will funnel weapons to Ukraine regardless of the cost..”

Zelensky Aide: Counterattack Claims Part Of Kiev’s ‘Information Warfare’ (RT)

All public remarks by Ukrainian officials are part of information warfare against Russia, Mikhail Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenksy, claimed in an interview on Tuesday. The comment came as Podolyak was discussing Kiev’s plans to take back the city of Kherson from Russia with the BBC. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly claimed that a major counterattack was looming and that Russia was concentrating its forces in return, suggesting that a major battle in southern Ukraine was about to break out. Speaking to the British broadcaster, Podolyak said that “war is a dynamic process” that entails “a constant correction of tactical goals” and that he preferred to discuss “the possibility of lifting the blockade in broad terms” rather than particular maneuvers.

When pressured on the promises of a counteroffensive, he conceded that they could have been meant to deceive Russia. “Certainly, all public comments are part of information warfare. We need to demoralize the Russian army,” he said. The official erroneously called Kherson the largest city captured by Russia since attacking Ukraine in February, explaining its symbolic importance for Kiev. The port of Mariupol is bigger, the BBC noted in an editorial remark. Zelensky’s adviser claimed that Ukrainian forces were waging a “creative war,” as opposed to Russia, which he believes has little regard for its own casualties. “Russia hates us so much that it is ready to lose 100,000 of its people just to prove that it has the right to kill,” he declared.

Podolyak said that Zelensky will remain in power in Ukraine for as long as the armed conflict continues, dismissing the idea that the country could hold a presidential election before the hostilities end. Responding to the widely-used assertion that the government would fight “to the last Ukrainian,” he said the fight would be “to the last Russian citizen in Ukrainian territory.” He ruled out Kiev’s military defeat as a possible scenario, predicting that Western nations will funnel weapons to Ukraine regardless of the cost. Western nations won’t negotiate a truce with Russia at the expense of Ukraine “because the reputation of President Zelensky is such that no such talks can be held behind his back,”Podolyak said.

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“..you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today..”

Welcome To The Third World (Matt Taibbi)

Headline from Politics Insider this morning: “Feds likely obtained ‘pulverizing’ amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say.” Pulverizing! Hold that thought. We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different. As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid.

If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country. The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law.

This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.” There are whispers throughout the business that editors are striking down certain jubilant language, and we can even see this playing out on cable, where the most craven of the networks’ on-air ex-spooks are crab-crawling backward from last night’s buzz-words: The hugeness of the story has become part of its explanation. An action so extreme, we’re told by expert after expert, could only be based upon “pulverizing” evidence.

Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage of investigations. The aforementioned Politics Insider story is no different. “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound in the text. An amazing five bylined writers explain: Regardless of the raid’s focus legal experts quickly reached a consensus about it: A pile of evidence must have backed up the warrant authorizing the search. They then quoted a “former top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division” — you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today — who said, “There’s every reason to think that there’s a plus factor in the quantum and quantity of evidence that the government already had to support probable cause in this case.”

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Theater. Bad theater, but still..

FBI Even Searched Melania’s Wardrobe In Trump Raid (Devine)

FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning. The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm Beach property focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there. A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.


The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored. Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.

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Nothing the FBI does can be clean.

Judge Who OK’d Mar-a-Lago Raid Once Obama Donor, Jeffrey Epstein Lawyer (NYP)

The Florida federal magistrate judge who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — months after he left the local US Attorney’s office to rep employees of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein who had received immunity in the long-running sex-trafficking investigation of the financier. Sources tell The Post that Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the warrant that enabled federal agents to converge on the palatial South Florida estate on Monday in what Trump called an “unannounced raid on my home.”

Reinhart was elevated to magistrate judge in March 2018 after 10 years in private practice. That November, the Miami Herald reported that he had represented several of Epstein’s employees — including, by Reinhart’s own admission to the outlet, Epstein’s pilots; his scheduler, Sarah Kellen; and Nadia Marcinkova, who Epstein once reportedly described as his “Yugoslavian sex slave.” Kellen and Marcinkova were among Epstein’s lieutenants who were granted immunity as part of a controversial 2007 deal with federal prosecutors that allowed the pervert to plead guilty to state charges rather than federal crimes. Epstein wound up serving just 13 months in county jail and was granted work release. According to the Herald, which cited court documents, Reinhart resigned from the South Florida US Attorney’s Office effective on New Year’s Day 2008 and went to work for Epstein’s cohorts the following day.

Epstein, who was found dead in August 2019 of an apparent suicide in the Manhattan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, had hired a stable of high-powered lawyers for his defense in the late 2000s, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Ten months after starting work for Epstein’s co-conspirators, according to Federal Election Commission records, Reinhart gave $1,000 directly to the Obama campaign and another $1,000 to its fundraising arm, the Obama Victory Fund. Though the records show the judge made mostly small-dollar donations to his law firm’s political action committee in subsequent years, Reinhart also donated $500 to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign in November 2015.

Reinhart was later named in a civil lawsuit by two of Epstein’s victims that accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides in the middle of the Epstein investigation, suggesting he had spilled inside information about the probe to build favor with the notorious defendant, the Herald reported in 2018. In a 2011 affidavit, Reinhart denied he had done anything improper and insisted that since he was not involved in the federal investigation of Epstein, he was not privy to inside information about the case. However, in a 2013 court filing, Reinhart’s former colleagues contradicted him, saying that he had “learned confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter” while employed by the US Attorney’s Office.

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“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”

Trump Ally Rep. Scott Perry Says The FBI Seized His Cellphone (Fox)

Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania says that the FBI has confiscated his cellphone. Perry, in an exclusive statement, told Fox News on Tuesday that while traveling with his family earlier in the day, he was approached by three FBI agents who handed him a warrant and requested that he turn over his cellphone. The confiscation of the congressman’s personal phone comes one day after FBI agents searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. “This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish.

“I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,” Perry said in his statement. “My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.” Perry asserted in his statement that “as with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen — especially considering the decision before Congress this week to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to further persecute law-abiding Citizens.”

Perry, a five-term congressman and loyal Trump ally, is an original member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and took over as the group’s leader at the beginning of the year. Perry was also a strong supporter of Trump’s repeated unproven claims that his 2020 election loss to now-President Biden was due to massive voter fraud. Perry has been a target of interest of the Democratic dominated January 6 House select committee that is investigating the deadly 2021 attack on the Capitol by right wing extremists and other Trump supporters who aimed to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. Perry was in communication numerous times with the Trump White House in the days and weeks ahead of the storming of the Capitol.

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“Since Orbán returned to power in 2010 marriages in Hungary have doubled, abortions have halved, divorces have hit record lows, and the birth rate has risen by a quarter.”

EU Break-up Now Inevitable (Saxty)

Back in 2020, Dutch Prime Minister – Mark Rutte – asked (perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek as to whether they might have an EU without that troublesome duo of Hungary and Poland? It was a telling moment, hinting at frustration in western Europe with what many there see as recalcitrant ex-communist states. Then in 2021, Rutte said Hungary had no business being in the European Union anymore owing to the banning of LGBT issues to under-18s. While Rutte said he could not push Hungary out of the EU by himself he somewhat candidly added: “The long-term aim is to bring Hungary to its knees on this issue”. Now bad blood is brewing between progressive Brussels and conservative-nationalist central and eastern Europe over the tying of EU cash to rule of law issues, something Hungary and Poland see as a thinly-veiled attempt to impose liberal values upon them.

To some extent, central and eastern Europe got a bait and switch with the EU, believing they were joining an enhanced free trade bloc, they ended up joining a political union with a strong progressive ideology. That said, Hungary and Poland have been in the club long enough by now to know the rules. Budapest and Warsaw must, by now, be aware the EU is not going to change to suit them. Officially, majorities in most central and eastern EU states support EU membership. In reality, however, most back being part of a beefed-up trade alliance, not an ideologically-fixed political union. Plus, the EU cannot chuck the two out. As Brexiteers know, the only way out is Article 50 and it must be triggered by the country in question. Article 7 can impose sanctions, including losing the right to vote in the European Council.

However, this requires unanimity, and Hungary and Poland – not to mention other central and eastern European states – generally have one another’s backs. How much longer then can Hungary and Poland keep doing this dance, and how much longer can both sides of the EU divide ignore the cultural Iron Curtain which has caused a schism on the Continent? Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not just an irritant to Brussels, he sees the world from an entirely different perspective. Since Orbán returned to power in 2010 marriages in Hungary have doubled, abortions have halved, divorces have hit record lows, and the birth rate has risen by a quarter.

Orbán has also overseen a constitution with references to God and Christianity; funded Christian schools, and banned content deemed to promote LGBT issues to minors. None of this has endeared him to Brussels but has proved extremely popular in central and eastern Europe. But it is almost certainly the case that what Brussels sees as Hungary’s and Poland’s draconian policies is a direct reaction to what Budapest and Warsaw feel is coming their way from Brussels.

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“Today the question is, after the UK, who next? A popular choice is Hungary. But who knows? Apart from the imbecile-afflicted UK, there is already political turbulence in three EU countries, Bulgaria, Estonia and Italy.”

Z for Zorro (Batiushka)

The collapse of the EU has never been a question of ‘if’, only of ‘when’. The decomposition of the Brussels Yoke of unelected bureaucrats has already long been visible and its collapse foretold years ago. First there was Grexit (which was averted at the last moment at huge cost), then Brexit, which actually happened, and then was an alphabet jungle of Frexit, Italexit, Nexit, Dexit, Polexit etc. Today the question is, after the UK, who next? A popular choice is Hungary. But who knows? Apart from the imbecile-afflicted UK, there is already political turbulence in three EU countries, Bulgaria, Estonia and Italy.

It all sounds as if these are only ‘the beginning of troubles’. Winter is coming to Europe on 1 December with probable food riots, looting and mass civil disobedience, caused by the refusal and inability to pay soaring energy bills because of the EU millionaire elite’s refusal to buy Russian gas. The only way out is if European countries free themselves from the shackles of the USA in order to find their natural places as part of the Eurasian, or rather, Afro-Eurasian, world. This liberation deserves a sign. We can think of no sign more topical – or more native to the Western world – than the sign ‘Z’. Let me explain. Z was the sign of a fictional Spanish-Mexican character, El Zorro, created by an American author in 1919. Zorro is portrayed as a masked, nineteenth-century avenger who defends the common people and native peoples of Spanish-run California against an oppressive imperialist dictator in Madrid, his corrupt and tyrannical local servants and other evildoers.

His name Zorro, (in Spanish, ‘The Fox’), comes from his foxlike cunning. Using the tip of his rapier, he leaves his mark, the initial ‘Z’, on his defeated enemies and on objects in order to sign his presence. However, this purely fictional Zorro goes back to several real figures, notably to three main characters, real ones, indeed so real that they have become myths in European history. These are: Eadric was one of many Englishmen, well-known in their day, who lived in the wilder parts of England after 1066 in order to fight back against the barbaric Norman occupiers. Called ‘the Wild’ or ‘the Woodsman’, Eadric was a nobleman (‘Cild’ in Old English) and landowner in the hills of the west of England. (Remarkably, Eadric’s descendants inherited his lands in a place called Acton Scott in the west of England and these lands still belong to his descendants, the Actons, after a thousand years). Here Eadric led the English Resistance to the Norman occupation and was active in 1068–70.

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“Transneft, announced on Monday that attempts to pay Ukraine for transit have been blocked due to EU sanctions.”

Hungary Offers Solution To Resume Russian Oil Supply (RT)

The Hungarian oil and gas company MOL confirmed on Tuesday that Russian crude supplies via the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline stopped a few days ago, and said it had initiated negotiations to assume obligations to pay for transit. The company responsible for Russian oil supplies to the EU, Transneft, announced on Monday that attempts to pay Ukraine for transit have been blocked due to EU sanctions. According to news outlet Origo, MOL has offered to pay transit fees on behalf of Transneft, but has not received a reply from Ukraine. “Although MOL has enough reserves for several weeks, it is working on a solution and has also initiated negotiations on the assumption of the fee obligation,” the energy company said in a statement.


On Monday, Transneft announced that Ukraine had suspended Russian oil flows to parts of central Europe since August 4 because Western sanctions prevented Moscow from making payments for transit. According to the Russian company, the suspension of pipeline flows has affected Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Transneft said it was working on alternative options for the transfer of funds. Druzhba, which is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from the eastern part of European Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Russia normally supplies about 250,000 barrels of oil per day via the southern leg of the route. The northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline running through Belarus to Poland and Germany continues to operate as normal, according to Transneft.

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“While in some cases, it lied by omission, in others, it lied outright.”

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Jan. 6 Committee (Sperry)

The Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 has adjourned for a well-deserved summer break. Misleading the public is exhausting work. A careful review of the official transcripts of its eight long hearings shows the committee repeatedly made connections that weren’t there, took events and quotes out of context, exaggerated the violence of the Capitol rioters, and omitted key exculpatory evidence otherwise absolving former President Donald Trump of guilt. While in some cases, it lied by omission, in others, it lied outright. It also made a number of unsubstantiated charges based on the secondhand accounts—hearsay testimony—of a young witness with serious credibility problems.

These weren’t off-the-cuff remarks. Panelists didn’t misspeak. Their statements were tightly scripted and loaded into teleprompters, which they read verbatim. In other words, the committee deliberately chummed out disinformation to millions of viewers of not just cable TV, but also the Big Three TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—which agreed to preempt regular daytime and even primetime programming to air the Democratic-run hearings. And because Democrats refused to allow dissenting voices on the panel or any cross-examination of witnesses, viewers had no reference points to understand how they, along with the two Trump-hating Republicans they allowed on the committee, shaded the truth.

This charade of an honest investigation appears to have had the desired effect. Polls show the Jan. 6 hearings hurt Trump, who plans to run again, with independents. Unaffiliated voters have grown more likely to blame Trump for the Capitol riot and to show support for Democrats in the midterms, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey.

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“..a mere 0.88% (US$ 866 Bill) is owed by Africa comprising 54 countries. And even then, more than half of the African debt is owed by just three countries…”

The Global Debt Scam – Day of Reckoning? (Salamah)

Global debt is now claimed to exceed $300 Trillion, while the poor countries’ debt continues to rise in percentage terms – The Poor are always the culprits. It is all a matter of definition, you set it according to your understanding, objectives, or motives. We can make it a lot more alarming by theoretically adding the liabilities of the derivatives and futures markets which could be considered hypothetical debts should they be allowed to become due; then, global debts would be in the Zillions. Economists just love creating definitions, no matter how practical or impractical they are, or how narrow and rigid they become, and end up wagging the dog! On a closer look, however, it transpires that the US$ 300 Trillion global debt includes the internal and external debts of all countries.


In other words, it probably includes Aunt Jemima’s debt to her local grocer. While this is important and helps understand how deep the world has fallen into the hole it has dug, it is probably of higher priority to address the External Debt of countries; debt owed to parties outside their borders. These are the debts that will immediately impact countries’ currency exchange rates, ability to import especially food and energy, and fund development. They are quicker to trigger inflation and disrupt economies and societies. Accordingly, when we look at the Global External Debts, we are taken aback by their distribution. (Bear in mind that the actual numbers are approximations as they cover different years as well as slightly differ from one compiler to another, however they all point in the same direction):

What is striking here is that approx. 80% of global external debt is owed by the advanced countries (the US, its close Allies, and Europe), while a mere 0.88% (US$ 866 Bill) is owed by Africa comprising 54 countries. And even then, more than half of the African debt is owed by just three countries. As for Asia, it owes 3.62% (US$ 3.5 Trill) distributed among 42 countries with the top 4 countries owing half of it. Similarly, 29 Latin American countries owe just 2.25% (US$ 2.2 Trill) with the top three responsible for more than half. Most financial data, including the World Bank and IMF, kick off with a display of debt as a percentage of GDP (a ratio) and relegate the actual nominal debt figures to links that are harder to find or access. This approach may be useful to assess the size and seriousness of the debt problem in an individual economy, but it is not the only tool.


A country’s ability to pay its debts over a period of time can also be affected by inflation, which could falsely paint a rosy shrinking debt-to-GDP picture and vice versa, at least in the short term. Also, a sudden contraction or bounce up of GDP could occur as a result of multiple causes such as wars, market collapses or spikes, and rebounds in economies after sharp falls such as the ‘post covid’ temporary activity. Hence, the actual debt numbers add an important aspect to any analysis. Not surprisingly, the global Debt-to-GDP percentages/ratios tend to tally with the conclusions of the above table of actual numbers. The ratios of advanced nations and Europe are way, way higher than those of the poorer countries. In fact, quite a few of their ratios make Japan, with its famously excessive ratio, appear to be thrifty.

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I’m not sure this is helpful. The trend is everywhere. The farmers in Holland get very little coverage. But now Rutte can say: Look at Greece, it’s much worse…

How Greece Became Europe’s Worst Place For Press Freedom (Pol.eu)

Reporters across Europe raced to follow up on the piece, which provided evidence of possible criminal behavior. Interview requests poured into Germany’s Der Spiegel, one of the outlets behind the story. One country, however, was noticeably quiet on the matter: Greece. “You’d be hard pressed to find any reference to it in the pro-government press, which dominates, especially the airwaves,” said Giorgos Christides, a reporter at Der Spiegel. “In Greece, there’s two parallel media universes.” The moment illustrated what journalists, media analysts, civil rights groups and EU investigators have been warning about for years. Greece, they say, is now seeing the troubling, violent and oppressive results of a years-long erosion of press freedom in the country.

It’s a problem, they say, born during the Greek financial crisis, which destabilized the country, polarized its politics and sapped media outlets of the profits that helped them stay independent. News organizations became increasingly partisan. Threats, attacks and surveillance targeting journalists rose. The pandemic only made things worse. Press conferences were halted and essentially never came back. Questions arose over whether the government was favoring friendly outlets with taxpayer funds. A new law claimed to curb misinformation but is fueling concerns that journalists could be tossed in jail for critical reporting. And just last week, the spying web that had ensnared journalists blossomed into a full-blown scandal that forced two top officials to resign. “Due to the financial situation, media owners have handed over the keys of their businesses to the government,” said Tasos Telloglou, an investigative reporter in Greece.

“This, combined with a government that believes that it does nothing wrong, is an explosive combination.” The situation reflects a broader trend across Europe. Demonstrators going after reporters. Demonization from officials. Public funds withheld. Countries from Germany to Luxembourg to Slovenia, Poland and Hungary have all slipped in annual press freedom rankings. But Greece fell to the bottom of all European countries on the latest list. The Greek government insists the fears are vastly overblown. Press freedom is enshrined in the country’s constitution and there is no press censorship, officials note, correctly. “Greece is a country where everyone can write and publish whatever they want about anyone, without any censorship and no government control,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the European Parliament in a recent debate, holding up two newspaper front pages featuring negative articles about the government.

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Shameless. The Russians should kick them out.

US Occupation Loots Most Of Syria’s Oil: Ministry (AlMa)

The Syrian Oil Ministry revealed that the US occupation loots the majority of Syria’s oil, knowing that the daily production of the eastern oil fields is 80.3 thousand barrels.” During a meeting held to discuss its work plans and the work of its subsidiaries during the first half of this year, the Syrian Ministry of Oil stated that “the amount of oil production during the first half of this year amounted to about 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels.” The Ministry added that the barrels are delivered to refineries at a rate of 14.2 thousand barrels per day, stressing that the US occupation forces and their mercenaries steal up to 66,000 barrels per day from fields in areas in the eastern region that they occupy.


“Around 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas were produced, with a daily production rate of 11.3 million cubic meters, of which 11.1 million cubic meters is renewable natural gas,” it stated. The Ministry detailed that “82% of the gas produced is delivered to the Ministry of Electricity, 3% to the Ministry of Industry, and 15% to the Ministry of Oil.” It is worth noting that the daily average quantity delivered to the Ministry of Electricity is 8.6 million cubic meters, as per the Ministry. [..] Besides being an occupation force that backs armed groups for its own operations and agenda in the region, the US occupation forces continue to steal Syrian oil by smuggling it from their bases in Syria to their bases in Iraq. Convoys of tens of vehicles, including tankers loaded with stolen oil from oil fields occupied by US forces in Syria, are frequently seen crossing toward northern Iraq, in addition to trucks loaded with military equipment.

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“.. the most important independent risk factor for the development of severe infections in youths..”

Lockdowns Increases Obesity, And Obesity Increases Covid Risk (DM)

One of Australia’s top Covid-19 experts says lockdowns have drastically affected the health of children as a study shows two years of coronavirus restrictions have made people fatter and unhealthier. Professor Peter Collignon, an influential infectious diseases physician with the Australian National University, shared a medical study on his Twitter in which American experts researched the link between the pandemic response and obesity in children and adolescents. ‘Lockdown measures affected healthy lifestyle behaviors through modification of dietary habits, reduction of physical activity and alteration of sleep patterns, and also increased the levels of stress and anxiety, overall promoting weight gain and obesity,’ Prof Collignon wrote on Twitter.

‘Paediatric overweight/obesity—an alarming epidemic of increasing proportions, before Covid-19, has been demonstrated to be the most important independent risk factor for the development of severe infections in youths, requiring admission to hospital/ICUs,’ Prof Collignon said. The paper published by the National Library of Medicine concluded, ‘the dramatic lifestyle changes forced by Covid-19-related lockdown promoted weight gain, with a stronger impact on obese subjects, at higher risk of severe infection.’ The study looked at both the risk factors of lockdown-induced weight increase and the impact of obesity on the risk of hospital admission in children and adolescents. The study also concluded those who were classified as obese had a higher probability of being hospitalised compared to the normal weight population and Covid-19 and obesity represent ‘epidemic conditions with detrimental impact’.

Epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett says the full effect of Covid restrictions have had on the obesity epidemic are not yet fully grasped ‘It is one of those things we have been concerned about yet with obesity the challenge is those rates have been rising anyway, so the question is how much can be attributed to the increase from restrictions from Covid?’ Prof Bennett said. ‘Constraints on individual liberties, exercise, organised sport disruption in and outside of schools would all contribute to the nature of the problem. ‘It is really important that we invest in actively understanding the impacts of Covid restrictions. It is crucial so we can put in place things that might help minimise the long term impacts and address the impacts in terms of obesity and chronic illness.’

Read more …

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle August 10 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 46 total)
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  • #113176

    Gustav Klimt Field of poppies 1907   • Is The US Preparing To Throw Zelensky Under The Bus? (Diesen) • Zelensky Aide: Counterattack Claims Part O
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 10 2022]

    #113177
    those darned kids
    Participant

    Cumulative Number of Case Reports Reported to Pfizer for BNT162B2 (COVID Vaccine) Serious and Non-Serious, Medically Confirmed and Non Medically-Confirmed from Post-Marketing Data Sources.

    This is the data that Pfizer has.

    If you were responsible for reviewing this, what action would you take?

    Through 15th April 2022 (around 16 months):

    Total cases reported 1,348,078.

    75% of cases reported are under the age of 65.

    Over 68% of cases are female.

    387,675 (29%) of cases are described as “serious”.

    17,156 reported cases for pregnant or breastfeeding women.

    45,523 paediatric cases.

    4,563,768 adverse events (average 3.4 per case).

    646,837 nervous system disorders.

    503,108 musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders.

    299,486 gastrointestinal disorders.

    209,213 skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders.

    176,907 respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders.

    162,086 reproductive system and breast disorders.

    114,375 cardiac disorders.

    93,097 blood and lymphatic system disorders.

    from australia

    #113178

    Ok, whoaaaaa.

    China baaaad because THEY are messing with the weather.

    1. and we here DON’T ? USA Watchdog guests beg to differ … chemtrails anyone ?

    2. and this is the same WEF that is so engaged in mine and humanity’s well being ? Really? Pot calling kettle black time imho.

    #113179
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I hope everyone know that the magistrate who signed the order to raid Trump’s home was formerly

    JEFFERY EPSTEIN’S LAWYER

    Small world, aye?

    Trump Derangement Syndrome taken to new lows.

    .

    #113180
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Klimt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugendstil

    I think I can put the FBI thing this way: sure, no one is above the law, you can get a warrant for anyone, and although I want to be careful, this is just law, with a judge. One thing though:

    You better find something.

    Or the Judge, the FBI, the opposing party, the auto mechanic that fixed the van, you’re all going down.

    Seem fair enough?

    I don’t think they found anything. It seems to be a fishing expedition.

    The (Democratic) news media seems to be advertising that if Donald gets a ticket, a case, a lawsuit, he is ineligible to be President. Hmmm…that’s not what the Constitution says. Signed by two guys who called each other a French traitor and a hermaphrodite. Donnie’s a natural citizen over 40. Everything else is made up and likely won’t hold water, but that’s politics, that is, whatever you can get the public to swallow without choking. Remember kids: Law is just some s—t we make up!

    But I’m bored with it and my attention is elsewhere. Don’t have time for reality TV.

    “We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual” –Matt Taibbi

    “the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law. This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.” There are whispers throughout the business that editors are striking down certain jubilant language, and we can even see this playing out on cable, where the most craven of the networks’ on-air ex-spooks are crab-crawling backward from last night’s buzz-words…”

    Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage…
    “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound
    A pile of evidence must have backed up
    There’s every reason to think
    had probable grounds to believe
    [The] search warrant must be something …said Harvard”
    –Taibbi, etc.

    Uh-huh.

    “Judge Who Signed Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Exposed as Associate of Jeffrey Epstein”

    Because once you don’t clean up corruption…corruption never sleeps. Thanks FBI, who knew the whole thing! What makes you think they didn’t find the judge, know the judge, and KEEP the judge in their pocket for future use? Wouldn’t you? The fate of some important case might rest on having this favor. Maybe the whole country! You wouldn’t want to NOT have that 5th ace in your hand, would you? Be logical. Logic is the opposite of morality. It’s never logical to disadvantage yourself for no good reason, i.e. for principle’s sake.

    “Lies, Damned Lies, and the Jan. 6 Committee”

    Just to be clear, Judge Judy, on TV, has some small legal foundation. The J6 Committee has less legal authority than Judge Judy. (The committee has no congressional authority, was not created according to congressional requirements, and further cannot adjudicate as they have separation of powers with the Judiciary. No one cares. That is to say: we have no rule of law, are a lawless nation, neither your person nor property are safe, and we are not-agreement-capable.)

    “Deep State’s “Next Step Will Be Assassination” after Trump Raid, Warns Former NYC Police Commissioner”

    Yup, as Mr. Q sez. But he’s a nobody in his basement that doesn’t know anything, right mom? But golly gee, why would he — a police commissioner — think such an outrageous thing? Nobody’s ever been assassinated in the U.S. before. Right? And there are no pedophiles in the U.S., and CERTAINLY not in NY or DC, and not under his watch in NYC where they were investigated and let go, where Weinstein paid Cuomo and the NYC D.A. a million or so by check to have the charges dropped. …On record. Nope, nope, nope. He’s just cra-cray. Crime is an elaborate illusion. Such people do not exist.

    “FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff”

    What a silly idea: when was the last time the police of FBI planted stuff? 500x daily? Anyway, this will be G R E A T when someone (Secret Service) gets film of the FBI doing it. FINALLY a reason to erase and utterly destroy the FBI and start over. And the IRS too now. Couldn’t be happier. It was going to take a lot since we need the people’s widespread support to erase them.

    “Washington dominated the information war”

    Yes but only the information war among Jr. High School girls and Crayon munchers: our core audience of illiterates.

    ““All public remarks by Ukrainian officials are part of information warfare lies against Russia..” Fixed it. I mean, what did you think that meant?

    “He ruled out Kiev’s military defeat as a possible scenario, predicting that Western nations will funnel weapons to Ukraine regardless of the cost..”

    These glue-sniffers think “cost” is any relevant factor here. “Cost” is not the issue. “Cost” does not win wars. What is that definition? “Knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing?”

    “Certainly, all public comments are part of information warfare. We need to demoralize the Russian army,”

    If you’d stop sniffing glue with Hunter for a moment, you’d realize the Russian Army isn’t reading your papers. They’re too busy taking the country and getting shot at. Unlike you, typing with the lights on between Bono and Vogue. We should fight wars like this more often. Who knew? Leaving the lights on gives them a fabulous sense of un-reality and lack of urgency that they never get serious and screw around with everything they touch.

    “Perry was in communication numerous times with the Trump White House in the days and weeks ahead of the storming of the Capitol.”

    A Trump ally was in communication with Trump during the Trump administration??? Very suspicious. And Laurel was talking to Hardy, I hear. And the reason for the cell phone must be 1) a show, 2) they can’t get or don’t trust a FISA warrant anymore since it would be better, easier, and more secret to tap the cell tower because THE PHONE CALLS DON’T LIVE ON YOUR PHONE. Dummies. Do these guys also think there are tiny actors inside their TVs?

    ““Since Orbán returned to power in 2010 marriages in Hungary have doubled, abortions have halved, divorces have hit record lows, and the birth rate has risen by a quarter.”

    No wonder they hate and fear him. And he’s bringing that here. Brrrrr, the horror! Rutte? Meanwhile Holland is the drug-running capital of the world and is now being called a narco-state. That is, the drug money is now bending politics, law, and the economy. Nearby to Sweden, the hand grenade capital of the world. But they’re successful and free unlike that awful Orban guy.

    “Eadric’s descendants inherited his lands in a place called Acton Scott in the west of England”

    Yes, and you can see them on TV. The Acton Scott was the landowner host of BBC’s “Victorian Farm”, still doing good things after all these years.

    Africa is going to do well. But slowly, which is probably a good thing. They’re on a different cycle and it will be helpful when U.S. and Europe come down to Ordinary-nation level with them as peers. Like Brazil.

    US Occupation Loots Most of Syria’s Oil: Ministry (AlMa)”

    The “U.S.” is not one thing. For instance, I am not “the U.S.” So WHO in the U.S.? …The CIA is broke and self-funding. Using pirating, drug running, human trafficking, and theft. Duh. I mean since Pappa Bush or even ‘Nam, and the U.N. already reported their drug flows are the keystone supporting international banking. Or modern nations like Holland. I mean, that report that the loss of drug running would collapse world banking was like 2007? Or is that one of Schrodinger’s reports that happened but didn’t happen, is real but also not?

    Anyway, “Americans” like the floods in Kentucky won’t see a dime. They will see an IRS agent looking for that one loose chicken in the yard. And that Agent will be armed. ‘Cuz “guns R bad” / “Police brutality” am I right? Can I get an “Amen” up in here?

    “Man” Or modern man. No human did this for 10,000 years before and some places not till 1900 or even now. We are supposedly the same species so what happened? Most people wouldnt’ do that now and are forced to at gunpoint — the Sheriff’s eviction. Points out that cities are way more environmental than farms and cows of course. Who knew? We MUST pave the farms surrounding Amsterdam: the fate of the planet depends on it!!! Go go Greta Greenberg!

    #113181
    oxymoron
    Participant

    People build up a skill set that gets honed over years and years. It becomes easier – like body memory (which I have in spades when I sit behind my drumkit). Dr D, catches those little lines that stick out like dog’s balls when revealed to you but easy to skim past if not as trained or skilled – in Dr’s case academic level bullshit detecting.

    “Certainly, all public comments are part of information warfare. We need to demoralize the Russian army,”

    If you’d stop sniffing glue with Hunter for a moment, you’d realize the Russian Army isn’t reading your papers. They’re too busy taking the country and getting shot at. Unlike you, typing with the lights on between Bono and Vogue.

    Aced it again – and I would not have caught it. Thanks.

    Bill7 from the other day – Charles Hugh smith on “I Dig Dirt” – I loved it and would add that the sign above the entrance to our house says “DIG DIRT”

    #113182
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I’m pretty much a full time conspiracy theorist, but only about one such in particular. My theory is that there is a vast conspiracy to suppress theorists by calling them conspiracy theorists.

    #113183
    zerosum
    Participant

    In a few words
    Information wars.
    Nobody is above the law.

    1. Take the boxes, Put this “secret paper” in one of the boxes.
    2. Covid19 did not kill all the Obese people, old people, sick people. They are still the living majority.
    3. If Russians are not safe, and ex presidents are not safe from hate, why would you think that you and your property are safe

    #113184
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    So when somebody calls you a conspiracy theorist, here is what you should tell them back:

    “Well I sure am a theorist alright, and right now my theory is that you might have undisclosed reasons, which you have good reason to keep hidden, for calling me a conspiracy theorist.”

    #113185
    Noirette
    Participant

    I tried to post this yest. and it didn’t see it show (if mistaken apologies…) 2 parts.

    OFFSHORE 95 Secrets of the President Zelenskyy’s business

    Oct 2021, YouTube, 55 mins. Eng subs. Movie was banned in Ukr.

    Apparently some Collective-W ppl (as seen published in Die Welt) have *discovered* it as now Zelensky is most likely to be thrown under the bus. Imho there are no real surprises on the financial end (most of the info comes from the Panama Papers..still the detail is vaguely interesting..) but the interviews of two Ukr. officials are telling, and there are some great scenes that show us that fiction and RL meld together so intimately it becomes impossible to distinguish them.

    For ex. there was a public debate before the prez. election in Ukr. between Ze and Poro (RL) – it looks like a scene from a movie, a fabrication…Ukr. obviously beats, hands down, the USA in the IMAGE-NARRATIVE-IS-ALL game, which is interesting to think about. Corruption in Ukr. also closely resembles corruption in the USA, but that is another topic.

    youtube, https://bit.ly/3QypodI

    #113186
    Noirette
    Participant

    2. More on Ze,

    The Swiss MP and former editor-in-chief of the Tribune de Genève, Guy Mettan, paints a portrait of the acrobat who plays the role of president of Ukraine. He shows how this public entertainer became an ally of the Banderists and set up a dictatorship for them. June 2022.

    voltaire network, https://bit.ly/3JI5xXm

    Mettan is good.. But.. why and how the Banderistas / Neo-Nazis gathered so much clout in Ukr. is imho only explicable by massive support .. from the W, the US and Germany in first place, as well as – this gets more complicated – Ukr. Oligarchs who pay for, and thus control, private militias (some of which become incorporated nationally.. heh ..)

    Imho Ze is a kind of hapless actor playing in a landscape he doesn’t understand, from glitz and image is all, and secrecy and corruption and using dodgy finance is necessary (that is how he got ahead, running a kind of local Media Empire, huge profits, triumph galore), to the realisation that physical threats are real and if one can’t counter, submission is the only choice.

    #113187
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Say, now that we (me, at least) are on the topic of “Conspiracy Theorists” , how about that Alex Jones trial, hey ? That’s a real hum dinger, donctha think? I mean, have you ever seen anything quite like it ? Was there ANY keystone of Law that the court failed to violate? It’s as if the judge had a checklist of fundamental principles of legal philosophy , written statute and Constitution and just went down the list checking each one off as she violated the hell out of it in broad daylight. Just, WOW!

    It takes a lot to corrupt a legal system, because the system itself is designed to remove from the itself (from the top down) any violations of the principles upon which the system is based. The legal system is the last Fail-Safe for self correction, but it is EXTREMELY effective in eliminating anything which opposes the primary directive of the power at the top.

    The only way a judge can get away with violating law is if the judge’s boss allows (or orders!) them to get away with it, because the boss can simply order the enforcement of the law and it shall be enforced and the junior judge will be either gone or in prison. Snap.

    So how corrupt is the court that went after Jones? Corrupt enough that the judge was confident that she would get away with what she did. And brother, she did a LOT!

    That badly corrupted then, all the way to the top? Sure looks that way,. I don’t see anybody from within the Justice System officially trying to stop them although the struggle upward continues. Jones still shows up to court on time every time, and I assume that the guns carried by many of the law enforcement officials involved are real guns, and that their prison cells have real bars on them to dissuade premature departure.

    So what did Jones do that was so bad that the Justice System of the world’s (heretofore) most powerful empire had to be sacrificed in order to stop him?

    Seems that he is a rather successful conspiracy theorist.

    So the United States government sees Jones, personally, just this ONE guy(!) as an actual existential threat? Sure looks like it.

    Say! I just came up with a conspiracy theory! My theory is that there is a REASON that the legal system of the US Government wants to stop Jones from theorizing about conspiracies.

    #113188
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Father’s recorded call to pharmacist
    …Last year a woman contacted me off of a private group that I was in on Facebook. She was looking for advice, because her husband wanted to vaccinate their young children against Covid and she was opposed. I told her that she would have a better chance at preventing that from happening legally separated or divorced rather than married — because when married, either parent can take the child to be vaccinated and there is nothing the other parent can really do. The assumption by the state is that the married parents are united and functioning. With joint-legal decision-making either parent can make a decision at the doctor office, but expressly going against the wishes of the other parent can create legal problems. There are formal ways to make decisions when parents disagree. I felt awkward telling the woman this — I don’t like breaking up marriages, but I’ve learned a great deal going through divorce and then custody stuff, and I knew that Inwas correct. I guess it was a bombshell for her — the next thing she said was that the only reason why she was staying in the marriage was because she thought she had more parental rights married than divorced.

    More IRS agents isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
    Right now, thousands upon thousands of citizens tax returns are getting flagged by an automated system for “verification” requiring human eyes to proceed. Some are flagged due to changes or anomalies, for others it is simply random. ( This has happened to my 2021 tax return. I filed mid-February 2022…I have no idea when I’ll receive my refund. It is creating economic hardship.). There are not enough IRS agents to do this “human check” in a timely manner, so this process drags on month after month after month. In addition, by law, the IRS is required to be available to citizens via telephone who want to talk to “a real person” when calling in. Currently, the ONLY way to get to a real person on the IRS phone system is by not answering the automated questions — i.e. DON’T enter your social security number when prompted by the computer voice, and then following a specific set of prompts that do not relate to you so that you get into a queue that results in getting to a real person. It takes about 3 minutes to get that far. But I could only get to the next step — waiting in the phone queue to talk to a live person when I called at 6 am (9 am Eastern.). All other times of the day, I would get the recording that due to high call volume they couldn’t take my call, please try back later. The wait exceeded 2 hours. To get an appointment at the local office, one has to leave name and information on voicemail. They never called me back to make the appointment. Fortunately, I qualify for the IRS Taxpayer Assistance Service…it didn’t take quite as long to get through to them. They said that they’d get back to me in about a month. They did not. Now, today or tomorrow I’ll be calling them back.

    The IRS is severely understaffed. I read all these words about more IRS agents meaning more people will be audited and I shake my head. The people saying these things are ignorant of reality. The IRS is already so short staffed that it is failing to comply with the law and adequately communicating with taxpayers.

    #113189
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Tried to post a long reply to @TDub the other day, and of course it was silently rejected. I’ll try breaking it up.


    @TDub
    : if I were in your place, which is a difficult one, I would build my argument on a couple of pretty solid pieces of evidence: the jabs appear to be effective for only a period of months, and then turn negative:

    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410 (Swedish study of 1.6 million health records concludes that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 infection wanes progressively over time across all subgroups, but at different rates according to type of vaccine, and faster for men and older frail individuals; protection against severe disease seems to remain high through 9 months, but again the same subgroups (men, older, frail) decay faster; note that, on average, vaccine efficacy turns negative at about eight months after the second injection, meaning a vaccinated person is MORE likely to become infected after that time, relative to an unvaccinated person; for good discussion about validity of study and conclusions, see here: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/swedish-study-shows-covid-vaccines or here https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/11/05/covid-how-long-does-vaccine-based-immunity-last/ )

    This implies that you would be signing your son up for an endless series of boosters, with a concomitant cumulative risk with each additional shot.

    #113190
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    The risks involved in the injection are not zero, especially for young people; many countries are realizing this, and are beginning to ban COVID-19 vaccines for the young. Here is one article on that trend from boriquagato’s substack:

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/all-cause-mortality-effects-of-covid (you’d probably have to click the links in the article to go back to the official source data, otherwise she’ll probably claim it is just misinformation)

    On the other side of the equation, the evidence continues to mount that immunity from natural infection is more durable, more effective against variants, and much longer lasting, here is a summary from the Brownstone Institute:

    https://brownstone.org/articles/natural-immunity-and-covid-19-twenty-nine-scientific-studies-to-share-with-employers-health-officials-and-politicians/ (twenty-nine studies summarized, showing that natural immunity for a SARS-type virus is robust, long-lasting, and broadly effective even in the case of mutations, generally more so than vaccines; now upgraded to 81 150 studies: https://brownstone.org/articles/79-research-studies-affirm-naturally-acquired-immunity-to-covid-19-documented-linked-and-quoted/ )

    #113193
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Joan Rivers, acting from the beyond, has arranged a peace conference between Vlad and Zelensky:

    Ending the Gwar

    #113194
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    And now it won’t take the third and final section of my response.

    #113195
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Finally, the thing that drives both the doctor and your wife is fear. It is very hard to get people to assess risks rationally when they are in a perpetual, automatic state of fear on a topic.

    https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-689684/v1 (research quantifying deaths of children and young people from SARS-CoV-2, finds them rare)

    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v2.full (preprint of John Ioannidis study of infection fatality rate in 14 countries based on seroprevalence data; IFR was less than previously believed for the elderly 70+; more than 95% of those infected survive, 97.1% when considering those not in a care home; also has IFR for other age ranges, for those under 20 it is approximately 1 in 76,000, or 0.0013%; for more discussion and context, see https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/new-research-suggests-covid-was-less-deadly-thought-first-year-pandemic )

    #113196
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Some other resources:

    https://palexander.substack.com/p/alexander-dear-pfizer-leave-the-children (Dr. Paul Alexander reviews the situation on the 5-11 year old group, and finds the case for vaccination to be sorely lacking – underpowered trial data, insufficient study length, and a risk-benefit ratio that tilts almost entirely toward risk and away from benefit)

    https://gmail.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=841d7e17af5afd1f5d4877c35&id=ca6cff93ac&e=ba13277090 (the TruthForHealth.org web site is hosting a webinar for parents on August 9th regarding children’s vaccination; with the problems posting this date has now past, but the presentation should still be archived on the truthforhealth.org web site)

    Finally, there is the documentation project started by myself and TAE Summary, in which I’ve tried to include important papers and analysis. The most relevant sections are the section on poor efficacy (page 25), danger (page 38), natural immunity (page 51), and children (page 60).

    https://we.tl/t-SJKIZEXkBp (link to PDF good for 7 days)

    Rototillerman

    #113197
    Polder Dweller
    Participant

    Dutch farmers and nitrogen

    Here’s a nice little twist to the story.

    Yesterday evening on the news there was an item about the problems caused by having too much nitrogen being deposited in natural areas. A forester point out some plants that he particularly liked. “If there is too much nitrogen,” he informed the viewers, “these little plants will lose to other species because they can survive on poor soils where other species can’t.” The interviewer asked the man what would become of the area if nothing was done about the nitrogen. “Well,” he replied, “then quickly trees would establish themselves here and this area would turn into a wood.”

    I’m not making this up (you couldn’t) here was a forester who was worried about trees growing!

    #113198
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    If the information about the attack on the Novo airport in Crimea is correct -a British orchestrated attack that destroyed 20+ aircraft and 60 pilots injured- we can expect the Russian response to these fascist provocations to be ramped up to an even higher level.

    #113199
    TDub
    Participant

    @Rototillerman
    Thank you for both the time and knowledge you shared. These links are a great help and I appreciate the way you approached the argument. This will definitely help my son and I’m sure there are others on here who will benefit as well.

    #113200
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    You need to understand the ‘correct’ role of nitrogen compounds in modern economies: they are manufactured synthetically -frequently from natural gas to make urea, at great expense and consuming large amounts of electrical energy; they are applied to agricultural land to stimulate faster growth, and production of food for humans and animals that humans eat; the waste nitrogen compounds in human bodies are naturally converted by biological systems to urea, which is excreted as urea; the urine (containing high-value organic nitrogen) is pumped through sewage systems using electricity that is generated by burning fossil fuels that exacerbate both energy depletion predicament and the planetary overheating predicament. Most of the urea generated in ‘civilised nations’ ends up in the seas and oceans of the world. Fecal matter is frequently separated utilising machines that are electrically powered, and in many cases the fecal matter is recycled into compost (again using electricity and fossil fuels) which can be sold to consumers via the use of plastic bags and diesel-powered transport systems. In this utterly Orwellian world, such products are described as ‘BIo’ or ‘Eco’.

    This is just one aspect of what is called ‘development’ or ‘progress’.

    Other forms of ‘progress’ include using huge quantities of coal to make iron and steel for construction buildings and transport systems, as per

    2Fe2O3 + 3C = 4 Fe + 3CO2

    To achieve the high temperature needed, coal (coke) is blasted with air

    C + O2 = CO2

    And converting limestone -again using huge quantities of fossil fuels- into cement, according to these equations:

    CaCO3 + heat = CaO + CO2

    CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O

    So, the object of the game is to convert the natural world into a synthetic world, using vast quantities of fossil fuels that release humungous quantities of carbon dioxide into the biosphere when utilised.

    The prime reasons for doing this are:

    1. so that Ponzi schemes can be kept gong a little longer

    2. so that people with a sense of entitlement can have their whims temporarily satisfied

    3. so that multibillionaires can have fun on board planes and superyachts

    #113201
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    @Afewknowthe truth, good post.

    #113204
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Jones was talking about Bigfoot and the greenwood machine elves whut dun it. He was on to the whole thing! …Or maybe there are only a very few SPECIFIC questions, subjects, and theories that are not allowed?


    @Afewknowthetruth
    , not wrong, but those are also the foundational elements for the lowest forms of life: poor, primitive people. Are you suggesting no masonry, no iron, no steel, no fertilizer? Sounds pretty rough to me.

    This is the thing with business, they say “Corporations Pollute.” Pollute to who? They aren’t making things for their benefit, they’re making products for YOU, the poor and middle class public. Sure that one superyacht sucks and takes an outsized share of resources for stupid reasons, but that’s one yacht. It’s the 2.5 million 16 foot powerboats that really used 2.49x the amount of resources. Same math as to why all taxes are paid by the middle class: there are only a thousand billionaires and we already tax them.

    So generally the resources like plastic, fertilizer, aluminum, steel, lithium, are used and thrown in the Royal Canal by US, the ordinary guy. I’d say use less, but that’s still using a lot and a billion times more than Musk and his 27 kids, known and unknown. I’m not planning on shutting off my food, water, steel, or masonry consumption any time soon since — and I must firmly protest here — I would die, die, die, die, die if I didn’t. But also if you took my cheetos away with their tasty, non-biodegradable 1oz mylar bag, individually shipped to me from Amazon.

    Second question: if we cook with sharp sticks and go back to caves as Germany and AOC want, what’s the power differential look like when they have satellite radar, IR goggles, drone cameras, railguns and flying cars? I don’t plan on a repeat of being a Plains Indian. Already did that. This time I plan on keeping my own gunpowder and my own laser-guided IR missiles to keep Custer off my lawn for good.

    Loose thoughts. WE are the change we seek, and also the enemies R us.

    #113205
    Antidote
    Participant

    @ Afewknowthetruth

    “The prime reasons for doing this are:

    1. so that Ponzi schemes can be kept gong a little longer

    2. so that people with a sense of entitlement can have their whims temporarily satisfied

    3. so that multibillionaires can have fun on board planes and superyachts”

    Well you were doing pretty good on your analysis until the above. What? Do you ride a horse to work? Go down to the river to bath and wash your nice *manufactured* cotton, wool or synthetic clothing? Grow or gather ALL of your food? On and on. For a few seconds I thought you might be one of the only other people that have read (the much discredited) Jeremy Rifkins “Entropy, A New World View” other than myself, well I betcha JD has read it. Even as far off the grid as @Michael Read is he is still using and dependent on entropy increasing technology.

    By the simple act of reading this blog you and I are bleeding this planets resource base and creating entropy as we do. Internet server farms are some of the worst energy hogs there are. Blame game is a non starter with me. Bloods on everyone’s hands.

    #113206
    aspnaz
    Participant

    We have a Covid bombshell tonight with figures revealing the true number of deaths is much lower than feared.

    Doctors were raising this issue over a year ago and the government response was to remove their licenses. Will the doctors that were struck off for saying this now get their licenses back? Will the people now understand why the anti-vax people do not trust the Aussie government? Will they fuck.

    #113207
    aspnaz
    Participant

    More died after vax than from virus in Taiwan

    This is old news. Total Covid deaths in 2022 is 625 (up to May), excess mortality in 2021 (excluding Covid etc) was 7000 unexplained, unexpected deaths in the younger age group. So still loads dying unexpectedly, as reported in this clip.

    #113208
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute

    The world’s most reputable police force? Is this written by a provincial US farm worker who hasn’t seen a newspaper ever? The FBI has not been reputable in my lifetime, certainly not the world’s most reputable police force, but to provincial americans the “world” is the USA with Canada being the Moon and Mexico being Mars, or something like that.

    #113209
    aspnaz
    Participant

    There’s every reason to think that there’s a plus factor in the quantum and quantity of evidence that the government already had to support probable cause in this case.

    History of the Trump Presidency accusations reveals that this statement is most likely not true. Which is why they got a disposable junior magistrate – an Epstein associate and pedophile whom you can bet appears in the blackmail footage from Epstein Island – and not a judge to sign this off. I wonder what will happen to this poor magistrate, in some ways I feel sorry for him, it must be terrible being blackmailed, then I think of his likely crimes and that pity quickly evaporates.

    #113210
    russellnblbs
    Participant

    Urea and the other synthetic fertilisers are a roundabout way of allowing us to eat oil and gas, as laid out by Odum a fair while ago now. That’s why I’m suspect of any taxation or limiting of these fertilisers on environmental grounds, as it seems to me more likely related to the pricing of oil and gas.

    There is a mental trap we get caught in the west of our sinful ways, that is encapsulated in that ‘Man’ video. Firstly that it is universal human behaviour, which it certainly isn’t. The entire machine thinking, technical domination of nature is an outcome of Western European ways of thought (progress, extension, analysis), that we have managed to infect everyone else with (bad money drives out good). But there are also the power laws which state that destruction will inevitably follow when a system gets the enormous boost of energy that fossil fuels gave us, so to assign blame may be the wrong way of looking at it.

    But there is the further thought that on a long enough time scale, perhaps this violent eruption of the last 300 years is a great release of locked up resources for living systems to utilise. As that ridiculous Dutch news item says, trees are certainly appreciating the higher availability of carbon and other nutrients. Places like Australia, which were caught in a tectonics trap of slowly eroding fertility have been given a huge dose of phosphorus and other things it was lacking (including nutrient cycling megafauna such a buffalo and camels).

    All those big cats locked in US homes may one day become the ancestors of long lost large predators on the north American landscape. Biodiversity can recover very quickly once things settle down.

    #113211
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Dr. D ‘Are you suggesting no masonry, no iron, no steel, no fertilizer? Sounds pretty rough to me.’

    I guess it depends on your definition of rough.

    Don’t forget that humans lived on this planet for around 195,000 out of the 200,000 years of existence of our species without iron, without steel, without cement, and without fertiliser. And it was only AFTER humans commenced large-scale utuilisation of iron, steel, cement, fertiliser that things started to go seriously wrong, i.e. after around 1850 (though I have previously highlighted Newcomen’s installation of coal-fired steam pump to facilitate more extraction of water from flooded mines and thereby increase rates of extraction of minerals and coal around 1715 as a critical turning point for humanity and life in general on this planet). As late as 1950 a substantial portion of the human population lived without any of the aforementioned.

    It was the use of the aforementioned that got us into this mess! -of massive population overshoot and massive overdependence on fossil fuels. And The Sixth Great Extinction Event, of course.

    Here’s the real kicker, though: the more we use the aforementioned, the faster our demise!

    And if we do not go entirely extinct as a direct consequence of the severe disturbance to geochemical and ecological balance [we have caused] in the very near term (some genuine scientists say before 2030), the more we use the aforementioned, the faster we cause civilisation to collapse.

    I am just the messenger, so please don’t ‘shoot me’.. But please understand that this is not a new message. The eminent senior Shell oil geologist M K Hubbert warned this would happen!!!

    All that happened in the 1970s was that bankers, economists, corporate leaders and bought-and-paid-for politicians ignored the warning. (Just as they ignored the 1972 Limits to Growth) And they promoted fantasies as a replacement for reality,. And they pretty much censored the truth about energy and resources out of existence -much s they have recently censored the truth about fake ‘vaccines’ out of existence, and have censored the truth about the financial system out of existence. That, plus 24-7 propaganda.

    The ‘controllers’ haven’t done with promoting fantasies: just look at the garbage the WEF churns out.

    In case you have missed it


    The trouble is, when your entire system is fakery and lies and censorship and propaganda -which it is- and when you are shitting in your own nest as quickly as possible, catastrophic collapse is inevitable.

    #113212
    Redneck
    Participant

    I think this article illustrate how the Russians fucked up bad when they attempted to surround Kiev in the early days of the war. They did not understand that hand held missiles were a game changer and took heavy losses before retreating.https://en.topwar.ru/200011-neobhodimost-jevoljucii-vooruzhenija-i-taktiki-vozdushno-desantnyh-vojsk-kak-sledstvie-provedenija-rossijskoj-specoperacii-na-ukraine.html

    #113213
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Antidote.

    No, I don’t ride a horse. I have never been wealthy enough to own a horse. Just a poor boy, born to poor parents in the off-the coast-of-Europe sector of the concentration camp. What distinguished me was having above-average intelligence and above-average determination. Above-average curiosity too.

    No horse but I do ride bicycles. . Rode one this morning. Indeed cycling is my normal mode of transport. I have various bicycles for different uses, and several bike trailers for different applications.

    Not yet at the stage of ‘going to the river to bathe. But I am in the process of digging a small well, in preparation for when the electricity grid fails….which it most certainly will some time this decade. Of course the ‘Zombie apocalypse’ will occur before or contemporaneously.

    ‘ By the simple act of reading this blog you and I are bleeding this planets resource base and creating entropy as we do..’

    I totally agree!

    Indeed, having an honours degree in chemistry, having studied the structure of matter, energy transitions and thermodynamics to a very high level, I may well know more than you. Not saying I do. Just I may. Gibb’s Free Energy, Clausius-Clapeyron and all that.

    I do know that I know more about the physical world and the biological world and the financial world than 4.8 million people who also live on this land mass. I cannot say that is a good thing. Sometime I think it would be better to be blissfully ignorant.

    But then I think about what the ‘blissfully ignorant’ are going to suffer in the near future -collapse of their food supply, collapse of their finances, collapse of their health [for the jabbed] and collapse of all they systems they believed in.

    No. It’s better to be informed and prepared., .

    #113214
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Young Sociopathic Biden Spells Out How The Game Works

    #113215
    chettt
    Participant


    @Afewknowthetruth
    ,
    Reads to me that you would have preferred that the world would have been better off if it had been taken over in the 1970s by a one world government like WEF (or the Club of Rome as they were known in the ’70s). I couldn’t agree less.
    Humans are clever and much more resourceful than the one world megalomaniacs give them credit.

    #113216
    Antidote
    Participant

    @chettt

    Dr. D said a while back: “the people are perennial like the grass”.

    In these last 3 years I have been amazed at how many people do not recognize their own nazi bent. Advocating eugenics and they don’t even know it.

    #113217
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Modern humanity is like a “generation ship” whose inhabitants can scarcely remember why they’re on a giant interstellar ark, or even what stars are.

    The gen-ship trope usually has people lapsing into barbarism. On our 21st century “gen-ship”, we’ve laxed into surreal hyper-civilized couch potatoes unable to remember much less imagine life without couches.

    Let’s hear it for Joe-Jim!

    ***

    The Plains Indians were done in mostly by pathogenic microbes. If it weren’t for them itty bugs, European culture/military would’ve bounced off American culture/military with quills in its hide, and never returned.

    For survival tech I suggest real friends who really care about each other’s survival. WIthout that, even the biggest military industrial complex won’t do squat.

    ***

    ET Phone

    #113218
    Antidote
    Participant
    #113222
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Never assume, especially not about what other people think or believe. You just make an ass of yourself.

    Far better to ask them Then you will get the right answer!

    So, no, I do not think the world would have been better off it had been taken over by WEF or Club of Rome.

    Besides. the world already was taken over by WEF! But they just didn’t call it WEF at the time. Research the City of London, and recognise that there has been a millennium of control of the populace by sociopaths, looters, exploiters and psychopaths.

    In the non-Anglo world it is referred to as ‘The Empire of Lies’, and more recently as ‘The Empire of Chaos’, as everything is made increasingly chaotic.

    If you were to ask me who I think should be in control, I would say physical scientists and ecologists and deep thinkers. But such people (like me) would say: “Stop, Enough.” And the bankers and industrialists would have a fit and have them murdered. Promptly.

    As it is, such people do say, “Stop. Enough!” all the time. But their voices are unheard above the cacophany of bullshit and commercialism that ‘the controllers’ promote..

    “Money makes the world go round.”

    Well, it used to.

    But now the rules are changing. Very seriously changing. And people are discovering that physics, chemistry and biology etc. DO MATTER AFTER ALL!

    By the way, here is Shell’s top oil geologist M King Hubbert’s warning to the world in 1976. (Ignored, of course).

    I rather like what senior oil geologist Colin Campbell (co-founder of ASPO) said around 15 years ago: “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

    And here is another by the way: Admiral Rickover, ‘father of the US nuclear submarine fleet’ warned about much the same thing as Hubbert waaay waaay back in 1957!

    But their voices are unheard. That is partly

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